Shouldn’t They Play a Game of Horse?

A team of Santa Anita jockeys will play against seventh- and eighth-graders from Holy Angels Elementary School in Arcadia in an annual charity basketball game at La Salle High in Pasadena on Thursday night.

Kurt Hoover, co-host of the radio show “Thoroughbred Los Angeles,” is the jockeys’ coach. He used a triangle offense last year, which helped end a four-year losing streak. But Hoover says the triangle is gone.

“It was just too complicated,” he said.

“I’m in favor of a truncated triangle,” jockey Kent Desormeaux said, “but I guess we’ll have to go along with Kurt.”

Where’s Tex Winter when you need him?

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Trivia time: Sandy Koufax was the National League’s most valuable player in 1963. Who was the American League’s most valuable player that season, and what was his connection to Koufax?

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Strikeout disparity: According to reader David Macaray, the first post-1900 pitcher to record 300 or more strikeouts in a season was Rube Waddell of the Philadelphia A’s, who had 302 in 1903. But, amazingly, no pitcher in the National League had a 300-strikeout season until 1963, when Koufax struck out 306.

Koufax set the National League record of 382 strikeouts in 1965 and Nolan Ryan, as an Angel in 1973, set the major league record of 383.

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A bit too slick: A recent Morning Briefing item about an Ohio bowler’s perfect 900 series prompted an e-mail from longtime bowling writer Joe Lyou.

Lyou pointed out that Glenn Allison of Anaheim bowled a 900 series on July 2, 1982 at the La Habra 300 Bowl, but it was not allowed because of “an irregular oil pattern.” Officials thought the lane was improperly oiled, although the infraction sounds more like something that gets you black-flagged at Daytona.

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More bowling: An item on Anthony Davis’ upcoming gastric bypass surgery prompted Steven Herbert of City News Service to recall that Davis bowled a 67 in ABC’s “Superstars” competition in 1975.

“I was in a bowling class at Beverly Hills High at the time, and made bowling at least a 67 my goal,” Herbert said.

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More Davis: Herbert recalled that the only Superstars event Davis scored points in was the half-mile run, which he won. So New York Daily News columnist Dick Young wrote that Davis was just the player the New York Jets, who had drafted him, would need “on third-and-a-half-mile situations.”

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Looking back: On this day in 1970, Pete Maravich of Louisiana State scored 64 points in a 121-105 loss to Kentucky. Dan Issel scored 51 for the Wildcats.

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Trivia answer: Catcher Elston Howard of the New York Yankees. Both wore No. 32.

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And finally: “Same name” was the category for a puzzle on “Wheel of Fortune” the other day, and the answer turned out to be: “Ultraviolet and Tampa Bay Devil Rays.”

Mike Downey of the Chicago Tribune pointed out that the show’s host, Pat Sajak, added: “And both of them are invisible to the naked eye.”

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