Too Bad He Didn’t Get a Driver to Go With It

The golfer with the coolest wheels at the Wachovia Championship in Charlotte, N.C., this weekend is 18-year-old Ty Tryon, who couldn’t accept the perk of a free loaner Mercedes, offered to other players by local dealers.

Mercedes policy is that drivers must be 22 or older to receive a loaner. So Tryon has a black 2002 Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph owned by Felix Sabates, one of Charlotte’s richest men.

Tryon was first offered Sabates’ new Mercedes 500 SL, but the car wasn’t big enough to seat the golfer’s parents, girlfriend, caddie and friends.

“So I said, ‘Take my Rolls,’ ” Sabates told the Charlotte Observer. “You should have seen his eyes bug out!”

Tryon shot 75-75 and missed the cut.

Trivia time: Only regular-season statistics count in career records, otherwise Rafael Palmeiro already would be a member of the 500 home run club. Palmeiro has 499 homers, plus four in the playoffs for 503. What other player has more than 500 homers in the majors -- and is not a club member?

Oh, Johnny: Web site posting by the Philadelphia Daily News on Thursday:

“The Byko Birthday Book yesterday mistakenly resurrected Johnny Unitas. He remains dead and did not celebrate his 70th birthday.”

Jeter jam: For the two days leading up to Derek Jeter’s first game with the double-A Trenton Thunder, club employees had to use their own cell phones for outgoing calls because all the business lines were jammed by fans trying to buy tickets.

For Wednesday’s game, by count of the Newark Star-Ledger, there were a standing-room-only crowd of 8,380, 12 TV video crews, four police officers directing traffic, and two personal bodyguards and three trainers just for Jeter, who is on a rehabilitation assignment.

Title town: Scott Spiezio thinks some Angel magic might be rubbing off on the Ducks.

He has noticed that injured Duck Dan Bylsma is sporting a purple stripe in his goatee, similar to the one Spiezio had during the baseball playoffs.

And then there was the luck the Arrowhead Pond video screen brought for the Ducks against the Dallas Stars.

With the score tied late in Game 6, Spiezio’s dramatic three-run homer in Game 6 of the World Series was shown, followed by a shot of Spiezio in a luxury suite, watching the hockey game with his young son. The caption -- “Game 6 karma.”

Indeed. Shortly after, Sandis Ozolinsh popped a rebound into the net, giving the Ducks a 4-3 win and series victory.

Trivia answer: Lou Gehrig with 505. He hit 10 World Series homers, two in All-Star games and 493 in the regular season.

And finally: An ethics expert says Iowa State should “put together a leadership program on alcoholism and work with young people” in the wake of the embarrassing incidents that led to the resignation of basketball Coach Larry Eustachy.

Richard E. Lapchick, director of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, told Associated Press that the school could use the incident as an example of “how it hurt the university, disrupted the athletic program and hurt the individual and all the players involved.”

No word on Lapchick’s advice for Alabama.