Green Finally Turns Red Over Inept Play of Yankees

The New York Yankees’ losing streak had reached five games, and Manager Dallas Green had had enough.

In a nine-minute, closed-door tirade, a scarlet-faced Green lashed out at his players in language that left nothing to the imagination. Later, he told reporters what he thought of the team.

“We stink,” he said. “What else you want to know? We’re playing dumb baseball. Dumb. Guys are trying to hit 10-run home runs when what we need are some base hits back to back. And our pitching staff is throwing like a bunch of Little Leaguers.”

Someone asked if any players had spoken up.

“Is this a democracy or something?” an incredulous Green asked. “I hope not. I don’t run those kinds of meetings.”

Trivia: When was the first televised baseball game and which teams played in it?

The tofu was unharmed, too: Reserve forward Mark Acres of the Boston Celtics was involved in a freak car accident in front of his parents’ Palos Verdes Estates home last week.

He narrowly escaped serious injury when the parked car he was getting out of was rear-ended by another vehicle that had run a stop sign. Acres, who was trapped between the driver’s door and the side of the car, had just come from a health food store.

“My amino pills got shattered,” he said, “but my carrot juice was OK.”

Too late, Rafael: In 580 at-bats for the Chicago Cubs last season, Rafael Palmeiro produced not one game-winning RBI.

This season, the GWRBI has been ousted from the ranks of official major league statistics.

Obviously, that was the inspiration Palmeiro was waiting for. He batted in the winning run in his third game with the Texas Rangers.

Reaching for the Stars: The fact that only two teams in National Hockey League history have come back from a three-game deficit in the playoffs did not deter Curt Giles.

“It’s no fun being down three games to one, but it beats being down four games to zip,” said the captain of the Minnesota North Stars. “You look at the odds of us winning this series (against the St. Louis Blues). People say, ‘No way is it going to happen.’ But we have to do our best to say, ‘I know it can happen, I know it can happen, I know it can happen.’ ”

It didn’t happen.

Trivia answer: The first baseball game to be televised was Princeton at Columbia on May 17, 1939. NBC used one camera, operating from a 12-foot-high platform along the third-base line.

Quotebook: Said the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Andy Van Slyke, after tearing skin off his hand and wrist while making a sliding catch on artificial surface: “I’m the only man in America who can take his pulse by looking at his wrist.”