Cleaning Out The Mental In-Box, Sports Division

A whirl around the wide, wide world of sports.....

Perhaps the most stunning news in sports this past week was the surprise announcement that Indy Colts QB Andrew Luck was retiring at the age of 29.  Yet another injury and the facing of yet another long and laborious rehab process caused Luck to reach this decision.  Equally stunning were the reactions of both the fans of the Colts and of the (too) numerous ex-jock talking heads that populate the (too) many sports networks that have too much time to fill.  How dare Luck do such a thing?  Everything from his dedication, his courage, and his very manhood was questioned by these neanderthals.  It was kind of distressing, actually.

From what I know and have read about Andrew Luck, he is an intelligent guy, and he would not have come to this decision lightly.  I hope he does well in whatever his future endeavors are, and that he can take every opportunity possible to tell the Steve Beuerleins of the world to go pound salt.

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When the circus that comprised much of the Steelers off-season came to a merciful end this past winter with the free agent signing of a former RB by the New York Jets and the trade of one of their WR's to the Oakland Raiders I made comments in this space to the effect that I won't ever have to write about the two guys again, and I have pretty much kept to that.  Events over this training camp season and reports out of the Raiders camp have only reaffirmed that decision of mine, and it seems that everyone surrounding the Steelers would be well served to do the same.  In fairness, the Steelers themselves have pretty much adopted that stance.  That changed this past Sunday night when Ben Roethlisberger was interviewed by Michelle Tofoya on NBC and the subject of said wide out was mentioned.  I thought Ben took a high road and handled it well, but, of course, it brought up the idiotic tweets out of Oakland, and some idiotic comments by, among others, Shannon Sharpe.

Enough already.  That should be the last time anyone connected to the Steelers agrees to have anything to say about the guy who was last seen in Pittsburgh walking out and quitting on his team during the last game of the season.

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How about those "Players Weekend" uniforms worn by all MLB teams last weekend?  Without doubt, the ugliest and most stupid idea ever.  Whomever in the high echelons of MLB came up with the idea for those monochromatic monstrosities should be fired immediately.

Earlier in the week, I made a post on Facebook and asked if anybody, anybody at all, actually liked them.  All I got were more comments saying how much everyone detested them.

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Earlier in the year, Steve Blass got into a bit of a jam when he made an old-man-yelling-at-the-clouds comment about the excess amount of jewelry being worn by some opposing player.  The comment was seized upon by some as being racist and Blass was branded as such.  Now, you can say that Steve Blass is many things, a cranky old guy being one of them, but one thing that he is definitely NOT is racist.  His entire body of work in his sixty year association with the Pirates and MLB makes such a notion absurd.  Blass is also smart, or he certainly was in this case, because he chose to ignore the entire kerfuffle.  Never responded to any of the changes, and inside of a week, the entire story deservedly went away.

I mention this only to suggest a path for those associated with the Pittsburgh Steelers to follow whenever the subject of a certain Oakland Raider comes up for discussion.

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One of the more distressing bits of news amidst the crashing and burning of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the second half of the 2019 season was the news that Jameson Taillon underwent Tommy John surgery for the second time in his career, and that he would be lost not only for the rest of 2019 but for the entire 2020 season as well.

Taillon was the second player selected overall in the amateur draft in 2010, and it hasn't been an easy road for him.  Tommy John surgery and surgery for a sports hernia cost him parts of two seasons in the minor leagues and delayed his debut in Pittsburgh.  He also was a cancer victim a few seasons back.  He seemed to turn a corner in 2018 and it looked like he was going to become the ace of the staff that the Pirates expected him to be when they used that high draft slot to select him.  This second TJ surgery on his pitching arm certainly throws his future and career in doubt.

Of course, shortly after his surgery, Taillon tweeted out the above photo of himself with the message that he knows what lies ahead, and that he will do the work necessary to get back to where he belongs.  Nobody really knows what our sports heroes are really like in real life, but Jameson Taillon has given every impression that he is as he seems:  hard working, strong, and, mainly, a good guy.

Here's wishing him nothing but the best as he heads down the long path of rehab.

"Mike Wallace Is Here"

We went off our usual move trail on Friday and took in this new documentary about former "60 Minutes" pit bull journalist Mike Wallace.

It covered Wallace's career.  He started in radio and TV reading news, acting in soap operas, and doing commercials for just about anything, including Fluffo shortening.  But when he began doing interviews, he found his niche.  Interestingly enough, when he joined CBS, he was looked down upon as a "pitchman" by the serious newsies like Ed Murrow, Eric Severeid, and Walter Cronkite, but he became a force when the still ratings challenged "60 Minutes" converged with the collective mess known as Watergate, and a legend and a career was made.

The doc shows clips of Wallace's highlights...interviews with people like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, John Erlichman, William Westmoreland, Barbara Streisand, Kirk Douglas, and, perhaps the biggest coup of all, the Ayatollah Khomeini in the midst of the Iranian Hostage crisis.  It tells of Wallace's own battles with depression, and his ultimate impact on his profession.

It is a well done movie about one of the more captivating and compelling journalists in television history.  Wallace, by the way, was still working when he died in 2012, one month shy off his 94th birthday.

As movies in general go, it gets Two and One-half stars from The Grandstander, but in the documentary category, I'll go to Three Stars.

Brooks Koepka and the "Average" Golfer

I heard the morning show guys on 93.7 The Fan talking about this today and thought it deserved some attention/discussion.

At a presser preceding the PGA Tour Championship now being contested at East Lake CC in Atlanta, someone asked Brooks Koepka, four time major champion and currently the world's #1 ranked player a question the effect of....If you took an "average guy, an average player" out of the gallery at random, gave him a set of clubs and paired him with you, Brooks Koepka, in this tournament, how many strokes would you, Brooks Koepka, have to give him in order for it to be competitive?

Well, on the sound bite, Koepka at first just laughed and then said, "well, if an average guy is a fifteen handicap, I don't know, maybe 75 strokes over the four rounds of the tournament?"  (Not an exact quote, but that was the gist of it.)

Well, The Fan's Dunlap, Mack and Colony, all agreed that in saying 75 strokes, Koepka was just being diplomatic in answering the question.  That if an average golfer (and by the way, I am guessing that an "average golfer" is nowhere near a fifteen handicap) started a four round tournament on a course set up for PGA Tour players 75 strokes ahead of Brooks Koepka, not only would Koepka win, he would blow the doors off the poor sap who get suckered into thinking that the might be able to compete in such a contest, a contest on a 7,000+ yard course where there is no rolling the ball in the fairway, playing from behind trees and in thick rough and deep sand traps "as it lies", and where even the casual two foot "gimmes" from the Wednesday night league must all be putted out.

Think about it. If Koepka shot even par - which is 70 at East Lake, I believe - in every round, and if Joe Average managed to shoot 90 in each round, which he would be lucky to do, Koepka beats him by five strokes.

I can only imagine Koepka went back into the locker room and said to his fellow Tour players, "you ain't gonna believe what some guy just asked me", and that they all had a good laugh over it.

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Switching from golf to baseball, I have to say that after watching the Pirates lose three of four to the Nationals this week (cumulative score of all four games, 32-6; cumulative score of the three games the Pirates lost, 31-2), I have to say that I am not sure now many more posts you'll be seeing from The Grandstander on the Pirates for the remainder of this season.  I mean what more can possibly be said, and I've run out of synonyms for "lousy", "horrid", and "wretched".

So, perhaps the next post of any length or depth you will see on the Pirates in this space will be at season's end when we see who, if anyone, will be held accountable by Bob Nutting for what has been a total and complete second half collapse (and does "collapse" even begin to describe what we've seen since mid-July?) by this team.

The State of the Pirates as of 8/17/19

Okay.  We all know the numbers.

