Category Archives: Sports

Sports: Ho-Hum Baseball; Chiefs start; Tigers undecided; Sophie Steps Up; and the fast stuff.  

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BASEBALL)—Neither of our teams has caught any fire since the end of the trading deadline. This year, more than most, it is likely a lot of fans are excited about the advent of the football season more than they are about the how the Cardinals and the Royals are slouching toward the season’s end.

We went back to the All-Star break to see if the trading deadline (or anything else) has done anything to make the blood flow more rapidly.  And the answer is a big fat NOPE.

Cardinals, at the break, were 51-46. As of the end of the weekend they had staggered to 58-60, a record of 9-13.  The Royals were 47-50. Now they are 58-60 now, a record of 11-10, better than the Cardinals but basically becalmed.

So let’s look at something more entertaining. Such as—

(Sophie)—Former MU women’s basketball great Sophie Cunningham has turned the arrival at the Indiana Fever’s dressing room before a game into a red-carpet photo shoot. She’s glamourous and she likes to dress in camera-stopping styles.

With Caitlin Clark out and injuries last weekend to two other key Fever players, more weight has been put on her shoulders to not only be a team enforcer but a team on-floor leader.  She was all of that last weekend against  the Chicago Sky when she led the way with 18 points and added three rebounds, two assists, and a steal, with only one and a turnover

(FOOTBALL)—The Chiefs have played their first exhibition game and used it to let a lot of guys do some exhibiting. Coach Reid had said the starters would play about a quarter. The Chiefs got a short field and scored on their first three plays in the game, producing an early exit for Patrick Mahomes and the first unit. The Chiefs lost to the Cardinals 17-14.

(MIZ)—The Missouri Tigers aren’t exciting the national pollsters as they head into their first game unranked this year. They finished 22nd last year but in  both the sportswriters and the coaches’ poll, they don’t make the top 25.

Missouri has four teams ranked on the pre-seasons polls on the schedule this year: Alabama (8), Oklahoma (18), South Carolina (13), and Texas A&M (19).

The Tigers held their second scrimmage of the fall camp last weekend. Coach Drinkwitz saw no separation between the two players competing for starting quarterback—Sam Horn and Beau Pribula, and felt other segments of the offense and defense still need polishing before the Central Arkansas Bears provide the first test of hitting people from other teams on August  28.

(MIZZALUMNI)—From time to time we’ll catch up on former Tigers in the NFL and check on whether they make the squad this year.

There’s bad news about linebacker Ennis Rakestraw, who’s out for the season after suffering a shoulder injury during the first workout for the Detroit Lions.  He only played eight games last year because of a hamstring injury.  He’s had surgery on his shoulder.

MIZZBIZ)—With college football increasingly becoming a cash enterprise, schools are hiring people for jobs most fans could never have imagined just a few years ago. Case in point: Tigers football has added Gaurav Verma as the Director of Football Strategy and Finance. He’ll figure out how Missouri can get the most bang for its bucks in recruiting talent. He won’t recruit, he’ll just deal with the financial part of today’s college football recruiting. His most recent credential explains a good deal of what he’s going to do at Missouri: Salary cap specialist with the Denver Broncos. He has an MBA from MIT. ($OU)

Moving right along. Rapidly.

(INDYCAR)—A couple of major story lines come out of the Grand Prix of Portland IndyCar race this weekend: a race winner at last and a champion again.

Let’s talk about the race winner, Will Power, the first Penske driver this year to win a race in the series owned by Roger Penske, the senior driver on the team and one whose contract runs out at the end of the season.

First: The three-driver Penske program has suffered through a miserable year of mistakes, rules violations, and mediocre finishes.  How difficult has it been for the team known for its dominance of the sport? In 45 combined races this year, Power has the only win and one of three poles (at Worldwide Technology Raceway). The three drivers have accumulated only twenty top ten finishes and only a dozen top fives, including the win for Power at Portland. The three drivers have led only 490 of the 1,980 laps run in those fifteen races. By contrast, this year’s champion (more about him later) has led 568.

Power is sixth in the points standings this year. Teammates Scott McLaughlin are 6th and 18th, respectively.

Power is 44. Only Scott Dixon, at 45 is older among active IndyCar drivers. He’s won the national championship twice and the Indianapolis 500 once. He has started from the pole 71 times, the all time championship car record. His 45 wins are the fourth-most ever, trailing only A. J. Foyt (67), Dixon (59, including Mid-Ohio this year), and Mario Andretti (52).

Power shook off discussions of his future with Penske after the race.

The second story belongs to the driver who finished third in the race, Alex Palou. He accumulated enough points to guarantee his fourth series championship in the last five years.  His nearest competitor for the title, pole-winner Pato O’Ward saw his distance chances disappear when his car developed an electrical problem and he finished the day eight laps behind Power, in 25th place.

Palou, who is 28, will run the remaining two races in the IndyCar series this year with the “champion” sticker on his rear spoiler. He has won the last three championships. He is the only Spaniard to win a national championship in open-wheel racing in this country. In May, he became the first driver from Spain to win the Indianapolis 500.

He has put together one of the most dominant years in IndyCar history. He has won eight of the fifteen races and finished second twice. It has been a remarkably consistent year with finishes in the top ten 13 times, 12 of those times in the top five.

Only A.J. Foyt (7) and Dixon (6) have more championships.

(NASCAR)—Watkins Glen is a road course—-and that’s fresh meat for Shane von Gisbergen, who has won four road and street races this year. He joined Denny Hamlin as the winner of four races in the series this year. The closest competitor at the end, Christopher Bell, was a distant 11.2 second back.

(Photo credits: Sophie—Bob Priddy; Power—Rick Gevers; Palou—Indycar; Rakestraw–Detroit News)

 

 

Sports: Trades but no immediate gains; Stadiums suit; History on the track

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Neither of our major league teams found any blocks to bust in the late-season trading period. But both got a little help and some possible future performers.

(ROYALS TRADES)—Backup Kansas City Royals catcher Freddy Fermin has been traded to San Diego for a couple of pitching prospects. The Royals get pitchers Ryan Bergert and Stephen Kolek, both of who started games last week. Kolek has made fourteen starts this year and comes over with a 4.18 ERA. Bergert is a reliever who has a 2.78  ERA and is averaging almost one strikeout per inning this year.

Fermin had been the backup to Salvador Perez behind the plate. No replacement for Fermin has been announced by the team as we go to press.

Kansas City got a last-minute deal done to strengthen its outfield defense by getting Giants outfielder Mike Yastrzemski, a 34-year old veteran hitting .231 this year. He’s the son of Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski, he great Boston Red Sox outfielder. The Giants get minor league pitcher Yunior Marte from the Royals.

That deal paid off quickly for KC on Friday night when Yastrzemski homered in his first game in Royal Blue helping the Royals win for the seventh time in their last ten games and reach the .500 mark for the first time in a month.

Saturday, KC moved some of its player chess pieces around, adding Bergert and pitcher Baily Falter to the active roster, optioning Jonathan Bowlan to Omaha, and designating pitcher Thomas Hatch for assignment.

They had gotten Falter in their trade with the Pirates that gave Pittsburgh first baseman prospect Callan Moss and reliever Evan Sisk. .

Hatch had been cut loose by the Pirates after the 2023 season and spent the last couple of years playing in Japan. He signed a minor league deal with KC after the Hiroshima Toyo Carp announced he wouldn’t be retained this  year.  He was added to the Royals roster on June 5th and DFA’d the next day. Nobody else wanted him so he was sent down to Omaha before returning July 29. He pitched one inning and gave up two runs before his latest demotion.

The Royals started this week back at .500 for the first time since June 30

(DOWNHILL)—It didn’t take long for the Royals to decide a 45-year old journeyman pitcher couldn’t cut it with his 14th major league team.  Rich Hill was designated for assignment last week after two starts, both of which were no-decisions and the last of which was worth only four innings and led to some of the pitching staff’s 14 walks in a game.  In his two starts, he pitched nine innings, gave up five earned runs (seven overall) on nine hits.

Hill has asked to become a free agent instead of going back to Omaha.

Hatch took his place on the roster, but only briefly.

The Royals pitching staff is pretty lean now with Bubic out, probably for the year with a rotator cuff injury, and Cole Ragans (also with a rotator cuff strain) and Michael Lorenzen on the IL with a left oblique strain.

(CARDINALS)—-The Cardinals were not as active as some expected as the trading deadline rushed toward them, making some potential upside trades by unloading some expiring contract players. Some position players considered possible trades remain with the club, leaving St. Louis with some attractive bait for off-season and free agent acquisitions. Nolan Arenado and his no-trade clause remain in St. Louis.

Just a year after Ryan Helsley set a Cardinals record with 49 saves, he has been sent to the Mets with St. Louis getting three minor leaguers that are considered guys with solid futures: shortstop Jesus Baez and right-handed pitchers Nate Dohm and Frank Elissalt.

Although he’s been a closer for St. Louis, he’s expected to be the setup man for Edward Diaz in New York. He worked his first game as a Met on Friday night, pitched one inning, allowed to hits but struck out the side in his 37th appearance of the year. His ERA dropped to 2.92.

Helsley’s departure leaves the Cardinals with JoJo Romero as their best closer option. But he’s also the only left-handed reliever, so Manager Oil Marmol has indicated the Redbirds will use the committee approach to close out games the rest of the way this year.

The key player for the Cardinals in this trade is Baez, a shortstop who is the Mets’ number five prospect and ranked 92nd in all of major league baseball. He’s hitting .242 after 75 games in the minors this year. He’s played other infield positions, too.

The Cardinals also got rid of reliever Steven Matz, shipping him to Boston for one of the top prospects in the Red Sox farm system,

Blaze Jordan, who is 22, a five-year minor leaguer with a career average of .291 with 55 homers and 303 RBI. This year he has hit .308 in double and triple-A, with a dozen home runs and 62 RBI. The Cardinals also like the fact that he strikes out only ten percent of the time.

He first attracted public attention when he was a kid. When he was 11, he hit a homer that went 395 feet. At thirteen, he hit one that came down 500 feet away from the batter’s box.

Shortly before the trade deadline, the Cardinals sent reliever Phil Maton to the Texas Rangers. Maton was having the best year of his career, with 40 calls from the pen, 48 Ks in 38.1 innings and a 2.35 ERA. In return, the Cardinals get some promising minor leaguers; pitchers Mason Molina, a starter, and reliver Skylar Hayes. Molina is in High-A and Hayes is in  Triple-A.

After the wheeling and dealing was finished, the Cardinals lost for the eighth time in their last eleven games Sunday to drop below .500 at the start of this week.

(FEDDE)—It took just 4 2/3 innings for the Atlanta Braves to learn why the St. Louis Cardinals dumped Erik Fedde.  Pitching against the Royals last week, Fedde gave up four earned runs on five hits (one being a home run). He struck out three in his first appearance.

(FOOTBALL POLITICS)—Whether the Chiefs and the Royals stay in Missouri has been thrown into some additional uncertainty by the filing of a lawsuit that challenges recent legislative action providing state funding to keep them from moving to Kansas.

Two state senators, Mike Moon and Bryant Wolfin have been joined by property rights activist Ron Calzone in filing suit saying legislation providing financial help is unconstitutional. Their suit challenges the proposed state funding as a “direct gift or bribe to the owners of the  Chiefs and the Royals.”

The legislation commits the state to issue bonds to pay for as much as one-half of the costs of renovating Arrowhead Stadium and building a new stadium for the Royals. Tax revenue generated by the teams would help pay off the bonds.

Kansas is promising to issue bonds paying up to 70% for new stadiums if the teams move across the state line.

Negotiations involving the two states and the two teams are continuing. The legislature meets in September to consider overriding any of Governor Kehoe’s vetoes of bills from the regular session that ended in May. Kehoe could convene a concurrent special session to pass a bill answering the court challenges but it is too early to make that decision.

The Chiefs play their first pre-season game next Saturday.

(UFL)—The United Football League is going to look different next spring but the changes do not directly affect the St. Louis Battlehawks.

The new man in charge of league business operations, Mike Repole, has announced at least two teams and maybe all four of the USFL franchises will be moved—the Memphis Showboats, Hosuton Roughnecks, Birmingham Stallions, and the Michigan Panthers. The Michigan Panthers won their division this year but lost the DC Defenders in the championship game, which was played in the St. Louis dome in March. The only new market confirmed so far is Columbus, Ohio although the league has trademarked four team names from the original UFL: Oakland Invaders, Philadelphia Stars, New Jersey Generals, and Tampa Bay Bandits.

Repole candidly admits attendance is one reason new markets are being sought. Last year, the Battlehawks drew about 30,000 fans per game but the rest averaged five-to-twelve thousand.

The XFL franchises, which include St. Louis, have not been mentioned for any changes. The Battlehawks’ division includes teams from Houston, San Antonio, and Arlington, Texas and the Defenders.

Repole says the league does not expect to expand for 2026 but he sees 10-12 teams within the next five years and 16 within the next decade.

Off to the Races:

(INDYCAR)—A major change in IndyCar and its premier event, the Indianapolis 500—Roger Penske has sold one-third interest in the racing series to FOX Sports for a reported $130 million.  The move is described as “a strategic investment and partnership designed to launch new growth for IndyCar.”  The deal includes an extension of the broadcast rights that FOX now holds as its first season of broadcasting IndyCar races begins to wind down.

Observers consider the arrangement to be part of Penske’s succession plan.  He’s 88 now and still heavily involved in the operations of his sprawling business empire that fields teams in four top-level motor sports series, his trucking company, and a number of car dealerships as well as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the IndyCar series.  The speedway and the series are the only Penske operations that are now partly owned by FOX.

Penske bought the Speedway and the IndyCar series in 2019 and has poured millions of dollars into that ownership. Some voices, however, who admire him as a businessman don’t see the kind of promoter that they believe IndyCar needs. They think Penske Entertainment, the division that manages the racing partners, has taken a major step to be more entertaining and thus expand the open-wheel racing audience.

Although IndyCar does not run any races in Missouri, it has several within driving distances of various areas of our state with races just across the river in Illinois, in southern Iowa, Nashville, and (for a little longer drive) at the Circuit of the Americas near Austin, Texas.  And, of course, Indianapolis twice in May.

(NASCAR)—NASCAR was on the track in Iowa this weekend with William Byron stretching his fuel just far enough to win with three closes competitors also trying to reach the finish on their available fuel.

Most teams expected to get about 110 laps on the .875 mile track but Byron and his closest competitors got about 130, thanks in part to some caution flags that slowed the field and increased fuel mileage. A dozen cautions that covered 72 of the race’s 350 laps—21 of the last 100–helped drivers squeeze the last drop from their tanks.

It’s Byron’s second win of the year. He also won the season opening Daytona 500.

Chase Briscoe, who started on pole for the fifth time this year and the second race in a row, was about 1.2 seconds back, just ahead of Brad Keselowski, Ryan Blaney, and Ryan Preece.

Only three races are left in the regular season. Thirteen drivers have locked in positions for the 16 positions for the championship run-off.  Three non-winners are in the field on points: Tyler Reddick, Alex Bowman, and Chris Buescher. The three closest to them, Kyle Busch, Ty Gibbs, and A. J. Allmendinger are among those far enough below the cutline that they need a win to claim a spot in the championship round.

(Photo credits: Yastrzemski—Facebook; Jordan—Baseball Prospect Journal; Baez—Redbird Rants; Penske—Bob Priddy); Byron–NASCAR)

Sports: MLB teams muddle along as trading deadline nears: and a special win in NASCAR)

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals post all-star game drive to the playoff has been an unsteady one with a terrible turn in Colorado, where the worst team in major league baseball this year took two out of three—and wrapped up the series by holding the Redbirds scoreless, 6-0.  It’s the first time in 220 games that Denver has shut out an opponent. The win left Denver 26-76.

The Cardinals, thus, helped set a major league record by ending the Rockies record run of no shutouts.  The shutout is only the third time St. Louis has been shut out in the 32-year history of the Rockies. It was the second straight series loss since the break and dropped them to just one game over .500 after losing five of their first six games on the road trip and being outscored 20-1 in the first three innings.

The only win in those first six games was the middle game in the Denver series when Michael McGreevy, just up from Memphis picked up the victory.  His performance was solid enough that the team decided it’s time for one of its younger pitchers to become a starter. But that meant that a veteran had to go. In this case, it was Erick  Fedde, who has been a bust for St. Louis this year. He’s 3-10 with a 5.22 ERA. In his last 17 2/3 innings he gave up 26 earned runs. He’s 33-52 in eight major league seasons. The Braves have decided to pick him up. They’ll give the Cardinals some cash or a player later.  Fedde will be a free agent at the end of the season.

We start the week still waiting for the Cardinals to make the blockbuster trade that various sorts experts have been predicting.

(ROYALS)—The Royals  have continued to muddle along but they have gone to the free agent market to pick up former Cardinals outfielder Randall Grichuk from the Diamondbacks in exchange for pitcher Andrew Hoffman.  Grichuk, who is expected to immediately improve the outfield offensively and defensively, went one-for-four in his first game with the new team.  For now, he takes the roster place of rookie outfielder Jac Caglianone, who has gone on the 10-day DL with a strained left hamstring. Caglianone has struggled at the plate in his first season.  Grichuk was hitting .240 with 175 AB this year. He’s a lifetime .252 hitter  with five teams in a 12-year career.

Also going on the DL is starting pitcher Kris Bubic, our for 15 days with a rotator cuff strain.

The Royals did make a major commitment to the pitching staff, signing Seth Lugo to a two-year, $46 million guaranteed contract extension.

Last night, the Royals lost 10-7 to the Braves.  The game is memorable because Royals pitchers tied a club record with fourteen walks.  Six of those walks were dealt by Rich Hill, the 45-year old journeyman pitcher making his second start with his record-tying 14th team. He also gave up four runs and gave up two homers.

Now, the story of a man named Darrell and his record-setting day

(NASCAR)—

This is William Darrell Wallce, who goes by his middle name and more often is known as Bubba.  He’s a NASCAR driver who had gone three years, 100 races, since his last victory. When he broke that string this past weekend, he made significant auto racing history.

Bubba Wallace became the first Black driver to win a major race in the 116 year history of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He and Wendell Scott are the only black drivers to win a NASCAR race. Scott won one race in 1963. Wallace now has three NASCAR Cup winner’s trophies.

He only the third black driver to compete in one of the major races at the Speedway and the first since George Mack in 2002. The first was Willy T. Ribbs in 1991 and 1993

Wallace took the lead with less than twenty laps to go and held a three second lead over defending race champion Kyle Larson when a crash brought out the caution flag and bunched up the field for a restart. But he got the jump—twice—on Larson on two overtime restarts and took the checkered flag two tenths of a second ahead of Larson.

The win makes him the thirteenth entrant in the 16-driver playoff field with four races to go before that field is set.  Three non-winners are in the top ten in points and could be eliminated from the championship run if three other drivers win one of those four races.

Two other drives merit special attention:

Denny Hamlin, who was on a pole-setting run, wrecked on his second qualifying lap and started dead last, 39th. He and his pit crew got him to fifth for the last restart (that’s his 11 in the picture) and he picked up two more positions third place at the end.

And the only woman racing in NASCAR, Kathryn Legge (she pronounces the first three letters of her last name) drew praise for finishing 17th, far better than her average finish this year. She was on the leader’s lap on the last restart and held her position during the wild two-lap green-white-checker flag scramble to the end.

 

(INDYCAR)—Alex Palou puts more points distance between himself and challenger Pato O’Ward with a win at Laguna Seca, near Monterey, California. It’s his eighth win of the year. It has been eighteen years since anybody won eight races on the INDYCAR schedule.

Sebastian Bourdais did it in 2007.

The record for most wins in a season has been set and equaled at 10. A. J. Foyt in 1964 and Al Unser Senion in 1970 are the only ones to hit that mark.

Now he has eight of those. The record is 10 by A.J. Foyt in 1964 and Al Unser in 1970.

Two wins in the last three races of the year would let Palou tie the record.

(Photo credits: Wallace speaking and winning, restart and Legge—Bob Priddy; Wallace car—Rick Gevers)

Sports: Lows and highs at Mizzou; Chiefs Lock In Two, Third Escapes Lockup;  Bad Baseball, And More.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(MIZBB)—It might be the dawn of Tiger football season but the big Mizzou sports story of the week is with the roundballers. And it is a really big deal.

Guard Jason Crowe Junior also had been courted by UCLA, USC, and Kentucky. It’s a verbal commitment. Signing day isn’t until November so he could bolt.

247 sports ranks him as the sixth best player in the class of 2026. He’s from Inglewood, Califoornia, 6-3 with arms of a player two inches taller. He’s considered so good that some see him going to the NBA after one season at Missouri.

He’s the second-best recruit in Tiger basketball history. Number one is Michael Porter Jr., whose career didn’t turn out too well because of injuries.

(MIZFB1)—When former Tiger wide receiver Luther Burden I11 unexpectedly dropped off the list of first round NFL draft picks, he said, “That’s staying with me forever. Everybody who passed up on me gotta pay.”

But first, the team that took him as the 39th overall pick is GOING to pay.  The Chicago Bears have signed Burden to a guaranteed eleven million dollar contract. He is the first 39th pick in the NFL draft to sign a guaranteed deal.

(MIZFB2)—Once again, the Southeastern Conference media have picked Missouri to be in the lower tier of the football standings this year.

Twelfth, to be exact.

The Tigers play eight conference games, five against teams ranked higher: Alabama is third; South Carolina is ranked fifth. Texas A&M ranks number 8 with Oklahoma tenth. Auburn is forecast to finish one slot above Missouri. Below Missouri are Vanderbilt (13th), Arkansas (14), and Mississippi State, picked for last, at 16th.

The sportswriters think left guard Cayden Green is a first-team all-conference player. Wide receiver Kevin Coleman has been picked for the third team.

Here’s how the fulltime sports writers think the conference will look at the end (first place votes in parenthesis:

  1. Texas (96)
  2. Georgia (44)
  3. Alabama (29)
  4. LSU (20)
  5. South Carolina (5)
  6. Florida (2)
  7. Ole Miss (1)
  8. Texas A&M
  9. Tennessee (1)
  10. Oklahoma (3)
  11.  Auburn (1)
  12. Missouri
  13. Vanderbilt (2)
  14. Arkansas
  15. Kentucky
  16. Mississippi State

Vanderbilt got TWO first-place votes???

Missouri starts its fall practices one week from today.

(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City Chiefs start their pre-season camp today in St. Joseph. They’ll have wide receiver Rashee Rice on hand but they don’t yet know how much of the season he will miss. Rice has avoided a serious prison sentence with a plea bargain growing out of his big traffic crash in Dallas in 2024 that will put him on probation for five years and let him serve thirty days in jail at his convenience. He also has paid the medical bills of those he hurt, about $115,000 worth.

The NFL has not yet announced what IT plans to do about him, but a multi-game suspension appears to be looming—the Chiefs think he’ll be gone for two to five games. The Chiefs, however, are not totally without speedy wide receivers. This year’s fourth-round pick, Jalen Royals is on the depth chart behind Rice,  Xavier Worthy, and Marquise Brown.

A few days ago the Chiefs made sure two key players on the line would be around for several more years—offensive lineman Trey Smith and defensive end George Karlaftis.

Smith, originally a sixth-round draft pick, is the highest-paid player in his position in the whole NFL—$94 million for four years, with $70 million guaranteed.

 

 

 

George Karlaftis, a number one draft pick in 2022 and an immediate impact player at defensive end also is locked up for four more years. He gets $92 million with $62 million guaranteed.

 

 

(BASEBALL)—This wasn’t the post-All Star Game start that either of our MLB teams wanted. They went 1-5, the Cardinals being swept by the Diamondbacks and the Royals salvaging a win in the third game against the Marlins.

The Royals, behind a couple of Salvador Perez home runs, clubbed the cubs last night 12-4. Joe Caglianone and John Rave also joined the power show.

The Royals have the oldest player in the major leagues on the mound tonight—Rich Hill, who is 45, has been called up from Omaha. He was drafted by the Cubs in 1999 and made his major league debut in 2005. The Royals will be his fourteenth major league team. That ties him with Edwin Jackson as the player who has been part of the most major league teams in their careers. Jackson did it by the time he was 35, a decade younger than Hill.

Hill has made nine starts for Omaha this year and has lasted 42 innings. He has struck out 61 batters but has an ERA of 5.36. He’s 90-74 in his big league career.

The Cardinals opened a series last night against the Rockies who are headed for the worst season in modern MLB history. They’s won only 24 of their first 100 games after losing to the Cardinals 6-2.  The Cardinals racked Colorado pitching for fifteen hits, to get back to three games over .500 at 52-49.  Michael McGreevy went seven solid innings in his latest callup from Memphis.

If the Rockies can improve to win eighteen of their next 44 games, they will avoid breaking last year’s modern baseball loss record, 121 games, set by the White Sox.

The Cardinals have a chance to pour it on tonight as they face Colorado’s Bradley Blalock who has lost both of his decisions this year and has a 9.97 ERA. But that means the disappointing Erick Fedde will have to avoid losing his tenth game of the year (he has three wins) and should lower his 4.83 ERA.

Now, the More:

(INDYCAR)—It’s starting to develop into the Palou and Pato show in Indycar with Pato O’Ward’s win at Toronto

Monterey, CA – during the Firestone Grand Prix of Monterey in Monterey, California. (Photo by Joe Skibinski | IMS Photo)

O’Ward’s win cuts  Alex Palou’s championship points lead by thirty. It’s his second win in eight days; he and Palou split visits to victory lane in the to races at Iowa the weekend before.

The Toronto race course winds its way for 1.786 curvy (11 curves) miles through downtown Toronto.  The race produced the most on-track passes (226) since the 2014 event and the most passes for position (201) for position since the 2019 race.

Palou finished twelfth at Toronto. O’Ward was joined on the podium by two guys not familiar with the ceremony—Rinus Veekay, who hasn’t had a top-three finish since 2022, and Kyffin Simpson, who’s never been there in his two years in the series.

Palou still leads by 99 points, though, a  challenging figure for O’Ward to overcome in the four races remaining on the INDYCAR schedule.

The miserable season of INDYCAR’s most prestigious team added another chapter at Toronto. Scott McLaughlin went into the wall when a left rear lug nut came off  on the second turn after a pit stop. He finished 26th. Josef Newgarden was caught up in a crash that found the car of Jacob Abel on top of his, relegating him to 23rd.  Once again, the best finish for the Penske team was by Will Power, who finished 11th after brushing a wall.

Santino Ferrucci finished 27th, and last, although he did not start the race. He crashed in practice, damaging his car and injuring his right hand.

INDYCAR heads west to race at Laguna Seca next weekend.

(NASCAR)—THIS, I have to see to believe:

Your reporter is off to Indianapolis this coming weekend for the Brickyard 400, an annual trek we make.  He’s gone to a lot of automobile races in his long life, but this one……

Last weekend, in a more normal setting, the CUP series was at Dover, where Denny Hamlin edged teammate Chase Briscoe for the win in a two-lap overtime shootout.  The win is his fourth of the  year, the best of all drivers in the series. It’s his 58th career Cup win. Only Kyle Busch, with 63, has more victories among full-time drivers in the series. He needs two more to tie Kevin Harvick for tenth on the all-time winners list.

Hamlin was in charge late in the race until a rainstorm stopped the race with fewer than twenty laps to go. He got good jumps on the first two restarts after the track was dried, and got ahead of Brisco for the green-white-checker laps.

Chase Elliott, who led 238 of the 407 laps, couldn’t match Hamlin’s late run and dropped back to sixth at the end. But that was good enough to take the regular season points lead away from teammate William Byron.

The fight for the sixteenth playoff spot remains tight. Bubba Wallace is sixteen points ahead of Ryan Preece and 39 up on Kyle Busch with five races to go before the sixteen driver playoff field is set.

(Photo credits: Smith and Karlaftis—KC Chiefs; O’Ward—Indianapolis Motor Speedway; Hamlin—Rick Gevers; Cookie Monster—NASCAR)

NIL

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We don’t use the word “nil” very much in this country. And when somebody does—as in the score of a soccer game, one-nil—it is considered something of an affectation. On this side of the Atlantic we use “nothing.”  Every now and then somebody says “zero” instead of “nil.”

I started writing this entry yesterday, just after breakfast.  I’m glad I had already eaten because I saw Eli Hoff’s story in the Post-Dispatch that said my university had spent almost $32 million last year to buy athletes and I lost my appetite.

—-for collegiate sports.

Mizzou is spending a quarter of a billion dollars to put more seats into a facility that might fill them seven out of the next 365 days.  And then it’s spending more than half of the Name-Image-Likeness money on the players who will perform on the field below regardless of whether they win.

Name Image Likeness came about because of a court decision that said universities have to compensate the athletes whose names, images, and likenesses appear on shirts, mock jerseys, programs, TV promotions for the athletic department, and so forth.

So schools bid for the thoroughbred players who, once signed, have no particular loyalty to the school and can bolt for a higher-paying job at another university as soon as the season is over. And the fan base, which is paying twice as much for season football tickets this year plus a healthy “gift” (in politics the phrase is “lug.”) that entitles them to park somewhere in Boone County, watches a team to whom institutional loyalty is minimized thanks to the transfer portal and education is secondary rather than post-secondary.

The phrase “student-athlete” is so Twentieth Century.  The “athlete-student” is the name of the game these days, especially in the high-profile sports of football and basketball.  If you’re a future Wimbledon winner, you might get a few financial crumbs to play tennis for some university, but don’t expect to be paid to appear in some goofy television commercial for a company that kicks in big bucks to buy the best football and basketball players.

But being paid some pretty good money to be a college athlete isn’t a bad deal. Some jocks will have some financial security before they enter the real world where most of them will not become professional-professional athletes, rather than professional amateurs. And a few, such as WNBA star Caitlin Clark, might have to take a salary reduction to turn pro.

The NCAA says that these paid athletes are still amateurs as far as it is concerned.

Three concluding points:

I’m proud of the degree I have from the University of Missouri and I do make modest membership contributions to the alumni association. But I’ll never buy a ticket for a university sporting event because the financial tail has outgrown the dog on many of our college campuses.

I admire the athletes who DON’T have one eye on the ball and the other on the transfer portal. But the portal game is a mercenary one and I won’t support it.

The NCAA might say these folks are amateurs, but the NCAA does not run the State of Missouri and the state is missing a good bet by not extending its Athletes and Entertainers Tax program to levy an income tax on  visiting NIL-paid athletes who play here. The professional-professional athletes pay that tax. The million-dollar quarterback from Alabama or Georgie or Ohio State, etcetera, should contribute, too.

Now, there is a qualification to this spleen-letting this morning and it is this: NIL is a very complicated issue that the fan in the stands or in the fan in the recliner might not completely grasp and the reflexed knee in  this entry might be missing some important points that render these thoughts in-valid.  That’s why we have the reaction box at the end of these entries—so the host can be set straight on things. So have at it.  Reasonable discussion is always welcome (but stay within Captain Woodrow Call’s guidelines that we established a long time ago.

(As we were wrapping up this entry, we came across a 2024 article in Harvard Law Today that has an interview discussing the history and the significance of legal actions that have brought us to this point.  https://hls.harvard.edu/today/peter-carfagna-on-the-state-of-the-ncaa-nil-and-amateurism/).

 

Sports:  Cards, Royals headed the wrong way; UFL championship game in St. Louis; Great night for racing near St. Louis.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(Baseball)—And suddenly, things have taken a bad turn for our teams.

(CARDINALS)—We’ve seen this scenario before—and slow start, a month of optimism, and then a decline to mediocrity at best.  The Cardinals ended a six-game losing streak Saturday but couldn’t make it two in a row against the Brewers, losing Sunday.

They should bet healthy this week when they play three against the Chicago White Sox, one of the worst teams in the major leagues. The Sox are at home, 23-49 this year. The Cardinals are still slightly to the good at 37-35.

The highlight of the weekend came with the Saturday win when Wilson Contreras of the Cardinals and brother William Contreras both homered in the ninth inning of the Cardinals win.

They are not the first to do this.  But it’s been more than ninety years since anybody else did it. On July 19, 1922, Rick Ferrell of the Red Sox homered off of his brother, Wes, a pitcher for the then-Cleveland Indians.  Wes Farrell also homered that inning.

Two years ago, two brothers playing for the same team became the first to hit home runs in the same game. But Bo and Josh Gray, did it in different innings.

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals, tired of losing and dropping below .500 held a players only meeting after Saturday’s loss—-then lost again on Sunday as the Athletics completed a series sweep.

The Royals now have lost six in a row, 22 of their last 32, and are four games under break-even t 34-38. They open a series against the Ranger tonight.  The Rangers are pretty mediocre, too, also with a losing record at 35-36.

(FOOTBALL)—Fourteen thousand-559 people went to a football game in the St . Louis Dome and their home town team wasn’t even playing.

It was the United Football League Championship game and the DC Defenders clobbered the Michigan Panthers 58-34. The Defenders got a 390-yard passing day out of Jordan Ta’amu. Their 580 total yards and 58 points are records for a UFL game.

The Defenders took control of the game with 31 points in the second quarter then outscored Michigan 9-0 in the third quarter.

Thus ended a season of some disappointment for the UFL although you wouldn’t think so by listening to the league officers. Overall attendance dropped about five percent this year and it would have been much worse if Michigan’s attendance had not shot up by almost one-third. Four of the eight teams in the league—Birmingham, Memphis, Arlington, and Houston, drew fewer than 10,000 fans per game. Three other teams, including the St. Louis Battlehawks, saw lesser declines.  Television viewership was down by more than 165,000.

Executive VP for football operations, Daryl Johnston, says, “When the time comes and the time is right, we’ll start to reflect back and find out some of the whys and then how can we implement tht moving forward to make sure that we’re getting better every year.”

(DOME)—The domed stadium where the Battlehawks play needs a major upgrade—$155 million worth in the next decade according to a state audit. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports a draft of a state audit shows no revenue stream for that work.  A member of the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority  says the authority is preparing a “long term plan” to take to state and local officials.

The authority does have a plan to invest $50 million dollars the city has received in the settlement of its lawsuit against owners of the former St. Louis Rams.

(KANSAS CITY STADIUMS)—The state has promised to invest $1.5 billion in football and baseball stadiums in Kansas City—but the Royals and the Chiefs have not promised to stay in Kansa City.

Overland Park, Kansas has offered a site and a financial package for the Royals.

The legislation that goes into effect September 9 does not open a money faucet for the teams. The Department of Economic Development wants to see some proof  that the stadium projects qualify for developmental financial incentives.

Now, on to some fast moving sports stories.

(INDYCAR)—Worldwide Technology Raceway got its first prime-time broadcast major automobile race Sunday night—-and it wasn’t disappointing.

Unless you were connected with the sport’s biggest team.

Team Penske drivers had the top two starting positions and three of the top five starting slots.

And then the raee started.  Outside front row driver Scott McLaughlin stalled in pit lane as the other 26 cars took to the track. Enough warmup and pace laps were run for him to refire his engine and get into his regular starting position.

Penske’s senior driver, Will Power, a two-time series champion and Indianapolis 500 winner, started from pole for the 71st time in his career, an Indycar record.  And four-time WWTR winner Josef Newgarden, a two-time champion of the 500, started fifth.

Power crashed while running second after a tire went flat just 47 laps into the 260-lap event. Newgarden, was in a violent crash while about to lap Louis Foster on the 128th lap, t-boning the spinning car of Foster.

Newgarden’s car came down on top of the wall and then slid on the track almost to the start-finish line.  The car’s titanium aero screen protected him during the wild ride upside down and he walked away from the wreckage after the safety crew set it back up on hits wheels. Foster also climbed out of his demolished car and walked away. If you want to see it, including the view from inside Newgarden’s cockpit, this is how it looked on the FOX broadcast:

https://x.com/i/status/1934427429487231109

“Not sure what to say, other than thank you to the AMR safety team and the safety of the car. Seemed like everything was going our way last night, until it wasn’t. Not much you can do in a situation like that. This season has been pretty trying for everyone on the 2 crew. Only thing to do is look forward. It will only make the successes even sweeter. See you in Road America!” (Indycar runs there next weekend)

McLaughlin also had an encounter with the wall leading the leading Indycar team with finishes of 24-25-26 in the 27-car field.

That wasn’t the only action, of course.  There were 254 passes for position for the race. More than half of the drivers led at least one lap. Christian Rasmussen had his career best finish, third, although started 21st and was penalized to the back of the field during the race, passed a total of 62 cars to get to the podium.

Winner Kyle Kirkwood led only the last five laps and held on for a  half-second win over Pato O’Ward. Indianapolis 500 winner Alex Palou, who finished eighth, had the fast lap during the race—174.803 on the mile and a quarter track.

The win by Kirkwood is his third of the year, his first ever on an oval.  He and Palou are the only drivers to win an Indycar race this year. The victory puts him third in the stndings behind Palou and O’Ward. Palou, who has the other five wins, including the Indianapolis 500, finished eighth and reeled off the fastest lap of the race, 174.803 on the mile and a half track.

(NASCAR)—Every year there seems to be a driver who is ‘way down in the standings who surprisingly wins a race and thus qualifies for the 16-driver race off for the series championship.

This year it’s Shane Van Gisbergen, 30th in points, who makes the runoff.  His win is an appropriate one, however.  The Australian Supercars champion won the first points NASCAR race in a foreign country by taking the win at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez road course in Mexico City.

He beat Christopher Bell by almost seventeen seconds to claim his second Cup series victory. He won his first Cup race on the street course in Chicago two years ago.

(FORMULA 1)—Mercedes driver George Russell won his first race of the year, taking the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal.

(Screenshot from FOX Sports; Kirkwood by Rick Gevers; Newgarden aero screen, Bob Priddy)

 

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SPORTS—Stadium Money Faces Crucial Week; Competitive Cardinals; Breakout Rookie in KC; Battlehawks Lose in Playoffs, Again

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(THE CAPITOL)—-Whether the state lays out hundreds of millions of dollars to build the new stadium that will keep the Kansas City Royals on this side of the state line could be determined tomorrow at the Missouri Capitol.

The House will consider the Senate-passed bill would have the state as much as half of the total costs of a new stadium for the Royals and for major upgrades to Arrowhead Stadium.

