DiMag Gets Double in Autograph Game

There is a baseball bearing the autographs of President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. It belongs to Joe DiMaggio.

The Yankee Clipper, who has signed plenty of baseballs in his life, was invited to the White House for last year’s superpower summit.

“I was a witness to history,” DiMaggio, 73, told the New York Times. “In my life, that’s the only time I ever asked anybody to sign a baseball.

“Reagan’s signature is very precise and readable. Gorbachev signed it the way a doctor writes a prescription.”

Add DiMaggio: He said he has only one regret as an autograph collector.

“I would have liked Babe Ruth’s,” he said.

Trivia time: Who wears No. 33 with the Denver Broncos? (Answer below.)

Tennis has a problem that no one has ever seriously addressed: What do you do with the second ball?

The answers have been varied at the current French Open.

Most of the men’s players, such as top-seeded Ivan Lendl, keep the second-serve ball in a pocket of their shorts. Others hold it in their free hand, as does the women’s top-seeded player, Steffi Graf.

Martina Navratilova, eliminated from the women’s field last weekend, uses just one tennis ball at a time, having the second tossed to her if she needs a second serve.

Arantxa Sanchez, the 16-year-old Spaniard who upset Chris Evert, may be the forerunner in the technological wave of the future. She carries the spare ball in a plastic bracket on the back of a red belt.

John McEnroe had another answer. He used to hit the extras at the line judges.

Trivia answer: Good question.

Running back Gene Lang currently has it, but Tony Dorsett also has worn it for the Dallas Cowboys and has asked to keep it if he is traded to the Broncos.

Lang says sure. For a price.

“I’m not a rookie,” Lang said. “I didn’t just get here. Everything has its price. Everyone can be bought. Even me.”

Think your confidence is low? Listen to pro golfer Craig Stadler, who still has the bushy mustache and bulky build but not the game that made him famous as the Walrus.

Stadler, competing in the $800,000 Kemper Open at Potomac, Md., this week, won the most money on the PGA Tour in 1982 but is searching for his first victory on the circuit since ’84.

“Things just haven’t fallen into place for me,” Stadler said. “I’d put myself at 4-1 to be a contender, but 99-1 to win. But I had Risen Star in the Preakness at 8 to 1, so I can’t complain.”

Quotebook

Former stripper Morganna Roberts, the Kissing Bandit, warned in Baltimore’s Eastside District Court that it might cost her a $100 fine, maximum, if she trespassed onto the playing field again: “So if I go kiss the whole team next time, it will be worth it.”