90 season playing in the 5,000-seat Mullett Arena at Arizona State University — the team’s 27-year history in the Valley was over. The news broke with just one home game left on the schedule, turning the team’s season finale into a wake. Then, in a flash of smoke, the team was gone. A disap- pearing act needs a good reappearance to complete the trick, but a half-hearted attempt to revive the Coyotes by owner Alex Meruelo failed in June when a land deal in Phoenix fell through. 22222 B EST E U LO GY Todd Walsh With about a week’s notice, Todd Walsh had to summarize the nearly three-decade exis- tence of a beloved Arizona sports franchise and the last 27 years of his own sports broad- casting career. The Arizona Coyotes had just wrapped up their final game of the season. Days earlier, they’d announced the team would move to Salt Lake City. Walsh had covered the team on the air since it came to the Valley in 1996, and over five poignant minutes on the postgame show, he bid an emotional and professional farewell to a franchise that was leaving a dedicated fanbase, a local media contingent and him behind. “Hockey gave me a personal and professional purpose,” Walsh said, sharing how the game and its people buoyed him after the death of each of his parents. With admirable poise and without a single verbal pause, Walsh helped fans through their grief just like hockey had helped him through his. “A good story lasts forever,” he told them. “However, sometimes the ending just isn’t what you want it to be.” 22222 B E ST S P O RTS M AS C OT Sparky the Sun Devil The Valley’s sports mascots leave a lot to be desired. Big Red, the Arizona Cardinals’ mascot, is one of two anthropomorphic cardinals in major professional sports. Howler the Coyote has moved to a farm upstate. The Suns’ Gorilla is famous but nonsensical, and the Diamondbacks having a bobcat mascot makes sense only if you know the tortured explanation for it. (Chase Field was originally named Bank One Ballpark – or B.O.B. for bobcat. Again, the team is named after a snake.) But Sparky is wholly original. Sure, there may be a few other devil mascots out there, but there’s only one Sun Devil. He has more history than most of his counter- parts in town, and he’s certainly unique. And there’s no mistaking what team he repre- sents — something the Valley’s other mascots would have a hard time claiming. 22222 B E ST S C O F F L AWS ASU Athletics We’re No. 1? It’s been a while since the Sun Devils won anything in a major sport — no offense to the men’s swimming and diving team, which won an NCAA title this year — but ASU landed atop a dubious leaderboard this year. In April, the NCAA penalized the Sun Devils for illegal recruiting during the pandemic under former football coach Herm Edwards. As a result, ASU is now tied with Southern Methodist University for the most major infractions (10) in NCAA history. The obvious solution: Go for 11. Bring back a poorly disguised James Harden on the basketball court. Start a sign-stealing scheme on the baseball diamond. Give every student- athlete a sports betting app, $500 and no supervision. It’s time to make history. 22222 B E ST I N A B I L I T Y TO R E A D T H E RO O M Ken Kendrick It should have been a celebratory moment. Spring training had sprung, and the Diamondbacks were coming off a surprise trip to the World Series. They’d just executed an exciting offseason, spending tens of millions of dollars to bolster a young and exciting team that had just brought post- season baseball back to the Valley. Then Diamondbacks managing partner Ken Kend- rick stepped in front of a bunch of micro- phones and issued a veiled threat to move the team. “We may run out of time in Phoenix,” Kendrick warned, raising the specter of relocating the team out of state. There are cities across the country, he explained, that “would certainly be very happy, you know, with, frankly, a successful, existing franchise.” Arizona Republic colum- nist Phil Boas called it Kendrick channeling “his inner mob boss.” In a rarity when it comes to Boas’ work, he was right.
