Good Thing He Didn’t Leave Lunch

UC Santa Barbara’s Harder Stadium apparently doesn’t get much use since the Gauchos dropped football after the 1991 season.

Dean Linke, press officer for the U.S. National Soccer Team, arrived at the stadium last Thursday to check phone lines for Saturday’s match against Romania. The last time Linke had been in the press box was in October of 1991, for a match involving the U.S. women’s team.

Linke remembered leaving a cardboard box filled with press guides on a counter in the press box, believing they would be thrown out before the next event at the stadium.

It never happened. When Linke opened the press box door last week, 16 months later, the box was right where he left it.

Trivia time: Whom did the Angels send to the Minnesota Twins in the 1979 trade for Hall of Famer Rod Carew?

In the genes: After Washington defeated UCLA last Thursday night at Seattle, Husky guard Brett Pagett told reporters: “I grew up hating UCLA.”

His father, Dana, was a reserve guard on the USC team that was 24-2 and ranked No. 2 during the 1970-71 season, but didn’t play in the NCAA tournament because it lost twice to UCLA.

One of a kind: Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post, on the late Arthur Ashe: “You get to meet a lot of great athletes as a sportswriter, but not a lot of great men, such as Ashe. Most athletes run away from the public as soon as their games are over. They live in bubbles. Ashe wasn’t like that.

“He would engage the public, perhaps because he understood that change is a movement, a conga line, not a bolt of lightning, and that movements need popular support.”

None of the above: Texas A&M; basketball Coach Tony Barone, an emotional type who is known for yanking on his ties during games, prompted this comment from former Houston player Reid Gettys, a commentator on Southwest Conference television broadcasts: “What would you rather be: a tie in Tony Barone’s closet or a chair on Bobby Knight’s bench?”

For the record: UCLA will play winless Oregon on Sunday at Pauley Pavilion, not Saturday, as was incorrectly reported in Wednesday’s editions.

Spaced out: A world-class athlete who is entered in the Sunkist indoor track meet Feb. 20 at the Sports Arena had an unusual request for promoter Al Franken.

He wanted six tickets, spread throughout the arena.

Explained the athlete: “They’re for three girlfriends and none of them know about the others.”

Inferior product: Wrote Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe, after the Wales Conference defeated the Campbell Conference, 16-6, in the NHL All-Star game: “Note to new NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman: Forget all that other stuff, Commish, your hockey mandate now is to do everything you can to keep the game off national television.”

Trivia answer: Ken Landreaux, Dave Engle, Brad Havens and Paul Hartzell.

Quotebook: Buddy Ryan, recently hired as defensive coordinator of the Houston Oilers: “I thought I was going to get the New England job, but Bill Parcells beat me to it. It was one of the few times he beat me.”