Trying to Win Job, He Has Lost Lots of Blood

Tom Myslinski a legend?

Hardly, but according to the 1992 Dallas Cowboys media guide, it’s only a matter of time before the 6-foot-2, 291-pound fourth-round draft choice from Tennessee gets the recognition he deserves:

“Myslinski’s pregame preparation may someday equal the legend of former NFL and Tennessee star Jack (Hacksaw) Reynolds, who earned his nickname after sawing a car apart,” the guide explains. “Just before the team left the locker room before each game, Myslinski would go into the shower area and bang his unhelmeted head against the shower wall until it bled.”

Myslinski to the Cowboys: “I have no idea why I did it. After the game, I always said it was stupid because my head hurt. On game day, I’m a maniac. When the game’s over, I go back to being my old cheerful personality.”

Footnote: In his senior year of high school, Myslinski was involved in an automobile accident and took 100 stitches in his head.

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Add legends: John Riggins, former star running back with the Washington Redskins, was known as a rebel, and his being named honorary coach at a Kansas alumni-varsity football game in the early 1980s didn’t change anything.

Pro Football Weekly looks back to the day it says was “a bit like the inmates running the asylum”:

“Riggins announced that there would be a bed check, and anybody caught in bed before midnight was fined heavily. (He) arrived at the game with beer and soft drinks for the men. He also was carrying three dozen red roses, explaining, ‘The women fans didn’t have anything, so I brought roses and tossed them to ladies in the stands.’ ”

*Add Riggins: After he was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame last January, Riggins explained the essence of Riggins during his playing days: “My image was less than Jack Armstrong, but in my heart, I was probably Jack Armstrong with a different point of view. I was Igor and Dr. Frankenstein in one, doing my own experiments.”

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Last add legends: He may not be remembered among the game’s big names, but William (Pudge) Heffelfinger has the distinction of being the first professional football player.

Heffelfinger, according to the NFL, was an All-American at Yale from 1889-91 and was the most coveted player in the nation. The Allegheny Athletic Assn. and Pittsburgh Athletic Club, involved in an intense intracity rivalry, had recently played to a 6-6 tie.

Allegheny, in want of a ringer, decided to pay Heffelfinger $25 in expenses and $500, hoping that he would prove the difference in the rematch.

Heffelfinger was. On Nov. 12, 1892, before 5,000 at Recreation Park on Pittsburgh’s North Side, Heffelfinger, playing guard, forced a fumble and returned it for the game’s only touchdown to give Allegheny the victory.

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Trivia time: The Miami Dolphins’ “53-defense,” employed during the 1972 season when Miami posted a 17-0 record to become the only team in NFL history to go undefeated in a single season, was named after what player?

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It’s outta here: That’s what you can expect to hear frequently at Denver’s Mile High Stadium, where the expansion Colorado Rockies begin major league play next season.

Tom Stephen, a University of Denver physicist, tells Dan Le Batard of the Miami Herald that power hitters will set long-ball records and non-power hitters will hit homers that in any other park would be routine fly balls.

Mile High Stadium is more than 5,000 feet above sea level, four times higher than the next highest, Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium, which is often called “the Launching Pad.”

Le Batard: “Because of the thin air, Stephen concludes that Mile High is going to be ‘the Launching Pad to the Fifth Power.’ ”

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Honest hack: Czechoslovakian decathlete Robert Zmelic, the Olympic champion, almost went home without the gold. Zmelic, according to Deutsche Presse Agentur, forgot his medal in the back of a Barcelona taxi. Fortunately, the taxi driver, Modesto Remedios Morales, found the medal and turned it in to a lost-and-found, where it was returned to Zmelic.

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Damaged goods: The United States’ Trent Dimas didn’t lose the gold medal he won at Barcelona, but when the Albuquerque gymnast opened his bag to show the medal to a hometown crowd that had turned out to greet him, his coach, Ed Burch, placed the medal around Dimas’ neck and noticed it had an abrasion near its base.

“I dropped it,” explained a slightly embarrassed Dimas.

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Trivia answer: Linebacker Bob Matheson, a member of the Dolphins’ “no-name defense,” who wore No. 53.

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Quotebook: Atlanta Coach Jerry Glanville, on the Falcons’ traveling to Cleveland last week for an exhibition game against the Browns: “I think it’s great for your young players to get into an enemy city . . . where they know how to boo. . . . I hope they’re violent, vicious and find somebody to hate on the sidelines.”