When a goal isn’t the goal
Patty Rodriguez cried when her soccer-playing boyfriend, Mike Munoz, told her a few weeks ago that he wouldn’t be returning home to Southern California any time soon.
Munoz, a soccer star at Los Alamitos High and in college at California, played two seasons with Chivas USA but suffered an ankle injury last season and is now with the California Victory, an expansion minor league team based in San Francisco.
Munoz told his girlfriend the only way he would be coming home is if he was playing soccer here.
Rodriguez thought, “What can I do?” Then the idea of a petitioning Chivas USA to re-sign him popped into her head.
She Googled “petition” and found a website, gopetition.com. Her heart-tugging petition titled “Please Help Me Get My Boyfriend Back,” which first appeared on the website Sept. 21, has now gotten more than 800 signatures.
Trivia time
Chivas USA is the sister team of the more famous Chivas Guadalajara. What does chivas mean in English?
She’s not shy
Rodriguez, 24, has a way of getting her way. When she was a senior at Lynwood High she heard on the radio that KIIS-FM was looking for an intern to work on Rick Dees’ morning show.
Only 16 at the time, she looked up the station’s address and, skipping her first class, drove there and talked her way into the internship.
Now she is assistant producer of Ryan Seacrest’s show on KIIS-FM.
Last week, Seacrest heard about Rodriguez’s petition and put her on the air.
“He thought it was a joke, but when I started crying he realized it wasn’t,” Rodriguez said.
Seacrest ended up signing the petition.
As for her boyfriend’s reaction, Rodriguez said, “He didn’t know about it until I went on the radio and a friend of his called him. I was worried he might be really mad, but he laughed about it.”
Chivas is too. Asked about the petition Monday, team spokesman Keegan Pierce said, tongue in cheek, “I’m sure Preki will give this matter its fullest attention after we win the MLS Cup.”
Pretty eary
Hockey guys are tough, and Doug Sauter, a former goalie who coaches the Oklahoma City Blazers of the Central Hockey League, is a prime example.
Last week, he was credited with helping to prevent a stampede of Belgian horses at the Oklahoma State Fair. He got one of several spooked horses pulling a wagon to calm down by biting its ear.
“That’s how you stymie a horse,” he told the Oklahoman newspaper. “You bite as hard as you can, and it won’t move.”
That tactic doesn’t work quite as well on humans, as Mike Tyson discovered against Evander Holyfield.
Only in basketball
The University of Kentucky is off to its best start in football in 23 years. But after the Wildcats’ 45-17 victory over Florida Atlantic on Saturday, reporters ran out of post-game questions for Coach Rich Brooks after only eight minutes.
Chided Brooks: “You guys must have been 5-0 around here an awful lot.”
Trivia answer
Goats.
And finally
Vince Young said on CBS’ “60 Minutes” that he was angry that he did not win the Heisman Trophy two years ago. “He sounds like John Kerry and Al Gore,” said comedy writer Argus Hamilton. “Losing to a Bush always leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.”
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