Pendleton Puts the Off in Off-Season

Terry Pendleton did it all last season for the National League champion Atlanta Braves--batting champion, the league’s most valuable player and the acknowledged team leader. During the off-season, instead of touring the banquet circuit, Pendleton spent most of his time at home in Atlanta.

“I’m not the rah-rah type. I thank the Lord for everybody who voted for me in the MVP balloting and my teammates,” he said. “To the baseball world I’m the MVP, but to Mom (his wife, Catherine) and Stephanie (his 17-month-old daughter), at home, I’m just Dad.”

Add Pendleton: One banquet he turned down was that given by the Baseball Writers Assn., which voted Pendleton the MVP.

“I didn’t accept their invitation because they called me five days before the dinner and I already had a prior commitment,” he said. “I wanted to be there, I really did. I couldn’t believe that they called me on a Tuesday for something that was happening on Sunday. They had all winter to plan it.”

Pendleton still has not received his MVP plaque.

Trivia time: Alexander Graham Bell’s family lived in Brantford, Canada. Who else came from that community?

You can look it up: The first recorded pinch-hitter in the major leagues was Mickey Welch in 1889. He struck out.

Try it real fast: Santa Anita announcer Trevor Denman proves he is the best at his craft each time he does a race that includes Gnitsaoc Mi Reglob among the runners. “Gnitsaoc,” as he is known, is a son of Bolger out of the mare Im Coasting.

Bad casting: In the film, “Conan the Destroyer,” Wilt Chamberlain played the role of Captain of the Guard. In one scene, the queen ordered the captain to ensure that her daughter return from a trip with Conan “with her safety and her virginity intact.”

Considering that Chamberlain claims to have slept with 20,000 women, a reader told San Francisco Chronicle columnist Tom FitzGerald that he “found it amusing to see the role played by that famous defender of chastity, Wilt Chamberlain.”

Secret desire: Race driver Gary Bettenhausen once volunteered to sit in for a pie-in-the-face fund-raising auction at a mall near Indianapolis. Most of the bids to smother racing personalities in pudding and merengue averaged about $30. For Bettenhausen, the figure rose to $95.

The winning bidder was his wife, Wavelyn.

Trivia answer: Wayne Gretzky.

Any two will do: Trainer Charlie Whittingham recalls a day when he and two other young trainers were too broke to pay their hotel bill. The manager told them: “I’ll give you guys two days to pay up or get out.”

One of the trainers replied: “OK, how about the Fourth of July and Christmas?”

Quotebook: Hall of Fame center Bill Russell, never lacking in confidence, on being asked how he would have fared against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: “Young man, you have the question backward.”