At the All-Star Break, the Pirates just might have been the hottest team in the National League.  They had just gone 8-5 in a thirteen game stretch against some of the better teams in MLB (Astros, Brewers, Cubs). They were 44-45, two and a half games out of first place and two and a half games out of the final wild card spot.  People were actually feeling positive about the Buccos.

What was to follow after the All-Star Game was a stretch of such impossibly lousy and rotten baseball, that I honestly had a hard time remembering anything like it in all the sixty-plus years that I have followed baseball in general and the Pirates in particular.   Since that time, they have gone 7-25.  To put that in perspective, that is a "winning" percentage that would produce a record of 35-127 over 162 games.  And not only have they been losing, but they have been losing in ways that are particularly astounding in that they have been showing a complete lack of discipline and displaying lousy fundamentals in executing the game.  (When I was away on vacation last week, the team posted a 1-7 record.  All I saw were the final scores online every night. I'm thankful that I was out of town and not exposed to that particular stretch.)

A particularly sour cherry was put on top of this rotten sundae with the reporting yesterday about the rifts and a complete lack of discipline in the Pirates clubhouse that has at time led to near physical altercations between players and coaches and even Clint Hurdle.  Much of this has revolved around relief pitchers Keone Kela and Kyle Crick.  Honestly, were I member of this particular Pirates bullpen, I would be doing everything in my power to stay OUT of the limelight rather than have it shine upon me and emphasize just how god-awful it has been all year.

GMNH had to take to the MLB Network airwaves yesterday to address this mess, which he did by spewing out a two minute bullshit sound bite wherein he essentially said nothing.  On the telecast last night, Propaganda Ministers Joe Block and Bob Walk failed completely to address this particular stinky elephant in the room.  Not a single mention was made of the breaking story that had dominated the sports airwaves in Pittsburgh all afternoon.  I'm sure that Greg and Steve followed the same path on the radio.

Kevin Newman walks it off for the 

Pirates' 3-2 win over the Cubs last night

And as often happens in the game of baseball, the Pirates went out last night and played one of their better and most satisfying games of the season.  Joe Musgrove pitched an outstanding game, and rookies Brian Reynolds, Cole Tucker, and Kevin Newman played key roles in producing a ninth inning walk-off 3-2 win over the smug and insufferable Joe Maddon and his Cubs and their smug and insufferable fans who populated PNC Park last night.  The only aggravating thing about the game was that the winning pitcher ended up being Jackass-in-Chief Keone Kela.  Oh, well, that's baseball.

And the narrative on the post game show immediately became "the Bucs have now won three of their last four games."  I'm sure that that will be Greg Brown's lead on the opening of the telecast tonight.

The sheer awfulness of the post-ASG Pirates, combined with the stories of an out-of-control clubhouse simply screams out this question.  Who will be held accountable for this mess?  On most teams, either the manager or general manager or both of them would be fired at season's end, if not sooner.  However, both Hurdle and Huntington have two years remaining on contracts that reportedly pay them $3 million and $2 million per year, respectively.  Can't imagine that Bob Nutting is going to pay out Ten Large over the next two years to guys to NOT work for him, so what happens?  

My guess is that the fall guy for this will be pitching coach Ray Searage.  That will be the cheapest way out.  A couple of other coaches might get sacrificed as well.  And maybe Clint Hurdle will decide to "retire" after negotiating a compromised buy-out of his contract with Nutting.  I'm guessing that GMNH will be back in all his glory.

I can tell you this.  If nothing happens, if they build on the fact that "we've got  a lot of great hungry young players who are ready to bust loose", if the Best Management Team In Baseball returns intact, there probably will not be an "insurrection" among the Pirates fan base, because, after all, what can the fans do about this?  There will, however, be a complete and total blanket of apathy and ennui that will fall over the baseball fans of Pittsburgh.  For the Pirates bean counters, Apathy and Ennui will end up being far worse than an Angry Insurrection.

