Diamondbacks' 47th loss a crushing defeat...

The Arizona Diamondbacks threw another one away tonight in St. Louis.

Another walk-off loss. Another start by Dan Haren wasted.

Two throwing errors in the bottom of the ninth. Three unearned runs cross the plate as Haren watches from the dugout. The result: A 6-5 loss to the Cardinals, the Diamondbacks' 47th loss of the year. They have won only 30. The Diamondbacks are in a tailspin.

Tonight's loss will linger for a while and I doubt the D'backs collectively will be able to shake away the cobwebs before they take the field tomorrow night in St. Louis. How can A.J. Hinch get through all those postgame press conferences? Somehow, he seems to keep his cool. Hats off to him for that.

And hats off to Haren (7-6) as well. He deserved a better fate tonight.

Herb's record stays intact thanks to Nationals' defense

In 1955 a hard-throwing, 22 year old rookie lefthander started his major league career striking out 50 batters in his first five starts, a record that still stands tonight thanks to the sub par defense by the Washington Nationals.

 Fifty five years ago, it was Herb Score who was the hurler that posted the feat for the Cleveland Indians. Score struck out 245 in 1955 enroute to a 16-10 record. Fast forward to Turner Field in Atlanta tonight and you have a young righthander by the name of Stephen Strasburg, a rookie out of San Diego State who many say should already be penciled in on the National League All Star roster.

He's that good. Unfortunately, his team is not. The young man was cruisin' again tonight. He had struck out seven and was within two of Score's record when trouble struck in the seventh inning.

A muffed ground ball at shortstop led to an unearned run in the bottom of the seventh and opened the flood gates as the Braves went on to a 5-0 win. Strasburg dropped to 2-2. His 48 strike outs are in the books, but the Nationals fumbled another one away and dropped to 33-44 on the season.

I get the feeling Strasburg, if given the chance, could lead the National League to a win at the All Star Game next month, but his team will see to it that he won't be there. The Nationals just may have the best pitcher in baseball this season. Unfortunately, Washington is stuck in the NL Eastern Division cellar for the remainder of the year.

As for the 1955 Cleveland Indians, well they went 93-61 that season and besides having Mr. Score, they also had Early Wynn, Bob Lemon and Bob Feller.

Wow! What a pitching staff that was!

In the year 2010...

I'm 96 hours away, give or take an hour one way or the other, from hitting the age of 65. It's been a long haul. Fifty years ago, my attitude was that the year 2010 was so far out there, well it was just too far, off the map so to speak. Unattainable.

I was in my 30s, say somewhere in the mid 1970s, before I even sat down long enough to contemplate what I would look like, feel like and, in my case, even act like the day I'd be forced to show up at the MVD for an eye test and begin the customary state of Arizona five-year renewal plan on my drivers' license.

Now, every fifth year, I'll have to haul myself down to the MVD and get the okay to get behind the wheel. I'll be forced to get my photo updated and I'm sure I'll notice another wrinkle or two, before I safely tuck away the newly laminated license into my billfold.

Sixty-five! I'm here. A member of AARP. An owner of a medicare card. A member of something called the "Silver Sneaker Program" -- which allows me to attend my fitness facility for free. A silver sneaker...my goodness, wasn't it just the other day, say the summer of 1956, when I slipped on a pair of tennis shoes, grabbed my baseball glove and bat, and headed off to the park to play ball? My hair was black and wavy. I weighed all of 85 pounds. I had dimples. I had no worries, except one and that being: Will my buddies be there at the park and will we have enough for a game, or at least workups?

Not a care in the world. My future ahead of me. My dreams intact. A sure major leaguer by 1970. An all-star by 1975. A world series hero in 1978. A hall-of-famer and my portrait on the walls of Cooperstown by 1995. Oh, the dreams of a young boy who loved baseball. And now, decades later, the father of two and six grandchildren,

I find myself on the way to the ball park once again. My buddies are waiting. Sure enough, there will be a game. I can count on my buddies being there. We are called the TOTS. The Tucson Old Timers, the oldest baseball team in the country, ranging in age from 60 to 90, suit up every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at Udall Park and play for the love of the game.

 Most of us are on Medicare. Most of us are without those wavy locks that decades ago would extend beyond our batting helmets. We all have a couple of things in common: We all remember our dreams of long ago...our dreams of playing in the majors, getting that big hit at Yankee Stadium or making the game-ending, diving catch at Fenway Park. Not one of us made it to Cooperstown, although some of us have visited the place where our baseball heroes of the past are enshrined.

