Friday, Nov. 1, 2002 | 9:34 a.m.
Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4084.
Notes today, starting with the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame.
Nice as it is to see worthy inductees Greg Maddux, Mike Morgan, Mike Maddux, Rodger Fairless and Lori Harrigan selected this year, there's an obvious bias involved when the sixth inductee -- if it can collectively be called that -- is the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority. Is this a ploy to get the LVCVA to support the budding Hall, which will hold its induction ceremony Monday? Well, whether it is or it isn't, the LVCVA as a whole does not merit that type of award and it lessens the value of the entire project when such jocular selections are made. ... Speaking of shady moves, the PGA Senior Tour is changing its name to the Champions Tour, which totally misconstrues what the tour is all about. The most basic requirement to play on the tour is being at least 50 years old, and having ever been a champion is completely irrelevant.
Speaking of the Senior Tour, 57-year-old Hale Irwin just became the first man to win more than $3 million in a single season on that circuit. But here's something even more startling: Irwin has as many wins as Tiger Woods since 1996, as each has 34. ... Curtis Strange was the first PGA Tour player to win $1 million in a single season (1988) but payouts have skyrocketed to such a degree that Woods won $6.7 million this year alone. ... What a sweet escape for former NFL star running back Larry Brown, who admits to writing 18 fraudulent checks cashed at Las Vegas casinos and gets off with a hand slap. Where's the justice in that?
As part of its penance to the community for allowing runoff water from its exclusive Cascata golf course to cause a problem near Boulder City, course owner Park Place ought to let every local play a round there for free. As it is, neither you nor I can get past the gate and that barbed-wire fence that surrounds it is equally foreboding. ... Whatever jurisdiction gets the proposed Shane Mosley vs. Raul Marquez fight had better cross its fingers. Marquez is a nice enough guy but he's totally shot as a fighter and if Mosley -- who may be in decline himself -- has anything left, it will be a quick and ugly fight with potentially dangerous ramifications.
Can you believe the lack of betting support for Johnny Tapia for his Saturday fight with Marco Antonio Barrera at the MGM? It would seem as if he has at least an outside chance to win, but apparently every single bettor thinks otherwise. ... UNLV assistant football coach John Jackson will have an interesting Saturday. He'll be at Boyd Stadium for the Rebels' 4 p.m. game with Wyoming and then have to hustle to the MGM to see the fight, as he's Barrera's promoter. "They need me more at the football game," he said, when asked if he might be tempted to slip away early.
Cal Ripken Jr. breaking Lou Gehrig's consecutive-game record was voted the single greatest event in baseball history (in a contest whose results were just announced), but it comes across as a poor choice to me. A much better one: Pittsburgh's Bill Mazeroski homers to left field to lead off the bottom of the ninth inning in the seventh game of the 1960 World Series, not only giving the Pirates an exhilarating win but the world championship. "I was too excited and too thrilled to even think," Maz said later.
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