Good News Is Around, but Hard to Find

Weren’t you becoming tired of picking up your sports section and reading nothing but bad news? Weren’t you ready for some nice news?

I don’t know about you, but I could hardly stomach one more morning of: Jose Canseco’s precinct rap sheet, Ben Johnson’s search for a better life through chemistry, Wade Boggs’ bimbo-a-go-go, the University of Oklahoma football team’s crimes and punishment, Pete Rose’s bid for bookie-of-the-year honors, Mike Tyson’s parking-lot scrapes, speeding escapades and wedding-bell blues, stoned ponies on the race track, ad nauseam. This stuff ruins the taste of my oat bran, man.

Hey, you guys just have to read this stuff. Try writing it sometime. I do not happen to relish reporting on scandalous behavior. I got into this business strictly to write about mankind’s successes and to sniff the unmistakable aroma of Ben Gay in America’s locker rooms. It smells like, I don’t know, victory.

Trouble is, I usually feel obligated to discuss things that do happen, while ignoring those things that do not happen. Much as some of you might like me to, I cannot write a lot of columns that begin: “Well, life was wonderful again yesterday.” You do that, and next thing you know, you start running headlines like: Dodgers Lose by Five, but Try Really Hard.

All I know is, I definitely was in the mood for some good news. You, too? It has been getting to the point that the only pleasant news I have been reading is that daily USA Today box in which ballplayers are asked things like: “What are your five favorite pies?”

Well, things began to pick up a couple of weeks ago, when Pat Bradley won a women’s pro golf tournament, practically in my back yard. Bradley had been one worried lady. Once the top player on the tour, she was stricken with a thyroid condition called Graves’ disease, which caused her general health and golf game considerable distress.

But when Bradley won the AI-Star Centinela Hospital tournament at Rancho Park, she felt better, I felt better, her colleagues felt better, everybody felt better.

Thus encouraged, I started rooting harder than ever for Jim Abbott. OK, so as a reporter, I am supposed to remain objective when it comes to the Angels or any other team. But when it comes to Abbott, I’m sorry, I want the kid to do well, and I do not care who knows it.

Abbott, as almost anybody can tell you these days, is the left-handed pitcher with no fingers on his right hand. When he got off to a rocky start with the Angels, after having successfully made the team in spring training, there were those who said he did not belong, that he had been rushed to the majors, that the Angels were going to ruin the guy.

Those same guys were unusually quiet recently when Abbott collected his first major league victory, followed by a nine-strikeout performance against Toronto in which he got no decision. Ordinarily, I do not get excited about a pitcher’s success unless I own him in a Rotisserie league. Jim Abbott, though, makes me smile. May he keep on striking ‘em out until he’s older than Nolan Ryan.

Meanwhile, wondering if we had exhausted our good news ration for the year, I opened my morning paper the other day to read about golfer Scott Hoch, whom you may remember as the guy who blew the Masters. Only a few weeks ago, Hoch missed a two-foot putt that would have made him the new lord and master of Augusta.

After Hoch lost, I began to hear murmurs that his fellow golfers were not exactly crushed by his misfortune. It was reported that in a poll of professional golfers, Hoch was voted the most disliked. Why, I have no idea. Maybe he doesn’t replace his divots.

Hoch was vindicated, at least in my eyes, a week ago, after winning a lucrative tournament at Las Vegas. In an emotional speech near the 18th green, a moist-eyed Hoch donated $100,000 of his winnings to the Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital, mentioning how helpful the hospital’s organization had been when his own child had some unspecified problems.

More than any putt he ever sank or missed, this act made Scott Hoch a winner on my score card, no matter what anybody else might think of him.

Finally, just when I had braced myself for some inevitable bad news, I picked up the paper to read that P. J. Carlesimo, basketball coach of Seton Hall, elected to reject an offer from the prestigious University of Kentucky to remain at his crummy little South Orange (N.J.) campus, showing the sort of loyalty we don’t always see these days.

Seton Hall’s administrators stuck by Carlesimo when outsiders crusaded for his firing. Carlesimo repaid their faith by leading his team to within seconds of the 1989 national championship, and repaid them with interest by rejecting a job that must have held incredible appeal. After all, he could have gone to Kentucky, home of the best basketball players money can buy.

I don’t know--is it me? Am I the only one whose cereal tastes better this morning? I know this can’t last, but for the time being, at least, life is a little bit better in the wide world of sports.