While Weighting, They Should Have Eaten Way Out

You know those elevator signs that say “2,000 pounds maximum”?

They speak the truth--as 10 USC football players learned the hard way Sunday night.

The 10 were riding a campus dorm elevator when it suddenly shut down, stranding them between floors without air conditioning until elevator mechanics arrived--an hour and 15 minutes later.

“We tried to rip open the door, but we broke it,” guard Chris Brymer said.

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The 10: Brymer (300 pounds), Grant Boelter (310), Matt McShane (285), Darrell Russell (305), Taso Papadakis (240), Brett Samperi (280), Mark Manskar (240), David Pratchard (290), Jason Grain (290) and Shawn Walters (235).

Total load: 2,775 pounds.

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Trivia time: Who won the first PGA Championship?

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One man’s view: Olympic icon Carl Lewis not only didn’t run the 400-meter relay at Atlanta, he ran out of favor with Cincinnati Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty, who wrote:

“Perhaps we should have let Carl Lewis run the entire 400-meter relay by himself. Lewis hands to Lewis, who hands to Lewis, who hands to Lewis. The winner is the United States of Lewis.

“Lewis wouldn’t have needed a baton. Just a big plastic hand, with which to pat himself on the back.”

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Looking back: On this day in 1920, Howard Ehmke of the Detroit Tigers pitched the fastest game in American League history, 1 hour 13 minutes, in a 1-0 win against the New York Yankees.

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Good riddance: John Daly has been having trouble with his driver. After shooting a 51 on the front side during a round in the Dutch Open, he continued to have problems in the Scandinavian Masters.

On the par-5 seventh hole, he missed the fairway off the tee, laid up with his second shot and then hit an 8-iron into the water in front of the green. As he and his caddie walked past the hazard, Daly took his prototype driver out of his bag and tossed it into the water.

“I wasn’t mad,” Daly said. “I just tossed it into the water because I didn’t ever want to see it again.”

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Marking time: Hey, hockey fans--only 30 days until NHL training camp.

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Mysterious Amy: All of Colorado belongs to Amy Van Dyken, who won four gold medals in the Atlanta Olympics, but where she actually lives is up for grabs. At least three communities have claimed her as their own, a fourth has adopted her whether she lives there or not, and officials in Lone Tree, where she lived the last few months, didn’t know she was there.

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No swimming: There is no such problem with gold medalist Michelle Smith, Ireland’s swimming darling. A big street party was held in her hometown of Rathcoole, a village of 5,000 southeast of Dublin with one supermarket, four pubs--and no pool.

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Trivia answer: James M. Barnes in 1916, at the Siwanoy Country Club in Bronxville, N.Y.

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And finally: From Bill Conlin of the Philadelphia Daily News: “People who know [Tommy Lasorda] only in a passing way have no trouble buying into the concept his clothes should be custom-tailored by Oscar Mayer, that there isn’t a jar of mustard big enough to cover him.”