Survival of the grittiest

 Ninety years old, for God's sake. How the hell does A.J. Foyt Jr. still walk among us, at such an ancient age?

How did he survive those lovely but wicked old front-engine Offys, which were immovable objects meeting another immovable object when they got up into a speedway wall? And which vibrated so badly at speed A.J. said he had to occasionally bang his hand against the cockpit to get some feeling back in it?

How did he survive getting upside-down in a stock car at Riverside one day, and would have died right then if Parnelli Jones hadn't scooped a bunch of dirt out of his airway? How did he survive the day, in his racing dotage, when his brakes failed going into a corner at Elkhart Lake and he plowed into an embankment so hard it nearly destroyed his feet?

Told the first track workers on the scene to just hit him in the head with a hammer, ol' A.J. did. Even the toughest man in motorsports wasn't up to dealing with that kind of pain fully conscious.

And yet ...

And yet here he was turning 90 yesterday, the living embodiment of survival of the grittiest. Still ambulatory. Breathing less fire than in the  olden days, but still breathing nonetheless. Still showing up at Indy every May with his race team, for whom a kid almost young enough to be his great-grandchild now drives his iconic No. 14.

Santino Ferrucci, after all, is 26 years old. That's 64 years younger than his race team's patriarch, if I've got the math right. And yet here the patriarch still is, keeping watch.

They say A.J. Foyt Jr. never met a race car he couldn't drive the wheels off of, and he's got the resume to prove it. The man won the Daytona 500 in a stock car and the 24 Hours of LeMans in one of Carroll Shelby's Ford GT40s, and of course the Indianapolis 500 four times in an IndyCar. Had he ever gotten the urge to hop the pond and race Formula 1, he probably would have won a couple Monacos or Zandvoorts, too.

The corollary to all of the above, of course, is if A.J. never met a race car he couldn't drive, he also never met one that could kill him, either. 

You can call that luck or skill or plain old barbed-wire contrariness, because as fascinating and (dare we say) charming as he could be when he was in a good mood, he could stop a rattlesnake with one Texas Death Stare when things weren't going well. What was astounding about that, naturally, was how often it coincided with the appearance of some callow reporter with a microphone or a tape recorder.

Quick story: Once many years ago I was following a young radio reporter who was following A.J. back to Gasoline Alley. The poor kid might have been even younger than I was, and I was a mere pup. Anyway, he sidled up to A.J., matching him stride for stride, and stuck a mic under his chin while asking him questions in what was, frankly, an annoyingly obsequious whisper.

After a few steps, A.J. pulled up short and rounded on the kid.

"Get that f****in' thing outta my face," he snarled.

I like to think that's why the man is still with us, at 90 years of age. I like to think, all the times death waved its infamous scythe at him through the years, that A.J. Foyt Jr. looked him square in the eye and once more snarled, "Get that f***in' thing outta my face."

If the man ever needs an epitaph, I say that's it.

The soul of the game

 The news reports all say Bob Uecker was 90 years old when he passed yesterday, but that only paints the outside corner of the truth. He might have been 90 as the chronology flies, but we all know he was really 90 going on 12.

No one loved a thing that didn't love him back the way Bob Uecker loved baseball, a child's game for which Ueck never lost the joy of a child. If his playing career was notable only for its lack of notability, everything that came after was peanuts and Cracker Jacks  and everything else wonderful about our most American of pastimes.

If the game had a soul, Ueck was it. That's all the eulogy the man needs, really.

Making fun of his undistinguished playing career was his main schtick, but playing baseball for laughs was only a side hustle. If his devotion to the game went no deeper than that, he'd never have spent more than half a century calling Milwaukee Brewers games, almost until the day he died. He'd never have become known as "Mr. Baseball" for doing that, nor been inducted into the Hall of Fame as a broadcaster.

His service to baseball, in other words, went far beyond Miller Lite commercials and cracking up Johnny Carson with funny stories on the "Tonight" show. That served the game, too, of course, simply by making us see it through the wondering eyes of that aforementioned 12-year-old.

For the former, he will forever be venerated. For the latter, he will forever be cherished as the grown man who took us all back to the days when baseball was a cracked bat held together with nails, and Billy's jacket and Jerry's sweatshirt were the bases, and we were all Ernie Banks or Al Kaline or Roberto Clemente or Willie Mays.

There was magic in that, somehow. And Bob Uecker, bless his inner child, brought it home to us.

Which means Ueck's most iconic Miller Lite bit, and his iconic line in it, had it wrong all along, you see.

Turns out he was always in the front row.

Diminishment

 On Monday night in Atlanta, Marcus Freeman will become the first black head coach to take part in a football national championship game, although it's no longer politically correct to bring that up. It's Just Not Relevant anymore, don't you see.

This is the new zeitgeist in America, this diminishment of achievement by traditionally under-represented minorities. It's never framed that way, of course. Rather, it's framed as something we don't need to hear anymore, because we're now a color-blind nation that regards recognition by class or race as passe, if not racist itself.

Which, to borrow from Steely Dan, is pretzel logic of a particularly devious variety. Or so it says here.

Understand, it's not that we shouldn't be a nation in which achievement is color-blind; Freeman himself has taken that position on his historical significance. And to be clear, Coach is absolutely right when he says this.  

However.

However, to paint it as bad form even to mention that significance takes us in the opposite direction of the diminishers' alleged ideal. Whether that's by design, or just a lack of awareness, depends on who we're talking about.

For instance: There is a certain species of American who clearly uses this kumbaya vision  as cover to reset whatever hegemony it thinks it's lost. We all know who these people are; they rarely try to hide it anymore. They're the point of the spear in the current effort to Protect Our Children (because so many societal muzzlings are justified that way) from "pornography", if not the insidiousness of the written word itself.

The written word, surprise, surprise, often being the word written by minority authors or those who explore minority themes. Your Toni Morrisons, your James Baldwins, your Maya Angleous, even your Mark Twains or Harper Lees.

The people who want to keep these authors away from their kids often cite "woke indoctrination" as their justification. In so doing. of course, they're practicing their own de facto indoctrination, an obvious hypocrisy they always miss.

And, yeah, OK, before you say anything, I know it seems I've strayed a good ways from my original point. Perhaps. But even if no one else does, I see a thread running from "Why do we always have to mention it when a black person does something for the first time?" to  "Why do we need to expose our children to authors who explore 'divisive' themes? Give 'em books about Columbus instead."

Presumably only the "In 1492, Columbus sailed the blue" version, of course.

An Indiana sighting, Part ...

 ... oh, never mind.

Never mind, because last night, in the archeological dig that used to be Assembly Hall, even the students quit on your Indiana Hoosiers. According to published reports, they started heading back to their dorms at halftime, with the Hoosiers down 28 to an Illinois team that had just lost at home to a fairly beige USC team.

By the middle of the second half, everyone else had quit on the Hoo-Hoos, too, with the place two-thirds empty by that point, again according to published reports. This can be excused, frankly. Doesn't everyone leave when a game is over?

Pretty soon it actually was, with Illinois on the high side of a 94-69 blowout. It was the second 25-point loss for Mike Woodson's crew in 72 hours, and the final score was something of a cheat; the Illini led by 32 before head coach Brad Underwood cleared his bench and the Hoosiers knocked down a couple of threes in the last five minutes or so.

One supposes the latter was the law of averages at work. No one can miss 'em all -- not even an Indiana team that was 0-of-13 from Threeville before Trey Galloway finally got one to bed down with 5:50 to play.

They finished 4-of-18 from the arc, a 22.2 percent clip that sadly is more or less a typical success rate for the Hoosiers these days.

Illinois, on the other hand, made 11 threes in 32 tries -- many of them uncontested because Indiana consistently was late on switches and less than zealous in getting out on the shooter. It was emblematic of the entire evening, as the Illini consistently beat the Hoosiers to loose balls and rebounds, outboarding them 51-37 including 16-8 on the offensive glass.

Rebounding, some wise old X-and-O guy once said, is nothing but effort. Draw your own conclusions from that.

Oh, Indiana did show some life, briefly, scoring the first 10 points of the second half to cut the gap (OK, so it was more of a chasm than a gap) to 18. But before long Illinois had pumped it back up to 28, 29, 30 again, and that was that.

But what was that, exactly? And where did back-to-back blowout losses come from after the Hoosiers had strung together five straight victories and risen to a tie for third in the Big Ten standings?

Woodson had no answers last night, an increasingly prevalent response to Indiana's bewildering no-shows. All he could say was he had to make some changes, which is what he always says.

What those changes might be is anyone's guess. Steve Alford's in his 50s now and busy coaching his own team, and ditto for Calbert Cheaney, who's now Indiana's director of basketball operations. So no help there.

In any event, the hot seat is toasty warm again under Woodson's hindparts, just when it looked as if he finally had things going his way. He has three days now to figure it out before the Hoosiers hit the road again for Columbus, where a beatable Ohio State club awaits. Then it's on to Northwestern, back home to host Maryland, and off to Mackey Arena to face perpetual nemesis Purdue and finish out the month.

Maybe by then the "Fire Woodson!" cries that drifted out of the Disassembly Hall expanse last night will have faded. Or maybe they will have grown into a full-throated chorus.

