Deep thoughts, cheap shots & bon mots . . .

MLB moving the AllStar Game out of Atlanta to protest a new state voting law is a bit of unintentional homage to Robinson, who was born in Georgia.

Georgia did soften its voting law to allow for providing water to voters standing in line in the heat. Maybe separate drinking fountains for Republicans and Democrats?

As fans are trickling back to ballparks and arenas, do you wonder whether some teams are juicing the ambiance by continuing to pump fake crowd noise over the loudspeakers?

If Wilt Chamberlain was alive, he would have been on hand to congratulate Stephen Curry for passing him to become the Warriors’ alltime scoring leader. The two would have gotten along great; they had a lot in common. Each has an unstoppable shot, Chamberlain’s fallaway bank and Curry’s quickdraw 3pointer. Both got knocked around but didn’t get much love from the refs. (Wilt briefly retired after his rookie NBA season, fed up with the thuggish defenses.) Both are disparaged by some socalled experts, but are wildly popular with fans and kids. Both love women, although Curry dotes on his wife and two daughters (and one son), while Chamberlain, uh, played the field. Rick Welts, among his accomplishments, made AllStar Weekend an event. Before him, the offcourt festivities were limited to a banquet featuring, as Welts said, “a bad comedian.” Amen. I was at the banquet in 1980 in Landover, Md. Entertainment was Willie Tyler and

Lester, a fine comedy duo, except Tyler was a ventriloquist and Lester his dummy, and from my distant table, I couldn’t tell which was which. Robinson’s first game in his integration saga was in New Jersey in 1946, his TripleA Montreal club against the Jersey City Giants. His second time up, Robinson jacked a threerun homer. The packed house of 25,000 held its collective breath to see how Robinson’s teammates would react.

George “Shotgun” Shuba, due up next, met Robinson at the plate with a big handshake. That moment will be memorialized this summer in a bronze statue in Shuba’s hometown of Youngstown, Ohio. A handshake. Suggested additions to the song playlist at the Moscone Center’s vaccine clinic: “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” and “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.” Tara VanDerveer, pretty much summing it up at the Final Four: “I don’t think the girls should get hot dogs and the boys should get steak.” At the A’s ballpark, I interviewed one of those cardboard fans, the only one that was not smiling. Said the fan, “I wasn’t cut out for this.”