Drive Time Never Sounded This Good

The Birmingham Barons will be traveling in style this year, thanks to Michael Jordan. No more 12-hour trips on the double-A team’s old bus. Jordan is buying a new one for the team--a $350,000 luxury vehicle similar to one used by touring rock stars.

It has 35 reclining seats, six television sets and a VCR, and a lounge area with wet bar in the rear.

“It’s the latest thing,” said Joe Thrasher, president of the Thrasher Bros. Bus Co., which has provided the Barons’ charter service for the past 14 years. “It’s like stepping into a new airplane. It just never leaves the ground.”

Add Jordan: Chicago White Sox outfielder Tim Raines put together a list of reasons why spring training “was different with Michael Jordan around.” It included:

“Tickets were scalped for batting practice, and our outfielders are being taught to stick out their tongues while making a catch.”

Trivia time: Who is the last California native to win the Masters?

Cluck cluck: Max Patkin, the “Clown Prince of Baseball,” refused to perform in an all-star game at St. Petersburg, Fla., after “the Chicken”--also hired to perform--refused to let him do his act before the bottom of the fourth inning.

“I don’t know what he’s complaining about,” said Ted Giannoulas, alias the Chicken. “All great performers--the Sinatras, the Streisands--go on last.”

Replied Patkin: “I’m so angry. I’d like to eat that little chicken for lunch.”

Hot snack: Unusual things seem to happen to pitcher Curtis Leskanic of the Colorado Rockies. For example, the hotel where Leskanic and his spring roommate, catcher Jayhawk Owens, were staying in Tucson serves complimentary popcorn. One night, the machine was empty and Leskanic was hungry.

“It was one of those old-fashioned machines with the big heater,” Owens said. “Curtis got it going, but he couldn’t figure how to dump it. So, all the popcorn caught on fire and the smoke alarm went off in the hotel. I think we burned up the machine.”

White lightning: Paul Runyan, 85, two-time PGA champion, recalled playing in the first Masters tournament in 1934.

“Good corn whiskey,” Runyan told Jo-Ann Barnas of the Kansas City Star. “It was a fun sort of a tournament. They had 50 gallons of it and ran out by mid-morning of the third day of the tournament.

“No one was inebriated, but we had fun.”

Fish story: After being released by the Oakland Athletics, veteran relief pitcher Goose Gossage said:

“This is a great organization. Some organizations stink like dead fish from the head down.”

He didn’t identify the clubs with a bad odor.

Trivia answer: Craig Stadler in 1982.

Quotebook: Rich Donnelly, a coach with the Pittsburgh Pirates, on Manager Jim Leyland: “Managing a spring training game for him is like Da Vinci having to paint by the numbers.”