For $5,000, Berger Found Place to Roost

In 1947, seven years after Wally Berger had retired from baseball, he and his wife, Martha, decided to settle in Manhattan Beach. He gave Martha $5,000 and told her to use it as a down payment on a house.

Martha went looking and found a place close to the beach.

“So I called Wally and said, ‘Guess what. I got a house for $4,950 and have $50 left over for furniture,’ ” Martha said. “And Wally said, ‘What is it, a chicken coop?’ I said ‘Close, but when you see it you will like it.’ ”

Berger, who hit 38 home runs and had 119 runs batted in with the Boston Braves in his rookie season, died in 1988. But Martha still lives in the house. Now, it’s worth about $900,000.

Trivia time: There are only three active players in the National League who have at least 10 years’ major league experience and have spent their entire careers with one team. Who are they?

The big jerko? When Mike Ditka recently showed interest in the coaching job with the Atlanta Falcons--and was spurned--it did not escape Jay Mariotti of the Chicago Sun-Times.

“Why in the name of a heart palpitation would Ditka want to leave what he has now?” Mariotti asked. “If Atlanta hired him, he would have to deal with the two-sport headache known as Deion Sanders, the moods of Andre Rison. He’d have to deal with Bobby Hebert, who has a gun arm but makes Jim Harbaugh look like a Mensa achiever. He’d have to deal twice a year with Steve Young and the 49ers.

“Is that what the big jerko really wants?”

Whatever it takes: The American Hockey League is pulling out all stops to draw fans. The Portland Pirates’ fans now stay in their seats during intermissions to watch frozen-turkey bowling or to catch T-shirts propelled by slingshot from the ice.

But the award for creativity goes to the Binghamton Rangers, who recently sponsored a “Baby Derby.”

For five days in a row, babies were entered in crawling derbies at 12 different stores in a food chain to qualify for the final, which was held during a game intermission.

A large mat was placed on the ice between periods, complete with lanes, and the babies were off. The winning baby received a $500 bond, and the parents got a four-day trip to the Poconos.

Add baby: During a recent basketball game between the Miami Heat and the Utah Jazz, the Utah dancers lured four men from the crowd with the promise that they would be in a dance routine.

The men were serenaded with a few choruses of “Baby Face,” as the women strapped red bows to the men’s hair and made them hold oversized baby bottles and wear baby bibs.

Scott Fowler of the Miami Herald says the crowd loved it.

“You could almost hear every man in the Delta Center tell himself, ‘Remember, don’t ever volunteer for anything.’ ”

Trivia answer: Orel Hershiser, Dodgers; Dwight Gooden, New York Mets, and Tony Gwynn, San Diego Padres.

Quotebook: Longtime Delaware football Coach Tubby Raymond on why his team doesn’t have a booster club: “I don’t want to organize my own lynching mob.”