By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor.
(MIZZBB—The word should be spreading among the SEC: Don’t let the Missouri Tigers get a double-digit lead on you in the first half. Comebacks against this year’s team—unlike the previous year’s team—are very hard and present evidence indicates, not working.
Last year’s team seemed to crumble when the other team came back and once they gave up the lead, they had nothing to come back with—and often lost by double digits,.
Not so this year as two games last week proved.
Missouri is 4-1 in the conference now, tied with three other teams a game behind Auburn. They have the league’s best home-court record, with 14 straight wins.
These guys also do something the other team didn’t do. They rebound.
They are starting to attract national poll attention. Missouri is basely in the top 25 but they haven’t been there in a long time. They’re 24th in the USA TODAY Coaches poll, their first appearance in the top 25 since March 13, 2023. They fell out of the top 25 after the season and, of course, never smelled the rankings last year.
The Tigers head to Texas tonight for an 8 o’clock game. The Longhorns are 12-6. Missouri is 15-3 and seems to be headed to its first 20-win seasons since Gates’ first year when they went 25-10. It could be only the only the fourth season in the last eleven when they hit that mark. They were 2-13 in Cuonzo Martin’s first season, 2017-18 and unofficially 23-12 under Frank Haith. The University later voided all 23 wins after finding violations throughout Haith’s career at Missouri.
(GRILLING THE OPPONENTS)—Mizzou Guard Caleb Grill is the SEC Player of the Week.
Against the Florida Gators last week, he rang up 22 points on 7-for-eleven shooting, eighteen of those points coming from behind the arc. It included a critical three-pointer that gave Missouri a seven-point lead with two minutes left in the game that Missouri won 83-82. The Gators were the nation’s fifth-ranked team that night.
Against Arkansas, he was 7 for 10 from the field, finishing with 17points. For the season he’s averaging 12.5 points per game and his 49.3% accuracy from the three-point line is one of the nation’s best. (ZOU)
(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City Chiefs keep playing and the griping gets worse from fans who thnk the officials are giving Kansas City too many breaks and opponents too many penalties.
Whatever.
The Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills meet in the AFL Championship game late Sunday afternoon to determine who goes to the Super Bowl.
Kansas City kept the Houston Texans from reaching the AFL title game for the sixth year in a row and made it themselves for seven seasons in succession with a 23-14 victory at Arrowhead Stadium Saturday. As usual the Chiefs defense rose to the occasion, sacking Houston quarterback C. J. Stroud eight times.
The Chiefs (15-2) are narrow favorites over the Bills (13-4), playing at home against a Buffalo team that beat them 30-21 earlier in the season. But that game was in Buffalo. It was the fourth straight time the Bills beat Kansas City in the regular season.
Last year, the Chiefs won when Buffalo’s Tyler Bass missed on a field goal from 44 yards that would have tied the game.
The games are often portrayed as duels between Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen. Both are the only quarterbacks with at least 26 touchdowns in their first ten playoff games.
(CARDINALS)—St. Louis Cardinals President John Mozeliak says a top priority of the team is to get rid of Nolan Arenado, who has asked for a trade. The problem is the no-trade clause in Arenado’s contract that lets him decide where he’ll go. He’s already vetoed a trade to the Astros. A top issue is how much of Arenado’s salary the Cardinals are willing to pay his new team to take him off their hands.
(ROYALS)—The Royals have signed infielder Harold Castro, who spent last year playing—and playing well—in Mexico. He’s 31. It’s a minor league contract but he’ll have a chance to improve his standing in spring training.
He played a dozen years for the Tigers and one season with the Rockies before going to the Mexican League where he hit .320 with six homers in 84 games and an .813 OPS. He also played 51 games in the Venezuelan Winter League and hit .332 with 15 more homers, 41 more RBIs, six more stolen bases and a 1.021 OPS.
He’s seen as an injury replacement if one of the Royals regular infielders goes down the an injury. Heading into spring training, Nick Loftin is expected to be the infield utility man.
(AHHHH, SPRING)—For the baseball fan, the opening of Spring Training is the equivalent of the first Robin on the season. Royals and Cardinals pitchers and catchers are to report Wednesday, February 12. The Royals training in Arizona and the Cardinals in Florida.
Now—to the noisy stuff:
(INDYCAR)—A. J. Foyt turned 90 last week and he’s still all there—and kind of surprised about it. “I don’t think I’m supposed to live this long! I’m living for a reason, but I don’t know why!” he said in an interview released by his team.
His story goes back to a time when it was said, “There are old race drivers and there are bold race drivers but there are no old-bold race drivers.”
He’s the first four-time winner of the Indianapolis 500, a winner of the Lemans 24-Hour sports car race, a winner of the Daytona 500 in NASCAR. If it had four wheels, he won in it. “I always drove hard, even at the local tracks, because I liked to win,” he said. “And when I got to Indy, the fans made want to win even more. I know they loved winning and I loved winning, so we had a good combination together.”
He saw some pretty bad stuff in his career at Indianapolis and elsewhere. In his first 500, he got through a terrible first-lap crash that killed Pat O’Connor, one of the most popular drivers of the time, who had been Foyt’s mentor that year. In his 1983 autobiography, Foyt said that he was shaken by the experience. “When I turned around to see the car burning and his arm hanging out, I figured maybe I better go back to Texas, It’s a little bit too rough for A.J. Foyt. … I (had) come from little racetracks, nothing like this. My biggest dream was to qualify for the race. Here I qualified in 1958 (for the first time) and all of a sudden, it turned into a major disaster. I decided I don’t know about this.”
But he went back and three years later he won the big race for the first time. But he carried an emotional scar from that day through his career. He never let fellow drivers get too close to him off the track. “I lost a lot of friends. That’s the reason I didn’t run with too many people. I kinda stayed by myself ’cause I didn’t want it on my mind,” he said in his birthday interview.
Three years after that was the worst crash in Speedway history and was the first time the race was red-flagged. Dave McDonald spun coming out of the fourth turn and crashed into the inside retaining wall. His car exploded in flames and rebounded back to the middle of the track where it was T-boned by Eddie Sachs, causing another explosion. Sachs died instantly. McDonald died later that day in a hospital.
Indianapolis race cars ran on gasoline then. The new rear-engined cars carried as much fuel as the front-engine roadsters of the kind Foyt drove that day, including a center fuel tank that, in effect, encased drivers is tanks full of gasoline.
Foyt won that race and afterwards conceded rear-engine cars were the future of the race. He said afterwards, “If I drive one, it won’t be on gasoline, you can ge sure of that. I am scared of having all that gasoline around me in that type of chassis…Maybe it would be wise to ban gasoline and also limit the account of fuel in a car and make it mandatory to make either two or three pit stops.”
Foyt had just become the first winner of the 500 to run the entire race without changing tires. The industry took notice. Gasoline was replaced by methanol (and that was replaced a few years ago with renewable versions of it). The rear-engine cars were re-designed and as they took over from the roadsters, became safer.
In his birthday interview, he commented that the cars are “ so much safer than what they used to be. They carry a lot less fuel, and that’s the biggest thing that racing has gained. I don’t say it’s any better, but it’s a lot safer. I’m always looking for safety too ’cause I had a lot of friends that lost their lives. I was one of the lucky ones ’cause I made it through all that.”
The next year, however, Foyt was one of two drivers to still use gasoline (Al Unser was the other) in the 500. Methanol was the fuel of choice for everybody else.
Ultimately, however, the last lap comes for even the greatest:
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That was 1993. He was 59 years old that day. He had driven in 35 consecutive 500s, a record unlikely to be broken. Nobody else has done it 30 or more times. His closest competitor is Mario Andretti, who was in 29. The only driver still active is Helio Castroneves, who will try to make his 25th 500 in May. Castroneves is one of three other winners of the 500. Rick Mears and Al Unser Sr., are the other two.
Foyt, who had fielded his own cars for several years, continues to be active with Foyt Racing although his sons have taken over the operation and have shifted its headquarters from Houston to Indianapolis.
Foyt is a FIVE time winner of the 500, four times as a driver and as the owner of Kenny Brack’s car in 1999.
In 2019, Foyt settled recalled his for ABC17 in his home town of Houston.
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Years after he ran his last competitive race, he still holds a ton of records and distinctions and he is still the fastest man to ever drive a car on a track. In 1987, at age 52, he turned a lap at 257.123 mph in the Oldsmobile Aerotech around the 7.712 test track near Fort Stockton, Texas.
Today?
“I keep buying land and try to develop it. I love to get on my bulldozers and tractors. I do that almost every other day. People say you’re out there by yourself. And I say: ‘It’s peaceful. I don’t have to listen to anybody but me.’”
He is the only surviving member of the 1958 Indianapolis 500 starting field. Thirteen of those who started the race with him were killed in racing crashes.
A new biography of Foyt came out last year. Art Garner’s book, A. J. Foyt; Survivor, Champion, Legend captures the first part of Foyt’s story which is so extensive that 656 pages is not enough. A second volume is in the offing.
(Photo Credit: Bob Priddy, Indianapolis 2019)
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(NASCAR)—We are eleven days away from the opening of the NASCAR season. A non-points exhibition race will be February 1. The real season starts with the Daytona 500 in a little more than three weeks.
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