Just desserts

 Major League Baseball threw the book at a sick twist named Trevor Bauer yesterday, and it was one heavy book. Under its domestic violence and sexual assault protocols, it suspended Bauer, who's been on "administrative leave" for the past 99 games, to an additional 324 games.

That's two full seasons to you and me, kids. And that's a record.

It means Bauer, a pitcher of some merit, won't see a big-league mound until 2024 if his appeal of the suspension fails.

He'll be 33 by then and will not have pitched in almost three years.

And that's entirely appropriate.

What would be more appropriate would be putting Bauer in the Graybar Hotel for a stretch, which won't happen because the L.A. District Attorney's Office declined to bring charges back in February. This does not mean charges weren't warranted, mind you. It just means the case was he said/she said, and therefore not enough of a slamdunk for the D.A.'s taste.

Which does not mean the Blob is wrong to call Bauer a "sick twist." We do strive for accuracy here, after all. 

See, Bauer's idea of a romantic sexual encounter involves choking women unconscious and beating them so badly they wind up in the emergency room. That's what happened to a woman in California who had the misfortune to hook up with Bauer a year ago.

She's not the only one. A woman back in Ohio, where Bauer previously played, alleges the same thing. And yet a third woman came out yesterday, claiming in the Washington Post Bauer choked her dozens of times without her consent during sex when they were "dating."

Bauer's defense, essentially, is that the women asked for it. He said they wanted rough sex, and he accommodated them. Now he's suing one of the women, and several media outlets, for defamation.

The Blob's take on that is, once a bully, always a bully.

Look. Let's assume for a moment Bauer is telling the truth when he says he choked and beat up his accusers because they asked him to. Wouldn't a normal male with healthy urges respond by saying "Ewww, no"? Would a normal male with healthy urges instead take that as license to hurt a woman so badly she had to go to the emergency room, as the woman in California did?

"Gee, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Would the answer to that be 'No'?"

Indeed it would.

Bauer, on the other hand, did not say no, indicating he pretty obviously gets off on abusing women during sex. I don't know if this means he  has some deep-seated animosity toward women, and where it comes from if so. But I do know a good psychiatrist could make a ton of coin figuring it out.

A woman psychiatrist, preferably. 

Your signature Draft-y moment

 So the NFL Draft First-Round Extravaganza is over, and other than the usual -- guys getting picked, teams trading up to pick other guys, and the gurus obsessing about the size of a quarterback's hands -- there was the requisite signature moment that made everyone nod and say "Of course." 

The moment happened when the Jets picked Cincinnati defensive back Ahmad "Sauce" Gardner with the fourth pick, spawning a lot of bad jokes that in one fell swoop Sauce had become Weak Sauce. That wasn't the signature moment, however.

The signature moment was when Sauce got lost on the way to the stage for his bro hug with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

Sample headline: "Jets Top Draft Pick Gets Lost. Because, The Jets."

Now all Sauce has to do is get lost on the way to training camp. Because, again, the Jets.

Wait, this is Pittsburgh? How'd I get here ... 

Something like that.

Gettin' Drafty in here

 Tonight is the greatest primetime event you don't really have to watch to watch, the NFL Draft, which consists of draft gurus like Mel Kiper Jr. (and Mel Kiper Jr.'s hair, a Hasbro product) talking about why the Jets drafted a guy with great upside because he has tight skin, and why the Lions blew it again because the offensive lineman they drafted is a waist-bender.

("Tight skin" and "waist bender" being actual Draft-y terms. What, you think I could make those up?)

Anyway ... the draft has become the Draft, a traveling road show that's become a weird sort of American Mardi Gras. Last year, in Nashville, the event drew thousands of fans decked out in their respective team gear. Jacksonville fans huzzah-ed loudly when the Jaguars took Trevor Lawrence as expected, not knowing that in a few months the Jags would hire Urban Meyer and everything would go to hell.

This year?

Well, tonight a lot of gurus think the Jags will take one of two defensive ends, Aidan Hutchinson of Michigan or Travon Walker of Georgia, with the first pick. The Lions will take Hutchinson if the Jags don't; otherwise, they'll take a defensive back, maybe Kyle Hamilton from Notre Dame or Ahmad "Sauce" Gardner from Cincinnati.

(Me, I hope they take Sauce, if it comes to that. On account of a guy named Sauce just sounds like a Lions guy. Especially if he turns out to be a huge bust.)

The gurus also think the first quarterback taken will be Malik Willis from Liberty, and he'll go to the Panthers with the sixth pick. Also, they think the Jets will pick offensive lineman Ikem "Ickey" Ekwonu from North Carolina State with the fourth pick, which would be perfect. Few things could be more Jets than drafting a kid named Ickey -- even if he's  really, really good, which he's supposed to be.

Elsewhere ... well, it looks like the usual pile of DEs and OLs and wide receivers. There'll be the usual tearful celebrations when a player hears his name called. Jets fans and Giants fans and Eagles fans will boo their pick, because Jets fans and Giants fans and Eagles fans. They'd boo their own grandmothers if their team picked her.

"Grandma? What the HELL?? She has no motor! And that godawful tuna casserole of hers!" Jets Fan or Giants Fan or Eagles Fan will say.

Grandma, meanwhile, will turn out to be the Micah Parsons of the 2022 draft. Then she'll sign with the Rams for the GNP of Bulgaria when her rookie deal runs out.

"Tuna casserole THAT, sonny!" she'll say.

But enough of this silliness. On with the show.

Yankees sneered at here*

 (*Especially their asswagon fans.)

(*But also the Yankees.)

I know, I know, I KNOW. I'm just jealous. I despise the Yankees only because my Pittsburgh Cruds are so, well, cruddy, and I would give anything to be able to root for a team with 27 world championships and all that rich history and the monuments out there beyond center field, and EFFING PINSTRIPES, BABY.

Yeah, maybe. 

But they're still a bunch of cheaters.

And their fans are still asswagons.

Only asswagons would throw crap at opposing players right after the Yankees had beaten them on a walkoff hit. That's what the brain cell deficient Yankees fans in center field did Saturday to Cleveland players. Then they subjected Cleveland center fielder Myles Straw to more abuse the next day after Straw said, rightly, that Yankees fans were garbage.

"Worst fan base on the planet," he said -- and if that perhaps gives short shrift to Philly fans ("Hey! We suck, too!" you can hear them protesting), it was close enough for government work.

As for the cheating part, well ... a couple of days after the asswagons did their thing, it came out that Yankees players had been using instant replay to determine pitch sequence, then passing that information to baserunners, who in turn passed it on to the batter at the plate.

In all fairness, the Yankees weren't the only ones doing this at the time. And they apparently stopped after MLB commissioner Manfred Mann, er, Rob Manfred issued a stern warning about it.

Still, the Yankees were doing it. And the Blob's reaction to that is, well, of course. They're the Yankees.

And their fans are their fans.

Which is to say, not quite up to snuff on the evolutionary scale.

Signing day

 You see it every year, re-enacted in a thousand places in a thousand towns, everywhere from the big city to the suburban sprawl to one-stoplight dots on the map in the middle of Farmland USA.

The tableau is always the same: Some kid in a fresh U. of Somewhere cap sitting at a table with a piece of paper in front of him and a pen in his hand, flanked by his beaming parents and maybe a coach or two.

A coach, because the kid is always a football player or a basketball player or a volleyball player or a softball player. Or a baseball player. Or a golfer.

Signing Day is one of those lines of demarcation in life, marking the transition of High School Harry Or Hannah to College Joe Or Julie. And it's uniquely a sports thing. Hardly anyone outside the school doors makes a big production out of the art student landing a scholly to, say, Carnegie Mellon, or the math brainiac who's bound for MIT in the fall. What this says about our national obsession for games and their outsized place in high school culture is self-evident.

And so even a Sports Guy like me notices when a high school decides to take stock of its priorities.

 Snider High School over on the near northeast side of my town takes a backseat to no one in the gild on its athletic programs. The school's won state titles in football and girls basketball and a pile of other stuff, and it's come damn close in boys basketball, our Hoosier bellwether. 

But the other day something unusual happened there.

A young woman named Sydney Spilker signed a letter of intent to attend Wartburg College in Iowa, surrounded by the usual public tableau of family and local media. But not to play basketball or volleyball or softball or golf.

To play cello.

Spilker, see, is a darn fine musician, and Wartburg likes darn fine musicians. So it recruited her to come play the cello, same way it recruits kids to play football or basketball. And Snider High School decided to conduct a college signing for her, same as for the football and basketball kids.

This reminded me of a guy named Russ Isaacs, who was Snider's football coach when it won a state title back in the '90s, and who looked every bit the part. In fact, if you were actually casting a part for a football coach, Russ would be at the front of the line: He had the Fu Manchu going, and the scary glower, and a damned impressive coach-ly holler. 

But appearances fool.

They fool because as much as Russ looked like your standard eat-sleep-breathe Foo-ball Coach, he surprised you with his grasp on perspective. He understood football's role in a high school, and it wasn't to get a kid out of math class. And he actively encouraged his players to participate in other sports, on the excellent theory they would be better football players because of it.

My take on Russ, accurate or not, was that he cared more about Snider High School than Snider High School football. Even if he cared a whole lot for the latter.

So, yeah. I thought about him when I saw Snider was putting on the dog for a cello player.,

Good on you, Snider. Applause, applause, as the music crowd says.

The Reluctant

Well, at least we know one thing: No one will ever confuse the guy with Willis Reed.

"The guy," of course, being Ben Simmons, a professional basketball player who doesn't seem all that interested in playing basketball. He was finally supposed to play for the Nets in Game 4 against the Celtics tonight -- an elimination game, mind you, with the Nets the potential eliminee -- but, nah. Darn back acted up again.

So he'll sit, once more, just when the Nets need him most. Somewhere Reed is shaking his great head, having limped out on one good leg 50 years ago to help his Knicks hold the Lakers at arm's length in the NBA Finals.

I don't know what you do with a guy like Simmons. He sulked his way out of Philly after pouting for months about perceived slights; he still hasn't played a game for the Nets, although he's been shooting for weeks now and was cleared for contact last week.

Which is why he was supposed to finally play tonight.

It being Simmons, no one with a working brain cell actually thought he would.

So no surprise his back acted up again, and, listen, I'm not the guy to tell you it's not legit. Backs are tricky things, and when you injure them it limits you in ways you never could imagine. Especially if your game is basketball.

And yet ...

And yet, who can remember Larry Bird playing through his back issues in his sunset years?

Or Michael Jordan playing what's become known as the Flu Game?

Or all the others down through the years who've taken the floor bruised, battered, hurt or injured because, well, it's what expected of you as someone who's getting paid great sums to play?

What do you do with someone who's not willing to do that?

You've heard of  The Revenant, in which Leo DiCaprio gets mauled by a bear and suffers untold agonies to make it back to civilization (and an Oscar!)? 

Call this The Reluctant.

It was a miracle Philly was able to unload Simmons on the Nets after he spent all those months acting like a 3-year-old who's been denied a cookie. Now that he hasn't played a minute for his new team in (checks notes) two months, who would want him even if the Nets, like Philly, got sick enough of him to trade him?

And, yes, I know, someone certainly would. He's got a certain undeniable skill set, although it doesn't involve shooting straight. In the right system, where he can function solely as a facilitator, he could probably thrive.

If you could get him to play, that is.

And if no one says anything negative about him, and he goes into pout mode again.

Which you wouldn't want bet against, either.

Stuffed shirts and such

 The late, great Dan Jenkins -- sportswriting legend, and the man who inspired a whole generation of keyboard poets -- once poked fun at the pomposity of Wimbledon officials by referring to them as "wing commanders." 

So I imagine he's having a good chuckle somewhere at the wing commanders thinking Wimby actually matters in a geopolitical sense.

His daughter, Sally, alas, thinks the wing commanders are jolly good and spot on.

What they've done, see, is ban Russian and Belarussian tennis players from participating in their little tea party in a couple of months, even the ones who've bravely come out against Vladimir Putin's mad slaughterfest in Ukraine. The wing commanders think Wimbledon needs to take a stand, because, well, it's Wimbledon

Sally Jenkins came out in print to support this position, noting that Putin's crimes are Russia's crimes, and therefore every Russian must answer for them. Unfair as that might be.

The Blob wonders, if that is so, why every single German and every single Japanese wasn't imprisoned for their nations' crimes at the end of the Second World War.

Jenkins' argument is the benign codicil of the doctrine of total war, introduced by Sherman in his March to the Sea in the American Civil War and brought to full flower in the barbarism of the 20th century. Sherman made war on the civilian infrastructure of the South; Great Britain in World War I starved German civilians to death with a blockade that continued long after the armistice was signed. And of course Allied bombers incinerated entire populations in Dresden and Hamburg and Tokyo in World War II. 

Most of the victims of all that were innocents. As are the Russian and  Belarussian tennis players, whose allegiances in many cases are almost entirely commercial. Most of them are citizens of Nike or Adidas or Head or Yonex, not Russia or Belarus. Some haven't lived in their native countries in years.

This is not to equate murdering women and children in time of war with what Wimbledon is doing. That's plainly ridiculous. But the principle -- holding every citizen accountable for actions they're powerless to stop -- is the same. And it's the stuffed shirts of Wimby being their usual pompous selves, pretending mighty Wimbledon taking a stand isn't just empty showboating.

But it is.

I mean, Vladimir Putin probably couldn't find Wimbledon on a map. But, hey. I'm sure banning tennis players who sometimes have only tenuous ties to Russia is going to make him say, "Ah, hell, Wimbledon's against us. I guess it's time to call off the genocide."

And, yes, I suppose that's not the point. More so is what Putin's doing to the multitudes in his own country who have come out against what Russia is doing.

Which is to say, imposing a de facto loyalty test by arresting protestors by the hundreds and locking them up.

Some have suggested a similar loyalty test for the Russian and Belarussian players. Come out against the war and we'll let you play; remain silent and be barred from the grounds.

I don't know. It all sounds the same to me.

And it's a damn slippery slope. If we start making participation in an athletic event contingent on taking a favored political stance, where does it end?

Better to let them play, and then, protocol be damned, sit back and let the fans shower boos on those who still support the war. Let the players stage their own protests when they play one of the Russians -- like, say, taking the court bearing a Ukrainian flag, or wearing a Jim McMahon-esque headband saying "Stop The Russian Genocide," or writing "No war please" on a camera lens with a marker.

A player actually did the latter at a tournament back in February. 

His name is Andrey Rublev.

He's the No. 8 player in the world.

And he's a Russian.

The wing commanders think it's perfectly OK to ban him from their soiree. They have a statement to make, after all. 

Even if it may not be the one they think they're making.

Two for the memories

 You pile up memories with the years, and there's Captain Obvious reporting for duty. The more time you put in on this rock, the more memories you have, duh. And sometimes they might resemble the truth.

For instance, I think of Daryle Lamonica, I think of him throwing deep to Fred Biletnikoff on every play. And I know that's not right.

I think of Guy Lafleur, I think of elegance and grace as the beating heart of a juggernaut. And I know that's not the whole truth, either.

The two of them died this week on consecutive days, and if these things will happen -- particularly as my own years pile up -- there's always a tinge of loss that attends it. And the memories, too, incomplete though they may be.

No, Daryle Lamonica, who died Thursday, didn't throw deep to Wells on every play, even though they called him the Mad Bomber during his salad days with the Raiders. He threw deep, he threw underneath, and occasionally he handed off to Hewritt Dixon and Clem Daniels, too.

But I think of those Raiders, and I think of Lamonica carving parabolas across the sky, and Ben Davidson's luxuriant 'stache, and the guy who wore double-zero, Jim Otto.

And Lafleur?

He was indeed the star of those mighty Montreal Canadiens in the 1970s, but hardly the only one. They called him the Flower, but around him others blossomed: Ken Dryden and Jacques Lemaire and Serge Savard; Larry Robinson and Steve Shutt and Guy Lapointe. And of course the team captain, Yvan Cournoyer.

What I remember about that team, about Lafleur, is that in 1976-77 they went an absurd 60-8-12, and Dryden won 41 games in goal, and the Flower scored 56 goals and 136 points. 

What I also remember, weirdly, is the first thing I thought of when I heard Lefleur had passed: That some people didn't know how to pronounce Cournoyer's name, and how one night on the radio I heard some news guy butcher it as Corn-OI-er.

But of course it's pronounced CORN-why-ay.

And of course it's absurd Lafleur, who was only 70, is gone now.

And of course it's absurd to be surprised by that, and by the fact time passes, and by the way memory becomes an imperfect thing because of that.

Burst balloons

They cling to their traditions in May, over there on the west side of Indy. It's what tends to happen when you've been putting on the biggest sporting event in the world for more than century, not so say the most hallowed in its genre.

In other words: It's easy to be an apostate at the Indianapolis 500. 

Just say, "Nah, we're not gonna do the milk thing anymore."

Or the Purdue band thing.

Or the "Back Home Again in Indiana" thing.

Or the "Taps" thing, the "Gentlemen start your engines" thing, the release of the balloons th-

Oh, wait. That thing is going away.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway announced last week it was suspending the balloon release for the foreseeable future, and the knee-jerk reaction from those of us who've spent so many of our Mays there was a lot of grumbling and harrumphing. 

The balloon release, after all, has been a part of the pre-race festivities for more than 70 years. It's as much a part of the race day backdrop as 33 cars in rows of three coming to the green. You can't thumb through a 500 photo album without seeing balloons rising from the infield into the late-spring sky.

That said ... as someone who covered the 500 for 40 years, and who's been going to the Speedway in May for more than half a century, I think this is one tradition that needs to go away.

I say this today not because I'm a serial tree hugger, or because it's Earth Day -- although Earth Day seems an appropriate day to bring it up. I say it because no one ever wonders, watching those balloons drift off wherever the day's prevailing wind currents take them, where they land and what happens when they do.

What happens is they wind up choking to death various and sundry wildlife that ingests them. What happens is they land in streams, lakes and rivers that often empty into the ocean, where saltwater wildlife ingests them.

That's not just random blue-skying, mind you. Environmentalists have been tracking this phenomenon for years. It's why they've consistently come out against these sorts of mass releases, and why the 500 release is one of the only such releases that still exists.

The Speedway has always maintained its balloons are biodegradable, but the tests that have been done on them have revealed they're not all that biodegradable. According to the Indianapolis Star. some, submerged in water, have remained largely intact for as long as a four years. 

I know it's chic now in certain political circles to belittle environmental concerns, if not openly sneer at them. But good for the Speedway for finally seeing the light on this. Sometimes you can still change minds with factual data these days, all evidence to the contrary. 

The balloon release?

Yeah, I'll miss it. Kinda like we all miss lead paint and asbestos.

Today in dumbassery

 ... in which a jerkwater passenger on a JetBlue flight to Florida picked a fight with the guy sitting in front of him.

The guy sitting in front of him was Mike Tyson.

Who finally accommodated Jerkwater by punching him in the head.

Which, of course, is exactly what Jerkwater had coming. For whatever reason, he decided it would be cute to start harassing Tyson -- and then, when harassing him wasn't enough, he threw a water bottle at him.

Let's repeat that again, slowly: He threw ... a water bottle ... at Mike Tyson.

Now, I know what some of you are going to say. You're going to say Tyson should have ignored it all. You're going to say the guy was trying to bait him and he rose to the bait, and that was stupid. 

All of this is true.

But what's also true is there's a certain undeniable pleasure in Jerkwater getting served what he ordered.

Of course, because it's Tyson, the headlines this morning are all about him punching someone on a commercial flight. That's not how the Blob would have played it, but the Blob tends to be a contrarian in these matters.

That's why the header atop this reads "Today in dumbassery." And why it's not referring to Mike Tyson.

Misery, meet company

 So I'm checking out the National League baseball standings this morning, and, hey, look at this!

My Pittsburgh Cruds are NOT the worst team in baseball. Why, they're not even the worst team in their own division!

The Cruds are sailing along at 5-7 so far this April, which is America's Cup level sailing for them. Meanwhile, the Cincinnati Reds are 2-11 and have sublet the Cruds' usual abode, the Central Division cellar.

This is, of course, exactly what the Reds owners deserve, after team president Phil Castellini -- son of principal owner Bob -- said a lot of dumb stuff on the day of the Reds home opener. Basically he said out loud what a lot of these rich guys likely say in private, which is that the fans are a pain in the ass and if they don't quit griping about what a bunch of money-grubbing greedheads the rich guys are, well, neener-neener-neener. How 'bout we take our team elsewhere, then?

"You'll get nothing and like it!" Castellini said in so many words, channeling his inner Judge Smails.

So far, nothing is exactly what Reds fans have gotten. Which means a little momentary cover for the even cheaper cheapskate who owns my Cruds.

Right now, the Cruds are three whole games out of last place. Let the Battle for the Cellar commence.

Bumper crop

Well. I guess that answers that question.

Remember when some folks were wondering if an NBA lifer like Mike Woodson could do something he'd never had to do, which is convince 18-year-olds to come play basketball for him?

That seems so child-like and silly now, like 5-year-olds asking if unicorns are real. I mean, now that Woodson has gone major yard with his first full recruiting class ...

This week he scored another major get when top-30 forward Malik Reneau committed to Indiana, joining top-25 high school teammate Jalen Hood-Schifino. That gives Woodson two 5-star recruits and vaults Indiana's recruiting class to No. 5 nationally, and also to No. 1 in the Big Ten.

Significantly, Reneau said it wasn't his high school bud who sold him on the Hoosiers. It was Woodson and his staff and the school and Indiana's players.

Which suggests Woodson is as good at this as the Blob suspected he would be, and maybe for the reason it suspected it. Can't say for sure if Woodson's NBA bonafides gave him a leg up on recruiting kids with legit NBA dreams. but it seems too much a coincidence that suddenly 5-stars want to come to B-town. 

Of course, it's likely more than just that. As an IU basketball legend, Woodson can sell IU buckets just by walking in a room. Today's 18-year-olds surely don't remember when Indiana buckets meant something -- those ancient banners in Assembly Hall are just really old laundry to them -- but Woodson is a tangible link to those days.

I played here when the program was great. You can play here when it's great again. You can MAKE it great again.

That sort of thing.

Now, of course, it's up to Woodson to knit the raw material into something fashionable. And what happens if Trayce Jackson-Davis tests the NBA draft waters and decides to come back, as he probably should if he's at all getting competent advice?

Then Mike Woodson will have another problem.

Namely, expectations will be through the roof. Because the Indiana fan base has never had a firm grasp on reality in such matters.

Oh, the torture that awaits Woodson. How wonderful it must feel.

Winnin' Slimed

 So I see on the interwhatsis that Jerry West is suing HBO over its limited series "Winning Time", and all I have to say is, what took him so long? A proud man seeing his life turned into a cartoon is grounds for a street application of a Flagrant 2 foul, not just some suits throwing paper around.

The Blob has been riveted to "Winning Time," Adam McKay's odd little fairy tale about the early days of the 1980s Showtime Lakers, but for entertainment purposes only. Anyone who takes anything in it seriously probably also thinks Wile E. Coyote really survived being repeatedly blown to bits by Acme explosives.

That's all "Winning Time" is, after all: Just another Saturday morning cartoon. 

As Kareem Abdul-Jabbar astutely pointed out in his takedown of the series, there was a compelling story to be told here, one with equal parts pathos and humor. McKay just chose not to tell that story. He opted for Porky Pig hunting that wascally wabbit instead.

Everything in it is either wrong or outlandishly exaggerated in order to get laughs. If Jerry Buss were truly as much a buffoon as John C. Reilly portrays him, he'd never have gotten in the door of the NBA owners club. Kareem never told a kid on the set of "Airplane" to f*** off. Paul Westhead was never a cowering, Shakespeare-quoting boob, and, come on, Adrien Brody as Pat Riley? Really?

But it's the portrayal of West with which McKay takes the most license.

He has well-credentialed Australian actor Jason Clarke play West entirely for laughs as a drunken, micro-fused lunatic. See Jerry fly into a rage and break his golf clubs! See him throw his NBA Finals MVP trophy into the hallway! See him ranting and raving in a taxi outside Boston Garden while listening to the Lakers play the Celtics!

(Although the line of the series so far is West looking at Boston through the car window and saying, "Paul Revere should have slept in. They should have let the British burn this f***hole to the ground." Not that he ever actually said that.)

In any case ... he's Jerry West! He's Yosemite Sam! Two, two, two toons in one!

Little wonder, then, that West and his kin are deploying the lawyers. The wonder is how McKay could have been so bone stupid as to turn people who actually are still living into punchlines.

You're literally begging for defamation suits when you do that, which is why you don't do it. Surely McKay's smart enough to know that, although the evidence surely is lacking in this case. If you're going to turn real events into satiric farce, at least have the good sense to fictionalize the characters along with the storyline.

Hollywood does this all the time, and in fact McKay did it in "Don't Look Up," his recent sendup of climate-change denial. He turned climate change into a comet about to hit Earth dead-on, turned Meryl Streep into a thinly-veiled female Donald Trump, turned Jonah Hill into an equally thinly-veiled Fredo Trump (i.e., Donald Trump Jr.). 

So why not turn the Los Angeles Lakers into, I don't know, the Las Vegas Zephyrs? Turn the charismatic Magic Johnson from Lansing, Mich., into the charismatic Dazzle Wilson from Peoria, Ill.? Turn Dr. Jerry Buss into Dr. Mike "Mikey" Jones -- and turn Jerry West into Zephyrs legend Dick Bledsoe?

Or, you know, something like that.

Instead "Winning Time" is now Winning Slimed, as far as West and Kareem and a bunch of others who were there are concerned. Shoulda gone with Dick Bledsoe, Mr. McKay.

Or, what the hell, Yosemite Sam.

Although then Warner Bros. would probably be suing HBO, too.

Ownin' it, or not

  Look, the Blob knows all you Blobophiles (we're up to three now!) know it has some experience with rotten team owners. But at least the guy who owns my Pittsburgh Cruds is only your standard greedy rich guy, and not, you know, a crook and a skeeve.

Which is more and more what Daniel Snyder of the Washington Commanders looks like these days.

It's not enough that his organization is a misogynistic den of iniquity that pimped out its cheerleaders to wealthy supporters and engaged in rampant sexual harassment. That's standard procedure in the Nash-unal FOOT-ball League, no matter what kind of hot air league officials blow about respectin' wimmen and such.

But now?

Now the feds are after Snyder's operation for blatantly ripping off its own fans.

Last week Congress told the Federal Trade Commission there are serious allegations of shenanigans within the Commanders' ticket office, specifically holding onto security deposit money owed to season ticketholders. Now the D.C. attorney general is looking into the allegations, promising to drop the hammer if the Commanders indeed are breaking the law.

Which brings us, speaking of hammers, to NFL commissioner Roger "The Hammer" Goodell -- who consistently brings the pain when the players get out of line, but is the perfect toady for the owners.

He serves at their pleasure, sure, but at some point you'd hope he'd behave like a real commissioner. He flaps his gums a lot about protecting the integrity of the league, but he's been predictably mealy-mouthed about Snyder and his cabal. By now it should be perfectly obvious that Snyder's continued ownership of the Commanders has become an integrity-of-the-league issue, and Goodell needs to say so publicly. 

He needs to own this particular owner, in other words. He needs to say -- publicly -- that it's high time for Snyder either to sell his team or get voted out of the owners club.

"But, Mr. Blob," you're saying. "He can't say that. If he did it without an OK from the owners, wouldn't the owners run him out on a rail?"

Well, yeah. That's a definite possibility. 

But at least he'd go out on his feet.

Eternal madness

 It's all so random, the things that catch your eye these days.

Information overload -- or misinformation, propaganda and straight-up bullstuff overload, if we're telling the truth of it -- comes at us so fast no human brain can process it. And so when the crazy whirl of stuff spits out something upon which we fasten, it can't help being random.

For instance: Until this morning I'd never heard of a young woman named Aaliyah Gayles.

But I was scanning one of my usual sites and an item jumped out at me, and it was about Aaliyah Gayles. Seems she was at a party in her hometown Las Vegas, and a fight broke out, and of course guns became involved, because America. And Aaliyah Gayles was shot multiple times.

Turns out she's a pretty fair basketball player. 

Turns out she's the No. 8 recruit in the high school class of 2022, a point guard from Spring Valley High School who just played in the McDonald's All-American Classic. She's headed for USC this fall on a basketball ride.

Sunday morning, though, she was undergoing multiple surgeries for her multiple gunshot wounds. Because, again, America.

Land of the free. Home of the brave. World capital of Shooting People For No Particular Reason, Except I've Got This Gun Here.

Gun. Or, guns, plural. Usually the latter.

Look. The Blob has preached about our sick obsession with firearms enough. It's now officially waving the white flag. We want a shooting gallery for a country, have at it.

 Be the first on your block to turn your block into the OK Corral. Arm yourself like the 82nd Airborne and then holler about how they're coming to take your guns. Go ahead and think what happened to Ailyah Gayles over the weekend is perfectly normal.

After all, our muckety-mucks sure seem to think so.

Just a week or so ago, for instance, the Indiana lege voted to free its citizenry from the tyranny of gun permits. God knows they were a such a massive infringement on our God-given Second Amendment rights.  

Meanwhile I open up the Indianapolis Star's feed practically every day, and practically every day lately there's a story about another shooting somewhere in the city. I mean almost literally every day.

This doesn't happen in a civilized country. A talented young woman, in a civilized country, doesn't go to a party with her friends and wind up getting shot multiple times. 

Of course, this isn't a civilized country. 

This is America.

God bless it. For sure God needs to.

Return to yesterday

The New USFL kicks off tonight in prime time, and the goal is to fool you into thinking it's the Original USFL. That's why the two teams playing the inaugural game are named the New Jersey Generals and the Birmingham Stallions.  

The New Jersey Generals! The Birmingham Stallions! Why, it's 1983 all over again, folks!

Except it's not, of course.

Oh, sure, the New USFL is using all the old names, like the Generals and the Stallions and the Houston Gamblers and the Michigan Panthers, and also the Philadelphia Stars, Tampa Bay Bandits, Pittsburgh Maulers and New Orleans Breakers. The hope is fans will see those names and remember Jim Kelly (Gamblers), and Bobby Hebert and Anthony Carter (Panthers), and  Steve Spurrier (Bandits) and maybe even Marcus Dupree (Breakers).

The problem is none of those guys live there anymore.

Almost 40 years on they're all graying senior citizens, and so tonight Herschel Walker will not be lugging the mail for the Generals, having given all that up for a run at Congress that gets stranger and more Trumpian by the day. Instead, the running backs for Jersey will be named Darius Victor and Mike Weber and Trey Williams.

None of them ever won the Heisman Trophy.

None of them, in fact, you've ever heard of unless you're an all-in football junkie.

Same goes for the quarterbacks, D'Andre Johnson and Luis Perez. Same goes for the Stallions' QBs, Alex McGough and J'Mar Smith. And instead of Anthony Carter, the wide receivers will be a bunch of guys named Cameron Echols-Luper and Peyton Ramzy and Manasseh Bailey and CJ Marable, and also Alonzo Moore and J'Mon Moore.

If you've heard of any of them, again, you spend way too much time memorizing CFL and college football rosters from places like Presbyterian and Tuskegee and Morgan State.

This does not mean the product will be faceless and un-interesting, or that some of the players might actually achieve star status of a fashion. It's just that the New USFL, unlike the Original, is a league without drawing cards. And they're playing in the spring, which is a handicap all its own.

But maybe, just maybe, it'll fly. Maybe it will have a business model that's modest and realistic and therefore sustainable. 

The Original certainly did, in the beginning. And because of that, it was successful, for a time and of a fashion, But then some guy bought the Generals and bullied the rest of the league into getting into a bidding war with the NFL for players, and there went that.

That guy, of course, was our 45th President, bumbling businessman, former reality show and next-level wackjob. And heaven help the New USFL if it trades on that part of the Original.

On this date

 Today is Good Friday, and, at sundown, the day Passover begins. It's also the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson integrating baseball, and the 110th anniversary of the Titanic going down, and the date, 167 years ago, at 7:22 on a rainy morning, that Abraham Lincoln drew his last breath.

That's what I call a day. 

And aside from its religious significance, everything else that happened led to some stuff, good, bad and in between.

Lincoln's death doomed the nation to a riven rebuild whose fault lines, racial and otherwise, remain dismayingly unrepaired to this day.

The sinking of the Titanic, among other things, would one day make James Cameron rich and win him an Oscar.

And Jackie Robinson?

Those aforementioned fault lines shaped his legacy, too, in their own way. The dignity and restraint with which he endured that first torturous summer in 1947 won over white fans who came to see him as the Good Negro; the fierce militancy that more truly framed Robinson's character turned some of those same fans against him later on.

Turning the other cheek that first season, he never did so again. He became what he always was, an uncompromising competitor with a mind of his own and no qualms about speaking it. In 1950s America, this was as singularly courageous as anything he did in 1947.

The rest of his legacy we see today in baseball, where every April 15 every player on every team wears No. 42 in Robinson's honor. The game has become not only integrated but multicultural; the stars of the game these days hail from white American suburbs and Latin America and Asia and African-American communities.

Fewer from the latter, it must be noted. The downside to Robinson's legacy, as we again celebrate his opening Major League Baseball to persons of color, is the dwindling number of African-Americans who are following him these days. It's a phenomenon that's not new and has been extensively noted, but that occasionally raises an eyebrow anyway.

The other day, for instance, when the Fort Wayne Tincaps played their home opener out at Parkview Field, I happened to glance at the roster for this High-A San Diego Padres affiliate. And something jumped out.

Except  for outfielders Joshua Mears (Federal Way, Wash.) and Corey Rosier (La Plata, Md.), there appear to be no African-Americans on the roster. Every other player is either white or Latin American.

Which only tells us, to belabor the obvious, that it's a different time in America, and a different time in baseball. The game's mostly self-inflicted eclipse in the shadow of football and basketball has led to a corresponding diminishment at its roots. 

American kids, particularly black American kids, gravitate far more readily to basketball or football these days, because who do they see? They see LeBron or Steph or Giannis or KD they see Patrick Mahomes or Russell Wilson or Gronk or Tom Brady. Heck, even Boban Marjanovic, a journeyman center for the Dallas Mavericks, stars in a State Farm ad now.

But that is baseball's doing, not Jackie Robinson's. Seventy-five years ago he kicked open a door long barred to Americans of color, and those who wish to pass through it can still do so -- no matter how much baseball has fumbled the baton.

Which is why April 15 remains his day. And, of course, much else.

Imperfect-o

 OK, so I almost get it. Almost. This time.

Clayton Kershaw is coming off a 2021 season in which he missed two months with inflammation in his pitching arm. And he was on an 85-pitch limit. And it's April.

Except. Except.

Except he had a perfect game going through seven innings, and he'd only thrown 80 pitches.

And the Dodgers were on their way to a 7-0 win over the punchless Minnesota Twins. 

And if you're paying the guy $17 million to pitch, as the Dodgers are, shouldn't the guy, you know, pitch? Especially when he's got a perfect-o going?

Instead Dodgers manager Dave Roberts pulled Kershaw after seven innings, 21 batters and 13 strikeouts. And Kershaw not only didn't protest, he seemed almost to agree with it. Because when you're getting paid $17 million, you begin to see yourself the way the club sees you -- as an investment that must be protected for the money games in October.

Or not even then, sometimes. Remember when the Washington Nationals shut down Stephen Strasberg for the playoffs a few years back, in order to save him for, I don't know, some other future playoffs?

This is where the Blob channels its inner Old Hoss Radbourn, who, way back in the caveman days of 1884, won 60 games for the Providence Grays and pitched nearly every damn game from July 23 on. Forty-three games; 40 starts. And he won 36 of them.

My inner Old Hoss is sneering at these pantywaists today. He's wondering why all this babying of investments is producing more and more pitchers who break down if you look at them sideways. Or who sit out a couple of weeks because of a "twinge" in the elbow.

A twinge in the elbow?

Old Hoss would have killed for a twinge in the elbow. Hell, he pitched on days when he couldn't raise his arm above his head until he got going. And if you don't want to go all the way back to 1884, what about Nolan Ryan almost a century later?

Someone posted something yesterday about how Ryan, in 1974, threw 235 pitches across 13 innings in a 15-inning Angels win over the Red Sox. He faced 58 batters and struck out 19 of them.

Two-hundred thirty-five pitches. Fifty-eight batters. And the Angels didn't shut him down for a month after that, because three days later Ryan took the bump again and beat the Yankees. That season he went 22-16, pitched 332 2/3 innings and rang up 26 complete games.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying. "It's a different time now. No one throws complete games anymore. And if a guy throws more than 100, 110 pitches in a game, they declare his manager clinically insane."

To which my inner Hoss Radbourn would say: That's right. And that's the problem. Today's pitchers don't throw enough pitches, so they don't don't develop arm strength, and that's why they're so fragile.

Of course, that's just a theory. And it might be a completely absurd theory, its evidence being largely circumstantial. Modern baseball people might even laugh and call my inner Hoss a flaming peawit.

I do know how my inner Hoss would respond to that, however.

I just can't repeat it here.

Kingdom of Waaaah

Real men don't cry, or so they say, and along with much else these days this puzzles the Blob. If real men don't cry, why are so many self-anointed Real Men reaching for a tissue lately?

The New York Times just published a story, not worth its newsprint, in which Real Men  complained about, well, everything. They can't say they voted for Trump without getting criticized! Can't express an opinion without "cancel culture" (i.e., someone disagreeing) trying to Cancel them! And why can't women just shut up and cook these days?

The latter of which, in so many words, Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton said the other day. Teleporting in from, oh, 1955 or so, Cam said he likes women who can cook and keep their mouths shut. He might have added the barefoot-and-pregnant part, but he probably didn't think of that until later.

This immediately led to some well-deserved criticism, which almost as immediately led to some Real Men lamenting that "traditional male roles" are under attack -- it's always "under attack," with these folks -- and how manhood itself is in peril. Somewhere in all of that is Disney "grooming" innocent children with the Gay Woke Agenda, and the Scourge of CRT, and, I don't know, it's all so hard to follow these days. So much manufactured outrage, so little time.

But back to Real Men weeping.

The height of it, perhaps, was one Real Man saying Disney (and its subsidiary, ESPN) was "feminizing sports" and facilitating "the assassination of men." A perfectly rational take, of course. Not, you know, completely hysterical or anything.

All snide-ities aside, I suppose it is hard for Real Men to cope with life in modern times. Women talk about sports on ESPN now. and play them on TV, and occasionally even coach men. A Black woman just made the Supreme Court ("Racist!" some Real Men hollered, predictably). And women and minorities no longer dummy up when Real Men spout the bullstuff that once passed for conventional wisdom.

Heck. Even their Real Man avatar got his butt kicked in the last presidential election.

And then spent months crying about it, of course, and illegally scheming to reverse it.

Tough days out here in the Kingdom of Waaah. Tough old days.

What owners really think

 Opening Day has been an unofficially official holiday in Cincinnati for more than 100 years. There's a parade. Everyone wears red. They play hooky from work, and adult beverages are consumed in mass quantities.

It's a grand celebration of the game, and of the Reds grand history in it.

Well. At least it was until Reds COO and president Phil Castellini showed up.

What Castellini did was let slip what MLB owners -- especially small market owners -- really think, and it's about as snotty and high-hatted as you'd expect. What he said in a radio interview, and doubled down on later, was if the fans don't like what the Reds are putting on the field, they can p*** off. Essentially, he channeled his inner Judge Smails: You'll get nothing and like it!

"Where are you going to go?" he asked.

And then intimated that if fans really wanted ownership to pay more to put a better product on the field, the only way the owners could do that would be to move elsewhere.

"And so be careful what you ask for," Castillini said, not making it sound like a threat or anything.

At issue was the Castillinis -- Phil and his dad Bob, the CEO and principal team owner -- selling off valuable pieces of last year's team, which won 83 games. The Reds narrowly missed the playoffs, which is hardly unusual; since the Castellinis bought the club in 2006, they've reached the postseason just four times, and put up a winning record just five times.

So of course fans were annoyed at the seeming prospect of starting over again just when the team was starting to get good. It's a cycle with which the Blob is well familiar, being a long-suffering fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates, a fake MLB team whose ownership operates it like a farm club -- i.e., develops prospects until they become good enough to command real money, then deals them away for more prospects.

Meanwhile ownership keeps raking in all that revenue-sharing money. Because, you know, a guy can never have enough ski lodges or private planes or yachts or whatever.

Meanwhile the fans get nothing like their money's worth, year after dreary year. And if, as they should, they complain ...

Well. I have zero doubt doubt my Cruds' owners feel the same way Castellini does about that. They've just never been dumb enough to say it out loud.

Or should I say, galactically dumb.

After all, Castellini was speaking yesterday in a city whose NFL team just went to the Super Bowl. A team with some major drawing cards. A team stuffed with exciting young players. 

Where is Cincinnti gonna go, Castellini asked?

It's gonna go watch Joe Burrow play. That's where it's gonna go. 

Look. You don't crap on your fans when those fans have other entertainment options. That's Marketing 101. And you especially don't do it when those options are far more attractive.

