They Made Knight Look Like a Saint

John Feinstein had a falling-out with Indiana basketball Coach Bob Knight after his book on Knight’s team, “A Season on the Brink,” was published.

In his latest book, “Hard Courts; Real Life on the Professional Tennis Tours,” Feinstein writes about self-centered players, greedy agents, and manipulative parents.

Asked who was harder to deal with, Knight or the world’s top tennis players, Feinstein said: “Bobby Knight was the sweetest, kindest, gentlest person in the world compared to dealing with tennis players.”

Add Feinstein: Feinstein writes that Chris Evert smoked marijuana on more than one occasion, although she doesn’t smoke it now.

“It’s illegal and dangerous,” Evert is quoted as saying in the book, which will be released in the United States in August. “When I smoked it, it made me brain-dead. I was out of it completely.”

All talk: It seems that NBC-TV late-night talk show host David Letterman is merely that--all talk.

Letterman has been boasting on the air recently that he would guarantee he could pitch an inning of shutout ball for a major league team.

However, when the Tucson Toros of the Pacific Coast League extended an invitation to Letterman to pitch next Monday in a game against the Toros’ parent club, the Houston Astros, he declined the offer through his agent, saying he was too busy.

“I guess they chickened out. Their bark was bigger than their bite,” Toro General Manager Mike Feder said. “My question to them was why do you keep talking about it if you’re not going to play--to which there was no answer.”

Trivia time: Ray Ewry won eight Olympic track and field gold medals in 1900, 1904 and 1908 in events that were discontinued. What were they?

Nothing to it: Stan Musial, the former St. Louis Cardinal player who compiled a career batting average of .331, had this philosophy on hitting:

“If you want to hit ground balls, hit the top third of the ball. If you want to hit line drives, hit the center. If you want home runs, hit the bottom third of the ball. It’s simple.”

It was for Musial, at least.

Fish iron: Golf can be a slow game, especially in a scramble format involving fivesomes.

However, TV analyst Johnny Miller found a way to break the monotony last week during the Great American Indian Shootout, benefiting Indian students, at Jeremy Ranch, Utah.

Between holes, he would grab a fly-fishing rod out of his golf bag and head for the stream that runs through the course.

His score was unavailable, but he landed a two-pound German brown trout during the six-hour round.

For the record: Cookie Gilchrist of the Buffalo Bills didn’t wear jersey No. 32 as reported previously. He wore No. 34.

Trivia answer: Standing high jump, standing long jump and standing triple jump.

So who’s tired?: Jimmy Connors, 38, was hailed--and rightly so--for extending Michael Chang, 19, to four sets in nearly four hours at the French Open before he had to retire.

Pancho Gonzalez was even more durable in 1969 and three years older at 41, when he won the longest tennis match in Wimbledon history by beating Charles Pasarell in a 112-game, 5-hour 12-minute match.

Quotebook: Bill Cayton, Mike Tyson’s former adviser, on Tyson’s rematch against Razor Ruddock Friday night at Las Vegas: “It will only take 30% of the real Mike Tyson to destroy Ruddock, but who knows if there will be 30% of Mike in the ring?”