Sprint Success Nearly Went to His Head

Golfers are distracted by clicking cameras. Basketball players are sometimes rattled by taunting from the stands.

They should all know the Charley Paddock story. The famed USC sprinter of an earlier era, known as the “World’s Fastest Human,” had to dodge or run past falling bodies and falling bricks when a grandstand wall collapsed onto the track during the Penn Relays at Franklin Field in Philadelphia on April 27, 1928.

Paddock was competing at the unusual distance of 175 yards and was running in the lane nearest the stands.

After the race, he said: “One second later and there would have been one less Charley Paddock in the world. I thought I was in a steeplechase.”

Trivia time: Paddock is the only USC athlete to win the 100 meters in the Olympic Games. When and where was it accomplished?

What are the odds? Arnie Bail has been married three times and all of his wives have something in common: They’ve all recorded holes in one on the 126-yard sixth hole at Hillcrest Country Club. The latest ace was recorded by Linda Bail last Sunday.

Saliva stuff: Roberto Alomar isn’t the only baseball player to spit on an umpire.

Stanley “Frenchy” Bordagaray, a former big league outfielder who played in the 1930s and ‘40s, also spit at an umpire. When he saw the size of his fine, Bordagaray reportedly said: “It was more than I expectorated.”

Pitchman: Atlanta Brave third baseman Chipper Jones, after sampling a candy bar named after him, the Chipper Bar, a blend of milk chocolate with crisped rice:

“Wow! It was very good. I expected it to be good, but it exceeded my expectations.”

Nothing to it: Lawrence Cameron, a Charlotte resident who was picked from the stands to try a half-court shot for $240,000 during last Wednesday’s Charlotte Hornet-Atlanta Hawk game, was short on his attempt, but the show wasn’t over.

Charlotte’s Vlade Divac, unimpressed, left the Hornets’ huddle and showed Cameron how it’s done, banking it in for good measure.

Divac, however, was not eligible for the $240,000.

Sweating it out: Boston Celtic Coach M.L. Carr, when told before a recent game against the Chicago Bulls that Michael Jordan needed 120 points to pass Oscar Robertson and move into fifth place on the all-time NBA scoring list:

“I’d hate to hold him to 118.”

Trivia answer: Paddock won at the 1920 Games in Antwerp, Belgium.

And finally: Former Los Angeles policeman Mark Fuhrman was at the New York Yankees’ workout in the Seattle Kingdome last Monday. His brother is a longtime friend of Yankee pitcher David Wells.

That’s how Fuhrman got into the dugout, dispelling the rumor, wrote Tom Keegan of the New York Post, “that he was brought to Seattle to throw out the first glove.”