Arizona’s Vote Figures to Be for Basketball

As if Arizonans needed more airing of their civic laundry. . . .

In Pima County, which includes Tucson, home of the University of Arizona, there’s a scheduling conflict between the start of the Wildcats’ basketball game Feb. 26 against Stanford and the last hour of voting in the gubernatorial runoff election between Republican Fife Symington and Democrat Terry Goddard.

Polls are scheduled to close at 7 p.m., which is tipoff time for the Pacific 10 Conference game at Arizona’s McKale Center. Pima County Democratic Chairman Bill Minette has asked the Arizona athletic department to delay the tipoff until 8.

Add conflict: Minette senses that the scheduling conflict will affect voters on their way home from work.

He told the Associated Press: “I’ve had 10 or a dozen people say to me, ‘I’m either not going to vote or miss the first half of the ballgame.’ ”

The Democratic chairman argued in a letter to the university that starting times were reworked to accommodate television schedules and ought to be negotiable for an election.

However, Minette did tell AP he isn’t optimistic about the chances of having the tipoff moved back, adding that the university’s position might be: “You’ve got to be out of your skull. Delay a game?”

Trivia time: Besides Don Mattingly, who are the only New York Yankee players who have more than two years’ continuous service with the club?

Win-win situation: To set the tone of baseball’s salary arbitration season, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune recently invoked former Oakland Athletic pitcher Mike Norris, who once said before his arbitration hearing: “I’m either going to be rich or richer.”

Treats for being good: Make of it what you will, but the Atlanta Journal sports staff recently put together a statistical list under the heading “The postseason pie.”

It measured the percentage of NCAA Division I (or I-A) teams advancing to postseason play in four sports:

--Football bowl games, 38 of 106 teams, or 36%.

--Basketball, 96 of 295, 33% (includes NCAA and NIT tournaments).

--Hockey, 12 of 52, 23%.

--Baseball, 48 of 272, 18%.

Not just bluster: Runners hoping for personal bests in the recent Houston-Tenneco Marathon were disappointed when 15-m.p.h. winds fouled the course.

Kenneth Carnes, winner of the wheelchair competition, said: “For a long time, it didn’t seem to matter what direction I was going or how I turned, I still was fighting it.”

Jeff Wells, 1976 champion who ran 2:28.32 this year and finished 37th, wasn’t making any excuses, but he did make a good point.

Wells told Terry Blount of the Houston Chronicle: “You have to realize if you’re running at a five-minute-mile pace, that’s equivalent to a 12 m.p.h. wind by itself. So a 15 m.p.h. wind is a lot more than it sounds like.”

Trivia answer: Outfielder Roberto Kelly and relief pitcher Lee Guetterman.

Quotebook: The late Harold (Red) Grange, telling the story behind his legendary No. 77: “The guy in front of me got 76, the guy in back got 78.”