They even survived paper bags

The Rams, after all, did it.

So did the White Sox. And, yes, the Red Sox, with millions of acres of forest having been felled to produce the newsprint that carried the words chronicling the end of the collective civic angst.

Yes, hope is out there for long-suffering fans of long-struggling teams. Championships aren’t just a dream.

New Orleans Saints fans would do well to remember this: Even the Angels won the World Series.

Really.

So keep Merritt Lane and his wife in mind this weekend. The couple, original Saints season-ticket holders dating to 1967, stayed in the game, keeping their seats, watching friends defect and being mocked regularly for their loyalty. It started with 110 other couples for that first season, and shrank to just a few, according to a story about the couple in the New Orleans Times Picayune.

“When people would find out we had season tickets since the beginning, they’d call us Dumb and Dumber,” Merritt Lane told the newspaper.

“And there were many years I thought they were right.”

Senior circuit

A former rookie of the year attempting a racing comeback?

Well, James Hylton is giving new meaning to the phrase: Same old, same old.

The 72-year-old NASCAR rookie of the year in 1966 is back behind the wheel, attempting to qualify for the Daytona 500 next month.

“I am doing this for seniors that at 70 years old, you don’t have to go hunting for an old-folks home,” Hylton said to the AP. “A lot of the old drivers want to come out here and hang out in the pits and see if I can do it.”

Trivia time

Who scored the New Orleans Saints’ first touchdown?

Red Wing alert

Wonder if there were some Detroit Red Wings fans among the squid-tossing crowd at last weekend’s prep hockey game between Amesbury (Mass.) and host Newburyport.

Debris showering the ice, apparently from Amesbury fans, forced the game to be stopped. The tossed objects were all over the map, including pucks, water bottles, golf balls and squid, according to a Boston Globe report.

“There’s always been incidents in the past at sporting events, but this one’s gone over the top,” Newburyport chief of police Thomas Howard told the Globe.

Imagine the headline if this sort of incident happened when Hartford played in the NHL: The Squid and the Whalers.

Or maybe ...

Perhaps the hockey fans were getting in some early training for the Tunarama Festival later this month in Australia.

As the name would imply, it’s all about tossing tuna, of the frozen kind.

Held since 1961, it can draw up to 25,000 people and the competition is fierce. In fact, former Olympic hammer thrower Sean Carlin holds the all-time fish toss record.

The question here isn’t: How far? Instead, it’s much simpler: Why?

Trivia answer

John Gilliam.

It started off so well for the Saints when Gilliam scored with a 94-yard opening-kickoff return against the Rams on Sept. 17, 1967 at Tulane Stadium. The Rams, however, won, 27-13.

And finally

Movie casting director Billy Hopkins, on David Beckham, to the New York Daily News: “He’s totally castable. Who knows if he can act, but he’s certainly good-looking and he has charisma.”

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