I sure hope that before next season, Little League officials alter a rule that turned a World Series qualifying game into a shambles. The game found the manager of Vermont's team instructing his players to let Portsmouth, N.H., score a tying run in a New England Regional playoff game because of a mistake he'd made: forgetting to get a reserve in the game for a required three consecutive defensive outs and one at-bat. Leading 9-8 in the fifth inning of a six-inning game, Vermont stood to lose because it breached the player-participation rule – that is, unless it could force a tie that would allow Vermont to bat one more time, in the bottom of the sixth, it would forfeit.

Vermont's strategy of issuing intentional walks and making wild pitches was countered by New Hampshire, which refused to let the game be tied by swinging at bad pitches and not advancing when balls sailed by the catcher. The Vermont manager and pitcher were ejected from the game for their roles in trying to give up a run, and New Hampshire advanced to the World Series with a 6-0 forfeit victory.

To avoid such a fiasco again, Little League officials should probably assign an independent scorekeeper to each tournament game who would assume responsibility for keeping track of whether all players are getting into the game as required, and alerting managers and umpires before the situation reaches a crisis point.

And while we're on the subject of the Little League World Series, here are several more points:

• The Japanese team that reached World Series championship game may not be familiar with Yogi Berra, but the players should probably be introduced to Yogi's famous line: "It isn't over until it's over."  ESPN's cameras caught some of the Kawaguchi team members crying with a few outs left in their 2-1 loss to Columbus, Ga. Two-out rallies are not uncommon in baseball, and with a runner on first base, there was still good reason for hope.

• Even if a boy is legally the proper age to play, should Little League have some size restrictions? One youngster on the Saudi Arabia team at this year's World Series was 6 ft. 8 in. tall and 256 pounds. Fortunately, the boy (an American living overseas) played first base and didn't pitch, because at that height, he would have been a fearsome presence on a pitching mound only 46 feet from home plate.

• In the interest of protecting young arms, Little League Baseball will implement a new rule next season, basing a pitcher's eligibility to take the mound on the number of pitches thrown (pitch count) rather than innings pitched. Using results from a pilot program conducted this year, age-related regulations were drawn up. For 12-year-olds, they set the daily limit at 85 pitches and a sliding scale of required days off. Pitchers who throw 61 or more pitches in a day must take three days off, 41 to 60 pitches in a day two days off, etc. This is all well and good, but when it comes to the World Series championship game, there is no "next game" and teams often ride their dominating pitching ace to a title. I'd prefer a two-game series that would force teams to win with someone else on the mound, and if the teams split the two games, go to extra innings in the second one until a winner is determined.

• When contacted shortly after the World Series ended, all the batting statistics for the tournament weren't in yet, but the decision to move the fences back had its intended effect. It led to more doubles and triples and opportunities for outfielders to make plays, rather than times when all they could do was watch helplessly as home runs sailed over their heads. The idea, Little League spokesman Chris Downs said, was never to reduce the number of homers, although that happened.  While it worked to moved back the fence from 205 feet to 225 feet, I wouldn't stop there. Here's a vote for making it 250 feet and making inside-the-park home runs a possibility.

• Why it took so long to induct "Legendary Lloyd" into the Little League's Hall of Excellence (alias, hall of fame) is beyond me, but still it was nice to see the star of the 1971 Little League World Series receiving his well-deserved honor this year.  Lloyd McClendon is a coach with the Detroit Tigers today, but in 71', while playing for the Little League team from Gary, Ind., he hit five home runs on five consecutive pitches, a feat that probably has never been accomplished on any other level. As a member of the first all-black team to play in the World Series, he pitched superbly into the ninth inning of the championship game, before giving up seven runs in Gary's 12-3 loss to Chinese Taipei.

Touching other bases

• Shouldn't the PGA Tour's Deutsche Bank Championshlp be played somewhere in Munich or Dusseldorf rather than in Norton, Mass.?

• Hats off to Florida Marlins manager Joe Girardi for not condoning the unsporting behavior of team owner Jeff Loria, a defiance that some think may cost Girardi his job. Loria reportedly berated the umpire's balls-and-strikes calls while sitting behind home plate on Aug. 6, prompting Girardi to ask or tell the owner to stop, according to witness accounts. As a former catcher, Girardi knows that antagonizing the home plate umpire is never a good idea and that doing so is ultimately counterproductive.

• Is it just me or do others feel like the men's world basketball championships are speeding by virtually unnoticed? Playing the tournament in Japan during a non-Olympic year is a sure invitation for American fans to tune out.

• NPR sports commentator Frank Deford was right on target, as he often is, in spoofing the way athletes reach for explanations of their postive drug tests. Pretending he too was caught with performance-enhancing drugs in his system after a recent commentary, Deford said maybe a strange woman at the beach who rubbed his back with steroid-laced suntain lotion was to blame. Or perhaps the culprit was a "very sinister waitress" who served him supicious maple syrup. If you haven't heard this superb satire, click this link.

• For those looking to trace the late-season collapse of the Boston Red Sox, baseball's worst team in August, forget the five-game mid-month sweep by the Yankees. The first real signs of trouble came about a week earlier when the lowliest of the low, the Kansas City Royals, took a three-game series against the southbound Sox.

You've got to give Stephon Marbury of the New York Knicks a lot of credit for associating with a product that goes against the grain, namely a highly affordable basketball sneaker. Called the Starbury One, the new design sells for a mere $15 a pair. The kicker is that Marbury says he will actually wear the high-tops in NBA games, and get paid by how well they sell.

The shoes are sold at Steve & Barry's University Sportwear locations across the US, as are nearly 50 Marbury-signature boys' and men's sports apparel items, most priced at $10 or less. From growing up in a cash-strapped household in Coney Island, N.Y., Marbury knows that today's high-priced sneakers (Air Jordans sell for as much as $180) are out of realistic range for many families. He wanted to provide an alternative. "It was very important to me that the Starbury Collection have a strong social component for kids and parents, especially in urban areas," he explained.

As a baby boomer, I remember when buying sneakers was a simple back-to-school shopping affair, involving only a few basic choices: High tops or low cuts?  Black canvas or white?  Converse, Keds, or PF Flyers? The marketing today of so many brands, styles, and price points has created an incredibly confusing landscape of options. For example, in looking at an advertising flyer for sneakers in the Sunday paper I learned that I could choose among such features as ABZORB cushioning, supportive overlays, SpEVA midsole, dual-fit webbing straps, and breathable mesh uppers. I pity the poor shoe sales clerks who have to work the sneaker aisles at back-to-school time. 

That's no desert mirage. That's a stadium

The unusual design of Arizona's new Cardinals Stadium, the retractable domed home of the NFL Cardinals, has the appearance of a futuristic water tank clad in a series of slightly convex metallic panels.

The inspiration reportedly came from barrel cactuses so common in the region. The playing surface is natural grass, but grown in a mammoth rolling tray that allows it to be moved outside into total sunlight about 350 days a year. As a result, the stadium is usually available for trade shows, conventions, motorsport, concerts, and rodeos.

Modular turf was used at the Pontiac Silverdome near Detroit during the 1994 World Cup soccer tournament. In that case, Michigan State University developed a system of plastic modules in which grass was grown, then temporarily fused to create an entire playing surface.

Touching other bases

• Matt Leinart, the rookie quarterback of the Arizona Cardinals, had never seen an NFL game in person until he saw his first game action in the preseason. He grew up in Santa Ana, Calif., and played his college ball at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, but LA hasn't had an NFL franchise since 1994.

• Who would have imagined during the cold war that a team from Moscow would ever compete in the Little League World Series, as one did this year, the fifth time one has does so since 2001?

• How does Tiger Woods get away from it all?  According to Men's Vogue magazine, he and his wife repair to their yacht, named "Privacy," from which they scuba dive. Woods has a hard time going out in public, so he says part of the appeal of diving is that "the fish don't know who I am."

