Trainer’s Life Without Tyson Has a Not-So-Familiar Ring to It

Boxing trainer Kevin Rooney took a serious pay cut when Mike Tyson banished him.

Rooney, who made $1.5 million when he worked Tyson’s corner against Michael Spinks, earned $1,500 when he worked a fight last weekend for Vinny Pazienza, a former lightweight champion. “Sure, it’s different,” Rooney told Newsday’s Wallace Matthews. “Vinny Pazienza is not Mike Tyson. Nobody’s like Mike Tyson. But Vinny Pazienza is a good fighter, and I think I can help him be a better fighter.”

After Pazienza stopped Jake Carollo at 1:57 of the second round, Rooney raised his fighter’s hand overhead, as he had done with Tyson.

“It always gives me great satisfaction when my fighter wins,” said Rooney, who has been working with amateurs since he and Tyson split. “It feels the same no matter who the fighter is.

“It’s a personal challenge to me, to prove that I can train fighters besides Mike Tyson.” Runners’ world: Valerie Wilson, whose house faces the starting line of the Boston Marathon, opens her home to runners before the race.

“I think they distribute maps in Tulsa, Okla., telling them how to get to our house,” Wilson said.

Before Monday’s race, her house was jammed with 150 runners, but she didn’t mind.

“Runners are wonderful people,” she said. “And the marathon only happens once a year.”

Trivia time: Who’s the only person to have played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Rangers and the New York Knicks? This is a trick question.

Bronx cheers: After being booed for his erratic fielding, New York Mets infielder Howard Johnson sarcastically tipped his cap to the fans at Shea Stadium after scrambling to throw out a runner in a recent game.

He got a standing ovation.

“I took it in a positive way,” he said. “I’ll remember this probably as much as any home run or curtain call.”

TV or not TV?: “TV is the worst thing ever to happen to college basketball. There are a tremendous amount of Sunday games, of which I don’t approve, and they have you playing every day, every time imaginable. TV timeouts control the game. TV has made actors out of players, coaches. It’s hurt team play. Team play hasn’t progressed as fast as the individual has.”

The words will not sit well with TV hoopaholics, but they come from a man who should know what he’s talking about--John Wooden, who won 10 national championships at UCLA.

No clue: After the Cincinnati Reds signed Eric Davis to a $1.35-million contract, which included a $100,000 bonus for winning a Gold Glove for fielding, a team official asked why owner Marge Schott agreed to the bonus.

“Why not?” Schott is reported to have said. “What are his chances of winning that?”

Pretty good, it would seem.

Davis won Gold Gloves in 1987 and ’88.

Trivia Answer: Organist Gladys Goodding.

Quotebook: George Vogel, Cincinnati sportscaster: “Seton Hall is not Ollie North’s secretary.”