BIG LOSS: Walter Lantz, the animator who...

BIG LOSS: Walter Lantz, the animator who gave us “Woody Woodpecker,” died Tuesday (A1), and one place he’ll surely be missed is CalArts in Valencia. Last year, Lantz established an annual scholarship and $10,000 prize for students in the character animation program. . . . “CalArts and animation, as a whole, has lost a very dear friend,” said a school official.

HOME LOONS: Warner Bros., you operate 56 stores in the United States and six in Great Britain. What will you do next? Go to home shopping, of course. That’s right. . . . The folks in Burbank who sell Daffy Duck hats and Tweety Pie T-shirts will be doing their hawking on cable for two hours on the last Saturday of each month, starting this week.

PLAY THE BEST: Like Notre Dame in football, the CSUN baseball team doesn’t just play softies on its schedule. . . . Already this season, the Matadors (15-13), who lost 5-4 to powerful Cal State Long Beach Tuesday afternoon (above), have faced highly ranked opponents such as Ohio State, Oklahoma State, Cal State Fullerton and USC. (C8)

TOPANGA’S MESSENGER: His first job was digging ditches. In recent months, he was back in the trenches again, this time fighting against the controversial Canyon Oaks development plan. He’s Colin Penno, editor of the bi-weekly in town, the Messenger. . . . Penno, a native of England, came to Topanga in the early 1970s, and knew right away this is where he belonged. “Topanga’s a place where you can still smell the earth.” (B2)

NO CODE SEVEN: OK, so we’re getting another area code--562--in two years (A1). That’s still no reason for us to panic. In fact, Pacific Bell tells us the Valley is going to have 818 to kick around “well into the next century.”. . . Since area codes started in 1947, there’s been only one major switch in the Valley, when we went from 213 to 818 in 1984.