The Lad Wins by a Nose at Horse Play

Abergwaun Lad took a bite out of trainer Steve Rothblum’s nose last year, causing Rothblum to undergo reconstructive surgery, but the trainer harbors no ill feelings toward the 6-year-old gelding. Maybe it’s because Abergwaun Lad won his fifth race in seven starts last Saturday at Santa Anita.

“I saw him out of the corner of my eye, or he would have gotten the whole side of my face,” Rothblum says. “He was just playing. When I got him he was timid, and I would get in his face and play with him to make him more aggressive.”

An idea whose time has come?As the NCAA seeks to tighten requirements for incoming athletes, Dick Schultz, executive director of the NCAA, has a suggestion.

“Maybe it’s time for the NFL and the NBA to establish farm systems so people who don’t want to go to school can find another route to develop their skills,” Schultz told the NCAA convention.

Trivia time: What do Vlade Divac, David Robinson, Stojan Vrankovic and Rik Smits have in common other than being centers in the NBA?

Escape on the diamond: The New York Yankees’ Steve Howe has been suspended five times for substance abuse but is still pitching in the major leagues. He tells what keeps him going:

“I always feel free on a baseball field. Baseball’s awesome. Baseball’s not a realistic world. It’s something where I can escape. It’s a neat time for solitude. You can have 50,000 people around you but not notice them. It’s awesome. It’s excellent.”

The reason why: For the first time in 21 years there will be no United States race on the Formula One Grand Prix schedule. Max Moseley, president of FISA, the world sanctioning body of auto racing, says the reason is that “this business of having the race on (temporary) street circuits and moving around like gypsies is not beneficial.”

Since 1976, races at Long Beach, Las Vegas, Detroit, Dallas and Phoenix have been on temporary circuits.

Hole in the ice: Play was stopped nine times in a hockey game between the New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers the other night at Madison Square Garden when a pothole, about three feet square, opened in the ice. Linesmen finally patched it with ice shavings, a water bottle and a puck.

It’s just a motorcycle: A Yamaha brochure described one of its new racing models as “sensual rather than intellectual . . . with the kind of engine that encourages empathy between the rider and the machine.”

Wanna build one?A polo field is 300 yards long and 160 yards across and the goals are eight yards wide.

Tall and trendy: Elvin Hayes, the 6-foot-11 “Big E,” was stopped on the street once by a woman who asked him if he was a basketball player.

“No,” he replied, “I clean giraffe ears.”

Trivia answer: All played in the 1988 Olympics, Divac and Vrankovic for Yugoslavia, Robinson for the United States and Smits for the Netherlands.

Quotebook: Pete Rose, on the importance of Babe Ruth to baseball: “If Babe Ruth had been a soccer player, soccer would be our national pastime.”