Category Archives: Sports

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.

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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)

 

Celebration Time—C’mon!

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Some sports know how to celebrate a victory.  Others just have participants shake hands and go to the locker room.

Admittedly it’s hard to go crazy ninety or 100 times a year in a baseball season, or thirty times if you’re a top NCAA basketball program.  Winning the Super Bowl, the World Series, the Stanley Cup, the NBA Championship—all of those have major celebrations.

But 36 times a year, it’s confettiville—

—at a NASCAR Cup race.   The winning driver is in there someplace.

And it’s time to smoke ‘em because you’ve still got ‘em—–

There’s a car in there.  It just won the NASCAR Cup race at Worldwide Technology Raceway and it’s traditional for the winner to cut roaring donuts and burn off what’s left of the rubber on the rear tires.

And then, in Kyle Busch’s case, to get out of the car and bow to the crowd that often responds with a mix of cheers and boos.

Then the car goes to victory lane for the hurricane of confetti.

and then there’s  celebration with the crew.

Some folks don’t understand why your correspondent likes auto racing.  That’s okay.  I don’t have much good to say about the NBA (I went to a game in Washington, D.C. once and felt that I was at some kind of a carnival that was interrupted by some big guys playing some version of basketball.)  And soccer?  A lot of guys running around a big field for an undetermined amount of time and a team that scores a goal in all of that is a winner.  Horse racing?  One lap is all I get?

Auto racing also is more fan friendly than many sports.  Where else can fans chat with four players before a big game as this fan was doing in the garage area at WWTR? Full-field autograph sessions are often held before a race.  And there are lots of selfies—-

—in this case with Missouri’s most successful NASCAR driver, Rusty Wallace, who was at the track to drive some exhibition laps in his favorite car. It even has a name,  Midnight.

Or photos with prominent participants—in this case with Jamie Little, who is a pit reporter for the FOX television team.

Have you ever heard of the Chiefs inviting fans out of the stands for an autograph or selfie session at Arrowhead Stadium before a game?

So these guys went out and do what they do.  It took about six hours to finish the race because of a 105-minute delay while potential unsettled weather moved out of the area. A lightning strike several miles away triggered the precautionary step. The race included nine on-track caution periods.

One other social note about the race.  Among the spectators, actually a special guest of the Illinois political folks who sponsored the “Enjoy Illinois 300” was this fellow:

We don’t know if Governor Parson got any autographs or had his picture taken with any drivers (or vivacious TV reporters) but he seemed to be enjoying things.  We didn’t know he was a car-racing fan although as a former sheriff he probably had his share of high-speed adventures.  We hope he had a good time, probably more comfortable than we did on a 90-plus degree day walking from one end of the track to the other in our hot photographer’s vest that the track provided so my camera could go to certain places.

And I couldn’t help myself, but seeing him at a race track in sight of the Gateway Arch reawakened an irritation that has been in mind for more than twenty years.   On the other side of our state, some promoters were looking for some tax incentives to build a major NASCAR track near the Kansas City airport.  The legislature, showing the vision that it sometimes shows, refused any help. So, in 2001, within sight of the Kansas City skyline, the Kansas Speedway opened and has triggered a massive industrial development around it.

Maybe a lot of readers don’t understand this racing thing and why people enjoy it so much.  But it is huge economically.  And Missourians are going to a track in Madison, Illinois—as Governor Parson and I and a lot of other Missourians went last weekend—or to the Kansas Speedway, or to the high-banked Iowa Speedway (with design consultation from the aforementioned Rusty Wallace) but we could have had our own track and its economic development around it.

But we blew it. Or our legislature did.

Kyle Busch had plenty of chances to blow the race last weekend at WWTR.  He withstood challenges from Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin on a series of late-race restarts after crashes to finish half a second ahead of Hamlin. Last year’s winner, Joe Logano, was third with Larson fourth and Martin Truex Jr., one of the drivers talking to a fan in the garage area we showed you earlier, fifth.

Late that night—the race ended about 9 p.m. after eleven caution periods and a stoppage for almost two hours because of lightning in the area—-two big trucks passed your correspondent on Interstate 70—haulers carrying some of the cars that will race next weekend on a road course at Sonoma, California.

(INDYCAR)—Much—but certainly not all—of the skepticism about the raciness of the Detroit street course seemed to have gone away by the end of Sunday’s race, won by Alex Palou.  The track’s roughness, ninety-degree corners and tight passing areas had raised concerns during practice.  Some drivers thought the long front straightaway remained too bumpy and left them unable to advance as they would have liked. One team owner, Chip Ganassi, thought the GP was “a really good race” despite earlier fears that chaos would take place.

Race organizers say they’ve been listening closely to the criticisms and will have a better circuit next year.

Palou started from pole and led 74 of the 100 laps. Runnerup Will Power led fourteen of the others and finished about 1.2 seconds back.

Felix Rosenqvist was third with Scott Dixon continuing his consistent runs this year with a fourth.  Palou led by as many as nine seconds but at the end was only 1.2 seconds up on Power. He was one of the skeptics earlier, calling the course “too tight for INDYCAR, too short for INDYCAR.”  He complained it was “too bumpy.”  At the end of the race, however, he conceded, “I was a really fun race. It was a lot better than I expected.”

(FORMULA 1)—-Red Bull’s Max Verstappen makes it five wins  in seven races this year with a victory in the Spanish Grand Prix. His closest competitor was 25 seconds back.  The results have prompted INDYCAR star Will Power to pronounce Formula 1 racing incredibly boring and not nearly as exciting as INDYCAR racing.

