The latest baseball crisis is over: The...

The latest baseball crisis is over: The peanut vendors will be allowed to pitch at Dodger Stadium after all.

“My arm’s all ready,” said Roger (The Peanut Man) Owens, the celebrated, behind-the-back bag tosser. He had been forced to hand-deliver the goobers at a Freeway Series game Friday night after the Marriott Corp., the team’s new concessionaire, announced a ban on the custom.

“That should not have happened here,” Mel Clemen, Marriott’s general manager, said late Monday. “That’s been our policy elsewhere because fans sometimes get hit and complain. But the vendors are a lot more accurate here. And it’s part of the show, too.”

Among those relieved are Owens’ season peanut-holders--fans who prepay for a season’s worth of airborne snacks. They had begun a petition campaign.

Six years ago, the Dodgers also briefly banned peanut-tossing, misinterpreting a new law that banned spectators from throwing objects. But ardent Dodgers fan Ethel Bradley, the mayor’s wife, successfully interceded with City Atty. James K. Hahn.

Contacted while the latest ban was in effect, Mrs. Bradley predicted: “I’m sure that they (Marriott) will change their mind once they realize how upset people will be.”

Marriott’s reversal capped a fine spring for Owens, a 33-year Dodger veteran. “The National Peanut Council just gave me a plaque naming me MVP,” he explained. “That stands for ‘Master Vendor of Peanuts.’ ”

In case you’re wondering, the arenas where the Marriott doesn’t trust its vendors to toss the peanuts are the Orlando (Fla.) Arena, Reunion Arena (Dallas) and Sun Devil Stadium (Tempe, Ariz.). Perhaps Roger the Peanut Man could start an instructional league.

The newsletter sent out by the posh Mid-Valley Athletic Club in Reseda the other day contained one misspelling. A story warned of a shortage caused by the “draught” crisis, leading one member to wonder if the club’s bar was out of ale.

List of the Day:

Some 19th-Century tips for stagecoach travelers, recounted in the Wells Fargo Museum on Bunker Hill:

1--Don’t ask how far it is to the next station until you get there.

2--Don’t growl at food stations; stage companies generally provide the best they can get.

3--Don’t keep the stage waiting; many a virtuous man has lost his character by doing so.

4--If you have anything to take in a bottle, pass it around. A man who drinks by himself in such a case is lost to all human feeling.

A jeweler in the L.A. Mall displays a sign that says: “New Year’s Special, Watches, 10% to 50% Off.”

So far the offer’s been good for New Year, Chinese New Year, Russian New Year and the Iranian New Year, among others.

misceLAny:

The 80-foot-tall Encino Oak at the corner of Ventura Boulevard and Louise Avenue is estimated to be at least 1,000 years old.