Fellow columnist’s departure leads to doppelganger dilemma

I have in my hand a Sports Illustrated refund check made out to Lyman Rutherford for $198.

I blame it all on junk mail and SI columnist Bill Scheft.

If you can remember back to the days when junk mail came in your mailbox and not your computer e-mail, then you can remember the volumes of mail for cruises, get-rich quick schemes, cigar sales, travel deals and the rest.

Certainly, I never requested any information about Alaska cruises. By the power of Cobb Manor deduction, I concluded that these missives were coming from the magazines to which I subscribed. Those publishers were not only taking my money but selling my name and address to the junk mail pirates.

Fiends!

In retaliation, I changed my name on each magazine to determine which publication was selling my good (ha!) name.

The New Yorker came to Dan Cohen, an award-winning journalist. Sports Illustrated came to Lyman Rutherford, a junior high school classmate.

Although I have not seen Lyman for a good 50 years and we were not really good friends, his name has stuck in my mind, like the fact that Willie Mays was on deck when Bobby Thomson hit the winning home run off Ralph Branca in the 1951 playoff game.

I don’t know where my keys are, and for that matter, my truck, but I remember these things.

Anyway, the best thing about SI was “The Show,” the hilarious weekly Scheft column.

SI is deadly serious about sports, too serious. Scheft, a staff writer for David Letterman, provided just the right touch each week.

When the Patriots won their latest Super Bowl, Scheft said the (losers) Eagles got to take home the Stanley Cup for their second-place finish. If you have to be told there was no hockey season and no Stanley Cup that year, you are reading the wrong column.

When Pats coach Bill Belichick mistakenly went to the wrong bench at the beginning of the game, Scheft said he thought it was the Goodwill bin and he was looking for another sweat shirt. If you are not acquainted with the junkyard wardrobe worn by St. Bill, again you are reading the wrong column.

Another Scheft fan, ESPN’s Dan Patrick, said Scheft’s column “should be required weekly reading for every sports fan. Consistently funny enough to make a grown anchorman cry. You can’t stop the laughter – you can only hope to contain it.”

For reasons unknown to anyone but SI editors, the column has been dropped.

Because I praised him so many times in print, Scheft e-mailed me last week to alert me of his coming dismissal – and the release of his new book, “Best in Show” (Warner Books, $23.95), a collection of his columns.

In a fit of pique, I dashed off an e-mail of my own to SI, asking the fumblers to cancel my subscription and told them why.

That would make them think twice, I bet.

Of course I forgot all about it, until I got the check in the mail from SI for $198.

It was made out to my old pal, Lyman Rutherford.

Now what do I do?

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.