by John Walters

Starting Five

You’re Duplicitous Enough, Deceitful Enough, And Gosh Darnit, People Like You

In today’s episode of Russian You-lette, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is in trouble for having lied under oath to Senator Al Franken during his confirmation hearings on January 10.

 

Here’s the (a?) relevant exchange from the Sessions confirmation hearing. pic.twitter.com/8LfMA9HgkX

— Olivier Knox (@OKnox) March 2, 2017

This morning the Washington Post is reporting that Jeff Sessions, back when he was a senator, spoke with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in July and September.  The guess here is that Sessions will not resign but will recuse himself from the investigation into Trump and Russia.

It’s this simple, though: If “under oath” has no meaning for the top-ranking law enforcement in the United States, why should it mean anything to the rest of us?

As the noose tightens….

2.  Baseball, We Need Relief!

The average baseball game lasted 3 hours and 2 minutes last season—the AVERAGE—and that is too long. Consider that five of the past six Indy 500 races took less time to be run. So I provided five suggestions to speed up the game in Newsweek. Nearly making the cut but not: an espresso machine directly behind 2nd base, or maybe in the coaching boxes.

And here’s another idea that has nothing to do with speeding up the game but that I’d love to see MLB try just once, during an exhibition: The CCW/CW Game. The idea: during even -numbered innings runners would take the base paths in a clockwise direction, so that you’d run to third base after hitting the ball, etc. Defenses would be allowed to alternate fielders between positions as they pleased, but how cool would this be to see just once? Personally, if I were Sports Czar, this would become a fixture of baseball.

Before you condemn it, do the test I always do: If it were the other way around, would it seem any less insane to go from alternating running directions every inning to deciding that base runners would always run in the same direction?

3. The Good News? It Did Go Viral*

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

*The judges will also accept, “Ciao, Chow”

That’s Jonathan Chow, 17, at a shopping mall in Singapore. Chow wanted to be filmed for a Snapchat video stunt. The idea was that he’d jump over the railing so that he’d look as if he were leaping to his death but he’d really jump to a concrete ledge one floor below. The problem? The ledge was made of plywood or some soft material and he fell right through it and then three floors down past that to his death.  The last thing Chow reportedly said to the girl with the camera was, “Help me take a Snapchat video and I’ll jump.”

4. Rust The Process

Seriously, Philadelphia? Joel Embiid is done for the season? And Ben Simmons has yet to make his NBA debut (and why play him now?). The Sixers are actually decent not awful this season (22-38), but now they’ve traded Nerlens Noel (6th overall pick in 2013) to Dallas and the 3rd overall pick from 2014 (Embiid) and number one overall last June (Simmons) have yet to take the court together. Every Sixers’ top pick is really just Godot, isn’t it?

Other NBA news: Keep an eye on the Oklahoma City Thunder, who have won five in a row. The Fighting Westbrooks are in 7th place in the West but only 1 1/2 games out of fourth place. It’s very fluid is what I’m saying. Right now OKC would be facing the Spurs in Round 1, but expect that to change.

5. Mother Of Dragons

There’s a race I only learned about yesterday that takes place in late May in Wales. It’s known as The Dragon’s Back. Per The Guardian:

Five days, 200 miles, 8½ miles of ascent – the gruelling Dragon’s Back Race, which started on Monday 3 September, crosses the length of Wales, from Conwy Castle in the north to Carreg Cennen Castle in the south. One of the world’s most challenging races, it fills even the hardest runners with awe.

The Route:

Bucket List? You bet.

And…

Reserves

Spirit of ’72

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH3DwMZYxtU

September of 1972, Team USA suffers its first basketball loss in Olympic history on the controversial final play against the U.S.S.R. Doug Collins may have been the best player on that USA team.

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

March of 2017: Northwestern, which has never played in the NCAA tournament (despite hosting the very first one in 1939), beats Michigan on a similar play. Doug’s son Chris Collins is Northwestern’s coach. The Wildcats (21-9) will dance in a couple weeks.

 

Music 101 

Me and Mrs. Jones

I had no idea what “thing going on” was when this Billy Paul song hit No. 1 for three weeks in December of 1972, but all I can imagine is that Joe Cocker is pissed that this song didn’t land in his lap. This tune replaced “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” atop the Billboard charts, which may have been the 3rd-person companion tune to this. A lost gem from the early Seventies here.

Remote Patrol

Thunder at Blazers

10:30 p.m. TNT

Russell Westbrook, more than even Steph Curry, is the one player I’d pay to see this season. I mean, I wouldn’t pay much since you can watch him on TV for free and my momma didn’t raise no dummy. But something. I’d pay something to see the dude who’s averaging 31.2 ppg, 10.3 apg and 10.6 rpg.