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Life’s just no fun

Oft-injured pitcher Mike Grace, determined to make the Philadelphia Phillies’ roster, said he no longer plays as hard off the field as on it.

“I realized there is life after baseball,” Grace said. “It just isn’t as good.”

It made his hair stand on end

Don King - in Mexico City for last Saturday night’s super lightweight title bout between Julio Cesar Chavez and Miguel Angel Gonzalez - and others with him were robbed of their watches within a couple of minutes near their hotel.

King described his diamond-studded gold watch, reported to be a Rolex worth $100,000, as “a shiny doodad … a gaudy little thing that sparkles; nothing of significance.”

King, despite his conspicuous presence, is certain that armed bandits had no idea who he was when they robbed him of his gold watch.

“Had they known I was Don King, I’m confident they never would have stopped me,” the boxing promoter said.

If they’d known who he was, it probably would have been worse.

Turnabout’s fair play

Jay Leno’s take on King’s mugging: Now he knows how we feel when we buy one of his fights on pay-per-view.

No longer of top of his game

Courts in two countries agreed that a now-inactive insurance agency must pay a $1.16 million claim on a stallion whose sexual prowess was reduced by a bump on the head.

Le Glorieux can still father foals, just not as many of them as he did before a 1994 accident left him with a balance - and hence mounting - problem.

After a protracted court battle, French and Kentucky courts ordered Equitania to settle the claim on an accidental infertility policy that covered the stallion, who lives in Lisieux, France.

The thoroughbred’s unsteadiness caused a steep decline in his studly income, from $450,000 a year to about $9,000 a year at today’s exchange rates.

In your dreams

Rico Brogna, the Philadelphia Phillies’ first baseman, has a new one-year contract that includes a $50,000 World Series most-valuable-player clause.

It seems safe for the Phillies to have made that deal, since they finished 33 games out of first place last season.

Here are some other off-the-wall contract clauses agreed to in baseball this winter, as reported by Jayson Stark of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

“Orioles DH Harold Baines, who played one game in the field last year, has a $50,000 Gold Glove clause.

“And we’ll all sleep better knowing that (pitcher) Jeff Juden - who allowed 56 stolen bases last year and committed errors on three of the 18 balls hit to him - has a $35,000 Gold Glove clause.”

The last word …

“Up there, it’s not another day, another dollar. It’s another day, another 46 cents.”

- Former Vancouver Grizzly Otis Thorpe on playing basketball in Canada, where tax rates are higher than they are in the United States.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo