Joe Mcdonnell

Yes, it is a pretty belt, but it seems to be moving: The sheriff's log of the Big Bear Grizzly carried an alert about "a rattlesnake on a rock in the middle of a driveway and garage sale." (Maybe it was one of those you-can-have-it-if-you-can-haul-it deals.) * Better than 'the dog ate my homework': Well, wait until the claims adjuster gets this one. Big Bear's newspaper reported the vandalizing of a car this way: "Appears bear ate car bumper and wiring harness. Scratches found along with fur."

As quick with his wit as he was with a bat, the Hit King was in rare form at an appearance at the Arrowhead Pond on Sunday, according to The Times' Mike Hiserman. Pete Rose made $810,000 for the 1979 baseball season, which at the time made him the highest-paid athlete in professional sports. When asked by contemporary and former Dodger Steve Garvey at the appearance how much he thought he would be making if he played today, Rose quipped: "Just a couple of million more than you."

Greg Foster is still in the record books. Two days after Britain's Colin Jackson thought he broke Foster's 60-meter hurdles record of 7.36 seconds, embarrassed track officials acknowledged that Jackson had only tied the mark. A review of the photo-finish print from Jackson's run Saturday at a Britain-U.S. meet at Glasgow revealed that his time was fractionally slower than originally judged. The difference was enough to round the Briton's time up to 7.36, instead of 7.35. Baseball Sen.

Could it be that some stadium workers take their jobs a little too seriously? The Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette reported that workers at Iowa's Kinnick Stadium removed beer they'd found in a refrigerator in a box leased by Bill Krause, who happens to be the university's leading donor. He recently gave $5 million to the athletic department. School policy allows no alcohol on campus, but beer is OK at the stadium. No one is sure who removed the beer.

Last year, before John Wooden threw out the first pitch for Game 2 of the World Series at Edison Field, he was a little apprehensive about doing it. Carl Boldt, a starting forward on the University of San Francisco teams that featured Bill Russell, recalls having breakfast with Wooden, a couple of other friends and his daughter, Nan, at VIP's in Encino when the subject came up. "What convinced him to do it was Nan telling him, 'Go ahead, it will look good on your resume,' " Boldt said.

There is calm, cool, reasonable play-by-play work. Then there is broadcaster Joe Starkey's call of "the play" during Cal's 25-20 victory over Stanford in the Big Game on Nov. 20, 1982: "All right, here we go with the kickoff. Harmon will probably try to squib it, and he does. "Moen comes loose--the Bears have to get out of bounds. Rodgers along the sideline--another one--they're still in deep trouble at midfield. They tried to do a couple of . . . THE BALL IS STILL LOOSE!

If Keith Jackson, who announced his retirement from broadcasting last week, has a signature phrase, it's "Whoa, Nellie!" However, Jackson claims he never said it, at least not until Roy Firestone put it into his stand-up act. "My mule was named Pearl," Jackson said. The origin: Reader Jack Rosenberg remembers wrestling announcer Dick Lane saying, "Whoa, Nellie! Don't put your coffee pot on yet, folks."

He's one of Dodger Stadium's most famous performers, a guy who has been a guest on "The Tonight Show" four times. Yet when he appeared on TV's "To Tell the Truth" the other day, two of the three panelists failed to identify him. "I don't think they were baseball fans," said the Dodger great, vendor Roger (the Peanut Man) Owens (see photo). Of course, the wrong guesses enabled Owens to win $1,000.

Claims adjuster Curtis Barickman of Sherman Oaks phoned an insurance agent in a little town in West Virginia about a case only to have the agent say he was leaving the office. When Barickman offered to phone back later in the day, the agent said, "Oh, no, I won't be back. I gotta go squirrel hunting." Maybe he's in charge of bringing home the Thanksgiving dinner.

Andy Yao, no relation to Yao Ming, is the host of a weekly sports-talk show called the "Big Hour" on Houston radio station KCHN. Yao does his one-hour show Wednesday mornings in the Mandarin dialect of Chinese. Andy Yao was a guest on KSPN's "Big Show" with John Ireland and Steve Mason on Tuesday. Yao said he was from Taiwan and had lived in Houston for the last 13 years, but Mason kept asking him what things were like in China. "Is there religion in China?" Mason asked, to Yao's astonishment.