Ernie’s Journey Could Be at an End

If baseball players strike Friday, it could mean Ernie Harwell called his last game Wednesday night after 42 years behind the microphone for the Detroit Tigers.

The Tigers are off today.

Harwell, retiring after the season at 84, had no way of knowing Wednesday if there will be a strike, or how many games one might cost, so he decided simply to go about his business.

What a business it has been.

One of Harwell’s trademarks is identifying the supposed hometowns of fans who catch foul balls--a custom that started by accident, but caught on quickly, he told the Detroit Free Press.

“A batter hit a foul ball into the stands. On the spur of the moment I said, ‘That foul was caught by a man from Saginaw [or some other place].’ A few days later I did it again.

“After a while people would stop me when I walked through Tiger Stadium. ‘Hey, let a guy from Windsor catch one tonight.’ ... Or some lady would say, ‘I’m from Battle Creek. Can’t somebody from our town catch a foul ball?’ ”

Incredibly, some folks never quite got the joke.

“Some fans have speculated that I have seating charts to find out about hometowns,” Harwell said. “Others suggested I check with turnstile men for information. Now that the computer age has arrived, some suggest I use my PC for the desired town locations.”

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Trivia time: Houston and Los Angeles are the only teams to win the WNBA title. What teams other than the Comets and Sparks have appeared in the finals?

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Olympic flameout: News that Washington didn’t make the cut when New York and San Francisco were chosen as the final U.S. contenders for the 2012 Summer Olympics hit Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser hard.

“Maybe we could try again--in 2036!” Kornheiser wrote.

“My fantasy is to win an Olympic medal at 90, but then fail a drug test because I took ginkgo biloba to remember what event I was in.”

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Bay Area bid: Art Spander of the Oakland Tribune doesn’t know whether it would be good news or bad news if the Olympics came to San Francisco.

“[But] all those empty dot-com offices can be turned into housing for Olympic athletes.”

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NHL woes: Jason Kay, managing editor of the Hockey News, isn’t buying NHL executives’ claim that ESPN’s drastic cutback in its NHL telecast schedule this season will create higher demand for hockey in the long run.

“Less may be more in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, but a 30% decrease in nationally televised NHL games is yet another rejection of a league gasping for attention,” Kay wrote.

“The last time hockey was in danger of being overexposed in the U.S. is when Michael Ontkean’s character in ‘Slap Shot’ performed a strip tease.”

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Trivia answer: New York, Phoenix and Charlotte.

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And finally: Golf writer Eddie Sefko of the Houston Chronicle enjoys seeing people of Fijian and Polynesian descent following Vijay Singh, those of Mexican heritage in the galleries around Esteban Toledo, and the many Asians behind K.J. Choi and Shigeki Maruyama.

“It’s human nature to want to follow somebody who has a similar background or heritage as you. Which leads to the obvious question: Why aren’t there more Martians following Jesper Parnevik?”