Quarterback Race Doesn’t Always Go to the Swiftest

When Cory Paus was named the starting quarterback at UCLA ahead of Ryan McCann, one of the reasons given was Paus’ ability to escape a pass rush.

McCann disputed his reputation as a stay-in-the-pocket quarterback, reminding, “I run a 4.6 40, you know.”

Besides, McCann said, “the coaches are working on us keeping our feet in passing position when we go back anyway. That way, if the receivers are covered, we can get the ball to DeShawn Foster.

“He runs better than any of us anyway.”

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Trivia time: Which baseball team had the worst record in one-run games?

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Only .390: Like Todd Helton, George Brett was 27 when he was threatening to bat .400 for a season. Said Brett to Jack Etkin of the Denver Rocky Mountain News:

“When you hit .390, that’s a pretty good year, but afterward I felt like I’d failed. It’s just weird with expectations, media buildup and the desire to be the best, and all of a sudden you’re not the best. . .

“I didn’t hit .400. I was devastated. It hurt me. It hurt because I talked about it for six weeks.”

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Summer Games? In case you don’t get the Weather Channel, it snowed the other day in Sydney.

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Value of an editor: Sydney’s weather reminds of Tom Clancy’s novel, “Rainbow Six,” in which a terrorist plot is discovered that would spread a deadly virus through misters used to cool crowds for this year’s Olympics.

Think there will be a lot of misters at a place where it just snowed?

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Inflation: The average salary in the NHL has risen from $271,000 to $1.49 million over the past 10 years. Put another way, it’s gone up from $311,650 to $2.23 million Canadian.

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Double duty: In a 7-6, 13-inning win over Atlanta on Tuesday, Colorado’s Brent Mayne, a catcher by trade, became the first position player to be a winning pitcher since Rocky Colavito in 1968.

Kevin Sherrington of the Dallas Morning News found that the last position player to be a winning pitcher as a starter was Jimmie Foxx, who is in the Hall of Fame and certainly not as a pitcher. In 1945, Philadelphia Manager Ben Chapman asked Foxx to start the second game of a doubleheader against Cincinnati, adding, “If by some miracle you last five innings, I’ll take you out.”

Foxx went 6 2/3 innings, struck out six, walked five and gave up four hits in a 4-2 win.

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Getting to be a habit: When Colavito beat New York for Cleveland in 1968, the Yankee third baseman was Bobby Cox, who managed the Braves in their loss to the Rockies and Mayne on Tuesday.

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Trivia answer: The Boston Braves were 7-31 in one-run games in 1935. Overall that season, they were 38-115 and finished 61 1/2 games out of first.

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No he wasn’t: In second place, seven shots behind Tiger Woods after the second round of the NEC on Friday, Phil Mickelson said:

“I think that as well as Tiger is playing, to be just lighting this golf course up, I would be disappointed to only have a five- or six-shot lead.”