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Times Staff Writer

Rundgren produces ballplayers

The saying that rock stars want to be professional athletes and pro athletes want to be rock stars takes on particular resonance in a famous household.

In this case, the middle-aged dad is the rocker and the sons are the athletes.

Meet the Rundgrens.

Rex Rundgren, the son of music visionary Todd Rundgren, plays shortstop for the Las Vegas 51s, and his younger brother Randy was a 2004 draftee of the Kansas City Royals.

“I never really got into music,” Rex Rundgren told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “I didn’t really like it when I was younger, but now I have more respect for music. I like it a lot and wish I could play.”

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Dad does have another link to baseball utopia. The 51s often play Rundgren’s song, “Bang the Drum All Day.”

That song has burrowed its way into sports arena and ballpark musicology. And it doesn’t deface the music like “Macarena.”

Trivia time

Who was the first woman to ride in a parimutuel horse race in the United States?

Shock jock

Who took a shot at J.R.?

You had to feel for the San Jose Sharks’ public relations department.

Fresh of a victory in first-round series against the Flames, it quickly put together a conference call Thursday morning with Jeremy Roenick, the hero of Game 7 with his four-point night.

A couple of questions were asked before the call was hijacked and ultimately kidnapped by an increasingly bizarre line of questioning from a couple of radio shock jocks.

Before that, Roenick spoke about how he handled being benched for Game 6, dealing with it maturely. How would the old J.R. have dealt with such a demotion?

“Probably a lot of broken items in the locker room,” Roenick said.

Commercial appeal

File this one in the fast-growing give-me-a-break file.

Ed Price of the Newark Star-Ledger, on a trip to Chicago for a White Sox game, noted the absurdity of the capital-letters warning on the way out to the visitors’ clubhouse:

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NO BOTTLED WATER ON THE BENCH.

This, of course, has to do with a certain other drink that happens to be the official sports beverage of Major League Baseball.

Offenders, Price noted, would cause officials to have to get rid of all bottled water from the clubhouse. Either that, or play the “Macarena” on an endless loop.

Unhappy camper

Barcelona soccer fan and two-time French Open champion Sergi Bruguera was not a happy camper at a seniors’ tennis event in Barcelona, Spain, mainly because of events at Camp Nou on Wednesday:

“Manchester United were terrible and yet the score still finished 0-0. . . . They were one of the worst teams I have seen in the Nou Camp this year,” said Bruguera to reporters.

Trivia answer

Diane Crump in 1969. She made more history a year later by becoming the first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby, finishing 15th on Fathom.

And finally

Light-heavyweight Clinton Woods, dispelling a notion about the flash of all boxers, to reporters: “I’m not into all this fame stuff. I’d rather do my gardening than drive fast cars. I’ve just got my first sponsored car in 14 years. My first one was a Fiat Punto and my mate used it to do his pizza deliveries in.”

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lisa.dillman@latimes.com

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