Sorenstam Provides Inspiration for Pit Crew

The first all-female pit crew in NASCAR history will be working for driver Shawna Robinson today in the O’Reilly 400 truck race at the Texas Motor Speedway.

The idea to team Robinson, one of a few female pro drivers, with an all-female crew was inspired by Annika Sorenstam when she competed against the men at the Colonial PGA Tour event about 25 miles away recently.

A marketing agency searched health clubs for “competitive women in great shape” as crew candidates.

They found two personal trainers, a physical therapist, a student, a business manager, an information analyst and the co-owner of an online talent database, ages 21 to 39.

Mike Starr, who owns the truck Robinson will drive, has been supervising the crew’s training.

“It’s up to me to make sure that it’s not a joke,” he told Bloomberg News. Yeah, or the impetus for a very big crash.

Trivia time: Name three things Ken Griffey Jr. and Stan Musial have in common.

For the defense: Reared in Fresno in the 1980s, San Antonio Spur guard Bruce Bowen watched the Lakers and his favorite player very closely.

That player wasn’t Magic Johnson, or James Worthy, or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

“I was always a skinny kid who was told I’d never have the body to play big-time college basketball or the NBA,” Bowen told the Washington Post. “So, I always studied Michael Cooper ... wanted to be Coop.”

Said Johnson, “You know how much pride I took in my passing? Coop took that much pride in his defense.... So, Bruce idolized the right guy.”

Unfortunately for Bowen, his free throws look like another former Laker’s: Wilt Chamberlain’s.

That’s flagrant: Scott Ostler, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, is not surprised baseball umpires compare the QuesTec Umpire Evaluating System to Big Brother watching.

“Gradually over the last couple of decades, the umps have hijacked the strike zone, twisted and shrunk it, all part of their evil plot to take over the world,” he wrote. “ ... You know what happens to an umpire whose judgment is deemed badly flawed and wildly arbitrary?

“He gets shipped to the NBA.”

Horsin’ around: Comedian Jerry Seinfeld wonders if horse racing is really understood by the thoroughbreds themselves.

“They must get to the end and go, ‘We were just here,’ ” he said on HBO’s “On the Record.” “ ‘What’s the point of that? ... If we had just stayed here, we would have been first!’ ”

Trivia answer: They were born on Nov. 21, in Donora, Pa., and each has 475 major league home runs.

Unplugged: The Class-A Fort Myers (Fla.) Miracle spoofed Chicago Cub slugger Sammy Sosa’s corked bat incident by giving away plugs of cork to the first 505 fans through its gates Thursday and providing free admission to anyone named Sammy, Sosa or Corky.

And finally: Noting that experts say corking a baseball bat “allows a player to move the same amount of exterior girth at a faster speed,” comedy writer Jerry Perisho suggests, “Hey, maybe the Mets should think about ‘corking’ Mo Vaughn.”