Some of These People Are Card Sharks

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Clark’s rookie card being traded right from under your nose. . . . It’s beginning to look a lot like a collectibles Christmas, everywhere you go.

So much so that several metropolitan daily newspapers, among them New York Newsday and the Baltimore Sun, have seen fit to publish regular weekly columns devoted exclusively to sports cards and collectibles.

Acquiring minds want to know.

In an item about a slick new set of hockey cards, Baltimore Sun collectibles columnist Ruth Sadler wrote: “The photos are so sharp that a sharp-eyed editor spotted Mike Keenan behind the Philadelphia Flyers bench on Kjell Samuelsson’s card, making that an old picture, since Keenan was fired after the 1987-88 season.”

Trivia time: What is the nickname of the women’s teams at Washington and Jefferson University in Washington, Pa.?

Victory for a change: Taking care of her 10-month old daughter has kept Juli Inkster out of more than half the LPGA tour events this year.

Trailing by two strokes going into Sunday’s final round of the Spalding Invitational golf tournament at Pebble Beach, which combines men and women, Inkster said: “This is just a tournament with lot of players trying to get ready for next season. But don’t get me wrong. A win would buy a lot of diapers.”

Sunday, Inkster won the tournament.

Add golf: Inkster, one of four women competing this year, commented on the distance advantage they received off the tees: “I can’t stand it, but I just go out there and play. It’s not really men versus women. It would be if we were playing from the same tees.”

Dirty game: Canada bows to no nation when it comes to Christmas commerce. A toy store in London, Ontario, is advertising seven versions of table-top hockey.

Among the choices: Wayne Gretzky’s Overtime Hockey, Play-Off Hockey, Power-Zone Hockey and, for $129.95, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Subterranean Sewer Hockey.”

Better that way: When Seattle visited Green Bay for a recent game, a contingent of 100 people from Milton, Wis. (population: 4,500), cheered on Seahawk quarterback Dave Krieg.

Milton College, Krieg’s alma mater, went bankrupt in 1982, but the NAIA football program had fun while the school lasted.

Milton had no band, no fight song. On game days, as the players walked the six blocks from the school to the field, Coach Rudy Gaddini drove alongside them. His car had loudspeakers on top, and Gaddini would implore the neighbors: “C’mon down and see the Milton Wildcats play at Anderson Field.”

Krieg recalled: “There was no ‘wave.’ People would wave at you from their houses.”

Looking good losing: “After you’ve won Olympic gold, you don’t settle for silver,” reads the headline of a full-page national magazine advertisement for a men’s hair-coloring product.

Olympic gold medal winners Frank Shorter, Mark Spitz and Bob Seagren are pictured.

In perfect advertisingese, the text reiterates the headline: “These Olympians have never settled for silver--not in the way they compete or in their appearance.”

Wait a minute. After winning the gold medal in the marathon at Munich in 1972, Shorter settled for the silver at Montreal in 1976, behind East Germany’s Waldemar Cierpinski.

And after winning the gold in the pole vault at Mexico City in 1968, Seagren settled for the silver at Munich, losing to East Germany’s Wolfgang Nordwig.

Add aging Olympians: In Spitz’s case, there’s a gray area. True, he did win two gold medals, a silver and a bronze at Mexico City, but the ad has it right. Spitz saw to it that it didn’t happen again, winning seven gold medals and nothing else at Munich in 1972.

Trivia answer: The First Ladies.

Quotebook: Georgia Tech point guard Kenny Anderson, on his moves: “I’m so deceiving, it might take four or five years for me and my teammates to be on the same wavelength.”