Today in dumb ideas

The National Football League, which brought you Let's Pretend We're Not Trying To Kill Our Players and other classic hits, has come up with another burnt-out lightbulb of an idea. Beginning this season, the League is requiring its coaches to submit to in-game interviews from sideline reporters.

I'm sure this will add layers of insight that have been previously unexplored. OK, so no.

No, like many of you, the Blob is trying to figure out what the point is, aside from "There is no point, we're just doing it because basketball does it." Unlike many of you, however, I immediately imagined how this would have played in a day when NFL coaches weren't as media-savvy as they are now ...

"Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Lambeau Field, where it's colder than a well-digger's ass and the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys are playing for the NFL championship. Game-time temperature is minus-13 with a windchill of My Toes Just Turned Black. Let's go down to our sideline reporter Biff Turducken for an in-game chat with Packers coach Vince Lombardi. Biff?"

"Thanks, big guy. Let me squeeze past Jerry Kramer here and grab Coach Lombar-"

"Hey! You stepped on my foot! And who are you, anyway?"

"I'm Biff Turducken, sideline reporter for the Big Deal Network. If I could just slip by here and grab Coach Lombardi for a sec-"

"Hey, Vince! Check this out! Some TV doofus wants to interview you IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAMN GAME!"

(Lombardi whirls around)

"The HELL?? Who let you down here? Out! Out! We're tryin' to win a football game here! Jerry ... Fuzzy ... run the Packer sweep over this guy's ass!"

"But, Coach, you agreed to do this. Just one question, OK?"

(Lombardi grumbles, sighs, walks over)

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. That damn Rozelle. I swear, if the man had a brain he'd be loanin' it out to strangers. OK, so what's your question?"

"How is your team handling this brutal cold, Coach?"

"WHAT?? How do you THINK we're handling it, dumbass? We're freezing to death! I tried to send McGee into the game and found out he'd turned into a McGee-sized Popsicle! I hadda send Mercein in at fullback 'cause all our other fullbacks were frozen solid! You know how long it takes to thaw out a fullback? 'How is your team handling this brutal cold.' Crissakes."

"Well, good luck, Coach. Now back to th- holy (bleep) Nitschke just took my microphone! Now he's trying to shove it up my -- Ow! Ow! That HURTS!!"

(Audio abruptly goes silent. On the screen, the play-by-play man appears)

"Thanks for that informative report, Biff! Now a word from our sponsors."

Wordplay

 And now, on the cusp of August, we interrupt the long slog of the baseball season for some ... fun.

Ever heard of Jason Benetti?

He's the play-by-play voice of the Detroit Tigers, and like everyone this time of year he and the Tigers are desperate for something, anything, to break up the monotony. This is especially true if you're the Tigers, who are 52-57 and 14 games out of first in the AL Central. In other words, they're not going anywhere, especially after offloading their ace pitcher Jack Flaherty at the trade deadline yesterday.

And so ...

What to do, what do.

I know! Let's give Jason a bunch of random words and see if he can get them all into his broadcast!

Which is just what the Tigers did yesterday. 

The words they gave him, according to the website Awful Announcing, included "funkytown", "yellowtail", "Fortnite", "pineapples" and "perpendicular."

God bless the man, he managed to use all of them. And apparently made it sound legit.

Reminds me of all the times my former sister-in-law and her best friend, both of whom were schoolteachers, used to pick a word for me to slip into my column for the next day. Most of the time I remembered to do it; a lot of times, miraculously, I made it sound legit. But Benetti and the Tigers have taken that several stratospheres beyond.

I salute them. Go, you perpendicular pineapples, you.

Snubbing The Snub

 Look, I don't know what Dawn Staley has to do, at this point. Genuflect at Caitlin Clark's feet? Place candles around her picture and burn some incense? Set off on a pilgrimage to Iowa wearing a hair shirt and begging forgiveness at every wide spot in the road along the way?

None of it would be enough, it seems, for the Society of the Chronically Aggrieved. Staley was a honcho on the committee to pick the U.S. women's Olympic basketball team, and the committee didn't pick Clark, and so the Chronically Aggrieved say it was because of jealousy or racism (especially ludicrous, considering almost half the team's white and so is the head coach) or whatever it is they're saying.

Bottom line, they're still carrying on about it. And probably always will.

The alleged Great Snub of Caitlin came up again the other day because Staley went on with Mike Tirico at the Paris Olympics and did her best to say she did not, in fact, have anything against Caitlin Clark. In fact, she said if the Olympic team were picked today, Clark would be a great asset because of the way she's lighting up the WNBA right now.

This of course won't appease radio foofs like Colin Cowherd (and others), who continue to insist it was petty and shortsighted to leave her off the team. From a marketing standpoint, that might be true. But otherwise?

Otherwise, this continued narrative that poor Caitlin is being persecuted by a bunch of mean girls needs to go away, because some of us (OK, me) are sick to death of it.  And that's especially true as it becomes more and more obvious what a load of manure it is.

Look. It's beyond all doubt now that, halfway through her rookie season, Clark already is one of the best players in the WNBA. And that the day is fast coming when she could be the best player.

But the Olympic team wasn't picked yesterday. It was picked when Clark's professional resume wasn't nearly as well-defined as it is now. At the time, she was just a rookie -- albeit the most celebrated rookie in WNBA history -- with a very small sample size and next to no Olympic-level international experience. And Olympic-level international experience was clearly a priority for the committee putting the team together.

So the Great Snub wasn't actually a snub, in the Blob's humble opinion. If everyone knew what they know now and left her off, that would be a snub. But they didn't, so it wasn't.

Of course, you can't convince the chronically aggrieved of that. They have their narrative, and they're sticking to it. Certain people just seem to have a need to feel persecuted these days, by proxy or otherwise. And even if they have to invent the persecution. 

(Consider, for instance, that certain species of Christian outraged by the depiction of the Feast of Dionysius during the Olympic opening ceremonies. Now, it was admittedly weird, but then again, we are talking about the French here. Somehow, though, the certain species of Christian got it in their heads it was a blasphemous depiction of the Last Supper, even though to see it that way you had to seriously suspend disbelief. But that didn't stop them from feeling outraged at a perceived attack on their faith, which perhaps was the whole point.)

Where was I again?

Oh, yeah. Caitlin Clark.

Who is indeed a stronger, more confident player than she was a couple of months ago, and not just because her teammates have magically gotten better. If they've gotten better, it's because she's gotten better. That's obvious to anyone who remotely knows what they're seeing.

Dawn Staley does, and so there she was the other night, praising Clark's extraordinary court vision and basketball IQ. And saying, sure, if the team were picked today, she'd likely be on it.

Does that sound petty to you?

Yeah. Me either.

A hero for Everynerd

 You can have your Simone Biles, your Suni Lee, even your Brody Malone or Frederick Richard. America's new fave isn't any of them.

See that guy over there in the black horn-rimmed glasses?

No, he's not the team statistician. 

No, he's not the student manager.

No, he's not (choose one) Millhouse from "The Simpsons," Robert Carradine from "Revenge of the Nerds" or Sheldon from "Young Sheldon."

His name is Stephen Nedoroscik, and the other night he became an American Olympic hero.

He became an Olympic hero even though some people thought he didn't belong on the U.S. men's gymnastics team, and not because he looked like Millhouse or Robert Carradine or Young Sheldon. They thought he shouldn't be on the team because he was only good at one thing, even though he was really, really good at that one thing.

Stephen Nedoroscik, see, is something of a pommel horse savant. And when the Olympic team competition got down to cases the other night, it was Stephen Nedoroscik on the horse who was either going to seal the first medal for an American men's gymnastics team in 16 years, or blow it for them.

Pommel Nerd said "Aw, HELL, no" to the latter.

Instead, with the horse the last rotation of the meet, he did his deal. Stuck everything, put up a big number in the most clutch circumstance you could dream up, and secured the bronze for the U.S. over Ukraine.

And suddenly no one cared that Stephen Nedoroscik looked less like an Olympic gymnast than maybe any Olympic gymnast ever. Or that even his coach calls him "quirky" and "goofy." Or that he's a whiz with a 1980s fad (Rubik's Cube) and loves video games.

Nedoroscik can solve a Rubik's Cube in less than ten seconds. It only took him 45 to finish a landmark performance from the American men, who every four years play, I don't know, fourth or fifth fiddle to the glamorous American women.

Well, not this Olympiad. This Olympiad, the American -- Malone, Frederick, all the rest -- nailed every routine and stuck every landing. And even gave the country something it never gets very often, and certainly not often enough.

A hero for Everynerd. Raise those pocket protectors and slide rules high, everyone.

More Olympic news

 Lots of fencing, soccer-ing, judo-ing, tennis-ing went on in Paris yesterday, and speaking of fencing, how about that Japanese guy, Kano Koki, in the men's individual epee?  

OK, so maybe you missed that. So did I, but I heard it was something. OK so I didn't.

Anyway, sports happened, including gymnastics and swimming, and the Blob was paying attention to some of it. And of course I have a few thoughts:

* After explaining to some friends why the men's Olympic basketball tournament wasn't just going to be a walkover for Team USA, on account of there are great players spread around the globe now, Team USA walked over Serbia in its Olympics opener.

Won by 26, Team USA did. Kevin Durant, who didn't even start, led the scoring with 23 points and didn't miss a shot. LeBron was LeBron, with 21. Nikola Jokic, one of those great players spread around the globe, led the Serbs with 20 points, five rebounds, eight assists and four steals. It wasn't nearly enough.

So, maybe I was wrong. If you can bring Kevin Durant off the bench and not even play Jayson Tatum (for which Team USA coach Steve Kerr called himself a big ol' dummy), and you can still beat Nikola Jokic by 26 ...

Well. I may have to reassess how much I know about basketball.

* Speaking of dominance, the U.S. women's soccer side crushed Germany 4-1, which just goes to show if you couldn't beat us in two world wars, you ain't gonna beat us in women's footie, either. Or, you know, something like that.

Anyway, the win pushed the Americans into the quarterfinals of the Olympic tournament, and in two games now (both wins) they've outscored their opponents 7-1. This suggests their heralded new head coach, Emma Hayes, deserves the heralds. She has, after all, had this team less than two months, and already they look like the U.S. women's juggernauts of old.

Hayes, of course, said Sunday her ladies played like goofs at times, which means she's still got a lot of work to do. You gotta like a coach who says that after a blowout W.

* More news from women's soccer: The Canadian side (2-0), caught red-handed spying on New Zealand, beat the home team, France, 2-1. They insist they're not spying on anyone anymore and aren't, aren't, aren't a bunch of slimy cheaters, but ... 

Well, OK. If they say so.

* In the shooting sports, a Chinese guy won gold in the 10-meter men's air pistol, and a South Korean won on the women's side. The U.S. did not medal in either.

This comes as a shock considering how much we like to shoot at stuff here in America, including presidential candidates, schoolkids and random strangers. Every other American these days, it seems, is walking around ordinance-ed up like an Army Ranger. And we know it's not just for show, because people keep getting shot and the funerals keep piling up.

Proper sport shooters don't behave that way. So maybe we should develop more of them, and fewer psychos. It's a thought.

* In the pool, the U.S. continued to stack medals, but the race to watch was the men's 100 breaststroke, in which Adam Peaty of Great Britain was trying to win three straight golds. He failed by (choose one) an eyelash, a fingernail or an eyelash on fingernail.

It doesn't get much closer than losing by 0.02 seconds, but that's what happened. In fact, gold medalist Nicolo Martinenghi of Italy, Peaty and Nic Fink of the U.S. touched practically simultaneously. Peaty and Fink actually did touch simultaneously and shared the silver.

So Peaty missed out on history because he didn't let his fingernails grow a bit. Your grooming tip for today.

Cruds alert!

 (And no, not my Pittsburgh Cruds, who are threatening to break the bonds of Crud-dom on account of their current behavior, which is playing weirdly like a real baseball team. Right now, on July 28, they're a game out of second place in the NL Central, and they have the scariest pitcher in baseball right now in rookie phenom Paul Skenes)

Now where was I?

Oh, yeah. Cruds.

Who this summer, of course, are the those sad barefoot ragamuffins, the Chicago What Sox (as in "What th-?"). The What Sox started out cruddy and then got cruddier, and now they have split the atom of Crudness to unlock the awesome power of the Crud Universe. Or, you know, some similarly tortured metaphor.

Seen what they're doing lately?

Yes, losing. That goes without saying.

Except now they are epically losing.

Going into today the What Sox have lost 13 straight baseball games, their longest losing streak of the season. They haven't won a game since July 10, when they beat the Twins 3-1 in the first game of a doubleheader. Prior to that, they'd lost three straight. 

Which means since July 6 they're 1-16. 

Which also means their season record now stands at 27-80, dead last in both baseball and the AL Central, where they're so deep in the bowels of the earth the Mariana Trench is suing for copyright infringement. As of this morning, they're 36 1/2 games behind front-running Cleveland, and 25 1/2 behind next-to-last Detroit.

Their 27 Ws, meanwhile, are 12 fewer than anyone else in the majors. Twelve.

In other words, the What Sox are your basic Beloit Sky Carp or Lansing Lugnuts (of the Class A Midwest League). Heck, the Sky Carp or Lugnuts might be better. 

I can't imagine what it must be like to be a What Sox fan these days, especially one who remembers Nellie Fox and Luis Aparicio and the Go-Go Sox and the 2006 World Series champs. I can't imagine what it must be like to be a certain former colleague who's the What Sox beat writer for the Chicago Tribune.

My heart goes out to them; two more months of this torture. My heart also goes out to the What Sox themselves.

Of course, being the What Sox, they'd probably drop it.

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

A GOAT's rebuttal

 Simone Biles flew again early today in Paris, and half of Hollywood showed up to watch her. Tom Cruise was there. Snoop Dogg, of course. Ariana Grande, Jessica Chastain, John Legend, others.

What they came to see, they got to see.

In the Olympic gymnastics prelims, Biles easily led the American women in total points, posted the highest score in the world by miles this year in the vault, and pretty much looked as much like Simone Biles as Simone Biles has ever looked.

All while limping around between rotas on tightly wrapped lower left leg.

That it was hurting her when she wasn't competing was as clear as a mountain stream, but you'd never have known it when it came time to put up the numbers. Pain became a ghost then. If she felt a jolt every time she landed after taking glorious flight -- and no doubt she did -- you'd never have known.

And what I want to know now, at 8:02 on a Sunday morning, is where that one guy is right now. And what he's having for breakfast.

I hope it's crow with a side of crow, smothered in crow gravy.

The one guy I'm talking about see, was some dim bulb of a columnist who, three years ago, when Simone Biles came down with gymnastics' version of the yips in Tokyo, called her a  coward in print. And bragged about how brave he was to do so, because only HE had the guts to write it.

Of course, he wasn't the only one. Other dim bulbs and wanna-be tough guys soon crawled out their holes, calling her a quitter, a choker, an all-time choker, and saying she let her teammates down and her country down and, I don't know, maybe all of humanity down.

Simone Biles, they were saying this about. Most decorated woman gymnast in history.

Who, of course, went on from her crisis of confidence in Tokyo to regain the world all-around title a year later. And who, at 27, came to Paris the unquestioned leader of the latest crop of tiny American flyers with more pure guts than all the tough guys put together.

Women's gymnastics has never been my thing, and I profess to know next to nothing about it. But as a stranger in a strange land, I covered enough of it on the high school level to know this: Those tiny girls/women are among the toughest athletes I know.

Or maybe you'd like to show up at a gymnastics meet and see how many knee-ankle-wrist- brace warriors are out there whirling around bars with those braced wrists, and landing jumps on those braced knees and ankles, and getting decent air above a four-inch-wide beam.

Try it sometime. Me, I wouldn't be brave enough.

At any rate, it's on to the team finals on Tuesday, where Biles and the Americans are heavily favored. Then, on Thursday, it's the individual all-around. Two guesses who'll be the favorite there, and the first one doesn't count.

Thaaaat's right: Simone Biles. The GOAT. Looking for one last rebuttal to all the tough guys.

Be afraid, boys. Be very afraid.

Headless Maries and such

 Watched the Olympic opening ceremonies last night because I always watch the Olympic opening ceremonies, and I especially wanted to watch these opening ceremonies because it was Paris and Paris is, you know, Paris.

In other words: I enjoyed all the headless Marie Antoinettes holding their singing heads while the French metal band Gojira banged away.

That was fun, and weird, and gloriously French. And so was Lady Gaga (and that peerless voice) cabaret-ing along the Seine, and the boats with the national teams all making their way downriver as the rain fell and night came down, and of course Celine Dion at the end bringing down the house from the Eiffel Tower.

Not sure I can take two weeks of Snoop Dogg, but, hey, he's a joy. And suitably Parisian, somehow, like the Assassin's Creed guy running across the rooftops of Paris and through the Louvre with the Olympic torch.

The production numbers along the Seine were spectacular, as was the classical mezzo-soprano Axelle Saint-Cirel belting out "La Marseillaise" from atop the Grand Palais. Even the nod to Paris fashion shows on a rain-soaked runway had its moments.

Only thing I didn't get was why Peyton Manning was there.

Now, I love Peyton, just like all y'all. But pairing him with Mike Tirico and the overly caffeinated Kelly Clarkson was just ... odd. It reminded me of the time, way back in the day, when NBC had Fess Parker as a member of the announcing team for the Tournament of Roses parade because Fess was the star of one of NBC's primetime hits, "Daniel Boone."

You hadn't lived until you'd seen Fess introduce the Governor's Trophy float. Talk about a fish out of water -- or a frontiersman out of his frontier.

Peyton, same kinda deal. He wasn't quite as out of his element as ol' Fess, because Peyton never met an element he couldn't audible. But it might have worked better (and been more fun) if he'd had brother Eli on the set with him.

I mean, just imagine what Peyton could have done with the headless Maries bit, for instance.

"Hey, Eli, that looks like you the first time Ray Lewis hit you," Peyton might have said.

Mon dieu! That would have been magnifique.

The Games

 I know the Summer Olympics are upon us again, because yesterday I looked up at the TV  in my favorite hang and there was Fiji playing rugby.

"Fiji?" I said, and I wasn't alone.

But then I watched a little more and I saw Fiji was actually whipping Ireland, which you'd think would be yea more experienced at rugby than Fiji. But, nah. The Fijians were quicker and had a couple of guys who just refused to be tackled, and at one point one of the Fijis lads deflected an inbounds toss (or whatever they call it), and another Fijian scooped it up on the bounce and ran it in like he was, I don't know, Micah Parsons or Nick Bosa are someone.

Later, I went home and saw the Fijians had won, 19-15, and that they'd also whupped the home team, France, in their Olympic opener. So they're 2-0 in Olympic play and now I'm ready for the opening ceremonies tonight, because Fiji being good at rugby is one of those happy revelations that make the Games, the Games.

I mean, think about it. What are some of the more indelible memories of the Olympic Games? All those "Hey, who's that guy/gal/team?" moments, right?

I mean, just think about the last time Paris hosted the Games, for starters. An underdog from Great Britain, Harold Abrahams, won the men's 100 meters, which was supposed to be the sole property of Charlie Paddock of the United States. It was such a stunner that later they made a movie about it called "Chariots of Fire", where everyone ran along a beach while that song played that for sure is stuck in your head now.

Or how about the Soviets, those clodhoppers, beating the U.S. in men's basketball in 1972, even if the officials royally screwed the Americans? Everyone remembers that, right?

That's what makes the Olympics such a treat every four years, because it's only every four years we think about most of its athletes and/sports. What? You mean Fiji's good at rugby? You mean there's some swimmer from England (Adam Peaty) who's going for an unprecedented third straight gold medal in the 100 breaststroke? Hey, look, it's Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky, Sha'Carri Richardson! They're still around!

That sort of thing. 

Oh, it's gonna be fun, and educational, and weird. Hell, it's already weird. Snoop Dogg got to carry the Olympic torch through a Paris suburb. Flavor Flav made an appearance at a news conference for the U.S. water polo team. Fans stormed the pitch and threw trash on it during an Argentina-Morocco men's soccer match, and the Canadian women's soccer team got caught using a drone to spy on the New Zealand side.

With all of that as a prelude, can two weeks of delicious craziness and "What th-?" be far behind?

(Also: Go Fiji)

We're No. 17 (or 18)!

 There's gonna be one hell of a rivalry game come November, if the smart guys are right about this. Indiana vs. Purdue for a wooden bucket, boy howdy. Winner gets to add an "I" or a "P" to the bucket's chain; loser gets a broom and a dustpan to sweep up after everyone else, like a street worker at the tail end of a parade.

Football media days for the new XXL Big Whatever are happening this week in Indianapolis, see, and that means the preseason media rankings are out. Ohio State was picked to win the conference. Indiana and Purdue, meanwhile, were picked to finish 17th and 18th, respectively.

That's next-to-last and last in XXL-speak, in case you were wondering.

(Quick aside: Newcomer Oregon was picked to finish second. This did not, however, include the fact they won the media days outright by launching a giant inflatable Oregon Duck in the White River that courses through Indy. Bravo, gentlemen.)

Anyway ...

Needless to say, getting picked next-to-last and last is quite a back of the hand to big-boy college football in our proud state, and I fully expect Jim Banks or one of the other halfwits to launch an investigation any day now. Surely the Deep State is behind this, or maybe DEI. Perhaps Critical Race Theory played a role.

The reaction in Bloomington and West Lafayette, meanwhile, is likely to be a lot of fist-shaking and we'll-show-you, with a hefty side of MY GOD YOU'VE EVEN GOT NORTHWESTERN AHEAD OF US. Both new Indiana coach Curt Cignetti and second-year Purdue coach Ryan Walters are sure to use it as motivation, although how much remains open to question. This is just the media saying they're both going to suck, after all.

It will be especially instructive to see how Cignetti reacts, seeing how he's been so swagger-y for a guy taking over a program with such threadbare tradition. As the immortal Dan Jenkins once famously wrote, Indiana's record in football is right up there with Germany's record in world wars. Yet Cignetti has brought in a bunch of new guys, and he remains insistent Indiana will win right now because, after all, he, Curt Cignetti, has won everywhere he's been.

The flaw in that bravado: Everywhere he's been does not include the XXL Big Whatever.

At any rate, we shall see. Going transcontinental by adding USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon to the mix will surely shake up the power structure. And it's hard to imagine that shake-up won't sift programs that have not been at the top of that structure further toward the bottom.

Programs like, you know, IU and Purdue.

"(Bleep) you!" comes the response from Bloomington and West Lafayette.

Or so one imagines.

Flag man

 LeBron James will be the male flag bearer for the Olympic opening ceremonies in Paris, and I can already hear the haters tuning up. Or maybe, blessedly, this time they won't.

If not, it wouldn't be because their litany of complaints about the man -- virtually all of them petty or (inevitably these days) political -- have magically disappeared. It's because LeBron is such a "well, duh" choice not even the fiercest of his critics can make a coherent argument against him.

I mean, why not LeBron?

First of all, this is likely his final Olympics, so being picked to carry the flag in Paris is a wholly appropriate auld-lang-syne gesture. Secondly, no male American basketball player has ever been granted the honor, so it's well past time. And, thirdly, LeBron certainly has the resume to be the first, given that this is his fourth Olympics and he's represented his country with distinction in the previous three. 

He was a mainstay on the Redeem Team in 2008 that won the gold and removed the stain of the Lost Games of 2004, when the U.S. men's basketball team stumbled to a bronze medal. Then he was a major cog again in 2012, when the Americans repeated their gold medal performance.

Twelve years later, at 39, he's already saved the U.S. team twice in its pre-Olympic tuneups. First he made the game-winning layup with eight seconds left to help the Americans avoid a stunning upset by South Sudan; then, yesterday, he scored the last 11 points to haul the U.S. past Germany in another narrow escape.

All of which means he comes to Paris not only as a four-time Olympian and two-time gold medalist, but as the unquestioned leader of a U.S. team seeking its fifth straight gold -- a streak that began with LeBron and the Redeem Team in 2008.

Elder statesman for U.S. men's basketball he may be. But hardly a ceremonial one.

Except, of course, on Friday, when he will carry the American flag in Paris. As well he should.

Wait ... what? Part Deux

 Kyle Larson won the Brickyard 400 yesterday, even though it took three tries to finish the thing because NASCAR gonna NASCAR. In other words, a bunch of allegedly professional race drivers commenced driving like idiots down there at the end.

So there was one crash and then another crash and then, I don't know, three or four more crashes, even after it went overtime to a green-white-checker finish. Somewhere in there Brad Keselowski, who was leading at the end of 400 miles, finally ran out of gas, and then Ryan Blaney inherited the lead, and then Larson took the lead on the second green-white-checker restart.

He took the white flag as the leader, and then someone else crashed, and so after all that the race finished under yellow.

Of course, NBC decided I didn't need to see that last part.

No, as everyone waited for the second green-white-checker to begin, NBC abruptly told the viewing audience it was switching the finish of the race to its subsidiary platform, the USA Network. This was because it was 6 p.m. and the evening news was about to begin, and the evening news couldn't wait.

"What the hell?" I yelped, and I probably wasn't alone.

And, yeah, before you say anything, I understand President Biden announcing he would not be seeking re-election was way more important than a stock car race. Especially a stock car race in which some people apparently were still on their learner's permits, thereby ruining a rare compelling finish.

However ...

However, the Biden news had broken some three or four hours earlier. NBC had already broadcast the entire race (and then some, as it turned out) in the interim. So they'd waited that long, but they couldn't wait, what, 10 more minutes?

Apparently not.

This is not to say we missed all that much, even before the switch-over. I tuned in hoping this Brickyard would be less a parade than it usually is, but it wasn't. Instead it turned into the Economy Class 400, with everyone on different fuel strategies following one another like beads on a string, hoping the other guys would run out of gas first. It was like watching a really loud math class.

That was interesting, I have to say. But it wasn't exactly racing.

And then it was just crashing.

And then it was the evening news, reporting on a three-hour-old story.

Brought the grumpy old coot right out of me. Surprise, surprise.

Wait ... what?

Or in other words: That looked suspiciously like actual racing.

To be specific, actual racing in actual stock cars on (actually) the big track at Indianapolis, where so many actual races have gone to die across the last 30 years.

Well. Not yesterday, bud.

Yesterday, in the Xfinity series Pennzoil 250, it got down to not just a two-way duel, but a three-way duel. Cole Custer, Aric Almirola and Riley Herbst all led -- and that was just in the last three laps. Eventually Herbst took the checkers, but not before he punted leader Almirola aside coming off turn four on the last lap, got about half sideways himself, and then beat an onrushing Custer to the yard of brick by 0.67 seconds.

Some finish. Some race. Something, maybe, to look forward to today when the 31st Brickyard 400 comes to the green about mid-afternoon.

Those of us who've been around awhile still fear it could turn into another Parade Float 400. But what happened Saturday does give one pause. It rivaled the last couple finishes in the Indianapolis 500, both of which were won by Josef Newgarden with a pass on the last lap. And it was a stark contrast to what IndyCar gave us last weekend at Iowa, which really turn into a pair of Parade Float 250s when Firestone screwed up the tire compound and IndyCar continued not to get a handle on the new hybrid component.

NASCAR suddenly looks very good by comparison. And if it can duplicate Saturday's show today in what was once one of the crown jewels of its season, IndyCar's going to suffer by comparison that much more.

Me?

I'm easy. All I want to see is some bangin'-nonexistent-door-handles at Indy for once. 

Not too much to ask, right?

A little discretion, please

 The Blob tries not to overtly venture into politics too often, and that's not because it doesn't care about such matters. It's because the Blob is extremely yahoo averse. 

It's especially averse to the yahoos who always say "Stick to sports!" when the Blob does  venture into politics, overtly or otherwise. Those people are the worst. Also they're not very original, because that's what they say every time a sports person ventures away from the playground.

Today, however, I will risk their unoriginality.

That's because I checked in on some of the news from the WNBA All-Star weekend, and I noticed Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese -- the two sensational rookies America is desperately trying to turn into blood enemies -- were making extremely nice. Both were saying how great it was to be representing the WNBA against the U.S. women's national team, and also how much fun teaming up will be.

Which got me to thinking about all the Democratic congress critters publicly calling for President Biden to step aside and let someone else have a crack at Donald Trump. Someone who, you know, isn't one gaffe away from spending his days watching Turner Classic Movies at the Tapioca Acres Home For The Aged.

(As so many seem to think Biden is.)

Anyway, it occurred to me these Dems aren't nearly as savvy as Clark and Reese, which while unsurprising does not speak well for them. In fact, the plain unvarnished truth is publicly calling for Joe to stand aside just makes them look like grandstanding jerkwads. And that for sure is a bad look for the Democratic party, which frequently resembles an unmade bed but usually isn't quite this stupid about it.

(A disclaimer: This notion is not original with me. One of my high school classmates, Ken Morris, made roughly the same point on a social media platform the other day. And he's absolutely right.)

He's right, because publicly calling for your nominal party leader to get the hell out of the way not only leaves the impression you're a bunch of backstabbing ne'er-do-wells, it leaves the impression your party is in panicked disarray with November little more than three months away. And if this election like most elections will be decided by the undecideds, that's no way to win them over to your side.

Yeah, that Trump, he's Training Wheels Mussolini. But, geez, the Dems look like the Training Wheels Roman Senate on the Ides of March. Et tu, Sherrod Brown?

Or, you know, Adam Schiff, Jon Tester, a pile of others. 

This is not to say Biden shouldn't step aside, for the good of the country. He should. But publicly calling for his head is not the way to do it. The way to do it, for anyone with an ounce of political smarts, is to do it on the quiet. That way you can make it look like Joe's idea, and you can thank him for his long commitment to public service without sounding completely phony.

Look, I get it. These are the Democrats we're talking about. Dishevelment is and always has been a cherished tradition. As Will Rogers once famously said: "I am not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat."

But there's disorganized, and then there's just plain clueless. You don't have to be both.

I mean, ambition does have its limits. Doesn't it?

Outrage overkill

 More and more these days I suspect the entire world is running a low-grade brain fever, and not just because the Party Formerly Known As Republican is holding its convention  this week in Milwaukee. 

(Although the sight of all those Trump Moonies wearing maxi-pads on their ears in honor of their nicked messiah makes me think the fever is more than low-grade in some precincts. Good lord, are these people certifiable or what?)

Anyway.

Anyway, another piece of evidence comes to us from Royal Troon over in Scotland, where The Open championship is in full cry this weekend. The opening round belonged to an Englishman named Daniel Brown, who led the way to the clubhouse with a 6-under 65, and to the increasingly painful spectacle of an old and wounded Tiger Woods hobbling around on his way to an 8-over 79.

He's going to miss another cut in a major today, and frankly it hurts to watch him anymore. You admire his courage, but question his sanity. And some people have ... other questions.

Which brings us to Mark Roe, a commentator for Sky Sports, who said out loud what some people thought he shouldn't have said out loud: That Tiger must be taking painkillers because he was wearing a telltale thousand-yard stare out there.

Now, it was probably silly of Roe to base his conclusion on how a guy's eyes looked. Truth is, the Tiger Stare has always been part of his mystique. You especially saw it when things weren't going well, or when he was hunting you down on a Sunday afternoon. Either way, you'd never wanted him to train it on you.

That said, the reaction to Roe's comment has been, like so much else these days, generously garnished with hysteria. Folks brimming with the usual outrage came crawling out of their social media holes everywhere, saying how dare this man imply that Tiger was some sort of DRUG ADDICT.

Thing is, Roe didn't imply that at all.

Other thing is, what he did say wasn't remotely controversial. Of course Tiger's likely taking painkillers for his various infirmities, which at 48 are legion. He's got surgical knees and surgical ankles and surgical other stuff, and he's walking around on that leg he ruined in his now-famous car accident. Even if it's only maximum-strength Tylenol or Aleve most days, you've gotta figure he's taking something when the aches gang up on him. And when he's trying to make it through 18 holes in a major, the something is likely a mite stronger.

To acknowledge that into a hot mic might not have been the smartest play, but it was only acknowledging the obvious. And it was a good country mile from saying, oh, my God, Tiger Woods is a junkie.

But, hey. People gonna outrage these days, even if the outrage is wholly inorganic and miles over the top. It's just what we do now.

Brain fever, I tell you. Brain fever.

The Brickyard at 30

Thirty years on now, and ye gods, time is a mighty river. It rolls and rolls and now it's 2024, and 1994 seems as far away sometimes as Model Ts and bathtub gin.

It  is not, of course. I know this even though Rick Mast is 67 years old now and owns an environmental cleanup service down in  Rockbridge Baths, Va., and he hasn't strapped into a stock car in 22 years.

Rick Mast, you see, brought the field to the green as the polesitter in the first Brickyard 400 on the first Saturday in August in 1994. This weekend the Brickyard turns 30, but Rick Mast is where this all starts for me, because I was there for the first one and somewhere I have a photo of Mast in his black-and-white No. 1 diving into the first turn on the first lap. 

If I dug that photo out of whatever box it's in now, it would all come back to me: The 250,000 Mass O' Humanity; the newness; the blare of Detroit iron rocketing off those cliffs of grandstand running the length of the most famous main straightaway in motorsport. 

I close my eyes now, and I see a forest of Confederate stars-and-bars fluttering above the campers along 25th Street, because NASCAR gonna NASCAR. I see the thin smoke rising from the morning campfires. And I see the men and women in their Dale Earnhardt Goodwrench shirts and Ricky Rudd Tide shirts and Terry Labonte Kellogg's Corn Flakes shirts watching the morning bacon sizzle, and cracking open the first cold one of the day. 

Oh, it was some show, that first Brickyard. The Journal Gazette sent four (or was it five?) of us down to cover the thing, and all four (five?) of us crammed into one tiny hotel room clear across town from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It was just about the only lodging left in the whole blessed town.

Out at the track, meanwhile, there was this prevailing sense of wonder (Holy gee, Martha! Stock cars at Indy!) to everything, and not a little out-of-body weirdness. It wasn't just looking up and seeing Rudd or Earnhardt or Rusty Wallace rumble out of the garage area in their Fords or Chevies or Pontiacs. It was looking up and seeing Indy 500 veterans Danny Sullivan and Gary Bettenhausen and Stan Fox wheeling stock cars around, and A.J. Foyt trying to stick a Barney-the-Dinosaur-purple car in the show.

Eighty-six entries showed up looking to get in the field, and some of them were driven by  ancients. Fifty-two-year-old Morgan Shepherd was there. Fifty-seven-year-old H.B. Bailey.  And then there was 66-year-old Hershel McGriff, who'd started racing when he came back from the war in 1945.

Everyone wanted in on this, in other words. Everyone was acutely aware history was riding shotgun with them in a way it perhaps never would again -- and that included me with my little cheapo camera, and all the other media who crammed into the tiny cinderblock building  that served (inadequately) as the media center then.

What we all got from that first Brickyard was not only history but a decent race besides, and none of us then understood how rare a thing the latter would become. The stock-car boys barreled down those long, long straightaways and through the squared-off, one-groove turns, and there were some fascinating storylines. 

Who could forget the Battlin' Bodines, Geoff and Brett, who wrecked one another and then went public with their brotherly feud? And who could forget the finish, when it got down to Ernie Irvan, Rusty Wallace and young Jeff Gordon?

Irvan was leading when he had a tire go down, opening the door for Gordon, who grew up eight miles down the road in Pittsboro. The kid blazed home to the checkers, and it was as if the narrative was ordained by the racing gods: (Almost) hometown boy wins the first Brickyard 400.

Now it's 30 years later, and Jeff Gordon is a 53-year-old racing exec and elder statesman. And I haven't been to a Brickyard 400 since 2015, long after the shine wore off and the multitudes stopped coming because the racing frankly stinks, becoming a really loud parade of sponsor billboards more often than not.

It got so bad NASCAR moved the race to the road course a few years back, but for the 30th anniversary this weekend the boys will be back on the big track again. People with short memories are happy about this; those of us with longer ones are betting it comes down to either the Governor's Trophy float or the President's Trophy float.

But 30 years ago?

Well, I've got this photo here to remind me how different it was. And hanging in my closet I've got an inaugural Brickyard 400 polo I bought that weekend, with a gold-and-purple crest that forever reminds me of the date: Aug. 6, 1994. And it occurs to me now that Jeff Gordon won the first Brickyard I covered, and 20 years later he won the last one I covered.

Symmetry or something, I suppose. Or just time like a mighty river, carving its path.

Today in addition and subtraction

 So I see various news gerbils are saying an 18-game NFL schedule is as done a deal as sunrise, and I think, well, here comes the Super Bowl bumping heads with March Madness. That's assuming there'll be enough players left with all four limbs attached to play the thing.

Wouldn't take any bets on that if I were you.

No, an 18-game schedule just means there'll be more players being held together with Scotch tape and bondo by the end of it, not that anyone seems to care. The owners certainly don't; neither, apparently, do the players, who'd likely approve a 20- or 25-game sked if the league would throw in two or three more bye weeks per team.

Greed makes you do funny things. Among others, it makes you vote against your own interests, and makes the obscenely rich lust after even more obscene riches no matter the consequences.

Which it says here eventually will be an implosion. 

This is because market over-saturation is a thing, and even if the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League seems impervious to it right now, eventually no one is. And so just wait until the NFL gets to Week 18 and half the stars in the league are either on the PUP list or sitting out, and teams are trotting out Buddy Bill Walk-On at quarterback, Jimmy Jack Taxi Squad at wide receiver and Joe Bob Backup Long Snapper at running back.

Which kinda-sorta brings me to this: If 18 games are going to happen, and if the players aren't blinded by the prospect of additional riches ("Who cares if my arm falls off? That extra game check'll buy a lot of Superglue"), they should demand the league get rid of the preseason altogether.

There are a couple good reasons to do this.

One, season-ticketholders are already yea miffed they have to pay full price to watch Buddy Billy and Jimmy Jack wallow around in preseason games. Get rid of those games, and you cultivate goodwill with a crucial part of your revenue stream. How's that a bad thing?

Two, the preseason is pretty much unnecessary these days. Enhanced, stem-to-stern 21st-century scouting and analysis have diminished the necessity for preseason snaps to determine if Buddy Bill can play or not. And the controlled scrimmages teams  increasingly conduct against one another these days adequately fill that need anyway.

So: Add that 18th game. But subtract the preseason in return.

Math, baby. It's just what we do here.

Normal 1, Crazy 0

 These are not normal times, boys and girls, and so when we get a moment of normal, it often feels like a moment of zen. As in, "The universe is a wondrous and holy place, no matter how batshite crazy those people in America get."

And so on a weekend when a kid with a gun fetish plinked the grand poobah of the gun-fetish crowd in the ear with a round or shrapnel from an AR-15 (the preferred fetish object of the gun fetish-ers), we yearned for normal like manna from heaven. Anything to briefly escape the Home for the Criminally Bizarre the good old US of A has become.

Enter merry olde England. 

(Which itself is a bizarre thing to say, considering the last thing we told merry olde England was "Exit, please.")

Anyway, England played Spain yesterday in the Euro final, and normal prevailed again. In other words, the Brits struck their colors right on cue, losing to Spain 2-1.

This was behavior learned long ago by the English side, which hasn't won a World Cup in 58 years and manages to wanker it up every time it gets within a sniff of a major international title.  Nothing on earth is more comfortingly pro-forma than England stepping in it on the world (or in this case, the European) stage. You can set your watch by it if for some odd reason you still wear a watch.

Frankly, this bothers a lot of folks not at all, given the rep English soccer fans have for breaking things and beating people up. England forever choking, some might even say, is divine retribution. Asshats get what asshats deserve, and so saith the Lord.

At any rate, here's to our former overlords. When you live in a country you increasingly suspect has dropped acid en masse, any ray of clarity is appreciated.

Hat tip for the old boss

 Carlos Alcaraz of Spain smoked Novak Djokovic in straight sets in the men's final at Wimbledon yesterday, the second year in a row he beat Joker to claim the big trophy. He's now won two of the three Grand Slams this year -- he also won the French Open a month ago -- and, at 21, he already has four Grand Slams on his ledger.

This is not about the new boss of men's tennis, however.

This is about the old boss.

This is where we hit pause to tip a hat to Djokovic, who not all that long ago was everything Alcaraz is and more. And who isn't exactly stumbling off the stage here in what we must assume is career twilight.

That's because he's 37 years old and still reaching Grand Slam finals.

That means he's still better than every tennis player in the world besides Alcaraz. It means, at 37, he still has enough juice left to routinely take down elite players seven, eight, ten years younger. And it means, finally, that he is likely the best we've ever seen at this game, and we should pay him proper homage.

Fans of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal may dispute that assessment, and given that they're the only two players in history besides Joker to win more than 20 career Grand Slams, it's not an unfair contention. But neither Federer nor Nadal -- the former five years older than Joker, the latter a year older -- was able to sustain his game at such a high level for as long as Djokovic has. Which is why they won 20 and 22 Grand Slams, respectively, while Djokovic is the all-time leader with 24.

No one else in the history of men's tennis has more than 14. 

Djokovic, meanwhile, has not only won 24 Slams, he won the bulk of them competing against arguably the next two greatest players ever.

Federer left the game in 2022, and Nadal's body is breaking down to the point that 2024 may be his last year. And yet here Djokovic is, still making the Wimby finals at 37.

And, yes, it's true, he's not exactly been the most engaging personality in the game all these years. Compared to Federer, the consummate professional, and Nadal, the effervescent Spaniard, Djokovic has often come off as dour and snarky and willfully contrarian. And -- let's face it -- just a platinum-grade horse's ass at times. 

And yet ...

And yet, he remains a marvel. So take a moment here and marvel.

America the insane

 And now will come the disclaimer, as phony as plastic vomit: This is not how we do things in America.

To which the Blob has this response, on the morning after yet another crazy with yet another gun tried to take out Donald Trump:

Since when?

Violence is who we are, what we are, what we have always been. It's been baked into our DNA since we (violently) threw off British rule. We glorify it, even as we profess to be horrified by it. Our heroes practice it in word, thought and deed; the rest of us worship God and guns, and not necessarily in that order. 

We are the nation of Rambo and The Equalizer and John Wick. Of William Muny and Rooster Cogburn and, yes, Donald Trump -- arch defender of Second Amendment absolutism, and weaver of spells over his yahoo cult.

The violence of his rhetoric -- calling desperate brown people coming across the border "vermin" and "parasites" who "poison the blood" of America, for instance -- makes his cult roar with approval. The persecution complex that feeds his utter lack of perspective (and more often than not takes him to the rim of madness) only invites the same sort of violent rhetoric and lack of perspective from those on the other end of the political spectrum.

Both are out there on the fringes of the lunatic fringe now, seeing nothing but darkness and  ruin across the void. Already, in the immediate wake of last night's shooting, they were assuming their usual positions: The MAGAs claiming it was an attempted hit by President Biden and his acolytes, already holding up their boy as some sort of half-assed Martyr For 'Merica; the fringe left in some cases making jokes about the shooter (reportedly a 20-year-old with, what else, an AR-15) being too poor a shot.

Both are ridiculous. Both are vile. Both are something you scrape off your shoe after walking through a cow pasture on a hot day.

 And here at the center of it all?

The perpetually aggrieved Donald John Trump -- who more than anyone has sowed this wind, and who last night reaped the whirlwind.

The unfettered gun rights his cult holds as a sacrament, after all, surely smoothed the sick path of the shooter last night. If so-called good guys with guns regard any inconvenience as a violation of their right to arm themselves like a Ranger battalion, such absolutism made it yea easier for a bad guy with a gun to bloody a presidential candidate and kill one of his followers.

And so, yet again, the familiar pop-pop-pop of gunfire echoed through the clear July air.  People screamed. Trump was grazed in the ear by either a bullet or flying glass from a shattered teleprompter. The Secret Service hustled him off with his fist in the air -- a gesture seen by his cult as a manly man show of defiance, and by those less enamored as Trump hot-dogging it again.

And then, of course, the disclaimers about violence never being the answer in America.

An America that has seen four of its presidents assassinated, and at least three more (Andrew Jackson, FDR and Gerald Ford) nearly so.

An America that has seen another presidential candidate assassinated, and a civil rights icon assassinated, and another sitting president wounded, and yet another presidential candidate crippled for life.

America the violent, boys and girls. America the insane.

God help us.

Cruds alert!*

(*Which this morning is actually an Old Man Shouting At Clouds alert, even if it does involve my right-now-only-marginally-cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates)

So, anyone see what happened in Milwaukee the other night?

Pirates rookie sensation Paul Skenes was cruising through seven against the Brewers, scything through the home nine with the sort jaw-dropping stuff that has his ERA under two at the moment. And then ... 

And then some sort of pitch count alarm went off or something. 

Seems Skenes had thrown 99 pitches, and apparently he was not allowed to throw one pitch more. So he came off the mound at the end of seven, and Pirates manager Derek Shelton told him he was done for the night.

This despite the fact Skenes had struck out 11 Brewers and showed no signs of letting up.

This despite the fact he was six outs away from becoming the 26th rookie in MLB history to throw a no-hitter.

No matter. Seven innings, 11 strikeouts, no hits, and, sorry, son. The timer went off, so hit the showers.

The Old Man Shouting At Clouds in me finds this absolutely insane.

Crazy Town. Straitjacket City. All that.

And, yeah, OK, I get it, this is 2024 and Paul Skenes is not a ballplayer but a Very Expensive Investment, and Very Expensive Investments must be protected at all costs. Even if it means shutting down a no-hitter or not letting the VEI pitch in the playoffs (See: Steven Strasburg). Even if it means all the other ways teams protect VEIs from, well, actually doing what made them VEIs to begin with.

I suppose this is what some people call smart business. Not me, understand, but some people.

What I call it is the opposite of that, and one reason among many why baseball is becoming increasingly irrelevant among generations not yet eligible for Medicare. Why come out to the ballpark to watch a wonder-of-the-age like Paul Skenes throw seeds, if you know you're never likely to see him pitch a no-no? Or at least a pure no-no?

And by "pure no-no," I mean a no-no where the pitcher throwing it finishes what he started. Which to me is the only real no-no, because to me one of the saddest sentences in the English language is "Joe Blow and three relievers combined on a no-hitter for the Fightin' Meatheads."

Yeah, boy. That'll get 'em out to the ballpark!

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "What if they'd left Skenes in the game, and on his 120th pitch he'd blown out his elbow?"

Gee, I don't know. What if he'd blown out his elbow on his third pitch? Or his 23rd? Or his 33rd?

What if he'd done it putting on his shirt in the clubhouse?

Sounds like exaggeration to make a point, but in an era when teams shut down the likes of a Paul Skenes because he felt a "twinge" or "discomfort", how much of an exaggeration is it? If you're that worried about the guy getting hurt, why send him out there at all?

Skenes is a big, strong kid who wasn't in any distress at all when Shelton yanked him the other night. In fact, he was in complete command. So for what exactly were the Pirates saving him?

The fan in me thinks he knows the answer to that.

See, as a fan, I know how the Buccos think, and more importantly I know what a bunch of skinflints they are. Under the ownership of chief skinflint Bob Nutting -- who seems never to have met a nickel he couldn't squeeze until it screamed -- the Pirates have earned a rep for developing young talent and then trading that talent when it comes time to pay talent-level money. And so I already know what's going to happen with Paul Skenes.

If he stays on his current trajectory, the Bucs will trade him as soon as they have to pay him. And so it's pretty obvious for what the Pirates are saving him.

They're saving him for the Yankees.

Or the Red Sox. Or the Dodgers. Or the Cubs, the Braves, the Phillies.

Sigh.

When a dream dies

 We called Sean Burroughs The $2-Million Man, back in those innocent days.

It was the spring of  '99 and Burroughs was not yet 19 years old, but we all knew who he was. He was the son of former major leaguer Jeff Burroughs. He had been, seven years before, the hero of back-to-back Little World Series champions, a fearsome pitcher from Long Beach, Calif., who sawed off the bats of sawed-off Little Leaguers. And now?

Now he was the San Diego Padres' Next Big Thing, their bonus baby. A $2-million bonus, to be exact, which is why we called him the $2-Million Man.

The Padres had just become the parent club of our Class A Fort Wayne Wizards, see, and in the spring of '99 (back when mid-market newspapers were still flush and still had travel budgets) the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette sent three of us to Arizona to check out what sort of team we'd have in the Fort that year. Burroughs, of course, was the primary focus of that checking out.

What I remember about him was he was a quiet kid with obvious skills and what seemed at the time a limitless future.

And then two months ago, I opened a news site and saw that Sean Burroughs had died.

And this morning I opened another news site, and saw the cause of death was fetanyl intoxication.

He died of cardiac arrest in the parking lot of a Long Beach park, police determined. Passed from this world to the next lying on the ground beside his car, as EMTs vainly worked to get his heart beating again.

Sean Burroughs was just 43 years old.

And now I'm thinking back to that spring a quarter century ago, and I'm wondering what the hell happened. I'm wondering how and when Burroughs' reported struggles with substance abuse began, and if his bonus-baby dream died suddenly or just gradually, one fruitless swing of the bat at a time.

I'm guessing it was probably the latter, and I'm guessing it was a hard death. You come up knowing nothing but ceaseless triumph -- come up with the game as natural to you as breathing -- what happens when the triumph stops being ceaseless? Or when the game stops being like breathing?

The answers are as speculative as they seem obvious, and therefore likely unfair to Sean Burroughs. Life is not a movie script, and its narratives rarely march neatly from one act to the next. There are detours and tangents and meandering dead ends that follow no logic but their own, and moments of clarity even in the messiest of times.

All we know is in the spring of '99, Sean Burroughs came north with the Wizards, and that summer he batted .359 with an on-base percentage (OBP) of .464, and he reached base in 56 straight games. All of those remain club records.

After that?

After that, not a lot. Burroughs went on to play seven major-league seasons with four teams -- the Padres, Tampa Bay, Arizona and Minnesota -- and batted .278 with 12 homers and 143 RBI in 528 career games. He was out of the game entirely by the time he was 25, then made a brief comeback at 30, playing 78 games with the Diamondbacks in 2011 and 10 games with the Twins in 2012.

Twelve years later he is gone, dying on a May afternoon at the Long Beach park where he coached Little Leaguers 30 years after the height of his glory.

If only time could have stopped then, for Sean Burroughs. If only it could have stopped in the spring of '99, when he was the $2-Million Man and headed for a summer to remember in a mid-sized city in Indiana, and his future stretched bright and unfettered before him.

A culture non-war

 Something fairly unremarkable happened a few days back here in the Fort -- and when I say "unremarkable" it's because this is Indiana, and only if you're not from here would you regard it otherwise.

("Well, THAT makes sense," you're saying now)

Allow me to explain.

See, what happened was, a group of Amish showed up at Reservoir Park, long a mecca of summer hoops in Fort Wayne's inner city. There were both men and women, and some of the men rolled up their sleeves and cycled into the games, their blue work shirts and long dark pants and suspenders a stark contrast to the tanks and shorts of the mostly African-American men with whom they shared the court.

The court, and our universal Indiana language: Basketball.

Crossovers. Back cuts. Give-and-go's. Stepback Js and box-outs and make-it-take-it and "Ball! Ball!", and of course that timeless challenge: "We got next." 

You live in Indiana, all that's in your blood the second you bust out of the womb.

You live in Indiana, you've played on that court at Reservoir Park, or on a thousand courts just like it. You've played in some barn loft where you don't dare chase a ball out of bounds, because it's a 15-foot drop to concrete and there's a trip to the ER in your future if you do. 

You've played, finally, in a driveway in the dead of winter -- bundled up in four sweatshirts, your breath smoke-signaling out in icy puffs, your jumpshots coming off oddly muffled by your gloved hands.

And so, yeah, when I say it's unremarkable that a bunch of Amish men would be hooping with a bunch of black men in the inner city on a summer evening, I say it as a native Hoosier who gets in his bones that basketball is a culture unto itself here. And that it therefore knits together all other cultures.

Now, I'm no sociologist, but I do know a few things. I know we live in a time in America when the loudest voices seem to be the craziest and most extreme. I know a nation that is by its very nature tribal has surrendered, as it periodically does, to the worst and most lunatic instincts of that nature. 

But you know what?

I also know there is an overarching commonality to the American experience, and that it's in particularly fissured times that we most need to cling to our knit-together places. And that's true even if that place is just a patch of inner-city asphalt on a summer evening in Indiana, alive with the rhythms of our Indiana game.

Culture wars, we've got in abundance. Culture non-wars -- cultural touchstones -- we could surely use more of.

So here's the ball, America. You got next.

Challenge time!

President Biden has turned down Donald Trump's 18-hole golf challenge, which is the smart play because A) Trump would probably cheat;  B) it's just a transparent way for Huckster Donny to promote his golf properties and everyone knows it; and C) the whole idea is silly and juvenile to begin with, "silly" and "juvenile" being Huckster Donny's second and third middle names.

This is a presidential campaign, not The Battle of the Network Stars. Which means someone has to be the grownup in the room.

In this case, that was Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer -- whose stinging response began with "We'd challenge Donald Trump to create jobs, but he lost 3 million" and continued with several other zingers. If nothing else, it gave me a launch point for my own campaign challenges, if the President and the Silly Juvenile are up for it:

* I challenge the candidates to quote passages from the Bible from memory. Chapter and verse included. 

(Realizing this is rigged heavily against the Silly Juvenile, who loves to gin up the evangelicals by waving a Bible in the air even though he has no idea what's in it.)

* I challenge the candidates to read a book, any book, in its entirety.

(Realizing this is rigged against both of them, because Biden would nod off three pages in and the Silly Juvenile's never read a book in his life that wasn't an Archie comic or didn't have a picture of himself on the cover.)

* I challenge the candidates to watch "How A Bill Becomes Law" and then summarize it.

(Biden probably could; the Silly Juvenile would just say, "You know, I like that little cartoon bill. He's funny. He should have his own TV show.")

* I challenge the candidates to correctly identify the states by their shapes.

(And, no, "Mar-A-Lago", "Scranton" and "One of them square states" will not be accepted as answers.)

* I challenge the candidates to drink an entire carton of milk through one of those worthless paper straws that are making an environmentally-friendly comeback right now.

(Neither could do it, but the Silly Juvenile would be disqualified for cheating after he threw the straw away, guzzled the milk and then, I don't know, ate the carton.)

* Similarly, I challenge the candidates to that blow-into-the-tube-and-keep-the-little-ball-in-the-air test from "The Right Stuff."

(Big advantage for the Silly Juvenile, who never seems to run out of hot air.)

And last but not least ...

* I challenge the candidates to (choose one) a pie fight; a rotten tomato fight; a rotten egg fight; a horse race.

(Because a presidential race should be more than just metaphor.)

The future, glimpsed

 You might have missed it while waving your American flag and ducking your neighbor's mortar rounds during the long holiday weekend, but something fairly significant happened over in Mansfield, Ohio, on Sunday.

They ran an IndyCar race at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, and it looked like any other IndyCar race.

Pato O'Ward held off Alex Palou to win, and hooray for that, because the guy has had Lloyd Ruby luck lately and was due a W and then some.

But what made this race stand out was not that Pato won, but what he and Palou and every other driver in the field was wheeling around out there.

Honda or Chevrolet, they were all hybrids. Like your Prius, only faster and louder.

It was the first first all-hybrid race for IndyCar -- the teams have been testing them for some time now -- and it was a rousing success. Only one car, Scott Dixon, had issues with the system. And no one who watched was bellowing about "woke racing" or "green energy fossil-fuel haters racing" or anything similarly stupid.

That's because they were too busy watching Palou crawling all over Pato's tailpipes across the last 20 laps.

It's because they were watching Palou hang everything out trying to catch him, to the extent that he damn near lost it a couple times.

It's because they were watching Pato damn near get sideways off the last corner with the checkers just yards away and Palou still coming.

It was, in other words, a hell of a show. One not altered in the slightest because the engines were hybrids.

Now, I don't know if this is what the future of IndyCar looks like. But if it does, I'll take it.

The serenity of Bronny James

LaBron James' oldest son looked more like a G-League South Bay Laker than a Los Angeles Laker in his NBA Summer League debut the other day, but you know what?

He doesn't care what you think about that.

He doesn't care if his four points, two rebounds, two assists and 2-of-9 shooting in 22 minutes profoundly underwhelmed you.

He doesn't care if he looked exactly like what he is, a nepo hire, or if he's only on the roster because his dad is one of the best three or four players who ever lived, or if he's depriving some stiff from Directional Hyphen State Tech a shot at being either a South Bay Laker or an insurance salesman. Which is what happens to stiffs from DHST who get taken with the 55th pick in the draft.

Bronny James is profoundly serene about all of that.

I suppose that will happen when you're 18 years old and you're playing basketball one day and your heart just, you know, stops beating. And then they run every test known to man on you and operate on your heart and you have to slooooowly work your way back (hard enough when you're 38, let alone 18), and you still manage to play a little for USC last season.

Now the kid's 19 and a Laker, and, listen, when you've been through what he's been through, I suspect he's 19 going on 40. That's what his dad says, anyway. 

LeBron talked a bit about his oldest the other day, see, and he marveled at the way the kid just lets stuff roll off his back. He couldn't do that at his age, Dad says. Trivialities that used to bug the young LeBron aren't even blips on Bronny's radar, apparently.

"I don't know if people really understand Bronny," LeBron said in an interview with ESPN. "He doesn't care. I actually care a little bit. When I came in (as a rookie), I wanted people to like me, and some of the things that people were saying about me kind of bothered me early on in my career ...

"He doesn't even listen to that stuff. He's like the coolest. He's like the complete opposite of his dad. Everything that's being said about him, he really does not care."

You know what?

I like that.

I think it shows some maturity. I think it hints at where his focus is, and that it's where it should be. And it makes me root for the kid, even if  his skill set clearly isn't NBA-ready yet. 

You go, young man. You go.

Rush hour

 That  was some fine mess NASCAR and Mom Nature gave us yesterday in Chicago, where it rained and then rained some more and alleged professional race drivers kept sliding off into tire barriers and rear-ending each other and generally making you wonder if they could survive a normal commute day on the Dan Ryan.

The Grant Park 165? More like Carl The Insurance Salesman Trying To Get Home To The West 'Burbs At Rush Hour 165.

"This is a joke," someone observed in my neighborhood hang, summing it up succinctly.

Me?

I wouldn't say it was a joke, exactly. But it wasn't racing, either. 

Until ...

Until, with twilight coming on hard and the race barely a third finished, NASCAR decided to put everyone on the clock.

At 7:20 p.m. Central time they gave everyone an hour until the checkers flew, and then it got interesting. Then it got down to how fast the track would dry and whether or not the leaders should come in to swap out rain tires for faster slicks, and who ultimately would make the right choice at the right time with the minutes ticking down.

In the end that was Alex Bowman, who gambled the pavement wouldn't dry out enough in an hour to make it worth switching to slicks. That handed him the win after passing Joey Hand, who also stayed out, and running out the clock before a fast-closing Tyler Reddick could reel him in.

And the guys who switched to slicks, like Reddick and Christopher Bell, the man who looked like your race winner until he ducked into the pits to swap out his wets?

They bet wrong. Made the switch too early, costing them too much track position as they skated around out there on pavement still too wet for slicks. A kiss of the wall through one tight corner cost Reddick, who finished second; Bell wound up finishing 27th after a late crash. 

The Blob's takeaway from that is NASCAR should put all its races on a clock.

So many laps, or two hours (or three to four for longer races). Whichever comes first determines the finish.

Honestly, I don't know why NASCAR doesn't do this already, given that it serves a public increasingly addicted to immediacy. Hidebound motorsports tradition likely plays a role. Marketing likely plays a bigger role for a sport whose life's blood is marketing.

 The Southern 500 you can sell all day long. But the Southern Three Hours Or Thereabouts?

Profoundly unsexy. And thus profoundly un-marketable.

Yet it was the element of the clock that saved the Grant Park 165 from itself, or so it says here. It handed some late drama to a comic-opera day, and made the closing act not just interesting but riveting: Reddick growing larger and larger in Bowman's mirrors with every lap; the clock shrinking to three minutes, two minutes, one minute as he did.

Great stuff.

Now if only the stock car boys could learn how to drive in Chicago ...

America's "Meh"

 Cam Newton got on his podcast the other day and said the Dallas Cowboys are no longer America's Team, and I for one am glad someone finally said it. I mean, everyone knows the Indiana Caitlin Clarks are the real America's Team, right?

(Kidding. But you could make a case.)

Anyway, I'm glad Cam said it because I'm always glad when someone is bold enough to say the Emperor's naked, even when it's perfectly obvious the Emperor is. The way some yappers in the sports blab-iverse reacted, though, it was as if Cam was saying something controversial instead of something that's been true for 30 years or so.

Yes, the Cowboys still sell lots of apparel, and that star logo is still one of the most iconic in American sports. But they're no more America's Team these days than the Atlanta Braves were back when Ted Turner's cable network started beaming their games from Seattle to Miami. 

This is because you can't just base the America's Team deal on how saleable their brand is, in the Blob's humble opinion. At some point you have to walk the walk, too.

Which the Cowboys haven't done since Don Meredith was freezing his tuchis off in the Ice Bowl.

And, OK, so it hasn't been that long, but sometimes it seems like it. Since the last time Emmitt Smith and his crew hoisted the Lombardi Trophy in 1995, the Cowboys have won all of four playoff games. In the next 13 seasons, they lost every playoff game they were in (six). And between '95 and 2023, they missed the playoffs entirely 11 times.

This is not how an America's Team behaves. This is more like America's "Meh." 

It's like saying the Miami Marlins are America's Baseball Team instead of, say, the New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox or Los Angeles Dodgers. It's like saying the Boston Celtics may be NBA champs, but the Houston Rockets are the pro buckets team that owns America's heart.

No, if there's an America's Team in the NFL now, it's clearly the Kansas City Chiefs, as Cam also pointed out. They've got Andy. They've got Patrick. They've got Travis Kelce and Mom Kelce and, oh, yeah, Taylor Swift.

America doesn't get much more America than the tight end of the Super Bowl champions going steady with the brightest star in the entertainment firmament. It's kinda like if some glamboy Cowboys wideout had married some glamgirl entertainer back in the day.

Oh, wait. That actually happened. Remember Lance Rentzel and Joey Heatherton, who got hitched in 1969?

Back when, you know, the Cowboys really were America's Team.

Cruds alert!

 It's the day after the Fourth of July, epicenter of summer here in America, and that means hotdogs on the grill and your drunk Uncle Charlie losing a finger or two to an M-80 ("Oopsie!" Uncle Charlie said, drunkenly), and, of course, baseball.

Perfect time to check in on our favorite Cru-

"No, dammit!" you're howling. "Not your stupid Pirates no one cares about! Not, not, NOT!"

Hold on a second. Lemme finish.

What I was going to say is it's time to check in the REAL Cruds, the cruddiest of the Cruds, the Cruds who set the standard for Crudness here in the year of our Lord 2024.

I'm talking, of course, about the Chicago White Sox. Or the Chicago What Sox, as in "What??"

As of this morning after the Fourth, the What Sox are 39 games under .500, or 25-64.

They're 31 games out of first in the AL Central, and 15 games out of next-to-last.

And they've won five fewer games than anyone else in MLB.

In other words, they are the Kings of Crud. No one else is close.

This includes even my Pittsburgh Cruds, who this morning are in fourth place in the NL Central, a comfy two games clear of their ancestral home in the cellar. That's currently being occupied by the wretched Chicago Cubs -- who this summer are taking their faithful back to the days of yore on the north side, when the Bearcubs couldn't get out of their own way and people tuned in just hear Harry mangle Rafael Palmeiro's name.

(He pronounced it "Palermo.")

Anyway, my Cruds can't hold a candle to the What Sox, though if they did they'd probably drop it and set the grass on fire. This is because they've got a rookie pitcher (Paul Skenes) who's absolutely sawing off bats, and a stud shortstop (Oneil Cruz) who isn't hurt so far, and some other guys who actually resemble baseball players.

The What Sox?

The What Sox got nothin'. They've been looking for a place to fall down since April. I can't imagine what it's like to be in their clubhouse right now, or what it's like to be a former colleague of mine who's the What Sox beat writer for the Chicago Tribune.

LaMond, if you're listening, you don't deserve this, buddy. You absolutely do not.

And as for the rest of you ...

Fine. I'll shut up now.

A few thoughts about the Fourth

 Independence Day again, and what I want to know -- what's uppermost in my mind -- is who eats the most hotdogs now that Joey Chestnut is out of the play.

OK. So that's not really what's uppermost in my mind.

No, what's uppermost in my mind is how 13 colonies that were as different from one another as, say, Sweden and Kuala Lumpur, managed to agree on something so recklessly audacious: Breaking with Mother England even when it meant taking up arms against the greatest military power on earth.

I still don't know how they did it. I still don't know how they convinced France to rescue us even though the last thing the French wanted to do was get into another expensive go-around with England. And I still don't know how our Constitution, riddled with contradiction as it is, has managed to survive no matter how often it's been bent to the whims of self-interest.

Mostly, though, I still marvel at whatever divine providence or sheer crazy luck was involved in the 13 colonies deciding to break away at exactly the right moment in history, because they did it when the Brits themselves were still paying off their last war (the French and Indian, as it was known in North America) and were weary to death of armed conflict.

Somebody up there likes us, I've concluded. Even when we're not particularly likeable, and God knows there have been plenty of times in our 248 years when we haven't been.

Which brings me to the other day, when I saw a quote so breathtakingly at odds with American values I almost literally gasped: "... we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."

In other words: Submit to the Revolution or we'll kill you. 'Cause, you know, freedom and 'Merica and all that. 

The person who said this is named Kevin Roberts, and he's the president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation. He's also the architect of Project 2025, which is the right's master plan to dismantle the levers of government and replace them with levers loyal not to the country but to the whims of one deranged man.

That man, of course, is former president Donald Trump, felon, chiseler, sexual predator and con man extraordinaire. A shameless idolator of autocrats and dictators, he wants to be one when he grows up. To help with that he's got a cult awash in religious mania, and a pet Supreme Court that just cleared the road by ruling the divine right of kings should apply to presidents, too.

Because of  that, and much else, lots of people seem to think if the con man extraordinaire gets back in the White House, the American democratic experiment is effectively done.

Me?

I think there's a measure of mania to that, too.

I say this not because I don't believe Trump, and the manic persecution complex he's used to animate his base, are dangerous and in some cases lethal. They are. Delusion always is, and when Kevin Roberts and those he represents start talking about "a second American Revolution" to restore freedoms they already have in abundance, that is delusion at its most extreme. And the card played by every vicious tyrant throughout history.

However.

However, I go back to that American experiment, and how often it's prevailed even when it sabotaged the prevailing. And I think it will prevail over Trumpism and the lunacy it represents, if for no other reason than like all such lunacies this one contains the seeds of its own destruction.

This is not to say Trump and his fellow travelers, unhinged as they are, can't do plenty of damage. Immense damage, even. But I refuse to believe the damage would be irrevocable -- and, yes, I know how impossibly naive that sounds right now.

But you know why I say that?

I say it because, if America could survive everything it's survived in 248 years, it can survive Donald Trump if it comes to that.

(And for the sake of -- and in some cases the very lives of -- pregnant women and gays and transgenders and desperate migrant families and other marginalized populations, God forbid it does come to that.)

If America could survive the Articles of Confederation and the chaos that attended them, it can survive Orange Julius Caesar.

If it could survive leaving slavery to be decided by a ruinous and unimaginably destructive civil war, it can survive Training Wheels Mussolini.

If it could survive wars and rumors of wars ... and the brutal suppression of constitutional guarantees at various times ... and the assassination of four presidents ... and every injustice inflicted by malice, greed, bigotry or simple thoughtlessness ...

Well. If America could survive all that, I figure it can survive a lying, conniving, fear-mongering wretch like The Former Guy. Because it  has before.

Anyway ... have a great Fourth. And if you're going to do fireworks, for God's sake try not to blow off anything vital.

Alien landscape

 Got a look the other day at someone's predicted finish for Big Ten football this fall, and at first glance I thought it was a preseason national poll. That's how absolutely alien it looked to my trained-but-not-yet-ready-for-this eye.

Eighteen schools. Eighteen. Ohio State and Michigan and Iowa and Indiana and Purdue, and  USC and UCLA and Washington and Oregon in there, too. And, yes, I know, it shouldn't have been so disorienting, because we've had a full year to get used to this odd new reality.

But, damn. Dee-yam. How are relics like me ever going to see this new normal as anything but abnormal, a humble little Midwestern conference transforming into what, on paper, looks like the AP top 25 until you eventually notice it's short seven spots?

Yeesh. I'm still shaking my bony fist about the Big Ten adding Rutgers and Maryland. The hell do I do about this?

I get used to it, I suppose, same as I got used to the Southwest Conference going away back in the before time, same as I got used to Penn State joining the humble Midwestern conference and Nebraska forsaking the Big 12 and its ancient rival Oklahoma to become a Big Ten school. Neither had any history in the conference, and Maryland and Rutgers for damn sure don't (Maryland will always be an ACC school to me, and I don't want to hear a word about it).

But USC? UCLA? Oregon and Washington?

This is too much for me, even though I fully understand the economics of it. But I am too old. My cultural memory banks are full to the top with all the times Woody and Bo took their stodgy Ohio State and Michigan juggernauts to the Rose Bowl and got stepped on by USC with its shiny modern ways.

 I still remember Don James and Washington beating Bo and Michigan in the Rose Bowl in 1978. Remember the UCLA teams of Tommy Prothro and Dick Vermeil and Terry Donohue. Remember when the West Coast was the West Coast and the Midwest was the Midwest, and each had its own distinct brand.

Now I look at this predicted order of finish in the Big Eighteen, and I see Oregon at No. 2, just behind Ohio State.

I see UCLA in there and Washington and USC, all mixed in with Michigan and Iowa and Indiana and Purdue. And Northwestern. And Michigan State. And Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, etc.

Purdue, alas, is predicted to finish in a tie for dead last with Michigan State.

And Indiana?

The Hoosiers come in at 12th. If the prognosticators are right, that means they'll probably be in the hunt for a bowl berth, which would be absolutely hilarious.

Think about it: The entirety of the old Big Ten playing in bowl games, and then some.

I can't. I just can't.

A star-spangled splat

 This just in from the world of men's soccer, where yesterday Ronaldo first cried and then rejoiced, and Ronaldo's young teammate made himself a legend, and there was joy in every heart in Panama and Uruguay:

Our boys still suck at this game.

Our boys, representing the United States of America, by god, last night crashed out of Copa America, the Western Hemisphere's version of the Euro Cup tournament that's being played simultaneously across the pond. Didn't even make the knockout round, our boys. Lost 1-0 to the Uruguayans to bow out of the tournament in the group stage.

This despite the fact American boys have been playing soccer since Pele turned them onto the game a whole pile of years ago.

This despite the fact there are youth soccer camps everywhere in the U.S. now, and youth soccer leagues everywhere, and everyone says the latest progeny of those camps and leagues are the "golden generation" of American men's soccer.

And, yes, this despite the fact the American women have been one of the top sides in the world for almost 30 years.

The men, however, still can't get out of their own way, golden generation or not. This is the same ballyhooed group of young talent that reached the knockout stage of the World Cup two years ago, suggesting the USMNT was on the cusp of breaking through into the game's elite. And why not? Who had more resources to develop talent than USA! USA!?

And then ...

And then came Copa America.

Where the USMNT played uninspired, un-creative soccer, and also dumb soccer. How else to explain Timothy Weah getting an early red card against group winner Panama, compelling the team to play shorthanded the rest of the match? How else to explain the on-field lapses that led to a 1-3 group record?

The answer to that for a lot of folks is USMNT coach Gregg Berhalter, and some of the blame for the team's star-spangled splat certainly belongs to him. But he's only the latest coach who couldn't milk consistency from the USMNT. And so at some point it has to be the players who are the problem -- which, to their credit, the players acknowledged after last night's loss.

In any case, the hard truth has once more been borne out: We're not a soccer nation, at least on the men's side. Hell, we're not even much of a baseball nation anymore.

We're a basketball nation. We're a football nation. That's what we are, men's side.

Meanwhile ...

Meanwhile, a real soccer nation, Portugal, reached the quarterfinals of Euro 2024 yesterday.

They beat Slovenia on PKs, 3-0.

They beat Slovenia even though Slovenia's goalkeeper made a stunning save on the legendary Ronaldo on a free kick late in extra time, prompting Ronaldo to break down in tears.

But then it got to PKs, and Ronaldo buried his, and Portugal's keeper -- Diogo Costa, playing in his first international tournament -- did the almost unheard of, stopping three consecutive Slovenian attempts to send Portugal to the next round.

Great game. Great moment. 

Maybe someday we'll have a moment like that. Maybe.

Narrative fiction

Sometimes I think life is a made-for-TV movie that takes more liberties with the truth than a Mel Gibson historical epic. I especially think this when I watch Caitlin Clark play basketball.

No, not because I think her game's a big ol' fake. That's quite real, and it's translated way better to the pro level than some people who profess to know basketball thought it would. 

It's because of this whole "hate" narrative. 

I'm starting to think that's as phony as Mel somehow being a plantation owner in South Carolina in the 1770s whose black workforce was free and not enslaved. Or mostly as phony.

Didja see what happened in Phoenix yesterday?

Sure you did. The Indiana Fever beat the Sun, 88-82, and Clark put up 15 points, 12 assists and nine rebounds. One more rebound and she'd have become the first rookie in WNBA history to record a triple double.

Know what else happened?

One of her alleged haters, 42-year-old Diana Taurasi, hugged her before the game. And had some very kind words for her afterward.

"It's amazing what Caitlin's been able to do in her career so far," Taurasi said in a piece by Michael Voepel of ESPN. "The one thing that I really love about her, she loves the game. You can tell she's put the work in ... It's been a lot of pressure, a lot of things thrown at her, and she keeps showing up and keeps getting better every single game."

This from one of Caitlin's alleged haters, jealous of all the attention she's gotten because she was the league's top draw before she even stepped on the floor. 

This from someone tagged as a bitter old fossil because she said "Reality is coming" when Clark was setting all those scoring records at Iowa a few months back.

Well ...

According to Voepel, Taurasi's been saying that, or something very like it, about every hotshot rookie who's come down the pike in the last 20 years. Which makes me think a lot of the hate/resentment/jealousy narrative we've been sold is a load of snake oil.  

This is not to say the narrative's completely false; I'm sure there is a fair amount of resentment of Clark in some quarters. But I also suspect a lot of air is being pumped into the "hater" storyline by people with their own agendas -- some of them monetary, and some of them not so.

The whole Clark/Angel Reese rivalry thing, for instance, is surely monetary and therefore largely beneficial to both the two players and the WNBA. Nothing creates exposure better than personal enmity or perceived personal enmity; look how the Bird-Magic rivalry was largely responsible for saving the listless NBA in the early 1980s. Jealous of one another's success, they made Celtics-Lakers appointment viewing for most of a decade.

Clark and Reese, same deal. How much jealousy and resentment has do with their budding rivalry (and how much of it is pure eyewash) is immaterial. What matters is there's enough meat on that bone to sell it to a public that's always hungry for conflict.

Me?

I suspect Reese and Clark don't despise one another nearly as much as it appears. I suspect it's as amplified as the poor-white-girl-getting-picked-on-by-the-haters narrative being pushed by those who love to pretend white people get a raw deal these days.

Yes, it's true Clark's getting knocked around a lot out there. But it's also true rooks routinely get knocked around; it's all part of the initiation process. And if she's indeed being targeted, her alleged tormentors aren't doing very good job of it.

I say this because she's only the fifth most-fouled player in the WNBA so far this season. If she were truly as picked on as some people say, wouldn't she be No. 1?

Something to think about.