"Neon Prey" by John Sandford

I just finished reading "Neon Prey", the twenty-ninth novel by John Sandford featuring his creation, Lucas Davenport, now a U.S. Marshall.  If you are familiar with the Sandford/Davenport canon, this one gives you exactly what you have come to expect....heinous and loathsome villains, lots of snappy dialogue from Lucas and his colleagues, and lots of violent and often disturbing action.

In this one, Lucas is sent on the trail of a particularly nasty serial killer.  Along the way, he runs into a particularly nasty gang of home invasion criminals, and a "dumb blonde" moll of the gang who may not be as dumb as she seems.  The case takes him from the steamy bayous of Louisiana, to the wealthy enclaves of Los Angeles, the bright lights of Las Vegas, and the searing Nevada desert.

The story hits on a recurring theme of Sandford's - that even the most vile and terrible criminals are not especially bright, even if they can avoid the long arm of the law for over 300 pages of a 390 page book, and that there is no honor  - none! - among thieves.

A full Three Stars from The Grandstander.

The Steelers and "The Draft"

Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, prompts more bullshit to be spread among sports writers, sports TV talking heads, and sports radio talk-jocks and callers than the build up to the annual NFL Draft.  And when said draft is over, more bullshit is spread in the analysis of "how teams did" in the draft, including instant letter grades assigned to teams' draft classes, which consist of anywhere from six to ten young men who, it needs to be noted, have yet to step on to an NFL field or play a single down in an NFL game.

Of course, the Draft is important to the teams themselves as they annually restock and infuse themselves with new young talent, but we really need to wait three to four seasons before we really know "how the Steelers/Browns/Patriots/Chiefs/et al did in the Draft".

As for the Steelers in 2019, great excitement has been generated by the fact that the team traded up ten spots in the draft and gave up three picks in order to select LB Devin Bush with the tenth selection in the first round.   No doubt Bush fills a serious need for the Steelers - and here are the key words here - if he can play at an NFL level, and no college game films, no stats from pro days and combines, will be able to tell us if he can play until young Mr. Bush gets to Latrobe in July and starts playing against other actual NFL football players.  The credentials are there (as they were with guys like Jarvis Jones) and there are reasons to be optimistic (as there were with guys like Huey Richardson), but until....well, you get the idea.

Anyway, without listing all the names, the "Devin Bush Draft", as it will come to be known, netted nine new hopefuls for Rooney U - 2 linebackers, 2 defensive linemen, and one each of the following: wide receiver, defensive back, running back, tight end, and offensive linemen.  

We all know what the needs are.  Let's hope that at least four or five these guys can fill them over the next several seasons.

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Elsewhere on the Steelers front, big news was made earlier in the week that Ben Roethlisberger signed a contract extension for several gajillion dollars that will keep him in Black and Gold through the 2021 season, the season in which Ben will be 39 years old.  It will probably be Roethlisberger's final contract (although Tom Brady and Drew Brees have shown that you can still play at a top level at age 40 and beyond, so who knows?), and it really was a no brainer for the team.  You need a "franchise quarterback" to win in the NFL.  The Steelers have one, and they needed to keep him.  Case closed.  Unless Roethlisberger's talent level falls off the side of a cliff, and there is no reason to think that it  will, the Steelers now have a three year window in which to "go for it" in terms of Super Bowl contention.

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One final comment upon all for the aforementioned b.s. that spews forth from draft experts, including the teams' themselves every year, let me offer the following, and I'll just confine this to the quarterback position:

• In 2007, the Number One overall pick was JaMarcus Russell.
• In 1999, the Number One overall pick was Tim Couch
• In 1998, the Number Two overall pick was Ryan Leaf.
• In 2000, the 199th overall pick was Tom Brady.

Somewhere in the archives I am sure that we can find footage of Mel Kiper's comments in each of those years, but I'll take a pass on listening to them.

To Absent Friends - Harding "Pete" Peterson

Harding Peterson

1929-2019

With Chuck Tanner at Three Rivers Stadium

The picture that I wanted to post of Pete Peterson, who died a few days ago at the age of 89, at the top of this entry is one that I could not find.  Google Images gives you old pictures of Peterson from his playing days as a Pittsburgh Pirate and plenty of photos of his Pirates teams, most notably the 1979 team, but the photo that I really wanted was one of Peterson holding that 1979 World Series Trophy in that post-Game 7 locker room in Baltimore, or holding that same trophy at the celebration a few days later in Market Square (I was there!!). That is the picture I wanted, because it would have depicted something that we Pirates fans may well never see again:  A Pirates General Manager who built a World Series Champion holding the tangible evidence of such a triumph.

