THE FUNNIEST PEOPLE IN SPORTS, VOLUME 2: 250 ANECDOTES
By David Bruce
Dedicated with Love to Josh Murphy
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Copyright 2009 by Bruce D. Bruce
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The Funniest People in Sports, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes
Chapter 1: From Activism to Crime
Activism
• Jackie Robinson, the African American who integrated modern major-league baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers, was an activist long before he became famous. As a boy, he and his friends would sometimes go to the movie theater and sit in the white-people-only seats. When that happened, the police would arrive to get them out of those seats. Later, while he was playing with the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues, his team’s tour bus pulled up at a gas station in Oklahoma. African Americans were allowed to buy gas there, but the men’s restroom bore this sign: “WHITE MEN ONLY.” Mr. Robinson walked to the restroom, and the gas station owner told him that he couldn’t use that restroom. Mr. Robinson then said, “Take that hose out of the tank.” The gas station owner did not want to lose any business, so he allowed Mr. Robinson to use the restroom. After that, the Kansas City Monarchs never bought gas at a gas station where they weren’t allowed to use the restroom. As Mr. Robinson explained, “This is America, man.”
• Women’s sports and women athletes have not always been respected. For example, in the 1960s (well before Title 9) at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, Catherine L. Brown used to teach field hockey on a field that was also used by ROTC cadets. Sometimes, the ROTC cadets would act as if the women athletes were invisible and march onto the field—even during games. On one occasion when this happened, the ROTC cadets were standing at attention—meaning that they could not move—so Ms. Brown ordered the game to continue, and she rewarded each woman athlete who managed to hit the legs of an ROTC cadet with the ball.
• For a very long time, the Kenilworth Hotel in Miami, Florida, did not allow Jews to stay there. Finally, in 1960, some Jewish sportswriters covering the New York Yankees’ spring training trip were allowed to integrate the hotel’s guest list. Leonard Shecter, a man with a sharp mind and acid tongue from the New York Post, hired a bellman to walk throughout the hotel and yell, “Paging Stanley Isaacs.”
Age
• In 1948, African-American pitcher Satchel Paige joined the Cleveland Indians and became the oldest rookie in the major leagues at age 42. He had made a name for himself in the Negro Leagues, but until Jackie Robinson broke the color line, no black athletes played in the major leagues. Indians shortstop and manager Lou Boudreau strongly supported integrating the major leagues, but he wondered whether Satchel was too old to play major-league baseball. Therefore, Mr. Boudreau put Mr. Paige through a workout to test his skills. First, Mr. Boudreau caught several of Mr. Paige’s pitches; nearly all were in the strike zone. Next, Mr. Boudreau, who was almost a .400 hitter at the time, tried to hit Mr. Paige’s pitches. Mr. Paige threw 20 pitches, and Mr. Boudreau failed to make solid contact with any of them. Shortly thereafter, the Indians offered Mr. Paige a contract. By the way, Mr. Paige’s career as a major-league pitcher was long-lived. In 1965, when Mr. Paige was 59 years old, Charles O. Finley, owner of the Kansas City Athletics, brought Mr. Paige in to pitch three innings as a way to boost attendance. In three innings, Mr. Paige allowed one hit and no runs, leaving the game with a 1-0 lead; unfortunately, the Athletics lost the game, 5-2, to the Boston Red Sox.
• Elwin “Preacher” Roe was one sports star who knew when it was time to quit. He was a good pitcher for the Dodgers in the 1940s and 1950s, and when catcher Roy Campanella knew that Preacher was pitching, he would say, “They can cut the middle of the plate out and throw it away—ol’ Preach ain’t gonna use it.” Preach had more than control; he also had a good fastball that he called his burner. However, one day he was on the mound facing Stan Musial. Preach says, “I was old, I was tired, and I was facing the best hitter in the National League. I reached back to get the last bit of good stuff I had. My burner got away from me and was heading right for Stan’s head.” Then came the moment when Preach knew it was time to quit: “Fellows, I had time to yell ‘Look out!’ three times before it got there.”
Animals
• Australian scuba diver and underwater photographer Valerie Taylor has an unusual ability to make pets of sea creatures. For example, she once befriended two moray eels that she named Harry and Fang. She fed them, and the moray eel named Harry—who was as big as Ms. Taylor—actually allowed her to carry him to the ocean’s surface to show him to her human friends. This is not recommended—Harry bit two other scuba divers.
