Congratulations to Grand Island Islander baseball star Kash Kalkowski on being selected honorary captain of the Lincoln Journal Star’s All State baseball team. The junior and UNL recruit led the state in hitting and was one of its top pitchers. The Journal Star put him as a “utility” player in the all star lineup, I’m guessing because he does everything well on the field. The utility designation carries a less than all star connotation, but I can see that Kalkowski would present a dilemma. A player with his skills doesn’t come along very often. And we get to watch him as an Islander for another season and a Home Federal legion player this summer and next. You should make a point to do that.

Props, too, go to Islander catcher Josh Smith, who was named to the Journal Star’s All State second team, and Cody Raile, Matt Hilligis, and Ross Helleberg, who were named among the Honorable Mention crew.

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The Huskers punched their baseball tix to the desert Monday, being seeded third in Tempe and making a date with UC-Riverside for a Friday game. I like us in a short (two game) series because of pitchers Tony Watson, Johnny Dorn, and the hard charging Luke Wertz, who is throwing very well when it counts.

After a season of too many distractions and not enough base hits, the Huskers could leave a much sweeter taste in Husker Nation mouths with a win or two in Arizona. A salty schedule and high RPI put the team in a regional. Let’s hope the experience of a tough season will play well for the Huskers this week.

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I caught ESPN’s report on the NFL and other’s continuing investigation into Michael Vick’s role — if any — in dog fighting. The footage was gruesome and the accusations by an unidentified informant sensational. The informant, a law enforcement officer, and an official from the Humane Society said a number of NFL players are involved in dog fighting. Pay attention. This is a story that will be making noise as the summer wears on.

I’ve lost interest in two major sporting events. The first is the NBA playoffs, where the San Antonio Spurs’ Robert Horry’s forearm shiver to Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns has become the pivotal moment in the big money tourney. When Suns Boris Diaw and Amare Stoudemire left the bench after the assault, they were ticketed with one game suspensions. Horry got two games for his efforts. He claimed that it was simply, good hard basketball. Looked more like an angry player mad that his teams was losing at home to the Suns. Please, save me macho code crap. David Stern got this one wrong. In the last few years playoff basketball has been less game and more foul fest. NBA players somehow need to punch, undercut, smack, claw, and generally act like thugs to get to the top. Michael Jodan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird never shied from physical play, but when they took their game to another level, it wasn’t with forearms and elbows. Stern should have recognized the play for what it was. Give Horry a temporary hook and understand that the bench rule, while important to keep the game civil, has to have some flexibility and interpretation.

The upshot is that Stern, with a little too much arrogance for my taste, completely disrupted the flow of the series. Maybe the Suns would have lost anyway, but why did the suspensions — which had some mitigating circumstances — carry the game weight they did. The Commish needs to look at the rule when he and the owners get together this summer in the overpriced hotel of their choice for league meetings.

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Just break the record, Barry. Like millions I’m completely ambivalent. I’ve never been a Bonds fan, even when was slim and trim and had a normal sized head. And yes, I agree, he’s not the only juicer in the bigs — he’s never admitted to using performance enhancing drugs nor has it been proven in court or a lab.

But his creep toward 755 has the nation holding its nose. In my mind, it’s more than steroids, too. I think part of it is Bonds’ abrasive personality and unwillingness to be a team guy. Fans know the difference. He doesn’t have to be Sean Casey, but as Ty Cobb suffered the consequences of his sometimes brutal personality, so it is with Bonds. The day after 756 leaves the yard, chances are good that Barry Bonds will be both a headline in history books and a footnote for the rest of the season of his most historic season.

MLB teams are trying to decide whether they should allow alcohol in club houses after Josh Hancock was killed while driving drunk. The question has come up that if you ban booze in clubhouse and sell it in the stands, you’re sending an odd message. It’s a good question. As many have pointed out, Hancock, a St. Louis Cardinal, played for a team owned by a beer company. The Rockies play in Coors field. Miller Park is in Milwaukee. I doubt beer sales at the old ball yard will come to a halt. Maybe baseball teams should determine if players have substance abuse problems and address those first. You can take alcohol out of the club house, but that will do nothing for somebody is struggling with the stuff. I’m not saying Hancock was. I’m saying many drunk drivers do a lot of things under the influence.

