Myths, fables and PCA

 Chicago Cubs star/wildcard Pete Crow-Armstrong (aka, "PCA") was on Kristin Cavallari's podcast this week, and, boy, did he not disappoint. Didja hear what he said THIS time?

(OK, so he didn't say it, exactly. A Seattle Mariners pitcher named Tayler Saucedo said it. PCA was just passing it along as an example of an unpopular opinion.)

Anyway, what PCA said Saucedo said was that, since very little video of Babe Ruth exists, maybe Babe Ruth didn't exist. Maybe he was a myth or a fable, like Paul Bunyan or Vince the ShamWow guy.

This, of course, immediately vaulted Saucedo into the top five on the Stupidest Things An Athlete Has Ever Said list. He's right up there with Kyrie "The Earth Is Flat" Irving now, or maybe even Aaron Rodgers.

Because of course Babe Ruth existed. The reason there's not much video of him is because ... well, figure it out. Start with "it was the 1920s" and go from there.

So, yeah. Babe Ruth existed, he hit 714 home runs, he called everyone "keed" (as in, "kid). He ate too many hotdogs and drank too much beer and one time in the World Series he called his shot, or didn't, or whatever.

Did we mention he hit 714 home runs?

Which PCA implied was less than impressive because, well, it happened in the Before Time, when he never had to face the likes of Satchel Paige on account of the baseball commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, was a racist douchecanoe who kept black players out of Major League Baseball.  

"People might as well have been like underhanding the ball to that guy," PCA said of the real/mythical Babe.

(Brief pause while Walter Johnson enters the chat. Also Lefty Grove. Also, what the hell, the Babe himself.)

(Lengthier pause while we discuss the door PCA opened with his comment, which is that you can't compare the 1920s to the 2020s because athletes are bigger, faster, stronger and not just white anymore.)

(All of which is true, by the way.)

What is also true, however, is that today's athletes are bigger, faster and stronger because training regimens are different and diet is different and the equipment is different. Saying the Babe, real or otherwise, couldn't compete today takes none of that into account. In the 1920s, he trained on hotdogs, chopped wood to get himself in shape, and thought cardio was the name of that new Italian slugger in Philly. And still, again, he hit 714 home runs.

Imagine a ripped, sleek Babe 2026 model swinging a modern bat crafted exactly to his specifications down to the molecular level. For that matter, imagine, say, Bjorn Borg in his prime playing with today's trampoline tennis racquets instead of the tiny wooden deals he had to make do with.

Why, he'd paint every line in the joint with those laser groundstrokes. It would hardly be fair.

Unless, of course, Tayler Saucedo or PCA or Kyrie claimed Borg never existed, either. You never know with these guys.

Today in turned tables

 Aaron Rodgers, everyone's favorite NFL wackadoodle, was on with Pat McAfee again yesterday, and he had some unkind things to say about Dr. Anthony Fauci, the ditso right's latest boogeyman/scapegoat/Extremely Evil Person. 

Veering off one of his tangents, A-Aron called Fauci an "absolute coward" for refusing to play along with Random Brain Cell Paul's dog-and-pony show last week. Said, like Fauci, he'd "plead the Fifth" when McAfee asked about training camp.

This gives the Blob the opportunity to turn the tables on all the aforementioned ditso's who love to tell left-leaning athletes and coaches to "stick to sports" and "just bounce the ball" when they offer non-sports opinions.

So, here goes:

1. "Stick to sports."

2. "Just throw the football."

3. "Nobody cares what you think of (choose one) Fauci, vaccines, the moon landing, etc."

4. "Could you go do your isolation thing again? 'Cause that would be awesome."

5. "You've been into the ayahuasca again, haven't you?"

6. "Or how about the peyote? Yeah, I bet it's the peyote."

7. "Orrrr ... or I hear your pal RFK Jr. is doing wonderful things with eye of newt these days. Maybe you scored some of that?"

And last but hardly least ...

8. "Bless your heart."

Firing offensively

 Caught this one today on the Awful Announcing website, via FOB (Friend of the Blob) and fellow Indiana sports journo colleague Andrew Smith, aka the Hardest Working Man In Sportscasting.

(Or so I call him).

What Awful Announcing posted, and Andrew re-posted, was an item about Boston College, which just hired Luke Murray as its new basketball coach. It seems among the changes fully expected anytime a new regime takes the reins was one that wasn't expected: In addition to a new staff, Murray also insisted BC fire longtime men's basketball broadcasters Kevin Collins and Josh Maurer, who'd been calling BC's games together for nine seasons.

Rather than stand by their men, BC acquiesced -- on August 1, which means it'll be hard for Collins and Maurer to find another gig for this winter. A profile in courage this wasn't.

A slap in the face to two men who deserved better, however, it was. Not to say completely ridiculous.

First off, and most obviously, Collins and Maurer had no direct connection to the previous regime, or to any previous regime, really. Collins in particular had been calling BC games for 13 years, through three head coaches and five athletic directors. That made him less a specific program institution than a university institution -- certainly more of the latter than anyone involved in firing him.

Any or all of whom should lose their jobs, in the Blob's opinion. For, I don't know, lack of institutional gumption or something.

Look. I get that every new coach wants to bring in his own people, if only to fumigate a program that, one presumes, desperately needs it. But the broadcasters aren't any part of that. All they're doing is calling the games. So to insist they go, too, is not only a supremely dickish move, but a supremely irrational one, too.

(Re the dickish part: It should be noted that Murray came to BC from UConn, where he was an assistant for Dan Hurley, the high priest of college hoops dickishness. So I guess he gets it honest.)

Anyway, shame on Murray. And shame on BC administrators for letting him knuckle them.

Because what someone (ideally the athletic director) should have said when Murray insisted on canning Collins and Maurer was this: "Coach Murray, that's not your call. That's our call. And unless you can show cause -- which you can't, because the whole idea is absurd on its face -- Collins and Maurer aren't going anywhere. And if you don't like it, we can tear up your contract right now. I hear Northwest Eastern Tech State is hiring."

Of course, saying all that would have taken some stones. And some integrity. Both of which seem especially lacking these days in Chestnut Hill.

You've heard of firing offenses?

This one was an offensive firing. Squared.

Wonder Gramps

 The most amazing golfer of our time did it again yesterday, and, no, I'm not talking about Tiger or Rory or Scottie Scheffler, those putzes. I'm talking about our very own Fearless Leader, Donald John "Par Killer" Trump.

Who won his 40th club championship at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., over the weekend, carding a 2-under 70 that was totally legit and had nothing whatever to do with the fact he owns the club and is, you know, President of the United States or anything.

The only people saying otherwise are jealous losers like all the losers he beat to win yet another title.

"It's called TALENT, and I have it, and they don't!" he crowed on the Mighty Twitter X Machine.

Now, I get it, some of the aforementioned jealous losers might question how a slobbish 80-year-old man managed to shoot 10 strokes under his age on any golf course that wasn't Pirate Mike's Buccaneer Booty Miniature Golf. Is there a clown mouth hole at Bedminster? Did Fearless Leader play the orange ball or the purple ball? And is it true he eagled the treacherous Walk The Plank hole?

Please. Your snark and your cynicism grow wearisome.

Truth is, you just can't accept the fact that Fearless Leader is not only a world-class intellect, but the wonder of his age on the golf course. You know how Dale Earnhardt used to taunt the young Jeff Gordon by calling him "Wonderboy"? Well, Donald John is Wonder Gramps.

Eighty years old and still bringin' it! And, again, enough with all the yap about how it's his own golf course where everyone works for him and therefore knows their paychecks ride on knowing exactly when to look the other way.

Reporter From An Actual News Outlet: Hey, there, Trump National Golf Club employee. Is it true Wonder Gramps kicked his golf ball out of that bunker on the 12th hole? Did he really say "Put me down for a 4" on that par-5 where he actually put up a snowman (i.e., 8)? 

Trump National Golf Club Employee: Hey, man, don't ask me. I was lookin' at this tree over here. Ain't it a gorgeous tree?

