Monthly Archives: May 2021

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | Leave a comment

by John Walters

Teen Exceeds Speed Limit

This is Hobbs Kessler of Ann Arbor, Mich. Over the weekend at the Portland Track Invitational Kessler ran a 3:34.36 in the 1500. That time not only breaks the U.S. high school record but also the U.S. collegiate record. It’s good as an Olympic qualifying time. Hobbs is heading to Northern Arizona University in the fall, but first he’s headed to the Olympic Trials in Eugene in three weeks.

(Kessler earns a hug from 27 year-old Craig Engels, a 2016 Olympic alternate who won in 3:33.64)

Kessler’s time beat the extant high school record, set 20 years ago by Alan Webb, by nearly four whole seconds. That’s crazy. He bettered Notre Dame’s Yared Nuguse’s collegiate mark of 3:34.68 set just two weeks earlier.

A Day That Should Live In Infamy

One hundred years ago today, in Tulsa, Okla., a bunch of cowardly and scared white supremacists destroyed a flourishing black business district known as Greenwood and murdered approximately 300 people. They burned the area to the ground. See, they say wanted segregation, but what they also wanted that they failed to mention was degradation. Or, as Carol Anderson wrote in her book White Rage, “The trigger for white rage is black advancement.”

Ironic that this centenary is taking place on what white America recognizes as Memorial Day.

This area was known as Black Wall Street because black-owned businesses were flourishing. And that terrified them. So, being white nationalists and deplorable humans, they committed mass murder on a scale rarely seen.

https://twitter.com/MC_Hyperbole/status/1399129297240084489?s=20

This weekend former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, who should be behind bars (as opposed to backed by Barr) spoke at a QAnon conference in Dallas where he wondered aloud why a military coup like the one staged in Myanmar (“Minimar,” he said) cannot happen here.

Very little has changed in a century.

Me And Helio Down At The Brickyard

At Sunday’s Indianapolis 500, Brazilian Helio Castroneves earns his fourth career milk shower, his first since 2009. If you’re paying attention in 2021:

Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady (his 7th SB win) is 43.

PGA Championship winner Phil Mickelson (his 6th major) is 50.

Castroneves is 46.

And the top seeded men’s player at the French Open, which began yesterday, is Rafael Nadal, who turns 35 on Thursday.

Sam I Am

The winner of this year’s Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions is Sam Kavanaugh, a substitute teacher from Minneapolis, Minn. Maybe now he’ll earn a full-time teaching position somewhere. Kavanaugh lapped the field in the two-day event that aired last Thursday and Friday, winning more than $68,000 in the competition. As the winner, though, he takes home $250,000. Not too shabby.

Kavanaugh had won $156,000 during a five-day streak of wins on Jeopardy! in 2019 when Alex Trebek was hosting. He knew he’d qualified for the Tournament of Champions, and when he lost his teaching gigs due to the pandemic last year, he devoted all of his time to studying for the T of C. Studying pays off.

An unofficial winner, in our minds, of the T of C was guest host Buzzy Cohen, who handled the duties the past fortnight. A former T of C champ (2017), Cohen possessed the perfect energy and acumen for the gig. He’d make a worthy successor to Trebek.

A Trio Of R.I.P. Worthy Gents

Three well-known figures all died over the weekend. First Gavin McLeod, whom you either know as Murray Slaughter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show or as Merrill Stubing, the captain of the Pacific Princess on Love Boat, passed. He was 90. Has a TV actor ever played two more dissimilar characters?

https://twitter.com/espn______0/status/1398673666255241217?s=20

Then Mark Eaton, the former NBA shot-blocker extraordinaire for the Utah Jazz, died in a bicycle accident. Eaton was 64 and 7’4″. Oddly, that’s the second catastrophic bike accident to take place in Utah this past few months involving a 7-foot plus center who played part of his career in Utah (the other was Shawn Bradley, who was left paralyzed). A two-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year, Eaton averaged 5.6 blocks per game in 1984-85, which remains the highest single-season average since the league began tracking the stat.

Finally, musician B.J. Thomas passed. Thomas, whose “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” won the Oscar for Best Original Song and hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts for four weeks, was 78. Thomas did not write the tune, Burt Bacharach and Hal David did. They offered it to Ray Stevens, who turned it down. Thomas recorded it in seven takes—Bacharach hated the first six.

The song was an odd choice for a Western (Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid) but something about it playing as Paul Newman’s Butch rode a bicycle around the yard clicked. It was a massive hit, back when music lovers used to buy singles. Thomas did write and record “Hooked On A Feeling” (1968) and “Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” (1975). The version of “Hooked On A Feeling” that you knew was actually covered by Swedish group Blue Swede, who uses the “ooga chaka ooga ooga” intro you know so well. That version hit No. 1 in ’74.

The Kid

…took it on the chin this weekend. We wondered why he’d do a parlay, but he just had to, and the Nets lost Game 3 in Boston. It’s their only defeat in four games versus the Celtics in the series. Then on Saturday he took Man City and Pep Guardiola in the Champions League final. Frantic texts from The Kid on Saturday as Pep changed his lineup, dropping a midfielder into the defensive backfield before the match. The Kid thinks Guardiola has a little Darell Bevell in him, too smart for his own good, and he self-sabotages his squads in big games. Does something different just to prove that he’s different as it costs his squad. As an ND football fan, all’s I can say is, “Run the damn ball.”

Then again, Pep sounds a little like The Kid these past two weeks. Attempting reverse lay-ups when the gimme dunk is right there.

He’s now 9-6 and at $895, or $105 under water.

Today he likes Serena Williams minus-$300 over Irina-Camelia Begu of Romania in opening round action rom Roland Garros. That’s $300 to lose, $100 to win.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

I Don’t Understand The Filibuster, Either

We’ve all seen Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, right? That’s probably the extent of our knowledge on how the Senate filibuster works. If you are really, really, really against a bill being passed, you can stand up and start arguing against it and as long as you keep talking and refuse to yield back your time, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop you (just make sure you take a potty break before you embark on this mission). It’s like a Hail Mary pass of legislation and a test of one’s physical stamina and perseverance. A little like a Spartan Race inside the Senate chamber.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work. While it only takes a majority of 51 votes to pass a bill, it takes a supermajority of 60% (60 votes if everyone is voting) to end debate on a bill, so that the vote may be taken. So if you never get enough votes to end the debate, then the bill never comes up for a vote. And as Jefferson Smith taught us in that Frank Capra film, you stall debate by reading the Bible, the scout handbook, anything, in order to hold the floor and prevent the vote that ends the debate.

So a couple things I learned this morning:

  1. “Filibuster” is derived from the Dutch word for pirate. I don’t get the connection, but you can dig deeper into that.
  2. Senate Rule XXII (not the one where the Redskins mauled the Broncos) says that cloture—a motion to end debate on a bill—requires a supermajority of at least 60 votes. Which is another way of saying that having a simple majority of the 100 senators is not enough to pass a bill as long as at least 41 senators choose to obstruct that passage. And by invoking the filibuster, they choose to obstruct.
  3. The 60-vote filibuster has only been around since 1917, so don’t pin this one on “the Founders.”

In 2013, the Democrat-controlled Senate voted in a rule that all nominations except that for Supreme Court need only a simple majority. Just three years later the Senate, now under Republican control, said, “A ha, two can play that game” and extended the rule of a simple majority to Supreme Court nominations, which is how we got stuck with Brett Kavanaugh.

Now, since the early 1970s, the Senate has imposed what is known as the “silent filibuster.” Now you no longer need to drone on endlessly for hours (the longest such filibuster campaign was waged by South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond, who spoke for more than 24 hours in 1957 to protest the Civil Rights Act… but, of course). Instead, as long as at least 41 senators threaten a filibuster, the Senate majority leader can refuse to call a vote.

It’s a lot like the modern intentional walk rule in baseball. You don’t even need to throw the four balls any more. You just let the ump know you want the batter on first base. Takes all the effort—and fun—out of it.

I can’t say I understand why if Chuck Schumer (a Dem) is the current Senate majority leader why he allows the silent filibuster to happen. Not sure why he doesn’t force someone from the GOP side of the aisle to stand up and talk ad nauseam. Maybe it’s just a gentleman’s agreement (ha!) but it’s certainly wrong.

Meanwhile, West Virginia Dem. senator Joe Manchin says he will not vote to end the filibuster because he “does not want to destroy democracy.” Which shows that he has a poor grasp of what the term means. Because by insisting on keeping the filibuster he is in favor of not allowing democracy—a majority vote—to prevail.

And so that’s why the Senate approving a bipartisan Jan. 6 commission, when 50 of the senators are GOP and House Minority leader Mitch McConnell is asking them to filibuster the vote “as a personal favor,” is unlikely to come to a vote.*

*I think. Please school me where I’m wrong. I have to move on to other matters.

Rule No. 7

As longtime readers know, Rule No. 7 states that “any baseball game offers the opportunity to see something you’ve never before seen in the game (and the other team sports are just not like that).” The crazy thing here is that there were two outs. All Pirate first baseman Will Craig need do is turn around, step on the bag and the inning is over. He got lazy and now this moment of infamy will live for as long as social media does. Certainly it will outlive his career.

Overdraft Dodger

We’ve gotten so accustomed to congresswoman Katie Porter or Senator Elizabeth Warren stuff the Montgomery J. Burnses of the world in a locker—and yes, they almost always deserve it—that we may have forgotten to ask, Do the merits of the argument hold up? When Porter was holding J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s feet to the flames a year or two ago about the shamefully low wages his company pays to its tellers, etc., I was on her side.

Two days ago, though, when Sen. Warren upbraided Dimon for the > $1 billion in overdraft fees his company collected in 2020, I thought, Wait a minute. Isn’t an overdraft fee a bit like paying an overdue fee for a library book except that in the library-book scenario the consumer did not actually cost the library money? In other words, when Warren asked if Dimon would pay everyone back and he said, flatly, “No,” I thought, Neither would I.

An overdraft fee is the fee you pay when you withdraw more money from the bank than you actually have in your account. And the bank floats you that money. If I go to Whole Foods and buy $27 worth of goods but only have $20, they don’t let me take everything I bought out of the store. And why should they? So why should any bank give you more money than you have in it, unless you’ve formally applied for a loan? Which is essentially what an overdraft fee is: interest on a loan that you took out from the bank without actually clearing it with the bank first.

Sorry, Not Sorry

As Jerry used to say on Seinfeld, “That’s a shame.”

You have to wonder what Officer Trujillo was thinking as they intubated him and put him on a respirator in the final days/hours of his life. Was he remembering Donald Trump’s advice from last October about Covid-19: “Don’t let it dominate you?” Was he experiencing any sense of remorse over having been so arrogant and boastful about a subject he was woefully under-qualified to wax eloquent upon (that’s never stopped me)? That age, 33, is awfully young to depart this planet. But of course, being MAGA I presume, he probably thought that any type of capitulation to the reality of a pandemic that’s killed 2.3 million people would be a sign of weakness on his part. And if there’s anything white male MAGA types hate (more than govt. handouts to poor people), it’s weakness.

Ignorance is okay. But weakness is shameful.

Now he’s dead. An apt metaphor for the current condition of the Republican Party.

The Kid

… won again as the Lakers iced the Suns in Game 3.

He’s now 9-4 and the bank is up to $1,340 (from a $1,000 base).

Tonight he likes a PARLAY!

VEGAS over Minnesota in Game 7 of their Stanley Cup playoff series AND

Brooklyn over BOSTON in Game 3 of their NBA playoff series.

Betting $100 to win $112.

If he loses, he loses $100. If he wins, he wins $112.

And The Kid is not even done. He wants a Saturday bet for the Champions League final, an all-England affair between Chelsea and Manchester City in… Portugal.

He’s putting down $345 to win $300 for ManCity over Chelsea, even though the Blues have beaten them twice in the past six weeks. So that’s our first Saturday bet.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 4 Comments

by John Walters

How YOU Doin’?

The Friends reunion is now streaming on HBO Max. We haven’t seen it. It’s not actually a scripted show, but apparently more than 90 minutes of chatter and replaying of scenes and even a game or two. Could I beeeeee any more disinterested?

The Friends sextet (pun intended) are essentially the MH staff’s age and the show was set in the city in which I was living at the time. So it was always fun to compare reality versus a Burbank or Studio City soundstage. It’s impossible to capture the oft-gray and windy and chilly life of New York City from a writer’s room no more than 45 minutes from Malibu. Not even Seinfeld did it.

Anyway, I remember hitting a very dimly lit bar on Columbus Ave. and 84th with two SI friends of mine after the first season of Friends aired. And there, sitting together that May (it must have been during upfronts week) were, I believe, Matthew Perry and Jennifer Aniston. They could still go out in public then without too much fanfare. The three of us should get together again and see how things have gone the past 28 years.

