GRAND RAPIDS — There’s a lot of nuances to sports conversations on KAXE.
This week, the conversation began with a wrap-up of the NCAA women’s and men’s championships.
Along with the tournament play, Sports Page addressed the apparent racism on display when it came to public reaction toward some on-the-court antics. The behavior of Angel Reese of Louisiana State University during the women’s championship game was dissected — even though both Reese and Caitlin Clark of University of Iowa taunted each other during the competition.
“Trash talking is a part of sports,” said John Bauer, one of the Sports Page commentators.
Fellow contributor Kyle Erickson said he thinks race was at play.
“Caitlyn is a young white woman and Reese is a young black woman, and there were definitely differences in social media and the larger media on the conversation about (it) — one of them was quote unquote ‘classless’ and one was ‘competitive,’” Erickson said.
The conversation turned to the men’s NCAA champions, University of Connecticut.
Erickson said, “Women’s basketball (at UConn) is legendary and well deserved. One of the best programs in history. I don’t know that the media give the men’s team enough credit. They’ve won five titles in the last 24 years.”
Baseball updates
Also in sports news was a collective bargaining agreement for minor league baseball, newly ratified by the players association.
“Among the impacts of this players will actually get housing provided to them by the teams,” Erickson said. “Previously you would have, especially in the lower levels of the minors, sometimes seven and eight players crammed into a two-bedroom apartment.
“People were skipping two meals a day – and the reason is that they are being paid, the lower levels are, $11,000 per year. That is criminal.”
With collective bargaining, Erickson explained pay will go up to $27,000 a year.
“People don’t think about that for decades and decades, minor league players were being exploited,” Erickson said. “They’re being paid sub-minimum wage.”
In Minnesota Twins talk, Bauer said, “Twins pitching has been pretty incredible, starting pitchers for sure.”
This led to Erickson's regular rant on Twins Manager Rocco Baldelli and his tendency to pull starters early, in Erickson’s view.
“They need to be allowed to pitch deeper into games,” he said. “And if this is already happening in April, over a long 162-game marathon season, you're not just keeping your starters from building endurance and learning to pitch deeper in games — you're putting more innings than you need to on your bullpen.”
“Caitlyn is a young white woman and Reese is a young black woman, and there were definitely differences in social media and the larger media on the conversation about (it) — one of them was quote unquote ‘classless’ and one was ‘competitive.'"Kyle Erickson
Sports Page trivia
Finally, the Sports Page ended with KAXE Senior Correspondent Scott Hall’s sports trivia. This week, the topic was NCAA hockey tournament history. Some of the questions:
Q. The Gopher men's team first made it to the NCAA finals in 1953 and 1954, losing both times. Who was the Gopher coach?
A. John Mariucci from Eveleth.
Q. The NCAA women's hockey tournament started in 2001. What school won five of the first ten women's hockey titles?
A. University of Minnesota-Duluth.
Q. What school won the women's title this year?
A. Wisconsin won for the seventh time.
Q. The head coach for all of the Wisconsin women's seven national titles was also the MVP of the 1980 U.S. men's Olympic Hockey team. Who is he?
A. Mark Johnson. Johnson scored two goals in the 1980 game between the U.S. and Soviet Union.
