Spirits Don’t Go Over Well With Spirits

Rain has plagued the Memorial golf tournament at the Muirfield Village course in Dublin, Ohio in recent years. Jack Nicklaus designed the course that is near a 19th-Century cemetery.

To appease spirits last Thursday, Nicklaus and his wife, Barbara, picked out a grave site and placed a shot glass filled with gin next to it. Rain, however, interrupted play on Friday.

“Instead of a bar call, he should have used a premium brand,” Payne Stewart jokingly told Jaime Diaz of the New York Times.

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Trivia time: Can you name the three former UCLA athletes who are current world record-holders in track and field?

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Fan dance? David Benjamin of the San Francisco Chronicle commenting on the sumo wrestling exhibition that concluded Sunday in San Jose:

“One of sumo’s charms is that that there aren’t many rules of conduct. The sumo ref, professional sport’s wimpiest enforcer, has no power. Not even a whistle.

“All he does is run around the dohyo (ring) in his nightgown and wave his goombai (war fan).”

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Frustration: From Randy Barnes: “I’m the world record-holder in the shotput and I’m still living at home with my parents.”

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Rah, rah! When Birmingham High needed an all-weather track a few years ago, alumnus Michael Milken, the junk bond king, supplied funds for the facility.

Milken and Academy Award-winning actress Sally Field are former co-yell leaders at the school.

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Time warp: Baseball slugger Johnny Mize, who died last week, had to wait 28 years after he retired before he was elected to the Hall of Fame.

When he was finally inducted in 1981, he said: “I had a speech, but somewhere along in 28 years, it got lost.”

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Don’t bet on it: The Times’ Orange County section sports staff passed along this comment from Bob Hinman, football coach at Santa Ana High:

“By the way, do you think you can get Michael Jordan to play in our benefit golf tournament?”

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FYI: The NCAA has received a record 267,498 requests for tickets to next year’s Final Four at the Charlotte (N.C.) Coliseum, which seats less than 24,000.

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Just wondering: In the recent Senior Golf NFL Classic, shouldn’t there have been some NFL players in the field the last two days? And shouldn’t the Memorial tournament be played on Memorial Day weekend?

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Come again? Yogi Berra, in “Baseball Quotations”: “Listen up, because I’ve got nothing to say and I’m only going to say it once.”

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Trivia answer: Kevin Young, 400-meter hurdles; Mike Powell, long jump, and Willie Banks, triple jump.

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Quotebook: Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Examiner: “Michael Jordan is now in great position to finish his season with one of those champions only I’m-Going-To-Disneyland Ads. Only for Disneyland, substitute Bally’s.”