It’s no secret Barry Bonds doesn’t have a lot of friends in baseball. Ask him the names of his teammates on the San Francisco Giants, and he might be lucky to guess half of them.

DALLAS — The Dallas Mavericks still can’t stop Phoenix’s inside-and-outside playoff combination, even with Amare Stoudemire on the bench with an injury this year.

HOUSTON — Graham Rahal was racing cars five years before he earned his Ohio driver’s license.

SAN FRANCISCO — Three Cardinals pitchers fell a single short of the cycle.

CHICAGO — Mark Buehrle got his third straight win, allowing six hits in seven innings against a team that has always given him problems, and the Chicago White Sox beat the Oakland Athletics 3-2 Wednesday night to complete a three-game sweep.

Tony Smaldino, a sophomore who began the year on the junior varsity team, was a hero in Tuesday’s CIF North Coast Section Class A playoff opener.

Northern California’s premier traveling sprint car tour, the Golden State Challenge, will open Calistoga Speedway’s 2006 racing season with two nights of racing over Memorial Day weekend on Saturday and Sunday, May 27 and 28.

NOTES AND QUOTES for a Thursday in the Napa Valley:

Nine members of Napa Track Club traveled to the Modesto USA Track & Field-sponsored meet last Saturday, and everyone medaled. Ten first-place finishes were garnered and 10 personal records were broken.