If You Just Ask Him, He’ll Give the Word

They tell the story that Jim Lynam, when he was coaching the San Diego Clippers, was asked by the writers to stop replying to their questions with one-word answers.

“Why?” Lynam said.

He’s now the coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, and a Philadelphia Daily News writer asked him if that actually happened. Lynam thought for a moment.

“True,” he said.

From Dodger pitcher Don Sutton, 43: “I used to pitch, golf, have fun, rest and pitch again. Now, I pitch, recover, recover, recover, rest and pitch again.”

Back when the National Football League draft went for 20 rounds, things could get a little giddy at the end.

Hal Bock of the Associated Press recalled a year when Norm Van Brocklin, picking in the last round, named John Wayne as the choice of the Minnesota Vikings.

The league, playing along, asked what school he was from.

Van Brocklin, not missing a beat, said, “Fort Apache State.”

Trivia Time: Wrigley Field, which opened in 1916, is the oldest stadium in the National League. What is the second oldest? (Answer below.)

From Boston rookie pitcher Steve Ellsworth, on the thrill of playing in Tiger Stadium: “You think of all the guys who have played there. It’s a park where they’ve played nothing but baseball for 76 years. It’s a baseball stadium, not a place where they hold circuses or something.”

Don’t tell him, but the Detroit Lions played football there for 37 years before moving to the Pontiac Silverdome.

Now-it-can-be-told Department: Red Auerbach, when he was coaching the Boston Celtics, wasn’t the first to light up victory cigars.

Says Norman Sharp, president of the Cigar Assn. of America: “The tradition of the victory cigar dates to the Civil War when Gen. Ulysses Grant was given 30,000 cigars after his victory at Appomattox in 1865.”

57 Years Ago Today: On April 29, 1931, Wes Ferrell pitched the Cleveland Indians to a 7-0 win over the St. Louis Browns with a no-hitter. He also knocked in four runs with a homer and a double. The St. Louis catcher was his brother, Rick Ferrell.

Gerald Perry, 6-foot-6, 321-pound tackle drafted from Southern University by the Denver Broncos, originally attended South Carolina.

Asked how he got so big, he said, “I went to South Carolina on a basketball scholarship, and they gave me a summer job before the season started. It was at Chic-fil-a. I didn’t do much work but I did a lot of eating.”

Add Perry: He attended Dreher High School in Columbia, S.C., where he broke all the school scoring and rebound records in basketball. They had been held by Alex English, now of the Denver Nuggets.

Trivia Answer: Candlestick Park, which opened in 1960.

Quotebook

Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post: “The only way the Lakers lose to San Antonio is if they take a tour of the Alamo and the walls collapse on Magic Johnson.”