Petard, hoisted

Sleep with hornets

And they wonder why they wake up stung

-- Matt Nathanson

A friendly judge in Texas has ruled Brendan Sorsby can play football this fall at Texas Tech, and, man, you've never seen such hand-wringing. Nebraska says it will never play the Red Raiders now. Ditto TCU. Ditto the Big Ten as an entire conference.

These things will happen when a young man  not only carpetbags from school to school -- Tech will be Sorsby's third stop, after pre-Curt Cignetti Indiana and Cincinnati -- but brings a truckload of baggage with him. And by "baggage," we mean, "Would bet on how long it takes Mikey to eat a bowl of Life cereal if the odds were right."

Sorsby, you see, is a young man with a problem. He apparently has a raging gambling jones that puts old heads in mind of Art Schlichter at Ohio State; according to investigators, Sorsby's placed thousands of bets while playing college football, including at least 40 on his own team while at Indiana. The kid seems hooked but good.

Nonetheless, the friendly judge waived the injunction slapped on him by the NCAA, whose record in court these days ranks up there with Germany's record in world wars (to steal an old Dan Jenkins line). So now a known and fairly notorious gambler will be playing quarterback for Tech this season.

Cue the hand-wringing.

"We officially lost our soul," moaned one Big 12 athletic director.

"How is anyone going to trust the outcome of a game again?" fretted TCU coach Sonny Dykes.

"I'm stunned that there would be a question at the court level that this is acceptable," Florida AD Scott Stricklin chimed in.

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips was in full agreement, telling ESPN the ruling suggests a "horrendous pattern" that is "eroding the integrity of our process."

This is where the Blob is compelled to snark this: "The integrity of your WHAT?"

Because, listen, as right as all these folks are, they're also blind as bats. They can't see that Brendan Sorsby, with the help of Friendly Judge, his slipped in a door they themselves left wide open.

Jim Phillips, for instance?

He presides over a conference that just extended its deal with ESPN through 2036. ESPN, in turn, has a sponsorship deal with DraftKings, an online gambling platform. So every Saturday afternoon when Wake Forest is playing Clemson or North Carolina is tussling with Georgia Tech, play will occasionally be interrupted by a DraftKings ad.

So how can Phillips -- or anyone in any Power 4 conference, really -- honestly say Brendan Sorsby throwing deep outs for Texas Tech is an Armageddon blow to college football's integrity? Seems to me they themselves crossed that bridge when they climbed in bed with people who were in bed with the gamblers -- or at least the gamblers' facilitators.

Sleep with hornets, wake up stung. Yessir, Matt Nathanson stuck the landing with that lyric.

Or to put it another way: Behold college athletics' own petard, hoisted.

Hail to the Jinx

 They booed the President of the United States rather lustily last night in Madison Square Garden, which only proves New York basketball fans are an astute lot. They know a bad penny when they see one.

And so, in front of Fearless Leader and a bunch of other famous fans or fans-for-now -- Hey, look! There's Derek Jeter! Eli Manning! Timothee Chamelet! -- the hometown Knicks did something they hadn't done since April.

They lost a playoff game.

Fell behind by double digits early, rallied to lead by seven at halftime, couldn't make it stick in the second half against young Victor Wembanyama, young Stephon Castle and the rest of the San Antonio Spurs.

Final score: Spurs 115, Knickerbockers 111.

Snapped a mind-boggling 13-game playoff winning streak for the home team.

Trimmed the Knicks' lead in the NBA Finals to two-games-to-one.

And whooo was there to see it as a homegrown New Yorker and apparent longtime Knicks fan?

Donald John "Stop Asking Me Questions I Don't Like Or I'll Take My Ball And Go Home" Trump. 

Fearless Leader. Defender Of The Faith (But Only One Of Them). President of these United States.

Jinx-In-Chief.

And, yeah, a lot of the Garden crowd that booed him when he showed up on the videoboard probably weren't booing because of that. They were probably booing him because, in deciding to horn in on their party, he made the evening even more inconvenient than it already was going to be, as presidents will do when they decide to attend an event.

However.

However, you know -- you just know -- a goodly portion of the crowd were thinking this:

Oh, great. THIS MFer. We're screwed for sure.

Right?

Child's play

 Meanwhile, in Formula One ...

They ran again Sunday at history-thick Monaco, and guess who won F1's most famously glittering event?

No, not Max Verstappen. The four-time world champion's engine took a dump as soon as the staging lights winked out, leaving him sitting on the grid while everyone else roared away without him. Finally got it going enough to limp around for one lap before retiring the car, extending what has been an ugly season for him.

"OK, so Lando Norris, then? Oscar Piastri?" you're saying now.

Nope. The McLaren jockeys finished fourth (Piastri) and DNF (Norris), not at all what you'd expect from a team that dominated F1 a year ago.

"Lewis Hamilton? Charles Leclerc? One of those Esteban Ocons or Pierre Gaslys?"

No, no, and ... no.

It was Kimi Antonelli in his Mercedes.

Won from the pole. Won his fifth straight Grand Prix, out of six contested so far. Leads Hamilton and his Ferrari by 66 points in the title chase, and teammate George Russell by 67.

Oh, and did we mention he's just 19 years old?

"Oh, come on," you're saying now. "A 19-year-old going all Verstappen/Hamilton/Michael Schumacher on everyone? Really?"

Yes, really. He's 19. Looks even younger. Plucked from the litter at 18 by team principle Toto Wolff and placed in seven-time world champion Hamilton's old seat. Now he's making child's play out of the most technologically demanding racing series in the world instead of, I don't know, getting ready for the prom or something.

There he was again on the podium Sunday, giving everyone a champagne bath as the youngest Monaco winner in history. Even his predecessor -- the previous youngest winner -- saw fit to salute the young Italian.

"That's a lot of wins, buddy, you're catching me up, man!" joked Hamilton, who finished a distant second this time around.

Well ... not yet, Lewis. But give the kid time.

Which he has a lot of, obviously.

 

The right Tempo

 Maybe you missed it in all the other weekend sporting life, but they ran the Belmont Stakes at Saratoga two days ago, and Golden Tempo won again for trainer Cherie DeVaux. That made it two legs out of three in the Triple Crown for Golden Tempo, and two out of three for DeVaux, the first woman trainer ever to do that.

Know what was the best part of it all, though?

Golden Tempo came from nowhere to win it. Again.

In the Kentucky Derby, if you recall, he was dead last at the head of the stretch before getting on his, well, horse and galloping past the entire to field to nip Renegade at the wire. Saturday was an instant replay: Golden Tempo was at the back of the field before hauling ass down the stretch again to beat Commandment by a nose.

Two races; two immortal stretch runs. And now the Blob is wondering, in its usual cattywampus way, what the horsie set could have done to offer Golden Tempo a real challenge. 

OK, so we got the usual buttload of horses here for the Derby. We'll bring in an extra gate to load 'em into. 

Except for you, Golden Tempo. You start across the river in, I don't know, Seymour or someplace.

Or ...

OK, so we got nine horses for the Belmont here at Saratoga, including Golden Tempo and the odds-on favorite Renegade.

Renegade gets to start with all the others. Golden Tempo, we're sending you across the state line to Vermont. You start from Montpelier.

Now that would be a stretch run.

Good craziness

 I don't know where Lord Stanley is in the Great Forever After, but I'm guessing he'd welcome a stiff shot of some well-aged scotch about now. It's a pretty safe bet the tussle for his Cup hasn't gone easy on the old aristocratic nervous system so far, because it hasn't on anyone else's, either.

This after the Vegas Golden Knights took a two-games-to-one lead in the Stanley Cup Final last night, but not before giving everyone on the Strip the vapors. The Knights led 4-0 in the second period after Mitch Marner collected the fastest hat trick in Final history -- three goals in six minutes and 10 seconds, beating Rocket Richard's 69-year-old record by 11 seconds -- only to see Carolina storm back with four straight goals to force overtime.

It only took two OTs for Vegas to finally win 5-4, and of course that wasn't ordinary, either. Shea Theodore got credit for the goal after Carolina's Jordan Martinook inadvertently banked it in off goaltender Brandon Bussi's skate.

Craziness. But not the sort iconoclastic journalist Hunter Thompson used to call "bad craziness"; this was good craziness, as in "Man, that was crazy. Let's see some more."

More than likely, we will, if the first three Final games are any signpost. The last two games have gone to overtime; in each of the first three games, someone has blown a multi-goal lead.

In Game 1, it was Carolina, who led 2-0 early before losing 4-3. In Game 2, it was Vegas, who led 2-0 with 10:20 to play before Carolina scored three goals in less than five minutes, Vegas tied it, and Carolina won 4-3 in overtime.

Last night it was Vegas blowing the lead again, only to save the W on the flukiest of bounces.

Great stuff. Legendary stuff, even. And exactly the stuff everyone was predicting for this Final, which features two teams who, if not mirror images of one another, are as evenly matched as you're likely to see.

And so: More craziness, please. And another shot for Lord Stanley.

Crossing the (state) line

 Well, now they've gone and done it. Crossed the Rubicon, if you will -- or at least almost, kinda-sorta, pretty much something like it.

Yesterday, see, the  board of directors of the Chicago Bears voted for the first time on a new stadium site, and came out in favor of a proposed site on the other side of the state line. And so, welcome to the Chicago Bears of Hammond, everyone. 

Maybe. Kinda-sorta.

I say this because nothing's a done deal until someone touches a pen to the bottom line, and no one has yet done that in this Bears-to-Hammond deal. Until that happens, a vote by the board of directors and a bunch of happy talk from Bears president George McCaskey and CEO Kevin Warren is just play-acting to squeeze the Illinois lege and governor JB Pritzker.

In the meantime, though ...

Well. It does sound like the Bears are serious about this. I'll give 'em that.

"We believe a world-class stadium project in Hammond will transform the region, connecting Northwest Indiana and the South Side of Chicago though the Loop and across the neighborhoods and suburbs stretching north of the city," McCaskey and Warren said in a statement.

All that sounds great, except there's no stadium yet, and no surrounding village of bars and restaurants and high-end hotels, and no special parking next to the stadium for the muckety-mucks. Also no shuttle service for the unwashed masses in their Urlacher and Bobby Douglass jerseys who'll be parking in, I don't know, Munster or Griffith perhaps.

(For the low, low price of 30 bucks a head, no doubt.)

Anyway, with the Illinois lege gone until fall, and having again futzed away the spring session without moving on this, Indiana looks like it's won this. That it's done so because our own Guv, Mike Braun, promised the Bears everything but streets paved in taxpayer gold is just the way this sort of bidness gets done, disgusting as that is.

The Blob's position on this is if the Bears want a new stadium, the Bears should pay for it. They're an anchor franchise in the most lucrative sporting conglomerate in America, so it's not like they haven't got the money. Freeloading off the taxpayers for a development study after study has shown has limited long-term economic impact should be strictly verboten.

Yes, and pigs should be able to fly, do barrel-rolls and land at O'Hare on Sunday afternoons. Believe me, I get that.

So here comes Mike Braun with an armload of tax breaks and other incentives, and here are the Bears following established tradition -- i.e., he who fleeces Joe Taxpayer hardest gets the cheese. Lucrative sports franchises have been playing off one municipality against another since the Dodgers and Giants lit out for California 70 years ago. They call it leveraging; the rest of us just call it what it is, which is blackmail.

So there's plenty of precedent. And for those who think it's beyond weird that the Bears would abandon Chicago for some godforsaken patch of land in, ugh, Indiana ... well, New York lost the Jets and football Giants to a godforsaken patch land in New Jersey decades ago. 

The Commanders play in Maryland, not Washington. The 49ers play in Santa Clara, not San Francisco. And so on.

The Chicago Bears playing in Hammond, Indiana?

Oh, hell. Why not?

The First Fan. No, really.

 The President of the United States has accepted an invite to attend Game 3 of the NBA Finals in New York, and, listen, the Blob is fine with that. Anything that takes Fearless Leader away from policy decisions is aces high with me.

And, OK, so that was snarky. This, however, is not: At least F.L. is legit.

He's a New Yorker, for one thing, and as such has lived and (mostly) died with the Knicks for a long time. According to NBA commish Adam Nosferatu Silver, Fearless Leader used to regularly attend the NBA Draft in Madison Square Garden, and once even had a cameo in an NBA promotional video.

So, yeah. He's a Knicks fan with receipts, as the current lingo goes.

Not gonna lie. I find that refreshing.

I find it refreshing because when politicians and legislators make forays into Sportsball World, it generally ends poorly. John Kerry, when he was running for president in 2004, famously said "How about those Buckeyes?" in an Ohio-Michigan border enclave that turned out to be heavily pro-Wolverines. Hillary Clinton, a lifelong Cubs fan, donned a Yankees cap when she was running for office in New York. Numerous other examples exist.

Donald John "Do What We Say Or We'll Bomb You Back To The Stone Age" Trump is not one of them, so good on him. What's semi-hilarious about that, though, is it puts him in the same company with his No. 1 hate-fetish Barack Obama, which surely must grind his gears during his nightly lunacy fits.

Obama, see, is a Chicagoan to the bone, and a  full-blooded White Sox fan. Never has pretended to be anything but. Never tried to curry favor with the northsiders by claiming to be a Cubs fan, too.

Just like Fearless Leader -- whose unhealthy obsession with Obama is well-documented, and springs from the fact Obama is, well, smarter, more grounded and just generally a better human being.

Also, Obama once gently needled F.L. at the correspondents dinner. Opened a festering wound in F.L.'s Hindenburg ego that apparently never has healed.

Anyway, kudos to the guy for being an actual First Fan. They're in tall cotton right now, Knicks fans. Their guys went out to San Antonio and stole Game 1 of the Finals, 105-95, closing out the game with an 11-0 run.

Or as Fearless Leader might put it: Greatest game EVER. You can't believe how great it was. Very, very great.

Cruds alert!*

 (*Which does NOT include my Pittsburgh Pirates, who are four games above the waterline and doing just fine, thank you, sailing along in second place in the NL Central. So you can all just stand down -- or, in other words, quit yer bitchin'.)

My wife is always after me to Blob something about her beloved Boston Red Sox, and I always say no one cares about her stupid Red Sox, which is perhaps uncharitable of me but mostly true. However ...

However, attention must now be paid.

Didja see who's in last place by three games in the AL East, and, on June 3, has the third-worst record in all of the American League?

The Boston Red Sox!

Or, given their current state of deterioration, the Boston Rolled Sox.

The Rolled Sox, generally accustomed to lording it over the East with their evil twins the New York Yankees, are currently down to Garrett Crochet, Roman Anthony and not much else. They're like the mansion where the town robber baron used to live sitting empty and slowly falling apart because the town robber baron died and left the family fortune to his doofus son.

The doofus son, or his real-life incarnation, decided the remedy was to fire manager Alex Cora before the season was a month old -- a move my wife (Julie) continues to say was stupid, stupid, stupid. She has a point, because, as with most such moves, it hasn't solved the problem.

 The Rolled Sox remain deeply fragrant, on account of they're just not a very good baseball team. They could bring back Terry Francona or summon Joe Cronin from the grave,  which they didn't, and they'd still not be a very good baseball team.

On the other hand, their partner-in-footwear might actually be one, believe it or not.

That would be the Chicago What Sox, who are almost good enough to be the White Sox again. The Pale Hose are three games over .500 and sitting comfortably in second in the AL Central, just two-and-a-half games behind division leader Cleveland. Minnesota is another three-and-a-half games back.

"But what about the Colorado Rockheads, Mr. Blob?" you're saying now. "They're still the Rockheads, right?'

Yes, they are. But even the Rockheads are better than last year, when they were basically a church softball team.

Not only are they not the worst team in baseball -- that would be the California Bane-gels, wallowing around at 23-39 as of this morning -- they're not even the worst team in the NL West. At 24-38, they're a half-game out of the cellar, which for now is occupied by the San Francisco Compliants, who are 23-38.

This may be small potatoes in some precincts. But for the Rockheads, it's a quantum leap forward; last year on this day, after all, they were 11-50. So even they would be burying their 2025 selves.

As for the Rolled Sox ...

Well, there's always Garrett Crochet. And Roman Anthony. And, you know, a hotdog and a beer.

A (bed)timely proclamation

 Look, I don't care if you think the mayor of New York is going turn the Big Apple into Tehran or outlaw hotdogs at Yankee Stadium. Just keep your Islamophobia and MDS (Mamdani Derangement Syndrome) down there in Mom's basement for a bit, OK?

Because That Muslim Guy, Hizzoner Zohran Mamdani, just demonstrated he knows his city as well as anyone, and red-lined the cuteness meter at the same time.

With the hometown Knicks about to play in the NBA Finals for the first time in 27 years, see, he's declared a moratorium on bedtimes.

Yes, that's right, America. Yesterday, surrounded by a bunch of young New Yorkers, he signed an "executive order" repealing kids' bedtimes for the duration of the Finals. Then the kids sealed the deal by putting their handprints on the EO.

WHEREAS, bedtimes should not impede the ability of New York's Cutest to cheer for the Knicks and watch every second of this historic Championship series ... the proclamation read.

"As Mayor, you're forced to make many difficult decisions," Mamdani posted on X. "This was not one of them."

Waiting now for some MDS-afflicted fruit loop to condemn Hizzoner  for -- let's see -- "interfering in parental decisions" and "government overreach." 'Cause you know it's comin'.

Stanley!

 The Stanley Cup Final becomes tonight down in North Carolina, and if you think that sounds odd you are clearly a grumblin' geezer of the liver-spotted fist-shaking sort. These are modern times, Grandpa. The Montreal Canadiens don't live here anymore.

(Although, by God, they might have. Got to the conference finals this time around, only to be erased in five games by the rampaging Carolina Hurricanes. Ah, well. Light a candle to the memory of Yvan Cournoyer, and let's move on.)

Anyway, it's the Hurricanes against the Las Vegas Golden Knights in the Final, which means Lord Stanley is going to be paraded down either Dale Earnhardt Way or the Strip when the final horn sounds. Again, this is convergence of the disharmonic sort of the grumblin' geezers, but the world keeps on turnin'. And it's not like either the 'Canes or the Golden Knights don't have at least some hockey lineage upon which to draw.

The 'Canes, after all, started life as the New England/Hartford Whalers of the WHA, which means they've been around for 54 years. And the Knights have already won one Stanley Cup (in 2023) and played in the Final another time (in their inaugural season of 2016-17). So they're bonafide, as Holly Hunter liked to say in "O Brother Where Art Thou."

The Hurricanes, too, although they haven't graced the Final since 2006, when they beat Edmonton to win the Cup. They've been a, well, hurricane this time around, however, blowing through the Eastern Conference playoffs and, from the second period of Game 1 on, outscoring the Canadiens in the conference finals 153-77. 

They score, they smother opponents in their own end, and goaltender Frederik Andersen has been a locked door between the pipes, with a miniscule 1.44 goals-against in the playoffs. So they've got that going for them.

And Vegas?

All the Golden Knights did was sweep the best team in the regular season, the Colorado Avalanche, in the conference finals. They score, they smother opponents in their own end (giving up just seven goals to the league's most potent offense in the conference finals), and their goalie, Carter Hart, ain't half bad, either.

So, there you have it: Two teams that do everything well squaring off for Stanley. May the best non-traditional hockey town win.

Preferably in seven games. Because the best of all playoffs deserves it.

The upside-down

 Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White did a little hollering during a timeout the other night, and now it's all over the Great Social Media Crazysphere that she's about to be fired.

As with everything in the GSMC, you can take that with a grain of salt. Or less.

What's instructive, however, is why it's all over the GSMC that White's about to be fired.

It's because the person she was mostly yelling at was Caitlin Clark.

Some goober in the stands caught it on video, because there's always a goober in the stands catching stuff on video. And now there's this viral clip of White speaking a trifle, well, passionately to Clark, after which Clark stands up, takes a swig out of a water bottle and shakes her head in disgust.

Now, none of us are as fluent in body language as we like to pretend we are. But Clark's body language seemed to suggest her reaction to being, well, coached, was this: You're full of (bleep), Coach.

Which brings us to the Superstar Effect, and how it tends to turn upside-down the way sports hierarchies are supposed to work.

Because if Caitlin Clark were just another player -- say, some anonymous kid on some middle school team -- her hindparts would have been on the bench for the foreseeable future, and Coach would have been carried through the streets in triumph for it. Because no one has any patience for attitude cases, and everything about the way Clark reacted screamed attitude case.

But what happened?

The Superstar Effect kicked in. And suddenly it was Caitlin Clark, Superstar, who was the victim of a mean, incompetent bumbler who clearly shouldn't have the privilege of  continuing as Clark's coach.

White's mistake was failing to recognize that. Her mistake was assuming she could coach Caitlin Clark the way she's coached other players -- by getting in her face when necessary -- without understanding she was CAITLIN CLARK. Savior of the WNBA, unrivaled mover of merch and tickets, all that.

So White hollered at her (Guard somebody!, seemed to be the gist), and then benched her in favor of Raven Johnson, a better defensive player. It was the correct move, given that the Fever was playing like ten pounds of you-know-what in a five-pound bag and getting their asses handed to them on the defensive end. And if Clark were merely that callow middle-schooler, and not, you know, CAITLIN CLARK, no one would have said a thing.

But she is Caitlin Clark. And they did.

On every other level of sport, see, Coach is the clear-cut winner in disputes with a player -- even a star player. In the upside-down of the professional level, however, it's the exact opposite. When Coach takes on a star player, Coach is going to take the "L" every time. 

RIP, in other words. As in, "rest in priorities."

In a sense, then, this is not really Clark's fault. She didn't invent the hierarchy; she's merely its latest beneficiary. Against all those kids and grownups in their Fever No. 22 jerseys, White has no chance in the court of public opinion. She is, after all, merely a coach, and thus an eminently replaceable part.

Is Caitlin Clark a wonderful basketball player, with otherworldly court vision and a knack for getting the ball in the basket? Indeed. Does she also turn the ball over too much, miss more of those logo threes than she makes, and become a liability when the Fever's on the defensive end?

Also indeed.

 But, again, none of that matters, here in the upside-down. And so here comes all this interwhatsis chatter that White should be fired, with even analysts who should know better weighing in.

One of them, the other day, said White was "the wrong coach for Caitlin Clark." 

Know what's most revealing about that?

No one wondered if perhaps Clark was the wrong player for Stephanie White.

Pots calling out kettles

 Drove down to the old neighborhood the other day, just to remind myself how many years have flown past. And how the world keeps turning no matter how much we wish it would stop in its tracks, or -- better yet -- reverse course.

What I discovered was the world is never going to do either. And that's OK, because it's how the cosmos operates and always has.

And so I almost drove past the street I grew up on -- Castle Drive -- because the trees have grown large and encompassing around the entrance, as trees will do after 60 or so years. The house I grew up in looks pretty much the same, except, again, the saplings of my childhood are mighty pillars now.  Which makes the yard look like a postage stamp compared to the yard I remember. 

And the neighborhood?

Different, too. When we moved there early in the 1960s, it was almost exclusively white, de facto racial and economic segregation being what they were then. Now an eyeball count suggests it is largely black, Hispanic, Asian and Middle Eastern -- the sort of American palette a certain species of American fears and loathes these days.

And yet ... 

And yet, the kids who live there now still ride their bikes up Castle and across the little cut-through to Stinson (named Sitko Drive for Emil "Red" Sitko, a 1940s Notre Dame football star who lived in the neighborhood). They cruise the same streets, and follow the same paths, we cruised six decades ago on our Schwinns and Huffys.

In other words: The world changes.  But perhaps only cosmetically.

I wish more people would understand that. I wish they wouldn't be so easily led by the demagogues and fear-mongering politicians who love to manipulate them.

Which brings us to our esteemed Lieutenant Governor, Micah Beckwith, who has raised fear-mongering demagoguery to high art.

As Loot Guv and a minister of the fire-and-brimstone sort, he has both a bully pulpit and a literal pulpit, and he's used each to advance a theology a lot of Christian folk find alien. But we're just plain old Methodists or Episcopalians or Presbyterians, and perhaps are not as privy to the Lord's revealed wisdom as the Loot Guv.

Whose latest pronouncement -- that he hates Islam because it's a "demonic death cult" -- has not only united Muslims, Jews and Christians in public condemnation, but summoned echoes of another demagogue in a collar: Father Charles Coughlin, the Detroit radio priest from the 1930s. Increasingly virulent the longer he had a microphone and an audience, by the end of his 15 minutes of fame he was all but Sieg Heil-ing the madman of Germany, Adolph Hitler. That's how unhinged Father Chuck had become.

Now, it might be a reach at this point to say Micah Beckwith is traveling the same trajectory. But, like his 1930s doppelganger, he does seem to get more irrational every time he opens his mouth. In so doing, of course, he misses the obvious irony: That he's every bit the religious extremist he accuses the followers of Islam of being.

Muslim extremists call America is the Great Satan; Beckwith, in so many words, returns the disfavor. Two sides of the same fanatical coin.

In any event, Beckwith seems to stand not far from the crowd that wants to throw all the Muslims out of the country, on account of we're a Christian nation and the Muslims (so they say) want to take over America and institute Sharia Law in Mayberry and Mount Pilot and every other wholesome All-American town. So they'd best either convert to Christianity, or get to packing.

All of this is of course preposterous, at least to any rational person. No Mayberry in the U.S., even those with large Muslim communities, operates under Sharia Law or anything remotely like it. Nor is it ever likely to.

But never the twain shall meet between hysteria and reality, and so go Beckwith and his fellow travelers out there on the fringes of American thought.  So, too, goes the supreme irony of the pot calling the kettle black, because it's not the kettle that wants either to convert every pot, or effectively outlaw them in violation of one of America's most cherished founding principles. It's the pot.

Hmm. What was that about "Sharia Law" again?

Which brings me back to the old neighborhood.

To be sure, we've taken the long way around the barn to get there, and maybe I've gone on long enough in the interim. But stay with me, because there's one more thing I want you to see.

No, it's not the faint outline of the old cinder track behind the now-boarded-up Village Woods Junior High, grassed over now but still carrying a faint whiff of oxygen debt. And it's not the overgrown field where we used to play baseball, with someone's sweatshirt serving as first base, someone's mitt serving as second and (invariably) someone's brand-new jacket serving as third.

It's this building over here, a few yards away.

When I was growing up, it was the Southeast YMCA. Now, though, it's a mosque; Masjid Akhoon, to be precise. It serves the Muslim community on the southeast side of town just as St. Henry's over on Hessen Cassel serves the Catholic community, or Bethlehem up on Anthony serves the Lutherans. All of them worshipping as they see fit.

Because that's America, you see. And no matter what Micah Beckwith and his ilk say, that's exactly what America should always be.

Throwbacks

 Well, then: It's the San Antonio Spurs and the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals.

Just like 27 years ago.

Just like the last time the Knicks played in the Finals, and the Spurs won their first NBA title.

Now it's a different Knicks team, this one led by a watch-fob veteran guard (6-1 Jalen Brunson) and not a 7-foot veteran center (Patrick Ewing). And it's a different Spurs team, only ...

Only in some ways it's not.

Back in 1999, see, the Spurs were led by a 23-year-old center who'd been the No. 1 pick in the draft just two years before. This time, they're led by a 22-year-old center who was the  No. 1 in the draft three years ago.

The first guy was Tim Duncan, a platinum-card Hall of Famer everyone called the Big Fundamental. The guy this time is Victor Wembanyama -- who's on a Hall of Fame trajectory, and whom some folks call The Alien on account of he's 7-4 but runs the floor like a man a foot shorter, and plays anywhere the Spurs need him to play.

On the perimeter, he has a silky stroke that regularly bottoms threes. Down in the low post, he blocks shots and rebounds the way you'd expect a 7-4 guy with a 7-9 wingspan to. Out on the floor, he takes it to the rim like a guard, and even dishes like one occasionally.

And he's got the Spurs in the Finals just two seasons after they went 22-60.

Just like Tim Duncan, who took the Spurs to the Finals two seasons after they went 20-62.

I don't know about you, but I sense some harmonic convergence here. A little throwback soft-shoe, if you will. One of those occasions when time's river turns back on itself.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "What about the Knickerbockers? Don't they have some deja vu going on, too? And haven't they blown through the playoffs in historic fashion, winning 11 straight games by an average margin of 23.8 points?"

Well, yes. Sure. They also beat the Spurs two out of three times during the regular season -- the first in the finals of the NBA Cup, and the second on March 1, when they won by 25 points and smothered the Spurs defensively, forcing 21 turnovers and limiting them to just 41 percent shooting.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, that was one of only two regular season losses Wemby and Co. suffered after the first of February. And on the further other hand, even though they lost the season series to defending NBA champion Oklahoma City, they blew out the Thunder in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals, then took Game 7 from the champs in Oke City. 

So they've got that going for them.

And all the rest?

Well, 27 years ago, the Spurs beat the Knicks in five games in the Finals. 

Something to think about, harmonically converging-wise. Or not.

Today's requiem

 I wrote my obit for Sports Illustrated almost two-and-a-half years ago now, on account of the magazine I grew up reading and that steered me into 38 years of writing about our games was long gone by then. Great writing and photography and by-God journalism had surrendered to the omnipotence of The Brand by then, and I mourned appropriately.

Here's what I wrote, if you're interested. Or, you know, not.

Anyway, I'm back on the subject today because SI jettisoned another crop of its writers yesterday, because writers don't matter there anymore. Hell, the bosses can just get AI to do the writing, right? And in some cases (I can hardly say this without throwing up in mouth a little), they have.

I can imagine Dan Jenkins throwing a young scotch against the wall up there in the celestial press box, hearing that. Or Frank Deford or Gary Smith or Rick Reilly or any of the other authors who made Sports Illustrated such a glorious festival of words, images and, again, by-God journalism.

Know what I don't have to imagine?

What another SI alum, Jeff Pearlman, thinks about it. Needless to say, he ain't too happy, either.

Here's how he put it on what can only be described as a seething TikTok video yesterday, and re-posted by the website Awful Announcing:

As a guy who wrote for Sports Illustrated for a long long time and a guy who loves Sports Illustrated, like loves, loves, loves ... this stuff carves me up. And it's one thing that they get rid of writers, they lay people off. What I hate the most is that these corporate douchebags who have taken over the magazine view it just as a name now ...

I do want to remind people, because I think it's important, and I know this makes me a dinosaur. To me, Sports Illustrated is Gary Smith, it's Rick Reilly, it's Grant Wahl, it's Ron Fimrite, it's Frank Deford, Dan Jenkins, Jon Wertheim, Phil Taylor. It's the great, great, great writing and reporting, where once upon a time they put money and pride into bringing you the absolute best in sports ... every Tuesday or Wednesday, you'd open you mailbox and there would be this bible every week  of what's going on in sports.

As someone who actually opened that mailbox every week as a kid, I say this: Amen, Jeff Pearlman. Amen.

Street fights over America

 Saw a photo the other day of the massive UFC build on the South Lawn of the White House, and I gotta say, Woodrow Wilson doesn't look so bad, suddenly. All he did was let sheep graze on the South Lawn to keep the grass in check.

I imagine some people thought that was an abomination, too, Americans being Americans. Never met anything we wouldn't complain about, after all.

In any case, this thing really is an abomination, or at the very least a big ol' thumb in the eye of a national landmark. I'd say it would be like holding a UFC card on the White House lawn, but they really are going to hold a UFC card on the White House lawn.

Some folks just have no couth, I guess. Or manners.

Anyway, this Street Fight Over America on June 14 is part of Fearless Leader's celebration of the nation's 250th birthday, upon which the founders told George III and the British to stick it up their nose with a rubber hose. It's probably just me, but I can't think of anything less evocative of that great shouting day than a bunch of half-naked tattoo enthusiasts rolling around inside a cage. 

Unless, that is, the founders settled on the wording of the Declaration of Independence by pitting Thomas Jefferson against John Adams in the octagon. "It's 'we hold these truths to be SELF-EVIDENT', dammit!" cried John, submitting poor Tommy with his deadly Roxboro Armbar.

Yeesh. What a country.

Of course, it's not just a glammed-up brawl on the South Lawn we've got look forward to these days. There will also be an IndyCar race through the streets of D.C. this summer -- keep it off The Wall, Sting Ray Robb! -- and, before long, Fearless Leader will have his very own Reichstag bunker, cleverly disguised as a ballroom. And how about that lovely Albert Speer Memorial Arch welcoming visitors to Arlington National Cemetery?

Talk about not reading that particular room.

But enough about all that. I just want to know what it's going to look like on June 14, which is also Flag Day. I also want to know how fast the new sod will grow in after it's all over.

That Donald J. Trump Presidential Pitch-And-Putt won't wait forever, you know.

Unknowable anguish

 Claude Lemieux was never cut out to be Mr. Nice Guy. If you'd handed him the NHL's Lady Byng Trophy for gentlemanly behavior, he'd likely have told you to stick it, and into what orifice, and with exactly how much force.

He grew up in Buckingham, Quebec, a mill town 24 miles north of Ottawa and 110 west of Montreal that was swallowed up by the city of Gastineau in the early Oughts. He died this week in Lake Park, Fla., just three days after serving as the honorary torch bearer in Montreal before Game 3 of the NHL Eastern Conference Finals between the Canadiens and Carolina Hurricanes.

Police say his son found him in the back warehouse of a furniture store showroom in Lake Park, apparently dead by his own hand. He was 60 years old.

In passing he leaves a quirky sort of legacy from his years as a player, primarily with the Canadiens, the New Jersey Devils and the Colorado Avalanche: Clutch performer and (not to tiptoe around it) a genuine horse's ass.

In his 1,215 games in the NHL, he won four Stanley Cups -- one with the Habs, two with the Devils and one with the Avalanche -- and finished with 786 career points on 379 goals and 407 assists. In 1995, he won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP, leading the Avalanche to the Stanley Cup with 13 goals in 20 games.

Of course, along the way, he also delivered one of the all-time cheap shots in the '96 Western Conference finals, running Kris Draper of the Red Wings from behind and leaving Draper with a fractured skull and a rearranged face. Because that was Lemieux, too.

On the ice, he was that annoying fly buzzing around your head, an agent provocateur who accumulated 1,777 penalty minutes in his career. If he played for your team, he was a hard-nosed guy who played hard-nosed hockey, because it's  hard-nosed game. But if he played for the other guys?

Well. Then he was just, you know, a horse's ass.

"A fierce competitor who rose to the occasion in big moments, Claude was a relentless, courageous and tenacious player who the team to the highest honors," Canadiens owner Geoff Molson eulogized.

To which opposing fans would no doubt reply, channeling The Dude in "The Big Lebowski": Yeah, well, that's just like your opinion, man.

What is not opinion is he's gone now, and the "how" of it is is ineffably tragic. That's because, as is true so many times when someone takes his or her own life, there is no "why" to go with it at this point.

The signs may have all been there, leaving those who are left to deal with a grim emotional stew of guilt, grief and, yes, anger ("How could he/she do this?"). On the other hand, sometimes the signs are not there. Sometimes hard-nosed guys are too hard-nosed, and shielding whatever is churning inside them in the armor they've built up across the years. .

Claude Lemieux?

Who knows what drove him to the back of that showroom? Who knows if the signs were there, or if he'd walled them away from the world? 

All I know for sure is there's this video clip of him bearing that torch in Montreal three days before he killed himself, and the roar that washes down around him from every corner of the Bell Centre is huge, huge. In its midst, Lemieux wears a sort of fixed half-smile as he enters the arena, holds the torch up, shakes his other fist. The fixed half-smile never changes through all of it, never blooms to full wattage.

I don't know what that means. I don't know that it means anything. And I don't know that we'll ever know. 

The unknowable anguish: The tragic core of a tragedy.

Bee time!

 And now the big news from the Blob's favorite sporting event that's not a sporting event, even though it's aired on ESPN. 

It's Scripps National Spellin' Bee time, y'all!

(And, OK, so it's "Spelling", not "Spellin'." But this is my Blob and I'll say "Spellin'" if I want to.)

Anyway, the Big Bee went to a lightning-round spell-off, and a 14-year-old from California won. Shrey Parikh correctly spelled 32 words in 90 seconds, beating out Ishaan Gupta and Sarv Dharavne.

"Question, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Did any Americans compete in this thing?"

OK, first of all, Parikh, Gupta and Dharavne are Americans. They're as American as George Washington, despite all the yahoos out there who think the only real Americans are named John-Boy Winthrop and came here on the Mayflower.

 Anyway, as their names suggest, Parikh, Gupta and Dharavne are of Indian descent. Americans of Indian descent own the Bee, having won 31 of the past 37. They're like ... well, they're like India in cricket, another pursuit Indians dominate.

"Question, Mr. Blob," you're asking now. "Is there a pursuit Indians don't dominate?" 

No. Well, maybe cross-country skiing. The Norwegians are all over that.

Anyway, Shrey smoked the lightning round, leaving Gupta and Dharavne choking on the dust of his correctly aligned P's and Q's. The winning word was "bromocriptine", which was not John-Boy Winthrop's nickname. It's a polypeptide alkaloid that mimics dopamine.

"Question, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "What is a polypeptide alkaloid? And why didn't the spellin' bee people say, 'OK, now spell polypeptide' after Shrey rattled off bromocriptine?"

Beats me. What do I look like, a chemistry major? And I suppose they didn't make Shrey spell "polypeptide" because that would have just been picking on a 14-year-old, and nobody likes a bully.

Steal his lunch money and kick his schoolbooks into the street, that's one thing. But make him do extra spellin'? Unacceptable.

That's u-n-a-c-c-e-p-t-a-b-l-e. Unacceptable.

Today in Curse news

 The Chicago Cubs finally won a baseball game last night, pummeling the Blob's Pittsburgh Cruds 10-4 before a gathering of the chronically disappointed in PNC Park. This was big news for the northsiders, because A) they actually scored some runs, and B) the win snapped a 10-game losing streak.

About that ...

Some astute observer on the Interwhatsis the other day, when the Cubs were still losing, noted that the Cubs last won a baseball game on May 15. Which, the observer went on to note, was also the day beloved Chicago tavern owner Sam Sianis died.

Sianis, of course, was the longtime owner of the fabled Billy Goat Tavern. It was founded by his uncle, William, whom legend has it put a curse on the Cubs after owner P.K. Wrigley wouldn't let him bring his pet goat into Wrigley Field.

The Billy Goat Curse survived in myth and legend for 71 years, until the Cubs supposedly broke it by winning the 2016 World Series.

And then ...

And then the heir to all that died.

And on the next day -- the very next day -- the Cubs began to lose. For, like, 11 straight days.

So what do call this? The Curse II? Heir Beware? A Brief Unfortunate Return To Those Goat-y Days Of Yore?

Only Sam, William and that damn goat know. And they're not talkin'.

Paying the piper

 (In which Sportsball World once again cannot hold the Blob. You know the protocol: Read on, or take your hall pass and skedaddle.)

So I see my alma mater will have to fork over a quarter million dollars to fired employee Suzanne Swierc, and I say, too effing bad. Ball State University should have to pay her a quarter mill. In fact, if it were up to this alum (Class of '77, thank you very much), Ball U. would be paying a lot more.

It got off cheap, in my estimation. So pay the piper and don't play the victim, ya lint brains.

I say this because the current administration showed no stones and less integrity in dismissing Swierc last September, simply because she chose to lay a little perspective on everyone about murdered (martyred?) right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk. The deification of Mr. Kirk was well underway by then, and Swierc was deemed not properly genuflective (to totally make up a word) because she said some things that frankly needed saying.  

If you read her post, it was the farthest thing from heartless. She didn't "celebrate" his death, as the more fevered of her detractors tried to claim. She simply pointed out that Saint Charlie occasionally said some pretty hurtful things about certain people who'd never done him any harm, and sometimes one reaps what one sows when you do that.

Now, not a word of that was untrue. But Ball State's administration went into cringe mode anyway, apparently afraid governor Mike Braun and attorney general Todd Rokita would come after them with pitchforks and torches. So Swierc was canned for reasons that smelled worse than any cow pasture in Indiana.

Or as the Blob put it last September:

In its official release the University said it went strictly by official guidelines, which state that a public institution can justify a dismissal by applying a two-part test to determine whether or not an employee's speech disrupts the workplace. The release went on to say the University determined Swierc's post did exactly that.

"... Our administration evaluated the impact of the significant disruption to the University's mission and operations and the effect of the post on her ability to perform her work in her leadership position," the release said, in a masterwork of handbook-speak.

And to which the Blob says this: Oh, balls.

Tell me how, precisely, Swierc's post was a "significant disruption" of her ability to (what did she do again?) promote and advocate health issues. Tell me how, again precisely, a post entirely unrelated to her job made it difficult for her to do that job. Explain yourselves -- or to put it in more educational terms: Show me your work.

Indeed. Or, better yet, be honest about it: Say you were a-feared of the Guv and Sanctimony Todd, and decided to cave instead of doing what higher ed is supposed to do.

Which is, stand up for the truth-tellers. Because seeking truth is supposed to be a university's core mission, is it not?

Any university worth the name, that is.

In the interest of self

 Mike Elko is as right as ham on rye, if it matters at all. Which it doesn't.

This is because saying out loud what is self-evident doesn't make it less self-evident. And what Texas A&M's football coach said the other day at the SEC spring meetings was as self-evident as it gets.

What he said was, essentially, is that everyone in college football these days is in it for themselves.

"I don't know why you ask us," he replied in response to a reporter's question about the Power 4's latest harebrained idea, which is a 24-team playoff. "It doesn't matter what we think. I don't know why we're trying to become a trophy sport. What does Mike Elko want? 40 (teams). Then I won't get fired.

"None of us are answering for the good of the sport. We're answering for the good of ourselves."

Well, sure. The 24-team proposal being pushed hardest by Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti is because, essentially, the Power 4 conferences need cash to pay their worker bees, who've become as mercenary as their coaches and universities. More Power 4 teams in the playoff would mean deepen the revenue stream. And, yes, it would help Coach hang onto his job because, by golly, he made the playoff even if he only went 8-4 or 9-3.

With the glaring exception of the SEC -- which, let's face it, doesn't need anyone's help now that it's swallowed up half the Big 12 -- the other Power 4s are slowly coming around to Petitti's hard sell. That it's a profoundly stupid idea that finishes blowing up what once made college football great matters not at all.

For example: One of the arguments advanced by the pro-24 crowd is that it would compel teams to schedule more marquee opponents instead of Lower Eastern Murgatroyd Tech. This makes absolutely zero sense, of course; if anything, teams would be compelled to schedule more Lower Eastern Murgatroyd Techs in order to get to the magic playoff threshold, which with a 24-team playoff would go from 10 or 11 wins to eight or nine.

Also: If everything becomes about making the playoffs (and getting one's hands on all that lovely green stuff), what happens to the lifeblood of the sport -- i.e., the traditional rivalries that have given college football a historical texture the Sunday version can't match?

"That's silly, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Alabama-Auburn will always be Alabama-Auburn. Michigan-Ohio State will always be Michigan-Ohio State. Army-Navy will always be Army-Navy."

The latter I'll give you, because Army-Navy is unique among rivalries. But the rest of 'em?

If making the playoffs becomes the Alpha and Omega of college football, what of them? Alabama and Auburn might still despise one another, but what happens if they both wind up playing one another in the playoff? Will the rivalry game still be THE RIVALRY GAME, or will it merely be a warmup act?

At least now those end-of-season rivalries sometimes have the added spice of a possible playoff berth; last year, for instance, Michigan needed to beat Ohio State to have a shot at getting in. In a 24-team field, the Wolverines would have already had a berth nailed down. With the prospect of playing Ohio State again down the road.

Dilutes the hell out of The Game, the name Michigan-Ohio State swiped from Yale-Harvard. Because bragging rights would be postponed until later.

Me?

I'd rather just keep watching Army-Navy every December. Stubborn coot that I am.

A Knick(s) in time

 Your New York Knickerbockers are back in the NBA Finals again, and, listen, pal, they mean bidness. Lathered the Cleveland Cavaliers in four straight in the Eastern Conference, winning Games 2, 3 and 4 by a combined 66 points. That includes Game 4 in C-town, when they squashed the Cavs like a bug, 130-93.

One-thirty to 93! That's 37 points to you and me, kids.

In any case, they look unstoppable right now, having won 11 straight playoff games. Now they await the winner between the Spurs and the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder, either of whom will presumably be the favorite in the NBA Finals.

Think New York will care. if so?

Hell, no, New York won't care. This is, after all, the first time the Knicks have been in the Finals in 27 years. And it's the first time they've been in the Finals after a full 82-game season in 32 years.

The 1998-99 season, see, got cut to 50 games thanks to a lockout, and the Knicks only showed up for a little more than half of those. They went a "meh" 27-23 in the regular season, then shocked a whole lot of people by making it to the Finals.

Beat Reggie Miller, the Davis boys and the Indiana Pacers in six games in the Eastern Conference finals, the Knicks did. Lost in five in the Finals to the Big Fundamental, Tim Duncan, and the San Antonio Spurs. 

Patrick Ewing, Allan Houston, Latrell Sprewell and Marcus Camby were the big names on that Knicks team. They're all in their 50s now -- except for Ewing, who's 63.

Which is to say, 1999 was a long time ago.

It's so long ago nine players on the current roster hadn't even been born. Bill Clinton was president, and everyone was worried about Y2K, one of the biggest nothingburgers in contemporary American history. "You've got mail!" was still a thing; Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and TikTok were not. Heck, MySpace wasn't even around yet.

That year, the Yankees won the World Series. John Elway was still playing football, and Wayne Gretzky was still playing hockey.  Dr. Jack Miller the Racing Dentist was racing in the Indianapolis 500, and so were Jeret Schroeder, Stan Wattles, Buzz Calkins and John Hollansworth Jr. And instead of a Ford or Offy power plant, almost everyone was driving an Oldsmobile. 

The winner that year?

Kenny Brack, a Swede.

The winner this year?

Felix Rosenqvist, another Swede.

One of the two teams playing for the right to face the Knicks in the Finals?

The Spurs. Same as in '99.

Hmm.

I sense some temporal convergence here. But maybe that's just me.

Da race

 Somewhere, no doubt, Scott Goodyear must have nodded his head and said, "Of course."

And somewhere else, Marco Andretti must have nodded, too, and said, "Yep."

And when the day was done, Helio Castroneves must have watched the replay and said, "Been there, done that."

Because the Indianapolis 500, see, went the full 500 yesterday before the winner emerged.

Because not even the blink of an eye, or the twitch of a nerve ending, separated the winner from the heartbreak of second place.

Because young David Malukas, who drove an impeccable race and looked more and more like the chosen one the longer the day went on, was going to win the biggest motorsports prize in the world. And then he didn't.

And then, in the last, what, 50 feet or so, Felix Rosenqvist -- new father and fastest man at at the Speedway for most of the month -- got a run. A millisecond later, he was crossing the yard of brick a nose cone ahead of Malukas. Hell, not even a nose cone ahead.

Zero point zero two seconds. That was your margin of victory after 500 miles.

 Closer than Al Unser Jr. over Goodyear in '92. Closer than Sam Hornish over Marco in '06. Closer than Ryan Hunter-Reay over Helio in '14. Closest finish ever.

Rosenqvist, whose month of May began with the birth of he and his wife Emille's first child and ended with -- let's face it -- a damn miracle, was properly overjoyed. Malukas was just as properly crushed. What do you say to a young man who had the Indianapolis 500 in the palm of his hand one second, and then the next -- literally, the next -- didn't?

"Better luck next time" ain't gonna cut it. That I can assure you.

In any event, it was an unreal finish to an unreal day, with a record 70 lead changes among 14 drivers and a red flag and a caution in the last eight laps. When the green and white flags flew together after the caution, Malukas went from fourth to first with a brilliant outside move in traffic, and then held off everyone until Rosenqvist's perfectly timed push swiped it off the kid's plate.

Some other observations:

* Red is the new fashion statement.

No grumbling from the geezer section, if you please, about the policy of red-flagging the 500 in the final laps of the race. It's the best decision IMS and IndyCar have made in years.

The first year it was instituted was 2014, and it produced Hunter-Reay's thrilling duel to the checkers with Helio. Subsequent late stoppages have set up some of the best finishes in the 110-year history of the 500 in the dozen years since. No one would rather see the race finish under yellow because some back marker got cozy with the wall.

In this particular circumstance, tradition be damned.

* Fuel strategy is not boring. It's what makes the Race, the Race.

Because, as ever, it was a major Indy 500 plotline.

Malukas, Alex Palou, Josef Newgarden, Scott McLaughlin and Conor Daly were on one stagger. Rosenqvist, Marcus Armstrong, Pato O'Ward et al were on another. It meant the latter had to make their last stops ten laps or so later than the former, and then hope they could run Rosenqvist and Co. down or pressure them into running out of fuel.

In the end, Caio Collet's hard crash and Mick Schumacher's kiss of the wall in the last eight laps -- the first stopping the race, and the second slowing it for a crucial lap -- made that a moot point. 

* Oh, Pato.

How many times is Pato O'Ward going to be right there, only to not be there?

He finished fourth on Sunday, which means he's now finished fourth or better four times in the last five years. Once more he was hanging around the front all day; once more he played all the strategic cards right to put him up front as the laps got skinny.

Everyone keeps saying he's going to win the Greatest Spectacle someday, because he's always good here. But as the Blob has noted before, maybe he could also be the modern-day Ted Horn -- who finished fourth or better nine straight times between 1936 and 1948, but never won.

* Dixie!

Scott Dixon may never win the 500 again, but that doesn't mean you can keep him away from the front. The greatest IndyCar driver of his generation led 32 laps yesterday, second only to polesitter Alex Palou's 59. It extended his all-time 500 record for laps led to 709, which are 65 more than second-place Al Unser Sr. 

It also marked the 17th Indianapolis 500 in which he's led at least one lap. Not bad for a guy who somehow has only won the Spectacle once, and who'll turn 46 on July 22.

* And speaking of old guys ...

At 49, Takuma Sato did not have the car to win his third Indianapolis 500 Sunday. But he did have the car to finish 10th.

Counting his victories in 2017 and 2020, it was his sixth top-ten finish at Indy -- and his second in a row for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.

The only older driver in the field was, of course, Helio who at 51 didn't come close to a record fifth 500 victory. He finished 25th.

And yet ...

And yet, he won, sort of.

He won because Rosenqvist won, which made Helio a 500 champion as an owner.  He owns a piece of Meyer-Shank Racing, for whom he won his fourth 500 in 2021 and for whom Rosenqvist won Sunday. 

Of things given

 This being Memorial Day, when we remember the ones who didn't come back from our wars and rumors of wars -- when we remember who bought us our cookouts and our trips to the lake and all of a peaceful life's pleasures and, yes, annoyances, too -- the Blob offers in this space something I wrote eight years ago on this day. It is the perfect message for these times, when the man-children running our country play army with real lives and treat war as some sort of glorious crusade instead of the mean, ugly business it is.

And that's all I'll say about that.

Of the rest, I say this:

Always I remember the crosses, on this day. Pristine white, laid out row upon perfectly symmetrical row, they sprout like a field of wildflowers in this quiet green place, every cross representing a father or son or brother who didn't come back from what was naively termed the Great Adventure.

Every cross representing something given, without expectation of payment.

War is the great waster, thief of life and potential and what-might-have-been. It is never something to be glorified, to be held up as some shining beacon of human virtue. Even in a good cause -- and the good causes almost without exception look less so in retrospect -- it reveals the worst of what we are.

And also the best, in an oddly paradoxical way.

The latter is why, on this Memorial Day, we go to the cemeteries and place American flags on graves. It's why on this day I remember those white crosses in the St. Mihiel American Military Cemetery near Thiaucourt, France, where so many of our countrymen rest who died trying to reduce the St. Mihiel salient in September of 1918.

It was the first major American engagement of the First World War, and if it was a victory it was a costly one, part of less than six months of combat that would steal some 53,000 American lives. The cemetery at Thiaucourt lies at the center of the old salient, a peaceful place set down in the middle of lush French farmland. If you didn't know any better, you'd swear you were in Indiana somewhere -- at least until, in the middle of a field of wheat, you spied the crumbling remains of an old German pillbox.

Or looked out over all those crosses, row on perfectly symmetrical row. Or stepped into the cool marbled shade of the memorial, where name upon name is etched in gold on a black plaque that stretches almost from floor to ceiling. The names go on forever, representing eight different American divisions. They are the names of the American soldiers who fought in the St. Mihiel region, and who now "rest in unknown graves."

Outside, in a leafy alcove, stands a white marble monument with an American doughboy carved on it in bas relief. Bareheaded, eyes closed, he holds his helmet at his waist in his left hand. Beneath him is this inscription: "Blessed are they that have the home longing, for they shall go home."

Around it, beneath those crosses, other American doughboys sleep on. They are home at last, in a sense. And because they and so many of their brothers are, generations of other Americans got to sleep peacefully in their own homes.

And because we do, we remember them this day. And on all days. 

Da prediction

 People keep asking me, because they know what I used to do. It's Indianapolis 500 week, and I covered it for four decades as a professional scribbler, and so of course I must know, of course I have the wisdom of the ages when it comes to predicting who's gonna win the Greatest Spectacle today, other than the rain.

"Beats me," I say. "Could be any of a dozen guys."

Everyone looks crestfallen.

"Oh, come on," they say. "Pick somebody, You've GOT to pick SOMEBODY."

In that case, I say, you could do worse than Alex Palou. Defending champion, starts on the pole, has won three of five races so far on the IndyCar circuit as he pursues his fourth straight title. The Dominator.

Everyone nods.

"Palou," they say. "Well, sure."

Except ...

Except I have this weird feeling he won't be the one slamming the milk at the end today (or tomorrow).

Mainly I say this for the completely irrational reason that it's too easy -- too obvious -- to pick Alex Palou. Indy, after all, doesn't always do obvious on Memorial Day weekend. And when it's this obvious, it hardly ever happens.

Well, OK. Except when Al Unser Sr. won back-to-back in 1970 and '71 in the fabled Johnny Lightning Special. And except when Bill Vukovich won in 1953 and '54. And except when Wilbur Shaw won in the Boyle Maserati in 1939 and '40 ... and when Rick Mears won all those times for Roger Penske ... and when Simon Pagenaud won from the pole in 2019 ... 

Like I said: Irrational.

Except ...

Except that weird feeling won't go away.

It's the feeling I get sometimes when I think this is a year when Indy gets quirky on us, which it's fairly notorious for doing on occasion. How else to explain Mario Andretti only winning the 500 once in 29 starts? Or Lloyd Ruby and Michael Andretti never winning? Or Scott Dixon winning just once, or Ted Horn finishing in the top four, like, every damn year, but never finishing first?

So, no, I'm not picking Palou. I'm also not picking Pato O'Ward, who starts on the outside of Row 2 and has finished second, second and third in three of the last four 500s. He's going to win this race someday. If it's this year, well, that would figure. But I don't think it will be.

Dixon, back there in Row 4? Maybe. Two-time winner Takuma Sato, who led a race-high 51 laps last year and starts on the outside of Row 5? Always up there. Ditto Santino Ferrucci, Marcus Ericsson, two-time winner Josef Newgarden, four-time champ Helio Castroneves.

Ditto Conor Daly.

Who starts in the middle of Row 3 and could very well win this today (or tomorrow), after leading 13 laps and finishing eighth last year for Juncos Hollinger Racing. He's the hometown boy, from just up the road in Noblesville. Makes him a sexy pick for a lot of people.

Me?

Well ...

Well, try this name on for size: David Malukas.

He's a 24-yearold from Chicago who qualified seventh and finished second last year for A.J. Foyt, and now he has Will Power's old ride with Penske. Stuck it on the outside of the front row in qualifying, during which he drove with a calm efficiency that reminded you a little  (OK, so, reminded me a little) of a young Rick Mears. I know, crazy, right?

Know what's crazier?

I think this is a David Malukas kind of year. Write it down.

In pencil, at least.

A real 'dogfight

 The weather was gray, damp and cool at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway yesterday, but the hot(dog)foots were tearin' around the old joint nonetheless. They were sizzlin' four wide down the long straightaways and playin' ketchup through the perilous turns, but only one mustard the wherewithal to relish the victory.

OK, OK. I'll stop.

(Maybe)

But, hey, how could you not get carried away by the second annual Wienie 500, a two-lap speedfest featuring six Oscar Mayer Wienermobiles. Buns and wienies blazed around the hallowed Brickyard at a blistering 50 mph or so, and when the condiments settled New York Dog had beaten the rest of the pack(age) to the checkers.

"Grilled those losers!" said the winning wienie pilot, Dario Frank-Eatie, who credited the radical bun-length design of his delicious ride for his late pass of runnerup Chili Dog.

OK, O-KAY. I'm stopping. Promise.

(Or not.)

Meanwhile, last year's inaugural wiener, Slaw Dog, got shuffled back in the fierce jockeying for position and finished third. Driver Wilbur Slaw filed a formal complaint post-race, claiming the rest of the field was driving "like a bunch of  ***damn Italian sausages out there."

"Wow, wonder what's got his buns so steamed?" said Chili Dog's chauffeur, Mauri Rolls, who--.

Hey. What are you doing with that Guilden's Spicy Brown?

Put it down. I mean it. PUT IT DOW--

Shock and awe

 You never think the leadfoots are gonna go out like this. There's your home truth for today.

There's your home truth now that Kyle Busch is gone, at 41, not in some metal-shredding Big One at Talladega or Daytona but from something too small to see with the naked eye. Died three days before the Coca-Cola 600, his next gig. Died of what for now is only being called a "severe illness" that first sent him to the hospital yesterday morning, and then ended his life a few hours later.

Deadly Virus Or Something Kills The One They Called "Rowdy": Now there's a shocker of a headline for you.

It's a shocker, first of all, because when a race driver gets tagged with a nickname like Rowdy, it's not usually because he's a gentleman on the racetrack. It's because he's a purebred SOB with a big mouth and an even bigger ability to drive the wheels off anything you put him in.

That was Kyle Busch to a fare-thee-well when he came into NASCAR at 19 -- he actually drove in a truck race when he was just 16, finishing ninth -- and if the years and a wife and family killed off the punk in him, it didn't file down his edges completely. Just a couple of weeks before his death, in fact, he was going back and forth with his crew chief about some on-track outrage or other, and when his crew chief suggested he re-focus on the job at hand, Rowdy sneered, "OK, pysch major."

And then suggested the crew chief put a bag of ice on his crotch to calm his ass down.

That was vintage Kyle Busch, and if you didn't like it, well, you could just sit on it and spin. Busch couldn't have cared less. He actually courted the crowd's disfavor on occasion, gesturing the boo-birds to bring it louder after he'd won one race or another.

And there were a lot of those one-race-or-anothers. Because you can't talk about the shock of Kyle Busch's passing without also talking about the awe of his talent.

He won in every iteration of NASCAR, and no one did it better. No one has ever won more than the 234 races he won in the series top three tiers, and his 63 Cup wins are ninth alltime. He's the only driver ever to win 100 races in the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts series, and his 69 wins in the truck series also is the most alltime.

He won two Cup titles for Joe Gibbs, made the Chase at 19, and won the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis back-to-back in 2015 and 2016. And if he'd ever decided to show up at Indy in May, he likely might have won the 500, too. He was that good.

And the rest of it?

Hell, that was just old-school NASCAR, when the good ol' boys used to put one another into the fences (and occasionally through or over them) in pursuit of the checkers. And then settled any and all disputes with their fists when the racin' was done.

Now, Kyle Busch was not a good ol' boy, except in spirit. He grew up in Las Vegas, a light year away from the Deep South hollers where NASCAR was born. But he did some dispute-settling of his own, too, on occasion.

As Joey Logano could attest.

 A guy like that, you figure, isn't going to die in bed. Although a couple of weeks ago at Watkins Glen, Busch did request medical assistance -- a "shot", actually -- upon finishing the Cup race. Which makes you wonder if whatever killed him was already working on him then.

And yet ...

And yet, he raced again last weekend at Dover. Won the truck race for Spire Motorsports, then finished 17th in the Cup All-Star race for his regular employer, Richard Childress.

Oh, and that race at Watkins Glen?

Despite clearly being in dire straits physically, he finished eighth.

That was Kyle Busch.

A writer's rant

 Read the other day that a writer on one of Sports Illustrated's platforms got nailed for using artificial intelligence to plagiarize part of some betting piece or other, and here came my Curmudgeonly Old Writer Guy, roaring from his cave. 

I cannot help this. It's who I am. It's probably who I was at 31 instead of 71, come to think of it.

And so I shake my head and grumble and wonder what Dan Jenkins would think this. Or Frank Deford. Or Curry Kirkpatrick or Gary Smith or any of the other SI legends from back in the day.

I'm thinking they wouldn't think too kindly of it. I'm thinking they'd think, one, AI is a cheat for a writerly sort, and lazy, and, by the way, so is plagiarism. In fact if you can't come up with a better way to say something than whomever it is you're plagiarizing, you're not much of a writer and should probably take up a different profession, like arc-welding.

I think that's what the legends would think because that's what I think. Not that I was ever a legend or anything close to it.

What I am is guy who did the sportswriting thing for 40 years, and the idea of stealing someone else's words -- at least without quotation marks and attribution -- would never have occurred to me. This was arrogance, mostly; I figured I usually could express something better in my own way, so why would I bother with someone else's way?

And besides ... it's lazy, like I said. And not nearly as much fun.

As for AI, well, that's lazy squared. And if you're a writer -- the sort of oddball who glories in the written word -- you know AI can't write, anyway. This is because the human brain is infinitely more complex, and every human brain is different. We're all informed by different life experiences, and it's those life experiences that enable us to produce words and images unique to us. The associations we make are ours alone.

AI?

All AI can do is reproduce whatever you tell it to. That's why what it spits out is so wretchedly pro forma. Skynet may live, but it can't write for doody.

Or at least, that's what I tell the young minds I find myself surrounded by these days.

In my retirement, see, I've taken up teaching creative writing for an organization called the Unity Performing Arts Foundation in my hometown, and it's been a revelation. First of all, the students are mostly middle-schoolers to young high-schoolers, and I'd forgotten what kids that age are like. And, second, I'm amazed (and a bit envious at times) at how adept some of them are with the written word at their age.

And so, periodically, I haul Curmudgeonly Old Writer Guy from his cave and rant my little rant about AI. It can, I point out, be a useful tool. But it can't express your thoughts and feelings -- your creativity -- better than you can. All that is yours, and yours alone.

It's why, when I try to coax one of my shy ones to read for the class what they've written, I always say a variation of this: "Come on. Have pride in your work, because you should. It's your work, after all, and no one else's. Don't be afraid to share it."

I almost never add, "And don't ever let AI within a light year of it."

I don't have to. I mean, how many times have they heard that sermon from the old dude?

To Cav not

 So I'm looking up at the TV a few skinny minutes before 9 o'clock last night, and, oh, look, it's the Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks in Game 1 of the NBA Eastern Conference finals, and, wow, the Cavs are up 15 with three minutes to play in the third quarter, and this is HUGE, because they're playing in Madison Square Garden and the Knicks have just been rolling through the playoffs so far ...

I'm sorry, what?

Will this sentence eventually have a period in it?

OK, fine. Here's your period. Three of them, in fact.

Now where was I?

Oh, yeah, right: The Cavs. Rolling themselves. Moving the basketball like a metronome. About to erase homecourt advantage for the previously indomitable Knickerbockers.

And then ...

If you live in Cleveland, you might want to stop reading now.

That's because the Cavaliers' lead was up to 22 points with 8:19 to play in the fourth quarter, and now it was not just a win but a certified freaking blowout. Except ...

Except over on the Knicks' bench, head coach Mike Brown and his assistants noticed something.

What they noticed was James Harden was bouncing the ball an awful lot for the Cavs, as he tends to do. They also noticed his age (36). And they also noticed the age of their own bucket-filler, 29-year-old Jalen Brunson.

That's seven years of fresher legs, if you're keeping score at home.

And so, right about then, the Knicks told Brunson to start attacking Harden offensively. And suddenly the 22-point deficit began to melt like an ice cube on an August sidewalk. And before long the Knicks had outscored Harden and the Cavs 44-11 -- 44-11! -- the rest of the fourth quarter and overtime, and Cleveland's blowout became a shocking 115-109 win for New York.

In that same span, the Cavs shot 29.4 percent, missing six of their seven shots in overtime.

Harden was 1-for-6.

And Brunson?

Scored 16 of his game-high 38 in the fourth quarter and OT.

You could call that a choke job of epic proportions by the Cavaliers. Or, you could be nice and call it an equally epic comeback by the Knicks.

Me?

I prefer to call it a horrendous pun, as is my wont.

To Cav ... and then, to Cav not.

I'll be here all week, folks.

Dark influencers

 (Departing once more from the normal Blobosphere  to talk about non-Sportsball stuff. Standard protocols apply.)

Couple of sick f**** (excuse the potty mouth) attacked a mosque in San Diego yesterday, killing three people in a burst of gunfire, and God forgive me. My first reaction was not horror or shock or even a weary sigh at the perfidy of these days, but the following: Yep. Knew this was comin'.

Knew this was comin', because the fringiest of the lunatic fringies have been stoking the fire on antisocial media, ranting about the "Muslim horde" (hat tip to Secretary of Defense Sir Pete the Lionhearted Hegseth for that 12th-century gem) that's INVADING AMERICA and trying to turn a CHRISTIAN NATION into another Islamic hellscape ruled by Sharia Law. Lord knows from what stinking sewer lint-brains like these crawl, but they're suddenly everywhere.

It's their contention -- and even that of some of our elected boneheads, like that idiot Tommy Tuberville -- that Muslims are evil incarnate and don't belong here, and never mind that freedom-of-religion thing. The First Amendment, they claim, doesn't apply to Islam, because Islam is anathema to American culture and wants only to subjugate it. 

Even though Muslims have been part of the American fabric since the founding. Even though the Muslims I know are a lot more interested in Mohammed Salah and Liverpool subjugating Aston Villa or Arsenal than subjugating America.

No matter. Bigotry has no time for reality, and it's out there every day -- sent out into the online biosphere by beyond-hard-right webheads we've come to know as "influencers."

Being an elderly American hopelessly afflicted with terminal fogey-ism, I can't tell you what an influencer is, exactly. I can't tell you how or why certain people become influencers. From what I can tell, all it takes is a cellphone, a fondness for using it to film your every personal interaction every second of the day, and the massive narcissism it takes to do that.

After which, in some cases, you start up a website where you can share the ravings of your diseased mind with the similarly afflicted. With no consequences whatsoever, because words, apparently, are only words.

Except, in this case, three people are dead. And the two suspects, both teenagers, are dead from apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds. 

To repeat: Teenagers.

Who cruise the Great And Terrible Interwhatsis 24/7. And who, let's face, seem to be particularly drawn to "influencers."

Mind you, this is not to say all the anti-Muslim poison out there right now triggered these particular teenagers. But I'm not saying it didn't, either. Words do matter sometimes, after all. And it's not like America doesn't have a long and ugly history of hate-stoking; go back to the 1840s, for instance, and the influx of Irish from the Great Famine prompted that era's "influencers" to rail that these Catholic heathen were coming to America to turn us all into Papists.

Stroll on down the timeline, and you'll find similar hysteria leveled at every succeeding wave of immigrants. The Chinese were diseased and incorrigibly foreign; Eastern Europeans were anarchists to the man: Italians were all criminal gangsters; and so on, and so on.

Always has to be an Other in the land of the free, I guess. And now it's the Muslims' turn.

To America's shame.

The Great Inescapable

 Hey, what am I? Chopped liver?

-- Tuesday

Well, you can't blame ol' second-day-of-the-week for being miffed. The Nash-unal FOOT-ball League now has targeted every other day of the week for anointing, but not Tuesday? What's up with that? 

This upon the release of the NFL schedule last week, in which the league announced it would not only play games on Sunday, Monday, Thursday and sometimes Saturday, but on Wednesdays and Fridays, too. So that's six days out of seven the NFL will come flying off the edge into our living rooms, with only Tuesday left to sit around with its hand out.

What is up with that?

I mean, heck, you wanna flood the zone, flood the zone, dammit. If you're gonna crap on high school football by scheduling games on Friday nights, might as well take it all the way to the house, right?

Don't just schedule games on Thanksgiving Eve, a new wrinkle this year that brings Wednesday into play. Schedule a couple of Thanksgiving Eve Eve games, too. Call it the NFL Tuesday Night Two-fer or something.

After all, what's so all-fired special about Wednesday? With Tuesday you at least get tacos. With Wednesday you get ... what? Hump Day Ham Loaf? Boy, howdy.

Oh, I'm sure, in the fullness of time, the League will bring Tuesday into the NFL family of days. It is, let's not forget, the Great Inescapable, or at least aspires to be so. With an expanded European slate this season, NFL Sundays will now be a literal morning, noon and night proposition. And then Monday night! And Thursday Night Football! And now not just Thanksgiving but Thanksgiving Eve, and Christmas Day, too!

Coming soon: The NFL Presents The Night Before Christmas. Best hustle off to bed, boys and girls, or Santa will leave Jets-vs.-Titans in your stocking.

The cautionary tale in all this, of course, is that the NFL risks doing what wildly successful sports monoliths have done since time immemorial: Overreach. To be sure, it sounds silly right now to say the Shield might be perilously close to red-lining market saturation. The public's hunger for its product remains insatiable -- or at least it seems that way.

And so, for now, how-high-is-up remains an open question. And Tuesday awaits.

Pissed off. Feeling abandoned. Bearing tacos.

Palou and the pole

 So, then: Alex Palou, Alexander Rossi, David Malukas.

That's your front row, America. That's who leads the field of 33 six days from now, when the Indianapolis 500 goes off for the 110th time.

Rossi did it for Ed Carpenter with a brilliant final drive after squeaking into the Fast Six as the slowest of the Fast.

Malukas was cool beyond his 24 years in putting Will Power's old ride in a familiar place for Roger Penske.

And Palou?

Well, shoot. Palou was just Palou. Best wheel in IndyCar.

The Spaniard beat out Felix Rosenqvist, who'd been quickest around the ancient place all week until his pole run, when he unaccountably fell off and wound up fourth on the grid. That means the man who's won three of the last four IndyCar titles -- and three of the five races so far this season -- brings 'em to the green on race day.

But if you're inclined to just hand him a second straight bottle of milk and get it over with ... don't.

What, you haven't heard about the Pole Position Curse?

OK, so it's not a curse, exactly, but it might have bought a house in the same block. Since 2009, see, only one polesitter has gone on to win the race. That was Simon Pagenaud in 2019.

In the six 500s since, the guy on the pole has finished 13th, 17th, 21st, 4th, 6th and 26th.

In 109 runnings, the polesitter has won 21 times. 

Which is not nothing, admittedly, but it still means the race winner comes from the pole just 19 percent of the time. And that's taking into account the first decade of this millennium, when the polesitter won four times in eight years, including three in four years between 2006 and 2009.

So, just 17 times in the other 105 Indy 500s. Hardly a lock.

"Yeah, but all those guys who didn't win from the pole?" you're saying now. "None of 'em were Alex Palou."

Oh, really?

Well, one of 'em is A.J. Foyt, the greatest American racer not named Mario Andretti, who won the 500 four times but never from the pole. And one of 'em is Andretti, the greatest American racer not named A.J. Foyt, who started second in 1969 in his only win. And one of 'em is ...

Hey, look at this! It's Alex Palou!

Who, yes, started on the pole in 2023. And finished fourth. So ...

So, don't make him Mr. Automatic yet. It's Indy. No one's automatic, nor ever has been.

Eighty-eight polesitters would agree.

The rain cure

 The mission was a total scrub down in Indianapolis yesterday, as rain washed away what was to have been the setup day of qualifying for the Indianapolis 500. So what happens now?

Well ... a bit of simplification.

Instead of the new Rube Goldberg deal it was scheduled to unveil, IMS is going back to the old ways, or least the less-new ways. Qualifying will begin at noon, with the top 12 qualifiers making four-lap runs for the Fast Six at 4 p.m. and then the Fast Six run for the pole a bit later.

"Gee, Mr. Blob," you're saying now (or should be). "How come they just didn't do it that way in first place? Seems a lot easier to follow."

Weelll ...

That is a very good question. With a variety of answers.

See, the original, brand-spanking-new plan, if you read the Blob a couple of days ago ("Why would we do that?" you're saying) was to fill the field on Saturday, lock in places 16-33, and roll out the top 15 qualifiers for further qualifying on Sunday. 

The deal was, all 15 would make another four-lap trip to winnow it down to 12. The quickest nine from that session would be locked into spots in that 12. The slowest six would all run again to determine positions 9-12. 

Then those 12 would run again to determine the Fast Six. After which the Fast Six would run YET AGAIN in the race for the pole.

No, I don't know why. Oh, wait, yes, I do.

One reason for the revised skeddy is because there's no last-row qualifying as in the past, on account of this year there are only 33 entries. Which means no bumping, and thus no last-row drama to milk.

Consequently, the Speedway needed something to keep the fans from nodding off mid-afternoon. So, presto, let's add another couple layers to the process!

All of this, of course, springs from the fact qualifying in May ain't what it used to be. Perhaps spooked by the death of polesitter Scott Brayton in practice in 1996, the Speedway has engaged in a three-decade campaign to keep all its rocket ships reasonably sub-orbital. It started with the the fledgling Indy Racing League's move to a normally aspirated engine formula in the late 1990s (a move that didn't last) and has continued right up to today.

The consequence is the track record Arie Luyendyk set 30 years ago still stands. And with no track record in play, a good bit of the drama of 500 qualifying went winging off with the angels.

And with no bumping now either ...

Well. There went the rest of the drama.

(A radical notion: If you want to revive bumping and spice up everything else in May, open up IndyCar's closed Honda/Chevy/Dallara shop. Invite Toyota and Ford and, I don't know, Audi or Ferrari inside the gates. Porsche and Mercedes? Sure. Aston Martin? Why not? Hell, let Pratt & Whitney bring back the turbine. Couldn't hurt.)

Anyway ...

Anyway, we're back to a simpler time today, aka, back to last year. Some might call that the rain curing a few ills. IMS, of course, would characterize it as the rain being a pain again, as it so often does in May.

I know which side of that fence I'm on. You?

The Mav!

 So remember, I don't know, a month or  so ago, when the Blob wrote it was going to root for a guy named Maverick McNealy in the Masters? Mainly because "Maverick McNealy" sounded like the kind of name you'd give the hero in a golf movie?

(Or the villain. Works either way.)

"No," you're saying now.

Well, I DID. What, you don't remember this:

 And speaking of random ...

I'm putting my dimes on Maverick McNealy.

He's a 30-year-old pro out of Stanford who's 41st on the PGA money list right now, and I'm not picking him just because his name is Maverick McNealy. OK, so, that's mostly why I'm picking him.

 I mean, come on: Has there ever been a better golfer name than Maverick McNealy? ...

See?

Well ... today, I have some further Maverick McNealy news. And it's very exciting.

Guess who's got a piece of the 36-hole lead at the second major of the year, the PGA Championship?

Yes! The Mav!

(Which is what I'm calling him now)

Shot a 67 yesterday that could have been a 65 if he hadn't  messed up a couple of closing holes, and is tied for the lead with Alex Smalley, who's playing in only his fifth major. They're at 4-under 136 on the tricked-up Aronimink layout outside of Philadelphia, the highest 36-hole total for co-leaders in the PGA in 14 years.

But big whoop! The lead is the lead, right? And not only that, but The Mav's younger brother is caddying for him, and you know what HIS name is?

Scout.

Scout! Scout McNealy! What, you think I could make up something that way cool?

So it's Scout and The Mav in the lead in the freaking PGA, and, listen, if you think it'll be cake taking it away from  them, you're in for a rude awakening. 'Cause you losers ain't never BEEN in a rodeo like this before. 

(Or so The Mav would say in the movie, I figure.) 

The Narcissism Bowl

 We're now in week whatever of America's new favorite game show, "The Pittsburgh Steelers Held Hostage," and what have the Steelers won, Johnny Olsen?

"A NEW CAR for driving around looking for Aaron Rodgers!" Johnny cries.

Uh, no.

"A TWIN-ENGINE BEECHCRAFT AIRPLANE for flying around looking for Aaron Rodgers!" Johnny warbles.

Try again.

"A DELUXE STEEL-TOED BOOT to kick Aaron Rodgers' ass when he finally shows up!" Johnny serenades.

Now you're gettin' warmer.

Now you're gettin' what the Steelers must be feeling but not saying these days, with minicamps underway and the NFL beginning its long post-Draft run-up to more minicamps, and then training camp, and then, at last, the Hall of Fame Game between a bunch of future NFL cuts against a bunch of other future NFL cuts.

So where's A-Aron, that rascally old drama king?

Well, still unsigned. Still MIA. Still a 42-year-old whisper in the wind after not showing up in Pittsburgh last weekend despite all the chatter that he was going to. More smoke without fire, while the Steelers insist everything is fine, no worries, Aaron's going to be here and WHAT THE (REALLY BAD WORD) IS ITWITH THIS (DIFFERENT REALLY BAD WORD) GUY?

Well ... the Packers could have told you. Ditto the Jets.

This is Aaron making it about him, as usual. He's the MVP of the Narcissism Bowl, and the Narcissism Bowl is a semi-yearly event.

He'll play. He won't play. He'll sign. He won't sign. He'll show up ... eventually.

Word on the street this time (according to Mike Florio Pro Football Talk) is that Rodgers wants an out clause that would free him to go to a quarterback-needy team of his choosing should the Steelers decide he's had it. In other words, he wants a guarantee that the team would simply release him if it ever decides to bench him.

This would apparently safeguard him from being picked up by any old team on the waiver wire, if the benching happened before the trade deadline. 

In any event, the Steelers' quarterback room is now Will Howard, Mason Rudolph and rookie Drew Allar of Penn State, whom the Steelers drafted all of three weeks ago. Mike McCarthy's new coaching staff is working hard with all three, just in case A-Aron decides to hell with it and retires. He is, to reiterate, 42 years old.

In the meantime, Aaron continues to be, well, Aaron. Only difference from all the other times he was Being Aaron is he's not really Aaron anymore, but just an old guy trying to play the same games without the status he used to have.

Oh, he had a decent season last year, throwing for 3,322 yards and 24 touchdowns against just seven interceptions. But he threw 16 of those sixes in the first seven weeks; in the last 10, he threw just eight. His season QBR of 44.4 ranked 23rd in the league.

So, yeah. Not the Aaron of old; just the old Aaron.

Playing the same young man's games with management he used to be able to play with some justification. Now, it's just annoying.

Or, you know, just Aaron. Same diff.

Two deaths

 A couple of men passed from this earth too soon this week, and they had two things in common. 

One was basketball. The other were their demons.

This bears some explaining.

Brandon Clarke, one of the men, was just 29 years old when police found him dead from an apparent drug overdose in California. Clarke was a reserve forward for the Memphis Grizzlies of the NBA, an apparently joyous young man whose bright life, and career, had been darkened by one injury after another.

At some point, again apparently, the drugs got their hooks in him. The story is an old and bloody one: A young man succumbing to a demon whose appetite is never sated, and whose legacy of death and ruin stretches to infinity.

And the other man?

His name was Jason Collins, and he, too, was once an NBA player, and still young in the way we measure such things. He was just 47 when the brain cancer he'd been battling for a year killed him, well short of his full complement of years.

And his demon?

Its name is bigotry, and it belongs not to Collins but to those who pass along its sting. Yet it is as old and bloody as Brandon Clarke's, and every bit as potent, given that it hangs out these days in the corridors of power where laws are passed and our meanest impulses no longer skulk in the shadows.

Jason Collins, see, was the first openly gay player in the NBA. Came out 13 years ago in Sports Illustrated, before Pride Months and rainbow flags and the pushback that has made anti-gay prejudice almost chic in America's more reactionary precincts.

You see it most nakedly in the hard-right states, where "Don't Say Gay" laws prohibit educators from so much as breathing the word "LGBTQ+" in a classroom -- even high school classrooms where students struggling with their sexuality already feel isolated and shunned. You see it anywhere a rainbow crosswalk gets painted over, or a rainbow flag is declared verboten, or anti-gay pronouncements are heralded as Christian virtue.

This is not, I believe, the prevailing zeitgeist in this country, founded as it was on the principle of individual freedom. But it's no outlier, either. That's because the bigots hold the levers of power at the highest levels, and thus own the loudest megaphone.

It's OK now, they all but say, to talk about gays and transgenders the way the German Reich talked about Jews in the 1930s -- i.e., as threats to a wholesome and vibrant nation. It's regarded as noble, or at least admirable, to push for laws aimed at effectively shoving the LGBTQ+ community back into the closet where (the narrative goes) it belongs.

In 2013, Jason Collins said "Aw, HELL, no" to that sort of poison. One wonders if, at the end of his life, he felt any dismay that the gay/trans community still had to keep saying it in 2026.

And if perhaps, just perhaps, it is even harder to do so now.

Qual folderol

 No one escapes the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May without tradition holding a pillow over your face. It grows like crabgrass and creeper vines around the old joint, ancient artifacts from a dig site that's 117 years old, and from the most venerable motor race in the world, which turns 110 this month.

You know all the traditions, if you've ever visited. The yard of brick? Sure. The bottle of milk? You bet. "Back Home Again In Indiana" ... "Gentlemen, start your engines" ... Thirty-three cars coming to the green in 11 rows of three?

Check, check and check.

Well. Apparently we can now add another to the pile: Qual Folderol, or Jacking Around With Indy 500 Qualifications For Fun And Profit. 

The other day, see, an item popped up on one of the TV news channels about 500 qualifying. It said the qualification procedures were being changed for this weekend.

"Again?" I yelped.

Yes, again. Apparently, because there aren't enough entries for bumping to occur, there won't be any bumping. So all of us who were just getting used to the previously revised schedule now have to wrap our heads around another revised schedule.

Previously, Saturday would determine the fastest 12 qualifiers, and on Sunday those 12 would qualify again to determine the Fast Six. Then the Fast Six would each get one crack at the pole late in the day. Also, the slowest four qualifiers would run again for spots in the last row, with the slowest winding up "bumped."

Now?

Well, take a deep breath. This could get a little exhausting.

On Saturday, qualifying will commence at the traditional 11 a.m., and run until 5:50 p.m. At that time positions 16 through 33 will be set.

The remaining 15 qualifiers will advance to Sunday, with the fastest nine locked into the Top 12 qualifying session. The remaining six will have one shot at the last three Top 12 spots in something called the Final 15 qualifying session.

Then it's on to the Top 12 session, from which will emerge  the Fast Six, who'll make the official run for the pole at around 6:30.

Confused yet?

"Gee," you're saying now. "Sounds kinda like NASCAR's playoff system." 

And just look how popular that is with the NASCAR hardcores.

Anyway, all this tinkering and reworking and re-reworking is a desperate attempt to make 500 qualifying a hit again, and it's a relatively new phenomenon. For years and years, after all, qualifications for the Indianapolis 500 were as immutable as sunrise: The first day was Pole Day, the last day was Bump Day, and in between were two days to fill the field. Four days across two weekends.

But times change. Circumstances change. The old ways became the Jacking Around ways.

Two weekends of qualifications became one when not enough entries showed up to make two weekends viable anymore. Bump Day become bump-less for the same reason. And all those six-figure crowds for qualifications went away after the race cars were powered down and the track record -- 30 years old this May -- was no longer in play.

Thus the Month of May became the Fortnight of May, especially after IndyCar and the Speedway decided to squeeze another race into the month. And the Jacking Around commenced.

Excuse me. Continues to commence.

God bless tradition.