Cheap Seats

A site to be seen and not heard

Holy cow! Phil Rizzuto has his own internet site.

“Scooter’s Sports Club” provides scores on pro and college games, catalogues of sports apparel and autographed items, plus a scrapbook of Rizzuto’s career as a New York Yankees player and broadcaster.

Now, someone’s gotta teach the 78-year-old Scooter how to log on.

John Kruk, the actor

It’s official. John Kruk is not a tux-adorned, Ellen Barkin-accompanying, Big-Apple-Premiere kind of guy.

“Nah, I ain’t coming to New York for no 2-hour movie,” the former Philadelphia first baseman warbled from his home in the hills of West Virginia, where he’s still happily ensconced in baseball retirement. “I’ll just catch the video.”

Kruk plays the role of Jimmy Lanz, the remarkably Kruk-like teammate of Wesley Snipes, in Hollywood’s newest blockbuster baseball film, “The Fan,” which opens next week.

On the subject of Robert De Niro, who plays stalker Gil Renard:

“He kinda kept to himself. He’d show up when it was time for him to do something, and as soon as he was done, he’d leave.

I did have one scene with him where it was just me and him for two or three hours. And we talked. He told me, ‘You should pursue acting.’ He thought I was good. I said, ‘How would you know? You’re never around.’ “

Tonga party

Sure, everybody thought the United States was the best just because it won the most medals at the Olympics.

But a demographer has recalculated the results and found Tonga really outperformed everyone else.

Kevin Pollard of the private research group Population Reference Bureau calculated the number of medals won by each country per million residents.

Thanks to having a small total population, Tonga’s single silver medal - in boxing - works out to 9.4 medals per million people. Not that Tonga has a million residents, of course; it has about 105,000 residents. Next best was Bahamas. Also a winner of one medal, Bahamas’ rate is 3.4 medals per million.

On that basis the United States managed just 0.4 medals per million people, ranking 40th among the 79 nations that won any medals at all.

Lendl plays on

Ivan Lendl, winner of eight Grand Slam tennis titles and 94 tour events, is entered in this week’s Czech Open, part of the European PGA tour.

Since trading his tennis racket for a set of clubs, Lendl has improved to a two-handicap, regularly shooting in the 70s.

“My goal,” he said, “is to get to the level where I would never have to look for a ball.”

Try orange balls.

The last word …

“I think they just want to keep me in the league so they can keep kicking my ass.”

- Pirates manager Jim Leyland on why, after several losing seasons, his peers continue to rate him as the game’s best manager

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo