One Guy Has Overwritten, and the Other Was Overrated

Ian Thomsen of the International Herald Tribune of Paris, on Marc Rosset, a hard-serving Swiss tennis player who lost to Pete Sampras in a rain-delayed, five-set match in the French Open:

“Rosset ambles along to the rhythm of a stringed puppet, but when he lunges up for the ball at the service line, all of his segments suddenly align themselves as do the planets on the most dangerous day of your life, and the sky swirls to an angry foamy gray, and the line judges leaning into the gale appear braver than Aeneas or Odysseus.

“When this Marc Rosset, 1.95 meters tall (6-feet-5), swept at the air, flags whooshed and the trees around court No. 1 swayed like backup gospel singers. Ozone huddled around the poles. . . . Perhaps we have made this Marc Rosset, 21, out to be more than he really is.”

Just a trifle.

Trivia time: How many of the Pacific 10 Conference schools have won NCAA baseball championships?

No way to San Jose: San Francisco Examiner columnist Art Spander doesn’t believe that citizens of San Jose will vote--and tax themselves--to bring the Giants to their city.

“I want San Jose to build the Giants a new stadium,” Spander writes. “Candlestick Park is cold, miserable, uncomfortable and hard to access from the freeway. And that’s not even bringing up the bad points.

“But the Giants have already lost three elections, two in San Francisco and one in the South Bay, so what would make you believe the fourth time’s the charm?”

Early exit: Roberto Guerrero, the pole-sitter for the Indianapolis 500, said he had only one objective in the race.

“I want to lead as many laps as possible, and I want to start with the first one,” he said.

Guerrero never got to the “first one,” hitting the wall before the race began on the second parade lap.

Holds up: UCLA’s Jackie Robinson won the long jump at the Pacific Coast Conference track and field meet in 1940 with a leap of 25 feet. That mark would have won the recent Pac-10 meet 52 years later.

Snow job? There are many claimants to the longest drive of all time in golf. However, an Australian named Nils Lied, working at a weather station in Antarctica in 1962, reportedly drove a ball 2,640 yards.

How did he do it? Well, a report in “Amazing, but True Golf Facts,” says the ball landed on smooth, frozen ice covering a bay and just kept rolling and rolling.

Trivia answer: Five. USC 11 times, Arizona State five, Arizona three, and California and Stanford twice each. Arizona and Arizona State were in the Western Athletic Conference until 1979, when they joined the Pacific 10.

Quotebook: Oakland A’s slugger Jose Canesco, commenting on the taunting fans in Baltimore: “On the abuse meter, this place still ranks behind New York and Oakland. And (Oriole fans) aren’t very original.”