Tough Luck, but No One Said the Shell Game Would Be Easy

Sean Ostman, a 21-year-old peanut-tossing vendor at the New York Mets’ Thomas White Stadium in Port St. Lucie, Fla., has been forced into early retirement after one of his throws bounced off a customer and hit a woman in the chest.

Ostman’s supervisor fired the left-hander a day after he came in a little high and tight with a peanut bag.

“I lived for the games,” said Ostman. “I’m bewildered and dazed. I was counting on making $3,000. Now I have nothing.”

Is there a minor league for peanut tossers?

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Trivia time: How many Canadian teams have won the Stanley Cup in the last 10 years?

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Priorities: General Manager Jerry Reynolds of the Sacramento Kings, on the Michigan basketball team: “They’re very talented, but they pay more attention to male bonding, slapping high fives and chest-bumping than they do to playing hard.”

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Ouch! Quinn Buckner will be the new coach of the Dallas Mavericks next season and Peter Vecsey of USA Today suggests this motto for the team: “Quinn and Bear It.”

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Strange alliance: If letters and presents sent to Dodger owner Peter O’Malley during the winter are any indication, San Francisco Giant fans might treat the Dodgers better this season when the team plays in Candlestick Park. Fans are apparently thankful to O’Malley for the part he played in blocking the team’s move to Tampa, Fla.

“I get about one letter a week, and there used to be more, thanking me for the role I played,” O’Malley said. “One bar owner even sent me a case of steamed beer.”

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Hi-yo Silver: When Coach Herb Brooks of the New Jersey Devils got upset recently with the play of Peter Stastny, he called the veteran forward’s $700,000 contract “the biggest heist since Brink’s.”

Stastny showed up at the rink the next day wearing a Lone Ranger mask.

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Clip this: Fred Couples on Jack Nicklaus: “We love to have him out here (on the PGA Tour). We love to see him play. But for Jack to win again, it would take . . . a miracle.”

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Versatile judge: U.S. District Judge John G. Davies, who is presiding over the federal trial regarding the alleged violations of Rodney G. King’s civil rights, is a former gold medal winner in the Olympic Games.

Davies won the 200-meter breaststroke while competing for Australia in the 1952 Games at Helsinki, Finland.

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Trivia answer: Three. The Edmonton Oilers won it five times and the Montreal Canadiens and Calgary Flames, once each.

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Quotebook: Blackie Sherrod of the Dallas Morning News: “My hope for Nolan Ryan after he hangs up spikes next year: Go to Harvard med school. Not to study, to be studied.”