These Guys Make for a Potent Mixture

You’re Diego Maradona, you’re fat, you’re out of shape, you’re 36 and you want to make a comeback with Boca Juniors, the Argentine soccer club you led to the league championship in 1980.

Whom do your hire, at $1,000 a day, to be your personal trainer?

Ben Johnson, of course.

The pairing, a punch line in itself, raises many obvious questions, foremost among them: So, what are they serving at the training table?

Johnson lost his 1988 Olympic 100-meter gold medal and was suspended for two years for steroid use before being banned for life for failing a drug test in 1993.

Maradona was banned by FIFA for 15 months after testing positive for cocaine in 1991 and was suspended again during the 1994 World Cup for using banned stimulants.

Maradona spent two weeks training with Johnson and claims his weight, once near 200 pounds, is down around 170.

No truth to the rumor, however, that the two teamed to film an exercise video titled, “Banned on the Run.”

Trivia time: Who was the first National League relief pitcher to win the Cy Young Award?

Not a party guy: Mike Tyson was a no-show at his birthday party last week, perhaps not in a party-type mood after his teeth-marked disqualification against Evander Holyfield three days earlier.

Tyson wasn’t the only one. A publicist for the Carbon Club in New York, where the party was scheduled, said 600 guests were invited but only about 100 showed up.

Those hardy few hung out until 3 a.m., listening to recorded rap and hip-hop music, before finally calling off the vigil. No word if the deejays played “Maneater” or “Another One Bites The Dust.”

They forgot Mighty Mouse: Entertainment Weekly suggests the following opponents as “dream bouts” for Tyson, if and when he fights again: Babar the Elephant, Spock from “Star Trek,” Prince Charles, Alfred E. Neuman and Carrot Top, the Bozo-haired comedian (see photo at left).

What, no Muresan?Charles Barkley’s dynasty atop the NBA all-interview team continues, as Sir Fill It Up led vote-getters again on the 1996-97 team.

As selected by a panel of NBA writers and broadcasters, Barkley, with 74 votes, was joined on the first team by Jayson Williams of the New Jersey Nets, Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls, Karl Malone of the Utah Jazz and Grant Hill of the Detroit Pistons. Seattle’s George Karl was voted most quotable coach.

Barkley has been named to the all-interview team 10 times in the poll’s 11-year existence.

Trivia answer: The Dodgers’ Mike Marshall in 1974.

And finally: Ken Baumgartner, former Mighty Duck enforcer, discussing his recent move to the Boston Bruins in the Boston Globe:

“In Anaheim, if you walked downtown with a black eye, chances are people were going to cross the street when they saw you coming. I don’t think that will happen here.”