Today in unpopular opinions

 The Summer Olympics are coming up next month in Paris, and so now the various Olympic Trials are commanding the headlines -- track and field; swimming in a temporary 50-meter pool in Lucas Oil Stadium, unofficially the ninth wonder of the world; and of course everyone's favorite, women's gymnastics.

("Hey, what about the men?" you're saying now.)

("What about 'em?", I'm answering.)

Anyway, the gymnastics Olympic trials are going now, and they were on the tube where we were eating dinner last night. This prompted me to once again trot out a Most Unpopular Opinion, which elicited the usual surprise from the friends sitting around us.

"I know it's a big deal at the Olympics, but I seriously couldn't care less about the gymnastics," I said.

"Really?" our friends said.

Really. It's true. 

Mind you, this is not because I don't think gymnasts are brave souls who, even though legendary sportswriter Dan Jenkins once dubbed them "Siamese cats" in one of his novels, play through pain that would leave macho men four times their size curled up weeping in a corner somewhere. And what they can do on a floor mat or a set of bars or a four-inch-wide plank of wood is simply astounding.

Which is why Simone Biles is one of the greatest athletes of my lifetime, and don't even try to argue. Ditto Olga Korbut, Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton back in the day.

Still.

Still, I'm just not into it. Just like I'm not much into Olympic figure skating unless Tonya Harding is trying to kneecap the competition, or into Olympic swimming unless Michael Phelps is going for his 250th gold medal or Katie Ledecky is leaving everyone so far in her wake there's no wake left by the time they get there.

The former I'm not into because the Russian judge will give the Russian skater a 10 even if she falls down 12 times.

The latter I'm not into because every four years Olympic swimmers break, like, 25 world records, which makes breaking a world record seem like a big yawn.

No, in the summer give me track and field or boxing or basketball (men's and women's), or even rowing or cycling. And give me downhill skiing or hockey or bobsledding in the winter.

The luge and skeleton, bring it on. Also ski jumping, short-track speedskating and even curling when the Danish women's team is competing.

("Typical guy," you're saying now.)

("Guilty," I'm answering.)

Anyway ... 

Here come the Summer Games. In Paris, which last played host to the Summer Games in 1924, a full century ago. That was the year Harold Abrahams shocked the world by winning the men's 100 meters and Eric Liddell won the 400 -- which is how we wound up with "Chariots of Fire" and a bunch of guys in their underwear running on some English beach, while in the background played that theme song you'll probably be hearing in your head for the rest of the day now.

("Bastard!" you're saying now.)

And what of women's gymnastics, in 1924?

There were no women's gymnastics that year. The sport didn't debut until the 1928 Games in Amsterdam. Since this was 27 years before I was born, I think we can safely say I didn't care about it then, either.

Yeah, I know. I am a terrible person.

A few great (or not) ideas

 Been thinking a bit about that cartoon of a presidential debate the other night -- it was either another sequel to "Grumpy Old Men", or, as a Facebook friend suggested, Floyd the Barber vs. Rowdy Roddy Piper -- and I've decided what it needed were some surprise guest appearances.

Remember when the grumpy old men started arguing about who had the better golf game?

(No, really. They did. You think I can make this s*** up?)

Well. I think it would have added some fun to the proceedings -- or at least made us forget that this is our choice in November -- if Scottie Scheffler had suddenly walked onstage with a broomstick in his hands, looked at the grumpy old men and said "You know what? I can outdrive either one of you with THIS."

How great would that have been?

If nothing else it would have emphatically, and hilariously, ended one of the more ludicrous exchanges ever heard in any presidential debate in memory. And that's acknowledging the debate itself was pretty ludicrous.

Now, personally, I don't think either one of the grumpy old men is capable of swinging a golf club better than Rodney Dangerfield in "Caddyshack". This despite the fact Donald Trump claims to have "won" a string of club championships at clubs he just happens to own, and whose caddies and scorekeepers are therefore compelled to ignore Donny's foot wedges and creative math.

"That's a birdie!" Trump exclaimed, after putting up a snowman on the par-four No. 7.

"Yes, sir," concurred his caddy, erasing the "8" and dutifully changing it to a "3" ...

Anyway.

I think if President Biden is going to spend long stretches trying to remember if he turned off the stove, and I'm-Still-President-I-Don't-Care-What-You-Say Trump is going to spend even longer stretches not answering questions and lying his ass off at a gasp-inducing clip, there should be some way to break up the absurdity. And by that I mean, "Bring on EVEN MORE absurdity."

Like Scheffler with the broomstick.

Like having Homey the Clown come onstage during Trump's more egregious forays into bullstuff-ery, smack him on the head and say, "Homey don't play that."

Like having Nurse Ratched from "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" come out periodically to announce it's medication time. Biden and Trump would then be required to step away from their podiums and take their pills while soothing music plays softly in the background. 

(For extra effect, have Chief come onstage to offer both men a stick of Juicy Fruit.)

Or how about this?

Have Mr. T come out when Trump was blatantly evading the questions from moderators/bumps-on-a-log Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, and bellow, "Answer the question, fool!" And then turn to Tapper and Bash and bellow, "Make him answer the question, fool!"

Stay tuned for more great ideas.

Some non-risky business

 The Los Angeles Lakers made Bronny James the 55th player taken in the NBA draft last night, and then, God bless 'em, they tried really hard to make it sound like he wasn't the 55th player taken in the NBA draft.

Lakers GM Rob Pelinka declared Bronny has the makings of a disruptive on-ball defender and effective 3-point shooter.

Forward Anthony Davis said he's "very good defensively" and a "really good playmaker" who impressed A.D. with his ability to read the defense and make the right pass at the right time.

The Blob's take on that is this: Bronny James is 19 years old, he's listed at 6-1 (although he may be taller), and in his one season at USC, he averaged 4.8 points, 2.8 rebounds and 2.1 assists playing slightly less than half of each game.

Also, his dad (LeBron James) has until 5 p.m. tomorrow to either opt in to the last year of his Lakers contract, or become an unrestricted free agent.

If you think that isn't relevant, I have some prime oceanfront property in Nebraska to sell you.

Of course it's relevant. Of course the Lakers plainly wanted some extra leverage in order to hang onto LeBron, and drafting Bronny was the most obvious way to do that.

So, they took the kid. He's undersized, his sample size is virtually non-existent, and he's likely a G-League send-down if he's not LeBron's kid.

But you know what?

None of that matters.

It doesn't matter, because, except on the rarest of occasions, the 55th pick in the draft will never be an impact piece of the grand plan. It's a squander-proof pick. You could take Driveway Joe with it and your team would be no better or worse for it.

So why not take Bronny? What's the downside?

The answer, of course, is there isn't one. By the time you get to the 55th pick, you're down to the crumbs and un-popped kernels anyway. No matter how Bronny pans out (or doesn't pan out), no one in the Lakers front office is going to be smacking himself in the forehead a year from now and saying "Ah, geez, we coulda taken that big kid from Tierra del Fuego!"

Instead, now Bronny and LeBron (presumably) will get to be the first father-son combo in NBA history ever to play together. Lotta positive vibes there, and God knows the Lakers could use some. Lotta great pub. Lotta distraction, too, but, hell, it's L.A. They're used to it out there.

And if it turns out Bronny can play a little?

Gravy. Pure gravy.

The Confounder

 Remember Zach Edey, the big galoot from Purdue all the smart guys said was a prehistoric creature unfit for the modern NBA?

Remember how the smart guys said he was A) Just big; B) Could only play five feet from the basket; C)  Had no footwork and no skills except being, you know, Just Big: and, D) Was a second-round NBA draft pick at best ... OK, maybe a late first-round pick ... OK ...?

Wait, what?

He went to the Memphis Grizzlies with the NINTH PICK last night?

Didn't the Grizzlies listen to all the smart guys?

Could it be possible he's not A, B, or C, in addition to not being D?

Could be.

In the meantime, Big Z has a new nickname, or at least he has a new one here in the Blobosphere: The Confounder.

As in, he keeps confounding all the smart guys. And you'd best hold onto your wallet if you were planning on betting that The Confounder will wind up being the worst top-ten pick in NBA history.

No doubt some people are already saying that, and bless their hearts. Me, I'm done thinking there's no place in the modern NBA for Tyrannosaurus Zach. I'm thinking the Grizzlies watched him in the combine with a specific role in mind, and that Edey would fit that role quite well.

Did  I mention the combine?

Apparently The Confounder went there and, you know, Confounded. He was faster than everyone thought. He was more mobile than everyone thought. He shot mid-range Js better than everyone thought. He did all those things, in fact, better than UConn big man Donovan Clingan, who went two picks before him and whom Edey thoroughly outplayed head-to-head in the NCAA championship game.

(A brief sidetrip: When did France become a basketball hotbed? Last year Victor Wembanyama goes No. 1 in the draft; last night three of the top six picks, including the top two, were from France. The first American college player taken was Reed Shepherd of Kentucky at No. 3. I'm guessing he plays Ollie in the subtitled French remake of "Hoosiers", in which he will be called "Olivier" and hits a pair of crucial free throws.)

 But back to Edey.

Who is, yes, better than people think, and likely to keep getting better. That's what happened at Purdue, where Matt Painter plucked him off a pair of hockey skates (not really, but he didn't start playing basketball until he was a sophomore in high school) even though Edey was the No. 436 prospect and No. 75 center in the 2020 recruiting class according to 247 Sports. 

Four years later, he entered the NBA draft as a two-time NCAA Player of the Year, the centerpiece of the first Purdue team to reach the national title game in 55 years, and the best player in Purdue history whose name isn't Rick Mount.

(Another brief sidetrip: When the Grizzlies took Edey with the ninth pick, he became the second Purdue player in three years to go in the first ten picks; Jaden Ivey went No. 5 in 2022. But, nah, Matt Painter's system doesn't turn out pros.)

Look. No one here is saying Edey's going to be a perennial All-Star in the NBA. But his work ethic and developmental history do suggest he can be an effective weapon at the next level. He'll have the endlessly creative Ja Morant as his point guard and a gifted power forward alongside in Jaren Jackson Jr., and I'm guessing the Grizzlies coaching staff is already drawing up schemes to maximize that dynamic.

So my money's on The Confounder. Not like he hasn't been here before, after all.

Exit, stage wrong

 This happened almost 30 years ago now, and I have told the story before. But this morning seems the perfect time to tell it again.

The year was 1996 and Rick Pitino had just won the NCAA title with a powerhouse Kentucky squad, and now he was traveling around the country hawking his latest book. One night he came to a bookstore here in the Fort, and I hauled my intrepid little reporter's hiney out there to chat with him.

We talked for a bit about his book and UK's relentless March march, and then, because I'd been hearing some pretty loud rumors that Pitino was about to bolt Lexington for the Boston Celtics, I asked him if there was any truth to it.

Pitino looked me square in the eye and lied through his teeth. Which is quite the anatomical trick if you think about it.

"Why would I want to leave Kentucky?" he asked, and then went on and on about how it was the greatest basketball environment in the world in the greatest basketball place in the world.

The very next day the news broke that Pitino was taking the Celtics job.

I thought about that when I saw the clip from Texas A&M baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle's postgame presser after the Aggies lost the College World Series to No. 1 Tennessee.

It seems a reporter chose that moment to ask him if he was going to stick around Aggieland, admittedly not the optimum time and place for such a question. And Schlossnagle let him know about it.

"I think it's pretty selfish of you to ask my that question, to be honest with you," he replied. "But I left my family to be the coach at Texas A&M. I took the job at Texas A&M to never take another job again. And that hasn't changed in my mind."

A day later, Texas announced Jim Schlossnagle as its new head baseball coach.

Now, if you want to cut the guy some slack, you could say that sometime later that evening -- maybe, I don't know, at 3 a.m. or something -- it did change in his mind. Maybe he thought, "You know, College Station is OK, but the Tex-Mex is better in Austin. Maybe I'll give the boys down there a call." 

But to believe that, you'd also have to believe he hadn't already been talking to Texas. And that's absurd.

Of course he had been. Of course the deal was likely already done. So, basically, like Pitino all those years ago, he looked everyone in the eye and lied through his teeth.

And, sure, I know what you're gonna say next: "What else did you expect him to do?" And you're right. He was caught between the proverbial rock and the hard place.

But he could have chosen the hard place. Instead he chose the rock.

He could have followed up his observation that the question was selfish by saying "...and I'm not answering it." That would have ramped up the speculation, but at least it wouldn't have been so blatantly, shamefully dishonest. At least it would have kept the Bullstuff Meter below the red line.

Instead, Schlossnagle -- like Pitino all those years ago -- chose to gild the bullstuff lily. Piled it higher than an elephant's eye, you might say.

Which seems like a lot of extra work to no good purpose. One man's opinion.

Placeholders

 JJ Redick dropped an F-bomb in his introductory presser as the next (former) head "coach" of the Los Angeles Lakers the other day, and it was the only thing that came out of that media scrum that was remotely noteworthy.

This is not to say JJ won't be a competent "coach" for the Lake Show. He might be, even if he's never coached a lick. He's young and he's passionate and he knows the league because he played in it for 15 years, and, hey, did you hear he has a podcast?

First active player to have one when he started it up. So he's got that going for him.

Aside from that?

Well, he and LeBron James are friendly, and almost the same age. Which counts for something, I guess -- or maybe everything, because the reason the Bob used quotation marks around "coach" is because the Lakers are LeBron's team and whoever coaches them learns  very quickly how the hierarchy works there.

Luke Walton could tell you that.

He was the "coach" when LeBron came aboard in 2018, and by the end of that season he was gone. Then it was Frank Vogel's turn, and the Lakers won the 2020 Covid Bubble title on his watch, but after three years he took his pink slip and ran.

Enter Darvin Ham, who lasted all of two seasons before the Lakers fired him, too, at the conclusion of the season just past.

Now JJ Redick climbs in the barrel, the poor sap. Although if the Lakers win maybe he sticks around awhile, because LeBron's 38 and he's already said the team needed to hire someone to coach the young guys and not him, because he wasn't going to be around much longer.

So maybe it works this time. I don't know. We'll see.

We'll see if JJ's just another placeholder for the L.A. LeBrons, and, yes, I know exactly how cynical and perhaps unfair that sounds. But the track record is the track record, and the track record in LeBron's case says very loudly that he's a coach killer. That may or may not be entirely true -- these things almost never are -- but the verdict is in and it's not going to change anytime soon.

In any case, the clock is started on JJ Redick. May he go with God, or at least the god of basketball, and not drop anymore unnecessary F-bombs in meet-and-greets with the media.

Something tells me he'll have plenty of opportunities to drop more necessary ones. Just sayin'.

And the Cup goes to ...

Ah, well. So much for storylines.

So much for the Edmonton Oilers becoming the first Canadian team in three decades to bring the Stanley Cup back to its ancestral home, and so much for them becoming only the second team in history to come back from a three-games-to-none deficit in the Stanley Cup Final to win the Cup.

The Florida Panthers wrecked both scenarios in Game 7, winning 2-1 back in south Florida after somehow finding the defensive mojo they lost somewhere between games 3 and 4. Goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky stood on his head, the D threw a lasso around Connor McDavid and Co., and the Panthers won the Cup for the first time in their relatively brief history.

Hooray for them. Hooray for south Florida. And hooray for the '42 Toronto Maple Leafs, who remain the only team in NHL history to go down 3-0 in the Final and come back to win Stanley.

May they all be popping champagne cork to celebrate, somewhere in this world or the next.

As for the Panthers, they dodged the infamy of being the second team in history to lose the Cup after leading the Final 3-0, so you figure there must have been a sigh of relief when the clock hit zeroes last night. OK, so there were probably multiple sighs of relief.

And the Oilers? 

Well, McDavid won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP, a rarity for a player from the losing team. I'm sure his name will look snazzy on it and all, but you know he'd have rather had his name on the trophy the Panthers were carting around the ice.

Nonetheless, the Oilers get the lion's share of the credit for rescuing the Final from the pale clutches of "meh", and turning it into one of the more memorable Finals in recent history. And Game 7 was as Game 7-ish as it gets.

So hooray for hockey, too. Once more, it proved the truth of one of the most immutable laws in sports: It does the playoffs better than anyone.

Eyes on 'em

 Late Sunday afternoon in the Blob's favorite hang, and what's on the two TVs at either end of the bar?

Women's basketball.

The WNBA, to be more specific.

The Indiana Fever vs. the Chicago Sky, to be even more specific.

The game's on both TVs and people are watching, really watching, and, listen, boys and girls, the Caitlin Clark Effect is real and it's a hell of a thing to experience in real time. That's because I'm trying to think of a time before now when a WNBA game was on the tube on a Sunday in June in a public place, and I can't because it either wasn't or it was just background noise.

Not anymore.

Now we're watching Clark splash threes and drop dimes and get dinged for turnovers that aren't really hers, because her teammates aren't used to getting passes from the angles Clark delivers them. Or the passes arrive and they blow the layup, and with it the assist.

On this day, Clark will finish with a franchise-record 13 assists. The Blob counts at least five more she would have had if the shots she set up not been missed.

On the other end, meanwhile, Angel Reese --  Magic Johnson to Clark's Larry Bird in the  Budding Rivalry narrative being pushed so hard by the media -- is absolutely abusing poor Nalyssa Smith in the paint. She'll finish with 25 points and 16 boards, and we'll be left wondering (OK, some of us will be left wondering) why Fever coach Christie Sides never switched someone else onto her.

We'll also wonder why she waited so long to call the timeout as the Sky whittled the Fever's double-digit lead to nothing, and what adjustments if any she made coming out of the timeout, and why she didn't scheme Clark open for a shot a single time in the last two minutes.

The conclusion (OK, for some of us) was that Christie Sides is not very good at her job.

A year ago, of course, we never would have come to that conclusion. Because very few of us would have noticed.

Now we are noticing, and people in public places are watching on Sunday afternoons in June, and the women are getting eyes on 'em. And even when that's a negative it's a positive. 

People are arguing about dirty fouls and lousy calls and dumb coaching, same as they argue about those things when it's the Celtics vs. the Mavs in the NBA Finals. Or they're complaining about all the Mean Girls in the league, same as everyone outside Detroit used to complain about the Bad Boys.

Anyway, on this Sunday afternoon, the Sky beat the Fever 88-87. 

Reese put up her eighth straight double-double, and Clark finished with those 13 assists, plus 17 points, six rebounds, five threes and four steals. And we can't wait for the next rematch.

And how great is that? 

A culture thing

I don't know what Purdue's men's basketball team will look like next season with Zach Edey gone -- I suspect the Boilermakers will be good again, if different -- but I do know one thing. And it's not because I'm a seer or a genius or anything like it.

("Gee, there's a revelation," you're saying now.)

I think the vibe will be the same. Different look or not.

I think this because Matt Painter is still Purdue's coach, and Painter does Build-A-Culture better than almost anyone else in college buckets. And he does it in an era when building a culture seems endearingly old-timey, like eight-tracks and Betamax and telephones with 12-foot-long cords.

You watch Purdue these days, and it's like going to your grandmother's house. Everything in it is 50 years old, but somehow it feels comforting and familiar and right because of that.

And, no, this is not because Painter's teams play the game the way they played it in 1960. It's because ... 

Well. Let's take what happened last week, for instance.

Last week Painter's top recruit, four-star stud Kanon Catchings, asked to be released from his letter of intent. Then, according to Painter, he "went back the next day and said everything was good."

Painter granted him his release anyway. 

He granted the release, he told Nathan Baird of the Indianapolis Star the other day, because Painter recognized Catchings' priorities were different from Purdue's. Regarded by some an NBA player sooner rather than later, Catchings began his high school career at Brownsburg, then transferred before his senior year to Overtime Elite, a basketball mill for high-end recruits in Georgia. He's now headed for BYU -- where his Overtime Elite coach was just hired as an assistant coach -- and his mother, Tauja, told the Star it was because Kanon is "looking for a program that can support his timeline" to the NBA.

Painter's response was, essentially, go with God, son. Wish you all the best.

"It was like, this is probably better that we can kind of part ways if you're questioning things before things start," Painter told Baird.

You could almost hear the shrug in that. And read between the lines that Catchings might have been concerned with how much playing time he was going to get on a still-loaded Purdue squad, and wanted some assurances regarding that.

Perhaps that's unfair to the young man. But if so, Painter's response was surely that he couldn't guarantee minutes to anyone, that minutes were earned in West Lafayette.

Because, again, culture -- funny little anachronism that it is in the time of NILs and unrestricted transfers and more players than ever looking to showcase their talents for the NBA.

There's nothing wrong with any of that, understand. But it's just not the way Painter does things, and likely never will.

And so, good for Catchings, and for his pursuit. But good for Matt Painter, too.

Game 7: Two perspectives

 Sooo, alrighty, then.

Game 7. Stanley Cup Final. It's happenin', folks.

It's happenin' because, for heaven's sake, the Edmonton Oilers won again last night, tying the series at 3-3 and extending the frustration of the Florida Panthers and their fans, who've been waiting patiently to hoist Stanley except DAMMIT WHY DON'T THOSE ANNOYING LITTLE S**** DIE?? 

"'Cause we didn't feel like it," said the annoying little s****, who won 5-1 last night in front of a howling mob in Edmonton. That makes them the first team since the 1945 Detroit Red Wings to force a Game 7 after going down 3-0 in the Stanley Cup Final. 

Only the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs have ever won the Cup after trailing 3-0 in the Final. The Oilers will get their crack at doing that Monday night in south Florida. 

Where they will likely be playing in front of a crowd that's in a far different mood than the crowd last night. Because it's all about perspective at this point.

See, in Alberta last night, everyone's reaction was likely this: "Woo-hoo! We've got a Game 7!"

In south Florida, meanwhile, it was likely this: "Omigod! We've got a Game 7!"

Spoken in the same tone of voice in which they might have said, "Omigod! It's Godzilla!"

At any rate, yes, we've got a Game 7. What fun.

Well. For some people, anyway.

Summer

Summer's cry came to me Thursday across a summer field on the day of the summer solstice, and if it wasn't a herald of trumpets it was as ceremonial a flourish. It came from a baseball diamond a hundred or so yards away, tiny figures in white T-shirts swinging bats and running bases and doing gloriously imperfect baseball things.

This is how it sounded:

Hey, battah ...

Hey, battah ...

Hey, battah-battah-battah-battah ...

Summer's cry, right there. Summer's voice, high and keening, like the yip-yip of the old Rebel yell without its menace and its grim promise of blood and death.

I couldn't resist this. No one who was an American boy with memories of American boy summers could.

So of course I wandered over to the rough diamond with its high chain-link backstop, and there it was again: Bunch of kids playing outside on a steamy morning that whispered we ain't seen nothin' yet, just wait 'til this afternoon.

Wildcat baseball, baby. Took me right back.

Took me right back, lord, 60 years now, when I was knee-high to a fruit fly and a sort of reverse five-tool player: I couldn't hit, couldn't hit with power, couldn't run the bases and couldn't field. It's why I was generally deployed in deepest left field, because hardly anyone in Wildcat could pull the ball and thus my dogged search for four-leaf clovers went largely undisturbed.

And now here I am tailgating 70, and you know what?

Not a damn thing has changed.

Those iconic shirts with the blue Wildcat on the front are exactly the same. The red-and-blue caps are exactly the same except the logo on the crown is bigger these days. The chatter is the same, the thick heat is the same, the kid on the pitcher's mound is the same.

Watch now as he winds up, uncoils, flings the baseball toward home.

Watch as it sails over the batter's head by a good foot-and-a-half and slaps the chain-link.

Yessir. Same pitcher, same pitch, same merry cha-ching against the backstop.

And how wonderful is that?

How wonderful is it that, on this summer solstice morning, time can so completely stop and turn back on itself? 

I move a little closer, into a welcome piece of shade, and here are the parent and grandparents, sitting in their folding chairs same as ever. 

"That's my grandson out there," one says, pointing to the kid at the plate.

We watch as a pitch sails high, and another sails high, and a third comes down just enough to get a strike call from the Wildcat coach standing out there behind the pitcher.

"Yes, the strike zone is very generous," the batter's granddad observes with a grin.

I laugh. Yep, I remember. I remember standing at the plate and swinging at pitches a mile over my head. I remember bailing out of the batter's box if a pitch came within a nautical mile of me. I remember that proud day when I kept the bat on my shoulder and drew a walk.

Out on the mound, the pitcher winds up again, his arm comes forward, the baseball flies toward the plate.

And then the most amazing thing happens.

The grandson swings.

Bat strikes ball with a resounding crack.

It's a sizzling ground ball that smokes between second and third for a base hit.

Everyone cheers and claps, and the next batter trudges to the plate, and I turn to go. As I do, I see one of the players sitting in a lawn chair next to his mom and his granddad, and I smile and point at his shirt.

"I used to have a shirt exactly like that when I was your age," I tell him.

Summer.

A Cup in limbo

 Forget the Florida Panthers and their self-imposed jet lag, for a moment. Let's talk about the guys in the white gloves instead.

Let's talk about the Guardians of Lord Stanley (this is not an official title, but it should be), who've had to lug the most iconic trophy in sports twice across the continent in the last five days. And they have the Edmonton Oilers, and mostly Connor McDavid, to either thank or curse for that.

 This is because the Oilers lost the first three games of the Stanley Cup Final to the Florida Panthers, and then they got stubborn as a 3-year-old about things. Refused to lose Game 4, instead blowing out the P's 8-1 as McDavid dropped a goal and three assists. Then, though threatened to be sent to their room without supper if they didn't stop acting out, they acted out again, beating the Panthers 5-3 in Game 5 to, as McDavid put it, "drag 'em back to Alberta."

McDavid had another four-point game in that one, by the way. The only other player in history to have multiple four-point games in a Stanley Cup Final is named Wayne Gretzky. Perhaps you've heard of him.

Anyway, it compelled the Panthers to board another plane for the 2,541-mile flight back to Edmonton, and I'm guessing the P's were JUST THRILLED ABOUT IT. Even more thrilled, I bet, were the guys in the white gloves, who had Stanley ready Saturday night in case the Panthers wrapped it up, then had to put the Cup on a plane to Florida in case the Panthers wrapped it up there, and then had to put the Cup on a plane again to fly it back to Edmonton when the P's couldn't close the deal.

(And, yes, before you say anything, I know this is probably not exactly how it works. But bear with me. I'm trying to capture the spirit of the thing, as the immortal scribe Dicky Dunn said in "Slapshot.")

Anyway ...

Anyway, because I'm weird that way, I'm now trying to imagine what Stanley would be saying at this point if he suddenly became sentient and self-aware. I figure it goes something like this:

Stanley: "Oh, come on! ANOTHER plane ride? I hate flying! It's cramped as hell in that overhead bin!"

Guys In White Gloves: "Ah, quit yer bitchin'. WE'RE the ones who have to lug you around all over creation, remember. Edmonton, Miami; Miami, Edmonton. Jesus, Florida, just close the deal, already.

"Oh, and by the way? You're not in some overhead bin, and you know it. The lady in 12C took up all the space with her two steamer trunks."

Stanley: "Yeah, but ..."

Guys: "But nothin'. You should consider yourself lucky we didn't check your ass when we boarded. The luggage handlers coulda been playing blanket toss with you right now. So consider yourself lucky we actually bought you a seat here in coach."

Stanley: "Yeah, but it's a middle seat. Middle seats suck. Especially when I gotta sit between you two. You might wanna lay off the Tim Horton's Timbits for awhile, know what I mean?"

Guys: "Oh, shut up. Look, we're about to land in Edmonton. With any luck the Panthers get off their heinies and win tomorrow, and we won't have to haul you clear across the continent again."

Stanley: "Fine with me, tubbo.

"Hey. You gonna eat those peanuts?"

Willie

 The perfect baseball player breathed his last on a scorching summer's day, and now, one last time, he turns his back on us. Runs and runs, across green grass and years and all the withering indignities of years. Runs and runs, past the outfield wall and Vic Wertz's screamer and into forever, until at last all we can see of him is a number.

That number is 24.

It is huge on his back and huge in our memory, a snapshot of Willie Mays doing his Willie Mays thing.

The snapshot is 70 years old now, and every baseball fan in America has seen it. Mays is running, his back to us. His glove is raised. The baseball, Vic Wertz's screaming line drive, is a white dot above it.

In another nanosecond, his glove is going to swallow the ball, and then, in one motion, he'll turn and fire it back toward the infield, cap flying off his head the way it always did. The fans sitting above the outfield wall and to its left, not yet reacting in the photo, will gasp or howl or grab their heads in disbelief.

Willie Mays, who passed Tuesday in the fullness of 93 years, made people do that a lot. He was the Say Hey Kid who played stickball with the neighborhood kids in the streets of New York, and he was, yes, the perfect baseball player, as Johnny Bench once called him.

He broke in with the New York Giants in 1951, and no one had ever seen the like of him. Up from the Birmingham Barons in the Negro Leagues, like so many of the pioneering black players of his time, he could hit and hit with power and steal bases and steal base hits with a nonchalant dip of his glove.

The basket catch was his signature, along with the ease with which he mastered every facet of the game. It was also, one suspects, the bane of every Little League coach's existence, who no doubt suddenly had an epidemic of dropped basket catches among their young charges.

We can argue forever whether or not Willie Mays was the greatest baseball player of all time, but if he's not in your top three -- hell, if he's not in your top two -- you deserve whatever pushback you get. He was that good, and that different from anyone who had come before him.

At the plate, he had a lifetime average of .302 and clubbed 660 home runs; six times he hit 40 or more homers, and five times he led the NL in slugging. 

On the basepaths, he stole 338 bases alltime, and led the league four years in a row at one point.

And in the field?

All he did was win 12 Gold Gloves, more than any centerfielder in history.

He was a 24-time All-Star, including 20 years in a row. Became the first player in 27 years to steal 40 bases when he did it in 1956. Became, in 1965, the first player in history to hit 50 homers and win a Gold Glove in the same season.

You can find all of the above and more in Tim Kurkjian's piece on the ESPN website, which captures Mays' legacy better than perhaps anything else written about him this day. He opens it with an anecdote about Frank Robinson, who was asked once if Mays was the best player he'd ever seen.

Robinson rolled his eyes at the sheer absurdity of the question.

"Of course he was," he replied. "He's as good as you want him to be. You can't exaggerate how great he was."

And how much he saw, in his time. On top of everything else, Mays' era spanned an entire epoch in the game: He started at 17 in the Negro Leagues; came to the Giants at 20 when there were only nine other black players in the majors; saw baseball go from a largely provincial enterprise to a continent-spanning monolith with the expansion to L.A. and San Francisco; and retired when it was on the cusp of free agency.

By the time he died -- within weeks of his death, actually -- Major League Baseball finally righted an historic wrong and announced the inclusion of Negro Leagues player statistics in the MLB record book. And tomorrow, two days after he died, the Giants and Cardinals will play a game in 114-year-old Rickwood Field in Birmingham, an event designed to honor Mays specifically and the Negro Leagues in general.

The hope was that Mays would attend the game in person. He didn't quite make it.

Count it one of the rare times he couldn't do what he set out to do.

"With Willie, it was like Tiger Woods coming to your town, you just always expected him to win," Giants broadcaster Lon Simmons said in 2008, a quote Kurkjian resurrected in his Mays tribute. "The fans expected a miracle from Willie every day.

"And he just gave them a miracle every other day."

Good enough.

All about the C's

 The Boston Celtics are your NBA champions for a record 18th time, and surely now oceans will boil, rivers will run backward and deserts will bloom.

This is not because everyone expected the C's to lose. Most people didn't.

It's because "most people" includes me, who a week or so ago said the Celtics would beat  the Kyrie Irving/Luka Doncic Mavericks in five. And then they went and beat Kyrie and Luka in five.

Now, I've been right about stuff before. Once in 1983, maybe. Or 1965 or 1997 or 2004, one of those years.

But I'm hardly ever exactly right.

This time I was, so all you haters can take a flying leap off a tall building. You can do that even as I acknowledge being exactly right this time wasn't that hard, and it was the Celtics who were responsible.

They were, after all, the best team in the league almost all season, winning 64 games and finishing first in the Eastern Conference by a staggering 14 games. The Mavs, meanwhile, were only the fifth best team in the West, finishing seven games astern of the first-place Oklahoma City Thunder.

But Kyrie and Luka put on a show in the playoffs, and the Mavs knocked out Oke City and Minnesota to reach the NBA Finals, and there was a smidge of received wisdom that because the West was so much stronger than the East this season, Kyrie and Luka would continue ballroom dancing right through the C's.

Except.

Except, the received wisdom either failed to notice, or chose to ignore, that the Celtics played the most vicious lockdown defense in the league. And that they had their own pair of ballroom dancers, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.

Who wound up being the dynamic duo of the series, while the Boston D mainly took Kyrie out of the equation and left Luka to win it for the Mavs by himself.

Kyrie had his moments -- notably in the Game 4 blowout win, when he scored 21 points, and in the Game 3 loss, when he scored 35 on 13-of-28 shooting, including 4 of 6 from the 3-point arc. But in the other three games?

Twelve, 16 and 15 points. Eighteen-of-53 shooting, a shade under 34 percent. And except for Game 3, he was 4 of 23 from the arc in the series.

That's a tick under 17.4 percent, if you're keeping score at home.

No way that was going to get it done, even with Luka averaging 29 points per in the Finals. Five beats two, or one, every time, after all. And the Celtics had the five.

So the best team in the NBA this season won it all. Surprise, surprise.

Hey, look, it's the Brickyawn 400

 Saw an Indianapolis Motor Speedway ad the other day trumpeting the Brickyard 400, which comes back in July after a few years hiatus because (at least partly) it will be the 30th anniversary of the first Brickyard 400.

"History Returns!" it trumpets.

The Blob's immediate response is to ask who invited History back, and why, and is it too late to say we've changed our minds?

This might sound way snarky considering the Brickyard used to be one of NASCAR's premier events, but I spent too many dryer-vent summer afternoons watching stock cars go around and around IMS like beads on a string to summon up many warm-and-fuzzies. Mostly my memories of the Brickyard boil down to this:

1. Sweating.

2. Watching Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Dale Jarrett et al sweat.

3. Listening to Bill Elliott bitch about the heat while he sweated.

4. Watching the fans go from medium rare to well done under that mother of a late July/early August sun,  watching the world's loudest Tournament of Roses parade go tearing around the Speedway for three hours or so.

One year the Governor's Trophy won, and everyone who hadn't passed out sent up a mighty cheer.

And, yes, OK, so my sarcasm meter is cranked up to high here. My apologies. But I covered the first 20 Brickyards, and I'm here to tell you it was more often than not lousy racing in the steamiest part of the Hoosier summer, and therefore contained little bang for the buck for both the paying customers and the scruffy media crowd that covered it.

Attendance began falling off once the novelty wore off, and fans discovered the Speedway, with its long, long straightaways, narrow corners and negligible banking, did not make for a great NASCAR show. In fact, many more times than not, the Brickyard 400 was the Brickyawn 400. And then came the Tiregate year, when Goodyear sent a tire that wore out with embarrassing speed, and the Brickyawn was not only a crashing bore but a crashing bore interrupted by mandatory yellows for fresh rubber every ten laps or so.

Not long thereafter the stock car boys were doing their deal before vast swatches of empty seats, with entire grandstands completely closed off. On the track below the rumble and blare of the cars suddenly sounded oddly strengthless, like kids making loud noises to scare off the ghosts in an abandoned house.

Which was certainly not the way it all started.

In '94, see, 250,000-plus showed up for the first Brickyard, and no one had seen anything like it. Stock cars at Indy! Dale Earnhardt and Rusty Wallace and the Labontes and that kid Gordon! Look at 'em go! Listen to 'em snarl!

Whoever thought we'd see such a thing?

Even the racing gods seemed to approve that first year, serving up temperate 70-degree weather for race day and -- with no little irony, considering what happened in subsequent years -- actual drama to it. Down at the end it was  Ernie Irvan, Gordon and Rusty Wallace battling nose-to-tail, until Irvan had a tire go down and the kid from eight miles down the road in Pittsboro took the checkers.

The storyline, therefore, was as perfect as perfect gets. And there was even actual racing, so it was all good.

Maybe the reboot will bring some of that back. I hope so.

Not holding my breath, though.

Enough, already

 Aaaand here we go again.

Caitlin Clark is getting mugged out there because she's white and the black players who are mugging her are racist.

Caitlin Clark is getting mugged out there because she's getting ALL THIS ATTENTION and everyone else in the WNBA is jealous (and racist!)

Caitlin Clark is getting mugged out there beca-

Wait. 

Stop.

Enough, already. 

I've watched several times the video of Angel Reese knocking Clark to the floor Sunday in the Indiana Fever's win over the Chicago Sky, and, sorry, I don't see any of the above. I see a hard foul I'm not convinced should have been a flagrant-1. I see Reese going for the block, getting all ball, but catching Clark in the head on the follow-through. 

Hard contact, but incidental from all visual evidence. And not a mugging by any stretch of the imagination.

No, what I see is a pro hoops foul that would not have been a miscarriage of justice had the official whistled it as a common foul. The head contact is the only element I see that turned it into a flagrant-1.

And, sure, some people will say it was only a flagrant-1 because it was Angel Reese, and Angel Reese has said some things about Caitlin Clark that certain people have taken objection to, because how dare she not agree that Caitlin is the best thing to hit basketball since Naismith nailed up the peach baskets?

And other people will say it was more proof those mean WNBA girls are targeting poor Caitlin because she's more famous than they are, and why doesn't the league protect poor Caitlin?

And the worst people of all will say (because this is the world we live in now) that it's an innocent white girl getting picked on by black thugs because she's a white girl in a largely black league, and why doesn't anyone have the guts to admit it?

What I say about all that, again, is this: Enough, already. Enough.

Time for everyone to chill.

Time to take our cues from Caitlin herself -- who seems to be the only level head in the building right now, and who, when she gets knocked down, simply gets up and plays on.

So play on, already. And that goes for everyone.

Oh, Rory

Maybe it's just not supposed to happen for him. That's what the mystics would say.

Not being conversant with fate or destiny or perhaps second sight, all I could do yesterday, watching Rory McIlroy give away another major, was gasp when those two teensy putts slithered past the jar on 16 and 18. The first erased what was left of a two-stroke lead; the second handed the U.S. Open to a wonderfully giddy Bryson DeChambeau.

DeChambeau made the shots Rory couldn't down the stretch, including that remarkable save for par on 18 that sent him howling to the heavens. The guy was in jail, absolute jail, with his ball resting under a tree against a root in Pinehurst No. 2's hinterlands; then he was in jail again when his shot from there skittered across the fairway and landed in a bunker 55 yards from the cup.

No worries. DeChambeau just pulled out a wedge, took a measured swipe at the ball, and it fetched up four feet or so from the pin. It was all cake from there.

And Rory?

He fled the premises, and the questions from the media, as soon as DeChambeau's putt dropped, a chickenstuff exit for which we should be willing to forgive him. It has, after all, now been a decade since he won his fourth and last major, and again Sunday he had a fifth in hand until he didn't.

Until, after dueling DeChambeau all day in the North Carolina sun, he missed two putts inside three feet for the first time since, I don't know, disco was in. And again I was reminded of something a friend said once when golf bit him in the ass: "It's an evil game."

True then. True now.

Your moment of karma

 Things weirdly symbiotic are No. 1 with a bullet this week, or so it seems. A couple of examples come to mind, the latter perhaps less symbiosis than something else.

First off, it's weirdly symbiotic how much the storylines of  the NBA Finals and the Stanley Cup Final have exactly mirrored one another, and never more so than this weekend.

In the NBA, the Boston Celtics won the first three games and shoved the Dallas Mavericks to the precipice, only to the Mavs crush the C's by 38 points in Game 4 -- yes, you read that right -- to force the series back to Boston.

In the NHL, meanwhile, the Florida Panthers won the first three games and shoved the Edmonton Oilers to the precipice, only to have the Oilers crush the Panthers 8-1 in Game 4 -- yes, you read that right -- to force the series back to Florida.

Weird, right?

But not as significant as a couple of other things that happened this week.

In Newtown, Conn., the 2024 graduating class from Newtown High School turned their tassels, on a day far more freighted than usual. That class, see, was missing 20 members. They were all gunned down a dozen years ago by a madman who burst into Sandy Hook Elementary and killed 28 people in a matter of minutes -- 20 of them children between the ages of 6 and 7 who would have been turning their tassels with their classmates if this country were a less mad place itself.

At the graduation ceremony, graduates wore green-and-white ribbons in their memory. And everyone listened as the names of the lost 20 were read out.

Meanwhile ...

Meanwhile, in Texas, another madman got his.

Alex Jones, the ranting cuckoo who was the voice of the extremist right-wing media vehicle Infowars, was ordered by a judge to liquidate all his personal assets in order to pay the parents of the Sandy Hook victims $1 billion in damages. They were awarded those damages after Jones tormented them for years, claiming they were all "crisis actors" and their children weren't dead at all.

Imagine losing your child in the worst possible way, and then have to listen to some vile creature like Alex Jones call you a liar.

Now imagine all those names being read out at the Newtown graduation ceremony, in the same week the man who told America all those names were just cosplay was punished for doing so. 

No, symbiosis probably isn't the right word for that.

But karma sure as hell is.

Father's Day: A memory

 Went out to an area winery last night -- beautiful place, with an open field and woods at the back and a pond and live music -- and a boy walked past our table at one point.

Took me right back to the neat brick home on the southeast side where I grew up. 

The kid was wearing a ball cap with shades propped on the bill, see. And he was carrying not one but two baseball mitts.

The significance of the latter was not lost on me.

It suggested, see, that at some point on this soft June evening he and his dad were going to walk out to that open field and have a catch, and that's where it took me back to 3029 Castle Drive. Because every so often in the summer my dad and I would go out in the backyard, and he'd lob a baseball at me, and I would swing and miss.

"Swing level," he'd say. "Don't try to kill it."

Then he'd lob the ball to me again, and I'd swing level. And I'd miss again.

I've told this story before. It was six years ago, when Dad passed. It served to illustrate the fact that our relationship was different from some fathers and sons, partly because Dad was never much of a sports fan, and partly because his son had the athletic ability of a kumquat. I was never gonna be that kid who hit home runs or jump shots or the tight end up the seam with a laser pass, and he was never gonna be the proud dad sitting in the stands cheering me on.

That was OK, though. We bonded over other things -- nerding out on the Civil War; finding value and fascination in the past and its various relics -- and I like to think he got to be a proud dad anyway when (weirdly or not) I grew up to be a sportswriter and he got to see my name in the paper every day.

"I don't know how you do what you do," my dad, a master electrician and even more masterful woodworker, used to say. Or words to that effect.

"Well, I don't know how you do what you do," replied his son, who would have either electrocuted himself or sacrificed a finger to the Clumsy Gods if he'd tried to fix a broken circuit or whittle a piece of wood into something exquisite.

And then we'd laugh.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. Think about you often; miss you always.

Exit strategy

 Slowly, now, the phenom slips away from us. Instead of blazing across the firmament, he hobbles. Instead of high noon, you see sunset in every pained step.

Once upon a time Tiger Woods was the greatest golfer of his generation, maybe of any generation, and he carried his sport to an extent perhaps no athlete ever has. When Tiger played, America watched golf. When he for whatever reason didn't or couldn't, America watched something else. It was that simple a thing.

But now?

Now he's 48, his body and his game ruined by infirmities both self-inflicted and not so, and it's shocking sometimes to watch him. He has become an old man, it seems, between one swing of the club and the next. 

This week he shot 4-over 74 and 3-over 73 at Pinehurst in the U.S. Open, and missed the cut just like he missed the cut at the PGA last month. The month before that, he finished 60th in the Masters, shooting 16-over after an ugly 82-77 weekend.

He's played just one other tournament this year, at Riviera Country Club. He withdrew after two rounds.

And so you can watch him now and say, "Why doesn't he just retire?", but if you do you miss the fact he pretty much already has. After he missed the cut at Pinehurst he said this might or might not have been his last U.S. Open, just as he said in April it might or might not have been his last Masters. His body dictates that now, his body and time.

Woods more than anyone seems to accept this, and with an equanimity that seems odd considering how pitilessly he used to hunt down and crush all pretenders. When he slipped on his Sunday red with another major in his sights, it was almost always game over. Everyone else went into what can only be described as Tiger Cringe Mode.

Maybe that's why the galleries still follow him whenever he plays, even though he's just another P. Malnati or R. Mansell on the leaderboard these days. It's memory that draws them. It's nostalgia. And mostly it's a tribute, the way it was a tribute when Michael Jordan came to a town in his last years with the Washington Wizards, and the arena would jitter with camera flashes every time he touched the ball.

Why doesn't Tiger Woods just retire?

Look around. This is his retirement.

Good times, rolling

 Sometimes you forget IndyCar has a whole series and not just one race, and by "sometimes" I mean "pretty much all the time." This is because IndyCar is and has been for a long time epically clumsy at marketing its product.

But occasionally the sun does shine on its hindparts. Or, you know, something like that.

To start with, the one IndyCar race America actually watches, the Indianapolis 500, was an instant classic. After a four-hour rain delay that only ramped up the anticipation, the race was a three-hour carnival of crazy: Eighteen different leaders; drivers barreling three and sometimes four-wide down its long narrow straights and through its square-jawed narrow corners; and finally Josef Newgarden passing Pato O'Ward for the lead in turn three on the last lap after O'Ward had passed him for the lead as the last lap began.

It was a hell of a show, and even people who barely know motorsports exists thought so. As did the 345,000 fans who crammed the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's massive expanse to watch it in person.

Then came yesterday.

When IndyCar finally, finally announced it was dumping an increasingly disinterested NBC as its network partner, and was signing a new deal with FOX that is expected to raise the series' profile and pump some needed cash into a product whose operating costs -- especially for the smaller teams -- have become problematical.

Under the new agreement, FOX will air every one of IndyCar's 17 races on its flagship  channel, as well as carry live qualifying and practice sessions on its streaming and cable entities. What IndyCar hopes (expects, really) is this will bring more eyeballs to its product, and by bringing more eyeballs attract the sponsorship dollars that are lifeblood of any motorsport venture.

An all-flagship schedule might even enable series owner Roger Penske to lure a third engine supplier -- something that has consistently eluded IndyCar, and (let's face it) would remain a hard nut even with the expected ratings bump the FOX deal should provide.

In any event, IndyCar's in a yea better position now than it was with NBC, which is airing roughly half this season's races on either Peacock or USA. It even announced it might have moved the 500 -- the biggest motorsports event in the world -- to USA had the rains stuck around and pushed the race to Monday.

The network suits likely would have characterized that as a business decision. More invested folks (i.e.: me) thought it was NBC sticking its thumb in IndyCar's eye in the most blatant way possible.

So good for IndyCar for going with FOX, which is now the motorsports network because of its dual alliance with NASCAR. And here's hoping it can do for IndyCar what it's done for the stock car boys -- because NASCAR, while diminished these days, remains America's dominant motorsports series almost 30 years after Tony George and CART tore IndyCar apart and left the field wide open for Jeff Gordon 'n' Dale Earnhardt 'n' them.

In the Blob's completely biased view, IndyCar right now is a better product than NASCAR, as competitive and thick with talent as its been since long before the Split. Now it gets its best chance in a long time to show it off.

Let the good times roll, in other words. Like, really fast.

Statue wars

 They brought Tom Brady back to Foxborough last night to induct him into the New England Patriots Hall of Fame, and Bill Belichick was there and team owner Robert Kraft was there and 60,000 fans were there, which is pretty impressive when you consider it's summer and the Cape beckons and Foxborough is not exactly the least remote place on earth.

But, hey. When you're honoring the greatest player in franchise history, and one of the greatest players in the history of the game, people will come, Ray. People will come.

So they came and Kraft got up and announced that no New England Patriot would wear Brady's No. 12 ever again, and then he announced that sometime this year the Patriots would erect a statue of Brady outside Gillette Stadium.

The statue, naturally, will stand 12 feet tall.

And right off that got me thinking about Peyton Manning.

Who of course was Brady's great rival all those years, and who made a surprise appearance at Brady's induction last night. And whose own statue stands outside Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, looking downfield for Marvin or Reggie -- who, judging from the orientation of the statue, must have been running a slant through the lobby of the JW Marriott across the street.

Peyton's statue is nine feet tall. I looked it up.

And now, somewhere in the inner recesses of my diseased mind, I can see Brady acknowledging this, and I can already hear the exchange ...

Tom: "Ha! Beat you again, Manning! Neener-neener-neener!"

Peyton: "Dammit!"

On it goes.

Identity theft

 OK, class, to here's your pop quiz for to-

("Aw, gee, Mr. Blob, a pop quiz? That ain't fair!" you're saying now)

Well, tough noogies. Here's your pop quiz for today anyway:

What did the Dallas Mavericks say after they lost AGAIN to the Boston Celtics last night, which put them down 3-0 in the best-of-seven and virtually ended the NBA Finals?

A. "I hate it when a plan comes together, and it's not our plan."

B. "Well, hell, that didn't work."

C. "Hey, wait a minute! We're supposed to be the ones with the dynamic duo!"

D. All of the above.

The correct answer is "D", of course. Also, perhaps, "Gee, nice of you to finally show up, Kyrie", and "My back hurts from carrying all y'all around. Think I'll commit a couple stupid fouls and check outta this game so I can sit down and rest."

That last, of course, comes from Luka Doncic, whose back probably does ache from carrying the Mavs in these Finals, but who didn't have to go and foul out of Game 3 last night the way he did. It killed whatever shot the Mavericks had of salvaging both game and series, and it squandered a 35-point night from Kyrie Irving, who finally stirred himself, looked around and said "Wait, these are the FINALS? Why didn't anyone tell me?"

So he goes 13 of 28 from the field and 4 of 6 from the 3-point arc (after going 0 for 8 from there in the first two games), and, well, big deal. Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum combined for 61 points, 14 rebounds and 13 assists for the C's, and now the Mavs not only are down the well right and proper, they also have to cope with the fact the real dynamic duo in this series is wearing Celtic green.

Prevailing wisdom was it would be Luka and Kyrie against the best team in these Finals, and some folks actually were picking the former. But until last night it was only Luka against the best team, and now that team has stolen even the Mavs' Luka-Kyrie identity.

Best team. Best dynamic duo. 

Looks like you Blobophiles were right after all.

It ain't fair, mister. It just ain't.

Gone West

America called him Zeke from Cabin Creek, way back when. 

He was a shy, skinny kid from West Virginia who could shoot out every light in little old Cabin Creek, and he did it there and in Morgantown for the University, and later in the footlights of L.A. And by the time Jerry West was done, people called him a lot of things.

Elgin Baylor and Wilt Chamberlain and bunch of other Los Angeles Lakers -- hell, maybe even their nemeses on the Boston Celtics -- called him The Man. 

The NBA called him All-Association 12 times, and an All-Star every season of his career, and its NBA Finals MVP in 1969.

Kareem and Magic and Kobe and Shaq and many, many others called him boss.

The Basketball Hall of Fame called him a member in three different categories.

How good was Jerry West, who died this morning at 86?

He was so good he won that aforementioned Finals MVP in '69 as a member of the losing team. In 55 years, it's never happened since.

How giant a shadow did he cast over his game as a player, coach and executive?

The freaking NBA logo is his silhouette. Or so virtually everyone agrees.

West never beat the Bill Russell/Sam Jones/Red Auerbach Celtics, but neither did anyone else in the 1960s. Year after year he'd show up in the Finals, and year after year the best he could manage was to be brave in the attempt. Until he finally won with Wilt, Gail Goodrich and that crowd in 1972, he was the living embodiment of nobility in the face of defeat -- so much so that even though he lost and lost and lost, no one anywhere regarded him as a loser. 

He was just the guy who didn't win. The man who didn't win.

That maybe makes up for the unfairness of his last years on our mortal coil, the mean twist of fate that defaced his legacy for those who didn't know any better. In the sunset of his life, see, a bunch of hacks from HBO made a limited series called "Winning Time" that chronicled the early years of the Lakers' 1980s dynasty.

Now, there are a million directions they could have gone with that tale, but they chose to make it a cartoon, or the next-door neighbor to a cartoon. And no one suffered for that decision more than West, who was portrayed as a bitter, ranting lunatic for the sake of comic relief.

Hell of a sendoff for the man, that was. Because anyone who watched it whose institutional basketball knowledge began with LeBron 'n' Steph 'n' them would have come away believing that was Jerry West. Dear God, what a kick in the teeth.

And now the man has gone West, to pun terribly. And the only upside to that is maybe, in the perspectives on his life sure to pour forth in the coming days, the LeBron 'n' Steph generation will discover the circus-clown Jerry West from "Winning Time" was as fictitious as Forrest Gump or Jimmy Chitwood.

One can only hope.

A-cricketing we will go

 And here you thought the U.S. hockey team beating the Soviets in Lake Placid was the greatest upset in the history of sports.

Not even close, BUD.

No, that happened last week, when the U.S. national cricket team (yes, we have a national cricket team) upset the No. 1 team in the world, Pakistan. Understand, Pakistan has been a world power forever, and it doesn't lose to anyone, except occasionally to fellow world power India. And it sure as hell doesn't lose to a bunch of Americans, most of whom think cricket is what you put on your hook when there's bluegill to be caught.

And yet, the Americans beat 'em. And without Jim Craig or Mike Eruzione, even.

Now, you might be asking why I'm bringing this up a week late, and my answer is "Because it's not hockey or basketball or soccer." If it were any of those, see, I wouldn't have forgotten about it. But because it's cricket, and I'm an American, I did.

Provincialism in the first degree. Guilty on all counts, your honor.

I know this is an affront to cricket aficionados everywhere, but cricket is pretty provincial itself. It's played in England and in all those places the empire once stole blind, er, touched. Aside from that, it's not really anyone's cup o' tea, if you catch my drift.

Mostly this is because no one understands it, even the people who profess to understand it. The scoring, to begin with, would have stumped Alan Turing. (Look him up. I can't do all the work around here.) And in America's case, it's especially hard to grasp because our eyes are used to baseball, and even though cricket looks like baseball, it's not.

Therefore we get confused when a batter whacks the ball and it goes directly behind him, and it's not a near-whiff foul ball but perfectly placed because the area behind him is in play. Pretty much everywhere is in play.

I learned this more than 20 years ago when I was in Ireland, and it seemed every time I turned on the telly, there was a cricket match being broadcast. I got to the point, watching it for awhile, that I could almost tell what was going on 10 percent of the time. I also learned that cricket has every other sport in the world beat in terminology.

 In baseball, for example, a snappy curveball is just a snappy curveball. In cricket, however, they call it a "wicked googly." How fun is that?

Also, in cricket they don't name positions boring stuff like first baseman or third or left fielder. No, sir. Instead, there's a "silly midoff." Also, as night follows day, a "silly mid-on." Also a "gully", a "square leg" and a "bowler", which is what the pitcher is called in cricket.

I learned all this a few years back, when I discovered that a group of Sri Lankans in Fort Wayne had hacked a cricket pitch out of an empty field at Kreager Park and were playing host to the Midwest Sri Lankan Annual Cricket Tournament. I also learned cricket actually has a rabid following in the U.S., albeit one largely comprised of immigrants from cricket-playing countries.

I'm thinking they were over the moon when the U.S. took down the Pakistanis last week.

I'm thinking the Americans, in doing so, didn't make a lot of "hoiks", which is cricket for swinging wildly for the fences and missing. I'm also thinking they avoided the "agricultural shot", which is cricket for playing a shot awkwardly.

For context, I committed a lot of hoiks and agricultural shots in my thoroughly undistinguished Wildcat youth baseball days. If that helps.

And if it doesn't?

Just think of Eruzione swinging a bat that looks liked a fraternity paddle and smacking the ball past the silly mid-off for, I don't know, some sort of points. And raise a pint to our brave lads for kicking some Pakistani butt.

Now there was a wicked googly for ya.

Eating disorder

 Read the other day that Joey Chestnut, the only professional hot dog eater in America (or so it seems), has been thrown out of the Nathan's Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest. And I don't know how to feel about that.

I don't know how to feel because he's being banned for signing an endorsement deal with a rival hot dog company -- a vegan hot dog company, for heaven's sake! -- and I had no idea hot dog eating had advanced to the branding-wars stage.

I also don't know how to feel because he's being banned by the ruling body of professional eating, Major League Eating, and I didn't know there even was a ruling body for professional eating. Let alone a ruling body that, you know, actually named itself Major League Eating.

Makes me wonder where Major League Digesting comes down on the Joey Chestnut issue. Or how the renegade splinter group Major League Gorging will deal with this, seeing how Major League Gorging is currently planning a spring eating competition with another renegade splinter group, Major League Stuffing Your Face.

"Oh, come on!" you're saying now. "You made all that up!"

Nuh-uh.

OK, so I did, but can you blame me? I mean, over and above the fact there actually is something as ridiculous as competitive eating -- only in America, amiright? -- there are now turf wars like in actual sports.

And how dumb is Major League Eating, using its apparently vast legislative powers to ban the only reason America even cares about competitive eating?

Or maybe MLE thinks the attention the Nathan's contest gets can be attributed solely to people rooting for Joe Blow from Idaho. Yeah, no.

No, the only thing that matters to anyone is whether or not Joey Chestnut wins another Mustard Yellow Belt, which he's won 16 times and is not to be confused with the yellow jersey donned by the winner of the Tour de Syringe, er, France. Or with the Lombardi Trophy, the Borg-Warner Trophy or the Stanley Cup.

All of this reminds me, kinda-sorta, of the Dream Team flap at the 1992 Olympics. Remember that? Remember how Michael Jordan, a Nike client, played for the U.S. team even though its outfitter was Reebok? And how he used the American flag to cover up the Reebok logo as he stood on the medal stand?

It was either the most disgusting thing ever, or evidence that MJ understood better than anyone what America was all about. You can go either way on it, or both.

Anyway ... the MLE is not about to let Joey C. get away with that sort of thing. So he's been banned, to the MLE's and Nathan's detriment. Never underestimate the power of bigotry to get people to act against their own interest.

And by "bigotry", I mean "pro-beef bigotry." In other words: Don't you DARE bring that hippie plant-based crap into THIS bastion of meaty American virtue! You think our boys could have stormed the beaches of Normandy if they'd grown up eating plant dogs in Yankee Stadium? WE THINK NOT.

Or, you know, something like that.

Money, and history

 Well, then. Guess the past really isn't past, just like Faulkner used to tell us.

Guess history still matters to some folks -- even in a day when so many know so little of it, and the unscrupulous are hard at work rewriting it as a fairy tale. This does not include Dan Hurley, apparently.

To the University of Connecticut's profound relief.

Hurley shocked a lot of people when he decided to turn down the Los Angeles Lakers and their choke-a-horse offer yesterday, opting to stick with UConn and the groves of academe. Or, this being 2024, the groves of Professional Basketball Lite, which is only marginally distinguishable from the full-bodied version.

Smart guys everywhere thought Hurley would surely make the jump to L.A. and the NBA, on account of he'd apparently expressed a desire to someday coach in the Association and, what the hell, if it didn't work out, he'd have a fatter bank account and job affairs from every major college program in America. But what do the smart guys (and even the less smart guys, like, say, me) know?

Turns out the lure of history trumped the lure of LeBron, and, hand-in-hand with that, the lure of unfinished business. It's been half a century since John Wooden and UCLA reeled off seven straight NCAA titles, back when it wasn't nearly the task it is today. No one since has managed so much as a three-peat; Hurley and UConn, having gone back-to-back, now have the chance to do that.

So, Hurley will remain in Storrs, and deal with the blinding migraine Professional Basketball Lite has become. Unfettered NIL deals ... the virtually unregulated transfer portal ... yeah, bring it on. The three-peat awaits.

Well. That and a rather hefty salary bump.

This raises an obvious question: If college kids have become untrammeled money grubbers, as so many grumblers grumble they now are, who do you think they learned it from? 

Yes, they're choosing schools these days based on how much jack their NIL collectives are willing to cough up, but their coaches have been doing the same thing forever. And so Dan Hurley will stick with UConn, as Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont -- the governor, for pity's sake -- promises the Constitution State will "make sure he's the top-paid college coach."

This for a guy who's already making north of $5 million a year to coach basketball at an academic institution.

Know what that makes Dan Hurley?

A history nerd, sure. And perhaps the most adroit transfer portal strategist ever, because no one leveraged his own personal portal better than Hurley, whether he intended to or not.

See, kids? There's still a lot to learn from the grownups.

Snub or no?

 USA Basketball left Caitlin Clark off the U.S. women's Olympic basketball team, and if some people think this means USA Basketball has dryer lint for brains, other people think it means USA Basketball has dryer lint, dust bunnies and grass clippings for brains. 

I get where they're coming from, sort of. But I also get where USA Basketball is coming from, sort of.

I get that Caitlin Clark is the biggest draw in women's basketball since, like, forever, and that putting her on the Olympic team would have thrown not just a national but an international spotlight on women's Olympic basketball in general -- which veteran journalists who've covered Olympic women's basketball for decades say has been routinely, and shamefully, ignored. 

Put Clark on the U.S. team, they argue, and she'd be one of the three biggest names at the Paris Games. And maybe the international media and viewing public would finally realize there's more to women's Olympic sports than pocket-sized gymnasts and the occasional lung-capacity-monster swimmer.

For those folks, it's not about whether Clark has done enough yet to deserve a spot on the team, or whether she's the best women's basketball player ever. She's not, at least yet. She's not even the best player in the WNBA, nor even close to it.

She is, however, the biggest draw in women's basketball history. That's not even debatable for anyone with an ounce of cognition, and that is what it's about for the pro-Clark folks.

Also, putting Clark on the Olympic team as something of an outlier would hardly have been without precedent. Steve Alford made the 1984 U.S. Olympic team after his freshman year at Indiana largely because Bob Knight was the Olympic coach that year. And Christian Laettner made the 1992 Dream Team because the selectors apparently decided they needed a Designated College Guy for appearance sake.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, USA Basketball is tasked with putting a team on the floor to win a gold medal, the key word being "team." It's the reason their supporters have given for past snubs, some of them far more egregious than Clark's snub-or-no. As Jemele Hill pointed out the other day on the Magic Twitter Thingy, one year they left the WNBA's MVP (Nneka Ogwumike) off the roster. Another time they left off two-time Olympic gold medalist and former MVP Candace Parker. 

Clark has nothing like those on-court credentials yet. So ...

So, here we are.

With a roster put together to maximize experience, which is why 41-year-old Diana Taurasi is on it and 22-year-old WNBA rookie Caitlin Clark is not. 

With a roster so stuffed with talent -- veteran talent -- it's hard to conceive whom you'd leave off it to make way for Clark, accomplished and uber-celebrated though she may be. 

With a roster that will almost surely win a ninth consecutive gold medal, and that USA Basketball figures will draw millions of viewers worldwide even without Caitlin Clark, because it's, you know, the Olympics. Who doesn't watch the Olympics?

All of that said, one of USA Basketball's reported reasons for leaving Clark off the roster was because it didn't want to deal with a storm of online blowback from Caitlin Maniacs if she wasn't getting the minutes the Maniacs thought she should. If true, that's just damn silly. And kinda gutless.

What might not be so silly?

That Clark's celebrity might in some way prove disruptive to USA Basketball's concept of team.

 Now, I may be all wet here, but if you send Clark to Paris, yes, she'd bring unprecedented attention to women's Olympic basketball. But the attention would primarily be about her. How long before some of her Team USA mates, professionals though they are, would weary of Caitlin Clark constantly being the focus even if she's playing, like, 12 minutes a game? Would the world really discover the awesome talents of A'ja Wilson or Breanna Stewart or Jewell Lloyd because of the spotlight on Clark, or would that spotlight only further obscure them?

I could see it going either way. Which is why, in perhaps a too-close-to-call finish, I tend to come down on the side of USA Basketball here.

Clark eventually will get her shot at Olympic gold, just as Olympic newbies Kahleah Copper, Sabrina Ionescu and Alyssa Thomas will get theirs this year after putting in their time. And they'll get more pub than ever even without Clark, because the very fact she won't be in Paris already has put them front and center in a way they've never before been.

Or perhaps you remember all the headlines about the release of the women's Olympic roster from four years or eight years or 16 years ago. Yeah, me, either. 

A little Stanley provincialism

 I know who I want to win the Stanley Cup Final that begins tonight, and it's the Edmonton Oilers. And that's not because I have anything against the Florida Panthers, or am a STINKING TRAITOR TO AMERICA, and IF I LOVE CANADA SO MUCH WHY DON'T I JUST MOVE THERE?

Although part of this is about geography, come to think of it. Not to say my cockeyed notions of propriety.

See, I want the Oilers to win because, whether we like it or not here in 'Merica!, hockey is Canada's national sport, and so it only would be right and proper for a Canadian team to return Stanley to his ancestral home. Especially since the last time a Canadian team won the Cup, Turk Broda was still in goal for the Maple Leafs, and Rocket Richard (or maybe Howie Morenz!) was still skating a regular shift for Les Habitants, aka the Montreal Canadiens.

OK. So not really. 

But it has been 31 years since the Habs brought Stanley home to Canada, and that's an intolerably long time for the citizens of our neighbor to the north. For pity's sake, Anaheim, Calif., has won the Cup since then. Two Florida teams have, including the Panthers. Teams from North Carolina, Texas and, oh my God, Las Vegas have.

So, yeah, I'm all in on the Oilers. For one thing, the best player in hockey (Connor McDavid) plays for them. Shouldn't the best player in hockey bench-press Stanley at some point, if only to maintain the integrity of the game itself?

I think so.

I think, even years and years after the NHL metastasized all over creation and back, that there's something weird about Stanley possibly being paraded through the streets of Miami, and not for the first time. When it was Dallas vs. Tampa Bay in the Stanley Cup Final a few years back, I was sure the end times must be near. Hell, I'm still mad about the North Stars fleeing Minnesota -- Minnesota, for God's sake -- to become the generic Dallas Stars deep in the heart of Texas.

And that's despite the fact Minnesota now has another NHL team, the Wild.

But, hey. Times change. Geography and such becomes elastic. The Phoenix Coyotes are headed for Salt Lake City, and apparently they're leaving behind a heartbroken fan base. 

Hockey angst in Arizona. It's a brave new world.

But not that new, dammit. Not that new.

Exit strategy

 So apparently the Los Angeles Lakers are going hard at UConn's Dan Hurley as their next coach, and I'm thinking, sure, why the hell not? It's not as if UConn is throwing wads of cash at him to keep him around.

Oh, wait. UConn is.

The word out there is the Huskies are willing to make Hurley the richest college basketball coach in America if he sticks around, but here's the problem: For one of the few times in the history of business transactions, it might really not be about the money this time.

 Oh, the Lakers will pay him more than enough to keep Hurley in hair, er, bald product, make no mistake. But this is more about Hurley's none-too-secret desire to give the NBA a whirl. And what better time than now?

First off, he's won back-to-back NCAA titles at UConn, so what's left for him in the college ranks but more of the same? Cutting nets down is fun, but after awhile, it's just origami with scissors. The Lakers will give him all the scissors and basketball nets he wants if he misses it.

And then there's this: College hoops ain't college hoops anymore.

Back in the day, when Rick Pitino and John Calipari bailed for the NBA and Mike Krzyzewski told the Lakers, nah, he was good in Durham, it was mostly about the money, not to say ambition. The Celtics and Nets lured Pitino and Calipari with both large green and an appeal to their outsized egos, and Coach K told the Lakers no because he didn't need either the money or the ego stroke.

Plus, he'd already gotten his fill of coaching NBA players when he coached the U.S. Olympic team. So thanks but no thanks.

Now, however ...

Well, it's all different, right? The NBA dynamic is now the college dynamic, courtesy of the out-of-control NIL monster and the transfer portal. College coaches -- who for decades ruled like pashas, holding absolute sway over their subjects, er, players -- now awaken every day in an alien landscape where the players hold sway over them. It can't be the most comfortable feeling in the world.

It also begs the question: If you're going to work in an environment in which the players wield the power (or at least a chunk of it), why not do it at the game's highest level? Keeping LeBron happy can't be all that different from keeping Billy Bob Jumpshot happy at State U., can it?

And in Hurley's particular case, he won't have to keep LeBron happy for long. Hell, LeBron himself has told the Lakers that they should consider a future without him in their hiring process. Don't bring in another LeBron's Coach, in other words; bring in a coach for all seasons, or at for all Lakers.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Hurley's disciplined, share-the-wealth system is the very antithesis of the NBA culture. What if it doesn't work in that culture? What if Hurley winds up as the next Frank Vogel or Darvin Ham, forced out because they weren't the ones driving the bus?"

Well ... in that case, Hurley will have spent three or four years cashing chunky paychecks, and he can simply go back to cashing even more chunky paychecks at the college level. Because every major program in the country will be lining up to hand him the keys the vault, so to speak.

And who knows? There's always a chance his NBA model won't be that of Pitino or Calpari, who crashed and burned in the Association, but that of Brad Stevens. Whom lots of people (i.e.: me) thought was a bizarre hire by the Celtics, but which turned out to be pretty much genius.

Either way, where's the downside?

Take your time. I'll wait.

Aaaaand we're off

 Aaaaand it's the C's in Game 1.

It's the Boston Celtics, favored in an NBA Finals for the first time since Bird and McHale ''n' them were doing their deal in the mid-1980s, taking down Luka, Kyrie and the Dallas Mavericks 107-89, and not looking particularly stressed doing it. The Celts' dynamic duo, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, went for 38 points, 17 rebounds and seven assists; Kristap Porzingis scored 20 off the bench in 21 minutes; and the Celtics looked like what they are, which is a far deeper team than the Mavs.

The Mavs?

Well, Luka Doncic dropped 30 points and 10 boards, but his running buddy Kyrie Irving struggled, managing just 12 points and going goose-egg-for-five from the 3-point arc. Except for P.J. Washington, who scored 14 points and pulled eight rebounds, no one else did much to speak of. Which has pretty much been Dallas' M.O. in this playoff run.

All five starters and Porzingis, meanwhile, scored in double figures for Boston. Which is going to be the Mavericks' major issue in this series. 

The Blob is lousy at math, see, but even I can figure out that five (or six) beats two almost every time. The Mavs have the dynamic duo in Luka and Kyrie, but the Celtics have Jayson and Jaylen and Kristaps and Al Horford and Jrue Holiday and ... well. You get the idea.

That's why the Blob's official, probably-way-off NBA Finals prediction is this: Celtics in five.

May Luka and Kyrie make me look the fool. Wouldn't be the first time.

Politician to the rescue!

 James "Jim" "Jimbo" Banks, the Trump sock puppet who represents Indiana's 3rd District in Congress, is running to replace Mike Braun as one of our state's two senators. This explains a few things.

Mostly, it explains him inserting himself into stuff that's none of his business, and about which he knows next to nothing.

It seems "Jim" "Jimbo" saw the Cheap Shot Heard 'Round The World from Chicago the other day, when Chicago Sky guard Chennedy Carter knocked Indiana Fever rookie sensation Caitlin Clark to the floor with a dead-ball, blindside body block.  This provoked days of bloviation (Mea culpa: The Blob was one of the bloviators) about Clark being targeted by opponents jealous of Caitlin Mania, and whether or not one reason everyone's gone bonkers about her is because she's white and straight and not black and gay.

There's probably some truth to that, as the Blob has noted. Some.

In any case, this led to the assumption that Clark being roughed up is a racial thing -- which likely also has some truth to it, though not as much as is suggested by the narrative the always issue-hungry media seems to be pushing. 

And speaking of the always issue-hungry among us ...

Enter James "Jim" "Jimbo" Banks!

Who decided the other day this was an issue with some meat on its bones, and so he fired off a letter to the WNBA office, demanding an explanation for why the league isn't protecting poor Caitlin, who after all has brought goo-gobs of attention to said league. The stench of paternalism in this bothered "Jim" "Jimbo" not at all, of course. Nor did the arrogance of his assumption that as a Very Important Hoosier, it's his job to protect Hoosiers from basketball goonery and such.

Even Hoosiers from, you know, Iowa. And even though this particular Hoosier from Iowa didn't ask, and hasn't asked for, any protection -- let alone protection from a  politician who's just trying to harvest votes.

Now, I don't know what Clark thinks of Banks' little stunt. Wise in the ways of the media, publicly she'd probably say something cushiony like, gee, I appreciate the gesture, Rep. Banks. But I have to think an athlete as fiercely competitive as she is must be privately rolling her eyes and saying, "Stay in your lane, 'Jim' 'Jimbo.' I got this."

And I have to think she does.

Or at least, she does enough not to need an unsolicited got-your-back from some politician who doesn't know a microbe's worth of what she knows about basketball.

Stay in your lane. Good advice.

Day of days

 Eighty years ago today.

Eighty years ago today, Hitler's mad experiment in human extermination began its inevitable fall.

Eighty years ago today, his Fortress Europe proved no match for a bunch of kids who assaulted it headfirst with nothing but their flesh and blood and stubborn will for armor.

Eighty years ago today, the words Omaha and Utah and Juno and Gold and Sword were inscribed in red on the pages of history, and became something more than just words. Eighty years ago today, they were the code names for a handful of beaches in Normandy transformed into death traps by Hitler's Nazis, and then into peaceful strands where people go now to stare out at the English Channel and struggle to summon the violence and sacrifice of D-Day, June 6, 1944.

Eighty years ago today.

For context, we're now as far away from then as the kids who walked into the Nazi storm that day were from Grant and Lee squaring off in the swelter of a Virginia summer in the last campaign of the American Civil War.

That happened in 1864, or 80 years before D-Day.

It's now 2024, and again I summon the words of Rick Atkinson, who described D-Day thusly in volume three of his epic Libertation Trilogy, "The Guns at Last Light":

For those who outlived the day, who survived this high thing, this bright honor, this destiny, the memories would remain as shot-torn as the beach itself ... They remembered the red splash of shells plumping the shallows, and machine-gun bullets puckering the sea "like wind-driven hail" ... Mortar fragments said to be the size of shovel blades skimmed the shore, trimming away arms, legs, heads. Steel-jacketed rounds kicked up sand "like wicked living things," as a reporter wrote, or swarmed overhead in what the novelist-soldier Vernon Scannell called an "insectile whine" ...

Eighty years ago today.

A man and his cars

 Comes now the word that Parnelli Jones has died, and here's where I lose an old debate with my best friend. I knew it had to happen sooner or later.

See, my best friend and I have known one another since we were in what was then called nursery school, and for almost as long we've had this running quasi-debate about motorsports. I say race drivers are athletes; my friend says they're not. And the reason he says they're not is because most of racing is about the cars.

I no longer have a rebuttal, now that Parnelli is gone. Because for me, it was about the cars with him.

Initially it was about one of those gorgeous Offenhauser front-engine roadsters, which Parnelli flogged around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway one day in May of 1962 at an iconic speed. He ran four laps at a 150.370, officially becoming the first man in history to crack the 150-mph mark in qualifying for the Indianapolis 500.

He didn't win the race that year, but the next year, when he again won the pole, he held off Jimmy Clark to become a 500 winner. By that time, the gorgeous old Offy was iconic itself; built by A.J. Watson and owned by J.C. Agajanian, it bore Agajanian's signature number -- 98 -- and a nickname: Calhoun.

Calhoun was my first race car crush. Part of it was because Parnelli drove the wheels off it; part of it was because it was just so damn beautiful. All those old roadsters are -- even if,  I've been told, they were not exactly a comfortable ride.

Fast forward four years.

It's 1967 now, and Parnelli is driving for Andy Granatelli. His ride is no longer No. 98; now it's No. 40. And it's like no ride Indy has seen before or since.

That's because No. 40 was powered by a Pratt and Whitney turbine engine, and if it wasn't the first turbine-powered car to show up at Indy, it was the first that was actually competitive. Squattier than your average Indy car, it had four-wheel drive, so all the tires were the same size. And just to make it stand out even more, Granatelli had it painted Day-Glo orange, so when it whooshed around the track on gray days it glowed like a Monument Valley sunset.

And when I say "whooshed," I mean "whooshed." Didn't blare, didn't scream, but just cruised quietly around, leaving a sort of ruffling sound in its wake.

And I fell irredeemably in love with Indy because of it.

I was 12 years old in '67, see, and the first time I went to the Speedway was on the second weekend of qualifying that year. Parnelli had already put the Whooshmobile on the outside of Row 2 on Pole Day, running in race trim. But that afternoon he rolled out No. 40 for a brief shakedown cruise, and I was hooked.

I immediately decided it was the coolest car ever, and Parnelli the coolest driver ever, and IMS the coolest place ever. Nothing that's happened since -- including 40 years covering the 500 as a sportswriter -- has changed my mind.

So, yeah, Parnelli is responsible for all that. Peripherally, at least.

He didn't win the 500 in the Whooshmobile, of course. After dominating the race, a six-dollar bearing failed in No. 40 with three laps to run, and Parnelli was done. A.J. Foyt inherited the lead and the win in a standard internal combustion engine.

That made every other driver happy but Parnelli, because the combusties hated the turbine. Taking the hint, in due course USAC legislated it into oblivion.

Dumbest move any motorsports body ever made.

Of course, you can still see both Calhoun and No. 40 today, if you make a pilgrimage to the Speedway Museum. And every so often I do when my eyes get hungry and I need to let them feast on something exquisite.

As for Parnelli, he only raced in seven 500s and only won the one before retiring to become a successful team owner. But he led 492 laps in those seven starts, which I believe works out to an average of 70.2 laps per. That's putting your mark on a thing.

He also saved Foyt's life once when Foyt got upside-down in a stock car in Riverside, Calif. But that's another story for another day.

Today, it's all about another member of American racing's greatest generation going to his reward. 

And those cars, of course. Always the cars.

The race thing

 I've never completely gotten the Pat McAfee phenomenon, except for the fact he can be funny as all get out and he's completely free-range. And therefore is a media guy who's not really a media guy, even if ESPN employs him as one.

I could also say he's white and male, which is why he's allowed to say stuff no one else could get away with saying. I hate to go there, but sometimes the obvious is the obvious.

The other day, for instance, Pat went off on the apparent jealousy of Caitlin Clark in the ranks of the WNBA, and how it's racial in nature. Which is why he said this: I would like the media people that continue to say, "This rookie class, this rookie class, this rookie class." Nah, just call it for what it is — there's one white bitch for the Indiana team who is a superstar.

"One white bitch for the Indiana team." Nice.

Now, Pat got away with that one because the clear implication was he wasn't calling Clark that, but it's how he believes a lot of WNBA players think of her. Let's not kid ourselves, though: He also got away with it because he's white and male.

I mean, imagine how quickly ESPN would jettison say, Jemele Hill or any other McAfee-like black talent if they'd said the same thing in the same context. Actually the Worldwide Leader did get rid of Hill for calling Donald Trump a racist -- not even a racist bitch, mind you, but just a racist.

Which frankly isn't all that controversial, if you ask me. Not that anyone is.

Ah, but here we go again, right where the Blob didn't want to go. I realize it's unavoidable, especially in this riven time. And I realize, much as I'm loathe to admit it, there's probably a grain of truth to what McAfee was saying.

But only a grain. 

I don't think it's true, see, that the largely black WNBA workforce is resentful of Clark primarily because she's white. Pat McAfee may think that, but I don't. And I don't because it's pretty damn racist in itself to assume as much.

No, I think the main reason some WNBA veterans resent her (not all, and not even most; that's another false assumption here) is not because she's white, but because she's getting all this attention -- attention they rightly feel she hasn't yet earned. Here we've for years been putting all this sweat equity into building the WNBA into a viable brand, and now this girl comes sashayin' in and gets all the credit for putting us on the map. Hell, we drew the damn map!

Which they did.

And yet ...

And yet, it's undeniably true that Caitlin Mania has elevated the WNBA. People are paying attention now who never paid attention before. They're buying her merch; they're filling arenas to see her play. Her team, the woeful Indiana Fever, exceeded last year's total attendance in just five games.

In the meantime, while she hasn't yet walked on water, she's established herself as one of the top rookies in the league, averaging 17.6 points, 6.6 assists and 5.1 rebounds through a rough first month of the season. Yes, she commits turnovers in bunches. Yes, she's not shooting all that well. And, yes, she may not even be the best rookie in the league.

Check out what Angel Reese is doing up in Chicago. Or Cameron Brink out in L.A. They've hit the WNBA with significant impact, too.

But the hype is all with Clark, and she's dealing with it as well as anyone could when the hype is as beyond ridiculous as it is. And if the fact she's white has helped that along, that's not nearly as much a factor as McAfee and others want you to think it is.

 If that were true, people would be filling WNBA arenas to watch Brink, who is also white. But they aren't.

They're coming to watch Caitlin Clark. And I'll die on the hill that most players in the WNBA aren't resentful of that, because to suggest otherwise is to suggest most players in the WNBA are stupid.

They aren't. Like the professional golfers who realized early on that Tiger Woods and the attention he got was making them ALL rich, I 'm thinking the WNBA players realize that about Clark, too.

No matter how much the Pat McAfees want to muddy the waters.