IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters
https://mediumhappi.org/?p=7936

by John Walters

Starting Five

Enter Sandman*

*The judges will also accept “Mo-mentous!”

There are, as of this morning, 264 former players in the Baseball Hall of Fame, but Mariano Rivera just became the only one of them who was elected unanimously. Rivera, baseball’s all-time leader in Saves (652) appeared on every baseball writer’s ballot, including the Boston writers’. Well-deserved.

We met Mo once. Doing a story for The Daily on how important it is for baseball writers to be bilingual and we dared to approach the Panama native at his locker before a game. Mo could not have been more effusive, more friendly, more garrulous talking about how he learned English in the minors. He was near the end of his legendary career by this time (it was 2011?) but he acted like a rookie who was just happy to have someone speak to him. We’ll always remember how gracious he was.

2. Enter Sandmann

As we type this, Savannah Guthrie’s full interview with Covington Catholic’s patron saint of Stand Your Ground, Nick Sandmann, has yet to run. We’ve only seen this snippet:


Methinks this kid is taking the fall, no matter where you fall on the spectrum in your perception of this incident (From “They Did Nothing Wrong” to “The Next Gillette ‘Toxic Masculinity’ Ad”), for a lot of the bad actors, i.e., his friends and classmates, who were surrounding he and Nathan Phillips.

Meanwhile, Savannah Guthrie and Today are going to take a beating for this, no matter what is said. I’ll say this for her predecessor/partner, Matt Lauer: no matter how much of a cretin he may have been with the ladies, Lauer was unsurpassed among A.M. show types in these types of interviews.  You could trust him to handle this correctly. As for Guthrie, who I imagine spoke to Lauer for advice prior to sitting down with the kid, we’ll see.


UPDATE: Here’s the entire interview above. We haven’t watched it yet.

3. Plot Twist

Serena Williams, the GOAT of women’s tennis, was up 5-1 in the third set versus (INSERT NAME OF EASTERN EUROPEAN SUPERBOT HERE) in the quarters at the Australian Open. Serving for the match.

Then, a foot fault. Then, a twisted ankle. That’s when Karolina Plizkova of the Soviet Union Latvia Ukraine? Belarus Czech Republic pounced, winning that game and the next five to take down Serena in three sets. Wow, have her last two grand slams not gone according to plan.

Williams had been 82-0 when serving for match point at the Australian Open before Tuesday/Wednesday in Melbourne. Now 37—ancient in tennis years—Serena has not won a Grand Slam event since giving birth to her first child. Blame the baby!

4. Megan Gustafson Great Again*

Do you recognize this face?

*The judge may have tried too hard on this one.

Google “Port Wing, Wisconsin.” Go ahead, we’ll wait…See where it is? How it’s on the southern shore of Lake Superior, about 40 or so miles east of Duluth. Port Wing is home to  college basketball’s superior women’s player this season, Megan Gustafson. Somehow Gustafson got out of America’s Dairyland after setting a state record with 3,229 points at South Shore High School.

Now at Iowa, the 6’3″ senior leads the nation in both Scoring at 26.2 points per game and  in Field Goal % (70.7%) and is third in Rebounding with 13.0. The Hawkeyes are 14-4.

5. Maidan Shar: Now What?

You may have missed this, what with all the identity and culture politics taking place and overshadowing the government shutdown which is also overshadowing this, but on Monday a suicide bomber for the Taliban driving a captured HumVee got past the gates at an Afghan military base, Maidan Shar, and detonated his bomb as he reached the main building. The fatality count among the Afghan government soldiers, many of them intelligence officers, is at least 45 but may climb to as high as 100.

This one day before the Taliban was scheduled to have talks with the United States and its allies about a possible withdrawal from Afghanistan. Make of it what you will, but U.S. troops have been in Afghanistan for 17 years. It’s not getting any better.

Music 101

Juicy

Christopher Wallace, better-known as Biggie Smalls, was only 22 when this, his first single was released and shot up to No. 27 on the Billboard charts. It was the first single off his Ready To Die debut album. Less than three years later, Smalls was murdered. Whoever done it, no one’s saying.

Remote Patrol

Fyre

Netflix

Fyre Fraud

Hulu

Dueling documentaries, both released last week, about the outrageously fraudulent and failed Fyre Festival from 2016. The idea was great: a private island in the Bahamas packed full of super-duper models and popular musical acts. Alas, they forgot to take care of  infrastructure. Billy McFarland was the architect of it all, a sociopathic personality and pathological liar who talked a big game but never delivered and defrauded everyone who believed in him out of thousand of dollars if not more. Again, sound like anyone you know?

MH recommends!

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