Leaf season

 The Toronto Maple Leafs won a playoff series last night for the first time since 2004, which goes to show no one can be a schmuck all the time. Also, if you give a guy enough chances, sooner or later he's gonna get it right.

I say this because for six seasons in a row, the Leafs screwed around and lost in the first round. They lost 11 straight elimination games until last night. Last year, memorably, they blew a 3-2 series lead against Tampa Bay, falling in overtime in Tampa in Game 6 and then losing Game 7 at home, 4-3.

This year they beat the Lightning in six games, winning three games in overtime and wrapping it up with a 2-1 win last night. And you can bet they partied like was 2004 in Toronto last night.

2004! Remember that?

"Isn't that the year we found out we hadn't actually won the war in Iraq, Mr. Blob?" you're saying now.

Yes! It was. It was also the year George W. Bush, the architect of that mess, won a second term. And the year the Patriots won the Super Bowl again. And the year the Pistons upset the Lakers to win the NBA title ... and the year the Red Sox won the World Series and ended 86 years of tort-cha, absolute tort-cha ... and the year Buddy Rice (remember him?) won the Indianapolis 500 and celebrated indoors because a massive thunderstorm rolled over the Speedway and a tornado touched down a couple of miles south.

So, yeah, a long damn time ago, and that it happened to one of the Original Six made it worse. Somewhere Dave Keon and Frank Mahovlich and Syl Apps and Tim Horton must have been hollering and throwing things every time the Leafs blew it the last 19 years.

Well, not today, boys and girls. Today, one of the most decorated franchises in NHL history finally brought it home.

For now.

"Shaddap!" Turk Broda just snarled.

Drafting by volume

 I never had much luck with baseball cards.

Just about every one I got when I was a kid was an immediate candidate for my bicycle spokes. No Koufaxes, Kalines or Clementes for me. No, sir. But I cornered the market on Gary Bells, Chico Salmons and Orlando Penas, so I had that going for me.

I'm guessing Indianapolis Colts GM Chris Ballard would have thought that was fabulous.

This upon learning the Colts have collected a lot of potential Bells, Salmons and Penas in this man's NFL Draft, which makes today a busy day for them. They'll will have two fourth-round picks, FOUR fifth-round picks and two picks in the seventh and final round.

Call it drafting by volume, and it's sort of Ballard's deal. Sometimes it even works.

Most times, though ...

Well. I may be a tad skeptical, but I don't see how "Let's bring in a bunch of lower-round guys and see if any of 'em can play" is a blueprint for future Super Bowls. I look at the six fifth- and seventh-round picks in particular, and all I see are six guys who are going to be going home sometime during training camp.

Yeah, maybe the Horsies will get lucky with one or two. Teams do. But what's the point of accumulating picks you know aren't going to pan out for the most part? Why not, I don't know, accumulate second- and third-round picks instead?

Hey, look, kids, here's an offensive tackle from Tech State! And a safety from Western Hog Waller U.! And this GEM of a linebacker who somehow fell all the way to the seventh round! Collect 'em all!

And the Colts will, apparently.

And Ballard will look like a genius if two or three of 'em turn out to be value picks and not just candidates for the bicycle spokes.

They might not deserve that fate. But, hell, neither did Chico Salmon.

A roll of the dice

 So, then: Anthony Richardson.

Off-the-charts athlete. Leaps tall buildings in a single bound, all that. If the NFL were the Olympic decathlon, the Indianapolis Colts just won gold.

Except ...

Except the NFL is not the Olympic decathlon.

Which means the Colts are asking Richardson to play quarterback.

And no one really knows yet if he can do it. 

At least, not in the National Football League, although the Colts are betting he can. Scratch that: They're praying he can. That especially includes GM Chris Ballard, who's hanging his job and his reputation on Anthony Richardson.

He might have just selected the next great Colts quarterback, the way the Horsies picked Andrew Luck and Peyton Manning and even Bert Jones way back in the day. Or he might have just selected a hell of a free safety.

Truth is, we don't really know, which means the Colts were either very bold to take him at No. 4 or completely reckless. There's the thinnest of lines between the two, and we won't really know which side of it the Colts landed on for awhile yet.

Right now, all we've got to go on is what he did at Florida last fall in his only season as a full-time starter, and the numbers don't blow your hair back. He completed 53.8 percent of his passes for 2,549 yards, 17 touchdowns and nine interceptions. He also rushed for 654 yards and nine more scores -- and, at 6-4 and 244 Adonis-like pounds, he'll be both agile enough and ripped enough to survive behind the Colts' Seven Blocks of Parmesan Cheese O-line.

He flashed enormous promise at times. He also made some of the mistakes a guy makes who's still learning the position. He looked like what he is, a stunningly gifted athlete playing quarterback.

So will he become a quarterback playing quarterback? Patrick Mahomes 2.0, or even Lamar Jackson 2.0?

We shall see. But as last night's first round of the draft proved, these things never go the way you think they're gonna go.

First the Houston Texans won the draft in the first half hour by taking C.J. Stroud with the second pick and trading with Arizona for the third pick so they could take Alabama edge rusher Will Anderson.

Then the draft gurus who kept telling us the running back position is devalued in the modern NFL watched two RBs get taken in the first 12 picks -- Bijan Robinson by the Falcons at No. 8, and Alabama's Jahmyr Gibbs by the Lions at No. 12.

The Bears sat tight and let the Eagles jump them to take Jalen Carter, the peerless edge rusher from Georgia whose draft status was supposedly hurt badly by a couple of errors in judgment, but who still went ninth. O-linemen were popular early. The Patriots may have gotten the steal of the draft by snagging corner Christian Gonzalez with the 17th pick.

Oh, yeah: And Kentucky quarterback Will Levis, who was getting some late run from the gurus as a potential No. 2 pick, fell all the way out of the first round. He'll likely go in the second round tonight.

Once again: You never know.

Which, if you're a Colts fan, means you're saying one of two things this morning:

"Hey, you never know!" is one.

"Omigod, you never know!" is the other.

The long way home

The best story in sports last night was not Jimmy Butler wrestling the  top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks to the ground and taking their season away, or the upstart Seattle Kraken beating the Colorado Avalanche in the Avalanche's barn to take a 3-2 series lead, or even the Golden State Warriors doing Golden State things to steal a win on the road in their nail-biting playoff series with Sacramento.

It was a pinch-hitter striking out in Pittsburgh.

("Oh for God's sake. Not your stupid Pirates AGAIN!" you just said)

Yes, but ... not really.

Not really, because this could have happened anywhere in baseball, except for the fact it never does. What happened was, a career minor-leaguer named Drew Maggi pinch-hit for Andrew McCutchen in the eighth inning of the Cruds' 8-1 shellacking of the Dodgers, and he got ... a standing ovation.

Heck, the ump even let him soak it in.

This is because that one at-bat was the last stop on a long journey for Maggi, who'll turn 34 years old next month. He began playing professional baseball in 2010 after the Pirates drafted him in the 15th round out of Arizona State, and a lot of bus rides in a lot of places have happened for Maggi in the 13 minor-league summers and 1,155 minor-league games since.

He's been a Lehigh Valley IronPig. A St. Paul Saint. An Arkansas Traveler and a Tulsa Driller and an Oklahoma City Dodger and, until he got the Call this week, an Altoona Curve. He's been in the bushes for the Pirates and the Angels and the Dodgers and the Twins and the Phillies, and the Pirates again.

He got called up once by the Twins but never played. Got an invite from the Indians in 2018 but was immediately dumped after testing positive for amphetamines and drawing a 50-game suspension -- something of a joke considering how many major-leaguers in the '60s, '70s and '80s used to gobble what they called "greenies" like M&Ms.  

All of it culminated in last night, when he stepped to the plate in PNC Park and took his swings in a major-league game for the first time ever.

Yeah, he struck out. But after 13 years and almost 4,500 plate appearances in the minors, plate appearance No. 1 in the majors will undoubtedly be the plate appearance he'll always remember.

"Anything is possible. Never give up," he said when it was done. "If you love something, go for it."

Even if the way home is the long way.

One lovely facial

 And now the goal of the Stanley Cup playoffs so far, which might be the goal of the year when it's all said and done because it was a perfect deflection imperfectly achieved.

Also a whale of an owie, if in this case a useful one.

"The hell are you talking about, Mr. Blob?" you're saying now.

I'm talking about Zach Hyman of the Edmonton Oilers, who scored a goal last night in the Oilers 6-3 win over the Los Angeles Kings.

Scored a goal ... with his face.

I mean, check this out. Is that sticking your nose in there, or what?

And here the Blob imagines this exchange between Kings goalie Pheonix Copley and Oilers D-man Evan Bouchard, who took the shot that caromed neatly into the goal off Hyman's mug ...

"Wait, you mean that COUNTS?" 

"Sure it does! Planned it all the way, dude." 

"Yeah, but you didn't call bank!" 

"Did so!" 

"Did not!"

At which point, of course, a dazed Hyman skates past.

"Why does my face hurt?"

A-Jetsing they will go

 Aaron Rodgers is finally a New York Jet, just like Brett Favre before him, and there is the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth in Green Bay, where he won a Super Bowl and became an icon just like Favre did. Thus the rending of garments, the gnashing of teeth, and the shedding of enough tears to make the Fox River overflow its banks.

Just kidding. The only thing making the Fox jump its banks in Green Bay this morning is likely champagne, because the Packers finally shed a massive pain in their ass and fleeced the Jets in the bargain.

That Rodgers is one of the best quarterbacks of his generation is indisputable, but he's also a weirdo and a drama queen and a world champion complainer. The latter was tolerable as long as he wasn't 39 years old and entering the sunset years of his career. But now that he is?

Well. Both parties were sick of one another, is what it boils down to. And so off he goes to New York, and the celebration is on in Green Bay because in offloading him to the Jets the Jets Jets-ed it up as usual.

"But ... but we got AARON RODGERS!" Jets fans are saying now.

True. But you gave up your first, third and sixth-round pick in Thursday's NFL Draft for him, plus a conditional second-round pick in next year's draft that becomes a first-round pick in next year's draft if Rodgers plays 65 percent of the Jets snaps this season. Which he is almost certain to do.

That's a lot to give up for a guy who's essentially a rental, given that Rodgers will turn 40 before the season is over and realistically will not be the QB he was at 30.

The Jets, of course, are betting he has enough left in his arm to get them to the Super Bowl, just like Tom Brady got Tampa Bay to the Super Bowl. Difference is, Brady had already gotten his teams to nine Super Bowls (with six rings) before he took the Buccaneers home in 2021. Rodgers, in 18 seasons, has gotten his teams to ... one.

So for four draft picks, half of them likely first-rounders, the Jets get an aging superstar who's closed the deal all of one time in his career. And that was 12 years ago .

Maybe it will work. Or maybe the Jets have gone a-Jetsing again, and this will be the worst deal since that Swedish knob on "Succession" slicked the idiot Roy boys out of their daddy's business empire and made 'em think they won.

(Sorry for the spoiler, if you haven't seen it yet.)

(Although the real spoiler might be awaiting Jets fans.)

Geezer power

 Poor Dillon Brooks. He thought he was being all brave and what-not when he called LeBron James "old" and got all Yeah, I said it, explaining he did so because he likes to "poke bears". It's fun, y'all!

Meanwhile Old LeBron just shook his head and probably chuckled a bit because he's seen this movie a million times with a million other wannabes, and so he knew how it was going to play out in the last reel.

How it's played out is this:

* With the series between LeBron's Lakers and Brooks' Memphis Grizzlies tied at one win apiece, Brooks was ejected for punching LeBron in the junk in Game 3 and LeBron went on to put up 25 points, nine rebounds and five assists in a 111-101 Lakers win.

* Then, in Game 4 last night, LeBron became the oldest player in NBA history ever to put up a 20-20 stat line -- 20 points, 20 boards -- and made the overtime-forcing layup and then a crucial and-one in overtime as the Lake Show went up 3-1 in the series.

He also blocked a couple of shots, doing the Dikembe Mutombo finger-wag when he did, And dished seven dimes. And played 45 minutes.

And the old bear-poker, Brooks?

He's the guy LeBron took to the tin to draw the foul on the and-one.

Brooks finished with 11 points on 4-of-11 shooting. In the two games since he shot off his mouth about old guys, he's 0-2 against the Old Guy, and Old Guy has abused him for 45 points, 29 rebounds, a dozen assists, three blocked shots and a steal.

So maybe now poor Dillon gets it, as have so many before him: You don't mess with geezers. They've seen you before, they know what you're bringing, and they're always three or four jumps ahead of you.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Feeling a draft

 Look, I don't have clue one what's going to happen Thursday in the NFL Draft, which is the Shield's version of the Oscars without the red carpet. The difference between the Blob and every draftnik in America is the Blob will tell you that.

Truth is, no one knows what's going to happen Thursday until it happens, no matter how many mock drafts people put out there. And some of them are, you know, out there.

For instance, I saw one the other day that had the Colts taking Texas Tech edge rusher Tyree Wilson with the No. 4 pick.

"But I thought the Colts were taking a a quarterback!" you're saying now.

Well, that's what everyone ASSUMES. But no one really KNOWS. And that's because every front office in the NFL lies through its teeth about the draft. Hell, Indy GM Chris Ballard admitted it the other day.

Of course, if everyone's lying, then that includes Ballard. So he could have been lying about everyone lying.

This is why the Blob pays meager attention to the Draft before the actual Draft. Which means this is not where you come to find out if the Carolina Panthers will take Alabama QB Bryce Young with the No. 1 pick, or Ohio State QB C.J. Stroud, or go completely off the rails and take a Will Levis or Hendon Hooker.

Beats me. For all I know, the Panthers will take T.J. Hooker with the top pick. Or maybe Fair Hooker, the old Cleveland Browns wideout with the greatest name in NFL history.

And the Colts?

Yeesh.

Ballard says they won't try to move up from the 4 slot, but, again, Everyone Lies. So maybe they trade for the 3 pick if Houston bails on Stroud, or just sit tight and take Anthony Richardson, the project QB whose athleticism has everyone's head spinning, the way Jamarcus Russell’s once did.

OK. So bad example.

Anyway, some people now have Levis going No. 2 to the Texans. He's got a great arm and eats bananas with the peels on. That's all I know about him.

Stroud, meanwhile, apparently did poorly on some cognitive test or other. Or he didn’t. Everyone etc., etc., remember? Anyway,  some people think this means his draft status will take a hit because everyone knows cognitive tests are more important than whether a guy can thread the ball into the tightest of windows while under pressure. 

I mean, weren't Tom Brady and Peyton Manning great because they filled in the right dots with their No. 2 pencils? Or whatever a cognitive test involves?

Meanwhile, the draftniks are in a lather about where edge rushers Will Anderson and Jalen Carter will land, or if Texas running back Bijan Robinson will go earlier than a running back should these days, or who the Lions or Bears or Packers will take.

My prediction is a defensive back or an offensive lineman or a linebacker or a tight end, or maybe a wide receiver or defensive tackle. The draftniks tell me it all depends on Needs and Wants and Who's Available, but I can't say for sure.

They could be lying, after all.

Cruds break! Part Deux

 (And, yes, you may be excused.)

("But I didn't even raise my hand yet!' you're saying.)

(No, but you were going to.)

Anyway ...

It's time again to check in on my cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates, who are not being Cruddy at all right now. In fact they're being completely ridiculous.

See, the Cruds have now won six baseball games in a row.

They're 15-7 so far in the first month of the season.

As of this morning, they have the second best record in the National League, and the third best in all of baseball.

Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

And so here's what I want to know: What the hell are the baseball gods up to?

Because, remember, these are the Cruds we're talking about, which means the deities must be up to something. You can't just let the Cruds have one of the prettiest ballparks in the majors AND an actual baseball team unless you're about to send a few soul-crushing thunderbolts down from on high.

Or ...

Or  maybe this isn't the baseball gods at all. Maybe there's another explanation.

Maybe Cruds owner Bob Nutting is secretly plotting to move them to Ketchikan or Waxahachie, and the pissed-off Cruds are trying to ruin his plans like in "Major League."

Maybe they're thinking if they're gonna win they'd better do it now before Nutting thinks "Jesus, if we're good these guys will want real money!", and trades them all to Oakland for a box of Fruit Loops and the carburetor off a '67 Buick Lasalle.

Maybe they're JUST BEING CRUEL, and are about to haul off and lose 18 of 20. 

As a lifelong Cruds fan, I'm picking door No. 3. 

I know, I know. Ye of little faith. 

Gambling jones

 The NFL yesterday suspended four Detroit Lions and Washington defensive end Shaka Toney for violating the league's gambling policy, and, gee, who didn't see this coming? Also, the NFL has a gambling policy?

What would that be, exactly? "Do as we say, not as we do"?

Because, listen, you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas and all that, and the NFL laid down with the mutts awhile ago. A league that once rightly saw opening itself to gamblers as an expressway to its own Black Sox scandal now not only welcomes the gamblers, it does bidness with them.

Or maybe you missed it when Jamie Foxx hawking Bet MGM became as much an NFL fixture now as Patrick Mahomes or Joe Burrow. Or when the NFL became partners in 2021 with not one but FOUR sportsbooks: BetMGM, FOX Bet, PointsBet and WynnBET.

That's a lot of gettin' cozy with gamblin' folk for a sports monolith that once wanted nothing to do with them.

And, yes, times have changed and sportsbooks are big business now, and totally legit besides. The NFL even has a team in Vegas now. Think Bugsy Siegel isn't having a good laugh about that somewhere in eternity's void?

Easiest prediction in the world, given all of the above, that players eventually would get sucked into the betting world themselves. And so Calvin Ridley being suspended for betting on NFL games last year begets Toney and Quintez Cephus and C.J. Moore of the Lions being suspended indefinitely yesterday for betting on NFL games. And Lions wide receivers Jameson Williams and Stanley Berryhill being suspended six games apiece for mobile betting on college football at the Lions' facility.

(Which, frankly, I don't understand. What difference does it make where they pulled out their phones and bet on Whatsamatta U., other than optics? And if optics matter, why is the NFL involved with sportsbooks at all? Because those optics ain't exactly pretty.)

In any case, this is a classic example of having your cake and eating it too. The NFL wants the revenue stream sportsbooks provide, but it also wants us to think theirs is a straight game whose players don't do what it encourages its audience to do. The league has no problem with gambling, but stands foursquare against its potential taint.

The trick is promoting one while with a straight face condemning the other. And maybe someday they'll master it.

Wouldn't hold my breath, though.

Today in legislative wish lists

 Some days I wish I were a lawmaker. 

Of course, some days I wish I were an Avenger or a starship captain or an NBA shooting guard, too. Or maybe Mario Andretti, because who wouldn't want to be Mario Andretti?

Anyway, I'm reading on Deadspin about the Oakland Athletics buying 49 acres of land adjacent to the Strip in Las Vegas, and how it seems to presage the A's abandoning Oakland for Vegas the way every major sport seems to be doing. This is because Oakland is Oakland and Vegas is Vegas, and it would be a lot easier in Vegas for the A's owners who want a new stadium to nick the taxpayers for a good chunk of it.

Oakland's been resisting that, as well it should. It doesn't have the money nor the tax base to subsidize a playground for a bunch of rich dudes, so the rich dudes are apparently ready to bail.

I wish I were a lawmaker so I could pass legislation that makes it illegal for Rich Dude  to use a dime of taxpayer money to finance his new stadium/ballpark/arena. You want it, you pay for it, because you've got the dough and you're the one who's going to see most of the benefit.

Know why else I wish I were a lawmaker?

So I could pass legislation that would make it illegal to pick on transgender athletes, because there are only a handful anyway. This would include no forced genital inspections, no interference in theirs and their parents' medical decisions, no banning their participation so long as they adhere to certain guidelines for testosterone levels, which some athletic organizations already have.

I don't like bullies or hysterics. Never have. And there are plenty of both right now in the anti-transgender movement.

I wish I were a lawmaker so I could mandate that Aaron Rodgers A) sign with the Jets B) sign with the 49ers or C) just retire. I'm tired of him. America's tired of him. Go away.

Same with Draymond Green, come to think of it. Though he kinda got screwed on this latest deal.

I wish I were a lawmaker so I could levy a tax on any baseball owner who sits on his duff and collects his TV cut while his team finishes last every year because he's too cheap to pay his star player(s). You know who you are, Bob Nutting.

I wish I were a lawmaker so I could ban obnoxious fan bases. Mandate that least one IndyCar race a year be run in those lovely old front-engine Offies. Make Notre Dame admit it's not really a football independent anymore, on account of it plays half its games against ACC opponents.

 Lastly, I wish I were a lawmaker in order to establish SOME sort of guidelines for the transfer portal and NILs, because the NCAA sure as hell won't do it.

Come on, folks. Get your act together or I will.

One last plea

 Maybe I'm not the one who needs to keep saying this.

Maybe it's Gregg Popovich, who said it a week or so ago, who gave our idiot politicians the rough side of his tongue because their solution to This Week In Shooting People is simply to give more Americans more opportunities to shoot people. 

"More guns, more safety!" they babble, as the bodies pile up and America keeps arming itself like a military strike force.

And meanwhile there's a young black boy in Kansas City all wired up in a hospital bed because he rang the wrong doorbell by mistake.

And  there's a cheerleader in Texas (of course!) all wired up in another hospital bed because she got in the wrong car in a grocery store parking lot, again by mistake.

And there's a young woman lying cold on a slab because she and her friends turned up the wrong driveway, again by ... well, you know.

So the body count is one dead, two hospitalized because America is insane and the idiot politicians won't do a damn thing about it because they're insane, too. Not to say bought off by the fine folks in the violent death, er, gun industry,

Business is booming these days in the former, in case you haven't noticed. Someone buys a slug and very often a date with the coroner every day in Indianapolis now, and every other day or so here in the Fort. People are eating lead left and right down in Kentucky these days. And now you can't even make a honest mistake without some nutbar shooting you for it.

I mean, seriously, who greets someone on his front step with a spray of bullets? Who pulls out a piece and starts shooting because someone got the wrong car? And for God's sake what sort of batshite psycho grabs his gun and blazes away because some cars turned up his driveway?

The vehicles in question were already turning around when Psycho Boy opened fire. The hell is that?

And the worst part is, some of the aforementioned incidents happened in states that have those moronic stand-your-ground laws. Which means Psycho Boy might reasonably argue he fired in self-defense because he "felt threatened."

In fact, that's the argument his attorney was already crafting even as the authorities hauled his client away.

And now I'm remembering all the times I mistakenly started to get in the wrong car in a parking lot. Or got my addresses mixed up and knocked on the wrong door. And especially, I'm remembering the time a colleague and I were driving back from an IU-Illinois game in Champaign-Urbana and blew a tire right at the Veedersburg exit in western Indiana.

Up the ramp and into town we trudged, looking for a door to knock on. And fortunately we knocked on the right one.

 The guy who lived there loaded us into his pickup, drove us back to our car and helped us put the donut on. Wouldn't even take any money for it.

Later, I said, man, we were so lucky. That remote part of the state, it's a wonder we weren't greeted with the business end of a shotgun. 

I thought I was joking.

Turns out I wasn't.

And so, one last time: Put the guns away, people. Put. The damn. Guns away.

Through the years with stomping

Draymond Green, Golden State forward and noted impulse control failure, just got a Lifetime Achievement Award sitdown from the NBA gendarmes for punk-stomping Sacramento's Domitas Sabonis. And right away the Blob was launched into old-man-who-can't-let-it-go mode.

Thirty-one years later, see, I'm still pissed about Christian Laettner getting away with punk-stomping Aminu Timberlake of Kentucky.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," you're saying. "Laettner apologized for that years ago. Let it go."

Didn't I just say I couldn't?

See, Draymond did the same thing to Sabonis the other night, and because it's Draymond, he was suspended for a game. Laettner, of course, got nothing for stomping on Timberlake, which we all know because later on he hit that shot CBS keeps showing ad nauseum during March Madness.

(Note to the network: Enough. Please. Laettner's 53 years old now. What's next, you're gonna add Hank Luisetti hitting a jumpshot to the March montage?)

(Note to the Bloboverse: Yes, I know you've never heard of Hank Luisetti. That's why God gave us Google, children. Look him up.)

Anyhoo ...

Yes, old-man-who-can't-let-it-go still wishes one of Timberlake's teammates would have immediately dispensed justice by putting Laettner on the deck with a right cross. Or, better yet, that the gutless officials would have taken a break from being intimidated by Mike Krzyzewski long enough to immediately eject Laettner.

But enough about then.

("Finally!" you're saying.)

What about now?

Look. The Blob is not going to defend what Draymond did the other night, nor what he's done on a succession of other nights. The guy once decked one of his own teammates (Jordan Poole) the way some Kentucky Wildcat should have decked Laettner, after all. So stomping on Sabonis was simply water seeking its own level in a sense.

However ...

However, Sabonis did grab his leg as Draymond turned to run upcourt.

And he did get tagged with a Flagrant 1 foul for that.

So at least for once Draymond's acting out was not entirely unprovoked. Unlike, oh, that other guy 31 years ago.

Fine. I'll shut up about it now. 

Progress, sort of

 They still can't draw flies, except in places with names like "the Indianapolis Motor Speedway". But out there in Long Beach, Calif., over the weekend a few things happened that made you think someone cares about IndyCar racing, even if it's in a sick kind of way.

What happened was, Scott Dixon and Pato O'Ward got into each other on Lap 20.

What also happened was, Callum Illott used the subsequent caution to unlap himself, then held up teammate Agustin Canapino to try to stay on the lead lap. Canapino had opted to stay out during the caution and thus had inherited the lead.

Canapino then crashed himself shortly thereafter.

And what happened after that?

A torrent of social media abuse, including death threats, directed at Illott and his loved ones. Also, Dixon fans and O'Ward fans got nasty online after Dixon blamed O'Ward for their incident, and O'Ward basically replied "Wasn't my fault, dude."

Now, none of this should be news to those of us who regularly traverse the social media landscape these days. It was, it sometimes seems, invented for asshats and jackwagons, after all. And of course America's healthy population of closet racists and bigots love it, because it enables them to stay in the closet and still proudly fly their racist/bigot flags.

But rarely do the asshats and jackwagons get so riled about IndyCar racing that IndyCar itself has to put out a statement condemning online viciousness. And, I don't know, I see this as progress in a weird sort of way.

I mean, if someone -- apparently a lot of someones -- gets so passionate about Callum Illott and Agustin Canopino they'll actually take the time to compose vile spew and hit "Send," then IndyCar has achieved a milestone of sorts. Because in the years after the Split, and in the residue of disinterest that to one degree or another lingered long after IndyCar reunited, who would have bothered?

The sport still hasn't achieved the the kind of open warfare that existed in NASCAR between the Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon camps, when Gordon fans dismissed Earnhardt as a backwoods bully while Earnhardt fans openly questioned "Jeffy's" manhood. Same goes the  impassioned allegiance to Ferrari or Mercedes or Red Bull that exists in F1 today. As far as I know, Chip Ganassi and Bobby Rahal aren't publicly sniping at Michael Andretti yet, the way some team principals are sniping at RedBull team principal Christian Horner overseas.

Still, online spew, disgusting, gutless and occasionally criminal though it is, mean IndyCar might be catching up. Or catching on.

Boston and the illusion of safety

 Ten years on now, and today the forecast calls for 50s and rain for the Boston Marathon, and the runners will glide and lope and in some cases stagger along that old, old route from Hopkinton to Boston, and the hills around Newton will take their old, old toll. 

Ten years on, and everyone will pause to reflect on the day the bombs went off and downtown Boston became Baghdad 2004, with blood and screaming and the awful realization that we are never really safe, not anywhere nor at any time.

Ten years on ... 

And we should have learned that by now. Or even by then.

A nation awash in military-grade weaponry and madness should have taught us that by April 15, 2013, but it took two brothers with their minds twisted by hate to drive home the point. And if we've forgotten it because no one since  has left two backpacks full of death at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, surely the America of 2023, with its This Week In Mass Shootings ambience, should be a sufficient reminder.

On the 10th anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings, and the ensuing manhunt that had the greater Boston area living with its heart in its throat for five days, I looked up what I wrote about it. And, sadly, it is no less true now than it was then:

This is why the metal detectors are there now, beeping and buzzing us into the places where we play our games. It's why we hold out our arms and unzip our jackets and spread our legs while the wand passes up one inseam and down the other, while it travels from armpit to fingertip and then (please, sir) from the other armpit to the other fingertip.

The illusion of safety. That's what we're all after here.

And so the metal detectors and the wanding and the bag searches -- some perfunctory, some not so -- and, if's a Super Bowl, the bomb-sniffing dogs. Because these are our spectacles, our circus, and with spectacle comes dark opportunity. And once that dark opportunity is acknowledged or assuaged or dealt with, at least in our minds, then the games can begin ...

Ten years on now, and it's as if I wrote that yesterday, or today.

Ten years on, and now I'm remembering not April 15, 2013 in Boston but a warm summer night there nine months ago, when my wife and I were standing in a queue to get into Fenway Park for a Red Sox-Yankees game.

The metal detectors. The wanding. And then my wife being told she couldn't bring her handbag into the game, because it was too big. 

Instead of leaving it with security, she simply dug everything out of it she needed and pitched it in a trashcan. She needed a new one anyway, she figured.

The illusion of safety. Ten years on, in Boston and elsewhere, we still chase it. 

And live our lives anyway, because the alternative is no alternative at all.

Cruds break!

 ... and let me start by saying, yes, I see you in the back there, with your hand already up.

"May I be excused Mr. Blob?" you're about to say. "I have a note from my Mom that says I don't have to listen to anymore of your boring Pittsburgh Pirates crap."

Fine, then. You're excused. But you're gonna miss a lot, and it'll all be on tomorrow's pop quiz.

You're gonna miss me saying I thought my Pirates were headed back to Crudsville after what happened on Easter Sunday, when they fell victim to a typical bit of Cruddy luck. What happened was, star shortstop Oneal Cruz slid awkwardly into homeplate, collided with the catcher, and fractured his ankle. So there goes the Cruds best player for a bunch of the summer.

But then the weird stuff started happening.

The Cruds did NOT, as expected, lose every game for the next week and move back into their accustomed residence, the NL Central cellar. They got walloped 8-2  the next day by the defending World Series champion Houston Astros, but then they beat the Astros 7-4 the day after that, and two days later they shut out the Cardinals 5-0. 

Now it's a week after Easter, and the Cruds are .500 since Cruz went down. They're three games above .500 at 9-6, and they're in second place in the division, just a game behind frontrunning Milwaukee.

And now I'm starting to have heretical thoughts.

I'm starting to think, 15 games into the season, that the Cruds might not be as Crud-like as usual.

I'm starting to think .500 might actually be their wheelhouse this summer. 

I'm starting to think they aren't going to haul off and lose ten games in a row, or 12 of their next 15, or something more traditionally Crud-like. I'm seeing that they've taken two of three headed into the last game of the Cardinal series, and that it's the Cardinals who are in the cellar right now, not the Cruds, and maybe that's a sign that baseball is going to tilt weirdly on its axis this season.

Shoot. I might even break out the Clemente jersey, the way things are going.

Uh-oh.

Was that the baseball gods I just heard, laughing and pointing?

The world we live in

 The Miami Heat knocked the Chicago Bulls out of the playoffs last night, which means Bulls star DeMar DeRozan's kid can rest her vocal chords. She can also go back to at least a semblance of blessed kid-like anonymity, which is just fine with DeMar.

See, because this is the world we live in now, Diar DeRozan's screaming support for Daddy the other night landed her all over social media.

Because this is the world we live in, she -- a nine-year-old girl -- therefore became what passes for an overnight sensation these days, with United Airlines offering to comp her flight down to Miami so she could be at Daddy's next game.

And because this is also the world we live in, on the night she became famous up in Toronto, security escorted her out of the building after the NBA notified the Raptors that there had been online threats directed toward her.

Threats. Against a nine-year-old girl.

I would ask what sort of subhuman creatures would do such a thing, but because this is the world we live in, I don't have to. I know those creatures exist. They live in mom's basement or somewhere similarly subterranean, eating Flamin' Hot Cheetos and threatening children because, really, what else do they have in their lives? 

I mean, it's not like they've ever been on a date with anything that wasn't inflatable.

But you know what?

DeMar DeRozan does not live in the world we live in.

He lives in the world where a dad -- i.e., him -- turned down United's offer to fly Diar to last night's game, because Diar had already missed one school day to go to Toronto, and she wasn't going to miss another to go to Miami.  And besides, she had her own basketball game to play that night.

"She's still a child, you know what I mean?" DeRozan said Friday morning. "I don't let her get caught up in the outside fix of it."

And the online threats?

"It's crazy," he said. "No matter how good something could be, you still got miserable people that just don't have a life, honestly."

Sad but true.

A Ray of something

 Your Tampa Bay Rays whupped the Boston Red Sox 9-3 last evening, and now only the St. Louis Maroons stand between them and immortality. They're 13-0 to start the season, and only the Maroons did it better in the entire history of baseball.

The Maroons once started a season 20-0, see. Way back in 1884, as a matter of fact, when Chester Arthur was president and the Maroons played in something called the Union Association.

The Union Association was comprised of 12 teams and lasted just that one season. St. Louis won the league title and then joined the National League -- which had a guy named Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn, who, in that same year of 1884, pitched for the Providence Grays and started 72 games (some say 73) and won 59 of them (some say 60). 

"Borrrr-ing," you're saying now. "Enough history. What about the Rays?"

Well, they're pretty darn good, obviously. But the Blob wouldn't be the Blob if it didn't drop a shower or two on the parade. 

A 13-0 start is an achievement by any measure, but the Rays have gotten some help from the schedule-makers. Those 13 wins, after all, have come against the oops-I-stepped-in-something Oakland Athletics, the what's-that-smell Detroit Tigers, the swing-and-a-miss Washington Nationals and the oh-god-we're-gonna-suck-again Boston Red Sox.

All four of those teams are in last place in their respective divisions. Their combined record as of this morning: 15-36.

So it's not like the Rays have been doing this against the 1927 Yankees. Or even the 2023 Yankees.

On the other hand, no one else has started 13-0 since the Milwaukee Brewers did it 36 years ago. And it's a pretty safe bet a number of teams have been as similarly blessed as the Rays in all that time.

So hail to these Rays of sunshine. Or Rays of something.

When L is really a W

 I want to be Daniel Snyder when I grow up.

No, not a creepy, money-grubbing crud who sued sick old ladies over season tickets, moved money around like a carnival huckster and clung stubbornly to a racial slur of a nickname. And who oversaw an organization full of creepy guys like himself -- an organization that used to pimp out its own cheerleaders, and that treated its women employees the way men do who likely think it's A-OK to call women "skirts."

I don’t want to be that guy.

I want to be the Daniel Snyder who just got run out of the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League and still won.

You might think it's a terrible thing to lose an NFL franchise, but in a world where money's how you keep score, Snyder's scoreboard reads something like Snyder 48, All Those Other Chumps 0. He's laughing all the way to his yacht in the Mediterranean, Dan-O is. 

This is because, for "losing" his franchise, Snyder got a record $6 billion. That's the reported price for which Snyder and his wife Tanya sold the Washington Commanders to a consortium headed by Philadelphia 76ers co-owner Josh Harris and including NBA Hall of Famer Magic Johnson.

Which means Snyder walks away with even more eff-you money than he had before. And all for being one of the worst NFL owners in recent memory.

Because, see, even without the rampant culture of misogyny that Snyder oversaw for so long, the Commanders were a dump site on the field, too. Both literally and figuratively.

Literally, in the sense that the Commnders home digs, FedEx Field, became a dump on Snyder's watch.

Figuratively, because in the 24 seasons Snyder owned the team, the Commanders (nee Racial Slurs) made the playoffs six times. They had three double-digit win seasons, none in the last ten years. They never made a Super Bowl, never reached a conference championship game, went through 27 starting quarterbacks -- that's more than one a year to you and me, kids! -- and 10 head coaches.

For that level of epic failure, Daniel and Tanya Snyder walk away $6 billion richer.

Accountability?

Pffft. That's for the little people.

And so on ... and so on ...

 So remember yesterday, when the Blob wrote about San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich being fed up to here with America the Calibrated, all those unhinged gunslingers shooting up schools and places of worship and businesses on a damn near daily basis?

Well, yesterday it came home.

Wednesday evening, over on Raymond Street on Fort Wayne's east side, friends and family gathered to remember a 19-year-old who'd died from gunshot wounds just the day before. And then the guns came out. Again.

When the shooting stopped, one more person was dead and three others were wounded.

While they were remembering another shooting victim.

Who'd been gunned down -- and we can't emphasize this enough -- just the day before.

It happened amid children's playground equipment in McCormick Park, which the Blob knows very well. Passed it a million times growing up in the years my dad worked for International Harvester, one street over from the park.

I can't even. Cannot. Even.

When does it stop? 

Will it ever stop?

Pop. Guns.

 This week began with an aggrieved about-to-fired bank employee exercising his Second Amendment right to bear arms by bearing arms into his place of imminent unemployment. His score: Five dead, eight wounded.

On the same day, a stone's throw away, someone else exercised their Second Amendment right to bear arms by bearing arms at a community college. His score: One dead, one wounded.

Anywhere else in the world they'd call this uncivilized lunacy. Here in America we just call it "Monday."

The saner among us might also call it lunacy, but we passed lunacy some ways back. We've now arrived at a place where This Week In Mass Shooting is met not just with indifference by certain legislators, but with them actively passing laws to make it even easier for Bank Guy and School Shooter to do his or her thing.

"If we make it as easy as possible for every Tom, Dick, and Mary to arm him or herself like an Army Ranger, no one will ever get shot again!" they cry. 

Seriously. That's the logic at work here.

All of this, mind you, is a long and winding road to the individual I really want to talk about, who is San Antonio Spurs coach and president Gregg Popovich.

He's a Region guy from Indiana who like most Region guys brooks no nonsense, and he's had his fill of the nonsense of dead schoolkids and the lint brains who aid and abet the people who make schoolkids dead.   

And so the other day, in a remarkable 10-minute rant, Pop popped off. At a media availability before the Spurs last game of the season, he mopped the floor with state officials in Texas and Tennessee who continue to help the aggrieved and batshite crazy  stack up bodies.

In particular, he referenced Republican state officials in Tennessee, whose response to three dead kids at Covenant Christian School in Nashville was to label subsequent protests for stiffer gun laws "insurrectionist", and to expel two black Democratic legislators for joining in.

Oh, and about their usual thoughts and prayers ...

"I'm sorry to go on and on, but (Tennessee Governor) Bill Lee: 'I'm closely monitoring the tragic situation. Please join us in prayer'," Pop sneered. "What are you monitoring? They're dead! Children -- they're dead. When I pick up my 6- and 11-year-old grandkids at school, when I'm here at home, on the way it goes through my mind that I hope they're going to be OK."

Meanwhile, in Pop's state of Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has announced he'll pardon the white guy who drove his car into a crowd of people at a Black Lives Matter protest and then shot to death the armed protester who tried to stop him. Daniel Perry was subsequently convicted of murder.

No worries, though, Daniel. The Guv's got your back.

Which I guess means it's OK in Texas to commit murder as long as you murder the right people -- i.e., those with whom you differ ideologically.

Good. Lord. In heaven.

"You know, these people, they think we're stupid -- Republican and Democratic alike," Gregg Popovich said the other day. "But they might be right because they get away with that crap. They tell us things about prayers and you know, their offices are monitoring this stuff, like I said. 

"Get away from me. Stop all the bull****. Stop talking down to us. We're not stupid, but they will do it to keep their jobs."

Amen.

Hey, look! Play-in games!

 The book-length NBA playoffs kick off tonight with two play-in games, and I can't tell you how excited I am not. Wait, did I say "not"? Slip of the tongue! Really!

Actually it is hard to get fired up about the play-in games, because they involve teams that would have missed the playoffs had the NBA not essentially said, "OK, you've had 82 games and six months to prove yourselves, but we'll give you ONE LAST CHANCE."

And, yeah, I know, everyone's making all kinds of noise about how the Lakers are playing really well and LeBron and AD are both momentarily healthy, and how that makes them a legitimate threat to win the up-for-grabs West. This presumes AD and/or LeBron don't get hurt again tonight in their play-in game -- which one or both probably will, because it's AD and LeBron.

In reality the NBA added the play-in games to alleviate blatant tanking by the bottom feeders for draft position. Give 'em hope, no matter how slim, and they'll play hard to the end. That was the rationale.

Of course, then the Mavericks came along and ruined it all.

The Mavs, see, were one of the bottom feeders that had a real shot at a play-in game. I mean, they were right there. And what did they do?

They decided to lose instead.

Seven of their last nine games, they lost. Kyrie Irving played  in seven games after March 20. Luka Doncic played just 13 minutes in a Friday loss to the Bulls, and neither he nor Kyrie played at all in the last game of the season, a 138-117 blowout loss to the hideous San Antonio Spurs.

But they preserved their lottery pick in the draft, so call it a W.

Truth is, when a Victor Wembenyama is there for the taking -- the golden goose in the coming draft -- a play-in game isn't much incentive to not tank. Your chance at an NBA title, after all, is yea more slim than your chance at Wembenyama. So fire up the First Armored Division, George Patton.

In the meantime, tonight we've got the Hawks at the Heat and the Timberwolves at the Lakers. And the Wolves will be without Rudy Gobert, who threw a punch at teammate Kyle Anderson during a timeout Sunday. He's been banished from tonight's game and probably any subsequent games.

Which I suppose means Gobert made history of sorts by executing the NBA's first one-man tank job. Though Victor Wembenyama will not be his reward.

Inspect this

 Some days you just gotta wish on a star, child-like as that is. And so here is what I wish for the state of Kansas, which has lost its damn mind about gays and transgenders and OH MY GOD WHAT ABOUT GIRLS SPORTS??:

I wish every school system in the state would say "hell, no," to the Republican-controlled legislature that just voted to allow forced genital inspections of children if they want to play (girls) sports. 

I wish every female athlete in every school in the state that avails itself of this legislative permission would say "hell, no" and refuse to comply. And then see what sort of girls teams their school manages to scrape together.

I wish, I wish ...

Oh, but I'm not so naive.

I realize, this being Kansas, there will be the odd school system that will take the lege up on its offer. 

I also realize not every girl, or even most, will tell those school systems to sit on it and spin. They're high school kids. They've got futures, athletic and otherwise. It's a big ask for them to defy authority, no matter how abusive.

It's also a big ask for their parents, especially if their kid's got a full-boat scholarship riding on it. And besides, you know there'd be enough lunatics on the local school board who'd be more than willing to sacrifice a girls team or two as a matter of "principle."

Even though protecting girls sports from those sneaky evil transgenders is what this law is supposed to be about. Oh, irony.

Also ironic: A lot of the dirtbags who voted for this abomination likely don't give a tinker's damn about girls sports; this is all about hurting the Sneaky Evil Transgenders, even though the latter have never hurt them. In fact, I suspect several of the dirtbags believed back in the day it was perfectly OK for the boys to get the best of everything, and the girls to get what was left over in terms of equipment, facilities, practice times, scheduling. 

But now they care about girls sports?

Riiiight.

As always, of course, the hysteria that fuels this sort of extremism is grossly misplaced, because there are so few transgenders in women's sports as to be statistically insignificant. So it's a solution in search of a problem -- and the more vile the solution the better, apparently.

 Know something else?

If I close my eyes now, I can see a parent in some burg in Kansas pushing for the local school system to mandate genital inspection. And it won't be because they're a-feared transgenders will take over girls sports, but because they want the talented player who's stealing little Susie's playing time to prove she's a girl.

I wish that scenario were not so plausible. But of course it is.

One more wish: I wish every male legislator who voted for this trash because they were afraid of their base should also be forced to undergo a genital inspection.

Just to see if, you know, they’ve actually got a pair.

Masterful

 Recency bias is a viral pestilence in Sportsball World these days, one to which cranky fist-shaking antiques like the Blob seem most resistant, thank God. So I won't start off this morning by saying what Jon Rahm did at Augusta National last week proves he's the greatest golfer of his generation.

Some people did say that. Like, right out loud and everything.

What the Blob says to that is wait until the next major, when, I don't know, Taylor Gooch becomes the greatest golfer of his generation.

(With the most un-golfy name ever, which is way cool)

What the Blob will say is this: Rahm's four-stroke blowout might be the greatest display of sheer golf toughness in ... well, quite awhile anyway.

Begin with the fact he had to play 30 holes yesterday to win the thing, because the meteorologists punched Augusta around all weekend. Plus he started the day four strokes adrift of leader Brooks Koepka. Plus he had the garbage draw all weekend, finishing his second round and starting his third Saturday in the kind of weather that drowned Mark Wahlberg and George Clooney in "The Perfect Storm."

She's not gonna let us out ...

And she didn't. Have some wind, rain and a little more wind and rain, Jon.

Somehow, though, Rahm survived it all. Got Koepka's lead down to two as the final round began at midday Sunday. Kept his cool as Phil Mickelson legend-ed it up with a throwback 65 and Jordan Spieth birdied exactly half the golf course in the final round. Played it all kinds of smart on the back nine, scene of so many Sunday disasters from golfers who couldn't keep the prospect of a green jacket out of their heads long enough to win one.

Rahm could. He played it safe when he needed to play it safe and went for it when he needed to go for it. And on 18, after spraying it off the tee, he chipped to within spitting distance of the stick and dunked the short putt.

"A Seve par," said Rahm, acknowledging the patron saint of Spanish golf, Seve Ballesteros, the way every Spaniard with game does.

Lots of reasons to like Rahm -- he's an immensely likable guy -- and his reverence for Seve and all those who came before him is one of them. Another reason to like him, in the Blob's opinion, is his perspective on the LIV Exhibition Tour. 

Remember what he said when he was asked about the gargantuan paychecks he could cash for doing very little on the LIV circuit?

He said he didn't need to make more money because he was already making an Everest of money on the PGA Tour. Would his lifestyle change if he made another, say, $400 million? Not a bit, he said. So what would be the point?

Gotta love a guy who sees the world like that.

Gotta love the way he played golf last weekend, too.

Listing badly

 The Blob doesn't generally get exercised about stuff like lists, because most of them are silly and One Man's (Or Woman’s) Opinion, besides, and we all know the old saw about opinions. Something about how they're like a certain part of the anatomy, everyone's got one.

But occasionally there comes a list that's so ridiculous, so upside-down and just clearly  wrong, it bears mentioning.

Let me begin today's discussion of one such list with a tangent: I once spent a week one night in Champaign-Urbana, Ill.

Actually, it was a Pizza Hut where a bunch of Indiana media wound up that night after covering a Hoosiers-Illinois basketball game. This is because it was the only place open  in Fun City. And that's because it was after midnight, and all the bars closed at midnight.

On a Saturday night. 

In a college town.

Which didn't stop some outfit called Clever.com from slotting Champaign-Urbana No. 2 on its last of best Big Ten college towns.

I'm sorry, what?

Clever.com's No. 1, Ann Arbor, probably is right where it should be. But after that, the list gets all sorts of wacky.

Bloomington, In., for instance, the home of Indiana University, is nearly always mentioned as one of the top college towns in America on most lists. It's 10th in the Big Ten according to this one.

And Purdue?

Look, it's nice a campus. And I'm sure West Lafayette has all the amenities. But it's not the first place you think of when people talk about great college towns.

Clever.com lists it as No. 3 in the Big Ten.

On the other hand, Madison, Wis., is way down there at No. 8. Right behind Iowa City, but ahead of Columbus, O. -- the home of Ohio State, which is next-to-last on the list, right behind New Brunswick, N.J. (Rutgers).

Now, I don't know what the criteria was for this list. Maybe they factored in Harry's Chocolate Shop and the burgers at Triple XXX when they considered West Lafayette. Which would be two pretty awesome points in its favor.

But as lists go, this one's listing worse than the Titanic post-iceberg. 

Another One Man's Opinion.

Much ado ...

 So Angel Reese will apparently join her LSU teammates on the traditional White House visit, and I guess we can exhale now. This presumably includes the family of the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, whom Reese dragged into the middle of the silliest kerfuffle to come down the pike in a good while.

This kerfuffle happened because the First Lady, Jill Biden, attended the women's national title game between LSU and Iowa. And then, said, gosh, both teams put on such a terrific show maybe they both should be invited to the White House.

This wasn't an official invitation, mind you. It was just the First Lady trying to be nice, Which was perfectly obvious to anyone with half a working brain cell.

But you can't say anything these days, no matter how innocuous, without someone taking it the wrong way. Hell, it's practically become an art form.

And so Caitlin Clark of Iowa spoke up and said, nah, only winners get to go to the White House. And Reese  -- and, to a lesser degree, some of her teammates -- got all insulted by Jill Biden trying to be nice, saying the First Lady had disrespected them and what-not.

Reese even said she wouldn't be going to the White House now, and that maybe she'd go visit the Obamas instead.

(To which Barack likely replied in private: "Hey, leave me out of this.")

But she changed her mind eventually, maybe because her head coach, Kim Mulkey, whispered a few choice words in her ear. Such as, I don't know, Stop being a dopey college kid, Angel. Or maybe For God's sake, the woman was just trying to be nice, quit acting like she hit you in the face with a pie. Get over yourself.

And, look, maybe part of Reese's over-the-top reaction was because she is a dopey college kid. College kids generally are not fully-formed humans yet. It's why some of them walk to class in shorts and flipflops when it's snowing sideways and the windchill is Ice Station Zebra. 

Maybe, too, this was the residue of Reese being slammed for taunting Clark in exactly the same way Clark had taunted Louisville a week earlier. Everyone thought it was cute when the white girl did it. Everyone loves those stories about Larry Bird and Michael Jordan and heaven knows how many other male basketball stars taunting opponents, too.

But the black girl?

She got savaged for it. Mostly by old white guys, of course, which means there was both a racial and a gender element to the whole hypocritical business.

Anyway, here was Reese mere days after that, getting all butt-hurt about the First Lady trying to be nice (and a bit clueless, since it's doubtful Jill Biden knows the protocol for inviting teams to the White House). Would Reese have reacted that way had the aforementioned crapstorm not happened?

Maybe. Maybe not. But if the Blob had to choose, he'd choose Door No. 2.

Especially after the Assembled Media turned the White House thing into A Major News Story. Another Big Mac crafted from a nothingburger, in other words.

Nobody does it better.

Tiger, in repose

 Tiger Woods very likely could miss the cut at Augusta today, which is maybe what he was trying to tell us this week. If his presser with the assembled media was not his valedictory speech to competitive golf, it was a spot-on imitation.

His shattered leg, Tiger said, is never going to be right again. Which is why he can't play a lot of tournaments anymore. And which is also why he's not sure how many more Masters he has left in him, because Augusta National is a lot more up-and-down than it appears on TV.

Then he went out yesterday and validated everything he said.

Shot a 2-over 74, Tiger did, and it hurt to watch him. He gimped around and gimped around and looked like nothing so much as a 47-year-old going on 68. At 2-over as the begins, he's a stroke adrift of the projected cut, tied for 53rd with the likes of Tom Hoge and Thomas Pieters and Sergio Garcia, himself a senior citizen at 43.

To make the cut, he'll need a better round than Thursday's, in what's expected to be much lousier weather. And even if he does, it's not like he's going to actually be a factor come Sunday. 

The irony here is he seems a lot more at peace with this than those of us watching him.

Listen. It's hard to feel sorry for this wounded version of Tiger, seeing how it was his own damn fault he nearly lost his leg. Driving 80 mph on a twisty stretch of road more suited to 45 was a spectacularly stupid thing to do. Especially when you consider who was doing it.

And yet ...

And yet, watching him struggle will never not be painful, because memory keeps taking us back to what he was. And he'll never be that again.

Time will always be undefeated, especially when its wounds are self-inflicted. Doesn't mean we can't howl and shake our fists at it.

One more spring

 There was a ballgame on the radio, that April day. The sun was shining. Spring was suddenly no rumor, nor the fever-dream of souls sick of battlement-gray winter, nor even the false spring of March, faithless liar that it is. 

There was a ballgame on the radio that day.

There will be another one on the radio today.

Is it really possible 30 years separate the two?

Thirty years of minor-league baseball here in the Fort, and, whew, time flies. The 68-year-old driving this sentence was two years shy of 40 then. Bill Clinton had been in the  White House less than three months. And a 21-year-old kid from Venezuela was out there on the bump in Waterloo, Iowa, delivering pitches for a spanking new Minnesota Twins low-A affiliate called the Fort Wayne Wizards.

Thirty years later they've been re-branded the Fort Wayne TinCaps, and they're the high-A jewel in the San Diego Padres system. The Padres' top prospect, Jackson Merrill, will start at shortstop today. He's not yet 20 years old.

Thirty years of minor-league baseball in Fort Wayne. Hardly seems possible, until you think about all the years that came before.

We're a hockey town now as well as a baseball town, but before that, baseball defined us. The newly-formed National League was born here in 1871, when the Fort Wayne Kekiongas played the first game in league history against the Cleveland Forest Citys. The Kekiongas won, 2-0. A kid named Bobby Mathews, all of 20 himself, got the shutout.

And there would be more, so much more, down the road. There would be a black team called the Fort Wayne Colored Giants that played to overflow crowds on a ballfield just west of where traffic on North Clinton now rushes past. There would be the Fort Wayne Daisies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, and Red Braden's GE Voltmen.

There would be, among others, Chuck Klein and Steve Hargan and Matt Kinzer. Mike Roesler and Dave Doster and Kevin Kiermaier. Josh Van Meter from just down the road in Ossian, and Eric Wedge from Northrop High School, your American League Manager of the Year in 2007.

But never an oh-fficial MLB farm team until Eric Margenau brought the Kenosha Twins to Fort Wayne in 1993.

The night of the first home game was gray and wet and raw, but Memorial Stadium was packed and Ramon Valette hit the first home run and the home team got the W. And again there would be more, so much more, down the road.

That first summer a rangy kid from Gary with lightning in his arm -- LaTroy Hawkins was his name -- went two months without losing. The next summer, a young outfielder named Torii Hunter made catches that had sportswriters grabbing their heads in disbelief up in the pressbox. That same season, someone named Alex Rodriguez hit his first professional home run here while playing for the Appleton Foxes.

And, of course, a whole bunch of other major leaguers played here, from A.J. Pierzynski  to Fernando Tatis Jr.

And that 21-year-old kid from Venezuela?

Memory blurs as to whether he pitched the first game or the second of that doubleheader in Waterloo three decades ago. But his name was Ron Caridad, and he's 51 now. These days he lives in Miami, where he owns a floor installation business.

The Wizards split a pair that day, winning the first and losing the second.

It was early April, and the sun was shining, and a certain 38-year-old had the windows open and the ballgame on the radio, and can it really be 30 years already? Can it really?

Damn right it can.

A swordfight at the Masters

 Tomorrow the Masters begins, and so bring on the magnolias and Tiger and the Cathedral of Pines and Tiger and the flora and fauna and tinkly piano music. And Tiger.

Also, bring on the swordfights with 1-irons!

OK, so they're golfers, which means swordfights with 1-irons are out. Someone might  hurt his hand and have to change his grip.

But there are 18 golfers from the LIV Exhibition Tour in the field, and some of them have green jackets. And at least one of them (Cam Smith) was ranked No. 1 in the world before he decided collecting big-ass paychecks from gangsters for playing as indifferently as he liked sounded peachy to him.

Anyway, let the one-upmanship -- and trash-talking -- commence. None of these folks are Angel Reese so no one will object.

The majordomo of the LIV Tour, Greg "People Make Mistakes" Norman has already said if a LIV golfer wins this thing, the other 17 will congregate at the 18th green to congratulate him. He didn't say that would be a giant middle finger extended toward the PGA, but feel free to think that if you wish.

Meanwhile, the folks at Augusta National released the first and second round pairings the other day, and none of the LIV golfers are in any of the featured groups. And only Smith is paired with another golfer ranked in the top 20 in the world.

No one said this was a deliberate snub, but feel free to think that if you wish.

Tiger Woods, meanwhile, has given off the vibe this week of a man who knows sunset is upon him. He joked that he knows more players on the Senior Tour now than on the regular tour, and hinted that his days at Augusta in April may be numbered. And he says he's fine with that.

He is, after all, 47 years old with a bum leg that will likely always be a bum leg. He still has game, but maybe not enough left physically to sustain it for 72 holes.

Besides, at his age and with his infirmities, he'd be lousy at swordfighting. Fact.

As predicted

 Look, don't blame Connecticut. The Huskies were just too good. They were too good all month. And you can't fault good for being, well, good.

But after all the madness (or, Madness), after all the craziness and upset-edness and a team from Conference USA and another team from the Mountain West making the Final Four, the best team won. And it was the best team, demonstrably, all through the tournament, a little soul-crushing island of sanity in an unhinged world.

In fact they were so much the best team, these Huskies, that they sucked all the whimsy out of the most whimsical NCAA tournament in recent memory.

Last night they ball-peened San Diego State by 17 in the championship game, as predicted and to practically no one's surprise. The Huskies beat everyone put in front of them by double digits. They boat-raced 31-win Gonzaga by 28 and pancaked an Arkansas team by 23 that had just knocked off 1-seed Kansas. Miami in the national semifinal was their closest call, and that didn't exactly go down to a last-second shot.

Well. Unless Miami could have concocted a 14-point shot there at the end, seeing how UConn disposed of the Hurricanes by 13.

So the Huskies were the polar opposite of drama kings, an against-form champion of a tournament defined by drama. From 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson knocking out 1-seed Purdue on the opening weekend to tiny Florida Atlantic's march to San Diego State beating overall 1-seed Alabama on the way to the first title game ever for a Mountain West team, it was a hell of a fun ride. 

It was also very likely a sign of things to come, here in the transfer portal/NIL era. The chaos that has attended it, with players changing schools the way motorists change lanes on an expressway, means the day you could pencil in one of the bluebloods into your Final Four every year is done. It's a have-game-will-travel world now, and its axis will shift every time this player or that decides Somewhere Else U. is the "U" for him. 

This doesn't mean the best won't still be the best, as UConn showed us. But it will play hell with trying to guess who will be the best -- because as FAU and San Diego State proved, it could be virtually anyone now.

And how's that a bad thing?

A thrashing. With trash talk.

Give the LSU Tigers this much: They brought their A-plus game on the A-plus day.

Caitlin Clark of Iowa did her Steph Curry deal, splashing eight threes from Neptune on the way to a 30-point, eight-assist afternoon in the women's national championship game. But it didn't matter a whit. She could have shot long into the night and it wouldn't have tilted the scoreboard, because LSU was not going to be beaten by her or anyone else on this day.

Fifty-four percent shooting? 

Ridiculous.

Eleven 3-pointers in 17 attempts (64.7 percent)?

Absurd.

A record 102 points in a national championship game?

You're kidding, right?

And so Kim Mulkey started to cry over there with 90 seconds to play, and Alexis Morris kept hitting jumpers and LaDazhia Williams and Angel Reese kept taking it to the tin, and an old-fashioned down-home thrashing ensued. The Tigers, who led by 17 at the half, won by 17. And then confetti fell and they were lifting the big trophy just two years after Mulkey came to Baton Rouge from Baylor, returning to her Louisiana roots.

LSU's women were 9-13 two seasons ago. They were 26-6 in Mulkey's first season, 34-2 this year. And they finished it off with a performance that might have out-glittered Mulkey's sparkly title-game pantsuit, which passing Romulans probably could have seen from space.

It was a team reflective of big-wheel college athletics’ new reality, for better or for worse. A whole pile of LSU's players came here from somewhere else, including Reese (Maryland, 15 points and 10 rebounds in the title game), graduate transfer LaDazhia Williams (Missouri, 20 points, five boards), Jasmine Carson (West Virginia, 22 points and 5-of-6 from the arc off the bench), Kateri Poole (Ohio State,  six points and three rebounds) and Morris, a fifth-year senior playing for her fourth school (Baylor, Rutgers, Texas A&M, LSU; 21 points and nine assists).

Call them Rent-A-Champions, then, if you're so inclined. But they're pretty much doing what everyone does in the era of the transfer portal. Best get used to it.

Best get used to watching women's buckets now, too, because a lot of people did. So much so, that Clark went viral with her Steph-back threes and swagger, and Reese went viral with the sort of intertoobz firestorm that only happens when people are paying attention.

I'm talking, of course, about Reese looking at Clark and pointing to her ring finger when the game was done, and then doing the whole John Cena "You can't see me" hand-waving in front of her face.

It was playground taunting and utterly classless given the setting, and Reese, who is black, was roundly and rightly bashed for it. What wasn't so right was that Reese stole the Cena thing from Clark, who is white and did the same bit last week.

Social media never uttered a peep about that bit of classless taunting. And (mea culpa) that includes the guy driving this Blob.

So it blew up, of course, the way everything blows up these days. But you know what?

Just a few years ago it wouldn't have. Because America, or a good chunk of it anyway, wouldn't have been tuning in.

Call it progress.

'Bout damn time

 Word came down yesterday about the 2023 Basketball Hall of Fame class, and look who's in it: Old Bad Breakfast Guy himself.

That would be Gene Keady, of course, and as with a lot of things involving Keady there's a story about Bad Breakfast Guy. One afternoon he took his Purdue Boilermakers up to Michigan State and they had an almighty tussle with Tom Izzo's Spartans, but in the end the Spartans prevailed. And here came Keady, not exactly growling about the refs but talking about one particular call by one particular ref.

The ref, Keady told us, said he was sorry about missing the call. But he'd had a bad breakfast and he wasn't feeling well.

"A bad breakfast?" Keady barked. "We're tryin' to win a game here, and he's talking about a bad breakfast?"

There are a million Gene moments like that, and anyone who covered his Boilers incorporated them into the Gene Keady impressions they all had down pat. "What the hell's goin' on?" was a standard Keady observation on the state of basketball/the world. "Typical media s***" was another.

And then, of course, as night follows day, there was "Why wouldn't you want to play hard?" -- "playing hard" being one of Keady's bedrock mantras.

The Purdues always played hard, when Keady rode their bench. They might not always beat you, but you knew you'd been in a basketball game when you played them.

It's why the man took Purdue to 17 NCAA tournaments and won 493 games and was the Big Ten Coach of the Year a record seven times. And it's also why it's about damn time he's going to Springfield, the Hall of Fame being somewhere he's belonged long before now.

Keady would never say that himself, of course, because he was never one to waste time with self-absorption. Behind those scowls and that bulldog jaw jutting out a mile was a far more gracious man than his public persona suggested. If he got mad at you for something, he never stayed mad. Unlike his great rival down in Bloomington, he didn't nurse grudges like they were family heirlooms.

Quick story: Back in the day the newspaper for which I worked got an anonymous letter accusing Keady of all sorts of shenanigans. Although as far as I know no one questioned the provenance of the letter, we took it and ran with it, running story after story for months that mostly amounted to not much.

In the midst of all this, Keady showed up in town to watch some potential future Boilers play. I approached him -- warily -- for a quote or two. When I told him who I was and what paper I was with, he kind of reared back and looked at me.

"You guys haven't been treatin' me very nice," he said.

And then gave me the quote or two I was looking for.

That was Gene Keady.

On beating the buzzer

 Couple more seconds. That's all we're talking about here, right?

Couple more seconds before you had to attack the rim, and maybe they're not celebrating over there on the San Diego State end. Couple more seconds, and maybe Lamont Butler doesn't get down the floor far enough, maybe he has to launch from farther away and with less form, maybe the ball kicks off the front rim or hits the back rim too hard or skims away off the side of the rim.

Couple more seconds.

Ah, the parsing of time and dissection of what-if that attends the beating of the buzzer.

One flick of the wrist last night -- one launching of the basketball in the right parabolic flight -- and San Diego State is playing for a national title. One flick of the wrist, and Florida Atlantic, the story of Da Tournament, is going home after blowing a 14-point  lead and never trailing in the second half until that very last flick of the wrist.

Elsewhere this night UConn would continue what looks more and more like an inevitable march to the title Monday night, jumping out 9-0 on Miami and never looking back. The 72-59 final score was their closest call of the tournament. No else has finished within 15 points of them.

But the One Shining Moment of this night had already happened by then.

It belonged to Lamont Butler, rushing up the floor and pulling up for a mid-range jumper that splashed down as the horn sounded.  It was every kid's driveway hero skit playing out for real, in real time: Three ... two ... one .. Butler shoots! Butler scores!

Rarely does any other moment in sports result in such instantaneous elation and mourning. Or the instantaneous reversal of the two.

For Florida Atlantic, it was a tear-your-heart-out end to a magical run that has defined this tournament more than anything else. And if Dusty May and his players might not be inclined to dwell on what would have happened if they'd had a couple more seconds to drain off the clock before trying to draw the foul, the rest of us will happily indulge.

Couple more seconds.

One season ends in that eyeblink, and one goes on that looked for a long time as if it were ending. It doesn't get better than that.

Or worse.

One CC of fun

 I don't know how you can play a game much better than Caitlin Clark and Iowa played the game of basketball last night, knocking out undefeated South Carolina and ending the Gamecocks 42-game winning streak in the women's national semifinals. I'm sure that small cadre of sad creatures who still hate women's sports will tell us how.

But the women's tournament keeps putting up big TV numbers and selling out arenas while the scalpers get three times for tickets  what they got even a year ago, and last night will only help their business. Iowa-South Carolina was exactly what everyone thought it would be, and Caitlin Clark was once more a CC of fun and then some.

Five days after she set social media on fire with a 41-point, 12-assist, 10-rebound symphony in the Elite Eight, she did it again last night in the Final Four. Again she went for 41, this time accompanied by eight assists and six boards, as the best defensive team in the nation proved helpless to stop her. Again she hauled her team along with her, accounting for 58 of Iowa's 77 points in the 77-73 win.

The woman is a gold filigree legend now, doing things unseen either forever or for a very long time. Her 41 points last night was the most scored in a women's Final Four game since Sheryl Swoopes went for 47 against Ohio State -- 30 years ago. And only one person has ever gone for back-to-back 40s in the history of the women's tournament.

That would be Caitlin Clark. She stands alone there.

She and the Hawkeyes get LSU in the title game tomorrow night, and that's a story, too. In just her second season since leaving Baylor to return to her home state, head coach Kim Mulkey has the Tigers playing for the championship after kicking to the curb the  other 1-seed, Virginia Tech. Even she admitted it was "crazy."

Crazier yet if the Tigers find a way to slow down Clark and win the title.

Even crazier if they can't, and CC Of Fun does it one last time.