Diamondbacks . . . There It Is--So, What’s the Big Problem?

Headline writers at the Arizona Republic in Phoenix were faced with a problem when the new major league baseball franchise was named the Diamondbacks.

The name doesn’t fit in tight headline space. So readers came up with some suggestions, such as:

Az Backs, D-Backs, Snakes, the D’s, Stingers and Strikers. The paper’s response? Fangs a lot.

Trivia time: Who is the only two-time winner of the John Wooden Award recognizing the season’s best college basketball player?

Retire retirement: John Eisenberg of the Baltimore Sun on the anticipated return of Michael Jordan to the Chicago Bulls:

“The word retirement has become the sporting version of ‘the check is in the mail.’ Utterly meaningless.”

Sock it to me: Antonio Davis of the Indiana Pacers welcomes Jordan’s return to the NBA even if it proves embarrassing to him: “He can dunk in my face, like he has on everyone else. I can tell my kids about it.”

Measure of fame: Jayson Stark of the Philadelphia Inquirer writes that the Phillies’ Jeff Stone “leads all active players (such as they are) in career batting average, at a spiffy .277.”

Says Stone: “If they make a Replacement Hall of Fame, I’m in there.”

Gamesmanship: Actor Leslie Nielsen’s “Stupid Little Golf Book” includes this tip: “I find it useful to inform an opponent who is lining up a 4-foot putt that under the metric system widely used in other countries, it’s actually a putt of just over 1,200 millimeters.”

Add golf: Another Nielsen observation: “Probably the simplest adjustment you can make is to subtract the apparent average wind speed from your score. If you shoot, say, a 135 and the wind, at a conservative estimate, was blowing 56 m.p.h., you’d shoot a quite respectable 79.”

Come again?The New York Mets canceled the TV show “Kiner’s Korner,” with host Ralph Kiner. His reaction was typical: “History is over.”

Mat mentality: Caught on the Fly in the Sporting News: “Fly hears that L.T. (Lawrence Taylor) chose r-r-rasslin’ after getting the hook at TNT because he wanted to go into something where lack-o-preparation wasn’t a problem.”

Versatile: Gary Shelton in the St. Petersburg Times: “I can see it now: Kevin Mitchell as the Japanese Deion Sanders. Some of the time, he’s a baseball player. Some of the time, he’s a sumo wrestler.”

Looking back: On this day in 1945, Maurice Richard of the Montreal Canadiens became the first NHL player to score 50 goals in a season during a 4-2 victory over the Boston Bruins in the final game of the season.

Trivia answer: Ralph Sampson of Virginia in 1982 and ’83.

Quotebook: Coach Barry Switzer of the Dallas Cowboys on the NFL’s new proposed tackling rule: “They talk about getting back to traditional tackling. Heck, if they want to get traditional, have them get rid of helmets entirely.”