Somewhere a long the way our childhood dreams turned into reality. We raised families, built homes. Some of us became doctors, lawyers, professors and writers. Priorities changed, but our love for the game of baseball has never wavered.

And now we can sit back and watch our grandchildren take the field...and we know full well what is going through their head as they round first, looking to turn a single into a double with their curly locks protruding from underneath their helmets. It's 2010 and nothing has really changed.

Daly Watch...

John Daly is getting some "home cooking" this week.

Big John is back in Arkansas and competing on the Nationwide Tour in Ft. Smith. He is just four shots off the pace after posting three sub-70 rounds of 66-68-69 for a very respectable 203. John Broadaway leads the way into today's final round at the Hardscrabble Country Club with his 3-day total of 199. Go get 'em Big John. Daly has won $81,254.00 on his comeback trail this year, his best accumulation of the green stuff on the PGA tour since 2007. John had made eights cuts on the PGA tour this season. He's competed in 11 events.

Daly Update: Daly cards a 69 on final day in Ft. Smith and finishes in a tie for 22nd -- eight strokes back of the winner. On a positive note, Daly carded four, sub-70 rounds and added his support for the Nationwide Tour stop at Hardscrabble.

Diamondbacks, Pirates and Orioles in a battle for "Roadkill" award...

The Arizona Diamondbacks are in a battle for the major league roadkill award with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Baltimore Orioles.

Thank goodness there is not such an award, that would be one piece of hardware you wouldn't want in your trophy case. Thanks to a 6-5 win at Detroit last night, the Diamondbacks are 10-26 on the road this season. That is a tad better than the Orioles at a dismal 8-28 and the Pirates at a riveting 9-25. Of course, the Diamondbacks home record isn't anything to write home about. Sitting at 17-16 at home, Arizona will need to take in a collective deep breath at the all star break and regroup.

Let's home the D'backs can turn it around or the records they will set, come September, won't be pretty.

The tallest man I ever saw play on the hardwood...

The year was 1986.

I was at a basketball game at Arco Arena in Sacramento, California. A very, very tall man stood up. checked in at the scorers' table and entered the game. The man was 7-foot-7. He walked slowly to his position under the bucket and awaited a shot from the Sacramento Kings. He stuck his hand up, blocked the attempt and sent the ball sailing...into the crowd.

He led the NBA in blocked shots that year for Washington with an average of five blocks per game. I wondered at the time, why he didn't average 10 per game. He was so tall. Manute Bol was the towering figure I saw play that day.

Bol, the man from Sudan, played 10 years in the NBA, averaging 2.6 points, 4.2 rebounds and 3.3 blocks per game. He died Saturday at the age of 47. Bol remained tall in life as well as basketball. His humanitarian work in Africa is well documented. I'm glad I got to see him play.

Will miss the confines of Rosenblatt

I spent a few years of my life in Omaha, Nebraska.

The people were wonderful and of course the Midwestern burg was --and still is-- the host city of the College World Series. I played a lot of fastpitch softball in Omaha from 1975 to 1979. I will never forget the first day I rolled into Omaha. My first order of business was to get a hold of someone at the parks and recreation. I walked in, asked a few questions and left with a phone number. I had asked the gal at the desk if she could get me in contact with the best softball team in the city.

She did. I called. I got a tryout. I made the team and spent the next five years or so traveling all over Nebraska and Kansas, competing against some of the best teams in the Midwest. It just so happened Omaha was referred to as "The Capitol of the World for Softball" at the time. There must have been 800 teams competing in the city. I played at two fields the majority of the time -- one was called Boyd Field and the other was called Dill Field.

Great softball town...and still is, as far as I know. But the field I remember most is Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium -- the home of the College World Series since 1950. For sixty years, the elite college teams from across the nation have rolled into Rosenblatt and have battled it out for the NCAA title. Eight teams are there this week, including Arizona State -- the top seed. Unfortunately, this will be it for Rosenblatt. Next year it will be a parking lot, an extension to the Zoo next door.

