Dolphins Can Escape Alcatraz, Not Scribe

Coming off Sunday’s 24-17 loss to the Seahawks at Seattle, the hapless Miami Dolphins -- 1-9 going into this weekend’s game against the 49ers at San Francisco -- visited Alcatraz on Tuesday.

Greg Cote of the Miami Herald wasn’t sure what that meant, but he did see some positives in the team’s staying on the West Coast.

“The long trip means the Dolphins will miss Thanksgiving at home with their families,” Cote noted. “But that might not be such a bad thing. The way the season is going, there’s a good chance their turkeys would have been intercepted and returned all the way to the store.”

The holiday spirit prevails in Philadelphia too, something Cote recognized this way: “Well-intended gesture backfires as Eagle players distribute turkeys accompanied by actress Nicollette Sheridan, wearing nothing but a Pilgrim hat.”

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Trivia time: What was remarkable about new South Carolina football Coach Steve Spurrier’s final season as an NFL player?

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From A’s to Zito: Noting that “the A’s are always shopping for their players at the equivalent of Food 4 Less,” the San Francisco Chronicle’s Ray Ratto suggests it’s time to trade Barry Zito and put some cash in the bank. Why Zito?

“Two years of so-so results,” wrote Ratto, “plus he’s left-handed, plus he has the kind of off-field profile (read: Alyssa Milano) that can easily blind another owner (read: Fred Wilpon of the Mets) to the danger of ridiculously overpaying in return.”

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Sour notes: Not long ago, or so the Toronto Globe and Mail reports, the Toronto Raptors’ Vince Carter was told he could no longer catch some tunes on his iPod during warmups because it “does not conform to the league guidelines on proper attire on the court.”

In Europe, they have a little different problem with new technology.

Determined to track down who leaked a story about the possible dismissal of Coach Kurt Jara, FC Kaiserslautern of the German Bundesliga ordered team captain Timo Wenzel to go through the locker room and confiscate all the players’ cellphones to find out who had been in touch with the press.

Bad as that sounds, things are worse in Serbia and Montenegro, where the players at FK Vojvodina have sold their cellphones, among other things, to put food on the table. The club has not paid its players in months.

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Fingering the culprits: It hasn’t taken long for someone to figure out a way to cash in on the great Piston-Pacer brouhaha. C.I. Host, a software development company, has offered to pay $10,000 to the first person involved in the brawl -- player or fan -- willing to permanently tattoo the firm’s logo on his or her fist.

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Trivia answer: It was spent with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who finished 0-14.

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And finally: NASCAR driver Morgan Shepard offers one compelling reason why a Detroit-style fracas could never happen in his sport:

“There was a time when it couldn’t happen because none of our fans would ever let go of a beer for any reason, much less throw it at somebody.”