But first: Stick and ball news—
We now enter the busiest time of year for stick and ball sports.
The first players showed up during the weekend at spring training sites in Florida and Arizona, ending an extended winter of discontent in baseball. Opening day is less than a month away. There will be 162 games with day/night doubleheaders making up for games previously cancelled.
College basketball tournaments are underway for men and women but the main focus, although not the exclusive province of great basketball, the NCAA Tournament, begins tomorrow afternoon.
The USFL is back after a 37-year absence. Old-timers might remember it played three years, 1983-85 and had grand plans to compete head-to-head with the NFL in the fall of 1986. But it collapsed before that season could start. The league filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL and won treble damages. The jury awarded only $1 in damages, which was tripled to three dollars which didn’t do much to offset the $163 million dollars theleague lost. The planned move to the fall was led by the majority owner of the New Jersey Generals, Donald J. Trump, who thought it would provoke a merger with the NFL. The new United States Football League owns all of the trademarks of the original league but has no other connection with it. But that’s why we’ll see some names that might ring a bell with those who remember the original.
The National Hockey League still has about six weeks to go before it begins the long, long second season. The Blues are in good shape for the playoffs, second in their division, not likely to catch the Avalanche but hoping to hold off the Wild.
The National Basketball Association, which has former Missouri Tigers Jordan Clarkson and Michael Porter Jr., is a few days less than a month away after which it will compete with the NHL with its long, long second season. Missouri has not had an NBA team since the Kansas City/Omaha Kings (the former Rochester Seagrams, Rochester Eber Seagrams, Rochester Pros, Rochester Royals, Cincinnati Royals) left town to become the Sacramento Kings in 1985.
And of course there’s golf and tennis and soccer. And before too long the ground will be warm enough in Missouri for some sand volleyball in our city parks.
Now: Racing
(NASCAR)—A three-lap shootout with four of NASCAR’s young guns at Phoenix has gone to Chase Briscoe, driving a car owned by his childhood hero, Tony Stewart, and sporting Stewart’s old number—14. Briscoe had to survive three late-race restarts to get his first Cup win. He finished about eight-tenths of a second ahead of Ross Chastain, Tyler Reddick, and Ryan Blaney. Two of the oldest drivers on the circuit, Kurt Busch, 43, and Kevin Harvick, 46, filled out the top six.
For those keeping track of such things, Briscoe also became the 200th driver to win a Cup Race in NASCAR’s almost-75 year history. Harvick’s finish was his 18th top ten at Phoenix. Only two other drivers in NASCAR history have matched that consistency. Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt Sr., had eighteen straight top tens at North Wilkesboro, which no longer hosts NASCAR’s top series. Harvick has another streak going that he’d prefer to break sooner rather than later. He hasn’t won a race since September 19, 2020.
The win was an emotional one for last year’s series Rookie of the Year. “I was crying the whole last lap,” he said later. “Just seven years ago I was sleeping on couches, volunteering at race shops and was literally driving home to give up.
Next up for NASCAR is the first race on the newly-redesigned track at Atlanta which has been repaved since last year with progressive banking in the turns.
(INDYCAR)—The second race of the year for America’s premier open-wheel series is this coming weekend at the Texas Speedway. It will be the first high-speed banked oval run for six rookies. INDYCAR set up a nine-hour test last week for Kyle Kirkwood, David Malukas, Romain Grosjean, Devlin DeFrancesco, Christian Lundgaard, and Callum Llott. Grosjean was there voluntarily. He’d done his oval testing last fall at World Wide Technology Raceway across the river from St. Louis. But he took the opportunity to get acquainted with a bigger, faster track.
A quasi-rookie in the race will be seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson, who ran only road courses last year. Most of his NASCAR career was on ovals and he expects to do better than his career-best 17th place finishes on road courses. Johnson won 83 Cup races, 82 of them on ovals. He’s confident of better things in the five INDYCAR oval races this year after testing on the ovals at Texas and Indianapolis last year.
One of INDYCAR’s hottest young talents has landed a Formula 1test driver job with McLaren. F1 rules allow teams to use one of last year’s cars to test young talent. If Colton Herta is impressive enough he could land an FP1 opportunity. Formula 1 requires rookie drivers to have at least two FP1 sessions before they can race. FP1 lets new drivers get accustomed to the current car in test sessions held before a race with the first session (FP!) focusing on car setups. FP2 gives experience in simulated long race runs. FP3 lets them work on qualifications laps and more setups. Herta plans to fit those sessions in between his INDYCAR races this year.
(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 has wrapped up the last pre-season testing with three days on the track at Bahrain. The top rivalry, a carryover from last year’s heated championship run, is still Red Bull vs. Mercedes. Mercedes turned the most test laps at Bahrain but was short of the top of the speed charts. Red Bull had the only laps below 1:32. Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton, who lost his chance for a record eighth championship because of a controversial race administration issue last year, says Red Bull looks “ridiculously fast” but he says Mercedes is still the better team.
Red bull driver, defending champion Max Verstappen thinks Mercedes wasn’t showing its full capability during the tests.
The season opens Sunday on the Bahrain circuit.
(Photo credits: Bob Priddy)
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