My mom threw open the back door and yelled out to her yard-full of children, “He’s coming up again!”

We all ran inside to our kitchen to watch history unfold on our black and white TV (the color TV was further in the house and we weren’t allowed to go in there covered in sweat.) Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run tonight in 1974, passing Babe Ruth on the all-time home run list. Someone has since passed Aaron, but nobody cares. Aaron ended the 1973 season just one short of Ruth’s record. Can you possibly imagine how his every move would have been covered in the off season in today’s world?

Tonight’s national championship game is being played on the 220th anniversary of the first recorded college basketball game ever held, at Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. The NCAA has since deemed several of the players ineligible and doesn’t recognize the contest.

Kurt Cobain was found dead today in 1994, three days after he’d shot himself with a shotgun in the greenhouse above his garage. Killing yourself to live indeed.

Here’s a top 20 Songs off of albums that were released on April 8:

1. Sweet Emotion, Aerosmith, “Toys in the Attic”– 1975
2. Save it For a Rainy Day, The Jayhawks, “Rainy Day Music”– 2003
3. Graduate, Third Eye Blind, “Third Eye Blind”– 1997
4. Semi-Charmed Life, Third Eye Blind– 1997
5. Janie Jones, The Clash, “The Clash”– 1977
6. Tailspin, The Jayhawks– 2003
7. You See Me Crying, Aerosmith– 1975
8. Jumper, Third Eye Blind– 1997
9. I’m So Bored With the USA, The Clash– 1977
10. Africa, Toto, “Toto IV”– 1982
11. All the Right Reasons, The Jayhawks– 2003
12. Walk This Way-– Aerosmith– 1975
13. How’s It Gonna To Be— Third Eye Blind– 1997
14. White Riot— The Clash– 1977
15. Toys in the Attic— Aerosmith– 1975
16. Narcolepsy— Third Eye Blind– 1997
17. Today’s the Day— America, “Hideaway”– 1974
18. Uncle Salty— Aerosmith– 1975
19. God of Wine— Third Eye Blind– 1997
20. Amber Cascades— America– 1974

— Bill Hubbell

Starting Five

1. Don Who

Don Ho. Don Juan. Don Corleone. In a sense Don Draper was all of the above last night. “Thanks for the toy,” says his neighbor, Dr. Rosen (no relation to Dr. Rosenrosen, I assume), when Don hands him some swag in the form of a camera. And little do we know it at the time, but Don might as well have replied, “Likewise.”

It’s Christmas, 1967 (Peggy Olsen gave it away when she said that it’ll be “The Packers against the Raiders or the Oilers” in the Super Bowl) at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Don is still Don and Roger remains Roger (when Don vomits at Roger’s mom’s memorial, Sterling quips, “He was just saying what everyone else is thinking”), but metamorphoses are taking place (maybe Don should be reading Kakfa instead of Dante?). Anyway, show creator/writer sets up his theme of portals (the episode is titled “The Doorway”) via Roger speaking to an analyst, a sure sign that Wiener watches The Newsroom.

What other popular TV program began a season with an extended episode in Hawaii? The Brady Bunch.

It’s a little too easy –here, I’m just going to have my character spew the premiere’s theme out to a shrink midway through the two-hour premiere — but it’s still a terrific, cynical and sobering point. We are all just going through portals, and each one closes behind us. “Experiences are nothing,” notes Roger, who will take the news of his mother’s death with stoicism, almost nonchalance, but breaks down in tears when he learns of the death of his shoeshine guy. “They’re just some pennies you pick up off the floor, stick in your pocket. You’re just going in a straight line to You Know Where.”

For more, read the incomparable Alan Sepinwall, who notes that this was also the time when The Doors themselves were just beginning to break big.

2. No Title For Skylar Diggins

Is Skylar Diggins the best female basketball player ever to don a Notre Dame uniform? She IS the school’s all-time leading scorer and she is certainly the most photographed female athlete in Fighting Irish history. A South Bend native, she has represented the school proudly, leading the Irish to three straight Final Fours.

The Irish failed to win a championship, however, and this was the year they should have. Baylor was bounced in the Sweet 16 and the Irish just needed to get past a pair of Big East foes, UConn and Louisville, against whom they’d gone 5-0 this season. Notre Dame beat Louisville, which will meet UConn tomorrow night, by 29 and 24 points earlier this season.

