Columnist Ron Kantowski: Get ready to rumble when WCHL comes to town

Ron Kantowski's notes column appears Tuesday and Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or 259-4088.

The phone rang only once before a pleasant-sounding voice at the other end of the line responded:

"Good morning, West Coast Hockey League."

"Hi. I'm trying to reach Mike McCall, the league president. Is he available?"

"This is Mike McCall."

So give the chief executive of the rumbling, bumbling league full marks (as former Thunder coach Butch Goring was fond of saying) for accessibility.

But that the league can't afford or chooses not to have a receptionist says something about the level of professionalism local hockey fans can expect, provided the low-rent WCHL does expand into Las Vegas the year after next to fill the void left by the IHL's Thunder.

By then, there may or may not be a rink in town suitable to host professional hockey. And by then, the WCHL may or may not qualify as professional hockey.

This is a brawling, lower-level league that during its four-year reign of terror has had more players arrested than go on to the NHL.

The WCHL makes the IHL, which will see the last of the Thunder (or at least the Las Vegas Thunder) on Saturday when its lease expires at the Thomas and Mack Center, look like Disney on Ice. It's like Dorothy Hamill (IHL) vs. Tonya Harding (WCHL).

This past February, Anchorage Aces defenseman Dean Trboyevich was arrested by Fresno, Calif., police and charged with assault with a deadly weapon after cross-checking Fresno Falcons forward Jacques Mailhot in the mouth and then spearing him with his stick.

You'd have to go back to the Hanson Brothers vs. Oggie Ogelthorpe during the 1977 Federal League playoffs to recall a more dubious on-ice incident.

Detective Guy Ballesteroz said it was an unusual case, even for Fresno police, who have had to slap the cuffs on Jerry Tarkanian's basketball players for wielding samurai swords but never had been summoned to the arena between periods of a hockey game to deal with Slapshot-like shenanigans.

"We usually don't go out arresting players during a game," Ballesteroz told the Associated Press. "Normally, they do something stupid after the game in their private lives."

Well, that's reassuring. Remind me to stay away from the visiting team's hotel.

In retrospect, maybe the Thunder's Kerry Toporowski (505 penalty minutes, 1991) wasn't such a bad guy after all.

* WINNING ISN'T EVERYTHING: I've long maintained that winning and losing is irrelevant at the minor league level, that complimentary refrigerator schedule magnets and the price of a bratwurst at the International Haus of Sausage (a k a Sausage Hut) at Cashman Field is more crucial to Las Vegas Stars attendance than the team's position in the standings.

John Carbray, president of the PCL's Fresno Grizzlies, agrees. He recently told the Fresno Bee that the biggest compliment he could receive is to have a fan exit the ballpark asking "What was the score?"

* HIT MAN HURTING: The out-of-focus, overweight blob that was waddling around the ring over Jim Lampley's shoulder as HBO signed off following the Prince Naseem Hamed-Paul Ingle bout last Saturday night looked a little like Thomas Hearns, the former five-time world champion. Sure enough, it was.

Hearns was credited with a victory over Nate Miller but the fact that he is now fighting "walk-out" bouts that even HBO isn't interested in shows how far this once mighty warrior has fallen.

* WHAT'S HIS LINE? Soccer players are renowned for celebrating goals with unusual antics -- remember the Cameroon players hiking their legs on the corner flag during the 1994 World Cup? But Liverpool striker Robbie Fowler apparently went too far during a recent match against crosstown rival Everton in the English Premier League.

After scoring on a penalty kick, Fowler, who had been taunted by the Everton fans for his rumored use of cocaine, got down on his hands and knees and pretended to snort the goal line. He was suspended for six games.

* IT'S NOT OVER UNTIL...: As Sun boxing writer Dean Juipe pointed out in his Tuesday story about a scoring foul-up at a recent local prizefight that led to the wrong result being announced (and not corrected until the next day), most fans of the "stick-and-ball" sports usually leave the arena or stadium knowing which team won (except in L.A., where everybody leaves early, regardless of the score). But fans of major league auto racing are used to these bizarre developments.

In 1981, I left the Indianapolis Motor Speedway thinking Bobby Unser had won the 500. But the next day, they had Mario Andretti's name up on the Speedway marquee, preceded by the word "Congratulations." Unser was penalized overnight for passing under the yellow flag. But the story doesn't end there. Several months later, Bobby U's appeal was upheld and he was reinstated as the race winner.

More recently, Billy Boat's victory in an Indy Racing League event in Texas was disallowed when it was ruled a scoring error shortchanged Arie Luyendyk out of not one but two laps. Luyendyk, thinking he had won, crashed the victory lane celebration, only to receive a knuckle sandwich from A.J. Foyt, Boat's car owner.

* LEFT-HANDED COMPLIMENT: If I had a kid, I'd put a baseball in his hand and teach him to throw left-handed.

No offense to Ed Vosberg, but if a 37-year-old relief pitcher whose fastball moves as fast as William Conrad on sedatives remains a valuable commodity in Major League Baseball, then there aren't enough southpaws to go around.

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