It’s No Surprise He’ll Go to the Mat for Missouri

Mike DeArmond of the Kansas City Star writes, “Those who wonder where Missouri football Coach Larry Smith draws his competitive fire need only shake the family tree.

“Smith’s grandmother once was arrested for taking a chair to a pro wrestler. And his aunt was escorted out of another wrestling arena for assaulting a wrestler with an umbrella.”

Smith said his grandmother loved wrestling and thought it was on the level, recounting the story of her chair attack:

“One night in Fort Wayne, Ind., she got so mad at this one wrestler, who was the bad guy. As he was walking down the aisle, she got up and whacked him across the back with a folding chair.

“They called the cops and took her down to jail, this little old lady who was about 70 at the time.”

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Trivia time: Who holds the NFL record for pass receptions in a game?

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Role model: Las Vegas bookmakers listed hometown driver Sam Schmidt at 12-1 in last Sunday’s Vegas.com 500 Indy Racing League race, odds that a number of his friends snapped up.

After he’d won, he was asked if he had put any money down.

“Pete Rose told me not to bet on myself,” Schmidt said.

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True love? Hubert Mizell of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times writes that Steffi Graf has “fallen” for Andre Agassi:

“He would not have been my first choice for Steffi’s mate. Not that she’s hired me as romance consultant. I was thinking Graf might match up with somebody less famous, devoid of high ego and visibility, and with better hair.”

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Mean guy: Steve Rosenbloom of the Chicago Tribune nominates Bryan Marchment of the San Jose Sharks as the biggest cheap-shot artist in the NHL: “Dirtiest player in this or any league. Would’ve made a good Hun.”

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Distinctive, at least: The late Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle once wrote that Candlestick Park is “the ninth blunder of the world.”

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Come again? Pittsburgh Coach Bill Cowher, on the Steelers with Kordell Stewart at quarterback: “Certainly that position is one that’s going to burden the blunt of the responsibilities.”

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L.A.’s forgotten team: The St. Louis Rams have a 47-99 record in the 1990s, a .322 winning average.

“Nobody in this organization enjoys losing,” Ram President John Shaw said. “It’s a strange twist for us to have such a losing decade. We’ve had so many years of winning.”

Who can remember?

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Trivia answer: Tom Fears of the L.A. Rams, 18 against Green Bay on Dec. 3, 1950.

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And finally: Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe, on Kevin McHale’s induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame on Friday: “He was Lou Gehrig to Larry Bird’s Babe Ruth, and as a result people never fully grasped how utterly unique and unstoppable a basketball player [he] really was.

“There were people who could do a passable defensive job against Bird. There was, meanwhile, no forward in the world who could regularly stop McHale.”