Remember the Tour de France?
It was a big deal, and a lot more fun, back in the days when Lance Armstrong was shooting himself full of happy juice and behaving like a Mafia legbreaker. But then Lance and his drug ring got busted, and cycling finally tired of all the Tour de Syringe jokes, and now it's gone back to being one of those "oh, yeah" summer deals only avid cyclists care about.
Anyway ... it starts this weekend. And as a public service, even if you don't really give a hoot, the Blob hereby presents its Very, Very Quick, Quicker Than A Peloton Rolling Down An Alp, Preview:
1. Chris Froome will win again.
2. Unless he doesn't.
There you have it, folks.
Friday, June 30, 2017
Thursday, June 29, 2017
The sad return of Cubbiness
Give Theo Epstein this much: He acted swiftly, he acted surely, he was Theo-y through and through in the matter of Miguel Montero, the erstwhile Chicago Cubs catcher who passed the buck and then discovered it was attached to a ticket out of town.
A day after Montero blamed starting pitcher Jake Arrieta for the seven bases the Washington Nationals stole on him the other night, Montero was designated for reassignment. In other words, pack your bags, son, you're gone.
"When something goes wrong on the field we expect our players to take the blame, step up and proactively assume the blame for it, even if it's not their fault," Epstein said after casting Montero into outer darkness. "That's the way to be a good teammate ... After thinking about it some more, I just came to the conclusion that now more than ever we need to be a team. This was an example of being a bad teammate publicly and that we'd be better off moving on and not standing for it."
All of which is absolutely on the mark, of course.
None of which Epstein ever had to come within 50 nautical miles of saying last year, when everything was sunshine and light.
But now we're coming up on the Fourth of July, and those days are gone in Wrigleyville. The Cubs are a .500 baseball team now, still wallowing around a game behind the Brewers for first place in the crummiest division in the majors. Winning this dubious prize is their only shot at the making the playoffs with the Dodgers, Diamondbacks and Rockies tearing it up in the NL West.
It's a huge letdown for a team of which so much more was expected in the wake of the historic World Series victory, and letdowns breed discontent the way filth breeds disease. A year ago, Montero never says what he said the other night, and Epstein never issues his proclamation that "we need to be a team." They were a team. That they should still be that same team now perhaps asks too much of flawed human beings.
It's easy to be a team when things are going well. It's damned hard, and sometimes impossible, to be a team when they're not -- especially when no one inside or outside the organization expected things to go this way, and especially when the man who was the Cubs' glue is now off enjoying his retirement.
It certainly takes no genius to figure what happened this week might not have happened had David Ross still been patrolling the clubhouse. His leadership skills were praised to the skies last season, almost to the point of being overblown. It appears now that praise might actually have been understated, and Ross' role underplayed. Hard as that might be to believe.
It's a theory, anyway. One among many on the north side these days.
A day after Montero blamed starting pitcher Jake Arrieta for the seven bases the Washington Nationals stole on him the other night, Montero was designated for reassignment. In other words, pack your bags, son, you're gone.
"When something goes wrong on the field we expect our players to take the blame, step up and proactively assume the blame for it, even if it's not their fault," Epstein said after casting Montero into outer darkness. "That's the way to be a good teammate ... After thinking about it some more, I just came to the conclusion that now more than ever we need to be a team. This was an example of being a bad teammate publicly and that we'd be better off moving on and not standing for it."
All of which is absolutely on the mark, of course.
None of which Epstein ever had to come within 50 nautical miles of saying last year, when everything was sunshine and light.
But now we're coming up on the Fourth of July, and those days are gone in Wrigleyville. The Cubs are a .500 baseball team now, still wallowing around a game behind the Brewers for first place in the crummiest division in the majors. Winning this dubious prize is their only shot at the making the playoffs with the Dodgers, Diamondbacks and Rockies tearing it up in the NL West.
It's a huge letdown for a team of which so much more was expected in the wake of the historic World Series victory, and letdowns breed discontent the way filth breeds disease. A year ago, Montero never says what he said the other night, and Epstein never issues his proclamation that "we need to be a team." They were a team. That they should still be that same team now perhaps asks too much of flawed human beings.
It's easy to be a team when things are going well. It's damned hard, and sometimes impossible, to be a team when they're not -- especially when no one inside or outside the organization expected things to go this way, and especially when the man who was the Cubs' glue is now off enjoying his retirement.
It certainly takes no genius to figure what happened this week might not have happened had David Ross still been patrolling the clubhouse. His leadership skills were praised to the skies last season, almost to the point of being overblown. It appears now that praise might actually have been understated, and Ross' role underplayed. Hard as that might be to believe.
It's a theory, anyway. One among many on the north side these days.
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Your moment of Zen
... in which the Zen Master himself, Phil Jackson, and the New York Knicks, finally end what has been a dumpster fire of a marriage.
Phil will take his triangle and go home today, and all of New York (or at least that part of New York that still thinks about the Knicks occasionally) will say "Finally." That Jackson's heart wasn't in the job, or he just wasn't up to it, has been obvious for a long time to a lot of people. At last even the Knicks' dopey owner, James Dolan, realized this was a toxic situation largely of Jackson's making, and it wasn't going to get any better until he was gone.
It's not like Dolan will have to search very hard for an upgrade. The Knicks finished 20 games under .500 this season and missed the playoffs for the fourth straight year. They were 80-166 in Jackson's tenure as team president.
That means the Knicks averaged not quite 27 wins a season in his three full years. And those were only the numbers. They don't take into account the way he alienated both the club's marquee player, Carmelo Anthony, and its future marquee player, Kristaps Porzingis.
The latter was likely the tipping point for Dolan, who couldn't have been happy that Jackson managed to get crosswise with Porzingis, the 7-foot-3 21-year-old whose seemingly limitless ceiling made him the perfect piece to rebuild the franchise around. You can mess with the present if you're in Jackson's shoes, but you can't mess with the future. Yet that's exactly what he did.
Which makes more than a few people wonder if Phil deliberately did it because he was looking for an escape hatch. If that's the case, it worked.
So maybe you give Phil the "W" here. I'm sure he'd appreciate it.
It's not like he's seen a lot of 'em lately.
Phil will take his triangle and go home today, and all of New York (or at least that part of New York that still thinks about the Knicks occasionally) will say "Finally." That Jackson's heart wasn't in the job, or he just wasn't up to it, has been obvious for a long time to a lot of people. At last even the Knicks' dopey owner, James Dolan, realized this was a toxic situation largely of Jackson's making, and it wasn't going to get any better until he was gone.
It's not like Dolan will have to search very hard for an upgrade. The Knicks finished 20 games under .500 this season and missed the playoffs for the fourth straight year. They were 80-166 in Jackson's tenure as team president.
That means the Knicks averaged not quite 27 wins a season in his three full years. And those were only the numbers. They don't take into account the way he alienated both the club's marquee player, Carmelo Anthony, and its future marquee player, Kristaps Porzingis.
The latter was likely the tipping point for Dolan, who couldn't have been happy that Jackson managed to get crosswise with Porzingis, the 7-foot-3 21-year-old whose seemingly limitless ceiling made him the perfect piece to rebuild the franchise around. You can mess with the present if you're in Jackson's shoes, but you can't mess with the future. Yet that's exactly what he did.
Which makes more than a few people wonder if Phil deliberately did it because he was looking for an escape hatch. If that's the case, it worked.
So maybe you give Phil the "W" here. I'm sure he'd appreciate it.
It's not like he's seen a lot of 'em lately.
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
A street with THE name
OK, so it's not a statue. Which would have taken too much time, anyway, for those of us who marked our winters growing up with "Look out!" coming out of our radios on frigid snow-whirling nights, with "Look ... shoot ... SCORE!" and then that particular thunder a Komet hockey crowd makes, one that can never precisely be duplicated by any other Allen County War Memorial Coliseum thunder.
Bob Chase, that voice, and the Coliseum, that place, are tied together in a thousand ways that go straight to the bone. And so it was high time to get cracking on recognizing that.
Which is why the circle drive in front of the Coliseum will be known from here on as Bob Chase Way, in honor of the man who took Komet hockey and the Coliseum national, and who passed in Thanksgiving week last November. There will be a sign. You will be able to see it from the bypass. It will be a fitting and proper tribute.
Sometimes we get things right in this city. We just do.
Bob Chase, that voice, and the Coliseum, that place, are tied together in a thousand ways that go straight to the bone. And so it was high time to get cracking on recognizing that.
Which is why the circle drive in front of the Coliseum will be known from here on as Bob Chase Way, in honor of the man who took Komet hockey and the Coliseum national, and who passed in Thanksgiving week last November. There will be a sign. You will be able to see it from the bypass. It will be a fitting and proper tribute.
Sometimes we get things right in this city. We just do.
Mac attack
OK. So that's a little unfair.
This was not exactly an attack John McEnroe launched the other day on NPR, when he said Serena Williams would be ranked "like 700th in the world" if she played the men's tennis tour. It was more of a backhanded compliment, only without the compliment. Or rather, with plenty of compliments and then an entirely unnecessary qualifier.
He called her a terrific player.
He also couldn't resist adding the unspoken "for a woman."
Because, really, if you're praising a woman athlete to the skies and then adding that she wouldn't stand a chance if she played in a context in which she'll never play, it is a slap, even if it isn't intended as one (and, having heard the interview, I'm completely certain there was no such intent on McEnroe's part here). It's pointing out something that didn't need to be pointed out -- yes, male athletes and female athletes are different, and the sun rises in the East, and gravity is a thing. So why point it out at all, unless it's to fulfill some nameless instinct to devalue a woman's accomplishments?
Look. Serena Williams is never going to play on the men's tour. She's never expressed a desire to play men. So why this compulsion to bring up something that's not even a hypothetical? Why can't men in particular simply acknowledge that she's one of the greatest athletes in history -- certainly in my lifetime she is -- and let it go at that?
No man I know, for instance, ever attaches those kind of weights to his praise for a male athlete. You never hear him declare Michael Jordan the best basketball player of all time, and then qualify it by saying "Yeah, but he was lousy at baseball." You never hear anyone say Tiger Woods was the greatest golfer of his generation, but as a hurdler he wouldn't rank in the top 100 in the world.
That's because it's completely irrelevant, of course. And it's completely irrelevant because Tiger Woods never ran track and never expressed any desire to run track. So why do some consider it relevant -- even compulsory -- to speculate about something Serena Williams has never done or has ever aspired to do?
I think we know the answer to that. Don't we?
This was not exactly an attack John McEnroe launched the other day on NPR, when he said Serena Williams would be ranked "like 700th in the world" if she played the men's tennis tour. It was more of a backhanded compliment, only without the compliment. Or rather, with plenty of compliments and then an entirely unnecessary qualifier.
He called her a terrific player.
He also couldn't resist adding the unspoken "for a woman."
Because, really, if you're praising a woman athlete to the skies and then adding that she wouldn't stand a chance if she played in a context in which she'll never play, it is a slap, even if it isn't intended as one (and, having heard the interview, I'm completely certain there was no such intent on McEnroe's part here). It's pointing out something that didn't need to be pointed out -- yes, male athletes and female athletes are different, and the sun rises in the East, and gravity is a thing. So why point it out at all, unless it's to fulfill some nameless instinct to devalue a woman's accomplishments?
Look. Serena Williams is never going to play on the men's tour. She's never expressed a desire to play men. So why this compulsion to bring up something that's not even a hypothetical? Why can't men in particular simply acknowledge that she's one of the greatest athletes in history -- certainly in my lifetime she is -- and let it go at that?
No man I know, for instance, ever attaches those kind of weights to his praise for a male athlete. You never hear him declare Michael Jordan the best basketball player of all time, and then qualify it by saying "Yeah, but he was lousy at baseball." You never hear anyone say Tiger Woods was the greatest golfer of his generation, but as a hurdler he wouldn't rank in the top 100 in the world.
That's because it's completely irrelevant, of course. And it's completely irrelevant because Tiger Woods never ran track and never expressed any desire to run track. So why do some consider it relevant -- even compulsory -- to speculate about something Serena Williams has never done or has ever aspired to do?
