Hanging Around With Them Is the Pits

Rick “Pellet Gun” Krause won the International Cherry Pit Spitting Championship last weekend in Michigan, by propelling a seed 67 feet 5 inches.

The Arizona resident reclaimed family bragging rights by out-distancing his son, Brian “Young Gun” Krause, who had won the previous four years and is in the Guinness Book of World Records with a mark of 93-6.

It’s a wonder this family hasn’t put any eyes out.

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Trivia time: Who’s the only player to have scored three goals in a World Cup final?

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Locking horns: The annual running of the bulls is today in Pamplona, Spain. The running of the nudes will be held beforehand as a protest against animal cruelty, lending new meaning to the phrase “shirts versus skins.”

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Collared: Chicago Bulls mascot Benny the Bull reportedly chose to fight rather than run. While in his mascot duds during a weekend festival, Barry Anderson was arrested for allegedly punching an off-duty sheriff’s deputy who tried to stop him from riding a motorcycle through a park.

Like the bulls in Pamplona, Benny did not get off easy. He was charged with misdemeanor battery and cited for driving on a sidewalk.

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Peak performance: Michelle Wie is Hawaii’s most popular young athlete, but another teenager from Honolulu is making quite a splash.

As Wie was competing in the U.S. Women’s Open, Carissa Moore was winning three divisions of the National Scholastic Surfing Assn. championships in San Clemente, giving her a record nine amateur titles.

Moore, 13, won the Open Women’s division -- for all ages -- for the third consecutive year.

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Immortalized: Wie has yet to win on the elite level, but her stature continues to grow. An eight-foot sculpture of Wie, in full follow-through, was recently carved into a dying oak tree in front of Dunham Hills Golf Club in Hartland, Mich.

Said a headline in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin: “Man helps a tree become Wie.”

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Oops! After being granted permission to leave the team because of a “family emergency,” Youri Djorkaeff of Major League Soccer’s New York Red Bulls was seen by a team official on TV at the World Cup game between France and Brazil.

Wrote John Ryan of the San Jose Mercury News: “Maybe Youri Djorkaeff has been in American soccer too long and he forgot that people actually watch the games.”

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Sad commentary: A recent survey that revealed that there are only four black sports editors at 305 U.S. newspapers prompted syndicated columnist Norman Chad to bemoan:

“We’re whiter than Newt Gingrich’s Fourth of July barbecue.”

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Trivia answer: Geoff Hurst in 1966, in leading England past West Germany, 4-2.

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And finally: White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen to the Chicago Sun Times on having to attend the second of two sensitivity sessions because of recent derogatory remarks:

“They said only one more time, but I’m going to tell my wife it’s like seven more times so I can get out of the house.”