Saturday's America*, Part Deux

 (*Hat tip as usual to legendary sports scribbler Dan Jenkins)

So, you know what was great about Saturday?

No, not sitting five rows behind the home bench watching my Ball State Cardinals pull off the Big Upset, taking down the defending MAC champion Ohio Bobcats 20-14. Although that was pretty special. Made the out-of-season sunburn (October, and I'm sunburned? What backward freaking pageantry is this?) worth it.

But enough about the mighty Cardinals.

Let's journey out to the west coast instead, where college football did the sort of thing that makes it college football. Which is, deliver us the Really Big Seismic Upset.

That would be winless UCLA shocking the world by upsetting No. 7 Penn State, 42-37.

It was one of those "Wait, that can't be right" moments, an Appalachian-State-beating-Michigan vibe blended seamlessly into a Chaminade-beating-Ralph-Sampson-and-Virginia-in-basketball vibe. It's tempting to say there won't be a Bigger or more Seismic upset in college football this fall, but because it's college football and college football is crazy and wonderful that way, it's probably wise not to.

It's important, first of all, to understand the context here. The Nittany Lions, ranked third in the nation just a week ago, were coming off a prime-time clash of the titans with fellow Big Ten power Oregon. The Ducks marched into Happy Valley and stole the biggest W of the season so far, a titanic 30-24 struggle that wasn't decided until a former Purdue Boilermaker, Dillon Thieneman, intercepted Penn State quarterback Drew Allar in the second overtime.

Until that game, Penn State's defense had given up 17 points all season. They came to California having given up just 34 in regulation in four games. Barbed wire was more accommodating.

As for UCLA ...

Well, they were awful. Oh-and-four, and the most points they'd scored were 23 against UNLV. Utah bounced the Bruins by 33. New Mexico strafed 'em by 25. They'd already fired their head coach, and they were coming off a 17-14 loss to Northwestern.

So what happens?

The Bruins drop 27 on the Penn States in the first half.

After Penn State goes from 20 down at the break (27-7) to six down early in the second half, the Bruins do not do what 0-4 teams are supposed to do in that situation. Which is fold like a card table and wind up losing 44-27 or something.

No, sir. What UCLA does instead is, they keep answering back.

And somehow they win by five.

And score almost as many points as the Nittany Lions had given up all season.

And make internet wise guys snark that just to prove he not only can't win the big ones, Penn State coach James Franklin went out and lost a little one.

It was the alarmed exclamation point on a day when Cincinnati toppled Iowa State, Arch Manning's woes continued in a Texas loss to "meh" Florida, and (yes, I'm going to mention this AGAIN) Ball State outscored Ohio 20-0 in the second half to beat a Bobcats team that earlier in the season had taken out West Virginia. 

It was the Cardinals' first conference game, so they're 1-0 and in third place in the MAC.

Penn State, meanwhile, is 0-2 and sits 14th in the Big Ten.

Saturday's America, boys and girls. Ain't nothin' like it.

The caprice of October

 Playoff baseball and playoff baseball's month came in together this week, and the usual quirks and eddies came with it. It is both odd and wonderful what October does our former national game, bringing everything odd and wonderful about it into the sharpest of focus after the long slog of summer.

In other words, the Cubs beat the Padres 3-1 in a winner-take-all Game 3 of the wild-card, but not without doing what the Cubs do, which is surrender a leadoff home run in the ninth and then load the bases before allowing their faithful to breathe again.

And your Detroit Tigers?

Blew a 15-game lead and lost the division title to the onrushing Cleveland Guardians in the last days of the season, then eliminated the Guardians by taking two-of-three in Cleveland.

And then, of course, there was Cam Schlittler.

"Who?" you're saying now.

Exactly.

Can Schlittler, rookie arm for the New York Yankees, who suddenly was the very epitome of playoff baseball. He was the 24-year-old kid with 15 lifetime starts and 85 days in the bigs who was thrust suddenly into the spotlight's glare, the full weight of the playoffs coming down on his shoulders the way it so often does.

The kids, the washed relics, the pinch hitters deep on the dugout bench: Playoff baseball somehow finds them all. And then, for at least one afternoon or evening, infuses them with magic.

Schlittler, see, had never pitched a major-league playoff game until the Yankees sent him to the hill last night to save their season against their mortal enemies, the Boston Red Sox. The best-of-three was tied at a game apiece. Every anxious soul in Yankee Stadium was projecting its hopes and prayers and raw nerve endings on Schlittler's 6-foot-6, 225-pound frame. 

So what did the kid do?

Well, not unravel like a cheap sweater, the way a mortal would.

Instead, the young righty pitched the game of his life in, well, the game of his life, striking out 12, walking none and giving the Red Sox straight zeroes for eight fairy-tale innings. Got the shutout win, 4-0, and a piece of history to go with it: According to the folks who keep track of such things, it was the first time a pitcher had ever thrown eight playoff innings with at least 12 strikeouts and zero walks in a postseason game.

The 12 punch-outs were the most in a winner-take-all game in baseball's ancient history. They were also the most in a playoff debut in Yankees history.

Which, includes, you know, some guys. Whitey Ford, Ron Guidry, Andy Pettitte, those kind of guys.

None of 'em did what Schlittler did last night -- against, by the way, his hometown team, Schlittler having grown up in Walpole, Mass., 27 miles southwest of Boston.

The caprice of October rarely has been more capricious. Or more true to its nature.

Hot seat

 I don't know if WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert is hearing footsteps yet, but if she isn't she's either not paying attention or she's in willful denial. Because the footsteps are shaking the ground all around her.

First it was WNBA star Napheesa Collier flame-broiling her leadership, or lack thereof, in a brutal but carefully crafted four-minute takedown.

Then it was ESPN blowhole Stephen A. Smith calling for Engelbert's resignation -- significant not because it differed much from a lot of Stephen A.'s spew, but because it was Stephen A. Who, let's face it, is on your TV screen more than a 1950s test pattern these days.

Then it was former WNBA player Stacey Dales lighting her up with a story about how Engelbert basically ignored the rollout of the WNBA's new Toronto franchise.

Then ...

Well. Point made.

That point being Engelbert is on an exceedingly hot seat these days, and it's not apt to get cooler in the days ahead. Among league players and coaches, for instance, there's all but a full-scale mutiny going on over the WBNA's glaring officiating issues, and no amount of fining or suspending can seem to slow it down.

Collier's ripped the officiating. Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham have. And when Engelbert suspended Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve for her profanity-laced rant about the officiating in the Lynx-Phoenix Mercury series?

Fever coach Stephanie White and Las Vegas Aces coach Becky Hammon both publicly backed Reeve's play, essentially saying, well, hell, she's not wrong.

Engelbert's lost the locker room, in other words. This will happen when, according to Collier, the commissioner all but sneers at the league's most prominent seat-filler (Clark), and says the players should be on their knees thanking the commish for the chunky TV deal, she got for them.

That was part of Collier's four-minute manifesto the other day, and it tracks with the contempt the boardroom seems to have for its working stiffs here in the Oligarch America of 2025 -- i.e., you should be grateful you have a job, ya bunch of bellyachers. Now go away and let me count the pile I'm making off you.

I don't know if that's Engelbert's mindset, but she did come to the WNBA from the corporate world (Deloitte) and seems to have brought those above-the-little-people sensibilities with her.

This from Sports Business Journal: "She hasn't connected; she's not a relationship builder, which you have be in that job with the teams, with the players," a source familiar with league office dynamics said last month. "I think she's a wicked smart business person, and the success she gets a lot of credit for. But a commissioner has to have a personality element that can touch every constituent that they have. I think she's lacking in it."

Which makes her appallingly tone-deaf, not to say appallingly wrong. To say Clark owes the WNBA for her off-the-court endorsement haul (as Collier claims Engelbert did) is to ignore the fact Clark was making major endorsement coin before she ever stepped foot on a WNBA floor. And, of course, it ignores the fact the fan base and attention Clark brought to Engelbert's league gave the commish major leverage in negotiating that aforementioned TV deal.

In other words, Engelbert ought to be on her knees thanking Caitlin Clark. And doing something about the league's officiating instead of fining and suspending players and coaches for criticizing it.

Because they're right, and she's wrong. And the spotlight that's on her league now is glaringly exposing just how wrong.

And as those footsteps get louder and louder.

A W of an L

 The Indiana Fever departed the 2025 season out in Vegas last night, but sing no sad songs for them. They went out on their feet, not on their shields. They went out the way champions go out, even if their names will not be inscribed on the championship trophy in a couple of weeks.

In the win-or-get-packin' Game 5 of the WNBA semis, after all, they pushed the Las Vegas Aces to overtime, on the road, before running out of weapons and gas in a 107-98 loss.

And if it seems vaguely obscene to use that word ("loss") this morning, that is entirely on the Fever. Because they didn't lose, really; they just didn't win. It was a W of an L. 

It was the Fever pushing a superior team to the cliff's edge on its home floor, and doing it, by the end, with all but empty hands. Kelsey Mitchell, the Fever's playoff engine, had departed with a leg injury in the third quarter after playing just 23 minutes. Aliyah Boston, their other playoff engine, had fouled out. Lexi Hull (43 minutes) and Odyssey Sims (41) had barely been off the floor; Brianna Turner and Shey Peddy had played heavy minutes off the bench.

And, of course, there was the Casualty Brigade over on the sideline in streets: Damiris Dantis and Chloe Bibby and Sydney Colson and Sophie Cunningham  and Aari McDonald and, of course, Caitlin Clark.

Another entire lineup plus a sixth woman, in other words.

To couch it in inappropriate but perhaps inevitable language of war, the Fever were surrounded and out of ammo. But they clubbed their muskets (to use a handy Civil War nerd term) and went down swinging.

Every one of the starting five scored in double figures, led by Sims with 27 points. Boston put up 11 points and 16 rebounds before fouling out. Natasha Howard had a16-point, seven-rebound, five-assist line. Hull scored 12 points, took down seven boards and dished three assists.

Mind-numbing stat of the night: The Fever outrebounded the Aces 40-21. And no that is not a misprint.

What it was, instead, was the evening's clearest demonstration of the Fever's will, because will is mostly what rebounding is. He (or she) who most wants the ball usually gets the ball when it goes up on the glass.

I don't know who's going to be the WNBA coach of the year. But if it's not the Fever's Stephanie White, Congress should convene one of those investigations of which it's so fond.

She essentially lost one entire team and had to cobble together another entire team in mid-season, and somehow managed to get cohesion and heart from both. That's a hell of a coaching job, is what that is. And last night?

Hell of a not-loss, Fever. Hell of a not-loss.