Sports Records

One wonders if Jose Reyes would understand the juxtaposition of what he did Wednesday. One also wonders if there could be any better illustration of the difference between sports stars of the past and of today. Reyes started for the New York Mets, collected a bunt single and sat down for the rest of the game. He hoped his one-for-one day would boost him to a National League batting title, which it did. Going to the plate for the rest of the game would have endangered that.

One wonders if Jose Reyes would understand the juxtaposition of what he did Wednesday. One also wonders if there could be any better illustration of the difference between sports stars of the past and of today. Reyes started for the New York Mets, collected a bunt single and sat down for the rest of the game. He hoped his one-for-one day would boost him to a National League batting title, which it did. Going to the plate for the rest of the game would have endangered that.

The road to Storrs runs through small towns and stretches of wooded countryside where the trees are still mostly bare. On a drizzly afternoon with few cars around, it is hard to imagine that day in 1995 when the people of Connecticut lined this route for miles on end, waving flags, cheering as their college basketball team came home with a championship trophy. Their women's college basketball team. "From the airport all the way to campus," recalled Geno Auriemma, the women's coach at the University of Connecticut.

The road to Storrs runs through small towns and stretches of wooded countryside where the trees are still mostly bare. On a drizzly afternoon with few cars around, it is hard to imagine that day in 1995 when the people of Connecticut lined this route for miles on end, waving flags, cheering as their college basketball team came home with a championship trophy. Their women's college basketball team. "From the airport all the way to campus," recalled Geno Auriemma, the women's coach at the University of Connecticut.

The Nebraska Cornhuskers set numerous NCAA baseball records Tuesday by defeating Chicago State, 50-3, in the second game of a doubleheader. The previous record for runs was set by West Chester, Pa., which beat Philadelphia Textile, 42-1, on April 7, 1994. The Huskers (12-6) also established an NCAA record for winning margin--47 runs. Nebraska's 48 runs batted in eclipsed the NCAA single-game record (held by West Chester and Clemson) by 11.

In a season full of lows and dubious records they wanted no part of, the Chicago Bulls reached new depths Saturday night. The Miami Heat held the Bulls to the lowest point total in the NBA since 1954, the year the shot clock was introduced, humiliating Chicago, 82-49. "It's not fun, having this record," Chicago center Bill Wennington said.

There's nothing about Darel Newman that hints he was once one of the world's fastest men. You wouldn't be surprised to hear he is a former football player. Newman has the look of a linebacker, stocky and solid. But speed doesn't seem to be part of the mix. Newman, 54, moves with the steady purpose of the longtime physical education teacher that he is at Santa Ana High. But flash back to the mid-1960s and Newman is the "bald bullet" of Fresno State.

As Michael Phelps dived into his bid to surpass the Olympic standards set by Mark Spitz, the 58-year-old Spitz expressed bitterness he had not been invited to watch the historic swimming performance in person in Beijing, according to a French wire service. But when Spitz, in Detroit to watch one of his sons in a basketball tournament, finally faced Phelps via an NBC split screen, he was gracious and charming, expressing only praise and admiration for the 23-year-old Phelps, who was poised to win his eighth gold medal of the 2008 Games, breaking a Spitz mark that had stood for 36 years.

They were throwing passes and breaking records like crazy Saturday in the Astrodome, which may need a new name in honor of University of Houston quarterback Andre Ware. The Warehouse? Although Ware played only the first half in Houston's 95-21 Southwest Conference victory over Southern Methodist, he passed for 517 yards, a National Collegiate Athletic Assn. record for a half, and helped the Cougars reach another remarkable NCAA milestone--1,021 yards of total offense.

IT is four hours before the night's first pitch will be thrown and Sadaharu Oh is already in his temple, standing behind the batting cage simulating a hitter's swing, talking religion. Oh's house of worship is a ballpark -- any ballpark will do, but in this case it's the Fukuoka Dome in southern Japan where he is manager of the Softbank Hawks -- and his temporal faith follows the scripture on hitting a baseball.

