Couple more observations about the Retirement Announcement That Shocked The World And Pissed Off Wannabe Tough Guys Everywhere, on the Monday morning of the last week of the NFL preseason ...
* It is, indisputably, the best thing on Twitter. Some genius photoshopped a Civil War uniform onto Andrew Luck and his infamous 19th-century neck beard -- beards were big in the Civil War; you weren't a cool general if you didn't have one (lookin' at you, Joe Hooker) -- and voila, Capt. Andrew Luck was born.
But what happens now to all those poignant letters to Dearest Mother, thanking her for the latest care package of squirrel oil, braised possum thighs and candied gopher knees?
Alas, we may already have the answer. Here's what Capt. Andrew Luck tweeted yesterday:
Dearest mother —
The quill has never felt more heavy. I have made the decision to holster my sidearm permanently. I shall battle no more. The decision is difficult, but, as the hogs taught me, I must be true to myself. I am coming home to care for you and the farm.
— Andrew
So that's that, I guess. I for one will miss the candied gopher knees. I hear they're yummy.
* Others of note have done what Andrew Luck is doing, for a variety of reasons. Jim Brown left football at 30 to pursue an acting career. The game beat up Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus so bad they left at 29 and 31, respectively. Many, many others followed the same path for the same reason.
But somehow it's different when an Andrew Luck, beat up by the game, too, decides to walk away at 29. Apparently if you do that before football has actually crippled you, it fails to pass muster with the Wannabes, on account of the game pays you a whole lot of money for the privilege of crippling you. So shut up and take it like a man.
Know what else a guy like Andrew Luck deciding the game isn't worth it does?
Sends a shiver through every boardroom in the NFL.
This from Drew Magary of Deadspin: "And while the NFL will handle Luck’s retirement with its usual false graciousness, the collective silent scream of GMs and scouts in the face of a draining talent pool is growing by the second. Luck is the largest domino to fall, by far. If he can walk away from the game (and from untold millions in future earnings in a league in which good QBs play for quite a while) right before the season begins, anyone can. That means, going forward, teams are gonna be too scared shitless to draft ANYONE."
Absolutely spot on. It's one thing for a relative unknown to decide the game isn't worth it and depart in his 20s, as more and more are these days. But when a Calvin Johnson leaves at 30, or an Andrew Luck at 29? And when the latter is so bluntly honest about it, saying he's just tired of being in pain all the time, and what kind of life is that no matter how chunky the paycheck?
Whoa. Katie bar the door. And get ready for even more lunatic psychoanalysis at the NFL combine, as those desperate GMs try to determine who's still batty enough to want to play their game in an era of linebackers and edge rushers with the speed of Olympic sprinters, delivering foot-pounds of force unimaginable 30 or 40 years ago.
Think you've seen crazy from the combine before?
Just wait.
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Broken
They booed him when he walked off his last football field Saturday night, and what a fine thanks for services rendered that was. Andrew Luck left pieces of himself scattered from San Diego to Foxborough for all those jamokes in their throwback Peyton and Marvin and Bob Sanders jerseys, and their gold watch to him was to boo him like he was Deflategate Brady.
"Yeah, it hurt," Luck admitted later, eyes red, tears close, a 29-year-old man in a 55-year-old's body.
Darned right it hurt. But maybe it was affirmation, too, that walking away was the right thing at the right time for a man who always had more going on between his ears than snap counts and checkdowns, and who loved with a child's fervor a game that, in the end, didn't love him back.
Those dillsacks that booed him last night, every one of whom should have been tossed out of the joint like 2 a.m. drunks?
They weren't as hard on Andrew Luck as the game was, ultimately. Or as his own front office was.
It was the latter that most ruined him, of course, by drafting like drunks themselves. With almost unimaginable good fortune, they fell into a generational talent just as the generational talent they already had (Peyton Manning) was making for sunset. Then they put him behind a remainder-bin offensive line that couldn't block sunlight, and broke him the way a careless child breaks a toy.
Luck was hit, and hit, and hit again, even as he led the Colts back to semi-respectability. And the injuries soon followed.
Torn rib cartilage.
Torn abdomen.
Concussion.
Lacerated kidney that left him pissing blood.
The torn labrum in his throwing arm that refused to heal and put him down for the entire 2017 season.
And then ...
And then, the strained calf back in March. More pain. More pain. A month became two became six and still no one, least of all Luck himself, could figure out why he was still in pain, still couldn't move properly in the pocket.
Enough was finally enough.
And, listen, if what happened last night left most of the football world reeling, it was not something that came winging in from the blue. As long ago as 2017, when the shoulder simply wouldn't heal, Luck says he contemplated hanging it up. And he'd been mulling the same thing for two weeks before last night, and the Colts knew it. So he did not just spring this on his employers, and it wasn't a decision he arrived at on the spur of the moment.
In the end, it wasn't even his decision, in a sense. There comes a time when the body simply tells the mind, "No more." And the mind, no matter how sheathed it is in steel, has to go along.
This is what Luck seemed to be describing last night, and to hell with anyone who thinks badly of him for it. The jamokes and the clueless will scoff when Luck talks about how the pain had stolen the joy of the game for him, pointing out that he gets paid absurdly well to do a job and that joy doesn't enter into it.
But it does. And it should.
The money, see, is irrelevant, because playing professional football is a hard dollar no matter how high the dollars are stacked. It's why more and more players are walking away from the game in their 20s, or at the gateway of their 30s. No contract, after all, is juicy enough to give you back what football, by its very nature, takes away.
I have never stood on an NFL sideline during a game. But I have stood on the sideline at Notre Dame Stadium, many times, and I've heard what it sounds like when two high-end college football players collide at full speed.
It sounds like two cars colliding. You can't imagine the violence of it.
And that's not even the NFL, where the violence is ratcheted up even higher.
And so, players get out while the getting's good. And Andrew Luck is getting out while he can still walk, still get down on the floor and play with his kids when they come, go to their ballgames when they get older and remember being there.
Yeah, the timing sucks, if you're a Colts fan. But if you're Colts fan, your opinion matters exactly zero here, because it's not your life.
Or your pain. Or your vanished joy.
"Yeah, it hurt," Luck admitted later, eyes red, tears close, a 29-year-old man in a 55-year-old's body.
Darned right it hurt. But maybe it was affirmation, too, that walking away was the right thing at the right time for a man who always had more going on between his ears than snap counts and checkdowns, and who loved with a child's fervor a game that, in the end, didn't love him back.
Those dillsacks that booed him last night, every one of whom should have been tossed out of the joint like 2 a.m. drunks?
They weren't as hard on Andrew Luck as the game was, ultimately. Or as his own front office was.
It was the latter that most ruined him, of course, by drafting like drunks themselves. With almost unimaginable good fortune, they fell into a generational talent just as the generational talent they already had (Peyton Manning) was making for sunset. Then they put him behind a remainder-bin offensive line that couldn't block sunlight, and broke him the way a careless child breaks a toy.
Luck was hit, and hit, and hit again, even as he led the Colts back to semi-respectability. And the injuries soon followed.
Torn rib cartilage.
Torn abdomen.
Concussion.
Lacerated kidney that left him pissing blood.
The torn labrum in his throwing arm that refused to heal and put him down for the entire 2017 season.
And then ...
And then, the strained calf back in March. More pain. More pain. A month became two became six and still no one, least of all Luck himself, could figure out why he was still in pain, still couldn't move properly in the pocket.
Enough was finally enough.
And, listen, if what happened last night left most of the football world reeling, it was not something that came winging in from the blue. As long ago as 2017, when the shoulder simply wouldn't heal, Luck says he contemplated hanging it up. And he'd been mulling the same thing for two weeks before last night, and the Colts knew it. So he did not just spring this on his employers, and it wasn't a decision he arrived at on the spur of the moment.
In the end, it wasn't even his decision, in a sense. There comes a time when the body simply tells the mind, "No more." And the mind, no matter how sheathed it is in steel, has to go along.
This is what Luck seemed to be describing last night, and to hell with anyone who thinks badly of him for it. The jamokes and the clueless will scoff when Luck talks about how the pain had stolen the joy of the game for him, pointing out that he gets paid absurdly well to do a job and that joy doesn't enter into it.
But it does. And it should.
The money, see, is irrelevant, because playing professional football is a hard dollar no matter how high the dollars are stacked. It's why more and more players are walking away from the game in their 20s, or at the gateway of their 30s. No contract, after all, is juicy enough to give you back what football, by its very nature, takes away.
I have never stood on an NFL sideline during a game. But I have stood on the sideline at Notre Dame Stadium, many times, and I've heard what it sounds like when two high-end college football players collide at full speed.
It sounds like two cars colliding. You can't imagine the violence of it.
And that's not even the NFL, where the violence is ratcheted up even higher.
And so, players get out while the getting's good. And Andrew Luck is getting out while he can still walk, still get down on the floor and play with his kids when they come, go to their ballgames when they get older and remember being there.
Yeah, the timing sucks, if you're a Colts fan. But if you're Colts fan, your opinion matters exactly zero here, because it's not your life.
Or your pain. Or your vanished joy.
Friday, August 23, 2019
Echo of the past
So, you want to know just what a Model T the NFL preseason has become, in the age of the Tesla?
It seems the old grid doesn't have to be ironclad.
Which is to say, Oakland and Green Bay played a preseason game up in Winnipeg last night, but did so on an 80-yard field. They put the goal line at the respective 10-yard lines, because the gridiron in Winnipeg was set to CFL dimensions, which means the goalposts were on the goal lines. So they had to move the goalposts back, which left a couple of holes in the turf where they'd been anchored.
A patch job was deemed insufficient by Packers coach Matt LaFleur. And so ...
And so, they improvised. Which of course would never happen in an actual game.
That it happened last night is a tacit admission that even the NFL doesn't think preseason games are worth a bucket of warm spit. Most of what they traditionally have been about -- evaluating rookies and end-of-benchers in order to set your roster -- seems superfluous in the age of the combine and individual workout, where every aspect of every potential draft pick is scrutinized to the point of absurdity.
Used to be training camp lasted five, six weeks, and its primary goal was to whip the lads into shape after an offseason of sitting on their assets. You needed preseason games then, just so the players could get their football legs back. They needed to hit, and be hit, in a time when the only thing they'd been hitting for six months was the all-you-can-eat-buffet at the local Stuff Yer Face Here.
Not so much now.
Now training camp lasts two weeks, because the players have already gone through mini-camps and OTAs and mini-OTA camps. And in most cases have been working out individually in the interim.
Hall of Fame defensive back Rod Woodson once told me he took all of about two weeks off at the end of every season. Then it was back to his workout-and-diet regimen. It was one of the reasons he was famously regarded as the fittest player in the NFL -- and he needed to be, because to one degree or another pretty much everyone was following similar regimens.
In short ... it's a different time. Which is why preseason games have become quaint anachronisms whose necessity long ago passed its expiration date. The only thing they're good for now is getting valuable commodities hurt in meaningless exhibitions. That they still exist at all is a testament only to the greed of the owners, for whom preseason games remain a source of revenue. It's why many of them make preseason games a mandatory part of their season ticket packages.
But enough is enough. The only argument to be made for preseason games anymore is that without them, play in the first week of the regular season is apt to be a tad rusty. To which the only apt response is "So what?"
Besides, NFL teams already conduct controlled scrimmages against one another during training camp. So what is truly the purpose of preseason games, other than another way for the NFL to fleece the paying customers?
Take your time answering. I'll wait.
It seems the old grid doesn't have to be ironclad.
Which is to say, Oakland and Green Bay played a preseason game up in Winnipeg last night, but did so on an 80-yard field. They put the goal line at the respective 10-yard lines, because the gridiron in Winnipeg was set to CFL dimensions, which means the goalposts were on the goal lines. So they had to move the goalposts back, which left a couple of holes in the turf where they'd been anchored.
A patch job was deemed insufficient by Packers coach Matt LaFleur. And so ...
And so, they improvised. Which of course would never happen in an actual game.
That it happened last night is a tacit admission that even the NFL doesn't think preseason games are worth a bucket of warm spit. Most of what they traditionally have been about -- evaluating rookies and end-of-benchers in order to set your roster -- seems superfluous in the age of the combine and individual workout, where every aspect of every potential draft pick is scrutinized to the point of absurdity.
Used to be training camp lasted five, six weeks, and its primary goal was to whip the lads into shape after an offseason of sitting on their assets. You needed preseason games then, just so the players could get their football legs back. They needed to hit, and be hit, in a time when the only thing they'd been hitting for six months was the all-you-can-eat-buffet at the local Stuff Yer Face Here.
Not so much now.
Now training camp lasts two weeks, because the players have already gone through mini-camps and OTAs and mini-OTA camps. And in most cases have been working out individually in the interim.
Hall of Fame defensive back Rod Woodson once told me he took all of about two weeks off at the end of every season. Then it was back to his workout-and-diet regimen. It was one of the reasons he was famously regarded as the fittest player in the NFL -- and he needed to be, because to one degree or another pretty much everyone was following similar regimens.
In short ... it's a different time. Which is why preseason games have become quaint anachronisms whose necessity long ago passed its expiration date. The only thing they're good for now is getting valuable commodities hurt in meaningless exhibitions. That they still exist at all is a testament only to the greed of the owners, for whom preseason games remain a source of revenue. It's why many of them make preseason games a mandatory part of their season ticket packages.
But enough is enough. The only argument to be made for preseason games anymore is that without them, play in the first week of the regular season is apt to be a tad rusty. To which the only apt response is "So what?"
Besides, NFL teams already conduct controlled scrimmages against one another during training camp. So what is truly the purpose of preseason games, other than another way for the NFL to fleece the paying customers?
Take your time answering. I'll wait.
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Kid stuff
So here is this kid from South Korea, coming set now on the bump. He is the Little League World Series to me, an event that used to be charming and now is just more slick ESPN packaging. That's because he's 12-years-old and actually looks it.
I find this refreshing. Also comforting.
Some of these other 12-year-olds, see, look like they just got their driver's licenses. But this kid, he looks 12. He looks like his favorite food is ice cream or Pop Rocks or maybe hamburger, which a screen graphic just told us is the favorite food of the Japanese batter at the plate.
I don't remember what that particular kid did on that at-bat. But I do know the Japanese team roughed up the poor South Korean kid pretty good. Loaded the bases on him and then scored two runs on a sharp single.
That bumped Japan's lead from 5-2 to 7-2, which was the final score. They were pretty machine-like, the Japanese. Executed a flawless double steal and worked the hit-and-run and did all the things you never see major league teams do anymore, on account of MLB is home run derby now and not really baseball in the purest sense.
So Japan advanced and, watching them, you fell into that trap you sometimes fall into watching the Little League World Series. You forget these are 11-, 12-year-old kids because they play the game far too well for their age. You keep waiting for them to do goofy 12-year-old things out there, and it almost never happens.
A for-instance: There was a woman sitting next to me at the bar where I was watching Japan and South Korea the other day. She stared at the screen for a moment and then asked her boyfriend what level of baseball this was, because the players looked awfully small. She had no clue the players looked small because, well, they were kids, not tiny grownups.
And so, yes, thank God for that pitcher from South Korea, who actually looked his age. And thank God for what happened the other day, when the Cubs and the Pirates came to Williamsport to hang with the Little Leaguers and play a game.
There at the tail end of a 7-1 Cubs victory was reliever Craig Kimbrel, doing what he does. You've seen it: Right before he throws a pitch, he bends over at the waist and does this weird thing with his arms. Looks a little like the Karate Kid doing the Crane.
So there Kimbrel is, doing it. And up in the bleachers ... yep, sure enough, there's a bunch of Little Leaguers, imitating him. And for one wonderful moment, they look like what they are.
Kids. Just kids.
I find this refreshing. Also comforting.
Some of these other 12-year-olds, see, look like they just got their driver's licenses. But this kid, he looks 12. He looks like his favorite food is ice cream or Pop Rocks or maybe hamburger, which a screen graphic just told us is the favorite food of the Japanese batter at the plate.
I don't remember what that particular kid did on that at-bat. But I do know the Japanese team roughed up the poor South Korean kid pretty good. Loaded the bases on him and then scored two runs on a sharp single.
That bumped Japan's lead from 5-2 to 7-2, which was the final score. They were pretty machine-like, the Japanese. Executed a flawless double steal and worked the hit-and-run and did all the things you never see major league teams do anymore, on account of MLB is home run derby now and not really baseball in the purest sense.
So Japan advanced and, watching them, you fell into that trap you sometimes fall into watching the Little League World Series. You forget these are 11-, 12-year-old kids because they play the game far too well for their age. You keep waiting for them to do goofy 12-year-old things out there, and it almost never happens.
A for-instance: There was a woman sitting next to me at the bar where I was watching Japan and South Korea the other day. She stared at the screen for a moment and then asked her boyfriend what level of baseball this was, because the players looked awfully small. She had no clue the players looked small because, well, they were kids, not tiny grownups.
And so, yes, thank God for that pitcher from South Korea, who actually looked his age. And thank God for what happened the other day, when the Cubs and the Pirates came to Williamsport to hang with the Little Leaguers and play a game.
There at the tail end of a 7-1 Cubs victory was reliever Craig Kimbrel, doing what he does. You've seen it: Right before he throws a pitch, he bends over at the waist and does this weird thing with his arms. Looks a little like the Karate Kid doing the Crane.
So there Kimbrel is, doing it. And up in the bleachers ... yep, sure enough, there's a bunch of Little Leaguers, imitating him. And for one wonderful moment, they look like what they are.
Kids. Just kids.
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
Conspiracy theory for today
And now the latest episode from what is rapidly becoming America's least favorite soap opera, AB Goes West, Sort Of ...
In our latest episode, new Raiders wide receiver Antonio Brown finally showed up again for practice after essentially holding out because he didn't like the way his new helmet fit.
This after the Raiders' GM Mike Mayock finally got fed up and said (essentially), "Quit jacking around and get your ass in here. It's time to go to work."
So everything is A-OK now on AB Goes West, Sort Of. He's gone back to work. Jon Gruden is happy. Ashley's boyfriend, in a coma since the accident, didn't wake up with amnesia after all.
Except ...
Except the Blob, which loves to picnic on the fabled Grass Knoll, has a theory about all this.
The Blob's theory is the kerfuffle over AB's helmet wasn't really about the helmet.
The helmet, the Blob believes, was a smokescreen. The problem with AB is at the other end of his body, and he/the Raiders are trying to keep it quiet.
The Blob thinks AB's feet still aren't tip-top, so to speak.
Oh, sure, he went off and got them worked on after sustaining severe frostbite during a cryogenic treatment in France. But that doesn't mean they're completely healed. And the Blob is wondering, given NFL teams' tendency to be, shall we say, less than forthcoming about injuries, if perhaps AB's feet are still an issue.
This is not a suspicion unique to the Blob, mind you. Plenty of other sports-talk yappers have suggested the same thing. After all, how AB's got his feet frostbitten to begin with was kind of embarrassing: He forgot to put on protective footwear before the cryogenic treatment.
So the Raiders now have a shiny, expensive new toy that might or might no be damaged goods. And you can understand why they might want to keep that quiet, too, given how much they shelled out for the guy.
Look. I don't know much, but I do know once you've had an extremity badly frostbitten, it tends to become a chronic issue. It becomes far more susceptible to the cold. I once knew a Korean War vet who got his feet severely frostbitten up on the Chosin Reservoir. Every time the weather turned cold, big lumps would pop up on the soles of his feet.
His souvenir from Frozen Chosin, he used to tell me.
So, anyway, I'm looking at the Raiders' schedule, and I see they're in New York in late November, and in Kansas City on Dec. 1, and in Denver on Dec. 29. Those places tend to get cold that time of year. And so ...
And so, I'm wondering how AB's feet are going to feel on those dates. And I'm wondering if the Raiders -- who, before he's even played a down, have clearly already had their fill of AB drama -- are wondering the same thing.
Or so it looks from the Grassy Knoll.
In our latest episode, new Raiders wide receiver Antonio Brown finally showed up again for practice after essentially holding out because he didn't like the way his new helmet fit.
This after the Raiders' GM Mike Mayock finally got fed up and said (essentially), "Quit jacking around and get your ass in here. It's time to go to work."
So everything is A-OK now on AB Goes West, Sort Of. He's gone back to work. Jon Gruden is happy. Ashley's boyfriend, in a coma since the accident, didn't wake up with amnesia after all.
Except ...
Except the Blob, which loves to picnic on the fabled Grass Knoll, has a theory about all this.
The Blob's theory is the kerfuffle over AB's helmet wasn't really about the helmet.
The helmet, the Blob believes, was a smokescreen. The problem with AB is at the other end of his body, and he/the Raiders are trying to keep it quiet.
The Blob thinks AB's feet still aren't tip-top, so to speak.
Oh, sure, he went off and got them worked on after sustaining severe frostbite during a cryogenic treatment in France. But that doesn't mean they're completely healed. And the Blob is wondering, given NFL teams' tendency to be, shall we say, less than forthcoming about injuries, if perhaps AB's feet are still an issue.
This is not a suspicion unique to the Blob, mind you. Plenty of other sports-talk yappers have suggested the same thing. After all, how AB's got his feet frostbitten to begin with was kind of embarrassing: He forgot to put on protective footwear before the cryogenic treatment.
So the Raiders now have a shiny, expensive new toy that might or might no be damaged goods. And you can understand why they might want to keep that quiet, too, given how much they shelled out for the guy.
Look. I don't know much, but I do know once you've had an extremity badly frostbitten, it tends to become a chronic issue. It becomes far more susceptible to the cold. I once knew a Korean War vet who got his feet severely frostbitten up on the Chosin Reservoir. Every time the weather turned cold, big lumps would pop up on the soles of his feet.
His souvenir from Frozen Chosin, he used to tell me.
So, anyway, I'm looking at the Raiders' schedule, and I see they're in New York in late November, and in Kansas City on Dec. 1, and in Denver on Dec. 29. Those places tend to get cold that time of year. And so ...
And so, I'm wondering how AB's feet are going to feel on those dates. And I'm wondering if the Raiders -- who, before he's even played a down, have clearly already had their fill of AB drama -- are wondering the same thing.
Or so it looks from the Grassy Knoll.
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Your Hollywood script for today
Not many people pay a lot of attention to Arizona rookie league baseball these days, or any days, really. That's because, well, it's the Arizona rookie league. And it's also because fewer people are paying attention to baseball in general, now that it's basically become a Home Run Derby video game.
Batter comes up, batter goes yard. Batter comes up, batter strikes out swinging. Rinse. Repeat.
Anyway ... even though it is just the Arizona rookie league, something sort of wonderful happened the other night: A 23-year-old kid named Nathan Patterson, in his professional debut, struck out all three batters he faced.
And if you're asking here, "Why is that so wonderful, particularly?"...
Well. It's because the 23-year-old kid named Nathan Patterson was, a couple of months ago, just a fan.
One night earlier this summer, see, he went to a Colorado Rockies game and decided to try his luck at a radar gun pitching booth. The radar gun clocked him at 96 mph. Video of it went viral, and, lo and behold, suddenly the Oakland A's were signing him to a contract and shipping him to Arizona.
That was Hollywood-y enough. But then the kid strikes out the side in his first outing?
"Oh, come on!" every film exec in California just exclaimed.
(OK, so probably not. I mean, someone did do a film about Vince Papale, the bartender who became a special teams fan favorite with the Philadelphia Eagles. And there was that one film starring Dennis Quaid about a schoolteacher who wound up pitching for the Tampa Bay Rays. And there was "It Happens Every Spring," where a nerdy college professor played by Ray Milland became a star pitcher after developing a bat-dodging baseball. But you get drift.)
The drift being, Nathan Patterson is not Ray Milland, but just a guy with a lively arm. And this is not something that happens every day.
It is, you figure, exactly the sort of fairy tale every kid getting the full ESPN treatment out in Williamsport, Pa., right now still believes in. The Little League World Series may have become as slickly corporate as MLB these days, but the kids are still kids, and they still dream their dreams. And so a guy like Nathan Patterson?
He is their secular patron saint. And he is everything good about baseball, or at least what baseball was always meant to be.
Something to hang onto these days, as you watch another boring video game dinger land in the seats.
Batter comes up, batter goes yard. Batter comes up, batter strikes out swinging. Rinse. Repeat.
Anyway ... even though it is just the Arizona rookie league, something sort of wonderful happened the other night: A 23-year-old kid named Nathan Patterson, in his professional debut, struck out all three batters he faced.
And if you're asking here, "Why is that so wonderful, particularly?"...
Well. It's because the 23-year-old kid named Nathan Patterson was, a couple of months ago, just a fan.
One night earlier this summer, see, he went to a Colorado Rockies game and decided to try his luck at a radar gun pitching booth. The radar gun clocked him at 96 mph. Video of it went viral, and, lo and behold, suddenly the Oakland A's were signing him to a contract and shipping him to Arizona.
That was Hollywood-y enough. But then the kid strikes out the side in his first outing?
"Oh, come on!" every film exec in California just exclaimed.
(OK, so probably not. I mean, someone did do a film about Vince Papale, the bartender who became a special teams fan favorite with the Philadelphia Eagles. And there was that one film starring Dennis Quaid about a schoolteacher who wound up pitching for the Tampa Bay Rays. And there was "It Happens Every Spring," where a nerdy college professor played by Ray Milland became a star pitcher after developing a bat-dodging baseball. But you get drift.)
The drift being, Nathan Patterson is not Ray Milland, but just a guy with a lively arm. And this is not something that happens every day.
It is, you figure, exactly the sort of fairy tale every kid getting the full ESPN treatment out in Williamsport, Pa., right now still believes in. The Little League World Series may have become as slickly corporate as MLB these days, but the kids are still kids, and they still dream their dreams. And so a guy like Nathan Patterson?
He is their secular patron saint. And he is everything good about baseball, or at least what baseball was always meant to be.
Something to hang onto these days, as you watch another boring video game dinger land in the seats.
Poco-no
I remember the day Dan Wheldon died.
He hung it on the fence in a massive crash 12 laps into an IndyCar event at Las Vegas, and died of massive head trauma. I tuned in after they'd red-flagged the race to clean up the mess, and the first thing I heard was Scott Goodyear and Eddie Cheever talking about Wheldon in that certain way you talk about a guy when it's very, very bad. And that's when I knew.
Then I saw Tony Kanaan sitting on the pit wall crying, and that's when I really knew.
"Oh, my God," I said to my wife, Julie. "Oh, my God he's dead."
Then I got up and went into the den and wrote a column about Wheldon, whom I'd interviewed probably a dozen times. And I said IndyCar was unbelievably irresponsible for putting Vegas on the schedule to start with, because the venue was too fast and too tight for Indy cars -- especially when you put 34 of them on it, which for some unfathomable reason IndyCar decided to do that day.
That decision got Dan Wheldon killed. And I'll give IndyCar this much: It hasn't raced at Vegas since.
And now a lot of people are saying they shouldn't be racing at Pocono anymore, not after Justin Wilson was killed there and Robert Wickens was paralyzed there and a whole pile of cars got turned into scrap on the very first lap of the ABC Supply 500 Sunday.
I suppose I ought to be one of those people, given what I wrote about Vegas after Wheldon died. But I'm not.
What I am is a guy who thinks IndyCar should demand Pocono get its, um, business together before it does go back there again.
Look. Pocono is different from Vegas because IndyCar first started racing there in the 1970s, and it is no more inherently perilous now than it's ever been. Wilson's death, for instance, would have happened anywhere; he died because Sage Karam hit a nosecone lying in the racing line and flipped it in the air, and it hit Wilson in the head. An utter, tragic fluke.
But then Wickens got up in the fence last year, and he's in a wheelchair now. And then there was Sunday's crash, which began with Takuma Sato trying to do something he shouldn't have, particularly on the first lap, and ended with him upside down. Nearby, James Hinchcliffe and Alexander Rossi were twisted together. Farther down the track was Felix Rosenqvuist -- who, like Wickens a year ago, got up in the catch fence.
Want to know how the geniuses at Pocono repaired the damage to that fence Sunday?
Video evidence suggests they filled the hole in it with an old gate that apparently was just lying around somewhere. And they secured it with zip ties.
You'd hate to see IndyCar permanently abandon one of its long-time signature venues. But zip ties?
That simply won't stand. Or shouldn't.
And so IndyCar should consider bailing on Pocono not because it's too dangerous; it is and always has been a tricky place, with that tunnel turn and the odd tri-oval configuration. And it's not like IndyCar hasn't raced at tricky, dangerous places before. Ask some of the old-timers about Langhorne, for instance.
No. IndyCar should bail on Pocono, at least for now, because it's incredibly poorly managed.
That much it owes its drivers. And its fans, scarce though they may be these days.
He hung it on the fence in a massive crash 12 laps into an IndyCar event at Las Vegas, and died of massive head trauma. I tuned in after they'd red-flagged the race to clean up the mess, and the first thing I heard was Scott Goodyear and Eddie Cheever talking about Wheldon in that certain way you talk about a guy when it's very, very bad. And that's when I knew.
Then I saw Tony Kanaan sitting on the pit wall crying, and that's when I really knew.
"Oh, my God," I said to my wife, Julie. "Oh, my God he's dead."
Then I got up and went into the den and wrote a column about Wheldon, whom I'd interviewed probably a dozen times. And I said IndyCar was unbelievably irresponsible for putting Vegas on the schedule to start with, because the venue was too fast and too tight for Indy cars -- especially when you put 34 of them on it, which for some unfathomable reason IndyCar decided to do that day.
That decision got Dan Wheldon killed. And I'll give IndyCar this much: It hasn't raced at Vegas since.
And now a lot of people are saying they shouldn't be racing at Pocono anymore, not after Justin Wilson was killed there and Robert Wickens was paralyzed there and a whole pile of cars got turned into scrap on the very first lap of the ABC Supply 500 Sunday.
I suppose I ought to be one of those people, given what I wrote about Vegas after Wheldon died. But I'm not.
What I am is a guy who thinks IndyCar should demand Pocono get its, um, business together before it does go back there again.
Look. Pocono is different from Vegas because IndyCar first started racing there in the 1970s, and it is no more inherently perilous now than it's ever been. Wilson's death, for instance, would have happened anywhere; he died because Sage Karam hit a nosecone lying in the racing line and flipped it in the air, and it hit Wilson in the head. An utter, tragic fluke.
But then Wickens got up in the fence last year, and he's in a wheelchair now. And then there was Sunday's crash, which began with Takuma Sato trying to do something he shouldn't have, particularly on the first lap, and ended with him upside down. Nearby, James Hinchcliffe and Alexander Rossi were twisted together. Farther down the track was Felix Rosenqvuist -- who, like Wickens a year ago, got up in the catch fence.
Want to know how the geniuses at Pocono repaired the damage to that fence Sunday?
Video evidence suggests they filled the hole in it with an old gate that apparently was just lying around somewhere. And they secured it with zip ties.
You'd hate to see IndyCar permanently abandon one of its long-time signature venues. But zip ties?
That simply won't stand. Or shouldn't.
And so IndyCar should consider bailing on Pocono not because it's too dangerous; it is and always has been a tricky place, with that tunnel turn and the odd tri-oval configuration. And it's not like IndyCar hasn't raced at tricky, dangerous places before. Ask some of the old-timers about Langhorne, for instance.
No. IndyCar should bail on Pocono, at least for now, because it's incredibly poorly managed.
That much it owes its drivers. And its fans, scarce though they may be these days.
Monday, August 19, 2019
Eclipse
Years back, in the before time, it was appointment viewing for me. Come a certain Saturday night in August, I'd flip on the TV, settle onto the couch, and watch the boys go around and around that infernal bullring. Or I'd head out to a favorite sports bar, knowing it would be on every big screen.
Around and around they'd go. Sometimes they'd run into each other. Sometimes they'd shake their fists and cuss after running into each other. Once one of them actually pulled an automotive head butt on the last lap, punting the winning driver sideways beneath the checkers.
The headbutt-er was Dale Earnhardt. The headbutt-ee was Terry Labonte. And it was pretty much the definitive Bristol night race moment.
Now?
Now I had to look up who won the Bristol night race on Sunday morning, on account of I forgot about it. Pretty much the way I forget about NASCAR as a whole five minutes after the checkers fly in the Daytona 500.
This may be just me, mind you. I was never more than a cursory NASCAR fan to begin with; IndyCar stole my heart as a kid, and it still owns it. It's better racing, for one thing. It's better racing even when Takuma Sato goes full nitwit and wrecks a whole pile of drivers on the first lap of a 500-mile race, the way he did Sunday at Pocono.
IndyCar was already thinking of dumping Pocono, despite the fact it's one of IndyCar's oldest venues. This likely will only push the series closer to doing that -- even though being an idiot, the way Sato was Sunday, is not a condition that's ever been tied to geography.
But I digress.
("Yes, you are," you're saying. "Constantly.")
The topic here is not IndyCar, but NASCAR, and in particular the Bristol night race. It indeed might be just me, forgetting about it, but it might not. Apparently it's disappeared from a lot of radars in the 15 or 20 years.
Word on the street is NASCAR's having a hard time selling it out these days, just like NASCAR is having a hard time selling out every Cup event. Swaths of empty seats dot every race on the schedule now. The Brickyard 400, once one of the NASCAR crown jewels, has gone from crowds of 250,000 to maybe 50,000 and a whole lot of crickets. And where once the Bristol night race was the toughest ticket in American motorsports ...
Well. Not so much now. It's not even appointment viewing for some of us anymore.
Which is why it was Sunday morning before I found out Denny Hamlin won the Bristol night race Saturday, passing Matt DiBenedetto with a handful of laps remaining just when it looked as if DiBenedetto, who found out earlier in the week he was losing his ride, was about to notch his first Cup win.
Hamlin apologized to him for that afterward. There is no record of Earnhardt doing the same after head-butting Labonte across the finish line on that night years ago.
Hmm. Maybe Bristol needs more of that. A thought.
Around and around they'd go. Sometimes they'd run into each other. Sometimes they'd shake their fists and cuss after running into each other. Once one of them actually pulled an automotive head butt on the last lap, punting the winning driver sideways beneath the checkers.
The headbutt-er was Dale Earnhardt. The headbutt-ee was Terry Labonte. And it was pretty much the definitive Bristol night race moment.
Now?
Now I had to look up who won the Bristol night race on Sunday morning, on account of I forgot about it. Pretty much the way I forget about NASCAR as a whole five minutes after the checkers fly in the Daytona 500.
This may be just me, mind you. I was never more than a cursory NASCAR fan to begin with; IndyCar stole my heart as a kid, and it still owns it. It's better racing, for one thing. It's better racing even when Takuma Sato goes full nitwit and wrecks a whole pile of drivers on the first lap of a 500-mile race, the way he did Sunday at Pocono.
IndyCar was already thinking of dumping Pocono, despite the fact it's one of IndyCar's oldest venues. This likely will only push the series closer to doing that -- even though being an idiot, the way Sato was Sunday, is not a condition that's ever been tied to geography.
But I digress.
("Yes, you are," you're saying. "Constantly.")
The topic here is not IndyCar, but NASCAR, and in particular the Bristol night race. It indeed might be just me, forgetting about it, but it might not. Apparently it's disappeared from a lot of radars in the 15 or 20 years.
Word on the street is NASCAR's having a hard time selling it out these days, just like NASCAR is having a hard time selling out every Cup event. Swaths of empty seats dot every race on the schedule now. The Brickyard 400, once one of the NASCAR crown jewels, has gone from crowds of 250,000 to maybe 50,000 and a whole lot of crickets. And where once the Bristol night race was the toughest ticket in American motorsports ...
Well. Not so much now. It's not even appointment viewing for some of us anymore.
Which is why it was Sunday morning before I found out Denny Hamlin won the Bristol night race Saturday, passing Matt DiBenedetto with a handful of laps remaining just when it looked as if DiBenedetto, who found out earlier in the week he was losing his ride, was about to notch his first Cup win.
Hamlin apologized to him for that afterward. There is no record of Earnhardt doing the same after head-butting Labonte across the finish line on that night years ago.
Hmm. Maybe Bristol needs more of that. A thought.
For sale
Everyone has a price.
You hate that, right?
You hate it for its smugness, its arrogance, its presumption that, in America, everything and everyone is for sale. The Man Who Couldn't Be Bought? Why, that's a child's myth, like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Save it for Hollywood, bud.
No, in the real world -- the world of grownups and their alleged grownup grasp of What's Important -- everything's just a haggle over price. Everyone's got one, which is why selling out one's principles isn't a character flaw. It's just bidness.
Perhaps Jay-Z can find some comfort in that.
Once upon a time, see, Jay-Z did the John Carlos/Tommie Smith thing to the Nashunal Foot-ball League, saying he'd never do their Super Bowl halftime show as long as the Shield was blackballing Colin Kaepernick for peacefully protesting racial injustice. Kaepernick's preferred method for doing that -- kneeling silently during the national anthem -- ran directly counter to the NFL's secular worship of the anthem and the flag and the troops and 'Merica. So out he went.
This no doubt pleased the Paper Patriot in the White House, who had been actively pushing for the NFL to fire anyone who didn't show respect for the anthem/flag/troops/yada-yada in a manner the Paper Patriot deemed satisfactory. The problem for the NFL was there was a backlash -- and it was led by Jay-Z and other prospective halftime entertainers, who suddenly found their schedules full up on Super Bowl Sunday.
So, good on Jay-Z for standing up for his guy. Showed integrity, principle, all that stu--
Hey, wait a minute. What's this?
Why, look, it's Jay-Z, sitting here yukking it up with Roger Goodell, tsar of all the NFLs. This upon the news that Jay-Z's company, Roc Nation, had struck a deal with the league to serve as a liaison between the NFL and the entertainment industry that has snubbed it -- and also to facilitate the league's sudden interest in social justice initiatives, which of course has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the aforementioned snubbing.
Just like Jay-Z suddenly jumping into bed with the NFL has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Jay-Z possibly getting a stake in an NFL franchise.
Coincidences. They're a real thing, Pinocchio.
In any case, suddenly Jay-Z has gone from standing up for Kaepernick to saying "I think we're past kneeling. I think it's time for action." This of course ignores the fact Kaepernick and the other kneelers have been taking action, via numerous initiatives and charitable acts of their own.
Look. I get it. The NFL was taking a beating on this issue, so it's just smart business to co-opt one of the people administering the beating. Astute corporate entities do it all the time, because the public is notoriously indifferent to sellouts these days. Just look at what's going on in Washington, where everyone shrugs at even the most blatant conflicts of interest, treating the entire concept not as corruption but simply how governance gets done.
And so Jay-Z allowing himself to be co-opted by the NFL, for a price?
Just bidness, boys and girls. Just bidness.
You hate that, right?
You hate it for its smugness, its arrogance, its presumption that, in America, everything and everyone is for sale. The Man Who Couldn't Be Bought? Why, that's a child's myth, like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Save it for Hollywood, bud.
No, in the real world -- the world of grownups and their alleged grownup grasp of What's Important -- everything's just a haggle over price. Everyone's got one, which is why selling out one's principles isn't a character flaw. It's just bidness.
Perhaps Jay-Z can find some comfort in that.
Once upon a time, see, Jay-Z did the John Carlos/Tommie Smith thing to the Nashunal Foot-ball League, saying he'd never do their Super Bowl halftime show as long as the Shield was blackballing Colin Kaepernick for peacefully protesting racial injustice. Kaepernick's preferred method for doing that -- kneeling silently during the national anthem -- ran directly counter to the NFL's secular worship of the anthem and the flag and the troops and 'Merica. So out he went.
This no doubt pleased the Paper Patriot in the White House, who had been actively pushing for the NFL to fire anyone who didn't show respect for the anthem/flag/troops/yada-yada in a manner the Paper Patriot deemed satisfactory. The problem for the NFL was there was a backlash -- and it was led by Jay-Z and other prospective halftime entertainers, who suddenly found their schedules full up on Super Bowl Sunday.
So, good on Jay-Z for standing up for his guy. Showed integrity, principle, all that stu--
Hey, wait a minute. What's this?
Why, look, it's Jay-Z, sitting here yukking it up with Roger Goodell, tsar of all the NFLs. This upon the news that Jay-Z's company, Roc Nation, had struck a deal with the league to serve as a liaison between the NFL and the entertainment industry that has snubbed it -- and also to facilitate the league's sudden interest in social justice initiatives, which of course has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the aforementioned snubbing.
Just like Jay-Z suddenly jumping into bed with the NFL has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Jay-Z possibly getting a stake in an NFL franchise.
Coincidences. They're a real thing, Pinocchio.
In any case, suddenly Jay-Z has gone from standing up for Kaepernick to saying "I think we're past kneeling. I think it's time for action." This of course ignores the fact Kaepernick and the other kneelers have been taking action, via numerous initiatives and charitable acts of their own.
Look. I get it. The NFL was taking a beating on this issue, so it's just smart business to co-opt one of the people administering the beating. Astute corporate entities do it all the time, because the public is notoriously indifferent to sellouts these days. Just look at what's going on in Washington, where everyone shrugs at even the most blatant conflicts of interest, treating the entire concept not as corruption but simply how governance gets done.
And so Jay-Z allowing himself to be co-opted by the NFL, for a price?
Just bidness, boys and girls. Just bidness.
Saturday, August 17, 2019
That's gratitude for ya
Many of you do not know who Billy Napier is, and you should not feel unschooled because you don't. That's because many of you -- the Blob might even say the vast majority of you -- are not big-time fans of University of Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin' Cajuns football.
Billy Napier, see, is the head coach of the Ragin' Cajuns, and, according to Deadspin, he makes $850,000 a year to coach up the Ragin's. His players, of course, make nothing. They get a free education, allegedly, plus the use of school equipment and facilities, all so ULL can make millions, and pay Billy Napier his almost-a-million-dollar salary, off their labor.
Also, they can't just up and go play for another school whenever they want to, the way Billy Napier can just up and go coach another school whenever he wants to. They have to sit out a year, in most cases. Oh, and Billy Napier, and ULL, can refuse to release them if they don't like where they're trying to transfer to.
Reasonable people might regard this as indentured servitude. Or at least something that lives right down the street from it.
But you know what?
Billy Napier thinks they should be a little more grateful for that.
And so the other day he announced a new initiative for his football team. Starting this year, he said, all scholarship members of the team would be required (or at least strongly encouraged) to donate $50 to the Ragin' Cajun Athletic Foundation.
He went on to say this would be a gesture of gratitude to the university for all it does to enable the Ragin' Cajun football players to make the university a pile of money.
Some people would say this is an odd application of logic. Some people also would say it would be a more apt gesture of gratitude for Billy Napier to donate part of his salary to the workforce whose sweat equity earns it for him. But of course, in the inside-out, through-the-looking-glass world of corporate college football, that would be wrong.
So would selling your game-worn jersey to come up with the fifty bucks. Or selling whatever swag the NCAA says "student-athletes" are allowed to get if they go to a bowl game. Or trading on their status as Ragin' Cajun football players in any way, no matter how small and picayunish, even if it's just accepting a ride or a McDonald's cheeseburger from an alum.
That would be an impermissible benefit. Because, you know, no alum/professor/staff member/administrator ever gave a regular college student a ride or bought him or her lunch. Why, heavens, no.
What a racket. What an absolute, platinum-grade racket.
Billy Napier, see, is the head coach of the Ragin' Cajuns, and, according to Deadspin, he makes $850,000 a year to coach up the Ragin's. His players, of course, make nothing. They get a free education, allegedly, plus the use of school equipment and facilities, all so ULL can make millions, and pay Billy Napier his almost-a-million-dollar salary, off their labor.
Also, they can't just up and go play for another school whenever they want to, the way Billy Napier can just up and go coach another school whenever he wants to. They have to sit out a year, in most cases. Oh, and Billy Napier, and ULL, can refuse to release them if they don't like where they're trying to transfer to.
Reasonable people might regard this as indentured servitude. Or at least something that lives right down the street from it.
But you know what?
Billy Napier thinks they should be a little more grateful for that.
And so the other day he announced a new initiative for his football team. Starting this year, he said, all scholarship members of the team would be required (or at least strongly encouraged) to donate $50 to the Ragin' Cajun Athletic Foundation.
He went on to say this would be a gesture of gratitude to the university for all it does to enable the Ragin' Cajun football players to make the university a pile of money.
Some people would say this is an odd application of logic. Some people also would say it would be a more apt gesture of gratitude for Billy Napier to donate part of his salary to the workforce whose sweat equity earns it for him. But of course, in the inside-out, through-the-looking-glass world of corporate college football, that would be wrong.