• In 1990, after Susan Butcher won the 1,049-mile-long Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska for the fourth time, she and one of her husky dogs, Granite, went to Washington, D.C., where they met then-President George Bush. Her dog was as much a celebrity as Ms. Butcher. Letters addressed to “Mr. Granite” were delivered to Ms. Butcher, and he drank expensive bottled water from France and ate his ground beef off a silver platter.
• Drag racer Christen Powell can accelerate from 0 to 100 mph faster than perhaps anyone, but when she races, she carries a purple platypus Beanie Baby, which she puts inside the firesuit that is intended to protect her in case of an accident. Ms. Powell is a feminist. Occasionally, someone asks her if she wants to be the fastest woman on the track. She replies, “No, I want to be the fastest person on the track.”
• As a competitor in the first All Girl Rodeo, Texas cowgirl Fern Sawyer decided to ride a bull one night when all the cowgirls who would normally ride the bulls were injured—she simply felt that the crowd should have the opportunity to see a cowgirl riding a bull. She rode the bull, but she broke her hand in nine places. No, she wasn’t bucked off—she broke her hand gripping too hard.
Autographs
• When Sarah Hughes won the gold medal in ladies’ figure skating at the 2002 Winter Olympics, she received a few perks. Another gold medalist in ladies’ figure skating, Dorothy Hamill, asked Sarah to sign a copy of Time magazine—the one with Sarah’s photograph on the cover. (Time was prescient when it put Sarah’s photograph on its pre-Olympics issue—Sarah was a definite underdog in the competition.) She signed it, “Dorothy, thank you for all the inspiration. Love, Sarah.” The State of New York also gave her license plates that read “TRPL TRPL” to honor her two record-breaking triple-triple combinations in the Olympics long program—even though 16-year-old Sarah had not yet learned how to drive.
• Nineteenth-century cartoonist Eugene “Zim” Zimmerman once made a special trip to get the autograph of John L. Sullivan at the boxing great’s saloon, but unfortunately, Mr. Sullivan was not there that day. However, Mr. Sullivan’s valet offered to give him a photograph of the great boxer. When Mr. Zimmerman mentioned that he had hoped to get Mr. Sullivan’s autograph, the valet said, “That’s all right. I’ll write his autograph on it. I often do.”
• When Dorothy Hamill was almost eleven years old, she trained at Lake Placid, New York, where one day a famous skater watched her with great concentration. After the practice was over, young Dorothy recognized the skater and asked him to write in her autograph book. He wrote, “To dear Dorothy / I’m sure you will be great one day. / Toller Cranston.” In 1976, she won an Olympic gold medal in ladies’ figure skating.
Automobiles
• Chuck Klein of the Philadelphia Phillies hit four home runs in one game on July 10, 1936, against the Pittsburgh Pirates. This made him the first National League player in the 20th century to accomplish such an impressive feat. His home-run hitting turned out to be expensive for Phillies owner William Baker. Mr. Klein hit so many baseballs out of the Phillies ballpark that he was a menace to car windshields. Mr. Baker paid for each windshield that Mr. Klein’s home runs smashed. Eventually, Mr. Baker ordered a 15-foot-high screen erected on top of the Phillies’ right-field fence.
• At the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, Alberto Tomba, aka Tomba la Bomba, of Italy had more than the usual reasons to want to win a gold medal—his wealthy father had promised to buy him a Ferrari if he was victorious. And he was victorious, performing two spectacular runs in the giant slalom to win gold. After his victory, he immediately telephoned his father. After his father picked up the phone, Alberto requested, “Make it a red one.”
Children
• Parents can embarrass even future celebrities. As a young boy, Oscar De La Hoya was sent to the grocery store to buy food with food stamps. This horribly embarrassed him, and he waited 45 minutes for the other customers to leave before he would pay for his purchase. When the grocery store cashier asked why he had waited so long to pay, he replied, “Because I have these food stamps.” After he had earned millions of dollars as a boxer, Mr. De La Hoya carried a food stamp in his wallet to remind himself of his origins. In addition, when he was 16, Oscar stayed out past his curfew even after first his mother, then his father, had called him. Suddenly, his father—dressed in a bathrobe—ran out of the house and started screaming at him. Today, Mr. de La Hoya says, “I was never more embarrassed in my life—which was the reason he did it.”
