This Player Can’t Keep Down His Feeling About the Game

Denver Bronco nose tackle Darren Drozdov has a problem, and it’s a bit nauseating. He gets sick to his stomach during games.

Drozdov threw up on the ball during last week’s exhibition game against the Miami Dolphins..

“I get sick a lot,” Drozdov explained. “I was a quarterback in high school, and I’d start throwing up on my center’s back. I don’t have a lot of control out there.”

The vomiting problem is a result of nerves. He has been given medication, which helps calm his stomach for practices, but it hasn’t seemed to work for games.

Trivia time: Who was the first USC player to gain 1,000 or more yards rushing in a season?

Restraint: Angel Manager Buck Rodgers, after watching two brawls Tuesday night, was asked if he has ever punched a player:

“No, I’ve never thrown a punch at a player, but there are times I’ve sure felt like it.”

No more hot dogs: It was the ultimate road trip. Four college friends in a rental van drove to 28 games in all 28 major league stadiums in 28 days.

The whirlwind tour ended Wednesday at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Three Princeton juniors and a Dartmouth sophomore lived every die-hard baseball fan’s fantasy.

“We’ve been preparing for this so long that I don’t think any of us knows what to do after we’re done,” Mark Johns said as they took their first steps into the final park. “We’re not going to have any reason to live anymore.”

Win or else: After the latest defeat by Peru’s national soccer team in World Cup qualifying, El Informal, a Lima newspaper, called on authorities to put all the players in jail “for having betrayed the nation.”

Frustration: The Chicago White Sox are in first place in the American League West and the Chicago Cubs are in fourth place in the National League East. Yet, the Cubs have outdrawn the White Sox by more than 200,000.

“I still feel the Cubs are looked at as the team in Chicago,” White Sox outfielder Tim Raines said. “But no one talks about their team, really. It’s almost like people go there because Wrigley is like an amusement park.”

Terrible Turk: The messenger who brings NFL players the unwelcome news that they have been cut has long been known as the Turk.

Players over the years have gone out of their way to avoid the Turk. Jim Burt, a former nose tackle for the New York Giants, was particularly apprehensive as a rookie free agent in 1981.

Giant General Manager George Young told USA Today that Burt looked tired all the time. “Well, I’ve been sleeping under my bed,” Burt told a coach. “My roommate got cut a few days ago, and I was afraid they were going to come and get me, too.”

Trivia answer: Morley Drury, with 1,163 yards in 1927.

Quotebook: Nolan Ryan, 46, of the Texas Rangers on his decision to retire after the season: “My body is quitting on me.”