Memorabilia Collector Is in the Chips With Ichiro

When baseball memorabilia dealer Gary Engel heard that Ichiro Suzuki was coming to America, he stocked up on $25,000 worth of Ichiro merchandise from Japanese collectors.

Magazine covers, figurines, trading cards, playing cards, drinking glasses, puzzles, plastic fans, cooking aprons, sun visors and life-size cardboard supermarket displays--everything he could find.

“Having experienced Nomomania in 1995, I knew it could happen again,” Engel, a collector of Japanese baseball memorabilia since the 1980s, said, recalling Hideo Nomo’s rookie season with the Dodgers. “But never did I expect to see anything like this.”

Darren Rovell, writing for ESPN.com, reports that Ichiro’s 1993 Takara rookie card recently sold for $1,800. Others are valued at far more. A premier Ichiro gem is the 1994 Calbee Hokkaido card, distributed only on the island of Hokkaido in limited runs, attached to potato chip bags.

Engel said he has made a 1,000% profit selling Ichiro items.

“Thank you for coming to America, Ichiro,” he said.

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Trivia time: What movie star, in a 1988 book, claimed to have subsidized the rent for Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) during his UCLA basketball career?

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Why bother? During a recent radio broadcast of a Spark game at Staples Center, the signal could not be picked up on the Foothill, Pasadena, Harbor or Santa Monica freeways. Not even static. Nor can you hear the games from the Staples parking lot.

Here’s why: The club’s broadcast outlet, KWKU (AM-1220), is a 250-watt station (Comparison: KFI is 50,000 watts) in Pomona. No one there answers the phone and there is no answering machine. And no Web site.

The WNBA requires teams to broadcast their games, but there’s no minimum power rule.

Spark games were to have been broadcast on a bigger station, but it underwent a format change shortly before the WNBA season.

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The new Barry: What has happened to the formerly surly Barry Bonds, now suddenly the life of the party?

When Tommy Lasorda tried to dodge a splintered bat, Bonds came running out with a catcher’s chest protector for the portly Dodger executive.

And at the All-Star team party, it was Bonds who was behind the bar, pouring drinks.

Next thing you know, he’ll be smiling at reporters.

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Don’t look: For a piece on pro tennis’ minor league, the USTA Futures Tour, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Mark Fainaru-Wada conducted interviews at a tournament in Chico, where players bunked four to a room in local homes and motels.

Commented one player, Amanda Augustus: “Four girls sharing one bathroom is not pretty.”

Footnote: The Chico men’s singles winner, Jaymon Crabb, won $1,950. The doubles winners split $945.

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Better terms: The San Francisco Chronicle’s Scott Ostler, on Alex Rodriguez getting a $100,000 All-Star game bonus: “The way it should work: You get 25 mil a year and if you don’t make the All-Star team, you keep $100,000 and give back the rest.”

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You schmooze, you lose: From syndicated columnist Norman Chad: “Did you see Fox’s Kevin Kennedy doing interviews during the baseball All-Star game? If Kennedy worked as a sideline reporter during the creation of the world, he’d ask God if he had any plans for the weekend.”

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Trivia answer: Kirk Douglas. In his book, “The Ragman’s Son,” he said that as a favor to UCLA boosters he let Alcindor live “for a couple of years” in a unit of an apartment building he owned near UCLA “at low rent.”

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And finally: Boxing promoter Bennie Georgino handles the 37-year-old Weaver triplets, Floyd, Lloyd and Troy. Even he can’t tell them apart.

“In airports, I just holler, ‘Hey, Weaver,’ ” he said.