June 12, 2007

This is the end?

What if sports, like 'The Sopranos,' left its story lines hanging? FUGGEDABOUTIT!

Steve Dilbeck

So you're outraged, because no one likes to be left hanging after the big build-up.

Talking "The Sopranos," of course.

It's just not polite. Getting everybody all worked up, only to sidestep the big finale. Leave everyone wondering. Playing the "if" game.

Now there are some quarters where this is thought of as really clever, but you certainly hope it doesn't spill over to the world of sports.

If everything in sports suddenly went black and rolled credits, there would be no end to the unsolved athletic dramas. In sports you start something, you finish it.

Unless it's the 1994 baseball season.

A good thriller needs a fitting climax. Questions have to be answered. Dilemmas worked out.

If the baseball season ended today, we'd never know what the national reaction would be to Barry Bonds finally hitting the home run to overtake Hank Aaron's all-time record.

Begrudged admiration, wide-range damnation, Bud Selig on vacation?

Answers are demanded. Not Tony Soprano staring into his onion rings.

Sports get the juices flowing, are more volatile and divisive than politics.

Bonds is the biggest cheat, liar and general jerk in baseball history.
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Bonds is unfairly targeted, an incredible talent and the greatest player who ever picked up a Louisville Slugger.

See, sports stories demand a postscript, a final resting place, a comfortable last designation. You want ESPN Classics off the air?

Kobe Bryant wants the Lakers to trade him?

Get serious, then we'd never know. Can he win another championship as a Laker without the Big Whatever? Can he finally make those around him better players? Can he make up his mind whether he wants to stay or go? Will Mitch Kupchak make him happy by filling in the missing pieces?

It's a melodrama that has to be played out in Los Angeles. You don't bring the curtain down now or ship the star of the show to Chicago. You don't put Kupchak at the microphone about to make a major announcement and then say, "That's all, folks!"

What? Did somebody get whacked or not? Come on, come on, tell us.

What if , in that bizarre news conference in January, told the assembled media at Heritage Hall he was really intrigued by the Miami Dolphins situation, there had been no complete turnaround 30 minutes later to a lone media outlet?

Would we be left hanging, wondering?

Did he go, or not? Did he head for Miami and made men and turn the Dolphins around? Did he stay at USC and keep the Trojans in rarified air? Turn this year's USC squad into national champions?

People don't read 500 pages of a Michael Connelly thriller and then skip the last chapter.

Yeah, whatever. Figure out your own ending.

Can Peyton Manning do it again? Will the Spurs-Cavs put America to sleep (sans the fishes)? Will the Dodgers ever score again?

You play the games to get results. Play the seasons to crown a champion.

Are we going to stop the college basketball season now? Leave us to figure out who had the bigger impact, Kevin Love at UCLA or O.J. Mayo at USC? If Billy Donovan could find happiness on less than $5.5 million per?

Now that we have invited everyone to the College World Series, let's just skip it, heh? Cal State Fullerton or UC Irvine? Keep wondering.

Somebody needs to be pinched.

Just imagine if this do-it-yourself ending became all the rage in years past.

Jack Clark is coming to the plate, Tommy Lasorda signals Tom Niedenfuer to &. what? He walks him intentionally and the Dodgers win it all? Andy Van Slyke drills a home run, the Cards win anyway and Lasorda has to answer for the rest of his life why he didn't pitch to Clark?

If Gene Mauch leaves Mike Witt in to finish the ninth inning of Game 5 in the 1986 American League Championship Series, do the Angels win their first World Series and the Donnie Moore tragedy is avoided?

What if they hadn't added those three seconds back on the clock in the USA-USSR game at the 1972 Olympics? Would an irate Russia still be red?

Say the Rams never traded Eric Dickerson. They keep winning, filling Anaheim Stadium, the team never moves, Georgia doesn't head home and hoist a Super Bowl trophy in St. Louis. What if Carroll Rosenbloom never went for a swim?

Imagine if the Rams and Raiders never left. Think of all these NFL hoops we would have been spared the past dozen years. Better yet, if the Chargers had never left Los Angeles?

What if Magic Johnson never became HIV-positive?

Would the Lakers have avoided a 12-year drought between titles? Jerry West would never have left, Shaq never have arrived, Magic wouldn't be the Starbucks king? What if Jack McKinney never had his bike accident? Is there a dynasty anyway? Does Pat Riley have a hall-of-fame broadcasting career?

Come on, get the daughter in the diner, look up at the door and give us something. They didn't end "Godfather" at the funeral, and they didn't end the 1988 World Series opener with Kirk Gibson in the training room.

As Tony once said, "A wrong decision is better than indecision."

Let Notre Dame kick off the second half to Anthony Davis. Let Magic jump at center for the injured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Give the ball to Sandy Koufax in Game 7 of the 1965 World Series.

Play it out, don't leave the moment unfulfilled.

It's only sporting.

USC football coach Pete Carroll Steve Dilbeck's column appears

in the Daily News four times a week.

stephen.dilbeck@dailynews.com

(818) 713-3607 ---------

WHAT IF ....

Magic Johnson (left) never contracted HIV? Would the Lakers have suffered through a 12-year drought between titles?

Eric Dickerson (right) never was traded? Would the Los Angeles Rams of Anaheim been a winner on the field - and at the box office?