So would selling your game-worn jersey to come up with the fifty bucks. Or selling whatever swag the NCAA says "student-athletes" are allowed to get if they go to a bowl game. Or trading on their status as Ragin' Cajun football players in any way, no matter how small and picayunish, even if it's just accepting a ride or a McDonald's cheeseburger from an alum.
That would be an impermissible benefit. Because, you know, no alum/professor/staff member/administrator ever gave a regular college student a ride or bought him or her lunch. Why, heavens, no.
What a racket. What an absolute, platinum-grade racket.
Thursday, August 15, 2019
Trademark this
Oops. Wrong article of speech.
It's not "trademark THIS." It's "trademark THE."
Or so certain people in Columbus, Ohio, who fancy scarlet-and-gray would like to do, which seems silly, admittedly, until you stop to think about all the silly things people try to trademark. Few can top this, though: Ohio State University, which likes to call itself The Ohio State University, wants to trademark the "the."
Yes, that's right, America. Ohio State wants to own (trademark) merchandising rights to one of (trademark) most common words in (trademark) English language so it can put it on a bunch of hats and T-shirts and (trademark) rest of us can't.
This is, of course (trademark) height of absurdity. As these past few sentences demonstrate.
The Blob, being of a naturally suspicious nature anyway, suspects the origin of this traces back to the year the Dayton Flyers upset OSU in the NCAA Tournament. The Dayton Daily News celebrated this achievement with an immortal headline.
All it said was "The University of Dayton."
I'm guessing OSU's collective hindparts are still chapped about that. One of the classic trolls of all time.
Until now, of course.
No sooner had the news gotten out about this trademark silliness, see, than OSU was getting trolled from every point on the compass. Its grand plan, it seems, only made it a laughingstock -- a circumstance that no doubt especially stings given the innate nose-in-the-air snootiness it takes to label yourself The Ohio State University to begin with.
Now it doesn't take any effort at all to imagine the abuse that surely is forthcoming. The Blob envisions an immediate sprouting of "The Real The" T-shirts at The U, aka the University of Miami. And the first time the Buckeyes go back to Ann Arbor for the annual grudge match with Michigan?
Picture the entire Michigan student section wearing blue or yellow T-shirts (sorry, UM, maize is a vegetable, not a color) with one word on them: "The."
Heck. Some enterprising business major is probably already churning them out.
Oh, (trademark) possibilities ...
It's not "trademark THIS." It's "trademark THE."
Or so certain people in Columbus, Ohio, who fancy scarlet-and-gray would like to do, which seems silly, admittedly, until you stop to think about all the silly things people try to trademark. Few can top this, though: Ohio State University, which likes to call itself The Ohio State University, wants to trademark the "the."
Yes, that's right, America. Ohio State wants to own (trademark) merchandising rights to one of (trademark) most common words in (trademark) English language so it can put it on a bunch of hats and T-shirts and (trademark) rest of us can't.
This is, of course (trademark) height of absurdity. As these past few sentences demonstrate.
The Blob, being of a naturally suspicious nature anyway, suspects the origin of this traces back to the year the Dayton Flyers upset OSU in the NCAA Tournament. The Dayton Daily News celebrated this achievement with an immortal headline.
All it said was "The University of Dayton."
I'm guessing OSU's collective hindparts are still chapped about that. One of the classic trolls of all time.
Until now, of course.
No sooner had the news gotten out about this trademark silliness, see, than OSU was getting trolled from every point on the compass. Its grand plan, it seems, only made it a laughingstock -- a circumstance that no doubt especially stings given the innate nose-in-the-air snootiness it takes to label yourself The Ohio State University to begin with.
Now it doesn't take any effort at all to imagine the abuse that surely is forthcoming. The Blob envisions an immediate sprouting of "The Real The" T-shirts at The U, aka the University of Miami. And the first time the Buckeyes go back to Ann Arbor for the annual grudge match with Michigan?
Picture the entire Michigan student section wearing blue or yellow T-shirts (sorry, UM, maize is a vegetable, not a color) with one word on them: "The."
Heck. Some enterprising business major is probably already churning them out.
Oh, (trademark) possibilities ...
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Deja owie, Part Deux
Not yet, you damn fools. I said not ... yet.
Don't you dare cue up the Music of Foreboding. Don't. You. Dare.
Yes, I know this is all starting to feel very familiar, this sense of unease and, let's be honest, straight up uncertainty coming from the mouths of various Indianapolis Colts' honchos. First Andrew Luck was just dealing with an ouchie left calf, even though he'd been dealing with it for three months, and this little voice in the back of your head was whispering that maybe that wasn't, you know, a normal healing arc for an otherwise robust 20-something.
But now?
Well. Now there's this.
And from the GM himself, no less.
And suddenly, you bet, this feels like the summer of '17 all over again, even if it probably (hopefully?) isn't. But suddenly the strained left calf has morphed into a high ankle ... something, and Chris Ballard is saying he can't say for sure if Luck will be ready for the season opener against the Chargers three weeks from now, and, wait a second, how did we get to a place where we're talking about Luck missing the regular season opener?
The preseason opener, sure, that was fine. And then this week arrived and it was, well, Andrew's not going to be practicing so he'll miss preseason game two. And now ...
And now, a high ankle ... something.
To be sure, this isn't surgery on Luck's throwing arm we're talking about. It's a calf, I mean, ankle. It will heal with rest, presumably, although high ankle Somethings are notoriously slow in healing. And Luck seems to be a notoriously slow healer. And, well, this really is starting to sound familiar.
I'm sorry. What was that?
No, dammit. No. I'll tell you when.
Although God help us, it feels more and more like there's going to be a "when."
Don't you dare cue up the Music of Foreboding. Don't. You. Dare.
Yes, I know this is all starting to feel very familiar, this sense of unease and, let's be honest, straight up uncertainty coming from the mouths of various Indianapolis Colts' honchos. First Andrew Luck was just dealing with an ouchie left calf, even though he'd been dealing with it for three months, and this little voice in the back of your head was whispering that maybe that wasn't, you know, a normal healing arc for an otherwise robust 20-something.
But now?
Well. Now there's this.
And from the GM himself, no less.
And suddenly, you bet, this feels like the summer of '17 all over again, even if it probably (hopefully?) isn't. But suddenly the strained left calf has morphed into a high ankle ... something, and Chris Ballard is saying he can't say for sure if Luck will be ready for the season opener against the Chargers three weeks from now, and, wait a second, how did we get to a place where we're talking about Luck missing the regular season opener?
The preseason opener, sure, that was fine. And then this week arrived and it was, well, Andrew's not going to be practicing so he'll miss preseason game two. And now ...
And now, a high ankle ... something.
To be sure, this isn't surgery on Luck's throwing arm we're talking about. It's a calf, I mean, ankle. It will heal with rest, presumably, although high ankle Somethings are notoriously slow in healing. And Luck seems to be a notoriously slow healer. And, well, this really is starting to sound familiar.
I'm sorry. What was that?
No, dammit. No. I'll tell you when.
Although God help us, it feels more and more like there's going to be a "when."
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Head case
Wide receiver/drama king Antonio Brown is said to be reporting to training camp with the Raiders today, which is maybe good news for the Raiders but maybe not, considering the media will be all over him in a very Terrell Owens sort of way.
It might be premature to declare A.B. the new and improved T.O., but his seemingly unchecked tendency to focus attention on himself and his problems seems to be approaching T.O. levels. The Blob is famously loathe to regard off-the-field "distraction" as anything but a theoretical concept (i.e.: An excuse for on-the-field failure), but A.B. certainly comes off as distraction with a capital D.
It's why the Blob wonders if the Pittsburgh Steelers aren't secretly looking west to Oakland these days, and suppressing a smile or two. Good luck, boys. You're gonna love having A.B. around. He'll catch a lot of balls for you when he's not bitching about next to nothing and dividing your locker room.
Now, that might not be true. But it is true the Steelers are no longer lighting up social media with their family squabbles, now that A.B. is gone. "As The Wideout Turns" has closed its run. It's been remarkably quiet around their team during training camp, except for the usual mundane stuff about who's hurt and who's not and who looks like they could make the 53-man roster.
But in Oakland?
The circus is in town, baby. First, A.B. vanished from camp because of a mysterious ailment that turned out to be frozen feet. Then he started complaining about not being able to wear his outdated helmet anymore, saying if the NFL wouldn't let him wear it, he'd leave the game.
Which was ridiculous, of course. Platinum-grade drama king nonsense.
Anyway, A.B. appealed the decision, the NFL told him to pipe down and wear the approved headgear, and now Helmetgate is apparently over. Well ... except for the media questions about it, which will surely dog A.B., the Raiders and head coach Jon Gruden well into the regular season.
No horse is so dead, after all, that the NFL media can't keep beating it. It is, you see, an Issue, and there's nothing the NFL media likes more than an Issue. Even if A.B. is the only guy who made it one.
To be sure, more players than just A.B. are miffed that the NFL has banned the old headgear. But no else threatened to quit over it. No one else, as the saying goes, made a federal case out of it.
So congratulations, Coach Gruden. You've now got the best wide receiver in football.
And everything that comes with him.
It might be premature to declare A.B. the new and improved T.O., but his seemingly unchecked tendency to focus attention on himself and his problems seems to be approaching T.O. levels. The Blob is famously loathe to regard off-the-field "distraction" as anything but a theoretical concept (i.e.: An excuse for on-the-field failure), but A.B. certainly comes off as distraction with a capital D.
It's why the Blob wonders if the Pittsburgh Steelers aren't secretly looking west to Oakland these days, and suppressing a smile or two. Good luck, boys. You're gonna love having A.B. around. He'll catch a lot of balls for you when he's not bitching about next to nothing and dividing your locker room.
Now, that might not be true. But it is true the Steelers are no longer lighting up social media with their family squabbles, now that A.B. is gone. "As The Wideout Turns" has closed its run. It's been remarkably quiet around their team during training camp, except for the usual mundane stuff about who's hurt and who's not and who looks like they could make the 53-man roster.
But in Oakland?
The circus is in town, baby. First, A.B. vanished from camp because of a mysterious ailment that turned out to be frozen feet. Then he started complaining about not being able to wear his outdated helmet anymore, saying if the NFL wouldn't let him wear it, he'd leave the game.
Which was ridiculous, of course. Platinum-grade drama king nonsense.
Anyway, A.B. appealed the decision, the NFL told him to pipe down and wear the approved headgear, and now Helmetgate is apparently over. Well ... except for the media questions about it, which will surely dog A.B., the Raiders and head coach Jon Gruden well into the regular season.
No horse is so dead, after all, that the NFL media can't keep beating it. It is, you see, an Issue, and there's nothing the NFL media likes more than an Issue. Even if A.B. is the only guy who made it one.
To be sure, more players than just A.B. are miffed that the NFL has banned the old headgear. But no else threatened to quit over it. No one else, as the saying goes, made a federal case out of it.
So congratulations, Coach Gruden. You've now got the best wide receiver in football.
And everything that comes with him.
The Battle. Over.
Well, that's that. It's only August, and not even mid-August at that, but the Blob has officially run up the white flag on its popular, one would almost say beloved, baseball feature, the Battle for the Cellar.
("In your dreams, Blob Boy!" you're saying. "'Beloved'! Get him!")
Anyway ... my cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates continue to plumb new depths of cruddiness, adding some throw pillows and a few abstract paintings to the Cellar as they make themselves cozy there. The Cruddies are now 7 1/2 games behind the next-to-last Reds, see. And it's even worse than that, frankly.
They don't even have Aristides Aquino.
Who, first of all, has a singularly awesome baseball player name. And who, second of all, is giving not just the Reds, but baseball itself, a dazzling fireworks show right in the middle of the dog days, when baseball most needs fireworks shows.
Aristides, you see, is a rookie who was little thought of as recently as a year ago by Reds management. Now he's blowing up the bigs. In his first 12 games in the Show, he's hit eight home runs. All eight have come in his last nine games. He's launching so often it's almost become as routine as the sun rising in the east; if it's Monday, or Tuesday, or whatever, Aristides must have gone sub-orbital.
His numbers as a big-leaguer so far: Eight home runs, 16 RBI, a .429 average, seven dingers in his last six games. He even comes with his own ready-for-prime-time nickname: The Punisher.
And while he Punishes, the Reds rise. They're 6-4 in their last 10 games, and have risen to within 7 1/2 games of first in the ploddingly average NL Central. My Cruddies, on the other hand, have gone 2-8 in their last 10 games and, at 49-69, are a full 20 games under water. Right now only the barely-major-league Marlins have a worse record in the National League.
Of course, they don't have an Aristides, either.
Which I guess is good news for my Cruddies. Or something.
("In your dreams, Blob Boy!" you're saying. "'Beloved'! Get him!")
Anyway ... my cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates continue to plumb new depths of cruddiness, adding some throw pillows and a few abstract paintings to the Cellar as they make themselves cozy there. The Cruddies are now 7 1/2 games behind the next-to-last Reds, see. And it's even worse than that, frankly.
They don't even have Aristides Aquino.
Who, first of all, has a singularly awesome baseball player name. And who, second of all, is giving not just the Reds, but baseball itself, a dazzling fireworks show right in the middle of the dog days, when baseball most needs fireworks shows.
Aristides, you see, is a rookie who was little thought of as recently as a year ago by Reds management. Now he's blowing up the bigs. In his first 12 games in the Show, he's hit eight home runs. All eight have come in his last nine games. He's launching so often it's almost become as routine as the sun rising in the east; if it's Monday, or Tuesday, or whatever, Aristides must have gone sub-orbital.
His numbers as a big-leaguer so far: Eight home runs, 16 RBI, a .429 average, seven dingers in his last six games. He even comes with his own ready-for-prime-time nickname: The Punisher.
And while he Punishes, the Reds rise. They're 6-4 in their last 10 games, and have risen to within 7 1/2 games of first in the ploddingly average NL Central. My Cruddies, on the other hand, have gone 2-8 in their last 10 games and, at 49-69, are a full 20 games under water. Right now only the barely-major-league Marlins have a worse record in the National League.
Of course, they don't have an Aristides, either.
Which I guess is good news for my Cruddies. Or something.
Monday, August 12, 2019
Golf fight!
OK, OK. So not really.
Nobody threw down at the Northern Trust tournament yesterday, so if you read the headline above and thought you were going to see a couple of guys dropping the glove and the sponsor cap, pulling the golf shirts up over their heads and wailing away ... no. Golfers don't do hockey fights, or even baseball fights (although that would be fun). To paraphrase Dan Jenkins, somebody might hurt his hand and have to change his grip.
So, no fisticuffs, no Nike swooshes torn in anger from pastel shirts, no rolling around on the ground getting grass stains on their Sansabelts. No Happy Gilmore getting his ass kicked by Bob Barker.
