You could look it up: We were...

You could look it up: We were always confident big league baseball would return. After all, the sport is mentioned in several futuristic novels. “The Dreyfus Affair,” by Peter Lefcourt, deals with a 1998 expansion club, the L.A. Valley Vikings. The club’s stadium, if you have to know, sits “on the old Sepulveda Reservoir site between the San Diego and Ventura Freeways.” (Wouldn’t rainy days be sort of dangerous?)

Then there’s Bernie Bookbinder’s “Out at the Old Ball Game,” which looks ahead to the day when the New York Gents put together the first all-gay big league team. The Gents win the National League pennant after sweeping a four-game divisional series from their rivals in the West--the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Finally, Crabbe Evers’ “Bleeding Dodger Blue” is a mystery set in post-Tommy Lasorda Chavez Ravine. Lasorda’s successor is bumped off by one of his players outside a taco stand on Sunset Boulevard. The question is: Does the player’s contract OK perks such as murder?

*

Future O.J.: Getting back to “Out at the Old Ball Game,” it may be the first novel to mention the O.J. Simpson murder case. The story is set in 1996. And the subject comes up during a discussion of a young sportscaster’s career plans.

“I think I got my image, my persona,” the sportscaster tells a relative. “Even my name. It’s O.J. Cobb. O.J., got it? Like Simpson. I know he got into trouble but that wasn’t sports. . . .”

O.J. Cobb, incidentally, is a woman.

And, no, the novel doesn’t reveal how the Simpson case is resolved. Or if it is resolved.

Like we said, it’s only set one year into the future.

*

Perfect for L.A.’s theater of the absurd: Any judges out there having trouble with jurors? The folks at Atlantic Casting in Hollywood published an open letter in Daily Variety on Monday, offering to supply extras on short notice (see excerpt). Atlantic says it even has “specific extras to sit around and look like attorneys.” They might be more convincing that some of the real attorneys.

*

Hence the Easter duck: Erik Gerhardt of Hawthorne noticed that the program for an Easter service revealed that one of the speakers had been raised in a “Quacker” family.

*

So you think you had a bad day: A trucker hit a street person’s shopping cart Monday in Glendale, then alighted from his rig to argue with the transient.

While they were jawing away, an Amtrak train crashed into the truck, a Glendale police spokesman said.

Not only that, but the transient allegedly hit the truck driver with a rock before scurrying away.

miscelLAny It’s too, too symbolic. The Stricklin-Snively Mortuary building in Lakewood was formerly a Lincoln Savings & Loan.