The Bell Curve:

Last week I ended my column with a note that I had planned to explore public reaction in the Newport-Mesa school district to President Obama’s pep talk with the nation’s school kids, but my phone calls weren’t returned before deadline.

So let’s start today by putting that right. I have since talked at length with the district’s spokeswoman, Laura Boss. Due to some sort of glitch, she didn’t receive my messages. Technology failed us.

So first and foremost, she wanted to stress that the solution adopted by the district that allows the teachers and principals at each school to arrange the showing — or non-showing — in line with their own special problems and technology was reached before the program was made public.

She also stressed the point made by Supt. Jeffrey Hubbard that Newport-Mesa had no direct communication from the federal secretary of education about Obama’s planned speech and learned of it from another district when it was not possible to make the necessary arrangements to cover the whole district in real time. As a result, all of the public reaction came after the program was already in place and had zero influence on its nature.

When public reaction did come, Boss said it was difficult to measure because it was split between the district and specific schools where callers had children enrolled.

When I pressed her for numbers, Boss estimated some 30 to 40 phone calls to the district and about 75 e-mails over the weekend after the talk.

The callers were about evenly divided in supporting or condemning the talk, but on one note they were in total agreement. Neither side liked the solution reached by the district. Supporters wanted the talk to reach all students en masse as closely as possible to real time. And the disenchanted didn’t want it to be offered at all. Like the health-care division, it came off as another microcosm of our country today.

So, finally, I asked how the district would have resolved this matter if it had been given appropriate time to prepare.

“Under proper circumstances our decision would have been the same — to let each principal and their teachers decide,” Boss said. “This would give the teachers an opportunity to speak out. They know what arrangements are possible and how they fit into the school’s curriculum.”

When I aired the counter position that anything as important as a message from the president of the United States should be dealt with from headquarters rather than as a group decision, she answered simply, “I disagree.”

So a confrontation was avoided this time, along with a hope that a similar situation can be handled as adroitly. And the only thing left to say about our school district’s handling of the Obama chat with our kids is that for a couple of weeks it siphoned off some of the outrage being devoted to the debate on health care. If there was a lesson to be learned from it, Boss couldn’t come up with one.

Maybe it was just for me to stop flogging a dead horse.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the season is fall and the primary demands for our attention have moved from news to sports. All that came clear to me on Monday night when the Yankees were in Anaheim Stadium and my daughter and I were there to wish them ill. There is a different aura when the Yankees are in town — a supercharge of energy and enthusiasm and a kind of unmatched delicious pleasure at seeing the rich take a fall.

The rest of baseball’s regular season will be played out, although meaningless.

What has meaning, now, is courting a state of mind that won’t run and hide when Boston is the Angels’ opponent. It’s time for another World Series in Anaheim and our one-fourth of a season ticket and $800 will get us in to every third home game as long as the Angels are still involved. And hopefully a rebate when they aren’t.

But in October, baseball isn’t the only show in town. Both college and professional football have charged into the meat of their schedules and the Saturday TV football listings from early morning to late at night are real home wreckers.

My struggle to find Missouri among the TV listings is a regular weekly crisis in my home.

All of this dedication might command more attention in October than presidential chats or health-care debate. And that isn’t all bad — especially when your team wins. So go Angels.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.