A Grip on Sports: Summer sports really do flower in May, thanks in part to all the pieces put in place in April
A GRIP ON SPORTS • What happens in May? Lots of stuff. Just ask Three Dog Night.
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• If you are under the age of 50 and recognize Three Dog Night, you are either an aficionado of hackneyed rock and roll or a music major. Either way, we apologize in advance if the words “just a mornin’, a mornin’ in May” run through your mind all day. Blame us. Or Dave Loggins. He wrote the darn earworm.
Anyhow, for some reason we started humming that early ‘70s song this morning. Maybe it’s because the 90-degree temps we experienced in Spokane yesterday had us longing for a piece of April weather. Or maybe it’s because we realize just about every weekend in May is packed with events.
The weather turns nice and everyone wants to experience it, whether it be on the golf course, on the softball field, over the hills of a running trail or even sitting at a parade. It’s May. Flowers are everywhere. And it’s time to live again.
We focus on all those things in Spokane this month, a month that begins with the joy of Bloomsday, is populated throughout with lilacs and ends with memories of those who never returned home from war.
But there is a lot more to the month, in a sporting sense, than that.
We can watch the greatest golfers in the world hit golf shots that are akin to the type we hit once or twice a round. We saw that yesterday, in large part thanks to the weather conditions at the PGA Championship in New York. Guys taking huge swings and hardly moving the ball a foot. Guys plugging shots from the sand into the lip. Guys turning their baseball caps backward, not in an homage to Ken Griffey Jr. but to keep the water from dripping on their ball.
What fun.
But as Annie once sang, the sun will come out tomorrow, come what may. Or is it May? Today’s final round, with LIV-defector Brooks Koepka ahead by a stroke at the start, should be an interesting one.
Speaking of interesting, though we’ve lived in Spokane since 1983, we have avoided the Lilac Parade each and every one of the past 40 Mays. But a gift of a free night’s stay at a historic hotel lured us downtown on Saturday. And we realized something we had forgotten, even though we learned the lesson attending New Year’s Day’s nearby Rose Parade growing up near Pasadena. Marching band is, in its way, an athletic event. Try just walking a few miles carrying a tuba or drum. Or, heck, even a trumpet. Then try doing it while playing. And keeping in time.
It’s a marathon of sorts.
Another marathon is about to end. The high school sports year. One more weekend, though for all but a few of local athletes, it has already finished. Sure, Spokane will send track athletes and golfers to State championships in the coming week. But only a few baseball or softball or soccer teams in the area will compete for a title.
Which makes what Paul Peters has done over the past 44 years remarkable. The Mead golf coach is retiring after this week’s State 3A tournament in Olympia, with his last team trying to give him his fifth State title. Our Jim Meehan has this column on Peters’ remarkable career and the part of it that is most important: the relationships coaches and athletes make in high school.
May also is month of shattered dreams and, in horse racing too often these days, shattered bones and lives. All happened yesterday in Baltimore, when Bob Baffert’s National Treasure won the Preakness, ending Mage’s triple crown hopes on a day when another Baffert horse, Havnameltdown, had to be killed after an injury in an earlier race. The latter is something that happens too often in horse racing these days and a way needs to be found to fix the issue.
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WSU: The baseball team won’t be playing in the Pac-12’s postseason tournament. A 15-5 loss to Stanford ensured a 10th-place finish, though California’s win over Washington made the outcome moot. The Cougars finish 29-23 overall. … We linked a story about Klay Thompson’s future yesterday when it ran in the Mercury News. We link it again today as it ran in the S-R. … Elsewhere around the Pac-12 and the nation, quick, grab your blood pressure medicine. Take a double dose. Jon Wilner has this story on Larry Scott’s compensation from his tenure as Pac-12 commissioner. … It has been an interesting year for Colorado. … San Diego State basketball transfer Keshad Johnson is headed to Arizona, giving Tommy Lloyd a big transfer portal victory. … The Wildcats also picked up a coveted football transfer. … Oregon may have found its future quarterback. … Arizona State is sure it has found the coach that can change the narrative in Tempe. … In the NCAA softball tournament, Washington, Oregon, Utah and Stanford are a game away from moving on. California will have to defeat No. 1 Oklahoma twice in Norman to do the same. And second-seeded UCLA’s season is over as the Bruins fell to Liberty. … Who’s to blame for USC’s newest set of issues? … The baseball tournament matchups are set.
EWU and Idaho: Around the Big Sky, Northern Colorado’s softball season ended in defeat at the Washington regional.
Preps: The district track meets produced three GSL team championships, with Mt. Spokane winning the boys 3A, Mead winning the girls and Central Valley taking the 4A boys title. Keenan Gray has the coverage from Richland. … Dave Nichols has a roundup of results from baseball, softball and tennis.
Indians: Is seven home runs in a game good? It sounds good. How about scoring 15 runs? That sounds good as well. As we mentioned yesterday, Spokane is heating up, as the Indians won 15-5 yesterday in Everett, has won four consecutive times and is actually in first place in the Northwest League standings. Dave has that story.
Mariners: Logan Gilbert started poorly. But he didn’t finish that way and neither did the M’s, rallying for an important 7-3 win over the Braves in Atlanta. The rubber game of the series is today. … Ryan Divish had fun writing this story about Cal Raleigh and his younger brother. You can tell just reading it.
Storm: Well, we knew it was going to be a bad season for Seattle, despite the optimistic statements from training camp. Too much talent gone. Not enough back. The Storm was overwhelmed by Las Vegas in a WNBA record-breaking 105-64 loss in last night’s opener. Don’t expect the rest of the season to be much better.
Sounders: After a pretty decent start to the season, Seattle has hit a wall recently. And the wall has hit back. The Sounders lost again last night in Vancouver, 2-0 to another scuffling team.
Golf: One of the better things the S-R does every year is put together a group of stories dedicated to golf in the region. And the region does have some exceptional golf courses of which to take advantage. This course list is our favorite part each year but we can also recommend Jim Kershner’s look at how to use a mulligan – or a Ken-again as we used to call them, in honor of a friend who used one about every other swing back in the day – and Jim Meehan’s interview with Joel Dahmen.
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• Last night we went to dinner and a movie. Date night, if you will. An understated meal. And an understated film, not one of those blockbuster action thingees, with explosions and magic and the like. Nope, it was a talkie. In the best sense of the word. An intimate film with an intimate crowd. Six of us. (Yes, we counted.) We all could have talked with God during the movie, told the big guy our name and felt pretty comfortable. But we left that to the star of the movie. Despite the lack of a crowd (or maybe partly because of it), it was a worthwhile movie with great company. A perfect date. Until later …