• When Gwen Jocson was 15 years old, she wanted to learn to ride horses, so she went to a neighbor’s pasture where two horses were grazing, climbed up on a gentle horse, and hung on as the horse walked around the pasture. A few days later, she climbed up on the other horse—which was not gentle. This horse galloped around the pasture and crashed through a fence. When Gwen was found, she was unconscious. After young Gwen revived, the owner of the horses asked if she was scared. Gwen replied, “Scared of what?” Hearing that, the horses’ owner gave her some jobs to do around the horses—and some riding lessons. (The owner of the horses was Bobbie Brostoff, a well-known and well-respected teacher of riders on the jumper circuit.)
• Carol Heiss was a natural at skating—both roller and figure. When she was age three and a half, her parents bought her some roller skates. After putting the skates on, young Carol held on to her father’s hand for a while as she skated, then suddenly let go of his hand and skated away from him, shocking both of her parents. The following winter, when her parents decided to let her have figure-skating lessons, the first instructor they took her to watched young Carol skate, then gave them back their money, saying that she was already too advanced for him to teach her. She became World Champion in ladies’ figure skating from 1956 through 1960, and in 1960 she won an Olympic gold medal.
• Growing up during the Great Depression in Morgantown, West Virginia, comedian Don Knotts and his childhood friends used to sneak into West Virginia football games. Before one game, they were having trouble getting in, as the gates seemed to have overly vigilant guards. Fortunately, they noticed the football team, wearing regular clothing since they dressed in the field house for games, going into the stadium. They joined the team and enjoyed themselves while the fans cheered the football team until someone yelled, “Those kids! Grab those godd*mned kids!” They took off running and successfully disappeared into the stands as the crowd now cheered for them.
• When he was a kid, Hank Aaron, as you would expect, played lots of baseball and softball games. He also practiced on his own. For example, he would practice hitting bottle caps with a broom handle—something very difficult to do. He would also spend hours throwing a ball on a roof and catching it when it fell down. Another game he perfected was throwing a ball high over his house and racing to the other side of the house so he could catch it before it bounced off the ground. Mr. Aaron felt that hitting bottle caps really improved his hitting: “The way one of those things will dip and float, you’ve got to jump out and get it, and that’s the way I always hit a baseball.”
• Figure skater Tara Lipinski started out as a roller skater, but she changed to skating on ice when she was six years old. Her first time on the ice, she was as awkward as every other first-timer—for a while. Her parents thought that she was ready to quit, so they offered to take her out for hot chocolate, but Tara stayed on the ice. When her parents returned after taking a short break, they discovered that Tara had made the transition to ice skating and was flying around the rink as if she had been ice skating for years. In 1998, Tara won an Olympic gold medal in women’s figure skating.
• In the Old West, babysitters were sometimes hard to come by. Very young children were sometimes put on a gentle, reliable horse, tied to the saddlehorn, and babysat by the horse. Of course, children learned to ride horses quickly. When Fannie Sperry was very young, her mother placed her on a horse and told her to be careful not to fall off. Young Fannie fell off anyway, so her mother picked her up, put her on the horse again, and told her to be more careful. Fanny quickly learned to ride, and eventually she competed at riding bucking stock in rodeos.
• Gymnast Tracee Talavera and her older sister, Coral, attended an elementary school in San Francisco that was attended mostly by African-American children. Sometimes, the black children taunted the Talaveras by yelling at them, “You white honkies!” Coral would run to and hold the hand of a white teacher, but Tracee shouted back, “I am not! I’m brown!” This was her way of telling the African-American children that her heritage was Chicano. In fact, Talavera de la Reina, which means “Tiara of the Queen,” is a town near Madrid, Spain.
• As an eight-year-old, future Pittsburgh Penguin hockey player Mario Lemieux had an excellent slap shot—even though most players don’t develop one until their teenage years. From the center of the ice, young Mario had the strength and power to send the hockey puck flying through the air and over the high plexiglass at the end of the rink. In one game, he scared the other team’s goalie into leaving the goal undefended simply by getting ready to hit a slap shot, but once the goalie had gone, he simply tapped the puck in for a goal.
• While growing up, Gail Devers used to race her older brother in their backyard. He always beat her, and he always made fun of her because he had beat her. This motivated Gail to practice running. She beat her brother the next time they raced, and he stopped racing her. However, he did set up races between Gail and other children in the neighborhood—races that Gail always won. The practice paid off. Ms. Devers won three Olympic gold medals—one (100-meter) in 1992 and two in 1996 (100-meter and 4x100-meter relay).
