by John Walters

Make America Crate Again

Not sure how the “Milk Crate Challenge” became a thing, other than it originated on Tik Tok, but it’s certainly the most viral phenom of the past week. Our favorite person above is the dude wearing a mask. Being careful about Covid but not about his neck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqCa1BxjhEg

Our new priority order for emergency room cases goes like this: 1) vaccinated, 2) unvaccinated, 3) milk crate challenge losers.

And then there’s this…

‘cuz We’re Stupid And Contagious

Thirty years after appearing on the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind, Spencer Elden has filed a lawsuit against the surviving members of the band alleging child pornography. I mean, he’s holding the pretty damning evidence. One baby to another said I’m not happy to have met you…

Then again, the band’s directions to the model were come as you are….

Elden is seeking less than $3 million and if you read this it seems pretty apparent that Geffen records and/or Kurt Cobain’s estate should simply pay up and settle…

Is this the start of a wave of album cover-related lawsuits? This would seem to be a perfect class-action lawsuit aimed square at a band even more iconic than the godfathers of grunge…

Weir Have All The Hitters Gone?

Yesterday in the Little League World Series Gavin Weir threw another no-hitter. The 12 years-old from Sioux Falls struck out 14 batters as South Dakota defeated Oregon 1-0. Weir is one of the most phenomenal kids we’ve seen in LLWS in a long, long time.

Here’s Weir’s line through the tournament thus far: two no-hitters. 43 2/3 innings pitched and he’s only allowed one hit and no runs while striking out 114 batters. He’s gotten 131 hitters out, and 114 of them have whiffed.

And here’s the craziest thing: Sioux Falls and Weir shouldn’t even be in Williamsport. They finished second in their region, but because of Covid, as you may have noticed, there are no international teams in the LLWS this August. So second-place teams from each region also advanced. Which is why Weir and Sioux Falls are here.

Unless there is a rainout, Weir will not be permitted to pitch again. Because he’s maxed out his pitch count for the week. That’s a LLWS rule… which might deny fans of an epic LLWS finale.

cuz We’re Stupid And Contagious (Part Deux)

This, right here, is *exactly* how you deal with rightwing reporters more focused on spreading misinformation than keeping people alive.

Thank you @GovPritzker and team.pic.twitter.com/oQlmgg6T6n

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) August 26, 2021

“Send me some studies.” The f**k is wrong with people?

Up All Night

San Diego is not the furthest west baseball city in America— Seattle is. In fact, it may blow your mind to learn that America’s Finest City is further east than Spokane… it is. But it sure felt like it was halfway to Hawaii last night as a baseball game between the Padres and the L.A. Dodgers went early into the morning on the East coast.

The Dodgers outlasted the Padres 5-3 in 16 innings in something less than a classic and more than a marathon. What began as a pitchers’ duel between Cy Young favorite Walker Buehler an Blake Snell remained a 1-1 game to the top of the 15th… more than six innings after both had exited.

In fact, the Padres went more than nine innings before Fernando Tatis, Jr.s’ two-run homer in the 15th tied it up at 3-3. It was Tatis’ first hit in two games, or 8 at-bats.

The box score was not pretty: the clubs went a combined 7-51 with runners in scoring position, for about a .113 batting average in that spot. A.J. Pollock put L.A. up for good with a two-run homer in the top of the 16th. I went to bed after the 11th when the Padres loaded the bases with two outs but had to pinch-hit using a starting pitcher who was 3-for-40 as a hitter (why not just keep your ace closer in with those odds?).

The game took 5 hours, 49 minutes to play, which means it ended at 3:49 a.m. Eastern time. It’s the longest extra-inning game since MLB tweaked extras by starting the inning with a baserunner on 2nd (I think I buried the lede).

by John Walters

Jesus of Nazare

Watching 100 Foot Wave on HBO Max. Terrific. Concisely, it’s the story of big wave surfer Garrett McNamara’s quest to ride the world’s tallest wave before age boxes him out. To outrace the world’s largest wall of water before he’s over the hill.

Is McNamara a bit obsessed? He’s named his first son Barrel.

Two things: 1) Most of this 5-part series is based around the coastal Portuguese town of Nazare, which had not been traditionally thought of as a surfing mecca, and 2) the supporting characters in this tale are all thoughtful, articulate and sincere. They’re not wacko streaming-doc characters. McNamara’s wife, Nicole, his brother-in-law, J.C., his tow-riders from England and Ireland, Andrew Cotton and Al Lennie, the Nazare locals who help fund the project, these are all good people and great teammates. And the latter two just happen to have the courage to ride 50-foot plus waves.

And make no mistake: it’s thrilling to watch these surfers “dance with God,” as one Brazilian big-wave rider puts it, but these waves will wreck people. A broken back, a wrecked shoulder, a near-death experience. McNamara’s wife, Nicole, is a decent surfer who eats it on a small Nazare wave and gets rag-dolled into shore. After that, she’s done. And that’s probably the puniest wave in the whole series.

If you loved Free Solo as we did, you’ll truly enjoy this.

The Skinns Game

This is David Skinns, a golfer from England who just experienced his Tin Cup moment (except he got the win, not Rene Russo… settling for second, I guess). Skinns is 39, a journeyman 16-year pro on lesser tours. During the pandemic he worked as a delivery driver and a bartender to support his family. As recently as six weeks ago he was 82nd on the Korn Ferry Tour, which is the next tour below the PGA Tour. The top 25 golfers on the Korn Ferry Tour are elevated to the big league tour, the PGA, the following year.

In four of Skinns’ five final events, he finished no lower than 8th. This weekend at the Pinnacle Bank Championship in Omaha he one-putted the last four holes to win… and finally move himself into the top 25. And a much bigger series of pay days next year. The man who was a driver used his driver to take a big leap forward.

Built To Last

Remember the U.S. sprinter who was kept off the Olympic team after testing positive for Cheech-and-Chong’ing it? Last Saturday in Eugene Sha’Carri Richardson had her chance for redemption, as she lined up in the blocks against the three Jamaicans who stood on the podium in Tokyo. And a few other sprinters.

Richardson came in last place. By a lot. She finished 9th, but only because there were only eight other sprinters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrZ5YpIQ-nE

To Richardson’s credit, she did the post-race interview at the Prefontaine Classic, congratulated the winners, and the 21 year-old told everyone, in colorful language, that she’s far from done.

A Shohei from Sioux Falls

Meet Gavin Weir, the breakout star of the Little League World Series from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Yesterday Weir jacked a three-run bomb to lift his squad, representing the Midwest, past Oregon, 3-0. He provided the game’s only RBI.

But Weir’s also unhittable. In fact, pitching may be his true forte. From Yardbarker: “. Over his last 37.2 innings, he’s allowed just one hit, no earned runs, and struck out 100 batters. Yes, he has struck out 100 of a possible 113 batters (88 percent). That’s just crazy.”

Happy 10th, Tim

Today is the 10th anniversary of Tim Cook being CEO of Apple. The company’s stock has risen 1,000% since he’s been in charge. We were fools to ever sell it. #NeverSellApple

The Freeze Has Supernatural Powers

Soooooo close……

The Freeze — and the Warning Track monster — strikes again 😅

🎥 @MLB pic.twitter.com/GStpiFxZN6

— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) August 24, 2021

In Atlanta, the Yankees and Braves met, an encounter 120 years in the making. Sure, they’ve played plenty in the past 12 decades, but it was the first time since 1901 that two teams sporting nine-game win streaks were meeting. The Yankees won, 5-1, meaning their last loss is still the Field of Dreams game.

Anyway, that little historic moment was overshadowed by a stunning finish in the nightly Freeze race at the ballpark. Watch.

by John Walters

A Bronx Tale

After new Yankee shortstop Andrew Velazquez made a sweet throw from deep in the hole (below) to throw out a Red Sox baserunner in the top of the ninth and crush a rally, he made his way back to his parents’ home in the Bronx. The sublime 6-3 put-out put the final touch on a Yankee sweep of the Red Sox. It also heralded the arrival of Velazquez, who grew up less than 30 minutes from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. His dad is a retired NYPD detective.

In the last four games, all Yankee wins, Velazquez is 5-for-10 with three RBI. And the 27 year-old plays shortstop like a Hoover. Will he stick around once Gio Urshela and Gleyber Torres get healthy? Highly unlikely. But for now it must be fun coming home after games and telling his parents how his day went.

Mary Jane’s Next Dance

This weekend’s Prefontaine Classic is gonna be lit with fast women. The event to watch is the women’s 100-meter dash, where the tokin’ (but not token) American will be Sha’Carri Richardson. She’ll be running against the trio of Jamaicans who swept gold, silver and bronze less than a month ago at the Olympics. Richardson had been favored to win a medal, perhaps even gold, before a drug test revealed she’d taken some of the funky herb. That’s a no-no with the IOC.

War Shooter

Robert Capa took one of the most riveting war photographs ever published. In the late 1930s Capa was covering the Spanish Civil War when he shot “The Falling Soldier,” which purportedly was taken at the moment of impact when a loyalist soldier took a mortal bullet to the chest as he was charging toward the enemy (there have been murmurs since that the photo was staged).

Capa’s own life may be worthy of a series of moving pictures. Born in 1913 in Hungary as Endro Erno Friedmann, he moved to Berlin to attend college. But if you look at how old he’d have been in college, his last name, and where he was attending school, well, Friedmann was smart enough to leave Berlin while he still could. He moved to Paris where he and a female friend jointly assumed the name, as a professional photography duo, of Robert Capa.

Considering his taste for adventure/war and his talent, it should come as no surprise that Capa soon became fast friends with Ernest Hemingway. And John Huston. And John Steinbeck.

During D-Day, Capa was the only civilian photographer to join the Allies as they stormed the beach at Normandy. His 11 photographs appeared in Life magazine less than two weeks later.

In 1954 Capa was in Vietnam, or Indochina as it was then known. A little dust-up was brewing between the colonial French and the natives, the Vietnamese. He had been in Japan and Life had asked him to take the assignment. He’d long ago claimed he was done shooting wars, but took the gig. One May day he left his jeep and decided to go up the road and photograph the advance. He stepped on a land mine. Capa, or Friedmann, was 40 years old.

MAC/CAM

Do you use a Mac or a PC? Or in New England’s case involving quarterbacks, a Mac Jones or a Cam Newton? For now the gifted veteran who once led the Charlotte Raes to a Super Bowl defeat looks like the starter in Foxboro. But the rookie from Alabama whose first name is the incumbent’s spelled backward has also been impressive. In a meaningless preseason game last night, New England beat Philly 35-0. Both QBs looked sharp. Stay tuned.

A Case of Murder

Fifteen years ago University of Miami defensive lineman Bryan Pata came home from practice after dropping off a few teammates, and was killed outside his home. The murder went unsolved all this time… until yesterday. Miami police arrested Rashaun Jones, a former Hurricane teammate of Pata’s.

Apparently the two had got into an altercation over a potential theft (by Jones) and there were also girlfriend issues involved (Pata was apparently dating an ex of Jones). You have to admit, this is a very University of Miami thing to happen.

by John Walters

The Shohei Kid

The line last night for Los Angeles Angel pitcher Shohei Ohtani: 8 innings, 8 strikeouts, 1 earned run, and the Win. He also hit his 40th home run of the season while improving his record to 8-1 and lowering his ERA to 2.79.

As ESPN’s Jeff Passan has pointed out, this is historic stuff. Ohtani leads the bigs in home runs and his ERA would be in the Top 10 if he had enough starts.

All that and he got Jack Morris suspended without even trying…

And That’s Why They Call It…

A husband, wife, their one year-old daughter and even the family dog were found dead after going for a hike near their home just outside Yosemite National Park this weekend. No signs of trauma on any of the bodies.

So what happened? The couple had lived in the San Francisco area, where he’s a software engineer, but had relocated to just beyond Yosemite for a simpler, cleaner life. Now they’re all gone. Was it noxious fumes from a deserted mine? Tainted water? The Taliban? Who knows.

By the way, I’m really looking forward to a week or two from now when the NFL season starts and America can go back to not giving a sh*t as to what happens in Afghanistan…

Where You Really Do Earn An Mrs. Degree

In Reykjavik, Iceland, you will find the School of Housewives, which really does teach Nordic lasses how to excel in the art of husbandry-pleasing. And now, of course, someone has made a documentary about it…

College Football’s Big Weekend

As it stands now, and we have no reason to believe the preseason rankings will change, college football’s opening weekend will feature five games between a pair of Top 25 schools. That’s 10 schools. That’s 40% of the Top 25, for those of you who like the maths. The contests:

No. 23 Louisiana (Lafayette) at No. 21 Texas

No. 19 Penn State at No. 12 Wisconsin

No. 17 Indiana at No. 18 Iowa

No. 1 Alabama vs. No. 14 Miami

No. 5 Georgia vs. No. 3 Clemson

Sexy games not on the list: No. 16 LSU at UCLA and No. 9 Notre Dame at Florida State.*

*And no, we presently have no idea whether The Athletic will ask us to bring back The Bubble Screen.

