Perhaps Someday It Will Be Scots Heard ‘Round the World

Baseball in Scotland?

“In Scotland, it’s soccer first, rugby second, nothing third, and then there’s baseball,” Chris Crowe of the Dundee Dodgers tells Andrew Bagnato of the Chicago Tribune.

So, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but the grand old game is slowly gaining in popularity in Scotland.

The Scottish amateur league has grown from four teams to 10, major league caps adorn many a head, and equipment is filtering into the sporting goods stores.

The majors aren’t likely to see a Scottish intrusion anytime soon, though.

Scotland’s three best players are said to be a set of triplets named McDougall--Gregor, Cameron and Roddy, of the Finitry Braves, occupants of the country’s only true diamond.

The McDougalls picked up the game from the book “Teach Yourself Baseball.”

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Trivia time: Scotland has produced one major league baseball player. Who is he?

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Too precious to use: The San Diego Padres’ Gary Sheffield, atop the majors in batting, credits a bat he doesn’t even use as the reason for his success.

The bat was given to Sheffield by Barry Bonds of the Pittsburgh Pirates in May, and Sheffield considers it too valuable to risk against big league pitching, but he does swing it before every game.

“I even hold it the same way that (Bonds) does, choke up and everything,” Sheffield told The Times’ Bob Nightengale. “I use it as my good-luck charm.”

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Barroom etiquette: From Jeff Rude of the Dallas Morning News: “And you think John Daly is wild? Senior PGA Tour nonconformist Simon Hobday, called ‘Scruffy’ because of his appearance, once took off his clothes in a Switzerland tavern. The bartender insisted that he at least put his underwear back on. So Hobday did. Over his head.”

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Now you see him . . . Here’s a quality you like to see in a football player: Defensive end Jeff Lageman is called “Spook” by his New York Jets teammates--according to the team media guide--”for his reputation of disappearing from a room without anyone noticing.”

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No kidding: The Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles merged for one season in 1943, during World War II. Their nickname: The Steagles.

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Arnie’s age: Arnold Palmer, asked about the regression of his golf game over the years: “For so many years before the Masters began, I was asked over and over if I thought I could win. Now, everybody wants to know if I think I will make the cut. I’m not too sure I like the latter.”

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Mark your calendar: Syracuse will be the site of the World Horseshoe Pitching Championships in July-August, 1994.

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Correction: In Tuesday’s Morning Briefing it was stated that North Carolina State’s Ricky Logo “could have been King” of his native American Samoa, but chose an education instead. A reader from Long Beach points out that there is no such title in Samoa. The correct term is High Chief, and each family, or village, has one.

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Trivia answer: Glasgow-born Bobby Thomson, who played in the majors for 15 years, starting in 1946. Thomson was famous for “the Shot Heard ‘Round the World,” a ninth-inning, three-run home run that gave the New York Giants a 5-4 victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers, propelling the team into the 1951 World Series against the New York Yankees.

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Roots: The Denver Broncos’ Karl Mecklenburg, in Berlin for a game today against the Miami Dolphins, recalls his recent tour of the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in northeastern Germany, his ancestral home:

“It was interesting just looking at the people. They all looked like my cousins. I felt like I fit right in there. And everywhere I looked, I saw my name--and it was spelled right.”

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Quotebook: Professional golfer Lon Hinkle, on the various descriptions of the game: “Golf is golf. You hit the ball, you go find it. Then you hit it again.”