As always with Woodson and these Hoosiers, you can flip a coin.

Not so wild

 Raise a glass this day to Jayden Daniels and your Washington Commanders, because here's what they just did: They saved the weekend for the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League (as Howard Cosell used to call it).

No, really. They did.

What Daniels and the Commanders did, see, was beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 23-20 on a walk-off field goal -- and not just any walk-off field goal, but one that banked in off the goalpost. Scored 10 points in the last 10 minutes to rally from a 20-13 deficit, the Commanders did. Drove 51 yards in 10 plays to Zane Gonzalez' winning doink, as Daniels played like it wasn't the first playoff game of his career but, I don't know, the 15th. 

His numbers on the day: 24-of-35, 268 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions. If he wasn't already the presumptive Rookie of the Year, he certainly is now.

And not just because of what he did Sunday. Because he and the Commanders (and the Buccaneers) were the only ones who did it.

Which is to say, wild-card weekend was pretty much a bust for the NFL, because everything besides Washington-Tampa was Blowout City. Every other game was a two-score game. Every other game was ... well, not wild.

It began with Justin Herbert throwing four picks as the Texans eviscerated his Chargers, 32-12. Then Derrick Henry ran for about 9,000 yards (OK, so only 186) as the Ravens drummed the Steelers out of the playoffs 28-14.

After that, Josh Allen and the Bills dispatched the Broncos with, um, dispatch, 31-7. Then it was Eagles 22, Packers 10. Finally, last night, a Vikings team that two short weeks ago was 14-1 got paved by Matthew Stafford and the 10-7 Rams, 27-9.

Not a lot of suspense in any of that, unfortunately. Without Commanders-Bucs, the biggest news out of Roger Goodell's fiefdom was Jerry Jones firing Mike McCarthy and the rumor mill immediately churning out Deion-to-Dallas grist.

(Which, frankly, the Blob is rooting for, being a longtime fan of chaos. Deion and Jerry occupying the same space?  Can you imagine what a car crash that would be? Everyone else in the organization would suffocate because those two galactic egos would suck the oxygen out of every room in the Jerry Dome.)

Anyway ...

Anyway, on to next weekend. Jerry can't fire his head coach again, so Goodell and Co. better hope for more walk-off doinks.

Monday mysteries

 Another cold Monday morning here in this part of the world, and the Blob is pondering the Big Questions again, like why we can't have January right before Christmas instead of right after. At least then we'd have something to look forward to.

Also, looking at all that lovely crisp snow out there, would it be weird if I hauled the sled out of the garage and took my almost-septuagenarian ass on a short flight down the nearest hill? Or would someone swaddled in a parka, mittens and big ol' boots emerge from the nearest house to tell me to knock it off and act my damn age?

These things I wonder.

And, of course, these things:

* So I see Roger Goodell is planning on sending the Jaguars, the Browns and the Jets to play in London next season, and I think, geez, Rog, let the poor Brits up easy. We already got 'em back for Banastre Tarleton, and also the Intolerable Acts. Wasn't making Cornwallis surrender at Yorktown enough?

This is not to say England doesn't forever have it coming, because of course it does. Trying to starve the Irish to death during the Great Famine, and subjecting half the world to mushy peas and warm beer, surely can never be repaid in full.

But, really, now. The Jags, Browns and Jets?

This is punishment beyond the pale, and not terribly astute of Roger the Hammer, either. If you're trying to shove your product down the world's throat, it at least ought to taste good. Which means you don't send three of the worst teams in the league to London as your goodwill ambassadors. 

Combined this season, after all, the Jags, Browns and Jets went 12-39. The Jets were the stars of that collective show, stampeding through a mighty 5-12 campaign. The Browns (3-14) and Jags (4-13) were somewhat less impressive.

This is who the NFL is using to pry British eyes away from Liverpool, Arsenal and the rest of Premier League footie? What's the marketing pitch?

"The NFL: Not All Our Teams Suck This Bad." That'd be my guess.

Speaking of the Premier League, I just looked at the standings. The Liverpudlians and Gunners are at the top. At the very bottom, and in line for relegation, are Wolverhampton, Ipswich, Leicester and Southampton, which is is an appalling 1-16-3.

I think the Premier League should send the latter on a U.S. tour. It would only be fair.

* Saw the other day the NHL has selected the Florida Panthers to host the 2026 Winter Classic, and also the Tampa Bay Lightning to host a Stadium Series outdoor game. And right off I thought, "Ah, another Gary Bettman triumph."

Bad enough that the ill-considered Stadium Series has muffled the sense of occasion the Winter Classic once gave us, on account of it was the only time in a season the NHL played an outdoor game. But the initial success of the Classic made Bettman and the boardroom gang greedy, and they decided if one outdoor game was such a hit, a half-dozen or so others would be an even bigger hit.

Um, no. All it did was dilute the product.

And now they'll play the Classic in south Florida, which is not so much dilution as parody.

The entire thrust of the Classic, after all, was to take the game back to its Canadian roots, when kids learned the game skating on frozen ponds in an icebox Canadian winter. You put on gloves, you tugged a toque over your ears to keep the frostbite away, and off you went.

You lose something in translation when you do it in a place people go to escape all that. 

It's apt to be 75 or so in Miami the day of its Winter Classic, which means the audience will be decked out not in toques but shorts, Hawaiian shirts and Ray-Bans. And instead of shoveling snow off the ice to make it playable, the organizers will have to crank up the refrigeration to make sure it doesn't melt.

This is not what the Winter Classic was supposed to be, on account of it was supposed to include actual winter. Even all those Canadian snowbirds might struggle to get into the spirit, having memories of the aforementioned.

Ah, well. Maybe the NHL can make a buck or two off that sunscreen sponsorship.

* I've been keeping track of the Chicago Bears' ongoing search for another sucker, er, head coach, and I have to say it's harder than it ought to be. Sure, they've interviewed some guys I've heard of, like Ron Rivera, Pete Carroll and Mike Vrabel.  But they've also brought in some milk-carton types, too.

Most of these are current assistant coaches, which dismays because you'd think the Bears would have learned their lesson after hiring the two Matts, Nagel and Eberflus. But, nah. Let's bring in Drew Petzing, whoever that is (Hint: Not Drew Brees). Also Mike Kafka, aka Not That Kafka. Also Anthony Weaver.

Of course, they've also interviewed both Detroit Lions coordinators, Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn. The two of them have done wonders in Detroit, but that's in Detroit, where the Lions have a front office and ownership that knows what it's doing. In Chicago, not so much.

As for Vrabel, the hottest available name, interviewing him was a huge waste of time. Anyone with an eyedropper of sense knew he was going to wind up back in New England, where he helped win Super Bowls as a player for Bill Belichick. And sure enough, the news broke over the weekend that the Patriots have welcomed back to the fold.

Rivera might work, if you're looking on the bright side. And Pete Carroll's a quarterback whisperer from way back, which would be ideal for Caleb Williams. But at 73, how long could the Bears reasonably expect him to stick around?

Besides, they're the Bears. Which means you know exactly what's going to happen.

They're gonna bring back Abe Gibron.

Yeah, he's dead. But there were moments this season when you wondered the same about Eberflus, so there you go.

An Indiana sighting, Part Deux

 In which the Hoosiers, well, disappear into the night out there in the flat expanse of Iowa.

The Hoosiers had won five straight coming to Iowa City, fooling even the Blob ("Not much of a feat," you're saying) into thinking that these were different Hoosiers, more reliable Hoosiers, the kind of Hoosiers who were as likely to make a deep run in March as they were to make their connecting flight home after one tournament game.

And then, this: Iowa 85, Indiana 60.

And then, an epic flameout two nights after kicking USC to the curb by 13 -- the same USC who beat No. 13 Illinois by 10 in Champaign yesterday.

Same old song. Different verse.

And as they say, everyone contributed. Luke Goode, who scored 16 points and was 4-of-5 from Threeville against USC, had this stat line: three points on just four shots, zero rebounds, zero assists, zero steals in 22 minutes. Fellow starter Trey Galloway was even more inert; in 20 minutes, he took just two shots, missed them both, and finished with zero points, zero assists, zero steals, zero blocks and one rebound. He did have four turnovers, however.

Among the regulars, only Oumar Bello (a 10-point, 13-rebound double-double) and Myles Rice (12 points, five assists) scored in double figures. No one else did, although Mike Woodson subbed liberally, playing Bryson Tucker 23 minutes, Kanaan Carlyle 22, Anthony Leal 21 and Langdon Hatton 16 -- which is exactly the number of minutes Mackenzie Mgbako played in scoring six points.

You can surmise from this, if you're a more generous soul, that some sort of creeping crud is running through the Indiana locker room and Mgbako and several other Hoosiers have come down with it. This would explain a few things.

Of course, you can also surmise from this that Indiana was already down 10 at halftime and Woodson was sick, too -- sick of watching his starters flounder. I lean toward a combination of the two.

In any event, away we go again. Tuesday Indiana gets Illinois in Assembly Hall. If I were a betting man, I'd put some coin down on  the Hoosiers to win. It would be just like them.

Or, you know, just like the usual Hoo-Hoo-Hoosiers. Heaven forbid.