Cheap Seats
Shake me out at the ballgame
It was the late Steve Goodman, in his affectionate ode “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request,” who called Wrigley Field an “ivy-covered burial ground.” Maybe it’s just a song lyric, but Cubs fans take it literally - or at least one did last week when he leaned over the left-field wall in mid-game and sprinkled his father’s ashes onto the warning track.
Houston’s Luis Gonzalez was in left when it happened and “thought it was flour or white chalk or powder or something. Man, there were a lot of ashes.”
Gonzalez wasn’t eager to play in the surrogate graveyard the next day, especially when he looked into the bleachers and saw a banner that read, “Gonzalez R.I.P.” with a skull and crossbones.
“That’s too weird,” he said. “I’m glad it’s only a two-game series. But I guess it was a little less dangerous than some of the other things that were being thrown.”
Now, if Luis had slipped on the ashes and muffed a fly ball, would that have led to an un-urned run?
The long-dreaded sequel to ‘Men at Work’
Call it “Man at Play.” George Will, noted conservative columnist and resident bow tie on “This Week with David Brinkley” will moonlight as commissioner of the Texas-Louisiana Professional Baseball League, which begins play May 19.
A lifelong baseball fan, who sits on the board of directors of the Orioles and wrote the baseball tome “Men at Work,” in which he mostly goobered at the feet of Tony La Russa, Will was approached by a shareholder in the league, whose son happened to play high school baseball with Will’s son.
Though Will will rule on fines and suspensions, league president Doug Theodore said the general job description is to serve as “a goodwill ambassador for us. I guess we regard him as a conscience for our league. He brings a detached perspective and he’ll help us stay on the right philosophical track.”
Or is that the philosophical right track? Asked to comment on his new job, Will said: “Baseball’s roots run deep in American history and deep into communities from coast to …”
Cork it, George, this isn’t another Ken Burns documentary.
I’m (playing) 18 and I like it
One-time rock star Alice Cooper loves golf. He belongs to a country club in Scottsdale, Ariz., where he carries a 6 handicap. There’s one problem, though.
Cooper explains: “Do you know how many times a day I hear, ‘Hit the ball, Alice’?”
No blinders necessary
Racing fans left Pimlico recently wondering what possessed Buck’s Charger to take a hard right out of the gate. Well, it’s the same thing that prompted the 3-year-old to hang a hard left in the homestretch of another race - severe degeneration in the retina and optic nerves of both eyes.
“I’m not going to say he has no vision whatsoever,” said veterinary ophthalmologist Seth Koch, “but you can safely say, from a functional standpoint, that he’s blind.”
So how is it, then, that Buck’s Charger won two of his first three races? A seeing-eye jockey?
The last word …
“I’m not afraid of death, just 3-footers.”
- Golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez