As the foul ball sailed toward them...

As the foul ball sailed toward them in Dodger Stadium, Larry Barbee felt his father start to duck and he did the same. The next thing Larry felt was the ball wedged in his armpit.

Larry, 24, is blind with retinitis pigmentosa.

“It just stuck there--isn’t that unreal?” said his mother, Donna. “He was so happy.”

Larry’s uncle, Gary Barbee, who is the stadium’s manager of ticketing, plans to have the ball autographed tonight by the player who hit it, Cubs catcher Mark Grace.

Larry had to overcome one other challenge to keep his souvenir.

“After he caught it some man tried to grab it,” Donna Barbee said. “But Larry realized what he had and held on to it.”

A royal nose job? Responding to gossip in European magazines that Britain’s Princess Diana is considering an anatomical adjustment, Dr. Stephen Pincus of Marina del Rey displayed computerized photos Tuesday to show how he could bring her nose “into harmony with the rest of her royal countenance.”

Namely, a little shortening here, some thinning there and a general straightening of the princess’ proboscis.

Pincus is sending his photos to the royal couple.

Kensington Palace, meanwhile, is keeping a stiff upper lip.

“A lien Nation,” a new television series set in 1995 L.A., will follow the exploits of two cops--one human, one extraterrestrial.

In some ways, not much has changed.

“Metro Rail will still be under construction, Mayor Bradley will still be mayor, and in one scene we’ll have a detective stuck in traffic for two hours,” said Ken Johnson, producer of the Fox Broadcasting show, adapted from the movie of the same name.

One intriguing development, however, is the landing of thousands of extraterrestrials, called Newcomers, by space ships in the Mojave Desert. The Newcomers look human except for their heads, which are bald and sport red and purple squiggly lines, not to mention tiny ears.

One of the first episodes concerns a prostitution ring of Newcomers who work Hollywood Boulevard because they aren’t conspicuous there.

Speaking of odd spectacles, the proposed “Steel Cloud” monument over the Hollywood Freeway has been pelted by more than a few jokes. But not by Metropolitan Home, a glossy, upscale architecture and interior design magazine. A story in the latest issue declares that the 5-block-long, 5-to-14-story structure would be a kind of “healing arch” for downtown.

Besides, the magazine points out, the city has “embarrassingly few public monuments . . . the Hollywood sign, Watts Towers, Griffith Observatory.”

Hey, what about our legendary 17-foot-long frankfurter next to the Beverly Center, the Tail of the Pup stand?

Sue Calhoun of Studio City wonders if all of Southern California is trying to go Hollywood.

She pulled into the parking lot of a fish restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway the other night, only to be waived away.

“The attendant told me, ‘You can’t come in,’ ” she said. “He was polite but firm. I told him I had reservations for dinner. I pointed out there were some empty parking spots. Then the attendant pulled out a piece of paper and asked, ‘Are you on the VIP parking list?’ ”

Calhoun ate at another restaurant that didn’t require parking reservations.

Glasnost has even mellowed conservative hard-liner George Putnam, a longtime TV and radio commentator. How else do you explain the fact that Putnam, who was honored by the Board of Supervisors Tuesday on his 75th birthday, now broadcasts for radio station KIEV?

Vice President Dan Quayle’s comments in Long Beach on the space program moved comic Jay Leno to assert on NBC’s “Tonight Show” that when Quayle “heard it was the 20th anniversary of the moon walk, he sent Michael Jackson a telegram.”