Sideline chatter

Hope had the classic lines for all seasons, all reasons

Bob Hope, the entertainer for the ages who died at age 100 Sunday, was certainly no stranger to the sports world. He had his own PGA Tour event, he introduced college football All-Americans on his NBC Christmas specials, and a golf club was his constant prop on his annual USO gigs for the troops.

Not to mention a gag or two:

On his youthful physique: "I want to tell you, I was built like an athlete once -- big chest, hard stomach. Of course, that's all behind me now."

On his short-lived boxing career, under the name of Packy East: "I was on more canvases than Picasso."

"It's not hard to find Jerry Ford on a golf course -- you just follow the wounded."

On working well into his 90s: "I'm not retiring until they carry me away. And I'll have a few routines on the way to the big divot."

Consider him Jolted Joe

One Red Sox fan is so eager to cure the Curse of the Bambino, the New York Daily News reported, that he confessed to Yankees manager Joe Torre during a ride on a Boston hotel elevator: "If it came to catching Saddam Hussein or beating the Yankees this year, we'd take beating the Yankees." "I didn't know what to say," Torre said later. "I was stuck. I think he was kidding, but I wasn't sure."

Save it for the game

Players for UEFA Cup champion Porto, Portugal, are allowed to have sex the night before a game, manager Jose Mourinho told the sports paper O Jogo, "only until 5 p.m., because then we have a pre-match camp."

In a related story, Major League Soccer officials declared that sympathy pains are to blame for this season's drop in scoring.

The fifth H: haymakers

Prosecutors in Rocky Mount, Va., have charged three teenage counselors at a 4-H summer camp with staging boxing matches involving eight preteen boys, then charging other campers $1 to watch the fights and placing bets on the outcomes.

"We haven't found anything like this before," Franklin County prosecutor Cliff Hapgood told Reuters. "I'm sure there have been fights between campers, but nothing like this."

Still to be resolved, however, is the legality of the contract that the 12-year-old camp champ signed with Don King.

They said it

Bob Uecker recalling his playing days when manager Gene Mauch gave him the hint he might be trade bait: "I'd be sitting there and he'd say, 'Grab a bat and stop this rally.' "

Bill Scheft of Sports Illustrated, on the Arkansas man who finally regained consciousness after being in a coma since 1984: "His first question: 'Are the Tigers still running away with the AL East?' "

Replace your divots

Golfer Kenny Perry, who stands 6 feet 1, reported just one problem with his lodgings during the British Open, a 1600s-vintage house in Sandwich, England.

"All the doorways are 6 feet tall, and I keep banging my forehead every time I walk through one," Perry said. "I guess they must not have been very tall people back then."

Moral of the story: If you want to be par for the house, you have to be 6-under.

-- Dwight Perry, Seattle Times