Cheap Seats

To protect, serve and make a withdrawal

Tommy Kendall is a leadfoot off the track, too. The IROC driver was nailed by a state trooper in Darlington last weekend for going 68 mph in a 45 mph zone.

“He asked me if I was racing,” Kendall said. “I told him I was - in IROC. He was a bit disappointed.”

California, Kendall’s home state, and South Carolina don’t have a reciprocal agreement to collect speeding tickets. So the trooper told Kendall to post bail or go to jail.

“I didn’t have the money,” Kendall said. “But the trooper was nice and followed me to an ATM machine where I could get the cash.”

Damn (Replacement) Yankees

Yep, that old Yankee mystique is certainly taking a beating from replacement baseball. Word is, manager Buck Showalter went ballistic when several of his new players asked for Tom Lasorda’s autograph before New York’s exhibition game with the Dodgers - but that was just a hint of things to come.

Showalter had to address his team about wearing Yankee paraphernalia outside the stadium. Several players were wearing their jackets and caps into nightclubs and restaurants - you know, just so the locals would know they’re real Yankees.

Then there was an incident in which Showalter came to the mound to ask for the ball from his pitcher. Buck stretched out his palm, and the pitcher slapped him five. A few days later, the same pitcher asked to see Showalter privately; the manager thought maybe the pitcher was going to confess that he couldn’t cut it.

Wrong. The pitcher wanted to have a picture taken with him and his family.

Only in America

The story was that Mike Tyson tossed Don King out of his homecoming for inviting a Showtime camera crew and catering the bash with alcohol and shellfish, which are taboo in Islamic law, to which the former heavyweight champ is a recent convert.

It couldn’t be that Tyson has merely decided King is a leech. For the promoter with the high voltage hair insisted recently that his first concern wasn’t Tyson’s boxing career, but rather that the convicted rapist “get out and have an intercourse with society.”

A fine mess you’ve gotten us into, Ollie

Detroit Pistons management said at the beginning of the NBA season that Oliver Miller’s weight would never be an issue. Well, it’s an issue.

Miller - all 290 pounds of him - has tired in the latter stages of recent games, and it’s costing the Pistons, who are chasing a playoff spot.

“It’s not just the conditioning,” said coach Don Chaney. “We all know it’s the weight. You can’t go out and bust your butt in practice, then go home and eat three chickens. That doesn’t work. You’re busting your butt for nothing and coming back to practice at the same weight.”

A fan at America West Arena in Phoenix, where Miller used to play, put it in pithier terms on the corpulent one’s recent return.

“Hey, Miller!” the fan shouted. “You’re the worst two players on that team!”

The last word …

“I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. I knew all along we who love baseball had nothing to fear but Fehr himself.”

- Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan