An Exercise In Scammin’

For all you closet triathletes who believe you could be the sport’s next superstar if you had the time to train, take heart.

Longtime triathlete Scott Tinsley, writing for Asimba Magazine, has some suggestions for day jobs that offer maximum training time.

“1. Trust-Funder: Train all day, race on the weekends, pick up your check every other Friday.

“2. Early Retiree: Take the pension at 50 and reduce your overhead. (Same as Trust-Funder only with less mileage.) “3. Part-Time Student: Mooch off your parents as long as possible. Take one class to keep them guessing.

“4. Firefighter: Lots of time off. Kind of like working at a frat house if you get the right station.

“5. Navy SEAL: No need to work out on your days off. The whole job is a race of some type.

“6. Lottery Winner: Hardest part is deciding who your `real’ friends are.

“7. Pro Surfer: Well, duh!

“8. Novelist/Screenwriter: No need to really sell anything. You are always `dangerously close’ to hitting it big. Sleeping in your car makes you tough.

“9. Game Show Competitor.”

It’s Greek to them

The Greeks have a lot to learn about baseball before the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. How much? Well, an Olympic reporter from Athens recently asked Games organizers where they were building the “baseball courts.”

Wrong-way Yoshii

Colorado Rockies pitcher Masato Yoshii homered in a 2-1 loss to Pittsburgh. “He hit it, but he didn’t know what he did,” Colorado coach Rich Donnelly told ESPN.com.

“He ran to second. Then he ran halfway to the mound, because he thought he was out. Then they told him, no, the ball was out. So he went back to second and finished his trot.

“It was the worst home-run trot in the history of baseball.”

Getting skinned

Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder plans to charge $10 admission and $10 parking for practice sessions at training camp.

Jim Armstrong of the Denver Post says the Redskins’ pay-per-view camp “really isn’t such a bad deal. Any fan who shows up will receive a free instructional video on how to get a life.”

Is that clucking we hear?

Golfer Harrison Frazar, on playing with Tiger Woods: “He makes you feel like a chicken for laying up.”

The last word …

“I used to be big. Now I go round the locker room and I look like a little pipsqueak.”

- Martina Navratilova after her first Grand Slam match for six years.