Hockey List Only Half as Good as Letterman’s

The Toronto Sun’s top five reasons why even regular-season hockey is better than postseason baseball:

5) Twelve-year-olds can’t grab pucks to prevent goals.

4) Hockey doesn’t have Albert Belle, Eddie Murray or Roberto Alomar.

3) Hockey has a commissioner, even if he is a lawyer.

2) Who would you rather have, Don Cherry or Tim McCarver?

1) In hockey, everybody is in the action. Baseball is mostly two guys playing catch and seven guys spitting.

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Trivia time: Who has the longest streak of games in the major leagues, as a player and manager, without one in the World Series?

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Bruin heritage: No one should be surprised that UCLA Athletic Director Peter Dalis refuses to let basketball Coach Jim Harrick talk about possible recruiting violations. Dalis is only doing what he learned from the Wizard of Westwood.

When Lew Alcindor came to UCLA from New York as the greatest prep player in history, John Wooden refused to let Alcindor--now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar--talk to reporters.

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Poor scouting: Rene Lacoste, one of France’s greatest tennis players, who died last Sunday at age 92, was 16 before he first picked up a racket. His father was unimpressed when Rene was beaten, 6-0, 6-1, in a schoolboy match.

“Don’t you think,” he said, “that it would be wise to abandon a sport for which it seems evident that you have hardly any aptitude?”

Five years later, Lacoste won the first of two Wimbledon titles, and in 1926 won the U.S. Open.

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The other side: Baltimore Oriole outfielder Bobby Bonilla, reflecting on 12-year-old Jeff Maier deflecting a ball that was ruled a New York Yankee home run in the American League championship series:

“Let’s put it this way: If it was a home run for us, George Steinbrenner would have Maier on the Throgs Neck Bridge dangling somewhere. It’s a double standard.”

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Mixed signals: Bill Jauss, a commentator on “The Sportswriters,” says there’s something convoluted in society “when a 6-year-old kid who kisses a 6-year-old girl gets bigger punishment than a baseball player for spitting on an umpire.”

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Almost perfect: When a list of college football’s longest win streaks appeared recently, with Oklahoma on top with 47 straight wins, it brought a protest from Rod Mays, a California graduate, class of ‘32, because Cal was not listed. He claimed the Golden Bears had gone without a loss for 50 games between 1920 and 1925.

True, but the Bears were tied four times during that streak, making their record 46-0-4.

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Trivia answer: Yankee Manager Joe Torre, 4,277 games--but it will end Saturday when he manages in his first World Series game.

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And finally: When the Yankees celebrated after winning the American League championship and getting to the World Series, it was with bottles of Asti, a sparkling Italian wine.

“We don’t have Dom [Perignon] yet,” catcher Jim Leyritz said, “but that’s the next step.”