Don’t Even Think of Asking About His Infield Fly Rule

If Mike Maksudian, a catcher for the Portland Beavers of the Pacific Coast League, has an indigestion problem, it would be understandable.

Maksudian doesn’t catch many fly balls. But he catches plenty of flies. And eats them.

He also has snacked on beetles, grasshoppers, worms, aquarium fish, small lizards and cockroaches.

His greatest conquest--on a dare--was a four- to five-inch locust while he was playing briefly for the Toronto Blue Jays.

Bon appetit.

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Trivia time: Who were the four Angel managers who had winning records in their first full seasons with the team?

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Career move: Agent Leigh Steinberg, speaking at a banquet at the Balboa Bay Club, said that his first client, when he was living in Berkeley, was a kicker.

“Then I got some quarterbacks and moved to Newport Beach,” Steinberg said.

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Looking back: Reader Robert F. MacLeod writes that George Halas, the late owner of the Chicago Bears, had a professional basketball franchise as early as 1939.

MacLeod played on the team, called the Bruins, that was in a league with Detroit, Oshkosh, Sheboygan, Akron and St. Louis.

“I’m sure we played for peanuts,” MacLeod said, citing a salary of $25 to $50 for exhibitions and $75 for league games.

MacLeod is a former Dartmouth All-American running back and is in the College Football Hall of Fame.

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Jolly good show: Columnist Art Spander of the San Francisco Examiner, writing on the chauvinistic British media at Wimbledon: “A first-round match, and it was treated like the end of World War II. Or, as the Star shouted, ‘Unknown Andrew Foster helped drag the tattered Union Jack out of the sporting gutter by upsetting Swedish ace Thomas Lindqvist.’ ”

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Why bother? Michael Heistand of USA Today, writing on the 0.4 rating that TNT drew for the Bruce Jenner track meet in San Jose:

“You can almost get such a rating just from the household pets who accidentally turn on TV remote controls.”

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Bad timing: Forty passengers who chartered a bus headed back to New York from a Yankee-Baltimore Oriole game thought their driver was drunk. So they arrested him.

The 40 passengers had proper credentials. They were police officers. A breath test confirmed that Woodrow Wilson Jackson, 53, was intoxicated. He was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated and negligent driving.

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Sticky subject: Former Chicago White Sox third baseman Bill Melton, who played from 1969 until 1975, on collecting baseball cards:

“When I was a kid, I remember how kids wanted the bubble gum, not the cards. Now it’s the complete opposite. What I remember about my cards is that you look like a jerk in every one of them.”

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Trivia answer: Lefty Phillips, 1970; Jim Fregosi, 1979; Gene Mauch, 1982, and Doug Rader, 1989.

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Quotebook: Philadelphia Phillie first baseman John Kruk, on his team: “When you die, you go to one of two places. You either go to heaven, or you come here with us.”