Soccer Arrives in Time to Spice Up Summer
U nconventional wisdom of the day . . .
World Cup ‘94: One way or another, a rousing hockey season comes to an end Tuesday night in New York. Meanwhile, the Knicks and the Rockets threaten to bomb pro basketball back to the Stone Age. The American League West race is already a bore. The Angels are as lousy as ever, except with no Buck Rodgers around to keep us amused. The Dodgers are in a pennant race that will be rendered moot within weeks by a player strike. Wimbledon will be won by Steffi Graf and whichever man hits the most aces. Sounds to me like a great time to host a monthlong soccer tournament.
Red card: A wonderful soccer invention that, if adopted by the NBA, would have left the Knicks with three players to start Sunday’s game.
Knicks-Rockets: The least attractive NBA final since . . . Seattle-Washington, ‘78-’79? No, that matchup had Elvin Hayes, Wes Unseld, Gus Williams and Dennis Johnson. Milwaukee-Baltimore ‘71? Earl Monroe, Oscar Robertson and Lew Alcindor played in that one. Syracuse-Ft. Wayne ‘55? It appears we have a winner. The centers in that series were Johnny Kerr and Larry Foust; Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon probably rate a slight edge. But that was 39 years ago, and the winning team did manage to break 100 points twice in that series.
Ewing vs. Olajuwon: Get Starks and Maxwell and Mason and all the rest off the floor. Now. Everybody out of the building except the two big guys. Let them have at it, one-on-one, all the way to 21. As soon as we have a winner, let’s shake hands, shut it down and promise to do a better job next season.
New York Rangers: All those who have had it up to here with “1940,” raise your right hand. Not you, Mike Richter . . . oops, too late, Canuck goal, glove side. This obsessing over some dusty date in hockey history reached an absurd extreme Saturday in Vancouver, when ESPN’s Bill Clement looked at his watch as the horn sounded on Game 6 and noted, “And in a minute or two, it will be 7:40 p.m. And in military time, that is 19:40.” Yes, and if you take the number of goals scored this series, multiply by 169, add in the wind-chill factor in downtown Winnipeg on March 3, subtract the shoe sizes of every member of the Howe family and divide by pi, that is also 1940.
The Ghosts of Madison Square Garden: I’m wondering how they made it to Vancouver in time for Game 6. On Air Canada through Toronto? Or United through Chicago?
Jimmy Carson: He has been scratched by two different coaches on two different teams in back-to-back Stanley Cup finals. This is believed to be an NHL record.
Mike Keenan: How does a guy negotiating a new job with the Detroit Red Wings during the middle of the Stanley Cup finals tell his players to “stay focused?”
Sam McMaster: The new Kings general manager has been on the job two weeks, hasn’t traded Marty McSorley or ticked off Wayne Gretzky or gutted a top scoring line yet. So far, he’s been a big improvement.
Luc Robitaille: Don’t be surprised if he or restricted free-agent Rob Blake are traded by training camp. The new Kings ownership has shallow pockets and slashing the payroll is the first order of business. The salad days are clearly over, which means Gretzky has probably seen his last Cup final. Unless he’s traded, too.
Augie Garrido: Every other year, his Cal State Fullerton Titans go to Omaha and brighten the dreary local sports scene for a week or so. What was the most incredible story this time? Playing three games in 24 hours in Stillwater, Okla., and winning two of them, including the clincher against host team Oklahoma State, just to qualify for the World Series? Or scoring 20 runs to eliminate defending champion LSU? Or reaching the semifinals and having the tying run on third with no outs in the bottom of the 12th, despite possessing a fraction of the talent the ’92 Titans brought to Rosenblatt? Augie, the break in the weather did all of us good.
Dante Powell: He was 0 for Omaha heading into the last game against Georgia Tech, hitless in 22 College World Series at-bats spanning 1992 and ‘94, and the natives were starting to wonder, “So what’s the big deal with this guy?” Nice to see him break out with three hits and put the tying run 90 feet away in the 12th. A sacrifice fly there would have been nicer still, but that, I’m afraid, got chopped out of the athletic budget.
Cal State Fullerton: In little more than six months, Fullerton sent two of its men’s teams--soccer and baseball--to the NCAA final four. Is there another school that can make the same claim in 1993-94? One that has money?
Bill Shumard: He always wanted to build a better basketball gym, and now, as an assistant AD at Long Beach State, he shall have one. The 49ers begin play in the sparkling new Pyramid this fall.
French Open: When I awoke Sunday morning and turned on the television, much to my surprise, the men’s singles final was no longer in progress.
