Baseball website offers treasure trove

It wouldn’t be Opening Day without making a late-night sojourn to Baseball-Reference.com to find an interesting morsel or two or three about the grand ol’ game.

I know Forrest Gump was talking about life when he uttered that famous “box of chocolate” line in the movies. But had the Internet been around, say, in left-handed pitcher Bill Lee’s day, Lee might have said the same thing about Baseball-Reference.com, because the “Spaceman” was known to say interesting things.

Here’s what I found on this trip: a section that lists the high schools and secondary schools of every major league player. Or at least most major league players.

A disclaimer at the top said “please note that this information is not complete … yada, yada, yada. But the information is mostly complete, because there have been three guys from my high school (Whiting, Indiana) who have played in the big leagues — and Al Pilarcik, Steve Kraly and Larry Fritz each were listed. And Fritz, who was known as “Zeb,” only had one at-bat, with the Phillies in 1975.

So the information is mostly complete.

Among Las Vegas-area high schools, Bishop Gorman leads with six major leaguers and 29 baseball pros altogether. Next are Valley (hello, Mr. Maddux) with five guys in the bigs, Cimarron-Memorial with four, Basic and Bonanza (hello, Mr. Bryant) with three, Green Valley, Durango and Las Vegas High (hello, Mr. Harper) with two, and Chaparral, Clark, Cheyenne, Eldorado, Palo Verde, Rancho and Sierra Vista with one each.

BASKET-BOLLA

Former Lady Rebels coach Jim Bolla called the other day to say his sports talk show on KDWN-AM (720), “Coaches Corner,” is still going strong — at 5 a.m. If you don’t get up when roosters crow, you can listen via the archive at kdwn.com.

That segued into a conversation about Jamie Dixon, the former Pitt coach who was one of 38 guys to turn down the UNLV basketball job, and that segued into when Bolla and Keith Starr, another longtime Las Vegan, played for Pitt against David Thompson and North Carolina State in the 1974 Elite Eight.

Bolla — he was listed as James Bolla in the box score — scored Pitt’s first four points. Then he said Pitt coach Buzz Ridl, an early proponent of the swarming Amoeba defense (Jerry Tarkanian right-hand man Tim Grgurich was Ridl’s assistant), took him out of the game. Bolla still doesn’t know why. Starr played 17 minutes and also scored four points.

Pitt was hanging in there in front of a hostile crowd in Raleigh, North Carolina, until Starr attempted to block Thompson’s shot as Thompson went flying through the air and clipped teammate Phil Spence’s shoulder.

There was a sickening thud as Thompson’s head hit the court, and there was blood. And then in the second half, Thompson returned to the bench with his head wound wrapped in the manner of a Revolutionary War soldier.

Pitt, which was led by Billy Knight, did not make it to the Final Four. NC State won, 100-72, and then State upset UCLA and won the national championship.

JUST LIKE 61

Did you see the footage of Lon Kruger cutting down the net after Oklahoma beat Oregon to advance to the Final Four?

It reminded me so much of when Roger Maris hit his 61st home run for the Yankees.

When Maris hit his 61st, the other Yankees practically had to push him out of the dugout to take a curtain call. Maris almost made it to the top step. He sort of doffed his cap.

When Kruger cut down the net, he sort of waved it around for like a nanosecond. He did not wear the net as a necklace, as Steve Alford had when he coached New Mexico to the Mountain West tournament title a couple of years ago at the Thomas & Mack Center.

Kruger, Maris and Alford are/were guys from the Midwest. The first two were humble and unassuming. These are basic Midwestern values. The third wore the net into the news conference like a necklace.

DIXIE BOPPER

I was telling somebody the other day that Las Vegas has become such a hotbed for high school baseball that it wouldn’t surprise me if there were kids playing college baseball in all 50 states — provided the infield ever thaws in Alaska.

Well, you can scratch Alabama off the list.

Palo Verde’s Chris Hopballe has been named Player of the Week in the Southern States Athletic Conference, which features NAIA (small school) teams in Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Hopballe, a junior first baseman, collected seven hits in 10 trips with two doubles and two home runs for Mobile (Alabama), which took two of three games from 24th-ranked William Carey of Mississippi.

SHANE, COME BACK

I’ve been a Shane Victorino fan since the day I spotted him walking down the bleachers at a Bishop Gorman vs. Findlay Prep basketball game, and I introduced myself, and instead of blowing me off, he talked 10 minutes about local high school basketball. He was totally up on it.

This was before I learned of the charity work he does in Las Vegas, his adopted hometown, and Philadelphia and his native Hawaii.

He’s at the end of the line now as a major league ballplayer, owing to age (35) and injuries and whatnot. He tried to make the loaded Cubs roster in spring training as an extra outfielder. He didn’t, partly because of another injury (calf), but Chicago quickly signed him to a minor league contract.

When healthy, one could easily imagine Victorino being called up to lay down a bunt or steal a base or being inserted into the game as a late-inning defensive replacement during a pennant race, or a wild-card race, or even a game against the Marlins.

THE (WHITE) SHADOW KNOWS

When actor Ken Howard died recently, a lot of sports people wrote requiems for the character he played on TV, coach Ken Reeves, aka “The White Shadow.”

(The character was inspired by Howard’s real life; in high school, he was the only Caucasian player on his team.)

FoxSports 1 aired a 15-episode “The White Shadow” marathon this weekend. To my point about every sports story having a Las Vegas angle if one looks hard enough, episode 10 in the marathon was called “We’re in the Money.” It was about the Carver High team traveling to Las Vegas for a tournament where team members gamble and lose money entrusted to them by other students.

I’m sure Salami was in the middle of it, forgetting to split aces and eights or something.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski