Cheap Seats

Do you get bonus points for a shutout?

Give San Diego Padres owner John Moores some credit. He’s trying to make Jack Murphy Stadium more fan friendly, and this is one of the ideas he’s come up with: Fans are awarded points for attending games, with bonus points available for various happenings. At season’s end, those points can be cashed in for gloves, baseballs, bats, jerseys and other goodies.

You guessed it - the Padres are calling this their “Frequent Friar Program.”

Nasty as he wants to be

Opinion polls give Ilie Nastase a wide lead in the race for mayor of Bucharest, Romania. The former tennis star is running with the slogan: “He built a name for himself, and he will rebuild a town.” Running for the governing Social Democracy party, Nastase promises to turn the city of 2.3 million from a place “suffocated by misery, pollution and crime” into a modern European metropolis.

But the antics and temper that earned him the nickname “Nasty” in his tennis days still get him into trouble.

Asked about rumors that he holds French citizenship, which would exclude him from running, Nastase cursed the questioner and threatened to hit any other reporter who raised the subject.

Responding to criticism that he left school at 15, Nastase, the world’s top tennis player in 1973, replied that he would like to see another Romanian who managed to make millions on a ninth-grade education.

Although Nastase’s American wife, Alexandra, and their two children visited Bucharest from the United States for a few days, an adviser said they won’t come to stay unless he wins the election.

Better Laettner than never

Nice to see a national audience finally getting to witness what a jerk Christian Laettner is - to say nothing of seeing him humbled by Shaquille O’Neal in the NBA’s Orlando-Atlanta series. Asked by NBC’s Peter Vecsey about Atlanta teammates who say he won’t say hello some days, Laettner said he couldn’t deal with anyone shallow enough to judge him on that basis.

O’Neal’s dominance in the series prompted Hawks scout Jack Nolan to say, “Christian’s not a center, but he plays one on TV.”

Shaq, as usual, denied all rivalry angles, telling the press, “I hope y’all are not going to make it into some Laettner-O’Neal matchup.” But teammate Penny Hardaway said O’Neal always gets up for Laettner, irritated that the Dukie once beat him out for college player of the year.

Chuck Hustle

Remember all the talk when Minnesota second baseman Chuck Knoblauch was rookie of the year - that he was a throwback, a rub-a-little-dirt-on-it, Pete-Rose type? Well, throw this back. Twins manager Tom Kelly tried to use Knoblauch, who has a non-displaced fracture of his left middle finger, as a pinch-runner last week and found the player unavailable.

“I didn’t think having something wrong with your finger could keep you from running,” Kelly said. “He didn’t have his shirt or his spikes on. I guess you can’t assume anything in this game.”

The last word …

“I thought it was the right decision. I’m going to work hard to make it the right decision.” - Don Shula, on retirement

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo