Baseball Team Smells Success With Its Rally Skunks

The Angels may have the make-believe Rally Monkey, but the Long Beach Armada is playing in a stadium inhabited by a family of real-life skunks.

During the seventh-inning stretch the other night, with the Armada losing 2-1, the scoreboard flashed: “Rally Skunk Time!” Sure enough, the Armada erupted to score six runs and win the game.

Possibly because they’re associated with a winner, the skunks reportedly did not release any perfume.

The minor league team plans to have the mother and her four babies captured and released in the wild, but until then, “We count them in the attendance,” said General Manager Jared Florin. “We announced our attendance as 1,075 the other night -- and five were skunks.”

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Not to needle today’s kids but ... “At my son’s graduation from UCSB, I was distracted from the usual advice to the departing students by the tattoo on the back of the young lady standing in front of me,” wrote Tom Hynes of Ranchos Palos Verdes (see photo).

He added: “Perhaps commencement speakers should advise the younger generation to invent a tattoo machine with spell check.”

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Annals of unusual crimes: USC students have always had a reputation as sound sleepers (if not spellers). But there are limits to their drowsiness.

Consider this recent item from the school’s department of public safety:

“A student reported that while he was sleeping on the couch in the living room (of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house), a suspect entered through the unsecured front door and began pulling on a pair of pants that [the student had] placed beneath his head.”

Better than any alarm clock! The would-be pants pilferer was chased out of the house and later arrested at a bus stop.

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Such a deal: John Howell of Huntington Beach studied an offer from Los Angeles magazine and pointed out that even non-math majors could see it made more sense to subscribe for one year (see accompanying).

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Real estate fever? Those of you planning to move up north might steer clear of one neighborhood, noted Tony Camoroda (see accompanying).

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I’m No. 255! Irrelevant Week is a mock celebration concocted by Orange County businessman (and former USC football player) Paul Salata to salute the inglorious last selection of the NFL draft.

This year the honoree was Kevin McMahon, a University of Maine wide receiver, who was flown out to Orange County after being the 255th player picked, by the Oakland Raiders.

One of McMahon’s perks was to be a guest groundskeeper at an Angel game.

But when the crew swept the field, McMahon evidently wasn’t told when to stop. Mr. Irrelevant kept going and wiped out some of the chalk in the first base line.

The first base line is very relevant to baseball games.

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miscelLAny: Some items culled from crime reports in glamorous Orange County during the first week of June by the OC Weekly:

* “Middle-aged neighbors fought because one leaned on the other’s car.”

* “A customer ordered $600 worth of food at a restaurant, fled without paying and returned to complain about the food’s poor taste.”

* “Three men fought in the street, finished, put their shirts on and then ate lunch together at Panda Express.”

* “Someone spray-painted ‘Why?’ onto a car.” I’ll see if I can come up with an answer later this week.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012, and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.