‘Yes, We Are the Clippers’--No False Advertising There

Proving that there is indeed a Tokyo equivalent of Madison Avenue, each Japanese major league team chose a slogan to epitomize how they would play this season. Here are a few, with English translations:

--Hanshin Tigers: “3F: Fresh, Fight, For the Team.”

--Hiroshima Toyo Carp: “Total Baseball to Forward Ever.”

--Yokohama BayStars: “Yes, We Are the BayStars.”

--Yakult Swallows: “Gumushara Yakyu.” (No translation).

It is believed that the Clippers are working on a similar slogan, for which there is also no translation.

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Trivia time: Who won the 1985 French Open?

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Brawl four: There was a major league brawl in a minor league game at Durham, N.C., this week. Umpires ejected 10 players from a Carolina League game between Winston-Salem and Durham. A record $6,000 in fines and 124 games of suspensions were levied. The incident took place on “Strike Out Domestic Violence” night.

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Star quality: Figure skating stars Nancy Kerrigan, Brian Boitano, Oksana Baiul, Viktor Petrenko and Elvis Stojko donated $125,000 to help build a day-care center in Oklahoma City to replace the one destroyed in last month’s bombing.

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Too late for a recall? Shed no tears for Chris Ford, fired as coach of the Boston Celtics with two years left on his contract. The Celtics owe Ford $1.6 million.

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Confection is rare: Malley’s Chocolates introduced a candy bar--a chocolate crunch bar--named after Cleveland Indian outfielder Albert Belle at a news conference this week. Belle didn’t show up. Maybe Belle wanted to strike out on his own.

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Like father. . . ? Peter McNeeley, 26, who fights Mike Tyson on Aug. 19, has a boxing pedigree. His father, Tom McNeeley, was floored eight times and knocked out in the fourth round by Floyd Patterson in a 1961 heavyweight title fight.

Ring Magazine commented 34 years ago: “McNeeley is the worst challenger Patterson has ever faced, and some of them have been pretty sorry specimens.”

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Pass the bank: Evander Holyfield contributed $250,000 to faith healer Benny Hinn’s crusade. That’s a lot of faith.

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It’ll drive you crazy: Olympic officials plan to close virtually every major street in downtown Atlanta to incoming private vehicles for 17 days during the Games. Major arteries into the city will be open only for buses and a limited number of authorized vehicles containing Olympic officials and VIPs from 7:30 a.m. until midnight.

Other than that, the streets will be normal. Thank you, and have a nice day.

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ThunderDumb: The ThunderDome that will house the Tampa Bay Devil Rays was finished five years ago and they won’t play Major League baseball there until 1998, but the stadium is deemed so far out of date already that $47 million in public funding has been set aside for alterations.

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Trivia answer: Mats Wilander and Chris Evert Lloyd.

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Quotebook: The Philadelphia Phillies’ Norm Charlton, who graduated from Rice in 1986 as a triple major--political science, religion, physical education: “If I can’t talk you out of it and I can’t preach you out of it, I’ll beat you out of it.”