Someone Doesn’t Want to Be Like Mike

A man in Portland, Ore., recently filed an $832-million lawsuit against Michael Jordan and Nike founder Phil Knight, claiming that his life had been subjected to harassment, discomfort, unpleasant feelings and permanent injury because, according to Ray Heckard’s suit, he resembles the basketball icon.

This prompted a visit to Heckard’s neighborhood from John Canzano of the Oregonian, who asked a man seated on a porch across the street from Heckard’s home, “Does your neighbor really look like Michael Jordan?”

Said the man, “Which neighbor?”

Wrote the baldheaded Canzano, after meeting the 6-foot Heckard, who is six inches shorter than Jordan: “In the right light, on the right day, under the right conditions, maybe you’d mistake [him] for Jordan. And I’m certain under the same conditions you’d mistake me for Jude Law.

“Good thing for him, I’m not the suing type.”

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Trivia time: Why is the letter ‘K’ used to denote strikeouts?

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Nonstop action: Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle, on the World Cup: “Soccer, many of us have learned over the past month, is a game of amazing endurance, stamina and teamwork. You must run all day, covering the entire field, with few moments of rest, all within a team concept. And that’s merely the stretcher crew.”

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Susceptible in Seattle? No Super Bowl loser has made the playoffs the next season, or posted a winning record, since the 2000 Tennessee Titans.

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Got him cold: Wrote Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times, after punter Todd Sauerburn of the Denver Broncos drew a four-game suspension, reportedly for violating the NFL’s policy on anabolic steroids and other substances: “Suspicions reportedly were aroused when his first kick at minicamp came down with ice on it.”

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Land of the fee: Buffalo Bills fans can access free tickets to the team’s summer practices at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, N.Y., via buffalobills.comor through Ticketmaster, but they’ll be charged a $1.75 “printing fee” per order.

Drive to win: The Champ Car series includes an Australian driver named Will Power.

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Windy City wit: After injury-prone former USC pitcher Mark Prior sat out his scheduled start for the Chicago Cubs on Sunday because of a strained muscle, a headline on the Chicago Sun Times’ website read, “Another pain in the ace.”

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Trivia answer: In the 1860s, when a batter struck out, it was said that he had “struck.” Newspaperman Henry Chadwick created symbols for use with his new creation at the time, the box score, giving each play a letter: S for sacrifice, E for error, and so on. Since S was already taken, Chadwick used the last letter of struck instead of the first letter to abbreviate it.

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And finally: Observed Jeff Gordon of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch after Rick “Pellet Gun” Krause had won the International Cherry Pit Spitting Championship with a blast of 67 feet 5 inches, “These guys could go deer hunting without rifles.”