I'm sure Castellini's Pops laid all that out for him after yesterday. Which is why today his son profusely apologized, saying how they loved the city and the fans and blah-blah-blah.

Too little, too late. The truth, as they say, is already out there.

False starts

 The Los Angeles Lakers finally released their hostage coach yesterday, but Frank Vogel returning to his loved ones from Bizarro World is not what this is about. This is about how Vogel found out he was being released.

Which is to say, the Lakers didn't tell him. Some Magic Twitter Machine jockey did.

This jock is named Adam Wojnarowski, and he's ESPN's top NBA "insider." He broke the story with a tweet. Unfortunately, he broke it before it was a story; the Lakers, true to their clown-show selves, hadn't gotten around to telling Vogel themselves yet. It was the journalistic version of a false start.

In any event, Vogel found out from Woj, and if that's on the Lakers for being (to borrow some "Letterkenny" lingo) a backward effing pageantry, it's as much on Woj. And  with that, the Blob will indulge in its periodic geezer lecture, "How Journalism Really Works."

("No!" you're protesting. "Not AGAIN!")

Yes, again.

See, here's how what happened yesterday happens, in the geezer's opinion: Because journos do not inhabit the same reality as their readers. Journos, like Woj, believe readers care who gets the story first. 

They don't. Not really. Most of the time -- especially in an age when information (and disinformation) comes at us from a bewildering array of sources -- readers couldn't tell you on a bet where they saw something first.

What they can tell you is where they saw it best.

Which is to say, you can rush a story into print in two days and beat the competition to the punch, but if the competition has spent six months reporting, writing and editing the same story, that's the version readers are going to remember. That will be the definitive narrative, simply because there's no way it can't be.

Now, this is not to say news organizations shouldn't try to be first.  They should. That will always be a driving motivation for disseminators of news, simply by the nature of news.

But Who Gets It First is a conceit mostly for news organizations themselves. It's a marketing tool that's mainly for the people doing the marketing. Who Gets It Right (or Best, or Most Memorably) is what really sells the book, as print journos like to say. 

Lecture concluded. Class dismissed.

Master(s)work

 Scottie Sheffler slipped on the green jacket Sunday, because he played impenetrable golf for four days while the pack waited in vain for him to come back to it. He finished three strokes clear of a charging Rory McIlroy, whose 64 yesterday was too little, too late.

But Sheffler wasn't the guy who won the Masters.

He is golf's alpha dog so far in 2022, finishing atop the leaderboard Sunday for the fourth time so far this year.

But he wasn't the alpha dog of the weekend.

His rise has been startling to say the least, considering that three months ago he had yet to win a tournament as a PGA Tour professional.

But his rise was dwarfed at Augusta by that of another.

The guy who finished 47th, to be exact.

Who shot 13-over for the tournament, the worst Masters performance of his career by miles. Who shot 78-78 on the weekend, despite a perfect day for scoring on Sunday.

None of that mattered. 

What mattered, see, was not the 47th-place finish. It was the word "finish."

The guy we're talking about is Tiger Woods of course, and he won the Masters because he finished four rounds in four days in a major. This sounds exceedingly modest until you remember what happened to him 14 months ago. 

What happened was the car he was driving left the road at high speed, rolled and crushed his right leg so badly doctors thought they might have to amputate it. Instead, they pinned it back together with enough hardware to set off metal detectors in Beirut. A lot of folks thought that was the end of him as a golfer; as recently as a month ago, even Woods himself wondered if playing the Masters was a pipe dream.

Once he decided to play, the same number of folks thought there was no way he'd make the cut -- or, if he did, that he would be able to play all four rounds. Among those folks was the guy driving this Blob.

Of course, then he went out, shot 71-74 the first two rounds, and made the cut. He ran out of gas after that and finished on fumes, but he finished. For four days, on his metal-shop leg, he walked a course that has a lot more changes in elevation to it than you'd guess from watching on TV.

Nonetheless, he walked it. And played his shots. And finished what he started.

Now, he says he's planning on playing The Open at St. Andrews in July. And maybe the PGA next month and the U.S. Open in June, though he's not sure about those two.

I don't know about you. But at this point, I wouldn't put a dime down against him.

Athletes, dying young

 I don't know if Dwayne Haskins ever would have fulfilled the promise of his one glittering autumn at Ohio State. I don't know if his coming season with the Pittsburgh Steelers would have been his great awakening, or if he would have been destined never to have one.

All I know is what happened to him at just past 6:30 yesterday morning.

That's when he decided to cross a busy highway, and was hit by a dump truck.

I don't know if he saw the truck. I don't know why he decided to cross the highway at that precise moment. All I know, again, is now we'll never know. 

That's because the truck hit him and he died and it's all so senseless, stupid, unjust in a way human beings have a hard time getting their heads around. Dwayne Haskins was just 24 years old, for one thing. By all accounts he was an upbeat, outgoing young man who instilled positivity in everyone around him -- so much so that even the coach of the team that cut him, Ron Rivera of the Washington Commanders, issued a public statement full of anguish.

Getting hit by a truck is not supposed to be how it ends for young men like that.

And, yes, you can say that's not how it's supposed to end for anyone, young or old.  You can say no 24-year-old, whether they're good at throwing a football or not, deserves to die by getting hit by a truck or, too often, by a bullet.

You can say it's all senseless and stupid and unjust. And of course you'd be right.

But there is something about athletes dying young, as A.E. Housman tried to tell us. There is something about the good ones, like Dwayne Haskins, that convinces us they're immune to the everyday shocks that afflict the rest of us mortals.

It's absurd, obviously. They're as susceptible to those shocks as anyone, and they've proved it time and time and time again. You could even maintain they fall prey to human frailty even more often -- or at least more publicly.

But somehow, because they do things in the arena we could never do, it doesn't seem so. It's an illusion, but it's also part of why we watch them. It's part of why we probably always will.

And why it will always feel so wrong when one of them falls.

The glory of the miss

 Sometimes the best thing about sports is being wrong.

It's starting a sentence with "There's no way he/she ...", and then he/she finds a way.

It's declaring, from the depths of your depthless wisdom, that such-and-such is going to happen (or not happen), and then it doesn't (or does), and somehow you don't even feel like a fool because it's so incredibly wonderful.

Prognostication is and always will be a hit-or-miss proposition. But in sports, it's the miss part that makes it fun.

And so to Wednesday, and a conversation with a friend about the Masters.

"I don't see how he can possibly play four rounds in four days," I say.

"Nope. I don't either," my friend says.

"I think he'll probably play a round, and, if he makes the cut, maybe two," I say. "But ..."

We're talking about Tiger Woods, of course.

Who proceeded to go out there at Augusta the next day, on the hardware store masquerading as his right leg, and shoot 1-under 71 in his first competitive round in a year-and-a-half.

Then he went out the next day, struggled early and righted the ship to shoot 74 and make the Masters cut at 1-over for the tournament.

By the end, he wasn't even limping, at least noticeably.

Somewhere Steve Austin, the Six-Million Dollar Man, is saying "What the hell? But I thought he was like me, a man barely alive!" 

Somewhere else, I'm saying the same thing, and also "When am I ever gonna learn?", and also "I thought the whole Ben-Hogan-after-the-bus-crash thing was a one-off."

Apparently not. Because there's Tiger out there channeling Hogan at the 1950 U.S. Open, and this morning he'll report to the first tee for the third round, and unless something devastating happens I think his leg will have to fall off for him not to complete the weekend. And, hell, maybe even win, although he's nine strokes off the lead and it seems unlikely.

Of course, the whole thing is unlikely. Which, again, is what's great about sports. 

You can be wrong -- you can be a big stupid, like me -- and be OK with it. Or as the immortal Denis Lemieux put it in "Slapshot": You feel shame, you know. And then you get free.

Exactly.

The Lake D'oh

 Baseball started up yesterday, only a week late, and my Pirates were as cruddy as ever, losing their season opener 9-0 to the bleeping-bleep St. Louis Cardinals. How dare they pick on a Double-A team like that!

Also, Tiger Woods, dragging a leg held together with the random screws your dad kept in the garage, shot a 1-under 71 in the first round of the Masters and is just four strokes adrift of the lead. Reaction from Arnold Schwarzenegger in his "Terminator" role: "Dee-yam, son!"

But enough about that.

Let's talk about the latest news from the NBA, which involves stuff we no longer have to talk/hear about/have force-fed us by coastal-centric Big Sports Media.

The Lakers are officially eliminated from the playoffs!

