John Blanchette

SEATTLE – I guess I didn’t understand. I thought that when the Seattle Mariners traded for Milton Bradley last December, they were acquiring the spray-hitting outfielder who had such a good season with Texas a couple of years ago. I didn’t realize they actually were acquiring a backlog of board games marketed by the company of the same name.

SEATTLE – In a three-batter span bridging innings 2 and 3 on Monday afternoon, the Seattle Mariners put a face on all the offseason fuss. On a grounder deep into the hole, shortstop Jack Wilson ranged behind the crossing path of third baseman Jose Lopez, gloved the ball and grenade-lobbed it over Lopez and in the general direction of first baseman Casey Kotchman, who stretched high to the outfield side for the putout. Then second baseman Chone Figgins angled quickly to the right field line to snare a troublesome pop fly on a dead run. And finally, Kotchman did a full layout to stop a one-hop rocket down the line and then outraced Oakland’s Gabe Gross to the bag.

In these sorry economic times, here’s an endeavor that’s not just thriving, but exploding in growth. Even more amazing? It’s a track meet.

YouTube came along 40 years too late for Gus Johnson. So instead of highlight videos there are merely highlight orals – stories of his improbable basketball feats passed down by word of mouth, shaded by fading memory, possibly embellished, impossibly baroque even if 100 percent true.

Home is where the hemlock is. The season is over for the Spokane Chiefs – bitterly and yet, sad to say, not a minute too soon.

Art Taylor drove from Chicago to Gonzaga University in the summer of 1960, towing his furniture unsteadily behind his old car and praying every 100 miles or so, vowing to join the church if his family was delivered there safely. And he kept his promise. So when Frank Burgess discovered his new friend and basketball teammate was going to Mass, he couldn’t resist assigning a nickname.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Apparently there comes a time in March Madness for Women when there is no denying the old daredevil’s shibboleth. Go big or go home.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The women’s tournament needs an Ali. By now, there isn’t a corner of America that doesn’t know the kid from Northern Iowa with freon in his veins and a blank slate for a conscience. Ali Farokhmanesh grew up in Pullman sneaking off from his mom’s volleyball games –Cindy Frederick was the coach at Washington State – to shoot baskets, and then turned up this week having shot the Panthers into the Sweet 16 with two clutch game-winners, making him the face of an NCAA tourn- ament rife with upsets.

The far end of the guests’ dressing room at the Spokane Arena butts up against a hallway where the Spokane Chiefs come and go, so when the visiting team wins and the music gets cranked up – and it gets cranked up loud – it thunders through the walls and provides an irritating soundtrack to any post-mortems the Chiefs might be conducting for the assigned media. As in making pearls, a little irritation is good. And necessary.

SEATTLE – For 81 seconds – the last 81 seconds – Courtney Vandersloot had the worst seat in the house. An unobstructed view from the bench.

All those second chances Americans love to give? It seems as if you have to take a mistress, use a needle or wind up in front of a judge to get one. That was Tiger trolling for goodwill and bumping highlights of actual sporting events off the sports channel on Sunday night, wasn’t it?

This falls in the category of Things to Worry About Later, certainly. The NCAA basketball tournament games coming our way Friday are version 3.0 of March Madness at the Spokane Arena, and soon enough the din from the bleachers will drown out the inevitable bleating that the committee never sends us a top seed (because those No. 1 vs. No. 16 games are always such good theater) and that the hockey team has to start the playoffs out of town.

An eight? The NCAA basketball committee made the home team a No. 8 seed? Did the selectors not get to touch the Maui Classic trophy? Were they not on those brutal hops to Illinois and Memphis to see the lads emerge victorious? When they were assessing the “body of work” did they simply fixate on the derriere – the losses at USF and Loyola? Are they unaware that Gonzaga simply doesn’t “do” No. 8 seeds anymore?

LAS VEGAS – Start packing. Emotionally, that is. The fun flirtation of this college basketball season was not the Big Dance, but the Big Tease – the knowledge that the NCAA had booked one of its opening-round tournament pods into Spokane this month and the giddy suspicion that the Gonzaga Bulldogs would be a part of it.

LAS VEGAS – His right elbow was Saran wrapped in ice, where before a sleeve of white tape had buttressed the joint bruised by a crash to the floor both spectacular and horrifying. The tips of the nails on the middle and ring fingers of his right hand looked as if they’d been dinner for a passing wolverwine, and the blood from them spotted both his jersey and his shorts. Either that went undetected by officials as the game went on – by rule, it requires fresh laundry – or they simply shrugged and decided they could live with any gore short of a Tarantino movie.

LAS VEGAS – His right elbow was Saran wrapped in ice, where before a sleeve of white tape had buttressed the joint bruised by a crash to the floor both spectacular and horrifying. The tips of the nails on the middle and ring fingers of his right hand looked as if they’d been dinner for a passing wolverwine, and the blood from them spotted both his jersey and his shorts. Either that went undetected by officials as the game went on – by rule, it requires fresh laundry – or they simply shrugged and decided they could live with any gore short of a Tarantino movie. In other words, Steven Gray was a mess.

If some citizens of Soap Lake are a little chapped about the 50-foot lava lamp that never came to be, at least it diverted attention from the other civic foible: The basketball team that never came to state.