Kings Stole the Shirts Off Their Racks

Canadian retailers were geared to sell truckloads of Toronto Maple Leaf merchandise if the Maple Leafs won Game 6 of their NHL semifinal series against the Kings on Thursday night.

But because the Kings won, 5-4, in overtime to tie the series at three games apiece, the sale is on hold pending the result of tonight’s final game at Toronto.

“If the Leafs were to win, we’d be printing T-shirts one minute after they clinched,” said Mark Salzman, the Toronto-based sales manager for a wholesaler that supplies NHL merchandise to Canadian stores. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed.”

You might say that Salzman has more than a rooting interest in the game.

*

Trivia time: Who is the only Angel player to win the most-valuable-player award?

*

Barkleymania: Charles Barkley’s face is on T-shirts, buses, ties and television commercials. Bald look-alikes show up everywhere he goes. In Phoenix, Charles Barkley was apparently granted most-valuable-player status long before he received the award from the NBA.

“We have two grands in Arizona now,” state tourism director Michael Leyva said. “We have Grand Canyon and Grand Barkley.”

Mayor Paul Johnson said that if the Suns’ forward decided to run for his job, “I’d hang them up.”

*

Shelled: Jerry Shelton, an Alabama third baseman, is in the NCAA record book the hard way.

He has been on base 52 times by getting hit, breaking by one the year-old record held by Coastal Carolina’s Pete Schramka.

“It’s not something I go around bragging about really,” Shelton said. “It really doesn’t take a lot of talent to get hit by a pitch.”

*

Touche: Marion Robertson of Menlo Park, in a letter to the San Francisco Examiner, recalled a conversation between two friends on the relative merits of golf and tennis.

“The argument was quickly won by the golf player when she asked her tennis friend: ‘And what was the most beautiful tennis court you ever played on?’ ”

*

Wind aided: Cincinnati Rocker kicker Rusty Fricke, explaining the Arena Football League-record 60-yard field goal he kicked in 1991: “I had air-conditioning at my back.”

*

Trivia answer: Don Baylor, in 1979.

*

Quotebook: Jim Henneman of the Baltimore Sun: “Owner Marge Schott says the Reds have embarrassed her so far this year. Does that mean they’re even?”