by John Walters

The MH staff got to rub elbows with CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor last night. Not that we are suddenly media titans (again), but he treated his staff to a few rounds of ale and whatnot at our other place of employ. Great tipper, nice man. Good luck at the commencement speech at Syracuse this weekend.

Starting Five

Eighty-Six The 76ers

The record will show that Boston advanced “easily,” 4-1, over Philly, but the final two losses came in overtime and by two. Last night in TD Bank Center Garden or whatever it’s called, Philly led 109-107 before a couple of bad turnovers and a missed Joel Embiid layup sealed their fate.

Sharp’s update: The line was Boston minus 1.5 and the Celtics led by one with just 2.7 ticks left when Marcus Smart attempted to miss his second free throw. He tossed it hard off the front rim, but somehow the sphere bounded up and over, ricocheted off the backboard, and bounded through. Celts win by two. If you had Philly plus the points, it was a doubly bad beat.

Michael Cohen, Renaissance Man

World’s Most-Screwed Individual

Not only did Michael Cohen graduate from the Worst Law School in America, but as the financial records disclosed by Michael Avenatti demonstrate, he’s also a respected accountant (hence the $600,000 payment from a South Korean airplane manufacturer) and a health-care expert (hence the $1.2 million from Novartis).

It’s amazing that a one-man shell company set up in Delaware is able to draw not only interest but substantial fees from corporations based in South Korea and Switzerland, not to mention AT&T. Especially since none of the principals at those companies had never met him in person.

Hmmm.

Now you can ask yourself, Does any of this ever get revealed if Avenatti isn’t representing Stormy Daniels, if the news of the $130,000 payout is not released, which sends Avenatti poking through Cohen’s financial records? And our answer is YES. Wethinks Robert Mueller and pals were way ahead of Avenatti on this (might someone from his office even have leaked these figures to him?) but it sure makes a difference with this evidence out in front of the public long before Mueller files any charges.

And dig: None of these companies denied this. In fact, a few of them released higher payment numbers than Avenatti originally disclosed. Maybe they want their money back?

3. Mass. Murder

Brett Gardner, perhaps the only Yankee yet to play hero during this run, had three hits last night, including the go-ahead triple in the 8th inning

On the morning of April 21st the New York Yankees, losers of two straight, woke up to find themselves with a 9-9 record. The Boston Red Sox, waking up a few hours later on the West Coast, were 17-2. Pundits wondered if the Sawx, with a 7 1/2 game lead on the Bombers just three weeks into the season, would “run away with the A.L. East.”

That night the Sawx were no-hit in Oakland. Earlier in the day the Yanks had exploded for a 7-run sixth inning to beat Toronto, 9-1. Last night New York exploded for a four-run eighth inning (in both big innings, Aaron Judge homered) to beat Boston in the Bronx and win their 17th game in 18 outings, since the morning of April 21.

The Yanks are now 26-10. Boston is 26-11. New York is in first place. Buckle up, it’s going to be a fun summer with these two.

4. Meanwhile, Al Pacino Has A Word For The Mets

A midweek matinee in Cincinnati between the Mets and Reds got interesting when the Let’sGo’s handed the umpires an incorrect batting order in the top of the first. Second- and third-place hitters Wilmer Flores and Asdubral Cabrera were actually written in the reverse order in the lineup card exchanged at home plate before the game.

So, after Cabrera doubled with two out and no one on in the first inning, Reds skipper Jim Riggleman apprised the home plate umpire of this and Cabrera was called out. His double was wiped off the face of the earth. This is what happens when you trade the Dark Knight to Cincinnati for a jar of pickled beets.

Anyway, any history of the Mets now must include this anecdote. The Mets lost 2-1 in 10 innings.

5. “Oh, My Aching Bach”

This is Dane Johansen, 33, and he was a man on a mission. In fact, he may have visited a few missions. In 2014 the native Alaskan embarked on a  600-mile pilgrimage in northern Spain, trekking the famed Camino de Santiago network of trails. His task: to play and record Bach’s six suites for solo cello in 36 churches along the way. Johansen accomplished the suite feat with his sweaty feet in 45 days.

Hands down, this is and will be The New York Times-iest article of the year. Let’s just end the competition now.

Reserves

Satire need not be long or overdone. Here’s Andy Borowitz with a funny idea and he didn’t belabor his point….

***

This type of thing seems to be happening more often lately. Maybe this Yale student can have a chat with those two Native American siblings at Colorado State. The irony of this is that the Yalie, a 34 year-old woman who is earning a Masters in African Studies, just had her thesis handed to her.

Music 101

Fooling Yourself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkdU7p30xKg

As disco took over on one end of the spectrum in the late 70s, and punk ruled the other, a lot of teens wearing retainers and with terrible bowl-shaped haircuts had no one to believe in. And then Styx came along. A lot of their music gets slagged and rightfully so (“Domo arigoto, Mr. Roboto?”), but this is one of their better tunes.

Remote Patrol

Game 7: Winnipeg at Nashville

8 p.m. NBC Sports Net

A Nashville-Las Vegas Western Conference final is still a possibility, as is a Las Vegas-Tampa Bay Stanley Cup final. Gordie Howe must be forechecking the grave next to him.

by John Walters

Starting Five

It really is a disproportionately small finger that Trump has on the button of the nuclear arsenal

Deal Or No Deal

In the past week or so, with President Trump’s handling of North Korea (welcome back to the three prisoners) and now North Korea, we’ve learned a lot about his style of “diplomacy,” which is definitely 180 degrees different than his predecessor’s. In a nutshell: I have more power/money/weapons than you do, and I’ll be an even bigger bastard than you guys are if you force my hand.

It’s not something they extol at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, tyrannical diplomacy, but short-term, it’s working. Kim Jong-Un (or as Mike Pompeo calls him, “Chairman Un”; it’s “Chairman Kim”) appears to speak the same language and is now sending home three U.S. prisoners and talking about getting rid of his nukes. Will Iran, which took our money and then funneled (always with the funneling) a lot of it to militants we were fighting elsewhere in the Middle East, suddenly realize that we’re no longer the soft step-parent they assumed we were?

On the other hand, no one in Europe likes that Trump pulled out of the Iran deal. Moreover, the signal, and anyone who dealt with Trump the casino-0wner or Trump the real estate-magnate or Trump the husband could have told you this, Trump honors a deal only so far as it is beneficial to him. The moment it is not, he cuts and runs and cares not about the bridges he has burned. That’s what Michael Cohen and the slush fund is for, to assuage the hurt feelings.

Anyway, we’ll see. Trump is taking a victory lap this week. Is North Korea playing him, or are they really sincere because Trump has either 1) made some very dark threats or 2) paid them off in some secretive way? Will Iran become more or less amenable to behaving?

We’ll see.

And finally, here’s a conspiracy theory: What if Trump is telling men like Kim and Putin and China’s Xi, “Look, dudes, the only thing keeping me from turning America into a dictatorship is the freaking free press. Help me score a few wins against them, turn the public further in my favor, and then I’ll be able to get away with being more punitive toward them. And then we’ll all get richer and America will be just like you.”

2. The Last BOY Scout*

*The judges will not accept “The Boy Scout Handbook of Mormon”

To read any Brigham Young University football media guide in the 1990s (and we read our share) was to discover that a disproportionately high number of Cougar gridders were also former Eagle Scouts. In fact, the other religion within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, i.e., the Mormons, is the Boy Scouts of America.

But, as of December 31, 2019, the Mormons and the B.S.A., who have a fruitful relationship for more than a century, will split. In a joint statement, the two organizations announced the divorce, with the increasingly global church announcing that it will form its own independent youth scouting group.

The personification of most Mormon adults I’ve met.

In 2013 the BSA announced that it would admit gay scouts.  A year later, transgender scouts. A year after that, in 2015, openly gay adult scout leaders. And last week, it said that it would take the name “Boy” off the Scouts as to openly welcome girls into the program. So from whom do I buy my cookies now?

It might be fair to say that the Mormon church had finally had it with all this progressiveness. Can’t you just get a “Social Justice Warrior” merit badge and be done with it?

3. Three Months, Three No-Hitters, Three Countries

Big Maple gets a hug

Since the baseball season officially began in March, we can say that this is its third calendar month. And last night in Toronto James Paxton, a pitcher for the Seattle Mariners who is Canadian, threw the third no-hitter of the young season. And for what it’s worth, it was tossed in the third different country.

The first, by the A’s Sean Manaea against the Boston Red Sox on April 21, came in Oakland. The second, a combined job by a quartet of Dodger pitchers against the hapless San Diego Padres, happened last Friday night in Monterrey, Mexico. And now a third in Canada.

Paxton, who threw a 99 mph fastball on his 99th and final pitch, becomes only the second Canuck (after Dick Fowler) to toss a no-hitter. And it’s the earliest point in the season baseball has had three no-no’s since 1969, a season that would see six no-hitters in all. It was also baseball’s 299th regulation-length (9 innings) no-hitter.

Paxton, a.k.a. Big Maple, made news earlier this season when an American Eagle landed on him during the national anthem.

4. Knotted at 116

You probably weren’t paying attention, but last weekend in Gulf Shores, Alabama, UCLA won the NCAA Beach Volleyball national championship. If you’re saying to yourself, I didn’t know there was an NCAA sport for beach volleyball, well, it’s only been around since 2016 (Title IX: it was cheap to add and creates more schollies for women and no, they don’t wear bikinis).

What makes the title newsworthy is that now UCLA and Stanford are knotted at 116 for the most NCAA championships won by one school. At No. 3, and you might have guessed, is USC with 104. But who’s No. 4? We’d never have reckoned, but the school has less than half USC’s total (51).

The answer, and we were shocked: Oklahoma State University, but unlike the other three schools, all of theirs are in men’s sports. How did this happen? Well, two-thirds of the Cowboys 51 titles have come in wrestling and another 10 in golf.

5. Funnel Of Love

Most likely on CNN or MSNBC this very moment

Yesterday America’s unofficial special prosecutor, Michael Avenatti, who has gone from zero to household name in the past two months, released a report claiming that a Russian oligarch with ties to Vlad Putin wired at least $500,000 to Essential Consultants, LLC,  a shell company set up by Michael Cohen.

Here is where it becomes far more interesting: in a time period stretching from just before the 2016 election to this past January, more than $4.4 million passed though Essential Consultants coffers, and some of those payments originated with “legit” companies: $99,000 from Novartis Pharmaceuticals, $200,000 from AT&T.

The largest payment known came from Columbus Nova, about $500,000, which is a New York-based investment firm owned by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.

All of the above claim these were “consulting” fees, but let’s face it, you’d receive better advice, legal or non-legal, from your barber. This was pay-for-play to Donald Trump, with Michael Cohen acting as the intermediary. Is Trump that greedy or is he that broke, or is it a little bit of both?

Hal Holbrook said it best: “Follow the money.”

Music 101

Suspicious Minds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb0Jmy-JYbA

Legendary talent. Arguably the Abraham of rock and roll. Elvis Presley had it all: looks, swagger, a voice, charisma, musicianship and mystique. He was to culture what the atomic bomb was to warfare. By this time, 1970, he was a drug-addled shell of his former self, literally a Vegas lounge act. He’d die 7 years later, only 42 years old.

Remote Patrol

Who The F**k Is That Guy?
Netflix

Alago, left

A documentary on the life of Michael Alago, a gay Puerto Rican kid from Brooklyn who in the early Seventies, barely a teenager, snuck into clubs such as CBGB to see the biggest names and music and within a decade or so was a 24 year-old A&R exec signing bands such as Metallica. He’s still only 53. If you love the seamy underbelly of the music biz, or at least learning about it, this is for you. It’s like HBO’s Vinyl but real.

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour

Gotcha. https://t.co/a3NPal4z9X

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) May 8, 2018

Starting Five

Literally 3 hours after The New Yorker story appeared on line, Schneiderman resigned

When Will They Learn?

On Monday afternoon The New Yorker released a story in which four women accused New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman of physical abuse. By the time the sun had set, Schneiderman, 63, had resigned. Two of the women, ex-girlfriends Michelle Manning Barish and Tanya Selvaratnam, went on the record and provided their own names and their own harrowing testimony of being slapped across the face and choked. Both said that Schneiderman had threatened to have their phones tapped and that he’d kill them if they broke up with them.

Schneiderman, who had pursued Harvey Weinstein on criminal charges due to the assault allegations brought up against him last October, denied the accusations but resigned three hours later. He joins the short list of infamous ex-New York Attorneys General that includes Elliot Spitzer and Aaron Burr.

2. The Wholly Ronan Empire*

*The judges will also accept “American Farrow”

No male figure has done more to forward the #MeToo movement than Ronan Farrow, who  co-authored the piece on Schneiderman and who broke the story on Harvey Weinstein last October that sparked the entire crusade. Farrow, 30, won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.

Not bad for the son of Mia Farrow, best-known for her work in the title role in Rosemary’s Baby, and officially of Woody Allen. Although Ronan’s mom has publicly hinted that her ex-husband, Frank Sinatra, may have sired Farrow and if you ask us to look at the photo above and place our bet, we’re going with Ol’ Blue Eyes. Which would be funny because Frank was a friend of many, many people (and dames), but he loathed the press. He reportedly once nearly ran a few of them down after landing at LAX with Eva Gardner.

Anyway, Farrow (like Anderson Cooper) has turned out to be far more than the scion of New York celebrity. He’s a very bright young man (Yale Law School alum) who’s done some of the most intrepid reporting in the country in the past year. And to think NBC execs put the kibosh on his Weinstein reporting last year, which is why he went to The New Yorker with it.

Allen The Family: Those Were The Days

Finally, you cannot at all discount how Farrow’s own highly exposed personal life played a role in his dogged pursuit of sexual predators. Born in 1987, he was just a little boy when his father’s decision to leave his mother for his half-sister, an adopted Asian teenager, was all over the New York City tabloids. It was a pre-internet age, but that story ruled this city for a summer and his family imploded. As bright as Farrow is—graduating college at age 15—you can bet that that traumatic experience had an enormous impact on his life and his impassioned reporting.

We call that turning a negative into a positive.

3. The International Rifle Association

You can’t spell “Nicaragua” without “N-R-A”

At least the NRA has a sense of humor. On Monday they named convicted international arms dealer Oliver North as their new president. In case you are too young to recall, in the mid-Eighties North was a member of the National Security Council who played a huge role in selling arms to Iran, which was expressly prohibited since we had a trade embargo with them, and then funneling some of those profits to help fund the Nicaraguan Contras (which I hope will someday be the name of an MLB expansion franchise) in their war against their government, which was expressly forbidden by the Boland Amendment.

Ollie may have been the fall guy for some of these Beltway shenanigans, but he was convicted (those convictions were later dismissed by Reagan’s former Veep who would succeed him, George H.W. Bush).

Still, you have to admire the NRA’s chutzpah: putting the most infamous living American in terms of illegal sales of arms in the post as the president of your association. Bravo!

I wonder if any thought was given to asking Donald Glover if he wanted the gig.

4. Has Running Peaked?

Spokane’s annual Lilac Bloomsday Run, which is on our bucket list for races to run before we die (or our back and knees give out, whichever happens first) took place this weekend, as it always does on the first weekend of May. Sunday’s 12 km (7.46 mile) race had “only” 38,187 finishers, which marked the seventh consecutive year that the number of finishers had declined.

Sunday’s race had the fewest number of finishers since 1985.

Founded by runner and writer Don Kardong in 1977, less than a year after he finished in fourth place at the 1976 Olympic marathon in Montreal, Bloomsday (named after a character in James Joyce’s Ulysses) became synonymous with the road running boom. Its popularity peaked in 1996, when more than 61,000 runners finished. With that many runners and that relatively short a distance, Bloomsday is more a parade for most than a competitive run.

Maybe this is just a blip on the chart. Or maybe running is waning in popularity, which we’d be fine with, since it wouldn’t be so dang hard to get entries into the races we’d like to run.

5. Carpet Diem

Carla Delevingne: Actually, I’ll pass on the pudding, thanks.

On an insanely lovely early May evening in Manhattan, the MET Gala rode again. On to the costumes…

We found love in a Popeless place….

Is it us or is Rihanna beginning to look like Albert Pujols?

Wondering if Katy Perry took the M79 crosstown bus over to the shindig

Reserves

Be Best Galini

She is lovely, though

“Be Best.” Not Be Your Best or Be The Best. Simply “Be Best.” That’s our First Lady’s new program for children. Melania seems like a decent person trapped in a prison of her own design, but there’s also a sense of comic relief to so much of what she’s attempting to do. It’s funny how MAGA types are so adamant that people speak English but then give it a pass as long as they’re not speaking Mexican or poor.

Our Newest Hero

Gerald

You may have read about the film director who ignored safety precautions at a wildlife park named Glen Afric, roamed off into an area he didn’t belong, and was unwittingly killed by a giraffe. Carlos Carvalho, 47, was looking through the camera eyepiece trying to take closeups of a giraffe known at the South African game park as Gerald when the magnificent creature swung its magnificent neck and inadvertently struck Carvalho, sending him flying through the air. The blow was fatal.

This is the last photo of Carvalho, snapped about five minutes before the incident

Now, Gerald is not exactly our hero, but the owners of the wild life park, who announced that Gerald would not put down, are. Said their spokesperson, a woman identified simply as Jenny: “Gerald was not to blame and would not be put down. We are not going to shoot Gerald. He was not in the wrong. He’s just a huge wild animal and the guy disobeyed safety regulations. I’m very sad for his family. But I’m not one of those people who blames the animals.”

Thank you.

Thank You!

THANK YOU!!!!

At last, a little sanity.

Music 101

The Spirit of Radio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Juv5Ifs2fFY

Senior year of high school, April 1984. We had an assembly and three of my classmates played this song in front of the entire Brophy Prep student body and 10:30 a.m. and the gym went nuts. You had to be there, but lead singer Michael Brockman had Geddy Lee’s vocals down perfectly and lead guitarist Chris Redl could flat-out shred. It was pretty damn epic. Oh yeah, Rush released this song in 1980.

Remote Patrol

NBA Playoff Doubleheader

Jazz at Rockets Game 5

8 p.m TNT

Pelicans at Warriors Game 5

At this point, I’m just watching for the TNT studio updates on gas mileage. Wake me for the conference finals.

by John Walters

Starting Five

Put this in the vault for “Best Sports Photos of 2018”

Raptor, The Best Medicine

In Game 1 of the 1992 NBA Finals, Michael Jordan scored 35 first-half points, a total that was greatly abetted by his then-record six three-pointers. After burying his sixth over Cliff Robinson in the second quarter, Jordan turned to Magic Johnson, who was part of the NBC courtside broadcast crew, and shrugged. It was as if to say, “Even I don’t believe what I’m capable of.”

LeBron James has reached Shrug-Level playoff capability. His running left-side lay-up style 15-foot game winner against Toronto on Saturday was so nonchalant that, well, there was actually a total absence of chalant to the feat.

Conversely, didn’t the Raptors, now down 3-0 in this series, learn anything from watching the Pacers series. You always double, double, double LeBron in situations like this. He’s a fundamentals guy, he’ll pass out of a double team. J.R. Smith or Kevin Love can beat you, sure, but make them do it. Or make him give it up to Kyle Korver or George Hill or whatever mook is on the floor. Just don’t play iso ball with one of the greatest players who ever lived. Another week of Susie B.’s Sweet Pea euphoria crashing down on us like a world-record wave in Portugal is more than we can bear.

2. Earning Their Pinstripes

It was nice when the Yankees swept four straight from the Minnesota Twins, the last win coming on a Gary Sanchez walk-off home run in a 9th inning that began with the Yanks trailing 3-1 on a getaway Thursday afternoon game. That stretched the W streak to six in a row.

But then the Yanks had to hit the road to play seven road games versus the top two clubs in the A.L. West, one of them the World Series champs, and then follow that with three against the A.L. Central-leading Cleveland Indians. All without a day off.

So how did those 10 games go? New York went 9-1, capped off by Sunday’s come-from-behind 7-4 win at Yankee Stadium (they trailed 4-0 heading into the bottom of the eighth) that ended when rookie Gleyber Torres smashed a 3-2 pitch over the wall in dead center.

On Friday night Miguel Andujar, another rookie infielder who was not on the roster on Opening Day, hit a game-winning walk-off single.

On Friday Torres, 21, whom the Yanks acquired two summers ago when he was a prospect by trading Aroldis Chapman, whom they now have back on the roster, became the youngest Yankee in 49 years to hit a home run. Yesterday Torres became the youngest Yankee to ever hit a walk-off home run. And he’s the only known position player since 1900 whose team is 14-1 since he was called up to play for them.

The Yankees have gone from the Torre Dynasty to the Torres Dynasty, you might say. Anyway, they’re 15-1 over the past 16 and yet still in second place behind the Sawx, who come to the Bronx this week for a three-game series beginning tomorrow. It’s going to be a fun summer in the A.L. East.

3. Hawaii: April Showers Bring May Flows*

*The judges will also accept, “Hot Rocks” and “Hawaii Volcan-O”

It was only three weeks ago that a storm dropped two feet of rain on the island of Kauai, necessitating the obligatory interviews of shirtless surfer Laird Hamilton, who came to the aid of many.

Last week on the big island of Hawaii, the Kilauea volcano erupted and it has been spewing hot magma ever since. More than two dozen homes have been destroyed and more than 500 tourist lava selfies have been uploaded on Instragram. Meanwhile, the release of toxic sulfur dioxide gas have made much of the surrounding area smell like your junior year chemistry lab.

4. A Hero For Wildlife

We only caught the last five minutes of this 60 Minutes feature on wildlife photographer Thomas Mangelsen, but anyone who is cool enough to get Jane Goodall to hang out with him on a riverbank in mid-winter has something going for him. If you’re emotionally mature enough to appreciate wildlife beyond posting click-baity “Shark Nearly Attacks Paddleobarder!” or “What Are All These Cougars Doing In Colorado Backyards?” stories, take a few minutes to watch and appreciate this.

And we want to give special props to the producer of this segment, Denise Schrier Cetta, for staging a fadeout shot that was worthy of an Oscar-winning film. Just magnificent.

5. Say It Ain’t So, Joe

Above: Joe Cool

This is what Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon, 64, looked like when he was leading the Cubbies to their first World Series championship in 108 years back in 2016.

And this is what Joe Maddon looks like today. To each his own, of course, but those of us who are fellow Gray Rights advocates are disappointed. Did you lose a bet or something, skipper? All Maddon will say is, “It’s going to get darker.” Ew.

Reserves

Thank You, Neil Cavuto

Catch Neil’s latest Common Sense pic.twitter.com/JdGCX4WmjF

— Neil Cavuto (@TeamCavuto) May 3, 2018

Another Foxy sees the light about the president….

*****

Mud, Sweat and Cheers

For the sixth consecutive year, the favorite to win the Kentucky Derby wins the Kentucky Derby. Justify, trained by Bob Baffert, took the lead before the far turn and never looked back in the wettest Run For The Roses ever. The other note is that Justify never raced as a two year-old, although neither did you.

******

Confetti don Tutti

Speaking of unwelcome eruptions….

The confetti rained down on the court prematurely in Game 3 between the Celtics and Sixers Saturday night, an ideal metaphor for an OT game in which the young, talented but not very bright Sixers committed three careless turnovers in the half court in the waning moments of the contest and ALSO put up an offensive rebound put-back try with :15 left and the lead in overtime.

Simply put, the not-so-smart Sixers ran into a far more intelligent adversary in Brad Stevens, who designed two game-winning out-of-bounds plays, one at the end of regulation (only a lovely Marco Bellinelli fallaway corner shot spared the Sixers and forced OT) and the other at the end of O.T.

Go to school, Joel (Goodson, not Embiid; it’s from Risky Business). Go learn something. That’s the thought we had after watching the end of Game 3.

Music 101

This Is America

After failing his audition at Saturday Night Live a few years ago, Donald Glover has done okay for his self. He has a critically acclaimed, Emmy-winning hit in Atlanta, he hosted SNL this weekend, and as his musical alter ego, Childish Gambino, he just released this song and video that already has 10 16 million hits in one weekend. I’m still not sure if the NRA is going to love or hate this, although since it’s black people he’s gunning down, I can guess the answer.

