Cheap Seats

Today’s gratuitous shot at Greg Norman

After the Great White Shark blew a six-shot lead and lost the Masters, Jay Leno called him the “Unachoker.”

Let’s play 3.6

It was 15 years ago this weekend when a chilly wind that turned homers into easy outs and two confused umpires conspired to bring about baseball’s longest game. It took 32 innings - then a 33rd two months later - for the Pawtucket Red Sox to emerge 3-2 winners over Rochester. In a portent of things to come, Rochester’s Cal Ripken played all 33 innings.

The game’s start was delayed 30 minutes by a power outage, but the finish was delayed much longer. As the contest headed into the 20th, the handful of remaining fans began helping themselves to free food at concession stands. Rochester scored in the top of the 21st, but Pawtucket’s Wade Boggs tied it again with a double in the bottom half.

The near-catatonic players went through the motions for 11 more scoreless innings before a frantic phone call to the league president, who was awakened at home in Ohio, put the game on hold at 4:09 a.m. Easter Sunday. “The International League constitution said plain as day that no inning would begin after 12:50 a.m.,” PawSox president Mike Tamburro said. “It was the one paragraph that for whatever reason got cut off at the end of a page and didn’t go into the manual for league umpires.”

When the umps finally suspended the game, 19 fans remained. Each received a free season pass.

Squid pro quo

It’s NHL playoff time good news for fish markets in Detroit, where they can’t keep an octopus in stock.

For 40 years, Red Wings fans have made it a playoff ritual to lob dead octopuses onto the rink. Now it’s becoming a cause celebre for the animal rights crowd.

“Just because they’re not cute and cuddly doesn’t mean they don’t hurt when you kill them,” said Michael McGraw of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. “What’s next - throwing dead kittens and dead puppies on the ice just for laughs?”

No way. Not until the Finals, anyway.

Steal third while you’re at it

So why was Los Angeles rookie Roger Cedeno crying in the clubhouse after a recent 11-2 romp over San Francisco? Well, with two outs in the top of the ninth, the young outfielder decided to steal second base - not realizing that, in a blowout, baseball considers that to be a sin.

“You don’t kick a guy when he’s down,” said Giants second baseman Steve Scarsone, who was already down enough when his error led to six unearned runs.

Growled Giants manager Dusty Baker, “That was terrible. He told Scarsone he was confused. I’ve never seen anybody that confused. If a guy’s that confused, somebody needs to get him a manual on how to play baseball.”

Maybe, Dusty. But if you’re losing 11-2, you could use one, too.

The last word …

“The woman is claiming now that she struggled with (Mike) Tyson for 10 minutes. That’s amazing, when you think about it. She lasted nine minutes longer than Peter McNeeley.”

- David Letterman, on the woman charging WBC heavyweight champ Mike Tyson with sexual assault

, DataTimes