All That Lip Wasn’t Making Any Friends at Shea Stadium

Joe Gergen of Newsday recalls how Leo Durocher, who died Monday at 86, once stirred up New York Met fans with some typical Leo lip in 1969.

Recounts Gergen:

Durocher’s Cubs, leading the National League East, came to Shea Stadium for a midsummer three-game series against the Mets, known at the time mainly for their woeful early years. The Cubs lost the first two games, then won the third. After the final game, Durocher was asked: “Were those the real Cubs?” Replied Durocher with a sneer: “I don’t know about that, but those were the real Mets.”

In September, with the Cubs in retreat and the Mets surging toward the division title, Durocher returned to Shea and encountered 58,000 fans waving white handkerchiefs and singing, “Goodby, Leo, we hate to see you go.”

Add Leo: Gergen also recalls how Durocher liked to run with the Hollywood crowd. Writes Gergen: “Durocher dressed like a dandy, even carried spares for his two false front teeth in a jeweled cuff link box, and was liberal with cologne.”

Trivia time: The Indianapolis Colts are on a pace to score 115 points this season. What NFL team holds the record for fewest points scored during a 16-game season?

Stupid bet tricks: The American League championship series between the Minnesota Twins and the Toronto Blue Jays has prompted this wager: Minneapolis Mayor Don Fraser and St. Paul Mayor Jim Scheibel are putting 500 pounds of birdseed on the Twins; Toronto Mayor Art Eggleton is putting two bushels of Toronto-grown McIntosh apples on the Blue Jays. Nothing like putting your birdseed where your mouth is.

The poet’s game: Don Johnson, an English professor at East Tennessee State, has edited a collection of poems titled, “Hummers, Knucklers and Slow Curves: Contemporary Baseball Poems.” The book, published earlier this year, includes 84 baseball-related poems by 57 American poets.

Said Johnson: “More than any other sport, baseball belongs to the poets. It is a slow enough game that it can be observed carefully. And it has a pastoral innocence about it.”

Worth 1,000 words: Baylor football Coach Grant Teaff’s dislike for Houston Coach John Jenkins was underscored by a photo that appeared in Monday’s Houston Post. The picture showed an angry Teaff, both fists clenched, being restrained by a Baylor official and squaring off with Jenkins as players scuffled after Baylor’s 38-21 victory over Houston Saturday.

Teaff claims that Houston coaches ordered their defensive players to jump off-side on the first play of the game to intimidate Baylor’s offensive line, a charge that Jenkins denies.

Jenkins also denies that there was a tense exchange between him and Teaff after the game, photo or no photo.

“(Teaff) went over to the Baylor fan section,” Jenkins told Bill Nichols of the Dallas Times Herald. “He had apparently fallen down and was out of breath. I thought the guy was going to have a stroke. I told him he had a great team and wished him good luck.”

Trivia answer: The 1990 New England Patriots, who scored 181 points.

Quotebook: Syracuse football Coach Paul Pasqualoni, on his days as a walk-on linebacker at Penn State: “I may have been the worst linebacker in the history of Linebacker U.”