IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 5 Comments

By John Walters

Starting Five

“Believe in something, even if you have to give up a game in the U.S. Open final”

Serena, Not Serene

It’s Rule No. 647 in the Playbook of Life: Never tell a woman she is prohibited from wearing a catsuit at the French Open, and especially don’t do so 10 months before the tournament even commences.

This is what happens. Said female simmers and then, KABOOM!, she loses her sh*t in the second set of the U.S. Open final. Okay, yeah, perhaps chair umpire Carlos Ramos overreacted but, as Patrick McEnroe stated on GMA Sunday morning (and we agree with him), Serena needed to know when to dial it back. She didn’t.


We love Serena, but we also have watched her long enough to know that her emotions, good and bad, are on a hair-trigger setting. And if you don’t think the folks who know here best and love her, many of whom were seated inside Arthur Ashe Stadium Saturday afternoon, have not seen that tyrannical display numerous times, well, you’re wrong.

Townshend was not fined for this, but did declare that he won’t get fooled again by Osaka’s ground strokes.

The coach violated a rule. Sure, Ramos could’ve let it go. But he wasn’t obligated to. No one (except Naomi Osaka and her pristine play) forced Serena to go Pete Townshend on her tennis racket. And as for the verbal abuse afterward, this isn’t MLB where no one in the stands hears what you’re saying. The entire stadium, the entire viewing world does.

“You owe me an apology! You owe me an apology! I have never cheated in my life!”

Does a male player get away with that? Definitely in the 1980s. And maybe today. I dunno. But as The New York Times‘ Juliet Macur wrote in a wisdom-soaked essay, “You also have to wonder if Williams would have gone after Ramos so relentlessly — and with such conviction to stand up for women’s rights — if she were winning.” Besides, Ramos wasn’t accusing her of cheating. He was simply enforcing a rule, one that her coach had broken. What Serena had done prior to that day, or the fact that she has a daughter, those are irrelevant facts.

J-Mac remains the undisputed king of tennis tantrums

Lots of SJWs were invoking the names John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, and they’re correct. But those outbursts took place 30 or more years ago. And there’s a reason McEnroe’s nom de guerre was Superbrat. If you’re going to use John McEnroe as your counter to what took place Saturday night, all we can say is, “SURELY, YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS!”

(And don’t come back at me with Leslie Nielsen. I will turn this blog right around and we won’t be going out for Carvel)

One final thought, as it applies to both major players in this saga: When a woman says, “Men are jerks,” every woman in the room agrees with her. It’s a blanket statement, a gross generalization, but they all agree. When a man says, “Women are crazy,” the same thing happens on the other side. We got a dose of both on Saturday.

2. From Hell To Purgatory


Browns fans, you’ll have to learn to walk before you can run. Cleveland played inspired football in its season-opener against Pittsburgh, a.k.a. “For Whom The Bell Does Not Toil,” but only came away with a 21-21 tie. Then again the Browns were down 21-7 in the second half. They’ll win a game this season, even though we cannot say that for sure because they do NOT meet the Buffalo Bills.

3. Sunday Night Follies

Take a Nia

Football Night In America: Game On!

Miss America Pageant: Clothes On!

As Aaron Rodgers was pulling his Lazarus act in Green Bay, fully clothed competitors were flashing their talent and brilliance at the Miss America Pageant, where bathing suits are no longer required (But what if wearing a bathing suit happens to be your talent?). Miss New York, Nia Amani Franklin, was crowned the winner, but it was Miss Michigan, Emily Sioma, who stole the show with an “Oooh, snap!” burn about her home state’s supply of fresh water versus how much of it is potable for residents.

Not the shotgun Rodgers had in mind when the game kicked off…

Meanwhile, Rodgers returned from a busted left knee with his Pack down 20-0 at halftime to lead them to a 24-23 victory. Danica Patrick was impressed. Cris Collinsworth said the defeat would set the Chicago Bears back 100 years, which makes no sense. Chicago almost was able to come back after Clay Matthews committed a fourth-down roughing the passer penalty, which prompted Twitter smarty pants Tom Fornelli to tweet that Matthews had “lost his head and shoulders.”

Nice.

Oh, and the Red Sox beat the Houston Astros in a Fenway Park walk-off and that should be the World Series, really, these two teams.

4. A Farewell To Misery

Hooray for Kansas and Kentucky, two notoriously downtrodden football programs (albeit highly successful hoops programs), for putting to rest two dubious streaks. The Jayhawks ended the nation’s longest FBS road losing streak (46 games) with a 31-7 victory at Central Michigan, while in Gainesville the Wildcats ended a streak of 31 consecutive losses to the same team, the Florida Gators, with a 27-16 victory. The only thing missing this weekend was Samford being unable to finish the historic and ignominious dumping of Florida State at Doak Campbell Stadium. It almost happened.

We’ll get to the Domin-8 tomorrow, but two notes: Tua can also be an acronym of sorts for The University of Alabama and why doesn’t some enterprising student in Tuscaloosa print 1,000 t-shirts that read #MeTua? Sell them for $20 a pop.

5. CBS: Now With Less Moonves!

Congratulations, Les: You’re now just five sexual harassment accusers short of becoming president of the United States. Les Moonves, longtime president of CBS, resigned last night after Ronan Farrow‘s latest precision strike in The New Yorker unearthed a half dozen new accusers.

That’s face of CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose, and network el hefe Moonves in the same year. Can’t anyone on West 57th and 10th keep it in their pants? Oh, and our old friend Josh Elliott, a good egg, is probably sitting at home and thinking, And I’m the one who lost his job?!?

Pete Campbell’s behavior toward distaff co-workers? Not great, Bob.

Waiting for Farrow’s next hit, on the mid-level execs at Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce: Pete Campbell, Ken Cosgrove and Harry Crane (the three C’s). You know, it’s funny, but Don Draper had a plethora of flaws, but he drew the line at office harassment (remember when Peggy came on to him in the series pilot?). And you might accuse Roger Sterling of bad behavior, but his relationship with Joan appeared consensual and as for the marriage, that secretary seemed to know how to play ball. Your thoughts?

Reserves

British Invasion

A couple years ago we spotted this bird on CNBC and thought, Oh, yeah, women are going to despise her (those pants) but men are going to watch her. Beginning this morning on CNN International (which is probably somewhere in our cable package, but we’ll search for it later), Julia Chatterley will host her own show, First Move. Think Early Erin Brunette With a British Accent.

Music 101

Puff The Magic Dragon

As a child in the late Sixties/early Seventies, I had the same look on my face as these munchkins when hearing this song. Even before you realize what the song is about (and we’re not talking about ganja here), you instinctively feel the sense of both wonder and melancholy.

Interesting back story: a 19 year-old Cornell University student, Leonard Lipton, wrote the poem. His roommate was friends with another Big Red undergrad, Peter Yarrow, who would later form the group Peter, Paul & Mary. It was on Yarrow’s typewriter that Lipton wrote the poem that would become the song’s lyrics. He forgot about it. Three years later, Yarrow’s group recorded the song, which was a major hit. Yarrow tracked Lipton down to give him half the songwriting credit and both men have forever shared in the royalties.

Remote Patrol

Better Call Saul

9 p.m. AMC


I’m Nacho stepping stone! It’s beginning to heat up in the Duke City, and Nacho has become the most intriguing character in the series. Not unlike Walter White, he’s a man torn between two loyalties, being pulled apart at the seams. Gus Fring owns him—don’t ever toss your pills off a bridge, kids—but the Salamancas, particularly the laconic, scary twins, still think he’s part of their gang.

CHRIS PICKS

by John Walters | Leave a comment

by Chris Corbellini

Friday News Dump: Week 1 NFL picks


So anyway, yeah, I’m making gambling picks this NFL season. Partly because Medium Happy didn’t wince when I suggested it, partly because I want to stay involved with the NFL, and mostly because it feels like the right time to do so.

Here are my qualifications, such as they are:

-I worked for six-plus seasons at NFL Films, and one of my main assignments there was producing the video-on-demand versions of every game from Week 1 to the Super Bowl. What NFL VOD meant at that time was stripping the games of the commercials and condensing each to just the big plays, with a run time of about 10 minutes. Each VOD version of a game also had a taped lead-in right before the kickoff … a :30 stand-up by one of our on-air talents (at one point, Rich Eisen) … teeing up what you were about to watch. Now here’s the important part: Those stand-up recordings were taped three days before games were played, so the writing involved had to basically predict what would take place. I wrote at least half of those stand-ups and directed all of them in studio each week from the years 2004-2010. That’s 256 regular season games, plus 12 playoff games (Pro Bowl included), divided by two, multiplied by seven … so 938 games, total, of which I was personally responsible to predict. And 1,876 games, total, that I was at least involved with to pump out VOD production each week.  If each game is 60 minutes, that’s 112,560 minutes of football. Or 1876 hours. Not exactly Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule, but yes, I used to guess winners each week for the NFL, and I got pretty good at it.

-While we’re here, something I learned at Films: The more I listened to the in-house experts talk about the Xs and Os about pro football, the more I realized how little I knew about it. I won’t pretend I’m an expert until I put in enough grind in the film room, and even when that day comes … I still won’t be an expert.

-I still work in football, helping run a developmental league that feeds prospects back into the NFL and Canadian Football League. And finally, after all this time, on film and on the field, I see the benefits of almost hitting a play that is a cornerstone of an offense. Even a near-miss can build a QB’s confidence, especially if everyone is new to the offense. So, when I see it on film — an oh-so-close splash play or five-yard run that almost broke free — I note it for the next week. It’s a positive play. They’re thinking it, they’re talking about it as they walk off the field, and in the locker room. I’ve seen it happen. I always note the “almosts” on game film.

-I once worked at a Daily Fantasy Sports giant, a workplace that taught me basic game strategy in contests that are similar in nature to sports gambling. They now run a sports book as well.

-I worked in features for a major television network last season, producing content for their NFL programming, including the Super Bowl LII pregame show.

-At the same time, I also took Ben Alamar’s Introduction to Sport Analytics course at Columbia University. Alamar is the Director of Analytics at ESPN, got me over my fear of Excel, and started his course with some terrific advice about the intersection of data and sports: “Be willing to go against your gut.”

-I really, really like Pro Football Outsiders and Pro Football Focus.

All of this means … I don’t know jack about sports gambling.

I’m a rookie quarterback.

I have made exactly one sports bet in my 45 years here on Earth — a futures wager for the Boston Red Sox to win the 2004 World Series. I don’t expect to be that lucky in the weeks to come. I will make mistakes that will seem laughable to even a casual bettor. For instance, my four Week 1 picks below are all road wins. That’s not great, right?

Still, each week I will put my own money on three or four picks that I feel are solid plays. If I don’t I will tweet out why … most likely because I missed the ferry to New Jersey.

And here we go. Into the gutter, good friends:

My picks: Home team in caps. I went with William Hill odds this week.

Tennessee Titans (-1.5) over MIAMI DOLPHINS

In Week 1 I have so little to go on, film-wise, so I’m really just crunching numbers. Pro Football Focus ranked two Dolphins linebackers well below average when up against a traditional three-receiver set, and an inexperienced slot corner. What interests me most are the linebackers against the Titans run game, and Marcus Mariota’s scrambling ability. The Titans field a massive running back in Derrick Henry, and a water-bug type in Dion Lewis, formerly of the NFL’s golden goose, the Patriots. You’ve probably seen the photo of Henry and Lewis together in training camp; They are the NFL’s version of Schwarzenegger and DeVito. That’s a strange combo to prep for so early in the season, before a defense truly finds its identity. I see Lewis trying to prove himself just as tough as Henry between the tackles, and scoring in the pass game. Henry, meanwhile, without DeMarco Murray in town anymore, will get 100 yards and maybe more.

Jacksonville Jaguars (-3) over NEW YORK GIANTS

It was the Summer of Ramsey in sports media, and with overexposure comes the haters. I’m sure there will be plenty of New Jersey bettors who want to see Jalen Ramsey transform into burnt, smoking toast by newly mega-rich guy Odell Beckham Jr, and note great things in rookie Saquon Barkley, and so they will go with the Giants at home. But I’m looking at the Jags defense at the moment, so healthy and hungry, and I get why Ramsey talks the talk. Interestingly, the Giants rank dead f-cking last against No. 2 receivers (according to Pro Football Outsiders), so with Allen Robinson and Allen Hurns now gone, I wonder who will have the bigger day in the Jags passing game, Keelan Cole, or Donte Moncrief?

Pittsburgh Steelers (-4) over CLEVELAND BROWNS

Haley: Not-so-old yeller


I went qualitative on this one. I really didn’t like the way Browns defensive coordinator Gregg Williams and offensive coordinator Todd Haley spent the summer screaming at their players. A linebackers coach, or offensive line coach – true assistants in the NFL – yes, it fits. And always will. But coordinators? Hard Knocks doesn’t fake drama that way – capturing, say, Haley in a bad moment and framing it like that happens all the time (Ed. Note: The author is also an alum of the HBO series). This is who these guys are, every day, and I wonder when Browns players will begin to tune them out after a loss. Like in Week 1.  The Steelers, meanwhile, will rally around running back James Conner, who gets the start while Le’Veon Bell sits out due to contract demands. I hated that his teammates trashed Bell this week (not cool at all, don’t mess with another man’s wallet), but that’s a side issue as they kick off the season. Conner will score at least once and expect the entire offense to celebrate with him. Haley, formerly a Steelers coordinator, knows enough about Ben Roethlisberger to give Williams tips to get after the QB, but I still see Pittsburgh ultimately winning by a touchdown.

Los Angeles Rams (-4) over OAKLAND RAIDERS

Gamblers will chase this one hard on Monday night if they suffer some bad beats on Sunday. It happened all the time in daily fantasy sports: You try to make up your losses on the Sunday slate of games that have hundreds of thousands of people playing (the millionaire maker game, for example) with a Monday-Thursday combo contest that may not have a huge payout (say, $50k to the winner) but nowhere near as many participants. Those Monday-Thursday combos always fill up quick. So, I envision heavy action on this game, for those behavioral reasons, and also because the game seems like such a mismatch if you do even rudimentary research.

According to Pro Football Outsiders, the Raiders rank 30th, 24th and 29th against the No. 1, 2, and “other” receivers, respectively, and 27th against pass-catching backs. The Raiders will have no problem figuring out who the top passing weapon is in the Rams offense — Todd Gurley — but while that defense worries about him, the receiver trio of Brandin Cooks, Robert Woods and Cooper Kupp will think up a new Fun Bunch end zone dance. The loss of Khalil Mack will obviously hurt Oakland, and after this one ends, perhaps LA’s offense will be the talk of the NFL.

Record to date: 0-0!

WALLY

by John Walters | 14 Comments

by John Walters

Wally Mulligan, 2016, flanked by the author and his mom

“Is this the new Wally Mulligan?” I would ask by way of salutation every time I phoned.

“Oh, John,” Wally would often reply with an infectious chuckle. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.”

The “new Wally Mulligan” was a term my physician friend had made up not long after we met, a riff on how he was setting forth on a self-improvement program. The joke was that he’d ever need to.

As a medical student in Philadelphia, Wally had chosen internal medicine (like Dr. House in the CBS progam) because “it was the most difficult specialty I could find.” He’d served in the Marine Corps as a battalion surgeon stateside in the early 1960s, then in 1969 served a tour in Vietnam as a civilian doctor. For 30 years, whenever I’d lamely say to him, “I’ll try,” he’d quickly interrupt me with, “Marines don’t try.”

We met quite by chance in April of 1989. In my first year out of college, trying to decide whether or not to attend the medical school I had been accepted to or take another path, I bought myself a year of procrastination by volunteering at a high school for Native Americans in Santa Fe. I taught chemistry (this white Walters was teaching high school chemistry in New Mexico long before Walter White). It was a boarding school, and on a weeknight I drew the duty to drive a few students to the Public Health Indian Hospital.

There I was, a clean-cut kid festooned in a Notre Dame Crew sweatshirt when a tall, handsome man in a lab coat with a full mane of white hair happened upon me. “Did you go to Notre Dame?” he asked, wide-eyed. You have to understand: To come across a 21 year-old such as myself in Santa Fe at the time—there was a bearded man who walked around the plaza daily in a wedding dress—was like finding Wally Cleaver in Haight-Ashbury during the summer of love.

Wally was intrigued.

A conversation led to lunch that led to Wally and his wife, Alma, inviting me and my roommate, Marty, to dinner at their house in Pecos, about 25 miles east of Santa Fe. I quickly diagnosed Wally as chronically, no terminally, Irish: he loved to laugh and he was a gifted raconteur. I’d only learn later that he was a member of Mensa and had authored 12 books of his own.

That night the four of us walked down to the Pecos River and stared up at the gallery of stars above us. As we reentered the house, we were talking constellations (Wally had also taught a course in astronomy) and Alma asked, “Did you see Scorpio?” and I’m not sure what possessed me other than the fact that being around Wally just inspired me, but I replied matter-of-factly, “No, but I loved Dog Day Afternoon.”

“Ohhhhh!” Wally chortled, surprised and charmed. “Alma, what happens to them? Why can’t they stay like this?”

“They get married,” Alma replied, “and then they get careers and they slowly die inside.”

Wally had been on the career track. He had gotten married—he was quite the handsome devil in his youth, a veritable daytime soap opera doc—, had two children, Michael and Rebecca, and opened a private practice in Cleveland. But he must’ve been miserable—anyone who met Wally never saw him within two time zones of unhappy, much less miserable. He divorced the eastern half of the United States and moved his family to an Indian reservation in northeast Arizona, where he served as medical director for the country’s first Native-American run health-care organization.

Two Mulligan anecdotes from that era stand out for me: the first, when he was audited by the I.R.S. because they simply could not believe a medical doctor only earned $23,000 in one year. The second, when a pair of German tourists were trying to purchase something at a local Native American goods boutique. Because Wally spoke both German and the Pueblo language of Keresan, he was able to serve as translator.

Brilliant, funny and utterly without pretense, that was Wally. You’d tell him about some misfortune that you had run into and he’d reply, “Second prize was two nights in Tucumcari (an unappealing, barren, eastern New Mexican fuel stop disguised as a town).” Wally was once invited to a swank Santa Fe party, the kind to which the odd celebrity is invited and the other attendees try hard to act unimpressed. So there stood Robert Redford, nursing a drink and not particularly talking to anyone. Wally approached. “The name’s Mulligan,” Wally said, extending an arm from his 6’2″ frame and flashing that winning smile. “I’m the local doc. What do you do?”

The Sundance Kid smiled, clearly charmed. “Bob,” he answered. “I’m in pictures.”

That was Wally Mulligan. In the seeds of our friendship was the hope, by Wally, that I would follow his path into medicine. And truly, I almost did. Before I’d met Wally, I had yet to meet anyone in my pre-med program or in the hospitals where I interned who flashed a sense of humor, who did not fail to take themselves too seriously. Suddenly, here was this guy who was both Dr. Kildare and Roger Rabbit. It could be done.

The nearest character I can summon who is redolent to Wally Mulligan is Hawkeye Pierce from M*A*S*H, particularly in the early years of the show: brilliant, witty, lanky, uninhibited, flirtatious, mischievous and, above all, caring. It’s important to remind you that with all of the gifts that God had given him, with all of the talent he had and the work he put in to develop that talent, Wally devoted his life to easing people’s pain. Not to making money; he was never wealthy. Not to rising up the ladder; he had a far more prestigious job at the age of 30 than he did at the age of 55, and by choice. He became a doctor and he took care of what he liked to call “the great unwashed.” With ardor. And they LOVED him for it.

For one of our first lunches, Wally asked me to meet him at the hospital. When I arrived, a nurse ushered me into a changing room and tossed me a pair of scrubs. Next thing I know, I was shoved into a delivery room where I stood next to Wally as he delivered a baby (I cut the umbilical cord). Clearly, he was trying to show me that medicine was not miserable, that the wonders of life made it more than worthwhile.

It was a turbulent time for someone like myself who can sometimes too easily let outside influences steer a decision. Dead Poets’ Society had just come out (“Carpe diem!”) but then so had Field of Dreams (Moonlight Graham) and now here was Wally Mulligan, who sort of resembled Burt Lancaster. What to do?

I chose journalism, of course, a decision that must have greatly disappointed him, though it never affected our friendship. He was more upset about where I was moving—”New York isn’t living, it’s existing”—than what I was doing. Wally had long ago abandoned the East Coast and Midwest and that entire mentality. He’d promised he’d never travel east of Tucumcari again. He didn’t, with the exception of one college reunion, in all the years I knew him.

Still, we’d talk on the phone frequently. He’d always ask what book I was reading and then tell me what he was reading. Once he shared that he had just devoured Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, the autobiography of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who’d helped build the atomic bomb and was one of the more eccentric characters you’d ever come across. It dawned on me that both Richard Feynman and Wally Mulligan did or had inhabited northern New Mexico, and I thought, kindred spirits.

Wally knew every movie reference. Every literary character. Every Shakespearean quote. And he’d invoke each of them without ever coming off as pompous. He was a repository of aphorisms. “John, to live well is to eat well,” he’d say, “and to eat well is to eat Italian.” With every conversation came a bon mot or an insightful, often hilarious, anecdote, free of charge.

I spoke to Wally in April. Phoned him specifically to admonish him. It had dawned on me that though I’ve spent three decades meeting or interviewing some big names (Kurt Cobain, Hugh Hefner, Clay Travis!), I’d still never come across anyone quite as brilliant and warm and funny as Wally Mulligan (An aside in an essay that’s been riddled with them: In his seventies Wally volunteered in an after-school reading program for elementary school kids, where they called him “Mr. Mulligan.” None of the kids knew he was a doctor because he never felt any reason to tell them). Thirty years of criss-crossing the country and meeting millionaires and Hall of Famers all to come to the epiphany that Wally Mulligan, new or original recipe, is ultimately inimitable.

“Mulligan, you should have warned me,” I told him. “I thought I was heading out into that big city, into that big world, and that I’d be meeting dozens of Wally Mulligans. I still haven’t met a single soul that’s measured up to you.”

“Why, thank you, John,” he said warmly, then launched into a funny story about taking his board exams and how the instructor told him to quit with the pretentious terms and just tell him the seven ways fluids can leave the body (I think it was seven, Wally; I was listening, I promise).

Last weekend my college friend Dean and I were driving through southwestern Pennsylvania. We passed a sign for St. Vincent College, where Mulligan had attended both prep school and college (an experience that permanently cured him of Catholicism and religion in general). “I have a good friend who went there!” I exclaimed to Dean and then picked up my phone to dial Wally.

The call went straight to voicemail. I felt a tinge of dread. Two days later, I spoke to Wally’s daughter. He left this world last Friday. Wally wanted his headstone to read, “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad,” which is taken from the novel Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini (yet another book Wally read that I will put on my to-do list). The former is certainly true and as for the latter, well, you watch the news, no?

It’s incalculable, the randomness of life. The cast of characters who randomly appear on our stage and those who don’t. The effects those characters, or the absence of such, will have on the rest of our lives. On an otherwise forgettable weeknight in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I walked down the corridor of a hospital and met the finest man I’ve ever known. Thank you, Wally.

 

 

 

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 5 Comments

by John Walters

*Happy birthday, Drew!