Oh, the College World Series will still be in Omaha, but beginning in June of 2011, the teams will battle for the title a few miles to the north, in downtown Omaha, at the brand-spanking new Ameritrade Stadium. I spent a lot of summers in the late 1970s at Rosenblatt as I watched my Arizona Wildcats battle for the NCAA title, along with Arizona State and USC, of course. Those were the years when those teams dominated the action. Those were the years when Jerry Kindall (UofA), Jim Brock (ASU) and Rod Dedeaux (USC) were the field generals who sat in the dugout and engineered their respective teams to glory.

I even had the honor of playing an exhibition fastpitch softball game or two between the lines at Rosenblatt. I sat in the same dugouts and awaited my turn at bat, just like the college kids of the past had done. It was an honor. There is not a lot of stadiums like Rosenblatt left...so, I think I'll tune in to ESPN this week and pay close attention to this year's College World Series, and as I watch, I'll reflect on some old memories from the 70s.

In 2011, it just won't be the same.

It was Hollywood at its best in Game 7...

It was Hollywood at its best in Game 7 of the NBA Finals tonight in LA as Kobe Bryant and the Lakers came back from a 13-point third-quarter deficit to defeat the Boston Celtics, 83-79.

Bryant, the MVP, scored 23 points and grabbed 15 rebounds to lead the Lakers. I got to hand it to the Celtics. I predicted they'd go down in four games. After all, the Lakers took care of our Phoenix Suns and they owned the homecourt advantage in the finals. And, of course, if it did get to Game 6 and 7, well, the Lakers would have 19,000 screaming fans, including Jack Nicholson, behind them.

What I didn't expect was the hard-nosed, never give up play by the Celtics. They scratched and clawed their way to an early lead tonight and for three quarters anyway kept Bryant bottled up. But the fourth quarter belonged to Bryant, Artest, Gasol and Fisher, allowing Nicholson, the other Hollywood stars in attendance, and all the Laker fans to go home happy.

In the end the curtain finally came down on the Celtics, but hats off to them for taking the Lakers to the limit. It was an entertaining Game 7.

Rubbing elbows with Geno and Vance...

If you're ever in the neighborhood, say a stretch of Interstate 70 in Colorado between Grand Junction and Glenwood Springs, take the one exit at a small burg called Parachute, hang a left and pull into a place called VJ's Outlaw Ribbs.

 If you're a sports nut, or better yet a Denver Bronco or a University of Arizona football fan, you'll be glad you did. And if you love juicy ribs, well you'll be getting a double whammy. Why? Because VJ's is owned by former Wildcats' football star Vance Johnson.

 I recently returned from a week-long vacation on the Western Slope, visited with family and found myself hanging out at Vance's place. VJ's is the place to be in Parachute on a Friday or Saturday night. There is plenty of memorabilia on the wall, complete with pictures of the "The Three Amigos", a group of wide receivers that got their name in 1987.

 The Three Amigos included Mark Jackson, Ricky Nattiel and Johnson. And, of course, it was quarterback John Elway who served up the TD passes to the trio. The Three Amigos are still the most popular name of receivers in the history of the Denver Broncos.

As for Johnson,who played football at Tucson Cholla High School, it is hard to believe he is now 47 years old. He still looks like he could run a post pattern with the best of them. If you are lucky enough, you just might catch Vance and his father, Geno, at the Outlaw Bar and get into a conversation with both of them.

 Vance credits his father for getting him into football in the first place. "Pop, kinda pushed me into football." It certainly was the right path to take for the Johnson family. Both men are smiling now, and boy do they have a lot of stories to tell. Geno is more my age and after a beverage or two, well let's say the hours just fly by. It is easy to see that dad is very proud of his son's accomplishments on the gridiron.

And now they have another member of the family to keep an eye on. Canyon del Oro junior running back Ka'Deem Carey committed to the Arizona Wildcats last Friday. Carey just happens to be the nephew of Vance Johnson. And as Vance puts it, "He's blood." Carey, of course, is the best running back in the state of Arizona. He rushed for 2,738 yards and 45 touchdowns last year at CDO. He's a four-star recruit and is listed as the nation's 16th best high school running back.

I woke up in Colorado this morning only to find...

I woke up in Colorado this morning. The first day of a week-long vacation. I poured a cup of coffee, went down to the hotel lobby and picked up a copy of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. Of course, I went right to the sports page and the headline across the top of the page read: CU later, Big 12. My goodness, the Colorado Buffaloes have joined the Pac-10. College athletics are in for a wild ride in the coming weeks. Who's next?

