It’s never too late to take a shot

Just wondering who will be next on the comeback trail of senior-citizen athletes ... Gordie Howe?

James Hylton, 72, landed in the news this week with his planned attempt at qualifying for the Daytona 500. Now for some equal time for athletic ladies with their feet on the ground.

An Associated Press story took note of the increase in basketball leagues for senior women -- 50-plus -- around the country, taking advantage of the opportunities that had been denied them in the pre-Title IX days.

Competitive fever hardly wanes whether it’s a 19-year-old or a 69-year-old. Bring it on, says Colleen Pulliam, 69, of the Hot Pink Grannies in the Iowa Granny Basketball League. “I think I’m tough,” she told AP.

Said Phyllis Huxford, 78: “I’m having fun and I love it. We have a nice bunch of girls here. The main thing is it gets you out of the house.”

Sounds like this gives new meaning to the phrase: Old-School Basketball.

Trivia time

When was the first women’s intercollegiate basketball game?

Swimming with the fishes

No wonder Martin Strel says he is having nightmares.

Here are three self-explained challenges for the 52-year-old Slovenian swimmer: Candiru, piranhas and pororoca. Before getting into additional detail about those dangers ... Strel is scheduled to swim down the Amazon, going from Peru to Brazil, starting Feb. 1.

“The first is a small fish that can enter my body and cause some serious illnesses,” he told the daily newspaper, Folha de Sao Paulo, speaking of the candiru. “The next could tear through my wet suit with its teeth. And the third [pororoca] is a powerful wave that could drown me.”

His risky business is scheduled to be on the Internet.

Canadian exports

Get ready for another “sport” filled with fights to make its way across the border.

The Pillow Fight League has started in Toronto and apparently will expand to New York, featuring costumed women whacking each other with pillows.

“People all have a conception in their head of what a pillow fight is all about,” co-investor Don Lovranski told Reuters. “When they come to it, though, they see it’s not hot blonds in negligees; the fights are real, and there’s some fun to it. I think that’s what the appeal is.”

Daily dose of David

The topic of the Galaxy’s acquisition of David Beckham has a way of surfacing almost anywhere these days. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was highlighting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s support of the Los Angeles bid for the 2016 Olympic Games at a news conference Friday.

Somehow soccer came up when the mayor was speaking about Los Angeles’ many assets, adding, “And now we even have David Beckham.”

Trivia answer

It was April 1896, featuring Stanford and Cal.

The final score: Stanford 2, Cal 1.

Briefing HQ has to add these pertinent stats: The game was nine on nine and each basket counted for a point.

And finally

President Bush, the former co-owner of the Texas Rangers, to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “I fancied myself a baseball guy at one point. The Cardinals have now won 10 World Series -- that’s 10 more than the Texas Rangers have won.”

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