ESPN ran a report late last night with first-year Stanford football coach Troy Taylor’s thoughts on the possibility of joining a league in which the Cardinal would consistently have to fly to the Atlantic Coast:
“We get on a plane for five hours, six hours, that’s not the end of the world. You get drinks served to you and some snacks, and it’s not that bad.”
Sounds like someone is stoked about getting more of the Southwest snack packs, or the little Biscoff cookies.
For those who didn’t closely follow the 2022 FCS Playoffs, Taylor comes to Stanford by way of Sacramento State, whom he built into one of the best programs in the Big Sky Conference, a league with a footprint a little bit smaller than that of the Mountain West. Sac State isn’t far from UC Davis or Cal Poly, but for other league games, the Hornets were flying. By the sounds of it, Troy Taylor loved that part.
Really, this says more about Stanford than it does about conference realignment. Troy Taylor is not that weird of a football coach. Plenty of these guys have done things like coach high school ball for ten seasons and take eight years off to do radio for Cal. They’re grinders. They know how to grind.
Stanford? There are some grinders there, don’t get me wrong, but those are all-nighter term paper grinders. Those are not charter flight to Pocatello grinders. Stanford is full of people who know about REM cycles and choose their mattresses to optimize their posture later in life. Troy Taylor comes from a type of football person who is unsure if sleep is really a biological necessity. This is the opposite of that trope where an affluent white guy goes to a disadvantaged high school and uses sport to solve poverty. This is a middle class football man going into the heart of the Ivory Tower and trying to tell the culture there that actually, you can live without eating a vegetable for four months. He’s done it!
(Thank you to the reader who pointed this quote out to us. You know who you are.)
Everyone’s Piling On the Orioles
The Orioles suspend one broadcaster for insanely defensive reasons, and suddenly everyone remembers how messed up this organization is.
Ken Rosenthal chose today, today amidst the Kevin Brown snafu, to publish a refresher on how the Orioles can’t get a lease signed with Camden Yards because John Angelos is being a Major League Baseball owner (i.e., he’s asking the city to build him a bunch of commercial space around the ballpark to make him richer).
Thankfully, no one seems to think Angelos will actually try to move the Orioles, including Rob Manfred, who’s said it isn’t going to happen. What instead seems to be going on is that Angelos knows he’s an owner now, with his father dealing with serious late-life illness, and Angelos wants to do the owner thing, which is asking for real estate. You can imagine Angelos showing up to owner’s meetings and hearing Tom Ricketts and John Fisher talk numbers and feeling very inadequate. (A coffee shop near Fisher’s vacation home in Lake Tahoe has banned him, by the way, and in the official statement told him to “fuck off.”) So, he’s going to drive the car towards the other car, but he’s kind of laughing while he does it, and he’s driving really slowly, not hitting the gas at all or anything like that. He’s playing chicken, but he’s idling. It appears this will end with a small bump and then Angelos getting out and laughing a little more and the Orioles signing whatever lease Baltimore tells them to sign.
In the meantime, though, you have to appreciate Rosenthal in all this, and all the others who’ve risen from the depths these last few days to say, “Yeah, that’s a fun baseball team right now, but remember when their owners did and said this and this and this and Buck Showalter forgot how extra innings worked in the 2016 Wild Card Game?” Everyone in baseball media is ready at all times to pounce on the Orioles.
Fernando Tatís Jr.: Joe Kelly Fan
I missed this amidst the drama, but Fernando Tatís Jr. was asked about the incident where Joe Kelly knocked him down with two fastballs and then called him a “fucking bitch” under his breath, and Tatís was remarkably cool about it. From the San Diego Union Tribune:
“Kelly is a baller,” Tatis said. “He’s one of the best relievers out there. He struck me out. So he got me.”
…
After the game, it was noted by social media lip readers that as Tatis walked from the plate and Kelly stalked back off the mound toward second base, the pitcher said something that was seemingly directed at Tatis. (The first word was the most infamous one that begins with an F and ends in “ing” and the second word was the most infamous one that begins with a B.)
Tatis had seen the posts. He laughed.
“Everyone in baseball knows Joe Kelly,” Tatis said. “That’s the way he pitches. That’s part of the game. That guy is giving 100 percent.”
One of us!!
I didn’t expect this, and I now don’t know what to do. For the moment, I’m going to quietly support Fernando Tatís Jr., but if I later learn that Joe Kelly really doesn’t like him, I’m ready to pivot. I’m always ready to pivot if I find out Joe Kelly doesn’t like someone. That’s the job description.
(The public reaction to the “fucking bitch” thing is pretty funny. What do people think Max Scherzer is saying when he does all that muttering? Nursery rhymes?)
Andrew Chafin: Sleeper Cell
Andrew Chafin was an utter delight with the Cubs in 2021, so it was fun to see him torpedo the Brewers last night. We don’t want to get into details, we wish Andrew Chafin the best, we will say he was not alone in his efforts, but hell of a performance by the old friend. Love that for all involved.
Sad News in Maui
If you’ve missed it, there are wildfires in Maui right now, including in Lahaina, home of the Lahaina Civic Center, home of the Maui Invitational. They are destructive. They are deadly. They’ve already killed six. It’s really, really sad. Hopefully it doesn’t get worse. Hopefully it gets better fast.
Elgton Jenkins Got a Little Mad
The Packers and Bengals are doing one of those joint practice things, an NFL happening which confuses me but I blindly accept. It got ugly today, with Elgton Jenkins pancaking a Bengals linebacker who then tried to fight Elgton Jenkins. The problem, for Elgton Jenkins, was that he was unable to stop fighting. He started swinging again a few minutes later, during a drill. He was then pulled from practice.
You don’t like to see it, mainly because the headline is not, “Holy shit, Elgton Jenkins beat the piss out of this guy.” Instead, it’s just that Jenkins got angry. Way less fun.
Signing 13-Year-Olds to Play Professional Sports Is Weird
Yesterday, one day before a former 10-year-old social media influencer (who emblemized the pattern of families allegedly manipulating their children online for financial gain) was announced dead, a 13-year-old soccer phenom was signed by a second-tier U.S. professional team, the Sacramento Republic. Yes, the Sacramento Republic is a soccer team. No, it’s not a newspaper. Yes, I double checked.
Hopefully everyone’s being conscientious about this. The fawning reports say the child will enroll at a charter school in Sacramento County, and he did join the team’s youth academy in 2021. I would assume that he wants this. What 13-year-old who’s great at sports doesn’t want to be a professional athlete? But man…13 years old. Potentially playing actual professional soccer games.
Child labor debates are weird. On the one hand, yes, it’s very bad when children are forced to work in sweatshops. On the other hand, yes, it’s often a great life experience for children to work in ice cream shops part-time during the summer, especially if they’re supporting their families. There’s a lot about this child I don’t know. But it feels like a publicity grab from this team, and you have to imagine that if the child is really so great at soccer, opportunities are available through sponsorships and the like for the family to secure itself financially without sending their kid to Birmingham on Saturday night to play a soccer game. Hopefully he’s psyched. Even then, though…
Weird.
