No Sign of Buffalo in Texas

Buffalo, Texas, doesn’t like being associated with Buffalo, N.Y., when a Buffalo team is playing a Dallas team for a championship.

For the third time in seven years, Buffalo, Texas, is changing its name for a few days. In 1993 and 1994, when the Bills played the Cowboys in the Super Bowl, city officials ordered all signs with “Buffalo” to be covered up and replaced by the temporary new name, “Blue Star, Texas.”

Now, it’s the Sabres who are playing the Stars for the NHL championship and the town has unofficially been renamed “Green Star, Texas.”

Buffalo is about 100 miles southeast of Dallas.

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Trivia time: Who was the first player signed by the Galaxy when it joined Major League Soccer in 1995?

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Bad choices: Since Jim Abbott was chosen by the Angels in 1988, Jason Dickson is the only pitcher the Angels have drafted who has won at least 20 games in his career.

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Small town: With 667,650 television households, San Antonio is the smallest market to make the NBA finals since Fort Wayne played Philadelphia 44 years ago.

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Ankle trophy: If the Dallas Stars’ Mike Keane is on the winning Stanley Cup team, he knows what he’s going to do.

“I’ll get it tattooed here,” he said, pointing to his left ankle, where his previous wins, with Montreal in 1993 and Colorado in 1996, are celebrated.

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Half a million: No wonder Roger Penske unloaded most of his CART stock and sold Penske Motorsports to Bill France. According to the Wall Street Journal, the car and race track owner recently ponied up $500,000 to buy membership in the Piano Creek Ranch in southern Colorado.

The $120-million development, under construction, will be limited to 395 members, who will have such playthings as an 18-hole golf course, tennis courts and at least 10 ski runs. But no race track.

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Fish story: The Sacramento Steelheads, a Western League baseball team, likes to liven up its games with a fish toss. Fans are selected from the crowd to hurl dead steelheads as close to second base as they can from the baseline.

“One time a little kid threw the fish, and its head came off in his hand and the body went flying,” said Elaine Davis, whose son pitches for the Steelheads. “It was awful.”

Bruce Portner, the team’s owner, said, “I thought it would be hysterical. But is it offensive? I think if the fish were alive it might be offensive.”

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Trivia answer: Goalkeeper Jorge Campos of the Mexican national team.

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And finally: From The Vent column in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “It’s hard to believe that 185,000 people [at the Coca-Cola 600] can sit and watch automobiles run around in a circle for five hours. It’s a grave reflection of the intelligence of the American public.”