That sort of thing.

Well, you know what you can do with "that sort of thing." You can stick it right up there where the sun never shines, along with your doubts about the heinous vandalism of the Reflecting Pool by America-hating antifa commie Muslims. Who you gonna believe, Fearless Leader or Fearless Leader's own Justice Department, which just admitted the vandalism story is total bunk? Seriously, Jeanine Pirro? Who's Jeanine Pirro, besides wanna-be Judge Judy?

Take it down the road, jealous losers. And all hail Wonder Gramps -- 40-time club champion at clubs he owns, and the athletic marvel of the age according to his closest friends and most steadfast political allies.

I mean, have you seen clip where he dunked on LeBron? Incredible.

Reverse Cruds Alert!*

 (*Because the Rockheads, the Mange-els and the rest of the Cruds are old news now that the baseball season has reached August, its black hole of months)

Checked out the MLB standings this a.m. just to see if it was really August and if my Pittsburgh Not-As-Cruddy-As-They-Used-To-Be's were still playing .500 baseball (They are! 56-56, baby!).Aand guess what?

The Los Angeles Dodgers are not the best team in baseball right now. 

They've actually lost two in a row and are 69-42, half-a-game back of the numbingly efficient Milwaukee Brewers. And, OK, so they're still 10 games up in the NL West, but, listen, it's not like they couldn't use some help. So all you people griping about the rich getting richer and what a joke baseball is now need to dummy up.

Because they needed Tarik Skubal. Yes, they did.

For those of you who don't know who Tarik Skubal is, well, he was the prize of prizes during this trade deadline period, a two-time Cy Young winner who's arguably been the best pitcher in the American League the last two years. And now he's a Trolley Dodger!

News broke last night that the Dodgers and Skubal's former team, the Detroit Tigers, were finalizing a deal that would send Tarik west in exchange for a handful of magic beans, er, prospects. That's what's so annoying about the Dodgers, see: Not only do they have all the money these days, they also have lots of trade bait to dangle from their first-rate farm system. 

"All the money AND a farm system?" you're saying now. "How's THAT fair?"

To which the Dodgers would no doubt reply, quoting a former teammate in our company basketball league: Fair? (Bleep) fair!

Fair's not what's made Dem Bums back-to-back World Series champs, with a likely three-peat waiting in the wings come October. And if you think that's a joke, well, the joke's on you, sorehead. 

Dynasties are good for baseball, see. Grotesquely over-doggy overdogs are the life's blood of the game. I mean, you didn't hear people complaining about Casey Stengel's Yankees when they were winning the Series every crummy year in the 1950s, did you?

(Brief interlude while every other team from the '50s shouts, "Hell, yes, we were complaining! Screw Mantle and Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra and Elston Howard and the rest of those high-hatted bastards! We like World Series rings, too, ya know!")

Anyway ...

Now the Dodgers have Skubal, and just in time, too. After all, it wasn't like they were going to get by with Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamato, Tyler Glasnow, Roki Sasaki and those guys. And where was the run support gonna come from when the only sticks you had were Ohtani and Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts and Kyle Tucker and Will Smith, and also Max Muncy?

So, yeah, good for them. They've got the best pitcher in the AL now, or one of the best. Which means they'll probably win a pile more games and beat the Brewers or Braves in the NL and then beat, I don't know, maybe the Rays in the World Series.

Or how about this: Maybe the Series comes down to the Dodgers vs. the White Sox.

The Pale Hose, after all, are leading the AL Central by three games right now, two seasons after fielding the worst team in the modern era. How great a narrative would that be, the former schlubbiest of schlubs against baseball's reigning Reverse Cruds?

The White Sox, stealing a Virgil Tibbs' line from "In The Heat Of The Night": "I can pull that fat cat down off his mountain!"

The Trolley Dodgers, stealing King Arthur's line from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail": "Bloody peasant!"

Ah, yes. I can see it now. 

Birthdate of fear

(In which the Blob again says "Later for you, sporty-sports," and sets off into the wider world for awhile. The usual protocols apply to those who don't wish to join me on the journey.)

First of August now, and another summer in the books, or at least it seems so these accelerated days.  The local baseball diamonds are empty. The band kids are in the high school parking lots, sweating under the hammering sun. In 12 days, they'll back in school again, the yellow buses will be running again, and wasn't it just yesterday that they spilled everyone out into what seemed an endless stretch of freedom?

Perhaps. But summer's end is not the end I think about when I think about August 1, and this August 1 in particular.

The end I think about is the end of a certain kind of American innocence, and the assumptions that formed its foundation.

This August 1, you see, is 60 years to the day since a sick man in a high place went hunting human beings.

His name was Charles Whitman, and on Aug. 1, 1966 he hauled an M1 carbine, two Remington rifles, a semi-automatic shotgun and three handguns up to the observation deck of the University of Texas tower -- which still stands, and which they still light up Texas burnt orange after every Longhorns football triumph -- and turned downtown Austin into a kill zone.

He was up there for 90 minutes until a couple of police officers took him down, and in that time, from his high place, he killed 15 people and wounded 31 more. This was after he'd stabbed his wife and mother to death, and after he'd left two victims inside who had the misfortune to encounter him on his way to the observation deck.

For most of his 25 years, he'd been a normal American male, a loving husband and dutiful son who'd whisked his mother away from his abusive father. Then a tumor bloomed inside his brain, and, in 90 terrifying minutes, Charles Whitman became something else entirely: The godfather of the American mass shooter, and the bringer of nightmares we could scarcely imagine in 1966.

Because who could conceive, back then, of an America where you could be shot dead just walking down the street? Where some random human (Even a neighbor, maybe!) could take it in his head to find someplace where other random humans congregate, and just start killing people he didn't even know?

We feared the Russkies and nuclear missiles aimed our way and the damn Commies taking over the world, in those days. We didn't fear one of our own using his Second Amendment rights to stockpile an arsenal of weapons (Two Remmies, an M-1, a shotgun and three handguns? Who needs all that?) and make war on his fellow Americans.

So now we had something else to fear, in a fearful time. And on it went from there -- from Charles Whitman to James Oliver Huberty in a McDonald's down by Mexico; to Patrick Sherrill in a post office in Edmonds, Okla.; to George Hennard in a cafeteria in Texas; to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High School; to Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech; to Stephen Paddock on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Hotel in Las Vegas, another hunter of humans in a high place.

Paddock killed 60 people and shot almost 500 when he did his deal nine years ago. Five years before that, Adam Lanza murdered 27 people, 20 of them children, at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. Another elementary school in Uvalde, Tex.; a synagogue in Pittsburgh; a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.; a supermarket in El Paso, Tex., and another in Buffalo, N.Y. ...

The blood trail of Charles Whitman, the madness and the butchery, continues apace. As does the fear that, after so many butcheries, we're either numb to or have trained ourselves not to think about anymore.

But Aug. 1, 1966 was the birthdate of that fear. And then it was very real.

I was 11 at the time, see, and we were on vacation, and that night we went to dinner somewhere. I remember, hazily, seeing a newspaper there, and the Texas tower shooting was splashed all over the front page. And when we finished dinner and walked out to the car, I remember walking very fast, because somewhere in the dark I just knew there was a man with a rifle, and that he was going to start shooting.

Like I said, I was 11 years old at the time, with an 11-year-old's overheated imagination. But I suspect I wasn't the only one who, after that day, felt a chill the next time they walked out into their quiet American lives in their quiet American town. 

And I suspect they weren't all 11, either.

The toll, continued

 Last night I watched "Concussion" again, the flick in which Will Smith plays Dr. Bennet Omalu, a pathologist who's largely credited with discovering CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy. I did it because Billy Ray Smith Jr. and Ahman Green were in the news this week.

Billy Ray Smith Jr. -- whose father, Billy Ray Sr., played on the same Baltimore Colts defensive line with Bubba Smith -- was in the news because he's dead. A former Pro Bowl linebacker for the San Diego Chargers, he was 64 years old and died from what his family says was CTE  dementia.

