Race Officials Shepherd Riders and Prevent a Tour de Farce

Sheep farmers near Bressuire, France, angry about falling meat prices in their country, came up with a plan: To the barricades! Block the Tour de France!

Monday, the farmers clogged 15 miles of the race route with manure, tree trunks and tractors.

Race officials created a detour, halting the cyclists and restarting them at Bressuire, 54 miles into the stage. The change resulted in a three-mile increase in the 144.5-mile route from Poitiers to Nantes.

Trivia time: What major league father-son combination had the most hits?

Last laugh: Former Dodger pitcher Carl Erskine was in Los Angeles last weekend for an old-timers’ game. While driving Erskine to the airport Monday, Anthony Santoro mentioned the Morning Briefing item about Carl Furillo’s throw from right field to first base in 1951 that retired Pittsburgh pitcher Mel Queen, keeping Ralph Branca’s no-hitter alive.

Said Erskine: “You know, the funny thing was, we’d been riding Queen from the dugout all day, really getting on him. The dugouts at Ebbets Field were close to the plate and close to the base lines. So here’s Queen, thinking he’s broken up a no-hitter in the eighth inning. He’s running down to first base, looking in at us and laughing, as if to say, ‘ . . . you guys.’ He was still looking at us when Furillo’s throw beat him to the bag.”

Leading his league: Chicago agent Steve Zucker recently signed Jacksonville’s Dee Brown, becoming the only sports agent in 1990 to sign first-round picks in three sports--basketball, football and baseball.

Brown, picked by the Boston Celtics, joins Dexter Carter and Richmond Webb, both NFL draftees, and Jeff Jackson, signed by the Philadelphia Phillies, in Zucker’s group of first-rounders.

Career round: Until last week, Thomas Vardasco (Tony) Robello, the 79-year-old former pitcher with the Cincinnati Reds, was most notable for signing Johnny Bench.

Robello topped that, however. In one round at the Hurricane Country Club, about 35 miles north of Dallas, he made two holes-in-one, after never making one previously.

Major influence: Manager Bobby Valentine of the Texas Rangers treasures a photograph hanging in his office. It shows a player in Yankee pinstripes whispering into the ear of a 17-year-old boy.

The player is Mickey Mantle. The boy is Valentine.

“The closest I had ever gotten to Mickey was the third deck of Yankee Stadium the five times my dad was able to afford to take me to the game,” Valentine said. “To go out on the field, take a picture with him and have him whisper in my ear . . . What he did was incredible, the most memorable moment.”

It might have rendered Valentine speechless, another rarity.

“I didn’t ask (Mantle) for an autograph that day,” he said. “I didn’t get a single Yankee autograph that day. I think maybe it was a little too much for me.”

Trivia answer: Gus and Buddy Bell.

Quotebook: Chicago White Sox catcher Carlton Fisk: “If the human body recognized agony and frustration, people would never run marathons, have babies or play baseball.”