Sorry About That Is His Chief Statement

Mike Downey of the Chicago Tribune is a sorry columnist.

He’s sorry, he writes, that “I didn’t realize sooner that the ‘WS05’ patch on each World Series player’s sleeve actually must have stood for ‘White Sox ’05.’ ”

He’s sorry that “up to now, Michael Jackson was the person most associated with white socks” and that “the National League never gets to win a World Series game or All-Star game anymore.”

Perhaps most of all, the columnist continues, “I’m sorry that my wife, Gail Martin, and her dad, [entertainer] Dean Martin, had to waste so many years of their lives going to Dodgers games.”

Trivia time: Neil Rackers of the Arizona Cardinals leads the NFL with 20 field goals -- out of 20 attempts -- and appears poised to challenge the NFL single-season record for most field goals. What two players share the record?

They have problems: What’s worse for fans (and athletes) in Houston: having had to endure the Chicago White Sox’s sweep of the Astros in the city’s first-ever World Series, or the Texans’ 0-7 football start?

Writes Greg Cote of the Miami Herald: “Is it better to climb the mountain only to fall pinwheeling from its peak? Or be embarrassed to never quite figure out even that first vertical step? Suffice it to say that if misery loves company, they’re having a party right now over there near the gulf side of Texas.”

Lunchtime? Washington Redskin Coach Joe Gibbs is not boasting about his team’s surprising 4-2 start. The reason? “Because with sports,” he said, “there’s always somebody ready to give you a knuckle sandwich when you walk around the corner.”

Pumped up: San Francisco’s Dean Karnazes, honorary co-chairman of today’s Silicon Valley Marathon, is an ultramarathoner who once ran 350 miles in just under 81 hours -- despite three consecutive nights without sleep.

Asked by the San Jose Mercury News why he is so obsessed with running, the 42-year-old athlete joked, “I guess I just don’t like to drive that far with the price of gas [so high].”

No batteries required: Karnazes has also run a marathon at the South Pole; he won the 135-mile Badwater race through Death Valley in the hellish summer heat and after that he ran nonstop for 262 miles.

In his autobiography, “Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner,” he writes that he can run 75 miles and wake up the next morning without feeling sore.”

Comments Mark Emmons of the Mercury News: “The man has kept going and going better than anybody this side of the Energizer Bunny.”

Trivia answer: Olindo Mare, with Miami (1999) and Jeff Wilkins with St. Louis (2003) with 39 field goals.

And finally: Receiver Joe Horn is one member of the New Orleans Saints enjoying anonymity in San Antonio, the team’s temporary home. As he told the Express News, “If you’re African American and you show up in a two-seater Benz, they know you’re either a football player, a drug dealer or a professional athlete of some sort. But that’s all they know.”