Mike Pratt was a smart basketball player as Dan Issel’s sidekick at the University of Kentucky. He was smart enough to be a head coach in the NCAA’s college ranks. As UK fans who have heard him do analytical  work with Tom Leach on radio broadcasts on the Big Blue network,  he also shows his brainpower there.

NBA scouts know enough to pick his brain about UK and other Southeastern Conference players.

As a speaker, he can tell Adolph Rupp stories that will have his audience rolling on the floor.

Attn: TV bosses
I wish general managers of our television stations had been watching last Thursday morning on Channel 7 in Louisville when Pratt was Dave Ragone’s guest. He would be a hit in any capacity on his own show. So would Bellarmine University coach Scott Davenport, a Ragone guest earlier in the week. Ragone’s partner, ex-Wildcat Scott Padgett, left the program to join John Calipari’s UK staff, and the ex-U of L quarterback has been having guest partners.

Pratt tells it as it is. No bull. You ask him a question and he gives you his honest opinion.

For instance, you knew immediately what he thought of Billy Clyde Gillispie by the smiles on his face when callers were critical of the ex-coach’s work.

Pratt said he thinks that Jodie Meeks will return to UK for his senior year. He said he wasn’t surprised that Patrick Patterson returned for his senior season. Patterson and his parents wanted him to get his degree.

Ragone’s show is on Monday through Friday from 6:30 to 8 a.m.

Those 300 winners
When Randy Johnson was seeking to join the list of 300 winners last week,  I went scurrying to one of my three Baseball Encyclopedias. I wanted to prove a point that there are 300-game winners and there are 300-game winners.

Here’s what I mean. It disturbs me greatly when home run hitters are mentioned without telling us that some of the leaders are cheaters (steroids). And it is more unfair when some of our greatest pitchers were deprived of a chance for 300 victories by service in World War II.

Let’s take at look at two of the greatest of all time, Bob Feller and Warren Spahn.

In the three seasons prior to WWII, the fire-balling Feller posted these records for the Cleveland Indians: 24-9 in 1939, 27-11 in 1940 and 25-13 in 1941.

Feller joined up
A few days after Pearl Harbor Day on Dec. 7, 1941, Feller didn’t wait to be drafted. The Iowa farm boy enlisted in the Navy.

In the next four years, he pitched in just eight games.

The next three years, Feller was 26-15 in 1946, 20-11 in 1947 and 19-15 in 1948.

For his 18 years, he won 266 games and lost 162.

He deserves  an asterisk (*) by his record to indicate his four seasons lost to his Navy service. He easily would have won well over 300 games.

Winningest lefty
Spahn also missed four years to the war but pitched  21 years in all and posted a 363-245 record, which makes him the winningest lefthanded pitcher in history. Thanks to A. Ray Smith when he owned  the Louisville Redbirds, I had Spahn and Bob Gibson on my TV show.  Spahn was most proud of his Hall of Fame record and he was quick to point out that he missed a lot of playing time to the war.

Gibson, of course, was so good that baseball was forced to make a major change, lowering the height of the pitching mound so the hitters would have a better chance of hitting the baseball. Gibson also was an outstanding basketball player. He played for the Harlem Globetrotters when they played basketball for real, even beating NBA teams.

New Diddle dog yarn
Down through the years, numerous former Western Kentucky Hilltoppers have told about the time famed coach Ed Diddle lost his dog, Rex. Everyone in Warren and adjoining counties was looking for Rex. But when Mr. Diddle opened the rumble seat of his coupe after four days there was  Rex! Mr. Diddle said, “Rex, where have you been?”

Manual alumni director Mike McDaniel, author of “Stand Up And Cheer,” the best history of any Kentucky high school I have ever read, was kind enough to send a 1936 copy of Bruce Dudley’s Courier-Journal column with the rumble seat version.

The story I always was told was that Mr. Diddle found his dog in the trunk of his car. Either way, it’s a good story. There are so many “Diddleisms.” One I like had Mr. Diddle telling his basketball players: “Line up alphabetically according to height.”