This Guy Phoned In His Jokes

As a pitcher, Moe Drabowsky was not bad, but he was no Walter Johnson, either. He is more likely to be remembered as the man who gave up Stan Musial’s 3,000th hit and the losing victory than for his 88-105 record. news,22p9

As a practical joker, however, Drabowsky, 52, the pitching coach for the Double-A Birmingham Barons, was a Hall of Famer.

He pulled his favorite gag of all-time at old Municipal Stadium in Kansas City, he told Ben Walker of the Associated Press.

“I’d pitched there for a few years, so I was familiar with the phone system,” Drabowsky said. “I knew the extension of the Kansas City bullpen and you could dial it direct from the visitors’ bullpen.

“One game, Jim Nash of the Athletics is cruising against us in about the fifth inning. So I call their bullpen and shout ‘Get Krausse up’ and hang up.

“You should’ve seen them scramble, trying to get Lew Krausse warmed up in a hurry,” Drabowsky said. “It really was funny.”

He did what again? In his first at-bat for the New York Mets Monday night, Don Schulze drew a bases-loaded walk on four pitches from Randy O’Neal of the Atlanta Braves.

For Schulze, it was history repeating itself.

In his first major league at-bat for the Chicago Cubs in 1983, Schulze was walked on four pitches by the Mets’ Ron Darling.

Said Darling after Schulze’s latest effort: “Now, I know he can’t hit. If I’d known that then, I wouldn’t have walked him.”

Seeing double: Fourteen players have hit two home runs in a game this season against the Texas Rangers.

The Ranger pitching staff apparently can make a slugger out of almost anyone. Monday night, Toronto’s Garth Iorg hit two homers against Texas to help the Blue Jays to a 5-3 victory. Those were the first home runs of the season for Iorg, who hit only three last season and has just 16 in 987 career at-bats.

Jerry Trecker, writing for the Hartford Courant, had this to say after Nick Faldo had won the British Open:

“Faldo is everything a sporting hero might be; everything, that is, except a gracious target for criticism. The British, you see, like to take potshots at sporting heroes, perhaps because Britain doesn’t have all that many superstars to cheer.”

Oh?

Out of pocket: The Kansas City Chiefs are installing an offensive scheme that, in part, requires the quarterback to roll from sideline to sideline before handing the ball off, throwing or even running with it.

Veteran quarterback Bill Kenney is not sure he’s entirely sold on the system, which is designed to disguise some running options and also to reduce the Chiefs’ reliance on the passing game.

“I feel vulnerable right now because I haven’t seen what takes place under fire,” Kenney told the Denver Post’s Irv Moss. “If you go out there and put a big fake on a linebacker and you take off and embarrass him, the next time you come out without the ball, he’s probably going to smack you. I don’t like that.”

Visiting the training camp of the Super Bowl runner-up Denver Broncos, who failed to score after having first and goal on the one-yard line last Jan. 25, the Denver Post’s Buddy Martin recalled a bumper sticker a former neighbor recommended at the time: “Give Those Broncos A Yard And They Take An Inch.”

Lou Holtz said there were times that he felt just as much pressure to win while coaching at Arkansas as he does at Notre Dame.

Holtz recalled that after one big season with the Razorbacks he was inducted into the Arkansas Hall of Fame and a stamp was issued with his picture on it.

“But the next year we lost to Texas and they had to take me off the stamp,” Holtz said. “People were spitting on the wrong side.”

Quotebook

Radio personality Gary Owens of station KFI, commenting on the recent auction for $70,000 of a tag to shoot a California bighorn sheep, the money to be used in bighorn sheep studies, said: “That’s like holding a bullfight to benefit the ASPCA.”