Not takin' it

 I don't know this Matt Calkins out there in the state o' Washington, but even sports columnists have their principles. And so I stand with Brother Calkins as a fellow ink-stained wretch who knows all about the indignities that come with the job.

And I'm not just talking about the hot dogs at Michigan Stadium.

I'm talking about getting a column spiked because the bosses didn't agree with it, which is what happened to sports columnist Calkins recently at the Seattle Times. It's why he's no longer a sports columnist with the Seattle Times after 11 years, because he resigned over it. Decided he wasn't takin' it, and good on him.

 The column in question was about the whole Sophie Cunningham/transgender athletes flap, and Calkins did what any good columnist does: He localized it. Went to an Indiana Fever-Seattle Storm game and sought out a young woman holding a sign in support of Cunningham. Interviewed her. Found out she was a high school athlete who wasn't crazy about the idea of competing against "biological males." Listened to her story and to another female athlete's story. 

Then he wrote about it, taking the position that keeping girls and boys sports separate doesn't automatically make you transphobic. It was a reasonable and consistent viewpoint for the right-leaning Calkins, even if he was addressing a largely fictitious issue ginned up by folks who do have a bug up their keisters about transgenders.

(In this former sports columnist's opinion)

Nonetheless, Calkins sought out a story and told it. Did his job, in other words.

But then the bosses got involved.

Held the column. Decided to talk it over with the other bosses. Concluded they wouldn't run it because Calkins hadn't told his editors about it beforehand.

Which was lamer than Dennis Weaver in "Gunsmoke."

It is, in fact, total BS in the Blob's informed opinion, and the worst part is the capos at the Times likely knew it when they put it out there. They needed a cover story, and that's the cover story they're stickin' to.

Here's the deal: I don't know how it works out in Seattle, but I rarely if ever told my sports editor beforehand what I was writing about from a live event. This was because it was, well, a live event, and I didn't know what was going to happen. And so never once did my sports editor say, "Well, you didn't tell me yesterday what you were writing about from this live event today, so we're not gonna run your column."

Unlike the dopes in Seattle, see, my sports editor understood how it all works.

 Now, it's true that what Calkins wrote wasn't expressly about the live event in this case. But it did become news when one of the Storm's minority owners berated one of the girls he interviewed. Therefore the column, and the topic, were relevant -- even if the bosses didn't like the opinion Calkins expressed about it.

Which certainly appears to be the case here. And which certainly says nothing good about the chuckleheads atop the masthead at the Times, whose cover story no one buys and who now stand accused of letting their own editorial biases bleed over to the news side.

Dumb and dumber. Because if  the bosses didn't agree with what Calkins wrote, there was an easy out: Run it on the oped page, which is where newspapers print columns that offer a different viewpoint than their own. Why just kill it and make yourselves look like hypocrites or worse?

Now there's a question a good columnist might ask.

Nightmare scenario*

 (*Largely imaginary, but still)

Caught a brief snippet on NPR the other day about this weekend's upcoming Freedom 250 IndyCar event on the streets of D.C., and how curators of the various historic sites Alex Palou 'n' them will be hotrodding past are concerned the vibration might damage some of the nation's most treasured art and museum exhibits.

"There's a reason the speed limit in these areas is 25 mph," the spokesperson unearthed by NPR said, adding that race cars ripping through at seven times that speed therefore are a legitimate concern. It was all very NPR-ish, which is to say it addressed an issue I had never considered or was even aware was an issue.

Frankly, I still don't think it's much of one. But the curators who think it is are far more qualified to determine that than some dopey sports lunkhead, so the question remains: What if race cars tearing around at 180 mph isn't good for our national treasures?

The course, after all, hits a whole pile of highlights. After a long run down Pennsylvania Ave., it makes a hard left past the National Archives, then another hard left past the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, then a hard right past the National Gallery of Art. A few blocks later it makes another hard left past the Air and Space Museum, then angles past the National Museum of the American Indian.

And so a nightmare scenario immediately  blooms in the nightmare-scenario-obssessed brain of the aforementioned dopey sports lunkhead ...

Air and Space Museum Guy (after the vibration sends Freedom 7 and the Spirit of St. Louis crashing to the floor): Welp, there goes John Glenn and Charles Lindbergh! Thanks a lot, Pato!

Museum of Natural History Guy: Four laps and our dinosaur skeleton is a pile of bones! Terrific! Imma make Ericsson and Rosenqvist come in here and put it back together piece by piece! And they'd better get it right!

National Gallery of Art Guy: Son of a BITCH! The Van Gogh and Da Vinci are RUINED! And our van Eyck looks like a second-grader's finger-painting now! Damn you, Scott Dixon!

And last but not least:

National Museum of the American Indian Guy: Figures.

History reverberates. Part Deux.

 (Another detour from Sportsball World, albeit a brief one. Adjust your reading habits accordingly.)

Saw where January 6 rioter/professional provocateur/all-around chum bucket Jake Lang took is self-styled "Christian crusade" into Deaborn, Mich., and achieved what he set out to achieve. Insulted Muslims, got the citizenry stirred up and got himself arrested. All part of the plan, my man.

Anyway, it reminded me of something, as these charades tend to do. I addressed it with a post on Facethingy this morning that I will re-post here.

Goes like this: 

1977: Nazis go to court in attempt to stage a march in Skokie, Ill., a village with a significant Jewish community.

2026: Provocateur and general nuisance Jake Lang leads a self-styled "Christian crusade" into Deaborn, Mich., a city with a significant Muslim community.

Same hate. Same agenda. Different day.

History reverberates. All the time, and forever.

Disrespect, or something

 Look, I know what preseason college football polls are, at least most of the time. Reality is the disease and they're the cure.

I would say they're not worth the paper they're written on, except no one writes them on paper anymore. Still, the essential truth remains: No one's played a game yet; no one, especially in these days of almost yearly roster turnover, knows how the new pieces are going to fit with the old ones; no one knows if the schedule that looked like Cream Cheese City in August will morph into an absolute grind by October.

After all, no one in South Bend saw Northern Illinois coming a couple of years ago. Ditto Appalachian State in Ann Arbor a decade or so before that.

However ...

However, I'm looking at the Associated Press preseason poll this morning, and what I'm seeing is Curt Cignetti crafting another chip for his Indiana football team's shoulders.

This is because Indiana ran the table last year on its way to an astounding national title, becoming the first college football team ever to go 16-0. Along the way, the Hoosiers beat Oregon twice, once by 10 in Eugene and then by 36 in the CFP semis. And they beat Ohio State 13-10 in the Big Ten championship game. 

And now Ohio State is your preseason No. 1, according to the AP. And Oregon is No. 2.

Indiana?

Your undefeated defending national champs came in at No. 6.

Presumably this is because Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza is gone, along with a few other significant pieces from the national champs. It does not, however, take into account that several other significant pieces return, or that the Hoosiers will have another A-lister at quarterback in Josh Hoover. Or that Indiana loaded up again on transfers and top-shelf recruits.

And yet ...

And yet, the AP judges the Hoosiers the sixth best team in the country, and only the third best in their own conference. Ahead of them are the Buckeyes, the Ducks, Georgia, Notre Dame and Texas.

Now, it's true Ohio State returns just about every key piece from the Buckeyes' 12-2 team from a year ago, and added its usual haul of stud recruits. And Oregon returns quarterback Dante Moore and a pile of other notables from its CFP semifinal team. And Georgia's always gonna be Georgia.

But Notre Dame lost the engine of its offense in premier running backs Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price. And, yes, Arch Manning returns for Texas, although the Longhorns finished fifth in the SEC and went 10-3 overall. So you can see how Coach Cig might use that to stoke a few internal fires.

See? They STILL don't respect us. They still think we JUST GOT LUCKY. They still think we're gonna go back to being, you know, Indiana, nothing but the bunch of losers we've always been. 

And so on.

Of course, as always with these matters, a lot of that will be so much stuff and feathers. Indiana's No. 6 preseason ranking is the highest in the program's 139-year history, and most college football gurus predict the Hoosiers will at least reach the CFP quarterfinals. Which perhaps means the disrespect card is not the ace Cignetti will proclaim it to be.

On some level, Cignetti's players no doubt will understand this. But that level will be somewhere in the general vicinity of the sub-basement.

Up top, they'll be wearing that aforementioned chip like a badge of honor. And Coach will quietly be thanking the Associated Press for the woodworking help.

What baseball does

 Maybe you had a better weekend than Joshua Baez of the St. Louis Cardinals, but I doubt it. All he did was take on baseball's entire ringing history and wrestle it to the ground.

Here's what Baez, a rookie call-up to the bigs, did on Saturday in Chicago:

He hit the first major-league pitch he ever saw almost clean out of Wrigley Field. Four-hundred forty-nine feet to dead center.

In his next at bat in the third inning, he went yard to the bleachers in left.

In his third at-bat in the sixth, just to show he played no favorites, he spanked a souvenir to right.

Three at-bats. Three home runs. Five RBI in his first MLB game, an 8-4 win for the Cards.

Also a W over history in our venerable American game, which is its history.

According to the Baseball Almanac, no one in the history of the National League -- which encompasses 22,800 other players from that day to this, according to the Almanac -- ever did what Joshua Baez did on Aug. 15, 2026. And that history goes all the way back to April 22, 1876.

Think about that for a moment.

On April 22, 1876, Ulysses S. Grant was still President of the United States.

George Armstrong Custer was still two months away from getting his at the Little Bighorn.

Cy Young was 9 years old. Henry Ford was 12. Teddy Roosevelt was 17. And Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Knute Rockne and Jim Thorpe had yet to be born.

All of that is relevant again because of what Joshua Baez did Saturday.  

