Today in American exports

So the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees played a game of American baseball in London yesterday, although it was more like slow-pitch softball than the real thing. This will happen when the teams combine for 37 hits and put up a football score (17-13), which happens in baseball only when the wind's blowing a gale toward Lake Michigan in Wrigley, and a couple of minor-league callups are on the bump.

In any case, the Brits must have been curious, not to say confused. After all, they've seen American football, even if sometimes it was the Browns or Jaguars before they got halfway good. Yankees 17, Red Sox 13 must have seemed weirdly familiar, and prompted more than one furrowed brow.

"Where are the space helmets and shoulder pads  that make them all look like Quasimodo?" they no doubt said. "And where is the wee lad who comes on periodically to kick the ball toward the post thingies?"

Not helping matters, of course, is the fact that MLB's timing for this exhibition was passing strange. It happened right in the middle of the cricket world championships, which are also happening in England right now. Baseball, of course, is the bastard cousin of cricket, which is incomprehensible to anyone not born in England or its former colonies.

Its scoring would have stumped Pythagoras. Its terminology is Martian, or perhaps Klingonese. There's a position called the "silly mid-off." There's a pitcher's delivery called a "wicked googly." And if the googly is particularly wicked, batters occasionally find themselves "out for a Golden Duck."

How's American baseball compete with that? Particularly when its first showing overseas ends in such a profoundly un-baseball score?

"Which one is Tom Brady?" someone is saying now, as Aaron Judge comes to the plate.

"I believe he's that big chap," someone replies, pointing at Judge.

Yeesh.

Women's work

Megan Rapinoe is as right as a cold beer on a hot day. Why would she go to the White House if the U.S. women win the World Cup again, given that the guy who lives there now is aggressively hostile to everything she not only believes, but is?

So, no, she ain't goin'. And likely a lot of her teammates won't, either. And good for them. Because no matter what the clueless say, everything about these White House visits is political to this whining man-child for whom everything is political, and who can't let any perceived slight go without weighing in like a butt-hurt 8-year-old.

Our Only Available President did just that, predictably, after Rapinoe said what she said, and it was as juvenile and incoherent as always. Some blab about how she was disrespecting the country and the flag (The flag!) by refusing to give political cover to an unapologetic misogynist.

I know. I couldn't follow it, either. Who can if you have an ounce of adult perspective?

In any case, Our Only Available President taking on Rapinoe is an unfair fight because the former is so clearly out of his depth. Rapinoe is smarter, tougher, and doesn't give a rip what OOAP thinks. One wishes more of OOAP's political adversaries were the same.

Besides, she's way better at finding the back of the net.

She did it twice more yesterday as the USWNT knocked out France, 2-1, which means the aggregate score for the USWNT's last two matches is Rapinoe 4, Spain and France 2. That she and the Americans did it with a big assist from the referees should not diminish that.

And, yes, they did get a big assist from the referees, in both matches. Against Spain, an extremely sketchy foul in the box on Rose Lavelle, who sold it like Meryl Streep, enabled Rapinoe to score the game-winner on a penalty kick. And, yesterday, an obvious hand ball that would have given France a shot at the tying goal went uncalled.

But, hey. Nobody ever won these deals without being lucky as well as good.

And now it's on to the semis against England, just in time for Fourth of July week. It's the Ungrateful Colonials vs. the Haughty Empire -- just the scenario that cries out for an unapologetically independent soul like Rapinoe to play the hero again.

Big Macs at the White House await, no doubt. Not that she cares, or should.

Goin' shoppin'

Spent the last hour or so reading the takeaways from the Democratic presidential cattle call, and the Blob has pretty much determined who the frontrunners are mere year or so from the convention.

You got your Elizabeth Biden, you got your Kamala Warren, and you got your Pete Castro Harris. I think I got those names right.

In any case, shopping season is open for Democratic voters, whose online reactions to the doings the last two nights, near as the Blob can tell, pretty much boil down to these:

1. Good lord there are a lot of people on that stage.

2. Who is Marianne Williamson, and why is she here?

3. Are Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders actually still living, technically?

4. Hey, look! Beto O'Rourke can speak Spanish!

And of course:

5. Good lord there are a lot of people on that stage.

Almost as many people, to make a not-at-all clumsy segue, as there are narratives in the looming NBA Silly Season. Speaking of shopping.

Our opening tale takes place in L.A., where, after initially botching the Anthony Davis deal and then botching his team's cap space situation, Lakers GM Rob Pelinka finally landed Davis, and yesterday rectified his cap space botching by selling three dudes to the Washington Wizards. This frees up $32 mill for the Lake Show to go shopping for more luxury items, like Kawhi Leonard or perhaps Kyrie Irving.

Of the two, Irving seems more likely, even though most people think he's bound for Brooklyn. Having discovered in Boston that being The Man wasn't nearly as much fun as he thought it would be, and that he kinda sucked at it, it's easy to envision him coming to the Lakers to be Robin to LeBron's Batman again. And to be whoever to whatever superhero AD is.

As for Kawhi ... well, I suppose he could be persuaded to join up with LeBron, too, but given what a hot mess the Lakers are right now, why not go with the more stable SoCal option? That of course would be the Clippers, who have the excellent selling point that Rob Pelinka doesn't work for them.

On the other hand, it's probably even money right now that Kawhi stays in Toronto. So we'll see.

As for the Lakers, they could always make a play for Jimmy Butler, who's also available and would come cheaper. Kevin Durant, of course, is along with Kawhi THE free agent gem, and it will be fascinating to see where he lands.

If he's smart, he goes back to Golden State and plays for more titles. If he's not, he signs with, um, the Knicks, and does what most superstars have done with the Knicks across the last two decades: Lose a lot, get super frustrated and light out for the territories.

But, hey. He'd be in New York, and he'd be making a lot of money. At least for awhile, that might make it worth playing for a tire fire of a franchise -- and its owner, Jimmy Dolan, doofus extraordinaire.

In the meantime, keep your eye on Pete Castro Harris. Rob Pelinka says he's got serious hops.

Dance fever

The list of Olympic sports for the 2024 Paris Games came out yesterday, and everyone was talking about how break dancing was being added as an Olympic sport.

The Blob has no beef with this, even if break dancing is not, strictly speaking, a sport. But then, there's a whole raft of Olympic sports that aren't really sports, either, if you squint your eyes and look at 'em just right.

As the late, great Dan Jenkins once famously wrote: Cross-country skiing is just how a Swede goes to the 7-Eleven.

Yes, and another name for luge is "sledding." And another name for skeleton is "getting drunk and then sledding." And another name for rhythmic gymnastics is "recess."

And don't get me started on synchronized swimming, which is basically treading water with style.

So, yeah, bring on the break dancing.

I want to see which country will emerge as the Olympic power in break dancing. I want to see who will be the Michael Phelps of break dancing (perhaps Michael Phelps!). I want to see the entire Russian break dancing team get banned for doping, and Torvill and Dean come out of retirement to win the pairs competition, and a huge judging scandal erupt because six of the judges were from Brazil and somehow IndyCar driver Helio Castroneves won the men's gold, even though he wasn't entered.

"Yes, but he's Helio! And he won Dancing With The Stars!" the Brazilian judges will all say.

I want to see this. Then I want to get to work thinking of other cool stuff that ought to be Olympic sports:

1. Lawn Maintenance.

In which the American entry, Lance Thurston Howell III of Gated Swale, California, is disqualified after testing positive for Miracle-Gro.

2. Greco-Roman Eating.

In which the American team, comprised entirely of guys from Indiana, sweep the medals in the Giant Breaded Tenderloin division.

3. The Decatlon.

In which cats from all over the world compete to see who can most haughtily ignore a grueling schedule of ten owners' commands. The Siamese team wins gold, silver and bronze because, let's face it, they're just nasty-ass creatures.

4. Jart  Dodging.

In which there are both Helmeted and Helmetless divisions -- the latter of which is dominated by skeleton racers looking for something hella crazy to do in the summertime.

And last but not least ...

5. Chess Boxing.

Which, believe it or not, is actually a thing that has been around since 1992. Competitors alternate rounds of chess with rounds of boxing.

In the Olympic gold medal round, 8-year-old Bulgarian prodigy Dimitri "Little Goober" Manilova puts his Russian opponent in check with a classic "Hey, Look Over There" gambit -- i.e., shouting "Hey, look over there," and moving his queen into a check position when his opponent looks away. Then he scores a TKO in the boxing segment by tying the Russian's shoelaces together and goading him into chasing him around the ring by shouting "Hey, Ivan! Did your mom have any kids that lived?"

Or something like that.

States rights

Time now to check in on the beleaguered overseers of the NCAA, who once again find their magnificent illusion under siege, this time from the most feared adversaries of all.

Bring on the politicos!

Who, in California, seem poised to pass SB 206, aka the Fair Pay To Play Act, which would allow college students to make money off their own names, images and likenesses. As reported here by Deadspin, this has the overseers' knickers in a bunch, since it would threaten their carefully constructed system of indentured servitude.

Head overseer Mark Emmert released a statement that essentially says California shouldn't oughta do that, because then other states might follow Cali's lead, and then the whole tottery house of cards would come tumbling down. Emmert also said, quite disingenuously, that it would be a shame if the NCAA had to bar California student-athletes from competing for championships, because the proposed law would constitute the dreaded Unfair Advantage over student-athletes from other states not suitably enlightened.

The real fear, of course, is that other student-athletes in other states, and their legislative advocates, would see the Unfair Advantage as something that looked damned fine to them, and how can we get in on it? And suddenly jurisdiction would be taken right out of the NCAA's hands in this matter.

And Emmert and Co. thought losing to Ed O'Bannon (at least in part) was a nightmare.

Formulaic

Back in the before time -- when the names were Jim Clark and Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart, Ayrton Senna and Niki Lauda and Alain Prost -- Formula One used to be an actual racing series. The lads used to flit around from Monaco to Zandvoort to Watkins Glen, and sometimes Lotus won and sometimes it was BRM  -- or, later, Ferrari or Williams or McLaren.

There was dicing. There was competition. There were rivalries worth noting, because they were actual rivalries and not hammer-vs.-nail rivalries.

Which brings us to yesterday, and the Hammer-vs.-Nail Grand Prix in France.

Lewis Hamilton won easily in his Mercedes, his sixth win in eight races so far this season. Valtteri Bottas finished second in his Mercedes. No one except those two have won a race so far this year. No one not driving for Mercedes, Ferrari or Red Bull has posted a top-five finish. Only five drivers have finished on the podium in eight races, and the two Mercedes pilots have finished 1-2 in six of them. The only other driver with a second-place finish is Sebastian Vettel for Ferrari.

Who actually broke Mercedes' stranglehold by winning in Canada, only to have the victory stripped on an absurd stewards' ruling. Which handed the victory to -- shocker! -- Lewis Hamilton.

Look. I get it. Mercedes is dominating F1 to a ridiculous extent because it's head-and-shoulders the best operation in the sport, and excellence should be celebrated. But it's also damn boring.

Problem is, I don't know what you do about that. Just be boring I guess.

Because F1 is and always has been a money game, and that's never going to change. The operations with the most money to spread around have always ruled. Back in the day, when Michael Schumacher was winning every race, Ferrari was every bit as dominant as Mercedes is now. A lack of competitive balance has always been the sport's Achilles heel to one degree or another.

And so you've got Mercedes and you've got Ferrari and, to a somewhat lesser extent, you've got Red Bull. And then there's everyone else. And thus has it ever been, with only the names changing through the years.

