Holik Swears He’ll Never Use This Excuse Again

When New Jersey Devil center Bobby Holik missed a practice last week, the club said only it was for “personal reasons.” Since he had staged a holdout during training camp--and his wife is six months’ pregnant--reporters began to fear the worst.

As it turned out, he had an excellent reason for his absence. Holik, a native of the Czech Republic, was sworn in as an American citizen.

“I’m one of the good guys now,” he said.

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Trivia time: Before this season, when was the last time Stanford defeated USC and UCLA in football?

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Moving around: Former Cleveland Brown running back Leroy Hoard was signed by the Minnesota Vikings after being cut by the Baltimore Ravens in September and the Carolina Panthers in October.

“It’s been a humbling experience,” Hoard said. To which John Crumpacker of the San Francisco Examiner commented: “At $16,000 a week, we should all be so humbled.”

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Still a round ball: Old coaches don’t die, they just go coach somewhere else. In the case of John Lucas, it’s tennis.

Lucas, who was fired as coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, is the new tennis coach for Lori McNeil.

Lucas ought to know what he’s doing--he was an All-American tennis player at Maryland in the 1970s.

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Enough yet? Among the things you can learn by calling up https://www.nd.edu:80/ndsi/ on the Internet are the Notre Dame schedule, fight song, team roster, a list of all 2,349 players who have worn the gold helmet, transcripts of Lou Holtz’s news conferences, a list of South Bend hotels, a stadium seat diagram, a fan bulletin board, and an on-line store to purchase Fighting Irish items.

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Fashion note: From Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe: “George Steinbrenner needs to lose that blue double-breasted blazer with white turtleneck. I remember he wore that in the 1970s.”

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In case you wondered: The Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept. issues about 90,000 crab-trap permits each year.

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A day at a time: Darrell Green, the Washington Redskins’ 36-year-old cornerback, says of the NFL: “I’ve told the guys all along that a season is measured in sixteenths.”

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Perfectly clear: Houston Rocket Coach Rudy Tomjanovich, whose birthday is Nov. 24, says he knows why his teams have been so successful in November.

“I’m a Sagittarius,” he explained.

What happened Tuesday?

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The name game: Folks in St. Louis are saying that the O in Ram defensive end Leslie O’Neal’s name stands for 0 tackles.

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Trivia answer: 1992.

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And finally: Don King, in looking for a sponsor for Christy Martin, the female fighter in his camp, said:

“I’m calling on Max Factor and Revlon. She can promote a rouge that don’t bruise.”