Cheap Seats
No child support, no ticket
A Missouri farmer made the winning bid on a deadbeat dad’s season tickets to Kansas City Chiefs games.
The tickets - for two seats in Arrowhead Stadium’s upper deck, 45-yard line - sold at an auction in Lexington, Mo., for $12,700 to Stephen Cravens, 33, of Malta Bend. Besides the team’s remaining home games, Cravens also won the right to buy the tickets next year.
A judge ordered the tickets sold at auction to help satisfy the $10,000 their co-owner owed for four years of child support. The man was briefly jailed in September for failure to pay.
Nearly 3,000 people are on a waiting list for Chiefs season tickets.
“It’s not tickets for three games this year, it’s tickets for a lifetime,” Cravens said.
First up in his lifetime package: Chiefs blow out Seahawks tonight. Now there’s a game worth $4,233.
Picking your poison
Fans are being given the chance to vote for the most pretentious person in sports through the Smirnoff Get Real Index on the World Wide Web. And the choices are, well, choice.
Mike Tyson is a nominee for fighting so many weak opponents, from Peter McNeeley to Frank Bruno to Buster Mathis Jr. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner is under consideration for his general headline-seeking pronouncements and decisions. All 12 members of the Dream Team are cited for watching the parade of athletes at the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics from luxury boxes, then joining the other athletes just 5 minutes before the United States was announced.
Four surveys will be released, beginning in mid-November, and the overall winner will be announced in January. Smirnoff will make a donation to the favorite charity of each winner.
What’s in a logo?
When asked to assess the hopes of the Phoenix Coyotes, formerly the Winnipeg Jets, NHL spokeswoman Mary Pat Clarke, indicated she felt the new logo might help.
“Phoenix has a phenomenally creative and colorful logo,” she said. “This is the perfect time for a team like the Coyotes to be taking Arizona by storm.”
A triangular drawing of a coyote with a goalie mask and stick, the logo is featured on the team jersey.
“It’s extremely cool,” Clarke said.
So it was those listless, logoless helmets that kept the Cleveland Browns out of the Super Bowl?
Send the food bill to Sterling
The Los Angeles Clippers may be the worst basketball team in the West, but they’re certain to be first in big appetites and bad attitudes.
Shaun Powell of Newsday has this to say about the Clips: “They’ve cornered the market on heavy centers with bad attitudes. Stanley Roberts reported overweight again and was booted from camp for cursing coach Bill Fitch; Dwayne Schintzius is holding the starter’s position. The Clips then did the sensible thing and signed Kevin Duckworth.”
The last word …
“Let’s put it this way: If it was a home run for us, George Steinbrenner would have Maier on the Throgs Neck Bridge dangling somewhere. It’s a double standard.”
- Baltimore’s Bobby Bonilla, reflecting on 12-year-old Jeff Maier deflecting a ball that was ruled a New York home run in the ALCS
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo