Of fathers and sons

 Father's Day again, and again a reminder that time is a relentless taskmaster, forever demanding a receding present. It has been almost eight years now since my dad laid down his burden, and every day, in small ways and big, it strikes me how quickly the years fly by, and yet how much so many of their echoes linger.

Just the other day, for instance, I found cornmeal mush at the local Amish market.

Bought some. Took it home. Fried up a mess of it, and remembered how my dad, a Depression kid who grew up eating mush, taught his kids to grow up eating it, too.

"Well, I'll be, Jackie, he DOES know what's good!" I imagine him telling Mom in the great holy forever, because he so often told my sister and me the opposite.

Usually when he was devouring liver and onions. Ewww.

Anyway, this morning I came across something I wrote in 2018, on the occasion of our last Father's Day with Dad. He died five months later, 11 days after his 91st birthday. But by Father's Day the Lewy-Body dementia that took him had already stolen much of the man we knew from us, cruel bastard affliction that it is.

And so, on another Father's Day, here's what I wrote on that one. I can't express what fathers mean to us, and the legacies they pass on, any better than this:

We'll go see Dad on this Father's Day, and maybe he'll be with us and maybe he won't. He is 90 years old now and lives in a memory-care unit, his life force at twilight and dimming. Dementia and accompanying Parkinson's have reduced him to a shell of the Dad we once knew, a shrunken figure scrunched down in his comfy recliner, the TV endlessly tuned to old black-and-white movies that go mostly unseen and unacknowledged.

And yet.

And yet, perhaps this will be a day like the day not long ago, when his eyes briefly focused and he pointed at the TV and said, "Humphrey Bogart." And then pointed again and said "Sidney."

Which would be "Sidney Greenstreet," the old character actor. Dad was right on both counts. It was an old Bogart flick, and Sidney Greenstreet was in it.

You live for those moments, as your father recedes toward what Abraham Lincoln called the dark indefinite shore. Most days, when he's awake, he is far away from us, his mumbled words describing things and people who lived and moved 60 or 70 years ago. One day he told me he'd been visited by an old high school basketball teammate who'd been dead for decades. Another day he might greet me with the news that he'd sold his Model T, which he kept in a barn I presumed had been gone for decades -- and, oh, by the way, did he tell me they'd cut off one of his legs?

You learn to roll with all of that. You learn even to roll with it when he asks how Mom's doing, and if she's coming to visit him anytime soon.

Mom has been gone since 2013.

Still, he is Dad, and sometimes even now you see glimpses of it. You'll catch a crooked grin or a dusty chuckle, and remember how easily he smiled, and that booming, audible-three-states-away guffaw of his. And you'll remember that this was the man who taught you a reverence for history and old things, and to do a job right or don't do it at all, and to honor your commitments.

I am not half the man my father was, but some of it took. My wife frequently notes that I go at everything -- work, exercise, sports --"like a dog killing chickens," and that is Dad's doing. Do it right or don't do it at all.

And so there came a time, not long ago, when I was walking out the door after a visit, and Dad called after me. Hollered after me, truth be told. Startled, I turned around and walked back into his room.

"What is it, Dad?"

He looked at me -- really looked at me, which doesn't happen often anymore.

"Get me out of this chair," he said.

"Dad," I said, "we've been over this. Your legs don't work anymore. You can't stand up anymore."

He kept looking at me.

"Get me out of this chair," he said again.

And then his eyes softened.

"Help me," he whispered.

Well, that did it. I should have called for the aides, who knew how to move him. But those two words -- "Help me" -- erased my common sense.

So I lifted him up. He weighs only 140 or so now, but he was dead weight and 140 pounds of dead weight is pretty much a bridge too far for a 63-year-old man who never had any upper body strength to begin with.

But somehow, the dog killed the chickens again. I managed to get him from his chair into his wheelchair. And when he was settled, and I was trying to catch my breath, he looked at me and said two words that seemed to reverse time.

"Thank you."

Whoa. Hold on there, Dad.

That's my line. 

An American story

 The U.S. men's soccer team put on another fine show yesterday in the World Cup, smothering Australia 2-0 and winning its group after Panama clipped Turkey 1-0 later in the day.

Know what that makes our guys?

It makes them the first USMNT in history ever to clinch a spot in the knockout rounds with a group match still to play.

It also makes them about as American as America gets, for anyone who might have forgotten what America is and always should be.

This iscbecause the player who headed in the Americans' second goal in the waning minutes of the first was a 21-year-old named Alex Freeman, and you may have heard of his dad. His name is Antonio Freeman, and he has a Super Bowl ring. Won it as a stickout wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers in 1996, with whom he spent most of a career in which he caught 477 passes for 7,251 yards and 61 touchdowns.

His best season came two years later, when he was Brett Favre's go-to guy, snagging 84 balls for a league-leading 1,424 yards and 14 sixes.

In other words, his kid gets his athleticism honest.

He's fast, he's got quicks, he has a gymnast's ability to control his body in the air: Sound familiar?

So here, on America's team, you've got a young man who grew up around American football but took its DNA to the soccer pitch. And another young man (Weston McKennie) who was an Air Force brat who started playing soccer in Kaiserslautem, Germany, while his dad was stationed at Ramstein Air Force base. And yet another young man (Folarin Balogun) who grew up in London the son of Nigerian parents, but who chose to play for the U.S. because he happened to be born in Brooklyn.

Balogun scored two goals in the USMNT's 4-1 win over Paraguay in its World Cup opener. Which, as a friend of the Blob pointed out, is the best argument for birthright citizenship in a nation whose leaders want to get rid of this very American fundamental right.

On this American team, there are players who hail from 11 states, everywhere from Massachusetts to Texas and California to Delaware. There are players whose hometowns are London, Nuremberg and Almere-Stad in the Netherlands. It is, in other words, as remarkably polygot a team as America itself.

Sometimes, especially in these fractured days, we forget that. We forget that America is and always has been a patchwork of cultures, belief systems and backgrounds whose best self is our common striving -- and whose worst self is embodied by those who use fear and loathing to divide us into two camps: Americans, and some treacherous Other. 

Well, guess what, boys and girls?

In this country, we are all Others.  It's the American story right down to the ground.

As a certain soccer team keeps reminding us these days.

Open reform

 Took a peek this a.m. at the 36-hole scores in the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, and, wow, apparently the USGA learned its lesson. Not a windmill or clown mouth in sight, unlike eight years ago.

No, this time around Wyndham Clark leads by four strokes at 7-under and nine other players are under par for the tournament. This is a marked contrast to 2018, when the USGA tricked up Shinnecock with everything but NHL goalies and pin placements in Manhattan, and reduced both a beautiful natural course and the best players in the world to laughingstocks.

Well, not this time. This time the USGA apparently decided to let Shinnecock be Shinnecock, which is plenty. Between the seaside wind ("If it's nae wind, it's nae golf," the Scots like to say), and the typically jungle-y rough, the course presents enough of a challenge without being ridiculous about it.

Which is what the USGA, which runs the U.S. Open, did eight years ago at Shinnecock. And rightly was ball-peened for it from just about everybody.

Well, not this time. This time, they're letting golf be golf, without any usual artificial ingredients.

Call open reform at the Open, or something. And hooray for it.

Erasing history, Part Infinity

 (In which the Blob again tunnels out of Sportsball World and is on the loose. Post your APB here if you don't want to be want to be subjected to, ugh, names and dates and demon hist'ry)

Today is Juneteenth National Independence Day in America -- Jubilee Day, Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, etc. -- and once again some folks will celebrate with picnics, barbecue, music and seminars, and other folks will make snide remarks and wonder why the hell we have to mention slavery again when President Trump says it's verboten.

This is our country now, sadly. It always has been, really -- Americans have forever been a squalling, contentious lot, a melting pot that never completely melts -- but now the divide is more stark and unhinged than ever, having been given the seal of approval by the Unhinged One himself and his various toadies and bootlicks.

On his watch, per his executive order in March of last year, it's now official policy to scrub the nation clean of any history Fearless Leader deems insufficiently worshipful of 'Merica. This of course means keeping quiet about slavery, America's original sin and one of its  messiest and most defining legacies -- i.e., the very essence of what history is, and what it's supposed to teach us about ourselves.

People with a reverence for the past understand this. The people driving the bus in America now do not.

And so the National Park Service, on orders from the very top, has either removed or ticketed for removal signs and exhibits at dozens of sites. Not surprisingly, most of the removals involve slavery, the civil rights movement, America's erratic and often murderous policies toward indigenous peoples, and the trashing of the environment.

In other words, anything that suggests American history isn't all seashells and balloons, as Al McGuire used to say.

The latest erasing happened just a week or so ago, when the NPS removed several panels at Bunker Hill with quotes the Regime deemed inappropriate. These included a Vietnam War era quote suggesting the U.S. should "cease to build memorials to death and begin to glorify life", and a quote urging that immigrants should take "no second place" in America.

And another?

An editorial from the abolitionist paper "The Liberator" chastising freedom-loving Americans for also embracing slavery.

Now, none of those, obviously, is remotely controversial to any rational human. Of course we should choose glorifying life over romanticizing death. Of course the immigrant should not take a back seat in a country built by immigrants. And of course the contradiction between freedom-loving Americans and the institution of slavery is central to our national narrative.

 But, again, rational humans aren't driving the bus anymore.

This includes the woman who claimed a Bunker Hill display about the women's suffrage movement in America was -- I swear I'm not making this up -- "woke" feminism. Yet her lone complaint set in motion the aforementioned erasures.

So one nutbar says something irredeemably stupid, and the Park Service commences scrubbing. This is our country now.

It's a country where our leaders pine for either the 1890s or 1950s, when history textbooks still advanced the false catechism of  the Lost Cause, teaching a generation of young minds that most slaves were happy and, anyway, the Civil War wasn't about slavery. And it was a time when no one questioned how bizarre it was that United States military installations were named for Confederates who waged war against the United States military.

Juneteenth?

A national holiday, but one of which a disturbingly large part of the nation seems disinclined to make too much. It's OK to celebrate the end of slavery in America, but not to talk about slavery itself. Better to keep it locked in the national attic with your crazy Uncle Fred.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, here's something I wrote on this occasion three years ago. Very little has changed, sadly. Which only means it's still a relevant way to wrap all this up:

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

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

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

Know who else used that rationale?

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

Hmm. Sound familiar?

Windmills and clown mouths

 The U.S. Open returns to Shinnecock Hills in the Hamptons today, and for the sake of golf we can only hope the USGA doesn't turn it into Omaha Beach again. Or, failing that, Pirate Pete's Treasure Chest Mini-Golf, complete with windmills and clown mouths and the notorious Walk The Plank hole.

That's pretty much what the USGA did eight years ago, which was the last time it brought the Open to Shinnecock Hills, a lovely windswept course that surely deserved better. As did the golfers who had to play it.

By the time the tournament organizers got done tricking up Shinnecock, see, the place featured everything but land mines and machine gun nests with interlocking fields of fire.  They always do this at the Open, the goal being to make the tournament "a true test of golf" or some such thing. It's why the green are always slicker than a bald man's head and the rough is a Brazilian rainforest.

This time, however, the USGA outdid itself. And in the process made laughingstock of both a proud track and the Open itself.

What it did was, it took the best golfers in the world and turned them into Merle Fleenor The Carpet Cleaner, hacking his way around Dirt Clod Country Club on a Saturday morning. How ridiculous was it?

It was so ridiculous no one broke par for the tournament. Brooks Koepka won with a 72-hole total of 1-over.

It was so ridiculous Tommy Fleetwood, who finished second, shot a 75 and a 78. 

It was so ridiculous Dustin Johnson, who led at the 36-hole turn, shot a 77 in the third round. Rickie Fowler shot 84 the same day. Rory McIlroy didn't shoot anything, having missed the cut after putting up a fat 80 in the first round.

And Phil Mickelson?

Well, in the midst of shooting 11-over 81 in the third round, he pulled big ol' Merle. Slid a putt wide, then trotted after his ball and swatted it back the other way before it stopped rolling.

Polo, anyone?

It's the Blob's considered opinion he should have been disqualified for that sorry little stunt, but on some level you could understand it. Professional golfers always complain about U.S. Open courses, mainly because they're professional golfers. A more pampered lot you'd be hard-pressed to find.

But eight years ago at Shinnecock, they had more than a point. And once again we were compelled to wonder why the USGA thinks golf fans flock to the Open to see Rory shoot 80 or DJ shoot 77.  Omigod, Martha, DeChambeau's workin' on an 85! Let's hustle over to 18 to watch him come in!

Yeah, no. If golf fans wanted to see that, they'd just head out to Dirt Clod to watch Merle chili-dip a wedge -- and then fling the (bleep-bleep) piece of Calloway (bleep) into the nearest pond, shouting "Hope you can swim, you (bleep-bleep) son of a (bleep)!"

Or maybe he'd just pull a Phil Mickelson. A true golf fan can never get enough polo, after all.

Or windmills. Or clown mouths.

Change of ... something

 So after all that ...

Brendan Sorsby said, "Nah, just messin' with ya."

He is not going to play quarterback for Texas Tech. He is not going to be Joe College for one last year. He's gonna go pro -- if that phrase is even relevant anymore in a world where Joe College is already a pro thanks to Name, Image and Likeness deals that could choke a horse.

Brendan Sorsby, for instance, was set to make $6 million from Texas Tech's NIL for his one season in Lubbock.

But again: Nah, just messin' with ya.

This after Sorsby announced he's entering the NFL's supplemental draft, after paying a bunch of suits heaven knows how much to drag the NCAA into court. He drew a friendly local judge who might or might not have been wearing a Texas Tech jersey under his robes, and scored an injunction on the grounds that Sorsby was a compulsive gambler and denying him one more year of eligibility would do serious harm to his mental health.

In other words: You can't bar Brendan Sorsby for being a compulsive gambler who bet on college football -- including, at Indiana, his own team -- because he's a compulsive gambler who bet on college football.

I know. And believe me, that's not going to sound less wack no matter how many times you read it.

But after paying lawyers and getting Judge Go Red Raiders to sign off and putting Texas Tech in the crosshairs of virtually everyone in college football -- and after Tech embarrassed itself with a cringe-y video defending Sorsby, and itself ("We're not either letting a compulsive gambler play for us just because we need a quarterback!") -- Sorsby's decided to tell Tech this: Sorry, guys. I've had a change of ... well, something. Have a good one!

Now there's some gratitude for ya.

This likely had much to do with the state of Texas threatening the Big 12 with a lawsuit if the conference tried to punish Texas Tech on its own hook. The Big 12 basically said "Bite me" and rolled out its own team of lawyers, who were prepared to argue the conference had every damn right in the world to enforce its own rules.

Suddenly the NFL had all sorts of appeal, one imagines. And so off to the NFL supplemental draft Sorsby will go. 

Will someone take a chance on him?

 Probably.

Will it be a hard sell given that Sorsby has an acknowledged gambling addiction and the NFL is notorious for shunning players for far less than that? 

Maybe.

Shedeur Sanders, after all, went tumbling in the draft just because teams didn't like his attitude. Now a kid who bets on everything wants in the door?

Somewhere Paul Hornung and Alex Karras, who way back in the NFL's Before Time each got a year's sitdown for betting on NFL games, must be howling. 

But that was Pete Rozelle's NFL, and that was when the league considered gambling to be the third rail of heinous crimes. Now, of course, the NFL is in business with the gamblers, or at least their enablers. Hard to get past the cognitive dissonance of rejecting Sorsby because of his gambling jones when DraftKings, Bet MGM and lord knows who else are paying big money to sponsor your team's games on Sunday afternoon.

In any event, after all the hoo-ha, Texas Tech is out one quarterback, and the NCAA is out one headache. A rare W for an organization that turned college athletics into the Wild West by basically washing its hands of the whole NIL thing once it became inevitable.

"Go with God," you can imagine them all saying now.

With God, or with mammon. Hard to say these days.

Their Cup runneth even

 The thing about the World Cup is, a tie is not always like kissing your sister, as Bear Bryant liked to see. Sometimes a tie is a win -- or a loss, depending what side of the tie you're on.

"OK, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Zen break is over. Get on with it."

Alrighty, then. Let's talk about Cape Verde, then.

It's an island nation 350 miles of the west coast of Africa that used to belong to Portugal, but that's been independent for 51 years now. This year its soccer team, which includes expats from half the countries in the world, reached the World Cup for the first time. With a population just north of half-a-million, it's the third-smallest country ever to play in the world's biggest sporting event.

And yesterday it beat Spain, 0-0.

And, OK, so officially that made it a nil-nil draw, but that didn't mean it wasn't a huge upset. It was. It was, in fact, a monumental upset, given the fact Spain is almost everyone's favorite to win the World Cup and Cape Verde is ... well, lovely bunch of islands in the eastern Atlantic.

The Verde-ians (Verdettes?) did it with guts, determination, dumb luck and a 40-year-old goalkeeper named Vozinha, who made seven saves and immediately became the star of the tournament in its early stages. In 19 years he's played professionally in six countries -- including two stops in Portugal, where he's currently with Chaves in La Liga Portugal 2.

Before yesterday only hardcore soccerheads had heard of him. Now he has five million followers on Instagram.

This is what one shining moment will do for a guy in the World Cup, just as one shining moment In the NCAA Tournament will make people aware that a Maryland-Baltimore County, a Fairleigh Dickinson or a Mercer are actual schools with actual basketball teams. Upsets make the Madness, the Madness; upsets make the World Cup, the World Cup.

This is especially true in the latter case, because upsets like Cape Verde vs. Spain happen so rarely. Many more times than not, a Cape Verde-Spain result will look like Germany-Curacao (a 7-1 rout for the Germans), or Sweden-Tunisia (in which the Swedes paved the Tunisians 5-1).

Plus, the fans are nuttier in World Cup. They just are.

Oh, sure, college kids will paint their faces and sometimes their torsos in the colors of dear old Whatsamatta U., but what about the Australia fans who show up dressed in a head-to-toe kangaroo suit (in honor of their national side, the Sockeroos)? Or how about the Egypt fan who showed up for his side's 1-1 draw with Belgium wearing the head of Anubis, the Egyptian god of graves?

I don't know what the Cape Verde equivalent is to that, but I bet it would be cool. And I bet they partied long into the night in a distinctly Cape Verde-ian (Verdette?) way after their boys brought down mighty Spain, sort of.

Their World Cup runneth even, by golly. Raise a glass.

The Great Divide

 The President of these United States celebrated his 80th birthday yesterday, and to commemorate the occasion, Ivory Coast beat Ecuador 1-nil on the soccer pitch.

OK. So that's not right.

How about this: The President of these United States celebrated his 80th birthday yesterday, and to commemorate the occasion, the Carolina Hurricanes beat the Vegas Golden Knights 3-0 to win the Stanley Cup.

No?

Fine. Here's one more:

 The President of these United States celebrated Pride Month yesterday, and to commemorate the occasion, a bunch of buff, sweaty, half-naked men brawled on the White House lawn. 

Excuse me?

Whatta you mean I'm being snarky about this?

You mean it was actually a celebration of Freedom, and the President of Freedom, and good old All-American Freedom testosterone? Strength and will and aggravated assault (but with referees!)? Everything that made America the greatest country in the history of countries, and last night's mixed martial arts card the greatest sporting event in the history of sporting events?

(Which, no lie, is how it was marketed)

Okey-dokey. Whatever floats your boat.

This is an America, after all, where there are any number of boats these days, and they're all headed off different edges of the world. Whatever commonality we have as a nation -- and, truthfully, it's never been as common as we like to think -- vanishes a bit more with every deranged social media post by Fearless Leader, his acolytes, and the fringier of his appalled opponents.

Either he's Jesus Christ, or he's the Antichrist. Either he's George Washington, or he's Attila the Hun. Either Michelle Obama is a thoughtful, educated former First Lady eminently worthy of every American's respect ... or she's a man.

Which is what one of the buff, sweaty, half-naked brawlers shouted last night after winning his fight. Right after he praised God, of course.

This not being a crowd well-versed in cognitive dissonance, they cheered.

And elsewhere?

Elsewhere, Japanese fans were observed picking up their trash after Japan and the Netherlands tied 1-1 in their opening World Cup soccer match.

Elsewhere (reportedly, because who knows these days), some Knicks fans stuck around to help sanitation workers clean up the New York streets after a night of revelry and mayhem following the Knicks first NBA title in 53 years.

Elsewhere, Carolina's ancient warrior, Jordan Staal, hoisted the Stanley Cup on enemy ice, and no one threw trash him, no one (at least within earshot) questioned his parentage, no one called his wife a man.

On Flag Day, in the midst of America's 250th year, the Great American Divide perhaps was never more starkly illustrated. To our eternal shame.

Respect vs. disrespect. Manners vs., well, something else. America vs. 'Merica.

On one side of the divide stands the crowd who believes in their heart of hearts that Fearless Leader is a Dark Lord intent on destroying every decent thing about this country, instead of what he is -- a half-senile bumbler surrounded by bumbling enablers who, yes, are intent on destroying every decent thing about this country, but who thankfully appear too stupid to complete the mission.

And on the other side?

They're the enablers, the hell-yeah bunch, the poor dupes who believe big talk and bombs equate to strength, and that God anointed the half-senile bumbler to be the GREATEST PRESIDENT EVER and save us all from diversity, inclusion and the Somali/Muslim/transgender hordes.

Oh, and from Michelle Obama, of course.

Anyway, that ensemble was on full display last night, in what was billed as UFC Freedom 250 but looked more like redneck cosplay. On the grounds of the People's House, they erected an MMA cage emblazoned with Bud Light logos. Dirt bikes sailed over jumps.  Not far away lay the trash heap that used to be the East Wing.

All that was missing were a rusted-out Chevy up on blocks and a giant oil stain in the driveway. The Ellipse as Cletus Bob's front yard, in other words.

And, yes, I know, that sounds insufferably elitist. It isn't meant to. And it's not like I'm some kale-eating dilettante who doesn't enjoy a little lowbrow culture himself on occasion. I'm a retired sportswriter, for God's sake. And so gimme a cheeseburger and a beer and dial up some stock car racing or professional axe throwing on the tube. I'm there.

This does not mean, however, that I have no standards. I do. And one of them, as a board-certified history nerd, is an admittedly pearl-clutching reverence for America's landmarks.

Civil War battlefields. Our national parks. Arlington. And, yes, the White House.

Turning its grounds into some garish Roman circus sponsored by Bud Light strikes me as obscene. I can't help it.

I suppose that makes me just another triggered lib to those on the other side of the Divide. So be it. Guilty as charged. But what else can I say, in this riven America?

You do you, in other words. And I'll do me. And maybe one of these days -- not soon, unfortunately, and maybe not before I shuffle off this mortal coil -- we'll all come to our senses.

Hopefully before Cletus Bob does some more urban renewal at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Hopefully before then.

Knicks, and time

 The Knickerbockers of  New York won the NBA championship last night in San Antonio, led by an undersized guard who found his game in the big city (Jalen Brunson); a forward who's never been an NBA All-Star but became one in the Finals (OG Anunoby); three guys from Villanova (Brunson, Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges); and a quietly efficient center (Karl-Anthony Towns).

It was their first NBA championship since 1973, and there was a weird resonance to it.  In '73, the Knicks clinched the title in five games, on the road; last night, the Knicks clinched the title in five games, on the road.

Fifty-three years have passed between those doppelganger moments, and that is a lot of water under the Brooklyn bridge. Stephen A. Smith, the shoutin'-est Knicks fan in America, was five years old. Spike Lee, the most famous Knicks fan, was sweet 16. Benson and Stabler -- aka, Mariska Hargitay and Chris Meloni, who were at the Garden for one of the games this week -- hadn't even thought about arresting creeps yet.

Fifty-three years.

You wanna know how long ago that was?

The guy driving this sentence was 18 years old and so skinny you could fit him inside a ballpoint pen. Now he's 71 and ... not skinny.

Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley and Dave DeBusschere were the Knick stars. Now Reed and DeBusschere are dead and Frazier and Bradley are 81 and 82, respectively.

"The Godfather" had yet to be sequel-ed by "The Godfather II," which means Fredo, Hyman Roth and Frank Pentangeli were all still alive. Watergate hadn't taken down Nixon yet. And because the Knicks wrapped it up on May 10, Secretariat was only a third of the way through the greatest Triple Crown run in history. 

Donald Trump was still a young punk and not a half-senile punk. Disco wasn't a thing yet, thank God. Neither were Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Joe Montana, Wayne Gretzky, LeBron James, Taylor Swift or Snoop Dog.

How long ago was 1973?

These things didn't exist: T-Mobile, Netflix, Atari, Betamax and DraftKings. Also the internet; Al Gore claiming/not claiming to have invented the internet; laptops with access to the internet; social media on the internet; Zoom meetings on the internet.

You know what was still around, in 1973?

The Big Shef.  Pizza Spins. Whistles and Daisies. The Plymouth Barracuda  ... the original Pontiac GTO ... Winston Cup ... Hai Karate aftershave ... Chess King.

Oh, yeah: And the New York Knicks winning an NBA championship.

USA! USA!

 OK, so first off on this glorious star-spangled morning, here is a name you are duty-bound to remember now: Folarin Balogun.

Folarin Balugon is a professional soccer player born to Nigerian parents who'd emigrated to London, but who just happened to be in Brooklyn when Folarin's mother went into labor. So he grew up in London, but, because he was born in the U.S., he was eligible to play internationally for either the United States or England.

He chose the U.S., God bless his red-white-and-blue soul. I don't know how the Brits feel about that, but, seeing how this is the 250th anniversary of us kicking them the hell out of our freshly-minted nation, perhaps it's karma. Sucks for you, limeys.

Anyway, Balogun plays for the United States Men's National Team, and last night he was spectacular in the USMNT's World Cup opener as a co-host of the tournament. Scored two goals in the first half as the U.S. beat Paraguay like a dusty rug, 4-1. This was sort of like the Dallas Cowboys beating someone 42-14 (as if), so, you know, USA! USA!

"Question, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Does this mean the USMNT is going to give us the Miracle on Fake Grass the way the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team gave us the Miracle on Ice in Lake Placid? Or to put it another way, is the USMNT that good, or does Paraguay just blow chunks?"

Well ...

Heck, I don't know. Maybe. Or not. Bit of both, perhaps.

In any case, the USMNT looked damn good last night, after looking sort of "meh" in some of the World Cup run-up matches. They controlled play in the midfield with panache and style. Established star Christian Pulisic dazzled on the wing and set up strikers in the box. And Balogun's goals were both quality -- especially the second, when he fought off a couple of defenders and sent a rocket into the top corner.

So, who knows. Maybe it's destiny, 250th national birthday and all. Or maybe it was just a win over Paraguay.

Next up for the U.S.?

That would be Australia, six days from now in Seattle. I hear the Socceroos are tough. OK, so I didn't, but they could be. 

Anyway ... onward.

A summerish interlude

 Fine June morning here in the Midwest 'burbs, and that mean old baseball ain't playin' fair.

It inscribes a high soft arc against a blue sky gauzed with cirrus-cloud lace, but the kid still can't find it. He bends low at the plate, trying to time his swing. The ball floats in; the kid swings too slow or late or high or low; and the ball passes untouched.

Stee-rike one.

And then: Stee-rike two. 

And then: Stee-rike three.

"Good swing!" some grandpa sings out from the cool morning shade.  But I'm watching the kid, and he's trudging back through the beige dust, hot summerish sunlight pouring down -- and, oh, lord here it comes: my own summerish interlude.

The kid, see, is wearing the same Wildcat Baseball T-shirt and cap I wore, what, 62 years ago now (Sixty-two years! Good lord). The shirt is white with blue trim and a blue Wildcat etched on the front, same as ever. The cap is red-and-blue with a Wildcat patch on the crown, same as ever. The swing-and-three-misses are achingly familiar, too.

And so I stand in the cool shade and look around and it all just washes over me abruptly and unbidden, everything summer was then and is now in the late fall of my years.

Solstice sun beating down. Hieroglyphic imprint of Keds in flour-like dust. The sting of sweat in the eyes; the baseball sailing in; heartbeat jumping as I lunge at it, the bat in my hands less a deadly weapon than a tchotchke in a knickknack shop.

Swing and a miss. Swing and a miss. Swing and a miss. And then it's back out to left field, where the highlight of my Wildcat days was finding a four-leaf clover once.

There may have been worse baseball players born to America's game than me, but you'd hunt for a good long time finding him. Nearsighted, mite-sized and so slow (as the saying goes) it took me two trips to haul ass, I was also blessed with the hand-eye coordination of a tree stump. I might have gotten a hit once in my couple of years playing Wildcat, but after six decades it might have just been a walk. Hard to say.

Know what, though?

Wildcat was summer to me, in a way nothing else was. It remains one of my most vivid memories of a time when you slung your Ted Williams baseball glove over the handlebars of your bike and set off for some ballfield vaguely carved from the grass, the long summer days stretching out before you to infinity.

Summer lasted a year back then. Don't even try convincing me otherwise.

In Wildcat, I played for the Beckerts, our team named for the Cubs' second-baseman. My best friend played for the Fords, as in Whitey Ford. Wildcat was divided into age groups -- Kitty, Kat and Tiger -- and the team names in each all had a different motif.

Real-life baseball players for us. Car names for others. So on a given day you had the Beckerts beating the Fords (or vice-versa) and the Pontiacs beating the Buicks.

 Now?

I don't what they call teams now. I don't know, on this nostalgia-thick morning, if I'm watching the Reds play the Royals or the Skittles vs. the KitKats. All I know is how achingly familiar it all looks.

Same caps and shirts. Same chatter rising from the infield (Hey, battah, hey, battah, hey, battah-battah-battah). Same moms and grandparents and brothers and sisters sitting in their camp chairs under the shade trees, one eye on the diamond while they chatter themselves.

Oh, sure, there are differences.  It's 2026, not 1962, and so Mom periodically pulls out her cellphone to take a call. The kids wear Day-Glo kicks and Day-Glo batting gloves and Day-Glo shades. Some of them are girls, because, heck, why not? 

And now I'm reading back over this, and I'm cringing a little, because it sounds unforgivably mawkish to me. One of those rambling, back-in-my-day essays that go on and on and on and on -- and over which I used to roll my eyes, until I became a back-in-my-day guy myself.

I can't help it, in other words. Can't help how watching a kid strike out hits me around the heart. Can't help looking around and seeing another kid over here in the shade, tossing a baseball into the sky and catching it.

He's wearing a boot on one leg, so he won't be playing today. But he's still geared out in his Wildcat cap and shirt, still communing with the game.

Up the ball goes. Down into the glove it falls. Up, down. Up, down.

 Summer, by heaven. Summer, at full, flood tide.

Comeback spring

 Maybe you walked away when the Knickerbockers of New York went down 27 points at halftime last night ... in Madison Square Garden ... where they'd already broken everyone's heart by losing two nights before.

Now the San Antonio Spurs were crushing them like bugs, and an NBA Finals that looked to be firmly in New York's control was about to be level at two wins apiece. Little wonder that a city that greeted them like Caesars two days before escorted them off the floor with a scattering of boos.

New Yorkers are like that. Win and you're the best EVER; go down 27 at the half and you're a bunch of bums who should never be allowed to darken whatever door it is you've had the privilege of darkening.

Anyway, if you said "I'm out," and switched over to Netflix when the Spurs went up by 29 early in the second half, you were only being rational. The Knicks were done on both sides. They were a Big Apple turnover poppin' fresh from the oven. Who climbs out of a 29-point hole in less than a half, against a team good enough to make the Finals.

"This guy!" cried Jalen Brunson, or OG Anunoby, or Karl-Anthony Towns.

OK, so they didn't.

But they did climb out of that hole, and come all the way back, and then won it when Anunoby -- who had the game of his life in the series of his life -- outleaped Dylan Harper and Devin Vassell to tip in Brunson's miss with 1.2 seconds showing.

Knicks 107, Spurs 106.

No, really. That was the final score, in case you just woke up, checked your sports app of choice and yelped "WHAT?"

Knicks 107, Spurs 106.  You read that right.

It happened because the Spurs, who shot a blistering 60 percent in the first half, couldn't throw it in the East River in the second. Shot 20 percent. Built a brick edifice, as they say. Let the Knicks back into it, and that got the Garden crowd back into it, and then Anunoby got, I don't know, maybe half a finger on the ball for the Tip-In Heard 'Round The World.

Scootch over, Bobby Thomson. You just got some company in the New York Greatest Sports Moments pantheon.

The tip was the 32nd and 33rd points of the night for Anunoby, the former Indiana Hoosier who just may wind up as the Finals MVP. Brunson dropped another 36. Towns had a double-double; Josh Hart had eight boards, six assists and two steals; and now the Knicks lead the series 3-1 and are one trembling step away from their first NBA title in 53 years.

Accounts vary, but some say there were still laces on the basketball then.

And the comeback?

Well, it's just this year's seasonal motif. Or so it seems.

Over in the Stanley Cup Final, for instance, the Vegas Golden Knights and Carolina Hurricanes keep blowing leads left and right, then un-blowing them. In four games so far, the Hurricanes have lost 5-4 after jumping out 2-0; the Golden Knights have jumped out to a 2-0 lead, fallen behind 3-2, tied it at 3-3, and then lost in overtime.

So it's gone. In Game 3, Vegas led 4-0 in the second period, Carolina rallied to tie it 4-4, then Vegas won it on Shea Theodore's goal in the second overtime. And in Game 4 the other night, the 'Canes jumped out to leads of 2-0 and 3-1, watched Vegas tie it at 3-3, then rallied for two more goals in the third period to win 5-3.

It's a comeback spring, everyone. Enjoy.

World Cup feverish

 Asked a guy the other day if he was jacked about the World Cup, and he kind of chuckled a bit and maybe smirked and said "nah," as if I'd asked him if he were jacked about putting the coffee on in the morning.

So there's that.

On the other hand, I talked to another guy who's going to be visiting friends reasonably near one of the game sites, and he's planning to score a ticket and go watch, I don't know, someone play someone. Because, hey, it's the World Cup, and it's in the U.S., so how could he not?

I concluded from this admittedly unscientific study that we're only mildly feverish about the world's most-watched sporting event coming to out shores, and not running a raging temp of 102 degrees or so. More like 99.7, which hardly counts as a fever at all.

Now, I know that's probably inaccurate as all get out. I know there are lots of folks here in America who are completely charged up about the World Cup, which begins in Mexico tomorrow when the home team takes on South Africa in Mexico City and the South Koreans battle the Czechs in Guadalajara. 

This is despite the fact that FIFA, which runs the World Cup, is brazenly trying to siphon every last dollar and peso it can from the lucrative American market.

Its most egregious cash grab was trying to bar spectators from bringing their own water into the Cup sites, on account of that would mean vendors couldn't gouge the paying customers for as many ten-buck bottles or whatever. Imagine that: Making water a strictly for-profit concern. 

That takes some big brass ones, as someone once said, but organizers quickly walked it back after getting massive pushback. Apparently robbing fans at thirst-point in summertime heat was too criminal even for FIFA.

Besides, have you seen those ticket prices?

Now, granted, it's the World Cup, and, granted, you needed to take out a second mortgage to afford tickets to Game 3 of the NBA Finals in Madison Square Garden the other night, too. Big events command big money -- even absurdly outrageous money. The world is a rich man's playground, and thus has it ever been.

And so it will likely not surprise you that (at least on the online ticket outlet I checked) a pair of primo midfield tickets for the U.S.-Paraguay match at Sofi Stadium in L.A. Friday will run you a cool $7,757. Then again, you can snag two in the remotest reaches of one corner for a mere 854 smackers.

Eight-hundred fifty-four!  And with that you get complimentary oxygen and your own sherpa to lug your gear up to Section Himalaya.

Of course, that's for the home team's opening match. Not every first-rounder this week is going to impoverish you that much.

For instance, let's check out that big Haiti-Scotland showdown Saturday in the New England Patriots home digs in Foxborough, Mass. Primo midfield seats were going for just $777 a pair for that one. Heck, even club seats only ran you $1,359 for two.

Bargain.

"Enough griping about ticket prices like some sad old coot," you're saying now. "Tell us who's going to win the gold Oscar-sized statuette."

Well ... probably not Haiti. Or Scotland. Or, sad to say, Team USA, for that matter.

According to folks who know immeasurably more about this than the Blob, Spain is your favorite, followed closely by France. Both teams are apparently loaded with stars from the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, all the major circuits. 

England will be in thick of it, too, it seems, although the Brits always pucker up in the World Cup, having not won it since the Beatles released "Revolver" (i.e., 1966). Somewhere in there will be Brazil, because it's Brazil and it still has a full complement of guys with one name (Casemiro, Vinicius Jr., Rapinha, even Estevao, who's out with an injury).

Also Portugal, because Cristiano Ronaldo still plays for the red-and-green. Also defending champion Argentina, which still has Lionel Messi.

Me?

I'm picking the Dutch. 

Not because they're one of the powerhouses, but because I still remember the Clockwork Orange group from 52 years ago, Johan Cruyff and that bunch. They lost to Gerd Muller, Franz Beckenbauer and West Germany in the World Cup final that year, but, what the hell, maybe their spiritual descendants get it done this time.

Anyway, enjoy, America. And don't forget your water.

Petard, hoisted

(They) sleep with hornets

And they wonder why they wake up stung

-- Matt Nathanson

A friendly judge in Texas has ruled Brendan Sorsby can play football this fall at Texas Tech, and, man, you've never seen such hand-wringing. Nebraska says it will never play the Red Raiders now. Ditto TCU. Ditto, maybe, the Big Ten as an entire conference.

These things will happen when a young man  not only carpetbags from school to school -- Tech will be Sorsby's third stop, after pre-Curt Cignetti Indiana and Cincinnati -- but brings a truckload of baggage with him. And by "baggage," we mean, "Would bet on how long it takes Mikey to eat a bowl of Life cereal if the odds were right."

Sorsby, you see, is a young man with a problem. He apparently has a raging gambling jones that puts old heads in mind of Art Schlichter at Ohio State; according to investigators, Sorsby's placed thousands of bets while playing college football, including at least 40 on his own team while at Indiana. The kid seems hooked but good.

Nonetheless, the friendly judge waived the injunction slapped on him by the NCAA, whose record in court these days ranks up there with Germany's record in world wars (to steal an old Dan Jenkins line). So now a known and fairly notorious gambling addict will be playing quarterback for Tech this season.

Cue the hand-wringing.

"We officially lost our soul," moaned one Big 12 athletic director.

"How is anyone going to trust the outcome of a game again?" fretted TCU coach Sonny Dykes.

"I'm stunned that there would be a question at the court level that this is acceptable," Florida AD Scott Stricklin chimed in.

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips was in full agreement, telling ESPN the ruling suggests a "horrendous pattern" that is "eroding the integrity of our process."

This is where the Blob is compelled to snark this: "The integrity of your WHAT?"

Because, listen, as right as all these folks are, they're also blind as bats. They can't see that Brendan Sorsby, with the help of Friendly Judge, his slipped in a door they themselves left wide open.

Jim Phillips, for instance?

He presides over a conference that just extended its deal with ESPN through 2036. ESPN, in turn, has a sponsorship deal with DraftKings, an online gambling platform. Thus every Saturday afternoon when Wake Forest is playing Clemson or North Carolina is tussling with Georgia Tech, play will occasionally be interrupted by a DraftKings ad.

So how can Phillips -- or anyone in any Power 4 conference, really -- honestly say Brendan Sorsby throwing deep outs for Texas Tech is an Armageddon blow to college football's integrity? Seems to me they themselves crossed that bridge when they climbed in bed with people who were in bed with the gamblers -- or at least the gamblers' facilitators.

Sleep with hornets, wake up stung. Yessir, Matt Nathanson stuck the landing with that lyric.

Or to put it another way: Behold college athletics' own petard, hoisted.

Hail to the Jinx

 They booed the President of the United States rather lustily last night in Madison Square Garden, which only proves New York basketball fans are an astute lot. They know a bad penny when they see one.

And so, in front of Fearless Leader and a bunch of other famous fans or fans-for-now -- Hey, look! There's Derek Jeter! Eli Manning! Timothee Chamelet! -- the hometown Knicks did something they hadn't done since April.

They lost a playoff game.

Fell behind by double digits early, rallied to lead by seven at halftime, couldn't make it stick in the second half against young Victor Wembanyama, young Stephon Castle and the rest of the San Antonio Spurs.

Final score: Spurs 115, Knickerbockers 111.

Snapped a mind-boggling 13-game playoff winning streak for the home team.

Trimmed the Knicks' lead in the NBA Finals to two-games-to-one.

And whooo was there to see it as a homegrown New Yorker and apparent longtime Knicks fan?

Donald John "Stop Asking Me Questions I Don't Like Or I'll Take My Ball And Go Home" Trump. 

Fearless Leader. Defender Of The Faith (But Only One Of Them). President of these United States.

Jinx-In-Chief.

And, yeah, a lot of the Garden crowd that booed him when he showed up on the videoboard probably weren't booing because of that. They were probably booing him because, in deciding to horn in on their party, he made the evening even more inconvenient than it already was going to be, as presidents will do when they decide to attend an event.

However.

However, you know -- you just know -- a goodly portion of the crowd were thinking this:

Oh, great. THIS MFer. We're screwed for sure.

Right?

Child's play

 Meanwhile, in Formula One ...

They ran again Sunday at history-thick Monaco, and guess who won F1's most famously glittering event?

No, not Max Verstappen. The four-time world champion's engine took a dump as soon as the staging lights winked out, leaving him sitting on the grid while everyone else roared away without him. Finally got it going enough to limp around for one lap before retiring the car, extending what has been an ugly season for him.

"OK, so Lando Norris, then? Oscar Piastri?" you're saying now.

Nope. The McLaren jockeys finished fourth (Piastri) and DNF (Norris), not at all what you'd expect from a team that dominated F1 a year ago.

"Lewis Hamilton? Charles Leclerc? One of those Esteban Ocons or Pierre Gaslys?"

No, no, and ... no.

It was Kimi Antonelli in his Mercedes.

Won from the pole. Won his fifth straight Grand Prix, out of six contested so far. Leads Hamilton and his Ferrari by 66 points in the title chase, and teammate George Russell by 67.

Oh, and did we mention he's just 19 years old?

"Oh, come on," you're saying now. "A 19-year-old going all Verstappen/Hamilton/Michael Schumacher on everyone? Really?"

Yes, really. He's 19. Looks even younger. Plucked from the litter at 18 by team principle Toto Wolff and placed in seven-time world champion Hamilton's old seat. Now he's making child's play out of the most technologically demanding racing series in the world instead of, I don't know, getting ready for the prom or something.

There he was again on the podium Sunday, giving everyone a champagne bath as the youngest Monaco winner in history. Even his predecessor -- the previous youngest winner -- saw fit to salute the young Italian.

"That's a lot of wins, buddy, you're catching me up, man!" joked Hamilton, who finished a distant second this time around.

Well ... not yet, Lewis. But give the kid time.

Which he has a lot of, obviously.

 

The right Tempo

 Maybe you missed it in all the other weekend sporting life, but they ran the Belmont Stakes at Saratoga two days ago, and Golden Tempo won again for trainer Cherie DeVaux. That made it two legs out of three in the Triple Crown for Golden Tempo, and two out of three for DeVaux, the first woman trainer ever to do that.

Know what was the best part of it all, though?

Golden Tempo came from nowhere to win it. Again.

In the Kentucky Derby, if you recall, he was dead last at the head of the stretch before getting on his, well, horse and galloping past the entire to field to nip Renegade at the wire. Saturday was an instant replay: Golden Tempo was at the back of the field before hauling ass down the stretch again to beat Commandment by a nose.

Two races; two immortal stretch runs. And now the Blob is wondering, in its usual cattywampus way, what the horsie set could have done to offer Golden Tempo a real challenge. 

OK, so we got the usual buttload of horses here for the Derby. We'll bring in an extra gate to load 'em into. 

Except for you, Golden Tempo. You start across the river in, I don't know, Seymour or someplace.

Or ...

OK, so we got nine horses for the Belmont here at Saratoga, including Golden Tempo and the odds-on favorite Renegade.

Renegade gets to start with all the others. Golden Tempo, we're sending you across the state line to Vermont. You start from Montpelier.

Now that would be a stretch run.

Good craziness

 I don't know where Lord Stanley is in the Great Forever After, but I'm guessing he'd welcome a stiff shot of some well-aged scotch about now. It's a pretty safe bet the tussle for his Cup hasn't gone easy on the old aristocratic nervous system so far, because it hasn't on anyone else's, either.

This after the Vegas Golden Knights took a two-games-to-one lead in the Stanley Cup Final last night, but not before giving everyone on the Strip the vapors. The Knights led 4-0 in the second period after Mitch Marner collected the fastest hat trick in Final history -- three goals in six minutes and 10 seconds, beating Rocket Richard's 69-year-old record by 11 seconds -- only to see Carolina storm back with four straight goals to force overtime.

It only took two OTs for Vegas to finally win 5-4, and of course that wasn't ordinary, either. Shea Theodore got credit for the goal after Carolina's Jordan Martinook inadvertently banked it in off goaltender Brandon Bussi's skate.

Craziness. But not the sort iconoclastic journalist Hunter Thompson used to call "bad craziness"; this was good craziness, as in "Man, that was crazy. Let's see some more."

More than likely, we will, if the first three Final games are any signpost. The last two games have gone to overtime; in each of the first three games, someone has blown a multi-goal lead.

In Game 1, it was Carolina, who led 2-0 early before losing 4-3. In Game 2, it was Vegas, who led 2-0 with 10:20 to play before Carolina scored three goals in less than five minutes, Vegas tied it, and Carolina won 4-3 in overtime.

Last night it was Vegas blowing the lead again, only to save the W on the flukiest of bounces.

Great stuff. Legendary stuff, even. And exactly the stuff everyone was predicting for this Final, which features two teams who, if not mirror images of one another, are as evenly matched as you're likely to see.

And so: More craziness, please. And another shot for Lord Stanley.

Crossing the (state) line

 Well, now they've gone and done it. Crossed the Rubicon, if you will -- or at least almost, kinda-sorta, pretty much something like it.

Yesterday, see, the  board of directors of the Chicago Bears voted for the first time on a new stadium site, and came out in favor of a proposed site on the other side of the state line. And so, welcome to the Chicago Bears of Hammond, everyone. 

Maybe. Kinda-sorta.

I say this because nothing's a done deal until someone touches a pen to the bottom line, and no one has yet done that in this Bears-to-Hammond deal. Until that happens, a vote by the board of directors and a bunch of happy talk from Bears president George McCaskey and CEO Kevin Warren is just play-acting to squeeze the Illinois lege and governor JB Pritzker.

In the meantime, though ...

Well. It does sound like the Bears are serious about this. I'll give 'em that.

"We believe a world-class stadium project in Hammond will transform the region, connecting Northwest Indiana and the South Side of Chicago though the Loop and across the neighborhoods and suburbs stretching north of the city," McCaskey and Warren said in a statement.

All that sounds great, except there's no stadium yet, and no surrounding village of bars and restaurants and high-end hotels, and no special parking next to the stadium for the muckety-mucks. Also no shuttle service for the unwashed masses in their Urlacher and Bobby Douglass jerseys who'll be parking in, I don't know, Munster or Griffith perhaps.

(For the low, low price of 30 bucks a head, no doubt.)

Anyway, with the Illinois lege gone until fall, and having again futzed away the spring session without moving on this, Indiana looks like it's won this. That it's done so because our own Guv, Mike Braun, promised the Bears everything but streets paved in taxpayer gold is just the way this sort of bidness gets done, disgusting as that is.

The Blob's position on this is if the Bears want a new stadium, the Bears should pay for it. They're an anchor franchise in the most lucrative sporting conglomerate in America, so it's not like they haven't got the money. Freeloading off the taxpayers for a development study after study has shown has limited long-term economic impact should be strictly verboten.

Yes, and pigs should be able to fly, do barrel-rolls and land at O'Hare on Sunday afternoons. Believe me, I get that.

So here comes Mike Braun with an armload of tax breaks and other incentives, and here are the Bears following established tradition -- i.e., he who fleeces Joe Taxpayer hardest gets the cheese. Lucrative sports franchises have been playing off one municipality against another since the Dodgers and Giants lit out for California 70 years ago. They call it leveraging; the rest of us just call it what it is, which is blackmail.

So there's plenty of precedent. And for those who think it's beyond weird that the Bears would abandon Chicago for some godforsaken patch of land in, ugh, Indiana ... well, New York lost the Jets and football Giants to a godforsaken patch of land in New Jersey decades ago. 

The Commanders play in Maryland, not Washington. The 49ers play in Santa Clara, not San Francisco. And so on.

The Chicago Bears playing in Hammond, Indiana?

Oh, hell. Why not?

The First Fan. No, really.

 The President of the United States has accepted an invite to attend Game 3 of the NBA Finals in New York, and, listen, the Blob is fine with that. Anything that takes Fearless Leader away from policy decisions is aces high with me.

And, OK, so that was snarky. This, however, is not: At least F.L. is legit.

He's a New Yorker, for one thing, and as such has lived and (mostly) died with the Knicks for a long time. According to NBA commish Adam Nosferatu Silver, Fearless Leader used to regularly attend the NBA Draft in Madison Square Garden, and once even had a cameo in an NBA promotional video.

So, yeah. He's a Knicks fan with receipts, as the current lingo goes.

Not gonna lie. I find that refreshing.

I find it refreshing because when politicians and legislators make forays into Sportsball World, it generally ends poorly. John Kerry, when he was running for president in 2004, famously said "How about those Buckeyes?" in an Ohio-Michigan border enclave that turned out to be heavily pro-Wolverines. Hillary Clinton, a lifelong Cubs fan, donned a Yankees cap when she was running for office in New York. Numerous other examples exist.

Donald John "Do What We Say Or We'll Bomb You Back To The Stone Age" Trump is not one of them, so good on him. What's semi-hilarious about that, though, is it puts him in the same company with his No. 1 hate-fetish Barack Obama, which surely must grind his gears during his nightly lunacy fits.

Obama, see, is a Chicagoan to the bone, and a  full-blooded White Sox fan. Never has pretended to be anything but. Never tried to curry favor with the northsiders by claiming to be a Cubs fan, too.

Just like Fearless Leader -- whose unhealthy obsession with Obama is well-documented, and springs from the fact Obama is, well, smarter, more grounded and just generally a better human being.

Also, Obama once gently needled F.L. at the correspondents dinner. Opened a festering wound in F.L.'s Hindenburg ego that apparently never has healed.

Anyway, kudos to the guy for being an actual First Fan. They're in tall cotton right now, Knicks fans. Their guys went out to San Antonio and stole Game 1 of the Finals, 105-95, closing out the game with an 11-0 run.

Or as Fearless Leader might put it: Greatest game EVER. You can't believe how great it was. Very, very great.

Cruds alert!*

 (*Which does NOT include my Pittsburgh Pirates, who are four games above the waterline and doing just fine, thank you, sailing along in second place in the NL Central. So you can all just stand down -- or, in other words, quit yer bitchin'.)

My wife is always after me to Blob something about her beloved Boston Red Sox, and I always say no one cares about her stupid Red Sox, which is perhaps uncharitable of me but mostly true. However ...

However, attention must now be paid.

Didja see who's in last place by three games in the AL East, and, on June 3, has the third-worst record in all of the American League?

The Boston Red Sox!

Or, given their current state of deterioration, the Boston Rolled Sox.

The Rolled Sox, generally accustomed to lording it over the East with their evil twins the New York Yankees, are currently down to Garrett Crochet, Roman Anthony and not much else. They're like the mansion where the town robber baron used to live sitting empty and slowly falling apart because the town robber baron died and left the family fortune to his doofus son.

The doofus son, or his real-life incarnation, decided the remedy was to fire manager Alex Cora before the season was a month old -- a move my wife (Julie) continues to say was stupid, stupid, stupid. She has a point, because, as with most such moves, it hasn't solved the problem.

 The Rolled Sox remain deeply fragrant, on account of they're just not a very good baseball team. They could bring back Terry Francona or summon Joe Cronin from the grave,  which they didn't, and they'd still not be a very good baseball team.

On the other hand, their partner-in-footwear might actually be one, believe it or not.

That would be the Chicago What Sox, who are almost good enough to be the White Sox again. The Pale Hose are three games over .500 and sitting comfortably in second in the AL Central, just two-and-a-half games behind division leader Cleveland. Minnesota is another three-and-a-half games back.

"But what about the Colorado Rockheads, Mr. Blob?" you're saying now. "They're still the Rockheads, right?'

Yes, they are. But even the Rockheads are better than last year, when they were basically a church softball team.

Not only are they not the worst team in baseball -- that would be the California Bane-gels, wallowing around at 23-39 as of this morning -- they're not even the worst team in the NL West. At 24-38, they're a half-game out of the cellar, which for now is occupied by the San Francisco Compliants, who are 23-38.

This may be small potatoes in some precincts. But for the Rockheads, it's a quantum leap forward; last year on this day, after all, they were 11-50. So even they would be burying their 2025 selves.

As for the Rolled Sox ...

Well, there's always Garrett Crochet. And Roman Anthony. And, you know, a hotdog and a beer.

A (bed)timely proclamation

 Look, I don't care if you think the mayor of New York is going turn the Big Apple into Tehran or outlaw hotdogs at Yankee Stadium. Just keep your Islamophobia and MDS (Mamdani Derangement Syndrome) down there in Mom's basement for a bit, OK?

Because That Muslim Guy, Hizzoner Zohran Mamdani, just demonstrated he knows his city as well as anyone, and red-lined the cuteness meter at the same time.

With the hometown Knicks about to play in the NBA Finals for the first time in 27 years, see, he's declared a moratorium on bedtimes.

Yes, that's right, America. Yesterday, surrounded by a bunch of young New Yorkers, he signed an "executive order" repealing kids' bedtimes for the duration of the Finals. Then the kids sealed the deal by putting their handprints on the EO.

WHEREAS, bedtimes should not impede the ability of New York's Cutest to cheer for the Knicks and watch every second of this historic Championship series ... the proclamation read.

"As Mayor, you're forced to make many difficult decisions," Mamdani posted on X. "This was not one of them."

Waiting now for some MDS-afflicted fruit loop to condemn Hizzoner  for -- let's see -- "interfering in parental decisions" and "government overreach." 'Cause you know it's comin'.

Stanley!

 The Stanley Cup Final becomes tonight down in North Carolina, and if you think that sounds odd you are clearly a grumblin' geezer of the liver-spotted fist-shaking sort. These are modern times, Grandpa. The Montreal Canadiens don't live here anymore.

(Although, by God, they might have. Got to the conference finals this time around, only to be erased in five games by the rampaging Carolina Hurricanes. Ah, well. Light a candle to the memory of Yvan Cournoyer, and let's move on.)

Anyway, it's the Hurricanes against the Las Vegas Golden Knights in the Final, which means Lord Stanley is going to be paraded down either Dale Earnhardt Way or the Strip when the final horn sounds. Again, this is convergence of the disharmonic sort of the grumblin' geezers, but the world keeps on turnin'. And it's not like either the 'Canes or the Golden Knights don't have at least some hockey lineage upon which to draw.

The 'Canes, after all, started life as the New England/Hartford Whalers of the WHA, which means they've been around for 54 years. And the Knights have already won one Stanley Cup (in 2023) and played in the Final another time (in their inaugural season of 2016-17). So they're bonafide, as Holly Hunter liked to say in "O Brother Where Art Thou."

The Hurricanes, too, although they haven't graced the Final since 2006, when they beat Edmonton to win the Cup. They've been a, well, hurricane this time around, however, blowing through the Eastern Conference playoffs and, from the second period of Game 1 on, outscoring the Canadiens in the conference finals 153-77. 

They score, they smother opponents in their own end, and goaltender Frederik Andersen has been a locked door between the pipes, with a miniscule 1.44 goals-against in the playoffs. So they've got that going for them.

And Vegas?

All the Golden Knights did was sweep the best team in the regular season, the Colorado Avalanche, in the conference finals. They score, they smother opponents in their own end (giving up just seven goals to the league's most potent offense in the conference finals), and their goalie, Carter Hart, ain't half bad, either.

So, there you have it: Two teams that do everything well squaring off for Stanley. May the best non-traditional hockey town win.

Preferably in seven games. Because the best of all playoffs deserves it.

The upside-down

 Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White did a little hollering during a timeout the other night, and now it's all over the Great Social Media Crazysphere that she's about to be fired.

As with everything in the GSMC, you can take that with a grain of salt. Or less.

What's instructive, however, is why it's all over the GSMC that White's about to be fired.

It's because the person she was mostly yelling at was Caitlin Clark.

Some goober in the stands caught it on video, because there's always a goober in the stands catching stuff on video. And now there's this viral clip of White speaking a trifle, well, passionately to Clark, after which Clark stands up, takes a swig out of a water bottle and shakes her head in disgust.

Now, none of us are as fluent in body language as we like to pretend we are. But Clark's body language seemed to suggest her reaction to being, well, coached, was this: You're full of (bleep), Coach.

Which brings us to the Superstar Effect, and how it tends to turn upside-down the way sports hierarchies are supposed to work.

Because if Caitlin Clark were just another player -- say, some anonymous kid on some middle school team -- her hindparts would have been on the bench for the foreseeable future, and Coach would have been carried through the streets in triumph for it. Because no one has any patience for attitude cases, and everything about the way Clark reacted screamed attitude case.

But what happened?

The Superstar Effect kicked in. And suddenly it was Caitlin Clark, Superstar, who was the victim of a mean, incompetent bumbler who clearly shouldn't have the privilege of  continuing as Clark's coach.

White's mistake was failing to recognize that. Her mistake was assuming she could coach Caitlin Clark the way she's coached other players -- by getting in her face when necessary -- without understanding she was CAITLIN CLARK. Savior of the WNBA, unrivaled mover of merch and tickets, all that.

So White hollered at her (Guard somebody!, seemed to be the gist), and then benched her in favor of Raven Johnson, a better defensive player. It was the correct move, given that the Fever was playing like ten pounds of you-know-what in a five-pound bag and getting their asses handed to them on the defensive end. And if Clark were merely that callow middle-schooler, and not, you know, CAITLIN CLARK, no one would have said a thing.

But she is Caitlin Clark. And they did.

On every other level of sport, see, Coach is the clear-cut winner in disputes with a player -- even a star player. In the upside-down of the professional level, however, it's the exact opposite. When Coach takes on a star player, Coach is going to take the "L" every time. 

RIP, in other words. As in, "rest in priorities."

In a sense, then, this is not really Clark's fault. She didn't invent the hierarchy; she's merely its latest beneficiary. Against all those kids and grownups in their Fever No. 22 jerseys, White has no chance in the court of public opinion. She is, after all, merely a coach, and thus an eminently replaceable part.

Is Caitlin Clark a wonderful basketball player, with otherworldly court vision and a knack for getting the ball in the basket? Indeed. Does she also turn the ball over too much, miss more of those logo threes than she makes, and become a liability when the Fever's on the defensive end?

Also indeed.

 But, again, none of that matters, here in the upside-down. And so here comes all this interwhatsis chatter that White should be fired, with even analysts who should know better weighing in.

One of them, the other day, said White was "the wrong coach for Caitlin Clark." 

Know what's most revealing about that?

No one wondered if perhaps Clark was the wrong player for Stephanie White.