He Won’t Go Home Again to Indiana

Anyone going to Indiana to play basketball knows he’s in for four years of verbal abuse, but Rich Valavicius still wasn’t ready for the X-rated outbursts of Bob Knight.

Valavicius, basketball coach at Huntsville, Ala., High School, played on Indiana’s NCAA championship team of 1975-76 as a freshman, then transferred to Auburn after his sophomore year.

“It got to the point that I actually hated playing,” Valavicius told the Huntsville Times. “A lot of people go back there, but I don’t. I’m bitter about it, because I felt I could have been a better player at another school. I felt deprived.”

Of Knight, he said, “I didn’t know what he wanted. He was yelling, screaming and cussing all the time. I wanted to do all the things he wanted, but I was thinking instead of reacting.”

Valavicius, who went to Indiana after a brilliant prep career in Hammond, Ind., said he heard Knight was tough but said, “I didn’t think he’d cuss as much as he did. My impression of him is that he’s a great coach, but he has to grow up. Some of the things he does are childish.”

Asked if he read John Feinstein’s best-seller on Knight, Valavicius said, “Everybody’s reading it, but I won’t. I don’t want to contribute any money toward him.”

With Roger Clemens still holding out, Boston reliever Joe Sambito predicts that Calvin Schiraldi will pitch the opener for the Red Sox. Schiraldi, Boston’s stopper last year, has pitched more innings than anyone on the staff this spring.

When Texas won the College World Series in 1983, Clemens won the championship game, but Schiraldi was named the tournament’s most valuable player.

Jim McMahon has been quoted as saying he’d be better off playing for the Raiders, but Bear Coach Mike Ditka told the Chicago Tribune: “Anybody can play for me. I’m the easiest guy in the world to play for. He couldn’t play for Lombardi or Landry or Shula or Walsh. But he can play for me because I’ve bent for him. A lot of guys could never bend after what he did.”

Trivia Time: Which pitcher has won the most games among left-handers in the major leagues during the last three years? (Answer below.)

Joe Garagiola, on pitchers: “The worst animal in the world for a left-handed batter is a sidearm left-hander who wears glasses, and has to wipe them clean just before he throws.”

On the screwball: “When you have a good screwball, hitters don’t like it. As soon as you throw enough of them, hitters start looking at ads for broadcasting school.”

Providence Coach Rick Pitino, a former assistant to Jim Boeheim and still best friend of the Syracuse coach, told the Washington Post: “People think he’s a quiet guy who sits in the living room. But Jim is very intense. Without question, he cheats in golf. In the summer he tries to use winter rules and in the winter he tries to use summer rules. He’s just a very competitive man.”

Pitino added: “He’s got his peculiarities. He’s the kind of guy who can sit down, watch a 1950s black-and-white movie, tell you the lead actress, whom she married and how many times she was nominated for an Oscar. Then, while you’re trying to sleep, he’ll sit there on the edge of the bed and watch to the end.”

Trivia Answer: Frank Viola of the Minnesota Twins with 52.

Quotebook

Mickey Mantle, on why he hated to bat against Don Drysdale: “After he hit you, he’d come to the plate, look at the bruise on your arm and say, ‘Do you want me to sign it?’ ”