Out There, That’s What They Call a Gofer Ball

The Angels are used to fighting their way through lines of autograph seekers at the ballpark and, when they travel, at the team hotel. But, when they dressed up in coats and ties to meet President Bush on Tuesday, they did not expect to encounter autograph hounds on the White House grounds.

Government staffers extending bats and balls for the Angels to sign included two young women who said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham sent them to fetch autographs.

In Washington, that’s called delegating.

Trivia question: What court ruling on this date 81 years ago allowed baseball to be run in a way unlike any other pro sport?

He’s in a pickle: On this date in 1990, Oakland’s Rickey Henderson stole career base No. 893, breaking Ty Cobb’s 62-year-old American League record.

Henderson, now 44 years old and playing for the independent Newark (N.J.) Bears, recently took part in a promotional race against people dressed like ketchup and mustard bottles, prompting this from the Toronto Sun’s Steve Simmons: “They could have billed the race as the hot dog vs. the condiments.”

Call to arms: Harvard didn’t make the college baseball playoffs, and it’s too bad because all by himself freshman Matt Brunnig could have provided a lot of the pitching depth a team needs in tournament-style play.

Brunnig is 6 feet 7 and is called “Freak” by his teammates because he can pitch about 85 mph left-handed and near 90 right-handed.

He was 4-3 and had a respectable 3.55 earned-run average, throwing mainly right-handed.

“Someday he’s going to be our No. 1 starter,” Coach Joe Walsh told Bloomberg News, “and our No. 3 as well.”

Hall pass: In an interview on Sporting News Radio, Jose Canseco said he should not be in baseball’s Hall of Fame.

But he also had plenty of reasons why he would have, should have and could have been worthy. “If you were to average home runs and RBIs per at bat, definitely,” he said. “Between injuries, things that have happened to me off the field, and now with this issue of being exiled from the game of baseball.... [If I had played longer] I could have easily hit another one hundred home runs.”

Me, too, provided they’d have moved the pitching mound way back and the fences way in.

Texas two step: Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser believes the best players should be able to play on the PGA Tour, regardless of gender, just as long as they qualify.

But he also said this about what he described as a “hysterical feminist proposal” to automatically place the No. 1 LPGA player in the Colonial field each year: “This is a golf tournament. Not a Sadie Hawkins dance.”

Trivia answer: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that organized baseball was primarily a sport and not a business, and not subject to antitrust laws and interstate commerce regulations.

And finally: Comedian Argus Hamilton noted what he described as the “very patriotic” atmosphere at the Indianapolis 500. “After the invocation,” he said, “a million race fans stood up and sang God Bless Dick Cheney for securing the oil that made the race possible.”

-- Mike Hiserman