Her Writing Can Make Alesi a Little Carsick

Formula One driver Jean Alesi has been taking a lot of heat from the media in his native France this season.

According to On Track magazine, a satirical TV program has regularly featured an Alesi puppet in various stages of emotional distress.

At a news conference, a French journalist with whom Alesi does not see eye to eye asked him if the program upset him. He said no, that he found it funny.

“Then why,” she asked, “do you take such offense at what is written in the press?”

“Because I find the program amusing, but what you write makes me want to throw up.”

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Trivia time: Who was the last Dodger to lead the National League in home runs?

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Shark and high C: Carl Vigeland, author of the book “Stalking the Shark” about Greg Norman, has also written about the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He finds an interesting parallel in the two.

“I’m fascinated by pressure,” Vigeland said. “The fear that a trumpet player feels when he has a high note to hit is the same as what a golfer feels in hitting a big shot.”

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Unimpressed: As the Olympic Games near, Vitaly Smirnov, president of the Russian Olympic Committee, said about conditions in Atlanta: “There is a big difference between promises of the organizers before the Olympics and real conditions.”

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L.A. bashing: In the state of Washington, a pair of 5K runs are held for nudists, called the Bare Buns Runs. One is in Issaquah and one in Spokane.

“Main difference between the two nude fun runs,” writes Ron C. Judd in the Seattle Times, “[is that] in Issaquah, they run for fun. In Spokane, they’re fleeing a group of retired Los Angeles police officers visiting from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.”

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Cross-spikers: According to Reuters, members of an all-transvestite men’s volleyball team from the northern Lampang province of Thailand, surprise gold medalists in the Thai national games, claim they are being kept off the men’s national team because they act and look like women.

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Scorecard menu: Tampa Bay Buccaneer owner Malcolm Glazer has changed the name of Tampa Stadium to Houlihan Stadium, after his restaurant chain.

All of which prompted Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Sun-Times to wonder, “How long before the guy puts in ferns and a brass rail?”

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Trivia answer: Duke Snider, with 43 in 1956, two years before the Dodgers left Brooklyn.

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And finally: Keeping an up-to-the-minute scorecard is a must for baseball broadcasters, but Phil Rizzuto sometimes chattered so much at New York Yankee games that he fell behind.

Once a fellow broadcaster noted that Rizzuto had written “ww” after a play and asked what it meant.

“Wasn’t watching,” the Hall of Famer replied.