A pearl of wisdom

 The Little League World Series is happening in Williamsport, Pa., right now, yesterday the Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Guardians were there to sign autographs and interact with their surrogate younger selves prior to playing a game there this weekend. 

This is always one of my favorite parts of the LLWS, because the big leaguers get to reminisce like they're 70-year-olds instead of 20-or-30-somethings, and also because of the advice they pass on to the Little Leaguers. Mostly it's just mundane stuff like "have fun" and "try your hardest", but occasionally there's a gem that's truly inspired.

(And, no, not "Avoid the clap," which is what Tom Hanks' drunken manager Jimmy Dugan wrote on a kid's baseball in "A League Of Their Own.")

In this case it was Guardians' pitcher Foster Griffin who came up with the pearl of wisdom. When asked what advice he'd give the Little Leaguers, he replied "Don't dig holes in the outfield and have fun."

Don't dig holes in the outfield! Well, who among us can't relate to THAT?

I certainly can because I spent a lot of time in the outfield in my tragic youth baseball days. More accurately, I spent a lot of time in left field, where I was least likely to turn routine fly balls into triples. That's because most of the kids I played with were right-handed, and at that age none of them could pull the ball to save their lives.

So left field was where I went to contemplate life and look for four-leaf clovers. I suppose if I'd gotten bored enough, I might have dug a hole or two out there, but frankly it never occurred to me. This makes me wonder if Foster Griffin ever dug a hole or two in the outfield, because that piece of advice seemed oddly specific.

I also wish there'd been at least one wisenheimer Little Leaguer who would have replied to Griffin's advice thusly: "But if I can't dig holes in the outfield, how am I supposed to have FUN?"

Beauty.

Not takin' it

 I don't know this Matt Calkins out there in the state o' Washington, but even sports columnists have their principles. And so I stand with Brother Calkins as a fellow ink-stained wretch who knows all about the indignities that come with the job.

And I'm not just talking about the hot dogs at Michigan Stadium.

I'm talking about getting a column spiked because the bosses didn't agree with it, which is what happened to sports columnist Calkins recently at the Seattle Times. It's why he's no longer a sports columnist with the Seattle Times after 11 years, because he resigned over it. Decided he wasn't takin' it, and good on him.

 The column in question was about the whole Sophie Cunningham/transgender athletes flap, and Calkins did what any good columnist does: He localized it. Went to an Indiana Fever-Seattle Storm game and sought out a young woman holding a sign in support of Cunningham. Interviewed her. Found out she was a high school athlete who wasn't crazy about the idea of competing against "biological males." Listened to her story and to another female athlete's story. 

Then he wrote about it, taking the position that keeping girls and boys sports separate doesn't automatically make you transphobic. It was a reasonable and consistent viewpoint for the right-leaning Calkins, even if he was addressing a largely fictitious issue ginned up by folks who do have a bug up their keisters about transgenders.

(In this former sports columnist's opinion)

Nonetheless, Calkins sought out a story and told it. Did his job, in other words.

But then the bosses got involved.

Held the column. Decided to talk it over with the other bosses. Concluded they wouldn't run it because Calkins hadn't told his editors about it beforehand.

Which was lamer than Dennis Weaver in "Gunsmoke."

It is, in fact, total BS in the Blob's informed opinion, and the worst part is the capos at the Times likely knew it when they put it out there. They needed a cover story, and that's the cover story they're stickin' to.

Here's the deal: I don't know how it works out in Seattle, but I rarely if ever told my sports editor beforehand what I was writing about from a live event. This was because it was, well, a live event, and I didn't know what was going to happen. And so never once did my sports editor say, "Well, you didn't tell me yesterday what you were writing about from this live event today, so we're not gonna run your column."

Unlike the dopes in Seattle, see, my sports editor understood how it all works.

 Now, it's true that what Calkins wrote wasn't expressly about the live event in this case. But it did become news when one of the Storm's minority owners berated one of the girls he interviewed. Therefore the column, and the topic, were relevant -- even if the bosses didn't like the opinion Calkins expressed about it.

Which certainly appears to be the case here. And which certainly says nothing good about the chuckleheads atop the masthead at the Times, whose cover story no one buys and who now stand accused of letting their own editorial biases bleed over to the news side.

Dumb and dumber. Because if  the bosses didn't agree with what Calkins wrote, there was an easy out: Run it on the oped page, which is where newspapers print columns that offer a different viewpoint than their own. Why just kill it and make yourselves look like hypocrites or worse?

Now there's a question a good columnist might ask.

Nightmare scenario*

 (*Largely imaginary, but still)

Caught a brief snippet on NPR the other day about this weekend's upcoming Freedom 250 IndyCar event on the streets of D.C., and how curators of the various historic sites Alex Palou 'n' them will be hotrodding past are concerned the vibration might damage some of the nation's most treasured art and museum exhibits.

"There's a reason the speed limit in these areas is 25 mph," the spokesperson unearthed by NPR said, adding that race cars ripping through at seven times that speed therefore are a legitimate concern. It was all very NPR-ish, which is to say it addressed an issue I had never considered or was even aware was an issue.

Frankly, I still don't think it's much of one. But the curators who think it is are far more qualified to determine that than some dopey sports lunkhead, so the question remains: What if race cars tearing around at 180 mph isn't good for our national treasures?

The course, after all, hits a whole pile of highlights. After a long run down Pennsylvania Ave., it makes a hard left past the National Archives, then another hard left past the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, then a hard right past the National Gallery of Art. A few blocks later it makes another hard left past the Air and Space Museum, then angles past the National Museum of the American Indian.

And so a nightmare scenario immediately  blooms in the nightmare-scenario-obssessed brain of the aforementioned dopey sports lunkhead ...

Air and Space Museum Guy (after the vibration sends Freedom 7 and the Spirit of St. Louis crashing to the floor): Welp, there goes John Glenn and Charles Lindbergh! Thanks a lot, Pato!

Museum of Natural History Guy: Four laps and our dinosaur skeleton is a pile of bones! Terrific! Imma make Ericsson and Rosenqvist come in here and put it back together piece by piece! And they'd better get it right!

National Gallery of Art Guy: Son of a BITCH! The Van Gogh and Da Vinci are RUINED! And our van Eyck looks like a second-grader's finger-painting now! Damn you, Scott Dixon!

And last but not least:

National Museum of the American Indian Guy: Figures.

History reverberates. Part Deux.

 (Another detour from Sportsball World, albeit a brief one. Adjust your reading habits accordingly.)

Saw where January 6 rioter/professional provocateur/all-around chum bucket Jake Lang took is self-styled "Christian crusade" into Deaborn, Mich., and achieved what he set out to achieve. Insulted Muslims, got the citizenry stirred up and got himself arrested. All part of the plan, my man.

Anyway, it reminded me of something, as these charades tend to do. I addressed it with a post on Facethingy this morning that I will re-post here.

Goes like this: 

1977: Nazis go to court in attempt to stage a march in Skokie, Ill., a village with a significant Jewish community.

2026: Provocateur and general nuisance Jake Lang leads a self-styled "Christian crusade" into Deaborn, Mich., a city with a significant Muslim community.

Same hate. Same agenda. Different day.

History reverberates. All the time, and forever.

Disrespect, or something

 Look, I know what preseason college football polls are, at least most of the time. Reality is the disease and they're the cure.

I would say they're not worth the paper they're written on, except no one writes them on paper anymore. Still, the essential truth remains: No one's played a game yet; no one, especially in these days of almost yearly roster turnover, knows how the new pieces are going to fit with the old ones; no one knows if the schedule that looked like Cream Cheese City in August will morph into an absolute grind by October.

After all, no one in South Bend saw Northern Illinois coming a couple of years ago. Ditto Appalachian State in Ann Arbor a decade or so before that.

However ...

However, I'm looking at the Associated Press preseason poll this morning, and what I'm seeing is Curt Cignetti crafting another chip for his Indiana football team's shoulders.

This is because Indiana ran the table last year on its way to an astounding national title, becoming the first college football team ever to go 16-0. Along the way, the Hoosiers beat Oregon twice, once by 10 in Eugene and then by 36 in the CFP semis. And they beat Ohio State 13-10 in the Big Ten championship game. 

And now Ohio State is your preseason No. 1, according to the AP. And Oregon is No. 2.

Indiana?

Your undefeated defending national champs came in at No. 6.

Presumably this is because Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza is gone, along with a few other significant pieces from the national champs. It does not, however, take into account that several other significant pieces return, or that the Hoosiers will have another A-lister at quarterback in Josh Hoover. Or that Indiana loaded up again on transfers and top-shelf recruits.

And yet ...

And yet, the AP judges the Hoosiers the sixth best team in the country, and only the third best in their own conference. Ahead of them are the Buckeyes, the Ducks, Georgia, Notre Dame and Texas.

Now, it's true Ohio State returns just about every key piece from the Buckeyes' 12-2 team from a year ago, and added its usual haul of stud recruits. And Oregon returns quarterback Dante Moore and a pile of other notables from its CFP semifinal team. And Georgia's always gonna be Georgia.

But Notre Dame lost the engine of its offense in premier running backs Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price. And, yes, Arch Manning returns for Texas, although the Longhorns finished fifth in the SEC and went 10-3 overall. So you can see how Coach Cig might use that to stoke a few internal fires.

See? They STILL don't respect us. They still think we JUST GOT LUCKY. They still think we're gonna go back to being, you know, Indiana, nothing but the bunch of losers we've always been. 

And so on.

Of course, as always with these matters, a lot of that will be so much stuff and feathers. Indiana's No. 6 preseason ranking is the highest in the program's 139-year history, and most college football gurus predict the Hoosiers will at least reach the CFP quarterfinals. Which perhaps means the disrespect card is not the ace Cignetti will proclaim it to be.

On some level, Cignetti's players no doubt will understand this. But that level will be somewhere in the general vicinity of the sub-basement.

Up top, they'll be wearing that aforementioned chip like a badge of honor. And Coach will quietly be thanking the Associated Press for the woodworking help.

What baseball does

 Maybe you had a better weekend than Joshua Baez of the St. Louis Cardinals, but I doubt it. All he did was take on baseball's entire ringing history and wrestle it to the ground.

Here's what Baez, a rookie call-up to the bigs, did on Saturday in Chicago:

He hit the first major-league pitch he ever saw almost clean out of Wrigley Field. Four-hundred forty-nine feet to dead center.

In his next at bat in the third inning, he went yard to the bleachers in left.

In his third at-bat in the sixth, just to show he played no favorites, he spanked a souvenir to right.

Three at-bats. Three home runs. Five RBI in his first MLB game, an 8-4 win for the Cards.

Also a W over history in our venerable American game, which is its history.

According to the Baseball Almanac, no one in the history of the National League -- which encompasses 22,800 other players from that day to this, according to the Almanac -- ever did what Joshua Baez did on Aug. 15, 2026. And that history goes all the way back to April 22, 1876.

Think about that for a moment.

On April 22, 1876, Ulysses S. Grant was still President of the United States.

George Armstrong Custer was still two months away from getting his at the Little Bighorn.

Cy Young was 9 years old. Henry Ford was 12. Teddy Roosevelt was 17. And Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Knute Rockne and Jim Thorpe had yet to be born.

All of that is relevant again because of what Joshua Baez did Saturday.  

This is what baseball does, in a way none of our other games can match with the possible exception of college football. And even college football, as played by Princeton and Rutgers back in 1869, resembles the modern game the way a Roman chariot resembles an F1 Ferrari.

Baseball, however, survives down the decades mostly intact. The pitcher pitches; the batter swings. Three strikes and you're out. Four balls and take your base. Three outs and your inning is over. From the pitcher's mound to homeplate is 60 feet, 6 inches.

All true in 1876. All still true today.

In his grand soliloquy in that grand valentine to baseball, "Field of Dreams," James Earl Jones' character declares that America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers, but baseball has marked the time. This is not just sentimental fluff. It is as true as true gets.

The game your grandfather watched -- even your great or great-great grandfather, depending on your age -- is at its essence the game you watch today. He yelled at the nearsighted ump who just judged an obvious strike a ball; you yell at the ump for the same reason, and probably use the same words. You both wonder, decades apart, why your crummy centerfielder can't hit the cutoff man. You both wonder, decades apart, why your favorite team is always so bleepity-bleep awful.

And if you watch enough games?

You both eventually see something you've never seen before.

Like, say, Joshua Baez's Saturday in Wrigley Field. Like that.

What's in a number?

 The polls are closed and the votes tallied, and the runaway winner of a new Blob feature I just made up -- "Numbskull of the Week" -- is Jayden Daniels of the Washington Commanders. Also Jayden Daniels' numbskull attorney, Adam Kenner, who this week sent a cease-and-desist letter to Daniels' alma mater, LSU.

The letter warned LSU not to engage in "any further use, display, publication, promotion commercialization or other exploitation of Mr. Daniels' NIL in any manner or medium."

And why did Daniels' mouthpiece send that letter?

Because a new LSU player -- defensive back DJ Pickett -- is wearing Daniels' old No. 5.

You think I'm joking? I'm not joking.

"But ... but ..." you're saying.

I know. I know.

You're wondering, as is most of America, how assigning another player the number of a guy who's been gone from LSU for three years constitutes "promotion" of Daniels' Name, Image and Likeness. Or how it constitutes "commercialization." Or how it constitutes -- good Lord in heaven -- "exploitation."

Talk about stretching those boundaries of imagination in the old "Twilight Zone" intro. 

Personally, I think DJ Pickett should hire an attorney and demand Daniels cease and desist exploiting his NIL. It would be equally laughable.

And, oh, how the internet trolls are laughing.

Best of the burns was delivered by the New York Mets, of all people. After beating the Washington Nationals 4-1 the other night, the official Mets social media account tweeted this: "Stopped at four out of respect for Jayden Daniels."

Boom!

And as for me?

Well, I'm just thinking of all the ways this numbskullery could boomerang on Daniels and Co. ...

Dear Mr. Kenner:

Please inform your client he must cease and desist wearing No. 5 or we will begin legal proceedings.

Signed,

The estate of  Joe DiMaggio

(Also the estate of Paul Hornung)

(Also the estate of Brooks Robinson)

(Also Johnny Bench, George Brett, Albert Pujols, Jason Kidd, etc., etc.)

Boom again.

A grand snafu

 Some days the Blob plays the motorsports loyalist, and thinks IndyCar should get more attention than it does outside Memorial Day weekend in Indianapolis. And, some days it doesn't.

Today is one of those days.

This after IndyCar showed up in Markham, Ontario, for the first time, and fans eager to see Alex Palou and the boys wheel it in person got ... nothing.

It seems the Markham event promoters, Green Savoree Racing Promotions, didn't have  a track for them to run on.

Somehow, on its big IndyCar debut weekend, the Markham street course for the Ontario Honda Dealerships race wasn't ready for Friday's scheduled practice session. Let me say that again: They didn't have the course finished ON THE FIRST DAY OF RACE WEEKEND.

Good lord. What's next, clowns on unicycles?

Now, granted, this wasn't IndyCar's doing, but it was an IndyCar event, so it caught some of the residual embarrassment. Can you imagine NASCAR showing up for a Cup weekend and being told, um, sorry, guys, the track isn't quiiiiite up to snuff yet? Or F1 showing up at, say, Zandvoort for the Dutch Grand Prix and race officials saying, "Wait, you mean that's THIS weekend?"?

Nope. Neither can I.

Worse yet, fans who showed up for Friday's non-practice weren't told what was going on, according to the Indianapolis Star. So they sat there staring at an empty track as Green Savoree stayed mum about the postponement until after the race teams started re-loading their cars on the transporters and drivers left the premises.

Imagine the chit-chat among the fans at that point.

Fan: Hey ... isn't that Scott Dixon getting in that Honda CRV? Where's he going?

Other Fan: Look! Palou just beat him out the gate in HIS Honda CRV! And there goes Newgarden in a custom Vette, and Pato in another custom Vette!

All The Other Fans: The hell is going on?

As every driver, crew chief, and wrench jockey in the paddock no doubt wondered, too.

Ay-yi-yi. Yi-yi.

Names and games

 The chairman of the Chicago Bears met the media yesterday and made the most obvious Chicago announcement ever, aside from declaring Walter Payton the greatest running back of all time, and none of that Jim Brown/Barry Sanders noise.

He announced the Chicago Bears would remain the Chicago Bears.

"We will be the Chicago Bears whether we're in Arlington (Heights, Illinois) or whether we're in Hammond," George H. McCaskey said.

Well, duh. As if anyone actually thought they'd be the Hammond Bears, or that anyone would ever call them that if they were.

(Of course, the McCaskeys could always completely befuddle everyone and revert to the Bears' original name, which was the Decatur Staleys. The Decatur Staleys! Put Caleb Williams in a leather helmet, install the single wing and break out the flying wedge. Beauty.)

Anyway, that the was the no-news portion of the program. The other portion is what McCaskey devoutly wishes was no news, which is that the Bears are still leaning toward an Indiana zip code.

"Our focus is on Hammond, that's where we're advancing our efforts and that's where the bulk of our time, attention and resources are being devoted," he said.

To which chronic skeptics like the Blob continue to say: Yeah, OK.

Because, listen, even after all this time -- and even after Indiana's governor, the spectacularly cotton-headed Mike Braun, promised the McCaskeys everything but Fort Wayne and Evansville as throw-ins on the deal -- stubborn suspicions remain. Chief among them is that all this public devotion to Hammond is just a ploy to crowbar more concessions from Illinois on the Arlington Heights site.

So far, admittedly, Illinois ain't playin'. McCaskey said Thursday the Bears had had minimal contact with state officials, leaving the impression the Arlington Heights option is deader than ... well, the Decatur Staleys. But then he tossed out that "whether we're in Arlington or whether we're in Hammond" line, leaving the impression the Illinois option may NOT be dead yet, whether it's feeling much better or not.*

(* -- Gratuitous "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" reference)

So on the speculation goes, at least for us skeptics. Maybe the Bears really will be playing in Hammond in an (ugh) roofed stadium. Maybe the McCaskeys will strike an 11th-hour deal with the Illinois contingent. Or maybe they'll relocate to, I don't know, Munich or someplace, and call themselves the Munich Fightin' Knockwursts.

The Fightin' Knockwursts! Now there's a name for you.

Shady doin's

 So now the federal government owns the Los Angeles Lake--

I'm sorry, what?

You're saying that's not true?

OK, then, so Donald John "Paws In Every Pie" Trump, president of these United States, owns the Los Angeles Lake--

Excuse me?

You're saying that's not true, either? 

OK, O-kay. I'll take off my tinfoil hat. But as L.A. Times columnist Bill Plaschke writes, something kinda stinks here, and for once it ain't the Prez's Underoos.

This after Lakers owner Mark Walter reportedly sold the Lakers this week for a record $12.5 billion, less than 14 months after buying them. The new owners are Bob Iger, former CEO of Disney, and Josh Kushner, a venture capitalist who recently tried to buy a minority stake in the World Cup until widespread condemnation caused FIFA head Gianni Infantino to back out of the deal.

"Kushner ... Kushner," you're saying now, a bit puckishly. "No, where have I heard that name before?"

To which the Blob replies: Yes, OK, he's the brother of Trump's son-in-law, real estate dude and alleged slumlord Jared Kushner.

This of course raises some eyebrows, and not just Plaschke's. Jared Kushner, after all, has swung some ethically shady deals since his ethically shady father-in-law became president. This includes playing footsie with the Saudis while kinda-sorta serving as an extra-legal representative of daddy-in-law's administration.

Now, that in itself doesn't mean anything. However ...

However, the guy who just abruptly sold the Lakers to Iger and Jared's brother is being investigated for some suspicious bookkeeping by the federal government. Donald Trump's federal government.

"Oh, come on," you're saying now. "You're implying that Trump's feds put the arm on Mark Walter so he'd sell the Lakers to Trump's son-in-law's brother? Like this is some kind of 'Godfather' make-him-an-offer-he-can't-refuse shenanigan?"

Of course I'm not implying that. Besides, Trump says he's got nothing to do with any of this, and whose word is more golden than Trump's?

All I'm saying is, it is a trifle weird, given that Walter became the official owner of the Lakers only last October, when he was unanimously approved by the league. And now he's selling them? And, shall we say, rather abruptly? Who does that, unless ...

But, no. I will not be That Guy. I will not put the tinfoil hat back on and start babbling about chemtrails and vaccines causing autism, like the Prez's batshite director of Health and Human Services (and the Prez himself).

Although that tinfoil hat looks mighty fine, if you tilt it just-so. Mighty fine.

That Cunningham woman, Part Deux

 Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White came out swingin' last night before her team's game against the New York Liberty, and applause, applause. At some point money talks and the bullshite walks, and she sent it packin'.

Said the "hate, the fear-mongering, the divisiveness, the stuff that's trying to hijack our league will not win." Said there were a bunch of keyboard culture warriors out there trotting out "narratives that simply don't exist." Corrected one of those narratives, which is that she failed to have Sophie Cunningham's back after DiJonai Carrington of the Chicago Sky clotheslined Cunningham the other night.

Every word she spoke was true. Every word she spoke said "Enough, already." Especially the part where she said she'd stick by her team, and everyone else could go to hell.

This presumably includes Indiana's meddlesome lieutenant governor, Micah Beckwith, our First Culture Warrior and general all-around blowhole. Beckwith said White should be fired either for not standing up for Cunningham, or for not buying into the keyboard warriors' bullshite narrative about poor white girls being mugged by a bunch of jealous black lesbians. 

The Blob's reaction is pretty much White's. And also that the First Culture Warrior should stay in his lane, wherever in the wilds of the extremist right that is these days.

 Because, see, the last I looked, the Fever were 21-12 and had won nine of their last 12 games, despite White's horrible coaching and failure to stand up for her players. That's the fourth-best record in the league. And, oh, yeah: Last night, in a stark display of just how much White has lost her locker room (according to the keyboard warriors),  the Fever blasted the New York Liberty by 14, 106-92.

Led by as much as 21 at one point. Made 16-of-25 threes, the second-highest 3-point percentage in WNBA history.

"No way we were losing this game," declared Caitlin Clark, who put up 22 points and 10 assists, despite her PERFECTLY OBVIOUS disdain for White (according to the keyboard warriors).

And Cunningham, whose back White DEFINITELY DOES NOT HAVE (again, according to the keyboard warriors)?

She chipped in 12 points off the bench and said, as did White, that the reason White merely called Carrington's Flagrant 2 a hard foul was because she'd only seen the play in real time at the time she was asked about it.

"She didn't see the (video) clip ... and that's OK," Cunningham said.

And as for the W against the Liberty ...

"We did it for Steph, and we did it for everyone in the locker room," she said.

Hey, bullshite. There's the door.

Today in awesome cheating

 Golf is the gentleman's game, or so we've been told, the only sport other than playground hoops where you call your own fouls and take your punishment like a man (or woman) -- even when the infraction for which you're being penalized looks as silly as kittens on laughing gas to those of us outside the golfing culture.

(I refer here, as I always do, to the time Dustin Johnson was penalized two strokes for grounding his club in a bunker during the U.S. Open, even though the bunker resembled a bunker the way I resemble, say, Jason Momoa. Spectators were actually standing in it, for crying out loud.)

Anyway, cheating in this gentleman's -- or gentlewoman's -- game therefore is regarded as the lowest form of human behavior, punishable by forfeiture of A) your brand-new Callaway driver with the built-in radar function; and B) your entire wardrobe of John Daly Loudmouth golfwear. (The latter being especially cruel.)

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, since golf is such a gentleman/gentlewoman's game, it makes it that much more hilarious when someone cheats as extravagantly as Zach Holland did recently.

Holland, a 2-handicap, was playing in a membership event at WingHaven Golf Club in O'Fallon, Mo., when he decided to fake a hole-in-one. He did via an elaborate scheme that included -- not even kidding -- a mythical phone call from his dead grandmother. 

(Actually, she was only critically ill. But still.)

What happened was, Holland took a cart out to the par-3 fourth hole at WingHaven before his tee time and placed a golf ball in the cup. Then he told the rest of his group he'd go on ahead to the fourth hole after saying he had to take a phone call from his sick grandmother.

When the rest of his group showed up, Holland claimed to have "thinned" his tee shot and didn't see where the ball ended up. Imagine his surprise and delight when he discovered it nestled in the bottom of the cup!

Unfortunately, according to Holland, security cameras caught him driving his cart near the fourth green well before his tee time. Busted.

"There's no excuse for what I did, and I was completely in the wrong," Holland told a local ESPN radio show out of St. Louis, adding that he'd resigned from WingHaven, as well he should have.

But is what he did not a total Carl Spackler "Caddyshack" moment, or what?

Here he is, Zach Holland, Cinderella boy, about to win the Masters ... It's in the hole! It's in the hole ...

Only thing missing was the groovin' gopher.

That Cunningham woman

 Sophie Cunningham is all over social media again, and not because she pointed at someone or said girls sports should be protected from trans women, which is kind of like saying girls sports should be protected from Puff the Magic Dragon, but, OK.

No, sir. This time it's because she got clotheslined by DiJonai Carrington of the Chicago Sky, which got Carrington properly ejected with a Flagrant 2 and got all the keyboard  warriors stoking the fires of a racial animus they say is rampant in the WNBA.

It's not, but the warriors' frankly racist narrative -- that clean-cut straight white girls are being targeted for abuse by animalistic black lesbians -- continues to have legs, because never underestimate the staying power of manufactured grievance.

"White privilege," Carrington, who is black, tweeted after her ejection, which of course only stoked this particular fire.

"Black privilege," fired back butt-hurt former swimmer Riley Gaines, who's whiter than Wonder Bread.

Apparently this was Gaines' way of saying, "I can even more ridiculous than you."

Look. I've watched the video of the Carrington foul half a dozen times, and I don't see a deliberate mugging. I see Carrington making an awkward swipe at the ball as Cunningham drove to the rim, and then lowbridging her on the follow-through. I see a reckless and potentially dangerous foul, which was why it drew a Flagrant 2.

This is basically what Fever coach Stephanie White said postgame, for which she of course was vilified by the keyboard crowd because it didn't play into their preferred storyline. According to them, this couldn't simply have been Carrington being Carrington, given she has a reputation for brutal takedowns. This was Carrington punishing Cunningham on behalf of the "woke" WNBA because of her alleged transphobia.

(Which has been overblown, too, by the other side in the culture wars. Just to show they're all off their meds.)

Anyway, according to the keyword crowd, Carrington was Luca Brasi and the league was the Godfather, sending her out to take care of the "problem." Riiiight.

Rational deduction quickly laughs this scenario out of the room, even if rationality has fallen out of favor these days. Regardless, its message remains: Carrington has an established rep as a dirty player, and Cunningham isn't exactly a shrinking violet herself. Last week she caught an elbow to the jaw because she was aggressively bodying an opponent looking to make a pass; last season, of course, she did this to Jacy Sheldon of the Connecticut Sun.

So: One clothesline vs. one out-and-out tackle. Seems like a tit-for-tat cheapshot tie to me.

Of course, I don't have an agenda to sell. 

Beware the machines

 The first time I saw one of those Waymo self-driving cars it freaked me out.

We were in San Francisco and an old friend of my wife's was showing us around -- he lives in Berkeley, just across the water -- and suddenly this car went past and THERE WAS NOBODY IN IT.

"Yah!" I said, or something like it. "Now that is creepy."

My wife's friend chuckled.

"It's the future, Ben," he joked.

"I don't care," I replied. "It's still creepy."

And I stand by that judgment, stubborn codger that I am.

I especially stand by it now that Kyle Shanahan has revealed his Tesla was in autopilot mode -- not exactly the same thing as Waymo, but close enough -- when he caused an accident that (as former Indiana football coach Bill Mallory used to say) boogered him up considerable.

Wound up with a serious concussion, a broken hand, a broken nose, three broken ribs and 40 stitches in his face. Damn near lost an eye, too.

Shanahan said his phone slid off his leg and he took his eyes off the road to look for it, never a winning move in a motor vehicle. This week he added the autopilot detail.

"See?" my inner stubborn codger said. "You can't trust the machines. Doesn't anyone remember how Skynet created the Terminators?"

"Oh, come on," you're saying now. "That was just a movie. Movies aren't real. If they were, 5-foot-7 Tom Cruise and 74-year-old Liam Neeson would be indestructible action heroes."

Well, maybe. But I still don't trust the machines. 

When I'm in a car, I want my hands on the wheel, not some invisible AI Mario Andretti. That's because you'd never know when Mario was going to morph into Fender Bender McGee or someone.

What an epitaph that would be: "He Lived. He Died. He Let An AI Whittington Brother Drive."

No way, baby. I'm not getting a Tesla with an autopilot feature, and not because it boogered up Kyle Shanahan. And I'm for sure not climbing into a Waymo taxi -- yes, they have Waymo taxis now -- unless I'm either unconscious or heavily sedated.

"Where to, buddy?" my invisible taxi driver would say.

And then he'd turn around, and it would be Arnold at the end of the first Terminator, with all his skin worn away and one angry red eye glaring at me.

"Yah!" I'd shout.

If the heart attack didn't get me first.

No-brainer

 There was no way Drew Brees was ever going to wind up in Canton, until there was no way he wasn't. You want to sum up a guy's journey in a single sentence, that would be it.

He was too short and he didn't have a rocket launcher for an arm, and that was before he blew up his shoulder and the San Diego Chargers shipped him off to New Orleans like a sprung couch. Set him out by the curb for the Salvation Army to pick up, and that was the last anyone would hear of him.

Except.

Except now we're 25 years down the road from all that, and, hey, look who's in Canton today. The sprung couch is about to go into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and rarely has there been more of a no-brainer than that. 

Twenty years in the league, a Super Bowl MVP and 13 Pro Bowls will do that for a guy. More than 80,000 passing yards, 571 touchdowns and a ridiculous 67.7 completion rate will. And being the heart and soul and light in the night for a wrecked city after Katrina took N'awlins down to the studs?

Well, that'll do it, too.

Not a bad deal for a guy who came out of Purdue as its latest Bob Griese/Mike Phipps/Jim Everett, only a miniature version of same. Yes, he blew away every passing record Purdue and the Big Ten had, but the tape measure stubbornly refused to declare him more than a smidge over six feet even. And then there was the arm strength thing. And then ...

And then, he languished into the second round of the NFL Draft before the Chargers said "Ah, what the hell" and snatched him up.

Those of us who watched him light up Ross-Ade Stadium for four years couldn't figure it out. Yes, he was short -- at 6-1, I'd never interviewed a major-college quarterback shorter than I was until I met Brees -- but, good lord, and holy gee, besides. Did the draft gurus not see what we saw?

Did they not see Brees-to-Morales for six?

Because the Purdue faithful will always see it, and not just because it beat Ohio State to all but seal the Boilermakers' first trip to the Rose Bowl in 34 years. Brees-to-Morales for six was, for those of us who were there, the first time you could see him in Canton some day.

It wasn't just that it was the knockout blow in a knock-down, drag-out hammerfest between the Big Ten's two heavyweights that year. It was because Drew Brees kept passing Purdue into the lead and then passing the Boilers out of it with four picks -- the last a Mike Doss interception that set up OSU's go-ahead score with a bit over two minutes left.

A couple plays later, with Ross-Ade one giant held breath and all the pressure of a pressurized afternoon bearing down hard, Brees took the snap 64 yards from the end one and dropped back.

He looked at Vinny Sutherland.

He looked at Tim Stratton.

And then, finally, he looked at Seth Morales free and clear downfield, and launched a perfect strike that won it for the Purdues once and for all.

"It wasn't designed to go to me," Morales said later. "Drew looked at Vinny, and he looked at Stratton, and he just came to me."

So it was a third-read touchdown at the biggest moment of an impossibly big day. And a revealing look into why Drew Brees is going into Canton today.

Because he was cooler than Arctic winter when nothing less would do.

Because when the heat was hottest, Mr. Cool went through his progressions like a man studying a bus schedule.

Because if the pros wrinkled their fussy beaks over his arm strength or lack thereof, they missed something else: That Brees' arm was more laser than rocket launcher, capable of throwing a football through a keyhole from ... well, from 64 yards away.

That's why they'll unveil his bust and slip the yellow jacket on him today. And that's why "Well, duh," is the only proper response to that.

Oopsie

 Look, I'm not here this morning to make fun of Tommy McClelland, Purdue's new athletic director. The poor guy came to West Lafayette from Rice. I hear lots of stuff hasn't gotten down there yet.

But ye gods, what a Florsheim insertion into mouth yesterday. You wanna come in swingin' at your fiercest rival in your introductory appearance -- especially when you're coming to a school that could use that sort of feistiness -- at least land a glancing blow. And have, you know, at least a nodding acquaintance with timing.

Here's what Tommy said, which has everyone from Valparaiso to Rising Sun guffawing today (but not me!): "We are here to win championships. If you don't want to win championships, go to Indiana."

Which, of course, just won the only championship that really matters, going 16-0 and beating everybody in the College Football Playoff.

Now, if the Blob were inclined to make fun here (and, really, I'm not!), it would point out what a lot of the online snarkmeisters were pointing out, which is that Indiana has won 24 NCAA titles over the years to Purdue's, um, five. And in the two biggies -- football and men's basketball -- the score is IU 6, Purdue 0.

Conference championships?

OK, there McClelland's on firmer ground. The Boilermakers have won or shared 83 Big Ten titles across the years, including 25 in men's basketball and eight in football. Indiana has won 22 and two-and-a-half in the Big Two, respectively. So neener-neener-neener, Hoosiers.

Also, good news for McClelland, who now has a handy escape hatch for yesterday's oopsie -- which at least one mean IU fan called "the most Purdue thing ever."

Wait, you thought I meant NATIONAL championships? you can hear McClelland saying. Oh, HELL, no. I meant we're here to win BIG TEN championships. Which we have more of in football and men's buckets than Indiana, by the way. So neener-neener-neener.

That would work, right?

Um, riiiight?

American echoes

 "The Know-Nothings vowed to close the gates and keep the newly arrived from becoming citizens ... What was happening to the United States was a conquest, they claimed, indirect and unplanned, by foreign hordes, unknowing of our ways, with foreign values."

-- Timothy Egan, "The Immortal Irishman", of reaction to the Irish-Catholic diaspora of the 1840s

"It's not racist to say you don't want Muslims in America."

-- Current Vice-President JD Vance, not a Know-Nothing as far we, well, know

Someone smarter than most of us once said history doesn't so much repeat as reverberate. Its echoes tumble down the years from one age to the next, fetching up in the present with only the details altered, not the substance.

(And, yes, we're taking a drive outside the Sportsball compound again. Standard protocols apply.)

Which brings us to the two quotations above.

The first, as noted, takes us back to the 1840s, when a political movement grounded in anti-Catholic hysteria decided the Irish fleeing the Great Famine were militant Papists whose goal was not the opportunity America presented for a better life, but its subjugation to Rome.  If the "invasion" of Irish-Catholics was not checked, the Know-Nothings warned, soon all of America would be bowing to the Pope.

And the second quotation?

It advances a theme every bit as hysterical: That Muslims in America are militant Islamists whose goal is not the opportunity America presents for a better life, but its subjugation to Mohammed. If the "invasion" of Muslims is not checked, JD Vance and his ilk warn, soon all of America will be bowing to the mullahs.

In both cases, the assumptions are identical. Roman Catholics/Muslims aren't really Americans; they don't share our common values; they are incompatible with our culture. Or as Egan went on to write of the Know-Nothings' warnings: "No country on earth had tried to form a common bond without common ancestry -- it could not be done. And America was not by design a haven for the world's rejects ..."

At which point the echoes of  1840s America become thunderous. It's as if the anti-Muslim bigots -- no, not racists, but certainly bigots -- are following the Know-Nothings' script word-for-word.

Everything changes and nothing changes, in other words. The fear and loathing that has greeted almost every succeeding immigrant wave from the Irish onward employs the same weary rhetoric, advances the same weary ideology, fuels itself with the same weary lies and distortions.

And we should be weary of all of it -- or at least recognize it as the divide-and-conquer boogaloo charlatans and scoundrels have employed to hold onto power since the beginning of time.

Speaking of which, let's go back to JD Vance echoing what a lot of his fellow travelers have been saying out loud: That Islam is fundamentally incompatible with American "culture" (despite the fact our "culture" is not one but many), and therefore its followers should be cast out of the country no matter what the Constitution says.

The great irony, of course, is that's exactly the sort of religious bigotry that drove our forefathers to these shores to begin with.  And the other irony?

That JD Vance would so perfectly echo the old Know-Nothings.

Because JD Vance, you see, is Roman Catholic.

Karma sighting

 Your Chicago Cubs took care of the Los Angeles Dodgers yesterday, 7-6, completing a three-game sweep of the Trolley Dodgers in Wrigley Field. Even beat L.A.'s shiny new toy, Tarik Skubal,  by a 5-1 count on Tuesday.

The sweep extended L.A.'s current spiral to six straight Ls, which makes the Blob wonder something now that everyone's saying how unfair it is that the back-to-back World Series champs, already shamefully loaded, were able to pluck a two-time Cy Young winner (Skubal) before the trade deadline.

What I'm wondering is this: Is the Dodgers' six-game skid karma? Or something like it?

Because no  one likes an overdog. And you have to figure the baseball gods don't, either.

Random thought for today.

Copy-cattin'. Or not.

And now ... logo wars!

Which is the Blob's way of introducing the current tiff between Smith & Wesson and the Fort Wayne Football Club, two entities you never thought you'd see in the same sentence until you did.

Smith & Wesson, see, thinks Fort Wayne FC's logo looks waaaay too much like Smith & Wesson's logo, which of course has been around waaaay longer. So S & W is suing the local soccer club for copyright infringement.

I gotta be honest here. I think Smith & Wesson might have a case. 

But only a teensy one.

Yes, the font and calligraphy of both logos are eerily similar. But this does not mean Fort Wayne FC is guilty of copy-catting Smith & Wesson's deal. It just means in an America where corporate logos are thicker than BS in a congressional inquiry, sooner or later lookalikes are going to happen.

Besides, does anyone with a working synapse think Fort Wayne FC intentionally copied the logo of a gunmaker? Or even ran across it when it was trying to come up with something snazzy?

Imagine the conversation ...

FC Artistic Guy: Hey, let's check out some gunmaker logos. Maybe we'll see something snazzy.

FC Project Manager: Do WHAT?

Artistic Guy: Gunmakers! I mean, why not?

Project Manager: I dunno, because we're not a gunmaker? We're a soccer club. Why the hell would be looking at gunmaker logos? Better we should be checking out other soccer club logos so we don't inadvertently copy one and get sued.

Artistic Guy: OK, FINE. I suppose this means you don't want to check out these rad kitchen appliance logos, either. 

And so on.

At any rate, here's hoping some judge tells Smith & Wesson to take its teensy lawsuit and make a paper airplane out of it. 'Cause I, for one, happen to like the football club's logo. So I'd hate to see them have to scrap it for, I don't know, a logo featuring the silhouette of a soccer player leaning hard into a drive upfie--

Jerry West, from somewhere in the great beyond: "Hey! That looks like me!"

Well, crap.

Myths, fables and PCA

 Chicago Cubs star/wildcard Pete Crow-Armstrong (aka, "PCA") was on Kristin Cavallari's podcast this week, and, boy, did he not disappoint. Didja hear what he said THIS time?

(OK, so he didn't say it, exactly. A Seattle Mariners pitcher named Tayler Saucedo said it. PCA was just passing it along as an example of an unpopular opinion.)

Anyway, what PCA said Saucedo said was that, since very little video of Babe Ruth exists, maybe Babe Ruth didn't exist. Maybe he was a myth or a fable, like Paul Bunyan or Vince the ShamWow guy.

This, of course, immediately vaulted Saucedo into the top five on the Stupidest Things An Athlete Has Ever Said list. He's right up there with Kyrie "The Earth Is Flat" Irving now, or maybe even Aaron Rodgers.

Because of course Babe Ruth existed. The reason there's not much video of him is because ... well, figure it out. Start with "it was the 1920s" and go from there.

So, yeah. Babe Ruth existed, he hit 714 home runs, he called everyone "keed" (as in, "kid). He ate too many hotdogs and drank too much beer and one time in the World Series he called his shot, or didn't, or whatever.

Did we mention he hit 714 home runs?

Which PCA implied was less than impressive because, well, it happened in the Before Time, when he never had to face the likes of Satchel Paige on account of the baseball commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, was a racist douchecanoe who kept black players out of Major League Baseball.  

"People might as well have been like underhanding the ball to that guy," PCA said of the real/mythical Babe.

(Brief pause while Walter Johnson enters the chat. Also Lefty Grove. Also, what the hell, the Babe himself.)

(Lengthier pause while we discuss the door PCA opened with his comment, which is that you can't compare the 1920s to the 2020s because athletes are bigger, faster, stronger and not just white anymore.)

(All of which is true, by the way.)

What is also true, however, is that today's athletes are bigger, faster and stronger because training regimens are different and diet is different and the equipment is different. Saying the Babe, real or otherwise, couldn't compete today takes none of that into account. In the 1920s, he trained on hotdogs, chopped wood to get himself in shape, and thought cardio was the name of that new Italian slugger in Philly. And still, again, he hit 714 home runs.

Imagine a ripped, sleek Babe 2026 model swinging a modern bat crafted exactly to his specifications down to the molecular level. For that matter, imagine, say, Bjorn Borg in his prime playing with today's trampoline tennis racquets instead of the tiny wooden deals he had to make do with.

Why, he'd paint every line in the joint with those laser groundstrokes. It would hardly be fair.

Unless, of course, Tayler Saucedo or PCA or Kyrie claimed Borg never existed, either. You never know with these guys.

Today in turned tables

 Aaron Rodgers, everyone's favorite NFL wackadoodle, was on with Pat McAfee again yesterday, and he had some unkind things to say about Dr. Anthony Fauci, the ditso right's latest boogeyman/scapegoat/Extremely Evil Person. 

Veering off one of his tangents, A-Aron called Fauci an "absolute coward" for refusing to play along with Random Brain Cell Paul's dog-and-pony show last week. Said, like Fauci, he'd "plead the Fifth" when McAfee asked about training camp.

This gives the Blob the opportunity to turn the tables on all the aforementioned ditso's who love to tell left-leaning athletes and coaches to "stick to sports" and "just bounce the ball" when they offer non-sports opinions.

So, here goes:

1. "Stick to sports."

2. "Just throw the football."

3. "Nobody cares what you think of (choose one) Fauci, vaccines, the moon landing, etc."

4. "Could you go do your isolation thing again? 'Cause that would be awesome."

5. "You've been into the ayahuasca again, haven't you?"

6. "Or how about the peyote? Yeah, I bet it's the peyote."

7. "Orrrr ... or I hear your pal RFK Jr. is doing wonderful things with eye of newt these days. Maybe you scored some of that?"

And last but hardly least ...

8. "Bless your heart."

Firing offensively

 Caught this one today on the Awful Announcing website, via FOB (Friend of the Blob) and fellow Indiana sports journo colleague Andrew Smith, aka the Hardest Working Man In Sportscasting.

(Or so I call him).

What Awful Announcing posted, and Andrew re-posted, was an item about Boston College, which just hired Luke Murray as its new basketball coach. It seems among the changes fully expected anytime a new regime takes the reins was one that wasn't expected: In addition to a new staff, Murray also insisted BC fire longtime men's basketball broadcasters Kevin Collins and Josh Maurer, who'd been calling BC's games together for nine seasons.

Rather than stand by their men, BC acquiesced -- on August 1, which means it'll be hard for Collins and Maurer to find another gig for this winter. A profile in courage this wasn't.

A slap in the face to two men who deserved better, however, it was. Not to say completely ridiculous.

First off, and most obviously, Collins and Maurer had no direct connection to the previous regime, or to any previous regime, really. Collins in particular had been calling BC games for 13 years, through three head coaches and five athletic directors. That made him less a specific program institution than a university institution -- certainly more of the latter than anyone involved in firing him.

Any or all of whom should lose their jobs, in the Blob's opinion. For, I don't know, lack of institutional gumption or something.

Look. I get that every new coach wants to bring in his own people, if only to fumigate a program that, one presumes, desperately needs it. But the broadcasters aren't any part of that. All they're doing is calling the games. So to insist they go, too, is not only a supremely dickish move, but a supremely irrational one, too.

(Re the dickish part: It should be noted that Murray came to BC from UConn, where he was an assistant for Dan Hurley, the high priest of college hoops dickishness. So I guess he gets it honest.)

Anyway, shame on Murray. And shame on BC administrators for letting him knuckle them.

Because what someone (ideally the athletic director) should have said when Murray insisted on canning Collins and Maurer was this: "Coach Murray, that's not your call. That's our call. And unless you can show cause -- which you can't, because the whole idea is absurd on its face -- Collins and Maurer aren't going anywhere. And if you don't like it, we can tear up your contract right now. I hear Northwest Eastern Tech State is hiring."

Of course, saying all that would have taken some stones. And some integrity. Both of which seem especially lacking these days in Chestnut Hill.

You've heard of firing offenses?

This one was an offensive firing. Squared.

Wonder Gramps

 The most amazing golfer of our time did it again yesterday, and, no, I'm not talking about Tiger or Rory or Scottie Scheffler, those putzes. I'm talking about our very own Fearless Leader, Donald John "Par Killer" Trump.

Who won his 40th club championship at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., over the weekend, carding a 2-under 70 that was totally legit and had nothing whatever to do with the fact he owns the club and is, you know, President of the United States or anything.

The only people saying otherwise are jealous losers like all the losers he beat to win yet another title.

"It's called TALENT, and I have it, and they don't!" he crowed on the Mighty Twitter X Machine.

Now, I get it, some of the aforementioned jealous losers might question how a slobbish 80-year-old man managed to shoot 10 strokes under his age on any golf course that wasn't Pirate Mike's Buccaneer Booty Miniature Golf. Is there a clown mouth hole at Bedminster? Did Fearless Leader play the orange ball or the purple ball? And is it true he eagled the treacherous Walk The Plank hole?

Please. Your snark and your cynicism grow wearisome.

Truth is, you just can't accept the fact that Fearless Leader is not only a world-class intellect, but the wonder of his age on the golf course. You know how Dale Earnhardt used to taunt the young Jeff Gordon by calling him "Wonderboy"? Well, Donald John is Wonder Gramps.

Eighty years old and still bringin' it! And, again, enough with all the yap about how it's his own golf course where everyone works for him and therefore knows their paychecks ride on knowing exactly when to look the other way.

Reporter From An Actual News Outlet: Hey, there, Trump National Golf Club employee. Is it true Wonder Gramps kicked his golf ball out of that bunker on the 12th hole? Did he really say "Put me down for a 4" on that par-5 where he actually put up a snowman (i.e., 8)? 

Trump National Golf Club Employee: Hey, man, don't ask me. I was lookin' at this tree over here. Ain't it a gorgeous tree?

That sort of thing.

Well, you know what you can do with "that sort of thing." You can stick it right up there where the sun never shines, along with your doubts about the heinous vandalism of the Reflecting Pool by America-hating antifa commie Muslims. Who you gonna believe, Fearless Leader or Fearless Leader's own Justice Department, which just admitted the vandalism story is total bunk? Seriously, Jeanine Pirro? Who's Jeanine Pirro, besides wanna-be Judge Judy?

Take it down the road, jealous losers. And all hail Wonder Gramps -- 40-time club champion at clubs he owns, and the athletic marvel of the age according to his closest friends and most steadfast political allies.

I mean, have you seen clip where he dunked on LeBron? Incredible.

Reverse Cruds Alert!*

 (*Because the Rockheads, the Mange-els and the rest of the Cruds are old news now that the baseball season has reached August, its black hole of months)

Checked out the MLB standings this a.m. just to see if it was really August and if my Pittsburgh Not-As-Cruddy-As-They-Used-To-Be's were still playing .500 baseball (They are! 56-56, baby!).Aand guess what?

The Los Angeles Dodgers are not the best team in baseball right now. 

They've actually lost two in a row and are 69-42, half-a-game back of the numbingly efficient Milwaukee Brewers. And, OK, so they're still 10 games up in the NL West, but, listen, it's not like they couldn't use some help. So all you people griping about the rich getting richer and what a joke baseball is now need to dummy up.

Because they needed Tarik Skubal. Yes, they did.

For those of you who don't know who Tarik Skubal is, well, he was the prize of prizes during this trade deadline period, a two-time Cy Young winner who's arguably been the best pitcher in the American League the last two years. And now he's a Trolley Dodger!

News broke last night that the Dodgers and Skubal's former team, the Detroit Tigers, were finalizing a deal that would send Tarik west in exchange for a handful of magic beans, er, prospects. That's what's so annoying about the Dodgers, see: Not only do they have all the money these days, they also have lots of trade bait to dangle from their first-rate farm system. 

"All the money AND a farm system?" you're saying now. "How's THAT fair?"

To which the Dodgers would no doubt reply, quoting a former teammate in our company basketball league: Fair? (Bleep) fair!

Fair's not what's made Dem Bums back-to-back World Series champs, with a likely three-peat waiting in the wings come October. And if you think that's a joke, well, the joke's on you, sorehead. 

Dynasties are good for baseball, see. Grotesquely over-doggy overdogs are the life's blood of the game. I mean, you didn't hear people complaining about Casey Stengel's Yankees when they were winning the Series every crummy year in the 1950s, did you?

(Brief interlude while every other team from the '50s shouts, "Hell, yes, we were complaining! Screw Mantle and Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra and Elston Howard and the rest of those high-hatted bastards! We like World Series rings, too, ya know!")

Anyway ...

Now the Dodgers have Skubal, and just in time, too. After all, it wasn't like they were going to get by with Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamato, Tyler Glasnow, Roki Sasaki and those guys. And where was the run support gonna come from when the only sticks you had were Ohtani and Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts and Kyle Tucker and Will Smith, and also Max Muncy?

So, yeah, good for them. They've got the best pitcher in the AL now, or one of the best. Which means they'll probably win a pile more games and beat the Brewers or Braves in the NL and then beat, I don't know, maybe the Rays in the World Series.

Or how about this: Maybe the Series comes down to the Dodgers vs. the White Sox.

The Pale Hose, after all, are leading the AL Central by three games right now, two seasons after fielding the worst team in the modern era. How great a narrative would that be, the former schlubbiest of schlubs against baseball's reigning Reverse Cruds?

The White Sox, stealing a Virgil Tibbs' line from "In The Heat Of The Night": "I can pull that fat cat down off his mountain!"

The Trolley Dodgers, stealing King Arthur's line from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail": "Bloody peasant!"

Ah, yes. I can see it now. 

Birthdate of fear

(In which the Blob again says "Later for you, sporty-sports," and sets off into the wider world for awhile. The usual protocols apply to those who don't wish to join me on the journey.)

First of August now, and another summer in the books, or at least it seems so these accelerated days.  The local baseball diamonds are empty. The band kids are in the high school parking lots, sweating under the hammering sun. In 12 days, they'll back in school again, the yellow buses will be running again, and wasn't it just yesterday that they spilled everyone out into what seemed an endless stretch of freedom?

Perhaps. But summer's end is not the end I think about when I think about August 1, and this August 1 in particular.

The end I think about is the end of a certain kind of American innocence, and the assumptions that formed its foundation.

This August 1, you see, is 60 years to the day since a sick man in a high place went hunting human beings.

His name was Charles Whitman, and on Aug. 1, 1966 he hauled an M1 carbine, two Remington rifles, a semi-automatic shotgun and three handguns up to the observation deck of the University of Texas tower -- which still stands, and which they still light up Texas burnt orange after every Longhorns football triumph -- and turned downtown Austin into a kill zone.

He was up there for 90 minutes until a couple of police officers took him down, and in that time, from his high place, he killed 15 people and wounded 31 more. This was after he'd stabbed his wife and mother to death, and after he'd left two victims inside who had the misfortune to encounter him on his way to the observation deck.

For most of his 25 years, he'd been a normal American male, a loving husband and dutiful son who'd whisked his mother away from his abusive father. Then a tumor bloomed inside his brain, and, in 90 terrifying minutes, Charles Whitman became something else entirely: The godfather of the American mass shooter, and the bringer of nightmares we could scarcely imagine in 1966.

Because who could conceive, back then, of an America where you could be shot dead just walking down the street? Where some random human (Even a neighbor, maybe!) could take it in his head to find someplace where other random humans congregate, and just start killing people he didn't even know?

We feared the Russkies and nuclear missiles aimed our way and the damn Commies taking over the world, in those days. We didn't fear one of our own using his Second Amendment rights to stockpile an arsenal of weapons (Two Remmies, an M-1, a shotgun and three handguns? Who needs all that?) and make war on his fellow Americans.

So now we had something else to fear, in a fearful time. And on it went from there -- from Charles Whitman to James Oliver Huberty in a McDonald's down by Mexico; to Patrick Sherrill in a post office in Edmonds, Okla.; to George Hennard in a cafeteria in Texas; to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High School; to Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech; to Stephen Paddock on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Hotel in Las Vegas, another hunter of humans in a high place.

Paddock killed 60 people and shot almost 500 when he did his deal nine years ago. Five years before that, Adam Lanza murdered 27 people, 20 of them children, at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. Another elementary school in Uvalde, Tex.; a synagogue in Pittsburgh; a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.; a supermarket in El Paso, Tex., and another in Buffalo, N.Y. ...

The blood trail of Charles Whitman, the madness and the butchery, continues apace. As does the fear that, after so many butcheries, we're either numb to or have trained ourselves not to think about anymore.

But Aug. 1, 1966 was the birthdate of that fear. And then it was very real.

I was 11 at the time, see, and we were on vacation, and that night we went to dinner somewhere. I remember, hazily, seeing a newspaper there, and the Texas tower shooting was splashed all over the front page. And when we finished dinner and walked out to the car, I remember walking very fast, because somewhere in the dark I just knew there was a man with a rifle, and that he was going to start shooting.

Like I said, I was 11 years old at the time, with an 11-year-old's overheated imagination. But I suspect I wasn't the only one who, after that day, felt a chill the next time they walked out into their quiet American lives in their quiet American town. 

And I suspect they weren't all 11, either.