Johnson’s Hand and Mouth Are Covered

New Yankee Randy Johnson, known as the Big Unit, was welcomed to New York on Tuesday with the headline “BIG JERK” on the front of the New York Post.

“Randy strikes out on 1st day in Apple,” read a smaller headline under a photo of Johnson reaching to cover a television camera as he yelled at the cameraman.”Relax fans,” said the Post. “He used his right arm, not his multimillion-dollar left.”

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Add welcome wagon: The New York Daily News, another tabloid, also ran the picture of Johnson’s run-in with the television cameraman on its cover.

And the newspaper’s Mike Lupica, under a column headline that read “For a tall guy from out West, Johnson is walking small,” had this to say Tuesday:

“There were thousands and thousands of tourists in the city of New York yesterday. The tallest of them, a 6-10 baseball pitcher named Randy Johnson ... acted like the biggest hick of all of them.”

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Trivia time: St. Louis Ram Coach Mike Martz’s critics claim he is not the brightest bulb, but his media guide biography says he graduated summa cum laude from what school in 1973?

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Star appeal: HBO Sports President Ross Greenberg, asked by New York Newsday whether the Mets needed stars such as Carlos Beltran to attract viewers to the network the team is planning to launch in 2006, said, “That’s like asking if HBO needs [“The Sopranos” star] Jim Gandolfini.”

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More Moss: Of Randy Moss pretending to moon Green Bay fans, Cris Carter, on his Sirius satellite radio show, said, “I fell off my couch laughing.”

Carter cited what Tony Dungy had told Van Earl Wright and Andrew Siliciano on their Fox Sports radio network show carried by XTRA. Dungy had said that Green Bay fans, among other things, would traditionally moon the opposing team’s bus after a Packer victory.

“Once you know the story, don’t you look at it differently?” Carter said.

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Reasonable conclusion: Mike Miller of the Memphis Grizzlies is among seven NBA players who are donating $1,000 a point in selected games to the tsunami relief effort.

Miller was on with Wright and Siliciano recently, talking about the gesture, when Moss was mentioned. This time, the topic was Moss walking off the field a week earlier with two seconds to play. Siliciano asked Miller what would happen if he walked off before a game was over.

“I might not be in a Grizzlies’ uniform anymore,” he said.

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Looking back: On this day in 1958, the NCAA rules committee made the first change in football scoring rules since 1912 by adding the two-point conversion. The change in 1912 was increasing the value of a touchdown from five points to six.

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Trivia answer: Fresno State.

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And finally: ESPN’s Lee Corso coached football at Louisville and Indiana; at the time, basketball ruled at both. Corso, quoted in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, said, “I had the right schools, just the wrong job.”

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Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.