In other words, no second thoughts.

The Doctor, of course, is Tom Davis. He’s the new basketball coach at Drake University, and he knows he did the right thing in coming back to major-college basketball after being out of it for four seasons.

Davis, the winningest coach in University of Iowa basketball history with a 13-year record of 269-140, was hired April 22 for the Drake job vacated by Kurt Kanaskie.

"So how’s it going?" I asked Davis the day he joined our gang of working sportswriters, retired sports writers and sports editors and columnists at lunch.

"I’m enjoying it. I’m enjoying it very much," Davis said. "I worried about it. I worried that, if I came back into coaching, what happens a month or two later?

"I wondered if I’d be saying, ‘Oh, man, what did I get myself into?’"

But that hasn’t happened.

"One thing that’s helped me is the enthusiasm of everyone here in Des Moines and around the Drake campus—in the offices and the athletic department," Davis said. "Everybody is fired up.

"They recognize that we have a big job to do, but they’re willing to help, and that makes you feel good. I have a good young staff and they’re pretty excited about what we’re trying to do."

The thing that makes Davis’ move so intriguing is that his mission is to pump some life into a Drake program that hasn’t had any for a long time. The Bulldogs haven’t had a winning season since Gary Garner went 17-14 in 1986-87.

Despite the academic situation, Davis was willing to give Drake his best shot.

After all, spending 28 seasons at Lafayette, Boston College, Stanford and Iowa should tell everyone that he wasn’t exactly building a 543-290 record at Northwest Iowa Welding Academy.

And the way it looks to me, he’s going to do his best to use the academic thing to his advantage at Drake.

"Having good, first-class athletic competition has only helped Duke, Princeton and Stanford," Davis said, referring to three outstanding institutions of higher learning that have been able to field consistently strong basketball programs.

"So why can’t Drake aspire to be strong in certain athletic areas?" Davis asked. "It can only help a school if we can get it done."

Davis and his wife, Shari, have bought a home in Des Moines, his 2003-2004 non-conference schedule is complete, the start of practice is only about six weeks away, he’ll get a look at his team against some professional players from Mexico on a trip to Cancun and he’s upbeat.

"I don’t know how it could have gone much better," he said.

Davis said, because of the trip to Cancun, his players—the returnees from last season plus the newcomers—will be able to practice for 10 days, starting Aug. 17.

"Classes at Drake start before Labor Day," he said. "For the Cancun trip, we’ll leave Friday before Labor Day and be gone Saturday and Sunday, and return Monday night. The players will be back for classes on Tuesday.

"It will be a quick trip, but a good trip from a basketball point of view. There will be two teams from a Mexican professional league that have been hired to come in and play us. The University of Arkansas will also be there, and they’ll be playing those same two teams from Mexico, but we won’t play Arkansas."

"Texas A&M at Corpus Christi is the tournament host," he said. "Cleveland State and Texas Southern were also scheduled to be there, but Texas Southern may be replaced by another team."

To show that Davis has already done his homework, he said one reason he scheduled the tournament in Texas is because of Luke McDonald, his 6-6 senior-to-be from Wolfforth, Texas.

"It’s kind of neat," Davis said. "He’s our only senior and he has a chance to be the all-time leading scorer in Drake history if he can stay healthy and if we can have any kind of ballclub."

A number of people are ready to bail out on the baseball season.

That includes me.

The Chicago Cubs’ season has ended. Just as all of us feared, the swoon came in June.

The only reason the Cubs haven’t totally died in the standings is because the rest of the teams in the National League’s Central Division have been bad, too. Any day now, I expect St. Louis to take charge of the division in a big-time way.

The Cubs’ pitching staff that was supposed to be so talented has hit the skids. Heck, Mark Prior and Kerry Wood can’t pitch all the games. The bullpen—so strong in April—is now lousy, like all other Cub bullpens in the past.

The Cubs couldn’t hit in May and can’t hit now. Sammy Sosa, desperate because he’s showing every sign that he’s over the hill (do you suppose he’s been lying about his age all these years?), tried to see if corking his bat would help

People were talking about this team being in the World Series for the first time in a million or so years, but now the Cubs aren’t even the best team in Chicago.

The White Sox won two of three from the Cubs at Wrigley Field, then proved how good they are by winning two of three in their own park. Suddenly, manager Dusty Baker has run out of magic.

All I can say is wait’ll next year. Yeah, so the same thing happens.