Location Is New, but Andujar’s Line Is Same

The uniform is different, but not the quotes. In Oakland, as in St. Louis, Joaquin Andujar continues to play the macho role with comic opera results.

Mitch Albom of Knight-Ridder Newspapers reports this exchange with Dusty Baker in the Oakland dugout:

Andujar: “You tell me one pitcher who throws faster than me, man. Tell me one.”

Baker: “One? OK. There’s one.” He pointed to Jose Rijo.

Andujar: “You crazy, man. Can he throw 98?”

Baker: “When do you throw 98?”

Andujar: “Never in my life.”

Strange.

New York Met announcer Tim McCarver, on Steve Carlton, whom he caught at both St. Louis and Philadelphia: “When Steve and I die, we’re going to be buried in the same cemetery, 60 feet 6 inches apart.”

Add McCarver: When he was at St. Louis, he said: “Bob Gibson is the luckiest pitcher I ever saw. He always pitches when the other team doesn’t score any runs.”

Trivia Time: What do Bear Bryant, Daffy Dean and Tank Younger have in common? (Answer below.)

Add Forgettable Quotes: Wrote Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe, after the Houston Rockets released John Lucas for drug involvement: “What losing Lucas does to the Rockets is simple. It finishes them as a Western Conference playoff contender.”

Said Rickey Henderson of the New York Yankees, when told that Al Nipper, just off the disabled list, was the Boston Red Sox’s choice to pitch the third game of this week’s series after two straight losses: “Panic. Everything’s going against them.”

Nipper and Boston won, 5-4.

From United Press International: “Pitcher John Butcher, traded from Minnesota to Cleveland, has plans to marry a Minneapolis dentist this fall and doesn’t know whether she’ll move with him to Cleveland. But he does plan on keeping the Porsche 911 she gave him for a wedding present.”

Toronto’s Lloyd Moseby, on the resurgence of the Blue Jays: “The hitting’s hitting, the pitching’s pitching, the defense is defensing and the choir’s singing.”

Joe DiMaggio, asked why he had attended the Gerry Cooney-Eddie Gregg fight in San Francisco, told Bob Verdi of the Chicago Tribune: “Because I enjoy privacy.”

The fight drew 1,537.

Now-it-can-be-told Dept.: John Jardine, 50, now a partner in an insurance firm, told Rob Zaleski of the Madison, Wis., Capital Times why he quit as the University of Wisconsin football coach: “The last two years I coached I was sick every weekend. They’d take me to the hospital every Friday and give me a shot to relax me. It was the only way I could digest my food.

“In 1977, my last year, they started taking me to the hospital on Wednesday. That’s when I decided that was enough.”

Said retired NFL guard Ed White, when asked about the toughest defensive linemen he had faced: “Overall, Bob Lilly was the toughest. That goes back awhile. Most recently, it’s been Howie Long. They both were intelligent and possessed great skills. They called Lilly the Purple Haze . . . you couldn’t focus on him. Howie has such great quickness, speed and strength.’

Trivia Answer: The same first name, Paul. Quotebook

Howard Cosell, testifying at the USFL-NFL trial, asked by NFL attorney Frank Rothman if he had understood a particular question: “If you ask a question I don’t understand, you will have the biggest story of the century.”