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Sports: Salvy’s Honor; Baseball Playing Ending, Dealing Beginning; Chiefs Roll and Build; Tigers Hurting;

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BASEBALL)—The baseball season is down to its last five games, maybe to its last two, as the World Series moves to Yankee Stadium after the Dodgers took the first two games in Los Angeles.  By this time next week, certainly a week after that, we’ll get the first hints of how the teams will reshape themselves for 2025.

(ROYALS)—-One of baseball’s most prestigious awards, the Roberto Clemente Award, has gone to Royals catcher Salvador Perez. He’s being recognized as an outstanding representative of the sport “through extraordinary character, community involvement, philanthropy, and positive contributions, both on and off the field.

 

Perez is 34, a thirteen-year member of the Royals, the only team for which he has ever played. He was a major factor in the team reaching the playoffs for the first time in a decade, hittig .274 with 27 home runs and 104 runs batted in.  He is a five-time Gold Glove winner and could win his fifth Silver Slugger Award.

His merit-worthy work has not just been in Kansas City. He has distributed food to thousands of people in his home town of Valencia, Venezuela, helped create the Carlos Fortuna Foundation in Colombia, honoring the memory of the Royals minor league pitcher who died at the age of 22 of liver cancer. The organization is supervised by Monica Ramirez, who was the Royals English-as-Second-Language instructor and helped Perez learn English in 2007. He also donated one-million dollars to the Kansas City Urban Youth Academy.

He was presented the award during a pre-game press conference at Yankee Stadium before last night’s game three of the World Series.  He’s the first Royals player to win the award, named for the great Pittsburgh outfielder who died in a plane crash while on a humanitarian mission in 1972.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals are on a budget-cutting spree and some inside observers expect a lot of faces from 2024 will be elsewhere either because of trades or because of free agency.

John Denton of MLB.com recently took a look at the possibilities, suggesting Ryan Helsley won’t be back next year and Nolan Arenado probably doesn’t want “to go through a rebuild”  although Arenado, whose offensive production has declined in the lasts three years, has a no-trade clause in his contract.

Paul Goldschmidt will be a free agent in a few days and the Cardinals, who have watched his offensive production decline in the last two years, do not appear likely to want to re-sign him to the size of contract he would want.

Helsley is seen as prime trade bait, as is Sonny Gray.

Lance Lynn had a solid season but it was a one-year deal. Kyle Gibson and Andrew Kittredge also could go.  The departure of Goldschmidt, Gibson, Kittredge, and Lynn would cut $60 million from the payroll—and cutting the payroll is a big goal of team management.

Another name being kicked around as a soon-to-be former Redbird is Wilson Contreras.

Regardless of how all of this turns out, the 2025 Cardinals will be younger, cheaper, and more future-focused.

(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City have made the Oakland, Los Angeles, Las Vegas Raiders their 13th straight victim (counting last year’s playoffs) and will be the last NFL team to lose a game this season. They continue to build strength in a season notable for its losses with low-risk, high-return trades.

The Raiders’ 20 points was three more than the Chiefs defense has been averaging this season and the first time the Raiders have hit the 20-mark since September 29. The last score came with little time left in the game and the outcome of the game beyond doubt.

The KC defense might have saved the game for the Chiefs after a Mahomes interception left the Raiders within smelling distance of the end zone line by stopping the Raiders on a fourth-and-goal from the three-yard line.

The Chiefs defense held the Raiders to just 33 yards rushing, less than 1.6 yards per attempt. It’s the second time this year Las Vegas has averaged less than two yards per rush. It’s happened only two other times in all of the NFL games played this year.

Receiver DeAndre Smith, obtained earlier in the week in a trade with the Titans, was targeted three times and caught two passes for 29 yards. The Chiefs gave up a conditional fifth-round draft pick to get him.

Yesterday, the Chiefs did it again by dealing for Patriot’s linebacker Josh Uche, an edge rusher with four years of NFL experience as an edge rusher. They gave a 6th round draft pick to get him. He’ll be a free agent at the end of the year. He has a couple of sacks. The Chiefs defense has recorded only 15 sacks in their first seven games, tying them for 26th in the NFL with three other teams, including the Patriots. They have only four players with more than two sacks this season.

The trade deadline is next Tuesday.

So far, the chiefs have filled vacancies caused by injuries and have taken steps to strengthen the squad during the season. If, as things evolve, they have a surplus of talent at the end of the year, they also will have an attractive assemblage of trade bait to use for off-season lineup strengthening.

(MIZ)—-The Missouri Tigers have struggled to live up to their pre-season hype as a championship playoff possibility and their 35-0 loss to Alabama has left them hanging on to a national ranking by their fingernails.  They’re 25th and 21st in the top-25 polls with a quarterback whose hurting and a backup who has been ineffective, as well as a vaunted defense that two big-time teams (Texas A&M and Alabama) have vaulted over by combines scores of 75-10.

Brady Cook, already limited by a high ankle sprain, left the game with a hand injury after striking a defensive player’s helmet while throwing a pass. He finished his day with only 30 passing yards on 7 completions. As we prepared this post, Coach Drinkwitz had not indicated the severity of the injury.

Missouri has its second bye week of the season this weekend, giving the walking rounded some time to recover. Two other key parts of the offense, running back Nate Noel and wide receiver Mookie Cooper, missed the Alabama game.

The Tigers will have to run the table against Oklahoma (4-4), South Carolina (4-3), Mississippi State (1-7), and Arkansas  (5-3) to finish with a double-digit win total, a possibility but backup QB Drew Pine will have step up his game.  So far, he’s 35 for 55, but only for 248 yards and his three interceptions against Alabama were killers.

Pyne has not been able to show the results he had in 2022 when he took over at Notre Dame and led the Fighting Irish to an 8-2 record the rest of the way that season, throwing for 2,021 yards, 22 touchdowns and only three interceptions. Pyne should be better-prepared for the Oklahoma game. In the next two weeks, he’s likely to get most of the practice snaps—if not all of them, depending on Cook’s injuries.

(MIZ, Volume II)—Basketball is here.

An exhibition game against Lincoln University, in Jefferson City, went the way it was expected to go—a rout for the Missouri Tigers against the Lincoln Blue Tigers 90-45 and it wasn’t that close.  But it was the highest scoring total since the Tigers ran off 92 against Missouri Southern in 2015 when the margin was one point more, 92-46.  Missouri’s biggest lead was 50 points with 8:44 to go in the first half.

It was the first competition for Missouri’s top-five recruit class and 13th rated transfer class.

Junior guard Mark Mitchell scored 15 points in the first half and finished with 22.  Caleb Grill (pictured), who sat out of most of last year with a wrist injury, had 20 as the two shot 14 of 17 from the field and 7 of 8 from the rim.  Missouri led 53-19 at the half.

Real basketball for Missouri begins next Monday night at Memphis.

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There’s no break in the recruiting work in college basketball these days.  A week before the regular season opened, Missouri announced it has landed four-star power forward Nicholas Randall for the Class of 2025.

Randall is a St. Louis native now playing for Compass Prep in Chandler Arizona, a 6-7, 225 pound forward ranked 120th in the recruiting class by 247Sports. Missouri beat out Creighton and San Francisco to get him. He joins Tolton High School (Columbia) point guard Aaron Rowe in a recruiting class already ranked 69th in the country with plenty of time for additional signings.

(BLUES)—The St. Louis Blues have started the season at 5-4.  It’s early but there are questions abut how competitive the Blues will be against teams already ahead of them in the standings. They were impressive with their 5-1 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs only to fall 5-2 to the Montreal Canadians who went into the game with three losses and a tie in their last four games. (ZOU)

—-Now, the wheels go round and round—

(NASCAR)—Tyler Reddick pulled off another of his epic drives to win a spot in the final four for the NASCAR Cup.  Reddick, whose gutsy drive in a wreck-damaged car at Talladega kept his championship hopes alive two weeks ago, went from third to first on the last lap at Las Vegas, sweeping past defending NASCAR champion Ryan Blaney on the last turn. The win makes him the second driver locked into the final four for the last race of the year in two weeks.

At Talladega, Reddick was five points below the playoff cutline with five laps left and was caught up in the largest crash in NASCAR history.  “I was spinning around backward and hit front and back,” he said after the race, but he kept his car on the track and finished 20th, ahead of six of his contenders and well into the field for the playoffs.

His banzai final lap at Las Vegas carried to a two-tenths of a second win over Blaney, who now almost needs to win next weekend on the Martinsville short track to defend his championship in the season’s last race at Phoenix.

Reddick’s last-lap heroics drew enthusiastic reviews from team co-owner Michael Jordan, the NBA Hall of Famer. “Little kid drove his ass off,” said Jordan. He just let go. He just went for it and I’m glad. We needed it.”

Little kid? Reddick is five feet, five inches tall.  Jordan is 6-9.

(INDYCAR)—A case of Patomania broke out in Mexico City in the leadup to the Formula 1 race there last week.  INDYCAR star and Mexican native Pato O’Ward was there for his first ride in a Formula 1 car in his native land.  He wasn’t there to qualify for the race, but to try out the car on the Autodromo Hermano Rodriguez.  And he did pretty well, actually, with a hot lap time of 1:19.245 in his McLaren in the first of three practice sessions.

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown praised O’Ward as “the most popular driver in INDYCAR” whose popularity is “growing by the moment.”  He thought the practice runs were important to building a fan base in Mexico. “I believe that people who like Formula One will also like INDYCAR if they’re unfamiliar with it.”

The other two practice sessions were for Formula 1 regulars who turned increasingly faster laps until Ferrari’s Carlo Sainz topped the field with a lap of 1:15.946.

INDYCAR is in discussions to run one of the series races in Mexico. O’Ward says he’s been saying “for years” that an INDYCAR race would draw well in Mexico and he thinks fan reaction to his test run proves his point.

Brown thinks Mexico is “a huge market” for motorsports and will draw attention throughout the world to INDYCAR.

(FORMULA 1)—News accounts sometimes close with a “kicker,” usually an anecdote intended to amuse the consumer after a diet of serios stuff.

This is the first time we have done such a thing.  Ferrari put its two drivers on the podium after the Mexican Grand Prix, with Carlos Sainz the winner, McLaren’s Lando Norris in second, and Charles Leclerc in the other Ferrari third.

In the post-race press conference, Leclerc described his near-crash with Norris, recognizing immediately that he had said something that had had caused a penalty for points leader Max Verstappen in an earlier race. “”I was like f*** and then luckily… Oh no, oh no, I don’t want to join Max!”

Well, he is joining Max.  Formula 1 has a policy that language used in public forums “meets generally accepted standards for all audiences and broadcasts. F1 wants no “coarse [or] rude” language that might “cause offense.”  Verstappen used the same word after the Singapore Grand Prix. Leclerc will get the same penalty—an “obligation to accomplish some work of public interest.”

Here is the interesting part: When Verstappen was called to account by the race stewards, he—as a Formula 1 statement put it—“explained that the word used is ordinary in speech as he learned it, English not being his native language.” 

It appears these two guys have learned our language all too well.

Formula 1 has four races left and four post-race news conferences left for drivers to practice their English language.

(Image credits: Perez—KC Royals; Caleb Grill—Instagram; Uche—Chiefswire; Reddick—NASCAR; OWard—Bob Priddy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Young and the Old 

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Tomorrow is—–well, you know.

(I thought that we deserve some nicer things in this space today than the intense reviews of the campaigns and campaigners that we have been posting.  I’ve been saving this one for just such a day and suddenly in this year in which age has become such a headline, this seems kind of appropriate.)

One of my former reporters, Drew Vogel, who was on the Missourinet staff in the 1970s, has gone on to a thirty-year-plus career as a well-respected Ohio nursing home administrator. He wrote this in his blog on July 6, 2019:

Ramblin’ on a Saturday morning –Youngest and Oldest of us

I recently read a story out of Kansas City about a seven-year-old who dresses up like a policeman and visits nursing homes.  He cheers up residents by giving hugs and writing them tickets for being “too cute.”

There’s an eleven-year-old girl in Arkansas who is CEO of an organization that raises money to grant simple wishes to nursing home residents – things like a Happy Meal or a pair of slippers.  She’s raised over a quarter of a million dollars.

Too often the most significant thing missing from an older person’s life is not a spouse or friends who have passed away, not lack of money or even reduced creative or intellectual stimulation.

No, it’s the disappearance of children from their lives.

I witnessed it myself.

When we moved to Florida in 1980, my son Bobby was seven or eight years old.  We didn’t have a boat, but we went fishing a lot.  Pier fishing.

In those days you didn’t even need a license to fish off the pier.   After I left Florida 30 years ago the state changed that.  For the greater good, you now have to buy a salt water fishing license to pier-fish.

Fish tend to bite when the tides are running. Coming in or going out.  Doesn’t seem to matter.

Between the tides – it’s called a slack tide – the fish take a siesta.

We were fishing from the pier at Ft. Desoto State Park near St. Petersburg.  Bobby was the only youngster on the pier.  I was the only working-age adult.  There were maybe eight retired gentlemen.

When the tide stopped, Bobby noticed several of the men were still catching fish.  He went to see how they were doing it.

“Dad,” he said running back to me a few minutes later, “give me some money.”  He needed to buy squid for bait and a few little tiny hooks.

The grandpas on the pier had showed him how to catch the angel fish that nibbled on the barnacles attached to the pilings.

Bobby caught a few, but every time one of the retired gentlemen snagged one they would yell for Bobby and put the fish in his bucket.

At one point I told Bobby to quit bothering people.  One of the guys said, “He’s not bothering anyone.  All our grandkids are up North.  We love having little boys out here on the pier.”

I never mentioned it again.

We took about two dozen fish home that day – all angel fish.  Bobby and I fileted them, put them in a pan with some butter and lemon and stuck it in the oven.

Dinner was on Bobby that night.  Boy, was he proud.  And it was all because of a connection between kids and seniors.

I was administrator of the Ohio Veterans Home in Georgetown, Ohio the year the H1N1 virus was going around – the Swine Flu.

I cancelled trick-or-treat in the facility that year because there was so much of the influenza in the county.

I nearly got lynched.

The residents, many of whom were big tough, old war veterans – guys who had fought in combat – cried foul.  They confronted me at a Resident Council meeting.

“We love it when the kids visit us,’ was the general context of their complaint.

“And I like it when you guys are breathing,” I said.

I won.  They begrudgingly admitted I was right.

I did dress up like the Swine Flu, complete with a pig head, at Halloween that year!

At another facility, the Activities Director had a baby.  Her husband worked out of town and was away four nights a week.  I allowed her to bring the baby to work while she was arraigning daycare.

That little girl had about ten doting babysitters anytime she was in the building.

The point is that there is a special bond between kids and our “seasoned citizens.”

I’m convinced it goes beyond grandparents getting a chance to “do it right this time around.”

It’s much deeper than that.  There’s a camaraderie between the newest and the oldest of our society – and I suspect of any society, anywhere in the world, anytime in history.

I’ve have always considered life to be a bell curve.  When a person is born we feed them, change their diapers and generally take care of them.

At the end of life ….. well, you see the similarity.

Shel Silverstein illustrated it best.  He’s the guy who wrote Johnny Cash’s big hit “A Boy Named Sue.”

But, Shel Silverstein was much more than the writer of novelty songs.
One of my favorites, Silverstein was an author, poet, cartoonist, songwriter and playwright – and a member of the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame.

One of his most poignant poems dealt with the relationship between kids and senior citizens.

The Little Boy and The Old Man – by Shel Silverstein

Said the little boy, ‘Sometimes I drop my spoon.’
Said the old man, ‘I do that too.’
The little boy whispered, ‘I wet my pants.’
‘I do that too,’ laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, ‘I often cry.’
The old man nodded, ‘So do I.’
‘But worst of all,’ said the boy, ‘it seems
Grown-ups don’t pay attention to me.’
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
‘I know what you mean,’ said the little old man.

Thanks, Drew.

