Lawmakers Turn Scheduling Into a Can’t-Miss Proposition

By a 29-21 vote last week, the Mississippi State Senate required Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Southern Mississippi to schedule annual football games with one another.

But wait, that’s not all. How’s this for strict? If the bill passes the House and is signed by the governor, they will have to play those games in Mississippi, of all places.

Sen. Eddie Briggs of Dekalb was the one who proposed the home-state amendment, noting that all three schools have moved home games outside Mississippi in the last two seasons.

Briggs noted that the trend continues: Ole Miss officials are looking at a $1 million offer to move the Rebels’ 1991 home game against Arkansas to Memphis. Mississippi State is considering an offer from Orlando, Fla., to move its Florida game out of Starkville. And the city of New Orleans is trying to lure the Mississippi State-Louisiana State game.

Trivia time: Who was the first foreign golfer to win the Masters?

Clean-up time: Now that the International Hockey League is down a team, what with the recent demise of the Albany Choppers, Doug Soetaert no doubt feels an obligation to maximize the League’s entertainment value.

Soetaert, the former NHL goaltender who coaches the Kansas City Blades, went into a rage during his team’s loss to the Peoria Rivermen Sunday, throwing a metal garbage can and several sticks onto the ice to protest referee Scott Zelkin’s calling five penalties against the Blades in a four-minute span.

Said Soetaert: “I thought it was an appropriate comment. The garbage can made a perfect statement for the way (Zelkin) does a game.”

Spring gleaning: Just in case there’s a quiz, some 1990 Dodger (and former Met) data from “The Official Major League Baseball 1991 Stat Book:”

--Pitcher Ramon Martinez was 13-0 against the National League West, 7-6 against the NL East. Against Atlanta, he was 3-0 with a 1.38 earned-run average and 36 strikeouts in 26 innings.

--Juan Samuel batted .164 in August, .376 in September and October.

--Darryl Strawberry batted .301 in the daytime, .265 at night, .268 on grass and .301 on artificial turf.

Oh, that: Brian Hanley of the Chicago Sun-Times recently suggested that Big Ten basketball coaches, especially Indiana’s Bobby Knight, stop complaining about ESPN’s late starting times for the Big Ten portion of its “Big Monday” tripleheaders.

Hanley quoted Knight as saying: “These kids are going to get home at 2 a.m. and still have to go to class the next morning.”

Wrote Hanley: “Before we start confusing the Hoosiers’ head coach with Mother Teresa, just remember Knight has no such concern when he holds one of his infamous 2 a.m. practice sessions after a particularly irritating loss.”

Weight off his back: Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was the guest of honor as the Toronto police department launched its anti-drug campaign Monday.

Acting police Inspector Mike Sale said Johnson, who was banned from track and field after testing positive for steroids at the 1988 Olympics and has since sworn off drugs and been reinstated, exemplifies the qualities police want teen-agers to emulate.

Dolly Wright, 17, one of the teen-agers who gathered at a local mall to see Johnson, got a piggy-back ride from the sprinter as he was leaving. He also gave her his phone number.

Said Wright: “I told him I loved him.”

Trivia answer: Gary Player of South Africa, in 1961.

Quotebook: Carl Barger, president of the Pittsburgh Pirates, after Cy Young Award winner Doug Drabek won $3.35 million in arbitration and outfielders Bobby Bonilla ($2.4 million) and Barry Bonds ($2.3 million) lost their arbitration cases: “Wouldn’t it be tragic if it reached the point where you couldn’t afford to win?”