Weekend winners
Bobby Bonilla. We annually celebrate Bobby Bonilla Day, July 1, when Bonilla goes to the mailbox and gets his $1.19 million check for the deferred payments the Mets owe him. Here's the background, but hope everyone enjoyed Bobby Bo Day on Saturday.
Rickie Fowler. What a great win for what seems to be a really good dude on Tour. Rickie's facial hair, friend or foe? Throughout the interview I was waiting for him to say, "Today's the day you almost caught Capt. Jack Sparrow."
America. Birthday weekend. Supreme Court wisdom. Fireworks galore. Cookouts and family. Great stories of great citizens like this one from TFP all-around ace Mark Kennedy, who tells of a former WWII pilot who celebrated his 100th birthday.
Shohei. What more can we say at this point? Truly. Dude hit a 460-foot homer over the weekend and now has a MLB-best 31.
NASCAR. Hooray. I did not watch it, but by all accounts I have seen and read, the NASCAR event on the streets of Chicago was a smashing success.
Weekend losers
ESPN. The avalanche of known names paled in comparison to the numbers of off-air folks. And the names who were laid-off Friday all have made a pretty penny in this industry. Still, it was quite the blood-letting. So many familiar names. Suzy Kolber, Steve Young, the A-announcing team of Mike Breen, Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson. Max Kellerman and Keshawn Johnson. David Pollack and Todd McShay. I will also miss Jason Fitz, too. Sad day.
Chattanooga leaders. What? We're run worse than New York City? How can only San Francisco be a city with worse leadership than us?
The Mets. The team is in the crapper. A team that spent hundreds of millions in the off season went 7-19 in June and is 18.5 games back of the Braves as of this morning. Bobby Bonilla Day makes the organization a laughing stock. Everyone this side of Mr. Met should be on the chopping block. What a disaster.
PGA Tour. Yeah, this one feels like an every weekend thing, too. But this weekend it was even moreso. Tiger calling out the leadership for some sort of document release. (Side question: Is anyone more deserving of a pink slip than Jay Monahan at this current juncture? Discuss.) Then a popular tournament with a popular champ is forced to be shown in tape-delay in an era of immediacy. Yikes.
Baltimore. Wow. A mass shooting at a block party. No es bueno.
Braves bats
What a June. Buckets of big innings and bushels of bully bats.
The Braves have become must-see TV when they come to the plate. Especially in the first inning.
The June offense was eye-popping.
— They hit 61 homers in the month, 14 more than any other team.
— They struck out 176 times, tied for the fewest in the big leagues for the month.
— They are averaging more than one run in the first inning (1.05 to be exact), which is a full-quarter run better than any other team.
So it makes plenty of sense the NL-leading Braves rightly had eight All-Stars on the NL team — six hitters (the entire infield and Ronald Acuña Jr.) and pitchers Spencer Strider and Bryce Elder — that was announced this weekend.
Sweeps of then-AL-Central-leading Twins and the Braves' closest competition in the NL East left this team with a 23-3 mark since June 3.
Wowser.
The June numbers as a team were staggering.
They hit .307 as a team and had an OPS of .943. As a team friends.
They had 270 hits — 107 for extra-base hits — and scored 175 runs in 25 games. That's almost 11 hits and exactly 7 runs per.
And it starts with Acuña, who is a generational talent who is having an exceptional year even for a generational talent.
He's second in the MLB in average (.336), eighth in homers (21), tied for 15th in RBIs (54), second in total bases (201), second in OPS (1.018), and first in steals (39), runs (76) and WAR among hitters (4.8).
This is truly an exceptional run he and the rest of the Braves are on friends.
This and that
— Here's a little weekend offering — Lester Bangs would call it a think piece about anything-but-a-middle-level golf course — on The Honors turning 40. If I ranked the all-time golf courses I've played, The Honors is assuredly top three. A special little place in Augusta, East Lake, The Honors, Sawgrass.
— Rickie made more than $1.584 million for his first win in more than four years. Stephan Jaeger finished tied for ninth and pocketed $222,200 of Rocket Loan money. Is there interest paid on that?
— Chuck Barkley has changed his will and will donate $5 million to Auburn scholarships at the time of his death. That was in there before and originally was earmarked for "underprivileged" students. The change in the wake of SCOTUS's decision that affirmative action in college admissions is unconstitutional came when Chuck flipped the verbiage to "Black" students. And you know what, I'm fine with all of that. It's Chuck's coin, he can leave it to whomever he sees fit.
— NBA free agency has started, and how did we get to a place where Dillon Brooks is worth $20 million per and any basketball player not named LeBron or KD — never mind a Sacramento King — is worth north of $40 million per?
— Not the best opening for Indiana Jones and his destiny dial. Yes, it topped $100 million across the globe, but considering the costs, Disney assuredly was hoping for more. Much more.
Today's questions
Weekend winners and losers. Go.
Multiple choice Monday looks like this:
Most popular PGA golfer not named Tiger?
- Rory
- Spieth
- Rickie
- Other (and specify).
As for today, July 3, let's review.
Gettysburg ended on this day in 1863.
Egad, Tom Cruise is 61 today.
Tom Cruise.
Rushmore of action movie superstars of the last 50 years, does Cruise make it?
Go.