The little guy(s)

 Spent some time this morning looking up facts about Curacao, on account of a bunch of their 12-year-olds whupped Henderson, Nev., 11-2 yesterday to win the Little League World Series. 

Spotted Henderson a 2-0 lead, the kids from Curacao did. Then they scored 11 straight runs to win going away.

So, anyway, about Curacao: It's an island in the Dutch Caribbean that's smaller than Hibbing, Minn. People there speak Papiamento, Dutch and English. It has a population of 156,000, which makes it less than half the size of Henderson.

You know what, though?

Their 12-year-olds can play baseball.

So can Henderson's 12-year-olds. So can every 12-year-old on every team in the LLWS, which is what makes watching it so endlessly fascinating.

Fascinating because every game you see the 12-year-olds perform certain baseball functions better than major-leaguers generally do.

Hit the cutoff man, for instance. Move baserunners over. And, as a part of that, execute an effective bunt.

These 12-year-olds, see -- these kids -- can drop a bunt on a dime. And do. A lot.

It's a skill as rare as a Bigfoot sighting in the upper reaches of the venerable old game, which is why the kids frequently are a lot better at it. I get a kick out of that, frankly. I also get a kick out of the 12-year-olds occasionally do 12-year-old stuff, like break into a dance at second base after spanking a double into the gap, or cleanly scoop, yes, a perfectly placed bunt -- and then throw it ten miles over the first baseman's head.

In the LLWS, there's always a nerdy kid in glasses who plays the bassoon in the school band and throws absolute cheese from the pitcher's mound. Sunday, that kid was Henderson starter Payton Hinsen, who (in the Blob's opinion) should never have been taken out after Curacao tied the game 2-2 in the second inning. 

There's always the requisite Big Kid, who in this case was 5-foot-10, 100-pound Steven Felix of Curacao. And there's always a little kid coming up big -- in this case Shardijon De Lanoi, second smallest kid on the field at 5-feet even.

All he did was drive in three runs and score another for the champs.

And then, presumably, made a beeline for a Big Mac, Curacao's players having been on a strictly monitored diet since the LLWS began.

"Every kid (will eat) McDonald's," predicted Curacao coach Railison Gijsbertha, grinning fit to burst.

Love it.

Double the Pato

 Alex Palou wrapped up his record-tying fourth straight IndyCar title yesterday in Milwaukee, launching him into the IndyCar stratosphere alongside the likes of A.J. Foyt and Scott Dixon, which is not a bad stratosphere to inhabit.

His fifth title overall -- all in the last six years, mind you -- puts him behind only Foyt (seven) and Dixon (sixth) in IndyCar history. He's the first driver since Sebastien Bourdais from 2004 to 2007 to win four straight championships, and, at 29, he's the youngest driver ever to win five total.

In other words, he's the Man. And likely to be the Man for quite a few more years.

But that wasn't all the precedent-denting that went on at the Milwaukee Mile yesterday.

Did you hear what Pato O'Ward did?

He won two races. In the same day.

Won the regularly scheduled 250-miler, outrunning Scott McLaughlin on exhausted rubber in the late going. Then, three hours later, he won the rain-interrupted Milwaukee Mile 250 from Saturday, ducking under David Malukas on a late restart to complete the double play.

O'Ward was leading that one when persistent rain red-flagged it after 90 laps on Saturday. So he won one race while simultaneously leading another, which he admitted in the first post-race was Weird City.

"Yeah, I've never been in this position before ... pretty crazy," he said. "We could make history today by being the first IndyCar driver to win two races in one day."

He was wrong about that, but you couldn't blame him for not knowing. He's only 27, after all. The last time an IndyCar driver won two races in one day happened 18 years before he was born; that driver was Rick Mears, surprise, surprise, who swept both ends of a doubleheader in Atlanta way back in 1981.

Now the Double Pato joins the Richard Repeat in the books, while Palou becomes the first driver in 19 years to win four straight championships. Not a bad day for history at the Mile, which has seen quite a bit of it.

