The sports page remains the truly entertaining part of a newspaper. Chi Trib columnist Mike Downey keeps up the tradition of Warren Brown, John Carmichael et al. He's not as dry as they, but this is in-face time for writers all over; so he does pretty well in the more or less detached manner that sits well with discriminating readers.

Today he has the first nay-saying I have seen about Magglio (Maggs) Ordonez, who just left the Sox in mid-level dudgeon with harsh remarks about management, mainly the GM. Downey lists various things to show Maggs's not being fair or even truthful, but one stands out: he made $14 mil last year.

That's been known, of course. But wouldn't it be good to state that early and often in any pro-sports employment story, as in "Magglio Ordinez ($14G/yr)" stated routinely, just as "R.-Ill" or "D.-Mo." is routinely stated for a member of Congress. We still love those guys and root for them and sympathize with them in their various troubles, but perspective is important too.

Elsewhere in Downey, and this is delicious, is his notation that in San Francisco, where hero Barry Bonds has recently claimed the lotion he used was not illegal, the Giants will continue to sell hot dogs without telling people they contain "potentially harmful carbohydrates." Yes! Not to mention calories.

D. also notes the Marquette students who want teams to be renamed Warriors, as in Ojibwa, etc., dropping the current, correct Golden Eagles name, which in Wisconsin, says D. is the only thing "not named for a Native American." This is not noteworthy, except that it leads a reader to recall that our so-called Native Americans (not native-born, like Downey, me, and many others) are actually our Oldest Immigrants, going back a very long time. They came from the northwest, I believe, paddling the Bering Straits, which couldn't have been an easy journey. But this is the sort of observation I do not expect to find in a newspaper, not even on the sports page.