Just Call Him the Hot-Dog Whisperer

The 89th Nathan’s Famous hot-dog eating contest will be televised live by ESPN from Coney Island, N.Y., at 9 a.m. today. The telecast will last one hour, including 40 minutes leading up to the 12-minute, all-you-can eat contest.

So what’s the strategy?

Eric Booker, who downed 30 dogs last year, told the New York Daily News, “As far as strategy is concerned, I sit with the hot dogs, I interrogate them. I’m like, ‘What’s the quickest way to eat you?’ ”

Top dog: Takeru Kobayashi, 25, of Japan is the three-time defending champion despite weighing only 155 pounds. He set the event record by downing 50 1/2 dogs in 2002. He is known as the “prince of gluttony” in Japan, where he is a national celebrity.

“It’s like any other sport,” Kobayashi told Associated Press. “You really have to be dedicated to win.”

Good reason: Charles Hardy, on why he first entered a hot-dog eating contest in 1998: “I thought of it as a free lunch.”

Trivia time: Who has the most victories as manager of the Angels?

A winner: An upcoming HBO documentary, “Hitler’s Pawn,” is about a young Jewish athlete who was Germany’s best high jumper heading into the 1936 Olympics. The Nazis used her as propaganda, then sacked her once the IOC committed to Berlin as the host site.

Today that deprived athlete, Margaret Lambert, is 90 and lives with her husband in Queens, N.Y.

At a recent premiere for the documentary in New York, she was every bit the company pitch person. “ ‘The Sopranos,’ ‘Six Feet Under,’ ‘Sex and the City,’ Margaret Lambert, what a winning combination,” she said.

Woe Sox: “Don’t look now, but it’s early July and the Boston Red Sox are hopelessly behind the New York Yankees in the American League East,” wrote AOL.com sports columnist Jim Armstrong. “Excuse me, but aren’t they supposed to wait until October to gag?”

Rich man, poor man: Larry Eustachy, forced out as basketball coach at Iowa State last year, told Associated Press he would always appreciate his time in the state of Iowa.

“Iowa has been great to my family and myself,” he said. “I feel like I owe the state of Iowa, even though I was the highest taxpayer for a few years.”

Eustachy, who is from Arcadia, had a salary of $1.1 million at Iowa State.

In California, that would put him nowhere near the top among taxpayers.

Looking back: On this day in 1982, Jimmy Connors defeated John McEnroe, 3-6, 6-3, 6-7, 7-6, 6-4, in four hours 16 minutes, the longest championship match at Wimbledon.

Trivia answer: Bill Rigney, with 625 from 1961 to 1969.

And finally: Publicist Rachael Vizcarra Banvard, on why Barry Bonds’ surprise birthday party last week was held at Lucky Strike Lanes in Hollywood, a bowling alley: “We thought Barry would enjoy seeing lots of strikes.”

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