Little League Frowns Upon Player Fashion

A Campbell, Calif., Little League coach fired for letting his team wear unauthorized black pants has his job back. The pants, however, have to go.

A compromise was reached between parents and the league board of directors. The parents agreed to the required white pants and the league agreed Sal Machuca could stay as coach of the Butchie’s Pet Feed team.

Machuca was ejected from the field and the league on Tuesday when he and three players wore the banned pants.

“The league was just afraid of change, maybe that teams will show up in purple shorts next year,” Machuca said.

Trivia time: Who holds the NBA playoff record for most three-point baskets in a game?

Phantom opponent: Art Aragon, recalling his fight in Los Angeles with Carmen Basilio on Sept. 5, 1958, said he lost because he was too nervous.

“The bell rings for the first round and I rush to the center of the ring and throw two left jabs, a hard left hook, two right hands and an uppercut,” Aragon said.

“Then, he comes to the center of the ring.”

Donovan legacy: An Associated Press article identified Billy Donovan as the youngest head basketball coach in NCAA Division I when Marshall hired him last month at 28.

Curiously, another Billy Donovan was only 27 when he was basketball coach of Loyola Marymount when it achieved NCAA Division I status in the 1955-56 season.

Costly saliva: Joe Falls in the Detroit News: “The fine in Singapore for spitting in public is $500, which means (Detroit Tiger utility player) Tony Phillips would use up a year’s salary in one game.”

A sinking feeling: Phil Niekro, who is manager of the Colorado Silver Bullets, a new women’s baseball team, recently praised one of his pitchers for her ability to throw an effective sinker.

When a reporter asked her name, Niekro declined.

“Women are a little different,” he said. “If I mention her name, the others will be thinking, ‘He likes her more than he likes me.’ ”

Ordinary guy: Bill Hardekopf, president of the Birmingham Barons and former USC athletic marketing director, told Bob Ford of the Philadelphia Inquirer that the club tries to treat Michael Jordan like any other player.

“We have a little box by the receptionist’s desk, and we throw his mail in there like everyone else’s,” he said.

A little box? How about a barrel?

Come again?New York Met announcer Ralph Kiner recently described a dribbler to shortstop by Gary Redus:

“This time he grounds it on the ground.”

Trivia answer: Dan Majerle of Phoenix, with eight against Seattle on June 1, 1993.

Quotebook: Bud Selig on being baseball commissioner: “For a guy who said he’d take the job for two to four months, it’s been an awful long two to four months. Seems like two to four decades.”