Celebration Has Them Bent Out of Shape

After East Bank High of Charleston, W.Va., won the football state championship for mid-size schools last Friday, some players launched an assault on one of Laidley Field’s goal posts.

One problem: The celebration left the goal post bent and stadium and state high school officials in a quandary because the large-school and small-school title games were scheduled for the next day at Laidley.

But Warren Carter, executive director of the governing body for West Virginia high school sports, made sure the games went on. He had the teams switch sides on each possession to use the undamaged goal post.

Carter said he did not know what disciplinary action might ensue.

“We’ve worked diligently from the beginning of the year to establish a sportsmanship program. For something like this to happen doesn’t make me very happy at all,” Carter said.

Trivia time: Who had more 20-victory seasons, Don Sutton, who is eligible for Hall of Fame election beginning with the 1994 ballot, or Babe Ruth?

Wanted: a good villain: George Vecsey of the New York Times isn’t worried about the retirement of Michael Jordan. He writes that the future of the NBA has another, more recent, departure with which to worry.

“Isn’t it a shame what has happened to the National Basketball Assn. since the great one retired? The fans just don’t want to go to the arena anymore, now that they can’t boo his flailing elbows, his churning knees.

“I am talking about Bill Laimbeer, not Michael Jordan. Jordan is October’s story, and it is December already, and Laimbeer has put away his scowl and his smirk forever. The NBA is going down the drain. There are no stars, anymore, no heroes, no villains.”

Add Vecsey: He was kidding, of course. His real point: Whatever superstars or supervillains the NBA loses, it always seems to come back stronger.

“Basketball has gone much too far to be brought down by the loss of a few stars,” Vecsey writes. “The sport was in trouble back in the late 1970s when Julius Erving seemed to carry the league with his great skill and positive personality, but Bird and Magic and Jordan carried the sport way beyond those years. . . . “

Trivia answer: Ruth, who had two 20-victory seasons (24 in 1916 and 1917) in his short career as a pitcher before he moved on to other things. Sutton, in 22 years as a pitcher, had one, winning 21 games for the Dodgers in 1976.

Quotebook: Andy vanHellemond, the NHL’s senior referee, on the strike-replacement officials:

“Somebody has to explain to me how a guy is supposed to whistle down Wayne Gretzky when what he really would like is an autograph after the game.”