Loss of Gem Takes the Sparkle Off Promotion

The world’s most expensive hood ornament -- a $350,000 diamond embedded in the front of Austrian rookie Christian Klien’s race car for last Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix -- is missing.

The button-sized diamond apparently was dislodged when Klien crashed his Jaguar on the first lap of the Formula One race, sending sponsors scurrying like teenagers on a scavenger hunt. The diamond was a promotional gimmick for an upcoming movie that depicts an international diamond heist.

“That will be the most expensive drive I’ll ever take around Monte Carlo,” Klien, 20, told the Guardian of London.

Jaguar is offering a $65,000 car as a reward for the diamond’s return, but spokesman Nav Sidhu speculated that a spectator probably took it: “Someone has walked away with more than a motor-racing souvenir.”

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Trivia time: Who holds the record for most steals in an NBA playoff series?

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Oh, that trick: Before reaching the Stanley Cup finals for the first time this season, the Tampa Bay Lightning endured an unenlightened past, wrote Greg Cote of the Miami Herald:

“Tampa got its NHL franchise two years before South Florida got the Panthers, and here is all you need to know about how foreign the sport was down here: After a Lightning player scored his third goal of a game for the first time in team history, a hat flew onto the local ice. The fan who threw it was ejected from the arena.”

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More Lightning: When asked what it would take for Tampa Bay fans to treat hockey as a religion the way Canadians do, forward Martin St. Louis told the Toronto Star: “Watch less wrestling.”

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All talk: Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press, chiding Piston forward Rasheed Wallace for making only four of 19 shots Monday after guaranteeing a victory in Game 2 of the NBA Eastern Conference finals:

“Hey, all he said was they would win. He didn’t say it would be pretty. Just because Wallace missed his first shot, his second, third and fourth shots, his fifth and sixth shots, made his seventh, then missed his eighth and ninth, then threw up an airball with his 10th, hey, that doesn’t mean he was wrong about guaranteeing a victory, does it?”

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Strong defense: Quarterback Tim Couch has filed a grievance against the Cleveland Browns, who banned him from working out with them, even though he is still under contract.

Responded Michael Ventre of MSNBC.com: “The Browns are expected to defend themselves in the action by showing game films of the past five seasons.”

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Big statement: Bill Scheft of Sports Illustrated, on Randy Johnson’s perfect game against the Atlanta Braves: “It was such a dominant performance that by the fifth inning [TBS announcer] Skip Caray stopped referring to the Braves as ‘we.’ ”

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Trivia answer: John Stockton of the Utah Jazz had 28 steals in a seven-game series against the Lakers in 1988.

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And finally: The Florida Marlins’ Jack McKeon, to Fox Sports Net, on being a major league manager at age 73: “I’m so old, I remember Preparation A.”