Hotel Staffers Are Merely Pawns in His Hands

There have been stories about demanding athletes and their entourages making outrageous requests, whether it is of hotels or tournament officials. A bigger suite, another room, a better car ... the original PlayStation simply being not good enough.

Hungarian chess wizard Peter Leko may be in his own class. And you can take that two ways.

Leko won the prestigious 20th Linares Super Grandmasters chess tournament earlier this month in Linares, Spain. He also sounded as though he landed at the top of the list in another department.

Apparently, Leko had problems finding the right room at his hotel during the tournament. He moved not once, not twice, but seven times, according to an Associated Press feature story about the quirky event in the southern part of Spain.

Wait, there’s more: The same story detailed another eccentric request by the Hungarian.

Leko wanted to meditate before games, and he got after the tournament staff to find him an apple tree for that very purpose.

Suddenly, stories of rock stars demanding that the green M&Ms; be removed from a dish of candy don’t sound so outrageous.

Trivia time: Which player has the longest streak of 30-homer seasons?

Lights on: The job of being a goal judge in the NHL is not without its difficulties. Al Samson, who has been a goal judge for 30 years, remembered one playoff game in the old Philadelphia Spectrum that was particularly difficult, hunched over in a booth with an open top.

Beer, of course, was the enemy.

“When the game ended, my uniform and my pants were soaking wet,” Samson told Bloomberg News.

Anna-gate: David Thomas of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: “In a major upset, softball player Jennie Finch unseated defending champion Anna Kournikova as Hottest Female Athlete in an espn.com poll. That’s unfortunate, because this has been our only chance to call Kournikova a defending champion.”

Kournikova lost in the opening round of the Nasdaq-100 Open in Miami on Thursday. Dinara Safina, the 16-year-old sister of Russian pro Marat Safin, defeated Kournikova, 6-1, 6-4.

Looking back: On this day in 1939, Long Island University completed an undefeated season with a 44-32 victory over Loyola of Chicago in the NIT championship game.

Looking back again: On the same day in 1968, Lew Alcindor scored 34 points to lead UCLA to a 78-55 victory over North Carolina in the NCAA basketball championship.

Trivia answer: Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants with 11.

And finally: The Detroit Red Wings’ Sergei Fedorov, talking about his personal problems after the breakup of his brief marriage to Kournikova: “I kept it together. I don’t know how, but I kept it together. At least people are laughing [now], so that’s good.

“Back then, it really didn’t matter to me whether it would be public or private. If she wanted to keep it that way, I had no problem with that. I said nothing because I didn’t want to mislead anyone.”