N.Y. Gets the Games; L.A. Gets the Toy

The bumbling Dodgers will be mere spectators when the World Series begins Saturday. But the Danbury Mint of Norwalk, Conn., is offering delusional L.A. fans a chance to shell out $123.80 for a Dodger toy car collectible “for the victory parade” (see accompanying). Sure, try showing that thing in New York in a couple of weeks during the Yankee or Met celebration.

Oddly enough, the car is a 1961 T-Bird, a mint worker told me. The Dodgers didn’t have a victory parade that year, either.

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CATCH OF THE DAY: L.A. County sheriff’s deputies searching for robbery suspects in Paramount noticed that one member of their canine unit was barking and growling at a koi pond. “The dog leaped into the shallow pond and rousted out a suspect who had wedged himself inside to hide, with only his lips and nose above water,” recounted the city’s newsletter.

I guess the suspect figured he wouldn’t be spotted in the koi pond because he was wearing drab colors.

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THAT SAN GABRIEL VALLEY TOUCH: Among the 20 films that have been accepted for the Smogdance ’00 film festival Nov. 3-5 in Pomona is “Dial-a-Ninja,” by James Domkus and Scott Dietze. It is described as a “West Covina-style Ninja thriller.”

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NAME-DROPPING: Pat Mooney of Goinvest.com wrote, “This came across my desk. I’m used to getting ‘Occupant’ but evidently with all the bad publicity for Internet companies, I’ve been downgraded” (see accompanying).

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STRIKEOUT: The new, non-worshipful biography of Joe DiMaggio by Richard Ben Cramer recounts a wild, true-life drama with DiMag, Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra in the cast.

Soon after the 1954 divorce of DiMaggio and Monroe, the ballplayer was dining in the Villa Capri in Hollywood with Sinatra. A private eye in the singer’s employ phoned to tell them that he had seen Monroe and a male friend enter an apartment house in West Hollywood on Waring Avenue.

DiMaggio, still jealous despite the divorce, rushed to the scene with Sinatra. The singer’s bodyguards broke down a door and found a terrified “Mrs. Florence Kotz, a 50-year-old woman who [had been] asleep, alone, in that apartment.”

The wrong-door raid was covered up as a failed burglary attempt, Cramer wrote. Mrs. Kotz later accepted a $7,500 payment from Sinatra and DiMaggio.

And Monroe? She had been down the hall. During the confusion, she escaped.

miscelLAny:

When I read that Fabian was in concert in Cerritos the other day, I was reminded of a business card that an associate of his sent me a decade or so ago. It answers the question of what a teen idol of the 1950s and ‘60s calls himself (see accompanying).

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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.