The Power Under Our Feet

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If you think fossil fuels are the only way to power our lives, you need to go to Iceland. If Iceland doesn’t tickle your fancy (and don’t underestimate Iceland on this score; it’s surprising.), go to Texas.

If you think windmills should be forbidden because they kill birds, that nuclear power should be abolished because it leaves behind tons of dangerous waste, that electric-powered vehicles are actually uneconomical because it costs a lot of gas, oil, and coal for power plants to generate full  battery charges, that the use of oil, gas, and coal shorten lives, that water cannot turn enough turbines to light our cities—-you need to go to Iceland.  Or Texas.

Iceland first. We learned about this on a trip there just before the pandemic set in. We were attracted by the opportunity to see the northern lights.

And we did on a really cold night (we went in November).  Our guide—we called him “Fred” because we would have dislocated our jaws trying to pronounce name—took this one.

A 2020 study, the latest study we have seen, shows at least 90% of all homes in Iceland are NOT heated by nuclear, wind, or fossil fuel-generated power.  That study shows, in fact, that 99.94% of electricity generated in Iceland was geothermal or hydro-generated. Underground hot water and the water that powers the great waterfalls, in fact, provided 99.94% of all electricity generated in Iceland that year. And more than 70% of the total energy used in that country came from geothermal sources. The country wants to be carbon neutral by 2040.

Iceland has a lot of waterfalls—a lot!

Many of them are spectacular and they flow year-around. Why? Because glaciers melt from the bottom up in Iceland, even as winter puts down several feet of snow on top of them every year. The result is a lot of hydropower generation.

As far back as the Vikings, people have taken warm baths and washed their clothes in warm water even on the coldest days because of geothermal water-–water heated by the volcanic activity that created Iceland thousands of years ago and continues to alter its size today.

The number one use of geothermal heat in 2020 was space heating, then heating swimming pools, melting snow, fish farming, industry, and greenhouses (This is the Fridheimar     greenhouse that covers about 2.7 acres that uses pure  glacier water heated in a thermal pool to grow eighteen percent of the tomatoes used by the country—370 tons of them a year—on 20-foot high, or more, tomato vines throughout which about 1200 peaceful bumbleees maintain pollination, each of them capable of pollinating 2,000 flowers a day. The incredible tomato soup and bread for lunch are to die for.)

The Capital of Reykjavick, where about sixty percent of the country’s people live, has clear streets and sidewalks on snowy days because those streets and sidewalks are heated.  Water ranging from 100-300 degrees centigrade heats homes and is then diverted under the streets and sidewalks at 30 degrees centigrade (about 86 of our Fahrenheit degrees).

This issue has been highlighted by recent news coverage of some volcanoes that have become active in recent months. Some of the coverage has focused on the closure of the Blue Lagoon, the country’s most popular tourist attraction.  We were there.  And we floated in the geothermal waters.  The only way we could have drowned was by turning over and having somebody sit on us.

The lagoon’s water is a mixture of freshwater discharged from the Svartsengi Power Station and seawater.

Iceland didn’t officially recognize the power beneath national feet until about fifty years ago.  That’s when energy price inequities forced the national government to address the issue.   Orkustofnun, the National Energy Authority, recommended increased use of hydro and geothermal power to stabilize energy costs.  The Arab Oil Embargo that created an energy and economic crisis throughout the world led the Icelandic government to speed up its adoption of geothermal alternatives.

You might think that’s great for Iceland but the only significant place for geothermal activity here is Yellowstone National Park.  You are wrong. Take a look at this map of geothermal resources prepared by the Southern Methodist University  Geothermal Laboratory.

Texas might not look so hot in this map but it is a hotbed of geothermal energy development. The state well-known for its oil industry, says writer Saul Eblin for The Hill, is poised to dominate what boosters hope will be America’s next great energy boom: a push to tap the heat of the subterrnean earth for electricity and industry.”  He says Texas “is fueling a boom in startups that seek to take the issue nationally.

In March, he says, solar generation in Texas “eclipsed coal both in terms of power generation and market share.  Texas also has more utility-scale wind and solar capacity than any other state” although California still leads in rooftop solar power generation.

Last year, the Texas legislature passed four bills with only one “no” vote that will create new opportunities for geothermal drilling. Eblin says eleven of the nation’s 27 geothermal startups last year were in Texas and the momentum is building.

A few days ago, he reports, Bedrock Energy had a display at a commercial real estate company in Austin showing a new geothermal-powered heatng and cooling system. A few days earlier, Quaise, a drilling company, filed for a permit from state regulators to start field-testing drills that use high-powered radio waves to drill through dense rock. A company in Houston called Dervo, is building a 400-megawatt facility in Utah and the military is looking at geothermal source of electricity. Sage Geosystems soon will start using a fracked well to store renewable energy, a big step toward its goal of producing a reliable source of geothermal energy.

There are those who laugh at the electrification of America, particularly the growing emphasis on electric vehcles, claiming that the production fo electricity still requires fossil fuels and windmills and solar farms are nice but they limit use of land increasingly needed for food production.

But the heated water beneath our feet leapfrogs those arguments.  The SMU map indicates Missouri can produce 50-60 Milliwatts per square meter from underground water. One watt equals one millon milliwatts. Our calculation says Missouri has 180,540,000 square meters.  If we understand the math, that means 9,027,000,000-10,832,400,000 watts of geothermal power generation is beneath our feet.

