With These Teams, This City Will Never Sleep

Steve Serby of the New York Post writes that the New York sports market has crashed. A sampling: “Welcome to the Rotten Apple, where:

* “The Yankees couldn’t get out of the first round of the playoffs against the Angels.

* “The Mets fired Bobby Valentine but not GM Steve Phillips, who built The Worst Team Money Can Buy II.

* “The Giants are boring impostors destined for mediocrity. Or worse. If they can’t get into the end zone, they won’t win another game, and Jim Fassel, who was hired to fix the offense, won’t survive.”

It tugs at your heart, doesn’t it?

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Trivia time: Who holds the NFL record for passing yards in a game?

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Not rough for some: Geoff Russell in GolfWeek magazine: “Ever wonder what a major championship venue does with all the rough it has to grow for the event after the event is over?

“At Scotland’s Muirfield, host of last summer’s British Open, the club invited local farmers to come in and cut the rough away, which they did, bailing it to be used as feed for their animals.

“In other words, a bunch of cows handled Muirfield’s rough a lot better than some of the world’s best golfers.”

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Hot and bothered: Tonya Harding is upset about a new product on the shelves of some Oregon stores that uses the name and unauthorized likeness of the disgraced figure skater.

Tonya Hot Sauce features an unflattering caricature of Harding outside a dumpy trailer, cigarette in mouth, ice skates in one hand, a hubcap in the other.

“Not for the weak-kneed,” reads the label. “Guaranteed to assault your taste buds. It’s a lead-pipe cinch you’ll love it.”

“I read the papers and think up ideas for a product,” said John Farmer, whose company PDX Hot Lix makes the sauce. “Tonya just keeps on giving.”

Harding doesn’t think it’s funny and neither does her lawyer. Made in Oregon stores pulled the product from the shelves after getting a legal letter advising them not to sell the sauce.

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Coming home? Adrian Wojnarowski of the Bergen (N.J.) Record surmises that Net Coach Byron Scott could become the next Laker coach when Phil Jackson retires: “Anita Scott confesses her husband’s ambition has always been to coach the Lakers, a corner of his heart belonging to L.A.

“After all, Scott was the kid raised a dozen blocks from the Forum, spending his childhood sneaking into Laker games by sprinting past the sluggish security guard in the tunnel and losing himself with the pretty people.”

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Bon appetit: Tom FitzGerald in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Kraft is coming out with a Packer pizza in the Midwest. It will have green and gold mozzarella cheese. Green mozzarella?

“Isn’t that called mold?”

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Trivia answer: Norm Van Brocklin of the L.A. Rams, 554 yards against the New York Yanks on Sept. 28, 1951.

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And finally: New Jersey Devil defenseman Ken Daneyko scored his first goal in 255 games, then scooped up the puck and gave it to his 4-year-old son, Shane.

“This may be the last goal I score before I retire,” he said. “I’m like an NFL lineman. I score about every five years.”