Ball girl, gold glove both fake

It's being billed on the Internet as "The greatest catch ever."

Too bad the video isn't real.

Gatorade, which has been airing a series of commercials of athletes doing extraordinary things, has a yet-to-air spot in which a ball girl at a minor league baseball game makes a catch that would make Torii Hunter and Jim Edmonds proud.

The footage, which surfaced on the Internet on Friday, was shot last month at a Pacific Coast league game between the Tacoma Rainiers and Fresno Grizzlies at Fresno's Chukchansi Park.

A deep drive to left field that is hooking foul is suddenly snagged by the ball girl, who scales the adjacent wall down the line, a la Spiderman, and then springs above to the outfield wall before gloving it. She then tosses the ball to a stunned Fresno outfielder and takes her seat down the line as if nothing had happened.

It's great video, replete with fans going bonkers over the catch. But the ball girl is an actress and the only real footage is everything up to the crack of the bat.

"We're getting calls from all over the country," Grizzlies public relations director Paul Kennedy said. "Everyone thinks it's real and our phone rings every five minutes wanting to know who the ball girl is."

Go to YouTube and search for ''ballgirl'' -- just don't believe it to be real.

• WIMBLEDON QUIRKS -- Wimbledon is under way and that means putting up with players' idiosyncrasies. If it's not Maria Sharapova's grunts, it's Rafael Nadal grabbing the back of his trademark clam-digger shorts.

But the worst is waiting for Novak Djokovic to serve. The Serb will bounce the ball as many as 30 times before finally tossing it up. His labored approach is far worse than Sergio Garcia's golf-club waggle on the tee.

Fortunately, a new rule instituted to speed up play in Grand Slam events requires players to put the ball in play 20 seconds after the completion of the previous point. Hopefully, that will speed up Djokovic's routine.

• BASEBALL 'CHICKEN' -- It started out as amusing and quickly escalated to absurd.

Thursday's New York-Penn League game between Staten Island and Brooklyn featured an ambidextrous pitcher and switch-hitting batter who kept changing back and forth for several minutes before the umpires put a stop to the shenanigans.

Staten Island pitcher Pat Venditte was on the mound to protect a 7-2 lead in the ninth inning. Brooklyn switch hitter Ralph Henriquez came to the plate with two outs and one man on. Henriquez prepared to step into the left-handed batter's box, prompting Venditte to switch his specially made glove to his right hand and throw lefty. Henriquez decided to switch to the right side only to have Venditte switch back to pitching right-handed.

On and on it went as the pitcher and batter kept switching in their own personal game of chicken.

Finally, the umpires had enough and, after conferring with the two managers, decided that Henriquez would bat right-handed and Venditte would throw right-handed. Venditte struck out Henriquez on three pitches to end the game -- and the charade.

COMPILED BY STEVE CARP REVIEW-JOURNAL