If You Want to Talk Odds, Rose Says He’s the Wrong Guy

On Cincinnati’s last trip to San Francisco, Red Manager Pete Rose asked for a room on a lower floor of the hotel. What he got was a room on the 41st floor.

“Two and half hours later,” Rose told the Atlanta Journal, “an earthquake hits. Man, I got up and looked out my window and figured out that if the hotel had tipped over I would have come down five blocks away, in the middle of a Wendy’s. And now they say there’s a chance we might get another one in the next five days--and we’re here three more days.”

One writer, according to the Journal, told Rose, “Yes, but the scientists say the odds of it are only 50-1.”

“Don’t talk about odds to me,” Rose said. “You’re talking to the wrong guy.”

Trivia time: Kevin Mitchell is the sixth member of the New York-San Francisco Giants to hit 40 or more homers in a season. Name the other five.

Good call: Red Murff, a New York Met scout, filed this report on 17-year-old Nolan Ryan of Alvin, Tex., in 1964: “Skinny right-handed junior. Has the best arm I’ve ever seen in my life. Could be a real power pitcher someday.”

Add Ryan: Chicago White Sox Manager Jeff Torborg, who caught no-hitters by both Ryan and Sandy Koufax, told USA Today: “When you talk velocity, Nolan threw the hardest. Nolan threw it harder than any human being I ever saw.

“In 1973 against the Boston Red Sox, Nolan threw a pitch a little up and over my left shoulder. I reached up for it and Nolan’s pitch tore a hole in the webbing of my glove and hit the backstop at Fenway Park.”

Now-it-can-be-told Dept.: At the Hall of Fame ceremony, Haywood Sullivan, part owner of the Boston Red Sox, revealed that Carl Yastrzemski got the last major league hit off Satchel Paige.

Sullivan, then manager of the Kansas City A’s, said: “We were playing the Red Sox on a very, very hot day and Paige gave up a hit to Yaz in about the third inning. He hadn’t given up a hit until then and it was a flare into the outfield. I went out and got him right away.”

Asked why he was so quick with the hook, Sullivan said: “He was cooked. When I got out there and asked him if he was ready to come out, he just looked at me and said, ‘Where ya been?’ ”

Paige was 59.

Trivia answer: Mel Ott, Johnny Mize, Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, Willie McCovey.

Note: Ott won six National League home run titles but didn’t win the title the only time he hit 40 or more homers. In 1929. Philadelphia’s Chuck Klein was the leader with 43 homers, followed by Ott with 42.

Quotebook: Bob Hertzel of the Pittsburgh Press, on Pirate second baseman Jose Lind, who is hitting .241 at night and .190 in daytime: “He has reacted worse to sunlight than Count Dracula.”