Look No Further if You’re Hungry for Negative Feedback

Got a question? Ask Mr. Negative, the noted sports authority whose cup is neither half full nor half empty. It’s completely empty, because some numbskull forgot to fill the coffee machine, and tell me that doesn’t ruin your day before it starts.

Dear Mr. Negative: Has Danny Manning joined the Clippers? Why, are they coming apart?

I know, that’s an old joke. But the new jokes are all so doggone stupid and depressing.

I’ll say this about Manning: Unlike many of the Clippers’ recent high draft choices, he hasn’t disappointed anyone with his performance on the court.

Manning has already served the team well. The Clippers have used his photo on the cover of their media guide and in newspaper ads.

They were planning to put a life-size cardboard cutout of Manning at the forward spot and hope that the opponents didn’t catch on. But they killed that idea, fearing that the fans might mistake the cutout for Benoit Benjamin.

Look, I know Benoit is off to a fine start. But for Mr. Negative, no shot is too cheap.

Do you like the name of the new NBA team, the Miami Heat? I would have prefered something more appropriate to the city and the team. Like maybe the Miami Crime.

I do like the new team motto: “If you can’t stand the Heat, get out of the arena.”

Seriously, I think the Heat can win some games this year, if they convert their scores from Celsius to Fahrenheit.

Is it really important for an NFL team to establish its running game early, to show it can move the football? You’ve been watching too much TV. Announcers love to refer to the ball as the “football,” as in: “Lem, the Raiders are really moving that football.” Bad example, but you get the idea.

What other kind of ball is used in the NFL? Boccie ball? Medicine ball? Mothball?

That’s like people who call a tuna sandwich a tunafish sandwich. Doesn’t all tuna come from a fish, or is there a tuna I’m not aware of that is made from cows or birds?

Are you excited by the announcement that the next Super Bowl halftime show will be telecast in 3-D? You think this is something new? They’ve all been 3-D--dull, dull, dull.

Oh, sure, I’m looking forward to losing my 3-D glasses, just like I lose everything else, and getting severe eyestrain and headache from trying to watch the stupid halftime show without ‘em.

Call me vain, but I refuse to watch anything in 3-D until they come out with 3-D contact lenses.

Do you think the Clippers will trade the rights to Danny Manning for Charles Barkley or Mailman Malone, as rumored? Why not trade Manning for Barkley and Malone? Friend, whoever started that rumor is going through life with a 3-D brain-wave filter. Manning couldn’t carry Malone’s mailbag, and if Manning ever dreamed of having Barkley’s impact on a ballgame, he’d wake up and apologize.

Not that Manning isn’t a fine player in his own right, wher ever he is.

During last Sunday’s NFL action, I saw two instances of defenders taking cheap-shot, blind-side dives at the knees of quarterbacks. Both quarterbacks somehow escaped serious injury. Can’t anything be done about this? Sure, the NFL is thinking of making quarterbacks wear stilts, so defenders wouldn’t have to dive low in order to crunch the knee area. A guy could get hurt diving like that.

I guess the officials need to look the other way on this stuff because the game isn’t violent or dangerous enough.

Whatever happened to the honorable old days when defenders were satisfied with giving the quarterback a fractured skull or separated shoulder?

I prefer watching football on TV, as opposed to live attendance, because I like the replays. How about you? I like a Gershwin tune . . . Never mind.

Don’t even talk about TV replays. I liked the original concept of instant replay. I didn’t mind the advent of slo-mo and then stop-action replay.

But now we’ve got the variable-speed replay, where the players speed up, slow down, freeze, jerk ahead one frame at a time, run backward.

Watching a game is like riding in a truck with someone who’s just learning how to drive a stick shift.

What’s this new boxing organization, the WBO? Who can keep track? There are hundreds of official boxing organizations. I’ve started my own, the MNBA--Mister Negative Boxing Assn.

Send us a $5 licensing fee and proof-of-purchase seal from this newspaper and we’ll send you a handsome certificate or reasonable facsimile, officially sanctioning any altercation or squabble.

And because there just are not enough divisions, we have added some new ones--tsetse flyweight, anorexia weight, light medium heavy, fair to middlin’, medium rare.

I understand that Mike Tyson has ballooned up to about 260 pounds. Is he eating himself out of a title? Don’t be negative. He’s simply eating himself into a new title.

He will battle George Foreman for the MNBA superslob championship.

Don’t ask about tickets. There won’t be a live gate, because whatever arena you put these Pillsbury doughboys in, there won’t be any room left for fans.

Now we know why Tyson, when he got into that street fight with Mitch Green, was at that Harlem clothing store at 3 a.m. The suit Tyson bought at noon didn’t fit him anymore.

Confidential to Matter of Life and Death:

Sorry, dude, I’ve run out of space. Maybe next month.