They Call Them Hooligans for Several Good Reasons

England’s Premier League soccer clubs didn’t play this weekend, but rowdy followers of teams in the lower divisions provided plenty of action:

--Former English national team coach Graham Taylor, now in charge of Wolverhampton, chased down a Sheffield United fan who spat at him after a 3-3 tie at Bramall Lane. Taylor grabbed the man, but he slipped into the crowd.

“I am sick and tired of managers and players being subjected to such disgraceful behavior,” Taylor told the Associated Press. “Rather inadvisably, I went in and got hold of him. I thought he was being led away by the stewards, but then he escaped. It’s not very nice when you feel somebody’s phlegm on your face.”

--Nine people were arrested after about 500 fans of Wembley rivals Birmingham and Carlisle brawled at Southend.

Police had been tipped that rival fans planned to meet the night before the game for a brawl on the beach, and although authorities tried to prevent trouble, fighting broke out in several parts of town.

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Trivia time: Who, where and when did George Foreman fight in his first heavyweight title defense in the United States?

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Saviors? Steve Zipay of Newsday calls Ken Griffey Jr. of the Mariners and Frank Thomas of the White Sox “the Dynamic Duo of a sport that desperately needs an image transfusion.”

To support this assertion, he quotes David Burns of Burns Celebrity Sports Service in Chicago, who says: “They are the two future Mickey Mantles. . . . There is just no third close to them. (They) have all the ingredients. They have Michael Jordan-type warm personalities, no negatives come through. They’re considerate, they’re young and keep ringing up all types of records.”

Zipay further notes: “The cash registers are ringing as well.”

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Trash talk: Michael Jordan knows how to put the NBA’s 16-team playoff format in perspective, saying: “The regular season is garbage. We can throw this thing away now. It was only for us to get to know each other, and I think we’ve done that. Now, what we do from this point on is going to be written in history books.”

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Process of elimination: Mike Keenan, who left the New York Rangers last summer to become general manager and coach of the St. Louis Blues, has more than a faint idea of which anonymous Ranger player told Sports Illustrated recently that Keenan comes “with an expiration date.”

Keenan: “Any player who would not go on record is a coward. You’re not going to get an anonymous comment from Mark Messier or Kevin Lowe or Steve Larmer or Brian Noonan or Stephane Matteau or Adam Graves or Brian Leetch or Jeff Beukeboom or Sergei Zubov. So, I can pretty well tell you one of the three or four players who said it, and they’re the guys who didn’t play.”

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Cooperstown, not Albuquerque: After Henry Rodriguez hit his fourth home run Sunday, Vince Piazza, father of Dodger catcher Mike Piazza, yelled to Executive Vice President Fred Claire: “Does this mean he’s going to make the ballclub?”

Said Claire: “He’ll make the Hall of Fame if he keeps that up.”

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Trivia answer: Axel Schulz in Las Vegas on April 22, 1995.

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Quotebook: Howard Cosell on his reputation: “Arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, persecuting, distasteful, verbose, a showoff--I’ve been called all of these. Of course, I am.”