LITTLE ROCK — Uniform could pay for college
It took former New York Yankees star Don Larsen nine innings to do something no other baseball player has ever done.
Now, after 55 years he’s decided to cash in.
Larsen, who is the only pitcher in Major League Baseball history to pitch a perfect game in a World Series, will auction the jersey and pants he wore for that game in 1956 so that his grandchildren can pursue a college degree.
“I’m auctioning the uniform to provide my grandsons with enough money for a college education,” Larsen told The New York Times last Friday. “What the uniform actually sells for is not that important to me; whatever happens, happens. I’m just hoping for enough to help the grandkids.”
According to the newspaper, the uniform Yogi Berra wore when he caught Larsen’s perfect Game 5 against the Brooklyn Dodgers was sold for $565,000 at an auction two years ago.
“I really don’t know what it is worth,” Larsen, 82, said of his jersey. “But what I do know is that in terms of historic importance, my uniform is a part of one of the greatest moments in the history of sports. I have thought about that perfect game, more than once a day, every day of my life since the day I threw it.”
“It was a moment in time that changed my life.”
The auction will begin Oct. 8, the 56th anniversary of Larsen’s perfect game.
“It’s still in beautiful condition,” Larsen said. “I will miss it when it goes because I have a whole lifetime of memories wrapped up in it.”
Anywhere but there
New York Times columnist Bill Pennington has an easy answer for the question: What’s the hardest shot in golf?
It’s any shot you miss.
“Knowledgeable golfers have been trained to respond, almost by reflex: the long bunker shot. It requires a long carry from sand, from 25 to 100 yards, and that scares most recreational golfers,” Pennington wrote Sunday. “Or, is the hardest shot in golf the dreaded ‘playing through’ shot?
You know the one I mean. Your group has been coming up on a slower group for several holes, then, as you approach the tee of a nasty par 3 over water, they decide to wave you through. They stand to the side of the green, their hands on their hips, and wait for you to hit. Now that’s a tough situation.”
He submitted several other dreaded scenarios for consideration:
“The 180/100 shot: That’s my blood pressure when I try to execute a drive on the tee after a three-putt on the previous green.
Or a four-putt.”
“The awkward/uncomfortable circumstance shot: the first shot after any golf rules snafu in the foursome, especially if there was an argument over what the rule is.”
“The floppy feeling shot: This is when you’ve tried a flop shot over a green side bunker but mishit it so badly that the ball landed short of the bunker. So now you get to try the same flop shot all over again.”
“The worst-spot-on-the-golf course shot: This is when you realize your innocent little ball has come to rest in perhaps the most godforsaken, penal place in the course’s entire 140 acres. Like the down slope near the back edge of a bunker 30 yards from the green - with high fescue growing over the bunker and the ball.” He said it ...
English Premier League soccer Manager Roberto Mancini on Manchester City striker Mario Balotelli: “He just needs to make his brain work. That is his only problem.”
Quote of the day
“We won 39 games but you come back to Fayetteville and it feels like you won 29.” Arkansas Coach Dave Van Horn, after the Razorbacks scored one run in 18 innings while going 0-2 in the SEC Tournament.
Sports, Pages 18 on 05/29/2012