It Might Be the Only Way They Get In

When Dodger players were asked by MasterCard to name which player from the last 100 years they would most like to sit with at a World Series game, pitcher Mike Maddux chose his brother Greg, the Atlanta Brave pitcher.

Chan Ho Park named Sandy Koufax, Gary Sheffield and Pedro Borbon selected Jackie Robinson, Trenidad Hubbard reached back for Negro League legend Satchel Paige.

Eric Karros surprised pollsters by naming Pete Rose, the hit king banned from baseball. Babe Ruth was the choice of Todd Hundley, and Todd Hollandsworth named Kirk Gibson, the crusty hero of the 1988 World Series.

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Trivia time: Who is the only woman to have played on championship basketball teams in NCAA Division I, the Olympics and WNBA?

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Bump it up: More and more, the pro golf season is becoming a 12-month tour of duty, especially with the designed-for-TV invitationals at the end of the year. How can high-ranked golfers turn them down?

Former U.S. Open champion Lee Janzen says, “Set a price so high they won’t accept.”

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Most of the most: The San Francisco Chronicle’s Tom FitzGerald thumbed through the index of Wilt Chamberlain’s “A View From Above” and found listings for such items as “adolescence of,” “dislikes of,” and “feats of,” but under “women and,” there were listings for pages xi, 3-4, 16-17, 29, 30-31, 32, 54, 55, 85, 86-89, 95, 184, 209, 235, 240-41, 246, 251-57, 258, 260-61, 262, 264-65, 267-68.”

“Does it add up to 20,000?” asked FitzGerald.

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Persuasive Pedro: Pedro Martinez won 23 games and is a certainty to win the Cy Young Award in the American League, but another achievement ranks high in the Boston Red Sox pitcher’s mind.

“One of the things that I am most proud of is talking [brother] Ramon out of giving it all up.”

Ramon Martinez underwent surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff in June 1998 and spent most of 1999 in rehab in the Gulf Coast and Florida State Leagues before rejoining the Red Sox.

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Trivia answer: Sheryl Swoopes, of Texas Tech and now the Houston Comets.

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And finally: Leonard Shapiro in the Washington Post: “Doesn’t it seem as if every time a Fox or NBC camera zooms in on a player or manager, a spray of spit is certain to follow? It’s uncanny. You don’t need a remote to watch baseball on television these days. You need a windshield wiper.”