Cheap Seats

Another drug flap

Those who mistakenly believe the drug problem has not reached deeply into all sports need only consider this:

The Swedish Carrier Pigeon Association last month had to expel two birds from its championship after both tested positive for cortisone.

Call him Sly, the golf clothes horse

Seeing Sylvester Stallone with a club is his hand should not come as a surprise. In Hollywood, it’s called typecasting.

But a golf club?

And yet here he is, in the Sporting Life, striding across the magazine pages in these natty - OK, ludicrous - plus fours and delivering golfing wisdom to all.

Stallone claims a handicap of “probably between 8 and 9, now,” and golf seems to have given him another dimension - a sense of humor.

Asked his idea of a perfect golf day, he answered: “No injuries.”

Queried about compliments he might have received about his game, he quoted tutors Jim McLean and David Leadbetter.

“They’ve always been very complimentary about my form. `You have nice golf clothes,’ I think is what they said. `He dresses well for a golfer.’ That’s the best I can hope for.”

Talk about stupid pet tricks

Tom FitzGerald in the San Francisco Chronicle: “One of the events in the Great Outdoor Games, which will be held for the first time in July at Lake Placid, N.Y., is called `Big Air Dogs.’

“The dogs will run down a lakeside dock and leap into the water. They will be judged on distance and style.

“We hear that ESPN is talking to the Taco Bell Chihuahua about providing expert commentary.”

And make sure those rings are gold

Tony Kornheiser in the Washington Post: “Did you hear they’re adding another part to the Olympic motto of `Faster, higher, stronger?’ It’s `Leave it in my room.”’

There are no cheap thrills in Charlotte

NASCAR owner/driver Bill Elliott can’t get over what it costs to keep a car going around in circles. Well, OK, ovals.

“The money absolutely blows me away,” he told the Charlotte Observer. “At Charlotte, say, it costs $1 million to lap the track in 35 seconds. To take a second off that, it might cost an additional $3 million. To take another half-second off, it might cost you … well, it doesn’t double, it just goes out of sight.”

Or are those star bucks?

The New York Mets have added five rows of premium seats behind home plate at Shea Stadium.

Tickets in the first two rows will cost $150 a game. Wrote Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe: “Call it Piazza dough.”

The last word …

“When they talk about each other, they sting like bees, but when Ali spoke, he remembered to float like a butterfly, too.”

- Tennis commentator Mary Carillo, comparing the current crop of arrogant young women’s players to Muhammad Ali