Irish Stew Over Defeat Served by Wolverines

Notre Dame’s football team lost last season to Michigan, 38-0, the worst defeat in its 31-game rivalry against the Wolverines.

And don’t think the Irish have forgotten.

Often when lifting weights, the players do 38 repetitions.

Tired at the end of spring practice, they forced themselves through 38 more push-ups.

During summer training, they might have done 38 sprints, or 238 stomach crunches.

“It seemed like everything we did was 38 this, 38 that, 38 seconds here,” linebacker Mike Goolsby told Associated Press this week. “It was all for a cause. You could just not forget what happened, and not let it happen again.”

We’ll see. There’s a rematch today in South Bend, Ind.

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Trivia time: Who was the first Angel baseball player whose number was retired by the team?

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Recycla-Bull: In his seemingly unquenchable thirst for competition and the spotlight, Michael Jordan, who has retired three times from basketball and tried baseball in one of his lulls, is now into, get this, motorcycle racing.

His Airness recently attended a motorcycle school in Michigan and he sponsors AMA road racer Montez Stewart.

“I came in this year in an experimental stage,” Jordan told Speed Channel’s Greg White. “Now I am hooked. Next year, I am looking to expand the team, looking to compete. I want to win.”

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Looking back: On this date in 1985, Pete Rose became baseball’s hit king with base hit No. 4,192, breaking Ty Cobb’s record by lining a 2-and-1 Eric Show pitch into left-center for a single in the first inning.

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Beetle boy: Matthew LeCroy of the Minnesota Twins gave “pregame meal” a new meaning when he swallowed a live beetle he discovered crawling across the clubhouse, the St. Paul Pioneer-Press reported.

Teammates coughed up $550 to prompt him to do it.

“I’ve got a kid to feed,” LeCroy said.

Wonder what the kid eats.

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Peerless: Joe Hawk of the Las Vegas Review-Journal doesn’t think Laker star Kobe Bryant would have received a fair trial in Colorado had the criminal case against him proceeded.

Wrote Hawk, “Hmmm. For Bryant to get a true ‘jury of his peers,’ wouldn’t the judge have to seat 12 adulterous NBA players who refuse to pass the ball?”

The real problem, of course, is that they’d all have had to be residents of Eagle County, Colo.

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Looking back II: On this date in 2001, in the wake of terrorist attacks, major league baseball postponed a full schedule of regular-season games for the first time since D-Day, June 6, 1944.

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Trivia answer: Rod Carew, whose No. 29 was retired in 1986. No. 26 was retired in honor of owner Gene Autry in 1982.

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And finally: Bernard Hopkins, on his upcoming middleweight title fight with Oscar De La Hoya, “I hope on fight night someone in the De La Hoya corner has the sense to stop this fight after five, six rounds. I don’t want to have De La Hoya look like [William] Joppy did. That’s not going to look very nice.”