Bear Down and Blog » John McLean

Stranded At Second Base: Hans Gruber falls from grace…aka a building

Christopher C. Wuensch — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 19:19:00 +0000

“Culling the thoughts that occur when you’re standing around waiting for something to happen”

We hoot and holler about what a small percentage of ‘student athletes’ actually live up to their title.

Yet success stories that blend the student and the athlete often go buried, unread or, even, unwritten.

K’Lee Arredondo is one of those success stories. The University of Arizona shortstop was named the PAC-10 Softball Student Athlete of the Year this week.

Arredondo — who graduated in May with a 3.55 GPA and a psychology degree — has a long list of accolades to hang on her walls, including:

Three consecutive first-team Academic All-Pac-10 honors
All-Women’s College World Series Team
Second-team All-American
Second-team Academic All-American

Unfortunately for Arredondo, she was unable to add nation champion to her résumé. The Wildcats fell to UCLA in the Softball College World Series finals.

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Three of the last four champions in the MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL have one thing in common: two-word city names (Los Angeles, New Orleans, and New York).

The No. 1-seeded San Jose Sharks ruined a chance for a clean sweep when they lost to eventual Stanley Cup Champs Chicago in the Western Conference finals.

Cities with two-word names have won titles in all four major sports in the same calendar year only twice in the history of professional athletics.

In 2000: New York Yankees, St. Louis Rams, Los Angeles Lakers, and New Jersey Devils

In 1982: St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco 49ers, Los Angeles Lakers, and New York Islanders

And, yes, I did squander an hour of my life to research that. How else would I know that teams with two-word cities have won a world title 96 times dating back to the 1905 New York (baseball) Giants?

Next step is to identify the “why I did it.”

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Reggie Bush dates supermodel and reality-show icon Kim Kardashian and his New Orleans Saints win the Super Bowl.

Lamar Odom married Kim’s sister, Khloé and his Los Angeles Lakers wriggled their way to an NBA title.

That leaves eldest sister, Kourtney, as the last remaining good luck charm. Perhaps an eligible bachelor from the World Series-starved Chicago Cubs should take one for the team and ask her on a date.

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JOHN MacLEAN or JOHN McCLANE

Who is the newest New Jersey Devil head coach and whom is the renegade New York City cop?

Q: Scored the game-winning goal in the final game of the 1988 season to lift the New Jersey Devils to their first Stanley Cup playoffs.
A: John MacLean

Q: Single-handedly thwarted a terrorist uprising on Christmas Eve in 1988.
A: John McClane

Q: Sharpened his skills with a 19-year playing career with four teams.
A: John MacLean

Q: Once described his job as “because there is nobody else to do it.”
A: John McClane

Q: Is No. 2 on the Devils’ all-time scoring list.
A: John MacLean

Q: Is No. 6 on Entertainment Weekly’s list of ‘All-Time Coolest Heroes in Pop Culture.’
A: John McClane

Q: Had his named etched onto the Stanley Cup after the 1995 season.
A: John MacLean

Q: Was originally penned into the 1979 novel ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’ under the name Joe Leland.
A: John McClane

Side Note: Joe Leland was originally portrayed on the silver screen in the 1968 thriller ‘The Detective’ by Frank Sinatra.

Q: Dropped the gloves 33 times and wracked up 1,328 career penalty minutes.
A: John MacLean

Q: Dropped Hans Gruber off a Los Angeles skyscraper.
A: John McClane

Yippee Ki Yay…

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Speaking of unrepeatable language…

The NBA Finals are a highly audible event. That being said, its best moments might be the silenced ones. To be more specific, the moments where ABC has to cut sound entirely due to a player’s profane soliloquy.

Thank your messiah for the NBA’s slight time delay between the live game and actual airtime. It seems that NBA players use vernacular just slightly coarser than that of a Viking.

On-field cursing is a visual thing in football and baseball. And even then, head coaches and catchers are always covering their mouths with clipboards or catcher mitt’s to prevent lip-reading espionage.

Basketball’s close proximity to its fans and cameras doesn’t seem to faze the players concentrating on the shot clock and not who’s within ear shot.

Of course, it’s never kosher to hear a kid using the same ‘cursive’ arts that, say, Tiger Woods uses after spraying a shot into a heavy seaweed bed.

But a little swearing in the name of sports is downright second nature — if blurted in the heat of the moment.

At least it’s grounded in a little more reality than regular prime-time programming. Case in point, for six years a band of pariahs waged battle against unholy elements and plot twists on the ABC series “Lost.” Not once did any of them need a pre-emptive silence when describing the “bleeping” island.

This preamble had a point when I started writing it…I swear.

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The WNBA season is underway, if you’re looking for former Wildcats…don’t bother. Of the 131 players in the women’s hoops league, none claim allegiance to the University of Arizona. A dozen of those players, however, do have ties to the PAC-10.

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ESPN’s World Cup coverage might have the fancy bells and whistles and vuvuzelas, but I think I’d prefer to watch soccer’s pre-eminent games on Univision.