So we're sitting in a local restaurant last night and I look up at the TVs over the bar, and there on the screen is the waste of oxygen known as "Jihadi John." And you know what he's wearing?
A Pittsburgh Pirates cap.
Yes, that's right. Some murdering piece of human excrement decided, probably not for any reason in particular, that he needed a cap for the picture. I don't know how it happened to be a Pirates cap, but as a lifelong Pirates fan, I am as not happy about that as everyone in the Pirates organization.
It says nothing good about the way 24/7/365 media works these days that players and club officials felt compelled to say that "Jihadi John" didn't represent the values of the Pittsburgh Pirates, as if that were not "well, duh" evident. Silly as it sounds, they undoubtedly said it because you just know that somewhere out there is a blogger who'd try to make some tenuous connection between a terrorist wearing a Pirates cap and the fact that Andrew McCutchen wears dreds.
Of course that's ridiculous. But turn on FoxNews for five minutes. Ridiculous is a media specialty these days.
At any rate ... I keep wondering what would happen if Roberto Clemente came back from the grave and saw that. I imagine he'd have something to say. He always did.
He also swung a mean piece of lumber. If you know what I mean.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Friday, February 27, 2015
Time warped
It has been the coach's lament since Coach Oog first commanded his Cave City Rock Flingers to drop and give him twenty: Kids today just aren't the same.
Like most laments, it's only half-true. What's not the same today, or on any today for all time, is how we handle kids.
Once upon a time you shoved 'em, you screamed at 'em, you grabbed 'em by the throat. And you sneered at anyone who suggested you should apologize for any of it.
Now?
Now a coach gets in touch with his inner Bob Knight and feels compelled to apologize profusely. Which is what happened when Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings -- a Purdue grad, ironically -- profanely berated one of his players for clapping sarcastically at the end of a win at Tennessee last night.
It was nothing less than a time warp: Stallings screaming at Wade Baldwin IV, saying "We don't (bleeping) do that" and "I'm going to (bleeping) kill you" as he forced him to go back through the handshake line and apologize. The moment was an unedited page from the Knight school of discipline, and it came from a coach whose demeanor has always been the polar opposite.
And was again in the postgame, when Stallings publicly apologized, saying in so many words that he had embarrassed Vanderbilt and should have handled the situation differently. And he was as right as he could possibly be on both counts.
But as Faulkner once famously said, the past is never dead, it's not even past. And so you can be sure there was a whole segment of America who watched the clip of Stallings telling one of his players he was going to kill him, and ached with nostalgia. Those were the days, by God. Men were men, coaches were coaches and you could do just about anything you wanted to some snot-nosed kid without meddling Pollyannas tsk-tsking over it. And you for sure didn't apologize, because apology is weakness.
All I can say is this: What a load. And thank God those days are gone.
Thank God Kevin Stallings recognized what he'd done, and apologized for it. That didn't mean he was letting Wade Baldwin IV off the hook. It only meant he understood who he was representing, and how you should conduct yourself accordingly.
Contrary to the once-accepted meme, it takes a man to do that. And so here's your score for today: Present 1, Past 0.
Like most laments, it's only half-true. What's not the same today, or on any today for all time, is how we handle kids.
Once upon a time you shoved 'em, you screamed at 'em, you grabbed 'em by the throat. And you sneered at anyone who suggested you should apologize for any of it.
Now?
Now a coach gets in touch with his inner Bob Knight and feels compelled to apologize profusely. Which is what happened when Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings -- a Purdue grad, ironically -- profanely berated one of his players for clapping sarcastically at the end of a win at Tennessee last night.
It was nothing less than a time warp: Stallings screaming at Wade Baldwin IV, saying "We don't (bleeping) do that" and "I'm going to (bleeping) kill you" as he forced him to go back through the handshake line and apologize. The moment was an unedited page from the Knight school of discipline, and it came from a coach whose demeanor has always been the polar opposite.
And was again in the postgame, when Stallings publicly apologized, saying in so many words that he had embarrassed Vanderbilt and should have handled the situation differently. And he was as right as he could possibly be on both counts.
But as Faulkner once famously said, the past is never dead, it's not even past. And so you can be sure there was a whole segment of America who watched the clip of Stallings telling one of his players he was going to kill him, and ached with nostalgia. Those were the days, by God. Men were men, coaches were coaches and you could do just about anything you wanted to some snot-nosed kid without meddling Pollyannas tsk-tsking over it. And you for sure didn't apologize, because apology is weakness.
All I can say is this: What a load. And thank God those days are gone.
Thank God Kevin Stallings recognized what he'd done, and apologized for it. That didn't mean he was letting Wade Baldwin IV off the hook. It only meant he understood who he was representing, and how you should conduct yourself accordingly.
Contrary to the once-accepted meme, it takes a man to do that. And so here's your score for today: Present 1, Past 0.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Childhood, interrupted
LeBron James is right about his son, and he is wrong about his son. That's where we've arrived now with American childhood, particularly when that childhood has any precocious shine or genius glimmer to it.
And so here was LeBron the other day, telling colleges to quit sending recruiting letters to his 10-year-old son, LeBron Jr., who apparently is a chip off the block on the basketball floor. And yet here he also was, putting LeBron Jr. out there in an AAU pipeline expressly designed to showcase individual talent for college recruiters.
Can't have it both ways, LeBron.
And yet ...
And yet, he's right. Ten-year-olds should be off-limits. Mainly because, well, they should be 10-year-olds, and not commodities to be warred over by fat-dollar athletic programs.
The worst crime you can commit against childhood is to corrupt its innocence, and that's what's now happening now. The most damning line in the entire LeBron/LeBron Jr. story is buried deep within it, and what's damning about it is its very innocuousness. Here's what it says: "Kentucky's John Calipari watched LeBron James Jr. play last summer during the AAU Fourth Grade National Championship in Lexington."
Whoa.
There's a fourth grade National Championship?
For God's sake why?
When I was in fourth grade, my biggest concern was whether or not we'd be having Tater Tots or Tri-Taters for lunch (I was always a Tri-Tater man myself). It certainly wasn't playing for a national championship while a bunch of college coaches evaluated me like a piece of meat. I was a kid, and I was allowed to be a kid. And that was true even for my classmates who were precociously athletic and not, like me, comic relief.
But now 10-year-olds are not 10-year-olds but Prospects, future parts for a machine whose stated academic mission long ago became a sly wink and a poke in the ribs. The Blob's unease with AAU ball is well documented, and it's backed up by the likes of Kobe Bryant and Charles Barkley, both of whom have utter disdain for it. They believe it serves no purpose but to impede young players' fundamental skills and distort their sense of self, and they're absolutely right.
To belabor the point: No kid ever learned how to play basketball by playing AAU ball. That's because its implicit purpose is not to develop basketball IQ but to showcase talent for the college coaches with whom AAU coaches sometimes have entirely too cozy a relationship. And while there may be good intentions in all of that, the corrosive nature of it is obvious -- particularly on kids as young as LeBron James Jr.
Nothing good can come of treating 10-year-olds like stars, and yet that's what AAU ball does. Its very function makes it unavoidable. And unless that 10-year-old has some pretty solid guidance at home -- and it sure sounds like LeBron Jr. does -- the inevitable result is a warped sense of entitlement that's only reinforced the older and better he (or she) becomes.
I've seen it happen, over the years. Not often, but on occasion, I've interviewed high school stars who clearly thought I should be grateful for the access. I always came away feeling not so much offended as sad and a little sorry for them.
And I always wondered what would have happened if they'd been allowed to have normal childhoods, to not have such a bright spotlight turned on them at such a young and vulnerable age. If, when they were in fourth grade, their biggest concerns were Tater Tots or Tri-Taters, and rounding up enough bodies at recess to play five-on-five.
Somehow I think John Calipari or Mike Krzyzewski still would have found them.
When the time was right.
And so here was LeBron the other day, telling colleges to quit sending recruiting letters to his 10-year-old son, LeBron Jr., who apparently is a chip off the block on the basketball floor. And yet here he also was, putting LeBron Jr. out there in an AAU pipeline expressly designed to showcase individual talent for college recruiters.
Can't have it both ways, LeBron.
And yet ...
And yet, he's right. Ten-year-olds should be off-limits. Mainly because, well, they should be 10-year-olds, and not commodities to be warred over by fat-dollar athletic programs.