(MIZ)—Finally, Missouri bas a big guy.  And we meet big.  REALLY big. How about 7-feet-5 inches?  Connor Vanover has played at the University of California then moved to Arkansas and was with Oral Roberts University last year.  Petty good stats: 34 games, shot 52% from the field and 32 percent from outside for an average of about 13 points a game. Better than 81 percent of his free throws found the net. 7.2 rebounds, 3.2 shots blocked.

This will be his only year at Missouri. His college eligibility will be finished.

But how’s this for a Tiger front line?  Jordan Butler at 6-11, Vanover at 7-5 and Mebor Majak at 7-2.

(THE BASEBALL)—-Why talk about our teams when we can talk about Albert?

He has a new job.  He’s a special assistant (in other words, a consultant) to Commissioner Rob Manfred, advising him on issues related to the Dominican Republic and other areas. Pujols also is in the broadcast booth as of tonight (Tuesday) as an analyst on an MLB Network. l

Okay, now the teams: The once lowly Pittsburgh Pirates sank the Cardinals back into last place in the division by sweeping the Redbirds during the weekend—after the Cardinals had had to days off to rest up after a poor road trip.  They’re 10 games under .500 but the good news is that they’re playing in a division so weak that the leader is only five games above .500.

The Royals?  They continue to be so bad that if they were in the same division as the Cardinals, they’ve be seven games behind the Cardinals going into this week’s games.

The only team in the major leagues with a worse record is 12-49, the Oakland Athletics.

 

Sports:  Have the Cardinals peaked too early?  Racing’s Biggest Weekend

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Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(THE BASEBALL)—The St. Louis Cardinals appear to be closing out the promising month of may not with a bang—as they lifted fans’ hopes with in mid-month—but with a whimper, as they have demonstrated in a 3-4 road trip and a holiday loss to one of the worst teams in major league baseball, their cross-state rivals, the Kansas City Royals.

Inconsistent starting and relief pitching—the Redbirds are hoping somebody can consistently finish the sixth inning—and the sudden lightening of briefly-heavy lumber has St. Louis struggling for hits and scratching for runs.

The 7-0 shutout by the Royals on Memorial Day indicates St. Louis is not likely to make much or any post-season noise, an observation that could produce ridicule if the team makes it deep in the post season.

The Royals had the pitching, with reliever John Staumont pitching the first inning and starter Mike Mayers held the Cardinals without a baserunner through seven innings until Nolan Arenado broke up the perfect game in the 8th. The Cardinals wound up with two hits in the game. The Royals jumped on Adam Wainright going his usual five innings, for nine hits and three runs.  The bullpen remained unevenly unimpressive.

The Cardinals and Royals finish their odd two-game series today (Tuesday) with Miles Mikolas, who went seven scoreless innings against Cincinnati last week, against Zack Greinke, whose final season is an unproductive 1-5.

For those holding out hope the Cardinals can be a playoff team, they’ll have go to 58-48 just to break even, let along make the playoffs.

(RACING)—It was Josef Newgarden’s turn to “unleash the dragon” at the Indianapolis 500…and when he did, the monkey left his back.

Newgarden snatched the lead from defending 500 champion Marcus Ericsson in a dramatic final lap,

then held off Ericsson in the fourth-closest finish in the race’s 107-year history, watched by a crowd estimated at 330,0000 people, the second largest crowd in Indianapolis 500 history.

Newgarden had to make a desperate move called “the dragon” to keep Ericsson from slingshottig out of the draft past him before the finish line, coming out of the fourth turn and diving far to the inside to break the draft, limiting Ericsson’s opportunity to make the race’s 53rd pass for the lead.

Newgarden beat him to the finish line by 0.974 seconds.

Newgarden, a two-time INDYCAR champion, had high personal aspirations and high public expectations that he would have won the 500 before now. He said after the race, ““Everyone just kept asking me why I haven’t won this race. They looked at you like you’re a failure if you don’t win it. I wanted to win it so bad. I knew we could. I knew we were capable. It’s a huge team effort, as everybody knows. I’m so glad to be here.”

Santino Ferucci finished third, driving for A. J. Foyt’s team. It’s the best finish for a Foyt-owned car since Kenny Brack won the race for Foyt in 1999.   Pole-sitter Alex Palou survived a pit-road shunt early in the race to climb back to fourth and 2016 winner Alexander Rossi was fifth.

Ericsson and Rossi were among nine former winners of the race trying for another win of The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.  Scott Dixon and two-time winner Takuma Sato were sixth and seventh. Ryan Hunter-Reay was 11th.  Four-time winner Helio Castroneves was 15th, one spot ahead fellow Brazilian Tony Kanaan, who was running his 23rd and last Indianapolis 500.

Newgarden teammate Will Power, who won the 500 on his elventh try, was 23rd  and Simon Pagenaud was 25th.

Newgarden and his team earned a $3.666 million check for winning the race, a new record. Ericsson earned $1.043 million. The total purse topped $17 million.

(NASCAR)—NASCAR’s longest day took an extra day to run. Rain washed out the 600-mile race at Charlotte on Sunday night and interrupted the race on Memorial Day before Ryan Blaney held off pole-sitter William Byron to end a 59-race winless streak.

Blaney gave Roger Penske his first same-year sweep of both races on the Memorial Day weekend.

Blaney dominated the race, leading 163 of the 400 laps, getting the jump on Byron on the last restart with 20 laps left.

The pair finished ahead of teammates Martin Truex Jr., and Bubba Wallace, who drive for 23XZIZ Racing.

Ross Chastain, who led late in the race before falling to 22nd, remains in the points lead—by one point over Byron.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen made sure Team Red Bull’s winning streak continued by taking the trophy at the Grand Prix of Monaco, the six win in six races this year for Red Bull.

Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso, a two-time F1 champion, had his best finish since he finished second in the Hungarian Grand Prix of 2014.

Red Bull is playing down paddock talk about whether Red Bull will win all 22 Formula 1 races this year.  No team has run the table in an F1 season. The closest to a perfect season any team has achieved was McLaren’s victories in 15 of the 16 races in 1988.

 

 

 

Spring training finally ends for Cardinals; Royals on record run; AP is P1 at Indy; KL is an all-star again.

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UPDATE FOR INDYCAR  12:50 A.M.:

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BASEBALL)—St. Louis Cardinals emerge from extra-long spring-training (well, it sure seemed like it)  by winning four straight series, going 11-3 in that span and averaging more than seven runs a game (which is significant because the pitching staff’s ERA is 4.30 and is 16th in the league).

Newcomer Oscar Mercado and rejuvenated veteran Paul DeJong accounted for nine of the ten runs in the 10-5 win against the Dodgers Sunday.

The Redbirds took three of four from the Western Division leaders, the Los Angeles Dodgers, during the weekend to climb into a tie for third in the division with the Cubs. Both are five games behind Milwaukee and Pittsburgh, the only teams in the division with winning records.

The Cardinals now have won more games since hitting bottom than they won in the first 34 games of the year.  They’ve won eight of their last ten and now are only six games below .500.

They’re up to sixth in team batting average and in runs scored.  But the starting pitchers still struggle to make it past the sixth inning. They rank 27th in the league by giving up 1.44 walks or hits per inning.

Jack Flaherty, who looked so good his last time out, lasted only 4 2/3 innings in the Dodger series wrapup.  He did induce his 14th double play of the year, a major league-leading number.

The Cardinals will be tested in the next couple of weeks, with 13 of their next 15 games on the road.

(ROYALS)—A .300 hitter is considered pretty good.  A .300 TEAM is something else.   The Kansas City Royals aren’t even that good.  They lost their 34th game of the year Sunday, and coupled with their 14 wins, they’re at only .296 and are on track to lose 114 games this year (48 wins).  That would beat their 2005 record of 106 losses. Home fans have seen only six winning games so far this season.

But it could be worse.  The Royals’ predecessor in Kansas City, the Oakland Athletics are 10-38.

(HOS)—The star first baseman for the Royals’ 2015 championship team, Eric Hosmer, has been cut loose by the Chicago Cubs.  It’s been a long fall for Hosmer, who signed an eight-year $144 million deal with the San Diego Padres for the 2018 season. San Diego sent him to Boston at the end of last year and he signed a one-year deal with the Cubs at the minimum MLB salary for this year. He’s 33 now, was in 31 games as a Cubs DH and was hitting .234 when the Cubs  cut him loose last week.

–The Biggest weekend in Motorsports is next weekend with the focus on Indianapolis, Charlotte, and Monaco.  But this past weekend—–

(INDYCAR)—Alex Palou ran the fastest pole-winning speed in Indianapolis 500 history during the weekend and will lead the race’s fastest first row into the first turn next Sunday morning.

Palou is the first driver born in Spain to win the 500 pole.  He became the first Spanish driver to win the INDYCAR championship in 2021.  He was leading the 500 that year when Helio Castroneves passed him on the 199th lap and stayed ahead one more time around to win his fourth 500, beating Palou to the finish by less than one-half second. It was the fastest Indianapolis 500 in history.

Palou made his four-lap, ten-mile run in two-minutes, 33.7037 seconds, edging Dutch driver Rinus VeeKay by six one-thousandth of a second for the ten mile run.  Felix Rosenquist joins them on the front row, finishing six-one-hundredth of a second behind Palou.  All three drivers averaged more than 234 miles an hour.

Thirty-four drivers competed for the 33 spots in the race.  The one left outside is veteran Graham Rahal, who missed the field by .007 second. His story is reminiscent of the story of his father and the owner of his team, Bobby Rahal, who won the race in 1986 and failed to make the race in 1993.  He was bumped from the field by teammate Jack Harvey, who will line up 33rd, outside of the 11th row, on Sunday. Another teammate, Christian Lundgard, will start 31st.

Rahal has run fifteen straight 500s. He has four top ten finishes with a best at third in 2011 and in 2020.

UPDATE:  A crash during practice yesterday involving Rahal-Letterman-Lanigan driver Katherine Legge and Stefan Wilson left Wilson with a fractured vertebra and unable to race next Sunday.  Rahal has been picked to drive in his place, in a backup car that as of Tuesday had not been on the track all month. Rahal will start 33rd alongside Harvey and rookie Sting Ray Robb, who was faster than either of the Rahal team cars.

One woman will start the race.  Katherine Legge will start from outside the tenth row with a qualifying run of 231.070 mph to gain a spot in her third race. Her wrecked car is being rebuilt.

Rahal will have a chance to test his new ride and Legge will have a chance to get the settings right on her rebuilt car on Friday, the last opportunity the field will have to make sure the cars are race-ready.

The average speed of all 33 drivers in the race is 232.184 mph, a record.  That means the average car in the race on Sunday traveled 340.53 feet every second during its ten-mile qualifying run.

That’s the equivalent of traveling from the south wall of Memorial Stadium in Columbia to the wall in front of the Big M in a second.

(NASCAR)—A couple of hours after INDYCARS were topping 230 mph, NASCAR returned to a track where it hasn’t run a race since 1996 for its annual all-star run during the weekend. North Wilkesboro had been one of the oldest racks on the circuit before it was shut down. New owners bought it a couple of years ago and put it back into racing condition for the all-star race although the race was run on the old, patched, pavement. North Wilkesboro’s future as a Cup venue is uncertain.

Kyle Larson dominated the race on the .625 mile track although he was sent to the back of the field because of a pit road speeding penalty. Within 35 laps he had driven back to the front and won by more than four seconds.  It’s his third all-star race win.  There was little passing for the lead, few yellow flags, and a winning speed far less than half the speed INDYCARS were running earlier in the day.

The winner got one-million dollars. Other competitors get nothing.  Larson joins Dale Earnhardt Sr., and Jeff Gordon as a three-time winner of the event. Jimmie Johnson won it four times.

The Cup series holds its longest race next Sunday night, 600 miles at Charlotte.

(Formula 1)—Heavy rains in Italy forced the cancellation of this weekend’s Imola Grand Prix. The Emilia Romagna region has been soaked in recent weeks, leaving at least nine people dead in local flooding and forcing the evacuation of about 5,000 others.  F1 cancelled this weekend’s race so relief efforts could go on.

The series moves to the streets of Monte Carlo for next Sunday’s Grand Prix of Monaco.

(picture credits:  Bob Priddy, Rick Gevers)

 

The genetic pull

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No, not the genetic pool.  The pull.

Some of the few who read these profound thoughts will understand when I ask if  you’ve ever felt drawn to a place or to an event because its in your genes—-because something was planted in your DNA early in your life and your life isn’t complete if you can’t see or do something?  Because there are instinctual longings that drive you to do, to be, or to go—-just as instinct drives the gees south in the fall and north in the spring, as the Wildebeest is driven in constant migration following the good grass from north to south to north to south, despite the lions, leopards, jaguars, and cheetahs, or big crocs in the streams.

A few years ago we were in the middle of it, on the Masai Mara in Kenya (in a balloon over it, in fact, one morning), and in the Serengetti National Park and the Ngorongoro Conservation area of Tanzania.  In the lower right corner is the Ngoroongoro Crater, where even an elephant is overpowered by the magnificence of the surroundings.

Go there if you ever get the chance.  We’ve been.  And right now our next big trip will be across Kansas, where there used to be gigantic fish-things whose bones have turned to rock—and you can stop in Hays and see them.

Many folks hate to drive across Kansas.  Not us.  In fact we feel it whenever we go to something in Kansas City. There is a faint whisper in our genes that says, “Don’t stop here.”

We think it’s because her mother’s family was from the Larned area and my ancestors, on both sides, moved to north-central Kansas’ Mitchell County not long after the last Indian raid.  We have a Kansas Gene.

The Flint Hills and the Tall Grass Prairie, the rolling prairies that stretch before us as the sky grows larger as we head beyond Salina.  Not until Hays, the home of the Sternberg Museum’s fish things and the remains of other fascinating beings, is the rising flatness something we notice. But the sky is all around us (as are big trucks) and the sky is open and uplifting.

The Garden of Eden is out there, you know.  We’ll let you look it up.  But it’s worth a jaunt a little to the north to break up the trip.

As we cross the Colorado line, we confess, we have to remind ourselves we’re still at least two hours from seeing the first faint outlines of mountains. But we’re done with the quiet stateliness of Kansas.  Let’s get to the dramatic stuff now.

The problem is—there’s too much Kansas in Colorado.

The other problem is that it’s I-70.  We understand why people get bored crossing Kansas on I-70 but we wish they appreciated the fact that it’s the road, not the landscape or the places along the way, that is boring.  It’s I-70 on the land beyond the windmills and before the sighting of the mountains that becomes tedious, even for us.

We are going to answer the call of our genes in a few days.  Time to visit the granddaughters at the foot of the Rockies in Longmont.  That means a day and a half on the road, most of it enjoying Kansas in warm weather.

But before than I have a personal gene pull that has to be satisfied.  I’m off later this week to the east, to the City of Indianapolis—a prototype for a big city that wants to reclaim itself—and to the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

There are those who are surprised that an educated and literate person can also like to watch noisy very fast cars going so fast that it’s impossible to read a sponsor’s message  on the side of the car.  This corrupted gene was planted almost (Oh, Lord!  Just saying this give me chills) seventy years ago.  Something about the unique climate of the event, as well as the event itself, is a magnet.

In my working days, the trip to Indianapolis was a step toward freedom after being cooped up for four and a half months inside the pressure cooker that is the Missouri Capitol in the closing days of the legislative session.

And I’m going to watch 33 people hurl themselves around a 2.5-mile squared oval at 230 mph-plus, turns included. I have tried to think of something else that is so frightening yet so remarkable and the closest I can come is Olympic downhill skiing.

Why go?  Because it’s the Indianapolis 500.  It is part of my genetic programming. My parents took me there for the first two or three times. I have taken my self there for as long as I have had a driver’s license.

I do not know if the those I will watch ever think about Theodore Roosevelt’s famous remarks about “the man in the arena,”  those who “strive valiantly; who know the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spend themselves in a worthy cause; who at best know the triumph of high achievement and who, at worst, if they fail, fail while daring greatly, so that their place shall never been with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”

Some people like to watch birds. Some like to chase little white balls around well-manicured courses. Let me admire the courage and the remarkable precision of 33 cars going 230 mph and turning left, perfectly putting wheels where they must, running within inches of one another. In my genetic makeup, that beats the tar out of watching a little white ball slowly curl its way into a hole.

So, pick the adventure your genes call on you to take. If it’s genetic, it can’t be wrong.  And don’t pay attention to those who think you are odd.

Greatness is not achieved by those who think those who push the envelope are odd.

-0-

The Mistake

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The Mistake

The man St. Louis Cardinals fans have loved to hate for almost forty years died last week. Don Denkinger was 86.  Cardinals fans have been whining about his missed call at first base during game six of the 1985 World Series, claiming Denkinger cost them the series championship.

He didn’t.  The St. Louis Cardinals cost the St. Louis Cardinals the championship that year. The Kansas City Royals took opportunities to beat them.  Denkinger’s call was one of those opportunities.

Major League Basebll didn’t have instant replay in 1985. In fact, MLB was the last of the fourmajor sports in North America to allow it.  And that didn’t happen until 23 years after that World Series. Had it been in effect then, the play would have been overturned.

Let’s look closely at that play because there’s a lot that had happened before it, a whole lot that went on during it, and a lot that came afterwards.

The series opened in Kansas City and the Cardinals won the first two games. In the first game, John Tudor and reliever Todd Worrell held the Royals to just one run and the Cardinals won 3-1.  The Cardinals also won game two.  Royals pitcher Charlie Liebrandt shut down the Redbirds through eight innings but manager Dick Howser decided to let him finish the game instead of bringing in ace reliever Dan Quisenberry. Liebrandt was one out away from tying the series at a game a apiece but allowed four runs before Quisenberry came in for the final out.  The Cardinals won 4-2 and headed back to St. Louis two games up and headed for their home field. That inning was the only inning during the entire series that the Cardinals scored more than one run.

Governor Ashcroft booked a special World Series Special train that carried St. Louis and Kansas City fans to St. Louis and I was one of the media persons on board.  Recalling that the Royals had fallen behind Toronto in the American League Championshp Series and then rallied to winthe series, I visited the Cardinals fans car and asked one of the red-capped celebrants, “Do the Royals have the Cardinals right where they want them?”  I was assured that wasn’t the case.

But they did.

Brett Saberhagen beat the Cardinals and Joaquin Andujr in game three 6-1.

Tudor was back for game four and threw a complete game five-hit shutout.  The Cardinals were up three games to one and could win the Series at home the next day.  Only four times in baseball history had a team down three games to one rallied to win the World Series.

Danny Jackson held the Cardinals to just five hits and one run in game five with the Royals winning 6-1,  Jackson pitched an immaculate 7th inning—three strikeouts on nine itches—and to this day is the only pitcher to do that in a World Series. The Royals headed back to Kansas City and that famous sixth game down three games to two.

Game Six:  Most fans forget that Denkinger’s missed call was not the only missed call in the game.  The Royals’ Frank White appeared to have stolen second in the fourth inning but was called out.  Two pitchers later, Pat Sheridan singled to right, a hit that likely would have scored Whie from second and put the Royals up 1-0

Danny Cox and Charlie Liebrandt held their opponents scoreless through seven innings before the Cardinals Brian Harper got the first hit of the game with a runner in scoring position and gave the Cardinals a 1-0 lead. Worrell came in to protect that lead. Pinch-hitter Jorge Orta hit a ball toward the hole between first and second but Jack Clark was able to get to it and flipped the ball to Worrell, who tagged the bag.  But Denkinger called Orta safe.

Let’s look more closely at the dynamics of the play. Remember, all of this happened in about four seconds or less. :

Worrell throws his pitch to the left-handed swinging Orta who hits the ball to the right of the mound.  As Orta completes his swing and starts to run, Worrell stops his pitching motion, sees the ball is past him, and breaks toward first. It’s a foot race to the bag between the pitcher and the runner. The ball is a slow roller that Jack clark ranges to his right to pick up right at the line where infield turf changes to dirt.

Worrell is sprinting to firt and Ora is at full speed and closing. Denkinger is moving to the bag, too, to make the call.  Clark has to focus on the bag and not be distracted by the three other people running towards it.  In a play such as this, the order is to throw to the base and the pitcher should be there in time to catch it.

Worrell’s momentum carries him to the bag but Clark’s throw is slightly behind him, forcing Worrell to rech backward. Orta is in his final leaping strike to first base. It appears the throw beats him by a quarter or half a step. It is a bang-bang play.

Denkinger is in foul territory as Orta flashes past and as Worrell closes his glove around the throw. Orta hits the bag and falls forward. Worrell hangs onto the ball and turns around to see Denkinger calling Orta safe.

The argument with Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog, Clark, Worrell, and Denkinger is brief and the call stands.  Denkinger was in a good position for the call. But Worrell was six feet-five and the throw was high. “I couldn’t watch his glove and his feet at the same time. It was a soft toss, and there was so much crowd noise, I couldn’t hear the ball hit the glove,”

So the Royals have a base runner. Nobody is out. But Todd Worell, one of the best closers in baseball, can shut things down. Next up is power-hitter teve Balboni who lifts a foul ball toward the first-base dugout.  Clark, who was still transitioning from being an outfielder to being a first baseman, lost track of the ball as he tried to avoid falling into the dugout and the ball fell on the dugout’s first step.  Balboni then singled, advancing Orta to second.

Onix Concepcion pinch runs for Balboni and Royals catcher Jim Sundberg tries to lay down a sacrifice bunt to move the runners over.  But Worrell goes to third with the throw and forces Orta.  That brings up pinch-hitter Hal McRae, a .259 hitter in the regular season. Herzog orders an intentional walk to set up a potential double play.

Howser sends Dane Iorg up as a pinch-hitter. Iorg, who had won a Series with the Cardinals in 1982, bloops a single over the infield, driving in the only two runs the Royals score that night.

The Series was tied at three games apiece.

The Cardinals gave the ball to Tudor, already a two-time winner, to close out the Series.  Howser picked Saberhagen, who shut down the Cardinals on five hits.. The Royals pounded them 11-0 to win their first World Series championship.

None of the games lasted three hours.  Six of the seven were played between 2:44 and 2:59.  Game four, the Cardinals’ 3-0 shutout of the Royals, lasted only 2:19.  It ws the first series with all games at night.

The Cardinals were up two games to none, then three games to one. Denkinger’s call was in the sixth, not the seventh game so the Cardinals still had a big chance to win.  But they blew it—-although many of those who blame Denkinger for the Cardinal defeat don’t recall how badly the Cardinals played in game seven and don’t recall the bad call was in game six.

Don Denkinger spent three decades as a major league umpire. The World Series call did not seem to affect his career.  He umpired his fourth world series in 1991. He umpired three All-Star games, including calling balls and sgtrikes in 1987. He took part in a half=dozen American League Championships, two of them after the ’85 World Series. At his death he was one of seven umpires to have worked two perfect games (Len Barker, May 15, 1991 and Kenny Rogers, June 29, 1994). When Nolan Ryan threw his sixth no-hitter, Don Denkinger was behind the plate.

He had a distinguished career, a good life.  But he’s remembered for something that happened in a split second.

But in looking into that split second we learned about his other contributions to The Game.

There’s a lesson here for all of us, I suppose.  A decision we make in a split second can change our lives forever.   And the lives of others. We often don’t have time to worry about that when action is required.  And in most instances it’s not worth worrying about. And worrying about a mistake shouldn’t be part of what we become.

Sports: Cardinals become birds of prey; Royals remain Commoners; Running hot and fast at Indy; Carl Edwards steps out of the NASCAR shadows.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BASEBALL)—-It was dusty and covered in cobwebs in the corner of the garage, but the Cardinals were able to find their broom this weekend against the Red Sox.  The Brewers had theirs closer-by and used it on the Royals

(CARDINALS)—All of the sudden, the Cardinals are starting to look like a contending team again.  They finished a 5-1 week with a sweep of the Red Sox in Boston, culminating in a 9-1 pounding Sunday night.  After taking two of three from the Cubs, the Cardinals took all three form Boston. They’ve gone six out of seven after an eight-game losing streak left them at the bottom of the division and their fans at the bottom of their tolerance.

The Birds still roost in last place but they’re only 2½ behind the Reds and 3½ behind the Cubs, who are only two games under .500 as we start the second half of May.  St. Louis is the only team in the division with a winning record in the last ten games (6-4).

They opened a three-game series last (Monday) night with a chance to make a big move on the division-leading Brewers. The Cardinals jumed out with three runs in the bottom of the first, added a single run in the second, add four in the sixth and demolish the Brewers with ten runs in the Cardinal half of the ninth.  The Cardinals hammered the Brewers 18-1 to start the week.

Jack Flaherty, who has struggled, went seven full, struck out ten, and gave up only one run.

(ROYALS)—When a team goes 4-6 in its last ten games and it’s considered progress, you know things are, well, terrible.

The Royals finished the weekend 12-30, a .218 percentage.  Milwaukee took all three games as the Royals once again were blasted by one big inning by opponents.

The Royals are a better team on the road than at home, which is damning by faint praise. They’re 6-13 on the road but 6-17 at home.  They started the week at home against the Padres with a disappointing performance—held hitless by former Cardinals Michael Wacha through seven innings before Michael Massey got a hit to start the 8th. Vinnie Pasquantino had the only other Royals hit, the ninth as the Padres shut them down 4-0, dropping Kansas City to 12-31 for the year. Oakland is worse, still, at 9-34.

(RACING)—Retired NASCAR driver Carl Edwards of Columbia admits he’s getting the itch to get back on the track.  Edwards made a rare public appearance this weekend at Darlington, where NASCAR officially introduced its list of 75 greatest drivers in its 75-year history. He retired in 2016 and has seldom appeared at a race since. He told FOX’s Mike Joy, “I got to race with my dream, got to do all the fun stuff. I’ve been on adventures around the world, been farming a little, been raising my family.”  Being at Darlington “is very important for me to come here and just show how much appreciation I have for NASCAR, all the fans, all the drivers. It’s been great.”

Edwards was a guest in the FOX broadcast booth for the second stage of the race and was asked by long-time competitor on Missouri tracks and on the NASCAR circuit, Clint Bowyer, if he’d consider returning to NASCAR, he noted, “It was easy to not race when I first stepped away, but it’s getting harder and harder,” he admitted. “I like sliding stuff around and driving cars. So there’ll be a time when I go do something. Maybe sim work, something like that … to see if I could still drive. It’s a step-by-step process.”

Edwards, always a fitness geek, looked trim and could still fit into his old fire suit. His hair is longer now and we thought we noticed a little touch of gray at the temple (after all, he’ll turn 44 on August 15).

In the race—William Byron took advantage of a late-race collision between front-runners Clay Chastain and Kyle Larson to clam his third win of the year, the first driver with three victories this year.

(INDYCAR)—Practice begins on the oval at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway today for the 107th running of the Indianapolis 500 in two weeks.  INDYCAR kicked off its month of May with Alex Palou winning on the road course, his first win of the season. The victory moved him into first place in the points standings.

He finished almost 17 seconds ahead of Pato O’Ward and Alexander Rossi.  Pole-sitter Christian Lundgaard had his best finish of the year, in fourth, with Felix Rosenqvist fifth.  O’ Ward, Rossi, and Rosenqvist are teammates with Arrow McLaren.

Home Cookin’ finally tastes good in STL and KC.  And a Historic Race at a Track That Should be Over Here.  And:  Another Missourian is among the 75 Greatest

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(Baseball)—The St. Louis Cardinals won their first home game Sunday since April 17.  But they’re still the worst team in the National League. And it felt so good, they won again last night.

The Royals avoided a sweep against the Athletics in a series involving the AL’s worst teams.  Oakland turned out to be the best of the worst by taking two out of three. But the Royals, too, enjoyed the unusual experience this year of winning a second game in a row last night.

(St. Louis)—Detroit’s Jake Rogers hit a grand slam homer in the top of the sixth inning to put the Tigers up 6-5. This time, however, the Cardinals had a response, a vicious one, with seven runs in their half to take a 12-6 lead that stood up the rest of the way. Brendan Donovan’s three-run shot gave the Cardinals an 8-6 lead and they added four more runs in the rest of the inning

Paul Goldschmidt hit the third of his three home runs in that same inning.  St. Louis is 11-24 as we head to the mid-point of May.

Last night, the Cardinals got solid pitching from Miles Mikolas, and some timely hitting to take a 3=-1 win from the Cubs in Chicago. Mikolas didn’t get the win but he fanned seven in four and a third innings.  it’s the first time the Redbirds have won two in a row since April 11-12.  And it’s the first time this year that the Cardinals have won a series opener.

(CONTREAS)—It happens everywhere when someone comes in behind a person who has been a fixture or an institution whether it’s at a church, a bank, a university, or a business. The successor often has a rough time and the people who work with him have to make some major adjustments.   Willson Contreras and the Cardinals are in that situation.  After twenty years with Yadiair Molina managing pitchers masterfully, the adjustment by and to  Contreras is struggling.  He’s going to be a DH for a while and spend time during the game on the bench with the manager and others on the coaching staff learning the Cardinal Way.

His offense has been good enough to keep him in the lineup. Andrew Knizner, a Yadi mentee for four years or so, will take over the prime duties behind the plate for now.

Baseball’s trading deadline is not until August 1 but putting Knizner behind the plate while Contreras studies the Cardinal style of baseball will give the kid some exposure should he be considered trade bait in a deal to strengthen the pitching staff.

(ROYALS)—The Royals salvaged the last game of a three-game series against the other American League bottom-feeder Sunday, but their two losses to Oakland leaves Kansas City as the worst American League team.

The victory was clouded by the 106-mile-per-hour line drive off the bat of Detroit’s Ryan Noda that struck pitcher Ryan Yarbrough on the left side of his head. Yarbrough was able to walk from the field a few minutes later but has been put on the 10-day disabled list with what is described as a “head fracture.” But no surgery will be necessary. No other details have been released by the team.

Salvatore Perez, who picked up the ball that had bounced back toward the plate, threw out Noda before rushing to the mound with other teammates.  Perez, the batter, went three for four with a 462-foot shot over the fountains in left to lead the Royals attack.

Last night the Royals exploded for eight runs in the sixth inning and clobbered the White Sox 12-5.

(AT THAT TRACK OVER THERE)—-Denny Hamlin broke a 55-race winless NASCAR streak with his win at the Kansas Speedway, pulling off the first last-lap pass in NASCAR’s 28-year history at the track

Track developers twenty years ago, or so, tried to get the Missouri Legislature to provide some tax breaks so the rack cold be built near Kansas City International Airport.  The legislature’s failure to act has led to the track being built in sight of the Kansas City skyline, triggering a massive economic development in the area.

Twelve drivers accounted for 36 lead changes before Hamlin got in front for the final time on the backstretch of the last lap when Kyle Larson, on worn tires, bobbled in the side draft as he and Hamlin were running next to each other.  Hamlin’s car lightly touched the left rear of Larson’s car, sending Larson into the wall.  Larson recovered to finish second, 1.3 seconds back.

The  37 total lead changes was a record for any 1½ mile track on the NASCAR circuit.,

William Byron, Bubba Wallace, and Ross Chastain filled out the top five.

NASCAR is at Darlington next weekend. Retired Columbia driver Carl Edwards will be a guest in the broadcast booth, working alongside Mike Joy and former local track competitor Clint Bowyer for the race’s second stage.

(THE GREATEST)—Darlington is traditionally a “throwback” race for NASCAR, a time when the cars are painted to resemble competitors from NASCAR’s history.  NASCAR will use the race to honor the 75 greatest drivers in the series’ history.

Carl Edwards was announced earlier as one of the 75.  But Missouri has a SECOND driver on that list—Larry Phillips, the southwest Missouri driver who won five NASCAR national short-track championships.  Nobody is sure how many races he won although NASCAR says he won 226 of the 308 sanctioned races that it knows he ran.  He won thirteen track championships in three states. Phillips died at the age of 62 in 2004.

He and Edwards have been listed on NASCAR’s Hall of Fame ballot but are still waiting for election to the hall.

(ONE MORE NASCAR NOTE):  Kyle Larson knows what kind of seat he’ll be sitting in when he tries to make the field for the Indianapolis 500 next year.   He was fitted for the seat at the Arrow McLaren shop in Indianapolis last week.  He hopes to become the fifth driver to compete in the 500-mile race at Indianapolis and the 600 mile race that evening in Charlotte. The others who’ve tried it are Tony Stewart, John Andretti, Robbie Gordon and, most recently, Kurt Busch.

(FORMULA 1)—Another race, another Red Bull win, this time on the streets of Miami.  Max Verstappen beat teammate Sergio Perez, who started from the pole. Fernando Alonso, whose career has been revived since joining the Aston-Martin team, finished third, his fourth third in five races this year.

 

SPORTS:  Look for a Long, Hot, Depressing Summer, Baseball Fans; Maybe You Should Go to a Race

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(BASEBALL)—We are left to recall a man who lived and died baseball, who passed up a potential Heisman Trophy college career to play the game of baseball, and who gave us some memorable thoughts and calls during fifty years in the broadcast booth as Jack Buck’s sidekick and later as the number one play-by-play guy with the Missourinet’s first sports director, John Rooney.

Mike Shannon is gone. He was 83. He was a multi-star athlete in high school who went to the University of Missouri on a football scholarship. In the days when freshmen could not play varsity football, Shannon so impressed Missouri coach Frank Broyles that Broyles thought he could have won the Heisman Trophy if he had stayed with football.

Instead, Shannon got a $50,000 signing bonus from the Cardinals and played baseball.

He gave us a lot of things on the field and in the booth. His Shannon-isms might be rivalled in all of baseball history (at least in our experience) only by the colorful phrasing of another native Missourian, Casey Stengel:

“It’s Mothers Day, so a big happy birthday to all you mothers out there.”

“Back in the day when I played, a pitcher had three pitches: a fastball, a curveball, a slider, a changeup and a good sinker pitch.”

(During a game in New York): “I wish you folks back in St. Louis could see this moon.”

“Ol’ Abner has done it again.”  (a late-game observation when the game is tight going into the last innings.)

“He’s faster than a chicken being chased by Ronald McDonald.”

“Our next home stand follows this road trip.”

“The wind has switched 360 degrees.”

“The crowd (is) on their feet for the Canadian Star Spangled Banner.”

And there were many more. Mike Shannon was Mike Shannon. Nice guy.  Good ball player. One of those guys who made a baseball broadcast booth much more than calling balls and strikes.  They don’t come along often and their enthusiasm for the game can’t be faked or scripted.

And we really need him these days.   His beloved Cardinals are in the pits. There’s no sugar-coating it.

They haven’t won a series since April 10-12 and were 10-19 after their weekend series against the Dodgers, wrapping up a road trip in which they went 2-8. They haven’t been this far under .500 in at least 16 years, 2007, the last time the cardinals finished below .500.  They have to go 80-53 if they’re going to win 90 games and compete for a wild card slot.

The Cardinals had never finished the first month of the season in last place in the National League Central—-and it was formed in 1994.

This weeks’ USA TODAY power rankings put the Cardinals 23rd out of the 30 teams.  The team started the year with fairly low expectations from the newspaper. They were ranked 11th.

And they’re expecting a 41-year old pitcher who has had a mediocre rehab assignments in Springfield and Memphis to lead a turnaround?   Wainwright had an ERA of 6.14 in Springfield and 6.35 at Memphis, 13 strikeouts in 12.2 innings in which he gave up 18 hits and nine runs.

Doesn’t me he can come up to the big club and do better—-rehab assignments aren’t necessarily about winning and losing.

But still…..

The Cardinals could be worse.  They could be the Kansas City Royals and ranked 29th by USA TODAY.  Only Oakland (soon to be Las Vegas, perhaps) is below them.

Where’s Mike Matheny when the Cardinals need him?

He’s in Kansas City where he is 172-242 in his three-plus seasons after going 591-474 in seven seasons in St. Louis and never having a losing record. The Royals went 7-22 in the first month of the season.

(MIZ-WHO?)—We confess that we’ve lost track of what the Missouri basketball team has won or lost since the season ended.  I think we’re suffering from portal fatigue.  They still lack a horse in the middle, a big one.

We’ll root for whatever Dennis Gates puts on the floor next year. But the era of carpet bagger-players the NCAA has ushered in with the portal and the NIL business has been a huge mess we prefer not to try to follow.

Pretty much the same for the football team.  We hope coach Drinkwitz is able to put together an outstanding team.  But by and large it’s going to be a bunch of strangers on Faurot field next fall.

It’s tempting to say that the NCAA has really screwed up collegiate sports.

(RACING)—All three major series were on track during the weekend—although the weekend stretched to an extra day for one of them.

(INDYCAR)—Close, but no cigar—again—for Romain Grosjean who led 57 of the first 66 laps before Scott McLaughlin fought his way past on lap 71 and held on to beat Grosjean to the line by about 1.8 seconds at Barber Motorsports Park at Birmingham, Alabama.

Grosjean, who started the race on the pole,  admits that he’s headed to Indianapolis for the two races in May—on the road course on May 14 and the Indianapolis 500 on the 28th.

McLaughlin’s win, his fourth in the INDYCAR series, was the product of race strategy.  His team planned on three pit stops. Grosjean’s team hoped to win the race on two stops.  But the three-stop strategy eliminated any fuel concerns for McLaughlin, who called it a “happy driver strategy.”

McLaughlin is the fourth driver to win in the four races run this year in INDYCAR.

Two-time series champion Will Power challenged Grosjean in the final laps but couldn’t get close enough to make a pass attempt.  Pato O’Ward and Alex Palou made up the rest of the top five.

(NASCAR)—The long dry spell for Martin Truex Jr., has come to an end after 54 races and 597 days.  Truex, opting for two tires on his last pit stop, held off Ross Chastain, who went with four, for the final fourteen laps.  Truex crossed the stripe a half-second ahead of Chastain.

The race was run yesterday (Monday) because it was rained out on Sunday. The win made the long weekend a family affair. His younger brother, Ryan, won the Xfinity race on Saturday.

Ryan Blaney, William Byron, and Denny Hamlin completed the top five. Byron led almost half of the 400 laps (193 of them) but couldn’t keep up with the top three in the closing laps.

Chastain’s run has put him on top of the points standings.

Chase Elliott, in his third race after returning from a broken leg was 11th and is now within the top thirty in points.  NASCAR rules say a driver must be in the top thirty in points and must have at least one victory if they’re not 16th or better in points at the start of playoffs.  Elliott is still looking for his first win of the year.

Josh Berry, who filled in for Elliott while he was recovering, was driving Alex Bowman’s car at Dover because Bowman suffered some compression back fractures in a sprint car wreck last week. He’s out indefinitely.  Berry finished 11th.

(FORMULA 1)—Sergio Perez is the first driver to win twice at the Grand Prix of Azerbain.

He beat teammate Max Verstappen, the defending f1 champion, by 2.1 seconds. Ferrari’s Charles LeClerc claimed the other podium spot.

Perez’s victory moves him to within six points of Verstappen in the standings. Both drivers have won twice this year. Two-time F1 champion Fernando Alonso, who seems to have found a new life in his career driving for Aston Martin, is third.

(Photo Credits; MLB Tonight (Rooney and Shannon) and Bob Priddy)