Columnist Ron Kantowski: Outdoors writer to throw first pitch at O's game

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

Paula Del Giudice, the Sun's veteran outdoors writer, recently was appointed chairman of the National Wildlife Federation, which is neat.

On May 23, she'll throw out the first pitch at the Texas Rangers-Baltimore Orioles game at Camden Yards on ESPN, which is even neater to anyone who thinks the shotgun is a formation developed by Tom Landry, not a firearm manufactured by Remington.

Not too many Las Vegans outside of Greg Maddux have been entrusted to deliver the first pitch at a Major League game, and Del Giudice admits she's more nervous about the assignment than a pitcher just up from triple-A facing Mark McGwire with the bases loaded.

She's been practicing by lobbing fastballs -- or at least straightballs -- to her Little League-playing son Kevin, who will accompany her to the mound in Baltimore.

Del Giudice's first-pitch duties coincide with International Migratory Bird Day, of which the Oriole is one. It's designed to call attention to the fact that many species of migratory birds are on the decline.

(The Orioles' underachieving pitching staff isn't considered one of those, although a late-inning lead at Camden Yards has been put on the endangered list.)

After Del Giudice throws out the first pitch, she'll watch the game from Orioles owner Peter Angelos' box.

Del Giudice is the first woman in the 63-year existence of the National Wildlife Federation to be named its chairman.

"It is a high honor to have been selected to the chair of the nation's largest conservation group," she said.

"As the first woman to hold this position, I am proud that the National Wildlife Federation has truly become the nation's big tent conservation group, with room for people of all backgrounds and motivations for conservation."

But Paula will tell you the first thing she wants to conserve is enough energy to toss a baseball 60 feet, 6 inches into Charles Johnson's catchers mitt a week from Sunday.

* GRASSY KNOLL LEAGUE: Some things to be surmised from the 1999-2000 UNLV basketball schedule:

-- The only patsy not on the Rebels' slate is Oswald.

-- The low point of the schedule has to be High Point, the college in North Carolina the Rebels will scrimmage -- er, play -- next Jan. 4.

-- The highlight of the nonconference home schedule is a Dec. 18 date with Oklahoma State. If you think that's a marquee matchup, you've been spending too much time at the local drive-in.

Bottom line: Unless you're allowed to make out in the upper deck, I think I'll just watch on TV.

* GIVE IT TIME: Several years ago, then-UNLV athletic director Jim Weaver proposed that Rebel football fans fly a UNLV flag, either at their home or from their car antenna, on football game days. He wanted to "start a new tradition."

Somewhere on the UNLV campus, there's a closet where a bunch of little red UNLV flags are gathering dust.

Weaver should have known that you can't create a tradition. It has to develop on its own, over a period of time.

Similarly, great sports rivalries aren't concocted by a group of marketing executives drumming pencils on a long, oak table.

On Aug. 2, David Duval, golf's best player, and Tiger Woods, its most popular one, will square off in a made-for-TV, head-to-head, nothing-at-stake match. The idea is to jump start a rivalry in the making that hasn't sputtered to life on its own, only because Duval and Woods have yet to get hot on the same weekend -- or are too boring to talk about it.

But when they do, particularly if the stage is Augusta or the U.S. Open or even a TPC course near you, it'll be like Arnie and Jack all over again. And we won't need TV to tell us we ought to be watching.

* PARTING SHOT: "I'm going to graduate on time, no matter how long it takes." -- Senior basketball player at the University of Michigan.

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