No One’s a Winner in This Match Play

Bill Lyon of the Philadelphia Inquirer writing on the Masters: “That bastion of unbending, calcified, hidebound resistance to change, has reversed itself. It will permit old guys [65 and older] to play....

“The Masters has done the right thing, but has done it clumsily, and once again has left itself with an unplayable lie.... But the blame should not be heaped at the gates of Magnolia Lane alone.

“It takes two to escalate, and while it was Masters chairman Hootie Johnson who started the teapot tempest swirling, his opponent, Martha Burk, head of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, has managed to shank a few into the water herself.

“What the two of them have managed to do is take one of the greatest sporting events of the whole year and turn it into freak show.”

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Trivia time: Other than the fact they were outstanding NFL players, what else did Sammy Baugh, Red Grange and Bronko Nagurski have in common?

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Different goals: Bert Blyleven, a former big-league pitcher, says he can empathize with the pressure facing Sammy Sosa, whose next home run will be his 500th.

“I know what it means to get close to 500,” he told Fox Sports Net. “I gave up almost 500.”

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Words of wisdom: Jim Hodges of the Hampton Roads ( Va.) Daily Press after Texas Tech basketball Coach Bob Knight said the NCAA could learn a few things from the New York-based NIT: “Remember what they say: If you can make it in Lubbock, you can make it anywhere.”

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Foul play: From the Caught on the Fly column in the Sporting News: “Someone should call a flagrant foul on the Pacers for their second-half play; they have gone from being an NBA Finals contender to looking like they’ll be waving bye-bye to that Conseco advantage in Round 1. Things have gotten so bad that the team reached out to Tim Hardaway in the TV studio for help. ‘If he could be half the player he used to be, he’d be good enough here in Indianapolis,’ Pacer prez Donnie Walsh says. Funny thing is, the same could be said about Reggie Miller.”

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Bulletin! From Sportspickle.com: “Information leaked from the U.S. State Department shows that U.S. plans for the post-war occupation of Iraq include Montreal Expos home games as well as the possibility of Baghdad becoming the permanent home of the franchise.”

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Looking back: On this day in 1993, 53-year-old Mario Andretti won the Valvoline 200 in Phoenix to become the oldest driver to win an Indy car race and the first driver to win a race in four decades.

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Trivia answer: They were in the charter class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963.

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And finally: George Connor, one of the Chicago Bears’ great linebackers, died Monday at age 78. He had a rude introduction to pro football. In his first play as a rookie, he got clobbered in the face by an opposing lineman. In fact he got punched in the face every time he entered the game. Five games into the season he figured it out.

The man he was always replacing would punch the opposing lineman in the mouth on the play before he came out. Then he’d leave the field and let Connor absorb the retaliation.