Yesterday the Chicago Cubs fired the only manager to win them a World Series since Frank Chance, which is what you do when the Team Built To Last fails to Last. All those kids and in-their-prime guys who were going to deliver yearly trips to the World Series, or at least the NLCS, led them instead straight downhill.
World Series title in 2016. NLCS loss in 2017. Wild-card loss in 2018. No playoffs at all in 2019.
And so Joe Maddon had to go, because firing the manager is what you do when you've run out of ideas. And the Cubs braintrust certainly seems to have. Whatever magic beans Theo Epstein brought to Chicago with him apparently have lost their potency. Prescription magic beans tend to do that over time.
Epstein promised a renewed sense of purpose for the Cubsters in spring training, and indeed they started out well. But since the end of May, they played .500 baseball. And for the second year in a row, they swooned in September.
Last year they went a beige 16-12 in September. This year, allegedly fighting for a playoff spot, they lost 10 of their last 12, including nine straight in the last week of the season.
This is not going to win any manager a re-up in his contract year, but as the season unraveled it also revealed Epstein's touch was not what it was. His solution to the Cubs' season-long lack of a closer, for instance, was to bring in former stud closer Craig Kimbrel. He lived up only to the "former" part.
And all those vibrant young kids of 2016, who were going to be the cornerstone of Built To Last?
Not so much.
Addison Russell, instead of getting better as he got older, regressed. And Kris Bryant, who batted .292 and hit 39 home runs in 2016, hasn't come within eight homers of that since. Plagued by injury, he played only 102 games in 2018 and hit just 13 home runs; this season he rebounded to bat .282 and go deep 31 times.
But as a team, the Cubs again struggled to hit at times. And the bullpen, collectively, were Chicago's most notorious arsonists. And so ...
And so, Joe Maddon is gone. He was never a master strategist, even in the World Series season; his strength was creating and maintaining a culture that kept the clubhouse loose and the kids calm through the long slog of the season. But when David Ross retired after the 2016 season, Maddon never again had as effective a veteran lieutenant to anchor that process. This perhaps has not been given the weight it deserves in the Cubs' erosion from great team to still-a-really-solid-but-not-what-it-was team.
In any case, it will be interesting going forward to see who Epstein comes up with to pump air into the tire again. And to see where Maddon lands, because surely he'll land somewhere.
My cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates, for instance, have an opening at manager after firing Clint Hurdle. Just sayin'.
Monday, September 30, 2019
Sunday, September 29, 2019
Fun with numbers
Notre Dame won the 900th football game in its storied program's history yesterday, beating Virginia, the only team left on its schedule that might have had a shot at beat it this fall. A couple of hours earlier, Oklahoma also won its program's 900th game.
This made the Sooners and the Irish the sixth and seventh FBS programs in college football history to reach that milestone. The others are the usual suspects: Michigan, Ohio State, Texas, Alabama and Nebraska. Also Yale, but Yale is no longer an FBS program, so I guess Albie Booth, Brian Dowling and them don't matter anymore.
Anyway ... what got the Blob thinking about all this is how long it takes to win 900 football games, and what that says about just what an enduring legacy college football has. The NFL is just a bunch of johnny-come-latelies, by comparison. Practically every major American sport but baseball is.
Notre Dame, for instance, started playing football in 1887. That was just 22 years after the end of the Civil War, and just 11 years after Custer bought it on the Little Bighorn. Sitting Bull was still alive. The shootout at the OK Corral still qualified as current events. Knute Rockne wasn't even born yet over there in Norway, and it would be 31 years before he became head coach at Notre Dame and invented the forward pass, the T formation, the wishbone, the bubble screen, the jet sweep and the parking pass.
(OK, so he didn't invent any of that stuff. But Domers think he did.)
In other words, college football at Notre Dame has been around for a good long time. It's been around so long, in fact, that the Irish have actually won 900 games twice.
The Irish first did it in 2017, but then the NCAA took away 21 victories in 2012 and 2013 because, I don't know, they forgot to wash their hands after using the bathroom or something. This of course does not mean those 21 wins didn't happen. Everyone remembers that they happened, how they happened, and who made them happen. Knute Rockne probably remembers that they happened, and he's been dead for 88 years.
In any case, because of the NCAA's splendid penchant for Stalinist revisionism, they never happened. The NCAA said, nope, sorry, what you think you remember you don't remember. And so you don't have 900 wins anymore.
But yesterday the Irish got back there, anyway. And for that, we can bless college football's eternal, unmatchable reach across the decades.
This made the Sooners and the Irish the sixth and seventh FBS programs in college football history to reach that milestone. The others are the usual suspects: Michigan, Ohio State, Texas, Alabama and Nebraska. Also Yale, but Yale is no longer an FBS program, so I guess Albie Booth, Brian Dowling and them don't matter anymore.
Anyway ... what got the Blob thinking about all this is how long it takes to win 900 football games, and what that says about just what an enduring legacy college football has. The NFL is just a bunch of johnny-come-latelies, by comparison. Practically every major American sport but baseball is.
Notre Dame, for instance, started playing football in 1887. That was just 22 years after the end of the Civil War, and just 11 years after Custer bought it on the Little Bighorn. Sitting Bull was still alive. The shootout at the OK Corral still qualified as current events. Knute Rockne wasn't even born yet over there in Norway, and it would be 31 years before he became head coach at Notre Dame and invented the forward pass, the T formation, the wishbone, the bubble screen, the jet sweep and the parking pass.
(OK, so he didn't invent any of that stuff. But Domers think he did.)
In other words, college football at Notre Dame has been around for a good long time. It's been around so long, in fact, that the Irish have actually won 900 games twice.
The Irish first did it in 2017, but then the NCAA took away 21 victories in 2012 and 2013 because, I don't know, they forgot to wash their hands after using the bathroom or something. This of course does not mean those 21 wins didn't happen. Everyone remembers that they happened, how they happened, and who made them happen. Knute Rockne probably remembers that they happened, and he's been dead for 88 years.
In any case, because of the NCAA's splendid penchant for Stalinist revisionism, they never happened. The NCAA said, nope, sorry, what you think you remember you don't remember. And so you don't have 900 wins anymore.
But yesterday the Irish got back there, anyway. And for that, we can bless college football's eternal, unmatchable reach across the decades.
Win one, ya bums
There is no such animal as the Knute Rockne Dyin' Guy Locker Room Whip Up The Boys Soliloquy Award, so far as the Blob knows. (Though it would be cooler if there was.) But if there was, Washington State coach Mike Leach would not have won it yesterday.
This after Utah floor-waxed his Cougars 38-13 in Salt Lake City, which prompted Leach to channel his inner Doug Niedermeyer and call his players "fat, dumb, happy and entitled."
This was not quite "you're all worthless and weak," but it lives across the street. And Leach expanded on that, because that's what Leach does. A strange football mad scientist who never met a fleeting thought he wouldn't vocalize -- Pirates? The emoluments clause? The history of bread? Leach will go there -- he was perturbed because his team didn't put up much of a fight a week after blowing a 32-point third-quarter lead in an epic 69-63 loss to UCLA.
This, and the Utah laydown, led Leach to explain that his was "a very soft team" that believed its press clippings as the nation's top passing team, and that folded like a cheap lawn chair every time it got challenged.
"I think we've got a bunch of free agents running around there that think they're pretty special, and then as soon as something doesn't go their way, they want to pout," Leach said. "I think that at some point they have to embrace the effort themselves."
Now, some of you out there might regard this as mean-spirited. But as a former card-carrying, pressbox-buffet-stained sportswriter wretch, the Blob heartily endorses coaches like Leach. We don't want some bland automaton telling us "We just weren't good in any area today." We want the goods.
Like, you know, "Our offensive line couldn't block a sunbeam."
Or, "Our running backs are yellow as butter."
Or, "We couldn't guard that door over there."
Which a certain high school basketball coach actually said to me once, with a rich disgust in his voice that was absolutely priceless.
God bless the man. Made this sportswriter's job a whole lot easier that night.
Being, you know, fat, dumb, happy and entitled occasionally, too.
This after Utah floor-waxed his Cougars 38-13 in Salt Lake City, which prompted Leach to channel his inner Doug Niedermeyer and call his players "fat, dumb, happy and entitled."
This was not quite "you're all worthless and weak," but it lives across the street. And Leach expanded on that, because that's what Leach does. A strange football mad scientist who never met a fleeting thought he wouldn't vocalize -- Pirates? The emoluments clause? The history of bread? Leach will go there -- he was perturbed because his team didn't put up much of a fight a week after blowing a 32-point third-quarter lead in an epic 69-63 loss to UCLA.
This, and the Utah laydown, led Leach to explain that his was "a very soft team" that believed its press clippings as the nation's top passing team, and that folded like a cheap lawn chair every time it got challenged.
"I think we've got a bunch of free agents running around there that think they're pretty special, and then as soon as something doesn't go their way, they want to pout," Leach said. "I think that at some point they have to embrace the effort themselves."
Now, some of you out there might regard this as mean-spirited. But as a former card-carrying, pressbox-buffet-stained sportswriter wretch, the Blob heartily endorses coaches like Leach. We don't want some bland automaton telling us "We just weren't good in any area today." We want the goods.
Like, you know, "Our offensive line couldn't block a sunbeam."
Or, "Our running backs are yellow as butter."
Or, "We couldn't guard that door over there."
Which a certain high school basketball coach actually said to me once, with a rich disgust in his voice that was absolutely priceless.
God bless the man. Made this sportswriter's job a whole lot easier that night.
Being, you know, fat, dumb, happy and entitled occasionally, too.
Friday, September 27, 2019
Eternal voices
Marty Brennaman called his last Reds home game last night, and there goes more of summer's background music. This is how it works in baseball, see. No sport is more wedded, in its porch-swing cadences, to its season and its medium -- the season being summer, and the medium being radio.
And so when a Brennaman sits behind the mike for 46 years as the voice of Cincinnati Reds baseball, a curious alchemy takes hold across the long slow days and lollygagging twilights of summer. After awhile his voice becomes what you hear when you look back on that season of the year, a soft murmur that's barely noticed but indelibly stitched into every summer memory.
It worked that way with Red Barber and the Yankees and Ernie Harwell and the Tigers and Jack Brickhouse and Harry Caray and the Cubs, and it works that way with Brennaman and the Reds, too. Next season someone else will be calling balls and strikes and telling tales in baseball's long pauses, but something will be off. The Reds will still be the Reds, but it won't seem so, somehow.
Every Reds fan has his favorite Marty Brennaman story, and, even though I am not and never have been a Reds fan, I have one, too. It is an outsider's story, and thus an odd one. But in some way it is its own tribute to the Brennaman canon, its own nod to 46 years of ritual.
Back in my Anderson days, when there was still such a thing as two newspapers even in fair-to-middling cities, the assistant sports editor at our rival paper was a huge Reds fan, as many folks in central Indiana are. Every night he'd lay out the pages or write headlines or craft ledes with Marty Brennaman's voice as his accompaniment. And when Brennaman got to his signature line, "And this one belongs to the Reds!" ...
Well. The sports editor, being an impish sort, would always time it perfectly. He'd wait until juuuust before Brennaman began "And this ...", and then he'd reach over and quickly turn off the radio.
The assistant sports editor was not amused by this, I am told.
Because, yes, ritual is all, in this realm. And now, after 46 years, it is no longer.
Someone has reached over and turned off the radio. For good, this time.
And so when a Brennaman sits behind the mike for 46 years as the voice of Cincinnati Reds baseball, a curious alchemy takes hold across the long slow days and lollygagging twilights of summer. After awhile his voice becomes what you hear when you look back on that season of the year, a soft murmur that's barely noticed but indelibly stitched into every summer memory.
It worked that way with Red Barber and the Yankees and Ernie Harwell and the Tigers and Jack Brickhouse and Harry Caray and the Cubs, and it works that way with Brennaman and the Reds, too. Next season someone else will be calling balls and strikes and telling tales in baseball's long pauses, but something will be off. The Reds will still be the Reds, but it won't seem so, somehow.
Every Reds fan has his favorite Marty Brennaman story, and, even though I am not and never have been a Reds fan, I have one, too. It is an outsider's story, and thus an odd one. But in some way it is its own tribute to the Brennaman canon, its own nod to 46 years of ritual.
Back in my Anderson days, when there was still such a thing as two newspapers even in fair-to-middling cities, the assistant sports editor at our rival paper was a huge Reds fan, as many folks in central Indiana are. Every night he'd lay out the pages or write headlines or craft ledes with Marty Brennaman's voice as his accompaniment. And when Brennaman got to his signature line, "And this one belongs to the Reds!" ...
Well. The sports editor, being an impish sort, would always time it perfectly. He'd wait until juuuust before Brennaman began "And this ...", and then he'd reach over and quickly turn off the radio.
The assistant sports editor was not amused by this, I am told.
Because, yes, ritual is all, in this realm. And now, after 46 years, it is no longer.
Someone has reached over and turned off the radio. For good, this time.
Sports injury of the week. No, year.
Maine Maritime and Massachusetts Maritime hooked up in their annual rivalry football game last weekend, and, well, so this happened.
(And a tip of the hat to Deadspin for alerting us to it.)
Keep your eye on the official in the end zone in the upper right side of the screen, and ignore the background audio, which apparently is someone listening to someone else explain why the President of the United States shouldn't oughta be strong-arming foreign governments into assisting in his re-election bid. As if, you know, that's not kind of "well, duh" to anyone in America who still has a working brain cell.
Anyway ... watch the puff of smoke. Then watch the ref go down like he was shot. Because, well, he kind of was.
Turns out the wadding from a cannon fired to celebrate Maine Maritime touchdowns hit Stripes in the head. Apparently it's a tradition at Maine Maritime for an alumnus to bring a cannon to the games and let 'er rip. Because nothing says a lovely Saturday afternoon in the fall like "Let's load this puppy with double canister wadding and fire away, boys."
("Hear, hear," says the ghost of Alonzo Cushing.)
(Look him up, Blobophiles.)
Anyway ... the ref was carted off to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries, thank heavens. And Maine Maritime, those spoilsports, sent out a statement saying alumni would no longer be allowed to bring their own artillery to the games.
Some people just live to take all the fun out of college football, I guess.
(And a tip of the hat to Deadspin for alerting us to it.)
Keep your eye on the official in the end zone in the upper right side of the screen, and ignore the background audio, which apparently is someone listening to someone else explain why the President of the United States shouldn't oughta be strong-arming foreign governments into assisting in his re-election bid. As if, you know, that's not kind of "well, duh" to anyone in America who still has a working brain cell.
Anyway ... watch the puff of smoke. Then watch the ref go down like he was shot. Because, well, he kind of was.
Turns out the wadding from a cannon fired to celebrate Maine Maritime touchdowns hit Stripes in the head. Apparently it's a tradition at Maine Maritime for an alumnus to bring a cannon to the games and let 'er rip. Because nothing says a lovely Saturday afternoon in the fall like "Let's load this puppy with double canister wadding and fire away, boys."
("Hear, hear," says the ghost of Alonzo Cushing.)
(Look him up, Blobophiles.)
Anyway ... the ref was carted off to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries, thank heavens. And Maine Maritime, those spoilsports, sent out a statement saying alumni would no longer be allowed to bring their own artillery to the games.
Some people just live to take all the fun out of college football, I guess.
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Your wild-card moment for today
And, no, it doesn't involve your Chicago Cubs being officially eliminated from postseason play last night, after losing their eighth straight game and second straight to the Cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates.
This moment happened in the nation's capital, and it doubles as the Karma's A Bitch moment for today. Earlier this week, see, the Washington Nationals clinched the National League wild-card spot not clinched by the Milwaukee Brewers last night. They did it in a doubleheader with the Philadelphia Phillies, who had to watch the Nats celebrate.
Among those interested observers?
Bryce Harper.
Who jumped ship with the Nats to sign with the Phillies last offseason, an arrival that was presumed to mean the Phils would be celebrating a postseason berth come late September.
Alas, but no. The Phils, as of this morning, are a dead-even 79-79 on the season. They have lost five in a row and seven of their last 10, an end-of-season death spiral that rivals that of the Cubs. Right now they're 17 1/2 games out of first in the NL East, and four games behind the third-place Mets. Only the hideously inept Miami Marlins, the worst team in baseball not named the Detroit Tigers, keeps them safely out of the cellar in the division.
Oh, yeah: And they weren't a factor even in the wild card chase, finishing (as of this morning) nine games out.
Poor Bryce. Backed the wrong horse, looks like.
This moment happened in the nation's capital, and it doubles as the Karma's A Bitch moment for today. Earlier this week, see, the Washington Nationals clinched the National League wild-card spot not clinched by the Milwaukee Brewers last night. They did it in a doubleheader with the Philadelphia Phillies, who had to watch the Nats celebrate.
Among those interested observers?
Bryce Harper.
Who jumped ship with the Nats to sign with the Phillies last offseason, an arrival that was presumed to mean the Phils would be celebrating a postseason berth come late September.
Alas, but no. The Phils, as of this morning, are a dead-even 79-79 on the season. They have lost five in a row and seven of their last 10, an end-of-season death spiral that rivals that of the Cubs. Right now they're 17 1/2 games out of first in the NL East, and four games behind the third-place Mets. Only the hideously inept Miami Marlins, the worst team in baseball not named the Detroit Tigers, keeps them safely out of the cellar in the division.
Oh, yeah: And they weren't a factor even in the wild card chase, finishing (as of this morning) nine games out.
Poor Bryce. Backed the wrong horse, looks like.
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
The inevitability of Cubness
Maybe it's just a nostalgia deal. Sure, that's it.
Took a gander at the baseball standings this a.m., and I saw that your Chicago Cubs have lost six games in a row and are now comfortably out of the playoffs, four games behind Milwaukee for the second wild card spot with a week left in the season. Just a week ago they were hanging onto that spot by the skin of their teeth, but then an outbreak of extreme Cubness broke out, and they lost four one-run games in a row in Wrigley Field to their fiercest rival, the Gosh Bleep St. Louis Cardinals.
Four one-run losses in a row! In the Confines! With a playoff berth on the line!
This is not just extreme Cubness, it is epic Cubness, given that it hadn't happened since the Wilson administration (1919). And it hadn't happened against the Gosh Bleep St. Louis Cardinals since the Harding administration (1921).
So, yes, this suggests the Cubs secretly pine for the days of yore, when world wars weren't yet numbered, men handled the voting for all you lovely ladies and "That's a doozy" was what you said when your snooty neighbor came home wheeling a Deusenberg. The Cubs were just a decade removed from winning the World Series, but they could still say, "Gosh, we haven't won a World Series since 1908." And they could go right on saying it for another 97 years.
Now?
Well, 2016 spoiled everything. Complaining that you haven't won a World Series in three years, after all, just isn't the same as complaining that you haven't won a World Series in 108 years. There is not that tinge of endearing pathos to it; it's just complaining. And from a fan base that's grown used to winning -- until now, the Cubs have made the playoffs the last four years, and until last year had reached at least the NLCS three straight years -- it's not endearing at all.
And not nearly as interesting.
The entire culture of the franchise, after all, has always been built around the inevitability of Cubness. No matter how bright the outlook every year when they came north from Arizona, you knew in your bones something Cubbish would happen to the Cubs. Sometimes there would be a breathtaking cruelness to it, like when Steve Bartman became the wrongfully blamed architect of Cubness on a ball Moises Alou was never going to catch anyway. And sometimes the Cubs just sucked.
Either way, it all ended up the same. The sun's shining, the Old Style's flowing and fer crissakes, Dusty, Prior's thrown 147 pitches, get him the hell out of there.
But then Theo Epstein showed up, and Cubness went dormant. Under his hand, the Cubs became just another big-spending overdog -- the Yankees or Red Sox, only more cuddly. Which is why this all must feel, on some level, like the Cubs merely returning to their comfort zone.
In other words: Dammit, Cubs, you did it to us again. All that talk back in the spring about a new urgency? Yeah, right. Shoulda known it was a setup.
And the Great Choke of 2019?
Just stick it up there alongside the Great Choke of '69, the Great Choke of '84 and the Great Choke of '03. And welcome back, Cubness.
Took a gander at the baseball standings this a.m., and I saw that your Chicago Cubs have lost six games in a row and are now comfortably out of the playoffs, four games behind Milwaukee for the second wild card spot with a week left in the season. Just a week ago they were hanging onto that spot by the skin of their teeth, but then an outbreak of extreme Cubness broke out, and they lost four one-run games in a row in Wrigley Field to their fiercest rival, the Gosh Bleep St. Louis Cardinals.
Four one-run losses in a row! In the Confines! With a playoff berth on the line!
This is not just extreme Cubness, it is epic Cubness, given that it hadn't happened since the Wilson administration (1919). And it hadn't happened against the Gosh Bleep St. Louis Cardinals since the Harding administration (1921).
So, yes, this suggests the Cubs secretly pine for the days of yore, when world wars weren't yet numbered, men handled the voting for all you lovely ladies and "That's a doozy" was what you said when your snooty neighbor came home wheeling a Deusenberg. The Cubs were just a decade removed from winning the World Series, but they could still say, "Gosh, we haven't won a World Series since 1908." And they could go right on saying it for another 97 years.
Now?
Well, 2016 spoiled everything. Complaining that you haven't won a World Series in three years, after all, just isn't the same as complaining that you haven't won a World Series in 108 years. There is not that tinge of endearing pathos to it; it's just complaining. And from a fan base that's grown used to winning -- until now, the Cubs have made the playoffs the last four years, and until last year had reached at least the NLCS three straight years -- it's not endearing at all.
And not nearly as interesting.
The entire culture of the franchise, after all, has always been built around the inevitability of Cubness. No matter how bright the outlook every year when they came north from Arizona, you knew in your bones something Cubbish would happen to the Cubs. Sometimes there would be a breathtaking cruelness to it, like when Steve Bartman became the wrongfully blamed architect of Cubness on a ball Moises Alou was never going to catch anyway. And sometimes the Cubs just sucked.
Either way, it all ended up the same. The sun's shining, the Old Style's flowing and fer crissakes, Dusty, Prior's thrown 147 pitches, get him the hell out of there.
But then Theo Epstein showed up, and Cubness went dormant. Under his hand, the Cubs became just another big-spending overdog -- the Yankees or Red Sox, only more cuddly. Which is why this all must feel, on some level, like the Cubs merely returning to their comfort zone.
In other words: Dammit, Cubs, you did it to us again. All that talk back in the spring about a new urgency? Yeah, right. Shoulda known it was a setup.
And the Great Choke of 2019?
Just stick it up there alongside the Great Choke of '69, the Great Choke of '84 and the Great Choke of '03. And welcome back, Cubness.
A few brief thoughts on the NFL, Week 3
And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the over-the-counter Blob feature whose side effects may include dizziness, nausea, a tendency to lurch clumsily about and an overwhelming urge to flap one's hands and run in circles around one's living room while clucking like a chicken:
1. Daniel Jones!
2. Rescued a kitten from a tree, ended world hunger, joined forces with Greta Thunberg to give the United Nations a stern talking-to and saved the Giants from certain doom against the Buccaneers with the GREATEST DISPLAY OF HERIOCS IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE NFL!
3. Jacoby Brissette!
4. Completed eleventy-hundred passes in a row for the Colts, which NOT EVEN DANIEL JONES COULD DO!
5. Andrew Luck!
6. Said, "Gosh, look at Jacoby! I couldn't do that. Why, I bet DANIEL JONES COULDN'T EVEN DO THAT!"
7. Freddie Kitchens!
8. Said, "Yes, I know we have a first down on the 4-yard line. I know we have all three of our timeouts left. I know we have Nick Chubb. But I didn't feel like running the football, so NEENER-NEENER-NEENER!"
9. Sean Payton!
10. Said, "I'll use BOTH my backup quarterbacks to beat the Seahawks, because I am SEAN PAYTON and I don't need Drew Brees to win football games. Or even DANIEL JONES!"
1. Daniel Jones!
2. Rescued a kitten from a tree, ended world hunger, joined forces with Greta Thunberg to give the United Nations a stern talking-to and saved the Giants from certain doom against the Buccaneers with the GREATEST DISPLAY OF HERIOCS IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE NFL!
3. Jacoby Brissette!
4. Completed eleventy-hundred passes in a row for the Colts, which NOT EVEN DANIEL JONES COULD DO!
5. Andrew Luck!
6. Said, "Gosh, look at Jacoby! I couldn't do that. Why, I bet DANIEL JONES COULDN'T EVEN DO THAT!"
7. Freddie Kitchens!
8. Said, "Yes, I know we have a first down on the 4-yard line. I know we have all three of our timeouts left. I know we have Nick Chubb. But I didn't feel like running the football, so NEENER-NEENER-NEENER!"
9. Sean Payton!
10. Said, "I'll use BOTH my backup quarterbacks to beat the Seahawks, because I am SEAN PAYTON and I don't need Drew Brees to win football games. Or even DANIEL JONES!"
Monday, September 23, 2019
Self-destructive
They played football again in the Nash-unal FOOT-ball League yesterday, but the best wide receiver in the game was not on the field. The best wide receiver in the game spent the day blowing up what's left of his career instead.
He was saying he was done with the NFL because they're all a bunch of crooks who are out to get him.
He was calling out the Raiders, and Patriots owner Robert Kraft, for stealing money from him.
He was ripping his former quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, for still being able to play while he, the best receiver in the game, has been cast into outer darkness because of the same sort of sexual assault allegations once leveled at Roethlisberger.
He was blaming everyone for his miseries but himself, the architect of those miseries.
The unraveling of Antonio Brown was fascinating to watch at first and then tiresome and now is just immensely sad, on some level, because it has become starkly apparent he is not entirely in control of that unraveling. If he has done even half of what Sports Illustrated's reporting alleges he has done, he is a seriously disturbed young man. We are allowed to feel some pity for that without excusing any of his actions, particularly the allegations of sexual assault and harassment.
The latest was a series of texts he sent to the artist who claims Brown dangled his junk in her face while she was working on a mural for him in his home. An individual in control of his impulses would have let his attorney simply crank out the usual pro forma denial. But Brown is clearly not a man in control of his impulses, so he allegedly threatened her via text.
That was enough for the Patriots, who didn't care what Brown was accused of as long as it hadn't happened on their watch. It is the NFL, after all. Value turns team officials blind to practically any depravity, unless of course it involves not standing for the national anthem. The Shield is much too invested in stagecraft patriotism to tolerate that sort of heinousness.
And so no surprise that, despite everything, Brown's agent Drew Rosenhaus said Sunday teams are already sending out feelers about AB. Even though he's been sent packing by three teams now in less than a year -- including one team (the Raiders) which was done with him before he'd even played a down for it.
Think about that: The best receiver in the game made himself so intolerable he was let go -- and by the most comically inept organization in football, no less -- before he could even see the field.
That is next level self-destruction. And it is why the overwhelming reaction here is not ridicule or contempt but the urge to get at how Antonio Brown ended up the way he is, and if perhaps it wasn't inevitable.
He grew up abandoned and, for a time, was homeless as a teenager. Nobody gave a damn about him. But he had this marvelous gift for catching footballs, and suddenly people were giving him things and excusing every bad act he committed not because they gave a damn, either, because he could do something for them. And you wonder why he's such a malignant narcissist, with a persecution complex a mile wide?
Which is why the Blob is thinking this, as teams send out their feelers:
Antonio Brown doesn't need another team. He needs professional help.
He was saying he was done with the NFL because they're all a bunch of crooks who are out to get him.
He was calling out the Raiders, and Patriots owner Robert Kraft, for stealing money from him.
He was ripping his former quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, for still being able to play while he, the best receiver in the game, has been cast into outer darkness because of the same sort of sexual assault allegations once leveled at Roethlisberger.
He was blaming everyone for his miseries but himself, the architect of those miseries.
The unraveling of Antonio Brown was fascinating to watch at first and then tiresome and now is just immensely sad, on some level, because it has become starkly apparent he is not entirely in control of that unraveling. If he has done even half of what Sports Illustrated's reporting alleges he has done, he is a seriously disturbed young man. We are allowed to feel some pity for that without excusing any of his actions, particularly the allegations of sexual assault and harassment.
The latest was a series of texts he sent to the artist who claims Brown dangled his junk in her face while she was working on a mural for him in his home. An individual in control of his impulses would have let his attorney simply crank out the usual pro forma denial. But Brown is clearly not a man in control of his impulses, so he allegedly threatened her via text.
That was enough for the Patriots, who didn't care what Brown was accused of as long as it hadn't happened on their watch. It is the NFL, after all. Value turns team officials blind to practically any depravity, unless of course it involves not standing for the national anthem. The Shield is much too invested in stagecraft patriotism to tolerate that sort of heinousness.
And so no surprise that, despite everything, Brown's agent Drew Rosenhaus said Sunday teams are already sending out feelers about AB. Even though he's been sent packing by three teams now in less than a year -- including one team (the Raiders) which was done with him before he'd even played a down for it.
Think about that: The best receiver in the game made himself so intolerable he was let go -- and by the most comically inept organization in football, no less -- before he could even see the field.
That is next level self-destruction. And it is why the overwhelming reaction here is not ridicule or contempt but the urge to get at how Antonio Brown ended up the way he is, and if perhaps it wasn't inevitable.
He grew up abandoned and, for a time, was homeless as a teenager. Nobody gave a damn about him. But he had this marvelous gift for catching footballs, and suddenly people were giving him things and excusing every bad act he committed not because they gave a damn, either, because he could do something for them. And you wonder why he's such a malignant narcissist, with a persecution complex a mile wide?
Which is why the Blob is thinking this, as teams send out their feelers:
Antonio Brown doesn't need another team. He needs professional help.
Sunday, September 22, 2019
Missing signature
The W hid from them, down there are the end. Hid in those famous Sanford Stadium hedges, perhaps. Hid in Jake Fromme's impeccably accurate throws. Hid ... somewhere ... as Ian Book took the snap and scrambled madly as the red helmets chased him, looking downfield, looking downfield ...
Nope. No W in sight.
And so Book's last pass, and Notre Dame's last hope, fell incomplete from the Georgia 38. And the Bulldogs did what all the wise guys said they were going to do, which is win at home against the Irish. And Notre Dame, for all intents and purposes, remained a program almost good enough to get into college football's toniest precincts, but not quite.
They were good enough to lead early and good enough to lead at the half, 10-7, but then Fromme started throwing back-shoulder routes to Lawrence Cager and Georgia's D reduced the Irish to one dimension -- Book threw the football 47 times, while the Irish scratched out a mere 46 yards on the ground in 14 mostly fruitless tries. And suddenly it was 23-10.
It ended 23-17, and the Irish had that one last shot from the 38, but the signature win they needed went unsigned. A good try, but good tries don't get you in the door.
And so what last night proved was only that the Irish were a legit No. 7, which is what they were ranked going in. And maybe that's good enough to get into the playoff if the Georgias and Auburns and 'Bamas and LSUs start knocking one another out, which they surely will. So the headline on ESPN's website this morning about how the Irish are in "trouble" in the College Football Playoff race is woefully premature.
Here's the thing, see: There is absolutely nothing coming their way in October and November that should prevent them from arriving in December at 11-1. Absolutely nothing.
ND's remaining schedule is, frankly, soft as butter Charmin, although it might not appear so to the untrained eye. Oh, they've got some marquee names down the road -- Michigan and USC and Virginia Tech and Stanford -- but none of them are marquee teams these days. They're just not.
Michigan, with two weeks to prepare, looked utterly lost and unprepared as Wisconsin worked the Wolverines over 35-14. Virginia Tech, a long jaunt from the Frank Beamer days, is 2-1 and needed a major second-half rally to beat, um, Furman last week. USC beat Utah using a third-string quarterback, but has already lost to BYU. And Stanford isn't Stanford anymore, either, standing 1-3 after losing to USC, Central Florida and Oregon.
Unbeaten Virginia and always-pesky Navy are probably the highest hurdles left for the Irish. And even they're not all that high.
So, yeah. No reason at all to think Notre Dame won't be 11-1. It may not be a good enough 11-1 resume to get them to the playoff, but how many 11-1 teams are going to be left, come December?
In which case, they may get in by default.
And you can sign that.
Nope. No W in sight.
And so Book's last pass, and Notre Dame's last hope, fell incomplete from the Georgia 38. And the Bulldogs did what all the wise guys said they were going to do, which is win at home against the Irish. And Notre Dame, for all intents and purposes, remained a program almost good enough to get into college football's toniest precincts, but not quite.
They were good enough to lead early and good enough to lead at the half, 10-7, but then Fromme started throwing back-shoulder routes to Lawrence Cager and Georgia's D reduced the Irish to one dimension -- Book threw the football 47 times, while the Irish scratched out a mere 46 yards on the ground in 14 mostly fruitless tries. And suddenly it was 23-10.
It ended 23-17, and the Irish had that one last shot from the 38, but the signature win they needed went unsigned. A good try, but good tries don't get you in the door.
And so what last night proved was only that the Irish were a legit No. 7, which is what they were ranked going in. And maybe that's good enough to get into the playoff if the Georgias and Auburns and 'Bamas and LSUs start knocking one another out, which they surely will. So the headline on ESPN's website this morning about how the Irish are in "trouble" in the College Football Playoff race is woefully premature.
Here's the thing, see: There is absolutely nothing coming their way in October and November that should prevent them from arriving in December at 11-1. Absolutely nothing.
ND's remaining schedule is, frankly, soft as butter Charmin, although it might not appear so to the untrained eye. Oh, they've got some marquee names down the road -- Michigan and USC and Virginia Tech and Stanford -- but none of them are marquee teams these days. They're just not.
Michigan, with two weeks to prepare, looked utterly lost and unprepared as Wisconsin worked the Wolverines over 35-14. Virginia Tech, a long jaunt from the Frank Beamer days, is 2-1 and needed a major second-half rally to beat, um, Furman last week. USC beat Utah using a third-string quarterback, but has already lost to BYU. And Stanford isn't Stanford anymore, either, standing 1-3 after losing to USC, Central Florida and Oregon.
Unbeaten Virginia and always-pesky Navy are probably the highest hurdles left for the Irish. And even they're not all that high.
So, yeah. No reason at all to think Notre Dame won't be 11-1. It may not be a good enough 11-1 resume to get them to the playoff, but how many 11-1 teams are going to be left, come December?
In which case, they may get in by default.
And you can sign that.
Friday, September 20, 2019
The cardio of chess
So one of my old journo colleagues posted an NPR report on my Facebook page the other day, as a way of reviving an old debate we had in our Anderson Daily Bulletin days.
The debate: Is chess a sport?
My reporter friend said yes. I said no, because there has to be some form of physical prowess and/or endurance involved in an actual sport, and sitting motionless for hours on end waiting for Bobby Fischer to do something crazy didn't involve any of that.
Besides, I was the sports editor. So neener-neener-neener.
Well, neener-neener-neener on me.
According to the NPR report, top-flight chess players can expend up to 6,000 calories a day during matches. In the 1984 chess world championship, defending champion Anatoly Karpov lost 22 pounds. And in 2018, a company that tracks heart rates monitored chess players during a tournament and discovered that one Russian grandmaster, Mikhail Antipov, burned 560 calories in two hours.
This, the NPR report said, is about what Roger Federer would burn in an hour of singles tennis.
The Blob's initial reaction: The heart rate boys obviously missed the part where Antipov was playing singles tennis between moves. Also, geez, Karpov, eat an energy bar or something.
The upon-further-reflection reaction: How do chess players burn all those calories?
The Blob has a few explanations:
1. They are all Lipozene junkies.
2. Although it looks as if they're sitting absolutely motionless for hours on end, their feet, moving too fast for the human eye to detect, are running entire marathons in place.
3. Bill Belichick is making them run wind sprints between moves.
4. They have the metabolic rate of hummingbirds.
And speaking of Mikhail Antipov ...
5. He's actually the late Steve Prefontaine. Because, reincarnation.
In all seriousness, though, it is a mystery. I profess to know less than zero about human physiology and how it works, but I'm guessing chess players burn these incredible amounts of calories while sitting around like lumps because of the hyper brain activity chess requires. Either that, or the energy expended in staring at a chessboard without blinking for hours on end is much greater than crass laymen like myself would ever suspect.
And either that, or Anatoli Karpov was on a hunger strike at the same time he was playing for that 1984 world championship.
In any case, this does still not prove chess is a sport, in the Blob's estimation. This is because the Blob is stubborn and hates admitting it's wrong even more than Our Only Available President does. But my former colleague's argument always has mirrored my own about race drivers, whom the unlettered and unwashed don't think are athletes, either.