If you had to rank the Friends’ post-show careers, what would your order be? For instance, if we did Seinfeld it would be Julia Louis-Dreyfus clearly in first place, then Jerry, then a tie for last between Jason Alexander and Michael Richards (and Larry David, who never really appeared on the show, might be ranked ahead of all of them). But for Friends?

I dunno. I mean Matt LeBlanc, Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow have all had their own TV series, but none of them were zeitgeist-type shows. Jennifer Aniston may have had the most prolific career. David Schwimmer was great as Robert Kardashian in the O.J. series and Matthew Perry gave it a go in Studio 60 (Aaron Sorkin’s biggest, if not only, bomb). We’re going to put them in a six-way tie unless you feel differently.

Ja Rules

The Grizzlies lost Game 2 in Utah last night, but second-year guard Ja Morant scored a franchise playoff-record 47 points. In only is second postseason game (if you want to quibble about his two previous play-in appearances last week, feel free). Coupled with his 24 points in Game 1, that puts the former Rookie of the Year at 71 points after two career playoff games. You know how many NBA players have outscored Morant after the first two playoff games of their careers?

Zero.

Not George Mikan, not Wilt Chamberlain, not Jerry West, not Oscar Robertson, not Larry Bird, not Kareem, not MJ, not LeBron, not Steph. This is not an argument to say Morant is better than any of them, or will be. Just a point to say, Keep an eye on the kid.

A Swing and An Ole Miss

Yesterday at the Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz., the University of Mississippi won its first NCAA championship (non-football where it was with votes) in school history. The Rebels’ women’s golf team prevailed over Oklahoma State. If you’re wondering, Wasn’t the women’s NCAA golf championship canceled a couple weeks back due to mansplaining?, you’re partially right.

An NCAA women’s regional was canceled in Baton Rouge due to an unplayable course (heavy rains), even though the LSU men’s team for some reason practiced on that very course that very day. Hmm.

https://twitter.com/AlexMcDaniel/status/1397748003998507009?s=20

Anyway, the top schools in that regional automatically advanced, one of which was Ole Miss. And yesterday the young misses from Ole Miss brought home the school’s first national title.

The Hardy Boy

The other night The Revenant aired on AMC (again), and I’ve seen it a few times, as have you. What strikes me on repeated airings is that Leo DiCaprio won an Oscar for his work in this but Tom Hardy did not. Hardy’s character and portrayal are less like acting than they are being possessed by an alien being. I’m not ripping on Leo for his not having to speak all that many lines—I know his actor was a make-good for all the worthy parts he’s played in the past… and when is Tom Cruise going to receive his long overdue statue?—but Hardy is simply fantastic in this film.

And I can’t even decipher half the sentences he speaks.

2015 was actually a very good year for films: The Revenant, Mad Max: Fury Road (Hardy starred in this), The Big Short (shoulda won Best Picture), The Martian and Brooklyn all released. And Spotlight, a good-but-not-great film, won Best Picture. Hardy was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for The Revenant, but lost out to Mark Rylance in Bridge Of Spies (I’ve never seen this so I’ll leave it up to you).

Also, next time you watch Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, that’s a younger Tom Hardy as Ricki Tarr. He’s terrific in that role, too.

San Jose: 9 Shot And Killed

and…

Please share with a wackadoo gun nut you know.

The Kid

…won again last night as Utah evened the series with the Grizz.

So he’s now 8-4 and has $1,240 in the bank.

We’re waiting for today’s wager, but right now he’s at 66.67%, which is good.

Tonight he likes LAKERS minus-270 versus Suns in Game 2 of their series from Staples. Wins $100, or loses $270. A money-line wager.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

TRUMP DUMP

Three items of news regarding Donald Trump, who has taken to cheap TV ads to raise money (exactly what for, he does not say) of late:

  1. A grand jury has been convened in New York City to decide whether to indict Trump on potential tax and bank-related fraud. The grand jury will convene three times a week for the next six months and hear other cases as well. Having served on a New York City grand jury myself, here’s what I learned: grand juries indict. If they don’t initially, the prosecutor comes back and repeats the argument until they “get it.”
(then there’s this guy… kicked off Duke’s golf team, kicked around low-level pro golf for 9 years, daddy got him a job in Trump administration, now he’s ready to be your GOVERNOR!)

ESPN’s Don Van Natta and Seth Wickersham are out with a report claiming that it was Trump who essentially bribed then-Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Penn.) to lay off the 2008 New England Patriots Spygate inquiry. Allegedly Trump, a friend of both Robert Kraft and the senator, phoned Specter and said, “If you lay off the NFL, there’ll be a lot of [campaign] money in Palm Beach.”

At the time I was covering Notre Dame football for NBC Sports and wondered aloud if Charlie Weis, who had earned that job three years earlier due to his “decided schematic advantage” as an offensive mind, was actually just the beneficiary of some cheating. That column drew a nasty rebuke both from the school and one of my bosses at NBC. I’m still of the mind that Charlie probably could share a lot of info about this. Also, curious how Robert Kraft’s rub-n-tug bust a dozen years later, when Trump was president, just mysteriously vanished.Then there’s this… Man, if ever a meteor could be well-timed and well-placed…

George Floyd, One Year Later

(George Floyd’s daughter…this was yesterday)

The one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by Officer Derek Chauvin was marked by the family’s visit to the Oval Office. Meanwhile, mass-murderer/white supremacist Dylann Roof is appealing his conviction. On what grounds? Probably on the grounds that he’s white and they were black. In South Carolina, it just might work.

(Mike Lindell…this was January…I feel better now, don’t you?)

Tokyo? To Go?

The Olympics are less than 60 days away and minor dailies such as The New York Times are still posing the question, Should the Olympics be canceled? I really don’t know how the GOP has missed this as an own-the-libs talking point thus far.

So we’re clear, and these back-to-back Asian Olympics within the span of six months may get confusing: cancel the Summer Olympics in Tokyo because of Covid and boycott the Winter Olympics in Beijing because of genocide of Uyrghrs (and because of the Wuhan lab and because of sweatshop labor and because “GI-nah”).

Male Bonding

Your name is Jennifer Grant. You’re one of the prettiest, most popular girls at your Los Angeles private school. One of your classmates has a crush on you and it just so happens that he’s just landed a role in an ABC “After School Special.” So your dad suggests that it’s okay for you to invite him over, that you and he can watch the special (“Schoolboy Father”) together in your bedroom. But dad will be in the room with the two of you (so that the boy does not become his character).

Your dad is Cary Grant.

The boy is Rob Lowe.

This actually happened, as told in Scott Eyman’s biography of Hollywood’s most comically refined leading man, Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise. By this time Grant was in his mid-70s. He took Lowe aside after the program and told him that he reminded him of a young Warren Beatty (who patterned himself after a young Cary Grant in many ways). And then, after Lowe departed, Grant chased after him. Grant, at the time a spokesman for Faberge products, handed him a gift basket of the fragrance and bath works company’s items.

That’s Hollywood.

William Least-Heat Super Flower Blood Moon

This morning, if you rose early enough, you saw the Super Flower Blood Moon… which I believed played the Yuma Tent at Coachella in 2017. Anyway, it’s SUPER because it’s the closest a full moon is to Earth in its elliptical orbit, it’s FLOWER as a reference to a full moon in May, and it’s BLOOD because it is a full lunar eclipse (our first since 2019…thanks yet again, Covid!).

If you missed it, well, you may not be into super-celestial events. Or you may be more into sleep. Or I should have posted this yesterday and given you some warning.

Seeing Red Over Greene

Listen: we all know that Marjorie Taylor-Greene (and Lauren Bobert) are total clown shows who, if you actually had to apply for the job instead of run for the office, would never have earned it. But that’s the great thing about being an elected member of the U.S. government: any dope can run and if there are enough other dopes who buy into your dogma rather than consider that you should actually be qualified, you can win.

So Greene is a U.S. congresswoman. And her entire tenure in office is performance art designed to get attention and trigger the libs. But this weeks she finally crossed a line, somewhere near Dachau and Auschwitz, by comparing the Holocaust with mask mandates. Greene’s exact quote is in this link.

Should anyone care that the crazy lady is barking at the moon? If you took her seriously before she said this a few days ago, I guess you should care. But if you took her seriously at all since you knew who she was, you’d better consult a physician. There’s Katie Porter at one end of the spectrum of intelligence and maturity, and then there’s Marjorie Taylor-Greene pushing tires across a parking lot.

Bee-yond Bee-lief?

https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1397270263088271362?s=20

Fanta? They must be Mexican bees.

The Kid

…was sweating bullets as Carolina-Nashville went to OT last night, but the Hurricanes prevailed.

He’s now 7-4 and up to $1,140.

He also may be chomping at the bit to start trying a parlay here or there. Parlay vous?, I inquired.

Yes, he said.

Tonight he wants UTAH minus-360 over the suddenly hot Grizz in what’s a must-win game for the 1-seed. Apparently, seeing the Clippers lose the first two at home to Dallas hasn’t spooked him.

So that’s $360 to lose, $100 to win on Game 2 between UTAH-Memphis.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 5 Comments

by John Walters

Law A’ Biden Texans

The Texas legislature passes a law that says citizens may own handguns without having to undergo a background check, obtain a license or have training. It’s been less than two years since 23 people were gunned down in El Paso at a Wal-Mart. Of course, those in favor of this bill will note that the killer did not use a handgun and that if everyone in the store were armed, he might have been stopped earlier. On the other hand, if everyone in Texas is carrying a handgun devoid of background checks or a license, fender-benders are about to become that much more dramatic. And traumatic.

Texas just passed a “heartbeat bill” that in essence outlaws all abortions, even for rape. It’s putting draconian restrictions on a woman’s uterus while relaxing all restrictions on the 2nd Amendment.

Eurobash

The Eurovision Song Contest has been held annually since 1956 (with the exception of last year) but we Yanks seemed mostly oblivious to it until Will Ferrell made a film about it. The contest, which draws nearly 200 million viewers worldwide, was held this past weekend in Rotterdam. Thirty-nine nations participated. It’s like the EuroCup for songs.

The winner? Maneskin, from Italy, with “Zitti e buoni” (Either “good ziti” or “Quiet and Behave”). Here’s the tune:

Acceptable Nickname: Blackjack

That’s former Notre Dame possession receiver Robby Toma, the Chris Finke of his time.

Gamma Rays

On May 12 the Tampa Bay Rays, defending American League champs, were shut out 1-0 at home by Gerrit Cole and the Yankees. Their record fell to .500, 19-19.

Since? The Rays have won 11 in a row, sweeping 3-game series with the Mets and the Orioles and a 4-game series against the Blue Jays (it began with a defeat of the Yankees to avoid being swept in that series). They’re now 30-19 and have the best record in the American League. A lot can change in a fortnight.

Oddly enough, the Rays and Red Sox have the A.L.’s two top records but their combined home records are 24-24.

Scoring Cramps

The Golden State Warriors had the NBA’s scoring champ in Steph Curry (32.0 ppg) this season. The Dubs lost both of their play-in games in the postseason and were bounced.

The Edmonton Oilers had the NHL’s scoring champ in Connor McDavid (105 points on 33 goals and 72 assists). The Oilers were swept 4-0 in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs by Winnipeg.

Two scoring leaders, Curry and McDavid, finish a combined 0-6 in the 2021 postseason.

Omission Impossible

We noticed one glaring omission from our “Stars Over 80” item yesterday. And this one is bad, since the movie star just won an Oscar for Best Actor last month: Anthony Hopkins is 83. He’s a two-time Oscar winner who won his first after his 50th birthday. Hope for us all.

Anyone else? Yeah, the Corleone brothers, James Caan* and Al Pacino, both 81.

Sports By Brooks

Someone at the Golf Channel leaked this never-ran interview of Brooks Koepka being addled and rattled as Bryson DeChambeau sauntered past and upstaged him. I don’t think Brooks is at all annoyed that it was leaked.

Remember The Mayne!

Last night was Kenny Mayne’s final night hosting SportsCenter on ESPN. This was memorable.

The Kid

…is on Tilt. It all began when he took Gerrit Cole and the Yankees to beat a Rangers squad that had lost six in a row. Cole, arguably the top pitcher in the AL, lost and then the Yanks won their next six. But they lost the night he took them.

Last night Vegas, whom he took, outshot Minnesota 40-14 but still lost.

So tonight, even though Jacob deGrom is on the mound at Citi Field against a Rockies team that is 3-17 on the road, The Kid is so spooked that he won’t take the Mets. Or the Rockies.

Instead, he likes CAROLINA minus-200 against Nashville. That’s $200 down to win $100 (or lose $200).

For the record, he’s 6-4 and at $1,040. A net of $40 after 10 wagers, or $4 per wager.