Diagnosing athletes just for sport

Call it one of the world’s most natural pairings -- sports and psychology.

November’s GQ magazine covered the six most obvious subcategories: The Space Cadet, The Clutch Performer, The Prima Donna, The Head Case, The Clubhouse Cancer and The Psycho.

GQ’s list of “known specimens” of The Clubhouse Cancer was limited to just five: baseball players Carl Everett, A.J. Pierzynski and Raul Mondesi; football’s Randy Moss; and basketball’s Bonzi Wells.

“Description: A close cousin to the Prima Donna, though confined solely to team sports, he infects his team with dissension, tension and strife by fighting with teammates or setting teammates against each other.”

“Signature Call: ‘I play when I wanna play’ -- Moss.”

A mere five players? Sounds like the all-star team.

Trivia time

Name the three sets of twins playing in the NFL this season.

Scrap-metal blues

Sports aside, there’s something about manhole covers and Beijing.

News agencies said that about 240,000 manhole and street-drain covers were stolen in 2004, and officials wisely switched some to non-metal material to try to slow the thefts.

Now would-be thieves have another cover story: Aerodynamics, baby.

Course correction

Briefing HQ hopes things go a little better once the Olympics come around in Beijing in 2008 because the run-up there to the first A1GP motor race could not have been much worse.

Practice sessions were suspended because one hairpin turn proved to be, well, too hairy and scary for the drivers and then a wayward manhole cover stopped sessions Saturday.

Exactly how does a manhole cover come loose on the course?

“The aerodynamics of the A1GP car creates an extreme suction effect,” A1GP World Cup of Motorsport told Reuters in an e-mail response. “The force of the suction proved too strong, fracturing the welding and loosening the lid.”

Thumbs up

Ah, remember the days of NBA players going on the injured list because of that dreaded malady, the Nintendo thumb?

Fairly soon, it’s almost certain that a case of Blackberry thumb will surface for some professional athlete (or sportswriter) on the injury list right next to the oh-so-mundane pulled hamstring and strained back.

One ergonomics specialist offered a bit of advice out of the common-sense file.

“Don’t type ‘War and Peace’ with your thumbs!” professor Alan Hedge of Cornell University told Reuters.

Or Morning Briefing, for that matter.

SMS madness

Hedge and his colleagues had to be wincing when word surfaced in Singapore on Sunday that a 16-year-old student shattered the world record for typing a 160-character text message.

The teenager did it in less than 42 seconds and took aim at breaking 40 seconds next year.

What are we to make of this? An impressive feat or just good practice for Game Boy?

Trivia answer

Tiki and Ronde Barber, Daniel and Josh Bullocks, and Paul and Pat McQuistan.

And finally

Pat McQuistan, to the Oregonian on his brother Paul: “Still, when I’m old and sitting on the front porch, I want to be able to say I had more snaps, played more and had more consecutive starts. Oh, yeah. And more wins. More Super Bowls.”

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lisa.dillman@latimes.com