Beating the Traffic in Baltimore Won’t Be a Royal Pain in Neck

The royals are coming to Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium next month. Not the ones from Kansas City, the ones from London.

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip will be there May 15 to watch their first baseball game, the Orioles against the Oakland Athletics. President Bush might accompany them.

The royal couple will attend a private reception and meet the players from both teams, but a team spokesman said the couple isn’t expected to stay for the entire game.

Sounds as if they would make good Dodger fans.

Trivia time: Why were the first nine holes of the Augusta National Golf Club switched, with the second nine after the first Masters tournament?

No sibling rivalry: UCLA tennis player Stella Sampras was honored as the Daily Bruin female athlete of the week after she won four singles and doubles matches last weekend.

Asked to name her favorite athlete, Sampras said: “My brother, of course. Pete’s very down-to-earth. He can do anything he wants with a tennis ball. He has such quick hands.”

They were expecting her to name Andre Agassi?

Changing roles: Actor David Warner, who stars in the hit movie “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II,” will portray famed hockey player-coach Lester Patrick in his next role.

Patrick led the New York Rangers to the 1928 Stanley Cup title. A star defenseman, Patrick was 45 and had retired to become a coach when he activated himself to play goalie in place of the fallen Lorue Chabut.

Wonder if the Ninja Turtles role will have toughened Warner enough to play a hockey player?

Lost wages: Douglas Lederman of the Chronicle of Higher Education notes that because of the NCAA’s new revenue-sharing policy, adopted last year in the wake of its seven-year, $1-billion contract with CBS, Nevada Las Vegas and basketball Coach Jerry Tarkanian did not exactly enjoy the spoils for advancing to this season’s Final Four.

Last season, when the Rebels won the NCAA championship, the school received $1 million. Tarkanian, with a performance clause in his contract guaranteeing him 10% of UNLV’s tournament revenues, made $100,000.

This season, the school got $85,000--its share of the Big West Conference’s portion of the $32-million pool. Tarkanian’s cut was $8,500.

Oops: Bill James writes in his 1991 baseball book that outfielder Juan Gonzalez of the Texas Rangers is the No. 1 candidate for American League rookie of the year.

Only trouble is, Gonzalez isn’t a rookie.

Gonzalez has had 150 major league at-bats over the past two seasons. The rookie limit is 130.

Lead of the week: From a United Press International story on comebacks by Mark Spitz and George Foreman:

“Creaky Bones Week begins with an old fogy hitting the water and ends with a dinosaur out to avoid the canvas.

“Mark Spitz and George Foreman, heroes of another era, will make television appearances . . . “

Trivia answer: The change was made because play could begin earlier after a frost on what is now the front nine, because it is on higher ground.

Quotebook: Former pitcher Bill (Spaceman) Lee: “Baseball is the belly button of society. Straighten out baseball and you’ll straighten out the rest of the world.”