D's Notebook

Tag: baseball (Page 1 of 22)

D’s Notes

October 22, 2024 /

A few other notes from last week/the weekend plus life in general.

Health

I’ve had a couple longer spells of irregular heart beats lately, so the week before we went to Denver I wore an event monitor again. Just like the first two times I wore one, I had zero issues, so it wasn’t really helpful. Plus it made it hard for me to sleep since I’m a stomach sleeper. And you’re not supposed to get it wet so I couldn’t work out very hard or take full showers. And it itches.

There are way worse heart issues than what I’ve got, but I think this is all pretty dumb since it is so random and never fires off when the docs are keeping an eye on me.

Football

A mostly good weekend for my teams, although I wasn’t able to follow any of the games very closely.

Friday #5 Cathedral dropped their regular season finale to #6 Warren Central by 8. Sounds like it was a good game, with CHS jumping out 14–0 then the teams trading the lead in the second half. A 5–3 regular season for the Irish. Class 6A gets a bye week before starting sectionals next week. CHS will play across the street vs 0–9 North Central, then most likely play the new #1 team, 9–0 Lawrence North.

KU finally got their shit back together, although Houston being really bad helped. Every time I checked the score while we were walking around Boulder KU was either scoring or Houston was turning the ball over. Seems like the Jayhawks played well, most importantly Jalon Daniels, who had his best statistical game in two years.

Just in time, as KU has K-State, Iowa State, and BYU the next three weeks, the top three teams in the Big 12. What better moment to flip the script on this season?

The Colts won an ugly game against a banged up Dolphins team. We were home for part of this, although I wasn’t paying much attention as we got settled and unpacked. This team just isn’t that fun to watch at the moment.

WNBA Finals

I barely watched the WNBA playoffs after the Fever were eliminated, only checking in on games for a few moments here-and-there. Which is partially on me, partially on the league for agreeing to a TV schedule that often had its games going up against the NFL. Not super smart.

I did turn on the fourth quarter of game five of the Finals Sunday night. What a shit show! I was somewhat amazed at how bad the officiating was while watching the Fever this year. Each game had objectivey terrible calls, and replay reviews that sometimes had indefensible conclusions.

It was no surprise to me that the championship may have come down to an absolutely atrocious call in which the refs bailed out Breanna Stewart and then somehow upheld the defensive foul after Minnesota challenged it. Stewart hit two free throws, Minnesota missed a wide open 3 to win, and then New York won in overtime. The refs also failed to call a clear foul against New York that cost Minnesota a basket and should have put the Lynx on the line late in regulation.

I’m not saying the game was rigged because that’s dumb. But I understand all the anger flowing from Minnesota after the game. Anyone who has watched the WNBA all season was not surprised that the biggest game of the year featured calls this bad. The quality of officiating is going to be a major growing pain for a league that has more eyes on it than ever.

World Series

Oh goody, Yankees-Dodgers. There’s a lot of star power in the series, for sure. But I haven’t watched much of the playoffs since the Royals went out. I doubt I’ll spend a lot of time with this series. It is kind of crazy it’s been 33 years since these franchises last matched up in the fall classic.

Wildlife Fun

Monday morning as I walked to the gym I noticed what seemed to be a couple big piles of garbage in our yard near the busy street we sit on. This isn’t unusual. Fools are always throwing garbage from their cars. We get tons of fast food bags, beer cans and bottles, plus other random stuff. I made a mental note to grab it after my workout.

An hour later I was walking towards said piles when I realized I should have investigated closer to get out of the morning sun glare. One pile was part of the front corner of a car, including the headlight. Ten feet away was a dead deer.

Yikes.

How the fuck do I get rid of a deer?

Fortunately the city of Indianapolis has an app where you can make service requests. I wear it out in the winter reporting potholes. For the most part it seems to work, although it can take them a while to work through my list in the worst of the winter.

After enough digging I found a section where you can report dead animals. Deer was even included in the dropdown box where you identify the carcass. Midwest, baby!

I put in a request and hoped they would get to it sooner than they do potholes.

I left the house to run some errands this morning and when I returned our dead deer was gone. My tax dollars at work! I guess it could have been some hillbilly who saw a way to fill his freezer for the winter, but I’ll give the city credit.

C said she had heard an impact around 1:00 AM Monday morning and by the time she looked out her window the car had left and it was too dark to see the poor deer. Hopefully it went quick.

Comet

I might have missed the full northern lights a couple weeks ago, but I did not miss the chance to see Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, the brightest comet we’ve had since 1997.

Tuesday I drove about 10 minutes north to a park where there are no lights and a clear view to the southwest. I was able to see the comet as a bright spot and smudge with the naked eye. A three-second exposure with my iPhone got a much better view.

Still not nearly as bright as Hale-Bopp was – one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen with it’s bright tail streaking across a good chunk of the sky that summer – but I’m still glad I got to see it.

R’s: Surviving and Advancing!

October 3, 2024 /

What a glorious October morning today was. Made all the more glorious by the mighty Kansas City Royals sweeping Baltimore to advance to the ALDS against the evil New York Yankees.

It’s like the late 70s up in here!

Two tense games in gloomy, Baltimore weather, which made the Wild Card series feel so much like the 2014 ALCS between these two teams. Poor Baltimore. That’s six-straight losses to the Royals in the postseason, a healthy chunk of their 10 straight postseason losses. The Royals won those six games by a combined eight runs. Three times they won 2–1!!!

To make things worse, aside from one bad misplay by MJ Melendez Tuesday, the Royals were flashing leather like it was 2014. Both Melendez and Tommy Pham had catches that would have made Lorenzo Cain proud.

In the Wild Card era, baseball playoffs have consistently been the most volatile of the professional sports postseasons. Home field doesn’t matter as much as in other sports. A couple good pitchers can make up for a huge disparity in total talent. And baseball is just the streakiest of sports. All that is amplified in the current system, which begins with the three-game Wild Card series. One bad inning can doom your entire postseason in a series that short. The Orioles gave up a couple hard singles to Bobby Witt and are now headed to Cancún or wherever.

So while it’s not a huge surprise the Royals got the Wild Card win, neither is it ridiculous to think they can keep things going against the #1 seed Yankees. Now, it would be nice if they could score more than a run or two per game. In fact, I’m going to go out on an analytic limb and say the Royals must score more than that if they want any chance to upset the Yanks. Then again, the Royals pitchers were absolute nails in Baltimore. Who’s to say that won’t continue and a few well timed runners and hits will be enough?

It’s just a lot of fun that the Royals are still alive. Even more fun that they seem to be mimicking the ’14–15 Royals by playing terrific defense, getting great pitching from the entire staff, and using their speed to create runs. They still feel a little flukey. I doubt they care what outsiders think.

It is also worth mentioning that this week’s games were far less stressful for me than those games in ’14–15. I’m sure a lot of that is because I’ve not been as fully into this team as I was those. While I paid a lot more attention to them this year than in the past 3–4 years, my investment still wasn’t nearly what it was before and during that championship run. It would have been a bummer if the Royals had lost both games in Baltimore, or split then lost the deciding game today. I would not have been crushed the way I was after game seven of the 2014 World Series, or would have been if the Royals had lost game four in Houston in 2015.

In those two playoff runs I was locked in, every pitch a super-stressful moment. I missed parts of a few games because of work, family, and kid sports, but I was still following every moment of those games. This week I was able to often be splitting my attention elsewhere, which surely helped my blood pressure a bit.

Anyway, it is October, the Royals are heading to New York for a playoff series, and it would not be completely ridiculous if they were still standing in 10 days.

Weekend Notes

September 30, 2024 /

Another weekend in the books. This one had some familiar elements, yet was still quite different than other recent weekends.

Helene

The biggest event of the weekend was the remnants of Hurricane Helene kind of ruining our weekend. That’s overstating things. Other people had far worse weekends than we did because of the weather. But it was cloudy, breezy, and muggy at best all weekend. Off-and-on drizzle all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And then about five hours of pretty intense rain and wind Friday evening as the biggest waves from the storm blew through between 5:00 and 10:00 PM.

We were very lucky. Our power blinked a few times Friday night, but never fully went out. Which is a miracle given that the line that feeds our house runs through dozens of old trees that are growing into/against it. I was sure at least part of the line had pulled loose at one point, as we kept getting little waves of partial outages. But we made it through. Lots of people around us lost their power for much longer than a few seconds.

We desperately needed the rain, so that was welcome. TV said we were somewhere between an inch and inch-and-a-half of rain for the storm. Normally when we get any significant rain our sump pit in the basement will make lots of noise as it fills and the pump ejects the collected water. It had been so dry here none of the rain made it to the pit and our basement remained eerily quiet.

Driving and walking around Saturday and Sunday there were tons of big trees and limbs down in our part of the city. Lots of power crews working to repair lines. We just had one small branch come down in our yard, along with lots of leaves. Again, very lucky.

We have friends who were not so fortunate.

Parents of one of S’s best friends live on Anna Maria island. We spent our first day of spring break this year at their house while we were waiting for our rental to open. Friday night they had water waist-deep inside their house. Our friend lost contact with them overnight, and she was freaking out. Fortunately cell service came back up Friday morning and they were safe. However, they likely lost everything they own inside the house.

S also found video of the place in Siesta Key where we are going for spring break this coming year. It took a lot of water damage. It is a high rise, so we are hoping our rooms aren’t on the first floor and got through without any damage.

She also has an old friend in Asheville, NC which is apparently in terrible shape because of flooding. S sent her a text and got a response, but no real word on how they are doing.

High School Football

Cathedral picked a great week to have a bye. I’m sure the coaches weren’t thrilled to have a hole in their schedule, but they were able to avoid having to deal with the weather.

Most games here Friday were postponed to Saturday. But some foolish schools decided to play. The worst of the storm was going through right during game times Friday. At their peak, the winds were gusting to around 70 MPH. Oddly there was no lightning associated with the storm, so most games that started just kept on going through the worst of it. A couple games kicked off then stopped when the power went out.

Although the Irish were off, I did have football plans for the night. Our friend Coach H was bringing his team to play NC, the school across the street from us. That game was moved to Saturday morning, so I walked over and watched with Mrs. H. Poor NC entered on a 32-game losing streak. Coach H’s guys did their job and easily extended that streak to 33 games. It was fun to catch up with Mrs. Coach.

The Jayhawks

As the season continues to go down the toilet, I can step back a bit and react from a distance. Noticing things like it’s interesting how you can be mad about one thing during a game, then afterwards realize you should be mad about something else completely.

During the loss to TCU Saturday, most KU fans were steaming about a series of replay reviews and calls/no-calls that went against KU. All were very close, but in the heat of the moment they all seemed horribly wrong.

After the game, though, it was clear KU didn’t lose that game because of the refs. They lost, mostly, because on three massive plays, they missed a total of 187 tackles. They let what is basically a fullback run a punt back over 80 yards for a touchdown. They had the TCU QB dead in the backfield only to let him slip away and complete a pass that not only secured a massive first down, but turned into another score when tackles were missed on the back half of the play.

Offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes is taking most of the ire of KU fans because his offense seems unimaginative and predictable while former OC Andy Kotelnicki took his super-fun offense to Penn State and is doing amazing things. And Grimes deserves that ire. His offense is dumb and his play calling at times infuriating. Not giving the ball to the best running back in school history one time when you have first and goal inside the five is just stupid.

But the defensive coaches need to take their share of the blame. They haven’t figured out a way to either get consistent pressure on the quarterback or cover receivers downfield. There are far too many big holes for receivers to get open and run freely. On top of that, this team tackles terribly. It’s like they don’t practice it.

Last year’s defense often played bend-but-don’t-break football. This year they break early and often. They had three take-aways Saturday, and should have had at least one more. And still gave up 38 points.

Honestly, I think you can summarize this year compared to last like this: last year, KU got nearly every break. This year, the Jayhawks are getting none. Watching games, you always expect something to go wrong. I think the players feel that, too. Which means things can get rougher as they lose faith. You know what I always say about KU football and things getting worse…

Colts

Hey the Colts with an impressive win, dropping 27 on the allegedly fearsome Pittsburgh defense. Twenty of those points coming after Anthony Richardson, shockingly, left the game with an injury. Old man Joe Flacco can still fling it. The defense was incredible early and made a couple huge plays late to hold off the rallying Steelers.

Again, I refuse to judge Richardson until the end of the year. But, man, he threw a couple more just incredible balls in the first two drives of the game. Then he got destroyed on two different QB runs and had to leave the game. Will Levis was the other option for the Colts to draft a year ago, and he looks like a disaster at this point, so I think AR was the right choice. It feels like he’s always, always, always going to be a massive risk-reward player, though. He’s got some Joel Embiid in him where even when he does the right thing, he manages to get some total freak injury. But, again, I’m not judging him yet.

Oh, would you be surprised that there were a series of incredibly inconsistent calls by the refs in this game? They both helped and hurt the Colts. Between this and the KU game, I’m about done with football refs. Looking forward to basketball refs ruining my life in about a month.

Royals

The Kansas City Royals are in the playoffs! One year after losing 106 games. What a turnaround, and totally unexpected. I would have been thrilled if they got close to .500 this year. If not for a bad September, the R’s would have been well over 90 wins in 2024.

That stumble to the finish doesn’t exactly inspire confidence for the Wild Card series with Baltimore. But the playoffs are all about pitching and the Royals have three solid starters, when they are on, plus the bullpen has been terrific for the last month or so. If they can just find a way to string together some hits again they have every chance to advance. A Royals-Yankees divisional series would be fun for us old folks.

I expect these playoffs to be much less stressful for me than the Royals’ runs in 2014 and 2015. I’m less invested now, the games move quicker, I drink less than I did a decade ago, and I have lower expectations. I still need to add sunflower seeds to my shopping list so I can recreate some of the magic from those two Octobers.

Weekend Notes

September 16, 2024 /

As has become standard so far this fall, Friday night was jam-packed with sports action from the couch. Things were ratcheted up a notch this weekend, as KU was playing, meaning I couldn’t casually watch tennis, baseball, or basketball while listening to high school football. No, this week I would be yelling at the TV while listening to the radio. Sadly, more yelling than I expected. For the most part that worked out ok, although there were moments that big things were happening in each game at the same time and it was tough to keep track of what was going on where. It was also very confusing for S, who was facing away from the TV and didn’t always understand what was causing my outburst when the radio announcers were fairly quiet.

There was plenty of dumbness over the weekend, with some cool stuff sprinkled in. Let’s get to it.

HS Football

On the radio was Cathedral’s visit to arch rival Bishop Chatard, ranked either #1 or #2 in 4A, depending on the poll. CHS had won eight of the last ten in the series, but last year was one of those losses in the weird, split game that started on Friday (and CHS led 21–0 early) then ended with BC making a comeback Saturday morning after the game was halted because of a power outage Friday.

No worries this year. CHS jumped out 14–0 and never let up, winning 30–7. It could/should have been an even bigger win. The Irish had three touchdowns, including a 66-yard pass, called back because of penalties. Two of those turned into 10 points anyway. The kicker missed a makable field goal, then put what would have been a school-record 51-yard field goal off the crossbar at the halftime horn. Still, always satisfying to beat the rival, especially for the girls who have friends there. L went to the JV game on Saturday, another W for the Irish.

The CHS radio guys were hilarious. Both analysts played for the Irish, one graduating about 20 years ago, the other over 50 years ago. They were a little fired up for the rivalry game. They thought each penalty that wiped out a TD was garbage. They show more uncalled holds than usual. By the fourth quarter they were screaming at the refs from the press box. And this was in a game their team was winning! I was entertained.

KU

Welp, so much for all the big plans for this year.

I would have written a lot more about this game had I taken a crack at it Friday. Some seriously dumb coaching decisions. Any hopes that Jeff Grimes would step right in for Andy Kotelnicki have been dashed. I mean, how you don’t give Devin Neal, who averaged almost six yards a carry on the night and is averaging nine yards a carry for the season, the ball on second and two and instead throw a pass that has not worked all night when another touchdown likely wins the game is beyond me. The KU offense, which would get all kinds of run on football Twitter the past couple years for how innovative and fun it was, is now boring and can’t adjust. Hiring Grimes is the first big mistake of Lance Leipold’s time in Lawrence. I feel like he could have grabbed some OC from a Texas high school and got better results.

Aside from one exceptionally dumb play by the defense that could have ended the game – the fumble they kicked around for 30 seconds before UNLV fell on it – they were, mostly, amazing. Especially the front seven, which was not expected to be a strength. Two weeks in a row they’ve controlled the game and been let down by the offense/coaches.

Losing a contest that, after the game, the analytics gave the Jayhawks an 83% chance to win seems dumb even for a program with as much dumbness in its history as KU has. Something about the entire team seems off. The last two years it seemed more like a Mangino-era team that rarely did things to beat themselves. Through three games they seem sloppier and less disciplined than the past two years. That is true from the coaches through the players. Not what I expected from a head coach wound as tight as Leipold.

The headline has to be Jalon Daniels, though. Clearly he’s compromised. Whether it is physical, mental, a matter of meshing with Grimes, or some combination of those three, it’s not working. Bad throw after bad throw. Terrible decisions. Seeming confused rather than playing with the joy he used to take the field with. Maybe he can be fixed/salvaged/cajoled into better football, but it needs to happen quick if that is a genuine possibility.

There was a lot of call on Twitter to bring in Cole Ballard. Friday didn’t seem like the time to do that. If things go sideways in Morgantown this week, it might be time to give JD a break.

You would have thought it was a KU basketball loss for how long the angry, post-game texts flew around after this one.

Technically, a lot of the big goals for this season are still possible. They could still make the Big 12 championship game if the offense gets fixed in the next, gulp, five days. At this point I’m more worried about finding five more wins and going to another crappy bowl than any of that. After blowing two winnable games, I don’t have a lot of confidence those W’s are on the remaining schedule. Playing the Big 12 home games at Arrowhead always had a measure of risk. If this team falls apart and no one is there – aside from the entire state of Iowa when the Clones come to town – it will make this season seem even worse. Remember, with Kansas football, things can always get worse.

We all know timeouts in college are too long. But KU called a timeout with under 2:00 to play in the game Friday just to stop the clock. It was a standard, FOUR MINUTE time out. Just fucking terrible. Even in the NFL, which will cram as many ads into a game as they can, they limit those late game TOs to 30 seconds or a minute.

College Football

I didn’t watch much ball on Saturday as I found few of the games compelling. The game I watched most was Cincinnati-Miami. M made the 45 minute trip to Oxford to hang out with friends but did not have a ticket. She did get to go to a party with one of her best friends and said she had a great time and enjoyed all Oxford has to offer. Nice win for her Bearcats.

The Victory Bell rivalry is tied for the oldest non-conference rivalry in the country, but this was the last game scheduled to be played on campus, and the 2026 game at the Bengals’ stadium is the last one currently scheduled. When I talked to M on Sunday I tried to explain why – UC wants the games at the Bengals’ field instead of having to go to Oxford, Miami wanted to hang onto those home games, joining the Big 12 changed UC’s scheduling priorities, etc – but she thought most of those reasons were dumb. I’m with her.

S and I went out for an early dinner and got to see part of Notre Dame’s destruction of Purdue. I guess the Irish got re-focused after the Northern Illinois loss.

Colts

So the Colts might be a bad team. A really bad team. GM Chris Ballard insisted the defense would be solid this year, especially against the run. Then the Colts gave up over 250 yards rushing in the first half against a team starting a backup QB that was only going to pass if he had to. Seems dumb not to load up the box and force him to pass. And that was before two defensive linemen got hurt. I refuse to hold Anthony Richardson’s dumbness against him until next year. But something about his passes seems hard to catch, because his receivers dropped a ton of balls that hit their hands. Weird. Those drops make his poor decision making on other passes hurt even worse. And still the Colts had a chance until the final gun. They were fortunate the final score wasn’t more indicative how big a beat down this was.

The Cowboys, Lions, and Ravens all lost at home. The Niners lost. Aside from the Chiefs, who nearly lost at home, do you trust a single team in this league? I’m starting to think the uneven play is a function of teams barely playing starters in the preseason and the added week to the regular season making teams/players more cautious in how they handle injuries. But that’s crazy talk, right?

Twitter During Games

It is funny to look back on your feed at how people react to specific plays. When KU ran that stupid screen pass on second and two in the fourth quarter? People were pissed. And remained pissed well after the game ended. Same in the Colts game. There was a rather curious play call on a third down – something that happened several times during the game – and Colts Twitter, to the extent I follow it, blew up. My favorite was one of our young, local weather ladies getting involved. “What was that play call????” It shows how far we’ve come as a society where it’s not a surprise at all when a young woman has a football take, and it’s 100% legit.

Royals

The R’s took two of three in Pittsburgh, and really should have swept the woeful Pirates. Five games up for the final Wild Card spot with 12 games left. A better record over the last 10 games than both the team ahead of them and behind them in the WC race. 97% playoff odds. A clinched winning season. All summer I’ve been waiting for them to fall apart. It would really suck if they finally did it during this closing stretch.

Fever

Another Friday-Sunday weekend for the Fever. Friday they lost their second game in three nights to Las Vegas, this one much more competitive than the first. I checked on that game periodically but there was too much else going on for me to really follow it.

Sunday they closed their home schedule against Dallas. For some reason the game was only on locally on some third-tier station. One that, even on cable, looked piped in on some terrible, over-the-air antenna. The picture was all fuzzy and blurry. It was like trying to watch European soccer in the 1980s. Pretty sure this wouldn’t happen to the Pacers.

Anyway, for the third time this season the Fever and Wings played a tremendously exciting game, with the Fever winning by one, although Dallas hit an unguarded 3 at the buzzer. These teams tend to not play defense against each other, so it is back-and-forth, up-and-down the entire game. That win clinched sixth place for the Fever, and also guaranteed them at least a .500 season. Twenty wins two years after winning five. Not bad. Caitlin had a career-high 35 points Sunday, and broke the WNBA single season assist record Friday.[1] She also collected her sixth technical foul of the year Friday. Her teammates were keeping her away from the refs Sunday so she doesn’t get magic #7, which brings a one-game suspension with it. Maybe just stop complaining.

Weather

Still hot and dry here. I’ve been watering the grass a couple times a week for about a month. Despite that, our lawn got pretty crunchy over the past few days. We were hoping the hurricane remnants would bring us some rain last week, but that fizzled out in southern Indiana. No rain in the forecast, every day in the upper 80s. At least the pool is still open, and staying warm on its own.

  1. The WNBA schedule expanded to 40 games last year, so a lot of season records have been falling. They may add another four games next year, so throw out your record books.  ↩

Holiday Weekend Notes

September 3, 2024 /

It was an action-packed weekend. At least for watching sports from the comfort of my house. Friday night in particular was kind of crazy. High school football on the radio. Indiana Fever and US Open on the TV. Royals-Astros Gameday coverage on the Mac. With bonus weather monitoring on every screen. I guess I’ll break things down by subject rather than day.

KU Football

A slow start turned into the blowout it was supposed to be Thursday night for KU. Not sure you can make any great assessments of the team given the opponent. I thought Jalon Daniels looked a little rusty, but I also don’t know how open the playbook was. It seemed like the coaching staff was doing some experimenting with the offensive line. A pick-six for Mello Dotson, likely not the last for this defensive backfield this season. Devin Neal scoring touchdowns, Luke Grimm catching passes. We’ll find out a lot more about the Jayhawks next week when they go to Illinois.

The first game at Children’s Mercy Park seemed to go just fine. Word from people who went is that it was a great atmosphere. The replay system not working early and likely costing KU two scores was kind of a bummer.

HS Football

A week after beating preseason #1 Ben Davis, #3 Cathedral got a reminder their schedule is still brutal, losing to #6 Brownsburg 30–14. They got there a rather odd way.

BHS jumped out to a 17–7 lead Friday night before lightning was spotted. Although the storm was 10 miles away, and moving away from the stadium, the game was delayed over an hour before a second series of storms popped up and officials decided to postpone the game until Saturday afternoon.

Things didn’t get much better in the resumed game. CHS was playing with their primary running back – who ran for 168 yards week one – hobbled Friday, then without him completely Saturday. L heard Sunday he’s probably having surgery and out for the year. Not sure if he was worth 16 points but I think he would have helped. If he is indeed out for an extended stretch, the Irish’s already brutal schedule looks even more formidable.

Weather

Last week was hot, sticky, and nasty. The heat index was up around 110 a couple days. Friday night three rounds of storms came through, and torrential rains and heavy winds blew the heat away. The humidity stuck around through Saturday. Then Sunday morning it was 52 and 100% pleasant. The extended forecast has a bunch of mornings like that, with a few even colder, and daytime highs mostly in the mid–70s with a few mid–80s sprinkled in. September is a truly glorious month.

US Open

I watched a ton of tennis last week and into the weekend. Week one of the Open might be the best week of tennis of the year, hell one of the best sports weeks of the entire year, with great matches in progress just about any time you turn on your TV from noon to midnight.

Weekend highlights were Frances Tiafoe’s two wins and both Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic losing early. It was a bummer that Coco Gauff went out early, but at least she lost to another American. In general it’s great to have several decent American players in both the women’s and men’s game at the moment. It sure makes for better crowds in New York.

Royals

Crap on a stick.

Last Wednesday afternoon the Royals were tied for first place and were up on co-leaders Cleveland going into the seventh inning, nine outs away from a four-game sweep of the Guardians. Then the Royals melted down a little and they’ve yet to recover, losing six straight games. Three injuries during that span have not helped. At least they still have a cushion in the wild card race for the time being.

It’s been a bit of a charmed summer for the Royals, totally unexpected and built on out-of-nowhere quality starting pitching. The pitching has still been fine, at least the starters; it’s been the bats that have let them down over the past week. They were nearly no-hit Friday and have gone deep into other games with just one or two hits. Maybe, hopefully, surely the hitters can lock back in and they can hold on to one of those wild card spots to complete this surprise season.

Fever

I know I’m not alone in having watched more WNBA games this year than in the rest of my life combined. I now know exactly when the Fever are playing, and on what channel. Unlike other sports, which S doesn’t really pay attention to, for the Fever she gets kind of locked in. Ironically our basketball playing daughter will still just breeze through and watch a few minutes, but rarely sits down and watches long stretches with us.

Two more wins over the weekend for the hottest team in the league. The Fever are now over .500 for the first time in five years. Which sounds made up. Have they really been that bad, for that long? Again, since I never watched I don’t know if that is a real stat or not.

It’s been fun watching this team figure each other out since their disastrous start. Kelsey Mitchell is a revelation, and a perfect backcourt partner for Caitlin Clark. Aliyah Boston finally settled down and started playing like the former #1 pick she is. Lexi Hull is one of the most fun players to watch, and seemingly can’t miss a 3 since the Olympic break.

And, of course, there’s Clark. She was starting to get comfortable before the break, but has looked like a first team all league player since getting some time to both rest and work on her game. In those seven games she’s averaging 24.6 points, 5 rebounds, and nine assists. And that’s with her teammates still booting 3–4 passes a night, or blowing open layups.[1]

She’s added a floater. Her teammates are getting better at anticipating her crazy passes. She’s handling the physicality of the league better. She still makes a few horrible passes a game, but when she’s averaging almost nine assists a game, you’ll take those. And her outside shot still isn’t locked in. That will come next year. Any questions about her transition to the pro game have been answered.

The only real bummer to the Fever turning the corner is it has kept us from going to a game. Tickets were crazy expensive at the beginning of the season, as you would expect. I planned on waiting until the hype died down and the team fell deep into the bottom of the standings before trying to grab some for a weeknight game. So much for that. I was looking at tickets for tomorrow’s game and even upper level seats were going for $200 each. That seems excessive, especially when L isn’t super into watching. Although she would go if given the chance.

Oh, one other WNBA note. The yammering idiots on TV need to drop the whole Caitlin Clark vs Angel Reese thing and focus on the real issue: how stupid are the four teams other than Indiana and Chicago who passed on drafting Reese? She’s getting 20 boards a night over the past three weeks and leads the league in rebounding for the season. From watching Chicago Friday, it’s obvious that some of those numbers come because her coach leaves her on the court deep into blowouts to pad her numbers. But 20 rebounds is 20 rebounds.

The rookie of the year argument is pretty much over, as CC is both having a better and more impactful year while Chicago is dropping like a rock despite Reese’s play. That shouldn’t hide the fact that Reese is having a phenomenal rookie year of her own.

College Football

It’s always hard for me to dive in this first week of real college football action. There’s so much other stuff going on, both on TV and in real life, that it’s hard to lock in. I had plenty of games on but other than Notre Dame – Texas A&M didn’t get super focused on any of them.

That was a big win for the Irish. Notre Dame’s defense looks incredible. They have a cake schedule. They will be one of the top four teams in the playoff. The obvious joke is they will then lose to Alabama or whatever SEC runner-up they play in the first round. But that game will be in South Bend. In December. Surely Touchdown Jesus will scare up some lake effect snow, or at least nasty windchills, to aid the Irish.

Family Time

We didn’t do anything big family-wise for the holiday weekend. M stayed in Cincinnati. C and L went to the CHS game with friends Friday, but neither went back to the resumption on Saturday. L went to the gym with basketball friends Sunday. C went to the Pitbull concert Sunday night. We had the in-laws over for dinner Sunday, and three of the nephews over to swim on Monday. S and I went to dinner with friends Saturday.

I also found a little project for myself over the weekend. It scratches one of my biggest itches and will have a direct effect on some of my blog posts. I doubt most of you will be as interested in it as I am, but I’ll still share more details about it soon.

And with that, summer is over. Preseason training for school basketball started for L today, and I was up at 5:15 to get her to school on time. A perfect way for her to knock out some of her driving in the dark time!

  1. As the father of a lady baller, I will say the most frustrating part of the women’s game is how many layups are missed. That, more than any other area, is where the difference between men and women is glaring. It’s a lot harder to make a layup in traffic when you release the ball a foot/foot-and-a-half below the rim than within a few inches of it.  ↩

Weekend Notes

August 19, 2024 /

An Unexpected Trip

What started as a boring, uneventful weekend ending up being surprisingly fun.

S worked full time all weekend, filling in for a hospitalist who is on maternity leave. She had like 1000 babies to see,[1] so was at the hospital until 5:00 Saturday, nearly as long Sunday. Because of that and the girls being tired after their first full week of school, we just sat around and did nothing on Saturday. I read. I swam. I watched some TV. I napped. And repeat.

Saturday evening I was monitoring the Royals-Reds game while doing some other stuff around the house. I knew my buddy O-Dawg, who I lived with for a year after college and now lives in Cincinnati, was at the game. When Dairon Blanco hit his second home run of the game, I texted O. His response:

“i got a ticket 4 u 4 tmrw”

Um, ok.

Totally out of the blue, at 7:30 the night before the game. Classic O-Dawg.

I had a couple things on the calendar for Sunday, but quickly made some adjustments, cleared it with S, and told him I would be down.

So Sunday morning I hopped on I–74 to see the Royals in person for the second time this season.

It rained off-and-on during the drive, which was an omen. I made very good time and had to wait about 30 minutes for O, his daughter, and her boyfriend to meet me at Great American Ball Park. Twice in that half hour it lightly rained.

O arrived, we got to our seats, which were terrific – section 129, row T, even the pitcher’s mound behind the Reds’ dugout – and started catching up.

We tailgated together at last fall’s Iowa State – UC game, but hadn’t really caught up in over a decade. My readers who know O won’t be surprised to learn he hasn’t changed much. It was tough to truly have a conversation because he was constantly spilling stories out. So you just sit back and listen and laugh and try to have something to say when he takes a breath.

For the first inning or so it was exactly what you would expect from an afternoon game in Cincinnati. We were wiping the sweat from our heads as our necks got crispy. Then the rain moved in, escalating from sprinkles to a decent downpour in the bottom of the second inning. That burst turned into a 45 minute delay. Once the game re-started, it felt more like football weather, cool and blustery. It rained again in the 7th, complete with some thunder and a warning that we should leave our seats, but the umpires never stopped the game. That was nearly disastrous as, with the Royals up 4–0, Sam Long loaded the bases and gave up a run when he clearly had no grip on the ball, but Lucas Erceg came in and shut the door to preserve the lead.

Then the clouds moved out, the sun reappeared, and it turned into a nearly perfect day. The Royals scoring four in the ninth to stretch the lead to 8–1, and 28–3 for the series, was the cherry on top.

There was one more cherry on top for the day, though. M’s rush prep activities wrapped up at 3:00 so I was able to go pick her up for dinner together. We went to a very tasty pizza place right off campus. Her “work week” went well. She is already losing her voice. “We yelled so much this week!” I’m not sure why they were yelling so much when they were just getting trained and practicing for rush, which starts tomorrow. Anyway, work week went well, she and her suitemates get along great, all the girls on their floor are getting along, and it’s been a good first week on campus.

Great seats. Great time with a guy I lived with for a year but haven’t seen much on a consistent basis in over 20 years. Great win/weekend for the Royals. Great dinner with my daughter. Great that the driver that had just passed me got pulled over by the state police officer who is always lurking near Batesville. Always slow down around Batesville, folks.

Fall Feelings

I think it’s funny how as soon as the kids go back to school you start thinking of fall. When we still have half of August left, plus summer weather these days seem to stretch deep into October.

I’ve already been thinking about fall wardrobe choices. Octoberfest beers have started replacing summer ones. Pumpkin Spice is emerging from its slumber to take over store shelves. People are spending too much time talking about preseason football.

I even heard a local weatherman talking about how fall weather was just around the corner. He was kind of right as we’ve had a few very cool mornings and will have a couple more this week. But we also just came off a stretch of days where if it wasn’t close to 90, the heat index was. And, again, astronomical summer has over a month left.

I know the end of summer kind of sucks, as we get beaten down by the heat, our lawns get crispy, and we are looking forward to the relief of fall and all the fun things that come with that time of year. I try to hold on to summer, though. Sure, fall is great. But right after fall there will be long months when we are stuck inside by the cold and we will long for days when we complained about it being hot and humid.

  1. Or closer to 30.  ↩

Sports Notes

June 20, 2024 /

Time to knock out some sports notes while I avoid going outside and facing Heat Dome ’24.

Say Hey

The incomparable Willie Mays died Tuesday night. I never saw him play live as the tail end of his career just barely overlapped with my life. I did hear the stories and saw the grainy highlight reels. And I remember how those fat, softcover, sports trivia books popular in the late Seventies and early Eighties were always filled with amazing facts about his career. Willie, at worst, was on of the four best players ever. At worst.[1]

I sent a few of you this statement after the news of his death broke. I’m pretty proud of it so will repeat it for my blog readers:

Willie should have kicked Joe DiMaggio’s ass when the Yankee Clipper insisted on being introduced as “The Greatest Living Baseball Player” late in his life. It was asinine, dishonest, and offensive to suggest Joe D was better than the Say Hey Kid.

Rany Jazayerli has a great piece on The Ringer breaking down how Mays was even better than the raw numbers suggest. I know all about the time Ted Williams missed because of his military service in World War II and the Korean War. I did not know, or did not recall, Mays missed nearly two years when he served in Korea. Even for a player as accomplished as he was, those two years made a massive difference in his career production.

Willie Mays Was the Greatest Baseball Player Who Ever Lived

Royals

I’ve been paying more attention to the Royals over the past month or so. Figures that whatever fueled their hot start over the first two months of the season seems to have fizzled over that stretch. It is nice that they aren’t terrible, though. I’ve been on the verge of resubscribing to either MLB.TV to watch or At Bat to listen several times, but then they lose a couple games and I figure I watch/listen to other stuff at night so why upset my routine. Then again, At Bat is only $30…

Pacers

It won’t be official for a couple more weeks when the NBA calendar turns over, but word has it that the Pacers and Pascal Siakam have agreed on a big contract extension. There wasn’t much doubt; word around the NBA was that Siakam would not agree to be traded to a team he was not interested in re-signing with. There were some rough patches early, but eventually he fit in well with his new teammates. Add a summer of working out together plus a 100% healthy Tyrese Haliburton next season and the Pacers should be firmly in the second tier of the Eastern Conference behind Boston.

NBA Finals

What a boring series. Boston is the least impressive great team I can recall. That isn’t really fair. Almost every game, though, they have one terrible quarter which keeps you from thinking, “Wow, this team is incredible!” They have two legit stars in Jaylen Brown and Jason Tatum, a perfect compliment (when healthy) in Kristaps Porzingis, and remarkable role players in Jrue Holiday and Derrick White. White, especially, floors me every game when he makes multiple “HOLY SHIT!!!” defensive plays.

The Celtics definitely got a great draw, with Jimmy Butler, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, and the entire Knicks roster injured and then Haliburton getting hurt during the Eastern Conference Finals and the Denver Nuggets getting knocked out of the Western Conference semis by Minnesota. That shouldn’t distract from a magnificent season and a team that is poised to be, perhaps, the next NBA dynasty getting the Finals monkey off their backs.

Olympic Swimming Trials

Big week here in Indy with the Olympic swimming trials at Lucas Oil Stadium, which is obviously a little weird. The closest we came to attending was having dinner with some friends who were in town to attend and dropping them off at the gates before we headed home.

I highly suggest finding one of the videos showing how they built the pools inside a football stadium. Wild stuff, and roughly 20,000 people a night are coming in to watch.

It’s been a good week for the local swimmers, with several athletes who either went/go to high school in the Indy suburbs, or attend(ed) IU or Notre Dame making the Olympic roster so far. I guess swimmers can come from anywhere, and the high school/club swim programs in Carmel are some of the absolute best in the world, but it is always weird to me that landlocked Indiana can crank out such high level swimmers.

The schedule for the week seems weird to me. Or at least the TV schedule. Some nights NBC showed swimming for an hour. Some nights two hours. I get that they have airtime to fill, and buzz to create for the Paris games. But seems like the trial meet used to be over a long weekend instead of stretched across a week.

Also I’m preemptively complaining about local NBC stations sending reporters to the Olympics. Absolutely zero need for it and their little puff pieces they file for the local news are terrible 99% of the time.

  1. Mays, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds in some order. Your mileage may vary on Bonds.  ↩

Pro Sports Notes

October 24, 2023 /

Time for a few thoughts about the exciting world of professional sports.

MLB Playoffs

I have continued to watch the playoffs most nights. Maybe not as closely as I did a few years back, but I’ve had them on which is a big step for me. Since I’ve been checked out on baseball for the past two seasons, that has turned me into one of those viewers who is amazed by seeing players for the first time in October and probably infuriates people who give the game attention all season.

Thus I’ve been infatuated with Texas Ranger Adolis Garcia. That dude’s performance in the ALCS was legitimately legendary. I don’t have any great love the the Rangers – I’ve always found them to be kind of anonymous and generic – but since it is fun to hate on the Astros, I was all-in on the Rangers winning the battle of Texas. That made Garcia’s performance, especially in the final three games of the series, even more enthralling. Nothing like getting an entire city to hate you then just destroying their hopes in the biggest moments of the year.

The Rangers-Astros series was great not just because it went seven games and had many moments of terrific drama. It was also great because of the in-state rivalry angle. Especially in 2023, when it is much easier to get tickets as a fan of the road team. The large number Rangers fans in Houston and Astros fans in Arlington gave each game a little extra juice that made them even more interesting to watch.

That got me thinking about how the nature of crowds has changed so much in recent years. It’s an on-going joke in NFL discussions that the LA Chargers play 17 road games, since they have a tiny fanbase in LA and their fancy new stadium is often filled with many more visiting fans. The Rams have a larger home fanbase but still play in front of an audience that has a healthy portion of out-of-towners, witness the amazing games against San Francisco in recent years that seemed like college bowl games instead of NFL games. Same for the Raiders since they moved to Las Vegas.

You can watch about any NFL game these days, and there will be a lot of people in the crowd cheering for the visitors, making enough noise to be noticeable on TV.

Tickets cost a ton. Parking is like buying an extra seat inside the stadium. NFL stadiums are filled with drunk, angry people. The in-stadium experience pales in comparison to watching a game at home. And going to the stadium requires an investment of at least five hours. Throw in a lot of tickets being snatched up by businesses and handed out to folks who aren’t diehards for the local team, and the makeup of crowds is just different these days. Where Arrowhead was once 79,500 Chiefs fans and a few hundred visiting fans scattered around, now the colors of the other team stick out of the sea of red.

Another thing that has blown me away about watching baseball again is the realization that we have moved into the fourth generation of postseason records. The first generation was in the pre-division days, when everything was accomplished in the World Series. Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Micky Mantle, etc all racked their numbers up in seven-game series. The second generation was from 1969 until the first Wild Card teams were added, which added the LCS. These were ruled by Joe Morgan, George Brett, etc. The third generation, when the first Wild Card teams were added, dudes like Manny Ramirez and Bernie Williams broke all the records set in the previous age thanks to the extra round of divisional play.

Finally, the current, fourth age brings in multiple Wild Card teams and the extra games associated with that expansion. It makes sense that Jose Altuve either holds or will soon nearly every postseason hitting record. Dude has been mashing in multiple series every year for nearly a decade, including four World Series appearances.

What blew me away, though, was learning that Kyle Schwarber now holds the record for most postseason homers by a left-handed batter. Kyle Schwarber?!?! I know he’s good, but it seemed crazy that he would own that record. The homers do add up pretty quick when you hit five, six, and five (and counting) homers in individual postseasons.

What was even more amazing was who held the record until last weekend: Reggie Jackson! If Kyle Schwarber breaks a record set in the Seventies and Eighties, it sure seems like someone else would have done so sooner. Surely there was a lefty in the Yankees Nineties dynasty who would have approached it. Or David Ortiz. Or Barry Bonds. But Big Papi ended his career with 17, matching Jim Thome one spot behind Mr. October’s record. Schwarber’s teammate Bryce Harper is at 16, so by the end of the month Reggie could, possibly, be in third place. Crazy.

I always hated Reggie, but I was equally fascinated by him. Props for setting a record that held up for 40-ish years.

NFL

I told you the NFL was crazy. The Niners have now lost two in a row after staking their claim as best team in the league. The Bills might be trash. Can you trust the Dolphins, Lions, or Jags?

That leaves the Chiefs, winners of six-straight, and the Ravens, who destroyed Detroit last week, as the teams of the moment. The Chiefs are incapable of losing to the Broncos, so I think they’re safe for a week. The Ravens go to Arizona this week, and it was the Cardinals who exposed the Cowboys a month ago, so you never know.

I’ll just repeat what I said last week: I’m glad I don’t gamble on the NFL, because I don’t understand how you make any sense of it.

NBA

I discovered over the summer that I’ve joined a particular demographic: middle aged white men who listen to tons of NBA podcasts but don’t watch many NBA games until the playoffs. I found out that’s a thing when the hosts of two non-hoops podcasts I listen to mentioned they fell into that category, and know lots of people like them. OK, then.

It is true, over the past year I’ve added a bunch of NBA pods into my regular rotation. I’ve been trying to figure out why this sub-group of like-minded people exists. I think it’s because you can talk about the NBA in a similar way to baseball, but analytics aren’t as prevalent (yet), so these conversations are based on people rather than numbers and remain accessible even to casual fans. Plus the NBA is a lot more fun than baseball, at least in the way it embraces drama and tension. The NBA embraces when there is beef while baseball goes totally off the rails when there is any controversy. Witness the whole Braves-Phillies stupidity earlier this month. And a single trade/free agent signing has a much bigger impact on an NBA team than an MLB one.

Anyway, the NBA begins tonight and I can’t wait to watch Victor Wembanyama play. His highlights from the preseason don’t seem like they could have been done by a human. If he can stay healthy, he is legit going to change the NBA.

Of greater interest to me is that the Pacers have the potential to be one of the most fun teams to watch. They will run like crazy. Tyrese Haliburton may lead the league in assists, and will do so with flair. Obi Toppin is a walking, talking Alley Oop. All the other parts are fast and young, and there is plenty of shooting to go around.

Now the defense is probably still going to be suspect again this year. But I’d much rather watch a mediocre team that scores the shit out of the ball than the one the Pacers ran out a few years back that struggled to score in the 90s.

A lot of NBA talking heads have fallen in love with the Pacers. Not as title contenders, let’s not be silly. But as a team that, health permitting, can easily win 45-ish games and sneak into the upper six of the Eastern Conference.

I feel like that might be a little over-optimistic, based on the one preseason game I watched. They are certainly capable of dropping 120+ points a night, but it puts a lot of stress on the team to have to do that because they can’t avoid giving up 115.

The Pacers have also had horrible injury luck in recent years. There’s no reason to expect that to suddenly end, and all it will take is Haliburton or Myles Turner or another starter missing 10–15 games to sink the season.

It is opening week, though, and time to push those concerns aside for the moment. I’m excited to watch what should be a highly entertaining team that has a great chance to make the postseason for the first time since 2020, maybe even winning a game for the first time since 2018.

Sports Notes

October 4, 2023 /

NFL

Four weeks into the NFL season and I’m not sure what to make of things. Is there a single team that deserves unquestioned trust?

The Chiefs lost at home to Detroit opening night, righted themselves over the next two weeks, then apparently looked kind of crappy against the Jets last Sunday before escaping with a win.

The Bills played lethargic football against the undermanned Jets in week one, but have been kind of awesome since.

Miami hung 70 points on Denver, then lost by four touchdowns the next week.

Dallas has made a strong argument as the most complete team in the league. Well, other than losing to Arizona.

Philly is 4–0 but have been far from impressive getting there.

The 49ers are also 4–0, which means one of their stars is almost guaranteed to get hurt this week.

The top of the league seems kind of jumbled and uncertain, plenty of good teams but no great ones at the moment. Which I guess is a good thing as a casual fan of the game, as it makes for competitive games. Of course, any of those teams could go undefeated through October and a month from now we’ll be talking about how great they are.

For some reason I’m always surprised at how the Bears have been so bad for so long. 1985 was a long, long time ago, yet my brain keeps trying to convince me that they were still good until recently. They’ve been to the playoffs six times in the last 30 years. Is it just me or can other Gen Xers not get their heads around how long the Bears have been terrible?

I wasn’t able to watch the Colts Sunday, but it sounds like Anthony Richardson again dazzled. I caught a few minutes of ESPN’s NFL show Tuesday afternoon and I thought it was interesting that the panelists said they’ve seen enough, he is legit, and it’s time to start thinking about what moves the Colts need to make this offseason to both protect Richardson and put more weapons around him. He is still very raw, but is already making plays not many quarterbacks can make. I’m guessing if there was a re-draft, CJ Stroud would now be the #1 pick and playing in Carolina while Richardson would have gone #2 to Houston and the Colts would be, sadly, trying to keep Bryce Young from getting killed each week. Or maybe they would have traded down and chucked this season to go for Caleb Williams if they knew Jonathan Taylor would hold out.

NBA

What a crazy week in the association!

First, the Blazers trade Dame Lillard to Milwaukee as part of a three-team deal. Dame joining forces with Giannis made the Bucks the Eastern Conference favorites, at least temporarily.

My favorite part of the trade was Miami getting butt-hurt about being left out of the trade discussions. As if there was an obligation for Portland to make the deal that Dame wanted most but did not bring the best return for them. There was some pettiness on Portland’s part, which is kind of to be expected when the guy who still has four years left on his contract asks to be traded. But the Blazers were absolutely free to find a deal that gave them the best return as they rebuild around Scoot Henderson. Fuck Miami.

So for, what, three days the Bucks were conference favorites. Until Portland sent Jrue Holliday, who was part of their return for Lillard, to Boston. Suddenly the Celtics had one of the best perimeter defenders it the league and a thoroughly capable fourth option on offense. While there was some arguing amongst the experts, this trade made Boston at least co-favorites with Milwaukee, while some pushed the C’s into the top spot after the trade.

I loved all of this. Now we have two teams that are built to give the other absolute fits and will eye each other the entire regular season, likely battling for the top seed that would put a possible conference finals game seven on their home court. Should be a fascinating journey to get to those conference finals in late May.

And the Blazers absolutely kick-started their rebuild, assembling good pieces around the young core they already have while also grabbing a couple more established players that can be moved to add even more picks/youngsters to their stash.

I very much approve of teams making splashy moves like this. Dame or Jrue or one of their teammates could get hurt and blow this all up. Portland’s youth movement might never come together into a winner. The process sure wasn’t boring, though.

Man, the Lakers need to shut the fuck up. How do you whine about Denver talking a lot of trash last year after they swept you? Especially when the Nuggets went on to win the title. If a team sweeps your ass, they can say anything they want.

A team built around two aging, injury-prone stars should keep their mouths shut, lest the Hoops Gods notice and reward them by blowing out LeBron’s ankle again for wrecking AD’s back for the 1000th time.

MLB

I actually watched a baseball game on Tuesday, my first of the year! I didn’t plan on it, but when I was texting with L’s travel coach he said he was watching his Twins try to break their 18-game playoff losing streak. I had nothing else going on so flipped to the game. I was transfixed by the beautiful uniforms both the Twins and Blue Jays were wearing, and left it on as I did other things. I wouldn’t say I was super focused on the action, but at least I had it on. I even watched a couple innings of Arizona-Milwaukee later. I don’t know if this means I’m going to totally dive back in for the playoffs, but I may at least glance at them from moment-to-moment.

Travel Ball

Speaking of youth basketball, we finally got L’s assignment for the next travel season yesterday. I had been sweating it because I knew we were close to the deadline for rosters to be set.

As I’ve said several times, we knew the high school travel ball world is different, just not for sure what those differences were. At the final tryout the girls were told “if” they made a team, they would get an email in the next two weeks. “If.” Yikes.

It seemed like the past couple years it took a little over a week to get the assignment. But one of L’s best friends got hers last week and when L’s didn’t come, I started to panic a little.

Now I’m pretty sure that friend is going to play on a higher level team (there are three tiers of teams in high school), and figure that those teams come together first so they can fill holes.[1] But as each day went by without an email, I got more and more worried. I kept telling myself it would all work out, she will likely play a lot of minutes on the JV team this year so surely she’d land on a travel team, but she also wasn’t super happy with how she played in her tryouts, so you never know.

Fortunately the email arrived yesterday morning, coincidentally on her birthday. She’s staying with the coach she’s had the past two years, three of her teammates from those seasons are staying with her, along with one of her teammates from CHS. Another CHS girl may join them. It sounds like we might have zero size, although the coach is trying to find someone with height in the pool of remaining girls.

  1. A lot of those girls try out for multiple programs and pick from their offers. I’m not sure if money is involved for ninth graders, but L’s friend chose the team that practices closest to her home.  ↩

Sports Notes

August 1, 2023 /

I’ve stacked up a lot of sports thoughts over the past several weeks. Let’s dive in and see how long it takes to get through them.

Tour de France

After watching the Netflix show Tour de France: Unchained in June, I was all-in for this year’s tour, even ponying up for Peacock for the month to watch.[1] It was like the good (bad) old days watching Lance Armstrong as I turned the race on first thing every morning and tracked the day’s progress.

This year’s race was awesome. Week one was incredible, with all kinds of cool attacks and finishes until Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar, combined winners of the last three Tours, took over. The duo battled across France and stayed within seconds of each other into the final week, until Vingegaard won a convincing victory in stage 16’s individual time trial. The next day he blew the race open in the Alps. What had been a nine second lead exploded to over seven minutes. It was a remarkable two days to earn a deserved second-straight Tour win.

I had a few sources for reading about each day’s stages, one of them The Guardian. Which, being The Guardian, threw aspersions towards any biker who performed particularly well. Vingegaard got the worst of it as he took over the race. Who knows if the speculation is accurate or not. His team noted how many times his blood was tested over the month, an argument we’ve heard before. I just found it interesting it was NEVER discussed on the TV broadcast.

It also drove me nuts that the announcers, the same main two guys as back in Lance’s prime, have the same quirks they had 20 years ago. They’re looking at the same footage we are watching, and somehow almost always misread biker’s body language. Multiple times they suggested someone was in great shape, only to get dropped moments later, or that someone was struggling only for them to surge away from their rivals. And they love to speculate, with like 80 kilometers to race, that some guy with a minute lead “surely has this stage won.” I blame Europeans and their strange ways of covering sports.

KU Hoops

I’ve never followed up on my May thoughts, after Hunter Dickinson committed. It’s been a busy summer.
Both Zuby Ejiofor and Ernest Udeh transferred out, which really, really sucked. I totally understand why they left, and that is the big downside to adding a massive transfer in like Dickinson. I wish Bill Self could have talked at least one of them into staying. Udeh ending up at TCU was a real bummer, but better than Kansas State, which was one of his other options.
Kevin McCullar decided to come back, which was huge.
Christian Braun’s brother transferred in, giving KU another body in the front court.
Zach Clemence, who had said he was transferring to UCSB, changed his mind and announced he was returning and would redshirt.
Incoming freshman Chris Johnson saw the roster crunch in the backcourt and decided to de-commit and go to Texas.
Then, after a couple weeks of summer school, fellow freshman Marcus Adams decided Lawrence was “too country” for him and bailed, burning his free transfer in the process, for Gonzaga.

Suddenly a super-deep roster was kind of thin. There were rumors KU might grab an international player who could come in and play this year, but those rumors have faded. There could still be a grad transfer to add, but it looks like KU might roll into the season with just nine eligible players, assuming Clemence sticks with redshirting. Self normally only plays 7–8, but all it takes is a couple tweaked ankles or the flu running through the locker room for the bench to get shallow real quick.

The Jayhawks go to Puerto Rico this week to play a few games, two of which are against the Bahamas national team and could include several NBA players. Just need no one to get hurt…[2]

Pacers

Man, the Pacers had a nice summer. They made smart draft picks to start. Then they signed Bruce Brown. During the NBA Finals I knew someone would overpay him after his great performance, and I was bummed when it was the Pacers.

However, while his contract was reported as two years, it is basically a one-year deal that the Pacers can get out of if he doesn’t perform this year, or re-sign him on better terms for each side next year if he has a good season. A savvy, win-win signing.

Then they traded for Obi Toppin, which seems like an awesome move. He was always forced to play out of position in New York, and seems like a perfect match for Tyrese Haliburton. The duo showed up at a local pro-am league last week and combined for approximately 800 alley-oops. Toppin has vibes of the classic guy who needs a change of scenery to finally capitalize on his potential. I don’t think he’s going to be a superstar, but he fits what the Pacers are trying to do.

They still need to massage the roster a bit, the young guys need to develop, and Haliburton and Myles Turned need to stay healthy. But they could be one of the most fun teams in the league next year, and should battle for a playoff spot.

Royals

Props to the R’s! They won their last three games of July, giving them their first three-game winning streak of the season. No one keeps the Royals from winning three consecutive games for four months!

Colts

The team didn’t even get to training camp before drama popped up. Jonathan Taylor was part of a group of running backs around the league who met virtually to discuss how their position gets screwed by the current collective bargaining agreement. Then he suddenly was placed on the PUP list when camp opened. Two days later he requested a trade. This from the guy who has been the epitome of how you want a player to behave, and kept insisting he wanted to play his entire career in Indy.

I totally get where he, and his fellow RBs are coming from. Only kickers are compensated less under the franchise tags since the NFL has decided that running backs are basically interchangeable and dispensable. But that’s an argument they need to aim at their own union, not at ownership that is following the agreed upon rules.[3] And I also understand Taylor’s specific fears. He was hurt last year and had off-season surgery designed to keep his ankle healthy. The Colts drafted a dual threat QB who is going to be given the keys to the offense soon enough, which will cut down on Taylor’s carries, yards, and touchdowns. If he doesn’t get his money now, he might not get it next off season.

The Colts don’t seem inclined to move him; I wonder if they’ll have the guts not to play him. Regardless of cause and odds of resolution, it’s not a great way to begin the season. Especially when his prime backup broke his arm in practice on Monday.

Oh, and I read this morning that the Colts have dropped hints that Taylor also hurt his back over the summer working out on his own, a claim Taylor angrily denied. We’ve moved beyond ugly and are pushing irreparable.

USWNT/World Cup

Ooof. I was not up at 3:00 AM today to watch the US women’s national team’s final group stage game against Portugal. Pretty glad I did not set an alarm. The outcome could have been worse, but not much. A team that has looked sluggish through their first two games failed to score and had to rely on Portugal hitting the post in stoppage time to advance to the knockout stage.

Head coach Vlatko Andonovski has faced a lot of criticism for how he’s constructed the team and how they played in the run-up to the tournament. I haven’t watched enough nor know enough about high-level soccer tactics to be able to critique his choices. At some point, though, the most talented team in the world, filled with both veterans who own two World Cup titles and some of the brightest young stars in the world, have to take responsibility for their play. Even if Andonovski has made terrible tactical choices, they should be good enough to overcome his errors.

I guess the only good thing about the team’s subpar performance is that so few Americans can watch it because of the time difference.

  1. Strangely convenient how our free access to Peacock thanks to being Xfinity customers expired the day before the race began.  ↩
  2. Jinx. You read it here first.  ↩
  3. Note is, as it may be a first: me siding with ownership over labor.  ↩
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