No Wonder Demand for Oil Is Rising

Saban Yilmaz won the 644th annual Kirkpinar oil wrestling championships when, after an hour of grappling and bumping, he heaved his opponent onto his back in the open-field competition in Edirine, Turkey.

That’s right, it was the 644th staging of a tournament in which athletes smear themselves with olive oil beforehand. “This is our ancestral sport,” Yilmaz told Associated Press. “God willing, oil wrestling will be brought to other countries.”

Apparently, he hasn’t been out much. Oil wrestling has had a large following in the United States for years -- but as an indoor sport.

Trivia time: What two major league baseball players share the record for most home runs in July, and how many did each hit?

No introduction necessary: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch used the wretched Colorado Rockies’ visit as impetus to publish a list of “the most hapless franchises in pro sports.”

Author Matt Herb stopped short of naming one of the teams high on the list, writing, “To paraphrase Bruce Springsteen’s on-stage introduction of beloved saxophonist Clarence Clemons, do we really have to say their name?”

You guessed it: the Clippers.

Different world: Former University of Arizona star Channing Frye has some serious lifestyle issues with being drafted by the Knicks and having to move to New York. “I have to get used to not seeing cactuses and deserts,” the Arizona native told the Tucson Citizen. “And I might have to buy a lawn mower.”

Obviously, he has never been to Manhattan.

Second fiddle: The top-selling item in the Cleveland Cavalier team store last season was:

* A) LeBron James jerseys.

* B) LeBron James bobbleheads.

* C) LeBron James posters.

The answer is none of the above. The top seller, according to the Akron Beacon-Journal, was the Cavalier Girls swimsuit calendar.

Not a threat: Hearing that President Bush had attended a recent Toronto Blue Jays-Washington Nationals game in D.C., Bill Lankhof of the Toronto Sun observed, “Nobody’s certain why he was checking out Toronto, but if he was looking for weapons of mass destruction, boy did he ever pick the wrong offense.”

Texas gold: James Fulbright and friends have made headlines in Texas by riding waves generated by oil tankers in Galveston Bay.

“We could be the rare breed who could surf every day because of man’s greed for oil and gas,” Fulbright told Associated Press. “We’re tapping a resource that would normally go untapped.”

Trivia answer: Albert Belle of the Chicago White Sox and Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals hit 16 homers each in 1998 and 1999.

And finally: Playboy magazine reports that a 95-mph fastball reaches the plate in 0.39 of a second, a 130-mph tennis serve reaches the opposing player in 0.5 of a second, and Roy Jones Jr. can deliver six punches in one second.

Perhaps more impressive: Steven Petrosino set a world record by guzzling a liter of beer in 1.3 seconds.