An MLB player slaps an opponent across the face, during batting practice, over fantasy football? Yeah, you’re not gonna believe this story. For Memorial Day, a video of soldiers reuniting with families. And another Game 7 tonight for my Rangers, can the good luck continue?

There have been a ton of strange sports stories over the years, of course. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen one quite like the one that erupted a few days ago during batting practice before a Los Angeles Dodgers-Cincinnati Reds game Friday.

So if you don’t know what I’m talking about, let me preface this by saying I swear this is all true, I’m not making any of it up. Tommy Pham is a player for the Reds (above, right), and Joc Peterson is on the Dodgers. Out of nowhere Friday Pham walked up to Peterson, yelled at him a little, then slapped him across the face.

What was this about, you ask? Perhaps a personal dispute over a woman, or a family member, or something that happened in a game? All good guesses when trying to understand why professional baseball players might have beef.

But nope, it was over a fantasy football dispute! From last season! Pederson and Pham and some other MLB’ers were in a fantasy football league together, and Pham said Pederson was breaking league rules by using the injured reserve slots to stash players who weren’t hurt, or something like that. Pham was also apparently mad about a GIF that Pederson shared mocking the Padres’ collapse last season (Pham used to play for San Diego).

“I didn’t like the sketchy shit going on. Too much money on the line. Fucking with my money,” Pham said when asked about the fantasy football dispute.

Soooo many thoughts here: First, as an avid fantasy football player myself, I can tell you what Pham is alleging Pederson did isn’t allowed in most leagues, and Pederson said it was allowed in their league. Second, a GIF? Really, you got mad about a GIF in a group chat??? Come on, Tommy.

Third, MLB, desperate for publicity, should play this up for everything it’s worth (Pham was suspended for 3 games). Put Pederson and Pham at the 50-yard-line of Soldier Field or Lambeau or somewhere and let them wrestle it out. Or have a “jury” hear their FF dispute and televise it live.

Two millionaires fighting over fantasy football. The mind, it boggles.

**Next up today, it’s Memorial Day, a day to remember all of our heroic soldiers who have died in battle, fighting to protect our freedoms.

I ran a video like this last year, and loved it, and this is a similar one: a compilation of soldiers returning home and surprising their loved ones. Hits all the right notes and makes you appreciate how many sacrifice for the rest of us.

If you’ve lost someone in battle and are thinking of them today, please know that many, many of us are grateful they were there.

**Finally today, another Stanley Cup playoffs round, another Game 7 for my beloved New York Rangers tonight. This series with the Carolina Hurricanes has been so perplexing; in the games in Raleigh, Carolina looks awesome, forechecking and hitting and stifling the Rangers’ offense, and looking like the superior team.
In the games in New York City, the Hurricanes have looked mistake-prone, tentative, gotten so-so goaltending, and haven’t been that close to winning. For six games, it’s been one drastic extreme to the next, based on where the game was.

Except for Game 1, which the Rangers controlled for 2/3 of it, one team has had the clear advantage in every contest. So I have no idea what the hell will happen tonight.
I thought Game 6 was the Rangers’ best of the series, Carolina’s goalie, Antti Raanta, finally looked like the career backup he is, and anything can happen in a Game 7! Rangers have the best goalie, and shoot, aren’t the Canes DUE to lose at home???
Regardless of tonight’s outcome, it’s been a thrilling Rangers season, one I won’t soon forget. Hell, there’s a Rangers game on Memorial Day, which is crazy late in the hockey year!

Let’s go Blueshirts.

Good News Friday: A Florida high school grad cleverly comes out as a “curly haired” person to avoid saying “gay.” A T-ball player with an incredible dance as he walks up to the plate. And a 5-year-old piano prodigy plays Mozart.

florida high school class president zander moricz was told by his school that they would cut his microphone if he said “gay” in his grad speech, so he replaced gay with “having curly hair.” i am in awe pic.twitter.com/OqLbar5bwq

— matt (@mattxiv) May 24, 2022

Man, more than almost ever do we need a lot of good news today. At least I do. The horrible school shooting, more GOP politician BS about it (go watch Georgia Senate GOP candidate Herschel Walker try to talk about gun violence, your jaw will hit the floor), the great actor Ray Liotta died Thursday (Henry Hill, eating his egg noodles and ketchup in witness protection, somewhere weeps). Just because you probably haven’t seen it in a while, here, watch the Copa entrance scene from “Goodfellas,” one of the greatest movie tracking scenes, ever.

OK, so much Good News to get to, but I want to start with a kid named Zander Moricz, who was the class president at Pine View High in Florida. Before speaking at graduation, he was explicitly told he wasn’t allowed to say “gay” or talk about any LGBTQ issues in his talk.

So he got around that by talking about his curly hair. This is freaking phenomenal, you go Zander!

**Next up today, this Little Leaguer has absolutely the best time walking up to bat in his T-ball game recently; no idea where this game took place, but it rocketed around Twitter and is just about the most adorable thing ever.

And then he hit the ball! Also? We don’t have walk-up music in our Little League, we totally need to get some.

https://twitter.com/WUTangKids/status/1527780330526081024

**Third, how about a 5-year-old piano virtuoso who can play Mozart? Here’s Alberto Cartuccia Cingolani, playing the instrument WAY better than most grownups can do.

Just sensational.

(Italy) Enjoy 5-year-old Alberto Cartuccia Cingolani performing some Mozart.🎶🎵

pic.twitter.com/LSulANRoMM

— GoodNewsCorrespondent (@GoodNewsCorres1) May 22, 2022

**And a bonus clip today that warmed my heart, check out this grandmother who was blind for 5 years, seeing for the first time after cataract surgery.
Such a gift. Have a great, and safe, holiday weekend, everyone.

Grandmother who was blind for 5 years regains sight thanks to cataract surgery. Emotional reaction by all 😭

pic.twitter.com/fGTqLsO7M4

— GoodNewsCorrespondent (@GoodNewsCorres1) May 23, 2022

Another Sandy Hook happens at an elementary school in Texas, and maybe something will get done about guns (yeah right). HBO’s new documentary on the legendary George Carlin looks fantastic. And the last working pay phone in NYC gets removed, dramatically.

Those of us hoping and praying that the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre would be the last time innocent elementary school children would be slaughtered at the hands of a gun, were of course found to be way too idealistic.

Tuesday afternoon in Uvalde, Texas, about 85 miles from San Antonio, an 18-year-old walked into Robb Elementary School and murdered 19 children, and a teacher, and if this all sounds exactly like what happened in December, 2012 in Connecticut, well, that’s because it is pretty damn close to the same thing.

Words fail me. Shock, horror, disgust, all of it, it rises up like bile inside of me. I see videos like this from Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr,  desperately begging and pleading for our legislators to do something, and I know nothing will change.

Said to my mother tonight, that the only thing that will ever change the 50 or so GOP Senators refusing to do anything about gun control is if their OWN children and grandchildren were killed. Maybe, maybe then something will change.

Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut and an advocate for gun control legislation, said, “I think everybody here is going to be shaken to the core by this.” He added, “I have no idea how a community deals with this. There’s no way to do this well. Your community is never ever the same after this.”

None of us are ever the same. And yet this KEEPS HAPPENING.

So disgusted I could vomit.

 

https://twitter.com/WUTangKids/status/1528753510053031936

**Next up today, this short video made me sad and nostalgic. This week in my beloved New York City, the last working pay phone in the five boroughs was removed, and transported to a museum. Like you, I haven’t used a pay phone in more than a decade, probably two decades, but they were once such a hugely important staple. Especially for a kid, a pay phone was how you got ahold of your parents after soccer practice (did anyone else use the trick of calling your parents collect when you didn’t have a dime or quarter, and just saying “Dad pick me up” when the operator said to say your name?), or how you connected with someone you just wanted to call while you were out.

Pay phones are where Clark Kent turned into Superman, and where Diana Prince became Wonder Woman.
Sigh. Life is SO much easier with cell phones, of course. But every once in a while when I lived in NYC, I’d pass a pay phone booth and stop and smile for a few seconds.

Goodbye, 20th century relic. We’ll miss you.

 

Finally today, George Carlin was one of a kind. And he was damn, damn funny.

You can tell who other comedians revere just by hearing how often their name gets brought up. Jerry Seinfeld is constantly referenced by comics, as is Richard Pryor and Robin Williams. Those guys were held in the highest esteem by the folks who know hard it is to constantly be thought-provoking, interesting, original AND still be funny.

But I don’t know if any stand-up was more revered than George Carlin. Appealing to people of every age and generation, he was just incredible. My first exposure to him was as a kid on HBO, and while I certainly didn’t understand everything the silver-haired guy with the mic was talking about, I got enough to realize he was hilarious.

Carlin famously said, on TV, the seven dirty words you’re not allowed to say on television, and he eviscerated sacred topics with the ease of a surgeon.

Here, for example (above), in brilliant two-minute form, is Carlin attacking the concept of religion.

HBO, and the great Judd Apatow, have just released a new two-part documentary about the life of George Carlin (who died in 2008), and it looks fantastic. Carlin was one of those rare humans who was conservative and straight-laced as a young person, and got more and more liberal and wild as he got older.
He could take any topic and with his brain and humor, hold it under a microscope and pick it apart for laughs.
I can’t wait to watch this portrait of an American legend; here’s the trailer, and it’s available now on HBO and HBO Max.

Remembering the legendary Roger Angell, the best baseball writer who ever lived, who died at 101 on Friday. Adam Sandler with hilarious advice to NYU grads. And the Rangers win a playoff game at MSG, with me and my son live in person.

Nothing I could say about the remarkable life and writing career of Roger Angell, who died at age 101 on Friday in New York, could do justice to his life any better than his own words could.

So instead of writing a few hundred words here about the greatest baseball writer who ever lived, and one of my favorite writers, ever, I’m going to let his own words speak. (There have been many great tributes written to Angell this weekend; two I loved were this by Joe Posnanski, and this one by David Remnick of The New Yorker) These first two excerpts of pieces from the remarkable Mr. Angell are from baseball writings he did in more than 40 years of covering the sport; and the last excerpt is from an incredible essay he wrote about growing old, in his 90s (still so sharp!)

Roger Angell, on why we care so much about baseball:

It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look – I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring – caring deeply and passionately, really caring – which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naïveté – the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball – seems a small price to pay for such a gift.”

― Roger Angell, Game Time: A Baseball Companion (1977)

— Roger Angell, on the famous 1975 World Series Game 6 home run by Carlton Fisk of the Boston Red Sox:

“He circled the bases in triumph, in sudden company with several hundred fans, and jumped on home plate with both feet, and John Kiley, the Fenway Park organist, played Handel’s ‘Hallelujah Chorus,” fortissimo, and then followed with other appropriately exuberant classical selections, and for the second time that evening I suddenly remembered all my old absent and distant Sox-afflicted friends (and all the other Red Sox fans, all over New England), and I thought of them—in Brookline, Mass., and Brooklin, Maine; in Beverly Farms and Mashpee and Presque Isle and North Conway and Damariscotta; in Pomfret, Connecticut, and Pomfret, Vermont; in Wayland and Providence and Revere and Nashua, and in both the Concords and all five Manchesters; and in Raymond, New Hampshire (where Carlton Fisk lives) and Bellows Falls, Vermont (where Carlton Fisk was born), and I saw all of them dancing and shouting and kissing and leaping about like the fans at Fenway—jumping up and down in their bedrooms and kitchens and living rooms, and in bars and trailers, and even in some boats here and there, I suppose, and on back-country roads (a lone driver getting the news over the radio and blowing his horn over and over, and finally pulling up and getting out and leaping up and down on the cold macadam, yelling into the night), and all of them, for once at least, utterly joyful and believing that joy—alight with it.

And Roger Angell, on growing older: He wrote this at age 93, in 2014:

I’ve endured a few knocks but missed worse. I know how lucky I am, and secretly tap wood, greet the day, and grab a sneaky pleasure from my survival at long odds. The pains and insults are bearable. My conversation may be full of holes and pauses, but I’ve learned to dispatch a private Apache scout ahead into the next sentence, the one coming up, to see if there are any vacant names or verbs in the landscape up there. If he sends back a warning, I’ll pause meaningfully, duh, until something else comes to mind.

On the other hand, I’ve not yet forgotten Keats or Dick Cheney or what’s waiting for me at the dry cleaner’s today. As of right now, I’m not Christopher Hitchens or Tony Judt or Nora Ephron; I’m not dead and not yet mindless in a reliable upstate facility. Decline and disaster impend, but my thoughts don’t linger there. It shouldn’t surprise me if at this time next week I’m surrounded by family, gathered on short notice—they’re sad and shocked but also a little pissed off to be here—to help decide, after what’s happened, what’s to be done with me now. It must be this hovering knowledge, that two-ton safe swaying on a frayed rope just over my head, that makes everyone so glad to see me again. “How great you’re looking! Wow, tell me your secret!” they kindly cry when they happen upon me crossing the street or exiting a dinghy or departing an X-ray room, while the little balloon over their heads reads, “Holy shit—he’s still vertical!”

— Roger Angell, “This Old Man,” 2014

https://twitter.com/WUTangKids/status/1527764061462712320

**Next up today, it’s graduation season, and my favorite part is always the speeches. Every year there are so many wonderful talks given by commencement speakers. Sometimes they’re funny, sometimes they’re poignant, but there are always a handful that are worth thinking about.

Adam Sandler gave the speech to the NYU Tisch School for the Arts grads over the weekend, and remember, he’s talking to a bunch of future actors and writers and people in the arts.
His talk was great, with this part in particular hitting exactly the right notes. Guy is great in these situations.

**And finally today, Sunday was another big sports milestone for me and my oldest: I took Nate to his first Rangers playoff game at Madison Square Garden.
He has become so enthralled with hockey this year, and had such a wonderful time at our first game in January, that I promised him if the Rangers ever got a home, afternoon playoff game, I’d try to get us tickets.

So, you know, he’ll be going to community college now, but I bought two tickets last week and Sunday, with our beloved Blueshirts down 2-0 to the Carolina Hurricanes (after losing two very winnable games in Raleigh last week) we had a wonderful experience at the game.

We hit up the Fan Zone before the contest, where he got to shoot pucks through a target and had a blast. The game itself was terrific; we had seats high up but right at center ice, the fans around us were very loud and rowdy and taught him all kinds of new words, as they taunted ex-Ranger Tony DeAngelo and accused him of having an improper relationship with his mother.

“Kid, don’t repeat any of the words you hear today in class tomorrow,” the big dude sitting next to Nate told him early in the game.

The crowd was electric, we waved towels, we sang the “Goal” song, and Nate and I both had a blast. Truly a life experience he and I won’t ever forget, one I was blessed to have.

Now, Rangers just have to win again Tuesday, and we’ve got a series.

 

Good News Friday: The U.S Women’s Soccer Team finally wins its pay equity fight, and it’s wonderful. A youth hockey team honors their teammate who finished chemo. And a “Dirty Dancing” mashup with “The Muppets” that is brilliantly funny.

Happy Friday, people! We are in the middle of May, I’m finally ready to put away my sweaters since New York spring has finally been, ya know, warm for a week now, and it seems like everybody I know has a family member with Covid. This damn thing just won’t go away, and it’s hella depressing, even as I was encouraged that 5-11 year-olds like my son Nate can now get boosters.

Mask up again, people, and let’s go Rangers!

OK, we start GNF this week with a long, long overdue concession by the U.S. Soccer Federation. For years now the USSF and the U.S. Women’s National Team have been involved in litigation since the women filed a class-action lawsuit asking for equal pay.

The USSF fought the women’s team tooth and nail, despite the fact that the women’s team was far more successful, worked just as hard, and drew record TV ratings for soccer in America.

The USSF over the years has brought out the tired old arguments against paying women equally, saying their games and tournaments don’t bring in as much revenue, without mentioning that part of that is because they’ve never been marketed and promoted as much as the men.

Well finally, that’s all over. In February the two sides reached a settlement on the lawsuit, and this week the USSF announced that going forward the two national teams will be paid equally.

This is NOT that hard, people. Equal pay should be a fundamental right in situations like this, and it’s ridiculous the women like Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan had to fight so hard to get USSF to do the right thing.

But better late than never.

On his first day of chemo his whole hockey team shows up to cheer him on. 6 months later, at the end of his treatments, they are there to celebrate and watch him ring the bell! 😭❤️😭 #FBF
(🎥:Kayceeziefle)

pic.twitter.com/plbkEynpLt

— GoodNewsCorrespondent (@GoodNewsCorres1) May 14, 2022

**Next up today, this is a beautiful little video that actually was filmed last year, but that just went viral on Twitter this week. This is Luke Davison, a hockey player at St. Norbert (Wisc.) College. Last spring Luke was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and chemo treatments were scheduled.
His entire hockey team showed up to the hospital on the first day of treatments to wish him luck. Six months later, after he completed his chemo, they all showed up again to celebrate.

Teammates, man. Frickin’ awesome.

**And finally today, man I love the Internet sometimes. A very creative human being named Amanda, a comedian and social media wizard, decided to mash up a famous dancing scene in “Dirty Dancing” with the theme song from “The Muppets,” and my friends, it is 60 seconds of pure joy.

The head-bobbing, the old guys narrating, just freaking fantastic! 

Have a great weekend.

A North Carolina teacher lets a 12-year-old student move his car. It didn’t go well. Another crazy comeback in a track and field race. And the best use of Tinder I’ve ever heard: Finding players for a kickball team.

I know being a teacher is hard work, filled with lots of stress. As longtime readers of this blog may remember, I was a substitute teacher in the New York City school district for five years, from 2012-2017, and it was very difficult.

So I have a lot of sympathy for teachers who make mistakes. It happens.
But then there’s a guy like Jason Oxentine, an athletics director and teacher assistant at River Bend Middle School in Claremont, N.C., who did something so stupid, it boggles the mind.
Seems on April 29 ole’ Jason wanted his truck moved from the back of the school to the front. So he tossed his keys to a student and asked the lad to drive the truck around the building.

Keep in mind, Mr. Oxentine works in a MIDDLE School. The students are between 12 and 14-years old.

I’m sure you can take a pretty good guess what happened next. The future driver did as he was told, but managed to crash into three parked school buses in the parking lot, causing a total of $6,750 in damage. There were two school employees in one of the buses when the barely-teenaged driver hit them, but they were unhurt.

I’d like to imagine what was going through Oxentine’s mind at the moment he decided to toss his keys to a 13-year-old. “Hey, nothing bad will happen, I’m sure the kid can see over the steering wheel.”
“Ah, it’s only a few turns, nothing bad can happen.”

The monumental stupidity is pretty hilarious, because nobody got hurt. And that kid will have a great story to tell the rest of his life.

Oxentine was fired a week later, in case you were wondering.

Some people really are just too stupid to be allowed to work at a school.

Wow this race video was not about what I expected 👏 pic.twitter.com/eLkoSmbrqE

— Lindsay Crouse (@lindsaycrouse) May 15, 2022

**Next up, remember last week when I posted that video of the 7-year-old girl who lost her shoe and made a huge comeback to win a race?
Well, this seems to be a trend, runners falling way behind then winning. Check out this video posted by sportswriter Lindsay Crouse, of sophomore Abigail Dennis of Old Tappan High at the Bergen County, N.J., championships last week.

Dennis has some trouble with the hurdles, but wow does she solve them. Incredible comeback!

**Finally today, this story made me laugh out loud. A Massachusetts woman named Gianna Pechia was looking for players to join her adult kickball league.
Maybe it if were you and me, you’d put up a few flyers in town, post on a few Facebook message boards, or ask around at the local YMCA.
Not Gianna, though: She joined Tinder and started going on “dates” with potential kickball teammates.

Pecchia used Tinder to find 25 players this kickball season – 18 for her own team and seven to help fill three other teams in the league.

Pecchia explained her recruiting process to Carlos Muñoz of the Boston Globe.

“I kind of interviewed people based on personality,” Pecchia said. “We would go to dinner and be like, here are people from the league and we would all vibe and if you were interested, great. If you weren’t, that’s fine, too.”

“Whether they want to hook up or find a relationship, a lot of them are looking for friends or some form in their life,” Pecchia told Clubwaka. “I was like, not only will I be your friend, I’ll give you a whole league of friends. The way I sell it to people is right there in my profile: I’m looking for you to join my kickball team because they’ll get pissed if I don’t want to date them,” said Pecchia.

I think this is awesome. After all, when you’re on a sports team you know you’re going to spend a lot of time with someone, might as well find out if they’re a nice person. OK, so maybe you don’t want to date and sleep with them, but perhaps they’ll be an excellent left fielder!

Tinder was less amused by all this; they banned Pecchia for life for violating their guidelines. Boo, Tinder. They probably never got invited to play kickball as a kid.

 

 

Game 7s everywhere, and not a moment to be missed: The Rangers win an OT thriller, the Maple Leafs choke as usual, and the Celtics look like this year’s champs. And a mass racist shooting in Buffalo makes me angry and feeling helpless.

I am 46 years old, according to my birth certificate.
But in sports years, I’m at least 93. And when it comes to the years taken off my life thanks to the New York Rangers and Stanley Cup playoffs hockey, well, I have no idea how old I am.

OK, not sure that paragraph made sense. My brain is a little scrambled right now after an absolutely thrilling, nerve-wracking, couch cushion-punching, screaming Rangers 4-3 Game 7 overtime win over the Penguins at Madison Square Garden Sunday night.

Look, let me stipulate right off, the Rangers had NO business winning this series. None. Like, take all the business in the world, throw it away, and that’s how much business the Rangers had winning this series.
Despite being the stronger team in paper, New York played lousy in Games 3 and 4, had terrible first periods in Games 5 and 6, and looked very bad for long stretches of the series.

And Pittsburgh played five of the 7 games with a third-string goalie, without several key players, without Sidney Crosby for a game, yada yada and yada.

But none of it matters. It doesn’t matter because Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin came up huge Sunday night, the Blueshirts’ best players like Mika Zibanejad and Artemiy Panarin, finally came up large in important moments, and yes, luck came into play as well.

These heart-stopping Rangers moments had become commonplace from 2012-15, when they played a ton of OT playoff games, and a ton of Game 7s. But it’s been awhile since we’ve experience something like this, and the grooves in my carpet can attest I was a nervous wreck.

Then this happened and I felt better…

ANOTHER LOOK AT THE BEAUTY FROM BREAD pic.twitter.com/5XiyRGVfOb

— Rangers on MSG (@RangersMSGN) May 16, 2022

Now the Rangers get to play Carolina, a team loaded with talent and on paper far better than New York. But the Hurricanes, loaded with ex-Rangers by the way, barely got by Boston, also are playing a backup goalie, so who knows.

I’m exhausted but happy, exactly how one should feel during Stanley Cup playoffs hockey.

Let’s go Rangers. Off to bed.

— One more hockey thought: The Toronto Maple Leafs. Man oh man, what absolute frauds. They are loaded with oodles of offensive talent, have the biggest fan base in the league, maybe, and year after year they come up short. They lost in the first round once again, 2-1 to Tampa in Game 7 in Toronto Saturday. This franchise, with enormous resources, hasn’t won a playoff series since 2004.
With SO much talent, they can’t win a damn series. Embarrassing.