Last night Diggins was completely outplayed by UConn freshman Breanna Stewart, a 6-foot-4 swing player with a deadly jumper. Stewart, from upstate New York, scored a career-high 29 points. It’s worth nothing that when Diana Taurasi faced the Irish in the Final Four as a freshman, she went 1 for 15. The Irish won that game and their first — and still only –national championship.

Sky-fall. Diggins denied again.

Ruth Riley led that Irish squad, and if Diggins is not the best player in school history, she is.

Notre Dame had beaten UConn seven of its past eight meetings, all during the Diggins era. Nobody beats Geno Auriemma that often. Nobody. Not even Pat Summitt. But if Auriemma can survive the Diggins era being able to say that the Huskies won two national championships in those four years and Notre Dame zero, that’s a major coup.

3. From Mad Men to mad man: Is Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim an insufferable grouch? Does Syracuse play zone defense? The Orange coach  and longtime misanthrope must exhaust his limited supply of charm on lovely wife Julie, but I will excuse him –slightly–for his latest cantankerous post-game outburst. Gregg Doyel of CBSSports.com, a fearless columnist who marches to his own beat, admirably, was called on to ask the first question after the Cuse lost its national semifinal to Michigan. Gregg led with, “When do you think you’ll decide, announce, whatever, whether or not you’re coming back next year or do you already know?”

Doyel

Valid question? Yeah, I guess. Boeheim is 68. Then again, Mike Krzyzewski is 66 and I doubt anyone asked him that question after Louisville defeated Duke last Sunday. There are a few things going on here. First (and as someone who is beginning to get up there in age but can still outhustle snappers of whip 20 years my junior), aging lions completely resent being reminded that they won’t be around forever, particularly when their performance has yet to drop off. Coach K led his squad to the Elite Eight while Boeheim and Rick Pitino, age 60, advanced to the Final Four (and Pitino might win it all). So, unless Boeheim is ill or his team’s performance is noticeably suffering, yeah, he’ll take offense to that question. And I don’t blame him.

Second, Gregg is a veteran of pressers. That’s not a question you lead off the presser with unless you are deliberately going after the Howard Stern/Stuttering John moment. Gregg said 100 hands went up in the air and he was surprised to be chosen first. Two things: One, all of us have more than one question in our arsenal. Two, if you know it’s that type of question, you don’t raise your hand initially. You let a few questions pass before you step up to the plate.

Could Boeheim have handled it better (and how many times can we ask that about Jimmy B. over the course of his career, especially in pressers?)? Of course. He could have pulled a Mark Dantonio and tersely replied, “Yes. Next question.” But I don’t blame him for being a little pissed off at Gregg.

4. This should bother you: The Tanzanian government plans to kick Maasai tribesmen off their land so that wealthy oil barons from the United Arab Emirates can use the area for trophy hunting of lions and leopards, etc. Poaching is bad enough. Government-sponsored poaching is just terrible. Can’t Matt Damon or George Clooney make a film about this? Can Toto perform a benefit concert?

“What beautiful creatures! Let’s kill them and mount their heads on our walls to compensate for our tiny…”

5. Instead of a bunch of words on Margaret Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister who died today at the age of 87, I’ll provide one of her many memorable quotes (why are British heads of state so much more quotable than American heads of state???): “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”

Reserves

On “Weekend Update” Drunk Uncle is joined by brother-in-law Peter “Drunklage.” Drunk Uncle on taxes: “You know what I’m writing off this year? The next generation.” Drunklage, staring at his Scotch glass while discussing social media: “You know what’s in my Tumblr? Regret.”

Scotch and cynicism: make mine a double

Dinklage, by the way, was a convincing drunk. But the dude who portrayed PFC Dinkins on “Mad Men” was intoxicatingly good.

I got into a little Twit-snit with women’s hoops reporter Wendy Parker this week. Last Tuesday she tweeted, “Louisville-Cal will be a fun game. Don’t call it an undercard, (as compared to Notre Dame-UConn).” Then yesterday, by way of a link to her advance story on the game, she tweeted, “…the undercard (Louisville-Cal) has its own appeal.” To be fair to Wendy, she made a point in her story of noting that people consider that game an undercard, but it is not.
Except that, by every definition of the term “undercard”, it kinda was. Though she’s correct, it was a fun game. Geno Auriemma had the best line on the Louisville-Cal game, noting that Cardinal coach Jeff Walz was wearing a red-and-white checkered shirt: “He’s wearing an Italian tablecloth. I should hire him for my restaurant.”

Hey, everybody, Wesley Snipes is a free man again.

Jon Stewart, in his Lords of Flatbush get-up, interviews George Carlin in 1997. At the end (9:45), Carlin tells Stewart that “you are going to show us a lot, and I look forward to it.”

Remote Patrol

NCAA Championship Game

Louisville vs. Michigan

CBS 9 p.m.

Tip-off is at 9:23 p.m. Here’s betting that Phil Mushnick of the New York Post has already written his column blasting the suits at the NCAA and CBS for starting a title game after most kids’ bedtime. And, you know what? He’s right.

Starting Five

1. “A Leave of Presence”

That was the term film critic Roger Ebert used just earlier this week when announcing that he would begin curtailing his film review efforts. Yesterday Ebert, 70, passed away. No shortage of encomia accompanied Ebert’s death, from this one (terrific lede, by the way, one that Ebert would have appreciatee) by Neil Steinberg in the Chicago Sun Times, Ebert’s employer for more than 40 years, to this one from a fellow downstate Illinois native, Will Leitch (just wait until Darren Rovell dies), which originally ran a year or two ago. Too much to say here, but read Ebert’s memoir, “Life Itself“, if you get a chance.

As for other material, this 2010 Esquire profile by Chris Jones is as good as you’ll find.

The balcony is closed

Five Roger Ebert tidbits:

1) The first film he saw was “A Day at The Races”, starring the Marx Brothers (admission: 9 cents).

2) As a University of Illinois senior (he grew up in Champaign), Ebert was the editor-in-chief of The Daily Illini. The sports editor was future Sports Illustrated senior writer William Nack, whom some of us feel was the most poetic writer in the mag’s history.

3) He was fortunate enough to have legendary Chicago columnist Mike Royko take him under his wing soon after he arrived at The Chicago Sun Times.

4) He became, in 1975, the first movie critic to win a Pulitzer Prize.

5) He once sort of dated Oprah Winfrey. He admits that she put the brakes on it.

2. Bosh Bash

I think we’d all feel worse for Chris Bosh having been robbed of $340,000 worth of jewelry if the heist had not occurred while he was out celebrating his 29 birthday, a bacchanal that included a cake that was a “jewel-festooned chocolate elephant ridden by a miniature Bosh figure.” Oh, and he reportedly arrived by both helicopter and yacht. These are the types of details that a young Steve Rushin would weave into literary and comic gold when writing one of his outstanding SI features back in the 1990s, before the internet.

3-5: Apologies. Just got called in to the steakateria. Will finish later if I have the chance or this will run in full tomorrow.

3. I once spent three hours interviewing Jay Mohr at his beach house in California for a story that would run in TV Guide (I know). I thought that we got along well — we’re about the same age and we were both raised in New Jersey, and one of us is funny. Anyway, after believing that we’d bonded, as I was walking to my car he called out, “Enjoy those quotes! They’re the same ones I gave to People magazine.”

Rot in hell, Bob Sugar

Which is to say that sometimes, as a journalist –and particularly when you are dealing with actors/actresses — you are not going to reveal your subject to your satisfaction. Or your readers’. That’s what happened in this Rolling Stone cover story on Jon Hamm, who was amiable and charming enough, but at the end played his role as Don Draper to a tee for RS scribe Josh Eells. We learn very little of substance about Hamm, except for the fact that before he was cast in Mad Men, his last job was as a waiter at a Latin restaurant located just three blocks from where the show currently films. He even uses the same parking lot that he used then. What aspiring actor will not spend another five years in the biz (the biz of waiting tables, that is) upon reading that anecdote?