Vacation, Outer Banks, 2019

If you have noted the prolonged absence of The Grandstander in recent weeks, it is due to the fact that we made our annual trek with Mrs. Grandstander's side of the family to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, specifically, Corolla in Currituck County.  This was out thirty-fifth year for this trip, and there was a grand total of eleven Sproules, Moellenbrocks, Stoners, and Richards in attendance this year.

There is not really much that I can say about this vacation, as we all did pretty much what we have always done on this trip - lazed on the beach and at the pool, ate well, relaxed, and enjoyed each other's company.  I strongly suspect that it is this "sameness" that makes this trip so special for everyone of us.

I won't go into a lot of detail, but, for the sake of my own personal historical record, I will share a few photos with you.

On Monday night of the week,  Marilyn and I prepared the dinner.  As many of you may know, we always try to have a special "theme" for our dinner, and this year it was "Chinese New Year", specifically, the Year of the Pig.

Appropriate decorations....

And if the food wasn't authentically Chinese, at least it was authentically labeled....

Our weather was perfect.  We did not miss a single minute of beach time because of rain or bad weather.  Although one evening, some awesome storm clouds rolled in....

Followed by heavy rains....

And when the rains stopped, it produced a pretty rainbow....

And an even more beautiful sunset....

Nature can be spectacular.

On our own "date night", Marilyn and I went to this place...

...and while we didn't stay for the actual sunset, we did enjoy this cool view during our meal.

During the trip, I bought only one thing for myself, and it came from the campus bookstore at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA:

This will be my way of standing with Mike Tomlin during the upcoming Steelers season.

One interesting observation for you.  The house where we stay is, of course, equipped with lovely flat screen HD television sets.  However, from the the time we arrived on Saturday until Thursday night, none of the TV sets were ever turned on.  It was only on Thursday evening when someone realized that there were NFL exhibition games airing on the NFL Network that the set was turned on.  In all, the television was on for probably about three hours in the course of the entire week.  For the better part of six days, television did not exist in our world, and, I have to say, it was peaceful and delightful.  I didn't miss it for one second.

It was good week.  Nothing beats time spent on a beautiful and relaxing beach.

To A Trio of Absent Friends

As often happens when you go on vacation and leave the keyboard behind you, things can get backed up in the old in-box, so to that end, let us pay tribute to a trio of individuals whose recent deaths deserve noting.

Harold Prince

1928-2019

Broadway Impresario Hal Prince died in recent days at the age of 91.  The list of shows that Prince either produced and/or directed is a veritable Hall of Fame of Broadway musical theatrical productions, and it covers pretty much the entire second half of the twentieth century.  Just to name a few:

The Pajama Game

Damn Yankees

West Side Story

Fiddler On The Roof

Cabaret

Phantom of the Opera

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to The Forum

Company

Evita

And I could go on, but you get the idea.  Prince won twenty-one Tony Awards over the course of is remarkable career.

Clifford Branch

1948-2019

Former Oakland Raiders wide receiver Clifford Branch left us last week at the age of 71.  Now, I am no fan of the Oakland Raiders, never have been, but that cannot lessen the admiration of many of the great players who have worn the Silver and Black over the years, and Branch was one of the best.  He played on three of the Raiders Super Bowl winning teams and in four Pro Bowls over the course of his fourteen year career.  He was a major player in so many of those classic Steelers-Raiders games back in the 1970's, and did rivalries come any better or more heated than the one between those teams of that era?  I don't think so.  For that reason alone, the passing of Cliff Branch deserves to be noted.

Perhaps the most shocking and saddest news of all, however, was the death on Sunday morning of Steelers assistant coach Darryl Drake at the too young age of 62.  In all honesty, I could not have told you the names of any Steelers assistant coaches beyond the coordinators.  Let's face it, there are so many assistant coaches on NFL teams any more, who can keep track of them?  That doesn't make the loss of Drake any less shocking or sad, especially when you hear all of the heartfelt responses and memories from all who had been associated with Drake over the course of his long coaching career.

Darryl Drake in his final game as Steelers WR Coach

this past Saturday night.

RIP Hal Prince, Clifford Branch, and Darryl Drake.