Instead, here's what happened: Bryson "Slo-Mo" DeChambeau, who takes novel-length pauses between shots, apparently was especially laggardly at the Northern Trust this weekend. Before one shot, he actually walked the entire 70-yard distance from his ball to the cup and back, then thought about it some more, then finally stepped up and hit. Elapsed time: About three eternal minutes.
Apparently, someone shot video of this epic bit of Slo-Mo performance art. And of course it went viral. DeChambeau defended himself by saying he's really not all that slow, because he walks quickly to his ball after a shot, and Justin Thomas came out on Twitter and basically said that was a lot of cowflop, and Brooks Koepka, notorious hater of slow play, wondered when the PGA was going to do something about this ...
And, well. Fast forward to Sunday morning, when DeChambeau marched up to Koepka's caddie on the practice green and said if Koepka had something to say, he should say it to DeChambeau's face. And then Koepka showed up and marched over to DeChambeau to ask him what his deal was, bugging his caddy like that.
And, this being golf, that was that. No hockey throwdown. Not even a baseball fight, where a couple of guys swing wildly and then roll around on the ground like big cuddly teddy bears.
Nope, they just chatted a bit. Which is kind of boring. But then, it's golf.
It's a gentleman's game, a call-your-own-infractions game, an I-believe-you're-away game. Kind of like soccer, only without all the running and shameless flopping.
That's a shame. I mean, who wouldn't want to see, say, Bubba Watson and Patrick Reed -- a couple of notorious flaming jackasses -- go to Fist City? Or Dustin Johnson, the rare golfer who doesn't look like anyone you'd want to mess with? And who's married to Wayne Gretzky's daughter in the bargain?
Challenge D.J. and the Great One sends in Mark Messier to fix your wagon. Or Marty McSorley. You'd wind on the DL with Tiger while the docs tried to remove that Titleist from your nether regions.
But, hey. Under the Rules of Golf, you might get a free drop out of the deal.
Nobody threw down at the Northern Trust tournament yesterday, so if you read the headline above and thought you were going to see a couple of guys dropping the glove and the sponsor cap, pulling the golf shirts up over their heads and wailing away ... no. Golfers don't do hockey fights, or even baseball fights (although that would be fun). To paraphrase Dan Jenkins, somebody might hurt his hand and have to change his grip.
So, no fisticuffs, no Nike swooshes torn in anger from pastel shirts, no rolling around on the ground getting grass stains on their Sansabelts. No Happy Gilmore getting his ass kicked by Bob Barker.
Instead, here's what happened: Bryson "Slo-Mo" DeChambeau, who takes novel-length pauses between shots, apparently was especially laggardly at the Northern Trust this weekend. Before one shot, he actually walked the entire 70-yard distance from his ball to the cup and back, then thought about it some more, then finally stepped up and hit. Elapsed time: About three eternal minutes.
Apparently, someone shot video of this epic bit of Slo-Mo performance art. And of course it went viral. DeChambeau defended himself by saying he's really not all that slow, because he walks quickly to his ball after a shot, and Justin Thomas came out on Twitter and basically said that was a lot of cowflop, and Brooks Koepka, notorious hater of slow play, wondered when the PGA was going to do something about this ...
And, well. Fast forward to Sunday morning, when DeChambeau marched up to Koepka's caddie on the practice green and said if Koepka had something to say, he should say it to DeChambeau's face. And then Koepka showed up and marched over to DeChambeau to ask him what his deal was, bugging his caddy like that.
And, this being golf, that was that. No hockey throwdown. Not even a baseball fight, where a couple of guys swing wildly and then roll around on the ground like big cuddly teddy bears.
Nope, they just chatted a bit. Which is kind of boring. But then, it's golf.
It's a gentleman's game, a call-your-own-infractions game, an I-believe-you're-away game. Kind of like soccer, only without all the running and shameless flopping.
That's a shame. I mean, who wouldn't want to see, say, Bubba Watson and Patrick Reed -- a couple of notorious flaming jackasses -- go to Fist City? Or Dustin Johnson, the rare golfer who doesn't look like anyone you'd want to mess with? And who's married to Wayne Gretzky's daughter in the bargain?
Challenge D.J. and the Great One sends in Mark Messier to fix your wagon. Or Marty McSorley. You'd wind on the DL with Tiger while the docs tried to remove that Titleist from your nether regions.
But, hey. Under the Rules of Golf, you might get a free drop out of the deal.
Sunday, August 11, 2019
Gimme an I ... gimme an H ...
The whistle is hardwired to your brainpan now, if you're of a certain age and a certain geography. Every morning it moaned through the predawn darkness across southeast Fort Wayne, down Meyer Road and out Wayne Trace and Hessen Cassel, past Village Woods and St. Henry's and on down to Castle Drive in Eastland Gardens, where I'd burrow deeper under the covers and know my dad had already left the house, black matte lunchbox in hand.
The International Harvester whistle proscribed your life, if you were an IH family. After awhile you'd never even hear it, or you'd hear it and it would flit through your consciousness like a ghost or background static on the radio. There but not there.
You grew up southeast, that whistle was just part of the mosaic, in other words. But you know what?
I'm 64 now and haven't lived in Eastland Gardens in more than four decades. Yet I can hear that whistle still.
So when I saw one of the old ones on display yesterday at the inaugural Harvester Homecoming in Scout Park on Meyer Road, you're damn skippy the sound of it came back to me. Suddenly I was 7, 8, 9-years-old again, lying in my narrow boy's bed, drifting back to sleep just about the time my dad was walking into Dept. 19 for another day in the shop.
My dad, Bill Smith, worked at Harvester for 34 years, from the last year of the 1940s until they closed up shop and moved to Springfield, Ohio, in 1983. Dad didn't want to make that long trek to Springfield, so he took early retirement. Last November he died at the age of 91, so he missed all the fun yesterday. The man would have eaten it up with a spoon.
He was always a sucker for history in all its forms -- he passed that lovely obsession on to his son, I'm happy to say -- and so, on a beautiful Saturday morning, I kept seeing everything through his eyes.
All those restored trucks and vehicles from the Teens, the Twenties, going back as far as 1910. An IH bulldozer. An IH tractor. Every model and permutation of the famed Harvester Scout imaginable. Photos and model IH vehicles and all manner of memorabilia -- including the sign that adorned the IH Scout which led my dad's Civil War re-enactor unit in Jimmy Carter's inaugural parade in 1977.
That one they got from my dad's own collection of IH stuff.
All of it was mute, and not-so-mute testimony to a legacy as deeply woven into this city's landscape as the moaning of the shift whistle. For 60 years Harvester was synonymous with Fort Wayne, and Fort Wayne with it. And for 34 years it put food on the table and clothes on the backs of the occupants of 3029 Castle Drive.
And not without cost, of course. Some of the memorabilia Dad took away from his Harvester years was physical. He lost the tip of one little finger when a tractor-trailer backed into it and crushed it. A fall through two false ceilings left him with a messed-up back that eventually required surgery. It happens -- and none of it ever dimmed his loyalty to IH.
Which, of course, he passed on to his children.
My mom's people, for instance, owned farmland down in Wells County, and I still remember the tractors my granddad had. One was an IH Super M. One was an IH "H" model. We called them the Big M and the Little H.
But time courses on. And so one day I was down at the farm, and I noticed my uncle had at some point bought some John Deere equipment. And of course I gave him hell about it, asking him where in God's name he'd gotten that green crap.
Blew the whistle on him, I guess you could say.
The International Harvester whistle proscribed your life, if you were an IH family. After awhile you'd never even hear it, or you'd hear it and it would flit through your consciousness like a ghost or background static on the radio. There but not there.
You grew up southeast, that whistle was just part of the mosaic, in other words. But you know what?
I'm 64 now and haven't lived in Eastland Gardens in more than four decades. Yet I can hear that whistle still.
So when I saw one of the old ones on display yesterday at the inaugural Harvester Homecoming in Scout Park on Meyer Road, you're damn skippy the sound of it came back to me. Suddenly I was 7, 8, 9-years-old again, lying in my narrow boy's bed, drifting back to sleep just about the time my dad was walking into Dept. 19 for another day in the shop.
My dad, Bill Smith, worked at Harvester for 34 years, from the last year of the 1940s until they closed up shop and moved to Springfield, Ohio, in 1983. Dad didn't want to make that long trek to Springfield, so he took early retirement. Last November he died at the age of 91, so he missed all the fun yesterday. The man would have eaten it up with a spoon.
He was always a sucker for history in all its forms -- he passed that lovely obsession on to his son, I'm happy to say -- and so, on a beautiful Saturday morning, I kept seeing everything through his eyes.
All those restored trucks and vehicles from the Teens, the Twenties, going back as far as 1910. An IH bulldozer. An IH tractor. Every model and permutation of the famed Harvester Scout imaginable. Photos and model IH vehicles and all manner of memorabilia -- including the sign that adorned the IH Scout which led my dad's Civil War re-enactor unit in Jimmy Carter's inaugural parade in 1977.
That one they got from my dad's own collection of IH stuff.
All of it was mute, and not-so-mute testimony to a legacy as deeply woven into this city's landscape as the moaning of the shift whistle. For 60 years Harvester was synonymous with Fort Wayne, and Fort Wayne with it. And for 34 years it put food on the table and clothes on the backs of the occupants of 3029 Castle Drive.
And not without cost, of course. Some of the memorabilia Dad took away from his Harvester years was physical. He lost the tip of one little finger when a tractor-trailer backed into it and crushed it. A fall through two false ceilings left him with a messed-up back that eventually required surgery. It happens -- and none of it ever dimmed his loyalty to IH.
Which, of course, he passed on to his children.
My mom's people, for instance, owned farmland down in Wells County, and I still remember the tractors my granddad had. One was an IH Super M. One was an IH "H" model. We called them the Big M and the Little H.
But time courses on. And so one day I was down at the farm, and I noticed my uncle had at some point bought some John Deere equipment. And of course I gave him hell about it, asking him where in God's name he'd gotten that green crap.
Blew the whistle on him, I guess you could say.
Saturday, August 10, 2019
A nation of crazies
In which the Blob poses a question it's been thinking about all week, but which most of you Blobophiles rarely give a thought to because it's not the NFL, or the NFL Draft, or NFL mini-camps, or NFL training camps or preseason NFL football.
The question is this: Who doesn't love a rodeo?
You've got bucking broncos. You've got bullriding. You've got barrel racing, and rodeo clowns, and guys wearing belt buckles the size of serving trays, and also ... COWBOY HATS!
Oh, yeah. And grown men bashing in the heads of children who don't show proper respect for the national anthem, because Our Only Available President, the Demagogue in Chief, kinda-sorta said that's how Real Americans should behave.
By now everyone's heard about what happened in Montana last week, when a 39-year-old man with apparent mental problems started barking at a 13-year-old kid for not taking his cap off during the anthem at a rodeo. The kid, in the most American reaction possible, told him to mind his own business, though he apparently used some not-to-nice words to do so. So the 39-year-old grabbed him by the throat, lifted him off his feet and slammed his head into the ground hard enough to fracture his skull in several places.
Now the kid lies in a hospital bed, and he may suffer permanent brain damage. The perp's attorney, meanwhile, is selling the notion that his client, who's ex-military, was brain damaged himself in a car accident and considers Our Only Available President still to be his commander-in-chief. And so when OOAP started bashing African-American NFL players for kneeling with their heads bowed during the anthem to protest racial injustice, saying they should all be fired, this guy took it as an order to enforce the proper respect by any means necessary.
Now, OOAP never said to bash in the skulls of those who in his opinion "disrespect" the anthem, although he has been agreeable to protestors at his rallies having their skulls bashed in. But he did suggest those who did "disrespect" the anthem should lose their jobs, which is just about as extremist. So this guy just extraplolated that out.
The only thing he's guilty of, his hired suit says, is being a patriot.
A patriot.
Good. Lord. In heaven.
This has not been a good week for those of you who expect a lot of happy talk about Sportsball World from the Blob. For that, the Blob apologizes. But stuff happens. And among that stuff has been this "patriot" in Montana, and what he says about the country we live in now.
We live in a country now, I keep thinking, where grown men bash in the skulls of children for not being properly "respectful" to a song.
We live in a country where people who do that are called "patriots" by their attorneys.
We live in a country where other "patriots" drive 600 miles to kill a bunch of brown people, because the President of the United States, and his enablers in right-wing media, have repeatedly referred to them as "invaders" and all but openly suggested they're bent on destroying white American hegemony.
We live in a country where the president who says these sorts of things claim his words mean nothing, that they radicalize no one, that they inspire no white supremacist violence even when the perpetrators of that violence say they do.
We live in a country where arresting 600 undocumented Hispanic workers at a chicken processing plant (but not their white employers, of course) is framed as keeping America safe from ... oh, hell, I don't know. Hard-working people just trying to live their lives and feed their families, I guess.
We live in a country where lots of people actually believe this nonsense. We live in a country where you can't call a racist a racist, because then you're being racist yourself. We live in a country where you can't even do that when the President himself is telling elected representatives of color to go back to Africa if they don't like his policies.
We live in a country that used to be America.
The bad news is, I don't know what it is now.
The worse news is, or maybe I do.
The question is this: Who doesn't love a rodeo?
You've got bucking broncos. You've got bullriding. You've got barrel racing, and rodeo clowns, and guys wearing belt buckles the size of serving trays, and also ... COWBOY HATS!
Oh, yeah. And grown men bashing in the heads of children who don't show proper respect for the national anthem, because Our Only Available President, the Demagogue in Chief, kinda-sorta said that's how Real Americans should behave.
By now everyone's heard about what happened in Montana last week, when a 39-year-old man with apparent mental problems started barking at a 13-year-old kid for not taking his cap off during the anthem at a rodeo. The kid, in the most American reaction possible, told him to mind his own business, though he apparently used some not-to-nice words to do so. So the 39-year-old grabbed him by the throat, lifted him off his feet and slammed his head into the ground hard enough to fracture his skull in several places.
Now the kid lies in a hospital bed, and he may suffer permanent brain damage. The perp's attorney, meanwhile, is selling the notion that his client, who's ex-military, was brain damaged himself in a car accident and considers Our Only Available President still to be his commander-in-chief. And so when OOAP started bashing African-American NFL players for kneeling with their heads bowed during the anthem to protest racial injustice, saying they should all be fired, this guy took it as an order to enforce the proper respect by any means necessary.
Now, OOAP never said to bash in the skulls of those who in his opinion "disrespect" the anthem, although he has been agreeable to protestors at his rallies having their skulls bashed in. But he did suggest those who did "disrespect" the anthem should lose their jobs, which is just about as extremist. So this guy just extraplolated that out.
The only thing he's guilty of, his hired suit says, is being a patriot.
A patriot.
Good. Lord. In heaven.
This has not been a good week for those of you who expect a lot of happy talk about Sportsball World from the Blob. For that, the Blob apologizes. But stuff happens. And among that stuff has been this "patriot" in Montana, and what he says about the country we live in now.
We live in a country now, I keep thinking, where grown men bash in the skulls of children for not being properly "respectful" to a song.
