He Has to Be Faster Than Run-On Sentence

How fast is Maurice Greene?

Fast enough to cover 100 meters in 9.79 seconds, which is about what it takes to read this blur of a sentence about him in England’s Independent on Sunday newspaper.

“In less than one Olympiad, the four-year cycle between games, Greene has gone from American also-ran--scraping a living walking greyhounds at a dog track, serving at fast-food restaurants, tearing tickets at a cinema and loading trucks--to the fastest runner in history, mobbed by autograph- hunters on the streets of London, with a Mercedes bearing the vanity plate ‘MO GOLD’ and a mini movie-theatre built into his luxurious home in Granada Hills, north of Los Angeles.”

Whew!

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Trivia time: Penn State’s Alamo Bowl appearance against Texas A&M; will be Coach Joe Paterno’s 30th bowl game, breaking the record he shared with whom?

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Culture club: It’s not every day that Blanche DuBois makes an appearance in Newark, N.J., but she did so in a Jerry Izenberg column this week.

“The Giants,” he wrote in the Star-Ledger, “have become a team much like Blanche DuBois in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ or the last starving artist in a Paris attic. They have come to rely on the kindness of strangers in order to survive.”

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Words that melt: Even Tennessee Williams couldn’t have penned a better line than Izenberg’s description of a badly thrown ball about to be intercepted.

“The ball hung there like a giant marshmallow just waiting for the campfire.”

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Say what? Asked to describe Mike Tyson in one word, the Miami Dolphins’ Trace Armstrong didn’t hesitate.

“Embarrassing,” he said.

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Dogleg left? Jack Nicklaus was hobbled by a bad left hip when he finished sixth at Augusta in the 1998 Masters.

“I had a chance on one leg to win the Masters,” he said of his prospects in 2000. “I’d like to go back on two legs and see what happens.”

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Feeling queasy: If Cleveland Brown offensive lineman Orlando Brown thinks he has it bad after being hit in the eye by Jeff Triplette’s flag, think again. Other officials in other sports have done a lot worse.

There was, for instance, major league umpire Paul Pryor, who once lost it all over catcher John Roseboro at Dodger Stadium.

That wasn’t intentional, either, but it did earn Pryor a nickname--the Puker.

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Endless summer: Now that he’s back with the Dodgers, don’t look for Orel Hershiser, 41, to be hanging it up after only one season.

“I’ve been having my last season for probably the last five years,” he said.

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Trivia answer: Paul “Bear” Bryant.

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And finally: Ron Rapoport of the Chicago Sun-Times says Nashville Predator defenseman Bob Boughner had a tough time of it when a storm in Detroit knocked out television reception at the team’s hotel.

“It was an absolute nightmare,” Boughner said. “I tried to think if this is the first time I’ve gone without TV for two days. I don’t know if I did that on my honeymoon.”