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Numbers Just Don’t Add Up on Monday

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Times Staff Writer

Now that ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” doubleheader is mercifully behind us, for now, some questions about the concept can be answered.

Question: Are two games on Monday night better than one?

Answer: When one of the teams is the Oakland Raiders, no.

Q: Are three announcers in the booth better than two?

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A: When one of the announcers is Joe Theismann, no.

Q: How did Tony Kornheiser rate in his regular-season debut?

A: There were no references to Vasco da Gama, Enrico Fermi, Horace Greeley, Hadrian’s Wall or the Serengeti Plain, and no waxing about how thrilling it was to have dinner the previous night with Brad Childress. So it could have gone worse.

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Trivia time: When was the last time the Raiders won a game on Monday night?

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Home disadvantage: Home teams went 5-11 in their NFL openers, a winning percentage of .313. Three home teams were not only shut out but lost by scores of 26-0 or worse.

How is this possible?

Clue: Among the losing home teams in Week 1 were Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Tennessee, Green Bay and Oakland. Those teams can lose anywhere you put them, on any given Sunday, Monday or Thursday.*

Deja vu all over again: New York Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman has lent his name to the DVD “Power Yoga for Baseball,” which claims to teach a program that “will improve your strength and flexibility and dramatically decrease your chance of injury” -- presumably while writing checks that grossly overpay free-agent pitchers and outfielders.

Nice, but where is the DVD that features the sage 81-year-old philosopher dispensing such timeless wisdom as “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going because you might not get there”?

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Call it “Power Yogi for Baseball.”

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But a frog mascot is OK: A professional basketball team named “Kebekwa” with an orange and green frog named Jumpy as its mascot and an owner named Real Bourassa can’t possibly be, well, real, can it?

Oh, yes, it can. The Quebec City Kebekwa will begin play in the American Basketball Assn. in November. The name Kebekwa is the phonetic pronunciation of Quebecois, the French term for Quebecer.

Club owner Bourassa told the Canadian press that Kebekwa beat out Jumping Frogs in a contest to name the team, as some voters viewed the word “frog” as an insult to French-speaking Quebecers.

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Trivia answer: The Raiders defeated the New York Jets, 26-20, on Dec. 2, 2002. Since then, the Raiders are 0-4 on Monday night, going winless in three appearances in 2003, which led to no appearances in 2004 or 2005.

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And finally: One more from the great Yogi: Berra’s wife Carmen once asked her husband, “Yogi, you are from St. Louis, we live in New Jersey and you played ball in New York. If you go before I do, where would you like me to have you buried?”

Replied Yogi: “Surprise me.”

mike.penner@latimes.com

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