IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 4 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet Me Right

Pirate booty

Starting Five

Sigh, SI

Where Are They Now? Indeed.

In what must have been the bloodiest day in the history of Sports Illustrated staff shakeups, 50% of the current staff were shown the door at 225 Liberty. Sadly, and a sign of what has happened to the iconic 63 year-old mag in the past decade, you will not recognize most of the names.

Here are some of the job postings that Maven, the soulless vampire company responsible for all the cuts, has posted in the wake of the layoffs: “managing editor,” “pre-editor,” “editorial lead,” “insider (reporter),” “sport editor” and “expert writer.“

And dig, I’ve been critical of the way SI failed to adapt to the changing new media landscape the past 25 years, but those of us who were there at SI before the internet and before America went mad over SportsCenter (we co-wrote that piece in December, 1992) can appreciate that there was no real way to stop this tidal wave.

If you’re under 40 and grew up in an age before cable news and ESPN and USA Today and the web, this may shock you: Americans used to watch sports on the weekends and wait until Thursday to read what Sports Illustrated had to say about it. Sure, you’re local KPNX news guy would spend 30 seconds on it, if the event were big enough, before talking about the local teams; and your local newspaper, if your city was large enough, would send someone to cover a World Series or NFL playoff game.

But if you wanted the ONE AUTHORITATIVE VOICE to take you, the reader/viewer, to that game after it happened (and remember, most everything that was taking place was NOT on live television…that’s why “This Week In The NFL” was such a popular weekly show; it was Berman and Jackson’s NFL Blitz before that show existed), you read Sports Illustrated.

As soon as SportsCenter became the cool hangout (not until about 1991) and then the internet came along shortly thereafter, that all changed. Sports consumers no longer had that sort of patience, and why should they? And SI, which easily could have put those written-on-Sunday stories on its website Monday morning, still made readers wait until Thursday or Friday to view them. At least in the beginning.

The bell tolled for thee, and that bell originated in Bristol and on the WWW.web.

Acuna Matata

So gifted. So maddening.

Atlanta Braves 2nd-year superstar Ronald Acuna, Jr., went 3-4 with a two-run home run in his team’s Game 1 loss to the Cardinals last night, but everyone’s angry with him. Why? Because he spent too much time admiring a 7th-inning hit that he thought might go over the right-field porch and was held to a single. Later that inning he was doubled off second base when by all intents he should have been on 3rd when the ball was hit.

The Braves have lost an MLB-record 10 consecutive postseason Game 1’s.

Enough Already

Late in the Rams-Seahawks game, Clay Matthews was penalized for roughing the passer on this play. Pathetic. The Rams led 29-24 at the time and this penalty gave the Birds 15 yards and a first down, which they’d use to finish the game-winning drive. Pathetic, no?

A Star Is Born

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNMsn35vESE

To be fair, the acoustics inside subway stations are really, really favorable.

This is Emily Zamourka, who has been homeless in the past two years in Los Angeles (but still dresses better than I do) and is from Russia. Her background:

She’s a classically-trained violinist and pianist who moved to the United States from Russia 30 years ago. She worked as a music teacher, but when her medical bills piled up due to a serious health problem, she played her violin in the streets to make extra cash. That $10,000 violin was stolen a few years ago, and Zamourka became homeless. But she still performs for subway commuters, despite not being a trained singer.

–From CBS Los Angeles

We picture a national underground tour, playing some of the most iconic subway stops in New York City, D.C. and Boston. Perhaps even an L station in Chicago.

It was an LAPD officer, Frazier, who shot the video and changed Zamourka’s life (she’s already received $100,000 in GoFundMe donations). That is, until some enterprising newspaper uncovers her old racist tweets.

It’s Katie McCollow’s Birthday!

Happy Birthday to MH’s funniest contributor and to the most talented stay-at-home actress we know. You may not recognize Katie’s face, but you’ve heard her voice on quite a few national TV commercials in the past few years.

All those casting directors who told you that you’ve got a great face for radio. Who got the last laugh? You did, Katie. You did. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

p.s. Katie and Mike are now empty nesters and since they have no interest in touring the nation to visit Civil War battlefields, you can help keep Katie busy by soliciting her to paint someone or some pet you love (Mike will golf in 30-degree weather so don’t worry about him). It makes a wonderful Christmas or birthday present. We have two Katie originals hanging in the MH world headquarters.

Music 101

I Lost It

Our dream country-rock concert would be Lucinda Williams and Son Volt. And if you don’t own Williams’ 1999 album Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, from whence this song comes, you’re not living your best life. We’re here to help, America.

Remote Patrol

Rays-Astros

2 p.m. FS1

Cardinals-Braves

4:30 p.m. TBS

Twins-Yankees

7 p.m. MLB Network

Nats-Dodgers

9:30 p.m. TBS

October playoff baseball quadruple header. You’re welcome, America! Bask in the glory.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet Me Right

Ooooooh, Expert Writer! Is that like Stable Genius?

Starting Five

Trumpnobyl

  1. The disaster’s epicenter: the Ukraine.
  2. In the initial stages, the power mongers attempted to downplay the gravity of the incident and silence anyone who spoke up.
  3. Finland was an innocent bystander.
  4. The meltdown was ugly to behold and fatal to anyone who was closely aligned with the operation.
  5. Finally, a man of integrity and learning stepped up and acted as whistleblower, paying a ghastly personal penalty while in the long run saving thousands, if not millions, of lives.
“Do I know where that hand has been?”

19th Nervous Meltdown

That weird feeling when daddy is becoming unhinged and you go into your room and play with your dolls or read comic books and turn the music up loud so you don’t have to listen. That was the Trump presidency yesterday. From tweeting the word “BULLSHIT” (lawdie, my precious evangelical ears!) to going Travis Bickle (“You talkin’ to me?!?”) to referencing Nickleback to describing the Ukraine as a “beautiful, wide wall” to, and this is the most important part, evading for three or so minutes a most basic question posed to him by Reuters reporter Jeff Mason, Trump was a fuming rageaholic.

Then he ordered Mason to ask the president of Finland a question, and Mason did, and as the president of Finland began to answer, Trump completely interrupted him and hijacked the answer. I don’t care about our policies all that much. I do care that you’re an asshole of a human being.

For the second time in less than four months, Oakland sports fans got to watch their pro sports team’s season end at home to a team from a town in the Eastern time zone that begins with a “T”. From Toronto to Tampa.

Rays, A’s, Bay

The Rays won 5-1 thanks to a pair of homers, including a game leading-blast, by Yandy Diaz, who had missed all of August and nearly all of September due to injury. Diaz was activated on the final day of the season.

Reliever Nick Anderson, who once played on a barnstorming independent league team, got four late outs all by strikeout. It’s so refreshing to see a Nick Anderson from a central Florida pro sports franchise delivering in the playoffs.

Line we enjoyed from the ESPN2 broadcast: “If the Yankees or Astros or calling about trading for one of your players, you need to go back and look at what you’ve failed to see in that player.”

Global Warming Hits SI

I had not been at Sports Illustrated as a reporter more than a year or so when managing editor (read: top dog) Mark Mulvoy’s secretary phoned me and asked me to come down to Mark’s office. I was thrilled. Terrified. Was I in trouble? Was I about to be lauded or ripped for my latest batch of story ideas? Was I going to be fired?

I had never had a one-on-one meeting with Mulvoy before. And he was a commanding presence, besides standing 6’4.”

When I arrived, the secretary handed me some freshly laundered dress shirts. “Mark’s at the Harvard Club,” she said, “and he needs these brought over.”

That was probably the most essential service I performed in my first two years there.

As reports that SI is laying off half its remaining staff soon circulate this week (at least it isn’t being sold again) and that Christian Stone, once a colleague and a good personal friend, is leaving, it’s hard not to reflect on how all of this happened.

I liken it not to an asteroid striking SI, but rather SI’s top brass taking the new media landscape about as seriously as the GOP has taken global warming (it’s going to hit 100 degrees in Alabama today, by the way).

I was there, as you know. The top staff at SI in the 1990s were almost all Ivy League-educated (Mulvoy was not; he was a B.C. alum) and the few who weren’t were usually either bullies or had adapted that entitled mentality. There were a few rogues, such as Bob Roe and Chris Hunt and Greg Kelly, generally and genuinely good guys who knew their stuff and were not imperious and all-knowing (even when they weren’t).

A few specific errors SI made: 1) Letting the culture die by failing to promote the next generation, the people who’d grown up in the mag, properly. Or at least promoting mostly the wrong people. That future stars (who were already stars and just hitting their primes) such as Steve Rushin, Jeff Pearlman and Tim Crothers were either let go or allowed to leave or even wanted to leave is a shame. Some of the people who moved up were the very people that those of us who knew them best kew were exactly the wrong types to be taking the reins. We know who they were, knew what they were, but somehow they’d managed to impress the fifty-somethings with their ability to confidently spew bullshit, and those top guys recognized a familiar and beloved phenotype.

2) Not fully respecting the power of the web. When the web became a reality, SI did not promote the people whom they considered to be their top guys to run it. The management thought of it as a ghetto and the internet an annoying fad, like stone-washed jeans, that would soon disappear. Fatal mistake.

3) Failing to tighten belts until it was entirely too late. If you knew how SI was still spending money on writers and ad sales trips and boondoggles even 10 years ago, you’d laugh. Or cry. “Global warming? What do I care? I have my own private island.”

Everything you see going wrong with the GOP and global warming, or with Jeff Epstein, or all these other old white, chauvinistic power mongers, it was all happening back at SI where no female ever rose to a rank of true influence. These were the Old Guard, who were unwilling to adapt and who deep down knew that it would be the next generation’s problem, not theirs. So they got all theirs while they still could and failed to prepare for the future. Just as your Republican leaders are doing today.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 7 Comments

by John Walters

Starting Five

Khashoggi

One year ago today, Saudi-born Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi walked into his own planned hit. He has never been seen again.

Khashoggi left his fiancee in a waiting vehicle in Istanbul as he entered the Saudi Arabian consulate to obtain the necessary marital paperwork. Instead, from what has been ascertained, he was choked out and then butchered into pieces for easier egress. A Khashoggi doppelgänger was even sent out of the building for cameras to follow so as to provide a (flimsy) alibi.

Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman as late as last week was claiming he had no idea that the murder would take place (in the same week, the Saudis beheaded 37 prisoners because electric chairs are so not green, you know?).

The worst part, as an American, is knowing that Donald and Jared and Mike Pompeo were at the very least unwilling to hold the Saudis accountable and at the worst, particularly in Jared’s case, may have been complicit. Because oil. And money. And future resorts.

Tanking

By the way, the day before Khashoggi’s murder by the Saudis last October 2nd, the DOW was near an all-time high at about 26,900. On the day after Khashoggi’s killing, the DOW began to tank and would continue to plummet all the way to Christmas eve, when the markets closed with the DOW at 21,792.

That’s at least a 20% free fall in just over 2 months. Shares of Apple (AAPL), for example, plummeted from $232 to $142 in that time span. And while here we are one year later, nearly back to where we were, you have to wonder what might’ve been had the markets not been spooked by this cowardly assassination while the American economy was otherwise thriving.

Wild Finish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRAmeQjoY3o

At least the Red Sox were given another game after Bill Buckler misplayed Mookie Wilson’s grounder, and the score was already tied when Mookie hit the slow roller.

With the bases loaded last night in D.C., two outs in the bottom of the eighth, and the Nats trailing the Brewers 3-1, 20 year-old Juan Soto lined a ball into right field off lefty reliever ace Josh Hader. At worst two Nat runs should have scored, maybe even only one. But somehow Milwaukee right fielder Trent Grisham allowed Soto’s hit to skip right past him in between the first and second hops.

Three runs scored. The Brewers went down relatively quietly in the ninth. One error, and the season’s over. That’s cold. But that’s why the Wild Card (read: Knockout) Game is so much fun for fans. Unless you’re a Brewers fan this morning.

Stone Cold

Not pictured above: Chris Stone

In anachronistic sports journal news, Sports Illustrated Editor-In-Chief Pete Campbell Christian Stone is out. The 27-year run is over at SI. (Jon Snow) Steve Cannella remains and will become one of the Co-Editors-In-Chief (with Ryan Hunt, whom we don’t know) because nothing makes more sense and creates less divisiveness than putting two people in co-equal charge of a major institution.

More layoffs are apparently imminent.

Our mom always taught us if we didn’t have anything nice to say, then to at least say it funny. We’re out of jokes at the moment (although we always found the first name ironic, more so as the years passed), so we’ll move on.

See You at Trumpstock!

Burning Man? That’s so last month. Travel one state south this weekend for Orange Man, a.k.a. Trumpstock, a three-day event in Kingman, Arizona. The high-desert town most renowned for being the place you’d stop for gas on the drive between Phoenix and Las Vegas will host this weekend event with headliners David harris, Jr. (he’s black!), Alexandra Levine (she’s a woman and possibly Jewish!) and Marco Gutierrez (“Build the wall!”). Seriously, where are the regular people?

Tickets for the event will run from $25 to $125 and it’s open to Americans of all rages.

Music 101

Falling Down The Stairs Of Your Smile

New stuff from The New Pornographers. You can always tell when I’ve been listening to student-run (Fordham) radio station WFUV.

Remote Patrol

Maradona

HBO

Our friend and colleague Richard Deitsch calls this film on the 5’5″ Argentinian soccer legend the best sports documentary of the year. Good enough for us, or you can watch Rays-A’s on the ESPN at 5 p.m. local time. Gloaming baseball!

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 5 Comments

by John Walters

Starting Five

OCTOBER!

October is here! The greatest month of the year!

Sports-wise, there’s no contest. Playoff baseball begins today and will continue daily, often in the early autumn sunshine, for at least the next two weeks. College football season hits its peak. The NBA and NHL seasons begin. If you’re a runner, it’s peak road- and trail-racing time.

The weather. Sunny and crisp, but not too hot and not too cold. Climate-wise, it’s the very best time to be in the Midwest or New England or northeast.

The colors? God’s just showing off this month, letting us know what He could do all the time if He felt like it.

Birthdays! Many of our favorite people were born this month, and you know who you are, but we’ll send shout-outs to Phyllis and my sis and Smo, the funniest man we know.

Halloween!

They stage an Octoberfest; they don’t stage a Januaryfest.

October is a little bit like being in your early fifties or late forties. It’s the last hurrah month where you still feel smart and beautiful before November and December, when you’re going to have to start popping blue pills and having serious discussions about hip and knee replacements.

Viva October! Soak in every day.

Salazar Banned Four Years

Distance running coach and guru Alberto Salazar, once the U.S.’s premier marathoner, has been banned FOUR YEARS from athletics due to doping violations. Salazar 61, has long wielded tremendous influence in track and field as the head coach of the Nike Oregon Project, with top runners such as Mo Farah and Galen Rupp in his stable.

But for years now other runners, some past students of his, have alleged that he runs a dirty program. Salazar has long been combative and obtuse when hit with such allegations, sort of the Paul Manafort of track and field.

Now the Cuban-born coach, who until Meb Kefleghezi came along was the last American citizen to win BOTH the Boston and New York City marathons, disappears for a quadrennial. Good riddance.

NC-Pay-A

A few sports-bro web sites made plenty of $$$ off Allison Stokke’s image back in the day, but she never made a dime while at Berkeley.

In California, Pandora’s Box opens. Governor Gavin Newsom signs the Fair Pay To Play Act into law (it will not take effect until 2023), giving college athletes the right to be compensated for the use of their likenesses.

Is the world going to burn down? No. It’s just that some enterprising schools and their boosters are going to find ways to use this law, particularly when/if Texas and a few southern states pass similar laws, to create a giant slush fund for player talent. The only difference being that now they will be able to do so without the help of a bag man.

Read more about it here from the always well-informed Michael McCann at SI.com.

We welcome the idea of local car dealerships and eateries using current football heroes as pitchmen. USC backup quarterbacks Kedon Slovis and Matt Fink, both who’ve been pushed into service as starters already, would be perfect for an insurance ad.

Happy and Peppy And Bursting With Love

We’re going to, for no particular reason, leave this classic moment from The Odd Couple right here. We suspect that many of our sportswriting brethren (and sports reading brethren on The Athletic) are too young to have seen this early 1970s sitcom, which used to air on Friday nights after The Brady Bunch but before Kolchak: The Night Stalker (man, Friday and Saturday nights were great TV nights in the early to mid-Seventies). If any of them/you have a chance to binge this series, do so.

Watching this at our current age, we’re beginning to wonder if we’re a mash-up of Oscar and Felix. That’s enough navel-gazing for one morning.

Bye, Bye Burfict

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLO129SxLUY

Following this hit on Sunday on Colts tight end Jack Doyle, the NFL suspended long-time assault artist Vontaze Burfict for the rest of 2019. Burfict’s act may have played well in the days of Dick Butkus and Chuck Bednarik, but not so much these days.

What a checkered career the former Arizona State linebacker has had. From ultimate stud and All-American his first couple of years in Tempe to being benched in his final game for the Sun Devils to crashing and burning at the NFL Combine and going undrafted to becoming a starter and Pro Bowl selection for the Bengals and now the Raiders. To possibly being out of football for good.

What should happen is a cage match between Richie Incognito and Burfict, preferably in the Phoenix area where both have plenty of history.

Music 101

The Beat Goes On/Soul Bossa Nova

What happens when you marry Sonny & Cher with Austin Powers? You get this mashup from Emilie-Claire Barlow, a Canadian jazz vocalist.

Remote Patrol

NL Wildcard Game

Brewers at Nationals

8 p.m. TBS

This is Anthony Rendon, who leads the Nats in every major batting category and who just got offered $200 million to remain in D.C. I guess I should’ve heard of him.

What a matchup! You’ve got Christian Yelich on one side and Bryce Harper on the other. Wait, what?

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 7 Comments

by John Walters

Starting Five

Ohio Statement

The best college football team in America, after one month, is Ohio State. On Saturday night the Buckeyes strutted into Lincoln, a vaunted powerhouse until the past 17 years, and embarrassed Scott Frost’s squad. It was 38-0 at halftime and if Ryan Day had put the pedal down after halftime the final score would have been much worse than 48-7.

Defensive end Chase Young is a beast, fulfilling the promise that Nick Bosa never did last season. Quarterback Justin Fields is winning converts weekly both to his Heisman campaign and to the idea that Kirby Smart isn’t the best decision-maker out there. Finally, Ryan Day is the anti-Urban when it comes to basking in a drama vortex. We will call him Rural Meyer.

MH’s Top 4, after one month: Ohio State, Alabama, LSU, Auburn.

I Don’t Want Your Civil War*

*The judges would remind you that for many of those who attend MAGA rallies, the Civil War never ended.

This is a classic Trump Tweet, filled with superlatives and threats and false premises. The facts are this: 1) no one diplomat/nation ever simply “does a favor” for another, just like no one ever went to Don Corleone asking for a favor thinking there’d be no payback expected, 2) since the beginnning Trump has never denied what he did (the transcript demonstrates it in black and white) but has instead asked “Who is accusing me?” 3) the Civil War has been going on ever since Lincoln freed the slaves. Some Americans will never accept the post-bellum world in which they live and all Trump has done is capitalize off that rift while further widening the gulf.

The funniest thing about all of this? Trump doesn’t give a tinker’s darn about any of you Middle America types. You think a guy who has lived his entire adult life within 2 blocks of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street gives the slightest (poop) about a $30,000-a-year worker in Centerville, Ohio? Think again. He’s exploiting you; he’s not fighting for you.

The Death of the Middle Class (In Pro Sports)

Detroit, which earlier this decade had the two best pitchers of this generation, lost 114 games this season

We don’t know if it’s just a coincidence or a reflection of market economics elsewhere, but what’s happening to the American class structure is being reflected in pro team sports somewhat. That is, an increase in folks to the ultra-rich or very poor with a decrease of America’s true middle class.

The Major League Baseball season ended yesterday and for the first time in THE HISTORY of the Show, four teams finished with at least 100 wins: the Dodgers, Astros, Yankees and Twins. Also for the first time, four teams finished with at least 100 losses: the Tigers, Orioles, Royals and Marlins.

Thirty teams, and more than 25% of them are uber-successful or distressingly lacking.

Meanwhile in the NFL, and we know it’s early, the only thing that’s going to prevent the Jets or Dolphins from finishing 0-16 is the fact that they both play in the AFC East. The Patriots look unbeatable. And the 0-3 Bengals face the 0-3 Steelers tonight on Monday Night Football.

The Broncos and Redskins are 0-4 and the Cards, who had the No. 1 overall draft pick, are 0-3-1.

The Fraser-Pryce Is Right

At the Worlds in Doha, Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce wins the women’s 100 meters in 10.71 seconds. The Worlds gold medal in the 100 is the Jamaican’s (yes, what is it about Jamaican sprinters?) fourth in this biannual event to go along with her Olympic golds in the 100 in 2008 and 2012.

Pryce, 32, now holds two of the five fastest times ever run, and two of the other people who ran faster were Marion Jones and Flo-Jo, one of whom definitely wasn’t clean and the other of whom has long been suspected.

Truth be told, we don’t fully subscribe to any track and field record set in the past 50 years. Which is sad, and yes it smears plenty of athletes who’ve done it the right way. We’re not saying they’re all cheaters, only that our suspicions lead us to wonder. No matter what they say. Call it the Lance Armstrong Effect.

Watson, Come Here

https://twitter.com/jasonkersey/status/1178517314154745856?s=20

I’m 100% with Jason here, and not at all with Mike. This is exactly how the process is supposed to work. And no egos were damaged in the exchange of information here. Reporter asked a good question: Was there a coverage that dictated why you could not throw deep? Watson explained in depth the coverage and how Houston had to react to it. Of course, at a certain point one team’s Joes have to make more plays than the others. That’s the unspoken truth in this exchange. We’ve always liked Deshaun Watson and we like him even more now.

Music 101

Classic

Come to me, baby/Don’t be shy/Don’t be shy/Don’t be shy

Written and released by New York-based electronic music duo The Knocks, featuring vocals by Crista Ru of POWERS. We detect a hint of The Human League here, no? Released in September of 2017, it’s a club favorite. Not that we get to many clubs.

Remote Patrol

Two of the men in this photo won Best Actor/Best Supporting Actor Oscars for this film, even though the most deserving, IMO, was Dana Andrews (middle), who did not