by John Walters

Aaaaand….

Starting Five

1.Ohhhhhhhh! Canada

Rule No. 6: Every time you attend a baseball game, there’s a chance you may see something you’ve never seen before. Such as…

Meanwhile, I have to ask you, does this…

…remind you at all of this?

 

Here’s my story about it all in Newsweek ( <– shameless promo).

By the way, the Astros and Rangers went 0-4 after the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, sent out this tweet earlier this week:

By the way, not that anyone outside Kansas City cares, but Royal pitcher Johnny Cueto did retire 19 in a row last night as K.C. clinched, too.

2. The Daily Harrumph: Who Killed Harmed Lamar Odom?

So on Thursday afternoon Dennis Hof, who owns the Love Ranch South and is no stranger to appearing on TV, shows up on Nancy Grace and reveals that Lamar Odom showed up last week and told him to charge $75,000 on his credit card in exchange for “two girls, round-the-clock” for a minimum of three days bur no more than five.

So if the question is, Can you both own a whorehouse AND be a publicity whore, Dennis Hof demonstrates that the answer is yes. There seems to be a lot of that going around here in terms of the people the former Sixth Man of the Year surrounded himself with off the court.

Even though CNN.com asked last night, as a headline, “Clue To Lamar Odom’s Death?” the 35 year-old retired NBA star is still clinging to live in a Las Vegas hospital room.

3. Donald Trumps Irony

The essential irony of the GOP candidate and those who so fervently support him, in 140 characters or less. And this sort of speech leads to these sorts of confrontations.

To be fair (someone is trying to be fair), there’s a difference between arriving here legally and illegally. But I’m sure many of the people who arrived here via Ellis Island a century ago took someone’s jobs, too, no?

4. Bill Simmons Meets Mike Francesa

The Sports Guy at long last appeared on the Mike Francesa Show yesterday afternoon, where it was revealed that Francesa and his former partner, Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, will appear on a “30 for 30” (Simmons, who created the series, was floored by the news) and that Simmons still really does not know exactly what his HBO show will be about (“I’m not a stand-up comedian”….he and HBO are just realizing that now?). If you’re a sports/sports media nerd, you may enjoy this.

5. Where In The World?

Yesterday: The architecturally charm-free Carlton Centre, which is 50 stories tall and is located in Johannesburg. It’s the tallest building in Africa.

Music 101

(Keep Feeling) Fascination

In honor of Notre Dame linebacker Joe Schmidt referencing a tune that was a hit before he was born yesterday –which is not to say that the Fighting Irish middle linebacker was born   one day ago, I mean that would be nuts — by The Human League, I’m inserting another one of their mid-Eighties hits. This one reached No. 8 in 1983. What a great decade.

Remote Patrol

Mets at Dodgers, Game 5

TBS 8:07 p.m.

In his first full season in the big leagues, Met ace Jacob deGrom finished fourth in the National League in ERA (2.54) and fifth in WHIP (0.98). His counterpart on the hill tonight, Zack Greinke, finished atop the NL in both categories (1.66 and 0.84). Both pitchers earned a win last weekend in LA, which also means deGrom, who struck out 13 last Saturday, is pitching on one more day’s rest (by the way, will deGrom still be autocorrecting to “legroom” after he wins a Cy Young in a few years?).