That’s high-quality H2O
Bobby Carpenter is more than a rookie linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys. He’s also the world’s best-paid water boy. As the team’s top draft pick in 2006, Carpenter has the job of fetching water for coach Bill Parcells during practice breaks. He performs the task at training camp and will do so throughout the season, until next year’s first selection takes over. “It was something I’d always seen on TV,” said Carpenter, a former Ohio State standout who signed a five-year, $12 million deal. “It never really hit me until I came to training camp, and the trainer was like, ‘OK, you know what to do?’ … It’s definitely an honor.”
Familiar with the plate
When Bruce Froemming works the plate in the Detroit Tigers-Boston Red Sox game tonight at Fenway Park, he will be umpiring his 5,000th regular-season game in the majors. He will join Bill Klem as the only umpires who have worked that many major- league games. Klem was behind the plate for 5,374 games from 1905-41. Asked for the secret of his longevity, Froemming credited his wife, Rose Marie, who has understood and dealt with his long summertime absences. Then, with a laugh, Froemming gave credit to “my conditioning program.” Froemming, who turns 67 on Sept. 28, has kept his legs in decent shape, but his silhouette is more suggestive of Alfred Hitchcock or Winston Churchill.
Oh, brother
“Now he can’t tell me what to do for 4 1/2 hours. That’s against the rules.”
Jerry Haas, golfer, on his pairing with older brother Jay Haas at this week’s PGA Championship in Medinah, Ill.
Erring some dirty laundry: It’s R-I-P-K-E-N
Cal Ripken Jr. played in a record 2,632 consecutive major-league games, but none since 2001. Evidently, some memories are short in the media. Monday’s edition of the New York Post ran a five-paragraph story about Ripken’s endorsing an Australian bedsheet product, misspelling his name five times, including the headline: “Cal Ripkin’s Clean Sheet.” According to the story, “The Baltimore Orioles slugger has lent his name to an Australian wool company that’s renamed its core bedding product the Cal Ripkin Underlay and Duvet.” Impressive, really. Not only was the bedsheet renamed, but so was Ripken.
