Agony and ecstasy

 The best and the worst, all in one. Sometimes you really do get that.

Sometimes joy comes with a side of grief, but not really grief, because the joy diffuses it. Illuminates it. Gives it a gloss of ecstasy even when it is agony that is its core truth.

That all happened Sunday. And not where you might think, I'm guessing.

It happened in Eastlake, Ohio, site of the NCAA Division III College World Series. A team from Wisconsin-Whitewater eliminated a team from Birmingham-Southern College on a walk-off home run, 11-10, after Birmingham-Southern blew a 10-5 lead.

That did not just end the team from Birmingham-Southern's season, it turns out. It ended its existence.

That's because the Birmingham-Southern baseball team was the last vestige of Birmingham-Southern as a whole, its run to the D-III World Series an odd brew of triumph, loss, magic and heartache. The small liberal arts school from Alabama, see, announced it was shuttering its doors at the end of the 2023-24 school year. Like so many small liberal arts schools across America these days, financial woes did it in.

What that meant was the Panthers baseball team was representing its school, it was its school. And when the end came with dramatic suddenness Sunday, it took awhile for everyone to absorb the fact this was not only it, but it.

Then the players, and the alumni who had come to see Birmingham-Southern one last time, lined up along the third-baseline, tipped their caps to their fans and left the field holding hands with teammates.

After that, it was left to head coach Jay Weisberg, who came to BSC in 2007, to sum it all up. He did so eloquently.

"I know a lot of people have pride in their schools, and they should," he said in a Associated Press piece. "We aren't different from many. But it's such a beautiful place, physically. We have the best sunsets in the world. The message about Birmingham-Southern is that it changed lives. It was a place where people came as young men and women and left as mature men and women.

"What this nation has seen over these last three weeks and the joy we brought is exactly what this program is ... Birmingham-Southern could have gone off into the sunset and not many people besides graduates or the Birmingham community would know about it. But now the nation knows there were some pretty special things that happened here."

Indeed.

Timing is everything

 There are a lot of things to like about A.J. Foyt's latest IndyCar prodigy Santino Ferrucci, like the fact he apparently has titanium gonads and drives like his hair is on fire, and also that he's still only 26 years old.

Being still only 26 years old is sometimes a liability, however.

Friday, for instance, he got into a spat with Andretti Global drivers Kyle Kirkwood and Colton Herta, both of whom claimed Ferrucci was driving like an idiot and tried to run them both off the road during qualifying up in Detroit. Ferrucci, of course, saw it differently, claiming it was Kirkwood in particular who was driving like an idiot.

Then (just for funsies, perhaps) he took a shot at Herta, calling him Kirkwood's "little boyfriend teammate."

Lesson No. 1 here: Guys who are still only 26 frequently engage their mouths before their brains.

Lesson No. 2: Guys who are still only 26, and alpha males on top of it, will always go to the homophobe well if given half the chance. Someone could do an interesting study on why if it weren't so glaringly obvious: No insult is greater for an alpha hetero male than implying someone is gay.

Anyway, in this case not only was a hetero alpha male doing just that, the timing was, shall we say, exquisite. Because Ferrucci chose to do it on the eve of Pride Month, which began yesterday.

And IndyCar is a proud supporter of Pride Month, on account of it has one of the most robust LGBTIQA+ fan bases in motorsports.

Oops. 

"Man, I just apologize for the comments," Ferrucci told RACER, trying to repair the damage. "I was very out of line, very out of pocket, especially in Pride Month ... I just want to really apologize to the (LGBTIQA+) community for that."

Yeah, well. Maybe he could make amends by thinking of every month as Pride Month. Just a thought.

Target practice

 Look, I know what some folks are gonna say these days when you suggest Caitlin Clark has become the WNBA's favorite Mugging of the Week target. I've been around. I know how some folks are.

They've gonna say, waaah, too bad, welcome to the bigs, rook.

They're gonna say them that gets all the exposure always are going to have a bullseye on their backs, so get over it.

They're gonna say it's a physical game and opponents have quickly figured out if you get physical with the league's newest Big Deal you can throw her off her game and knock the Big Deal right out of her.

All of this is true.

However.

However, when you go as out of the way as some opponents do simply to knock the crap out of the WNBA's perceived cash cow simply because she's the perceived cash cow, that's when I get off the boat.

I get off the boat because when Chicago guard Chennedy Carter shoulders Clark to the ground when the ball isn't even in play, someone needs to do something. And I'm not talking just about the game officials, who somehow didn't slap Carter with a flagrant foul even though it was as clearly a flagrant foul as any foul ever has been.

I'm talking about Clark's teammates. Where the hell were they?

One upon a time in a land far, far away, one of Duke University's designated asshats (and Duke always has a Designated Asshat, it's like a rule) stomped on a Kentucky player's chest during a scrum under the basket. Did it deliberately. Did it behind the official's back, and so got away with it.

That player was, of course, Christian Laettner. The Kentucky player whose chest he planted a foot on was Animu Timberlake. Neither Timberlake, nor any other Kentucky player, retaliated.

This is not what should have happened.

What should have happened was, the next time down the floor, someone in a Kentucky uniform should have knocked the Designated Asshat on his ass. Sent the kind of message that regrettably is the only kind of message that should be sent sometimes.

I'm not saying you should routinely turn basketball games into hockey games, mind you. Leave the bench-clearing brawls to the Hanson brothers and Ogie Oglethorpe.

However.

However, when Carter threw that shoulder into Clark yesterday, one of her Indiana Fever teammates should have thrown hands at Carter. And not just because it was Clark. You do it for anyone, because otherwise you're putting a great big Kick Me sign on your backside.

Want to take gratuitous shots at our prize rookie? Sure, go ahead. 'Cause, you  know, we're soft as Charmin.

Maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe that's not what the Fever are implying at all by their apparent disinterest in stepping up for a teammate.

I'm gonna take some convincing, though. Like, a lot of convincing.

Delayed action

 So, then: It's Kyrie 'n' Luka vs. Jaylen 'n' Jayson in the NBA Finals.

Also, if you prefer, the Dallas Mavericks vs. the Boston Celtics.

Also, a team with two guys playing out of their minds right now vs. the team that has been the winningest in the NBA all season.

Logic says you pick the latter. Not being remotely logical, I'm picking the former, who last night booted the Minnesota Timberwolves (who themselves had booted the reigning champion Denver Nuggets) in five games in the Western Conference finals.

Luka (Doncic, for those still require a last name) scored 36 points in last night's win, 20 of them in the first quarter. Kyrie (Irving) also scored 36. It was the fourth time in the playoffs so far both players have scored 30 or more points in the same game.

I don't know if the Celtics can put the brakes on that. I also don't know if the Celtics own dynamic duo, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, can match Luka and Kyrie bucket-for-bucket, although they probably won't have to because the Celtics also have Al Horford and Jrue Holiday and Derrick White, and the Mavs do not.

In any case, we'll have to wait six days for it all to begin, because the NBA and the teevees insist on being inflexible about this. The schedule says the Finals begin on June 6; therefore the Finals begin on June 6. It doesn't matter that both conference final series wrapped up a full week before that, or that the Celtics disposed of the Indiana Pacers on Memorial Day. The schedule is inviolable and timeless, like Stonehenge. It has withstood centuries of logic and rational thought (OK, so a week of logic and rational thought), and cannot be moved by any force known to man or nature.

Or, you know, something like that.

In any case, the Celtics will have been off nine days before they play again, the Mavericks six. By that time they may all be old enough to qualify for their pensions. Tatum and Brown may require walkers to get down the floor. Luka may have grown a long white beard and go by a new nickname: The Gandalf of Buckets.

"Now you're just being silly," you're saying now.

Yes, well. It's what I do.

I'll also wait, just like we'll all be compelled to do. At least nothing else is happening in the country now, besides the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Oh, and some guy got convicted yesterday on 34 counts of cooking the books to hide pay-offs to some porn star. I think I read something about that.

Sockless

 Checked in on the MLB standings this morning, and ye, gods, the White Sox, man. The Sox are Sockless. They are the Chicago Bare Feet. Choose your aphorism.

