Author Archives: bpriddy

Cardinals Re-Start Season on Hopeful Note; Royals Get Rare Win; A Close Shave in INDYCAR; Finally, a win at New Hampshire

Posted on by
Reply

(CARDINALS)—The St. Louis Cardinals have started the post-All Star Game season by taking two out of three from the Washington Nationals with Jack Flaherty starting to look like the Flaherty of 2022 before he got hurt.  It’s his fourth straight win, a six-inning effort in which he gave up only three hits, struck out seven and walked only three.  His ERA is down to 4.29.

(CABRERA)—Those waiting for the Cardinals to make a season-transforming deal have instead been treated to a surprise by the team seemingly giving up on a promising young reliever.  It appears to be a “what have you done for us lately” situation that has turned Genesis Cabrera into disposable property. Cabrera has been designated for assignment after 32 appearances this year in which he allowed more than 1.5 walks and hits per innings pitched—a poor record for a relief pitcher, and a 5.06 ERA, an exceedingly poor record for a reliever even in this era. He had no saves and a 1-1 record.

“Designated for Assignment” does not mean the team has cut Cabrera, at least not yet. He has just been removed from the 40-man roster.  But the Cardinals have to decide within a week whether he will put him back on it, put him on waivers, trave him, or outright release him.

It’s been a tough season for Cabrera—one of a lot of tough seasons the Cardinals are having.  He’s only 26 and up to the start of 2023 had been in 142 games for St. Louis with a 3.95 ERA and a 160-83 strikeout-to-walk ratio.  He’s been with the club since 2019.

Cabrera’s replacement on the roster hasn’t been a lights-out guy this year either.  Right-hander Ryan Tepera was DFA’d by the Angels after ten undistinguished outings with a 7.27 ERA. The Rangers gave him a minor league deal and he recorded eight scoreless innings in Triple-A Round Rock but opted out of the deal when the Rangers didn’t move him to the big club.

He’s 35 but had a career 3.50 ERA coming into 2023. His strikeout radio has dropped into the 20% area the last couple of years.  Although he had eight scoreless innings at Round Rock, he struck out less than 40% of the Triple-A hitters he faced.

(Bird Relief)—Genesis Cabrera is only one part of the Cardinals bullpen problem this year.  Relievers have blown a major league-leading 21 out of 43 save opportunities in 2023. The White Sox have 20 blown saves. Those two are the only two teams with more than 20 blown saves.

Jordan Hicks delivered the 21st blown save in the completion Saturday of Friday’s rain-suspended game when he gave up two runs in the tenth inning. Andre Pallante leads the team with five.

(MONDAY NIGHT)— The Redbirds started the week with their third straight win, 6-4 in the opening game of a series against the Marlins. It’s their fifth win in the their last sixth games and pulls them into a tie for last place with the Pirates. Miles Mikolas, whose start last Friday night lasted only three good innings before the rains came, went six innings last night, gave up three runs and seven hits. The save went to Jordan Hicks, his eighth.

The ’birds wasted no time getting new relief pitcher Ryan Tepera into the lineup. Not a distinguished entrance—two-third of an inning, two singles, a hit batter, and a walk.  Giovanny Gallegos bailed him out by getting the final out in the seventh with the bases full.

(WAINO UPDATE)—Adam Wainwright was scheduled to throw a bullpen session yesterday to see how his shoulder is doing.  He’s been shut down since July 5. He’s gotten several shots in his shoulder and says he’s feeling better.

(Royals Relief)—The Royals relievers have only a dozen blown saves. But then again, there have only been 25 times this season that the Royals have had a lead to save to begin with.

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals have fallen forty games below .500 and they started this week having to go 54-14 to finish the year at .500.  So every win is something to cherish—and they got one Sunday in a team history-making day.

Bobby Witt Jr., and Drew Waters each had a home run and a triple—the first time two Royals players have done that in the same game—and Kansas city beat the Tampa Bay Rays 8-4.  Brady Singer pitched far better than his record by going seven full innings, throwing only 70 pitches before leaving after giving up back to back home runs.

The Royals were 2-8 in their last ten games through the weekend, and started the week on a down note with a loss. Detroit scored all their runs in the seventh inning to take a 3-2 win. The Royals outhit them 6-5, though.

Okay, now let’s go racing:

(INDYCAR)—Christian Lundgaard’s first INDYCAR victory is also the first time a driver from Denmark has won a race in the long history of the series—under whatever sanctioning name it has carried.

Lundgaard also gave Rahal-Letterman-Lanigan racing its first win since Takuma Sato’s Indianapolis 500 triumph in August, 2020 (the race was delayed because of COVID and was run in front of an empty grandstand, you might recall). It also is RLL’s first win on a street circuit in six years; Graham Rahal swept both segments at Grand Isle Michigan that year.

Lundgaard finished almost 13 seconds ahead of points leader Alex Palou, who had his worst start of the year at 15th and still come home second despite a damaged front wing on his car.  Colton had his best finish of the year, at third.

Lundgaard has promised during the offseason that he would not shave his moustache until he won his first INDYCAR race.  His crew had a charged-up electric razor waiting for him in victory lane.

Lundgaard (shown here at Indianapolis last year before he made his vow) started the race on pole—his first career pole in INDYCAR—took command on the 61st of the 85 laps when he fought past Alex Palou for second place behind then-leader Scott Dixon, a lap before Dixon’s last pit stop that gave Lundgaard lead the lead he never gave up. Dixon finished fourth.

INDYCAR returns to an oval next weekend—within driving distance for many Missourians. The series runs at the Iowa  Speedway with 250 laps on the high banked 7/8 mile track Saturday and another race on Sunday.

(NASCAR)—It has finally happened at Loudon, New Hampshire for Martin Truex, Jr., one of the tracks he considers a “home track.”  (The other is Dover, in Delaware). Truex is a Trenton, New Jersey native.

Truex’s third win of the year was a dominating performance that saw him lead 254 of the 301 laps. Eight other drivers divided the other 46 laps.

His victory earned the only edible winner’s trophy in racing.  A live lobster goes to the winner each year. Some drivers spare the life of the trophy.  However, we haven’t received word if Loudon the Lobster survived the team’s celebration last night.

Truex won both stages and maxed out on points to move into the lead in the regular season standings. Joey Logano was among the drivers who tried to catch Truex but he consistently pulled ahead on restarts and finished four-tenths of a second ahead of Joey Logano.

Going into the race, Truex had led more than 900 laps in the 29 Cup races he had run at Loudon, but had three third-place finishes as his best results until yesterday’s win (the race was rained out on Sunday and moved to Monday).

Kyle Larson, Kevin Harvick, and Brad Keselowski made up the rest of the top five.

It was a bitter race for Aric Almirola, who crashed while leading on the 168th lap when his car lost a wheel. He finished 34th.

It also was a disappointment for Logano, a native of Middletown, Connecticut, who also considers Loudon his home track.  “When you’re at your home track, second hurts more than anywhere else,” he said afterward. “That one stings but overall, still have to say it’s a good day. Just mad right now.”

Kyle Busch finished his rugged weekend with a wall encounter on lap 72. He also crashed his car in practice and again during qualifying.

(FORMULA 1)—F1’s next race is the Grand Prix of Hungary next weekend.

(Photo Credits: Lundgaard: Rick Gevers, Indianapolis 2022; Truex: Bob Priddy, WWTR 2023)

Difficult choices 

Posted on by
3

Lawmakers, state and federal, sometimes find themselves in the position of voting for something they don’t like to get something they want. The reverse also is true—they vote against something they like to keep something they dislike from becoming law.

At campaign time, opponents usually don’t discuss these subtleties in our political system when they criticize the incumbent for voting against an issue popular or unpopular with the public.

These dual-personality bills sometimes are passed anyway.  Then it becomes a problem for governors and for presidents.

The problem could be avoided if the legislative body did not try to combine two or more (somewhat) disparate issues into one bill.

Governor Parson had one of those bills that he vetoed in the last flurry of bill signings from the 2023 session. In this case, however, he disagreed with both sections of the bill. For whatever good it does, we—as appeals court judges sometimes write—“agree in part and disagree in part.”

Had we been present in the discussion (and it is easy to be a second-guesser from our lofty perch), we would have wondered if at least some of his reasons for the veto would be different if he were still the Polk County Sheriff.

One of the sections in the bill to which Governor Parson objected expanded the number of people eligible for state restitution if their convictions of crimes were overturned by a court proceeding and the prosecutor decided not to refile the charge.

Present law allows the state to pay someone $36,500 for each year that person was wrongly imprisoned if DNA evidence proves they are innocent.  The bill that the governor vetoed upped that figure to $65,000 and includes people set free by a “conviction review process” that was established by law two years ago.

It is the new, second, category of prisoner releases that troubles Governor Parson—and the 75% increase in restitution. The original figure, an amount based on $100 a day for each day of wrongful confinement, was enacted in 2006.  The new amount would be about $178 a day.

But here’s the meat of his objection, from his veto message to the legislature:

“With very few exceptions, criminal cases are tried by local governments (counties or municipalities).  The underlying offense, elected prosecutor, elected or retained judge, and community-drawn jury all come from the local jurisdiction and not the state as a whole. However, the burden of paying restitution under these provisions falls on all Missouri taxpayers…Missourians from every part of the state should not have to foot the bill for a local decision. Local governments should bear the financial cost of their own actions.”

Had I been in the discussion, I might have piped up with something such as:

“I agree that our justice system is administered by local people in local courtrooms.  But the offender was charged with violating a STATE law.  As I recall from years of reading court records at the local courthouse, the charges often—always?—end by saying the offense occurred “against the peace and dignity of the STATE.”

“The trial was held in a circuit court, which is a division of the STATE court system. The prosecutor, although locally-elected, is prosecuting the STATE law.  The jury, although made up of local citizens, is part of the STATE judicial process that determines guilty or not-guilty verdicts.

“The accused probably was held in a local jail but the STATE compensates the local jurisdiction for the costs of incarceration—-although local officials have complained the compensation isn’t close to adequate.”

“Clearly this is a state issue because everybody but the accused is acting on behalf of the STATE.”

“If the compensation, as you argue, should be made at the local level, who should be sued to gain restitution?  If such a reversal had happened when you were Polk County Sheriff, should YOU pay it—especially if you made the original arrest? Should the twelve members of the jury be held responsible for one-twelfth of the annual amount because they acted responsibly although incorrectly?   How much responsibility should fall on the shoulders of the judge who sent this ultimately-innocent person to jail for so many years?  Should Polk County have had some liability because its county prosecutor and its county sheriff were key figures in this process?

“And suppose this trial had been moved to another county on a change of venue. How much does that county have to pitch in?

“Polk County has about 33,000 residents.  Could a court order each resident to contribute two dollars per capita times the number of years this person was improperly imprisoned? Would that be a problem in a county with a per capita income of less than $25,000 a year?”

“Do you think you would get elected to another term as sheriff if you were the one who arrested this person to begin with?”

Well—I wasn’t part of the discussion and as I said, it’s easy to second-guess a decision such as this from a distance and without hearing the other voices. And it’s always a shame when so many good things combined into a bill are knocked down because the bill contains one problematic section that a governor thinks is poorly-written.

The legislature will have a chance to override the veto when it meets in about 50 days or so.  Or it can come back about six months from now and try again, fine-tuning the language and making a better argument for financial justice for someone from whom the STATE took away the most precious gift all of us are given—time.

 

Ignorance gone to seed 

Posted on by
1

My friend Derry Brownfield had an expression that describes somebody doing something so egregiously stupid that it causes jaws to drop in total disbelief.

A few days ago, a tourist in Rome was accused of carving into the walls of the Coliseum, something such as “Igor+Muffy2023” to show his undying affection for his girlfriend. After he was arrested, the young sculptor/love-struck fool sent a letter of apology to the local prosecutor.  He gave as his excuse, “I admit with the deepest embarrassment that only after what regrettably happened, I learned of the antiquity of the monument,”

The “thud’ you hear is the jaw of your correspondent striking the area carpet covering the hardwood floor under my chair. It has happened every time I have read the account of his apology.

He did not know that he was defacing a structure that was built about 2,000 years ago? Did he spend his entire education playing video games in class?  Did he make it through thirteen grades of school and however many years of college without ever hearing ANYTHING about ancient Rome?

This is one of those times when it is common for millions of people to think, “How could anybody be that stupid!!!!!!” (I probably did not include enough exclamation points, actually).

The Coliseum is only one of the most recognized structures in the entire world. How can somebody NOT know it and the ruins of the Roman Forum and other obviously ancient features in Rome that the city and a lot of its structures dates back to Biblical times?

It’s ROME, for God’s Sake!  The place is old. Could he not tell it’s old just by looking at it?  Did he think it was built like that just last week? 

Why did he go there to begin with?  What was he expecting to see—lots of buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright?  (This assumes he knows what a Frank Lloyd Wright is.)

What did he think went on in the Coliseum?  The Rome Lions versus the Florence Christians in the Chariot Bowl?  He seems to say in his apology, “Golly, I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t thought it was sort of new.” As if there’s nothing wrong with spray-painting anything made or built within his lifetime that sits still long enough to be attacked by a clown with a pressurized can or a chisel.

Somewhere in the last twenty or thirty years, a new culture has been created that says it’s okay to display your decorative skills by spray painting property that does not belong to you and for which you have no permission to paint—or carving your initials in something made of more solid materials twenty centuries ago.  “See how brilliant I am?  I can paint or chisel my name and other names or even paint a suggestive or profane slogan on your property.  You’re welcome. I did it to enhance public appreciation of your property (building, boxcar, subway car, billboard, town sign). And I really like your day-glow red St. Bernard now, by the way.”

Equally troubling is his apparent belief that he can just deface any building he wants to deface.  Places such as this were created, whenever, so people like him can carve away at the stone if they feel romantically or artistically inclined.

Where do these people come from?  The ones who carve their names in the rocks of world monuments and satisfy their personal artistic muses by turning somebody else‘s property into their canvas or carving piece?

Wouldn’t it be interesting to talk to their parents?   And see how proud they are of their children for their overwhelming self-expression and how they want to commemorate their immortal love for one another.  Or until their gap year ends, mom and dad’s money runs out, and they go to separate homes.

There are better ways to make your mark on the world. I wonder if such a thing will occur to those whose ignorance has gone to seed.

-0-

Are the Cardinals playing Charlie Brown football with us?  And the joy of being in the right place at the right time.  

Posted on by
Reply

Charlie Brown football—Lucy snatches the football away just as Charlie Brown tries to kick it. Are the Cardinals leading us to think, again, that they’ve started to claw their way back to decency, only to snatch defeat from victory again?

The Cardinals got two strong pitching performances in their last games heading into the all-star break.  Miles Mikolas  went seven innings on Saturday and the relief corps closed out the White Sox 3-0.  Steven Matz, making his first start since May 24 when his record fell to 0-7 and his ERA soared to 5.02, went into the sixth inning on Sunday and the Cardinals, struck out nine and gave up only two hits.  He didn’t get the decision as the Cardinals scored the winning run in the 10th on a Paul DeJong double.

Are they doing it again to their fans—-showing a spark that increases desperate hoe that the season can still amount to something?   Or will they return from the break and drift backwards again?

Admittedly, the White Sox were hardly top-not material in the weekend series.  The Sox enter the break at 38-54.  The Cardinals have the next few days to think about a lot of things that led to their 38-52 pre-break season.

The Royals also go into the break as winners—for only the 26th time this year. They’ve lost 65 times. But Sunday, they got three runs in the sixth to send the Cleveland Guardians into the break with a .500 record. Ryan Yarbrough, pitching for the Royals for the first time since he was hit in the face by a line drive May 7, gave up six hits and struck out five in six innings. He gave up the Guardians only run.

Tonight’s All-Star Game finds only two players from our two teams on the roster. Nolan Arenado will start at third base for the American League.  Salvador Perez represents the Royals as a reserve.  He’s hitting .246 for the season, fifteen points better than his team’s winning percentage.

Stars of tomorrow—maybe.  Major League teams have spent the last couple of days picking the talent that might be season-savers for some teams in a few years.

In the first round, the Royals took high school catcher Blake Mitchell of Sinton, Texas, who has committed to LSU but is considered likely to withdraw the commitment.

The Cardinals went for Chase Davis, a power hitting outfielder whose 60 home runs in the last three years at the University of Arizona rank third in school history.

In Round two, the Royals picked pitcher Blake Wolters, the Player of the Year in Illinois this year, a righthander with a 99 mph fastball. He also was an all-state basketball player. He’s giving up his commitment to Arizona.

With a second pick in the first round, the Royals selected outfielder Carson Roccaforte from Louiana-Lafayette, a projected center fielder.

The Cardinals did not have a second round pick.

The Royals went for another high school player of the year in the third round—Hiro Wyatt of Staples Connecticut.  The Cardinals went for outfielder Travis Honeyman of Boston College.  Round four found the Royals taking Vanderbilt pitcher Hunter Owen and the Cardinals picking a Cardinal, pitcher Quin Mathews.

The Royals stayed at home in the fifth round, taking outfielder Spencer Nivens from Missouri State University.  The Cardinals drafted Miami outfielder Zach Levenson.

One player from the University of Missouri was taken—pitcher Austin troesser by the Mets as a fourth-round compensation pick.

(Football)—The Kansas City Chiefs open their training camp at St. Joseph twelve days from today.

24/7 sports looked at the SEC teams and ranked them on the basis of returning starters—ranking the Missouri Tigers second or third with 13 (8 on defense) and commenting, “The Tigers expect to be elite on the defensive side of the football this season with several all-conference candidates returning at all levels. Missouri ranked fourth in the SEC in total defense last season and nearly knocked off top-ranked and unbeaten Georgia at home as a result.”  Ahead of Missouri in the ranking is Texas A&M with 16 returning starters and Old Miss (also with thirteen),

Those of you who only want stick and ball sports can go find something else to do now because we’re going to talk a little bit about racing.

(NASCAR)—William Byron was in the right place at the right time in Atlanta.  When the big rain came, and the red flag flew, he had the lead. Byron took the lead away from A. J. Allmendinger with 19 laps left in a race with a high intensity level because of the approaching storm.

Allmendinder was third with Daniel Suarez as the runner-up after starting 26th.  Michael McDowell, squeezing ever last gas vapor out of his tank, was able to bring his car home fourth.

The win is  the fourth of the year for Byron, the most of any Cup driver this season, and it moves him into the lead for the regular-season points championship.  Byron drives the 24-car for Hendrick Motorsports, the number used by Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon.  This year is the first time since 2014 that car 24 has won four races in a season.

Pole sitter Aric Almirola led the most laps in the race but dropped back to 18th in the final stage.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen has on his sixth grand prix race in a row, and the 11th straight for Red Bull.   The eleven straight wins ties the Formula 1 record for consecutive victories by a team, first achieved by McLaren with drivers Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.

Verstappen was joined on the winner’s state at the Grand Prix of Britain by runnerup Lando Norris of McLaren and Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes.

(INDYCAR)—Indycar races through the streets of Toronto this coming Sunday. Alex Palou will be looking for his fourth straight win.

Two drivers are hoping to extend streaks and also to achieve personal milestones in the race.  Scott Dixon holds the series record of 18 straight seaosns with at least one win and 20 seasons with at least one victory.  Will Power has 16 years with at least one win and 17 seasons overall ith at least one victory.

Dixon is one of only four drivers in INDYCAR history to record at least 100 podium finishes. Power is at 97 with eight races left this season to reach 100.

Dixon. With 133, ranks behind only Mario Andretti’s 144.  A. J. Foyt had 119 and Michael Andretti retired with an even 100.  A top-three finish at Toronto will tie Power with Al Unser Sr., at 98.

Jefferson City’s first tornado

Posted on by
Reply

The scars of the May 23, 2019 tornado that hit Jefferson City remain fresh—and obvious to many who remember when a house stood here, a big beautiful tree over there, when a fence conceals a vacant lot that once held a gathering place for plays, when broken windows at the state penitentiary continue to stare blankly at passersby.

When city and county officials had time to add things up, they found it had damaged 316 residential buildings, 82 commercial buildings and thirty government structures. It was classed as an EF-3, with winds of 73-112 mph (the scale assigns storms of less than 73 mph as an EF0).

Within hours of that tornado, and continuing today, there are those who speculate about what would have happened if the tornado had followed a path just a few blocks west—-and hit a hospital or the Southside and downtown business district and even the Capitol.

We had a tornado that did.  Hit the Capitol.  And a hospital.  And areas in between.

It was May 12, 1890, a Monday in the town of about 6,700 residents. “The almost stifling heat during the afternoon indicated that a storm of some kind was brewing and the heavy cloud that rolled up in the southwest about 4:30 indicated further that it was a storm of the business turn of mind, and that it had business in this immediate vicinity” reported the Jefferson City Daily Tribune the next day.  “It came with a roar and a crash that was terrible enough to fill the minds of those who witnessed it with apprehension of dire disaster.”

The Cole County Democrat reported, “The winds rose in a stiff blow, carrying the dark green looking clouds in every direction and threatening destruction to everything.”

And then the cloud split into three segments, “one division striking for the extreme western portion of the city, another traveling up Monroe Street to the river, while the third division took in the southern and eastern portion of the city taking in the penitentiary.”

The Chillicothe Constitution reported, “For half an hour the wind blew a hurricane, driving before it a storm of rain which so enveloped the town that nothing could be seen but the vivid flashes of lightning…At 4:45 o’clock the wind had risen almost to the force of a cyclone, and as it came roaring over the hills it struck the state Capitol with terrific force.

The seven-year old St. Peter Catholic Church was hammered and, “The heavy brick arch on top of the rear wall was blown over on the roof and went crashing through clear to the basement, making a complete wreck of the richly furnished altar and sacristy.”  Fortunately, said the Daily Tribune, “it is understood that a cyclone policy was carried on the church.”

The Capitol was immediately next. “Here the wind got a grip under the cornice of the roof of the old part of the building north of the dome and did not relax its hold until a great section of the roof, tin, timbers and all, had been rolled up, crushed, splintered and scattered…,” said the newspaper.  The Chillicothe paper said the debris was “rolled together like a scroll and carried over the bluff.”

The tornado struck only a few months after a new cornerstone had been laid after two new wings had been added to the Capitol.

“At the same moment, half a dozen trees in the Capitol Park were snapped in twain, and the glass in the dome came tumbling with a crash into the rotunda.”  But, “the building itself stood solid as a rock.”

The eastern division of the storm unroofed the penitentiary hospital but apparently did little damage beyond that.

But the central division, the storm “tore down several chimneys, one off he residence of Postmaster Sample, one off the resident of J. R. Edwards, the smoke stack from the Brton residence and J. T. Craven lost his tin chimney. The shade trees in Mr. R. Dallmeyer’s yard were twisted considerably.  The Democrat building lost a cellar door, it being lifted by the storm from the pavement and carried at least one hundred feet. One window of the building being completely destroyed, the venetian blind being blown clear away with only a small fragment left. The resident of Mr. W. M. Meyer on Adams Street has the bale end blown in, doing some damage to his furniture but fortunately injuring no one.”

The young ladies’ dormitory at Lincoln Institute lost its roof and the heavy rain damaged the interior plastering.

The Daily Tribune cataloged other damage:

“A porch in the rear of the building on High street occupied by Mrs. Robinson and Mr. Schleer was lifted over onto the roof and a big chimney, adding further destruction by tumbling over and making another big hole.  The west wall of the house on McCarty Street, occupied by Mr. W. W. Meyers, was blown in. The children had been playing in this room a few moments before the storm came, but were fortunately in another part of the building when the wall went in with a deafening crash. The cornice on the rear of the Music hall building was damaged. Mrs. Vogt’s residence on Washington street, was unroofed. The Standard Shoe Co.’s building, on Main Street, was dismantled of chimneys, and buildings in all parts of the city had similar experiences.

“The roof of the Neef house was badly wrenched and some of the rooms damaged by water.  At the Central hotel a smokestack on Maj. Lusk’s residence was blown through a window, carrying away the entire sash, and before the aperture could be protected a number of rooms were flooded, doing much damage to furniture and carpets. Shade and fruit trees, shrubbery and fences suffered at Mr. H.W. Ewing’s place, near the city. His stable was also minus the roof when the storm cleared away..”

No casualties were reported.

“Our people were considerably frightened, and well they may be, as no such clouds have ever before been seen in this city.  We are congratulating ourselves that it is no worse, and hope that such an occurrence will not visit us again,” said the Cole County Democrat.

While residents of Jefferson City were pondering the disaster, some people sixty miles away were showing no sympathy.  The booming and ambitious city of Sedalia, with more than 14,000 people, had been trying to wrestle the seat of government away from Jefferson City for more than a decade.  The Sedalia Bazoo commented, “Since the Lord partially ruined the state capitol building at Jefferson City, it is a good time to agitate the removal of the capital to Sedalia.”  The Sedalia Gazette noted, “The roof of part of Missouri’s capitol was blown off this week. This is the same building upon which was squandered a quarter of a million dollars recently” (with the addition of two wings on the north and sound ends of the 1840 Capitol).

Five years later, Sedalia interests stormed Jefferson City with a one-day lobbying blitz that led the legislature to put a proposition on the 1896 ballot to pull state government out of Jefferson City.

But that’s another story.

 

If you can’t trust the game—-

Posted on by
Reply

The NFL announced last week that five players have been suspended for betting on sports contests.  Three are suspended for at least a year. Three can resume playing in game seven of the upcoming season.  Four of the players involved are with the Detroit Lions. The team has released two of them.

They aren’t the first.  Last year the NFL suspended Calvin Ridley of the Atlanta Falcons for gambling.

The Detroit Lions reportedly (ESPN) organization has fired several staff members from various departments who also might have been gambling.

A few days before that announcement, Ohio residents began wagering on sports.  The first bet was placed by former Cincinnati Reds baseball player Pete Rose, who has been banned from the Baseball Hall of Fame because of gambling.  As baseball and other sports crawl farther under the covers with gamblers, are they creeping closer to admitting people such as Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson to Halls of Fame?  Will fans believe them as much as they once did that the answer is “no.”

One of those lobbying for sports wagering in Missouri has said it will enhance fan participation in the games.

Associated Press columnist Kyle Hightower, however, wonders if our pro sports teams are undermining public confidence in themselves, writing, “The incidents have driven a public conversation about the integrity of pro sports as legalized sports betting takes a greater hold in this country.”

He quotes Professor Declan Hill at the University of New Haven who says “Leagues are dancing with the devil. Here’s what happens.  There’ll be one play that’s kind of weird and dubious and sports fans will start to do, ‘Was that legitimate?’ And then there’ll be another one. And another one and another one. And after a few years, the sports leagues will have a problem because their fundamental credibility is being debated by their fans.”

Hightower sees players becoming “ambassadors for gambling companies” by appearing in sports gambling advertisements and promotions.

Huge money is involved here—more than $220 billion since the U. S. Supreme Court legalized sports betting in 2018.  Leagues already are providing official stats to the big gambling companies. Some fans already wonder how pure leagues can be when this kind of big money is involved. And the money is going to be even bigger.

Missouri is an island surrounded by states with sports betting. The industry is leaning hard on the Missouri legislature to end that status. So far, internal squabbling among gambling interests has frustrated sports wagering backers.  But it seems inevitable that our lawmakers eventually will buckle.

And what will happen to our trust in the games we watch when the fans’ “participation” in the games is “enhanced?”

Humans play these games and humans make mistakes and not always by accident.  In the future fans might ask if a mistake really is a mistake? Every suspension for gambling chips away at confidence in The Game, whatever game it might be.  What happens when we wonder if that error was accidental or that missed block was really just a miss; that the pass was not intentionally thrown an inch too high or too long or too short; that the goalie really did just miss that puck or that those two free throws that bounced off the rim could have gone in?

Our pro sports teams have spent decades emphasizing the integrity of their games. We worry that the lure of big money will erode the confidence we have as we watch from the games’ grandstand.  How can we know?

How can we trust what we see?

It appears to be too late for such concerns to be prohibitive of gambling involvement in sports.

Hightower’s article concludes with a comment from Karol Corcoran, the general manager of FanDuel, one of the biggest online gambling operators, who says, “We’re in an ecosystem with customers, we’re the operators, with the leagues with our data providers. It’s important for all of us that we build together a sustainable industry. And being very careful about integrity is part of that.”

The fox is in the hen house.   And it is talking about integrity.

We wish we could say we are comforted.

—-because the fox is always hungry.

We hope we can still love and trust our games five years, ten years, from now.

 

Knocking off the big guys and racing in the rain: last week in sports

Posted on by
Reply

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.

July 4th came on July 3rd this year  

Posted on by
Reply

Cartoonist Walt Kelly years ago had a popular cartoon strip called “Pogo,” about a possum and his animal friends who lived in a Georgia swamp.  Every now and then, one of them would proclaim, “Friday the 13th came on Wednesday this month!” or whatever day was appropriate.

So today we celebrate Independence Day. We can’t say we’re celebrating the fourth of July because that’s not util tomorrow.  And actually, there are several dates we can observe because the Declaration was a work in progress for almot a month before Congress adopted it.

John Adams thought July 2nd would be the day to be remembered. He wrote to wife Abigail 247 years ago today, “The second day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epocha, in the history of America…It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forever more.”

Why July 2ns?

Let’s go back to June 7th when delegate Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed a resolution “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

Four days later a committee of five—Adams, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson—was appointed to write a document expressing those views. Congress recessed until July 1 while the document was written.

Jefferson reluctantly took the job of writing the first draft.  But he alone did not write the Declaration.  Adams and Franklin were his chief editors.  His first draft contained about 1850 words.

The five-member committee made about four dozen changes. Other committees of the Continental Congress made 39 more. Jefferson made five.  In the end of the document was reduced by about 25 percent, to 1,337 words.

One immediate change was made by Benjamin Franklin in the most-cited part of the document—“all men are created equal”

The idea is not Jefferson’s alone.  He borrowed the sentiment from fellow Virginian George Mason, the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights that had been adopted a month earlier, saying, “all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

Jefferson re-wrote that idea:

“We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty,& the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it’s foundation on such principles & organizing it’s powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness.”

Jefferson took an already wordy sentiment and made it even more wordy.

And this is where Franklin made a significant change.  He immediately removed “sacred and undeniable” and inserted “self evident.”  Franklin biographer Walter Isaacson says Franklin argued that the new nation was to be one in which rights come from rational thinking and the consent of the governed, not from the dictates or dogmas of religion.

The document mentions God or substitute names for God several times but it does so in neutral phrasing.  This is not a Catholic God.  This is not a Christian God—in those days there were plenty of people who believed Catholics weren’t Christians and Protestant belief organizations were actively splintering into different denominations with differing interpretations of God and the Scriptures.

The God in the Declaration is nature’s God, not a denominational God for a reason.

In Jefferson’s state of Virginia, between 1768 and 1774, about half of the Baptist ministers were jailed for preaching.  In Northampton, Massachusetts—Adams’ state—eighteen Baptist ministers were jailed in one year for refusing to pay taxes to support the Congregational minister in the town.

The sentiment about God had been voiced in the very first sentence of the Declaration that asserted that the colonies are separate from England and as a unified entity assume “among the powers of the earth and the separate and equal stations to which “the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them.”

The Congress resumed its session on July 2 and the Lee Resolution was adopted and debate on the Declaration began immediately.  For the next two days, Congress made changes—the most significant one being the removal of a section that attacked slavery.

It was late in the morning of July 4 when the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration and the handwritten original with all of its changes was given to printer John Dunlap.  But until August 2, the only signature on the document was that of convention president John Hancock.

The document was not signed July 4th—the famous painting by John Trumbull showing the five-man committee turning in the document with other members seated behind them.

Most members of the Continental Congress did not sign the Declaration until August 27.  And there were stragglers: Richard Henry Lee, Elbridge Gerry (of gerrymander infamy), and Oliver Walcott did not sign until November 19.  And it was not until 1781 that Thomas McKean added his signature.

McKean had left Congress a few days after adoption of the Declaration to become a colonel in the Pennsylvania Association, a military unit despite its name created by Franklin.

They promised their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor when they signed the document.  Several, tragically, kept that promise.

Five of them were captured by the British, branded as traitors, and died after being tortured. A dozen saw their homes burned.  The sons of two of them were killed in the war. Nine of them fought in the war and died of their wounds or the hardships of the war.

Lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.  Those words and the passionate commitments behind them meant something in 1776.

As we honor them today, we should be haunted by those words and wonder what place they have in our political world today.

Could we survive yesterday?

Posted on by
1

Someone asked me the other day, “If you could go back 150 years, what would be the first things you would notice?”

It took me about two seconds to come up with an answer—because I’ve sometimes thought it would be interesting to be able to go back as an invisible observer of the past.

“Color,” I said. “And smells.”

“And the water would kill us.”

The images with which we are most familiar are all one-dimensional and black and white.  Take that picture of great-great-grandfather and grandmother and imagine what a shock it would be to meet them on the street, in three dimensions, their flesh the same color as yours, eyes (perhaps) the same color as yours, hair—-well it might be the same color but it also might be pretty greasy with the men and not particularly clean with the women.

And they likely would have an odor about them, especially if you met them at this time of year.  Stale sweat for one.  Showers were unknown in most homes (indoor plumbing of any kind). Bathtubs were not as well-used as our tubs and showers are now.  Underarm deodorant was nonexistent.  Mum was the first underarm deodorant, and it didn’t come along until 1888, a paste applied under the arms, by hand.  Deodorant, not anti-perspirant.

Underwear probably went a few days before changing.

In those days, if everybody stank, nobody stank.

Last year, I was on the town square in Springfield, Illinois and I noticed a sign on one of the historic buildings denoting it as the former home of the Corneau and Diller Drug Store. The sign said the store had been opened in 1849 by Roland W. Diller and Charles S. Corneau, who installed a big wood stove circled by chairs, making the pace a popular place for mento gather and swap stories or discuss events of the day including politics, a subject that was appealing to Abraham Lincoln, whose law office was a short walk away.

Wife Mary purchased toiletries there “such as bear’s oil, ox, marrow, ‘French Chalk’ for her complexion, a patent hairdressing called ‘Zylobalsam,’ and ‘Mrs. Allen’s Restorative.”

It continues: “Because daily bathing was not yet customary, the Lincolns—like most other people—bought cologne by the quart!”

Visitors to the Steamboat Arabia Museum in Kansas City can purchase 1856 French Perfume.  It’s not the real stuff that was found when the boat was excavated but it is a reproduction.  The museum sent a bottle of some of the real stuff to a laboratory in New York that did a chemical analysis and reproduced the perfume.

It’s strong stuff.  But for hundreds of years, perfume often was not the olfactory decoration and attraction that it is today; it was a masking agent sometimes poured on and sometimes used to soak kerchiefs that were kept up the sleeves and used to waft away some personal unpleasantness of a companion.

So color and odor would be the first things to jolt us if we went back 150 years.

But the smells would not be confined to the people you meet on the streets.  The streets themselves would be pretty rank.

The New York Almanack published an article a couple of years ago observing that the city had 150,000 to 200,000 horses, each of which produced “up to 30 pounds of manure per day and a quart of urine…over 100,000 tons a year (not to mention around 10 million gallons of urine.”

“By the end of the 19th century, vacant lots around New York City housed manure piles that reached 40 or 60 feet high. It was estimated that in a few decades, every street would have manure piled up to third story levels.”

Jefferson City’s streets didn’t produce that much manure and urine.  But New  York’s problems were the problems of every city in the country, including the capital city.

The manure on the dirt streets (such as High Street in Jefferson City) attracted flies by the thousands, millions.  New York once estimated that three-billion flies were hatched from street poop every day.  They were disease carriers. The dust from the streets and the dried manure mingled in the air, was inhaled and worn on the clothing.

And when it rained in the summer or when the show thawed in the winter, the streets turned into a gluey muck that was tracked into every business and home in town—except for the ones that required footwear to be removed before or upon entering—at which point socks that weren’t changed daily added their own atmosphere to life.

These conditions led to the rise in some communities of a new institution—the country club.  People needed a place in the country where they could breathe clean air, at least for a day or two.  Golf courses and horse-racing tracks developed outside of towns.

Missouri Governor Herbert Hadley, who suffered from a lung disease—pleurisy—bought a farm west of town and several prominent residents gathered one weekend for a big barn raising and cabin-building.  Later, a nine-hole golf course was created and thus was born the Jefferson City Country Club.

Sanitary sewer systems were rare. Homes had outhouses, often not far from the well that provided the house with water.

If we went back 150 years and took a drink of the water of the day, we probably would choke on the taste and if we dank a little too much, we might just die of a water-borne disease.  Even with natural immunity that residents of those times developed, the average life expectancy in the United States in 1880 was 40, a good part of it because of high infant mortality and primitive obstetrics that led to high mortality rates for women giving birth.

We forget how tough, how strong, our ancestors had to be to survive in such an environment.  The Missouri State Penitentiary kept a log of every Confederate prisoner it took in.  The average prisoner was 5-feet-7 and weighed 140 pounds.  Women prisoners averaged 4-feet-11.

Imagine wearing a wool uniform, marching ten or 20 miles a day carrying a heavy rifle and a 50-pound backpack, eating unrefrigerated rations and drinking whatever water you could find, even if it was downstream from a cattle farm.

The good old days weren’t very good.  The problem with going back to them is that we might not live long enough to return.

 

There comes a time……

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

We normally talk about sports in these Tuesday entries but today we’re going to talk about a universal issue many who are not sports figures face.  Sports is the most obvious example, but the issue is common to all.

Sooner or later, we all have to face the fact that we have lost that fine edge that has enabled us to participate or compete at a high level in our careers.  For some it is a competitive fire.  For others it is acute enthusiasm for a job, a dulling of the drive for excellence. For others it is the onset of fatigue, the lessening of energy to do assigned tasks that might seem mundane to others but are important in the world in which the individual lives and works.

In sports it’s sometimes called “the loss of a step.”

The desire to continue something although one is no longer capable of doing the best work is common, even something so common as driving a car, an issue that is instantly uncomfortable and often hurtful in relations between parents and children.

The issue is played out most publicly in sports where retirement age comes early.

As we watch sports, we see the players as timeless, ageless, figures.  When they depart from the scene we watch from the grandstands or from our television sets as new uniformed figures take their place.  But sports are filled with the drama of aging and the surprise realization that someone who is 40 is old.

And it is a surprise to those who remember them that they are so old when they die—Heisman Trophy winner Charles White was 64 this year and Oakland A’s outfielder Sal Bando was 78. New York Knicks center Willis Reed was 80; Vida Blue, 73; and arguably the NFL’s greatest running back, Jim Brown was 87.

How can that be?

it is because memory is in the moment.  We see these people in our minds as they were when they were in the heat of battle.  How can they have gotten so old?

It is because the game, whatever game it is, is eternal and its participants are frozen in memory as they were.  We advance in years but our memories of them do not change. We are surprised that they have aged at the same rate we have.

Image it from the other side.  Imagine you are 40.  And you are old.  And you face leaving the arena because you aren’t good enough to be in it anymore. The game is ageless but you are not.

Our two major league baseball teams are dealing with this issue.  It’s most obvious with the Cardinals because they are dealing with high expectations this year. The stakes are less for the Royals, from whom not much was expected in 2023.

Both teams have pitchers who are, or who are becoming, shadows of themselves in their glory days.

A look at the Cardinals statistics after their trip to London lists nineteen pitchers used this year, based on earned run average.

Nineteenth on the list is Adam Wainwright, who is 3-2 in his nine starts this year. His ERA after his disastrous start against the Cubs in London is 6.56.  He has pitched 46.2 innings in those  nine starts. He’s allowed 71 hits and has given up 14 walks. He has struck out 24 batters.

85 base runners in 46 innings in nine games.  He’s averaging five innings a start.  He was hoping to win his 199th career victory on Saturday.  He wants to finish his career with 200.

He is part of a pitching staff working hard to rise to mediocrity.  The pitching staff’s overall ERA is 4.43, hardly contender level.  Even Jack Flaherty, counted on to be the staff ace despite his injury history and MIA status during most of last year, is at 4.95 and has a losing record at 4-5. Only one Cardinals pitcher has a winning record. And he’s being mentioned in the numerous entries by various speculators as possible trade bait as the Cardinals look for a physical magic bullet that will save 2023 for them.

Wainwright will be 42 before the season ends. He is the third-oldest player on an active major league roster behind Pittsburgh pitcher Rich Hill, who is 43, and San Diego DH Nelson Cruz, who will be 43 on July l.  The eighth-oldest active major league is Royals pitcher Zack Greinke, who is 39 (forty in October).

Greinke lasted 4.2 innings last Friday, gave up nine hits and a walk and dropped to 1-8 for the season. His ERA is 5.31 as we write this.  In sixteen games, he’s lasted 81.1 innings. He’s given up 89 hits and 11 walks, 100 baserunners in those 81 innings. His stats are similar to Wainwright’s, remembering that Wainwright’s season start was delayed by injury.

Wainwright’s situation is attracting more attention because the expectations for the Cardinals this year were light years greater than those of the Royals.  But neither is having the kind of retirement season they want; neither is providing a veterans’ spark for their teams.

For most of us, stepping away from what we have loved to do during our working lives comes at an advanced age.  It would certainly seem to be easier when you are 65 or 70 or more than to realize you can’t keep up any more and you’re only 40 or 42 or in many cases, even younger.

We focus on Wainwright today because more was expected of his team—and him—this year.

Wainwright is a painful problem for the Cardinals. Each start in a season where every game is growing in importance is a crap shoot now.  Sentimentally, it would be a shame for him to come up short of his personal career goal. But there comes a time when sentiment doesn’t outweigh winning.

This isn’t like an office. Millions of people including tens of thousands in the grandstands are not watching the deterioration of talent in an office.  The personal goal of one player cannot outweigh the necessity of success by an entire team.

It is not beyond possible that Wainwright or Greinke could be a small part of a trade although they won’t bring much in the baseball market this year.

It is not likely to be much comfort to Wainwright, but here are some guys, among many, whose baseball cards we once had or would have gotten if we’d continued collecting who came up short of 200 wins: Trevor Hoffman  197; Claude Osteen 196; Larry Jackson,  David Cone and Dwight Gooden 194.  There also are a bunch of old-timers, some who are in Cooperstown, who didn’t get there.

42 years old.  And you’re too old to play a game you’ve played since you were in single digits. Both Wainwright and Greinke had announced earlier this would be their last years.  Now, perhaps, the lyrics of a popular sing might be making themselves heard, ever so softly in the backs of their minds.”

“Should I stay or should I go?”

And the opposite surely has crossed the mind of management, especially the Cardinals management—“Should he stay or should we let him go?”  Are these roster spots better filled with players of the future rather than shadows of the past?

The poet A. E. Housman wrote many years ago of those who “slip away from fields where glory does not stay,” and recalled, “Early though the laurel grows it withers quicker than the rose.”

The game Wainwright and Greinke are playing this year after their glory has fled and their laurels have withered is one that many fans will think is one game too many. And the Cardinals are running out of time to play with sentiment.

-0-

Okay, now let’s get to the box scores. This is Tuesday, and it is sports day, after all.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals split two home games with the Cubs. But they had to go to London to play those games.  The Cardinals are playing .500 ball in their last ten games, a noticeable improvement. They split four during the weekend and went 5-5 in their last ten games, a step up from earlier results. But the ‘Birds were still 32-45 as they returned from London, last in their division, third worst in the league behind the Rockies and the Padres.

(ROYALS)—The Royals have had a relatively successful 10 game run.  Four of their 22 victories have come during that time and they finished the weekend by splitting four with Tampa Bay, the team with the best record in the league. The Royals have failed to win ll straight series.

On to Racing:

(NASCAR)—Ever get hit by a flying chunk of watermelon?  Your correspondent has—a couple of weekends ago when NASCAR visited Worldwide Technology Raceway and driver Clay Chastain, with help from the irrepressible Kenny Wallace smashed a watermelon during a pre-race stage show and threw the pieces into the audience.

One of them hit my shin.  I asked some nearby fans if they wanted to take it and get Chastain to autograph it but nobody was interested so I took it to the nearest trash container.

Chastain, a fourth-generation watermelon farmer, likes to climb on top of his car if he’s won a race and hurl a big green watermelon onto the track, smashing it t the finish line.

He didn’t get the chance at WWTR but he did get the chance Sunday at Nashville when he finished eight-tenths of a second ahead of Martin Truex Jr., who picked up his fourth straight top five finish of the year. It was a “perfect” race for Chastain, who got his third Cup win.  He started from the pole for the first time and led the most laps (99 of the 300) on the 1.33-mile Nashville Fairgrounds track.

Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, and Kyle Larson filled the top five slots.

Elliott has to win to get into the chase for his second championship. A victory is his only way in to the playoffs because he has missed seven of the 17 races this year, six because of injury, and one more because of a one-race suspension for an in-race incident with Hamlin.

NASCAR takes to the streets of Chicago for the first time next weekend.  It’s the first time the series has ever run a street race, which is more common in INDYCAR.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR competitors hope to chip away at Alex Palou’s 74-point huge championship points lead when they run at Mid-Ohio this weekend, starting the second half of the series season.

(FORMULA1)—The Grand Prix of Austria is next on the F1 schedule.