An awful receding

 Tough times this week in the Trek-inverse, with Pavel  Chekov departing this mortal coil at 90 and Jean-Luc Picard following him at 86. May they both have following winds and a star to guide them by for all eternity.

(And, yes, I know this is not a Sportsball World post. Grab a hall pass and vamoose if you so desire. This Trekkie has other things on which to cogitate this day.)

Anyway, Walter Koenig and Sir Patrick Stewart are gone now, taking big pieces of Trekkie shared memory with them. Who’s left to lay in a course for Kirk and Spock and the Originals now? How’s Data gonna know when to engage the warp drive without Captain Picard to say “Make it so”?

Here in the Blobosphere, it is the latter’s passing that lingers longest, no offense to Ensign Chekov. That’s because Sir Patrick reportedly died from Alzheimer’s and Lewy-body dementia, the latter of which I’m far too conversant with.

Eight years ago, see, my father died of Lewy-body. It is a mean, filthy bastard way to die, because it doesn’t just steal your life. First, it steals everything that made your life what it was. 

Those afflicted with it don’t so much die as … recede. I can’t think of a better word to describe the process. Little by little, what makes the afflicted who they are recedes from loved ones and the world, until all that is left is a shell entirely imprisoned within itself.

Eventually, at least in my father’s case, the afflicted seem to forget that they are even alive. They recede so far they literally forget how to eat. Which is why when my dad finally died, he was nothing but skin and bones.

Long before that, though, he was gone from us. It was a wound that remains in some form or fashion to this day.

Now, I don’t know if this is exactly how it happened with Sir Patrick, and with the many who loved him. Every circumstance is different. But what I do know is a life as full to the top as his, as crammed with joy and laughter and love and accomplishment, deserved far better than to drain away like grains of sand through the fingers.

In any case, he is gone now. As is Walter Koenig. May their memory be eternal, no matter how cruelly it might have been stolen.

National Fashion Loonies

 Word comes down now that Bears quarterback Caleb Williams has been fined again for a wardrobe violation, and all the Blob can say about that is … 

Well. The Blob doesn’t say anything about that. It just rolls its eyes and sighs. Again.

It does this because the acronym “NFL” doesn’t just stand for “National Football League,” or even “Not For Long.” Apparently it also stands for “National Fashion Loonies.”

They’re the kings of the Untucked Jersey Fine, these Loonies, as well as the lords of the Wrong-Color Shoes Fine, the Eyeblack Message Fine and, going way back, the Message On The Headband Fine (Hello, Jim McMahon!). 

They’re the Regulation Nazis who threatened to fine Colts quarterback Peyton Manning if he wore black high-tops to honor John Unitas, a Colts and NFL icon, when Unitas passed away. Sorry, Peyton. Those shoes are not league-approved. And Unitas is dead now, so it’s not like he’d know anyway.

Aye-yi-yi. The mindless conformity, it stings.

Which brings us back to Caleb Williams again.

Who’s been wearing a brand of cleats called Caddix since returning from a hamstring injury two weeks ago, because  Caddix makes an innovative cleat that rotates with a player’s movements and helps protect his lower-body joints. The NFL now has fined Williams close to $36,000 for wearing them.

His crime: Failing to properly cover up the logo. 

No, really. I’m not making this up.

See, the NFL has licensing deals with just three apparel providers — Nike, Adidas and UnderArmour. If a player chooses to wear a different brand, he must cover up the logo. 

It’s a money deal, after all. And we all know how the NFL loves its money deals. 

Here’s the thing, though: If the NFL really was as concerned about player safety as it claims to be, wouldn’t it simply tell Williams, “We’re all for equipment that minimizes injury, but cover up the logo next time”? What’s the point of fining a guy five figures unless you’re  A) far more interested in protecting your chunky apparel deal than player safety, or B) just being as numbingly hive-minded as any other corporate monolith? 

Questions I suppose will never get answered, alas.

The price of success

 The Atlanta Dream keep running into scheduling conflicts in the WNBA Finals, proof once again that the WNBA is a joke of a league and only still alive because of Caitlin Clark, the only player anyone comes to see.

Or …

Or it’s more proof that the WNBA is more than just CC, no matter how crucial she’s been to the league’s viability and elevated profile.

I say this because even though the Dream wasn’t farsighted enough to book the 17,000-plus seat State Farm Arena ahead of time in case the Dream made the Finals, the fact they needed the facility at all is illuminating.

