On Game Day, Nobody Is His Buddy

Before the Houston Oilers played the Kansas City Chiefs last Sunday, Oiler defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan was asked if he would put all-out pressure on Chief quarterback Joe Montana.

“I have all the respect in the world for Joe Montana,” Ryan said. “But he also plays quarterback. If my great friend Joe Namath was playing, we’d be after him, too.”

Montana was spared all of Ryan’s grief because he didn’t play. The Oilers won, 30-0.

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Trivia time: Who is the oldest living Olympic gold medalist in track and field?

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Land or sea: Herb Gould of the Chicago Sun-Times recalled that when Gerry Faust was Notre Dame’s football coach, he once commented on a left-handed pass thrown by Steve Beuerlein, saying that his quarterback was “amphibious.’

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Serving it up: From “Baseball Quotations”: Bobby Bragan, Milwaukee Brave manager on catcher Joe Torre in 1963:

“I can’t understand why he hasn’t been nicknamed ‘Chicken.’ Don’t you get it? Chicken catcher Torre.”

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Try again: After the Pernell Whitaker-Julio Cesar Chavez fight, pay-per-view announcer Ferdie Pacheco tried to interview Chavez in Spanish.

An interpreter helped Pacheco through the first question. Pacheco came back in Spanish again but lost it, asking if it was “muy, muy rough.”

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Sure you didn’t: From Mike Ditka in Sport magazine:

“I’ve never picked on the media. That’s a fallacy. I’ve never said one word about them. I’ve never slammed the people who slammed me. . . . It’s not my nature to slam anybody.”

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Not an easy feat: New York Met broadcaster Ralph Kiner, a Hall of Fame slugger, was reminiscing on the air about Curt Simmons of the Philadelphia Phillies. Kiner said Simmons was one of the toughest pitchers he ever faced “until he hurt his arm when he cut off his toe while mowing the lawn.”

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FYI: What are the most dangerous outdoor sports? According to a survey by Forbes magazine, sky diving leads the list, with 25 deaths per 100,000 participants, with hang gliding close behind with a 22.5 rate. The figure for hunters is only 0.8.

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Smells good: Tampa Bay tight end Tyji Armstrong was named after a cologne his mother liked.

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No silver lining: Tim McKeown of the San Francisco Chronicle on the slumping Giants: “One problem with the Giants right now: They have to stop saying it can’t get any worse, because it keeps getting worse. The more it can’t, the more it does.”

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Rubbing it in: At Anaheim, where his team was defeated, 27-0, by the Rams last Sunday, Pittsburgh Steeler running back Merril Hoge was listed on the flip card in the press box as: “Merril Hogs.”

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Trivia answer: Clarence (Bud) Houser, who won the shotput and discus in the 1924 Olympics and the discus again in the 1928 Games. He will be 92 Sept. 25.

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Quotebook: Phil Jackman of the Baltimore Sun on John Madden: “Eliminate the word boom from John Madden’s vocabulary and the all-star pro football analyst might have to learn sign language.”