Pac-10 Update: Add the Utah Utes as of today. Pac-12 or the Dirty Dozen, the Northern Six and the Southern Six. Should be a plus for the Wildcats.

Kenzie and the Wildcats give it their all, but run out of gas...

The Arizona Wildcats' freshman sensation Kenzie Fowler toed the rubber, went into her windup, and unleashed her 805th pitch in five days. The ball sailed inside and caught UCLA's B.B. Bates on her batting helmet. The softball caromed off of Bates and came to an abrupt stop in the glove of Wildcats' first baseman Lini Koria.

Fowler, physically and emotionally spent, walked off the field and into the dugout. Her work at the 2010 Women's College World Series was over. She did all she could, but time had finally run out on the Wildcats' hard-throwing hurler as UCLA expanded on its 2-0 lead and went on to a convincing 15-9 win to claim the Bruins' 11th NCAA title in Oklahoma City last night.

Fowler's first season in a Wildcats' uniform is over, but luckily for Arizona fans, she has three seasons left and will lead the talented Wildcats back to OKC in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Fowler's dream to pitch for her hometown Wildcats and compete in the NCAA finals in Oklahoma City is now a reality. And compete she did. Fowler has nothing to be ashamed of and neither do the Wildcats. They may have ended up second best at Oklahoma City this year, but if there ever was a team worthy of accolades for being runner-up...it would be the Arizona Wildcats Women's softball team of 2010.

Kenzie Legal Enough as Wildcats get by Huskies...

Kenzie Fowler was legal enough this afternoon as the Arizona Wildcats survived elimination in Oklahoma City and edged the defending champion Washington Huskies 4-3 to advance to tonight's game against surprising 16th-seeded Hawaii at the Women's College World Series. Fowler threw enough illegal pitches to make it interesting, including a seventh-inning pitch, her 24th airborne offering of the tournament, which led to the Huskies third run of the game, but a two-out flare to left field, caught by Brittany Lastrapes, closed out the game and allowed the Wildcats to win their first game at the Series since 2007.

Next up: Hawaii at 6:30 pm. Go 'Cats!

Wildcats Wave Goodbye to Hawaii

Wildcats Update: Fowler does it again! She leads the Arizona Wildcats to a 5-1 win tonight over Hawaii. Lastrapes provides the offensive punch with three hits and the Wildcats move on to face Tennessee tomorrow. Go 'Cats!

Wildcats Send Tennessee Packin'

Wildcats Update: Arizona sends Tennessee packing. Fowler no hits Lady Vols for four innings and the Wildcats win via the mercy rule 8-0 in Game 1 today and then comeback in the nightcap to win Game 2 as Fowler allows just six hits as the Wildcats come away with a 5-2 victory over Tennessee. The twin-killing of the Lady Vols sets up an all Pac-10 matchup with UCLA for the 2010 Women's College World Series title in Oklahoma City. Game 1 of the three-games series starts tomorrow night as Fowler will try to become the first freshman hurler in 20 years to lead her team to an NCAA Women's College World Series Championship. Nice comeback 'Cats!

Two Men Remembered...

Two men passed away this week. One of them made the national headlines, the other received a headline or two in the local paper, The Arizona Daily Star.

One made his living on the sidelines adjacent to a hardwood floor, the other swept particles of hair from the floor into a tray at his place of business, a barbershop on 6th Avenue in downtown Tucson.

Both men left a legacy that would take more than a couple of bold headlines to do them justice. In fact, a book or two wouldn't be enough to chronicle the lives and the deeds of these important men. They were both pioneers in their own right, one was born in 1910, the other entered this world on an August day in 1921.

The older of the two gentlemen was a teacher, a disciplinarian, a revered basketball coach. He was simply known in the sports world as Coach Wooden. John Wooden, the Wizard of Westwood, led UCLA to 10 NCAA Championships. He won 620 games at UCLA, and if you include his 44 victories at Indiana State, prior to his arrival in LA, you'd come up with a win total of 664. An All-American player at Purdue, Wooden was inducted into the National Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 1960 and again as a coach in 1972.

 he hardware in his trophy case is mind boggling, but it was the lives he touched in his 99 years that is his biggest legacy. You couldn't build a trophy that big. The players who went through his tutelage learned about life on and off the hardwood floor. The basketball court was Wooden's office and the players were his students.

