If You Flood It, They Will Come to New Field

The baseball diamond in Davenport, Iowa, is under water from the Mississippi River flood, but that hasn’t kept the Quad Cities River Bandits from playing their home games.

The Bandits borrowed North Scott High School’s field in Eldridge, 10 miles west--on dry land.

A soybean field runs along the left-field side, like a scene out of “Field of Dreams.”

The visiting team’s broadcasting crew has to use cellular phones to call the games, and Jim Wehmeier, the River Bandits’ general manager, does his work on two car phones.

“Baseball is the great escape,” Wehmeier said. “We are the most visible victims of the flood. If we can get back to playing games, it’ll show the community’s bouncing back.”

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Add Quad Cities: Meanwhile, back in Davenport, the outfield is thigh-high in water from the Mississippi River flood. A ring of sandbags surrounds an infield slick with muck and the only way to get to the stadium is by boat.

To help pay for the cleanup, the River Bandits are selling T-shirts that say “Field of Streams.”

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Trivia time: How many Heisman Trophy winners have been player of the year in the Canadian Football League?

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Check it out: The PGA News carries an interesting item about Jerry Barber’s remarkable final three holes in the 1961 PGA that enabled him to tie Don January and then win an 18-hole playoff the next day.

“Inside Look at PGA History” says Barber holed birdie putts of 20, 40 and 60 feet to pull into a 72-hole tie with January. Not so. The distances are correct, but the 40-footer was to save par.

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Collector’s item: Zina Garrison-Jackson may never make it to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I., but her compression shorts--the first ones worn by a woman at Wimbledon--have been placed in the museum’s memorabilia section.

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Fortune in feathers: The single most expensive item at the golf stores at the British Open cost $12,000.

It was an 18th-Century golf ball made of feathers. Impossible to use on a course, it is of antique value only. But if a potential buyer wanted more to make up a set, two more were on sale. Slightly smaller and a decade or two younger, they cost an additional $19,500.

What can you say?Fuzzy Zoeller has had the same caddie, Mike Mazzeo, for 17 years.

“I tried to fire him eight years ago,” Zoeller said. “But he looked me in the eye and said, ‘You can’t fire me because I know too much.’ ”

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La Bomba: Alberto Tomba’s lean season on the international ski circuit this year hasn’t stopped him from thinking big.

Tomba has a new Ferrari, uses a helicopter to reach the glacier for training in Val di Fassa, Italy, for next year’s Lillehammer Winter Games and he says he’s going to win his fourth Olympic gold--an unprecedented achievement in Alpine ski history.

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Trivia answer: Two, Billy Vessels, Edmonton, 1953, and Doug Flutie, 1991 with the British Columbia Lions and 1992 with the Calgary Stampeders.

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Quotebook: Washington football Coach Don James, on why he was pleased that one of his players made the Playboy All-American team: “It’s the only time in my life that my wife let me buy the magazine.”