Umpire Doesn’t Like These Calls

Ria Cortesio doesn’t want to be called a female umpire.

“It makes about as much sense to me as saying blue-eyed umpire or brown-eyed umpire,” she said. “A ball is a ball, a strike is a strike, whether you have blue eyes or brown eyes, or whether you’re male or female.”

Cortesio, 24, is the only female umpire in professional baseball. She has been assigned to the Class-A Midwest League this season after spending two years in the Pioneer League.

“When you come down to it, I am an umpire. I don’t see myself as something different or something special,” she said. “But I guess there is only one of me and hundreds of thousands of people who are not me.”

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Trivia time: Who are the six players in major league history with at least six consecutive seasons with 20 home runs and a .320 batting average?

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Really bad ad campaign: Jerry Greene in the Orlando Sentinel: “Can’t believe it took the Chinese centuries to think of this. In order to promote ‘Beijing in 2008’ for the Olympics, they stretched a scroll nearly a mile long on the Great Wall.

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“That’s brilliant. The scroll had drawings of pandas flying airplanes and slogans such as, ‘Success to Beijing!’ and ‘We will win!’ OK, maybe they do need a little work on writing slogans, but the idea is solid.”

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Dirty business: Dennis “Dirt” Winston, the former Pittsburgh Steeler and New Orleans Saint linebacker, got his nickname with punishing hits that flattened opponents. Now he’s the one who feels flattened after a storage rental company sold his most prized possessions.

The storage center said Winston missed two payments, a claim he disputes, so it sold or threw out everything. Gone are jerseys he wore in two Super Bowls and the most valuable player trophy he received from the Saints.

“I was collecting it all to give it to my daughter and my high school,” said Winston, now an assistant coach at the University of Toledo. “My high school coach said they were going to put it in a museum.”

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Dodgers could use him: When Chicago Cub second baseman Eric Young was thrown out trying to steal by Pittsburgh Pirate catcher Jason Kendall on Sunday, it ended a streak of 34 consecutive steals dating to last July.

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Trivia answer: Lou Gehrig (1930-37), Ted Williams (1939-42, 1946-49), Babe Ruth (1926-32), Stan Musial (1948-54), Joe DiMaggio (1936-41) and Edgar Martinez (1995-2000). Note: Williams served in the military from 1943-45.

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And finally: Colorado Rocky Manager Buddy Bell, commenting on Todd Hollandsworth’s three homers, including the game-winner, in a 10-7 victory over Arizona on Sunday at Coors Field in Denver: “Without him we wouldn’t have won it.”