Sports Beat

How's this for a naked bootleg? After suiting up as quarterback for the Miami Fury of the Independent Women's Football League, Anita Marks briefly ditched her gear for a six-page spread in the September Playboy. The 5'6", 130-pounder threw for 11 touchdowns as the Fury went 6-0 this year, but after the team averaged barely 500 fans at their home games in the Orange Bowl, Marks decided it was time for some exposure. "A lot of people aren't aware of women's pro football," she says. "This was an opportunity to shed a positive light on females in sports." When she isn't serving up IDs or cheesecake, Marks, 32, is a freelance TV sports producer and cohosts a show as the Ultimate Sports Chick on Miami's Fox Sports radio. She's hoping to parlay her looks and experience into a job as an NFL analyst. "Football's like chess," says the unwed pinup. "Not to take anything away from Melissa Stark or Bonnie Bernstein, but do they know how to read a Cover 1? I do."

?The baseball labor agreement might have something no one has noted before: greasy fingerprints. In the afternoon of Aug. 28, 20 negotiators dug in at Bud Selig's Park Avenue office to try to beat the Aug. 30 strike date. At 9:30 p.m. they tucked in too. Baseball fan and celebrated restaurateur Danny Meyer, a friend of baseball senior V.P. Tim Brosnan, had his restaurant Blue Smoke deliver a manly array of baby back ribs, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, baked beans, key lime pie and banana cream pie. "It was a kind gesture," says Brosnan. "And it really hit the spot." After divvying up the pie, the negotiators did the same with their revenue.

?What was that about the agony of defeat? A few hours after dropping a U.S. Open quarterfinal match to Amelie Mauresmo last week, a boisterous Jennifer Capriati stripped down to her black silk bra on the crowded dance floor at Serafina, a Greenwich Village club. Capriati, who arrived with her Friends friend Matthew Perry, unabashedly flaunted her abs and even grabbed a mike and sang along to Nelly's Hot in Herre.

? Actor Russell Crowe and director Ron Howard, who teamed up on A Beautiful Mind are considering making a film called Cinderella Man, based on Depression-era boxer and folk hero James Braddock. The heavyweight lived in obscurity before a run of upset wins, including a title victory over Max Baer in 1935, gained him prominence. Ren�e Zellweger might get the call to play Braddock's wife.

?The recent legalization of same-sex marriages in Quebec had its first impact on the sports world when Nancy Drolet, 29, a veteran of Canada's women's hockey team, married longtime partner, Nathalie Allaire, in a civil ceremony last month. Drolet, a center, played on Canada's silver-medal squad in Nagano in 1998, and her overtime goals clinched the World Championships in '97 and 2000. With the marriage, Drolet became the first prominent Canadian female athlete to disclose her homosexuality.