And Ahman Green?

The leading rusher in Green Bay Packers history was in the news because he announced on a podcast he had early-onset Parkinson's, a neurological disorder that's frequently accompanied by Lewy-Body dementia. I know this because my dad died of it, slipping slowly away from us until he simply wasn't there anymore.

My dad was 91. Ahman Green is just 49. But sure enough, he says his short-term memory is "trash" now.

Green played 12 seasons in the NFL, after high school ball and college ball at Nebraska. Billy Ray Smith Jr. played 10 seasons in the NFL, after high school ball and college ball at Arkansas, where his daddy also played. 

Now, it's far too presumptuous to say Billy Ray Jr. would be alive today, and Ahman Green's short-term memory would be just fine, had they not played what has become our great American game. But it's not presumptuous at all to say banging heads at cartoon speeds for 18, 19, 20-some years is hardly the secret to a long and healthy life.

Football ain't good for you. Which is not exactly a revelation handed down from above.

On the other hand, it's also a multi-billion dollar industry and a cultural touchstone, which means it's not going anywhere soon. The trick is to alleviate the toll without destroying what created that industry and that touchstone.

The Blob is of the opinion it can't be done. Not to everyone's satisfaction, anyway.

The codgers and knuckle-draggers already are shaking their bony/hairy fists at their TV screens on fall afternoons, saying the colleges and the NFL have let pantywaists and sissies take over the game. Can't touch a quarterback anymore. Can't clock a receiver going over the middle. And what the hell is "targeting," anyway?

Why, son, targeting's just sorting through the pile until you find the schlub with the ball, and then knocking the goo out of him. It's what Dick Butkus or Ray Nitschke or Night Train Lane did on every blessed snap.

And the guys who wind up like Billy Ray Jr. or Ahman Green because of it?

Well, they knew the risks. Didn't they?

The problem with that is they didn't know the risks, or at least the worst of them. And the reason they didn't know, at least on the professional level, is the NFL -- the very pinnacle of the American game -- didn't want them to know. It's why the league spent better than a quarter century telling the world concussions were just a bump on the head, and didn't affect brain function at all. Heck, that's what the helmets were designed to prevent, wasn't it?

So the league just kept stacking cash, while at the same time trying to wreck the careers of the Dr. Omalus of the world. It wasn't just irresponsible; it was flat-out criminal.

And meanwhile, CTE kept showing up in more and more deceased NFL players.

In Junior Seau and Andre Waters and Justin Strzelczyk and Dave Duerson, gone before their time.

In old timers like Frank Gifford and Paul Hornung and Ken Stabler; Jim Kiick and John Mackey and, yes, Bubba Smith.

The toll, continued.

The toll, which is unavoidable without pissing off the fan base -- or at least the codger/knuckle-dragger constituency, most of whom have likely never stood on a modern major college or NFL sideline and heard the sound it makes when two 220-pound 4.5-forty cyborgs come together at warp speed.

I have heard it, and it makes a sound like a car crash. Unless you've also heard it, you simply can't imagine.

Look. Football is not going to go away. We've established that. So what is its future?

Its future is maybe abolishing tackle football until, I don't know, middle school or so.

Its future is a game the codgers and knuckle-draggers hate, but that in time will simply be the football succeeding generations grew up with.

Its future is what I saw on TV the other day.

It was a bunch of kids in shorts and T-shirts playing in the National Flag Football Championships, and it was a blast to watch. There was a girls division and a boys division. The football was fat and white and reminded me of the ball they use in Australian Rules Football. There was running and passing and terrific catches and, on one play, a leaping one-handed interception that turned into an amazing pick six.

It's everything athletic we love about football, without brains getting knocked to squash inside skulls. I don't think it'll ever replace the tackle version, but no one who plays flag is going to die not knowing his or her own name.

He or she won't be Billy Ray Smith Jr., or even Ahman Green. Which is how I wound up watching a certain movie last night, and thinking about all this.