By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City Chiefs remain undefeated after a workmanlike 22-6 win over the still-winless San Diego Chargers. The Chiefs are 5-0, undefeated in three games in the AFC West. The Chargers.  The Chargers are still looking for their first win after six games.

The Chiefs take on the Seatle Seahawks next weekend in Seattle. The Seahawks, with Kenneth Walker III on their side, won the Super Bowl this year. They’re split their first six games. Walker is now in the red and yellow, leading the league in rushing and giving a dimension to Kansas City’s offense that it hasn’t had in several years.

Parick Mahomes went 23/29 for 272 yards and one interception. The game was one of the rare times he did not pass for a touchdown. Walker added 128 yards to his year’s producito on 19 carries. He scored twice. He’s averaging 6.2 yards per carry—537 yards so far.

Harrison Butker was three for four in field goals; he has yet to hit one from 50 or more yards out. He missed half of his extra point tries.

(MIZBOO)— Saturday was one of those any give Saturdays.

We’d like to see the Ole Miss scouting report on the Missouri Tigers. They had them cold.

Missouri was not upset—Mississippi was a top-10 team–but the beat down the Tigers took was surprising. Clearly, Ole Miss had figured out a way to bottle up Missouri’s rushing game and how to riddle the Tiger Defense with both runs and passes. Missouri got the first three points of the game. Mississippi got the next 31, let Missouri runners get only 34 yards and kept the Tigers from scoring on ten straight possessions.

Missouri assisted in its misery with a badly kicked field goal and an interception at the goal line. The missed second-quarter field goal was the last time Missouri made it to red zone until the last part of the game when the goal line interception happened.

The Tigers ground game was grounded. Runners gained only 39 yards. The Tigers converted only six of 17 third downs, most of which were long. On average, Missouri was third and 7.8.

“You’ve got to figure out how to score,” said coach Drinkwitz, who also thought Missouri never got into “the rhythm of the game.”  The defense did but it wasn’t until the third quarter. But, “offensively, we were just pressing, we were pressing, we were pressing and we just weren’t able to do it.”

The loss might not be as severe as it seemed at the end of the game because Auburn upset #1 Georgia and #14, Unranked Florida toppled 7^th ranked Texas, Tennessee beat sixth-ranked Alabama. LSU, ranked 22^nd, dumped 16^th ranked Mississippi State.

Missouri drops to 2-2 in the conference, one of eight teams with two losses. Georgia, Kentucky, and Texas have one loss apiece. Alabama and Florida are 3-2. Missouri, LSU, Auburn, and Mississippi have split their four games. Texas and Oklahoma are 1-2.

Arkansas (3-4) is next up for Missouri after the bye week. Then it’s Texas and Georgia. Kentucky and Oklahoma will finish the season for Missouri.

(RATINGS)—ESPN dropped Missouri out of its top 25 after the loss to Mississippi but the AP and the Coaches put them back where they were two weeks ago—21^st and 22^nd.

(MIZHARDY)—Coach Drinkwitz says Ahmad Hardy still hasn’t started the two-week ramp-up to get on the active Tiger roster and he’s tired of being asked when Hardy will be ready.  Hardy is still in rehab for his off-season gunshot wound as Missouri heads into the seventh game of its 12-game season.  Drinkwitz says he’ll let everyone know when Hardy starts practicing.

It appears the earliest Hardy could be back would be for game ten.  As far as we know, Drinkwitz has not been asked bout red-shirting Hardy.

What Hardy’s role will be if he does come back this season is a matter of speculation with the emergence of Jamal Roberts, who ranks second in the national rushing statistics—by just seven yards.

(KICKED OFF)—Harrison Mevis, who stabilized the Los Angeles Rams’s field goal  kicking last year, has lost his touch…or his golden foot….and his job.  Mevis missed two field goals in last week’s Rams loss in overtime to the Buffalo Bills and the day afterwards, the Rams booted him off the team. He missed two field goals in a 37-34 Rams loss. The second one would have been a game winner. The second one, in overtime, was blocked.

Mevis, who was 12 of 13 last years is only five for nine this year and missed on 7 of 9 kicks from and 3 of 7 from forty yards or more. The Rams have called Blake Grupe off the practice squad to take his place.  Grup, who also has played for the Saints and the Colts is 18 of 27 in field goals in his career.

The Rams got one field goal out of his replacement, Blake Grupe, before Grupe injured a knee tackling a runner on a kick return. He had kicked a 44-yard field goal to give the Rams a 3-0 lead without ten minutes left in the first quarter. He’d been signed off the practice squad when Mevic was let go.

Grupe was the fifth kicker for the Rams in their last 57 games.

(MIZBB)—Tiger forward Annor Boateng has been ruled out for the season as he recovers from a knee injury suffered last January when he slipped going tor a dunk. Coach Dennis Gates thus has an opening in his lineup for Mark Mitchell if Mitchell keeps his court permission to play a fifth year.

Mitchell had committed to spend his fifth year with Kentucky before deciding to return to Missouri where he made the SEC All conference team twice. Nonetheless, a judge in Kentucky has ruled, for now, that he is eligible for a fifth year and has issued an injunction against the NCAA that sought to sideline him.

Gates, who testified for Mitchell in his most recent court case, says he did not discuss the return with Mitchell but he’d be glad to get him back. He said at the SEC Media Days, “When we were 0-19 (in 2023-24), that young man stepped foot on our campus, and the last two years, we were able to go to the NCAA Tournament. Call it what you may—sure, we lost in the first round the last two years—but I’ll always be here for Mark Mitchell, man. Without a doubt. That’s what it’s about. It’s not about using these young people; it’s about stepping foot in lockstep with them, every step of the way.”

Another NIL transfer, C. J. Gunn, has won his court case to be on the roster.

Gates says he did talk to Mitchell but did not recruit him to return. “When you have a kid for two years, you don’t have to recruit anybody. … When you do things the right way, you don’t have to recruit. You just hold your arms open and give them a hug when they return.”

(SOCCER)—We rarely cover pro soccer in these columns but when a record is involved, it’s particularly newsworthy. The St. Louis Soccer Club played to a scoreless draw against the Vancouver Whitecaps last Wednesday to remain unbeaten for 21 straight games, breaking the record of 19 by the Red Bull New York team in 2016. . The tie also guaranteed St. Louis will be in the playoffs. St. Louis is 14-6-9 overall.  The streak has guaranteed St. Louis a spot in the MLS playoffs.

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals have released some new views of their intended downtown baseball park. The project location is a partnership with Hallmark Cards, owners of Crown Center, near the proposed ballpark. The Kansas City architectural firm, Populous, is designing the stadium.

The new four-deck stadium built on part of an 85 acre space that will include a ballpark district (for example, Ballpark Village in St. Louis).    that also will include residential and entertainment space will hold 34,000 fans, about four-thousand fewer than fit into Kauffman Stadium. There will be space for about 3,000 more to stand.  About two thirds of the fans will be shaded by a canopy.

The stadium actually will be in a big hole in the ground. Builders will have to carve a 90-foot deep hole in he Kansas City limestone before actual stadium construction can start.

It will have a lot of fountains, a reference to “The City of Fountains” that Kansas City calls itself.  The city owns 48 fountains with more than 150 additional ones in private hands. The city says it has more fountains than any other city except for Rome. Fans will be able to ride streetcars to get to it. Groundbreaking is expected next June. The Royals’ lease on the K runs out in 2031.

Cost: $1.9 billion.

To the Track—-

(NASCAR)—Tyler Reddick, the hottest driver in NASCAR at the start of the season is heating up again just in time to make the chase to the Cup Championship hotter as the season roars to its end.  Reddick won the first three races of the year and added two more to go five for the first nine. Since then he has settled back into the field.

 

Reddick won his first race since April 19 at Kansas City and when he led the field across the finish line in Phoenix Sunday he went from 114 points out of the lead to just 56 behind Kyle Larson with three races left in the season. He still has six drivers ahead of him, though.

Christopher Bell, who finished fourth, also closed on Larson, is only five points back.

Larson was never in the picture. His car never ran well at Phoenix and he eventually finished 24th after a blown tire send him into the wall.

Ahead next week is unpredictable Talladega, always a crap shoot for everybody.

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(INDYCAR)—Alexander Rossi and Alex Palou, the test drivers for IndyCar’s new chassis due to go into serious competition in 2028 wrung out the new deal on the Sebring Road Course last week. Rossi was in a Chevrolet-powered car. Palou’s engine was a Honda.The runs were the first for the IR-28 chassis on a rough road course after early tests on the smooth asphalt at Indianapolis. The Sebring runs were the first durability runs intended to learn how the cars handled under extended street-course conditions.

Perhaps as an indication of what’s to come came while Palou was on the track at the same time other drivers were doing some off-season tire testing with the current cars.  Palou “accidentally” passed Kyle Kirkwood in one of the current cars.  His runs also showed a weakness in the new car when a fueling system cropped up. It was quickly fixed.

(Photo credits:Palou and Kirkwood—Chris Owens, IndyCar; Ole Miss wins—Instagram; Royals Stadium—Populous

 

More than three decades ago, Missouri made headlines with a botched execution. It’s so long ago that it’s largely forgotten. It was not nearly as tragic as the Tennessee case but it caused quite a stir and it presented a Missourinet reporter with an ethical dilemma.

Emmitt Foster and an accomplice broke into the St. Louis County home of Travis Walker and his girlfriend De Ann Keys at 2 a.m. on November 20, 1983. Both men shot Walker, who died, and Keys, who survived to identify Foster as his accomplice.

Both were convicted. Foster drew a death sentence. The other man got life.

Foster’s time and appeals ran out on May 31, 1995.

The Missourinet had a policy from the time the death penalty was reinstated that we would witness all executions.  We felt that any time the state exacted its utmost penalty, it should not be done secretly and that representatives of the media had to be present.

I sent my reporter, Brad Farrell, to Potosi to cover Foster’s execution. At the time, the Missourinet was offering a wire service to our affiliates and the editor went with him.

Missouri had a problem when it re-enacted the death penalty because it had no facility capable of administering it in the state penitentiary old penitentiary.  The gas chamber gasket that sealed the chamber closed had deteriorated so badly that the chamber could not contain the cyanide gas that was used, provoking fears that everybody else would die, too.

Until a room could be modified into a death chamber at the Potosi prison the gas chamber was modified with the removal of the two chairs inside, creating enough room for a gurney on which the condemned prisoner would lie. Equipment was installed for the administration of the drugs.  So the first death penalty inflicted after re-enactment of it was done with drugs in the gas chamber.

At Potosi, as is the case now at Bonne Terre, there are three glassed-in areas around the execution chamber. Media and other state witnesses sit in one area while friends, relatives and spiritual advisors of the condemned sit across the chamber. The third area is for other witnesses with interests in the case.  When the prisoner on the gurney raises his head and looks past his feet, he can see those witnesses. In one instance, a man who killed a highway patrolman looked up and saw the area packed with men in the blue uniforms of the patrol.

Foster’s execution, the 12^th by drugs in Missouri, was a routine event until something went wrong.

The blinds covering the windows of the witness areas were always closed while the preparations are underway inside the chamber and are not opened until all prison and medical personnel have departed, leaving the inmate tightly strapped to the gurney and able to move only his head and his feet.

The blinds were opened as the first drug began to flow into Emmitt Foster’s veins at 12:03 that morning. Normally the inmate has only a minute or so to find his witnesses and mouth any words to them, as they mouthed words to him—there is no public address system in the chamber.  It usually does not take long for the first drug to knock out the inmate, for his head to drop to the pillow. The other two drugs that paralyzed breathing and stopped the heart usually produced a couple of gasps and then stillness. In four or five minutes, the blinds were to close and the announcement would be given in the witness areas that the procedure had been completed.

But not for Foster. When things did not appear to be going the usual way, Brad, who had witnessed three other executions saw him “gasping and slightly convulsing and I could see that he was still breathing,” as the St. Louis Post-dispatch reported. Brad remembers turning to his Learfield colleague and saying “Something’s wrong. This isn’t what I’ve seen before.”  When Foster was still alive seven minutes into the procedure, the blinds were closed.

When the Washington County Medical Examiner entered the chamber about 12:27 to find out why Foster was still alive he noticed that a strap on Foster’s arm was fastened too close to his elbow while the needle allowing drugs to into his veins was closer to his wrist, the strap serving as something of a tourniquet. He told other officials to loosen the strap and after that, “things happened quickly.” Foster’s heartbeat quickly fell and stopped within three or four minutes.

The blinds remained closed for twenty-six minutes, three minutes after officials had gone back into the chamber to figure out what was wrong, correct it, and then complete the execution. He was pronounced dead at 12:33.  The blinds were reopened so witnesses could see that Foster was dead.

The witnesses filed out. “We didn’t see him die,” Brad told me a few days ago from his home in Alexandria Virginia. He’s now an attorney for the Department of Veterans Affairs. He and our Learfield wire service editor refused to sign the warrants attesting that they had witnessed the execution. “I didn’t know what had happened. They could have put a pillow over his face,” Brad said.

The medical examiner later called the incident “a little error” and commented, ”It’s not like the guy suffered,” he said.

We had a discussion with State Corrections Director Dora Shriro a day or two after the event to resolve issues related to the refusal to sign the document. Somewhere in the state archives, probably, is that document.

The Post-Dispatch commented, “Why shouldn’t the public’s representatives get to see what happens when the best laid plans for killing a prisoner go awry?  The state tries to make executions seem so clinical and so painless that the harsh truth of what is happening recedes into the background. The government is premeditatedly lowering itself to a criminal’s level by taking yet another life. Emmitt Foster’s slow death and the state’s frantic reaction bring home once again what capital punishment really means—and make one more argument for no more executions.”

The Death Penalty Information Center, has counted at least 65 botched executions, 1982-present, most involving lethal injection in Tennessee, Idaho, Alabama, and Ohio because of problems hooking up intravenous lines.  Foster is twenty-second on the list, the only one from Missouri

Missouri has executed 90 more men since that night without a repeat of Foster’s death.

(Photo Credit–Missouri Department of Corrections)