Canzano: Mailbag hits San Diego State, SMU, Pac-12, ESPN, Apple, Blazers and more

Your questions, my answers.

San Diego State is on hold while the Pac-12 Conference settles its media deal.

My parents knew me well. They bought me a statistical baseball board game called “LONG BALL” in 1980. It included a pair of seven-sided dice and a laminated roster card for every Major League Baseball team.

Roll a certain combination of numbers on the dice and Jack Clark would hit a home run. Roll a different one and he’d ground out, fly out, pop up, strike out or walk. I sat on the carpet of my bedroom for hours, keeping score and calling play-by-play in my head as if I were broadcaster Hank Greenwald in the booth at Candlestick Park.

That first summer with the game I went nuts. I played a mythical 162-game season for my favorite team — the San Francisco Giants. The final game ended in a 3-1 loss to the Dodgers with the bases loaded and Clark stranded in the on-deck circle.

To this day, I wonder what “Jack the Ripper” would have done given the chance.

I still have the game. It’s in a dust-covered box on a shelf in our garage. Every once in a while I lift the lid and peek in, just to make sure the pieces are still there. I outgrew that game in one summer, but I never stopped loving it.

Thank you to all who subscribe and support this publication and those who have purchased a gift subscription for a friend or family member. Also, thanks to those who donate paid subscriptions for seniors/readers on fixed budgets.

Onto this week’s mailbag…