As Excuses Go, This One’s More Than Fair

Ace pitcher Tyler Shaddy, third baseman Steve Lourel and reserve infielder Joe Daily missed their team’s doubleheader against Chandler (Ariz.) Hamilton High last week, but at least they had an original excuse.

The Yuma Kofa High players traded throwing around the horsehide to deal a little pigskin.

They were absent because they were auctioning off their pigs at a county fair, according to the Arizona Republic.

Their investments paid off, as they combined for a $4,200 haul, Kofa Coach Billy Laguna reported.

As for the doubleheader, Kofa won the first game, 23-18, but lost the second, 7-2.

Sounds as though they missed Shaddy.

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Undercover strategy: Heading into a doubleheader with Portland State on Thursday, the University of Washington’s softball team was 34-5-1 and ranked No. 3 in the nation. But Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times reports that when the Huskies hit a recent 1-3 skid, Coach Teresa Wilson resorted to a popular backup: superstition.

“We’ve changed scrunchees [ponytail holders], we’ve changed visors, we’ve changed uniforms, we’ve changed socks,” Wilson said. “There’s nothing left to change.”

Well, almost nothing. “I’ve decided that purple underwear can only go on Day 3 of a three-game series,” Wilson said. “They don’t pull a win out on Day 1, you’ve got to be sensitive to the softball gods.”

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Trivia time: Who said, “If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be”?

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Wild thing: Tom FitzGerald of the San Francisco Chronicle had some fun with a wild pitch thrown by Dodger right-hander Hideo Nomo recently.

“As pitches go,” FitzGerald wrote, “this one was the wildest of the wild. [He] uncorked one Saturday against the Padres that a catcher could have tracked only on a Global Positioning System.”

The pitch landed more than halfway up the screen behind home plate, prompting Padre television broadcaster Mark Grant, a former Giant, to recall his own wildest pitch, which he described as a “42-foot curveball” against Montreal in 1984.

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Fair enough: Denver Nugget assistant general manager David Fredman, quoted by the Denver Post after his team fell below Cleveland for the NBA’s worst record:

“I want to win every game. I really do. The only thing I want to be last in is dying.”

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Who’s No. 1? Michael Jordan thinks Carmelo Anthony warrants serious consideration as the No. 1 pick of the NBA draft should the Syracuse freshman make himself available.

“I think his coming-out party was during this tournament,” Jordan said earlier this week.

Jordan believes Anthony’s one season of college competition may have lifted him above Ohio high school phenom LeBron James.

“You have to give this kid some consideration, at least from my perspective,” Jordan told the Associated Press.

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Trivia answer: Who else? Yogi Berra.

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And finally: David Letterman offers up this idea to modernize baseball’s seventh-inning stretch song:

“Take Me Out to the Corporate-Sponsored Megaplex.”