This Streak Leaves Us Scratching Heads

Hal Bock of the Associated Press writes that every time a coin is flipped, the chances on heads or tails are 50-50.

“Jackie Slater, longtime captain of the Rams and now a TV broadcaster, says that’s wrong. What’s more, he says, he has the evidence.

“ ‘I called heads every time,’ he said. “ ‘That was my policy, and every time, it came up tails. . . . I think I lost 17 straight coin flips.’

“The Rams can confirm 12 straight in 1992, a pretty remarkable string.”

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Trivia time: Who holds the NFL record for most passes completed in a playoff game?

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Will he keep them? Bernie Lincicome of the Rocky Mountain News has some new millennium resolutions. A sampling:

* “I resolve to see the puck.

* “I promise to find a placekicker with some calluses and a bowler who can touch his toes.

* “I will start a petition to have Anna Kournikova declared a hood ornament.”

Watch out! Blackie Sherrod in the Dallas Morning News: “Most intriguing roster of 2000 AD was the posse who joined King Juan Carlos of Spain for a partridge shoot in his country.

“Norman Schwarzkopf, George Herbert Walker Bush and--get this--Bobby Knight. (Bobby Knight in a foreign land, with a gun, is that scary?)”

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More Sherrod: “The late Orson Welles was booked for a civic lecture one evening when a sudden snowstorm limited his audience to a handful.

“ ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am Orson Welles,’ he began. ‘I am a writer, a producer, an actor, a director, a poet, a philosopher, a businessman, a promoter . . . Isn’t it a pity there’s so many of me and so few of you.’ ”

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Firings of the future: John McGrath of the Tacoma (Wash.) News Tribune, on Kansas City Chief President Carl Peterson posting the news of Coach Gunther Cunningham’s firing on the Chiefs’ Web site:

“And why not? It’s easy, it’s fast, and it spares fraidy-cats like Peterson the harrowing task of talking with some cameras pointed at him. Why is a firing announcement inevitably associated with the term ‘pink slip?’

“On the Web page, it looks a whole lot more like yellow.”

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Multiple personalities: Sam Perkins on the demeanor of Indiana Pacer Coach Isiah Thomas: “He talks congenial with you, but when he snaps, he’s like a thug with a sling blade. You don’t want to see it.”

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Looking back: On this day in 1982, John Roche of the Denver Nuggets set an NBA record of seven three-point baskets in one quarter against the Seattle SuperSonics.

The record has since been equaled by Atlanta Hawk teammates Steve Smith and Henry James in 1997.

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Trivia answer: Warren Moon, while playing for the Houston Oilers, 36, against the Buffalo Bills in 1992, overtime.

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And finally: Dan Le Batard of the Miami Herald, on Oakland Raider fans:

“They make the atmosphere at home, with their face paint and costumes and shields and skeletons and spikes, like Halloween in the insane asylum. . . .

“There is more delinquency per square foot here than any place you can find outside of prison.”

Dan, where have you been? This has been their shtick for years--in Oakland and L.A.