First guy to win an IndyCar race there, after all?

Wilbur Shaw. In 1933.

Sis-boom-hurrah

 Flipped on the tube yesterday afternoon, and there was Bill Belchick in Ireland, glowering into his Guinness. He was all decked out in Carolina blue. An Irish rain was falling softly on his fields on thinning gray hair, and on the TCU Horned Frogs in their purple finery, and on Coach Bill's Tar Heel defense, which was smothering the life out of the Frogs.

College football was back. And yippee and sis-boom-hurrah for that.

And, yeah,  OK, they're not the same anymore, those Saturday afternoons in the fall Chris Schenkel used to rhapsodize about. The student-athletes are pros now, and half of them are on their second or third mailing address. The coaches are CEOs pulling down CEO jack. And where football is concerned, the schools aren't really schools anymore, but commercial brands subsidized by ESPN or Fox or one of the alphabet networks.

And yet ...

And yet, I watched Bill's boys send Sonny Dykes' Frogs packing, and it felt like autumn again. Out in Los Angeles, under a brilliant southern California sun, a quarterback named Jayden Maiava was completing a gazillion passes in a row -- he was 25-of-29 on the day -- as USC spanked San Jose State 42-26 and the USC band played that annoying fight song over and over and over.

Change the channel, and here was Virginia dropping an anvil on North Carolina State's Wolfpack under another brilliant sun in history-soaked Charlottesville. Stanford came from way back to beat Hawaii, and William & Mary scored 13 points in the last minute to steal one from Villanova. And out in Fargo, N.D., former FCS monster North Dakota State trampled Jacksonville 33-7 in its first-ever FBS game.

Heck. Even the Blob's Civil War nerd got some satisfaction, as its favorite school named after a Civil War general won its opener. Howard 31, Alabama A&M 24, beeotches. Ol' Oliver Otis must be waving the arm he didn't lose at Fair Oaks up in there in paradise.

A lovely day. A Saturday afternoon in late August spent jumping from one game to another, and suddenly it was late October. Set out the jack-o-lantern and get the Twizzlers ready for the trick-or-treaters.

 OK. So not really.

But you know what?

Saturday morning I was driving downtown, and along the way I passed a certain tree. Most of its leaves were green. But almost half of them had already turned a deep crimson, as if it couldn't wait to get autumn started.

Or maybe it was just dressed for the day. Maybe that.

Loopholes, Part Deux

 So remember the other day -- it was Wednesday, if memory serves -- when the Blob blobbed about a tight end named Dae'Quan Wright who decided to go back to college ball after the Cleveland Browns released him?

The SEC immediately pushed through rules that prohibited players who'd been in a pro camp from coming back to college, and threatened severe penalties for any member schools that tried to add them to their rosters. The Blob said this was all well and good, but as surely as night follows day, the suits soon would be hauling everyone into court forthwith.

Their argument, in the Blob's opinion, would be that because the college game is virtually indistinguishable from the pro game these days, a pro released by an NFL team should have every right to rejoin a pro SEC program if he still had eligibility.

Well, guess what, boys and girls?

Forthwith came a bit sooner than expected.

This from ESPN reporter Dan Murphy:

The SEC and commissioner Greg Sankey are not allowed, at least for now, to punish schools if they play a college football player who returns to campus after signing a contract with an NFL team this summer, according to an order signed Friday by a Louisiana state judge.

The temporary restraining order prohibits the SEC from enforcing a new rule adopted by the conference earlier this week that threatens stiff penalties for any team that uses a player previously who previously signed a contract to play in the NFL, NBA or WNBA. The league voted to enact the rule after tight end Dae'Quan Wright and defensive tackle Zxavian Harris announced plans to join their former coach, Lane Kiffin, at LSU after leaving NFL training camps ...

The judge also signed a show-cause order that requires the SEC and NCAA to explain during Thursday' hearing why the new penalties associated with their pro athlete rules, which plaintiffs' attorneys described as "draconian," do not put them in contempt of court and in violation of the judge's previous ruling in the case.

Well, well, well. Sometimes the Blob DOES get the prognostication thing right. 

Or, you know, pretty close to right.

The argument being floated by Wright, Harris and others, it seems, is not the colleges-are-just-as-pro-as-the-pros tack the Blob predicted. Rather, they're arguing that the only reason they were in pro training camps to begin with is because they believed their eligibility was exhausted. But a court ruling in June (the "previous ruling" in question) granted a fifth year of eligibility for everyone, meaning Wright and Harris still had a year in the bank.

"(The NCAA) created this cluster, and now they've got to lay in that bed," said Tony Clayton, one of the attorneys representing Wright, Harris and 40 other athletes.

Hmmm. That sounds familiar ...

From the Blob, three days ago: My perhaps un-bold prediction is the judge won't buy those groceries for a second. He (or she) will say, essentially, "Boys, you made this bed. Now you gotta sleep in it."

I love it when a prediction comes THIS together. Don't you?

Bad Bad

 Every once in awhile something happens that freshens the Blob's perpetually sour-milk attitude about the world in general, and makes it think for a heartbeat or two there might be hope for our species after all.

Today, that something is what's happening to a YouTube company called Good Good Golf, which recently was really Bad Bad.

Gone radioactive, Good Good has, and bless their hearts. This is on account of a YouTube ad it produced to promote a new driver it's co-developed with golf giant Callaway.  In the 60-second spot, a male golfer/content creator (Garrett Clark) flies into a rage and shoves a female golfer/content creator (Alexis Miestowski) to the ground because she touched his Callaway/Good Good Golf driver.

"Do not touch my new driver!" he shouts.

Apparently whoever came up with this thought it was hi-larious. Ditto everyone who signed off on it -- including the folks at Callaway, who admitted in a statement they were extremely lax in vetting the thing.

Now, the sour-milk side of me must say I'm not surprised the creators of the ad thought a man pushing a woman to the ground and yelling at her was the height of humor. Under the current Regime, offensive, obnoxious and puerile has become the humor of record. Anyone who says otherwise is a politically-correct snowflake who can't take a joke.

"F*** your feelings," after all, is more than just a T-shirt these days. It's practically official policy.

And yet ...

And yet, Callaway posted the aforementioned mea culpa, and announced it was severing all ties with Good Good Golf, effective immediately.

Dick's Sporting Goods and its golf subsidiary, Golf Galaxy, pulled Good Good products off their shelves.

Golf Galaxy also asked to have its branding removed from the upcoming Golf Channel reality show "Big Break x Good Good", prompting the network to postpone the series debut. 

Last but not least, Good Good dropped its sponsorship of an upcoming PGA Tour tournament.

So at least some part of corporate America still retains a bit of common decency, it seems. I find that encouraging, no matter what the sour-milk part of me thinks.

Of course, what the sour-milk part thinks is the clock has started on when some internet troll indicts Callaway, Golf Galaxy and the PGA Tour for the crime of "wokeness." So there's that.

Loopholes

 Well. I guess that solves THAT.

Maybe.

For now.

Because ...

Because, listen, loopholes are slippery things, and sneaky, and most of all stubborn. So even though the SEC and Big Ten walked away this week brushing their hands and saying, "So much for another pro football or basketball player sneaking back into OUR game," the Blob's sense is they're either charmingly naive or willfully oblivious.

This after both conferences unanimously pushed through rules banning athletes who've been on an NFL or NBA roster from returning to Northern Tech State to take advantage of the fifth year of eligibility just granted them by the courts. What sparked this was a former Ole Miss tight end named Dae'Quan Wright, who was signed as an undrafted free agent by the Cleveland Browns, dressed for at least one preseason game and then was cut on Monday.

After which he announced he was entering the transfer portal to suit up for LSU as a fifth-year eligible.

"Wait, can he do that?" you're saying now.

Apparently so.

Until, that is, the SEC said, uh-uh, no way, this is a bridge too far even for us. You can't be on an NFL roster one day and then come back to a college roster the next. It would be like a kid who gets cut from his college team deciding to go back and play another year of high school football.

The problem, of course, is it's not like that at all.

The problem is football (and basketball) as they're presently constituted in big-boy conferences like the SEC and Big Ten are every bit as professional as the NFL or NBA. The dynamic is the same: Schools indirectly pay kids to play through NIL deals, and the deals are essentially the same sort of free-agent contracts Dae'Quan Wright signed with the Eagles and Browns. That's because the kids are themselves free agents thanks to the unregulated transfer portal, chasing dollars just like an NFL or NBA free agent.

And so ...

And so, Dae'Quan Wright going from the Browns to LSU isn't a whole lot different than when he went from Virginia Tech to Ole Miss. Or an MLB player being sent down from the big club to its Double-A affiliate.

Which I imagine is going to be the argument when players like Wright inevitably take the SEC and Big Ten to court to challenge their hastily drawn-up new rules. You can't function as professional or quasi-professional entities for decades and then turn around and go all sis-boom-bah on everyone, the suits will argue. Can't sign mega TV and equipment deals, pay your coaches like CEOs and then say, "Wait, we're not the pros! We're about academics and student-athletes and education, not ... you know, not ..."

My perhaps un-bold prediction is the judge won't buy those groceries for a second. He (or she) will say, essentially, "Boys, you made this bed. Now you gotta sleep in it."

And that stubborn loophole everyone thought was closed will come bursting back into the room like Mr. Kool-Aid bursting through the wall in the old commercial.

"Oh, YEAH!" Mr. Loophole will cry.

Oh, no.

(Bleeping) rights!

 (In which the Blob again roams the jungles beyond Sportsball World. Hall passes will be issued for those who don't wish to endure the torture.)

So I see where Fearless Leader -- aka Donald John "Look! A Squirrel!" Trump; aka Still Our Only Available President -- is all honked off at our neighbor to the north again, on account of those stubborn Canucks won't just roll over and let America First punch it in the face with its American Fist. 

Bullies hate it when you stand up to them. Fact.

Thus, Donald John Fearless Leader is stomping around threatening again to make Canada the 51st state, and slapping a 50 percent tariff on Canadian goods. And all the while claiming it's Canada who's the bully here, not poor taken-advantage-of 'Merica.

This is a recurring theme for Donald John and his supplicants, so much so it's almost become official policy. They play the victim card the way Doc Holliday used to play a pair of aces (one of which he kept up his sleeve, natch), and it makes a sane person laugh every time they do it. I mean, how on earth did the United States become the richest, most powerful nation on earth with all these Canadas and Denmarks and  Venezuelas continually ripping us off?

At any rate, Donald John's latest harebrained notion in this latest absurd beef is to rename Lake Ontario, christening it "Lake America." After all, if Ontario won't play ball with America, why should it get its own Great Lake?

Of course, sane persons understand that renaming Lake Ontario -- or any geographical feature -- would be meaningless to anyone but Donald John and his worshipful minions. They could call it Lake Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang for all anyone else cared; it would still be Lake Ontario to the rest of the world.

In other words, it's kinda like if I'd decided to rename Lake Huron, where my parents lived for 25 years, Lake Me. Everyone else (including my parents) would just roll their eyes and say, "Whatever."

So, yeah, the whole idea is as silly as most of Fearless Leader's ideas. But it would be amusing to see how Canada would retaliate.

I mean, how hilarious would it be to hear Canadian PM Mark Carney announce that, henceforth and forevermore, Lake Superior would be known as "Lake More Superior Than You Know Who"? Or "Lake Up Yours, Hosers"? Or "Lake Kick Save And A Beauty"?

And speaking of Canada's national sport ...

Wouldn't it be awesome to hear Carney announce the name change with the hockey player's eternal cry of defiance?

"F****** rights!" quoth the PM.

In a word.