Forget Tolstoy, Dolphins Provide Enough to Read

It may not rival “War and Peace” in content, but Miami’s media guide for the upcoming NFL season has given Tolstoy’s epic a run for its money in length. The tome cranked out by the Dolphin publicity department runs to an astonishing 544 pages.

And not everyone gets equal treatment, either, says the Orlando Sentinel’s Jerry Greene.

--Coach Jimmy Johnson, with five years in the league, gets seven pages.

--Former coach Don Shula, with 33 NFL seasons under his belt, gets four.

--Joe Robbie Stadium gets 11 pages.

--The former owner after whom the stadium is named gets none.

The landslide winner, however, is quarterback Dan Marino, whose media guide biography extends to--wait for it--40 pages!

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Trivia time: Who was the first race driver to earn $1 million by winning the Indianapolis 500?

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Change for change’s sake: The Dolphins might want to keep the presses warm on that media guide. The changes might be frequent under Jimmy Johnson.

“I don’t fall in love with a player,” Johnson said. “If he gets too old, I’ll replace him. It’s the way I believe in doing things.”

He’s not kidding, said defensive back Robert Bailey, who played for Johnson at the University of Miami.

“If we don’t win, he’ll have a new team until he wins,” Bailey said. “Every player will be gone, and that includes me.”

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A cold one, perhaps: Bob Charles is the only left-hander ever to win one of golf’s major tournaments, and only four others, including Phil Mickelson, Russ Cochran and Ernie Gonzalez, have ever won a PGA event.

“Then,” wrote Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Verdi, “there was Sam Adams, who took the 1973 Quad-Cities Classic before he became a beer.”

Short subject: Verdi dubbed the squabble at the PGA Championship over the caddies’ demand to wear shorts in hot weather “The Boxer Rebellion.”

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Burning mad: Sydney 2000 had best design a better torch for its Games or risk the wrath of the mother country.

Times of London columnist Matthew Bond, bemused by Atlanta’s grotesque effort, called it: “The ugliest flame in Olympic history--a chip [French fry] carton mounted on a fire escape is the nearest I can get to it.”

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Snail’s pace: Gwen Torrence, bronze medalist in the 100 meters at Atlanta, beat gold medalist Gail Devers at the Monaco Grand Prix meet on Saturday, winning in 10.92 seconds.

“I don’t know what happened, I felt like a slug,” Devers said.

Her time? 10.98. Some slug.

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Trivia answer: Emerson Fittipaldi of Brazil.

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And finally: The Cowboys’ Emmitt Smith, talking about his new contract demands: “I don’t want to become the Shaquille O’Neal of the NFL. I’d like to be looked at as the Michael Jordan of the NFL.”