It’s Not So Tricky to Get a Read on Pan-Scram Games

The Pan American Games have led to chilled relations between Winnipeg, Canada--one of the coldest cities in North America during winter--and balmy Cuba.

At the center of the contentiousness is the local tabloid, the Winnipeg Sun, accused by the Cuban delegation of promoting defections by printing a story about how local officials would handle the situation.

Even Fidel Castro joined in. Upset by prowling sports agents as well as the Sun story, Castro found time in his 4 1/2-hour Revolution Day speech to mention “tricks” and “filth” at the Pan-Am Games, and said Cuban athletes are “competing in enemy territory.”

The Sun responded quickly.

“Top o’ the morning to you, Fidel Castro,” wrote columnist Pat Doyle. “Still ticked off about all those defections? Well, listen up, Cigar Breath: Life in Cuba must really suck if your people would rather live here than in Havana.

“I mean, this is where snow drifts come to die.”

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More fun in the Sun: The tabloid also started a contest: Correctly predict the number of defections by the end of the Games and win a one-week trip to Cuba for two, Cohiba Esplendidos not included.

(Unlike U.S. citizens, Canadians are permitted to travel to Cuba because Canada does not have an embargo against the country.)

Responded Jose Fernandez, president of Cuba’s Olympic committee: “If this is a goodwill gesture, it is a perverse one.”

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Trivia time: Who is the only player on a Canadian team to pitch a perfect game in the majors?

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Rushing bride: New Orleans Saint rookie running back Ricky Williams was an amazingly good sport to don a wedding gown for a photo shoot for ESPN Magazine as the bride of Coach Mike Ditka.

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He’s also in pretty good shape: The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports the 5-foot-11, 235-pound back is a size 13--with the waist taken in.

Williams, who is gaining a reputation as an all-around good guy at the Saints’ training camp, was surprisingly unprepared for the fuss about his bridal portrait.

“My mom was kind of upset about it,” he said. “She said I should have told her about it.”

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Table for 50, please: Jason Sehorn, the New York Giant cornerback out of USC, faced criticism for rehabilitating his reconstructed knee in Southern California instead of with Giant personnel: “Do all 53 of us go out to dinner? No,” Sehorn told the New York Daily News. “But do you go out with everyone you work with?”

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Trivia answer: Dennis Martinez, for the Montreal Expos against the Dodgers on July 28, 1991. Martinez is coach of the Nicaraguan baseball team at the Pan-Am Games.

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And finally: In honor of the passing of baseball’s trading deadline, an oldie but goodie from the late Bill Veeck, owner at various times of the Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians and usually sorry St. Louis Browns: “I always felt the more Browns I could place on the other teams, the better off we would be.”