Signed by the Pirates out of Rutgers University in 1950, Peterson had an injury curtailed and lackluster career as a player (only 66 games and 185 plate appearances over four seasons).  He went on to become a scout and minor league manager for the Pirates, and worked has way up to being the Farm Director for the team.  In that role, he was responsible for the development of many of the players who formed the core of the Pirates 1971 World Series Champs (Willie Stargell, Al Oliver, Richie Hebner, Dave Cash, Steve Blass).  When Joe L. Brown retired as Pirates GM in 1976, Peterson became the GM.

An article in the Tribune-Review today by John Steigerwald noted that this might have been the last time in history when all teams competed on a level playing field.  Free Agency was just about to become a fact of life in MLB, but as GM,  Peterson was able to make deals, a trade with the A's for manager Chuck Tanner in 1976, and early season trades in 1979 for Tim Foli and Bill Madlock, that built teams that contended for division titles in 1977-78, and won a World Series in 1979.

Not long after that wonderful season, it became apparent that the Pirates were to become one of those teams on the wrong side of MLB's financial tracks.  Peterson, grasped at straws with some signings of aging over-the-hill veterans (Amos Otis, Gene Tenace, George Hendrick), signings that didn't work out (and that were to become hallmark of the franchise for the next twenty years or so).  When the Baseball Drug Trials bombshell landed in Pittsburgh in 1985, that spelled the end of the Peterson Era in Pirates history.

Peterson stayed in baseball, scouting for a couple of other teams, and even being GM of the Yankees for one season in 1990.  The pinnacle of his career, though, was that 1979 We Are Fam-a-lee World Series winning Pirates team.  Pete Peterson lived for forty more years and neither he nor the Pirates  and their fans ever saw another Pirates GM achieve what he did.  

RIP Harding Peterson.

Peterson as a player

"Girl Most Likely" by Max Allan Collins

Regular readers of The Grandstander know that I am a big fan of mystery/thriller author Max Allan Collins.  His series of private eye novels featuring Chicago based PI Nate Heller are among the very best of the genre.  So I was excited to see that Collins is launching a new series of thrillers that feature Galena, Illinois Chief of Police Krista Larson, "the youngest female Chief of Police in the United States."

As the first novel in the series, we are introduced to Krista and to to her father, Keith, a recently retired and widowed police detective.  After he experiences some depression over the death of his wife, Krista asks her Dad to move back into the family home, where Krista now resides and from which she recently kicked out her live-in boyfriend.

The story of this novel revolves around Krista's Ten Year High School Reunion (told you she was young!), where Astrid Lund, the Girls Most Likely to Succeed, returns as the star attraction of the reunion, because she is (a) extremely beautiful, and (b) she is now a highly successful television news reporter in Chicago.  She also had a habit in high school of stealing, it seems, every other girl's boyfriend, so not everyone is all that happy to see this little vixen return for the reunion.  Lots old old wounds get opened at the Galena High School Reunion.

As you might guess, Astrid ends up getting herself killed, and Krista now has a homicide to investigate in her sleepy little tourist town.  It also happens that another female member of the class was murdered in a similar fashion if Florida several months before the reunion.  Krista enlists the aide of her Dad on a pro bono basis to help determine if the two homicides were related (the reader knows that they were), and if anyone else in danger from this killer.

Although I didn't love this book as I love Collins' Heller and "Disaster Series" mysteries, I liked it and am glad that this will be a series (the second book is already written and in the editing stages).  I like the character of Krista, although I hope that she will come to rely less and less on her Dad as the series moves along.  "Girl Most Likely" had one plot element that involved Keith that seemed unnecessary (I'm not going to spell it out as I don't want to give  a quasi-spoiler).  However, a personal matter involving Keith seems to be left wide open for development in future books, so I'm guessing that this series will revolve around the father as much as it will the daughter.  

All in all though, I found "Girl Most Likely" to be enjoyable and eminently readable, and I look forward to future stories about Chief Krista Larson.  It gets Two and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander, and I see the potential of these books getting better as the series moves on and the character of Krista continues to develop.

Notre Dame in Paris

It was heartbreaking watching scenes of the fire at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris burning yesterday.  Having been there on our vacation with Dan and Susan Bonk last year and visiting this magnificent edifice, it felt like we were watching a part of us going up in flames.  We were all heartened to see today that much of the internal structure of the Cathedral is still structurally sound, and that the Cathedral can be saved.  Miraculous.

This tragedy prompts me to post some of the pictures that we took when we visited Notre Dame last May.  Some of these are photos that I took, and some are photos that Dan took.

Tiger Wins The Masters!!

Hello, friends.

If it is a truth that nothing can match The Masters for sheer self-reverential malarkey, it is also a truth that few sporting events, year after year, can match The Masters for drama and excitement.  The 2019 edition of this event may have been the most dramatic of them all, and the old canard that "The Masters never really begins until the back nine Second Nine on Sunday" was never more true than it was today.

The victory of Tiger Woods at the age of 43 - his fifteenth Major, his fifth Masters win, his first Major win since 2008, and his first Masters win since 2005 - was simply amazing.  The dramatic ebbs and flows of all of the other contenders on that final nine, which saw names such as Xander Shauffle and Patrick Cantley atop the leader board, albeit briefly, the strange and awful things that can happen to golfers on Augusta National's shortest hole, the Par 3 twelfth, were all on display, and through it all the resolute determination and sheer will of Tiger Woods, not to mention his still remarkable golf skills, shone through like a beacon.  It was an amazing thing to watch, and performances and events such is this is why people who follow sports, well, follow sports.

Two comments made by Nick Faldo on the telecast stood out to me.  As it became apparent that Woods was likely to win this event, Faldo commented about the generations of younger golfers now on Tour who came of age watching Woods play.  Whereas at the height of his powers, Woods would have to fight off the occasional Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson, or Davis Love, today, Faldo remarked, Woods was fighting off - and would eventually - overcome an entire field of young guns.  Faldo also told the story of how two years ago at the Masters Champions dinner, Woods told him that he doubted that he would ever be able to play golf competitively again, much less win on the sport's biggest stages.

It was a comeback of monumental proportions, and it is doubtful that any sports story that might develop and occur over the course of 2019 will be able to top the story of Tiger Woods' win at this years Masters.

Before writing this post, I went to the Blog search box and typed in "Tiger Woods", and I found sixteen posts that I had written over the years that featured Tiger Woods.  Some of them concerned the topic of who might become the "next Tiger".  In every one of those, I came to the conclusion that we are never, at least not in my lifetime, ever going to see another Tiger Woods.  This weekend's accomplishment confirms that opinion.

Like I said, what we saw today is why we follow sports.

Michael Phelps, the Tiger Woods of Swimming, 

follows the ball on Woods' near ace on #16.

Green Jacket #5

"It still fits."

"Dumbo"

It had seemed like forever since we took ourselves out to a movie theater, so yesterday we decided to see the only movie currently in the local multiplex that had even the slightest appeal for us, Disney's "Dumbo".  This is a live action version of the 1941 Disney animated classic.  It is directed by Tim Burton, and this one delivers exactly what one might expect from Burton.  It is dark and somewhat frightening.  It is definitely NOT something to take the little kiddies to see.

Like the cartoon, this one is about the baby elephant with the freakishly big ears who is separated from his mother, and the movie is all about reuniting Dumbo with his mother.  In this one, Dumbo is born while being a part of a run down circus just after the end of World War I.  Danny DeVito owns the circus, and his star trick rider, played by Colin Farrell, is returning from the war a disabled man who now has to raise his two children on his own, as their mother died from influenza while Farrell was off in France.  When the two kids discover that Dumbo can fly, in walks Micheal Keaton, in an incredibly hammy performance, as the evil impresario who wants to wring every buck he can out of the flying elephant.  He does this at a park of his called Dreamworld,  a  bizzaro world version of Disneyland and Disney World, right down to the peddling of stuffed animal Dumbos to all of the customers.  It was an interesting satirical take on the Disney parks, and I was surprised to see it in a Disney film. 

The animatronic and digitally created animals are wonderful, and Dumbo is sure a cute little bugger, and it is amazing to see him fly, but I can't say that I loved or even seriously liked the movie.   I also wonder how many parents will take their very young children to see this and come out saying "What the Hell?  Was THAT supposed to the a kids' movie?"  No, it isn't.  However, this version does include homages to the song "Baby Mine", the Pink Elephants on Parade sequence, and the train, Casey Jr.  So there is that.

Two Stars from The Grandstander.

Thought I'd close out with this sequence from the original...