Miller Is Deserving of Better Fate; How About That Joyner?

Some burning sports questions for a cool Monday morning . . .

Doesn’t Cheryl Miller deserve a kinder fate than to wind up her brilliant career playing a terrible game on national television in the NCAA championship game?

With the USC offense shut down more convincingly than the Libyan navy, Miller was forcing shots and was unable to give one last demonstration of why she is the most talented and colorful female player ever.

Has there ever been a sadder final game for a local legend? OK, maybe Dieter Brock in Chicago.

Is Wally Joyner the greatest spring pheenom in the history of baseball? Probably not, but he’s making the Angels’ dumping of Rod Carew look like the strategic move of the decade.

Joyner’s most impressive statistic so far is his three strikeouts in 73 at-bats. Is it too early to start breaking out the Ted Williams comparisons?

Which superstar will be the first to get into foul trouble tonight and ruin the showcase game of the college basketball season?

Saturday it was Danny Manning and Greg Dreiling nailed to the bench because of foul trouble. Sunday it was Cheryl Miller. Foul trouble is seldom a crucial factor in an NBA game, but it almost always is in important college games. Just watch tonight. Isn’t it time for either a six-foul limit or a no-foul-out rule?

Will the Yankees, with rookie manager Lou Piniella, be the most publicized baseball team at the start of the season? Or will it be the Angels, with their continuing Reggie Saga?

Neither. Baseball’s media darlings will be the single-A Bee Team, the San Jose Bees, a California League team featuring four former major leaguers who are battling back from drug problems.

Isn’t it time to put an end to the longest-running fan swindle in sports? That would be the boxing rip-off where one or both of the combatants make weight by dropping 15 or 20 pounds the day before the fight.

Latest example: Richie Sandoval loses 10 pounds the week before his bantamweight title defense and gets his brain tenderized with five quick knockdowns.

Simple solution: Weigh in the fighters every week for a month before the fight.

Are the Lakers ready for the playoffs? Probably, if you can forget all about that game they played--or didn’t play--Saturday night in Seattle. If Maurice Lucas careening into the lane like a human bowling ball at the buzzer is the Lakers’ best 10-second offense, maybe they’re not quite ready for prime time.

Lucas said of that last play, “He (Seattle’s Danny Vranes) just ran into me.� Replays verified this. Vranes ran into Lucas, like the common highway hazard where the tree runs into the unsuspecting motorist.

Will a woman ever coach big-time boys’ college basketball? If Texas Coach Jody Conradt could get boys to play like her girls played Sunday against USC, she would be the next Denny Crum. Or Johnny Wooden.

And why was Linda Sharp never even mentioned among the dozens of candidates rumored to have a shot at the USC job when Stan Morrison quit? Maybe Linda didn’t have the approval of the Four Freshmen.

Can any college basketball all-name team be considered legitimate if it does not include Wyoming’s Fennis Dembo and Texas’ Yolanda Wimbish?

Surely Steve Bartkowski still has a few bombs left in his arm, and you know Joe Theismann will be a motivated guy this year, but isn’t it time the Rams gave some other NFL team a chance to salvage the career and enrich the estate of an immobile, injury-ravished, over-the-hill veteran quarterback?

A lot of teams wind up having their quarterbacks carried off the field. But if the Rams continue their policy of signing, uh, classic quarterbacks, will they be the first team in history to have their quarterback carried onto the field?

Do you suppose all those baseball veterans who brag about how hard they work in spring training when they take 15 minutes extra batting practice feel a little sheepish when they hear about Oakland rookie Jose Canseco, who gained 40 pounds of muscle over the last two years by pumping iron more than 20 hours a week? I hope so.

Have we no respect for our venerable sports legends? First Joe Namath is sacked by ABC as a Monday Night analyst, then he is offered a job as ring announcer for a professional wrestling extravaganza.

Why would the wrestling people think Namath would do something so demeaning just for money? Next thing you know, someone will be offering poor Joe big dough to model panty hose in a TV commercial.

Is the USFL really moving to a fall format and going head-to-head with the NFL next season?

Not exactly. It will be more like head-to-kneecap.