He’s Lost a Step, but Still Has a Few Moves

Sam Dana, who turned 100 last week, was presented a game ball and a jersey with his name and the No. 100 during a recent visit to the Buffalo Bills’ training camp.

Dana, who played with Lou Gehrig at Columbia -- Gehrig played both baseball and football there -- and once caught a pass from Harry Stuhldreher, a member of Notre Dame’s celebrated “Four Horsemen,” played halfback for the New York Yankees football team in 1928. NFL historians had lost track of him until his son wrote a letter to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, advising that his father was alive.

“I didn’t even know I was missing,” Dana said. “I’m glad they found me.”

Dana cradled the ball in his arm just as he was taught 80 years ago. “Now if only I could run with it,” he said, smiling.

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Trivia time: Arizona’s Emmitt Smith isn’t the first great running back to change uniforms for one last hurrah. Franco Harris played for the Seattle Seahawks in 1984, Earl Campbell was with the New Orleans Saints in 1985, Tony Dorsett was a Denver Bronco in 1988 and Thurman Thomas played for the Miami Dolphins in 2000. Which of those four rushed for the most yards in his last year?

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Fly for a birdie: The 2003 Pro World Disc Golf Championships are underway in Flagstaff, Ariz., with a field of almost 300 tossing Frisbees at targets laid out on a course similar to golf.

The sport was invented by the Frisbee inventor, Ed Headrick, who took his inspiration from the metal pie pans thrown by Ivy League college students in the 1930s.

Headrick, who died last summer, once told the Santa Cruz Sentinel, “We used to say that Frisbee is really a religion -- ‘Frisbeeterians,’ we’d call ourselves. When we die, we don’t go to purgatory, we just land up on the roof and [lie] there.”

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Speed demon: Chicago Cub pitcher Mark Prior agrees games should be played faster, but he doesn’t think the players should be blamed for the slowdown.

“The thing that drives me nuts is, they want to speed up the game, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, no problem, let’s do that,’ ” he told the Chicago Tribune. “But every time I’m waiting, [it’s] because TV isn’t back.”

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Crazy heights: Maegan Carney, a 38-year-old Seattle native who lives in France, is hoping to become the first woman to ski from the top of Mt. Everest to base camp 11,000 feet below.

Carney, winner of last year’s World Extreme Skiing Championships in Valdez, Alaska, will face 60-degree slopes where there is almost no survivable margin for error.

Only one skier -- Slovenian Davo Karnicar in 2000 -- has made the descent and some skeptics would put an asterisk on that, believing he rappelled down the steep Hillary Step.

“The most critical part for me,” Carney told Outside magazine, “is my control and discipline.”

Plus, you really don’t want to fall down.

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Trivia answer: Dorsett with 703 yards. (Campbell was next with 643 yards. Harris had 170 and Thomas 136).

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And finally: Irish golfer Padraig Harrington, the highest-ranking European in the world at No. 9, is proof that confidence isn’t everything: “I never expect to play well. I’m usually surprised when I do.”

-- John Weyler