Category Archives: Racing

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

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(NASCAR)—

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

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

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

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

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

Two other drives merit special attention:

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

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

 

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

Sebastian Bourdais did it in 2007.

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Twelfth, to be exact.

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

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

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

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

Vanderbilt got TWO first-place votes???

Missouri starts its fall practices one week from today.

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, the More:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

INDYCAR heads west to race at Laguna Seca next weekend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, on to some fast moving sports stories.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

.

 

 

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

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(BATTLEHAWKS)—We’ve heard this before:

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

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

Now: Where the rubber really meets the road—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Photo Credit: Visit Kansas City)

This Might Be News To You—-

Posted on by
Reply

It sure is to us.

Did you know Missouri has another professional football team?

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

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

Arena Football 1

Indoor Football League

National Arena Football League

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arena Football 1

Indoor Football League

National Arena Football League

Arena League

The St. Joseph team is in the Arena League.

-0-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speaking of big wheels—-

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

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

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

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

Kirkwood teammate Colton Herta came home third.

Alex Palou, the Indianapolis 500 winner, wrecked on a restart but still has a strong lead in the points.

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

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

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

NASCAR heads to Michigan next weekend.

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

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

 

 

Sports: Making a Mark and Marking Places

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No, not Disneyland.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, to stick and ball sports:

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

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

But they are.

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

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

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

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

St. Louis: 27,890

Memphis: 2,044

Birmingham: 10,344

Houston: 6,684

That’s an average of 11,740.

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

Hot Baseball; Winning Football; and the Power of Palou

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Our baseball teams are hot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Photo Credits: Palou, INDYCAR

Bombs Away for Kansas City; Sweep for the Birds; Gem for the Battlehawks. Blues for the Blues. But first, some history for today.

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

May 6, 1917—-Bob Groom of the St. Louis Browns throws a no-hitter against the Chicago White Sox a day after the Browns’ Ernie Koob had no-hit the Sox at Sportsman’s Park. The catcher for both games was Hank Severeid, the only catcher in MLB history to catch no-hitters on two consecutive days.  Groom went on to an 8-19 record that year and finished his ten  year career a year later.  Ernie Koob was 6-14 that year and out of baseball after another year and a five-year record with the Browns of 23-31.

The Browns were 57-97 that year, seventh in the then-eight team America League which is about what they usually were before they left St. Louis after the 1954 season to become the Baltimore Orioles (of which we will have some news in a few more paragaphs)

Baseball Reference records, “The St. Louis Browns are perhaps history’s worst Major League franchise. The Browns existed from 1902 to 1953 in the American League and managed just 11 winning seasons over that span. They lost more than 100 games eight times, finishing dead last in the AL 10 times. They finished as high as second in the AL standings just three times. The Browns won just one pennant, in 1944, when the majors were not at full strength due to World War II.”  (To which we add that they lost in six games to the Cardinals during the “trolley car series,” when all games were played in old Sportsman’s Park.

But for two days in 1917, the Browns were untouchable.

 

Severeid went on to a solid career, ten of his years with the Browns for whom he caught 100 or more games eight times. He had a solid major league career (.289 career batting average) and spent several more successful years as a minor league catcher and manager. He died in 1968 at the age of 77, still the only catcher to get pitchers through no-hitters on successive days.

Only one pitcher has ever thrown back-to back no-hitters: Johnny Vander Meer of the Reds beat the Boston Bees (later the Braves) on June 11, 1938 and no-hit the Brooklyn Dodgers in his next start June 15.

The only time there have been back-to-back no-hitters involving the same two teams was in 1968 when Gaylord Perry of the Giants beat Bob Gibson of the Cardinals 1-0 and the next day when the Cardinals’ Ray Washburn beat the Giants the next day 1-0. The last two outs he got that day were future Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Willie McCovey.

Those two games are the only time in MLB history there have been no-hitters in two consecutive games.  The second Browns no-hitter had been in the second game of a double header. 

That’s your baseball history lesson for the day. Now let’s look at the history being made by today’s players.

(Royals)—The Kansas City Royals started their week against the Chicago White Sox last night  after finishing their previous week with a team-record seven home runs in one game.  They polished off the Baltimore Orioles 11-6 to go three games over .500 at 19-16.

It was a historic game for catcher Luke Maile, who homered for his first hit with the Royals. He’s the 29th player in team history to have a home run as his first hit.