The worst crime you can commit against childhood is to corrupt its innocence, and that's what's now happening now. The most damning line in the entire LeBron/LeBron Jr. story is buried deep within it, and what's damning about it is its very innocuousness. Here's what it says: "Kentucky's John Calipari watched LeBron James Jr. play last summer during the AAU Fourth Grade National Championship in Lexington."
Whoa.
There's a fourth grade National Championship?
For God's sake why?
When I was in fourth grade, my biggest concern was whether or not we'd be having Tater Tots or Tri-Taters for lunch (I was always a Tri-Tater man myself). It certainly wasn't playing for a national championship while a bunch of college coaches evaluated me like a piece of meat. I was a kid, and I was allowed to be a kid. And that was true even for my classmates who were precociously athletic and not, like me, comic relief.
But now 10-year-olds are not 10-year-olds but Prospects, future parts for a machine whose stated academic mission long ago became a sly wink and a poke in the ribs. The Blob's unease with AAU ball is well documented, and it's backed up by the likes of Kobe Bryant and Charles Barkley, both of whom have utter disdain for it. They believe it serves no purpose but to impede young players' fundamental skills and distort their sense of self, and they're absolutely right.
To belabor the point: No kid ever learned how to play basketball by playing AAU ball. That's because its implicit purpose is not to develop basketball IQ but to showcase talent for the college coaches with whom AAU coaches sometimes have entirely too cozy a relationship. And while there may be good intentions in all of that, the corrosive nature of it is obvious -- particularly on kids as young as LeBron James Jr.
Nothing good can come of treating 10-year-olds like stars, and yet that's what AAU ball does. Its very function makes it unavoidable. And unless that 10-year-old has some pretty solid guidance at home -- and it sure sounds like LeBron Jr. does -- the inevitable result is a warped sense of entitlement that's only reinforced the older and better he (or she) becomes.
I've seen it happen, over the years. Not often, but on occasion, I've interviewed high school stars who clearly thought I should be grateful for the access. I always came away feeling not so much offended as sad and a little sorry for them.
And I always wondered what would have happened if they'd been allowed to have normal childhoods, to not have such a bright spotlight turned on them at such a young and vulnerable age. If, when they were in fourth grade, their biggest concerns were Tater Tots or Tri-Taters, and rounding up enough bodies at recess to play five-on-five.
Somehow I think John Calipari or Mike Krzyzewski still would have found them.
When the time was right.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
A more orange shade of pale, Part Deux
You know what the Blob just said about those sufferin' Browns fans?
At least they don't live in Chicago.
Where the leading scorer in the NHL, the Blackhawks' Patrick Kane, went hard into the boards last night and reportedly broke something in his shoulder region, an injury that's likely to keep him out until the playoffs or beyond.
And where Derrick Rose of the Bulls tore his meniscus and will have knee surgery again, effectively ending his season and perhaps writing finis to his career, or at least the career everyone once predicted for him.
Sucks to be a Browns fan?
Sure. But it says here it sucks worse to be from Chicago right now.
At least they don't live in Chicago.
Where the leading scorer in the NHL, the Blackhawks' Patrick Kane, went hard into the boards last night and reportedly broke something in his shoulder region, an injury that's likely to keep him out until the playoffs or beyond.
And where Derrick Rose of the Bulls tore his meniscus and will have knee surgery again, effectively ending his season and perhaps writing finis to his career, or at least the career everyone once predicted for him.
Sucks to be a Browns fan?
Sure. But it says here it sucks worse to be from Chicago right now.
A more orange shade of pale
It's learned not to expect much, the grimly loyal tribe that roots for the Cleveland Browns. You watch Dick Van Dyke trip over the hassock often enough, your expectations become pretty modest.
Just don't break a leg.
Or, you know, draft a quarterback. 'Cause you're not very good at it.
Aside from that, all Browns fans ask is that you throw 'em a bone once in awhile, or maybe some dog biscuits, or maybe the occasional can of Alpo (Try some! It's yummy!). Beat the Steelers once a decade or so. Throw a Bernie Kosar out there every so often. Suit up a wide receiver with the greatest name in the history of pro football, Fair Hooker.
Oh, yeah: And when you announce you're rolling out a new logo, actually roll out a new logo.
The Browns announced that awhile back, and then, well, tripped over the hassock again. The "new logo" is actually the old logo, only the orange is brighter. As a commenter observed in the story that unveiled the new logo, it looks they just changed the toner on the copy machine.
Really, Brownies?
Look. No one's a bigger fan of traditional unis than this guy. I happen to like the Browns' plain orange helmets. I might be the only man in America who wishes the Bengals hadn't dumped their copycat orange helmets with "Bengals" on the side for the tiger stripes. I still wish the Rams would go back to the traditional blue-and-white, the Chargers to the white helmets with the lightning bolts and numbers on the sides, and the Patriots to the sneering patriot in the tricorn hat, eternally preparing to hike the ball and knock you on your redcoat ass.
So if the Browns just want to pull out an orange crayon and freshen up their traditional look, good on them.
Just don't say you're breaking out a new logo. 'Cause you really didn't.
Although, in fairness, it's hard to conceive what new logo they could have come up with.
Perhaps a brown Milk-Bone, aggressively tilted forward on a field of orange. Bernie Kosar with his hands over his eyes. The little Brownie guy, visibly drunk, sending a fumble-fingered text.
These (bleepin') guys ...
Yeah. That.
Just don't break a leg.
Or, you know, draft a quarterback. 'Cause you're not very good at it.
Aside from that, all Browns fans ask is that you throw 'em a bone once in awhile, or maybe some dog biscuits, or maybe the occasional can of Alpo (Try some! It's yummy!). Beat the Steelers once a decade or so. Throw a Bernie Kosar out there every so often. Suit up a wide receiver with the greatest name in the history of pro football, Fair Hooker.
Oh, yeah: And when you announce you're rolling out a new logo, actually roll out a new logo.
The Browns announced that awhile back, and then, well, tripped over the hassock again. The "new logo" is actually the old logo, only the orange is brighter. As a commenter observed in the story that unveiled the new logo, it looks they just changed the toner on the copy machine.
Really, Brownies?
Look. No one's a bigger fan of traditional unis than this guy. I happen to like the Browns' plain orange helmets. I might be the only man in America who wishes the Bengals hadn't dumped their copycat orange helmets with "Bengals" on the side for the tiger stripes. I still wish the Rams would go back to the traditional blue-and-white, the Chargers to the white helmets with the lightning bolts and numbers on the sides, and the Patriots to the sneering patriot in the tricorn hat, eternally preparing to hike the ball and knock you on your redcoat ass.
So if the Browns just want to pull out an orange crayon and freshen up their traditional look, good on them.
Just don't say you're breaking out a new logo. 'Cause you really didn't.
Although, in fairness, it's hard to conceive what new logo they could have come up with.
Perhaps a brown Milk-Bone, aggressively tilted forward on a field of orange. Bernie Kosar with his hands over his eyes. The little Brownie guy, visibly drunk, sending a fumble-fingered text.
These (bleepin') guys ...
Yeah. That.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Court (non)sense
First things first this morning, as the image of Bill Self being crushed against the scorer's table remains fresh:
Kansas was ranked eighth. Eighth.
The Jayhawks weren't No. 1. They weren't even in the top five. They weren't undefeated, and they didn't come in trailing an 81-game winning streak the way the John Wooden UCLA Bruins once did, and they weren't, like those Bruins, the seven-time defending national champions. They were just a pretty good team in a season where there's a lot of pretty good teams, and one great one in Lexington, Ky.
And still.
Still the students rushed the court down there in Manhattan, Kan., after Kansas State took 'em down. Still the mob became its own potentially lethal weapon. Still it was just another episode of made-for-TV mayhem that suggested K-State students must not get out much, and also that the rushing-the-court thing long ago jumped the shark.
Except that in this case, it became the shark.
A mob is a mob is a mob, and its mindlessness carries just as sharp an edge whether it springs from delirious joy or red-mad fury. And so there was Kansas coach Bill Self, crushed against the scorer's table. There was Kansas State coach Bruce Weber desperately trying to get the mob to back off. And there were a couple of Kansas players being assaulted -- there's no other word -- as they tried to leave the floor.
Question: What happens if one of those players starts throwing punches in retaliation, and a student goes down, and that student gets trampled as a result?
Question: What happens if Weber's unsuccessful, and Self goes down and gets trampled?
Question: Does this really have to end in tragedy, and criminal charges, and ruined lives, before it finally just ends?
Look. I know how this sounds, coming from me. It sounds like your mom telling you to zip up your coat and put your hat and gloves on, it's cold outside. It sounds like Get Off My Lawn Man ranting about These Kids Today, forgetting that he was once one of them. It sounds like the kind of thing they play laugh tracks over in sitcoms.
