by John Walters

Starting Five

A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall

Musing out loud: “Irma” is an anagram of “Mira,” which is one of the more famous surnames in the Miami Hurricane football family: George Mira, Miami’s QB in the early Sixties, and George, Jr., the team’s All-American middle linebacker in the heart of The U era.

Anyway, Irma, with her 185 m.p.h. winds and Category 5, is about to pack a far stronger hit than George, Jr., ever did. By the way, George, Sr., grew up in Key West, which is going to take the brunt of the storm this weekend.

2. A.L. East in the A.M.

Because of a two-hour rain delay in Baltimore and a 19-inning endurance test in marathon (nay, a Boston marathon), four of the five A.L. East teams found themselves playing after midnight this morning. In the city of Stringer Bell, the Yankees squandered a five-run lead and lost to the Orioles, 7-6. Manny Machado ended it with a two-out, two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth at about 1 a.m. Ouch, babe.*

(*The MH staff is even more glad that it chose to go to sleep in the sixth inning)

Up in Beantown and facing the Blue Jays, the Red Sox won at about 1:15 a.m. when Hanley Ramirez’s bloop single scored Mookie Betts, who had led off with a double, ending a three-game slide.

3. Wasted In Wyoming

So it sounds as if ESPN radio host Ryen Russillo did the ol’ Extremely Intoxicated-and-Extremely Belligerent two-fer when he was out in Wyoming, even though he intended no harm to anyone else. He simply got so blackout drunk that he entered the wrong condo and when the cops asked him to leave, he behaved like a jerk.

That earned him an arrest, a mugshot, and a two-week suspension from ESPN. To Russillo’s credit, he owned up to his mistakes when he returned to air yesterday and, let’s face it, he didn’t miss a day of the NFL season, so that suspension was quite timely. I mean, who doesn’t love two weeks off in August even if they are unpaid (and were they even?).

To Russell’s credit, he completely, as he said, owned the blame. “I know, for years, I’m gonna have to own this and wear it because if I say, ‘[Joe] Flacco’s having a hard time finding his receivers,’ you’re gonna say three years from now, ‘Just like you in hotel rooms,’” Russillo said. “So, that’s the price that I pay as a public figure. I understand it. But again, I’m sorry.

4. DACA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWFydl-nFsw

Another Day of Trump: “I have a great heart for these people,” the president said of the hundreds of thousands who will be affected by his rescinding of the DACA executive order signed by his predecessor. Then he kicked the can over to Congress.

This is a total Trump move: he strikes out something Obama did (a YUUUUUGE win with his base), then he tells Congress to clean up the mess (allowing him the plausible deniability with the center as if to say, “Hey, don’t look at me”), all the while failing to have an actual position or show even a modicum of leadership.

The feeling here is that he’s a little more concerned about how Mar-A-Lago will weather the storm than he is about anyone whose parents brought them here illegally.

5. The Experts Get It Right (And Wrong)

Finally, an “Experts’ Poll” with which we can agree. ESPN’s Heisman pickers have Josh RosenRosen way out in front in the Heisman race (after that glut of Sam Darnold preseason features, making it all the sweeter). It’s not just that RosenRosen threw for 491 yards against a legitimate “S-E-C!” defense, it’s that he engineered the second-greatest comeback (34 points) in FBS history. Context should mean something, and these media types got that. Good for them.

(The largest comeback in FBS history? 35 points, Michigan State versus Northwestern in 2006; the Wildcats had led 38-3).

On the flip side, both the AP poll and Coaches poll kept USC in the Top 6, even though they were tied with Western Michigan at home midway through the fourth quarter, Sure, the Broncos are a very good team (went 13-1 last season, but did not Oklahoma State, Michigan, LSU, Stanford and Georgia not all have more impressive debuts? LSU, as Jacob/Jason Anstey points out, did not even allow BYU to cross midfield last Saturday night. So the question as always remains: Why do AP/Coaches Poll voters adhere to the preseason polls as the template for how they vote following Week 1? It’s intellectually lazy, and we realize we’re making that accusation against sportswriters and SIDs. Forgive us.

Music 101

Jet Airliner

“And I don’t want to get caught up in all that/Funky sh*t going down in the city…”

When The Steve Miller Band released Fly Like An Eagle in 1976, it packed the biggest hit of his career: the title track reached No. 2 on the Billboard chart and seemed to be ubiquitous on radio. The following year, however, TSMB released Book of Dreams, an album that has three songs which, though none were as big of a hit, all seem to have aged better: “Swingtown,” “Jungle Love” and this classic, which shot up to No. 8 on the charts.

A Word, Please

hoary (adj.)

grayish white; old*

This is a word better written than spoken, just so as not to offend