Monthly Archives: October 2025

Sports:    Chiefs Stumble to Third Loss; Mizzou Faces First Elite Challenge; Missouri State Moves to the Big Time, etc.   

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by Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(CHIEFS)—It’s being called “a miracle touchdown” in Jacksonville,. Florida today. It’s considered a disaster by many Chiefs fans in Kansas Cityu—and elsewhere. Mistakes and a dozen penalties cost the Kansas City Chiefs their third loss in five games this year last night against the Jacksonsville Jaguara.  The Jags, down by four, benefitted from an out-of-bounds kickoff by Kansas City with less than two minutes left that gave them a short field.  Quarterback Trevor Lawrence turned a potentially fatal stumble after the snap into a touchdown with 23 seconds left to put the Jaguars up 31-28.  The Chiefs got a solid return on the kickoff but were flagged for another penalty—holding in this case—that challenged their ability to get the ball close enough for a field goal attempt to tie.

The game featured two goal line plays, one by each team, that kept the score from being higher.  Lawrence’s attempt to dive over his line for a first-half touchdown was short circuited when the ball was knocked form his hands and recovered by the Chiefs. Later, as the Chiefs were on the verge of a touchdown, when Jacksonville’s Devin Lloyd picked off a potential Patrick Mahomes touchdown pass and took it 99 yards the other way for a score.

The win is Jacksonville’s first over Kansas City since 2009. The loss equals Kansas City’s total for all of last year, including the Super Bowl.

Jacksonville is now 4-1. The Chiefs are 2-3.

The last time Kansas City started 2-3, the Chiefs finished 14-6 with an overtime loss to the Bengals in the AFC championship game.

(MIZ)—The Missouri Tigers head into their most important game of the year next weekend fully rested after a weekend off, their upcoming opponent being Alabama, which ended Vanderbilt’s winning streak last weekend and moved to 8th in both major polls. Missouri will go into the game 14th.

Look for a battle of poised veteran quarterbacks with Alabama led by Ty Simpson, whose composure in the last couple of minutes in the first half of their games has gained attention.  He took the Crimson Tide on an 87-yard march in the last two minutes of the first half to get a halftime tie against the Commodores. It was the fourth time he has led the team to a TD in the last minute of the first half.

One of the things Alabama has to do is limit Ahmad Hardy, the nation’s rushing leader with 730 yards. He also leads the nation with 46 missed tackles, fifteen more than Kewan Lacy of Ole Miss.  His nine touchdowns rank second in the country for running backs.

Missouri is number two in the SEC in scoring—45.2 points per game. On defense, the Tigers lead the nation in total offense—only 203.8 yards per game. They rank third in stopping the ground game (62.4 yards per game and they’re third in allowing only 141.4 yards passing.

Although they’re playing at home for the sixth straight time, they’re listed on the early line as underdogs by a little more than a field goal.

(MIZRECRUITS)—The Tigers recently picked up a couple four-star players recently by picking Arkansas’ pocket.  Linebacker J.J. Busch, who had committed to Arkansas, has flipped to Missouri. Running back Terry Hodges, an Arkansas native, has signed to come north. They will join Hardy and Jamal Roberts, who are eligible to be back next year. (ZOU)

(MOSTATE)—Missouri State left the Football Championship Subdivision for the big-time Football Bowl Subdivision this year and is part of Conference USA .

The NCAA counts 136 schools in that subdivision.  The latest rankings put Missouri State 115th. The Bears are competitive within their conference although things get difficult if not ugly when they try someone far up the ladder—as they did last week against 26th ranked USC.

Southern Cal rolled over the Bears 73-13, racking up 597 yards in total offense while Missouri State could get only 65 yards rushing and 159 yards passing.  The Bears are now 2-3 with a win over Tennessee-Martin, an FCS school, 42-10 and another win over Marshall (ranked 121st in the NCAA FBS rankings) 21-20.  Other than USC, their losses have come 28-10 to SMU, ranked , 42nd and 27-22 to Western Kentucky, ranked 67th.

Ahead are 134th ranked Middle Tennessee, New Mexico State (110), Liberty (117), UTEP (122), Kenesaw State (107) and Louisiana Tech (87).

(BASEBALL)—Wheeling and dealing and free agent courting officially begins when the World Series ends but new management in St. Louis and a disappointing mediocre season in Kansas City has all kinds of speculation and proposed trades being suggested that we’re not going to get into.  When a deal is struck or a trade is made, we’ll talk about it.

Now the hot wheels stuff—

(NASCAR)—Joey Logano, who got into the final rounds of the NASCAR Cup Championship last year on a technicality and then won it despite being far back in the regular points system, is back in the final eight again despite being a calculated tenth in regular season points.

Logano got past Chastain as Chastain sped toward the finish line in reverse.  The two had been tied or separated by only a couple of points as the race on the Charlotte Roval (the road course inside the oval) wound down.  Denny Hamlin got in front of Chastain in the closing series of turns and when Chastain moved to reverse the order, the two collided on the last corner, spinning Chastain backwards.  He got his car in reverse and backed across the finish line a matter of feet before Logano, who had been trailing, got there.

Chastain blamed himself for being in the situation because of bobbles during pit stops. Hamlin indicated he did not know Chastain’s circumstances and was racing for his own position when he incident happened.

So Logano is in and Chastain is out and the best he can finish in this year’s system will be ninth.

We’ll have to wait and see if this incident becomes part of NASCAR’s discussion of changing he way the playoffs are determined or if here will be playoffs in the future or whether the driver with the most points after thirty-six races is crowned champion.

THE WINNER of the race was Shane Van Gisbergen, who has swept all five of NACAR’s road races this year. He will not, however, advance to the eight-driver field racing for the title although he is tied with Denny Hamlin for most victories this year. Van Gisbergen was eliminated after the first three raises of the cut-down series.

Still standing as NASCAR heads to Las Vegas for the first of three races that will reduce the championship field to four for the final race of the year next month in Phoenix are Denny Hamlin—who leads all active drivers with 59 career Cup wins but no championships in his 21-year career—Ryan Blaney, the 2023 champion; Kyle Larson, who won in 2021; William Byron; Christoper Bell; Chase Elliott, the champion in 2020; Chase Briscoe; and Logano who won last year and in 2018 and 2022 before winning his third championship last year.

Among those who missed the cut are two-time champion Kyle Busch (2015, 2019) and Brad Keslowski (2012).

(INDYCAR)—2019 Indianapolis 500 winner Simon Pagenaud, whose driving career ended with a crash in 2023 that left him with a severe concussion issue, is back in the cockpit—a simulated one.

Pagenaud is the official simulator driver for the new Cadillac Formula 1 team that takes to the track next year.

It’s important work as the team develops the elements necessary for a new race car to be competitive, including cockpit design and ergonomics, simulated aerodynamic influences—even braking systems, power steering, and tire settings. He says his role gives him “a feeling of being useful and bringing in my expertise, something that was missing somehow since my accident.”

Pagenaud was the third French driver to win the 500, the first since Rene Thomas in 1914. Another French driver, Jules Goux, won a legendary race in 1913 during which he and riding mechanic Emil Begin consumed four bottles of champagne (each bottle being about 4/5 of a quart) in the six-hour and 35 minute race. Goux’s set a still-standing record by finishing more than thirteen minutes ahead of the second-place driver.

Gaston Chevrolet won the race in 1920. Although he was born in France, he was an American citizen when he won the race.

Pagenaud’s winning margin was slightly more than two seconds ahead of Alexander Rossi.

(Photo credits: Pagenaud, Logano, Van Gisbergen—Bob Priddy; Cadillac F1—autoracing.com; Missouri State–NCAA)

 

 We are Victims of Trump’s Absurd Tariffs

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—-and I am furious.

(My monthly guest column on the editorial page of the Jefferson City News-Tribune addressed this topic yesterday but of necessity it was much shorter and somewhat less candid, perhaps because I had lowered the steam pressure after starting on this version.)

There must be a reason why the highly-praised Wharton School that President Trump attended has never invited him back as a speaker. I wonder if anyone has investigated to find out who wrote his papers for him or even took tests for him.

His favorite course must have been Bankruptcy 101 and he must have slept through class every day the word “tariff” came up. The graduation program for his class does not list him for any honors and just has his name among all of the other graduates.

Stop me before I tell you what I really think.

Here is a story some nice people in a gentle English town. Stay with us. By the time we are finished the story will be about a person in a big American town who puts the “bully” into the ;political phrase “bully pulpit.”

(The phrase began with Theodore Roosevelt, one of the four faces on Mt. Rushmore, a monument he thinks he should—something even less possible than him winning the Nobel Price for Peace.)  TR used the word “bully” as an adjective for “wonderful” or “superb.”

Sorry about that. We have wandered off the path.

Grasmere, a village of about 4,500 people in England’s Lake District, has been known for decades as the home of numerous poets, writers, artists, philosophers and other notables.

Poets William and sister Dorothy Wordsworth described it as “the loveliest spot that man hath ever found.”

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner) are considered the founders of English Literature’s “Romantic Age.” Coleridge is said to have “muttered stanzas” of the Rime” while walking about the countryside nearby. The Wordsworths lived for a few years in Dove Cottage, where Coleridge also lodged for a time.

The Dove Cottage is still there as is The Swan, an inn where William sometimes dined with the famous poet Walter Scott.

More recently, Gordon Matthews Thomas Sumner had a home there. The world knows him better as the musical artist, Sting.

Perhaps better known than the poets, philosophers, and other notables who have lived there is Beatrix Potter, who gave the world Peter Rabbit and his friends. She also lived in the Lake District.

It was a coolish, dampish English day when we were there and we didn’t get to spend as much time as we wished, but that’s a penalty we paid for trying to hit some of the highlights of three countries—England, Wales, and Scotland in two weeks.

We had our lunch at the Grasmere Tea Room, ate outside on that pleasantly cool afternoon. I think we had Paninis, having a desire to break from fish and chips (we call them French Fries here). But we had been warned of interlopers that we were told were particularly aggressive that day—Jackdaws, a relative of crows and ravens. They liked to snatch food from tables.

Grasmere is, as is the case with many European communities, an old place, one where a 200-year old building is still relatively new.  We have avoided describing it as “picturesque” because we imagine the locals have heard their town referred to that way and it has become cloying to them.

And “quaint” is a condescending word, too, so we didn’t use it.  We liked Grasmere. It’s one of several small places we visited that we’d like to return to, despite the Jackdaws.

To the ancient Celts, Jackdaws were sacred birds that nested in church steeples, symbolic church guards. Like their Crow and Raven relatives, they are considered quite intelligent. We kind of thought the one perched on the back of a chair about twenty feet from our table was scheming to poach some of our lunch. But we kept a sharp eye on it and never let it have a chance.

What has all of this to do with Trump’s politically silly and nationally-damaging tariffs? We have vented about this in earlier posts but this time it’s personal.

Our excellent tour guide, Charlie Reader, gave us something else for which Grasmere is widely known.

We each got a couple of hand-wrapped gingerbreads. And we loved them.

More than 170 years ago, Victorian Cook Sarah Nelson began making gingerbreads in her 17th century home, using her “secret recipe” (that is still secret).  Grasmere Gingerbreads are a cross between a cake and what the English call a biscuit—a cracker to us.

Sarah’s secret recipe now is guarded by Joanne and Andrew Hunter, third generation owners of the business which still operates from Sarah’s house. I wish we had known of the gingerbread house before we left the town—and had the time to visit it.  But bus tours being bus tours, we had to be on our way after lunch.

The BBC has provided some looks at Sarah’s story and the wonderful products she created.

Bing Videos

Bing Videos

When we got home, I decided to secretly order a dozen of these gingerbreads to be delivered to our home each month. It was going to be a surprise Christmas present for Nancy but the surprise fell though when Diane Gallagher (probably) called from Grasmere and Nancy answered the phone. “There’s a lady from Grasmere on the phone asking for you,” she announced before listening to the conversation. Diane was calling to confirm the order.  The first order came in the tin you see here. Subsequent orders have come in hand-wrapped paper packaging and are refills for the tin.

Each month we have looked forward to finding our little package by our front door about the 10th of each month.  But on September 5, we received a note from Diane announcing the package had been shipped three days earlier but she understood “there have been delays at Customs and your parcel is due for delivery today.”

Then she wrote:

We believe the delays are because the US Government has now abolished the exemption for any parcel under a value of $800 from import duties.  This may mean that you will be liable for import duties on delivery of the parcel.  We are still trying to find out exactly what this will mean in monetary terms, but have reason to believe that for the next six months there will be a flat fee of $80 per parcel being sent from the UK. 

Eighty dollars on a $30 package!!!

This is the results of Donald Trump’s ill-advised removal of the “de minimis” exemption for small packages from foreign countries. Packages worth less than $800 were exempt from tariffs until August 29 when he decided even the smallest item would cost a lot more.

The Universal Postal Union says postal deliveries from around the world to the United States dropped by EIGHTY PERCENT within two weeks after our economic genius President scribbled his name on the bottom of his executive order.

We were supposed to take delivery on Wednesday, September 10. Instead we got a “reschedule” notice from UPS telling us, “UPS is preparing your package for clearance. We will notify you if additional information is needed.”

Diane told us it would be okay to refuse to pay the duties. Afterward the company could tell the UPS to destroy the parcel and the amount remaining on our order would be refunded.

The order from Grasmere was held up for the better part of a week before it cleared customs in Louisville, Kentucky (why Louisville, we don’t know), and was to arrive at our house on Wednesday, September 10.

We decided to pay the duty because the folks in Grasmere had produced the gingerbreads and had shipped them to us in good faith but we decided to have them hold onto the rest of our funds until our country regained this small part of its sanity and allows something so benign as Grasmere Gingerbread to be shipped to Missouri without a duty or a tariff that our President is unable to admit punishes his own citizens.

Trump says his tariffs will force foreign manufacturers to build factories in this country. I am quite sure that Joann and Andrew Hunter are not going to establish a gingerbread manufacturing plant in this country because of this petty policy.

But if you are accumulating evidence of how idiotic Trump’s tariff policy is working, we offer this observation as a good example.

We are puzzled by the whole tariff/duty business even more because while we were waiting for our gingerbreads to trickle through the customs bureaucracy, we found a book on our doorstep that we had ordered from a company in Delhi, India.  It took only ten days from the day I ordered it for it to arrive. I ordered the book on September 5. The company in Delhi gave it to FedEx on the tenth and five days later it was on my doorstep. Clearly, somebody in the customs office was asleep at the switch.

The gingerbreads?  They were mailed on September 2, three days before the book was ordered and eight days before the book was shipped.

On Friday, September 25, we got a notice from UPS:

The status of your package has changed.

Exception Reason: The customs clearance has failed and the shipment is abandoned

UPS told us on September 10 that the package was being prepared for clearance. We were to be notified if more information was needed.  We were not notified of anything until the message that Grasmere Gingerbread package apparently is such a threat to our national security that it would be dangerous for it to be shipped from Louisville, Kentucky where it has been losing its freshness for three weeks.

We got a new note from from Diane;

On 18th September we asked UPS to destroy the parcels that had not cleared Customs, but it appears that this has not yet happened for all parcels.  As well as the severe delays through Customs, it appears that parcels valued at less than £20 are incurring import duties of just under $70, which is just not viable.  For these reasons, our directors have taken the decision to suspend shipping to the US and Canada temporarily. 

I am very sorry about this. 

UPS told us:

Exception Reason: Package cannot clear due to customs delay or missing info. Attempt to contact sender made. Package has been disposed of.

Amazing. After all these months, UPS told us the reason UPS apparently could not get a straight answer from the customs people about the reason—it’s either “customs delay” or it’s “missing info.”  What missing info?   We are unlikely to ever learn why there was a delay and what information was missing in this shipment that wasn’t a problem earlier.

It’s a little package of a dozen Gingerbreads, for God’s sake!!!

It’s disgusting. But our president has taken “disgusting” to unprecedented levels in so many things.

I have notified Diane of our sincere apologies for the embarrassment this administration is. I wish we could go back to that beautiful part of our world to do it in person—-

—because he is creating so many things to apologize to the world for.

Is it too late for Wharton to ask for its diploma back?

(photos by BP. Gingerbread by the Grasmere Gingerbread Co., videos from the BBC)

A New County 

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We’ve commented in the past about whether some of our county names should be changed to honor more contemporary heroes—and maybe reject some scalawags who we learn from history weren’t really worth honoring in the first place.

More than 110 years ago a distinguished Missouri politician introduced a bill to change the name of one of our counties.

We discovered his suggestion among our clippings.  It’s part of a column from the Taney County Republican, January 30, 1913

The column began, “Until a few years after the war, the city of St. Louis was the seat of St. Louis County. When, by authority of an act of the legislature, the voters of the city and the county adopted the ‘scheme and charter.’

“St. Louis became a separate jurisdiction, a county within itself, under the name ‘The City of St. Louis’ and the county became known as ‘the County of St. Louis.’ The county seat was established at the city of Clayton and a courthouse was erected on land donated by a citizen of that name. It has never since had any legal connection with the city of St. Louis, although comparatively few of the people of the State know yet that St. Louis is not in St. Louis County.

“Deeds and legal documents intended for county officials and courts and lawyers are often mailed to St. Louis and important legal documents affecting property and persons in the city of St. Louis are often mailed to Clayton. The confusion created by the use of name St. Louis for the county has been a source of annoyance for many years to both city and county.”

He proposed renaming St. Louis County “Grant” County, honoring the Union General and later President who once lived there and married into a prominent family, the Dents. “There was a time when name of Grant was not popular in that county,” said the newspaper. “But that day has passed.”

“The name of the famous general to whom Lee surrendered is more honored than any other name connected to St. Louis County. No name could be more appropriate for St. Louis County than the name of Grant. If the name of that county is ever changed, it should be called Grant. That it eventually will be changed is hardly to be doubted.”

We know, of course, that his bill didn’t make it.  One reason is that Michael McGrath didn’t make it, either.  It’s an interesting proposal, too, because it came from a former Confederate soldier.

His name means nothing to most of those who labor in the halls of the Capitol now.  But in his time, Michael McGrath was a political power.  And his influence is still felt in Missouri government today.

He was the Secretary of State who created the Official State Manual, known colloquially as “the Blue Book” but called when first published in 1878 “Almanac and  Official Directory of  Missouri.” It contained all of the information about state government in 72 pages.

McGrath was born in 1844 in Ballymaloe Civil Parish, County Cork, Ireland and was raised on a farm and educated in a parish school.  He went to the National School in Kinsale, a small village in the southeast corner of Ireland where he studied to be a teacher.  He became one at age 16.

(Kinsale is the home to a lot of famous people we Americans have never heard of except for William Penn, the founder of the colony of Pennsylvania.  Nearby is Old Kinsale Head, a piece of land jutting into the Atlantic that has a lighthouse and the remains of an old castle.  About eleven miles out to sea from Kinsale Head, the liner Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk in 1915.)

He was among the thousands of Irish citizens driven to this country by the Great Potato Famine and general civic unrest in Ireland, arriving after a nine-week voyage in New Brunswick in 1850 and immediately gong to Maine before going to New York a few months later in 1851. He was convinced to come to Missouri by reading The St. Louis Republic in the Astor Room New York City Libray. He arrived here in July, 1856.

Just two days after his arrival, his good handwriting landed him a job with the St. Louis County Recorder.  After declaring himself a Democrat, he was hired as a a deputy clerk in the criminal court in 1861. He served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War but signed a loyalty oath at the end that let him take a bar examination and become a lawyer.  He was a clerk in various city and court offices until he was elected Secretary of State in 1874.

He served fourteen years, a term in the office not exceeded for a century when Jimmy Kirkpatrick served five four-year terms.

He got into the newspapering business, owning and operating an Irish-oriented paper, The Celt, and the Sedalia Democrat. He also was a major stockholder of the Jefferson City Tribune.

He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1912 but he died shortly after taking office on January 28, 1913 “after a brief illness.”  He was 79 and had had heart trouble and problems with bronchitis.

Michael Knowles McGrath is an unfortunately forgotten figure in Missouri history.

St. Louis County is still St. Louis County. But Grant County is a pretty good idea for someplace. Surely a legislature that is always willing to make a fourth-grader’s dream come true by choosing a new state symbol could devote as much time to assessing whether some famous person has worn out his welcome with one of our counties.

(Photo Credit: State Official Manual, 1913)