by John Walters

Starting Five

Wreck on the Highway

Late Saturday night in Wisconsin. Beaver Lake Road in the town of Merton, Wisconsin. In a rainstorm, former Michigan State punter Mike Sadler, 24, soon to enroll at Stanford Law School, is driving. His passengers are Nebraska punter Sam Foltz, 22, a farm boy from Greeley, Neb., who had gone from walk-on with the Huskers to Big Ten’s first team punter, and LSU punter Colby Delahoussey, 21.

The car slides on the wet pavement—authorities say excessive speed may have been a factor— and veers off the road, slamming into a tree. Both Sadler and Foltz are killed. Delahoussey survives.

Here’s  local Lincoln, Neb., sports director Kevin Sjuts with a fitting tribute to Foltz.

2. Hack a Hillary

The Dems are launching their convention tonight under a thick cloud. Over the weekend WikiLeaks released the contents of thousands of emails that show that DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schulz and CFO Brad Marshall actively sought to undermine Bernie Sanders’ campaign (the old coot wasn’t crazy, after all!). So this is a worse train wreck than Melania’s Rick Roll and plagiarism…

Anyway, what makes this fun (read: horrifying) is that Donald Trump is into Russian oligacrchs for millions and millions of dollars and that Russian hackers may have been the ones who got into those emails and Trump has been very complimentary of Vladimir Putin and…FOLLOW THE MONEY!

Either way, the Russkies didn’t force Wasserman-Schulz and Marshall to attempt to rig the game. Also, who knows what else they got and WHEN they will release it? This has disastrophe written all over it.

3.  Citizen Kaine*

*The judges consider this choice far too easy, but what would you do? “Mission Tim-possible?”

When you must choose a Veep/Don’t want drama like Streep

Tim Kaine

When your rival’s Trump/Your campaign’s in a slump

Time Kaine

He don’t lie, he don’t lie, he don’t lie

Tim Kaine

Kaine, who married the daughter of a Virginia governor and then later became a Virginia governor, is a Kansas City-born grad of a Jesuit high school, then Mizzou, then Harvard Law. He hablas the Espanol. And he is 8-0 in elections, but let’s face it: he’s never played in the SEC. Here’s his speech in Miami on Saturday.

4. A Sale on Retro Jerseys

This is the best story of the baseball season. White Sox ace Chris Sale has been suspended by his own team for five days for taking a pair of scissors to the retro jerseys the team was supposed to wear this weekend because they’re ugly and also because he thinks the team values marketing above winning (he should talk to NBA players about sleeved jerseys).

Anyway, love Sale’s spunk (I will not have you assail a Sale!) and now those jerseys that he cut up are collector’s items. So much irony! I can’t help feeling that this entire episode could have been avoided if Drake LaRoche were in the clubhouse.

5. The Part Where Donald Trump Makes Just Enough Sense To Be Terrifying

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLcL2fSxGKw

So, Donald Trump sat down with Chuck Todd yesterday for Meet the Press and, minus all the histrionics and bullying, did not sound completely wacko to this avowed Trump loather. About his tough talk with NATO allies who don’t pay their fair share (why don’t they just declare bankruptcy?), he reminded Todd, “They have a treaty, too.”

Agreed. Some countries don’t pay just because they America will still have their backs (related: I have friends like this. You probably do, too).

Second, I do think it’s a legitimate question, as Trump posed, to wonder how we as a nation would deal with a 500% influx of Syrian refugees. Not all Muslims are bad, obviously, but events on a near-weekly basis in Germany, in Belgium and in France demonstrate that there’s a problem here.

Don’t get me wrong: Trump is stoking fear (False Evidence Accepted as Reality) here with most of his speech, but those are two legitimate takes. I wanted to give the Donald some fair coverage here; I agreed with many of his points.

One more thing: Yesterday I tweeted out a rude tweet about the Trumpster asking him why he keeps getting fatter while his hair seems to be thinning. Many people, assumedly Trump supporters, came down on me for being immature and rude. That part is right.

Of course, my intent here WAS to be immature and rude. To mimic Donald’s style with how he treats so many other people, on Twitter and in speeches, the evidence of which is manifold. My point: If what I wrote upset you, why doesn’t what he says upset you? Further, he’s running for the most powerful job in the world; I’m not.

Music 101

I Say A Little Prayer 

If you’re too young to recognize the name Dionne Warwick, oh you poor, poor, sad boy. Tremendous voice, lovely, and Burt Bacharach’s avatar (Who’s Burt Bacharach, you ask? Get outta my class room!). This was a No. 4 hit in 1967. Warwick is one of those voices of my childhood. She was all over the place on the radio, and with good reason.

Remote Patrol

Democratic National Convention

8 p.m. PBS

You can tune into the networks at 10 p.m., or you can watch PBS’ superior coverage two hours earlier (just make a pledge of $20 or more to your local PBS station). Speakers include U.S. Senator Cory Booker (who never had a chance of being VP because the ticket would have read, “Clinton Booker”), then Michelle Obama, alias FLOTUS, then Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, and then we’ll all Feel The Bern on this hot summer night.