D's Notebook

Tag: Kansas City Royals (Page 1 of 14)

Weekend Notes

October 14, 2024 /

Kind of a quiet weekend for us on the personal tip. Plenty of other shit to review on this gloomy, chilly Monday morning.

Northern Lights

Since we live inside the city’s light dome, we weren’t able to just walk out and see Thursday’s northern lights. I was able to get a couple shots, using a long exposure, that showed a bit of the colors.

There were tons of amazing pictures from not too far from us. It definitely would have been worth my time to get off my ass and drive 30 minutes or so to get a bette naked eye view of them. But did I? Nope, despite seeing northern lights being on my bucket list.

Interesting Times At School

CHS parents got this text last Tuesday afternoon.

Screenshot

When the girls got home their eyes were big and they were talking fast. Apparently they were nearly in the midst of all the fun.

C said as they exited campus and headed west, they saw a car that had been pulled over by the police take off through the intersection she had just passed through to the east. Moments later they heard a bunch of loud noises as that car collided with several others that had just come off of campus. That proved these fools weren’t super criminals. Traffic around CHS during dismissal is a true nightmare. It can take you 15 minutes to travel a quarter mile if you hit the lights wrong. Yet these geniuses decided they were going to use that moment to evade cops.

A few of girls’ friends who were behind them got videos of first the car taking off, then the driver and his passenger sitting on the curb in handcuffs.

Word was they were arrested on drug and weapons charges. Awesome.

Two years ago M and C missed driving through an intersection by St P’s where there was a road-rage shooting by about five minutes. Now C and L missed get smacked by a criminal by literal seconds. They’ve obviously been saying their prayers, and/or their dead grandmas are looking out for them.

Royals

Well, it wasn’t unexpected, but after snatching game two in New York, the Royals couldn’t win either of the games at home and lost to the Yankees in four games. Another one-run loss and a two-run loss to end the season. It was pretty much all that was great about the Royals this year – the starting pitching with the bonus of an improved bullpen – and all that was not right – a woefully thin lineup that struggled to score to begin with, but had an even mightier challenge when Bobby Witt Jr. and Salvador Perez weren’t hitting.

The Yankees didn’t blow them out and the Royals didn’t embarrass themselves. Playoff baseball, especially the first two rounds, can be super flukey. That benefited the Royals in 2014. Their special blend of Royals Devil Magic did not make an appearance in this series.

Still, a surprisingly fun season. They got me at least partially interested in baseball after falling out of love with the sport because of how management handled the most recent labor stoppage.

It is probably too much to ask for the starters to be as good in 2025 as they were this year. The bullpen was bolstered late in the season and became a weapon, so pitching in general should continue to be a strength for the team. Now if management can go find a bat or two to plug the many holes in the lineup, we could be cooking with gas next year.

That said, surprisingly, the AL Central could be one of the most competitive in baseball next year. Cleveland is in the ALCS. Detroit had an amazing run late in the season and pushed Cleveland to the bring in the ALDS. The Twins fell apart late but entered the season as preseason favorites. In other words, even if the Royals make smart decisions to improve their roster for next year, there’s no guarantee it will be enough to return them to the playoffs.

KU

Hey, no Jayhawks loss this week! You never know, KU could always find a way to lose in a bye week.

It’s been kind of crazy to see how the teams that have beaten KU have done after knocking off the Jayhawks. Illinois is 5–1 and ranked. UNLV is also 5–1 despite their quarterback checking out. A week after beating KU, West Virginia went to Oklahoma State and destroyed the Cowboys before losing to Iowa State this week. Then Arizona State pulled a massive upset beating Utah this weekend. Only TCU has looked worse after beating the Jayhawks.

Mostly that doesn’t mean shit. Anyone who has watched KU this year has seen how flawed they are, both on the field and from a schematic/coaching perspective. Still, four of their losses have been by a single score. The TCU game was a single-score game until the closing minutes. As many issues as the Jayhawks have had, a few breaks here and there and they could easily be 5–1. While I think us KU fans would be waiting for reality to set in, we would feel a lot better about things.

This week brings Houston, and KU opens as favorites. Get a win and it doesn’t necessarily turn the season around, but it could at least change the vibes. Lose this one? Man, things will get ugly.

In totally unrelated news, Purdue fired their offensive coordinator last week. This week they went to Illinois. The ESPN boxscore was all messed up, but I believe they trailed by 27 in the second half before scoring 30 straight points to take the lead. They gave up a tying field goal at the final gun, then failed to convert a 2-point conversion and lost by one in OT. All from firing their OC. Hmmm….

CHS

Friday night Cathedral took on Southside Catholic rivals Roncalli. This was once one of the best rivalries in the city. Before the tournament success factor was introduced, the teams played in the same class and were often either in the same sectional or regional. In our first few years living here, they always face each other in the playoffs, and the score was usually something like 10–9 or 14–13. And Roncalli often won.

But Roncalli, aside from a 4A state title two years ago, has been kind of crappy since their legendary coach retired a while back. CHS beat them 42–0 last year. This year it wasn’t much better, a 35–6 Irish win. A CHS receiver made an insane catch for an 84-yard TD. He dropped two other sure touchdowns on easy balls. The only RHS points came on their final drive with a running clock and facing the CHS reserves.

The #5 Irish are now 5–2 with a big matchup at 7–1 #6 Warren Central to close out the regular season.

The sectional draw was last night. CHS gets the school across the street from us, who will be 0–9, to open. Then a likely matchup against presumptive 9–0 Lawrence North for the sectional crown. CHS has ended LN’s season the past two years.

Halloween Shit

Both the girls had friends over Saturday to carve pumpkins, eat fall foods, and have fun. Tough to get a shot of all the pumpkins but they look nice on our front porch.

Worth mentioning that L had a young man over she’s been hanging with for the past few weeks. He’s a nice kid. They were joined by another couple. Those four stuck to one part of our house while C and her group of ten-or-so seniors stayed in another part. Seemed like everyone had fun. Once things got going S and I kept to our room to stay the hell out of the way.

Closing Time

We closed the pool on Friday. It was sunny and 80° when the guys were shutting it down, the water still at 78° despite me not running the heater in a week. I think you call that perfect timing. Of course, the girls hadn’t been in the pool since August. I had been using it, but as I’ll share tomorrow, I haven’t been able to get in for a week or so, meaning we closed it a week late. Since I wasn’t running the heater I didn’t mind.

Then Sunday morning S and I first cleaned up the leftover pumpkin messes from the girls then stored away all the pool furniture and other summer goodies into the pool house for the winter. Our pool deck is now naked. Appropriately it was super breezy and gloomy while we were doing that, and 15° cooler than the day before. This week looks super fall-ish, although another warm-up is forecast for next weekend.

Colts

The Colts couldn’t get it done against pathetic Jacksonville a week ago, but did enough to win against the equally pathetic Titans this week. Man, Will Levis is fucking bad. Anthony Richardson, who sat out again, may end up being a bust. I’d rather have a dude that can only play every third game than Levis, who throws some of the worst balls I’ve ever seen. Maybe he figures the game out and turns into a solid QB eventually. But watching him Sunday, I was glad the Colts passed on drafting him a year ago.

The crazy thing about watching the Colts is that if they could ever get healthy, they really should have a plus offense. They have two really good receivers in Michael Pittman and Alec Pierce. Josh Downs showed Sunday that he might be better than those two. And AD Mitchell has loads of potential although he has a long way to go. Old Man Joe Flacco gets them the ball just enough to be dangerous. If you can keep Jonathan Taylor on the field, easier said than done, you have terrific balance. Of course, you can’t keep him on the field and there is no decent backup. The O-line has improved, even losing one starter for the season.

But that defense? Woof. They make just enough plays, especially against a shitty team like Tennessee, to make you think they might be decent. But they aren’t decent at all, even allowing for missing important players up front and being too thin on the back end.

Feels like a season that ends in 5–7 wins and puts them too deep into the draft to get a player that can immediately plug a gap next year.

Fall Break

It’s appropriate the weather has finally changed, as this week is the girls’ fall break. They are in school today and tomorrow, then off the rest of the week. We are traveling to Denver to visit our family out there. It looks like we will have a 20° temperature swing while we’re out there, too, so packing could be tricky. Obviously a lot more about this next week.

Weekend Notes

October 7, 2024 /

A busy, warm, disappointing, and significant weekend.

FNL + Party

Friday was a big night for a couple reasons. First, L was having friends over to celebrate her birthday. Seven girls, including her middle school buddy who goes to the rival high school, gathered at our house after school. They are a good group and fun to be around. They are mostly sassy and confident and silly, and while they usually congregate away from us, when we have to interact with them they always make me laugh.

Once S got home we ran them over to Marion University, which was hosting the big Center Grove vs Cathedral game. This was class 6A #5 vs #7. CG came in at 4–2, CHS 3–2. CG had won three in a row in the series and have dominated it over the past decade. In a change, it was moved from the final week of the season to week eight this year for some reason.

It was a wild game.

CHS scored on the first play of the game, a 64 yard run.
Trailing 10–0, CG had an 80-yard TD run.
CHS answered with a 74-yard TD pass.
CG led 30–27 at halftime, and eventually 45–35 with about six minutes to play.
The game ended with this sequence in the final five minutes:
Cathedral touchdown.
Cathedral successful onside kick.
Cathedral touchdown.
Center Grove interception.
Cathedral punt.
Center Grove interception.
Game over.

Huge win for the Irish. Normally you would say these teams are on a collision course for a rematch in semistate. CHS is going to have trouble getting past Lawrence North, who is 7–0 and destroyed #2 Warren Central this week, in sectionals though. They would also likely have to beat #1 Brownsburg between sectionals and Center Grove, and they’ve already lost to them. Anything is possible I guess.

The only bummer to the night was apparently there weren’t a ton of CHS kids at the game. Marion is on the opposite side of the city from school. Since CHS kids come from literally everywhere – something like 80 middle schools are represented in L’s class – you would think that wouldn’t be an issue. Especially for the Center Grove game, which is always huge. But I guess it was an issue. Anyway, L texted us at halftime that they wanted to leave because “no one is here” and it was boring. So the girls were eating cake and ice cream at our house when the Irish made their furious comeback. I kept listening and let them know the result.

Kids, man. Kids.

Royals

Man, so close to stealing game one in New York. Yes, there was a curious, at best, replay call that didn’t go the Royals way that directly let to the winning run for the Yanks. Bobby Witt Jr. got no love from the home plate ump in the 9th. Bummers.

What truly sucked was the Royals pitchers walking 80 Yankees batters. The fifth inning was really when the Royals lost this game. That inning went walk-single-walk-walk-foul out-fielder’s choice-walk. Two runs scored, both on bases loaded walks.

You don’t expect to lose in Yankees Stadium because you walked in more runs than you allowed on homers.

The Royals are a resilient bunch, though, and I think the loss will get them more re-focused than discouraged. Hopefully the pitchers are a little more locked in Monday while the hitters can keep generating runs.

Oh, and this ALDS schedule is nuts. Three days off in a five-game series? When these teams played a five-game ALCS in 1980, games one-through-three were played on consecutive days. And that was with a night game on Thursday in Kansas City and a night game Friday in New York. Since the Royals swept that series, I don’t know if an off-day was scheduled before either game four or five. But in 2024, there are scheduled off days between games one and two, two and three, and four and five if needed. Dumb.

KU

Same old same old. A disastrous end to the first half. A lead in the fourth quarter. The inability to stop the opponent when it mattered most. A fifth loss in a row.

Lawrence radio guy Derek Johnson posted this amazing stat on Twitter after the game: In each of their losses, at some point in the second half KU has had at least a 74% win probability. Add those up, and the odds of going 0–5 over that stretch is 0.01%, or about 1 in 10,000. Yet KU found a way to do it. Never say we can’t do amazing things in football season!

I think that stat also points out the truth to this season, something I pointed out last week. KU got just about every break possible last year. This year, though? No breaks. Or when they get a break, they find a way to fuck it up.

The offense and OC Jeff Grimes have taken the bulk of the criticism this year. The offense was fine Saturday. Yes, there were a few bad choices, notably in the two three-and-outs after KU forced turnovers because of hopelessly conservative play calling. One first down late in the second quarter and Arizona State never gets a chance to tie the game going into halftime. Jalon Daniels, who might have had his best game of the year, rushed a throw to a wide open Quentin Skinner that cost KU four points in a four-point loss.

Those aside, Saturday was on the defense. Yes, they forced two turnovers and blocked a field goal. But there were, yet again, massive holes for ASU to exploit all night. Almost no pressure on the quarterback. KU got destroyed at the line on running plays and gave up 313 yards rushing! Not technically on the defense, but they also gave up another long punt return to a player who should have been tackled seconds after fielding the ball by one of three players.

I know they were missing one defensive captain the entire game, and Cobee Bryant left the game late with what appeared to be a bad injury. That doesn’t excuse how bad the D looked as a whole, and has looked all season.

I read a theory this week that the transitional recruiting class between Les Miles and Lance Leipold, which was ranked in the 110s nationally, is what is killing this team. There are a ton of seniors of various types, a lot of freshmen and true sophomores, but not many of those third year players who maybe aren’t ready to start, but have been in the system and can come in briefly to spell the starters when needed.

I have no idea if that explains KU’s defensive woes or not. I am starting to think last year’s performance was a fluke. DC Brian Borland should definitely be under as much pressure as Grimes, because he hasn’t found a way to scheme around talent issues.

I genuinely hated sports late Saturday night. The Royals and KU games overlapped some. I had the Royals on the TV, KU on the MacBook. It was harder to follow both than my attempts to listen to CHS and watch tennis or football earlier this year. Higher stakes, I guess. KU and the Royals both scored at about the same time once, which was fun. The Yankees scored the go-ahead run at nearly the same moment Arizona State tied the game going into halftime, which was not fun.

Oh, a couple of my KU buddies and I had talked about going to this game a while back. We didn’t go forward because, for some reason, tickets even on Southwest were over $500. I was glad we chose to stay home. Not just because of the loss, but also because it was 106° at kickoff. I read somewhere this was the hottest temperature at kickoff for an ASU game this century. And, (in)famously, whatever Sun Devil Stadium is called these days has all aluminum bleacher seating. I can’t believe the game was nearly sold out.

Colts

No Anthony Richardson or Johnathan Taylor, plus a couple key defensive injuries. An offensive lineman breaks his leg during the game. And the Colts hadn’t won in Jacksonville in 11 years.

So no surprise that after giving up their third ridiculously long touchdown of the game, they trailed by 14 late. I went outside to water some plants, figuring my weekend didn’t need any more sports disappointment.

A few minutes later I noticed S looking at the window trying to get my attention. I strolled over and glanced inside at the TV and saw the Colts were kicking a PAT to tie. Apparently Joe Flacco and Alec Pierce did their best to save the day, but the Jags kicked a field goal to win at about the same point in the clock as where Arizona State beat KU. Perfect.

I don’t think the Colts are terrible. But they are definitely on the bottom half of the mediocre middle of the NFL. That middle is so big that any team in that group can beat any other, so the Colts might still manage six or seven wins. I wonder if they would be better served to start thinking about the draft and focusing on getting the best pick possible. Which means as tempting as it will be to keep starting Flacco when AR is healthy, you have to focus on both developing Richardson and determining if he is the man going forward. You can’t delay that question another year while you’re chasing a Wild Card spot with Flacco.

LB

Some milestones for B girl #3.

She turned 16 Thursday.

Saturday we got her travel basketball assignment for next year. She’s with the same coach she’s been with. It does suck that we’ve lost two more of her best friends she’s played with the last three years. We might steal one of those girls back but we’re not confident. Travel ball at the high school level is brutal when it comes to roster building. You have very little say in who you get, as teams higher in the pecking order can “steal” girls if they need them. That happened to one of her besties, and from what I’ve heard from that girl’s mom, she does not want to play with the team that picked her. L is hopeful they can get her switched back to our team, but I’m doubtful.

L is still suffering from the lingering effects of mono, but will try to go back to preseason practice this week. She feels mentally bad about missing two weeks, but also feels physically bad any time she breaks a sweat. Knock on wood I don’t get a call at 6:30 AM Tuesday that she’s sick at practice, or just can’t continue and needs to get picked up.

Sunday she passed her driving test. She’s been doing a great job with her practicing, so there wasn’t much doubt. Her instructor even said “Piece of cake” when they returned. She can officially get her license on Jan. 1, although she’ll obviously have to wait another day.

Weather

A gorgeous, warm weekend to wrap up an unseasonably warm week. Saturday I hardly watched any football during the day, partially because I knew I would be watching both the Royals and Jayhawks at night. But also because I wanted to sit outside and read and enjoy the beautiful day.

All last week they were saying this week would be much different. It is cooling off a little; we’ll be down in the upper 40s for a few mornings. But days will still be in the low 70s, slowly warming back to the low 80s by the weekend. These are the days you have to hold on to because even when they are mild, the Midwest winters will suck the life out of you.

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 23, 2024 /

Another full-ish weekend, with most of our attention focused on the corrupt and disgraceful arena of sports. Sports suck.

Family

Let’s flip our normal order, though, and kick it off with family chat. M came home for the weekend. It was her first visit of the semester and nice to have her in the house for about 48 hours. She had no plans and mostly chilled on our couch while doing homework or taking naps. I told her to let me know if she was missing any specific meals and I would make them for dinner, but she never got around to picking something and/or we had other things going on, so she didn’t get any good home cooking. Which is kind of a bummer. That was always a highlight of trips home for me. This was also her first time coming-and-leaving on her own. When she left Sunday afternoon, S noted how it was nice that one of us wouldn’t spend the next five hours driving to Cincinnati, helping her get settled, then coming right back. Indeed.

Her classes are going well. Much harder than freshman year, since she’s in the business school now, but she’s working through it. Crazily, she showed me how she has her next two-and-a-half years completely planned out. Thanks to all the hours she took with her from high school, she can both spend a semester abroad and then do a co-op without taking any classes another semester and still graduate on time. We are also about to sign a lease for where she will live the next two years. Seems like she just started college and now we are about to lock up her housing up to graduation.

C had a quiet weekend, until she got sick Sunday night. She is home with me today. Fun.

L had a tryout for next year’s travel ball team yesterday. We think she’ll end up on the same team, or at least with the same coach and the same core players, she has been on. So this was more a required show your face type thing. She is really hoping that her old coach is allowed to keep the team together, because she didn’t feel very good yesterday either, and didn’t think she played very well.

High School Football

One reason we couldn’t do anything special for dinner for M Friday was that it was CHS’ homecoming, and the girls basketball team had a tailgate. S and I went and ate pizza and hung out with the girls and other parents for about 90 minutes. We came home after to hang with M. It was hot, the game was at Butler so our season passes didn’t work, and we knew it would be a blowout – CHS beat the school across the street from our house 53–13 – so we didn’t see any reason to stay.

That proved to be even smarter when our first rain in two weeks rolled in midway through the second half. There was lightning, of course, and the game got halted for about an hour. L was there with friends and they left to get ice cream then hang out at a friend’s house.

Jayhawks

This is why, as a KU fan, I should never, ever, ever have expectations when football season rolls around. In 44 years of being a KU fan, conditions have been right to have serious hopes, I’m talking potential conference championship game rather than just go to a bowl game, exactly twice in my life. Both times those expectations got blown out of the water before the season was even halfway finished.

This time it was allowing West Virginia to score 15 points in about 3:30 of game time in the fourth quarter. The defense was terrible, our two alleged all-conference cornerbacks getting roasted all day while the line couldn’t tackle anyone. Jalon Daniels struggled. Shocker. The play calling was odd, again. Yet the Jayhawks were up 11 with under 5:00 to play on the road, after a two-hour weather delay no less. Then they blew it.

While there was plenty to be mad about, and this game pretty much ruined my entire day since it took over five hours to complete and then I was pissed for the remainder of the night, all the attention goes to a couple coaching decisions. First, taking a delay of game penalty right before the weather delay and turning a 4th and 2 into 4th and 7 was idiotic. Especially when our punter hadn’t exactly been kicking the shit out of the ball. Then running to the short-side on the biggest play of the day, when a first down might ice the game, was criminal. As one West Virginia writer pointed out:

Kansas for the last hour: Succeeds for chunks of yards every time they run a speed option.
Kansas on the biggest 3rd down of the game: Let’s try something else.

Maddening.

Jalon missed some more throws that suggested to me he’s compensating for injury/weakness in his body. But the coaching staff had an entire summer to game plan around that, and apparently didn’t. Then they make dumb calls in the game’s biggest moments.

Just like the only other time I had big expectations going into the season – 2009 – this season has quickly gone to shit. Now, the Illinois loss doesn’t look so bad after they won at Nebraska this week. And the remaining schedule is still relatively weak. Given how KU’s best players – aside from Devin Neal and Daniel Hishaw – and coaching staff have performed through the first four games, I don’t have much confidence things will improve. And next year we will roll out a team filled with freshmen and sophomores who haven’t played much…

Again, with Kansas football, it can, and almost always will, get worse. Can’t wait to see what this week brings.

Other College Games

Well, it’s started. All the weird, new conference games that a year ago would have been awesome non-con games. USC traveling to Michigan, for a tremendous game that went down to the final seconds. Tennessee going into Norman and slapping Oklahoma around, which was cathartic to this Big 12 fan. The games were good, but the vides were odd.

I read this weekend how UEFA adjusted how they schedule the Champions League this year, requiring the best teams to play more games against other strong teams. It is starting to feel like college football should do something like that. Just get rid of conferences and throw all the names into buckets based on preseason rankings, and try to make balanced schedules from that.

Here’s a wild bonus idea: Keep the schedules geographically logical, too. Nah, that’s crazy talk. Why would we want schools to play most of their games against rivals from neighboring states?

Colts

Hey, at least the Colts won! Not that they looked good doing it and didn’t try to give the game back to Chicago like three times.

Quarterbacks

Jalon Daniels has seven interceptions. Anthony Richardson has six. I’m falling out of love with the forward pass.

Fever

Like a lot of Indianapolis, at 3:00 eastern I switched from the ugly Colts game over to watch the Fever open their playoff series with the Connecticut Sun. That went well for one quarter, then it turned into a rout. The Sun kept big defenders on Caitlin Clark and made her life hell. CC and Kelsey Mitchell combining to shoot 4–23 from 3 did not help. We’ll see if they can regroup and adjust for game two and get the series back for the finale in Indy. The Sun have handled the Fever pretty easily all season, but it would be cool to steal game two and have the deciding game back here.

Royals

Man, you think KU had a bad week, go check out what the Royals did. Six straight losses. At home. A 13–1 collective shellacking to the Giants over the weekend. Now somehow tied with Detroit, DETROIT, for the second/third Wild Card spots with Minnesota just a game back, and Seattle a game behind the Twins. Detroit closes the season with three against the pitiful White Sox, so they have effectively locked up one of those two spots.

A week ago the Royals had a five-game cushion over the seventh place spot, with a 99% chance of making the postseason. This morning that percentage has dropped to 69% (per Fangraphs). If Minnesota wasn’t nearly as cold as the Royals those odds would be even lower.

Maybe the bats will wake up this week. Or the pitching will do enough to get the R’s to the playoffs and then the bats will wake up. Sure doesn’t look promising this morning.

Weather

Mother Nature finally flipped the switch Sunday and our heat wave broke. Rain moved in midday Sunday, with heavier showers in the evening, and the temps have dropped 10–15 degrees from where they had been. The forecast has highs in the mid-upper 70s with cool nights. Just about perfect.

We put the Halloween decorations out Saturday. The holidays are getting close.

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.  ↩

Weekend Travel Notes

June 10, 2024 /

A busy weekend back in the Motherland.

KC Trip

Lots of fun on my first Kansas City visit in two years, first solo one in five. As always, it was too brief but I packed plenty in.

I flew in Friday morning and got to experience the new KCI for the first time. Soooo much better than the old airport. I enjoyed how the old terminals are still standing, so if you were ever in them you have a reminder of how weird they were.

First stop was lunch at CharBar in Westport. Burnt end sandwich, solid.

Next was a shopping trip on the Plaza to pick up shirts for the girls.

After a stop at the Lee’s Summit Nesbitts to unload my bags, we headed out for an evening of fun. Started at the Boulevard Beer brew hall, which was a nice place to gather. It was weird that last call was at 8:45, although that ensured we got into El Patron for dinner right before they closed.

While eating dinner, we watched the Royals game. They were chipping into a big Seattle lead but it didn’t look promising.

After the staff graciously let us hang around past their closing time to finish our meals,[1] we headed to the Plaza and decided to roll into the Granfalloon for old time’s sake. On the way we listened to the Royals game. Things were getting interesting! Just as we claimed a table Salvy Perez ripped a ball down the third base line and the Royals claimed a miraculous win. There was much celebrating.

Saturday I decided that L would not think the KU, Joel Embiid shirt I got her would be nearly as cool as I did, so I took it back to exchange it. She had requested some kind of Ochai Agbaji shirt but I couldn’t find one and settled on the Jojo version. I hit a Rally House in Independence and swapped it for a generic, KU basketball shirt. Then I decided to run over to Independence Center and see what the mall where I literally spent months of my life in the ‘80s and ‘90s was like. It was a trip! While I strolled through its massive, mostly empty interior, I was trying to remember when the last time I would have been there was. There’s a decent chance it was sometime in the early 2000s, but a greater than zero chance it was before the turn of the millennium, which was kind of wild.

Later we headed to Gates to grab some lunch to take to the K for tailgating before the Royals game. Mother Nature dialed up some good, old fashioned KC heat and humidity to ensure I worked up a sweat doing nothing. It made the beer taste better!

Our seats were in the Loge level, which I bet I hadn’t sat in since the mid–90s. I remember sitting there for an Orioles game sometime in my O’s fan phase, but never since. Great seats since they were in the shade and we had a breeze. The R’s were nice enough to make the day about perfect with another win.

And, of course, great to sit with a bunch of good friends.

Following the game we gathered at the Brookside Murrays for Minsky’s pizza, drinks, and conversation. It was a beautiful summer night and just about perfect.

Sunday morning my last stop was to meet an uncle for brunch at Homegrown in Brookside. Quite good. Get your name on the list early. On my way I was able to listen to most of the top 10 from 1981 on the AT40 replay. I wondered if I had made the same drive into Brookside with my mom sometime in June ’81 and heard some of these songs.

I had a little time to kill so made a quick walking lap of the Plaza before heading back to KCI.

While the daylight hours were just fine, both Friday and Saturday nights had big, ol’ Great Plains thunderstorms. I swear the thunder is louder in KC. I sleep right through the same storms at home, or at least only wake momentarily. Both nights in KC the rumbles were loud enough it took me some time to get back to sleep.

It was so great to see all of my friends who are reading this. It was great to see the ones who aren’t reading this, too. You know what I mean.

Family Heirloom

Another highlight of the trip was my uncle passing along a treasured item from his past.

He had designs on being a radio DJ back in the day. Sadly, he did not have the voice for it and it never worked out as a long-term occupation. While he was in college, though, he did some summer work at a small station in central Kansas, KHOK. In October 1979 he was working at a station in Hoisington, KS and had the honor of spinning at least one American Top 40. Literally spinning it; back then the entire program was pressed onto vinyl and sent out to radio stations around the country.

The station let him hang onto the records as a memento. As we often text about old music, he decided it was time to pass it along to me. So expect to have several RFTS entries from the October 13, 1979 countdown this fall. I just need to find the proper adapter to connect my turntable, which has been packed away since we moved, to computer speakers. Someone made me ditch my old school, mega-speakers when we switched houses.

Rental

I didn’t take a picture, but I splurged a little on my rental. I put myself into a very nice Nissan Versa. Car And Driver ranks it as their #1 subcompact car, so you know it’s quality.

Honestly I was surprised to look up its specs when I got home and see it had 122 horsepower. Mine might have only had 100 or so HP. There were several times I was literally standing on the gas pedal and the car was wheezing to get up to speed on the highway. I forgot my 1980s trick of turning the AC off when trying to get a four cylinder vehicle onto an interstate in the summer. But I did get around 35 miles per gallon, so while I didn’t drive around a ton it was nice to only spend about $11 topping off the tank before I turned it back in.

I rented from Enterprise. I told the enthusiastic kid who helped me check out on Friday that I had a lot of fun in Enterprise cars back in the day. Shame Cadillac doesn’t make huge cars anymore.

  1. Yes, we closed down two establishments in one night! Don’t call us old!  ↩
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