I always just laugh when they say that, because the one time I drove a race car in a charity event I emerged bathed in sweat with my muscles aching. And this was after only 10 laps. And it was for funsies. And it's when I was a young man who still ran occasionally and played a lot of playground hoops, so I was in pretty decent physical shape.
"It's a lot more physically taxing than it looks," I always say.
Plus it requires incredible hand-eye coordination, preternatural reflexes, vast reservoirs of physical and mental stamina ...
You know. Pretty much like every premier athlete has.
But chess?
I'm sorry. Mikhail Antipov could not outdrive A.J., Mario or Jimmy Clark. Or dunk on LeBron. Or throw a football through a keyhole from 30 yards away, while on the run, like Patrick Mahomes.
Although Antipov might be able to out-eat them.
The debate: Is chess a sport?
My reporter friend said yes. I said no, because there has to be some form of physical prowess and/or endurance involved in an actual sport, and sitting motionless for hours on end waiting for Bobby Fischer to do something crazy didn't involve any of that.
Besides, I was the sports editor. So neener-neener-neener.
Well, neener-neener-neener on me.
According to the NPR report, top-flight chess players can expend up to 6,000 calories a day during matches. In the 1984 chess world championship, defending champion Anatoly Karpov lost 22 pounds. And in 2018, a company that tracks heart rates monitored chess players during a tournament and discovered that one Russian grandmaster, Mikhail Antipov, burned 560 calories in two hours.
This, the NPR report said, is about what Roger Federer would burn in an hour of singles tennis.
The Blob's initial reaction: The heart rate boys obviously missed the part where Antipov was playing singles tennis between moves. Also, geez, Karpov, eat an energy bar or something.
The upon-further-reflection reaction: How do chess players burn all those calories?
The Blob has a few explanations:
1. They are all Lipozene junkies.
2. Although it looks as if they're sitting absolutely motionless for hours on end, their feet, moving too fast for the human eye to detect, are running entire marathons in place.
3. Bill Belichick is making them run wind sprints between moves.
4. They have the metabolic rate of hummingbirds.
And speaking of Mikhail Antipov ...
5. He's actually the late Steve Prefontaine. Because, reincarnation.
In all seriousness, though, it is a mystery. I profess to know less than zero about human physiology and how it works, but I'm guessing chess players burn these incredible amounts of calories while sitting around like lumps because of the hyper brain activity chess requires. Either that, or the energy expended in staring at a chessboard without blinking for hours on end is much greater than crass laymen like myself would ever suspect.
And either that, or Anatoli Karpov was on a hunger strike at the same time he was playing for that 1984 world championship.
In any case, this does still not prove chess is a sport, in the Blob's estimation. This is because the Blob is stubborn and hates admitting it's wrong even more than Our Only Available President does. But my former colleague's argument always has mirrored my own about race drivers, whom the unlettered and unwashed don't think are athletes, either.
I always just laugh when they say that, because the one time I drove a race car in a charity event I emerged bathed in sweat with my muscles aching. And this was after only 10 laps. And it was for funsies. And it's when I was a young man who still ran occasionally and played a lot of playground hoops, so I was in pretty decent physical shape.
"It's a lot more physically taxing than it looks," I always say.
Plus it requires incredible hand-eye coordination, preternatural reflexes, vast reservoirs of physical and mental stamina ...
You know. Pretty much like every premier athlete has.
But chess?
I'm sorry. Mikhail Antipov could not outdrive A.J., Mario or Jimmy Clark. Or dunk on LeBron. Or throw a football through a keyhole from 30 yards away, while on the run, like Patrick Mahomes.
Although Antipov might be able to out-eat them.
Thursday, September 19, 2019
Defining moment
Tom Hanks was full of horsefeathers and baloney, you know. There is crying in baseball.
Those were not seasonal allergies, after all, that prompted the outbreak of sniffles men of a certain age tried to suppress while Kevin Costner and his dad had a catch up there on the big screen in "A Field of Dreams." Yeah, half of those men, being men, would never admit to tearing up a mite -- just a mite, you know -- during that scene. Yeah, women, some of them, sometimes found the entire premise of the film silly and saccharine and full of clumsy, over-the-top sentimentality.
But as every guy says who ever got something in his eye during that scene, to hell with 'em. It's our National Pastime and we'll cry if we want to.
Even if the Pastime, as the Blob has observed here on more than one occasion, is mostly Past its Time in America, a relic like eight-track tapes and GTOs and carhops on roller skates.
That's why this right here was the defining baseball moment of the year for a lot of us of that certain age.
Enjoy. Tissues available upon request.
Those were not seasonal allergies, after all, that prompted the outbreak of sniffles men of a certain age tried to suppress while Kevin Costner and his dad had a catch up there on the big screen in "A Field of Dreams." Yeah, half of those men, being men, would never admit to tearing up a mite -- just a mite, you know -- during that scene. Yeah, women, some of them, sometimes found the entire premise of the film silly and saccharine and full of clumsy, over-the-top sentimentality.
But as every guy says who ever got something in his eye during that scene, to hell with 'em. It's our National Pastime and we'll cry if we want to.
Even if the Pastime, as the Blob has observed here on more than one occasion, is mostly Past its Time in America, a relic like eight-track tapes and GTOs and carhops on roller skates.
That's why this right here was the defining baseball moment of the year for a lot of us of that certain age.
Enjoy. Tissues available upon request.
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
Low and lower
And now, because the Blob can never do enough to disgust/torture/chase off its myriad followers -- "myriad" being a synonym for "a couple, maybe" -- here's the latest, and probably final, update on the Battle for the Cellar.
("No!" you're saying. "Not this stupid thing again!")
(And also, "I suppose this means you're going to talk about your crummy Pirates again, whom NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOU!")
Why ... yes. I am going to talk about my crummy Pirates again.
Who remain crummy, and solidly in the cellar, 21 games below .500 and 5 1/2 games behind the Reds with two weeks left in the season. But this is not about that.
This is about how the Pirates have plumbed new depths in the Battle for the Cellar by discovering that -- hey, check it out! -- there's a sub-cellar beneath.
This upon the news that their All-Star closer, Felipe Vazquez, has been arrested for preying on children. Child pornography, soliciting a child, statutory sexual assault, unlawful contact with a minor, corruption of minors ... it's the whole sicko package, in two states, with which they've charged Vazquez. Additional charges are pending, which is why Vazquez was denied bail.
You know you're in some Marianas Trench-level trouble with the laws when you're as high-profile a suspect as Vazquez is, and they deny you bail.
So, to review: Not only are my Pirates an awful baseball team, their bullpen ace is an alleged perv. And not just any kind of alleged perv, but the absolute worst kind there is.
Nice.
("No!" you're saying. "Not this stupid thing again!")
(And also, "I suppose this means you're going to talk about your crummy Pirates again, whom NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOU!")
Why ... yes. I am going to talk about my crummy Pirates again.
Who remain crummy, and solidly in the cellar, 21 games below .500 and 5 1/2 games behind the Reds with two weeks left in the season. But this is not about that.
This is about how the Pirates have plumbed new depths in the Battle for the Cellar by discovering that -- hey, check it out! -- there's a sub-cellar beneath.
This upon the news that their All-Star closer, Felipe Vazquez, has been arrested for preying on children. Child pornography, soliciting a child, statutory sexual assault, unlawful contact with a minor, corruption of minors ... it's the whole sicko package, in two states, with which they've charged Vazquez. Additional charges are pending, which is why Vazquez was denied bail.
You know you're in some Marianas Trench-level trouble with the laws when you're as high-profile a suspect as Vazquez is, and they deny you bail.
So, to review: Not only are my Pirates an awful baseball team, their bullpen ace is an alleged perv. And not just any kind of alleged perv, but the absolute worst kind there is.
Nice.
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
A few brief thoughts on the NFL, Week 2
And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the Blob feature which critics who have in no way been paid under the table by the Blob call "a triumph of wit, erudition and delightful bon mots" and "not at all a jumble of obscure references lost on most readers":
1. It's Tuesday morning and another Jets quarterback has NOT gone down with an inj--
2. Crap. Never mind.
3. It's Tuesday morning and the Dolphi--
4. Crap. Never mind.
5. (Because it doesn't matter what the Dolphins did/failed to do. "Never mind" will always be the default response for the Dolphins this season.)
6. (And "If that even counts" will be the default response to anything the Dolphins' opponents do. As in: "The Patriots beat the Dolphins 43-0 yesterday, if that even counts.")
7. Drew Brees is hurt. Ben Roethlisberger is hurt. Sam Darnold has mono. Trevor Siemian is hurt.
8. "Hey, I'm not hurt!" (Joe Namath.)
9. "Neither am I!" ((Richard Todd, Ken O'Brien, Chad Pennington, various other former Jets quarterbacks.)
10. "It's only Tuesday morning. Just wait." (The football gods)
1. It's Tuesday morning and another Jets quarterback has NOT gone down with an inj--
2. Crap. Never mind.
3. It's Tuesday morning and the Dolphi--
4. Crap. Never mind.
5. (Because it doesn't matter what the Dolphins did/failed to do. "Never mind" will always be the default response for the Dolphins this season.)
6. (And "If that even counts" will be the default response to anything the Dolphins' opponents do. As in: "The Patriots beat the Dolphins 43-0 yesterday, if that even counts.")
7. Drew Brees is hurt. Ben Roethlisberger is hurt. Sam Darnold has mono. Trevor Siemian is hurt.
8. "Hey, I'm not hurt!" (Joe Namath.)
9. "Neither am I!" ((Richard Todd, Ken O'Brien, Chad Pennington, various other former Jets quarterbacks.)
10. "It's only Tuesday morning. Just wait." (The football gods)
Monday, September 16, 2019
Kickin' it
If this is it for the man, there will be no glib jibes about the march of time in these precincts. No clichés about how you can't outrun (or outkick, in this case) the calendar. No banalities about how the years pile up on a man no matter what sly schemes or magic elixirs he employs.
There will only be this: A tale of two men in two places on one Sunday afternoon, and what the ancients said about the fleeting nature of glory.
Out in Denver, see, a man swung his leg as time expired and became the king of Chicago 53 yards later, his third (and game-winning) field goal of 48 yards or longer on the day. In Nashville, meanwhile, another man missed two more extra points, continuing a horrendous start to the season that has seen him miss five of his eight kicks so far, extra points and field goals.
The first man is Eddie Pineiro, the survivor of a zany cattle call that saw the Bears run 10 kickers through training camp in either a tribute to the Democratic debates or the latest season of the Bachelorette.
And the second man?
That would be Adam Vinatieri, the greatest placekicker in NFL history, who may or may not be announcing his retirement today.
Eddie Pineiro is 24 years old. Adam Vinatieri is 46. Together, they stand this morning at the opposite poles of fame, how it finds a man and then leaves him now matter how long he's managed to keep it around. Particularly if his job involves kicking extra points and field goals in the NFL.
Eddie Pineiro undoubtedly will find out about that sometime down the road, when that game-winning kick ricochets off a goalpost or sails wide instead of truer than a mother's love. Adam Vinatieri is just now finding out about it, even if it's taken almost a quarter century.
Quite simply, the man has had a run no one ever has in a sport that so pitilessly uses up its assets, particularly if you're a placekicker. One week you're Eddie Pineiro and they're toasting you all up and down Rush Street; the next, you doink a couple and you're Eddie Munster. Or, to reverse the process: One week you're tending bar, the next you're kicking field goals for the Atlanta Falcons.
That was the backstory of a guy named Tim Mazzetti, back in the late 1970s. Signed by the Falcons in 1978, he made 13-of-16 field goals that season, including a team-record 11 in a row and four game-winners as the Falcons made the playoffs for the first time in franchise history.
Three years later the Falcons cut him in training camp. So it goes.
Except, of course, for Vinatieri, who's been hanging with the glory so long half his teammates in the Colts locker room were in the womb when he started with the Patriots in 1996. John Elway and Dan Marino and Emmitt Smith were still playing; Peyton Manning, who played 17 seasons in the NFL himself before retiring three years ago, was still a junior at Tennessee.
And still Vinatieri is kicking, though no longer well. And if that is indeed age catching up with him (to, OK, indulge one lame cliché), it's taken its own sweet time doing so. And that is a credit to the man's sustained excellence, whose like at his position we may never see again.
In other words: Enjoy it while it lasts, Eddie. Because it never lasts forever.
There will only be this: A tale of two men in two places on one Sunday afternoon, and what the ancients said about the fleeting nature of glory.
Out in Denver, see, a man swung his leg as time expired and became the king of Chicago 53 yards later, his third (and game-winning) field goal of 48 yards or longer on the day. In Nashville, meanwhile, another man missed two more extra points, continuing a horrendous start to the season that has seen him miss five of his eight kicks so far, extra points and field goals.
The first man is Eddie Pineiro, the survivor of a zany cattle call that saw the Bears run 10 kickers through training camp in either a tribute to the Democratic debates or the latest season of the Bachelorette.
And the second man?
That would be Adam Vinatieri, the greatest placekicker in NFL history, who may or may not be announcing his retirement today.
Eddie Pineiro is 24 years old. Adam Vinatieri is 46. Together, they stand this morning at the opposite poles of fame, how it finds a man and then leaves him now matter how long he's managed to keep it around. Particularly if his job involves kicking extra points and field goals in the NFL.
Eddie Pineiro undoubtedly will find out about that sometime down the road, when that game-winning kick ricochets off a goalpost or sails wide instead of truer than a mother's love. Adam Vinatieri is just now finding out about it, even if it's taken almost a quarter century.
Quite simply, the man has had a run no one ever has in a sport that so pitilessly uses up its assets, particularly if you're a placekicker. One week you're Eddie Pineiro and they're toasting you all up and down Rush Street; the next, you doink a couple and you're Eddie Munster. Or, to reverse the process: One week you're tending bar, the next you're kicking field goals for the Atlanta Falcons.
That was the backstory of a guy named Tim Mazzetti, back in the late 1970s. Signed by the Falcons in 1978, he made 13-of-16 field goals that season, including a team-record 11 in a row and four game-winners as the Falcons made the playoffs for the first time in franchise history.
Three years later the Falcons cut him in training camp. So it goes.
Except, of course, for Vinatieri, who's been hanging with the glory so long half his teammates in the Colts locker room were in the womb when he started with the Patriots in 1996. John Elway and Dan Marino and Emmitt Smith were still playing; Peyton Manning, who played 17 seasons in the NFL himself before retiring three years ago, was still a junior at Tennessee.
And still Vinatieri is kicking, though no longer well. And if that is indeed age catching up with him (to, OK, indulge one lame cliché), it's taken its own sweet time doing so. And that is a credit to the man's sustained excellence, whose like at his position we may never see again.
In other words: Enjoy it while it lasts, Eddie. Because it never lasts forever.
Sunday, September 15, 2019
The fall of dominoes
They passed it without a dissenting vote out there in California, and now the NCAA is in full-on bully mode. That's the way of it with bullies; they're never more dangerous than when they're scared and cornered. And the NCAA is both right now.
That's because what passed this week without a dissenting vote was a bill that would allow college athletes in California to earn income from the use of their names, images and likenesses. Now it merely awaits the stroke of governor Gavin Newsom's pen to make it law -- a stroke that will sound remarkably like the tipping of a domino.
And that's what has the NCAA feeling scared and cornered and acting the bully. Because this domino has been poised to tip for a long time, and the pashas of major-college athletics know it. And there's not a thing they can do to stop it except threaten to excommunicate every college athlete who takes advantage of the new law.
Here's the problem with that: The NCAA's essential argument is grounded in fantasy.
"If the bill becomes law and California's 58 NCAA schools are compelled to allow an unrestricted name, image and likeness scheme, it would erase the critical distinction between college and professional athletics and, because it gives those schools an unfair recruiting advantage, would result in them eventually being unable to compete in NCAA competitions," it said in a letter to Newsom. "This bill would remove the essential element of fairness and equal treatment that forms the bedrock of college sports."
Let's take the last part of that first.
Fairness and equal treatment?
Sure, OK. Perhaps we should ask every school that ever got dinged for giving a kid a ride to the airport or a cheeseburger about that. Let's ask them how fair and equal they think it is that the NCAA chose to pick nits with them, but let North Carolina's powerhouse basketball program skate for its involvement in a decades-long academic scandal.
And how fair and equal is it that, until Ed O'Bannon took the NCAA to court and undressed it for $44 million, the institution charged with enforcing the "critical distinction between college and professional athletics" was milking its athletes' images for tons of cash in video game sales? And making billions on TV rights to its football playoff and its basketball tournament, both of which are driven by the sweat and toil of its "amateur" student-athletes?
Or allow its member conferences and schools to cut their own TV deals on the backs of their student-athletes, and use them as unpaid human billboards for their apparel partners?
The California bill would allow them to be compensated for their role in such deals, which seems fair and equal in a way that's more than just the lip service the NCAA pays it. Because, listen, that "critical distinction" the NCAA imagines would be erased by the California bill doesn't exist, and hasn't for a long time. Big-time collegiate athletics already are a professional enterprise; they are an entirely corporate entity that operates by the same supply-and-demand principles that apply to any corporate enterprise.
And so the entire framework for the NCAA's argument here has no legs, because it precedes from the faultiest of assumptions. And the pashas know that, deep down. And that's what scares the daylights out of them, because they know if California can decide to call them on their BS, other states will follow.
I mean, if California collegiate athletes can finally get a cut of that fat pile, why shouldn't college athletes in other states? Because, see, that part of the NCAA's fantasy is right: It would constitute a recruiting advantage.
The NCAA's solution to this is typically punitive: Cast out the student-athletes whose welfare they claim to safeguard. But how are they going to do that if other states decide the better solution is simply to allow their student-athletes the same freedom California's has?
And down go the dominoes, one by one by one.
That's because what passed this week without a dissenting vote was a bill that would allow college athletes in California to earn income from the use of their names, images and likenesses. Now it merely awaits the stroke of governor Gavin Newsom's pen to make it law -- a stroke that will sound remarkably like the tipping of a domino.
And that's what has the NCAA feeling scared and cornered and acting the bully. Because this domino has been poised to tip for a long time, and the pashas of major-college athletics know it. And there's not a thing they can do to stop it except threaten to excommunicate every college athlete who takes advantage of the new law.
Here's the problem with that: The NCAA's essential argument is grounded in fantasy.
"If the bill becomes law and California's 58 NCAA schools are compelled to allow an unrestricted name, image and likeness scheme, it would erase the critical distinction between college and professional athletics and, because it gives those schools an unfair recruiting advantage, would result in them eventually being unable to compete in NCAA competitions," it said in a letter to Newsom. "This bill would remove the essential element of fairness and equal treatment that forms the bedrock of college sports."
Let's take the last part of that first.
Fairness and equal treatment?
Sure, OK. Perhaps we should ask every school that ever got dinged for giving a kid a ride to the airport or a cheeseburger about that. Let's ask them how fair and equal they think it is that the NCAA chose to pick nits with them, but let North Carolina's powerhouse basketball program skate for its involvement in a decades-long academic scandal.
And how fair and equal is it that, until Ed O'Bannon took the NCAA to court and undressed it for $44 million, the institution charged with enforcing the "critical distinction between college and professional athletics" was milking its athletes' images for tons of cash in video game sales? And making billions on TV rights to its football playoff and its basketball tournament, both of which are driven by the sweat and toil of its "amateur" student-athletes?
Or allow its member conferences and schools to cut their own TV deals on the backs of their student-athletes, and use them as unpaid human billboards for their apparel partners?
The California bill would allow them to be compensated for their role in such deals, which seems fair and equal in a way that's more than just the lip service the NCAA pays it. Because, listen, that "critical distinction" the NCAA imagines would be erased by the California bill doesn't exist, and hasn't for a long time. Big-time collegiate athletics already are a professional enterprise; they are an entirely corporate entity that operates by the same supply-and-demand principles that apply to any corporate enterprise.
And so the entire framework for the NCAA's argument here has no legs, because it precedes from the faultiest of assumptions. And the pashas know that, deep down. And that's what scares the daylights out of them, because they know if California can decide to call them on their BS, other states will follow.
I mean, if California collegiate athletes can finally get a cut of that fat pile, why shouldn't college athletes in other states? Because, see, that part of the NCAA's fantasy is right: It would constitute a recruiting advantage.
The NCAA's solution to this is typically punitive: Cast out the student-athletes whose welfare they claim to safeguard. But how are they going to do that if other states decide the better solution is simply to allow their student-athletes the same freedom California's has?
And down go the dominoes, one by one by one.
Same old, same old
You knew this was coming, if you were at all upright and sentient. How many times does Lucy have to yank the football away? How many times does the pea in the shell game have to elude the rubes along the midway?
And so, yes, Ohio State 51, Indiana 10, and same old Who-Who-Hoosiers. The day of football relevance may yet be coming, but then we always believe the day Lucy lets Charlie Brown kick the ball is coming, too, don't we?
And so you knew in your bones what was going to happen, when the usual preseason hype ended. All that talk about how this IU team was different, how it had athletes on both sides of the football who were as elite as anyone else's, how this was the long-awaited turning of that long-established corner ...
Well. You still smelled 6-6 in the wind, despite all that. You still smelled 6-6 and a date in some radial tire bowl if the Hoosiers were lucky, and sub-.500 and a date in the Home Alone Bowl if they weren't.
And sure, I get it, it's still only mid-September, and the Hoosiers could yet prove me wrong. And maybe it's different yesterday if Michael Penix Jr., a legit game-changer at quarterback, had played. But I really don't think it would have been all that different.
See, I have watched these Hoosiers twice now, once in person against Ball State and once on TV, and I didn't see anything I haven't seen before from them. Against Ball State, a middling MAC offense went up and down the field on Indiana's allegedly stouter, more athletic defense, scoring 24 points. Ohio State moved the football with absurd ease yesterday. Indiana, it seems, is still Indiana.
Which is to say, college football lives on its traditional rivalries, and Indiana's fiercest traditional rival has always been its own history. It's been the '67 Rose Bowl and the Bill Mallory era and maybe a couple other teams, and then a whole lot of beige. It's been Pihos and Gonso and Isenbarger, Butcher and Anthony Thompson and Taliaferro and Randall-El, and then ...
And then a whole lot Dennis Cremeans and Ted McNulty. And Ohio State 51, Indiana 10.
Next week?
Next week the Hoosiers get UConn, a game they should win. They also have Rutgers on the schedule, another game they should win. Beyond that ...
Beyond that, hope springs eternal. Maybe Lucy won't yank the football away this time.
And so, yes, Ohio State 51, Indiana 10, and same old Who-Who-Hoosiers. The day of football relevance may yet be coming, but then we always believe the day Lucy lets Charlie Brown kick the ball is coming, too, don't we?
And so you knew in your bones what was going to happen, when the usual preseason hype ended. All that talk about how this IU team was different, how it had athletes on both sides of the football who were as elite as anyone else's, how this was the long-awaited turning of that long-established corner ...
Well. You still smelled 6-6 in the wind, despite all that. You still smelled 6-6 and a date in some radial tire bowl if the Hoosiers were lucky, and sub-.500 and a date in the Home Alone Bowl if they weren't.
And sure, I get it, it's still only mid-September, and the Hoosiers could yet prove me wrong. And maybe it's different yesterday if Michael Penix Jr., a legit game-changer at quarterback, had played. But I really don't think it would have been all that different.
See, I have watched these Hoosiers twice now, once in person against Ball State and once on TV, and I didn't see anything I haven't seen before from them. Against Ball State, a middling MAC offense went up and down the field on Indiana's allegedly stouter, more athletic defense, scoring 24 points. Ohio State moved the football with absurd ease yesterday. Indiana, it seems, is still Indiana.
Which is to say, college football lives on its traditional rivalries, and Indiana's fiercest traditional rival has always been its own history. It's been the '67 Rose Bowl and the Bill Mallory era and maybe a couple other teams, and then a whole lot of beige. It's been Pihos and Gonso and Isenbarger, Butcher and Anthony Thompson and Taliaferro and Randall-El, and then ...
And then a whole lot Dennis Cremeans and Ted McNulty. And Ohio State 51, Indiana 10.
Next week?
Next week the Hoosiers get UConn, a game they should win. They also have Rutgers on the schedule, another game they should win. Beyond that ...
Beyond that, hope springs eternal. Maybe Lucy won't yank the football away this time.
Thursday, September 12, 2019
Un-Justified
You never want to say horse racing is as crooked as a dog's hind leg, because that would be mixing your animal kingdom metaphors, and it would be an insult to your dog, besides. Horse racing is waaay more crooked than that.
It's as crooked as Lance Armstrong, apparently. And in pretty much the same way.
Thanks to great reporting by the New York Times yesterday, a bombshell detonated in the Sport of Kings: Apparently Bob Baffert's 2018 Triple Crown winner, Justify, was as juiced as the Tour de France peloton. And everyone -- including Baffert and the officials charged with making sure the horses are clean -- knew it.
Here are the Cliff Notes: After winning the Santa Anita Derby on April 7, Justify tested positive for the scopolamine, a banned performance enhancer. But rather than disqualify the horse, which the rules dictate should have happened and which would have kept the undefeated Justify out of the Derby, California racing officials waited almost a month before confirming the results. That gave Baffert the time to request an independent test whose results wouldn't come back until after the Derby.
Which of course Justify won.
After which officials skipped protocol again, waiting until after Justify had won the Triple Crown to issue a ruling. That ruling was, surprise, surprise, to drop the case -- and also to de-escalate scopolamine from a disqualification-level substance to a fine-or-suspension substance.
And if you're thinking here, "I bet money had something to do with this," give yourself a gold star. Of course money had something to do with this. To be specific, it had $60 million to do with this, which is what Justify's breeding rights sold for.
California officials defended their actions by saying scopolamine can be found in jimson weed, so they weren't sure if Justify's positive test hadn't been due to contaminated feed. Drug lab experts, however, say it's virtually impossible for the levels found in Justify's sample to have happened in that way. Sooo ...
So, yeah. Draw your own conclusions.
Me?
I'm headed to the nearest OTB. Got a line on a sure winner.
Scopolamine in the fifth at Aqueduct. I can't lose.
It's as crooked as Lance Armstrong, apparently. And in pretty much the same way.
Thanks to great reporting by the New York Times yesterday, a bombshell detonated in the Sport of Kings: Apparently Bob Baffert's 2018 Triple Crown winner, Justify, was as juiced as the Tour de France peloton. And everyone -- including Baffert and the officials charged with making sure the horses are clean -- knew it.
Here are the Cliff Notes: After winning the Santa Anita Derby on April 7, Justify tested positive for the scopolamine, a banned performance enhancer. But rather than disqualify the horse, which the rules dictate should have happened and which would have kept the undefeated Justify out of the Derby, California racing officials waited almost a month before confirming the results. That gave Baffert the time to request an independent test whose results wouldn't come back until after the Derby.
Which of course Justify won.
After which officials skipped protocol again, waiting until after Justify had won the Triple Crown to issue a ruling. That ruling was, surprise, surprise, to drop the case -- and also to de-escalate scopolamine from a disqualification-level substance to a fine-or-suspension substance.
And if you're thinking here, "I bet money had something to do with this," give yourself a gold star. Of course money had something to do with this. To be specific, it had $60 million to do with this, which is what Justify's breeding rights sold for.
California officials defended their actions by saying scopolamine can be found in jimson weed, so they weren't sure if Justify's positive test hadn't been due to contaminated feed. Drug lab experts, however, say it's virtually impossible for the levels found in Justify's sample to have happened in that way. Sooo ...
So, yeah. Draw your own conclusions.
Me?
I'm headed to the nearest OTB. Got a line on a sure winner.
Scopolamine in the fifth at Aqueduct. I can't lose.
Your eerie coincidence for today
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Hamlet once told us. Which I suppose was the melancholy Dane's way of saying there is some weird s*** goin' on out there in the cosmos, brother, and that's just the home truth of it.
Example: Yesterday in New York.
Where the New York Mets were playing a baseball game at home on the 18th anniversary of 9/11, and doing it rather well. The baseball gods have not always been kind to the Mets this season, although lately they've been on something of a tear. So no real surprise they got the Arizona Diamondbacks in town on this most evocative of dates in New York, and spanked them roundly.
The final score: Mets 9, Diamondbacks 0.
Number of hits the Mets put up: 11.
And so, on 9/11, the Mets linescore read 9-11-0.
Something mystical this way comes, methinks.
Example: Yesterday in New York.
Where the New York Mets were playing a baseball game at home on the 18th anniversary of 9/11, and doing it rather well. The baseball gods have not always been kind to the Mets this season, although lately they've been on something of a tear. So no real surprise they got the Arizona Diamondbacks in town on this most evocative of dates in New York, and spanked them roundly.
The final score: Mets 9, Diamondbacks 0.
Number of hits the Mets put up: 11.
And so, on 9/11, the Mets linescore read 9-11-0.
Something mystical this way comes, methinks.
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Those darn women
It's easy to forget, sometimes, what it used to be like. And not all that long ago, either, in the grand flow of years.
Once upon a time, for instance, before Pat Summitt built it into a mighty athletic force and a robust draw, this was Tennessee women's basketball: A bunch of young women crammed in a van with Summitt at the wheel, sticking her head out the window every so often to stay awake on those interminable drives home.
Once upon a time, Summitt coached and drove and washed the uniforms. She got zero support from the athletic department. She had to fight for practice time.
Once upon a time, girls high school basketball in Indiana didn't even exist as a varsity sport. It was a club sport, and forget about practice time. In a lot of places, the girls weren't even allowed to sully the main gym. They practiced and played games in an auxiliary gym, stuck somewhere in an out-of-the-way corner of the school.
Once upon a time, college women field hockey players -- Division I athletes -- got chased off in the middle of games. The host school, it seems, wanted to shoot off a couple of fireworks before the football team's games. So off you go, ladies.
Oh, wait. That wasn't once upon a time.
That was Saturday.
The place was Kent State, the field hockey teams were from Maine and Temple, and they were locked up in a dilly Saturday morning. The game was scoreless through regulation. It was scoreless through one overtime. A second overtime loomed.
And then ...
And then, Kent State officials halted the game and told the young women they had to clear out, because it was time for Real Sports. The football stadium, see, is right next to the field hockey venue. And the fire marshals wanted the space cleared before the fireworks -- even though the fireworks amounted to a couple of Silver Salutes or so, and could probably either have been foregone or postponed until later.
But, no. Because, you know, football.
Kent State has since apologized, but the incident remains instructive. You can pass Title IX, you can ensure women get their place in the college sports hierarchy, but you don't have to respect them. When push comes to shove -- or to a sport that pays your freight -- they still don't matter.
Commerce beats propriety every time in a corporate enterprise, which is what Division I athletics is. Surprise, surprise.
Of course, it was a tough week for women athletes in general. Out in Anchorage, Alaska, for instance, a talented high school girls swimmer was disqualified after the official in charge determined her suit wasn't sufficiently covering her buttocks.
The obvious question here is why this perv was staring at a high school girl's ass to begin with. And why this poor girl's dad/mom/other relative didn't clock said perv for doing so.
Instead, she gets body-shamed, even though she was wearing the school-issue suit. And even though, yes, swimsuits sometimes ride up on you during a swim. And, oh, the by the way, how come she -- a young woman of color -- was singled out?
Oh, wait. I think I just answered that one.
In any case ... it's hard to imagine a situation where a male swimmer would be similarly penalized, even though male swimmers' suits frequently leave little to the imagination, either. One more example of how you can change the laws of a nation, but you can't necessarily change its mindset.
Title IX?
This week, at least, call it Title Nein.
Once upon a time, for instance, before Pat Summitt built it into a mighty athletic force and a robust draw, this was Tennessee women's basketball: A bunch of young women crammed in a van with Summitt at the wheel, sticking her head out the window every so often to stay awake on those interminable drives home.
Once upon a time, Summitt coached and drove and washed the uniforms. She got zero support from the athletic department. She had to fight for practice time.
Once upon a time, girls high school basketball in Indiana didn't even exist as a varsity sport. It was a club sport, and forget about practice time. In a lot of places, the girls weren't even allowed to sully the main gym. They practiced and played games in an auxiliary gym, stuck somewhere in an out-of-the-way corner of the school.
Once upon a time, college women field hockey players -- Division I athletes -- got chased off in the middle of games. The host school, it seems, wanted to shoot off a couple of fireworks before the football team's games. So off you go, ladies.
Oh, wait. That wasn't once upon a time.
That was Saturday.
The place was Kent State, the field hockey teams were from Maine and Temple, and they were locked up in a dilly Saturday morning. The game was scoreless through regulation. It was scoreless through one overtime. A second overtime loomed.
And then ...
And then, Kent State officials halted the game and told the young women they had to clear out, because it was time for Real Sports. The football stadium, see, is right next to the field hockey venue. And the fire marshals wanted the space cleared before the fireworks -- even though the fireworks amounted to a couple of Silver Salutes or so, and could probably either have been foregone or postponed until later.
But, no. Because, you know, football.
Kent State has since apologized, but the incident remains instructive. You can pass Title IX, you can ensure women get their place in the college sports hierarchy, but you don't have to respect them. When push comes to shove -- or to a sport that pays your freight -- they still don't matter.
Commerce beats propriety every time in a corporate enterprise, which is what Division I athletics is. Surprise, surprise.
Of course, it was a tough week for women athletes in general. Out in Anchorage, Alaska, for instance, a talented high school girls swimmer was disqualified after the official in charge determined her suit wasn't sufficiently covering her buttocks.
The obvious question here is why this perv was staring at a high school girl's ass to begin with. And why this poor girl's dad/mom/other relative didn't clock said perv for doing so.
Instead, she gets body-shamed, even though she was wearing the school-issue suit. And even though, yes, swimsuits sometimes ride up on you during a swim. And, oh, the by the way, how come she -- a young woman of color -- was singled out?
Oh, wait. I think I just answered that one.
In any case ... it's hard to imagine a situation where a male swimmer would be similarly penalized, even though male swimmers' suits frequently leave little to the imagination, either. One more example of how you can change the laws of a nation, but you can't necessarily change its mindset.
Title IX?
This week, at least, call it Title Nein.
That day
Remember, everyone says, as the day comes 'round again. Never forget.
And so I will. And will not.
I'll remember, and never forget, the dead, all those names that circle two murmuring reflecting pools in a shaded glade -- the footprints of the towers that stood there that clear blue morning 18 years ago, and then no longer did.
I'll remember, and never forget, the nation we used to be, and then no longer were, and may never be again.
I'll remember, and never forget, how the psychic scars of that day remain 18 years along, and how opportunists and fear-mongers and charlatans of every political stripe have used that to turn us against those who don't look or speak or believe the way we do.
I'll remember, and never forget, those opportunists and fear-mongers and charlatans on election day. And vote accordingly.
Because, see, I also remember what so many sacrificed on that day, and what so many nameless, faceless people sacrificed for months and years afterward to heal its physical and emotional damage. And how the opportunists and fear-mongers and charlatans demean those sacrifices.
But every time they do?
I just turn this up a little louder.
And so I will. And will not.
I'll remember, and never forget, the dead, all those names that circle two murmuring reflecting pools in a shaded glade -- the footprints of the towers that stood there that clear blue morning 18 years ago, and then no longer did.
I'll remember, and never forget, the nation we used to be, and then no longer were, and may never be again.
I'll remember, and never forget, how the psychic scars of that day remain 18 years along, and how opportunists and fear-mongers and charlatans of every political stripe have used that to turn us against those who don't look or speak or believe the way we do.
I'll remember, and never forget, those opportunists and fear-mongers and charlatans on election day. And vote accordingly.
Because, see, I also remember what so many sacrificed on that day, and what so many nameless, faceless people sacrificed for months and years afterward to heal its physical and emotional damage. And how the opportunists and fear-mongers and charlatans demean those sacrifices.
But every time they do?
I just turn this up a little louder.
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 1
And now the triumphant ("No!") return ("Don't say it!") of The NFL In So Many Words ("I TOLD YOU NOT TO SAY IT!!"), a revered American tradition enhanced this season with a black Sharpie, which will draw in stick figures of the Pottsville Maroons and Duluth Eskimos where applicable:
1. "This is it! The road to the Super Bowl starts TODAY!" (Browns Fan)
2. "Aw, CRAP!" (Also Browns Fan)
3. "This is it! The road to the Super Bowl starts TONIGHT!" (Bears Fan)
4. "Aw, CRAP!" (Also Bears Fan)
5. "Of course we're in field goal range! We have ADAM VINATIERI!" (Your Indianapolis Colts)
6. "Of course we're not going to sink! We have SIX WATERTIGHT COMPARTMENTS!" (Your crew of the Titanic)
7. "Hey, who replaced the Dolphins with us?" (The Pottsville Maroons)
8. "I think we could beat 'em, and we're all dead!" (The Duluth Eskimos)
9. "We're gonna win! We're gonna win!" (Lions Fan)
10. "Aw, CRAP!" (Also Lions Fan)
1. "This is it! The road to the Super Bowl starts TODAY!" (Browns Fan)
2. "Aw, CRAP!" (Also Browns Fan)
3. "This is it! The road to the Super Bowl starts TONIGHT!" (Bears Fan)
4. "Aw, CRAP!" (Also Bears Fan)
5. "Of course we're in field goal range! We have ADAM VINATIERI!" (Your Indianapolis Colts)
6. "Of course we're not going to sink! We have SIX WATERTIGHT COMPARTMENTS!" (Your crew of the Titanic)
7. "Hey, who replaced the Dolphins with us?" (The Pottsville Maroons)
8. "I think we could beat 'em, and we're all dead!" (The Duluth Eskimos)
9. "We're gonna win! We're gonna win!" (Lions Fan)
10. "Aw, CRAP!" (Also Lions Fan)
Monday, September 9, 2019
Just a Sunday drive
Twenty-five years on, I still have the photo, somewhere. It's in a box with a bunch of other photos in the back of a closet, a color print shot with a 35-millimeter camera.
(We still used actual film in those days, kiddos. Had to get it developed and everything. I know. I'm older than cave drawings.)
Anyway ... I shot this photo from behind the fence inside turn one at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, on a ridiculously mild August day in 1994. In it, a black-and-white stock car with a big "1" on it is diving into turn one, followed by 42 other stock cars. It's the start of the inaugural Brickyard 400, so I raised my camera, wanting to preserve a little history.
Twenty-five years on, it is history. In more ways than one.
The man driving the black-and-white No. 1, for instance, was Rick Mast, the polesitter for the first Brickyard. He's 62 years old now and has been retired from racing for 17 years. He led the first two laps of the race and never led again, finishing 22nd. It was fairly even par for a driver who answered the green for 364 Cup races and never won one of them. His best finish was a second at Rockingham that same year, '94.
NASCAR doesn't race at the Rock anymore. Hasn't for years.
So, yes, that day, that moment, is history now, and fast approaching ancient history. Jeff Gordon, who came of age as a racer eight miles down the road from IMS, won the inaugural Brickyard. He'd just turned 23. He's 48 now and retired from racing.
So is Dale Earnhardt Jr. He was 19 years old on the day of the first Brickyard, in which his legendary old man finished fifth. He wouldn't even reach NASCAR's top series for five more years. Yet he's been out of the car, mostly, since 2017, after running 631 races across almost two decades.
Like I said. We're talking a long time ago, that day in '94.
In the photo, for instance, that immense cliff of grandstand rising along the main straightaway forms the backdrop. It is an ocean of humanity, a carpet of living souls stretching as far as you can see. There were 250,000 of those souls there that day to see the first stock car race at the most iconic motorsports venue in the world, and the sound they made was like ocean surf breaking on a rocky shore.
I don't know what sort of sound they made yesterday, for the 26th running. Not that, surely.
That's because I turned on the race for awhile and no one was there, or at least what looked like no one in the immense expanse that is IMS. Whole stretches of grandstand -- the third turn, the north short chute, the north part of the seats behind the pits -- contained not a living soul. What fans there were in that immense cliff along the main straightaway were all in the upper deck; everyone else huddled in sad little clumps in the fourth turn and the south short chute.
Those who were there said all of that added up to 70,000 people. I'd say closer to 50,000, but I've never been much good at guessing crowds.
In any case, it wasn't '94. Hasn't been for a long time.
It was, instead, just another NASCAR Sunday drive, and Kevin Harvick won, starting from the pole and leading 118 laps while all that emptiness echoed around him. And I felt sad, as the flow of years and the changes it brings make all of us sad sometimes. The world of Aug. 6, 1994, the moment a man still in his 30s captured in a photo, is long gone.
I'm 64 now, for one thing. That young man in his 30s, that year and month and day when NASCAR brought 250,000 souls to Indy and was on the cusp of a mighty explosion: They're all, yes, ancient history.
Like those cave drawings, kiddos. Like that.
(We still used actual film in those days, kiddos. Had to get it developed and everything. I know. I'm older than cave drawings.)
Anyway ... I shot this photo from behind the fence inside turn one at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, on a ridiculously mild August day in 1994. In it, a black-and-white stock car with a big "1" on it is diving into turn one, followed by 42 other stock cars. It's the start of the inaugural Brickyard 400, so I raised my camera, wanting to preserve a little history.
Twenty-five years on, it is history. In more ways than one.
The man driving the black-and-white No. 1, for instance, was Rick Mast, the polesitter for the first Brickyard. He's 62 years old now and has been retired from racing for 17 years. He led the first two laps of the race and never led again, finishing 22nd. It was fairly even par for a driver who answered the green for 364 Cup races and never won one of them. His best finish was a second at Rockingham that same year, '94.
NASCAR doesn't race at the Rock anymore. Hasn't for years.
So, yes, that day, that moment, is history now, and fast approaching ancient history. Jeff Gordon, who came of age as a racer eight miles down the road from IMS, won the inaugural Brickyard. He'd just turned 23. He's 48 now and retired from racing.
So is Dale Earnhardt Jr. He was 19 years old on the day of the first Brickyard, in which his legendary old man finished fifth. He wouldn't even reach NASCAR's top series for five more years. Yet he's been out of the car, mostly, since 2017, after running 631 races across almost two decades.
Like I said. We're talking a long time ago, that day in '94.
In the photo, for instance, that immense cliff of grandstand rising along the main straightaway forms the backdrop. It is an ocean of humanity, a carpet of living souls stretching as far as you can see. There were 250,000 of those souls there that day to see the first stock car race at the most iconic motorsports venue in the world, and the sound they made was like ocean surf breaking on a rocky shore.
I don't know what sort of sound they made yesterday, for the 26th running. Not that, surely.
That's because I turned on the race for awhile and no one was there, or at least what looked like no one in the immense expanse that is IMS. Whole stretches of grandstand -- the third turn, the north short chute, the north part of the seats behind the pits -- contained not a living soul. What fans there were in that immense cliff along the main straightaway were all in the upper deck; everyone else huddled in sad little clumps in the fourth turn and the south short chute.
Those who were there said all of that added up to 70,000 people. I'd say closer to 50,000, but I've never been much good at guessing crowds.
In any case, it wasn't '94. Hasn't been for a long time.
It was, instead, just another NASCAR Sunday drive, and Kevin Harvick won, starting from the pole and leading 118 laps while all that emptiness echoed around him. And I felt sad, as the flow of years and the changes it brings make all of us sad sometimes. The world of Aug. 6, 1994, the moment a man still in his 30s captured in a photo, is long gone.
I'm 64 now, for one thing. That young man in his 30s, that year and month and day when NASCAR brought 250,000 souls to Indy and was on the cusp of a mighty explosion: They're all, yes, ancient history.
Like those cave drawings, kiddos. Like that.
Sunday, September 8, 2019
One almost-fall Saturday
I know why college football is the best kind of football, and it's not because of this.
Really, Michigan State. Have some pride, for God's sake. You're a college football team, not a company bowling team. Or a company softball team. Or whoever else would be caught dead in those god-awful things.
No, sir. I know why college football is the best kind of football, Michigan State's fashion Chernobyl notwithstanding.
It's the best kind of football because of days like yesterday, which was a perfect autumn day no matter what the calendar said, with blue skies and cotton ball clouds and whispery little breezes with just a hint of cool to them. And, inside, Army damn near beating Michigan in the Big House.
College football is the best kind of football because of the way it can stop the hearts of 100,000-plus souls at once, the way it did as all those Michigan fans watched Army's potential game-winning field goal slide just ... a tad ... to the right.
College football is the best kind of football because you can turn on Nebraska-Colorado and watch two schools that have been playing each other since the 19th century. Or you can turn on Texas-LSU and watch the 'Horns get Hooked. Or watch Purdue's Elijah Sindelar throw for 509 yards and account for six touchdowns, and Rondale Moore catch 13 balls for 220 yards and a score, and wonder why you can't add them to your fantasy team.
College football is the best kind of football because it goes back farther than any American mainstay sport except baseball, and therefore its rivalries are real and bone-deep and historic. It's the best kind of football because you can turn on Cincinnati-Ohio State and see a graphic pop up referencing William McKinley, who was in the White House the last time the Bearcats beat the Buckeyes.
Then you turn on Nebraska-Colorado again, and realize that McKinley was also in the White House the first time those two schools played each other (1898).
One afternoon in September 2019, and William McKinley comes up twice. What's not great about that?
Really, Michigan State. Have some pride, for God's sake. You're a college football team, not a company bowling team. Or a company softball team. Or whoever else would be caught dead in those god-awful things.
No, sir. I know why college football is the best kind of football, Michigan State's fashion Chernobyl notwithstanding.
It's the best kind of football because of days like yesterday, which was a perfect autumn day no matter what the calendar said, with blue skies and cotton ball clouds and whispery little breezes with just a hint of cool to them. And, inside, Army damn near beating Michigan in the Big House.
College football is the best kind of football because of the way it can stop the hearts of 100,000-plus souls at once, the way it did as all those Michigan fans watched Army's potential game-winning field goal slide just ... a tad ... to the right.
College football is the best kind of football because you can turn on Nebraska-Colorado and watch two schools that have been playing each other since the 19th century. Or you can turn on Texas-LSU and watch the 'Horns get Hooked. Or watch Purdue's Elijah Sindelar throw for 509 yards and account for six touchdowns, and Rondale Moore catch 13 balls for 220 yards and a score, and wonder why you can't add them to your fantasy team.
College football is the best kind of football because it goes back farther than any American mainstay sport except baseball, and therefore its rivalries are real and bone-deep and historic. It's the best kind of football because you can turn on Cincinnati-Ohio State and see a graphic pop up referencing William McKinley, who was in the White House the last time the Bearcats beat the Buckeyes.
Then you turn on Nebraska-Colorado again, and realize that McKinley was also in the White House the first time those two schools played each other (1898).
One afternoon in September 2019, and William McKinley comes up twice. What's not great about that?
A great big "Hmmm"
Sooo, Antonio Brown is a New England Patriot, suddenly. And now, just as suddenly, the Blob's Grassy Knoll Person Spidey Sense is tingling like mad.
Oh, sure. I know it's just a coincidence AB managed to escape the NFL's worst dumpster-train-wreck-crash-site-fire only to wind up with the defending Super Bowl champions, and also the best organization in the league. I know it's just because his agent, Drew Rosenhaus is so crackerjacks at his job that, like, five minutes after the Raiders released him, Rosenhaus had the deal hammered out with the Pats. I know there couldn't have been any back-channeling going on there, because if there was any back-channeling going on that would be big-time tampering on the part of the Patriots, and tampering is a big-time no-no in the NFL.
Besides, why would the Patriots risk violating the rules like that? It's not like they have a reputation for being sneaky and underhanded, after all. They've always been absolutely above-board as an organization. It's not like they've ever been a bunch of scofflaws or anything.
So, no. I'm sure there was absolutely nothing calculated about AB's meltdown in Oakland, which escalated to the point the Raiders took away his guaranteed money and his termination pay -- which prompted AB to ask for his release, which prompted the Raiders, sick of his not at all contrived drama-queening, to swiftly grant it.
And there were the Patriots, waiting with open arms. At, like, 4:01 p.m., a minute after it was legal for teams to sign players.
Nothing remotely suspicious about that. Why, I'm sure this is absolutely not what it looks like, which is that AB played the Raiders like a French horn because he knew Rosenhaus had a deal working with the Pats.
Grassy knoll stuff, like I said. Second-shooter stuff. Fake news, as our Fearless Leader likes to say every time the free press catches him lying his ass off.
No. I'm sure this is just what it looks like, the Patriots renting another troubled soul short-term because, after all, look how often it's panned out for them before.
Randy Moss was a Patriot once, remember. Corey Dillon. LaGarrette Blount. Hell, Josh Gordon's a Patriot now.
So why not AB, if only for a year?
And speaking of AB, I don't know how anyone could question that the man's got an entire colony of bats living in his belfry. He couldn't fake the kind of crazy that would compel him to blow up his juicy deal with the Raiders before it even started, could he? Who in his right mind blows off $30 mill in guaranteed money for $9 mill in guaranteed money, which is what he'll get in his one-year deal with the Patriots?
I mean, even if it means he trades Derek Carr for Tom Brady. And Jon Gruden for Bill Belichick. And an utter clown show for the NFL's gold standard.
Sometimes things just work out. Which is why, again, I'm sure it's just a coincidence that AB's drama queening started up juuust about the time he discovered juuust how clownish the clown show was out there in Oakland.
Damn Spidey sense. Still tingling.
Oh, sure. I know it's just a coincidence AB managed to escape the NFL's worst dumpster-train-wreck-crash-site-fire only to wind up with the defending Super Bowl champions, and also the best organization in the league. I know it's just because his agent, Drew Rosenhaus is so crackerjacks at his job that, like, five minutes after the Raiders released him, Rosenhaus had the deal hammered out with the Pats. I know there couldn't have been any back-channeling going on there, because if there was any back-channeling going on that would be big-time tampering on the part of the Patriots, and tampering is a big-time no-no in the NFL.
Besides, why would the Patriots risk violating the rules like that? It's not like they have a reputation for being sneaky and underhanded, after all. They've always been absolutely above-board as an organization. It's not like they've ever been a bunch of scofflaws or anything.
So, no. I'm sure there was absolutely nothing calculated about AB's meltdown in Oakland, which escalated to the point the Raiders took away his guaranteed money and his termination pay -- which prompted AB to ask for his release, which prompted the Raiders, sick of his not at all contrived drama-queening, to swiftly grant it.
And there were the Patriots, waiting with open arms. At, like, 4:01 p.m., a minute after it was legal for teams to sign players.
Nothing remotely suspicious about that. Why, I'm sure this is absolutely not what it looks like, which is that AB played the Raiders like a French horn because he knew Rosenhaus had a deal working with the Pats.
Grassy knoll stuff, like I said. Second-shooter stuff. Fake news, as our Fearless Leader likes to say every time the free press catches him lying his ass off.
No. I'm sure this is just what it looks like, the Patriots renting another troubled soul short-term because, after all, look how often it's panned out for them before.
Randy Moss was a Patriot once, remember. Corey Dillon. LaGarrette Blount. Hell, Josh Gordon's a Patriot now.
So why not AB, if only for a year?
And speaking of AB, I don't know how anyone could question that the man's got an entire colony of bats living in his belfry. He couldn't fake the kind of crazy that would compel him to blow up his juicy deal with the Raiders before it even started, could he? Who in his right mind blows off $30 mill in guaranteed money for $9 mill in guaranteed money, which is what he'll get in his one-year deal with the Patriots?
I mean, even if it means he trades Derek Carr for Tom Brady. And Jon Gruden for Bill Belichick. And an utter clown show for the NFL's gold standard.
Sometimes things just work out. Which is why, again, I'm sure it's just a coincidence that AB's drama queening started up juuust about the time he discovered juuust how clownish the clown show was out there in Oakland.
Damn Spidey sense. Still tingling.
Saturday, September 7, 2019
Your diva update, Part Whatever
Yeesh. Did I not JUST SAY to stay tuned?
Because apparently Antonio Brown gave an apparently tearful, heartfelt apology to his Raiders teammates yesterday, and now he's back in the fold and everything is copasetic. He will be playing on Monday night after all, head coach Jon Gruden says.
Of course, it's still just Saturday. So stay ...
Well. You know.
Update: Well, THAT didn't take long.
And is this not the most Raiders thing ever?
You sign the best receiver in football and then release before he ever plays a game because you get in huge pissing match with him that swiftly became unresolvable?
And don't believe for a second this all wasn't the Raiders seeing an opportunity to not pay Brown's $30 mill guaranteed money. Of course it was. This was always going to be the endgame, once AB gave them the opening by being either a self-destructive jackass or someone with some sort of mental issue going on.
Frankly, the Blob votes for the latter. Only way to rationally explain AB's increasingly irrational behavior.
In the meantime, I'm sure the Raiders and their $30 mill will be very happy while they go 4-12 again.
Because apparently Antonio Brown gave an apparently tearful, heartfelt apology to his Raiders teammates yesterday, and now he's back in the fold and everything is copasetic. He will be playing on Monday night after all, head coach Jon Gruden says.
Of course, it's still just Saturday. So stay ...
Well. You know.
Update: Well, THAT didn't take long.
And is this not the most Raiders thing ever?
You sign the best receiver in football and then release before he ever plays a game because you get in huge pissing match with him that swiftly became unresolvable?
And don't believe for a second this all wasn't the Raiders seeing an opportunity to not pay Brown's $30 mill guaranteed money. Of course it was. This was always going to be the endgame, once AB gave them the opening by being either a self-destructive jackass or someone with some sort of mental issue going on.
Frankly, the Blob votes for the latter. Only way to rationally explain AB's increasingly irrational behavior.
In the meantime, I'm sure the Raiders and their $30 mill will be very happy while they go 4-12 again.
Your diva update, Part Deux
Well. Allll-righty then.
The Blob stands corrected.
Apparently As The Buttonhook Turns is not finished with its run.
No, the Antonio Brown soap opera/drama queen show continues out in Oakland, so forget what the Blob said yesterday. It still believes all of it will go away the first time he runs a go route for six, but who knows if it ever gets to that point in Oakland now.
Because, on Thursday, this happened.
A screaming match with the GM, who's apparently as hard a case as AB is, and now it looks as if the Raiders are going to suspend their prize offseason acquisition before he ever plays a snap. Partly this is just a ploy to get out of paying him his bonus money. But part of it is unquestionably that they're fed up with the guy.
And, again: He hasn't even played a snap for them yet.
This has to be a world record for souring a relationship. I mean, it's not even really a relationship yet, and already AB has so pissed off his new bosses they're going to suspend him.
I don't know where the soap opera goes from here, but it's going to be damned interesting to see. If he's suspended, will AB demand a trade (because you know he will)? Will the Raiders just straight up waive him, a staggering thought considering he's the best wideout in the game? And if they do, what will that say to the rest of the league about AB's desirability?
Somebody would sign him, you have to think. Someone always signed T.O., if you recall. But in a league that increasingly craves stability and staying in step with the rest of the worker bees over personality and -- horrors! -- "distraction," AB winding up out of football, at least for a time, is not an inconceivable scenario.