What makes this song so powerful? The blending of uplifting African tribal rhythms with the shots-fired reality of urban America.

Remote Patrol

Capitals at Penguins, Game 6

7 p.m. NBC Sports Net

Can Ove finally take down the Penguins in a postseason series? The Penguins are 0-4 against the flightless fowl in Ovechkin’s career in the playoffs, including being knocked out each of the past three years. He’s one game away as the Caps lead 3-2 but this rink is in Pittsburgh.

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour

blaming the intern is so 1990’s. 🙄 https://t.co/6CGPERpNqx

— Monica Lewinsky (@MonicaLewinsky) May 3, 2018

Starting Five

The King and SI

After 29 years at the magazine and website, Peter King opts not to renew his contract at Sports Illustrated and joins NBC Sports (and NBCSports.com). Sure, it’s a landmark moment in the life of the franchise because when Peter joined SI, there was no place else in sports (ESPN included) that any upwardly mobile journalist would desire to work. SI was THE destination.

ESPN and the web changed all that, of  course. And SI‘s foot-dragging approach to embracing the web (ironically, NBC Sports got into the web game WAYYY LATE…I was among the original group of hires in spring of 2006) but now, a dozen years later, they’ll finally come of age.

Peter was, deservedly, the highest-paid person at Sports Illustrated the past few years. Not because he was the best writer, but because he had made himself the most relevant. How did he do that? By embracing, at a time when most other SI senior writers told the editors that they did not have the time or inclination to write for it, the website. Peter understood early the freedom that writing for the web provided (note: somewhere buried deep in the SI Vault or the plethora of blog posts I wrote for SI.com, enthusiastically, but that never touched the same audience) and he carved out a remarkable niche for himself. He pursued it wholeheartedly because the web was the one place that had the space for all of his thoughts on both the NFL and life beyond it. It was refreshing.

King was the first and still only writer at SI whose popularity spawned an independent, stand-alone website, MMQB

It helps that Peter is a remarkably good guy, cherubic and personable, genuinely interested in other people. He’s not soft; far from it. He’s just not adversarial as a default mode. He’ll be just fine at NBC, where Sunday Night Football is the NUMBER ONE NETWORK PRIME TIME SHOW in the country annually.

As for SI? Where does the mag and website go from here? There are still a few vets there who do remarkable work—Tim Layden, Jon Wertheim, Andy Staples, to name a few—but the pre-millennial stamp of this publication has almost entirely vanished. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but much like rock and roll music, the question I ask is, Who has stepped in to fill the void? (and don’t tell me The Lumineers or I’ll have to slap you).

2. The Path Of Priest Resistance

Like any good Jesuit priest, Fr. Pat Conroy, S.J., is a smart and somewhat defiant cleric. So when Speaker of the House Paul Ryan asked for his resignation, fully expecting that Conroy was like one of his GOP toadies who bends to the will of any Republican who polls higher (See: Trump v. Ryan), Conroy asked, “For cause?”

And when Ryan could not provide cause, Conroy said, “Well, F___ that, you’re going to have to fire me.” And Ryan, well, we all know who he is, he backed down like the coward he is. So Fr. Pat remains as the House prayer guy or whatever his job is, which let’s face it, is a total sinecure anyway.

All I know is, usually when two Irish guys skirmish (and you can’t spell “skirmish” without “Irish”), both guys arrive willing to take a punch. Not here. Paul Ryan is the worst fighting Irish I’ve seen since Charlie Weis’ 2007 outfit.

3.  Cash Mob

Yesterday on Interstate 70 in Indianapolis, the back doors of a Brinks truck flew open and as much as $600,00 in cash flew out the back and onto the road. Drivers stopped and stuffed their pockets as did anyone passing by. Brinks and the Indiana State Police are asking people to return the money. Good luck with that.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate dipped below 4% for the first time since 2000, but methinks someone (or maybe two guys) just tilted that figure in the opposite direction.