Predictions? Why not. Let’s go with Louisiana breaking in a new QB, Penn State and the power of James Franklin, Indiana and Tom Allen’s Ted Lasso coaching talents, Bama to crush the Canes, and Clemson in a battle of red-ass coaches.

We’re Back? Are You Sure?

There’s a big concert on The Great Lawn in Central Park this weekend to celebrate New York being “back.” Performers include Carlos Santana, Paul Simon, Earth, Wind and Fire, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Wyclef Jean, The Killers and Journey. Did they say back or back to the Eighties?

We’re not overly militant here about reminding people about the pandemic and the Delta variant. At this point in the game, our attitude is pretty much live and let live. If you’re vaccinated, you may get sick but not too sick. If you’re not, well, someone probably advised you to quit smoking a long time ago, too. At this stage of the game, it’s on you.

Have a good time, everyone.

by John Walters

Bad Faith Arguments

In his latest “New Rules” installments, Bill Maher took on bad faith arguments on Real Time. You know, kind of like when Jack Morris made a bad attempt at Asian humor during last night’s Tigers-Angels game and now Twitter wants to see him hanged…

…or kinda like how Fox News and Newsmax is trying to destroy President Biden over America’s exit from Afghanistan while at the same time they’d be destroying him if more American lives were being lost there in a hopeless cause… while ignoring that his predecessor engineered this so that the Taliban would take over and the departing Afghan prez would leave with a $169 million parachute and land in the UAE… and also ignoring that it was George Bush who put us there.

Bad faith arguments happen on both sides of the aisle. I was recently scorned for “mansplaining” something, though that’s not at all what I was doing, but it occurred to me that if I pointed out that this was not the correct usage of mansplaining that it would be the ultimate in mansplaining. So I kept quiet, recognized it for the bad faith argument that it was, and moved on. That’s the thing with bad faith actors. They’re not worth your energy in terms of having a rational disagreement. They’re not looking to find common ground. They’re trying to cause an earthquake.

Would You Rent a Beach Cruiser From This Homie?

A incredible speech my only note is that he should of ended it with OOH WA-AH-AH-AH pic.twitter.com/OANLdLhpkB

— PFT Commenter (@PFTCommenter) August 18, 2021

A somber reminder that you don’t need a license to be a parent. Someone else said it, and I agree, but it’s as if Alex Jones and Adam Duritz had a love child.

Heavyweight Investors Bout

In this corner, Cathie Wood… whose ARK Innovation ETF had a return of 150% last year and has been hailed as a CNBC superstar. It helps, of course, that she’s age-appropriate pretty and a good TV presence.

In the other corner, Michael Burry… the renegade character from The Big Short who profited youge-ly from shorting the housing market 15 or so years ago and who recently put in 2,355 put contracts against Wood’s fund. A put is basically a short bet based on conditions.

Wood is saying that Burry does not understand the innovation space. Burry is not saying much. Why should he? His track record speaks for him.

Fastball?

So the MH staff was noticing that the San Francisco Giants have baseball’s best record, and then the staff waxed wistful about the possibility of a Yankee-Giant Fall Classic… and then we looked up the last time these two franchises had met in a World Series.

The year was 1962.

The Yankees won that one in seven games, culminating in a 1-0 victory in Game 7 at Candlestick Park. But as we researched, what blew our minds was the length of time for each game. Remember, these are World Series contests, which regularly approach four hours these days.

The time for each game: 2 hours, 43 minutes; 2:11; 2:06; 2:55; 2:42; 2:00; and 2:29. That’s an average of 2 hours and 28 minutes over seven games.

Find Your Mojo

Remember when MH used to do “Where In The World?” Well, this is kind of like that except that we’ve already provided the answer. This shot is from Moyo Island, which used to be named Mojo Island and someone who is not very savvy in terms of marketing changed the name. It’s in the Pacific, just a little bit east of Bali. One of these days we need to get lost in this part of the world for six months. Who’s with us?