Does the World Really Need a New Rodman?
If there’s a sports agent out there who wants a ride through the twilight zone, all they have to do is call Major League Soccer’s New York/New Jersey MetroStars and ask to represent Sasha Curcic.
If there’s one athlete who can give anyone a run for the money when it comes to weirdness, it’s the Serbian midfielder who arrived in New York a couple of weeks ago with these words for his new MLS employers: “Here I am. I am your Dennis Rodman.”
He wasn’t kidding. Tim Leonard of the Bergen Record can testify to that. Curcic, he wrote, sports a shaved head, a strip of blond beard down his chin that ends in a scraggly knot held together with an elastic band.
And, of course, there are tattoos. Curcic’s left arm and shoulder are emblazoned with an angel, the names of his parents and sister and a few words about the Dalai Lama. His multicolored right shoulder features a devil, flames, a peace sign, the words “who is my self,” a strand of barbed wire and something Leonard described as “a lime-green alien head.”
Then there is Curcic’s oversized, white watch, which, when a button is pushed, announces the time--in Japanese.
“All my life I’ve been having fun,” he told Leonard. “The day I was born--the next day I was having fun.”
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Add Sasha: Curcic, wrote Leonard, “wants to meet Rodman and hang out with the NBA-rebounding-champion-turned-pro-wrestler with the penchant for grabbing Las Vegas cocktail waitresses in places that result in lawsuits.”
He said Curcic told him: “ ‘I think he will make my day if I meet him one day. It would be a crazy, wild night out. . . . I have funny skirts too. You don’t see my clothes.’ ”
Perhaps that’s just as well.
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Trivia time: Which NFL team has the most difficult 1999 schedule, based on its opponents’ records in 1998?
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$urfing, anyone? With the hot weather back, this might be a good time to consider a new career as a surfer. But is there money to be made riding a board? You bet.
According to Surfer magazine, top American surfers are raking it in. Kelly Slater has an annual salary of $1-2 million, the magazine said. Shane Dorian nets $450,000 to $500,000. Rob Machado gets about the same. And wearing a wetsuit to work beats a pin-stripe any day.
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Unbearable: Forget the Bulls. According to Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Verdi, “Whatever the Bears do creates more commotion than any other local franchise.”
But that doesn’t make Verdi a fan of their stadium.
“While modern buildings are considered a must for success,” he writes, “the Bears still play in Soldier Field, the NFL’s unofficial porta-potty, one of the worst facilities in professional sports. Maybe Cade McNown can achieve the unthinkable and bring the Bears not only another Super Bowl, but indoor plumbing too.”
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Insect aside: Of course, Verdi may be forgetting what his Tribune colleague Bernie Lincicome wrote only a week or so ago, after McNown’s altogether unremarkable first outing:
“The introduction of McNown has to be the most discouraging debut in Chicago since the arrival of the Asian long-horned beetle.”
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Trivia answer: The Oakland Raiders.
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And finally: PGA winner Tiger Woods, 23, needs to win only three more tournaments this year, and three each year for the next six years, to surpass Jack Nicklaus’ record of 29 tour victories before age 30.
