(BASEBALL)—We are left to recall a man who lived and died baseball, who passed up a potential Heisman Trophy college career to play the game of baseball, and who gave us some memorable thoughts and calls during fifty years in the broadcast booth as Jack Buck’s sidekick and later as the number one play-by-play guy with the Missourinet’s first sports director, John Rooney.
Mike Shannon is gone. He was 83. He was a multi-star athlete in high school who went to the University of Missouri on a football scholarship. In the days when freshmen could not play varsity football, Shannon so impressed Missouri coach Frank Broyles that Broyles thought he could have won the Heisman Trophy if he had stayed with football.
Instead, Shannon got a $50,000 signing bonus from the Cardinals and played baseball.
He gave us a lot of things on the field and in the booth. His Shannon-isms might be rivalled in all of baseball history (at least in our experience) only by the colorful phrasing of another native Missourian, Casey Stengel:
“It’s Mothers Day, so a big happy birthday to all you mothers out there.”
“Back in the day when I played, a pitcher had three pitches: a fastball, a curveball, a slider, a changeup and a good sinker pitch.”
(During a game in New York): “I wish you folks back in St. Louis could see this moon.”
“Ol’ Abner has done it again.” (a late-game observation when the game is tight going into the last innings.)
“He’s faster than a chicken being chased by Ronald McDonald.”
“Our next home stand follows this road trip.”
“The wind has switched 360 degrees.”
“The crowd (is) on their feet for the Canadian Star Spangled Banner.”
And there were many more. Mike Shannon was Mike Shannon. Nice guy. Good ball player. One of those guys who made a baseball broadcast booth much more than calling balls and strikes. They don’t come along often and their enthusiasm for the game can’t be faked or scripted.
And we really need him these days. His beloved Cardinals are in the pits. There’s no sugar-coating it.
They haven’t won a series since April 10-12 and were 10-19 after their weekend series against the Dodgers, wrapping up a road trip in which they went 2-8. They haven’t been this far under .500 in at least 16 years, 2007, the last time the cardinals finished below .500. They have to go 80-53 if they’re going to win 90 games and compete for a wild card slot.
The Cardinals had never finished the first month of the season in last place in the National League Central—-and it was formed in 1994.
This weeks’ USA TODAY power rankings put the Cardinals 23rd out of the 30 teams. The team started the year with fairly low expectations from the newspaper. They were ranked 11th.
And they’re expecting a 41-year old pitcher who has had a mediocre rehab assignments in Springfield and Memphis to lead a turnaround? Wainwright had an ERA of 6.14 in Springfield and 6.35 at Memphis, 13 strikeouts in 12.2 innings in which he gave up 18 hits and nine runs.
Doesn’t me he can come up to the big club and do better—-rehab assignments aren’t necessarily about winning and losing.
But still…..
The Cardinals could be worse. They could be the Kansas City Royals and ranked 29th by USA TODAY. Only Oakland (soon to be Las Vegas, perhaps) is below them.
Where’s Mike Matheny when the Cardinals need him?
He’s in Kansas City where he is 172-242 in his three-plus seasons after going 591-474 in seven seasons in St. Louis and never having a losing record. The Royals went 7-22 in the first month of the season.
(MIZ-WHO?)—We confess that we’ve lost track of what the Missouri basketball team has won or lost since the season ended. I think we’re suffering from portal fatigue. They still lack a horse in the middle, a big one.
We’ll root for whatever Dennis Gates puts on the floor next year. But the era of carpet bagger-players the NCAA has ushered in with the portal and the NIL business has been a huge mess we prefer not to try to follow.
Pretty much the same for the football team. We hope coach Drinkwitz is able to put together an outstanding team. But by and large it’s going to be a bunch of strangers on Faurot field next fall.
It’s tempting to say that the NCAA has really screwed up collegiate sports.
(RACING)—All three major series were on track during the weekend—although the weekend stretched to an extra day for one of them.
(INDYCAR)—Close, but no cigar—again—for Romain Grosjean who led 57 of the first 66 laps before Scott McLaughlin fought his way past on lap 71 and held on to beat Grosjean to the line by about 1.8 seconds at Barber Motorsports Park at Birmingham, Alabama.
Grosjean, who started the race on the pole, admits that he’s headed to Indianapolis for the two races in May—on the road course on May 14 and the Indianapolis 500 on the 28th.
McLaughlin’s win, his fourth in the INDYCAR series, was the product of race strategy. His team planned on three pit stops. Grosjean’s team hoped to win the race on two stops. But the three-stop strategy eliminated any fuel concerns for McLaughlin, who called it a “happy driver strategy.”
McLaughlin is the fourth driver to win in the four races run this year in INDYCAR.
Two-time series champion Will Power challenged Grosjean in the final laps but couldn’t get close enough to make a pass attempt. Pato O’Ward and Alex Palou made up the rest of the top five.
(NASCAR)—The long dry spell for Martin Truex Jr., has come to an end after 54 races and 597 days. Truex, opting for two tires on his last pit stop, held off Ross Chastain, who went with four, for the final fourteen laps. Truex crossed the stripe a half-second ahead of Chastain.
The race was run yesterday (Monday) because it was rained out on Sunday. The win made the long weekend a family affair. His younger brother, Ryan, won the Xfinity race on Saturday.
Ryan Blaney, William Byron, and Denny Hamlin completed the top five. Byron led almost half of the 400 laps (193 of them) but couldn’t keep up with the top three in the closing laps.
Chastain’s run has put him on top of the points standings.
Chase Elliott, in his third race after returning from a broken leg was 11th and is now within the top thirty in points. NASCAR rules say a driver must be in the top thirty in points and must have at least one victory if they’re not 16th or better in points at the start of playoffs. Elliott is still looking for his first win of the year.
Josh Berry, who filled in for Elliott while he was recovering, was driving Alex Bowman’s car at Dover because Bowman suffered some compression back fractures in a sprint car wreck last week. He’s out indefinitely. Berry finished 11th.
(FORMULA 1)—Sergio Perez is the first driver to win twice at the Grand Prix of Azerbain.
He beat teammate Max Verstappen, the defending f1 champion, by 2.1 seconds. Ferrari’s Charles LeClerc claimed the other podium spot.
Perez’s victory moves him to within six points of Verstappen in the standings. Both drivers have won twice this year. Two-time F1 champion Fernando Alonso, who seems to have found a new life in his career driving for Aston Martin, is third.
(Photo Credits; MLB Tonight (Rooney and Shannon) and Bob Priddy)