Get Off My Lawn Man doesn't care. Because one of these days this is all going to end very badly.
I'm thinking now of an ESPN 30-For-30 I watched not too long ago about the Hillsborough Stadium soccer tragedy in Sheffield, England. During an FA Cup semifinal between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in 1989, 96 people were crushed to death and 766 were injured after the standing-room only section grew dangerously overcrowded. Police finally collapsed the gates and the panicked crowd stampeded onto the field to get away.
It's not precisely analogous to fans rushing the floor at a basketball game, but the elements are the same. As is the potential for disaster. Just ask Joe Kay, who a decade ago scored the winning bucket in a high school game in Tucson, Ariz., and then was trampled when his schoolmates rushed the floor in celebration.
Kay's in a wheelchair now. Bill Self, and others, could have wound up meeting the same fate, if not for the grace of God and pure dumb luck.
So what do you?
Well, the SEC has already banned rushing the court, and fines those who do a hefty sum. Maybe every conference needs to follow suit, with the additional addendum that those who do face criminal charges.
Let 'em storm their jail cells. Get Off My Lawn Man speaks.
And
Kansas was ranked eighth. Eighth.
The Jayhawks weren't No. 1. They weren't even in the top five. They weren't undefeated, and they didn't come in trailing an 81-game winning streak the way the John Wooden UCLA Bruins once did, and they weren't, like those Bruins, the seven-time defending national champions. They were just a pretty good team in a season where there's a lot of pretty good teams, and one great one in Lexington, Ky.
And still.
Still the students rushed the court down there in Manhattan, Kan., after Kansas State took 'em down. Still the mob became its own potentially lethal weapon. Still it was just another episode of made-for-TV mayhem that suggested K-State students must not get out much, and also that the rushing-the-court thing long ago jumped the shark.
Except that in this case, it became the shark.
A mob is a mob is a mob, and its mindlessness carries just as sharp an edge whether it springs from delirious joy or red-mad fury. And so there was Kansas coach Bill Self, crushed against the scorer's table. There was Kansas State coach Bruce Weber desperately trying to get the mob to back off. And there were a couple of Kansas players being assaulted -- there's no other word -- as they tried to leave the floor.
Question: What happens if one of those players starts throwing punches in retaliation, and a student goes down, and that student gets trampled as a result?
Question: What happens if Weber's unsuccessful, and Self goes down and gets trampled?
Question: Does this really have to end in tragedy, and criminal charges, and ruined lives, before it finally just ends?
Look. I know how this sounds, coming from me. It sounds like your mom telling you to zip up your coat and put your hat and gloves on, it's cold outside. It sounds like Get Off My Lawn Man ranting about These Kids Today, forgetting that he was once one of them. It sounds like the kind of thing they play laugh tracks over in sitcoms.
Get Off My Lawn Man doesn't care. Because one of these days this is all going to end very badly.
I'm thinking now of an ESPN 30-For-30 I watched not too long ago about the Hillsborough Stadium soccer tragedy in Sheffield, England. During an FA Cup semifinal between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in 1989, 96 people were crushed to death and 766 were injured after the standing-room only section grew dangerously overcrowded. Police finally collapsed the gates and the panicked crowd stampeded onto the field to get away.
It's not precisely analogous to fans rushing the floor at a basketball game, but the elements are the same. As is the potential for disaster. Just ask Joe Kay, who a decade ago scored the winning bucket in a high school game in Tucson, Ariz., and then was trampled when his schoolmates rushed the floor in celebration.
Kay's in a wheelchair now. Bill Self, and others, could have wound up meeting the same fate, if not for the grace of God and pure dumb luck.
So what do you?
Well, the SEC has already banned rushing the court, and fines those who do a hefty sum. Maybe every conference needs to follow suit, with the additional addendum that those who do face criminal charges.
Let 'em storm their jail cells. Get Off My Lawn Man speaks.
And
Monday, February 23, 2015
Oscar wins Daytona
So now Daytona is in the books and so are the Oscars, and let me just say that was one hell of a drive Eddie Redmayne put on. And doesn't Danica have a set of pipes?
