What They Like Best Is Consistency

When former major league outfielder Mel Hall, currently playing in Japan for the Chiba Lotte Marines, showed up with a new fade haircut, the Japanese found it so unusual that it became a highlight on Japan’s “TV Baseball News,” reports Jeff Bradley of the New York Daily News.

“This is normal for me,” Hall told Bradley. “But for (the Japanese), no way. They’re not used to change. They like everything to stay the same. If you’re loud, loud, loud, then one day you come in quiet, they think something’s wrong.

“And if you’re (hitting well), you know what they say? ‘Very nice batting, Mr. Hall.’ ”

He wanted to see Goofy: The selection of Vanderbilt alumnus Jan van Breda Kolff as the Commodores’ basketball coach prompted Ron Higgins of the Memphis Commercial Appeal to recount how van Breda Kolff, the son of former Laker coach Butch van Breda Kolff, came to the attention of Ron Bargatze, a Vandy assistant coach in the 1970s.

Wrote Higgins: “Bargatze had always wanted to see Disneyland, so he began subscribing to the Los Angeles Times to see if there were any area players he could recruit. He read that Palos Verdes High had top talent, so he made a recruiting trip. He was looking at others when he noticed van Breda Kolff.”

Trivia time: How was golf history made in 1967 at the Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J., site of this year’s U.S. Open?

Help from above: Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda says that, as a pitcher, he once had a winning streak start after a pigeon did its business on his head.

“I had lost five or six games in a row,” he said. “I was walking down the street one day with Don Drysdale and Johnny Bucha and Buckshot Fiala, and this pigeon dropped his stuff on the middle of my head. I told those guys that this is the thing that was going to bring me good luck. Then I went on and won 10 games in a row.”

Said Drysdale: “We were in Buffalo when that happened, and after that, Tommy would go around looking for a pigeon every time he was going to pitch. But he was due (to win) anyway. You couldn’t keep the Warren Spahn of the International League down forever.”

Thanks, but. . . : Selena Roberts of the Orlando Sentinel reports that President Clinton, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Andy Rooney were among those who wrote former Michigan basketball star Chris Webber to console him after his timeout gaffe in the final seconds of the NCAA championship game. “But,” Webber told Roberts, “I’d rather have won the game and had all those people hate me.”

He might go Airless: Bernie Lincicome of the Chicago Tribune says Michael Jordan needs to explain only one thing about his alleged high-stakes gambling on the golf course: Why he didn’t pay off his debts.

Writes Lincicome: “I wear Air Jordans, not because Jordan endorses them but because they are the most comfortable shoes I have ever worn. I wouldn’t wear them if they were Air Welshers.”

Roy, as in . . . what?Todd Phipers of the Denver Post was impressed with the playoff performance of Montreal goalie Patrick Roy. “Now,” Phipers writes, “if he’d just learn how to pronounce his name.”

Trivia time: Amateur Marty Fleckman of Port Arthur, Tex., had rounds of 67-73-69 to lead the Open after 54 holes in 1967. He blew to a 10-over-par 80 on the final day, however, and tied for 18th, 14 strokes behind the winner, Jack Nicklaus. Although stardom was predicted for Fleckman, he won only one tournament as a professional and quit the PGA Tour in 1980.

Quotebook: Fred Miller, San Diego State athletic director, on proposed NCAA cutbacks in football recruiting and staff, and their effect on the sport: “Gender equity is going to pass, and we’re going to get our butts kicked.”