I think we know the answer to that. Don't we?
Monday, June 26, 2017
Anything's possible
And now the news, this fine morning, from the quadrant of the galaxy known as Could Happen -- because, as we all know, the glory of sports is that frequently Could Happen transforms itself, like a chrysalis to a magnificent butterfly, into Happened.
(No, the Blob has not been into the Sir James Beam this morning. I don't what happened with that sentence. It just kind of grabbed the steering wheel and shoved me out into the road, cackling madly).
Anyway ... here is what Happened in Could Happen over the weekend:
1. Jordan Spieth did this, proving he is not really mortal. Mortals cannot hit golf balls out of sand from a bunker that looks like a Great War trench at Verdun. Mortals would hit the golf ball straight into the side of the bunker. Then they would do it again. And again.
Then they would pick the damn thing up and just toss it onto the green.
2. Tim Tebow is getting promoted to high-A because the Mets stink, their players are either grumpy, hurt or trade bait, and, well, why not?
Sure, he's almost 30 and only batting .222 in low-A, and anyone with a speck of baseball sense knows he has zero chance of ever playing in the majors. But he's a relentlessly sunny presence, and the fans still love him, and Tebow Time! sounds a lot better than anything else going on in the Mets system right now.
Besides, if a 43-year-old guy can start in center field for a major-league team, who knows what Could Happen for Tebow?
3. A 43-year-old guy started in center field for the Marlins yesterday.
That would be Ichiro Suzuki, who is 43 years and 246 days old and, according to Elias Sports Bureau, the oldest person to start in center field for a major-league club since at least 1900. That's 117 years to you and me, kids! Why, the Wright Brothers hadn't even invented the 747 yet! Football was still Three Yards And A Cloud Of Dead Guys At The Bottom Of The Pile! Donald Trump was tweeting that The Future Is Coal!
Oh, wait. That was yesterday.
(No, the Blob has not been into the Sir James Beam this morning. I don't what happened with that sentence. It just kind of grabbed the steering wheel and shoved me out into the road, cackling madly).
Anyway ... here is what Happened in Could Happen over the weekend:
1. Jordan Spieth did this, proving he is not really mortal. Mortals cannot hit golf balls out of sand from a bunker that looks like a Great War trench at Verdun. Mortals would hit the golf ball straight into the side of the bunker. Then they would do it again. And again.
Then they would pick the damn thing up and just toss it onto the green.
2. Tim Tebow is getting promoted to high-A because the Mets stink, their players are either grumpy, hurt or trade bait, and, well, why not?
Sure, he's almost 30 and only batting .222 in low-A, and anyone with a speck of baseball sense knows he has zero chance of ever playing in the majors. But he's a relentlessly sunny presence, and the fans still love him, and Tebow Time! sounds a lot better than anything else going on in the Mets system right now.
Besides, if a 43-year-old guy can start in center field for a major-league team, who knows what Could Happen for Tebow?
3. A 43-year-old guy started in center field for the Marlins yesterday.
That would be Ichiro Suzuki, who is 43 years and 246 days old and, according to Elias Sports Bureau, the oldest person to start in center field for a major-league club since at least 1900. That's 117 years to you and me, kids! Why, the Wright Brothers hadn't even invented the 747 yet! Football was still Three Yards And A Cloud Of Dead Guys At The Bottom Of The Pile! Donald Trump was tweeting that The Future Is Coal!
Oh, wait. That was yesterday.
Saturday, June 24, 2017
Summers of despair
So now that the NBA draft is over, and Magic Johnson has anointed a kid one year out of high school the leader of the Los Angeles Lakers (no pressure there for poor Lonzo Ball, an apparently nice young man who already has to deal with his dad), it's to time shake open the metaphoric morning paper.
Let's turn to the baseball standings, kids!
Why, look, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox are tied for first in the AL East. As ever. Can we not get anything but reboots these days?
And, hey, check this out: My Pittsburgh Pirates are not only not in last place the NL Central, they're actually tied for third this morning with the Cardinals. Why, they're three whole games clear of the cellar! Breathing down the Cubs' necks! I mean, they're not going anywhere but home in October, but that's somethin', right?
