This Is Cleanup Day and, in a Way, It All Starts With UCLA

What’s my beef? Glad you asked. UCLA, for starters.

Bruin coach Walt Hazzard signs a great high school basketball player, Darrick Martin, to a letter of intent. UCLA fires Hazzard. Martin asks to be released from his commitment. UCLA refuses, with new coach Jim Harrick casting an assenting vote.

Balderdash. When a kid signs a letter of intent, he is committing himself to five years of indentured servitude to the coach. The kid’s choice of college is almost always made on the basis of perceived affinity for the coach.

Look, you go to a Dizzy Gillespie concert. Diz phones in sick at the last minute. The concert promoter brings out John Denver. Are you entitled to a refund?

Maybe I should be a judge. This is such an easy call, it’s ridiculous.

From now on, a kid’s letter of intent shall become null and void if, before the kid even receives his freshman propeller-beanie, the university:

--Moves its campus to Irwindale.

--Changes the uniform color scheme (men’s sports only) to pink, with ruffled trim.

--Reneges on a promise, i.e., repossesses the kid’s Trans Am or his girlfriend.

--Fires the coach.

Ben Johnson.

The world’s fastest human should not be allowed to run against Carl Lewis for big bucks until Johnson first beats Marty Krulee.

Since setting his world record in the 100 meters, Johnson has done so much ducking he should be awarded a limbo trophy. He won’t race anyone. And now he won’t let former Ram Ron Brown into the Lewis-Johnson summer showdown series.

In a race in Tokyo last week, Johnson hand-picked a field of slugs, then pulled up in mid-race with a muscle twinge. The race was won by the aforementioned Marty Krulee, who is an over-30, bald, Jewish, white American sprinter who lives in Sweden.

Now Krulee is champion of the sprint world, and I say let’s not let Johnson run any more big-money races until he defeats king Krulee.

Poor Zola.

Also known as Zola Budd.

She drops out of international racing with nervous exhaustion, brought on by political harassment when nations of the world object to her violating the cultural ban on South African sports.

So now we’re supposed to feel sorry for Zola. “(Political harassment) doesn’t happen to Sydney Maree (a black South African-born runner, now an American),” Zola says. “Why should it happen to me?”

Maybe because she got every break in the world, including hurry-up British citizenship. In return she violated at least the spirit of the sanctions against South Africa by appearing as the announced guest celebrity at two track meets there.

Never once has Zola repudiated, even mildly, the apartheid system her family was (is?) an intrinsic part of. OK, she’s not a political spokesperson. But she is a human, and she should be aware of what’s going on in her own country.

Politics has no place in the Olympics? Well it’s there, has been for a century or so. And if politics has to interfere with the 1988 Olympics, I would rather the victim be Zola Budd than all the hundreds of innocent athletes from the dozens of nations that would boycott in order to go to bat for a young woman who has never gone to bat for anyone but herself.

Thomas Ehrlich.

This is the brash bozo who is president of Indiana University, who had the gall to release a statement critical of Bobby Knight’s infamous rape statement.

Bobby, in retaliation for the prez’s brazen act, threatened to move to New Mexico.

Now Bobby and Tommy have made up and Bobby will be staying at IU, also known as Tyrant Tech.

For this, let us in Los Angeles give thanks. The man was closing in on us. Surely New Mexico was a steppingstone in Knight’s march westward as he seeks to seize the entire United States in the name of the Holy Bobby Empire. With our backs to the ocean, we would have had no place to run.

Bloomingdales, or whatever the name of the city where Knight rules and is beloved, is close enough.

And now that we’re safe from Knight, we can get back to the serious business of checking out those latest Larry Brown rumors.

Hockey.

It’s a thankless task, trying to clean up hockey. For my recent efforts in this regard, what do I get? Abuse from letter-writers.

My lovingly crafted constructive criticism of hockey’s soft-on-violence stance was characterized as a “literary piece of trash” and a “stupid article.”

Hockey sticks and stones will break my bones.

I figured that if the sporadic fisticuffs that pop up every few minutes are not what the game is about, are not the essence of the sport but a needless distraction, then the true fans would be happy to be rid of same.

By condoning and therefore encouraging Pier 6 hockey, the NHL commissioner and owners are essentially saying that this is what the fan wants.

No offense, hockey fans, but you are brainwashed, or self-duped, into believing the sport can’t be played without the fights, because, gosh, it’s a physical game.

Gimme a break. A football nose guard gets hit more times on one play than does a hockey player in an entire game, and how often do nose guards get into game-stopping, 5-minute flailing punch-outs, where the two combatants try to undress one another?

Hey, fans: You want it, you got it.

But I’m warning you. A few more nasty letters and I might give up my campaign and turn the sport over to the savages.