Cheap Seats

No pass outs

Dave Cowens, the former Celtics great and current San Antonio Spurs assistant coach, continues to mull over a comeback at age 46. He ran the idea past David Robinson, whom Cowens would back up at center.

Robinson: “Aren’t you in the Hall of Fame?” Cowens: “Yeah.”

Robinson: “Would they take you out of it if you come back?”

Only if he came back with the Celtics.

He never knew lonely

Attendance at Belmont College basketball games in Nashville rarely tops 600 - even with a country music celebrity like Rick Byrd as the coach.

Celebrity? Well, he has appeared in two music videos with Vince Gill. And when it came time for the Rebels to head to the NAIA tournament in Tulsa, they boarded a bus loaned to them by the group Sawyer Brown.

The Rebels (37-2) returned to Nashville Monday after losing in the semifinals - a pretty big deal, though not as big as when Gill came to a game against Lipscomb several years ago.

“Nobody was there, 40 people in the gym, if that many,” Byrd said. “The next thing I know, he’s running down the bleachers - bang! bang! bang! bang! - yelling at the referees. Then he starts running the other way. “He gets on the refs, but he’s funny when he does it. He loves to come to the games.”

So that’s what he was singing about in, ‘When Love Finds You.’

Double jeopardy

New baseball Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn was adept at fouling off pitches while waiting for one he could drive. Unfortunately, one of his many intentional foul balls once struck a woman in the face. The next day, he visited her in the hospital and apologized.

“That isn’t the half of it,” she said, noting that as she was being carried out, “You got me again on the leg.”

Continental divide

You’re familiar with all the great rivalry trophies in sports - the Ryder Cup, the Old Oaken Bucket, the Little Brown Jug. And, of course, the I-82 Cup.

What? You aren’t aware of the brouhaha that foamed over recently along Washington’s southern tier between the Yakima Sun Kings and Tri-City Chinook of the Continental Basketball Association over ownership of the storied hunk of tin? Seems this contrivance was born to foment a facsimile of a rivalry in this me-first league - and the Chinook won the season series the first three years. After splitting six games this season, Yakima claimed the trophy on the basis of quarter points, which are used in CBA standings.

Chinook owner Mike Lundgren said nothing doing - until he was shown the original press release from 1991 outlining the quarter-points tiebreaker.

“My understanding was that this was like the Ryder Cup, where you have to win more games and if it’s tied, it stays with the winner,” he said.

Earlier, he was less understanding. “We’re the ones who paid for the trophy,” he said, adding that if Yakima wanted one, it could buy one of its own.

The last word …

“They showed one guy who went to grab his crotch and missed.”

- Jay Leno, on replacement baseball