If we do our math correctly, our largest utility, Ameren, generates 10,000 megawatts a year in Missouri, or about 10,000,000 watts per year.

Whether geothermal generation is an alternative for Ameren, we don’t know. But the company came under new federal pressure recently with the adoption of EPA new rules requiring coal-fired power plants to have new carbon pollution controls. The Post-Dispatch has reported more than half of Ameren’s power is generated by coal. Only Texas generates more power with coal. And Ameren’s Labadie plant in Franklin county is the number two power plant producer in the country.

So it appears we have enough thermal energy under our feet to generate as much as Ameren produces from all of its power plants, whether fossil or nuclear fueled in a year.  And Missouri isn’t even close to the geothermal potential other states who not only can serve their customers well but can export energy to other parts of the country, including to Missouri.

We have mentioned in earlier posts, one advantage to studying journalism in college was that no math courses were required.  If we have misunderstood these calculations, we welcome corrections.

Even if we are wrong, the experience of Iceland and elsewhere as well as the growing experience in Texas shows there is non-fossil energy enough beneath our feet to keep our lights on and to fuel our commerce indefinitely. But energy is politicized here. The fossil fuel industry slings a lot of money around in Washington and on campaign trails.  The Greenies, however, are making progress, incremental though it might be.

We might not be able to operate our cars on water but they can operate on the electricity generated by water, steaming hot water.  A 500-mile affordable electric car is growing closer.  But if we want to see the reality of a society powered by non-fossil fuels, Iceland is a flight of only five hours from Chicago O’Hare Airport. Take a coat, even in summer. It’s pretty far north.

Iceland as a country is one big ground source heat pump, north to south, east to west.

Super hot water beneath OUR feet is something to think about even here in relatively cool Missouri.

(Photo Credit: Bob Priddy)

 

Sports: Getting Over the Hump; For the Want of a Cup of Gas; UFL Playoffs

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(CARDINALS)—The St. Louis Cardinals went 13-12 in May, a record that might surprise some folks who once saw them nine games under .500 as late as May 11.  The Cardinals closed out the month winning 12 of their last 16 games and got to break even on the next-to=last day of the Month before losing to Cincinnati.

The turnaround was fueled by some bats waking up to support the pitching staff. The Cardinals hit only 19 home runs in April. In May they hit 30.  They had 23 more hits and scored 13 more runs in May than they did in April, most of that in the second two-thirds.  They stole 17 bases in May, only 11 in April.

The Redbirds were 13-13 in April, 1-3 in March.

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals have shown consistency in the first two months of the season, posting identical 17-11 records in April and May.  As of the beginning of play last night,  Salvador Perez was seventh in batting in both leagues, with a .315 average.

Bobby Witt Jr. was ninth in batting at .313 and was second in stolen bases with 17.

(BASEBALL STATS, GENERALLY)—Going into last night’s games, ESPN’s ranking of the top 50 players in hitting and pitching listed these Missouri players.

Pitching—Royals Seth Lugo is number two behind Ranger Suarez of the Phillies in ERA, Suarez at 1.70 and Lugo at 1.72. Both lead the majors with nine victories. The Royals have two other pitchers in the top 50—Brady Singer is twelfth with an ERA of 2.63 although he’s only 4-2; Cole Ragens is 31st in ERA at 3.21 with a 4-4 record. The only Cardinals starting pitcher on the top 50 is Kyle Gibson, fiftieth, with a 3.60 ERA and a 4-2 record.

Masyn Winn’s .299 average ranks 14th among major league hitters.

(HAWKS)—It wasn’t particularly pretty, but the St. Louis Battlehawks locked in a home UFL playoff last weekend, slipping past their top division rival, the San Antonio Brahmas. 13-12. Both teams finish the regular season 7-3 but St. Louis won both of the regular season games and therefore gets home field advantage for the playoff fame next Sunday.

The ‘Hawks led 10-0 at the half but the Brahmas But the Brahmas reeled off twelve unanswered points in the second half and completed a two-point conversion that would have given them a 14-12 lead. But the Battlehawks won a challenge that maintained a San Antonio player was an ineligible receiver downfield.

(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City Chiefs are beginning the serious preparations for the 2024=25 (they hope) season this week. The last of the voluntary workouts begins today with the mandatory week-long spring training camp starting next Wednesday, the 11th.

(MIZ)—Former Tiger lineman Justin Smith is one of 77 players and nine coaches nominated for induction into the College Football Hall of Fame this year. Smith, a Jefferson City native, played for the Tigers, 1998-2000.  He was a Freshman All-American and made the national All-American first team in 2000. He still ranks fourth in sacks.  He had a long pro career with seven years with the Bengals and seven more with the 49ers.  Inductees will be announced early next year.

Tigers Roar and So Do Engines

(NASCAR)—There’s a car in there somewhere—

We thought it would be the yellow car of Ryan Blaney who had the race in hand, especially after this chief challenger, Christopher Bell, developed engine trouble.  But it was the blue car of Blaney teammate Austin Cindric that did a furious burnout at the start-finish line at Worldwide Technology Raceway just across the river from St. Louis.

Blaney, the defending NASCAR Cup champion still looking for his first win of 2024,who had made his last pit stop was just one lap before Cindric’s last stop, ran out of gas on the next to last lap, had just enough fuel to run the last two laps and to celebrate the win. His tank went dry just before he got the white flag signaling one lap was left.

Cindric had not won a race in 85 outings since becoming a rookie winner of the Daytona 500 at thes start of the 2022 season and had recorded only one top-ten finish this year.  He admitted afterwards that he had become so unfamiliar with the NASCAR winners’ rituals that he almost fell off the roof of his car when he shut it down and climbed out to celebrate.

“It was like my first time all over again, it’s been so long.”  He said his win “is everything. It’s absolutely everything,” but he acknowledged that the third-place car in the race wound up winning because the two better cars—of Blaney and Bell—encountered late problems.

Bell wound up seventh with teammate Martin Truex Jr., bump-pushing him to the finish line. Truex, who had run into problems early and was far out of contention, finished 34th.  Blaney coasted the final lap and was credited within finishing 24th.

Blaney finished 24th after coasting around the track with a silent engine.

(INDYCAR)—Years ago, IndyCar driver Tom Sneva was called the “gas man” because he stood on the gas and became the first driver to turn official 200 mph laps at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and was the fastest qualifier for the 500 four times.

There’s a new “gas man” in IndyCar today, Scott Dixon, who still goes fast at the age of 43 (he’ll be 44 next month) has been winning a lot of races because he “makes fuel,” or stretches his fuel loads father than other drivers.  Last weekend’s race on the streets of Detroit added another example of that nickname by stretching his fuel to finish a full second ahead of Marcus Ericsson.

 

It’s his 58th career win, second to the legendary A. J. Foyt, who had 67 wins his career. Dixon made only two pit stops while most other teams made four or more. “A lot of guys that you know are going to be racing for a championship had a rough day,” he said of the race. His win has elevated him to the top of the point standings, twenty points ahead of last year’s champion, Alex Palou, who finished 16th, and 33 up on Will Power, who was sixth.

(Photo credits: Bob Priddy)

Some Things Are Harder Than Others

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This has been a long and tiring week with a lot of travel and not enough time to meet some domestic responsibilities or compose some elegant verbiage, so we’re going to just pass along this piece of philosophy—a poster my friend Karen Burns (she and her husband Rick Gevers are my hosts on racing weekends in Indianapolis) keeps at her home office desk.

In these turbulent times, some things are harder than others.

Brian Andreas is an Iowa native author and artist.  If you want to know more about him, check Wikipedia.

And if you’re in Indianapolis, drop by the Zoo. It’s a really nice, though small, place that’s doing some interesting things. That’s where Karen works. It’s a great small zoo where I have had close encounters with a sloth, some kangaroos, some free-flying exotic birds, and where there’s a great Orangutan facility.

She gave me a t-shirt a few years ago, when the new facility opened, that proclaims humans are genetically 96.4% Orangutans.

National Geographic told me a few years ago that I also am 1.5% Neanderthal.

Such information suggests you and I should be a little less arrogant about our self-assured Homo Sapien-ness.

Sometimes it’s awfully hard to love the world we superior beings wake up to every morning. But let’s try.

The silent letter

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We have a big stack of table games that we like to play with friends. One that we like is Bananagram.  I often complain because, unlike Scrabble, there are no points for the letters. And without points, how do we determine a winner?

Nancy just unzips the cloth banana and spills out dozens of tiles with different letters. We turn them upside down and pick the proper starting number of them (usually trying to pick tiles from various parts of the pile—as if that makes any difference) and then each person starts his own little word-building.  The end result is a crossword-looking series without any lines and with no clues.  If you have leftover tiles after you spell your first series of words, you say the proper word and everybody draws another tile. The person who runs out of tiles first is the winner.

But there are no points!!!   How do we identify a winner after a night of full-contact Bannanagram if the losers of each game don’t get points?

We also play other word games such as Quiddler and Wordspiel.  And other non-word card games including one with five suits called Five Crowns.  And games that aren’t word games such as Labyrinth,  Dominoes, and Rummikub.

Whether it’s because we play word games at the table or because we make a living out of stringing words into columns or articles or books or speeches, we find the English language pretty fascinating.  Maybe it goes back to one of our first jobs being the proofreader of the National Broom and Broom Corn News, which had an unpleasantly picky and prickly editor, in Arcola, Illinois or because we had some pretty good English teachers along the way.  (The NB&BCN was a contract print job that the Arcola Record-Herald published for the broom corn industry that was big in central Illinois then).

That’s probably why we had to do some hard thinking when we saw an article in Mental Floss by Michele Debczak about the only letter in our alphabet that cannot be silent.

(Let’s pause here for a bit so you can ruminate on this. Come back whenever you’re ready.)

The English language is a really hard language and a lot of us never learn it or never quit learning it.  The other day I admonished a friend for saying something such as, “George and myself are going to the game next Friday.” That sentence construction is fingernails on a blackboard.  Suppose George wasn’t going with you.  Would you say, “Myself is going to the game Friday?”  Think of a sentence that way and you’ll probably say or write it correctly.

Psychosis.   Gnu.  (In Africa a couple of years ago, I took a picture of several Wildebeests standing around.  I called it “Gnus Conference.”)  Mnemonic.  Silent letters.

Some letters have multiple personalities. Hard and soft “c,” or “g.” A great example is “Ghoti,” which is pronounced “fish.”  You know, “gh” as in “enough.”  “O” as in “women,” and “ti” as in “action.”

Ms. Debczak points to some foreign words we have appropriated for our own use that have silent letters.  French gives us the silent “z” as in “Chez.” Spanish gives us a silent “j,” as in “marijuana.”  Come to think of it, the “z” in Debczak probably is silent.

