It’s Manny being meanie

When push comes to shove, Boston Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez proved a man in his 60s is no match for him.

On Saturday, Ramirez made a late request to the team's traveling secretary, Jack McCormick, for 16 tickets to that night's game. The two argued after McCormick said it might be difficult to fill such a large order. Ramirez pushed McCormick to the ground during the argument.

"What's up with Manny?," Dan Shaughnessy wrote in the Boston Globe. "Is the goofy slugger in need of some anger management? And why won't the Red Sox publicly sanction their star when he pushes a 64-year-old club executive to the ground?"

On June 5, Ramirez also scuffled briefly with teammate Kevin Youkilis in the dugout during a game.

"It's not like anyone's saying the Sox should dump Manny," Shaughnessy wrote. "But couldn't the ballclub demonstrate a little organizational spine and stand up to their superstar slugger? Just once?"

• WHAT, NO ALCOHOL? -- If one of 13 drivers in the "Coca-Cola Racing Family" wins Saturday's NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Daytona International Speedway, the soft-drink company will offer free 20-ounce bottles of Coke Zero to consumers throughout the country.

Many race fans, however, are distraught this promotion is not coming from NASCAR sponsors Budweiser, Miller Lite, Coors Light, Jack Daniels, Jim Beam or Crown Royal.

• GENERAL JOINS NBA -- The NBA hired Army Maj. Gen. Ronald L. Johnson on Tuesday as senior vice president of referee operations, a newly created position to help strengthen the league's officiating programs following the Tim Donaghy scandal.

Johnson recently retired after 32 years of service as a combat engineer. He was commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers, Gulf Region division, in 2003 and 2004, and was responsible for overseeing $18 billion of reconstruction in Iraq.

That's nothing compared to cleaning up the mess that is NBA officiating.

• GLADIATORS FIGHT BACK -- "Last spring, the Gladiators' practice turf at a Las Vegas casino became a minefield of elephant dung after the circus came through town. The team couldn't even run plays on it, and canceled its last few practices," the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote of the Arena Football League team that moved from Las Vegas to Cleveland early this year.

The team that went 2-14 in Las Vegas last year made this year's playoffs with a 9-7 record and won its wild-card game Monday.

• ZIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH -- In his column at Yahoo.com, former college football coach Terry Bowden says mascots and team nicknames are what will always set college football apart from the NFL. He notes the unique moniker for the University of Akron, where he was an assistant in 1986.

"Akron, Ohio, is the home of the Goodyear Rubber Company, and many years ago they developed the first-ever rubber boot with a zipper. So in honor of that feat, we became the Zips, which is short for zipper.

"I suppose we could have become the Akron Boots or the Akron Rubbers -- so in light of those choices Zips wasn't all that bad."

COMPILED BY JEFF WOLF REVIEW-JOURNAL