Nobody Says This King Is a Prince of a Man

Sam Smith of the Chicago Tribune is the latest sportswriter to incur the wrath of Don King. Or to, uh, make the fight promoter’s hair stand on end.

Smith was ejected from the working press area at last week’s Edwin Rosario-Juan Nazario fight at the University of Illinois Chicago, and a press agent for King tried to bar Smith from taking his seat at ringside. When that failed, he yanked Smith’s telephone from its outlet and had the reporter removed by stadium security guards.

The incident apparently stemmed from Smith’s story the day before the fight about King’s alleged financial abuses of his fighters, the latest being Chicago veteran Alfonzo Ratliff. According to the paper, Ratliff was being made to turn over 50% of his purses to manager Carl King, Don’s son.

Writes Wallace Matthews of Newsday: “ . . . King, whose former attitude to press criticism was, ‘Who cares? Just spell the name right,’ is now desperate to protect his soiled reputation. And he will go to any lengths, including bullying journalists, to do it.

“Actually, Smith went easy on King. He didn’t bother to mention King’s history as a numbers runner in Cleveland, which King proudly recounts at his interminable news conferences, or his 1966 manslaughter conviction, for which he received a pardon from Ohio Gov. James A. Rhodes in 1982. King likes to tell those stories as an example of how he has been ‘rehabilitated,’ but this recent episode shows that, in reality, his tactics haven’t changed much.”

Trivia Time: What do Gary Rajsich, Dick Davis and Tony Brewer have in common? (Answer below).

Remember when the idea was to try to reach the major leagues? Well, here’s what catcher Andy Allanson had to say about his promotion from Triple-A to the Cleveland Indians:

“Like Sammy Stewart said when he got called up, ‘Why me?’ I wasn’t anxious to get here. I knew how bad the situation would be in Cleveland.”

From Brian Hewitt of the Chicago Sun-Times: “I would like to know what Darryl Stingley thought when he heard Bo Jackson say he was going to pursue professional football as a ‘hobby.’ ”

Add Hewitt: “If I were shipwrecked on a deserted island, the three men in professional sports with whom I would like to be stranded are George Steinbrenner, Dennis Conner and Eric Show. (Steinbrenner could build the escape ship, Conner could sail it, and Show could fire coconuts at the heads of pirates.)”

Trivia answer: All are former major leaguers hitting better than .300 in Japan.

Quotebook

Pitcher Bert Blyleven of the Minnesota Twins, who is threatening to break his own major league record of 50 home runs allowed in a season: “It’s pretty bad when your family asks for passes to the game and wants to sit in the left-field bleachers.”