• I heard on the radio recently that China is giving behavior lessons to the public so Beijing residents don't offend visitors to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. That means cracking down on spitting, to the point of issuing fines. The irony, of course, is that the very habit many Americans consider disgusting and would object to if they witnessed it in China, they tolerate in Major League Baseball. There's a double irony, though, since baseball long ago outlawed spitballs.

If you've ever wondered what became of Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger, the Notre Dame football walk-on immortalized in the 1993 movie "Rudy," here's the scoop: He's now pursuing a dream in the business world.

Not long ago, I received an unsolicited 16-page informational flyer in the mail about Global Beverage Solutions, which said that Ruettiger was part of the managment team for its new "Rudy" line of juice blends drinks, which use something called "structured water." The brochure trumpeted that Investors willing to get in on the ground floor of this startup could hit it "rich in the next six months."

It all sounds a little too good to be true, but Ruettiger demonstrated at Notre Dame that he is an indefatigable underdog who will pursue even limited success doggedly. First he struggled to get into Notre Dame and was rejected several times. Then, without a scholarship, he won his way onto the football roster through sheer grit and determination. He practiced all out, yet at 5 ft. 6 in. and 165 pounds he was given almost no chance to ever play in a game. Finally, however, against Georgia Tech in the last game of his career, Ruettinger was sent in for the final 27 seconds, when he sacked the opposing quarterback.

His teammates helped him celebrate this personal victory by carrying him off the field. It may be asking a little much, though, for his entry into the beverage industry to produce another fairy-tale ending.

Sorry, Columbus, that you got left out

Several "We're Just Fans" readers have written in with a correction to my list of cities with only one major-league team in any of the four major team sports (baseball, basketball, football, and hockey). Ohioans noticed I overlooked Columbus, Ohio, which has the NHL Blue Jackets.

The city's Triple-A baseball Clippers (a Yankees affiliate) and the Major League Soccer Columbus Crew don't quite make the grade, nor does what reader Jeff Pierce calls "the biggest game in town," meaning Ohio State football played at the Horseshoe, i.e. Ohio Stadium.  "Now some cynics would say that the football Buckeyes are like a pro team, but that doesn't count," Dr. Phillip Myers chimes in. "We're not ashamed to be called a 'football factory' – after all, Ohio is an industrial state that produces things, including the most NFL players from one school."

Yet another eagle-eyed reader, Helen Wheelock, wondered if San Antonio should be listed as a one-team town since it has two major-league pro basketball teams, the Spurs and the WNBA's Silver Stars. Good point. "Won't it be cool," Wheelock opines, " when writers use the describers 'men's' and 'women's' to acknowledge the existence of both leagues/tournaments etc."

The remaining cities identified as having just one men's teams in the Big Four pro sports are Portland (Ore.), Green Bay (Wis.) Jacksonville (Fla.), and Memphis. But I realize I overlooked two more: Sacramento and San Jose. Do I hear any more corrections?

Touching other bases

• Over the years, the National Football League has done about as well as possible in realigning teams geographically. The Dallas Cowboys are the only team that continues to be misplaced, playing in the NFC East. Still, no one would think of switching Dallas to a different division now, because the Cowboys have developed some of the best rivalries in the game against the Washington Redskins, New York Giants, and Philadelphia Eagles.

• Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts is a terrific quaterback, but you have to wonder if criticizing his pass protection at the end of last season was a mistake. His blockers proabably didn't appreciate the putdown, a sour note that could carry over when the going gets tough this season. Dan Marino was a great passer, too, who set all sorts of records, but he never seemed to hesitate to chew out his linemen when things broke down. It should be noted that Marino's Miami Dolphins never won a Super Bowl. By the way, Peyton and younger brother, Eli, of the New New York Giants will square off during a season-opening showdown on Sept. 10 at Giants Stadium. That will mark the first time brothers have been opposing starting quarterbacks in National Football League history. Of course, they won't be on the field at the same time, which makes it far different from when Venus and Serena Williams have gone toe-to-toe across a tennis net.

