Hockey Plays Hooky in L.A. When March Turns to April

Columnist Dick Chubey of the Edmonton Sun, who in the past has blasted Los Angeles in general and the Kings in particular, was at it again last month after the Edmonton Oilers knocked the Kings out of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

“ ‘April in L.A.,’ ” wrote Chubey. “Not quite the ring of ‘April in Paris,’ is it? But, the two worldly glamour cities do have something distinctly in common come spring-time.

“No hockey past April.”

Kings are not alone: Eleven of the NHL’s 22 teams have never won the Stanley Cup.

Trivia time: Who is the only Angel who hit home runs in all three of the ballparks the Angels called home--Wrigley Field, Dodger Stadium and Anaheim Stadium?

Trial by fire: Outfielder Oscar Azocar of the San Diego Padres has really hot bats. He pours alcohol on them and sets the alcohol afire, sometimes in the dugout.

“Really, I’m not trying to be funny,” he said. “I do it to harden the wood.”

On the outside: If NBA players were not eligible for the Olympics, Bill Walton told Sport magazine, he would favor sending a starting five of Duke’s Christian Laettner and Grant Hill, Louisiana State’s Shaquille O’Neal, Ohio State’s Jim Jackson and USC’s Harold Miner.

As his top reserves, he would send UCLA’s Don MacLean and Stanford’s Adam Keefe.

And how would they do?

“They’d win,” Walton said.

Where were you in ‘72?Speaking of Walton and the Olympics, Doug Collins told Inside Sports that the results in basketball during the Munich Games would have been different if a certain redhead center had participated.

“Simply put, we would have won the gold medal hands down if Bill Walton had played for us,” said Collins, part of the team that was upset by the Soviets in a controversial final. “It’s my understanding that Bill would have participated only if he had been permitted to bypass the tryouts, but Coach (Hank) Iba was the type of person who felt that if tryouts were good enough for 11 other players, then they were good enough for everybody.”

Forever young: At a golf tournament in Lake Wales, Fla., a group including Richmond Meyer set a record for the oldest foursome.

Meyer, 90, was the youngest player in the group. His partners were Maurice R. Smith, 97; C.M. McAllister, 96, and Egon Quittner, 92.

Still a little short: Pushing the Boston Celtics during the 1991 playoffs gave the Indiana Pacers a false sense of security, Pacer General Manager Donnie Walsh said.

“I know what happened,” Walsh told Newsday after the Pacers were swept by the Celtics in a first-round series this season. “It got too blown out of proportion when we played the Celtics in the five-game series.

“We believed we had arrived in some way. We came into the season thinking that, and we just got our socks knocked off.

“There are a lot of things you need to do to win. You just can’t outshoot everybody. At some point, you’ve got to get back together (and play defense).”

Would you believe it?The Seattle SuperSonics upset the Golden State Warriors in a first-round series, 3-1, but the Warriors outscored the SuperSonics by two points.

Trivia answer: Buck Rodgers.

Quotebook: Richie Bancells, Baltimore Oriole trainer, on Cal Ripken Jr., who hasn’t missed a game since the 1982 season: “Sometimes when he gets hit by a pitch, I’m almost embarrassed to ask him about it. By the time he gets to the dugout, the bruise is gone.”