These guys went out with a bang

Sports fans have made unusual requests regarding their bodies after they’ve died.

Briefing recalls one who asked to be stuffed and put in a chair in front of the TV for Sunday football games.

Well, outdoorsmen have their passions too. Mike Dupps, a hunter from Willow, Alaska, wants his ashes mixed into shotgun shells so he can enjoy one final hunt.

The Anchorage Daily News found a precedent: The widow of a gun specialist in Scotland had her husband’s ashes mixed with shot and loaded into 12-gauge shells.

In his honor, his pals used the shells to bag 70 partridges, 23 pheasants and seven ducks.

Trivia time

The USC football team finished the previous four seasons ranked in the top four nationally -- a streak currently in jeopardy. When was the last time, before 2002, that they were ranked that high at season’s end?

A little needling

Rick Maese of the Baltimore Sun wonders aloud what might be going through the minds of electors debating whether to vote for Mark McGwire in baseball’s Hall of Fame balloting:

“Maybe we should create an entire ‘roids wing. We could have an interactive display where the kids can poke a needle into the best tushes ever to grace the diamond.”

A grand tradition

Bruce Jenkins of the San Francisco Chronicle penned McGwire’s name on his Hall of Fame ballot as a vote “for the game.”

He explains: “As much as people would like to believe that the game’s tradition is an Up With People refrain, full of saintly types setting the good example, it’s a million miles from that.

“Whether it was blatantly betting on games (in the early 20th century), throwing spitballs, corking bats, stealing signs via scoreboard lights, doctoring up the baseball (an absolute ticket to the Hall of Fame for Gaylord Perry and Whitey Ford, as they readily admit), popping amphetamines or carrying little vials of cocaine, cheating has been a staple of clubhouse behavior since baseball was invented.”

The nose knows

Jay Mariotti of the Chicago Sun-Times is among the growing multitudes clamoring for Brian Griese to be starting ahead of struggling Rex Grossman for the 10-2 Bears.

“Life is too short to suffer a stinky quarterback,” the columnist wrote.

Prediction: Grossman emerges from Monday night’s game against the Rams smelling like a rose.

Nice try

In advance of Sunday’s Las Vegas Marathon, the Las Vegas Sun profiled Pheidippides, the Athenian herald who ran to Sparta for help after the Persians had landed at Marathon.

He ran 150 miles in two days, then ran another 34.5 miles from near Marathon to Athens to proclaim the Greek triumph. Then he dropped dead.

Wrote Ron Kantowski, “Makes you wonder if a can of Red Bull might have changed history.”

Trivia answer

They finished the 1979 season ranked second in the AP and UPI polls. Alabama was No. 1.

And finally

A newborn baby in Minnesota was named Santana Peterson in honor of Cy Young pitcher Johan Santana, prompting Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times to observe:

“Just be thankful Mom and Dad aren’t fans of Seattle’s J.J. Putz.”

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