All That This Team Needs Is a More Realistic Nixon

Richard Griffin, media-relations director for the Montreal Expos, recently devised the Watergate 20th anniversary all-star team.

Included were Manager Russ (Richard) Nixon, starting pitcher Dizzy (John) Dean, reliever John Mitchell, catcher Bill (White House) Plummer, first baseman Dan (Gerald) Ford, second baseman Ron (E. Howard) Hunt, shortstop Woody (Bob) Woodward, third baseman Bill (Archibald) Cox, and outfielders Wally (Washington) Post, Ron (Rose Mary) Woods and Ty Cobb, the Georgia (Im)peach.

Wondered Sports Illustrated: “Why was Russ Nixon named manager instead of Otis or Donnell Nixon? Russ holds the major league record for most games (906) without a steal, while the Nixon brothers have been caught stealing more than 100 times.”

Trivia time: What professional athletes appeared on “The Brady Bunch,” a 1970s sitcom?

Daydream believers: Unable to arrange a matchup of last season’s co-national college football champions, Miami and Washington, organizers of next month’s Kickoff Classic at East Rutherford, N.J., settled for a game between Iowa and North Carolina State.

Wrote Don Borst of the Tacoma News Tribune: “It’s kind of like getting the Monkees when you wanted the Beatles.”

No sex appeal: Of the nearly 4,000 Tennis magazine readers who participated in a poll asking, “If Monica Seles and Jimmy Connors played a ‘Battle of the Sexes,’ who would win?” 53% responded by saying, “Who cares?”

A world away: Wrote Ron Borges of the Boston Globe: “Promoter Murad Muhammad was recently discussing a possible title fight being held in Venezuela with another promoter. Faced with that possibility, Muhammad said: ‘Great. That’s the Italian city with the guys in the boats, right?’ ”

Any relation to Francis? Fred Couples told Golf Digest that his family’s surname was Coppola.

“My dad changed it,” he said. “I’ve never really even asked him why. I overheard him talking one time about it and he said that as a little kid he took a lot of grief, so when he was old enough, he changed it.”

Easy on the eyes: Said Manager Jeff Torborg of the New York Mets: “I’ve always said I only read the papers when we’re winning. The way we’ve been playing, I haven’t been reading much.”

The Mets are fourth in the National League East, seven games behind the division-leading Pittsburgh Pirates.

Expensive toy: An 18th-Century golf club, found in a garden shed, sold for $178,300 at a Sotheby’s sale in Scotland this week.

Considering what it had been used for recently, it was amazing that the club survived, said David Neech, Sotheby’s specialist in golfing memorabilia.

“The owner told me his children used to play with it in the garden,” Neech said of the club, which was made between 1680 and 1720.

Trivia answer: Joe Namath, Deacon Jones, Wes Parker and Don Drysdale.

Quotebook: John Bach, assistant coach of the Chicago Bulls: “I’ve had a divorce, heart attack and world championship all in one year--and I enjoyed them all.”