The younger man who passed away last week was on this earth 88 years. His name: Johnny Gibson.

Gibson touched the lives of many Tucsonans, maybe not on a national scale, but within the confines of a 25 mile radius in and around the Old Pueblo. He cut my locks when I was a young boy. I was in his barber chair all of 20 minutes. I didn't know too much about the man at the time. I was to busy squirming in the chair.

What I didn't know was the man was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for his service as a paratrooper in WW2, and as a medic, he jumped into Normandy on D-Day. Later in life, he was a fitness guru, a Mr. Arizona in 1950, and an eight-time state of Arizona weightlifting champ. But to his customers, he was affectionately known as the "Mayor of 6th Avenue" as he ran the Johnny Gibson Barbershop from 1949 til 2001. A lot of children squirmed in his barber chair over those years and I am proud to say I was one of them.

As far as Mr. Wooden goes, I brushed by him once at McKale. Two very good men were lost to us last week. Their accomplishments will be remembered for a long time to come.

Attn: Arizona Women's Softball Coaching Staff

Attention Arizona Women's Softball Coaching Staff: Somebody run over to Ace Hardware or maybe The Dollar Store in Oklahoma City and come up with some kind of a toe extension.

Get some glue, some paper or cardboard and some paint, and mold a two-inch extension to Kellie Fowler's shoe on her drag foot...and let's play ball...and let's come back and win this thing. It has been a bad week for baseball umpires, thanks mainly to a two-out in the ninth inning bad call from a base ump that robbed a major league pitcher of a perfect game two nights ago. And then last night, the base ump during the Arizona-Tennessee first round game at the Women's College World Series in Oklahoma City decides to call Fowler for eight illegal pitches.

Fowler has been pitching a softball since she was knee high to a grasshopper and now all of a sudden, after winning 34 games this year as a freshman for the Wildcats, her pitches are illegal. Tennessee was all smiles during the game. I can see why. A 9-0 blanking in five innings. Jim Joyce, the umpire guilty of the bad call in Detroit the other night, at least cried the next day. John Kurnat, the ump that called the illegal pitches against Fowler does not need to shed a tear, but whoever decided to put the airborne rule into place, should!

Price Clan on the Diamond...Priceless

It all started 55 years ago.

 A 10-year-old boy donned a baseball uniform and nervously walked to his position on the field. Stenciled across his jersey were the words: Pima Sheriffs, the sponsor of one of the many teams that summer which participated in the mid-town Randolph Park Little League.

And so it began on that hot summer day in Tucson, the start of the Price family's obsession with baseball. Of course that boy was yours truly, all glove and no hit Danny Price. That's right. I could catch everything, but putting wood on the ball as a 10 year old just wasn't my thing. I couldn't hit my way out of a paper bag. I remember batting eighth, walking a lot, stealing bases, and sliding, of course.

Oh yea. I loved to slide. Feet first, head first, hook slide, you name it. But hit, no way. That would come a few years later. Now fast forward from the 1950s to the mid 1970s, and you would find my two sons, Michael and Daniel, sending walls of dirt to the outfield as they ran and slid their way around the bases on a Little League team, on a beautiful, balmy summer day on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado.

They hit better than the old man. And they could field and throw with the best of them. Then came the year 2000 and my oldest grandson, Daniel, pitched and hit his way to stardom on his Colorado Little League team in a small, quiet town called Parachute, just 25 miles east of Grand Junction.

Daniel, now 18, had to give up the game this spring after being hit in the head during a high school game. He finished the season as the team manager and hopes to return to the playing field next year.

The doctors will more than likely make that call. It was a scary moment for the Price family. And now, let's fast forward to June, 2010.

It is another hot, summer day in Tucson. Another day for Little League teams to hit the playing field. And yet, another member of the Price clan suits up and takes the field. This time it is grandson Jadon Price -- pitcher, shortstop and center fielder for the Thornydale Little League Orioles.

Grandpa is now on the sidelines, pushing 65 years of age, and his son, my goodness, will hit the age of 46 in late November, and is the assistant coach of the playoff-bound Orioles. Jadon is batting .426 and is a sure bet to make the All Stars, which will extend his sixth season in organized baseball into July.

It is a sure bet that in the year 2025 a few more ball players from the Price clan will hit the field. And it is a sure bet that they'll all hit better than than their Great Grandpa Dan.