He Didn’t Love It, So Just Like Everyone Else, He Left Early

First Dick Chubey of the Edmonton Sun took on King fans, describing them as “borderline loons . . . who know even less about hockey than Bruce McNall.”

Now, Art Spander of the San Francisco Examiner has taken on Laker fans.

“Nobody knows . . . what’s wrong with the spectators who attend Laker games,” Spander wrote after Game 1 of the Lakers’ Western Conference semifinal playoff series against the Golden State Warriors. “At game time, maybe only 30% of the Forum seats had fannies in them. And even though the game was announced as a sellout, throughout the game maybe 5 to 10% of the seats never had fannies in them.

“The people who did show up late and left early seemed to be on loan from Forest Lawn. If silence is golden, the Forum during Laker games is a Mother Lode.”

Add Spander: “You want cliches? You got cliches. Here it was the first game of the second round of the NBA playoffs, but the folks from La-La Land could hardly be bothered. See, it was a gorgeous Sunday afternoon and, oh dear, who wanted to give up a day at the beach? And that 5 p.m. start. What to do with those 7:30 reservations at Spago?

“How dare the people who run pro basketball not take into account the Beverly Hills social calendar. Even if there is a Great Western automatic teller machine in the Great Western Forum. There’s more to life down here than simply withdrawing money. There is a suntan. There is fashion.”

Summing up, Spander wrote: “A great team. A bad town.”

Last add Spander: An L.A. native, he left after graduating from UCLA.

Trivia time: Since the NHL expanded from six teams before the 1967-68 season, how many teams with records below .500 during the regular season have reached the Stanley Cup finals?

Tough times: From Mark Maske of the Washington Post: “Back at Frank Robinson’s Memorial Stadium office in Baltimore, the trophy that he was awarded as the 1989 American League manager of the year lies in pieces, broken when unpacked for display at the outset of this season. “It was suggested to the Baltimore Orioles’ recently embattled manager a few weeks ago that perhaps he should return the mantelpiece, contend it was defective and ask for a new one. He replied wryly: ‘They’ll just tell me, ‘That’s too bad. You’re having a defective season.’ ”

The Shoe fits: Wrote Red Smith in his final column on Jan. 11, 1982: “On this job, two questions are inevitably asked: ‘Of all those you have met, who was the best athlete?’ and, ‘Which one did you like the best?’ Both questions are unanswerable, but on either count Bill Shoemaker, the jockey, would have to stand high.”

Strike a pose: Jose Canseco of the Oakland Athletics was photographed coming out of Madonna’s apartment building in New York during the early morning hours one day last week.

Asked a headline in the New York Post: “Madonna’s Batboy?”

Trivia answer: The St. Louis Blues, who were swept by the Montreal Canadiens in 1968; the Vancouver Canucks, who were swept by the New York Islanders in 1982, and the 1991 Minnesota North Stars, who hope to avoid a similar fate against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Quotebook: Jockey Eddie Delahoussaye, wondering why riders take so much abuse from gamblers: “Why don’t the fans yell at the horse instead of the jockey?”