Good old girl

I dreamed about our old girl, not so very long ago.

In my dream our tumbledown rail fence was still standing, and our old girl kept hopping through it into the common area that abuts our backyard, and there she would run and jump and play tag with the neighborhood dogs, her black tail wagging back and forth like the baton of a particularly manic orchestra conductor.

In my dream her muzzle and the place around her eyes were not yet salted with gray, and there was no pain in those eyes or hobble to her gait. And she leaped for joy as she played.

When I woke there was heaviness like a stone in my chest, and a sadness I carried with me long into the day.

Because things change, see, and we cannot un-change them. The tumbledown fence is gone and it's not coming back. And the sweet joyous girl of my dream is not coming back either.

Which is to say, we had to put the old girl down yesterday. 

She was 15 years old and half-blind and her back legs didn't work anymore, so that she could no longer get up without a gentle foot placed under her hindquarters. And when she did finally get up, she hobbled and panted because it hurt her terribly, and it hurt us just to watch her.

So it was time. And this morning when I came downstairs her collar was sitting in the middle of her dog pillow by the fireplace, and the words rose to my lips like a reflex: "Hey, Spark."

Her name was Sparky, a male-dog name given her by our then 10-year-old daughter, but she went by a dozen aliases. She was Spark and Spark-a-lark and Sparker Parker and Babycakes. Occasionally she was also Dammit Sparky, because dogs will be dogs and sometimes are.

She was a Labradoodle, born east of Columbus, Ohio, on a puppy farm, but she was always far more Lab than Doodle. Her fur was jet-black and sort of unruly-wavy, and she was the gentlest soul that ever walked on four legs. She was also a prodigious eater of unattended socks, and not long after a prodigious thrower-up of socks. As a pup, there wasn't anything of which she wouldn't test the chewability.

One winter's day when she was nine months old, for instance, she tore the cable box off the side of the house and tried to eat it. I discovered it when I turned the TV on and there was nothing but snow. 

So I went outside and there lay the box, as dead as disco. The chewable parts were a chewed mess. The metal housing bore the telltale scars of teeth marks.

None of this would have been so bad had she not done it the night of the Rose Bowl in 2006. No. 1 USC vs. No. 2 Texas in one of the greatest college football games ever played, and who could forget Vince Young's dash to the end zone that sealed it for the Longhorns?

I mean, other than me, who never got to see it.

Yet she was a good old girl, in all other ways. When one of us walked in the room not just her tail but her entire hindquarters would commence to wiggling back and forth, a sort of doggy Dancing with the Stars that never failed to make us smile. And she guarded her domain fiercely, barking my-yard-my-yard-my-yard at anyone walking on the pathways that skirted the common area.'

"Sparky, that's not your yard!" we'd always say. It never worked.

They say when a dog grows old and loves and is loved it will cling to life, however painfully, because it doesn't want to leave those it loves. It will endure much just to stay with its family a little longer.

This is likely a human conceit, but it explains a lot about Spark's last months. She loved and was loved, to the very end. And it was love that compelled that end. 

Somewhere on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge, she runs and barks and leaps for joy now, and there is no more pain. And that is solace enough for those of us left behind.

Goodbye, Sparky.

Spark. Spark-a-lark. Sparker Parker. Babycakes.

Forever Plagued

 So now the Bastard Plague has put college football's marquee-est name in lockdown, and a powerhouse Wisconsin team has run out of undiseased (or at least un-carrier) quarterbacks, and we see the cost, don't we? We see what going ahead and playing football in the middle of a resurgent pandemic will do, unavoidably.

What it will do is alter the landscape of autumn, unavoidably. Shape it in ways it would never have otherwise been shaped, unavoidably. 

Let's consider Clemson, for instance.

The word came down the other day that quarterback Trevor Lawrence, the leader in the clubhouse for this year's Heisman Trophy, has shown red for Covid-19, which means he's on the shelf for the Boston College game tomorrow. It also means the No. 1 Tigers might be headed to South Bend for the big Nov. 7 showdown against No. 4 Notre Dame without him. 

That wouldn't be happening if not for the Plague. And so the dynamics of the next two weeks are changed because of it.

For Wisconsin, too. We're only a week into the truncated Big Ten season, and the Badgers are on the sidelines. An outbreak on the team sidelined 16 players and left Wisky with the prospect of starting its fourth-string quarterback against Nebraska this week, until the school said to hell with it and canceled the game. And that, of course, changes the landscape of the Big Ten, too.

The Badgers, after all, poleaxed Illinois 45-7 last week and looked ready to shoulder their way into the Ohio State-Penn State-Michigan power nexus, and now ... well, who knows. A potential Big Four will remain the Big Three, more than likely. And what of the Illini, who spent three-and-a-half hours last week getting breathed on by the Badgers?

Maybe down the road they'll be compelled to drop a game, too. Or maybe Purdue will, having already played its opener with head coach Jeff  Brohm sidelined by a positive test. And on and on it goes, the dominoes tumbling, the season's geography shifting with every outbreak.

The Let 'Em Play crowd wanted their football, and they got it. But that doesn't mean they beat the 'Rona.

One way or another, subtly and otherwise, it's still working its will. It's still, and always will be,  the Season of the Plague.

And the warping of its contours has just begun. 

Curiouser and curiouser

 Some things you gotta explain to me, like where the lids to plastic containers go five minutes after you store them in the kitchen cabinet. 

I suspect a wormhole. Or perhaps time travel. 

In which case someone in 1903 is right this minute wondering where the containers are for all these lids. 

In any event,  it is a mystery to me, one of many. Just now, for instance, I'm wondering what the the heck the Chicago White Sox are up to.

This is not an unusual question, the White Sox being the White Sox. But this time they're being especially opaque, following pathways of rhyme and reason undetectable to mere mortals.

First, they put together a young, vibrant team whose future, as Yogi Berra would say, is ahead of it.

Then they fired the manager who brought the young, vibrant team along and got it to the playoffs this season for the first time in 12 years.

Then, instead of a young, vibrant manager to take the young, vibrant team the rest of the way, they hired ... Tony LaRussa.

And, yes, I know, he's a Hall of Fame manager and yadda-yadda, blah-blah-blah.

But he's also 76 years old and hasn't jockeyed a dugout bench in nine years. So this is basically like the White Sox rummaging through their closet, finding the lime-green leisure suit they last wore in 1977 and saying "Wonder if this still fits?"

Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. But the Sox couldn't find someone a little more, you know, current?

Now, it's possible they're three moves ahead of all of us, and the next time we see LaRussa he'll be getting sprayed with champagne by the Kid Sox. And we'll be writing about what a genius move this was, dusting off a revered senior citizen to come in and keep the youngsters in line.

I mean, it worked for the Yankees, back in the '50s. In 1949 they dusted off Casey Stengel, who was pushing 60 and hadn't managed in six years, and handed him the keys. Everyone thought they were crazy, too, but all Stengel did was manage the Yanks to seven World Series titles in 10 years and get himself elected to the Hall of Fame.

So maybe the Sox are looking at LaRussa and seeing another Stengel.

Me, I'm looking at LaRussa and seeing that leisure suit.

But what do I know? Fashion was never my thing.

Quittin' time

You can't blame the guy, really. You win the World Series after losing to a bunch of cheaters the last two times, you're gonna want to savor the moment. And you're gonna want to do it with your teammates.

And so there was Justin Turner out on the field with the rest of the Los Angeles Dodgers last night, hugging guys, putting his hands on the trophy some of his teammates would soon be kissing for the cameras, wide grin creasing that Grizzly Adams beard. 

You could see that grin because he wasn't wearing a mask.

You could also see it because he was out there not very long after the Dodgers were informed he had tested positive for the Bastard Plague, after which Turner was removed from the game and put into isolation.

And after that, the Dodgers wrapped up the Series with a 3-1 win aided greatly by Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash, who pulled his cruising starter, Blake Snell, because the hypotenuse of the co-efficient of x times y, carry the one, told him he was supposed to. 

Analytics, man. You could almost hear Old Hoss Radbourn and the Big Train and Bob Gibson stomping around up there in the great beyond, wondering how the hell a bunch of pocket protectors and lab coats managed to hijack America's Pastime.

In any case, Snell got yanked, the Dodgers won and out came Justin Turner from the shortest isolation in history. It was reckless and irresponsible and completely understandable, and who knows how many people in the Dodgers orbit will wind up getting sick because of it.

And, yes, I suppose pointing that out just makes me a pearl-clutcher these days. Because what happened on that baseball diamond last night was, as baseball so often is, an accurate reflection of what's happening in America right now.

Which is, we've officially surrendered to the Bastard Plague.

The White House itself has waved the white flag, saying we can't control it and therefore will just have to live with (or die with it, as Joe Biden accurately noted). We're closing in 230,000 deaths in eight months and the virus is raging at April levels again all over the country, and we just ... don't ... care.

And so the President of the United States, who fiddled while Rome burned in this deal, still gallivants around the country, making jokes about mask-wearing to his mobs of unmasked, socially-undistanced minions. Telling the nation he's tired of all this so, what the hell, it's quittin' time. Party on, dudes!

Meanwhile the Plague, which doesn't know how to spell "quit," keeps filling up ICUs and making people sick and occasionally killing them.

And all because the President and the nation he allegedly leads didn't have the stomach to wear a mask and shelter in place when it was necessary to do so. We did it for awhile, and then we got tired of it. And then, following the President's example, we started ridiculing the scientists,  calling state governors who actually were trying to fight the spread "dictators" and plotting to kidnap or kill them, spinning old wives' tales and holding them close as gospel.

Because, you know, freedom. Or something like that.

Some folks will look at that and hold it up as proof of America's greatness, that we can beat back a pandemic simply by pretending it's over.

Other folks will look at that and say, "Damn, are we stupid."

Y'all know where I come down.

Damn, are we stupid.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 7

 And now a special Halloween week edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the chilling Blob feature of which critics have said "I hear something in the basement, Merle", and also "No, Merle! Don't open the door! DON'T OPEN TH- AIEEEE!!":

1. "The door creaked open, and out shuffled the hideous abomination that once was the Dallas Cowboys ..."

2. "The door creaked open, and out shuffled the hideous abomination that once was the New England Patriots ..."

3. "Sometimes, late at night, Matt Nagy's offense clambers worm-eaten from its stinking grave, slips on a banana peel and falls back in ..."

4. "Sometimes, late at night, Trevor Lawrence awakens screaming from an awful nightmare in which he's drafted by the New York Jets ..."

5. "I had an awful nightmare, Doc," Merle said. "I dreamed Russell Wilson threw three interceptions and my undefeated Seahawks blew a game to the Arizona Cardinals."

6. "That was no dream, Merle," Kyler Murray replied, chuckling horribly as he removed his doctor mask and battened on poor Merle with his razor-sharp teeth.

7. "Hands shaking, Joe Burrow mustered the last of his strength to scratch out a note. 'Please send help,' it read. 'I'm stranded on the Bengals' ..."

8. "Eyes glittering with unholy life, Tom Brady dropped another dime for six, as if he were still 22 years old ..."

9. "How do you still do it, Tom, at 43?" a Tampa reporter named Merle asked after the game.

10. "Brady, born in the Carpathian Mountains in 1847, merely chuckled horribly and then battened on poor Merle with his razor-sharp teeth ..."

The prerogatives of need

I'll give Tampa Bay head coach Bruce Arians the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe he really does believe Antonio Brown has "matured," and that redemption really is possible for all humans on this mortal coil.

But Bruce Arians is also short some folks who can catch footballs.

And Antonio Brown can catch footballs like nobody's business.

So maybe redemption is not quite the noble aspiration it appears in this case.

Maybe this is just plain expediency talking, which it does a lot of in the NFL. And so Arians' Buccaneers have signed onto the Antonio Show, hoping against hope that the Show part is over.

He's worn out his welcome in three places with his Show, and he's still serving an eight-game suspension for all manner of bad acts. But once that's over, he's a Buc. And there goes all that happy talk from the NFL (and Arians himself) about how domestic violence is bad-bad-bad and we-stand-against-violence-against-women and blah-blah-blah, yadda-yadda-yadda.

Here's a thing you should know about Bruce Arians: He once got an award for  promoting gender equality.

And here's a thing you should know about Antonio Brown: He's been accused of multiple incidences of sexual misconduct and has been sued for sexual assault by yet another woman.

Of course, this makes him no different than a pile of other NFL players who've done league suspension time for beating up women or sexually assaulting women or otherwise treating women like dryer lint, and yet who remain gainfully employed by the NFL.

Either they're really good at throwing footballs or really good at running with a football or really good at catching and then running with a football. Which makes them good to go in the We Stand Against Violence Against Women League.

Bottom line is newfound maturity and "second chances" are fine things to say if you're Bruce Arians or anyone else, but no one says them about backup linebackers or running backs whose wheels are gone. Or, for that matter, quarterbacks whose only crime was to kneel quietly for the national anthem because he didn't think police officers should be shooting people of color in such a cavalier manner.

 But Colin Kaepernick, while certifiably far better at his job than a bunch of quarterbacks currently on NFL rosters, wasn't quite Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers. So he was blackballed by a league that makes a ton of bank on superficial displays of "patriotism."

Antonio Brown?

Well, shoot. He was perhaps the best receiver in football not so long ago. So of course Bruce Arians (and the league) can afford to be magnanimous, even if almost half of NFL fans are women.

Then again, they're still watching. So obviously they're still buying what the league is selling vis-a-vis Antonio Brown and his ilk.

Domestic violence? Sexual assault? All that stuff?

Bad, bad, bad.

And wink, wink, wink.

Day of "What th-?"

Look, I don't know if the kid was in. You can eyeball the thing more times than the Zapruder film, from every angle and at every speed, and we'll still never know.

Back, and to the left. The football touched the ground a millisecond before it touched the pylon or it didn't. It's all of a piece, and none of it matters anyway.

That's because Michael Penix dove and stretched and the football broke the plane and down went No. 8 Penn State in Bloomington, In., yesterday, and what was remarkable about that is you could ask "How will Indiana blow it this time?" and get two opposing answers. And both would be correct.

The first answer is that Indiana blew it this time by blowing coverage and letting a Penn State receiver run free for a 60-yard touchdown catch that gave the Nittany Lions the lead with two-and-a-half minutes to play.

Oh, Indiana.

The second answer is the Hoosiers didn't blow it this time, because Penix led them on a 75-yard drive as the clock got skinny, scored on a 1-yard run and then ran it in for the two-point conversion that tied the game and forced overtime.

Then he hit Whop Philyor from nine yards out in OT, after which IU coach Tom Allen essentially said "Screw it, we're gonna win it or lose it right here." So Penix ran and stretched and the ruling on the field -- two points and the win -- was upheld because, well, it was too inconclusive to reverse. And Indiana had the 36-35 upset that rang in the Big Ten season with a bang.

Wow, Indiana.

It was the Hoosiers' first win over a top ten opponent since 1987, and maybe it heralds something and maybe it doesn't. In '87, the Hoosiers' 31-10 win over Ohio State heralded an 8-4 season that ended in a Peach Bowl loss to Tennessee. Bill Mallory was the coach then, and Indiana had its best run of seasons under him, and then he was gone and Indiana went back to being Indiana.

I don't know what's going to happen this time. But I do know Tom Allen is the right man for this job, clearly, and his call to go for the win in OT was absolutely the right call, and he outcoached his opposite number, James Franklin, in this one. And that's because it was Penn State and not Indiana that blew it with the game on the line.

The Nittany Lions blew it with 1:42 to play in regulation, when Allen opted to let Penn State score to get the ball back for one last shot. So the Hoosiers stood aside and Devyn Ford walked into the end zone instead of doing what he should have done, which is trip and fall down. 

Had he done that, Penn State would have simply run out the clock. But he didn't -- and so it was the football royalty that made the bonehead play this time, and not Indiana.

Cooler heads prevailed, in other words. And when's the last time we could say that about an Indiana team playing a top-ten team?

Then again, maybe this was just Indiana tapping into the karma of an entire day of squirreliness in Sportsball World.

The Hoosiers beat Penn State. Rutgers -- Rutgers, for God's sake! -- beat the almighty wadding out of Michigan State in East Lansing. And, much later Saturday, the Tampa Bay Rays won Game 4 of the World Series in one of the most gloriously ridiculous endings ever.

Two outs in the ninth, Rays down a run, and some guy named Brett Phillips, who might last have gotten an at-bat in the deadball era, somehow drives a pitch into right center field. 

Dodgers centerfielder Chris Taylor promptly makes like Lionel Messi and boots the ball. Kevin Kiermaier steams home with the tying run. Taylor tracks down the ball and relays it home, where catcher Will Smith drops the relay, allowing Randy Arozarena -- who had actually fallen down between third and home -- to slide headfirst across the dish with the winning run.

Here's the video evidence. I don't know how you score that, frankly. Huh? to What Th-? to Cue Up Yakety Sax, maybe.

I do know one thing, however.

Indiana is 1-0. And Penn State is 0-1.

What th--?

No way (to go) out, revised

 Well. As Lee Corso is fond of saying, "Not so fast, my friend."

Yesterday the Blob wrote about Southwood High School, and how the Bastard Plague was going to deprive its undefeated football team its run at a state title, and what a dirty shock to the system that must be for the kids and the coaches on that team.

Not so fast, my friend.

Later Thursday came the welcome news that, with no one on the team any longer showing red for the Plague, the Knights' sectional opener with Northfield tonight was back on again. And that is indeed the best of news.

And a rare, welcome W over the Plague, too.

No way (to go) out

We are officially a red state, here in Indiana. And, no, that is not the water-is-wet statement you think it is.

To be sure, we vote Republican the way we brush our teeth or wash behind our ears, reflexively, because that's just what you do in Indiana. We're as reliable as sunrise in the east and tornadoes in springtime in that regard.

That's not the red I'm talking about  here, however.

The red I'm talking about has to do with the Bastard Plague, which has made one hell of a comeback in the Hoosier state in case you haven't noticed. We're now a Covid-19 red state, which means Ohio and Illinois won't let any of us in without a mandatory quarantine. Cases and deaths are spiking like '90s hair again, while our governor insists everything's cool and we can keep the state wide open as long as we all cooperate and follow the rules.

And if a frog had wings, it wouldn't whump its ass every time he jumped, either. 

In any case, the hospitals are filling up with Plague cases again, and. predictably, so are our schools. Which bring us to a small 1A school down near Wabash.

That school is Southwood, and they've got a whale of a football season going. Or had.

The Knights are 9-0 and ranked third in the state in 1A, and they were looking forward to a deep run in the playoffs that begin tomorrow night. Their closest game was their season opener, a 29-26 squeaker over 3A Knox. Since then no one's come within 19 points of them.

And now no one will, because of the Bastard Plague.

Along with Peru, see, a Covid-19 outbreak has forced the Knights to end their season prematurely. They've had to forfeit their sectional opener, which means their season is over. Which of course is just a damn shame.

Closing out your season with a playoff loss is painful enough. There are few scenes that evoke more melancholy than a locker room the morning after a playoff loss, with everyone cleaning out their lockers and turning in their equipment. It's the end of fall and Friday nights thick with the smell of sweat and cooling earth and dew-slick grass, and the beginning of cold gray winter.

Now multiply that tenfold when it happens the way it's happened at Southwood and Peru.

One minute you're looking forward to the real meat of your autumn; the next, it's over before it even begins, leaving so much unresolved. And all the rest of us can hope for is that it doesn't end this way for anyone else.

Wear the damn mask, for God's sake. Stay away from crowded places. Let the frog grow those wings. 

Name games

 So the Indiana Pacers have hired former Toronto Raptors assistant Nate Bjorkgren to replace the deposed Nate McMillan as head coach, which of course inspires more silliness from the home office of silliness, aka the Blob.

In this episode, the Blob imagines how the hire went down among the Pacers' brain trust ...

Brain No. 1: "OK, so what about this guy? Thoughts?"

Brain No. 2: "Is his name Nate?"

Brain 1: "Yes."

All The Other Brains: "Sold!"

Doc

Mike Emrick bought my wife and I a drink once.

It was at the Indiana Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association annual banquet and Doc was being inducted into the ISSA Hall of Fame that night, and just the fact he was there said everything you needed to know about the man. It was April and the middle of the NHL playoffs and Doc was already in a million halls of fame, but he was also an Indiana boy. And so here he was. 

He might have been the voice of hockey and maybe the pre-eminent broadcaster in any sport anywhere, but he'd found that voice in Indiana. And he's never forgotten that, or us.

I say us because he grew up just down the pike in tiny LaFontaine, and the voice of his winters was also the voice our winters, those of us who grew up in northeast Indiana. Like us, winter nights for Doc always passed to the accompaniment of Bob Chase's machine-gun patter coming out of the radio, talking about Len Thornson or Reg Primeau or Robbie Laird raggin' the puck all the way into the zone as the Fort Wayne Komets did battle with the Dayton Gems or Muskegon Mohawks or Toledo Blades of the old International Hockey League.

Doc Emrick learned his craft at Bob Chase's knee, and he never forgot that debt. That's why he showed up in Fort Wayne to call a Komets game with Bob one night, and surprised  him with another visit on Bob's 90th birthday. And so you'll be utterly unsurprised at what he told Justin Cohn of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette yesterday, on the occasion his retirement as a broadcaster.

"I'm going to do an interview on NHL Network later today, he told Cohn. "And the two jerseys I have hanging behind me for that will be the smiling spaceman (logo) from the 1950s orange-and-black, which was the Komets jersey at the time I watched my first game in 1960, and the other will be the first team I worked for in professional hockey, which will be the Port Huron Flags from 1973." 

The man does cherish his roots -- right down to Manchester University in North Manchester, of which Doc is a proud member of the class of 1968.

As readily as he can talk the Komets and the Flags and Chase and the old I, he can talk Manchester, too. He can tell you how he started in broadcasting there, and how the values that were instilled in him at home and fortified by his time at Manchester are values he holds to this day.

When Emrick announced he was retiring yesterday, the tributes poured in, as well they should have. A lot of them saluted his legend as a broadcaster, but as many paid tribute to his decency and his unflagging love for the game and his place in it.

And that is exactly the way it should be.

Thanks for the drink, Doc. Here's to ya.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 6

And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the cruelly uninterruptible Blob feature of which critics have said "Please, someone interrupt this!", and also "Or mute it! Mute is good, too!":

1. "Eh, the Cowboys will be just fine with Andy Dalt--"

2. "The Browns don't Browns anymore! They're for real! Just watch what they do to the Stee--"

3. "The Bengals are gonna win! The Bengals are gonna win! Who De--"

4. "Cam Newton, doing Cam Newton things! Bill Belichick has worked his magic aga--"

5. "You know, the Bears might be the most mediocre 4-1 team I've ever se--"

6. "OK, the most mediocre 5-1 team."

7. "Philip Rivers looks like a 38-year-old Philip Rivers out there! Bring back Jacoby Brisse--"

8. "Whoa. Wait a minute."

9. "The Jets stink. The Giants stink. The Falcons sti--"

10. "Whoa. Wait a minute."

Titan-ic

 So it's Monday morning and the Blob would be remiss if it didn't acknowledge an impressive NFL feat, not to overstate it or anything. 

And, no, we're not talking about 57-year-old Tom Brady still doing Tom Brady things down in Tampa -- even against the Green Bay Packers and Aaron Rodgers, who played like he was 67-year-old Aaron Rodgers against the Buccaneers' defense.

We're talking about what happened in Nashville, Tenn., yesterday.

What happened was the Tennessee Titans jacked around and won another football game, this time a 42-36 win in overtime against the Houston Texans. This gave the Titans five wins on the season and zero losses, and no one can figure out how they're doing it except that no one can tackle Derrick Henry, who rumbled for 212 yards and two touchdowns yesterday.

That's not the impressive part, however.

The impressive part is it was the Titans' second victory in five days.

It was last Tuesday night they walloped Buffalo 42-16, when the Bills were also undefeated. Then they turned right around and won again without the sort of recovery time NFL teams are supposed to require.

And if you're saying here "But Mr. Blob, teams have won on Sunday and then turned around and won on Thursday night. So why is this so special?"

Well ... it's special because prior to last Tuesday night, the Titans hadn't played a football game in 16 days, thanks to an outbreak of the Bastard Plague. They hadn't even been practicing for part of that time. 

Now they've won two games in five days and, unlike teams that play on Thursday night, they won't get a week-and-a-half to recover. They're right back at it again at unbeaten Pittsburgh next Sunday at 1 p.m.

That's a lot of football to play in just 12 days. And it's a significant disruption of routine in a sport whose life's breath is routine.

Hats off to 'em.

Notlanta

 You gotta feel for the city of Atlanta. First Sherman puts it to the match (actually the retreating Confederates did most of the match-putting, but that's too deep a dive for today), then it becomes The City Where No Lead Is Safe.

No one anywhere is more proficient at losing from in front, and the mighty Braves hewed to tradition again last night. The Bravos blew a three-games-to-one lead over the Dodgers in the best-of-seven NLCS, and they did it by blowing not one but two leads in Game 7. That is some impressive snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory right there.

So the Dodgers are off to the World Series, where they'll take on the Tampa Bay Rays. It'll be a 2020 rubber match of sorts; the Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA title and the Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup, so this will be for civic dominance in American professional sports. We now eagerly await the Buccaneers-Chargers Super Bowl.

And poor old Notlanta?

Well, the Braves' collapse is the same old replay of the Falcons' collapse against the Patriots in the 2019 Super Bowl. I'm not sure the Braves can top whizzing away a 28-3 late third-quarter lead, but it was an impressive effort.

Although one that's probably going unappreciated in certain locales this morning

A Ray of hope, The Next Part

 In which the Tampa Bay Rays go up 3-0 in the ALCS (Yay!), then give everyone who despises the Cheatin' Astros heart failure by blowing the 3-0 lead (Oh my God! Stop it!), then finally -- finally -- win Game 7 4-2 (Super yay!)

So the Rays are on to the World Series and the local guy who plays centerfield for them (Kevin Kiermaier) is on to the World Series, and the Cheatstros go back where they belong, which is home.

And we get to dust off an old and not always true bromide.

Cheaters never prosper.

I mean, they do, obviously, sometimes. But sooner or later they get theirs. And could there be any crueler way for the Cheatstros to get theirs than to let them come all the way back from a 3-0 deficit in the best-of-seven, only to crush the life out of their season in Game 7?

Heh. 

Meanwhile, in Indianapolis ...

And here we go again:

The Indianapolis Colts have announced that several people in the organization have tested positive for the Bastard Plague.

They've therefore closed their practice facility.

This is happening two days before they're supposed to play the Bengals downtown in Lucas Oil Stadium, in the middle of a current surge in Plague cases (and a blithe "we're still open as hell, just wear a mask" response from Indiana governor Eric Holcomb) that has led both Ohio and Illinois to restrict travel from Indiana.

Which has led the Blob to imagine this exchange among our neighboring states:

Illinois: "Don't make us build a wall, Indiana."

Ohio: "What Illinois said."

Michigan: "Not sure we want you up here, either."

Kentucky: "Hell, come on down here! We're like you! We don't give a crap if you get sick, either!"

Indiana: "But ... you're Kentucky."

Kentucky: "So?"

Indiana: "So, thanks but no thanks -- and as for Ohio, Illinois and Michigan, fine! We didn't want to visit your crummy states anyway! We'll go to Canada instead!"

Canada: "Yeah, don't think so, hosers."

Indiana: "It's HOOSIERS, dammit! Hoosiers!"

UPDATE: OK, so the Colts are NOT diseased after all.

Followup testing revealed the four members of the organization showing red were false positives, and so everything is cool and today's game is on again. Why the Colts jumped the gun on their announcement before a followup test was run remains a very good question, however.

But Ohio and Michigan still aren't gonna let us roam around their states without a leash. Which is probably still smart.

Inevitable comeback

And now Nick Saban -- Nick Saban, charter member of the Control Freak Club -- has tested positive for the Bastard Plague.

And Alabama's athletic director has, too.

And Saban and his old adversary Les Miles, now the football coach at Kansas, are in isolation.

And LSU-Florida has been scrubbed this weekend because half the Gators, or so it seems, have shown red.

And everything everyone who knows what they're talking about warned would happen if the Let Them Play crowd got their way is indeed happening.

Which is that once we hit October, the start of sick season in America, the Plague would surge again. And that would be especially true on college campuses -- where you can put your football team in a bubble to keep the revenue stream burbling along, but, well, it's still a college campus and college kids will be college kids.

I guess that must be true, because if the Plague can even get to Nick Saban deep in the sanctum sanctorum that is Alabama Football Inc., it can get to anyone. Or everyone, as seems to be the case in Florida, where Ron "DeSanitizer" DeSantis, the state's idiot governor, recently declared it was perfectly safe to fill those football stadiums to the brim again.

Well. I guess that's a very loud "ahem" we're hearing now from Gainesville, isn't it?

And, sure, you can reschedule and move games and adjust on the fly, but there are only a finite number of weeks in which to do that. And what happens when you run out of them?

Beats me. But I'm looking at the Plague staging its inevitable comeback, and public officials in deep denial cavalierly flinging open the doors to public spaces anyway ("Ah, hell, it'll be fine"), and I'm back to wondering how college football is going to pull this off without completely unraveling. 

Maybe they still can. I hope so, because the games have been spectacular so far.

But if the Plague can get to Nick Saban ...

Tongue tried

Sometimes your brain just gets itself a big ol' charlie horse. It happens.

So maybe it was just a cramp in the cerebral cortex that made Zach Greinke of the Cheatin' Astros say what he did the other day, which is not something any athlete wants to say when he wants to fly under the radar of public disdain. 

What he said was, he kinda likes playing in empty ballparks. Doesn't miss the fans at all. 'Cause, you know, who needs 'em?

"I mean, for me it's nice not having fans in the stands," he said, his tongue clearly getting away from him. "Because then there's no one there to talk to you and ask for autographs and want pictures and all that stuff. I don't like to do that stuff. It's nice not having them."

I don't know if any of his teammates were standing nearby when he said this. But no one came leaping in to slap a hand over his mouth, so I guess not.

Meanwhile, somewhere baseball commissioner Rob Manfred either spit out his coffee or knocked over the cup as he flew out of his chair screaming "WHAT THE HELL, GREINKE?!"

God knows baseball has enough headaches without a key player in one of its league championship series saying he could do without the fans. And God also knows the Cheatin' Astros were loathed enough already without it being one their key players who said that.

Although hardly anyone roots for the Cheatstros anymore anyway, so maybe Greinke was just trying to put a smiley face on his team's current reality.

Look. Every sport needs its fans, but maybe baseball most of all, because its fan demographic right now hovers somewhere between Rest Home and Tombstone. Shouting-at-clouds geezers like me may still go to the games because we cling to romantic and imperfect memory, but the kids coming up today don't even have that. 

Baseball to them is just three-and-a-half hours of boring -- and, besides, the World Series comes on too late for them to watch even if if they wanted to. So it's an uphill fight for baseball to sustain itself as America's Once-Upon-A-Pastime, and Greinke saying who needs the fans hardly makes the grade any less steep.

Fact is, baseball, as with any sport, became what it is because of the fans. They showed up, they liked what they saw, and they became obsessed with it to an unhealthy degree.

And then?

Well. And then they invented fantasy, of course.  

Maybe Greinke does prefer cardboard cutouts and piped-in sound to the real thing. But the rest of us just think it's weird and kind of sad, if not deeply so. No cardboard cutout kid is ever going to hit that bomb some Tampa Bay Ray just hit off the Zachster, after all. Or one of Jose Altuve's wild relay throws, for that matter.

And that's a shame. That's a hit baseball dearly cannot absorb, but has been compelled to like everyone else in this crazy 2020 reality. 

It already had a yeoman's task, making today's stratospherically wealthy players accessible and relevant to the average wage-slave fan. Having one of its stars go on television and say he likes being even less accessible only makes that task harder.

So what exactly WAS Zach Greinke thinking?

Actual working and inquiring minds want to know.

Children of the corn

It is just possible I am wrong about all this. I know, I can't my head around that, either.

But all along I've been saying 2020 must have been the last one picked for sandlot games when it was a yearling, and that's why it hates baseball so much. Because what else explains it taking Al Kaline and Tom Seaver and Lou Brock and Bob Gibson and Whitey Ford?

And now Joe Morgan?

Joe Morgan, for cryin' out loud! Wasn't he just standing at the dish yesterday, pumping that back elbow up and down like a kid making fart noises with his armpit?

Now I'm thinking that's not it at all.

Now I'm thinking there's a cornfield in Iowa that's run out of ghosts, and 2020 is just replenishing it.

It was fine and dandy when Shoeless Joe walked out of the corn and Smokey Joe Wood and a bunch of others, but now it's time for some new guys. And so tonight when the sun goes down and the ground mist rises up between the stalks, out will walk the newly minted River City Spectrals, Al and Tom and Lou and Gibby and Whitey and Joe.

That's the beginnings of a pretty fair pitching staff the Spectrals have going. And they're good in the outfield with Kaline and scary on the basepaths with Lou. And who else to anchor the batting order but Joe, the mighty little engine of the Big Red Machine?

Of course, Gibby will demand to pitch every game. But they'll work that out.

And so come on out of the corn, you lovely haunts.

Yeah, it's just Iowa. But you'll get used to it.

A few brief words on NFL Week 5

And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the memorable Blob feature of which critics have said "Wait, what was I saying again?" and also "Oh, crap, I forgot":

1. "Tom Brady didn't forget the count. He was just signaling he was going to need a table for four after the game." (Random Tampa Bay Bucs fan who used to hate Tom Brady but loves the guy now).

2. "Fourth down, right, ref? Fourth down." (Tom Brady trying to slick a fifth down out of the zebras, because he's Tom Brady and that's just the sort of thing he does).

3. "Yahoo! We got Philip Rivers!" (Colts fan then).

4. "Wait, what? Nobody told us he was 38 years old and liked to throw interceptions at crucial times!" (Colts fan now).

5. "We coulda had Tom Brady!" (Also Colts fan now).

6. "What was wrong with Jacoby Brissett, again?" (Also Colts fan now).

7. It's Tuesday morning and the Browns are still 4-1 for the first time since Paul Brown was a tiny babe in a manger.

8. To hear some Clevelanders talk.

9. It's Tuesday morning and that means Russell Wilson isn't going to throw any touchdown passes to-

10. Stop it, Russell!

The right stuff

Maybe it would have to take life in a bubble to make something about an upside-down year come out right-side up.

And so to Orlando last night and the NBA bubble, which worked far better than any nattering nabobs of negativism (aka, "me") predicted it would. Confetti fell from an empty sky in an empty arena, and beneath it the Los Angeles Lakers celebrated a 17th NBA title at about the time the NBA season would be starting up in a normal year.

And that was a right-side up deal for a number of reasons.

One, it was beyond fitting that the Lakers would return to championship form the year Kobe Bryant died, and to whom the Lakers dedicated their season -- wearing the Kobe-designed Black Mamba unis, breaking every huddle with "1-2-3-MAMBA!"

Two, Frank Vogel got a ring, and Frank Vogel is a superior human. Why the Pacers let him go remains an unsolved mystery, but now he's got a ring and they don't, and here is proof that nice guys do finish first, occasionally, when the sun and moon and stars are properly aligned.

Three, LeBron James now has four rings of his own, and a legacy that continues to build. Michael Jordan may be the GOAT, but LeBron continues to advance his case to the contrary.

Plus, Game 6 was a blowout, which meant LeBron did not have to endure more criticism from meatheads for passing up a last shot.

In Game 5 he did that, correctly passing out of a double team to the open man, which is  Basketball 101 to anyone who remotely understands the game. In this case, the open man was Danny Green, a 40 percent 3-point shooter, and he was utterly alone at the top of the arc. Alas, the shot didn't go down.

And so the usual "the superstar's gotta take the last shot," and "LeBron's gotta put it on him," and it's as if no one's watched the man play the game for the last 17 years, how he's a distributor as much as a scorer. Or they've forgotten that MJ passed on last shots himself back in the day.

Of course, Steve Kerr and John Paxson splashed their open looks. So all was forgiven.

In any event, it all ended with LeBron hugging the trophy again. And somehow that was right, too.

One Saturday in the fall, Part Deux

 That young woman down in Dallas, she caught the spirit of the thing. Flashed the Hook 'Em Horns sign on national TV, minus one of the Horns. Also with the wrong finger.

Yes, sir. What else would any respecting Texas fan do at the end of Oklahoma 53, Texas 45, but flip off the great all-seeing television Eye?

Her sentiments were no doubt a lot of sentiments, after Sam Ehlinger led Texas back from the pit and kept doing hero things like the ghost of James Street or Vince Young or some other Longhorn of yore, only to see those damn Okies win it in the end. What Ehlinger did (four touchdowns with his legs, two with his arm) the kid with that marvelous name (Spencer Rattler) kept matching for Oklahoma. And after four overtimes and a blocked field goal and a missed gimme field goal from a guy who never misses, it was finally over.

Almost five hours after it began, and more than an hour after Ehlinger ran and threw and hero-ed the Longhorns to two touchdowns in the last four minutes of regulation, his last pass settled softly into the arms of an Oklahoma defensive back.  And we had the final word on why Saturday football is so much better than Sunday football.

And if you were any kind of football fan at all, you wanted to flip off the camera, too. Because no one deserved to lose this one, not Ehlinger or Rattler or even the Oklahoma defense, which ultimately was the one thing Texas couldn't match.

The irony in that was as delicious as the game itself, because defense is supposed to be a mere hobby in the Big 12, and there were almost 100 points put up in this one. But if that's a knock on the Big 12, what were we to make of what the mighty rock-ribbed SEC gave us yesterday?

For starters, it gave us Alabama 63, Ole Miss 48.

Also a couple of upsets, Texas A&M 41-38 over No. 4 Florida and Missouri 44-41 over No. 17 LSU.

Also Georgia 44, Tennessee 21.

That's four SEC games, and not a defensive stop in sight. So maybe it's time to admit this is just what college football is now, and enjoy it for what it is.

Either that, or dial up Bo and Woody slogging through one of their 10-7 thrillers from back in the 1970s, speaking of rivalries.

Sorry, boys. I'll take yesterday in Dallas every time.

The maybe season

 Perhaps it's time now to just throw up our hands and hang a title on this puppy. If we can actually define what the puppy is, of course.

The Blob's suggested title: "Subject To Change."

Subtitle, "Everything That's Happening For the Forseeable Future, If In Fact The Future Is At All Forseeable Anymore."

Seems to me this would cram the landscape of Sportsball World into a neat one-size-fits-all box, and neatness is something to be craved in these shirttail-out days. It would cover the high school football games being postponed or canceled or hastily scheduled at the last second because of various Bastard Plague outbreaks. It would cover the spiraling mess upon whose edge the NFL is teetering right now. And it would cover all the other various headaches various other schedule-makers are up against.

Let's take the ECHL, for instance.

Right now the plan, if it can be called that, is for 13 teams to begin play Dec. 14. Another 12, including our very own Fort Wayne Komets, are looking at a Jan. 15 start. This means, theoretically, half the league will play a 72-game schedule, and the other half will play a 62-game schedule.

The regular season, theoretically again, would end on June 6.

June 6. 

Which means we're faced with the utterly insane possibility that we could all be going to a Komets playoff game on the Fourth of July.

I suppose that's no more bizarre than watching the Tampa Bay Lightning hoisting the Stanley Cup on  Sept. 28 -- or half the ECHL playing 10 more games than the other half, for that matter. But it seems so, especially when you say it out loud and all.

The worst part of this, of course, is it might not happen this way at all. Everything is contingent on the Plague and the edicts of the various health departments. Those vary from one community to another, which accounts for the weird two-seasons-in-one scenario.

This means the Komets might begin play on Jan. 15, or they might not. Ditto all the other teams in the league. So the current schedule, on top of everything else, is completely tentative at this point. 

And if you think that makes you grab your aching head and beg it to stop, imagine if you're, say, Michael or David Franke. I bet they're having a lovely time right now.

Man. Has normal ever looked so un-boring?

A Ray of hope, Part Deux

 Look, the Blob has feelings, too. And so I'll right off acknowledge that it was already a sad day for the Pinstriped Horde yesterday, what with Whitey Ford passing away and all.

I'll even send condolences, because Whitey Ford dying is 2020 taking another chunk out of baseball lore, and after Al Kaline and Tom Seaver and Lou Brock and Bob Gibson it's already taken its quota. Whassamatta, 2020, nobody picked you for sandlot games back when you were a kid? That why you hate baseball so much?

But I digress.

What I really want to talk about is what happened to the Pinstriped Horde later in the day.

The Tampa Bay Rays knocked 'em out of the postseason, is what happened./

And so, yes, that made a lousy day worse for the New York Yankees, but, no, I'm not sorry. In fact I'd like to thank Mike Brosseau for that home run he hit and the four Rays pitchers who teamed up on a three-hitter and mostly for the 2-1 Rays win that sent the Yankees home and the Rays on to the ALCS.

I'll thank them because now there won't be a choice between waterboarding and the rack for those of us who can't stand the Yankees but absolutely loathe the cheatin' Houston Astros. Now it'll be the Rays vs. the Cheatin's, and that means there will be a clearly defined good guy and a clearly defined bad guy.

So hooray for the Rays. Now go beat those people.

Hockey, re-imagined

I don't know why the Ontario minister of sport (Is that a throwback Soviet-ish turn of phrase, or what?) didn't just say "Screw it, we're not playin' hockey this year." The guffawing and knee slapping would have been much less general.

Maybe you missed it, probably you did, but the minister of sport announced the other day that the Ontario Hockey League, which you probably never think about more than once a forever, will not allow physical contact this year. Either that, or there won't be a 2020-21 season, on account of the Bastard Plague.

Now, the Blob is all for sensible pandemic protocols, especially with so many idiots out there (*cough* Republicans *cough*) deciding that taking on the Plague in hand-to-hand combat is some sort of half-assed macho deal. But hockey without contact ain't hockey. It's the Ice Capades.

It's people dressed as characters from "Frozen" waltzing around out there, only with sticks. It's Alex Ovechkin in sequins. It's the high-powered Chorus Line, which features Toe Pick skating left wing, Triple Axel at center and Sit Spin at right wing.

You can't take physical contact out of hockey. It's impossible. For one thing, what would all those team dentists do?

Leavin' a guy spittin' bloody Chiclets after a well-executed cross-check to the face is as much a part of hockey as turning the sound off on Our Only Available Impeached Diseased President is a part of American politics in 2020. It's simply nature taking its course. If mashing a guy into the glass with a solid check isn't an integral part of the game, why does it make such an awesome sound? And if you can't knock a guy off the puck in your own end, how long until your goalie throws his stick down in frustration and lumbers off the ice?

GOALIE: That's it, man. I'm done.

COACH: But there's still 17 minutes to play!

GOALIE: I don't care. These guys can just waltz through our D-men like Olympic figure skaters performing their long programs. I'm tired o' gettin' scored on by Brian Boitano.

COACH: But we've still got a chance! We're only down 15-13!

Yeesh. I can't even.

And what happens if a game ends in a tie? 

I'll tell you what happens.

Compulsory figures.

All about the buzz

And now another brief detour from Sportsball World, because a fly landed on Mike Pence's head while he was mansplaining Kamala Harris last night, and that's the kind of material the Blob simply can't pass up.

And so ...

Overheard down at the corner dungheap:

"So then, I landed on his head."

"Dude! The Vice-President?"

"Yup."

"What'd he do?"

"Nothin'. Just kept droning on about Trump this and Trump that and Trump took Covid out to the alley and beat it up with his tiny fists, and then pole-vaulted over the moon. The usual stuff."

"Wow. So how long did you stay up there?"

"Oh, I don't know. Good two minutes anyway. Even left something in his hair when I flew off."

"You mean ..."

"Yup. Teeny tiny little 'Biden-Harris' sticker."

"DUDE!!"

A Ray of hope

Time now to thank that baseball team from Tampa, the four guys who hit home runs and the four other guys who struck out 18 New York Yankees and, what the heck, the guy named Kevin Kiermaier, who is the Tampa Bay Rays' peerless centerfielder and also a Fort Wayne boy from Bishop Luers High School.

They all beat back the Yankee horde last night, 7-5. Which evened their ALDS at a game apiece and gave some of us hope that we will not be faced with the unimaginable in the next round of the playoffs.

Which would be the Yankees, bastion of pinstriped privilege, playing the Houston Astros, bastion of cheating and gloating about it, in the ALCS.

I suppose the A's could still rally against the 'Stros, but they're down two-games-to-none now and it's not looking good. So realistically it's the Rays saving the day or no one.

If it's the latter, it would be a nightmare for those of us who value honor and rightness in our baseball, because it would compel us to choose between a team we despise and a team we loathe. It would be like asking us if we'd rather be drawn and quartered or disemboweled. It would be like locking us in a room and asking if we'd rather listen to A) "Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro, or B) "The Night Chicago Died" by Paper Lace.

Either way you're gonna hang yourself with your shoelaces before the record ends.

See, the problem with Yankees vs. Astros, at least for decent people, is it's either an impossible choice or an unthinkable one. The former involves not being able to choose who to root for. The latter is having to root for the Yankees, because, really, there's absolutely no way you'd want to see the Astros in the World Series again.

This is because, yes, they're a bunch of cheating nogoodniks who vandalized the game on their way to a couple of World Series titles, but also because they got away with it. Oh, sure, they got fined some couch-cushion change and stripped of their first-round draft picks in 2020 and 2021, but that's like telling a misbehaving child he's only getting dessert tonight.

No supper for you, young man! And we were having liver and onions!

That sort of thing.

This means an Astros-Yankees ALCS would put the Yankees on the side of the angels, and that simply cannot be. As a fan of a team owned by skinflints who sew their wallets shut with barbed wire, there is nothing I hate more than a team that struts around with large denominations falling out of their pockets. 

I can't even feel good about them money-whipping Gerrit Cole away from the Astros, because the Astros money-whipped him away from my cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates.

There again the Yankees come away looking like the good guys.

Just typing that makes me want to amputate my fingers.

Please, Rays. Do the Lord's work here.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 4

And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the remorselessly viral Blob feature of which critics have said "Dang! It's so remorseless! And viral!", and "It doesn't even care if you're the President! Or a Republican!":

1. It's Tuesday morning and there is still no vaccine for Russell Wilson.

2. Or Patrick Mahomes.

3. Or Aaron Rodgers.

4. Or even that old guy in Tampa.

5. "Wait, the Browns almost dropped fi'ty on 'em? In Jerry's House?" (All the gurus who were talking up the Dallas Cowboys)

6. "Musta been talkin' about some OTHER Dallas Cowboys." (Everyone who remembers all the gurus who were talking up the Cowboys)

7. "Hey, look! We're up two touchdowns on the Saints!" (Lions fans, early on Sunday)

8. "!#%&!!" (Lions fans, later on Sunday)

9. Meanwhile, the Titans are still undefeated!

10. (The 'Rona) (Pointedly clearing throat)

Political football

I am sorry, Most Of America. I am sorry you've gotta hear this from me.

But the results are in, and Our Only Available Impeached Diseased Off His Rocker President has won the 2020 presidential election. Four more years of asshattery, outbreaks of viral crazy and soiling the highest office in the land for us, it looks like.

What's that you say?

Yes, I know the election isn't until Nov. 3. And I know what the polls say. But I also know what happened in Soldier Field yesterday.

What happened was, Nick Foles turned out to be just another Bears Quarterback, like Bob Avellini or Peter Tom Willis. And the Colts defense turned out to be, well, the Colts defense. Which means it stole the Monsters of the Midway tag right out from under the Bears copyright and paraded around with it while all of Chicagoland flapped its hand at its TVs in disgust and said "Ah, hell, I knew we weren't no real 3-0 team.". 

The final score was Colts 19, Bears 11. And if you're wondering what that has to do with the upcoming election, here it is: For the last 16 years, the Colts and Bears have played in every presidential election year. And every year the Colts have won, the Republican has won.

In 2004 and 2016, the Colts won, and George W. Bush and the Sick Guy won the White House. In 2008 and 2012, the Bears won, and Barack Obama won the White House for the Democrats.

So, Colts win, elephants win. Bears win, donkeys win. Sorry, Most Of America.

But go out and vote anyway.

It's 2020, after all. Weird stuff happens.

Uh-oh

 Not yet, you silly goose. I'll tell you when it's time, and "almost time" is not the same thing as "time."

But it's a wet chill first Sunday in October, and Cam Newton is in quarantine.

That means the New England Patriots are in quarantine -- not even Bill Belichick could glare the 'Rona into submission! -- and that means their scheduled game with Kansas City on Thursday was postponed, and that's the second NFL game this week that's been postponed. The germ-ridden Titans' game against the Steelers has been pushed to Week 7, and in D.C. the President and half his Republican buddies are sick because they thought it would be macho to stick their heads in the lion's mouth, and, well, you gotta wonder if this is the start of a new offensive from the bleepity-bleep Bastard Plague.

I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not.

So, no, it's not yet time to fire up the Music of Foreboding, because if this is "Jaws" the shark hasn't eaten the Kintner boy yet. But it is perusing the menu.

I hope the NFL has a handle on this. I hope the new protocols it rolled out in the wake of the Titans' outbreak -- the Shield gets points for the swiftness of its response -- are effective. Because if they're not, the season is going to come apart like a wet tissue.

That's because the schedule is a stern taskmaster and there just isn't much wiggle room in it if more teams turn up infected and more games have to be postponed. The Super Bowl might not happen until March, in that case, and Nathan Peterman and Babe Laufenberg could be the starting quarterbacks. Or they could just say to hell with it and let some teams play 16 games and some play 15 and some play 14.

Although if the Super Bowl does wind up getting pushed to March, it would mean the NFL would achieve what some people said it should have done to begin with.

Spring football, anyone?

The mystic chords of Cubness

Look, I know the Curse is dead and rotting. They barbecued the billy goat and ate him. Harry floated down from his cloud and anointed the Friendly Confines with Budweiser. And they blew up the Bartman Ball.

But the Cubs are the Cubs are the Cubs, and winning the World Series in 2016 cannot break certain mystic chords of  Cubness.  If it's the playoffs, they're still gonna lose to the Marlins.

Which they did, scraping out just five hits yesterday in a 2-0 loss in Wrigley that gave the Marlins a sweep in the best-of-three NL wild-card series. In two games in the Empty Confines, the Bearcubs managed just one run on nine hits. They even sent their best pitcher, Yu Darvish, out there yesterday, and couldn't plate a tally for him.

It all unavoidably took you back to 2003, speaking of mystic chords. That was the year of Bartman and the Cubs losing two straight to the Fish in Wrigley, with their two best arms on the hill. Seventeen years later the sour mojo of that October struck again, as if it had permeated Wrigley's ancient girders and was simply waiting to seep out again.

This of course is nonsense to the rational mind. This time it was the Marlins who had the arms and the Cubs who didn't, nor the bats, either. And even if the Cubs won the NL Central and the Fish barely cleared .500 to snag a wild-card spot, there wasn't much to choose between them. The Marlins finished 31-29; the Cubs were just three Ws better at 34-26.

So maybe it wasn't sour mojo after all, but simple baseball canon: In a short series, pitching almost always beats hitting. Especially if the hitting is as off-and-on as the Cubs' has been this mini-season.

And yet ...

And yet, because it's the Cubs, it's hard not to believe the ghost of an unraveling Mark Prior was somewhere close in that mausoleum of a ballpark. And that somewhere a spectral Alex Gonzalez kept booting that double-play ball over and over again. And that, in the outfield, there was a whiff of old anger as Bartman reached and Moises Alou went ballistic.

What's that you say?

Well, yes, of course that's silly.

Maybe.

Fathers. Sons. Gibby.

 And now Bob Gibson, and again I am thinking of my father.

This is the DNA strand we are all supposed to have -- fathers and sons and baseball -- but it was different with my dad, because he was pretty much indifferent to baseball and had only a nodding acquaintance with sports in general. But he knew his son was a sports nerd, and so one day in the fall of 1968 he penned a note in his small precise hand that observed the Tigers were down 3-1 in the World Series, and they were "really going to have to hustle to pull this one out of the fire."

His note also said he was doing fine, considering he was in the hospital and all.

He was in the hospital for back surgery, and he was indeed fine. In a few days he was home. And yet, weirdly, because my mind courses through those channels, it's his line about the World Series I remember most clearly from the whole business.

Bob Gibson becoming the latest heirloom this thieving year has stolen from us brought it back again. Because he died 52 years to the day that he struck out 17 Tigers in Game 1 of the '68 Series, and struck out 10 more to beat them again in Game 4 -- when the Cardinals, yes, went up 3-1 in the Series.

So I read that Gibby has passed, and I think of my dad, and I should be grateful for that. But loss is still loss. And now this crud of a year has taken Gibby and Lou Brock and Al Kaline and Tom Seaver, and, really, 2020, what did baseball ever do to you?

Maybe you've got a mad-on for it because your dad never sent you a note from his hospital bed, saying the Tigers were down a deep well and they were gonna have to do some serious climbing to get out of it, and darned if they didn't do it.

Yeah. I'm guessing that's it.

Bowing to history

Permit the Blob an assumption, to begin with: You probably don't think about lacrosse more than once or twice a day.

Or, you know, a lifetime.

This is because lax, as its devotees call it, has never been blessed with a Japanese-fleet-on-December-7-sized blip on the Sportsball radar, as fine a sport as it is. All we know about it is the Native Americans invented it, and Jim Brown was really good at it, and, geez, do the goalies ever actually make a save, or what?

They do. You might have to watch for a decade or so, but it happens.

Anyway ... the Blob is going to talk lax today, because the Blob is all about empathy, and it feels your pain in these days of lunacy and prospering cheaters, speaking of Our Only Available Impeached President and the Houston Astros.

Who swept the poor Twins in the wild-card playoffs this week, dammit. And then rubbed our noses in it by reveling in our disdain for their cheating hindparts.

But there is still honor in Sportsball. Just ask the Iroquois Nationals.

Who were denied entry into the 2022 World Games in Birmingham, Ala., on account of the organizers didn't deem the Iroquois an actual nation. This despite the fact the Nationals are ranked No. 3 in the world, and they represent the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, who actually invented what their ancestors called "the medicine game."

Well. This wouldn't stand with at least one entrant.

And so all hail to Ireland, who earlier this month chose to bow out of the eight-team tournament to make room for the Nationals, whom the organizers belatedly recognized as legitimate but only after the tournament field was filled.

"None of us would be going to Birmingham, Ala., in the first place if it weren't for the Iroquois and giving us the gift of their medicine game," Irish player Sonny Campbell told NPR's Morning Edition. 

Indeed. And so here's to those who honor history and propriety and the nobility of doing the right thing.

Refreshing, ain't it?

Covid autumn

 So now comes the news that the President of the United States says he's tested positive for the Bastard Plague, which means the next presidential debate is off, which is good news for America and also probably for the President, whose portrayal of a schoolyard bully the other night was both disgusting and no stretch at all.

(And what's it say about Our Only Available Impeached President that a lot of people immediately suspected he was lying again? And that this is merely another Distract-O-Con to change the narrative from Tuesday's poo-show? And that this seems not a ridiculously QAnon-ish deduction but entirely logical, given OOAIP's chronic aversion to the truth?)

Anyway ... the 'Rona has allegedly invaded the White House, which means the British Army now has to share the top spot in the Breaking And Entering The People's House polls. It's been a nice run for the Limeys since 1814, but now they gotta move over. Sorry, old chap.

Sorry, too, that the Plague isn't going away the way OOAIP and our own Guv seemed to think it would, or has gone away, or ... something. Because in this same week it supposedly infiltrated OOAIP's Cone of Denial, it also penetrated the Shield.

Which is to say, the Steelers and Titans will not be playing football Sunday. 

This is because there's been an outbreak of the Plague down there in Tennessee, and it temporarily shut down football activities for both the Titans and the Vikings, who played the germ-infested Titans last Sunday. The Vikings all tested clean, so they'll play this week, but the Titans-Steelers game has been moved to Week 7 after two more Titans tested positive this week.

In the meantime, the T's facilities are closed and their season is on hold. And it's OK to wonder if this isn't the beginning of a greater unraveling in the NFL season.

It may not be. The NFL's response so far has been suitably aggressive; the league quickly rolled out a new set of enhanced protocols in response to the Titans outbreak. But it's hardly a Chicken Little deal to foresee other outbreaks happening as the season plunges deeper into fall, and to wonder when postponements and/or outright cancellations reach a critical mass.

In the meantime, we'll keep an eye on the germy White House, and pray the President escapes the full wrath of the Bastard Plague, because no one deserves the full wrath of this vile contagion. 

If in fact the White House actually is germy.

Sorry, Mr. President. But you bought that one fair and square.

The road, finally taken

I feel vindicated this morning.

 It doesn't happen often. I might even still be asleep and it's just a dream. If it is, don't wake me up.

See, seven or eight or 10 years ago, I started writing that they ought to move the Brickyard 400 to the infield road course at Indy, because on the oval it was like watching paint dry on the Tournament of Roses parade if the Tournament of Roses parade had floats sponsored by Napa Auto Parts and Bass Pro Shops. Just a string of blaring loudness endlessly circling those historic 2.5 miles while the mid-summer sun baked everyone like a cherry pie. That was the Brickyard.

And not even the Petaluma High School marching band from Petaluma, Calif., to break up the monotony.

Well. Yesterday I opened up a story about NASCAR's 2021 Cup schedule, and ...

And there it was.

They're finally, finally moving the Brickyard 400 to the road course.

I have to say it's high time, and even if I know I had absolutely nothing to do with it, a man can be as delusional as he likes in 2020 America. A man can think somewhere in the sanctum sanctorum of NASCAR's corporate offices, some exec named Cooter or Delbert III said, "Ya know, we oughta do what this Ben Smith feller says. Seems like he's got his head screwed on straight on this Brickyard deal."

OK, so that didn't happen.

More than likely it was the official storyline, which is that NASCAR took a look at its schedule decided it could use some revving up. So they ditched two cookie-cutter ovals (Kentucky and Chicagoland) and moved the Brickyard to the infield course and added a couple other road-course races. They're even going to dump a pile of dirt on Bristol and stage the first dirt-track Cup race since 1970.

(Which is not what they ought to be doing, mind you. The perfect venue for a dirt-track Cup race is an actual dirt track, and the finest one around is Eldora, which just happens to be owned by NASCAR legend/team owner Tony Stewart. Of course, this makes so much sense it's probably why they didn't do it.)

In any event, the Brickyard is now a road race. And I suspect some of what informed that decision was the Xfinity race on July 4 weekend, which was also run on the infield course. That it just happened to be the most exciting race of the entire weekend -- and the best show NASCAR has ever put on at Indy -- no doubt opened a few eyes.

And now I feel vindicated.

"Well, look at you, Mr. Big Shot, strutting around," you're saying now.

Please. Don't spoil the moment.