Cheap Seats

Yo, computer, buckle down

Tony Kornheiser in ESPN the Magazine: “Tiger Woods and Mark O’Meara firing their caddies recently because they haven’t won too many golf tournaments lately is like me screaming at the guy who delivered my computer because I didn’t win the Pulitzer Prize.”

Hurrying on home

New York Mets rookie Mike Kinkade hit his first major-league home run Thursday, leading off the eighth against Padres reliever Dan Miceli, and almost sprinted around the bases. The quip he heard when he returned to the dugout: “We were going to clap for you, but you were already back in here.”

John Olerud, like Kinkade a former Washington State University star, had hit his fifth home run three innings earlier, but took his victory lap at a more leisurely pace. So the question had to be asked: Could Olerud circle the bases as quickly as Kinkade?

“I’m not sure,” Olerud said. “It would be a good conversation piece if I tried.”

Truth in labeling

From the Morning Line column in the Dallas Morning News: “Maverick center Hot Rod Williams used to be known as John Williams. His three sons are named John Jr., Johnpaul and Johnfrancis. So, if he liked the name so much to begin with, why doesn’t he use it?”

Don’t try this at home

After coming out of Tuesday’s game after just four innings because he got too close to his prescribed pitch count of 85, Florida Marlins right-hander Alex Fernandez went back into the clubhouse, picked up a bat and threw it at one of the four TV sets that hang from the ceiling.

The bat merely nicked the TV screen, however, and ended up lodged in one of the ceiling tiles.

“That’s really why I took him out,” Marlins manager John Boles joked. “He didn’t have any control.”

Especially self-control.

Better than Bart, the bankruptcy bear

Columnist Ron Rapoport in the Chicago Sun-Times: “Ed Hula, who publishes the Olympic newsletter `Around the Rings,’ says Salt Lake City soon will announce three mascots for the 2002 Winter Olympics: a rabbit to represent faster, a coyote baying at the moon to represent higher and a bear to symbolize stronger.

“Linda Fantin of the Salt Lake City Tribune says this comes as a big relief to those who were worried the mascots might be Wally Wallet, Chucky Checkbook and Sally Subpoena.”

Looking for Jack Nicholson

Before L.A.’s rout of Portland on Thursday, Tom Sorensen of the Charlotte Observer said this about the Lakers: “The Hornets are the anti-Lakers. The underachieving and selfish Lakers represent, despite Jerry West, everything bad about the NBA game.

“Yet, NBC, TBS and TNT all but refuse to televise an NBA game if the Lakers are not in it. In fact, the networks would, if they could, change the schedule so the Lakers played only themselves.”

The last word …

“Someone had to get him on his way.”

- Former Vancouver goalie Glen Hanlon, who gave up Wayne Gretzky’s first NHL goal