Also, we learn that as handsome as Hamm is now, he was even more studly as a high school football player in suburban St. Louis. Honestly, name an actor who looks/looked better in shoulder pads, ever, than Hamm does below.  Not even Tom Cruise’s Stefen Djordjevic is as much of a skirt-melter. Hey, I’m straight, but man is that a good-looking cat.

And Hamm was an All-State LB. Ben Fong-Torres and I would like that fact-checked, though.

4. Pac-12 director of officiating Ed Rush resigns. And spring cleaning at Rutgers, where head coach Mike Rice was fired, and both athletic director Tim Pernetti and assistant coach Jimmy Martelli, a.k.a. “Baby Rice”, resigned. Martelli is the son of St. Joe’s coach Phil Martelli, a longtime Philly hoops presence who 1) is best friends with Geno Auriemma and 2) could probably tell you more about Ed Rush and whether or not the Philly connection with NBA refs is a corrupt one.

Ed Rush: Cancun-bound?

As for Rush, he had to go and he’s too smart not to realize it. Three steps to his departure: 1) Singling out one coach, Arizona’s Sean Miller, for his officials to focus on instead of telling them to be tougher on coaches in general. 2) That coach, Miller, earning his first technical foul of the entire season, which leads to some serious dot-connecting, and 3) dot-connecting that only occurs when a referee chooses to inform CBSSports.com scribe Jeff Goodman of Rush’s comments. The real question here is why that official would do that. The most sensible answer is that Rush wasn’t joking –not enough, anyway — and that this official was tired of Rush’s bullying and/or his lack of integrity. As employees or underlings, we are always loyal to a boss/manager/coach who may say something off-color or inappropriate in confidence because we recognize the greater good that he/she is doing. People only go off the reservation if they feel their leader is harming the overall institution. That’s what Eric Murdock did at Rutgers, and that is what this anonymous referee was doing when he unburdened himself to Goodman.

5. Miami Heat: 27 games. Los Angeles Clippers: 17 games. Denver Nuggets: 15 games. New York Knicks: 11 games and counting. I don’t know if there has ever been a single NBA season with four 11-plus game win streaks. As for the scoring title, Kevin Durant is averaging 28.4 points per game, while Carmelo Anthony is averaging 28.3 points per game, with about two weeks left in the regular season.

Worth noting: Durant has played 14 more games. His season points total is 2,158 points, while Melo has scored 1,755 points. Still, as far as the league is concerned, it all comes down to ppg for the scoring title. I refer you to the 1978 season, when George Gervin of the San Antonio Spurs was averaging 26.8 ppg heading into the final game while David Thompson of the Denver Nuggets was averaging 26.6. Both teams’ final games were on a Sunday, with Thompson’s Nuggets playing first (both, notably, were playing for ABA refugee franchises).

Thompson went for 72 points.

Skywalker, soaring over Dr. J. Back in the ABA. Two best dunkers of the Seventies.

The Spurs played later that evening. Gervin went for 63, and won the scoring title. Thompson: 27.15 ppg. Gervin: 27.22 ppg.

The Iceman cometh

It makes you wonder what players are capable of when they REALLY, really care; and when their teammates feed them; and what both opposing defenses were doing.

Wondering if a similar final day of the season is in the offing. Until then, though, do note that the Knicks visit the Thunder tomorrow (Sunday). I see the ‘bockers streak ending at 11 games.

Reserves

The Washington Nationals may be baseball’s best team, and they have already recorded two shutouts, but they also lost 15-0 at Cincinnati last night. The worst loss in the majors in baseball’s first week. It’s only a four-game sample, but the Nats have been outscored this season, 16-11. Only five teams have a worse run differential, and two of them have won a World Series in the past five years (Phillies, -16, and Yankees, -12).

The New York Times hangs out with Louis CK. What reason could you possibly have for not wanting to read what the comic has to say. Funny and wise. I’ll take that every time.

It’s funny, isn’t it? ESPN exercised extreme sensitivity in never airing Kevin Ware’s injury, not once. And yet they torture-porn us with footage of Mike Rice going all Patches O’Houlihan at Rutgers for the past 72 hours. We get it, ESPN. Congratulations: you destroyed a few men’s careers. Granted, they may have deserved it. But so did Ed Rush. Except that you didn’t have tape on that. If Rice were to commit suicide this weekend, would his blood be on the hands of anyone in Bristol?

