A GRIP ON SPORTS • Well, I for one am glad the two winter professional sports, the NBA and the NHL, are finally done. After all, summer officially starts Sunday. Now we can start focusing on the most important warm-weather sport: football. Read on.

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• Just kidding about the football part. That really doesn’t kick in until next month, or August even. We have that much time to enjoy the M’s as the slowly, surely, begin pulling themselves out of this hole they’ve dug en route to a World Series championship. It’s going to happen people. All the pieces are in place. They are. Quit laughing. A great starting staff, or it will be when James Paxton and Hisashi Iwakuma return from injury. A tough-as-nails bullpen, or at least it will be when Fernando Rodney gets his act together. A potent lineup, or it will be when Robinson Cano pulls himself out of his season-long funk and Nelson Cruz catches fire again and Mark Trumbo’s back feels better. See, all the pieces are there. It’s only a matter of time. (Cue video of Kevin Bacon at the end of “Animal House” holding his hands up and saying “remain calm; all is well” just before he gets run over by a stampede of paradegoers.)

• The last paragraph was mainly sarcasm, of course. The next one won’t be. If you are ever asked why soccer isn’t accepted in the mainstream of American sports society, all you have to do to explain your answer is show the video of last night’s Sounders’ U.S. Open Cup match with Portland. First off, two MLS teams less than a 180 miles apart playing this early in U.S. Soccer’s premier tournament is a joke. Then the Sounders, as home team, picks its uniform. They go with black. U.S. Soccer lets Portland wear dark green. The two are almost indistinguishable. So does U.S. Soccer, the governing body of the sport in this country, enforce its rules and tell the Timbers to change? Nope. So Seattle switches to white at halftime. But that just scratches the surface of the problems. The refereeing is so poor the game gets out of hand. Brad Evans, a member of the U.S. National Team, is given two yellow cards – the second on a play that was completely mis-called by the referee – and ejected. Then one of the MLS’ best players, Obafemi Martins, is injured in a particularly rough stretch. He may be out for a while. That left the Sounders down two men – it’s 11 on 9 – but only for a while. Another red card ejects another Sounder and Clint Dempsey, the nation’s best player, is ejected for arguing. (Well, more than arguing. He grabbed the notebook out of the referee’s pocket, threw it on the ground, then picked it up and ripped it apart. As they say in baseball, he got his money’s worth.) Nice. The match ends with Portland playing 11 and Seattle seven. Yep, seven guys. What a joke. Last year, when the Sounders got past Portland in the Cup, Timbers’ coach Caleb Porter called the officiating the worst he had ever seen. So I guess the folks at U.S. Soccer wanted him to know he was wrong. It could get worse. And it did.

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• WSU: Experience matters in college football. Just how experienced are each of the Pac-12’s teams? ... For the second consecutive season, a WSU alum had a role in their team winning the NBA title. Last year it was Aron Baynes in San Antonio. This year Klay Thompson with Golden State. The Warriors clinched the title with a 105-97 win at Cleveland.

• EWU: Vernon Adams isn’t quite done with Eastern. He has a math class to finish. Jim Allen has more in this story.

• Indians: It’s not often a baseball player gets to begin his professional career in the same town he went to college. But that’s the case for former Whitworth pitcher Dan Scheibe. Chris Derrick has the story.

• Golf: Jim Meehan is at Chambers Bay. No, not playing. Covering the U.S. Open. He has a feature today on a participant who has local ties, Jimmy Gunn. ... Golf is a personality driven sport so it should come as no surprise we have three columns to pass along on three outsized personalities: Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods – actually, we have two on Tiger – and Phil Mickelson.

• Seahawks: The mini-camp began yesterday, even though the Hawks couldn’t go outside and play, thanks to an NFL punishment. ... This week is mandatory, so everyone seems to be in attendance. ... Russell Wilson isn’t stupid. He’s purchased a lucrative insurance policy for the season. ... Richard Sherman won an award for his personality.

• Mariners: The road trip ended yesterday in San Francisco with a 6-2 loss to the Giants. J.A. Happ pitched decently again, but it wasn’t enough as Brad Miller was the only clutch Mariner. ... Rich Donnelly was feeling better yesterday and returned to the third-base coaching box.

• Sounders: There are plenty of stories to pass along after the match, including comments by Sigi Schmid (I smell a fine coming) and coverage from the Seattle-area papers and the Oregonian. The final score of 3-1 really doesn't reflect how close it was, especially since it was decided in extra-time. ... Real Salt Lake eliminated the minor league Sounders in another Open Cup match.

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• That’s our report for today. See you tomorrow. But before we leave we wanted to remind you the U.S. women, playing in front of a pro-U.S. crowd in Vancouver, handled Nigeria 1-0 and won their World Cup group. They move on to the knockout round. Until later ...

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