When They Talk About Spares, They Don’t Mean Tires

Chris Economaki, longtime motorsports broadcaster and publisher emeritus of the weekly National Speed Sport News, has come up with some amazing numbers regarding Winston Cup stock cars. Economaki wrote that the 57 teams entered in the season-opening Daytona 500 have 341 cars ready to race this season.

The teams preparing cars for Ernie Irvan, Bill Elliott and Michael Waltrip reportedly have 15 cars apiece--ranging in cost from $60,000 to $80,000 each--to run the 29-race series contested on 16 tracks, ranging from big ovals to small ovals to two road courses.

Junior Johnson, owner of Elliott’s cars, said racing has become so sophisticated and specialized that a different car is needed for each track.

Change of heart: Nancy Lopez is back on the LPGA tour, at least on a limited basis, but the prospects of making another $1 million playing golf is not nearly as appealing to the 35-year-old Hall of Famer as staying at home.

“I’d rather be home doing laundry now than practicing chip shots,” she told Dick Taylor of Western Links. “I yearn to be mother and wife. Be home for the kids, be able to play with my kids. When they’re old enough, I want to be able to turn cartwheels with them.”

Good question: Former Pittsburgh sports writer Roy McHugh wants to know if Notre Dame will still be the Fighting Irish where racial and ethnic team names are banned.

Trivia time: Who won the first Los Angeles Open, and when and where was it played?

Waste of time: Spain’s Yago Beamonte and Ireland’s Jimmy Heggarty played 16 extra holes--14 after their final round and two the next morning--to get the final starting time in the British Open. Beamonte finally won with a birdie, but Heggarty got in, too, when another player withdrew.

One man’s method: Glenn Liebman, writing in Hoop magazine, recalls Johnny Kerr explaining how he would have coped with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s famed skyhook.

“I’d get real close to him and breathe on his goggles,” Kerr said.

Bad penny: Drag racer Pat Austin leans toward the superstitious side, so when he saw a penny half buried in the asphalt on the starting line at the Pomona Fairplex before the start of the Winston Finals, he wanted it. No luck, he couldn’t budge it.

“I would have killed for a screwdriver,” he said in frustration.

An apology: Mike Gottfried, an ESPN college football analyst, referred to sports agents as “vultures” when he was a coach at Pittsburgh. Later he said: “I would like to apologize to the bird species for connecting these two.’

Trivia answer: Lighthorse Harry Cooper, on the North course at Los Angeles Country Club, in 1926.

Good connections: Don Chaney may be out of job after being fired by the Houston Rockets, but he has one distinction in basketball--he is the only Boston Celtic to have played on the same team with Bill Russell and Larry Bird.

Quotebook: Harry Reasoner, after a “60 Minutes” look at NASCAR: “If the aim of a professional sport is to operate as a successful business, then the most successful business in America is stock car racing.”