Age of hysteria, the sequel

You can find some amazing stuff cruising the interwhatsis these days, and by "amazing" I mean "completely batshite crazy." Examples abound.

Here's one: It seems in certain precincts, certain media foofs (Hi, Clay Travis!) are now declaring anti-vaxxer athletes the spiritual descendants of Muhammad Ali and others who protested the Vietnam War back in the 1960s.

No, really. I'm not making that up.

Here, for instance, is a recent Magic Twitter Thingy gem from the aforementioned Mr. Travis, one of the leading disseminators of misinformation about the Evil Jab: "Covid is our modern era Vietnam. And those who refused shots are like those who refused the draft, both defied the government."

Aye-yi-yi. Where do you even begin with that?

The analogy is absurd to anyone who was awake and alert during Vietnam, and who also has even a nodding acquaintance with history. Why, yes, Aaron Rodgers and Kyrie Irving and all the other athletes who refused to be vaccinated are JUST like Ali and the others who stood against a war that was lost before it began. Why, certainly, defying what amounted to a work rule makes them all CIVIL RIGHTS HEROES, same as Ali and Tommie Smith and John Carlos and all the others.

Lord. Give me strength.

The foofs and anti-vaxxers are saying now that because the CDC has relaxed its COVID-19 rules, Dr. Fauci lied to us all along and should be in prison. And that Rodgers 'n' them were unfairly persecuted.  Besides, the vaccines don't work because the vaccinated are still getting the Bastard Plague, and also the vaccines themselves are killing more people than the disease itself.

Um, no. There's absolutely zero evidence of the latter that isn't whole-cloth bullstuff. And the former betrays ignorance of how vaccines work; getting vaccinated doesn't mean you won't get sick, it just means you aren't nearly as likely to wind up on a ventilator in some ICU.

Which is what we're seeing happening. The mutation of the disease into a less deadly if more contagious form, and the fact more people are vaccinated now, means we're seeing an uptick in cases, but not nearly as many clogging ICUs and overwhelming the medical system. 

The latter has been the primary marker for official response since all this began; if  some of that response now looks like overreaction, well, we all know what they say about hindsight. It looked a bit different at the time, when the death toll in the U.S. was zooming toward a million and hospital morgues were using freezer trucks to stash the overflow of bodies. 

Fact is, viruses, and the pandemics that sometimes arise from them, do not remain static, so neither does the response to them. That the death rate has slowed is not a vindication of the Rodgerses and Irvings who refused to be vaccinated. Nor is it a vindication of those (including a certain dunderheaded ex-president) who said during the worst of it that it wasn't as bad as people were saying. 

Those bodies stacked up in freezer trucks tended to refute that. If simple common sense didn't. 

Meanwhile, according to the people who keep track of such things, 89 percent of those still landing in the hospital with the Bastard Plague are unvaccinated. 

But, yeah, they're the Alis of their time, standing against a biological Vietnam War. Something I'll be sure to keep in mind the next time I visit the Wall in D.C., and scout around for a nice spot to place the newest monument to American greatness

The Vietnam Memorial ... 58,000 names on polished black granite ... and a statue of Aaron  Rodgers or Kyrie Irving, bravely standing against the tyranny of vaccination. 

Ah, yes.

F1 one is FDone

 Well, this was peachy. Max Verstappen's wagon was fixed good this time, wasn't it? Surely he couldn't turn another Grand Prix into the Tournament of Roses parade THIS TIME, could he?

Over there in Belgium Sunday, see, he was buried in 14th on the grid at the start, with a whole pile of sophisticated machinery and skilled drivers ahead of him. Not a chance he would run away with this one. Not a chance he --

Wait, what?

Ah, crap. He did.

The lights blinked off and by the end of eight laps, Verstappen was already third. By lap 12 he was in the lead. By the end, he was 18 seconds clear of Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez, who started 12 places ahead of him.

It was Verstappen's ninth win in 14 Grand Prix this year, and he's now 93 points ahead of his teammate  in the title chase. With eight races left, you can hand him the big trophy right now -- a short trip, because he won the title last year, too.

He's just too good. He's just ... too ... good.

He's so good, in fact, that he's turned the sport into Lewis Hamilton Revisited, or perhaps Michael Schumacher Revisited, or perhaps even Jim Clark Revisited if you want to reach back that far. In other words, F1 is again the most easily predictable sporting proposition since Hulk Hogan was throwing around the Iron Sheik.

This is not exactly the best thing for F1, although F1 fans are a different breed who don't seem to mind utter dominance. It's more about the cutting edge technology of the cars for them, and they'll celebrate just as hard if their guy makes a podium as they would had he won. And it does make the job easier for the deadline grunts in F1 pressrooms.

F1 journalist (leaning back): Well, I've got my lede.

Other F1 journalist: What? But the race hasn't even started yet! What's your lede?

F1 journalist: "Max Verstappen, blah-blah, blah-blah, won the Grand Prix of Blah-Blah-Blah Sunday."

Other F1 journalist: Stealing!

Now that's peachy.

Attention, unpaid

 The world is over-served with racist idiots. This is not an observation born of Critical Race Theory, which certain political creatures think is going to Corrupt Our Youth. This is simply a matter of paying attention.

Brigham Young University did not do that the other day, unfortunately. And a young woman of color named Rachel Richardson paid the price.

Richardson is a volleyball player for Duke, and during a road game at BYU Saturday, one of the aforementioned racist idiots carpet-bombed her with the N-word every time she served. This racist idiot was not a BYU student, but he was sitting in the BYU student section. Why he was allowed to remain there is a question worth asking.

Did BYU officials not hear him?

Yes, they did, because at one point they stationed a police officer by the Duke bench.

Did the actual students in the student section not hear him?

You have to figure they did, but by all accounts none of them said or did anything about him.

Did BYU's successful coach, Heather Olmstead, call time, grab the PA mic and tell him to knock that s*** off, as Bob Knight famously did one night in Assembly Hall?

She did not.

In fact, BYU desperately tried to ignore the entire thing until Richardson's godmother, who lives in Texas, went on the Magic Twitter Thingy to tell the world about it. Only after the Twitterverse found out about it did school officials retroactively ban the racist idiot from all future BYU athletic events.

Which is nice and all, of course. But it leaves open the question of what they would have done had Richardson's godmother not gone public.

The Blob's money is on "nothing."

This does not mean BYU officials are racist idiots themselves, mind you. It's likely more that either they, or perhaps the school's culture in general, are not inclined to confrontation. That's an exceedingly generous benefit of the doubt, I realize. But I'll stand by it.

In any event, Racist Idiot was allowed to spew the N-word to his heart's content. And no one apparently uttered a discouraging word in response. 

Perhaps if he'd have been black and had kneeled for the national anthem, he'd have at least drawn a healthy chorus of boos. Apparently that's more objectionable now in America.

In any event, the questions remain.

Why did the students in the student section not physically get in this dude's face and tell him to shut the hell up? Or better yet, just start whaling on him?

At least that would have gotten security involved. And perhaps shaken the BYU officials present from their lethargy.

Instead, they stood by and let Richardson take it. Not that the young woman wasn't up to the job.

"I refused to allow those racist bigots to feel any degree of satisfaction from thinking that their comments had 'gotten to me'," she said Sunday on her Twitter account. "So, I pushed through and finished the game.

"I refused to allow it to stop me from doing what I love to do and what I came to BYU to do, which was to play volleyball."

They call that gumption, in some circles.

The folks at BYU might want to look it up in the dictionary.

A tale too often told

 By now, the familiarity breeds not so much contempt as a numbed weariness. How often must this tale too often told be repeated, everything but the details all but pro forma?

NFL player accused of rape, sexual assault, sexual misconduct, domestic abuse.

Player, or the player's suit, says the accusations are false; player says he looks forward to "setting the record straight."

Team investigates, benches/offloads player, draws fire (in some circles) for assuming his guilt and not letting the legal process play out.

All of that happened in Buffalo this time.

The player in question is rookie punter Matt Araiza, a kid from San Diego State with a howitzer for a leg. He's been named in a civil suit by a young woman who claims Araiza and two other Aztec football players gang-raped her in 2021, when she was 17 years old.

Seventeen is underage in California.

So, here we go again. And how many times do we have to go again?

Araiza claims, as they all do, that "the facts of the incident are not what they are portrayed in the lawsuit or in the press." His attorney, as they all do,  says the rape allegations are "just untrue." 

The Bills released him anyway, claiming, as they all do, that they had talked to the young woman's attorney, and that their investigation was "ongoing." But they had gotten enough information to convince them the allegations were serious enough to warrant pink-slipping their heralded rookie.

"(We're) trying not to rush to judgment  and obviously Matt's version was different and you want to give everyone as much due process as you can," Bills general manager Brandon Beane said last night. "Again, we're not a judge and jury."

Of course, as always, some people will say that's exactly what the Bills became when they fired Araiza. This might be true.

On the other hand, it's also true the allegations are serious, and the Bills are a business, and no matter what Beane says about due process, businesses are not guided by due process. They are guided by expediency, and that expediency is guided by profit and loss. In that regard, it's not smart business to keep a guy around who's been credibly accused of statutory gang rape.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "What about the Browns and Deshaun Watson?"

Well ... I did say SMART business. And we are talking about the Browns.

That does, however, add yet another familiar element to this too-told tale. The Bills can look three hours or so west and say, "At least we're not the Browns."

And how many times have we heard that?

The fall of summer

 College football was back on my TV yesterday, and it made me want to pull on a sweatshirt and light a fire in the fireplace. Fill my mug with some good hard cider. Look outside, wistfully, for the first hints of brown and orange in the trees.

Autumn came crashing in, in other words. The calendar be damned. 

Outside it was still August and green and summer hanging on by its fingernails, but inside it looked and smelled and sounded like fall. The Nebraska Cornhuskers were choking big-time, same as ever. The Northwestern Wildcats were pulling off the old college try. They were coming to us from a foreign shore -- Ireland -- but even from an ocean away, in the land of hurling and rugby and footie, it was still American college football. A stranger in a strange land, yet wholly familiar.

I have always been a sap for the college game, even as what has happened to it in the new millennium conflicts me terribly. It is College Football Inc. now, a corporate enterprise little distinguishable from the NFL in its structure and function. The realist in me understands it has always been thus to some extent; the gooey sentimentalist wants to believe it's still Archie Manning and Sonny Sixkiller and all those magic names, doing all those magic things on a sun-bronzed Saturday afternoon.

So, I watch, still. I let it pull me in, trademarked to a fare-thee-well though it is these days. I watch Scott Frost call for an onside kick with Nebraska up 28-17 and think, along with all of Husker Nation, "What is he doing?" I watch Northwestern line up and blow the Cornhuskers off the ball as the clock winds down, grinding out the W between the tackles as if channeling the Woody Hayes Buckeyes or Bo Schembechler Wolverines.

Three yards and a cloud of begorra. Or something like that.

It was the climax of a day that began with a morning walk, and during it I could almost feel summer coming down to the final swallows. It's not definable by any means, but it's there. The quality of the light seems different, here in the last of August. The air smells different. There's a hint of coolness to it, even in the sun, that wasn't there in the furnace of July.

Then I came back home, and turned on the TV, and there was college football again.

I almost cracked open an Octoberfest Sammy to celebrate. But that would have been pushing it.

There is a protocol to these matters, after all. Even now.

Today in rooster grooming

 Faithful followers of the Blob ("'Followers'," you're saying. "Get him") know it is an unabashed Mascot Appreciation Zone. The weirder or more hilarious the mascot, the better, with special attention paid to mascot fights and other bizarre mascot-related events.

The Blob has never come across one quite as bizarre as this latest mascot-related event, however.

It involves the live rooster that's one of the University of South Carolina Gamecocks mascots, and a spat over a haircut. Or, to be more precise a comb cut.

The previous owners of Sir Big Spur, see, used to clip the bird's comb, on account of the team's nickname is the Fightin' Gamecocks, and the owners of fightin' gamcocks used to clip their combs. This was back when cockfighting was still legal, America being a more barbarous place then which enjoyed that sort of thing.

Well. The new owners of Sir Big Spur want to leave the comb intact, because it's more recognizable as a barnyard rooster. The previous owners regard this as a betrayal of the school's Fightin' Gamecocks identity; one even went so far as to call it "dumbing down our culture."

No, really. He did. 

Anyway, the previous owners have decided if the culture is going to be dumbed down, then it's not happening with their nickname. Sir Big Spur, see, is what the previous owners dubbed the original, back in 1999. So they're contending it belongs to them, not to the university, and are demanding a name change.

Likely this will result in merely shortening the name to "Spur." But the Blob could hardly miss the opportunity to inject itself into a mascot renaming debate. I mean, it's pretty much the Holy Grail of Mascot Appreciation Zone activities.

And so away with Sir Big Spur, and on with ...

Comb-over Cal (A nod to the controversy that sparked the name change)

Sir Topham Knot (Ditto)

Fill Your Hand You Sonofabitch (A nod to Rooster Cogburn of "True Grit" fame)

Barney (Rooster ... barnyard ... OK, forget it)

Gamey (South Carolina ... Gamecock ... OK, forget that, too)

Foghorn Keghorn (A nod to fabled cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn, and also to tailgating)

"Crow" Magnon, Eater of Worlds and Disembowler of Various Tigers, Wildcats and Bulldo--

OK. So now I'm just getting silly.  

But "Spur" seems kinda lame, if you ask me. Also "Cock Commander", the leader in the clubhouse in a fan poll.

Come on, folks. Put on those thinkin' caps. 

Too many miles on the tires?

 A month or so ago, the Oklahoma City Thunder shelled out a potential $44 million over four years for their beanpole No. 2 draft pick, 7-foot-1, 195-pound Chet Holmgren. Yesterday the news broke he will miss his entire rookie season with a foot injury.  

And how did he get the foot injury, you ask?

Well, not shoveling snow back home in Minneapolis, that's for sure.

He got it chasing LeBron James on a fastbreak in a glorified pickup game.

Now, you might assume the Thunder front office would be a tad steamed at the kid for that. But you'd be wrong.

No, sir. Not a discouraging word was heard from Thunder GM Sam Presti, who said only that the club was "disappointed for Chet" and that "guys are playing all over the place, all the time, everywhere. If you have players that love to play, they are going to play basketball."

Then he said this:  "Every time you step on a basketball court, something like this could happen. It could happen in a game. It could happen in a practice. It could happen in a scrimmage ..."

Yes, well, except it didn't. It happened in something called the CrawsOver Pro-Am in Seattle, where the court was so slippery the game was eventually called in the second quarter.

This is not to be confused with the NBA's own summer league, or the Drew League, or any of a number of offseason events in which NBA players participate. There are so many, in fact, that the concept of an offseason doesn't exist anymore. 

The cranky old man in me wonders why NBA execs are OK with this.

The cranky old man wonders why, when Presti said players are playing all over the place, all the time, everywhere, he didn't add "... the dumbasses."

Because, listen, the Thunder dropped a bundle on young Chet, just like other clubs have dropped a bundle on Jayson Tatum, top pick Paolo Banchero, Dejounte Murray and Aaron Gordon. All of them also played in the event in Seattle.

The question is, why?

The other question is, why do NBA front offices merely shrug about it, given that these guys represent a massive investment for them?

Good lord, LeBron just signed a two-year, $97.1-million extension with the Lakers, the largest in NBA history. And he's pushing 40. 

And yet there he was in Seattle, playing on that treacherous court. There he was, playing in the Drew League. There he was, at 37, after missing 26 games with various injuries last season, his 19th in the league.

That's a lot of miles on those tires. And with miles comes wear. And with wear comes injury. And yet he's still playing -- a bunch of them are still playing -- all summer long?

The NBA allows for this, and likely there's some sort of business arrangement/contractual clauses that cover the particulars for each player. Which is why none of the clubs forking over the GDP of Lichtenstein for these guys is publicly squawking. 

But don't you wish just once an NBA executive would channel his inner AJ Preller?

Preller, remember, is the San Diego Padres GM who (perhaps unwisely) basically called star shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. an idiot because he showed red for a banned substance a couple of weeks ago. I can't but think Sam Presti isn't thinking along the same lines right now.

"What are you, nuts?" his inner Preller might be saying.

Or, "What were you thinking, you dumb kid?" 

Or, "It's August, for God's sake. Why are you playing in some nothing event in Seattle when we just signed you for 44 million freaking dollars? Are you trying to bankrupt the organization?"

But, nah. None of that. Even though Holcomb is done before he's even started, at least for now.

Shhh. Listen. Was that a scream I just heard from Presti's office?

Nope. Just the wind, apparently, sweepin' down the Oklahoma plain.

A very Brahms farewell

 Len Dawson passed the other day at 87, and so dust off that piano bench, Mr. Burford. I'm ready to go hand-to-hand with Brahms again, two falls out of three.

Some explanation is likely in order here.

The explanation is all tied up with childhood memory, which frequently is triggered by the death of a piece of that childhood. Len Dawson was one of those -- the quarterback of the mighty Kansas City Chiefs of the 1960s, and also a Sports Illustrated cover on my bedroom wall.

 I papered the whole room with SI covers as a kid, and now they're long gone. So, too, are  many of those who graced them; one by one they go, taking with them the childhood conceit that mortality is just an ugly rumor.

But the memories remain, and come flooding back. And so Len Dawson goes, and here they all are again: Mike Garrett and Otis Taylor and Willie Lanier; Buck Buchanan and Johnny Robinson and Emmitt Thomas. Fred Arbanas, the one-eyed tight end. Hank Stram, the strutting peacock on the sideline, matriculating the ball down the field in his club jacket bearing the Chiefs crest. 

And Brahms, of course. Always Brahms.

 Brahms comes into this, you see, because my piano teacher, Mr. Burford, never heard of the Kansas City Chiefs. Never heard of the Green Bay Packers, either. And so, on the day they squared off in the very first Super Bowl, he obliviously scheduled our annual recital.

I drew the dreaded last spot in the lineup that day. Lucky me.

There I sat, sweating out the afternoon, the tie around my neck feeling even more like a noose than it normally did. I hated ties. I hated the iron maiden suits that went with them. What 11-year-old boy doesn't?

Especially when he has to sit through two hours or so of tortured plinking by his fellow performers, while the dads in attendance squirmed like 11-year-olds themselves. What indignities must Bart Starr 'n' them be inflicting on the poor Chiefs, speaking of torture? And who scheduled this thing on the day of the game?

Waiting at the end of all this, for both the dads and me, was Brahms. I don't remember what the piece was. All I remember was finally -- finally -- sitting at the piano, and plowing through old Johannes like Donny Anderson plowing through Fred "The Hammer" Williamson. I was not as deft as Max McGee, plucking two touchdown passes from thin air and the haze of his legendary hangover, but I got through it. 

Me 1. Brahms 0.

And, out in L.A.: Packers 35, Chiefs 10.

Three years later Dawson and the Chiefs would get their revenge, pounding the Vikings 23-7 in Super Bowl IV while Stram gloated unabashedly on the sideline. And now it is -- what? -- 52 years later, and Len is gone. And the dust lies thick on the piano a few feet away here in our den.

Like old Hank Stram, Brahms must be gloating.

Decisions, decisions

 Saw an ESPN item today about Pete Carroll, who won a Super Bowl in Seattle and blew another one a couple years later, deciding to put off naming a starting quarterback because he can't decide between Geno Smith and Drew Lock.

Having run off his Hall of Fame QB, Russell Wilson, this is a classic case of being hoist by your own petard. And what it says to the Blob is Carroll would really prefer not to be starting either of the quarterbacks with which he's left himself, but he can't really say that.

The Blob, however, can. And so, through the miracle of completely making stuff up, here's exactly what's going on in Pete's mind right now ...

For God's sake. Drew Lock and Geno Smith. The hell was I thinking? It's like choosing between head cheese and lutefisk. They're both vile, but a man's gotta eat, so ...

 Cripes. why didn't we treat Russell better? Why won't the 49ers pull the trigger on Jimmy G? I've left 'em so many messages they've probably reported me for stalking.

Now it's Drew ... Geno; Geno ... Drew. Gaaah! I'm screwed either way. I mean, look at the division I'm in. The Cardinals have Kyler Murray. The Rams have Matt Stafford. Even that Trey Lance kid is starting to look OK in Frisco, I hear.

Me?

I don't even have Matt Saracen from "Friday Night Lights." Or that little turd J.D. McCoy.

Oh, no. I've got Drew and Geno. Or Geno and Drew. Hell, I don't even have Andrew Luck's number anymore.

'Course, he'd probably tell me he got the crap kicked out of him in Indy, so why would he come to Seattle to get more crap kicked out of him? For the weather? The coffee? A lovely boat ride on Puget Sound?

I shoulda retired while the retiring was good.

Your sign(s) of the apocalypse for today

(In which certain Cleveland Browns fans show their true colors.)

Yes, they are lovin' them some tallywacker-danglers in C-town these days. And to show their support of their new Quarterback Flavor of the Month, they're showing up displaying this, and this.

The latter has been entered in the Cleveland Parenting Moment of the Month contest.

OK, so it hasn't. But it's Cleveland, so you never know.

Come on, dipsticks. Do better.

The B$g T$n

 Urban Meyer is coming back to Fox to commentate on its "Big Noon" college football studio show this fall, and that's just fine with the Blob. After all, he's a lot safer in a studio than he is out in the wild, where he might accidentally maul another NFL franchise.

("Personal foul!" you're howling. "Fifteen yards!")

Yeah, but ... let me finish.

The real reason I have no quarrel with Urban here is he's the perfect guy to talk about not just Big Noon, but Big College Football Inc. in general. He is, after all, the epitome of the head-coach-as-CEO, having functioned as such at two of America's premier corporate programs, Florida and Ohio State. And the timing couldn't be better.

That's because the Big Ten -- henceforth to be spelled "B$g T$n" -- just signed the mother of all TV deals, a multi-platform structure that will bring in an estimated $1.2 b-as-in-billion a year. The contract, which runs until 2030, spans five networks but primarily Fox, CBS and NBC, which each Saturday will air a featured B$g T$n noon, 3:30 p.m. and prime time game, respectively.

The deal dwarfs every other college TV contract in the nation -- including that of the SEC, the other of the Big Two conferences. And it signals the continuing reimagining, driven almost solely by football, of the college athletic landscape.

Because now, presumably, the SEC will have to put together its own media super-deal. And that will further separate the B$g T$n and the SEC from whoever or whatever is left of the rest, forcing an eventual restructuring of Division I athletics.

Here's how it might unfold, at least in the Blob's less-than-crystal ball: The SEC and B$g T$n will take turns raiding the ACC out of existence, leaving its bones to bleach from Tallahassee to South Bend (or some other overwrought metaphor). Someone will pluck Oregon -- still valuable as a football property, which is all that matters now -- from the remains of the Pac-12.  What remains of that conference will then strike a merger with the remains of the Big 12, forming the bulwark of what henceforth will be known as "Division I."

The Big Two, meanwhile, will form their own entity with its own set of rules, separate from the obsolete NCAA. Call it "Super Division I," perhaps. Or "Super Not Exactly Friends." Or what the hell, "Godzilla", in the interests of accuracy.

The College Football Playoff, expanded to 16 teams, will include seven or eight Super Division I teams, plus the champions of eight D-I conferences. Kind of like the NCAA Tournament always has seven or eight teams apiece from the Power 5 conferences, plus the champions of the Ivies and the MEAC and all the other smaller D-I conferences.

The national championship game, in a bow to tradition and history, would be played on a revolving basis at one of the historic New Year's Day sites -- Pasadena (Rose Bowl), Dallas (Cotton), New Orleans (Sugar) and Miami (Orange).

Of course, truth being stranger than prediction, this is probably not the way it will go down at all. More likely, it will all wind up in an an entirely new, but wholly familiar, bowl game.

The Litigation Bowl.

Where Tom went. Or not.

 And now it's time to examine the mystery that has kept all of America riveted ... OK, so all of NFL World ... OK, so all of Florida ... OK, so maybe just all the weirdos who live in Mom's basement and crank out conspiracy blogs for their 12 followers around the globe.

Where did Tom Brady disappear to? 

Also, why?

Also, what did the Buccaneers brass mean when it said his weeks-long absence from training camp was planned months ago?

Speculation has run rampant - because when speculation runs, it's never slowly or quickly or steadily, it’s always just rampant. One theory is Brady has been filming an upcoming appearance on "The Masked Singer." The Blob is extremely dubious of this, on account of I can't see Brady willingly dressing up as a giant kangaroo or aardvark or Purdue Pete with his lifeless psycho eyes. And what would he sing?

Aside from "Your Cheatin' Heart," that is.

In any event, he was in the wind, and the Buccaneers were apparently informed ahead of time he was going to be in the wind, and it seems they were OK with him being in the wind. But of course the Blob can't just let it go at that.

So I've fired up my vast powers of imagination ("'Vast'." you're saying. "Get him") for a little exercise I call "Where In The World Was Tom Brady?":

1. Cheating on Gisele with Carmen Sandiego.

(Don't tell Gisele)

2. Cheating on Gisele with Waldo.

(See above)

3. Cheating on Gisele with Bill Belichick.

(REALLY see above)

(Also, don't tell the Buccaneers)

4. Fulfilling a lifelong dream to drive in the Belgian Grand Prix for Mercedes.

(Don't tell Lewis Hamilton)

5. Fulfilling a lifelong dream to also drive in the Dutch Grand Prix, the Italian Grand Pris and the U.S. Grand Prix for Mercedes.

("Dammit!" -- Lewis Hamilton)

6. Wrestling a bear at the Indiana State Fair.

(Don't tell Colts fans. They'll show up to root for the bear)

7. Milking a cow at the Indiana State Fair.

(See above, only they'll root for the cow)

8. Forming a rock band: Brady on lead guitar, Gronk on bass, Belichick on lead vocals. 

(Don't tell Springsteen. He'll want in on it.)

9. Surfing some tasty waves.

(Don't tell Spicoli)

And last but not least ...

10. Cheating on Gisele with Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes.

("Dammit!" -- Gisele)

("For the last time, get out of my car!" -- Lewis Hamilton)

Age of hysteria

 Some days you just want to channel Major Clipton, who pronounces the appropriate benediction on his world in the last scene from "The Bridge on the River Kwai."

"Madness," he says, surveying the ruined bridge and a dead Colonel Nicholson. "Madness!"

And with that we take you to the great state of Utah, where the hysteria about transgender athletes has reached some sort of shameful zenith. In one of several states (including Indiana, naturally) where legislation has been proposed to ban transgender athletes from competing in high school sports, the Utah High School Activities Association was compelled by parental complaints to  confirm one of its female athletes was actually female.

The issue, see, was this particular athlete was Just Too Good -- code for, "She kicked our little Susie's ass and we didn't like it."  And so officials dutifully went through her enrollment records, all the way back to kindergarten. And they did that, the legislative representative of the UHSAA explained this week to the Utah lege, because the organization takes all such complaints seriously -- even ones as ridiculous as claiming a certain athlete didn't look "feminine" enough.

What are we doing here, people? I mean, what the hell are we doing?

Imagine for a moment how the girl in question must have felt, having her very girlhood investigated by her own ruling body. The teenage years are fraught enough anyway, and you do this? You question the excellence that so often bolsters the self-esteem so critical for teenagers? And not just her excellence, but her very identity?

Theoretical High School Girl: "I'm really good at this!" 

Theoretical Parents Of High School Girl Who's Not As Good: "Yes, but are you a girl? Are you REALLY?"

For. God's. Sake.

It's something I say a lot these days, along with Major Clipton's benediction. We are neck deep in an age of McCarthy-esque hysteria in America, and sometimes all you can do is shake your head at the madness. Commie socialist teachers indoctrinating our kids with their wily commie-socialist ways! Assigning subversive materials like "Huckleberry Finn," "The Diary of Anne Frank," and "To Kill A Mockingbird"! Mentioning the word "slavery" in an American history class!

Ban it all, dammit. 'Cause if we don't, how will our kids ever learn that America is all about freedom?

The transgender hysteria, meanwhile, courses through those same mad channels. Transgender athletes across the country comprise a number so small as to be statistically insignificant, but, omigod, they're TAKING OVER GIRLS SPORTS!  

Just today, for instance, right-wing foof Clay Travis expressed alarm on the Magic Twitter Thingy that a transgender golfer was "kicking biological women's asses" in an LPGA qualifier. And the headline on the story he linked to in the tweet?

"Biological Male Is In Contention At LPGA Qualifying School After Round 1."

In "contention." Not "kicking asses." Go with God there, Hysteria Boy.

And the case in Utah?

I don't know who the girl is or who her parents are, but if I were her dad I would be absolutely foaming at the mouth at the UHSAA. I would be asking just how silly a complaint would have to be for the association not to take it "seriously." I would be wondering why the UHSAA didn't have my daughter's back, and why they didn't tell the complaining parents in this case to go piss up a rope.

Because that's what a high school athletic association that supported ALL its student-athletes would have done. At least in a world not gone mad.

Punishment unfazed

 You can see Roger Goodell this morning, in your mind's eye. He's just finished throwing a couple shovelfuls of dirt on the rotting corpse of the NFL's "We Respect Wimmen!" schtick.  He's walking away. He's brushing off this hands.

"Welp, that's that!" he's saying.

Or, "Close enough for government work!"

Or, "Fixed it!"

Meanwhile, Deshaun Watson, serial groper/tallywacker-dangler, is apologizing to the Browns for all the trouble these meddlesome wimmen have caused, but not for what he did to cause the wimmen to haul him into court and take his money.

And Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, who handed the tallywacker-dangler $230 million in guaranteed money (shielding most of it against the tallywacker-dangler's impending suspension), is saying, doggone it, forget what he did. He's 26 years old and he's "a hell of a quarterback."

If this sounds like no one has learned anything, and that the 11-game suspension and chump change fine Goodell imposed on Watson yesterday hasn’t taught anyone a thing, grab yourself a cookie. You go straight to the head of the class. 

Goodell might think he fixed everything by ignoring arbitrator Sue L. Robinson's wimpy six-game suspension and imposing (cough-cough) Serious Punishment, but then Roger the Nerf Hammer still waits up for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Because what did we hear coming out of Cleveland yesterday?

Not dismay, certainly. Not, "Oh my God, this is so unfair!" And certainly not regret or remorse from either the Browns or Watson.

We heard relief.

We heard, "Thank God we didn't screw up and hand eff-you money to a guy we won't see on the field until next season." We heard, "Hey, this ain't so bad!" We heard just about everything, of course, except repentance.

Nope, here was Watson yesterday, apologizing only to the Browns and not to the women he abused. Asked why he settled with 24 of his 25 accusers, he said it wasn't because he did anything wrong. He said instead that he's "always been able to stand on my innocence." 

Which is the same as saying the 25 or 30 or however many women it is are all lying, and he's not. Which is what the Browns said when they handed him a then-record contract. 

Lots of folks out there on the interwhatsis reacted by saying they hope the Browns go winless this season. But the Blob is not so vindictive.

I just hope the Browns are met everywhere by a mob of pissed-off women.

And that the Ghost of Browns Quarterbacks Past turn Deshaun Watson into, oh, Tim Couch, maybe. Or Johnny Manziel. Or DeShone Kizer, or Josh McCown, or Brandon Weeden, or pretty much every Browns QB since Bernie Kosar.

Retribution, thy name is history. Something like that.

Media culpa

 Perspective lends wisdom, or so the wise say. It's one of those eternal verities that only become eternal verities with, well, perspective.

("The hell does that mean, Mr. Blob?" you're asking now. "You trying to go all philosopher on us, and hit Jim Morrison instead?") 

Well ... maybe.

But the rest of that thought is perspective sometimes lends other things, too. Like, say, the overwhelming urge to say "What the hell were we thinking?"

Watched the Netflix doc about Manti Te'o and his imaginary girlfriend last night, and I came away from it with an enormous sense of shame. Like most of American media, I weighed in on the whole bizarre story, too. I fed with just as much frenzy on it. And I speculated with just as little restraint as everyone else.

Ten years later, watching it all unfold again, I marvel at how easily I was duped into thinking the  victim of a cruel hoax was less sinned against than sinning.  

Somehow, in tone at the very least, a lot of us insinuated it was his own fault, because who develops a relationship with someone he's never met? We questioned his motives for keeping the truth from us even as he was still trying to figure it all out himself. We even speculated he orchestrated the whole thing because he was gay and was trying to hide it. 

Rock bottom in all that was when Te'o was asked point-blank on national TV if he was gay. He handled that question a lot better than I would have.

In the end, disgustingly, even the NFL succumbed to the victim-blaming, apparently deciding it meant Te'o had some sort of flaw in his character. No one will ever admit it, but why else would he have dropped to the second round after being projected by everyone as a mid-first round pick?

Crazy. Absolutely, batshite crazy.

Ten years removed now, I can see how the way the media covered this story said far more about it than about Manti Te'o. I can see that running roughshod over a 21-year-old kid who'd just lost his grandmother, and speculating that he made up the girlfriend and her death, was not exactly a shining moment in American journalism. 

Maybe someone, in some newsroom, stopped to ask why one of the most famous college athletes in America would need to concoct an immensely elaborate dead-girlfriend narrative for publicity. Or do it to hide his alleged sexual orientation in 2012 America.

I would hope someone did that. 'Cause that would have been thinking like a reporter.

I defend journalists a lot these days, because so many in America bash them for doing what they do in a free society, which is ask questions some people don't like to be asked. That happened a lot during the term of our 45th president, because he and the truth were so often strangers. It's why 45 called the free press "the enemy of the people," the way tinpot dictators have since time immemorial.

But sometimes the criticisms are on the mark. Sometimes a mea culpa (media culpa?) is not only necessary, but ought to be demanded.

This is one of those times.

Bunker mentality

 Tiger Woods rallied the troops yesterday in Delaware, flying up from Florida to meet with a bunch of other PGA heavyweights as the Saudi Butchers Tour continued to raid the beleaguered PGA with impunity.

The Blob's completely irreverent response: "Well, isn't that special."

Because, listen, the PGA is losing this fight, and it has no one but itself to blame. It made a bunch of guys stupid rich because they're good at swinging golf clubs, and now some of the stupid rich guys are doing what stupid rich guys always do, which is say "Why can't we be even MORE stupid rich?"

In other words, they've gotten greedy, which is not so much an affliction as a way of life for the stupid rich. They've got it all, but all isn't enough. They want whatever is out there beyond "all."

Enter the Saudis, mutilators of journalists and murderers of women and children. They dangled more-than-all in front of the stupid rich guys, and a bunch of them jumped at it, not being able to help themselves. Now a pile of former PGA stars are on the Butchers Tour, and Tiger and the PGA loyalists are groping for a defense.

Call it a bunker mentality for those who do battle with bunkers, if you will. And when you get to that point, history says you've already lost.

Just recently the PGA lost the British Open champion, Cameron Smith, and Bubba Watson to the Butchers Tour, and they surely won't be the last. Meanwhile, the PGA's hard-ass response -- banning those who jump ship -- looks more and more foolish, because it hasn't stopped anyone from defecting and has given the defectors ammunition for legal grievance. 

No one loves playing the martyr like the over-privileged, after all. And the PGA  has opened the door for them to do so.

So what's the solution?

The Blob makes no claim to second sight, but it seems to me what's eventually going to happen is the PGA  will realize the Butchers Tour is not really a competitor. That’s because the PGA is tournament golf, and the Butchers Tour isn’t. It's merely a series of 54-hole, no-cut exhibitions in which the participants get guaranteed money and play for enormous purses.

And so the way out of this is for the PGA to recognize that the Butchers Tour is just supplemental income for all those poor impoverished PGA golfers, and not an existential threat. All that needs to happen is for the two entities to coordinate their schedules, and they can peacefully co-exist.

I suppose that's too simple, though. But it's a way out of the bunker, and the PGA needs to start looking for one.

Alien ground

 Bought one of those college football preview mags the other day, because college football is coming up the street and I wanted to see how the old alma mater, Ball State, was expected to fare this fall.

(Answer: They're expected to suck.)

I also wanted to check out the service academies, and the Ivies, and a few of your random Elons and Holy Crosses and William and Marys. Just to make sure, you know, that college football was still being played in places where actual students did the playing. 

Which is why I did not check out the Incs. As in, Alabama Inc., Ohio State Inc., Texas A&M Inc., all those SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 Incs. 

College football, see, has always stirred the romantic in me, and there is damn little romance anymore in those precincts. These days it's alien ground. These days, it's all about transfer portals and NILs and Nick Saban crabbing about Jimbo Fisher buying players -- which is kinda like Microsoft crabbing about Amazon, or JPMorgan Chase crabbing about Bank of America.

They're all just bloated corporations, in other words, cranking out quarterbacks and wideouts and edge rushers for the WalMarts of the NFL. And thus I find college football at that level less and less appealing, even if I still get excited every year when the days shorten and the light takes on the curious slanting cast of August.

It's an old man's complaint, I suppose, that nothing's the way it used to be, or at least the way we choose to remember it being. But nothing's the way it used to be.

This does not necessarily have anything to do with the fact college athletes now can make money off their image and likeness, mind you. They should have always been able to do that. The athletic programs they enrich long ago shed the illusion they're institutions of higher learning, so why should the kids who generate those programs' gargantuan revenue  keep up appearances?

No, it's more the culture that forced the NCAA to allow NILs -- a culture that pays athletic coaches millions because their programs generate millions, and those millions are the only reason they exist anymore. That's probably always been the case to some degree, but they didn't use to be so blatant about it.

The other day, for instance, a young man named Myles Brennan announced he was leaving college football behind. An often-injured quarterback at LSU, he'd been granted a sixth year of eligibility, and he was poised to be the Tigers' starter this fall, a role he last filled for them in 2020.

Brennan said, nah, no thanks. Five years of college football were enough. It was time to put away childish things, as the Bible says, and get on with being a grownup.

"It is time for me to start a new chapter in my life," he said in a statement.

I found that refreshing. And it seemed to give college football exactly the context it should have in a young man's life.

Until, that is, Darren Rovell tweeted that Brennan had NIL deals with three or four different companies, and he'd be able to keep whatever money they'd paid him. Which made it sound like he was ripping them off or something.

"Bullstuff," I thought. "They agreed, he agreed, it's just business."

And then the college football romantic in me winced.

Two deaths in Texas

"He's the kind of kid who just goes out and causes wrecks …”

-- Darrell Royal, 1969, in Sports Illustrated

They all loved the way Steve Worster played football. He was as Texas as a blue norther and a belt buckle the size of a serving tray.

The point of the spear in the Texas Longhorns wishbone juggernaut in t he late '60s, he was the guy who ran through arm tackles like turnstiles and made defenses crowd the middle to stop him, which freed up Jim Bertelsen and Ted Koy and Chris Gilbert to run free on the flanks with James Street's pitches. Texas won a national title and 30 games with the 'bone from 1968-70, turning Worster into even more a Texas legend than he already was after running for 5,000 yards in high school.

Worster died Saturday at the age of 73.

So did Michael Hickmon, 43, in a Texas football narrative of a much darker sort.

Hickmon was shot and killed Saturday night in the Dallas suburb of Lancaster, yet another victim of America's gunslinger fetish. Police say they're looking at the brother of Aqib Talib, who won a Super Bowl with Denver and was a five-time All-Pro cornerback in a 12-year NFL career, as a suspect in the shooting.

Hickmon?

He was a youth football coach.

He was shot and killed because the coaches from two youth football teams got into it over a game official's call, and someone pulled out a gun. Because, you know, Texas, and also 'Murica.

Pulled a gun at a youth football game. Pulled a gun arguing a call at a youth football game. As if it were the Super Bowl and not just a bunch of kids chasing each other around, oversized helmets wobbling on their heads like bowling balls on pencils.

How many nightmares are those kids going to have now? 

How many of those kids will never be able to look at a football again?

Here's your answer to the latter: Probably not many. It is Texas, after all.

It's Texas, the home office for Friday Night Lights -- film, TV and actual versions. It's Texas, where a state's love affair with football made Steve Worster a legend before he ever left Bridge City High School.  

It's Texas: Where that obsession gets twisted into something unholy by people with no sense of proportion or reason, and where a bunch of kids chasing a ball becomes a literal matter of life and death.

We've all read the stories these days about the game official shortage cutting across all sports at all levels, and how it's happening largely because Dad and/or Mom have lost their damn minds. They think 8-year-old Johnny has the best arm or speed or jumpshot anyone's ever seen in an 8-year-old. They think he's destined for MLB or the NFL or the NBA. And they won't let some poor ref -- often a kid himself -- working for a couple of extra bucks get in their wunderkind's way.

Or some poor coach.

And so more and more youth and high school officials saying, "Forget this. Too many crazy people out there." And so youth coaches winding up dead because some of those crazy people decide to start gunning up like pretend Army Rangers, a gruesome collision between America the calibrated and America the land of warped priorities.

I mean, seriously: Who the hell takes a gun to a youth football game? What sort of alien creature does that?

And how far down a dark path have they come from the normal folks who simply loved the way Steve Worster went out and caused wrecks?

No longer about the label

 Look, John Calipari nailed it on the screws. No one thinks of Babe Parilli -- or even Bear Bryant -- when you say “the University of Kentucky."

Which is to say, as Calipari did the other day, that Kentucky is not a football school. It's a basketball school.

Say "Kentucky", and you think of Adolph Rupp and Joe B. Hall and Tubby Smith, not the Bear, who did indeed coach football there once upon a time.  You think of Alex Groza and Ralph Beard and Jack Givens and Dan Issel; Kenny "Sky" Walker and Jamal Mashburn and Anthony Davis. And several dozen others.

Basketball. 

That's UK. That's the label.

That's the label even when the football is good in Lexington, as it has been lately. Across the last four years, the football Wildcats have won 33 games and won four bowl games. That's prime stuff in the SEC.

But when Calipari said the other day Kentucky was a basketball school the way Alabama and Georgia were football schools, he wasn't thinking about that. He was thinking about the leaky roof in the Wildcats practice gym. And maybe, deep down where a man's insecurities live, he was thinking about something else, too.

Like, I don't know, the way college basketball is now merely a handmaiden for King Football.

All the seismic activity among the top D-I conferences, after all, is about football, not basketball. Oklahoma isn't fleeing the Big 12 for the SEC because it's better for hoops, after all. Ditto USC and UCLA heading to the Big Ten, and the Big Ten cozying up to NBC. Ditto whatever happens to the ACC once the Big Two begin raiding that conference.

The ACC, once a conference synonymous with basketball. The ACC, for whom, like everyone else, football is driving the bus now.

Because of the March Madness ATM, college buckets will never lapse into complete irrelevancy, but right now you can see it from here. And you've gotta wonder if Coach Cal and a lot of his fellow basketball coaches aren't getting a tad queasy about that. You've gotta wonder if what he said the other day wasn't solely driven by a sub-standard practice facility, but by the creeping suspicion that basketball is just along for football's ride anymore.

It's possible I'm reading too much into this. ("No, really?" you're saying). But you can't blame me for thinking otherwise, right?

Preseason, over-seasoned

 Watched a bit of the Colts preseason game at Buffalo yesterday, and there must be something wrong with me. I didn't see anything that made me retire to my fainting couch.

I saw Nyheim Hines make a couple nice runs and Matt Ryan step up in the pocket to deliver a buying-time completion, and a swing pass to Hines that picked up a chunky six-or-seven yards on first down. 

But I missed the horrible Parris Campbell dropping two passes, and the other sadsack Colts receivers struggling to get open against the Bills' backups, and OMIGOD THE COLTS ONLY SCORED 24 POINTS THEIR OFFENSE IS TERRIBLE.

Which is what I was hearing from Indianapolis media and other Colts followers after the first-team offense played one quarter in one preseason game. That amounted to 21 snaps. And yet ... lots of over-the-top pearl clutching and lots of preseason over-seasoning from folks who should know better.

Here's what I know: Playing preseason football games in today's NFL is like putting water wings on Michael Phelps. They are completely extraneous, serving no real purpose except to get players hurt and put a few extra dollars in the owners already overburdened wallets. As an evaluator they are next to worthless -- especially the first preseason game., 

Back in the day, when NFL teams used to play as many as six of these deals, they did have a modicum of value. That's because players went home after the season and you didn't see them until training camp. Same for your draft picks.

Now everyone has mini-camps and mini-mini-camps and OTAs and film technology that would have left Cecil B. DeMille slack-jawed. Players show up for training camp already in game shape. Rookies show up already having been evaluated down to the molecular level. The days of a rookie making the team solely because he made a couple of jarring tackles in a preseason game are mostly over.

Oh, it still happens occasionally, I'm sure. But so much else goes into the process now, and coaching staffs know so much more about a player than they ever did before.

And all the hand-wringing about how bad the Colts offense looked, particularly the receivers?

Maybe they're not very good, and maybe they're only sorta OK. But 21 snaps in one pretend game wasn't the clincher. For any number of reasons, appearances deceive in these money-grab exhibitions. And no one should know that better than Colts fans.

Remember 2006, the year the Colts went 12-4 and won the Super Bowl in Miami?

In the preseason, they were 1-3. Lost to the Seahawks, who went 9-7 that season. Also to the Rams, who were 8-8. Also to the Bengals, who beat the Colts 20-3 in their last preseason game and also went 8-8 that season.

And the year before?

The Colts went 14-2. 

In the preseason, they were 0-5.

But, hey. At least they weren't the Jets on Friday night.

On Friday night, see, the Jets beat the Eagles 24-21. Starting quarterback Zach Wilson threw five passes and completed three. Then he stepped wrong, and now he's out 2-to-4 weeks with a knee injury.

"What a waste!" you're saying. "The Jets already know what he can do! Why was he out there at all?"

Good question. Goood question.

Growing pained

 Some days the These Kids Today gene overwhelms, not to say the What The Hell Were You Thinking, Kid? gene. At those times we are all cranky old men shaking our liver-spotted fists at both the indignities of age and the folly of youth.

And so we come to San Diego Padres GM AJ Preller, who is only 45 but did a passable impression of Walt Kowalski from "Gran Torino" when his brightest star, Fernando Tatis Jr., showed red for a banned substance and drew an automatic 80-game suspension, which puts him out for the rest of the 2022 season.

This after the 23-year-old Tatis had already been gone for the first four months of the season because he broke his wrist in a motorcycle accident back in December.

Preller was not pleased, seeing how the Padres had stripped half their farm system to acquire Juan Soto, Josh Hader and Josh Bell to position themselves as a viable challenger to the dominant Dodgers.

"He's somebody that from the organization's standpoint we've invested time and money into," said Preller, clearly torqued. "We were hoping that from the offseason to now that there would be some maturity, and obviously with the news today, it's more of a pattern and it's something that we've got to dig a bit more into ...

"I'm sure he's very disappointed. But at the end of the day, it's one thing to say it. You've got to start showing by your actions ... I think what we need to get to is a point in time we trust (him). Over the course of the last six or seven months, that's been something that we haven't really been able to have there."

Blunt words, and perhaps not entirely wise words. Star players these days, after all, are always looking for reasons to feel disrespected, A public tongue-lashing from the front office would certainly provide that. You wonder how much of a rift that opens between Tatis and Preller, and if that rift will ultimately prove irreparable.

But, again, the These Kids Today gene cannot be overcome sometimes. Preller succumbed to it yesterday, and truthfully it would have been nearly impossible not to. The Padres are paying Tatis $340 million over 14 years, and for that have every right to expect some recognition that a certain responsibility attends such an investment. 

So far, they're still waiting for it.

They just wonder, first of all, what the hell the kid was doing on a motorcycle to begin with. Then he waits until March to have surgery on the wrist. And now?

Now he tests positive for Clostebol, an anabolic steroid banned by both MLB and the World Anti-Doping Agency. Commonly used for opthalmological and dermatological use, According to Tatis, it ended up in his system because it was in a ringworm med he was taking.

To his credit, he owned it completely, refusing to appeal the suspension. 

"I should have used the resources available to me in order to ensure that no banned substances were in what I took," he said in a statement. "I failed to do so ... I have no excuse for my error."

Preller, clearly frustrated, remained unappeased. The intersection of growing pains, and growing pained, has rarely been so well-marked. 

"He failed a drug screen. For whatever reason," Preller said. "That's a player's responsibility to make sure he's within compliance of that. He wasn't."

You could almost hear Walt Kowalski's snarl.

Field of memes

 The Reds and Cubs play the MLB Field of Dreams game out there in Iowa tonight, so right off the Blob lapses into irreverence. The place itself is no longer so much a Field of Dreams as it is a Field of Schemes, a reverent tribute to baseball turned tourist trap in the traditional American way. So why not irreverence?

And so I imagine old "Baseball Has Marked The Time" Terrence Mann re-emerging from the corn, saying "Well, I'm never doing THAT again."

And because it's the Cubs and the Reds. here come Frank Chance and Joe Morgan, saying "Man, do these guys suck now."

"Even worse than we did," agrees Andy Pafko, from a couple rows of corn over.

"Yeah, we never lost a game in '69," adds old George Wright, star of the original Cincinnati Red Stockings of 1860s fame. "These mutts have lost 66 and it's only August! Dead last in their, whatchcallit, division!"

There's a rustle from several rows, and the College of Coaches emerges, still squabbling over strategy after all these years.

Another rustle, and here comes Ted Kluszewski, scowling darkly.

"I hate it in there," he grumbles. "They made me put sleeves back on."

Gametime draws near. Morgan and Pete Rose, who's somehow weaseled his way onto the grounds, have a catch in the gloaming. Ron Santo and Don Young try to, but Young keeps dropping the ball. 

"Just like 1969!” Santo gripes.

Now it's time for the current Cubs and the current Reds to take the field. The ghosts begin drifting back toward the corn. A sweet little breeze whispers through the ripening stalks, making them nod in seeming assent -- a curious sight, because there's no breeze at all this night.

Turns out it's Shoeless Joe and Christy Mathewson and a bunch of others, dragging a cursing, spitting figure through the rows.

"We're gonna make Cobb watch these bums!" they crow.

And so they do.

Phoning it in

 Now that my Pittsburgh Pirates ("Not again!" you're saying) are back in their ancestral home, the NL Central cellar, it might be instructive to consider why they are the superlative Cruds they are.

("No it wouldn't!" you're saying. "We don't care!")

Well ... we're gonna do it anyway.

That's because something happened yesterday that was perhaps uniquely Crud-like, as the Buccos took on the Arizona Diamondbacks in another losing effort. What happened was, second baseman Rodolfo Castro slid safely into third base at one point -- and so did his cellphone.

See, he'd stuck it in his back pocket and forgot about it. And when he slid into third, it popped out of his pocket.

Third-base umpire Adam Hamari spotted the phone with his well-trained umpire's eagle eye and pointed to it. Presumably he did not also say "Hey, look! A phone!" 

The chagrined Castro said later he'd forgotten he'd put the phone in his pocket, and, boy, what a stupid I am, and also, geez, what a knucklehead. He did not answer the relevant question, which was why he had his phone in the dugout to begin with.

Meanwhile, the Cruds manager, Derek Shelton, could only shake his head.

"You stay around the game and you see things you haven't seen before," he said.

"Do this mean you guys are phoning it in?" some wiseguy reporter asked.

OK, so no one asked that. But it would have been cooler if they did.

A queen mother signs off

Serena Williams once won the Australian Open when she was 35 years old and two months pregnant. If the question remained, that answered it.

The question is "Who is the greatest female athlete of all time?"

The subsidiary question ("Who is the greatest female tennis player of all time?") she answered some time ago.

As she announces she is "evolving away from tennis" after the U.S. Open -- Serena-speak for retirement -- she is not only the queen of a domain she and her sister altered forever, she is in a sense its queen mother, too. This is not so much a commentary on her age (40), understand; it's an acknowledgment of how much that altered terrain owes to her. 

When she and Venus showed up from the public courts of Compton two decades and change ago, women's tennis was whiter than the proverbial picket fence.  It was Steffi Graf and Martina Hingis and Monica Seles, the lineal descendants of Chrissie and Martina and Billie Jean. The only woman of color who'd ever made a significant mark in all the game's long history was Althea Gibson, and she'd made that mark 40 years before.

Venus and Serena, two black women from demonstrably plebeian roots, therefore must have seemed like visitors from another planet. Shamefully, they were treated as such on occasion by the country club doyennes who were used to their champions being less ... well, colorful.

But then Venus won Wimbledon five times and Serena won and won and won, and little girls who looked like them began to notice. And two decades later, look at what they've wrought.

Over there on the metaphorical court one is Coco Gauff, an American black woman and 18-year-old prodigy. On courts two and three and four are Madison Keys and Taylor Townsend and Sloane Stephens. On other courts in other places are other young girls of color, none of whom might have picked up a tennis racquet had it not been for Serena Williams.

She is, after all, the greatest of all time, with 23 Grand Slam singles titles and a stretch of unmatched dominance that carried well into her 30s -- another altering of the terrain, because once upon a time the top women's players rarely played much beyond their 30th birthdays, and certainly weren't winning Grand Slam titles or reaching their finals by then.

Serena played in three straight Grand Slam finals when she was 37 years old. And after she'd had a baby and battled through subsequent blood clots that could have killed her. Who does that?

Who, besides the queen, that is. And the queen mother.

A resignation too far

 Some people deserve what they get in life, even if they once were President of the United States. And some people do not.

I'm including Cale Gundy among the latter.

Gundy, the younger brother of Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy and an Oklahoma assistant coach for more then three decades, resigned Sunday. He was the longest-tenured coach in the Big 12, and you can say his resignation was a noble act of falling on his sword for the greater good.  You can also say the reason he did it seems to be pure nonsense.

He did it, apparently, because he read a word off a player's tablet he shouldna oughta read.

The story is, Gundy was conducting a film session, and noticed that one of the players was not, shall we say, paying attention. What he was supposed to be doing was taking notes; what he actually was doing was playing with his tablet.

So Gundy did what coaches have done since time immemorial: He snatched the tablet in a classic "Let's see what's so damned interesting you can't pay attention" move, and began to read what was on the screen.

Unfortunately for him, what was on the screen included a word euphemistically described as "racially charged." And Gundy, who was likely reading without paying much attention himself, said it out loud. 

Sunday he resigned, expressing "great anguish".

"The unfortunate reality is that someone in my position can cause harm without ever meaning to do so," Gundy said in a statement. "In that circumstance, a man of character accepts accountability. I take responsibility for this mistake. I apologize."

Everything in that quote is exactly why Gundy should still be coaching at OU. 

Everything that compelled that quote, if it happened exactly the way it's been described, is straight Big Silly.

Look. I get it. You can't say certain words in polite society anymore  -- and thank God for that, because you never should have been able to.  Decent people who were brought up right know this. Indecent people who weren't (including a certain ex-president, and some of our more strident demagogues in Congress) do not. Instead they cry persecution and tyranny when they're called out on their indecency and/or criminality.

And yet. 

And yet, there is abundant evidence that Cale Gundy is not one of those people.  Most of that evidence comes from players of color he coached. Both Adrian Peterson and Joe Mixon, former running backs at OU, issued statements saying, basically, that the reason for Gundy's resignation was total BS.

"If not for Coach Gundy I would not have attended OU, survived at OU, stayed at OU and succeeded in life after OU," Mixon's statement read. "I owe my education and professional career to him and most importantly I owe who I am as a person to him."

He concluded by saying Gundy was demonstrably no racist, and should be immediately reinstated.

It won't happen, of course. This is no longer a world that tolerates missteps, and God knows this apparently was as innocent a misstep as it gets. But proportionality is as extinct as triceratops these days. If OU allows Gundy to keep coaching, it calls down the wrath of the zealots who seem to run every show these days. The PR nightmare would be gruesome.

Gundy understood this, and so he stepped aside. I don't know if he was forced to. I don't know if one of the players in the room last week blew the whistle on him. I do know, though none of them would ever say it publicly, that officials at OU think the inevitable blowback would be grotesquely overreactive. 

In any case, Gundy is gone. And will the OU football program be better for it?

Think you know the answer. 

A brief pause for history nerdery

 I met David McCullough once.

It was years ago at the Allen County Public Library, and I brought a copy of "Truman" with me, and he signed it. It was right after the Ken Burns doc on the Civil War came out. McCullough narrated it, and so his voice was American comfort food, one of those deals where he opened his mouth and everyone said "Oh, yeah, that guy," and were immediately on familiar ground.

(If you don't know who David McCullough is, you may exit the Blob now. We're going full history nerd on you, and we'll revisit Sportsball World tomorrow sometime. 'Bye.)

We're going full history nerd because David McCullough was America's most popular historian, and he died yesterday at 89. He wasn't a trained historian -- his Yale degree was in English lit -- but few trained historians ever brought American history to the masses the way he did. His books, two of which ("Truman" and "John Adams") won Pulitzers, occupy our bookshelves; besides the aforementioned, you'll find "The Path Between The Seas" and "The Greater Journey" and "The Great Bridge" and "Mornings On Horseback" and "The Johnstown Flood" and "1776." 

We like our McCullough, in other words.

His genius was in making American history accessible to Americans whose grasp of it is notoriously tenuous, and  very often the product of disinterest. It is the timeless lament of history nerds that America's understanding of its own history is at best inaccurate and at worst almost childlike. There is so much myth to hack through, after all. Who has the time?

This is especially true today, with those of a certain ideological bent feeling so threatened by, well, history. It tends to bore them anyway, but if they must consider it, and their children must learn it, please, only the good parts. Anything else is a Marxist plot to make our children Hate America.

And so the current movement to whitewash American history, which has been whitewashed enough as it is. That process has been carried to absurd lengths in some quarters; in Texas, for instance, there's a movement to banish even the word "slavery" in second-grade history textbooks. The wholly sanitized (and wholly misleading) recommended replacement? "Involuntary relocation." 

God forbid anyone try slip into little Johnny's History O' Texas that the heroes who died at the Alamo were fighting in part to preserve slavery -- which was, at the time, the underpinning of the cotton trade that drove the Texas economy. And which Mexico wanted to abolish in all its territories.

Bring that one up in a Texas school board meeting sometime. And then duck.

Point is, we like our history in simple parables, and history doesn't work like that. It's messy, it's non-linear, and even those we rightly consider its paragons often saw their best intentions stumble over unforeseen consequences. No chronicle of humans -- and that is what history is -- would be worth the ink and paper it's written on that suggested otherwise.

The most extreme of the aforementioned ideologues, however, want that not just suggested but shouted from the rooftops. Which must surely distress actual students of American history who understand George Washington never chopped down that cherry tree, but he did grow up to be the Father of Our Country -- and also a man who bought and sold human beings to maintain his homestead.  

The ideologues would consider that inconvenient fact bad form. Kind of like the woman who visited the site of a plantation and then complained on Twitter that the guide talked too much about slavery. What did she expect, a discourse on Scarlett's hoop skirts?

David McCullough's passing makes me wonder what he must have thought about such willful ignorance. And if he heard some of the nonsense being spewed about American history teachers by foaming-at-the-mouth extremists, and died of apoplexy as much as anything else.

Look who's back

 Scott Dixon is the grand old man of IndyCar, if you consider 42 old. Which it probably is considering he's two decades older than a lot of his competition these days.

He beat them all again Sunday, by the way.

Started 14th after qualifying like an old lady, and then drove like the best of his generation he is, winning the Music City Grand Prix on a Nashville street circuit that included racing over a bridge, and which turned a lot of expensive race cars into macrame.

Wise old head that he is, Dixon survived the demolition derby. It was his 53rd career victory, lifting him over Mario Andretti into second place alltime, and now he's just six points behind Will Power -- another wise old head -- with three races left.

It's the closest he's been to his seventh championship all year. He's been hanging around -- fourth, fifth, sixth -- but no one was even talking about a seventh title earlier on. Everyone was watching Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson, Pato O'Ward, Josef Newgarden and others fighting over the top spot.

But now?

Anyone want to bet against that seventh title now?

Didn't think so.

Your Saudi Butchers Tour moment for today

 So, according to Deadspin, one of golf's alltime hucksters tried to huckster his way into some of the LIV Tour blood money, but tour commandante Greg Norman said no.

"I begged Greg Norman to let me be on the LIV tour," John Daly confessed on Piers Morgan Uncensored.

John Daly, for heaven's sake! The fast buck artist from whose knee all other fast buck artists have learned! 

Why, the Saudi Butchers Tour is made for him. It's almost as if he invented it. "Come play for our tainted dough, boys! You won't even have to work for it! We'll give you a wad just for showing up, and then it's 54-hole exhibition city! Why, you can kick the ball around like Pele, and you'll still walk away with some hella folding green!"

Does that not sound like John Daly's very alley?

But, nah. Guess Norman wasn't inclined to bring in someone THAT baldly on the make. It might expose all the other LIV guys as, you know, guys on the make. Gotta preserve the illusion, after all, that this is a legit tour where true professionals who aren't just in it for the money or anything play legit competitive golf.

Poor Daly. If only facades were his thing.

Sentenced, and judged

 You'll never go broke betting on the inconsistency of American thought. It tends to get more inconsistent with every day, when it's not completely batshite crazy.

The other day, see, WNBA star Brittney Griner was sentenced to nine years for forgetting to leave out of her travel bag a painkiller (cannabis oil) the Russians deemed illegal. It's an absurd sentence, of course, but Russia itself is absurd. 

It's also transparently a negotiating tactic in Russia's ongoing de facto war with the United States. The Russians have a high-profile American athlete, and they're holding her hostage until they get what they want. It's the oldest terrorist ploy in the book from the oldest terrorist state in the world.

Amazingly, there are some Americans who are OK with this. In fact, they're almost  rooting for the Russians, in a half-assed sort of way.

A bunch of them, ironically, style themselves American "patriots," although their grasp of that concept seems problematical in this case. Would an American patriot take such apparent glee that an American citizen is being held hostage by a gangster nation?

(Of course, some of the self-styled "patriots" seem to be in love with the idea of a gangster nation. They voted for it twice, after all. And they invited Viktor Orban, the fascist gangster who runs Hungary, to speak at one of their recent gatherings. He got a standing ovation.)

In any event, the "patriots" reacted very differently 40-some years ago, when the Ayatollah's minions took Americans hostage in Iran. American "patriots" were ready to turn Iran into a glowing nuclear cinder then, and they blamed Jimmy Carter for not doing so. It was one of the issues that cost Carter the 1980 election.

But Griner?

She's no victim, according to some of the "patriots." She's just getting what she deserved for "breaking the law." Also she participated in the WNBA's anthem protests, which of course means she HATES AMERICA and now is finding out what REAL oppression is like. 

Let her rot over there, the sentiment seems to be in these aforementioned precincts. 

Not "Let the Russians rot for jailing an American citizen  on a bulls**t charge." Let the American citizen rot.

Sentenced by the Russians; judged by the "patriots." What a world.

Roger the Dodger

 There are times in life when you're compelled to say "What kind of Mickey Mouse operation are you running here?", but then you catch yourself. Because no decent human wants to be caught insulting Mickey Mouse.

This is approximately where we are with the NFL right now, an organization that has written do-overs into its own bylaws. See, Roger Goodell 'n' them agreed to an independent arbitration process to determine punishments for violating league rules, but not really. What they agreed to was, if the independent arbitrator's decision didn't sit well with the league, it could just ignore it and do whatever it wanted to do to begin with.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Isn't that, you know, kind of silly?"

It is. It renders the entire arbitration process performance art, is what it does. Also a waste of time. I suppose retired judge Sue L. Robinson was well paid to preside over the Deshaun Watson case, but I also suppose she must, at this point, be wondering "Why the hell am I here, again?"

Understand, her ruling in the Watson case was inconsistent and at times contradictory, and it certainly didn't seem to fit the crime. Watson, after all, was accused by 30-some women of sexual harassment/misconduct. This is hardly the same as other NFL players who've committed similar but far less serial offenses. Yet Robinson judged Watson's case based on those precedents.

Still, she did her job. She weighed the facts and adjudicated the case. But now the NFL gets to just ignore her ruling because, well, it doesn't like it?

Robinson: "I hereby rule that Deshaun Watson should sit out the league-minimum six games without pay. No additional fines will be assessed."

The NFL: "Wait, what? That's not what we wanted! We wanted a whole season PLUS fines! I call a do-over!"

And so the NFL is appealing, because Roger Goodell wants to  resurrect his rep as Roger the Hammer. First, however, he has to be Roger the Dodger.

As in "dodging the agreed-upon arbitrator's decision."

Yeesh. What a Mickey Mou-

Oops. Sorry, Mick.

Burial plots

 Sometimes the gods of satire serve it up on a shining silver platter. One should therefore be immediately suspicious, even if one is not already immediately suspicious of most of the world these days.

This is why the Blob has shied away from the whole Trump-Buries-His-Ex-Wife-On-His Golf-Course deal. It just seemed too good to be true.

It does, however, seem to be true after all: Ivana Trump, who died a couple of weeks ago, is buried somewhere on the grounds of Trump's Bedminster, N.J., course, which last weekend played host to the greedheads from the Saudi Butchers Tour, aka the LIV Tour. All the usual Trumpian suspects were there, including Fredo Trump (aka, Donald Jr.) and chief propagandist Tucker Carlson. 

Plus, of course, a whole lot of folks who worship money and and those who have it, and who don't particularly care what sort of gangsters they are.

(Requisite whataboutism: "But what about the NBA and China?" Requisite answer: "China didn't knock down our buildings and kill 3,000 American on 9/11.")

In any event, Trump -- aka, TFG; aka Training Wheels Mussolini -- apparently did have Ivana buried somewhere on the Bedminster course grounds. He did this, apparently, as a tax dodge, because, well, he's Trump. He's made a career out of spelunking various caverns in the tax law; it was reported in 2019, for instance, that he brought goats to the Bedminster course so he could declare it a farm and save a reported $90,000 in taxes.

Now, tax-law experts say he may not be able to pull off his latest scam. The Trump oligarchy does have interest in a cemetery company, but it's 40 miles away from Bedminster. So we shall see.

In the meantime, what are you thinking right now if you're Melania, Trump's third and current wife? And how irresistible is it to imagine some future conversation between the two?

Donald J. Trump: You're gonna love it, hon. I've got a nice little spot along the second fairway that's PERFECT for you. Lots of shade, water, and, look, there's even a couple of bunkers full of sand! 'Cause I know how much you love the beach.

Melania:

Trump: Oh, come on! What's the big deal? I'll even write into the ground rules that anyone who hits your plot gets a free drop! What could be more respectful?

Melania:

Trump: OK. OK. So, how about if I put in my will that when I die, I'll be buried alongside you? You can't say it's humiliating if I'm lyin' right there next to you, right? Plus I can put in there that anyone who hits MY plot gets hauled off and charged with defiling the gravesite of a U.S. president.

I could even throw in a conspiracy charge, 'cause I KNOW anyone who hits my plot did it on purpose. It's probably right there on Hunter Biden's laptop or in Hillary's emails, or in the satchels full of ballots those black election officials in Atlanta disappeared, because THEY WANTED BIDEN TO WIN AND THERE'S NO WAY I LOST TO THAT DODDERING OLD FOOL! NO WAY, G--DAMMIT!!

(Looks around)

Melania? Hon?

Hey, where'd she go?

The Voice of Baseball, moving on

The silence, needless to say, will be deafening ...

I wrote that six years ago, when Vin Scully slid behind the mike for the final time. And today the silence is deafening. 

Vin passed last night at 94, and if you don't take your radio out to the patio tonight to listen to a baseball game in his honor, you have not an ounce of sentiment within you.

Baseball, after all, is radio's game, and Vin Scully was its narrator of narrators. And because I cannot say it better than I did then, here's the rest of what I wrote six years ago, updated for the present day:

... if there is a singular Voice of Baseball he is it, if not the voice of an entire American epoch. When he began calling Dodgers games, Jackie Robinson was still playing, Dem Bums still played in Ebbets Field and Harry Truman was president. The Korean War hadn't happened yet. Vietnam hadn't. And the current president, 79 now, was an 8-year-old kid in Scranton, Pa., listening to ballgames on the radio himself.

Now Ebbets Field is long gone, and Jackie is, and whatever passed for both American innocence and American civility has vanished. Buffoons and lunatics vie for Harry Truman's office now. Demagoguery is celebrated rather than hooted back to the dark corners where it belongs. And through it all, Vin Scully called balls and strikes and evoked endless summer, having outlasted 11 presidents and the Soviet Union and responsible discourse in American politics -- but not, alas, racial inequality, divide-and-conquer fear-mongering and the unceasing drumbeat of war.

Here's something else Vin Scully didn't outlast, thankfully: The notion that for all the technological advancement in presenting the game, baseball's best medium remains radio.

It is a game the mind's eye has always seen clearest, and it is the Vin Scullys who have always been its best guides. The porch-swing rhythms of the game are perfectly paired with the porch-swing rhythms of those voices murmuring from the radio on a summer afternoon or night. They are the voices we fell asleep to, the voices we listened to on the sly on October afternoons, transistor radios tucked away from the prying eyes of the commandant at the front of the classroom.

Vin Scully was that voice then if you were a Dodgers fan, and for 67 years he remained that voice. He is the bridge that spans Jackie and Mookie Betts, the connective tissue that binds Carl Erskine to Sandy Koufax to Fernando Valenzuela to Clayton Kershaw. He is the background music that played while America went from Korea to Vietnam to the fall of the Berlin Wall to the fall of the towers on 9/11.

Vin Scully's journey spanned all of that. What he saw, from his perch high above the changeless geometry of the diamond, very few people have been privileged to see.  And when he signed off in 2016 for the last time, entire eras of history signed off with him.

The silence, needless to say, was deafening.

Justice defied

 I wouldn't know retired judge Sue L. Robinson if she sentenced me to hard time for making fun of the Oxford Comma People. Though apparently she would not.

I mean, look at the slack she cut Deshaun Watson.

The arbitrator jointly chosen by the NFLPA and the NFL, she handed down her ruling yesterday, and it wasn't exactly bread-and-water on Devil's Island. She ruled Watson should get a six-game suspension -- the league minimum -- for what she termed "non-violent" sexual offenses, going by the precedent set in the NFL's slap-wrist-y punishments for other sexual assault/harassment/domestic violence cases.

If you're looking for somewhere to park your disgust about this today, that's where you start: The NFL.

Which despite all its gum-flapping about how VERY SERIOUSLY they take domestic violence and sexual assault/harassment, has been less than draconian in punishing the offenders among its employees. All Robinson did was follow the Shield's lead. 

Not that her ruling wasn't wrong-headed itself. 

I doubt the 24 women with whom Watson settled, and the 30 with whom the Houston Texans settled, would regard being ejaculated upon as "non-violent", for instance. Forced oral sex and wagging your business in a massage therapist's face would not seem particularly non-violent, either. And while we're at it, how about the Texans themselves acting as Watson's de facto pimp by providing non-disclosure agreements to protect him, and also providing the venue he used for some of his "appointments"?

Robinson supposedly took all of that into consideration. Then she handed down a decision riddled with inconsistencies. 

She labeled Watson's conduct "predatory" and that "a preponderance of evidence" demonstrated he committed "sexual assault," but noted that no criminal charges were filed (two Texas grand juries refused to indict, because, well, Texas), and that Watson's behavior did not "fall into the category of violent conduct that would require the minimum six-game suspension."

Then she imposed the minimum suspension anyway. But also ruled Watson could only have access to therapists and sessions approved by the ballclub from here on out.

I'm sure that comes as a great comfort to any future interactions he'll have with massage therapists, club-approved or not.

I'm also sure a whole lot of folks out there -- including Watson's accusers -- were thinking "Wait, what? You're calling the guy a 'predator' but you're allowing him continued access to the sort of individuals on whom he preyed? And letting him skate with a six-game suspension and no fine?"

Well ... yes. But again, most of this falls on the NFL.

Not only did its precedent inform Robinson, it only talked to four of Watson's accusers. And it did so, reportedly, while functioning as a prosecutor, treating the women it interviewed as hostile witnesses.

Now the league is considering whether or not to appeal the judge's decision. I'd suggest it would be better off appealing to itself, citing its own history of letting down women to keep the mighty football machine rolling along.

Meanwhile, Deshaun Watson showed up at training camp yesterday with his new team, the Cleveland Browns. Fans in attendance broke into applause.

Not to ratchet up your disgust a little more or anything.

Last place again! Last place again!

 And now an entirely self-serving public service announcement, and no whining and bellyaching from the usual whiners and bellyachers.

"Oh, God, is this about your stupid Pirates again?" you're saying.

Hey! What did I just tell you?

Yes, it's about my Cruds, and it's exciting news: After much hard work and losing-ness, they've returned to their ancestral home in the NL Central cellar. It's been a tough struggle, but the lads have managed to put together a great stretch of Cruddy baseball to overtake the Reds, who got an unfair head start by losing 23 of their first 26 games.

Quite the challenge, but, hey, the Cruds were up to it. They've gone from third in the division to last with a seven-game losing streak; they've now lost 12 of their last 14 games, and, with an 8-2 loss to the Phillies yesterday coupled with the Reds 3-2 win over the Orioles, Cincy is now in fourth place, a half-game out of the cellar they've occupied all season.

So the Cruds have that goin' for them. All hail. 

A giant's passing

Memory serves not well at all, if you have to reach back far enough for it. And so the only time I saw Bill Russell comes back to me the way a moment in a dream comes, a wisp of a shred that dissipates with every advancing year.

All that remains is a man striding past me in the Fort Wayne airport, and me looking up at him  and thinking he was a giant out of fable.

This was -- must have been -- in the early 1960s sometime, when I was 7, 8 years old and the Boston Celtics still changed planes in odd places on their way from somewhere to somewhere else. And now Bill Russell has left us at 88, and I am still thinking he's a giant out of fable, transcending the games of children the way Jackie did and Ali and Arthur Ashe and so many others.

Russell won an Olympic gold medal and 11 NBA titles and was the first black NBA head coach. On the court, he transformed his child's game, making it less about scoring and individual athletic excellence and more about thinking, defense and what can only be called strategic shot-blocking: Getting-that-week-s***-outta-here not by swatting it out of bounds, but by tipping the ball to himself to trigger the Celtics lethal fastbreak with a lightning outlet pass.

There has never been anyone quite like him, before or since. On the court or off.

On it, he was a man of conscience playing in a town that had none. Vandals once broke into his Boston home, scrawled racist epithets on the walls and defecated in his bed. And Russell was a Boston icon.

Off the court, he used that icon’s status to answer the racists the way so many African-Americans did in the combustible '60s, the decade of MLK and James Meredith and Freedom Riders and Selma -- and of Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising gloved fists into the Mexico City sky in 1968, a protest that brought down on their heads the wrath of the Olympic authorities. 

And Bill Russell?

He was their kindred soul.

In 1961 he refused to play a game in Lexington, Ky., after he and the other black  Celtics were denied service in a restaurant. Denied service again in a Marion, In., restaurant, he marched down to the mayor’s office and returned the key to the city he’d been given earlier.

He marched with King and backed Ali when he refused induction into the armed forces, sitting at his side along with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Jim Brown and other black athletes. Inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1975, he refused to attend the ceremony or accept his HOF ring for 44 years because he felt the Hall had snubbed other black players.

There was a magnificent stubbornness to that, an adherence to principle that never flagged across the decades. Well into his 80s, the man who stood with Ali tweeted a photo of himself kneeling in solidarity with the NFL players who knelt during the national anthem to protest the gratuitous shooting of blacks in encounters with law enforcement. 

Those players were viciously attacked for that by self-styled "patriots" -- including the then-President of the United States, who called them sons of bitches and said they should all be fired. 

Sixty years ago, I suspect that president and his sad acolytes would have been saying the same things about Russell and Smith and Carlos and Ali and Kareem and Jim Brown, too. And of course MLK and the others.

A lot of those same folks, no doubt, are saying nice things about Bill Russell today, at the same time they're sneering at those who follow his example. I imagine the irony of that is lost on them, as is so much else.

All I know is this: A giant has passed, and he stands even taller than the man a small boy once saw striding through a middling Midwestern airport. And there is such a thing as serendipity.

On the day Bill Russell died, for instance, I was watching an HBO doc about Arthur Ashe. In it there was footage of a news conference Ashe conducted when he was battling South Africa over apartheid. And you know who was sitting next to him?

Sure you do.