Sports Frog

• The new Yankee Stadium may be cursed!

A devilish Boston fan working on a concrete crew at the $1.3 billion stadium covertly buried a Red Sox T-shirt under what will become the visiting team's locker room to jinx the Yanks, two construction workers told The Post yesterday.

Next week when the Boston fan vanishes from the face of the earth, he will also be buried in some concrete.

• Looks like Billy Beane finally lost a game of chicken. I can only imagine he was holding on to Rich Harden to get maximum value for him sometime in July, provided Harden could stay healthy until then.

For the sixth time in less than four seasons Athletics starting pitcher Rich Harden has landed on the disabled list. Oakland placed the hard-throwing right-hander on the 15-day DL retroactive to April 3 with a mild subscapularis strain in his right shoulder.

That's a muscle used to move the rotator cuff. Paging Dr. Jobe. Dr. Frank Jobe.

• Here's a nice piece about Fred "Crime Dog" McGriff. Here are additional players that where hurt by the strike of 1994:

Fred McGriff. The strike interrupted his best season and he lost the seven home runs he needed to reach 500.

Matt Williams and Ken Griffey, Jr. Both Williams with 43 home runs and Griffey with 40 had a chance to reach 61 four years before McGwire.

Harold Baines. Baines gets a special mention because he lost time to both the 1981 and 1994 strikes. If we include the shortened 1995 season, Baines' teams cancelled a total of 114 games. Baines finished his career 134 hits short of 3,000; there's an outside chance he would have reached that milestone without the stoppages.

Tony Gwynn. Gwynn's .394 average - the highest since Ted Williams' .406 in 1941 - fails to receive much credit due to the shortened 1994 season. Maybe Gwynn hits .400 in a full schedule, maybe he doesn't. The effort would be more memorable had we found out.

Barry Bonds. (Like we really care at this point) If Barry Bonds doesn't play again he'll finish 65 hits short of 3,000. The 65 games he lost in 1994 and 1995 might have made the difference.

Randy Johnson. Let's wait and see if he falls short of 300 wins. He lost at least a dozen starts due to the strike.

The Cleveland Indians. The long-suffering Indians were one game behind Chicago when the strike ended their best season (in terms of winning percentage) since 1955.

The Montreal Expos. At least the Indians rebounded and rolled out five straight division titles after the strike. The Expos never seemed to recover, failing to make the playoffs for the remainder of their history in Montreal.

• Something wicked brewing in St. Pete? On Monday night, during the Tampa Bay Rays' home opener, Matt Garza pulled himself from the game in the 3rd inning with an injury to the radial nerve in this throwing arm. Following the game, Garza was placed on the 15-day DL. He will rest the arm for two weeks and then be reevaluated. He will be out a minimum of four weeks.

According to Garza, this is a problem that he has experienced since his time with the Minnesota Twins.

Garza said it surfaced late last season, with him typically "pitching through it." But after his hand started going numb, forcing him to lose grip on his pitches, he signaled to the dugout for help..."This time it was just real bad," Garza said. "I knew something was up."

• Three days after winning the NCAA championship, Kansas coach Bill Self said no thanks to Oklahoma State, his alma mater, and agreed to a lucrative contract extension that could keep him at Kansas for the rest of his career.

Good for Self for not dragging this out, but let's see if the last four words of the above paragraph really do come true. I have a twenty that says, nyet.

• The Indians, facing the possible loss of left-hander C.C. Sabathia as a free agent after the season, are set to lock up their next potential ace long-term.

Right-hander Fausto Carmona, continuing the wave of young players signing multi-year deals, has agreed to a four-year, $15 million contract.

The deal includes three option years that could push the total value of the package to $47.25 million. The option years would cover Carmona's final year of arbitration and first two years of free agency.

This is what makes Cleveland different from most small-medium market teams. Instead of waiting around for the revenue sharing check ala, the Marlins or Twins, they are proactive with their own players. Would a deal like this have worked with Johan Santana three years ago?

Who knows, I can't ever recall it being offered.

• Baseball players and owners plan to turn most of the authority over testing for performance-enhancing drugs to the program's independent administrator while keeping oversight over drugs of abuse with a joint union-management body.

The sides established a third-party administrator when they amended their drug plan for the second time in November 2005, and they split authority between the administrator and baseball's Health Policy Advisory Committee, which has two members from each side.

I consider myself an educated man, but I cannot understand those two paragraphs. I do not think most players will be able understand it either.

Here's an idea. Publish a fucking list of shit not to take. I want a complete list too. I don't want to see someone suspended for taking asthma medication. I want it to be clear and simple so I don't have to call my father, who's a pharmacist, to get an understanding of the compound of a specific prescription medication that has now cost a guy on my fantasy team a suspension.

• After careful consideration George Steinbrenner decided that neither of his son's are very capable. Or he is finally teaching them how to share their toys.

Hal and Hank Steinbrenner were made co-chairpersons of the New York Yankees on Thursday by their father, owner George Steinbrenner.

George Steinbrenner, who has controlled the team since 1973, is chairperson, essentially the same as his previous title of chairman. The sons took over supervision of the team's daily operations last year.

• Finally, there is some golf thing going on. It is being held at a place that has historically discriminated against Jews, African-Americans, Women and guys that say the greens have been bikini-waxed. And people are protesting the Olympics.