The Numbers Game Can Give Athletes a Devil of a Time

Motocross rider Mike LaRocco carries an extra No. 6 on his factory Suzuki--on the bottom of the rear fender. No, it’s not because he wants fans to know who he is when the bike is upside down.

LaRocco is superstitious and after a season of wrist and ankle injuries last year, he added the extra number so that his bike wouldn’t be carrying three sixes--the sign for Satan.

The Oakland Athletics’ Dave Stewart, suffering through a mediocre season after being a 20-game winner for the last four years, is weary of seeing three sixes, too.

“You keep seeing the stats--six runs per game, six runs per game, six runs per game. Six, six, six. Isn’t that the sign of the Devil?” he asked after losing to the Texas Rangers, 6-1. It was the third consecutive game in which Stewart gave six earned runs.

Passing the torch: Karch Kiraly, espousing the virtues of national sports competitions, said the Olympic Festival helps young athletes prepare for the grandeur of the Olympic Games.

“You’re living in an Olympic village, getting to know people from other sports and other parts of the country,” said Kiraly, who went on from the 1978 and ’79 festivals to become one of the world’s best volleyball players. “It’s not just a volleyball competition. It’s a totally different feeling. It’s like that at the Olympics.”

Trivia time: Who is the only person to win both national motorcycle and automobile racing championships?

Baseball’s stretch: Reader Albert J. Forn of Santa Monica takes issue with a recent Morning Briefing trivia answer saying that the seventh-inning stretch was started when President William Howard Taft left a game in the seventh inning and the crowd stood in respect.

“The Cooperstown (Hall of Fame) report is that it started at a game in 1882 between the New York Metropolitans, a pro team, and Manhattan College,” Forn says. “Brother Jasper was the college athletic director. When his students started to get unruly, he ordered them all to stand and stretch and move about for a few moments. The rest of the spectators followed suit. Thereafter the stretch became customary at Metropolitan games and the idea spread through baseball.”

Old allegiances: Sydney Maree, a South African runner who made the U.S. Olympic teams in 1984 and 1988 after becoming a U.S. citizen, hopes to see his native country in the 1992 Olympics.

“Whenever you’re at an international event, where you sit and you see all the flags of the different nations, you wonder, ‘Why is one flag not here?’ ” he told the Boston Globe’s Joe Concannon.

“Even though I am a U.S. citizen, I always wondered, ‘Why?’ That’s the price they had to pay. Today the ball’s in their court again.

“I’m very excited. I have renewed energy. I definitely want to be a part of that scene, even though I’ll be in a different camp.”

Trivia answer: Joe Leonard, who won the motorcycle title in 1954, 1956 and 1957, and the United States Auto Club crown in 1971 and 1972.

Quotebook: Bill Musselman, former coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves: “I would like to get back in the NBA and be put on the spot, to be in a situation where the owners and the fans will be upset if you don’t win every night.”