Was David Stern’s Signature an Original or a Forgery?

The Charlotte Hornets admitted this week that some of the autographed basketballs they have donated to various causes have been signed by office personnel. Did that include the 20 balls that Charlotte public television station WTVI auctioned in April for $3,528?

“I’d be almost 99.9% sure that for something like that it would not (be fake),” Hornet vice president Tony Renaud said.

On the other hand, Renaud said: “When you have somebody who has a sick kid in the hospital, and you’re going to send them a ball, and the players aren’t here, what do you do? You don’t send them one?”

Renaud said the child probably will get a ball signed by Marilynn Bowler, Hornets’ director of community relations.

Trivia time: What honor did former Ohio State and Indianapolis Colt quarterback Art Schlichter receive Wednesday?

Penalty kick: Argentina’s Diego Maradona, who didn’t score a goal in the World Cup, now has to concentrate on defense.

Jose Francisco Sanfilippo, a member of Argentina’s national team in the 1960s, recently remarked that former Brazilian star Pele was the greatest player of all time. Maradona, in turn, called Sanfilippo “anti-Argentine and a traitor.”

“This boy (Maradona) called me a traitor because I said that Pele was a more rounded player than he was,” Sanfilippo said after filing a complaint at a Buenos Aires courthouse.

Sanfilippo’s suit asks that Maradona be thrown in prison and be banned from leaving the country.

Trilingual: Pat Calabria of Newsday recently recalled a story about tennis player Hana Mandlikova of Czechoslovakia. In the 1987 U.S. Open, during a fourth-round loss to Claudia Kohde-Kilsch, Mandlikova was penalized a game for repeated “audible obscenities.”

Later, she hid from reporters in a toilet stall in the locker room. Georgina Clark, the supervisor of officials for the women’s tour, was asked whether Mandlikova uttered the obscenities in Czechoslovakian or English.

Clark, an English resident of Oxfordshire, thought for a moment. “English,” she replied, “ . . . or rather, American.”

Nasty feeling: OK, so Cincinnati Red reliever Rob Dibble gave up the game-winning hit in Tuesday’s All-Star game. But his visit to Chicago wasn’t a total washout. Monday at Wrigley Field, Dibble spoke out.

In June, he went mum after being criticized by a Cincinnati sportswriter for not running out a ground ball at Atlanta.

“What they didn’t know was that I was fighting an ulcer,” Dibble said. “I also had a migraine headache that day, and I had spent about nine hours in the trainer’s room throwing up blood. And some guy calls me a dog and a bum and says I need a psychiatrist.”

Trivia answer: Arena Football player of the week. Schlichter completed 13 of 26 passes, seven of them for touchdowns, in Detroit’s 50-21 victory over New York.

Quotebook: Boston Red Sox reliever Rob Murphy, explaining why he threw his glove into the stands: “It was pitching lousy.”