Rule No. 1: Don’t Jerk Grandma Around

Roger Clemens has won 301 games, six Cy Young awards and has a place in baseball’s Hall of Fame waiting for him when he retires. But he doesn’t rank among baseball’s most popular players, according to a poll of 2,000 sports fans ages 12-64 conducted this spring by Marketing Evaluations Inc.

Of the 53 players included in the poll, Clemens ranked sixth in name recognition but was “about average” in popularity, according to pollster Steve Levitt, who said that might scare off some companies looking for an advertising pitchman.

“If a company says, ‘We want somebody with world-class achievement who’s warm and fuzzy so Grandma will like him,’ that’s not Roger Clemens,” Levitt told Bloomberg News. “But if you leave off the part about Grandma liking him, he qualifies.”

Trivia time: Who owns major league baseball’s longest current streak of consecutive games played?

Fields of dreams: The best big league playing fields are in Southern California, according to a Sports Illustrated survey of 550 major leaguers.

Dodger Stadium was deemed best by 23.3% of the voters with Edison Field, the choice of 11.2%, second.

The worst: Chicago’s Wrigley Field and Boston’s Fenway Park.

More survey: The second-biggest landslide winner in a survey question was David Eckstein of the Angels, who received 62.2% of the vote for “Who gets the most from the least talent?”

Adrian Beltre of the Dodgers finished in a fifth-place tie as the player who gets the “least from the most talent.”

The most lopsided vote: Asked whether Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame, 74.2% answered yes, unconditionally.

Questionable moves: The Atlantic Coast Conference sought to build a 12-team super conference that would have a lucrative championship game and would corner the Northeast TV market with the likes of Boston College and Syracuse joining Miami in jumping ship from the Big East.

As it is, there are 11 teams, no conference championship, no BC or Syracuse, meaning no Northeast TV ratings, and no promise of extra revenue after months of ill will.

“This fiasco affirms everything we’ve always suspected about big-time college athletics,” wrote Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi. “It’s filled with a bunch of back-stabbing [Atlantic Coast Corp.], money-hungry [Miami] liars [Virginia Tech] who care nothing about the good of college sports ...”

Understandable: Denver Post columnist Jim Armstrong is happy the Nuggets drafted Syracuse’s Carmelo Anthony rather than Darko Milicic or another European player.

“When looking for a big-time hoopster,” he wrote, “always better to take the one whose second language is trash-talking, not yodeling

Trivia answer: Miguel Tejada, who has played 517 games, the 27th-longest streak ever.

And finally: If Tejada keeps going ... and going and going, baseball expert Bill Arnold figures the Oakland A’s shortstop will break Cal Ripken’s record of 2,632 consecutive games in the 94th game of the 2016 season.

Just in case you want to make plans.

-- Mike Hiserman