It’s His World, And Soccer Isn’t Welcome

Mitch Albom in the Detroit Free Press: “Here we go again. Happens every four years. Somewhere on the planet they are playing the World Cup of soccer. So we in America must get a lecture.

“Why isn’t soccer popular the U.S.? What’s the matter with you? It’s the biggest sporting event in the world!

“With all due respect, no it isn’t. Because the world when it comes to sports, is defined by where your world begins and ends....

“Three out of four Americans couldn’t care less. Does that make us pompous? On the contrary, it suggests we have other things to do.”

Trivia time: What is the record for most three-point field-goal attempts in an NBA playoff game?

Don’t care enough: Bob Kravitz in the Indianapolis Star: “You know what? We say we care and at a very visceral level, I’m sure the latest steroids-in-baseball revelations do inspire some outrage.

“But for the most part, we don’t care, not enough to force a change in the culture of sports.

“If we really cared, if we were truly outraged and completely fed up, we’d stop going to games and stop watching games on television, and stop buying merchandise.”

Math major: Jerry Greene in the Orlando Sentinel: “Phillies’ catcher Mike Lieberthal had this to say about the accusations of rampant use of steroids in Major League Baseball: ‘Fifty percent? That’s ridiculous! Fifty percent would mean half our guys.’

“You’ve go to get up pretty early to get anything past Mike.”

More Greene: “In the June 3 issue of Sports Illustrated, Evel Knievel is asked what it was like to have been in a coma.

Answered Evel: “How the .... do I know? I was in a coma.”

He’d rather sleep: Steve Hummer in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the early TV times for the World Cup: “The only good reason to watch a soccer game is if you have a kid playing in it. And even then it pretty much has to be a first-born child, not one of the sequels.”

Saluting baseball: Mike Lopresti in USA Today: “Take me out to the ballgame. Take me out to the crowd. Give me some hormones, andro will do. If I take enough, I’ll make $10 million, too.”

Looking back: On this day in 1932, Yankee Lou Gehrig hit four home runs in a game at Philadelphia and John McGraw retired after 31 seasons as manager of the New York Giants.

It’s a mad world: Bob Knight is being courted for the big screen.

Knight, Texas Tech’s basketball coach, is scheduled to appear with actors Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler in the upcoming movie “Anger Management.”

The film, scheduled for a June 2003 release, is about a mild-mannered man (Sandler), who is mistakenly sent to an anger management help group.

Trivia answer: Rex Chapman of Phoenix, 17 against Seattle on April 25, 1997. He made nine.

And finally: Blackie Sherrod in the Dallas Morning News: “Sam Snead wasn’t above a hustle of two.... At his home resort courses in Virginia, Sam bet he could beat a guest using only a tree branch for a club.

“He actually had a hickory limb that he had honed and balanced on his workshop lathe, and it worked beautifully for him.”