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Morning briefing

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Times Staff Writer

They’re feeling in the pink

The Chicago White Sox have been red in the face over a blow-up doll controversy this week, but now some are pink in the chin.

Outfielder Nick Swisher, pitchers John Danks and Bobby Jenks, and catcher Toby Hall dyed their facial hair pink Wednesday in an effort to raise awareness for breast cancer and acknowledge Mother’s Day.

Swisher said the players would keep the pink dye in place through at least Sunday -- maybe longer if they get hot.

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“I guarantee it’ll stay [then],” he said.

Looking back

On this date in 1984, the White Sox and Milwaukee Brewers completed a game that lasted 8 hours 6 minutes -- the longest in major league history.

After the teams played 17 innings the night before, the game went eight more innings before Harold Baines hit a home run in the bottom of the 25th for a 7-6 White Sox victory.

Trivia time

That 25-inning game fell short of the major league record for number of innings played in one game. What is that record?

Big-screen crash

The movie “Speed Racer” is set to open today and ESPN the Magazine decided to get a review from some real racers. So it sent Bobby Rahal, winner of the 1986 Indianapolis 500 and owner of an IndyCar Series team, and his son, Graham, a current IndyCar driver, to a special screening.

Neither came away impressed.

“I hoped the racing was going to be more realistic, but there was nothing realistic about it,” Graham Rahal said.

Added Bobby: “Only highlight for me was that there was nothing about NASCAR in it.”

Dye job

Golf course architect Pete Dye was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame this week, earning selection in the lifetime achievement category.

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“All the great players and people who are in there, it’s kind of funny to be sticking a dirt digger in there along with them,” said Dye, who joined Donald Ross, Alister MacKenzie and Robert Trent Jones Sr. as the only architects in the Hall of Fame.

The majority of voters are non-players, which could explain how Dye got in after designing notoriously difficult courses such as the TPC Sawgrass, the PGA West Stadium Course and the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island.

Trivia answer

26, by the Brooklyn Robins and Boston Braves on May 1, 1920. The game ended in a 1-1 tie, called because of darkness.

Foreign concept

Jason Buursma, a baseball player for Bucknell, had to be resourceful to keep his skills sharp while studying abroad in England for a semester last year.

He kept his arm in shape by throwing a ball against a wall and created a makeshift batting tee from some PVC pipe to practice his swing.

“That was a challenge because baseball is kind of foreign there,” he said with a laugh. “People would kind of come up and watch and I would ask, ‘Is there a problem?’ and they would say, ‘What are you doing? I don’t know what this is.’ I had to explain what it was, and that was kind of funny.”

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And finally

Stephen Ames nearly holed his tee shot on the famed par-three 17th hole at the TPC Sawgrass on Thursday in the Players Championship -- only to watch it bounce off an extra-firm green and into the water.

Afterward, he was asked how close the ball came to landing in the hole.

He “held up a thumb and forefinger,” wrote Steve Elling on CBSSports.com. “As for an assessment of how the course played, he selected a different finger entirely, if you catch our drift.”

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peter.yoon@latimes.com

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