I could go on and on about it… but seriously, there’s a danger in making that building more than it was. It was the people there — fans and players — who made it special. The building itself? Well, it was loud and for its time, it was fine, very representative of the arenas of that era.

In fact, I have no doubt at some point it will serve as a living museum for what sports arenas once looked like — a curiosity more than anything. By then all the other non-functional arenas of its ilk will have been torn down. But the old Glass Palace will still be there, probably hosting flea markets and the rare concert.

But fans going to the Trail Blazers’ exhibition game there tonight will find small leg room at their seats, fewer rest rooms than they need and concourses not big enough to accomodate the crowd. And of course, a building now on the National Registry for Historic Places. Yeah, great.

For me, the building was special because of the great people who played there and the devoted fans who idolized them. And pardon this little aside, but to me — one other thing:

Some great, great sports writers who wrote so many marvelous pieces there. Blazer beat writers like John Dhulst, Wayne Thompson, Bob Robinson and Ken Wheeler told the Blazer story with great skill and accuracy. Never fawning but always fair, these men did their jobs in an era before all the new media brought attention to the writers themselves. Most of those guys, in fact, would have run from the spotlight, anyway. They just weren’t brought up in the business to think they deserved it.

I love those guys. All are still with us, thank goodness, in various stages of retirement. All of them, too, were a great, GREAT help to me in my career, in their own way.  I hope at some point during the team’s 40-year celebration those guys will be honored, too. In the early days of the team, without a lot of TV coverage and no sports radio, people learned to love this team mostly through the eyes and hearts of the men who covered the Blazers for The Oregonian and the Oregon Journal.

It would be a shame to forget their great accomplishments — and the great integrity and skill they brought to their jobs.

One more time — thanks, guys. All of you.

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Look, the season hasn’t even started yet. Please attempt to understand where I’m coming from here. I’m not dissing college football players when I intimate that they’re attending your little college only to play football and get ready for the NFL.

Seriously, you think all those guys are there to get their degrees in pre-law? Nope, no more than Oregon State’s players are in Corvallis to gobble up pharmacy degrees. I get it and have long railed against the hypocrisy of college sports — where people try to ignore the facts of a high-powered athletic program. The way the system is set up, kids have to go to college if they want to play in the NFL and I don’t happen to think that’s always right.

I don’t hate your team and I don’t hate your players. I call it as I see it and if you can’t handle it, why are you here? I will reiterate that one more time — if you don’t like my style or you think I’m an idiot, please don’t bother coming here. It will save us both time — you in leaving your ridiculous comments and me in having to read them.

And as far as owing Oregon’s LeGarrette Blount an apology, as one commenter suggested, I find that ironic. You’re defending a guy who was thrown out of his very first practice of the season.

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Geesh, if everyone who is suddenly screaming now about the Portland Beavers moving out of town actually went to games, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

I’m not that concerned about this fuss. If Vancouver, Hillsboro or anywhere else around here stepped up and built a beautiful ballpark, I’d like that better than PGE Park for minor-league baseball. And believe me, PGE Park is a very short ride from where I live.

It’s just that it’s time for us to have a real ballpark. Not a stadium. A ballpark — built for baseball. And if it’s done right, I repeat, it’s going to work even if it’s on Sauvie Island.

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Hot scoop — sports teams are selling all-you-can eat deals along with game tickets. Geesh, it’s been going on at the Rose Garden now since Global Spectrum operated the joint. As near as I can tell, it’s been spreading all over major-league baseball now for about three years.

And this is a Page 1 story in Portland? Yup, like I say — there’s a lot going on in this hamlet.

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I have to tell you, Oregon Duck fans, you’re a different breed. Most fans of teams can, at least once in a while, take an objective look at their favorite team.

They can see the bad things with the good. See the potential problems. Even make constructive criticism when merited because, really, all of that is part of being a fan. Overall, they’re capable of participating in objective discussions about their favorite team.

But not Oregon fans. At least, not many of them. ANY comments about the Ducks are usually met with extreme indignation, insults and generally grumpy opposition. It’s so predictable it’s funny. I have to tell you, this isn’t coming from just me, either. Others I know who write consistently about college sports will say the same thing.

The feedback from Duck fans is in a class by itself. Which is fine, really. Vent all you want. But I have to tell you, it’s really fun to jerk your chain.

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Did you ever chase foul balls as a kid? Of course, we all did. Here, thanks to a tip from Chris, is a VERY entertaining tale about a kid who does it at a whole new level (averaging getting more than SEVEN balls per game this season at Miller Park in Milwaukee) — and his negotiations with a rookie big-leaguer who wants his first home run ball.

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That thought popped into my head this morning as I read Dallas owner Mark Cuban’s apology to the mother of Denver Nuggets forward Kenyon Martin, which appeared on Twitter and Cuban’s blog.

Cuban, to a lot of fans, is the perfect owner. He’s a self-made billionaire and a sort of regular guy. Imperfect like us all, a fan first and an owner second. I mean, for a lot of people, if they owned a team they’d want to be just like Cuban — sit on the bench with the team, travel with it, just sort of be one of the guys.

His players seem to love him — and they ought to because he spoils them to death. He’s taken the Mavericks up a notch in Dallas and he obviously seems willing to do anything to win. Perfect owner, right?

Well, I’m not so sure his fellow owners and the league office believe that. They see him as a royal pain in the ass, complaining about stuff all the time, screaming at referees and even at players on other teams. To them, he’s an uncouth embarrassment, a very loud, undignified example of what an owner of a professional sports team ought to be. And from what I’ve heard, they rue the day they allowed him into their private club.

On the other hand, we have Paul Allen. He also wants to win and is perfectly willing to put his money where his heart is. Truth be told, the man has lost hundreds of millions of dollars on his Trail Blazers, all in search of an NBA championship.

But he’s quiet. He doesn’t often bother with owners meetings and has never gotten into the social part of being an owner in the NBA. You’ll see him on the baseline, under the basket, munching on some popcorn, cheering, chatting with his general manager. But this is never going to be the guy who is caught screaming at a player on another team — or that player’s mother. I’ve never seen him where he didn’t seem to be totally under control.

Paul’s deal isn’t hanging out with the team, although in the early days of his ownership, there were some H-O-R-S-E games with Clyde Drexler and Kiki Vandeweghe. Allen likes the player personnel side of it all. He’s heavily involved in the draft and in trades. He’s got his own opinions, and as the owner of the team, expresses them. Probably quietly, I’m guessing. But when you own the joint, you don’t need to speak loudly. People listen.

As long as you aren’t in his crosshairs, Cuban is hard to dislike. He’s a character. He’s different. The Mavericks almost seem to be named after their owner and I kind of wish there were more like him. I like Allen, too. In fact, my only regret is never having a chance to get to know him better. I think we’d have some very interesting conversations. 

I’m happy they’re both in the league. Balance is nice. And really, I have to tell you it would be kind of fun to have at least one goofy guy around here to keep things lively.

I could just picture Cuban, as the owner of the Blazers, on the floor going crazy when Trevor Ariza took out Rudy Fernandez. . .

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Watching the lacrosse LumberJax run off to another city shows just how difficult it is in this town to run a professional sports team.

The lesson learned from the Jax applies just the same to about all the other franchises that have fled this city. Luring fans into the Rose Garden for indoor lacrosse was difficult, but the fan base was growing. Attendance was really not the problem for this franchise. Sponsorships and big-ticket sales were the real culprit.

Fact: There’s not enough corporate support in Portland for another major-league team. There is barely enough for the Trail Blazers and the assorted minor sports we support. I’ve always been the biggest advocate for bringing Major League Baseball to Portland — but right now, I’d say it can’t work. That’s not because of the potential fan base, either. Such a team would draw extremely well from all over the Pacific Northwest. It wouldn’t be a problem to find people to buy tickets.

The real problem is that the unfriendly attitude in this state toward big corporations has driven most of them out of here. Oh, yeah, that’s also why we have such a high unemployement rate, but that’s another topic for another blog.

When it comes to supporting a professional sport, the fan base is necessary, but it’s imperative you also have businesses willing to sponsor games on television and radio, to buy suites and high-end season tickets, to buy signage in the arena and once in a while, to even buy into the team itself. We just don’t have enough of that in Portland right now.

Of course, one thing I’ve learned over the years in Portland is that we never learn much here about the value of sports to a community. No matter how much the Trail Blazers teach us we so seriously undervalue what pro sports can do for a community’s attitude and its quality of life.

Our political and social leaders just don’t get it. When they see Portland all geeked up over the Trail Blazers, when they see the community rising and falling over the fate of its team, when they see the joy that franchise can give to our community and how it brings us all together — they never nod their head and say, “THAT’S what it’s all about. THAT’S the value of professional sports to a community. THAT’S why chasing a pro football or Major League Baseball team is a worthwhile endeavor.”

And to me, that’s why throwing a few million bucks into a stadium once every century or so is nothing to be ashamed of for a community. Here we are in Portland, agonizing over $50 or $60 million in a city where billions have been thrown at streetcars, trams, transit malls, convention centers, condos and bike paths.

