As a Baseball Scout, He’s a Good NBA GM

Jerry Krause, general manager of the Chicago Bulls, telling Peter May of the Boston Globe of the most amazing thing Michael Jordan has ever done:

“He hit .202 in the Southern League. Considering he had not picked up a bat in 15 years, that is unbelievable.

“The Southern League is a pitcher’s league. The lighting is awful. The travel is tough.”

Krause is a former baseball scout.

Trivia time: Who is the only woman to win four track gold medals in the Olympic Games?

Striking out: Don Mattingly, former New York Yankee standout, may consider returning to baseball now that his restaurant, “Mattingly’s 23” in Evansville, Ind., has closed.

Reason: “People were not coming in anymore,” a spokeswoman said.

Four strokes: Mark Brooks, when asked to describe a hole he four-putted during the U.S. Open: “One, two, three, four.”

Astonishing deduction: Green Bay Packer General Manager Ron Wolf has figured out why the team has lost six consecutive games to the Dallas Cowboys:

“The difference between Dallas and Green Bay, quite frankly, is that Dallas has much better players than Green Bay.”

Ball-park: The driving range at Oakland Hills, site of the recent U.S. Open, was a popular site. The two staffers who ran the range said they made 10 sweeps a day to retrieve balls, picking up about 200 dozen each time. That works out to about 24,000 balls hit each day.

Tiger Woods was one of the hardest workers on the range, hitting more than 400 balls each visit.

It’s not too late: Mike Lupica in the New York Daily News: “Aren’t you surprised that the owners didn’t throw in a no-smoking edict for Marge Schott?”

Help! Steve Aschburner of the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, commenting on new Philadelphia 76er Coach Johnny Davis’ wanting to bond with controversial Derrick Coleman: “May the Force be with him.”

Messy mat: Nick Canepa in the San Diego Union-Tribune writes that Oscar De La Hoya’s victory over Julio Cesar Chavez was so bloody “it looked like a scene from ‘Braveheart.’ De La Hoya won on pints.”

Looking back: On this day in 1980, Freddie Patek hit three home runs and a double to lead the Angels to a 20-2 rout of the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park.

FYI: The East Coast Hockey League’s second franchise in Baton Rouge will be known as the Kingfish. That was also the nickname of Huey Long, Louisiana’s former governor and U.S. senator.

Trivia answer: Fanny Blankers-Koen of Holland in 1948: 100 and 200 meters, 80-meter hurdles and 400-meter relay.

And finally: Bob Verdi in the Chicago Tribune on the Chicago Bulls’ winning the NBA championship:

“There was Superman from North Carolina, Batman from Arkansas and Rodman from . . . well, exactly where is he from and where is he going? What’s more frightening, where will he wear that ring? Do we really want to know?”