As of this morning, see, they are 15-42 and already 22 1/5 games out of first in the AL Central, with two days left in May. They've lost eight in a row and nine of their last 10. At their present rate of non-winning, they'll finish the season 45-117. 

Forty-five and 117. And 22 1/2 games out before June. I can't even.

I can't even imagine what it must be like in that clubhouse, realizing the season's already over and there are still four months left in it. I see depression. I see unanswered prayers to Jobu (H/T to "Major League") for a season-ending injury to end this torment. I see players desperately petitioning ownership and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred to please, please, just let them go home already.

I see that exchange going like this:

Sox players: Can we go home now? 

Manfred: No.

Players: But this is a mental health issue! I thought baseball cared about mental health issues!

Manfred: Mental health? The hell is that? MLB has no position on mental health. If we did, we never would have let the Cubs win a World Series and then go back to being the Cubs. Think what that must have done to the mental health of Cubs fans! Although it is kinda fun, torturing them like that.

 Players: Ah, screw those northsiders. What about us? What about the fact you let baseball's worst ump, Angel Hernandez, retire the other day even though it's still only May? In fact you called him in and pretty much INSISTED he retire, even though it's still only May!

Manfred: Well, that was different.

Players: Different, how? He sucked at his job; we suck at ours. He was an embarrassment to baseball; we're an embarrassment to baseball. Same thing.

Manfred: No. It's not. You guys can still see, at least.

(Pause as the players absorb this obvious truth)

Players: Well ... can you at least get rid of Reinsdorf, then? That guy is the WORST. OK, so, actually we're the worst, but he's right up there in the Worst League standings. Hell, at this point, we'll even take Nutting over there in Pittsburgh instead of Rein-o. And he sucks, too.

Manfred: Yeah, he does. But no.

(Long pause)

Players: You're so mean.

Manfred: Hey, at least I ain't Landis. Remember what he did to you?

History, standing corrected

 I wish I were somewhere else this morning, and not because I'm unhappy with where I am. I wish I were somewhere else because I like to be entertained, and the somewhere else I'd like to be would be entertaining as all get out.

See, I wish I were wherever Ty Cobb is. Because, God, that would be some kind of fun.

I figure the racist old sociopath is throwing an epic poop-fit this morning, bellowing shattering oaths because a black man just supplanted him in the record books. I see him calling out to his fellow old racist, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and saying "Mountain, can you believe this? They're changin' history on us! How dare they!"

To which Landis would no doubt say: "Hey, I tried to keep 'em out. Can't lay any of this on my doorstep."

"This", of course, is Major League Baseball announcing that Negro League records for more than 2,300 players were officially incorporated into the baseball record books, forever altering some longstanding numbers.

This includes Cobb's lifetime .367 batting average, which now is second to Josh Gibson's .372. Gibson's .466 average for the 1943 season becomes the alltime single season record. Charlie "Chino" Smith's .451 average in 1929 moves into second place, supplanting the former alltime leader -- Hugh Duffy, who batted .440 for Boston way back in 1894.

This being the riven days of 2024, when straight-up crazy runs around stark naked in public, I'm waiting for some elected loon to call this "wokeness," the loon epithet of choice these days. I would hope, and frankly expect, this is one instance when the elected loons hold their tongues. But you'll never go broke these days underestimating the sheer bat-shittery of some of them.

So, someone somewhere will say something about "revisionist history." Count on it.

What they'll miss is the irony of being right for once, but not the way they think. This is revisionist history, in the sense that it's history that needed revising. It's history standing corrected, to be more precise. It's the completion of a history that for a century has been glaringly incomplete.

Adding Negro Leagues numbers into the official baseball records, after all, is adding the numbers of the only established professional entity excluded from those records. Yes, most of the records in the book are from the National and American leagues. But also included are records from the American Association (1882-1891), the Union Association (1884), the Players League (1890) and the Federal League (1914-1915). 

All of those had one thing in common: They were lily white, or virtually so.

The Negro Leagues, of course, were not. Yet they were far more legitimate, and certainly more successful, than most of the aforementioned. The only reason they were excluded from baseball's official record was ... well, we all know why they were excluded.

Now, finally, that injustice has been undone. That it should have happened long before 2024 is a shame MLB must rightfully bear, and for which Tuesday's announcement only partially absolves it.

In any event, hears to Josh and Chino and Oscar Charleston and all the rest. Welcome home, gentlemen. Welcome home at last.

The month that wasn't

 These are not the palmy days for NASCAR, which once bestrode the American motorsports scene like a Colossus and now bestrides it like a Colossus who shrunk in the dryer. And now Colossus is all faded, too.

Consider, for instance, what's happened in the last month, and especially in the last four or five days:

* Hendrick Motorsports, one of NASCAR's pillars, partnered with McLaren to give Kyle Larson, one of NASCAR's biggest stars, a shot at the Indianapolis 500.

* Because of that, when rain soaked Indy on race day and delayed the start of the Spectacle by four hours, Hendrick and Larson decided to stay and run the 500 rather than bail for Charlotte to run the Coca-Cola 600.

* Because of that, NASCAR has to decide whether or not to waive the rule for Larson that stipulates Cup regulars must run every race to qualify for the playoffs.

* Then there was the 600 itself, which NASCAR declared a race with 151 laps still to run and the track damp with rain. Like so much else in the NASCAR biosphere, this got some folks crabbing that NASCAR quit on its Memorial Day centerpiece, and that it instead should have waited out the wet and finished the race, even though it would have stretched into the wee hours of Monday morning.

* Last but hardly least, Stewart-Haas Racing, another NASCAR pillar, chose the day after Memorial Day to announce it is shuttering its NASCAR operations at the end of this season. This is not like the Bubba 'N' Them Family Of Car Washes race team pulling the plug on its deal, mind you; it removes from the series a 15-year-old entity that has won two Cup titles and 69 races since its formation.

Hell of a month. Hell of a last few days. And not in a good way.

Even before Tuesday's announcement, after all, NASCAR observers were saying allowing NASCAR teams to set up deals with outside entities to let NASCAR regulars run outside events is a slippery slope of the first magnitude. If they're gonna do it for the 500, what's next? LeMans? The Monaco Grand Prix? What?

The Blob's take on this is everyone should drop those pearls they're clutching, because the 500 is the 500 and everything else is not. It's the oldest, largest and most iconic motorsports event in the world, and not by a little. It's why F1 and NASCAR drivers have for decades been making the pilgrimage to Indianapolis in May.

Back in the 1960s, for instance, F1 stars Jim Clark and Graham Hill won the 500, and Jackie Stewart, Jochen Rindt, Denny Hulme and Jack Brabham raced in it. And between 1970 and 1973, Cale Yarborough, LeeRoy Yarbrough, Donnie Allison and Bobby Allison all ran the 500 as a side hustle from their stock-car racin'. 

The world didn't end. NASCAR didn't suffer from their brief absence. Cale and LeeRoy and the Allisons didn't suffer, either.

And, yeah, it's different now, because what was then called the World 600 didn't go head-to-head with the 500. On the other hand, Cup racing was strictly a points deal in those days; nowadays, the points accrued in any given race are only a means to an end -- the playoffs -- and Larson will have plenty of chances to make up for any points he lost by staying in Indianapolis. So there's that.

Truth is, this is NASCAR's fault, or rather the fault of NASCAR's hubris. It could easily solve the problem by moving the 600 to Memorial Day itself, or run it Saturday night instead of Sunday night. But this would be admitting the 500 is the bigger event, and too many in NASCAR are still laboring under the delusion that it's 25 or 30 years ago, when NASCAR was that aforementioned Colossus, and the 600 was bigger than the 500.

Those days, clearly, are long gone. IndyCar may still be the 500 and a largely anonymous bunch of street and road races, but NASCAR is a diminished presence itself. It's a case of aggravated living in the past to believe it can still go head-to-head with the Indianapolis 500 and win.

 Not the palmy days, no, sir. Not the palmy days at all.