what a brutal stretch …
they responded, just hope it’s
not one of those years

The team arrived for training camp, and during an otherwise nondescript seven-on-seven rep, promising young cornerback Mekhi Blackmon crumbled to the turf with a torn ACL. The next day, Shaq Griffin, whom the Vikings signed as a veteran corner and locker room voice, tripped while deflecting a pass. Griffin’s injury was less severe, but the cornerback has yet to return to practice.

Shortly thereafter, I was chatting with a longtime Vikings staffer one day before practice and said, “What a brutal stretch.”

“I know,” they responded. “You just hope it’s not one of those years.”

All seasons are different. But in 2010, the Vikings dealt with an onslaught of mayhem: Sidney Rice’s hip injury required surgery, Brett Favre was investigated for allegations that he sent inappropriate messages to a former Jets employee, Randy Moss was acquired and subsequently released amid an outburst and the freaking Metrodome roof collapsed.

You just hope it’s not one of those years.

From the article, J.J. McCarthy is done for the season, and the Vikings are left to pick up the pieces by Alec Lewis in the New York Times.

Mr. Lewis writes, “J.J. McCarthy, the symbol of a brand new organizational future, would miss the entire 2024 season. A surgical procedure, performed early Wednesday morning, indicated McCarthy’s meniscus needed a full repair. “

“Yeah, there’s been some things that, as I’ve said before, test your culture and foundation and locker room and building,” O’Connell said. “It really didn’t just begin this summer.”

his uniform fit
better than everybody
else’s uniform

“You would stay on the bench during batting practice simply to watch him — and just watching him walk, even that was special,” said Cleon Jones, who grew up in Alabama idolizing Mays and ended up sharing the outfield with him when the Giants traded Mays to the Mets in 1972.

“I’m telling you, even his uniform seemed to fit better than everybody else’s uniform,” Jones said. “The players held him with a reverence that felt almost spiritual.”

From the article, Remembering Willie Mays as Both Untouchable and Human by Kurt Streeter.

Not much to say but I think of Jim Harrison in his book The Road Home when his lead character meets Sioux Lakota warriors, veterans of the wars with Custer.

Mr. Harrison writes, ” … warriors with a lineage that owed nothing to the white man. We did not live upon the same earth that they did and we flatter ourselves when we think we understand them. To pity these men is to pity the gods.”

I also want to point out that Mr. Mays did not play in the Major Leagues until he was 20 years old.

Al Kaline and Robin Yount both started when there were 18.

I think of the record book with two more seasons added to it.

Mr. Streeter writes, “How great was he?

Six hundred sixty. That is how many home runs bolted off Mays’s bat during his career. When the Say Hey Kid retired at the end of the 1973 season, only Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron had more.

Mays ended 23 major league seasons with a total of 3,293 hits and held a .301 lifetime batting average, eye-popping for a player with such power. Twenty-four times, he was named to the All-Star team. Twelve times, he won the Gold Glove Award. Ten times, he drove in more than 100 runs.

He was named the National League’s most valuable player twice. If it were not for a need to spread the award among players, some experts say, he could have been the M.V.P. seven more times.

Numbers and accolades tell only part of his story. For it was how Mays played — the way he bent the confines of baseball to his will with his smarts, his speed, his style and his power — that set him apart as the most deeply beloved of stars.”

Mr. Mays also missed a season due to having to fulfill his military service.

And it should be pointed out I guess that Jackie Robinson was rookie of the year, his first year, …when he was 28.

The New York Times closes its Obituary with:

When he was selected for the Hall of Fame, Mays was asked to name the best ballplayer he had ever seen.

“I think I was the best ballplayer I’ve ever seen,” he replied. “I feel nobody in the world could do what I could do on a baseball field.”

Not too many could argue.

I mean, to quote Cleon Jones once more, “I’m telling you, even his uniform seemed to fit better than everybody else’s uniform.”

intention was right
but the execution was …
wrong — and they know that

Adapted from the article, in the Athletic, Nike, MLB announce uniform adjustments after player, fan criticism By Stephen J. Nesbitt May 3, 2024.

