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Sports: Homer King, Draftees, Hall of Famers, and some speed

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by Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(ALL-STAR GAME)—The All-Stars play tonight. But last night was reserved for the homer boys and the fourth guy from the left won it all.

(L-R: Ben Rice, Yankees; Wilson Contreras, Cardinals; Joe Caglianone, Royals; Jordan Walker, Cardinals; Murakami, White Sox; Caminero, Rays; Harper and Schwarber, Phillies.

Cardinals outfielder Jordan Walker could be in line for some major endorsement money from the chewing gum company whose product he was enthusiastically working over last night when he beat one of the biggest home runs guys in baseball to become the first Redbird and the second youngest competitor  to win the All Star Game’s Home Run Derby.

Walker, watching his winning home run fly into the stands in Philadelphia, beat hometown star Kyle Schwarber 12-11 on his last swing to take home the trophy.  He had matched former Cardinals catcher Willson Contreras’ 13 home runs in the first round and won his second-round matchup 6-5 against Junior Campanero of the White Sox, setting up the final slugfest.  He cleared the fence with his last six swings to take the trophy—-and the $1 million prize, some $300,000 more than he is to earn from the Cardinals this year.

It would not be a surprise if some of that money was a tip for the guy who threw all of those fat pitches last night: Cardinals bullpen catcher Kleininger Teran.  Teran was no stranger to the job. He pitched to Albert Pujols, the last St. Louis participant in the event, in 2022.  He also has thrown a lot of batting practice to Walker in his still young career.

Walker faces real pitching tonight in the All Star game.

Royals outfielder Jac Caglianone had eight home runs in the first round, not enough to advance, but he put on an impressive power show.  He was the only competitor to hit the ball into the stadium’s upper deck with one of his shots measured at 477 feet.  His father was his pitcher.

(BABY BIRDS)—The St. Louis Cardinals have chosen two dozen futures in the MLB draft. They had the most picks—seven—in the first four rounds. None of these players is obligated to sign a contract and none is forever linked to the team. Some might want to wait another two or three years to finish their college education and improve their skills in hope of moving up in a future draft.

The first choice was Georgia high school outfielder Trevor Condon, the first high schooler taken as the number one pick by St. Louis since another Georgia player who has turned out pretty well—Jordan Walker. Condon finished his last high school season hitting .504 with nine home runs, 42 RBIs and 15 stolen bases. He has committed to playing college ball at Tennessee.

The second choice played for Tennessee this past season, Tegan Kuhns, a 6-3 righthander with a big curve and a 98 mph fastball.

The Redbirds’ third choice was Rocco Maniscalo, an Alabama high school shortstop who is only two months into his 17th year.  Scouting Director Randy Flores says he has “current” tools which puts him ahead of players drafted for their hope and projectionables.

Outfielder Andrew Williamson, was next. He played for Central Forida next year.

Other picks;

Kansas State shortstop Dee Kennedy, who hatted .357 with 10 homers in 114 college games.

Right-handed pitcher Dawson Montesa, who plans to skip his last year at West Virginia University to join the Cardinals system.

Left hander Luke Harrison from the University of Texas.

First Baseman Jack Gurevitch from San Diego State.

Southpaw Cade Crossland from Oklahoma; Righty Ethan Young from East Carolina; Hawaii outfielder Matthew Miura; Pitcher Payton Graham, a righty, from Gonzaga; Penn State shortstop ryan Weingartner; Third Baseman Michael Dattalo, who played for Dallas Baptist last season; Stetson University Ty Van Dyke, a right-handed pitcher; Texas shortstop Jalin flores; Northern Kentucky right-handed pitcher Kaden Echeman; Righty Jake Shelagowski from Saginaw Valley State.  Later choices are Iowa RHP Anthony Watts; Stanford SS Trevor Haskins, Kansas City right-handed pitcher Alex Breckheimer,  Austin Peay outfielder Cameron Nickens, right-handed pitchers Dylan Driessen from South Dakota State and Liam Best from Appalachian State and the final choice (number 624), Central Missouri catcher Chase Heath

(FUTURE ROYALTY)—Thirteen of the Kansas City Royals 16 picks are pitchers but their first choice was a surprise:

Louisville outfielder Zion Rose who is described as having “elite contact skills, speed, and power.”  He finished the recent hitting .417, two dozen stolen bases, six homers and 47 ribbies.  Rose had been listed 30th in MLB’s pipeline.

The second choice was the 40th-ranked prosect, Ole Miss right handed pitcher Taylor Rabe, who has a fastball of 96-100 mph and strong control.

Third was 17-year old Jack Slightom, who has committed to playing for Cincinnati University, followed by West Virginia lefty Maxx Yehl who is said to have an “MLB-ready arm.”  Their last pick in the first round was Oswego East High School (Illinois) left-handed hitting outfielder Dominic Battista. He missed part of his last high school season with a broken bone in his wrist but batted .242.  Scouts say he’s just coming into his own at the plate but “has defensive instincts and speed.”  He’s expected to forego his freshman year at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Kansas City started the second day with Arkansas lefty reliever Ethan McElvain, who went 6-0 this season with a 1.88 ERA and made the SEC second all conference team followed by Clemson left-handed pitcher Jack LeGuernie, who was on the national Pitcher of the Year watch list. 4.69 ERA in 19 appearances.

Others chosen by the Royals are Georgia right-hander Dylan Vigue, a junior starter for the Georgia team tied for third in the College World Series.  He was 4-1 in eighteen appearances including 16 starts—63 IP, 77K, 36BB, 4.43 ERA.

Florida Gulf Coast lefty Hunter Possehl went in the 8th round with Oklahoma third baseman Camden Johnson (.293, 9 HR, 48 RBI) picked up in the 9th round.

LSU right-hander Grant Fontenot went in the tenth round. Last year he was in 21 games (4 starts) got 42Ks in 32.1 innings. He was followed St. Mary’s outfielder Tanner Griffith who his .342 in his last season, had a .477 OBP, was an All-WCC second teamer. He plans to play his last collegiate year for TCU, though.

Others; College of Central Florida right handed pitcher Lance Hartley; Nicholls State righty dalton Hill; catcher Banks Wickersham of Fort Dorchester High School in South Carolina, a commit to the College of Charleston. In his senior year of high school he hit .459; Virginia Tech left hander Madden Clement from Virginia Tech; and Troy University Righty Dylan Alonso.

They finished up with right-handed pitcher Richie Roman of Houston; New Mexico southpaw Cooper Cockrean, who has announced he’s going to the University of Kentucky next year; Pitcher Hudson, a righty from Mooresville High School in Indiana, a commit to the University of Alabama, and—finally—Riley McDonald from the State College of Florida, a reliever.

(MIZZOUHOF)—Six former Tiger Athletes are the newest members of the MU Sports Hall of Fame—

Football players Nick Bolton of the Kansas City Chiefs and Drew Lock of the Seattle Seahawks, along with player and later coach Andy Hill as well as  softball player Ashley Fleming, wrestler Daniel Lewis and Nicki Weber Moore, who ran cross country and other track and field events. They’ll be honored during a ceremony October 9.

Now: Fast Times in Atlanta

(NASCAR)—A late, soggy nail-biter at Atlanta ended with Ryan Blaney dominating the race but needing every inch of his car’s nose to win the race that ended just before 2 a.m., Atlanta time.  Rain and lightning had stopped the race for three hours just before the halfway mark.

Blaney—who was racing to lead his 171st lap in the 263-lap race—Bubba Wallace, Christopher Bell, and Carson Hocevar came out of the last turn in a dogfight for the finish line and Blaney crossed the line just ahead of Wallace.

Wallace, however, saw his second place finish taken away by NASCAR, which penalized him for dropping below the yellow line marking the inside of the track on the last lap, and moved Wallace to 29th place as the official last car on the lead lap.  Wallace objected, noting he had been pushed below the line by teammate Bell and did not gain a position because of it.  But as of press time, the penalty stood.  Bell is officially second by less than seven-hundredths of a second.

Six races remain before the ten-race playoffs begin with the top 16 drivers in the points competing for the NASCAR Cup.  Wallace’s penalty, instead of solidifying his position well within the runoff field, puts him 13th in the points standings, 55 points ahead of three-time Cup champion Joey Logano, who is the first out at this point.

(INDYCAR)—The Silly Season has arrived for IndyCar in a big way with the Arrow McLaren team announcing that two of its drivers this year will be replaced by a couple of bigger names next year. Gone are Christian Lundgaard, a two-race winner this year  who is third in the points, and Nolan Siegel who is in his second year with the team. Siegel has yet to develop, never finishing higher than 23rd in the standings in his first two seasons. He is 21st in this, his third year, in IndyCar.

O’Ward won the most recent race with Lundgaard second.

Replacing them are two bigger names—this year’s Indianapolis 500 winner, Felix Rosenqvist, moving over from Meyer Shank Racing, and one of the sport’s most prominent figures—Scott Dixon.

Dixon is leaving Chip Ganassi Racing after 24 years of full-time racing, six series championships (second to A. J. Foyt’s seven), 59 wins (only Foyt has more, with 67) and the 2008 Indianapolis 500. It appears, however, that his longtime sponsor, PNC Bank, will stay with Ganassi. Team owner Chip Ganassi says he oftered Dixon a multi-year offer that would have let him finish his career with his team, but Dixon chose to go a different direction.

Dixon and Rosenqvist will be teamed with Pato O’Ward, one of the most popular drivers in the series.

(photo credits: Walker—Instagram; Condon—Condon family;  Rose—USA Network; Home Run Derby—MLB; Blaney—NASCAR; Dixon—Rick Gevers at Indianapolis)

Sports: The Sports Society Page; The top 100 in the NFL; The Three W’s as All-Star Selections, and our weekly dose of speed.  

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

 

This has been the most famous kissing photo in New York history—Alfred Eisenstadt’s image of a sailor and a nurse celebrating in Times Square the end of WWII.  Now there’s a rival (although, not really. It’s just an image inspired by historic one.)

 

For the society-watchers, here are some details reported by various media of the wedding of the year so far, the Swift/Kelce nuptials held in a quaint little chapel called Madison Square Garden:

The officiating officer was comedian Adam Sandler whose 2025 movie sequel Happy Gilmore 2 included a cameo by Kelce, whom Sandler called “a gentle, nice guy, and funny as hell…a great actor and a real human.” He told TIME magazine Swift is “incredible” and “ridiculously nice to his children.”  They didn’t have a lot of maids of honor and male counterparts. Her brother, Ausin, was “man of honor,’ and Kelce’s brother, Jason, was the best man.

VARIETY reported Kelce’s boss, Andy Reid found the advice given the couple by Sandler to be “really touching.” (Sandler told them, “Kiss every chance you have. Every day. Whether  you’re going to bed or going to work. Whenever, go ahead and kiss her.”)

An immediate honeymoon does not appear to be on the horizon, according to knowledgeable Swift-Kelce constant observers.

So, it’s official. The All-American jock and the homecoming queen are no longer just a couple. They’re a MARRIED couple. We hope they have the strength to endure the heat of the spotlight and the expected tabloid headlines forecasting the worst.

Now we can get on with the less important stuff.

(CHIEFS)—-CBS Sports has put out a list of the 100 best players in the NFL. Kelce isn’t on it but the Chiefs have three percent of that list—Parick Mahomes, center Creed Humphrey, and Defensive Lineman Chris Jones.  Mahomes is number 7 on the list, Humphrey 23rd, and Jones is 62nd.

The list was put together by CBS’ Pete Prisco, who has covered the NFL for thirty years. He says of Mahomes, who was number one last year, “He’s still one of the best – if not the best – quarterbacks in the league.”

Humphrey, who allowed zero sacks and only seven pressures in 708 pass-blocking snaps last year “was the best center in the league again last season, displaying the ability to move people in the run game and excel in pass protection. Patrick Mahomes has to love having him as his center.”

Jones’ 63 quarterback pressures last year ranked him third in the NFL. He was 18th on last years list and Prisco comments, “He’s not the player he was a few years ago, but he’s still capable of being a force inside. The sack numbers have declined in recent years, and he hasn’t had double-digit sacks since 2023.”

His top five players are Rams Defensive End Myles Garrett (whose 23 sacks last year set a new record), Rams QB Matthew Stafford, the MVP last year, Bills QB Josh Allen, Cincinnati WR Ja’Marr Chase, and Bengals QB Joe Burrows, who, like Mahomes, missed a chunk of games las year with an injury.  The only other player rated above Mahomes is Detroit Offensive Tackle Penel Sewell

(HARDY)—The most recent report on Missouri Tiger running back from Coach Drinkwitz is that he is ahead of schedule in recovering from a gunshot wound to his leg but he still has a lot of recovering to do.

His situation has not kept him from being listed as a pre=season All-American by the Walter Camp Foundation. On the list with him is Kewan Lacey of Ole Miss, who started his college career at Mizzou before transferring in 2025.

The Tiger PR machine reminds us we are about 58 days away from the first game of the 2026 season opener with Arkansas Pine Bluff.

(UFL)—Almost two dozen players from the recently-finished United Football League season have been given a chance to make a National Football League roster.  Two of them are from the St. Louis Battlehawks—receiver Hakeem Butler, who led the league receiving yards, and Corner Back Sean Fresch Jr.  Both are going to get looks from the Denver Broncos.

Baseball—-

(ALL-STARS)—We are a week away from baseball’s All-Star team. Missouri’s teams have one position player starter, Kansas City shortstop Bobby Winn, and one reserve position player, Jordan Walker of the Cardinals.

Royals starting pitcher Michael Wacha, a former Redbird, is on the AL pitching roster. Wacha is 5-6 for one of the worst teams in baseball this year. He’d have a much better record if he had better run support from a generally punchless lineup. His ERA is a decent 3.45. He has 91 strikeouts in 114.1 innings. He leads the league in innings pitched.

As always, there are those whose absence sparks some comment. The biggest might be former Cardinals pitcher Sonny Gray, who leads the American League in wins, at 10-1 and is second in ERA (2.61) to Tampa Bay’s Nick Martinez, who also didn’t make the AL roster.

Gray’s teammate from St. Louis also with the Red Sox, first baseman Willson Contreras, might make the team after all because chosen starter Vladimir Guerrero Jr., is having back issues and says he’ll sit out.

The Cardinals’ only representative on the National League All-Star roster is outfielder Jordan Walker, who ways he was near tears when manager Oliver Marmol announced to the team in the locker room that Walker had made the squad. Marmol says, “Part of the message wasn’t so much just the fact that he’s produced over three months, it’s three years of perseverance to get to this point.”

Cardinals first baseman Alec Burleson is not on the National League roster although he started this week tied for third on the RBI list (four behind Jordan Walker’s 67). Some also think St. Louis DH Ivan Herrera should have made the team. He had ten homers and 58 RBIs at the start of this week.

The game is a week from tonight. It’s the 96th one. The American League leads 48=45 with two ties. The game will be in Philadelphia.

Moving along with those who move along—-

(NASCAR)—Joe Gibbs Racing rolled up a 1-2-3 finish at Chicagoland last weekend with Chase Briscoe outrunning Christopher Bell with Denny Hamlin getting the best view of their last lap fight.

Hamlin started from the pole

Briscoe, Bell, and Hamlin were joined by four other Toyotas in the top ten, the best 1=10 finish in Toyota’s history in NASCAR Cup races.

Briscoe’s remark in victory lane, “I feel so American winning in the Bass Pro Shop’s Red, White, and Blue car, 4th of July weekend, 250 years,” while driving a Japanese-badged car might seem a little odd to some. However, Toyota’s larges Camry manufacturing plant in the world is in Georgetown, Kentucky, where it had been producing cars for 38 years.

(INDYCAR)—The IndyCar title chase has tightened with Pato O’Ward’s win at Mid-Ohio ahead of teammate Christian Lundgaard, the first time Arrow-McLaren has finished 1-2 in its long IndyCar history.

O’Ward got past Lundgaard, who was headed for his second straight win, when Lundgaard went wide on a turn and O’Ward got under him. He stretched the lead to almost a full second at the end. At one time he had a 2.5 second lead on Lundgaard but ten laps later, with ten to go, the lead had been whittled to a second and a half.

O’Ward has ten wins in the series on nine different tracks and is only the second driver to win ten or more games for the team since Johnny Rutherford picked up 18 driving for the team 1973-79.

Kyle Kirkwood joined O’Ward and Lundgaard ont he podium. Points leader Alex Palou finished fifth and saw his lead over Kirkwood to shrink to  still-substantial 56 points after eleven of the 18 races IndyCar will run this year.

(Photo Credits: Times Square Kiss—Google Images; Wedding—JJ’s House; Walker, Witt and Wacha—MLB; Briscoe—NASCAR; O’Ward—Bob Priddy at WWTR

 

Sports: Baseball Midseason, More Tiger Signings, More Speed

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BASEBALL)—Major League baseball passed the midseason mark last weekend with both of our teams getting bounce-back wins.

The Cardinals seem to have played themselves out of the playoff picture with seven losses in nine game before taking a 2-1 in from the Marlins Sunday.  Kyle Leahy won for the first time since mid=May and Bryan Torres provided the offense with a  two-run homer Sunday.

The Royals, after a 22-1 mauling by the White Sox also avoided a series sweep by beating the White Sox 5-4. That gave them a split in their last ten games but still left them with the worst record in the American League. Only the National League’s Colorado Rockies are having a worse season at 33-51 while the Royals were 35-50 at week’s end.

(MOMOVESON)—Former St. Louis Cardinals executive John Mozeliak has a new job, moving on to become interim general manager of the Los Angeles Angels.

(ONTHEFARM)—Redbirdrants.com has checked on four Redbirds sent down to Memphis to find themselves.—Nolan Gorman, Yohel Pozo, Thomas Saggese, and Victor Scott II.

Scott started hot with nine hits and four steals in his first six games. In the next seven he had just three hits, stole no bases and struck out 11 times.

Gorman, who headed to Memphis via Florida after striking out half of the time in St. Louis struck out his first four times in Memphis before getting his first hit but has continued to have strikeout problems although he did hit two home runs and walking three times. Blaze Jordan is doing well enough in The Show that there appears to be little rush to get Gorman back in St. Louis.

Saggese’s batting average remans in the low 200s but has walked more times than he has fanned.

Pozo caught ten of his first fifteen games in Memphis but he has to contend with the play of Leonardo Bernal who is a catcher-first baseman and might be a victim of a numbers game.

(MIZZFB)—The Missouri Tigers continue mining home state talent with the latest commitment coming from four-star running back Kingston Miles of St. Louis, who originally committed to Auburn. He plays high school ball for St. Mary’s, the school that has produced current Mizzou running back Jamal Roberts and former Tiger wide receiver Kevin Coleman Jr., who was drafated in the fifth round of this year’s NFL draft.

Six of the states ten top-ranked players in this recruiting cycle now have committed to Missouri.

Kansas City offensive lineman Kyler Kuhn, a four-star, player at St. Pius X, has joined Miles. He’s a 6-3 280 pounder.

Others who’ve committed in recent days are a pair of three-stars: Cornerback T’ari Miller from Miami and Jaylen Hill, an 6-5, 295 pound offensive tackle from the state of Louisiana.

Motoring along—

(INDYCAR)—Two Indianapolis 500 winners’ off-the-track situations might signal a significant change in the IndyCar lineup for 2027. One definitely will.

Speedcafe is reporting that the deadline has passed for Chip Ganassi Racing to have exclusive negotiating rights to keep six-time series champion Scott Dixon, leaving him free to talk to other teams. The Dixon-Ganassi combination has been a constant in IndyCar since 2003.

Ganassi’s exclusive negotiating window with Dixon recently lapsed, allowing the Indianapolis 500 winner to speak with other teams. Arrow McLaren has been mentioned as a possibility. Dixon is 45 and has one Indianapolis 500 win to his credit. He has led more laps in the Indianapolis 500 than any other driver—709. The most laps led by any other active driver is Will Power’s 145.

The winner of this year’s Indianapolis 500, Felix Rosenqvist, says he has taken an offer from a rival team, speculation suggesting the Andretti Global arm of Arrow McLaren, and will move on from Meyer-Shank racing at the end of the year.

Rosenqvist had been with Arrow McLaren before moving to Meyer Shank two years ago. Meyer Shank minority owner Helio Castroneves, a four time 500 winner, says the team has started talking with rookie Caio Collett, a Brazilian driver for A. J. Foyt’s team. Collett has had some impressive performances this year although his overall results have been poor.

Team co-owner Jim Meyer told the Indianapolis Star that a decision will come later whether to go with a newcomer or a veteran-ish driver is the correct direction to take, saying, ” Ultimately, we’re all trying to figure out how to consistently beat Alex Palou right now, to be honest with you. So however we think we can do that best is how we’re going to look at that.”

(NASCAR)—-Shane Van Gisbergen how stands just one win away from tying Jeff Gordon’s record of winning nine Cup road races.  Van Gisbergen fought off a determined late challenge from Chase Briscoe to win at Sonoma.

The race was the last on a road course this year. Van Gisbergen’s win puts him 14th in the points standings, two slots above the cutoff point for drivers wanting to be among the ten that will race  for the season championship. Two former champions, Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano (a three time champion) are having less than mediocre seasons and rank 18th and 20th.

Eight races remain before the championship runoff begins.

The points standings have a new number one for the first time since Tyler Reddick won the Dahytona 500, the opening race of the season.

Denny Hamlin’s 26th place finish gave him enough points to be one ahead of Reddick, who lost four laps early that he could never get back. He finished 36th, last, in the race.

(Picture credits: Cardinals—Chris Creamer’s Sports Logo Page; Royals—Pinterest; Dixon at Indianapolis—Rick Gevers; Rosenqvist at the bricks—Bob Priddy; Van Gisbergen at WWTR-Priddy)

 

 

 

Sports: Avoiding a Sweep, Getting Out of Jail, and Surprise Winners on the Track

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BASEBALL)—The Kansas City Royals missed getting their first sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals at home in 25 years, but they still won the three-game series.  The final game, Sunday, was great for the spectators even though the Royals lost it.

St. Louis 12, Kansas City 10.

Eight home runs. 28 hits. Neither starting pitcher made it to the third inning. A combined dozen relievers followed them to the mound.

Cardinals rookie J. J. Wetherholt had two of the home runs, drove in three runs and scored three times. With one of his two home runs Wetherholt tied an obscure record by a largely forgotten Redbird. His third leadoff home run tied a rookie record set by Bo Hart 24 years ago.

Who?

Bo Hart had a roaring start to his big league career in 2003 when he broke Kirby Puckett’s record by hitting .460 in his first ten games. He finished the season with four homers, to leading off. But  a month into the 2004 season he was sent down and never came back to the bigs.

The Cardinals had lost four in a row. The Royals had a three-game winning streak.

(CHIEFS)—Rashee Rice has finished his thirty-jail sentence that started shortly after his knee surgery.  His time in jail meant his rehabilitation program could not be fully implemented. He also missed the voluntary offseason workouts and the mandatory minicamp practices.

Rice is in the last year of his four-year, $6.5 million rookie contract. He’ll be an unrestricted free agent next March unless the Chief slap a “franchise” tag on him to keep him through ’27.

(HARDY)—Latest word on Tiger running back Ahmad Hardy is that he’s been hard at work on a Stairmaster in the Tiger Training facility rebuilding the strength in his left thigh after a gunshot wound requiring emergency surgery.  Coach Drinkwitz says he’s making good progress but it’s too early to determine if he’ll be in playing condition for the season opener in a little more than a month.

(NFL)—It has been seven years since the NFL has held a supplemental draft. Players have to make themselves available for it—Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsbey has announced he’ll turn pro instead of wrestling opponents about his eligibility after a gambling conviction.

The draft allows teams to submit bids and choose the rounds they want to enter. The first round of bidding is open to non-playoff teams with six or fewer wins.  If no team enters from that category, non-playoff teams with more than six wins go next.  Playoff teams are last, based on their most recent records. If a team wins a player, the team forfeits the equivalent pick in the next year’s draft.

The supplemental draft is kind of an auction. It’s held only when eligible players have put themselves on the market. This will be the fiftieth year since the draft began and only 46 players have been taken.

Jalen Thompson, chosen by the Cardinals in the 2019 draft, is the last player was taken.

—-On the Road Where Mistakes Make Losers and Surprise Winners—

(INDYCAR)—-IndyCar defending champion Alex Palou started from the pole at Road America and was running second when he was caught speeding on pit road and forced to do a drive-through penalty that set him back far enough to take him out of contention. He was able to salvage fifth.

The bigger story was Christian Lundgaard, who started 12th and whose left front wing was damaged in a first lap tangle with Scott Dixon incident that forced him to the pits for repairs and dropped him to last place, 25th.  He made it to the lead on the 43rd of the race’s 55 laps before gibing way to Josef Newgarden for four laps and Marcus Amstrong for 18.  But Lundgaard got past Armstrong to lead the last seven laps including a final lap shootout coming out of caution. Davis Malukas finished second for the third time this year.

The last time an IndyCar driver went last-to first was in 2024 when Alexander won the Grand Prix of Monterey.

(NASCAR)—A unique NASCAR Race Sunday produced a special result and seemingly provide a positive answer about whether the series can run a street-course race on a military base.

The cars snaked through the 3.4-mile naval base course in San Diego, California with part-time driver Corey Heim getting his first Cup victory.  Bubba Wallace, who lost a wheel early in the race rallied back to second.

Road racing ace Shane Van Gisbergen, who had the fastest qualifying run, was taken out in a multi-car crash about halfway through the race.

Heim, 23, who was running only his sixth Cup race of the year and only the 13th in his young career. He’ll move into a fulltime ride next year as a teammate of Tyler Reddick, the current points leader, and Wallace.

(Picture credits:Heim—Instagram;  Hart—Fanatics Collect; Rice—KMBC TV; Lundgaard at Indy—Rick Gevers)

 

Sports: Catching up on Some Missourians; Smith, Anonube, Porters in Brooklyn, Seattle; and other sports

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by Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(WHEREARETHEYNOW)—Aldon Smith, one of the University of Missouri’s greatest linebackers, died Saturday in a friend’s truck.  The cause of his death has not been disclosed. He was 36 and had dealt with various legal problems that cost him his career.

Smith reportedly had blown his NFL millions and was delivering pizzas with a friend when he died. When he was straight he was one of the best defensive backs in the NFL—his first two years with the 49ers. But drug tests in 2014 led to a nine-game ban. The team dumped him after several DUI arrests. He was picked up by the Raiders who kept him for nine games before cutting him.  He was out of football before the Cowboys brought him back in 2020. He was in all sixteen games but did not return in 2021.

Former Missouri Tiger Tucker McCann has been released by the Battlehawks. He had kicked well (10 for 11 in field goals with some beyond fifty yards and a long one of 58) and 6 for 7 on PATS. But he was sidelined by a pre-game injury in week five. There is some speculation that his release from the IR might be because he’s caught the eye of an NFL team.

Jontay Porter, whose possible NBA career was ended after just 37 games in The Show and a career largely in the development league by his gambling, played a couple of games for the United Basketball Leagues Seattle Superhawks this spring.  The team won the league championship with only one loss but without Porter except for the brief appearance.

Porter was convicted in the gambling case and had been scheduled for sentencing last December 10 but the sentencing was delayed. As far as we know he is in federal custody and still is awaiting sentencing. Prosecutors want him to go to prison for 41-51 months although he could get much more. The Los Angeles Times reports his case remains part of a multi-million dollar investigation of NBA players and gambling.

He had a triple-double in his debut with the Superhawks in which he set a league rebounding record. But he played only one other game finished averaging 26.5 points, 18.5 rebounds and 9.5 assists per game.

Older brother Michael Porter has wrapped up his first season with the Brooklyn Nets, making it the best year of his seven-year career, one of the few bright spots for a team that finished 20-62.  In 52 games, he averaged 24.2 points on 46% shooting from the field, 7.1 rebounds and three assists. Porter suffered a left hamstring injury that cut short his year after 52 games.

And then there’s Ogugua Anunoby,  or “O.G.” as everybody knows him, the Jefferson City High School product who is part of the NBA champion New York Knicks and who will forever be the hero for tipping in the winning basket in the Knicks’ epic comeback in game for the the NBA finals. That basket overshadowed the other 31 points he scored that night to put New York up 3-1 against the Spurs, who wrapped things up Saturday with another comeback win in San Antonio.

Anunoby is one of the great misses for the University of Missouri. He graduated from Jefferson City High School in 2014 and received scholarship offers from Indian, Georgia, Iowa, George Mason and Ole Miss, but not from the Tigers, coached then by Kim Anderson. He chose Indiana, played a couple of years there and went to the NBA.

In 2014, while a senior at Jefferson City High School in Missouri, Anunoby received scholarship offers from several schools, including Indiana, Georgia, Iowa, George Mason, and Ole Miss Wikipedia. Missouri was among the schools that contacted him, but he ultimately chose Indiana University over them. In 2017, he was the 23rd overall choice in the NBA draft, taken by the Toronto Raptors.

(CHIEFS)—The Chiefs are comfortable with their draft choices and other personnel that they could let tackle Wanya Morris go to the Atlanta Falcons for a sixth-round 2027 draft pick. The Chief also are giving the Falcons a seventh-round pick. The general feeling is that the Chiefs are not giving up much but they’re not getting much either.

Morris started only 16 games in three years for Kansas City and posted below-average numbers for a starter.

(UFL)—The United Football League has crowned the Louisville Kings their 2026 champion.  The Kings, who defeated the St. Louis Battlehawks to make it to the United Bowl, beat the DC Defenders 27-20.  They finish the season 7-4. DC United finishes 6-5. The Kings lost their first three games of the year but won seven of the remaining eight games.

(BUTLER)—Battlehawks receiver Hakeem Butler has earned another shot at an NFL career.  The UFL’s Offensive Player of the Year has signed a contract with the Denver Broncos.

Butler has been the UFL Offensive Player of the Year twice in three seasons. He missed a game and the team changed quarterbacks twice but he still let the league with 641 yards receiving with an eye-opening average of 22.1 yards per catch, a league record, this year.

He finished just eleven yards short of his team record, with nine catches for 30 or more yards including a 75-yard touchdown bomb against the Defenders in the third week of the season.

Butler is 30, stands 6’5” went to school at Iowa State where, as a junior he had 60 receptions for a school record 1,318 yards. He opted out of his senior season and was a 2019 fourth-round pick of the Arizona Cardinals.  He also had brief stints with the Panthers, Eagles, Steelers, and Bengals and also played in the CFL.

BASEBALL

(CARDINALS)—The St. Louis Cardinals finished their week winning seven of their last ten and being in a playoff position if the season ended now. They’re five games behind the Brewers in their division and seven games above .500.

But they’re not standing pat.

In the last ten days, they’ve sent Victor Scott II to Memphis and activated Nathan Church. They finally sent Nolan Gorman and Hunter Dobbins down while moving first baseman Blaze Jordan to the big league roster along with right hander Chris Roycroft. They made roster sace for Jordan by moving third baseman Ramon Urias to the 60-day DL. He has problems with his right elbow. And they’ve added left hander Nathan Shinn to their system. He had been with the Lake Erie Crushers of the Frontier League.

(MONDAY)—Dustin May settled for a one-hit complete game against the Padres last night. The Redbirds won the game 3-0.  May didn’t allow a base runner until he issued a walk in the seventh inning.  It’s his first complete major league game in 71 starts. He’s now 5-6.

May is the first Cardinals starter since June 27, last year when Sonny Gray one-hit the Guardians.

In all of Major League Baseball this year, there have been only nine complete games and six individual shutouts.

(RECORD)—One of Albert Pujols’ records with the Cardinals has been broken. Ivan Herrera’s two home runs against the Twins on Saturday five him 21 pinch-hit homers by a Cardinals designated hitter. Pujols had 19.

(TROUBLE DOWN ON THE FARM)—The city council in Memphis is arguing about whether the city should put five-million dollars into the stadium where the Cardinals top minor league team plays.  A city council budget committee has refused to commit the five million the team wants for “mandatory essential life-safety overhauls, HVAC requirements, and…MLB facility compliance.

The city is involved because it bought the stadium twelve years ago to keep the Cardinals from moving the franchise and in doing so assumed the obligation to cover major improvements.  The team pays the bills for all operating expenses including utilities.  The Cardinals pay the city only $30,000 in rent but tourist experts say the city benefits in total economic activity because of the stadium to the tune of almost $120 million.

There are five years left on the lease.

(ROYALS)—The Royals and the Angels are tied for the worst record in the American League—29-43. The Royals are ten games out in their division. The Angels are in a better position because they’re in a division in which only one team is above water—the Mariners who are only 37-36.

The Royals ended their latest losing streak at four by beating the Astros Sunday. They’ve had three six-game losing streaks and the season isn’t half done.

The Royals are generally punchless and have had inconsistent bullpen all season.

Sam McDowell, who covers the Royals for The Kansas City Star, has noted the team that was 26th in the league in scoring last year is scoring the fewest runs this year in all of major league baseball, that in their last 223 games (all of last year and so far this year), the Royals have scored three or more runs in an inning only 74 times. Four guys the team counts on for offense, Bobby Witt Jr., Salvatore Perez, Vinnie Pasquantino, and Maikel Garcia are hitting well below their averages from 2025.

On top of that, Pasquantino has been put on the ten-day DL with a broken wrist bone. Seth Lugo is due off the list this week after taking a line drive off his forehead last week. Outfielder Kyle Isbell is on the ten day DL with a foot injury.

The “good” news is that Kris Bubic has started his rehab at Omaha. Second baseman Jonathan India has been moved from the ten-day to the sixty-day disabled list with left shoulder problems.

The Royals start a series tomorrow night against the Washington Nationals.

Now: Cars

(INDYCAR)—IndyCar heads to its longest race track to start the second half of its season next weekend.  Driver and crews finally got a little off-track time since the race a week ago near St. Louis, but they’re headed to Road America at Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin for the first of the nine remaining races on the schedule—three more ovals and six more road courses including the inaugural race through the D.C. Mall on the July 4th weekend.

The circuit is four miles, with fourteen turns, and held its first race 71 years ago. The race will be 55 laps, about 221 miles.

Alex Palou, who leads the series points chase, has won three of the last four events there.  Starting near the front is almost mandatory for anyone hoping for a win. Nobody who has started 14th or lower has won an IndyCar race at Road America.

The championship this year would be Palou’s fourth, third in a row. It’s his to lose as he heads into the last half of the season up on Kyle Kirkwood by 49 points and 68 more than David Malukas.

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IndyCar is mourning the loss of Paul Reinbol, half of the Dreyer & Reinbold racing team. He was 65.  He had built on his success as a car dealer in Indianapolis to run cars in the 500 for a quarter century. Oriol Servia had he team’s best finish in the 500 when he came home fourth in 2012. Drivers for the team have led laps in four of the last six races and the team has had entries.  Last year, Ryan Hunter Ray had the lead in a D&R car with 31 laps left when he ran out of gas chasing his second 500 title.

(NASCAR)—For the first time in his two-decade career, Denny Hamlin has won three races in a row.  Sunday’s win at Pocono was his eighth at the track and the 64th of his career, breaking a tie with Kyle Busch.

Christopher Bell and his crew gambled on fuel and lost, big time, when Bell had to pit with five laps left. Bell, racing with a wrist broken in a crash last week, wound up 266h.

Points leader Tyler Reddick, who won five races early in the season but who has struggled to find podium finishes since, finished second to Hamlin but sawhis early-season 100 point lead shrink to only a dozen.

NASCAR takes to a road course next weekend on a naval base in California.

(FORMULA 1—Seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton won his first race since joining the Ferrari team at the start of 2025. His win pulls him to within 41 points of Kimi Antonelli, a teenage F1 sensation who car dropped out with mechanical problems.  Hamilton wants to become the first F1 driver to win eight world championships.

Sports: Re-nesting the Birds; Bring Home a Chief; The Four-Point Field Goal; Consequential Track Wins.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BYE REDBIRDS BYE)—The Cardinals have welcomed back Noot and Nathan to the big nest and have kicked Victor Scott II down to Memphis after low-offensive production in the first couple of months of the season. Nathan Church came off the DL for last night’s game. Lars Nootbar had a solid outing in his return after months of recovery from heel surgery.

The moves can set up an outfield of Church in left, Jordan Walker in center and Nootbar in right. That leaves Nelson Velasquez to rotate in on offense and provide power off the bench.

Scott still isn’t showing he can consistently hit big league pitching. He was sent down with a .194 average, two homers and nine RBIs. Church, on the other hand, has played 45 games with five homers, 18 RBIs and a .247 average.

Nootbar returned Sunday with a two-run game-winning homer against the Reds.

(ROYAL PAINS)—Two key members of the Kansas City Royals are hurting and as this is written, their reappearance in the lineup is uncertain.

Bobby Witt has a right knee that is giving him more trouble as the season wears on. He left the field om the Seventh inning Sunday. Manager Matt Quatraro says its “nothing acute” but it got worse as the game wore on.  Witt has not missed a game this year.

Royals catcher Salvador Perez has missed the last couple of game after getting hit by a pitch on his right thumb. Outfielder Jac Caglianone left the game with a sore shoulder after hitting the wall. Maikel Garcia will move to shortstop if Witt spend some time off the field. The Royals have rookie Carter Jensen ready to go behind the plate if needed.  He’s played 34 games there this year, five more than Perez, who has spent some time at first base.

Although Perez’s overall batting performance is down this year, he and Witt are tied for the team lead in homers with nine. He’s also just five home runs behind the team record for career homers, now held by George Brette, who had 317.

On the good news side, there’s Kris Bubic who began his rehab assignment today in Omaha. He’s been on the 15-day DL with left elbow soreness. He had Tommy John surgery three years ago and missed the last half of last year with a rotator cuff strain.  He had a pretty good season going with a 4.11 ERA and 51 strikeouts in 50.1 innings. He had four quality starts in nine outings.

(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City Chiefs are bring back a former teammate who might be able to help a young cornerback corps.  NFL Insider reports the chiefs have signed L’Jarrius Snead to a one-year, potential five-million dollar contract.

The Chiefs cornerback group going into fall camp is their number eight overall draftee Mansoor DeLane, holdover Nohl Williams, and free agent Kader Kahou

The Chiefs traded Snead to the Tennessee Titans in 2024. The Titans signed him for four years, $76 million but he was in only a dozen games in the two seans there and was released in the offseason. He intercepted ten passes in his four years with the Chiefs and was on two Super Bowl winning teams.

(BATTLEHAWKS)—The St. Louis Battlehawks have fallen out of the UFL playoffs in the first round, falling to the Louisville Kings, arguably the hottest team in the league, or one of them.  Louisville lost its first three games and has won seven of eight since then, the latest being 29-20.

The win puts the Kings in the United Bowl, the league championship game, against the DC Defenders.  Louisville blasted one of the league’s best defenses with two touchdown runs of 50 yards or more. It is the third straight year the Battlehawks have lost a chance to play for the league championship.

St. Louis won the statistical game, with double the Louisville first downs (22-11), ran 75 plays to the Louisville’s 42.  But their offense, one of the league’s weakest, didn’t get the ball across the goal line enough.  They led 20-18 going into the last quarter.

But Louisville got the touchdown and then kicker Tanner Brown nailed down the win with a 63 yard field goal. The UFL gives field goals longer than 60 yards four points.

St. Louis finishes the year 6-5.

A different kind of running game:

(INDYCAR)—IndyCar reached the halfway mark of its18-race season and the halfway point of its six-race schedule for ovals just before midnight at World Wide Raceway, just across the river from St. Louis.  The race was delayed twice—almost an hour, total,  for brief sprinkles of rain.

The Track is a friendly place for Penske driver Josef Newgarden, who won there for the sixth time in eleven races at the track Sunday night. It’s his second win this year.

Newgarden is IndyCar’s ovalmeister, with fifteen of his 34 career wins coming on ovals, two of them at the Indianapolis 500.  He still wears a fiberglass boot because of a leg injury suffered in this year’s 500, although he takes it off for driving.

He finished about seven-tenths of a second ahead of Marcus Ericsson (on the left on the podium) and almost two seconds ahead of Christian Rasmussen (right). The finishes by Ericsson and Rasmussen are their bests this year.

Ericsson led more than twice as many laps as any other driver—Newgarden—114-53 of the 260 laps on the mile and a half track. But it was Rasmussen that Newgarden had to get past after close racing for several laps after the last stoppage.

McLaughlin made a spirited charge toward the front on the restart on Lap 234, climbing from ninth to fifth in just four laps. But the Kiwi and the other cars that pitted for tires didn’t have enough traction from the fresher rubber or speed to challenge the top four down the stretch.

The race was hotly contested all night long with 268 passes for position in he 260 laps, a track record.

Points leader Alex Palou started on pole for the fourth straight race but tried to stretch his fuel one lap too far. He coasted into his pits with a dead engine that then refused to re-fire. He finished 17th, two laps down but he still has a substantial lead on Kyle Kirkwood, who finished sixth.

Newgarden’s win puts him into a ninth-place tie with Al Unser Jr., on the all-time Indycar wins list.  A. J. Foyt is number one with 67, eight more than Scott Dixon, who finished 12th Sunday night.

(NASCAR)—Denny Hamlin’s 63rd career win—the second time in two weeks that he’s gone from last to first—was emotional one because it lifted him into a ninth place on the all-times Cup wins list with Kyle Busch.  His fourth win of the year ended with him turning a victory lap while holding a black flag with the number 18 on it—-Busch’s number for most of his racing career before his death a couple of weeks ago. Hamlin and Busch had been teammates at one time.

Hamlin had the top qualifying speed but had to start last among the 37 cars because his team made some adjustments in his car after qualifying.

Points leader Tyler Reddick failed to finish and leads Hamlin by only 52 points now.

The race had eleven caution flags, a race record.

(Photo credit: Bob Priddy)

 

Sports: I Got the Fever; Going Opposite Baseball Directions; Playoff Football; Detroit and Nashville for Speed

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BEFORE WE GET STARTED):   There is the NBA and then there is basketball and it is being played by women.

We took in our second Indiana Fever game when we were in Indianapolis recently, chance to watch Sophie and Caitlin play—Sophie is kind of considered Caitlin’s enforcer—and again were greatly impressed by the intensity of the women’s game and the fact that people of normal height but extraordinary skill worked the ball, set up plays, had tremendous assists, fierce blocks, and ran up 90 points in four ten-minute quarters.

And the pregame!  Tiger fans, get a load of this (anytime you see someone wearing number 8, it’s former Tiger Sophie Cunningham)

Now, on to regular business

(BASEBALL)—Neither of our major league baseball teams was much to talk about this week.  The Cardinals muddled along and the Royals sank deeper into mediocrity. In fact, the Royals dropped to a season-worst 15 games under .500 with their sweep by the Rangers, making Kansas City losers of 16 of their last 19 including two straight sweeps and four overall. Manager Matt Quartaro was at least honest when he said, manager Matt Quatraro said Sunday. “I mean, we didn’t play well enough to win a game.”

The Royals were 10-18 in May. Four of their pitchers are out with injuries and the the offense isn’t showing much spark heading into June.  They began the new week with the second-worst record in the American League (Detroit is a half-game behind them.)

The Cardinals took the rubber game of the series with the Cubs Sunday night to hold onto second place in a division in which every team is playing better than break-even ball. They’re five games over .500 but trail the Brewers by four and a half at the start of a new week.

They opened a series last night against the Texas Rangers who are managed by Cardinals fan favorite Skip Schumaker, who played in St. Louis 2005=2012.

(DOWN ON THE FARM)—-A rarity, maybe it’s history—for minor league baseball happened in Springfield Saturday afternoon when Jurrangelo Cinintje, obtained in a winter trade and now the number for player in the Cardinals pipeline, started for the Springfield Cardinals.

He struck out Wichita Wind Surge outfielder Garrett Spain twice.

He did it once throwing right-handed and once throwing left-handed. He wasn’t too spectacular otherwise—three runs, three hits and a walk.

He’s 23, has made ten starts this year and is 3-2 with a 5.21 ERA

(BATTLEHAWKS)—-The St. Battlehawks go into the first round of the UFL playoffs at 6-4 after Friday night’s upset by the Dallas. 20-16.  They had clinched a home field first round playoff spot a week earlier.

Dallas had lost six in a row before finishing the regular season with the victory. St. Louis helped he Renegades get the win by turning the ball over four times in eleven possessions (1 fumble, two interceptions and a 3-and-out).

The Orlando Storm go into the playoffs 8-2 with the Battlehawks at 6-4. The Louisville Kings are 5-4, and the DC Defenders are the four-seed with a 5-5 record.

The first round playoffs next weekend will match Orlando and DC and St. Louis against Louisville in the Battledome, as it’s now called. The ‘Hawks beat the Kings 16-3 earlier.

The Kings started the season 0-3

On the track—

(INDYCAR)—The streets of Detroit hosted IndyCar one week after the spectacular Indianapolis 500  and this this time, the driver who started P1 finished in the same position

—a familiar face: Alex Palou.  If he pulls off a win next weekend at World Wide Technology Speedway, he will have won half of the last 26 IndyCar events.  He’s four out of eight this year. He’s well on the way to his fourth straight series title, up by 62 points over Kyle Kirkwood, the runner up, three seconds behind.

He led 71 of the 100 laps and took the lead for the final time on lap 69 when Kirkwood pitted.

(NASCAR)—Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell, and Chase Briscoe were three-wide at the start of the last lap at Nashville but, as one long-ago broadcaster put it, “it was a wreck that didn’t happen….and Hamlin had the momentum coming off of the last turn.

Hamlin began the race on the pole but jumped the start and was sent to the back of the 38-car field. He fought his way back for the 62nd victory of his career. He is now only one win behind Kyle Busch, who ranks ninth on the all-time Cup list.

(picture credits: Palou at Indianapolis—Bob Priddy; Battlehawks—Instagram; Pitcher—Springfield Daily Citizen)

 

Sports: Hardy Update;  Winning and Losing Streaks end in Same Game; Biggest Weekend for Speed.    

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by Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(AHMED)—A suspect in the shooting of Missouri running back Ahmad Hardy has been caught in Paducah, Kentucky.  Rashodrick Harris is being extradited to Mississippi to face two charges of aggravated assault. Authorities say additional charges might be added.

Three people taken into custody at the shooting site have been released.

Hardy has moved to a Columbia hospital after surgery in Mississippi on leg wound. He already has started physical therapy and could be released from the hospital this week. Coach Drinkwitz says Hardy’s status for the 2026 remains uncertain.

(MIZZPORT)—South Dakota guard Jordan Crawford is the fifth, and likely last, portal player to join the Missouri Tigers for next season.  He’s 6-3, spent two years at College of Charleston then a year at Eastern Kentucky and was at South Dakota for the last season. He’s listed as a redshirt senior. He averaged 14.4 pointa game for the Coyotes last year and shot 37% from three.

Three Tigers last year are still without a new home court for the next season: Sebastian Mack, Jacob Crews, and Jevon Porter.  Porter and Crews need hardship permits that will let them play.

(BILLSPORT)—The St. Louis University Billikens have restocked after losing most of their team that finished with the best record in school history.  Several players have stayed and they’ll be joined by 6-7 guard Yousaf Ahmad, who comes south from Canada. Others players coming to St. Louis through the portal are Alon Michaeli, moving east from Colorado, and Elijah Stron, who’s moving west from South Carolina.

The Billikens lost Bobby Availa, their big mane in the middle. They’re hoping 6-11 freshman Sheek Pearson can step in. He was red shirted with Marquette last year.

They’re also picked up home town guy Jamison White, a 6=7  high school recruit from Vashon High in St. Louis.

Baseball:

(ROYALS/CARDINALS)—The Kansas City Royals broke their six-game losing streak Sunday against the Cardinals

The Royals are struggling with several injuries, perhaps the biggest one is starting pitcher Cole Ragans, who was put on the 15-day disabled list with a left elbow problem May 8. His return is uncertain although Kansas City Star reporter Jaylon Thompson says Ragans threw thirty pitches in the bullpen Sunday and felt good. But the teams is still deciding its next steps in his return.

Stephen Kolek shut down the Cardinal Sunday to end the Royals’ six-game streak. The Cardinals’s Masyn Wynn left the game in the seventh inning. He’s listed as day-to-day after tweaking his knee running to first base to avoid a double play.

The Royals have lost seven of their last ten games and have fallen out of a challenging position in their division. In fact, at 29-27, they’re last.  Only two teams have fewer wins.

The Cardinals are eight games over .500 and only a game and a half behind the Cubs.

Football:

(BATTLEHAWKS)—The clock ran out on the St. Louis Battlehawks with the ‘Hawks two years away from tying the score against the Houston Gamblers.  The 23-16 loss is the first home loss for St. Louis since the third game of last year and keeps them from locking up a playoff spot.

There are two games left in the UFL season before the top four teams go into a playoff. The Battlehawks are tied with the DC Defenders for second place in the league at 5-3. Orlando leads at 6-2.

The teams will face each other again on Thursday night in Houston.

The Big Motorsports Weekend:

Indianapolis 500 plus 600 miles and Charlotte and F1 in the picturesque streets of Monte Carlo.

(INDIANAPOLIS)—Alex Palou will start next Sunday’s Indianapolis 500 in the same place that he finished last year’s race—first.   But the starting field behind him is less settled than it appeared to be Sunday.

Palou finished a tense Sunday with a run of 232.248 to win his second pole at  the 500.  He was the only driver to top 232 mph in the last round of qualifying, edging another former winner, Alexander Rossi, by .1726 of a second for the four-lap run.  David Malukis, in his first 500 as member of the team owned by Speedway owner Roger Penske, starts from the outside of row one.

Felix Rosenqvist, who had led the qualifiers through the earlier rounds, was disappointed by his final run, which will start him fourth.

Then things changed.

The 33-car lineup for the race start was changed hours after the Palou’s qualifying run when post-qualifying inspections found unauthorized modifications to the cars of rookie Caio Collet and Jack Harvey.

Collet, who had qualified tenth and Harvey, who would have started 20th, have been sent to the back of the field to 32nd and 33rd place for the start of the race.

A three-car crash yesterday as drivers adjusted their cars for racing trim destroyed one car and badly damaged another.

Rossi spun on the second turn and demolished the car he had qualified for the second starting position.  He was taken to a hospital a short distance from the track but he was reported to be awake and in “good spirits” when removed from his wrecked car.  Pato O’Ward, who was following Rossi, spun into Rossi’s car and badly damaged the car he had qualified for sixth starting position. A third driver, Romain Grosjean, scheduled to start 24th, also spun trying to avoid the other two.

Multiple Contenders Crash in Indy 500 Practice

Two-time winners Josef Newgarden (who will start a disappointing 23rd) and Takuma Sato (starting 12th) had the top laps during the practice session that was shortened because of the crsh and because of rain.

Rossi, O’Ward, and Grosjean will have a chance to get their cars into racing trim one more time. The last practice before the race will be Friday.

(NASCAR)—Denny Hamlin won NASCAR’s annual all-start race, a non-points contest that means one-million dollars to him and his crew.

He and the other Cup driver will run NASCR’s longest race Sunday evening, 400 laps, 600 miles on the Charlotte oval.

One member of the starting field will be Katherine Legge, the only woman driving in the Cup series this year, although she’s a part-time entrant.  She will start 26 in the Indianapolis 500 that afternoon and fly to Charlotte for the race that night. She’ll be the first woman to try “the double.”  She will be the sixth driver to try to run 1100 miles on Memorial Day Sunday. Tony Stewart is the only driver to finish both races on the same day—in 2001 when he was sixth at Indianapolis and third at Charlotte. Other drivers who’ve tried are John Andretti, Robby Gordon (who tried five times), Kurt Busch, and Kyle Larson.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula One’s race will be through the glamorous streets of Monte Carlo on the same general circuit as the one used in 1929 for the first race.

(Photo credit:  Palou—IMS)

 

Sports: Ahmad Hardy Shot; NCAA Tournament Greed, and More 

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(HARDY)—Missouri’s  record=breaking running back Ahmad Hardy was shot in the left leg at a concert at a biker club in Laurel, Mississippi early Sunday morning. He’s undergone emergency surgery and is in stable condition.

Missouri is three months away from opening the 2026 football season. ESPN reports there is “optimism” that he will be able to play football again although it’s too early to establish a timetable for his return to strength.

Police say another man also was shot. Three people are in custody. Hardy is 20, a Mississippi native. He set a new Tiger rushing record last year.

Laurel police say the shooting took place during a “melee” after a rap concert. Reports n Laurel say the cause of the shooting is still being investigated.

The Tigers had been looking forward to a 2026 season with the return of its one-two backfield punch from ’25 of Hardy and Jamal Roberts.  Roberts ran for 753 yards on 124 carries last season and scored six touchdowns.  Hardy went for 1,649 yards, a new school record, with 16 TDs and was a finalist for the Doak Walker Award.

Hardy and Roberts made Missouri the only team in the  SEC with two running backs in the top ten in yardage last season. Coach Eli Drinkwitz told reporters last season that Roberts “is as good a back as there is in the country.” Hardy had been expected to go high in the 2027 NFL draft after staying out of the transfer portal. Roberts did the same thing and has two more years of eligibility remaining.

Missouri does have some depth at running back if Hardy isn’t ready by the start of the season. The Tigers picked up a couple of portal transfers in Hawaii native Va’aimalae Fonoti III, who moves over from Montana, an FCS school. He’s 5-11, 207 pounds with three years of eligibility left. He was 84/418 rushing with five touchdowns. Last season.

Also coming in is Houston Christian;s Xai’Shaun Edwards, who averaged five yard a carry for 1,019 yards last year for another FCS team. He scored a dozen touchdowns.

Missouri also will have true freshman Maxwell Warner on the roster.  Warner is from Chicago and went to the same high school that Mizzou basketball coach Dennis Gates attended. He was considered the top running back in Illinois. He also played defensive back.

(NCAA)—It’s going to be easier for our Missouri teams to get into the NCAA tournament in the future. The men’s and women’s basketball tournaments are being expanded by eight teams to 76 teams.  The plan has come under some harsh criticism but an association spokesman says none of the 32 conferences in the NCAA opposed the plan.

Ben Portnoy of the Sports Business Journal thinks the new plan gives the Power Four Conferences and their “increasingly bloated size” more dominance in college sports. In the pas five year’s tournaments, twenty teams were listed in the “first four out.” Thirteen of them were frm those four conferences.

“Let’s not kid ourselves, this is being done, at least on some level, to appease the richest and most powerful leagues in the country.” The new format opens dozens of new sponsorship opportunities and a subsequent jump in association and school revenues.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals have finished their toughest part of the season so far—going 9-7 in seventeen days against the Dodgers, Mariners, Pirates, Padres, and Brewers.  All of those teams are playing better than break-even ball and all are considered playoff contenders.

The Cardinals finished the week 23-17, three and a half games behind the Cubs, tied with the Brewers for second place in a division in which all five teams are playing better than .500 ball.

(WHERE ARE THEY NOW?)—Where are the major names that left the Cardinals in the last couple of years and how are they doing.

Nolan Arenado is hitting .273 with six homers and 18 RBIs for the Diamondbacks.

Sonny Gray is 3-1 with a 3.54 Era for the Red Sox

Willson Contreras, also with Boston, is batting .259 with eight homers and 23 ribbies.

Paul Goldschmidt, in his second year with the Yankees, is batting 200 with two homers and seven runs batted in.

Brendan Donovan is hitting .295 with 3 home runs and 8 runs batted in.

Miles Mikolas is 1-3, 7.44 in eight games, five of them starts.

(ROYALS)—The Royals continue working back to break even after their eight-game losing streak. They finished the week wining seven of their last ten and pulling to 19-22. The Tigers ended Kansas City’s five-game wining streak Sunday.

(FIFA)—Arrowhead Stadium as a name doesn’t mean much to the millions of people worldwide who will be watching the World Cup Soccer Tournament (or as the official soccer folks call it “football.”)  So the place will just be Kansas City Stadium when FIFA brings six pool play tournament games next month along with a match in the round of 32 and a quarterfinal contest.

The AP’s Dave Skiretta reports the Hunt family has spent millions of dollars reconfiguring the football field into a soccer field’s dimensions. The first teams to play on the redesigned field will be Argentina, the defending World Cup champion, against Algeria on June 16.  The final contest is scheduled for July 11, giving the Chiefs a month turn Kansas City Stadium back into Arrowhead.

Tickets for those games aren’t cheap. For the first four games, ticket prices will range from $140  to $410. Some seats in the nosebleed section can be had for as little as $60 but don’t expect any kind of intimate viewing experience. Round of 32 matches range from $160 to $440.

If you want to take in the quarterfinal match, be prepared to cough up $485 to $1,125. If you buy previously=sold tickets through the FIFA World cup platform, be prepared to pay a 15% resale fee.

(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City Chiefs invited 76 undrafted free agents to their rookie camp this year.  Only three were signed to contracts:  WR Xavier Loyd, DB Marlen Sewell, and OT Kahlil Benson.

Lloyd in a Kansas City native who played at K-State, Illinois State and at Missouri. He was in 12 games for the Tigers. Sewell spent five years at Vanderbilt, had 52 tackles in 45 games.

Benson played 12 of the 16 games Indiana played on the way to last season’s national championship. He allowed only 24 quarterback pressures on 382 pass-blocking snaps last season.

They’ll be part of the squad for the offseason training program that starts later this month.

(BATTLEHAWKS)—The St. Louis Battlehawks head into the last weeks of the UFL season in a three way tie for their division lead.  St. Louis, DC, and Orlando all are 5-2.  Jarveon Howard of the Battlehawks leads the league in rushing with 354 yards.  The ‘Hawks have the league’s best defense, giving up 247 yards a game, which they need because they’re last in total offense. But they’re pretty efficient. They are second in scoring average behind the DC Defenders, 30-23.

St. Louis beat Columbus 31-20 last week. There are three games left in the regular schedule, two against Houston and one against Dallas. Houston is 2-5. Dallas is 3-4.

(REMEMBER?)—Kansas Center Greg Ostertag, who played for the Jayhawks 1991-95 and then had an eleven-year NBA career, has been elected mayor of Mount Vernon, Texas, a town of about 2,500 about 100 miles northeast of Dallas.  At 7-2, he is now the world’s tallest public official.

Now: Where the rubber meets the road:

(INDYCAR)===It’s been a long time between wins for Chistian Lundgaard—47 races, in fact—but he heads into IndyCar’s biggest race as a winner.

Lundgaard finished almost five seconds ahead of David Malukas on the road course at Indianapolis, his first win since July of 2023

The race had its chaotic moments beginning as the field surged into the first turn and things got too crowded and the cars of Scott Dixon, Felix Rosenqvist, Pato O’Ward, and Caio Collett tangled, triggering a full course caution.

Rosenqvist was able to run eight more laps before retiring in 23rd place.  Dixon rallied back to fifth at the end. O’Ward and Collett finished on the leader lap but were 18th and 19th.

The race turned for many competitors when Alexander Rossi’s car quit because its hybrid power system failed and he rolled to a stop on the main straightaway. He fumed, ““It’s pretty annoying to have failures on the car because of a product we didn’t ask for that doesn’t improve the racing.”

Rossi sat in the safety of his stalled car as competitors roared past at racing speeds before a full=course caution came out.  He finally climbed out and walked across pit lane where he told an interviewer, “The fact that it took that long to throw a full-course caution when the cars on the front straight were going by at 170 miles an hour also seems insane when they don’t let us drive in the wet yesterday.” Qualifying had been called off  the day before the race because of unsafe conditions caused by rain, although IndyCar has run races in the rain several times.

David Malukis finished second after leading the most laps but giving up the lead to Lundgaard        and Graham Rahal claimed the last podium slot.”

Qualifying for the Indianapolis 500 will be next weekend. The race will be on the Sunday of Memorial day weekend, May 24th.

(NASCAR)—Shane Van Gisbergen’s historic drive to the win on the Watkins Glen board course already is considered an epic.

The acknowledged master of NASCAR road courses (he’s 7-1 in the last three years) came out of his last pit stop in 26th place, 29.2  seconds behind the leader with 24 twisting laps ahead. .

He overhauled all of them and pulled away for a 7.3 second lead at the checkered flag.

His win leaves him only two short of Jeff Gordo’s all-time NASCAR Cup Series record for road course victories. Van Gisbergen has yet to win on an oval.

Connor Zilisch, a rookie in the Cup series, appeared to be the only driver capable of keeping Van Gisbergen in sight until a tire let go. He finished 20th.

NASCAR’s next points race will be Sunday night, May 24th, the annual 600 miler at Charlotte. Next weekend it will hold its annual All-Star Race, this time at Dover.

(photo credits: Hardy— Kris Sand, Columbia Missourian; Lundgaard—IndyCar; Van Gisbergen—Rick Gevers)

Sports: One More Tiger; Good Mahomes News; Baseball is Looking Good–and May Racing

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(MIZZOUPORT)—The latest new Missouri Tiger basketball player is guard Kennard Davis, a St. Louis Vashon product coming over from BYU. He’s a 6-6 small forward who spent a year at Southern Illinois and two more at Brigham Young where he averaged 8.6 ppg last year.

247 Sports ranks Missouri’s recruit class this year as the 11th best in the country.

Three guy’s on last season’s Missouri roster remain unemployed—Sebastian Mack, Jacob Cruz, and Jevon Porter. Porter remains in limbo because he needs a medical hardship designation to play next year.

(CHIEFS)—The news is getting better about Patrick Mahomes’ recovery from his knee injury. The Chiefs are saying he might reach his goal of being ready for the season opener in September. In fact, Coach Andy Reid is holding out the possibility that he could be involved in the OTA’s May 26-28.

Reid has told ESPN, “He is in a good position to be able to do some things. If he can do some things, [he will]. Phase 2 remember, there’s no contact and there’s no offense versus defense. “It’s Phase 3 that you get into that… he’s in a position where he can do everything, I think.”

Some videos have been circulating showing Mahomes dropping back and throwing passes.

Just in case he’s not ready, the Chiefs picked up former LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier in the draft.

He’s eager to see what he can learn Mahomes: “I’m so excited to be in a room with those guys. Coach Reid and his unbelievable offensive mind and obviously sitting behind Patrick and getting to learn from him, hopefully steal some things from him and see the game through his eyes.”

The Chiefs also have added Justin Fields who has seen NFL snaps with the Bears, Steelers, and Jets.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals have hit the 20 wins mark a week earlier than last year even though they came up short against the Dodgers in their final game of their series, the loss ending a four-game Dodger losing streak and a six-game Cardinals winning streak, but still giving the Cardinals a series win. Dodgers’ starter Justin Wrobleski is now undefeated in five decisions.

The loss went to Dustin May, who drops to 3-3.

Cardinals pitching shut down Dodgers’ star Shohei Ohtani who went hitless during the series and finished without a hit in four straight games. That’s his longest hitless streak since he went five game in 2022 while playing for the other Los Angeles team.

The Redbirds started the week with a 6-3 win against the Brewers. Both teams had 11 hits.Milwaukee scored twice in the ninth to make it close. Kyle Leahy went 6.1 innings and gave the up the first of the by Brewer’s run.

(ROYALS)—The Royals swept the Mariners to wrap up their week and doubling the number of road games they’ve won this year.  They’re now 6-15 on the road.  Kris Bubic ran his record to 3-2 with seven solid innings, allowing Seattle its only run, giving up only four singles.  The save went to Daniel Lynch, his first of the year. The sweep has run the KC record to 15-19, going 7-3 in their last ten games.

Their game Saturday saw the Royals become the eighth team in MLB history to win a game although Royals batters fanned 17 times, got no walks, but still put together a 3-2 win.

Seth Lugo (7IP, 2R) kept Kansas City close and added another distinction to the game when he struck out Randy Arozarena on a curve ball clocked at 67.8 mph, the slowest strikeout pitch by a non-position player this year. But it was only the second slowest of his career.

The Royals started this week 2½ games behind the Guardians and the Tigers in a division in which those are the only teams above .500—by one game. ]

Michael Wacha, who threw only 60 pitches in the first six innings—tying a personal record—held the Guardians at bay last night. He left after 7 and, allowing only four hits and two runs.

Now, something that’s faster than a Seth Lugo curve:

(NASCAR)—Chase Elliott outran Denny Hamlin in a four-lap shootout at the Texas Motor Speedway to get his second win of the year.  The win makes Elliott the second multi-winner this year, joining Tyler Reddick, who has won half of this year’s races (5). Reddick finished fourth behind Alex Bowman, who had his best finish since recovering from vertigo that sidelined him for four races earlier.

The win moves Elliott into second place in the standings behind Reddick and Hamlin. Reddick leads by more than 100 points as the series moves into the second quarter of the racing year.

(INDYCAR)—No racing but plenty of running on the big oval at Indianapolis this week as IndyCar started preparing for the 110th 500 on Memorial Day Weekend. The two days of practice allowed rookies and returning veterans who don’t normally run the full schedule to complete their drivers tests or reviews and start getting their cars set up for qualifying on May 16-17.  The Race is on the 24th.  The last day of practice so crews and drivers can get their cars in race trim will be “Carburation Day” on Friday the 22nd.

(Carburation Day is a throwback to the distant times when the cars really used carburetors. The last carbureted cars in the 500 competed in 1963, the Lotus-Fords of Jim Clark and Dan Gurney.

The first car with fuel injection was Bill Vukovich’s Fuel Injection Special that was sidelined while leading with less than ten laps left in 1952.  Vukovich won with the car the next two years. This is the way it looked the year he won for the second time.  It was the first car I ever photographed at the Speedway—with my Brownie Hawkeye camera that captured only a blur. (This is a diecast model of it, though).

The two days of testing topped out at relatively moderate speeds—rookie Caio Collet turned a lap at better than 226 mph.  By the time qualifying weekend rolls around the fastest cars are likely to be at about 235.

(ZANARDI)—Racing lost one of its great competitors a few days ago with the death of Alex Zanardi.  He never ran in the 500 because he competed in the era when open wheel racing had split into two competing camps. Zanardi won the Championship Auto Racing Teams title for two of the four years he competed.  A horrendous crash in 20001 that cost him both of his legs ended his career—for a while.

Dissatisfied with the prosthetic legs on which he walked, he designed a custom legs that would let him get back into a race car. He was able to drive a race car using only hand controls and eventually got back into racing cars. And he won races.

More remarkably, he became a four-time Olympic champion.  He won four gold medals at the Paralympics in London and Rio de Janeiro in handcycling and the triathalon. F

He was 59.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 returned to the track last weekend after cancelling a couple of its races in the Middle East war zone.  Mercedes teenage sensation Kimi Antonelli won his third straight.  He’s the youngest driver in F1 history to win a race—19. He won the Miami Grand Prix last weekend. He’s 19.

(Photo credits: Vukovich car—Bob Priddy; Zanardi–the Independent)