Colin Kaepernick, after all, came thisclose to winning a Super Bowl for the 49ers, but he's Typhoid Mary now, blackballed out of the league because he took a stand on racial inequality in a way deemed inappropriate by the self-appointed arbiters of national anthem etiquette. So who knows?
Again ... stay tuned.
The Blob stands corrected.
Apparently As The Buttonhook Turns is not finished with its run.
No, the Antonio Brown soap opera/drama queen show continues out in Oakland, so forget what the Blob said yesterday. It still believes all of it will go away the first time he runs a go route for six, but who knows if it ever gets to that point in Oakland now.
Because, on Thursday, this happened.
A screaming match with the GM, who's apparently as hard a case as AB is, and now it looks as if the Raiders are going to suspend their prize offseason acquisition before he ever plays a snap. Partly this is just a ploy to get out of paying him his bonus money. But part of it is unquestionably that they're fed up with the guy.
And, again: He hasn't even played a snap for them yet.
This has to be a world record for souring a relationship. I mean, it's not even really a relationship yet, and already AB has so pissed off his new bosses they're going to suspend him.
I don't know where the soap opera goes from here, but it's going to be damned interesting to see. If he's suspended, will AB demand a trade (because you know he will)? Will the Raiders just straight up waive him, a staggering thought considering he's the best wideout in the game? And if they do, what will that say to the rest of the league about AB's desirability?
Somebody would sign him, you have to think. Someone always signed T.O., if you recall. But in a league that increasingly craves stability and staying in step with the rest of the worker bees over personality and -- horrors! -- "distraction," AB winding up out of football, at least for a time, is not an inconceivable scenario.
Colin Kaepernick, after all, came thisclose to winning a Super Bowl for the 49ers, but he's Typhoid Mary now, blackballed out of the league because he took a stand on racial inequality in a way deemed inappropriate by the self-appointed arbiters of national anthem etiquette. So who knows?
Again ... stay tuned.
Friday, September 6, 2019
Legacy of "meh"
It was all about history last night in Soldier Field, as two ancient enemies clashed again for the umpety-umpteenth time. It was the Green Bay Packers vs. the Chicago Bears, and there were legacies afoot in this official opening of the 100th NFL season, legacies that strolled unseen but not un-felt through the splendid September night.
Curly Lambeau was out there somewhere, and George Halas, too. Johnny Blood. Sid Luckman. Don Hutson and Red Grange; Butkus and Sayers, Nitschke and Hornung, Favre and Sweetness and the 46 defense -- which actually was there, because they trotted out the '85 Bears last night to get everyone properly stoked.
Legacies. And then the game started, and we got to see another one on the Bears side of the ball, a legacy with which everyone who's been following the Bears for the last half-century is well familiar, even if they don't like to admit it.
Which would be: Mediocre to cruddy quarterback play. "Meh" quarterback play, to put it another way.
Mitch Trubisky upheld that legacy in fine style last night, quarterbacking the Bears to a gargantuan three points in a 10-3 loss that was itself a tribute to, I don't know, the single wing or something. Trubisky put up a quarterback rating of 18, throwing for 208 yards while being sacked five times and throwing a pick in the end zone to strangle a Bears comeback. It was the perfect Bob Avellini/Bobby Douglass/Jack Concannon kind of night.
Which is to say, a perfect Bears quarterback legacy night.
It's strange how it all works sometimes. There are teams that always seem to have a quarterback, like Green Bay. And there are teams that always seem to have running backs and middle linebackers, like the Bears. And then there are teams that never seem to have that platinum-grade, Hall of Fame QB, also like the Bears.
In 50 years following the Monsters, I've yet to see any Bart Starrs, Joe Montanas or Tom Bradys playing quarterback in Chicago. I have, conversely, seen a lot of Avellinis and Huffs and Concannons and Jim Millers, not to say the immortal Peter Tom Willis. Some of them weren't bad. Some of them were atrocious. But none of them ever made me sit up and say, "Dee-yam, let's see Elway do that!"
Or Peyton Manning or Dan Marino or Drew Brees or Roger Staubach, for that matter.
No, sir. The only QB who ever won anything for the Bears in the last 50-some years was Jim McMahon, and even he wasn't that good. The '85 Bears were the 46 defense and Sweetness and Willie Gault occasionally sprinting downfield like the Olympic-grade sprinter he was. McMahon, on the other hand, was ... serviceable.
Threw for 2,392 yards that season. Threw almost as many interceptions (11) as touchdowns (15). Had a completion percentage of 56.9.
Fifty-six point nine percent might win you a backup job in today's NFL. Probably not, though.
As for Mitch Trubisky ... well, he's better than that. But not by much at this point, which only makes sense.
He is, after all, a Bears quarterback. It's a lot to live down to.
Curly Lambeau was out there somewhere, and George Halas, too. Johnny Blood. Sid Luckman. Don Hutson and Red Grange; Butkus and Sayers, Nitschke and Hornung, Favre and Sweetness and the 46 defense -- which actually was there, because they trotted out the '85 Bears last night to get everyone properly stoked.
Legacies. And then the game started, and we got to see another one on the Bears side of the ball, a legacy with which everyone who's been following the Bears for the last half-century is well familiar, even if they don't like to admit it.
Which would be: Mediocre to cruddy quarterback play. "Meh" quarterback play, to put it another way.
Mitch Trubisky upheld that legacy in fine style last night, quarterbacking the Bears to a gargantuan three points in a 10-3 loss that was itself a tribute to, I don't know, the single wing or something. Trubisky put up a quarterback rating of 18, throwing for 208 yards while being sacked five times and throwing a pick in the end zone to strangle a Bears comeback. It was the perfect Bob Avellini/Bobby Douglass/Jack Concannon kind of night.
Which is to say, a perfect Bears quarterback legacy night.
It's strange how it all works sometimes. There are teams that always seem to have a quarterback, like Green Bay. And there are teams that always seem to have running backs and middle linebackers, like the Bears. And then there are teams that never seem to have that platinum-grade, Hall of Fame QB, also like the Bears.
In 50 years following the Monsters, I've yet to see any Bart Starrs, Joe Montanas or Tom Bradys playing quarterback in Chicago. I have, conversely, seen a lot of Avellinis and Huffs and Concannons and Jim Millers, not to say the immortal Peter Tom Willis. Some of them weren't bad. Some of them were atrocious. But none of them ever made me sit up and say, "Dee-yam, let's see Elway do that!"
Or Peyton Manning or Dan Marino or Drew Brees or Roger Staubach, for that matter.
No, sir. The only QB who ever won anything for the Bears in the last 50-some years was Jim McMahon, and even he wasn't that good. The '85 Bears were the 46 defense and Sweetness and Willie Gault occasionally sprinting downfield like the Olympic-grade sprinter he was. McMahon, on the other hand, was ... serviceable.
Threw for 2,392 yards that season. Threw almost as many interceptions (11) as touchdowns (15). Had a completion percentage of 56.9.
Fifty-six point nine percent might win you a backup job in today's NFL. Probably not, though.
As for Mitch Trubisky ... well, he's better than that. But not by much at this point, which only makes sense.
He is, after all, a Bears quarterback. It's a lot to live down to.
Thursday, September 5, 2019
Your diva update for today
And now this from the set of As The Buttonhook Turns, aka The Young and the Restless Slot Receiver, aka Luke And Laura Got Nothin' On AB And the Xenith Shadow:
Antonio Brown has found love. Or at least like.
He announced the other day that he and the Xenith Shadow have hit it off, so there goes the Helmetgate portion of the ongoing AB soap opera. The Xenith Shadow is what Brown will wear into battle this season for the Oakland Raiders. AB says it's comfy and doesn't impede his vision like all those other NFL-approved models, and he can have a meaningful relationship with it.
So, that's that.
Ah, but now, of course, there is Finegate, which exploded yesterday when the Raiders fined AB $54,000 for various unexcused absences, and AB responded like, well, AB. Which is to say, like a whiny 5-year-old.
He posted on Instagram the letter he received from the Raiders detailing the fines, and responded thusly: "WHEN YOUR OWN TEAM WANT TO HATE BUT THERE'S NO STOPPING ME NOW DEVIL IS A LIE. EVERYONE GOT TO PAY THIS YEAR SO WE CLEAR."
Um, no, we're not clear. Who's got to pay? The Raiders? Their opponents? The man who shot Liberty Valance?
No, sir. The only thing clear about this is the Raiders are clearly fed up with the drama, and the Pittsburgh Steelers are snickering behind their hands and saying, "Enjoy, suckers." And there's one other thing that seems pretty clear, too.
The soap opera is about to wrap up its run.
It will go dark sometime late Monday night or early Tuesday morning Eastern time, when AB gets open down the seam for the first time and plucks a Derek Carr pass from the sky like a man picking an apple off a tree. And it will really go dark when he does the same thing again ... and then again ... and then again.
Which is to say, once the games start, all the other BS goes away. We'll all be talking about football again, and the Raiders will re-discover why they signed AB in the first place.
Because, well, he's the best wideout in the game. And that's all that will matter.
Look, the only reason Helmetgate and Feetgate and Finegate were Gates to begin with was because, well, nothing else was going on. What else was the media going to bloviate about, whether or not sixth-round pick Billy Bob Hoedown from Northeast Hogjaw Tech was going to stick? How many ways coaches could avoid playing their stars in preseason games? The preseason games themselves?
Please.
No, it's an observable phenomenon that when there's nothing of consequence going on, the media gets bored and turns the inconsequential into something consequential. Or that seems consequential.
But now that the games are starting up?
Shoot. By October, Helmetgate and Finegate will barely be remembered. And by December, we'll all be saying "What was that thing with Antonio Brown last summer? Something about frozen feet and a helmet?"
Of course, that could also happen because by then, the story will be AB bitching about Derek Carr, or about Jon Gruden's high school playbook. But at least it will be about football.
Stay tuned.
Antonio Brown has found love. Or at least like.
He announced the other day that he and the Xenith Shadow have hit it off, so there goes the Helmetgate portion of the ongoing AB soap opera. The Xenith Shadow is what Brown will wear into battle this season for the Oakland Raiders. AB says it's comfy and doesn't impede his vision like all those other NFL-approved models, and he can have a meaningful relationship with it.
So, that's that.
Ah, but now, of course, there is Finegate, which exploded yesterday when the Raiders fined AB $54,000 for various unexcused absences, and AB responded like, well, AB. Which is to say, like a whiny 5-year-old.
He posted on Instagram the letter he received from the Raiders detailing the fines, and responded thusly: "WHEN YOUR OWN TEAM WANT TO HATE BUT THERE'S NO STOPPING ME NOW DEVIL IS A LIE. EVERYONE GOT TO PAY THIS YEAR SO WE CLEAR."
Um, no, we're not clear. Who's got to pay? The Raiders? Their opponents? The man who shot Liberty Valance?
No, sir. The only thing clear about this is the Raiders are clearly fed up with the drama, and the Pittsburgh Steelers are snickering behind their hands and saying, "Enjoy, suckers." And there's one other thing that seems pretty clear, too.
The soap opera is about to wrap up its run.
It will go dark sometime late Monday night or early Tuesday morning Eastern time, when AB gets open down the seam for the first time and plucks a Derek Carr pass from the sky like a man picking an apple off a tree. And it will really go dark when he does the same thing again ... and then again ... and then again.
Which is to say, once the games start, all the other BS goes away. We'll all be talking about football again, and the Raiders will re-discover why they signed AB in the first place.
Because, well, he's the best wideout in the game. And that's all that will matter.
Look, the only reason Helmetgate and Feetgate and Finegate were Gates to begin with was because, well, nothing else was going on. What else was the media going to bloviate about, whether or not sixth-round pick Billy Bob Hoedown from Northeast Hogjaw Tech was going to stick? How many ways coaches could avoid playing their stars in preseason games? The preseason games themselves?
Please.
No, it's an observable phenomenon that when there's nothing of consequence going on, the media gets bored and turns the inconsequential into something consequential. Or that seems consequential.
But now that the games are starting up?
Shoot. By October, Helmetgate and Finegate will barely be remembered. And by December, we'll all be saying "What was that thing with Antonio Brown last summer? Something about frozen feet and a helmet?"
Of course, that could also happen because by then, the story will be AB bitching about Derek Carr, or about Jon Gruden's high school playbook. But at least it will be about football.
Stay tuned.
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
Century marks*
(*Also bumps, bruises, scrapes, contusions, etc., etc.)
Which is to say, the Nash-unal FOOT-ball League turns 100 this weekend. With everything good and bad that entails.
The 100th season begins tomorrow in Chicago with the Bears and the Packers, which is only fitting. Bears-Packers, after all, is the oldest and most celebrated rivalry in professional football. In fact, the Blob would argue it's the only real rivalry in pro football, because assorted others -- Steelers-Browns, Cowboys-Washington Football Club, Chiefs-Raiders -- are rivalries but not, like, Army-Navy, Harvard-Yale or Alabama-Auburn are rivalries.
I mean, no one in the NFL regularly kidnaps the opposing team's mascot, like Army and Navy do. Or kills a tree, the way that crazy 'Bama fan did at Auburn a few years back.
And don't even get me started on what the Yales and Harvards do to each other. It ain't pretty, folks.
Ah, but the Bears and the Packers, now there's some real disdain. They've been beating on each other since 1921, which is 98 years to you and me, kids. In fact, they've been beating on each other for so long that the Bears weren't even the Bears in the first meeting. They were still the Decatur Staleys, and they whupped the Packers 20-0 that day.
A combined 22 NFL championships, 65 combined Hall of Famers and untold one-upsmanship have followed. And the putdowns get better with each year.
Bring up Brett Favre, for instance, and Bears fans will bring up All Those Interceptions.
Bring up the '85 Bears, and Packers fans will roll their eyes and say it's been 34 years, how long are you guys gonna dine out on the Super Bowl Shuffle?
Bears Fan will say a typical Green Bay crowd is a buncha cows gnawing on cheese curds.
Packers Fan will reply by holding up a hand crowded with Super Bowl rings, "just to show you guys what one looks like."
Green Bay is smalltown, rural, blue around the collar. Chicago is big city, sophisticated, and also blue around the collar. Which is what makes the dynamic so damned interesting.
The two communities are nothing alike. And yet they are absolutely alike.
Both take their football 100-proof Midwestern: Rough, tumble, bleeding from a dozen encounters with turf frozen harder than the Dan Ryan Expressway. Packer Weather? Why, it's what Bear Weather wants to be when it grows up. The thicker the snow flies, the better both these teams like it.
I was on the Bears end of this rivalry growing up, but I wasn't very good at it. Part of this was a function of the times; in the mid-'60s the Bears were Gale Sayers, Dick Butkus, and Jack Concannon throwing to imaginary receivers in Schaumburg. The Packers, on the other hand, were an entire wing of the Hall of Fame: Bart Starr and Ray Nitschke and Jim Taylor and Paul Hornung and Forrest Gregg, and of course Vince Lombardi.
The Packers won the first two Super Bowls and five NFL titles in the 1960s. The Bears won the right to draft Bobby Douglass and Ralph Kurek. Which is why I rooted for the Bears but also had an emergency backup favorite team, the Baltimore Colts, on account of they had Johnny Unitas and actually won something every so often.
Still, the rivalry was real in those days. One-sided or not.
In his iconic book about those Packers, for instance, Jerry Kramer writes about what a big deal Bear Week was in Green Bay, how everyone got fired up for it and how no one got fired up more than Lombardi. At one point during Bear Week, in fact, someone in the Packers locker room said Lombardi was so fired up he sounded like, you know, George Halas.
Lombardi's response was immediate. And appropriately scornful.
"Halas?" he snapped. "Halas? Hah, hah. Halas. I can whip his ass. You whip the ballplayers and I'll whip him."
Wrote Kramer: "Everyone giggled at that."
But probably not very loud. Oh, no.
Which is to say, the Nash-unal FOOT-ball League turns 100 this weekend. With everything good and bad that entails.
The 100th season begins tomorrow in Chicago with the Bears and the Packers, which is only fitting. Bears-Packers, after all, is the oldest and most celebrated rivalry in professional football. In fact, the Blob would argue it's the only real rivalry in pro football, because assorted others -- Steelers-Browns, Cowboys-Washington Football Club, Chiefs-Raiders -- are rivalries but not, like, Army-Navy, Harvard-Yale or Alabama-Auburn are rivalries.
I mean, no one in the NFL regularly kidnaps the opposing team's mascot, like Army and Navy do. Or kills a tree, the way that crazy 'Bama fan did at Auburn a few years back.
And don't even get me started on what the Yales and Harvards do to each other. It ain't pretty, folks.
Ah, but the Bears and the Packers, now there's some real disdain. They've been beating on each other since 1921, which is 98 years to you and me, kids. In fact, they've been beating on each other for so long that the Bears weren't even the Bears in the first meeting. They were still the Decatur Staleys, and they whupped the Packers 20-0 that day.
A combined 22 NFL championships, 65 combined Hall of Famers and untold one-upsmanship have followed. And the putdowns get better with each year.
Bring up Brett Favre, for instance, and Bears fans will bring up All Those Interceptions.
Bring up the '85 Bears, and Packers fans will roll their eyes and say it's been 34 years, how long are you guys gonna dine out on the Super Bowl Shuffle?
Bears Fan will say a typical Green Bay crowd is a buncha cows gnawing on cheese curds.
Packers Fan will reply by holding up a hand crowded with Super Bowl rings, "just to show you guys what one looks like."
Green Bay is smalltown, rural, blue around the collar. Chicago is big city, sophisticated, and also blue around the collar. Which is what makes the dynamic so damned interesting.
The two communities are nothing alike. And yet they are absolutely alike.
Both take their football 100-proof Midwestern: Rough, tumble, bleeding from a dozen encounters with turf frozen harder than the Dan Ryan Expressway. Packer Weather? Why, it's what Bear Weather wants to be when it grows up. The thicker the snow flies, the better both these teams like it.
I was on the Bears end of this rivalry growing up, but I wasn't very good at it. Part of this was a function of the times; in the mid-'60s the Bears were Gale Sayers, Dick Butkus, and Jack Concannon throwing to imaginary receivers in Schaumburg. The Packers, on the other hand, were an entire wing of the Hall of Fame: Bart Starr and Ray Nitschke and Jim Taylor and Paul Hornung and Forrest Gregg, and of course Vince Lombardi.
The Packers won the first two Super Bowls and five NFL titles in the 1960s. The Bears won the right to draft Bobby Douglass and Ralph Kurek. Which is why I rooted for the Bears but also had an emergency backup favorite team, the Baltimore Colts, on account of they had Johnny Unitas and actually won something every so often.
Still, the rivalry was real in those days. One-sided or not.
In his iconic book about those Packers, for instance, Jerry Kramer writes about what a big deal Bear Week was in Green Bay, how everyone got fired up for it and how no one got fired up more than Lombardi. At one point during Bear Week, in fact, someone in the Packers locker room said Lombardi was so fired up he sounded like, you know, George Halas.
Lombardi's response was immediate. And appropriately scornful.
"Halas?" he snapped. "Halas? Hah, hah. Halas. I can whip his ass. You whip the ballplayers and I'll whip him."
Wrote Kramer: "Everyone giggled at that."
But probably not very loud. Oh, no.
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
Boo birdbrains
The No. 1 tennis player in the world is better at tennis than most of us -- OK, all of us, by definition -- and now it turns out he's better at some other stuff, too.
Like, showing class in the face of classlessness, for instance.
Those were, after all, a chorus of boos that chased Novak Djokovic out of Arthur Ashe Stadium the other night, when, down two sets and 2-1 in the third to Stan Wawrinka, the defending U.S. Open champ packed up his equipment bag and walked off the court. His shoulder, which he's been shooting up with painkillers for some time, was throbbing like a rotted tooth. He clearly wasn't able to put up much of a fight, so he did the intelligent thing: He retired from the match.
This happens all the time, or at least more than you think it does. But the dillsacks who booed Joker apparently wished him to continue until his arm fell off. 'Tis but a scratch, you know. Also they paid a lot of money for their tickets.
Of the former, the Blob would say, "It ain't your rotator cuff, pal." Of the latter, it would say, "Nobody cares how much you paid for your tickets. Caveat emptor, dumbass."
This only proves that the Blob does not possess half the maturity Djokovic does.
Here's what he said of the booing, for instance: "I'm sorry for the crowd. Obviously, they came to see a full match, and it just wasn't to be. I mean, a lot of people didn't know what's happening, so you cannot blame them."
See what I mean? Class.
The Blob, on the other hand, wonders what the hell the boobirds were thinking, assuming thinking entered into it at all. It's not like Joker has a rep for taking a powder in the middle of matches, after all. Particularly major tournament matches.
Perhaps this would be a good place to remind everyone that the player who got booed for being unable to continue has won 36 of his last 37 Grand Slam matches, and four of the last five Grand Slam championships. This does not suggest the time was ripe for him to say "Ah, screw it, my shoulder hurts. Four out of five is good enough."
Champions do not think this way, unless they are absolutely forced to. No. Champions are greedy. Champions always want more. They are absolutely shameless about it, which is what makes them champions.
So if Djokovic was walking off the court, even the most oblivious paying customer should have been able to figure out it was because he simply wasn't able to keep playing. One-plus-one-equals-two is a tougher equation. So, no, the Blob is not disposed to be as understanding as Joker himself was.
"Look, it's no secret that I have, of course, desire and a goal to reach the most Slams, and reach Roger (Federer's) record," Djokovic acknowledged after the match. "But at the same time, it's a long road ahead hopefully for me. Now it's a matter of keeping my body and mind in shape and trying to still peak at these kind of events that are majors and that are the most significant in our sport."
Well ... yeah. Who doesn't get that?
Except for, you know, the dillsacks who booed him.
Like, showing class in the face of classlessness, for instance.
Those were, after all, a chorus of boos that chased Novak Djokovic out of Arthur Ashe Stadium the other night, when, down two sets and 2-1 in the third to Stan Wawrinka, the defending U.S. Open champ packed up his equipment bag and walked off the court. His shoulder, which he's been shooting up with painkillers for some time, was throbbing like a rotted tooth. He clearly wasn't able to put up much of a fight, so he did the intelligent thing: He retired from the match.
This happens all the time, or at least more than you think it does. But the dillsacks who booed Joker apparently wished him to continue until his arm fell off. 'Tis but a scratch, you know. Also they paid a lot of money for their tickets.
Of the former, the Blob would say, "It ain't your rotator cuff, pal." Of the latter, it would say, "Nobody cares how much you paid for your tickets. Caveat emptor, dumbass."
This only proves that the Blob does not possess half the maturity Djokovic does.
Here's what he said of the booing, for instance: "I'm sorry for the crowd. Obviously, they came to see a full match, and it just wasn't to be. I mean, a lot of people didn't know what's happening, so you cannot blame them."
See what I mean? Class.
The Blob, on the other hand, wonders what the hell the boobirds were thinking, assuming thinking entered into it at all. It's not like Joker has a rep for taking a powder in the middle of matches, after all. Particularly major tournament matches.
Perhaps this would be a good place to remind everyone that the player who got booed for being unable to continue has won 36 of his last 37 Grand Slam matches, and four of the last five Grand Slam championships. This does not suggest the time was ripe for him to say "Ah, screw it, my shoulder hurts. Four out of five is good enough."
Champions do not think this way, unless they are absolutely forced to. No. Champions are greedy. Champions always want more. They are absolutely shameless about it, which is what makes them champions.
So if Djokovic was walking off the court, even the most oblivious paying customer should have been able to figure out it was because he simply wasn't able to keep playing. One-plus-one-equals-two is a tougher equation. So, no, the Blob is not disposed to be as understanding as Joker himself was.
"Look, it's no secret that I have, of course, desire and a goal to reach the most Slams, and reach Roger (Federer's) record," Djokovic acknowledged after the match. "But at the same time, it's a long road ahead hopefully for me. Now it's a matter of keeping my body and mind in shape and trying to still peak at these kind of events that are majors and that are the most significant in our sport."
Well ... yeah. Who doesn't get that?
Except for, you know, the dillsacks who booed him.
Meanwhile, in NASCAR ...
They ran the oldest race in NASCAR last night on one of the most iconic racetracks in the sport -- a throwback, really, to the days when not every layout was plumb-bob symmetrical -- and a young hotshoe named Erik Jones won it. Led the last 85 laps while the best wheel man in the game, Kyle Busch, stalked him relentlessly. It was Jones' second career Cup win, both in places that ring to the touch.
His first win was at Daytona. His second, last night, was at egg-shaped Darlington, in the Southern 500, which was first run 69 years ago.
It is, in a sport whose roots are Dixie to the bone, the most Dixie of all NASCAR events. But it's also an event whose results I had to go looking for, because like so much else in NASCAR it's a very off-off-Broadway production these days.
NBC, for instance, didn't see fit on a holiday evening to air it on the main feed, instead relegating it to NBCSN. And ESPN, which has long behaved as if NASCAR were the only motorsports series in existence, didn't even put it on its web front.
The Colts signing journeyman quarterback Brian Hoyer, that was there. The Jets hiring Hines Ward as an assistant coach was there. But nary a word about one of the crown jewels of the NASCAR schedule. I had to go to the NASCAR page to find out who won.
What this tells us is something we already knew, of course: NASCAR's long and steady eclipse continues. Except for the Daytona 500, it's all just dead air now to most of America. And if last night didn't again drive home that point, the weekend upcoming will.
That's when NASCAR returns to Indianapolis for the Brickyard 400, once a crown jewel itself but now Just Another Boring NASCAR Race. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway might be the most famous race course in the world, but it's a sleep aid on slicks when the stock cars come to town. The novelty of NASCAR coming to Indy has long since worn off, and now -- largely because of the Speedway's flat, square-jawed layout -- it's a 160-lap, 640-left-turn Tournament of Roses parade.
And the interest has dwindled steadily as a result. Oh, IMS and NASCAR have tried mightily to paper over the fact that the race stinks, plastering the internet and the city with ads for what they're calling (this year) the Big Machine Vodka 400 At The Brickyard Presented By Florida-Georgia Line. They even moved it from late July to early September, desperately concluding the baking heat of mid-summer in Indiana was keeping folks away.
Somewhere inside they had to realize what a crock that was. It was, after all, just as hot back in the early days of the Brickyard, and that didn't keep 250,000 sweaty folks from swarming the grounds anyway. Those numbers are down to 50,000 or fewer these days -- and mostly that's because of the racing, about which IMS and NASCAR can do very little. Indy is what it is, and everyone has figured that out.
And NASCAR, in 2019, is what it is.
His first win was at Daytona. His second, last night, was at egg-shaped Darlington, in the Southern 500, which was first run 69 years ago.
It is, in a sport whose roots are Dixie to the bone, the most Dixie of all NASCAR events. But it's also an event whose results I had to go looking for, because like so much else in NASCAR it's a very off-off-Broadway production these days.
NBC, for instance, didn't see fit on a holiday evening to air it on the main feed, instead relegating it to NBCSN. And ESPN, which has long behaved as if NASCAR were the only motorsports series in existence, didn't even put it on its web front.
The Colts signing journeyman quarterback Brian Hoyer, that was there. The Jets hiring Hines Ward as an assistant coach was there. But nary a word about one of the crown jewels of the NASCAR schedule. I had to go to the NASCAR page to find out who won.
What this tells us is something we already knew, of course: NASCAR's long and steady eclipse continues. Except for the Daytona 500, it's all just dead air now to most of America. And if last night didn't again drive home that point, the weekend upcoming will.
That's when NASCAR returns to Indianapolis for the Brickyard 400, once a crown jewel itself but now Just Another Boring NASCAR Race. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway might be the most famous race course in the world, but it's a sleep aid on slicks when the stock cars come to town. The novelty of NASCAR coming to Indy has long since worn off, and now -- largely because of the Speedway's flat, square-jawed layout -- it's a 160-lap, 640-left-turn Tournament of Roses parade.
And the interest has dwindled steadily as a result. Oh, IMS and NASCAR have tried mightily to paper over the fact that the race stinks, plastering the internet and the city with ads for what they're calling (this year) the Big Machine Vodka 400 At The Brickyard Presented By Florida-Georgia Line. They even moved it from late July to early September, desperately concluding the baking heat of mid-summer in Indiana was keeping folks away.
Somewhere inside they had to realize what a crock that was. It was, after all, just as hot back in the early days of the Brickyard, and that didn't keep 250,000 sweaty folks from swarming the grounds anyway. Those numbers are down to 50,000 or fewer these days -- and mostly that's because of the racing, about which IMS and NASCAR can do very little. Indy is what it is, and everyone has figured that out.
And NASCAR, in 2019, is what it is.
Monday, September 2, 2019
The ABCs of legendhood
A.J. Foyt once went on his head in a stock car out in Riverside, Calif., and would have died if Parnelli Jones hadn't jumped out of his own car to pull him out.
He drove stout old roadsters in a day when stout old roadsters frequently got a man killed, and whose frames created so much vibration at speed that Foyt used to take his hand off the wheel and bang it against the side of the cockpit to keep it from falling asleep.
At an age when most racers would have retired to their easy chairs, he lost his brakes coming into a tight corner at Elkhart Lake one time and turned into an unguided missile, arrowing into an embankment and pretty much destroying his feet.
He's been burned, bloodied, bruised and broken. He's fussed, feuded and told the holders of a few microphones to Get that (bleeping) thing out of my face. He's banged on his cantankerous race car with a hammer, fumed when he was wrecked by That Damned Coogan at Indy one year, impaled impertinent reporters with his fabled Texas Death Stare and charmed them, when the mood struck him, with his equally fabled Texas affability.
He's also the greatest American race driver who ever lived, unless Mario Andretti is. And he got that way, as you can surmise from all of the above, by being too damned stubborn to quit.
And so while Will Power was winning the IndyCar race out in Portland, Ore., this weekend, the word got around that the primary sponsor for Foyt's racing team, ABC Supply, was pulling the plug on him. After 15 years -- a lifetime in the racing biz these days -- it will sponsor only Foyt's entries in the Indianapolis 500 next May. Other than that, ABC is O-U-T.
Naturally, Foyt, 84 now, says to hell with that. He's not going anywhere regardless.
"I've been doing this my whole life, why would I quit now? What in the hell else would I do?" he told Robin Miller of Racer.com.
This is good news, and also as essential as essential gets. IndyCar racing without A.J. Foyt, after all, would be like ham without rye. It would be like Sinatra without the pipes, Bogie without Bacall, Rocky without the obligatory training montage.
In other words, it just wouldn't be IndyCar. It would be ... something else. Something less colorful, less vibrant, less moored to a rich history upon which it banks too little.
"We'll be back next year," Foyt vows. "I guarantee it."
Go ahead. You tell him he's wrong.
He drove stout old roadsters in a day when stout old roadsters frequently got a man killed, and whose frames created so much vibration at speed that Foyt used to take his hand off the wheel and bang it against the side of the cockpit to keep it from falling asleep.
At an age when most racers would have retired to their easy chairs, he lost his brakes coming into a tight corner at Elkhart Lake one time and turned into an unguided missile, arrowing into an embankment and pretty much destroying his feet.
He's been burned, bloodied, bruised and broken. He's fussed, feuded and told the holders of a few microphones to Get that (bleeping) thing out of my face. He's banged on his cantankerous race car with a hammer, fumed when he was wrecked by That Damned Coogan at Indy one year, impaled impertinent reporters with his fabled Texas Death Stare and charmed them, when the mood struck him, with his equally fabled Texas affability.
He's also the greatest American race driver who ever lived, unless Mario Andretti is. And he got that way, as you can surmise from all of the above, by being too damned stubborn to quit.
And so while Will Power was winning the IndyCar race out in Portland, Ore., this weekend, the word got around that the primary sponsor for Foyt's racing team, ABC Supply, was pulling the plug on him. After 15 years -- a lifetime in the racing biz these days -- it will sponsor only Foyt's entries in the Indianapolis 500 next May. Other than that, ABC is O-U-T.
Naturally, Foyt, 84 now, says to hell with that. He's not going anywhere regardless.
"I've been doing this my whole life, why would I quit now? What in the hell else would I do?" he told Robin Miller of Racer.com.
This is good news, and also as essential as essential gets. IndyCar racing without A.J. Foyt, after all, would be like ham without rye. It would be like Sinatra without the pipes, Bogie without Bacall, Rocky without the obligatory training montage.
In other words, it just wouldn't be IndyCar. It would be ... something else. Something less colorful, less vibrant, less moored to a rich history upon which it banks too little.
"We'll be back next year," Foyt vows. "I guarantee it."
Go ahead. You tell him he's wrong.
Mascots gone bad
Faithful followers of the Blob ("Plural? Really?" you're saying) know it's an unrestrained Mascot Zone in good standing. If it has huge hands and feet and a massive head and sometimes fur, it's aces in these precincts.
Alas, sometimes this means taking the good with the bad. And so here is your Mascot Malfeasance for the first weekend of college football, in which the Jackson State mascot, Cocky the Tiger, inserts himself into the proceedings as a Jackson State receiver and a Bethune-Cookman defensive back wrestle for the ball in the end zone.
In the end, it was ruled a J-State touchdown. And Cocky got flagged for excessive mascot-ery, er, unsportsmanlike conduct.
Also too many men on the field, come to think of it. OK, so the right number of men and too many guys dressed in tiger suits on the field.
But how about that school spirit, boys and girls!
Alas, sometimes this means taking the good with the bad. And so here is your Mascot Malfeasance for the first weekend of college football, in which the Jackson State mascot, Cocky the Tiger, inserts himself into the proceedings as a Jackson State receiver and a Bethune-Cookman defensive back wrestle for the ball in the end zone.
In the end, it was ruled a J-State touchdown. And Cocky got flagged for excessive mascot-ery, er, unsportsmanlike conduct.
Also too many men on the field, come to think of it. OK, so the right number of men and too many guys dressed in tiger suits on the field.
But how about that school spirit, boys and girls!
Sunday, September 1, 2019
No-brag Saturday
The alma mater did not pull off the grand upset again, though it made a kid named Michael Penix Jr. play hero ball to beat it. That's the update from Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, where the Blob went to watch his Ball State Cardinals give the old college try in a 34-24 loss to Indiana, and where the Blob also failed to pass Fight Song 101.
Which is to say, it doesn't know the lyrics any better than it ever did. As far the Blob knows, the lyrics consist of "Ball State, Ball State, Baaalll State," endlessly repeated.
(Michael Penix Jr., by the way, looks like an actual quarterback for IU. He's got an arm that ought to require nuclear launch codes, and he can run a little, too. Of course, this being Indiana, it would help if he had some receivers who could catch the football -- IU had four straight-up drops yesterday -- and a defense that didn't get pushed around by a MAC offense. But we'll see what transpires.)
Anyway ... this is not about Ball State or Indiana or the Blob ("Sure looks that way," you're saying), but about the first Saturday of the college football season. And mainly it's about the ongoing myth that the SEC is the greatest football conference in the history of football conferences, on account of Paul Feinbaum says so and, lookie here, we got us a a private network with ESPN.
The Blob's position is the SEC is Alabama and Georgia and maybe Florida and LSU, and then a whole lot of Conference USA. Let's got to the tape:
* Speaking of the aforementioned, 'Bama warmed up with a 42-3 ball-peening of Duke. Georgia handled SEC doormat Vanderbilt 30-6. Florida outlasted Miami 24-20. And LSU did what LSU is supposed to do to Georgia Southern, winning 55-7.
Ah, but then ...
* But then, there was this:
South Carolina lost to North Carolina, which was 2-9 last season and supposed to be a tuneup.
Tennessee was stunned at home by Georgia State, which was 2-10 last season.
Wyoming beat Missouri. Memphis beat Ole Miss. Arkansas wheezed past FCS Portland State by a touchdown.
The only thing saving the Greatest Football Conference In The Entire History Of Football Conferences was a freshman quarterback with the totally southern quarterback name of Bo Nix. Ol' Bo threw a touchdown pass with nine seconds to go to beat Oregon, one of the premier powers in the Pac-12. So good on ol' Bo.
Of course, this gave Auburn running back JaTarvious Whitlow the opportunity to do a little typical SEC loudmouthing, saying there's no way Auburn could let some sadsack like Oregon come in and beat an SEC school, because who was Oregon, anyway?
"Nobody wanted to lose to Oregon," Whitlow said. "What are they, ACC? Pac-12? I didn't even know what they were. A Pac-12 team coming in and beating an SEC team, we can't take that."
Well, sure. I mean, it's not like they were Georgia State or anything.
Right?
Which is to say, it doesn't know the lyrics any better than it ever did. As far the Blob knows, the lyrics consist of "Ball State, Ball State, Baaalll State," endlessly repeated.
