Sports Beat

Baseball hall of fame president Dale Petroskey blinked first in his spat with Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. The Hall canceled a screening of Bull Durham because of the antiwar views of the couple, who met on the set of the 1988 movie. "We didn't want people to espouse their views in a very public place," Petroskey said. After being criticized by people on both ends of the political spectrum who thought Robbins had a right to state his opinion, Petroskey admitted that he should have simply called the couple and asked them to keep politics out of the event. Had he done that, "I would have said, 'Relax, Dale, it's not gonna happen,' " says Robbins, who went on the Today show on Monday to discuss the controversy with Matt Lauer. "I have many friends who are athletes. I've never talked about politics with Mike Piazza or Robin Ventura or Mark Messier. I use sports as a respite from this stuff. The Bull Durham press junket in '89 was one of the very few junkets where I didn't say anything to the press about what was going on in the world."

?Mets catcher Mike Piazza, whose relationship with Playmate of the Millennium Darlene Bernaola ended three years ago, is back on Hugh Hefner's turf. The 34-year-old slugger is dating Alicia Rickter, 30, who was Playboy's Miss October 1995 before going on to a career that has included acting on Baywatch and modeling on The Price Is Right. The happy couple recently attended a bowling charity event sponsored by Piazza's teammate John Franco. The only potential hang-up: Piazza has Bernaola's name tattooed on his ankle.

?Olympic track star Marion Jones, 27, knows that the baby she and her boyfriend, 100-meter world-record holder Tim Montgomery, are expecting in July will slow her career, but it won't hold her back for long. Jones, who won five medals at the Sydney Games in 2000, will skip the 2003 outdoor track season—which will probably cost her at least $1 million in appearance fees and prize money—but she's planning to start training this fall for the 2004 Olympics in Athens....

Some fighters never learn. Sylvester Stallone, who cowrote and costarred with Dolly Parton in the 1984 song-and-dance flop Rhinestone (his performance earned him a worst-actor Razzie), wants to make Rocky into a Broadway musical. He's hired Thomas Meehan (The Producers and Hair-spray) to write the script. No word on whether there will be a number called Yo, Adrian....

The Wizards honored several members of the 1978 NBA championship Bullets team in a half-time ceremony on April 9. Included in that group was guard Tom Henderson, who retired in 1983 but is busier than ever, and not just at his job as an administrator at a youth-services agency. Henderson, 51, and his wife, Denolis, have taken in more than 60 foster children over the past 17 years. "I got into it because of my wife," says Henderson. "But I got so attached to the kids."

...The telegenic Lisa Guerrero is leaving Fox Sports Net's Best Damn Sports Show Period to pursue a career in acting....

The latest man to be linked romantically with Britney Spears is Phil Maloof, a 36-year-old teetotaler and former New Mexico state senator whose family owns the Sacramento Kings.