Let’s just remember that if we get a Syracuse-Louisville final (and I definitely believe that either Michigan or Wichita State, if not both, could still be standing on Sunday morning), that the last time they played Syracuse blew a 16-point lead only to lose by 17 to the Cards in the Big East tournament final final. There’s some coaching involved in that type of swing. My favorite Rick Pitino game of all time is when he led the Wildcats back from a 31-point deficit at LSU with less than 16 minutes remaining. The Wildcats won by four. So, yeah, he deserves that Naismith Hall of Fame induction. Well done, Rick.

It’s been a very good year for Rick Pitino. Is it about to get even better?

My old colleague Seth Davis is now a Subway sandwich spokesperson. He always craved being famous more than he did performing journalism.

Starting Five

It’s an early steakateria morning, folks. Sorry for the brief entry.

1. Some Ware, Out There

Honk if you have yet to interview Kevin Ware. Sorry. He seems like a wonderful young man. This isn’t about him. It’s about the race by news organizations to head to Louisville to see which one can out over-sensitive-ize the other to share his story. Meanwhile — and, yes, the videotape does not lie — the more wrenching interview yesterday was the impromptu one that canned Rutgers coach Mike Rice gave outside his home.

Hard. Ware.

Did anyone ask Kevin Ware an actual soup question? Did anyone ask him WHY or HOW he thinks the injury occurred? Even if he replies, “I have no idea” or “It was just a freak accident”, don’t you at least ask? I know I’m in the minority here. We are all supposed to fall over ourselves fawning over the job that Rece Davis did (and I love Rece as much as you do; I have two throw pillows, one that reads “Rece” and the other that reads “Davis”; okay, I have a third that reads “Get Outta Town!” but that’s only because I love Steve Levy’s hair). After all, Kevin did cry. Rece did fine. It’s just that, well, aren’t there still five Louisville starters who have a job to do this weekend who we may want to discuss a little more? And, well, isn’t THIS the height of exploitation? And how much money will Kevin Ware see from this?

2. The New York Yankees will be at least six games under .500 by the end of April. If not by tax day. I’m not sure what the most games NYY have been under .500 during a season since the dawn of the Derek Jeter Era in 1996, but I’m going to fathom that they will break that mark this season. Overreaction after two games? Perhaps. But right now I’d keep Edgar Nunez, Robinson Cano, Curtis Granderson and reliever David Robertson and throw away the rest of the team. And, by the way, how much value is Mariano Rivera when your team trails by three to five runs entering the ninth inning? Oh, and Hiroki Kuroda left with an injury in the second inning. And have you seen how empty the stadium has looked in each of the first two games in the late innings (granted, the weather has been colder than Yankee bats). The current era of NYY ended on the play that Derek Jeter broke his ankle in Game 1 of the ALCS. Everything beyond that is just wishful thinking and avoiding the inevitable.

And they’re only two games out of first place right now!

3. If you are Sports Illustrated, you have a dilemma on Monday. First, you had a terrific story by one of your top smiths of verbiage, Michael Rosenberg, on Tiger Woods. Also, you had one of the more iconic photographs shot in some time. The perfect cover, with clouds in the background that Rembrandt would have liked to have painted.

Pure perfection

The problem? You also have a compelling Kevin Ware story. And you know that your next week’s cover is going to come from the Final Four, so you cannot hold this Tiger cover for a week (and the Masters follows that). So, if you’re SI, you run this cover as a regional. And that cover actually receives more play because all the morning news programs use it when introducing their very special Kevin Ware interview. I feel for the editors of SI on this one. But it’s too bad this Tiger cover is not receiving more attention. It is sublime.

4. I think it is safe to say that Auburn alumna Selena Roberts will not be welcome at any class reunions any time soon.

5. ESPN’s Chris Fowler tweeted this two days ago. I don’t know how he got this photo (maybe this is how). It is “spectacular”, but as a New Yorker, it’s also a little eerie. Haunting. No?

Reserves

Erin Andrews and Michelle Beadle are actually both in New York City this week. However, I don’t see the two of them meeting for lunch at Per Se. Not after this, especially.

