Playing Two Sports Meant Little Fame, Even Less Fortune

Like Deion Sanders, Gene Conley played for two professional sports teams in the same city in the same year, the Boston Red Sox and Celtics.

Otherwise, Conley has little in common with Sanders.

“Shoe contract? Are you kidding me?” Conley told Dan Shaugnessy of the Boston Globe. “Red Auerbach used to make us buy our shoes. We’d get those black canvas sneakers. I think they cost $7.50.

“In baseball, I signed with Spalding and they gave me two gloves and two pairs of spikes. No cash. Sorry. Just two pairs of shoes and good luck to you after that.”

Add Conley: He is the only man who can say that he pitched to Mickey Mantle and posted up Wilt Chamberlain.

Asked who was tougher? Conley said: “It was about equal. Neither one of them was a picnic.”

Trivia time: What is the largest crowd ever to see a football game at the Coliseum?

Reading habits: Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News: “Al Gore’s book was the first one Dan Quayle has read since ‘Power Golf’ by Ben Hogan.”

Time out from politics: Bill Clinton, who has more important things on his mind, questioned why Otis Nixon bunted for the final out in the sixth game of the World Series.

“Why do you think they told Nixon to bunt?” Clinton asked. “I believe if I were going down in the World Series, I’d want to go down swinging.”

Nixon made the decision on his own.

Grounded: UCLA and USC are averaging a combined 247.3 yards rushing per game this season. By comparison, USC’s Marcus Allen averaged 202.3 yards in 1981.

Not much chop: ABC’s Al Michaels on ESPN’s “Sports Reporters,” calling Jane Fonda’s weak tomahawk chop, “The limousine-liberal chop.”

Ugh!A report from Thoroughbred Racing Communications: “Hannibal Lechter devoured his competitors at Belmont Park on Oct. 18 to carve out his first win.”

Wise decision: Steve Young of the 49ers told Art Spander of the San Francisco Examiner that he learned to run while playing football in a youth league.

“I was 8 and I wanted to play quarterback,” Young said. “The coach’s son played quarterback. They made me a running back. I carried the ball and a big kid grabbed me and tackled me and knocked the wind out of me.

“My mom ran on the field, shook the kid and told him, ‘Don’t you ever do that to my son again.’ After that I became a quarterback.”

Trivia answer: USC and Notre Dame played before 104,953 in 1947.

Quotebook: Montreal Canadien forward Vincent Damphousse on a recent 6 a.m. practice: “I knew it was early because Rocket Richard had his eyes closed in the picture on the dressing room wall.”