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08/15/2016

More Rio...and A-Rod

[Posted 11:00 p.m., Sunday]

Baseball Quiz: This is from ESPN The Magazine and a story on Ichiro.  There is a table that I feel compelled to use...So...Ichiro has 3,003 hits thru Friday, No. 2 all time for hits after age 27 (all of his MLB hits are 27 and on).  Who are the others in the top five for hits after 27?  [Hint: Two of them played in the early 1900s.  The other two at least part of their career in the 1960s.]  Answer below.

Rio

--Sunday, Jemima Sumgong of Kenya opened up the action in the morning, taking the women’s marathon.  The U.S. did well, as one of my favorite athletes of all time, Shalane Flanagan, finished sixth, with America’s Des Linden (7) and Amy Cragg (9) earning top 10s.

Another of my girls, Allyson Felix, cruised to a semifinal win to gain a spot in the 400-meter final on Monday.

In the men’s 400 final, South Africa’s Wayde Van Niekerk set a world record, 43.03, breaking the mark of Michael Johnson, 43.18, set in 1999.  Great story there with his 74-year-old female coach in the stands.  I loved the call of analyst Sanya Richards-Ross, who as the runners hit the final 200 said “this will be epic.”

And then we had the men’s 100 meters.  After an easy race in the semis, Jamaica’s Usain Bolt cruised to victory for his third straight gold, besting Justin Gatlin, again.  Bolt is so incredibly amazing.  Next up, the 200 on Thursday as he seeks to make it nine-in-a-row in the 100, 200 and 4X100 relay.

In the pool....

Saturday night, the U.S. women’s 4X100-meter medley relay team won gold – and reached a milestone for the U.S., the nation’s 1,000th gold medal in Summer Olympics history.  So Kathleen Baker, Lilly King, Dana Vollmer and Simone Manuel become part of a trivia question for future generations.  The men’s 4X100, with Michael Phelps, then followed up with No. 1,001.

For Phelps it was his 23rd career Olympic gold in what looks to be his last Games.  I believed him when he announced after the race that this was it.  He is 31, after all, and it’s time to move on, even if none of his teammates believe him.

“Getting off the bus and walking to the pool tonight, I pretty much felt myself starting to crack,” said Phelps.

“Last warm-up, last time putting on a suit, last time walking out in front of people, representing my country...it’s insane.

“This is how I wanted to finish my career.  I’ve lived a dream come true. Being able to cap it off with these Games is just the perfect way to finish.”

So Phelps bows out with 28 medals total; 10 more than the next best, gymnast Larisa Latynina, who competed for the Soviet Union between 1956 and 1964, and won 18, nine of them gold.

Bill Plaschke / Los Angeles Times

“He left it all in the pool, every inch of his lean and bruised body, every dazzling and dark moment of his career, all swirling behind him in the roiling waters of the Olympic Aquatics Center.

“He bent down over the deck in exhaustion.  He stayed down, staring at the blue floor, basking, breathing, until he finally found the strength to straighten, thrust up his arms and wave his hands in a universal gesture of goodbye.

“Thousands of fans wearing a dizzying diversity of colors and flapping many-hued flags stood for the guy wearing the red, white and blue.

“And soon thereafter, in accents and tongues from all over the globe, they chanted his name.

“ ‘Mich-ael Phelps!  Mich-ael Phelps!’

“On a thick-throated Saturday night in Rio, the air was filled with the sort of singular appreciation never heard from an entire Olympics crowd.

“For one moment, it felt as if the entire sporting world was putting aside its differences to say farewell to the greatest.

“Michael Phelps is the greatest Olympian ever, now and forever, and the final race of his five Olympics was filled with the richness of what exactly that means....

“He is Peyton Manning, but only if Manning had been the MVP of that last Super Bowl.

“He is Kobe Bryant, but only if Bryant had scored those final 60 points in an NBA Finals Game 7.

“He is Barry Bonds, but clean.  He is Tiger Woods, with redemption....

“ ‘This is a cherry on top of the cake that I wanted,’ Phelps said afterward, looking drained but happy.”

The New York Times had a bit noting Phelps had 63 races spread over five Olympics and covering 11,800 meters.

In winning the 200 individual medley, he became the third American after track and field athletes Al Oerter and Carl Lewis to win the same event four times.

I do have to add that in his individual race finale, the 100 butterfly, he tied with two others for silver, beaten by Singapore’s Joseph Schooling, who had his photo taken with Phelps in 2008.  Talk about a cool moment, this was Singapore’s first-ever Olympic gold.  Prime Minister Lee was the first to extend his congratulations.  [I like this man, Lee...and his country.]

Also, when Phelps won the 200 IM that gave him 13 individual golds, which bested the mark of 12 held by Leonidas of Rhodes, who back in 152 B.C. took his last three golds in races of about 200 and 400 meters and in a shield-carrying race.  True.

Staying in the pool....

The U.S. swim team won 16 golds, 33 medals, matching their total in Sydney in 2000.

In 2012 in London it was 16 golds, 31 total medals.

Barry Svrluga / Washington Post

“In one way, Katie Ledecky is morphing, right here in front of an international audience, into a everyone-knows-who-she-is star, the premier freestyle swimmer not just of these Olympics, but of all-time.  In another way, she’s just doing her part. She is an American swimmer at the Rio Games. So she must win medals....

“Ledecky is delivering in the way others can only fantasize about, the latest a sizzling leg (anchoring the 4X200 freestyle relay team) that turned what looked like a massive deficit into a walk-in-the-park advantage, taking over for teammate Maya DiRado and simply putting away Australia.”

Then Ledecky won the 800m free by a staggering 11 seconds!  So her haul in Rio amounted to golds in the 200, 400 and 800, plus 4X200 relay, and a silver in the 4X100 relay.

But now it’s off to school at Stanford, where she’ll be a freshman and a member of the swim team.  I can’t imagine what those meets will be like.

--Russian swimmer Yulia Efimova, the villain of the Rio swimming competition, took a parting shot at rival Lilly King on Saturday night, insisting the 19-year-old American was immature and had turned the event into “a cold war.”

Efimova told USA TODAY Sports that the past nine days had been a personal “nightmare” as the bad blood between King and her escalated.

“It was war,” Efimova said.  “It was like a nightmare. This completion (of the program) is a relief because I love racing, but this was more like a war.  It was awful.  She is young, but she should understand more.”

Efimova has been living and training in Southern California the past five years, but she said the reaction she received from the American swimming public has caused her to reconsider.  On several occasion, she was booed as she entered the pool deck.

Efimova continues to claim that singling out Russia for criticism over doping was unfair, despite the extraordinary extent of the Russian doping system that threatened the integrity of the entire Games.

“Why are they discussing only Russians, not another country?” she said.  “I mean, it is not only Russia.”

Sally Jenkins / Washington Post

“King, 19, is a swaggeringly great swimmer, but the rivalry between her and 24-year-old Efimova in the breaststroke is hardly a simple matter of a clean swimmer prevailing over ‘drug cheating,’ as King put it. The facts of Efimova’s case aren’t nearly so clear cut despite the self-righteous Cold War shunning of her.  It’s worth looking a little more closely  at the human face of Efimova and maybe even standing in her place for a minute.  As she suggested tearfully the other night, ‘You can just try and understand me, like if you switch you and I.’

“For starters, Efimova doesn’t live in Russia; she lives in Los Angeles, where she has trained with Southern Cal Coach Dave Salo since she was 19.  He says via email, ‘She is a sweet kid and not the monster she is being branded.’ She was born in the war-torn Chechen capital of Grozny and raised in the Russian swim-club system in Volgodonsk, but in 2011, her coaches feared she was wearied by the grind of the Russian program, so they asked Salo to take her on.

