Cheap Seats

Down the stretch he comes

Montreal catcher Darrin Fletcher, the slowest Expo and maybe the slowest runner in the National League, needed a triple to hit for the cycle in a recent game against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

“I thought about it in the on-deck circle, but then I thought, ‘What would happen if I hit one?”’ Fletcher said. “I mean, Ty Cobb would have turned over in his grave until he was upside down.

“For me to get a triple, an outfielder would have to fall down, break an ankle or pull a muscle. It was out of respect for Cobb that I didn’t do it.”

On God, Tupac and the Admiral

Charles Barkley considers himself a decent golfer. And David Robinson, according to Barkley, is not. Which is why Barkley was in a state of shock as he described the golf outing the two had last week.

“David Robinson was good on the golf course, which only lets you know that a broken clock is right twice a day,” Barkley said, shaking his head. “Damn, I lost to David Robinson. It’s like me beating Phil Mickelson.”

As Dream Team III preps for Atlanta, no one is having more fun than Barkley, voted again to the NBA’s all-interview team. He has no trouble in filling up a notebook. A recent sample: “Only God can judge me. Like (rapper) Tupac said, all you others can just stay out of my business.”

Asked by a TV reporter from Mexico whether the Dream Team can lose, Barkley looked as stunned as when he spoke of losing to Robinson in golf. “It can’t happen, my man, it can’t happen,” he said.

Free Marge?

After Marge Schott was forced out as majority owner of the Cincinnati Reds for remarks about Adolf Hitler, New York Times columnist Russell Baker wrote that baseball and Hitler once had something in common.

“Hitler became furious because a black American sprinter, Jesse Owens, beat the flower of Aryan athletes in the 1936 Berlin Olympics,” Baker wrote. “Such an embarrassment could not have happened that year to major-league baseball owners. They simply didn’t let blacks play.”

Perhaps surprisingly, former Reds outfielder and noted historian Kevin Mitchell is a Schott supporter.

“I’m going to picket for Marge,” Mitchell said. “I’m going to get a sign that says: ‘Free Marge.’ I had a great time with her when I was there. She invited my grandmother to sit with her in her box. She showed me respect and I gave her respect.”

Marty Blake, he’s not

Los Angeles sports-radio host Lee Hamilton isn’t known for intellectual acumen.

After referring to prank-impaired Dodgers pitcher Chan Ho Park as a “Chinese crybaby” - Park is Korean - Hamilton was duped by a Howard Stern fan.

As the NBA draft approached, the Stern fan asked Hamilton about “some NAIA players” and where they were projected to be picked. Their names - Jackie Martling, John Melendez and Gary Dela Vante - are the same as the three sidekicks on Stern’s show. Hamilton didn’t catch on, of course, and admitted he “didn’t see them” on his list of draft candidates.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo