Wrestle mania

 I haven't checked in on professional wrestling since, I don't know, Rowdy Roddy Piper was playing dirty pool against Hulk Hogan or something, mainly because it's professional wrestling. Hasn't really been on my radar since I was into cartoons, which has been some time ago.

But this morning I was cruising the ESPN site per usual, and suddenly this appeared on my laptop: A picture of some guy with biker hair pounding lumps on some guy dressed as the Gingerbread Man.

"Well, THIS is interesting," I said to myself, and opened the accompanying story.

Let me say right here that things have changed a bit in pro wrestling since the Hulk/Rowdy Roddy days. And certainly since the Dick the Bruiser/Yukon Moose Cholak days.

Bruiser and the Hulk never beat up on a literal cartoon character, for one thing.

But, yes, here was the aforementioned Gingerbread Man, who was last seen cavorting with Trick Williams, a present-day pro rassler. This was supposedly the way Williams chose to troll his opponent, Sami Zayn, the guy with the biker hair. Sayn's hair, you see, is red.

He's a "ginger," in other words. Get it?

Anyway, Williams went on to beat Zayn, but that's not all, folks! You think pro wrestling's gonna turn its back on something as wacky as the Gingerbread Man?

Oh, HELL, no. Because on the next edition of "SmackDown," there the Gingerbread Man was again, celebrating with Williams and his sidekick Lil Yachty. (And, no, I'm not making up these names). Except -- what's this? -- it was actually ZAYN wearing the gingerbread man costume, and he proceeded to attack Williams and Yachty. (Again, not making up these names).

And the next week?

More Gingerbread Man.

This time, however, it was a mannequin Zayn had dressed in the costume. He proceeded to pound the dough out of fake Gingerbread Man, in the process "ripping off its delicious arm" according to the account by ESPN correspondent Greg Wyshynski.

So that's your pro rasslin' these days.

Can't wait for the next WrestleMania, emphasis on the "mania." I predict a cage match between the resurrected Gingerbread Man and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. 

Highest sugar content wins.

Canaries in the mine

OK, class, it's Friday morning here at the University of Blob, and ya'll know what means. Quiz time!

"Aw, gee, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Do we hafta?"

Yeah, you hafta. Besides, this quiz is easy. It's only one question.

Q: How do you know when an NBA team knows it's up against it?

A: When it starts griping about the officiating.

It's the canary in the mine in the Association, and it  happened last week, when the Philadelphia 76ers rallied from a three-games-to-one deficit to take down the choking-dog Boston Celtics in Game 7 in Boston. As night follows day, the Celts' Jaylen Brown came out in the aftermath and said the officiating in the series was less than impartial, and the league really ought to do something about it.

Fast forward a handful of days later, and here were your Los Angeles Lakers, losing to defending champion Oklahoma City last night by 18 in Game 2 of the Western Conference semis. That put the Lake Show down 2-0 in the series, the Thunder having also beaten it by 18 in Game 1. 

You know what that meant.

Sure enough, Lakers coach JJ Redick crabbed about the officiating in the postgame, saying Oke City gets away with stuff because it hardly ever does what Redick was doing, which is crab about the officiating. He also said it was disgusting the way LeBron James gets pounded on, claiming that LBJ gets "the worst whistle of any star player I've ever seen."

About LeBron, he might have had a point. In two games in this series so far, LeBron's shot a measly five free throws. And, yes, it's an eternal verity in the NBA that the big fellas always get pounded on with impunity. 

However ...

However, Redick didn't pick the most opportune time to take off on the officiating, except for the fact his team is down 2-0 and he likely knows in his heart of hearts that Oke City is just better than his Lakers. 

Hard to make a case for blatant favoritism, after all, when the Thunder was whistled for 21 fouls and the Lakers for 26, in Oklahoma City. Hard to argue Joe Official was a terrible handicap when the Thunder shoots just five more free throws -- again, at home.

Yet, Redick did. Because ...

Well. See all of the above.

A Turner Classic story

 My father never knew Ted Turner. Let's begin today with that obvious factoid.

Dad was a retired International Harvester employee, master woodworker and electrician from Fort Wayne, In., and Ted Turner was ... well, Ted Turner. Multimedia pioneer, professional sports owner, America's Cup champion, Jane Fonda's hubby for ten years. Southern born, southern bred, Atlanta's own.

But they fought the same fight, the two of them. And for one brief moment, Ted provided Dad the ammunition for it, sort of.

Allow me to explain.

See, Ted and my dad both died of Lewy-Body dementia, Dad in 2018 and Ted yesterday, at the age of 86. If you've ever seen it at work close-to, you know Lewy-Body is one hell-borne SOB, little by little erasing a human being's life and taking its time about it. It is, needless to say, excruciating to watch happen; you find yourself searching for any piece of the person you knew, no matter how small and no matter how briefly.

Which brings us back to Dad and Ted.

One day, when much of the man I knew had already vanished, I walked into Dad's room at the memory care unit, and the TV was on. It was tuned to Turner Classic Movies. "The Maltese Falcon" was playing.

Suddenly Dad lifted a gnarled finger and pointed at the screen.

"Humphrey," he said. "Sidney."

Sure enough, there was Humphrey Bogart. And Sidney Greenstreet. And a brief, precious glimpse of my old man, whole and present again.

Anyway, that's my Ted Turner story, on the occasion of his death. Except for this: Along with everything else he was, Ted Turner was the money man who got Michael Shaara's epic Civil War novel "The Killer Angels" onto the screen as a lavish four-hour extravaganza called "Gettysburg."

Which my Dad of course saw, being a former re-enactor whose unit appeared in another Hollywood production ("North and South II"), and a confirmed Civil War nerd of long standing.

Voila: Ted and my old man, on the same page again. 

Two men who never knew each other. But two men who somehow, miles and worlds apart, knew each other.

An eternal debate

 It's May now and down in Speedway, In., that old May soundtrack -- the whine and whoosh of purebred racing machines -- rises again from the erector-set canyon of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  So I guess it's time once more to dust off the eternal debate.

 This isn't my idea, mind you. It's Stephen A. Smith's.

Or, rather, he's the one who brought it up a couple of weeks ago, when he was running his mouth as usual and said golfers and race-car drivers -- specifically, NASCAR drivers -- are not really athletes. 

"Come on, man," Stephen A. opined. "That don't count. You driving a car!"

This brought withering rebuttals from a number of NASCAR folk -- including, significantly, car owner Michael Jordan and longtime driver Kurt Busch. The latter posted this on social media: "Let's go cupcake. I will personally drive you around a NASCAR track for 30 minutes or when you pass out on lap 30."

Ooh. Shots fired!

Me?

Well, my best friend and I have been having this same debate practically since we've known each other, which is almost the entirety of our mutual 71 years. A confirmed gearhead, I covered the Indianapolis 500 as a sportswriter for 40 years; my friend did not. So he takes the "nay" position, and I take the "yay" position. 

Of course, we both long since concluded neither was going to convince the other, so the debate, eternal as it is, has become something of a pro-forma inside joke. Kinda like that old SNL bit with Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd, where Dan would routinely challenge Jane's position by beginning, "Jane, you ignorant slut."

In any case, our debate has gone viral now, and let me say this about that: Stephen A.'s elevator doesn't go all the way to the top.

I say this having watched racers literally being pulled from their cars in exhaustion after "driving" for three or four hours in the suffocating heat of a southern summer. I say it having watched IndyCar drivers circle Indy's fabled, capricious two-and-a-half miles for three hours at 220-plus.

Any twitch, any micro-second of inattention or less-than-superhuman reflex will put you in a world of often literal hurt there. Just as it will for the stock-car boys at Talladega or Daytona or gritty old bullrings like Bristol or North Wilkesboro.

Once, in what I like to call the Before Time, I got roped into a charity race at Anderson (In.) Speedway, another venerable old bullring roughly 50 miles northeast of IMS. I was 28 years old then, played a lot of basketball, and was in decent physical shape. The race was 10 laps on Anderson's banked quarter-mile track. So, what, 2.5 miles, right?

In other words, one lap around Indy. At, I don't know, 50 mph or so top end in a battered late-model I suspected was being held together by duct tape.

And who was utterly exhausted by the end of it?

This guy. Twenty-eight-year-old physically fit humanoid. After 10 laps.

I can't even imagine what kind of shape you have to be in -- or what kind of eye-hand coordination, reflexes and concentration you have to have -- to last 200 laps and 500 miles in a rocket ship traveling roughly 323 feet per second. Or  to make it through a 500-mile stock car race at, say, Talladega, where you're humming along at 180 or 190 mph inches apart from 40-some others for three or four hours.

So, yeah, there's my "yay" perspective in this eternal debate. And Stephen A. Smith?

I think he should take Kurt Busch up on his offer. Might open his eyes a bit.

At least until he passes out.

One smallish leap

 Well, well, well. Now they've gone and done it.

Kinda.

Sorta.

In a really, really careful way, like when you ask someone "Is this safe?", and he or she says "Yeah, it's safe", and then you say "Are you sure?", and he or she says "Sure, I'm sure", and then you say "Gee, I don't know ..."

This was the Indiana High School Athletic Association yesterday.

Which stuck its toe in the NIL waters by voting to approve an NIL structure for its high school athletes, although it won't be called NIL and has restrictions on its restrictions, just to keep high school kids from signing exclusive personal services deals with Big Harve's Gently Used Lawn Tractors, a longtime supporter of Pudville Consolidated High School athletics.

Nah. None of that for the IHSAA. What they voted to approve yesterday will not be called "NIL" but "PBA," which stands for "personal branding activities" and is not to be confused with that other PBA, the Professional Bowlers Association.

Under the  "personal branding activities" PBA, Indiana high school athletes will be allowed to engage in branding activities that include "social media, personal appearances and endorsement activities unrelated to their school athletic participation." In other words, they can't "perform personal athletic services", or appear in their high school uniform, or in any other way use represent their high school in a "branding activity."

That means, presumably, that Big Harve can't say, "This here's Flip Wannamaker, star quarterback for the Pudville Fightin' Pine Knots, demonstratin' what a great job our gently-used lawn tractors do. Go ahead, Flip, fire that puppy up and take it for a spin!"

And Flip dutifully fires it up and mows a strip or two, his aqua No. 17 Pudville jersey proudly rippling in the breeze.

Now, I don't know if the IHSAA's restrictions will prevent some Flip from Indiana to be identified as an athlete at a specific high school in some TV ad, or if he'll just be an unidentified high school kid who shows up eating a cheeseburger at the Burgers 'N' Such Cafe and gets paid for it. Except for the getting paid for it part, after all, it wouldn't be the first time a local high school athlete appeared in the background of a TV commercial or in a social media ad for some local business or other.

So the IHSAA is taking a baby step here. A smallish leap for mankind, if you will. A tentative concession to the new age, when not only good old Flip but his teammates can make a little on the side.

Although I don't know how the IHSAA gets around the obvious fact their "branding opportunities" unavoidably will be tied to their "high school athletic participation," even if the IHSAA says that's a no-no. I mean, those opportunities are going to happen precisely because of their high school athletic participation, right?

Just one Gordian knot the IHSAA will have to hack through now that it's decided (reluctantly) to join modern times. There will surely be others.

However distasteful the IHSAA, and the rest of us, may find that prospect.

Stupid human tricks

 (In which the Blob takes another brief detour from Sportsball World. Standard procedures apply.)

America the Calibrated scored another big "W" last night, except this time there was no body count. Thank God for small favors, and all that.

This time the usual knuckleheads skinned their smokewagons (obligatory "Tombstone" reference) during a party at a lakeside campground in Oklahoma. At least a dozen people wound up going to the hospital with gunshot wounds, and the beat goes on, the beat goes on. The Blob long ago shed its naivete over such incidents, having accepted the sad fact that the knuckleheads far outnumber the sane folk today in these United States.

So hooray for the nation of the Second Amendment ... and all that. Where Lee Greenwood is proud to be an American, where at least he knows he's free to, I don't know, pull out a Sig Sauer and start shooting because someone looked at him cross-eyed. Where every freedom-loving 'Merican thinks it's perfectly normal to pack heat wherever he or she goes, because The Right To Keep And Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed.

Also because you never know when a trip to the Piggly Wiggly is going to require some sort of Wyatt Earp cosplay.

"Gee, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "You sound bitter."

Do I? More like resigned. Not to say weary to death of the knuckleheads and law-makin' lint-brains who enable them.

So, I hereby surrender.

Sure, by all means, let's keep pulling guns out and opening fire at -- in this case -- a first-weekend-in-May celebration called (un-ironically, apparently) Sunday Funday. Let's break up another soiree in Bloomington just a week earlier, when post-Little 500 partiers on Kirkwood were sent fleeing because more knuckleheads decided to pull out their guns and start shooting, winging five of the revelers.

Let the congress critters with their AR-15 lapel pins offer up the usual thought-and-prayers, for all the good it ever does. Let stupid humans performing stupid human tricks become the new normal here in this insane asylum that used to be the greatest country on earth. 

That business on Sunday Funday in Oklahoma, for instance? 

It took place outside of Edmond, a city of 95,000 or so just north of Oklahoma City, where Timothy McVeigh did his deal 31 years ago. Nine years before that, in Edmond itself, a postal worker named Pat Sherrill walked into the post office and shot 20 people before turning the gun on himself. Fourteen of them died.

So Sunday Funday was a legacy calibration event, in a sense. God bless America.

He may be the only one.

Rarity Day

 And now, Alex Trebek, we'll take Stuff  You Don't See Every Day for $100 ...

* He was dead last most of the way. Thirteenth with a quarter-mile to go. Still 13th at the head of the stretch.

But you know what?

Golden Tempo won the 152nd Kentucky Derby anyway.

A 23-1 shot even his jockey, Jose Ortiz, called "lazy", Golden Tempo finally got up and said, "Welp, time to go", swung wide, and passed the field down the stretch like a Maserati passing a bunch of combines. Made 'em all look like statuary except for the betting favorite, Renegade, another late runner whom Golden Tempo beat to the wire by a neck.

Heck of a run for ol' lazybones.

Heck of a piece of history, too, because Golden Tempo's trainer was Cherie DeVaux, who became the first woman trainer in 152 runnings to win horse racing's biggest prize. Eighteen women have trained Derby entries across the years; only DeVaux managed to claim the roses. 

So Derby Day was also Rarity Day, and not just because of DeVaux. Know who was aboard Renegade as he and Golden Tempo came churning down the stretch?

Irad Ortiz. Jose's brother.

To sum up: Two brothers for the win, a woman trainer in the winner's circle for the first time, and, hey, look at this: Was that Ocelli, a late entrant and 70-1 shot, completing the trifecta in third?

Sure was. 

And was that Great White, another heavy 'dog, throwing his rider before being loaded in the gate and getting himself disqualified?

What, you think I could make that up?

Well, I didn't. It happened, speaking of rarities.

 Listen. There's always a horse or two who balks at stepping into the gate ("In there? I'm not going in there. Uh-uh, no way") in these deals. That happens all the time. But I've never seen a horse actually throw his rider ("I TOLD YOU I'M NOT GOING IN THERE!") to avoid it.

So, yeah. Rarity Day indeed.

And speaking of which ...

* Didja see what happened in Boston last night?

The Philadelphia 76ers beat the hometown Celtics109-100, as Joel Embiid went for 34 points, 12 rebounds and six assists, and Tyrese Maxey for 30 points, 11 boards and seven dimes. It was the first time NBA history that two teammates put up at least a 30-10-5 stat line in Game 7 of a playoff series.

But that's not all! Tell 'em what else the Sixers won, Johnny Olsen!

They won a playoff series against the Celtics for the first time in 44 years.

Yessir. The last time Philly knocked Boston out of the playoffs, it was 1982, and Ronald Reagan was president. Dr. J was still a thing in the City of Brotherly Love. Larry Bird was just beginning to burnish his legend. Michael Jordan was a freshman at North Carolina, and LeBron James wasn't even born yet.

Know what else?

The Sixers had to overcome a three-games-to-one deficit to swipe the series.

Which means they had to win two of the last three games in Boston. Which also means they had to do something they'd never done; they were an NBA record 0-18 when trailing 3-1 in a series. And which also means the Celtics had to do something they'd never done: Lose a series they led 3-1.

Going into last night, they were 32-0 lifetime in that circumstance. Thirty ... two ... and oh.

But Embiid, Maxey and the rest got it done. Just like Cheri DeVaux, Jose Ortiz and Golden Tempo got it done.

Great White, though ...