This Session Won’t Cost You Anything

Today only: Free advice.

To Mike Shanahan: Loosen up, buddy, it’s only a game.

Your Raiders have a third down on the Seahawks’ 13-yard line with 9 seconds left in the first half Monday night, and you send in the field goal unit?

Why not stick a white flag on top of Chris Bahr’s helmet?

Why not send in the Raiderettes?

Declining that one shot at a touchdown was like giving your cleanup hitter the take sign on a 3-2 pitch, bottom of the ninth.

The Raiders are supposed to be swashbucklers, not percentage-playing accountants. Swash those buckles, Mike, buckle those swashes, kick out the jambs, let the boys go down gouging and biting and swinging, like real Raiders.

To the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.: Next time, save your money.

You spent $1.75 million for a year-long study that revealed that--drum roll, please--college athletes in major sports spend more time in their sports than they do in their classes.

At last, an explanation why so few football players win the Heisman Trophy and the Nobel Prize for physics in the same season.

Here’s some free info, NCAA: Athletes not only spend more time in their sports than they do in their classes, they spend more time in their whirlpool baths than they do in their classes.

To Bert Blyleven: Keep the scraggly beard.

You may not have realized it until this moment, but you are the reincarnation of Vincent Van Gogh. Look at Van Gogh’s self-portrait and your photo. The evidence is irrefutable.

This explains your talent for painting the corners of the plate, your inability to impress critics, your reputation as a somber and impressionistic pitcher.

Van Gogh was born in the Netherlands March 30, 1853; Blyleven was born in the Netherlands April 6, 1951.

In 1888, Van Gogh moved to southern France and began the most productive period of his painting career. In 1988, you have been transferred to Southern California.

Good luck, Bert, and watch yourself shaving.

To Ickey Woods, Cincinnati Bengals running back: Please, no more end-zone dancing.

One-word review of your touchdown dance, Ickey: Yucky.

Ditto Ronnie Harmon of the Buffalo Bills. And Tony Dorsett of the Denver Broncos, I couldn’t tell if that was a touchdown dance Sunday or if you were trying to adjust your underwear without touching it.

Nothing personal, guys. I think the National Football League is experiencing a league-wide dancing slump. I suggest you go back to the basics, the things that got you here--the slam-spike, the prayer, the prance.

To Steve Sax: When you report to spring training with your Yankees, ask for a baggy uniform and long-sleeved undershirt.

Your new manager, Dallas Green, won’t like it if he finds out you’re a dedicated conditioner and weight-trainer.

Green recently said: “You can’t ride a bike between second and third base, and you can’t lift your batting average with a set of weights.”

Amazing. George Steinbrenner, the man our country commissioned to recommend ways to improve our Olympic athletes, hires a field manager whose theories on athletic conditioning were scientifically shot down decades ago.

Hey, Steve, play their little game. Tell Green you spent the winter drinking beer and playing pool. But if you sprain an ankle and the team doctor wants to put leeches on the ankle to suck out the evil poisons, ask for a second opinion.

To Steve Beuerlein: Don’t listen to the fans.

Raider fans can be a grumpy lot. Some Sundays, it seems as though they got up on the wrong side of the park bench.

At the Falcon game 2 weeks ago, I heard Coliseum fans loudly referring to you as Rusty Wilson.

Cute, but cheap. Don’t listen to them. Or to the media, either. Or to the coaches. Or even to your conscience.

Get a Walkman with a 12-volt car battery, enjoy some music and wait your turn. You’ll be back--right after Jay Schroeder, Vince Evans, Jim Plunkett. (Hey, I told you not to listen to the media.)

To Mike Tyson: Don’t rush into that fight with Frank Bruno.

The fight was postponed when you drove your car into a tree, then when you battled your wife, then when your handlers got into a legal tussle.

The suspense is building. An embarrassingly crummy tuneup fight now looms as the battle of the century.

Meanwhile, I see you’re keeping busy, partying in Mexico and getting baptized in Cleveland.

It’s amazing how the Rev. Jesse Jackson just happened to be in the neighborhood when you got baptized Sunday. He must have heard you had been taken hostage by Don King.

But as I said, keep Bruno on hold. Seldom have so many waited so long for so little.

To Doug Rader: Don’t try to play it straight with us.

When the Angels hired you as their zookeeper, you said, “I’ve never been a flake.”

If you’re not a flake, what good will you be as the Angels’ manager? The franchise has floundered for decades because they keep hiring managers who are non-flaky.

This is a team desperately in need of a flake. Go with it, man. Besides, if we media analysts say you’re a flake, you’re a flake.