With baseball such a hot topic on Capitol Hill these days, HOH wasn’t surprised to see the baseball card company Upper Deck capitalizing on the intersection of politics and that other American pastime.

[IMGCAP(1)]The company on Super Tuesday came out with a “Presidential Predictor” series, which parodies presidential hopefuls by tying them to a personality or unique moment in baseball history. There’s Arizona

Republican Sen. John McCain as Ted Williams (both were decorated war veterans). And former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) is depicted in the likeness of Archibald “Moonlight” Graham (both men are health care advocates).

Conspicuously missing, though, is a certain Democratic presidential hopeful you might have heard of: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.).

Reps for Upper Deck tell HOH that there actually was a Clinton card but it was pulled before being mass-distributed. Clinton originally was shown in the likeness of the voluptuous baseball fan known as “Morganna the Kissing Bandit,” who in the 1970s and 1980s was well-known for wearing provocative clothing, running onto the field during games and planting a kiss on the lips of a player of her choice.

“In about the 11th hour we got some external feedback from some partners and some internal people who hadn’t seen the illustration,” Upper Deck spokesman Terry Melia said. “They thought it might be misconstrued and it might end up in poor taste.”

Hmm, portraying the lone female in the presidential field as a buxom, leg-baring groupie? Yeah, that might be misconstrued.

So the company had to manually pull out all of the Clinton cards — except they only were able to remove about 90 percent of the them, meaning there’s still a few out there. And at least one fell into the hands of an entrepreneurial card collector. The Clinton card currently is being sold on the online auction site eBay by a seller with the handle “Pinpalplyr.”

As of HOH’s deadline, the bid was $1,625.

Scott Strikes a Cozy Pose. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) has shared the limelight with plenty of strait-laced politicos in his eight-term career. But MIX magazine shook things up a bit by pairing Scott with a sassy Newport News-native comedienne named Cocoa Brown for a recent cover shoot.

The January issue of the free magazine (its subtitle is “People, Color and Culture in Hampton Roads”) features a cover splashed with the line, “Gimme A Joke, Bobby! Why Comedians Love Politicians,” and an extensive photo spread inside of a suit-and-tie-wearing Scott cracking up with a flirtatious Brown. An accompanying story describes the interaction between Scott and the wise-cracking jokester while they posed for the magazine’s shutterbug.

“Come on Bobby, let’s make a scandal,” Brown tells Scott “as she snuggles next to him for the cameras,” the story says. Scott, apparently, was amiable and played right along. “Scott leans toward her and laughs as did everyone in the room. He grins and poses like a natural.”

Brown, who calls Scott her “homeboy” and once volunteered for his state Delegate campaign, confidently tosses out political jokes. But she apparently was nervous about meeting with Scott after arriving in Hampton Roads from Los Angeles for the photo shoot. “Lord, Lord, I can’t be smelling airport funky and take a picture with the Congressman,” she lamented, according to the magazine.

From the looks of the photos, Scott didn’t seem to mind.

Little Pitchers. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) likes to poke fun at himself for being a “skinny kid with a funny name,” and now he’s adding another target for self-deprecation: his ears.

At an event at T.C. Williams High School in Virginia on Feb. 10, Alice Johnson, an aide to Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), had the chance to chat with the Democratic presidential hopeful. Johnson once worked for the late Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), an early Obama supporter, and mentioned that fact to Obama.

According to David Carle, spokesman for Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and a fellow former Simon aide, Obama’s face lit up at the mention of Simon’s name.

“Paul was a great friend of mine,” Obama responded.

Johnson then told Obama that she saw similarities between Obama and her former boss. “You remind me of him and the many of the things I admired about him,” she said.

Whereupon Obama cracked a joke at his own expense. “Our big ears?” he asked.

The Labor Vote. Talk about having one’s priorities straight. Lona Valmoro, senior adviser and legislative director for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), gave birth to a little boy on Wednesday—but not before making sure she’d cast her vote for her boss in D.C.’s Democratic presidential primary.

Valmoro and her husband, Greg Speed, who works for progressive group America Votes, welcomed little Andrew Speed on the day of the Potomac primary. Proud dad notes in an e-mail to pals that he and Valmoro voted early and that their son is “already looking forward to casting his first ballot in the 2026 Democratic primary.”

Briefly Quoted. “I’m sure you are going to heaven.”

— Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), closing her remarks to baseball player Roger Clemens at the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s steroids hearing Wednesday.

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