Extreme Cubness, Part Deux

 And now with the one-liners, because, come on, they're just sittin' there: 

 So what's next? The Cubs dig up Harry and send him back to the White Sox for a dead guy to be named later?

The Cubs tried to trade their mascot, Clark the Bear, to the Bears, but the deal fell through when the Bears insisted he put on pants.

Cubs: "OK, who wants the scoreboard?"

"Love what you're doing!" -- Bob Nutting, owner, Pittsburgh Cruds.

"Woo-hoo! Now's our chance to get out of last place!" -- The Cruds.

"Hahahaha, just kidding." -- Also the Cruds.

Although now that Jed Hoyer has stripped the Cubs for parts ...

Goodness. What a couple of days on the north side.

Rizzo, gone. Bryant, gone. Baez, gone. Kimbrel, gone.

Season, surrendered.

Not, of course, that the Cubs were going anywhere this summer anyway. Thursday and Friday were, after all, merely the second stage of a fire sale that's been going on all through the current trade season; during it the Cubs have offloaded a total of nine players, including the aforementioned and also relievers Andrew Chafin and Ryan Tepera and starting pitcher Trevor Williams.

I guess if you're gonna do a rebuild, you do a rebuild.

But if it was time, five years after winning the World Series, shedding all your marquee names from 2016 is still a grim business. There is no joy in Wrigleyville today, because what's essentially been over for a couple of years now -- the glory days -- are now officially over. A page everyone was understandably reluctant to turn has been turned.

And now?

Hard to say.  As long as my Cruds are around, the Cubs, even if they go back to being the Cubs, are never going to finish last. So at least there's that.

As for the rest ...

Well. You'd like to think, if you're a Cubs fan, there won't be another 108-year dry spell. But, you know, it's the Cubs, so who knows.

In the meantime, an FYI about your "W" flag:

The Cubs just traded it.

Extreme Cubness

 What they call Silly Season in NASCAR arrived this week in Major League Baseball, and the simoleons are flyin' like confetti. 

The Dodgers are about to send money and a pile of prospects to Washington for Max Scherzer and Trea Turner. The Red Sox just raided the Nationals for Kyle Schwarber. And the Cubs ...

Ah, geez. The Cubs.

Let me say this s-l-o-w-l-y, ya bunch of peawits: You ... do not ... trade ... Anthony Rizzo ... to the Yankees.

The Yankees, for God's sake!

The hell are you thinkin'?

And, yes, OK, so it was inevitable Rizzo and the northside were eventually going to part company. But the Yankees? The Yankees are the antithesis of everything Cubs.

 The Cubs are a sun-scrubbed afternoon in wonderful, decrepit old Wrigley, pounding Old Styles and watching the ivy grow. They break your heart and make you smile at the same time. They're Ryne Sandberg and Ernie Banks and Kerry Woods' 20 Ks, and that stupid idiot Bartman, blameless though he may be. 

The Yankees?

The Yankees are some jamoke stealing a baseball from a kid and throwing it at the Red Sox player who gave it to the kid.

The Yankees are a corporate monolith, as gray and soulless as their pinstripes.

The Yankees are the annoyingly perfect Derek Jeter and the annoyingly perfect Mariano Rivera and Alex Rodriguez, who is not perfect but still annoying.

Anthony Rizzo, on the other hand, is the soul of all Cubness. So you send him to the Yankees, baseball's version of TPS reports?

Sure, the Cubs got some juicy prospects in return, but, come on, send him anywhere but there. Send him to Cleveland or San Diego or Tampa, or maybe the Mets. Send him to Philly, where he can commune with the Phanatic. Send him to Boston, even, aka the New Yankees.

Or, hey: What about Pittsburgh? Sure, send him to my Cruds.

On second thought, no. That would be cruel.

Seismic events, and their accomplices

And, no, we're not talking about the 8.2 quake that shook things up off the Alaskan coast yesterday.

We're talking about the latest churning of the Earth's crust in college football -- and make no mistake, it's ALL about football. The Blob played it for laughs the other day, suggesting the SEC was Godzilla and every other major conference would soon be Tokyo, stomped flatter than a manhole cover. But as ever in America these days, satire and reality share increasingly uncomfortable resemblance.

I say this because with Texas and Oklahoma forsaking the Big 12 for the SEC, the latest seismic event has begun. There's speculation the chain reaction might swallow up Kansas and Iowa State, whom the Big Ten  might conceivably covet. West Virginia, which should have gone to the ACC anyway in the last big shakeup, might soon be banging on that door. And everyone else?

Cutting whatever deals with whatever conference they can in a dwindling landscape. And adios, Big 12.

Unless of course it raids the Mountain West, coaxes Nebraska back into the fold, dooms some other conference further down the food chain.

Here's what's different this time around: Apparently ESPN has been actively involved in this process.

Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby claimed as much when he sent a cease-and-desist letter to the network this week, accusing it of actively trying to lure other Big 12 schools away from the fold. If Bowlsby's right, ESPN is way, way out of line here. As an alleged media entity, it's supposed to report the news, not be an active agent in it.

Of course, that is old-man-shaking-his-bony-fist stuff, here in 2021. ESPN, after all, long ago shed all those futzy journalism rules -- so 1950s, all of those -- to become that curious 21st century hybrid, the media entrepreneur.  As the owner of the SEC Network, it both covers the conference and promotes it. That the latter directly conflicts with the former is just details, conflict of interest being one of those tired 1950s concepts, too.

And yet ...

And yet, there are lines you shouldn't cross. Even if it's not the 1950s anymore.

As for the rest of this, maybe it's time to concede the ground to Godzilla -- aka, Power 5 corporate football. Stomp the current model flat and build a new one that lumps all the major football powers into one entity that operates the way it already operates anyway. Which is to say, as a semipro developmental league for the NFL.

Everyone else can then stop bankrupting their athletic departments trying to keep up. Football may pay the bills, see, but it's also by far the biggest drain on resources. And the latter is far more a factor in lower-tier Division I conferences  -- which is why more than a few schools in those conferences either have dropped the sport or are thinking about it.

The revenue stream provided  by small-time D-I football simply can't keep up with its costs, not when the payoff is some lawn implement bowl in Hog Waller, Miss. It's why so many schools at that level wind up subsidizing football with ever-increasing student fees.

So, sure. Let the big dogs eat, and let the smaller dogs eat better. Sounds about right.

Oh, yeah: And keep ESPN's mitts out of the process.

The limits of greatness

 Let's hear it out there for the tough guys, the wannabes, the never-weres-but-boy-if-they-had-beens. They know what's what.

One of them hammered out a column calling Simone Biles a "coward", and bragged how brave he was to do so because HE was saying what no one else would.

Several others said she was deserting her teammates, letting her nation down, was mentally weak, only quit because she knew she wasn't going to win this time.

Quitter. Choker. All-time choker. Yeah, the Tough Guys hit every mark.

Of course, at this point it must be noted, as Bill Plaschke of the L.A. Times does here, that  none of them ever won a world championship with broken toes in a sport where toes are, you know, kinda important.

None of them have been the best in the world at what they do, and worn the bullseye that comes with it, since they were 16 years old.

None of them have been so resplendent and singular at their calling that there are actually gymnastics techniques named after them. Or been the public face not only of gymnastics but the Olympic Games themselves. Or been the public face of sexual assault perpetrated by a grimy perv who was protected by her sport's own ruling body until she and others finally stood up and spoke up.

All of that is who Simone Biles is. All of that makes her tougher than you or me or every Tough Guy who swaggered onto the interwhatsis yesterday to sneer at her.

I don't know much, but I know this: Gymnasts at the Olympic level endure physical and mental stress that would leave every Tough Guy out there curled up in a ball weeping. This is true even at the high school level; I have covered enough of it, seen enough knee braces and ankle braces and every other kind of brace, to know real toughness when I see it. 

When you see a kid successfully negotiate a four-inch-wide beam -- try it sometime -- with everything on the line, that's toughness. When you wince watching some slip of a girl in a bulky brace land a vault and not wince ... that's toughness.

Simone Biles?

She's the greatest woman gymnast in history, and nothing that happened yesterday proves otherwise. All it proved is there are limits even to greatness, and Simone Biles bumped up against them. 

Whatever it is that makes a champion just wasn't there when the team competition began, and after one rotation Biles knew it. To do what she does requires a level of confidence unseen in almost any other sport, because in gymnastics the tolerances are so brutally exact. And if the confidence isn't there ...

Well. Suffice it to say it wasn't.

Suffice it to say it all piled up on Biles at once, and she admitted as much publicly. And so she withdrew rather than risk injuring both herself and her team's medal chances. 

Perhaps more than any other sport, or at least as much, gymnastics at the Olympic level is a game of the mind. And if the mind ain't right, not even the GOAT can do it.

Far from letting down her team, as the Tough Guys and clueless claim, she did what she did for the team. And the United States won a silver medal it surely would not have if a not-right Biles had insisted on continuing.

Call that weak if you want. Make all the phony comparisons to other elite athletes you care to. Drag Kerri Strug into the conversation -- Kerri Strug, who famously landed a vault on a damaged ankle to secure a gold medal in '96 for Team USA.