Yes, I’m afraid that aside from the Blazers, Triple-A baseball and Major League Soccer are about all the business climate in Portland can support at this time. What’s wrong with doing it in a first-class manner? The last time a NEW ballpark was built in Portland was when Vaughn Street Park was constructed in 1901. And, of course, it was privately funded.

One of these days, somebody is going to realize that venues for sports are a legitimate investment in our community’s quality of life. Just about every other city in the world recognized that decades ago, but small-town Portland keeps sputtering along waiting for someone else to do it, recoiling in horror at the thought of actually putting public money into such a thing.

Can you imagine that this city has NEVER funded the construction of a new stadium? It has renovated Multnomah Stadium/Civic Stadium/PGE Park (originally built by the Multnomah Athletic Club) two or three times — which was, as Bill Cutler so appropriately put it in about 1971, “like putting silk stockings on a hog.” 

I’m tired of it. It’s time sports fans finally get their share of the pie.

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We talked about this yesterday as a guest on “Wheels at Work” on 95.5 the Game. It’s such a hot topic in this town and has been for a long time (like decades).

There is no question that the officiating in the NBA bothers people a lot. I’ve written before that because there is an inconsistent application of traveling rules, three seconds in the key, illegal defense, offensive fouls, etc., it’s easy for people to believe that their favorite player or team is being discriminated against. The NBA needs to continue to push for consistency of enforcement but that’s not as easy as it sounds.

The game’s too fast. The people who play it are too big and too smart. It makes it incredibly hard to officiate. But they still do pretty well.

We know this, in part, because we watch games on television. We watch analysts complain (and not just complain, but whine and scream) about bad calls, only to be shown the replay and find out that the referee was correct all along. And that happens A LOT. Not to say the TV guys will always admit the referees were correct — but if you look at the video evidence, it often appears they were.

But sometimes they miss the call. And some referees miss more than others — just as some basketball players miss more shots than others. And yes, Leon Wood had a bad night Monday in the Rose Garden. He has a lot of bad nights, I bet. But to think Leon Wood, a former NBA player, has something against your Trail Blazers is a bit of a stretch. Some nights these guys are just bad. Stuff happens.

But honest, folks — I don’t think there’s a conspiracy against your favorite team. They miss calls but they’re equal-opportunity misses. The problem with basketball is that it’s impossible to officiate and there’s always a replay somewhere to point out your mistakes. You could put five referees out there — the best ones in the world — and have them do a 48-minute game and at the end of it, you could rerun two or three calls on videotape and wonder how anyone with decent eyesight could miss a call like that.

I’ve gotten a few e-mails from people in the last few days asking me why Steve Javie still has a job in the NBA, since everyone knows he’s pretty arrogant. Well, he still has a job because he grades out as one of the best officials in the league and has for years. He’s an outstanding referee. Period. Does he have an attitude? Yes, way too much of an attitude in my opinion.

But he’s no Jake O’Donnell, who was an arrogant jerk who held grudges and carried his authority around the league like a lead pipe, hitting people over the head with it. And Jake wasn’t the only one. There were several. But I give the NBA a lot of credit. It has changed and what was once tolerated from referees, no longer is. There’s a real effort these days to make officials accountable and more approachable.

Are there bad ones? Yup — like I said, it’s an impossible job and with the abuse officials take from all sides, even their bosses in some cases, it’s a job most people wouldn’t be able to handle. It’s one of those jobs, I’m afraid, that if you weren’t crazy when you accepted the position, the job would soon drive you there.

But there has to be accountability for players, coaches and fans, too. You can go ahead and blame a loss on referees if you want. Or you can look back at missed shots, blown defensive assignments, wasted timeouts, dumb decisions — any number of things that actually decide basketball games.

And when I hear people ripping a referee for how many calls he missed, I want to ask these questions:

“Are you willing to rip your star player for missing shots in the same fashion you bash referees for missing calls? Are you willing to chastise your coach the same way for his poor decisions? Why are we not applying our criticisms equally here? Are the referees just there to take the blame for your team’s failings?”

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We’ll be at The Agency, near PGE Park, at noon Friday, for our first “Lunch with Dwight Jaynes.” We’ll have the fancy owner’s suite all to ourselves, I believe. You pay for your own stuff, but the food is good and the service will be excellent. It’s right at the ballpark MAX stop, if you want to get there that way – or they will validate your parking in the basement lot.

We’ll just talk some sports and I’m looking forward to a chance to meet you. Also — if you can’t let me know you’re coming, don’t worry about it. They will be able to handle it OK. Just show up.

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