It’s a Case of Buyer Beware of the Cellar

If you’re an Angel fan, enjoy the 1992 season now--while your team is still unbeaten.

According to baseball’s forecasters, the Angels soon will begin a free-fall tumble into sixth or seventh place in the American League West, perhaps starting as soon as tonight, when they open the season at Anaheim Stadium against the Chicago White Sox.

Sports Illustrated: “The 1991 Angels had the best record of any last-place team in history. The 1992 Angels may have the worst record of any last-place team in history.”

Sport magazine: “Question: How many Angel executives does it take to screw up a team? Answer: Four. Whitey Herzog makes the moves while Richard Brown, Dan O’Brien and Buck Rodgers defend them.”

Adding insult to insult, Peter Gammons of the Boston Globe quotes this from an anonymous scout: “(The Angels) have come full cycle--they’re worse than they were in their first year of expansion. Virtually every one of those older players is washed up. It’s pitiful.”

Closing argument: The consensus is that the White Sox have the potential to contend for the AL West title. Whether they do contend, the Chicago Tribune’s Alan Solomon writes in his preseason preview, depends on one man:

“Bobby Thigpen. Without him . . . the White Sox have no closer. Without a closer, they have no chance.”

Add White Sox: Since Bo Jackson underwent hip-replacement surgery, the White Sox player receiving the most media attention has been his former Auburn football teammate, first baseman Frank Thomas.

White Sox outfielder Tim Raines told Sport magazine: “The only other guy in baseball who compares with Frank is Kirby Puckett. (Thomas) doesn’t have the power of Jose Canseco or Cecil Fielder, but he has so much more than them, and nearly the power. Really, Frank is all those guys--Puckett, Canseco and Fielder--in one.”

Speaking of Thomas and White Sox third baseman Robin Ventura, Tiger Manager Sparky Anderson told the Sporting News: “They’re the two best young players I’ve seen on one team in 22 years. I’ve tried to think of two young people being that good together on one club, and the only two I can think of are Fred Lynn and Jim Rice.”

Trivia time: What player holds the NCAA record for most turnovers in a Final Four game?

Ancient history: In 1939, the first year of the NCAA basketball tournament, the only teams invited were Brown, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah State, Villanova and Wake Forest.

Playing before a crowd of 5,500 in Evanston, Ill., Oregon won the title with a 46-33 victory over Ohio State, whose players were not particularly bothered by the defeat.

“We were not interested in playing in this tournament,” Ohio State’s James Hull recently told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “It was so new and so unheard of.”

Ancient history II: Five years later, Utah chose to play in the National Invitation Tournament instead of the NCAA tournament. The NIT not only was more prestigious, it paid travel expenses. The NCAA did not.

But after Utah lost in the first round of the NIT, and Arkansas was forced to withdraw from the NCAA tournament because two players were injured in a car accident, the NCAA re-extended its invitation to Utah.

Utah accepted and won the national championship.

Trivia answer: Indiana State’s Larry Bird, who committed 11 against DePaul in the 1979 semifinals.

For the record: Morning Briefing reported Sunday that Esquire magazine listed Pepperdine as one of 10 schools offering cheerleading scholarships. Pepperdine says no such scholarships are offered and that cheerleading is an extracurricular activity.

Quotebook: Outfielder George Bell, on phoning home after being traded from the Cubs to the White Sox: “I’ve got my 9-year-old on one extension and my 11-year-old on the other, and I’m trying to explain that I’ve just been traded from Chicago to Chicago.”