 

— OK, on to hoops. I am feeling bittersweet about the Boston Celtics outlasting the defending NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks in Game 7 Sunday.
As a New Yorker I generally find it impossible to root for a Boston team, much less the Celtics. But Jayson Tatum is the Celtics’ star, and he’s one of my favorite Duke players of the last 10 years, and it’s been such a joy seeing him explode into superstar status these last two years. He is a transcendent talent, excellent playmaker and scorer, and I said to my NBA amigo Tony the other day that he may one day go down as Coach K’s best-ever pro player that he coached at Duke.
Right now it’s still Grant Hill, and probably Kyrie (No-Vax for Me) Irving next, but Tatum is rising and still getting better.

— So, the Phoenix Suns apparently forgot to play Game 7 of their NBA playoff series Sunday night. Let me tell you some of the scores that flashed across my phone while I was watching the Rangers-Penguins game:
Dallas 57, Phoenix 27. Dallas 65, Phoenix 30. Dallas 92 (ninety-two!) Phoenix, 50.
Absolutely incredible. For the Suns, the NBA’s best team in the regular season, to completely no-show a deciding game, AT HOME, is just inexplicable. I don’t want to hear anyone tell me Chris Paul is a Top 5 NBA point guard ever again (lots of people make that argument). He hasn’t won diddly-squat.
What a shocking finish to the season for the Suns.

**Finally today, like many of you I’m feeling rage and helplessness at the latest mass shooting in America, this one not taking place at a school, but in a supermarket in Buffalo, when an 18-year-old white racist decided to shoot up a store in an African-American neighborhood, killing 10 people.

The feeling of helplessness comes from, of course, the fact that absolutely nothing ever gets done about gun violence in America, from a legislative standpoint. Nothing, ever gets done. There was another shooting Sunday afternoon at a church in California, with one person killed and five wounder.

The rage comes from the years and years of right-wing politicians, like Donald Trump and the blathering idiots on Fox News, stoking white resentment of minorities so hard, and so damn often, that something like this is bound to happen frequently. When you’re constantly being bombarded with messages that “these people are taking over” and “you’re better than them” and “why can’t things go back to the way they were, when white people ran everything!” when those messages go out to millions, some already-unstable people are going to take it to heart and try to do something about it.

Absolutely sickening and disgusting the messaging from Donald Trump and others, dividing and encouraging horrific behavior like that of the Buffalo shooter.

Absolutely abhorrent, and it makes me sick.

Good News Friday: A pretty remarkable example of Good Samaritans helping a driver in distress in Florida. Steve Hartman on some kids who’d never seen snow, getting a great surprise. And a loyal dog stays with his dementia-suffering owner, and helps her get rescued

Happy Friday, everyone! Hope you had a healthy and wonderful week; my beloved New York Rangers stayed alive in the Stanley Cup playoffs Wednesday night, they just need to pull off one more win tonight and then all heck breaks loose in Game 7 Sunday.

I am not optimistic, but it sure was fun sweating out a playoff hockey game Wednesday night. Lots of good news this week to share, including Americans peacefully protesting outside the homes of Supreme Court justices and the right wing media going nuts about it. Gee, where was there outrage about Jan. 6, that was far from peaceful??

INCREDIBLE MOMENT: Boynton Beach police sent this video out in the hopes to honor the people who got out of the car to help the woman who had a medical episode while driving. https://t.co/5XDUhTg570 pic.twitter.com/2o6G9d6MJP

— WPBF 25 News (@WPBF25News) May 11, 2022

OK, first up this week, a pretty amazing piece of video from the Boynton Beach (Fla.) police department.
On May 5, a woman suffered a medical episode and was seen by her co-worker slumped over the steering wheel, according to police. The co-worker then ran into the road to stop traffic as the car slowly moved into the intersection.

The woman continued to scream and wave her arms, and other motorists saw what was happening and got out to try and help, as well.

The full video is here, and it’s quite remarkable how many people try to assist. The citizens came together to stop the car, use a dumbbell to smash a rear window, and move the car into a nearby parking lot. A nurse in the parking lot called 911, and they were able to get the woman help.

The police released the video in the hopes of honoring the Good Samaritans who helped. Good job, Boynton Beach, all around!

**Next up today, we stay in Florida for a great Steve Hartman story about a bunch of young schoolkids who’d never seen snow before, and after reading a book about the white stuff, really wanted to.

Enter a wonderful elementary school teacher, her sister in Kentucky, and a snowman called Lucky. This was really warm (pun intended) tale about the joy of snow, and of wonder.

**Finally today, seems like it’s been a while since I’ve written about a heroic pooch, helping their owner, but this story was a doozy.

From Upworthy.com: “Max, a 3-year-old black Labrador retriever is being hailed as a hero for standing by his lost owner with dementia for three days and alerting authorities to find them.