But if you do, don't forget to mention that she only did it because her psycho coach, Bela Karolyi, bullied her into it. And that it ended her career.

Biles, too, worked with the psycho coach at one time. And was violated by Larry Nassar, the grimy perv. And somehow rose above it all to become what she became.

A weakling, according to the Tough Guys. A coward. A quitter.

Damn. The stupid, it burns.

Your obligatory Cruddy Pirates post for today

 It's been awhile since the Blob last bitched and moaned about his cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates, currently in their customary abode in last place in the NL Central. And by 10 1/2  games, no less!

Nonetheless ... today seems the time. As always, those of you who'd like to leave can exit through the doors at the back of the Blob.

Anyway, today seems the time because the Cruds have again done that thing they do, which is trade one of their few pieces of value for a handful of magic beans. This time the salary dump involved All-Star second baseman Adam Frazier, who at 29 has become so good the Cruds' cheapskate owners were going to have to pay him real dollars.

Frazier leads the majors in hits right now and is batting .327, second in all of MLB. His contract runs out at the end of next season, which means the Cruds had to get rid of him or face the prospect of, you know, paying him what he's worth.

Well. We couldn't have that, could we?

And so off to Frazier goes to the Padres, along with approximately $1.4 million. In return, the Cruds get three more minor leaguers to develop for San Diego or the Dodgers or the Yankees or the Red Sox.

Their names are Michell Miliano, Tucupita Marcano and Jack Suwinski. Remember them, all you actual major-league teams out there.

Someday you may be able to get one of them for a handful of magic beans.

Hoops without borders

 Bad news for you Flat Earthers out there: More proof has emerged that the Earth really is round.

A roundBALL, that is.

This upon the news that France -- France, for pity's sake -- beat the birthplace of buckets, the United States of America, in men's basketball at the Olympics yesterday, which never used to happen. Used to be, the US of A would beat France like a three-egg omelet in basketball, and everyone else, besides. It would be the Stars and Stripes 115, France 47 all the way to the gold-medal game, when the Soviets would lose 95-72 except for that one time when the timekeepers gave them three chances to make the score come out in their favor.

And who forget the monumental farce that was the original Dream Team, which crushed everyone in Barcelona in '92 in the least impressive crushing-of-everyone in the history of games?

Well ... a few years have passed since then. And now any listing of the best basketball players in the world includes Slovenians (Luka Doncic) and Greeks (Giannis Antentukounmpo) and Serbs (Nikola Jokic).

It's an international game now, basketball is, just the way David Stern intended it to be. And so, yes, the US of A is going to lose to France every so often.

I don't know why American commentators who should know better are so shocked by this. But to hear them talk after France whipped the U.S. the other day, it was a major catastrophe for U.S. hoops, and an indictment of Greg Popovich's stewardship of the American side.

But this is an American team that lost to Nigeria and Australia. And the loss to France was the first Olympic loss for the Americans since 2004, when Larry Brown's disastrous tenure as Olympic coach ended with a bronze medal. So it's not like the U.S. is suddenly, I don't know, Iran.

Whom the Americans play next.

And whom FanDuel sets as 37 1/2-point 'dogs.

Bottom line: The U.S. is still going to win a medal, probably a gold one. But if it doesn't, it won't be because the timekeepers gave the other team a couple of do-overs.

Actions and consequences

 The world was too ridiculous to even bother to live in ...

-- Jack Crabb, "Little Big Man"

And, well, OK. So it's not THAT ridiculous.

Yet.

But every day there comes some fresh absurdity from the usual suspects, because the interwhatsis is full of usual suspects. And so here was a columnist -- I'll save him the embarrassment of identifying him -- posting his latest work on Twitter the other day, claiming the NFL's Bastard Plague protocols are "Medical Jim Crow."

Medical Jim Crow.

For the love of all that's holy.

Look. I realize the world has gotten ridiculous enough that loony anti-vaxxers are casting themselves as some sort of persecuted class now. Ostracized! Demonized! Barred from the Woolworth lunch counter!

Or, you know, the 2021 equivalent.

For the love of all that's holy. 

We've got a virus out there that's been responsible for 600,000 American deaths, and now its variant is flooding over-stressed medical facilities again. And yet half the country thinks the vaccines against it will give you autism or shingles or, I don't know, terminal halitosis,  because we just don't know what's in it. Also, masks don't work and are a violation of my personal freedom.

For the love of ... well, you know.

Now private businesses are being equated with 1960s racists and segregationists. And all because they're acting in the interests of public health.

Which brings back to the NFL.

Which has told its players, look, you can get vaccinated against COVID-19 or not, your choice, but as with any choice it could carry consequences. If, for instance, an outbreak among un-vaccinated personnel forces the cancellation of a game, the team with the outbreak will forfeit the game. And the un-vaccinated personnel could be subject to fines.

The NFL is not messing around with y'all, in other words. Nor should it.

Because this is not about liberty or Braveheart shouting "FREEEE-dommm!" or being able to do whatever you want whenever and wherever you want, regardless of who it affects. It's about being responsible, because with freedom comes responsibility. Otherwise it's just licentiousness.

The NFL gets a lot of things wrong, most of them in service to image. But it's got this right.

If the name fits

 Well. I guess they could have been the "Cleveland Rocks."

Or the "Cleveland Flaming Rivermen."

Or the "Cleveland Mighty Midges."

Remember that? 

But as Cleveland as it might be to re-name its baseball team after annoying tiny bugs, Cleveland went in a different direction. Jettisoning "Indians" and the glaringly racist Chief Wahoo imagery that came with it, the franchise unveiled a name Friday that actually has some historical and symbolic context, which very rarely happens in these matters.

They went with Guardians. The Cleveland Guardians.

And of course you hate it, because that is the first rule of team names. Here in Fort Wayne, everyone hated "Wizards," and then they didn't, and then they hated "TinCaps." Now you can't throw an official Midwest League baseball anywhere in town without hitting someone in TinCaps gear.

So, yes, everyone's making fun of "Guardians." Of course, if you go back to 1915, when the Indians became the Indians, you'd likely find a bunch of snarly get-off-my-lawn types who hated the new name, wondering what the heck was wrong with "Naps.".

Now their descendants, some of them, are moaning about ditching "Indians," saying it's political correctness and cancel culture and all the usual nonsense. But "Guardians" is more firmly tied to local culture than "Indians," considering the origin story of "Indians" -- that the name was meant to honor a Penobscot ballplayer named Louis Sockalexis -- has been dismissed in some circles as apocryphal.

And anyway, everyone in Cleveland knows to what "Guardians" refers.

That would be the massive art deco sculptures -- known locally as, yes, the Traffic Guardians -- that flank both ends of the Hope Memorial Bridge into downtown. As Cleveland landmarks go, they're as distinctive as the Terminal Tower. 

So "Guardians" has history, it has tradition, it has all those elements baseball once treasured. Plus, the logo is pretty cool.

Which means, as usual, the very people griping about/making fun of "Guardians" will soon be rocking the gear. Team name rule No. 2.

Godzilla the conference

 So apparently Texas and Oklahoma are now knocking on the SEC's door, which would reduce the Big 12 to the Big Ten, which would be a problem because there's already a Big Ten, even if the folks who run it can't count and it's actually the Big 14 these days.

Also, it has an ACC school, a Big East school and a Big 12 school in it, which is contrary to nature and should invalidate its very existence in the Blob's opinion.

But then, the Blob can shout "Get a horse!" and shake its bony liver-spotted fist all it wants, time will continue to leave it choking on its dust. All the Blob can do is fall back on its famously warped imagination for solace, envisioning a day when the SEC roams the college landscape like Godzilla, stomping rhetorical Tokyos flat and absorbing every school everywhere except a few scattered holdouts ...

INSIDE THE COMPOUND AT DIRECTIONAL HYPHEN STATE -- Surrounded by students chanting "Hell, no, we won't go!", the president of Directional Hyphen State, Myron Horatio Conundrum, maintained a defiant stance as the SEC continued its siege of his school into the 168th day.

"I don't care if Nick Saban himself tries to scale the walls of this compound with a legion of Crimson Tides and Nittany Lions from over there at Penn State," Conundrum declared. "We will not submit. We will never submit!"

Directional Hyphen State has been the lone holdout to the SEC's complete control of Division I athletics since it absorbed the Ivies and a handful of scattered SUNYs six months ago. The last school to capitulate was Western Connecticut School of Dental Flossing, which protested "Hell, we don't even PLAY football or basketball! OK, we do, but we really suck at it!"

Directional Hyphen State, meanwhile, continues to show a brave face even as the SEC tightens its grip and deploys battalions of Harvard lawyers waving writs and cease-and-desist orders.

"They nearly breached the south wall the other day, but we beat them back with a squad of mercenaries from Yale," Conundrum said. "To hell with the SEC. They can have Texas and Oklahoma. They can even have Notre Dame and the Big Ten, including those two posers from the ACC and Big East. But they'll never get us!"

Five rings of cluster, the opening un-ceremonies

 The parade of nations is happening right now, over there in Tokyo. The lighting of the flame. The incredibly overblown celebration of the native culture, Japanese this time around.

Welcome to the Olympic Games, everyone.

A made-for-TV event.

Made for TV, because there is virtually no one in the Olympic Stadium. There will be no one at any of the events. No one on the streets, or virtually no one. 

And so this will be the Flat-Line Games, or something very like that. Two days before the opening ceremonies, Japan -- already under emergency Bastard Plague protocols -- reported its highest COVID-19 levels since January. They're bumping up against 2,000 new cases per day, and rising. Hospital and emergency facilities are already feeling he strain.

And now here come hundreds of athletes from all over the world.

Dozens of them have not been vaccinated, including roughly 100 Americans. And already 90 individuals associated with the Games have shown red.

The Blob does not say all this to feng anyone's shui, mind you. It is not trying to be Darren Downer or throw ice water on the proceedings or any other suitable cliche. It's only trying to point out these will not be your father's Olympics, and no one should expect them to be.

Except for the athletes themselves, see, the world is not invited this time around. The host nation will be at best dutiful and at worst openly hostile to the proceedings. Officials, in fact, report unprecedented levels of antagonism toward the Games among the Japanese people, who are struggling badly enough with this latest wave of infection without what seems an unavoidable super-spreader event being forced upon them.

In other words, people -- a lot of people -- are seriously pissed about this in Japan. Along with many of us, they want to know why the hell the Games are happening, and they don't like the answer.

The answer is, NBC has paid a truckload of cash to televise them. 

And so the Games will go on. In front of ghosts and echoes and minus the usual ambience of joyous celebration of host-nation culture, but, hey. You can't have everything.

Which is to say: The only thing that will redeem this cluster is the athletes. 

As ever.

Oh, no! Money!

 You gotta feel a bit for Nick Saban and his coaching brethren. Everything they know, and have always taken granted, just got turned inside-out like a pair of pants pockets.

College athletes are going to make bank now!

All over America football and basketball players are syncing up with branding folks, signing endorsement deals, changing the balance of power between player and coach (or so the doom-and-gloom crowd is telling us.) There may be no "I" in "team," but there sure as hell is in "income."

It's a madhouse! A madhouse, I tell you!

Which is not what Saban and his bros are saying, mind you. But you know there's a little voice in all their heads screaming it.

 Outwardly they may sound quite reasonable and go-with-the-flow, but inwardly the Titanic is sinking and they're shoving the women and children aside to get at the lifeboats. And every once in awhile you can catch a whiff of that sentiment.

And so here the other day was Saban, who makes north of $9 mill a year, marveling at the fact his heir apparent quarterback, Bryce Young, is already approaching a million in endorsements even though he's barely played. Although "marveling" probably isn't the right word.

The Blob suspects it wasn't. Just like it suspects Saban was as much issuing a warning as making an observation when he said certain players were going to command more in endorsement dollars than others.

"Everything that we've done in college athletics in the past has been equal," Saban said at the SEC Media Day. "Everybody's had equal scholarship, equal opportunity. Now that's probably not going to be the case. Some positions, some players, will have more opportunities than others."

Well, yes, that's the way capitalism works. And high-end college football and basketball have been capitalist enterprises for a long time, operating by have-and-have-not capitalist principles while expending great stores of energy presenting an old-college-try false front.

If it were all as amateur as they tried to make out, after all, Nick Saban would not be making that $9-mill-plus a year to coach football.

Truth is, opportunity in college athletics at Saban's level has never been equal, nor anything like it. Coaches became wealthy beyond measure; the "student-athlete" got dinged for selling their bowl swag -- bowl swag the NCAA said was theirs -- for a few extra bucks. And you think Trevor Lawrence didn't get more ink/exposure/face time than the lugs up front who kept the edge rushers off him?

So, yes, quarterbacks and wide receivers and running backs are going to make more off endorsements than the offensive linemen. And if back of that acknowledgment by Saban you can detect some unease about what that will do to team unity ... well, I don't see any rending of team unity in Tampa Bay, where Tom Brady is the face of the franchise.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying. "Those guys are older. And they're pros."

True. But the kids at Alabama or Clemson or Ohio State are pros, too, in everything but name, and have been for a long time. So I have a feeling they know how this all works better than we think they do. And if the coach-player dynamic will undoubtedly change now on the college level, it's unlikely it will be detectable.

I mean, Coach is still Coach, and no one on his roster is going to be making more than he does. He'll still command the same authority -- just as, in the NFL, Bruce Arians commands authority in the Tampa Bay locker room, and Andy Reid does in Kansas City's, Bill Belichick in New England's, and Sean Payton in New Orleans's.

And a lot of those guys don't pull down anywhere near the coin some of their players do.

The sky is not falling, in other words. It just looks a little different now.

Naming wrongs

 The other day I ran into a girls basketball coach whose teams I used to cover.

I was having breakfast in one my favorite breakfast places, and, even though it's been a few years, I recognized her sitting a few tables over.  So when I was done I got up and walked over and said, "Hi, Coach."  

Hi, Coach.

I could have called her by name, I suppose. I mean, she wouldn't have minded.

Not so Deion Sanders.

The second-year head football coach at Jackson State, he got all huffy the other day when a reporter called him "Deion" at the SWAC Media Day. Stormed out of the news conference. Said a reporter wouldn't dare call Alabama coach Nick Saban "Nick," so it was disrespectful to call him "Deion."

God bless the man. As a relatively new college coach, what he doesn't  know, he doesn't know, I suppose.

Truth is, reporters call Nick Saban "Nick" all the time. Just like we used to call Bob Knight "Bob" and Gene Keady "Gene" and Lou Holtz "Lou" and on and on.

None of them went stomping off when we did it. Although I definitely could see Knight doing it.

Me?

I've always been far more likely to address a high school coach as "Coach" than a college or pro coach. This might seem odd, as might my reasoning. I figured as much coin as a Knight or a Keady or a Holtz was making, they didn't require any additional honorifics from me. 

High school coaches, however, sacrifice just as much for a whole lot less. They do what they do, it seems to me, for more than a paycheck. They do it because they love the kids and the game, and using the latter to lift the former.

And so they generally get "Coach" from me. 'Cause they deserve it.

Sorry, Deion.

Opportunity answered

 So here is your word for today, boys and girls: Fifty.

Fifty years since Kareem and Oscar and Bobby Dandridge and Larry Costello drawin' it up over there on the bench, and an NBA championship banner goin' to the rafters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Fifty points last night for the son of Nigerian parents who grew up in Athens, Greece, and who came to Milwaukee as an 18-year-old in 2013.

The Greek Freak, they call Giannis Antetokounmpo, but there is a flippancy to that he has long outgrown. Now you can just call him "Giannis," because as an NBA champion he has elevated himself to that same sort of  only-one-name-need-apply realm.

The 50 points he dropped on the Phoenix Suns in a decisive Game 6 will always come up now, after all, when talk turns to legendary NBA Finals performances. LeBron and Michael and a handful of others across the decades have put their teams on their backs when the deal was there for the closing, but rarely did they do what Giannis did last night.

Fifty points, 14 rebounds and five blocks in a 105-98 win. Sixteen-of-25 shooting on a night when everyone else shot 21-of-57 for the Bucks. Seventeen-of-19 at the stripe, all but 10 attempts and eight makes for Milwaukee as a team. They don't make backpacks sturdy enough to carry that sort of weight.

That he did it for a small-market Midwestern city that had gone half-a-century without the Big Trophy separates Giannis, too, of course; instead of fleeing to go super-teaming as so many others do these days, he signed a super-max contract with the Bucks before the season because he wanted to win one in Milwaukee, in his own way and on his own hook.

"Coming back, I was like 'This is my city. They trust me. They believe in me. They believe in us'," Giannis said when it was done. "There was a job that had to be finished."

This is my city ...

And when's the last time you heard that about a place like Milwaukee, except when LeBron did it for Cleveland in 2016?

The NBA is a league of transients now, flocking to the big markets on the coasts because, well, that's where the money and exposure and endorsements live. But very few NBA stars come from the background Giannis comes from; very few see America through the same sort of prism.

It may be the most stale of cliches these days to call America the land of opportunity, especially in an America that too often regards those seeking that opportunity as some sort of threat. But for Giannis it's a home truth. He came to America to test himself against the best players in the world, and now he stands astride them.

If that's not what we used to call the American Dream, what is?

And if it's no longer hip to acknowledge that Dream always has many fathers -- check out how many "self-made" oligarchs dot the landscape these days -- Giannis gladly spurns hipness for truth.

"People helped me be in this position," he said last night. "I didn't do this by myself. Every freaking day people helped me."

Milwaukee thanks them. And him.  

Disappearing act

 Maybe it's just the sport that makes people dumb. Sure seems so.

Maybe even smart people like Roger Penske, and all the smart people around him, get infected with Dumbness Disease when they take the reins of IndyCar. What else could explain the fact I couldn't find the IndyCar race anywhere yesterday?

This was not a programming thing, understand. It was because there wasn't an IndyCar race.

There hasn't been one, in fact, since Fourth of July weekend, when the snakebitten Josef Newgarden finally broke through at Mid-Ohio. And there won't be another one until -- let's see -- August 8.

August 8??

So, IndyCar basically goes dark for over a month in the very heart of the motorsports season?

What's the deal here, guys?

The official explanation is IndyCar is an NBC property and the Olympics are also an NBC property, which means for two weeks it'll be all Olympics, all the time. And IndyCar did have a race scheduled July 11 in Toronto, but that got wiped out by the Bastard Plague.

Still, going away for more than a month? Especially now?

A racing series in desperate need of buzz was, after all, finally getting some. There was Helio Castroneves' dramatic fourth win in the Indianapolis 500 in May, a bit of outrageous good fortune that actually produced a blip on the sporting landscape's radar. And the emergence of an exciting crop of young talent -- Pato O'Ward, Colton Herta, Alex Palou, Rinus VeeKay chief among them -- has given IndyCar a bump it hasn't experienced in years.

Eight different drivers have won the 10 races so far this season, the four drivers above among them. Fully half the field or more is a legitimate threat to win every time it comes to the green. The sport has rarely been as competitive as it is right now.

So, you know, this was not the time to vanish like old smoke. 

The Blob has frequently observed that IndyCar's biggest obstacle is IndyCar, because it can't seem to get out of its own way. That observation remains distressingly relevant.

Five rings of cluster, the updated update

 Aaaand now one of America's Favorites  has shown red for the Bastard Plague. 

Women's gymnastics has long been one of the ratings monsters of the Olympic Games, dating back to the days of Olga Korbut and Nadia Comenici and Mary Lou Retton. The Blob freely admits it's on an island in being largely immune to the sport's charms; I always dwell too much on which eating disorder a particular gymnast suffers from, and what vile abuses she's been subjected to from sadistic jerks like Bela Karolyi.

In any case, lots of eyeballs attach themselves to women's gymnastics come Olympics time. Which makes the fact an alternate on the American team has tested positive for COVID-19 especially impactful.

It means the superstars, the Simone Biles's and the like, may have been exposed, too, though so far there's been no evidence of that. Biles has also been vaccinated -- though, again, that's no guarantee she couldn't contract the virus.

The unnamed gymnast, meanwhile, is the first American Olympian to show red. American tennis standout Coco Gauff pulled out of the Games before even joining the team after testing positive.

And so it goes, and so it goes.

Why are we doing this again?

The new guy

 You ought to know the kid, now that he's got his mitts on the Claret Jug. His name is Collin Morikawa. In the future, you're gonna hear it again a few times.

He's a 24-year-old American who's only played in eight major golf tournaments in his infant career, and he's won two of 'em. Won the PGA last year; won the British Open on Sunday, dropping a 66 on Royal St. George's to finish two strokes clear of Jordan Spieth, another erstwhile young American phenom.

This means Collin Morikawa has finished in the top ten in exactly half of the majors he's played so far. Spieth didn't do that. Neither did any of the other phenoms who've emerged on the PGA Tour the past few years. 

Neither did Tiger Woods, the greatest golfer of this or perhaps any generation. And who just happens to be Collin Morikawa's idol.

He's bright, he's engaging, and he's an unworldly talent. He also doesn't do drama, which is probably why you haven't heard as much about him as, say, Bryson DeChambeau -- who the Blob confesses a weakness for but whose act does grow old at times with remarkable speed. 

Morikawa?

He can just flat play. And just does.

I know. What a concept, right?

Five rings of cluster, the update

 They don't light the Olympic torch in Tokyo until Friday, but already there is a medal count of sorts. South Africa is leading.

This is because the South African soccer team already has three confirmed cases of the Bastard Plague in their contingent, two players and an official. This puts the South Africans one up on the Olympic Village, which already has two confirmed cases, and two up on the IOC, which has one confirmed case: Ryu Sueng-min of South Korea, a former Olympic gold medalist in table tennis.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to head off what's almost certain to be the super-spreader gold medalist of all time, Olympic officials have tried to head off any hanky-panky between the athletes by building beds in the Village out of cardboard. The theory is, any horizontal bopping going on will be thwarted because the beds will be too flimsy to hold more than one person.

Come on, now. You really think the Blob could make THAT up?

Or make up what IOC president Thomas Bach said last week, which is there was "zero" risk of athletes in the Village passing the virus to one another?

You could almost hear him whistling as the graveyard came up.

And again the Blob asks: Why are we doing this again?

That House That Dopes Inhabit

So, here's what happened last night in Yankee Stadium, home of the Gods of Baseball if you live in the five boroughs or claim the interlocking NY as your adopted  birthright: Some dope threw a baseball at Red Sox outfielder Alex Verdugo and hit him in the back with it.

Those of us who regard the Yankees not as the Gods of Baseball but pinstriped douchenozzles frankly are not surprised by this behavior, because, well, Yankee fans. Not all of them are frontrunners and jackasses, but those two groups are well represented.

The dope who threw the baseball at Verdugo being a prime example.

Here's the thing, see: The dope in question didn't even come by his baseball honestly. He stole it from a kid, basically. Verdugo originally tossed the ball to a young Red Sox fan, but ol' Babe Jackass intercepted it and hurled it back at Verdugo.

That set off a whole brou-ha in which Verdugo began yelling at the thrower and Red Sox manager Alex Cora pulled his team off the field for a spell. Play eventually resumed until heavy downpours ended it in the sixth inning with the Yankees claiming a 3-1 win.

"This is just a game," Cora said later. "It's a game. It's not life and death and it's not this drama, and the fact people come to the ballpark and they decided to throw a baseball (at) one of the players, I was shocked that that happened."

The Blob, on the other hand, holding no brief for either the Red Sox or Yankees, is merely shocked Cora could say all that with a straight face. He is, after all, one of the Houston Cheat-stros who brought that culture with him to Boston. So apparently it's only a game and not life and death when someone else does something heinous.

A pox on both their houses.

Hook 'em hokum

 Once upon a Michigan-Notre Dame football game, the student section at Notre Dame Stadium sang along to the UM fight song. It was hilarious.

Hilarious, because their version went like this:

Cheer, cheer, for Mich-i-gan,

The a**holes of the world!

I suppose in the Big 12 they'd have been penalized for lyric interference or so some such thing. Unsportsmanlike conduct! Fifteen yards!

I say this because it got out this week the Big 12 will penalize any opposing player who flashes an upside-down Hook 'Em Horns hand signal (aka "Horns Down") at a Texas player. Or perhaps even if said player flashes it at his own fans.

This will be regarded as taunting, the Big 12 decrees. That a Texas player flashing the actual Hook 'Em Horns sign at an opposing player could also be regarded as taunting apparently has not occurred to the conference hoo-ha's.

Or maybe it has, but ... you know, Texas. Got all that money, and them that's got money get to play by a different set of rules in America. 

Still, this is silly even for college athletics bureaucrats. Which does not mean the Blob is now going to take off on some rant about political correctness, mind you.

This is because the Blob despises people who do that. After all, they never seem to recognize that in decrying "political correctness", they impose their own version of it. They just don't recognize it as such.

Anyway, this is silly. And it sucks a lot of air out of the good old-fashioned enmity that makes college football in particular so much better than the antiseptic Sunday version.

College football is its rivalries, after all, and rivalries do not adhere the Marquess of Queensberry rules. That's why they're so much fun.

It's why Army/Navy can prank Navy/Army (or Harvard/Yale can prank Yale/Harvard) by infiltrating its flip-card section so the messages that pop up are not, shall we say, the intended ones. Or why UCLA pranksters can paint Tommy Trojan blue-and-gold the week of the USC game. Or. yes, why the Notre Dame student section can rewrite Michigan's fight song.

This sort of thing harms no one and adds much to the proceedings, and it transcends college sports. Who hasn't heard a student section at a high school basketball game respond to a rival student section's "Over-rated!" jeer with "Nev-er rated!"?

That's some classic stuff right there.

As is an opponent responding to Hook 'Em Horns with Horns Down.

Come on, Big 12. Grow a sense of humor why doncha.

Betrayals of trust

 Larry Nassar is alive and behind bars, at least one of which frankly amazes these days. Casual violence being sort of an American pastime -- and the ability to arm oneself like the 82nd Airborne not only easy-peasy but apparently a sacrament -- one wonders how Nassar, serial abuser of young gymnasts and general sicko, is still breathing air.

I guess it's a testament to the discipline and restraint of world-class athletes that Nassar didn't wind up in the trunk of a car with two taps in the back of his head. And I guess it's a testament to the same that a whole pile of others didn't wind up the same way, given the justifiable fury so many of Nassar's victims must be feeling at how badly their trust was betrayed by so many.

Nassar. Coaches and other officials in the gymnastics community. Michigan State University, which enabled and protected Nassar against a cascade of complaints across two decades. And now ...

And now, the FBI.

According to a report just released by the Department of Justice's attorney general, the Fibbies sat on the Nassar business for a year while Nassar continued to abuse the girls and young women in his dubious care. They waited five weeks after receiving the initial allegations to conduct interviews, then decided not to share their information with other law enforcement agencies.

It finally took a separate complaint made to Michigan police to get Nassar in bracelets. By that time he'd sexually assaulted more than 70 additional women and girls. 

More than 70 women and girls.

Yessir. That'd make me homicidal if I were, say, Rachael Denhollander or McKayla Maroney or Simone Biles or any of the other gymnasts, elite and otherwise, Nassar abused. For two decades no one took them seriously -- two decades -- and then, in the endgame, not even the FBI did, either.

Not exactly an Eliot Ness kind of moment for the Fibbies, if you catch my drift.

But then, they were just little girls, physically and in a lot of cases otherwise. And Larry Nassar was a world-renowned medical professional who'd been working with gymnasts at Michigan State and on the national level for years. So it was pretty much "Be nice little girls and go back to your flipping and tumbling and what-not, and let the grownups make the grownup decisions."

And then the FBI figuratively pats them on the head, too? And the deposed president of Michigan State (Lou Anna Simon),  whose university gave Nassar shelter all those years, has the monumental gall to whine about how SHE was being treated on her way out the door?

They're all lucky one of the nice little girls didn't drop a dime on Clemenza or Luca Brasi. Leave the gun, take the cannoli.

Their bad

 Here's a great big raspberry for you, haters. Baseball does so care about what the fans think, does so does so does SO.

This upon the news that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, who can't seem to do a whole lot about the cheaters in his game, can at least admit when the once-upon-a-Pastime he oversees has stepped in it.

Therefore, he announced at the All-Star game that baseball would likely be scrapping the whole seven-inning doubleheaders idea.

And that the silliness of starting extra innings with a man on second is also out the gate.

They were two of baseball's dumber ideas to come down the pike in awhile, not counting dressing the NL and AL All-Stars in winter jammies last night (and what the hell was THAT?) Usually sports moguls are uncommonly stubborn about saying "Our bad," but not Rob Manfred. He freely copped to the dumbness, and promised it was being excised forthwith. Because MLB gives the fans what they want.

Well. Unless you're fans of the Baltimore Orioles, the Arizona Diamondbacks or my cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates, that is. We never get what we want.

What I want, for instance, is for the current owners of my Cruds to sell the team to someone who wants to actually try, and not just Hoover up those revenue-sharing dollars while trotting out a minor-league product.

Or better yet: Send the current owners down the Monongahela without a paddle. Or a boat, for that matter.

After all, they can always use their well-padded checkbooks as a flotation device.

March of the xenophobes

 God bless Kevin Cash, the manager of your Tampa Bay Rays. He gets this whole All-Star business, what it's about (marketing) and who it's for (the fans).

That's why tonight, as manager of the American Leaguers, he'll send Shohei Ohtani to the bump as the AL's starting pitcher. And why Ohtani swing the bat for the AL.

After all, a baseball attraction doesn't get much more glittering than the Japanese pitcher/slugger, who's given a weary game a mighty injection of wow this summer. This is because Ohtani, who wields a high-octane arm and a high-octane bat, is doing things no one's seen since Babe Ruth was still gettin' 'em out and hittin' 'em out in his Boston Red Sox days.

Alas, Harry Frazee sold him to the Yankees to finance a  Broadway show, which saddled the Red Sox with 86 summers of lousy karma. Ohtani's karma, on the other hand, is soured by a much darker American instinct.

He's a foreigner, you see. And America's history is rife with antipathy toward foreigners, an un-erasable strain of xenophobia that at one time or another vented itself on Irishmen and Italians and Eastern Europeans and Latinos, and these days seems especially fond of Asians.

Maybe you missed what ESPN blowhole Stephen A. "Stop Me Before I Shout Again" Smith was hollering about the other day, but it's a sentiment that's as old as America itself. To wit, Smith was ranting that maybe it wasn't a good thing for a foreigner who uses an interpreter to be the face of America's Pastime.

"The fact that you have a foreign player who doesn't speak English, that needs an interpreter, believe or not ... I think contributes to harming the game to some degree when that's your box office appeal," Smith said. "It needs to be somebody like Bryce Harper, Mike Trout -- those guys. And unfortunately, at this moment in time, that's not the case."

That, boys and girls, is as xenophobic (not to say racist) as xenophobia gets. We seemed to be just one drawn breath from Smith invoking the Yellow Peril as an homage to other times in history when Asians were viewed with suspicion and disdain.

As it happens, the Blob's reading material right now has particular relevance:  Daniel James Brown's superb chronicle of the Japanese-American experience in World War II, "Facing The Mountain." It's all there: The fear, the loathing, the internment camps. The idea that, because one was non-white and happened to look like the enemy, one was not American at all, but something alien and corrupting.

And, eventually, the silent rebuke to all that represented by the sacrifices made by Nisei soldiers in the 442nd infantry, one of the most decorated units in the European theater.

Some screeching talking head lamenting that a Japanese man is the face of baseball these days hardly equates, of course. But strange times produce strange segues, and the segue here is not as strange as it seems. There is a common thread that runs from No Irish Need Apply to the Chinese Exclusion Act to the fear that stripped Japanese-Americans of their Constitutional guarantees to the rantings of a Stephen A. Smith.

It's all of a piece, or sort of, and it's all the same old weary nonsense. If Shohei Ohtani is bad for baseball, after all, it's certainly not evident; America can't get enough of him, which is why Kevin Cash is doing what he's doing. And Ohtani does, in fact, speak English. He uses an interpreter only because doing so makes what he says clearer and more in-depth for his American audience.

To his credit, Smith apologized on the air today. It takes little of the sting out of what he said, however; apologies of this nature are almost always the product of calculation and self-preservation. The spontaneity of his original sentiments -- and thus their authenticity -- therefore remain.

Some things never change, regrettably. History is particularly stubborn about that.

Aces for the ages

It's so easy to become a prisoner of the moment. Sometimes you don't even have to try to get captured.

And so you watch Novak Djokovic win Wimbledon again for his 20th career Grand Slam title, and you think, "There's never been ANYTHING like this before." And you forget about McEnroe and Connors and Borg and Laver and Ashe and a whole pile of others who did their deal back in the day.

This time, though, the prisoner goes free. Because the moment really is unique.

Perhaps you could argue that we saw this before when Borg, Connors and McEnroe were battling it out in the late '70s and '80s, but we really didn't. By winning his 20th Slam, see, Djokovic had to bring an extra chair to the mountaintop. That's because two of his contemporaries had already been seated.

Djokovic, Federer, Nadal. Present and accounted for up there on the windy summit.

All have 20 career Grand Slam titles.

All are still playing.

Borg, Connors and McEnroe?

They can't touch that. They just can't.

And so this is no prisoner of the moment deal, unless "moment" comes with a "capital M." That's what you have to do when you look up and there's three historically transcendent talents in the men's game at the same time.

Savor it, boys and girls. Because, no, there's never been ANYTHING like this before.

Hell, Britannia

 One more open letter to England from its former colony, which feels its pain, sort of, seeing as how the U.S. lost in ITS game (basketball) the other day to Nigeria, a nation we used to beat by sixty gazillion points back in the day:

Greetings, John Bull!

Sorry about the loss, man.

Sorry, but ... come on, now. Wasn't this just so England, blowing the early lead by playing wuss soccer and then gagging on the penalty kicks? Three missed PKs in a row, what the hell was THAT?

Nobody misses three PKs in a row at this level. Especially on their own soil.

But your lads did, and Italy hoisted the Euro Cup in Wembley Stadium, which had to be England's worst footie moment since, I don't know, the last one, maybe. America sympathizes, kinda. We'd sympathize a lot more if y'all weren't such sore losers, but you are what you are, one supposes. 

And so we shouldn't have been surprised when your lads took off their runnerup medals as soon as they were draped around their necks, even though it's apparently common in Footie World. That still doesn't mean it isn't low-rent bullstuff, no matter who's doing it. 

And then there was that scene at Wembley's gates, when England's legendary soccer hoodlums set upon fans trying to sneak in without a ticket, punching and kicking them when they were on the ground while security stood around with their thumbs up their arses. Classy business, that.

Anyway ... sorry. Sort of.

Just remember: You'll always have '66.

With slightly less affection,

America.

Punked

 Word has reached the Blob that there was a Great Big Fight in something called Mixed Martial Arts last night, and one tattooed guy beat the tar out of another tattooed guy in, like, five minutes, and that was a good thing because the tattooed guy who got the tar beat out of him is a colossal ass.

His name is Conor McGregor. You might have heard of him, even if, like the Blob, you don't follow MMA.

The guy who beat the tar out of him is named Dustin Poirier, and this was the third time they'd fought. You might have thought it was Ali-Frazier III -- aka, the Thrilla In Manila -- the way it was hyped, but it wasn't. Poirier's simply better at whatever this is, and he punked the punk the way he punked him the second time the two fought.

This does not mean McGregor still isn't the biggest draw in MMA, which says nothing good about MMA. That the face of your sport is, as noted, a colossal ass who's still reasonably skilled but whose mouth is what he's best known for these days is not exactly something to crow about.

And he's getting more colossally ass-y, apparently. In the run-up to the fight he trashed Poirier's wife and threatened not just to beat Poirier but literally murder him, bragging he would send Poirier out of the cage in a coffin. Poirier thought this was a mite beyond the pale, and he was right. 

But when you've got little left to sell but hype at this point, you have to keep upping the ante. So there McGregor was lying all bloody and with a fractured tibia last night, making a gun with his finger and pantomiming shooting Poirier in the head with it.

Nice.

Ali used to taunt opponents, too, especially Frazier. That was cruel at times, too, but it was also vaudeville, and the media for whom he performed it mostly caught the wink that came with it. Also, he never went after Frazier's family or threatened to murder him.

Then again, boxing wasn't MMA. The standards were, shall we say, somewhat different, as corrupt as the fight game often is.

I suppose McGregor's fans would counter by saying he's just a new Ali for a new age. And I suppose you could say that.

I just can't do it without laughing.

Mid-summer MIAs

 The MLB All-Star Game is Tuesday night, and the Blob has an odd little ritual for the occasion. Every year, or almost every year, it takes a radio and a cold adult beverage out to the deck, and listens to the first few innings as the midsummer twilight lollygags toward night.

Call it an homage to baseball's historic place as a game uniquely suited to radio, or a fit of nostalgia, or just a weird old guy thing. But it's like stepping into a cool little rip in time and returning to kidhood or something like it, when boys were proper little goofballs, a vacant lot was Yankee Stadium and baseball cards were routinely sacrificed to the bicycle gods so you could sound like Mario Andretti when you pedaled down the street.

And, yeah, food and sports and presidents were better then, and kids obeyed their parents, and, you know, America and all that. The endless refrain of the old, signing up for another hitch.

But you know what?

Some things were better, dammit.

Like, Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente and Mickey Mantle 'n' them actually showed up for the All-Star Game, for instance.

Today, well, today a man's gotta do what a man's gotta, which is protect the merchandise. Which is to say, himself.

And so come Tuesday, the best pitcher in baseball this summer will not be on the bump for the National League. And two All-Stars from the Houston Asterisk-os will not be in the American League dugout.

Jacob DeGrom of the Mets says he's opting out of the All-Star game to rest up for the second half of the season and (here it comes!) Spend Some Time With His Family. And Carlos Correa and Jose Altuve aren't gonna play, either.

Altuve's begging off because his leg's kinda bothering him. Correa's bugging out because his wife is pregnant, though not imminent.

I may be wrong about this, but I imagine Mays or Joe DiMaggio or Ted Williams weren't always in tip-top condition when the Midsummer Classic came around. And I imagine there were plenty of All-Stars back in the day whose wives were with child at the same time.

Somehow they always managed to show up. And if you go far enough back in the day, it was for two All-Star games, not just one.

And maybe that's because our priorities were wackier then, which is a fair point. Back in the day, guys didn't play hurt, they played injured, an admirable if profoundly stupid circumstance. And guys whose wives were pregnant?

Well, it was up to Mom to soldier through pregnancy pretty much alone, because the social order of the time required Dad to be elsewhere. The perpetrator of the situation, so to speak, got to do his own version of the perp walk, because by God he had a job, and the job was Job One.

That's the way things were. Ah, the days of Neanderthal un-enlightenment.

And yet ...

And yet, the All-Star Game, ostensibly, is the Fan's Game. That's how MLB has always sold it, at least since it started letting the fans pick the teams.

So when the fans vote DeGrom or Altuve or Correa onto the All-Star team, they sort of have an obligation to show up. Either that, or they should instruct MLB to take their names off the ballot.

If they don't, and they're designated All-Stars, and they neglect to show up for reasons other than legitimate injury, then MLB's obligation to the Fan's Game is to declare them ineligible for the All-Star Game the next year -- no matter what kind of season they're having.

So it says here, anyway. 

Five rings of cluster

 And now today's update for the Tokyo Olympics, which begin in about two weeks and are shaping up to be the biggest cluster you-know-what since Nikolas of Thebes took a shortcut to win the marathon back in 414 BC.

In the latest episode, Japan has declared a state of emergency as Tokyo finds itself in the midst of yet another Bastard Plague surge. This could potentially mean the Olympics will be conducted entirely without spectators; foreign visitors have already been banned from the Games.

Also, no alcohol will be served at these Games.

What a thrilling, unforgettable spectacle THIS will be!

I mean, if you like sporting events conducted largely in front of echoes and the moaning of the breeze through vast prairies of empty seats, that is.

Imagine some swimmer winning the usual eleventy-hundred swimming gold medals with that as the backdrop. Or the marathon coursing through deserted streets. Or the opening ceremonies, the athletes of all the nations marching in and waving to ...

Well. To a bunch of seatbacks, primarily.

And if you're asking here what's the point, you're asking the right question. If the whole stated purpose of the Olympic Games is to bring the world together, what do you call them when the world's not allowed to come?

 The Asterisk Games? The One-Hand-Clapping Games? The Why Are We Doing This Games?

I say all three. Which is why the Blob hereby declares them open, and also closed.

Update: It's official. There will be no spectators at these Olympics. Why are we doing this again?

Hail Britannia

An open letter to England from its former colony, which after 245 years has concluded a measure of thanks is warranted for the way George III and the rest of the nitwits provoked America into independence:

Greetings, John Bull!

Oh, sorry. Didn't mean to shout.

Really insensitive given the hangover you're likely nursing this morning, after England's 2-1 extra-time victory over Denmark in the Euro Cup semis yesterday. This puts your lads in the Euro Cup final for the first time ever, which is a hell of deal for a nation that hasn't had a lot big footie moments in the last 55 years.

So drink up, British cousins. Even if we think drinking beer un-chilled the way y'all do is Weird City.

Not as Weird City as cricket, mind you. But pretty damn weird.

In any event, hail to Harry Kane and that marvelous Raheem Sterling guy, and all the rest of the lads. Only Italy now stands between them and the greatest English footie moment since 1966, when Bobby Charlton led England to the World Cup.

It's been a long mean stretch of self-indulgent angst since then, regrettably. Every four years England enters the World Cup bearing the hopes and dreams of a proud nation, and every four years it inevitably whizzes all over those hopes and dreams like a man who's drunk too much warmish beer. The lads even got beat by Iceland a few years back, if you can believe that.

Oh, wait. That was in the Euro Cup. The soul-crushing losses, they do get difficult to sort out after awhile.

But now?

Now they'll go into the Euro Cup final Sunday as the betting favorites, which of course might just be a setup for the most soul-crushing loss yet. But let's not think about that. That would be like thinking about Brexit or the royals or, I don't know, the way you stupidly chased off the most lucrative colony you ever had 245 years ago.

Not to bring up THAT unpleasantness again.

Hail Britannia!

Affectionately,

America.

Camping days

 Out on the sunbaked grass here at Snider High School, the tykes in their bright yellow shirts are everywhere, running pass patterns, clustering around the water tent, chasing footballs arcing across the blue-white sky.

Sometimes they catch them. Sometimes ...

Well, just now a girl in pigtails, knee-high to a minute, takes off from the head of the line, kinda-sorta cuts behind the line of orange cones placed a few yards away, and reaches for the ball.

Which clears her head by, oh, ten feet or so, not being one of her instructor's better throws.

And she troops back to the line of yellow shirts, and the next kid lines up, and, lord, this is 1994 or '95 or '96 all over again. The morning sun beats down like a hammer, promising a molten afternoon. Sweat pops up on your forehead and begins to speckle your shirt here and there. And you're not even moving.

Feels exactly the way you remember Rod Woodson's football camp. Which is back here at Snider again this week, after all these years.

This time it's under the aegis of Woodson's foundation, Hope Through Football, whose signage is everywhere this steamy Tuesday. And it's not '94 or '95 or '96 anymore, because there is gray in the goatee of the man down at one of the field here at Snider, who happens to be Rod Woodson himself.

Just now he's pacing off a few yards from a small cluster of yellow shirts. Then he stops and places a water bottle on the grass.

"This is my water bottle," he tells the shirts. "Don't ... touch ... my water."

What they're supposed to do is practice taking handoffs, bolt off the line and then cut past the water bottle. One by one, they do it, holding one arm high and one arm low to take the handoff as instructed, making cuts alternately flashy and not so, imagining ...

What? 

That they're lugging the mail for Snider or North Side or Dwenger or Luers a few years down the road?

That they're Jonathan Taylor or Christian McCaffery or Derrick Henry in the pros?

That the next water break is just a few minutes away?

Something like that.

In any case, there are 200 or so of the yellow shirts here today, and it takes me right back to the first incarnation of Woodson's camp, which I covered from its inception for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. An estimated 10,000 kids participated between 1994 and 2007, and some of them went on to star at their local high schools.  And some went on to play in college, and some, yes, became the pros they imagined being, taking handoffs or chasing footballs across the sky on those seared summer days.

It is impossible to tell which of the yellow shirts taking handoffs and cutting smartly and otherwise on this seared summer day have Friday night or Saturday or Sunday stardom in their future. Just as it's impossible to tell what lessons they will take from this week to make any of that possible. 

But you know what?

You couldn't tell then, either. And yet it happened, and some piece of it likely happened because of a certain week under the summer sun.

So welcome back.

Patriot games

 Here come the super-patriots again, and you can smell 'em coming from a mile off. Their scent is store-bought outrage, plus a faint hint of desperation. These days, it seems, if they can't paint someone as anti-American or komminust or daggone liberal scum, they just make it up.

And boy have they made up a doozy this time.

Ever hear of a guy named Pete DuPre?

Well, he's a 98-year-old World War II vet, and he's become something of a hit around the country for playing the National Anthem on a harmonica at sporting events. And the other day, he played it before a game featuring soccer's U.S. Women's National Team, a favorite target of the super-patriots and other hard-right loonies because they're a bunch of uppity women who won't shut up about equal pay and who have that awful Megan Rapinoe, who's a komminust/soshilust/America hater because she kneels quietly during the anthem.

Well, now the super-patriots have a new reason to despise them all, because according to them, some of the USWNT members turned their backs on ol' Pete when he started playing the anthem. Such disrespect! Such hatred for the greatest nation in the history of nations! How dare they be allowed to represent the United States of America!

Except ...

Well, except, as usual, it's all a pile of twaddle.

Turns out the women weren't turning their backs on ol' Pete, whom they've actually met before and positively adore. They were turning to face the American flag.

Yeah, but ... but ... a couple of 'em DIDN'T turn to face the flag! How dare they!

That's because they were facing the video screen, which also had a giant American flag on it. And which was the direction ol' Pete himself was facing.

Yeesh. Try again, schmuckos.

Tragedy, defined

 I'm not a fireworks hater. Let's begin there today, two days after the biggest fireworks day of the year.

In a world that increasingly insists you must choose one camp or another on every issue, I sometimes insist on stubbornly pitching my tent on the unoccupied middle ground. That goes for this issue.

On the one hand, I don't depise fireworks with every fiber of my being, although I understand why some dog owners and combat veterans do. 

On the other, I think spending thousands of dollars to blow stuff up is a damn strange way to invest one's disposable income, and an even stranger celebration ritual. I don't hate the smell of explosives residue in the evening, to paraphrase Robert DuVall in "Apocalypse Now." But I don't love it, either.

And I especially don't love it when a Matiss Kivlenieks happens.

Kivlenieks was a 24-year-old goaltender for the Columbus Blue Jackets, until the Fourth of July. He died on that day because of fireworks. Someone setting off what was essentially a demilitarized mortar round accidentally fired one toward a group of people in Novi, Mich., and Kivlenieks apparently was struck by a piece of it.

That's not what killed him though, apparently. According to the autopsy, the  percussion from the blast itself likely had more to do with it.

Tragedy is a threadbare word these days, overused as it is. But a 24-year-old professional athlete dying what amounted to a combat death during a holiday celebration is pretty much the definition of it.

Such a completely avoidable and ridiculous way to go, if ridiculous is the appropriate term for such a horrific occurrence. And what an indictment of our national fetish for ordinance once reserved for military professionals, and now available to any goober off the street.

God bless America. But God also shake his head at our foolishness.

Dream cleavers

 The Crotchety Old Guy emerges far too often these days from the carping past, which I suppose is a function of being, well, a crotchety old guy. Seems I'm always shaking a bony liver-spotted fist at some modern outrage or another, like why people can't figure out roundabouts or what this bank fee is for.

Today the modern outrage is baseball, and why it insists on mucking up everything it touches.

It's a sport that more than any other in America bows slavishly to its past, and then it picks up a can of spray paint and scrawls graffiti all over it. This is because, like every professional sport in 2021, it's a thoroughly corporate enterprise, with thoroughly corporate sensibilities. Every good thing about its product it will find a way to ruin if given enough too much time to think about it.

 Remember when baseball was a brisk, lively game, a pleasant American way to while away two hours outdoors on a summer afternoon?

Great, let's move half  the games indoors and slow them to a three, three-and-a-half-hour crawl.

Games last too long now that they've been slowed to a three, three-and-a-half hour crawl?

Great, let's gimmick it up by starting extra innings with a runner already on second base.

And then there's that charming little tribute to baseball's past out in Dyersville, Iowa ...

Well. The powers-that-be in Major League Baseball have found a way to screw that up, too.

Enshrined as a national icon in 1989's love letter to baseball, "Field of Dreams," the Field of Dreams in Dyersville became first a humble diversion for devotees of the film and travelers bored by the drive across Iowa. Thirty-two years later, it's now a fully commissioned Tourist Trap. 

There's an events center and a place to buy souvenirs and food and baseball caps, and all its quaint humbleness has vanished. I know this because MLB has decided to insert its grubby mitts into the place, too.

In August, the Yankees and White Sox will arrive to play a major-league game there. Of course, they won't play it on the Field of Dreams. They'll play it in a brand-new 8,000-seat ballpark a few yards east of the FoD, and of course they'll play it under the lights.

If Shoeless Joe Jackson came walking out of the corn today, I suspect he'd come bearing a torch and a can of gasoline.

In any event, I know all this because the other day one of my former journalism colleagues, Ed Breen, wrote about it for a radio station Marion, In. The newspaper for which we both worked, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, reprinted it.

You can read it here, and I encourage you to do so. It's a far more eloquent takedown of this abomination than I've managed in this space.

"Ruined by success and greed," is Ed's verdict on the whole business.

And by people who should know better, but have long forgotten what made their game great to begin with.

Another senior moment

 So now we have our NBA Finals, and, please, no carping that the Lakers or the Clippers of the Nets or one of the other Superfriends teams aren't in it. It's a team (the Bucks) that hasn't seen a Finals in 47 years against a team (the Suns) that hasn't seen one in 28, and if you don't think that's wonderful you just don't have a soul.

Also, CP3.

Who is Chris Paul, of course, grizzled warrior and future Hall of Famer, having a springtime moment in the autumn of his career. He's 36 years old now, and he's been one of the best point guards in the NBA for 16 years, and in all that time he's never played in an NBA Finals. Not in New Orleans or L.A. or Houston or Oklahoma City.

Finally, in his fifth stop, he's found the magic with a young team whose players know their roles and who needed only a veteran's steady hand to finally climb off the deck and do something.

You don't have to dislike the Giannis/Khris Middleton Bucks to root for that.

In fact, the Blob will crawl right out on this limb here and say if you do root for that, you'll be rooting for a champion. And that is because the Suns winning it all fits the prevailing storyline of 2021, which has been the Year of the Senior Moment here in Sportsball World.

First Tom Brady, 59, won another Super Bowl with a new team. 

(OK. So he's only 43)

Then Phil Mickelson won the PGA Championship at 50.

Then Helio Castroneves, after a dozen fruitless attempts, finally won his fourth Indianapolis 500 at 46.

And just in the last week, a 36-year-old British sprint specialist named Mark Cavendish won not one but two Tour de France stages -- his first stage wins in 13 years, and an astonishing comeback for a rider who hadn't competed in the Tour since 2018 and was all but out of the sport.  

Now?

Now 36-year-old Chris Paul makes the NBA Finals for the first time.

Tell me the karma ain't with him.

PEDumbness

 Sha'Carri Richardson owned what she did. Made no excuses. Smoked that offending joint with full knowledge of what she was doing, because humans are humans and every human has his or her moments of humanness, especially when you find out from a reporter that your biological mother has died.

Sha'Carri Richardson owns all of that.

Too bad the creaky bureaucrats who run the USADA (U.S. Anti-Doping Agency) can't do the same thing.

What they did was strip Richardson of her win in the 100 meters at the U.S, Olympic Trials, thereby essentially stripping her of the opportunity to entertain us at the Tokyo Olympics later this month. She's arguably the most dynamic young performer to light up women's track in the U.S. since FloJo, and now we won't get to see her on the big stage because ...

Well, because she tested positive for THC, after smoking that joint. That's a banned substance, and that breaks USADA doping protocols, and none of that is in dispute.

But there's another relevant "because" here: Because the USADA is a collection of antiques whose blindered perspective is unencumbered by such niceties as compassion and nuance.

A rule is a rule is a rule, to the antiques. Even if the rule makes no sense, and even when its application serves the cause of competitive fairness not at all.

That is, ostensibly, why these drug enforcement entities exist, and yet it's completely irrelevant in Richardson's particular case. Nothing she did by smoking that joint enhanced her performance, nor would in the future. 

Not, that is, unless we all missed the part about the Olympics adding the munchies as a sport. But I've looked all up and down the list of Olympic sports, and I don't see the Crushing A Tube Of Pringles 100 anywhere.

So, here we are: One of America's brightest young stars out of the Games, because of a moment of human weakness and a ridiculous rule that is, nonetheless, a rule. 

But, hey. I'm sure the Tokyo Olympics will be much better because of it.

Sarcasm detected.

Cheers and echoes

Of course you thought of the man, as the horn sounded and the sticks and gloves littered the ice. As the boys formed their happy scrum against the glass and the orange thunder rolled down on them from the stuffed house, an echo of the Before Time when there was no Bastard Plague to turn the world inside out.

Of course you thought of Bob Chase, as the handshake line formed and the Fort Wayne Komets paraded the Kelly Cup around the ice for the best fan base in minor league hockey.  How could you not?

He always said he'd surrender the mic when the Komets won a Kelly Cup, but then the years got too heavy and finally he laid down his burden, as all of us must. That happened the week of Thanksgiving five years ago, and still you hear him every hockey night in Fort Wayne. A man defines a game and a town and a team for 63 winters, these things will happen.

And so as I watched the video of the celebration from the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum last night, I kept hearing and seeing Chase. I kept hearing him bark "Look out!" into the mic, and seeing the grin that always seemed to sprawl ear to ear across his cheerful Yooper mug.

I also imagine that, like a lot of us, he's out there in the cosmos somewhere shaking his head and saying, "What a crazy year."

Because there's never been one crazier.

The Bastard Plague turned the ECHL upside down and gave it a good shake, and what fell out was something that only vaguely resembled a hockey season. Half the teams decided not to play at all. The rest didn't start playing until December. And the Komets agonized over whether to play in front of restricted crowds or just say to hell with it, finally opting to begin play in February.

That meant they played 20 or so games fewer than everyone else, but it also meant their season was more compacted. Players, especially goaltenders, came and went with dizzying regularity. 

So, of course, they somehow formed a bond anyway. And somehow won 29 of their 51 games and knocked out Wichita in five games in the first round of the playoffs. And went on to eliminate the Western Conference top seed, Allen, in four games after going down 1-0 in the best-of-five and trailing by three goals halfway through Game 2.

Then they took one of two in South Carolina in the finals, playing both games in a practice rink. And then a 4-2 win in Game 3, and a 2-1 win in front of that throwback Jungle to finish it.

Craziness. Sheer craziness.

And now I see Chase again, thinking about that.

I see him one night an indeterminate number of nights ago, breezing down the corridor after a Komets victory. He was headed back up to radio rinkside, moving far more briskly than a man then in his 80s had any right to. 

"Heeeyyy," he said as we passed, busting out the wall-to-wall grin. "That was somethin', eh?"

Sure was.

How media works. Part 1,347.

 You get used to what people don't get, after awhile. Or you fake it. Or you sigh wearily, shake your head and explain it all again for the eleventy-hundredth time.

Even if you're explaining it to a 51-year-old man who's been in the public eye for more than a quarter century, and should get how things work by now.

Alas, Phil Mickelson does not. Or at least his representatives don't.

Everyone got all warmed around the heart when Lefty won the PGA as a 50-year-old in May, becoming the oldest golfer ever to win a major. People ate it up like gourmet chocolate, because of course they did. Lefty's a popular guy. No one could have better starred in such an endearing storyline.

Ah, but now. Now he's just being a butthead.

This upon the news that Phil got all miffed at the Detroit News this week because it published a story this week that he (through his attorney) says was intended solely to embarrass him. The story -- published in advance of the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit that began yesterday -- detailed how a Michigan bookie allegedly cheated Mickelson out of half-a-million simoleons and went on trial for it back in 2007.

Mickelson (and his attorney) say this was dirty pool, and as a result he'll never-ever-ever play the Detroit tournament again. 

"I'm disappointed they would curiously pick this week to write an article about a bet that was made over 20 years ago and a jury trial that took place in 2007 ..." Mickelson's attorney, Glenn Cohen, told ESPN.

Sigh.

Head shake.

Clearing throat to explain, AGAIN ...

OK, first off: There's nothing curious about the timing of the News piece. At all. It came out this week because, duh, this is the week the PGA Tour comes to Detroit. Also, the News just recently obtained the federal court records from 2007. 

Next?

Oh, yes. The News was just trying to embarrass poor Phil Mickelson. 

For the response to that one, we take you inside the editorial offices of the Detroit News, where the big cheeses are discussing story plans. The Blob has obtained a super-secret recording of that discussion, and here are the relevant parts:

Big Cheese No. 1: OK, so what do we have coming up?

Big Cheese No. 2: Well, the PGA Tour is coming to Detroit. And that 51-year-old guy who just won the PGA, Phil What's-His-Name, will be in the field.

Big Cheese No. 1 (groaning softly): God, I hate that guy. So annoying.

Big Cheese No. 3  (eagerly): Me, too, boss!

Big Cheese No. 4 (even more eagerly): Me, three!

Big Cheese No. 1: So how can we embarrass him? 2?

Big Cheese No. 2: Well, we have this story about him getting slicked on a bet by a Michigan bookie years ago. Even got the court records from the bookie's trial.

Big Cheese No. 1: Perfect! Run that baby!

And now the Blob is compelled to admit, rather obviously, that it totally made all that up. There's no secret recording, no Big Cheese hate for Phil Mickelson, nothing like that. No one at the Detroit News was trying to embarrass Phil Mickelson. Only an idiot or Phil Mickelson's attorney would believe such nonsense.

The surprise here is not that you have to keep explaining to non-media people that this is not how media works, mind you. Folks like me who worked in media for four decades are used to that.

The surprise is that you have to explain it to Mickelson and his people.

Now, deep down, probably, Mickelson knows the Detroit News does not unaccountably have it in for him. And in any case, the story was about him being victimized, not victimizing someone else.

But he's a professional athlete, and more to the point a professional golfer, and a certain amount of entitlement comes with that. Professional golfers, as a whole, may not be the most spoiled rotten of athletes, but they're for sure in the team picture. Hence Mickelson's pouty decision to take his ball and go home from now on.

Which frankly embarrasses him a hell of a lot more than the News piece did, or ever could.

And a pervy day to you, too

 Yesterday was not a gold-star day for abused women, despite what Phylicia Rashad says. They let Bill Cosby, one-time America's Dad and, since 2018, a convicted rapist, walk out of the joint. 

This was widely taken as exoneration by some people who didn't know any better.

It wasn't. The Pennsylvania Supremes let him out on a technicality tied to a deal he made in 2005 with Bruce Castor -- who served as one of Donald Trump's suits in his second impeachment trial, and apparently wasn't much smarter 15 years earlier.

What happened was, Castor swung a deal in which he promised not to charge Cosby with drugging and sexually assaulting one of the many women who accused him of the same thing, if he would testify in her civil suit. The Pennsylvania Supremes threw out Cosby's conviction based on the fact he was later charged in the case anyway, saying it violated the prosecution's deal.

This does not mean Cosby didn't do what he went to prison for. It just means Bruce Castor screwed up by handing the old perv an ill-considered pass.

Cosby, of course, maintains all that drugging and raping was actually consensual sex, which the jury didn't buy on account of it was ridiculous. But it's an  old, dismaying refrain for the accused in these cases.

But your Honor ... she wanted it.

Followed closely by How much did you have to drink, ma'am? What were you wearing? Why did you go up to his room with him?

Same-old, same-old. And it got trotted out there yet again this week, virtually at the same time a passel of judges made Cosby a free man.

Hear about this Trevor Bauer deal?

The Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher and social media gadfly was accused this week of strangling, punching and injuring a woman so badly she wound up in the hospital with "significant head and facial trauma," according to her doctors. This happened during a sexual liaison a couple of months ago, and it came out in the domestic restraining order the woman filed early this week.

Bauer's defense?

You've heard it before: She wanted it.

His reps say it was all "wholly consensual," and provided messages they say prove she was inviting "rough sex." Well, of course.

"But what if it's true, Mr. Blob?" you're saying now.

Well, even if it's true, all that does is prove Trevor Bauer is one sick SOB, and no one you should allow your daughters within fifty nautical miles of. Because who other than a sick SOB would say "OK, cool," to beating the hell out of a woman during sex and strangling her until she passed out?

So Bauer's either guilty of aggravated sexual assault, or he's just another perv.

Like we don't have enough of those on the streets already. And just added one more.

The less-green grass

 Faithful followers of the Blob ("'Faithful followers'," you're saying. "Get him") know I occasionally spew irritating bursts of whining about my cruddy baseball team, the Cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates. How they're really just a Triple A team in a major-league body, and how MLB allows their ownership, which is cheaper than a $2 suit, to get away with such larceny.

Well, the Cruds are cruds again this season, firmly settled in their usual abode -- last place in the NL Central -- and already 18 games out of first and 10 games out of next-to-last. But you know what people say about grass.

It's always greener on the other side. At least until you get to the other side.

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Who are taking crudness to new depths, and who have robbed the Blob of its ability to say it roots for the worst team in the National League. Well, not anymore!

No, sir. The D-backs, through sheer will, effort and an abject lack of talent, have seized the throne.

After losing 7-4 to the St. Louis Cardinals last night they're now 22-60, which on July 1 puts them dead last in the NL West. Already they're  nearly 30 games out of first (29.5), and a distant 12.5 out of next-to-last.

They're even eight games worse than my Cruds, if you can believe that.

But don't go away. There's more.

Know what their record is since the end of April?

Since the the end of April, they're 8-49. And, no, that's not a misprint.

Eight-and-49!

I can't even imagine what it must be like to play for the D-backs right now, and realize there's still three months of this torture remaining. I can't imagine what it's like to be a fan, burning to a crisp in Arizona's 115-degree heat without even decent baseball to take your mind off it. 

Gaaah.

Guess the grass on the Pirates' side of the fence is greener than I thought.