Bad Luck Turned Out to Be Good for Career

Did you know that a player in the world’s first baseball game, in Hoboken, N.J., on June 19, 1846, was fined 6 cents for swearing? Or that Ty Cobb walked with lead in his shoes to maintain lower-body strength?

These are tidbits in the vast “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” archives. But what’s also interesting is the story behind Robert Ripley. The San Jose Mercury News reports that he was an aspiring player who became an illustrator in San Francisco, but was talked back into baseball by his friend, writer Jack London.

Ripley made the New York Giants, but broke his arm in his first game. He went back to drawing cartoons and when he couldn’t think of one that he owed the New York Globe, he came up with a list of oddball athletic achievements and titled it, “Champs or Chumps.”

The title was changed and the rest is history.

Trivia time: Sailors starting today in the Transpacific Yacht Race, from Los Angeles to Honolulu, will try to break the record time for a monohull: 7 days 11 hours 41 minutes 27 seconds, set by Pyewacket in 1999. What yacht recorded the slowest time?

Lucky break: Billy Bob Thornton, who is involved with a remake of “Bad News Bears,” said during a conference call with reporters that he once had a tryout with the Kansas City Royals that ended prematurely when a stray ball struck and broke his collarbone. He was devastated, but now feels it was for the best.

“Baseball is a tough business,” he said. “The difference between high school and the pros is pretty drastic. Say by some miracle I had gotten there. I’d have been retired a decade already. I’d be selling cars in Orange County.”

No complaints: Scott Gomez was to make $2.9 million with the New Jersey Devils last season. When the NHL season fell through, he spurned a $500,000 offer from a Russian team. He stayed home and played for the minor-league Alaska Aces, for $500 a week.

“What has always helped me is where I’m from,” he told the Anchorage Daily News. “I wasn’t born with money. If money was such an issue for me, I’d have gone to Russia. It would have been selfish on my part to complain about money.”

Fresh perspective: Anthony White, who left the University of Kentucky early to play in the NFL, has re-enrolled in hopes of graduating in December and fulfilling a promise he made to his grandmother. The only thing that has changed, he told the Lexington Courier-Journal, is his outlook.

“I just thought getting grades was the way to play football,” said White, 28. “All I was worried about was football and girlfriends. As long as I could sit back in class and get a C, that’s all I cared about. It was like winning a race, but only running half speed.”

Trivia answer: Viking Childe covered the 2,225-nautical-mile race in just under 24 days in 1939.

And finally: In Qatar, they’re experimenting with robots as jockeys in camel races because using children was banned after protests by human-rights groups. The transition should be fairly seamless, writes Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times, “It’s just a matter of getting over the hump.”