Meanwhile, in the NL West ...
Wow. The once-lordly San Francisco Giants are dead last. And here's the number that really catches your eye: They're 22-and-a-half games out of first place.
Twenty-two-and-a-half. On June 24.
Every baseball season produces this sort of scenario, of course, because the Law of Baseball dictates that if there are winners ,then there surely must be losers. And not just losers, but epic losers. Losers who can't win for losing. Losers who lose almost all the time.
And so if you pull up any year in the 1950s -- 1955, let's say -- you'll find the Yankees at the top of the American League at the end of the season (of course), and the Washington Senators at the bottom (also of course). The Senators, this particular year, finished 43 games out of first place. Forty ... three ... games. That means they lost the pennant by almost 30 percent of the then 154-game schedule.
So, yeah, it happens. All the time. And it's worth noting that the Giants aren't alone on this lovely summer morning; the Padres, just ahead of them in the West, are 18-and-a-half games out, and the Phillies, with the worst record in baseball, are 19-and-a-half out in the NL East.
Still: Twenty-two-and-a-half games behind. On June 24.
What must that clubhouse be like right now? How numb to baseball's already numbing daily routine must they all be? With how much horror must they realize they're already hopelessly out of it, and the season still has more than three months to run?
And, yeah, sure, most of these guys get paid gobs of money to play a child's game. The child's game, once upon a time in America. And so even if you're 22-and-a-half games out, you can still concentrate on your personal numbers, the better to make even more gobs of money on your next contract.
And yet ... don't you think they all have to fight the urge to place a phone call to baseball commissioner Rob Manfred's office?
Manfred: Yes, can I help you?
Unidentified Giant: Can we just go home now? Please?
Now, granted, it's summertime (and one glorious morning here where the Blob lives). And they're still playing baseball. So maybe the Blob overstates all of this a bit.
Or, you know, not.
Let's turn to the baseball standings, kids!
Why, look, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox are tied for first in the AL East. As ever. Can we not get anything but reboots these days?
And, hey, check this out: My Pittsburgh Pirates are not only not in last place the NL Central, they're actually tied for third this morning with the Cardinals. Why, they're three whole games clear of the cellar! Breathing down the Cubs' necks! I mean, they're not going anywhere but home in October, but that's somethin', right?
Meanwhile, in the NL West ...
Wow. The once-lordly San Francisco Giants are dead last. And here's the number that really catches your eye: They're 22-and-a-half games out of first place.
Twenty-two-and-a-half. On June 24.
Every baseball season produces this sort of scenario, of course, because the Law of Baseball dictates that if there are winners ,then there surely must be losers. And not just losers, but epic losers. Losers who can't win for losing. Losers who lose almost all the time.
And so if you pull up any year in the 1950s -- 1955, let's say -- you'll find the Yankees at the top of the American League at the end of the season (of course), and the Washington Senators at the bottom (also of course). The Senators, this particular year, finished 43 games out of first place. Forty ... three ... games. That means they lost the pennant by almost 30 percent of the then 154-game schedule.
So, yeah, it happens. All the time. And it's worth noting that the Giants aren't alone on this lovely summer morning; the Padres, just ahead of them in the West, are 18-and-a-half games out, and the Phillies, with the worst record in baseball, are 19-and-a-half out in the NL East.
Still: Twenty-two-and-a-half games behind. On June 24.
What must that clubhouse be like right now? How numb to baseball's already numbing daily routine must they all be? With how much horror must they realize they're already hopelessly out of it, and the season still has more than three months to run?
And, yeah, sure, most of these guys get paid gobs of money to play a child's game. The child's game, once upon a time in America. And so even if you're 22-and-a-half games out, you can still concentrate on your personal numbers, the better to make even more gobs of money on your next contract.
And yet ... don't you think they all have to fight the urge to place a phone call to baseball commissioner Rob Manfred's office?
Manfred: Yes, can I help you?
Unidentified Giant: Can we just go home now? Please?
Now, granted, it's summertime (and one glorious morning here where the Blob lives). And they're still playing baseball. So maybe the Blob overstates all of this a bit.
Or, you know, not.
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