C-c-c-c-c-c-c-catfight

Starting Five

1. RICECAPADES at Rutgers

Homer Simpson: “I’m a rageaholic! I’m addicted to rageahol!” If Homer ever did attend an RA meeting, he’d meet Rutgers men’s basketball coach Mike Rice, who’d be tossing a chair at him. Yesterday ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” aired a video that showed Rice devoting far too much of hoops practice to Dodgeball. Except that he is the only player allowed to hurl the balls, and sometimes at players’ heads. Rice also yelled at a player and called him a “(bleeping) faggot.” This at a school where an undergrad tossed himself off the George Washington Bridge in 2010 after his roommate outed him on Twitter.

“We MUST beat Seton Hall!”

As of this moment, Mike Rice is still employed at Rutgers. (UPDATE: Rice has been fired)

Simmer down now. Simmer down. Simmer.

2. Yu Were So Close

The calculus of Yu Darvish losing a perfect game on the last out when pitching against the Houston Astros translates to this: your shot at baseball immortality was broken up by the 9th-position batter in the Astro lineup (Houston moved to the AL this season, so their pitcher no longer bats). His name: Marwin Gonzalez, who hit a screaming grounder right between the legs of Darvish, who fanned 14 batters.

There have been 23 perfect games tossed in MLB history, but six of them took place in the past four seasons (by comparison, there have only been 15 unassisted triple plays turned in MLB history). The last two potential perfect games that went down to the final batter were broken up by dinosaur-denier Carl Everett (Mike Mussina’s) and first-base umpire Jim Joyce (Armando Galarraga’s).

Darvish, pitching in his business formal attire

3. The Los Angeles Lakers retire the number of Shaquille O’Neal, while former teammate Kobe Bryant upstages him with a triple-double (23, 11 and 11) as the Lakers defeat the Mavericks by 20 (Can you dig it?). The win keeps LA tied with Utah for the 8th spot in the playoff race while it all but knocks out Dallas. Kobe delivered a nice, pre-recorded testimonial to Shaq to open the festivities, breaking new ground in the “Nicest thing ever publicly said by one man to another considering that the latter man once asked the former man how his ass tasted.” Fellow Laker Steve Nash, from whom Shaq once pilfered an idea for a TV show (“Shaq Vs.”) when both were on the Suns, was also there. As was Dwight Howard, who is currently inhabiting the role of Orlando Magic-turned-Laker center.

After the ceremony concluded, CBS’ Doug Gottlieb felt the urge to tweet, “Shaq is still all about Shaq.”

You’d forgotten about this era, hadn’t you? Shaq: 8 years in LA, 11 years with 5 other franchises.

In case you were wondering, Shaq is 6th all-time in scoring and 14th all-time in rebounding, and if he’d ever had Kobe’s determination to be the best, he’d be top five in both categories.

Earlier on Tuesday on ESPN, former Laker power forward Kurt Rambis was asked to name the five best Lakers of all time and excluded Wilt Chamberlain from the list. (Magic, Kobe, Shaq, Jerry West, Kareem). That’s a fantastic five, Kurt, but the Big Dipper is No. 5 all-time in scoring and No. 1 in rebounding. He’s in the top five, if not the top one. (And Harvey Pollack, who has only been an NBA employee since 1946, agrees with me).

4. So it turns out that Kathie Lee and Hoda are not the closest female duo on the Today show. Oh, no. Recently Weekend Today anchor Jenna Wolfe, 39, and NBC foreign correspondent Stephanie Gosk, 40, revealed that they have been a couple for three years and that Wolfe is pregnant. Back to you, Matt.

Stephanie Gosk: Pants Wearer

5. This is the lineup for Coachella, which begins next weekend (go ahead and peruse it, and then come back to me here in an hour). Old Fart alert here, but would Coachella be better if you cut the number of bands in half and had those remaining bands play sets that were twice as long? The godfather of Coachella, as far as California-based concert festivals go, was the US Festival (the judges will also accept the Monterey Jazz Festival, which began in 1958), whose lineup included just 20 bands, but among them were Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, The Ramones, The Cars and The Grateful Dead. Again, noted, this is an Old Fart item (if you get a chance, check out the lineup from the inaugural MJF; pretty sick) (also, note that the US Festival was a “Labor Day Weekend show” that included Jimmy Buffett, so what better way to listen to “Come Monday” ).

