President Clinton Gives a Veto to Rams, Frontiere
Georgia Frontiere was going to get together with 25 football players.
Nothing out of the ordinary there. After all, Madame Ram owns a football team. She and the boys were going to take a tour of the White House on Tuesday, including an invitation to tour President Clinton’s private residence, according to an official news release.
Nothing out of the ordinary there. After all, similar invitations have been extended in the past to Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky. Of course, it’s only recently that he has begun inviting entire teams to his room.
In fact the President was going to honor the Rams for their lucky Super Bowl win, and then according to White House officials, speak on the Rams’ importance as role models.
Nothing out of the ordinary there, because the Rams no longer have Lawrence Phillips or Darryl Henley, and when one of their players killed a woman while driving under the influence, he eventually apologized.
At the last minute, however, officials said the President would be spending more time at Camp David with the Israeli prime minister and Palestinian leader, divorcing himself from Georgia and any possible meeting with the Rams.
Nope, nothing out of the ordinary there either.
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HELLO, MR. GRUMPY, can’t we all just get along?
It seems Dodger pitcher Kevin Brown took exception to a paragraph written about him in this space Tuesday.
Before his teammates went out, made four errors and lost Tuesday, Brown jumped onto a table in the middle of the clubhouse, and, showing no rhythm whatsoever, began dancing, ranting and raving something about “waiting for a limo.”
Dressed in sliding shorts and a T-shirt and looking a little like Richard Simmons, he picked up a crate of sanitary socks and hurled it toward his locker. Me, I’d just take a pair or two and put them on the top shelf, but then it became clear Brown was trying to make some kind of point.
He began kicking all the items on the table in my direction, but missed and nailed a columnist from Long Beach, who should have been nailed years ago for his smart-aleck prose.
While lower-paid employees began cleaning up the trashed clubhouse, Brown continued his tantrum. He made a crude gesture, and then lifted his shirt like some kind of flasher in the park. I’m still not sure what the lifting of the shirt was all about, but it certainly seemed like an overreaction.
What if I had written two paragraphs about him?
Brown would have had to go a long way to match my first day in the Yankee clubhouse in 1978. After saying hello to Thurman Munson, he bleeped me, offering the same bleeping answer to my next 13 questions.
Although Munson had yet to read a word I had written, you could say he was ahead of his time.
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NOW IF COACH Dick Vermeil could find the right words to inspire the Rams to win a Super Bowl, what do you think it would be worth to a company to have him fire up the work force?
Vermeil gets upward of $30,000 a gig, and speaking to everyone from Amway salesmen in Grand Rapids, Mich., to the National Assn. of Convenience Stores, he has had more than 30 speaking engagements since the Super Bowl.
Laker Coach Phil Jackson is getting “twice that and then some,” said Marc Reede, president of the Beverly Hills-based Nationwide Speakers Bureau.
It’s going to take a lot of those speaking engagements, of course, to provide Jeanie Buss the standard of living she’s accustomed to if reports of their budding romance reach full bloom.
Then again, Lance Armstrong, the cyclist, might be a more appealing suitor. Besides being in better shape, he gets $125,000 to speak.
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AS PROMISED, YOUR F.P. Santangelo update concerns my wife. She reminded me that she was celebrating her birthday Tuesday. How many birthdays is that? Let’s just say she’s had more birthdays than Santangelo has had hits this season. Twice as many. Even more than that.
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FORMER DODGER OWNER Peter O’Malley, who has been exploring the notion of buying an Australian baseball league, will throw out the first pitch when the U.S. plays Australia.
O’Malley has been a busy pitcher of late. He threw out the first pitch for a game in Mexico, and then Japan.
The Dodgers have asked the big right-hander several times to take the mound this season. “He keeps telling us no,” a Dodger official said. “We asked him after he sold the team, and then Bob Daly asked him.”
O’Malley, a classy gentleman and a fan of international baseball, obviously doesn’t want it known he has better control than Chan Ho Park.
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OH, AND HAVE a nice day:
* Sharmon Shah, who wanted to be known as Karim Abdul Jabbar, now wants to be called Abdul-Karim al-Jabbar. He’s better known in NFL circles as “that not-so-shifty stiff.”
* The Dodgers made batting practice optional because they had to play a day game after a night game. Football players presently going through two-a-days would get a kick out of that.
* Team doctors say Manager Davey Johnson’s heart is just fine, but said they would like to conduct just a few more tests. They’d like to hook him to a machine and see how he reacts when told his team needs to bunt more.
* Did you hear what happened in the WNBA All-Star game? Me neither.
* It has been reported that Clipper owner Donald Sterling had dinner with Cincinnati Coach Bob Huggins. The story made no mention of the Heimlich Maneuver, so it’s obvious Sterling didn’t offer him the job.
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TODAY’S LAST WORD comes from the Dodger clubhouse and catcher Chad Kreuter, who yelled:
“Have you ever put on a uniform . . . If you want to be respected in here, you’ll have to write good stuff and not this crap.”
I probably can’t put on your baseball cap, can I?
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T.J. Simers can be reached at his e-mail address: t.j.simers@latimes.com.