A raging case of the stupids

 I became a Pittsburgh Pirates fan because of Roberto Clemente. 

On the bookshelf immediately to my left here in the den of our home -- I can reach out and touch it without moving from my chair -- are a Roberto action figure, a Roberto Starting Lineup baseball card, a placard commemorating Roberto's induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, and a commemorative ticket, encased in plastic, from the day Roberto got his 3,000th hit. 

Six feet or so over my left shoulder, a framed photo of Roberto hangs on the wall. He's standing either at the plate or in the on-deck circle, waiting to hit. He's scooped up some dirt and is rubbing it into his palms. His head is turned to the left, and his bat leans against his thighs like a war club leaning against a battlement wall.

The number on his back -- 21 -- fairly leaps out at you.

Unlike in PNC Park, apparently.

Maybe you missed it in all the March Madness buzz and Alex Ovechkin become the NHL's alltime goal king -- Ovi got No. 895 Sunday, knocking Wayne Gretzky out of the top spot -- but over the weekend it got out that my Cruds had committed their most Crud-like blunder yet. After which, in something like a panic, they hurriedly un-Crudded it. 

What Pirates management did, see, was replace a No. 21 logo on the right field wall with an advertisement. Which meant right-field, Roberto's old domain, became instead the domain of Yinzer Joe's Auto Body Repair And Spa, or some such thing.

Well. Needless to say, management immediately caught an epic raft of doo-doo from not only Roberto's family, but from every right-thinking Pirates fan in Pittsburgh. Rumor has it the fabled Primanti Bros. sandwich shop even went Full Soup Nazi, declaring, "No sandwich for you!" 

OK. So I made up that last part.

But the backlash was so intense club president Travis Williams immediately released a desperate mea culpa saying the removal was all on him and, oopsie, his bad, it was an honest mistake and he'd immediately restore the logo.

This either proves they're not as stupid as they look in the Pirates organization, or they're just a bunch of greedhead vandals who regard one of the oldest franchises in baseball history as little more than a money pump. Current ownership would suggest the latter, given the way Bob Nutting has turned the Cruds into the Cruds -- a modern-day version of the 1950s Kansas City Athletics, who functioned as little more than a farm team for the Casey Stengel Yankees.

Anyway, the logo will go back up, with Williams saying how sorry he is for the whole mess, and how no one ever intended to insult Roberto Clemente's family or his legacy as the greatest Pirate ever (with a nod to Honus Wagner). Why, they have a deep appreciation for their ballclub's long and decorated history, really they do, and never mind the way they've so thoroughly trashed it on Nutting's watch. We care, by God.

To which there is only one proper response from this Roberto shrine in Fort Wayne, In.: Yeah, surrre.

Blowout City, Part Deux

 This was all UConn's fault.

It was all on Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd, Sarah Strong and the rest of the Huskies, last seen celebrating giddily after smooshing 1-seed South Carolina 82-59 in the women's national championship game. It was UConn's, I don't know, 59th national title or something (actually 12th), but the first for Bueckers -- one of the greatest women's collegians in history, and almost certainly the best player never to have won the Big Trophy.

Well, no more.

She scored 17 points with six rebounds, three assists, a steal and two blocks in Blowout City Part Deux, then shared a long, tearful I-finally-did-it-coach hug with Geno Auriemma. She got to do that because, for once, she hardly needed to be Paige Bueckers; Strong (24 points, 15 boards, five assists, two steals and three blocks) and Fudd (24, five, one  and three) were more than enough for the Huskies, who won their two Final Four games by an astonishing 57 points, or 28.5 per game.

Bled the drama white, in other words. Turned the women's big show into a "Remembrance Of Things Past" snoozer. Were just too damn good, and ruined everything.

This was all UConn's fault.

But wasn't it glorious?

What I saw

(In which the Blob issues its standard disclaimer when it's about to stray from Strictly Sportsball Stuff: If you don't want to indulge my more self-indulgent impulses, you may leave the room and go down to the library. Make sure you have your hall pass, or crabby Mrs. Fernwinkle will turn loose her attack dogs, Marty and Beauregard.)

Went down to the local "Hands-Off!" rally the other day, and boy were Elon and the MAGA patriots right. It was wall-to-wall mayhem, violence and liberal/commie/socialist terrorism.

Senior citizens, veterans and other vicious thugs waved signs in a threatening manner. Harassed passing motorists into honking their horns in a nearly constant chorus. The heartless mob then cheered to celebrate the fruits of their bullying.

And the signs! Horrible, subversive things about Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, and vile attacks on brave Elon and our brave President Trump. One guy was parading around with an upside-down American flag, which is just out-and-out treason unless it's carried by one of the January 6 heroes. Another woman had a sign that actually called our wonderful senator, Jim Banks, a clown!

Why, I never.

You could tell George Soros was behind all this, like X said, because there's no way so many people are this angry about Elon and the president cutting child cancer research and aid to the poor, and gumming up the Social Security works by firing hundreds of its employees. Probably 1,500 or so America haters showed up on a raw, windy day at the local rally, which undoubtedly means they were actors paid by Soros to be there. 

They had to be, because everyone there looked suspiciously well-fed -- even the retired South Bend firefighter, the retired park service worker who complimented me on my Olympic National Park cap, and the young woman holding the sign that read, "My grandather didn't flee a Russian dictator only for his grandchildren to suffer a Russian puppet!"

Scary people, I'm tellin' you.

The whole shameful deal was organized by the local chapter of an organization called Indivisible, which is nothing but a Soros-financed front. I know this for a fact because I read it on the internet, and also because there were rallies like this all over the country that day. Millions of people turned out, their pockets no doubt bulging with Soros cash. It was all so deeply un-American, such nationwide coordination.

Anyway, that's what I saw at the "Hands Off!" rally. I felt lucky to get out of there alive.

P.S. I have not yet received my check from George Soros, but I'm sure it's in the mail. Elon, the president and their social media allies wouldn't just make stuff up, would they?

Unbreakable

 The One That Got Away is not a movie high on the viewership list for either Duke or Auburn, whom a lot of the smart guys figured would be playing for a national championship Monday night. You don't reach the heights they have if it is.

Duke, the 1-seed in the East, was looking more and more like your national net-snipper, Cooper Flagg 'n' them having stampeded through the bracket with an average winning margin of 23.4 points. And Auburn, the 1-seed in the South, was the overall top seed and had Johni Broome, who was the player of the year in college buckets if Flagg wasn't.

All of which fails to explain why Broome was weeping into his jersey at the end Saturday night, and why Flagg and the Dukies were wandering the floor in a someone-just-lifted-my-wallet daze. And why it's Florida and Houston who'll have Monday's big date.

What does explain it is one incandescent player, and another movie title.

Or in other words: Walter Clayton Jr. and True Grit.

Clayton did all his usual Clayton things in Florida's 79-73 knockout of the Tigers, scoring 34 points, dropping five threes and making a sprawling swipe of the ball in the final seconds to keep it inbounds and in Florida's possession, thereby certifying the W. Auburn had the Gators down eight at the break, but Florida went on a 13-3 run to open the second half, and the battle was joined in earnest.

And Clayton?

Combined with his 30 points in the Gators' win over Texas Tech in the regional final, it made him the first player since Larry Bird 46 years ago to rack back-to-back 30-spots this far along in Da Tournament. He's the leading scorer in Da Tournament and certain to be its Most Outstanding Player if the Gators hoist the big trophy tomorrow night.

But first, they'll have to get past the True Grit part of this tale.

That belongs to your Houston Cougars, who are so gritty you can taste it on your tongue just watching them. They were down a 14-point hole to the Blue Devils with eight minutes to play last night, and they were still down nine with 3:03 showing. With 75 seconds left, they were seven points adrift. With 34 seconds, six.

After which they outscored Duke 9-0 the rest of the way to claim a 70-67 win.

"Hang in there. Hang in there," Kelvin Sampson kept telling his guys as the clock tipped toward the halfway point of the second half.

Hang in there, they did. Though not in a pretty way, because pretty is not what Houston does.

What it does is put a pillow over your face and smother you, which is exactly what it did to Duke. Across the final ten-and-a-half minutes, the Blue Devils made just one field goal. They scored nine points. This from a team that averaged almost 83 points per game this season.

And so on to Monday night, when two unbreakable forces will try to break one another. It'll likely not be poetry in motion. Forty minutes (or perhaps more) of barbed wire and hearts left on the floor probably hits closer to the mark.

Whoever bleeds last wins.

The numbers game

 Alexander Ovechkin -- aka, the Great Eight -- tied Wayne Gretzky's career NHL goals record last night, putting the biscuit in the basket for the 894th time in his long and decorated career. Even more astounding: While Gretzky got 894 in 1,487 games, Ovi reached that mark in ... 1,486 games.

Same number of goals. One game's difference. Talk about your harmonic convergence.

Of course, Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson probably doesn't want to talk about that at all. More likely he'd rather focus on why Ovi's called the Great Eight.

"Because he wears No. 8, Mr. Blob?" you're saying now.

Always knew you were smarter than you looked.

Why Lamar Jackson would care about that is because he, too, wears No. 8. And right now he's sending a bunch of suits to court to challenge Dale Earnhardt Jr. for -- wait for it -- trademark rights to the No. 8. Specifically, a certain font that Junior last ran with his Dale Earnhardt Inc. car almost 20 years ago.

Somehow, Jackson's attorneys are arguing that the certain font is too close in style to Jackson's own "Era 8" brand. So there might be some confusion there because Junior is trying to trademark the same style of 8.

In other words: Lamar Jackson says this certain font of the No. 8 belongs to him. And if Junior is allowed to use it, some folks might get confused, because, after all, Lamar Jackson is an NFL quarterback and Dale Earnhardt Jr. is a retired NASCAR driver.

Perfectly understandable how people might mix up the two, right?

What do you mean, "No"?

And what do you mean, "This is the silliest thing I've ever heard"?

This is not silly. This is a serious trademark beef, because Lamar is paying his suits a lot of money to say it is. It's not at all the sort of frivolous nonsense a judge would throw out of his courtroom unless that judge was of sane mind.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "How can you trademark a number? And how you can do it retroactively? How can Lamar sue Junior for the rights to a certain style of No. 8 when Junior  first used it 26 years ago? And what about all the NFL players before Lamar who wore No. 8? Is he gonna sue them, or can they sue him?"

Well, now that you mention it ...

Turns out Lamar's attorneys are also going after former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman, who wore No. 8 some 30 years before Lamar Jackson donned it for the Ravens. A few years back, Aikman started marketing a brand of beer named "Eight" after his old number. Which of course Lamar's guys decided might confuse people, too.

Now, those of us not possessed of great legal minds might argue only persons with the reasoning power of amoeba could possibly confuse the numeral 8 with the written eight. But that's why we're not great legal minds.

Those folks would scoff at our ignorance. Why, how on earth could we not see this case as the Brown vs. Board of Education of numeric adjudication?

In the meantime, we await the resolution of this momentous numbers game. And wonder when the law firm of Owie That Hurts and Associates sues Lamar's "Era 8" brand on behalf of the Steroids Era, the Deadball Era and the Era of Good Feelings.

Coming soon to a court docket near you.

Blowout City

So, then: UConn vs. South Carolina for the women's marbles.

And what a letdown that is.

No, not because of UConn and South Carolina. Because of UCLA and Texas, a pair of 1-seeds who were supposed to show up to the party but sent their regrets instead.

Texas, see, lost by 17 to the Gamecocks. It was a three-point game at halftime and still a six-point game with 4:54 to play in the third quarter, but then the Longhorns went almost four-and-a-half minutes without scoring, South Carolina outscored them 11-2 in the interim, and that was pretty much that.

Texas scored just 22 points in the second half. It shot 39 percent for the game. In the second half, the Longhorns made just eight field goals.

Meanwhile, in the other semifinal ...

You know that old Woody Allen saying about how 80 percent of life is just showing up?

Well, UCLA flunked the 80 percent part.

Like the Longhorns, the Bruins scored just 22 points in one half, only in their case it was the first half. By that time they were down by 20, 42-22. And it never got any better, as Paige Bueckers and the Huskies rolled them like cookie dough, 85-51.

A 34-point rip, in a national semifinal game. With the 1-seed on the losing end. Holy guacamole, what an unscheduled trip to Blowout City.

Bueckers finished with 16 points, five rebounds, two assists and three steals, but she got plenty of help this time. Sarah Strong led the Huskies with 22 points, eight boards, two assists, a steal and a block; Azzi Fudd added 19, an assist and three steals and was 3-of-5 from the 3-point arc.

The Huskies never trailed, and the score was tied only once, at 4-4 on a layup by UCLA's Kiki Rice two minutes into the game. Eighteen seconds later Jana El Alfy tipped in a miss to send UConn back in front, and the Bruins never got even again.

So, then: UConn vs. South Carolina.

Here's hoping the suspense will last longer than it did Friday night. The women's game deserves it.

Whole new thing

 Well, isn't this just the world turned cattywampus.

Remember back in the day -- and I mean really back in the day -- when college hoopers of a certain refinement could declare something called "hardship" and enter the NBA draft before their college eligibility ran out?

Didn't really matter whether the hardship was actually hardship (though in a lot of cases it was). It was a slick little loophole for players to escape the collegiate plantation and start drawing a hefty paycheck for doing what they were good at. And a lot of guys did that.

Bound forward over an Everest of years and a foothill of decades, change "guys" to "gals", and check out what's happening here in the year of our Lord 2025.

Seems the women are declaring anti-hardship. Or something very like it.

In the last week, a couple of them with college eligibility still to run have decided to stick around campus -- some campus, anyway -- for another year rather than enter the WNBA draft. And this despite the fact both players were likely to be lottery picks in said draft.

The first, Notre Dame guard Olivia Miles, was projected to be the No. 2 pick in the draft and ship out for Seattle and the Storm. She's decided to enter the transfer portal instead, on account of she can probably make more money next season via NIL deals than the Storm would be willing or able to pay her.

And the second player to announce she's foregoing the WNBA?

That would be LSU guard Flau'Jae Johnson, also a virtual lottery lock, who was last seen scoring 28 points for the 3-seed Tigers in their Elite Eight loss to top-seeded UCLA. This season she averaged 18.6 points and was a third-team All-America.

But she's got a cozy NIL deal with Unrivaled which includes equity in Unrivaled's 3-on-3 league, which just concluded its inaugural season. This, again, almost surely makes her more financially secure than any WNBA team could make her. So Johnson will stick around Baton Rouge or wherever for another year, because the WNBA will still be around next year and, if Johnson has another stickout season, her draft status will likely rise still further.

This of course knocks the whole concept of "turning pro" into a cocked hat, because Miles and Johnson and college players of their stature have already turned pro in everything but name.  The NCAA so botched the NIL and transfer portal rollout that virtually every college kid who can hit the J or bang the glass is a perpetual free agent, jumping from one school to another to another in an unending search for the chunkier deal.

It's a model that simply isn't sustainable, and everyone knows it. It remains only for the schools to finally admit their "student-athletes" really are paid employees after all, and start signing them to contracts the way they would some hotshot coach.

Now, I don't know if two players opting to stay in college because the potential money's better constitutes a trend, but it kinda feels like it. And in a backassward sort of way, it lends weight to WNBA player complaints that they are grotesquely underpaid in light of the league's Caitlin Clark-fueled explosion. 

That they are grotesquely underpaid is beyond debate; Clark, the driving force behind the WNBA's surge in popularity, will make just over $78,000 this year to play for the Indiana Fever. The average NBA player is making just shy of $12 million -- or not quite 154 times more.

This is not to say WNBA players should be paid what NBA players are paid; even Clark admits that's ridiculous. But it is saying they should be paid more than they are.

Especially when a potential lottery pick can decide to "stay in school" and make more money.

World turned cattywampus. Oh, you bet.

Cruds and stuff

 We're officially one week into the baseball season, and that means it's as good a time as any for our first Cruds Alert of the new campaign. And there is both exciting news and no news at all on that fr-

Hey, where are you going? 

(Background noise of desks being pushed back, hurried footsteps, panicked cries of "No! Not the stupid Pirates!" and "Run for your lives before he says 'Buccos' again!")

Oh, relax. This isn't about my Buccos.

Well. Not entirely.

I will say the "no news at all" part of today's report is that my Cruds have already moved into their accustomed digs in the NL Central, which is to say the cellar. At 2-5, they're a half-game adrift of the next-to-last Brewers. Of course, they're also just 2.5 games out of first, which means the division title is still in reach.

OK, so no. No, it probably isn't.

But you know what?

There is exciting news in Crudville. As promised.

That's because the Chicago What Sox, the worst baseball team in modern history last season, are off to a glittering 2-4 start. This means that, after an entire week, they're tied for first in the AL Central. Giddy joy is presumably unrestrained on the south side.

Then again ...

Then again, the What Sox are also tied for last place in the Central. This is because everyone in the division is 2-4. Heck, if Connie Mack came back from the dead and brought his old Philadelphia A's with him, they'd probably be 2-4.

At that, they'd still be a game better than the Colorado Rockies, who were the worst team in the National League last year and apparently no better this year. The Rockies are 1-4 and already five-and-a-half games out of first in the NL West, where the grotesquely loaded Dodgers are 8-0 and probably headed for a 160-win season or something. 

So who's the Cruddiest of the Cruds right now?

Surprisingly, it's the Atlanta Braves, who are off to an 0-7 start and likely wondering what  happened to all that tall cotton in which they used to be awash. The Phillies are already five games clear of them, and the Marlins, of all people, are four games ahead of them. 

The Marlins! Who lost an even 100 games last year.

The baseball gods are cruel.

Rumor milled

Look, we all know what social media is. It's that nice thing we can't have because some thoughtless gomer tracked mud all over it, or smeared it with his or her greasy fingerprints, or used it as as a shop rag to wipe 10W30 off his/her hands.

"But that was my favorite Whitesnake tee!" you cry.

 "So?" the gomers reply.

This is kind of what they're saying to Mary Kate Cornett right now.

If you don't know her name, it's because there's no reason you should, but of course that's not the way the social media hellsphere works. People do know her name now, and it's all because the gomers decided her life was their business. They decided to wipe their hands on it, and now she's that ruined Whitesnake tee and wants to know what she did to deserve this.

The answer, of course, is nothing.

The answer is Mary Kate Cornett was just an 18-year-old freshman at Ole Miss until she started dating a certain BMOC, and a handful of troglodytes started spreading vile, baseless rumors (i.e.: blatant lies) about her. That's just what some people do, and, no, I don't know why. Because the world is over-served with  asshats, I suppose.

I mean, just look at the collection of insufferable clods running the show in Washington these days. Talk about Asshat Central.

Anyway, the rumors/lies would have been bad enough for Ms. Cornett had they just been confined to campus. But then the social media gomers got hold of them, and, being the Junior Fire Marshal journos they imagine themselves to be ("We got badges and everything!"), decided a college freshman's private life was Big Honkin' News.

So here was Pat McAfee of ESPN, a gomer first-class, yapping about it on his widely listened to/watched show. And two guys from Barstool Sports, that bastion of oafish seventh-grade-boy misogyny. And an ESPN St. Louis radio host. And former NFL wide receiver/certified loon Antonio Brown, another gomer first-class.

The Barstool Sports guys were a couple of yapping poodles who go by the online handles Jack Mac and KFC. The St. Louis poodle was Doug Vaughn. Just to get their names out there.

Thanks to them, but mostly thanks to McAfee, Mary Kate Cornett has been thoroughly rumor milled, with predictable results. Asshat America, remember? 

And so she started getting mail calling her a slut and a whore, surprise, surprise. Was moved into emergency housing and switched to online classes because of the harassment.  Her family's home was even "swatted" -- i.e., someone called in a false report that brought the police SWAT unit to their door.

All because McAfee and the rest of the gomers thought her business was their business.

Now Cornett and her family are thinking about dropping a lawsuit on McAfee's head, and by proxy on ESPN's. In a fair world they'd win and lighten a few wallets, but, again, it's not a fair world. That's because the phrase "social media" includes the word "media."

One of the most nefarious things the gomers have done, see, is blur the line between what is mere entertainment, and what is the legitimate gathering of news. The gomers tap-dance on either side of that line, and they're pretty slick about it -- slick enough that they can defend themselves by claiming any salacious rumors they were amplifying were legitimate news because of Mary Kate Cornett's connection to a legitimate news personage, and how about that First Amendment, boys and girls?

You see the problem here. They're not really media in the traditional sense, all these yapping poodles, but in 2025 the traditional sense no longer applies. If the Pat McAfees cannot in any way be regarded as newsmen, the blurring of that aforementioned line allows them to operate within the newsman's framework.

No matter how poorly the newsman's hat fits them. And with what reckless disregard they wear it.

Inhospitable

 Saw a post (actually a re-post) from a friend of mine yesterday in which someone named Mike Rothschild asked a very good question on the Magic X Twitter Thingy, and I wish I had an answer for it.

Or rather, an answer that's different from the obvious one.

The question Mr. Rothschild asks, see, alludes to the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympic Games, both of which are scheduled to happen on American soil. Mr. Rothschild wonders what would possess any international athletes or fans from other countries to come to America for either, given that America is not really America anymore but some fear-and-loathing hellscape dreamed up by a delusional old man and his grasping billionaire henchmen.

Or to put it another way: We ain't exactly down these days with holding up lamps for the huddled masses. 

More likely the lamps are torches and come with a side of pitchforks, standard accessories for a mob driven buggy by the paranoid fantasies of the delusional old man. This is hardly an un-blazed path in our beloved nation, sadly; the arc of our history might eventually bend toward justice, but it has also bent far too often toward bigotry, ignorance and plain old jackbooted thuggery.

