Change of Scenery and Name Change?

Former UCLA first baseman Pat Dodson is bidding for a spot with the Boston Red Sox, but the field is crowded, so he’s looking for options.

He doesn’t want to go back to the minors, so he asked his agent to check out the possibility of playing in Japan.

If he does make it in Japan, Dodson said: “They’d probably call me Nissan.”

From Marty Noble of Newsday: “Detroit outfielder Billy Bean went to the wall the other day for a fly ball hit by Minnesota’s Kent Hrbek. He made the catch, but dropped the ball when he crashed into the wall, prompting this response from Manager Sparky Anderson: ‘You’ve got to hang onto the ball. We have doctors, we have plastic surgeons. But we can’t replace outs.’ ”

More from Noble: “Bo Jackson won a celebrity slam-dunk contest against Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway, Washington Redskins receiver Gary Clark and boxer Thomas Hearns.

“Jim Rice recently asked Jackson whether basketball might become another of his famed hobbies. ‘I can dunk all right,’ Jackson told Rice. ‘But I can’t dribble a lick. I don’t even like basketball. But that bobsled team kinda interests me.’ ”

Trivia Time: Outfielder Lonnie Smith, signed last week by Atlanta, holds what distinction among active players who have played in the World Series? (Answer below.)

Jack Clark has resigned himself to Billy Martin using him primarily as a designated hitter with the New York Yankees.

The only positions Clark is capable of playing--first base, left field and right field--are filled by Don Mattingly, Rickey Henderson and Dave Winfield.

“And I don’t expect them to put me out in center field, either,” Clark said. “I know if they run me out there, then Billy must have had a really bad night.”

From Herman Helms of the Columbia (S.C.) State newspaper, noting that a friend sent him a copy of the May 25, 1963, issue of Sporting News: “It emphasized that the more things change, the more they remain the same. The Dodgers were trying Maury Wills at third base, the fifth player to get a shot at hot corner duty that season.”

Relief pitcher Roger McDowell of the New York Mets told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that he majored in art at Bowling Green where he took Life Art I, Life Art II and Life Art III, which included sketching nudes.

“I took it all three years,” he said, “but I didn’t make many of the classes when they had guys posing. When they had girls, it was different. And the more advanced the class, the better looking the models got.

“The first year, they were kind of plump, like the ones you see in paintings by Van Gogh and Renoir. By the third year it got pretty good. We had Bo Dereks.

“It was kind of weird around campus. You’d see one of the models on campus and say, ‘Hey, I know you!’ But they looked different with clothes on.”

Trivia Answer: He has played for three different teams in the World Series--Philadelphia in 1980, St. Louis in 1982 and Kansas City in 1985. He is among 15 players who have performed the hat trick, but Smith, pitcher Joe Bush and catcher Wally Schang are the only ones to play on three winners. Bush and Schang both played for the 1913 Philadelphia A’s, 1918 Boston Red Sox and 1923 New York Yankees.

Quotebook

Bud Collins of the Boston Globe: “If Charles Darwin had been exposed to that curious Japanese species, the sumo wrestler, would he have proclaimed, ‘Survival of the fattest?’ ”