Cheap Seats

A new recipe for flank steak

Red meat, once a staple of Tour de France riders, is out. Low-fat foodstuffs - pasta, rice, muesli - are in, but cyclists still find a good steak can save their hides.

“Nothing absorbs shock like animal tissue,” said cycling doctor Yvan Vanmol, who once recommended slipping a steak in a rider’s pants to protect a tender rear end on long stages.

Not a T-bone, we presume.

Holy cow! Harry Carey has gone nonalcoholic.

The Chicago Cubs broadcaster, legendary for his partying lifestyle, has had to stop drinking since he collapsed 13 months ago.

“I still go to nightclubs,” he said. “Just because I don’t drink doesn’t affect my good times.”

Carey takes medicine to combat an arrhythmic heartbeat and it’s not compatible with alcohol. He also began reducing his workload this season, skipping all but a few Cubs road trips. But the 78-year-old Caray has no plans for retirement, nor do his bosses plan to retire him.

“Harry’s future is whatever he wants it to be,” says Dennis FitzSimons of Tribune Television.

Unless he wants it to be his past.

Maybe he thought Jim Leyritz was a burglar

A recent package in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on athletes owning guns produced this interesting comment from the Mariners’ Randy Johnson: “I don’t own a gun, but I keep a bag of baseballs near our bed,” Johnson said. “If someone breaks in, they had better be wearing a batting helmet because I’m going to throw at their heads.”

It would be the Mariners’ luck for him to blow out his elbow because he wasn’t properly warmed up.

The wind never stills on the British Empire

Northern Ireland golfer David Feherty was quite the quote machine at the British Open. One of his complaints at St. Andrews was the wind.

“In the United States, you play target golf, but over here the target moves,” he said. “You can have the right club at the top of your swing and the wrong one at impact.”

Which is our problem on any course, any hole.

The Baseball Netbore

Los Angeles Daily News media columnist Tom Hoffarth is head jeerleader for The Baseball Network.

Writes Tom: “Bored out of my mind Saturday and Monday, I watched ‘Baseball Night in America’ for some amusement. It was a carnival freak show.

“The 8 p.m. start is great - if you work the graveyard shift stocking toilet paper at Ralph’s. By the time Monday’s Astros-Dodgers game ended 45 minutes before Tuesday’s arrival, most kids I know were 2 hours into a dream about playing street hockey. The family dog, bored with chewing up the cordless phone, is ready to address the TV screen like a fire hydrant. The newspaper desk folks are frustrated, trying to explain to irate readers why the previous night’s box score is missing from the daily section.”

The last word …

“We’ve had some help from the Phillies. What have they lost, nine out of their last eight?”

- Braves owner Ted Turner, on Atlanta’s sudden surge

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo