Columnist Ron Kantowski: LV’s Trampler savored meeting with Mathews

Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2001 | 10:27 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's notes column appears Tuesday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or 259-4088.

Chances are Dale Earnhardt, the hard-driving stock car racing legend, and Eddie Mathews, the hard-living baseball Hall of Famer, never met.

But chances also are they would have hit it off.

They were tough men cut from the same cloth. Neither gave any quarter nor asked for any.

As fate would have it, both men died on Sunday, Earnhardt as a result of a crash on the last lap of the Daytona 500, Mathews following a long illness in San Diego.

Bruce Trampler, the longtime boxing matchmaker for Bob Arum's Top Rank Inc., is one Las Vegan who was more affected by Mathews' demise than by Earnhardt's.

Nothing against No. 3, but No. 41, quite simply, was Trampler's hero.

"I grew up in New Jersey, where all my friends were Yankees fans. But I was always a (Milwaukee) Braves fan," Trampler said. "Eddie was my hero."

But it would be some 30 years before Trampler would get to shake hands with the Braves' slugging third baseman, who belted 512 career home runs. Former Cy Young Award winner Dean Chance, who has dabbled in the boxing promoting business (among other things), arranged for Trampler to meet Mathews during a baseball card show in Phoenix during the late 1980s.

"My knees were knocking," recalled Trampler, very much a grown man by then.

The two immediately hit it off. They had dinner at the Pink Pony, a notorious spring training hangout in Phoenix, and remained friends. Trampler even had his picture taken for a boxing trading card wearing a Milwaukee cap and a No. 41 Mathews replica jersey.

Last week, Mathews' son John called Trampler, telling him that his father had taken a turn for the worse and probably would not survive the weekend.

"It was my thrill of thrills, just getting to meet him and have a little bit of a relationship with him," Trampler said.

In its Winston Cup preview that appears this week, The Magazine lists Busch No. 3 in its "Rolling Wrecks" category for "guys who make SportsCenter for all the wrong reasons."

"His recklessness was effective in the (Craftsman) Trucks Series, but it won't win the rookie many friends or podium finishes in the big show," wrote Busch's anonymous critic.

Alas, Busch did exit Sunday's Daytona 500 due to a minor crash that was his own doing. But during the first three quarters of the race he drove magnificently, charging from his 26th starting position to as high as second.

He was such a factor that Dale Earnhardt even flipped him off midway through the race when Busch crowded him through one of the turns.

"I guess Dale Earnhardt thinks Kurt Busch is No. 1," Fox analyst Darrell Waltrip chuckled after the TV cameras picked up on the one-fingered salute.

Bonnie-Jill Laflin, who struts her stuff for the Los Angeles Xtreme, apparently claimed the dubious honor of becoming the first XFL cheerleader to drop her pom-pons for a men's magazine. She currently appears in a nude pictorial for Mystique-Magazine.com, an interactive website that features photos of "beautiful women."

If the league's TV ratings and attendance figures continue to tumble, don't be surprised if Bonnie-Jill runs a naked bootleg at the 50-yard line in the not-to-distant future.

-- He Humiliate Me: XFL cheerleaders.

-- He Grate on Me: The citizenry of Minnesota.

-- He Berate Me: former Indiana University basketball players.

-- She Date Me: Wilt Chamberlain.

-- He Gait Me: Willie Shoemaker.

-- He's Late on Me: Larry Brown, in honor of Allen Iverson.

-- He Illustrate Me: Charlie Brown.

-- He Really, Really Like Me: Sally Field.

And finally, Los Angeles Xtreme offensive lineman Jerry Crafts has a unique perspective on the difference between an NFL player and his XFL contemporary. Commenting on the $2,500 bonus paid to members of XFL winning teams, Crafts said: "The $2,500 to these (NFL) guys is a couple of bottles of Courvosier and a weekend with a hooker. The $2,500 to me goes a long way toward sending my kids to college one day."