Didn’t Hollywood Once Name a Movie After This Guy?

Texas A&M; has a new offensive lineman named Marshall Land, but you can just call him “Big.” Everyone else does.

Land is 6-feet 6-inches tall and weighs 378 pounds. He wears a size 60 suit, 58 pants and 17 EEE shoe. His waist is 50 inches. Linebacker Johnny Holland hesitantly asked Big if he wanted to be shown around the A&M; campus. Said Holland: “I was afraid to let him ride in my car. I thought he’d break the seats.”

When Land weighed in at practice he broke the scale. “It flashed some numbers and it broke the scale.”

Land is a transfer from Sacramento City College where he was elected student-body president. His campaign slogan? “Vote for Land, the big, big man.”

Add “Big”: Land weighed 14 pounds at birth and never wore baby clothes. He was too big. “My mom took me to the store to get some shoes,” Big told Steve Schoenfeld of the Dallas Times Herald. “Baby shoes go to size 12, but I wore a men’s size 3. My mother was too embarrassed to take me into the men’s shoe store to get shoes. My grandmother had to take me.”

Welcome to Denver, Mo: If Mo Martin, the Denver Nuggets’ No. 1 pick, can play basketball as well as he can take a joke, the Nuggets should be tough to beat. Well, the team’s jokes are tough to top, anyway.

It seems that while Martin, from St. Joseph’s, was being fitted for a Nugget uniform inside McNichols Arena, a few pranksters went to work in the parking lot. They conned workers using a crane to renovate the arena into hoisting Martin’s new $42,000 BMW atop the ticket office. “Where is my car?” Martin asked as front office people pointed skyward.

Would You Believe?: Narcy Randon and Fred Seufert, golfing partners in Springville, N.Y., were stunned when Randon dropped in a hole-in-one on the 159-yard 12th hole at Springville Country Club. So what did Seufert do when he followed Randon? You got it. He grabbed his 5-iron and scored a hole-in-one.

How’s That? Philadelphia rookie running back Junior Tautalatasi has been a big surprise for Coach Buddy Ryan, earning a starting spot in the Eagles’ backfield. The only problem is Ryan can’t pronounce his name (it’s TAUGHT-a-la-TOSS-ee).

Ryan simplified things, however. He calls him Junior Smith.

Dan Pohl was unsure whether to buy a case of champagne for the media following his victory Sunday in the World Series of Golf at Akron, Ohio.

“To tell the truth, I was wondering whether you guys drink,” he said.

Pohl soon was enlightened, and provided some bubbly.

Said Jose Canseco after breaking an 0-for-40 hitless streak with an RBI double Saturday night against the New York Yankees: “I was saying, ‘This can’t be a hit.’ That’s the way you think when you’re in the slump that I was in. I just couldn’t believe it until it fell in.”

Add streaks: While Canseco’s 0-fer streak is noteable it doesn’t approach Bob Buhl’s 0-for-70 in 1962. Buhl was no power hitter, however. A right-handed pitcher, he had a 13-14 record for the Milwaukee Braves and Chicago Cubs that season.

Quotebook

Writes Steve Kelley of the Seattle Times on the flow of former USFL players into the NFL: “Their times in the 40 were no faster than their sprints from the other league. They knew the great experiment had failed. USFL football was no better than Triple-A baseball.”