CORKY: UA softball has captured our hearts

Hall of Fame coach Lute Olson turned Tucson and Southern Arizona into an unlikely basketball hotbed. Football draws the big crowds and remains the No. 1 moneymaker at the University of Arizona.

Annika Sorenstam, Lorena Ochoa, Don Pooley and Jim Furyk are among a parade of Wildcat golfers who’ve made it big on the professional tours.

The swimming program under Frank Busch is among the best in the country, and there is an out-and-out reverence for Wildcat baseball.

But there’s no sport closer to the heart of the community and the fans here in Green Valley than Mike Candrea’s Arizona softball team.

The Wildcats, with a 46-15 record, will play No. 1 ranked Florida, 60-3, in the first round of the Women’s College World Series at 6 p.m. tomorrow in Oklahoma City. The game will be televised on ESPN.

Softball is a game of pitching and defense, but this year’s Arizona team has literally clubbed its way to success. The Cats have hit — are you ready for this? — an NCAA record 134 home runs, led by Stacie Chambers with 31 and Jenae Leles with 23.

The offense has produced 499 runs to 198 for the opponents.

Candrea has been called “the John Wooden” of college softball. The wonderful nonagenarian UCLA legend wouldn’t be offended, I’m sure, if someone referred to him as “the Mike Candrea” of college basketball.

The men are alike in many respects, notably in strength, discipline and character.

Candrea, an Arizona State graduate, has won eight national championships for arch-rival UA.

Mike has won 1,146 games as head coach of the Wildcats, plus one gold medal and one silver as head coach of the U.S. Olympic team. After winning the silver in Beijing, he retired as head coach of USA Softball.

Twenty-one trips to the Women’s College World Series in 22 years is reason enough for the Wildcats to pack cozy Hillenbrand Stadium on the UA campus for every home game. They averaged 2,458 fans a game this season, drawing 44,249 overall.

But there’s more to UA softball than numbers.

Mike has recruited good players who happen to be great kids. They meet and interact with the fans, who virtually adopt them as their own.

The sport is easy to like, too. It’s a quick game, exciting and usually low-scoring.

Invented in 1887 as a winter — and indoor — version of baseball, it has been known as “softball” only since 1926. Before that, it had a number of names: indoor baseball, kitten ball, diamond ball, mush ball and pumpkin ball.

I don’t know when it became an outdoor game, but that’s where it belongs. And it has flourished as a college sport.

The tournament committee did no favors for Arizona this year, sending the Wildcats to Louisville for the regionals and then to Stanford to face the Cardinal in the super regional. Strange, but Arizona was seeded No. 9 and was sent back and forth across the country, while Arizona State was No. 10 and reached the College World Series by beating North Dakota State twice in Tempe, as super regional host. Go figure.

ASU is the defending national champ; maybe that’s the reason.

The Pacific-10 Conference sends three teams to the eight-team NCAA championships this time — Arizona, ASU and Washington. Pac-10 champion UCLA, which has won 11 national championships, lost to Missouri in the super regionals at UCLA. The rest of the field includes Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Michigan.

Road warriors for sure, the Wildcats have a tough assignment in their opener against No. 1 ranked Florida. But the Cats have made a tradition out of meeting and beating the best.

That’s why softball is so dear to our hearts.

Former Tucson Citizen columnist Corky Simpson writes a weekly commentary for the Green Valley News.

UA Softball

No. 1 Florida versus No. 9 Arizona

Women’s College World Series, Oklahoma City.

6 p.m.

TV: ESPN.