By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor.
(BASEBALL)—Cardinals vs. Yankees; Royals vs. Dodgers. Didn’t happen the way the experts thought it should have. At the end of the week, both teams had split their last ten games, which means they’ve been playing well above their season’s average.
(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals took two out of three against the Yankees with Jordan Montgomery turning back his old team for the rubber game. Montgomery outpitched Yankee ace Geritt Cole to lift his team to 35-48. They are 10½ games out of a wild card slot for the post-season and they’ll have to play at a .582 clip to finish the year at .500.
They have shown incremental progress since the Giants swept them in three-game set in mid-June, going 8-6 since, a .570 clip.
The Yankees are 46-38 but they have had a losing record since losing Aaron Judge with a toe injury.
The Cardinals made a roster move to start the week by calling up Luken Baker, who had a cup of coffee earlier this year when he came up and hit .286 in four games before being send down to the Memphis Redbirds, where he racked up 22 home runs in 64 games. The Cardinals have designated outfielder Oscar Mercado for assignment to make room on the roster for Baker.
(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals surprised the Los Angeles Dodgers by taking two out of three from them to win their first series since mid-May. They still have the second-worst record in the American League at 25-59. They started this week 21 games out of a playoff spot but team officials seem bullish on a much-better team within the next two years as the youngsters gain experience.
The Royals have only 15 players born before 1995 (Zack Greinke was born in ’83). On their 40-man roster.
(ALL-STARS)—An indication of the lousy baseball seasons our Missouri teams are having can be found in the rosters for the July 11 All-Star game. The only Cardinal picked is third baseman Nolan Arenado. He’ll be a starter. The only other player from either of our teams is Salvatore Perez of the Royals, as a backup catcher. Of some note is that another American League reserve is former Royals Second Baseman Whit Merrifield, reserve from the Blue Jays.
Before we go racing:
(FOOTBALL)—Vice Tobin, once a standout defensive player for the Missouri Tigers and later the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals who led the franchise to its first post-season victory in fifty years, has died. He was 79.
Tobin and his brother, Bill, were natives of Burlington Junction who played his high school ball in Maryville. He was defensive back and later a coach for Dan Devine’s Missouri Tigers in the early sixties and mid-70s when the Tigers went 21-7-3 and were nationally ranked all three years. He had six interceptions, returned punts, and played some halfback on offense—his first play as a halfback was a touchdown pass to Johnny Roland at California in 1962.
He was a defensive ends coach from 1967-70, including the strong seasons of 1968 and ’69 when the Tigers finished with top-ran rankings. He called defensive plays under Al Onofrio during some of Onofrio’s most memorable wins against Notre Dame, USC, Ohio State, Alabama, and Nebraska and over Aubrn in the Sun Bowl. He coached in the DCFL with the British Columbia Lions before starting a 16-year career as an NFL coach. He headed the Cardinals 1996-2000 and led them to a win over the Dallas cowboys in the first round of the 1998 playoffs. He later was a defensive coordinator with the Chicago Bears, Indianapolis Colds and Detroit Lions.
(NASCAR)—The streets of Chicago were nothing if not entertaining Sunday. NASCAR ran its first street race in the modern era after a heavy downpour soaked the track—
(Michael Reaves, Getty Images/NASCAR)
Chicago got a record amount of rain for a July 2nd. And a driver who had never competed in a NASCAR Cup race beat everybody to the finish line.
The rain gauges at O’Hare International Airport had almost 2.3 inches of rain in them by noon, breaking a record dating back forty-one years. It was too much water for the NASCAR Cup cars to take to the track even with their rain tires.
The race finally got underway ninety minutes late with some water still standing on the track, leading to cars sliding into walls or into tire barriers several times. The track, however, was dry by the time the race ended with New Zealander Shane van Gisbergen 1.3 seconds ahead of Justin Haley and Chase Elliott.
Kyle Larson and Kyle Busch rounded out the top five—a considerable accomplishment for Busch, who buried the nose of his car in a tire barrier on the fourth lap and had to be retried by a NASCAR safety truck.
Van Gisbergen is the first driver in NASCAR history to win a points-awarding race in his first race. Until Sunday, only Joplin’s Jamie McMurray and Trevor Bayne held the record for quickest to win a Cup race. Both won in their second ones. No driver has won a Cup race in his first start since Johnny Rutherford won a non-points qualifying race at Daytona in 1963. (Jared C. Tilton, Getty Images/NASCAR)
Van Gisbergen, however, is no rookie in stock car racing. He has won the Bathurst 1000, a 621-mile road race back home in Australia three times. He is a three-time champion of the V8 Supercars Championship—Australia’s NASCAR.
This is the Camaro that runs in that series:
(carscoops.com)
Van Gisbergen is hinting that he might join NASCAR fulltime in 2025 after doing “one more year in OZ.” He is only the sixth foreign-born driver to win a NASCAR Cup race. Mario Andretti, born in Italy, was the first, in 1967. Canada’s Earl Ross won in 1974. Juan Pablo Montoya, born in Colombia, won his first Cup race in 2000. Australia’s Marcus Ambrose was a winner in 2011, followed by Daniel Suarez last year and Giesberger on Sunday in Chicago.
(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen, this time, as Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium. But zealous race stewards penalized eight drivers various amounts of time for cars going outside the racing surface to improve or to defend their positions that it took some time after the race to decide who finished where. In the end Charles Leclerc was second and Sergio Perez got the other podium spot.