• When she was a little girl, figure skater Sasha Cohen was used to causing and getting into trouble, so she experienced a lot of time-outs. Once, before being punished, she tried to get candy from her father. As he carried her to the spot for her time-out, she said, “Dad, before my time-out, I want 10 candies.” He said no, so she lowered her request to five candies, then to three candies, but he answered no each time. Finally, Sasha said, “OK, Dad, my final offer: Give me one candy, and I’ll take a lick and spit it out.” He laughed.
• Chris Evert came from a family of tennis players. By the time she was seventeen years old, she had won 250 trophies. Her siblings also had earned lots of sports trophies: Jeanne had 150, Drew had 125, and 10-year-old John had 20. Clare didn’t have any, but the four-year-old was busy practicing with a tennis racket that had part of its handle sawn off so she could handle it. Chris and Jeanne shared a packed bedroom—packed because it was filled with their trophies.
• One of the best days in Wilma Rudolph’s life occurred just before her 10th birthday. As a child, she had been sickly, and polio had damaged one of her legs so badly that she was forced to use a leg brace. Members of her family massaged her leg each day to help her regain use of it. Just before her 10th birthday, Wilma was able to walk into her church without using the leg brace. Ms. Rudolph won three gold medals in track and field at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.
• Kim Zmeskal started training in Houston, Texas, at age six, and the great gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi arrived shortly afterward. As a teenager weighing 71 pounds and standing 4-feet-5 tall, she competed for him. When the 14-year-old Kim won an award for Female Athlete of the Year in 1990, after becoming United States national champion, she amused the crowd by mentioning in her speech “people you’ve been with since you were little.”
• The most dominant basketball player who ever lived is probably Bill Russell, who led the Boston Celtics to 11 NBA Championships. But even he was not that good when he started out. As a third-string center on the JV team at McClymonds High School in Oakland, CA, he suited up for only half of the games. According to Mr. Russell, “We had 15 uniforms and 16 players, so another guy and I split [the use of] the 15th uniform.”
• Kristi Yamaguchi won the gold medal in women’s ice skating at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games. She had started ice skating as a little girl for a very good reason. She was born with a clubfoot—her foot turned inward too much—and her parents felt that skating would help to straighten her legs. The skating, in combination with corrective shoes and a brace she wore at night, worked. She did not need surgery to fix the clubfoot.
• Scott Hamilton, the 1984 Olympic gold medalist in men’s figure skating, was adopted. When as an infant he became a member of Dorothy and Ernie Hamilton’s family, Susan, their daughter, asked why he was so wrinkled and if they could get a different baby. Soon she learned to love her new brother, and she even had him visit her school so she could use him for her show-and-tell presentation.
• Gymnast Mary Lou Retton has very muscular legs. Of course, that is due to heredity and training, but her family joked that Mary Lou got the muscles in her legs from constantly being sent on errands by her older siblings and parents when she was young. Because she was the youngest of five children, she was constantly hearing, “Run upstairs and do that” or “Go and get me this.”
• When he was six years old, Ken Griffey, Jr., watched his father play baseball for the Cincinnati Reds. After his father struck out in a game, young Ken called out in support, “That pitcher’s got nothing.” However, after his father struck out a second time, young Ken got a laugh by calling out, “Dad, you got nothing.” (Even his father, who often batted over .300 in a season, laughed.)
• Ekaterina Gordeeva, the winner of two Olympic gold medals in pairs skating with Sergei Grinkov, started skating when she was only four years old. Despite being so young, she took skating seriously, and early in the morning, when it was time to get ready to be driven to practice, she would wake her parents and tell them, “I can’t miss it. It’s my job.”
• When figure skater Sonja Henie was five years old, she won a skating race and was awarded a small silver paper cutter. Thereafter, the paper cutter became a good-luck charm for her, and she kept it always. Ms. Henie died in 1969, but the small silver paper cutter can still be seen in a museum dedicated to her in her native Oslo, Norway.
• Amy Grossman was half of a figure skating pairs team with Robert Davenport. She has a twin sister named Karen, and the easiest way to tell them apart is by looking at a slight birthmark Amy has on her cheek. When they were youngsters, Karen sometimes drew a fake birthmark on her cheek, and they pretended to be each other.
• As a young figure skater, Dorothy Hamill was pleasantly surprised to discover that in competitions, she was called a lady, even though she was only 10 years old. Many other young girls have also been pleasantly surprised to discover that in figure-skating competitions, all females are called ladies.
• Some children have positive mental attitudes. A boy once took a baseball and a ball into his backyard. He threw the baseball into the air, swung the bat, and missed. He tried to hit the baseball a second time, and then a third, but he missed each time—so he marveled, “Gosh, what a pitcher!”