• It strikes me as odd, and not a little unsettling, that animal cruelty advocates work to rid cockfighting from the last remaining states (Louisiana and New Mexico) where it's still legal, while Ultimate Fighting between human beings appears to be flourishing.

• Sports columnist Harvey Araton of The New York Times may have hit the nail on the head when he called called lacrosse, the men's fasting-growing collegiate sport, football for the more affluent.

• There are few more photogenic events in of all of sports than track and field's steeplechase. Snapping runners at the water jump  seems to produce a winning image almost every time.

• Imagine my surprise when a friend, who is moving from Massachusetts, showed me a silver bowl from the famous Shinnecock Hills Golf Club that she was giving away. The inscribed bowl was presented to her mother for having won the club championship on the links-style, Long Island course. The Shinnecock connection didn't have much meaning to my friend, a nongolfer whose main interest was in jettisoning unneeded possessions.  The club was one of five clubs that jointly founded the US Golf Association in 1894. It has since hosted the men's US Open four times, including in 1896, 1986, 1995, and 2004, when South Africa's Retief Goosen was the winner.

If I were an opposing manager, I'd think twice before pitching to Cleveland's Travis Hafner with the bases loaded.  Hafner, the team's catcher, recently hit his sixth grand slam of the season, tying a single-season record set by the Yankees' Don Mattingly in 1987. Although Mattingly played eight more years, he never hit another grand slam.

Hafner, a North Dakotan who was the valedictorian of his 12-student high school class, played college ball at Cowley County College in rural Kansas before the Texas Rangers made him a lowly 31st-round draft choice in 1996. He was stuck in the minors until the Indians traded for him 2002. The next year he saw his first significant major-league action and in 2004 he enjoyed a break-out year, batting .311 with 28 home runs and finishing ninth in the American League's MVP balloting.

Hafner has a reputation as a very discliplined hitter who picks his pitches wisely. He also has one of baseball's more unusual nicknames: "Pronk," a fusion of two other former nicknames, Project and Donkey.

Wie bags her bag carrier

Golfer Michelle Wie has taken another mulligan in selecting a caddy. As she did in her first tournament as a pro earlier this year, she dumped her bag toter after she committed a rules infraction at the recent Women's British Open. The firing (delivered by her agent) made it appear Greg Johnston, who was carrying her bag, may have been partly to blame for the miscue and subsequent two-stroke penalty – and possiby also for her disappointing 26th place finish.

A caddy, of course, should know the rules cold, but so should the player, even one as young as the 16-year-old Hawaiian superstar. Wie may need to read up on the rulebook more than she needs to practice her tee shots or short game.

The latest penalty seemed a small matter, but in golf many rules are – yet they all must be adhered to. In this case, while she took a backswing in a bunker, her club touched a piece of moss behind her ball, a no-no in the exacting world of golf.  Last October, in her pro debut, she was disqualified after making an illegal drop in the Samsung World Championship.

Some have joked that if Ms. Wie isnt' careful, her dad may wind up having to carry her bag. A trusting relationship is important, but that hardly seems the solution.

Touching other bases

• I wonder if Tiger Woods gave that Buick away that he won – along with $864,000 – at the recent Buick Open. It's hard to imagine that the automaker, who has Woods under contract to endorse its products, doesn't supply him with all the Buicks he'd ever want. By the way, that win gave him his 50th for his career, a milestone achieved in 210 professional tournaments. Jack Nicklaus needed 280 events to reach the same mark.

• In Boston, media coverage of the Red Sox is known to go over the top.  An example occurred recently in the Boston Globe, which shared details about the wedding gift registry of general manager Theo Epstein, who won't tie the knot with fiancee Marie Whitney for another year. The couple's wish list, the Globe reports, includes napkins and kitchen utensils from Williams-Sonoma, Crate and Barrel and Pottery Barn.