And so lately we've been revoking visas and green cards and disappearing their holders until hell won't have it -- do not pass go; do not collect due process. This is not happening, mind you, because the holders are all hardened criminals threatening your family and mine. Mostly they're tourists and students who came here from overseas to become doctors, scientists, researchers and the like, and who wound up being abducted in broad daylight, shoved into unmarked vans by masked men and shipped off to some gulag in El Salvador or the American south.

Their crime: Expressing opinions that displeased the delusional old man and his Regime. 

Or having the wrong tattoo. Or the wrong surname. Or signing the wrong editorial. You know, all the things that will get you in trouble in a (cough, cough) freedom-loving nation.

Still, it's gotten bad enough in this (cough, cough) freedom-loving nation that some foreign governments are warning their citizenry to stay away from us, because, well, you don't know if you'll come back. There's perhaps a bit of over-the-top performance art in these warnings, but then again perhaps not.

Which gets us back to Mr. Rothschild's question: Why would any foreign athlete or visitor want to come to a place that's become so demonstrably inhospitable to foreigners? 

The aforementioned obvious answer is they wouldn't. In fact, how many of the participants might just to decide to boycott the World Cup or Olympics altogether? 

"Oh, that's just silly, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "We've not gone so far down the paranoia rabbit hole that we'd whisk some Iranian wrestler or Venezuelan fencer off to Stalag 17 for waving his country's flag in a threatening manner. It would create a huge international incident, for one thing."

Fair point.

On the other hand, this assumes the delusional old man would behave rationally, a bet not even Vegas would take at this point. Besides, why would you think the old man and the rest of his America First crowd would care about an international incident? What in anything they've done these past ten weeks suggests they'd give a damn about what anyone else in the world thought? 

Detain some other country's athlete or fan? Why not?

If they don't like it, let 'em eat tariffs.

Torpedo this

I'm sure former University of Michigan prof Aaron Leanhardt knows more about physics than I would if I loved to be 200, but I think he's wrong, wrong, wrong. OK, so mostly wrong, then.

What Leanhardt said the other day about the torpedo bat, which he's credited with developing, is it's not his baby that's making baseballs jump out of the yard like scalded cats. It's the man wielding the thing.

"It's about the batter, not the bat," he says.

Yeah, well. I think it's about both.

I think the torpedo bat -- an odd-looking cudgel with the weight shifted toward the end, making it resemble either a bowling pin or, yes, a torpedo -- is like feeding steroids to your  Louisville Slugger. In other words, it's a performance-enhancer every bit as stat-skewing as the exotics with which players were shooting themselves up back at the turn of the century. 

I know, I know. This is codger-speak of the most flagrant sort.

But I say it after watching Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees make a joke of the game over the weekend, using the torpedo bat to mash 15 home runs in three wins over the Milwaukee Brewers -- including an astounding nine in one game. And I say it after Elly De La Cruz of the Reds, who surely doesn't need the help, used a torpedo bat to drive in seven runs the other night with a single, a double and a pair of dingers.

Mind you, this is not to ignore the fact baseball has devolved into a mash-or-nothing enterprise. That's the game now, and I get that. I also get there are practitioners of that game who can send rockets into orbit on the regular without the aid of enhanced weaponry.

And I also, also get it's not just baseball whose parameters change with the equipment of the times. In golf, for instance, Scottie Scheffler isn't exactly whacking gutta perchas around with a Harry Vardon mashie anymore. He's doing it with lab-engineered balls and composite drivers with clubheads the size of New Jersey. 

All of which has changed the game, and not necessarily for the good. More and more golf courses, it seems, are defenseless against better players with better training regimens and better sticks -- to the point where, at the Houston Open over the weekend, it took a closing 67 and a 20-under 72-hole score for Min Woo Lee to bring home the W.

Two of his pursuers, Gary Woodland and Sami Valimaki, shot 62s on Sunday. Scheffler carded a 63. Fourteen players shot 65 or better.

As for baseball ...

Well. I could see the torpedo bat -- plus the player wielding it -- turning the record books into kindling. Just as 300-yard drives in golf provoke more yawns than gasps these days, the torpedo bat could render the 60-homer season no big thing anymore. Or that could just be the codger-ly alarmist in me shouting at the kids on the lawn again.

What I do know is this: If the torpedo bat in the hands of an Aaron Judge or an Elly De La Cruz continues to be as absurdly deadly a weapon as it was in baseball's opening weekend, MLB might eventually have to weigh in. And, being MLB, however it does that will surely displease as many folks as it pleases.

Me? 

I just wish the torpedo bat had been around when I was a kid. Woulda made all my strikeouts much more impressive.