Do you like love stories?

Try this one.

For Samuel Erby and Kelly Chapman, the scheduled first game of the Tigers-Indians series just might have been the best baseball game of the season, and it was rained out.

Erby, of Warrensville Heights, had excused himself for a moment, leaving Miss Chapman at the table in the Terrace Club of Jacobs Field.

A few minutes after he left, a Terrace Club staff member was at the table with a half-dozen red roses for Miss Chapman, along with a real baseball homeplate, on which was written, "Kelly, I love you." The University Heights woman was a bit stunned, but that moment was only a lead-in to Erby's returning to the table in Indians baseball shirt and cap, and carrying a ballbat.

Tribe gear were just props, but by this time, the diners in the room were concentrating their attention on the activities at the Erby-Chapman table, and burst into applause when the 32-year-old romantic asked his 29-year-old ladyfriend to marry him.

Kelly cried and said, "Yes," Samuel gulped and pulled out the engagement ring, cameras flashed all around and the couple, who met last November, were on their way to a wedding date scheduled for next November.

And nobody in the Terrace Club seemed to mind that the game was called because of rain. After all, most were filled not only with the fine food from Executive Chef Paul Taylor's kitchen, but with the warm feelings of love in the air.

(It should be mentioned that there may be a problem here: Samuel and Kelly are both baseball fans, but Kelly likes the Yankees!)

The Samuel Erby-Kelly Chapman drama was not the only event of the evening: outside, three boys decided to take a run across the playing field. This is frowned upon. Indians security personnel and Cleveland Police quickly hauled down, handcuffed, and hauled away the trio of fast-stepping teenagers. Other winners and losers:

In the Revco, Joseph Kimani, of Kenya, repeated as winner of the men's 10K and Maria Luisa Servin, of Mexico, won the women's 10K. Another Kenyan, Sammy Maritim won the men's marathon. In the long women's race, it looked as though Lyubov Klochko, from the Ukraine, would win her fourth Revco marathon (she was first in 1992, 1993, and 1994), but at the 24-mile mark, she suffered a leg cramp and lost what had been a 200-yard lead to Tatiana Pozdniakova, also from the Ukraine. Pozdniakova won the race, and, at 42, is the oldest winner of a Revco marathon.

It looks as though the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo has a winner in its "Wolf Wilderness" (opening May 9). There hasn't been a new exhibit at the zoo since Rainforest opened in 1992. This new one is a $2.5-million dollar project that covers two acres and features five gray wolves, beavers in a pool, fish and frogs, salamanders and turtles, quail and ducks, owls, ravens and bald eagles. There's a pond and a creek, trees, shrubs and wildflowers and an on-site "Trappers Lodge" that has observation points for visitors.

Oh, yes: a previous story on this Cleveland page referred to "Louie-the-Dip" and his activities at Euclid Beach Park, that piece of Cleveland's past that is now memory to many, and memory preserved in two books--"Euclid Beach Park is closed for the season," and "Euclid Beach Park--a second look"--available from AP Books publishers. (http://www.apbooks.com)

Louie "the Dip" Finklestein really liked Euclid Beach Park, so the story goes.

It was a good place for popcorn, and a great place for Louie's light touch on the wallets of visitors to Euclid Beach.

But, the park's famous popcorn turned out to be Louie's undoing.

The full story of Louie-the-Dip will be told here as the May 10 opening for amusement parks still in existence gets ever closer.

And, yes, Louie, for all his talent, has to be counted among the "losers" in this saga of winners and losers.

OTHER STORIES by John Herrington

RETURN TO Cleveland, The New American City