Odd convergence of events on George Washington's Birthday, and it left me with an odd jumble of thoughts. I wish Jeff Gordon had won his last Daytona, and I wish Benedict Cumberbatch had won best actor for "The Imitation Game." I wish every driving instructor in America would show students those last 30 laps at Daytona as an example of how to drive in expressway traffic, and I wish 2015 hadn't been the 50th anniversary of The Sound of Music, which I loathe and despise with every molecule of my being.
(This goes back, well, 50 years. I was a 10-year-old boy whose favorite TV show was "Combat." So my mom drags me off to see this interminable film about singing nannies and mountains and singing couples falling in love and disgustingly well-behaved children who are constantly singing while they climb mountains. You can imagine).
(But I have to say, even though I sat through the tribute thinking dark thoughts about how you could really solve a problem like Maria, Lady Gaga's musical tribute was stunning. That woman can carry a tune).
Meanwhile, back at Daytona ...
No, Eddie Redmayne didn't win. Joey Logano did, and hats off to him. And hats off also to Clint Bowyer, because at Daytona you're only as good as your friends, and Bowyer was a pretty good friend.
It was Bowyer who pushed Logano to the lead up there on the outside line, and after that it was Logano's race to lose. A lot of times at Daytona you don't want to be the guy out front, but Sunday, for some reason, out front is where you wanted to be. That's because everyone was even more equal than they usually are in a plate race.
And, listen, as much the Blob has taken them to task for constantly running into each other at these deals, a moment here to give credit where it's due. For most of the last 30 laps or so, they ran three-wide around the place at 200 mph, whipping up a devil's brew of turbulence. And yet the Big One never happened, at least until the last half-lap. It was one of the most jaw-dropping displays of collective driving skill you're ever going to see.
Gordon was one of the victims of all that skill, as it turned out. He was in the lead pack as the laps ground down, but there simply wasn't anywhere to go because no one was making any mistakes or leaving any holes. In the end he got turned by Ty Dillon to trigger the last-lap scrum and finished 33rd -- a parting kick in the teeth from Daytona after he'd run up front all day and led a race-high 87 laps.
Kinda like Benedict Cumberbatch losing to Eddie Redmayne.
But I digress. Again.
Odd convergence of events on George Washington's Birthday, and it left me with an odd jumble of thoughts. I wish Jeff Gordon had won his last Daytona, and I wish Benedict Cumberbatch had won best actor for "The Imitation Game." I wish every driving instructor in America would show students those last 30 laps at Daytona as an example of how to drive in expressway traffic, and I wish 2015 hadn't been the 50th anniversary of The Sound of Music, which I loathe and despise with every molecule of my being.
(This goes back, well, 50 years. I was a 10-year-old boy whose favorite TV show was "Combat." So my mom drags me off to see this interminable film about singing nannies and mountains and singing couples falling in love and disgustingly well-behaved children who are constantly singing while they climb mountains. You can imagine).
(But I have to say, even though I sat through the tribute thinking dark thoughts about how you could really solve a problem like Maria, Lady Gaga's musical tribute was stunning. That woman can carry a tune).
Meanwhile, back at Daytona ...
No, Eddie Redmayne didn't win. Joey Logano did, and hats off to him. And hats off also to Clint Bowyer, because at Daytona you're only as good as your friends, and Bowyer was a pretty good friend.
It was Bowyer who pushed Logano to the lead up there on the outside line, and after that it was Logano's race to lose. A lot of times at Daytona you don't want to be the guy out front, but Sunday, for some reason, out front is where you wanted to be. That's because everyone was even more equal than they usually are in a plate race.
And, listen, as much the Blob has taken them to task for constantly running into each other at these deals, a moment here to give credit where it's due. For most of the last 30 laps or so, they ran three-wide around the place at 200 mph, whipping up a devil's brew of turbulence. And yet the Big One never happened, at least until the last half-lap. It was one of the most jaw-dropping displays of collective driving skill you're ever going to see.
Gordon was one of the victims of all that skill, as it turned out. He was in the lead pack as the laps ground down, but there simply wasn't anywhere to go because no one was making any mistakes or leaving any holes. In the end he got turned by Ty Dillon to trigger the last-lap scrum and finished 33rd -- a parting kick in the teeth from Daytona after he'd run up front all day and led a race-high 87 laps.
Kinda like Benedict Cumberbatch losing to Eddie Redmayne.
But I digress. Again.
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