Boog Powell Makes Switch to Hot Corner

Boog Powell is back with the Baltimore Orioles at the age of 50. No, the American League’s Most Valuable Player in 1970 is not coming out of retirement to play again.

He will be operating “Boog’s Corner,” a portable barbecue stand behind the right-field bleachers at Oriole Park, offering some of his favorites--pit beef, pork chop sandwiches, barbecued beans, cole slaw--and beer.

Eating barbecue helped keep Powell’s weight up during his playing days, when it was estimated that he ranged between 250 and 300 pounds. His weight now?

“Two-ninety and holding,” Powell said.

Trivia time: Name the year UCLA made its first appearance in basketball’s Final Four.

Just like old times: It has been written that Indiana Coach Bobby Knight has mellowed. Not quite.

When he canceled the basketball awards banquet, a 41-year tradition, one day after the Hoosiers’ 61-59 loss to Purdue, Knight said he’d like to see banquets reserved for a team that “really achieves something.”

The cancellation shocked Craig Tenney, president of the sponsoring Kiwanis Club. Said Tenney: “I can’t believe anyone would be so cold to his players.”

Wait a minute: A recent Associated Press story said Arkansas’ nine-year winning streak in the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships was only the third such accomplishment in Division I history.

The wire service cited nine-year winning streaks by the Yale men’s golf team, 1905-1913, and Iowa’s wrestling team, 1978-1986.

Overlooked was USC’s nine consecutive victories in the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships from 1935 through 1943.

Hatchet job: More trivia from Phillip Lowry’s book, “Green Cathedrals,” on baseball in an earlier era:

Penmark Park, Philadelphia, home of the Negro National League Philadelphia Stars (1936-48). The hot dog stand behind home plate was run by Miss Hattie Williams. Her hot dogs were boiled in a washtub over a wood fire.

Amazingly, the wooden stands never fell down even though Hattie got her firewood by chopping away at the grandstand supports with a hatchet.

Omen? Three Pacific 10 Conference basketball teams--UCLA, No. 4; USC, No. 8, and Arizona, No. 10, were ranked in the top 10 of the final regular-season Associated Press poll for the first time since 1981.

Oregon State, No. 2; Arizona State, No. 3, and UCLA, No. 10, were the schools recognized in ’81. They were all eliminated by their first opponents in the NCAA tournament.

Trivia answer: UCLA lost to Cincinnati, 72-70, in a semifinal game in 1962.

Quotebook: Louisiana Tech basketball Coach Jerry Loyd, commenting on the officials after a 54-53 road loss to New Orleans: “They just choked. They’re cheaters. The police escorting them off the court should have escorted them to jail.”