Irony is dead

 The NFL suspended four players, including two now ex-Colts, for betting on NFL games yesterday, three indefinitely and the fourth (Titans offensive tackle Nicholas Petit-Frere) for six games for betting on sports other than football.

In related news, irony breathed its last.

It died in an assisted living facility next to the Never Felt Younger Health Spa, where it had been in ill health since Donald Trump started waving a Bible around. It had taken a turn for the worse when Clarence Thomas, a black man whom affirmative action helped get a leg up, ruled to ban such legs up for any future black man or woman. 

"Too late, suckers!" Justice Thomas crowed, pulling the ladder up behind him.

(OK, so he didn't. But he might as well have.)

In any case, the final blow was the NFL banishing four players for doing what it enthusiastically encourages America to do. That's because it gets paid a chunk by several online betting sites to do just that.

This went directly against everything the NFL had stood for since Paul Hornung and Alex Karras got dinged for betting on NFL games. But money talks loudest in today's America, so now there's an NFL team in Las Vegas and commissioner Roger Goodell might as well be Bugsy Siegel.

What's resulted is a scandal-in-embryo, and the league has no one but itself to blame. What you endorse often ends up defining you, after all. And so when you move to correct it you only sound hypocritical and silly. 

Oh, you can roll out all the high-minded sanctimony you want about how the "integrity of the game is of the utmost importance" (Indianapolis Colts GM Chris Ballard), but how is anyone supposed to take you seriously? How do we not just burst out laughing?

Which I did, by the way, when I read Ballard's quote.

And then waited for the inevitable DraftKings ad.

Indigestion Day

 The Fourth of July weekend begins in two days, and we all know what that means. 

Beer. Grilled meat. Shelling the German lines at the Somme, or whatever you call the annual barrage of ordinance that turns your neighborhood into the West Bank and dogs and veterans into quivering wrecks.

Oh, yeah. And let's not forget the splendid irony of fat guys hollering about athletes disrespecting the American flag while they traipse around in American flag Speedos and tank tops. 

Now there's some disrespect, by God.

There's also baseball on Fourth of July weekend, and apple pie, and hotdogs. Which brings us to perhaps the most quintessentially American event of the weekend, and the most quintessential American.

Joey Chestnut, come on down!

Because nothing says America like America's most prodigious glutton, and the event that's made him a household name, the Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest. It's become a Fourth of July tradition, and Joey is its MJ. Some would even call what he does a sport.

I would not. I would, however, concede it embraces the American zeitgeist like few other things.

Excess is our process, after all, and disparity, too, and the spectacle of Joey stuffing his face with eleventy-five hotdogs perfectly illustrates both. While Joey entertains with the ultimate in conspicuous consumption, see, Americans of lesser fortune are overwhelming food banks and dumpster-diving like Zeros diving on the Arizona. It is the eternal  dichotomy of American life: The haves have to absurd heights, and the have-nots literally scramble for the scraps from their tables.

And, yes, I know this is where the usual suspects would tell me to lighten up, it's all just for fun (and charity, too, to be fair). I get that. I do. But as someone who once made deliveries to my church's own food bank, I can't help wondering how many folks would benefit from all the 'dogs Joey and his competitors gobble down just for kicks.

Besides, let's be honest here: The whole thing's kinda gross if you've ever watched it. 

So there's that, too, I guess.

The Buckeyes don't have it

 So this is what happens when your school's nickname is an eye that can't (or won't) see: You wind up owing a lot of people a lot of foldin' green.

Ohio State University, home of the Buckeyes, has already forked over $40 mill because it let a sicko named Dr. Richard Strauss prey on its athletes for years back in the day. Now it will face a new round of lawsuits from Strauss' victims after the Supreme Court upheld a Court of Appeals ruling that OSU was trying to milk the legal clock until the statute limitations on Strauss' crimes ran out.

The Court of Appeals said, nah, no can do, you can't weasel out of things that easy. And even Donald Trump's pet Supremes agreed. 

This raises the delicious possibility of Ohio congressman Jim Jordan being deposed to testify, seeing how he was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State during the time Strauss was sexually assaulting Buckeye wrestlers. Jordan has always claimed he never saw nothin', having apparently mastered the art of looking the other way as long as it didn't involve anyone named Biden.

"Bullshite," several former Ohio State athletes have responded, in so many words.

And so while Rasslin' Jim squanders more of the people's money plunging down various  rabbit holes, he could be wind up on the griddle himself. Karma's a bitch, and so forth.

As for Ohio State ...

Well, Ryan Day better get Buckeye Football Inc. to the CFP this fall. Looks like OSU's gonna need the cash.

A most gracious man

It's been a good span of years now since I talked to the man, and no surprise there. Stuff happens, after all. Time does what it does. The years take us where they take us, and then one day I open the local newspaper's website, and there the man is again.

Carl Erskine. Still living life.

Still doing what he does deep into his '90s, which is be eternally gracious. Still giving and giving and giving some more, because that's who he is and a man cannot escape who he is anymore than he can grow gills and breathe water.

I know this because of all the times I talked to the old Brooklyn Dodger when I worked in Anderson, Erskine's hometown and the place to which he returned after his playing days. He was one of the Boys of Summer, and then he became a man for all seasons, and that's why I saw his name pop up again last week.

The Baseball Hall of Fame, it seems, was paying attention.

And so it's bestowing on Erskine the Buck O'Neil Lifetime Achievement award, only the sixth recipient of a relatively new honor. Giving hath its privileges, it seems.

Take that picture in the suite area of Parkview Field, for instance.

It was taken on a summer's day at McMillen Park in the early 1960s, when Wildcat baseball was in its infancy here in the Fort. Carl's sitting on a bench with Dale McMillen, Wildcat's founder. Some other folks are sitting there, too.

Jackie Robinson, for one. Ted Williams, for another. 

Mr. Mac called and they came, because of course they did. I don't know how that all went down, but I'm betting Carl had something to do with it. Jackie, after all, was Carl's teammate and friend with the Dodgers. And Carl was never very good at saying no.

And so there hangs that photo, and in Carl's Anderson home the phone rings and it's an area high school team or a baseball organization wanting him to come speak. Or the Dodgers requesting his presence in Dodgertown for another fantasy camp.  Or some guy like me starving for context to flesh out a story.

Because Carl is not only Mr. Gracious, you see. He's Mr. Context, too.

The man saw so much in his time, after all. When he started pitching for the Dodgers, the team was still riding the rails; by the time he retired, they were traveling by plane. Want to talk about the integration of baseball? Carl and Jackie Robinson were teammates and friends, and later would come Roy Campanella, and on and on. 

In his time, television transformed not only baseball but the nation, and segregation's death knell began to sound in both baseball and America. The Dodgers moved to L.A. and the Giants to San Francisco, and suddenly the very geography of the game was changed forever.

"I played in a specific era in the game," Carl told me once. "There were a lot of historic changes that happened in that era -- baseball always reflects those changes in society."

And if you just want to talk about the state of the game ... well, Erskine played in five World Series, and threw two no-hitters, and struck out 14 Yankees in Game 3 of the 1953 Series, a record that stood for a decade. 

And so the phone keeps ringing for Mr. Context. And, of course, for Mr. Gracious -- whose service to the game has never ended as a result, and who is now being recognized for it.

"Let me tell you," he once joked of the Mr. Gracious part. "My old Erskine saying is when you're cheap and available, you get a lot of work."

Along with much else.

What's in a name?

 Well ... a lot, depending on the name.

For instance, hear about Ball State's newest golf recruit?

His name is Happy Gilmore.

Seriously. What, you think I could make that up?

I couldn't. Ball State's newest golf recruit really is named Happy Gilmore, although Happy's just his nickname. His legit handle is Landon, and he's a senior golfer at Bloomington South High School. According to his website, he's gone by "Happy" since he was 9 years old and someone called him that after he won a long drive competition.

The kid took it and ran with it.

It's had its rewards, certainly. What other high school recruit headed to Ball State gets social media shoutouts from both Adam Sandler (who played the title role in the film) and the Twitter page for Shooter McGavin (Happy's rival, played by Christopher McDonald)?

Here's wishing him luck in Muncie. And no fistfights with Bob Barker, OK?

Cultural exchanges

 Caught part of the London Series game between the Cubs and Cardinals yesterday, and again it got me thinking what the Brits think of our National Past (Its) Time. I'm guessing they'd respond that a brisk game of rounders is fine with them.

Although the haughtier sort (these are Brits, after all) would no doubt sniff, "Well, it's not exactly cricket, is it?"

No, it's not. And England isn't America, which is why the Cubs and Cardinals gawked like proper bumpkins at Westminster Abbey and Big Ben and the Tower London and all the other old stuff they got to see on their visit.

"That's where Anne Boleyn was beheaded!" Cardinals shortstop Paul DeJong exclaimed of the Tower. "And we were standing right there today!"

And, OK, so he didn't say it exactly like that. But he did seem pretty stoked to be at the site of an historic dismemberment.

Which is to say, the baseball players loved London. But what did the Brits think about their game?

Well, both games were sellouts, so I guess they must have liked it OK. And yet I can't but wonder how many of those in attendance were actually locals and not American tourists, and what questions they might have been asking about our distant cousin to their cricket.

"Which player is the silly mid-off?" might have been one, referring to an actual cricket position.

Or; "You mean the bowler, I mean, pitcher, doesn't get a running start? Hardly seems fair."

Or: "Why is the beer so cold? And where's the mash to go with this banger-in-a-roll?"

They might also have wondered which team was the Yankees, and why there must be a lot of bearcubs in Chicago, because why else would its baseball team be called the Cubs? Ditto for Cardinals in St. Louis.

Also, why do they call it a curveball when it's clearly a wicked googly?

And then Ian Happ homered in his first two at-bats in the first game of the Series, and all of that went away, presumably.

"Ian! Now that's a proper name," someone surely said.

And then: "Wonder if he could play silly mid-off?"

From Hell's heart ...

 ... and, yeah, if you've seen "The Wrath of Kahn" or read "Moby Dick," you know the rest of that line: "I stab at thee."

Only now there's a rebuttal from the whales, apparently.

"I stab at thee"? Yeah, well, (BLEEP) YOU. Ahab, you crazy bastard. I'll show you some stabbing-at-thee.

Now, I doubt if whales think in complete sentences like that (although you never know), but what's going on off the coast of Spain and Portugal these days sure sounds a lot like the above.  The killer whales are coming, and they are pissed. In recent months the orcas have taken to ramming dozens of small sailing vessels in the Straits of Gibraltar -- even sinking one -- and this week they rammed two sailboats in The Ocean Race endurance event.

Free Willy, indeed. Also, BLEEP YOU, guys who race sailboats.

The orcas didn't sink the two boats they rammed, which means they didn't get to paint little sailboats on their sides like World War II fighter pilots used to paint Japanese flags on their planes for every Zero they smoked. So at least there's that.

However ...

However, this whole recent ramming-sailboats thing is more than a bit disturbing, seeing how it sounds like the opening act of some sci-fi horror flick.

First came "The Planet of the Apes." Then came "Cocaine Bear." Now, Paramount Pictures brings you nature's most terrifying revenge yet ...

"Ramming Speed!: Attack of the Orcas."

OK. So that's just silly.

But just in case it's not ...

Time to call this guy back from the watery deep.

Draft-y thinking

 The sky is the limit for him.

- Mike Woodson, on Trayce Jackson-Davis

Or ...

Or he's already arrived at the sky.

That's the question here, as Trayce Jackson-Davis finally, finally gets the call. He sat around all night Thursday as the NBA draft droned on and his name was never uttered, getting slowly more steamed as team after team passed on him. At last, as the possibly of not being drafted loomed ever larger, the Golden State Warriors swung a deal for his draft rights with the Washington Wizards, and TJD's phone chirped.

The Warriors it would be, with the 57th selection. For those keeping score at home, that was the next-to-last pick in the draft.

So what took so long?

For that, you have to lift the hood on NBA front offices and rummage around in there awhile, as unappealing as that sounds.

The shorthand answer: High floor, low ceiling.

By which I mean NBA teams draft for potential, not for resume. TJD might have been the best college player in the country last winter whose name wasn't Zach Edey, and he got the best of Edey twice in the annual Indiana-Purdue grudge matches. But he also was a four-year college player (a negative now in NBA thinking, if you can believe that), and that will make him a 23-year-old rookie.

Yeah, I know. Twenty-three ain't exactly wizened. But it's older than dirt in the modern NBA, which has decided the younger the better after years of hanging a You Must Be This Old To Ride This Ride sign on their league.

Age was one reason TJD dropped from a prospective late first round/early second pick; the other was the suspicion he doesn't shoot well enough. Those factors are linked, in a sense, because teams apparently have decided a full four-year college player has taken his game as far as it will go.

High floor, low ceiling, in other words.

The NBA craves the exact opposite, which is why 19-year-old Victor Wembanyama went first and kids you never heard of like Bilal Coulibaly from France (18) and James Nnaji from Nigeria (18) went well before Jackson-Davis. Also TJD's Indiana teammate, Jalen Hood-Schifino, a one-and-done who's 20 and went to the Lakers with the 17th pick.

Hoosier fans, of course, will tell you the Warriors got a steal with TJD, and maybe they did. He's a board-crashing beast who can score, and who finished his career as Indiana's alltime rebounder and shot-blocker and its third alltime scorer. Only Calbert Cheaney and Steve Alford are ahead of him on the list.

Alford, a deadly screen shooter, went on to play just 169 games in the NBA, averaging 4.4 points in five seasons for Dallas and Golden State.  Cheaney  made a much bigger splash, comparatively, but was essentially a journeyman pro who played for five teams across 13 seasons and averaged 9.5 points, 3.2 rebounds and 1.7 assists for his career.

So there you go. Or perhaps not.

Once upon a not-too-distant time, for instance, Golden State got another guy out of the Big Ten. Like Trayce Jackson-Davis, he was also a second-round pick. Like TJD, he was also a rebounding defensive beast whose shooting was suspect. He was almost as old at Jackson-Davis (22),  and he was three inches shorter and 10 pounds lighter. 

His name was Draymond Green, out of Michigan State. Perhaps you've heard of him.

All he's done since, after all, is become a four-time NBA All-Star, a four-time NBA champion, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and an eight-time member of the NBA's All-Defensive Team. So there you go again.

Or not, because Draymond Green is also six kinds of nasty, and nasty works in the Association. And that's definitely not Trayce Jackson-Davis.

And so it's as it always is with NBA draft picks: Stay tuned.

Clueless in Nacogdoches

 I wouldn't know Steve Lemke if he hit me in the head with all his dead brain cells, but I do know he's proof positive comedian Ron White was right. You really can't fix stupid.

Lemke is (or rather was) an assistant bowling coach at Stephen F. Austin, whose program is apparently a quasi-dynasty in collegiate bowling. You probably didn't know that, because college bowling is not as big as, say, college football. But that's OK. 

Steve Lemke just put it on your radar. And not in a good way.

No, Lemke did it by winning the coveted Dumbest Guy In America award, which is kinda like the Heisman for the terminally witless. This is because he lost his job back in April when it was discovered he was having an affair with one of the bowling student-athletes. 

The person who discovered this was Lemke's wife (or rather, ex-wife) Amber. She's also the head coach of the bowling team. 

Yes, that's right, boys and girls. Ol' Bonehead was cheating on his wife with one of her bowlers.

That's not what elevates Lemke to legend status, however. No, what does that is all the numbingly clueless stuff he told a Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel reporter recently. 

Basically he admitted the affair was "kind of a no-no," but it wasn't, you know, against the law or anything, so no harm done. Then he whined about being a stay-at-home dad while his wife pursued her coaching career. Why, she even expected him to watch the kids AND run practices occasionally. The injustice of it all, ya know? 

And how did she find out about the affair?

She found some texts on his phone from his (bleep) buddy. But, you know, nothing risque or anything.

"It was just about how amazing I am, basically, in a general perspective," Lemke told the Daily Sentinel.

Yeah, well ... about that, Steve-O.

To quote Dalton in "Roadhouse": Opinions vary.

Cruds break!

 Time now to check in with my Pittsburgh Pirates, who have been tormenting their fans with unnerving outbreaks of competence, but who now have lost seven in a row and are sinking ever closer to their ancestral home in the NL Central cellar ...

But enough about the fact they're 14-29 since their cruelly deceptive 20-8 start.

Let's talk about how my Cruds have finally, inevitably, driven someone to drink.

No, I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about the driver of their team bus — who was pulled over and subsequently arrested for drunk driving on I-94 in Chicago after a recent loss to the Cubs. 

No, I am not making that up. And, no, I'm not trying to make light of it, because a drunk driver behind the wheel of a bus should scare the bejeezus out of all of us.

That's not funny. Even if it kinda is.

Because, listen, this has to be one of the most Crud  things ever. Not only does the team suck, it couldn't even find a sober bus driver. How utterly hopeless is that?

And, again, thank God no one got hurt -- including my Cruds, who are only playing like they’re hurt, having lost 10 of their last 12 games and sunk to third in the division, half a game in front of the fourth-place Cubs.

Onward. 

(With a new bus driver, presumably).

Erasing history

 Today is Juneteenth, and so the Blob will dispense with Blobbing about a guy with a name like a hotel chain (Wyndham Clark) coming from the depths of the PGA to win the U.S. Open, and about Ja Morants' 25-game suspension for acting the fool, and about any and all other Sportsball matters.

Today is about history, and stirring s*** up. 

The former cannot be done right without the latter, see, because history is messy and not easy. And so this day is about wondering, only half tongue-in-cheek, if teachers in Florida are thanking their lucky stars Juneteenth falls during summer vacation, because now they don't have to fear losing their jobs if they talk about it in a way that displeases their governor.

Juneteenth, after all, is the celebration of the day the last slaves in America learned they were free. And we all we know how Florida's governor, Ron "Don't Say Slave" DeSantis, feels about that subject.

He's essentially banned any mention of the S-word, is what he's done. Can't talk about how slavery has shaped American history, and how its legacy continues to shape it. That's considered -- gasp! -- "Critical Race Theory." It might make white kids feel bad, and heaven knows we can't have that in the Il Duce of Florida's kingdom.

Do I exaggerate for effect here? Perhaps. But not by much.

And so on this Juneteenth I wonder how the day would be commemorated in the more DeSantisized precincts of the nation -- which apparently includes at least one school district (Hello, Northwest Allen!) here in the Fort. I wonder, as a student of history, about the disturbing trend toward muzzling history in favor of feel-good propaganda, because propaganda is designed not to educate but to validate a manufactured reality. 

I also wonder how black kids feel about so much of black history being downplayed (or in some cases, removed from their school libraries). And why that doesn't seem to matter to il Duce and others of his ideological stripe.

Their history is a throwback to the 1950s, a comfortable time to be white in America but not so much for Americans of color. History textbooks in those days still advanced the false catechism of  the Lost Cause, teaching a generation of young minds that most slaves were happy and, anyway, the Civil War wasn't about slavery. It was a time when no one questioned how bizarre it was that United States military installations were named for Confederates who waged war against the United States military.

That bit of nonsense is finally getting a long-overdue course correction. Governor DeSantis, of course, has pledged to reverse it, telling a crowd in North Carolina he'll restore the name "Fort Bragg" -- thereby re-honoring Confederate general Braxton Bragg, an incompetent boob whose troops killed hundreds of U.S. soldiers.

Why, I can't think of anything more appropriate than that. Can you?

Juneteenth, on the other hand, is rightly celebrated, but you can't fully discuss it without acknowledging the backlash that followed. It led to freedom, and then the ballot, and then to representation in Congress -- and then, as night follows day, to the violent overthrow of Reconstruction in favor of the reconstruction of slavery in the form of Jim Crow.

And then to the black Holocaust of lynching and racist violence. And then to the civil rights movement, the backlash-to-the-backlash whose gains the usual suspects are now working overtime to undo.

You can't properly teach Juneteenth without mentioning that context. And yet it's everything those usual suspects are trying to suppress in the name of  -- to use one of their arguments -- not stirring up resentments that divide us. 

Know who else used that rationale?

Well, in Adam Hochschild's history of the years 1917-21 in America, "American Midnight," there's a passage describing domestic Military Intelligence chief Ralph Van Deman's strong-arming of the black press. His excuse was that they were running exposes about lynching, and that pieces like that might create "a feeling of disloyalty" among blacks.

Hmm. Sounds kinda familiar.

The legacies of fathers

 I have way too many ties.

When I open my armoire I see a dozen of them, easy, and I know I'm never going to wear at least 10 of them. This is because I was a sportswriter, and adhered to the Sportswriter Dress Code that restricted tie-wearing to weddings, funerals and athletic banquets. And it is also because I'm retired now, and adhere to the Retiree Dress Code: Basketball shorts, T-shirts and ballcaps.

So you see, the stereotypical Father's Day gift is not for me.

And yet ...

And yet, ties define this day.

Ties that bind, if you're lucky. Ties to tradition. Ties to passions and lessons and all the things fathers pass down to sons and daughters -- things of value we scarcely realize have been passed down until long after we grow out of childhood.

My father has been gone five years now. To say I miss him every day, but especially this one, is a cliche that rings true nonetheless.

And, yes, most of that is about those ties, and how they've defined my own life.

From my father I learned to swing level and not try to kill it, and to do the job right or don't do it at all, and to be honest and dependable and true to your word. My passion for history, and the lessons it teaches, I got from my father. Ditto my creative temperament -- for me, writing; for my dad, crafting lovely things with a pocketknife and a chunk of  wood. 

He also passed on his appreciation for all manner of old things.

Here on the bookshelves in our den, for instance -- so close I can reach out and touch it -- is my dad's old baseball glove. One bookshelf over is the football he played with as a child. Propped up in the corner is a child-size hockey stick that belonged to his father, and in the hall closet hangs Dad's old uniform from his Civil War re-enactor days.

And then there are my old things.

A 29-year-old thank you note from Ernie Harwell, the legendary voice of the Detroit Tigers. An autographed photo of Ned Garver, the Shohei Ohtani of the 1950s St. Louis Browns. A photo of me buckling my helmet the night I drove in a charity race at Anderson Speedway 40 summers ago; media credentials and Indianapolis 500 badges that go back 30 years, 35 years, 44 years.

Old things. Cherished things. Ties that transcend mortality, and that are the legacy of fathers.

Happy Father's Day, everyone. And to my own dad, thanks for everything.

Even if I never could swing level, dammit.

Alcohol 2, Huggins 0

 OK. So maybe the question was NOT unfair, even if I characterized it that way a month ago.

Remember?

I don't know Huggins, so I don't know if he's a drinking man, although a DUI helped cost him his gig at Cincinnati two decades ago. And therefore the thought that popped into my head the other day was probably unfair, even if it was also unavoidable:

Was Bob Huggins drunk?

I wrote that after the West Virginia basketball coach called Xavier University's basketball players a bunch of "Catholic (gay slurs)" on a Cincinnati talk-radio show back in May, which got him a weak-kneed response from his administration -- suspended for three nothing games at the beginning of next season. 

Then came Friday night.

That's when police in Pittsburgh came upon his car stopped in the middle of the highway, door hanging open, tires shredded. When a disoriented Huggins -- he didn't even know he was in Pittsburgh -- couldn't successfully move his car off the road, the cops on the scene Breathalyzed him.

He blew .21, more than twice the legal limit. And Saturday, it cost him his job for the second time in 19 years.

And so maybe my hunch from a month ago was more intuition than hunch. It seemed the only reasonable explanation for why Huggins, who's hardly stupid, would say the sort of recklessly hideous stuff he said on a public radio show.

Was Bob Huggins drunk?

Seems likely now. Because he sure was the other night, when driving drunk may have cost him not only his job but his career, seeing how Huggins is 69 and well into retirement age.

If that's what happens, here's hoping he takes some time to get a handle on his issues with alcohol, which apparently are his personal demon, And, yeah, maybe it's unfair and assumptive to say that, too, even if the available evidence suggests otherwise.

I mean, a coach who built his reputation on personal responsibility having none himself?

That sort of hypocrisy doesn't just spring from the ether. It springs from something far darker, and against which its victim seems clearly powerless.

Another assumption, perhaps. But so be it.

. 

Rob Manfred is a jerk

 Not to put too fine a point on it or anything.

Yes, Rob Manfred, commissioner of Major League Baseball and tool of the owners, is a jerk, because like the Oakland A's misbegotten owner he, too, felt it necessary to kick a man while he's down. He, too, thought it was cute to bash Oakland and Oakland's fans with his snide answer to a question about the latter's "reverse boycott" this week.

He thought it was great, ol' Rob did, because the attendance that night was "almost an average Major League Baseball crowd in the facility for one night."

In other words: You guys don't draw flies most other nights, and that's why you're losing your baseball team. Also your public officials never made a serious effort to keep the team in Oakland.

This is exactly what the Misbegotten Owner, John Fisher, has been saying, which makes Manfred the puppet we always knew he was. It's also a truckload of hooey, because the city of Oakland DID make an effort, and, anyway, why do you think the A's needed a new facility to begin with?

It's because Fisher, the principal tenant, deliberately let the old place fall apart. It's a big part of why the other tenant, the Raiders, are now in Las Vegas themselves. They got tired of Fisher letting the facility rot.

And, oh, yeah: Perhaps someone should tell Mr. Snide the reason fans have stopped coming to the games is not just because the ballpark is crap, but because the ballclub is, too. Maybe if Fisher weren't such a cheap bastard, the A's would not be a de facto Triple A team playing (as of this morning) .264 baseball.

Name me any other team anywhere that would draw if the owner was putting such a garbage product on the field. If  you’re already 24-and-a-half games out of first on June 17, you're not going to get fans flocking to the ballpark. Especially to watch a lame-duck team whose foot is already out the door.

But, sure, Commissioner, trash a whole fan base and city as a parting gift. Real classy there, bud.

Although, great job following the script Fisher laid out for you.

The Uh-0h Open

 Look, I don't know what the Los Angeles Country Club can do. It's apparently so hidebound a place the greens are decorated in embossed gold leaf, so windmills and the celebrated Clown's Mouth Hole probably aren't options at this point.

But, lord, are they messin' with tradition right now.

Tradition at the U.S. Open, see, demands that the USGA trick up the host course so much it drives the world's best golfers into foam-at-the-mouth fury. Apparently the USGA labors under the delusion that people tune into the Open to see Xander Schauffele hack it around like Joe Schmo from Kokomo at Chemical Runoff Hills.

Well ... THAT didn't happen yesterday.

No, what happened was Xander Schauffele dropped napalm on LACC, flame-broiling it  to the tune of 8-under 62. Even worse, Ricky Fowler also put up a 62. In all, six players shot 65 or better -- including a certain W. Clark and B. Harman, whose first names are Wyndham and Brian and who sit 32nd and 40th, respectively, in the PGA Tour rankings.

When W. Clark and B. Harman shoot 64 and 65, respectively, you know the U.S. Open is about to become the Uh-Oh Open. Especially when last year, U.S. Open champ Matt Fitzpatrick shot 6-under for the whole stinkin' tournament.

That was a bit more like it. Yesterday, on the other hand, was an embarrassment for the USGA, which prefers the embarrassment shoe reside on the other foot.

So what can be done to return the Open to its head-high rough roots?

The Blob has a few ideas:

1. Place the pins in more challenging positions, like in the middle of head-high rough.

2. Equip the fans with air horns.

3.  Bring in some moveable fake trees. Hey, look what just showed up in the middle of the 7th fairway!

4. One word: Quicksand.

5. Import some really obnoxious Hollywood types loudly closing a deal on his phone in the middle of Xander's or Ricky's or B. Harman's backswing.

And if all else fails ...

Install a Clown's Mouth Hole. You can never go wrong.

Relocation dislocation

 The World Pessimist Championships are going on in my head again, and today's category is this: Is Las Vegas a baseball town?

Pessimist Contestant No. 1 says no.

Pessimist Contestant No. 2 adds "And why does Oakland A's owner John Fisher think it will be, other than the obvious?"

The obvious being the $380 million welfare check the Nevada state lege just cut to help Fisher build a $1.5 billion ballpark out there in the Vegas desert.

The pessimists in my head look at this and see the usual fleecing of the taxpayers for a dubious enterprise. In other words, the Blob doesn't see how this will work.

See, in order to kick Oakland in the tender parts one last time on his way out the door, Fisher contrived to put a Triple A team on the field this summer. That might not matter now, but it will next year. I mean, what's the marketing strategy here? "Come watch my fake-MLB team play .271 ball"?

That's what the lame-duck A's are doing now, and that's after winning seven of their last 10 games. Before that, they were even worse.

Even worse than that, Fisher's now moving his fake-MLB team to what will immediately become the smallest market in the majors. And the A's proposed 30,000-seat digs will be the smallest ballpark in the majors.

Know what's even worse, or at least dumber, than that?

 Part of the proposed stadium deal in Vegas hinged on the A's promise to average 90 percent attendance for 81 home dates. No one in the majors averages 90 percent attendance, even the Yankees and Dodgers. But a fake-MLB team's going to do it?

Yikes.

Now, all that said, what's likely to happen here, as it has for the Raiders, is Vegas will become the most popular baseball destination in MLB, at least for awhile. As a friend of the Blob pointed out, the airlines will offer special package deals to out-of-town fans to come see a couple of games and hit the gambling tables. This means every A's game will in essence be a road game, with Yankees or Red Sox or Cubs fans filling the seats.

Thing is, even that likely will lose its novelty after a time, as those out-of-town fans inevitably say "Meh, been there, done that." Novelties are only novelties until you've done them, after all. After that ... well, suffice it to say depending on those Vegas junkets does not seem a sustainable business model for a major-league baseball team.

Of course, Fisher isn't bringing an actual major-league baseball team to town. So there's that, I guess.

Lord, Stanley

The Vegas Golden Knights hoisted the Stanley Cup last night for their adoring, raucous, thoroughly-Vegas fans, and the question immediately occurs: When's the victory parade?

And how will you tell the difference between that and, you know, just another Tuesday in Sin City?

Las Vegas is, after all, the home office for American excess, and not just because I once had a drink there at a bar as long as a football field.  It's because everything is bigger, more gaudy, more outlandish than it needs to be or maybe even should be. It's so over the top, Everest is jealous.

So a parade?

I see sequins, a super-stretch Hummer, the Stanley Cup dressed as an Elvis impersonator (complete with shades and a pompadour). I see Conn Smythe winner Jonathan Marchessault in a top hat and a gold lame suit, holding Mike Tyson's white tiger on a leash. I see a champagne bottle the size of a howitzer leading the parade in its own custom Rolls. 

Lord, Stanley. Has your Cup ever seen anything like this?

It's been punted into a frozen canal, driven around in players' cars, visited more strip clubs than Ja Morant. It's been drunk out of a million times, been left behind in bars, and did I mention being punted into a frozen canal?

That's nothing compared to this. It's a formal tea, complete with crumpets.

Codgers and bony-fist-shakers like me may howl about Stanley winding up in Las Vegas, for God's sake, but it's a pretty remarkable story the Golden Knights have put together. In just their sixth season, they won it all, and not because they had Wayne Gretzky. Instead they had a bunch of guys nobody wanted, somehow reached the Cup Final in their first year in spite of that, and then made one shrewd move after another to build a powerhouse.

Now they're the champs. And now Vegas is a hockey town, bizarre as that sounds.

Somewhere Bugsy Siegel is wearing a Jack Eichel jersey. And telling his enforcers to go lay a cross check on that mug who won't pay up.

Family ties

 They handed him the NBA Finals MVP trophy as the confetti swirled and Denver howled, and here it was, the picture-postcard moment. And also the secret, of a fashion.

In one hand, Nikola Jokic held everything he was and is and has been for awhile now, which is the best player on the planet and now, finally, a champion. 

Cradled in his other arm was everything that matters to him.

That was his infant daughter he held, wearing an NBA Champions cap turned backward that was several sizes too large for her. Somewhere else were his wife -- his high school sweetheart -- and brothers, his family. And somewhere else were Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon and Michael Porter Jr. and the rest of the champion Denver Nuggets, Nikola Jokic's other family.

You want to know the Nuggets' secret, the reason they went 8-2 in the conference finals and NBA Finals, there it was right in front of you. It was a family thing.

Oh, it was Jokic and Murray and Gordon and Porter, too, and all the rest. It was Jokic becoming the first player in NBA history to lead the playoffs in points, rebounds AND assists. It was Murray becoming the first player in history history to put up at least 10 assists in his first four Finals games.

Murray finished Game 5 with 14 points, eight rebounds and eight assists as the Nuggets finished the Heat. Jokic had 28 points, 16 rebounds and four assists, making12-of-16 shots. Porter added 16 points and 13 boards. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope chipped in with 11 and four; Bruce Brown put up 10 and six off the bench.

Everyone did a little something, in other words. It's the Nuggets Way, and it's the Nuggets Way because, yes, they're a family, and family needs each other, and if you do it right no one cares who fills the need or how.

The Nuggets needed Brown and Porter in Game 5, and Brown and Porter produced.

They needed Aaron Gordon in Game 4, and Gordon went for 27 points, seven boards, six assists and a steal.

On and on. And at the center of it all was Jokic, holding his MVP trophy in one hand and his daughter in the other, a unique player with unique skills and a unique way of looking at the world -- a way that centers him the way few athletic stars of his stature are centered these days.

Last night, for instance?

He didn't want to go to Disney World or a victory parade or any of that noise after delivering the Nuggets their first title in 47 NBA seasons. No, sir.

"The job is done, and we can go home now," he said simply.

No look-at-me for him. No raucous champagne showers. Instead, he greeted every Miami Heat player before joining the celebration, and that celebration -- that one last W -- meant he and his daughter and his brothers and his wife could go home to Serbia, go home to the beloved racehorses that are his true passion.

But what about the parade, Nikola?

A groan.

"No, I need to go home," he replied.

The Nuggets Way, again.

O Canada

 And now, just for funsies, one more look at the Sportsball highlight of the weekend, coming to you from the RBC Canadian Open golf tournament.

Where a Canadian named Nick Taylor pulled a miracle out of his pocket to swipe the W off Tommy Fleetwood's plate on the last hole. Enjoy.

Taylor's 72-foot putt was the longest he'd ever jarred as a professional golfer, and it made him the first Canadian to win his country's Open since 1954. 

Also, it was a great big "take that!" from aggrieved Canadians who are being forced to watch either Las Vegas (huh?) or Miami (what th-?) claim Lord Stanley's Cup, instead of one of THEIR teams. Which hasn't happened since 1993, when Montreal won the Big Chalice.

That's not as long ago as '54, of course. But by God it's long enough.

Today in annoyances

 And now it's June, summer on deck, and that means it's fly season in America. I know this because one of them turned up at an airport in Phoenix the other day and wouldn't quit buzzing around Brittney Griner's head.

This fly has a name, but I won't give it oxygen by uttering it. Suffice it to say he's that species of fly prevalent on social media these days: A self-hyping creature who delights in tormenting people in public places with questions he knows his targets won't respond to in the environment he creates.

Then he hopes they react so he can get it all on video,

Some people actually regard this as journalism, and a valuable service to humankind. Of course, those same people regard the Former Guy as some sort of political martyr, so there you go,

In any event, Griner and her Phoenix Mercury teammates were headed for a flight when this creature showed up, buzzing, buzzing. He kept asking her how she felt about being swapped for an erstwhile Merchant of Death (more on that later). This is because the Fly, and his advocates, think she should have rotted in a Russian labor camp because she's a gay black woman who used to kneel for the national anthem.

Seriously. They thought it was just fine she got sentenced to hard labor for nine years because she inadvertently packed a tiny amount of cannabis oil when she was playing in Russia.

Of course, it probably goes without saying that if she weren't a gay black woman and her politics were different, the same folks who stuck up for the Russians instead of an American citizen would have been calling her a hostage and demanding the president firebomb Moscow or some such thing.

Instead, the president caught a raft of you-know-what from the Fly and his ilk for trading a Merchant of Death for her. This despite the fact the Merchant of Death hadn't been a Merchant of Death for 15 or so years, and had already served more than half his sentence under U.S. law.

Anyway, here comes the Fly, doing his Fly schtick. And when the Mercury and the WNBA released statements rightly decrying it as harassment, they were the ones who were castigated by ... well, by the usual suspects.

Again, seriously. And for God's sake and give me a break and what the hell is wrong with these people, too.

Griner probably did the right thing by ignoring the Fly. But when I read accounts of the incident, I couldn't help thinking the best way to deal with creatures like the Fly would be to Buzz Aldrin the thing.

Remember that? Buzz Aldrin clocking a conspiracy kook who wouldn't stop buzzing, buzzing, buzzing around him, insisting he tell the truth about the moon landing?

Laid the crazy bastard out, Buzz did. Became an internet hero for doing so, because someone caught the whole thing on film.

Of course, the Fly probably wishes Griner had Buzz Aldrin-ed him. Then he could have gone to court and sued her and played the martyr card himself. But you know what?

I'm just naive enough to think America is a still a place where propriety matters. And so I like to think a good chunk of the country would have been applauding Griner for dealing with an annoyance in the proper way. And I like to think whatever judge caught the lawsuit would have told the Fly to get the (bleep) out of his courtroom with that shite.

Yeah, I know. And unicorns are real.

Loss leader

 It's not quite true that running backs are a dime a dozen these days in the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League. Why, you can probably get 12 cents for a dozen in today's market. Maybe even 13 if you sell it hard enough.

Oh, they probably still have some value, even in an NFL that's 95 percent pitch-and-catch. But they wear out fast and, like new cars, they begin to depreciate the minute you drive 'em off the lot in the second or third round of the draft.

Know how I know this?

Because Dalvin Cook knows this.

He's only 27 years old and he's lugged it for 5,993 yards in six seasons, which already makes him the Minnesota Vikings' third leading rusher all-time. Last season he was sixth in the NFL in rushing, with 1,173 yards. He also caught 39 passes for another 295 yards.

All that, and the Vikings dumped him anyway.

They dumped him because re-signing him would have meant a $14 million salary cap hit, and not even a 27-year-old running back who's still among the best in the league was deemed worth that. Better to save those pennies for, I don't know, an extra wideout or a backup tight end.

None of us who remember watching Barry Sanders or Walter Payton or Earl Campbell can even conceive such a thing. Those worthies, and their contemporaries, were just getting started at 27. Now the Vikings clearly think 27 is a sell-by date.

This means they're either stupidly tossing him aside well before he's used up, or they're prescient enough to see signs of his inevitable decline. Because that's what happens to running backs in today's NFL.

When they fall off, see, it tends to happen suddenly. So maybe the Vikes looked at, say, the fact Cook's yards-per-carry has declined every one of the last three years, and saw in that the edge of the cliff approaching.

Time will tell. For now, Dalvin Cook is exhibit A that NFL teams consider running backs a loss leader. To be sure, lots of folks will line up to sign him -- the Dolphins have been most prominently mentioned as Cook's landing zone -- but a long-term deal is probably not in his future.

Unless, that is, some other team turns out to be dumber than the Vikings.

Yeah, I know. But it could happen.

A W for Rivalry Week

 Well, tie me to a chair and paint me in Rival U.'s colors. Maybe the Big Ten Conference does care a smidgen about something besides television markets and Everests of cash.

The Big Mathematically Challenged rolled out its football plan for 2024 and 2025 yesterday, and they even gave it a name: Flex Protect Plus. Sounds more like an analgesic than a football scheduling plan, but, hey, let the conference up easy here. At least  it's giving tradition a cursory nod in its pursuit of master of the universe status, or whatever it is the conference is pursuing other than Rutgers vs. USC on some autumn Saturday.

The analgesic/plan -- put in place for when USC and UCLA join the party next year, speaking of Not Tradition -- eliminates the current divisions while preserving (protecting?) traditional rivalries. Each school will have two permanent conference opponents, at least one of which is its big rivalry game.

So, Indiana-Purdue will still play for the Old Oaken Bucket every year, and Purdue and Illinois will still play for the Purdue Cannon, and, yep, we'll still get Michigan-Ohio State, Michigan-Michigan State, UCLA-USC and even Minnesota-Wisconsin. What, you thought they were gonna throw the battle for the Paul Bunyan Axe over the side?

(Also, under the new plan, the Floyd of Rosedale game -- Iowa-Minnesota -- will be a permanent deal. Which is a big W for fans of the humble bronze pig that remains the best trophy in college football)

Oh, and USC and UCLA?

Well, in 2024, the Trojans make the trek east to play at Maryland, Northwestern, Penn State and Purdue. UCLA, meanwhile goes all the way east to Rutgers, and also goes to Michigan, Iowa and Indiana.

This means Purdue could have a '67 Heaven Day when USC comes to Ross-Ade, commemorating the year Bob Griese 'n' them whipped the Trojans in the Rose Bowl. The Boilers could wear throwback '67 unis, the cool ones with the numbers on the side of the old-gold helmets. The Purdue band could play selections from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which dropped in '67. And the students could, I don't know, burn their draft cards or something.

It would be glorious.

And in 2025?

Indiana goes west to play USC. 

The Hoosiers lost to the Trojans in the 1968 Rose Bowl. They also lost to them 28-7 the last time they played, in 1982. So maybe it could be Ah, Geez, These Schlubs Again? Day in the Coliseum.

Why, they could even invite O.J. Simpson from the '68 Rose Bowl Tro-

Ooh.

OK. So maybe not.

Ode to a villain

 And now a few brief words to acknowledge the passing of that giant of professional wrestling villainy, The Iron Sheik, who died yesterday at 81 and is likely even now applying the Camel Clutch to whatever unfortunate celestial being questioned his entry into Paradise.

First off, the aforementioned celestial being is a jabroni (the Sheik's preferred epithet for assorted jerks and posers)

Same goes for death, the ultimate jabroni.

Also, F*** THE MONDAY (One of the Sheik's favorite tweets on his legendary parody account on the Magic Twitter Thingy).

Also, F*** THE WILDFIRES (One the last tweets on the account, along with WHOEVER LET THE DOGS OUT CAN GO F*** YOURSELF and F*** THE APPLE VISION PRO HEADSET)

Rest in whatever you want to rest in, Sheik. And warn the celestials ahead of time about Hulk Hogan, that jabroni.

Coming to America

 Indulge Major League Soccer if it thinks this week's big news is the biggest coming-to-America story since the Beatles graced our shores, or maybe the Pope if you want to get all sacrilegious about it.

I mean, come on. We are talking about Lionel Messi here.

Excuse me: LIONEL MESSI!!!

Coming to Miami! To MLS! And not to repeat ourselves, but ... to MLS!

This is the biggest coup for American professional soccer since Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and Giorgio Chinaglia wound up in New York playing for the Cosmos, giving the fledgling North American Soccer League a proper boost out of the gate. Of course, the NASL didn't last, mainly because most Americans couldn't name another of its teams on  a bet. But for awhile, America loved soccer.

And then Pele retired and, well ...

Well. All these years later, now comes Lionel Messi.

He doesn't have the mystical presence of a Pele, but he's only been the best player in the world for awhile now, unless it was Cristiano Ronaldo. He just led Argentina to the World Cup at 35, and not all that long ago he was the star of one of the top sides in the world in Barcelona, and now he's coming to Miami.

OK, so technically he's coming to suburban Fort Lauderdale, where Messi's new team, Inter Miami, plays its games. But you get the idea.

Now, it's hard so say how much of a bump he'll give MLS as a whole. But he'll surely give one to Inter Miami, which just became the Cosmos of the MLS. At the very least, non-soccer America now will be able to locate that team on radar, and by extension its league.

I know. I'm fengin' some shui here (a fully licensed Blob pastime). And while I'm at it, I might as well feng some more.

See, if it's important to note that Messi's coming, it's also important to note why he's coming. It's largely because Barcelona screwed up his paperwork with LaLiga a couple of years ago, which forced Messi to go play for PSG in Paris for a couple of years. Now he finds he can't back to Barcelona like he thought he might, so ...

So: Next stop, MLS.

And if this sounds like America was something of an afterthought, well, you're hearing's pretty good. It's probably a stretch to say he views it as a nice place to wind down his career and make a little bank while he's at it. But it's not much of a stretch.

After all, he wouldn't be the first getting-up-there European star to see MLS as a sort of soccer retirement community. David Beckham, anyone?

"I had an offer from another European team, but I didn't even evaluate it because in Europe my idea was only to go to Barcelona," Messi told Diario Sport the other day. "I'm also at a point where I want to get out of the spotlight a bit ... it was time to go to the American league to experience football in a different way."

Feel free to interpret "a different way" however you wish. Because in the end, does it really matter?

Money talks

 Congratulations to the PGA Tour, which is now in bed with the very scum it's spent the last year getting all high and mighty about. Congratulations, too, for giving a heads-up (Not!) to the players who left millions on the table to follow what they believed were their organization's principles. 

Y'all are special. And I mean that in the snarkiest and most sarcastic way possible.

I don't know what this pal-sy deal with the Saudis is going to look like, but I do know what it looks like today. It looks like the Saudis threw a wad of blood money at the PGA to save their floundering Gimmick Golf Tour, and the PGA decided, well, um ... hmm ... maybe these guys aren't so bad after all.

Maybe that's not exactly how it went down. Maybe PGA pasha Jay Monahan was sincere, if delusional, when he sold this as the best way forward for golf, and that's the only reason the PGA did this. The Saudis and the LIV defectors -- Phil Mickelson chief among them -- sure seemed to think so, having hitched their wagon to a novelty act and now get to walk back into real golf with no questions asked.

The way things were going, they'd have been cashing those chunky paychecks in a void. Turns out 54-hole no-cut "tournaments" in which everyone gets paid beaucoup no matter how poorly they play is not what the golfing public wanted. Why else would the CW be the only TV deal the LIV could scare up?

LIV golf, "Riverdale" and "Nancy Drew." Only on the CW!

In any event, this sure looks like the Saudis used their wealth to cut a deal with the PGA and European tours, and by "cut a deal" I mean "bought a lifeboat." Problem is, they cooked up the LIV Tour to begin with to sportswash their execrable human rights record, which includes chopping a Washington Post journalist into little pieces with the apparent approval of the royal family.

The same royal family, by the way, that controls the sovereign wealth fund with which PGA just decided to do business. As a friend and former of colleague of mine put it on social media, succinctly and accurately: "They sportswashed the PGA. Wow."

And to spring all this on your membership with no warning?

That membership is pissed and should be, because it's the worst kind of betrayal. They let Monahan have it at a players meeting yesterday, calling him a "hypocrite" more than once. It was an accusation Monahan conspicuously didn't even try to refute.

After all, how could he?

America the insane, continued

 We went to a high school graduation party the other day.

It was for the daughter of good friends and there were food and drinks in ice-choked coolers and a house stuffed with people, and a gentle greyhound named Santa. And, in the backyard, a tent with tables and chairs beneath and the graduate herself, who endured many congratulations.

What there was not were gunshots and screaming and young people fleeing, some still in their gowns and mortarboards.

That's what happened in Virginia the other day, and finally our American insanity broke me. I can't tell you why, because in Calibration Nation this happens damn near every day. Someone pulls out a gun and opens fire, and then there is blood and death and anguish and people like me telling you ... well, how insane it all is.

Maybe it was the sheer grotesqueness of it that finally got me. No one is supposed to go to his or her high school graduation and wind up dodging bullets. No one is supposed to do anything but laugh and hug their friends and pose with their proud parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles for endless pictures, and celebrate the beginning of a future that in that moment seems limitless.

Who brings a gun to such an occasion? Who harbors such hate in his heart he goes to a freaking high school graduation and turns it into a war zone? Who shoots seven people and kills two of them -- a father and his graduate son -- on what should be one of the happiest days of their lives?

I don't know who the father and son were, but maybe there was going to be a celebration  back at their house, too. Maybe there would be food and cold drinks and a dog and a tent in the backyard with chairs and tables, and many congratulations.

Now there is only heartache and mourning and two more snuffed lives.

And, meanwhile, in Ohio, there's a bill in the lege that would exempt guns and ammunition from state sales tax, making firearms EVEN MORE AFFORDABLE for Joe and Jill and high school graduation shooters. Can no money down, easy credit terms be far behind?

And again I say it: This country. Is. Insane.

Gambling jones, Part Ongoing

 I don't know where Alex Karras and Paul Hornung are these days -- hoisting a few celestial beers and airing old Lions-Packers beefs, presumably -- but I can pretty much quote them verbatim as they look down from their heavenly realm.

"Coulda told you this would happen," is my top pick.

They might also have added a bemused shake or two of the head, because things were different in their day. That would have been 1963, when then-commish Pete Rozelle suspended Karras and Hornung for betting on NFL games and associating with "known gamblers."

Of course, that was when the NFL didn't talk out of both sides of its mouth when it came to gambling.

No, back then, the league shuddered at the very thought of it, and held it at arm's length as a result. That's because Rozelle and Co. held the sensible notion that nothing warps a straight game faster than letting the gamblers get their mitts on it.

Now?

 Shoot. Associating with known gamblers is just Tuesday for today's NFL.

Not only does the league have a team in Vegas now, but it does business with its main industry. And, surprise, surprise, the scandals have followed.

Not six weeks ago, the league suspended five players for violating the league's "gambling policy" (quotation marks intentional). Now comes the news that the NFL is investigating Indianapolis Colts defensive back Isaiah Rodgers for possible violations of the "policy" -- including betting on Colts games.

This is some potentially bad business, obviously. And the hell of it is, the NFL has bought every bit of it legit.

It made it inevitable when it climbed in bed with the gamblers -- the league partnered with four sportsbooks in 2021 -- and now ads for sportsbooks are as much a fixture of NFL Sundays as Mahomes-to-Kelce. Budweiser, Dodge Ram and Jamie Foxx telling you to BetMGM: That's the NFL on CBS these days, and also the NFL on FOX.

It's also NFL players availing themselves of the very same sportsbooks the league itself promotes. Which makes Roger Goodell ‘n’ them getting all righteous about it a hell of a sticky wicket.

That sound you just heard?

It's Karras and Hornung, sharing a belly laugh.

A few brief thoughts on stupid questions

 Lots of chortling this morning at the expense of ESPN's top NBA reporter, Ramona Shelburne, because she asked a question last night some regarded as stupid -- including, clearly, Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, who cut her off by saying "that's the untrained eye that says something like that."

The question?

To paraphrase, that Nikola Jokic sometimes forces opponents to turn him into either a passer or a scorer. In other words, you have to pick your poison.

Couple of things about that.

One, it's amusing sometimes to see members of the media rip the media, particularly when the members in question fancy themselves outsiders who aren't really members of the media, because they're not "the MAINSTREAM media." And who themselves are guilty of many of the same sins for which they fault the latter.

It's a little like punching yourself in the face and then claiming you weren't aiming at YOUR face.

And two?

Two, the question didn't deserve the withering contempt with which Spoelstra treated it.

That's because what Shelburne was getting at was legitimate, which is that Jokic's physical gifts, basketball IQ and ability to read and react are so otherworldly you do have to pick your poison sometimes. And to her credit, she prefaced her question by conceding it might be simplifying things.

Maybe I'm simplifying things, but it sounded to me like she didn't simplify it enough for Spoelstra 

After the "untrained eye" comment, see, he veered off on a tangent about how special a player Jokic is, two-time MVP and all that, and how much respect the Heat have for him. Which did not at all address the question Shelburne asked, but was more a defense of Jokic that presumed (or seemed to) Shelburne's question was some sort of putdown.

It wasn't. And it's almost impossible to see how anyone could have read it that way.

In any case, here's the exchange. I've watched it several times. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it seems clear to me Spoelstra misunderstood what Shelburne was saying. In which case, it's incumbent on the reporter to be more clear, and it's not unfair to say Shelburne could have been.

But a stupid question?

Nah. Not really.

Street fight

 Watched nearly all of the IndyCar race from the streets of Detroit yesterday, just to see if the course was as ridiculous as some people were saying, and if the race would therefore turn into Red Flag Hell like those same people were predicting.

Here's what I concluded: Some people are pearl clutchers.

Here's what else I concluded: Roger Penske knows what he's doing, surprise, surprise.

That's because IndyCar's return to the streets in Detroit for the first time in 32 years produced a bunch of laps run under yellow, but nothing that necessitated pulling everyone in under a red flag to clean up piles of debris. There was even some dicey racing down there at the end, as Will Power tried to chase down Alex Palou and Scott Dixon and McLaren teammates Felix Rosenqvist and Alexander Rossi almost literally duked it out behind them.

There was some squeezing and bumping and pushing and shoving, and, at one point, Power getting up on two wheels. And as Rossi and Rosenqvist fought each other through one tight corner after another, you wondered how many punches were going to be thrown in in the McLaren garages afterward, and if it would be gloves or bare knuckles.

In other words, it was a hell of a show. And at least part of it was because, yes, the course was ridiculous.

It was too short for a street course and too bumpy and some of the corners were downright claustrophobic, so narrow an NBA big man could have stood in the middle and touched the fence on both sides. And right off, in the very first corner, Callum Illott ran into the back of Kyle Kirkwood, knocking himself out of the race and Kirkwood's rear wing askew, and you immediately thought "Oh, here we go."

But ... no. It looked like a knife fight in a closet at times, but when would race fans ever complain about that?

And so score one for Penske's IndyCar vision, again. And the pearl-clutchers who were predicting an utter farce?

Have a seat on the fainting couch, my dears. The Captain's got this.

Timeout for decency

 They're playing the French Open over in Paris right now, and like it or not it must be said: It's been one ugly show so far on the orange Roland Garros clay. 

Fans booing Novak Djokovic because, well, he is kind of a jerk. Ukrainian players refusing to shake hands with Russian opponents. A Belarusian player all but going into hiding because the media kept badgering her with questions about That War, and she "didn't feel safe."

Now, I won't dispute Aryna Sabalenka's claim that she ducked a presser for her own mental health. Nor will I disparage her for it. None of us know what's going on inside someone else's head, and anyone who sneers that no one had mental health issues back in THEIR day is either a liar or delusional.

I did, however, have to smile a bit at Sabalenka's contention that she didn't feel safe at a previous presser, even if the media was harassing her. As a sportswriter who sat in on untold numbers of pressers across four decades, I can attest to the fact we're really not very scary.

But I'm getting off track here.

("Again?" you're saying)

What I really want to say is a tennis tournament with its share of ugly needed a dose of decency. And so raise a glass to Iga Swiatek, the No. 1 women's player in the world.

On Saturday, see, the 22-year-old Polish star mopped the clay with poor Wang Xinyu to advance to the fourth round, winning in 51 minutes without surrendering a game. It was the second time in a month Swiatek has blitzed an opponent 6-0, 6-0, and so far this year nine of her opponents have lost at least one set by that score.

In tennis parlance, a 6-0 set is called "a bagel." Which means a 6-0, 6-0 win is a double bagel. Which has given rise on social media to the term "Iga's Bakery" to describe the current state of women's tennis.

Bagel ... bakery ... get it?

Swiatek doesn't. Or rather, refuses to.

Because when someone in her post-match presser referenced "Iga's Bakery" yesterday, she immediately pounced on it like a weak return. And then delivered a mini-lecture on sportsmanship a whole lot of folks could learn from these days.

"Look, I don't really want to talk about that," she said. "I really get why people do that because it's fun and tennis is entertainment and everything. But from the players' point of view, I want to be respectful to my opponents.

"You don't see the stuff that is behind the scenes. Sometimes it's not easy to play such matches, and sometimes it's not easy also for the opponents."

Talk about a breath of fresh air for a tournament that needed it.

Also, I think I've found a new favorite tennis player.

The S(issy)EC

 Somewhere out there, Directional Hyphen Tech just drew a huge sigh of relief. The bank is still open.

Which is to say, the Directionals and Whatsamatta U.'s of the college football world will still get their full complement of guarantee football games against the mighty SEC, and that means women's field hockey is safe. Or wrestling, or tennis, or any other (quote) non-revenue (unquote) sport starvin' for a budget.

Getting bashed for cash against the Power 5s, see, is how the Directionals keep those programs afloat, or at the very least helps enormously. It's why my alma mater, Ball State, is playing Kentucky and Georgia back-to-back this fall. They may need a shovel to scoop up the remains, but the athletic department will appreciate the sacrifice.

Appreciated, also, is the SEC's lily-livered-ness. Because that's what will keep those games on the schedule.

The SEC this week thought about expanding the conference schedule to nine games, and then chickened out. They'll stick with eight even though the conference has grown to 16 schools, preserving most traditional rivalries and also the empty calories.

Heaven forbid Nick Saban go without Florida Alphabet or When In Rome (Ga.) Polytechnical. The breathers matter, too, after all.

You can re-christen the SEC the S(issy)EC for that, if you like, and you wouldn't be wrong. But if you look at it from a Ball State's viewpoint, you're grateful for the wimp-out.

Thanks, guys. Now let's get this slaughter started.

Introductory phase

 And now, America, say hello to a guy who looks like he walked out of a team photo from the 1950s, with that anti-funk buzz cut and pale, un-cut physique. He's Jimmy Chitwood with a growth spurt, is who he is. Listen close, and you can almost hear him say, "I'll make it."

He's also the most amazing basketball player you're likely to see, precisely because nothing he does looks especially amazing.

But out there in Denver last night Nikola Jokic passed and screened and rolled to the basket and squared up from the arc when the occasion called for it, and when he was done he, Jamal Murray and the Denver Nuggets were up 1-0 in the NBA Finals. Jokic's contribution was straight basic Nikola: 27 points, 10 rebounds, 14 assists.

Murray, his sidekick, pitched in with 26 points, as the Miami Heat were no more successful in figuring them out than anyone else. In Jokic's case, that's because there's nothing particularly definable to latch onto.

Double him, and he'll find the open man, usually with a pass no one saw was there but him. Double Murray or someone else, and he'll lob in a 1950s not-quite-jumpshot from the three-point line. 

And then, just for variety, he and Murray will work the pick-and-roll in a way that probably makes John Stockton and Karl Malone all nostalgic.

Thing is, if you tuned in last night only because it was the NBA Finals, you were likely seeing all this for the first time, partly because Jokic plays in Denver and Denver is not exactly a major media center. Add to that the good chunk of America that thinks the NBA is white noise because its season goes on and on and on and on, and Jokic might be the most anonymous two-time NBA MVP in history.

All he does is put up 27, 10 and 14 night after night out there in the lee of the Rockies, while the America that pays only nominal attention to the NBA stays glued to the latest LeBron James/Lakers docudrama. The NBA is LeBron and Steph and KD and that goofy Kyrie Irving, to a lot of folks. Oh, yeah, and that Giannis guy with the last name they can't spell.

Jokic?

I can't quantify how less known he is, so I'll just settle for an anecdote.

The other day, see, I'm talking to my sister, who knows a bit about sports but doesn't really follow the NBA. I got to telling her about the NBA Finals and how America was finally going to get to know Nikola Jokic, and she responded the way I suspect more than a few others might.

"I've never heard of him," she said.

In that case, consider last night your introductory phase, sis.

Same goes for the rest of you.

That new car smell

 Robin Matthews could count herself one of the luckiest and unluckiest people in America Sunday afternoon.

Lucky because she was in a packed grandstand outside turn two at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and along with everyone else did not get hit by a tire that came spinning off Kyle Kirkwood's car and over the fence late in the day.

It was a heart-stopping moment because the wayward tire sailed directly over the grandstand, and had it landed in the grandstand someone likely would have died.

But it didn't.

Instead, it landed in the parking lot behind the grandstand. On Robin Matthews car.

Which is where the "unluckiest" part came in. It was like getting all the numbers right on a lottery ticket except the last one. 

For her part, Matthews thought she was being pranked when friends told her the tire hit her car. I don't know how she reacted when she found out otherwise, but I know how I would have.

"You have GOT to be kidding me," would have been the leader in the clubhouse. Followed closely by "Really?"

But we all love happy endings, and this story has one. 

See, Roger Penske's going to give Matthews a new car.

OK, so not Penske personally, but Penske Entertainment, which runs the Speedway. So Matthews really is lucky, it turns out, because who figures on going to the Indianapolis 500 and coming out of the deal with a new car?

Delayed gratification

 Zach Edey surely heard the siren song, though it wasn't that of the ancients. This song more likely came from men bearing satchels of cash than from the women of Homer's Odyssey, although temptation is the thread that connects both.

Points to Edey for resisting. Points to his brain trust, whoever they are, for being both brainy and trustworthy.

Which is to say: He's coming back to West Lafayette for one last rodeo, and that is absolutely the right decision.

He could have easily turned pro (or, in these days of NIL, more pro) by staying in the upcoming NBA draft, because his resume was as stuffed as it seemed likely to get. He was the consensus National Player of the Year at Purdue last winter, and, at 7-4 and north of 300 pounds, the most dominant figure in the college game. 

He averaged 22.9 points, 12.9 rebounds and two-plus blocks a game. Shot a tick under 61 percent. Scored 30 or more points eight times, with 28 double-doubles. Put up 750 points, 400 rebounds, 70 blocks and 50 assists, the first player in NCAA history ever to compile those kind of numbers.

Here's the thing, though: None of that made him ready for the NBA of the 2020s.

That's because he's a '68 Lincoln Continental in a Porsche hybrid world, a low-post, back-to-the-basket throwback to an age that doesn't exist anymore. You want to see the prototype 2020s center, tune in the first game of the NBA Finals tonight. Nikola Jokic will be there, playing up top and down low, popping the occasional three, distributing the basketball. He's still a center, not a point guard, but occasionally he plays the latter on TV.

That's why when Edey tested the waters, he found them lukewarm. Most draftniks projected him as a second-round pick, and not the No. 1 center.

Or the No. 2 center. Or the No. 3 center.

No, Edey was projected as the No. 4 center in the draft, and the 47th pick. That might not have even guaranteed him a roster spot, believe it or not. The guy picked 47th last year, for instance?

That would be Vince Williams Jr. out of Virginia Commonwealth. He averaged 7.0 minutes in 15 games this season for the Memphis Grizzlies. He also averaged 31.1 minutes in 14 games for the Memphis Hustle of the G-League. 

That's not to say the G-League would have been Zach Edey's main residence had he stayed in the draft. But one more year at Purdue -- a team that now has all five starters returning -- certainly is the better alternative.

The Boilermakers will  be a preseason top ten pick, for starters. They'll be an odds-on favorite in the Big Ten after winning both regular season and conference tournament titles last year. And maybe next year they won't get bounced by Fairleigh Dickinson in Da Tournament.

Maybe, too, Edey will develop some 2020s NBA pivot skills. In any event, it will be fascinating to see if that happens, if in 2023-24 he becomes a slightly different version of himself than the 2022-23 model.

As someone surely has said, delayed gratification is the best gratification. And while I don't who it was, I've got a pretty good guess.

A certain M. Painter, I'm thinking.