Category Archives: baseball

Sports:  It’s Not a Dance; Battlehawks Mania; Diamond Fun in the Spring; Two straight at the track.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(NCAA)—First, let’s wish that sportscasters (and others, but mostly sportscasters who have a tendency to use worn-out phrases more often than normal people) would quit referring to the NCAA men’s tournament as “The Big Dance.”  It’s not a dance unless you consider bunches of heavily-perspiring big people running, jumping, and banging into each other on a basketball court a weird dance of some kind.

We would say the same thing about the women’s tournament except that our grandmother once told us, “Horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies glow.”

Now, having gotten that off of our chests, we can move along to:

(MIZ)—The Missouri Tigers will beat Utah State in the first round of the NCAA Mens’ Tournament, at 12:40 p.m. Thursday.  If they win, they’ll get either second-seed Arizona or (unlikely but not impossible) Princeton.  It’s a TNT cable game. The Tigers are seeded seventh. Utah State, a Mountain West Conference Team, is 26-8. The Tigers are 24-9.

While the menfolk will be playing in Sacramento, California, the womenfolk will play Illinois State from the Missouri Valley Conference Thursday evening at 7 in the Women’s NIT.  Missouri finished the regular season at 17-13.  Illinois State is 24-8. Missouri will have the home-court advantage, playing in Columbia.  They’ll try to avoid a third straight first-round loss. (ZOU)

(OTHER ROUNDBALL)—The Southeast Missouri State Redhawks will meet Texas A&M-Corpus Christi this evening in the play-i1n game for the NCAA men’s tournament.  The winner becomes the 16th seed, which earns it the honor of playing #1 Alabama. The Red Hawks are 19-16 after winning the Ohio Valley Conference tournament.  A&M-CC is 23-10 and won the Southland Conference tournament. Game time is 5:40.

Missouri State women will go to Omaha to open the Women’s NCAA Tournament at 6 p.m. tomorrow night.  The WNIT does not seed teams.  Missouri State Lady Bears went 20-11 n the regular season, fourth in the Missouri Valley. Nebraska is the Big Ten automatic qualifier because it had the best record of any conference teams not invited to the Women’s NCAA. Nebraska is 16-14.

(FOOTBALL)—Before the first edition of the XFL folded, St. Louis fans had enthusiastically adopted the team.  The new version of the league and the team have picked up right where that left off.  The largest crowd in XFL history—and the largest crowd for any spring pro football game—38,310 fans—watched the Battlehawks whip the Arlington Renegades 24-11, running their record to 3-1.

Quarterback A. J. McCarron was 14 of 27 for 214 yards and a pair of interceptions. Running Back Brian Hill had 115 all-purpose yards.

(BASEBALL)—Both of our teams continue to play strong spring baseball although both are missing some key players who are taking part in the World Baseball Congress championship. Kansas City is 14-2, tops in the Cactus League. Boston leads the Grapefruit League but the Cardinals and the Blue Jays are kind of tied for second.  Toronto is 11-6 and the Cardinals are 9-5. Boston is on top at 9-4.

The Royals’ Bobby Witt Jr., is the youngest player on the USA team, the only one born in the 21st century.  Clubhouse talk is that the Royals phenom is on the road to greatness. Last year as a rookie he became the 5th player in major league history to hit 20 home runs and steal 30 bases in the same season before reaching 22 years old.

High praise has come from none other than the two biggest starts on the St. Louis Cardinals.  Third baseman Nolan Arenado says, “He’s already a star. He’s going to be a great one…He’s going to be a superstart in a matter of time.”

Adam Wainwright started the first game for the USA team, gave up a home run in the first inning against Great Britain that he blamed on “being kind of amped up.”  He says he “just had to get back under control, just a reset of the mind, go out there and make pitches.”  He did and the USA won 6-2, thanks in large part ot a 3-run homer by Kyle Schwarber.

But the USA got hammered by Mexico in the second game to drop to 1-1 in the start of the tournament.

Back in Florida, the Cardinals got a little scare when top prospect Jordan Walker slid awkwardly head-first into second base. He left the game but was examined in the clubhouse and found to be okay. The team said he didn’t need an MRI but was held out of the game on Sunday and should be back in the lineup today.

Now, the Racin’: Byron doubles up

(NASCAR)—William Byron took two tires while his closest competitors took four in the late-race pit stops, then held on to win his second NASCAR Cup race in a row.  Ryan Blaney and Tyler Reddick finished ahead of Kyle Larson and Kevin Harvick.  Larson had led more than two-thirds of the laps before Harvick passed him. Both lost positions during the last pit stop and could never challenge for the final couple of laps.

Harvick’s fifth-place finish marked the twentieth straight time he has finished in the top ten at Phoenix.

NASCAR has wrapped up its early-season west coast tour and heads to Atlanta next weekend.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 circuits sometimes have names and the one chosen for this fall’s race in Las Vegas has a fine double entendre name.  It’s “The Las Vegas Strip Circuit.”

No, not that kind of strip.  It commemorates the famous Las Vegas Strip that has been the citiy’s trademark center of gambling.   The race is November 18, the next-to-last race on the schedule. Ticket prices are for high-rollers.  A three-day standing-room only pass in the cheapest zone costs $500.  Paddock zone tickets sold out quickly at $15,000 a seat.

The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, event number two on this year’s schedule, is next weekend.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR doesn’t race again until April 16 when drivers take to the streets of Long Beach. Scott Dixon, who as third in the first race, tied Mario Andretti for the most top-five finishes in INDYCAR history.  It was his 193rd.  He’s a six-time series champion hoping he can equal A. J. Foyt’s record of seven. His 53 victories put him alone in second place. Only Foyt, with 67, has more.

Also in sight is Tony Kanaan’s consecutive start streak of 318 races.  Dixon stands at 306 with 16 races to go this year.

 

Sports: Who’s Next for Mizzou; Our Boys of Spring; Battlehawks Brawl; and Racin’

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(MIZ)—Missouri’s clutch victory over Ole Miss Saturday has earned the Tigers a double bye, meaning they won’t play until the Quarterfinals Friday afternoon. The opponent?  It might be Tennessee or maybe South Carolina—or maybe Ole Miss again.

Ole Miss, the 13th seed, plays South Carolina Wednesday night. The winner faces a short turn-around before playing Tennessee, the fifth seed, on Thursday afternoon.  The winner of that game plays Missouri.

Missouri has never reached the quarterfinals in the SEC Tournament—but their 11-7 conference record with tiebreakers over other 11-7 teams have put them there.  They have finished the regular season at 23-8 and they have shown they’re dangerous as the clock runs down. They have outscored their opponents through their first 31 games by only 5.3 points a game, a number that might surprise some folks who look at a 23-win team.

The Tigers’ four-game win streak going into the post-season seems not to be as impressive to the coaches who do weekly rankings.  Missouri is not one of their top 25 teams.  The Tigers are 30th.

College Football News, which swings to roundball in the off-season, projects Missouri as a number eight seed in the NCAA tournament.

And the NCAA doesn’t list the Tigers among its top 25 either.

A trio of big questions for Friday:  Will the Tigers come out a little rusty after the “long” layoff?  Can they play hot for both halves?  And will the failure of the coaches and the NCAA to think better of them be a motivator? (ZOU)

(BASEBALL)—The Kansas City Royals are the Cactus League leaders a full week into spring training.  The Royals are 9-2, including all six road games. They’re outscoring opponents 85-61, the largest run margin in the league. The Dodgers were 5-2 after the weekend; the Cubs 6-4; the Angels and White Sox 5-4.

The Cardinals are fourth in the Grapefruit League, trailing Boston, Houston, and Toronto.  St. Louis is 6-4

(BATTLING HAWKS)—Things got a little messy at the end of Sunday’s game between two of the unbeaten XFL teams—the St. Louis Battlehawks and the D. C. Defenders.  It became the highest-scoring game of the three-week old season.

St. Louis trailed 34-20 in the closing minutes but scored a touchdown and a two-point conversion.  That gave them an opportunity to maintain possession instead of trying for an onside kick.  XFL Rules say they have one play from their own 25 to pick up 15 yards and keep playing.  But Quarterback A. J. McCarron was sacked by D. C.’s Dalvin Bellamy, giving the Defenders the ball inside the St. Louis 20 as the clock ran down.

That’s when players from both sides went after each other.  After a few minutes, order was restored and two Defenders were ejected from the last few seconds. D. C. linebacker Francis Bernard and Defensive lineman Rod Taylor were thrown out, as was St. Louis running back Brian Hill.

The Defenders go to 3-0. The Battlehawks now are 2-1.

RACIN’

All three big-time racing series are underway for the 2023 racing season. INDYCAR and Formula 1 got rolling with INDYCAR on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida and F1 at the Bahrain Grand Prix.  And NASCAR went to the Busch brother’s home town.

(INDYCAR)—Marcus Ericsson, the winner of last year’s Indianapolis 500 stayed out of trouble and, has started 2023 with a win in a wild race on the street course at St. Petersburg.

Ericsson, who started fourth, finished 2.4 seconds ahead of Pato O’Ward. Six-time series champion Scott Dixon took the last podium position. Romain Grosjean, who started on pole, was one of those who dropped out because of what is called “contact” in racing.

A scary crash at the third turn of the race that saw Devlin DeFrancesco’s car airborne in a flat spin about twenty seconds after the first green flag. The crash eliminated DeFrancesco and four other drivers—500 winners Helio Castroneves and Simon Pagenaud, plus Santino Ferrucci and Benjamin Pederson.  The crash took out both Meyer Shank entries and both of A. J. Foyt’s team cars.

After other bumping, banging and visits to tire barriers that brought out four more cautions, Pato O’Ward appeared headed to victory when his engine briefly lost power, letting Ericsson through for the win.

INDYCAR will put the pieces back together to head to the high banks of the Texas Motor Speedway on April 2.

(NASCAR)—A race within the race made William Byron a winner at Las Vegas Sunday.  Byron, who led 176 of the race’s 271 laps, beat teammate Kyle Larson off pit road on the last stop with an overtime restart coming up. He got the jump on the green flag and beat Larson to the finish line by sixth-tenths of a second.  A third Hendrick driver, Alex Bowman, finished third.  Hendrick cars dominated the race, leading 239 of the laps.

Missing out on the fun was the fourth Hendrick driver, Chase Elliott, who’s going to miss out on a lot more fun because he broke a leg bone in a snowboarding incident Friday before the race. He underwent surgery and will start rehab work this week. He is expected to miss several races, however.

NASCAR moves to Phoenix next weekend to wrap up its early-season West Coast tour.

(FORMULA 1)—Already there is some frustration being voiced in F1 circles that Red Bull driver Max Verstappen will so dominate the sport again that fans will become bored and some will turn away.  Verstappen won the Grand Prix of Bahrain to kick off the season in defense of his 2022 championship.  Teammate Sergio Perez finished twelve seconds back. Two-time F1 champion Fernando Alonso was third driving for Aston Martin, a full 38 seconds behind Verstappen.

(photo credit: Bob Priddy at Gateway (WWTR), 2022)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sports: Clocks, Controversy and Records

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The opening contests of the spring sports seasons are being played out; so are the closing games of the regular college basketball season. The Cardinals are involved in problems with a handshake and a clock. The Tigers have a unique piece of Missouri basketball history to make. And history is made in NASCAR.

BASEBALL

(Cardinals, part one)—St. Louis Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol has triggered a controversy right out of the box in spring training by offering to shake hands with an umpire who chased him at the end of the last season.  Umpire C. B. Bucknor refused to shake hands with Marmol during the lineup card exchange before Saturday’s game, prompting Marmol later to accuse Bucknor of having a “lack of class as a man.”

Major League Baseball is looking into the incident.

The pitch clock is in play now and Cardinals reliever Giovanny Gallegos won’t be pitching until he shows he can pitch within the clock.   Gallegos was recognized as one of the slowest pitchers in the game last year and the Cardinals say he won’t pitch until he has the time to learn to pitch on time.  Baseball Savant rated Gallegos as averaging 25.8 seconds between pitches when nobody is on, and 30.6 seconds with runners aboard.  The pitch clock demands pitchers throw the ball within 15 seconds when the bases are empty. They have 20 seconds with runners aboard. A pitcher who fails to deliver will see a all awarded to the bater.

(Cardinals, part two)—The St. Louis Cardinals are 1-1 in the Grapefruit League after outhitting the Marlins 16-6 and outscoring them 8-2.  Hot Rookie Jordan Walker, normally a third baseman, is getting a full spring workout in the outfield because he’s unlikely to dislodge the Cardinals’ incumbent third baseman.  Walker, who starred at Springfield in Double-A last year, ripped a 430-foot home run and made a tough catch against the center field wall.

Brendan Donovan’s two-run homer in the third inning against the Washington Nationals on Saturday gave the Redbirds a 2-1 lead but the Nationals pushed across single runs in the eighth and ninth to win 3-2.

(Royals)—The Kansas City Royals have started the spring season 3-0 in the Cactus League, beatig the Texas Rangers twice and finishing with an 8-7 win against the Seattle Mariners Sunday.  The Royals got the jump with five runs in the first.

Kansas City beat the Rangers 6-5 on Friday with a ninth inning home run by Tucker Bradley, then followed up with a 10-5 win over the Rangers Saturday, scoring seven runs in the fourth inning.

BASKETBALL

(Mizzou)—The Tigers head into the last week of the regular season at 21-8, the most wins in a decade.  They wrap things up at LSU Wednesday and at home against Old Miss on Saturday.  The SEC tournament starts five days later in Nashville.

Dennis Gates has started his Missouri coaching career with nine more wins than his predecessor’s last year. Going back more than sixty years, Mizzou records show only Cuonzo Martin, whose first team finished with 12 more wins than Kim Anderson’s last  team, has had a bigger debut—in terms of wins.  Anderson had nine more wins than Frank Haith’s last team although fans will remember that Haith’s team forfeited all of its wins that year because of NCAA violations and officially ended 0-12.

Gates’ season so far is an unusual one. Unlike his predecessors dating back to Sparky Stalcup, Gates didn’t inherit much from his predecessor (for better or worse).  His team is mostly transfers.

(POST-MIZZOU)—Former Tiger coach Quin Snyder has a new job. He’s been hired as the coach of the Atlanta Hawks.  He’s 56 now, a veteran of the basketball wars, starting at Missouri where he took the Tigers to four NCAA tournaments and led the team to the Great Eight one year, the deepest Missouri has ever gone in the tournament. He was 126-91 at Missouri as Norm Stewart’s successor but he left under a cloud after the NCAA cited several violations.

Since then he has posted a 373-264 record as an NBA coach, all with the Utah Jazz.

RACIN’

(NASCAR)—Kyle Busch has wasted little time hanging up his first win for his new team, and a history-making win it was. Busch, who moved from Joe Gibbs to Richard Chidress Racing in the offseason, roared from the back of the field after an early-race pit road penalty, passed the dominant Ross Chastain late and beat Chase Elliott and Chastain to the line by three seconds. It’s his 61st win, ninth on the all-time list, and marks the 19th straight year he will have had at least one victory—breaking a tie with Richard Petty.

It also is the 95th Cup win for Kyle and Kurt Busch, breaking the record they had shared with Bobby and Donnie Allison for most wins on the Cup circuit by brothers.

Kevin Harvick, running his 750th consecutive Cup race, finished fourth. Only Jeff Gordon (797) and Ricky Rudd (788) have more. It was his 792nd start overall, tenth best. If he runs all of the races this year, and he fully intends to do so, he’ll finish with 826, which would put him eighth.

Busch’s win is the last time NASCAR will run on one of the drivers’ favorite tracks. California Speedway, two miles and wide enough for serious movements during races, is being torn down, perhaps to be replaced by a half-mile track, perhaps, that might not be available until 2025.

(OTHER SERIES)—INDYCAR and Formula 1 open their seasons next weekend.

 

 

 

SPORTS IS BACK. Or is it “ARE?”

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Super Bowl’s done. Players are showing up in Florida.  So are the stock cars.  March Madness is just around the corner.

But first, a literary note:

“I believe in the Church of Baseball.  I’ve worshipped all the major religions nd most of the minor ones. I’ve worshipped Buddha, allah, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn’t work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there’s no guilt in baseball and it’s never boring.”

Fans of the movie Bull Durham will recognize Annie’s soliloquy that opens the film.  The Church of Baseball is Ron Shelton’s biography of the movie and his creation of the characters we will watch anytime we come across the movie while we’re channel surfing.  If you’re a baseball fan or a fan of the movie or both (who couldn’t be?) we recommend getting the book.

Shelton, by the way, is a former minor league pitcher and he admits he was wrong about the rosary but he’s right about the stitches in a baseball.

There are three great film speeches about baseball.  James Earle Jones’ reverential, “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball” needs a voice like his to avoid sticky sentimentality.  But Susan Sarandon’s reading of the “Church of Baseball” is better.  The third film speech isn’t about baseball exactly or at all about baseball.  But when Kevin Costner as Crash Davis lists “the hangin’ curveball” as one of life’s great pleasures and believes that “there should be a constitutional amendment outlawing astroturf and the designated hitter,” among other things on his list, the viewer is left with the same reaction as Annie, “Oh My.”

Baseball is inching back into our lives and our lives are getting better every day.   Read Shelton’s book.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals gained a catcher, lost a Hall of Famer, and said goodbye to one of their voices in the off-season.  They enter the season with a lot of strengths and questions about the pitching staff. Perhaps the best thing to do is recall how many young arms came up for varying stints last year and, having tasted The Show, have a whole season to polish their game.  Former Missourinet Sports Director John Rooney will be glad to keep us up on the latest.

We’ll enjoy watching Wilson Contreras, miss talkative Tim McCarver, and hope that Dan McGlaughlin is getting the help he needs.

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals have a new hall of famer. Of course, it’s their own hall of fame, but the honor is well deserved. Ned Yost has the most wins of any Royals manager (746), was the first team manager to take the team to back-to-back World Series appearances and one world championship. His post season record of 22-9 (.710 winning percentage) is a major league record for managers with at least 20 postseason appearances.

(FL)—The XFL has wasted no time filling the pro football gap after the Super Bowl.  The USFL won’t be along until April. But the opening weekend of the XFL featured a stirring come-from-behind win by our own St. Louis Battlehawks. The win has some NFL fans wondering why their league doesn’t adopt some XFL excitement.

Former Cincinnati Bengals Quarterback A. J. McCarron let the Hawks to two scores in the last two minutes to rally from a 15-3 deficit to an 18-15 win over the San Antonio Brahmas.

McCarron drove his team 71 yards in eight plays to score with 1:25 left to narrow the margin to 15-9.

The XFL does not allow extra point kicks.  It awards one point for a pass or run from two yards out; 2 points from five yards, and three points from the ten yard line. McCarron hit Austin Proehl with a pass to cut the margin to 15-12.

The league also allows teams a chance to keep the ball after touchdowns if they can convert a fourth-and-15 play from their own 25.  Proehl got open for a 22-yard reception to keep the game going, and snagged a 14-yard pass a few plays later for the winning touchdown with sixteen seconds left.

Proehl is the son of former St. Louis Rams player Ricky Proehl.  McCarron hadn’t played pro football since he tore his right knee ACL in a preseason game in August of 2021. The touchdown passes were his first since he threw one for the Bengals in a playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers seven years ago.

(TIGERS)—The Missouri Tigers basketball team will try again to notch its 20th win tonight against Mississippi State, a team that beat them by eleven points in Starkville earlier this season. The game is in Columbia and the Tigers haven’t played well since dumping highly-ranked Tennessee two games ago. Missouri is 19-8 and has split 14 SEC games. Mississippi State is 18-9 and 6-8 in a crowded mit-pack of conference teams.

Now for the racin’

(NASCAR)—Ricky Stenhouse Jr., has won the Daytona 530, the longest Daytona 500 in history, surviving a series of crashes that forced two overtimes.  The nose of Stenhouse’s car was inches ahead of the car of Joey Logano when the final caution came out because of a crash.  Its his first win in 199 races since he won the summer race at Daytona six years ago.  It’s the first win for his team, JTG-Daughery Racing since 2014, a string of 266 races.

NASCAR races next weekend at Fontana, California as the series starts its spring West Coast swing.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR is two weeks away from its first race of the year, on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida and has started the countdown to the Indianapolis 500 in May.

2103 winner Tony Kanaan says he will step out of the cockpit for good after this year’s 500, the 390th race he’s driven in the series. He’ll finish his 500 career by driving for McLaren. He told Motorsport.com’s David Malsher-Lopez that he’s at peace with his decision.

Kanaan has no ride for the full season. He has no regrets about his decision but says, “I’m going to miss it every day of my life. I miss it now.”  He’s 48 and says he’ll still drive “everything,” but he has nothing on his schedule for the rest of this year, or 2024.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen shoots for his third straight F1 championship in two weeks at the Grand Pix of Bahrain.

Gambling Addiction? Don’t Blame Us

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The big push is underway in the legislature to let Missourians bet on sports.  A House committee has held a perfunctory hearing on two bills that have a tax structure in which the state will LOSE money.  An industry that profits from tilting the tables against its customers is about to tilt the tables against the state. And it’s likely the legislature will let them get away with it.

An article last week in The Hill, a D.C. publication that reports on government, says gambling addiction is going to be “the next opioid crisis.”

And the casino industry does not seem to care. At least not in Missouri.

Nationwide legal sports wagering will be five years old this year.  The Supreme Court threw out the national ban on it in 2018.  The growth of this betting has been nothing short of explosive. Missouri legislative fiscal experts say profits from sports wagering will exceed profits from all table games in all of our thirteen casinos in just three years.

The gambling industry has spent, and is spending, huge amounts of money wooing state legislatures. Last year The New York Times investigation detailed how it was done in Kansas. The newspaper also had a reporter in Missouri but when the issue died in a completely dysfunctional Senate, the investigation focused elsewhere.

It’s coming to Missouri—on the gaming industry’s terms.  A bill in the House that would allow sports wagering on the state’s terms will get a hearing this year but will go nowhere. That’s the official word.

The industry-backed bills set aside up to one-half million dollars for dealing with people who are affected by gambling addictions. If you think the casinos are being noble and responsible in doing this, you are wrong. They want nothing to do with that funding.

The money, instead, will come from the fund underwritten by fees the casinos pay for each person who enters the gambling area—fees that have been rendered woefully inadequate because of inflation since they were put in place n 1993.  The industry has fought, successfully, every attempt to bring the two dollars up to contemporary values.

One result of that resistance is that funding for our veterans homes is about one-third what it was a decade ago and it’s going to get worse.  Even the host cities of our casinos have seen their casino payments decline by about half, a circumstance their association doesn’t seem to think is worth discussing.

The bills in the House that set aside that half million dollars take it from the programs that draw support from that admission fee fund, meaning taking funding away from the veterans homes, the host cities, a state college scholarship program and a National Guard funeral escort program.

The industry doesn’t care. It accepts no financial responsibility for those who develop problems by over-participation in its offerings.

The Hill article says, “Most Americans ignored the opioid crisis, a staggering increase in overdose deaths in the 1990s and 2000s, until the government and news media processed the data and tendered a response.”  Timothy Fong, a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, told the publication, “We have a movement toward expanding what was once considered a sin, what was once considered a vice, and embedding it at every level of American culture, down to kindergarten.”

“You have exactly the same players you had with opioids. You have government. You have industry. You have civilians, a lot of whom will benefit from this. And then you have a population who will develop an addiction, let’s say one [to] one-point-five percent of the population.  It’s a hidden addiction. You can’t see it, you can’t smell it, you can’t taste it.”

We’ve looked at a lot of studies in this country and others of gambling addiction.  All of them point to gambling addiction at least tripling with the advent of sports wagering.

Lia Nower, the director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers University, told The Hill, “Gambling is a very different addition from drugs or alcohol. If I’m drunk or high, at some point my family is going to figure it out. With gambling, I can be sitting with my kids, watching cartoons, and gambling away my house, my car, everything I own, on my mobile phone. How would you know?”

Nower says New Jersey, the first state to have newly-legal sports wagering studied the issue of problem gambling BEFORE it allowed sports wagering. But she says most states “are just legalizing this stuff without any idea of the effects.” Missouri seems to be in that category.

We have yet to hear anybody outside of those with special interests in the topic, even so much as mention this coming potential public health crisis. Passing a bill with a pick-a-number amount set aside—subject to appropriation by the legislature—is not addressing the problem.  And having the industry that causes the problem directly take responsibility for it seems to be out of the question.

The Missouri Gaming Association once proclaimed, “As good corporate citizens, casinos do more than a fair share for military veterans…We honor and support our military veterans and will continue to do so…”

Just don’t trouble us to adjust outdated admission fees to stop the financial bleeding of Missouri’s nursing homes for veterans. And certainly don’t expect us to have any financial responsibility for veterans or anyone else who become the victims of our enterprise.

Just remember, we’re good corporate citizens. And we expect the people you elected to represent you and to protect your citizens’ interests to do what we want.

“I do think there are watershed moments in all public health crises. Unfortunately, it usually takes some kind of crisis or tragedy to turn the tide,” says Nower.

The “next opioid crisis” and accompanying tragedies is developing at the state capitol. Does your legislator care?

 

Sports: Championships come in Twos in 2022

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Baseball Season’s done. So is NASCAR for the year.  Champions have been crowned. Changes already are coming in the dugouts and the cockpits.  And the Tigers can’t get over the hump.

The Houston Astros brought down the curtain on Major League Baseball’s 2022 season Saturday night winning the World Series from the Phillies four games to two. It is the second time the Astros have won the World Series. The first time was against the Dodgers in 2017.

(CARDINALS)—Most of the speculation focuses on who the Cardinals will pluck from the free agent market or trade for in the offseason. But it’s changes in the dugout that make the first headline.

One-time fan favorite Matt Holiday will be wearing the birds on the bat again. He’s the new bench coach for Oliver Marmol’s second season. Holliday is still young enough to play (in Wainwright years, at least).  He’s been coaching at Oklahoma State University since winding up his playing days with single seasons with the Yankees and a return to the Rockies in 2017-2018.  He spent eight years with the Redbirds during which he hit .293 and was a member of the World Series-winning team in 2011.

Dusty Blake comes aboard as pitching coach and Turner Ward is the new hitting coach. Blake will have help from Julio Rangel, who comes over from the Red Sox, and Holliday will have help from Brandon Allen, who has been a member of the Cardinals Minor League coaching staff.

Ward is a holdover as the hitting assistant. He was the hitting coach for the Dodgers for three years, the Diamondbacks for to, and the Reds for one.  Blake was a pitching strategist for the Cardinals last year after three years as the pitching coach for Duke University. Allen spent four years playing major league ball for Arizona, Oakland, and Tampa Bay before joining the Cardinals minor league staff six years ago.  Rangle was in the Yankees minor league system as a player for seven years, did a couple of years as the pitching coach for the Texas Rangers, and for the last two seasons was the Red Sox Pitching Coordinator.

Several guys are holdovers including Willie McGee and Patrick Elkins along with First Base Coach Stubby Clapp, Third Base coach Ron “Pop” Warner, and bullpen catchers Jamie Pogue and Kleininger Teran.

(ROYALS)—The Royals and new manager Matt Quatraro are waiting for some other shoes to fall before deciding who needs to be replaced on their coaching staff. The White Sox, who have lured Pedro Grifoil away from the Royals bench to be their manager reportedly are talking to some other members of the Royals coaching staff. The Royals, in turn, are thought to be talking to some coaches on the Tampa Bay Rays staff to see if they want to follow Quatraro to KC.

(TIGERS)—It was a winnable game that would have put the Missouri Tigers clearly in the postseason bowl picture.  But things went wrong, again, and they now stand at 4-6 after going their sixth straight game with only two touchdowns.

On the bright side: the defense is averaging 7.1 tackles for loss per game, the best in the conference. The Tigers are 18th nationally in total defense. They have the 11th best pass defense and 13th best third-down defense in the country.

Both sides will be bested next week when Missouri meets Tennessee, ranked fifth in the country. They close out against New Mexico State and Arkansas.  New Mexico is 3-5. Arkansas is 5-4 but plays two tough games before meeting Missouri: seventh-ranked LSU and 11-ranked Mississippi.  Missouri needs to win two of the three games to be bowl-eligible.

(CHIEFS)—Patrick Mahomes’ dash for a two-point conversion kept the Kansas City Chiefs from losing to the Tennessee Titans Monday night.  Harrison Butker, who had missed two kicks (a field goal and an extra point) drilled a field goal home in overtime to give the Chiefs a 20-17 win.

Mahomes scored the touchdown that set up the conversion and lifted his team from an eight-point deficit as the clock was running down.

Mahomes set a personal record in the game.  He needed just 105 yards passing to break Matthew Stafford’s record for the fastest quarterback to 20,000 yards passing.  He finished his 71st game going 43-68 for 446 yards, running his career total to 21,596.  It took Stafford 75 games to reach 20,000 yards.

The Chiefs are tied with the Bills for the best record in the AFC at 6-2.  The NFC has the league’s only undefeated team, the Eagles at 8-0. Minnesota is 7-1.

(NASCAR)—It’s two for the 22 in ’22.   Joey Logano has won his second NASCAR Cup, driving car number 22.  Logano didn’t need to win the last race at Phoenix to become the champion but he did, beating three other drivers who qualified to run for the championship.

Logano and teammate Ryan Blaney finished 1-2.  Logano’s championship means team owner Roger Penske has had a historic year with championships in the two major racing series in this country.  Will Power won the INDYCAR championship a few weeks ago.

Logano, who started from the pole, led 187 of the race’s 312 laps. Blaney led 109. Only three other drivers led laps during the race. Logano the first driver since Kyle Busch in 2019 to achieve multiple NASCAR championships and the first Ford driver to win two of them since David Pearson went back-to-back in 1968 and 1969.

The race was the last for Kyle Busch with Joe Gibbs racing, a sad day that turned into a grieving day when the team learned that co-owner Coy Gibbs had died in his sleep hours after watching his son, Ty, win the Xfinity championship Saturday. He was 49, the same age as his brother J.D., who died three years ago.

The race started with four drivers running for the championship.  Ross Chastain, who started farthest back, in 25th, finished third. Christopher Bell, who was threatening late in the race, was derailed by a too-lengthy pit stop and finished tenth.  Chase Elliott’s car was damaged when he and Chastain went after the same racing area. Repairs to Elliott’s car left him two laps back, in 25th.

NASCAR’s next race will be the second annual pre-season exhibition race in the Los Angeles Coliseum 88 days from today.

(INDYCAR)—RM Sotheby’s, the famous auction house, called it “the largest sale ever of open-wheel race cars ever auctioned,” last week when 237 registered bidders took part in the sale of forty race cars and racing memorabilia left over from Newman-Hass-Lanigan Racing, which competed in INDYCAR and CART from 1983-20011.  The team won eight series championships and 107 races.

The sales totaled about $6.1 million, with the 1993 Ford/Cosworth car driven by former Formula 1 Champion Nigel Mansel the year he won the INDYCAR series championship.  It brought $995,000 from McLaren Racing boss Zak Brown.A helmet worn by Mansel went for $90,000.

The other big-ticket car was a 1984 Lola T800 that Mario Andretti drove to wins at Mid-Ohio and the Meadowlands. It brought $401,000.

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INDYCAR’s most important trophy returns to its Indianapolis Motor Speedway home this week after a tour of Sweden, the home country of this year’s Indianapolis 500 winner, Marcus Ericsson.  The trophy includes the newly-installed carved image of Ericsson’s face.

Ericsson is the second driver from Sweden to win the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. Kenny Brȁck won the 500 in 1999.

The trip to Sweden is only the fourth time the big trophy has left the United States.  It toured Japan in 2017 in honor of Takuma Sato’s first 500 victory.  It was displayed at the Silver Anniversary Goodwood Festival of Speed in England in 2018 and it went to Paris the next year for the unveiling of the likeness of 2019 winner Simon Pagenaud, a native of Montmorillon, France.

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Bryan Herta, whose career was thought at times this year to be headed to Formula 1, has signed a contract extension that will keep him at Andretti Autosports through 2027.  Herta is the youngest driver ever to win an INDYCAR race, at age 18. He becomes the senior driver for Andretti at the age of 22 (that’s from point of service, not age).

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 finishes its year next weekend with the Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi.  Max Verstappen wrapped up his second straight championship last month.

(Photo Credits:  Logano—Bob Priddy; Mansell car—R. M. Sotheby’s)

Notes from a Quiet (Leafs in the Gutters) Street

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Tomorrow is election day. At least it is for the thousands of people who have not voted early.  We are two of those who have. Visited the courthouse last Wednesday.  We passed three people coming out when we arrived, and four people going in when we left.  Not sure what our numbers were but we were probably closed to numbers 1999 and 2000.

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We like early voting. No lying about being out of town.  There were times when you had to have an excuse, such as being out of town on election day, to vote absentee.  I was always tempted to vote absentee and then on election day drive outside the city limits and then come back in, thus fulfilling the statement that I would be out of town that day.  The language never says the WHOLE day.

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The first Christmas catalogues arrived before Halloween.  One of them has, among other things, t-shirts with humorous messages on them—at least humorous to some.

One of the t-shirts says, “If YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook merged, you would have Youtwitface.”

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Originalist thinking by some judges interpreting the Constitution seems to overlook a lot of things that have happened since 1791.  Upholding the purity of the Second Amendment is seen by some as allowing the use of large-capacity magazines in today’s weapons.  But the authors of the Bill of Rights lived in a time when guns fired only one bullet at a time and required several seconds to reload, prime, cock, aim, and fire again.

Where’s the National Musket Association when we need it?

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Inflation was portrayed during the recent campaign as an issue caused by one person and that can be cured by one party.  If it was that simple, we wouldn’t have inflation.

Or climate change (for those who believe in it). Or a drug problem.  Or a crime problem.

And for those who preach simple solutions—I have this rash…….

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Once again, we gave away no treats for Halloween.  We went to a movie instead.  It’s a matter of self-preservation.  We don’t want to be caught with all that chocolate left over.

We saw the latest Julia Roberts-George Clooney movie.  George was George. Julia was Julia. The popcorn was pretty good, too.

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We noticed a sign of what the movie theatre business is becoming.  The ticket booths were closed.  We bought our tickets at the concession stand.                                                    -0-

Had a doctor’s appointment earlier that day.  The nurse was dressed up as Lilo, as in Lilo and Stitch (a Disney animated sci-fi movie of a decade ago). Given what nurses deal with, we thought she should have been dressed as Stitch.

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With the end of the elections, the first round of legislative chaos is about to begin.  The offices of those defeated or who were term limited are now available for surviving incumbents to scramble to get. For the next few weeks the Capitol will look like a big used furniture emporium with furniture stacked in the hallways waiting to go to its new offices.

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Will the Missouri Tigers go bowling this year?  Sure.  The Columbia Mall has several lanes available.

 

Sports—Doing What You Have to Do

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BASEBALL)—The Cardinals and the Royals have taken major steps for 2023, the Cardinals by locking in their All-Star third basemen through 2027 and the Royals hiring a new manager.

Arenado had an opt-out provision in his contract and after a disappointing two-and-out playoff series with the Phillies had said some things that raised doubts in fans minds that he would come back next year.  But the Cardinals sent President John Mozeliak to California for a heart-to-heart discussion and the best third baseman in baseball today.  Teammates Paul Goldschmidt and Adam Wainwright also had been telling him how much they wanted him back.   So he’s staying for the last five years and $144 million of his contract. He’s 31 and playing in his prime. He’s expected to compete with Goldschmidt for MVP honors.

The Royals have picked Tampa Bay bench coach Matt Quatraro as Mike Matheny’s replacement as manager. Quatraro finished his fifth year as bench coach this year. The Rays went 86-76 and lost both games of the wild card playoff to the Guardians. Quatraro got as high as Triple-A as a catcher, outfielder, and first baseman, then managed four years in the Tampa Bay system in Sigle-A and was Cleveland’s hitting coach in 2014.

During his five years on the Rays bench the team went 412-296 (.574), made the playoffs four times, lost the 2020 World Series, lost twice in the Division series and, this year, got knocked out in the wild card games.

Quatroro has his work cut out for him and likely will need some front office help.

He takes over a team that finished 27 games behind the Guardians, lost 97 games, and was under .500 at home. It ranked 24th in runs per game, 26th in run differential with opponents, had the 8th most strikeouts per 9 innings, ranked 27th with a team ERA of 4.70. Pitchers ranked 28th in strikeouts per nine innings and 29th in hits per nine innings.

Both the Cardinals and the Royals have some things to do in the offseason, however.

(CHIEFS)—No game this weekend but the Chiefs picked up some depth at receiver by giving the New York Giants a couple of next year’s low draft picks to get Kadarius Toney, a former number one pick of the Giants (2021). NFL observers say that he might be a significant outside threat for Kansas City—if he can stay healthy.

Now, Racing:

(NASCAR)—-Christopher Bell did what he had to do for the second elimination race in a row and Ross Chastain did what he had to do with an astonishing run through the last half of the last lap.

Bell, far down in the standings after last week’s bad-luck crash, had to win to make the final four for the season’s last race next Sunday at Phoenix. He grabbed the lead during pit stops with about 100 laps left, but dropped to sixth during the final round of stops, coming out sixth with 24 laps left on the short Martinsville track. He got past Ryan Blaney, another contender who had to win to advance to the final four, with four laps to go and held on to edge Kyle Larson at the line.

But behind the finishing gaggle, Chastain had started a desperate dash to the front.  Too far back to pass enough cars to make the playoffs, Chastain floored it, and ran full speed scraping the wall for the last two turns of the race, going 50-70 mph faster than other competitors, and nipped rival Denny Hamlin for fourth place, knocking Hamlin out of the playoffs.

https://www.nascar.com/video/franchise/nascar-cup-highlights/see-multiple-angles-of-chastains-last-lap-move-to-advance-at-martinsville/

Hamlin, who has had several run-ins with Chastain this year, came out of the last turn of the race two points ahead of Chastain in the points standings only to find himself displaced by Chastain’s mad dash.  Hamlin called the tactic “brilliant.”

Bell and Chastain, along with Chase Elliott and Joey Logano will fight for the championship next weekend in Phoenix. Whoever finishes highest gets the NASCAR Cup.  Logano and Ellott will be racing for their second championship.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen arguably has had the greatest season in Formula 1 history—and there are still two races left. Vertappen’s win in the Mexico City Grand Prix is his 14th win of the year, breaking the record held by Michael Schumacher in 2004 and tied by Sebastien Vettel in 2013.  His win gives Red Bull Racing its ninth victory in a row, tying the team record, and its 16th win in 21 races. Lewis Hamilton finished second for the second race in a row and Sergio Perez, Verstappen’s teammate, finished third, the second year in a row he has run third on his home track.

 

Giving Up Hope

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Tomorrow is the first of November.  Next weekend is the end of Daylight Savings Time for the year.

We’ve been getting cold leaf-dropping rains.

We call this season “fall” because that‘s what the leaves do.  And moods.

The baseball season will end this week.

The last NASCAR race of the year is coming up  next weekend.

It is always hard to admit—always—-that summer is gone. But when Thanksgiving is only about three weeks away and Christmas is less than 60 days in the future, the reality I have been ignoring wraps its cold arms around me and I must at last abandon hope that I will be warm for about five long, dark months.

Every year, I go around in short-sleeved shirts and feel cold because I am reluctant to admit it’s time to start wearing long-sleeved shirts and jackets.

The lightweight sweatshirt I wear to the YMCA three days a week is enough for now and the cold air against my uncovered legs makes me grateful for heated seats and a heated steering wheel in the car, both of which are operating by the time the car and I get to the stop sign up the street.

Nancy has gotten me some nice wool shirts. They’re hanging next to each other at the end of a rack in my closet.  The polo shirts are still at the front.

Not for long.  My resistance to wool shirts is weakening.  Soon, I will promote the long-sleeves to the front and the short sleeves to the back.  Soon I will remove the shorts (remember when they were called “Bermuda Shorts?” You have to be of a certain age, I think.) from the hook in the closet, and when they’ve been through the washing machine put them in a drawer—-but maybe there will be one more day to wear them. All day.

Nancy was raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Yep, I married a “Yooper.”  She likes these crisp, chill days.

Opposites attract, you know.

When people complain of the heat, I tell them, “I waited all winter for days like these.”

In a previous life, I was an indoor cat who always looked for the sun spots.

Baseball is gone. But there’s football and the Tigers have figured out how to win a game or two and the Chiefs are on a roll.  And soon there will be college basketball—a game played by people in shorts.

But then come the fallow days when our basketball team has lost its last (tournament, we hope) game. When the Super Bowl is over.  And all that is left is golf (Leon Wilson’s 1905 book was the first to call it “a good walk spoiled.”) and the NBA and the NHL, both of which—in this house—generate no heat.

The Kansas City Royals and the Texas Rangers play the first game in the Cactus League on February 25 in Surprise, Arizona. The Grapefruit League, in Florida, begins the next day in Jupiter, with the Cardinals against the Washington Nationals.

116 days from today is the first true sign of spring.  The voice of Rooney will be heard in the land once again. And hope will be restored.

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A Haunting Baseball Question—and Racing

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BASEBALL)—A lot of stick-and-ball sports fans adopt the attitude that if their team gets knocked out of the playoffs, they’ll hope the team that did it goes on to the championship.

So some Cardinals fans will be rooting for the Phillies in the World Series that starts Friday.  The Phillies, winners of only 87 games in the regular season, have run the table so far against the Cardinals, Braves and the Padres to gain the right to take on the Houston Astros, who swept the Yankees in the American League finals.   Houston won almost 20 more games in the regular season, 106, than the Phillies did.

But Cardinals fans are left to ponder, “If we had beaten the Phillies, would it be our guys in the World Series?”  The Cardinals were one of eleven teams in major league baseball this year with better records than the Phillies.  But if the Phillies need extra inspiration they need only look at the Cardinals of 2006, who finished 83-78 in the regular season and beat the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. Based on winning percentages, the 2006 Cardinals are the worst teams to win it all.

Five teams with fewer than 90 regular season victories have won the World Series including last year’s Atlanta Braves that finished 88-73, one victory more than the Phillies had this year.

(KC Chiefs)—-Sometimes it seems as if the only way the Kansas City Chiefs can lose is if they beat themselves—last week’s game against the Bills, for example.  For a few minutes against the San Francisco 49ers Sunday, the trend was headed in that direction. The Chiefs spotted the 49ers ten points and then outscored them the rest of the way 44-13 with thirty points in the second half.

The Chiefs have survived a tough first half of the season to go into their break week 5-2.

(TIGERS)—After playing just well enough to lose for a month, the Missouri Tigers played just well enough to win against Vanderbilt.  The Tigers went into the game favored by a couple of touchdowns in some forecasts but needed a fourth-down stop of a Vanderbilt running back to stop a drive that appeared destined for a tying field goal attempt or a winning touchdown.

Missouri is now 3-4 and faces another tough test next weekend against 25th ranked South Carolina.

Now, for the non-stick-and-ball stuff:

(NASCAR)—Unlike other sports where playoff losers go home and pack up the gear until next year, those who lose in NASCAR’s playoffs keep playing.  And winning.

Case in point, Kyle Larson, who won both stages and the race at Homestead-Miami Speedway last weekend.  Larson led all but 68 of the 267 laps. Larson was eliminated from the playoffs earlier as the NASCAR season winds down with only two races left.

Playoff contender Ross Chastain trailed Larson across the line by 1.3 seconds followed by A. J. Almendinger, Austin Dillon, and Brad Keselowski.  Chastain was the only playoff driver in the top five. Keselowski’s finish as his first top five of the year, the first top five since becoming part owner of what is now Roush-Fenway-Keselowski racing.

Joey Logano remains the only driver guaranteed a chance at the championship.  Chastain is the second-seed with Chase Elliott and William Byron holding the top four positions. Denny Hamlin is five points below the cutline. Ryan Blaney is eighteen points back.  Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe need to win next weeks’ race at Martinsville if they are to advance to the final four who will run for the title November 5 at Phoenix.

(INDYCAR)—Two fan favorites have sewn up rides for the 2023 Indianapolis 500.

Sponsorship has been found for a fourth car to be fielded by Andretti Autosport that will give Marco Andretti his eighteenth chance to get his face on the Borg-Warner Trophy.  Andretti was second as a rookie in 2006, sat on the pole in 2020 and has four top-three finishes and eight top tens.

The winner of the 2013 Indianapolis 500, Tony Kanaan, will drive for Arrow McLaren SP team in the 2023 race, which he has said in the past will be his last 500.  He’ll drive the fourth car in the race for AMSP. Kanaan finished third last year for Chip Ganassi Racing. It will be his 22nd 500. He has five top-three finishes including his 2013 win that as the fastest Indianapolis 500 at the time; the record was later broken by Helio Castroneves in 2021.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen has three races left to set a new Formula 1 record for most victories in one year.  He won his thirteenth race last weekend at the Circuit of the Americas, in the United States Grand Prix, near Austin Texas, passing Lewis Hamilton with just six laps left and won by about five seconds.

Hamilton, a seven-time F1 champion, thought he had a shot at his first win of the year and admits he’s beginning to think this will be the first time in his career that he has gone without a victory all year. He’s been racing in F1 since 2007.

The win also locks up the constructors’ championship for Red Bull Racing. It comes the day after the death of the co-founder of the Red Bull energy drink, Dietrich Mateschitz.