Cole Ragans already was playing at a historic level going into the game. Although he’s just 1-1 with a 4.40 ERA so far this year, he has struck out 11.16 batters per nine innings through five starts this year and has allowed 0.69 home runs per nine innings.  OptaSTATS says only two other pitchers since 1901 have ever started a season with allowing fewer than 0.80 homers and at least 11 strikeouts through fifty starts with a team are Nolan Ryan and Kevin Gausman.,

We all know who Nolan Ryan is. But Kevin Gausman? He’s bounced around among five teams in thirteen years, has a career record of 104-105.

Ragans was dominant in his return to the mound Monday, tying a season-high with 11 strikeouts in five innings as the Royals shut out the Chicago White Sox 3-0 at Kauffman Stadium. With that, the Royals continued their current hot streak. KC won its 12th game in 14 tries and also improved its season record to 20-16.

Ragans didn’t appear to show any ill effects from his earlier problem.

(CARDINALS)—-A double-header sweep of the Mets gets the Cardinals within three games of break-even 35 games into the season. They can thank Mike McGreevy, who was called up from Memphis by a rule that lets teams add an extra player for doubleheaders. McGreevy relieved Andre Pallante in second game when the bases were loaded and there was only one out in the fourth inning. McGreevy shut down the Mets on one hit and one walk the rest of the way, struck out five, and got the Mets to hit into five groundouts.

The Cardinals had won the first game 5-4

Alex Burlison broke out of his season-longer homerless streak with a two-run rip in the first game. In fact, he hadn’t hit a home run since last August 17. He’d had only three extra base hits so far this season.

The Cardinals kept rolling last night, beating Pittsburg 6-3 in a series opened. Home runs by Jose Berrero hitting his first home run since 2023 with Alex Burlison and Wilson Contreras adding shots of their own to give the Cardinals the lead.

(ST. LOUIS BLUES)—The coach has turned into a pumpkin for the St. Louis Blues. There will be no Cinderella story for them this year.

Once almost written off as a playoff team, the Blues stormed through the last third of the season to make it in the field.  Down two games to none to Winnipeg in the first round of the playoffs, but Blues came back to force a seventh game.

The Blues led by two goals with less than two minutes to play but the Jets tied the game with 1.6 seconds left and got the game winner at the 16:30 mark of overtime.

(FOOTBALL)—-Spring pro football reached the halfway mark in the regular season last weekend.

(BATTLEHAWKS)—Two weeks after losing their first game of the year to Arlington, the St. Louis Battlehawks put together what was called a “defensive gem,” against the same team, 12-6.

The Arlington Renegades had  scored thirty points three times this year, including the first game against St. Louis, in Arlington.

Battlehawks linebacker Pita Taumoepenu was the key to the St. Louis defense. With less than two minutes to play, Taumoepenu slapped the ball out of the hands of Arlington’s quarterback and two teammates pounced on it. It was the fourth turnover forced by the Battlehawks, the second within the final five minutes.

The win keeps St. Louis’ title hopes alive as they go to 4-2 on the season and get back to 2-2 in their UFL conference.

Now we move to sports with another turnoff the wheel.

(INDYCAR)—Alex Palou heads to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with momentum rarely seen in INDYCAR—winning three of the first four races of the season and already building a big lead as he runs for his fourth series championship.

Palou calls his start from the pole and his win on the road course at Barber Motorsports Park “the best race” of his career. He led 81 of the 90 laps. “It was a perfect day, a perfect weekend,” Palou said. “The car was amazing, super-fast. I had a ton of fun. I was a bit lonely there, but I loved it. It was an amazing day.” He was lonely, it seemed. His margin of victory over Christian Lundgaard was sixteen seconds. Penske driver Scott McLaughlin, who had won the last two races at the track, finished third.

Palou’s worst finish in the firs four races is second.

Next up will be two races at the track that gives the series its name, a race on the infield road course next weekend and then the crown jewel of the year for the series, the Indianapolis 500, where Josef Newgarden will try to become the first driver to win three 500s in a row.

(NASCAR)—Consider last weekend’s NASCAR race at Texas Motor Speedway a breakthough run for defending Cup champion Joey Logan, who avoided trouble as he worked his way from 27th starting position to victory circle. It’s his first top-five finish of the year.

He had worked his way up to second place behind Michael McDowell but took the lead with four laps left in regulation.  McDowell, a lap later, got into some dirty air behind Ryan Blaney and wrecked. He finished 26th.

Blaney was passed by Ross Chastain, who had started 31st, on the restart. It’s Chastain’s best finish of the year.

Nobody led more laps than Kyle Larson  but the best he could do at the end was fourth.

For the first time after 21 straight races, Denny Hamlin did not finish on the lead lap. He lost an engine early. His string of 21 straight top fives is the eighty longest in NASCAR history.

(FORMULA 1)—Oscar Piastri picked up his fourth win of the year in the Grand Prix of Miami. Teammate Lando Norris came home behind him.

(Photo credits: Severeid–Becket Marketplace; Palou–Rick Gevers, Indianapolis 2024)

 

 

 

Sports:  Mizzou Draftees and UDFA’s; Cardinals championship architect dies; Blues tie, etc.

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(DRAFT)—More former Missouri Tigers signed on with NFL Teams as Undrafted free agents than were picked up in the draft itself.

The New York Jets have signed quarterback Brady Cook, who was praised by NFL analyst Lance Zierlein for his toughness, athleticism, and arm talent. He calls Cook a “developmental prospect.”

One of his receivers, Theo Weese Jr., is headed to the Miami Dolphins, as is running back Nate Noel.  and edge rusher Johnny Walker Jr., and the Denver Broncos appear to be getting together.

Tigers taken in the draft were tackle Armond Membou, who calls himself “a mauler.”   His performance at the talent combine elevated him to the seventh choice in the first round, takenby the Jets. Jets GM Darren Mougey he’s a “natural fit” who will compete right away for a starting slot at right tackle.

Receiver Luther Burden III went to the Bears in the second round. He’s the first tiger WR to be drafted since J’Mon Moore in 2018. He’s the highest drafted wide receiver since Jeremy Maclin went to the Eagles as the 19th choice in 2009. He had a 13.3 yard career reception average. Moore lasted one year with the Packers and had two career receptions for 15 yards.

(BLUES—The St. Louis Blues appeared on the verge of being blown out of the first round of the National Hockey League playoffs before bouncing back with a pair of wins against Winnipeg to even their best of seven series at two each. One of these teams is going to win two of the next three to advance.

The Blues have picked themselves up off the mat before this year. Until a coaching change early in 2025 the Blues were headed for an early end to the 2024-25 season before they ripped off a franchise-record winning streak that put them back into contention. It has been more than nine weeks since they lost a game at home.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals continued their mediocre season during the last week and at the end of it they lost the architect of their latest championship-contending years.

Walt Jocketty, the general manager whose trading expertise built teams that won a World Series (2006), six NL Central Division championships, two National League pennants. The Cardinals made the post season seven times in his 14 years. He was the executive of the year three times. He was 74. He knew he had been voted into the Cardinals Hall of Fame and reportedly was writing his acceptance speech when he died.

(THE TEAMS)—Looks like a long season, folks, especially in St. Louis.

The Cardinals dropped to 12-17 after yesterday afternoon’s loss to the Reds in the first game of a four-game series.

The Redbirds have called up Jose Barraro from Memphis and they’ve sent Thomas Saggese down. Saggese had come up to fill in for Masyn Winn while he was out with an injury.

Barraro signed as a free agent in the offseason and had an impressive spring she he played 24 games, hit two homers drove in eight runners and stole four bases. At Memphis he was hitting .299 with ten extra base hits (four homers, 13 RBIs) and a recent 19-game on base string. He’s 5/6 in steal attempts this year at Memphis.

The Royals went into a four game series with the Rays last night after a 6-4 week that brought them back to near break-even at 14-15.

-0-

Let’s return to football for a couple of notes.

(THICK)—The Thicker Kicker is ten out of eleven for the Birmingham Stallions of the UFL.  But he can’t hit them all—-and his first miss of the season became a spectacular touchdown last weekend that helped the Memphis Showboats beat his Stallions 24-20 in overtime.

Harrison Mevis is 10/11 in the UFL this year and remains consistent from mid-field.  But 63 yards was a little much. The Stallions trailed 10-3 as the first half wound down. Mevis’s field goal attempt was picked up by the Showboats’ Isiah Hennie, who took it 108 yards for a touchdown.

Mevis was an undrafted free agent last year who spent three months with the Carolina Panthers.

(ANOTER EX-TIGER)—Maty Mauk, an Ohio kid whose career with Missouri was cut short by three suspensions and an eventual dismissal from the team despite his talents, is now the head football coach at Principia High in the St. Louis suburb of Town and Country. He was an assistant coach at Springfield Glendale, along with his brother, while his father was the head coach there. His brother went to Monett last season with Maty and their father as assistants.

Principia was 1-9 last year. They are 3-33 in their last four seasons. Principia College used to have a football program but ended it after the 2009 season.

At Missouri, he emerged as a red shirt freshman in 2013 when starting QB James Franklin was hurt. The Tigers went 3-1 with him. He tied a school record with five TD passes in a game against Kentucky. He was a starter the next year and led the team to its second strait SEC East conference championship. But he had his problems and was finally dismissed in 2016. He finished his college career at Eastern Kentucky, and spent some time with the Saskatchewan Rough Riders in the CFL but injuries ended his pro career.

Speeding along—

(INDYCAR)—Thirty-four drivers aiming for the 33 positions in the Indianapolis 500 field a month from now have run 5,804 test laps (14,510 miles) in their first major test runs on the Speedway using the new hybrid power plant.

2024 Pole winner Scott McLaughlin had the hottest lap at 232.686 mph, with the extra boost allowed for qualifying. In race trim, the fastest driver was defending national champion Alex Palou, who was about ten miles an hour slower.

Takuma Sato, who has won the 500 twice, was second fastest to McLaughlin in the boosted runs at 232.565. But he crashed shortly afterwards and sat out the rest of the test day.

The day also ended badly for NASCAR star Kyle Larson, who is back for his second attempt at running “the double”—the 500 in the afternoon and the Charlotte 600 that night in his regular NASCAR ride. He crashed his car, too, ending his test session.

The hybrid engine debuted last year after the 500 so the test provided drivers with their first experience on the track, and at racing speeds. The added 100 pounds or so that the new system puts at the rear of the car left drivers feeling their cars were more ticklish. Palou said the added weight makes cars “tougher to drive, so it’s a lot easier to see people do mistakes.”

The new power plant provides for bursts of sixty extra horsepower for a few seconds. The tests gave drivers a chance to adjust to some new handling characteristics and a chance to test when and how to use the extra surge of horsepower. But Pato O’Ward, who has had two second-place finishes in the 500 says the new power plant will make the cars “less forgiving.”

INDYCAR runs at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama this weekend, then heads to the Speedway for a road course race and two weeks after that, the 109th running of the 500.

(NASCAR)—The Big One never happed at Talladega this time, leading to the last 69 laps being run caution-free and an eyelash win by Austin Cindric, ending a 30-race winless streak.

Cindric picked up the win over Kyle Larson with a last-lap pass and hung on for a in by .022 second.  It’s the first win of the year for Penske Racing.

The race was typical for a NASCAR superspeedway contest, with 23 drivers leading at least one lap and 67 lead changes. Cindric’s win makes him the tenth different winner in the last ten races on NASCAR’s longest track (2.66 miles). But the race was uncharacteristically free of crashes.  The  yellow flag came out only twice for on-track incidents.

(Photo Credit: Rick Gevers)

 

Sports: Trying to Stay Even; Swinging Portals, And Big Wins

Posted on by
1

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(STADIA)—as in more than one stadium.

The discussion about whether Kansas City can keep either or both of its major league football and baseball teams ratcheted up yesterday when several civic leaders, including team officials, put out a joint statement calling for “swift and decisive” action to keep the Royals and the Chiefs on the Missouri side of the state line.

“All of our major league franchises are more than teams; they fuel our economy, strengthen our community, and are a beloved part of the region’s identity,” said the statement signed by the city sports commission, the area development council, tourist group Visit KC, and the Civic Council of Greater Kansas City.

John Sherman, the CEO of the Royals, said in a separate statement, “Greater Kansas City is our team’s home. For our fans, our partners, and our major league community, we want to keep it that way.”

Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt told KSHB-TV the team is glad to see the local support and said, “We remain committed to the continued growth and success of our entire region.”

State officials have been talking, secretly, with the teams and Kansas City officials but no specific plan has come but of the discussions. Some bills have been filed to create a funding system to keep the teams on our side of the line but the only one that is moving is one that was approved by the Missouri Senate yesterday that would make it possible for one of the teams to move to Clay County.

Clay County could create an organization  similar to the Jackson County Sports Authority which presently hands the leases for both Arrowhead and Kauffman stadiums. The bill would allow a new Royals stadium or a new training facility for the Chiefs.

Either proposal, particularly the stadium, would draw three million dollars a year from the state—a far cry from the anticipated cost of either facility.

The bill still must be approved by the House of Representatives and signed by the governor. The session ends in a month.

(CARDINALS)—Back to back quality starts by Matthew Liberatore and Sonny Gray have boosted St. Louis back to the .500 mark.

Gray shut down the Houston Astros last night, going seven innings and giving up only three hits while the offense pummeled Houston starter Framber Valdez for ten hits and six earned runs in four innings. St. Louis wound up with 14 hits and eight runs. Nolan Arenado was 3 for 4 with a homer. Behind him, Bendan Donovan was 4 for 4. Roddery Munoz gave up a three-run homer in the ninth for the Astros’ only runs.

Liberatore and the bullpen shut out the Phillies Sunday, giving the Redbirds their first series win since the opening weekend. Liberatore went six innings, gave up only three singles, and struck out seven to get his first win of the year. The last twenty Phillies batters went hitless.

Wilson Contreras is swinging one of those “torpedo” bats now and doing it effectively. Saturday, he had two hits and Sunday, he got the Cardinals on the board with a two-run homer.

Masyn Wynn, who left the series opener Friday with back spasms was put on the ten-day disabled list Saturday. As he was going on the injured list, the Cardinals reactivated Norman Gorman off the DL where he had dealt with a right hamstring pull..

(ROYALS)—The Yankees got four solo home runs, three in the fifth inning, against the Royals last night and won the series opener 4-1. Starter Seth Lugo gave up all four of them. Bobby Witt homered after a ten-pitch battle with starter Carlos Carrasco to put the Royals’ only number on the scoreboard.

The Royals drop to 8-9. The Yankees reach 9-6.

(COMINGS AND GOINGS)—It’s portal time for college basketball and it’s getting hard to keep up. Here’s where we think the Missouri Tigers are:

Center Peyton Marshall is jumping ship after his first year of college b-ball. He was a four-star recruit. Mashall was a seven-foot 300 pounder was in 22 games for an average of 4.4 minutes and one point. Another member of his 2024 class, Marcus Allen, also is looking for pastures with more green in them.

Replacing Marshall is 7-foot center Shawn Phillips Jr., who has decided Missouri has greater opportunities than Arizona State. His agency has made the announcement. Phillips has been a basketball gypsy, starting at LSU in the class of 2022 before going to Arizona for the last two years. He hits 56% of his field goal attempts, none of which have been tried from outside the arc.

He is the fourth transfer through the portal for Dennis Gates’ newest-look Tigers. Jontay Porter, Luke Norwether, announced earlier, and now-former UCLA guard Sebastian Mack announced heir plans earlier.

The Mizzou football team is going to lose at least four players when the football portal opens in a few days.

One of those taking off is linebacker Mikai  Gbayor just transferred to Missouri from Nebraska.  He leaves without ever taking the field for Missouri.

Also leaving is cornerback Ja’Marion Wayne, defensive end  Jahkai Lang, and backup quarterback Drew Pyne.

Coach Drinkwitz says he would not be surprised to lose four more guys.

Coming to Missouri is linebacker Josiah Trotter, who has some bigtime genes as the son of former NFL all-pro linebacker Jeremiah Trotter, and the brother of Jeremiah Trotter Jr., who was a member of the Super Bowl-winning Philadelphia Eagles, who have put Jeremiah Senior in the tam’s hall of fame. Josiah comes over from West Virginia, where he was the Big 12 Freshman of the year last year.

Now, let’s look at the people who come and go even faster:

(INDYCAR)—Andretti Global doesn’t have Michael Andretti in the ownership structure anymore but it has kept the Andretti name and now it has an INDYCAR victory.  Kyle Kirkwood started P2 and finished in the same place at the 50th Long Beach Grand Prix Sunday.

Kirkwood’s win is his first since he won at Long Beach in 2023, his third series in overall. To win, he had to hold off Alex Palou, the winner of the first two races of the year.

The race was a milestone for last year’s winner, Scott Dixon. Dixon came  home eighth for his 300th career top ten finish. The 11th place finish of Santino Ferrucci might not seem particularly noteworthy—except that he started 27th.

There were no caution flags in the race. In fact, the only crash in INDYCAR this year was on the first lap of the first race.

(NASCAR)—Denny Hamlin, who had won the two previous NASCAR races, outran everybody but Kyle Larson in the 500-lapper at Bristol Sunday.  Larson led 411 laps and gave up the lead under the green flag only once. Larson and Hamlin have finished 1-2 seven times but this was the first time Larson was ahead at the end. Ty Gibbs got close to ending his 81-race winless streak with Joe Gibbs Racing, the longest any JGR driver has gone without picking up his first win for the team. He’s the grandson of the former NFL coach who owns the team. He called his finish “really nice” and says he thinks “we’re really capable of winning a lot this year.”

(FORMULA ONE)—F1 was in Bahrain last weekend with Oscar Piastri started in his McLaren from the pole and holding the lead throughout. Mercedes’ George Russell finished 15 seconds back. Piastri teammate Lando Norris overcame penalties to come within less than a second of giving McLaren a 1-2 finish.