We saw a lot of plain black license plates in Iowa—firm rejections, by my understanding, of the mediocrity that state is currently making drivers affix to their front and rear bumpers. (Or maybe just rear. I don’t know if Iowa’s a two-plate state.) Iowa’s old license plate? It was good. Iowa’s current one? It’s bad. The people, it seems, are saying the same.
This leads me to my wishlist—that list of things we have that we’ll buy and/or do if we ever have enough money and/or time. This thing? Commission a study of each state’s alternative license plate popularity, compare that with the cost of each alternative license plate, adjust for other consumer spending in the state, and thusly create a metric measuring each state’s love of its own plate.
Of course, immediately this breaks down because I hadn’t yet considered the possibility where one or more of the alternate plates is really freakin’ cool. *sigh.* I guess it’s good I don’t have the money and/or time for it yet. Other things of thought:
Covid! I’ve Got It?
Do I have Covid? That’s unclear. And it strikes me: It would be really useful to have a test that says whether or not you’re actively contagious. Can we order one of those up, science? You created the vaccines. You put a man on the moon. You put the Tampa Bay Rays in the World Series. Let’s get a contagiousness test. And while we’re at it? One for the flu, too! And for diphtheria!!
*pause for applause*
Joe Kelly! He’s Got It!
Joe Kelly isn’t hurt, still throws gas, and has an ERA under six (to go with a FIP and xERA each under 3.40, but the haters aren’t ready for that conversation). Among the 457 pitchers who’ve thrown 20 or more innings this season, his strikeouts per inning are 21st, putting him in the 95th percentile. Even his walks have…ok no those are still really bad. But a 3.17 FIP with a 2nd percentile walks-per-inning? That’s unhittable. Call the police on this man.
(Don’t do that, policing’s still a touchy subject.)
Burnley! They’ve Got It!?
Burnley rocked England’s socks on Friday, opening their first EFL Championship campaign in years with a 1-0 win at Huddersfield that was not at all as close as the score makes it look. A thorough shit-pumping. Burnley put seven shots on goal and 16 in the goal’s general direction. Huddersfield put zero on goal and two in the goal’s general direction. The loaned Ian Maatsen found the net for the lads.
Next game Saturday at Turf Moor against Luton Town. Could have some more transfer movement before then. In both directions.
Scott Effross: The Yankees Have Him
The Cubs traded Scott Effross to the Yankees today, meaning if the Yankees and Phillies meet in the World Series we could have Effross pitching to Kyle Schwarber while Indiana University is briefly the center of the baseball world. What a moment that would be for them.
The Wheels
Not the best weekend by motor vehicles competing with one another. The IndyCar race occurred on Saturday and despite wanting to know what happened I don’t know what happened. Couldn’t even tell you who won. Colton Herta? That’s a guess. I did see that there are a lot of drivers within a race of the championship lead as we start coming down to the wire here. That’s part of the problem, though, as we’ve discussed. IndyCar, your competition is admirable, but we need just a little less of it.
Formula 1 followed up on Sunday, and their race was actually pretty good, as far as F1 races go, which is to say that the winner was surprising even if we should’ve seen it coming, and there was at least some level of intrigue as the race went on. Of course, Ferrari did a spectacularly dumb thing and cost themselves another race, but hey—as long as we all acknowledge that F1 is a joke up front, that’s fair play.
On a serious note: Do high barriers of entry hold F1 back on things like this? It seems, from afar, rather impossible to get into the industry in any fashion without oodles of money. I wonder if that’s why they end up with so much clownery. You can be pretty confident that the best basketball players in the NBA are, in fact, the best basketball players in the world. But race strategists in F1? There’s no way they’re the best. Hell, there’s no way the drivers are even the best. There are probably hundreds if not thousands of kids out there who’d be better than Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen if they ever got behind the wheel of a go-kart. It’s kind of like how with only 30 MLB franchises, all geared towards protecting themselves, it took 100 years to figure out that walks are something the hitter impacts (and it’s taken 120 years and counting to figure out that Buck Showalter and Tony La Russa are not the guys you want managing your baseball team).
NASCAR was a scene on Sunday afternoon, and it’s up for debate whether that was good or not. On one hand, the race really jumped the shark when Ross Chastain decided to just drive through the access road instead of staying on the track, but on the other, it was hilarious, and there was a non-zero chance NASCAR was going to let him get away with it so it was strategically a good move. Utter chaos at the end, good that Tyler Reddick held on so it wasn’t a farcical result, NASCAR needs to get away from road courses again unless they’re going to change some things with this car, and that sounds like a risky thing to do because of how good the car has made intermediate speedways. It’s all understandable—the racing was not good on intermediate speedways with the old car, so they needed these road courses—but now’s the time to adjust, and if I had to guess, I think they will. That’s how we got here, after all. They wanted more competition, and they didn’t want it to be pure chaos all the time (and in their defense, it wasn’t pure chaos at Sonoma or Road America).
**
Viewing schedule for the evening:
8:10 PM EDT: Royals @ White Sox (MLB TV)
There is one thing that matters in the baseball world tonight, and it is Joe Kelly getting the chance to kick some Royals ass. Added benefit? Got a La Russa vs. Mike Matheny battle of the wits, for those like us who like to guess at what point a toddler will pass a dog in intellectual capability.
