It Takes More Than an Olympic Village

Asked if John Madden might do anything else for NBC besides football, such as the 2008 Olympics, NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol said, “That’s really up to John. I know at this point, unless I can find a boat that’s enormously large, he probably won’t be in Beijing.”

In 1992, CBS asked Madden, who has an aversion to flying, if he was interested in serving as a host at the Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. Madden, who had been an offensive tackle at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, said, “Linemen don’t belong at the Olympics.”

CBS instead used Tim McCarver, pairing him with Paula Zahn. Cynics might say catchers don’t belong at the Olympics either.

Trivia time: Who was the last American League player to have a season with a slugging percentage of more than .700?

Drawing power: Not only will the national high school football player of the year, quarterback Mark Sanchez of Mission Viejo High, be attending USC this fall, so will three other national high school players of the year.

They are triple jumper Brittany Daniels of Merrill F. West High in Tracy, Calif., volleyball player C.J. Schellenberg of L.A.’s Loyola High and soccer forward Amy Rodriguez of Santa Margarita High.

Fair exchange: Wrote David Thomas of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, after the Cleveland Browns donated $300,000 to help save inner-city prep football programs: “The city’s high schools, in turn, say they will make their players available to the Browns if it will help them win games.”

Non-contact homework: Baltimore Raven cornerback Deion Sanders is planning to adopt a teenage boy who is a star high school football player.

Wrote Randy Hill of Foxsports.com: “Experts expect Deion to offer sage advice on open-space maneuvers, but he’ll probably be unable to assist the kid in tackling his homework.”

A lousy break: Houston Astro Manager Phil Garner, asked by Fox radio’s Van Earl Wright about throwing tantrums, admitted he has had a few. He pointed out one in which, after being ejected, he took a player’s bat with plans of breaking it.

“I kept beating it on the ground and couldn’t break it,” he said. “I had to leave the field humiliated. It was bad enough that I was thrown out and it was going to cost me money, I couldn’t even break the bat.”

Looking back: On this day in 1959, Ingemar Johansson stopped Floyd Patterson in the third round at Yankee Stadium to become Sweden’s first heavyweight boxing champion.

Patterson won back the title with a fifth-round knockout of Johansson a year later, and knocked out Johansson in the sixth round in their third fight, in 1961.

Trivia answer: Mark McGwire, who had a slugging percentage of .730 for the Oakland Athletics in 1996.

And finally: Boxer George Chuvalo, after learning that he will be getting a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame, told the Toronto Sun: “I’ll be the first athlete there who can’t skate.”

Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.