Radio Career Was a (Long) Snap Decision

Adam Lingner is the Buffalo Bills’ long snapper--the guy who hikes the ball for punts, extra points and field goals.

He’s also the only long snapper in the NFL with his own radio show.

Part of the show’s appeal, he told John F. Bonfatti of Associated Press, is that listeners can get a sense of what life is like in the pits.

Earlier this season, Lingner described an episode from the Bills’ game with Phoenix:

“I came up to the line of scrimmage, and I’d met Bill Lewis, their starting center, before. He was rushing me on field goals and I said, ‘Bill, are you any good at this?’

“He didn’t really say anything. He just chuckled under his breath. And ran me over.

“At least the snap was good.”

Trivia time: Before Doug Drabek (22-6) did it this season, who was the last Pittsburgh Pirate pitcher to lead the National League in victories?

Jack Who?: In their book, “The Pro Football Chronicle,” Dan Daly and Bob O’Donnell include an excerpt from a Pittsburgh Press story that appeared Sept. 6, 1955, reporting that the Steelers had cut a halfback named Burrell Shields.

The story went on: “Others leaving with (Shields) are halfbacks Bill Staudenmaier of Chattanooga and Ed Smith of Southwest Texas, quarterback Jack Unitas of Louisville, guard Vince Werl of Dayton and tackle Joe Cimini of Mississippi State.”

None of his business: Dodger scout Jose Pena said the magic word.

Osvaldo Luis Gil Bosch, president of the Puerto Rican Olympic Committee, wasn’t about to let it go.

During a baseball game at the Central American and Caribbean Games in Monterrey, Mexico Thursday night, Pena asked Gil for information about Puerto Rican players.

When Gil told him he had no information, Pena persisted.

Said the 58-year-old Gil: “The man . . . directed extremely offensive words at me and my mother and I punched him on the chin. Then I gave him more punches while he was on the floor.”

Add punch-out: According to AP, Pena suffered only bruises, but Gil broke bones in both hands.

Alonso Perez, president of the Mexican Federation of Amateur Baseball, said: “(Gil) has been in baseball 20 years and maybe he got bothered because they have always stolen his players and taken them to the professional leagues.”

Beavers damned: The spotted owl isn’t the only endangered species in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

The recent firing of Oregon State football coach Dave Kragthorpe ended the third reign of misery during the past 15 years. From 1976-79, Craig Fertig guided the Beavers to a 9-35-1 record. From 1980-84, Joe Avezzano’s teams were 6-47-2. And Kragthorpe’s six-year record at Corvallis was 17-48-2.

That’s a combined record of 32-130-5, or 2.13 victories per season.

Second opinion: Oslo University medical student Alf Thorvald Tysvaer, in his recently published doctoral thesis, wrote that “heading” balls had caused minor brain damage in 30% of the 43 retired Norwegian national soccer team members he interviewed, and that 3% of the 69 active Norwegian division players he studied also showed symptoms of brain damage.

But Willy Simonssen, assistant head of Norway’s Soccer Federation, said: “I have not noticed it in my meetings with players.”

Trivia answer: Bob Friend, who was 22-14 in 1958.

Quotebook: ABC-TV announcer Brent Musburger, during Saturday’s Michigan-Ohio State telecast, on Buckeye quarterback Greg Frey’s eagerness to play baseball for the school as a senior next spring: “Some feel he may have a minor league future.”