By MONTE DUTTON

Every single time I hear someone say, “I would (submit, suggest, etc.) …,” my mind conjures up, unsaid (usually), Hell, I won’t tell nobody, go ahead and (submit, suggest, etc.) it.

Many of my colleagues in the Fourth Estate – I’m so far out I have to tend the stables – try to attach degrees to words that don’t need them.

How ecstatic are you? One is either ecstatic or isn’t. Ecstasy has no degrees.

The athlete is likely to say, Very, very ecstatic. Of course, he or she is likely to volunteer something like, We played a very fabulous game. Those celebrating nearby will echo.

Veryvery,veruh,vehr fabulous!

Many years ago, it was my job to do a short interview with every player on a great high-school football team. The snippets ran all day on the radio. When I asked a player what he would remember most, he replied, “I shall never forget how undefeated we have been.”

It’s one of my 10 favorite quotations, right up there with “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth.”

I don’t actually keep score at many games anymore. Most are being scored on my cell. While watching the NCAA Tournament on Monday, I thought of a simple way to follow a game, not as effective as keeping score but interesting.

Make each inning a poker game. Assign values to every play. As currently constituted on my scratch pad, grounding into a double play is a 2, a strikeout a 3, groundout 4, flyout 5, sacrifice bunt 6, sacrifice fly 7, stolen base 8, hit by pitch 9, walk 10, single Jack, double Queen, triple King and home run an Ace.

Judge the inning by the best hand. Bad cards alone do not count. In other words, three straight strikeouts do not count as being “of a kind.” However, three strikeouts and two doubles can be a full house.

The team that wins the most hands (innings) will not always win, but it’s just something to bide the time in the same way that some people with a tablet use it mainly for solitaire or “Candy Crush,” whatever that is.

It’s also a way to say, Jacksboro won six tricks, but Paint Rock won the game, and none will understand, but a few will act like they do.

Hey, that’s right. Or, I be dogged.

That will be worth it alone.

LSU has a player named Steven “Monster” Milam whose hair is tiger-striped in purple and gold. This is what happens when baseball season lasts until after classes are over.

Meanwhile, Evansville, a 4 seed, won the Greenville (N.C.) Regional.

I found so many early college-baseball games devastating that I cheerfully turned to NASCAR at one of the few tracks where I’ve never been.

I don’t even know its name, but it used to be Gateway and it’s in Madison, Ill., across the Mississippi River from Saint Louis, Mo.

NASCAR is starting to perk up. The races are good. Fans are getting used to the young dynamos who occasionally say something besides a recitation of their sponsors.

The announcers talked incessantly about Saint Louis, even though the sponsor was Illinois, but I thought the race was great, right down the mysterious absence of fuel that cost Ryan Blaney the race.

John F. Kennedy said America was going to the moon “not because it is easy but because it is hard.” Sunday’s race, won by Austin Cindric, was great not because the passing was easy but because it was hard.

The late Bruton Smith once said that the problem was that too many passes occurred between two cars who weren’t within 10 yards of each other. The track was too wide when one car up against the wall passed another hugging the bottom, and it didn’t take much time.

Genuine duels occurred on Sunday, lap after lap, the car on the inside swooping ahead through the turns and the one on the outside sweeping back ahead down the straights.

Anderson Post 14 defeated Greenwood Post 20, 6-5, in American Legion baseball Monday night, but the Braves’ center fielder, Jaedon Goodwin of Laurens, singled three times in four at-bats.

Greenwood (0-2) trailed 6-0 after three innings but made a game of it with three runs in the top of the sixth inning.

Brody Linker was 4/4 at the plate for Anderson.

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