“Efimova has two offenses for performance-enhancing on her record, and let’s take a closer look at them.  One day in 2013 she went to a local GNC in L.A. and bought a nutritional supplement. Her English was poor, and she didn’t check the contents, which included the banned hormone DHEA. Efimova’s offense was deemed unintentional, and the normal two-year suspension was reduced to 16 months.

“No American would do such a thing, right?  Actually, as NBC correspondent Alan Abrahamson has pointed out, Efimova’s case was very similar to that of Jessica Hardy, banned for ingesting a tainted supplement in 2008 only to win two medals at London 2012.  No one splashed water in Hardy’s face or refused to shake her hand....

“Efimova is deemed a chronic cheat here mainly because of her second offense: testing positive for the heart medication meldonium in the midst of the crisis over the exposure of state-sponsored doping in Russia.  Meldonium was in broad use by Eastern European athletes legally until WADA prohibited it in January 2016.  This spring, WADA declined to ban more than 200 athletes who tested positive for meldonium after January, including Efimova, because it’s unclear how long it takes to clear the system.  It’s quite possible that she obeyed the WADA ban but the medication remained in her system anyhow.

“Efimova tried to explain these circumstances in her Olympic post-race news conference as King refused to look at her. Here was Efimova’s account of herself, and you can accept it or not.

“ ‘I have once when I made mistakes, and I have been banned for 16 months,’ she said.  ‘For second time, it’s not my mistakes.  Like, I don’t know why actually I need to explain everybody or not....Like if WADA say, like, tomorrow, stop like yogurt or nicotine or, I don’t know, protein, that every athlete use, and they say tomorrow now it’s on banned list. And you stop. But this is stay [in] your body like six months, and doping control is coming, like, after two months, tested you, and you’re positive.  This is your fault?’”

--China plunged into the doping crisis at Rio as the Chinese Swimming Association confirmed 18-year-old Chen Xinyi tested positive on August 7, the day she finished fourth in the 100m butterfly final.

This comes as China has vigorously defended its athletes, particularly superstar Sun Yang, who was labeled a “drug cheat” by Australia’s Mack Horton after he defeated Sun in the 400m men’s freestyle.

The big duel, however, Horton and Sun in Saturday’s 1500m freestyle failed to materialize, as Sun came down ill after winning the 200m and finished last in his 1500m heat.  But then Horton only finished fifth in the final, which was won by Italy’s Gregorio Paltrinieri, American Connor Jaeger taking the silver.

--After winning the 100-meter freestyle on Thursday night to become the first African-American female swimmer to take gold in an individual event, tying 16-year-old Canadian Penny Oleksiak for the top spot, Simone Manuel talked of dealing with being a rare black swimmer representing the U.S.:

“It is something I’ve definitely struggled with a lot,” Manuel said.  “Coming into the race I tried to take weight of the black community off my shoulders.  It’s something I carry with me. I want to be an inspiration, but I would like there to be a day when it is not ‘Simone the black swimmer.’

“The title of black swimmer suggests that I am not supposed to win golds or break records, but that’s not true because I train hard and want to win just like everyone else.”

--American Anthony Ervin wrote quite a story.  In winning the 50-meter freestyle, the 35-year-old became the oldest American swimmer to win an individual gold medal.  More stunning was that he last won the event in 2000 as a 19-year-old, before his life fell apart.  But he clawed back.

--Finally, I comment in that other column I do that you can have Rio.  I will never go there.  I wrote that 24 hours before Ryan Lochte and three members of the U.S. swim team were robbed at gunpoint late Saturday night/Sunday morning.  They were stopped by people posing as armed police, the USOC said in a statement.

The robbers demanded money and their personal belongings.

Initially, the USOC denied reports the robbery had taken place, then they said, “All four athletes are safe and cooperating with authorities.”  What assholes...the USOC,  that is.

Lochte and his buddies were leaving a party at the French Olympic team’s hospitality house when their taxi was stopped on the way back to the athletes’ village.

