Stanley rules

 I don't know what you were doing Saturday night, but here's what I was doing: Examining another piece of evidence pointing to an irrefutable fact. 

That fact being, the Stanley Cup playoffs are the best playoffs. And Stanley Cup Game 7s are the best Game 7s.

And Game 7 sudden-death overtimes?

Shoo. It's like watching a bunch of teenagers in a horror flick approaching That Door That Should Not Be Opened. Except the tension s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-s out like bleeping Gumby for minutes at a time.

And then, in a flash, the door is flung open. And it's all over.

Saturday night that happened in Boston, and, damn, it was glorious. The Bruins once again were trying to eliminate the Toronto Maple Leafs -- they seem to take a perverse glee in doing that, like Sid torturing his army men in "Toy Story" -- and, sure enough, they did it again. And after cruelly giving the Leafs a brief glimmer of hope, to boot.

Game 7, see, was dominated by the Leafs early, but they couldn't get the biscuit past Jeremy Swayman in goal. Down at the other end, meanwhile, Ilya Samsonov was a wall in the Leafs net. So it was 0-0 after one and 0-0 after two, and then, midway through the third period, the Leafs went up 1-0 on a William Nylander goal.

And for just over a minute, they could see daylight. For just over a minute, they weren't the same old Leafs anymore, capable of breaking the hearts of their believers in any circumstance.

But then -- just over a minute later -- Hampus Lindholm tied it for the Bruins, and on it went. And then, a tick fewer than two minutes into overtime, Lindholm fired the puck into the zone as David Pastrnak streaked down the wing after it, and you know what happened next: The puck took a crazy bounce off the corner boards, Pastrnak played carom perfectly, and just like that, it was over.

Bruins 2, Leafs 1.

On a goal that looked like an ordinary dump-and-chase until -- wait, what?

You won't see a purer example of the suddenness of sudden death than that. Nor a better example of why Stanley's Game 7s are the best -- unless it was Game 7 last night between the Dallas Stars and Vegas Golden Knights, when Radek Faksa scored the go-ahead goal for the Stars 44 seconds into the third period and the Stars put the clamps on Vegas thereafter to eliminate the defending Stanley Cup champs 2-1.

Stanley rules. Rules, I tell you.

By a nostril

 A bob of the head. A hoof striking the turf a millisecond before some other hoof. The flare of a nostril.

Choose your standard of measurement. Choose your method of description. And bag the metaphors, because this time a horse race wasn't a congressional race or a presidential race or a race for Chief Cook And Bottle-Washer of Succotash County.

This time a horse race was actually A HORSE RACE. 

This time it was three horses coming dead abreast to the wire, and the Kentucky Derby hadn't seen the like of it since 1947, or so the record books tell us. Closest three-horse finish since Jet Pilot nosed out Phalanx and Faultless that year. Even closer, actually.

Yesterday, it was another longshot, Mystik Dan at 18-1, who brought it home, and if you ever bet anything but longshots in the Derby again, may empty pockets be forever turned out. Saturday marked the third straight year a horse that went off at least 15-1 wound up with the blanket of roses, so call it officially a trend. 

Also call it officially one hell of a, well, horse race.

How close was it, down there at the end?

It was so close that if the Derby distance were a stride longer, Mystik Dan would have been the "place" horse and not the "win" horse.

Your winning horse would have been Sierra Leone, who was coming like a freight train with Forever Young half-a-stride back. All the momentum was with those two; Mystik Dan was just trying to get to the wire in front.

And he did. By that aforementioned bob of the head, planted hoof, flare of a nostril, as people watching in bars and restaurants all over America yelped "Whoaaa!"  

I know this because that's what everyone yelped where my wife and I were.

Hell of a horse race.

Don't ask, go to hell

 Couple of questions about the now-viral video of Bucks guard Patrick Beverley telling an ESPN reporter she wasn't allowed to ask him a question because she didn't subscribe to his podcast:

1. How does Patrick Beverley's head not take up the entire locker room?

2. Will Eddie Murphy ("I am Gumby, dammit!") play him in the movie?

Ay-yi-yi. I know arrogance is a common malady in professional sports these days (always has been, really), but Beverley has introduced an entirely new strain into the national bloodstream. I mean, it's not like he's LeBron or KD or Giannis. He's an NBA journeyman who's on his seventh team and has a lifetime scoring average of 8.3 ppg. Who the hell is Patrick Beverley?

And yet, there he was the other night, pulling high-handed BS far beyond his station in NBA life. He might only be Patrick Beverley, but he is Gumby, dammit!

Know what the scary part is, though?

Even though he's likely to be fined by the Association for this and for throwing a basketball at Pacers fans the other night, he might actually be ahead of the curve in future player/media relations. 

Now, as an old newspaper grunt, I understand the day is long past when athletes needed us to buff up their images and attract endorsements. Along came the worldwide web and Mom's-basement bloggers and, yes, podcasts, and with them an acceleration in how and through what conduits information (and disinformation) flows.

It's an instant gratification world more than ever now, and also a world in which athletes can bypass the media filter completely. Newspapers have tried to keep up, but the parameters by which print media must operate work against it in the everyone's-a-journalist-now reality. 

Thus we get Patrick Beverley pimping his podcast by dissing the media -- although telling the ESPN reporter "no disrespect" was a howler, considering disrespecting her was exactly what he was doing. And thus, the continued devolution of "journalism" into something that is nothing of the kind.

Telling a reporter he or she can't even ask a question without contributing to an athlete's own online "media" is only the latest step in that process. Rest assured Beverley won't be the last person to pull the stunt he pulled the other night.

Unless.

Unless, the reporter disrespected the next time goes ahead and asks his or her question anyway. And asks again. And asks again. And asks ... again.

Look. Every person under media scrutiny has the absolute right not to answer a reporter's question. Freedom of the press does not include that stipulation. It does, however, include the stipulation that the press has every right to ask that question, and really any question.

Plus, it's not like anyone can stop it from doing so. It is, in fact, literally impossible.

Which is why the other night, when Beverley told the ESPN reporter she wasn't allowed to ask a question if she didn't subscribe to his podcast, she should have immediately responded with a question: "And why is that, Patrick?"

And then told him to go piss up a rope.

OK. So maybe not that last.

And now, the rematch

 OK. So not really.

But the Pacers closed out the Bucks last night, blowing them out two nights after the Bucks blew them out.. And the Knicks, after epically choking in Game 5, finished off the 76ers. So now it's on to Pacers-vs.-Knicks in the second round -- or, as it was known almost 30 years ago, Hicks-vs.-Knicks.

Indiana against the Big Apple. Broadway against County Road 303. Half-a-million a month for a walk-in closet with a Murphy bed against ... well, a hell of a lot less for a hell of a lot more living space.

It won't be as glorious a culture clash as it was back in the day, but a guy can dream can't he? 

Dream of that afternoon in the Garden when Reggie scored, I don't know, eight points in two seconds or something, then made the choke sign at Spike Lee over there in the Knicks' Nicholson seats. Dream of John Starks skulking around making threes and dunking over guys and maybe letting the air out of Reggie's tires when he wasn't looking.

Dream of all those muscleheads bumping and banging and throwing nuclear elbows under the basket, because those were the days when NBA low-block play was more like pro wrestling than basketball.

This won't be that. 

Tyrese Halliburton won't be making the choke sign at Spike after sticking another J or dishing a dime to Pascal Siakam. The Knicks' OG Anunoby, who played his college ball in Bloomington, won't be posterizing Obi Toppin and then saying something mean about Mother Bear's or Nick's English Hut. There just won't be the same old enmity.

Although all it would take to revive it is Jalen Brunson making a joke about cornfields. Or, I don't know, Myles Turner coming back with "Does Walt Frazier still play for you guys?"

Please, gentlemen. Please do it, just for old time's sake.

Derby time ...

 ... in which the Blob once more professes his undying love for the Kentucky Derby, a sporting event he's never attended and understands even less, except for that song by Dan Fogelberg ("Run for the Roses") and that story by Hunter S. Thompson ("The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent And Depraved"). Also the Twin Spires and mint juleps and old guys who dress like Harlan Sanders, and ladies who wear hats constructed by either Frank Lloyd Wright or Home Depot.

"But what about the horses, Mr. Blob?" you're saying now. "Surely your depth of insight into horses and such can guide us toward a productive betting experience?"

Hmm. Well, here's a name you might want to remember: Secretariat.

"But Secretariat's dead!" you're saying.

Well, yes.

But mentioning Secretariat, the greatest thoroughbred in history, allows me to mention Mage, who was not Secretariat but a 15-1 shot who somehow horsed around (Get it? Horsed around?) and won the Derby last year. And it allows me to mention Rich Strike, who was REALLY not Secretariat, but an 80-1 meat loaf who started on the very outside in 2022 and, you guessed it, also won the Derby that year.

In other words, the last two Derby winners have been mutts. Which might make you pause a moment before you plunk down your hard-earned two bucks on this year's Derby favorites, Fierceness and Sierra Leone.

You can probably throw Catching Freedom in there, too, and T.O. Password and Forever Young, a pair of Japanese horses whom the people who know about these things have mentioned as possible winners.

Me?

Hey, don't look at me. My only horsey wisdom consists of the following:

1. Never bet on the gray horse. Gray horses are frequently Alpo.

2. Bet the jockey. Whoever Tobey MacGuire is riding would be a fine choice, seeing he did such a great job in "Seabiscuit."

3. Bet the trainer. Look for someone who wears a lot of tweed and goes by names like Peter Rouse Merriott Chard or Ian Michael Grayson Braithwaite. Do not look for That Guy With The White Hair, aka Bob Baffle or Biffle or Baffert or something. It seems Churchill Downs is still miffed at him for cheating a couple years back, and thus he remains banned from the premises.

And last but not least ...

4. Bet the mutts. Because after the last two years, who knows?

Besides, there's a trend going on down in Louisville these days, and it's a damned interesting one. My sportswriting acquaintance and longtime Derby reporter Rick Bozich alerted me to it the other day, when he wrote a piece pointing out that five of the last eight Derby winners never won another race. Either they got hurt and had to be retired, or they never again caught the same lightning in a mint julep they did on the first Saturday in May.

Now, I don't know a fetlock from the Soo locks or a wither from whither-thou-goest, but this sounds like an open invitation to take a flier on Society Man or West Saratoga or Epic Ride, all of whom opened this morning at 50-1. Of those, I say put some bitcoin down on Epic Ride, who's only in the field because another horse scratched and who starts way out there from the 20 hole. 

Which means he might as well be starting from, I don't know, Jeffersonville. Or maybe New Albany.

Here's the thing, though: Epic Ride is exactly where Rich Strike was two years ago (Rich Strike was also a scratch replacement). So I say go for it. Hell, it's not my money.

Just make sure Ian Michael Grayson Braithwaite has something to do with it.

That "Uh-oh" feeling

 The partisans in Milwaukee the other night, they could see the future. Sometimes the road ahead is a constant surprise, full of blind hairpin turns and reverse-camber corners; sometimes it runs straight as a string and you can see where it leads from miles off.

The partisans got the latter the other night, or thought they did. Because what were they chanting, after their Bucks sent their playoff series with Indiana back to Indianapolis with an unacceptably easy 23-point win?

"Bucks in seven ... Bucks in seven ... Bucks in seven ..."

Could be they're right. 

Could be they're wrong, but only if the Pacers get over blowing -- and I mean really blowing -- the perfect setup for a close-out two nights ago.

Leading 3-1 in the first-round series, playing a crippled Bucks team without their two biggest stars, the Pacers simply ... didn't show up. They not only let the Bucks off the hook, they unscrewed it from the wall for them. Darn, that looks uncomfortable. Lemme dig out my Phillips and take it down.

You don't go very far in the playoffs with a deficient killer instinct, and apparently that's what these Pacers have.  revealing stat: In beating the Pacers the other night, the Bucks became the first team in NBA history to win a playoff game without their two top two scorers (in this case, the injured Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard, both looking on in streets from the bench). And they won it by 23 points.

Yikes. And also, whoa, what th- and good grief, Pacers.

They pounded the Bucks three times in the first four games, but then they exhaled a game early. Now it's not too much to say Game 6 in Indy tonight is a must-win situation for them, because it pretty much is a must-win situation.

That's because the partisans are right: If the Bucks can take the series back to Milwaukee for Game 7, the Bucks will win. Two extra days of rest would mean Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard likely would be back in the lineup, for one thing. And for the second thing, the third thing, and the fourth thing, too.

All together now, Indy folk: Uh-oh.

Wardrobe change

 So remember back in spring training, when Major League Baseball introduced new lightweight uniforms, and everyone got their shorts in a twist because the pants were so lightweight you actually could see their shorts in a twist?

Also, they rode up in the crotch something fierce.

(Nah, that part I made up)

Also, they were kinda cheesy-looking, as if MLB had decided to go with the Chico's Bail Bonds look from "The Bad News Bears."

(That part I didn't make up)

Anyway, like every other debate in the history of baseball -- the designated hitter, dead ball-vs.-live ball, was Ty Cobb a racist asswagon or just misunderstood -- the uni-storm did not dissipate. The players kept crabbing, and finally, just the other day, MLB sighed and said, fine, we'll got back to the old uniforms or something very much like them.

Of course, being baseball, it won't be doing that until next season. I mean, it took 'em 75 or so years to figure out Josh Gibson and  Oscar Charleston and them wouldn't have ruined their lily-white game, and at last let Jackie Robinson into the club. So it's not like bold decision-making is a hallmark of this crowd.

At any rate, justice eventually will be served, and everyone can go back to arguing about the DH again. 

Well. Unless the White Sox bring back those damn shorts, that is.