Sherry Noppe, a 63-year-old with early-onset dementia, took Max for a walk on Tuesday, May 2, through George Bush Park in Katy, Texas, just outside of Houston. The 7,800-acre park hosts a large soccer field, shooting range and numerous pavilions, playgrounds, ponds and jogging trails, which are surrounded by forest and swamps.

While on their walk, Noppe accidentally wandered off into the forest with Max and couldn’t find her way out of the dense woods.”

A rescue team was on the lookout for Noppe and Max for three days before they located them early Friday morning at 3 a.m. When the rescue team got close, Max started barking, alerting authorities to their location. The intriguing thing is that Max isn’t known for making much noise.

“He’s not a barker, and I think something was coming, and he was like I got to protect her,” Courtney Noppe told KHOU. “When they actually found her, they heard him growling and barking,” Justin Noppe added.”

“The incredible thing is that when they found Max he wasn’t wearing a leash or a collar. He had stuck by the grandmother for three days voluntarily.

“I think she was hiding. I think she was disoriented, paranoid, and just was hiding, and didn’t want to be found. And so no, I think if Max wasn’t there, she would not have been found,” Justin said.

Good job, Max. Dogs, they really are our best friends.

Just one more example of disgusting police racism, involving a black college lacrosse team in the South. A 7-year-old loses her shoe in a race, still wins easily. And pediatric dentists in Japan get an angry robot child to practice on.

It happens every day, all over the country. We only hear about it once in a while, when a big stink is made by the victims. But there is no doubt that for every incident of “casual racism” from law enforcement officials that actually comes to light and is publicized, there are 10 more we never hear about.

Take this story that emerged Tuesday, that enraged and infuriated me. It’s from my old colleague Kevin Tresolini, of the Wilmington (Del.) News-Journal, and it details how the Delaware State University women’s lacrosse team, coming back from a road trip to Florida and on a highway in Georgia, was 

“A college women’s lacrosse team feels traumatized after its charter bus was stopped by police while traveling through Georgia, an incident that has left the school’s president “incensed.”

The Delaware State University women’s lacrosse team was traveling north on I-95 in Liberty County, Georgia, southwest of Savannah, on April 20. The Hornets were returning home after playing their final game of the season at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, on April 19.

Bus driver Tim Jones was initially told he was improperly traveling in the left lane when the bus was pulled over, according to DSU’s student publication The Hornet Newspaper and its website thehornetonline.com. The incident was first detailed there in a story that published Friday written by Sydney Anderson, a sophomore lacrosse player who was on the bus.

Video accompanying the story taken by DSU player Saniya Craft shows an officer saying, “If there is anything in y’all’s luggage, we’re probably gonna find it, OK? I’m not looking for a little bit of marijuana but I’m pretty sure you guys’ chaperones are probably gonna be disappointed in you if we find any.”

By that time, Liberty County Sheriff’s Office deputies had begun removing players’ bags from the vehicle’s cargo bay to search after asking Jones to open it. Police had a drug-sniffing dog at the scene.

Deputies knew those on board were on a lacrosse team.

There’s soooo much wrong here. First, OK, let’s stipulate that the police couldn’t have known it was a black college women’s lacrosse team on the bus when it got pulled over. But then, instead of just giving the driver a ticket (which they never did at any point here, by the way) they come on the bus, threaten and intimidate the college girls, and start searching and inspecting their bags immediately.

The part about the police officer being dumbfounded that one of the players received a birthday gift with instructions not to open it yet also blows my mind, as do the officers assuming guilt and drugs immediately.

More from the story: “When team members saw their luggage being removed before a deputy had begun his explanation, they were stunned, Jenkins said.

“The infuriating thing was the assumption of guilt on their (deputies’) behalf,” Jenkins said. “That was what made me so upset because I trust my girls.”

“One of my student-athletes asked them ‘How did we go from a routine traffic stop to narcotics-sniffing dogs going through our belongings?’ ” Jenkins said. “The police officer said that on this stretch of highway there are a lot of buses that are smuggling people and narcotics and they have to be diligent.’

Just so much wrong here, so much wrong. But this is the kind of “casual racial profiling” that goes on every day. It’s infuriating.

Breaking 🚨

This is simply amazing..Terence Crawford’s baby girl loses her shoe then does the unimaginable..Wait til the end..😱 @terencecrawford #TerenceCrawford #Boxing pic.twitter.com/p9w4sZsNr4

— AccordingToBoxing (@AccordToBoxing) May 9, 2022

**Next up today, this may be the greatest athletic feat by a human I’ve seen this year (Rich Strike’s win in the Derby last Saturday gets the greatest equine feat award in my book!)

A 7-year-old Nebraska girl named Talaya Crawford, daughter of boxing champion Terence Crawford, was competing in a 200-meter race last week when she lost her shoe at the start, right out of the blocks.

She goes back, puts it back on, and well, just watch this incredible video. Talk about effort and speed! 

