Now Only the Team Is Second Class

The most upbeat thing to happen to the San Diego Padres in recent memory is the opening of their new training camp in Peoria, Ariz., a 145-acre site they will share this spring with the Seattle Mariners. The cozy, earth-toned stadium will accommodate 10,000 fans, with ticket prices ranging from $4 to $15. For $7, you can buy a seat in some shade with your own misting system to keep cool; for $15, concession waiters will serve you.

“It’s just nice to have something that’s first class,” Padre President Dick Freeman told Kevin Kernan of the San Diego Union, who added that Freeman is well aware that first class and Padres are not usually used in the same sentence.

Trivia time: Who is the all-time leading money winner on the PGA Tour?

Mere peanuts: So what’s an extra week worth for major league players in the playoffs? Next October, it’s about $37,000 each. That’s the average projected share from the players’ pool for the new first round.

Writes Phil Rogers of the Dallas Morning News: “That may sound like a lot of money, but it’s a pay cut for most players. The average player made about $43,000 a week during the 1993 season. Ryne Sandberg, baseball’s highest-paid player last season, drew $245,354.37 a week for each of the 26 weeks.”

Wait a minute: Since the Albertville Games in 1992, the International Olympic Committee has tried to tighten qualifications for participation in the Winter Olympics, specifically limiting the field, to, well, athletes.

Marc Hodler, an IOC member and president of the International Ski Federation, said that in the ’92 men’s Alpine events, a South American country entered an athlete who had never skied before. Hodler was hardly consoled when organizers were assured that the racer would spend a few days in ski school before the race.

Add Olympic crackdown: A European official recalled a case of a particularly inept bobsled team at Albertville: “The bob was at a standstill, and they asked one of the starting officials for a push--a gentle one because they didn’t want to go too fast.”

Enough already: After the Buffalo Bills lost the Super Bowl on Sunday, Jim Wright dived into the icy Monongahela River in Fredericktown, Pa., to settle a bet with a friend.

It was the second consecutive year that Wright, 37, had bet on the Bills and ended up in the river, about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh. Last year, he came down with pneumonia.

“If Buffalo makes it next year, I’m not going in,” a dripping wet Wright said after scrambling out of the 36-degree water. “No more Buffalo. Two years in a row Buffalo let me down.”

Brought up right: Scott Fowler of the Miami Herald, commenting on the good manners of Heat player Harold Miner: “After Miner accidentally collided with a table containing at least 100 cups of Gatorade during an October practice, he grabbed a towel and started feverishly wiping.”

Add heat: Fowler also explored the ever-changing hairstyles of Matt Geiger: “In order, clean-cut frat boy; bald with Fu Manchu mustache; New Year’s celebrator with ’94 shaved in; back to bald, semi-normal growth, and the now-infamous Mohawk.”

Explained Geiger: “I’ve never had great hair to begin with. So I decided I should just start doing some crazy things with it. It puts me in a good mood when I look in the mirror. I think I look sort of tough. And you only live once, anyway.”

Trivia answer: Tom Kite, with more than $8 million in earnings.

Quotebook: Miami Heat forward Willie Burton, after he ordered a pizza from the bench, while sidelined with an injury, and sat there eating it during a game: “What’s the big deal? I was hungry, man. It’s not like I committed a crime.”