Morning Briefing

Actress Jane Seymour and her director-husband James Keach, who live in Malibu, are regulars at Dodger Stadium. They’re also avid golfers, which resulted in a cover story on Seymour in this month’s Golf for Women.

Seymour says in the magazine that when she plays golf she rarely keeps score.

“When I hit a ball and it goes where I intended it to, I give myself a star,” she said.

Her scores deserve an asterisk

More amateur golfers should try that. Then they wouldn’t feel the need to call every one of their friends to tell them their score every time they have a decent round.

Sidestep the sheep

The British-born Seymour also talks in the magazine about the couples’ lavish home in England, a 1,000-year-old former monastery.

The New York Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez and his wife Cynthia have been guests.

“He asked me, ‘Where’s the gym?’ ” Seymour said. “I said, ‘You see that hill? That’s the gym. You run to the top and run down, avoiding the sheep.”

Trivia time

A recent trivia item here mentioned several sports celebrities who attended Barry Bonds’ alma mater, Serra High in San Mateo. Among those not included were a former Rams coach and a former Angels manager. Who are they?

A real breather

Glenn Close, who stars in the new FX series “Damages,” told David Letterman the other night that she had recently competed in a mini-triathlon -- a 500-yard swim, a 16-mile bike ride and a three-mile run. The swim portion took place in the pool at Bowdoin College in Maine. Not to imply Close was a novice, but she said she did the swim wearing a snorkel.

Mistaken identity

Close, 60, said last summer she had planned to run in a 10K but had a bad cold and decided to give her bib number to a male friend. She didn’t think she was doing anything wrong and that no one would notice since Glenn is a man’s name. But then her friend won his division.

“It was published in the paper that I had won and I was getting calls from all over the country,” Close said. “How embarrassing.”

A high hard one over his head

Ken Levine, an Emmy Award-winning writer-director-producer who is also a part-time baseball announcer, has been doing some fill-in work on radio for the Seattle Mariners this season. In a recent interview with the Angels’ Rory Markas, Levine talked about his days as a writer for the TV show “Cheers,” which starred Ted Danson as a former Boston Red Sox pitcher turned bar owner.

Levine said Danson wasn’t much of a baseball fan.

“One time the script called for him to say ‘fastball’ and he instead said ‘speedball,’ ” Levine recalled. “The director yelled ‘cut’ and Ted said, ‘What did I do wrong?’ The director told him, and he said, ‘Fastball, speedball, what’s the difference?’ ”

A viable excuse

Markas, apparently a Bruce Springsteen fan, thought that maybe Danson had gotten “speedball” from the song “Glory Days,” which begins with: “I had a friend was a big baseball player back in high school. He could throw that speedball by you . . .”

Logical choice

The Big Ten Conference, which now consists of 11 schools, is thinking of adding a 12th member, possibly Rutgers or Syracuse. Mike Downey of the Chicago Tribune nominated Pepperdine. Why? “So we could make trips to Malibu,” he wrote.

Bored games

From Greg Cote of the Miami Herald: “Can someone please advise ESPN to cancel the ridiculous X Games and require all of those slackers way too old to be skateboarding to please get real jobs?”

Trivia answer

John Robinson, class of 1954, and Jim Fregosi, class of 1959.

And finally

Relief pitcher Scott Proctor recently came to the Dodgers from the Yankees, for whom he had a 2-5 record with a 3.81 earned-run average. Reader Ted Lamothe says, “As a Yankee fan, I know that Proctor had his highs and lows on the mound. With Proctor, it is a gamble.”

larry.stewart@latimes.com