Don’t Say Beckham Has an Odd Condition

Bending it like Beckham is one thing. Arranging it like the English soccer player is quite another.

David Beckham will reveal on British television before the World Cup that he has obsessive compulsive disorder.

He was quoted in the Chicago Sun-Times as saying, “Everything has to be perfect.”

His wife, Victoria, elaborated: “We’ve got three fridges -- food in one, salad in another and drinks in the third. In the drinks one, everything is symmetrical. If there’s three cans, he’ll throw one away because it has to be an even number.”

At least he can afford to do that.

Trivia time: Five players share the record for lowest fourth round in Masters history -- 64. Who are they?

Heavenly obsession: Men’s Journal reports in its April issue that Italy’s Angelo d’Arrigo broke his record for highest free flight in a hang glider, reaching an elevation of 29,850 feet, more than 7,000 feet above Argentina’s Aconcagua, South America’s highest peak.

The thrill-seeker studied the flight paths of Andean condors before the flight, which bettered his 2004 Mt. Everest fly-over by 350 feet.

Still funny: To mark the start of another long baseball season, thewizardofodds.blogspot.com pulled from its vault a classic Beano Cook quote.

Told in 1981 that 52 American hostages, who had been held for 14 months at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, had been freed and were being offered lifetime baseball passes, the college football commentator deadpanned:

“Haven’t they suffered enough?”

More nostalgia: After discovering the Peanuts gallery at San Francisco’s AT&T; Park, a quasi-shrine to the late Charles M. Schulz, John Ryan of the San Jose Mercury News recalled the 1962 classic in which Charlie Brown stood stoic for the first three frames before bursting into tears and proclaiming, “Why couldn’t McCovey have hit the ball just three feet higher?”

Sign of the times: Sadly, this thought now comes to mind: Had Willie McCovey been taking steroids he might have become the World Series hero, with the Giants trailing the New York Yankees, 1-0, in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7, by delivering a hit.

Instead, the ball was speared by second baseman Bobby Richardson and that was that.

No kidding: Under a Transworld Skateboarding magazine headline that reads “The good, the bad, and the ugly” are results of a Zandl Group survey of boys 13-17, who were asked whom they’d most like to meet.

They chose, in order, God (or Jesus Christ), President Bush and skateboarding legend Tony Hawk.

Trivia answer: Maurice Bembridge (34-30) in 1974, Hale Irwin (32-32) in 1975, Gary Player (34-30) in 1978, Greg Norman (30-34) in 1988 and David Toms (35-29) in 1998.

And finally: On the obscurity of the young and inexperienced Florida Marlins, Greg Cote of the Miami Herald observes, “The 2006 team essentially is Dontrelle Willis, Miguel Cabrera and 23 guys wearing ‘Hello My Name Is’ stickers.”