All the all important topic of the new uniforms in Major League Baseball, Mr. Nesbitt writes, “The intention was right,” Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson, a Nike-sponsored player who was critical of the new uniforms in spring training, said this week. “At the end of the day, the execution was wrong — and they know that. They’re obviously doing what they can to correct what they feel like needs to be corrected.”

Baseball is a game with a lot of traditions, some good, some bad, some very bad but there it is.

Of late, uniforms and how to modernize them for today’s players and fans have been in the news.

Seems that the latest batch of uniforms don’t measure up.

I am not saying we should go back to the all wool uniforms of the 1934 Gas House Gang but I just have to ask, wasn’t the look, most likely known as classic … well, classic?

Was because they pictures we have of that era are black and white that those uniforms look … well to me … perfect.

Remember when Bill Veeck came up with the un-tucked look for the Chicago White Sox?

I remember reading how Chet Lemon was traded from the Sox to the Tigers and walked into the clubhouse and said something like, HEY REAL UNIFORMS!

All this talk and the answer seems to be staring Major League Baseball right in the face.

As Mr. Swanson of the Chicago Cubs said:

At the end of the day, the execution was wrong — and they know that.

They’re obviously doing what they can to correct what they feel like needs to be corrected.

Why am I not confident they are doing what they can?

Or that I am confident in what they feel like needs needs to be corrected?

As the great Ted Williams said, “If you don’t think so good … don’t think so much.”

Campbell’s aggression
is fun … breaks with the norms .. but
pragmatism struck

Campbell’s aggression is fun. It breaks with the norms. It’s because of that aggression – because of the fourth-down decision-making; because of his belief in Goff – that the Lions found themselves in the NFC title game to begin with. Still, it’s tough to square Campbell’s decision to kick a field goal at the end of the first half rather than push for a touchdown with his refusal to kick field goals in the second half. Pragmatism struck Campbell when there was a chance to take a three-score lead into the break, only for the swashbuckler to return in the second half.

From Miscues, bad luck and ladybugs: how the Lions blew their best chance at a Super Bowl by Oliver Connolly.

This article was slugged: Detroit had a 24-7 lead at half-time of the NFC Championship Game, and still lost. But they should have no regrets about the aggression that took them that far.

Pragmatism struck.

As Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, “thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.“

Near the end of the movie, The Madness of King George, there is an incredible bit of acting within acting when the King, with the help of some courtiers, is reading aloud from Big Bill’s play King Lear.

They finish the bit in one of the mostest bestest renditions of the scene where Cordelia wakes up the King with a kiss that has have ever been put on film.

All the participants are so moved that no one speaks until someone breaks in with, “Is that the end your Majesty?”

To which George III responds with some angst, “Oh, good Lord, no. Cordeli is hanged, and the shock of it kills the king. So they all die.”

The King looks around then yells in frustration trying to make sense of it all, “It’s a tragedy.”

That was the game last between the Detroit Lions and the San Francisco 49ers.

A tragedy as in the meaning of the genre of the theatre!

The dictionary defines this type of tragedy as “a play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, especially one concerning the downfall of the main character.“

If that doesn’t define that game, no other single word will.

If that doesn’t define the continued ongoing existence of the Detroit Lions Professional Football Club, no other single word will.

So close.

What might have been.

Oh Fortuna!

I can hear the greek chorus.

Let me tell you, it had to happen this way.

All the breaks had to break the wrong way.

The Lions had to get the early lead.

They had to be able to wedge the door open to let us peak through.

Let us peak through and say … NOPE!

That is not who the Lions are.

Losing that game, and the way it was lost, that is who the Lions are.

As for me?

How does I feel after watching it?

After waiting for this moment for 30 years?

And knowing this may be the last time they will get this close in my lifetime?

Wouldn’t have it any other way.

I am a Lions fan.

Don’t look for me to cry.

My head is high.

I am a Lion’s fan!

As King Lear said:

“Pray do not mock me, I am a very foolish, fond old man.

You do me wrong to take me out of the grave.

Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like molten lead.”

Have to play my part.

It’s a tragedy you see.