What it illuminates is, in spite of the haters who tell us the WNBA can’t draw without Caitlin in the building, the Finals are drawing without Caitlin in the building. That’s why the sixth game of the Finals between the Dream and the Golden State Valkyries is being played at 12:30 this afternoon.

The NBA Hawks, see, have State Farm booked for a home game. And in spite of Title IX and the advances women’s sports have made since the cavewoman days of the early 1970s, a nothing men’s game in October still trumps a women’s Finals game.

“The Dream have another arena,” you’re saying now. “Why aren’t they playing there?”

Because it only seats 3,000 or so. And (yes, even without Caitlin) the home Finals games in Atlanta are drawing good-gobs more than that.

Every Finals game in Atlanta, see, has sold out State Farm Arena. Yes, all 17,000-plus seats. Ditto for the games at Golden State, where the Valkyries play in the 18,000-seat Chase Center. 

So I guess you can call what’s happening today the price of success. Whether the haters want to acknowledge it or not.

Brew rule

 I don’t care what you say, ya party poopers. Bob Uecker was in the front roooowww last night,  and that’s all there is to it.

Yeah, sure, you couldn’t see him down there in Tampa, but that is the way of things ethereal. He was there, holding an incorporeal Miller Lite.  He was in the visitors clubhouse, trying to touch the Big Trophy with an invisible hand. Thankfully, an incorporeal Eddie Mathews (1931-2001) was there to stop him.

“Better not, Ueck,” the ghost of Eddie whispered. “You never had the best hands, you know.”

But they were there, the two of them, and who knows, maybe the joint pwas crowded with the ghosts of old Milwaukee Braves and Brewers (And old Seattle Pilots! Hell, yeah, Jim Bouton) as these new-age Brewers beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 to win the World Series first time in franchise history.

The Brewers Crew did it in style, too, sweeping the moneybags Dodgers in the NLCS and nearly sweeping the Rays in the Series. Only a walk-off single in the bottom of the 12th in Game 4 saved the Rays from the Dodgers’ fate.

Otherwise, it was all Brewers, who had the best record in baseball in the regular season and then showed everyone why by going 11-2 in the playoffs and wining eight straight at one point.

This was a team of young, hungry, impeccably disciplined players, who never took an at-bat off and were relentless in their approach. They were simply a joy to watch.

In which case raise a Blatz, if you’ve got one, to the Brewers and the city they represent. It’s been a long time — 69 years — since Milwaukee got to celebrate a World Series championship, and then it was the Braves. The Brewers had never won one, not in 56 summers.

Or 57, if you count the one season they were the Seattle Pilots. And why not? 

That was 1969, the year Jim Bouton immortalized the Pilots in “Ball Four.” And so, yeah, raise a glass, too, to Bouton and Gerry McNertney and Gary Bell. To Don Mincher and Merritt Ranew and Diego Segui. To Steve Hovley and Tommy Harper and of course Joe Schultz, the Pilots manager who told his boys to pound that Budweiser after every rare Pilots win.

No doubt an incorporeal Joe (1918-1996) is pounding a Budweiser at this very moment.

Or, in deference to Milwaukee, a Blatz. You betcha.

Chasing the past

 So I texted my sis the other day wondering what was up with NASCAR, on account of it's pretty much off my radar these days, especially once college football starts up, and it's still kinda on hers.

"So what happened to the playoffs?" I asked. "Aren't they doing that anymore?"

She said, yes, there's still a 10-race Chase, with 16 drivers in the field, but they did away with the elimination rounds. Now it's just a points deal, with the 16 qualifiers all starting from zero. Guy with the most points after the 10 races wins the Cup.

"Wait ... isn't that pretty much what they had before the Chase?" I asked. "And isn't NASCAR just turning back the clock to the days when the points leader wrapped up the title early, making the last couple of races moot?"

Well, no, she said, and yes. Yes, right now Kyle Larson, who came from 11th to first on the last lap to win at Talladega last week -- a 'Dega finish if ever there was one -- leads by enough points that he may have already clinched the title by the time everyone rolls into Homestead for the last race of the season. But, no, because only 16 guys are vying for the title now.

Which doesn't sound like much of a difference to me. After all, when was the last time 16 drivers all had a shot at the title in the last month or so of the season?

I'll take "never" for $800, Alex.

