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Weekend winners
Braves fans. And Reds fans. Those were three super-fun games at the Great American Bandbox. (Side question: How long before a ball hit into the air is called “an infield” fly, ruling the batter out and then it carries over the the left-field wall? Man, does the ball jump there.) Plus, that’s two young teams with transcendental talents in Atlanta’s Ronald Acuña Jr. and Cincy’s Ella de la Cruz. Acuña was 6-for-15 with three runs scored, three steals, a homer and two doubles in the Braves’ 2-1 series win against the Reds in which all three games were decided by a single run. Cruz hit for the cycle Friday night, and was 5-for-13 in the series with four RBIs and four runs scored.
Everyone who bet on almost every offensive category in the Braves-Reds series. The final tally for the three-game series was a combined 47 runs and 69 hits. There were 19 homers in the series. Egad. Get the ball down pitchers.
Olivia Dunne. Let’s face it, the LSU smokeshow gymnast is winning almost every day these days. She’s reportedly the top-paid NIL college athlete because her social media influence has more than 11 million followers. (And big hint here: It’s not because there are 11 million college gymnastics fans looking for Dunne’s scores on the vault.) She got paid a pretty penny to be at the Nashville NASCAR event over the weekend, and to prove her brains go with that beauty, talk about knowing your audience. At a NASCAR event, Dunne takes to TikTok with two military members in Daisy Dukes and proudly announces “My pronouns are U-S-A!” Forget the class credits, Dunne deserves a masters degree from Red Stick in marketing for her real-world experience and accomplishments.
LPGA golf future stars. Man, the two best players in the world are 20 and were in contention Sunday at one of the Tour’s majors.
Weekend losers
LPGA golf present. Can anyone name either of the 20-year-old phenoms? Seriously, and we’re sports fans, but how many LPGA players could you name overall? How many could you ID in a photo? Has it been since Michelle Wie that the sport has had a true across-the-dial star? Annika maybe? And do you think the promotion is going to get better when the PIF is bankrolling PGA headquarters? (Answer: Rose Zhang is one of the 20-year-olds and she has a win and a top-10 major finish in her first two professional starts. The other is Ruoning Yin. Anyone get both? Spy? Bueller?)
The Cookie Jar. The erstwhile meat-and-three at the end of the glorious drive over the other side of Signal Mountain (or aptly called Whiskey Hill, as Dr. B used to dub it) to Dunlap was damaged by fire over the weekend. The TBI is now looking into it as well. Great eats there.
ESPN nostalgia. There was a time when the ESPN anchor was, if not the biggest sports media star, he/she was right there among them. Patrick and Olbermann. Berman. Stu Scott. Greenie started that way too. Heck, Craig Kilborn went from Bristol to hosting Hollywood celebs on late-night talk. The list is deep and star-studded. Now, I like Matt Barrie. Randy Scott is dad-joke funny. But other than SVP, is there a bona-fide A-lister there? Well, after 23 years at the late-night desk, Neil Everett called it a career. He was great at it, too. And sneaky funny, which is perfect for that role. Safe travels, Neil.
Bud Light. Wow, the sales of Bud Light have been down 20-plus percent each week since the Dylan Mulvaney promotional thing. How this became such a hot-button issue has truly shocked me, to be honest and derailed what was a monolith in its industry. Did you know Bud Light was the best-selling beer for like 20 straight years before this and has passed by Modelo Especial during the controversy. Now Garth Brooks has waded into it saying Bud Light is welcome at his Nashville bar, and “(bleep)holes” are not. Interesting strategery there, Mr. Brooks. Is that promotion more “Shameless” or do you think he will have “Unanswered” orders in a Nashville honky tonk with that kind of start? Here’s some more details.
Golf’s Happy days
So Keegan Bradley won the PGA event this weekend, the Travellers in Connecticut. He made $3.6 million for the effort.
Dang. For the Travellers.
Luke List made $109,000 for tying for 33rd. Harris English tied for 60th and got $44,600. Wow. At the Travellers?
Fellow Baylor School alum Stephan Jaeger finished ahead of exactly two other players in the 67-man field and he got a check for $43,200. At the bleeping Travellers people.
The Tour money is bonkers these days. Crazy in fact.
Speaking of golf and crazy, did you see the story that a high school golfer in Indiana has committed to play at Ball State.
While I normally try to offer different stories about all sorts of sports and angles, the day-to-day recruiting cycles of the Ball State golf program is not high on my social media feed.
But this one is different. You see the recruit is a young go-getter named … wait for it …
Happy Gilmore.
Yes, it’s a nickname. His real name is Landon, but he won a long-drive contest at 9 and the nickname proved to be a natural. Here’s more on his story, including connecting with Adam Sandler — the Hollywood superstar who played the titular character in “Happy Gilmore” movie — over the weekend.
(Side note: Gotta admit, at first I thought his given name was Happy and was thinking, is that clairvoyant parenting or just a risky all-in bet.)
Bigger picture for the real-life Mr. Gilmore are the NIL opportunities before him in the here and now, right?
Either way, it’s a fun story. A fun summer-time story.
That dare I say it, made me, well, happy this morning.
This and that
— Speaking of the Braves, how great is that lineup when the two weakest links — average wise and contact-wise — are Matt Olson, who leads the NL in homers with 25 after hitting four in three games at the Bandbox, and Marcel Ozuna, who is hitting .306 over his last 157 at-bats?
— Not speaking of ex-Braves, but Freddie Freeman got his 2,000th career hit over the weekend and is one of four active MLBers — Joey Votto, Miguel Cabrera and Nelson Cruz are the others — in the 2,000-hit, 300-homer club.
— LSU-Florida, Game 3 of the College World Series, is tonight. It pits the clear favorite schools of two of our regulars around these parts in Vader and JTC. In something of an anomaly, if LSU wins by fewer than 7 tonight, the Tigers would be the first national champion in almost a decade to win it all with a negative run differential in Omaha. So there’s that.
— Here’s a weekend recap from David Paschall — you may have heard of him — on the amazing success across all the major sports enjoyed by the UT athletic department in 2022-23.
Today’s question
Hey, welcome to summertime. Officially. Yes, it happened late last week, but the well-wishes remain
We are going to be on the go the next couple of weeks. This week is a bunch going on locally. Next week over the fourth, we’re headed to the lake. Week after, it’s Panama City for some 12-year-old softball world series.
Lots of funky eye-black and crazy braids to be certain. And at least one little blonde Signal Mountain teenager trying to strike everyone out. Great times.
So this morning, as we head into the summer-time fun-time, let’s start Multiple choice Monday here:
Best meat-and-three in the area?
— Wally’s
— Southern Star
— Cookie Jar in Dunlap
— Other (and suggest, who knows may need a road trip for lunch soon)?
As for today, June 26, let’s review.
Babe Didrikson Zaharias would have been 112 today. Any list of the best female athletes of all time that does not include Babe is flawed. Check out her exploits. She won two track and field gold medals — setting then-world records in the 80-meter hurdles and the javelin — in the 1932 before turning her attention to golf, where she won 10 LPGA major titles and made the cut on two PGA events in the 1940s.
Chris O’Donnell is 53 today, which makes him very close to my age.
Thought he would have more of a hit-filled career, no?
Rushmore of Hollywood “it” actors who failed to reach expectations over the last several decades?