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Litigation League

An 11-year-old boy is getting $1,235.20 for not playing baseball in a Fresno youth league.

The controversy started when Peter Lang was invited to practice with the Major Giants because some players were not attending practices. Later, his father paid the $40 registration fee, but the league’s president said the registration deadline had passed.

Although the league offered Lang a spot on another team, the parents refused, saying he had no friends on that team, and filed a lawsuit in small claims court.

Often, the small in small claims refers to the people.

He’d make a great Chicago alderman

The head of Brazil’s Committee of Soccer Referees has resigned amid accusations that he used his office to tamper with the results of games and to extort clubs for political campaign contributions.

Ivens Mendes quit hours before a national TV news program broadcast tapes that contained incriminating conversations with soccer club executives.

In one call to Mario Cesar Petraglia, president of Atletico Paranaense, Mendes offered to pressure the referee to benefit the club against Vasco da Gama.

“We have to lower the boom on Vasco. If I can, I’ll talk to the referee to give you a hand,” Mendes was heard saying. He suggested Atletico provoke Vasco star Edmundo into losing his temper and getting expelled.

In the game, referee Oscar Godoy ejected Edmundo and Atletico won 3-1.

Soccer legend Pele, Brazil’s minister of sports, called the disclosure a “great disappointment” but not a surprise.

Because it’s soccer? Or because it’s Brazil?

And it’s working on a knuckler

A year ago, Colorado was a dreadful road team - 28-53 away from cozy Coors Field. But this spring, Dante Bichette bought a pitching machine that throws a nasty curve and a brutal slider - pitches the Rockies say they rarely see in the thin air of Denver.

In April, they went 9-4 on the road.

“You’re not supposed to let a machine strike you out,” said shortstop Walt Weiss, “but it can flat-out embarrass you.”

So it’s only a matter of time before Don Baylor puts it in the starting rotation.

Forty bleepin’ Niners

A bawdy birthday party for 49ers consultant Jack Davis may hurt a new stadium campaign.

The wild party at the San Francisco Mart included strippers, sadomasochists and a leather-clad dominatrix who carved a satanic star into a man’s back and urinated on him. Mayor Willie Brown attended, as did 49ers president Carmen Policy and his wife.

The 49ers have paid Davis an estimated $100,000 to orchestrate their campaign to get voters to approve public funding for a new stadium - and now that campaign is into damage control.

Said Davis: “Nobody barred the doors, and I didn’t see anyone running for the elevators.”

Said Policy, “Obviously, that’s not the kind of entertainment that we find entertaining.”

And said owner Edward DeBartolo: “What do they say? Only believe half of what you see.”

OK. We’ll believe the dominatrix part.

The last word …

“The police call the ‘Republic of Texas Militia’ the most sinister band of outlaws since last year’s Dallas Cowboys.”

- Craig Kilborn, of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo