They Found It a Veritable Basketball Mall

For what it’s worth, sales of NCAA-licensed merchandise at last month’s women’s Final Four in Atlanta zoomed up the charts, while sales of men’s Final Four clothes and souvenirs took a dive in New Orleans.

According to the NCAA, licensed merchandising vendors at the women’s Final Four grossed a record $190,000, up from the $77,000 worth of tournament-related goods sold at last year’s event in Los Angeles.

Vendors can thank Texas Tech fans, who went into a buying frenzy after the Red Raiders won the national title.

Gross sales for men’s Final Four merchandise were down 30%, from $414,514 in 1992 to $290,204 this year.

“Our growth lies in the women’s championships,” said Greg Schuh, whose Collegiate Sports Design company is the official concessionaire for NCAA championships. “They’re growing in popularity by leaps and bounds.”

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Trivia time: When California and Stanford meet in the Big Game, the teams play for the right to keep the Axe for a year. When Minnesota and Michigan play, it’s for the Little Brown Jug. But what’s at stake in the Wichita-Wichita State game?

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Go west, young men: Since their summer internships on Wall Street apparently fell through, four Ivy Leaguers have decided to see the big leaguers.

Princeton men Chris Looney, Michael Casagranda and Mark Johns, along with Brent DeRiszner of Dartmouth, plan to visit each of the 28 major league ballparks in a month. That’s 28 games in 28 days--a trip that will cost $10,000-$12,000.

“We’re looking at this as sort of a ‘Mission: Impossible’ thing,” Looney told the NCAA News. “It’s the dream of dreams for a baseball fan.”

It also could be the dream of dreams for some lucky auto mechanic. Looney expects to put 17,339 miles on his car.

The driving leg most likely to cause a mechanical breakdown? Well, Looney and the gang are leaving Houston after a day game and driving straight to Los Angeles for a Dodger game the next night. That’s 1,541 miles in a little more than 24 hours.

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Say what? When Seattle Mariner Randy Johnson recently flirted with a perfect game, it brought to mind the 1956 postgame exchange between a sportswriter and New York Yankee Don Larsen.

Asked the sportswriter after Larsen’s perfect game in the World Series: “Is it the best game you’ve ever pitched?”

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Keep the tip: When Ottawa Lynx pitcher Mike Gardiner was called up from the minors last Saturday by the Montreal Expos, little did he know what it would cost him.

Rather than drive himself, Gardiner took a cab from Ottawa to Montreal. The fare for the 90-minute ride was $80 . . . and a baseball bat.

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Memphis blues: Pepper Rodgers, now a lobbyist for the Memphis group trying to win an NFL expansion team, has decided on a new career should the league look elsewhere.

“If we don’t get it, I’m running for Congress,” he told Gordon Forbes of USA Today. “My motto: It’s a perk for me and pork for you.”

Added Rodgers about the wait for the NFL to make up its mind: “I don’t want to sit around with the lawyers anymore and hear about how much money they make. I belong in the arena, not some smoke-filled room where you’re arguing about a guy getting an extra pair of socks.”

Well, then Congress is definitely out of the question.

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Trivia answer: The Dog Collar.

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Quotebook: Florida Marlin Ryan Bowen, who made franchise history by pitching the first shutout, on the difference between playing in the big leagues and the minors: “You know, we ballplayers call the minors, ‘the bushes.’ Well, the bushes were mighty high when I got there last year. It was a tough climb out of them.”