Jordan Buffs Will Come Out of Woodwork

Talk about being floored by Michael Jordan’s final shot.

Basketball agent Dwight Manley bought the court of Salt Lake City’s Delta Center, even the baskets, for an undisclosed sum with plans to break it into segments and auction off a piece of where Jordan played his last game and the hoop where Jordan made his championship-winning jump shot in 1998.

“This will probably go down as one of the most expensive pieces of sports memorabilia ever sold,” said Michael Barnes, president of Collectors Universe, One-Of-A-Kind, whose firm handled the auction for Mark McGwire’s 70th home run ball and will also run these proceedings. “To say this is a six- or seven-figure piece of sports memorabilia is not an exaggeration. This will obviously break new ground.”

It is unclear how this old ground will be broken up, but center court probably will be sold as one lot, the spot where Jordan took his final shot and the basket it went through as separates, and the baseline that says “Utah Jazz” another. Selling additional smaller portions in the October proceedings is also a possibility.

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More floor: Breaking up a floor and selling it is not unprecedented. Portions of the old Boston Garden court were sold when the Celtics moved next door to the FleetCenter, and the Houston Rockets sold chunks of their floor after they won NBA championships.

By selling to Manley, who represents Karl Malone, the Jazz and the WNBA’s Utah Starzz got enough money to buy refurbished floors for each team.

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Trivia time: The Arizona Diamondbacks had four players at the All-Star game, tying the record for a second-year team. Which was the first?

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Long and short of it: The PGA Tour has revisited an issue in the wake of a medical emergency and, in a break from tradition, will permit caddies to wear khaki shorts on extremely hot days.

But for now, it is being called a test period with the new look. A short-term study.

Cutting the caddies some, slacks will be allowed when the heat index, the gauge of temperature and humidity, breaks 100. The decision comes only weeks after a 51-year-old caddie collapsed and his heart stopped during the third round of the Western Open in Lemont, Ill., though the exact cause of the incident was not disclosed.

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Say what? Steve Trachsel of the Chicago Cubs is 3-12 and lost eight in a row before winning on the final day before the all-star break.

“There’s really not a whole lot I can do about it,” he said. “It’s out of my control. It’s a team game.”

There is one thing he can do about it: Get someone out for a change.

In one stretch of nine winless starts, he had an earned-run average of 9.41.

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Trivia answer: The 1962 Los Angeles Angels, with Billy Moran, Lee Thomas, Leon Wagner and Ken McBride.

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And finally: Forget major league umpires. Former Boston Red Sox outfielder Mike Greenwell is having his problems with one in Little League.

While coaching an all-star team of 9- and 10-year-olds on Tuesday, Greenwell was thrown out of a game by volunteer umpire Steve Ward for the second time this year. No other coach has been ejected in more than 400 county and all-star tournament games during the last two months in the league.