Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Cubs’ Ross warmed hecklers’ hearts while with 51s
Since winning their first World Series in 108 years with a dramatic Game 7 victory over Cleveland 10 days ago, the Chicago Cubs having been taking more bows than the cast of “Phantom of the Opera.”
This is especially true of David Ross, Jon Lester’s retiring personal catcher who hit a home run in Game 7. It was the final game Ross probably will play, other than Wiffle Ball with his kids.
This led to Cubs slugger Anthony Rizzo choking back tears when he introduced the team’s spiritual leader during the massive victory parade. It also led to “Grandpa Rossy” assuming the guise of a Chippendales dancer on “Saturday Night Live,” and receiving a medical walker with pinstripes and his name and jersey number on the “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”
So this seems like a good time to retell a David Ross story.
It happened long before he was Grandpa Rossy, in 2002, when Ross was a 25-year-old catching prospect for the Las Vegas 51s.
There was a game in Portland on a chilly May evening during which young hecklers were giving Ross a ration of you know what. A fan sitting nearby called the hecklers “punks” in her email. She said they were unmerciful. Late in the game, when Ross headed for the stands at PGE Park to confront his antagonists, she thought it might get ugly.
I wrote a column about the incident after I received Vicki Ballou’s email.
This is what David Ross said:
After the column was published, the newspaper ran a letter to the editor.
It said thanks for all the stories on the 51s, and especially the one about David Ross going into the crowd to quiet the young hecklers in Portland.
VAUGHN TIME COMING
The jury is still out on whether Rashad Vaughn made the right decision in declaring for the NBA Draft after playing one season at UNLV. But the jury would have been impressed by two of Vaughn’s early-season stat lines.
Playing 27 minutes, the former Findlay Prepster shot 8-for-17 from the field, including 6-for-12 on 3-point attempts, and scored 22 points in Milwaukee’s 110-108 victory over Brooklyn on Oct. 29.
He logged nearly 25 minutes against the Kings on Nov. 5, sinking 5 of 9 field-goal attempts, including 4 of 8 on 3-pointers, and scored 14 points during a 117-91 blowout.
Shabazz Muhammad, another relative NBA neophyte with local ties (Bishop Gorman) who left UCLA after one season, is giving the jury less to deliberate.
Muhammad appears to have carved a niche with Minnesota as a top reserve. After appearing in 82 games and averaging 10.5 points last season, he tallied a season-high 15 in a loss at Oklahoma City on Nov. 5 and followed with 13 in a win Wednesday at Orlando.
Anthony Bennett, who also left UNLV after one season, was drafted first overall by Cleveland but has yet to pan out in the NBA, has gotten off the Brooklyn bench four times heading into this weekend. Bennett also made a blooper reel when he mistakenly told Nets fans, “Don’t watch us play this season.”
SOUTH POINT PERFECTO
When young Canadian bowler Francois Lavoie posted a perfect game in the semifinals of the U.S. Open at South Point on Wednesday en route to his first PBA title, it marked the 26th time a 300 had been rolled on TV during an official PBA event.
The first televised 300 was on Oct. 4, 1953, when Grazio Castellano of Brooklyn achieved perfection in the Eastern All-Star League in Newark, New Jersey. It wasn’t a PBA tournament, but say this about Grazio Castellano: The dude abides.
Jack Biondolillo was first to roll a nationally televised perfect game in a PBA Tour event. It happened in 1967, during the opening round of the Firestone Tournament of Champions. Sean Rash is the only PBA player to have rolled two 300s on the tube, having been responsible for the 23th and 25th.
Henderson’s Wendy Macpherson is one of a handful of women who have knocked down 12 straight strikes on TV, having rolled a 300 game on Japanese TV when she was competing on the tour there in 2010.
JEREMIAH WAS A TITAN
A reader inquired of the NFL whereabouts of Jeremiah Poutasi, the former Desert Pines and Utah football star who played in 11 games for the Tennessee Titans, starting seven, as a rookie in 2015.
The affable big man was one of the Titans’ last training camp cuts this season before being signed to the Jacksonville Jaguars’ practice squad.
“Little” brother, Poutasi Poutasi, who stands 6 feet 3 inches and weighs 280 pounds, also is a standout at Desert Pines and committed in May to play for Louisville.
TAKING A KNEE
— Twitter post by former UNLV football play-by-play man Tony Cordasco (@TonyDasco) the morning after Donald Trump won the presidential election: “Does this mean @theUSFL is coming back?”
— Twitter post by former UNLV backup quarterback and “Dancing with the Stars” hoofer Kenny Mayne (@Kenny_Mayne): “Polling people need to go to Tom Emanski type school for rehab work. Come back and try a Water District Commissioner race at midterms.”