All of this makes me want to look up Matt Kenseth on the old Magic Google-ey Search Engine Machine, because he's the guy who's responsible for the Chase to begin with. In 2003, see, Kenseth was so dominant -- he won just one race but had 11 top-fives, leading the points for the last 33 weeks of the 36-week season -- that the season was almost anticlimactic. Finishing 90 points ahead of runnerup Jimmie Johnson, he clinched the championship with one race to go.

The next year, NASCAR's honchos said to heck with that. No one wanted to see a guy claim the Cup while winning just one race and clinching it a week early. So they dreamed up the Chase -- and they've been tinkering with it ever since, to the mutual displeasure of pretty much everyone.

Now they're back to Square One, without actually calling it Square One. (Of course, they still have the stage racing they instituted a few years ago, which is only the most heinous bit of phony sporting event  manipulation to come down the pike in some time. Stopping and then starting over again twice between the actual start and actual finish?  Who's the genius who came up with that one, and how many  bourbon-and-branch-waters had he put down his neck?)

Anyway ...

Anyway, it looks to this casual observer like NASCAR's chasing the past, and catching it. Can't wait 'til the boys go full throwback and bring back that old skyscraper-wing Dodge Charger. Those were the days, boy. 

 

Everything must go

 And now … let the teardown begin.

Quentin Nelson, the anchor of the offensive line?

Traded to Seattle.

Forest Buckner, the keystone of the defense?

Traded to San Francisco.

Jonathan Taylor? Daniel Jones? Anthony Richardson? Head coach Shane Steichen and his staff?

Stay tuned.

Everything must go: This is what Indianapolis Colts owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon signaled when she told general manager Chris Ballard to hit the bricks a week ago. And if you at all have been paying attention for the last seven years — ever since a battered Andrew Luck abruptly walked away, a wise decision from a wise man — you know it’s been a long time coming.

The rot in this franchise has been obvious for awhile, after all. The Horseshoes haven’t won a playoff game since 2018. They haven’t even made the playoffs since 2020. Since then they’ve done this: 9-8, 4-12-1, 9-8, 8-9, 8-9.

Beige on beige, in other words.

In that time, they’ve tried journeyman Carson Wentz and Geezer Patrol alums Philip Rivers and Matt Ryan at quarterback. Then they drafted a kid barely two years out of high school — 20-year-old Anthony Richardson, an off-the-charts athletic talent who’d started just 13 games at Florida — threw him into the deep end right off the bat.

No seasoning. No learning curve. No bring-him-along-slowly. Just, “yep, he’s good to go.”

And then they were shocked when he wasn’t.

So here we are, three fruitless years later, and Richardson is backing up Daniel Jones, which was likely the plan all along when the Colts got him from the New York Giants.  Jones was a revelation for nine games last season, and then he got hurt, and now he’s back to being New York Daniel Jones: Serviceable, occasionally more than serviceable, but rarely the guy who’s gonna win games for you when no one else can.

So is he on the block now?

Maybe. Probably. Everything must go, right?

 When you’re 2-5 this season and 2-12 since that 8-1 start a year ago, after all, that’s not just a sales catchphrase. That’s your mandate.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 7

 And now this week’s edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the bigly Blob feature of which critics have said, “Hey, you ain’t all THAT bigly,” and also “Come over here, Bigly, and lemme small-ify you.”:

1. “Ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha! Told ya we were bigly good!” (The Dallas Cowboys, after paving the floundering,  Jalen Hurts-less Eagles 38-21 to get to, um, 3-4 on the season)

2. “Hey, lookit us, baby! We’re 5-2 and you’re not! If that ain’t bigly good, what is?” (The Cleveland Browns, after squeaking by the 1-6 Tennessee Titans)

3. “Yeah, but it was the 1-6 Titans.” (Unimpressed America)

4. “Yeah, but that sorry Deshaun Watson’s still your quarterback.” (Also unimpressed America)

5. In other news, the Dolphins won a game; the previously 1-5 Buccaneers crushed the Panthers 43-13; the previously winless Dolphins beat the Jets in the Meadowlands; the previously 2-4 not-really-the-Super-Bowl-favorite-anymore Rams trucked the Raiders; and the Giants scraped by the Texans with Cam Skattebo and JJ Abrams, er, McCarthy, at quarterback.

6. “See? We do not either suck!” (The Rams, the Bucs, the Giants)

7. “But we do!” (The Raiders)

8.  “And we kinda did Sunday!” (The Panthers and Texans)

9. “Hey, we beat the Jets on the road! You know how hard that is?” (The Dolphins)

10. “Eh, not very.” (Unimpressed America — and thoroughly disgusted Jets fans.)