Which means we don't have to hear anymore about what a Superfund site they are, and how LeBron is sick of them, and how Anthony Davis needs to be traded before his Blue Cross/Blue Shield card explodes. 

All of this we've been hearing every day for months from various sports-talk poodles, who believe because they think the Lakers are important, we should, too. Actually, we don't. Actually, having the travails of a sadsack basketball team shoved down our throats because, oh, my God, IT'S THE LAKERS, is annoying as hell. It's especially annoying when it comes from the worst-in-show sportstalk poodle, Colin Cowherd, who lives in L.A. and so thinks everything in L.A. is fascinating.

Well ... it's not. Thousands of people in Ames, Ia, couldn't care less. Ditto thousands in, I don't know, Beloit, Wis., Grand Island, Neb., or, yes, Fort Wayne, In.

But the Lakers are done now, so we can talk about  teams worth talking about. Have you seen what Luka Doncic is doing right now for the Mavericks? Or Nikola Jokic, carrying an entire team on his back in Denver? Or Giannis in Milwaukee, or Joel Embiid in Philly, or -- holy crap, you mean the Suns won again?

Look. I get it. The Lakers have LeBron, and LeBron is always going to nudge needles. But they're an awful team, and not even a particularly interesting one. They're the Pacers with more laundry hanging from the rafters.

The only thing about the Lakers that intrigues me right now is the HBO series "Winning Time," which is both very good and very bizarre. It's about something that happened 40 years ago, when the Lakers became the Lake Show. The bizarre part is seeing Jerry Buss (John C. Reilly) and Jerry West (Jason Clarke) occasionally reduced to comic relief, and convincing us Adrien Brody is Pat Riley.

Now?

Now the Lake Show is the Lake D'oh. And I doubt anyone will ever make a miniseries about them.

Speaking of comic relief.

Deadball era

 The Major League Baseball season begins today, and so does the Masters golf tournament, and I'll give you three guesses which one will dominate the sports pages of your hedge-fund-pillaged local newspaper. 

Here's a hint: It won't be the one that's played with the larger ball.

It will be the Masters, of course, just like it's some random Jaguars-Panthers game in the fall, just like it's ... I don't know, "Law & Order: Mayberry" or some such thing. Andy and Barn chase down dirtbags; Fred Thompson orders Sam Waterston to plead 'em out. Fun!

Baseball, meanwhile, is a Pastime past its time, as the Blob and a million others have long noted. Every indice points toward a different sort of deadball era: Falling attendance, revenues artificially propped up by TV money, owners who are only in it for said money (Looking at, you, Pittsburgh Pirates). Combine that with an aging fan base that will soon be pushing up daisies, and you've got a game that's about to push up daisies itself.

Or so says a piece that ran this week in the New York Times.

A contributor named Matthew Walther posited that baseball is dying, and the only thing that can save it is the federal government taking it over. It's an argument Walther makes well up until his solution, which seems potholed by unintended consequences at best and as potentially disastrous as Venezuela nationalizing its oil industry at worst.

For instance: Walther admits, almost breezily, that a federalized MLB would perhaps drastically cut player salaries. I can't imagine the players' union sitting still for that, unless federalizing the game would also mean busting the union. In which case the players might leave to form their own league, as has happened before.

And what of free agency? Do we go back to the hallowed days of the reserve clause?

Perhaps it's simply a lack of imagination on my part, but I can't get my head around an MLB in which the job of manager is an elected position and the GM is appointed by the governor, as Walther suggests. A six-year term for a manager? What if he turns out to be a complete mushwit? 

Six years of dunderheaded managing would have fans setting fires in the outfield bleachers. And as for the GM ... what if he's the governor's idiot brother-in-law? Because nepotism has never determined political appointments, no, sirree.

The whole thing sounds so next-door-to-outlandish the Blob is tempted to think Walther is shining us on, and that his piece is just extremely clever satire. It doesn't read that way, but the Blob has been fooled by clever satire before. So, maybe ...

But no. The author seems in deadly earnest. And so the Blob will play along, and note that at least one aspect of Walther's vision sounds good to me: Federalizing the game would mean the cheapskate owner of my Pittsburgh Cruds would be out on his ear.

Now that I could live with.

Unbending

Officially now, he says he's in.

He says he thinks he can win.

If you're surprised by either of those, you haven't been paying attention for the last two decades and change.

A little over a year after crushing his right leg in a car crash ... a month or so longer than that since his last back surgery ... Tiger Woods will play serious golf again. At Augusta. In the Masters. And of course he sees no reason why he can't win himself another green jacket.

He wouldn't be Tiger Woods if he didn't think so, even if more rational people don't see any way. He hasn't played in a major in a year-and-a-half. He's got a bunch of metal holding his injured leg together. And he's 46 years old -- a very old 46, given all the injuries and surgeries that have dogged him the last 14 or so years.

The man ought to be pulling a cane out of his bag, not his driver.

The man would likely take the cane away and beat you with it if you said that within earshot of him.

In his prime he used to send other golfers into cringe mode with his unbending will, and now he turns that will on the ravages of age and circumstance. Mortality is not as likely to blink, but Woods will try to make it anyway. Going gently is not his way.

That's why he'll be on the first tee tomorrow, and what happens after that will be what happens after that. Maybe he'll play a round or two and the leg will give out. Maybe he'll make the cut. Maybe he'll be right there  on Saturday -- moving day -- and, in spite themselves, everyone will be looking over their shoulders on Sunday at the man with the shattered leg.

I'm saying that will happen. I don't think it will, or even can.

But I'm not dropping a roll of twenties against it. A fool and his money, you know.

One Un-Shining Moment

 The Kansas Jayhawks cut down the nets last night in the Superdome, celebrating both a national title and a stirring comeback from 15 points down at the half to North Carolina.

I suppose this is the part where the Blob brings precip to the parade, as it has a habit of doing.

("No kidding. You ruin everything," you're saying)

Guilty.

But I'm cursed with a pretty lively memory, and it occasionally is an inconvenient sidekick. And so I couldn't see photos of Kansas coach Bill Self up on the ladder this morning, and not think of a couple folks the teevees failed to mention because they didn't fit the triumphant narrative.

Namely, a former Kansas assistant named Kurtis Townsend and a former Adidas rep named T.J. Gassnola -- the latter of whom was last seen turning state's evidence for the feds in return for a lighter sentence.

This happened in 2018, after Kansas was among those got caught up in a federal case involving apparel reps steering prospective clients to schools with whom they did business. In the course of the investigation, Gassnola got caught on a wiretap telling Townsend he paid a friend of Deandre Ayton's $15,000 to provide Ayton's mom with a job and a house if her son agreed to sign with Kansas.

"We'll see what we can do," Townsend replied, in so many words.

Worse for Self, Gassnola also testified he told Self himself he felt bad because Ayton wound up going to Arizona instead. Which means Self was aware of the shenanigans. Even worse, Kansas was also in the mix to buy Zion Williamson's services; Williamson instead wound up at Duke, where it's never been proven but can be assumed he got a sweeter deal.

Sean Miller lost his job at Arizona, eventually, over the Ayton business. Another Adidas rep -- Merl Code, who went to federal prison for his part in the scheme -- subsequently wrote a book in which he claims Self knew about the Williamson negotiations, too.

"Bill Self was constantly kept abreast from his own coaches and the higher-ups at Adidas in terms of what was happening in the Jayhawks' pursuit of Zion," Code told Pat Forde of Sports Illustrated a couple of months ago. "It's all in the transcripts of the intercepted text messages. But, again, the jury never saw or heard any of it ..."

Now, you can say the fact Kansas didn't land either Ayton or Williamson means Self refused to play ball. And Gassnola and Code are just a couple of jailbirds, so who would believe a word they say? 

Except Gassnola's deal with the prosecutors means he had every incentive to tell the truth. And Code's already in prison, so what does he have to gain by making stuff up?

In the meantime, congratulations to Self and his Jayhawks. Maybe he really is as pure as the driven snow.

Forgive me, if so, if I question the quality of driven snow these days.

Shots in the dark

 He must get tired of doing it. He must get tired of having to do it.

Yet there Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr was again last night, lamenting another mass shooting, this one right down the street from where his Warriors were playing the Kings in Sacramento. Kings coach Alvin Gentry, weighed in, too. There would be a moment of silence before the game.

Kerr appreciated that and felt rich disgust about it at the same time.

