This Outlook Is Decidedly Unworldly
John Eisenberg of the Baltimore Sun has a primer for the World Cup such as “seeing as 71% of the country doesn’t even even know that the World Cup is being played in the United States.” A random sampling:
“ F is for football, the name soccer goes by everywhere else in the world except here. Have you ever thought that maybe they’re right and we’re wrong?
“ I is for the insurmountable 1-0 lead.
“ W is for wives and girlfriends, banned from the Swiss and German team hotels. Strictly verbotten.
“ Z is for the snores of American couch potatoes.
Trivia time: Who are the four golfers who have won the U.S. Open, British Open, Masters and PGA Championship?
Phone trap: In a Morning Briefing item on May 18, Martina Navratilova said she was bothered by cellular telephones ringing in the crowd at the Italian Open.
Her agitation amused reader Carl Esser, who said that while riding his motorcycle last summer in Universal City, he was nearly run off the road by Navratilova. “She failed to see me,” Esser said, “because she was engrossed in a conversation on her cellular phone.”
Polite loser: Bolivia Coach Xavier Azkargorta, after his team lost a controversial 1-0 World Cup game to Germany on Friday: “The referee was too intransigent. I would have liked to see whether he would have been as intransigent with a player from a big team.”
Considerably mild compared to frustrated howls from losing coaches in American sports.
Bora babble: C.W. Nevius of the San Francisco Chronicle, on Bora Milutinovic, coach of the U.S. soccer team:
“Bora is wonderfully cooperative with the media. He speaks to everyone. There is one small problem. No one has any idea what he is talking about.”
Wait a minute: An Associated Press story said that Trinidad cricket star Brian Lara’s joining an English team “is a signing coup comparable to Babe Ruth’s sale from the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees in 1920.”
Looking back: On this day in 1955, Jack Fleck beat Ben Hogan by three strokes in a playoff to win the U.S. Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco.
Choices: From David Letterman: “Phil Donahue says he’ll go to the Supreme Court for the right to televise an execution on his show. And he says if they won’t let him, he’ll do the next best thing and show a Chicago Cubs game.”
Trivia answer: Gene Sarazen, Hogan, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus.
Quotebook: Russian soccer Coach Pavel Sadyrin, on his country’s chances of winning the World Cup: “If we win, it will be a miracle on the scale of flying saucers.”