• As a baby-boomer growing up in the sixties, late summer was the time of year when I looked forward to seeing football preview magazines hit the newstand. There weren't that many back then, Street & Smith's being one of the best of the lot. I pretty much devoured these publications, and especially loved the photographs of teams and players you seldom if ever saw on TV. Now, glossy print and online issues proliferate, as does preseason TV analysis, and it's just not the same. Call me old-fashioned, but I miss those simpler times when an educated fan could read a couple of season preview issues and feel they were ready for the opening kickoff.

• I've got a hunch that business picked up at the concession stands the other day after the Cleveland Indians scored 11 runs in the first inning. Cleveland coasted thereafter in beating the lowly Kansas City Royals, 13-0. The Indians, interestingly enough, set the record for most first-inning runs with 14 against the Phildelphia Athletics in 1950. In that game, they prevailed, 21-2.

• While channel surfing recently, I came upon Joe Montana hawking autographed jerseys and framed photos on the Home Shopping Network. In between fawning callers, who were thrilled to speak with the ex-49er and tell him why they'd decided to make their purchases, Montana shared some thoughts on quarterbacking.  One of the more interesting observations was about the solid working relationship he established with whomever was the team's center. He said this was key to a team's success - a building block that needed to be in place from the very start of training camp.  Bad and muffed snaps would happen, he'd tell the center, but he said he'd always accept the blame whenever they came off the field. They could sort things out on the sideline later, but by shouldering responsibility for their miscues, he'd earn the center's trust and respect.

• OK, raise your hand if you knew the WNBA's playoffs have started. If regular-season form holds in the women's hoop circuit, the Los Angeles Sparks and Connecticut Sun would meet in the finals, which is about as close to an old NBA Los Angeles-Boston showdown as one can get these days.

• After what must seem a couple of lifetimes of playing organized football, quarterback Doug Flutie has finally retired, but, as you might expect, he's not getting out of the sport altogether. He's got a new job as an ABC and ESPN studio football analyst who's slated to work six to eight games this season, including the Aug. 31 opener of Boston College, his alma mater, against Central Michigan. Oddly, however, there are no plans - at least not yet – for him to work BC's Thanksgiving game against Miami. It was his Hail Mary touchdown toss against Miami in 1984 that won the game in a much-replayed finish that surely clinched his selection as that year's Heisman Trophy winner. As a reminder of the feat, his hometown of Natick, Mass., named a busy shopping mall connector road Flutie Pass.

Maurice Clarett's downward spiral reached a new low with his recent arrest in Columbus, Ohio, where he was a football hero just four years ago.

Ever since Clarett scored the winning touchdown for Ohio State in the 2002 double-overtime national championship game, in which the Buckeyes defeated Miami in the Fiesta Bowl, one misstep has followed another. In his latest encounter with the law, what began as a traffic stop for making an illegal U-turn devolved into an all-out police chase in which he had to be subdued with mace (a stun gun proved ineffective because he was wearing a bullet-resistant vest). The officers found him in possession of four loaded weapons – and this while awaiting trial on two counts of aggravated robbery. The judge in that case just ordered Clarett to undergo a mental evaluation.

An office colleague asked me the other day if any of this would have happened if Clarett had gotten better advice, namely if he hadn't futilely attempted to  prematurely enter the 2004 NFL draft after dropping out of school. By the time he was finally eligible in 2005, the Denver Broncos took a flyer on the rusty running back, selecting him in the third round. He was cut during the preseason, however. One assumed he'd lost his edge as a well-honed athlete, plus, according to the Associated Press, he refused efforts by veteran teammates to help him.

Although well removed from the playing field at this point, Clarett still remains a person of interest to sports fans fascinated both by meteoric rises and precipitous falls. A sign of that came on the day of his latest arrest, when an account of the episode was the most e-mailed headline story by readers of ESPN's website.