That horrible feeling when your favorite band is about to take the stage and you realize you need to take a dump

Reserves

The New York Knicks won their 9th straight versus a Miami Heat team that sat LeBron, D-Wade and Mario Chalmers. More notably, Carmelo Anthony scored 50 points without ever attempting any shot from closer than 15 feet. So, yeah, his ankle is still bothering him and, yeah, the Heat might have done a better job making adjustments.

This is Holly Sonders, and she just may persuade you to obtain a subscription to Golf Digest. Or even watch The Golf Channel. Either way, I don’t see Holly being relegated to the fringes of cable sports TV for very long.

Sonders has duffers working on their –wait for it — schwing

Do your want your son or daughter to grow up knowing how to properly shoot a basketball and not be “a chucker” ? Then send him or her to the Mike McCollow Fundamentals Basketball Camp. Seriously. This man has tutored Sam Mitchell and Jon Leuer, among many others.

Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott appears on ESPN Radio with Scott Van Pelt and announces, in regards to Ed Rush, that “I’m not a ‘fire the guy’ kind of guy.” Most sports journalists adamantly believe that Scott must fire Rush if for no other reason than to disassociate the league with even the perception of officiating impropriety. Here’s my column on the story. Here’s Gary Parrish, from CBSSports.com. Over at ESPN.com, Eamonn Brennan agrees. So does Andy Glockner at SI.com. Want a contrarian view? Read Bryan Fischer. And for whom does Bryan write? Hmmmm. It is not that Bryan does not make some good points, and as a former CBSSports.com staffer, he has a well-deserved, solid rep — it’s that, as a voice for the state-run organ, does he have any choice other than to take this side?

Larry Scott is demonstrating managerial skills more akin to Michael Scott

The Pittsburgh Penguins finally lose after 15 straight wins. Sydney Crosby had no comment.

Spend the summer in Colorado. Get in the best running shape of your life. And earn college credit. Where do I sign up?

The readers of Rolling Stone vote on the “10 Best Fleetwood Mac Songs.” Not on the list: “Second Hand News”, “You Make Loving Fun” and, shockingly, “Don’t Stop.” Granted, that last tune has been played to death, but if you were alive in 1975, it was THAT tune that launched the band into stratospheric success. You can make an argument, I guess, that Fleetwood Mac recorded 10 better songs than “Don’t Stop” (“You Make Loving Fun” would definitely be ahead of it on my list), but it almost seems that voters went out of their way to deny its value. My top three: “Go Your Own Way”, “Landslide”, “Silver Springs” (the last of which was left off Rumours because Mick Fleetwood told Stevie Nicks, who penned it, that they didn’t have room for it).

Music’s true Mac daddies

Dear Axe Apollo: The astronaut campaign just isn’t working for me. It’s not 1969, by the way. Maybe if we had a space program.

Both 2012 Cy Young Award winners (David Price, AL; R.A. Dickey, N.L.) lost in their season debuts yesterday.

A punishment worse than death? Only in the Middle East. Hammurabi approves, by the way.

Bummer: Cancer has returned for Roger Ebert, who has only become more prolific since it robbed him of his ability to speak and even eat or drink a few years ago. Few, if any, writers over the age of 50 have embraced the internet as zealously as has Ebert. Last year he wrote over 300 film reviews.

New York Yankee second baseman Robinson Cano ditches Scott Boras as his agent (Yay!) in favor of Jay-Z. Newphemism alert: niggotiate!

 Remote Patrol

San Francisco Giants at Los Angeles Dodgers

ESPN 10 p.m.

The World Series champs and Chavez Raviners have split the first two games of the series, with both teams winning by shutout. El Gigantes will hand the ball to Tim Lincecum (10-15, 5.18 ERA last season), who last October discovered that he was actually a superb middle reliever (who knew?). Through two games no Giant fans have been beaten senseless in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, so that’s progress.

Is probably bummed that he will be unable to attend Coachella next weekend when SF is in CHI (but will he fly down from SF the following weekend?)