President Reagan Strikes Again

Before Monday’s opener at Baltimore, President Reagan threw out the first ball to Oriole catcher Rick Dempsey.

The first one was a wild pitch, so Reagan tried again. This time, he delivered a strike.

“The first throw, he said he was afraid he would hit one of the reporters,” Dempsey told Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post. “I said, ‘Go ahead. That’s no loss.’ He doesn’t look at it that way. He needs all the votes.”

Dempsey said he got a chance to talk to Reagan.

“I told him, ‘If I was hitting ninth instead of eighth, we’d have more time to talk about Kadafi,’ ” Dempsey said. “He said something about Kadafi I can’t repeat. If I repeated it, I’d have to have Secret Service protection.”

Add Reagan: Wrote Boswell: “The last time Reagan sat on the Orioles’ opening-day bench in ‘84, he made footnote-to-history news by ordering $8 worth of hot dogs from a vendor, then paying him with a $5 bill.”

Trivia Time: What do Ron Darling of the New York Mets, Kenny Hill of the New York Giants and Gary Fencik of the Chicago Bears have in common? (Answer below.)

Add Darling: Claiming he’s judged in a different light than Dwight Gooden, he said: “If I throw a particular pitch in a certain situation, you hear, ‘How could he make that pitch?’ If Dwight throws it, no one questions it. Of course, if he does throw it, he probably throws it past the guy.”

From Blackie Sherrod of the Dallas Morning News, recalling the 1979 NCAA Mideast Regional basketball tournament: “Michigan State’s Magic Johnson had an early shot blocked by LSU’s Lionel Green, who told Johnson, ‘Don’t bring that (bleep) in here ‘cause I be smacking it back.’ To which Magic said, ‘Well, you can smack and smack and smack, but I’ll be back and back and back.’ ”

Michigan State won, 87-71.

From Pia Zadora, after she had bought a piece of the Portland Beavers of the Pacific Coast League: “I play baseball in Malibu. Once I hit the ball all the way to the backyard of my neighbor Neil Diamond.”

Don’t look for it on Diamond Vision.

21 Years Ago Today: On April 9, 1965, the Houston Astrodome was opened with an exhibition game between the New York Yankees and Houston Astros. President Lyndon Johnson attended and Texas Gov. John Connally threw out the first ball. Mickey Mantle hit the first home run, but the Astros won, 2-1, in 12 innings.

When they talk about basketball’s great minds, you’re not likely to hear the name of K.C. Jones, but former University of San Francisco teammate Bill Russell told the Dallas Morning News: “To this day I’ve never had a conversation with anyone that had a clearer understanding of winning than K.C. Other people taught me how to play. K.C. taught me how to win.”

Texas Ranger catcher Darrell Porter, on players who argue that drug testing violates their civil rights: “What rights? We’re no different from anybody else. You hear guys crying about the invasion of their privacy and their rights, and to me it’s a lot of noise. We’ve got to become responsible for what we do. We’ve got to quit worrying so much about our own rights and start doing what’s really right for everyone else.”

Trivia Answer: All played defensive back at Yale. Quotebook

Bernie Lincicome of the Chicago Tribune, commenting on heavyweight boxer Larry Holmes calling himself the people’s champion: “If he’s the people’s champion, asparagus is the people’s vegetable.”