A Baseball Broadcaster Bobbles One, but the Miscue Scores Big in Laughs

The San Diego Padres recently inducted broadcaster Jerry Coleman into the team’s hall of fame and paid him an even higher honor by unveiling a line of Jerry Coleman bobble-head dolls. The noggin tribute brought to mind one of Coleman’s most famous utterances during a game:

“There’s a fly to deep center field. Winfield is going back . . . back! He hits his head against the wall! It’s rolling toward second base!”

Coleman really had listeners’ heads bobbling that night!

Back-to-School Special: Good morning, class. Today’s exhibits (see accompanying) are:

* An opening for a teacher with not-so-admirable accomplishments (submitted by Marie Calkins of Tujunga).

* A UCLA student store ad that misidentifies the Rose Bowl--the stadium where UCLA plays (Michael King of Los Angeles).

* A snapshot of a Santa Monica saloon’s pitch to local college students. This was submitted by Wes Merchant at the end of last semester. I know I’m late with this item but I was always tardy with my homework in school too.

And, finally: An article in the New York Times about the cultural implications of alternate transit in California ended thusly: “Will Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint find romance speeding along the diamond lanes in the van pool? Stranger things have happened. This is California.”

An equally strange thing, as Howard Cohen points out, was the author’s misnaming of my alma mater as the “University of Southern California at Los Angeles.” (Eastern newspapers often seem to have trouble with place names out here on the western frontier.)

By the way, unlike a lot of other pundits, I consider USCLA a Rose Ball, I mean Bowl, candidate.

Back to strange California: This does seem to be the capital of unorthodox families. There are divorced moms and dads marrying other divorced moms and dads, not to mention folks who marry each other more than once.

Perhaps this swirl of complicated relationships explains the scene that Elizabeth Abramson saw in a bookstore. A grandmotherly type with two elementary school-age children took the boy aside.

“You be nice to your sister!” she told the lad. “At least she was your sister and she may even be your sister again.”

Street humor: After the mention here of goofy San Diego-area street names such as Haveteur Way (have it your way) and Unida (you need a) Place, William Potts of that city wrote that San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Diane Bell dug up some others. They include Outinda Street, Phire Place and Kurson Way (curds ‘n whey) not to mention the mirror image intersection of Nobel and Lebon.

There are also so many “Lemon” variation street names in Lemon Grove that developers apparently had to resort to Nomel (lemon spelled backward) Lane for one rue.

miscelLAny: Classes offered by Long Beach’s Recreation and Parks Department this fall include “Gospel Kick Aerobics” (“let’s get in shape--body, mind and soul”) and “Introduction to Feng Shui (Spanish).”

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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.