PSA for today

 Which is to say, the Blob is off to Vermont and Boston for some tourist-ing tomorrow. And so do not expect the usual regularity of spew.

"Aw, gee, Dad!" you're saying.

Not.

Chaos theory

 America now being the home of insane ex-presidents and dogs and cats living together and what-not, the Blob pauses today to mourn a great missed opportunity. 

Kyrie Irving is not going to the Lakers.

It seems no one on his wish list, even the Lakers, wanted his crazy a**, so he's picked up his option and will play one more season for the Nets, the unlucky stiffs. The Nets will of course greet this news with public restraint, while behind the scenes muttering "Jeezly crow, another season with THAT wack-job. God help us."

As for the Lakers ... well, a great chance for some delicious chaos goes by the boards. Since Russell Westbrook opted into the last year of his contract, the Lake Show is stuck with him for another year, too, and they've gotta pay him $47 mill besides. Imagine if the Lakers had managed to swing a deal to bring Kyrie to town on top of it.

It's hard to see how they could have done it, even if they'd wanted to. It would certainly have had to be a sign-and-trade, and the Lakers don't really have any assets with enough heft to pull off the trade part. 

But just imagine: LeBron, Kyrie and Russ on the same team. Think of the chemistry! Think of the fit! Think of how many basketballs they would need!

Russ was a horrible fit for the Lakers, but adding Kyrie, too?   

Now that would be some quality entertainment. 

Think the Big One at Talladega and you've got it.

Buyer's remorse

 I feel for Freddie Freeman. I do.

What I don't do is understand him.

Look, I get that when you play for one team in one city for a pile of years, you form attachments, and a piece of your heart grows there you can't uproot with a neutron bomb. So I understand what happened last week, when his new team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, went back to Atlanta for the first time since Freeman took the money and ran, and Freddie spent most of the series bawling like a baby.

He never really wanted to leave Atlanta. That much is obvious, and that's probably going to tick off his Dodgers teammates, who will no doubt say "Hey, what about us?" I fact, Clayton Kershaw already sounded off about this, telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that while Freeman's homecoming was cool and all, he hopes Freddie doesn't consider the Dodgers "second fiddle."

To which I'd respond, "Welcome to free agency, Clayton." Teams no longer buy a player's unswerving loyalty, only his services. It's a big ol' mercenary world out there now, and has been since, I don't know, Wade Boggs left the Red Sox to go play for the Yankees (to name but one example). And in a mercenary world, where everything is about buying and selling, occasionally there will be buyer's remorse. 

This is pretty clearly what's happening here. So much so, that Freeman has apparently fired the agent who worked the Dodgers deal for him.

It seems his negotiating team overplayed its hand by issuing the Braves an ultimatum, to which the Braves responded by going out and signing another player to take Freeman's place. Which closed the door on Freeman returning.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "If Freeman really didn't want to leave Atlanta, why didn't he tell his negotiating team that? Why didn't he just say, 'Look, I want to play for the Braves, make it happen'? Doesn't his agent work for him?"

Well ... yeah. And that's the part where I don't understand. 

But, hey, maybe it works differently in these big-deal deals. Seems like it shouldn't, though. Seems like all Freeman should have to do is tell his agent what to do, and the agent does it.

In which case, if he's not where he wants to be, it's kinda his fault. Much as I feel for him.

Welcome to Oregon. Now go home.

 The Saudi LIV "We Aren't Just Thugs And Murderers, We Play Golf, Too!" Tour comes to the U.S. this weekend, specifically Oregon, even more specifically Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club in tiny North Plains. And are the folks there amped for that!

OK, so ... not so much.

In fact, the mayor of North Plains, and several other mayors in surrounding cities, have sent the club's owner the ever-popular "We have concerns" letters. Some club members aren't too hot on the idea of playing host to a bunch of guys who've proved they'll take money from anyone. And Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden has spoken out against the tournament, reminding people of the shenanigans the Saudis pulled a few years back right in Oregon's backyard.

What happened was, a Saudi student ran over a 15-year-old girl in nearby Portland and kept going. Charged with first-degree murder, he removed a tracking device and vanished. U.S. authorities are convinced the Saudi government facilitated his escape with a fake passport and private jet back to Saudi Arabia.

Seems a bunch of people in the Portland area (and Pumpkin Ridge is) haven't forgotten that. Just as other bunches of people haven't forgotten that 15 of the 19 terrorists who attacked the U.S. on 9/11 were Saudis, too. Some of the families of the lost on that dark day have spoken out against the LIV tour, and have scheduled a news conference for tomorrow morning, the first day of the tournament.

I can pretty guess what the gist of their comments will be. 

"How could you play golf for the people who murdered our sons/daughters/husbands/wives?" will likely be one theme.

"We don't want you here. Go home," will likely be another.

Both of those sentiments may be expressed using different verbiage, mind you. But here at the Blob we like to keep it at least marginally clean.

Dan on the lam

I know what Daniel Snyder is doing. He's looking for the one-armed man who killed his wife.

Heard he was hiding out in the French Riviera. On a yacht. On, you know, Daniel Snyder's yacht.

And, OK, so enough with the bad jokes from "The Fugitive." Even if Snyder is doing an excellent impression of Dr. Richard Kimble right now.

Like Kimble, he's on the lam, having fled to his yacht across the pond to avoid a subpoena from the U.S. House Oversight Committee. The committee wants him to testify about all the underhanded crap he's pulled over the years as owner of the Washington Commanders. You know, like intimidating witnesses, smearing former employees to take the heat off himself, feeling up Commanders cheerleaders and behaving like some street-corner pimp. All that cool stuff.

Now we learn that Snyder's not only a dirtbag, he's a fugitive from justice. 

He's overseas to avoid being served, and yesterday one of his attorneys refused to be served on his behalf. "Declined to accept" the subpoena, is how the ESPN story put it.

Declined to accept? Like, what, it was a dinner invitation or something?

The Blob is no legal scholar, so it's not surprising this is news to me. You can decline to accept a subpoena? Really? So if, God forbid, a process server ever came to my door, I could just say, "Nah, I'm good" and hand the subpoena back to him?

Of course I couldn't. But of course, I'm not Daniel Snyder, hiding out in the French Riviera behind my money and my Great Wall of Suits and my rich-white-guy privilege.

None of which changes what he is now.

I believe "common criminal" fits.

Field of pray

 I have seen prayer committed on football fields. Many times.

I have it seen committed on football fields where self-appointed arbiters of when it's appropriate to pray, and for what, and by whom, have booed it lustily. A sitting Vice-President, in a thoroughly choreographed act, once even walked out of a stadium to protest it.

On a certain Friday in 2001, I saw coaches and players from two public high schools kneel together in a small Indiana farming community while smoke still stained the sky over Manhattan.

One night, I saw a public high school kid named Drue Tranquill call his teammates and opponents together to pray for an opponent who'd been seriously injured in their just-concluded game.

So pardon me if I don't get the big deal over the Supremes ruling that a high school football coach fired for kneeling on the field with his players was free to do so. I've seen it a million times, so often it was just part of the backdrop of all the Friday nights I spent in high school football stadiums across 38 years. And you know what?

At no time did any of the kids who knelt with Coach look coerced  or emotionally scarred or, God forbid, violated in a constitutional sort of way. Even though peer pressure can be a powerful thing, kids are kids. What puts their parents in a lather, they just shrug at.

Know what else?

Like all such rulings and laws that attempt to govern public behavior, this one will have consequences. And those consequences may not play out the way supporters of the decision envisioned.

See: Prohibition.

See also: Last week's decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

There are a bunch of historic parallels between the two, and just as the former didn't work out the way those who pushed for it hoped it would, neither will the latter. If enough people want to drink, they'll find a way to make it happen. If enough people think women, and not the state. should control their own medical decisions, they'll find a way to make that happen, too. 

Ruling or no ruling. Law or no law.

And Coach kneeling to pray on the football field?

That his school overreached in canning him seems pretty obvious, given that there apparently was never any conclusive evidence he blatantly coerced any of his players to join him. But those who see this decision as a victory for religious freedom perhaps haven't fully considered what "religious freedom" means.

To them it seems to mean freedom for their religion. But what it really means is the Muslim coach kneeling at midfield to lead his team in a round of "Allah akbar!" is protected by this ruling, too. Or a Hindu coach who sends up prayers to Vishnu on behalf of his team.

In a multi-faith society, that could happen. And the celebrants of yesterday's ruling will of course be the first to say "Wait a minute ..."

But, hey. You sow, you reap. That's the name of that tune.

Wimbledon, clear as mud

 Wimbledon begins this week, less than 24 hours after the Colorado Avalanche hoisted the Stanley Cup in Tampa last night. I don't know what that says except the hockey season goes on so long a baby born on opening night is drawing Social Security by the time Stanley gets clean-and-jerked, and that just seems wrong somehow.

But what do I know. In my day hockey was about falling down a lot, losing the feeling in  my extremities and drinking hot chocolate. Now it's about board shorts, heatstroke and "How many burgers you want?"

And as for Wimbledon ...

Well, God bless its high-born, that-simply-isn't-done-old-sport reverence for self.

On the eve of the fortnight, Wimby club officials came out to explain themselves on their ludicrous Russian/Belorussian player ban, and it made about as much sense as you'd expect. Which is to say, hardly any.

Consider this gem, from All England Club chairman Ian Hewitt: "But also, it was very important to us that Wimbledon, given the profile that we have, should not be used in any way, by the propaganda machine which we know the Russian government employs in relation to its own people and how their position in the world is presented and that would be, we just would not countenance Wimbledon success or participation in Wimbledon being misused in that way ..."

Well, that's as clear as mud.

Look. The Blob has said this before, but it bears repeating: By blindly banning Russian and Belorussian players, Wimby is actually punishing some who've publicly decried Vladimir Putin's naked aggression against Ukraine.  Which of course in its own way gives the Russians a pass -- which would be exactly what the staunchly pro-Ukrainian British government has said it doesn't want, and is part of Ian Hewitt's rationale for the ban.

Also, there is the aforementioned self-reverence with which Wimbledon routinely swaddles itself. No one on God's earth would consider it a boost to Russia if Daniil Medvedev, the world No. 1, won the men's singles title. Hell, it's probably safe to say most of the world doesn't even know he's Russian. To them he's just a guy who spells "Daniel" weird.

So, no. It's beyond ridiculous to think anyone who sees Medvedev hoisting the Wimbledon trophy on Centre Court is going to think "Look! A Russian won Wimbledon! Damn, maybe Putin's right!"

Completely absurd. And not how it works, needless to say.

But Wimbledon is Wimbledon. You wear white. You keep quiet on the serve, you lot. And you certainly aren't going to let such a MONUMENTAL WORLD STAGE be used for propaganda purposes.

Why, you're not even going to use a tennis tournament for such purposes. Which of course is all Wimbledon is, in the end.

Progress in shadow

 Timing is everything, people say, and what a concept that is. On the one hand, it's often a great explainer of good fortune; on the other, it just as often outlines the madness of the world in blazing neon.

Case in point: Title IX and the striking down of Roe v. Wade.

The former's 50th anniversary was just the other day, and thank God for it. It mandated that schools had to show  progress in gender equity if they wanted to get their hands on federal dollars, and among other effects it brought about a sea change in women's athletics.

Thanks primarily to Title IX, women's sports went from coaches driving the team van and washing the team uniforms -- or, on the high school level, having no interscholastic sports at all -- to at least semi-equal footing with the men. 

Not equal footing, mind you. Not with the men who still overwhelmingly run athletic departments griping about it ("Dammit, we had to get rid of wrestling because of women's field hockey, even though it costs nothing compared to football and men's hoops"), or paying mere lip service to it. (See: The women's Final Four last year, where the amenities looked like something you'd get from a rest stop vending machine.)

But progress has been made, and for one day it was celebrated. And then, the next day, the Supreme Court put that progress in shadow by striking down Roe v. Wade, blowing up 50 years of settled law that acknowledged women might actually be more than just Petri dishes for growing babies.

The Supremes -- at least three of whom perjured themselves in their confirmation hearings -- said, nah, sorry, ladies. We're gonna kick this back to the several states, which can treat you as Petri dishes if they want. We don't care one way or the other.

Now there's some timing for ya, by gumphrey. 

On the one hand, we live in a country that occasionally does have a conscience where women are concerned, even if it happens mostly by accident. On the other, we also live in a country whose highest court believes it's the inherent right of any state to dictate the private medical decisions of women -- effectively, in the most extreme cases, making them state property as soon as they become pregnant.

And what a perfectly Soviet concept that is. 

In any event, it's one step forward, two steps back, as former Notre Dame women's basketball coach Muffet McGraw pointed out yesterday. God bless America the Schizoid.

Movin' deck chairs

 I get where the IHSAA is coming from here. I think.

Maybe.

They're trying to gin up March again, see, and so this week they unveiled a major change to the Indiana high school basketball tournament. Beginning next year, the two-game regional will go back to being a one-game regional, as it was when class buckets first came in. And the semistate, now a one-game affair, will become a four-team, all-day event, with a secondary draw after the regional round to spice things up.

The idea is to get everyone ramped up for the last two rounds of the tournament. And also to give sectional winners a breather of sorts after a multi-game sectional.

I get that.

I think.

Maybe.

Of course, what I also get is what legendary Anderson Madison Heights coach Phil Buck told me one time when his Pirates were preparing for the regional.

I asked him something about how tough it was to play two hard games in one day, and Buck just laughed.

"Ah, Benny," he said (Buck being one of the few people who could get away with calling me "Benny"). "These kids play eight hours a day outside in the hot sun in the summertime. This is nothin'."

And that's doubly true today, with more and more kids attending basketball camps in the summer and getting sucked into the voracious maw of AAU ball. Two games in a day? 

It is, as Buck said, nothin'. Especially when it's been a full week between sectional Saturday and regional Saturday.

So that rationale falls flat.

Of course, falling equally flat is the counter-argument to the changes, which is that swapping out the all-day regional for an all-day semistate will mean more travel expense for parents and fans.

Problem with that is, the advent of class hoops has meant even sectionals are no longer as local as they used to be. And the regional round?

Well, this past year, the winners of our "local" sectionals already had to travel a bit for regional play. Sectional winners locally had to travel to Triton and Frankfort in Class A; in 2A, to North Judson from as far away as Bluffton; in 3A, to New Castle from as far away as Garrett and Wawasee; and in 4A, to Logansport from as far away as DeKalb.

Not sure how much more travel we're talking about for a semistate. If any.

So, fine. If the IHSAA thinks this will give the tournament a better contour -- everything building organically toward the state finals -- so be it. But you get right down to it, the changes amount to little more than moving deck chairs around on the Titanic.

OK. So bad analogy.

What's in a "the"?

Today we officially celebrate THE Day at the Blob, because THE U.S, Patent and Trademark Office has officially granted THE Ohio State University a trademark on the word "THE," which means OSU can now officially license merchandise using THE as part of it.

The Blob finds THIS ridiculous, but Ohio State has had a bug up its keister about it for at least three years now, when the school first filed to trademark it.

What you can say about that is THE Ohio State University is home to a lot of self-reverential twits, and that they all must have an inferiority complex wider than the Olentangy to make such a fuss over three measly letters. Also they're not real up to snuff on their history.

After all, it was Ohio University over in Athens that was calling itself THE Ohio University before there ever was an Ohio State. Which means Ohio State basically stole it to begin with.

In any case, all THE Buckeyes have done is set themselves up for some nuclear ridicule down the road. No one's more inventive at ridicule than college students, after all. And so imagine the banner the rival student section will unfurl should the Buckeyes ever again lose to Wisconsin or Penn State or, God forbid, even Michigan.

THE Losers, it will read.

Ouch.

Commissioner MIA

 I don't know. Few more days of this, and a police report might be in order.

"I'd like to report a missing person, officer."

"Name?"

"Roger Goodell."

"Occupation?"

"Commissioner of the NFL. Well, he was, anyway."

"Where was he when you last saw him?"

"I'm not sure. Someone claiming to be him is still around, and it does look like him, but it's not him. Used to be we called him Roger the Hammer because of the way he'd bring the pain when a player stepped out of line. But now?

"Now he's got a player who's been accused by 26 women of waving his tallywhacker at them like a conductor's baton, and who just settled with 20 of them because he didn't want to get his a** kicked in court. Meanwhile, he's got an owner who's a worse dirtbag than any player he's ever disciplined. And he hasn't lifted a finger to deal with either of them."

And so it goes, and so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say.

Roger the Hammer has morphed into some gelded imposter, and heaven knows where the real Rog has gotten to. This one dithers and frithers (not a word, but it should be) while Deshaun Watson all but admits to harassing a battalion of women, and Daniel Snyder, mouth-breathing owner of the Washington Commanders, flees overseas to avoid testifying before a congressional committee.

Which hasn't stopped the committee from issuing a damning report that fairly begs Goodell to do, well, something. In it, Snyder is accused of trying to cover his club's rampant culture of sexual harassment by smearing former GM Bruce Allen, hiring private dicks to intimidate witnesses and using a backdoor lawsuit to obtain phone records and emails.

This on top of basically pimping out the team's cheerleaders, and bullying anyone who objected by calling him "gay" -- using the word as an epithet, as if this were the 1950s or something.

The Commanders say, ah, all that happened years ago, and they've made a "positive transformation" since. Goodell has backed that play, maintaining the Commanders are shipshape on the culture thing now, and, anyway, he couldn't do anything about Snyder if he wanted to.

"I don't have the authority to remove him," Goodell told the House Committee on Oversight and Reform yesterday.

Which is true, technically, but makes it sound as if he's powerless, which he isn't. Although it would take 24 of 32 owners voting to kick Snyder out of the club, you have to think Goodell's opinion on the matter might exert some sort of influence. He may serve at the pleasure of the owners, but does that mean they never listen to him?

I suppose that's possible. Might even be probable.

But that doesn't mean Goodell shouldn't try. And it for sure doesn't mean he has to publicly defend Snyder and his whole rotten organization.

A strategic lack of comment from the commissioner would  have sufficed. And if that hung Snyder and the Commanders out to dry, so what?

It's the least they deserve.

An unfinished life

 I met Caleb "Biggie" Swanigan one time, when his life was still a Hollywood script in embryo. It was after a basketball game at Carroll High School, and he was polite and kind of shy but neither on the basketball floor, where he'd led Homestead to a win that night.

What I remember about his game is he was a load-and-a-half on the low block, a skilled passer out of the double team and could pop it from the arc when the occasion called.

What I remember about his life is it was straight out of Dickens: Young boy drifts from one homeless shelter to another, lives under a bridge for awhile, finds a home, finally, with a Fort Wayne native and local athletic legend Roosevelt Barnes.

He's 13 years old, and he weighs 360 pounds. But Rosie sees something in him, gives him structure and love, and Swanigan becomes a state champion and an Indiana Mr. Basketball, a beloved star at Purdue, and finally an NBA draft pick.

That's the script. That's the "Miracle" film treatment, with one last lingering shot of Biggie in his Portland Trail Blazers uniform while the musical score soars triumphantly over the closing credits.

If only life were like that. If only, as so many have said, it were like the movies.

But because it's not, Biggie Swanigan is no longer in the NBA today. He's no longer anywhere, at least in this earthly realm.

He died Monday of natural causes, at the age of 25, and the shock waves rolled out from Fort Wayne and West Lafayette and Indiana and all of basketball America. NBA players don't die at 25 of natural causes, in the Hollywood scripts. Life follows the prescribed track, and it doesn't continue on after the closing credits, getting all weird and messy and horrible the way life so often does. 

 For Biggie Swanigan, it got like this: He opted out of the bubble season in 2020, and never made it back to the NBA. His genetic disposition to being heavy allegedly took over from there, and word is he gained back a great deal of the weight he'd worked so hard to shed.

I don't know if that's true or not. And I don't really care, because ultimately that's not what matters here.

What matters is a remarkable young man with a remarkable story is gone at 25, another of A.E. Housman's athletes dying young. That doesn't make his story any more tragic than any other, but it does lend it a certain pathos.  If any death at 25 means a life unfinished, it's underlined even more when that life seemed so physically vital and, well, indestructible. 

In the end, of course, it never is. In the end, life ain't fair, and that's just the hard truth of it.

Dammit.

If wishing made it so ...

 So I see the GOP in the state of Texas (motto: Where Dumb Goes To Live Forever, Like Dracula) has adopted a resolution stating that Joe Biden "was not legitimately elected," and that he therefore should be referred to as "acting President" and not "President."

Which I guess means it's the Texas GOP's position that fairy tales are real and should be taught in our schools as science-based fact. 

(Also, on a grimmer note, that Joseph Goebbels was right when he said if you tell a big enough lie and repeat it often enough, people will eventually believe it.)

In any case, this got me wondering what other realities Texans might decide aren't realities, now that the state GOP has shown them what is possible. And, because the Blob is mostly a sports Blob, it's those possibilities that come most readily to mind.

And so, humbly, the Blob presents Texas Republicans with a few more resolutions for its consideration:

* That it is hereby resolved the Dallas Cowboys won the Super Bowl last year, and that in fact they have won a DOZEN Super Bowls, WAY more than any other team. And that this is why they are the GREATEST  FOOTBALL TEAM IN THE HISTORY OF FOOTBALL TEAMS.

* That it is also resolved any team who claims to have "beaten" the Cowboys in the playoffs did not legitimately do so, and that there is ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT ABOUT THIS. And that is why NFL playoff integrity is of paramount concern to the Texas GOP, until of course the Cowboys win again.

* That it is hereby resolved Nick Saban is a lying, cheating son of a biscuit, and how dare he say bad stuff about our A&M Aggies, and he is therefore declared to be an Enemy of the State. OK, so just our state, but you catch the drift.

* That it is hereby resolved that A.J. Foyt Jr., a loyal and revered son of Texas, in fact won SEVEN Indianapolis 500s, not four, and that anyone who says otherwise is either a BIG POOPY LIAR or Roger Penske, who everyone knows CHEATED HIS GLUTES OFF to win those eleventy-hundred 500s or however many it is.

* That it is also hereby resolved A.J. would have won EIGHT 500s if it weren't for that damn Coogan.

* That it is hereby resolved Notre Dame didn't legitimately beat the Texas Longhorns in the 1970 Cotton Bowl, or in the 1977 Cotton Bowl, or on any of the other seven occasions the Fighting Irish supposedly beat the Horns. There is AMPLE PROOF of scoreboard fraud in ALL NINE of the Irish "victories," and so heretofore Notre Dame will be designated the "acting winner" in those games and not the "winner."

* That it is also hereby resolved the Longhorns did not get "lucky" to beat Arkansas in their 1969 Game of the Century, which is what they say in Arkansas but who cares what those hayseeds in Arkansas say.

And, finally ...

* That anyone who says the Houston Astros "did not legitimately win" the 2017 World Series is also just a big poopy liar, because the Astros DID NOT EITHER cheat, and that therefore baseball integrity is not a priority for the Texas GOP because ... well, because it's just not, OK?

So there.

The inconvenience of history

 Today is the official federal holiday commemorating Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when ex-slaves in Texas became the last to learn they were free. And so, as something of a history nerd, the Blob is calling timeout from Sportsball. 

It would rather acknowledge what a stubborn thing history is, and how you can't escape it no matter how much you try to deny or muzzle it.

For instance, I'm guessing there are more than a few history teachers who are thanking their deities Juneteenth falls in the summer, so the parents of their white students don't start caterwauling about Critical Race Theory again.

See, if school was in, their children would be compelled to talk (and their teachers to teach) about Juneteenth. Which would bring up America's original sin of slavery. Which might lead to discussions that would make their children feel bad.

(They probably wouldn't, kids being kids. But reality intruding on a cherished narrative spoils all the fun.)

In any event, little Johnny or Susie might learn it was white folk who did the enslaving, and how the legacy of that has stained and informed the American experiment to this very day. And that would be history at its most inconvenient.

This means it's history certain people don't want to think about, or want their kids thinking about. So woe betide any teacher who tries to get them to think about it,

That would compel those certain people to grab their torches and pitchforks and run said teacher right out of town on a rail, no matter how accomplished an educator said teacher was. This might seem exaggeration for effect, but the torch-and-pitchfork crowd has already done it, having become that unhinged. Shoot, look at what happened just yesterday in Tennessee, where a bunch of loons with Stop White Replacement (huh?) signs gathered to protest a Juneteenth celebration.

(They were all masked up, in the photos. The Blob figures that was because it's June in Tennessee, and the usual sheets and hoods would have been too hot.)

But I digress.

Point is, we are deep in the days of CRT hysteria, which is why the very inconvenience of history is what makes it most valuable. Santyana brushed up against the truth when he said those who forget history are condemned to repeat it, but that was only a glancing blow. What's more true, in the Blob's humble opinion, is that those who distort history (or who excise certain parts of it because it might make certain people uncomfortable) are not just condemned to repeat it, but to deny its very existence.

This is going on right now in America, where a mountain of evidence is indicting a former president of trying to foment a bloodless coup. That it failed doesn't diminish its threat to  who we are and what we stand for as a nation.

And yet ...

And yet the former president, a gifted liar, has convinced a startling number of Americans that it's all a Democratic witch hunt. This of course ignores that all the Jan. 6 testimony against him is coming from Republicans. But then facts can be such pesky things. 

As is history, which is exceedingly messy as well. Interpreting the past and how it impacts the present is an art, not a science. If it were the latter, historians everywhere would be out of work, and the unemployment rate would be considerably higher. But interpreting and re-interpreting the past is a never-ending job, and so H.W. Brands and S.C. Gwynne and all the rest can breathe a sigh of relief.

Which gets us back to Juneteenth, in the Blob's usual meandering way.

I'm wondering, given all of the above, how teachers fearful of the torches-and-pitchforks crowd would prepare a lesson plan on Juneteenth. Would they dare risk the wrath of the hysterics by actually talking about slavery? Or would they toe the perceived party line, which sounds to the Blob like a passage from "Forrest Gump"?

And then, on June 19, 1865, freedom was proclaimed for all enslaved peoples in Texas. And that's all I have to say about that.

I'd like to think that wouldn't be the case. I'd like to think there would be a discussion of, you know, history, and how we've gotten to where we are as a nation because of it, and how every nation, no matter how great, got there by doing some pretty un-great things.

I'd like to think -- oh, how I'd like to think -- we would never go back to the days when schoolkids were taught that  Washington never told a lie (especially about that cherry tree), and that Davy Crockett died at the Alamo swinging old Betsy at a passel of freedom-hating Mexicans, and that the Civil War wasn't about slavery at all.

The first and third of those aren't true.

The second almost certainly isn't true, or is at best a gross distortion of the truth.

Here's hoping it will always be safe to say that.

One game

 I know what you're thinking this morning. I'd probably be thinking the same thing if history hadn't taught me that momentum is a mythical creature where matters of sport are involved.

You're thinking the Tampa Bay Lightning are done like dinner, after getting Avalanched 7-0 in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final last night.

You're thinking they're toast flambe. Dead men skating. On the waiting list for a trip to Toe Tag City.

Well ... could be you're right.

Could be the Avs are just that much better than the Lightning, who go back to Tampa down two-games-to-none after being outscored 10-2 in the first two games. They lost Game 1 3-2 in overtime, and last night they lost the moment they stepped on the ice, or so it seems.

Seven-to-zip. A touchdown and an extra point to doughnuts. Surely another sweep awaits for Colorado, which bageled Edmonton 4-0 in the conference finals.

Except.

Except this is, again, a sporting deal. And it's a two-time defending Stanley Cup champ we're talking about. And momentum in hockey, even more than pro basketball, has an odd way of turning on a dime when you least expect it.

Like, you know, in 1980, when the U.S. Olympic team shocked the Russians a handful of days after the Russians obliterated it 10-3 in Madison Square Garden.

Or like the Lightning beat Toronto in seven games, in Toronto, after trailing three-games-to-two in these very playoffs. Or, in the round preceding this one, knocking out the Rangers in six games after New York won the first two games.

All of this is not exactly the Blob saying the Lightning are a lock to win Game 3 tomorrow night. I'm just saying don't be surprised if it happens -- and don't be surprised if the Final goes back to Colorado tied at two games apiece.

Of course, it's just as likely the Avs are hoisting Lord Stanley in two more games. Which goes back to my original point.

One game is one game. And so on to the next one.

Thanks, Dad

 Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there, the ones who taught your kids how to hit the cutoff man and execute a pick-and-roll and throw a football that didn't quack like a wounded duck, and also to form sentences that didn't sound as if they were written by a German shepherd.

("Your dad never got around to that last, did he?" you're saying now)

In other words, thanks to all of you for being an inspiration, and also for the comic relief when you spend ten minutes trying to figure out why the goldang microwave won't goldang come on, only discover it wasn't goldang plugged in.

If nothing else, your kids will thank you for expanding their vocabulary.

I could write some stuff about my own dad, who never taught me to be athlete but passed on to me the value of honesty and responsibility, and a reverence for the past and its lessons. But I realize I said it all 3 1/2 years ago, when Dad died at the full measure of 91 years.

Here's what I wrote then. And enjoy the day, Dads:

Things passed along

"Swing level," the tall man says. "Don't try to kill it."

He is bent at the waist, his eternally angular frame assuming the rough approximation of a question mark. His right arm is extended. In his hand is a baseball.

Standing considerably closer to him than the requisite 60 feet, 6 inches is a speck of a boy who looks as if he were rush ordered from the Department of Runty Kids With Really Huge Glasses. The bat on his shoulder is almost as big as he is. It is high summer in Indiana; some indeterminate evening, twilight dawdling along as twilight tends to do in high summer, man and boy in the backyard of their neat brick home on the southeast side of Fort Wayne.

The man shakes the ball.

"Swing level," he says again. "Don't try to kill it."

He lobs the ball gently.

The boy swings level.

Above the ball. Below the ball. Above the ball again. On and on, the man shaking the ball and lobbing it, the boy swinging and missing.

"Swing level," the man keeps saying. "Don't try to kill it ..."

***

My father never raised no major leaguers.

His only son was comically small for his age and couldn't see a damn thing without the glasses that sat on his face like a pair of binoculars, the lenses thicker than the bottom of a Coke bottle. Baseballs ducked and ran for cover when he swung. Dribbling a basketball was like trying to dribble Jupiter. He couldn't throw a football 20 yards, and when he did hunters all over northeast Indiana went for their guns to bring down that quacking duck.

I was no athlete, in other words. I had the fine motor skills of a tree stump, and my track coach -- the only sport I ever quasi-participated in -- once damned me with this faint praise: "You've got great form. If you had any endurance, you could be pretty good."

So there were no "Field of Dreams" moments between us, father and son lobbing a baseball back and forth in the gloaming. Mostly this was because I couldn't catch a baseball with a three-state dragnet. And, partly, it was because my father was never more than a nominal sports fan.

Oh, he'd watch baseball or football or mostly basketball, because, at 6-foot-3, he played high school basketball the way most 6-3 boys in Indiana played it in the 1940s. For a time he was fascinated with tennis, mainly because he loved watching Bjorn Borg play. But we never really bonded over sports; the supreme irony of our mutual lives, and something we frequently laughed about, is that I grew up to be a sportswriter.

We will laugh about it no more, sadly. Dad left us yesterday in the skinny hours of morning, going peacefully in his sleep. At 91, he lived his full measure of years and more, and few men ever lived them better or more worthily. He was not famous or weighted with earthly honors or a great man as the world measures these things, but he was true and honest and everyone who ever knew him loved him. And surely there is greatness in that.

And, like all true and honest fathers, he will endure because of the things he passed along to his children.

If we never mastered the art of swinging level, for instance, we mastered other things, as father and son. Because of Dad, a former Civil War re-enactor, I am a Civil War nerd of the first order; his old re-enactor's uniform hangs in my hall closet, and I squeeze into it every Halloween (I am neither as tall nor as angular as the old man). Every few springs, alone, I make a pilgrimage to Gettysburg or Shiloh or some other Civil War haunt. That is my father's legacy.

So, too, is a general reverence for history, for the lessons it teaches that human beings routinely and blithely ignore, and for its relics. They are all around my house, these days; on the bookshelf in our den are Civil War minie balls and a chunk of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's wall and a tiny round button from a World War I German grenade, salvaged from the torn earth of the Western Front.

On another shelf is my Dad's old baseball glove. In one corner leans a cut-down hockey stick that belonged to his father, its age-dark handle wrapped in ancient black tape. And in the kitchen, on one wall in the breakfast nook, hangs a narrow knickknack shelf.

On it, carefully placed, are a clutch of wooden blocks and a glass jar of marbles. Scattered among them are several small lead soldiers, striking belligerent poses. Old campaign buttons -- two of them Roosevelt/Wallace buttons dating to 1944 -- lie at their feet, as if the soldiers were tasked with guarding them.

That shelf, and those things, have been there for so long I rarely notice them anymore. But in the pre-dawn darkness yesterday, when the phone rang and the word came that Dad was gone, I found myself looking at them again. And thanking God I'd known a man who treasured such things, and how lucky I was to be his son.

"Swing level," the tall man says. "Don't try to kill it ..."

Always, Dad. Always. 

-- Nov. 17, 2018

The Gray Lady, and gray areas

 There's nothing the Blob loves more than self-proclaimed bastions of free speech muzzling free speech. Hypocrisy makes my heart glow like a Yule log ember.

OK. So that's completely not true.

Actually, as a former bastioneer (or something) myself, it annoys the bejeezus out of me. Because the people doing the muzzling are people who ought to know better, but don't. Instead, they cling to notions of journalistic purity that read like they came from the quill of John Peter Zenger himself.

In other words, they're, like, 400 years out of date.

Which brings us to the latest anachronistic bastioneers (really like that word), the poobahs at the New York Times. After buying the floundering sports website The Athletic, they declared it would be an independent entity under the Times umbrella, and thus there would be no substantive changes in its content or philosophy. That of course was a lie.

Because now the Times has announced Athletic staffers will be banned from expressing their political beliefs on social media or any other platform. This presumably includes social or political commentary that pertains to sports (because the intersection is well-populated these days), but the Times says, well, no ... kinda ... maybe.

Thus does the Gray Lady wander into a vast gray area.

I mean, if, for instance, Steve Kerr sounds off again about gun control, are Athletic writers allowed to comment and/or expand upon it? Are they allowed to do more than simply serve up a lot of neutered pablum without pointing out that certain politicians of a certain bent are taking X amount of dollars from the NRA? And if they're not allowed to do that, what's the point of addressing what Kerr has to say?

And what about anthem protests against racial injustice? Will staffers be allowed to comment on those in any substantive way? If a Republican Vice-President conducts another staged walkout vis-a-vis Mike Pence at that Colts game a few years back, will they be allowed to comment on that?

"I don't personally view matters of race as politics," Times muckety Paul Fichtenbaum responded to questions about this.

Race isn't political? 

The hell is this man talking about? And from what planet is he talking about it?

The skinny is, this is destined to be one glorious quagmire, and it's entirely of the Times creation. They've so twisted themselves in knots trying to maintain outmoded notions of objectivity they come off sounding as gelded as Funny Cide. 

Lately, that's sounded like this: Let us not unduly piss off any political party, or that party's supporters, endeavoring always to treat all views with equal respect and gravity, no matter how utterly batshite they are.

That's a trifle more wordy than the Times current motto, "All The News That's Fit To Print." But it certainly seems more accurate these days.

Which would seem to be important for a newspaper, after all.

Champs to chumps to champs

 They confounded us to the last, those scamps. Seriously, was there anyone out there who didn't think the Golden State Warriors were sure to lose Game 6 in Boston last night, simply because these ebb-and-flow NBA Finals seemed destined to go the full seven?

But the Celtics, looking exhausted, couldn't hang, and Steph Curry became Steph Curry again after that weird interlude as Stiff Curry, and the Warriors rolled, 103-90. Not a lot of drama to attend the clinching moment of an odyssey that was all drama.

The Warriors have now won four titles in the last seven years, which sounds as dynastic as it gets these days until you realize how they did it. In between titles three and four, see, they went from the presidential suite to the sub-basement and back again. They broke up a Superfriends champ and put together another, entirely different sort of champ four years later.

This was no Steph/Klay/Draymond/KD juggernaut, after all. It was Steph and a lot of changeable parts -- some nights Draymond, some nights Andrew Wiggins, some nights a combination of Steph and Wiggins and Jordan Poole and assorted others pieces, like Gary Payton II, Otto Porter Jr. and Kevon Looney. 

"A collective season," Klay Thompson characterized it last night.

And very different from the Warriors' last title run in 2017. 

This time Curry broke his hand and Thompson was still struggling to regain his form after not one but two devastating Achilles tears, and Golden State didn't have a healthy roster until the playoffs. And there were no Superfriends around to help.

That ended when Kevin Durant left for the Nets after the 2018 Finals loss to the Raptors, which ended in Game 6 with Thompson suffering the Achilles injury that would keep him sidelined for a year. Two years later, in 2019-20, Golden State was the worst team in the NBA, going 15-50 in the Covid bubble year.

Two years after that, they're back on top again.

And in the deciding game, the Collective was its collective self. Draymond Green finally awoke from his series-long slumber with a classic Draymond line: 12 points, 12 rebounds, eight assists, two steals, two blocks. Wiggins contributed 18 points, six boards, five assists, four steals and three blocks. Poole scored 15 off the bench. And Curry?

Three nights after an unaccountably horrid Game 5 -- 16 points on 7-of-22 shooting, including zippo-for-9 from the 3-point arc -- he was back to being Steph again, going for 34, seven and seven on12-of-21 shooting and 6-of-11 from Threeville. It mirrored his legendary Game 4 in Boston, when he went for 43 points, seven threes and 10 rebounds to keep Golden State from going down 3-games-to-1 in the series.

Instead, the Warriors never lost again, winning Games 4, 5 and 6, all by double digits, to clinch the title. Champs to chumps to champs in five seasons.

You can't quite call that a dynasty. But you can surely call it something.

An outbreak of reason

 The U.S. Open began this morning where Francis Ouimet essentially gave birth to American golf 109 years ago -- The Country Club in Brookline, Mass. -- and that must have been a great relief to a bunch of crabby guys in logo caps and moisture-wicking polo shirts.

Finally, no more questions about the LIV!

Which put the LIV golfers out of sorts earlier this week, because they didn't want to hear questions like, I don't know, why are you taking money from people who bonesaw journalists and slaughter women and children? Especially when the PGA Tour you're supposedly trying to reform by doing so has already made you richer than God?

Gotta say, the LIV guys didn't react well to that. They bitched and moaned about it, mostly, saying the questions should be about the U.S. Open, and how dare you media people detract from the Open by asking us questions for which we have no decent answers?

Of course, they were only be asked those questions because it was the first opportunity most of the media there had had a chance to ask them. Let's face it, the LIV guys have been pretty adept at ducking the bulk of American media. So they really had no one but themselves to blame for all the LIV questions.

However ...

However, there was one golfer who stood out among the whiners. His name was Jon Rahm.

Rahm's one of the non-defectors, and when asked questions about the LIV, what he said was that while he saw the appeal,  he didn't think 54 holes with no cut and a shotgun start was real tournament golf. Although he didn't use the word, the implication was that the LIV was just a series of high-stakes exhibitions in which even the guy who finishes last cashes in big.

Which is what it is, basically.

Oh, yeah. And about that cashing in big part?

"Would our lifestyle change if I got $400 million?" Rahm asked rhetorically. "No. It would not change one bit. Truth be told, I could retire right now with what I made (on the PGA Tour), and I'd live a very happy life and not play golf again."

Outbreaks of reason like this are rare things, and this one is especially valuable because it gets at the heart of the LIV matter. Which is, how high can you stack the dough before it basically becomes Monopoly money? Isn't there a point where more is just more of the same?

I mean, golfers like Phil Mickelson or Dustin Johnson, they're already set for life. Hell, their kids are set for life. So why take the Saudis' blood money, and all the grief that attends it? 

Yeah, it's an obscene amount of cash, but after awhile it's just pieces of paper with pictures of presidents and the like. Now, maybe, as a friend of mine suggested, it's easy to say you wouldn't take it until it was actually there for the taking. And maybe that's true.

But I'd like to think if I'd already made, say, $200 million on the PGA Tour, I'd say, "Yeah, it's a lot of money. But I've GOT a lot of money. So, nah."

'Course, that's just me. Oh, and Jon Rahm.

Not bad company to keep.

And now, the boys of summer

 The Stanley Cup Final begins tonight out in Colorado, and that's a bit surprising. I mean, we're only halfway through June. Usually these things don't start heating up until the Fourth of July.

I'm being sarcastic, of course, and a bit geezerish, coming perilously close to sentences that begin "Back in my day ..." But it's a different world now, and refrigeration is better. And so the Stanley Cup Final can be anytime or anywhere the NHL decides it can be.

Shoot. Sometime in the misty future, the Final probably will pit the Quito, Ecuador, Ice Qs vs. the Lesser Antilles Canadiens, the latter having relocated from Montreal at some point. And they'll play all the games on the equator in the middle of August.

For now, it's the Avalanche vs. the two-time defending champs from Tampa, and even though I think the Avs are the better team, I'm picking the Lightning. This is because I think the three-peat is inevitable now that the Bolts have reached the Final again, and also because they've been harder to stamp out than velvet leaf.

After all, the Rangers had 'em down 2-0 in the conference finals, and the Lightning proceeded to win the next four games to win in six. And in the first round, Toronto led 3-2, only to see the Lightning win the last two games to advance -- including a Game 7 in Toronto, as the Maple Leafs Leafed it up again.

So ... yeah. I'm picking the Lightning. Three straight for Stammer (Steve Stamkos) and Pointer (Brayden Point) and Roons (Patrick Maroon) and Vasy (Andrei Vasilevskiy).

You know. All those boys of summer.

A programming reveal

 Occasionally I run into people who still believe the "news" part of Fox News, and I'm always astounded. It's fascinating to me how easily people are taken in by even the most obvious propaganda, the more outlandish the better.

In those moments it becomes clear to me how Stalin and Hitler and every other murderous goon in history was able to sell what he sold to the citizenry. It seems if the citizenry wants to believe something badly enough, no matter how ridiculous, it will believe it.

Like, that Fox "News" is actually a legitimate news source, and not, you know, an American version of Tass or Pravda.

The boys and girls at Fox proved it again the other day, when they deliberately manipulated reality during a broadcast of a San Francisco Giants game. To recognize Pride Month (for which the official Fox position is "Ewwww"), the Jints had transgender "Jeopardy!" champion Amy Schneider throw out the first pitch.

That's not what Fox viewers saw, however.

What they saw was NASCAR driver Kurt Busch throwing out the first pitch. It actually happened a year ago, but Fox didn't bother telling its viewers that. They just used it to promo an upcoming NASCAR race.

That was their cover, anyway, even if it was skimpier than a Sports Illustrated swimsuit  model's duds. And of course it wasn't "news." It was in fact exactly the opposite of "news." 

Look. I get it. The folks who run Fox News don't like transgenders. They think they're creepy and out to take over women's sports. They also aren't fond of those awful gay people, who want to corrupt our children with their awful gay-y ways. It's why they spend so much time reporting on nefarious teachers "grooming" schoolkids for gayhood, even if  it's almost entirely mythical.

I just wish they'd be upfront about what they're doing, and who they are.

I wish they'd all just come out and say what some of them pretty much already do -- namely, that they don't like transgenders and gays, and that they think they're all going to burn in hell, and that they're not legitimate members of American society but sick aberrations who should be marginalized at best.

At least that would be honest. 

If not exactly news.

Caught out again

 Greetings this morning from soon-to-be Dryer Vent, In., where Dorothy and Toto blow away in 98-mph wind gusts one minute, and The 98 Degrees of Heat Index Hell are apparently on deck the next.

That's your local weather in a nutshell after last night's apocalyptic storm, and here's hoping you made it through without a tree falling on you. But if you think this is God punishing northeast Indiana for continuing to send Jim Banks to Congress, imagine what it's like being a prisoner-of-the-moment right now.

These NBA Finals are playing unshirted hell with those folks. And not even apologizing for it.

I mean, after Steph saved the Warriors the other night with that 43-point masterwork in Boston, the interwhatsis was actually debating whether he belonged in the same breath with Bird, Magic, MJ et al as the greatest clutch player in NBA playoff history. Talk was heard that he was absolutely, without-a-doubt the best player in the NBA, and that he's never gotten his due as such.

You can probably make a case for the latter. The former ... well, as they say, opinions vary. And sometimes they vary right on out to the intersection of Hey, Wait A Minute and Let's Pump The Brakes A Tad There, Sparky.

Especially after last night.

Because, see, after all that chatter from the prisoners-of-the-moment, they got caught out again. Steph the Great went out and became Steph the Mortal: Sixteen points on 7-of-22 shooting, and negatory-for-9 from the 3-point arc -- the first time in 233 games he hadn't made at least one three. It was left to Andrew Wiggins (26 points, 13 boards) and Klay Thompson (21 points, 5-of-11 from the arc) to save the day for the Warriors and send them back to Boston with a chance to wrap up the title in six games.

The prisoners-of-the-moment are probably thinking that will happen, the silly gooses.

The Blob is saying what probably will happen is a vengeful Steph will go off -- a 30-spot, perhaps, with six or seven threes -- but the Celts somehow will scrape together a win anyway. And it'll be back to San Francisco for Game 7.  

Where the Dubs will raise the trophy in front of the home folks. Write it down.

June swoon. Er, swoons

 And now a quick check-in with my Pittsburgh Cruds, prompting the usual loud protests from the usual suspects.

 (These include "Nobody cares about your stupid baseball team!", and also "Gaaah! Baseball! Why can't we talk about stuff Americans care about, like soccer and Irish hurling?" To name just two of the usual protests.)

In any case, if you haven't been paying attention ("Oh, HELL, no!"), the Cruds are making a valiant effort to defend their last-place title. They've lost six in a row now and are 10 games below .500.

However ...

However, they're still in third place in NL Central, because the stupid Cubs and the stupid Reds won't cooperate.

The stupid Cubs, see, have also lost six in a row, and remain a game-and-a-half adrift of the Cruds. And the Reds have lost five of their last six to remain in last, two-and-a-half games behind the Cubs and four behind my Cruds.

This is, of course, an intolerable situation. Because if the Cubs and the Reds continue to stubbornly suck, too, and the Cruds wind up finishing third, management will say "See?   Our 30-year plan to be a farm team to actual major-league teams is working!" And they'll continue not to invest in the team ("Because if we can finish third without trying, why actually try?"), and the Blob will be pushing up daisies before they finish above .500 again.

Gaaah!

To coin a phrase.

Freedom of delusion

 Hey, we all get it. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

Sometimes it's a defensive coordinator in Washington, D,C.

That would be Jack Del Rio of the Washington Commanders, who the other day posted some spectacular denial on social media. Right out loud, he wondered why Congress was making such an all-fired deal about that minor "dust-up" at the Capitol, because what about all the protestors who rioted after George Floyd was murdered by a psycho cop?

To which a lot of folks responded, "Huh?"

Also, "Jeezly crow, what a dumbass."

Also, "Um, yeah, a violent attack on the seat of American government is just a 'dust-up'. Sure. And where's your rubber room these days, Mr. Del Rio?"

Here's the thing, though: I don't recall anyone coming forward to say Del Rio's dumbassery was "hurtful," or said, "Ouch, that hurt!", or otherwise was rendered wounded and sorrowful by said dumbassery.

Commanders head coach Ron Rivera sure thought otherwise, however.

He released a statement expressing his disappointment with Del Rio's comments, then said he was fining Del Rio $100,000 for his comments that were "extremely hurtful to our great community here in the DMV." Rivera characterized those comments as wrong, and an opinion that would not be tolerated by the organization.

Now, I don't have a problem with Rivera fining Del Rio. He's his boss. He can fine him for wearing a crappy-looking tie if he wants to.

What I have a problem with is punishing him for expressing an opinion, no matter how lint-brained.

That January 6 was, as Rivera called it, an act of domestic terrorism is beyond debate now  for any rational person. The Congressional committee investigating the events of that day laid out its case fact by fact by fact the other night, and it was devastating. It made crystal that Jan. 6 was the bloody end game of an orchestrated effort by a sitting president to keep himself in power by erasing the results of a democratic election.

I don't know what else you can call that except a coup attempt. It's pretty much the very definition.

All that said, Del Rio is entitled to his delusions. He's entitled to express them. Fining him for a "wrong" opinion comes perilously close to George Orwell's groupthink.

What you do if you're Rivera, and you're smart, is you express your opinion -- "My defensive coordinator is an idiot," for example -- and let Del Rio twist in the wind. Eventually the Requisite Media Frenzy would force Del Rio to resign, or force the Commanders to fire him. 

The Commanders could then get themselves off the hook by saying they weren't firing him because of his opinions, but because they'd caused a "distraction."

Which is NFL-speak for "This guy's a pain in the ass and we just don't want him around anymore."

The right-wing victim machine would still martyr-ize Del Rio as a casualty of political correctness, and yada-yada-yada. But the Commanders would at least have some cover.

Instead, they decided to go full Orwell. A damn shame, and not terribly bright.

Battle lines, drawn

 Well, now I guess it's a war for real. The rebs have fired on Sumter. The Sons of Liberty have beaten back the redcoats at Concord. Yamamoto has blown up Battleship Row.

And, in less momentous conflict news, the PGA has kicked 17 players out of the club for taking what even one of the banned (Phil Mickelson) has admitted is blood money.

Among the names of the officially banished are Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Lee Westwood, Charl Schwartzel and Sergio Garcia. Also an assortment of Graeme McDowells, Louis Oosthuizens, Ian Poulters and Martin Kaymers.

All are presumably in London this weekend, playing for gory Saudi dough while LIV Series security goons duck-walk reporters out of news conferences for asking embarrassing questions about dismembered journalists and murdered women and children and the like.

The latter actually happened, by the way. 

It's not a good look for the LIV, and a tiny contrarian part of the Blob thinks the PGA's ban of the LIV defectors is not a good look, either.  It smacks of exactly the authoritarianism the defectors are supposedly defecting to protest. Way to make their point for them, ya dopes.

Still ...

Still, it's hard to feel sorry for the Mickelsons and DJs 'n' them. Just as it's hard to feel sorry for anyone who compromises principle for cash.

A lot of people do it, of course, and they all deserve the appropriate scorn. Giving a bunch of rich golfers a pass because of that, as some folks out there seem to want to, is the flimsiest of debate strategies. It's the sort of whataboutism people resort to when they can't defend a thing.

And what these guys are doing is indefensible. Just like, yes, F1 and World Cup soccer crawling in bed with Middle Eastern thugs and the NBA crawling in bed with Chinese thugs is indefensible.

No single one mitigates any other one. Try again, boys and girls.

But back to the LIV.

All that money luring already moneyed golfers to help the Saudis "sportswash" their hideousness is an offense that carries its own punishment, or so the Blob thinks. Because of  all those chunky appearance fees and guaranteed payouts the LIV is offering, the public not unreasonably may view it as nothing but a series of exhibitions. Because if everyone in the field gets a wad of cash, for what are they really competing at the end of the day?

Yes, the winners get more, but so what? A guy who's already richer than God getting even richer is not the sort of drama that draws people to sports. No one flocked to "Hoosiers" to see Big Giant Consolidated High School beat Other Big Giant Consolidated High School for the state title. An embarrassment of riches is just, well, boring, frankly.

And so what's likely to happen is the defectors may vanish from the radar, at least to an extent. 

Hey, did you see what DJ did this weekend?

Who?

DJ. Dustin Johnson.

Oh, yeah. You mean that guy who's traveling around the world playing exhibitions now?

That sort of thing.

And so ...

Enjoy your blood money, boys. It was nice knowin' ya.

Today's questions

 Which all involve Deshaun Watson, whose story continues to get seedier and more twisted, what with the New York Times reporting that (with the aid of the Houston Texans) he visited 66 massage therapists in 17 months ...

Question the First: What normal person visits 66 massage therapists in 17 months? 

(Answer: No normal person visits 66 massage therapists in 17 months. Man's clearly got a problem.)

Question the Second: And what normal person allegedly waves his tallywhacker at a whole pile of those therapists?

(Answer: See answer to Question the First)

Question the Third: Are the Browns the dumbest franchise in history for, despite all of the above, agreeing to pay the guy $230 million over five years>

(Answer: Yes.)

(Also answer: But we already knew that.)

Question the Fourth: Are the Browns also creepy and reptilian because they never bothered to talk to any of Watson's accusers before signing him (this is commonly known as "vetting"), and also because they structured his deal to protect him from a possible suspension?

(Answer: The hell do you think?)

Question the Fifth: What should Baker Mayfield do if Watson gets suspended, seeing how the Browns have left him to twist in the wind?

(Answer: Wait until the very next day, and then announce he's taking "a mental health break" from the game -- thereby leaving the Browns without a viable quarterback, and jerking them around the way they've jerked him around.)

And last but not least ...

Question the Sixth: Speaking of suspensions, what in the name of Sexual Misconduct Is Something We Take Very Seriously is the NFL waiting for?

(Answers: Christmas. A 25th accuser to come forward, because that would be the magic number or something. A Million Woman March to descend on Roger Goodell's office, pound on his door and say "What the hell, man?")

A rare double

 The Blob is famous for always being wrong about stuff. I mean, I covered the Indianapolis 500 for 40 years, so I kinda know something about it, but you know how many times I've correctly predicted the winner in those 40 years?

Four. Four times.

But strange things happen in the cosmos. Like, I actually think I'm getting the hang of being right once in awhile.

The other day, for instance, I pointed out that, because of the nature of these NBA playoffs, the Warriors would probably win Game 2 easily on account of they blew Game 1 so spectacularly.

And then the Warriors won Game 2 by 19.

Which I noted, and then wrote this:

And so, on to Game 3. On to Boston.

Where the Celtics will adjust the way the Warriors adjusted in Game 2, and Boston will slow down Curry just enough to keep the Warriors from putting together one of their fabled nuclear runs. And the home team will pull out the win by, oh, let's say eight or 10 points.

Actually, it was only by six, 116-110.

And Steph Curry got hurt.

And now I'm thinking if he's really hurt, the Warriors are in big-time trouble. Unless, that is, Draymond Green, who was pretty much a ghost last night, goes all beast mode in Game 4, and Klay Thompson hits some more threes, and the Warriors even the series again.

I think this is exactly what's going to happen.

On the other hand, I've already pulled off the rare Double Right this week. A Triple Right may be too much an affront for the sports gods to stomach.

Guess we'll see.

The price was right

 I don't know what is the precise definition of "Eff you money," except that it's shorthand for "Eff you, I've got money." I don't even know if "Eff you money" has a precise dollar figure.

What I do know is, for Dustin Johnson, it seems to be around $125 million.

And for Phil Mickelson, $200 million.

And for various other PGA Tour regulars, various other chunky denominations.

What all of them have in common is they've taken money stained with the blood of innocents and said "Eff you." They're all off to Greg Norman's LIV tour, which is bankrolled by Saudi Arabia, which enjoys doing cool stuff like murdering journalists and dismembering their bodies, and butchering civilians in neighboring Yemen.

Yes, they're lovely people, the Saudis, but they're also the latest proof that if you have enough money to throw around, it doesn't matter if you have no manners. The people at whom you throw money will make excuses for you even if you chain your kids to the basement wall and torture them on the regular.

"Hey, everyone disciplines their children differently," they'll say.

Or, "Meh, lots of people have done worse. What about China, for God's sake?"

This is the rationale Norman and his cadre of PGA defectors are using in defending what is clearly a classic "Eff you, I've got money" scenario. Or, to be more precise, "Eff you, the Saudis have money."

Or to be even MORE precise: "Eff you, the Saudis have money and they're giving it to me."

And, OK, I get it, these are professional golfers we're talking about.  They are as enthusiastically capitalist as John D. Rockefeller, from the tip of their logo visors to the tip of their other logo shoes. Money means a great deal to them.

I just wish they'd admit that without exercising a lot of phony moral relevance.

It's not a great defense, after all, to justify reprehensible money-grubbing by pointing out the reprehensible money-grubbing of others. Yes, F1 does business with repressive Middle Eastern regimes, too. Yes, so does professional soccer. And, yes, so does the NBA, cozying up to the Chinese because their market potential is through the roof.

All of that is true. And all of that has been criticized in various corners of the media, despite the amnesia of those who say it hasn't been. (Examples just from the Blob, re China and the NBA: Here, and here.)

So what's your point, exactly, gentlemen?

Do you even have one, except the obvious?

Didn't think so. 

Translu(nacy)

 Time now to check in with Hysteria Watch, the Blob's just-invented mechanism for keeping tabs on the latest trends among the pitchfork-and-torch set, who never met an imaginary monster they couldn't rally the gullible around.

It seems trans athletes are their latest hobby horse, joining Critical Race Theory, mentioning gay people in classrooms (it's called "grooming," apparently) and the dadgum gummint coming to take our guns.

Now trans athletes are zooming up the hysteria charts. Especially in Ohio.

Where the Ohio House just approved a bill requiring genital inspections to keep transgender athletes from competing in girls sports -- because obviously this is a HUGE PROBLEM in Ohio, and those sneaky transgenders will infiltrate girls sports in that state unless legislators ACT NOW.

This, of course, is completely insane, especially since there are no fully formed guidelines as yet for this un-amended edict. Will the parents of one girl athlete be able to force a more skilled teammate to prove she's a girl, angling for more playing time for their little Susie? Because don't think that couldn't, or wouldn't, happen.

On the other hand, because the bill is as yet un-amended, there's the possibility Ohio's Senate will get a sudden attack of brainwave activity and/or compassion and radically water it down. One would hope, anyway.

But you never want to count out hysteria these days, especially among those of a certain political lean. So it's not unreasonable to think Ohio, in order to protect girls, could pass a law forcing them to prove they're girls in the most intimate and demeaning way possible.

Think about that for a moment. If you can, that is, without losing your mind entirely.

The whole idea is not only draconian but medieval, and perhaps (blessedly) unenforceable as well. I can't imagine any doctor worth his medical degree willingly consenting to such a charade. I can more easily see him defying the law by, instead of conducting the required Larry Nassar-esque examination, simply closing his office door and saying "Yeah, you're a girl. Where's the form I have to sign?"

The problem here, as usual, is that legislators are offering an outlandish solution to a non-existent problem. Transgenders make up less than 1 percent of the American population. There's absolutely zero evidence they're beating down doors to invade girls sports and keep little Susie on the sidelines. And there are already rules in place among some athletic entities, including the NCAA, that prohibit transgender athletes from competing if their testosterone levels are too high.

This includes Lia Thomas from Penn, the transgender swimmer who has become Public Enemy No. 1 in certain precincts because she won the NCAA championship in the 500 freestyle in March -- even though her testosterone levels were well within NCAA guidelines.  . 

And in her other two events?

Well. She finished, um, fifth and eighth. 

Fifth and eighth!

Total domination, by God. And totally a "threat."

Consistently inconsistent

 So remember a few days ago, when the Blob tsk-tsked at all the prisoner-of-the-moment types who were saying the Warriors were in trouble because the Celtics beat them in Game 1 of the NBA Finals?

("No," you're saying)

Well, I did. Actually what I said was, in Game 2, Steph Curry would probably score eleventy-hundred points, and the Warriors would drop 29 threes or something, and they would win, I don't know, 176-12 something.

Turns I was off  a tad.

Turns out the Warriors only won Game 2 by 19, 107-88, after leading by as many as 30 points in the fourth quarter. And Steph didn't go for eleventy-hundred points, only 29. And the Warriors would not drop 29 threes, only 15.

On the other hand, 36-year-old Al Horford did not score 26 points with six threes for the Celtics, either, the way he did in Game 1. This time he scored two points on four shots. And he didn't attempt a three after making 6 of 8 in Game 1.

In other words, he was the very archetype for these NBA playoffs, which have been nothing if not completely inconsistent. Team A blows out Team B in one game; Team B blows out Team A in the next. It's been a special circle of hell the all the instant analysts out there, those professional sports watchers who can sniff Portents and Omens at 20 paces -- even if those Portents and Omens only have a shelf life of 24 hours or so.

More astute observers would have observed the obvious, which is that Al Horford wasn't going to put up 26-and-six again, at least not in this lifetime. And the likelihood the Celtics as a team would go 21-of-41 from the arc, the way they did in Game 1, was perilously close to zero.

And so, on to Game 3. On to Boston.

Where the Celtics will adjust the way the Warriors adjusted in Game 2, and Boston will slow down Curry just enough to keep the Warriors from putting together one of their fabled nuclear runs. And the home team will pull out the win by, oh, let's say eight or 10 points.

After which the instant analysts will once more commence with their "See, this is how you beat the Warriors" narrative.

At least that will be consistent.

A brief pause for some newsie stuff

(Which means all of you who think sports journalists talking about sports journalism issues is boring are hereby excused.)

(But I expect that paper I assigned last week to be on my desk by the end of class tomorrow.)

(And no "Awww, gee" and "No fair" out of any of you. Also no "Yay! No Critical Sportswriter Theory junk!" until you're out of earshot.)

Now, where was I?

Oh, yeah: The NBA Finals. Specifically, how the NBA is conducting the Finals vis-a-vis media coverage, which involves impaling local media outlets with a giant screw.

This upon seeing a tweet from Kylen Mills of KRON4 News in San Francisco, expressing "disappointment" that the NBA essentially shut out local media for the two Finals teams, the Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics. Local media outlets that covered the teams all season were barred from floor or interview room access. Instead, parachuting bloggers, podcasters and writers from around the country were basically given their seats.

Me?

I think Mills is showing admirable restraint in calling this disappointing. It's an abomination, is what it is. Also a damn disgrace. Also complete unadulterated bull you-know-what.

Local media that have covered a team all season should be at the front of the credential line, not the back. And they for damn sure should have floor and interview room access before some blogger from Mom's Basement, N.J. 

And, yes, I know, it's 2022, gramps, and the blogger from Mom's Basement probably gets goo-gobs of hits per day. Same with the podcasters. And why don't you teleport back to 1955 and go set some more hot type, old-timer?

Well, harrumph to that, to continue this theme. I don't care if Mom's Basement gets hits/viewers from beyond the grave, he or she is still a guest in the NBA Finals home. And the local media are the homeowners. How do they get assigned to the guest quarters?

Which, based on a photo Mills tweeted, are up in the nosebleeds at the end of the floor. You can almost see the game from up there, if you squint hard enough. Even then it looks like two ant colonies fighting it out.

Reminds me of where my seat was in Indianapolis for the 2000 NBA Finals between the Pacers and the Lakers. I was up in the rafters, too, which was OK because I was Indiana media but not Indy media, and my paper didn't cover the Pacers on a consistent basis. God knows where the NBA would have put reporters like me today.

Somewhere in auxiliary parking, I'm guessing.

In Fort Wayne.

Muzzling dissent

 Florida Man struck again this week, but this time it wasn't because he went swimming in a meat suit in a pond full of gators. This time he accidentally did the right thing, minus the principle involved.

This Florida Man is named Ron "Gossamer Skin" DeSantis, Il Duce of Florida and one who does not like being disagreed with. This makes for some silt-brained decisions on occasion, like going to war against Disney because Disney didn't like Gossamer Skin's law banning any mention of those horrible gay people in Florida classrooms.

It takes a special kind of stupid to pick a fight with Disney in Florida.  But no one ever said DeSantis wasn't special -- if in a way you generally don't like to see in a public official.

And so, he's at it again.

This time he's taking a swipe at one of the state's two major-league baseball teams, because it had the gall to publicly express views which irked him. In the wake of the latest slaughter of innocents in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, the Tampa Bay Rays spoke out against gun violence in America, a completely reasonable stance given the circumstances.

DeSantis didn't like that. So he vetoed a line item for $35 million to build the Rays a new training facility.

Of course, DeSantis didn't say it was an attempt to muzzle dissent, even though the timing clearly established it was. He said his veto was because he doesn't believe in giving taxpayer dollars to professional sports facilities.

He's absolutely right about that. Taxpayer dollars shouldn't go toward funding new stadiums and the like, for the Rays or any other pro sports entity. Especially when the owners of those entities make piles of jack from their hosts, directly and indirectly, and can easily foot the bill for facilities that -- let's face it -- primarily benefit only themselves.

Who knows. Maybe DeSantis actually does believe that.

But somehow I think it's more about punishing those who displease him. And about juicing a 2024 presidential run by sucking up to a political base with a taste for thin-skinned bullies. 

Florida Man For President.

Sings, don't it?

The Finals, finally

 The NBA Finals kicked off on the west coast last night, and you know what that means. It means we get to learn again the formula M = DE2, and its corollary, OMIGOD (TEAM NAME) IS UNBEATABLE!!

"M = DE2" is short for "Momentum Doesn't Exist." The corollary, as of last night, is OMIGOD THE CELTICS ARE UNBEATABLE!!"

That's because they went out to Golden State's barn last night and got down 15 late in the third quarter, and then holy crap did you SEE that?

Yes, we did. We saw the Celts blow away the Warriors 40-16 in the fourth quarter, and saw 36-year-old Al Horford stick six threes on his way to 26 points, and saw the Celtics take Game 1 120-108. The 40-16 fourth quarter was the most lopsided final 12 minutes in NBA Finals history. And it happened even though Steph Curry scored eleventy-hundred points for the Warriors, although it was actually 34. 

It also happened even though the Warriors hit 19 threes as a team, which is completely ridiculous.

And so of course the living-in-the-moment narrative now is the Celtics ain't pretty but they sure are gritty, and the Warriors won't be able to match their grit, and Boston's D will prevail because it will wear down the elegant Warriors in a seven-game series they way it eventually wore them down last night.

This being the NBA, where every game is new miniseries, you can probably forget about all of that.

Because you know in Game 2 Curry will go for eleventy-hundred-and-one points, and the Warriors will drop 29 threes, and Golden State will win 176-12 or something. And the narrative will instantly become Boston can't sustain enough defense over a seven-game series to stop the Warriors, and that's why the Warriors win this.

Then everyone will go back to Boston for Game 3, and ...

Well. You know.

Bee, plus

 I'll put this in NASCAR terms this morning, for those of you who'll see the words "National Spelling Bee" and flee the premises because it's like, you know, spelling, and that lives next door to grammar, and who needs school junk on the third of June?

So, let's say it this way: The National Spelling Bee had its first-ever green-white-checker finish last night.

In other words, it went to a spell-off, and a 14-year-old from San Antonio (Harini Logan) beat a 12-year-old (Vakrim Raju) by correctly spelling 21 of 26 words in 90 seconds. Vakrim got 15 of 19 right n the same time.

Don't know if the NSB people went this route because of what happened a few years ago, when eight champions were crowned because the little brainiacs basically defeated the dictionary. They all kept spelling every word right, even the made-up ones, and finally the organizers said "Screw it, then, ya little goobers. You can be co-co-co-co-co-co-co-co-champions for all we care."

And so, the spell-off. Which, like the green-white-checker in NASCAR, the Blob has mixed feelings about.

On the one hand, at least someone (as opposed to someones) actually won. 

On the other ... well, Harini won despite misspelling FIVE WORDS.

This just seems wrong to me.

I want to see the nation's champion speller win because she beat her opponent over the head with "cernuous." Or "auguillette." Or "ba'mla'hoc," which is a word I just made up but which sounds kinda Klingon-y to me.

It means "A freaking spell-off? Come on, man!"

Indeed.

Parenting fail, part 1,265

 It's become axiomatic here in America the self-absorbed that asshat parents are everywhere, which is why there are no longer youth/high school umpires and referees everywhere. The latter are getting run off by the former, and it's become not just an issue but a critical one.

 Today's example?

For that we dip into the ranks of the minor celebrities, which is to say the Magic Twitter Thingy and national sports talk radio. It seems Clay Travis, Trumper sports-talker, got thrown out of his son's Little League game after railing at some poor umpire who made what Daddy Clay considered a horrible call.

Then he went on his national radio show to talk about it, apparently believing he was standing up for truth, professionalism and the American Way.

Actually all he was doing was demonstrating what a garbage parent he is. More on that in a bit.

For now, here's some poor Little League ump getting called out nationally for not being "professional" and not earning his paycheck. I'm sure that will be massive incentive for this guy to continue umping Little League games, oh, you bet. 

I'm also sure I can't imagine anything as unprofessional (since Clay was talking about "professionalism") as using your radio platform to air a private grievance.

I also can't imagine a greater parenting fail.

Because I keep thinking about Clay's kid, and wondering what lesson he was learning, watching his dad harass an ump and get ejected from the premises. That if an ump or ref makes a bad call, you should throw a mad fit? Get thrown out of the game? This is the example you want to set as a parent?

So, there's that.

There's also this: Justifying your misbehavior by claiming these Little League umps are all professionals and should earn their apparently massive paychecks by being competent. Gotta say, that one made me laugh out loud. Hell, a lot of these kid baseball umps are barely more than kids themselves, and all they're doing is trying to earn a little spending money for the summer. Because a little spending money is all they're making.

Like they need asshat parents yelling at them as if they just blew a critical call in the seventh game of the World Series?

No wonder the ump/ref shortage has gotten so bad entire swaths of games are being canceled because the organizers couldn't scare up game officials.

Sad thing is, the day's gonna come when Clay's son shows up for a Little League game and there won't be a game because there are no umps available. The sadder thing is, Clay (or any other asshat parent) won't realize they're largely to blame.

Meanwhile the kids will shrug and go looking for ice cream. Because, you know, sometimes it's the kids who get all the perspective.

Your completely catty post for today

 They say if you live long enough nothing will eventually surprise you, because if you haven't seen everything by a certain point you've at least heard about it. This is especially true for me these days, having seen a President Donald Trump and some of the nitwits he's helped get elected to Congress.

Once upon a time Congress was Daniel Webster and William Jennings Bryan and Margaret Chase Smith. Now it's Marjorie Taylor Greene, last seen predicting on her podcast that straight people would be extinct in 50 or so years.

Lord give me strength.

And also, thank the Lord I can still be surprised at my advanced age, because something happened in England the other day that made me say "Now I've finally seen everything."

What happened was, a professional athlete got sentenced to 180 hours of community service.

For kicking his cat.

Yes, it's true. Kurt Zouma, a defender for West Ham in the Premier League, was sentenced in Thames Magistrates Court after pleading guilty to two counts of "causing unnecessary suffering to protected animals" -- the protected animal in this case being his cat, which Zouma is caught on video punting across the room, slapping and pelting with shoes.

"Why would someone videotape that, Mr. Blob?" you're asking now.

And the answer is, "Because it's 2022 and everyone videotapes everything."

In any event, Zouma now joins Michael Vick in the Athletes Who Are S***heads To Animals Hall of Fame, and he's banned from owning cats for the next five years. This is not nearly long enough in the Blob's estimation. I'm a dog person, but I also have a soft spot for cats, and I think the ban should be for life. I also think someone should periodically punt Zouma across the room, slap him and throw shoes at him, but that's just me.

(Actually, what I really think is Zouma should be dropped into a pit of feral cats with sharp claws who are really, really pissed. The court could decree how much blood loss would be a suitable amount.)

(Also, he gets a year's hard labor cleaning especially gross catboxes. Sounds right to me.)