The Cubs will use "local" celebrities -- including police officers and teachers -- to sing "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" during the seventh-inning stretch at Wrigley Field this season, according to Warren & Armour of the CHICAGO TRIBUNE. It's the Cubs "way of answering critics who complained that what started as a touching tribute to [Harry Caray] soon turned into a forum for celebrities to push a product, movie or TV show." Cubs Manager of Entertainment and Special Projects Mary Therese Kraft said there will be guidelines: "You can't give a live mike to just any fan. Cubs games are televised all over the world. You could be asking for trouble" (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 1/10). HEAD SCRATCHER: In Boston, Mark Cofman writes, "In what is certain to go down in history as one of the more peculiar Celtics promotions, anyone who shows up at the FleetCenter with a shaved head" before tonight's game against the Grizzlies will be admitted free. Any fan "willing to have his/her head shaved gets a free ticket." Celtics C Vitaly Potapenko, whose shaved head is known as the "Ukrainian cranium," will be an honorary barber (BOSTON HERALD, 1/10). A SMASHING SUCCESS? Aided by a promotion featuring Rena Mero, aka former wrestler Sable, as an assistant coach, an announced crowd of 5,213 watched the NLL's Syracuse Smash lose their home opener 16-6 on Saturday to the Rochester Knighthawks. Team GM Howard Dolgon called the attendance "our best crowd yet." But in Syracuse, Dave Rahme noted the game's outcome and wrote, "If the team hoped to win over fans who entered the building primarily to get a glimpse of Mero, Playboy magazine centerfold and budding actress, this was no way to do it" (HERALD-JOURNAL, 1/9).
