BASEBALL MISCELLANY

The Cleveland Indians’ phone number for ordering advance tickets is 800 248-8888. It was seldom used before the team’s recent revival. Now, interest can be measured by the fact that in nearby Solon, Ohio, where Dr. David Radford has the same phone number except for a 216 prefix, he has had to hire an extra secretary. “I’ve been getting calls for tickets well into the night,” he said.

Numbers, going into Friday’s games:

--Pete Rose, 0 for April, was 3 for 18 in May, compounding a Cincinnati collapse that has now resulted in third baseman Buddy Bell’s getting glasses after being benched with a .164 average and one RBI, and Mario Soto yielding 10 home runs in 35 innings, prompting talk that he has lost the spice on his fastball.

--Atlanta left-hander Zane Smith, who averaged 5.3 strikeouts every nine innings in the minors and is now using improved breaking pitches to average 8.3, led the National League in midweek with 47 strikeouts. “I’m going to cut it out and frame it,” he said, reading the individual standings in the morning paper.

--Problems in Baltimore: Fred Lynn, who had 23 homers last season, had one this year. Mike Young, who had 28 last season, had none. Eddie Murray had driven in a run in only three Baltimore wins, collecting his total of 15 RBIs in just five of the Orioles’ 25 games.

--A San Francisco rotation of Scott Garrelts, Mike Krukow, Roger Mason and Mike LaCoss, expected to be the team’s Achilles’ heel, had produced 16 quality starts--three runs or fewer in six innings or more--in 20 opportunities.

--Kansas City’s Bret Saberhagen had pitched fewer than five innings three times in six starts after doing it only twice in 32 starts last season.