Quake Makes Series Picture-Perfect for Producer of Souvenir Baseballs

When the earthquake-shaken World Series resumes tonight at Candlestick Park, San Diego entrepreneur Michael Favish will have a broader smile than usual.

Favish is president of Fotoball USA Inc., one of 320 companies licensed by major league baseball to produce baseball collectibles for the sports-obsessed public. Talk about a hot streak!

In 1986, retail sales of all major league-licensed goods totaled $225 million. In 1988, the figure soared to $700 million; this year, even before the earthquake, it was estimated that sales would top $1.2 billion.

From a plant in Rose Canyon, Fotoball produces baseballs stamped with four-color pictures of individual players, plus team logos and statistics. By year’s end, Favish figures, upward of 150,000 balls will have been sold at $10 to $15 each.

By delaying the series, the quake lengthened the prime selling period for World Series knickknacks. (Fotoball has a special series ball.) The Home Shopping Network on cable TV did an eight-minute pitch and sold 750 balls.

“We’ll probably triple our sales of balls because of the earthquake,” said Favish, 41. “People just want a piece of this World Series.”

On Thursday, Fotoball workers were busily stamping an extra shipment featuring the San Francisco Giants’ Will Clark and the Oakland Athletics’ Jose Canseco, among others. The balls will be sold at Candlestick and assorted stores.

Call it melting-pot capitalism. Favish, a naturalized citizen from South Africa, employs mostly Laotians and converts baseballs made in Mainland China into memorabilia for the great American pastime.

Fotoball also does picture-bearing hockey pucks and soccer balls. Favish wants to expand into footballs and basketballs.

“The collectibles market,” he said, “is absolutely crazy.”

Now Cut That Out

The last time the Testor model kit company of Rockville, Ill., introduced a model of what it said was a super-secret military aircraft, Congress went ballistic.

Congressmen demanded to know how the company got hold of plans for the F-19 Stealth fighter. The Pentagon would neither confirm nor deny that such a fighter was being developed.

Testor, which has a research and development office in San Diego, said it took its design strictly from publicly

available information. Since that furor 3 1/2 years ago, Testor has sold more than a million of the Stealth kits.

Now Testor has a new spookcraft kit: the Stingbat LHX Stealth Helicopter, unveiled Thursday at the Aerospace Museum in Balboa Park. Retail price: $13. Average assembly time: eight to 10 hours.

The rotor blades are curved. The tail rotor has been replaced by a venting system. Landing skids are retractable. Hellfire missiles are housed internally.

Testor designers say they based their design on specifications gleaned from trade journals and helicopter shows. “We don’t ask for any secrets, and we don’t get them,” said San Diego designer John Andrews.

The Pentagon will neither confirm nor deny. . . .

Fest Talk

More from the Soviet arts festival.

- A scalper’s market has sprung up for heavy-demand days at the Faberge egg exhibit.

- The festival has an official ice cream (pomegranate flavor) and an official ice cream maker, Henry Rabinowitz, owner of Gelato Vero Caffe in Mission Hills.

The pinkish-red ice cream will be served at dinners hosting the master chefs from the republic of Georgia. It has also been added to the flavors at Gelato Vero.

- Super-clown Alexander Frish has returned to the Moscow Circus.

But Irina Mikheyeva, in charge of all Soviet cultural exchanges in North America, arrives from Moscow this weekend. She’s involved in the arrangements to find a replacement for the Georgian icons.