They Now Know This Player as Refrigerator

Jared Jones, a reserve quarterback at Florida State, knocked on the apartment door at 4 a.m., was let inside, asked the female residents to get the futon bed for him to sleep on, and started to raid the refrigerator.

He ate pizza, he ate sandwiches, he ate tortillas, he was even boiling water to cook hot dogs when the three women came to a conclusion. None of them knew Jones. They asked him to leave, he refused, they called the cops. The police arrived to find Jones outside--with a package of hot dogs in hand.

The students declined to press charges, so the police took Jones home, this time to the right one.

“I wasn’t really mad at him,” Kerri Crispell, one of the women, told the Tallahassee Democrat. “If I see him again, I’d joke with him and ask for my hot dogs back.”

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Trivia time: Ernie Shore was credited with an unofficial perfect game on June 23, 1917, when he retired the final 26 batters in relief of the starting pitcher who walked the leadoff batter and was ejected after an argument with an umpire. Who was that starter?

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Good Knight now: From Jim Armstrong of the Denver Post:

“Purdue goes on probation, Northwestern turns into the Las Vegas of the Midwest, Ohio State gives away grades, Michigan football players cut an unauthorized swath through Kmart, Minnesota jocks hand in papers they never wrote, and Barry Alvarez’s kid microwaves a frat brother’s canary. Yep, it’s official. Bobby Knight is the only sane one left in the Big Ten.”

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Country time: They unveiled a bronze statue of St. Louis Cardinal Hall of Famer Enos Slaughter on Sunday outside Busch Stadium, showing him in typical hustle pose, a slide with spikes flying. Like the good old days.

“You know, I never heard of a hamstring and a rotator cuff in the 1930s and 1940s,” said Slaughter, now 83. “We just went on out and played. You see so many players today round first and ‘Oops, out two weeks, hamstring.’ ”

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Dome, sweet dome: The great outdoors, huh?

Speculation has already hit high gear that Ken Griffey Jr., halfway to Hank Aaron’s record of 755 home runs, will tail off considerably now that the Mariners play in Safeco Field, complete with a retractable roof that will be kept open when the weather allows. Some estimates say that balls will lose 10 to 15 feet of carry because of the damp Seattle air, as opposed to the climate-controlled Kingdome.

“We won’t have the benefit of the cheap home run,” Mariner hitting coach Jesse Barfield said.

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Trivia answer: Babe Ruth. He walked Ray Morgan, argued with umpire Brick Owens and was ejected. Shore came in, Morgan was caught stealing, and Shore retired the rest of the hitters.

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And finally: Paul Doyle of the Hartford Courant, on the job Kevin Costner did at the All-Star game in Boston in introducing the players of the century and Red Sox legend Carl Yastrzemski in particular, providing a pause for the cheers before announcing the name: “That performance almost makes up for ‘Waterworld.’ ”