Morning Briefing : Hagler Figures He Can Take Hearns’ Best Shot

Asked how he is going to avoid the right hand of Tommy Hearns tonight, Marvin Hagler said it doesn’t make any difference.

“He’s going to land his ‘awesome’ right hand and I’m not going to blink an eye,” Hagler said. “He’s going to run back to his corner and ask Emanuel Steward, ‘What do I do now?’

“If Emanuel is smart, he’s going to tell Hearns to pray.”

Add Fight: Larry Holmes, in Las Vegas for the fight, said he is picking Hearns.

“Hagler is what I call a face fighter and Hearns has those arms that look nine feet long,” Holmes said. “I bet $5,000 on Hearns when I was here training for the David Bey fight. He’ll win by a KO.”

Berra’s Law: “When you’re struggling, the way to win is to play a team that’s also struggling.”

So said Yogi Berra after his New York Yankees improved to 2-3 after their second straight win over the 0-5 Cleveland Indians.

Name-of-the-game dept.: Fred Couples didn’t win the Masters but he gets the Terry Donahue Award for uttering the same nasty word after an errant tee shot Sunday that Donahue was once overhead saying on national TV.

CBS should have known better, of course. Anytime you put a live mike on a golf course, you’re asking for it.

Add Masters: Tournament chairman Hord Hardin would always listen patiently when a pro complained about the pin placements, but he always closed with this line: “Ben Hogan would have found a way to get it close.”

From NBC producer Michael Weisman, on the network’s baseball announcing team: “Never in the history of network sports has one network had the depth that we have. You used to dread a rainout, because you’d have to go to Ron Luciano.”

Keith Hernandez of the New York Mets, on pitcher Dwight Gooden: “He’s even better this year, if you can believe it. He’s filled out a little, and he’s worked on his pickoff move. You have to realize that until he got to the big leagues, he didn’t need a pickoff move. Nobody ever got on base.”

Larry King of the Sporting News quotes Tom Lasorda as saying: “You’re going to be sorry you didn’t pick us to win the National League title, Larry. I don’t see anybody giving us a rough time. We have a terrific team with great pitching and, while I would like to have gotten Rickey Henderson, it’s not bad having Al Oliver.

“When Oliver joined us, I thought he had astigmatism or something. He’d step up to the batting cage and keep looking down at his shirt, then back up again and then down again. I thought we had damaged goods. I asked him what was the matter. He told me he just couldn’t believe he was a Dodger. He just wanted to keep glancing down at his uniform to make sure it wasn’t a dream.”

You believe it? Or do you believe what what Joe Garagiola once said?

“You could take that stuff and fertilize 10 rows of corn.”

Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller, to Bill Livingston of the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “I’ll tell you, that stuff about Nolan Ryan being faster than me is a fairy tale or Santa Claus or whatever you want to call it. They have more sophisticated measuring devices now, but you ask around baseball and you’ll hear that nobody was ever faster than me except for Walter Johnson.”

Quotebook

Comedian George Burns, 89, at the Boxing Hall of Fame banquet in Las Vegas: “The first thing I do every morning is read the obituaries in the newspaper. If my name isn’t in there, I have breakfast.”