OFFBEAT : HERE'S BOOMING SPORT IN BACKWATER COLOMBIA.

It's a uniquely Colombian game - you hurl a metal disc at little packets of gunpowder and pray for a deafening explosion. Have a case of beer on hand, since the loser always pays.

The sport is ``tejo,'' a centuries-old pastime with players across Colombia, from the sweltering Amazon jungles in the south to the dry plains that border the Caribbean coast.

It's hugely popular among peasants. Parts of rural Colombia are sprinkled with signs beckoning passers by to roadside dirt strips for a round of tejo, along with beer or aguardiente, the local firewater.

Alcohol-free tournaments are played in special coliseums. Even U.S. Ambassador Myles Frechette plans to install a tejo strip on the spacious grounds of his home in Bogota.

``Everybody here plays,'' says Mayor Jose Antonio Moreno of Turmeque, a town north of Bogota where the game took root even before Spanish explorers arrived in the sixteenth century.

``It's a way to distract yourself instead of sitting in a bar drinking beer. Granted, they do drink a lot while they play.''

The idea is similar to horseshoes - hit a target with an object. In tejo, named after the two- or three-pound throwing disc, players aim with underarm lobs at four pink, triangular packets of gunpowder embedded in the center of a platform of clay.

Tejo II: Largely confined to the working classes, tejo was once a game of Indian royalty who played with gold discs. Spanish colonizers, naturally, stole the gold discs and replaced them with iron ones. It is also believed that they introduced the gunpowder charge as a target.

Local lore tells of an Indian chief who wanted to become Roman Catholic. To conform, he made his seven wives play tejo and abandoned all but the winner.

Despite the booze, flying metal and explosions, fans say fights and injuries are rare.

Rip of the week: Tennis player Pam Shriver has become so slow that The Telegraph of London's Martin Johnson wrote that ``she was in danger of being removed by security as an unattended package.''

He knows squat: Catcher Josh Paul, the White Sox's No. 2 pick in the June draft, said he's a fan of former catcher Carlton Fisk: ``I've been a huge Sox fan since 1981. It'll be an honor to me to squat in his footsteps.''

Faces and sox are red: London-based Virgin Airlines sells T-shirts for each of the cities to which it flies. On the back of the Boston T-shirt is an old black-and-white baseball photo with superimposed red socks. Oops, the photo is of ex-Yankees great Joe DiMaggio, who never played for the Red Sox (his brother Dom did).

Runner-up rip of the week: ``There are certain things that only happen to the Red Sox. For instance, only the Sox could have their official 1996 magnetic calendar/schedule sponsored by ValuJet.'' - Dan Shaughnessy, Boston Globe.

Strung along: Babolat, the tennis string company, is taking no chances with Britain's ``Mad Cow Disease.'' Despite Prime Minister John Major's claim that there is nothing wrong with British beef, Babolat is using approximately five miles of cow gut for Wimbledon players - all from French cows.

Another tradition gone: After a woman was conked in the head by a bag of peanuts at Jacobs Field, Sportservice, the official concessionaire of the Cleveland Indians, prohibited vendors from tossing bags of nuts in the stands. The woman had a contact lens dislodged by the errant toss and had to leave the game. Vendor Dan Kudroff says his business is off by 50 percent since he stopped tossing.

Another roost ruckus: Baltimore Ravens owner Art Modell has lashed out at what he called ``unnamed sources'' for criticizing the design of the proposed $200 million, state-funded stadium.

``What is wrong with this stadium? I defy anybody to come forward and tell me. If it's valid, we'll change it,'' Modell said.

Several city Architectural Review Board members and other officials have complained the current design is unimaginative and are pressing for changes and possible delays of up to a year.

Critics complain the current design does not equal that of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which opened to rave reviews and sellout crowds.

Although the site for the proposed football stadium is adjacent to the baseball stadium, it is also next to major highways that bring traffic into the city.