She Was Just Trying to String Them Along

Australian comedian Pixie-Anne Wheatley took her act to the Australian Open Wednesday.

It bombed.

Accompanied by a film crew and posing as a member of the media, she interrupted Stefan Edberg’s news conference, asking him, for example, which member of the band Abba he was and whether he thought using catgut in tennis rackets was ecologically sound.

The Associated Press reported that after Wheatley’s ejection, Edberg told reporters: “If I had understood the questions, I would have answered them.”

Add comedian: Tournament officials apologized to reporters for having allowed such a thing to happen and said Wheatley and her crew had been stripped of their credentials.

Said Tony Pickard, Edberg’s coach: “There is a time and a place for that sort of thing and it wasn’t here. The next thing you know, some goon will be in the locker room.”

Trivia time: Of the seven players who have appeared in five Super Bowls, who was the only one to play as a member of three different teams?

House of nostalgia: Newsday columnist Joe Gergen had to remind New York Giant kicker Matt Bahr that when he appears in Super Bowl XXV at Tampa Stadium Sunday, he will be returning to the site of earlier exploits as a player in the North American Soccer League.

Asked about the coincidence during an interview at the stadium, Bahr said: “Where did the Rowdies play? Here? Then I guess I did play here.”

Add Bahr: One of Bahr’s NASL teams was the Colorado Caribou. He recalled:

“We had the ugliest uniforms in the league and we were damn proud of it. We were supposed to look western. The shirts had leather tassels and fringe. And we had leather warm-up suits. They would have been pretty snappy for a rock group, but when it rained they weighed about 35 pounds apiece.”

Kiner is cornered: Columnist Bob Hertzel of the Pittsburgh Press recently seized upon Rollie Fingers’ failure to make the Hall of Fame as another opportunity to scold voters for having passed over former Pirate reliever ElRoy Face throughout his 15 years on the ballot.

Face, who was 18-1 in relief in 1959 and finished his 16-year career--14 as a Pirate--with a record of 104-95 and a 3.48 earned-run average, never received the two-thirds vote that would have qualified him for a vote by the veterans committee.

Face told Hertzel: “If Ralph Kiner is in the Hall of Fame, I belong in there. What’d he do? Hit home runs. Nothing else. When he went in, it degraded the Hall of Fame for me. If he wasn’t a broadcaster in New York he never would have gotten in.”

Trivia answer: Preston Pearson, with Baltimore in Super Bowl III, Pittsburgh in IX and Dallas in X, XII and XIII.

Quotebook: Boston Red Sox pitcher Roger Clemens, accepting the Boston area writers’ award as the team’s most valuable player: “I’d like to thank the writers for . . . no, I can’t thank them for anything.”