Coaches' corner.

BOBBY VEALENTINE, Mets manager, on Branch Rickey's proverb that luck is the residue of design: "He must be thinking of algebra. In my league, luck is the residue of busting your fanny."

MIKE LUPICA, in his review of Bob Knight's autobiography: "What a wonderful relief it is to discover that everything that ever happened to him was somebody else's fault."

MARV LEVY, retired NFL coach: "I spent 11 years earning my B.A., E.D., and Ph.D. degrees in law and medicine, then spent the next 40 years teaching kids how to pass a ball backwards between their legs."

BILL WALTON, on the supreme coolness of his NBA coach, Jack Ramsay: "He'd come into a huddle trailing by eight points with four seconds to go and tell us exactly how to execute a nine-point play that would win the game for us."

TIM MCCARVER, on what shocks him most about the tremendous salaries in pro sports: "It isn't the kind of money they pay the stars but the kind of money they pay the mediocrities."

DIVISION III BASKETBALL COACH: "The only way to get paid over $100,000 in Division III is by signing a contract for 150 years."

ZANDER PEPE, on show business: "In February, 'Oklahoma' received raves in New York. In March, Oklahoma died in the men's and women's Final Fours."

DOUG HARVEY, retired baseball umpire: "I still get a lot of birthday cards from the fans, and they still wish me to drop dead."

LEE TREVINO'S classic line about poverty: "My parents were so poor they couldn't afford to have kids. They had to get the lady next door to have me."

CASEY STENGEL, on what it was like losing 100 games every year: "I made the club pay me by the amount of suffering I had to endure."

JOE KAPP, on why he accepted a head-coaching job at California though he had never coached before: "If Howard Cosell could coach 28 NFL players every Sunday, I could coach 28 college players every Saturday."

JACK BRICKELL, on the advantage of coaching football abroad: "Anytime you spy an NCAA investigator, you don't have to hide in a closet. You know he's on vacation."

DON ZIMMER, on why he used to show up two hours early to every ball game; "I wanted to make sure nobody was in my uniform."

MIKE DITKA, on the beauty of coaching for the Washington Redskins: "You know that you'll never die or the job. They'll fire you first."

BILL GUTHRIDGE, upon becoming a head coach after spending three decades as an assistant to Dean Smith: "I never dreamed there'd be such a difference between making a suggestion and making a decision."

TUBBY RAYMOND, on why he never had a booster club at Delaware: "What kind of sense does it make to organize your own lynching party?"

AL MICHAELS: "The only sure bet in wrestling is that two sumo wrestlers are going to roll with the paunches."

BILL PARCELLS' special wisdom: "Never draft, buy, or pick up a player who isn't good enough to make the teams you are trying to beat."