• Sometimes, people make fun of male figure skaters because they see figure skating as a female sport. This never bothered figure skater Ron Kravette because he enjoyed being the only boy in the midst of many girls. (Besides, he had a beautiful ice dance partner: Amy Webster.)
• Muriel Grossfeld competed in women’s gymnastics for the United States at the Melbourne, Rome, and Tokyo Olympic Games. As a child, she demonstrated her balancing ability by reading entire comic books while standing on her head.
Clothing
• In 1980, ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean won the World Championships for their first time. As a reward for their hard work and success, the Queen of England awarded them both M.B.E.s (short for “Member of the Order of the British Empire”). This, of course, is a major honor for anyone, and Ms. Torvill had to invest in an expensive outfit, including an expensive hat, for the ceremony. Mr. Dean was luckier. He was able to rent his fancy suit and top hat. Actually, he was luckier even than that—when the rental place discovered who Mr. Dean was and why he was renting the fancy suit and top hat, they let him borrow them for free. Of course, hard work got them the M.B.E.s, and they continued to work hard after getting them. The same day they got the M.B.E.s, they were on the ice rink practicing at 11 p.m. The hard work continued to pay off. In 1984, they won gold at the Olympics, earning a string of perfect 6.0s for artistic merit for their dance to Bolero. (When a British reporter asked Mr. Dean later how the performance had gone, he modestly replied, “All right.”)
• Pat Tillman died fighting in Afghanistan. He was an original who gave up a lucrative career in the NFL to become a lowly paid U.S. soldier. His funeral was unusual; for example, his youngest brother, Rich, told the mourners, “Pat isn’t with God. He’s f**king dead. He wasn’t religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he’s f**king dead.” How much of an original was the late Mr. Tillman? He was godfather to the son of Alex Garwood, his friend and brother-in-law, who told this story: Since the son had two godfathers and no godmothers, at one ceremony Mr. Tillman came dressed in women’s clothing just to provide balance.
• During the 1992 Olympic Games, Hassiba Boulmerka of Jordan won the gold medal in the 1,500-meter race. As an athlete, Ms. Boulmerka received death threats because fundamentalist Muslims felt that she should keep her body covered in public instead of running in shorts and a sleeveless top. Ms. Boulmerka, who is herself Muslim, answered her critics by saying that she is an athlete and she dresses the way middle-distance runners must dress for competitions.
• During the 1981 Stanley Cup play-offs, Richard Sevigny, the goalie for the Montreal Canadiens, predicted that Montreal star Guy Lafleur would put Edmonton Oilers star Wayne Gretzky “in his back pocket.” In game one of the play-offs, Mr. Gretzky made five assists as the Oilers defeated the Canadiens, 6-3. Mr. Gretzky then skated over to Mr. Sevigny and patted the place where his back pocket would be if hockey uniforms had back pockets.
• Players in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League were supposed to be feminine and wear skirts or dresses when getting off the bus and walking into a hotel. Some veterans found a way to get around the rule. Left fielder Jo Lenard used to wear a raincoat, underneath which she had rolled up the legs of her slacks.
• Many tall women are uncomfortable with their height—but not all. Former WNBA star Rebecca Lobo is over six feet tall, yet she wears high heels. She explains, “I figure six-foot-four, six-foot-six—what does it matter? I might as well have style.”
• Bud Collins, a TV commentator on tennis, is known for his lack of fashion sense. Once, he asked Chris Evert a silly question after a loss at Wimbledon. She replied, “Nice pants, Bud,” then walked away.
• The great jockey Tod Sloan wore shoes that were size one and a half—he used to offer a pair to any woman who was able to wear them.
Coaches
• Many coaches talk about mental toughness. Magnar Solberg, a Norwegian athlete competing in the biathlon, an event that combines cross-country skiing and shooting, had it. Martin Stokken, Mr. Solberg’s coach, figured out a way to make Mr. Solberg mentally tough for those times when he needed to aim at and hit a target although his arms were exhausted from skiing cross-country. During the summer, Mr. Stokken set up a target 50 feet from an anthill. Mr. Solberg then lay down on top of the anthill and shot at the target as the ants swarmed over him. He said later, “The ants would crawl up my legs, all over my face, everywhere. It was awful. I did not believe it at the time, but my ability to concentrate under those hot, painful conditions made the actual competition easy for me in the cold.” At the 1968 and the 1972 Olympic Games, Mr. Solberg was the only biathlete to have perfect “no miss” shooting scores. He also walked away from the Olympic Games with gold medals in his event.
