Guns ‘n’ aromas:Author Jan Moran held a...

Guns ‘n’ aromas:

Author Jan Moran held a news conference in L.A. the other day to announce that his three-year study had found that companies using fragrances in the workplace are less prone to violence. Nice smells eliminate “stress and depression, which eventually lead to violence,” he explained. Maybe Moran has found the answer to the U.S. Postal Service’s problem with employee outbursts. The postal folks should announce that henceforth they will handle only perfumed letters and packages.

GETTING THE BUGS OUT: Margaret Seitz writes that her daughter Tami noticed that one Holiday Inn apparently is trying to draw customers who don’t like to leave their pet cockroaches at home (see excerpt).

WE’RE SHOCKED: A Long Beach legal newspaper reports that the Women Lawyers of Long Beach are taking a bus junket to a seminar in Laughlin, Nev., where members can earn credits for continuing education in such categories as “ethics, substance abuse . . .” Good thing the barristers are leaving the driving to someone else.

LIST OF THE DAY: Fans who are on strike against Major League Baseball--and history buffs in general--will enjoy a recently published account of the days of minor league horse-hiders in these parts. It’s “Runs, Hits, and an Era: The Pacific Coast League, 1903-58,” by Paul J. Zingg and Mark D. Medeiros.

The book is full of offbeat characters and anecdotes. For instance:

* Lou Novikoff of the old Los Angeles Angels would station his wife “in a box seat behind home plate with instructions to taunt him as loudly as she could.” The assigned nagging succeeded--Novikoff won the batting and home run crowns in 1940.

* Stout Steve Bilko, an Angel slugger of the 1950s, had such a Ruthian appetite for food and drink that he developed an unusual weight-reduction routine. After a night on the town, “Steve often resorted to locking himself in the bathroom, stuffing towels in the door and window cracks, and turning on the hot water full blast to create a private steam bath.”

* The league’s manpower shortage was so acute during World War II that the Angels signed Bill Sarni, an L.A. High student, to play catcher. Sarni was 15.

* The macho world of sports was shocked in 1950 when the Hollywood Stars decked out their players in pin-striped shorts. The team reasoned that “exposed legs would allow their men to move more quickly along the base paths.” One newspaper headline said: “Will the Stars Shave Their Legs Next?” The Stars eventually shed their shorts.

* And, finally, two 19th-Century PCL teams deserve to be remembered for their names: the Santa Cruz Beachcombers and the San Jose Prune Pickers.

THE JOHNNIE COCHRAN OF HIS DAY: Mention of the old PCL Angels, who played at Chutes Park at Washington and Main in the early 1900s, recalls a story Adela Rogers St. Johns told in her book, “Final Verdict.” Her father, Earl Rogers, was then the most famous defense attorney in L.A.

One day at Chutes Park, she wrote, “somebody started the yell that became a tradition in the Pacific Coast League for many, many years: ‘Kill the umpire--we’ll get Earl Rogers to defend you.’ I have to admit Papa loved it. He’d wave his hat and shout back at the fans.”

Ah, lawyers.

miscelLAny “Where else would the Unabomber and air pollution controls intersect but in L.A.?” writes Bill Kelly, a spokesman for the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Kelly notes that 6,000 Southland businesses were given a two-week extension to pay their air pollution emission fees because of mail delays caused by the Unabomber’s recent threats.