"I'll be honest, this is my ninth or 10th moment of silence that I will have experienced as head coach of the Warriors when we mourn the losses of people who have died in mass shootings," he said. "I don't think moments of silence are going to do anything."

No, they won't. I don't think anything will. In America, it's a shot in the dark to try and stop shots in the dark.

Those shots in the dark left six more people dead and 10 wounded after some crazy opened fire outside a Sacramento nightclub in the skinny hours Sunday morning, A couple hours before, at an outdoor concert in Dallas, one person died and at least 11 were wounded when more crazy people opened fire.

It was the second mass shooting in Dallas in two weeks. Yee-ha.

Meanwhile America shrugs and keeps electing the government we deserve.

Meanwhile Steve Kerr -- whose father was murdered by a gunman in 1984, and so has earned every right to speak out on the subject -- will probably be told to shut up and dribble by the usual suspects.

Meanwhile those same usual suspects will haul out the same tired bromides about the Second Amendment and freeee-dom and the Second Amendment and also the Second Amendment, which has been stretched so far beyond the founders' intent it's unrecognizable.

"If guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns!" someone will say, even though no one worth listening to is advocating outlawing guns or ever has.

"Obama is coming for our guns!" they said back in the day, missing the irony while they freely bought a sixth or seventh semi-auto because, you know, you can never have too many.

"More background checks won't stop gun violence!" they'll say now, although who knows how much has been stopped already because we'll never read about the shootings that didn't happen.

Look. I'm no fringe lefty when it comes to firearms. My dad was a gun collector, so I grew up in a house full of them. His brother was an avid hunter and sport shooter. Both were members of the NRA, until my dad quit when he figured out they weren't there to advocate for hunters and sport shooters, but were funded mainly by the gun industry as its lobbying arm.

It's why the NRA, after yet another mass shooting, says the only way to stop it is if more people buy more guns. 

I'm not anti-gun. I'm anti-obsession with guns, which they've become among some politicians of a certain lean. I've also accepted the fact this obsession is never going to go away no matter how many schoolkids or parishioners or concert goers die because of it.

This is America, and this is who we are. It's who we want to be, apparently. We're the Wild West we always read about but never really were, because even in the Wild West there were ordinances in some towns requiring visitors to leave their firearms at the city limits.

Today some towns actually have tried (unsuccessfully, but still) passing ordinances requiring gun ownership.

Yee-ha. 

Portal of justice

 Because the Blob's mind follows its own funky channels, I think of "Star Trek" when I hear the words "transfer portal."

"Transfer portal" equates to "transporter" for me. And, like Dr. McCoy, I think they're both crazy ways to travel.

One spreads a man's or woman's molecules all over space, as Bones said.

The other spreads the college basketball wealth to an absolute fault -- the NCAA having finally allowed players to do what carpetbagging coaches do all the time, which is leave whenever the hell they feel like it.

Case in point: What's happening at LSU right now.

Which is at once the worst thing about the transfer portal, and also the best.

It's the worst thing because every scholarship player on the roster has entered the portal and is getting out of Dodge, or at least Baton Rouge. And it's the best thing because the reason they're doing it is the fact LSU's now-former coach, Will Wade, is a cheating dirtbag whose actions are about to land the program in NCAA Shawshank.

That the transfer portal facilitates wholesale flight from these circumstances stinks for new head coach Matt McMahon, of course.  But it also means there are more ready consequences for cheaters and those who tolerate them. 

Which LSU did, because Wade was winning basketball games.

Now they're paying the price with a ghost-town program more radioactive than Chernobyl.

The transfer portal is in great measure responsible for that. And if the freedom of movement it accords players proves an extra deterrent for schools disposed to trade the NCAA's wrath for Ws, it will at least have served some purpose other than sowing chaos.

Or so one can hope.

Storybook finish(ed)

 Maybe, here at the end, you begin this way: The basketball gods will sometimes be denied.

Sometimes they get Windexed by Armando Bacot.

Sometimes Caleb Love or R.J. Davis or Brady Manek shoots them through the heart.

Sometimes a rookie head coach (Hubert Davis) shows an icon the door.

All of those happened last night in the New Orleans Superdome, as Mike Krzyzewski coached one last game in the Final Four and one last game against North Carolina, and lost one last time. The first win of his transcendent coaching career came at Army, against Lehigh; the last was in the Elite Eight, against Arkansas.

In between, there were 1,200 others, including 50 versus Carolina. The loss Saturday night was K's 48th to Duke's ancient rival, so he finishes with bragging rights.

And if the basketball gods could not decree a storybook finish, there was at least a storybook last grapple with the Tar Heels.

Eighteen lead changes, including three on consecutive possessions in the final two minutes and change. A 13-0 run for the Tar Heels that erased a seven-point Duke lead in the second half. An immediate 6-0 run for Duke to tie it. Back and forth, back and forth, trading punches like Ali and Frazier.

The heroes for Carolina? 

Bacot, who scored 11 points and cleaned the glass for an astounding 21 rebounds. Davis, with his 14 first-half points. Love, with his 28 points, including a three with 25 seconds left that lifted Carolina four points clear and all but sealed it.

And now it's on to the final, where Kansas and the ghosts of the past await. 

It will be Carolina's12th appearance in the title game, and Kansas's ninth. The Tar Heels have won six national championships; Kansas, three.  And when they face off Monday night, the faint echoes of an epic struggle now 65 years gone will stir again.

 The year was 1957, and the title game Carolina and Kansas played that night was perhaps the greatest ever. Kansas had Wilt Chamberlain and were favored because of it; Carolina was undefeated and had Hall of Fame coach Frank McGuire on the bench. It went three overtimes before Carolina won, 54-53, on Joe Quigg's free throws in the final seconds.

The Heels and Jayhawks have not met in a championship game since.

Here's hoping this meeting lives up to the last one.

First of April thoughts

 NEW ORLEANS -- In an announcement that caught fans, media and even his own players completely unawares, Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski said at his Final Four media availability Friday he was not retiring after all, but would return for yet another season.

"April Fool's, mother(bleepers)!" Coach K shouted, cackling madly. "I ain't goin' anywhere, so suck on THAT! I figured telling my guys this was the last rodeo was the only way I could get that buncha sadsacks to the Final Four. And by God it WORKED!  And as for you media gerbils ...

"Man, you swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Just like I knew you would, 'cause let's face it, you guys are NONE TOO BRIGHT. And those dopes over in Chapel Hill? I even got 'em to give me A GOING-AWAY OVATION! Which reminds me of a joke: What does a Tar Heel say to a Blue Devil? 'Would you like fries with that?' Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

OK. Enough.

I mean, it wasn't even that good an April Fool's joke, not like, say, the Los Angeles Lakers. And it will especially be a joke next week, when Lakers GM LeBron James -- sorry, I meant "Rob Pelinka" -- announces the blockbuster deal currently in the works to trade LeBron, Anthony Davis and Anthony Davis's line of personal orthopedic health care products to the Indiana Pacers for their entire lineup.

Sorry! There I go again!

Frankly I've never been good at the whole April Fool's Day deal, because I can never craft anything juuuust plausible enough to get people to bite. Outlandish doesn't work on this day, and outlandish is what I do best. Like telling everyone Andrew Luck has decided to come back to the Colts after all, which everyone knows by now is never going to happen.

Still, it is fun to dream up fake headlines that some chumps -- extremely dumb ones, of course -- might actually believe for 30 seconds or so. Like, I don't know, "Massive Voter Fraud Returns Trump To White House After Biden 'Victory' Overturned"

Oh, wait. Some people still actually believe that will happen. And about half of them are in Congress.

No, I can think of some other April Fool's Day headlines that would be great fun, and not be completely ridiculous ...

"Manfred Reverses Course, Strips Astros Of  '17 World Series Title. 'Never Should Have Given Those A**holes The Trophy To Begin With,' He Says."

"USMNT Officials Caught Bribing World Cup Officials For A Spot In The Knockout Round. 'Not Like We're Gonna Get There Any Other Way,' Newly Discovered E-Mail Reads."

"Wimbledon Issues Lifetime Ban To Novak Djokovic 'Just For Being A Horse's Ass.'"

"Aaron Rodgers Changes Mind, Decides To Leave Green Bay After Blowing Up The Packers' Cap Space With New Deal. 'That'll Teach 'Em!' He Says."

And last but not least ...

"F1 Planning Third U.S, Race In Vegas In 2023."

Oh, wait. That one's actually true. 

And totally awesome.