Still the Great One

 The man is everywhere around me now, here in our quiet den. A photograph of him standing in the on-deck circle -- poetry in repose, you might say -- hangs on the wall behind me. On a bookshelf not a foot-and-a-half beyond by left elbow, his baseball card and an action figure and a plastic-encased commemoration of his Hall of Fame induction day stare back at me.

At the opposite end of the same shelf, also encased in plastic, leans a facsimile of a ticket to his last game, when he laced a double into left-center for his 3,000th hit. The date on the ticket is Saturday, Sept. 30, 1972.

On Dec. 31, 1972 -- three months and a day later, and 50 years ago today -- Roberto Enrique Clemente Walker climbed aboard a creaky DC-7 and was never seen again. He was just 38 years old.

The ancient aircraft was loaded with supplies headed to Nicaragua, which had just been hit with a devastating earthquake. The plane, and the supplies on it, were Clemente's response to the catastrophe. And he was on that plane because he was never one to do anything halfway; if he was sending aid then he, Clemente, would be there to personally ensure it got where it needed to go.

The DC-7 labored into the air and crashed into the sea shortly after takeoff from Puerto Rico, Roberto Clemente's native soil.

At once baseball lost not just a legend but a man whose legacy extended far beyond the trim geometry of the diamond. In Puerto Rico he was revered as the Latino Jackie Robinson, the one who escaped their small island to become one of the greatest players of his or any other generation, and who paved the way for all who came after him.

He was the Great One to every kid in Puerto Rico and dozens of other places who picked up a stick and a ball and dreamed their dreams. And not just because he played the game with a grace and elegance and, yes, poetry rarely seen before or since.

He was the Great One because he kept coming back to Puerto Rico, kept giving back to his homeland by conducting clinics and building ballfields and spearheading  humanitarian causes in their hundreds. Acutely aware of who he was and what he represented, he became an outspoken advocate of civil rights for persons of color and, specifically, Latin American persons of color.

As for me, I became (much to my chagrin these past 30 years) a Pittsburgh Pirates fan because of Roberto Clemente. As a kid, I was utterly captivated by him. I'd never seen anyone play baseball the way he played baseball. Going full out all the time, but with this incredibly sublime fluidity, he patrolled right field the way Nureyev might have -- and God help you if you tried to take a base on that howitzer of a right arm.

You might argue with me when I say he was the greatest ever to play the position. But you'll lose.

A year after his death, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, baseball having taken the extraordinary step of waiving its usual five-year rule. It was a tribute not only to Clemente’s impeccable skill -- 12 Gold Gloves, 846 extra-base hits, a lifetime .317 average -- but to the way he lived his life, right up to the end.

Fifty years ago today, that life ended when the plane went down.

But, oh, how much he lifted up before it did.

Prediction time!

They'll play the Peach Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl today, on New Year's Eve, which does not seem right because they'll play 'em the day after the Orange Bowl, which they played 48 hours before New Year's Day -- which isn't right either, but, oh, well. The bowl schedule hasn't made sense for 20 years or so now, and no sense carping about it.

("But you just did," you're saying now)

("And get to the point," you're also saying) 

Point is, the Peach and Fiesta -- aka, the two College Football Playoff semifinal games; aka, the only bowls that aren't just exhibitions anymore -- go off today, and so I suppose the Blob should make its predictions for said games. So let's get on with it, shall we?

* The Fiesta Bowl might be a better game than you think.

This is because everyone seems to think TCU is just a big old patsy that totally lucked into its 12-1 record, and won a bunch of games via miracle, besides, and lost to Kansas State in the Big 12 championship game besides that. And so Michigan, which made all of Columbus, Ohio, weep a month ago, will stomp the Horned Frogs into formless goo and win by, I don't know, 52-7 or something.

The Blob doesn't think so.

The Blob thinks the TCUs will have their backs up after a month of hearing they're just a bunch of imposters who got into the CFP with a fake ID. And their quarterback, Max Duggan, is not the laydown type. 

So ... 

Michigan wins. But they'll have to fight for it, at least for awhile. Call it 31-20.

* The Peach Bowl might be a better game than you think.

And, yes, the Blob realizes it just said that about the Fiesta Bowl, but the same applies to the Peach. Everyone figures Georgia is so much better than any of the other three teams they'll win both CFP games by 30, but maybe not. Maybe the Bulldogs will prove to be human beings with human foibles after all.

Like, for instance, taking an opponent juuuust a touch lightly.

Hard as it is to imagine Ohio State ever being overlooked by anyone -- especially in a playoff game -- it seems entirely unlikely the Georgia kids will simply forget about the spanking the Buckeyes took from Michigan. The last impression is always the clearest impression, after all. And the last impression of Ohio State is the Buckeyes getting bulldozed all over Ohio Stadium by the Wolverines.

They got trucked, is what happened. And now here comes a tank after them.

And yet ...

And yet, the Buckeyes still have C.J. Stroud. They still have Marvin Harrison Jr. and Emeka Egbuka and Julian Fleming and a bunch of other guys running flight patterns. And from Stroud right down to the last guy on the bench, they've all been doing a slow burn for a solid month.

So, again: Georgia wins. But not by 30.

Call it 38-30.

The ridicule portion of this post is now open.

The beautiful man

 He didn't bring soccer to America, first of all. We only think he did.

We only think soccer was born in this country when Edson Arantes do Nascimento came to America in 1975, decades removed from the small town in Brazil where he was born.  By then the world knew him as Pele, and he was the greatest soccer player who'd ever lived. Even here, where the game was still mostly an immigrant curiosity, we knew Pele.

So when he joined the New York Cosmos in the last years of his glittering career, even those who thought soccer was just some weird foot fetish ("Whadda you mean you can't use your hands?") sat up and took notice. Pele? Hey, I've heard of that guy!

By then, ironically, he was in his mid-thirties and his skills had begun to erode, but that didn't really matter.  He was still the King, the foremost ambassador of the Beautiful Game, a phrase he himself coined. And it was beautiful the way he played it, with a flair and artistry that left soccer fans constantly hitting rewind because how the hell did he do THAT?

And now he's gone.

He died yesterday at 82 of colon cancer, a citizen of the world so famous that when he once met a president of the United States, the president -- Ronald Reagan -- introduced himself to him. He knew presidents and monarchs and world leaders of every stripe, an athlete who transcended athletics in a way no athlete ever has with the possible exception of Muhammad Ali.

With whom, of course, Pele was great friends.

Doubtless they recognized in one another what sport can do for a man or woman, how it can lift them to heights utterly unimagined. Ali grew up as Cassius Clay in a working-class neighborhood in Louisville, Ky.; Pele grew up kicking around a sock stuffed with newspapers, an actual ball being something beyond his imagining. Later, as his talent grew, he shined shoes to pay for his kit.

A few years after, he burst onto the world stage as a 17-year-old phenom leading Brazil to the World Cup in 1958. By the time he led Brazil to its third World Cup in 12 years in 1970, he was the acknowledged greatest player in the world, and even guys in America huddled around TV sets watching the Celtics or the World Series or "real" football on Sunday afternoons knew his name.

No, he didn't bring soccer to America, but we can date its entrance into the American  consciousness to the day he came to New York. The Beautiful Game, after all, had the perfect beautiful man to sell it to a nation built on selling: A joyous soul with a neon smile whose love for his game was so infectious it got us to wondering why Pele found it so damn much fun.

And so American kids started finding the game, sporadically.  They find it to this day.

Pele died less than two weeks after one of the most scintillating World Cup finals in history, a circumstance that seems both curiously appropriate and a tribute of sorts.  Messi and Mbappe and the rest, after all, confirmed what Pele had been telling us all these years about his game, and why he found so much joy in it. 

On the day of the final, I wound up at a local sports bar watching the overtimes and shootout. While I was sitting there, an acquaintance showed up and sat down next to me. He's an Ohio State football fan who, as far as I know, has only a nodding acquaintance with soccer. But when he sat down, he looked up at the screen with obvious relief.

"Oh, man," he said. "I didn't think I was gonna get here in time to see this."

I have to think Edson Arantes do Nascimento would have smiled, hearing that. I have to think he would have smiled forever.

Today in grammar

 You learn something every day, the saying goes, but it doesn't go far enough. The rest of it goes "... even if you could have gone your whole life without learning it."

Like, did you know there's no such word as "Cheez-Its"?

That's what the Cheez-It people say, anyway, and it's relevant because tonight Oklahoma plays Florida State in the Cheez-It Bowl. The winning coach  gets a tub of Cheez-Its dumped on his head, presumably.

Excuse me. Make that "Cheez-It crackers."

Because, see, the Cheez-It people say that's the proper grammatical plural of "Cheez-It." A single Cheez-It, they explain, is a Cheez-It. But the plural version is "Cheez-It crackers."

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Not that we care, but isn't this grammatically inconsistent?"

Your*darn tootin' it is!

(*You're)

Grammatical consistency, see, would dictate a single Cheez-It be called a "Cheez-It cracker." But it's not, according to the Cheez-It people. So by the Blob's lights, it's perfectly fine to continue to call the plural "Cheez-Its," for consistency's sake.

I'm sorry?

You say this is the dumbest thing the Blob has ever Blobbed about? 

Well ... maybe so.

But my grammar doesn't think so.

The Ineptitude Bowl

 The NFL season is down to crumbs and final swallows, and so it's the proper time at last to look in on what is annually one of the league's fiercest struggles.

Let's play Which Franchise Is The Biggest Dumpster Fire/Superfund Site, boys and girls!

"I know, I know!" you're saying. "Jacksonville!"

No, the Jaguars got rid of Urban Meyer last year. This year, not coincidentally, they're tied for the division lead and closing in on a playoff berth.

"The Lions, then!"

Nope. Last week's flameout against Carolina notwithstanding, the Kitties have won six of their last eight games and sit second in the division.

The correct answer is either Indianapolis or Denver, and it's one hell of a donnybrook right now. Rarely have two franchises pooped themselves so spectacularly, and with such complete and utter shamelessness.

Let's go to the tape, shall we?

In one corner, we've got Your Colts, who were supposed to be a favorite to win their division and maybe make some noise in the playoffs this year after signing Falcons veteran Matt Ryan to man the helm. 

But Ryan wound up using a fake ID to get on board, one that said he was 37 years old and not, I don't know, maybe 65. So they benched Ryan for Sam Ehlinger, and then they benched Ehlinger for Ryan, and then they benched Ryan again for Nick Foles, patiently waiting in the back of the closet like that '70s leisure suit you forgot you had.

Along the way, they fired head coach Frank Reich after the Colts stumbled to a 3-5-1 start. Then they elevated defensive coordinator Gus Bradley, a former head coach, to be the interim head coach for the remainder of the season.

No, of course they didn't do that!

Instead, owner Jim Irsay summoned Colts icon Jeff Saturday from behind his analyst's desk to coach the team for the rest of the season, even though Saturday had zero experience except as a high school coach. He's now 1-5, and the Colts are 4-10-1 with no viable quarterback, no premier receiver and a high-priced offensive line that can't block a sunbeam. 

Bonus points: Irsay recently said in an interview he's probably going to hang onto GM Chris Ballard, who put this mess together.

"Hey, what about us!" Denver is saying now. "What are we, chopped liver?"

Why, yes, Broncos. That's exactly what you are!

Their story starts with Nathaniel Hackett, the quarterbacks coach from Green Bay the Broncos brought in as head coach thinking he might lure Aaron Rodgers west. Turns out Rodgers was just playing mind games by hinting he'd leave; he wound up not leaving.

But no matter. Because you know what the Broncos did next?

They went out and get Russell Wilson.

Folks immediately started chattering excitedly about the quarterback battles they'd see in the AFC West among Wilson, Patrick Mahomes, Justin Herbert and Derek Carr. Except ...

Except, it turned out Nathaniel Hackett couldn't coach his way out of a paper bag. And Russell Wilson inexplicably turned into Mr. Wilson, Dennis the Menace's neighbor. The Broncos lost a bunch of games; Russ was terrible and losing the locker room; and Hackett consistently displayed the clock-management skills of Homer Simpson.

The topper to all this was the Broncos owners waited until there were just two games left in the season to fire Hackett. What the point of doing it now is anyone's guess. The Denvers are 4-11 and have been playing out the string for weeks. Players are getting suspended for fighting, probably out of boredom. And CEO Greg Penner has thrown  GM George Paton under the bus, saying whoever the new coach will be will answer directly to him, not to Paton.

This is not just a train wreck, in other words. It's a train/plane/automobile wreck.

So who wins the Inteptitude Bowl?

The Blob says it's the Broncos on a last-second field goal. Because they had Russell Wilson and still managed to have the worst offense in the league, and the Colts only had an over-the-hill Matt Ryan.

Who do you like?

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 16

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words -- the hopeful Blob feature that's looking forward to a new year, and of which critics have said "I'm looking forward to a new year in which we kill this thing once and for all!" and also "New year? Why, wasn't the old one good enough?":

1. "Speaking of new things, let's give Nick Foles a shot!" (The Indianapolis Colts)

2. "Yeah! Give me a shot!" (Nick Foles)

3. "GAAAH!" (The Colts, after Foles throws three picks, is sacked seven times and puts up a 31.9 passer rating in a 20-3 loss to the Chargers)

4. "GAAAH!" (Nick Foles, running for his life from the Chargers pass rush)

5. "Nobody told me our O-line was THIS bad!" (Also Foles)

6. Meanwhile, the Lions!

7. Lions-ed it up again, getting crushed 37-23 by the Panthers after getting everybody's hopes up that they might actually make the playoffs.

8. The AFC South. The NFC South. Heck, everyone in the NFC except the Eagles, the Cowboys, the 49ers and the Vikings.

9. Should all be sold for parts at a Reclaimed Freight outlet near you.

10. "GAAAH! (Fans realizing that one team each from the AFC South and NFC South is actually going to make the playoffs)

The spirit of the season

 Happy Day After Christmas -- Boxing Day, if you're from north of the border -- and the Blob thinks this is the perfect time to recognize those who understand the spirit of the season and the birth of the one who inspires it, and those who ... do not.

Anthony Leal from the IU basketball team, he gets it. The governor Texas, Greg Abbott (R-Colossal Dick), not so much.

What Anthony Leal did to honor Christmas was use his Name, Likeness and Image (NIL) money to pay off his older sister's student loan debt. All of it. Thousands of dollars. And so extra figgy pudding to Anthony for this act of goodwill toward women, and for understanding (implicitly or otherwise) that goodwill toward women and men was why Jesus was born all those centuries ago in the first place.

It seems Gov. Abbott -- who likes to profess his Christian faith without apparently living it -- never got the message.

What Colossal Dick did, see, is round up 100-some migrants who'd crossed the border illegally looking for relief from poverty or violence or exploitation, and exploit them some more. Put 'em on buses and shipped them literally to Vice-President Kamala Harris' doorstep in Washington, because, I don't know, he thought it would be cute or something.

He did this on Christmas Eve.

When it was 16 degrees in D.C.

And with at least some of the bewildered, desperate folks he sent off  not dressed for that kind of weather.

Merry Christmas.

And I suppose this is the part where we contemplate what Jesus would do in this situation, given that it's his birthday and he was born in inadequate circumstances himself because of the heartlessness of others. I have an idea, although it probably isn't particularly Christ-like.

I think Jesus would come back, kick the governor in the ass and ask him what part of "If you do this to the least of these, you do it unto me" he didn't understand.

But enough about cruelty and heartlessness and juvenile political stunts. I prefer to dwell on Anthony Leal and his sister, and the true spirit of the season.

Here's the video of Lauren Leal opening her gift from Anthony. Bring tissues.