Cheap Seats

Maybe they’re just asking for a friend

Are you Wolf material? Prospective Minnesota Timberwolves find out when they’re asked to answer a 567-question personality profile - including questions regarding a player’s “sexual creativity.”

“The question asked how many positions do you like to do it in,” Arizona guard Damon Stoudamire said. “I said to myself, ‘This is strange.’ I guess they want to find out if you’re wild and crazy or something. I don’t know. I’m kind of a low-key guy anyway, so that doesn’t apply to me.”

Just wait until Damon’s position is listed as “missionary” in next year’s Timberwolves program.

Why us?

Tonya Harding is at it again. “She says that some time ago, like a year ago, a couple of pro golfers had either joined her fan club or wanted to meet her in some fashion. They were really persistent,” said Damon Coates, spokesman for the Clackamas County sheriff.

Harding filed a hit-and-run report two weeks ago after a white car struck a planter in front of her house. Last week, she saw a white Lincoln Town Car drive past her house again. Harding and a boyfriend took off after it in her 1995 green Corvette.

“She’s driving down the street and calls us on her cell phone and says, ‘I’m following this car that has been stalking me and come help me,”’ Coates said. A patrol car joined the procession, which ended in a Cub Foods parking lot in southeast Portland.

The Lincoln driver identified himself as Dennis Brandenburg of Tennesee, and said was in town to chaperone Derrick Distasi, a 21-year-old golfer from Florida. He admitted driving up and down Harding’s street, but said he was only looking for Distasi.

The scene in the grocery parking lot drew television camera crews and Jeff Stone, Harding’s former husband, who used to go by Jeff Gillooly. He showed up with a female friend in a sports car, having been tipped by a reporter.

Good thing Gillooly changed his name so he wouldn’t always be linked with Tonya.

Kind of makes you appreciate Mud Hens

You might say the wheels have come off the nickname machine. Lansing, Mich., will have a new Midwest League baseball team next summer called the Lugnuts. Ten different people out of 2,088 submissions in a name-the-team contest suggested Lugnuts, so it was probably the other 2,078 who booed the announcement last week.

Mayor David Hollister told the critics to lighten up. “It’s playful, whimsical, campish and fun - and Lord knows Lansing needs fun,” he said.

The team has also introduced its mascot, Big Lug - a purple lizard with green spots, walrus-like tusks and two lug nuts screwed onto its long nose.

Among the headlines we’ll eagerly await: “Lugnuts tight despite blowout.”

The last word …

“The ERA of Twins starters has surpassed the average interest rate on a 30-year mortgage, a bit of information that doesn’t figure to be of much use to Twins pitchers. Commitments for long-term housing are not recommended.”

- Dennis Brackin, Minneapolis Star-Tribune