An 18th Century Dying Syphilitic, an Old West Killing, a Legendary Couple, and a Famous Western Song

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(Preface: I once heard the Sons of the Pioneers explain the difference between country music and western music.  Western music is about the outdoors—the trails, the mountains, the clean air; country music is about indoor stuff—fightin’ and lyin’ and dyin’)

Funny how things are connected.

A few days ago I was writing a new episode of Across Our Wide Missouri about Big Nose Kate, the girlfriend of Doc Holliday. She once lived in St. Louis and there is some story, legend, myth or whatever that while she was there in 1872 she met a fresh graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Dental School, John Holliday, who was there visiting a classmate during the summer.

What’s ahead is another example of how historians start pulling on a loose string and before long there’s a tangled heap of interconnected threads. Hang on because we’re going to unravel a whole historical sweater today.

Part of Kate’s story has her in Dodge City, Kansas working at Tom Sherman’s Barroom in some capacity or another. She already had a reputation of selling her services, if you will.

In the vicinity was a young Iowa native named Frank Maynard, who wrote poetry to keep himself occupied in slow times.  His poetry isn’t bad. One of his works reminded me right off of the writings of Robert W. Service who authored the great poems of the Yukon—The Shooting of Dan McGrew, The Spell of the Yukon, The Land God Forgot, and the Cremation of Sam McGee:

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam McGee.

One of Maynard’s poems begins:

There’s a wild and rocky canyon

Where the panther rears its young

And where somber, gloomy shadows

By the Cedars are flung.

There’s no signs of human presence

How e’er closely you may scan.

Yet within its dark recesses,

Dwells an exiled, ruined man.

Sorry, folks, one of the dangers of researching and writing is how easily one is distracted.  That’s one of the joys of doing research—and one of the frustrations because sooner or later you have to get back to what you came for.

Tom Sherman was a great big guy, even in our times—six feet-six or seven—and apparently at times as mean as a snake—as on the day that he killed a man named Burns (first name maybe Charley) at his bar in Dodge City, Kansas.

Young Frank Maynard noted the incident briefly in his journal for March 13, 1873 and later wrote in his memoir, “I could see some fellows gathering and I could discern a man down and moving his legs & arms. Possibly he may have had consciousness enough to feel that he was fleeing from his pursuer with whom I almost collided. This was Tom Sherman, a big blubbery fellow, who ran with a limp. He had a large caliber revolver in his hand which he was emptying into the boy that was down…Tom, panting for breath, said to those gathering, ‘I’d better shoot him again, hadn’t I boys?’ He stepped at once to where he lay struggling, stood over him holding the big revolver in both hands, aimed at his forehead and fired. The bullet went a little high and scattered his brains in his hair…All I could learn was that Sherman had killed a friend of Burns and thought it would be safer to have him out of the way.”

The incident led to the creation of a poem that became one of the most famous songs to come out of that frontier era.

A few years ago, Maynard’s memoir and his poems were put into a book by folklorist Jim Hoy, an English Professor at Emporia State Univeristy and published by the Texas Tech University Press.

Maynard was an Iowa City, Iowa boy who headed west of the Missouri River when he was sixteen and wound up in Towanda, Kansas, a town then of fifty people or fewer southwest of Kansas City (just off I-35 today).  He soon was a buffalo hunter and later he and his father (the rest of the family had moved to Towanda) ran a freighting business between Emporia and Wichita. He became a real “cow boy” in 1872 when he was part of a crew that drove a herd of horses from Kansas to north central Texas. When he went back to Towanda, he became one of the drovers on a cattle drive.

Three years later he witnessed the killing in Dodge City.

In 1876, Maynard was wintering a herd of horses on the Kansas-Oklahoma border until the Wichita market opened. “I had often amused myself by trying to write verses, and one dull winter day in camp, to while away the time, I began to write a poem which could be sung to the tun of ‘The Dying Girl’s Lament’ in which a dying young woman says her lover did not tell her he had syphilis.” It began:

When I was a young girl I used to seek pleasure

When I was a young girl I used to drink ale.

Out of the ale house and down to the jailhouse

Right out of a bar room, shown to my grave.

Its 18th century antecedent, perhaps dating back as far as 1740, was The Unfortunate Rake, an English folk song about a young soldier also dying of venereal disease. It began:

“As I was walking down by the “Lock”  (the hospital)

As I was walking one morning of late,

Who did I spy by the own dear comrade

Wrapp’d in flannel, so hard is his fate. “

In one version the rake tells his friend:

“Get six jolly fellows to carry my coffin

And six pretty maidens to bear up my pall.

And give to each of them bunches of roses

That they may not smell me as they go along.

Muffle your drums, play your pipes merrily

Play the death march as you go along

And fire your guns right over my coffin

There goes an unfortunate lad to his home.”

Maynard explained to young newspaper reporter Elmo Scott Watson for the Colorado Springs Gazette and Telegraph edition of January 27, 1924, the poem, called “The Dying Cowboy” that he “sang it to the boys in the outfit. They liked it and began singing it. It became popular with the boys in other outfits who heard it and after we had taken our herd to market in Wichita the next spring, and from that time on I heard it sung everywhere on the range and trail.”

It began:

“As I rode down by Tom Sherman’s bar-room,

Tom Sherman’s bar-room so early one day,

There I espied a handsome ranger

All wrapped up in white linen, as cold as the clay.

‘I see by your outfit that you’re a ranger,’

The words that he said as I went riding by.

‘Come, sit down beside me, and hear my sad story,

I’m shot through the breast and know I must die.”

The chorus was:

“Then muffle the drums and play the dead macrhes;

Play the dead march as I’m carried along;

Take me to the churh-yard and lay the sod o’er me,

I’m a young ranger and I know I’ve done wrong.”

Maynard’s ranger was a cowboy who rode the range tending and herding cattle.

He wrote that other trail herders changed the lyrics over time and replaced “Tom Sherman’s Barroom” with “Streets of Laredo” and the song evolved into the more familiar version we hear and sing today.

In 1949 Ray Evans and Jay Livingston wrote a version as a theme song for a motion picture, Streets of Laredo¸ starring William Holden, McDonald Carey, William Bendix and Mona Freeman.  The three were outlaws who rescue Freeman’s character from a racketeer.  Two of them later joined the Texas Rangers while the third continued his outlaw ways. The movie ends in a big showdown in which, as one source put it, “loyalty, love, and vengeance collide.”

Doc Holliday died at in Glenwood Springs Colorado at age 36 in 1887. He and Kate never got together again. It is said that when he died, he had a derringer given him by Kate later acquired for a large sum of money by the Glenwood Springs Historical Society.  But its authenticity has been seriously questioned and the society offered to give back donations used to buy the weapon.

Big Nose Kate died in 1940, within a few days of her 91st birthday.

As for the young cowboy poet—

Maynard was “weary of the hardship and the tragedy incident to life on the plains” when he headed home to Towanda in 1877. ‘it is not to be supposed that I had wandered all these years heartwhole and fancy free, for I had had my dreams of love and home that ended with a rude awakening, and now at the age of twenty-four I was growing cynical and I had often exultantly declared to myself, ‘I will die as I have lived, a wild free rover of the plains.’”

But he was invited to a party and found “one pair of eyes that held a strange fascination for me. They seemed to wear a far away expression, and in their luminous depth there seemed to be a touch of ineffable sadness. Somehow the thought came to me, ‘Here is a woman that I might love, that might save me from the reckless life I have been drifting into.’”  Her name was Flora Longstreth.

However,  “When I finally screwed up my courage to put the question, which would have such a bearing on my future, I did not get a direct reply.” When she refused his invitation to a party, he wentt back to cowboying in the spring of ‘78, finally concluding the relationship would never work. He wrote her a farewell letter and spent the season herding cattle, fighting a prairie fire, and having some brushes with Indians unhappy with the encroachments on their lands.

But he never forgot Flora and eventually he  convinced the girl with the faraway eyes his cowboy days were over. They were married April 24, 1881, moved to Colorado Springs six years later where Maynard made a good living as a Carpenter. He probably started compiling his reminiscences about 1888. He died March 28, 1926.  Hoy notes the headline on his Denver Post obituary read, “Plains Bard and Pioneer of Earliest Cowboy Days is Dead.” Flora, born three years after Frank, outlived him by five, dying in 1931.

Frank’s reminiscences include his early days as a buffalo hunter, days in which hundreds of the animals were killed for their hides. He wrote without pity about those times although by the end he laments to the fate of the buffalo and the people who relied on them for so many purposes.

Names of people who are now legends drift in and out of his thoughts and his life; Dave Rudabaugh once was a herder with him and later a member of Billy the Kid’s gang in New Mexico.  Bat Masterson, Bill Tighlman, and the Earps are part of the narrative as are Buckskin Joe, Colorado Bill, Prairie Dog Dave and Tiger Bill, whose barroom murder he likened to the death of Wild Bill Hickock; the Northern Cheyenne chief Dull Knife and many others forgotten or only words in history books were part of his world. .

He wrote of the ending of his era:

On Boot Hill they’ve built a schoolhouse

And the W.C.T. U.

Holds an annual convention

Where once corks and stoppers flew;

There are sermons, there is singing,

Where was pistol rack and flame.

Dodge, the erstwhile wicked city,

Has built a better name,

And the lamb now skips and gambols

Where was heard the grey wolf’s wail,

The survival of the fittest,

Marks the ending of the trail..

As with so much of the story of Doc and Kate, the real story of the free range west is part of legend and Western myth and preserved history.   The only thing that seems certain is that a young cowboy named Frank Maynard witnessed a killing on a Dodge City street at a tavern where Kate once worked and he wrote a poem about it. It was included in a book of his poems published in 1911. His poems and some other writings are in the Texas Tech book.

One of the joys of studying history is the people you meet along the way, the people who kept diaries or wrote memoirs in which we see how those we see in movies or on television really were—just people in a gritty time when law was tenuous and life sometimes was cheap.  But in those writings, they’re alive in their time with never a thought of being  a legend.  Good or bad, they become real and the mental images of their days carry with them new understandings of the humanity of our ancestors.

One string leads to another and to another, and one beyond that and maybe more.  And in the end, a historical sweater of many colors becomes a pile of string.  But oh! What fun the unraveling has been!  And how richer we have become in the unraveling.

(Photo credits: Kate and Doc: Tom Kollenborn Chronicles; saloon—facebook; Book—Barnes & Noble; album Tower Records; Flora—the book)

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Tom’s Bears

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I got a call the other day from my longtime friend Tom Sater to talk about bears.  Tom is a former architectural conservator for the state.  He was involved in restoring the Governor’s Mansion to its Victorian splendor many years ago, was the restoration expert for the House of Representatives and the Senate and led some of the early restoration efforts elsewhere in the Capitol that would have continued if September 11, 2001 had not happened.

As I recall, something like eight-million dollars had been set aside for continued architectural restoration but when the economy went south after the terrorists attacks, that money had to be withdrawn and put into the general operational budget of the state. Many years later, under the auspices of the Capitol Commission, architectural restoration has resumed, the most prominent feature being the Herman Schladermundt’s epic stained glass window over the grand stairway and the restoration of that entire area to the color scheme of 1917.

Tom has long been fascinated by the state seal and when the House was redone in 1988, the state seal was of special interest. For many years, the bears in the state seal had been painted white.  They’re grizzlies, not polar bears so Tom in all of the state seal work he has done through the years has painted the bears brown.

If you want to see his version of the state seal up close, drop in at the Missouri River Regional Library which occupies the area that was the home of Robert W. Wells, the designer of the seal.  We have one of Tom’s seals on display there.

Wells was the third Attorney General of Missouri (1826-1836) then was federal district court judge 1836-1864. He died while still serving.

Wells’ design of the state seal was adopted on January 11, 1822. The seal legislation provides the confusion about what color the bears are, but not what kind of bears they are.

Here is the official description—

The device for an armorial achievement for the State of Missouri shall be as follows, to wit: Arms, parted per pale, on the dexter side; gules, the white or grizzly bear of Missouri, passant guardant, proper on a chief engrailed; azure, a crescent argent; on the sinister side, argent, the arms of the United States; the whole with a band inscribed with the words `United We Stand, Divided We Fall.’ For the crest, over a helmet full faced, grated with six bars, or a cloud proper, from which ascends a star, argent, on an azure field, surrounded by a cloud proper. Supporters on each side, a white or grizzly bear of Missouri, rampant, guardant proper, standing on a scroll, inscribed with the motto: `Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto,’ and under the scroll the numerical letters MDCCCXX. And the great seal of the state shall be so engraved as to present by its impression the device of the armorial achievement aforesaid, surrounded by a scroll inscribed with the words, “The Great Seal of Missouri,” in Roman capitals; which seal shall be in a circular form, and not more than two and a half inches in diameter.

The Missouri Conservation Department has said, “The bears on the Great Seal of the State of Missouri are grizzly bears, which never resided in the state.” Although the Seal specifies grizzly bears, many think the 19th century renderings of the state seal shows semi-cuddly black bears. bears, which were and now again are located in Missouri. Not until late in the 20th Century were they recognized as Grizzlies.

Why, then, was the phrase “the white or grizzly bear of Missouri” get into this law?  Tom thinks he has figured it out.  It’s the fault of Lewis and Clark. Several entries in their journals refer to bear sightings. The first time they encountered a Grizzly was October 7, 1804 when Clark wrote,  “we Saw the Tracks of White bear which was verry large” at a place 15 miles downstream from present Mobridge South Dakota. Note the phrase that refers to “tracks of white bear,” not “a” white bear. Just “white bear.”

Tom thinks they referred to “white” bears to distinguish them from the black bears they had seen and recorded downstream.

The first publication of some of the journals was in 1814 by Philadelphia banker and historian Nicholas Biddle, later know for his feud with Andrew Jackson about the Bank of the United States. In 1810, Biddle  met with William Clark. Meriwether Lewis, who was supposed to write it, had died a few months earlier. Biddle became Clark’s choice as Lewis’ replacement.

Tom thinks Robert W. Wells, the circuit attorney in St. Charles 1821-22, then a state representative 1823-1826 when he became Missouri’s third Attorney General and later a federal district judge 1836-1864 (his death) had read the Biddle account.

Although descendants of Rep. George Burkhaltter claim he designed the seal, most sources credit Wells for a couple of reason. He was living in St. Chrles when the first legislative session met in 1821 and Governor McNair complained about the inconvenience of not having a state seal) and thus likely was appointed to design the seal. Burkhartt at the time was a Justice of the Peace in far away Chariton County at that time and was elected to office in 1822, the same year Wells was elected to the House . If he designed the seal, he must have been very quick.

The logic of most sources is that Wells’ proximity to the first legislature meetings in St. Charles and his position that enabled him to mix with the first governor and the timing of the sequence of events leading up to the approval of the seal make him the more likely designer.  Burkhartt died in 1828. Nineteen years later Wells wrote a lengthy description of the meaning of the elements of the seal that was published in the March 23, 1847 issue of the Missouri State Times.In the article he referred to himself as “I am the original author of the original suggestion of our coat of arms, I suppose the explanation would come from me as from others.”

He explained the white, or grizzly bears;

“The white or grisly bear is unlike any other and was believed to be unknown except on the Missouri and in the neighborhood and was adopted on account of its vast power, great courage, and prodigious hardihood; emblematical of the great resources of the state and the courage and hardihood of its citizens.”

So Tom has solved the mystery of the white bear and is proud that he has restored the brown color of the “grisly” to its rightful places in our capitol.

Sometimes we wonder if Missourians understand that those bears symbolize—courage and hardihood.  Our state seal tells us, however, as the old saying put it:

“If you’re going to be a bear, be a Grizzly.”

Sports: Lots of Chiefs Draftees and Other Things.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(TIGERSDRAFT)—Here’s a sign of the times for college football.

Six Missouri Tigers were chosen in the NFL Draft for the second time in three years.  That ties a record for most draftees from a single class since the league cut back to seven rounds of the draft in 1994.  Six Tigers from the 2009 and 2015 teams—Gary Pinkel was the coach then—established the record.  The only other time in school history this has happened under current circumstances was two years ago.

These six raise the total NFL draftees from Missouri to fifteen, the most for any three-year period since the NFL merged with the AFL in 1970.

In 1981 when the NFL went twelve rounds, seven Tigers were picked.

None of the six in this draft was a home grown Tiger.  All six were NIL carpetbaggers.

The top Mizzou draftees, defensive end Zion Young and linebacker Josiah Trotter went in round two, Young to the Baltimore Ravens (45th choice) and Young to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (choice 46).

Two other guys were drafted in the third round with Green Bay taking defensive tackle Chris McClellan and the Rams taking right tackle Keagen Trost. They were choices 77 and 93, respectively.

Day three saw wide receiver Kevin Coleman Jr taken in the fifth round (#177) by the Dolphins and cornerback Toriano Pride Jr., (#220) by the Buffalo Bills.

Missouri has had seven draft picks in a class before. In 1981, when the NFL Draft lasted 12 rounds, the Tigers sent seven players to the NFL as draft picks.

(RELATED)—A lot of people, Tiger fans included, were surprised that Vanderbilt QB Diego Pavia, a runner-up for the Heisman Trophy, didn’t get drafted. He certainly look pretty Heismanish when the Commodores played our Tigers.  He’s the first Heisman runner-up to go undrafted since nobody wanted Iowa’s Brad Banks 23 years ago. He’s the first Heisman finalist since Jordan Lynch form NIU in 2014 to go undrafted.   Both buys wound up playing in Canada.

(CHIEFSDRAFT)—The Kansas City Chiefs went aggressive in the NFL draft, trading places to get the people they most wanted.  They haven’t had a first round pick 2017, they year they took Patrick Mahomes.

The Chiefs went shopping for a cornerback in the first round, trading with the Bears to move up from 9th to 6th in the first round. They snagged LSU cornerback Mansoor Delane. They hope he’ll plug a hole created by the losses of Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson to the Rams. With their second pick in the first round, they went to Clemson DT Peter Woods.

Round two:  They took Oklahoma edge rusher Mason Thomas, a choice that surprised some analysts, one of whom forecast the choice could “go down as one of the biggest surprises in recent Chiefs draft memory” because he is “an undersized, bendy defensive end,” the kind of guy defensive coordinator Steve Spagnola likes.

They had no choice in the third round but in the 109th player picked, in round four, was Oregon small cornerback Jadon Canady who also can play safety. Nebraska running back Emmett Johnson was the fifth-round pick (#161). He also catches passes. A second choice in the fifth round was WR Cyrus Allen of Cincinnati who, some analysts think, has some special teams talent.

Nothing doing in the sixth round so their final choice (#249) was LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier, who is considered a “developmental pick.”

“This is the first time the Chiefs have picked in the top 10 since dealing up for Patrick Mahomes in 2017, and the first time they’ve gone into a draft day with a top-10 selection since Andy Reid’s first year in Kansas City (’13), when they held the No. 1 pick,” Breer wrote. “That, to me, is why GM Brett Veach has been so active looking at both moving up and potentially moving down. This is a rare opportunity for the Chiefs that might not come along again for some time. I think if Kansas City moves down, then Oregon tight end Kenyon Sadiq will be on the radar.”

UDFA: Houston Cornerback Zelmar Vedder, Sand Diego State CB Bryce Phillips, Oklahoma RB Jadyn Ott, Louisville OT Pete Nygra, Iowa Safety Xavier Nwankpa, Miami LB Wesley Bissainthe, Wyoming TE John Michael Gyllenborg, Cincinnati WR Jeff Caldwell, DT Cole Brevard of Texas, CB D’Arco Perkins-McAllister from Louisiana-Monroe, Duke edge rusher Vincent Anthony Jr., LSU guard Josh Thompson, and Toledo LB Anthony Dunn.  Other UDFA signings: Virginia Tech RB Terion Stewart, Iowa DL Ethan Hurkett, Michigan DT Damon Payne

The Chiefs also are going to look at several guys in their spring rookie minicamp: Temple receiver Kajiya Hollawayne, Montana CB Kenzel Lawler,  Pittsburgh OL Jeff Persi, safety Desshon Singleton of Nebraska, Washington WR Omari Evans, WR Jacob DeJesus of Cal, Charlotte LB Shay Taylor, USC WR Jaden Richardson, three guys from UConn—Punter Connor Stutz, LB Donovan Branch and TE Louis Hansen—and Tennessee Tech S Tim Countras, Washington kicker Grady Gross, Rice DL Blake Boenisch, LB Colby Taylor of West Florida, K-State S Gunner Maldonado, Liberty DB Brylan Green, three guys from Pitt: CB Rashad Battle, S Javon McIntyre, TE Justin Holmes; Eastern Kentucky DB Jaheim Ward. An offensive tackle from the International Player Pathway program, Felix Lepper, has been invited to the camp.

One other UDFA—in an intriguing move, the chiefs picked up E. J. Smith, who played for Stanford and for Texas A&M.  His four-year college stats are nothing to write home about: 207 total carries,  969 yards, nine TDS. He also caught passes for 470 yards and another touchdown. Sometimes it’s the pedigree more than the statistics that makes someone worth a look. E. J. Smith is the son of Emmitt Smith, the NFL’s all-time rushing leader.

He has a tough row to hoe if he ever gets to see much playing time. The Chiefs, remember, signed Kenneth Walker, the star of this year’s Super Bowl.  They drafted Nebraska running back Emmett Johnson and picked UDFA Jadyn Ott from Oklahoma.

For most of these guys, this is just a cup of coffee in an NFL locker room. A few might make the practice squad. Most will hope for a long shot chance with another team. Look for some of these names on the UFL rosters in the next season.

Speaking of the UFL:

(BATTLEHAWKS)—The St. Louis Battlehawks, who had split their first four games of the season, went on the road to play the undefeated Orlando Storm last weekend—and dominated the Storm in the first half, storming to a 25-0  lead. The defense held Orlando to just 29 yards of offense as Orlando went just 3 of 14 on third downs.  Orlando got 14 points in the third quarter and a field goal in the fourth, but St. Louis emerged with a 25=17 win.

The Battlehawks played without former Mizzou kicker Tucker McCann, who aggravated a quadriceps injury during warmups. Punter Ryan Sanborn was the fill-in. He got a couple of field goals in the first half but missed a couple of PATs.

The Battlehawks are 3-2 now although they have been outscored 112-116. Orlando and DC lead the league at 4-1.  St. Louis plays Louisville Thursday to wrap up a three-game road trip. Louisville is 2-3.

(MIZZPORT)—Missouri hasn’t seen the last of T. O. Barrett.  They’ll have to deal with him at least twice in the next season when they play Vanderbilt. Ant Robinson II has signed with Florida State. Jacob Crews and Sebastian Mack are still waiting for calls and Jevon Porter hasn’t heard if he’ll get a redshirt.

The portal closed on the 21st with Missouri still having three slots to fill.  As of now, six players from the last season will be back: Trent Pierce, Trent Burns, point guard Aaron Rowe, forward Annor Boateng (whose season ended early with an injury), forwards Luke Norwether and Nicholas Randall

The Baseball.

(CARDINALS)—The St. Louis Cardinals spent last week sinking back toward .500 and started this week 14-13 after wasting an outstanding pitching performance from Michael McGreevey. The offense got him two runs but the bullpen couldn’t hold the lead.

The crusher came from Seattle’s Rob Refsnyder, who challenged a called third strike and got it overturned—-then ripped a JoJo Romero pitch 412 feet over the fence to give Seattle the 3-2 win.

The Cardinals have not been below .500 this season.

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals scored six runs in the last two innings, with Lane Thomas’ walk-off three run homer in the ninth to snatch a win away from the Angels 11-9 Sunday. The win completed a sweep of the Angels and upped their record to 11-17.

Joe Caglianone had tied the game in the ninth with a two-run shot. The Angels got a run in the to of the tenth before Thomas ended it.

Starter Seth Lugo had a rugged outing. He went 6.1 innings but gave up seven earned runs on 14 hits.

The Royals started the week having climbed into a tie with the White Sox for last place in the division. They were only one game behind the Twins in their bid to escape the cellar in a competitive division in which the leading teams are only one game above break-even—Cleveland and Detroit are only 15-14.

Movin on to Moving On Sports—

(NASCAR)—-What to talk about after the first race of the year at Talladega?  The “big one” that involved 26 of the forty cars in the field?  The continued criticism of this generation of race cars?  Carson Hocevar’s first Cup win?  His victory celebration?

The wreck was not the biggest of the big.  The record is 28 cars that got tangled up in October of 2024.

Carson Hocevar’s first Cup win is memorable not only because he survived racing at Talladega and the way he held competitors at bay for several closing laps, but especially for his unique way of celebrating.  Hocevar, one of the tallest drivers in NASCAR at 6’4” tall, figured out how to work his clutch and throttle while sitting outside of his window, waving at fans.  Some folks worried he was endangering himself but NASCAR apparently liked it.

Hocevar has a ton of charisma, is a 23-year old Michigander who was the rookie of the year in the Cup series in 2024. He’s been racing since he was twelve.

He got through the big wreck without damage to his car, drove into contention in the third phase of the race, dueled with Chris Buescher, for the last 37 laps.

Hocevar took the lead from Buescher on lap 151 of the 188 lap race. Buescher took it back on 156 but gave it up to Hocevar for laps 1570169 before surging back into the lead for 151=165. Hocevar held it for 166. Buescher was in front 167-172 before Hocevar led two and Buescher took the led for lap 175. Hovercar led two, Buescher one before Hocevar led two more. Buescher was in control for four laps before Hocevar pulled ahead for two laps. Buescher got his last lead on 187 but Hocevar got him at the end and won by .112 seconds.

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(MODRIVERS)—-Missouri drivers in NASCAR have been hard to find in the last few years, but two drivers we’ve followed are going to be putting on the helmets and strapping into cockpits this summer.

Joplin native Jamie McMurray and sometime Missourian Clint Brawner (who hails from Emporia, Kansas—just across the border from Missouri–has had a place at the Lake of the Ozarks, thus earning him consideration as an adoptive Missourian) will each drive a truck race for Kaulig Racing this summer

Kaulig is bringing Dodge back to the sport under the Ram pickup truck label.  Bowyer will drive the truck at Dover on May 15. McMurray will be in the truck at the inaugural road race at the San Diego naval base June 19.

Both Bowyer and McMurray at part of the FOX sports broadcast crew that covers Cup races.  Bowyer won ten Cup races in his career and likes the short tracks. Dover, he says, is “a beast—concrete, tight and unforgiving.”   McMurray has seven Cup victories including the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400 in the same year, 2010. He has road racing experience, co-driving the winning car in the 2025 Daytona 24-hours.

(INDYCAR)—The Indianapolis 500 is guaranteed to have the traditional 33 starters this year with an entry from A.J. Foyt’s team to be driven by Katheirne Legge who will make her fifth start in the race.

Legge brings back her sponsorship by a cosmetics company and has new support from General Motors, one of the two engine suppliers for the series. Legge’s best start in the 500 is from 29th. Her best finish is 22nd.She’s the tenth woman to compete in the race and holds the one-and-four lap qualifying records for a woman driver, more than 231 mph.

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IndyCar runs on the Indianapolis Speedway road course next weekend then begins the buildup for the 500.

An Old Testament Story for Our Times

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With President Trump, some of his cabinet members, and his evangelical supporters finding Bible verses from either testament to justify what has been going on since he resumed office, we thought we would offer an Old Testament story that should be a cautionary tale for our situation.

We have enjoyed several of Malcolm Gladwell’s perceptive books (and are likely to enjoy more) one of which carries the title of the story from the Bible that gets to today’s situation in the Mideast.

Here’s Malcolm telling the story.

The unheard story of David and Goliath | Malcolm Gladwell

Our President is learning that being big is no guarantee of being superior. We are sure, given his statements about his favorite book that he has read the seventeenth chapter of First Samuel. We wonder, therefore, being the student of the Bible that he claims to be, why he hasn’t connected the dots.

There’s a cease fire as we write this. It’s a great chance for the Iranians to stock up on more stones.

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A Noisy Awakening 

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Nancy’s newest birth anniversary was last Friday. I took her out to eat and then to see a movie.

Kind of the way things were back in our courting days.

We went to our GQT Capital 8 Theatre and we bought our popcorn and our sugar-free soft drink and sat down in some nice roomy seats.  Just as the pre-movie trivia game was about to start for the three of us in the theatre, one of the theatre employees told us tornado sirens were blowing and we needed to take refuge in the bathrooms.

After an hour or so in what became two unisex bathrooms, the theatre folks gave us passes for some other night.

So we went back Saturday with our visiting daughter Liz, used our free passes and our free concessions tickets and settled into watch A GREAT AWAKENING.

We watched the charming young lady from Noovie host the various short word games or trivia questions and then theatre exploded with a deafening display of the latest in DOLBY sound technology.   Then the previews came on—one movie featuring real people and four or five featuring cartoon people.  All at beyond maximum volume, apparently to make the explosions that replace plots in today’s flicks more fearful.

Finally, we got to the feature. It was so loud I took out my hearing aids and even then it was so loud that I decided, as I told Nancy and Liz later, that I was eager to see the movie on TV so the sound level wasn’t so distracting as to spoil the story.  I walked out of the theatre that night feeling exhausted.

Not only that, but the popcorn was mediocre.  I get better popcorn at a convenience store on the other side of town.

Come to think of it, the best part of the experience was being able to go to the men’s restroom without some women in there, too.  It was a safe experience in the bathroom but a danger to my hearing in the auditorium.

The movie?  Pretty good for an almost-Hollywood production. Interesting story that, on reflection, lacked a little of the sophistication in story-telling and dialogue that the major studios produce.

It was produced by Sight & Sound Films, a Christian-themed spinoff of Sight and Sound Theatres, the company that has produced Biblical-themed shows in Branson for some time. In case you missed the point the movie was trying to make, the producers give it to you during the credits: “True liberty comes through Jesus Christ.” I found the statement in conflict with what I had just watched (or endured).

The movie tracks the unusual relationship between the passionate English Methodist evangelist George Whitefield (he pronounced it as if it had no “e” in the middle), who was trained as a stage actor, and the calculating and politically savvy printer, later inventor and sage who was a key to writing the Declaration of Independence and the U. S. Constitution, Benjamin Franklin, played impressively by John Paul Sneed.

Franklin realized he could profit from printing Whitefield’s sermons. Whitefield realized he could reach more people if he allowed Franklin to print and circulate his words.

(George Whitefield—The Genevan Foundation   (With his “lazy left eye” sometimes George Whitefield was derisively called “Dr. Squintum” by his many detractors)

Whitefield is portrayed by a young and handsome actor with no English accent and no resemblance to the real Whitefield an instantly-inspirational figure who spoke to thousands who quickly became “saved” by his dynamic sermons.  Franklin is the Franklin of our familiarity—a Christian, generally, who differ from those who think the only way to God is through Christ, which is Whitefield’s message.

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Sports: Portalizing; MLB Teams on Different Roads; Winners (Again) on an Oval and on Streets

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(MUMENBBPORT)—Chiefs Practice; The portal popped wide open for incoming Mizzou basketball players during the last week.

(KC Chiefs)—The Kansas City Chiefs have started their offseason training program—and, yes, HE is there.

Patrick Mahomes “can go to meetings. He can lift, do all that,” said Coach Andy Reid.. That’s the phase he’s in right now,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said. “We’ll just see. Kind of play it by ear. See where he’s at. He’s doing great, but we’ve just got to be smart with this thing.”

Mahomes is still talking about being ready for game one with no restrictions.”

All the Chiefs are doing is strength and condition programs, rehab work, and team meetings. The sessions go for a couple of weeks.  Mahomes is expected to take part in some of the second phase—three weeks of on-field walk-throughs (no contact).

After that are six workouts the week after the Memorial Day weekend and then June 1-3. Still no live contact although the offense will square off against the defense. A minicamp is scheduled for June-11.

The Chiefs had had to alter their workout schedules a little this year because World Cup soccer games will be held at Arrowhead Stadium.

The NFL hasn’t announced its schedule yet but the first games won’t be until the second week of September. It will have been about nine months since Mahomes wet out with his knee injury.

As long as we’re talking football—

(BATTLEHAWKS)—Former Mizzou placekicker Tucker McCann gave the St. Louis Battlehawks an early lead against the Washington Defenders but the ‘Hawks couldn’t get key stops throughout the game and dropped to 2-2 for the year, losing 28-22 when Washington intercepted a possible game-winning catch on their own three yard line.

McCann his field goals of 51 and 26 yards and added a third one to keep St. Louis close but the Battlehawks couldn’t complete the last-minute comeback.

(MUMENPORT)—The pieces are starting to fall into place for Dennis Gates’ 2026-2027 squad.

The Tigers have picked up three big additions in the last week.

Small forward/wingman Jemier Jones, who will be a sophomore. He’s 6-6, 218 and coming in from Providence. He averaged about 12 points a game for Providence last year, shot 57% from the field and 39% from three-point land and made almost two thirds of his free throws. . He’s considered a four-star transfer who finally is going to Missouri—which had made him an offer coming out of high school.  There’s another link to Missouri: his coach at providence was former Missouri favorite Kim English.  English, was fired at Providence, has joined the coaching staff at the University of North Carolina.

Also coming in is Tennessee’s Jaylen Carey, a beefy (6-8, 267 pounds) forward/center,  a basketball gypsy who already has played at James Madison, Vanderbilt, and Tennessee. He’s expected to complement center Trent Burns, the 7-5 junior whose development produced a lot of backup minutes in the recent season.  Carey started eight of the 37 games he played for the Volunteers last year when he logged about half of the minutes per game. He averaged almost eight points and six rebounds a game.

The most delicious acquisition was Bryson Tiller. who abandoned Bill Self and the great KU field house to play in Columbia next year—and maybe for two years after that (but don’t count on it in these NIL days.

He’s a 6-11 and 240 pounds with a wingspan of 7-feett-3-inches.  He averaged about eight points a game in 35 games as a freshman last season. He scored 13 points, had five blocks and five rebounds when KU belted the Tigers in Kansas City in December.   He’s another guy Coach Gates didn’t get at the start but didn’t give up on.

Tiller calls Gates “a standup guy,” and he told The Kansas City Star, “I trust in him as a person first and foremost, and I trust in the plan that he has. He wants to use me in all assets and all facets of the court — on the wings, on the perimeter, inside, outside. So I just feel like I have a lot of trust in that plan, and it’ll be great.” He appears to be a candidate to be Mark Mitchell’s replacement.

Trent Pierce and Trent Burns have agreed to stay with the Tigers.

As of last night, only Anthony Robinson of the departing Tigers had found a new team. He signed with Florida State.

(MIZZWMNPORT)—The Lady Tigers have lost five players to the portal: Ma’Riya Vincnt, Shannon Dowell, Hannah Linthacum, Chloe Sotell and Lisa Thompson.

The first replacement is Michigan shooting guard McKenzie Mathurin, 5-10, a former McDonald’s All-American who played about nine minutes a game for Michigan in her first year of college. Former Lady Tiger coach Robin Pingeton had made her an offer in 2024 but she took Michigan instead.

She was in 25 games for the Michigan team that made the Sweet 16, averaged 3.5 ppg including 15 against Penn State. She hit about 39% of her three point shots.

Joining her in the early moves to Springfield is Missouri’s Hannah Lithacum, who sat out last year with injuries.

(MOSTATEWMNBBPORT)—Seven Lady Bears from 2025-26 have rambled on. But their replacements already are in the den. Hanna Linthacum is leaving Missouri after playing 62 games and moving to the Missouri Bears, one of several new players who will take the court next fall in Springfield. She’ll be joined by Zoe Canfield, coming over from Kansas.  After three years at Arkansas-Little Rock, Faith Lee is moving to Springfield. She averaged more than 12 points a game last year on 39% shooting.  She scored 20 against the Lady Bears last December, almost half of her team’s points.

Victoria Dixon spent her junior year at Houston Christian where she started three of her 27 games. A pickup from Pittsburg State is Maycee James who spent two years at the community college level before one injury-shortened year at Pitt State.

(BILLIKENSMENPORT)—The St. Louis Billikens have a number of roster slots to fill because of graduations—and the exit of forwards Brady Dunlap and Kalu Anya. But three guys who made all-conference teams are to provide a solid foundation: Amari McCottry, Trey Green, and Kellen Thames. And six others also are staying. The retention rate for a mid-major school such as SLU is considered to be pretty special. The top five non-seniors will be back with a team that set a school record for wins this year—29—and won the A10 regular season championship.

(BILLIKENSWMNPORT)—The first two signees for Billiken’s women’s coach are Peyton Olufson and Evelyn Shane.

Olufson , a 5-8 point guard, will join Saint Louis from Incarnate Word Academy, which holds the nation’s longest high school girls basketball winning streak at 141 games. She is a three-time state champion, a 2024-25 first-team All-Conference selection, and a 2025 All-District honoree. Last season, she averaged 7.1 points, 1.3 rebounds, and 2.97 assists for the Red Knights.

Shane is a six-footer from Ursuline Academy where her teams set a new school wins record and two district championships. She has topped 1,000 points and is the school’s leading scorer.

BASEBALL:

(CARDINALS)—So far, the team that Chaim built appears to be golden.  Sports Illustrated has noted that their sweep of Houston during the weekend has given them their best start IN EIGHT YEARS. They finished the week with a five-game winning streak that put them at 13-8, a record not seen since 2018. Unlike forgettable recent years, they have yet to fall below .500.

The streak ended last night against the Marlins, 5-3.

The strong start is being led by young players, some of whom—Jordan Walker in particular—have started to bloom.

But playoffs are not to be seriously considered this early. In fact, every team in their division is above break even, as of Sunday night.

(ROYALS)—The Royals, on the other hand, are the worst team in the American League. The Yankees swept them last weekend.

Manager Matt Quatraro: “Everybody’s frustrated.  Nobody wants to have a start like this. But it is early, mid-April, and we play better baseball, that’s what’s in our control. If we’re able to do that, we’ll dig ourselves out. There’s way too much talent in there. There’s way too many high-character guys in there.”

Kansas City hoped Cole Ragans could end the losing streak at six Sunday, but he lasted only 4.1 innings, gave only four hits but eight walks, a career high.  The Royals started the week as losers of ten of their last dozen games, the last seven in a row. They have now lost eleven straight games to the Yankees going back to the 2024 playoffs.

Last night, the Royals wasted an outstanding performance by Seth Lugo, who held the Orioles to one hit and, thanks to Jac Caglianone’s homer, who left with a 1-0 lead.  But things fell apart quickly after that. The Royals lost the game in the 12th inning  7-5 to run their losing streak to eight, the longest since 2023. They had 14 hits and had the bases loaded in three innings but cold not score in any of those innings.  Reliever Alex Lange gave up the grand slam homer in the 12th that gave the Orioles the win.

Speedworld

(NASCAR)—Tyler Reddick now has a handful of wins and a historic start to the year. His fifth win in the first nine races equals Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s record set in 1987.

The result was a major disappointment to Denny Hamlin who came out of the (presumably) last round of pitstops with a four-second lead. Reddick ran him down before brushing the wall and giving the lead back to Hamlin. But a spin on the white flag lap by Cody Ware led to a restart. Kyle Larson got the jump and led a lap before Reddick got past him for the lead on the last lap and  got to the flag a tenth of a second ahead of Larson. Hamlin finished fourth giving up another position to Chase Briscoe.

Reddick started from the pole for the fifth time this year and has won every race from that position except the season-opening Daytona 500.

(INDYCAR)—Alex Palou has checked off one of the other big races on the IndyCar schedule, the Long Beach Grand Prix.

Felix Rosenqvist led all the way until the last round of pit stops when Palou’s Ganassi team was three-quarters of a second faster than Palou’s guys, and put their driver out front for the final laps. Palou now has won three of the five races this year, 11 of the last 22, and heads to Indianapolis where he is the defending 500 champion.

Palou has moved to a 17 point lead as he looks for his fifth IndyCar championship.

(500)—The field for the Indianapolis 500 has been guaranteed its 32nd car.

Jacob Abel, from Louisville, Kentucky, failed to make the field last year. His family-owned team has put together a sponsorship deal and has an engine supplier. Abel Motorsport last made the 500 field with R.C. Enerson in 2023.

Efforts are underway to put together another team-engine-driver-sponsor combination to enter a 33rd car, which would guarantee a full starting field.

Practice for the 500 begins on May 12 with the race, as usual, on Memorial Day weekend.

Photo credits: Tiller—Instagram; Jones and Kerry—X, Mathurin—U of Michigan; Earnhardt and Reddick—NASCAR; Palou leads—NTT IndyCar Series screenshot; Abel—Abel Motorsports)

Blasphemy:

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—The act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for God or to something sacred.

(Warning: This entry begins with an intemperate phrase not normally uttered by the author but circumstances have driven him to do so because there appears no better way to state the case).

If there are any people in the world that Donald Trump hasn’t pissed off yet, do not despair. The rest surely will be included soon. (Messrs Putin,  Un, and Xi excepted).

Even his evangelical Christian friends have been taken aback by his attack on the pope coupled with the totally indefensible image of him apparently raising a modern Lazarus from the dead.  

He could have said the image was a symbolic representation of his claim that he inherited a dead country but raised it up to be the hottest country in the world, a claim that would be only slightly less ridiculous than what he told reporters it was: “I thought it was me as a doctor, and had to do with Red Cross, as a Red Cross worker, which we support.” Why he thought anybody with an IQ above five would buy the explanation that he thought he was portraying a doctor will forever be a mystery.

“Had to do with the Red Cross?” We’re not sure if the woman in the lower right corner is a nurse or an airline cabin attendant.  Had she been a nurse, she might have had a red cross on her blouse. But there is nothing in the image that would lead any sentient being to think “Red Cross” when they looked at it.

And “doctor?” Nobody from Doctor Kildare to The Pitt has ever worn that kind of outfit. And his claim only shows him to be more of a fool.

The image is full of nationalistic symbols—the Statue of Liberty, the fighter jets roaring overhead, the flag.  We’re not sure what the figures above his head are (one has wings). Perhaps they are the spirits of his battlefield casualties rising to a place he has said he’s not sure he’ll go.

Not Jesus?  The piece is reminiscent of this image we discovered on the internet. I have not discovered the artist so he or she could be properly credited, but the attire and the general mood of the work can easily lead one to think Trump-as-Jesus or Donald the Christ if you will, seems pretty derivative.

Jesus undoubtedly never looked like this WASP.  It is an image any White Christian Nationalist would enjoy hanging in living room, though.

Vice President J.D. Vance rushed to his boss’s defense with the absurd suggestion that Trump was only joking and, “He took it down because he recognized that a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor in that case.”

The Knights Templar, which began as a Catholic military order supporting the first Crusade a thousand years ago, called the image “offensive and blasphemous,” and said it was “deeply offended by this and have no other choice but to condemn it wholeheartedly and ask for a public apology to the Christian brethren who have been deeply upset by this depiction. We respectfully remind President Trump of the Bible Scripture found in Galatians 6:7 ‘God will not be mocked.'”

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Putting Politics Back Into Our Highest Courts

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Most Missouri judges are elected, but years ago the state and its people decided the highest courts should be as isolated from partisan politics as possible. That nationally-recognized plan is under attack in the Missouri Legislature this year—and the process that created that insulated system also is under attack.

The decision was made after the collapse of the Pendergast political machine that so dominated Democratic politics in Missouri in the first forty years of the Twentieth Century that it could field a substitute for a gubernatorial candidate who died three weeks before the election and push previously obscure Platte County Judge Guy B. Park to a win by the third largest margin in state history up to that time, 61 percent of the vote against the incumbent Lieutenant Governor, Edward H. Winter.         (That winning percentage had been exceeded only twice before—Thomas Fletcher with 70.3 percent in 1864 and by John Miller, who had no opposition in1828) or after, by Warren Hearnes’ 62% in 1964 and John Ashcroft’s election in 1988 with 64.2%)

Members of Missouri’s appeals courts—which includes the Supreme Court—had been elected throughout state history until citizens had had enough of Kansas City political boss Tom Pendergast’s grip on state politics. A citizen-led initiative led to voter approval of “The Missouri Plan” in 1940.  The legislature tried to overturn it but voters rejected the effort. The plan was made part of the Missouri Constitution when the present document was adopted in 1945.

The plan applied to the Supreme Court and the appeals court as well as lower courts in a few counties. The changes were put in our Constitution in 1976.

Missouri rarely has been a leader in political thinking but this is a case where the state should be proud—because about forty states have adopted a version of The Missouri Plan which established a non-partisan Appellate Judicial Commission that takes applications for open judgeships handle appeals from local courts. The commission reviews applications for appellate judgeships and forwards three names to the governor who appoints one of them. The Senate does not confirm the appointment, another step to limit political influence in the makeup of our highest courts.

The commission is made up of three members of the Missouri Bar and three private citizens appointed by the Governor. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court chairs the commission.

The Missouri House Committee on General Laws has voted 8-6 to recommend the full House pass a bill junking the nonpartisan court plan and giving appointment power to the Governor with confirmation by the Senate.

If you think the similar system used to let a President pick U. S. Supreme Court Justices and federal district judges is the best way to have a non-partisan court system un-influenced by partisan factors, this bill is right up your alley. If the spectacle we see every time a new Supreme Court Justice is nominated approaches or exceeds your unbearable level, this bill is toxic.

When you have a President and a Senate under one party’s control, or a Governor and a state senate under one party’s control, there is room for discomfort about the fairness of the judicial system and whether money influences those who must confirm nominations.

Missouri no longer has political bosses such as Tom Pendergast, but it has something as bad—big-money political donors who have tried to buy state laws through the legislature or to buy sections of the state constitution (think of $43 million spent to get sports betting passed in 2024).

Moneyed political influence in shaping the laws mixed with political influence in determining the laws’ constitutionality is a dangerous combination.

There is a second dangerous move afoot in the two-thirds Republican General Assembly.  It’s the proposal saying no petition issue can be approved by voters unless it gets majorities in every one of our eight congressional districts. That means one district in which an issue fails by one vote can render positive votes in the other seven districts meaningless. Call it what it is—tyranny by the minority.

On one hand, our politically-independent upper judiciary is being threatened. On the other hand is a new threat—to the concept of majority rule, replaced with a one-eighth majority tyranny. Those backing this scheme certainly would not hold that no one could be elected to the legislature who did not carry every precinct in their district. Nor would they support the idea that no one could be elected to state office without carrying every legislative district. Or that no one could be sent to Congress without carrying every county in their district.

But they will silence the voice of the people when it comes to taking their grievances against government  to the ballot  box.

It’s a one-two punch to our democracy. The last time legislative Republicans tried to weaken the plan was 2012. Voters went 76 percent against it.

Fourteen years later they’re trying again. Let’s hope voters aren’t duped this time either.

Sports: New Royals Stadium Proposal; Cruise jumps; Sophie Stays 

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BBPORTALS)—Add the name of Jacob Crews to the list of bolting Missouri Tiger basketball players.

Crewse to play another year of college ball, but he’ll need an NCAA hardship waiver to get it. He’s the fourth Tiger to jump ship. So far, nobody has transferred TO Missouri but it’s still early in the shopping season to have anything in the cart although Coach Dennis Gates is looking at a lot of merchandise, particularly on the guard shelf.

The story is the same in Springfield and in Billiken-Land.

(ROYALSHOME)—Kansas City’s Council is considering whether the city should pay about one-third of the cost of a new stadium for the Royals. The ordinance putting up $600,000 of the $1.9-billion needed authorizes the city manager to negotiate a 30-year deals with the team to play in an area known as Washington Square Park.

The proposal also would prohibit the Royals from thinking about moving to another state, county, or city and it would call for the stadium being ready for the start of the 2030 season. Owner John Sherman has indicated the team wants to play “in the heart of the city,” although he has not reacted to the proposed ordinance.

(CHIEFSHOME)—Kansas Governor Laura Kely has signed a bill creating the Kansas Sports Facilities Authority, the latest step in her state’s effort to get the Chiefs to move to Wyandotte County Kansas with a training facility in Olathe.

Kelly’s statement says, “The Kansas City Chiefs’ historic agreement with the State of Kansas is monumental for our economy, creating thousands of new jobs, attracting tourists from around the world, and elevating Kansas as an elite place to put down roots…This bill provides the necessary governance structure and guardrails to manage and oversee the team’s facilities, ensuring Kansans for generations to come will continue to cheer on our beloved team at home. We’re turning Kansas into a premier destination for sports and entertainment without raising state taxes or taking funding away from essential services.”

(BATTLEHAWKS)—The St. Louis Battlehawks scored 21 points in the last quarter to top the Birmingham Stallions 34=30.  Backup quarterback Harrison Frost took over the quarterbacking duties at halftime.

The Battlehawks squandered a 10-0 first quarter lead, part of which was a 54-yard field goal by former University of Missouri place kicker Tucker McCann to fall behind 16-13.  It was 30-20 with 11:45 left before “Hawks and Frost took control of the game. They took the lead with 1:42 left.

The Battlehawks will play the DC Defenders next Saturday, the first of three straight road games. They opened the season with a win against the Defenders.

(MCCANN)—Tucker McCann has been out of football for five years but has continued to work out and made the Battlehawks roster in mid-January and immediately made his presence felt with a 58-yard field goal in the season opener, his first field goal in a competitive game since August 12, 2021.

He was an undrafted free agent in the 2020 draft coming out of Mizzou. He signed with the Tennessee Titans but injured an ankle in a preseason game and was sent to the practice squad. He was cut in October of 2021.

(THEBASEBALL)—Both of our baseball teams have shown they’re not much more han mediocre in the first couple of weeks of the season.

(ROYALS) —-The Royals finished the week at 7-9 only a game out of first place in the AL Central division. For the most part the team seems to have left it hits-bats in Florida. Salvador Perez and Vinnie :Pasquantino are hitting .264. Jonahan India is hitting .184. The star of the team, Bobby Witt Jr., is hitting only 260. The bright spot is Mikael Garcia who is at .324 after the first 15 games.

Starting pitching is pretty sold. Michael Wacha turned in a masters’ performance Saturday against the White Sox on Saturday. His first 17 pitches were strikes. He went into the eighth inning having thrown only 80 pitches. The Royals won the game 2-0 and Wacha lowered his ERA to 0.43.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals are above break even thanks to outstanding starting pitching in the early going. Michael McGreevy is giving up only 2.64 earned runs a game. Andre Pallante has an ERA of 1.80 and Matthew Liberatore is respectable at 3.38.

Jordan Walker has been a surprise in the first two weeks, hitting .314.  But the whole team’s average is only ,224.

(SOPHIE)—Sophie Cunningham has signed on for another season with the Indianapolis Fever of the women’s NBA.  The signing keeps the popular “Trois Leches” (Spanish for “Three Milks” that combine for a popular dessert) of Cunningham, Caitlin Clark, and Lexie Hull. The three are the core of the Fever, a team that won the Commissioner’s Cup in 2025 although Cunningham and Clark both missed playing time

Terms of the contract haven’t been revealed but the new collective bargaining agreement specifies that someone who’s been in he league as long as she has will be paid at least $292,500, a sizeable increase from the salaries in the last CBA.  This will be her eighth season. She’s 29, played thirty games for the Fever last year before a torn MCL put her on the sidelines. She had career best shooting percentages last year—43.2% from the three-point line and 46.9 overall.

Cunningham is setting up her second career as a media personality and podcaster. She’s going to be part of the USA Network’s studio coverage of the WNBA when she’s not on the court. She’ll also contribute to the network’s digital and social platforms.

AND she will be a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model this year.

The league starts its season on May 8. The Fever will play its first game the next day.

For the speedy set—

(INDYCAR)—Not all of the attention next weekend will be focused on the racing on the streets of Long Beach, California.

A new movie will attract a lot of attention—a documentary about driver Robert Wickens, whose seeming meteoric career was ended by a crash that left him partially paralyzed.  It’s going to be the story of a driver who was determined to drive racing cars again—and has been.

An earlier documentary tracked his life from wheelchair to racing car:

Bing Videos

Wickens was IndyCar’s rookie of the year in 2018, having run so well in the first part of the season to accumulate enough points to win the award although a crash at Pocono left him a paraplegic.

Four years later he was back in a race car—an IMSA TCR series entry with hand controls that he and his co-driver took to two wins and a championship.

The movie is called, “The Weight of Speed.”

The Long Beach race is the last one before the teams move to Indianapolis for a race on the IMS road course and the 110th Indianapolis 500.

(NASCAR)—Ty Gibbs made Grandpa’s day on Sunday with his win at Bristol, his first in 131 cup starts for Joe Gibbs racing.

Ty Gibbs made the critical decision that gave him the win when the caution flag waved for a Chase Elliott spin.  Gibbs refused to pit when many other leaders did.

His gain in track position paid off when he restarted with the lead and fourteen laps to go in regulation distance.  But a later caution flag meant the race would go into overtime.  He withstood the challenge of Ryan Blaney and beat him to the line by .05 second, the closest finish at Bristol since Missouri’s Rusty Wallace beat Ernie Irvan by one foot in 1991.  It’s also the first race win for a car number 54 in almost 47 years—when Lennie Pond won his only Cup race, at Talladega, in 1979.

Blaney and Kyle Larson had dominated the race until those cautions. Larson finished behind Blaney, in third.

Missouri NASCAR fans get a chance for their first close race of the year—at the Kansas Speedway, not far from the apparent future home of the Kansas City Chiefs.

(Photo credits: Stadium—Kansas City Royals; Sophie—Irishstar.com; Gibbs—Bob Priddy)

 

 

Monstrosity

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President Trump says he wants to build a 250-foot tall arch to celebrate this country’s 250th anniversary.  It is yet another project that wreaks of excess and of self-promotion.  Whatever its official name becomes, it’s always going to be known as the arch that Trump built. Arch deTrump, some already are calling it.

The only thing taller in the area that stretches from the Arlington National Cemetery east to the Library of Congress across from the Capitol is the Capitol itself, and by only a few feet.

Grace, beauty, and appropriateness have never been in his lexicon.  Gross, ugly, and inappropriate too often define him to an increasing number of people.  Last week, in an oval office reveal of the design for this monstrosity. CBS reporter Ed O’Keefe asked the President who the arch is for.  “Me,” he said.

The fact checkers who have built their careers on Trump’s lies had a day off on that one.

The Commission on Fine Arts refers to it as the Triumphal Arch. To be honest, the  letter “i” should replace the “h.”

The only manmade arch that we have been able to find that is bigger than this is the one on the St. Louis riverfront.

Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe in Paris is almost 100 feet shorter, at 164 feet.  The Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City is only 220 feet. The Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang, North Korea tops out at 197 feet.

The four-sided arch that is the Pennsylvania State Memorial at Gettysburg, honoring the 34,500 Pennsylvania soldiers who fought there, checks in at 110 feet. Not far away, the National Memorial Arch at Valley Forge honoring those who wintered there 1777-78 is sixty feet high.

The top of the Memorial Arch in Huntington, West Virginia is only 42 feet from the ground. The Camp Randall, Wisconsin arch honoring Civil War veterans from that state needs only thirty feet to dignify them. The Bushnell Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch in Hartford, Connecticut is but 116 feet and the Washington Square Arch that commemorates George Washington’s inauguration in New York City gets the job done in 77 feet.

“It’s going to be beautiful,” he says.  Philip Kennicott with the Washington Post offers a brutal opposing view:

It is an insult to the men and women who risk their lives to protect democracy, who have fought in wars against fascism, who have actually achieved victory rather than merely declared and celebrated it. Its symbolism is borrowed and confused, and it will block a sacred vista that connects the Lincoln Memorial to the final resting place of the Civil War dead, and veterans from every major war and conflict this country has fought.

This is a subtly that escapes people such as Trump who think symbolic as well as real sledgehammers and wrecking balls are among mankind’s greatest inventions. The arch will stand at the southern end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge, interrupting the flow of history from the Lincoln Memorial to the peaceful hillside that is Arlington National Cemetery, a cemetery on land confiscated from Confederate commander Robert E. Lee as a resting place for those who defended the Union in the Civil War.

Some critics say the planned arch will obscure much of he cemetery but will frame Lee’s mansion at the top of the hill beyond. Is that intentional?  Who knows, although Trump has expressed a fondness for honoring Confederate leaders.

Trump has said it will be 250 feet high as a symbol of the nation’s 250th birthday. As of last week, however, it is only colored drawings.  The first shovel of dirt for the project has not yet been turned and Independence Day is less than 90 days away.  As one critic put it, “If it isn’t going to be done this year, it really has nothing to do with the 250th Anniversary, and as Trump said, it’s for him.”.

Kennecott concludes, “It perverts a fundamentally American idea about war. We have fought them, we have died in them, and we have brought war to too many people who did not deserve our meddling with their politics and sovereignty.

“But no matter the cause, no matter how great the victory, we fundamentally honor sacrifice and service. We celebrate the end of wars and the achievement of peace, not victory. Roman victory arches are lovely to look at, but they were primarily political statements, assertions of personal power and propaganda by ambitious men”.

Caesar Trumpus wants his arch.

If it can’t be finished by July 4, maybe he can complete it in time to celebrate his glorious victory over Iran.