This is what baseball does, in a way none of our other games can match with the possible exception of college football. And even college football, as played by Princeton and Rutgers back in 1869, resembles the modern game the way a Roman chariot resembles an F1 Ferrari.

Baseball, however, survives down the decades mostly intact. The pitcher pitches; the batter swings. Three strikes and you're out. Four balls and take your base. Three outs and your inning is over. From the pitcher's mound to homeplate is 60 feet, 6 inches.

All true in 1876. All still true today.

In his grand soliloquy in that grand valentine to baseball, "Field of Dreams," James Earl Jones' character declares that America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers, but baseball has marked the time. This is not just sentimental fluff. It is as true as true gets.

The game your grandfather watched -- even your great or great-great grandfather, depending on your age -- is at its essence the game you watch today. He yelled at the nearsighted ump who just judged an obvious strike a ball; you yell at the ump for the same reason, and probably use the same words. You both wonder, decades apart, why your crummy centerfielder can't hit the cutoff man. You both wonder, decades apart, why your favorite team is always so bleepity-bleep awful.

And if you watch enough games?

You both eventually see something you've never seen before.

Like, say, Joshua Baez's Saturday in Wrigley Field. Like that.

What's in a number?

 The polls are closed and the votes tallied, and the runaway winner of a new Blob feature I just made up -- "Numbskull of the Week" -- is Jayden Daniels of the Washington Commanders. Also Jayden Daniels' numbskull attorney, Adam Kenner, who this week sent a cease-and-desist letter to Daniels' alma mater, LSU.

The letter warned LSU not to engage in "any further use, display, publication, promotion commercialization or other exploitation of Mr. Daniels' NIL in any manner or medium."

And why did Daniels' mouthpiece send that letter?

Because a new LSU player -- defensive back DJ Pickett -- is wearing Daniels' old No. 5.

You think I'm joking? I'm not joking.

"But ... but ..." you're saying.

I know. I know.

You're wondering, as is most of America, how assigning another player the number of a guy who's been gone from LSU for three years constitutes "promotion" of Daniels' Name, Image and Likeness. Or how it constitutes "commercialization." Or how it constitutes -- good Lord in heaven -- "exploitation."

Talk about stretching those boundaries of imagination in the old "Twilight Zone" intro. 

Personally, I think DJ Pickett should hire an attorney and demand Daniels cease and desist exploiting his NIL. It would be equally laughable.

And, oh, how the internet trolls are laughing.

Best of the burns was delivered by the New York Mets, of all people. After beating the Washington Nationals 4-1 the other night, the official Mets social media account tweeted this: "Stopped at four out of respect for Jayden Daniels."

Boom!

And as for me?

Well, I'm just thinking of all the ways this numbskullery could boomerang on Daniels and Co. ...

Dear Mr. Kenner:

Please inform your client he must cease and desist wearing No. 5 or we will begin legal proceedings.

Signed,

The estate of  Joe DiMaggio

(Also the estate of Paul Hornung)

(Also the estate of Brooks Robinson)

(Also Johnny Bench, George Brett, Albert Pujols, Jason Kidd, etc., etc.)

Boom again.

A grand snafu

 Some days the Blob plays the motorsports loyalist, and thinks IndyCar should get more attention than it does outside Memorial Day weekend in Indianapolis. And, some days it doesn't.

Today is one of those days.

This after IndyCar showed up in Markham, Ontario, for the first time, and fans eager to see Alex Palou and the boys wheel it in person got ... nothing.

It seems the Markham event promoters, Green Savoree Racing Promotions, didn't have  a track for them to run on.

Somehow, on its big IndyCar debut weekend, the Markham street course for the Ontario Honda Dealerships race wasn't ready for Friday's scheduled practice session. Let me say that again: They didn't have the course finished ON THE FIRST DAY OF RACE WEEKEND.

Good lord. What's next, clowns on unicycles?

Now, granted, this wasn't IndyCar's doing, but it was an IndyCar event, so it caught some of the residual embarrassment. Can you imagine NASCAR showing up for a Cup weekend and being told, um, sorry, guys, the track isn't quiiiiite up to snuff yet? Or F1 showing up at, say, Zandvoort for the Dutch Grand Prix and race officials saying, "Wait, you mean that's THIS weekend?"?

Nope. Neither can I.

Worse yet, fans who showed up for Friday's non-practice weren't told what was going on, according to the Indianapolis Star. So they sat there staring at an empty track as Green Savoree stayed mum about the postponement until after the race teams started re-loading their cars on the transporters and drivers left the premises.

Imagine the chit-chat among the fans at that point.

Fan: Hey ... isn't that Scott Dixon getting in that Honda CRV? Where's he going?

Other Fan: Look! Palou just beat him out the gate in HIS Honda CRV! And there goes Newgarden in a custom Vette, and Pato in another custom Vette!

All The Other Fans: The hell is going on?

As every driver, crew chief, and wrench jockey in the paddock no doubt wondered, too.

Ay-yi-yi. Yi-yi.