Totally Random
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It sounds like a punch line too good to be true, but a beer vendor has been voted into the Green Bay Packers Fan Hall of Fame.
Allan Hale became the 11th member of the hall, and he had to work to get there. Hale, 70, has been hawking beer at Lambeau Field since the Lombardi years, making his debut in 1963. He landed the job when he was approached by a vendor while looking for a ticket to a game. Hale told the Associated Press that he made $8.05 the first game and never stopped.
Hale was nominated by a friend who often sits in Section 119, where Hale has worked for 46 seasons.
As a hall member, Hale receives the following perks: four club tickets to the Packers’ home finale on Dec. 28, a $500 gift certificate and a road trip for two to a 2009 Packers away game.
Trivia time
Who coached the Packers for the longest time?
Bunning benched
Forty-five years after he last pitched for the Detroit Tigers, Jim Bunning finds himself knocked out of the box again.
Bunning, a member of the baseball Hall of Fame and a Republican senator from Kentucky, was supposed to appear at a sports card show today at the Gibraltar Trade Center in Taylor, Mich. But after he voted against an auto industry loan package in the Senate on Thursday, Bunning’s invitation was revoked. Owner Jim Koester said he couldn’t support someone who voted against Michigan’s financial well-being.
And now Bunning’s financial well-being takes a hit. Fans were to have paid Bunning $55 to sign a bat and $35 to autograph a baseball.
What a racket
Jaden Agassi, the 7-year-old son of tennis greats Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, was a terror on his coach-pitch baseball team this fall, with Dad literally lending a hand and doing the pitching.
‘We went undefeated and he had 53 at-bats and 50 hits for a .943 average,’ Andre told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. ‘You can argue I was finding the sweet spot for him, but nevertheless it worked. And I lived and died with every swing.’
Golf by osmosis?
Charles Barkley, whose golf swing has all the artistry of a blown dunk, is the feature of a new show soon to debut on the Golf Channel, ‘Project Barkley With Hank Haney.’ The premise: Can lessons with Tiger Woods’ coach possibly help Barkley’s golf game?
Kenny Smith, Barkley’s TNT studio partner, is dubious. Says Smith: ‘Kwame Brown played for Phil Jackson ... it didn’t work.’
Trivia answer
Earl ‘Curly’ Lambeau coached the Packers for 29 seasons, 1921-1949.
And finally
Reggie Hayes of the Fort Wayne (Ind.) News-Sentinel, on the news that Charlie Weis would return as Notre Dame football coach next season: ‘The news was greeted by great enthusiasm on campus. Unfortunately, the campus was in Southern California.’
-- Mike Penner