It Doesn’t Require Double the Intelligence

It can be frustrating for fans who are keeping score at a Dodgers game -- or any game involving a National League team -- when the scorebooks don’t have enough spaces to handle all the pinch-hitters, double switches and substitutes.

That’s pretty much the feeling of David Thomas, whose list of “strong dislikes” in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram included:

* “Treating the double switch as a genius managerial move. If the average fan scoring at home -- and looking for a space to squeeze in the name of the fifth person to bat in the No. 9 hole -- knows when to do a double switch, it can’t be genius.

* “The overhead moving camera during NBA games.... A moving camera trying to keep up with a fastbreak can be nauseating. Either the camera or the players need to be stationary while the other is moving. That’s the reason they don’t put moving seats in arenas.

* “The major league All-Star game still determines home-field advantage for the World Series. If it takes something like that to make some of the All-Stars care about the game, why should the fans care about the game?

* “ ‘Walk-off’ anythings. That expression still hasn’t grown on me like my friends said it would.”

Trivia time: Who is the only wild-card entrant -- a player who fails to qualify for a tournament but is selected on merit -- to win a Wimbledon singles championship?

A Chickism: Attempting to explain what constitutes the “magic spray” trainers have applied to injured World Cup players, “The Flip Side” wrote in the Baltimore Sun: “According to Slate.com, it’s probably some sort of skin refrigerant -- ‘chemicals like ethyl chloride that freeze and numb the surface of the skin on contact.’ ”

Or, as late Lakers announcer Chick Hearn would simply call it, “Don’t Hurt No More” spray.

That’s entertainment: Former Chicago Cubs Andre Dawson and Ron Santo, along with the band Chicago, are serving as guest conductors for the seventh-inning stretch at Wrigley Field for the three-game series this weekend against the crosstown White Sox.

Wrote Elliott Harris in the Chicago Sun-Times: “The Cubs will field a better lineup between the seventh innings than during them.”

King me: Forty-one players competed for $6,000 in prizes at the U.S. Checkers Championship last week in Medina, Ohio.

Wrote Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times: “Tournament organizers, still tallying up the gate receipts, say it’s much too early to tell whether the tournament finished in the red or in the black.”

Looking back: On this date in 1995, Dodgers right-hander Hideo Nomo became the first player from Japan selected to participate in the major league All-Star game.

Trivia answer: Croatia’s Goran Ivanisevic, who beat Australia’s Patrick Rafter in a five-set Wimbledon final in 2001.

And finally: On receiver Randy Moss of the Oakland Raiders opening a fruit juice franchise in Charleston in his home state of West Virginia, Pete McEntegart wrote at SI.com: “Unfortunately, the staff only makes juice when they want to.”