Just wait until Manning starts calling a few audibles
What do you get when you cross quarterbacks and golfers? Putt one! Putt two!
Peyton Manning (teaming up with Tiger Woods) and Tom Brady (playing alongside Phil Mickelson) will take part in a made-for-TV charity golf match next month.
Biggest adjustment, insiders say, will be getting Manning to stop yelling “Omaha!” instead of “fore!” when he shanks a drive.
NFL headlines
— At @SportsPickle, on Jacksonville reopening its beaches: “They’re going to have to tarp a lot more seats at future Jaguars games.”
— At TheOnion.com: “Gronkowski breaks 6 tackles on way out of neurology clinic to finalize trade With Tampa Bay.”
Pucks and bucks
A nondescript wooden cudgel discovered in a Vermont home in 1980 — and just sitting in an umbrella stand ever since — turned out to be a circa-1850s hockey stick now up for auction online. It’s been appraised at $3.5 million. Proving once again that it pays to forecheck.
Get me marketing
Proposed MLB public-service ad slogans for endorsing stayat-home edicts during the pandemic:
— You’re safe at home.
— Lay off the curve.
— Don’t even think about leaving the yard.
Picking up the flag
New England Patriots receiver Julian Edelman won’t be prosecuted for jumping onto the hood of a car, since the owner was reimbursed for the damage.
What, not even 15 yards for piling on?
Baseball 101
New fundamentals to work on if baseball ever resumes spring training: Maintaining six-foot spacing during bench-clearing brawls.
Special teams
The Detroit Lions stationed Steve Lancaster, the team’s director of IT, in a Winnebago in the driveway of GM Bob Quinn for all three days of the NFL’s virtual draft just in case there were any technical glitches.
Hold that line? No kidding.
Hooked on Huskers
Think those Nebraskans are football crazy? This year’s Cornhuskers spring game drew a crowd of 20,000. That’s 20,000 — as in people remotely tuning in to watch a simulated eSports version after the real game was cancelled.
All Bats Are Off Dept.
Hillerich & Bradsby Co. — a.k.a. Louisville Slugger — has furloughed 90 per cent of its staff and halted production at its Kentucky bat-making facility.
If anybody’s knocking on wood to end the baseball shutdown, it’s these guys: They supply about 50,000 sticks to Major League Baseball each year.
Not in the cards
The 51st World Series of Poker has been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Apparently the players balked when told a full house now can’t go higher than 10.
Talking the talk
— Mike Hart of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, on the downside of playing Green Bay Packers
games with no fans: “Lambeau Leaps: Fans won’t be there to pad the landing. There will be more guys in the concussion protocol.”
— Gary Bachman, via Facebook, on the downside of buying that chess set featuring Republican and Democratic playing pieces: “Every game ends in a stalemate.”
Picking up the flag
New Bucs QB Tom Brady was spotted working out in a Tampa park, in violation of local stayat-home orders.
Punishment-fits-the-crime advocates immediately demanded he be penalized for encroachment or too many men on the field.
Quote marks
— Janice Hough of LeftCoastSportsBabe.com, on the Yankees not refunding a fan’s $926 purchase for six tickets because the May 9 game is listed as postponed, not cancelled: “At least she didn’t prepay beers — she could be out thousands.”
— Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle, via Twitter, on hyperbole that a first-round draft pick “checks some boxes that don’t even exist.” “That was my problem on the SAT test.”
— Retired HOF broadcaster Vin Scully, 92, as quoted by @Dodgers, on being hospitalized after a fall at his home: “I won’t be doing any more headfirst sliding; I never liked it.”
Stat of the Week
Notre Dame’s Muffett
McGraw retired last week as the sixth-winningest coach in NCAA women’s basketball history. Some 526 of her 936 wins, one of her two NCAA titles, seven of her nine Final Fours and 16 of her 24 NCAA tournament appearances came after an assistant coach serendipitously talked her out of taking United Flight 175 out of Boston on 9/11 in 2001.
Paging Dean Wormer
So, the Boston Red Sox signstealing probe produced only the loss of a second-round draft pick and one-year suspensions for a video-replay operator and an already-fired manager.
What, no double-secret probation?
Quote, end quote
— Warriors coach Steve Kerr, to TNT, on getting a black eye but also Michael Jordan’s trust after the two players got into a fight during a Bulls practice: “I would say it definitely helped our relationship, and that probably sounds really weird. I wouldn’t recommend that to anybody at home.”
— Comedy writer Brad Dickson, on a sure sign that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is gravely ill: “He was only able to complete a marathon in 1 hour 55 minutes, and only scored 23 goals in a soccer game.”
— @SportsPickle.com, on a first-round draft pick’s stock answer when asked what his next tweet will be: “I was young and foolish when I tweeted that terrible thing yesterday.”