Irish Fan Needs to Buy a Consonant

Dan O’Connor is fighing mad, and you can’t blame him.

The Notre Dame fan went to a tattoo parlor in August for a permanent symbol of his allegiance to the school’s Fighting Irish--a $125 drawing of the university’s leprechaun mascot.

But when O’Connor took the bandages off his upper arm, the inscription read: “Fighing Irish.”

Said O’Connor: “I can’t just live with this. You’re not talking about a dented car where you can get another one, you’re talking about flesh.”

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Add tattoo: O’Connor has sued the Tattoo Shoppe in Carlstadt, N.J., seeking unspecified damages. He said he was humiliated by the typo. His friends call him “Fighing.” Even his girlfriend makes fun of the missing T.

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Trivia time: Who holds the record for most home runs in the World Series?

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Weather-beaten: John Crumpacker in the San Francisco Examiner: “Everybody wants a new stadium, even teams that play in new stadiums.

“Seahawk President David Behring called the Kingdome ‘this dilapidated place.’ The Kingdome is only 20 years old. Dilapidation occurs quickly in the moldy climate up there.”

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Color scream: Hakeem Olajuwon has mixed feelings about the Houston Rockets’ new blue, silver and red pin-stripe uniforms and a new logo, a blue rocket blasting off.

“I like them,” Olajuwon said. “But we look like an expansion team.”

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Never too old: Dallas Maverick Coach Dick Motta is 64, but he says he’s young at heart: “I see with young eyes. I see a beautiful 32-year-old woman and I wonder why she’s not in love with me.”

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Student athlete: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, son of the famed UCLA and Laker player, is a 6-foot-6 sophomore at Valparaiso University in Indiana, who had a 3.82 grade-point average his first year.

“If I quit basketball tomorrow, he’d probably ask me why,” said the younger Kareem of his father. “But he wouldn’t yell at me. He wouldn’t really care. If I told him I didn’t know if I was going to get my degree or not, that’s when he’d flip out.”

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Senor Octubre : Roberto Clemente played in 14 World Series games and hit in every one.

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Looking back: On this day in 1984, Iowa’s Chuck Long completed 22 consecutive passes to set an NCAA record in a 24-20 victory over Indiana.

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Trivia answer: Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees, with 18 in 12 World Series.

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Quotebook: Paul Assenmacher, Cleveland Indian relief pitcher, on how he stays in shape in the off-season: “I lay around the couch with the clicker in my hand and watch sports.”