Just amazing.

**Finally today, we’ve all been to the dentist and been there when a scared kid is either in the waiting room or in the room next to us. They’re wanting NO part of the drill, the cleaning, any of it. My kid used to be the same way. It’s never easy to be a pediatric dentist in those situations; heck, some kids get violent.
Well, leave it to Japanese scientists to solve this problem for all you aspiring D.D.S.’s out there! The folks in Tokyo have invented a robot called Pedia-Roid to simulate a difficult child patient.

 The robot can move its eyes, arms, and legs to copy human emotions like anxiety and resistance.

Check out this story: “The bot’s mouth movements are not simple opening and closing but also sneezing, coughing, and vomiting. Body movements are also diversified including convulsions and writhing.

Pedia_Roid even has a pulse and can fake bleeding.

‘Pedia_Roid not just develops symptoms but also throws a tantrum, forcing students to tolerate while trying to treat the child,’ said Yui Kawakubo, CEO of tmsuk, the company that invented the robot.

It is 3.6 ft in height and weighs about 25 kilograms, which makes it seem like a five-year-old boy.

Oh. My. Goodness. What a terrifying invention. I mean, it probably will help aspiring dentists, but my Lord, look at this thing, it’s scarier than Frankenstein!

A classic musical performance by Elton John and Axl Rose to get you going on Monday. A once-in-a-century upset at the Kentucky Derby, as an 80-1 shot wins a shocker. And a stunning number in our Covid pandemic: 1 million Americans dead.

Sometimes, you just need a kick-ass musical performance from 30 years ago to start your week off right.

At least, that’s my philosophy. After a busy weekend, filled with Mother’s Day festivities at our house and lots of running around, with a busy Monday ahead, this was exactly what I needed Sunday night.

The great Jimmy Traina of SI.com Tweeted this out last week, and it’s just splendid. Elton John and Axl Rose, at the height of his power, doing the classic Queen song “Bohemian Rhapsody” at a 1992 tribute concert to the late Freddie Mercury, in England.

Just such a wonderful, moving performance, with the crowd at Wembley Stadium going deliriously crazy.
If this doesn’t get you going on a Monday, you may be in a coma.
Enjoy.

The overhead view makes Rich Strike's comeback for the upset @KentuckyDerby win look even more incredible. 😮 #KyDerby | @ChurchillDowns pic.twitter.com/iDfkGVZS0O

— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) May 8, 2022

**Next up today, Saturday night saw a most stunning Kentucky Derby win. Sure, there are always upsets in horse racing’s biggest event, the “most exciting two minutes in sports.” But an upset like this? Not since 1913.

Rich Strike, a horse which until Friday morning wasn’t even in the field for the Derby, came from way back in the pack to shock the world and capture the crown.

There are so many great angles to this story, and just about all of them are covered by the great Chuck Culpepper. Just check out this fantastic lede:

“LOUISVILLE — The stuff of irrational daydreams and sugarplum fairies and future books and future movies and deathless wonder happened Saturday evening at the 148th Kentucky Derby, where a colossal stretch duel yielded suddenly and shockingly to an alternative reality.

There, as favorites Epicenter and Zandon battled one another in their own storybook in the fumes of the stretch, an interloper appeared along the rail. Rich Strike, who did not even get into the Kentucky Derby until Friday morning, who had not won anything since a $30,000 maiden claiming race last September and who went off at 80-1, materialized and capitalized on the others’ dogged wane.

That is SUCH sensational writing. Then Culpepper goes into these preposterous, “can you believe this really happened?” quotes:

Here spoke the owner, oil-and-gas Oklahoman Richard Dawson: “What planet is this?”

Here spoke the trainer, longtime Kentuckian plugger Eric Reed, training since 1983: “I saw him at the head of the stretch when he cut in, and then I passed out. I don’t remember what happened after that.”

Truly an amazing story; I always like it when the little guy wins a big race like this, the golly-gee aw shucks reaction is still so heartwarming. Check out the above footage from overhead of just how far Rich Strike had to go to win the race.
What a story.

**And finally today, we are about to hit an historic, unfathomable number in the two-year battle with Covid-19: Sometimes this week, the 1 millionth American will die due to the disease.

One million Americans. The number doesn’t compute in our brains, or at least in mine, until you consider some of these facts: “One million is how many people live in San Jose, Calif., or Austin, Tex., or in Montgomery County, Md., or Westchester County, N.Y. It’s more people than live in the six smallest states or D.C., about as many as live in Delaware or Rhode Island.”

How can we process a number that big? It’s impossible to get your arms around it. So this Washington Post story does what all great stories about enormous topics do: It drills down on a few stories among those million, and takes us inside the lives of a few families whose worlds were rocked and in some cases, completely shattered by Covid.

It’s a gripping, important story. One million dead. Hard to fathom.