By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor
(BASEBALL)—-The Cardinals and the Royals games count for something now. The Cardinals, a team with low expectations by their fans, swept the season-opening series. The Royals, whose fans expect a World Series contender this year, stumbled and lost two out of three to start their official year.
(ST. LOUIS)—The Cardinals polished off the Twins Sunday 9-1 With Victor Scott clubbing a three-run home run, Padro Pages doing the same thing and Nolan Gorman ripped one that traveled 409 feet to give the Cardinals their first season-opening sweep since they swept the Phillies on the road to start the 2006 season.
Few fans expected the team to go 3-0 to start the season for only the 17th time in 134 seasons.
St. Louis ripped Twins pitchers for thirty hits, nineteen runs and five home runs in the three games, and they did it with no offensive help from their leading hitting in Florida, Wilson Contreras, who was 0-9 with five strikeouts in the first two games.
Too bad that a lot of people missed all of that.
(CROWDS)—The St. Louis Cardinals and the Kansas City Royals saw thousands of fans disguised as empty seats in their opening three games at home last weekend. The Cardinals averaged 35,010 fans per game, tenth best in baseball with only 26.923 watching them complete their sweep of the Twins.
The Royals were even worse—averaging 25,608, ranking 13th in both leagues.
(KANSAS CITY)—The Royals dropped two of their first three at Kauffman Stadium, although first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino pronounced it a “good weekend other than losing two.”
The team they have to beat to get to the top of the division in October, the Cleveland Guardians, beat Kansas City in extra innings Friday. KC was down by six runs and couldn’t catch up. They came from behind on Saturday and won but dropped the finale Sunday.
The offense is shaky at the start of the season. The Royals got only ten runs in the series and had only five hits in Sunday’s loss. The bottom half of the lineup was pretty miserable going 10-59 with eleven strikeouts in the three games. Starting pitching was not sharp with Cole Ragans giving up three runs in a little more than five innings, Seth lugo allowing three runs and walking three batters in his five innings Saturday, and Michael Wache leaving after just four innings after throwing 87 pitches and walking four.
(FOOTBALL)—If the United Football League didn’t have the St. Louis Battlehawks’ fans, it almost could hold all of its friends in a high school field’s bleachers. The ‘Hawks started the season last weekend with a win over the Houston Roughnecks, 31-6, in front of a typical Roughnecks crowd of 7,321 (last year the team averaged 7,056).
St. Louis quarterback Manny Wilkins hit 17 of his 22 passes for 189 yards and ran for 43 yards and two TDs. Jarveon Howard gained 115 yards on 13 carries against a Houston team that was 1-9 last year and showed little indication it would be better in 2025.
Thus opened the second season of the UFL, a league with critics who wonder how long it can hold out with that kind of fan support.
(CHIEFS)—The Athletic is running a free agent tracker to help us keep track of who is staying and who is going or is already gone, and who is coming on board.
Here’s what it’s showing so far:
They have re-signed Punter Matt Araiza for one year; Linebacker Nick Bolton for thee years and $45 million. Punter Matt Araiza, WR Marquise Brown, running back Kareem Hunt, defensive Charles Omenihu, DT Mike Pennel, receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster, long snapper James Winchester, and Guard Mark Caliendo have re-signed for one year each.
Winchester, the team’s oldest player at 35, will get $1.65 million for his eleventh year. He’s played in all 189 games during that time.
They’ve signed free agent cornerback Kristian Fulton for two years and $20 million, plus quarterback Gardner Minshew (one year), RB Elijah Mitchell ( one year, $3.5 million), OT Jaylor Moore (two years, $30 million), and DL Jerry Tillery (one year).
They’ve lost WR Mecole Hardmann to the Packers, DT Derrick Nnadi to the Jets, WR DeAndre Hopkins to the Ravens; Safety Justin Reid to the Saints; DT Tershawn Wharton to the Panthers; and WR Justin Watson to Houston.
They traded their all-pro guard Joe Thuney, who shifted to tackle this year to try to get more protection for Patrick Mahomes, to the Bears in a move to free up about $16 million in cash. Thuney has the distinction of playing in three straight Super Bowls—twice. He was with the Patriots before moving to the Chiefs. The Chiefs get a fourth-round draft pick next year.
(TIGER BASKETBALL)—Maybe this one will work out—Jevon Porter is headed to Missouri. The brother of two other Porter brothers whose MU careers were brief—spent his first two seasons at Pepperdine and played for Loyola Marymount this past season. He’s 6-11, 235, averaged 12.5 points and 7.2 rebounds at LMU. He’ll be the fifth member of the Porter family to wear a Tiger uniform. Sisters Bri and Cierra, and brothers Michael and Jontay got there before him. The careers of Michael and Jontay were limited by injuries. Michael was in only three games for the Tigers and averaged ten points per game. Jontay played in 33 games but only seven as a starter and also averaged about ten points per game. Jontay was banned from the NBA for life for gambling. A Judge last July refused to let him play pro basketball in Greece. He was convicted of wire fraud and is scheduled to be sentenced May 20th. He faces 41-51 months in prison.
(ROBIN)—Former Mizzou women’s coach Robin Pingeton has landed on her feet—in Madison Wisconsin. She stepped down after fifteen years at Missouri, the last few being mediocre or losing years. But for her career she is 585-375 with twenty postseason appearances.
She’ll take over a program that was 13-17 last season, fourth in the Big 10 conference. The Badgers have not had a winning season since 20009-10.
Pingeton takes over a Badgers program that went 13-17 overall and finished 14th in the Big Ten with a 4-14 record. Wisconsin hasn’t had a winning season since 2009-10. Its last winning season in Big Ten play was 2010-11.
(HOCKEY)—We haven’t paid much attention to the St. Louis Blues but their nine-game winning streak makes that impossible. The Blues try to make it ten in a row tonight in Detroit. The game also could see the NHL debut of the team’s top prospect, Jimmy Smuggerud. He was the Blues’ first round pick in the 2022 draft and has signed a three-year entry level contact with the team.
The Blues, tied for fourth in their division, go into the game at 40-28-7. Detroit is 34-33-6.
Time to get the motor running:
(NASCAR)—Denny Hamlin has tied Missouri’s Rusty Wallace for 55th on the all-time NASCAR Cup wins list, dominating the race at Martinsville last weekend. It’s his second win on the “paperclip,” the first in ten years.
He led the last 275 laps of the 400-lap race and beat teammate Christopher Bell by almost five seconds. Bubba Wallace came home third for the second race in a row.
(NASCAR POLITICAL NOTE)—The company that makes diecast replicas of NASCAR automobiles has implemented a surcharge on its products, which are made in China for Lionel, the people best known for electric trains. Lionel has been in the NASCAR diecast business for several years and has been the NASCAR-licensed producer of diecasts since 2010.
Prices to wholesalers will increase 10%. It’s the first “hit” among NASCAR fans since President Trump imposed a 20% tariff on Chinese-made goods.
(INDYCAR)—IndyCar returns to competition in a couple of weeks at Long Beach. Drivers have done their first test runs on the road course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Scott Dixon ripped off the fastest lap. Eight drivers took part. The race comes up May 10, part of the run-up to the 108th Indianapolis 500.
(F1)—Formula 1 will be in Japan next weekend.