Tucson Weekly: A Good Day... (March 12

...But We Could Do Without The Preseason Baseball And Minor-League Hockey.
By Tom Danehy
THIS PAST SUNDAY, even by Sunday standards, was amazing. It started out, as usual, with my stopping by to say "Hi" to God. However, judging by the letter I got from the Newman Center after my last column, maybe God's not saying "Hi" back. I've pretty much been branded a heretic by members of the Church hierarchy.
What's really funny is that I'm going to attend a religious ceremony at the Newman Center in the near future. I wonder if they'll be waiting to ambush me with holy water. Splash some on me and see if it rips my flesh open. That'd be cool.
Danehy At the gym, there was an air of anticipation as the day moved along. Every basketball fan in America was waiting for the NCAA Tournament pairings to be announced. It was clear that Arizona had earned a No. 1 seed after their gut-wrenching win at UCLA the day before, but there were many other questions.
Which Pac-10 teams would get in? Which teams around the country would shockingly get left out? Why do newspapers waste valuable space running mock tournament pairings up to the very day the real ones are released?
The UA's win at Pauley Pavilion was a huge topic of conversation, but many of the people were still talking about the stunning upset loss to USC a couple nights earlier, when a Trojan player threw the ball at the basket and somehow willed it to defy the laws of physics by hitting the backboard and bottom of the rim and then having it crawl up and fall in.
I've been around basketball for 30 years and I've never seen a basketball do that. And I've been to middle-school games, so believe me, I've seen basketballs do a lot of weird things.
Most aggravating about the loss (outside of the fact that it kept this squad from being the first ever to go 18-0 in the Pac-10) was all the talk from know-nothings who kept blabbering on about the Cats needing a "good loss."
Let's get this straight once and for all: There is no such thing as a good loss. A loss is a loss. That means the other team beat you. All you learn from losing is how to lose. And most college athletes, by the time they've reached the pinnacle of their sport, have probably lost thousands of games--pickup games, summer league, HORSE, one-on-one. That's why they've worked so hard to get where they are. They don't like losing.
Winning can be incredibly addictive. And people and teams in the middle of a win streak can't wait to play another game so they can win again. I guarantee nobody on the Cats was thinking, "Gee, we need a loss to take the pressure off this win streak." That kind of talk is the product of sportswriters who never played ball.
I played a game of basketball and my daughter played on the team with me. Guys, that's a great feeling, where you and your child are at the same y-coordinate on the sine curve, where she's good enough to play at an adult level and, at the same time, your skills haven't deteriorated to the point where you'll embarrass her. (Or yourself, for that matter, although it will certainly take a lot more to embarrass yourself than your teenager.)
After the game, as I was taking her from the basketball gym over the another gym for her volleyball practice, I turned on the car radio to the all-sports channel. I wanted to know who had won the ACC and Big 10 Tournament championships. Plus, the Knicks and Bulls were playing in New York, and I also wanted to see if the UA women were going to host a regional in the NCAAs.
Here it is one of the most exciting sports days of the year, and the sports channel is covering pre-season baseball. If there is a more-boring or less-significant thing in the world than pre-season baseball, I don't want to know about it. I just wasted 12 seconds of my life thinking about it. And they put it on the radio?!
It's against the Geneva Convention to make people listen to preseason baseball on the radio. Come on, Sports Station Dudes, wise up. Nobody listens to that stuff. I'll bet the car-care guy on KTUC gets better ratings. Although, in fairness, the baseball might outdraw the holistic-health lady.
Don't ask me how I know about these things. For a while, my car radio was stuck on KTUC, so I'd hear snippets while I was changing cassettes. I think it was haunted by the ghost of Tom Hassey, whose show is dead at the end of this week.
I switched over to CNN and heard that Whitewater figure James McDougal had died. You know how George Orwell said that, at age 50, a man has the face he deserves? McDougal must've been into a lot more than scamming a few crackers in a real-estate con. The dude looked ancient, but he was only 57 when he passed on.
It's sad to live in such cynical times, but I swear the first thing that popped into my head was that Rush and his blithering band of morons are probably going to suggest that McDougal was silenced so he couldn't hurt Bill Clinton.
A few hours later, I got back in the car to go pick Darlene up and I again turned on the radio. Blessedly, the baseball was over. But instead of rich talk about the tournament pairings, they had...minor-league hockey! Aaaarrrggghhh! Even the holistic-health lady kicks minor-league hockey's butt.
Finally, I found some coverage on KNST, which kept me from driving to Phoenix to put a stop to the minor-league hockey game so the sports channel could provide some real sports coverage.
They reported the UA women would be hosting a regional, all but assuring them a trip to the Sweet 16. Plus, Joan Bonvicini and Adia Barnes were named Pac-10 Coach and Player of the Year, joining Lute Olson and Mike Bibby in similar honors, the first time all four honors went to the same school. Not bad.
All in all, it's like Ice Cube said: "You sorry #@!^%$#!!." Oops, wrong cassette. What he really said was, "I guess it was a good day." For everybody except James McDougal. And Kenneth Starr.

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