John Blanchette

A funny thing happened to Omar Samhan in Japan last winter. He had to shake Rob Sacre’s hand – and try to keep a straight face.

Royce Bolinger, after seven years into his professional baseball career as a hitter, has come full circle to where he began, as a member of the 2018 Indians ... pitching staff.

What if Spokane hadn’t lost its Triple-A team? Maybe the timeline would have looked something like this:

In the world of NCAA sports, Washington State is to fiscal gymnastics what Alabama is to football. If only they handed out national championships for that sort of thing.

With 700 miles to travel, it took until Monday morning for the thunder – OK, the very, very loud pings – from Gonzaga’s bats heard over the weekend in California to resound in Spokane. Still pretty loud, though – until being drowned out by an explosion of cheers from the Bulldogs themselves when their name went up at last near the end of ESPNU’s NCAA baseball selection show.

Why Jerry Kramer had to wait more than half his life – 45 years – for a distinction that should have been pro forma will remain a mystery, though joining the parade of his Green Bay Packers teammates from the 1960s into the hall was like trying to merge into rush hour traffic. In any case, with an appearance schedule that was already busy before, the countdown to the August induction on and his daily triple-team of joy, relief and gratitude, fixating on old slights doesn’t fit into Kramer’s schedule.

On Tuesday, crews from Japan’s six national television channels – 20 people in all – descended on McCarthey Athletic Center to explore Ruiworld.

Rui Hachimura wasn’t the only one getting grilled by Japanese television crews Tuesday. Bulldogs head coach Mark Few and assistant Tommy Lloyd had to parry some questions about their star forward.

What a great day for the Seattle Mariners. They got themselves a Gold Glove second baseman and saved $12 million.

He shook the trees – hard – for the money that built the joint.

If they could have rustled up 23-year-old Felix Hernandez to go head-to-head with 23-year-old Shohei Ohtani, then they might have had something.

There may be 70 or more credentialed media here specifically to itemize his every move, whether at the plate or on the mound or jogging through the outfield during batting practice or staring numbly at the sailboat race on MarinersVision (they must be saving money on hydro fuel). In two nights, nearly 79,000 have swept through the gates of Safeco Field out of curiosity.

Day 2 of Ichiro Suzuki, Special Assistant to the Chairman, began without the formal press conference and moved straight into the meat of his duties at Safeco Field: Starting with ... shagging batting practice flies.

The Spokane Sports Commission has put out the call for nominations for the annual Spokane Youth Sports Awards it hands out each June in partnership with SWX. They’re to honor the year’s best athletes – with nods, say the criteria, to character, dedication, sportsmanship and service, as well. What a coincidence. I happen to have a few nominations right here.

In the shortest romance since Taylor Swift and, well, anybody, Gonzaga athletic director Mike Roth made official Monday the ceasefire of flirtations between the Bulldogs and the MWC. That means a boffo 40th year in the West Coast Conference awaits the Zags -- and likely a few more season ticket holders scurrying to Craigslist to peddle their seats for the next Loyola Marymount game.

Mark Rypien doesn’t know if he has CTE: diagnosis can only be made with an autopsy. But both he and his wife, Danielle, can identify the signposts.

Having had so much success for so long, it gets increasingly difficult for each successive Gonzaga team to distinguish itself. Being part of a proud lineage is reward enough, certainly, but every team covets a unique place – a contribution that added to the history or to any mystique.

There haven’t been too many what-might-have-been endings in Gonzaga University’s recent and glittery basketball history.

They say you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. Wrong.

Madness? Let’s get more specific. It’s really March Schizophrenia. Let ol’ Doc Basketball here explain.

Maybe not until Rui Hachimura’s breakaway dunk with 4 – that number again – seconds left did all seem secure for the Zags in their 90-84 punch-out of Ohio State at Taco Bell Arena.

They may not be the team everyone talks about now nearly 30 years later. But they’re part of a bigger team.

March Madness began in earnest Thursday amid a swarm of killer 3s.

Leon Rice’s flight back from Seattle landed in Boise at 10:30 Thursday morning – about an hour before Gonzaga’s NCAA Tournament first-round game tipped off at Taco Bell Arena.