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Baseball immortal Babe Ruth, who died 50 years ago Sunday, was so popular during his first season with the New York Yankees, he had a pay phone installed next to his locker.

Nellie was a good old girl, uh, mule

With broadcast partner Keith Jackson nearing the end of his career, Bob Griese did an interview with Jackson for his own college football preview magazine.

Jackson says the “Whoa, Nellie!” call associated with him in a commercial is “not really mine” and “I haven’t used it many times.”

“Nellie was not the mule you rode to school back then?” Griese asked.

“No, she wasn’t. I think her name was Pearl,” Jackson said. “I hitched old Pearl to the wagon many times. ‘Whoa, Nellie’ - I don’t know how it got to me.”

Benefits of long-term investment

The way Henry Dehen figures it, since he bought a lifetime pass to play Portland’s municipal golf courses for $100 in 1935, his average cost has been about a penny a round. That’s not bad, considering it now costs $19 to play during the week and $21 on weekends.

Dehen bought the pass because he was tired of paying as much as 25 cents a round. A year later, two buddies also bought lifetime cards. Dehen and Louis Rose, both 88, and Jake DeYoung, 86, still use the tattered passes they bought more than 60 years ago.

“If I had to pay greens fees, it would cost me $100 per month or maybe more,” DeYoung said.

It’s time for some summit talk

A plan to pave the 12-1/2-mile road that leads to the summit of Pike’s Peak has upset some who compete in the motor-vehicle races to the top every Fourth of July.

Environmentalists say the dust from the heavy daily traffic on the road is harming the trees.

“So much for 76 years of history,” said Mike Ryan, the stuntman who broke the record for big-rig trucks in this year’s races. “They ought to pave the Kentucky Derby while they’re at it, because those horses make one hell of a mess.”

If dust hurts trees, get ‘em outta the forest.

A family with driving ambition

You may recall that six Perez brothers have pitched professionally, four in the major leagues, including Pascual, who once missed a start by misplacing the off-ramp for Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium.

Carlos Perez is the current family representive in big-league fastballs and driving problems. Not long after a recent accident, Perez, now with the Dodgers, kept riding Barry Bonds of the Giants from the dugout with taunts of “Swing the bat!”

How did Bonds respond?

“Why don’t you get some driving lessons?”

Do Texans bear grudges?

At first glance, UCLA’s Sept. 12 football opener against Texas in the Rose Bowl doesn’t look so bad. Texas was 4-7 last year.

Not so fast.

“I think they’re going to be mad as hell, OK?” UCLA coach Bob Toledo said.

Last year’s UCLA-Texas score? UCLA 66, Texas 3.

The last word …

“He may be the strongest person I’ve ever seen. He’s got me starting to take creatine.”

- Former St. Louis Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog on creatine advocate Mark McGwire