She apparently has read the Merriam-Webster Dictionary because she says the only letter in that entire dictionary that is never, ever silent is (drum roll):

V

If the “v” were silent, we would be saying “I loe you.”  Politicians would proclaim “ictory” after citizens had cast their “otes.”  Poetry would be “erse.”  Olive oil would be extra “irgin olie oil”  We’d have to find another word to describe these political times. “Diisie” would not work.

Get out your dictionary. Look at all the “V” words.

Let us know if you find one with a silent “V.”   And once you’ve done that, find the rhyme for “orange.”

 

Motivational posters

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Your correspondent dislikes walking into a room—usually somebody’s office—decorated with motivational posters.  You know them.  Lovely pictures with some syrupy words about success, or greatness, or achievement, or—motivation.

The motivational poster industry probably has been around forever; I think I have read of some motivational sayings painted on the walls at Pompeii.  But they’ve become noticeably popular in the last two decades or so.  We will leave it to various “ologists” to study what has changed about us to warrant such treacle.

There always was this feeling that anybody who really needed one of these saccharine decorations must have been short of self-esteem—or working for bosses who think a treacly poster can be a transformative influence on the employee.

I know several apparently well-adjusted folks who have these things on their offices.  As far as I know they do not spend any time every day meditating on them and pondering the significance of the message. They seem to be perfectly normal people who do their work competently every day.  I’ve known some of them long enough to know that the poster in their office has not changed the high-quality work they have always done anyway.

All of this is why my newsroom work station, for several years, sported a calendar from Despair.com (https://despair.com/collections/demotivators) that countered the hard-hitting soupy sayings on walls elsewhere in the building.  Every couple of months there was a new mini-poster taped under my name thingie.

Now, understand that news people have a tendency to be kind of anti-establishment, independent, unruly, and untidy souls who have an inborn pride in being to some degree as manageable as a wheelbarrow full of frogs.  Or cats.  Or Beagle pups. We are only slightly more manageable than a wheelbarrow full of canaries.

But my work area used to be decorated with beautiful pictures such as one showing several hands hoisting a trophy with the big word, “Winning” beneath and the ensuing paragraph: “Because nothing says, ‘You’re a loser’ more than owning a motivational poster about being a winner.”

There are several others—enough that I did not have time to acquire them all.

One that some legislator with a sense of humor might want to hang in the outer office where visitors can see it. If features a lovely early evening sunset-illuminated Nation’s Capitol and its reflection in a mall pool.  It says “Government,” and beneath it are the words, “If you think the problems we create are bad, just wait until you see our solutions.”

Apparently there is an alternate contemplation: “They may seem inefficient and feckless at times, but your Representatives in Washington just want what’s best for you assuming you’re a major corporation. Otherwise, you’re pretty mush screwed.”

Another poster shows a stack of newspapers with the big word “Media,” followed by, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies right to our faces.”

And there’s one labled “Conspiracy” that says, “Never attribute to stupidity that which can easily be explained by a pathological blood lust for control.”

Or one showing hands raised in high fives and labeled, “Teams,” with the note, “Together we can do the work of one.”

And of course the poster reading “Motivation,” which advises, “If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job.  The kind robots will be doing soon.”

I’m waiting for the poster that says “Treacle.”  The accompanying line should be a pip.

The Greatest Accomplishment

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We suppose our former governors have, from time to time, been asked about their greatest accomplishments during their terms. Lately, it has become part of the regular business of wrapping up their time in office to publish a glossy, colorful booklet praising themselves.  But apart from the self-serving publications, what do past governors really think is the best thing they did.

About twenty years ago or so, Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley, published at Southeast Missouri State University, printed a letter from then-former Governor Arthur M. Hyde about “some problem of statewide interest which occurred during my administration.”  The letter was to Dr. Joseph A. Serena, the then-President of then-Southeast Missouri State Teachers College (since 1973 it has been Southeast Missouri State University).

Hyde, a Republican, had been elected in what was seen as one of the great upsets in Missouri elections history in 1920. He immediately cleaned house in then-patronage dominated state government by throwing out Democrats given jobs by previous administrations.

The demand for a modern highway system led to the creation of a State Highway Commission during his term. Public education needs led to the assessment of real estate at its true value, “thereby writing a taxable foundation under the public schools upon which good schools could be built.” He listed the purchase of state parks and putting state charitable institutions under non-partisan control as important accomplishments.

“To my mind, however, the matter of greatest public import was the ‘cleanup’ of the Republican party,” he wrote. What he next wrote about the Republican Party of his time is applicable to either of our major political parties today.

“Á political party justifies its existence only when it offers itself to the people as an instrument or a tool which the people may use to bring about necessary reform, or to accomplish political results.  All political problems are reflected in party action. All matters of governmental action are political matters.  A carpenter cannot use a dull or an “unset” saw to do fine work.  The people cannot use a corrupt or a selfish party to achieve needed political changes. That the realignment within the Republican party was used by the people to accomplish great results is proved by the recitals of the early part of this letter. That realignment is forcing changes within the opposing party.  What a happy day for Missouri when the people have two effective instruments with which to work, when party campaigns are contests as to which party has best served the State, and which offers the most constructive program for the future.”

We offer Hyde’s words less as a commentary on present situations and concerns than as an observation that both of our major political parties are required to do significant soul-searching from time to time if they are to be “effective instruments” to best serve the state or nation and offer “the most constructive program for the future.”

