Sorry, Charlie: One Won’t Quite Cut It

Things are looking up at Notre Dame. The Irish are coming off a 42-21 upset of 23rd-ranked Pittsburgh in Charlie Weis’ coaching debut.

But then things were looking up as recently as 2002, when Tyrone Willingham, now at Washington, started 8-0 on his way to a 10-2 regular-season record. So Irish fans might want to put their enthusiasm on hold.

“A plan to repaint ‘Touchdown Jesus’ as ‘Crewcut Charlie’ seems a bit premature,” wrote Reggie Hayes of the Fort Wayne (Ind.) News-Sentinel. “Then again, only seven more wins and Weis can match Willingham’s 8-0 start in his first season at Notre Dame, a feat that guaranteed Willingham two more years of job insecurity and a one-way ticket to Seattle.”

Trivia time: On this day in 1993, the St. Louis Cardinals’ Mark Whiten hit four home runs and drove in 12 runs at Cincinnati. Three players have hit four homers in one game since then. Can you name them?

Glass-house department: In reference to TBS announcer Don Sutton’s making note of Cincinnati pitcher Ramon Ortiz’s .093 batting average being shown in high definition on the Turner Field scoreboard in Atlanta, reader Frank Messina e-mailed to say, “Talk about the Sony Hi-Def calling the giant Mitsubishi plasma screen black.

“I couldn’t let Sutton’s comments [which appeared in Tuesday’s Morning Briefing] pass without noting that he went four entire seasons hitting less than .093: 1976, .083; 1978, .083; 1980, .078, and 1988, .089.

“Even funnier, in 1,354 at-bats, Sutton had exactly zero home runs.”

No easy feat: Phil Mushnick of the New York Post, noting that Jesse Ventura is the spokesman in a radio commercial for an offshore sports gambling website, wrote: “In his excited testimony on behalf of this operation, Ventura identifies himself as Governor Jesse Ventura, a reminder that it takes a state to elect a village idiot.”

Double trouble: A recent caller to a talk show with John Riggins and Adam Schein on Sirius Satellite Radio’s NFL channel, identifying himself as “Mike in Illinois,” abruptly hung up after saying, “Oh my gosh!”

Mike called back the next day to say that his wife, who was about to give birth to twin boys, said, “It’s time.” Mike told Schein they had named one of the twins Adam, after him.

Apparently, Mike’s wife was not thrilled. After hearing a replay of the show, she said: “I can’t believe the father of my children is such an idiot.”

Looking back: On this day in 1970, jockey Bill Shoemaker broke Johnny Longden’s all-time record by posting his 6,033rd victory at Del Mar.

Trivia answer: Mike Cameron of Seattle on May 2, 2002, at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, Shawn Green of the Dodgers on May 23, 2002, at Milwaukee, and Carlos Delgado of Toronto on Sept. 25, 2003, against Tampa Bay at Toronto.

And finally: Mike Downey of the Chicago Tribune, on Northwestern’s scheduling Northeastern for its 2007 football opener: “Why, was Southwestern busy?”

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