Self-destructive tendencies also caused Art Schlichter, whose Ohio State football career predated Clarett's, to repeatedly run afoul of the law. Schlichter's compulsive gambling eventually led to fraud and forgery charges and a prison sentence. He's scheduled to get out of Indiana's Branchville Correctional Facility in May, 2008.

Schlichter was the school's quarterback in 1979, when the Buckeyes nearly won a national championship. His skills as a passer were tapped as the team transitioned from its old conservative "three yards and a cloud of dust" running game to a more pro-style attack. The fourth overall pick in the 1982 National Football League draft, he was suspended for the entire 1983 season after investigators learned that he'd rung up large gambling debts.

Schlichter has been in and out of trouble virtually ever since, but briefly tried his hand in the Arena Football League in the early 1990s long after his lackluster NFL career ended.

Last year, when the National Collegiate Athletic Association was crusading to halt growing student-athlete wagering on sports, Scott Woods, a columnist for the The Lantern, Ohio State's online media publication, remembered Schlichter. Rather than distribute gimmicky "Don't Bet On It" wristbands to college athletes to combat their wagering tendencies, Woods recommended making the Art Schlichter story required reading for all student-athletes. Surely, a companion volume about Clarett's trials and tribulations could now be added to the shelf.

Touching other bases

•Dave Anderson of The New York Times bemoans baseball's loss of colorful nicknames. Of course, he could always look to the example of veteran Boston Globe sports columnist and broadcaster Bud Collins, who's made a career of coming up with playful nicknames for the top stars. He calls Venus and Serena Williams the Sisters Sledgehammer. Andy Roddick "Ramrod", Rafael Nadal "El Nino", Maria Sharapova "Siberian Siren," Roger Federer "Basel Dazzle", Andre Agassi "Father Timeless." Some of his names for retired greats include "Captain Hook" for John McEnroe, "The Ice Maiden" for Chris Evert, "Brash Basher of Belleville" for Jimmy Connors, "Fraulein Forehand" for Steffi Graf, and "The Doomsday Stroking Machine" for Ken Rosewall. 

•The Cleveland Indians may be the most politically incorrect team left in American sports, especially with their toothy caricature of a mascot, Chief Wahoo. What's interesting is that the club was known as the Spiders in the 1890s, but changed their nickname in 1915, two years after the death of Louis Francis Sockalexis, who'd played briefly for Cleveland from 1897 to 1899 and was the first native American major leaguer. Injuries and alcoholism supposedly curtailed his career, which included only 367 plate appearances. It is not clear whether Cleveland named the team "Indians" to honor him or to adopt what many fans derogatorily chose to call the team.

• Did you know that football Hall of Famer Jim Brown once turned down an offer to play baseball in the Yankee organization and also started at center for the Syracuse basketball team for three years?

•Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there are only five American cities that are one-team major-league towns, meaning they have only one team in any of the four major team sports: baseball, basketball, football, and hockey. The cities are Portland, Green Bay, Jacksonville (Fla.), Memphis, and San Antonio.

•The New York Knicks may be the most disoriented franchise in pro sports at the moment. During the last two years they've jettisoned two of the biggest names in coaching, Larry Brown and Lenny Wilkens, both native New Yorkers.

•Believe or not, there's been talk about using Boston's Fenway Park for public skating and college hockey during the winter. Outdoor hockey games have been tried successfully in other cities as special events in recent years, including last winter at Lambeau Field, home of football's Green Bay Packers. A Big Ten Conference game between the University of Wisconsin men's team, the eventual national champion, and Ohio State, drew 40,890 for the first Frozen Tundra Hockey Classic. Temperatures were in the upper 20s, justifying the "frozen" label, and true to a modern stadium tradition, Wisconsin players leaped into the arms of fans just as Packer players do after scoring touchdowns.

•Did you know that one of the requirements to host a Super Bowl for the host city is that it provide 600,000 square feet of space for the NFL Experience, a temporary interactive theme park. That's 10-1/2 times larger than the field the Super Bowl is played on.