4. Let Love Rule

Almost (Hi, Susie B.!) all of us have become inured to LeBron’s dominance this spring, because last night The King posted his third 40-plus point game in the past five, but all anyone is talking about is how Kevin Love scored 31 points to lead the Cavs to an easy Game 2 win in Toronto.

It was nice to see T-Wolves era Kevin reemerge. Most of the time since he’s worn a Cavs jersey, Love’s play has been so tepid that I’ve redubbed him “Kevin Like.” Is it only a Punxsatawney Phil thing, or can the Cavs actually have a legit second option? This was the best Cleveland has looked this postseason and suddenly we all have to gird ourselves for the possibility of Cavs-Dubs IV.

5. Clicks Versus Classics

If you are into that sort of thing, my old co-worker at Sports Illustrated, Jeff Pearlman, recently released his 48th podcast about writers talking shop, Two Writers Slinging Yang, and his guest was another co-worker of ours, Steve Rushin (we’ll delve into why he had 47 guests before Steve Rushin another day…that’s just criminal).

Anyway, we’re not podcast consumers but we did listen to most of this (because we remember most of the tales first-hand or were there for them, I suppose). One anecdote Steve shared resonates with me: He told of the adventure he had writing a piece about golfing in Greenland and that when he returned, a high-ranking editor waved some market research at him and informed him, “This will probably be the least-read story in the magazine this year.”

And Steve’s retort, and I’m paraphrasing, was, “I’m interested in writing the story that people will be talking about three to five to 10 years from now. I can write 10 NFL stories if you like, but what can I write that will have a lasting impact?”

Amen. Think about that as you click on to your next “Way Too Early 2019 NFL Mock Draft” piece today.

Reserves

Eruption

A volcano explosion in Hawaii this morning, and record-setting geyser eruptions in Yellowstone earlier this week. The U.S. landscape is letting off steam. Can you blame it?

AL East 

Gleyber Torres, who was called up on the second day of this 12-1 streak, is batting .317 and got the hit that brought in the go-ahead run in the ninth inning yesterday

Remember when the Boston Red Sox were 17-2 and the New York Yankees were 9-9 and it looked as if the Sawx, even without Dustin Pedroia, were going to run away with baseball’s most top-heavy division?

The Sox are 5-7 since then and the Yankees are 12-1. New York just finished up a 6-1 road trip at the two stadiums where they’ve had the most trouble in recent years, Anaheim and Houston (they lost all 4 games of the ALCS played in Houston last October, as you’ll recall). Yesterday afternoon at Minute Maid Park the Bombers came back from 2 runs down in the ninth to lead 6-5, and then with the tying run on 2nd in the bottom half of the inning for Houston, Aroldis Chapman struck out AL MVP Jose Altuve on three straight pitches, all of them canned heat thrown right down the heart of the plate. It may have only been May, but it was thrilling.

FWIW: the Yanks’ lone loss since April 20, a period in which they have not had a day off, occurred Monday night in Houston. They arrived in town at 5:30 a.m. after playing ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” in Anaheim and then lost 2-1. They proceeded to shut out the World Series champs each of the next two nights before taking yesterday’s game to close out that series, 3-1.

It’s only May 4th, but look out. The Yanks are scary. Even scarier than the experts thought they’d be.

Music 101

Starlight

Back in the days before we realized that good band after good band was not naturally obliged to happen (or “before we got old”), we attended a “festival” on a rainy June Saturday in Giants Stadium where the headliner was Radiohead and the band directly ahead of them was Muse (Radiohead JayVee). Here in the U.S. the British band never fully got the love that they’ve garnered in Europe and even Asia, perhaps because they never had that one breakout hit song (even Franz Ferdinand and Snow Patrol did that). Anyway, this is a pretty fantastic live performance and you probably know this song even if you did not realize you did: Muse has a few songs like that, but you always come back to Matt Bellamy’s tell-tale falsetto (although that could be a song from Keane, too, come to think of it).

Remote Patrol

Rockets at Jazz

Game 3

10:30 p.m. ESPN

The referees had the temerity to call a lane violation on LeBron James in Game 1 at Toronto; maybe they’ll have the balls to call a push-off on James Harden tonight. I mean, I wouldn’t stay up late explicitly for that reason, but if you are up, well….