Bargaining These Chips Was Just a Bad Pitch

That wasn’t exactly a piece of baseball history for auction on eBay the other day.

It was three bone chips from Seattle reliever Jeff Nelson’s elbow.

Bidding reached an astounding $23,600 within about 24 hours before eBay halted the auction because the site prohibits the sale of body parts.

EBay had halted previous attempts to sell a kidney and a liver, as well as an auction by a man trying to sell his soul.

“An eBay seller has to be in position to deliver the product,” said Kevin Pursglove, eBay’s senior director of communications.

Nelson, inspired by the $10,000 fetched by Arizona outfielder Luis Gonzalez’s gum last month, acknowledged trying to sell the chips was “kind of sick and gross.”

But he planned to give half of the proceeds to Bear Creek High in Redmond, attended by his daughters, with the other half designated for the Curtis Williams fund at the University of Washington in honor of the paralyzed football player who died recently.

“If I can make money for charities for something that was going to get put in the trash, why not?” he said.

Trivia time: Put the following WNBA teams in geographical order, west to east: Mystics, Mercury, Monarchs, Miracle.

Timeout: Bryon Russell of the Utah Jazz will graduate from Long Beach State this month, nine years after leaving for the NBA in 1993.

Give him credit, but understand this: He won’t be the wealthiest among the new grads.

Steven Spielberg also will be picking up his 49er diploma, more than 30 years after leaving school without his bachelor’s degree in 1969 to launch his film-making career.

Lying in wait: In honor of the Colorado Avalanche-Detroit Red Wing playoff series, the Detroit Free Press and Denver Post have launched an insult-hurling contest.

Alex Furman of Englewood, Colo., became the first Avalanche fan to be published.

“Did you hear that on the Wings’ bus they hooked up a lie detector?” he writes.

“[Nicklas] Lidstrom hooks himself up and says, ‘I think we have the best defense in the league.’

“Immediately, the lie detector goes off.

“[Sergei] Fedorov hooks himself up and says, ‘I think I’m the best hockey player in the game.’

“Immediately, the lie detector goes off.

“[Darren] McCarty steps up and says, ‘I think ... ‘ and, immediately, the lie detector goes off.”

Life of a mucker: The Red Wings’ Kirk Maltby is the sort of feisty hockey player who is always getting whacked in the face.

Mitch Albom of the Free Press decided to ask him a few questions.

“Were you a fighter in school?”

“Oh, no,” Maltby said. “I never got suspended.”

“I didn’t ask if you got suspended,” Albom said.

“Well,” Maltby said with a smile. “Everyone deserves detention once in a while.”

Trivia answer: Sacramento Monarchs, Phoenix Mercury, Orlando Miracle, Washington Mystics.

And finally: Seattle Mariner trainer Rick Griffin, pondering the price that might have been fetched by Nelson’s bone chips:

“I can sell Ichiro’s stitches. I still have them.”