Cheap Seats

Going out on a limb

Nashville’s American Basketball League franchise will be called the Noise, a name chosen from more than 300 contest entries and announced Thursday.

Stephen Moseley, 24, of Nashville, suggested the winning name and won four season tickets and ABL merchandise.

“The Noise was the best choice,” said general manager Mike Kopp. “It’s strong, loud, in-your face … just the kind of basketball we intend to play in Nashville.”

Noisy? Yes, providing of course that more than the usual ABL crowd of 2,000 people shows up to watch.

Bill Veeck would have been proud

The Triple-A All-Star game Wednesday night between the International and Pacific Coast leagues wasn’t quite Coors Field on Tuesday night, but as former major leaguer Warren Newson, an ex-Spokane Indian, said afterward, “It was fun.”

The International League beat the Pacific Coast League 8-4 in the 11th annual game featuring Triple-A’s best, but the evening was as much about what was happening apart from the game as it was about the showcase itself.

There was the marriage of recent New York Mets call-up Benny Agbayani at home plate before the game, the figures like Cow Ripken Jr., Ken Giraffey Jr. and Shark McGwire rousing fans between innings, and the voice of former Chicago Cubs announcer Harry Caray singing, only as 10-foot Harry Canary.

We are the world

Four years after the World Cup was played in the United States, almost half of our citizens didn’t even realize it’s a soccer tournament.

Just 52 percent of adults in the United States knew the World Cup is a soccer competition and only 25 percent were aware it is being played in France, according to a survey released Tuesday by Lou Harris & Associates.

Just 19 percent of Americans have watched a World Cup game, according to the survey. Of those, 24 percent said they enjoyed the telecasts a great deal, 31 percent said they enjoyed them quite a lot and 45 percent said not at all.

The poll was conducted from June 17-22 among 1,000 adults and has an error margin of 3 percent.

World Cup: That’s that yachting race, right?

The last word …

“If it wasn’t for baseball, I might be a convict.”

- Yankees pitcher David Wells in an interview in Details magazine in which he divulged that his favorite foods are burritos, pizza, ice cream and chocolate - with beer for dessert.