A Bad Opinion of Kingman’s Performance

Brian Kingman, the last major league pitcher to have lost 20 games in a season, with the Oakland Athletics in 1980, said it was even more agonizing because he was playing for Billy Martin.

“When it happened, it was bad,” Kingman told Dan Barreiro of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “First of all, if there is any one manager you do not want to be pitching for when you lose 20, who do you think it would be? Yeah? Billy Martin. I mean, this guy was the ultimate psychotic manager.

“It wouldn’t matter if we were talking baseball or business. This is not the guy you want to go to to explain why you lost 20 games or why the cash register is short, or whatever. He’ll just rip the hell out of you. And for a long time after that, I was living in denial about it.”

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Trivia time: Who holds the career World Series record for striking out?

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Be careful: From Tom Weir of USA Today: “Uh, about this well-intended plan of the (Chicago) Bulls to give away two tickets to their Oct. 27 game to the first 250 people who turn in a gun.

“Make sure the gun of No. 251 isn’t loaded before you give him the bad news.”

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Sociable: Philadelphia first baseman John Kruk on relief pitcher Mitch Williams’ habit of letting runners get on base:

“I know a lot of guys who get on first base and say, ‘I couldn’t take this if he was on my team. It would kill me.’ But at least now I know when he comes in, someone’s going to come down to first and I can talk to someone. I just hope the guy who leads off the inning is a nice guy and likes to talk.”

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Filthy Phillies: Toronto Manager Cito Gaston’s impression of the Phillies during spring training:

“They played us tough. They play hard, they play dirty. That doesn’t mean they do anything dirty, it means they get dirty. They look like they get grubbier than our guys.”

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Fantasy 40s: John Crumpacker in the San Francisco Examiner:

“Don’t believe those football 40-yard dash times you see printed as gospel.

“The NFL loves its technology, but the 40 times out of the scouting combine in Indianapolis are taken by hand. Hand times are, without fail, about two-tenths of a second faster than fully electronic times, the difference between human reaction time vs. a precise timing device.”

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Trivia answer: Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees, 54.

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Quotebook: USC Coach John Robinson on his playing career at Oregon: “I played so little that the snaps on my warm-up jacket were rusted.”