Second Effort Was Worth It for One Disappointed Father

Mark Guthrie, 23-year-old rookie pitcher for the Minnesota Twins, has a brother, Mike, who is 15 years older.

Explaining the difference, the older brother said, “My dad saw me pitch one game and I threw a ball to the backstop. He decided then to have another son.”

Wait a minute: John Madden told USA Today, “There’s nothing tougher in the NFL than making it as a rookie quarterback. People say Troy Aikman is great. But when you look at the history of the NFL, only Dan Marino has made it big as a rookie.”

Sammy Baugh led the Washington Redskins to a National Football League championship as a rookie in 1937, and Bob Waterfield did it with the Cleveland Rams in 1945.

Trivia time: What do Oakland A’s pitcher Bob Welch, former National Basketball Assn. star George Gervin and 1976 Olympic 100-meter champion Hasley Crawford of Trinidad have in common?

Murphy’s law: Said ESPN analyst Bob Murphy as Isao Aoki addressed a pitch shot from the rough beside the green: “Watch these hands. Perfect touch.”

Kiss of death? Nope. Aoki, as if on cue, flipped it in for a birdie.

Add Murphy: Describing a delicate shot by Lee Trevino, he said, “It came in there like a butterfly with sore feet.”

Now-it-can-be-told Dept.: Oakland A’s Manager Tony La Russa said he was thinking of bringing in Jose Canseco to pitch when the Seattle Mariners were making a shambles of his staff in a 14-6 rout. Canseco was willing.

“You guys would be surprised, very surprised,” Canseco said. “I’ve got a knuckleball, too. I’ve been working on a knuckler since I was 18 years old.”

High praise: How good an athlete was Mel Blount, the Pittsburgh Steelers defensive back just inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame? Said former teammate Jack Ham: “He was the most incredible athlete I’ve ever seen.”

Wrote Cooper Rollow of the Sporting News: “One time, he beat star hurdler Renaldo Nehemiah in a standing vertical jump even though he was wearing wing tips and a three-piece suit.”

Sound the alarm: Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Andy Van Slyke, on the club’s defense, which ranks last in the National League: “They had better defense at Pearl Harbor.”

Free to roam: They call him The Hittin’ Machine, but Dallas Cowboys linebacker Eugene Lockhart said he was doing more reacting than hitting under Tom Landry’s flex defense. He said Jimmy Johnson has made him an attacker again.

“I wish I had been playing this defense my whole career,” Lockhart said. “I would have been all-pro at least three times. You can take chances in this defense. You just hit the gap and go.

“The other teams are going to be so surprised they ain’t gonna know what happened. I mean we’ll be playing intense defense.”

Trivia answer: All three went to Eastern Michigan.

Quotebook: Oddsmaker Danny Sheridan, on New York Jets Coach Joe Walton: “He’s in the seventh year of a five-year rebuilding plan.”