Cheap Seats

One of these kids might be the next Yogi Barer

There are no surprises at a Holiday Inn, nor for a teenage baseball team from Venezuela staying - for the second year in a row - at the Seminole Health Club in Davie, Fla. It’s a nudist colony.

Last year, the team’s hotel reservations for the George Khoury League International World Series fell through. A member of the colony works for the tourney host and offered to put up the team for free.

It was an eye-opener for 15-year-old Carlos Lovera.

“When the bus would pull into the camp each day someone on one side of the bus would yell, ‘There’s one!’ and everyone would lunge toward that side of the bus,” he said. “And then, ‘There’s another one!’ and we’d all end up on the other side of the bus.”

Now, however, topless women and bottomless men are no big deal.

“Seen it before,” Fernando Busato shrugged.

Nor are parents of the 15 team members leery.

“He’s my son, and being around - you know - had me worried,” said Mary Busato. “But everyone is really nice, and no one is DOING anything.”

Her husband stayed home in Caracas last year. And this year? “Stay home? Hah! He’s here all right,” she said.

Lovera’s father also volunteered to be a chaperone. “Someone has to do it,” he explained with a smile.

To protect and self-serve

Miami Dolphins linebacker Bryan Cox has been called a lot of things by opponents he has taunted and hostile fans. Now, the organizers of a national slow-pitch softball tournament have added the word “ringer.”

A police softball team has been banned from a national tournament because of the use of non-policemen. The East St. Louis Magnums are accused of using phony police ID cards signed by a local police chief to sneak civilian ballplayers onto the team during the police-only softball tournament in Dayton, Ohio.

Tournament officials say one of the civilians was Cox.

As a result, the Magnums will be banned indefinitely from the National Law Enforcement Softball Association for violating eligibility rules.

“We should have suspected something,” a spokesman said. “They were a little more competitive this year.”

Even so, the Magnums were out in two.

And something tells us Cox didn’t salute the fans the same way he did in Buffalo.

The paper chase

Marge Schott’s battle with her PR staff over the cost of producing media notes rages on. Now the Cincinnati owner has set a page cap - one - at a huge savings: $3.45 per game.

The 8-1/2-by-14-inch paper sells for $5.79 per 500-sheet box. The Reds make about 75 copies of their notes, so they’re saving roughly 300 sheets of paper each game. If Marge’s limit stays in effect, the savings for the rest of the season would be less than $100.

Meanwhile, Marge has made two trades that increased the 1995 payroll by more than $1 million and saddled the Reds with two more multiyear contracts.

But she can afford an extra pack of smokes every day.

The last word …

“NASA would have a much easier time launching the space shuttle if it did so at Coors Field.”

- Michael Ventre, Los Angeles Daily News

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo