Every Game’s the Super Bowl to a Texan

A Texas high school all-star team lost to a bunch of California kids on a Hail Mary pass a couple of weeks ago in a Shrine all-star game at Cerritos, 28-25, and the folks in Texas aren’t taking it lightly.

“It was a fiasco for a lot of different reasons,” Eddie Joseph, vice president of the Texas High School Coaches Assn., told the Houston Chronicle.

The main complaint was officiating, the Texans noting that their team was penalized 13 times for 93 yards while the Californians had only four for 20 yards.

“It was awful, just awful,” one Texas running back said. “The whole time we felt we were being cheated.”

Reporter Scott Kaiser of the Chronicle, wrote, “The officiating crew was made up of California Shriners.”

Joseph also said, “I know anything I say now sounds like sour grapes.”

No kidding.

*

Trivia time: What do Larry Bird, David Letterman, Carl Erskine, Jane Pauley and John Wooden have in common?

*

Tennis, or boxing? John McEnroe, who reached the mixed doubles semifinals at Wimbledon last week before partner Steffi Graf withdrew, says it might have been his last hurrah at the citadel of tennis. And he’s not happy about it.

“I would like to have had one last chance, but when Steffi Graf withdrew, it had gone,” McEnroe wrote in the Daily Telegraph. “This is probably my last Wimbledon as a major factor. Maybe no one cared, but I care. My kids were here, they cared.

“I wanted to try and win the championship and what happens still feels like a punch in the stomach.”

*

Babe’s legacy: When temperatures soared over 150 degrees on the field Monday in Cincinnati, some of the players wrapped their necks with towels soaked in ammonia and cold water. Others turned to an old-fashioned remedy of wearing cabbage leaves soaked in ammonia under their caps.

“They say that Babe Ruth did it. If the Bambino can do it, we can do it,” Cincinnati first baseman Sean Casey said.

*

Puzzled: Former Washington Redskin kicker Scott Blanton is looking for a job and can’t understand why no team has called.

“It boggles my mind a little bit when I see some of the kickers who are going to [NFL] camps and I’m still out of work,” Blanton said.

*

Same for everyone: Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., is the only artificial-turf stadium in the American League that has all-dirt base paths. It’s something else for players to complain about.

“The way the ball comes at you, you feel like a hockey goalie,” New York Yankee third baseman Scott Brosius said of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ infield.

*

Shark attack: The man who apparently stole two sets of clubs from Greg Norman’s garage last Saturday returned them when he realized they were the Australian’s tournament clubs.

“I don’t think he knew at the time he’d stolen the tournament clubs of Greg Norman,” Jupiter Island (Fla.) Police Officer Bill Smith said. “He wasn’t a golfer.”

*

Cash or charge? Sales are characterized as “booming” in the merchandise tent at the U.S. Senior Open in West Des Moines, Iowa.

Not much comes cheap. There are several baseball caps but all cost $26. Golf shirts sell for $65 or $70, a fanny pack is $10, an umbrella is $32 while a souvenir ball marker and greens-repair tool goes for $20.

“Nice products, a little pricey,” said one shopper, Tim Davlin of Omaha. “I’ll probably walk around the hats three times, complaining the whole time about the prices. Then I’ll buy one.”

*

Trivia answer: All are members of the Indiana Living Legends.

*

And finally: During one of those throwback uniform games, the Houston Astros showed up in their old rainbow-colored outfits.

“Looks like somebody cut up the drapes and made shirts out of them,” Cincinnati Manager Jack McKeon commented.