A Little Screaming and Hollering Goes Well With Your Cereal

Breakfast is boring. A dreary day awaits you at the office or at school. You open the newspaper and see mounting evidence that the world is being run and overrun by idiots. What can you do?

Talk back to the news. The sports news, in this case.

Find a statement or a quote that piques your interest and simply express your feelings, out loud. No muttering or grumbling. Let it out. Yell, rage, rant, pound the table, implore, sneer, expound, pontificate. Become a participant, in the privacy of your own home, in the great issues of sport.

Remember, this is not a debate. You get the first word and the last. Don’t even try to be fair or rational. Also remember: This exercise, a sort of primal-bitch therapy, should not be attempted on buses, commuter vans or airline flights.

To get you started, here are a few examples.

Dodger General Manager Fred Claire, responding to reports that free-agent Steve Garvey would like to return to the Dodgers to wind up his baseball career: “We appreciate Steve’s interest in the Dodgers, and we will be happy to meet with him.”

Happy? Whoa, Fred. One year ago, Tim Raines begs you guys to meet with him. He does everything but send a Candy-gram. All he wants is a chance to talk with you about the possibility of playing for the team of his dreams. But Tim is a free agent, and the Dodgers don’t sign free agents. So what if Raines is coming off a year where he hits .334 and steals 70 bases, and the only guy in your organization who can cover center field is the grounds-crew tarp man.

Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see the Garv come back for one more season. He’s a good guy, the fans love him, he can still play a little, even if he hit a robust .211 last season and tore up a shoulder. Besides, what could he mess up?

But you stiff Tim Raines and you’re happy to talk to Steve Garvey? Holy Dodgerdog.

Billy Martin, hired again as Yankee manager, on how he will peacefully coexist with owner George Steinbrenner: “We’re not going to let the press drive a wedge between us.”

That damn wedge-driving press again. Here you are, Billy, you and George, best of pals, two lovable, warm-hearted mugs who just want to have fun and bring baseball glory back to its rightful home. And what happens? A gang of backstabbing, gossip-mongering, poison-pen hacks break up your party by doing sneaky things like quoting you and reporting the news.

Drive a wedge between you? Most sportswriters I know, the only thing they’d want to drive between you two is a manure truck, so they’d have a winning poker hand--three of a kind.

Whitey Herzog, Cardinals manager, crying about the Twins having an advantage in the World Series because there are two days off, an enormous edge for the Twins’ thin pitching staff: “Why didn’t they win more games if they’re so (doggone) good?”

You’re absolutely right, Whitey. The World Series is badly flawed, what with two full days off during the seven-game event. It’s about time we corrected this mess, and made it a true test of baseball greatness instead of a Club Med vacation for overachieving imposters.

Next year we’ll play all seven games over one glorious World Series Weekend, topped off with a Sunday tripleheader. And we’ll put an asterisk beside the names of the last 30 or 40 World Series champs. Happy now?

LSU football coach Mike Archer, defending his decision to let fullback Victor Jones play after Jones was arrested for driving 123 miles per hour: “He told me he was trying to get some bad gas out of the tank. . . . I believe him.”

Trust is a beautiful thing, coach. I bet you’d believe the kid if he told you he rolled the car seven or eight times because the roof itched.

No harm done, right? Uh, have you checked the grill of Victor’s car for pedestrians?

Say, don’t powerful cars cost a lot of money? Why is a college student-athlete driving a car that will do 123 m.p.h. on bad gas? Don’t tell me--his chauffeur phoned in sick.

Look, I understand the temptation of the open road. More than once I’ve done 123 in my car, but that’s total miles, not miles per hour.

New Orleans General Manager Jim Finks, on Eric Dickerson: “He betrayed the organization that was so good to him for the first five years, and went to the organization that paid the most money.”

Now there’s a novel concept--switching jobs because another company offers you more money. I’ve alerted the FBI.

I also checked your bio in the Saint press guide, Jimbo. You’ve switched jobs and organizations seven times in your career. But surely never for more money.

And who was good to whom, James? The Rams didn’t exactly pick Dickerson up out of the gutter. When he came to Anaheim, he was a major star with a fabulous future, and the Rams were a mom-and-pop operation without the pop. I won’t say Eric pulled the Rams up out of a gutter, but he should have taken out hernia insurance.

There. Feel better? Now shut up and get back out in the real world.