We live in a country where people who do that are called "patriots" by their attorneys.
We live in a country where other "patriots" drive 600 miles to kill a bunch of brown people, because the President of the United States, and his enablers in right-wing media, have repeatedly referred to them as "invaders" and all but openly suggested they're bent on destroying white American hegemony.
We live in a country where the president who says these sorts of things claim his words mean nothing, that they radicalize no one, that they inspire no white supremacist violence even when the perpetrators of that violence say they do.
We live in a country where arresting 600 undocumented Hispanic workers at a chicken processing plant (but not their white employers, of course) is framed as keeping America safe from ... oh, hell, I don't know. Hard-working people just trying to live their lives and feed their families, I guess.
We live in a country where lots of people actually believe this nonsense. We live in a country where you can't call a racist a racist, because then you're being racist yourself. We live in a country where you can't even do that when the President himself is telling elected representatives of color to go back to Africa if they don't like his policies.
We live in a country that used to be America.
The bad news is, I don't know what it is now.
The worse news is, or maybe I do.
Friday, August 9, 2019
Cruisin' for a bruisin'
There has always been this mean, rotten place in the Blob that loves a good hard downpour on a festive parade. Nothing like drenched floral arrangements on the President's Trophy float to warm the cockles of its cold, cold heart.
And so we take you to last night, and the first full slate of Games Between Guys You'll Never See Again, aka the NFL preseason.
Here was a headline from all that I saw on ESPN.com this morning: Baker Mayfield, Browns Off To Picture-Perfect Start.
Oh, lordy. Here we go.
Here we go with the elaborate setup, the Hostess Twinkie filled with shaving cream, the flaming bag of dog poop left on the doorstep. The Browns hype, it's gone full red line. And it's cruelty undistilled. Browns fans are Carrie, and, yes, that is a bucket of pig's blood poised to come raining down on them.
Sure, sure. We all get it. The Browns have a quarterback now who from all appearances is not Johnny "Tim" Manziel-Crouch. They've got Odell Beckham Jr. They've got Nick Chubb to gash defenses. They've got a bunch of young guys on defense who look like they can play.
How can they not be bound for the Super Bowl? Or at least the lush expanse of the playoffs?
So cruel. So. Damn. Cruel.
Because, listen, there are all sorts of scenarios in which everything goes sideways, and the cruelest part is, every Browns fan knows every one of them. The catechism of heartbreak goes back decades, and every drunken Dog Pounder who wound up sitting bleary-eye on some street corner after another crushing loss can recite all of it.
The Drive. The Fumble. Johnny Bleeping Manziel, what the hell were they thinking?
But Manziel is in Canada now, or maybe back home in Texas. And the Brownies have Mayfield now, a real quarterback, better than Mike Phipps, even. And they have Odell. What could go wrong?
Easy to forget that the Browns went 7-9 last year. Easy to forget that the Steelers aren't going anywhere, that everyone who's writing them off because they lost Antonio Brown and LeVeon Bell are overlooking the fact they've still got the best QB in the division (Ben Roethlisberger),plus a wideout who caught 111 balls last year (JuJu Smith-Schuster), plus a running back (James Conner) who rushed for 900-plus yards and averaged 4.5 yards per tote.
Plus a lot more cohesive locker room now that A.B. is gone.
So there's that. And there's Lamar Jackson over in Baltimore;, and who knows what magic he'll pull out of the hat this fall. And ...
And, well. This is the Browns we're talking about. The last time they didn't screw everything up, Gary Collins was catching passes from Frank Ryan and Jim Brown was shedding tacklers the way a duck sheds rainwater.
On the other hand, they did beat the Washington Football Club 30-10 last night. Mayfield was 6-of-7 and threw a touchdown pass. And the Browns leading receiver was ... Rashard Griffin.
Fifth-round draft pick in 2016, out of Colorado State. Started one game last year. Caught 39 balls, fifth on the team. Ranked 98th in the league among NFL receivers.
In other words, he's a backup, and no Odell. Who didn't play a down last night, on account of it's preseason.
Which means, technically, that aforementioned headline is inaccurate. The Browns are not off to a picture-perfect start, because nothing's really started. We're still a month out from that.
See? Rain, all over the parade.
Of course, Browns fans are used to that.
Not the parade, though.
And so we take you to last night, and the first full slate of Games Between Guys You'll Never See Again, aka the NFL preseason.
Here was a headline from all that I saw on ESPN.com this morning: Baker Mayfield, Browns Off To Picture-Perfect Start.
Oh, lordy. Here we go.
Here we go with the elaborate setup, the Hostess Twinkie filled with shaving cream, the flaming bag of dog poop left on the doorstep. The Browns hype, it's gone full red line. And it's cruelty undistilled. Browns fans are Carrie, and, yes, that is a bucket of pig's blood poised to come raining down on them.
Sure, sure. We all get it. The Browns have a quarterback now who from all appearances is not Johnny "Tim" Manziel-Crouch. They've got Odell Beckham Jr. They've got Nick Chubb to gash defenses. They've got a bunch of young guys on defense who look like they can play.
How can they not be bound for the Super Bowl? Or at least the lush expanse of the playoffs?
So cruel. So. Damn. Cruel.
Because, listen, there are all sorts of scenarios in which everything goes sideways, and the cruelest part is, every Browns fan knows every one of them. The catechism of heartbreak goes back decades, and every drunken Dog Pounder who wound up sitting bleary-eye on some street corner after another crushing loss can recite all of it.
The Drive. The Fumble. Johnny Bleeping Manziel, what the hell were they thinking?
But Manziel is in Canada now, or maybe back home in Texas. And the Brownies have Mayfield now, a real quarterback, better than Mike Phipps, even. And they have Odell. What could go wrong?
Easy to forget that the Browns went 7-9 last year. Easy to forget that the Steelers aren't going anywhere, that everyone who's writing them off because they lost Antonio Brown and LeVeon Bell are overlooking the fact they've still got the best QB in the division (Ben Roethlisberger),plus a wideout who caught 111 balls last year (JuJu Smith-Schuster), plus a running back (James Conner) who rushed for 900-plus yards and averaged 4.5 yards per tote.
Plus a lot more cohesive locker room now that A.B. is gone.
So there's that. And there's Lamar Jackson over in Baltimore;, and who knows what magic he'll pull out of the hat this fall. And ...
And, well. This is the Browns we're talking about. The last time they didn't screw everything up, Gary Collins was catching passes from Frank Ryan and Jim Brown was shedding tacklers the way a duck sheds rainwater.
On the other hand, they did beat the Washington Football Club 30-10 last night. Mayfield was 6-of-7 and threw a touchdown pass. And the Browns leading receiver was ... Rashard Griffin.
Fifth-round draft pick in 2016, out of Colorado State. Started one game last year. Caught 39 balls, fifth on the team. Ranked 98th in the league among NFL receivers.
In other words, he's a backup, and no Odell. Who didn't play a down last night, on account of it's preseason.
Which means, technically, that aforementioned headline is inaccurate. The Browns are not off to a picture-perfect start, because nothing's really started. We're still a month out from that.
See? Rain, all over the parade.
Of course, Browns fans are used to that.
Not the parade, though.
Thursday, August 8, 2019
That's so Raiders
These are the palmy days for the Oakland/Las Vegas/Wherever Raiders, if such wonders still exist for this pratfall of a franchise.
HBO's "Hard Knocks" is in town, giving the Silver-and-Black some valuable national pub.
Enough people still think Jon Gruden -- the single most overrated football coach in America across the last two decades or more -- can actually coach, or still is interesting enough, to merit the full "Hard Knocks" monty.
And, yeah, even that's not true -- even if Gruden's Chucky persona is so '90s these days, and he's done some dumb stuff like trade away one of the best defensive players in football (Khalil Mack) and his best receiver (Amari Cooper) ...
Well, hey. At least "Hard Knocks" is in town. And at least Gruden's got Antonio Brown now, so who needs Amari Coo--
I'm sorry, what?
He doesn't have Antonio Brown right now?
And that's because ... why?
Yes, that's right, America. The Raiders landed the best wide receiver in football, only to find out he's got "extreme frostbite" in his feet because he didn't wear the proper protective footwear during a cryogenic treatment in France. He hasn't practiced since July 30, no one knows when he'll be back, and his feet look like they belong on Bilbo Baggins.
Extreme frostbite. Seriously. Could there be anything more Raiders than that?
They get one of the stickout offensive weapons in the entire NFL, and it turns out what they actually got was a guy who just crawled off the ice shelf in Antarctica. Jon Gruden, meet Ernest Shackleton. No, no one else in the expedition survived, I'm afraid. But give Ernie some time and he'll be running go routes before you know it.
Yeesh. You know how bizarre this is?
It's so bizarre it sounds like a baseball injury. And those guys wrote the book on bizarre.
So Raiders. So, so Raiders.
HBO's "Hard Knocks" is in town, giving the Silver-and-Black some valuable national pub.
Enough people still think Jon Gruden -- the single most overrated football coach in America across the last two decades or more -- can actually coach, or still is interesting enough, to merit the full "Hard Knocks" monty.
And, yeah, even that's not true -- even if Gruden's Chucky persona is so '90s these days, and he's done some dumb stuff like trade away one of the best defensive players in football (Khalil Mack) and his best receiver (Amari Cooper) ...
Well, hey. At least "Hard Knocks" is in town. And at least Gruden's got Antonio Brown now, so who needs Amari Coo--
I'm sorry, what?
He doesn't have Antonio Brown right now?
And that's because ... why?
Yes, that's right, America. The Raiders landed the best wide receiver in football, only to find out he's got "extreme frostbite" in his feet because he didn't wear the proper protective footwear during a cryogenic treatment in France. He hasn't practiced since July 30, no one knows when he'll be back, and his feet look like they belong on Bilbo Baggins.
Extreme frostbite. Seriously. Could there be anything more Raiders than that?
They get one of the stickout offensive weapons in the entire NFL, and it turns out what they actually got was a guy who just crawled off the ice shelf in Antarctica. Jon Gruden, meet Ernest Shackleton. No, no one else in the expedition survived, I'm afraid. But give Ernie some time and he'll be running go routes before you know it.
Yeesh. You know how bizarre this is?
It's so bizarre it sounds like a baseball injury. And those guys wrote the book on bizarre.
So Raiders. So, so Raiders.
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
Quality control
Maybe I'm not seeing this right. It happens sometimes.
It happens when you're a contrarian who frequently doesn't look at the world in the way normal humans do, or what we like to think are normal humans. Which is to say, things look yea different when you're seeing them upside-down and sideways, with your head cocked way over and your eyes all scrunched up like a hurricane wind is blowing in your face.
And so to the topic du jour: The NCAA's new guidelines for agents wishing to represent NCAA players testing the NBA waters.
The NCAA's new decree is that in order to represent these athletes, agents must hold a bachelor's degree, NBPA certification for at least three straight years and professional liability insurance, and must complete an in-person exam taken at the NCAA office in Indianapolis in early November.
One presumes the NCAA sees this as protecting its "student-athletes" from being exploited by unsavory street agents and fast-buck con artists.
The Blob, however, suspects it's also just another way for a massive corporate construct to safeguard its product. Quality control, if you will -- with the emphasis on "control."
You can get all kinds of pushback by suggesting big-money college athletics operate with a plantation mentality, because all kinds of folks will indignantly fly to the ramparts if you do. Why, how dare you characterize as chattel the athletes who feed the NCAA's revenue stream! They get a free education! They get the best of everything their universities have to offer! They get special treatm--
Oops. Better not go there. It leads to some thorny territory, because then you have to explain why "student-athletes" get their special treatment, and that leads to the uncomfortable truth that they get that treatment because they're ... well ... a valuable commodity.
In other words, they generate revenue. Goo-gobs of it.
And so, yes, there is a whiff of the plantation in these agent requirements, or at least a whiff of its paternalistic attitude toward its workforce ("We're doing this to protect our student-athletes. They're such children, you see.") And it is about controlling that workforce, when you get down to the bare wood of it.
Why else would the NCAA presume to dictate who its "student-athletes" can hire to represent them, and by what criteria? Do they dictate the same to the coaches and other athletic personnel of its member schools? And if not, how is it the NCAA's business who its "student-athletes" hire?
Unless, of course, there's a presumption of ownership there. Or something akin to it.
I know. This is just me seeing things all catawampus again, right?
But what if it's not?
It happens when you're a contrarian who frequently doesn't look at the world in the way normal humans do, or what we like to think are normal humans. Which is to say, things look yea different when you're seeing them upside-down and sideways, with your head cocked way over and your eyes all scrunched up like a hurricane wind is blowing in your face.
And so to the topic du jour: The NCAA's new guidelines for agents wishing to represent NCAA players testing the NBA waters.
The NCAA's new decree is that in order to represent these athletes, agents must hold a bachelor's degree, NBPA certification for at least three straight years and professional liability insurance, and must complete an in-person exam taken at the NCAA office in Indianapolis in early November.
One presumes the NCAA sees this as protecting its "student-athletes" from being exploited by unsavory street agents and fast-buck con artists.
The Blob, however, suspects it's also just another way for a massive corporate construct to safeguard its product. Quality control, if you will -- with the emphasis on "control."
You can get all kinds of pushback by suggesting big-money college athletics operate with a plantation mentality, because all kinds of folks will indignantly fly to the ramparts if you do. Why, how dare you characterize as chattel the athletes who feed the NCAA's revenue stream! They get a free education! They get the best of everything their universities have to offer! They get special treatm--
Oops. Better not go there. It leads to some thorny territory, because then you have to explain why "student-athletes" get their special treatment, and that leads to the uncomfortable truth that they get that treatment because they're ... well ... a valuable commodity.
In other words, they generate revenue. Goo-gobs of it.
And so, yes, there is a whiff of the plantation in these agent requirements, or at least a whiff of its paternalistic attitude toward its workforce ("We're doing this to protect our student-athletes. They're such children, you see.") And it is about controlling that workforce, when you get down to the bare wood of it.
Why else would the NCAA presume to dictate who its "student-athletes" can hire to represent them, and by what criteria? Do they dictate the same to the coaches and other athletic personnel of its member schools? And if not, how is it the NCAA's business who its "student-athletes" hire?
Unless, of course, there's a presumption of ownership there. Or something akin to it.
I know. This is just me seeing things all catawampus again, right?
But what if it's not?
Home at last
That one year, I flew out to Sioux Falls for the Summit League basketball tournament, on account of IPFW had a real shot at winning and reaching Basketball God's Country, aka the NCAA Tournament.
(The Mastodons didn't. Came close. Lost by three in the title game to North Dakota State when a kid named Taylor Braun went all hero ball on them in the last three minutes.)
Anyway ... Sioux Falls wasn't the edge of forever, but it felt like it. Ten minutes or so west of the city the countryside opened up and it was Great Plains Central. The Badlands were out there somewhere. Mt. Rushmore. North Dakota was to the north; Nebraska and Oklahoma were to the south, Colorado and the Rockies to the west.
