This Guy’s Raider-Bear Story Turns Out to Be a Real Riot

Hey, dude, like, you got a problem with Steve Schoenfeld? Maybe he did get a little fanciful with the lead of his Raider-Chicago Bear game story in Monday’s Arizona Republic. So what, dude?

Schoenfeld wrote: “A mugging took place before kickoff. The fan was carried off. No bother. This is Los Angeles Raider football. It just added to the pregame festivities.”

Wait a minute. What mugging before kickoff?

Trivia time: Name the pitcher with a losing record who will appear on next year’s Hall of Fame ballot for the first time.

Road kill: The bumper stickers seen while cruising around Mississippi might have been more humorous before Alabama defeated Vanderbilt Saturday--but not much more.

The top line reads: “Honk if you’ve coached football at Alabama.”

Below are the names “(Ray) Perkins, (Bill) Curry and (Gene) Stallings” with lines drawn through them, followed by “??????”

Sure lock: An employee in the odds-setting department at Caliente race track in Tijuana is paying special attention to the American League East race. And if the Boston Red Sox win the division title, he’ll be a nervous wreck.

During spring training, when the track inaugurated future book wagering on the pennant races and the World Series, the unnamed employee mistakenly set the computer at 300-1 on the Red Sox to win the American League championship, instead of the correct odds, 6-1.

Said Jorge Hank, Caliente’s owner and general manager: “Seven fans immediately saw the tremendous overlay and got down for a total of about $1,000 before the mistake was caught and corrected.”

Add Caliente: Hank said that one player bet $700 on Boston and added that “even though we do have a rule that allows us not to honor tickets issued due to obvious human or computer error--just as all the sports books in Nevada have the same clause--we will nevertheless keep faith with our customers and honor their tickets, should the Red Sox win the pennant.”

Last add Caliente: And if the Red Sox do make the playoffs against Oakland, what about the employee who goofed?

Said Hank: “You can trust me when I tell you that (the Athletics’) most fanatical fan, at least during the championship series, is right here in Tijuana.”

These two again?: On this day in 1920, the Cincinnati Reds and the Pittsburgh Pirates played the 20th Century’s only major league tripleheader. The Reds won the first two games, and the Pirates won the third, which was called after six innings because of darkness.

That’s better: Robert G. Brown, 49, finished the 10-kilometer Great Race in Pittsburgh Sunday in 1 hour 5 minutes.

Said Brown: “I definitely wanted to run this year.”

Midway through last year’s Great Race, Brown went into cardiac arrest. In January, he had quadruple bypass surgery to open clogged arteries. After two months of rehabilitation, he resumed running and gradually increased his distance.

Said Brown: “I wanted to show people with heart trouble you can do all of the things you did before.”

Trivia answer: Rollie Fingers, with a record of 114-118 and a major league-record 341 saves.

Quotebook: Nebraska defensive coordinator Charlie McBride, on the eighth-ranked Cornhuskers’ 7-3 halftime deficit against 51 1/2-point underdog Oregon State: “We started out like we were playing bridge.”