In mid-2008 when the NHRA indefinitely shortened its top-fuel and funny car races for safety reasons, it raised a question: Should there be record speeds and times kept for that distance? The National Hot Rod Assn. initially decided no. But starting last September, the sanctioning body started allowing records for the shorter distance, partly because the records earn their drivers championship bonus points in the sport's top-level Full Throttle Series. The distance for NHRA drag racing always had been one-quarter mile, or 1,320 feet.

The Lakers are more than a basketball team, they are a social glue, connecting a diverse city with brightly splashed layers of entertainment and excellence. The Lakers are not about individual statistics, they are about team championships, the annual push by parts that are never greater than the whole, the quiet owner who never closes his wallet, the humble late announcer who never missed a game. The Lakers have become Southern California's strongest and most enduring sports fabric not only because they win, but because of how they continually sacrifice their egos and agenda in the attainment of that victory.

Back when Nike was a goddess and not something to put on your feet, Olympic runners raced barefoot. What a difference a few millenniums make. Today's runners, with the rare exception of, say, a Zola Budd, wear shoes hyper-designed to cushion heel strike, improve toe-off and minimize flex, all in ultra-lightweight materials. That's not to mention the training regimens, physical therapists and bouncier tracks.

Swimmers set 11 world records in the first two days of the world championships, proof that the supposed stewards of the sport have turned the sublime into the ridiculous. Records that stood for years now change hands within hours, and more will fall in the last six days of competition at Rome's Foro Italico pool. "This is just ridiculous," five-time Olympian Dara Torres told reporters in Rome.

What started as a small gift from a pair of agents to their well-known client has taken off in an unexpected direction. The yellow "X" cap that Lakers Coach Phil Jackson donned a few minutes after the Lakers won the NBA championship on Sunday in Orlando, Fla., spawned a deluge of phone calls to the office of Jackson's father-and-son agent team of Todd and Brian Musburger.

The winner, and still . . . Actually, it's hard to say exactly what Phil Jackson is, at least between NBA championships -- as he was between 2002 and 2009, when he overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles. With the Lakers, I mean, not with The Times' T.J. Simers, although it seemed close at times this spring. Now that Jackson just made it 10 titles, passing Red Auerbach for the most in NBA history, he's clearly the best of all time . . . unless you want to lay it off on his players, as all of New England and many more people will always do. Happily, Jackson doesn't care what you or I or anyone else thinks, which is a break for him since so many think he's not just lucky, but a condescending jerk.

Bill Elliott of Mid-America Nazarene College in Olathe, Kan., broke the college basketball record with his 432nd three-pointer Saturday during a 76-74 loss to Baker. Elliott, a 6-foot-2 senior guard, moved past Tony Smith of Pfeiffer (N.C.) College.

Treating the drug problem as a detached issue without origins is deceitful and counterproductive. This drug war is a farce that keeps ghetto residents fighting among themselves and the government knows it. It keeps police officers employed, gives the military a new enemy, boosts the import profits for the CIA, and helps to install the infrastructure for a police state, while making George Bush look like he's doing something.

BEIJING -- To those who know track and field, to those who have watched Usain Bolt grow up, the most significant step he made wasn't what has happened in the last three months, when the Jamaican jumped from sprinting's elite into a class of his own. The key stride came when Bolt went from child prodigy and junior level phenom to a consistently successful runner at the senior world level, where he has competed since 2004. "I knew when he was 15 years old that if he was still in athletics six years later, he would be something really, really great," said Jamaican Coach Steven Francis.

As Michael Phelps dived into his bid to surpass the Olympic standards set by Mark Spitz, the 58-year-old Spitz expressed bitterness he had not been invited to watch the historic swimming performance in person in Beijing, according to a French wire service. But when Spitz, in Detroit to watch one of his sons in a basketball tournament, finally faced Phelps via an NBC split screen, he was gracious and charming, expressing only praise and admiration for the 23-year-old Phelps, who was poised to win his eighth gold medal of the 2008 Games, breaking a Spitz mark that had stood for 36 years.