For Some at Dodger Stadium, the Dream Team Wasn’t on the Diamond

My Dodger Stadium correspondent, Michael Horowicz, writes that beach balls weren’t the only distractions in the stands the other night. There was also Hugh Hefner--and his six girlfriends.

“Each of his girlfriends took turns sitting next to him so they could canoodle with the big guy,” reported Horowicz, a season ticket-holder. “All seven would get up occasionally and pose for pictures from the crowd. They signed autographs.”

Horowicz says some spectators even produced Playboy magazines for the septuplets’ signatures. (I’m assuming the fans had to go out to their cars for the magazines.)

Excitement galore. But, to Horowicz at least, “another woman stole the show.”

After word had reached the press box about the famous guests, organist Nancy Bea Hefley broke into a tune from “South Pacific.”

Naturally, it was “There Is Nothing Like a Dame.”

On the road: While in Dover, England, Gil Hamblet of Rancho Palos Verdes came upon a sign evidently directed at tourists who plan to commit only minor offenses (see photo).

Danger: Art Ahead: The reaction to the nude male figures etched into the floor at LAX showed, thank goodness, that we haven’t become too sophisticated for a good old-fashioned controversy over art depicting human bodies.

Look at all the fun we’ve had in the past with other suggestive displays, including:

* “The New World” (1991), Tom Otterness’ sculptures of an anatomically correct female and baby outside the downtown federal building. They were termed “obscene” by a judge, but won a reprieve and were reinstated behind a protective railing.

* The Greek statues with painted genitalia on the front lawn of a 38-room mansion in Beverly Hills. The owner, a Saudi sheik, eventually moved away, and the estate was leveled in a 1980 fire.

* “Back Seat Dodge ‘38” (1966), Edward Kienholz’s lusty, beer-bottle-decorated work of an amorous couple in a car, which some politicians tried to ban after its debut at the County Museum of Art (see photo).

* “The Pink Lady of Malibu,” a 60-foot-tall likeness of a naked maiden that was painted on a cliff above a tunnel on Malibu Canyon Road in 1966. The city deemed the nymph hazardous to motorists (especially, I imagine, male motorists). A compromise proposal to dress her in a bikini was rejected, and city workers rubbed her out with spray-paint guns.

We Love L.A.: The L.A. Downtown News’ annual reader survey of the “Best of Los Angeles” included these winners:

* Best Glitz: The two-pound gold nugget inside the Wells Fargo History Museum on Bunker Hill.

* Best Downtown LAPD Urban Legend: “That LAPD officers from the station across the street semi-paralyze their noses at a store with a walk-in humidor before they head out to grisly [and smelly] murder scenes.”

* Best Little Known Fact About City Hall: It was a stand-in for the Vatican on the TV miniseries “The Thorn Birds.” (Talk about casting against type.)

miscelLAny: Among those honored for submitting the “Best Ballot” in the Downtown News survey was Marj Villella. For the question, “What Is Downtown’s Best Kept Secret?” she responded: “I’m not going to tell you.”

Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A., 90012 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.