What a happy day it will be, indeed, if we ever reach Hyde’s ideal that the appeal for power must be based on two instruments offering the most constructive service to the people.

(photo credit: 1921 Official Manual of the State of Missouri)

 

The Past, The Present, The Future

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(The beginning of a new year is a frequent opportunity to look back, to ponder how the past has led us to where we are, and the degree to which yesterday should shape tomorrow.  Dr. Crane tells us each has its place.)

PRECEDENT

Precedent is solidified experience. In the realm of ideas it is canned goods.

It is very useful when fresh ideas are not to be had.

There are advantages in doing things just because they always have been done. You know what will happen. When you do new things you do not know what will happen.

Success implies not only sound reasoning, but also the variable factor of how a thing will work, which is found out only by trying it.

Hence, the surest road to success is to use a mixture of precedent and initiative. Just how much of each you will require is a matter for your judgment.

To go entirely by precedent you become a mossback. You are safe, as a setting hen or a hiving bee is safe. Each succeeding generation acts the same way. There is a level of efficiency, but no progress.

Boards, trustees, and institutions lay great stress upon precedent, as they fear responsibility. To do as our predecessors did shifts the burden of blame a bit from our shoulders.

The precedent is the haven of refuge for them that fear to decide.

Courts of law follow precedent, on the general theory that experience is more just than individual decision.

Precedent, however, tends to carry forward the ignorance and injustice of the past.

Mankind is constantly learning, getting new views of truth, seeing new values in social justice. Precedent clogs this advance. It fixes and perpetuates the wrongs of man as much as the rights of man.

Hence, while the many must trust to precedent, a few must always endeavor to break it, to make way for juster conclusions.

Precedent is the root, independent thinking is the branch of the human tree. Our decisions must conform to the sum of human experience, yet there must be also the fresh green leaf of present intelligence.

We cannot cut the root of the tree and expect it to live, neither can we lop off all the leafage of the tree and expect it to live.

The great jurist, such as Marshall, is one who not only knows what the law is, but what the law ought to be. That is, to his knowledge of precedent he adds his vision of right under present conditions.

Precedent is often the inertia of monstrous iniquity. War, for instance, is due to the evil custom of nations who go on in the habit of war-preparedness. The problem of the twentieth century is to batter down this precedent by the blows of reason, to overturn it by an upheaval of humanity.

Evil precedent also lurks in social conditions, in business, and in all relations of human rights. The past constantly operates to enslave the present.

We must correct the errors of our fathers if we would enable our children to correct ours.

Our reverence for the past must be continually qualified by our reverence for the future…

The momentum of what has been must be supplemented by the steam of original conviction, and guided by the intelligence and courage of the present.

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Humanity’s Control

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(We begin a new year next weekend. Many will say, “It’s good to get 2021 behind us.”  But changing the page of a calendar does not wipe out lingering fears and uncertainties. Nor does it erase lingering joy, lingering hope, lingering striving for truth.  Cruelty and inhumanity remain.  But so, says Dr. Frank Crane, remains ideals that can overcome that cruelty and inhumanity. We must, however, constantly be on our guard that our ideals do not become the cruelty and inhumanity they should overcome.)

THE HUMANITIES VERSUS THE IDEALS

The humanities are the ordinary universal feelings, such as family affection, aversion to cruelty, love of justice and of liberty.

The ideals are the so-called big enthusiasms, as religion, patriotism, reform, and the like.

The humanities are sometimes called the red passions; the ideals the white passions.

The great institutions of the race have been formed and kept alive by the white passions. These include churches, political parties, nations, and various societies and associations, secret and public.

The progress of mankind has been made through institutions, embodying ideals, which we may call the centrifugal force. The humanities have always pulled against this, and may be termed the centripetal force.

Thus, although great ideals present themselves to men as beneficial, yet in the carrying out of them men often become cruel, unjust, and tyrannical. So the greatest crimes of earth are committed under the influence of movements designed to do the greatest good.

Under the church we have seen persecution, a ruthless disregard of human feeling, families torn asunder, opinion coerced, bodies tortured.

The humanities in time destroyed the baleful power of the religious ideal, its dreams of dominance and its inhuman fanaticism. Plain pity and sympathy battered down the monstrous structure of iron idealism. The horrors of the medieval inquisition and the dark intolerance of puritanism had to yield to the humanities.

Most of the great tragedies have been the crushing out of human and natural feeling by some ideal which, once helpful, has become monstrous. Such were the Greek tragedies, where men were the victims of the gods.

War is the colossal force of an ideal, patriotism, where the check of the humanities has been entirely cut off.

It is supposed to ennoble men and states. It has always been the preferred occupation of the noble class, kings and courtiers, because the contempt of personal feelings and the merciless sacrifice of the humanities have seemed grand and royal.

But by and by war must yield to the eternal humanities. Sheer human sympathies will abolish it.

The humanities are peculiarly of the common people. Therefore they find expression and come into political effect quickly in democracies. In the United States, for instance, the rule of a religious party or the program of patriotic militarism is impossible. We have too much red passion to permit the ascendency of white passions.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” a book of red passion, sympathy for the Negro, overthrew the “white” ideals of the slave oligarchy.

The cry of a starving mother, the protest of wronged workmen, can defeat the apparently resistless power of massed capital.

One drop of blood outweighs the most splendid scheme of the theorist.

The history of the world is the unceasing struggle of the humanities against great ideals which, crystallized into institutions, have become inhuman.