John Blanchette

If your salary is insane, then you’re crazy to retire. This truth is purportedly behind the notion of soft-throwing left-handers pitching shutouts at age 47, doddering heavyweights who won’t leave the ring and other do-not-go-gentle examples of ever-extending careers in professional sports. What, then, do we make of Aaron Garcia?

There was a time when Tyree Clowe regarded school as the old ball and chain – if he regarded it at all. Now it’s the ball and chain spinning him through school.

The redshirt year is as ingrained into college athletics as shirtless, body-painted frat boys on football Saturdays, the home-court advantage, kidnapping the rival school’s mascot and lack of institutional control. Five years to play four is the rule – the extra year available to rehabilitate an injury, maybe deal with a personal issue, bulk up in the weight room – or in the classroom.

One thing we know for certain about Ken Griffey Jr.’s clubhouse snooze. It wasn’t a power nap.

AUBURN, Wash. – In the 14 years they’ve raced horses at Emerald Downs, Tim McCanna has been the winningest trainer nine times. That’s more than 700 victories and nearly $6.4 million in earnings. Three times he’s had four winners on a single card. He doesn’t own the joint but, well, he owns the joint.

So here’s a lesson in setting unrealistic goals. At Hermiston High School in Oregon, Mykael Bothum was a pretty fair shot putter – third in state her senior year, a best just beyond 44 feet, a track scholarship to the University of Idaho ahead of her.

PULLMAN – Back when he broke the Mooberry Track record for the 400-meter hurdles at a meet in 1983, Rob Cassleman immediately questioned its veracity. The clock said one thing, his body told him something else. And as a world-class hurdler – and at the time the assistant women’s track coach at Washington State – Cassleman knew himself well enough to doubt that he’d covered the lap in 49.69 seconds. But that’s what the old Accutrack system in use then registered, although there were other dubious times that day.

After an eight-year hiatus, Craig Blanchette is back in town this weekend for Bloomsday and the attendant headlines and airtime, which means only one thing. I can look forward to another five years of being hailed as “Craig” by my dry cleaner, my stockbroker and other strangers.

No fewer than 30 former Washington high school champions will be on the track today when Washington State hosts the University of Washington in their annual dual meet. Another eight on the two rosters will sit it out for one reason or another. So it’s not surprising when the in-state recruiting tug of war between the two schools gets a little chummy, or contentious – or just a little mixed up.

With spring football wrapping up at Washington State and the NFL draft sucking everyone’s good sense out of a fine weekend, it seemed the right time to reaffirm that Jeshua Anderson is alive and well and thriving without the pointed ball. Which is not to say he’s given up on it, completely.

No one in the 85-year history of the Northwest Conference has ruled the high jump quite like Whitworth’s Cody Stelzer, and he wasn’t expecting to be pushed to his limit Friday afternoon. Especially by a freshman from his own team who hadn’t gone higher than 6 feet in a month.

PULLMAN – Coming to a close is Paul Wulff’s third spring as head football coach at Washington State, or the second anniversary of when – with garbage-can lids a-crashing about his head like cymbals in a Three Stooges symphony – he was struck by the enormity of his task. The stale joke is that in April, all college football teams are still undefeated atop the Great Hope Conference standings. This is not quite true at Wazzu.

Tonya Turner has a sock fetish that’s going on five years now. Colorful, mismatched, knee-high – she loves them all and wears them in every possible combination. “If I see a pair of socks, I’ll buy them,” the Whitworth University junior admitted. “I tell my mom, ‘If you find socks, buy them – I’ll pay you back.’ I have a bunch of people looking for me – and many sock drawers.”