It’s Their Version of Male Bonding

Rookie hazing in spring training usually amounts to “you’re in charge of making sure I have sunflower seeds,” but football players are a little more physical than their baseball brethren.

Just ask Byron Leftwich, who ended a 19-day holdout this month by signing a five-year deal worth nearly $30 million. He reported to practice with the Jacksonville Jaguars and soon was just another millionaire quarterback taped to a goal post.

His teammates also gave him a gridiron version of the tar-and-feather treatment -- analgesic goo and sideline chalk.

Leftwich said he didn’t think his initiation was personal.

“It was kind of a ‘happy-to-see-you, welcome-to-the-NFL greeting,’ ” he said. “I would have been more worried if everyone ignored me....I didn’t care what they did as long as I survived it.”

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Trivia time: Which tennis player has won the most U.S. Open championships?

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Take a number: “Did you see where 137 climbers reached the peak of Mt. Everest on the same day recently?” asks Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel. “For crying out loud, why not just go ahead and put a Super Wal-Mart and a Starbucks up there.”

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Money runner: Hours after Kim Collins of St. Kitts and Nevis won the men’s 100-meter race at the track and field world championships Monday night, friends and family at home organized an impromptu motorcade and the Caribbean country’s deputy prime minister declared Aug. 25 as Kim Collins Day.

Collins must be honored by all the fuss, but he might be even more excited about a proposal by Fred Lam, the nation’s ambassador to Venezuela.

Lam called for Kittians to contribute to a fund for the runner to “see if we can get half a million dollars from the entire country and give it as a gift to him.”

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Sticky situation: Michigan football Coach Lloyd Carr has a message for Wolverine fans: Stop it with the marshmallows already.

Carr is hoping fans will drop the tradition of tossing marshmallows in the student section this season because he’s worried the gooey balls of sugar will mar the new artificial surface at Michigan Stadium that replaced a torn-up grass field.

“With the new field and the heat that we’ll have, those marshmallows are going to melt and cause some problems,” Carr said.

No word on whether there has been a run at Ann Arbor on graham crackers and chocolate before Saturday’s opener against Central Michigan.

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Rocket fizzle: Roger Clemens made his 600th start Tuesday night and gave up nine runs in a 13-2 loss to Chicago. His mother, Bess -- who missed her son’s 300th victory in June because she was ill with emphysema and pneumonia -- threw out the ceremonial first pitch.

“It was great,” Clemens said. “They should have let her stay on the mound. She had better stuff than I had.”

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Trivia answer: Molla Bjurstedt Mallory, who won eight (1915-18, 1920-22 and 1926).

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And finally: Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News on CBS’ Jim Nantz’s interview with Yanni during the NEC golf tournament: “One is an annoying purveyor of mindless schlock. The other is Yanni.”

-- John Weyler