Cheap Seats

For richer, for mortar

Several prospective Georgia brides must wait nearly a year for their proposals because their future fiances have inscribed marriage offers on bricks that will pave Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta.

Each brick will serve as the actual proposal and will be a surprise to the recipient next summer when the park opens in time for the 1996 Olympics. About 10 percent of the 175,000 commemorative bricks sold so far contain messages such as marriage proposals. The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games had hoped to raise $15 million to help pay for the park by selling 750,000 bricks at $35 apiece. Sales so far have brought in a little more than one-third of that.

There’s nothing quite so romantic as getting down on one knee and showing your girlfriend her engagement brick.

The rap on the Steelers

Greg Lloyd’s message to his Pittsburgh Steelers’ teammates: No bum rap this season.

Even if the Steelers make the Super Bowl, Lloyd insists they will not get caught up in cutting rap songs or making videos.

Several Steelers, most prominently tight end Eric Green, were heavily involved in planning a Super Bowl rap video when Pittsburgh was upset by San Diego 17-13 in last year’s AFC championship game.

“No video,” Lloyd said. “That’s it.”

Defensive end Brentson Buckner, a rookie last season who agreed to appear in the video, feels that the story “really got blown out of proportion. It didn’t play any part in how the season turned out.

“We knew we had to beat San Diego before we even thought about making a rap video. But we had to have a meeting to lay the groundwork. Let’s set the record straight - we weren’t looking over San Diego.”

They were looking over projected royalties instead.

Mitch Williams is always available

Just how awful is the San Francisco Giants’ bullpen?

“When I go out to the mound,” Giants manager Dusty Baker said, “People yell, ‘Not him!’

“I feel like yelling back, ‘Then who?”’

It looks like…it’s in the hole!

Give Shaun Lynch this much: he doesn’t overclub.

The 33-year-old recreational golfer may have earned a spot in the record books with a 496-yard hole-in-one earlier this week - hitting a 3-iron off the tee of the par-5 dogleg 17th hole at the Teign Valley Golf Club near Exeter in southwest England.

Lynch cut the dogleg by driving over a 20-foot hedge. The shot bounced down the steep fairway and rolled all the way into the cup.

“I had no idea where it had gone,” Lynch said. “It must have bounced on the hard ground and run and run. At 6-foot-2 and 203 pounds, I can whack the ball a long way and obviously hit this one just right.”

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the previous longest hole-in-one came in 1962 at the 480-yard fifth at the Hope Country Club in Arkansas. Lynch, playing only his second round of the year, received honorary membership in the club for his feat.

The last word …

“When you come to the plate in this ballpark, you’re in scoring position.”

- Rockies manager Don Baylor, on Denver’s Coors Field

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo