Congratulations Coach Pop & etc

 San Antonio's, already legendary coach, Greg Popovich will be inducted into Basketball's Hall of Fame this Saturday. I just finished reading a lengthy and well written article in The Athletic that sums up Coach Pop's life and career. It's great read. It begins with Pop's motto as a coach and human being: Get Over Yourself. As a retired high school teacher, it is an aphorism that should be engraved above he entrance of every high school in the nation and above the entrance to the White House. It should be part of every wedding ceremony and opening statement of every CEO at the beginning of every board meeting. It should be every minister's first words to his or her congregation. And very mornings whisper as one rises in the morning to start one's day.  

Coach Popovich goes into the BAsketball Hall of Fame having long ago gotten over himself. But those of us who have enjoyed watching his teams will never get over him and what he has meant to basketball and his county. 

ETC

Can anybody be mor petty than Donald Trump Tweeting or whatever he doe about how happy he was that our women's national soccer team lost in the FIFA World Cup? And why was that? Because the team includes Megan Rapinoe, a lesbian and a hero of previous teams who has been  critical of Trump while he was president. Trump could certainly benefit from Popovich's advice to get over himself. 

Trump's motto is: If you go after me, I'll come after you. Living with that motto, it's no wonder his soul is so dark. 

ETC

From Trump to a much happier subject: Congrats to Eric Bieniemy, starting his firs season as the Jets Offensive Coordinator. My guess is the Chiefs are going to miss his presence. I'm not sure if I'm correct, but I'd bet Coach Eric's last name Bieniemy originated from the French, bien  ami, perhaps somewhere around Lousiana. Bien Ami means beloved friend. Stuff like that doesn't translate to the rough and tumble of NFL football, but I've always imagined Coach Andy Reed and Erica Bieniemy after retiring sitting in rocking chairs side by side on a front porch with a cold brew in their hands and a plate of pork ribs balanced on their large bellies, talking football and remembering their good old days together. 

Onward and downward: Long time QB of the Packers and now the QB of the Jets, Aaron Rodgers, could stand getting over himself. I still can't get over his anti-vax stance, which in my opinion was all about how his health was more important than his teammates' health. 

Onward and upward: Jimmy G, new QB of the Raiders, wins the first game against his old team the 49ers. You read it first here. 

POPOVITCH  HAIKU    by Tom Meschery

One thousand wins

    And one loss keeps you awake

Staring into the abyss 

The NFL, My Second Effort and ETC

 Let's begin with ETC: Part of etc in the future is going to be about FANTABULOUS names in all sports. i'm not talking about  the players as athletes but the players' actual names. Yesterday's blog contained my first effort and a great one it was, it will reign supreme, numero uno, until I find one to surpass it. This name will not, but it is definitely Fantabulous: 49er cornerback. Drum roll, please: DEOMMODORE LENOIR. Brandon Aiyuk calls him, "his dog."  

Is Brock Purdy the answer to the 49er QB question mark. Last season was certainly a Brock Purdy coming-out party, but referring to a sport I know best, it's always the second year that tests whether a player can sustain and grow. Lot's of talk abuot Trey Lance being traded. Giving up on an athlete like that sounds dumb to me. What might he look like after a couple of seasons without an injury?  

I would have added Aiyuk to my Fantabulous names' list, but Brandon just takes the edge off Aiyuk. It's got to be first, last, and middle if possible to earn a sport on Meschery's Fantabulous Names List. 

Here's a Haiku about football

QB #1    By Tom Meschery

Watch the rabbit run,
Escaping the coyote
Mahomes evading tackles.

Beware NBA & etc

This morning I read an Athletic article about options for the Knicks looking to fill out their rosters. The title started out:  "Cheap options for the Knicks." I didn't need to read further. I've been thinking about this since reading how writers were congratulating Sun's GM, Jone for his acumen finding chepa players to surround his Big Three, assuming he doesn't consider Ayton, which would make it the Big Four. In the recent past, Teams over the cap apron(s) have been faced with the same problems as the Suns. Take the Golden State Warriors, for example, finding vets they can sing for vet minimums. In 2022 in worked out beautifully; in 2023, the Dubs were not so lucky. Just not the same caliber vets, excpet for Donte DiVincenzo. Here's my worry. As the money rises teams can offer, I can foresee the bulk of it going to the super stars and a great deal less of it distributed among the solid rotation players. I don't believe vet rotation players and their agents would deny that NBA championship teams are built around their Super Stars and those stars, like great film stars, deserve top salaries, However, if the difference between Star contracts begin to infringe upon the contracts of the rest of the team, thing couls get a bit dicey around the league. Without getting into politics, this possibility in the NBA could at some point in the future begin to look like the disaprity betwee wealth in this country where most of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of the upper 2% of the population. 

ETC

After Basketball season ends, I blog less. I watch baseball, but baseball on television is a game for people who love statistics. Not that there isn't action. Watching pitchers is very satisfying, but I can only do it for so long. as pitching takes up over half of he time of the game. Whenever there's a homerun, I hear the voice of my dearly departed friend, Bill King, one time Voice of the Athletics: "It's going, it's gone, Holy Toledo! I've had the game explained to me by Larry Colton, one time Philly pitcher and now writer of great books. Read Counting Coups, you'll love the story of a Native American girls basketball team on it's way to a state championship. Even with Larry's tutelage, I know I'm not getting half the nuance of baseball. So I don't blog about it much.  

Of course there are so many sports I can write about. Presently, we have America's women competing for the FIFA World Championships. And I'll always have my eye out for tennis.  And I try not to miss major track and field events.  I know too little about winter sports such as skiing and iceskating that there's not interesting I could say about it, unless there is a rekated human interest narrative  involved.

 This all leads upt to the following:

Why not blog about the NFL and college football? Even though i recognize the sports' violence, I still enjoy watching football, especially the NFL, I guess because I prefer seeing sports played on the highest level. The only reason I can think of why I don't blog about football is simply that there are too many players to be taken into consideration to do a credible job. Twenty-two in all and most in positions I know little about except when pointed out to me by a color-commentator. Did you see what the left guard did to open up the hole for the running back? I did not, sorry Troy.  

But I have decided this season to go against my better judgement and write more about the NFL 

Allow me to begin: Hurrah, foe Justin Herbert for earning a five year contract worth $265.2 million. Note please that I didn't round up and kept the.2, which is about the total amount a teacher earns in ten years and probably less in a state like Mississippi. Ah, well. My wife is on board with this contract as she is an Oregon Duck and so is Justin. And she points out he went the full four years and graduated with a 4 GPA degree in science with an emphais in biology. Now we're talking roll model. 

Not to be upstaged by Herbert, Andrew Thomas, offensive tackle for the New York Giants has signed a contract worth $217.5 million. We're talking lineman here, I know zero about offensive tackles so i felt it would be a good start mentioning him. Well, I do know the job of offensive tackles is to clear a path for rurnning backs and to protect quaterbacks from getting crushed by defensive tackles. 

I'm a 49er fan. I go back as far a YA Tittle. I used to also be a fan of the Raiders, but when the team domped Oakland, I stopped. Vegas can have them. Although, I must say, if any city might carry on the raucous tradition of the Oakland fans it's Glitter City. Back to the 49ers: Nick Bosa has not showed up for training camp as his agent is working on the details of a new extended contract. I can't wait to see the numbers. I am a fan of Bosa, not only because he is a fabulous end rusher but because my wife's grandson,Jaxon, has named his cat Bosa.  

I don't think I'll push the envelope mush frurther for my first foray into football blogging, excpet for one last shot: The Winner of the All Time Name for an Athlete in any sport - Drum foll, please - is Amon-Ra-St. Brown. Like Wilt Champerlain's 100 point game, I doubt this will ever be surpassed.

 I leave you with this interesting factoid about football: In England in the 18th century, Rugby, the grandpa of American Football, along with Cricket, was the sport of the upper classes, while Football, which in America we call soccer, was thought of as the sport for the lower classes?  

HEAPS ON HEAPS

And now both bands in close embraces met,
Now foot to foot, and breast to breast was set.
Now all impatient grapple round the ball,
And heaps on heaps in wild disorder fall.
                 Matthew Concanen

               from A Match at Football
                     (1721)

The Temp is Rising

I read this morning in The Athletic about the Sun working to establish a G League team for next season. Good for them.  Sometimes I make comments at the end of articles. I wasn't going to, until a I read a comment about this article posted by a reader. It was not about basketball, but climate change. He questioned if in the future there would be a Suns team to write about, given that with climate change, the heat in AZ would be intolerable. That made me think of all the other cities in the NBA that are going to be massively affected by climate change: San Antonio, Houston, Orlando, etc. The City of Miami is going to be flooded. The Sun's new owner Matt Ishbia might want to consider moving his team to the Northwest  and let KD finish his career where he started in cool and beautiful Seattle. 

Today's 7.25.;23 Athletic had a marvelous, touching story about how Charlie Villanueva has helped rookie Celtic draft choice Jordan Walsh deal with their mutual condition, Alopecia, a disease that keeps hair from growing and lightens ones skin. According to one of the comments following the article,  when Villanueva was playing, Kevin Garnett said to him that he looked like he had cancer, a mean and childish thing to say. I had never thought of KG as a knucklehead. To bad, he was one heck of a player. If he hasn't done it already, let me suggest that he apologize publicly to Charlie and meet Jordan Walsh who is  a Celtic draft choice and embrace Walsh, also publicly. Of course, he doesn't have to. He can continue being a childish knucklehead. But one day, God forbid, KG might get cancer and then he'll have to look in the mirror. 

Just thinking: Anybody out there just a wee bit tired of hearing: Ya Know, bottom line, at the end of the day? And as much as I admire Leborn James, I could stand to open a sport page and not see his name for a few days. 

Women's soccer players are finally going to be paid the dame as the men's team. About frigging time. 

I just watched SLAM BALL. Holy Hops! They have finaly come up with the perfect sport for people suffering from hyper active disorder. Major sponsor Red Bull? 

While the super sports are going on, the fishermen are out abong the streasm and lakes, among them, my two son-in-laws. Here's a fishing poem for all the fishermen.

CATCH   

I imagine us dancing, a Mexican ballroom somewhere
(anything instead of fishing)
In faded, pre-war elegance, tropically flowered wallpaper
(jigs, flies, speckled lures and mr. twisters)
Drooping lushly like the evening sea-breeze
(damn the wind, they won’t bite now)
And you in sailor whites – tuxedo, if I blur my eyes
(black, shiny, slimy leeches, grubs, chubs, fathead. . . )
The band plays 40’s swing, a dark man croons “Darling”
(I’m a rapid oxidizer,” you announce, sweat streaming down your nose)
“Darling, Take My Heart. . . “
(walleye, pike, sunstroke, crappies)
And my red dress spins faster as you lift me off he floor
9jesus Christ, a four pounder!)
Its ruffled hem streaming round my knees
(landed)
Like a school of tiny iridescent fish
(darling, take my heart)
You sing at last.
 
             Ethna McKiernan

This & That July 19th

 I was struck this morning with Sam Amick's article in The Athletic about Joel Embid in which he sude the term RINGZ CULTURE. What a shame it has come to that. Historically it minimizes so many great NBA teams that reached the Finals and lost. I'm thinking of th great Utah Jazz teams of Stockton and Malone, and Charles Barkley's and Kevin Johnson's fabulous Suns' teams. To them I add my marvelous 1967 San Francisco Warriors team with Nate "The Great" Thurmond and Rick Barry. We lost to Wilt's 76ers, which was a great team even when with Moses Malone at center they later lost to Walton's Trailblazers. I never wore diamonds on my finger, but what shines most is in my heart. Ringz are finally  just glitter. 

Let's hear it for Sabrina Ionescu, the WNBA player who shot lights out 37 pts in the recent 3 pts shooting contest at the WNBA All-Star Game. There's a lot of talk already about a NBA vs WNBA shoot out between Steph Curry and Sabrina. Advertisers are lining up. So are Vegas odds makers. Aside from her miraculaous performance, there is a point to be made here. When you see shooting like this and watch the recent WNBA games, I don't think it is too farfetched to believe that someday there will be a female who can make it on to an NBA team. Okay, not in any of the power positions, but how about as a point guard who can shoot like Ianescu? Of course, she'd have to have the body and strength of Serena Williams, but is that so hard to visualize? I wrote a novel called She's Got Game about a female college All-Star who forgoes the WNBA to try out for the NBA. It's in manuscript and waiting for an agent. Any agents out there, I'm listening. 

Hurrah for Carlos Alcaraz for defeating Novak Djokovic for the singles mens' championship at Wimbledon.  A worthy young champion. Spain should be proud. One takeaway from the presentation at the end of the match. Ever since COVID, I stopped cheering for Djokovic when he refused to be inoculated. I don't do selfish well. So, I was thrilled the young Spaniard defeated him. But Novak's concession speech made me change my mind about him. It was so honest, I couldn't help to believe he's a much better person that I thought. Yes, he's still wrong about COVID, but he understand what it takes to be an athlete, to be gracious in a loss. I still won't cheer for him, but I will not bad-mouth him either. 

Here's a poem I wrote after watching the Wimbledon. 

RACKET   by Tom Meschery

To his astonishment,
his shot goes wide
its fault he seems
to be assigning
to the racket
staring up at him
out of his hand,
not to any misjudgment
on his part.
Fingering the stings
he speaks to it
as he might speak
to an enemy
Perhaps  a change
of rackets
will be all it takes.
He threatens or cajoles
while in the stands
we wait for service,
his rage to end
and the match to continue,
down 40 love.