• During Wayne Gretzky’s first season (1979-1980) with the Edmonton Oilers, when the team was still part of the World Hockey Association, he played poor defense, costing his team a goal in a game against the Cincinnati Stingers. Therefore, his coach, Glen Sather, benched him for more than one period. When Mr. Gretzky got back into the game, he scored a hat trick (three points) to lead the Oilers to a 5-2 victory. Mr. Sather was impressed by Mr. Gretzky: “He could have pouted and sulked. But when I put him back in, he scored a hat trick. That, to me, was the turning point of his pro career.”
• Casey Stengel coached third base while managing the Dodgers. During a doubleheader against St. Louis, the Cardinal pitchers Dizzy and Daffy Dean were magnificent. In the first game, Dizzy allowed no Dodger past second base, and in the second game, Daffy pitched a no-run, no-hit game. Following this exhibition of impressive pitching in which no Dodger had reached third base, a fan yelled down to Casey, “Nice work. You never did a better job of coaching third base. I didn’t see you make one mistake all day.”
• At halftime, with his team trailing badly, a 140-pound football coach criticized a 235-pound tackle, who had actually played well, if only the coach would admit it. The coach declared, “You’re just a bum. You can’t take it. If I had your size, I’d be heavyweight champion of the world. Nothing could stop me.” The tackle replied, “What’s keeping you from being lightweight champion?”
• Figure-skating coach Brian Foley knew what to say to motivate his athletes to skate better during competitions. During a World Championship, the brother-and-sister pairs team of Val and Sandra Bezic started to lose momentum. Mr. Foley ran as close as he could to them, then yelled, “Come on, Sandra—Move your *ss.” The bystanders were startled, but Sandra was motivated.
• Don Faurot, football coach at Missouri, punished unsportsmanlike behavior. During a game, one of his players hit an opposing player. Referee Cliff Ogden saw the infraction and came running over to throw the player out of the game. However, the player told him, “You can’t put me out of the game—Faurot’s already beat you to it.”
• Paul Brown ran into some trouble before coaching his first game at Ohio State University—because he did not have a ticket, he was refused admittance to the football stadium. Fortunately, he was able to throw some stones at his players’ window. The noise made by the stones attracted his players’ attention, and they let him in.
Comedians
• Many celebrities early in the 20th century grew up poor, then took up golf later in life, after they had become successful. As a result, they were poor golfers. One day George Jessel came running to George Burns, screaming, “I did it! I did it! I came in with a 99!” When Mr. Burns asked him how he had accomplished such an amazing feat, Mr. Jessel replied, “I’ll tell you how I did it—every shot perfect!”
• Back in high school, lesbian comedian Kate Clinton had a crush on Ruby Gill, whom she called “a smart-*ss cheerleader.” The school’s boys’ basketball team was pathetic, and during a game in which the team was behind 80-40, Ms. Gill started chanting, “Break that tie! Break that tie!”
• British comedian Danny La Rue performs in drag; however, early in his career, performing in drag was not accepted. While he was imitating Mae West in a nightclub, some patrons started throwing ice cubes at him. Mr. La Rue asked, “Hey! Who do you think I am? Sonja Henie?”
Competitiveness
• The 1925 Rose Bowl featured Notre Dame against Stanford. In one play, Stanford fullback Ernie Nevers came close to scoring a touchdown, but when players were pulled off the pileup, Mr. Nevers was discovered to be inches short. This play was controversial, and fans of both sides argued about it for years. At a gathering of football fans and former players, a Stanford booster claimed that Mr. Nevers had scored on the play: “I used high-powered binoculars, and my seat was exactly on the goal line.” Another person, however, said, “I say he didn’t score. I also saw the play.” “Where were you sitting?” asked the Stanford booster. The other person answered, “On Nevers’ head. I’m Harry Stuhldreher, the Notre Dame quarterback that day.” (By the way, Notre Dame won, 27-10.)
• Astronaut Sally Ride was very competitive in tennis. While still attending a small private girls’ high school in California, she often played against the headmaster, who once got past her a particularly difficult shot, then made the mistake of showing off. Sally responded by hitting three drives in a row straight at his head. While competing at Swarthmore College, she was champion of Eastern Intercollegiate Women’s Tennis two years in a row. In fact, Ms. Ride was so good that Billie Jean King thought she could turn professional. However, Ms. Ride evaluated her tennis skills, then decided to stick to science. On June 18, 1983, she became the first American woman in space.