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The warm weather this week should scramble track charts. After a miserable 10 days of cold and rain, look for runners, jumpers, and throwers to pop some big marks as we approach the State Meet in Burke a week from Friday. Long, strong muscles react well to 85 degrees and no wind. It would be a fascinating research study to look at Nebraska marks the last month of the track season over the last 40 years. I can remember in 1968 running in the Big Ten Championship meet (two weeks before State) at UNK (then Kearney State). If you stepped off the track it was into three inches of snow. The next week at districts it was 80 in Scottsbluff and State returned to a cold, miserable 45 and cloudy. Make hay while the sun shines? Run fast when it’s hot.

I’ll never get back the 90 minutes past my bed time I spent watching David go brain dead against Goliath Tuesday night.

I speak of the Golden State Warriors, an eight-seed leading the mighty Dallas Mavericks 3 games to 1 in an NBA opening round series. I tuned in as the Warriors were making a furious charge to make it a game in the second half. I thought I might see a little drama and history if they could win at Dallas and move on. They only made the playoffs on the last day of the season.

Leading 112-103 with a couple minutes until David’s rock found Goliath’s melon, the whole metaphor went south. The Warriors took four bad shots in a row, stood around like the last minutes of pick up game at the Y, and threw in a turnover for good measure. Meanwhile, Big Dirk hit a couple threes and scored a regular three-point play. It was a 15-0 run for Dallas.

What? I stayed up for this nonsense. How can gazillionaire athletes be in complete control and then lose it like a bunch of third graders in an after school league. They came, they stood, they blew a nine-point lead. They missed their last eight shots, winning the 46-minute game but not the real one. They handled Dallas’ double team like Superman handles a kryptonite clutch pedal.

Granted I’m a little grumpy but I gave up perfectly good rack time to watch Baron Davis et al dominate, then watch as Dallas smoked then for 15 straight points. My hunch is that David, even the friendly confines of the Bay Area, will melt like so many wicked witches, left to ponder what might have happened had they played the last two minutes like they did the first 46 in Game 5.

I think the draft has supplanted the Super Bowl as the NFL’s biggest event. How the ESPN panel kept talking for two days was a miracle … or something far less appealing. I enjoyed Mike Lupica’s take on the “Sports Reporters” Sunday morning. He basically said what most of us suspect: Nobody really knows anything. You and I could probably draft about the same as the big dogs and especially as well as the “experts” ESPN assembles every spring and unleashes them on us for five or six weeks. Lupica called the draft Tom Brady Day, in recognition of one the NFL’s enduring stars being drafted in the sixth round. Sure ESPN touts Mel’s expertise, but Lupica’s point is that we simply have no absolute sure things in a draft. Otherwise, Marcus Colston of the Saints by way of Hofstra would not be a league leader in receiving after missing the Mr. Irrelevant by only a few slots.

I’m not suggesting all the research teams do is all for naught. Nor am I interested in drafting a team (unless it’s a fantasy league). I am wondering aloud here about the inordinate play the draft gets, not only on ESPN but in other media outlets.

All of which makes the event’s enormous popularity even more dramatic and curious. It’s another example of the enhancing and expanding of sports’ periphery (think up close and personal on steroids). Where the games themselves used to be enough, we taken to spend more time and attention on other things. The games are still important, obviously, but they now fight for our attention with drafts, police reports, drug tests, combines, battles of stars, dancing, etc.

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Big week for the top-ranked Islander baseball team as they head to Millard Monday for a double header with second-ranked West. It should be a test, but I’ll take the Purple and Gold pitching in a twin-bill or later this month at State.

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Final thought: If you have watched Steve Nash and the Suns during the NBA playoffs, you are watching basketball, not a superstar sell sneakers and jerseys but a team playing game designed for five players. Throw the Chicago Bulls and the Detroit Pistons for good measure. NBA coaches and GMs should pay attention to the success of teams built to play together.

Add a couple more Grand Island high school teams to your state championship watch list. Both of them wear black and gold and call North Road home. Northwest’s boys track and soccer teams are right in thick of excellence, a good spot to be this time of year. The soccer kids are 10th in points and flying below the radar. That puts them in a good position to go about their business and keep getting better. Don’t be surprised to see the Vikings boys right there at the end.

Dave Gee’s Northwest track team is smooth, strong, and fast. Paced by triple jumper and hurdler Tyler Wright (CNTC Outstanding Male Athlete) and sprinter Devon Johnson, the Vikings can put a bunch of points up on the board. With some warm weather and a few breaks, black and gold may be a dominant color among Class B hopefuls at Burke Stadium at the end of May.

