Providence Smiled on Him, but Only for Three Games

Bill Bertka, longtime assistant coach of the Lakers, has a pregame radio show called “Laker Legends.”

One recent segment dealt with former owner Jack Kent Cooke’s reaction to the Lakers rallying from a 3-1 deficit in an opening NBA playoff series in 1969-70 to defeat the Phoenix Suns. Bertka’s taped account of Cooke’s lavish praise of Coach Joe Mullaney:

“What a job he did. What he did in the last three games in substituting alone could provide textbook material for every coach in college or professional basketball, in my book.”

Bertka noted that Cooke fired Mullaney the next year.

Trivia time: Who is the only coach to take four schools to the NCAA basketball tournament?

Pan-demonium: Jackie Bowden, a 33-year-old bank employee, dashed 415 yards in 64.5 seconds while, according to the rules, flipping a pancake in a frying pan, to defeat 13 English competitors in the Shrove Tuesday International Pancake Race in Olney, England.

Bowden was seven-tenths of a second faster than Lou Ann Barker, who suffered a leg cramp while beating 10 runners in a similar race in Liberal, Kan.

Legend has it that the Olney race started in 1445 when a harassed housewife, dashing to get to church on time, arrived at the service still clutching her frying pan with a pancake in it.

Power sitter: According to Jon Heyman of Newsday, the main excitement in the New York Yankee camp last week came when Matt Stark, “a 265-pound first baseman with a decent hitter’s eye and a standout belly, accidentally exploded his chair. All he did was sit on it.”

Does anyone care?John Eisenberg in the Baltimore Sun: “Essential question as baseball exhibition season approaches: Can bad pitching beat bad hitting?”

Pachyderm promoter: H.A. (Humpy) Wheeler, Charlotte, N.C., Motor Speedway president, borrowed a page from P.T. Barnum to hype the track’s record $1.4-million purse for the upcoming Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR Winston Cup race.

Joining Wheeler and other officials was King Tusk, who at 14,000 pounds, is the largest elephant in captivity.

“With this jumbo-size purse posted for the Coca-Cola 600, we thought it was only appropriate to bring in King Tusk to illustrate the point,” Wheeler said.

Different agenda: Cava Mimosa, a 4-year-old filly, recently was scratched from a race at New Orleans’ Fair Grounds because the temporary license granted one of her owners had expired five days earlier and not been renewed.

Trainer Sam David said an effort to get a license application to the owner had “turned into a mess.” The owner is O.J. Simpson.

FYI: The Pittsburgh Pirates have a replacement outfielder named Ted Williams.

Trivia answer: Eddie Sutton: Creighton, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma State.

Quotebook: Bum Phillips, former Houston Oiler and New Orleans Saint coach, on what he does in retirement: “I ain’t doing a damn thing, and I don’t start until noon.”