Category Archives: Sports

Sports: Have the Cardinals Resurrected a Starter? Which Royals Team Will Show Up in ’24?; Quarterbacks in competition and Bubba on the Bubble

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(CARDINALS)—Should the Cardinals pencil in Dakota Hudson as a starter next year?   Hudson, who went 16-7 for the Cardinals in 2019 and then had Tommy John surgery the next year, appears to be at full strength as his team plays out the string in 2023.

Hudson rang up his fifth straight win of ’23 (he has yet to lose) when he became a stopper against the Mets Sunday.  The Cardinals had lost four in a row, partly because of a puny offense that had generated only five runs in their four losses.

The offense bulked up behind Hudson with 15 hits and seven runs. Every starter had at least one hit. Paul Goldschmidt was 3-for-4 with a homer, three RBIs, and two runs scored.

The series marked the debut of top rookie Masyn Winn who went 3 for 11.

His first major league hit was dribbler down the third base line. When Mets’ first baseman Pete Alonso was told to throw the ball out of play, he pitched it into the crowd—-realizing moments later it had been Winn’s first hit.  He apologized profusely and the woman in the crowd who had it gave it to a team security officer.  Winn signed another ball for her.

(ROYALS)—The Royals have reverted to form after their seven-game winning streak got fans’ hearts beating a little as this team heads for one of its worst seasons ever.  They’ve gone 4-11 since that streak.  But the new week begins with hope.  The Royals open a three-game series against the only American League team with a worse record.  The Royals open the series in Oakland at 40-86.  The A’s are 34-89.

Jordan Lyles dropped to 3-14 Sunday despite an impressive eight innings in which he allowed only two earned runs.  His eight innings dropped his ERA to 6.07.

The Royals needed three to tie in the ninth but ran out of outs after scoring only two.

(THE WEAPON AND THE LEFTY)—The Cardinals’ “Secret Weapon” has an addition to his wardrobe—a red sport coat symbolizing his membership in the Cardinals Hall of Fame.  Jose Oquendo, nicknamed “The Secret Weapon” of the Cardinals by Jack Buck, once played all nine positions in a game in 1988.  He had a solid career as a player but is best known and revered as a coach of young talent.

Left-handed pitcher Max Lanier, who died at 91 in 2007, was 101-69 in 12 years with the Cardinals. His best year was 15-7 in 1943, the year he led the National League with a 1.90 ERA.

He started as a right-handed pitcher but his son Hal—who had a long career as a utility infielder and was briefly a Cardinals coach—say he severely injured his elbow twice and had to learn to throw left-handed.

(DeJong Yawn)—-The Cardinals-Blue Jays trade that sent shortstop Paul DeJong to Toronto already is a big win for St. Louis, a big bust for Toronto, and a big downfall for a former All-Star shortstop.

The Blue Jays have designated Paul DeJong for assignment, just a eighteen days after getting him from the Cardinals.  He’d been acquired when Toronto shortstop Bo Bichette went down with a knee injury. But Bichette has been reinstated frm the IL and DeJong is available for the taking.

DeJong came up to the Cardinals in 2017, hit .285 with 25 home runs and made the All-Star game. He had 30 homers two years later but his batting average had dropped to .233.  He never recovered his freshman skills and when the Cardinals sent him to Toronto he was hitting only .233.

And Toronto became a disaster for him. He was 3 for 44 with 1 RBI.

It was a low-risk, low-return trade (so far) for both teams.  The Cardinals got minor league pitcher Matt Svanson who was not one of  Toronto’s top 30 prospects. Through Friday night he had been in four games for Springfield and had a 10.13 ERA,  7 hits, 6 runs in 5.1 innings.

CHIEFS)—Kansas City Chiefs fans disappointed that the starters played only a few downs in the first pre=season game, got a look at what happens when the starters stick around a while longer in the second pre-season contest.  And they got a pretty encouraging look at the backups, too.

Chiefs beat the Cardinals 38-10. The first team offense wasn’t too impressive in the first  few series’s but they looked like the Chiefs with a ten-play 92-yard drive that ended with a Justin Watson catching an 18-yeard TD pass from Patrick Mahomes. Mahomes finished his work going 10 for 15, 105 yards and the touchdown in the first quarter.  The Chiefs finished the night with 504 yards offense.

The Chiefs went up 17-0, let the Cardinals draw to within 17-10, then polished off the Arizona birds with 21 unanswered points.

Both teams are 1-1 now.

The performance by both backup quarterbacks has started some buzz.  Shane Buechele completed all ten of his pases for 105 yards and ran for a 15-yard touchdown.  Former Missouri Tiger QB Blaine Gabbert was 7 for 8, 130 yards, two touchdowns. The question remaining for the final pre-season game is which of them will be the number 2 QB.  It would not be a surprise if the Chiefs carry three quarterbacks this year.

The Chiefs welcome the Cleveland Browns to Arrowhead Stadium next Saturday night for the last pre-season game.  The teams have only one cutdown date this year. They have to name their 53-man rosters on August 29.  Although teams can have 53 roster players, only 48 can be eligible on game day.  Teams also can have a 16-player practice squad.

(SPEAKING OF QUARTERBACKS)—Coach Eli Drinkwitz says we’ll see Brady Cook and Sam Horn splitting time in the first game of the year against South Dakota. He says he wants to “let the play on the field decide it.”

Now, let’s get up to speed.

(INDYCAR)—Josef Newgarden will try to keep his IndyCar record of consecutive oval victories intact next Sunday afternoon at World Wide Technology Speedway just east of St. Louis.

Newgarden has won all four oval races this year, five in a row counting last year’s win at WWTR.  He seeks to become the first driver to sweep all of the oval races in a season since Sebastian Bourdais did it in 2006. Bourdais had a little easier time of it, though.  A race on the Milwaukee Mile was the only oval race held for IndyCar in 2006.

Racing at WWTR is usually highly-competitive. There were 13 lead changes and 520 on track passes for position last year before rookie David Malukas chased Newgarden to the finish line, trailing by .4708 of a second.

Only two races remain in the series after this one. Newgarden’s chances of overhauling Aledx Palou for the championship took a hard blow in the last race, on the Indianapolis road course two weeks ago, in which Newgarden (left) battled problems and finished 25th.

Scott Dixon won the race and moved past Newgarden into second place, 101 points behind Palou. Newgarden is back by 105.  A win by Palou would make him the first driver since Cristiano daMatta did it in 2022.

(NASCAR)—Fifteen of sixteen playoff spots have been determined heading into NASCAR’s last regular-season race.  Bubba Wallace is on the bubble in 16th,  thirty-two points ahead of rookie Ty Gibbs.

Although Wallace has some breathing room going into the race, nothing is certain when the race is at Daytona.  Multiple-car crashes often turn anticipated results (and some cars) upside down.  If a driver who has not won this year captures the flag at Daytona Saturday night, he’s in and Wallace is out.  The most desperate driver might be former series champion Chase Elliott, who has to win to be in.

(SRX)—A Missouri track provided the wrapup to the third season of Tony Stewart’s Superstar Racing Experience this week.  The race, at Wheatland in southwest Missouri, went to Jonathan Davenport and the championship to Ryan Newman.

The six-race made-for-television series features specially-built cars races by big names mostly from NASCAR and IndyCar ranks.

Davenport, the race winner, however, is a dirt-track champion who doesn’t run with the big dogs, Jonathan Davenport, a Georgia driver who has won the national championship in the Late Model Dirt Serioes in 2015, 2018, and 2019. On the podium with him was current Cup Series driver Brad Keselowski and Fenton’s ageless Kenny Schrader who, a few days earlier, had gone to Canada to win a 100-lap NASCAR Dirt Classic race at Ohsweken Speedway in Ontario.

Schader, 68, thus became the oldest driver to win a NASCAR-sanctioned event and the first non-Canadian to win in the Pinty’s Series.

(photo credits: Bob Priddy, Rick Gevers, and Lucas Oil Speedway)

SPORTS:  The Hendrick 1100; The Chiefs Debut; Tiger Basketball Gets the Beef; Tiger Football Developing.  Then there is baseball.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(RACING)—We normally start with the stick and ball sports but the stick-shift or paddle-shift sports took some interesting turns (to coin a phrase) this weekend and we were there so we’re going to talk about things faster than a baseball pitch.

First, NASCAR and IndyCar shared the road course at Indianapolis this weekend, IndyCar on Saturday and cars with fenders on Sunday.

(HENDRICK)—The weekend was the perfect venue to unveil the cars that former NASCAR champion Kyle Larson will run next year as he tries to “do the double, .” racing in the Indianapolis 500 and then jetting to Charlotte, NC for NASCAR’s 600 mile Memorial Day race that night.

Larson, who won Saturday night’s Knoxville Sprint Car Championship in Iowa, got to Indianapolis at 4 a.m. Sunday but was at the Indianapolis Speedway at mid-morning the unveiling of the cars he will drive next Memorial Day Weekend.

.His car owner, Rick Hendrick, is partnering with Arrow-McLaren Motorsports, which fields cars for the 500.  The color scheme is McLaren Papaya Orange and Hendrick’s traditional blue. Because he’s an active partner in the effort, the event has been unofficially dubbed the “Hendrick 1100,” for the 100 miles Larson will drive that day if he completes both races.

Four other drivers have tried it but only Tony Stewart has been able to run all 600 laps in the two races.  Robby Gordon tried four times, John Andretti tried it once and the most recent driver to make the attempt, Kurt Busch, was 6th at Indianapolis but fell out of the Charlotte race with engine problems.

Hendrick, owner of 94 automobile dealerships employing 10,000 people, owned Jeff Gordon’s car that one the first Brickyard 400, the first NASCAR race on the Indianapolis oval, in 1994. At one time he considered having Gordon run both races, but Gordon was cool to the idea.

But Jeff Gordon was a strong advocate for Larson to try it, and Larson has been eager to do it.  Hendrick says Larson has shown he can win in any kind of car.

For his part, Larson says he’s not nervous although he expects the nervousness to start “creeping in” as next May gets closer.

(SUNDAY ON THE ROAD COURSE WITH MIKE)—Michael McDowell had been one of the drivers keeping an eye on drivers’ points as NASCAR’s playoff runs begins to grow close.  But his win Sunday eliminated any uncertainty about his presence among the 16 drivers competing for a slot.

McDowell, who has shown improvement as a road course driver in his career, seized control of the race that went without a yellow flag for the last 77 of 82 laps.  It’s his second CUP victory—the first being the Daytona 500 two years ago.

His closest pursuer was Chase Elliott, who desperately needs a win to qualify for the playoffs.  Although Elliott trimmed McDowell’s lead from four seconds to less than one second, he couldn’t get the win that would have put him, Elliott, into the 16-car playoff field. He gave Ford its first road course victory since 2018, whcn Ryan Bleney won the first race on the Charlotte Roval.

He’s the 13th winner this year, leaving only three playoff positions available for non-winners.  Kevin Harvick and Brad Keselowski seem secure in the points chase, leaving only one position, for all intents and purposes, open. Bubba Wallas holds the 16th playoff spot now, by 28 pins over Daniel Suarea

McDowell’s win reduces the number of available Playoff spots to three. Keselowski and Kevin Harvick are comfortably situated on points—barring more different winners at Watkins Glen and Daytona—but Wallace’s hold on the final spot was reduced from 58 points pre-race to 28 over Suárez. Next closest is Ty Gibbs, who’s 49 points out.

The road course at Watkins Glen is next on the schedule.

(INDYCAR)—The IndyCar race Saturday was awash in history from beginning to end.  Saturday was the 90th birthday of Speedway legend Parnelli Jones, the first driver to run a 150 mph lap, a past winner of the 500 in May.  This year is the 38th anniversary of Danny Sullivan’s famous “spin and win” 1985 500. Dixon had not planned to celebrate Sullivan’s achievement when the race started but less than one minute into the contest he spun off the track into the dirt as part of a five-car tangle.  Dixon’s car was undamaged and he got back under power before the field came back around, keeping him on the leader lap.  A pit stop four laps later would let him run the rest of the race on only two more stops while other drivers had to make three.

The alert move by his team put him in the lead late and his legendary fuel-saving abilities left him ten seconds ahead of pole-sitter Graham Rahal after the final pit stops.  Rahal bit into the lead but finished about a half-second back.

(Dixon meeting a fan)

The win is Dixon’s 54th; only A. J. Foy had more (67).  It gave Dixon at least one win in 19 consecutive seasons, breaking a tie with Foyt.  He’s known as “The Ice Man” for his ability to keep his cool during tight races but he’s also IndyCar’s “Iron Man” after making his 319th consecutive start, breaking the record held by Tony Kanaan.

The race was a disaster for Josef Newgarden, the winner of the 500 in May. His car was one of the five in the first lap crash and he never got into contending position after repairs. Dixon has replaced him as second in points but Alex Palou has a 100-plus point lead going into the last three races of  the year (the first of which is just across the river from St. Louis in two weeks, at World Wide Technology Raceway).

(HELIO)—The race near St. Louis likely will be the last chance we have to see Helio Castroneves except for the Indianapolis 500.  Castroneves is easing into retirement and his only race for 2024 for his current owner, Meyer-Shank Racing, will be his next big for a fifth Indianapolis 500.  Otherwise he’ll assume a minority ownership of the team. He’ll also run sports cars in the IMSA series.

He remains one of the most popular and charismatic figures in IndyCar.

His MSR teammate, Simon Pagenaud, is still not allowed to race because of concussion problems resulting from his horrendous crash at Mid-Ohio a month ago. His contract with Meyer Shank ends at the end of this season. Linus Lundqvist has been filling in for him. He was 12th in the Saturday race.

(ONE OTHER THING)—Imagine the players on your favorite base, foot, basket, or soft ball team pausing on their way to the field to start the game to pass among fans and sign autographs.

IndyCar and NASCAR drivers do that.  We weren’t there to collect autographs but instead we were there to photograph drivers.  One young Indiana couple brought their young children, each wearing t-shirts saying, “My First NASCAR Race.”

Chase Briscoe was one of the several drivers who saw their little girl sitting on top of the fence, held by her father whose hat was signed earlier by broadcaster Dale Earnhardt Jr., (barely visible on the bill) and signed her shirt. Briscoe finished sixth in the race.  Briscoe is 28 with a lot of future ahead of him; she looked to be three or four with even more future before her.

Forty-six years ago, a woman named Janet Guthrie became the first woman to start a Daytona 500 AND an Indianapolis 500.  A year later she finished sixth at Bristol, the highest finish in a NASCAR race ever by a woman up to that time (Danica Patrick also finished 6th in a NASCAR race, in 2017).

Your on-the-scene scribe once had an autographed Guthrie picture hanging in his daughter’s bedroom, not because he thought she would become a woman race driver but because he wanted her to know she could be anything she wanted to be.

TIGER FOOTBALL)—Coach Eli Drinkwitz started sounding a little more positive about his team after Saturday’s closed practice, especially about the defense—although the offense began to find itself a bit toward the end of the first half of the closes scrimmage.

The competition for slots on the offensive line is intensifying. He says as many as eight players are competing for five positions.  He indicates Javon Foster might have left tackle nailed down and Connor Tollison is impressive at center.

A week ago he was critical of Tiger wide receivers for their shortcomings in the blocking game but after the weekend scrimmage, he says the players have “responded really well.”

(MISSOURI ROUNDBALL)—Coach Dennis Gates has been signing some big guys to fill what has been an aching shortcoming of the Tigers for years—the lack of interior size.  His newest recruit isn’t just tall.  He’s BIG.

He’s Peyton Marshall, a 7-foot, 300-pound center from Marietta, Georgia, who has picked Missouri aver Georgia Tech, Auburn Ole Miss, Cincinnati, Georgetown, and Mississippi State, and about ten other schools.  He’s the third top 100 player in the 2024 recruiting class. He is considered to have a lot of raw but unpolished talent.

(CHIEFS FOOTBALL)—The starters hardly broke a sweat in their first exhibition game of the year against Russell Wilson and the New Orleans Saints 26-24 on a late field goal.  The regulars were in for just a few plays while coach Andy Reid got a good  look at the rookies and the newbies. The Chiefs play the Cardinals next week. The regular seasons starts September 7.

Okay, now let’s take a look at our baseball teams. It will be a short one.

Our two teams had a rare Sunday off after their two game series that ended in a split at the end of the week.  In both games, both games played well above their winning percentage.

(ROYALS)—The Royals have to win their next 50 games in a row to have a .500 season. They start tonight’s game against the Mariners 31-81.  The Royals used the day to juggle the lineup.  Drew Waters is returning from the three-day Bereavement List.

Edward Olivares is headed down to Omaha to make room on the roster for Bubba Thompson, coming over from the Rangers, who designated hm for assignment this week. At first glance, Thompson doesn’t appear to be much of a game-changer. He is hitting .170 in 27 games for Texas.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals (52-66) face another team that, on paper, would appear to be easy pickings—the Oakland Athletics, who sport a 33-85 record.  It is the first meeting of these two teams since 2019.

Just when some things were starting to look just a teeny more rosy, the Cardinals have announced that Steven Matz is going to be on the 15-dayh DL with a left lat strain.

Manager Oli Marmol hasn’t said it in so many words, but the time as come to seriously address what’s to be done with Adam Wainwright.  Last Friday night’s outing against the lowly Royals was nothing if not tragic for a beloved player who wants so badly to go out with 200 wins. Marmol promised afterward to “sit down with Waino” and “talk through a few things.”  But he says the future doesn’t look great.

Wainwright, however, will make a start later this week.

(Photo Credits: Bob Priddy and Rick Gevers)

 

A Record Week; A Weak Record. And Some Speed

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by Bob Priddy, Missourinet contributing editor

(BASEBALL)—Time to play what you’ve been dealt.  Trading deadline has come and gone and so have Cardinals’ and Royals’ players.  Both teams will be playing out the string, seeing who develops, who has possibilities, or showcasing possible trade bait.  Our two teams went different directions last week but they’re really going nowhere for the season.  The Royals won seven in a row and are 7-3 in their last ten.  The Cardinals went 3-7.

(ROYALS)—-About that seven-game winning streak:  It was historic. And there’s a Cardinals angle to it.  It’s another example of how baseball is the playground for the figure filberts of the world.

(There are conflicting versions of who the original figure filbert was. One version refers to Al Munro Elias who The New York Times once said, “He ate, slept, dreamed and breathed baseball averages and odd records.”  He was the founder of the Elias Sports Bureau, often cited for its collection of arcane records.  The other person who is sometimes considered the original statistics nut is Earnest John Lanigan, a sportswriter and baseball historian who pioneered the gathering of statistics about games and players. He wrote the first encyclopedia on the issue.)

Pete Gratoff of the Wichita Eagle has written that the Royals last week became the first team in Major League history to have a winning percentage of less than .300 to win seven games in a row since the 1907 CARDINALS won nine straight, all against the same team—the Boston Doves, that later became the Boston Braves, the Milwaukee Braves and the present Atlanta Braves.  The Cardinals finished that year 55-101-2 and finished last in the eight-team American League.  The Doves fluttered to a record of 50-90-4, good for seventh.

The Royals now are 36-77, ahead of the A’s who are 32-80.

Who’s hot for the Royals?  Bobby Witt Jr., started this week hiting .336 since the start of July (he was at .244 through June). He has 20 homers and 32 steals, becoming the first player in baseball history to go 20/30 in his first two seasons in the Majors. “It’s just me playing the game,” he says.

Who’s not hot for the Royals?  Zack Greinke, who fell to 1-12 last week, He has given up 23 homeruns, 13 in the last ten starts. He has averaged five innings in his 22 starts. His most recent win was May 2.

(CARDINALS)—You see it happen in all kinds of situations—businesses, churches, sports—

Someone who has become an institution leaves the scene.  The person who comes in next is often unfairly compared to his or her predecessor. Sometimes that person tries to hard to BE that predecessor.  And they don’t stay long.

Wilson Contreras admits he was trying to hard at the start of the season.  Cardinals’ fans, many of them, were quick to judge him based on Yadiair Molina.  He hit .158 in May, .221 in June, and then he says he realized the Cardinals signed him to be himself.  And during the month of July he hit .429. Through the first few days of August he was hitting .313 and his season averages are close to his career averages.

Down on the farm, the ‘Birds’ top prospect, Mason Wynn, had to leave a game this past weekend with a minor glute strain. He’s hitting .284 at Memphis with 17 homers and 59 RBIs.  He’s 17-19 in stolen bases.

Luken Baker is lighting up opposing pitchers at Memphis. He leads the minor leagues with 37 home runs.  He hit .263 during a cup of coffee with the big team earlier this year.  The problem is that he’s a first baseman and the Cardinals are well-positioned (so to speak) there. And the Cardinals have a full arsenal of designated hitters.

(FOOTBALL)—This might be one of those years when there’s less talk about the overlapping seasons of baseball and football and more about how great it will be when the football season starts.  The Chiefs and the Tigers (and other college teams) are in workouts now. High Schools start soon.  Here’s hoping your team takes your mind off of baseball for a while.

ZOOM:

(INDYCAR)—This is turning out to be Kyle Kirkwood’s breakout year.  Kirkwood picked up his second IndyCar win of the year, the second of his career, by holding off Scott McLaughlin on the 2.1-mile street course in downtown Nashville.

He beat pole-sitter McLaughlin to the line by about eight-tenths of a second after a late-race restart with a little more than three laps left. The race had been red-flagged after a three-car crash that left no room for racing through one of the turns. Kirkwood got a good jump on the restart and pulled away to a 1.6-second lead after the first lap. But McLaughlin and series points leader Alex Palou rallied to cut the lead in half with one lap left.

McLaughlin was disappointed to finish second in the race for the second year in a row.

Kirkwood started eighth but team strategy early in the race moved him into contention and eventually put him in front for 34 of the race’s 80 laps.

Palou’s third-place finish upped his points lead over Josef Newgarden, who finished fourth, to 84 points.  Only four races with 216 possible points remain in the IndyCar season.  Next up is a return to the road course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway next Saturday afternoon.

(NASCAR)—Chris Buescher, who broke a long winless streak at Richmond has made it two in a row, taking the rain-delayed race at Michigan International Speedway.  His wins and strong finishes by teammate and part-owner Brad Keselowski have signalled a return to prominence of the former Roush Racing, now Roush-Fenway-Keselowski racing. Keselowski finished fourth.

The closing laps turned into a fierce chase of Buscher by Martin Truex Jr., for the last ten laps. Truex closed with five laps left but couldn’t find a way around Buescher who took away Truex’s driving line down the stretch.

(Formula 1)—F1 is on break. It takes off most of August each year.

(Photo credit: Kirkwood at Indianapolis: Rick Gevers)

SPORTS—First Sweep; Rentals for Futures; and a Racing Record 

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by Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(ROYALS)—Two words have not been heard together for a long time: Kansas City Royals and Sweep.  The Royals beat the Twins Sunday 2-1 and for the first time last September, swept a series.  Their opponents both times were the Twins. Ryan Yarbrough had his best game of the year, allowing the Twins their only run in a seven-inning outing to run his record to 4-5 and drop his ERA to 4.24.

It’s the Royals 32nd win of the year. They’ve lost 75.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals had to win to avoid being swept and Steven Matz gave them the game they needed. Matz and two relievers stopped the Cubs’ domination of the Redbirds with a 3-0 win.  Matz is only 2-7 for the year but his recent performances have been encouraging. In his last three starts, totaling 17 innings, he’s given up one run since coming back from bullpen exile.  He started the year 0-6 and sported a 5.72 ERA.that is now about to dip below four.

(TRADES)—-The Cardinals and the Royals finally have pulled the triggers on trades.

St. Louis President of Baseball Operations, John Mozeliak called Sunday “a day that we were hoping would never happen in the sense of having to break up our club,” but the season clearly points to the need to consider the future.

The Cardinals set left-handed starter Jordan Montgomery and reliever Chris Stratton to the Texas Rangers, getting some high-level prospects in return for left-handed pitcher John King, double-A pitcher T. K. Roby (a righty) and minor league infielder Tommy Saggese.  The trade puts Montgomery in the hands of pitching coach Mike Maddux.  Although Montgomery was only 6-9 for the Cardinals, he had a highly-respectable 3.42 ERA in 21 starts. He had struck out more than three times as many batters as he had walked.  He’ll be a free agent at the end of the year.

Also gone is reliever Jordan Hicks. He’ll be throwing his 103 mph fastball for the Blue Jays for the rest of the year.  He was 1-6 with eight saves in eleven opportunities  and an ERA of 3.67 for the year. The Cardinals get a couple of right-handed minor leaguers for him—Adam Kloffenstein and Sam Robberse.  Kloffenstein has been in double-A ball this year, is 5-5 in 17 starts with a 3.24 ERA. Robberse had 18 starts, as 3-5, with an ERA of 4.06.

The Royals swapped veteran infielder Nicky Lopez to Atlanta. They get lefty Taylor Hearne, who had been designated for assignment on July 19 by the Rangers who dealt him to Atlanta for cash. He made one appearance for the Braves and got one out.

As we were going to press, the Royals announced another trade, sending right-handed pitcher Jose Cuas to the Cubs for outfielder Nelson Velazquez, who will report to their Omaha farm team.  Velazquez has 13 major league games of experience that have generated only 29 at-bats. He’s hitting .241.

From wheelin’ and dealin’ to just wheelin’:

(NASCAR)—Only four races are left before NASCAR’s playoff season begins and only two playoff slots are in play.

Chris Buescher locked himself into the 12th guaranteed playoff position with his win on the Richmond three-quarters of a mile Sunday.  Two non-winning drivers, Kevin Harvick (sixth in the points standings) and Brad Keselowski (11th) appear to have enough points to make it.

Bubba Wallace and Michael McDowell have a tenuous hold on the 15th and 16th playoff slots based on points.  But Ty Gibbs is only 18 points behind McDowell and A. J. Allmendinger is only 22 points back.  Daniel Suarez is 34 back.

Also lurking are two buys who are familiar with the playoffs but can get in with a wind.  Chase Elliott has missed seven races this year, six with a broken leg and one on suspension for an on-track incident. And Alex Bowman, who missed three races with a broken back, are hungry for a win that will make them part of the final 16.

NASCAR moves its show to Brooklyn Michigan next weekend.

(FORMULA 1)—Make it eight straight F1 wins for Max Verstappen, and ten victories in twelve races this year.   Verstappen started sixth but quickly took the lead and beat teammate Sergio Perez by more than 22 seconds.  Ferrari’s Charles LeClerc claimed the final podium position.

Verstappen heads into Formula One’s annual August recess on track to break his record of 15 wins in a single season, set last year. If he wins the next grand prix, he will tie Sebastian Vettel’s record of nine straight.  Red Bull cars have won thirteen races in a row, including the 2022 finale.

(photo credit: Bob Priddy, WWTR, 2023)

 

Cardinals Revert to Form; Royals still have nothing to revert to. And other stuff  

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by Bob Priddy

Missourinet Contributing Editor

(Cardinals)—Why did the Cardinals walk to their next series in Phoenix?  Because the wheels fell off in Chicago.

The Redbirds swept into Chicago with a five-game post-All Star Game winning streak, made it six, and then a series of questionable calls in the second game of the series sent them to Arizona on a three-game losing streak and asking a 41-year old ‘bird with a questionable wing to rescue them.

If Jordan Montgomery us trade bait, as (increasingly-tiresome) speculators, uh, speculate, he didn’t show much to excite potential partners as the Cardinals wrapped up a week-gone-to-pot in Chicago.  The Cubs pounced on Montgomery, who had gone 4-0 with a 1.47 ERA in his previous seven starts, for seven runs (five earned) on six hits in six innings. The Baby Bears wound up winning 7-2.

He dug his own hole in the first inning when he muffed a two-out comebacker by Ian Happ for an error and then gave up Cody Bellinger’s home—and then gave up five more runs in the third.

The Cardinals flew to Phoenix (we were only joking about walking) afterwards to start a series with the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday.  Adam Wainwright says he’s ready after some time off and a series of shots in his pitching shoulder.

They’re in a virtual tie for last place (with the Pirates) in the National League.

And the Cardinals go into the week with a lot of speculators expecting to have some new faces in the dugout by this time next week.

(ROLEN)—There was a reason for Cardinals fans to do some celebrating during the weekend—when third-baseman Scott Rolen was enshrined at Cooperstown. Baseball writers voted him in during his sixth year eligibility. In his first year, he got just over ten percent of the vote and he becomes the Hall of Famer who got the least support for membership in his first year of eligibility.

You can watch his speech at (1) Scott Rolen delivers emotional Baseball Hall of Fame Induction speech – YouTube

He started his career with a 1996 doubleheader against the Cardinals.  He played for the Phillies 1996-2002, the Cardinals 2002-2007, Toronto 2008-2009, and Cincinnati 2009-2012. His Hall of Fame Plaque shows him in a Cardinals cap

Rolen also played for the St. Louis Cardinals, the Toronto Blue Jays and the Cincinnati Reds in a 17-year career from 1996-2012. Rolen went in as a Cardinal.

Only Hall of Famers Brooks Robinson (16), Mike Schmidt (10), plus current Cardinals third baseman Nolan Arenado (10) have more gold gloves at third base than Rolen. He was a key player in the 2006 World Series Cardinals victory. When he retired, only three other third basement (Mike Schmidt, George Brett, and Chipper Jones) had 2,000 hits, 500 doubles,  300 home runs, and 1,200 RBIs.

(ROYALS)—The Royals have had another ten-game streak going 2-8. They have lost one fewer game than the Athletics, so they don’t have the worst record in baseball.

Jordan Lyles has lost as many games this year as he won last year. He’s 1-12 after pitching the last game of a four-game Yankee sweep on Sunday.

The Yankees won 8-5, scoring four times in the first inning in wining their first series in July and getting their first sweep since taking three straight at Cincinnati in mid-May.  The Royals had four home runs in the game—by Salvador Perez, Michael Massey, Freddy Fermin, and Kyle Isbel but couldn’t get enough runners on base ahead of the blasts to take the game.

The Royals have three games in Cleveland to start the week before returning home Friday for a series against the Twins.

(CHIEFS)—The Kanss City Chiefs are in St. Joseph for the start of their preseason workouts. But they’re missing a key lmember of their defensive line, tackle Chris Jones, who wants a new contract. This the last year of his contract. He’ll get a base salary of $19.5 million. It’s reported he wants at least $30 millon.

Now, let’s go fast.

(INDYCAR)—Josef Newgarden is Der Iowameister after his sweep of the IndyCar doubleheader at the Iowa Speedway.

Newgarden won the race on Saturday but said later he felt the job was incomplete until he won the Sunday race, too.  He now has won six IndyCar races at the track, 50 overall in his career.  He has won four times this year, all on ovals—including the Indianapolis 500.  He will have a chance to sweep the oval races this year at Worldwide Technology Raceway near St. Louis on August 27. He now has won five oval races in a row, joining A. J. Foyt and Al Unser Sr., as the only drivers in all of IndyCar history to do that.

He outran teammate Will Power, the defending series champion, in Sunday’s race, by seven-tenths of a second in a three-lap run to the checkers after a late caution. Championship points leader Alex Palou got the last podium position Sunday.

Newgarden outran another Penske teammate Saturday when Scott McLaughlin came up 3.4 seconds short. Palou was eighth.

Newgarden’s two dominant wins—he led 341 of the 500 laps in the two races on the .894-mile oval—has cut Palou’s points lead from 10 to 80 points.

IndyCar heads to Newgarden’s home town of Nashville for a race through the streets on August 6.

(NASCAR)—Denny Hamlin has done IndyCar’s Josef Newgarden one better when it comes to wins at a single track.  But his seventh victory at Pocono—and his 50th overall in NASCAR Cup competition—brought a lot of boos from the crowd at the end.

The crowd was upset because Hamlin, on a restart with seven laps left, got inside leader Kyle Larson and appeared to force him into the wall.

Hamlin claimed after the race that he gave Larson enough room for a lane and said he wasn’t sure there was any contact between the two cars. Larson, although a good friend of Hamlin’s, had no doubt it was a dirty move. He said Hamlin “knew it was going to be his only opportunity to beat me…I got used up.”  Larson wound up the race 20th.

The race ended under caution because of a Ryan Preece spin so close to the end that NASCAR decided not to stop the race for cleanup.  Tyler Reddick, Martin Truex Jr., and Kevin Harvick joined Hamlin in the top five.  Truex retains his lead for the regular-season points championship, up by 30 over William Byron and 55 ahead of Hamlin.

NASCAR heads to Richmond next weekend. Only five races remain before the 16-car playoff field is set.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen again, but the win at the Hungarian Grand Prix is special.  It is his seventh straight dominating win and the 12th win on a row for his Red Bull team, breaking McLaren’s 35-year old record for consecutive victories.

Seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton won his first pole position in two years but was out-muscled by Verstappen going  into the first turn and won comfortably.  His win puts him 110 points ahead of the field after just eleven races this year.

 

 

Cardinals Re-Start Season on Hopeful Note; Royals Get Rare Win; A Close Shave in INDYCAR; Finally, a win at New Hampshire

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(CARDINALS)—The St. Louis Cardinals have started the post-All Star Game season by taking two out of three from the Washington Nationals with Jack Flaherty starting to look like the Flaherty of 2022 before he got hurt.  It’s his fourth straight win, a six-inning effort in which he gave up only three hits, struck out seven and walked only three.  His ERA is down to 4.29.

(CABRERA)—Those waiting for the Cardinals to make a season-transforming deal have instead been treated to a surprise by the team seemingly giving up on a promising young reliever.  It appears to be a “what have you done for us lately” situation that has turned Genesis Cabrera into disposable property. Cabrera has been designated for assignment after 32 appearances this year in which he allowed more than 1.5 walks and hits per innings pitched—a poor record for a relief pitcher, and a 5.06 ERA, an exceedingly poor record for a reliever even in this era. He had no saves and a 1-1 record.

“Designated for Assignment” does not mean the team has cut Cabrera, at least not yet. He has just been removed from the 40-man roster.  But the Cardinals have to decide within a week whether he will put him back on it, put him on waivers, trave him, or outright release him.

It’s been a tough season for Cabrera—one of a lot of tough seasons the Cardinals are having.  He’s only 26 and up to the start of 2023 had been in 142 games for St. Louis with a 3.95 ERA and a 160-83 strikeout-to-walk ratio.  He’s been with the club since 2019.

Cabrera’s replacement on the roster hasn’t been a lights-out guy this year either.  Right-hander Ryan Tepera was DFA’d by the Angels after ten undistinguished outings with a 7.27 ERA. The Rangers gave him a minor league deal and he recorded eight scoreless innings in Triple-A Round Rock but opted out of the deal when the Rangers didn’t move him to the big club.

He’s 35 but had a career 3.50 ERA coming into 2023. His strikeout radio has dropped into the 20% area the last couple of years.  Although he had eight scoreless innings at Round Rock, he struck out less than 40% of the Triple-A hitters he faced.

(Bird Relief)—Genesis Cabrera is only one part of the Cardinals bullpen problem this year.  Relievers have blown a major league-leading 21 out of 43 save opportunities in 2023. The White Sox have 20 blown saves. Those two are the only two teams with more than 20 blown saves.

Jordan Hicks delivered the 21st blown save in the completion Saturday of Friday’s rain-suspended game when he gave up two runs in the tenth inning. Andre Pallante leads the team with five.

(MONDAY NIGHT)— The Redbirds started the week with their third straight win, 6-4 in the opening game of a series against the Marlins. It’s their fifth win in the their last sixth games and pulls them into a tie for last place with the Pirates. Miles Mikolas, whose start last Friday night lasted only three good innings before the rains came, went six innings last night, gave up three runs and seven hits. The save went to Jordan Hicks, his eighth.

The ’birds wasted no time getting new relief pitcher Ryan Tepera into the lineup. Not a distinguished entrance—two-third of an inning, two singles, a hit batter, and a walk.  Giovanny Gallegos bailed him out by getting the final out in the seventh with the bases full.

(WAINO UPDATE)—Adam Wainwright was scheduled to throw a bullpen session yesterday to see how his shoulder is doing.  He’s been shut down since July 5. He’s gotten several shots in his shoulder and says he’s feeling better.

(Royals Relief)—The Royals relievers have only a dozen blown saves. But then again, there have only been 25 times this season that the Royals have had a lead to save to begin with.

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals have fallen forty games below .500 and they started this week having to go 54-14 to finish the year at .500.  So every win is something to cherish—and they got one Sunday in a team history-making day.

Bobby Witt Jr., and Drew Waters each had a home run and a triple—the first time two Royals players have done that in the same game—and Kansas city beat the Tampa Bay Rays 8-4.  Brady Singer pitched far better than his record by going seven full innings, throwing only 70 pitches before leaving after giving up back to back home runs.

The Royals were 2-8 in their last ten games through the weekend, and started the week on a down note with a loss. Detroit scored all their runs in the seventh inning to take a 3-2 win. The Royals outhit them 6-5, though.

Okay, now let’s go racing:

(INDYCAR)—Christian Lundgaard’s first INDYCAR victory is also the first time a driver from Denmark has won a race in the long history of the series—under whatever sanctioning name it has carried.

Lundgaard also gave Rahal-Letterman-Lanigan racing its first win since Takuma Sato’s Indianapolis 500 triumph in August, 2020 (the race was delayed because of COVID and was run in front of an empty grandstand, you might recall). It also is RLL’s first win on a street circuit in six years; Graham Rahal swept both segments at Grand Isle Michigan that year.

Lundgaard finished almost 13 seconds ahead of points leader Alex Palou, who had his worst start of the year at 15th and still come home second despite a damaged front wing on his car.  Colton had his best finish of the year, at third.

Lundgaard has promised during the offseason that he would not shave his moustache until he won his first INDYCAR race.  His crew had a charged-up electric razor waiting for him in victory lane.

Lundgaard (shown here at Indianapolis last year before he made his vow) started the race on pole—his first career pole in INDYCAR—took command on the 61st of the 85 laps when he fought past Alex Palou for second place behind then-leader Scott Dixon, a lap before Dixon’s last pit stop that gave Lundgaard lead the lead he never gave up. Dixon finished fourth.

INDYCAR returns to an oval next weekend—within driving distance for many Missourians. The series runs at the Iowa  Speedway with 250 laps on the high banked 7/8 mile track Saturday and another race on Sunday.

(NASCAR)—It has finally happened at Loudon, New Hampshire for Martin Truex, Jr., one of the tracks he considers a “home track.”  (The other is Dover, in Delaware). Truex is a Trenton, New Jersey native.

Truex’s third win of the year was a dominating performance that saw him lead 254 of the 301 laps. Eight other drivers divided the other 46 laps.

His victory earned the only edible winner’s trophy in racing.  A live lobster goes to the winner each year. Some drivers spare the life of the trophy.  However, we haven’t received word if Loudon the Lobster survived the team’s celebration last night.

Truex won both stages and maxed out on points to move into the lead in the regular season standings. Joey Logano was among the drivers who tried to catch Truex but he consistently pulled ahead on restarts and finished four-tenths of a second ahead of Joey Logano.

Going into the race, Truex had led more than 900 laps in the 29 Cup races he had run at Loudon, but had three third-place finishes as his best results until yesterday’s win (the race was rained out on Sunday and moved to Monday).

Kyle Larson, Kevin Harvick, and Brad Keselowski made up the rest of the top five.

It was a bitter race for Aric Almirola, who crashed while leading on the 168th lap when his car lost a wheel. He finished 34th.

It also was a disappointment for Logano, a native of Middletown, Connecticut, who also considers Loudon his home track.  “When you’re at your home track, second hurts more than anywhere else,” he said afterward. “That one stings but overall, still have to say it’s a good day. Just mad right now.”

Kyle Busch finished his rugged weekend with a wall encounter on lap 72. He also crashed his car in practice and again during qualifying.

(FORMULA 1)—F1’s next race is the Grand Prix of Hungary next weekend.

(Photo Credits: Lundgaard: Rick Gevers, Indianapolis 2022; Truex: Bob Priddy, WWTR 2023)

Are the Cardinals playing Charlie Brown football with us?  And the joy of being in the right place at the right time.  

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Charlie Brown football—Lucy snatches the football away just as Charlie Brown tries to kick it. Are the Cardinals leading us to think, again, that they’ve started to claw their way back to decency, only to snatch defeat from victory again?

The Cardinals got two strong pitching performances in their last games heading into the all-star break.  Miles Mikolas  went seven innings on Saturday and the relief corps closed out the White Sox 3-0.  Steven Matz, making his first start since May 24 when his record fell to 0-7 and his ERA soared to 5.02, went into the sixth inning on Sunday and the Cardinals, struck out nine and gave up only two hits.  He didn’t get the decision as the Cardinals scored the winning run in the 10th on a Paul DeJong double.

Are they doing it again to their fans—-showing a spark that increases desperate hoe that the season can still amount to something?   Or will they return from the break and drift backwards again?

Admittedly, the White Sox were hardly top-not material in the weekend series.  The Sox enter the break at 38-54.  The Cardinals have the next few days to think about a lot of things that led to their 38-52 pre-break season.

The Royals also go into the break as winners—for only the 26th time this year. They’ve lost 65 times. But Sunday, they got three runs in the sixth to send the Cleveland Guardians into the break with a .500 record. Ryan Yarbrough, pitching for the Royals for the first time since he was hit in the face by a line drive May 7, gave up six hits and struck out five in six innings. He gave up the Guardians only run.

Tonight’s All-Star Game finds only two players from our two teams on the roster. Nolan Arenado will start at third base for the American League.  Salvador Perez represents the Royals as a reserve.  He’s hitting .246 for the season, fifteen points better than his team’s winning percentage.

Stars of tomorrow—maybe.  Major League teams have spent the last couple of days picking the talent that might be season-savers for some teams in a few years.

In the first round, the Royals took high school catcher Blake Mitchell of Sinton, Texas, who has committed to LSU but is considered likely to withdraw the commitment.

The Cardinals went for Chase Davis, a power hitting outfielder whose 60 home runs in the last three years at the University of Arizona rank third in school history.

In Round two, the Royals picked pitcher Blake Wolters, the Player of the Year in Illinois this year, a righthander with a 99 mph fastball. He also was an all-state basketball player. He’s giving up his commitment to Arizona.

With a second pick in the first round, the Royals selected outfielder Carson Roccaforte from Louiana-Lafayette, a projected center fielder.

The Cardinals did not have a second round pick.

The Royals went for another high school player of the year in the third round—Hiro Wyatt of Staples Connecticut.  The Cardinals went for outfielder Travis Honeyman of Boston College.  Round four found the Royals taking Vanderbilt pitcher Hunter Owen and the Cardinals picking a Cardinal, pitcher Quin Mathews.

The Royals stayed at home in the fifth round, taking outfielder Spencer Nivens from Missouri State University.  The Cardinals drafted Miami outfielder Zach Levenson.

One player from the University of Missouri was taken—pitcher Austin troesser by the Mets as a fourth-round compensation pick.

(Football)—The Kansas City Chiefs open their training camp at St. Joseph twelve days from today.

24/7 sports looked at the SEC teams and ranked them on the basis of returning starters—ranking the Missouri Tigers second or third with 13 (8 on defense) and commenting, “The Tigers expect to be elite on the defensive side of the football this season with several all-conference candidates returning at all levels. Missouri ranked fourth in the SEC in total defense last season and nearly knocked off top-ranked and unbeaten Georgia at home as a result.”  Ahead of Missouri in the ranking is Texas A&M with 16 returning starters and Old Miss (also with thirteen),

Those of you who only want stick and ball sports can go find something else to do now because we’re going to talk a little bit about racing.

(NASCAR)—William Byron was in the right place at the right time in Atlanta.  When the big rain came, and the red flag flew, he had the lead. Byron took the lead away from A. J. Allmendinger with 19 laps left in a race with a high intensity level because of the approaching storm.

Allmendinder was third with Daniel Suarez as the runner-up after starting 26th.  Michael McDowell, squeezing ever last gas vapor out of his tank, was able to bring his car home fourth.

The win is  the fourth of the year for Byron, the most of any Cup driver this season, and it moves him into the lead for the regular-season points championship.  Byron drives the 24-car for Hendrick Motorsports, the number used by Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon.  This year is the first time since 2014 that car 24 has won four races in a season.

Pole sitter Aric Almirola led the most laps in the race but dropped back to 18th in the final stage.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen has on his sixth grand prix race in a row, and the 11th straight for Red Bull.   The eleven straight wins ties the Formula 1 record for consecutive victories by a team, first achieved by McLaren with drivers Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.

Verstappen was joined on the winner’s state at the Grand Prix of Britain by runnerup Lando Norris of McLaren and Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes.

(INDYCAR)—Indycar races through the streets of Toronto this coming Sunday. Alex Palou will be looking for his fourth straight win.

Two drivers are hoping to extend streaks and also to achieve personal milestones in the race.  Scott Dixon holds the series record of 18 straight seaosns with at least one win and 20 seasons with at least one victory.  Will Power has 16 years with at least one win and 17 seasons overall ith at least one victory.

Dixon is one of only four drivers in INDYCAR history to record at least 100 podium finishes. Power is at 97 with eight races left this season to reach 100.

Dixon. With 133, ranks behind only Mario Andretti’s 144.  A. J. Foyt had 119 and Michael Andretti retired with an even 100.  A top-three finish at Toronto will tie Power with Al Unser Sr., at 98.

If you can’t trust the game—-

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The NFL announced last week that five players have been suspended for betting on sports contests.  Three are suspended for at least a year. Three can resume playing in game seven of the upcoming season.  Four of the players involved are with the Detroit Lions. The team has released two of them.

They aren’t the first.  Last year the NFL suspended Calvin Ridley of the Atlanta Falcons for gambling.

The Detroit Lions reportedly (ESPN) organization has fired several staff members from various departments who also might have been gambling.

A few days before that announcement, Ohio residents began wagering on sports.  The first bet was placed by former Cincinnati Reds baseball player Pete Rose, who has been banned from the Baseball Hall of Fame because of gambling.  As baseball and other sports crawl farther under the covers with gamblers, are they creeping closer to admitting people such as Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson to Halls of Fame?  Will fans believe them as much as they once did that the answer is “no.”

One of those lobbying for sports wagering in Missouri has said it will enhance fan participation in the games.

Associated Press columnist Kyle Hightower, however, wonders if our pro sports teams are undermining public confidence in themselves, writing, “The incidents have driven a public conversation about the integrity of pro sports as legalized sports betting takes a greater hold in this country.”

He quotes Professor Declan Hill at the University of New Haven who says “Leagues are dancing with the devil. Here’s what happens.  There’ll be one play that’s kind of weird and dubious and sports fans will start to do, ‘Was that legitimate?’ And then there’ll be another one. And another one and another one. And after a few years, the sports leagues will have a problem because their fundamental credibility is being debated by their fans.”

Hightower sees players becoming “ambassadors for gambling companies” by appearing in sports gambling advertisements and promotions.

Huge money is involved here—more than $220 billion since the U. S. Supreme Court legalized sports betting in 2018.  Leagues already are providing official stats to the big gambling companies. Some fans already wonder how pure leagues can be when this kind of big money is involved. And the money is going to be even bigger.

Missouri is an island surrounded by states with sports betting. The industry is leaning hard on the Missouri legislature to end that status. So far, internal squabbling among gambling interests has frustrated sports wagering backers.  But it seems inevitable that our lawmakers eventually will buckle.

And what will happen to our trust in the games we watch when the fans’ “participation” in the games is “enhanced?”

Humans play these games and humans make mistakes and not always by accident.  In the future fans might ask if a mistake really is a mistake? Every suspension for gambling chips away at confidence in The Game, whatever game it might be.  What happens when we wonder if that error was accidental or that missed block was really just a miss; that the pass was not intentionally thrown an inch too high or too long or too short; that the goalie really did just miss that puck or that those two free throws that bounced off the rim could have gone in?

Our pro sports teams have spent decades emphasizing the integrity of their games. We worry that the lure of big money will erode the confidence we have as we watch from the games’ grandstand.  How can we know?

How can we trust what we see?

It appears to be too late for such concerns to be prohibitive of gambling involvement in sports.

Hightower’s article concludes with a comment from Karol Corcoran, the general manager of FanDuel, one of the biggest online gambling operators, who says, “We’re in an ecosystem with customers, we’re the operators, with the leagues with our data providers. It’s important for all of us that we build together a sustainable industry. And being very careful about integrity is part of that.”

The fox is in the hen house.   And it is talking about integrity.

We wish we could say we are comforted.

—-because the fox is always hungry.

We hope we can still love and trust our games five years, ten years, from now.

 

There comes a time……

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

We normally talk about sports in these Tuesday entries but today we’re going to talk about a universal issue many who are not sports figures face.  Sports is the most obvious example, but the issue is common to all.

Sooner or later, we all have to face the fact that we have lost that fine edge that has enabled us to participate or compete at a high level in our careers.  For some it is a competitive fire.  For others it is acute enthusiasm for a job, a dulling of the drive for excellence. For others it is the onset of fatigue, the lessening of energy to do assigned tasks that might seem mundane to others but are important in the world in which the individual lives and works.

In sports it’s sometimes called “the loss of a step.”

The desire to continue something although one is no longer capable of doing the best work is common, even something so common as driving a car, an issue that is instantly uncomfortable and often hurtful in relations between parents and children.

The issue is played out most publicly in sports where retirement age comes early.

As we watch sports, we see the players as timeless, ageless, figures.  When they depart from the scene we watch from the grandstands or from our television sets as new uniformed figures take their place.  But sports are filled with the drama of aging and the surprise realization that someone who is 40 is old.

And it is a surprise to those who remember them that they are so old when they die—Heisman Trophy winner Charles White was 64 this year and Oakland A’s outfielder Sal Bando was 78. New York Knicks center Willis Reed was 80; Vida Blue, 73; and arguably the NFL’s greatest running back, Jim Brown was 87.

How can that be?

it is because memory is in the moment.  We see these people in our minds as they were when they were in the heat of battle.  How can they have gotten so old?

It is because the game, whatever game it is, is eternal and its participants are frozen in memory as they were.  We advance in years but our memories of them do not change. We are surprised that they have aged at the same rate we have.

Image it from the other side.  Imagine you are 40.  And you are old.  And you face leaving the arena because you aren’t good enough to be in it anymore. The game is ageless but you are not.

Our two major league baseball teams are dealing with this issue.  It’s most obvious with the Cardinals because they are dealing with high expectations this year. The stakes are less for the Royals, from whom not much was expected in 2023.

Both teams have pitchers who are, or who are becoming, shadows of themselves in their glory days.

A look at the Cardinals statistics after their trip to London lists nineteen pitchers used this year, based on earned run average.

Nineteenth on the list is Adam Wainwright, who is 3-2 in his nine starts this year. His ERA after his disastrous start against the Cubs in London is 6.56.  He has pitched 46.2 innings in those  nine starts. He’s allowed 71 hits and has given up 14 walks. He has struck out 24 batters.

85 base runners in 46 innings in nine games.  He’s averaging five innings a start.  He was hoping to win his 199th career victory on Saturday.  He wants to finish his career with 200.

He is part of a pitching staff working hard to rise to mediocrity.  The pitching staff’s overall ERA is 4.43, hardly contender level.  Even Jack Flaherty, counted on to be the staff ace despite his injury history and MIA status during most of last year, is at 4.95 and has a losing record at 4-5. Only one Cardinals pitcher has a winning record. And he’s being mentioned in the numerous entries by various speculators as possible trade bait as the Cardinals look for a physical magic bullet that will save 2023 for them.

Wainwright will be 42 before the season ends. He is the third-oldest player on an active major league roster behind Pittsburgh pitcher Rich Hill, who is 43, and San Diego DH Nelson Cruz, who will be 43 on July l.  The eighth-oldest active major league is Royals pitcher Zack Greinke, who is 39 (forty in October).

Greinke lasted 4.2 innings last Friday, gave up nine hits and a walk and dropped to 1-8 for the season. His ERA is 5.31 as we write this.  In sixteen games, he’s lasted 81.1 innings. He’s given up 89 hits and 11 walks, 100 baserunners in those 81 innings. His stats are similar to Wainwright’s, remembering that Wainwright’s season start was delayed by injury.

Wainwright’s situation is attracting more attention because the expectations for the Cardinals this year were light years greater than those of the Royals.  But neither is having the kind of retirement season they want; neither is providing a veterans’ spark for their teams.

For most of us, stepping away from what we have loved to do during our working lives comes at an advanced age.  It would certainly seem to be easier when you are 65 or 70 or more than to realize you can’t keep up any more and you’re only 40 or 42 or in many cases, even younger.

We focus on Wainwright today because more was expected of his team—and him—this year.

Wainwright is a painful problem for the Cardinals. Each start in a season where every game is growing in importance is a crap shoot now.  Sentimentally, it would be a shame for him to come up short of his personal career goal. But there comes a time when sentiment doesn’t outweigh winning.

This isn’t like an office. Millions of people including tens of thousands in the grandstands are not watching the deterioration of talent in an office.  The personal goal of one player cannot outweigh the necessity of success by an entire team.

It is not beyond possible that Wainwright or Greinke could be a small part of a trade although they won’t bring much in the baseball market this year.

It is not likely to be much comfort to Wainwright, but here are some guys, among many, whose baseball cards we once had or would have gotten if we’d continued collecting who came up short of 200 wins: Trevor Hoffman  197; Claude Osteen 196; Larry Jackson,  David Cone and Dwight Gooden 194.  There also are a bunch of old-timers, some who are in Cooperstown, who didn’t get there.

42 years old.  And you’re too old to play a game you’ve played since you were in single digits. Both Wainwright and Greinke had announced earlier this would be their last years.  Now, perhaps, the lyrics of a popular sing might be making themselves heard, ever so softly in the backs of their minds.”

“Should I stay or should I go?”

And the opposite surely has crossed the mind of management, especially the Cardinals management—“Should he stay or should we let him go?”  Are these roster spots better filled with players of the future rather than shadows of the past?

The poet A. E. Housman wrote many years ago of those who “slip away from fields where glory does not stay,” and recalled, “Early though the laurel grows it withers quicker than the rose.”

The game Wainwright and Greinke are playing this year after their glory has fled and their laurels have withered is one that many fans will think is one game too many. And the Cardinals are running out of time to play with sentiment.

-0-

Okay, now let’s get to the box scores. This is Tuesday, and it is sports day, after all.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals split two home games with the Cubs. But they had to go to London to play those games.  The Cardinals are playing .500 ball in their last ten games, a noticeable improvement. They split four during the weekend and went 5-5 in their last ten games, a step up from earlier results. But the ‘Birds were still 32-45 as they returned from London, last in their division, third worst in the league behind the Rockies and the Padres.

(ROYALS)—The Royals have had a relatively successful 10 game run.  Four of their 22 victories have come during that time and they finished the weekend by splitting four with Tampa Bay, the team with the best record in the league. The Royals have failed to win ll straight series.

On to Racing:

(NASCAR)—Ever get hit by a flying chunk of watermelon?  Your correspondent has—a couple of weekends ago when NASCAR visited Worldwide Technology Raceway and driver Clay Chastain, with help from the irrepressible Kenny Wallace smashed a watermelon during a pre-race stage show and threw the pieces into the audience.

One of them hit my shin.  I asked some nearby fans if they wanted to take it and get Chastain to autograph it but nobody was interested so I took it to the nearest trash container.

Chastain, a fourth-generation watermelon farmer, likes to climb on top of his car if he’s won a race and hurl a big green watermelon onto the track, smashing it t the finish line.

He didn’t get the chance at WWTR but he did get the chance Sunday at Nashville when he finished eight-tenths of a second ahead of Martin Truex Jr., who picked up his fourth straight top five finish of the year. It was a “perfect” race for Chastain, who got his third Cup win.  He started from the pole for the first time and led the most laps (99 of the 300) on the 1.33-mile Nashville Fairgrounds track.

Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, and Kyle Larson filled the top five slots.

Elliott has to win to get into the chase for his second championship. A victory is his only way in to the playoffs because he has missed seven of the 17 races this year, six because of injury, and one more because of a one-race suspension for an in-race incident with Hamlin.

NASCAR takes to the streets of Chicago for the first time next weekend.  It’s the first time the series has ever run a street race, which is more common in INDYCAR.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR competitors hope to chip away at Alex Palou’s 74-point huge championship points lead when they run at Mid-Ohio this weekend, starting the second half of the series season.

(FORMULA1)—The Grand Prix of Austria is next on the F1 schedule.

 

 

 

SPORTS: Second Redbirds surge in the offing?; Royals likely to win 20th game before July; Palou tightens grip on INDYCAR lead; Verstappen again (ho hum) in F1

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(CARDINALS)—There’s no shortage of questions in the St. Louis Cardinals clubhouse these days.  One of the big ones is who will finish the year in a different uniform and the second one is a follow-up: will possible changes be made soon enough to salvage the season and eke into the playoffs.

The Cardinals finished the calendar week 4-6 after taking the last two from the Mets and claiming a series for the first time in almost a month.  Nolan Arenado refused to let the Cardinals give away the last game of the series in New York with homers at the start of the game and the winning home run in the ninth inning Sunday.

Some good news appeared to be coming with the start of a new week. Lars Nootbar is back with the team after a one-fame rehab in which he went four for five with a pair of homers and four RBI.  He’s been out since May 29 with a back injury, running his total games missed this year to thirty.

His return, along with that of center fielder Dylan Carlson, re-complicates the team’s outfield situation, particularly with Jordan Walker’s impressive return from the minors.

The Cardinals began the new week with a game against the Washington Nationals at 29-43 and picked up their 30th win Monday night, their third straight win. Jack Flaherty pitched an out into the 7th inning, gave up all six of the Nationals runs and was down 5-0 at one time. But Brendan Donovan and Paul Goldschmidt hit home runs back-to-back in the fifth inning to give the Cardinals a lead in a game they eventually won 8-6.

(NO THANKS)—Cardinals fans seem to be taking David Freese’s rejection of his election to the team’s Hall of Fame well and the team says he’s always welcome at the stadium anyway.  Freese, who always will be a hero to Cardinals fans for his solid career in St. Louis and his heroics in the 2011 World Series says he has thought long and hard about the selection before deciding his off-the-field character more than offset his on-field accomplishments and therefore leaves him unworthy of the honor.

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals ended a 10-game losing streak during the weekend and now stand only one win away from 20 victories for the season.

The victory Saturday had its historic moment when the Royals stunned the Angels by coming from six runs back to win the game on a walk-off hit by rookie Samad Taylor.  Taylor became only the second player in team history to have a walk-off hit in his first major league game.  Kevin Seitzer was the first, in 1986.

The 10-9 win on Saturday ended a 178-game streak in which the Royals lost when they were trailing by at least six runs in the 7th inning or later.

It was business as usual on Sunday, however, when the Angels got back-to-back homers on back-to-back pitches from Shoehei Ohtani and Mike Trout in the fifth inning leading to a 5-2 Angels win.

“Third time through the order got me,” said Royals starter Zack Greinke, who stated the obvious after the game: “I’ve got to figure out how to go deeper and get guys out the last time through.”

The Royals and the A’s tie as the worst teams in Major League Baseball with 19 wins.  The Philadelphia-Kansas City-Oakland-soon-to-be Las Vegas Athletics are THE worst, though, because they’ve lost three more games than the Royals.

The Royals had a 4-1 lead on the Tigers going into the 7th, but the Tigers ripped them for five runs and won the game 6-3, dropping the Royals to 19-52.

Now, to get away from stick-and-ball stuff:

(INDYCAR)—Alex Palou is threatening to run away with the INDYCAR championship this year.

His victory at Road America during the weekend is second in a row and his third in the last four races.  His only non-win in that string was the Indianapolis 500 where he started from the poll but finished fourth.  His average finish in the last seven races is 2.85 and his 74-point lead is the biggest margin for a points leader in the series since Scott Dixon was 74 up on Josef Newgarden after ten races in 2020.

The Road America race marked the halfway point in the INDYCAR season. Eight more races are left.

Palou won his first championship two years ago, in the final race.  But his run this year threatens to end a 17-year streak in which the INDYCAR championship has been decided in the final race of the season.

Palou isn’t interested in racing to protect his points lead. “We’re going to focus on scoring wins because that’s the way we can score more points. That’s the best way.”  But the last eight races of the year are races in which he has done well in the past including Mid-Ohio, INDYCAR’s next venue. He’s finished on the podium there in the last two races.

Palou seized the lead late in the race at Road America (which is in Wisconsin) as Colton Herta had to ration his fuel to make it to the end of what was a furious race that featured 444 on-track passes, 386 of them for position.  INDYCAR says 110 of the passes were among drivers in the top ten and 32 happened within the top five.

(FORMULA 1)—The Formula 1 race in Montreal was, by contrast to the INDYCAR event, a snoozer.   Max Verstappen led every lap to give Red Bull its 100th F1 victory.  Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton contended themselves with getting on the podium.

How about the only American team running in Formula 1?

Haas Racing has never threatened to be a top-tier team and this year is no different. Haas drivers have only eight points this year and the team ranks eighth out of ten teams competing.  Driver Niko Hulkenberg has six of those points, good for 13th in the driver standings (Verstappen has 195 and a 69-point lead on his closest competitor). Kevin Magnusson has the other two points and sits 18th out of 20 drivers.

(Photo Credits:  Rick Gevers, Bob Priddy)