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This just in from the Evil Empire: We have no pitching. Yankee fans everywhere surely share my concern (and BoSox fans everywhere are cheering) when the starting rotation for Joe Torre’s Bronx Bombers — a team hated in every corner of the earth save of few pockets of the Big Apple — looks like something out of an American Legion all star game. Props to A-Rod who is making baseball history (and on a pace to hit 126 home runs), but the Pinstripes may have to score a dozen a game if they expect to win before they gets their real rotation back from the DL. Meanwhile Boston is cruising behind a tremendous staff, purchased — if I may be so bold — in very Evil Empire fashion. Dice-K with his 19 different pitches is exhibit A, the Sox paying $50 million for the right to talk to him. Makes a George Steinbrenner proud.

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Did you catch the video of the four-year old on the sideline of the Colorado State spring game. He was leveled by a receiver catching a pass in the end zone. Check it out at http://deadspin.com/sports/college-football/ok-get-up-walk-it-off-254799.php

I have been on the sidelines of high school games for seven years. My son was a first grader when he stared ball boy duties. I was always leery and probably hyper-vigilant when the action came our way. He took a glancing blow once, but survived his ball boy career. Perhaps I was overly protective after taking a linebacker to the chest as a member of a chain gang myself. I was about 15 at the time and not paying attention, no surprise given my age. The surprise of the collision may have hurt more than the hit, but I was knocked into next week. I was lucky, too. Nothing broken and no stitches. The little Coloradoan wasn’t so lucky. He needed 30 stitches to close his melon.

Dads (moms would never take their kids to a football sideline), here’s a hint. If you are going to drag Junior or Sissy downstairs to see the game up close, make sure you pay attention. Always be between them and the strong young men hurtling toward them (It’s easier to explain to the wife that way). Perfect the scoop and dodge, too (See J.T. Snow in 2002 World Series), because it may save your kid.

Or, maybe, consider leaving the little one in their seats.

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Final thought, probably as close to sports heresy or a lack of patriotism as I’ll get, but I do not see the allure of this weekend’s NFL draft. ESPN’s promotion/programming-programming/promotion (when does one end and the other begin?) has been endless, matched only I’m sure by the months of analysis we’ll be subjected to after the fact. This is in keeping with the network’s upping the ante of NFL coverage, which conveniently coincided with its contract to cover the sport.

While professional football teams surely have much on the line at the draft this weekend, I’ll probably not rearrange my life around the event. I like what Wisconsin offensive lineman Joe Thomas plans to do for the draft. He is projected to go about fourth in the first round, but whoever picks him will have to send a boat to notify him (or perhaps cell phone). While most of his first round cohorts are in New York City this week buying expensive suits and posing for photo ops, Thomas stayed in Wisconsin to attend class (The 6’6”, 315-pound Thomas is pulling As and Bs.) and pack for a fishing trip with his father. That’s where he’ll be when his name is called Saturday.

How old school. How refreshing.

While the Dodgers did right when they honored Jack Roosevelt Robinson of Sunday, the affair was typical Los Angles Dodger fare. Or should I say Los Angeles Dodger fanfare. When the pre-game festivities started, the Dodger faithful had hundreds if not thousands of seats yet to fill. I lived in LA for 10 years and while I was an unrepentant and steadfast detractor of Dodger Blue, I loved Dodger Stadium. It was always curious, though, that the sellouts occurred sometime early in the third inning after everyone arrived and diminished in the seventh when a good number started to leave.

Neither score nor opponent affected this phenomenon. I remember a game against the Mets that went 12 innings. No more than 10,000 could have remained, most wearing hats the Orange and Blue of the Metropolitans Baseball Club.

So when music and Rachel Robinson and other festivities made the event baseball’s most important game of Sunday, not all the ticket holders were there.

No big deal but somehow I thought Dodger fans would pack the place for once before the game started.

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Don’t look now but the Grand Island Islander baseball team (representing three high schools) is undefeated and looking tougher than the Thursday special at bad diner. Does the term pitching rich mean anything? The Islanders have four very good arms, including Husker recruit Kash Kalkowski, submarine specialist Matt Hilligas, long and very tough lefty Eric Schwieger, and experienced senior Ross Helleberg. Combined with some power and speed, the guys with the Cleveland Indian I’s on their hats can go a long way in short tournament. Like … say … a state tournament.

So do yourself a favor baseball fans. Go have a look.

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Speaking of which, the best track meet of the year is next Monday at GISH. Oh, yeah, the newspaper sponsors it, but the Central Nebraska Track Championships pit all classes in our coverage area against each other. David vs. Goliath and slew of other storylines will be settling into the blocks at 3 p.m. on the 23rd. If you go to one meet a year, this should be it.