D's Notebook

Tag: baseball (Page 2 of 22)

Notes on Relocation, Bad Owners, and Loyal Fans

June 22, 2023 /

I have not returned to baseball this year. The Royals are truly terrible – on pace for their worst season ever – and have given me no reason to drop my boycott of the sport, prompted when the dishonest and corrupt combination of MLB ownership and commissioner Rob Manfred manufactured last year’s labor strife.[1]

I don’t have much idea what’s going on in the sport right now, other than the Royals sucking. I have enough Reds-fan friends to know they are on a historic winning streak. But I haven’t turned on one of their games either, something I used to do quite a bit.

(A big downside to my boycott: I LOVE the Royals’ City Connect collection, but refuse to give MLB a dime, let alone $30–40 for a new hat or shirt.[2] I may crack on this one, but for now I’m holding firm.)

Despite my boycott, I read this excellent, lengthy piece about the Oakland A’s relocation. It brought back some memories.

The Long, Sad Story of the Stealing of the Oakland A’s

My high school year in California was spent one BART stop away from the Oakland Coliseum. The Royals and A’s were rivals at the time – the A’s had abandoned Kansas City for the Bay Area 20 years earlier for crying out loud! – and I would argue with my classmates about how the ascendant A’s would never catch my beloved, but aging, Royals.

At lunch I would sit with other sports fans as we would pass around the sports sections from the San Francisco Chronicle and Oakland Tribune. I would focus on the national stuff, or on my teams from back in KC, while listening to the A’s and Giants fans bicker, the A’s fans gush about the young Jose Conseco and Mark McGuire or how they were building a dominating starting rotation.

The thing I picked up in my 11 months in California was that Oakland fans had an immense, almost defensive, pride in their teams. I think it came from the collective chip on their shoulders about being the city across from The City. They all still loved the Raiders, who had left Oakland for the first time a few years earlier, because they couldn’t bring themselves to root for the 49ers. They knew the Warriors had no chance to beat the Magic-Kareem Lakers, but went crazy the night Sleepy Floyd went off and stole a game from the mighty Lakers in the 1987 Western Conference semifinals.

And the A’s were their team, even if they had been mostly horrible since the end of their early ‘70s dynasty.

There’s always been that small, intense core of fans in Oakland. Through various ruinous ownership groups that often seemed more focused on finding a way out of town, that group has held on.[3]

I don’t know that any city deserves a team. The Bay Area might be massive, but perhaps having the Giants is enough. Still, I feel for A’s fans. They’ve put up with a lot of shit in the nearly 60 years the team has been based there. And, despite playing in a dump of a stadium, they’ve always come back when the team gave them a reason to believe.

I think we can agree that the A’s ownership group is terrible and have treated their fans like crap. Good luck making money in Las Vegas, with your tiny stadium and disinterested local fan base.

History—and hell, too, probably—reserves a special place for people who relocate pro sports teams. Every sports fan knows Art Modell, for example, as the guy who wrenched the Browns out of Cleveland. And we know Clay Bennett as the Oklahoman who stole the Supersonics out of Seattle. We remember these men for the damage they caused, which extends beyond the fan bases they forsook. Rather, it corrupts the foundation of faith on which fandom depends. Fans everywhere are poorer for it.

  1. Then, after crying poor for months, immediately after winning pretty much every aspect of their battle with the players, instituted like a dozen new ways of screwing the fans for more money.  ↩

  2. Hell, I won’t even link directly to MLB’s site to show off that gear.  ↩

  3. When we moved to Kansas City in 1980 and started getting the paper, one of the first stories I remember is about Charles Finley being close to selling the team to a new owner who would take them to Denver. That move fell through when the Raiders announced they were heading to LA and Oakland/Alameda County made big concessions to keep the A’s.  ↩

Weekend Notes

October 17, 2022 /

FNL

For the ninth-straight year Cathedral ended their regular season schedule against Center Grove. They are almost always great games, although CG had a 6–2 advantage coming into this year’s game. Two years ago the game came down to Cathedral being unable to get less than a yard on fourth down. This year the game also came down to one team coming up one yard short. Kind of.

Center Grove (No. 2) was up 14–13 after very even first half, the difference being a missed CHS (No. 3) PAT.

Then CG ripped off 15-straight points in the second half. Cathedral was committing too many penalties, turned the ball over twice, and was unable to get stops on defense.

Center Grove has this loud, stupid train horn they blast after every positive play. Fans have a collection of horns and cowbells the join in with. It’s annoying. When they are kicking your ass, it is really annoying. You can’t even hear the radio announcers the main horn is so loud. After Cathedral threw an interception and they blasted it for at least 15 seconds I was close to turning the game off because I was sick of hearing that dumb horn.

Cathedral forced a fumble but gave the ball right back shortly after and Center Grove drove deep into Irish territory as the game moved to the fourth quarter. Any more points and the game was likely over. They had fourth and goal at the one and ran the ball. The horn started blaring, the crowd roared. But the refs said Cathedral stopped the runner short of the goal line. Turnover on downs.

The Irish offense hadn’t done a thing in the third quarter. They had nine minutes to figure something out.

So they calmly drove 99 yards to score. The two-point conversion failed, 29–19.

On the next drive CHS forced a three-and-out and then blocked the punt, recovering it for a touchdown. 29–26.

Center Grove got the ball with about 3:00 left. Cathedral had all their time outs. A couple first downs and this game was over. CG drove to the CHS 26, but on third down were sacked and lost seven yards. They went for it, Cathedral held, and got the ball with 1:34 left.

On the ensuing drive, CHS converted a fourth and long, getting a huge 33-yard completion. The next play was a 35-yard TD pass. 32–29 Irish! 51 seconds left.

Center Grove returned the short kick to nearly midfield. Cathedral lost this matchup two years ago because they let CG drive 50 yards in less than a minute to score in the game’s final seconds.

Not this time; interception on the first play!

But CG still had three time outs left so the Irish needed at least one first down.

They got nine yards on first down. Time out.

They lost two yards on second down. Time out.

On third down the quarterback flipped a screen pass to his tight end, a kid who is going to Western Michigan next year. He busted through a couple tackles and rumbled 60 yards for a big EFF YOU touchdown.

40–29, final.

What a game!

Cathedral looked dead in the water and completely out-classed going into the fourth quarter. Then they somehow found something and scored 27 points in less than five minutes against the two-time defending 6A state champs. The final score makes it look like an ass kicking when, in reality, Center Grove was one yard from being the ass kickers. Sports are crazy sometimes.

It was the first Center Grove loss to an Indiana team since the state title game in 2019. First regular season loss for them since Cathedral beat them that same season. First home loss since August 2019.

With Cathedral now in 6A these teams could meet in semi-state. However, Cathedral would likely need to beat #1 Brownsburg, who handled them fairly easily in week two, in the regionals to get that far. (Update: Brownsburg lost to the #4 team Friday. Brownsburg also lost their quarterback to an injury and they have a very tough opening game in sectionals.)

M was up in Chicago for a Harry Styles concert. When the game was over, I texted her the score and a brief summary, figuring she would see it after the show was over. But she responded right away. “Harry is about to go on. We were checking Twitter obsessively!” Glad she’s turned into a football fan in her four years at CHS.

Kid Hoops

It was Championship Saturday for L’s travel team. To remind you, the back to school league finished with four-team brackets, and her team’s first opponent forfeited on Monday, so they had a bye into the championship game.

The opponent: a team they beat 35–32 three two months ago. L hit two free throws late in that game it help ice it.

This game started the way we started so many games this season: in a 12–0 hole. We whittled it down to three at one point – L hit a nice floater to get us to that point – but trailed by five at halftime.

We came out on fire defensively in the second half and quickly took the lead, going up by 3. But we turned that around by giving up seven-straight, which turned into an 11–2 run. It wasn’t looking good.

The girls battled back again. We could not hit an outside shot to save our lives, but we started getting steals and layups. We hit a couple and-ones. Finally, with about 2:00 left, down four, L was wide-open from the top of the key. Twice she had fumbled the ball and couldn’t get a shot off in a similar station. This time she handled the pass cleanly, squared her body, and drained the 3 to cut the lead to one. On the next possession she drove the baseline, drew the defense, then flipped it to a teammate who scored as she got fouled. That girl missed the free throw but we never trailed again. We got the lead to five once and ended up winning 34–31. L’s 3 was our only trey of the game; we went something like 1–20. But it was enough!

She had a really good game. Nine points on 4–7 shooting. Three rebounds, a couple steals. The only flaw was two bad turnovers, both when she was stuck between driving and either passing or shooting and shuffled her feet.

And now her first year of travel ball is officially complete. That team will go on the shelf for a few months as the girls settle out onto their school-based teams. Her Cathedral team will likely play this coming weekend.

KU Football

Well, we knew the regression was coming. It made sense that it would happen the week the Jayhawks went to Oklahoma. Especially with the backup quarterback starting. As much as OU losing three-straight made you want to believe this would be a chance for KU to get bowl eligible, decades of history made that seem unlikely.

I saw most of the first half and that was about what I expected. I think OU remembered they are a collection of four and five star recruits and needed to start playing like it. And it seemed like KU’s defense did not show up at all. Jason Bean looked like a guy who wasn’t good enough to win the starting job over the summer: he made some spectacular plays and some brain-dead dumb plays. Add all that up and the more traditional OU kicking KU ass seemed like it was in order.

But it looked like KU at least made it respectable in the second half, even covering the late 10.5 point line. I don’t know if that was more a function of OU taking their foot off the gas, though, since I was watching L’s team play then.

A bummer of a loss, especially when a lot of people were picking KU. But it made sense, given all the other factors that went into the game. The key is they competed. There were stretches where they were bad, but they never stopped playing and it wasn’t an embarrassment, as so many games against OU have been in my life.

The rest of the schedule is a beast, but if KU’s defense can figure out how to mix in the occasional stop again and the offense can work out some kinks as long as Bean is the starter, I don’t think we need to start thinking the rest of the season is a lost cause.

Other College Football

We got home in time to see much of Alabama-Tennessee and Oklahoma State-TCU. I really needed two TVs as both games worked their way to fantastic finishes within moments of each other. What a scene in Knoxville as the Vols finally got that elusive win over the Crimson Tide! That TCU win helps KU’s RPI, right?

Baseball

I set aside my baseball boycott when I heard about the craziness in Seattle Saturday. I watched innings 16-through–18. Seattle fans deserved better than a 1–0 loss and series sweep. I wanted the M’s to win, but was not strongly invested. The experience felt like back when I watched hockey a bit in the mid–90s and came across a playoff game that would stretch into multiple overtimes. At some point you’re rooting for the spectacle more than a result, hoping for great plays – shots that hit the post in hockey or diving catches by outfielders in baseball – that keep the game going.

Then I woke up Sunday morning to see that the Padres had knocked the Dodgers, by far the best team in baseball this year, out of the postseason. No surprise the “We Need To Fix The Baseball Playoffs” takes started rolling in right away.

Listen, the new baseball playoffs suck. They diminish the meaning of the 162-game regular season, even more than the previous expansion of the playoffs did. The Padres, who have a huge payroll of their own, knocking off the Dodgers has zero in common with St. Peter’s upsetting Kentucky in the NCAA tournament.

But Rob Manfred and the owners don’t give a shit about what’s fair or right or what the fans want. As long as they can sell more advertising time in prime time in October, and expand the field so cities like Seattle, that are hungry for playoff baseball, gobble up tickets, they are aren’t going to change a thing.

NFL

The Colts looked super shitty early, and I was more concerned with spending our last nice day for a week or so outside getting some work done in the yard than watching them continue to suck.[1] But they rallied nicely and even looked competent on both sides of the ball in the second half. The AFC South is about as stinky as you can get, so this team might still find its way into the postseason.

We had other things going on so I wasn’t able to watch much of the Bills-Chiefs game. It looks like it was entertaining, if not as crazy, as January’s playoff game between the teams.

In recent weeks I’ve heard plenty of “Josh Allen is clearly the best quarterback/player in the league” talk. I mostly hear it because of KC fans in my social feeds bitching about it.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot because I think it’s a weird argument, and I’ve tried to figure out why people are making it.

I’ve come up with these explanations.

First, it’s hot take-y. Everyone knows Patrick Mahomes is redefining what it means to be an NFL quarterback. Saying Allen is better gets people fired up, clicking links, and otherwise engaging.

Second, Mahomes, while still young, is old news. We all know he’s brilliant. Maybe not everyone knows that Allen is also brilliant.

Finally, I think some of it is because of their games. Mahomes seems like he’s from a video game, doing things no one has ever seen before in ways we would never have predicted. He does things that flat out don’t make sense. Meanwhile Allen is like the prototype for the perfect NFL QB for any era. He’s big. He’s aggressive. He throws a ridiculous long ball. I think that appeals to the same part of some people’s brains that can’t comprehend what Mahomes is doing. Allen is a modern John Elway, where there has never been anyone like Mahomes. Right or wrong, some folks will elevate Allen because of that.

Mahomes has a ring and another Super Bowl appearance. So he has a bragging rights/legacy boost over Allen. This season, most weeks, I think you can say they are 1A and 1B, or at worst 1–2 in any order. Unless you are a Chiefs or Bills fan, though, to say one is “clearly” better than the other is dumb.[2] Why can’t we just say they’re both awesome and not have to nitpick to declare one better than the other?

  1. It is after noon on Monday, cloudy, gusty, and only in the 40s. We are expected to have a hard freeze tonight. Yesterday it was in the mid–60s. Next weekend mid–70s. Fall in the Midwest!  ↩
  2. I still think it’s dumb for Chiefs or Bills fans to claim their guy is clearly better, but at least that’s homerism and choosing with your heart. I can understand that.  ↩

Weekend Notes

October 10, 2022 /

A quick run through a busy weekend.

FNL

It was Cathedral’s homecoming week. They pounded their Jesuit brothers pretty easily, winning 42–21 with two of those scores against coming late in the game. I went for the first half but it was chilly, C’s back was bothering her (she’s been seeing a chiropractor), so we left after we watched one of M’s best friends since kindergarten win homecoming queen.

Next week is the big season finale: at Center Grove, who have lost one game – by one point in overtime to a team from Kentucky – in the past three seasons.

KU Saturday Experience

I haven’t watched ESPN Gameday in years. Neither for football nor basketball. I just hate the whole “panel of experts talking over each other” concept no matter what the setting. Gameday hasn’t felt fresh in years. Even when KU is involved during basketball season, I will record it and go back and watch the stuff directly related to KU later.

But Saturday, with the show making its first ever visit to Lawrence for football, I was glued to the TV for all three hours. I don’t know if the crowds were bigger, smaller, or the same as on other campuses, but it looked great on TV. Especially as the stadium began to fill up behind the set. The Booth isn’t a great venue to watch football – and thank goodness it might finally be on the verge of being made into something better – but it has always been a beautiful setting on sunny, fall days like Saturday. Even when the play on the field was terrible.

It was an unbelievable and unexpected moment for the school and program to shine after so many years of mistakes and horrible football. I don’t think any KU fan is kidding themselves into thinking the rebuild is even close to being complete. But hosting Gameday gave us a confirmation that things have finally changed, and better days are ahead.

As for the game…well, I only say the first half. L, of course, had a game that caused us to leave the house at halftime. The second quarter was brutal. Jalon Daniels fumbling on the one, TCU taking approximately eight seconds to go 99 yards and score, KU dropping a pass that would have converted a fourth down and put them in the red zone, and then Daniels suffering a shoulder injury that forced him from the game. I wasn’t too upset to leave the house because things sure didn’t seem promising for the Jayhawks. The Frogs looked so much faster and more physical on defense, and it felt like it was just a matter of time before the KU defense cracked under the pressure the TCU offense puts on you.

On the way to L’s game I heard Jason Bean come in and first tie the game, and then give KU the lead. What the heck is going on?!?!

As I sat and watched L play I followed the game on my phone. That third quarter seemed like an all-time doozy. Forty-two combined points after just 13 in the first half!

Like so many times in KU football past, the game came down to the inability to stop a score on one end and the inability to get one score on the other.

Perhaps if I watched the entire game I would have been more upset/disappointed with the result. I think not seeing a couple close calls go against KU on their final drive (or so I was told) certainly helped my mental state.

But, I walked away from the day feeling as positive about the program as I can remember. TCU is a damn good team, and we went toe-to-toe with them for 60 minutes. A couple bad-luck moments changed the outcome. Our savior QB got hurt and his backup came in and played even better, becoming the first KU QB in 14 years to throw four touchdown passes in a half. This is a game KU could have easily won without it being a fluke. And that’s not something you could say about this program against a quality opponent since 2008.

Progress, and I’ll hang my Jayhawk hat on that. Now the hope is that Daniels isn’t done for the season, that Bean can continue to be steady as long as he has to play, and that the team can find at least one more win to validate the season with a bowl game.

Kid Hoops

It was the final regular season game of L’s Back to School league. They played a younger team – I never figured out what age they were – and lost by two. This team was really good. They had these tiny girls who took 22-foot 3’s and hit them, plus a big girl three inches taller than our “tall” girls who got every rebound.

We had a sequence with about five minutes left in the game where we missed an open shot in the lane then gave up a layup and a foul to go down eight. The dad I was sitting by and I looked at each other, shook our heads, and agreed that was the game.

That lead stretched out to 10 before we made a valiant run. Three backcourt steals. Converted some layups. Forced two turnovers in the front court. We got it down to two points, with the ball, in the final minute. Our leading scorer got fouled and stepped to the line. She missed the first, hit the second, and then we had to foul to stop the clock. We lost by two but it might have been the best they have played in this league.

L didn’t play well on offense. She was 1–3 from the field and I credited her with five turnovers, although an official scorer might have placed the blame for one of those on her teammate. But she was good on D and got a couple big defensive rebounds when we were making that run.

Next week is the “tournament.” We got a break because the team we were supposed to play – which has been getting annihilated every week – already forfeited. So we are into the championship game of our bracket. From 2–6 to the championship game! What a turnaround!

The team she will play on through Cathedral for the next few months had their first practice on Sunday. They will start play in two weeks. The grind never ends.

MLB

I did not watch a minute of the playoffs so I have no comments. I did enjoy the various tweets from fans new to the playoffs on what a grinder they are for fans. Examples:

“Playoff baseball is like watching a loved one defuse a bomb.”
“Why watch playoff baseball when you can drink 6 pots of coffee and intentionally vomit instead.”

Yes, I remain mad at the game. But I also miss how October baseball can take years off your life.

TNF

I feel obligated to mention how horrible Thursday’s Colts-Broncos game was. I was rooting for a tie. I’ve decided these Colts stink, they aren’t going to get much better, so why not go for history and try to get as many ties as you can?

Baseball Notes (+1)

September 29, 2022 /

My season-long boycott of baseball has continued. It’s really not been hard since the Royals have been so shitty this year. I’m not feeling any inclination to crack in a week when the playoffs begin. I’m sure I’ll watch some of the games, but I don’t expect to be as into them as I have been in recent years. I have plenty of other things that can entertain me during evenings in October.

Still, I thought I should drop a few baseball related thoughts.

Dayton Moore Fired

This is over a week old, but the Royals have finally moved on from their long-time general manager/president of baseball operations, the architect behind the 2014 pennant and 2015 World Series winning teams.

This was a good move.

Everyone says Dayton is a decent man who loves the franchise and the Kansas City area, and I don’t doubt that. But his methods had become outdated and it seemed like as long as he was in charge, the organization would remain stagnant.

When you look back at his career, it’s really remarkable that the R’s ever got to the postseason. It’s not that they weren’t deserving; those teams were filled with high draft picks and smart acquisitions. Rather what made those two Octobers seem so unlikely are the seasons around them.

I think Dayton was probably one more under-performing season away from losing his job in 2014. And the post-World Series era has turned into an absolute disaster.

A Twitter commentator said that championships are never truly flukes – it takes too much to win one in any sport to write them off as breakdowns in the matrix – but when you look at how the Royals performed in Moore’s first seven or eight years, and then in the seven years since, that title seems like a huge outlier.

I’m hopeful that J.J. Picollo, despite being a Moore protégé, is the right choice to move the franchise forward. He seems more open to using advanced stats and more modern training methods than Moore ever did. Perhaps that will unlock the potential of all the pitchers the R’s have collected in the past five years. His changes to the organization’s hitting philosophy are promising, so that bodes well.

The Dayton Moore era was filled with contradictions. The Royals were one of the few franchises that looked to take care of all of its employees during the pandemic. His efforts to build a new baseball academy are exactly what the sport needs to stay relevant and capitalize on talent that doesn’t come from the baseball factories of the American south or Latin America. Then there was his weird interest in educating players about the dangers of watching porn. Of all the ills in the world, that’s the one he chose to take a stand on? Bizarre.

There was a lot of shitty baseball between 2006 and 2013, and again since 2017. But what happened in the middle can never be discounted, no matter how much of an outlier it was.

Aaron Judge

I’m sure my long-time readers will be shocked that I’m super-annoyed by the coverage of Aaron Judge’s pursuit of the American League home run record, a mark he tied last night.

There’s the way ESPN has covered it. I don’t watch a lot of Sportscenter these days, but when I switch by it drove me nuts how the crawl would say something like “Judge Still Stuck at 60.” Still stuck. Two games after he hit #60. God I hate American journalism sometimes.

There was the same whining that happens anytime a record is being pursued and a hitter gets walked a lot. It’s not the job of the opponent to serve up meatballs, especially when they are fighting for a playoff spot. Ironic that some of the people complaining about Judge’s walks are the same people who fit into the next group and are allegedly concerned with the sanctity of the game.

But what has annoyed me most is the commentary around his chase, and the idea that should he break Roger Maris’ 1961 mark, he will become the “real” home run king.

That is garbage.

The MLB home run record is 73. It doesn’t matter if you hate Barry Bonds, if you think he didn’t play a clean game in his life, and if you think everything about that era was suspect. Those games, and those home runs, happened. You can’t strike them from the record without removing everything that happened in that era. So, Yankees fan, do you want to eliminate the team’s consecutive titles between 1998 and 2000? Roger Clemens was on those teams. Andy Pettite was on those teams. Jason Giambi. Kevin Brown. And those are just the big names we know about.

And you know how I feel about steroids. Do we know for certain that Judge is clean, or that he’s not using something now that is illegal but won’t be allowed in five years? The PED line is always moving, there are always advances in medicine, and I refuse to get upset about who is/is not using when the criteria for what is/is not allowed is not fixed.

Aaron Judge is a marvel, and what he’s doing is one of the most impressive performances in baseball history, especially when you compare his numbers to the other power numbers. He’s in position to break the AL home run record while also winning the Triple Crown, which is nuts. Let’s just celebrate that without trying to re-litigate 20-year-old grievances.

Albert Pujols

Hey, Pujols has had a remarkable summer, too. I figured when he signed with the Cardinals it would be for a victory lap, maybe a couple home series in the summer in front of packed crowds, then he’d slip away with an injury that would keep him on the IL until the final weekend of the season when he would come out for a few final ABs and hat tips to the crowd.

Boy was I wrong! Despite being 52 years old,[1] he’s somehow rediscovered the magic he lost over a decade ago and has bashed his way to 700 career homers and is OPS+-ing a cool 142.

It’s pretty amazing how a player can decline for a decade and suddenly find it agin. It’s weird how there’s been all the kvetching about Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa but no discussion of Albert’s miraculous comeback. Not saying it’s not legit, just saying be consistent if you’re going to complain.

Brett Favre

Not baseball, but he’s a piece of shit. Not that this was a surprise.

  1. Or 42. Allegedly.  ↩

Weekend Sports Notes

July 18, 2022 /

Some sports happenings over the past few days.

Royals

As if being shitty wasn’t bad enough, ten Royals players “did their own research” and decided not to get vaccinated against Covid, preventing them from traveling to Canada for the series with the Blue Jays over the weekend.

Just an exhausting moment. As I am barely interested in the team or sport right now, this does not make me want to come back.

Let’s move on…

Pacers Go Big…Almost

The Pacers have never been big players in the free agent market. Good players who are healthy generally don’t want to come to Indianapolis, and the Pacers have generally run a tight financial ship and refused to overpay to get talent to come to town.

That nearly changed last week. They signed restricted free agent Deandre Ayton to a massive offer sheet. Ayton had a strained relationship with the Phoenix Suns who seemed lukewarm on bringing him back on a max contract. There had been rumors for weeks the Suns and Pacers were talking about a deal that revolved around Ayton and the Pacers’ Myles Turner. If those talks were serious, though, they never resulted in a trade agreement.

So the Pacers sent out only the second offer sheet they’ve ever tendered, the biggest in league history, for Ayton. For about three hours Pacers fans were debating whether to be excited about the prospect of Ayton joining a young roster or to worry about Ayton getting hurt or just sucking and turning the deal into a disaster that sunk the franchise for the 2020s.

That debate only lasted a few hours because the Suns quickly matched the Pacers’ offer. Which could be a good thing. Offering $133 million for a big man in the current NBA seemed ultra aggressive, especially for one like Ayton, who is a good player but certainly not among the league’s elite.

It was cool the Pacers tried to make a splash, at least. Now I wonder where they go. They seem set up to remain on the outside of the eastern conference playoff picture next year, but also not bad enough to enter the Victor Wembanyama sweepstakes. They have a ton of cap room and a lot of picks stacked up for the next few years. Plus they still have to figure out what to do with Turner, an elite shot blocker and serviceable 3-point shooter whose total game does not match his ego or financial desires. Do they package Turner and some of their picks for a difference maker? Hang onto Turner until the trade deadline to see if he meshes with their new lineup (and can stay healthy)? Or do they move Turner now, take on a bad, expiring contract, and hope they are crappy enough to get deep into next year’s lottery and then make rapid improvement?

Kid Hoops

L’s team decided to get together for one more tournament. Saturday they played two teams they played two weeks ago, including the team that knocked them out of that tournament. They pounded that team pretty good, although they were playing without their best player. We were three players short, including a starter, but not sure that was an even trade. In game two they got a 14-point win over a team we have now beaten three times. This was our best performance against them.

In Sunday’s semifinal we had a five-point lead early in the second half but lost by 10. Our girls just got waxed in the last 10 minutes or so. The other team was too fast on both ends, our girls neglected to play any help defense, and we missed a ton of easy shots early that could have had us up by double digits early in the game.

L had a mixed weekend. She shot the ball like crap going 3–20 overall. Saturday she hit the top of the backboard with 3 pointers from behind the NBA line.[1] Apparently she’s been working out too much. In the second game she missed two wide open layups and another two contested ones. But she did score six in that game. And she turned the game around with her defense. We were down seven when she checked in. Five minutes later, when she checked out, we were up six. In that span she had two points, two rebounds, two assists, and three steals. She just shut down their point guard, getting steals on three of four possessions. We never looked back after that.

We’ve been doing some good shooting over at the YMCA, so I don’t know if she was just sped up, if her contacts weren’t locked in, or if it was the classic case of the improvement she’s making in practice not translating to games yet. Whatever the explanation, her shooting was gross. Afterwards I reminded her, though, that back in January if she ever took a 3-pointer, it was usually two feet short. Now she’s shooting them 3–4 feet long from behind the NBA line. So she has the range, she just needs to lock in the accuracy.

The Open

Jeeeeez what a let down. Rory McIlroy seemed like was finally going to break his eight-year major-less streak, playing beautiful golf all weekend. He was a little less stellar Sunday, missing six putts by a combined six inches, but still played well enough to win.

Except Cameron Smith went nuclear and hit every freaking putt on the back nine. Shooting 30 on the last nine of a major – six birdies and three pars – is pretty dope. Rory couldn’t even finish second as Cameron Young snuck by him with a final round 65.

There was no meltdown round this time. Rory played great all four days. Perhaps he was a little too cautious Sunday. Or the nerves caused shots that gave him short birdie looks the first three days to leave him much longer looks in Sunday. Whatever the cause, it felt like a massive letdown when he couldn’t close it out. Sometimes you just get unlucky and end up on the wrong side of a legendary closing round by another golfer.

It was really a magnificent tournament. St. Andrews is barely hanging on against modern players and technology, but it produced a terrific weekend of golf. Saturday, when six or seven players all seemed to be in the mix, was amazing to watch. It came at a perfect moment for professional golf, which has seen the 2022 season dominated by the break between the PGA and the Saudi-backed LIV tour. But you also have to wonder when we will see a tournament like this again. The 2023 major season could be drastically different as more players defect to the LIV, which could affect their ability to play in future majors. Perhaps it was that, more than Rory coming up short, that made the end feel a little extra somber.

  1. The tournament was at Jeff Teague’s gym, and we played both Saturday games on the NBA court, which is longer than the other two high school courts at the facility, and only has the college and NBA three point lines parked. Not sure why they had kids as young as fifth grade playing on it without the high school arc marked.  ↩

Sports Notes

June 9, 2022 /

KU Hoops

I still need to do an NIL post, and now that things finally seem to have calmed down a little on that front, I’ll move that up in the mental queue.

KU’s roster appears to be locked in for next year, so a few thoughts on how that has shaken out.

In general I think the transfer portal is a good thing, as it gives players more control of their careers. But I think it also gets misused as players bail on situations that are simply less-than-ideal instead of truly bad or jump at any opportunity to trade up in prestige of program. For fans, I think we expect too much from players who are transferring-in, expecting them to replicate what made them stars at their previous school while playing in different systems, with different teammates, often with very different roles.

I think the best move for KU this off-season would have been to keep the roster completely intact and not add any players. Even had some guys at the back end of the roster left, I would have been fine going forward with 11–12 scholarship players instead of trying to fill a bench player’s spot with a transfer who had started elsewhere.

There are just a whole lot of guys who will be fighting for playing time this year, and clearing out a spot wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

That said, replacing Christian Braun with Kevin McCullar, Jr was about the best move KU could have. They are different players, but since McCullar is complementary on offense and position-less on defense, he can slide right in and not be disruptive. I don’t think he will struggle to find his role the way pretty much every transfer last year did. While he adds to the roster crunch in the wings rotation, his presence also means that neither Gradey Dick nor MJ Rice will be expected to have an immediate impact for the team to win games in November and December.

Jalen Wilson coming back was the right move for him and potentially a huge move for KU. It’s unrealistic to expect him to take the jump Ochai Agbaji did last year, but after a solid NBA combine, it’s not unreasonable to see a leap in his game. I can see him having a tremendous statistical year, in the range of 15–16 ppg and 10+ rebounds per game.

Right now I think there are three players locked into starting roles: Wilson, McCullar, and DaJuan Harris. I would guess Zach Clemence is most likely to be the starting big man today. And then someone from the pool of Bobby Pettiford, Joe Yesufu, Dick, or Rice fill the remaining spot, depending whether Bill Self wants two small guards or a larger wing to join the other five. One of the freshmen bigs – Ernest Udeh or Zuby Ejiofor – should play a lot. I think Bill Self loves KJ Adams, so he will play.

I just named 11 players. Both Cam Martin and Kyle Cuffe are on scholarship, and most people think that Cuffe has a bright future. It’s hard to see either of them getting minutes, and I’m a little surprised Cuffe didn’t decide to jump somewhere that would give him a better opportunity to play.

Bottom line, the roster is deep, loaded with options, and seems pretty good here in June. They should be elite defensively if a big man can become a shot blocker. Offense may be a struggle at times, so I expect more games in the 60s than last year.

It’s a long way until practice begins, let alone the first games in early November. The defending national champs may not be in the true list of betting favorites (they are actually rated pretty high by Vegas at the moment, but that seems irrational) but they are going to run back a pretty good squad in ’22–23.

Professional Golf

I don’t know that it’s been on many of my reader’s radars, but men’s professional golf is in the midst of one of the most important weeks in its modern history. For a year or so there have been rumors of a league to rival the PGA, with rumors of multiple competing leagues at various times. The option that seemed the most serious and likely is backed by the government of Saudi Arabia, as part of their “sports washing” efforts to use their massive piles of cash to distract the world from the regime’s awful record on human rights. The LIV Golf tour begins this week and several notable PGA players have renounced their PGA Tour status and made the jump. Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson are rumored to be receiving between $100 and $200 million for joining the new tour. Others have received less but still more than they can make in many years on the PGA Tour. The weekly purses are also far beyond the already crazy money players are earning on the PGA Tour.

For obvious reasons, there has been a kerfuffle about all this. There is the fact these players are turning their backs on the tour than made them rich. The fact they are taking blood money from an oppressive government that had an American citizen murdered and chopped into pieces because he was publishing articles they didn’t like. The fact most of these golfers are trying to act like they are doing this for the “good of the game,” or in belief that golf can change the world. The idea that golf will somehow turn Saudi Arabia into a Jeffersonian Democracy with equal rights for all citizens is one of the dumbest things about this whole enterprise.

It’s all a little ridiculous. I think Dustin Johnson is the only person who has pretty much said he’s doing this for the money. Good for him. Be honest, take the heat, and know that it will fade. I disagree with his decision, but respect the fact he’s not hiding behind the BS most of his fellow LIV jumpers are spouting.

I’ve been more interested in the media/public reaction. Granted, my view is heavily skewed by the side of Golf Twitter that I follow, which is unusually progressive for golf in general and, likely, much more aware of all the details than the wider golf public. What has stuck me most is the heat these people are taking. A lot of the public is jumping on the side of the players, usually defending their taking the life-changing money. Which, again, I get.

I wondered how many people making this argument defend other professional athletes who chase money. Do they say, “Well, the Yankees offered him more, I don’t blame him,” when their favorite baseball player leaves their team for a bigger market? Or when the wide receiver their NFL team drafted and developed goes elsewhere when he is a free agent, are they as understanding? I can hazard a guess. I imagine terms like “greedy” and “disloyal” get thrown around.

What makes that question fascinating to me is that you can make a legitimate economic argument for why NFL/NBA/MLB players chase money. You may think that team X overpaid for your shooting guard, but his new contract was determined by market conditions, often based on offers from multiple teams. Nothing about what these golfers are getting paid makes sense from an economic standpoint. They weren’t sifting through a stack of offers similar to what the Saudis had on the table. Saudi Arabia is paying far beyond the true economic value of these golfers in an effort to legitimize their new league. Several golf writers have pointed out that these contracts make even less sense because LIV hasn’t offered any kind of business plan for how to grow and maintain their league. That won’t matter to the Mickelsons and Johnsons who are set for life based on their initial contracts and have PGA Tour status basically for life based on winning majors. But that’s a legit question for the lesser-known players who have joined LIV, and could have their careers wrecked if the league falls apart and they are banned from the PGA Tour.

This whole thing is just Saudi Arabia doing what they do: lighting cash on fire at a moment when oil is as expensive as it’s been in ages to try to get people to forget beyond their flashy architecture and lavish spending, most of country, from its leadership down, live lie it is still the 16th century.

Splitting sports leagues is pretty much never a good thing. The big names jumping to LIV are getting money that can literally set up their families for generations. While they have the right to make those decisions, I don’t think they realize the long-term damage this split is going to do to professional golf. In a decade or so, if TV contracts and exposure have shrunk and golf is even more niche than it is now, I’m not sure the next generation of players will be thanking the players who took the Saudi money and ran.

Royals

Good Lord the Royals suck. As of this morning, they are two games worse than Oakland and Cincinnati, two franchises that are trying to lose. I’m still not watching, listening, or paying much attention. But I still have several Royals commentators in my feeds and get enough of texts from friends who are still on board to have a sense of what a disaster this season has been.

For a long time it felt like the Royals were handling their post-title rebuild the right way and were poised to break back to respectability this year and possible contention next year. Especially with the new, expanded playoffs this year.

At the moment, it sure seems like they’ve bungled it all. And it seems like it’s time for new owner John Sherman to clear out the front office and coaching staff and start anew. Still won’t get me to re-up my MLB subscription this year.

Weekend Notes

April 11, 2022 /

That was a weird weekend. No big sports of any kind. No basketball or football on the TV for the first time since Labor Day. No kid sports.

Sure, I watched some of the Master’s, but we were often busy during the peak watch times so I wasn’t able to give it a ton of attention. Plus it wasn’t a super interesting tournament this year, so when I did sit down to watch, I did not feel compelled to remain seated for hours.

Baseball has begun, but I’m in one of my baseball moods right now and not ready to dive back in. Out of protest at the owners’ bad faith during their lockout of the players, I cancelled my MLB.TV subscription rather than let it renew annually as I’ve done for at least a decade. A few days later MLB automatically put all accounts on hold pending a resolution to the labor conflict. But I still felt like I got one over on them, withholding my $120 on my terms.

I have yet to go back and re-up.

A big piece of that is the dishonesty and unfairness that the owners built their entire lock-out argument on. They wanted to prevent the players from taking their fair share of the revenue pie in a moment when said revenues are skyrocketing.

And as soon as an agreement was made, MLB started trotting out all these new ways that baseball will be broadcast. Each of which is a new revenue stream for owners but which also makes it harder for fans to see their favorite teams. National broadcasts that wipe out local broadcasts and require a subscription of some kind to see. Added to a refusal to adjust the existing, ridiculous MLB blackout rules, these are just another example of how hostile to fans ownership and the MLB office are. Throw in that it’s damn near impossible for a family with more than a couple kids to take the entire household to an MLB game without dropping $500+ and I can’t help but be soured on how the game is run and where it’s headed.

My little protest won’t mean a thing to any organization’s nor MLB’s bottom lines. But it’s hard to get interested in a game that really doesn’t seem interested in the fans in any way other than finding more ways to get money out of us.

Of course, if the Royals are playing well in a month I may cave and start watching again.

We did have one big family event on the calendar this weekend: M got inducted into the National Honor Society. The ceremony was Sunday afternoon and we drug her sisters along with us. They were thrilled. We told them we expected to do this again in two and four years for each of them, so no pressure.

That was the first moment in a big month for M. Prom is two weeks away. She has a dress, a date (a friend, they are going with a large group), and as a class officer is responsible for setting things up the morning of the dance. We’ve also told her to get serious about what colleges she wants to visit so we can start making plans to get on those campuses between now and September.

Sweetness

March 24, 2022 /

Ahhhh, Sweet 16 week.

I’ve always said this is the best week of the tournament for the real hoops fan. Provided your team is in it, of course.

The frenzy of the first weekend has been thinned out and we can get down to some real, serious hoops. There’s always an interesting story or three for the national media to latch onto. And there are usually a couple “I HAVE to watch that game!” matchups.

This year I think those marquee matchups are Texas Tech – Duke, Houston – Arizona, and North Carolina – UCLA. Not that the others aren’t intriguing in their own way, but these are the most interesting games on paper.

Plenty of storylines. Obviously St. Peter’s finding a way to continue their miracle run is top of the list. Well, CBS will make it about whether Duke can cap K’s career with another Final Four. Is this finally the Purdue squad that can overcome the program’s history and get to New Orleans? Charlie Moore!!! Will the Midwest remain the region of chaos with a surprise champion or has the chaos just cleared the way for KU to get to the Final Four?

I’m obviously most concerned with that last one.

Like most KU fans this has been a strange week, with me wavering between confidence and fear. We’ve built up Providence to be Gonzaga-lite and the 10/11 seeds making up the opposite regional semifinal as the next cruel trick the Hoops Gods will play on KU fans. “This is 2011 all over again,” has been a familiar refrain.

Smart, more emotionally balanced people have pointed out the bracket also broke for KU in 2008, although that Elite 8 game was far from stress-free. It broke in a different manner, but still for KU, in 1988. So there are two data points to balance the disaster of 2011. Both of them ended with a KU title. Sooooo….

We should probably stop thinking about history and consider the actual opponents.

Providence will be a tough test. Some analysts have dismissed the Friars because of the “luck” they’ve won with this year.[1] To others that makes them battle-tested and ready for any challenge. They are extremely experienced, with an average age older than that of the Oklahoma City Thunder! They are long. They are solid, if not exceptional, on both ends of the court. They get to the free throw line a lot. They have a player who seems ideal for giving Ochai Agbaji fits on the defensive end of the court.

Still, looking around the Sweet 16, I’d rather KU play Providence than Arkansas, Houston, or UCLA. That doesn’t mean KU is guaranteed to win. Sweet 16 games that feature chalk matchups are pretty much coin-flips these days.

If KU plays well defensively and efficiently on offense, they win. If they fuck around and give Providence open shots and don’t play smart on offense, it could be a very tense night. The Friars are good enough to win and it not being some fluke night where everything broke right for them.

The Elite 8 would bring one of two super interesting matchups. Either Charlie Moore and Miami, who are very athletic, have some great wins this year, and just destroyed Auburn for much of their second round game. Or a streaking Iowa State team for the third time. A Cyclones squad that probably should have won in Lawrence back in January.

There are scary things about both of those opponents. But, man, I need to stop being such a KU fan.

The Jayhawks are the best team left in the Midwest bracket. And while the best team doesn’t always win, they should win, dammit. And if they don’t, I’m going to be on a beach in Florida all next week.

KU 77, Providence 68

Rock Chalk, bitches.

  1. I admit I don’t totally understand KenPom’s luck rating. KU won a bunch of close games, too, but rank 105 in luck. I guess that says KU should have won those games, based on the peripherals, while Providence should have lost a good chunk of their close games.  ↩

Weekend Sports Notes

February 28, 2022 /

Jayhawk Talk

A large game in Waco Saturday. KU looked fantastic for the first 15 minutes against Baylor, then, other than a brief spurt in the second half, pretty pedestrian.

I was as low-key about this game as any late-season, Big 12 contender matchup in years. I listen to three different KU-focused podcasts and all of them insisted last week that Baylor was a great matchup for KU. I think that was putting too much into the teams’ first matchup, which was as dominant as KU has looked all year. That sentiment must have gotten into my head, though, because I didn’t have the usual nervousness going into this game.

I also thought all the pressure was on Baylor because of that first game and the margin between the teams. If KU lost they would still be in first place. Texas Tech losing to TCU earlier took some more pressure off.

For awhile it looked like that was all true. KU looked great early, hit their usual lull before halftime, and struggled to match Baylor’s adjustments through the second half. Or at least that’s what the general narrative of the game is.

In truth, KU missed a ton of open shots. Especially Ochai Agbaji, who despite scoring 27, missed a handful of, for him, relatively easy shots. Jalen Wilson was back to December Jalen Wilson. The bench was non-existent, although Remy Martin did score five, balanced by his typical terrible defense.

I’m not throwing those details out there to diminish Baylor’s performance or poo-poo the loss. It’s just to say I wasn’t all that worked up about it. It’s not like Baylor made KU look silly, like KU pissed it away as they had the game in Austin a few weeks back, etc. KU lost to a really good team on the road while having their worst offensive game, efficiency wise, in some time. Not a loss to lose sleep over.

Of course it helped pretty much everyone else in the Top 10 dropped a game last week.

It’s almost March. I’m more concerned with how the team is playing than the result. KU lost because the missed shots they normally hit and struggled to guard Baylor’s athletic bigs. That’s pretty much the blueprint for a KU loss this season.

Youth Hoops

L’s winter team had their final regular season game yesterday. As has been usual, they were missing four players and had to recruit a replacement from the C team just to have a sub.

Comparing scores, the team they played had lost by seven to the team we beat a week ago. So I was hoping for good things.

Not sure what went on in that other game, but our result showed why using playground logic is bad. We took a 2–0 lead, gave up an 13–0 run, and never got it under nine again, losing by 20. This team had good, little guards that could handle the ball and shoot 3’s. They had two big girls who looked awkward but could post and score, move their feet a little on D, and rebounded the hell out of the ball.

L scored eight and had three assists. She was aggressive but did not have the distance dialed-in on her jumpers and had a bunch of airballs. She also had her best, and smartest, play of the year. She had the ball at the top of the key and one of the big girls on her. She recognized the mismatch, got the girl leaning left, blew by her on the right and laid it in. A simple play, but a smart one. She hasn’t had the results she’s wanted, but I think her hoops IQ continues to improve. She’s been frustrated by this season. I keep telling her that things are going to get better, and more fun, once he AAU season begins.

Her AAU coach was in the building and watched the first half. He told me he was excited to have her and her St P’s buddy on his team. They start their practices tonight and are supposed to play in a shootout on Sunday, pending enough teams registering. Meanwhile the winter league team plays a tournament game tomorrow and a championship game on Saturday, should they win their first game. The “tournament” is kind of whack, but I’ll share more about that later.

Winter Olympics

I realized I never wrote anything about the Winter Olympics. Which should be like a mortal sin to the blogging gods: the Olympics have been one of my go-to content sources over the last 18 years.

It’s not that I didn’t watch. I did watch quite a bit in the first week, but tailed off significantly in the second week.

I guess it was fatigue from a third-straight Olympics being held with a 12–13 hour time difference and how that affects how us Americans can watch the events. There was the prime time evening window, which is probably way more convenient in the Pacific time zone than the Eastern. I don’t think I watched past 11:00 PM more than two nights. I often caught a few minutes of live events in the morning before I took L to school. That was pretty much it, though. And, as I said, in week two I lost some interest.

The lack of crowds sucked, especially since here in the States we’ve been back to full crowds for quite a while.

There was also the fact they were holding the Winter Olympics in an area that gets like 10 inches of snow a year. The starkness of the ski slopes covered in artificial snow while all the surrounding hills were a dull brown kind of cut into the vibe you want from the winter games. Naturally there was a nasty snow/wind storm that affected some of the ski events. Those were the sports gods letting the IOC know you need to stop chasing Chinese money and put the games where they belong. Seriously, I think the Winter Olympics should always be in the Alps, Scandinavia, or Canada. Fuck China. And fuck Russia, too, while we’re at it.

I laughed out loud at the ski broadcasters discussing how the snow in these games was so different than what the competitors were used to skiing on in Europe. One of them said the snow was “very sensitive.” Snowflakes on two levels!

Once again I found I enjoyed the newer events that grew out of the X-Games more than anything. The halfpipe snowboard events, especially, are crazy fun to watch. Ayumu Hirano winning the men’s gold was an insanely impressive performance, even with the judges trying to screw him. I loved the analyst getting noticeably pissed as the judges refused to reward runs that included elements that had never been done in competition before.

Also fun to hear the cross country analyst again, who screamed like someone is dying anytime there was a close race.

I suppose my favorite thing about the games was Instagram stalking the competitors. I spent too much time looking at Swiss skier Lara Gut-Behrami’s page. Please don’t tell my wife.

Baseball

Rob Manfred and the owners suck. For the first time in at least 15 years I turned off auto-renewal for my MLB subscription. I doubt losing my $120 will bring them to their senses, but I also don’t feel obligated to sign back up right away when an agreement is reached. There are a lot of problems with baseball, and the owners seem intent on making every one of those issues worse while adding more to the pile.

Weather and Sports

October 6, 2021 /

Mother Nature can’t figure out what she wants to do. For the past few days, if you’ve looked through a window to see what’s going on outside, you would assume fall has taken over. It’s been cloudy most of the times, flat out dreary a few times, so you would think you would need to bundle up a bit when you set outside. Yet it’s still been close to 80 most days, and it looks like it’s going to be warmer than that for the next several days.

Not that I’m complaining. I’d be pleased as punch if I could wear shorts and t-shirts until Thanksgiving. However, I would also like to bust out the fall clothing. The jeans, the chinos, the flannels, the quarter-zips. You know what I’m talking about.

Game two of the CYO basketball season was last night. L’s team was playing St. I, a school that is always good and has beaten us pretty easily every time we’ve played them going back to third grade. We heard before the game that one of St. I’s best 7th graders would not be available, but knowing they have three really good 8th graders, we figured it wouldn’t matter much.

It might have helped us a little. At least at the beginning. We held them scoreless for the first four minutes and change of the game! Granted, we were without a basket, too. But being tied is better than getting crushed.

Sadly that changed quickly. St I scored, put on their press, and next thing you knew, we were down 12–0.

It never got much better – although we did win the third quarter 6–5 – and the final was 37–10. St. I not only had better players, but they all know how to play together. They would set up our defense and then get exactly what they wanted.

Meanwhile our girls were throwing lazy passes, never setting screens for each other, not running the right plays, dribbling into triple teams, and taking bad shots. The gap between the teams with players and the teams with athletes sure gets more obvious as the girls get older.

We were playing in a very small gym where the stands are directly behind the benches, so we were able to listen in on timeout huddles. To break the St. I press, our coaches drew up a very simple play that involved three quick passes and one cut. Our girls went out and ran it every single play for the next five possessions. It didn’t matter that St. I’s figured it out after the first play and adjusted their defense accordingly. Our girls blindly threw the passes that the coaches had told them to throw, without looking to see if that pass was covered and someone else was open.

It was super frustrating to watch and made me very glad I’m not coaching this year. The girls are all good girls. But none of them play enough basketball to not totally panic when faced with a better team that is messing up what they try to do.

L went scoreless, going something like 0–4 or 0–5 from the field. She had a couple decent looks in close that she missed. The rest were panic shots she threw up because she was trapped in the lane. She had one assist but approximately 37 turnovers. Ugly all around.

CYO now takes three weeks off for the various fall breaks around the Archdiocese. Stupid. L’s team does play in a mini-tournament this weekend but otherwise will have a few weeks to try to regroup and figure things out before they play their most winnable game of the year on October 26.

Hey, the Colts finally got their first win on Sunday! Since it was L’s birthday and we had some other things going on, I did not give the game my full attention. I believe I said it a few weeks ago and I have to restate it: I don’t like Carson Wentz, but that dude plays hard. You see why coaches and GM’s love his potential. He can make plays happen that only a handful of QB’s can pull off. But there’s always the downside with him that guys like Patrick Mahomes don’t also have, where he will account for an ugly turnover or three in his efforts to make a big play. Plus the inevitability of a major injury as a result of his scampering around.

The Colts still have tough games three of the next four weeks before the schedule lightens up a bit. That 0–3 hole is going to be tough to dig out of, even in the soft AFC South.

For those of you interested, CHS went down to Cincinnati and hammered a really good Ohio team last Friday. It was their best performance of the year. Their young quarterback had the best game of his career, throwing for 340+ yards, and he did it without his #1 receiver. Two more games in the regular season, both against fellow #1 teams from Indiana.

Finally, I was not super excited about last night’s AL Wild Card game between the Yankees and Red Sox. I even watched a short movie earlier in the evening. I did catch the last three and a half innings, though, and it warmed my heart to see the Yankees get bounced. A lot of things change over time, but my Yankee hatred remains strong after over 40 years.

I don’t think I watched a Royals game after mid-June. That terrible stretch that began about five weeks into the season killed any enthusiasm I had about devoting time to watching their young guys develop.

I’m bummed I missed most of Salvador Perez’s monster season. It has been shocking how he keeps getting better despite getting older. I hope he has another couple great years left in him so he can attach them to a season in which the Royals are contending.

Also a shame that Nicky Lopez’s out-of-nowhere great year was wasted on a season that the Royals were never in the race. You could have talked me into a great Salvy season last spring. But Nicky Lopez? No freaking way. Fingers crossed it was repeatable and not a fluke.

Now to get Bobby Witt Jr. to the bigs and hope the young arms progress. That’s enough to get me watching again next April.

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