Sideline chatter

Where there's a will, there's really a way

Pickpockets lifted Robert Flowers' wallet while he rode a subway in Moscow on Sunday, getting away with $100 and running up about $15,000 on his credit cards.

"They're good at what they do," Flowers told the Deseret News of Salt Lake City. "They really worked me over.

"But the whole thing is kind of embarrassing."

You could say that. Flowers was in Russia -- where the Moscow-Utah Youth Games are being staged -- to lend his expertise based on the role he played at the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Where he was chief of security.

Stubbing his tow

Many more Freddy Garcia fender-benders -- like his 2-2/3-inning, seven-run road mishap in Minnesota on Tuesday -- and the Mariners might have to think about getting him a AAA membership.

An entry in the Civil War diary

Oregon State needs a pick-me-up in donations and pledges to complete its $80 million renovation of Reser Stadium, rival Oregon's Daily Emerald reported, with OSU athletic director Bob De Carolis telling the newspaper: "The challenge right now is to expand Beaver Nation."

Or, as it's better known in Eugene, Beaver Dam Nation.

Error on the play

Dan Duquette, the former Red Sox general manager, has been cast to portray Washington Senators manager Benny Van Buren in "Damn Yankees" when the baseball musical hits the stage in Pittsfield, Mass., for a four-day run starting a week from today.

Frankly, we're shocked -- not because the Pittsfield thespians tapped the front-office ranks, but rather that they did not offer the role to the Rangers' GM.

After all, if you're going to do "Damn Yankees" and do it right, don't ya gotta have Hart?

Talking the talk

Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle, after Karl Malone listed "Shaq, Shaq and Shaq" as three reasons for signing with the Lakers: "This might be an indication that Shaq's offseason diet isn't working."

Syndicated columnist Norman Chad, on tryouts for ESPN jobs joining the ranks of reality-television shows: "Kids used to dream of becoming astronauts; now they dream of sitting next to Bobby Valentine on 'Baseball Tonight.'"

Light in the hops department

Funny Cide beer -- named for the Saratoga-born gelding who won the first two-thirds of Thoroughbred racing's triple crown -- was unveiled Thursday and will be made available to patrons of the upstate New York track starting next week.

No taste-test results are in, but Funny Cide, we're guessing, won't be a full-bodied brew.

Time out for testimony

Even though Chris Webber copped a plea deal and won't need to testify, Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press wants his testimony about Webber -- accused of taking illegal payments while at Michigan -- on the record.

"I knew him as a student. I knew him as a teen," Albom wrote. "I do not know him as an insanely rich NBA star who dates supermodels, barks at reporters, pretends he's got beefs with police, acts as if he grew up in a tenement in the ghetto and insists that he never did one wrong thing in his life.

"That Chris Webber I don't know."

-- DwightPerry, Seattle Times