Cheap Seats
Who would want this old thing?
Two Florida teenagers stole a baseball signed by Babe Ruth and promptly pitched it. The boys, ages 13 and 14, were arrested and confessed to burglarizing a baseball card store last week. Items stolen were valued at $45,000, including the $6,000 baseball.
Some things were recovered, but the boys threw the baseball in a dumpster, not realizing its value. Detectives rushed to the dumpster, only to find it had been emptied and its contends taken to a dump.
Bottled-up anger
Heavywhite boxer Peter McNeeley, who took the spotlight briefly when he lost to Mike Tyson in August, finally found an opponent he could handle. The 220-pound McNeeley allegedly hit 5-foot-7, 145-pound Aldo Hernandez on the forehead with a beer bottle during a dispute at The Roxy nightclub in Boston about 2 a.m. last Sunday.
“He was in the VIP box and just started with a young patron who is a regular and who is a VIP,” a Roxy employee said.
Both Hernandez, 28, who sustained lacerations, and McNeeley, 27, were described as regulars at the club located beneath the downtown Tremont House hotel.
Pizza Hut must’ve been closed.
An easy target
Albert Belle’s narrow loss to Boston’s Mo Vaughn in the American League MVP voting was and here’s a surprise! - applauded by many writers.
“I feel sorry for Belle, and not just because his temper cost him the MVP award voted on by the baseball writers,” wrote Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Bill Livingston. “I feel sorry for a man who is so joyless, when he created so much happiness for this city. And I feel bad for a man who hears the music, but cannot dance.”
Unbearable to watch
The Bears may be moving to Indiana, but Chicago Tribune columnist Bernie Lincicome still believes they’re going nowhere.
“Surrender is, incidentally, not an option, though it might be hard to distinguish it from whatever it is the Bears are doing on the football field these days,” Lincicome says. “This is woeful. This is pathetic. And those two will be the starting cornerbacks next week.”
He was giving the guy an earful
The ex-New Mexico State linebacker who bit off most of another man’s ear in a barroom scuffle pleaded guilty to felony battery charges in a plea bargain.
Carl Ditmars, 30, whom witnesses described as an “obnoxious Raiders fan,” faces no more than six months in jail for his Sept. 17 attack on a Chargers fan at Fat Freddies, a San Diego bar. Witnesses said Ditmars snapped when teased about Oakland’s loss to Kansas City. “The only thing I said to him was, ‘Hey, wait until we play you here in November,’ and then he came at me,” said the victim, Michael Burrows.
Ditmars claimed he was acting in self-defense.
The last word …
“And I’ll never forget when, with the help of two local referees, Chaminade pulled off the upset of a tough Montana State team back in 1981.”
- Former MSU stiff Craig Kilborn, now of ESPN, recounting memorable college basketball upsets on SportsCenter recap of Santa Clara’s win over UCLA
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo