Weekend winners
8-year-old A's baseball team. Yep, the A's, a collection of 10 super youths (cue the "what's a ute" scene from "My Cousin Vinny") won four games this weekend to capture the SMYB title. It was a ton of fun, and the title game was a defensive gem between the A's and Angels, with the A's winning 6-5 in the seventh on William Barker's game-winning, walk-off hit. (How defensive was that game? Coming into it, the A's averaged 16.5 runs per game before needing extra innings to get to six runs.) It was a great season, and here is the iMovie the Mrs. 5-at-10 put together. (Having a professional photographer in the fold pays frequent and great dividends.)
Jason Day. Dude cruised The Players, showing a variety and complexity to his game that raises the stakes for the other young guns trying to wrap their hands around the world's top spot in golf that Day currently holds. Look at Day's performance through entirety of the tournament: He dominated the first 36 holes, sprinting to a record score of 15 under at the halfway point. He handled the immense difficulties of Saturday's course set-up with a mental toughness that was impressive and featured a 3 under back-nine to salvage a 73. He then managed the course and his game Sunday, using irons off the tee and even laying off the accelerator on par 5s. It was impressive on all fronts, and when added the with overall numbers - he has won seven of his last 17 starts - it was worth consideration of calling this performance and his recent run Tigeresque.
Mike Foltynewicz. Another quality piece to the rotation of the future the Braves are assembling. Dude was light's out good Saturday, going seven innings and allowing no runs, eight hits with zero walks. He has a 2.89 ERA.
NASCAR youngsters. Yes, Matt Kenseth won the race and he is a bona fide veteran. (Side note: Did you know that Kenseth has 37 career wins? Man, that's a bunch more than we would have originally guessed. By comparison that's almost twice as many as Buddy Baker (19), and way more than say Dale Jarrett (32), Kevin Harvick (32) and Dale Jr. (26). Kenseth is not that far from names like Mark Martin, who has 40, and Bill Elliott, who has 44.) Coming in right behind Kenseth was the young gun duo of Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott, respectively, with each posting a career-best finish.
David Ortiz. Yes, he had a walk-off double on Saturday for the surprisingly potent Red Sox, but know this: Ortiz now has more than 500 homers and 600 doubles, and only two other baseball players ever can say that: Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds. And yes, when you are on a hitting list that includes you, Barry and Hank, well, that's fine company.
The Toronto Blue Jays and Texas Rangers have a benches clearing brawl during the eighth inning of a baseball game in Arlington, Texas, Sunday, May 15, 2016. (AP Photo/LM Otero) Weekend losers
Almost everyone else at Sawgrass. The officials at TPC are destroying the greens Tuesday. Good thing. Saturday was hard to watch. Yes, we love watching the best in the world struggle on holes like No. 17 - here's Russell Knox's Tin Cup-like adventure that turned into a 9 on the famous island green - but 5 putts from 10 feet are simply cringe worthy. Plus, with Day cruising home on Sunday, it really made for some yawn-tastic viewing.
Sportsmanship in baseball. Man that Jays-Rangers fight was something right? Where does that rank in the "baseball rules" conversation? Let's follow the dots. Toronto's Jose Bautista crushes playoff homer against Texas and flips his bat because, you know it was an emotional moment in a big playoff game. Rangers get mad and plunk Bautista. Jays pitchers defend their slugger by plunking a Texas hitter. Now everyone is ticked off and the next thing you know, Bautista's hard slide into second triggers a full-scale brawl and one of the cleanest connected punches since Nolan Ryan spanked Robin Ventura. (Here's an excellent montage of right-handed haymakers in baseball history.) In most cases, a hard slide like Bautista's would be described as "good baseball" or some other dated euphemistic term. Fighting the urge to get wordy here, can anyone explain the baseball's "unwritten rules" in which a flip of the bat is considered way worse that potentially wrecking the knees of a middle infielder? Either way, a full-scale brawl between 50 grown men was jumpstarted by a flipped bat last October. Normally, the silly reason involves a female when a large scale fight of this magnitude happens.
