Short Trips Make for a Long Game

Carlton Fisk, the 45-year-old catcher for the Chicago White Sox, has an annoying habit of stepping out of the box and adjusting his batting gloves after each pitch. He also makes more trips to the mound than most catchers.

Joey Reaves of the Chicago Tribune writes that there wasn’t any proof Fisk was responsible for slowing games. But the Elias Baseball Analyst has come up with substantiating figures.

Last season, the average length of a game Fisk was in was 3 hours 1 minute. The average length of games started by one of the four other White Sox catchers was 2:49.

“Fisk’s frequent chats with his pitchers appear to add more than 10 minutes to the game,” the Analyst reported.

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Trivia time: Which team holds the NCAA tournament record for fewest points scored in a game?

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Sour grapes?Clem Haskins, Minnesota’s basketball coach, isn’t impressed by Indiana Coach Bob Knight’s accomplishments.

“Give me the Indiana job and in 10 years I’ll win the national championship,” Haskins said. “If I don’t, I’ll pay the money back. What I’ve accomplished in seven years at Minnesota is more than Bobby Knight has accomplished in the last 10 years at Indiana. But people don’t realize that.”

Apparently not. All Knight has done at Indiana is win three NCAA championships and 11 Big Ten titles, including this season’s, in his 22 years at the school.

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Looking back: On this date in 1970, UCLA won its sixth NCAA basketball championship by defeating Jacksonville, 80-69, in College Park, Md.

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Kiner-isms: From Roy McHugh, writing in Executive Report, a business magazine:

“One thing we know without help from computers: The record for getting names wrong belongs to Ralph Kiner, the New York Mets’ broadcaster, celebrated for referring to Gary Carter as Gary Cooper, to Marie Osmond as Marie Osburg and to Father’s Day as Mother’s Day--or it may have been the other way around.

“More recently, warming up for the baseball season, Kiner referred to the Charlotte Hornets of the NBA as the Charlotte Harlots.

“By a rather mysterious procedure, Kiner’s slips of the tongue end up in sort of an unofficial clearing house, where they are tallied by dedicated students of broadcasting errata. In a highly competitive field, Kiner is in a class by himself, as superior to his rivals as he was at hitting home runs way back when.”

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Happy days: Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle: “The Mighty Ducks? For Anaheim, that’s not bad. In the late ‘60s, Anaheim had a team in the old American Basketball Assn. The Anaheim Amigos.

“Now there was a name to strike fear in the hearts of opponents. I don’t remember what the team logo was. Probably a happy face with a sombrero.”

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Camera day: Seattle forward Eddie Johnson, on playing against Michael Jordan: “It’s nice just to play against him. Sometimes you get your picture in the paper.”

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Trivia answer: North Carolina, with 20 points while losing to Pittsburgh, which scored 26, in 1941.

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Quotebook: Former Dodger outfielder Reggie Smith, on having to wear a neck brace because of nagging neck pain: “It’s an old neck.”