They Have No Brains to Go With the Brawn

Scott Ostler in the San Francisco Chronicle: “The steroid controversy is amazing. Not the idea that modern-day athletes would use illegal stuff to play better. What’s amazing is that baseball players have found a way to make themselves even less attractive to the public.

“It wasn’t enough that they’re wildly rich and are threatening to strike to get richer, or that the Strawberries and Rockers make the game look bad, or that players are emotionally aloof from fans, or that they [players, not fans] spit, scratch, swear and abuse tobacco in public.

“Now it turns out that many of them have muscles as fraudulent as a starlet’s silicone upper deck.”

Trivia time: What is Tiger Woods’ PGA Tour playoff record compared to Jack Nicklaus?

Color this stupid: A high school girls’ track team from Stevens Point, Wis., disqualified last week after one of its runners wore an illegal sports bra, was reinstated and will run in the state track finals.

The Stevens Point 3,200-meter relay team, which won a recent section meet, was temporarily banned from the state meet because one of its runners had a sports bra with one-quarter-inch black trim on the straps. State rules say a visible sports bra must be one solid color--black, gray or white.

Family ties: Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel on the family life of NBA superstars: “Some fathers and sons go fishing together. Some fathers and sons go to ballgames together.

“Damon Stoudamire and his father face felony marijuana charges together. You’ve heard of the male-bonding experience? In the NBA, they call it the bail-bonding experience.”

If he could only pitch: Milwaukee Brewer pitcher Nelson Figueroa has a 5.79 earned-run average, but off the field he’s something of a whiz kid.

Figueroa travels with an extra suitcase that houses his computer equipment, video games, portable speakers and other items necessary to get his room as he says “geeked out.”

Now, now: You expect it in hockey, but a brawl between croquet and softball players?

That’s what happened in Calgary, Canada, according to Reuters.

The incident began when a softball team, which had just finished a game, and the croquet players, who had been using the same field, began hurling what police described as “childish” insults at each other.

What’s next, chess and checker players rumble?

FYI: The nickname Isotopes, from an episode of “The Simpsons,” is the front-runner in a fan poll to name Albuquerque’s new minor league baseball team.

The team now in Calgary is moving to New Mexico after this season, and in an Internet poll by the Albuquerque Tribune, Isotopes has 57% of the vote, beating out 66ers, Atoms, Dukes and Roadrunners.

Trivia answer: Woods has a 6-1 record; Nicklaus is 14-11.

And finally: Ever been seasick aboard a fishing boat? The Anchorage Daily News lists some cures, according to fishing charter boat captains, including:

* “Drink beer and eat cold fried chicken.”

* “Place a cold can of beer behind your ear.”

* “Cheez-its.”