Category Archives: baseball

Sports: Baseball playoffs; Tigers & Chiefs; NASCAR playoffs

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(Baseball)—Well, that sure didn’t take very long, did it?  Two and out for the Cardinals whose big bats went one for fifteen and whose most solid relief pitcher’s finger apparently couldn’t last two innings.  Albert and Yadi went out with base hits in their last times at bat—a fitting conclusion to their careers.

In years to come, young men in the grandstands will be telling their grandchildren, “Yes, I saw Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina play baseball,” much as THEIR grandfathers told them, “I saw Mantle and Musial and Williams” or “Gibson and Marichal and Clemens.”

Across the state, the Royals are looking for a new manager and a new pitching coach.  And some better talent.

In the meantime the playoffs continue although a lot of people no longer care.

(Tigers)—The Missouri Tigers are playing just well enough to drive their fans nuts.  They’re off this week after losing three games they could have won.  This is a team that appears capable of winning only if they play mistake-free.  The break comes at a good time.

(Chiefs)—The Oakland/Los Angeles/Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders played the Kansas City Chiefs (ex-Dallas Texans) for the 127th time last night.  The Chiefs spotted the Raiders the first 17 points then worked their way back into the lead thanks to four short-yardage touchdowns by Travis Kelce, tying a team record and a 59-yard franchise-record field goal from substitute kicker Matthew Wright.  The hinge point of the game came when Wright missed a field goal but the Raiders were called for defensive holding, giving Kansas City a first down and keeping a drive alive that turned into a TD.

Both teams failed on two-points-after efforts and the Chiefs with only a 30-29 lead had to turn the ball over with less than three minutes left. Las Vegas couldn’t get close enough for a winning field goal and the Chiefs get away with a 4-1 record to start the season.

The Chiefs are now 71-54-2 against  O/LA/O/LV.

Now, on to another kind of playoffs:

(NASCAR)—The number of drivers who can win the NASCAR championship has been cut to eight after a competitive and contentious race on the Charlotte Roval—the combination oval and road course.

And in a season known for its unlikely turnouts, Christopher Bell’s victory fits right in.  He had to win to make the round of eight—and he did thanks to pit strategy that gave him fresh tires that let him clear Kevin Harvick on a restart and then pull away for the victory.

On-track incidents turned the day around for several contenders, none so much as 2021 champion Kyle Larson who hit the wall and broke a rear suspension piece on his car. The repairs were made but he was unable to regain enough positions to make the semi-final round. He fell two points short of Chase Briscoe, who had his own adventure when he spun with five laps to go but was able to recover to finish 9th, just enough to move into the next round.

Bell went into the race 33 points below the cut line with no chance to advance unless he finished first. “We were just there at the right time,” he said. “We rolled the dice, gambled, and it paid off for us.”

Also not making the cut was rookie Austin Cindric, the winner of the Daytona 500 at the start of the year. Daniel Suarez lost his power steering but muscled the car to the finish. Unfortunately his finish was 36th, knocking him out of the playoffs, too. Alex Bowman missed his second straight race because of a concussion and is the fourth driver eliminated,

Moving ahead are Chase Eliott, Joey Logano, Ross Chastain, Bell, Ryan Blaney, William Byron, Deny Hamlin, and Briscoe.  The field will be cut to four after three more races and the champion will be decided in the last race of the year. Whichever driver in the final four has the best finish in the last race will wear the crown.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen raced through a deluge that sometimes left visibility on Japan’s Suzuka Circuit to win his twelfth race in eighteen starts this year and wrap up his second F1 championship.  The race was halted after the first two laps because of the downpour.  His championship was clinched because initial runner-up Charles LeClerc was assessed a five-second penalty that dropped him to third place.  The result leaves Verstappen 113 points in the lead with four races to go, a margin impossible for LeClerc to make up.

Verstappen becomes only the third driver in F1 history to lock up a title with four races left.  Michael Schumacher and Sebastien Vettel are the only other drivers to dominate a season as he has done this year.

(Photo Credit: Bob Priddy, Bell at WWTR)

Notes from a Quiet Street (Baseball Playoffs Edition)

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We were pretty sure that when Albert Pujols left the Cardinals after the 2011 that we had seen his best years, that he was on the downhill side of his greatness.  His batting average dropped below .300 that year. His home run total was down a little but most annoying was that he led the league by grounding into 29 double plays.  He had that one wonderful day in the World Series against Texas when he hit three home runs but he was only 3 for 22 the rest of the way.

And we watched as he played for the California Angels and was never The Albert of his Cardinals days. Injuries that we started to see at the end of his Cardinals Career dogged him in California.

And when he came back to St. Louis—mostly for sentimental reasons, it seemed in the spring—we were glad to see him finish things up in the uniform in which he had had his most wonderful years.  But, be honest, who among us was expecting anything more than one old guy (old at 42 can only happen in pro sports) playing out the string in the warmth of the love of Cardinals fans and their memories?

There might even have been some thoughts in the first half of the season that Albert should retire so a younger guy could fill a roster spot and maybe add some life to the team.

At the All-Star break, it seemed that that was all there was to it.  A farewell tour for a beloved n Cardinals player.  He was hitting only .215. Only six of his hits left the yard. He had driven in only 20 runs. The Cardinals were becalmed at 50-44.

Albert got a special (again, probably sentimental) invitation to the All-Star Home Run Derby and surprised himself and just about everybody else in the opening round by out-homering the National League home run leader and top seed, Kyle Schwarber.

Maybe it was because he had made a little adjustment to his swing just before the break. Maybe it was because of the emotional uplift he got at the All-Star game in Los Angeles.  Whatever happened, Albert became The Machine again.

He came back from that high and became the Albert we remembered.  From then on he hit .323 with 18 often dramatic home runs and 48 often crucial runs batted in and the Cardinals went 43-25 to walk away from Milwaukee.

And Albert got to 700 home runs, with three more thrown in for good measure.

Somebody else is likely to win the National League Most Valuable Player Award this year, but it’s hard to think of anyone who meant more to his team in the last half of the year than Albert Pujols did for the Cardinals.

Now we have the playoffs.  In 29 National League Division Series games, Albert has hit .320. In the 37 National League Championship Series games he has played, he has hit .367 with ten home runs and 27 RBI.

And he’s feeling good going into the playoffs this year, maybe for the first time in a long time.

We have only a few games left to cherish him. But we will.  And will he give us a few more memories?  We’d be surprised if he didn’t.

And the same goes for Yadier Molina. Most games as a catcher for one team in major league history.  The eighth catcher with 2,000 hits and 1,000 home runs, tenth most hits by any catcher. The other seven are in Cooperstown, as he will be, perhaps a first-ballot admission with Albert in a few years. Nobody on a major league roster today can match his 40.3% caught-stealing percentage. Nine gold gloves.

And the playoffs are his playground, too.  In 21 World Series games, he has hit .328.

He is a commanding presence on the field, dangerous at the plate, in control of the pitches.

They will leave the game together.  We hope they go to Cooperstown together.

THE FIRST ROUND

If we look at the Cardinals starting pitching, it’s hard to see how they got here.  Miles Mikolas went 12-13.  Adam Wainright was 11-12.  Jordan Hicks was just 3-6; Steven Matz was hurt and was only 5-3.  Jack Flaherty was MIA until lately. Dakota Hudson was only 8-7. Jordan Montgomery came over and went 6-3.

The Cardinals used 28 pitchers this year.  28.  Their biggest winners were losers who accounted for only 23 of the team’s 93 wins.

But the bullpen had Ryan Helsley who went 9-1. Jake Woodford was undefeated in four appearances. Chris Stratton was 5-0. Three guys, 18-1.

That kind of thing might work out in a 162-game season.  But in playoff games?

The birds on the bat might need some rabbits in the hat on the pitcher’s mound.

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STATE:

There was no magic.  Only another dreary year.  But at least—-

The Kansas City Royals did not lose 100 games this year but that is not a distinction that enabled people to keep their jobs.  Mike Matheny is out as manager. Cal Eldred is gone as pitching coach. Dayton Moore has been dumped as general manager.

While the Cardinals have a tradition of winning, the Royals have built a tradition of being one of baseball’s worst teams, year in and year out.

The Royals have had winning seasons only four times in the last twenty years.  They were a .500 team in 2016 after the three-year buildup to their World Series win in 2015.  The only other winning season in that two-decade span was 2003.   They have had six straight losing seasons and they’ve lost 100 games four times in that 20-year span.

It’s been five years since the Royals saw two-million tickets sold for their games. The last time the Royals drew fewer fans was 1995.  This year was only the third year since 1981 that the Royals drew fewer than 1.3 million fans.

Could be a busy off-season on the west side.

THE DAYS DWINDLE DOWN

—to a precious few now, a few more precious days with that wonderful game and those who conclude the autumn of their years in it.

If the World Series goes to seven games, it will end on November 5.

The Kansas City Royals play the first exhibition game of the Cactus League on February 24, 2023 against Texas.  That’s only 112 days after the World Series could end, 2,664 hours (give or take a few).   The Grapefruit League opens with a full schedule the next day with the Senators against the Cardinals.

113 days.

And then we’ll be able to watch the game again, as “if…dipped in magic waters.”

But first we get to see Albert and Yadi—and maybe some others—-who, as is written in Ecclesiastes—“were honored in their generations and were the glory of their times” just a little more.

 

 

Sports—Albert makes it; Aaron ties it as the season reaches its final games; and a contender finally wins a NASCAR race

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BASEBALL)—Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina, and Adam Wainwright walked off the field together in the fifth inning of Sunday’s game against the Pirates, the last regular season game Pujols and Molina will play.  Wainwright, who has struggled in the last month of the season, has not announced if he’ll be back next year.

Pujols hit one more for the home folks, his 702nd home run, then added his 703rd last night in the sixth inning in Pittburgh, putting him past Babe Ruth into second place in the all-time runs batted in list (only Hank Aaron has more).

His 24 home runs in his final year is the most homers he’s had in  season since he hit 31 for the California Angels in 2016.

The Cardinals lost to the Pirates in St. Louis Sunday, then headed to Pittsburgh for the last three games of the regular season. The Cardinals went into the last series of the regular season with a chance to finish above .500 on the road. They were 39-39 going in.

AARON JUDGE was in a tie with Roger Maris for the American League home run record as the Yankees opened a four-game final series with the Rangers. Judge got his 61st home run last week.  Roger Maris Jr., says Judge should be considered the Major League home run record-holder if he gets his 62nd homer before the season’s end.  Maris says Bobby Bonds’ 73 homers and the 70 hit by Mark McGwire should be in a separate category because both used performance-enhancing drugs.  Maris says Major League Baseball “should do the right thing” and consider Judge the home run king if he gets to 62.

Maris has become more vocal as Judge has approached his dad’s American League record. Many might remember that, in 1998, he had no qualms celebrating McGwire’s year.

As far as Judge is concerned, Bonds deserves the crown.

PLAYOFFS—The playoffs begin Friday.  The Cardinals entered their last series not knowing who their opponent would be in the best-of-three game series.

(NASCAR)—Finally, a playoff driver has won a playoff race.  Chase Elliott is the first playoff contender to lock in a position in the next round of the playoffs by winning a race, in this case a thriller at Talladega. Elliott got a last-lap push from Erik Jones to gain a slight edge on Ryan Blaney and led Blaney to the finish line by less than .05 of a second.

It’s Elliott’s fifth win of the season, the most of any driver.  The race became a two-lap shootout after Daniel Hemeric stopped on the track with engine trouble.  “It was a wild last couple laps,” Elliott said. Elliott was the last of seventeen drivers to lead the race, which featured 57 lead changes, the most in any single race this year. And the win is a big relief to him.  After crashing out of the previous race at Texas and finishing 32nd, Elliott went into the race 8th in points. Only eight drivers will transition into the semifinal round after next weekend’s race on the Charlotte Roval (combination of oval and road course). He’s the first playoff contender to win a playoff race this year.  Non-contenders had swept the first four races.

Austin Cindric and Chase Briscoe are tied for the eighth playoff spot.  William Byron and Christopher Bell also are on the outside looking in.  Alex Bowman skipped the Talladega race because of a concussion he suffered at Texas the previous week. He’ll be re-evaluated this week to see if he can run at Charlotte but he is so far behind in the points standings that he will need a victory to advance.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR has announced a 17-race schedule for 2023 with several of the races within reach of Missourians, depending on where they live.

The season begins, as usual, on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida on March 5. They’ll race at the Texas Motor Speedway on April 2, run the Indianapolis road course on May 13 and the Indianapolis 500 on the 28th. The series returns to the Iowa Speedway for a double-header on July 22-23, then goes to Nashville on August 6 and back to the Indianapolis road course on the 12th.  The drivers will return to World Wide Technology Raceway near St. Louis on August 27th for the 15th race of the season and, if the past is an indicator of the future, the championship chase tight going into the last two races of the yearThey’ll race at the Texas Motor Speedway on April 2, run the Indianapolis road course on May 13 and the Indianapolis 500 on the 28th. The series returns to the Iowa Speedway for a double-header on July 22-23, then goes to Nashville on August 6 and back to the Indianapolis road course on the 12th.  The drivers will return to World Wide Technology Raceway near St. Louis on August 27th for the 15th race of the season and, if the past is an indicator of the future, the championship chase tight going into the last two races of the year.

FORMULA 1)—Sergio Perez picked up a history win in the Grand Prix of Singapore, becoming the first driver since 2011 to win both of Formula 1’s street races in the same year. He won at Monaco earlier. He also became the 58th driver in F1 history to lead flag to flag.

Ferrari failed to win for the sixth race in a row but its drivers, Charles LeClerc and Carlos Sainz took the two podium positions behind Perez.

Season points leader Max Verstappen saw his five-straight wins streak snapped. He had a poor start, spun during the race, and finished 7th.

The race was the 350th grand prix start for two-time Formula 1 champion Fernando Alonso, the first driver to achieve that number of races.  Unfortunately, he was unable to finish.

Five races remain in the Formula 1 schedule.

 

Sports—Numbers, Numbers, Numbers

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(Baseball)—Albert got his.  Judge has ten games left to get his.   Landmark home runs.

Albert Pujols ended the suspense and the run to 700 home runs with two of them off two Dodger pitchers Friday night, running his season total to 21. It’s the fourth multi-homer game for him since turning 42, the most by player 42 or older in major league history.

The San Francisco Giants, in the field during their game against the Diamondbacks, stopped the action to watch him hit 700.  It is his 18th season with 20 or more homers. Only Henry Aaron and Bobby Bonds have more (Bonds, 19 and Aaron 20)

He didn’t get the ball back and that’s fine with him. The fan who caught it got it certified by MLB officials and left the stadium.  We’ve heard him say something similar before:

“Souvenirs are for the fans. I don’t have any problem if they want to keep it. If they want to give it back, that’s great. But at the end of the day, I don’t focus on material stuff.”

Babe Ruth is next and out of reach with eight games left.

AARON JUDGE heads into the last ten games on the Yankees schedule stuck on 60 home runs.  His last blast was September 20.  He needs two to break Roger Maris’ 61-year old American League record of 61. Judge, who is 30, is unlikely to join Pujols in the 700 home run club. He would have to average about 49 homers a year in the next decade to get there.

His home runs might be overshadowing the extraordinary season he is otherwise having.  Through the weekend he was hitting .314, with 128 runs batted in. However, his 165 strikeouts are the highest since his rookie season when he fanned 208 times (while hitting 52 home runs).  He has 99 walks this year, the most since 127 in that rookie year.

UPDATE:  Cardinals head into the closing days of the season with 65 losses.  The Royals head into the closing days of the season with 63 wins.

(NASCAR)—Bigger news, probably, than the latest scramble that was the latest Cup playoff race is word that Jimmie Johnson is done as a fulltime driver, regardless of whether the car has fenders.  Johnson announced yesterday. His retirement leaves the 48-INDYCAR seat open at Chip Ganassi Racing. Ganassi says the door will be open for Johnson’s return, perhaps for a second shot at the Indianapolis 500.

Johnson, approachable and chatting with fans before the start of the INDYCAR race at World Wide Technologies Raceway near St. Louis, won seven NASCAR championships, five of them in a row, driving the number 48 for Hendrick Motorsports.

Johnson has been promised continued sponsorship support from Carvana for whatever kind of racing he wants to do in ’23. Johnson has indicated he’d like to run the 24 Hours of LeMans but hasn’t said if he’d like another shot at Indianapolis.  But, at 47, he says he realizes the value of more time for himself, wife Chani and daughters Evie and Lydia.

Johnson’s INDYCAR career seldom saw him competitive, especially on road courses. His best finish in any race in the two years on the circuit was fifth in one of the double-headers at Iowa Speedway.

(NASCAR—THE CUP)—Tyler Reddick waited a week too long to win a NASCAR playoff race this year.  He was one of four drivers eliminated after the first three playoff races.  But race four in the playoffs was his to take.  And he took it.

(Reddick with fans in the pits before the NASCAR race at Indianapolis this year)

Reddick’s victory at Texas is his first on an oval course.  He has two road-course wins. Reddick had moved to the point on the 281st of the 334 laps, gave up the led during last pit stops to Joey Logano, but took the lead back after one lap and beat Logano to the finish by 1.2 seconds. He admitted being concerned about his tires as the laps wound down in a race where tire failures again spoiled several drivers’ days and were a major contributed to the record number of yellow flags—16.

Playoff points leader Chase Elliott was leading when “something came apart,” and he went into the wall, ending his day in 32nd place and dropping from first to ninth in the playoff standings.  He’s now just four points above the cut line to advance to the final eight in two more races.

Christopher Bell, the only playoff driver with top fives in the first three playoff races, also was a tire victim. He started the race as the sixth-seed and dropped to 11th in the playoff standings after tire trouble put him 34th at the end.

Martin Truex Jr., and Kevin Harvick also had tire problems while leading.

Chaotic races such as this one often gives drivers usually found in mid-to-back of the field a chance to finish far above their status—Justin Haley, for example, was third, ahead of playoff drivers Ryan Blaney and Chase Briscoe,

If drivers and fans are looking for a reduced-chaos race, they’ll have to wait past this weekend when the NASCAR show goes to the high banks of Talladega.

(Photo Credits: Bob Priddy)

 

Sports: Four-gone conclusion to NASCAR first round; Some dashed hopes in INDYCAR; and a homer watch

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BASEBALL)—Some teams are watching their magic numbers dwindle for pennant-clinching.  But many fans are waiting to see magic numbers for two great hitters, one in the full flower of his career and the other watching the shadows move closer.

(PUJOLS)—Albert Pujols continues to add drama to each home run as he heads toward 700 for his career.  Friday night, with his team down by two runs, Pujols blasted a 427-foot shot into the left field stands for number 698.  Five of his six recent home runs either have tied games or given the Cardinals the lead as they went into this week with a magic number of their own: eight.

His renaissance since the all-Star break has been a key in the St. Louis drive for a divisional championship. In games in which Pujols has homered, the Cardinals are 15-1.

Baseball being a game of statistics, here are some about Pujols going into the last 14 games of his career.  His home run off the Reds’ Raynel Espinel was the 89th first-pitch homer of his career.  He has ten more when the count is 1-1 and 92 when he took the first pitch for a ball.

Raynel is the 453rd pitcher to give up a Pujols home run. Pujols hit the first pitch he saw from Espinal for a home run Friday. It was the 89th first-pitch home run of Pujols’ career. The only counts where he’s hit more home runs have come on 1-1 (99 HRs) and 1-0 (92).

His home run off Espinal was his 49th career home run against the Reds.  He has 62 against the Astros, 59 against the Cubs and another 54 against the Pirates.

He admits he’s feeding off the excitement of the crowd.  “I can feel that energy,” he said Sunday, “and when I’m going out there and performing, I’m going out here to represent God, this organization, and also my country.  I want to make my country proud every single day that I step onto that field.”

(JUDGE)—Sometime this week, the Yankees’ Aaron Judge is likely to catch former Cardinal outfielder Roger Maris’s American League home run record.

It’s a record often overlooked because of the overall record set first by the Cardinals Mark McGwire and then eclipsed by Barry Bonds of the Giants.

But Maris’ record set 61 years ago this year, is likely to fall to Judge, who upped his total to 59 Sunday with two homers against the Brewers.  Judge brushes off repeated questions about whether can do it. “We’ve got some big games coming up. That’s really the only thing on my mind,” he said Sunday night.

Maris took a lot of heat in 1961 about whether his 61 home runs really beat Babe Ruth’s 34-year old record of 60. That was the first year the American League went to the 162-game schedule. The National League followed suit in 1962.  Baseball commissioner Ford Frick decided Maris did not really break The Babe’s record because he didn’t hit number 61 until the 162nd game. He ordered an asterisk attached the Maris record because Ruth set his record in a 154-game season.

As of the end of Sunday’s games, the Yankees had played 146 games.  Judge is on course to break the Maris record—and the Ruth record.

However, if you want to get picky about it, Ruth only played 151 games in 1927.

Many do not remember (it has been sixty years and more, after all) that Maris bracketed his Yankee years by playing for both Missouri teams.  He was traded by the then-Cleveland Indians to the Kansas City Athletics in 1968 and after the 1959 season went to the Yankees.  He played his last two seasons in St. Louis, 1967-68.

(THE SEASON RECORD)—To update you on the question we asked last week: Will the Royals win more games this year than the Cardinals lose?  After Sunday’s game, the Royals were 58-89. The cardinals were 87-61.

(NASCAR)—The chaotic first round of NASCAR playoffs has come to a chaotic end with Chris Buescher winning the night race at Bristol, ending a 222-race winless streak and giving Roush-Fenway-Keselowski Racing its first checkered flag.

The last time the once-proud Roush Racing organization won a Cup rate was July, 2017. Roush Racing became Roush-Fenway in 2007 when the Fenway Sports Group bought in, It added the “K” this year when driver Brad Keselowski bought in.

For a time it appeared Keselowski would be the one to claim the teams’ first win.  But a flat tie with 87 laps to go took him out of the lead. He finished 13th.

Buescher is the third non-playoff driver to win a race in the three-race first round of the playoffs, a first-time record.  He’s the 19th driver to win a race this year, the most in a half-century.  He took the lead from Christopher Bell with 61 laps left and held off Chase Elliott the rest of the way.

The race eliminated four competitors from the playoffs.  2014 champion Kevin Harvick, needing a win, was in contention until a tire change problem in his last pit stop dropped him to tenth.  Two-time champion Kyle Busch, clinging to a playoff spot, lost an engine for the second time in three races and finished 34th.  Childress Racing teammates Austin Dillon and Tyler Reddick were caught in a 12-car wreck just past the halfway point. Dillon was 31st and Reddick kept going to finish 25th.

Chase Elliott, who finished about a half-second behind Buescher, goes into the second three-race series of playoffs as the top seed. Joey Logano, Ross Chastain, Kyle Larson, William Byron, Denny Hamlin, Bell, Ryan Blaney, Chase Briscoe, Alex Bowman, Daniel Suarez, and rookie Austin Cindric  make up the rest of the field.

The first race of round two will be at the Texas Motor Speedway.

(INDYCAR)—Hopes of INDYCAR driver Colton Herta that he might be in Formula 1 next year have been dashed by F1’s administrative body, prompting strong criticism from both INDYCAR and Formula 1 drivers and teams.

F1 relies on a points system to determine who can have a Superlicense to compete.  The system requires 40 points and Herta has only 32. Despite efforts by Red Bull, the dominant F1 team this year, to get a waiver for Herta, administrators have refused.

Herta, how 22, won his first INDYCAR race four years ago at 18, the youngest driver in INDYCAR history to win in the series.  He drives for Andretti Autosport, which had hoped to get permission to run an F1 team in 2023. But that bid was rejected by the sanctioning body and by other teams. McLaren signed Herta as a development driver for 2022, giving him opportunities to practice in Formula 1 cars.  Alfa Tauri had considered providing a seat for him next year. But all of those efforts have gone by the boards.

Herta will remain with Andretti in the INDYCAR series in 2023.  He had a win, two poles, five top five finishes, and eight top tens to finish in a tie for 9th in the final standings.

(Photo credits; Bob Priddy, Jim Coleman)