He Was a Good Samaritan on a Tough Day

Charlene Johanneson of Elbert, Colo., was driving home with her son and daughter on Interstate 25 near Denver Sunday when a hit-and-run driver struck their car from behind.

Denver Bronco Coach Dan Reeves and his wife, driving home from the Broncos’ 34-17 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, stopped to help. After calling police on his car phone, Reeves stayed at the scene for 45 minutes until an ambulance arrived.

Said Johanneson: “You know the guy wasn’t feeling on top of the world. It was very admirable. I just think it was a very honorable thing to do.”

Add Reeves: Johanneson told the Associated Press: “He introduced himself. I was so shaken up it didn’t register. I thought, ‘This guy looks familiar.’ While I talked to the police, my son told Mr. Reeves that he looked familiar.

“(Reeves) said, ‘I’m the coach of the Denver Broncos.’ My son is just Broncos crazy, and all he could say was ‘Wow.’ ”

Trivia time: Name the boxer who fought for the heavyweight title in his first professional bout.

Service to sport: Inside Sports, in its November issue, fills out the entire 1991 NCAA basketball tournament draw sheet, complete with seeding Nos. 1 through 16 in each of the four regions.

Quite a feat. Not only does the magazine tell us that South Florida will make it to the East Regional, it reads the minds of the selection committee well enough to know the Bulls seeded 14th.

And the sixth-seeded-to-be Missouri Tigers will be shocked to learn that No. 11 Murray State will knock them off in Round 1 of the Midwest Regional.

Add Inside Sports: The magazine’s predicted Final Four: Georgetown over North Carolina in one semifinal, Arizona over Arkansas in the other and Arizona over Georgetown for the title.

Be prepared, too, for fourth-seeded UCLA to beat No. 13 Wisconsin in the Midwest, then lose to No. 5 Pitt.

And of course No. 7 Cal State Long Beach will lose to No. 10 Houston in the West, where No. 14 USC also will lose its opener to No. 3 Oklahoma.

Fan-tastic debut: To help promote its first season of NBA telecasts, NBC-TV got the Philadelphia 76ers to suit up commentator Ahmad Rashad for an exhibition game against the Minnesota Timberwolves in Minneapolis Tuesday night.

The 76ers, unfazed by Rashad’s 2 1/2 minutes of playing time the third quarter, won 102-96. The former wide receiver with the St. Louis Cardinals and the Minnesota Vikings hit a 20-foot jump shot, but allowed his man, Tony Campbell, to score five points.

While Rashad was playing, the Timberwolves cut an 11-point deficit to five.

He was there: Yogi Berra was Paul Hornung’s guest on last Saturday’s telecast of “Greatest Sports Legends.”

Marion Brancato of Glendale wanted to be sure he got Yogi right, so he rewound the tape and heard:

Hornung: “Yogi, the sixth game of the ’56 World Series has to go down as one of the greatest baseball games of all time. You caught Don Larsen in that perfect game.”

Berra: “Well, it has to be, Paul, because it’s never happened in the World Series competition and it still hasn’t.”

Alma maters: File this one under “casual trivia.” Has any former major leaguer other than Joe Torre managed all three of his former teams (New York Mets, Atlanta Braves and St. Louis Cardinals)?

Trivia answer: Pete Rademacher, who was knocked out in the sixth round by Floyd Patterson on Aug. 22, 1957 at Sick’s Stadium in Seattle.

Quotebook: Montreal Expo second baseman Delino DeShields, once recruited as a point guard by Villanova, on why he’d like to play in the NBA: “Some friends of mine are doing it, and I’m better than they are.”