Dogs Still a Hot Item at Ballpark

Jayson Stark of the Philadelphia Inquirer writes that baseball attendance is up 32.4% in one vital category: dogs.

“Remember last year when the White Sox held a Dog Day Afternoon, in which all dogs accompanied by a human got in free?

“Well, they held Dog Day 2 [recently] and here is the attendance doggerel, hot off the leash:

“1996: 321 dogs. 1997: 425 dogs.”

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Trivia time: Who holds the modern major league record for singles in a season?

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Early tee times: Attention golf junkies: The Fairbanks Golf and Country Club in Alaska will be open from now through the end of July--24 hours a day.

Course manager Santina Meath said: “What better thing could there be to do at 2 o’clock in the morning?”

Sleep?

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Ouch: Tom FitzGerald in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Olga Barabanschikova of Belarus, the 94th-ranked tennis player in the world, reportedly has a pierced navel and is considering piercing her tongue. In honor of Mary Pierce, perhaps?”

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Media snobbery: Joe Concannon in the Boston Globe: “The U.S. Open [golf] is like the Olympics when it comes to coverage. You see writers you don’t see every week. Just yawn. They’ll go away.”

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Itching legend: From Jay Leno: “Anybody know what big event happened [last] week in 1839? Abner Doubleday invented baseball. And it saved his reputation because before he invented baseball, he was just known as a guy who scratched a lot.”

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Few skills: Peter Vecsey in the New York Post: “By virtue of his [NBA] finals scoring output, [Dennis] Rodman has vaulted to the top of the list of one-dimensional players.”

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Looking back: On this day in 1980, Salvador Sanchez successfully defended his World Boxing Council featherweight title by stopping Danny “Little Red” Lopez in the 14th round at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, prompting Lopez’s retirement.

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Trivia answer: Lloyd Waner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, with 198 in 1927.

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And finally: Cheryl Miller, the former USC All-American basketball player and Trojan women’s coach, is now coach of the Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA. She has some long-range plans, though. A sampling, as told to USA Today:

“I would love to coach in the NBA. And after that have [actress] Angela Bassett play me in my life story. I’d love to do some movies. I am the next Rambette.

“I could do my own stunts. Let me shoot somebody. Let me fall from a copter. Let me crash something.”