Cheap Seats

Which came first, the Dinger or the egg?

Four Denver business partners hatched an idea for a Colorado Rockies mascot and now claim the major-league baseball club stole it.

Rachel Akerfelds and Brian, Sally and Edwin Madigan Jr., through their business, AKMAD Co., have sued the Rockies, claiming Dinger the Dinosaur is “strikingly similar” to a proposed mascot they submitted months before the team’s first game. They also claim the club purloined their marketing plan, which called for an announcement that a giant egg had been found. Eventually, the dinosaur mascot was to “hatch” out of the egg on opening day.

Rockies officials reviewed AKMAD’s proposal but said they preferred to develop their own. But four months before the opener, the club announced that construction workers had found a dinosaur egg at the site of Coors Field and that the mascot was inside it.

You’ll notice no suit has ever been filed by someone claiming to have had the original idea for the Mariner Moose.

If you can’t blame ‘em, Laim ‘em

As master of the cheap shot, former Pistons goon Bill Laimbeer figures he’ll fit right in as a member of the media. His “Bill Laimbeer Uncensored” show begins Jan. 17 on the Pistons’ cable-TV station with his self-expressed notion of bringing ethics to the media.

“The media are always an interest of mine,” said Laimbeer, “the way they dictate and dominate public opinion in the direction they want to slant it, their ethics. That varies depending on the writer or commentator.

“My job on the Pistons was to always be the one who said what everyone else was thinking and wouldn’t say. So why should I change? Who attacks the sportswriters? They have carte blanche to go about attacking without being at the other end. And if we attack them in the newspapers - which will get very little ink - the writers will turn around and dump even more on us. I’m in this to have some fun.”

Bill could take his shots in the newspapers, too, but it’s hard to type with your elbows.

The yawning gap

Goaaaaaal! Score one for FIFA, soccer’s world governing body. It’s considering enlarging the goals.

FIFA general secretary Sepp Blatter was quoted in Stern magazine as saying that officials were agreeable to “widening the goal the equivalent of two balls, about 50 centimeters (19.7 inches) and one ball high.”

Naturally, the flak has already started from soccer drones determined to preserve more 0-0 ties.

“We see no chance to realistically do this,” said Wolfsgang Niersbach of the German soccer federation. “Alone in Germany there are about 100,000 soccer fields and each goal costs 1,000 marks ($700). There is a question of who finances this.”

The Skins Game

Eighteen-year-old Nelson Silva won a banana-eating contest in the Brazilian city of Sao Vicente Ferrer after eating about 11 pounds in 4 minutes. He was disqualified, though, for eating the skins as well.

Hey, was this a banana-eating competition or a banana-peeling competition?

The last word …

“Now I’ve got a sleeve of girls.”

- Golfer Brad Faxon, after the birth of his third daughter

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo