White Sox Flying High on Plain

Skip Bayless in the Chicago Tribune:

“Here might be the biggest reason the White Sox can’t consistently draw crowds worthy of their best-in-baseball record:

“They have no Sammy Sosa, thank goodness. No Rodman or Rocker, praise be. No media dream golden boy like Mark Grace. No star at the top such as Mike Ditka or Phil Jackson or Dallas Green. No better-than- fiction characters right out of the 1985 Bears. No rock stars circa the ’98 Bulls.

” . . . The Sox’s secret is something that no longer sells in our idol-craving culture: a beautifully boring team.”

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More Sox: On pace to win 103 games, the team has seven players who have scored at least 40 runs (no other team has more than four) and have scored the second-most runs in the majors.

“We know next year was supposed to be our year, but we didn’t feel like waiting,” former Dodger Paul Konerko said. “We don’t feel like waiting when we think we can win now.”

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Trivia time: Who holds the record for minutes played in an NBA finals game?

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The third man: New “Monday Night Football” analyst Dennis Miller:

“I know football like a nerd. I’ve watched it my whole life. I’ll never question a player’s fortitude. These guys are warriors. I have a nerd’s knowledge. I’ll ask questions a fan might ask. I won’t pontificate. . . . I’ll stay in the background. Will I comment on the game, the strategies, the refs? Yeah. Will I tell you what it’s like to take a hit? No.”

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Sore losers: English and German soccer teams lost on the same day in the European Championship, guaranteeing ridiculing headlines. A sampling:

* “You are the soccer idiots of Europe! Germany is ashamed of you!” said Germany’s Bild.

* ‘Can’t pass, no class” was the headline in one English paper. Another: “Just not good enough.”

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Clueless in Portland: Dan Hortsch, the public editor for The Oregonian, writes, “Last week, I misspelled Scottie Pippen’s name. As a colleague pointed out, a Pippen is a basketball player and a pippin is an apple.”

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Amen: Former Cornell University President Frank Rhodes, speaking at the funeral of course designer Robert Trent Jones: “He has given joy and torment to a world of golfers.”

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Special appeal: NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol:

“We’ve had two athletes in my time--Muhammad Ali and [Michael] Jordan--that draw fans from outside their sport. Every indicator we have says that Tiger [Woods] is the next one.”

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Tank is empty: Boston Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield, the apparent victim of overuse:

“It’s hard to get guys out when you have nothing to get them out with.”

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Looking back: On this day in 1928, John Farrell won the U.S. Open by beating Bobby Jones by a stroke in a 36-hole playoff.

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Trivia answer: Kevin Johnson of Phoenix, 62, in a three-overtime game against Chicago on June 13, 1993.

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And finally: A crowd estimated at 250,000 turned out to honor the NBA champion Lakers in a victory parade Wednesday.

However, in 1931, when the city was substantially smaller, the Los Angeles Herald-Express estimated in a headline that 300,000 greeted the USC football team in a downtown parade after the Trojans’ 16-14 come-from-behind victory over Notre Dame at South Bend, Ind.