Cheap Seats

Call her Lindsay Dangerfield

Sometimes even grand slam champions are treated like weekend hackers.

Take the case of tennis star Lindsay Davenport, winner of the U.S. Open, Olympic gold medalist, No.1 in the world, top seed in the Australian Open.

At the airport on the way to Melbourne from Sydney, where she beat Martina Hingis in the final of a tuneup tournament, she was stopped at the gate by a Qantas attendant.

“Your rackets are too big. You can’t take them on the flight,” the attendant said.

Davenport, who had just seen Hingis and Mary Joe Fernandez board with their racket bags packed, pleaded her case.

“You just let those people on,” Davenport said.

“Well,” the attendant responded, “Martina Hingis needs her rackets.”

Better than bingo

Franciscan nuns in Denver call the response to their charity raffle of two Super Bowl tickets “a gift from God.”

The nuns at the Francis Heights Senior Center expected to sell 3,000 raffle tickets, at $5 each, over three days. It took only 3 hours to sell all of the tickets last Thursday.

Denver city councilman Dennis Gallagher donated his two Super Bowl tickets to the nuns to give the average person a chance at going to the Jan. 31 game between the Denver Broncos and Atlanta Falcons. The nuns decided to raffle off the tickets, which are selling for about $1,600 each, to raise money to repair the swimming pool at a senior center.

Gallagher said the raffle might draw some divine intervention in the Super Bowl.

“Now the nuns are praying for the Broncos,” he said. “Maybe they’ll win.” Sounds like a lot of nunsense.

The running-over of the Bulls

The beatings officially began Sunday when the Chicago Bulls opened their NBA exhibition season with a 79-71 loss to the Pacers, and there will be other beatings. No one’s quite forgotten the Bulls’ reign of terror of the 1990s, the champions’ arrogance, the taunting, tormenting and winning.

So, teams will be gunning for these Bulls, and not only because it will be an embarrassment to lose to this team. The beatings are too fresh in everyone’s minds to forget.

“For all the years they destroyed people it’s payback time,” Minnesota’s Sam Mitchell said. “And people aren’t going to care that Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen aren’t there. All they’re going to see is that Chicago Bulls jersey, and if you can’t beat them by 50, beat ‘em by 60. They’re gonna get drilled.”

They couldn’t get a pledge from McGinnis

What if they gave a news conference and the head coach didn’t show up?

Chet Coppock still is trying to answer that question. Coppock and Fox Sports Chicago went live to Halas Hall Friday afternoon for Dave McGinnis’ introduction as the new Chicago Bears coach. But for more than an hour, all Coppock had to describe was a shot of an empty lectern as the team never did reach a deal with McGinnis.

That left Coppock to fill, fill, fill, and it definitely was less filling.

“I felt like I was doing the Jerry Lewis telethon,” Coppock said.

The last word …

“I’m trying to build a new foundation. Of course, I might have to build a snowman first.”

- Charles Oakley on going to the Toronto Raptors