Bald Egos Have Become Endangered

What could Cleveland’s Sandy Alomar Jr., the Cubs’ Gary Gaetti, the Angels’ Todd Greene, San Francisco’s Stan Javier, Boston’s Bret Saberhagen and Atlanta’s John Smoltz and Walt Weiss possibly have in common?

A couple of catchers, a couple of infielders, an outfielder and a couple of pitchers?

Well, visualize.

“When we take our hats off, there’s no avoiding our thinning hair,” Saberhagen said.

The seven astute, but less-than-hirsute, ballplayers have joined together to benefit charity in the Hats Off! Charity Challenge for Propecia, a treatment for certain types of hair loss in men.

The players are taking Propecia for a year to see who has the most, uh, hair-raising experience.

Merck, the pharmaceutical company that makes the product, will donate $25,000 to the charity designated by each player, and another $25,000 to the winner’s charity of choice.

Here’s betting someone will win by a hair.

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Trivia time: How many games have the Rams won since moving to St. Louis from Anaheim after the 1994 season?

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Just when, baby? The San Francisco Chronicle noted a huge Raider ad on a building in downtown Oakland that reads, “The greatness of the Raiders is in its future.”

“Unfortunately,” the Chronicle’s Tom FitzGerald wrote, “bad grammar is in their present.”

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Pitch dark: An English soccer team, Torquay, postponed its game against Portsmouth this week for an unusual reason: Wednesday’s solar eclipse, which brought darkness over parts of Europe during the day.

Torquay plays in County Devon, which along with Cornwall was braced for a throng of tourists seeking to witness the eclipse. Local police told team officials they would be unable to properly cover the game because of the eclipse.

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Serious business: Houston Astro Manager Larry Dierker kept his noted sense of humor this summer, even during preparations for the successful operation to remove tangled blood vessels in his brain.

“You know how they always say, ‘It’s not brain surgery?’ ” Dierker said. “Well, this is brain surgery.”

Dierker, who had the operation after suffering a seizure in the dugout in June, returned to the bench July 15.

With his new appreciation for life’s small pleasures, he told USA Today the surgery is “the best thing that ever happened to me.”

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Trivia answer: Only 22 over the last four seasons. The Rams had a 4-12 record last season.

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And finally: Doctors told Dierker’s wife, Judy, how the operation might affect her husband--and what they said might surprise you.

“A neurosurgeon predicted that Larry would be smarter after the surgery because his blood supply would finally be free to feed his brain,” she told USA Today.

“And I thought to myself, ‘I’m not sure I’m ready for a smarter Larry Dierker.’ ”