Kansas is putting on the pressure by offering to pay as much as 70% of the costs of building new stadiums on its side of the state line.

The bill also requires the state to pay as much as a quarter-billion dollars to upgrade Busch Stadium III.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals took on the third-best team in the National League during the weekend and won two out of three from the Dodgers. The Dodgers avoided a sweep with a Sunday win. But the Cardinals continue to gain confidence as they won the series.

Redbird shortstop Masyn Winn thinks the result shows the Cardinals can compete. He told reporters after the game, “We don’t have the payroll that a lot of teams do have. We have a lot of guys in here who are just grinders. We don’t have a standout superstar. We have a lot of guys in here who are just grinders.”

St. Louis finished the week four game behind the Cubs, in second place in the division,  seven games ahead of break-even and four games behind Chicago, the team with the second-best record in the National League. The Mets are on top at 42-24.

(PITCHING)— The Cardinals continue to tinker with their pitching staff, calling up relievers Riley O’ Brien and Chris Roycroft, both righthanders, and sending Matt Svanson and Michael McGreevey to Memphis.

They’ve also decided to take a flyer on Zach Plesac, a former starter for the Cleveland Guardians who had been moved in and out of the rotation for the past few years. The Guardians finally let him go to the Los Angeles Angels last year.  He was out of baseball as 2025 began but picked up a minor league deal with the Long Island Ducks of the Atlantic League. He’s averaged about eight strikeouts per nine innings with the Ducks.

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals still are waiting for the spark that moves them above mediocre and they might have found it in Jac Caglianone, who went 4 for 4 Sunday against the White Sox. Caglianone, called down from Omaha last week, had been just 2 for his first 21 at-bats.  But against the White Sox, he went 4 for 4, one of he hits a 113 mph double.

First baseman Vinnie Pasquantino led the Royals to a 3-3 week in games against the White Sox and the Cardinals with a performance that earned the Player of the Week honors. He batted .500 with 13 hits, 20 total bases, and seven runs batted in during the road trip.

Catcher Salvador Perez made a little history last week with his two-run homer that tied game against the White Sox. It was his 30th game-tying home run, moving him past Alex Gordon into number two on the team records list. Only George Brett had more.  35.

(BATTLEHAWKS)—We’ve heard this before:

It’s one and done for the St. Louis Battlehawks in the UFL playoffs, and the defeat smarts even more because it happened in front of the home folks.

The DC Defenders, beaten by the ‘Hawks a week earlier, rolled over St. Louis 36-18 to grab the XFL title.  The win sets up the Defenders to play the Michigan Panthers for the  UFL championship Saturday in (ouch!) St. Louis.  Michigan beat Birmingham 44-29 for the right to go to St. Louis.

Now: Where the rubber really meets the road—

(INDYCAR)—If  you want to watch the winner of the Indianapolis 500 try to go back to back on an oval, you’ll want to go across the river from St. Louis to World Wide Technology Raceway for Sunday night’s Indycar race.  Alex Palou made the 500 his first career win on an oval three weeks ago.

It’s a full weekend of competition with a race for 500 hopefuls in the IndyNXT series and a race for Silver Crown drivers.

(NASCAR)—Denny Hamlin has become one of the few drivers to win a race after running at least 700 Cup races when he minded his fuel until he needed to go all-out in the closing laps at Michigan.  He led only the last five laps and finished more than a second ahead of Chris Buescher and Buescher’s teammate, Ty Gibbs.

The race was the 701st of his career and his 57th win.

Carson Hocevar seemed to have the race in hand until he his car developed a flat tire, giving William Byron a lead he held until he had to make a splash-and-go fuel stop, handing the lead to Hamlin.

Only ten other drivers in NASCAR history have won at least one race after making 700 starts. Kevin Harvick had seven wins, a record Hamlin wants to beat. He is 44

The win at Michigan is his third checkered flag this year. He has said he wants to win at least sixty races in his career.

NASCAR runs its first international race next week, in Mexico City.

(F1)—Formula 1 runs the Grand Prix of Canada next weekend, in Montreal.

(Photo Credit: Visit Kansas City)

This Might Be News To You—-

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It sure is to us.

Did you know Missouri has another professional football team?

We’ve pretty much forgotten about arena football, the game from which Curt Warner vaulted into the NFL to become a Super Bowl-winning quarterback with the St. Louis Rams and a member of the NFL Hall of Fame.

Actually there are at least four leagues that play football in small arenas. The Goats are part of the Arena League. The others are:

Arena Football 1

Indoor Football League

National Arena Football League

The St. Joseph team is moving from Kansas City for this season. AND:

Travis Kelce and his brother, Jason, are the new principle owners of the Goats.

Actually, they are principle owners of Garage Beer and Garage Beer has a major ownership share of the team. It will play its first home game of the new season next Saturday in the city’s Municipal Auditorium against the Duluth Harbor Monsters.

Other teams in the league are the Harbor Monsters, Eau Claire Axmen, Hot Springs Wiseguys, Iowa Woo, and the Ozarks Lunkers (based in Springfield).

The Goats came into existence two years ago. They are named in honor of political boss Tom Pendergast’s Kansas City faction, known as “the Goats.” Pendergast and his family controlled Missouri Democratic Party politics for decades before he went to prison for tax evasion in the 40s. One of the things he did was push for building Kansas City’s Municipal Arena that was buit with lots of Pendergast concrete.

“Goats” won out over some other proposed names—Kings (after the NBA team that was in Kansas City for several years), Ribs (for the city’s well-known barbecue reputation, and the Potholes (which is self-explanatory). The team finished 7-1.

Will the team go over in St. Jo? Think about this: The Missouri State High School Activities Association lists 45 high schools that play 8-man football.  By our count, 33 of them are within an easy drive of St. Joseph.  Indoor, or Arena, football games are played on a field 50 yards long, 85 feet wide, surrounded by padded walls. Teams have 15-player rosters and field seven players at a time.

Sadly, we have to report the Goats lost their first game of the year, 54-50 to the Springfield Lunkers on a last-play-of-the-game touchdown set up by a pass interference call on the previous play.

Indoor, or Arena, football actually is a series of leagues ranging in size from three teams to twelve teams.

Arena Football 1

Indoor Football League

National Arena Football League

Arena League

The St. Joseph team is in the Arena League.

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Well, as long as we’re here, let’s do our weekly sports review:

—and let’s stay with football for a bit.

(BATTLEHAWKS)—The St. Louis Battlehawks have wrapped up their regular season 8-2 after taking down the D. C. Defenders 13-8. The Defenders are 6-4 and the teams will have a rematch for the XFL Division Championship next weekend. St. Louis won the game 13-8.

(BASEBALL)—The Cardinals and the Royals open a three-game series tonight with the Cardinals coming off their best May (19-8) since 2013 and their best month since August of 2022. They won six of their last ten and are second, within four games of the Cubs.

The Royals won only four of their last ten and come into the series 31-29. They’re 8 ½ games behind Detroit, in fourth place but only two games out of second place.

The offense-seeking Royals have called up their top minor leaguer, Jac Caglianone, for his first taste of big league pitching. Only one MLB team has hit fewer home runs so far than the Royals, who have 34. The Rockies, who are 9-50, have kept more balls inside the walls than the Royals.  The saving grace for the Royals so far is their pitching—the fourth best in the major leagues with a 3.13 ERA.

How would you react when you’ve been told you’re going up to the bigs?

https://www.si.com/mlb/royals-prospect-jac-caglianone-heartwarming-reaction-big-league-call-up-father

Caglianone has shown impressive power in his games in AA and lately in Triple-A while he’s learning to play the outfield.

The Cardinals’ counterpart is J. J. Wetherholt, who was drafted one slot behind Caglianone last year.  He hasn’t made the progress tht Caglianone has made offensively and there’s no position available for him on the present roster. He’s a middle infielder and the Cardinals are full at those positions.

(MIZ)—Missouri Tiger basketball has become such big stuff that the team needs a general manager.  That is Tim Fuller whose responsibilities are described as, “help with strategic planning and roster construction with an emphasis on alumni engagement, agent relations and NIL optimization.” The appointment is something of a homecoming for Fuller, who was an associate head coach for five years including 2012 when Missouri finished third-ranked nationally after a 30-5 record and a Big 12 championship.

Last season, he was an assistant coach at Providence, under former Tiger Kim English, one of he key players in that 2012 season.  Mizzou Coach Dennis Gates says the appointment will give him more time to coach instead of taking time away to do the things Fuller will supervise now.

Speaking of big wheels—-

(INDYCAR)—This is shaping up to be the breakout year for Kyle Kirkwood, who already has recorded two wins and six top ten finishes (although only five count), swept to the win on the streets of Detroit.  He earlier won on the streets of Long Beach. He and Alex Palou are the only drivers to win an Indycar race this year.

He finished sixth at Indianapolis but was demoted to 32nd after his car flunked post-race inspection.

All four of Kirkwood’s career wins have been in street races.

He took the lead from Foyt Racing driver Santino Ferrucci with 22 laps left ad held on to win despite damage to one of his front wings.  Ferrucci’s runner-up finish was the best finish for Foyt on a street course since Takuma Sato was second at Detroit a decade ago.

Kirkwood teammate Colton Herta came home third.

Alex Palou, the Indianapolis 400 winner, wrecked on a restart but still has a strong lead in the points.

The next race for Indycar will be within driving distance of most Missourians will be at the World Wide Technology Raceway across the river from St. Louis.

(NASCAR)—Ryan Blaney, the 2023NASCAR champion, has guaranteed he’ll be in the running for his second title with his win at Nashville.

Blaney has had strong runs throughout the season so far but hasn’t been able to hold leads down the stretch—until Nashville, where he led 139 of the 300 laps and beat Carson Hocevar to the finish line by almost three seconds.

NASCAR heads to Michigan next weekend.

(FORMULA 1)—McLaren’s Oscar Piastri beat teammate Lando Norris to the finish line in the Spanish Grand Prix with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc getting the other podium finish.

(picture credits: Kirkwood—USA Today, Junfu Han; Goats—Facebook; Blaney—Bob Priddy)

 

 

Sports: Making a Mark and Marking Places

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Your editor is recovering from a long and active weekend among about 350,000 of his closest friends and the long drive to and from the event. So he’s dragging himself back to the keyboard after a recovering day to explain how many people that is and some of the incredible stories, good and bad, emerging from the event.

If you took the average per-game attendance of the nine most popular teams in major league baseball and added them together, you would not get the 350,000 people who attended the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday. And here’s a kicker: What the eventual result was, was not what they witnessed.

Memorial Weekend is a big celebration weekend for sports. But the biggest celebration weekend happens with men driving cars rather than hitting line drives.

Memorial Day is a day for some of the biggest automobile races worldwide, in Indiana, North Carolina, and Monaco.  So we’re going to start where the biggest sports stories happened.

(INDIANAPOLIS)—It’s not over until it’s over.  And that includes the 2025 Indianapolis 500.

There are always stories within stories in the 500 and one of the two biggest ones came the morning after the race.

The biggest story is, of course, the win by Alex Palou, a three-time champion in the Indycar series who had said his career would be incomplete if he didn’t win the 500 after winning the series championship multiple times.

He won. But his is the only finishing position that remained as it was viewed by all of those fans.

While standings are listed within minutes after the checkered flag falls, the results do not become official until the next morning after all technical inspections and other reviews are completed.

In a race that began with two of the fastest qualifiers penalized to back-row starts for technical infractions and one of the favorites not even making it to the start, the final standings show drivers who finished second, seventh, and twelfth actually finished 31, 32, 33, behind a driver who did not log a lap in the race.

Improper equipment on qualifying weekend sent two of the Penske team’s drivers–last year’s winner, Josef Newgarden, and 2018 winner Will Power—to the last two starting positions.  Then on race day, the third Penske driver and one of the favorites to win the race, Scott McLaughlin wrecked his car on a warmup lap.

At the end of the day, the only thing that remained the same was the winner, Alex Palou (he pronounces it “Puh-LOW.”)

Marcus Ericsson, (shown) the 2022 winner, had crossed the finish line 0.6822 second behind  Palou, sixth-place finished Kyle Kirkwood, who crossed the line 2.9454 seconds behind, and twelfth place finisher Callum Illot (21.3918 seconds back) have been disqualified because their cars did not meet highly-technical standards after the race. Those times work to a difference of only .019 mph after 500 miles.

The OFFICIAL results posted Monday morning after post-race technical inspections record Ericsson finished 31st, Kirkwood 32nd, and Illot 33rd, behind McLaughlin, who never took the green flag.

This is not the first time a controversy has dogged the last laps of the race.

In 1995, Scott Goodyear, leading the race, which was going green on the 190th lap after a caution period, passed the pace car before it left the track.  He refused to go to the pits for a stop-and-go penalty and officials quit scoring him after 193 laps.  He was accorded a 14th-place finish. The win was given to Jacques Villeneuve who was running second to Goodyear when scorers quit counting him. Villeneuve had been assessed a two-lap penalty much earlier in the race for passing the pace car but had time to make up the penalty distance.

In 1981, Bobby Unser was declared the race winner with Mario Andretti finishing second. A protest charged Unser had illegally passed cars coming out of the pits during a caution flag and Andretti was given his second 500 victory.  But Unser protested and on October 8th, his victory was restored.

A driver who had never driven on an oval course started on the pole.  Robert Schwartzman is the first Israeli to race in the 500. Schwartzman holds dual citizenship in Russia and in Israel

He became the first rookie to win the pole since Teo Fabi in 1983.  Rookie Tony Stewart, later a NASCAR champion, was a rookie when he stated in the first position in 1996 but he had been moved into the P1 position after pole-winner Scott Brayton had been killed in a pre-race practice crash.

Not even the Indianapolis 500 can be isolated from other events in the world, and Schwartzman reminded people of that. He was born in Israel, was raised in Russia and had driven in Europe under Russian colors until Russia invaded Ukraine.

After winning the pole for the 500, he was asked about his dual citizenship, and replied, “I just want peace in the world. I want people to be good, and I don’t want the separation of countries, saying, ‘This is bad country. This is good country.’ There is no bad or good. We’re all human beings, and we just have to support each other. We need to find ways to, let’s say, negotiate things. Find ways to agree on things, you know? Because from my experience, there is always, you know, a gold medal, I’m calling it — like, there’s always the right path.”

(THE WINNER)—So where are you going to go after winning The Greatest Spectacle in Racing?

No, not Disneyland.

Alex Palou went to the NBA Divisional playoff game between the Indiana Pacers and the New York Knicks where a much smaller crowd than the one that saw him win the race, stood and applauded.

Palou won $3.8 million out of a record purse of more than $20 million, the biggest purse in auto racing history. He was the 14th and final lap leader in the race. Only two races have had more drivers leading at least one lap. Fifteen drivers led the 2017 and 2018 races. Last year’s race showed almost half of the drivers, 16 of 33, led at least one lap.

(Palou leads pole winner Robert Schwartzman into the first turn.)

Palou, who averaged 168.883 mph in the win (the record is 190=plus) is the 21st foreign driver to win the 500. Foreign drivers have won 31 of the 109 races (including five drivers from the UK and four from Brazil who have combined for 16 wins). Drivers from eleven countries have won the race but he is the first native of Spain to do so.

The 500 is one of those races where multiple records are kept.  The Speedway has updated some of its records book after this race:

Four-time winner Helio Castroneves ran the full 500 miles for the nineteenth time in his 25 starts in the 500. He has been running at the finish 23 times. Both are race records. Only three other drivers, A. J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, and Al Unser Sr., have more starts.  He also had the fastest lap in the race, 226.178 mph. He finished tenth.

Former winners Scott Dixon and Josef Newgarden had run all 200 laps in each of the last seven races. Neither finished Sunday’s race, though.

(LARSON)—NASCAR star Kyle Larson didn’t show the form he showed last year in his first attempt to “do the double,” run the 500 in the afternoon and the 600-mile NASCAR race in Charlott later in the day. He started 19th and went out after a crash just after the halfway point of the 500.  He made it to Charlotte to start that race, led 33 laps, but a couple of on-track incidents sidelined him well before the end. He was credited with a 37th place finish. After the race, Larson was doubtful he would try doing the double again.

(NASCAR)—Ross Chastain did something in the 600-mile race at Charlotte that had not been done in more than half a century.

He started dead last and finished a lively first. He is the first driver to qualify to start 41st to win a NASCAR race since Richard Petty did it in 1971 at Richmond. And he did it in a backup car that his crew put together overnight after he wrecked his primary one.

Runner-up William Byron led 283 of the 400 laps but could not hold off Chastain, who got past him with six laps left to get the checkered flag by about seven-tenths of a second and a chance to perform his post-race celebratory act, standing on the roof of his car and throwing a watermelon to the track, smashing it into pieces. (Chastain’s family has raised watermelons in Florida for generations).  Chase Briscoe, the pole winner, came back to third after a pit violation set him back early. A. J. Allmendinger was fourth and Brad Keselowski got his first top five finish in what has been a miserable season so far.

The race saw 34 lead changes, the most in the race since 2014.

(FORMULA 1)—Memorial Day Weekend in the United States is the weekend for Formula One’s “crown jewel,” the Grand Prix on Monaco on  course that winds its way past the Monte Carlo casinos and along the sea front.  McLaren’s Lando Norris picked up his second win of the year, finishing ahead of defending series champion Max Verstappen and Mercedes driver George Norris.

Now, to stick and ball sports:

(BASEBALL)— Memorial Day is traditionally the first of the three summer holidays in which baseball teams take their temperatures now that they’re fully engulfed in the season. Both of our teams are playing well, one of them not as well as many expected and the other playing much better than most people expected.

At the beginning of the season, few were predicting the St. Louis Cardinals would be playing better baseball than the Kansas City Royals at this stage of the year.

But they are.

The Cardinals begin the mid-season stretch between now and the next measuring point, July 4th, 30-24, trailing only the Cubs in their division, by three games.

The Royals make this turn fourth in their division behind Detroit, Cleveland, and Minnesota, six games out at 29-26.

(FOOTBALL)—One game left in the regular season for the St. Louis Battlhawks, who ran up heir biggest score of the season last week against the San Antonio Brahman’s in a 39-13 win.  Head Coach Anthony Becht became the first UFL coach to get twenty career victories with that win. His team is 7-2 and tied with the best record in the league.

More people attended the game than attended the other three games in the UFL combined:

St. Louis: 27,890

Memphis: 2,044

Birmingham: 10,344

Houston: 6,684

That’s an average of 11,740.

In the other division, the Memphis Showboats game against the Arlington Renegades, in Memphis, drew only 2,044 people to a stadium that seats 44,000. The Showboats averaged 6,900 for home games last year. The average this year is 3,846.

UFL News Hub reports the Battlehawks are averaging 34,362 fans per game. The other seven teams in the league average only 9,834 FPG and attendance is sliding. TV viewership also is down, leading to talk about the survival of the league.

The ’Hawks finish the regular season on the road next week and then, on June 8, will meet the DC Defenders for the division championship. That game will be in St. Louis.

(Photo credits: Palo–Indianapolis Pacers and Bob Priddy; Ericsson—Rick Gevers; Schwartzman—Priddy; Chastain–NASCAR)

 

 

 

Hot Baseball; Winning Football; and the Power of Palou

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Our baseball teams are hot.

(CARDINALS)—The St. Louis Cardinals finished the week with two straight series wins and a winning streak of eight games The streak has pulled the ‘birds into second place, one game behind the Cubs. The Cardinals, once at 14-19 are now at 22-19. Theu rank second in all of major league baseball with a .261 team batting average. The’re ninth in hits.

(ROYALS)—Although they lost two games in a row last weekend, the Kansas City Royals still have won 16 of their last 20 and are tied with Cleveland for second in their division, 2½  games behind Detrot.  Kris Bubic has the fourth best ERA in MLB, 1.69.

(AS WE GO TO PRESS)—The Cardinals extended their streak nine with a win over the Phillies in the first game of a midweek series.  The Royals ended their four-game losing streak with a series opening win against Houston and now have gone 25% of the way to a 100-victory season.

(UFL)—The St. Louis Battlehawks aren’t scoring a lot of points with their backup quarterback but they don’t need to, given their defense.

They ran their record to 5-2 during the weekend with a 19-9 victory on the home field of the Memphis Showboats. St. Louis broke the game open with ten first-quarter points. After Memphis closed to 10-6 in the second quarter, St. Louis bounced back with a 78-yard that made it 16-6 at the half. The teams traded field goals in the second half.

Next for Battlehawks: the Birmingham Stallions, in the St. Louis Dome, next Saturday noon.  The Battlehawks, Birmingham, and the Washington Defenders are 5-2 heading down the stretch in the UFL season. Birmingham will play the ‘hawks next weekend in the St. Louis dome.

(INDYCAR)—It’s May and for racing fans the word is Indianapolis.  INDYCAR has started the month with a race on the speedway road course. And Alex Palou has continued his run in the leadup to the biggest race of the year for the series.

But that’s the longest race so far this year and Josef Newgarden will be shooting for an unprecedented third straight win.  The 500 championship could be a matter of which of the biggest teams in the series gets the Borg-Warner trophy.

Palou is on track to have the greatest INDYCAR season in 61 years.  His win on the speedway road course is his fourth in five races this year and makes him the clear favorite to add a fifth win in the Indianapolis 500 on the 25th.

Palou had a ten-second lead when the first caution period this year came along after 408 green flag laps to start the season. But he pulled away on the restart and in the remaining dozen laps rebuilt his lead to more than five seconds.

Pato O’Ward picked up his second runner-up position of the season.

Through five races this year, Palou’s average finishing position is 1.2.  INDYCAR says the only start in the last half-century that comes close to that is the season-opening run by Sebastian Bourdais in 2006, who was at 1.4 after four victories and a third place.

While his start to the year has been spectacular, he has no lock on the 500, a race much longer than the first five races of the INDYCAR season. Josef Newgarden, who finished twelfth on the road course, will aggressively chase his goal of being the first driver to win three consecutive 500s. Former winner Will Power has had top tens in the last four races, including third on the road course last weekend. Power says he will be “shocked” if Palou dominates the 500 as he has dominated the first five races.

And O’Ward, who has two heart-breaking seconds in the big race, now has two seconds so far this year and wants to taste the champagne.

Scott Dixon, who finished fifth in the race, is a six-time series champion and has led more laps in the 500 than any other driver, wants to lead at least one more and get his second win in the race.

The 500 is likely to have seven drivers who have combined for 12 wins.

(NASCAR)—Kyle Larson’s car wasn’t 100% healthy when he crossed the finish line for his second straight win at the Kansas Speedway, but it was enough to get to the checkered flag seven-tenths of a second before Christopher Bell did.

He babied his right side tires for the last few laps, especially the last one when pieces of rubber were seen flying from the right front.

It was Larson’s third win of the year. He started from the poll and led 221 of the 267 laps to join Bell as the only three-time winner in the NASCAR Cup series this year.

He now ranks third among active drivers in laps led with 10,073. He has more than five-thousand laps to lead before he gets to Denny Hamlin and more than nine thousand before he equals Kyle Busch.

(Photo Credits: Palou, INDYCAR