Having a Bad Round of Golf? Just Blame It on Your Clubs

To explain their never-ending difficulties on the course, golfers often focus on their clubs. It’s easier than focusing on themselves.

But those are just weekend golfers. Pros never get trapped by such mind games . . . or do they?

Nick Price apparently has.

The head of Price’s putter broke off last winter, and his putting hasn’t been the same since. In desperation, he has changed the putter’s head four times.

“It just doesn’t look the same,” Price says. “I don’t know whether it’s a figment of my imagination or what.”

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Trivia time: He holds a consecutive-game hitting-streak record that has remained unbroken since the 1940s. His last name is DiMaggio. His first name is not Joe. Who is he?

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Class clowns: Team mascots may get paid to get laughs, but in Nashville, Tenn., it’s the wanna-be mascots who do the paying, $795 in all, at the Professional Mascot School.

And it’s no laughing matter.

“This is deadly serious work,” says Dean Schoenewald, who runs the weeklong sessions.

Schoenewald himself has been a mascot for 16 years, working as the San Jose Shark and the New Jersey Devil in the NHL, the Philadelphia Eagle in the NFL, and is currently Champ, a lime-green dinosaur who serves as the mascot for the Nashville Sounds, a triple-A baseball team.

Schoenewald says teams look to him when there’s a mascot suit to fill.

“It’s neat to have the teams calling,” he says. “It’s like they’re looking for the first-round draft choice.”

No word yet on the lottery picks in this year’s graduating class.

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Method to his madness: Former St. Louis relief pitcher Al Hrabosky, writing recently in a Pittsburgh newspaper feature titled, “Pirate Memories,” recalled a 1974 game between the Cardinals and the Pirates.

One out away from a save in the 13th inning, Hrabosky watched helplessly as his first baseman, Joe Torre, dropped an infield popup.

“He came to the mound,” Hrabosky wrote of Torre, “to see how I was, and I said, ‘Get off my mound.’ He said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘You didn’t ask permission to come on here.’ He looked stunned. Then I said, ‘Thanks a lot for dropping that ball. I wanted to strike out [Richie] Hebner for the last out.’

“Which I did.”

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Trivia answer: Dom DiMaggio, Joe’s younger brother, who hit in 34 games in a row in 1949, still the Boston Red Sox team record.

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Quotebook: Quarterback Jim Everett of the New Orleans Saints on talk that his team’s fortunes are riding on his right arm this season: “If I wouldn’t believe the stuff they told me when they said I was washed up, why would I believe the people that say it’s all on me now?”