It’s Better Than ‘My Dog Ate My Homework’

Jerry Greene of the Orlando Sentinel credits Denver Bronco quarterback Brian Griese for an imaginative excuse for not being able to practice--twisting his ankle when his dog, as he says, “clipped” him on some stairs at home causing him to fall.

But Griese’s excuse ranks third on Greene’s Best Football Excuse list behind two Miami Dolphins:

* “No. 2: Famed kicker Garo Yepremian once showed up for a game with a badly injured big toe. At first he said he had kicked a tire on his car, then admitted that he had dropped his bed on his foot.

* “No. 1: Nose tackle Alfred Oglesby, drafted in 1990, missed a practice and said it was because he had been kidnapped and left in the Everglades.”

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Trivia time: Who holds the record for most seasons with one club in the major leagues?

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It’s about time: Laura Vecsey of the Baltimore Sun on the Harlem Globetrotters’ recent induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame:

“Their credentials are beyond question or compare.... We’re talking generation after generation of wildly skilled ballhandlers, shooters, ambassadors of the game, entertainers.

” ... We’re talking Meadowlark Lemon, Goose Tatum, Marques Haynes. We’re talking Fred ‘Curly’ Neal, a bald-headed star long before Charles Barkley, who could spin a ball on his finger, dribble a ball like it was a yo-yo.”

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Big time stuff: Scott Ostler in the San Francisco Chronicle: “It’s true we are no longer the global power in men’s basketball. But there are so many sports that Americans still dominate.

“I stress the following is only a partial list: dog Frisbee, channel surfing, touchdown dancing, father-son mugging, basketball-mascot dunking, rodeo, midget wrestling, nude skydiving, prison handball, video games, base throwing for distance and hog-calling.”

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There’s a solution: Steve Jacobson in Newsday: “One other last word on the issue of no women members allowed at the home of the Masters. Restrictions on women at golf clubs abound--like those that forbid women to play on Saturday morning or prohibit them from sitting at the window table in the restaurant on Saturdays and will exist until the women say no more.

“The wives of the members ought to read ‘Lysistrata,’ in which the women of the Greek cities involved in the Peloponnesian War refused to lie with their men until there was peace.

“Unless that’s of no interest to golfers.”

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Looking back: On this day in 1944, the St. Louis Browns recorded a final-day 5-2 victory over the New York Yankees and clinched the first--and only--pennant of their frustrating 44-year history.

The Browns lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in six games in the World Series.

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Trivia answer: Brooks Robinson and Carl Yastrzemski share it, 23 years with the Baltimore Orioles and Boston Red Sox, respectively.

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And finally: Gil Lebreton of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, writing before the St. Louis Rams had fallen to 0-4 by losing to the Cowboys: “The Rams multi-motion, fire-drill offense was widely christened as ‘The Greatest Show on Turf.’ Now the headline writers, even in St. Louis, are twisting the knife--’Greatest No Shows on Earth.’ ”