(Michael Penix Jr., by the way, looks like an actual quarterback for IU. He's got an arm that ought to require nuclear launch codes, and he can run a little, too. Of course, this being Indiana, it would help if he had some receivers who could catch the football -- IU had four straight-up drops yesterday -- and a defense that didn't get pushed around by a MAC offense. But we'll see what transpires.)
Anyway ... this is not about Ball State or Indiana or the Blob ("Sure looks that way," you're saying), but about the first Saturday of the college football season. And mainly it's about the ongoing myth that the SEC is the greatest football conference in the history of football conferences, on account of Paul Feinbaum says so and, lookie here, we got us a a private network with ESPN.
The Blob's position is the SEC is Alabama and Georgia and maybe Florida and LSU, and then a whole lot of Conference USA. Let's got to the tape:
* Speaking of the aforementioned, 'Bama warmed up with a 42-3 ball-peening of Duke. Georgia handled SEC doormat Vanderbilt 30-6. Florida outlasted Miami 24-20. And LSU did what LSU is supposed to do to Georgia Southern, winning 55-7.
Ah, but then ...
* But then, there was this:
South Carolina lost to North Carolina, which was 2-9 last season and supposed to be a tuneup.
Tennessee was stunned at home by Georgia State, which was 2-10 last season.
Wyoming beat Missouri. Memphis beat Ole Miss. Arkansas wheezed past FCS Portland State by a touchdown.
The only thing saving the Greatest Football Conference In The Entire History Of Football Conferences was a freshman quarterback with the totally southern quarterback name of Bo Nix. Ol' Bo threw a touchdown pass with nine seconds to go to beat Oregon, one of the premier powers in the Pac-12. So good on ol' Bo.
Of course, this gave Auburn running back JaTarvious Whitlow the opportunity to do a little typical SEC loudmouthing, saying there's no way Auburn could let some sadsack like Oregon come in and beat an SEC school, because who was Oregon, anyway?
"Nobody wanted to lose to Oregon," Whitlow said. "What are they, ACC? Pac-12? I didn't even know what they were. A Pac-12 team coming in and beating an SEC team, we can't take that."
Well, sure. I mean, it's not like they were Georgia State or anything.
Right?
Footsore
So, this week's Chicago Bears placekicker, Eddie Pineiro, missed an extra point so badly last night it landed in Winnetka, according to this right here from Deadspin. And so the NFL's version of Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour (look it up, young'uns) continues.
Pineiro is the tenth kicker the Bears have had on the premises this summer, and the only one currently still on the premises. So it looks like he's the guy.
He did stick a 58-yarder against the Colts last week. And he made three short field goals last night. And while that extra point looked really bad (except to the lucky kid in Winnetka who now has an official NFL football), at least he hasn't banked anything off the goalposts or the crossbar or head coach Matt Nagy's groin.
That no doubt checks a huge box for the Bears and Nagy, who continue to be haunted by the ghost of Cody Parkey to a comic degree. Parkey, remember, double-doinked the point-blank miss that chased the Bears from the playoffs last season. Off the goalpost ... off the crossbar ... hello, offseason.
And so here came the parade of legs through Halas Hall, more legs than the Rockettes, it seemed. And the wheel has apparently stopped on Pineiro.
For the time being, anyway.
Because you know what's going to happen now, right?
First time Pineiro serves up another souvenir to another kid in Winnetka, the wheel will begin to spin again. Carli Lloyd? Hell, yes, bring her in. What's Morten Andersen doing these days? Anyone know where Jan Stenerud is? Is Tom Dempsey still alive?
The mind reels with the possibilities ...
Bears assistant: Hey, Coach Nagy! Guess who's at O'Hare, waiting for a connecting?
Nagy: Who?
Assistant: Pele!
Nagy: What? Hell, man, get out there! Here, take this contract ...
That sort of thing.
And in the meantime?
Get your kid out there in the backyard. You never know.
Pineiro is the tenth kicker the Bears have had on the premises this summer, and the only one currently still on the premises. So it looks like he's the guy.
He did stick a 58-yarder against the Colts last week. And he made three short field goals last night. And while that extra point looked really bad (except to the lucky kid in Winnetka who now has an official NFL football), at least he hasn't banked anything off the goalposts or the crossbar or head coach Matt Nagy's groin.
That no doubt checks a huge box for the Bears and Nagy, who continue to be haunted by the ghost of Cody Parkey to a comic degree. Parkey, remember, double-doinked the point-blank miss that chased the Bears from the playoffs last season. Off the goalpost ... off the crossbar ... hello, offseason.
And so here came the parade of legs through Halas Hall, more legs than the Rockettes, it seemed. And the wheel has apparently stopped on Pineiro.
For the time being, anyway.
Because you know what's going to happen now, right?
First time Pineiro serves up another souvenir to another kid in Winnetka, the wheel will begin to spin again. Carli Lloyd? Hell, yes, bring her in. What's Morten Andersen doing these days? Anyone know where Jan Stenerud is? Is Tom Dempsey still alive?
The mind reels with the possibilities ...
Bears assistant: Hey, Coach Nagy! Guess who's at O'Hare, waiting for a connecting?
Nagy: Who?
Assistant: Pele!
Nagy: What? Hell, man, get out there! Here, take this contract ...
That sort of thing.
And in the meantime?
Get your kid out there in the backyard. You never know.
Sis. Boom. Yay, rah.
I know it's fall now, because school is in and the yellow buses are running and, on my morning walks around the neighborhood, I pass tiny people trudging along lugging backpacks the size of condos, like sherpas trudging up Everest.
I know it's fall because over by Arlington Elementary, the courtyard has sprouted bicycles and the car line fills the looping driveway.
I know it's fall, no matter what the faithless calendar says, because the lights have come up on high school football fields all over the area. Because there are heroes and goats and pain and elation beneath those lights. Because, last night, No. 1 Clemson wore out unranked Georgia Tech the way No. 1 teams are supposed to wear out unranked Georgia Techs, and now we have college football again.
Fall to me is college football. Always has been.
It's Saturday afternoons listening to Leroy Keyes run and Mike Phipps and Bob Griese throw and Jim Beirne and Bob Dillingham catch while my mom, a proud Purdue grad, swept and dusted. It's the residue of Saturday afternoon on Sunday morning, when I'd come home from church and turn on Fighting Irish Football Highlights, Lindsey Nelson moving on to further action in the third quarter as Notre Dame clubbed the life out of whatever sacrificial Pitt or Navy it played that week.
Saturday afternoons were Purdue and Notre Dame, and Indiana getting romped by Wisconsin or Michigan, because except for '67 the Hoosiers were always getting romped by someone in those days. Saturday afternoons were Oklahoma-Nebraska, Alabama-Auburn, USC-UCLA. They were James Street bringing Texas back against Arkansas, Purdue and IU fighting over a decrepit old bucket, Ohio State and Michigan punching each other in the face while Bo and Woody growled and gnashed their teeth on the sideline.
All of that turns 150 this year, and that brings back another milestone for me. The year was 1969, America was bleeding to death in Vietnam, and college football turned 100. Every college football team wore a special decal, a football with "100" printed inside it.
James Street wore it. Archie Manning down at Ole Miss wore it. Rex Kern at Ohio State wore it, Jade Butcher at Indiana wore it, Chuck Dicus at Arkansas and Jim Mandich at Michigan and Steve Owens at Oklahoma wore it.
The best game that year was Texas-Arkansas, No. 1 vs. No. 2 down in Fayetteville, Street and Steve Worster and Cotton Speyrer vs. Bill Montgomery and Bill Burnett and Dicus. Texas won, 15-14. President Nixon was there to see it, back in the day when presidents could sit right outside among the common folk.
And now it all starts again. Has started, actually.
Tomorrow I'll be in Lucas Oil Stadium, watching by alma mater, Ball State, take on Indiana. It will be an odd experience for a former sportswriter; I can't remember the last time I went to a Ball State football game I didn't cover. I will try to cheer, and I already know it won't feel right. I'll keep looking around for some SID to come charging down the aisle, braying that there's no cheering in the pressbox.
Of course, my Cardinals are probably going to get ball-peened. On the other hand, it's Indiana, so maybe not.
I can't say this for sure. But I have a feeling that, whatever the outcome, somewhere, on Sunday morning, something wondrous and eternal will happen.
Somewhere, Lindsey Nelson will be moving on to further action in the third quarter. You just know it.
I know it's fall because over by Arlington Elementary, the courtyard has sprouted bicycles and the car line fills the looping driveway.
I know it's fall, no matter what the faithless calendar says, because the lights have come up on high school football fields all over the area. Because there are heroes and goats and pain and elation beneath those lights. Because, last night, No. 1 Clemson wore out unranked Georgia Tech the way No. 1 teams are supposed to wear out unranked Georgia Techs, and now we have college football again.
Fall to me is college football. Always has been.
It's Saturday afternoons listening to Leroy Keyes run and Mike Phipps and Bob Griese throw and Jim Beirne and Bob Dillingham catch while my mom, a proud Purdue grad, swept and dusted. It's the residue of Saturday afternoon on Sunday morning, when I'd come home from church and turn on Fighting Irish Football Highlights, Lindsey Nelson moving on to further action in the third quarter as Notre Dame clubbed the life out of whatever sacrificial Pitt or Navy it played that week.
Saturday afternoons were Purdue and Notre Dame, and Indiana getting romped by Wisconsin or Michigan, because except for '67 the Hoosiers were always getting romped by someone in those days. Saturday afternoons were Oklahoma-Nebraska, Alabama-Auburn, USC-UCLA. They were James Street bringing Texas back against Arkansas, Purdue and IU fighting over a decrepit old bucket, Ohio State and Michigan punching each other in the face while Bo and Woody growled and gnashed their teeth on the sideline.
All of that turns 150 this year, and that brings back another milestone for me. The year was 1969, America was bleeding to death in Vietnam, and college football turned 100. Every college football team wore a special decal, a football with "100" printed inside it.
James Street wore it. Archie Manning down at Ole Miss wore it. Rex Kern at Ohio State wore it, Jade Butcher at Indiana wore it, Chuck Dicus at Arkansas and Jim Mandich at Michigan and Steve Owens at Oklahoma wore it.
The best game that year was Texas-Arkansas, No. 1 vs. No. 2 down in Fayetteville, Street and Steve Worster and Cotton Speyrer vs. Bill Montgomery and Bill Burnett and Dicus. Texas won, 15-14. President Nixon was there to see it, back in the day when presidents could sit right outside among the common folk.
And now it all starts again. Has started, actually.
Tomorrow I'll be in Lucas Oil Stadium, watching by alma mater, Ball State, take on Indiana. It will be an odd experience for a former sportswriter; I can't remember the last time I went to a Ball State football game I didn't cover. I will try to cheer, and I already know it won't feel right. I'll keep looking around for some SID to come charging down the aisle, braying that there's no cheering in the pressbox.
Of course, my Cardinals are probably going to get ball-peened. On the other hand, it's Indiana, so maybe not.
I can't say this for sure. But I have a feeling that, whatever the outcome, somewhere, on Sunday morning, something wondrous and eternal will happen.
Somewhere, Lindsey Nelson will be moving on to further action in the third quarter. You just know it.
One last horrific thought ...
... and then the Blob will shut up about Andrew Luck and the toll football takes on those who love it too much.
This one grew out of a conversation with an acquaintance of mine, who was relating a conversation he had with a friend of his. They were talking about Luck's abrupt retirement, of course, and how sometimes football players retire because they just can't do it physically anymore, and then some time passes and they finally heal up, and the pull of the game, which acts very much like an opiate on those who've played it, begins to work on them ...
"Sure," I said at this point, or something to that effect. "Remember Brett Favre? Toward the end he'd say he was quitting at the end of every season because he was so beat up. But then a couple of months would pass, he'd heal up, and back he'd come."
"Exactly," this acquaintance said, or something to that effect.
Anyway, he went on, what if Andrew Luck, who's only 29, takes a year off to finally heal? That, coincidentally, would be just about the time Tom Brady is finally acknowledging he can't beat time in a foot race. It would also be about the time Bill Belichick would be ready to move on from him, if he's not already. And there would be a finally healthy Luck, the perfect heir apparent, who got out of the game not because he didn't love it but because it had beaten him to the ground ...
Andrew Luck as a Patriot.
Is that a nightmare Jim Irsay, the Indianapolis Colts and True Blue Nation couldn't wake up from fast enough?
It's never gonna happen, of course. But ... yikes.
This one grew out of a conversation with an acquaintance of mine, who was relating a conversation he had with a friend of his. They were talking about Luck's abrupt retirement, of course, and how sometimes football players retire because they just can't do it physically anymore, and then some time passes and they finally heal up, and the pull of the game, which acts very much like an opiate on those who've played it, begins to work on them ...
"Sure," I said at this point, or something to that effect. "Remember Brett Favre? Toward the end he'd say he was quitting at the end of every season because he was so beat up. But then a couple of months would pass, he'd heal up, and back he'd come."
"Exactly," this acquaintance said, or something to that effect.
Anyway, he went on, what if Andrew Luck, who's only 29, takes a year off to finally heal? That, coincidentally, would be just about the time Tom Brady is finally acknowledging he can't beat time in a foot race. It would also be about the time Bill Belichick would be ready to move on from him, if he's not already. And there would be a finally healthy Luck, the perfect heir apparent, who got out of the game not because he didn't love it but because it had beaten him to the ground ...
Andrew Luck as a Patriot.
Is that a nightmare Jim Irsay, the Indianapolis Colts and True Blue Nation couldn't wake up from fast enough?
It's never gonna happen, of course. But ... yikes.
There go the Cubs
The slow leak keeps leaking on the north side of Chicago, emitting a faint hiss that sounds increasingly sinister. Deflategate, it turns out, is not just a river in Foxborough. Like everything else in American history, it's migrated west.
Which is to say: 2016 seems like history, too.
That was the year the Chicago Cubs won 103 games and the World Series, something they hadn't done since before William Howard Taft got stuck in his bathtub. Great joy abounded in the Second City. W flags flew from sea to shining sea. And the best part was, it didn't feel like a one-off, because the 2016 Cubs were absurdly young and the entire thing felt built to last.
Three years later, those Cubs are still winning.
OK. So they won last night, anyway.
Beat the New York Mets 5-2, the Cubs did, behind Yu Darvish's five-hitter. Javy Baez went 3-for-3 and drove in three runs. The bullpen didn't blow it for once.
This bumped the Cubs' season record to 70-61, which is not bad when you consider their starting rotation is aging, their bullpen is sketchy and all those young guys from 2016 are three years older and struggle mightily to get a base hit sometimes. Since the end of May, they're two games over .500. They're now three games behind the first-place Cardinals in the NL Central, and two in front of the Phillies in the wild-card.
In other words, they're a pretty average-to-above-average baseball team.
In further other words, the team built to last is looking more and more like a team built to be dismantled in the offseason.
It has, amazingly, been a steady regression since 2016. From 103 wins and a world championship in 2016, the Cubs fell to 92 wins and a loss in the NLCS to the Dodgers in 2017. They rebounded to win 95 games in 2018, but went a drowsy 16-12 in September, lost the one-game NL Central tiebreaker to the Brewers at home, then lost the one-game wild card playoff to the Rockies at home.
That's the bad news.
The good news is, there's still a month left in this season to turn it all around.
Maybe the bats will awaken. Maybe the bullpen will stop jacking around. Maybe the aging starters will reach back and find their glory days again. Maybe they'll overtake the bleeping Cardinals, charge into the playoffs, reach the Worl--
OK. So that's probably not going to happen.
I mean, if it hasn't happened so far in five months, why would it in the sixth?
The only realistic hope here is the Phillies don't seem inclined to do it, either. They're about as win-a-couple, lose-a-couple as the Cubs, with a 68-63 record. In their last 10 games, they're 5-5. And they've scored 17 fewer runs than they've allowed this season.
The Cubs, on the other hand, have scored 64 more runs than they've given up. So there's that.
Doesn't seem like much, given the giddy future-that-was in 2016. But at least it's something.
And as any Cubs fan could tell you, At Least It's Something is a place every Cubs fan knows like home.
Which is to say: 2016 seems like history, too.
That was the year the Chicago Cubs won 103 games and the World Series, something they hadn't done since before William Howard Taft got stuck in his bathtub. Great joy abounded in the Second City. W flags flew from sea to shining sea. And the best part was, it didn't feel like a one-off, because the 2016 Cubs were absurdly young and the entire thing felt built to last.
Three years later, those Cubs are still winning.
OK. So they won last night, anyway.
Beat the New York Mets 5-2, the Cubs did, behind Yu Darvish's five-hitter. Javy Baez went 3-for-3 and drove in three runs. The bullpen didn't blow it for once.
This bumped the Cubs' season record to 70-61, which is not bad when you consider their starting rotation is aging, their bullpen is sketchy and all those young guys from 2016 are three years older and struggle mightily to get a base hit sometimes. Since the end of May, they're two games over .500. They're now three games behind the first-place Cardinals in the NL Central, and two in front of the Phillies in the wild-card.
In other words, they're a pretty average-to-above-average baseball team.
In further other words, the team built to last is looking more and more like a team built to be dismantled in the offseason.
It has, amazingly, been a steady regression since 2016. From 103 wins and a world championship in 2016, the Cubs fell to 92 wins and a loss in the NLCS to the Dodgers in 2017. They rebounded to win 95 games in 2018, but went a drowsy 16-12 in September, lost the one-game NL Central tiebreaker to the Brewers at home, then lost the one-game wild card playoff to the Rockies at home.
That's the bad news.
The good news is, there's still a month left in this season to turn it all around.
Maybe the bats will awaken. Maybe the bullpen will stop jacking around. Maybe the aging starters will reach back and find their glory days again. Maybe they'll overtake the bleeping Cardinals, charge into the playoffs, reach the Worl--
OK. So that's probably not going to happen.
I mean, if it hasn't happened so far in five months, why would it in the sixth?
The only realistic hope here is the Phillies don't seem inclined to do it, either. They're about as win-a-couple, lose-a-couple as the Cubs, with a 68-63 record. In their last 10 games, they're 5-5. And they've scored 17 fewer runs than they've allowed this season.
The Cubs, on the other hand, have scored 64 more runs than they've given up. So there's that.
Doesn't seem like much, given the giddy future-that-was in 2016. But at least it's something.
And as any Cubs fan could tell you, At Least It's Something is a place every Cubs fan knows like home.
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