Miami Heat. The Heat find themselves in the loser's category this weekend for two reasons. First, they lost Sunday's Game 7 at Toronto. Big. Yes, they scrapped and overachieved considering the rash of injuries they experienced down the stretch; they played the sat five games without their expected starting 4 and 5 with Chris Bosh and Hassan Whiteside unavailable. Secondly, they now face a long offseason filled with a litany of questions. Do you rebuild around a soon-to-be-35 star in Dwyane Wade? Will Bosh ever be able to play considering this is his second bout with blood clots? Do you give Whiteside max money even though he is a defensive-minded center in a league in which spacing and stretch 4s are the preferred M.O.? Pat Riley, whatcha' got?
All of us as sports fans. The fake bomb left at the Manchester United soccer match over the weekend is a painful reminder of the new world order in which we live. We may be annoyed by the rules and the security that are in place before enter some of these sporting events, but it's events like this that remind us why we need those measures. And we all lose because of it.
Toronto Raptors' DeMar DeRozan, right, and Kyle Lowry celebrate during the second half of Game 7 of the NBA basketball Eastern Conference semifinals against the Miami Heat in Toronto, Sunday, May 15, 2016. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Conference Finals
You have to take the good with the bad sometimes, right?
We get an amazing series between the Thunder and the Warriors, and have glorious expectations. Then, in the East, it would have been more fun to watch the Heat-Cavs duke it out in the LeBron Bowl, but Toronto had other plans.
Here's a quick breakdown heading into the Game 1s of each series (Thunder at Warriors tonight, 9, on TNT; Raptors at Cavs on Tuesday night, 8:30, on ESPN):
We'll start in the East. The Cavs have too much going for them right now. This series will be closer than we expected two weeks ago because Kyle Lowery has remembered that he's an All-Star in the last two weeks. Still, there's no way to expect anything closer than Cavs 4-2.
As for the shootout in the West, it's hard to remember being this excited about a seven-game series in while.
Five all-stars in the game. Three of the top five or six players in the league involved. Criss-cross of styles but with similar upbeat tempos. Steph Curry will score in bunches. So will Kevin Durant. Russell Westbrook will make a ton of plays that will make us wonder how amazing a wide receiver could this dude have been.
In the end, though, the difference here will be determined by which team blinks first.
Yes, both like to pay fast, and yes, both like to score, but the Warriors are at their best playing small, with 6-foot-7 Draymond Green using his myriad of skills at the 4 or even the 5.
The Thunder shocked the Spurs by using bigs Steve Adams and Enos Kanter a lot in the same lineup.
Which lineup finds the most success - especially early - will go a long way to deciding this one. We'll take Warriors in 7, which may be wishful thinking to get these two teams into a winner-takes-all game, but hey, let's all be dreamers.
This and that
- Tough-break for Alabama-native heavyweight Deontay Wilder, who had his big-dollar fight with Alexander Povetkin postponed after Povetkin failed a drug test.
- Great scoop here for TFP political ace Andy Sher, who informs us that UTC got the green light on starting work on an $18.5 million football facility.
- Wendell Pierce, the dude that played Bunk in "The Wire" was arrested in the A-T-L over the weekend. We would have thought that McNaulty would be the first one to be on the wrong end of the law. So it goes.
Today's question
Of course, we'd love to hear your suggestions about who won and lost the weekend.
We also would be remiss if we did not wish a happy 50th birthday to Janet Jackson. Yes, the girl who played Penny on "Good Times" is now 50. (Yes, Janet had some other success in another area of pop culture, too.)
In that vein, considering Janet and Michael's success in music, what's the Rushmore of the best brother-sister combos in a specific area of expertise. The Jacksons feel like a dunk, and speak of that, Reggie and Cheryl Miller make a strong case too.
Go.