Cheap Seats

Gritty pitcher

Detroit Tigers pitcher Brian Moehler is still claiming that was dirt on his thumb in Tampa Bay, not sandpaper, when he was tossed from a game. But Moehler did report: “My agent told me Home Depot wants me to do a commercial.”

We all know that stuff is fake

No one will ever forget Cuban umpire Cesar Valdez doing his Ravishing Rick Rude imitation on one of the misguided schmoes who decided to stage a protest in center field during the baseball game at Baltimore between the Orioles and Cubans.

But Orioles center fielder Brady Anderson said Valdez’s body slam wasn’t as imposing as it looked.

“I thought he had a hard time with his takedown,” Anderson said. “He had the guy in good position. He just couldn’t get him turned over properly. When he got him down, he got off a few good shots, but not real solid shots like I would have wanted. Just glancing blows.”

Told that he sounded disappointed, Anderson deadpanned: “I wanted a little more violence. If a guy is going to come out and waste my time, I want him to get pummeled.”

Cubs’ line: 911

These days a shutout inning is practically the lead story in major league baseball.

So it was only a matter of time until a team like the Colorado Rockies had a game like last week’s against the Cubs, when their inning-by-inning line on the board at Wrigley Field looked like this:

111 121 222.

“It looked like three of those new area codes,” Rockies coach Rich Donnelly said.

It was just the third game in this century in which a team scored in all nine innings.

To join this exclusive club, the Rockies had to score two-out runs in five innings, including the ninth, when they rode a Mark Grace error to history.

“When we lose,” Grace announced proudly, “we don’t screw around.”

Then again, it took major pitching creativity to lose at Wrigley last week, with the Cubs and Rockies staging back-to-back 13-12 and 13-6 games.

“The only thing that surprised me about that game,” Donnelly said, “is that the Cubs didn’t score in every inning, too.”

They’ve had practice

To dramatize the disparity between rich teams and poor teams in major league baseball, several hundred fans heckled the New York Yankees in a recent game against the Royals at Kansas City, refused to watch the Yankees bat, and then stormed out of the ballpark after three innings.

The Royals started a Share-the-Wealth-Day lineup that will make $5,775,000 this year. And the Yankees brought six players who will make more than that by themselves.

Alas, the destitute Royals then helped unmake their point by clobbering the New York zillionaires, 13-6, as a plane flew overhead trailing this banner: “Share? OK. You can have Irabu.” Oh, well.

Asked later by the Kansas City Star’s Joe Posnanski about the walkout, Johnny Damon of the Royals quipped: “People have been walking out on us for years.”

The last word …

“New York is New York. That’s a keg of dynamite with nitroglycerin all around it and and a guy shooting bullets at it. I don’t know how you’d handle it out there.”

- Milwaukee Bucks coach George Karl after Knicks general manager Ernie Grunfeld was fired.