The difference today is that, if there were dominant teams, the gap between No. 1 and No. 2 was rarely as yawning as it is now. If it's Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull and everyone else, it's more precisely Mercedes and everyone else. Little wonder that Vettel came a trifle unglued after his win was taken away in Canada, switching the "1" and "2" placards placed in front of his and Hamilton's cars, and initially refusing to appear on the podium.

After all, it's not like the scenery was going to change whether he stood up there or not. It was still going to be the same old crowd spraying the champagne around.

In any case, it's on to Austria this week. Your winner will be either Lewis Hamilton or Valtteri Bottas. Enjoy.

Child's play

They're playing baseball this fine June morning, on the rough diamond just south of Arlington Elementary school. A kid no bigger than a minute stands at the plate. The bat on his shoulder looks like a redwood. Cries of "Hey, battah, hey, battah" rise into the clear air from other tiny figures scattered around the infield like baseball miniatures.

Out on the pitcher's mound, or actually in front of it, Coach leans over and lobs the ball. No Bigger Than Minute swipes at it with the redwood. Ball hits bat, rises lazily and briefly, dribbles out toward second base, where one of the baseball miniatures surrounds it carefully, scoops it up and heaves it wildly.

The ball goes sailing off to parts unknown. The batter pelts madly toward first. "Safe!" another coach hollers.

Scattered applause from the camp chairs on the sidewalk beyond the first baseline, where the parents watching their children take part in this local ritual known as Wildcat baseball.

Where everyone gets to play, and the teams are named after car models and candy brands and major league players and animals, and no one labors under the delusion this is the major leagues or anything like them. Which is why there are remarkably few parents hitting each other in the face at Wildcat games.

Unlike, you know, these brainiacs.

By now everyone in America has seen this, because it's gone viral several times over since it was recorded this week. The spectacle of alleged grownups behaving like 7-year-olds at a baseball game played by actual 7-year-olds is just one more not-so-subtle reminder that the worst part of kid sports are parents, because parents are frequently morons. Acknowledging this is probably why so few of them ever get punished by the law.

Which is a shame, because the Blob tends to think if the brawlers got serious jail time every time they felt compelled to slug one another over child's play, the world would be a better place. And the next bunch of morons might think twice about it.

Or not, of course. They are, after all, morons.

You can label that name-calling if you like, but the Blob believes it's simply accurate reporting. How else are you going to describe people who get so upset over the call of a 13-year-old umpire in a kid baseball game they feel compelled to start brawling like soccer hooligans?

You want to know why the umpire was 13 years old? Because the players were 7. In other words, that wasn't the next Mike Trout out there getting robbed by a bad call. It was a kid who, when his team's not at bat, is probably standing in the outfield looking for interesting bugs. Or thinking up clever 7-year-old chatter like, "Hey, battah, hey, battah, you couldn't be fattah."

Quick story: Back in my young sportswriting days, I followed around a Little League team in Lapel, In., for a summer feature. A college buddy was the coach. Every inning, when his team came up to bat, one little guy invariably marched up to him and asked "Hey, Coach, when do I bat?"

My buddy would just roll his eyes.

"Fifth," he said. "Same as last inning."

Then he turned to me and grinned.

"Every inning he asks me when he bats," he said. "And every inning I tell him."

So, no, this is not the seventh game of the World Series we're talking about. Although it seems there are always morons who think it is.

It's why the Blob has always half-seriously thought organized sports should be outlawed until a kid is, say, 11 or 12. Until then, let 'em make their own fun.

Let 'em find a vacant lot, lay out a diamond using discarded jackets for bases, and declare everything hit to right an automatic out because there's only five guys on one team and four on the other.

Let 'em use the same vacant lot for a football field; Gilbert from the next block over is all-time center, everyone is eligible, and the defensive guys have to count to 3-Mississippi before they're allowed to rush the quarterback.

Oh, yeah: And no grownups allowed. Because not even Gilbert from the next block over has enough allowance money to bail 'em out.