A Chance to Revisit His Words of Wisdom

TowleHouse has published a number of “Quotable” books featuring sports figures, such as “Quotable Wooden,” “Quotable Woody” and “Quotable Charles Barkley.”

Among its latest is “Quotable Jim Murray,” compiled by Linda McCoy-Murray, the late Times sports columnist’s widow.

Here are a few Murray quotes culled from the book:

* On Little League baseball: “[It’s] a juvenile activity that makes delinquents out of adults.”

* On fans: “A Ram fan was said to be a guy who got his season tickets in February and his wife’s Christmas present on Christmas Eve.”

* On the late horse trainer Charlie Whittingham: “He has been around horses so long he sleeps standing up.”

So true: A personal favorite among Murray’s lines, not in the book, was his take on older professional athletes who were near retirement being more willing to talk to the media and fans than the younger, brash ones.

It went something like: “When it becomes time to say goodbye, they start to say hello.”

Trivia time: Who was Murray talking about when he wrote: “He is about as popular in the tennis world as a double fault”?

Supply and demand: Keith Olbermann, on his MSNBC show “Countdown,” got in a shot at his old ESPN colleague and friend, Craig Kilborn, the host of the “Late, Late Show” on CBS.

“The Los Angeles City Council passed a measure banning lap dances within the city limits, and the city’s economy has collapsed,” Olbermann said. “As a second consequence, Kilborn has an additional $400,000 to spend on other things annually.”

Sticky issue: Reader Larry Wilcox e-mailed to say he is the founder of a group pushing for an NFL team to play in the Rose Bowl. He proposes that the team be called the Pasadena Thorns and has created a Web site, www.thepasadenathorns.com.

Wilcox’s rallying cry: “Located between the brains of JPL and Caltech and complemented with the creativity of Pasadena’s Art Center comes the athletics and power of the Pasadena Thorns.”

Ouch!

No scoops here: San Francisco Chronicle reader Janice Hough got in this dig at the Dodgers in Tom FitzGerald’s “Open Season” column: “Cold Stone Creamery offered free ice cream to all fans at Dodger Stadium whenever the Dodgers scored 10 or more runs. Talk about free advertising.”

Trivia answer: Jimmy Connors.

And finally: A new Major League Baseball Productions DVD titled “100 Years of the World Series” includes a classic line involving pitcher Dizzy Dean.

In the 1934 Series in which Dean’s St. Louis Cardinals played the Detroit Tigers, Dean entered Game 4 as a pinch runner. As he ran toward second on a grounder to short, Dean got plunked in the head by a ball thrown by shortstop Billy Rogell and was knocked out.

Dean was taken to a hospital, and newspaper accounts the next day said, “X-rays of Dizzy Dean’s head found nothing.”

*

Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com