Quotable

Trevor Noah on Robert Woodward’s Trump book:

“Obviously, all of this stuff is crazy, but at some point I think we’ve got to stop saying it’s a ‘bombshell.’ I mean, Trump is just doing a lot more Trump than we thought he would. But it’s not a bombshell. The day it comes out that Trump secretly works out and reads Shakespeare and teaches kids how to code, that’s when we can call it a bombshell.”

Starting Five

To Kav and Kav Not

Watching California senator Kamala Harris expose Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh yesterday was illuminating. He lawyered up when she asked him a question that he realized she obviously knew the answer to, and then he refused to answer her question as to whether there was blame on both sides in the Charlottesville riots.

Behind closed doors, this is the dirtiest of Washington scenes. BK is being advised to stay quiet, play dumb, and then the GOP majority will push you through pronto. Then it’s presidential pardons and what-not. He’s of the “whatever-it-takes” school of fascism, just like the men in power right now. Or alt-right now.

2. Lodestar Power

We’ll take Barron Trump as the author and give us the long odds

Did the person who wrote the anonymous op-ed in The New York Times titled “I Am Part of The Resistance Inside The Trump Administration” use the uncommon noun “lodestar” to throw readers off the track? This is a term that V.P. Mike Pence has used often in the past, after all. Or was it actually the Veep?


We think the person above has solved the mystery.

Meanwhile, that op-ed has already generated nearly 9,000 comments.

3. The MH Domin-Eight

No one is more successful and also more miserable than Saban

  1. Alabama….I’m not gonna move them off No. 1, so quit asking.
  2. Clemson….Looking forward to this weekend’s action in College Station, a.k.a. “Dabo V. Jimbo.”
  3. Ohio State….Urban Who?
  4. Georgia…The Dawgs are the only school on this list who did not allow a point last weekend.
  5. Auburn…How many schools have ever played three consecutive games in the same out-of-state dome?
  6. Oklahoma…No Baker, no problem.
  7. Wisconsin...Jonathan Taylor-not-Thomas galloped for 145 on just 18 carries.
  8. Notre Dame…The D looked impressive for the Irish in a signature win.

4. Mighty, Mighty Boston

You have to love that a 37 year-old playing in his first game of the season can get that dirty

There were the Sox, playing a matinee getaway game in Atlanta and already fat and happy after two straight wins versus the first-place Braves. Trailing 7-1 to start the eighth inning. Start up the busses.

Not so fast. The Sawx scored sixth in the eighth to tie it, but then it got better. After Atlanta’s Freddie Freeman homered in the bottom of the inning to put the Braves ahead, Boston found itself with two outs, two strikes, one man on and newly acquired veteran Brandon Phillips, an Atlanta native, up at bat. Phillips, wearing “0” and a player so old he was originally drafted by the Montreal Expos, was playing in his first game in The Show this season.

Home run. Boston wins 9-8. The Sawx lead the Yankees by 9 1/2, which is exactly what they led by when New York limped out of Fenway a month ago having been swept four straight. It’s as if the Sawx are a lodestar or something.

5. Here, Li’l Putty Tat….


In our humble domicile, when a member of the feline persuasion begins behaving this way, we say that he is attacking with “Kitty Love Bombs,” or “KLBs.” Who knew that such behavior was rampant all the way up the genetic chain to the alpha of the species?

Music 101

Tell Me (You’re Coming Back)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwhtyFIAqf8

On their eponymous 1964 debut album, the Rolling Stones included a dozen tunes, but Mick and Keith only wrote one of them: this one. This was also the Stones’ first single, climbing to No. 24 in the U.S. and No. 1 in Sweden.

Remote Patrol

Falcons at Eagles

8:20 p.m. NBC

Came and Wentz

We’re not actually fans of Al Michaels or the NFL, but some of you are, so here’s a reminder that the NFL season kicks off this evening. Come for Nike’s Colin Kaepernick ad, stick around to see Carson Wentz standing on the sideline.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 6 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet Me Right


Welcome to our “The Amazing Adventures of Kavanaugh and Clay” edition….

Starting Five

Getting The Picture

We don’t know why Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, right, chose not to shake the hand of Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter was murdered in the Parkland school shooting, when he offered it at yesterday’s confirmation hearing. We don’t know why Guttenberg was there and more to the point, why he’d want to shake Kavanaugh’s hand.

What we do know is that the photo, snapped by the AP’s Andrew Harnik, is powerful.

Why?

Look at the photo again. Let’s assume that Guttenberg represents one half of America and Kavanaugh the other (I”ll leave what those halves, or haves and have-nots are, up to you). Guttenberg is reaching out to connect. Trying to make a connection. Kavanaugh is staring at him suspiciously: Why should we want to know one another? Be in each other’s worlds? He’s buttoning his jacket. He appears almost annoyed that Guttenberg would detour him.


And then he turns his back on Guttenberg. And walks away.

The symbolism is palpable.

2. Bird Of Paradise

Sue and Stewie

Seattle Storm? More like Pacific Sue-nami.

The Storm trailed the Mercury 73-69 midway through the fourth quarter of last night’s decisive Game 5. Then Sue Bird, the league’s oldest player, buried a three-pointer with 5:48 remaining.


Then there was a feisty jump ball involving Sue, a minor fracas, and one of Bird’s best buds, Diana Taurasi, lobbying a referee to T up her pal, who was sore about being taking an inadvertent arm to her busted beak.

From there Bird would hit three more threes, plus a long two, to lead the Storm to a 94-84 clinching win. And now it’s on to Washington.


Taurasi, who had never lost a winner-take-all game in her glorious WNBA career, saw her streak ended.

3. Clay’s Fudging The Numbers (Again)


We began tracking Clay Travis‘ college football picks on his site last autumn and we noticed something: his pre-Saturday picks did not seem to be lining up with his post-Saturday won-loss record that he was reporting. But we were somewhat lethargic in tracking this, so we let it go.

This season, though, we’ve decide to track Clay’s picks versus the ex post facto (that’s a legal term; did you know that Clay has a law degree?) reportage of the records. And he didn’t disappoint. Beforehand he bragged he’d go 14-0 and he actually did quite well: He went 10-4. But afteward he “reported” that he’d gone 10-2. That’s an actual .714 win percentage versus what Clay is claiming as a .833 win percentage.

Don’t believe me?

Here are Clay’s picks:

Central Florida -23.5 vs. Connecticut 

(WIN: UCF won 56-17. He’s 1-0)

FAU +21 and the over 72

(LOSS and WIN: OU won 63-14. He is 2-1)

Tennessee +10 vs. West Virginia

(LOSS: Vols got their clocks cleaned, 40-14. He is 2-2)

Auburn -2 and the under, 48.5

(WIN and WIN: Tigers won 21-16. Clay is 4-2)

Ole Miss vs. Texas Tech, the over 68, now 67

(WIN: Ole Miss 47, TT 27; Clay is 5-2)

Notre Dame – 1  and the under 46.5

(WIN and WIN: Irish, 24-17. He’s 7-2)

Alabama -24.5 vs. Louisville, and the over 62.5

(WIN and WIN: Tide, 51-14. He’s 9-2)

Vandy -3 vs. MTSU

(WIN He’s 10-2 as Vandy won, 35-7)

Miami -2.5 vs. LSU, the under 48.5, now Miami -3.5 and 47

(LOSS and LOSS. Tigers won 33-17. He finishes 10-4).

Let’s be clear: 10-4 as a gambler is outstanding (Clay reports that last season he won 49% of his games. You’ve got to win about 53%, roughly, to break even). But if you look here, on Sunday Clay reported that he’d gone 10-2. Not only did he get his record wrong, but also the number of games he picked.


It’s not that I don’t like Clay, but I don’t like Clay. We’ll keep watching this for you as the season progresses.

4. Fear (And Loathing)

The dude who actually met and won the trust of Deep Throat some 45 years ago, Bob Woodward, is back to tackle the Trump presidency. Think about that: in terms of time frame, that’s like Frances Ford Coppola coming back to make a film as good as The Godfather this year.

The tome, Fear: Trump In The White House, has everything: Chief of Staff John Kelly once again referring to his boss as “an idiot” and to the West Wing as “Crazytown.” Or Trump’s former lawyer, John Dowd, advising him, ” “Don’t testify It’s either that or an orange jump suit.” Or Trump referring to Attorney General Jeff Sessions as “mentally retarded.”


And much, much more. Of course, Donny has already tweeted his review. Our advice on that tweet, and on the man who wrote this book, is nearly the same: Consider the source(s).


Of course, Generals Kelly and Mattis, who were probably two of the book’s chief sources, have since come out and discredited the book. The theory here, as a smart friend of mine espouses (and supports), is that Kelly and Mattis are sacrificing their reputations for the good of the country, the idea being that someone has to be inside the White House to prevent it from being nothing but looney tunes and thus to prevent World War III.


I disagree. And so, apparently, does Charlie Pierce. He states the reasoning more succinctly than I, but it’s analogous to the poor way in which our government “fixed” the sub-prime mortgage crisis by creating TARP. When an institution (then, America or our government, now, the generals) abandons its ideals in order to fix a problem short-term, much greater long-term problems will be created.


Take the pain. But don’t sacrifice your integrity. Because you never know what the consequences of a once-proud institution (or general) abandoning them will be. In the former case, I’d argue that the consequence was Trump himself.

5. Dearest Mother

If you follow @CaptainAndrewLuck , you appreciate that this is one of the few Twitter accounts that demonstrates that the social media site can be used as a tool for good. Here is the story of how that account came about.

We’ve met Andrew Luck. He loves to read and he’s a student of history. We have to imagine he loves this meme.

Reserves

So MUCH is happening this week that we need to dip into the Reserves. It IS September, after all, the greatest month of the year.

Luke Longball

Remember when the Yankees traded Tyler Austin to make room for Greg Bird? Those were innocent days. Bird has struggled since returning from his latest injury in late May (.197 BA) and the Bombers finally inserted mammoth pickup Luke Voit (whom they got in the trade with the Cardinals for J.A. Happy), who physically resembles and is playing like 1998 Shane Spencer.

Last night Voit hit the go-ahead home run in the Yanks’ 5-1 comeback win at Oakland, his third home run in three games and his seventh since August 24th, which is less than two weeks ago. “Where would the Yankees be without Luke Voit right now?” asked YES announcer Michael Kay, alluding to the absences of slugger Aaron Judge and shortstop Didi Gregorius, whose silent bats have been mitigated by Voit’s power.

Imagine this lineup when healthy: Brett Gardner, Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, Didi Gregorius, Aaron Hicks, Miguel Andujar, Gleyber Torres, Gary Sanchez and Voit. That puts Neil Walker, arguably the Yankees’ most reliable situational hitter, on the bench, as well as Bird and former NL MVP Andrew McCutchen.

Whither Bird? I doubt the Yanks are ready to give up on that sweet swing especially with their right-field porch, but he definitely seems to be battling mental demons. If they do trade him, he’ll prosper elsewhere.

U.S. and Thiem

Four hours and 49 minutes. Five sets. Rafael Nadal held off Austrian Dominic Thiem in a fifth-set tiebreaker, but most of the crowd was rooting for the kid. We were all Team Thiem. As John McEnroe said around 2 a.m. when the match ended, “We all love Nadal, but…”

Fifth-Round Pick Makes Seahawks


If you watched UCF’s Shaquem Griffin last year, or knew his story, you knew just how foolish it would be to bet against the linebacker with one hand. Pete Carroll and the Seahawks took him in the fifth round. He made the roster. He may start Sunday. This will become a Disney film.

Weekend In South Bend

More of this, please….

Because you asked, Susie B….No, we did not attend College GameDay. I’ve done that a few times, we were spending the weekend at a Lake Michigan beach house about an hour away, and we’re sort of over crowds. We are older men, after all.

I’ll dispense with every minute detail, other than to say that I encourage anyone to visit Nore Dame’s new hockey rink. It’s state-of-the-art. My personal highlight came at a rooftop tailgater at the Jordan Hall of Science. There I was, listening to my friend, Smo, earnestly tell the woman in development for Notre Dame’s Science Dept., Alison (it was six of us guys talking to Alison, so just a typical Notre Dame social ratio, 30 years later) that what they really need is “a super-monkey collider, because how else will we be able to determine the effects of what happens when monkeys collide at supersonic speeds.” The best part is that he makes this argument passionately and earnestly and that she could not tell if he was kidding. Although the fact that he’d scrawled an “ND” logo onto a small square of white paper an then paper-clipped it to the front of his green shirt as his “Irish Wear Green” fashion statement should have provided a clue.

Also, because of our ages there was some talk about kidney stones (I’ve been spared). One of our gang had a harrowing story involving a stone “slightly larger than a Tic-Tac” and a string that needed to be pulled out from…

Music 101

My Generation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=594WLzzb3JI

When you assess this classic manifesto of defiance from The Who (Rolling Stone named it the 11th best song of “all time”), you have to remember that the year was 1965. The Beatles were still cute and Bob Dylan was still pretty much a folkie. Jimi Hendrix hadn’t been invented yet, nor had The Doors, and the Rolling Stones themselves were still playing blues covers (“Not Fade Away”) or lugubrious elegies (“Heart of Stone”). And here comes this pretty boy snot from London, Roger Daltrey, singing, “Hope I die before I get old.”

And when Roger suggests to the older crowd, “Why don’t y’all f-f-f-fade away?” we know what he’s really saying.

This was, in our minds, the original GOML anthem.

Remote Patrol

Comedians In Cars: Kate McKinnon

Netflix

I’ve grown a little weary of Jerry Seinfeld’s series, and if you watch certain episodes (John Mulaney, Dave Chappelle), it sounds as if he has, too. So it’s wonderful to find him pair up with someone who shares his sensibilities, or as he puts it, “Just two silly people with nothing to do but drive around New York City.”

Jerry is finally inspired here, going on a riff about broccoli rabe: “I don’t know who this Rob guy was who thought he could improve on broccoli and then put his name on it.”

I don’t know how well Jerry knew Kate before this episode, or if they’d ever met, but you can tell that he is adoring her. And when she grabs his arm as they are walking outside on a sidewalk near the end? It’s love at first goof.

Stick around until after the credits when they come to a consensus as to why they hate Los Angeles.