It’s Pablo López night as the Royals drive north on I-35 to visit Target Field. (They probably didn’t drive.)
First pitch: 7:10 Central
Weather: National Weather Service still gutted, bring a sweatshirt, 64° and dropping
Opponent’s SB site: Royals Review
TV: Twins TV. Radio: Gladden’s love language is bikes and bros
Lefthander Noah Cameron will be making his third-ever MLB start today; he is playing because Cole Ragans and Seth Lugo both contracted space herpes. He’s from St. Joseph, MO, an hour north of KC; Walter Cronkite and Psych’s Timothy Omundson are from there, too. He throws in the low-90s with a slider, change, cutter, and curve; in the minors the change was his best pitch. There’s barely any stats on Cameron, so instead enjoy these photos of Southern Gothic novelist Carson McCullers next to professional baseballer Carson McCusker:
Last year, Missouri voters were asked if they wanted to give bazoodles of money to the Kansas City Royals and Chiefs for stadiums; to refit Arrowhead Stadium with new luxury boxes and such, to completely replace Kauffman Stadium. (They were both built at the same time, by the same construction companies.)
Voters said “no.”
Read this outstanding post by Brian O’Neill on how truly repugnant the “Vote Yes” campaign was. It was really, horribly bad.
So naturally, Royals owner John Sherman learned his lesson, and devoted his efforts instead into helping preserve Kauffman as a baseball landmark such as Fenway, Wrigley, Dodgers Stadium.
Just kidding! Of course he still wants taxpayer money! So how does he intend to get it, after taxpayers said “no”?
Go to the state leg. It’s how the Twins and Vikings did it!
As Neil deMause tells us, Governor Mike Kehoe is fully the teams’ good little errand boy. He called for a special session to get — at least — $1.5 bil for the teams to have a doozy of a time with.
This immediately after the legislature cut $500 million from “national guard facilities, Boys and Girls clubs, and community health centers.”
Cutting those things… I cannot express how utterly I hate this. There are no words. Can you think of any better ones?
Basically, at this point, American sports owners are like the worst children at the playground; if they see another child with candy, they whine and scream until they get candy, too. Voters saying “no” are the responsible parents saying “you already had candy”; legislatures are the lazy babysitters who’ll give the brat anything to shut it up. (Except, in this analogy, they’re paying for the candy by stealing the parents’ credit cards.)
Elsewhere in The Sports, here’s another new story about how incredibly harmful online sports gambling is. This is a public health crisis that’s hurting/exploiting millions of people and there’s absolutely no chance anyone does anything sensible to slow its destructive growth.
Ugh, those things are awful. Anything better? Sure!
The WNBA season is just starting, and Defector’s Maitreyi Anantharaman thinks the Lynx have a good chance to win the championship. I do think they got jobbed in that last Finals game on some of the reffing. Hard to say, though. Basketball’s gotta be the hardest sport to call for a referee.
The Wolves and OKC Thunder are in the Western Conference finals; as our Kirilofffan19 pointed out, Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Wolves defensive specialist Nickeil Alexander-Walker are cousins. Here’s a CBS Sports article about the matchup.
There’s a new Netflix documentary about the many public misdeeds of former Vikings quarterback Brett Favre. I haven’t seen it; I think I’d have to be pretty hard up for viewing material to bother. I already know the stories (the sexting, the grifting of Mississippi welfare funds). I’ve seen a few other entries in Netflix’s Untold series and they were just alright, they didn’t show me anything amazing and I barely remember watching them.
For those who have Netflix and like sports documentaries, I’d strongly suggest The Battered Basterds of Baseball, about a Portland AAA team whose antics surely inspired the St. Paul Saints. Netflix also currently has ESPN’s Broke, which is really illuminating about how athletes are often swindled out of their money; Torii Hunter tells a pretty hilarious story along those lines. Home Games is a funny series about bizarre sports, and Tickled is a really funny, creepy documentary about the dark side of “competitive tickling.” Yes, that is a thing. Holy smokes, is that movie spooky. You won’t forget it if you see it, though.
That linked review of the Favre documentary concludes with “It’s really fascinating how people mythologize their sports heroes” (quoting the director, Rebecca Gitlitz). “People tie these great memories to their sports heroes, and it’s so hard to disentangle the two.”
Which brings us to today in baseball history, in 1991, from nationalpasttime.com: “At the Metrodome, Kirby Puckett strokes five singles and a triple in the Twins’ 10-6 loss in 11 innings to Texas. The outfielder’s performance marks the second time he collected six hits in a game, making him the fourth post-1900 major leaguer, along with Doc Cramer, Jim Bottomley, and Jimmie Foxx, to have accomplished the feat twice during their career.”
As our former siterunner put it, “don’t have sports idols.”
GO TWINS GO I guess
