A Publicity Effort That Had No Traction

Bob Benoit, 77, of Manhattan Beach was a publicist for Hollywood Park on May 6, 1954, when he arranged to have photographs taken of Kentucky Derby winner Determine after the California thoroughbred was flown back to Los Angeles.

Benoit said several newspapers were interested in running the photos on the front page of their sports sections, but those plans fell through when news broke that Roger Bannister had run the first sub-four-minute mile.

“Of course, the game was over,” recalled Benoit, whose company specializes in horse racing photography. “We were back with the tire ads again.”

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Trivia time: Who holds the record for highest scoring average in an NBA playoff series?

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Web of greed: Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle doesn’t buy the pitch that baseball’s putting advertising on bases for the movie “Spider-Man 2” -- a plan that was scrapped Thursday -- was the perfect alliance of two national pastimes:

“Welcome, fans, to the Golden Age of Gibberish. What this is is the perfect alliance between a desperate, greedy sport and an exploitative and crass industry.”

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More greed: Baseball’s controversial marketing decision drew comparisons to NASCAR racing’s abundant use of advertising, prompting this response from driver Brandon Whitt: “I read somewhere, ‘It’s going to look like a race car out there.’ Racing didn’t start the advertising as part of sports -- Major League Baseball did. We’ve just done a better job of using it.”

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Name game: Greg Cote of the Miami Herald, on why he wasn’t surprised that Vivian Harris retained his WBA junior-welterweight title: “Harris has been fighting his entire life, thanks to his parents’ naming him Vivian.”

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Scary games: After three bombs exploded outside a suburban Athens police station this week, Shaun Powell of Newsday wrote that he was apprehensive about covering the Olympics this summer:

“The official symbol of the Games should be two crossed fingers. Or a soldier armed with a machine gun. Or a metal detector and screening machine. Or a gas mask. Or a bomb-sniffing German shepherd.

“These Games, [98] days away and counting, are approaching us not holding the torch, but a yellow flag.”

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Perfect match: Wouldn’t it be something, the New York Post speculated, if the New Jersey Nets drafted Brooklyn high school star Sebastian Telfair, especially since the Nets are expected to move to Brooklyn?

“I would love to help the younger generation,” Net guard Jason Kidd told the Post.

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Looking back: On this day in 1986, Paul Mokeski of the Milwaukee Bucks, a graduate of Encino Crespi High, committed six fouls in one quarter against the Philadelphia 76ers to set an NBA playoff record.*

Trivia answer: Jerry West of the Lakers averaged 46.3 points in a six-game series against the Baltimore Bullets in 1965.

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And finally: Jim Armstrong of the Denver Post, after an Arena Football League fan attended a Colorado Crush game in pajamas: “There’s no ‘I’ in team, but there are two in idiot.”