Winning Tops His Most-Wanted List

Tired of being angry.

Tired of trudging through the pride-deep muck of our sports landscape.

Tired of the losing, the whining, the bad trades, no trades, firings, feuds, cursing, cowering, new owners, ugly uniforms, scandals, selfishness, sadness.

Weekly schedule reads: Criticize Tuesday, lecture Wednesday, scold Friday, rip ‘em to brunch and back on Sunday.

Tired of that.

Miss the winning.

Not just how it makes our teams look, but how it makes us feel.

Not just how it fills the box scores, but how it fills our senses.

Remember that last major-sport college championship? Tyus Edney running the floor against Missouri? Ed O’Bannon running the jumper against Arkansas? Five long years ago.

Miss humming the UCLA fight song for the next month.

Remember that last pro championship? Orel Hershiser kneeling in front of the mound, Kirk Gibson limping around the basepaths, Mike Scioscia blocking the plate? Eleven long years ago.

Miss listening to a recording of Vin Scully, over and over . . . “The impossible has happened . . . “

It all seems even longer this fine Wednesday morning, sitting here between the rock of a miserable baseball season and the hard place of two puzzling college football teams.

With the NFL taunting us from one side and the San Antonio Spurs heckling us from the other.

With hockey starting strong, but too soon to trust hockey, it having burned us with Ron Wilson and the Great One and the Jailed One.

But wait, they say, what about the new, big arena?

But wait, indeed. If only one of the three tenants makes the playoffs, and then is swept in the second round, the place will be so quiet you’ll be able to hear a staple remover.

Miss the time when when our proudest sports moments involved a jump shot instead of an earth mover, a home run instead of a luxury suite.

Want that championship feeling again.

Want to sit at Dodger Stadium on a cool October evening, tucked in a sweater, wrapped around a hot dog, embracing a team.

Want to watch those highlights later on the news, as the world sees us, loud and lovable Los Angeles.

Want to hear Scully broadcasting an October baseball game about us, not some team from New York or Atlanta, where he starts telling another story and you want to yell into the radio for him to just stop.

Want to see little kids wearing Dodger caps to school.

Want to see our cabbies being quoted in out-of-town newspapers about the Dodgers.

Want to see Tom Lasorda throw out one last first pitch, spiraling a curveball in the dirt, pointing and cursing, demanding another chance.

Want to get teary-eyed over a national anthem.

Want to see Gene Autry’s memory gloriously resurrected on a clean patch of Anaheim grass.

Want to see Dave Henderson’s memory buried there.

Want to see Orange County leap and dance and giggle over a relief pitcher who finishes the job. (On second thought, does Orange County have any idea how to do any of those things?)

Want to spend an October Sunday afternoon cooking bratwurst in an NFL parking lot before the biggest football game in the country.

Want to see a full Los Angeles stadium on a November night through a blimp camera again.

Want a quarterback controversy on the eve of a playoff game, the radios buzzing, the coaches scrambling, people bringing it into their family rooms, a town and a team as one.

Want to write about a bunch of West Covina friends collecting their pennies to follow our team to New Orleans for the last Sunday in January.

Want a downtown bellhop to wear that Super Bowl cap until July.

Want our mayor to make a corny sports bet with another mayor over something, anything, it doesn’t matter, as long as our mayor acts as if he cares.

Want to get goose bumps when the white horse runs onto the Coliseum field.

Want that Trojan fight song to be the last song any college football fan hears, played into irritating eternity at the end of the first week in January, a national title refrain.

Want to wear sweaters into an arena in May.

Want to hear somebody sing “O Canada” in that arena in June.

Want to walk outside, tear off those sweaters, and sling them into a Santa Ana wind as the Stanley Cup glistens behind us.

Want Pauley Pavilion to feel like church.

Want to see Billy Packer at the broadcast table, and Jerry West in the stands.

Want to miss both of them because can’t keep the eyes off John Wooden, talking up the Bruins, acting proud.

Want to have a reason, any reason, just one, to walk into a USC basketball game.

Want a reason to hate an NBA team from the East, any team.

Want a reason to love the Clippers.

Want a chance to test the Staples Center air-conditioning for a basketball game in June. Can it be shut off? Good!

Want to be lifted out of the seat by one slam-dunk accompanied by 20,000 cheers heard by the world.

Want to write a column about the difficulties in planning a championship parade.

Want to attend that parade, standing next to a Long Beach truck driver, next to a Northridge business woman, three languages spoken behind us, all of us one voice, one skin, cheering the same 12 men.

Want to be sitting next to a man on a plane, and he sees my luggage tag, and he asks, “So, you’re from Los Angeles, huh? That sure was an inspirational championship you won last year.”

Want to be able to turn to him and say, “Yep. Our teams are like our town.”

Want him to ask, “What’s the name of that song, the one I’ve been hearing for about a year now?”

Want to say, “It’s called, ‘I Love L.A.’ ”

Want him to say, “You ever get tired of it?”

Want to say, “Never.”

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.