Cheap Seats

This is your brain on sports

We hereby give our blessing to anyone willing to knock some sense into:

- Calvin Griffith, the dinosaurish ex-owner of the Minnesota Twins, who recently said of Marge Schott, “I wonder if she has the intelligence to be an owner, to decipher what’s right and wrong. She should be stifled for the good of the game.” It was Cal, you’ll recall, who in 1978 told a Lions club meeting in suburban Waseca, Minn., that he decided to move his ballclub to the Twin Cities “when I found you only had 15,000 blacks here.”

- Tremaine Fowlkes, disgruntled University of California basketball player, who transferred to Fresno State to play for coach Jerry Tarkanian because “he always recruits players that have good personalities and are great off the court.”

Nirvana? Didn’t they beat Arsenal?

Buddhists in flowing gray robes hand out bumper stickers depicting a chubby baby Buddha playing soccer. Religious fervor has met soccer fever, and Buddha, it seems, has lined up with South Korea in its battle against Japan to host the 2002 World Cup.

“Buddhism is something serene, a step away from everyday life. But if people see that even Buddhists want the World Cup, it should have a positive effect on our bid,” said Lee Sang-kyu, head of planning for the Chogye Order.

Lee admitted that his order’s support of South Korea’s World Cup bid has antagonized some faithful, but said critics were more angered by the use of the image of Buddha than by the support for soccer.

“The commercialism is undesirable,” said monk Ahn Jong-chul. “But Buddha is like the lotus. It grows from muddy water, but is untainted by it.”

At least until the first Colombian player is shot by fanatical countrymen.

Imagine them together in the same booth

Our favorite baseball announcer is back. Ralph Kiner told listeners the other day that Cal Ripken was about to break the ironman record “set by that Japanese player … in the Japanese League … in Japan.” As opposed to that Japanese League in Manitoba.

Not to be outdone, Harry Carey informed Cubs faithful that during the chilly spring in Chicago, “The average attendance at Cubs games is 48 degrees.”

It’s baseball, and he’s an American

They swear in Toronto that this is a true story. While playing on “Ken Griffey for President Night” in Seattle, Blue Jays shortstop Alex Gonzalez, a native of Miami, turned to teammate Shawn Green and asked: “Is Griffey really running for President?”

Nice icebreaker, pal

Kentucky cut down the nets at the Final Four, but University of Cincinnati forward Keith Gregor wasn’t impressed. “I don’t care who won the national championship, they’re still rednecks to me,” he said.

This just in: Gregor has taken a job as a computer sales representative - in Lexington, Ky.

The last word …

“There’s no use giving them instructions, because by the time they go from the paddock to the track, they’ve already forgotten. There’s a reason why jockeys wear size 3-1/2 hats.”

- Horse trainer Charlie Wittingham

, DataTimes