16 — Sunday, December 31, 1995 —- North Shore News Jim spectator ANOTHER YEAR-ENDER, a time for trivial pursuits. Sports fans are well aware of the big-time successes, hervics and failures in 1995. This prose piece homes in on the great but unknown oddball events of this past year. REFEREES HAVE THE LAST WORD?: Not always. Upset with the officiat- ing in a housing project basketball game in Atlanta last March, a player pulled out a hand- gun (those basketball shorts are pretty volumi- nous) and opened fire on the two referees. Hit Rt EAMES ENE SALLI MOIRA NESE ERE LT OM MADIL EE OEE EMER SEMI ELINA CLL RIO ES OLE RN OTE AMERY BAMA Sl IUE COAT STE fhe ct ERA ATER OMIT IN IED PIN EEA, A year of the sporting life Oddball events characterized the past year one in the leg and grazed the other's head. The refs pulled out their weapons and fired back. They went to hospital and the suspect escaped. That's what the Grizzlies need. Some guys who can shoot. THERE GOES THAT THEOPY: Remember the World Cup tournament last year in the ./.S.? This was the event that would sell soccer to the Americans and make it a major league spectator sport there. Eighteen months late, almost every event at the 1996 Olympics in Adjanta is sold out. But not succer. Tickets, by the tens of thousands, are still available. IN THE BEGINNING I'f WAS THIS WAY: In February. Hamline University in St. Paul. Minn., commemorated the 100th anniversary of the first-ever college basketball game by playing an exhibition using 1895 rules — featuring nine-man teams, no drib- bling. goaltenders who stood on Jadders to ward off shots, no backboards and players shooting ata peach basket on top of a pole. Goaltenders and step-luddcrs? Grizzlies, please note. NEW TWIST ON AN OLD THEME: Everyone knows baseball and beer make up the oldest marriage in sport. But when Coors Field opened its doors last spring in Denver, the old marriage had a new look. It featured the first microbrewery operating in a sports’ facility in North America. Production capaci- ty: 4,000 barrels annually. JUST BARRELING ALONG: Canada doesn’t have that many world champions cur- rently, so a tip of the old trilby to Patrick LeClere of St. Bruno, Que. He won his third straight world barrel-jumping championship last January. Soared over 16 barrels, 27 air- bore feet in all. His only complaint: no money and precious little fame. But he's a world champ. RODNEY DANGERFIELD DON'T GET NO RESPECT DEPARTMENT: Organizers for the 2002 Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City balked last month at housing athletes in two rundown apartment buildings near a toxic waste clean-up site, But they agreed it might be okay as a place to put some of the 10.000 journalists who'll be there to cover the Gunes. THE NAKED TRUTH: A bad baseball season in Pittsburgh. The Pirates were a chronic loser, they couldn't draw fans and ownership couldn't find buyers. But the season really went into the tank when the team mascot was accused of having sex with a woman ina public pool near the balipark at 3 a.m. one diy in July, The Pirates suspended him and the two were charged with open lewdness (Is there such a thing as closed lewdness?), TO ONE END OF THE EARTH: Slogging through deep snow and -30 degree temperatures last April, a group of Russian soccer fanatics staged a tournament at the North Pole. A Moscow businessman flew eight amateur teams to the top of the world from a nearby Russian polar station. The winner was a team —— you'd never have guessed — from a refrigerator factory. . TO THE OTHER END: Harry Johnson, from away up there in Anchorage. went all the way down there to the bottom of the world in February to win the first-ever Antarctica Marathon — 26 miles and change over glaci- ers, streams, rocks and through a white-out in three hours, 14 minutes and six seconds. Put together by a Boston travel agent, the race attracted 105 entrants, who paid $4,000 each to take part. Said the travel man: “They are eccentrics.” That's putting it mildly. For the less ruggedly inclined, he had another marathon package — a $1,900 trip to run in France’s Marathon des Chateaux du Medoc, where water stops offered wine and oysters were served at the 20-mile mark. WARNING TO MOTHERS OF SMALL GIRLS: Barbie will don Olympic clothes for 1996, just in time for the Adanta Games. The series will include Barbie dolls of various nationalities dressed in Olympic outfits. You have been warned. A Happy New Year to you. And to every- one else. FOR ADOPTION PLEASE CALL Doris Orr 987-9015 NS Animal Advocates North Van SPCA West Van a SPCA 7 Pets Limited 926-2068 988-7484 922-4622 922-4298 § Rocky Shepherd X Male, neutered, black/tan Stone Husky X Male, 1 1/2 yrs, neutered, white/gray Good with kids and other dogs PETS LTD. 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