Cheap Seats
Don’t mess with the mascot
A professional miniature-golf player was given a 30-day suspended sentence and fined $25 for punching the mascot for the Richmond Braves minor league baseball team in the stomach.
Manfred A. Stewart, 40, was charged with punching the Diamond Duck during a May 15 game. The mascot, a 24-year-old businesswoman, wasn’t identified because police said she had received threats.
The Diamond Duck’s bodyguard testified she witnessed the assault, but a fan who saw the incident said the contact was not aggressive or malicious.
“I’m so frustrated by the fact that people don’t respect mascots anymore.”
Yeah, what kind of sick society no longer holds the San Diego Chicken in the highest esteem?
Mac attacks the old guys
Hey, John, tell us what you really think of the PGA Senior Tour.
“I think Senior golf is all p.r. They make it seem like those guys are playing good golf, but they’re not. They cut the course 25 to 30 percent so it looks like they’re hitting it longer and still shooting good scores,” said tennis great John McEnroe, 38, a part-timer on the over-35 tennis tour.
‘I don’t believe in the whole concept. We could cut our courts in half so it looks like we’re playing better. But if I’m playing like crap, what good does that do you?”
McEnroe said the Senior tours are about personalities, not statistics and ability.
“Look at Arnold Palmer. He can’t break an egg. I mean, I’m pulling for him because he’s a good human being. But he can’t make the top 50 on the Senior tour, but he’s still one of the top two or three names.
“Tennis needs personalities and name recognition.”
Or maybe it should just lower the nets.
He’s no Mickey Mouse athlete
The debate over who is the world’s greatest athlete never ends, but champions of the Olympic decathlon are sure they have the answer.
Four of the five American gold medalists who gathered in Manhattan last weekend as part of Disney’s “Hercules” movie opening chose Dan O’Brien. The dissenter was O’Brien himself.
“I would have to say it’s Michael Jordan,” said O’Brien, who won at the 1996 Games. “But for two perfect days in Atlanta last year, I was.”
Milt Campbell, the 1956 gold medalist, Bruce Jenner (1976), Bob Mathias (1948 and 1952) and Bill Toomey (1968) agreed the decathlon is the one yardstick that has measured all-around athletic prowess throughout history.
One man carrying his team to five NBA titles in seven years is the other.”
Sundance Festival ready for ‘Cool Running II’
The Jamaican bobsled team, an Olympic novelty that finished 14th in one event in 1994, will base its training operations in the small southwestern Wyoming town of Evanston.
The team, which had previously trained at Calgary, Alberta, decided to move to Evanston because of its proximity to the winter sports facilities near Park City, Utah, and because costs of living in the small town are lower than in the resort east of Salt Lake City.
But will they find a hair stylist who can do dreadlocks?
The last word …
“The White Sox’s Albert Belle will get to flip off a whole new base of fans.”
- San Francisco Examiner Henry Schulman on interleague play
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