Masters Dinner Wasn’t Always to Squire’s Taste

Hall of Fame golfer Gene Sarazen, who died last week at 97, usually liked the champion’s dinner each year at the Masters, mainly because he enjoyed eating. But there were exceptions, such as when Tiger Woods served cheeseburgers in 1998.

Said Sarazen: “Cheeseburgers! I don’t care too much for that menu. Whoever heard of a cheeseburger as a dinner?”

He also didn’t care at all for Sandy Lyle’s choice of haggis, a Scottish dish, in 1989.

“What’s haggis anyway?” Sarazen said at the time.

Told it was minced sheep or calf organs mixed with suet, onions and oatmeal and boiled in the stomach of the animal, Sarazen paused for a moment, before deciding to order off the menu.

“I’ll have lamb chops,” he said.

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More from Sarazen: The Squire’s favorite champion’s dinner was the one in 1993 served by Fred Couples--chicken cacciatore with spaghetti on the side.

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Trivia time: When the Colorado Rockies’ Bobby M. Jones pitched against the New York Mets’ Bobby J. Jones last Tuesday, it was the first time in more than 100 years that pitchers of the same name faced one another in the major leagues. Who were the last ones?

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Better to lose: Winning is not all it’s cracked up to be, if you listen to Belgian tennis player Xavier Malisse, after playing in his first final of the year and second of his career.

“I’m really tired,” he said. “I’m not used to playing all week and making the finals.”

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One big man: Rico Petrocelli, all-star shortstop for the Boston Red Sox in the ‘60s, was reminiscing with Gordon Edes of the Boston Globe when Frank Howard’s name came up.

“Six-foot-eight, 320 pounds,” recalled Petrocelli, of the former slugger for the Dodgers and Washington Senators. “He had this jugular vein in his neck that must have been three inches wide. He had this habit [like a twitch], you couldn’t help but notice when that vein came out.

“After the game, he drank a case of beer like I drank a Coke.”

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Horsepower: Drag racer Warren Johnson has won 74 NHRA final rounds and holds the pro stock speed record of 202.24 mph with his Pontiac Firebird. He explains what it takes: “These cars run on money, not gasoline.”

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Trivia answer: John B. Taylor of Cincinnati pitched against John W. Taylor of Chicago on April 16, 1899.

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And finally: Roger Clemens is a five-time Cy Young Award winner, but Dave Stewart, the Toronto Blue Jays’ assistant general manager, is not unhappy that Clemens was traded to the New York Yankees.

“Our club as a whole feels we’re a better club without Roger,” Stewart told the Houston Chronicle. “I don’t believe Roger is conducive to winning. He’s more of a guy that’s good at accomplishing individual goals, but I don’t think he’s capable of bringing a team to a championship.

“In New York he’d be riding the coattail of a club that can do it without him.”