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

Posted on May 9, 2023 by bpriddy

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Down the Stretch They Come

Posted on May 8, 2023 by bpriddy

It’s like the Kentucky Derby this past weekend. The big group of horses rounds the last turn, accelerating, bumping, jostling, looking for an opening, straining for the finishing line.

And then, it’s over. Suddenly. Done. In the record books. The exhausted competitors head back to their barns.

The last week of this year’s regular legislative session begins today. All of the work, the hopes, the politicking, the lobbying, the deals and compromises, the conflicts and the consensus-building comes to a merciful end at 6 p.m. Friday.

The public has no concept of what their elected representatives go through on their behalf—or at the behest of those with power to force decisions—between early January and mid-May, especially in the weeks after Easter break when the clock begins to tick more loudly and the calendar pages fall more quickly.

The greatest responsibility the legislature has each year is passage of a state budget. This year it is $51 billion, huge, the largest budget in state history. The state is flush with money and sometimes there’s more fighting about state spending when there’s a lot than there is when there’s a little. With the little, lawmakers have to cover the basic services. With a lot, there are more pet projects, more promises to be fulfilled, more conflicts about what constitutes responsible fiscal policy.

Time of plenty tend to breed unnecessary discussions of policies that ultimately will make times of little even worse. It becomes harder to defend a system that allows consistent fiscal responsibility in good times as well as bad.

This is the week when bills become Christmas Trees, as they’re called in legislative circles—bills that begin as simple measures suddenly exploding in size as lawmakers who see their bills doomed for failure find bills with better prospects on which they can hang their issues.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes the bills finish up violating a constitutional standard that a bill can contain only one subject. Sometimes an effort to piggyback a controversial issue onto a relatively non-controversial bill kills both.

Perhaps the biggest issue involving the above scenario involves sports wagering. Hallway talk is that gambling interests will make one last push to finally get sports wagering by tacking the bill onto a Senate-passed tax bill during House debate and sending it back to the Senate for approval with no time for negotiations. The Senate must take sports wagering, which would face certain death on its own, if it wants to finally approve a more general bill that it has already passed.

If you have trouble following that description, you are not alone. Bills can become sacrificial lambs as well as becoming Christmas trees. Believe it or not, the process as a certain fascination the more you watch it. We will not try to influence your judgment about how moral or ethical that process is.

Sports wagering has at least one strong opponent in the Senate who is prepared to filibuster if the issue returns in some form from the House—and filibustering means there won’t be time for several other bills to be considered as the clock winds down.

So will the sports wagering advocates, desperate to get the issue approved after five years of previous failures, cause the death of other issues because they cannot take “no” for an answer? Again?

This is a nervous time for majority leadership in both chambers because they know every deck contains 52 wild cards at this time of year. To their credit, they’ve run the place pretty well in 2023, particularly compared the debacle of 2022. But they know their leadership legacy might rest on what happens by 6 p.m. Friday.

Everybody is excited to be coming to Jefferson City each January. But speed limits will become just roadside advisories for a lot of people after the gavel falls Friday evening.

The journalist

Posted on May 3, 2023 by bpriddy

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was last weekend. They’re filled with jokes and jabs between those who cover and those who are covered. And along the way, the people who are covered get to say some good things about journalists. Sometimes, the covered make some pointed comments about journalists.

We pause today to pay our tribute to the fellow ink-stained wretches who daily do their best to tell us about our city, our state, our nation, and our world. There are those who will dismiss this contribution as silly because they already know that reporters are biased against their viewpoint, whatever it might be. Some of those who dismiss these remarks might, in fact, claim that they know the “media” is biased because their favorite radio or television talk show host or political leader says it is, missing the irony in that position. We hope they will excuse us as we plunge ahead, using words of another written a long time ago when the press was newspapers and reporters really could be called ink-stained wretches—a title many were proud to wear. The phrase, incidentally, is of uncertain origin but has been used for decades.

In 1922, New York American writer Gene Fowler, one of the great journalists of the first third of the Twentieth Century, asked Arthur Brisbane to write about the one-thousand members of the Newspaper Club of New York. Brisbane was the editor of William Randolph Hearst’s tabloid New York Mirror. When he died in 1936, Brisbane was called “the greatest journalist in his day” by Hearst. And Damon Runyon, certainly no slouch as a 1920s writer, said, “Journalism has lost its all-time No. 1 genius.” What he wrote then about newspaper reporters rings true today among those who toil not only in newspapers but in the changing world of electronic journalism, often without pay increases for years, to responsibly report about the factors that shape our lives. We found a reprint of Brisbane’s editorial on page nineteen in the October 14, 1922 edition of The Fourth Estate, which billed itself as “a newspaper for the makers of newspapers.”

A thousand newspaper men represent, among other things, disappointment in life. Newspaper work is hard, and it does not get better as you grow older, unless you are among the few very fortunate.

Men in other professions, as they work through the years, build up a firm name professionally or in business they build up a business name. And at the end of years they have created something that goes on earning for them when they are old.

Not so with the newspaper man.

He must do every day the work by which he lives, and do it all over again.

Each day he must create his reputation anew.

His greatest asset is enthusiasm, real interest in what he sees and what he tells.

And the years are the enemies of enthusiasm.

A thousand newspapermen, however, represent something more important than several hundred kinds of disappointment. They are to our civilization what the bulb in the electric lamp is to the big factory grinding out electricity down by the waterfront. The light in the bulb tells what the factory is doing. The reporter in the newspaper tells what civilization is doing, as it works, builds, tears down, cheats, lies, deceives and slowly goes ahead.

“The electric bulb burns out, so does the newspaperman. He at least has made it possible for humanity to see more clearly and to advance with knowledge. That means satisfaction.

Newspaper work brings disillusion. After a few years a man starting out full of enthusiasm knows too much about human beings. He must begin with a great supply of hope and optimism, and a good deal of knowledge of the past and of progress in the past to avoid pessimism and gloom.

Young reporters learn that the words of great men is often unreliable. One of the best known statesmen and heroes of this country always had two reporters sent to see him by the Associated Press, that one might corroborate the other and discourage denial of what the hero had actually said.

Reporters in the very beginning learn the pitiful craving for notoriety, eagerness for publicity that obsesses their fellow citizens and that diminishes their opinion of them.

Reporters learn quite young that politics and the government of this nation are managed to a great extent by the intellectual dregs of the population. They discover that the first step toward public approval is a step down, and that discourages them,

However, newspaper work is an education. It enlightens reporter as the reporter enlightens his fellow citizens. If he can stay out of the rut, which is extremely difficult and unusual, or if he can stay in long enough to get the information he wants, then get out and try something else, the reporter usually can thank his newspaper experience.

If he stays too long and is not exceptionally fortunate, time and the current of news running through him burn him out, as the electric current burns out the bulb, and like that bulb he goes into the scrap heap.

This is written after thirty-nine years of reporting and other newspaper work, and therefore with some slight authority.

Without the work of good reporters our government, our grafters, our hypocrites, big and little, our crooks in politics, and our politics in crime would be a thousand times worse than they are. Let that repay the 1,000 newspaper men.

We often have said that being a reporter is the most exciting thing to do because reporters do something that scientists say is impossible and they do it every day. Each day reporters walk into their newsrooms not knowing what events will challenge their skills and their principles during the day. At the end of that day—and passionate reporters know a “day” for them is not measured in a fixed number of hours—they have created something out of nothing, a product known as “news.” It happens every day in newspaper, radio, and television newsrooms throughout America. Critics blast television for the “if it bleeds, it leads” attitude, or bemoan the shrinking commitment to solid local news reporting on radio, and mourn the passing of competition in local newspaper markets. But in hundreds of newsrooms of those organizations are those who consciously work to tell the story straight. But even if you believe the “media” are biased, believe Brisbane’s last paragraph:

Without the work of good reporters our government, our grafters, our hypocrites, big and little, our crooks in politics, and our politics in crime would be a thousand times worse than they are

Brisbane also wrote something else—advice that is good for reporters and non-reporters alike—that we’ll pass along in another entry.

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

Posted on May 1, 2023 by bpriddy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Our next home stand follows this road trip.”

“The wind has switched 360 degrees.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But still…..

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

Where’s Mike Matheny when the Cardinals need him?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Fido Tax

Posted on May 1, 2023 by bpriddy

Every now and then somebody comes upon a law that is old, forgotten, and outdated.

Part of a bill in the Missouri legislature this year calls for discarding one such tax, approved more than eighty years ago. It was introduced in the Senate by Mike Moon. It has two weeks to get passed. But things are complicated by some possible political gamesmanship that might doom this and other tax reduction efforts. That’s for another day.

Most cities and counties require Fido, Spot, Lassie, etc., to have tags. But the kind of enforcement envisioned when the law was new never has happened.

The first part of the law went into effect in the 1930s—or maybe in the 20s— and other provisions were added through several more legislative sessions.

The language is pretty clear:

273.050. Dog tax, when due. — No dog shall be permitted to be and remain within the limits of the state unless the owner thereof, or someone for said owner, shall have caused such dog to be listed and the tax imposed by sections 273.040 to 273.180 to be paid on or before the first day of February of each year hereafter.

273.060. Amount of tax. — The tax on each male dog and each spayed female dog, of which the certificate of a veterinarian or the affidavit of the owner is produced, in this state shall be one dollar per year, and the tax on all other dogs in this state shall be three dollars per year, payable to the county clerk of the county in which the owner resides; provided, that any person or persons operating a licensed kennel of more than ten dogs in which all dogs kept by him or them are confined and not allowed to roam, shall pay a tax of ten dollars, which amount shall be the full amount of tax on all dogs kept by said person or persons as described above.

The fact that the tax is only a dollar, or three, is an indication that this is a really old law.

The law is still on the books.

The other sections of statute referred to in that paragraph give counties the right to vote on whether to require the licenses.

The fees would go into a fund to reimburse owners of livestock or poultry for losses incurred because of dogs—although it the dogs were theirs, they would get no money.

The town marshall was responsible for catching the delinquent pooches and holding them for a week. After that, the law required him to kill them. Humanely. Owners could get their pets back

The assessor had to make a “diligient inquiry” of property owners about the number of dogs they had and if, upon checking the courthouse records and finding no licenses issued to that address, would have to tell owners they needed to get right with the law.

Voters had to approve the tax at the local level. If they reconsidered later, a petition signed by 100 people could order a re-vote.

The Missouri Fox Hunters Association and the Missouri Field Trial Association objected strongly.

The law did not go over well in other places either. The Jefferson City Daily Capital News observed in its February 2, 1939 edition that “Eighteen counties north of the river voted the dog tax. Not a county south of the river voted for it. The north Missouri counties are strong for sheep. South of the river counties are partial to canines.” Twelve days later the newspaper reported, “Monroe County has between two and three thousand dogs but only 150 of them have an owner who thnks enough of them to pay the dog tax to save their scalps.”

The Moberly Monitor Index reported on February 3 that ten Monroe County farmers had filed claims for damages to their sheep. But since only four dog owners had paid the tax, it was unlikely the tax would produce enough money to pay the damages.

The Sikeston Daily Standard on March 10 called the tax “a joke” because the city had collected only seventeen dollars from the dog tax.

The Brookfield Argus noted on March 16, “There’s gloomy days ahead for ‘poor old Rover’” because the voter-approve tax had gone into effect. But only two of the probable 3,000 dogs in the county had been licensed and they belonged to Marceline Police Chief Rich Freeman and County Extension Agent Robert J. Hall. The tax, said the newspaper, “applies to all dogs, whether they are of the county variety or the sophisticated city type. Old Shep, Fidol Fluff, or Trixie all must wear the 1939 style of necllace or join that somber parade to the burial ground for dogs.” It does not appear much of such a parade was ever assembled.

Eventually, all of this resentment simmered down. We are expected to get new dog tags for our versions of Jim the Wonder Dog or Old Drum each year. We’ve never heard of a farmer getting dog tag money for replacement of dog-induced poultry or livestock death.

But we’re still supposed to get a tag and a collar for our best friend. Senator Mike Moon doesn’t think it’s a state issue. Or sholdn’t be.

Just thought you might find it interesting to learn how all of that started. Our dogs went without tags and dog owners went without pooch taxes for the better part of 120 years before state government decided our dogs couldn’t live in Missouri without tags and collars.

But then, big government stuck its nose into our dog houses.

The Fido Tax

Posted on April 30, 2023 by bpriddy