In other words: It did not feel like home.
Home is where what is now Purdue Fort Wayne -- forget the blue-and-white; you'll get black-and-old-gold now and like it -- will be going next July.
Home is the Horizon League, an address that's been making all kinds of sense for at least five years and finally will be PFW's address. School and conference officials announced the move yesterday, to an unspoken chorus of "It's about time." The Horizon League, after all, is Cleveland State and Detroit Mercy and Wright State and Illinois-Chicago, IUPUI and Northern Kentucky and Oakland (Mich.). It's a Midwest league. It's what the Summit League used to be -- much of the Horizon League are Summit League alums -- before it packed up and moved west.
The Summit League is now the Dakotas and Colorado and Oklahoma and Nebraska. It's a Great Plains league. It's a football league, particularly if you're North Dakota State and South Dakota State, a couple of perennial FCS powers. It's no place for a non-football-playing regional campus stuck out there on an island a six-hour bus ride east of the next easternmost Summit League school (Western Illinois).
I don't know how the travel budget alone didn't take down the whole IPFW/PFW athletic department, these past few years. So from that standpoint alone, moving back in with its Midwest pals will be an immediate boon to the operating ledger.
Otherwise, culturally and geographically, the Horizon is home. There are four other regional schools in the league. It does not play football, and its headquarters is in Indianapolis. Old rivalries with IUPUI, Oakland, Northern Kentucky will be renewed, and there won't be any more road trips to the edge of forever.
Detroit and Chicago are three hours away. Dayton, home of Wright State, is two-and-a-half. Cleveland's three-and-a-half. Indy's two. So no more Oregon Trail and wagons ho.
And now I find myself thinking about Southern Utah University, and how oddly the worm turns sometimes.
Southern Utah, once upon a time, was in the Summit League. It's located in Cedar City, Utah, and back in the day it was Purdue-Fort Wayne's doppelganger.
Just as PFW is now too far east for the Summit League's footprint, Southern Utah was too far west. Like PFW, it didn't fit. Like PFW, it was the outlier, the square peg, the one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other. So in 2012, the Thunderbirds left to join the Big Sky.
But now?
Now, Southern Utah would fit right in with the Summit League; it even plays football. And it's Purdue-Fort Wayne who no longer fits in.
Your geography lesson for today, or something.
(The Mastodons didn't. Came close. Lost by three in the title game to North Dakota State when a kid named Taylor Braun went all hero ball on them in the last three minutes.)
Anyway ... Sioux Falls wasn't the edge of forever, but it felt like it. Ten minutes or so west of the city the countryside opened up and it was Great Plains Central. The Badlands were out there somewhere. Mt. Rushmore. North Dakota was to the north; Nebraska and Oklahoma were to the south, Colorado and the Rockies to the west.
In other words: It did not feel like home.
Home is where what is now Purdue Fort Wayne -- forget the blue-and-white; you'll get black-and-old-gold now and like it -- will be going next July.
Home is the Horizon League, an address that's been making all kinds of sense for at least five years and finally will be PFW's address. School and conference officials announced the move yesterday, to an unspoken chorus of "It's about time." The Horizon League, after all, is Cleveland State and Detroit Mercy and Wright State and Illinois-Chicago, IUPUI and Northern Kentucky and Oakland (Mich.). It's a Midwest league. It's what the Summit League used to be -- much of the Horizon League are Summit League alums -- before it packed up and moved west.
The Summit League is now the Dakotas and Colorado and Oklahoma and Nebraska. It's a Great Plains league. It's a football league, particularly if you're North Dakota State and South Dakota State, a couple of perennial FCS powers. It's no place for a non-football-playing regional campus stuck out there on an island a six-hour bus ride east of the next easternmost Summit League school (Western Illinois).
I don't know how the travel budget alone didn't take down the whole IPFW/PFW athletic department, these past few years. So from that standpoint alone, moving back in with its Midwest pals will be an immediate boon to the operating ledger.
Otherwise, culturally and geographically, the Horizon is home. There are four other regional schools in the league. It does not play football, and its headquarters is in Indianapolis. Old rivalries with IUPUI, Oakland, Northern Kentucky will be renewed, and there won't be any more road trips to the edge of forever.
Detroit and Chicago are three hours away. Dayton, home of Wright State, is two-and-a-half. Cleveland's three-and-a-half. Indy's two. So no more Oregon Trail and wagons ho.
And now I find myself thinking about Southern Utah University, and how oddly the worm turns sometimes.
Southern Utah, once upon a time, was in the Summit League. It's located in Cedar City, Utah, and back in the day it was Purdue-Fort Wayne's doppelganger.
Just as PFW is now too far east for the Summit League's footprint, Southern Utah was too far west. Like PFW, it didn't fit. Like PFW, it was the outlier, the square peg, the one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other. So in 2012, the Thunderbirds left to join the Big Sky.
But now?
Now, Southern Utah would fit right in with the Summit League; it even plays football. And it's Purdue-Fort Wayne who no longer fits in.
Your geography lesson for today, or something.
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Gamer madness
Well. I guess that settles that.
You are right, Mr. President. I confess.
Pole Position made me do it.
Pole Position or Super Mario Brothers or Fortnite, one of those evil video games that turn peace-loving young white boys into bloodthirsty mentally ill killers. Yes, that must be it. The next time some angry white guy grabs the military grade weaponry he picked up at his local big box store ("I'll take a Slim Jim ... a Red Bull ... and six AR-15s, please.")? The next time he grabs a sackful of clips and drives 600 miles to shoot up another big box store because there were too many brown people shopping there?
It won't be because he was all hopped up on the constant stream of racist paranoia being fed him by Our Only Available President and his enablers at Fox "News." Oh, no.
It'll be Call of Duty's fault.
Holy mother of pearl. Does the madness ever end?
And is there any debunked theory whose rotting corpse OOAP won't exhume to duck his own role in that madness?
Look. I get the obliviousness. I get the lack of self-awareness. No one wants to admit he or she might have played a role in what has become our No. 1 national security threat, white supremacist terrorism. No one, least of all Donald J. "Donny" Trump himself, is going to recognize the intergalactic absurdity of suddenly decrying everything he's been stoking for so many years -- and as recently as last week.
But the video game dodge is especially laughable, if indeed any thinking human being can summon a laugh at this point. Not only has its connection to real-world violence indeed long been debunked, it's especially absurd given that there's an entire sport devoted to it now.
The Blob has always been skeptical of e-sports, but that is mostly because it's reached full Old Man Shouting At Clouds citizenship. It's hard for me to regard as sports an activity you can engage in while crushing a bag of Doritos. But that's just me.
Thing is, e-sports is big business now. Lots of cash is on the line in all the big national events. But if you follow OOAP's line of reasoning, such as it is, e-sports should be banned. Because they're incubating an entire generation of psychopathic hollow-eyed killing machines.
This, of course, is ridiculous. To my knowledge, no serious professional gamer has yet gone a killing spree because he could not longer distinguish between video games and real life. Not even less-serious gamers have.
My son, for instance, spends a lot of his downtime in the summer killing Japanese and Germans and insurgents. Oh, not for real, of course. He does it playing his many versions of Call of Duty. In a given summer he'll wipe out entire battalions.
Yet I have no fear that someday he'll do it for real. Partly this is because he's immune to the gun culture; he's never really cared for firearms. Mostly it's because he's not an idiot, and knows the difference between right and wrong.
Also, he doesn't watch Fox "News." Or OOAP.
I consider this a sign of superior intelligence, frankly.
I only wish I could find an old Pole Position game. I'd kick his butt.
You are right, Mr. President. I confess.
Pole Position made me do it.
Pole Position or Super Mario Brothers or Fortnite, one of those evil video games that turn peace-loving young white boys into bloodthirsty mentally ill killers. Yes, that must be it. The next time some angry white guy grabs the military grade weaponry he picked up at his local big box store ("I'll take a Slim Jim ... a Red Bull ... and six AR-15s, please.")? The next time he grabs a sackful of clips and drives 600 miles to shoot up another big box store because there were too many brown people shopping there?
It won't be because he was all hopped up on the constant stream of racist paranoia being fed him by Our Only Available President and his enablers at Fox "News." Oh, no.
It'll be Call of Duty's fault.
Holy mother of pearl. Does the madness ever end?
And is there any debunked theory whose rotting corpse OOAP won't exhume to duck his own role in that madness?
Look. I get the obliviousness. I get the lack of self-awareness. No one wants to admit he or she might have played a role in what has become our No. 1 national security threat, white supremacist terrorism. No one, least of all Donald J. "Donny" Trump himself, is going to recognize the intergalactic absurdity of suddenly decrying everything he's been stoking for so many years -- and as recently as last week.
But the video game dodge is especially laughable, if indeed any thinking human being can summon a laugh at this point. Not only has its connection to real-world violence indeed long been debunked, it's especially absurd given that there's an entire sport devoted to it now.
The Blob has always been skeptical of e-sports, but that is mostly because it's reached full Old Man Shouting At Clouds citizenship. It's hard for me to regard as sports an activity you can engage in while crushing a bag of Doritos. But that's just me.
Thing is, e-sports is big business now. Lots of cash is on the line in all the big national events. But if you follow OOAP's line of reasoning, such as it is, e-sports should be banned. Because they're incubating an entire generation of psychopathic hollow-eyed killing machines.
This, of course, is ridiculous. To my knowledge, no serious professional gamer has yet gone a killing spree because he could not longer distinguish between video games and real life. Not even less-serious gamers have.
My son, for instance, spends a lot of his downtime in the summer killing Japanese and Germans and insurgents. Oh, not for real, of course. He does it playing his many versions of Call of Duty. In a given summer he'll wipe out entire battalions.
Yet I have no fear that someday he'll do it for real. Partly this is because he's immune to the gun culture; he's never really cared for firearms. Mostly it's because he's not an idiot, and knows the difference between right and wrong.
Also, he doesn't watch Fox "News." Or OOAP.
I consider this a sign of superior intelligence, frankly.
I only wish I could find an old Pole Position game. I'd kick his butt.
Sunday, August 4, 2019
Killing fields
This is no morning to visit Sportsball World, by the Blob's lights. If you came looking for that -- if you came looking for some light-hearted banter about how the Yankees and Red Sox play one another every week these days -- you might as well leave now. I personally don't give a damn.
See, I can't help you today. I can't put on the happy face for you, toss around witticisms like rose petals, crack frivolously about frivolous pursuits.
I can't do this because there are 20 people dead in El Paso at the hands of a white supremacist parroting many of Our Only Available President's talking points. I can't do this because there are nine people dead in Dayton, bodies strewn about an American street on a summer night as if it were Omaha Beach on D-Day. So I can't be Jolly Old St. Nick today. It would feel obscene.
Look. This is not going to be another anti-gun screed; I'm not anti-gun, as I've made abundantly clear many times. So don't accuse me of politicizing tragedy, the way our lackey politicians and our lackey president undoubtedly will of anyone who suggests maybe it's time we at least tried to make it a smidge harder for the insane and the aggrieved to arm themselves like Army Rangers.
I'm one of those anyones. That doesn't make me anti-gun. It merely makes me sane. But I've given up trying to talk sense to the gun fetishists who think I'm the crazy one, and who have elevated the Second Amendment to religious canon.
Fine, boys and girls. And congratulations. You've got the country you always wanted.
Although good luck surviving your next trip to Walmart.
A score of people didn't yesterday in Texas, a state where packing heat is as natural as breathing. There apparently were people packing in that Walmart yesterday, according to witnesses. Yet no one took out the shooter with a couple of well-placed hero rounds, like they do in the movies. This is because real life isn't the movies.
In real life, people freeze in those situations. In real life, with chaos happening in real time, sorting out what exactly is going on is a lot harder than it is in the movies. And in Texas, where so many real people find it necessary to strap on a Glock-9 for trips to the mall ...
Well. Maybe, in all the chaos, it was hard tell who were the "good guys with guns," and who weren't.
I don't know. I only know I'm sick of it all.
I'm sick of this Slaughter of the Week culture created for us by cowed politicians and powerful special interest lobbies.
I'm sick of thoughts and prayers, not because they're inappropriate -- they're always appropriate in the wake of these tragedies -- but because the thoughts and prayers are never backed up by action. Which ultimately makes them as hollow as reeds.
I'm sick of living in a country where I'm told by the gun lobby and its bought politicians that the answer to aggrieved white men with guns -- and lately it's almost always aggrieved white men with guns, the real terrorists attacking America these days -- is to stock up on guns myself. Which of course is the whole point.
Slaughters of the Week are good for business, you see. The more slaughters there are, the more Americans are frightened into thinking buying a gun is not a discretionary purchase, but a staple. Like gas or groceries.
I'm sick of that. And I'm sick of our Demagogue in Chief telling me -- OK, not me; I'm white -- that if I am sick of it, I can just go back where I came from.
Well. I'm not going anywhere. Or, actually, I am.
I'm going to the grocery. I'm going to the mall. I'm going to the movies, to a restaurant, to a concert, to church if I choose to do so. And I'm not going armed. The rest of you want to turn America into the wild West, have at it. I'm not playin'.
And to the American terrorists shooting up America and trying to make me think twice about going to the aforementioned places?
To hell with you. Come at me. And to hell with the lobbyists and their political toadies who've made us think twice, and who suggest we should all just buy a gun if we don't like that.
Thoughts and prayers for those of who don't, I guess. Word has it they're great at stopping bullets.
See, I can't help you today. I can't put on the happy face for you, toss around witticisms like rose petals, crack frivolously about frivolous pursuits.
I can't do this because there are 20 people dead in El Paso at the hands of a white supremacist parroting many of Our Only Available President's talking points. I can't do this because there are nine people dead in Dayton, bodies strewn about an American street on a summer night as if it were Omaha Beach on D-Day. So I can't be Jolly Old St. Nick today. It would feel obscene.
Look. This is not going to be another anti-gun screed; I'm not anti-gun, as I've made abundantly clear many times. So don't accuse me of politicizing tragedy, the way our lackey politicians and our lackey president undoubtedly will of anyone who suggests maybe it's time we at least tried to make it a smidge harder for the insane and the aggrieved to arm themselves like Army Rangers.
I'm one of those anyones. That doesn't make me anti-gun. It merely makes me sane. But I've given up trying to talk sense to the gun fetishists who think I'm the crazy one, and who have elevated the Second Amendment to religious canon.
Fine, boys and girls. And congratulations. You've got the country you always wanted.
Although good luck surviving your next trip to Walmart.
A score of people didn't yesterday in Texas, a state where packing heat is as natural as breathing. There apparently were people packing in that Walmart yesterday, according to witnesses. Yet no one took out the shooter with a couple of well-placed hero rounds, like they do in the movies. This is because real life isn't the movies.
In real life, people freeze in those situations. In real life, with chaos happening in real time, sorting out what exactly is going on is a lot harder than it is in the movies. And in Texas, where so many real people find it necessary to strap on a Glock-9 for trips to the mall ...
