By Kim J. Harmon

T

he first day of baseball practice was Monday and I figure John Larkins, the head coach of the Newtown High School squad, must be BOUNCING off his office walls right about now . . . speaking of baseball, one thing I can’t wait for is watching Matt McCarthy hit. That dude can ROPE ‘em, alright . . . but spring isn’t all about baseball (no matter what coach Larkins says) and I always get pretty excited about lacrosse, too, and with the new formation of a South-West Conference for the sport, I’m just about bouncing off MY walls (gotta stop drinking so much Coca-Cola) . . . don’t you just LOVE the first day of the NCAA Tournament? It is a day just filled with all kinds of possibilities (and all KINDS of ways to ruin my pool sheet) and to see guys brick foul shots in the final seconds or hoisting threes at the buzzer or just pulling off those crazy upsets makes it one of the best days in sports . . . speaking of foul shots, the last thing I’D want to do is brick two foul shots with 3.3 seconds left on the clock and my team down by one. Those are the moments that EVERY kid in America practices on the driveway court – “Kim Harmon steps to the line with just two seconds left and his team down by one point. He needs to sink both of these free throws to send his team to the championship. Can he do it?” Kidding aside, you can just see some of these guys wilting under the pressure . . . speaking tournament basketball, isn’t it clear to just about EVERYONE that there just isn’t 64 quality teams to form a good field for the NCAA Women’s Tournament? I mean, one team shouldn’t be beating another teams by 70 points no matter how good that first team is. Then the University of Connecticut women come up and WHIP up on Colorado State, 89-44, to reach the regional finals. Do teams like UConn and Notre Dame and Tennessee have to wait until the final eight to get some real competition? . . . hey, Newtown had its own version of March Madness this past weekend as the Parks and Recreation Department youth basketball league crowned new champs in four different divisions – Junior Boys, Intermediate Boys, Junior Girls, and Intermediate Girls. Things got pretty exciting there, too, with improbable rallies and overtime and last second buckets and what not. It was a GOOD day . . . give a LOT of credit to the crew of referees who called the games on Saturday at Newtown High School. With kids racing up and down the court and people getting whacked all over the place (come one, youth basketball is not the cleanest game, foul-wise) and they did a tremendous job of keeping on top of things. Sure, they COULD have called more fouls but they all managed to keep a nice flow going. Great job . . . you know, if Chuck Knoblauch of the New York Yankees wasn’t such a valuable lead-off hitter, his throwing PROBLEMS (i.e, plunking Keith Olberman’s mom with a throw to first base) would have ended his career by now. But I wonder if Knoblauch will now have trouble hitting the cut-off man . . . if baseball is AMERICA’S national pastime, then why does the season open in a foreign country? First it was Mexico, then Japan, and now Puerto Rico. Whatever happened to Cincinnati, for crying out loud? Cincinnati is where the first professional baseball team started barnstorming the country and it is THERE where the darn season should open. Where is it going to be next year – France? . . . I just LOVE how these New York Yankees fans are whining about the team’s lack of a fifth starter as if the Yankees aren’t going to win 100 games or better. Come on, with Mike Mussina and possibly Urgueth Urbina on the pitching staff, good ol’ Commissioner Bud Selig ought to just cancel the season and the mayor of New York, ol’ Rudolph Guliani, should schedule the parade next week (sorry to all those fans of the Boston Red Sox, but it’s better to admit it now than to get your hopes up all season) . . . hey, did you realize there is a new professional lacrosse league starting up this June and that Connecticut has its own team? Yep, Major League Lacrosse (MLL) will feature the Bridgeport Barrage (who will play out of Harbor Yard in Bridgeport) in a six-team league along with the Baltimore Bayhawks, the Boston Cannons, the Long Island Lizards, the New Jersey Pride and the Rochester Rattlers. You’ll be able to find games on television, probably, with the championship game on NATIONAL television. Not bad. Lacrosse is a great game, so let’s hope something like this sticks around . . .