Don’t Fool Around With Cal’s Streak

Robert Lipsyte, the usually sedate columnist for the New York Times, received a vociferous response recently when he jokingly (he says) suggested that once Cal Ripken Jr. had reached Lou Gehrig’s record of 2,130 consecutive games played, the Baltimore Oriole shortstop should sit out a game in honor of Gehrig.

Days after Ripken had broken the record, Lipsyte was still reeling.

“I still don’t understand the reaction,” Lipsyte wrote. “There were people who argued that the gesture would be akin to ‘a fix,’ that Ripken would be ‘throwing the game.’ . . .

“After years of getting advice to ‘lighten up,’ to treat sports less seriously, to stop covering fun and games as if they were political conventions or social movements, I found out that many people take all this much more seriously than I take political conventions.”

Trivia time: Who holds the major league record for most grand slams?

From personal experience: Dodger relief pitcher Todd Worrell was on the diving team at Arcadia High, which accounts for his unusual choice as his most memorable sports moment.

“Probably the most impressive . . . was Greg Louganis during the 1984 Olympics,” Worrell said. “He scored a couple of 10s and did some things which hadn’t been accomplished before.

“Because I dove, I had an appreciation for what the athletes were trying to do. Olympic divers represent the ultimate for an athlete, disciplining and controlling their bodies.”

Lost and confounded: For the first time in his 30-year NFL career, New York Giant Coach Dan Reeves has started a season 0-2. How’s he taking it?

“I’m a bad loser,” Reeves said. “If I look at myself [on tape] from [Sunday], I was terrible on the sideline.”

Chess match: Boxing is justly criticized for its confusing mishmash of organizing bodies and banana republic titles. But the chaos isn’t limited to the sweet science. According to the Christian Science Monitor, chess has its own border battle.

At odds are the long-established International Chess Federation, the Lucerne, Switzerland-based FIDE, and the newer Professional Chess Assn. in London, which is sanctioning the current world championship match in New York between Gary Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand.

Another “world championship” featuring Gata Kamsky and Anatoly Karpov is scheduled later this year under FIDE auspices.

Trivia answer: Lou Gehrig, with 23.

Quotebook: Newsday’s Rob Parker, explaining why union leaders didn’t come up with a good deal with the NBA until other players threatened an insurrection: “Talk about miscast. [Charles] Smith and [Buck] Williams are just too nice and easygoing to be dealing with union matters. Especially Smith. Think about it. If Smith is soft in the paint, you’d expect him to be the same way at the bargaining table.”