Well. Maybe, in all the chaos, it was hard tell who were the "good guys with guns," and who weren't.
I don't know. I only know I'm sick of it all.
I'm sick of this Slaughter of the Week culture created for us by cowed politicians and powerful special interest lobbies.
I'm sick of thoughts and prayers, not because they're inappropriate -- they're always appropriate in the wake of these tragedies -- but because the thoughts and prayers are never backed up by action. Which ultimately makes them as hollow as reeds.
I'm sick of living in a country where I'm told by the gun lobby and its bought politicians that the answer to aggrieved white men with guns -- and lately it's almost always aggrieved white men with guns, the real terrorists attacking America these days -- is to stock up on guns myself. Which of course is the whole point.
Slaughters of the Week are good for business, you see. The more slaughters there are, the more Americans are frightened into thinking buying a gun is not a discretionary purchase, but a staple. Like gas or groceries.
I'm sick of that. And I'm sick of our Demagogue in Chief telling me -- OK, not me; I'm white -- that if I am sick of it, I can just go back where I came from.
Well. I'm not going anywhere. Or, actually, I am.
I'm going to the grocery. I'm going to the mall. I'm going to the movies, to a restaurant, to a concert, to church if I choose to do so. And I'm not going armed. The rest of you want to turn America into the wild West, have at it. I'm not playin'.
And to the American terrorists shooting up America and trying to make me think twice about going to the aforementioned places?
To hell with you. Come at me. And to hell with the lobbyists and their political toadies who've made us think twice, and who suggest we should all just buy a gun if we don't like that.
Thoughts and prayers for those of who don't, I guess. Word has it they're great at stopping bullets.
More reefer madness
Or, in this case, PED madness.
Remember the other day, when the Blob made sport of the En Eff Ell's uneven-handedness in doling out punishment, particularly in regards to PED use ("Bad! Very bad!") versus domestic violence ("Wait ... is there video? No? OK, then.")
It's how Tyreek Hill basically skated on allegedly punching his toddler while Golden Tate got a four-game rip because, essentially, he and his wife were trying to get pregnant. Apparently there was some sort of no-no magic bean in the fertility drug Tate was taking, and, even though he alerted league authorities that it might cause him to show red, he got a sitdown, anyway.
Because, after all, a fertility drug could be a gateway to harder drugs. Today you're just trying to get pregnant; tomorrow you're mainlining Secretariat's DNA.
Pure silliness, I know. But you think that's something? That's nothing.
For even more silliness, we go to Los Angeles, where running back Steven Jackson, who hasn't played in the NFL since 2015, signed a symbolic one-day deal with the Rams so he could retire a Ram. After all, Jackson played the majority of his career with the Rams, and is the franchise's all-time leading rusher.
Nice little gesture, then. Nifty little training camp tidbit.
Except.
Except for the fact that, after signing, he got a summons from the league to take a drug test.
No, I'm not making that up. They really wanted him to come in and pee in a cup before he officially retired.
Jackson politely declined, for the excellent reason that the whole notion was numbingly stupid. And to his credit, he even had a sense of humor about it, joking on Twitter that perhaps the league had heard about him summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Of course, if there's video of that ...
Remember the other day, when the Blob made sport of the En Eff Ell's uneven-handedness in doling out punishment, particularly in regards to PED use ("Bad! Very bad!") versus domestic violence ("Wait ... is there video? No? OK, then.")
It's how Tyreek Hill basically skated on allegedly punching his toddler while Golden Tate got a four-game rip because, essentially, he and his wife were trying to get pregnant. Apparently there was some sort of no-no magic bean in the fertility drug Tate was taking, and, even though he alerted league authorities that it might cause him to show red, he got a sitdown, anyway.
Because, after all, a fertility drug could be a gateway to harder drugs. Today you're just trying to get pregnant; tomorrow you're mainlining Secretariat's DNA.
Pure silliness, I know. But you think that's something? That's nothing.
For even more silliness, we go to Los Angeles, where running back Steven Jackson, who hasn't played in the NFL since 2015, signed a symbolic one-day deal with the Rams so he could retire a Ram. After all, Jackson played the majority of his career with the Rams, and is the franchise's all-time leading rusher.
Nice little gesture, then. Nifty little training camp tidbit.
Except.
Except for the fact that, after signing, he got a summons from the league to take a drug test.
No, I'm not making that up. They really wanted him to come in and pee in a cup before he officially retired.
Jackson politely declined, for the excellent reason that the whole notion was numbingly stupid. And to his credit, he even had a sense of humor about it, joking on Twitter that perhaps the league had heard about him summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Of course, if there's video of that ...
Saturday, August 3, 2019
By any other name(s)
It used to be so easy, back in the day. Dale Earnhardt was the smirking dark lord in the black No. 3. Jeff Gordon was your daughter's date for the junior prom. Mark Martin was the wizened little guy who looked like he was 105 years old and subsisted on apples and air.
And the Brickyard 400?
It was the Brickyard 400. That's it. Nothing else.
Now?
Well, I saw an Indianapolis Motor Speedway online ad hawking tickets to this year's Brickyard 400, only it wasn't the Brickyard 400. It was something called the "Big Machine Vodka 400 at the Brickyard, powered by Florida Georgia Line." Takes you almost as long to spit out the entire official name as it does to run the thing.
Plus it has more syllables than there'll be fans in the stands, if the recent trend continues.
Such irony in that, or something. What started out as the plain old Brickyard 400 drew north of 250,00 future Trumpalinas, until everyone discovered it was the Tournament of Roses parade with faster floats. Now it's the "Big Machine Vodka 400 at the Brickyard, powered by Florida Georgia Line," and it's a good day if 50,000 show up for it. The longer the name, the emptier it gets.
And if you're wondering here what the hell Big Machine Vodka is ... well, I did some digging. In other words, I Googled it.
Seems Big Machine Vodka is distilled in downtown Nashville, in a complex that occasionally also serves as an event center. According to the promotional copy, Big Machine Vodka is "25x distilled, 3x platinum filtered. The smoothest tasting vodka, period!"
Which goes absolutely nowhere in explaining why I've never heard of it. Or you, either, I'm guessing.
Oh. And if you're wondering how the Brickyard 400 is powered by a couple of country-and-western musicians ...
Beats me. Maybe it has something to do with their amp setup.
And the Brickyard 400?
It was the Brickyard 400. That's it. Nothing else.
Now?
Well, I saw an Indianapolis Motor Speedway online ad hawking tickets to this year's Brickyard 400, only it wasn't the Brickyard 400. It was something called the "Big Machine Vodka 400 at the Brickyard, powered by Florida Georgia Line." Takes you almost as long to spit out the entire official name as it does to run the thing.
Plus it has more syllables than there'll be fans in the stands, if the recent trend continues.
Such irony in that, or something. What started out as the plain old Brickyard 400 drew north of 250,00 future Trumpalinas, until everyone discovered it was the Tournament of Roses parade with faster floats. Now it's the "Big Machine Vodka 400 at the Brickyard, powered by Florida Georgia Line," and it's a good day if 50,000 show up for it. The longer the name, the emptier it gets.
And if you're wondering here what the hell Big Machine Vodka is ... well, I did some digging. In other words, I Googled it.
Seems Big Machine Vodka is distilled in downtown Nashville, in a complex that occasionally also serves as an event center. According to the promotional copy, Big Machine Vodka is "25x distilled, 3x platinum filtered. The smoothest tasting vodka, period!"
Which goes absolutely nowhere in explaining why I've never heard of it. Or you, either, I'm guessing.
Oh. And if you're wondering how the Brickyard 400 is powered by a couple of country-and-western musicians ...
Beats me. Maybe it has something to do with their amp setup.
Friday, August 2, 2019
Losers, throwin' down
And now it's time for another update in that wildly popular Blob feature, The Battle for the Cel--
("Oooh, no. No, no-no-no-no-no," you're saying.)
--lar, in which the Blob's cruddy Pittsburgh Pir--
("STOP IT! Just STOP IT!")
--ates have reached new levels of stupendous cruddiness, settling in a comfortable 3 1/2 games behind the not-quite-as-cruddy Reds, with a 47-61 record that includes losses in ni--
("La-la-la-la-la, I'm not listening, I'm not listening!")
--ne of their last 10 games.
So they're solidly winning the Battle, with two months left in the season. And they can fight, too!
Also throw at people's heads, which accounts for the fighting.
It seems Our Lads and those scurvy Reds don't like each other much, perhaps because each sees their own innate cruddiness reflected in the other. And so, because they don't play baseball very well, and because Our Lads, again, like to throw at people's heads, they got into another bench-clearing brawl the other night.
Of course, "bench-clearing brawl" does not have quite the same meaning in baseball as it does in, say, hockey. This bench-clearing brawl, for instance, followed all the basic tenets of baseball fights: Two or three combatant wading into one another, and everyone else sort of milling around pulling guys off other guys and trying to look involved while actually just trying not to get hurt.
Still, Major Baseball League takes a dim view of this sort of thing. Which is why it handed down 40 games of suspensions for the latest fracas, led by Pirates pitcher Keone Kela, who got 10 games for (do we really need to repeat this?) throwing at the Reds' Derek Dietrich's head. Pirate teammate Jose Osuna got five games and Bucs manager Clint Hurdle got two, which suggest MLB thinks Our Lads instigated the whole thing, even though the Reds have (or had) Yasiel Puig.
The Blob's totally unbiased take on this is that Joe Torre, MLB's head suspension-hander-outer, likes Cincinnati more than he likes Pittsburgh. Maybe it's the Hudepohl beer.
In any case, the Blob cries foul. Do not disagree.
I'll throw at your head.
("Oooh, no. No, no-no-no-no-no," you're saying.)
--lar, in which the Blob's cruddy Pittsburgh Pir--
("STOP IT! Just STOP IT!")
--ates have reached new levels of stupendous cruddiness, settling in a comfortable 3 1/2 games behind the not-quite-as-cruddy Reds, with a 47-61 record that includes losses in ni--
("La-la-la-la-la, I'm not listening, I'm not listening!")
--ne of their last 10 games.
So they're solidly winning the Battle, with two months left in the season. And they can fight, too!
Also throw at people's heads, which accounts for the fighting.
It seems Our Lads and those scurvy Reds don't like each other much, perhaps because each sees their own innate cruddiness reflected in the other. And so, because they don't play baseball very well, and because Our Lads, again, like to throw at people's heads, they got into another bench-clearing brawl the other night.
Of course, "bench-clearing brawl" does not have quite the same meaning in baseball as it does in, say, hockey. This bench-clearing brawl, for instance, followed all the basic tenets of baseball fights: Two or three combatant wading into one another, and everyone else sort of milling around pulling guys off other guys and trying to look involved while actually just trying not to get hurt.
Still, Major Baseball League takes a dim view of this sort of thing. Which is why it handed down 40 games of suspensions for the latest fracas, led by Pirates pitcher Keone Kela, who got 10 games for (do we really need to repeat this?) throwing at the Reds' Derek Dietrich's head. Pirate teammate Jose Osuna got five games and Bucs manager Clint Hurdle got two, which suggest MLB thinks Our Lads instigated the whole thing, even though the Reds have (or had) Yasiel Puig.
The Blob's totally unbiased take on this is that Joe Torre, MLB's head suspension-hander-outer, likes Cincinnati more than he likes Pittsburgh. Maybe it's the Hudepohl beer.
In any case, the Blob cries foul. Do not disagree.
I'll throw at your head.
Thursday, August 1, 2019
Smoked
Tony Stewart got caught on video taking a swing at a particularly obnoxious heckler the other night, and here's the remarkable thing about that: It did not become a thing.
Oh, it indeed showed up in USA Today and some other publications, but no one called the cops and NASCAR, ever image-conscious until image-consciousness started hurting the gate, has thus far not requested an apology tour from one of its marquee team owners. This seems like a rare outbreak of sanity in an America in which every little thing becomes a, you know, thing.
This time, the general consensus is that the heckler had it coming when Smoke went all Smokin' Joe on him, to loud and profane hell-yeahing from the fans for whom he was signing autographs. It may not be the sort of behavior you want to see from your car owners if you're NASCAR, but allowances must occasionally be made.
Smoke, after all, is Smoke, and always will be. And everyone seems to understand this.
Which is not to say he should go around throwing right hooks at hecklers, no matter how deserving of it they are. This one, for instance, was heckling Stewart because his engine blew after just one lap in a sprint car race in Minnesota, where all this occurred. Why that earned Stewart some trash-talking is a mystery known only to our heckler.
Now, the Blob will admit to some bias here. I've talked to Stewart a number of times. I like the man. He's a no bullspit guy in a frequently bullspit world. And his outlandish success at the top levels of his sport never chased him away from his roots.
How many other guys like him regularly go back to the local dirt tracks from which he sprang, racing on Saturday nights in Flyspeck, Iowa, just because he still likes to hang with the guys who scrape together every dime they've got to go racing? He even bought one of those places -- Eldora over in Rossburg, Ohio, a sweet little dirt bullring set down pretty much in the middle of nowhere.
Smoke's kind of place. Smoke's kind of people.
And taking a swing at some tool?
Not the first time he's done something like that; you can ask any number of drivers and motorsport writers with whom he's gotten into, shall we say, altercations. Probably won't be the last.
As he himself would no doubt say: Deal with it.
Oh, it indeed showed up in USA Today and some other publications, but no one called the cops and NASCAR, ever image-conscious until image-consciousness started hurting the gate, has thus far not requested an apology tour from one of its marquee team owners. This seems like a rare outbreak of sanity in an America in which every little thing becomes a, you know, thing.
This time, the general consensus is that the heckler had it coming when Smoke went all Smokin' Joe on him, to loud and profane hell-yeahing from the fans for whom he was signing autographs. It may not be the sort of behavior you want to see from your car owners if you're NASCAR, but allowances must occasionally be made.
Smoke, after all, is Smoke, and always will be. And everyone seems to understand this.
Which is not to say he should go around throwing right hooks at hecklers, no matter how deserving of it they are. This one, for instance, was heckling Stewart because his engine blew after just one lap in a sprint car race in Minnesota, where all this occurred. Why that earned Stewart some trash-talking is a mystery known only to our heckler.
Now, the Blob will admit to some bias here. I've talked to Stewart a number of times. I like the man. He's a no bullspit guy in a frequently bullspit world. And his outlandish success at the top levels of his sport never chased him away from his roots.
How many other guys like him regularly go back to the local dirt tracks from which he sprang, racing on Saturday nights in Flyspeck, Iowa, just because he still likes to hang with the guys who scrape together every dime they've got to go racing? He even bought one of those places -- Eldora over in Rossburg, Ohio, a sweet little dirt bullring set down pretty much in the middle of nowhere.
Smoke's kind of place. Smoke's kind of people.
And taking a swing at some tool?
Not the first time he's done something like that; you can ask any number of drivers and motorsport writers with whom he's gotten into, shall we say, altercations. Probably won't be the last.
As he himself would no doubt say: Deal with it.