He Might Find Some Teeth in the Law

It’s no wonder the role-model status of today’s professional athlete is eroding by the hour.

With scofflaws such as Baltimore Oriole pitcher Ben McDonald running loose, does anyone remember Pete Rose?

While fishing near the team’s spring training headquarters in Sarasota, Fla., this week, McDonald hooked a baby alligator about 30 inches long. He took it to the Orioles’ dressing room and used it to startle a few teammates, then released it in a nearby pond.

When news of the incident reached the Florida Game and Freshwater Fish Commission, spokesman Henry Cabbage snapped: “It would be illegal to have it in your possession. If he took it into captivity, this man probably committed some infraction.”

Add McDonald: Said McDonald: “It was just a little itty bitty thing. It wasn’t big enough to hurt anybody.”

Lt. Tom Quinn, a wildlife inspector with the Commission, said no criminal prosecution was in the works. He added that the unlawful taking or possession of an alligator carries up to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail, although the typical punishment for a first-time offender is a fine ranging from $75 to $500.

Quinn noted that alligator bites have led to a number of amputations.

“An alligator has a bacteria in its mouth that causes a very bad secondary infection,” he said. “There is severe and intense swelling, the tissue dies and then (the infection) spreads. All it takes is a nick on the finger.”

Trivia time: Name the only player on a losing team to win the most-valuable-player award in the NBA championship series.

This is news?: John McEnroe, seeded first in the Volvo of Chicago tennis tournament, defeated Israeli Gilad Bloom Wednesday in a first-round match punctuated by the usual McEnroe verbal outbursts and abuse.

Later, McEnroe told Reuters: “I feel at times I can control it better than others, but I am not going to make any excuses and rationalize it. I can’t think of any positives coming out of my behavior. It’s like smoking cigarettes and you can’t stop. . . . It’s just a lousy stinking habit. It doesn’t do me a damn bit of good. I don’t have any excuses.”

Don’t mention it: Wallace Matthews of Newsday wrote that after heavyweight Smokin’ Bert Cooper knocked out Loren Ross in a recent bout televised by the USA network, announcer Al Albert asked Cooper how he felt about seeing Ross carried from the ring on a stretcher.

Said Cooper: “I just want to thank the good Lord for letting it happen this way.”

Wake-up chant: The battle between UCLA’s Don MacLean and Oregon State’s Teo Alibegovic is over, at least for this season. But the UCLA Daily Bruin recently recalled their initial encounter.

At Pauley Pavilion two seasons ago, MacLean inadvertently hit Alibegovic in the face, breaking his nose.

Said Alibegovic: “I was lying there in the end zone. It was a terrible feeling, holding my nose with blood everywhere and the fans screaming, ‘You go home! You go home!’ It was one of the hardest times of my life in the United States. . . .

“UCLA was the only school I knew in Yugoslavia because of Lew Alcindor and John Wooden. Everyone called it ‘Ookla’ and everyone wore UCLA T-shirts. When (the broken nose incident) happened, it broke all my dreams of what (UCLA) is. Welcome to the real world.”

Trivia answer: Jerry West of the Lakers, in 1969.

Quotebook: Bo Jackson, at a news conference for high school journalists in Portland, Ore., describing himself as a child: “A nappy-headed kid who threw rocks better than some people could shoot a gun.”