Sports Beat

The last time a horse won the Triple Crown, Bill Murray was a
long way from New York's Belmont Park--way up in the woods of
Ontario, in fact, filming the summer-camp comedy Meatballs. Last
Saturday he was among the record crowd of 120,139 who crammed the
track to cheer on Smarty Jones in the Belmont Stakes. Shortly
before the big race, Murray mingled in the paddock with the
family and friends of Smarty's sizable entourage, posing for
pictures with everyone who asked. When asked whom he was rooting
for, Murray declared, "Oh, I'm for Smarty Jones. Aren't you? You
wanna fight?" Murray--who watched the race in a box with Penny
Chenery, who owned Secretariat--took Smarty's loss hard, staring
in stunned silence across the track after the race.

--Retired tennis temptress Anna Kournikova was able to keep her
first marriage, to NHL hockey star Sergei Fedorov, a
secret--perhaps because she didn't go around wearing a six-carat
$5.4 million pink diamond. (The pair were briefly married in
2001.) But a bauble of that description was given to Kournikova,
23, by her boyfriend, crooner Enrique Iglesias, 29, in May, and
it recently caught the eye of a fan who offered his
congratulations to the couple on their engagement. Iglesias
(above, with Kournikova) responded by saying, "That is old news.
We were married five weeks ago." A rep for Kournikova denied the
story, and now the winless wonder is also denying speculation
that she's pregnant, which began after she was seen having her
stomach rubbed by a friend at a Los Angeles mall.

--No one is denying this engagement: ESPN hockey analyst and
18-year NHL veteran Ray Ferraro and U.S. national team captain
Cammi Granato will wed in the fall. Ferraro popped the question
during the Women's World Championships in Nova Scotia in April.
The couple plans to ice the deal during a ceremony on Sept. 4.

--Comerica Park's singing hot dog vendor, Charley Marcuse, has
been told to pipe down by Sport Service, the company that handles
concessions at the Detroit stadium. In 1999 Marcuse worked a
Three Tenors concert, which inspired him to operatically offer
his franks, and he's been singing ever since. But some fans
recently complained, so the company told him not to warble while
he worked. (Marcuse, 22, had no comment on the situation.) But
just as when Cracker Jack was banned from Yankee Stadium (page
20), fans opposed to the move have spoken out and, in this case,
posted their grievances on a website. A petition at
singinghotdogman.com states, "We believe in baseball. We believe
in mustard on hot dogs. We believe in mom and apple pie. And we
believe Charley the hot dog man should be allowed to sing at
Comerica Park."

--If he wasn't a fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm before, Juan Catalan
certainly is now. The 26-year-old Los Angeles man was arrested
last year on suspicion of murder. Catalan, who faced the death
penalty, claimed he was at a Dodgers-Braves game on the evening
of May 12, 2003, when the shooting took place 20 miles away. He
had ticket stubs but no irrefutable proof that he had actually
attended the game. Then in January, Catalan's lawyer discovered
that on the same evening, Larry David had shot scenes at the
ballpark for an episode of Curb. The case was dismissed, after
Catalan had spent 5 1/2 months in jail, when the judge
acknowledged unused footage showed the alleged perpetrator in the
crowd. David told The New Yorker, "I tell people that I've now
done one decent thing in my life, albeit inadvertently."

COLOR PHOTO: ROBERT LABERGE/GETTY IMAGES (PICTURE THIS) PICTURE THIS Hope sprang eternal last Saturday in Nashville at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships. But after getting off to a flying start in the compulsory round of the men's synchronized trampoline competition, Derrick Aldrich (left) and Peter Dodd (right) bounced back to earth and finished third. Ryan Weston and Chris Estrada had their ups and downs but won.

COLOR PHOTO: BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS (LAKERS)

COLOR PHOTO: THEO WARGO/WIREIMAGE.COM (KOURNIKOVA/IGLESIAS)

THIS WEEK'S SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE
Don King has joined the George W. Bush campaign.

THEY SAID IT DOC RIVERS
ABC commentator, on Los Angeles's eventful season: "The Lakers
should play their games at three o'clock with the other soap
operas."