He Handles Loaded Gun Better Than Loaded Questions

Barry Switzer’s elaborate attempt at a humble apology--he used the word “embarrassed” six times in six minutes by one count--initially rated a passing grade from Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon.

Unlike Allen Iverson, at least Switzer didn’t try to blame the media in part for his run-in with the law.

But then Switzer tried to steer reporters’ questions from his arrest on a gun charge at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport: “There’s no need to talk about the details here,” Switzer said. “I said we’ll talk about football.”

“Excuse me,” Wilbon wrote. “But the coach of the most troubled team in pro sports is arrested and he wants us to ask him about the status of the long snapper?”

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Trivia time: Who is the Cowboys’ long snapper?

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Trivia time, seriously: Which baseball record-holder earned his nickname for his resemblance to Russian wrestler George Hackenschmidt?

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Noted on the Net: A sampling of the postings on the Cowboy fan forum at the Dallas Morning News web site: Barry Bites the Bullet, Barry the Buffoon, NO ONE IS THAT DUMB, It’ll all blow by, Arrest the Media, Tom Landry Wouldn’t . . . and finally, our winner, Mentally Lazy as Usual.

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Talkin’ baseball: A fifth-inning strikeout during the Detroit Tigers’ game against Cleveland on Tuesday sent former Cal State Fullerton star Phil Nevin into a destructive fit.

“Something happened in the tunnel,” Nevin told the Detroit News after the game. “Some lights sort of fell off.”

Manager Buddy Bell was “sort of” impressed with Nevin’s bulb drill at Tiger Stadium: “Made better contact than he did in that at-bat,” Bell said.

It was effective, anyway. Nevin homered in his next at-bat, giving the Tigers a two-run lead on their way to a 6-4 victory.

“I’m sure I’ll get the bill,” Nevin said. “But I had to vent.”

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Another hot one: Golfer Annika Sorenstam is a fierce competitor, so imagine how it rankled to lose a recent match to her husband, David Esch.

“Maybe it was better than when we play chess and Annika loses,” Esch said. “She gets so mad, she knocks all the pieces off the board.”

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Trivia answer: Lewis Robert “Hack” Wilson, the 5-foot-6, 210-pound bull of a man who set the record for RBIs in a season with 190 in 1930. In addition, his 56 homers that season still rank as the highest total for a National League player.

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And finally: Let’s see . . . Switzer might have really shot himself in the foot this time . . . He thought he was catching a bullet train to Austin . . . He didn’t remember the white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of handguns only. . . .

“It’s too easy,” wrote columnist Gil LeBreton of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Making fun of Barry Switzer on this one is like shooting fish in a bathtub.”

“Oops. Another gun joke.”