ESPN.com baseball writer HOWARD BRYANT yesterday "pleaded not guilty to domestic assault and battery, assault and battery on a police officer and resisting arrest in Greenfield District Court" in Massachusetts. Bryant's wife, VERONIQUE, said she has "never been a victim of abuse." Bryant is black and his wife is Caucasian, and Bryant's attorney, BUZ EISENBERG, "blamed the arrest on race" (BOSTON HERALD, 3/1). Eisenberg: "I believe that witnesses saw things through the lens of race and if it were a Caucasian male they wouldn't have blinked at what they saw." ESPN VP/PR JOSH KRULEWITZ said, "We are gathering information about it" (USATODAY.com, 2/28).
CHANGE OF PLANS: A plan to auction the net from the Gold Medal hockey game at last year's Vancouver Olympics "took a surprising twist" yesterday after the Hockey HOF and VANOC "raised objections over an Olympic equipment supplier's plan to consign the object for sale." It has been decided that the net, on which SIDNEY CROSBY scored the game-winning goal for Canada, "would be withdrawn from the auction and donated to the Toronto hockey museum, which already has the puck Crosby shot for his gold-medal goal, the stick he used and the gloves he tossed in celebration" (NATIONAL POST, 3/1).
STRIKE WHILE THE IRON IS HOT: In Portland, Rachel Bachman reports MELISSA BOWERMAN, daughter of late Nike co-Founder BILL BOWERMAN, "has stumbled upon Nike's Holy Grail: the long-lost waffle iron that inspired him to craft the revolutionary sole that launched an athletic empire." Nike historian SCOTT REAMES said, "From a historian's standpoint, it's like finding the Titanic" (Portland OREGONIAN, 3/1).
DOUBLE SWITCH: LSU AD JOE ALLEVA and WCC Commissioner JAMIE ZANINOVICH will join the NCAA men's basketball selection committee with five-year terms. They replace Ohio State AD GENE SMITH and UC-Riverside AD STAN MORRISON (SPORTINGNEWS.com, 2/28). Alleva said, "I think it's one of the most prestigious, if not the most prestigious, committees the NCAA has, especially when you consider 95 percent of the NCAA's revenue comes from men's basketball" (Baton Rouge ADVOCATE, 3/1).
NAMES: The College Basketball HOF has selected White Sox Vice Chair EDDIE EINHORN for induction. Einhorn, the first to nationally syndicate radio and TV coverage of both regular-season NCAA games and the NCAA tournament, will be enshrined at a ceremony on Nov. 20 (White Sox)....BOSTON magazine has recognized New England Patriots Charitable Foundation President MYRA KRAFT, John W. Henry Family Foundation Dir LINDA PIZZUTI HENRY, and Red Sox Senior VP/Corporate Affairs and Red Sox Foundation Exec Dir MEG VAILLANCOURT among the 50 "Women In Power" in the city (BOSTON magazine, 2/ '11 issue)....Houston Chronicle reporter DALE ROBERTSON yesterday was presented with the Texas Daily Newspaper Association's Fred Hartman Excellence in Sportswriting Award (HOUSTON CHRONICLE, 3/1)....Rapper JAY-Z and Red Sox DH DAVID ORTIZ "will face off in court this month if they can't resolve their cybersquatting dispute." Jay-Z is suing Ortiz "for using a Web site to promote his Dominican Republic nightclub, Forty Forty, which he calls a rip-off of his famed 40/40 Club" (N.Y. POST, 3/1)....Pirates P ROSS OHLENDORF, "a Princeton graduate who previously interned with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, shadowed an economist with the House Energy and Commerce Committee in D.C. for two weeks this offseason" (SI.com, 2/28)....EPL club West Ham United Vice Chair KARREN BRADY is renting out her approximately US$570,000 "one-bedroom flat in the grounds of rivals Chelsea's Stamford Bridge stadium after failing to sell." Brady bought the apartment for about $290,000 in '97 (DAILYMAIL.co.uk, 2/28).
