Cheap Seats

Nuts to you

Peanut vendor Richard Aller’s gravel-voiced cry of “Nuts!” echoed across Dodger Stadium for 38 years - until he was fired for buying two bags of discounted peanuts.

Aller said he bought two $2 bags of salted nuts at a discount from a pair of fellow vendors who got them free as part of their lunch allotment. Aller then resold them to fans for a profit and when stadium concessionaire Aramark Corp. found out, it fired him.

“I can see being warned not to do it again, or maybe suspended for five or six games,” said Aller, who earns about $13,000 a year selling 300 bags a game. “But I can’t see being fired after 38 years for one offense.”

Fans have begun lobbying Aramark to take Aller back, and about 50 other stadium vendors have signed a petition asking the same thing.

“People get season tickets just to be in his section,” said Myron Rosenaur, a lighting contractor from Encino.

Replacing the radar gun with a calendar

We’re often told the great thing about baseball is that there is no clock. But sometimes you need one.

Take a recent at-bat by Bip Roberts of the Kansas City Royals against the Detroit Tigers’ Felipe Lira that lasted - get this - 14 minutes.

All so Roberts could ground out to second base.

“Fourteen minutes,” said astounded Tigers coach Jerry White. “I probably could have gone down and wolfed down a hot dog and gotten back in 14 minutes. I probably could have eaten a whole bag of seeds.”

He probably could have read a novel, or flown back to Detroit, or gotten a Ph.D., or something.

Lira threw 18 pitches - 10 of which Roberts fouled back with two strikes - and made nine pickoff throws to first base. There were also two pitchouts and four attempts by the runner, Tom Goodwin, to steal second. (He finally made it, on the 14th pitch. On a pitchout.)

Concluded White, “We probably should have just thrown it down the middle and let him put it in play.”

To put this in perspective, if every at-bat were like this, the average game would last 16 hours and 20 minutes. Then again, every night would be Sleeping Bag Night. But that’s the marketing department’s problem.

“Fourteen minutes?” said Perry Hill, another Tigers coach. “That’s two, three innings for Greg Maddux right there.”

This time, it’s the school that goes hardship

Kenny Thomas has settled a two-year dispute with the NCAA. The University of New Mexico basketball standout filed a lawsuit in 1995 to keep from being declared ineligible for a deficient high school curriculum.

Under the settlement, New Mexico will lose a scholarship each year through 2000 and Thomas has agreed to sit out the first semester of his senior season - though that won’t be until 1998-99.

So, of course, there’s no chance Thomas will turn pro after his junior year. Nah.

And he throws BBs

The Pirates have a pitcher in their system named John Dillinger, which prompted Denver Post writer Jim Armstrong to note: “His control isn’t much to talk about, but they say the kid’s got a gun for an arm.”

The last word …

“Sugar Ray Leonard has retired and unretired so many times, his tuxedos have skid marks.”

- Chicago Tribune columnist Bernie Lincicome

, DataTimes