A trading post

 Comes now that time of the baseball season (The Day After The Trade Deadline in official title-dom) when the Blob pauses for a brief spasm of self-indulgence, which is to say crabbing about my Pittsburgh Cruds and their never-ending pursuit of irrelevance.

And, yes, I can hear you already with the usual "Nobody cares about your stupid Pirates", and your "We gotta listen to this AGAIN?", and also your "Oh, no! Not another brief spasm of self-indulgence!"

My response to that is, get bent. Here's a hall pass. Go wherever you go when the Blob escapes the Sportsball World compound to contemplate the lunacy that is the United States of 'Merica in 2025.

Me, I'm gonna bitch about my Cruds.

Who once again contributed to baseball's under-privileged by dealing David Bednar to the New York Yankees for some magic beans and three, ahem, "prospects."  In return, the Yankees got a pretty-darn-good closer -- a former All-Star, even -- who has 17 saves and 51 strikeouts in 38 innings work.

He's given up 32 hits, two home runs and 10 earned runs in those same 38 frames, and his ERA is 2.37.

These are admittedly not lights-out numbers, but Bednar wasn't pitching for a lights-out team. He was pitching for the Cruds, currently cemented in the NL Central cellar with a 47-62 record. And that's after going 8-2 in their last 10 games and reeling off five straight wins.

Anyway, they're still 17 1/2 games behind the front-running Milwaukee Brewers, and 7 1/2 games out of next-to-last. So off Bednar goes to the Yankees, and off starting third-baseman Ke'Bryan Hayes goes to the division rival Reds.

"Does this mean the Cruds, er, Pirates are giving up on the season, Mr. Blob?" you're saying.

Nah. They gave up on the season in spring training, same as they do every year after craftily avoiding spending money all winter. Other teams are occasional trading posts; the Cruds are a trading post, in the sense that they're an insensate piece of wood that never moves. Their cheapskate owner -- we'll call him "Bob Nutting" -- seems content to collect revenue-sharing dough and milk what he can from one of the prettiest venues in the majors (PNC Park), all while operating his club as a sort of farm-team-to-the-stars.

Send us your "prospects," we'll develop 'em. Then we'll send 'em back to you when they get good enough to command real money. That's the deal.

Hence, goodbye Bednar (and Hayes). Hence, goodbye Oneal Cruz and maybe even Paul Skenes down the road, although those two seem to be the Cruds' only untouchables right now.

Untouchability, of course, being both relative and fluid where the Cruds are concerned.

"You sound bitter, Mr. Blob," you're saying now.

Who, me?

Nah, I'm not bitter. I'm just resigned. Also I wish Roberto Clemente would come down from his heavenly abode and start swinging a bat at a few heads while shouting "These are the Pittsburgh Pirates, you damn fools! The Pittsburgh Pirates!"

Which I guess means I'm deranged as well as resigned. Ah, well.

Summer's shortening arc

 The Chargers play the Lions tonight in the Hall of Fame Game, and again I think what I always think: "What, already?"

I mean, this can't be the beginning of the NFL hogging every Thursday night until literally next year, can it?

Heck, the Rockies haven't even lost 100 games yet. How can summer be on the wane?

But then I look at the calendar, and see that, yes, August begins tomorrow. Which means high school football is only three Fridays off, and kids head back to school in these parts a week from today.

A week. From. Today.

The arc of summer shortens with every year. Or so it inevitably seems when you've seen 71 of them, and remember when summer stretched all the way from Memorial Day to Labor Day and didn't cheat us out of a whole month.

Now?

Now summer is June and July, and then here comes the NFL and school starting up again, and even though the celestial calendar says there are still six weeks or so left until fall,  it feels like summer is done like dinner. The neighborhood baseball diamonds stand empty. The back-to-school sales are at flood tide. The other day I walked through some big-box store and saw candy corn for sale, and gold-and-orange wreaths decorated with pumpkins on display.

And I realized summer had slipped out the back way when I wasn't looking.

Good lord, wasn't the MLB All-Star Game -- the Mid-Summer Classic -- just a couple of weeks ago? (It was). Wasn't the Fourth of July yesterday? (Seems like it was). And when did I get so damn old I started crabbing about how BACK IN MY DAY summer lasted longer than the Punic Wars?

Because it did. No, really. 

Now, don't get me wrong. I love the fall. I love everything about it: Cool evenings and crystalline blue-sky days and football Friday nights. I love cider. I love donuts. I love the first time you step outside and there's a chill in the air, and you realize it's time to break out the Whatsamatta U. sweatshirts again.

I love fall almost as much as I loathe Dryer-Vent Season in summer -- you know, those several weeks when you step outside and it feels like you're standing in front of a dryer vent. On those days, I want fall to begin yesterday.

But last night it rained and today a front's supposed to blow Dryer-Vent Season back to hell where it belongs, and tonight the Chargers scrubs do battle with the Lions scrubs. And the other night I was sitting out on the deck, and a parade of kids on bicycles went by -- four, five, six of them riding nose-to-tail -- and it felt like a celebration of sorts, one last salute to summer before it ends.

Or maybe that was just my imagination running away from me again.

Running away like summer, you might say.

Wrasslin' with image

 It was all just a bizarre coincidence. No, really. Bring me a stack of that book the President of the United States has never read and I'll swear on it.

I will swear, so help me God, that the other day when I made an offhand reference to the WNBA getting perilously close to WWE country, I did NOT know there was someone out there who actually wants to do that. 

Well, sort of.

Here's the deal: As reported on the website Awful Announcing, last week the co-founder and owner of Women Of Wrestling, Dave McLane, said he'd love so see Sophie Cunningham of the Indiana Fever step into the ring at one of his event. And then Jeannie Buss of the Los Angeles Lakers, the other WOW co-founder, said she'd love it, too.

Now, if you don't know who Sophie Cunningham is, you've either been living in a snowdrift in the high Andes or you're still operating on dial-up. Cunningham, see, is that tall blonde looker you see showing up for games in alarmingly short skirts, and who functions as Caitlin Clark's oncourt muscle. Think Luca Brasi, only with better legs.

Mess with Caitlin, Sophie messes with you. She can also play a little, which doesn't hurt.

The problem with that is every time Sophie messes with someone, she contributes to the widening perception that the WNBA is a goon league full of cheap-shot Betty Laimbeers. This is not to single out Cunningham, who has had lots of help in advancing that unfortunate rep. She's even been on the receiving end of the goonery on occasion.

However ...

However, when a huckster like McLane says she's "the Marty McSorley to Wayne Gretzky," that's a problem. Basketball is not supposed to be hockey, although occasionally (the 1990s NBA, ahem) it's looked as if it would like to be. And when you start comparing the WNBA's players to legendary NHL enforcers ...

Well. This is surely not the image league president Cathy Engelbert was banking on when Clark hit the WNBA like a whirlwind last summer and sent the league into the stratosphere in exposure and popularity. 

With added exposure comes added scrutiny, see, and that's veering increasingly toward a net loss for Engelbert and her league. Oh, they cashed in on the Caitlin Effect with a chunky new TV deal, but as more and more fans and media have tuned in, they've more and more not liked what they've seen.

The officiating, for one thing, is disturbingly wretched, an object of increasing ridicule and the main culprit in all the WWE stuff. Everyone's seen Clark get knocked around with impunity, in part because the camera's always on her. But she isn't the only high-end player subjected to the rough stuff, and it's become an annoying question that buzzes around Engelbert's head like a fly: Why doesn't your league better protect its stars? Is it because it can't, or it won't?

And now a couple of pro wrestling execs want to put one of your most visible players in the ring?

Sophie Cunningham in tights, bashing Hellzapoppin' Heidi or someone with a folding chair. Executing the Sophie Smash off the top rope to take out Valkyrie Val. Or how about an all-WNBA  grudge match between Sophie and the Queen of Mean, Joltin' Jacy Sheldon?

Oh, yes. That's just what the WNBA needs.

Not.

Lyin' down with dogs

 For the second time in as many weeks a Cleveland Guardians pitcher has been caught up in an online betting probe, and, like Claude Rains in "Casablanca," I am shocked, shocked. Imagine, gambling soiling our national game again. And after all that hoo-ha about the 1919 Black Sox, and also Pete Rose.

But star reliever Emmanuel Clase has been placed on leave just as starter Luis Ortiz was last week, and maybe the cases are related and maybe they aren't. All we know right now is Ortiz was flagged by "a betting integrity firm" (now there's an oxymoron for you) because of in-game prop bets on two pitches he threw back in June.

Apparently a whole pile of folks with their eyes glued to their betting apps dropped coin on those two pitches, which the Betting Integrity Firm noticed, flagged and sent on to MLB.

Me?

Right now I'm remembering an old saying: Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.

By which I mean it's a lack-of-self-awareness world record for MLB to pretend to care about Betting Integrity when it's green-lighting the Oakland A's to become the Las Vegas A's a couple of years down the road. Or when it enters into a partnership with FanDuel, the official MLB online betting site.

That's a hell of a fence for baseball commissioner Rob Manfred and the gang to straddle, and perhaps only an absent self-awareness gene could make it possible. You'd think they'd want to get as far away from the gambling culture as possible, given baseball's traditionally severe stance post-Black Sox. But, nah. They're all in, as the saying goes.

There's money in them there prop bets, as the saying also kinda goes. So why not shrug at the jarring dissonance of promoting gambling while also condemning it?

And why get all righteous when you send such mixed messages to the players?

Do not bet on the game, gentlemen. That is the third rail of baseball. Betting on the game is very, very bad. Those who do it will be dealt with very, very severely.

Also, here's a sponsor patch from FanDuel. Make sure you display it prominently.

You can almost hear them saying it, can't you?

Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. Oh, you, um, bet.

And here are your winnings, Mr. Manfred.

Most Valuable Human

 Cancer took Ryne Sandberg from us yesterday, and if it's a cliche to say the world is a poorer place this morning because of that, I'm going to say it anyway.  Because the world is a poorer place because of it.

Every Cubs fan I knew wanted to be Ryne Sandberg in his salad days, see, or at least that's how I remember it. He could hit, he could field, and he was the very soul of a franchise that went to the playoffs twice in the 1980s after they'd been, well, the Cubs pretty much since the end of World War II. 

Which is to say, losers. Lovable sometimes, and merely losers at others. But consistent about it.

And then came Ryne Sandberg, sort of. Allow me to explain.

Begin with the fact that, in the 1982 trade with the Phillies that turned the Bear Cubs around, Sandberg was not the headline name. He was just a struggling kid in the Phillies' organization then, having gone 1-for-6 in his 13-game debut with the big club in '81. You couldn't quite call him a throw-in on the deal, but he wasn't Larry Bowa or Bobby Dernier or even Keith Moreland, the names in the trade everyone knew.

Sandberg?

Well, the '82 season would be his first full summer in the bigs. And he'd spend it in Wrigley Field, a circumstance that might or might not have been thick with portent. Because where do you suppose he got that one hit during his cup of coffee with the Phils in '81?

Thaaat's right, boys and girls. The Friendly Confines.

Anyway, here he came  along with Bowa and Dernier and the rest, working hard to learn his craft. And before long, Ryne Sandberg became, well, Ryne Sandberg.

He broke out for good in 1984, when he batted .314 with 19 home runs, 19 triples and 32 stolen bases and was the National League MVP. Hit two late jacks that summer to win what forever after would be known as The Sandberg Game. Led the Cubs to the playoffs for the first time since Andy Pafko was patrolling center field. 

They blew a 3-1 lead and lost to the Padres, of course -- hello, Leon "Wickets" Durham -- but they were no longer losers. In '89 they reached the playoffs again, as Sandberg batted .290 with 30 homers, 76 RBI and 301 total bases. By then, of course, he was no longer Ryne Sandberg but Ryno, and Mr. Cub to the Wrigley faithful in a way no one had been since the OG Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks.

Not that Ryno would have ever cottoned to such sacrilege.

What set him apart, always, was not just that he was good at everything on a ballfield, but that he was good at life, too. He was a family man who played the game with visible joy, and he was reflexively humble about it all. That he was also a notorious clubhouse prankster no one ever got mad at because of his incorrigible good humor and that damned smile of his was a testament to (for lack of a better term) his innate goodness.

He was a Most Valuable Player, and also a Most Valuable Human. Which is why, yes, every Cubs fan wanted to be him, and  why no opponent ever had a bad word to say about him anyone remembers.

In his later years he'd become a manager and a coach and mentor to the kids coming up, and none of them had anything bad to say about him, either, because he never talked down to them and always knew how to massage the flaws in their game.

Several of them said just that in Jesse Rogers' ESPN piece on Sandberg today. A pile of Ryno's contemporaries chimed in, too -- including Bowa, who remembered the way the young Sandberg used to come in early that first summer in Chicago to hit and hit and hit under the watchful eye of Cubs manager Jim Frey.

"I think about how handled himself when he first got called up," Bowa said. "He struggled out of the gate. I watched this guy not let it affect him. It might have affected him on the inside, but the way he handled himself on the outside was great."

Reading that takes me back my own Ryne Sandberg moment, which is actually not a Ryne Sandberg moment at all. It was actually a moment involving the man being quoted, Bowa, in the first days of those new-look Cubs of '82.

They opened that season in Cincinnati, where the Reds still traditionally kicked off Opening Day for all of major-league baseball. That was a big deal in those days, and so our paper -- the late, great Anderson (In.) Daily Bulletin -- always covered it.

So there I was, venturing into the visitors clubhouse because, let's face it, the new-look Cubs were the story that day. I wormed my way into the scrum surrounding Bowa, and asked him if, in addition to his obvious skills, if perhaps the Cubs traded for him because of his leadership abilities, too.

Larry didn't like that.

"What do you mean?" he snapped. "They got me because I can play! I can play!"

Young guy that I was, I thought it was a terrible thing, getting yelled at by Larry Bowa. Later, of course, I found out Bowa yelled at a lot of people in those days, and I felt somewhat better about it.

Know what I don't feel better about, on this day when all of baseball mourns an MVH?

That somewhere in that clubhouse was Ryne Sandberg, before he was Ryne Sandberg. And that, because he wasn't yet Ryne Sandberg, I never thought to seek him out for a comment. I might not have even known his name.

Sure do now, though. Sure do now.

Bubba

 It was Brickyard 400 weekend in Indy Saturday and Sunday, and damned if I forgot about it until the weekend was upon us. This either speaks volumes about my old-man brain, or about the Brickyard's diminished status in the motorsports firmament.

A bit of both, I'm thinking.

Oh, NASCAR still hypes the Brickyard as one of its official Crown Jewels, but that feels  like hollow courtesy these days. Sunday, a half-empty IMS spoke louder. In front of all those closed-off grandstands and here-and-there clumps of breathing humans, it felt like just another stock car race.

Until Bubba Wallace happened.

The man in the livery of Michael Jordan's race team had won a handful of Cup races, but he'd never won anything like the Brickyard 400. Yet there he was at the front of the field as the laps peeled away Sunday, trying to hold off onrushing defending champion Kyle Larson and stretch his last tank of gas to the finish at the same time.

And then ...

And then it rained. With six laps to go.

The red flag came out two laps later, and there we were, four laps to run and the field sitting in line in the pits for 18 minutes that must felt to Wallace like 18 centuries. The track was dried, the field ran the remaining four laps under yellow while Wallace's gas gauge trembled, and it was on to one of those damnable green-white-checker finishes.

(Why four laps under yellow before dropping the green, you ask? I don't know. Made zero sense to me, but I wasn't trying to manufacture a green-white-checker finish like NASCAR so clearly seemed to be doing. They're big into that sort of manipulation, it seems.)

Anyway, the green dropped, Wallace sailed away and, sure, of course, two numbskulls ran into each other behind him, bringing on a second green-white-checker. By this time it felt as if the racing gods had it in for him: Think you're gonna win, Bubba? Ha! We'll make it rain, then we'll make a couple of numbskulls run into each other, and, oh, by the way, how's your fuel situation?

Which is where history itself stepped in with a reply: Just fine.

Just fine, because the green dropped again, Wallace fled again, and this time there was no catching him. A couple of laps later he was crossing the yard of brick under the checkered flag, and the Brickyard 400 had the sort of moment for which it had been starving for years.

Bubba Wallace,  Brickyard champion. Bubba Wallace, first black driver in 116 years to win a race of any kind at the most iconic site in motorsports.

It was yet another historic moment at a place that breathes history like air because it has seen so much of it, and whose sustaining cache is that almost no other motorsports venue has seen more. It's gone from Harroun and DePalma and Milton and Lockhart to Arnold and Meyer and Shaw and Rose; from Vukovich to Ward to Foyt to all those Andrettis and Unsers.

Gordon and Earnhardt and Jimmie Johnson? Yep, they're in there. Schumacher and Barrichello and Hakkinen, too. Castroneves, Franchitti, Dixon, Guthrie, Patrick ... on and on it goes.

And now, Bubba Wallace. Who adds his own unique piece to a seemingly unending tapestry.

Racing gods and forgetful old men be hanged.

Happy-ness is a sequel

 Dialed up "Happy Gilmore 2" the other day in defiance of all the alarm bells clanging in my head, because the only thing in filmdom guaranteed to flop worse than a sports-movie sequel is a comedy sports-movie sequel. 

It's why you likely never saw "Major League 2" or "Major League 3," even though some lint brain in Hollywood green-lit those unfortunate projects. It's why you also likely never realized there were also three "Bad News Bears" movies in the original franchise, plus a 2005 remake of the original, plus a short-lived "Bad News Bears" TV series.

Many more sports-movie sequels never got made, on account of there was pretty much nowhere left to go at the conclusion of the original. "Rudy 2" would have been just Rudy Ruettiger making bank off what happened in the original "Rudy" for the rest of his natural life. And "Secretariat 2"? 

That might have been the first equine porn film, given it would just be endless shots of Secretariat at stud. "Seccy Does Claiborne Farm," roll tape.

However ...

However, "Happy Gilmore 2" works. And a lot of the reason it works is not because of Adam Sandler, but because Adam Sandler talked a number of golfing icons into poking fun at themselves in a frankly ridiculous (but hilarious) plot.

Is Jack Nicklaus in this thing, in other words?

You're damn right Jack Nicklaus is in this thing.

Are Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Scottie Scheffler in it?

You're damn right they are.

Does Rory get hit in the 'nads in a batting cage (don't ask)? Does even the famously colorless  Brooks play along with the silliness? Does Verne Lundquist play Verne Lundquist to the hilt, and do Scottie and John Daly pretty much steal the film?

You're damn right they do.

The Blob will not be That Guy and throw out a bunch of spoilers, except to say Daly is priceless as a sort of couch-potato philosopher king and Scottie perfectly deadpans his famous brush with the law. But if Sandler gets his laughs, and Christopher MacDonald gets his flowers as Shooter McGavin, and the blatant parody of the Liv Golf Tour is fun, it's the golfers, and those in their orbit, who make "Happy Gilmore 2" worth the watch.

Heck. Even Brooks Koepka looked like he was having a blast.