Material Girl’s Material May Beat the Babe at Auction

If a Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card can sell for $49,500 and the famous Honus Wagner tobacco card for more than $425,000, what kind of money will a John Goodman jersey worn in the movie “The Babe” bring in from sports memorabilia collectors?

And will the Babe’s jersey come in second to one worn by Madonna? The uniform worn by the film and rock star in “A League of Their Own” will be on the auction block along with Goodman’s on Sept. 26 at Bend, Ore.

“Wouldn’t that be something if Madonna beats out the Babe?” said Michael Graham, owner of Mountain High Coins & Collectibles, who will conduct the charity auction.

New capitalist: If you want to see more of Nadia Comaneci, the Romanian gymnast, go to New York or South Florida. Her likeness appears on 90-foot billboards in New York’s Times Square and along I-95 between Miami and Ft. Lauderdale.

And what is she pitching? Her own line of underwear.

Trivia time: Who won the Southern California high school 440-yard run in 1935?

Just asking: When the PGA held a news conference to announce that Nike would take over sponsorship of the Ben Hogan development tour next year, Golf World reported that the best question asked was, “Did you buy it for Michael Jordan?”

Changing times: Louisville Coach Howard Schnellenberger compared his team to the early years of his marriage after the Cardinals’ 20-19 loss to Ohio State last Saturday.

“When we were down 10-0, I wasn’t sure how our young team would react,” Schnellenberger said. “It’s like being married. For five years, you’re not sure how your wife will react to a situation. After 20 years, it’s cut-and-dried.”

Fast times: Thirty-two drivers have bettered five seconds in a top-fuel dragster for the quarter-mile run from a standing start. Five of them have been women: Lori Johns, Shirley Muldowney, Shelly Anderson, Kim LaHaie and Dannielle DePorter.

Mixed signals: Coronas, a Spanish tobacco company, invited 30 VIPs to be their guests at motorcycling’s French Grand Prix. But they flew them to La Castallet, venue of the 1991 French GP. The 1992 race was being run 400 miles away at Magny-Cours.

How many clubs?Fourteen clubs is the legal limit for golfers, but it wasn’t always that way. Lawson Little and Craig Wood each carried 25 before the limit went into effect in 1938. Maybe the restriction was made to save the caddies.

On the other hand, the caddies’ favorite should have been Francis Ouimet, who used only seven clubs when he won the 1913 U.S. Open.

Trivia answer: Tom Bradley of Los Angeles Poly. That’s right, the mayor.

For the record: Reader Arnie Rosenthal points that that Troy Dorsey is not the only kick-boxing champion to also have won a world boxing championship. James Warring won them both in the cruiserweight division.

Nothing is new: Sergei Bubka’s failure to clear a height in the pole vault at the Olympic Games and again later in an Italian Grand Prix meet is minor league stuff compared to Hans Lagerqvist.

Lagerqvist, a world-class vaulter from Sweden who tied for fifth in the 1972 Olympics, once failed to clear a height during an entire indoor season of eight meets in the mid-’70s, recalls promoter Al Franken.

Quotebook: Raymond Floyd, on what has changed since he won his first golf tournament in 1963: “I had a lot more hair then--and it was a different color.”