Fan turns into foul ballhog

• Horse racing announcer Kurt Hoover, a regular on HRTV who is also the inter-track TV host at Hollywood Park, has hit more than a few daily doubles. But he experienced a different kind of double at Angel Stadium last week -- catching foul balls from back-to-back batters.

Hoover was sitting in the Club level between home plate and third base during the Los Angeles Angels' 5-3 victory over the Oakland Athletics on Tuesday. In the top of the fifth inning, Eric Chavez of the A's bounced one off the railing, and Hoover barehanded it. About four pitches later, Jack Cust, hit another one Hoover's way and, after a few bounces, he retrieved that one as well.

Asked what the odds might be of getting two foul balls off back-to-back batters, Hoover said, "I deal with odds every day, so let's see. There were 42,000 people there. ... Oh, I have no idea."

• TRIVIA TIME: Speaking of long odds, what is the rarest feat in major league baseball -- a perfect game, a batter hitting four home runs in a game or an unassisted triple play?

• Saturday wasn't a good day for NASCAR driver Tony Stewart. He became ill before the start of the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona and was replaced halfway through the race by J.J. Yeley, who finished 20th in the No. 20 car. And during the race Stewart had trouble finding the right lane.

Kyle Petty, working as a commentator with Bill Weber and Wally Dallenbach on TNT's telecast of the race, explained Stewart's troubles in a way Los Angeles rush-hour commuters can understand.

"The right lane starts moving, so you move to the right lane and it stops and the left lane starts moving," Petty said. "Then you just look at yourself and think, 'I can't even get in the right lane today to make any time going down the interstate.'

"That's the way you feel sometimes as a driver. You choose the inside lane, and the outside lane moves, you choose the outside lane, and the inside lane moves and you're just out of sync. Tony has chosen the wrong lane his last two moves, which shuffled him from the outside at the top all the way to the inside seven or eight places back."

• Petty, grandson of Richard and son of Lee, drives only part time and hasn't won a race since 1995. Saturday at Daytona, he drove the pace car and afterward told Weber and Dallenbach up in the booth: "I may not come up there. This is the first time I've led anything in about 20 years."

• From Dwight Perry of The Seattle Times, on the seven-year, $16 million contract UCLA gave basketball coach Ben Howland: "He's now known in the coaching fraternity as the Financial Wizard of Westwood."

• TRIVIA ANSWER: There have been 15 perfect games in major league history, 15 games in which a batter has hit four home runs, and 14 unassisted triple plays.

• From Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle: "According to a USA Today story, laptops brought into China are likely to have their contents scanned (i.e., stolen) by the host government. I hope it enjoys my episodes of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.' ''

REVIEW-JOURNAL WIRE SERVICES