OFF LIMITS

Out at home: Although they never actually pitched for opposing teams, Neil Macey, developer and one-time city irritant, and Tom Gleason, former spokesman for mayor Federico Pena and current deputy director of the baseball stadium district, weren't exactly sitting in the same dugout. Macey, working with Denver Zephyrs owner John Dikeou (remember him?), was instrumental in pushing the legislation that created the stadium authority; Gleason was one of the district's first hires. But by then, metro residents had voted to approve the August 1990 stadium financing strategy, Mickey Monus (remember him?) was the great hope for bringing a major-league team to town, and Macey had his hands full as self-appointed umpire for a game with a whole new set of ever-changing rules. Still, Macey says, he and Gleason always got along--and now we know why. It was that "South Side Chicago" thing.

The two didn't know they shared common turf, though, until the state baseball commission--a group that's been largely defunct since the 1990 vote--took a recent tour of Coors Field. Commissioner Macey brought along both his young son and his mother, who spent some time chatting with Gleason. Within minutes they'd whittled their shared geography from Illinois to Chicago to Halsted Street to Emerald Avenue--and then realized that four decades ago the two families lived directly across the street from each other.

After that, Macey's mother hauled out the home movies. Sure enough, at young Neil's sixth birthday party, there was Tom Gleason, age four, mugging for the camera with his older brother. She sent a copy to Gleason who, once he recovered from the ignominy of being caught on camera actually socializing with Macey, says the best part was seeing early footage of his mother, who died just last year.

These days Macey is "concentrating on nonpolitical things," he says. "It's a pleasure." As for his old nemesis Monus, the former Phar-Mor president's federal trial on 126 counts of fraud ended in a deadlocked jury last month. Eleven of the jurors were reportedly ready to convict; after one alleged that the sole holdout had been bribed, the government ordered an investigation of possible jury tampering. Play ball!

Will bill hours for food: We'll be brief--unlike the private attorneys hired by the City of Denver to pursue the Department of Public Works beef with Channel 9. In its efforts to force KUSA-TV to surrender the unedited tapes of Paula Woodward's May series on loafing wastewater-division employees, last month the firm of Musgrave & Theis billed the city $11,982.30. In the process, taxpayers funded such niceties as lawyer Larry Theis reviewing an article in Colorado Lawyer by Channel 9 attorney Andy Low and another firm attorney considering the "ripeness" of the case. And that tab takes us only through May 13--just ten days after the city attorney's office decided it didn't want to handle the matter on its own and cut Musgrave & Theis in on the action, and a full month before the two sides met in Judge Ray Satter's Denver County Courtroom on June 17...for a hearing that was continued until August.

Naturally, the bills will continue, too; educated guesses have them topping $100,000.