His Tier Was Enough to Make Him Cry

Acting Commissioner Bud Selig says baseball is now two-tiered, a claim supported by the recent player dumping by small-market teams.

Before concluding the owners were right, the San Diego Padres’ experience suggests a team can renounce small-market status, simply by changing owners. The Padres have gone from entertainment mogul Tom Werner, who cut the payroll to $14 million, to software magnate John Moores, who added $10 million to it, trading for Andujar Cedeno, Ken Caminiti and Steve Finley.

General Manager Randy Smith, nicknamed “Pinocchio” by a talk-show host last season, says he had to sneak around town until recently.

“It’s not like I’d go to a restaurant and leave my name,” he told the New York Times’ Tom Friend.

“I didn’t want to hear, ‘Randy Smith, table for two!’

“I mean, I walked off a plane one day and some guy says, ‘Hey, there’s Pinocchio. There’s the guy who traded all the players.’ ”

Nor was it easy on the players. Someone mentioned the recent trades by Montreal and Kansas City to Tony Gwynn.

Said Gwynn: “Been there.”

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Trivia time: How many times did Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell lead the NBA in blocked shots?

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Tier of their own: If anyone thinks the Clippers’ 16-victory season is disappointing, imagine what it might have been without hard-driving Coach Bill Fitch.

“You don’t see teams with their record play as hard or as unselfishly as they do,” San Antonio General Manager Gregg Popovich said.

“They could have quit but they haven’t. That’s a tribute to Bill.”

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New York Story: Pat Riley, whose Knicks just posted their fourth 50-win season in his four years, has been taking his licks in the New York press.

The NBA even took note in its weekly release: “Although each game is not more or less than one of 82 . . . a loss in a ‘Big Game’ is followed by hand-wringing and calls for lineup changes and even coaching changes.”

Says Riley: “Go back the last 22, 24, 26 years. The only person who could ever survive in this town as a coach was Red Holzman. . . . There has not been a coach that has stayed here more than four years since he left. . . . There hasn’t been a general manager that has stayed here more than four or five years.

“It’s what makes this whole thing put a hole in your stomach. To be honest with you, I can take it. And I might be one of the only ones who can.

“I think that’s what this town is all about. They test everybody. They want to see if you can take it.”

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Next NY Story: The Yankees’ newly acquired Jack McDowell, who had a history of prickly press relations in Chicago, is meeting the New York tabloids.

The issue: facial hair. George Steinbrenner bans beards and mustaches below lip level (Goose Gossage’s drooping Fu Manchu no longer would pass). McDowell has shaved the bottom off his goatee.

Said McDowell: “It doesn’t really have to be a story, does it? Let’s talk about the game.”

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Trivia answer: None. The league didn’t keep the statistic until 1973-74, the season Chamberlain after retired and four after Russell left.

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Quotebook: Former UCLA forward Kenny Heitz, decrying changes in the game: “Of course, it would have been nice to have a bald maniac hyping us on TV every night.”