OBSERVATIONS: Would you like $4,775 a day? Sure, you would

 

By HAL McCOY

UNSOLICITED OBSERVATIONS from The Man Cave, watching our puppy, Quinn, go bonkers when I mention the word, ‘walk,’ when he has only taken four of them. And he goes nuts with happiness when we take off his bulky Invisible Fence collar.

—Those many, many Americans who have lost their jobs and cringe at the thought of where their next house payment and car payment will come from, have to shake their heads when they hear this:

Major League stars like Gerit Cole and Mike Trout will be paid only 2.5 per cent of their contracts over the next 60 days while they can’t play.

Uh, 2.5 per cent? For Cole and Trout, who make $36 million a year, that 2.5 per cent is $4,775.

Normally, when the season is under way, Cole and Trout are paid $193,546 a day during the course of the 186-game season.

Don’t worry about them making the payments on their Lamborghinis. Most likely they paid cash for them.

—Speaking of athletes and cars, former major league Jack Clark once purchased an F-40 Ferrari for $1 million. That wasn’t too bad, as too bad goes, but his penchant for cars, he purchased 18 of them, pushed him into banruptcy.

—With New York City’s transportation system at a near standstill, how about a couple of stories about Cincinnati Reds using Manhattan transit?

Early in Sparky Anderson’s managerial career, the Reds were in New York for a series against the Mets in Shea Stadium.

Sparky hopped into a cab in front of the team hotel and told the cabbie, “Take me to the stadium.” Then he concentrated on the sports pages of his newspapers.

When he looked up, the cab was in front of Yankee Stadium. “Hey,” said Anderson. “I meant Shea Stadium.” And the Cabbie said, “When you say ‘the stadium’ in New York, that’s Yankee Stadium. You want to go to Shea Stadium, you say, ‘Shea.’”

Then there was Adam Dunn, Austin Kearns and Brandon Larson during one of their first trips to New York for an interleague series against the Yankees.

They asked the hotel desk clerk which subway to take to Yankee Stadium. They were told to take the ‘4’ train from Grand Central Station, which was under the team hotel. But they forgot to ask which way. They ended up in Crown Heights, about as far away from Yankee Stadium as one can get and still be in a borough.

QUOTE: From a song by Petula Clark: “Don’t sleep on a subway, darling.” (Or you might end up in Crown Heights.)

—If you were an ESPN football analyst, would you like to be known as ‘Booger?’ What’s next, ‘Snot’ and ‘Poop?’

—They say that gun sales have increased dramatically during the coronavirus pandemic. It is probably all those hoarders protecting their toilet paper.

—If Joe Nuxhall, the ol’ left hander, was still around, he would tell everybody, “Don’t round third, just stay home.”

—The latest coronavirus advice: Wear a Dallas Cowboys jersey and you won’t catch anything.

—A friend told me a couple he knows have been practicing social distancing for more than a year. They haven’t come within six feet of each other in bed since they bought a king-sized bed and their 75-pound pit bull sleeps between them.

—Watched the first three episodes of ‘Ozark’ this week and now I’m addicted and I’m binge viewing. And I can’t wait for the resumption of ‘Yellowstone.’

—Can we watch ESPN for one day and not hear the name ‘Tom Brady?’ Did anybody else notice that Tom Brady and Tampa Bay have the same ‘TB’ initials? Prediction: Tampa Bay will not make the playoffs in 2020, if there are playoffs.