The Winner Will Drive a Yellow Car

Gentlemen, start your meters. . . . As part of the festivities scheduled for the Marlboro Grand Prix of New York, which will make its debut in June of 1993, organizers have announced plans for taxicab races.

There will be two events: The first will feature race cars painted as taxicabs, to be driven by celebrities and real cab drivers.

The second event will feature real cab drivers in their own vehicles.

In the organized race, taxi drivers will be bound by rules of the road, which will mean some adjusting for some cabbies.

Officials are nervous.

“There are obviously going to be insurance and image issues,” Rebecca Bowser, spokeswoman for the Taxi and Limousine Commission, told Newsday. “While we want to encourage the Grand Prix, we don’t want to encourage the image that cabbies are speeders.”

All events are scheduled to take place on a 1.14-mile course that circles the World Trade Center. It has seven turns--five left, two right--and a quarter-mile straightaway.

A race for New York bicycle messengers is also scheduled.

On race day, will New Yorkers notice anything unusual?

Trivia time: What was Danny Sullivan’s occupation before he became one of auto racing’s biggest celebrities?

Ring around the collar: Heavyweight George Foreman, who barely survived his bout with Alex Stewart on April 11, told Newsday writer Wallace Mathews he will probably retire if Evander Holyfield defeats Larry Holmes in June and does not offer Foreman a rematch.

This isn’t the kind of talk a man’s managers want to hear.

Promoter Bob Arum and Foreman adviser Ron Weathers want the boxer to fight Tommy Morrison in July if Holyfield beats Holmes.

Foreman, a preacher in his spare time, used a parable to describe the hyperventilations of Arum and Weathers.

“Every morning I get up, I cannot stop my wife from telling me what to do,” Foreman said. “She says, ‘George, get out of bed. George, take out the garbage. George, make breakfast.

“I just say, ‘Yes, dear. Yes, dear. Certainly, dear.’

“Then I just don’t do what she tells me. Works every time.”

Ouch: Tom FitzGerald of the San Francisco Chronicle passes along this quip from General Manager Pat Williams of the Orlando Magic: “Graduates of Florida State tape their diplomas to the windshields of their cars so they can take advantage of handicap parking.”

Add quips: FitzGerald quotes Oakland A’s slugger Jose Canseco on the electronic stimulation treatment he received recently for a bruised elbow.

“It’s electric shock therapy,” Canseco said. “I don’t know if it’s for my elbow or for me. I think they’re trying to slide something in.”

Can’t touch him: Jason Day, a freshman right-hander at Hudson Valley Community College in New York, will be seeking his third consecutive no-hitter Monday night against Broome Community College.

Daly is coming off a 5-0 perfect game and a 6-1 no-hitter. He has 18 strikeouts in 14 innings.

What’s the record for consecutive no-hitters in college? The NCAA doesn’t keep such information.

Trivia answer: Sullivan was a taxicab driver.

Quotebook: George Foreman’s wife, after surveying her husband’s broken nose, two swollen eyes and swollen jaw after his recent fight against Alex Stewart: “That’s it.”