RICKAROO - The New Mexico Sports Place

 I was not then and am not now a Boston Celtics fan, but I always liked Tommy Heinsohn in spite of that. I particularly liked his Fred Flintstone-like delivery as a TV analyst after his playing and coaching days were over. A Heinsohn memory, in the wake of his recent death:  In a game years ago (obviously), Heinsohn was headed toward the basket on a breakaway. Walt Hazzard, the former UCLA Bruin point guard — I don’t remember which NBA team he was playing for at the time — basically tackled Heinsohn to prevent the layup. The two sprawled together under the basket.  Tommy came up hot and landed a picture-perfect right hand to Hazzard’s jaw. I don’t remember for sure, it being so long ago, but I don’t think either player got ejected. It was a different game back then. Afterward, Heinsohn complained to the media about Hazzard’s aggressive play. “Talk about unsportsmanlike,” he said. How sportsmanlike he thought his right hand to the jaw was, he didn’t say. Hazzard had little...

 I can’t say I knew Billy Tubbs, the irascible, inimitable college basketball coach who won 641 games at Lamar, Oklahoma, TCU and Lamar again, who died on Sunday at age 85. But I remember him well. Very well. Among the memories: In January 1997, Tubbs brought his TCU Horned Frogs to the Pit to play New Mexico, at the time a Western Athletic Conference rival. He refused to use Albuquerque’s mile-high altitude as an excuse for a loss that night. In fact, he refused to acknowledge the altitude. “The game was played indoors,” he explained.  Oh, OK.  The following summer, TCU transfer power forward Damion Walker signed with New Mexico. Tubbs was furious, believing UNM had contacted Walker before his release from his scholarship at TCU — a violation, if true, of NCAA rules. Lobos coach Dave Bliss denied any such impropriety. That January, at the end of a UNM blowout with the Lobos approaching the century mark, Tubbs called two timeouts in the final minutes. Both teams had their...

On Monday (May 11), in response to a query from a friend,  I pored through the Albuquerque Journal’s obituary listings for August 2011. I didn’t find what my friend was looking for. I did find an obituary notice for Lillian Cantrell, age 100, who died on Aug. 10 of that year.  Oh my goodness. This had to be the Lillian Cantrell who worked for my family as a housekeeper — the term at the time was “cleaning lady” from roughly 1957-69.  What a very hard life she had.  Lillian lived in a poor section of Albuquerque’s South Valley. She made her living cleaning, doing laundry, etc., for ours and other households. Her husband had deserted her and left her with three children, two of whom had a disability  (I don’t remember exactly what the disability was). Her other son died young, I believe in a car crash. Yet, Lillian was unfailingly cheerful. She loved our first Welsh Terrier, Terry, and got along better than some of us did with our second, Binky, who ha...

Reacting to my recent blog about the 1983 Final Four in Albuquerque, Dennis Latta, then sports editor of the Albuquerque Journal, emailed me with recollections not just of Final Four week but of that entire NCAA Tournament and how the Journal covered it. Forthwith:  Your note made me stop and think about that 1983 Final Four and I thought I would pass along some of the things I remembered. When we were preparing, I went to a weekly  Tuesday  meeting with Frankie (McCarty, managing editor) and crew. I never went so she was surprised to see me there. I told her we should coordinate coverage, and she informed me that they didn't need anything for A1 on a sports event. But Susan (Stiger) and the woman who was head of that weekly women's magazine we printed (Pat Reed) stood up and told her it was a very big event. So Frankie informed me that they would assign someone from the city desk, she didn't want anyone from sports writing for A1. That needed a real rep...

This morning, my friend and former Albuquerque Journal colleague Chris Tomasson direct messaged me with a reminder that today is the 37th anniversary of North Carolina State’s unforgettable victory over Houston at the Pit.  Why not, wrote Chris, now the Minnesota Vikings beat writer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, tweet out some memories? Great idea. But why not blog some memories instead? That Final Four week was a week like no other in my memory for the Journal sports staff. Dennis Latta, our sports editor, made sure everyone was involved.  I was a bit disappointed when Dennis did not schedule me to cover that Saturday’s semifinals between Houston-Louisville and NC State-Georgia. But he did assign me to do a sidebar on Sunday’s Coaches All-American all-star game. My subject was Kentucky guard Dirk Minniefield, who happened to be a cousin of former Lobo Darryl Minniefield.  During the week, I’d done a story about an appearance by then-UNM coach Gary Colson at a...