... all concern the mystery back injury to Dustin Johnson, the world's No. 1 golfer and an odds-on favorite to win the Masters until he apparently screwed up his back yesterday by apparently falling down a flight of stairs.
Questions abound. Among them:
1. Is this a more bizarre athlete injury than former St. Louis Cardinal Vince Coleman getting eaten by that infamous tarp roller?
2. Is it more bizarre than Yankees pitcher Carl Pavano (another baseball player) rupturing his spleen while shoveling snow?
3. Is it more bizarre than Padres pitcher Adam Eaton (ANOTHER baseball player!) stabbing himself while trying to open a DVD?
4. And what is it with baseball players, anyway?
5. Are they the most hapless people on earth, except when they're playing baseball?
6. And could Dustin Johnson, who also once tweaked his back lifting a jet ski, have chosen the wrong sport?
7. I mean, he sounds like a baseball player to me.
Thursday, April 6, 2017
Wednesday, April 5, 2017
Ghosts of Augusta
The ghosts are everywhere in this place, accompanied by the hushed voice of Jim Nantz and the saccharine tinkling of ivories. At Augusta National, you hear that familiar theme music start up, it's like hearing that brooding bass line from "Jaws." You start looking for the shark.
And, no, not the Shark, Greg Norman. Though he's likely one of the ghosts.
His younger self is surely still out there somewhere, stumping mournfully through the Cathedral of Pines with his game unraveling around him. So is a younger Rory McIlroy, still looking for the ball he hit over by the cabins during his own unraveling. And so, presumably, is last year's version of Jordan Spieth -- a pale specter still visible late at night, some say, around the 12th green.
Listen closely. Is that a moan you hear, or just the wind?
Could be just the wind, but it's Masters week again, and so everyone is revisiting Spieth's haunted moment at the 12th hole a year ago. At 22, he was closing in on his second straight green jacket when he came to 12 on Sunday afternoon. And then disaster struck.
Two balls went swimming on him. Another landed on the beach. By the time Spieth limped away toward the 13th tee, he'd taken quadruple-bogey and someone named Danny Willett wound up wearing his green jacket.
And so, yes, Spieth has his own Augusta ghost now.
Or, again, maybe not.
Maybe not, because when he came to the 12th hole in a practice round yesterday, he damn near stuck it in the hole. His tee shot fetched up 14 inches or so from the cup, and he tapped it in.
So maybe there are no ghosts or gremlins or demons that haunt him here. Maybe he's mentally strong enough that the 12th will be just another hole for him this week.
If so, then it will be yet more proof that golf is a thing of the mind, and that the Masters more than any other event reveals as much. Or exposes as much.
A big swing helps here, a rapier short game helps more, but most of all it's the ability to get out of one's own head that wins for you here -- especially when things begin to go south, which to an alarming degree they seem to at Augusta.
It's a golf course that's not notably sinister until the leaders make that final turn into Amen Corner on Sunday afternoon, and then weird stuff commences happening. So much horror has descended there on Sundays that macabre jokes have grown up around it:
Q: Why do they have all those flowers?
A: To cover the graves.
And there are a lot of them, particularly on that back nine. Which, of course, conventional wisdom says is where the tournament actually begins on Sunday afternoon -- and where it's ended for so many.
Hence all those ghosts. So who'll be the next to join the pantheon?
Finding out is why we watch.
And, no, not the Shark, Greg Norman. Though he's likely one of the ghosts.
His younger self is surely still out there somewhere, stumping mournfully through the Cathedral of Pines with his game unraveling around him. So is a younger Rory McIlroy, still looking for the ball he hit over by the cabins during his own unraveling. And so, presumably, is last year's version of Jordan Spieth -- a pale specter still visible late at night, some say, around the 12th green.
Listen closely. Is that a moan you hear, or just the wind?
Could be just the wind, but it's Masters week again, and so everyone is revisiting Spieth's haunted moment at the 12th hole a year ago. At 22, he was closing in on his second straight green jacket when he came to 12 on Sunday afternoon. And then disaster struck.
Two balls went swimming on him. Another landed on the beach. By the time Spieth limped away toward the 13th tee, he'd taken quadruple-bogey and someone named Danny Willett wound up wearing his green jacket.
And so, yes, Spieth has his own Augusta ghost now.
Or, again, maybe not.
Maybe not, because when he came to the 12th hole in a practice round yesterday, he damn near stuck it in the hole. His tee shot fetched up 14 inches or so from the cup, and he tapped it in.
So maybe there are no ghosts or gremlins or demons that haunt him here. Maybe he's mentally strong enough that the 12th will be just another hole for him this week.
If so, then it will be yet more proof that golf is a thing of the mind, and that the Masters more than any other event reveals as much. Or exposes as much.
A big swing helps here, a rapier short game helps more, but most of all it's the ability to get out of one's own head that wins for you here -- especially when things begin to go south, which to an alarming degree they seem to at Augusta.
It's a golf course that's not notably sinister until the leaders make that final turn into Amen Corner on Sunday afternoon, and then weird stuff commences happening. So much horror has descended there on Sundays that macabre jokes have grown up around it:
Q: Why do they have all those flowers?
A: To cover the graves.
And there are a lot of them, particularly on that back nine. Which, of course, conventional wisdom says is where the tournament actually begins on Sunday afternoon -- and where it's ended for so many.
Hence all those ghosts. So who'll be the next to join the pantheon?
Finding out is why we watch.
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Cheaters prosper, blah-blah
Not much to say this morning about last night's One Shiner Moment, except that the Blob drifted off at halftime and missed the worst part of it, which happened when the stripes took the game hostage and turned the second half into a butt-ugly whistlefest.
Glad I missed it. Glad, too, I didn't have to watch North Carolina cut down the nets, because cheaters prospering has never been appointment TV for me.
And so yay, Tar Heels, who cares, and on to other things.
Patrick Ewing getting the Georgetown job, firstly. Tony Romo deciding he's had enough of getting various pieces of him broken, secondly.
The Ewing thing was a no-brainer, Georgetown keeping it in the most insular family in college buckets. Romo deciding to hang it up seems like a no-brainer, too, even though abundant evidence exists he could still probably play a little.
Some would say he could still play a lot, but the Blob has never been one of those. He's only a soon-to-be 37, but it's a very old 37, having played in parts of just five games the last two seasons because of collarbone and -- red alert here -- back injuries. And he was about to get released by the Cowboys, for whom he's the franchise leader in career passing yards (34,183), touchdowns (248) and QBR (97.1).
All of that is in the rearview, however. Even if he got picked up by another team, what was going to be left for an aging, beat-up star? Yes, it worked for Peyton Manning, but Romo, good as he used to be, is not Peyton Manning. And even for Peyton, it only lasted about three years before the tread started coming off for good.
Professional football has always been a balancing act between rewards and diminishing returns, and Romo obviously looked at the scales and saw them seriously tilted toward the latter. He's had a great career, but the prospects of him significantly adding to it at this point were minimal -- especially, again, coming off back surgery.
Back issues, after all, tend to be chronic. Just ask Tiger Woods, who isn't even getting hit periodically by 280-pound defensive ends.
And so, off Romo will go into broadcasting, the assisted living quarters for ex-jocks. Three networks are already lining up to hire him. And I'm sure all three can come up with a nice comfy chair for him to sit in.
What else does a 37-year-old with a bum back need?
Glad I missed it. Glad, too, I didn't have to watch North Carolina cut down the nets, because cheaters prospering has never been appointment TV for me.
And so yay, Tar Heels, who cares, and on to other things.
Patrick Ewing getting the Georgetown job, firstly. Tony Romo deciding he's had enough of getting various pieces of him broken, secondly.
The Ewing thing was a no-brainer, Georgetown keeping it in the most insular family in college buckets. Romo deciding to hang it up seems like a no-brainer, too, even though abundant evidence exists he could still probably play a little.
Some would say he could still play a lot, but the Blob has never been one of those. He's only a soon-to-be 37, but it's a very old 37, having played in parts of just five games the last two seasons because of collarbone and -- red alert here -- back injuries. And he was about to get released by the Cowboys, for whom he's the franchise leader in career passing yards (34,183), touchdowns (248) and QBR (97.1).
All of that is in the rearview, however. Even if he got picked up by another team, what was going to be left for an aging, beat-up star? Yes, it worked for Peyton Manning, but Romo, good as he used to be, is not Peyton Manning. And even for Peyton, it only lasted about three years before the tread started coming off for good.
Professional football has always been a balancing act between rewards and diminishing returns, and Romo obviously looked at the scales and saw them seriously tilted toward the latter. He's had a great career, but the prospects of him significantly adding to it at this point were minimal -- especially, again, coming off back surgery.
Back issues, after all, tend to be chronic. Just ask Tiger Woods, who isn't even getting hit periodically by 280-pound defensive ends.
And so, off Romo will go into broadcasting, the assisted living quarters for ex-jocks. Three networks are already lining up to hire him. And I'm sure all three can come up with a nice comfy chair for him to sit in.
What else does a 37-year-old with a bum back need?
Monday, April 3, 2017
Snoop dogs
We all know golf is kind of a bizarre sport anyway, what with John Daly's retina-searing pants, and the occasional tendency for even the best players to lapse inexplicably into weekend hacker mode, and all the evil gremlins who lie in wait to grab your ball and throw it in the water, or the sand, or the deep, deep woods.
But the notion that some guy living in his mom's basement can report a rules violation that changes the course of a tournament truly takes the game to Wack City.
There is no analogy for this in any other sport, which golfers somehow take as a point of pride but which actually is an indictment of their sport's innate weirdness. And it doesn't get much weirder than what happened Sunday to Lexi Thompson.
What happened was, Mom's Basement Guy likely cost her a major.
An e-mail from some sad-sack TV viewer compelled rules officials to review something that happened not on Sunday but on the day before. What happened was, Thompson marked her ball an inch or so incorrectly on one hole. Sad Sack apparently noticed in this, and, not having a life of his own, ratted her out.
And so a two-shot lead for Thompson magically became a two-shot deficit after officials docked her a four-stroke penalty -- again, for something that happened in the preceding round. And she lost in a playoff.
Which is pure unadulterated bull you-know-what.
The Blob has said this before, and it will say it again: There is no way, none, that some clown sitting at home watching on TV should be able to impact a golf tournament in this way. Frankly, it makes your sport a joke. And both the PGA and LPGA should forthwith make it illegal.
Here's the deal: The ruling bodies of golf have rules officials on the course to detect just these kinds of violations (and this one, frankly, was picayunish even by golf standards). It's their job to see these things and rule accordingly. It is not the job of Mom's Basement Guy -- and it's especially not the job of Mom's Basement Guy to report something from a round that's already official.
Sorry, but if the rules officials miss something, they miss something. That's how it works everywhere else, and that's how it should work in golf. Especially in cases, like this one, where no one can definitively say that Thompson mis-marking her ball by a fingernail on a tap-in accorded her an unfair advantage.
If you can't say that, you shouldn't be able to go back after the fact and enact a penalty on the say-so of some anonymous viewer. You missed the call. Move on.
There are no do-overs in life. There shouldn't be in golf, either.
But the notion that some guy living in his mom's basement can report a rules violation that changes the course of a tournament truly takes the game to Wack City.
There is no analogy for this in any other sport, which golfers somehow take as a point of pride but which actually is an indictment of their sport's innate weirdness. And it doesn't get much weirder than what happened Sunday to Lexi Thompson.
What happened was, Mom's Basement Guy likely cost her a major.
An e-mail from some sad-sack TV viewer compelled rules officials to review something that happened not on Sunday but on the day before. What happened was, Thompson marked her ball an inch or so incorrectly on one hole. Sad Sack apparently noticed in this, and, not having a life of his own, ratted her out.
And so a two-shot lead for Thompson magically became a two-shot deficit after officials docked her a four-stroke penalty -- again, for something that happened in the preceding round. And she lost in a playoff.
Which is pure unadulterated bull you-know-what.
The Blob has said this before, and it will say it again: There is no way, none, that some clown sitting at home watching on TV should be able to impact a golf tournament in this way. Frankly, it makes your sport a joke. And both the PGA and LPGA should forthwith make it illegal.
Here's the deal: The ruling bodies of golf have rules officials on the course to detect just these kinds of violations (and this one, frankly, was picayunish even by golf standards). It's their job to see these things and rule accordingly. It is not the job of Mom's Basement Guy -- and it's especially not the job of Mom's Basement Guy to report something from a round that's already official.
Sorry, but if the rules officials miss something, they miss something. That's how it works everywhere else, and that's how it should work in golf. Especially in cases, like this one, where no one can definitively say that Thompson mis-marking her ball by a fingernail on a tap-in accorded her an unfair advantage.
If you can't say that, you shouldn't be able to go back after the fact and enact a penalty on the say-so of some anonymous viewer. You missed the call. Move on.
There are no do-overs in life. There shouldn't be in golf, either.
That old Opening Day angst
It was Opening Day in baseball yesterday, which for the Blob meant the ceremonial Donning Of The Roberto Clemente Jersey, and for fans of the Chicago Cubs a moment of wrenching dismay when they realized they weren't going to go 162-0 this year just because of all that ending-the-jinx nonsense.
Final score last night: The Evil St. Louis Cardinals 4, Our Brave Lads 3.
Possible fan reactions: I KNEW it! Last year was just an elaborate setup for THE MOST SOUL-CRUSHING LETDOWN OF THEM ALL!
Also, Kris Bryant went hitless and struck out three times.
Possible fan reaction: I KNEW it! We brought him up too early! He should have STAYED IN THE MINORS FOR MORE SEASONING!
And so on. And so on.
Final score last night: The Evil St. Louis Cardinals 4, Our Brave Lads 3.
Possible fan reactions: I KNEW it! Last year was just an elaborate setup for THE MOST SOUL-CRUSHING LETDOWN OF THEM ALL!
Also, Kris Bryant went hitless and struck out three times.
Possible fan reaction: I KNEW it! We brought him up too early! He should have STAYED IN THE MINORS FOR MORE SEASONING!
And so on. And so on.
One shin(er) moment
So now the only thing that stands between America and the exposure of What Mom Used To Say is a (relatively) small Jesuit school from Spokane, Wash.
That would be Gonzaga, maligned as an imposter all season, now playing for the national championship tomorrow night. The Zags did it by matching grit with grit against a South Carolina team that never quits and makes you crawl over 10 miles of broken glass to beat it. Gonzaga did that, but only after the Gamecocks once again expended their last available breath.
And so on to Monday night, and the aforementioned collision with Mom's homilies.
One of which was always "Cheaters never prosper."
Prepare for that one to go up in flames.
That's because North Carolina survived Oregon's furious last-minute rush last night, twice collecting offensive rebounds after twice missing both ends of a two-shot foul in the dying seconds. The final was 77-76, and Oregon fans will forever point to Carolina's 17 offensive boards and the double-double of Kennedy Meeks, and wonder if injured big man Chris Boucher might have turned that around.
And so now we get Gonzaga against North Carolina, a school whose attorneys might well be the Tar Heels' MVP. That's because they've successfully lawyered the NCAA to a standstill in its attempt to get to the bottom of (and levy judgment on) an academic scandal widely regarded as the most egregious in NCAA history.
It's been two years now since the NCAA informed UNC it was investigating the scandal, which involved steering alleged "student-athletes" in mostly the money sports (football and basketball) into imaginary courses. Incredibly, this went on 18 years, during which the "student-athletes" were allegedly allowed to plagiarize freely on papers for which they received inflated grades, and to employ tutors to write papers for them.
And, of course, to get credit for courses that didn't exist.
Carolina has spent $18 million in legal fees to roadblock the investigation of that, and it's about to reap the benefits: Another NCAA title for its men's basketball team.
If you're with the NCAA, you've got to be the biggest Gonzaga fan walking right now. Even if you can't say so.
A Carolina win, after all, would once again expose big-ticket college athletics for what it is, a business venture that has little to do with a university's academic mission. At bottom, basketball at North Carolina is an industry with a corporate culture indistinguishable from that of any other industry. The school serves merely to provide it with a marketable identity.
But this is old news. A Tar Heels victory would only make it more glaringly obvious.
One Shining Moment?
If you're the NCAA, more like One Shiner Moment.
That would be Gonzaga, maligned as an imposter all season, now playing for the national championship tomorrow night. The Zags did it by matching grit with grit against a South Carolina team that never quits and makes you crawl over 10 miles of broken glass to beat it. Gonzaga did that, but only after the Gamecocks once again expended their last available breath.
And so on to Monday night, and the aforementioned collision with Mom's homilies.
One of which was always "Cheaters never prosper."
Prepare for that one to go up in flames.
That's because North Carolina survived Oregon's furious last-minute rush last night, twice collecting offensive rebounds after twice missing both ends of a two-shot foul in the dying seconds. The final was 77-76, and Oregon fans will forever point to Carolina's 17 offensive boards and the double-double of Kennedy Meeks, and wonder if injured big man Chris Boucher might have turned that around.
And so now we get Gonzaga against North Carolina, a school whose attorneys might well be the Tar Heels' MVP. That's because they've successfully lawyered the NCAA to a standstill in its attempt to get to the bottom of (and levy judgment on) an academic scandal widely regarded as the most egregious in NCAA history.
It's been two years now since the NCAA informed UNC it was investigating the scandal, which involved steering alleged "student-athletes" in mostly the money sports (football and basketball) into imaginary courses. Incredibly, this went on 18 years, during which the "student-athletes" were allegedly allowed to plagiarize freely on papers for which they received inflated grades, and to employ tutors to write papers for them.
And, of course, to get credit for courses that didn't exist.
Carolina has spent $18 million in legal fees to roadblock the investigation of that, and it's about to reap the benefits: Another NCAA title for its men's basketball team.
If you're with the NCAA, you've got to be the biggest Gonzaga fan walking right now. Even if you can't say so.
A Carolina win, after all, would once again expose big-ticket college athletics for what it is, a business venture that has little to do with a university's academic mission. At bottom, basketball at North Carolina is an industry with a corporate culture indistinguishable from that of any other industry. The school serves merely to provide it with a marketable identity.
But this is old news. A Tar Heels victory would only make it more glaringly obvious.
One Shining Moment?
If you're the NCAA, more like One Shiner Moment.
Saturday, April 1, 2017
April Fool's from college hoops
And now your April Fool's joke for this April Fool's Day, brought to you by the NCAA women's Final Four:
Mississippi State Beats UConn In OT!
No, really. The April Fool's joke, see, is that this is no April Fool's joke. It actually happened.
Now that's an April Fool's joke.
Mississippi State Beats UConn In OT!
No, really. The April Fool's joke, see, is that this is no April Fool's joke. It actually happened.
Now that's an April Fool's joke.
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