Category Archives: Sports

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

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Five races remain in the Formula 1 schedule.

 

Sports—Numbers, Numbers, Numbers

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Photo Credits: Bob Priddy)

 

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

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Photo credits; Bob Priddy, Jim Coleman)

 

 

 

 

Sports—Albert, Patrick, Bubba, Will, Max, and two questions

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

It’s the autumn of baseball season, the spring of football season, and racing heads toward its last turns.  We begin with stick and ball sports today because, well, they’re more important right now.

(BASEBALL)—Next up for Albert Pujols: The Babe.  Albert’s dramatic homer in the ninth gave the Cardinals the lead  that held up against the Pirates. Home run number 697 broke a tie with Alex Rodriguez for fourth place on the all-time homer list. Next up: Babe Ruth with 714, realistically out of reach even with Pujols’ remarkable surge in the closing weeks of the season.

The ball was retrieved by Matt Brown in the right-center field grandstand.  Pujols let Brown and his wife, Samantha, keep it and even gave them two signed balls when they offered to give him homer 697.  “It’s just a baseball,” he said. “They deserve to have it. It went out of the ballpark. We play this game for the fans. So whether they want to give it back or they want to keep it, I don’t have any problem with that.”

The Kansas City Royals won their 57th game with a 4-0 shutout of the Tigers Sunday.  And that sets up our first question:

Will the Royals win more games than the Cardinals lose this year? The Cardinals’ win on Sunday ran their record to 83-58. 

(FOOTBALL)—The rebuilt Kansas City Chiefs seem to have eliminated a lot of the concerns fans might have had about the players they lost in the off-season and the number of rookies they kept after training camp.

Although the Arizona Cardinals blitzed quarterback Patrck Mahomes 54 percent of the time, he threw four touchdown passes against the blitz and added a fifth when the defense stayed back. Clyde Edwards Hillaire showed signs last year’s injuries are in the past with 74 yards rushing and receiving and two touchdowns.  Travis Kelce got a good start on his 7th straight 1,000 yard year with 121 yards. The Cardinals had little to offer offensively or defensively as the Chiefs rolled to a 44-21 win on the road to open the season.

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The real world came calling on the Missouri Tigers during the weekend.  Missouri got an early field goal for its only lead in the game and left Manhattan after absorbing a 40-12 drubbing. The Tigers won convincingly 52-24 in their first game of the year, against Louisiana

The Tigers have a chance to feel better next week against Abilene Christian University, a school with about 4,600 students that plays football in a stadium holding 12,000. It completed its move to NCAA Division 1 five years ago.

The Tigers won convincingly 44-21 in their first game of the year, against Louisiana Tech, a school of 12,600 students.  So the second question:

How good will Missouri be this year against big-time competition?

RACING:

(INDYCAR)—It’s all over for INDYCAR in 2022 with two winners in the last race—the race-winner and the series champion.

Defending series champion Alex Palou ran away from the field to win the race.  Will Power, who finished third, racked up enough points to win his second INDYCAR championship.

Power broke Mario Andretti’s record for most career poles by starting from P1 for the 68th time.  Although he won only one race this year, he was in the top five in twelve of the seventeen races. He finished twenty points ahead of Penske teammate Josef Newgarden, who had five victories this year.  Six-time champion Scott Dixon was never a threat in the race but finished third in the standings.

Power and Dixon were the only drivers to complete every lap in every race this year. Power also won the series championship in 2014. He said after the race he had driven “on the edge” all day because his car was “very loose.”  He credited his championship to a mental adjustment early in the season to play the long game by not overdriving his car’s capabilities and forcing mistakes.

Palou’s last race of the year might be his last with Chip Ganassi Racing but he made it a memorable finish. He finished more than half-a-minute ahead of Newgarden.  He started eleventh after a six-position starting penalty for an unapproved engine change. But he was in the lead on the 16th lap and finished by leading 67 of the 95 laps on the Laguna Seca road course near Monterey, California.

His future in the series is uncertain. He, Ganassi, and McLaren Racing are in court because he appears to have contracts to run with both teams next year.

(NASCAR)—NASCAR’s playoff applecart has been fully upset by Bubba Wallace’s win at Kansas Speedway.  It’s the first time two non-playoff drivers have won the first two races of the ten-race playoff series. His win leaves fifteen of the sixteen driver to fight for twelve positions in the next round at the next race—on the “world’s fastest half mile” at Bristol, Tennessee.

Wallace dominated the closing stage of the race at Kansas, leading the last 43 laps and beating his car owner, Denny Hamlin, to the finish line by a second. It’s his first win this year, his second career Cup win.

Although Wallace is not one of the playoff drivers, his car is one of eight still in the running for the owner’s championship.  It’s the car that Kurt Busch had been driving before a crash at Pocono left him with a concussion that he couldn’t shake in time to be one of the 16 playoff drivers. The car is owned by the 23XI team owned by basketball legend Michael Jordan (who wore number 23 most of his career) and Hamlin (who drives the 11-car for Joe Gibbs Racing).

He led Hamlin by almost 2.1 seconds with ten laps to go but Hamlin couldn’t catch him. Hamlin admitted mixed feelings about finishing second to a car he owns but commented, “Bubba has just really worked hard on his craft and we’ve just given him fast race cars and now he’s showing what he has got”

Christopher Bell is the only one of sixteen competitors with enough points to be locked into the second round of playoff races. Former Cup Champion Kevin Harvick, who finished last, is 35 points out of 12th, the cutoff line, and needs to win at Bristol to advance.  But the fight for that 12th position is a fierce one with only thirteen points separating tenth from fifteenth.

Tyler Reddick, who started on pole at Kansas, blew a tire and hit the wall early and finished one slot ahead of Harvick, 35th.  He will start at Bristol eleventh in the standings. Rookie Austin Cindric is clinging to the last playoff slot with Kyle Busch, Austin Dillon, and Chase Briscoe within two to nine points.

(Formula 1)—Six races are left and only a miracle can give somebody other than Max Verstappen his second straight Formula 1 championship.  Verstappen won his fifth race in a row at the Grand Prix of Italy on the Monza course. It’s his eleventh win this year, one more than he had in last year’s championship season.

The race finished under caution after Daniel Ricciardo crashed with five laps left and stewards could not get his car’s transmission into neutral so it could be moved to an off-track area. Officials said the situation was not serious enough to warrant stopping the race so it could be finished under the green flag.

Verstappen has a shot at equaling, or breaking, Michael Schumacher’s record of 13 grands prix wins in a season, out of eighteen races in 2004, the year he won his seventh and last championship. That’s 72 percent, also a record.  This year there are 22 races.

The next F1 race is in two weeks, at Singapore.

(Photo credits: Bob Priddy, Rick Gevers)

 

 

Sports—Racing: Chaos at Darlington; INDYCAR Champ Race Tightens at Portland: And some baseball: Albert does it again

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(NASCAR)—NASCAR’s ten-race runoff for the championship has become a race of crumpled and burned cars, bruised hopes, and a historic win.

The historic win of the Southern 500 at Darlington is by Erik Jones, driving for Richard Petty’s team, now rebranded as Petty GMS racing, who took the lead with 22 laps left when Kyle Busch’s car’s engine blew up while the field was running under caution and he was leading. Busch, who led 155 of the race’s 307 laps, had taken the lead when teammate Martin Truex Jr., also lost an engine a few laps earlier.

The on-track chaos almost obscured the historic nature of Jones’ victory. It was number 200 for car number 43, a number usually associated with “The King,” Richard Petty.  It’s the first time that number has been in Victory Lane at Darlington since Petty won with it in 1967.  The number hasn’t been in victory lane anywhere since Aric Almirola won the July race at Daytona eight years ago.

Jones is not one of the sixteen drivers competing for the NASCAR Cup Championship and is the first driver not in the running to win the first race of the runoff series.

Denny Hamlin, who is in the competition, finished second. He was able to get to Jones’ back bumper in the closing laps but couldn’t get past and finished a quarter of a second behind. Playoff drivers Tyler Reddick, Joey Logano and Christopher Bell rounded out the top five.

Chase Elliott, who started the race as the number one seed in the playoffs hit the wall and collided with the car of 12-seeded Chase Briscoe early in the race. Elliott finished last. Briscoe went three laps down but was able to continue but finished 27th. Elliott has fallen to ninth in the seedings.

Former champion Kevin Harvick, who started as the sixth seed, bailed out of his burning car on the 274th lap and finished 33rd. Defending series champion Kyle Larson had engine problems early, went four laps down but climbed back to the leader’s lap and wound up 12th. Busch remains seeded 12th despite his early exit after finishing 30th.

The field of sixteen will be cut to twelve after the next two races. Rookie Austin Cindric, Austin Dillon, Briscoe, and Harvick are outside that group heading into next weekend’s race at Kansas.

(INDYCAR)—The INDYCAR championship is Will Power’s to lose next weekend at Laguna Seca.  Power finished second in the Grand Prix of Portland to teammate Scott McLaughlin and enters the series’ final race of the year with a twenty-point lead over Josef Newgarden and Scott Dixon.

The race at Portland, however, belonged entirely to McLaughlin, who led 104 of the 110 laps and at one tinme was 7.5 seconds ahead of Power, who closed to about 1.2 seconds at the checkered flag. His win makes him a long-shot possibility for the championship, along with Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson.  “I don’t care,” he said about being a long shot. “We’re a shot and I’m looking forward to it.”

Power, the 2014 INDYCAR champion says he wants to win the title “for the guys that have been with me for more than a decade. It’s a lot less selfish for me this time around because they deserve it.”  He can claim the title if he finishes third or better next weekend. Newgarden won the championship in 2017 and again in 2019. Dixon, who drove to third from a 16th starting position, is looking for his seventh championship, tying him with A. J. Foyt.

This is the seventeenth straight season that the INDYCAR championship will be decided in the final race of the year. It’s the first time in five years that five drivers have a mathematical shot at winning it in the last race.

(Formula 1)—It’s not quite time to engrave Max Verstappen’s name on the Formula 1 trophy for 2022 but it’s close. His win at the Dutch Grand Prix gives him a lead of 109 points over Charles LeClerc with seven races left that will generate 190 points to the winners.  F1 veteran observers say the championship could be decided during the next three races at Monza, Singapore, or Japan.

Mercedes’ George Russell was second and LeClerc was third with Lewis Hamilton a disappointed fourth.  He was critical of his team’s tire strategy late in the races that took away his lead and dropped him off the podium.  But the Dutch Grand Prix appeared to be the first race of the season when his Mercedes worked well enough to give him a shot at winning.

Hamilton has recorded at least one grand prix victory every year since his debut season of 2007. Although he was gravely disappointed at the results of this weekend’s race, he commented, “If the car feels like this at other races we’re going to be fighting for a win.”

(BASEBALL)—Albert Pujols’ farewell tour is turning into a series of dramatic memories as the Cardinals plunge toward a post-season extension of his career.  Pujols, called to pinch hit late in a scoreless game with the Cubs Sunday, responded with a two-run homer that gave the Redbirds a 2-0 win. It’s his 695th career home run, one short of Alex Rodriguez, who is fourth on the all-time list, and gives him 27 more games to reach 700.

(Photo credits: NASCAR, Bob Priddy at WWTR)

 

Sports—Racing: NASCAR Playoffs Set; The Tiger at the Top of INDYCAR; F1 Resumes

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(NASCAR)—Austin Dillon has emerged from the rain and the wrecks at Daytona to claim the last NASCAR Cup playoff spot by becoming the sixteenth winner of a race this year.  Dillon survived unscathed a multi-car crash with fifteen laps to go when rain suddenly struck the Daytona Speedway Sunday afternoon.  After the restart, he bumped Austin Cindric out of the way with three laps left and was protected from a last-lap surge by the few other surviving cars by teammate Tyler Reddick, who finished second.

Because Kurt Busch, one of the other winners this year, has withdrawn from the qualified finalists for the ten-race championship runoff, non-winner Ryan Blaney (right) will join the playoff field.  Blaney finished third in the regular season points chase. But Dillon’s victory kept fourth-place regular season points-finisher Martin Truex Jr., from a run for the title.

The sixteen-driver field is made up of drivers who won races. If there are fewer than sixteen drivers eligible with victories, remaining playoff slots are filled on the basis of regular season points.  Dillon finished nineteenth in regular season points  but made the field of sixteen with his win. Dillon will start the first runoff race next week at Darlington seeded 16th.  Blaney is seeded seventh because he got bonus points for winning stages of five races.

Rain Saturday night caused the race to be postponed until Sunday. The rainstorm that winnowed the field with the big crash late in the race Sunday caused a three-hour, 20-minute delay until the track was dry enough to finish the race.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR President Jay Frye is watching a heated battle for the championship play out as the season moves toward its last two races.

Frye, who played tight end and offensive tackle for the Missouri Tigers, 1983-86, under coaches Warren Powers and Woody Widenhofer, has been with INDYCAR since 2013 and has been the series President since 2018. He posted this picture from those days on Twitter recently. (There are some folks who think the uniforms of those times are much preferable to today’s outfits).

We talked with him in his mobile INDYCAR office while he was at World Wide Technology Raceway a little more than a week ago, just before the INDYCAR race won by Josef Newgarden.

AUDIO jay frye 2022  17:51  mp3

Frye and other INDYCAR officials enjoy being out of the office on race day, often being seen mingling with fans and often on the starting grid during pre-race ceremonies coordinating events and, in the case of the race at WWTR, checking the weather.  The start of the race that night was moved up by half an hour in an effort to avoid approaching rain.  It almost worked.  The race was stopped with about 40 laps left and resumed more than two hours later after the storms had moved on and the track had been dried.

INDYCAR races at Portland next Sunday then finishes its season with the Grand Prix of Monterey on the Laguna Seca road course a week later. Will Power clings to a three-point lead over Newgarden heading into these last two races. Six-time champion Scott Dixon is just 14 points back as he tries to equal A. J. Foyt’s record of six series championships. Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson is fourth, trailing Power by only 17 points.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen has started the second half of the F1 season with a statement victory at the Grand Prix of Belgium at Spa-Francorchamps. He started 14th, took the lead on the 12th lap, and finished a full 17 seconds in front of his nearest challenger, Sergio Perez.

Verstappen’s qualifying speed would have put him on the pole but he was set back in the field because his team put a new engine in his car.

Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, a pair of former F1 multiple champions, tangled on the first lap, the impact sending Hamilton’s Mercedes into the air.  Alonso was able to continue but Hamilton’s car was too badly damaged to go on. Hamilton said Alonso was in his blind spot. Alonso had far less charitable remarks about Hamilton.  Alonso recovered to finish fifth.

(Photo credits; Jay Frye Twitter, Rick Gevers, Bob Priddy)

 

Sports—Keeping Your Head in the Game

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Kurt Busch was sitting in a chair he didn’t want to be in Sundary afternoon.  He would rather have  been strapped in to his usual seat in his NASCAR Cup car,  racing three-dozen other drivers on the three-quarter mile track at Richmond.

But for the fourth weekend in a row the 2004 Cup champion was ruled unfit to race because of a concussion incurred in a qualifying crash at Pocono last month. He appeared unhurt when he got out of the car but doctors at the infield care center determined he was showing concussion symptoms.

Concussion protocols have become a much more important issue in sports at all levels in the last decade, highlighted by auto racing’s Dale Earnhardt Junior’s struggles in 2016 when he missed the second half of the NASCAR season. He retired at the end of the 2017 season, a season that began with the abrupt retirement of Columbia driver Carl Edwards, whose run for the 2016 championship had ended with a hard crash at Atlanta.

Edwards gave three reasons for leaving the sport. The third was his health. “I can stand here healthy after all the racing I’ve done and all the stupid stuff I’ve done in racecars. I’m a sharp guy and I want to be a sharp guy in thirty years.”

Edwards’ wife, Kate, is a doctor who works with people who have severe and traumatic brain injuries.

What do doctors look for when assessing concussions (and a person’s recovery from them?

The Mayo Clinic says someone, such as Busch after his crash, might not show signs and symptoms until hours or days after the injury.  Busch apparently did show signs because he was quickly ruled out of that weekend’s race at Pocono.

Doctors run some neurological tests that check on a person’s vision, hearing, strength and sensation, balance, coordination, and reflexes.  There also are cognitive tests—how thinking skills are working. Memory, ability to concentrate and the ability to recall information are part of that evaluation.

If the person shows signs and symptoms of severe headaches, seizures, repeated vomiting or worsening symptoms, brain imaging might be needed to see if there is bleeding of brain swelling.

The standard test to determine the condition of the brain right after an injury is a computerized tomography scan (or as they say in every episode of Grey’s Anatomy,  CT scan).

And a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) can be sued to identify brain changes or complications.

The great 1950s and 1960s English Grand Prix driver Sterling Moss, who raced long before sophisticated concussion evaluations, decided after a horrible crash in his Lotus that he knew his brain was no longer fit for him to race when he had to think about doing things he had previously done automatically.

Whether it is race drivers or athletes in general, head injuries that leave them having to think about what they normally would do automatically is a sign that they need to step out of the arena until the automatic response returns.  Sometimes it doesn’t and the person risks greater harm by trying to bull through the condition.

That’s why concussion protocols are so important in sports. It’s dangerous to the individual and sometimes to those also in the game with them to play before they have recovered. Self-assessment cannot be tolerated.

As Kurt Busch put it when he was ruled unfit for last weekend’s race at Richmond:

 “Brain injury recovery doesn’t always take a linear path. I’ve been feeling well in my recovery, but this week I pushed to get my heart rate and body in a race simulation type environment, and it’s clear I’m not ready to be back in the race car.”

For Kurt Busch, the brain is more important than trying to win another trophy, a recognition that now exists across various sports platforms.  Infield care hospitals or tents on the sidelines—they’re all signs that the idea of “playing through an injury” is increasingly unacceptable.

As Carl Edwards put it: “I’m a sharp guy and I want to be a sharp guy in thirty years.”

(NASCAR)—Kevin Harvick had so much fun finally winning another race a week ago that he decided to do it again—at Richmond, where he took the lead after the last round of pit stops and then held on to beat the charging Christopher Bell, on fresher tires, by four-tenths of a second.

The win is number 60 in his career, moving him to ninth place on the all-time winner’s list.

Only two races remain in the regular season. Ryan Blaney, who has yet to win this year, is the only non-winner in the playoffs and he widened his points advantage over Martin Truex Jr., for the last  of 16 playoff slots.  If a non-winner claims one of the last two races,  other than those two, both will miss the playoffs although they are  second and forth in the overall points standings.

The Series moves to the Watkins Glen road course next weekend.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR runs the first of its last three races of the 2022 season at Worldwide Technology Raceway across the river from St. Louis next Saturday.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 ends its summer break with the Grand Prix of  Belgium on August 28, the fourteenth race in the 22-race season.

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Sports:  A Super Coach, Landmark Cardinals Win, Royals Rookie Shines. And the Cars.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet contributing editor

(CANTON, OHIO)—-Dick Vermeil, the only man to serve as head coach of both of Missouri’s NFL teams, couldn’t thank enough people enough in his NFL Hall of Fame Speech. Given eight minutes to speak, Vermeil took twenty-three.

Along the way he saluted several people who made his enshrinement possible.

One of those was St. Louis Rams linebacker Mike Jones, who tackled Tennessee Titans wide receiver Kevin Dyson one yard short of a game-tying touchdown when the Rams won the 2000 Super Bowl “If he doesn’t make the tackle on the last play of Super Bowl 34, I’m not here today,” Vermeil said.

His bust was unveiled by John Shira (L) and Carl Peterson. Shira was the quarterback for Vermeil’s UCLA Bruins that defeated unbeaten Ohio State in the 1976 Rose Bowl. Peterson was an executive with the Philadelphia Eagles when Vermeil led the Eagles to four straight playoff appearances and to their first Super Bowl. Later, during his twenty-year tenure with the Kansas City Chiefs, he hired Vermeil two years after he had led the Rams to their Super Bowl Victory and then retiring.

He recalled UCLA’s win over Ohio State as the win that made him an NFL Coach. “If you don’t do that, the ownership form Philadelphia doesn’t get on a plane right after the game—so help me God it’s the truth—fly to Southern California…and recruiting me to come and coach your football team in Philadelphia.”

The Eagles were the first of three teams he led into the NFL playoffs.

But it was a basketball coach who taught him about coaching.  He took every chance he had to watch John Wooden.  “When you watch him practice, the intensity and the discipline and the structure was there of a great football practice.”  Wooden counseled him not to worry about the players he failed to recruit to UCLA. “Just make sure you do a great job of making those who you have the best that they can possibly be,” he quoted Wooden, “And I’ve operated under that simple philosophy the rest of my coaching career. It is so true. So true.”

Vermeil told the audience, many of them former players or fellow coaches, “Players win games. It’s our job to prepare them to win games.”

Kansas City Chiefs Coach Andy Reid, one of those who succeeded Vermeil with the Eagles, left Chiefs training camp in St. Joseph, Missouri to fly to Canton for a Saturday night reception for the Hall of Fame Class of 2022. “I have never had in my coaching career a better display of respect from someone else in the profession than what Andy Reid did for me last night. It will always touch me…That was unbelieveable.”

(BASEBALL)—The longest game in the short history of the current Busch Stadium has brought the St. Louis Cardinals a sweep of a three-game series against the New York Yankees.  It’s only the second time in Cardinals history they’ve won three straight against them.

Playing the Yankees is still rare for the Cardinals despite interleague play. The last time they won three straight against the New Yorkers was in the 1942 World Series when they won the last four games of a five-game series.

The Yankees have the second-best record in the American League but the Cardinals showed they could win tight games as well as slugging contests.  Sunday’s game finished 12-9. The twenty-one runs were generated by 27 hits (only three of which were home runs). The Yankees left a dozen runners on base. The Cardinals stranded eight.

The Cardinals have now surged to a two game lead over Milwaukee in their division and are on a seven-game winning streak. The Yankees lost their first three-game series this year and are on a five-game losing streak.

Yadiar Molina singled in the third inning for his 1,000th career hit at home.  The only catcher in baseball history with more is St. Louis native Yogi Berra with 1,042.

Across the state, the Royals hammered the Boston Red Sox 13-5 with rookie M. J. Melendez driving in six runs, three of them on a home run. The Royals have on four of their last five home series. It’s been nine years since they last won a four-game series against the Red Sox.

However they are not in any danger of playing in the post season. They’re 44-65. But they are not last in their division.

(NOW THE CARS)—Kevin Harvick, facing a win-or-else scenario for getting into the NASCAR playoffs, has made it in. Scott Dixon, running out of time to challenge for his seventh INDYCAR title, is knocking on the door with three races left.

Harvick, now 46 years old and 65 straight races without a win, is the fifteenth winner this year.  He went into the race at Michigan as the first man out of the playoffs, based on the points standings although in ninth place.  Playoff positions are based on wins and hadn’t had one in two years.

His victory is his 59th in Cup competition, 10th best all-time. It means Martin Truex Jr., is the odd man out.  He’s fourth overall in points but doesn’t have a win this year.  The only winless driver still in playoff contention is Ryan Blaney, who is second in overall points but also has yet to win a race this year.

There are three Cup races remaining before the field is set for the playoffs.  If both Blaney and Truex win one of those races, Kurt Bush would be eliminated. Although he has a win this year, he is 20th in points. Busch has missed three races since suffering a concussion in a pre-race crash last month. Ty Gibbs, the grandson of team owner Joe Gibbs, has filled in for him and had his first career top ten finish \

In INDYCAR—Scott Dixon went from last to first in the last 51 laps on the Nashville street circuit to close within six points of the INDYCAR points lead. He’s looking to equal A. J. Foyt’s seven series championships, the record.

Dixon (with his family at last week’s Indianapolis road course race) was in last place after a penalty for pitting when the pits were closed. The win is the 53rd of his career, breaking a tie with Mario Andretti for second-most INDYCAR victories. Foyt had 67 career wins.

A late-race collision brought out a red flag that set up a two-lap shootout between Dixon and Scott McLaughlin.  Dixon never made the high-pressure mistake during those two las and eat McLaughlin to the line by .1067 of a second, the closest finish of the year in INDYCAR racing.

Defending points champion Alex Palou was third. Last week’s winner at Indianapolis, Alexander Rossi, went a lap down after an early race shunt required repairs in his pit and then rallied to fourth.  Teammate Colton Herta, also the victim of a too-close encounter with a competitor, also rallied from a lap down (also for repairs) to finish fifth.

The top five drivers in the INDYCAR point standings now are separated by just 33 points. Their next chance to shake up the standings will be at World Wide Technology Raceway, across the river from St. Louis, in two weeks.

(photo credits: Bob Priddy, Rick Gevers, NFL)

 

 

Sports: Racing–INDYCAR, NASCAR TRIPLE-HEADER AT BRICKYARD 

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by Bob Priddy, Missourinet contributing editor

(Indianapolis)—–Whether you prefer them with or without fenders, you had your choice at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the weekend.  INDYCAR’s Alexander Rossi broke a three-year, 49-race winless streak and Tyler Reddick won for the second time this year in the NASCAR Cup series.  A.J. Almendinger caught the checkers in the Xfinity race, NASCAR’s  Cup feeder series.

Rossi, who called his INDYCAR win “a relief,” had been so frustrated by his long victory drought, announced earlier this year that he was leaving Andretti Autosport for Arrows McLaren in 2023.  He started P2 next to possible future teammate Felix Rosenqvist, and was running second to Colton Herta when Herta had a major mechanical failure after running over one of the course’s curbs near the halfway point.

The win is number eight for Rossi (right) in INDYCAR since joining Andretti Autosports in 2016 after a five-race mediocre career in Formula 1, and winning the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 as a rookie.

He said his lack of victories in the last two-plus seasons caused him to push “reset” on his career—the reason he has signed to drive for Arrows McLaren next year.

Rookie Christian Lundgaard finished 3.5 seconds back. Will Power’s third-place finish gave him the series points lead over Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson, who rallied from his dead-last starting position 11th in the 25-car field.  Power now leads Ericsson by nine points.

Power’s Penske teammates Scott McLaughlin and Josef Newgarden finished fourth and fifth.  Newgarden’s participation in the race had been in doubt until practice on Friday because of his crash the weekend before in Iowa and his later collapse in the hauler area after that race. He was tentatively cleared to practice and after the practice session was cleared to drive in Saturday’s race.

INDYCAR races next week on the streets of Nashville.

(NASCAR)—Tyler Reddick had the NASCAR race at the Brickyard under control before a series of last-segment incidents added drama to a race already marked by on-track bumping and off-track adventures.

The race was forced into overtime when several cars tangled on the first turn of the next-to-last scheduled lap, with one car mired in the gravel and unable to continue.  On the restart, Ross Chastain challenged Reddick for the lead on the first turn, found the track too crowded, and took an access road instead of the regular course turn. He briefly led Reddick, who regained the top spot before completing the lap.

The move backfired on Chastain, who crossed the finish second but was hit by NASCAR with a 30-second penalty that left him 27th in the final standings.  The wild scramble at the end left rookie Austin Cindric as the runner-up.  Harrison Burton came home third, followed by Todd Gilliland and Bubba Wallace. The results were career bests for Burton and Gilliland, and with Cindric, it marked the first time in 28 years that three rookies have been in the top five at the end of a Cup race (one of the three rookies that finished in the top five at Pocono in 1994 was Ward Burton, Harrison’s father. His uncle Jeff, now a NASCAR television analyst, was one of the others, joined by Joe Nemechek.

NASCAR  takes its show to Brooklyn, Michigan next weekend.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen survived a spin and won the Grand Prix of Hungary. In the process he built his points lead to 98 over Charles Leclerc, who started from pole and thought he had a shot at the win until a poor tire choice during a pit stop left him unable to keep up. He finished sixth.

Pole-sitter George Russell of Mercedes finished third with Russell’s teammate, Lewis Hamilton, between the two.

Formula 1 takes its summer break this month and won’t resume racing until the Belgian Grand Prix on August 28.

(Photo credits: Rick Gevers and Bob Priddy)

Sports: Racing—Poke-Oh-No! for NASCAR by Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

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(NASCAR)—Denny Hamlin’s weekend win at Pocono was historic and so was Kyle Busch’s second-place finish.  Historically bad, that is.  Or potentially historically bad.

As this is written, Hamlin and Busch join a part of NASCAR history that includes Joe Weatherly, Jim Reed, and Emanuel Zervakis and dates back to 1955.

The cars of Hamlin and Busch failed post-race inspections, causing NASCAR to disqualify them and give third-place finisher Chase Elliott his fourth win of the season.  NASCAR says their cars had some improper material on the front fascia that affected the aerodynamics of their cars. Both cars were taken to the NASCAR tech center for additional examination.

The last time a victory was taken away from a NASCAR winner was the spring of 1960 when the car of Emanuel Zervakis had a gas tank that was too big.  The last time the top two finishers were disqualified was 1955 when Joe Weatherly and Jim Reed finished 1-2 but were disqualified, Weatherly for an illegal camshaft and reed for illegal valves.  The win was given to Herb Thomas, who finished third.

Elliott thus joins Thomas in the history books as a third-place race winner and appears to be the first driver to win a NASCAR race without leading a lap.

Hamlin and Busch both drive for Joe Gibbs Racing.

NASCAR races on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course next Sunday as part of the NACAR/INDYCAR doubleheader weekend.

(INDYCAR)—Josef Newgarden’s status for next Saturday’s road course race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is unknown as this is written.  He was taken to a hospital in Des Moines Sunday evening after collapsing in the motorhome parking lot at the Iowa Speedway.  Newgarden, who won Saturday’s race, dominated the race on Sunday until a broken suspension sent his car hard into the wall. He cleared all tests at the infield care center but was taken by helicopter to De Moines after he fell in the parking lot and suffered a cut to the back of his head.

Team Penske later said all scans at the hospital were negative and Newgarden would be released Monday morning.

INDYCAR medical personnel will re-evaluate him in Indianapolis on Thursday to determine if he can race next weekend.

Newgarden led 208 of the 250-lap race on Saturday, finishing six seconds in front of Pato O’Ward.  He led 148 of the first 235 laps on Sunday before crashing. O’Ward won the race over Will Power.

Former NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson had the best finish of his two-year INDYCAR career.  He came home fifth in the Sunday race.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen picked up his seventh win of the year, thanks somewhat to Ferrari driver Charles LeClerc’s crash while leading.  Lewis Hamilton finished second in his Mercedes, followed by teammate George Russell.

(SRX)—Marco Andretti at last has won another championship.  Andretti, whose father and grandfather had won INDYCAR titles in their careers (and grandfather Mario won the 1969 Indianapolis 500), won the title in this summer’s Superstar Racing Experience—-and did it with a broken wrist.

His last championship was the Skip Barber Racing School championship in 2004, when he was 17 and learning to compete in big-time racing..

Andretti and former NASCAR Cup driver Ryan Newman went into the race leading the six-race series in points. They started the final race in mid-pack, collided on a restart but Newman wasn’t able to finish far enough ahead of Andretti to take the championship. Newman finished 8th and Andretti 9th.

Andretti said after the race he had broken his wrist when he got his thumb caught in the steering wheel during a collision. But he said it was painful for just “a couple of laps.”

The last race of the year was won by Chase Elliott, who became the first driver other than series co-founder Tony Stewart to win an SRX race on dirt.  The final race was held at the Sharon Speedway in Hartford, Ohio.

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