The Reply: ‘Hey, Stop Shouting Out There’

Pat Hurst defends her title in the LPGA Tour championship next week at West Palm Beach, Fla. Normally, this wouldn’t have much news value, except for the fact Hurst is seven months pregnant.

Hurst, 32, says she’s feeling fine and that her back doesn’t hurt as it did when she was forced to quit playing the last time she was pregnant.

That was two years ago when Jackson Jeffrey was born.

Hurst says Jackson is into the new baby thing ... sort of.

“He talks into my belly button,” she said. “He says, ‘Hi, baby!’ But I don’t know if he really knows what the whole thing means.”

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Trivia time: How many MVP awards have been won by players from the Minnesota Twins and Montreal Expos?

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Every little bit helps: Oakland A’s free agent Jason Giambi showed up to watch the Raiders practice last week.

Raider Coach Jon Gruden walked over and handed him a dollar. Gruden told Giambi he was starting a fund to keep him in Oakland.

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Payday: Tiger Woods played 19 PGA Tour events and his per-tournament prize-money average was $299,357.

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Contract this: Associated Press columnist Jim Litke knows what Bud Selig really meant. Wrote Litke:

“It’s not all that hard to figure out what ails baseball. There were 2,429 major league games played during the regular season and 35 more in the playoffs. That’s nearly twice as many as most of us need, and more important, are willing to pay for.”

Litke suggests dividing teams into the major and not-so-major leagues according to payroll and cut the regular season to 100 games.

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World Cupdate: There’s trouble brewing in Prague, where Czech soccer players are boycotting the media before their big World Cup playoff series with Belgium, saying the reporters are “distracting” them.

The problem, according to team captain Pavel Nedved, is that the Czech players “need peace” and they aren’t getting any, mainly because journalists distract the team “when they constantly repeat” questions.

The spurned journalists actually picked up support from an unexpected source--a former player. Ivo Knoficek said he’s never seen anything like the boycott. Said Knoficek: “Who made them stars? Journalists. Don’t tell me players have to concentrate on the match all the time.”

Yeah, there’s plenty of time to do that once it starts.

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Helmet optional: In the players’ families section of the Georgia Dome, where the wife of Atlanta Falcon quarterback Chris Chandler got into an argument Sunday with fans yelling for him to get hurt so Michael Vick could play, cornerback Ray Buchanan has his own way to handle unpleasantness. He hires a bodyguard to sit with his wife.

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Trivia answer: Three, all Twins. Zoilo Versalles in 1965, Harmon Killebrew in 1969 and Rod Carew in 1977.

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And finally: In case you’re wondering what Fox program was hyped the most in the controversial “virtual signage” on the wall behind home plate in the World Series, the answer is ... “The Tick,” which was advertised for seven half-innings.