Another Nominee for the Golden Twinkie Award! It will be hard for any sports writer to top the Hartford Courant's Lori Riley this year for the BasketCases' annual Golden Twinkie Award for Journalistic Accuracy . . . after all, reporting that a player who has never in her career actually suited up for a WNBA game was in fact in a game and made both her free throws is pretty hard to beat . . . but we do have another nominee: In today's Washington Times, Steve Silver writes that in last night's game against the Sting, Mystics players Chasity Melvin and DeLisha Milton-Jones both fouled out. Since the BasketCases were in fact at the game (we aren't sure about Steve), we know That Did Not Happen! [Note to Steve: if you go to the WNBA's web site, they have a nifty thing called a box score. That column with the heading "PF" means "personal fouls" (perhaps Steve thought it meant Phone-a-Friend, which may be what Steve was doing when he should have been watching the game.) Now, Steve, a "5" in that column means, well . . . five!! As in, one short of fouling out. And Steve, in case you thought you were watching a college game, *ahem* that season ended more than two months ago.]

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The same Washington Times article also qualifies for the Sharp Pencil Excellence in Editing Award, as it actually contains an editorial comment, clearly not meant for publication, in the body of the article saying: "these next 3 grafs could easily go, but i don't know if that would make it too short/kb." Well, shorter would be better if longer means readers are being told about phantom phoul-outs!