He Believes Angels Are Footnote to Bonds

Angel fans will disagree, but Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press writes that Barry Bonds was the biggest winner in the World Series:

“What Bonds did in this Series -- what he did in this postseason -- was nothing less than awesome. Here is how impressive it was: You will likely remember him long after you forget who won this championship.

“This World Series was about Barry Bonds. Lock. Stock. Barrel. Face it. You didn’t yell into the living room and say, ‘Is David Bell up yet?’ Bonds was the attraction, the curiosity, the lightning rod. He was the monster and the hero.”

And the loser, Mitch.

Trivia time: Carson Palmer set a USC record with 448 yards passing against Oregon on Saturday. Who holds the USC record for most yards rushing in a game?

Charms race: “The word on the street,” says John Cantu of HumorMall.com, “is that Saddam Hussein just ordered 500,000 rally monkeys.”

No math major: Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, asked how many major tournaments Tiger Woods would win next year, said, “Tiger has a chance to win every tournament he’s in, but if you’re going to pin me down to a number I’ll say five or six.”

There are four majors in golf.

Raising the bar: The Laker-Sacramento King rivalry can now be considered among the best in professional sports, writes David Steele of the San Francisco Chronicle:

“Any last fear that either team merely would mark time until the playoffs [and drain the regular season of all remaining drama] was erased in the hail of punches Friday night.

“The deans of discipline in the NBA office might not be crazy about it now, but they’ll like it a lot more come late May. So should everyone else.”

Quarterback duel: Billy Kilmer and Joe Theismann were among the 70 greatest Washington Redskins brought together by team owner Daniel Snyder last week, and the memories were not all fond ones.

Kilmer’s feelings toward Theismann, now an announcer for ESPN, have not changed much since they were teammates in the 1970s. “He was a jerk then and always will be,” Kilmer said.

Circus Bears: Jay Mariotti of the Chicago Sun-Times nominates the 2-5 Chicago Bears for the most “comedy-adaptable” team in the NFL:

“The Bears are so stinking awful, they aren’t worth your angst. Just laugh, because around the football nation, everyone else is.”

Trivia answer: Ricky Bell, with 347 yards in 51 carries against Washington State in 1976.

And finally: Bobby Bowden confounded many when the Florida State coach used the term “bumfuzzled” to describe his team’s play in a loss to Notre Dame on Saturday.

Peter Kerasotis of Florida Today writes that Bowden probably felt the same way Sunday morning after he forgot to set his clock back and arrived an hour early for his breakfast with reporters:

“[Bowden] arrived for breakfast to an empty room, where he sat alone, reading the newspaper and drinking coffee. Bumfuzzled, no doubt.”

-- Rob Fernas