Wrestlers Are Rebels With a Cause

The Outlaw Renegade, Junk Yard Dog and Krusty the Killer proved they have a soft spot in their hearts for a 12-year-old boy who needs heart and lung transplants. The professional wrestlers performed at Valley View High in Moreno Valley to help raise money for Travis Thom.

“What a show!” Thom said. “I love it. I had a great time.”

Thom has primary pulmonary hypertension, a disease that has caused the blood vessels in his lungs to thicken. The show was held to raise money toward the $100,000 needed for transplants.

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Trivia time: Who is defending champion in the Iditarod sled dog race?

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Filling the seats: Two men bought three tickets to a Colorado Rockies’ exhibition game--one for a life-size inflatable doll they had sitting between them. All wore “Replacement Fan” T-shirts with the logo of a Denver radio station.

KRFX disc jockeys Lewis and Floorwax have four season tickets to regular-season Rocky games, but they insist the dolls will occupy their seats for every game at Coors Field until the player strike ends.

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Q and A: Pitcher Pedro Borbon, 48, of the Cincinnati Reds, fell during spring workout drills, after which he asked, “What do they do with old horses, shoot them?”

Said Cincinnati Manager Davey Johnson: “We wouldn’t waste the bullet.”

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Go for it: The Hockey News logo poll voted the emblem of the Cincinnati Cyclones as the worst among minor league logos. This is the second consecutive year that the logo has been so (dis)honored.

“It’s always difficult to repeat even a dubious achievement like ‘worst logo’ and we feel it’s quite an achievement,” Cyclone General Manager Doug Kirchoffer said. “There’s already talk of a three-peat.”

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Tough as ever: Jimmy Connors is playing in 35-and-over tennis tournaments now, but his attitude is the same as when he was a teen-ager from East St. Louis, Ill.

“Every time I go out there, I look at it as a war,” Connors said.

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No Willie Hoppes: Golfing purists cringe when they see a professional, such as Bruce Lietzke, using an elongated putter, but there is a limit to what can be used on the green.

In the first U.S. Amateur, in 1895, the U.S. Golf Assn. banned Richard Peters for putting with a pool cue.

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Mother country: Chad Rowan, a sumo wrestling grand champion from Hawaii known professionally as Akebono, plans to apply for Japanese citizenship, a Tokyo sports newspaper reported.

Rowan, 25, is the first non-Japanese wrestler to attain sumo’s highest rank.

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If the shoe fits: Beverly Hills agent Dennis Gilbert, when asked if replacement players might be receiving shoe endorsements: “Hey, the only shoe endorsements these guys will get are from Buster Brown.”

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Frightening thought: The Good Doctor, in Inside Sports, was asked what would be the craziest thing that could happen during an NBA season.

“Dennis Rodman dyeing his armpits,” was the reply.

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Trivia answer: Martin Buser of Big Lake, Alaska, who also won in 1992.

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Quotebook: Orlando forward Horace Grant, on why he didn’t sign with the New York Knicks: “They said (Pat) Riley has an ego that won’t quit. It’s OK to have an ego, every player has one. But they say Pat’s crazy, that he won’t let you sit out unless your leg is broken in two places.”