Not Only Is He a Puncher, He Has Learned to Be Punctual

Remember Anthony Hembrick, the United States light-heavyweight boxer who was disqualified at the Seoul Olympics when he missed a bus and was late for his scheduled bout?

Hugh Malay of CNN Sports reports that Hembrick made a triumphant return to Asia earlier this month when he scored an eighth-round TKO over Martin Amirillas in Jakarta, Indonesia. That improved his pro record to 13-0.

Hembrick was scheduled to fly out the next morning, with a bus picking him up at the hotel at 8 a.m. According to his trainer, Al Smith, Hembrick was up at 3:30 a.m. and was in the lobby at 6 a.m.

“There was no way I was missing this bus,” Hembrick said.

Trivia time: What major league baseball team won the most games in the 1980s?

Say what?: Ron Borges of the Boston Globe quoted George Benton, trainer of Meldrick Taylor, as saying: “That fight aged Julio Chavez. I’ve seen this before. You’ll see it in his next fight.”

Said Borges: “If nothing else, Chavez’s fists probably aged because they fractured Taylor’s eye socket, split his lip so badly he swallowed two pints of blood, dehydrated him enough to hospitalize him for the night and drop his blood count two points.”

Add Taylor: Said his promoter, Dan Duva, when told about the blood loss: “He didn’t lose any blood, he swallowed it.”

Think that one over.

Add fight: Borges said that before the fight, Hector (Macho) Camacho and promoter Don King got into an argument and Camacho invited him to get up and fight.

“King accepted the invitation,” Borges said, “but halfway up, Camacho shot a right in and belted King in the eye, sending King’s glasses flying up and sending him down.

“Ray Leonard’s adviser, Ollie Dunlap, separated the two and tried to calm King. They had no trouble doing that until Camacho was 50 feet and 500 people away, after which no one could shut King up for 20 minutes.”

Good old days: George Will has written a baseball book called “Men at Work,” and John Steadman of the Baltimore Evening Sun passes along this excerpt: “Baseball has come a long way since the days when, on road trips, players slept two to a bed. Rube Waddell’s roommate with the Philadelphia Athletics made Manager Connie Mack put a clause in Waddell’s contract to prevent him from eating crackers in bed.”

Coming up short: After New Jersey’s lopsided loss to the Washington Bullets last Sunday, somebody suggested to Purvis Short that playing on Sunday might have affected the Nets.

Short: “We play bad on Sunday, we play bad on Thursday, we play bad on Saturday.”

Fighting words: From Dave Schultz, former bully boy of the Philadelphia Flyers: “There should be a goon hall of fame. Tough guys never have, and never will, receive the credit they deserve.”

Trivia answer: New York Yankees.

Quotebook: Jerry Tarkanian, asked his thoughts Monday night after Nevada Las Vegas had won the NCAA title: “It’s like I told my wife on the bus ride coming over here: ‘We’ve come a long way from Riverside Junior College.’ ”