Incredibly, earlier IOC spokesman Mark “Dick” Adams said reports of the robbery were “absolutely not true.”

Freakin’ Lochte’s mother was the first to tell the truth!

I’ll have more on this, far more, in the next column I do...the one I post Friday nights.

Back to the track....

--Anyone who saw Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson in her 100-meter semifinal heat early Saturday night had to be going, “Wow.”  It was like she was shot out of a cannon.  No way she would lose the finals, I thought.  And Thompson prevailed in it, taking gold over American Tori Bowie and two-time gold medalist, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, thus gaining the title world’s fastest woman (“Queen of the Track”), winning in 10.71 seconds.

Thompson grew up in Banana Ground, Manchester Paris, a remote Jamaican community, raised by her grandmother.

[My girl, English Gardner, finished seventh in her first international final, a big step, and she will only get better.  She will medal in Tokyo!]

--I was watching the men’s 10,000 meters, Saturday, and after about ten minutes I couldn’t have been the only viewer thinking, ‘Galen Rupp is going to trip Mo Farah...he’s too close,’ and sure enough, seconds later, Rupp tripped Farah, sending Farah tumbling, but the defending Olympic gold medalist in both the 5,000 and 10,000 bounced right back up, got back into it, and then did what he does best, close it out in the final lap, this time sprinting by runner-up Paul Tanui of Kenya in the final 100 meters, winning his second consecutive gold in the event in 27:05.17.  Rupp, Farah’s training partner and silver medalist in London, finished fifth.

“When I fell down, I was like, ah.  One moment, my race is over, my dream is over,” said Farah afterwards.  “But then I managed to dig deep.  I promised my daughter Rhianna, my oldest daughter, I was gonna get her a medal.  And in my mind I was like, ‘nah, I can’t let her down.’

“As soon as I got up, I was hoping that the guys didn’t see me fall down in the front.  I didn’t know if they saw it, but they did make a little bit of a surge.  I was just thinking, ‘It’s OK, I still got quite a long way.’”

Farah does race under a shadow, though, as a 2015 report published by the BBC and ProPublica contained allegations from former athletes and coaches that Alberto Salazar, who has trained Farah, approved usage of banned drugs.  And recently a photo has emerged of Farah with a Somali coach who was arrested by Spanish police on doping charges.

But Farah has been tested like everyone else at his level, more so as a champion, and still nothing.

Separately, Friday, Michelle Carter won gold in the shot put, becoming the first American woman to do so.

Also Friday, Ethiopia’s Almaz Ayana set a world record in the women’s 10,000...29:17.45, 14 seconds better than the 1993 mark of China’s Want Junxia.  I did not see this one, but Dr. W., a terrific runner himself in high school and at Wake Forest, said it was awesome to watch Ayana’s performance. 

--Simone Biles joined Mary Lou Retton, Carly Patterson, Nastia Liukin and Gabby Douglas as American all-around winners in gymnastics, leaving no doubt who the best in the world is these days.

American Aly Raisman won silver, sweet revenge for her disappointment four years earlier.

Then, in London, it was teammate Gabby Douglas who was the show-stopper, Biles not on the team, but then Simone exploded on the scene and everyone knows her name now.  [She won her third gold, Sunday, on the vault, last I saw...a lot to cover these days, kids.]

--The U.S. women’s soccer team was sent packing.  After a 1-1 tie in regulation, Sweden edged the U.S. in a shootout 4-3.  U.S. goalie Hope Solo, one of the true jerks on the planet, then let loose.

“I thought we played a courageous game.  I thought that we had many opportunities on goal.  I think we showed a lot of heart.  We came back from a goal down; I’m very proud of this team.

“I also think we played a bunch of cowards.  But, you know, the best team did not win today; I strongly, firmly believe that.  I think you saw America’s heart.  You saw us give everything that we had today.  Unfortunately the better team didn’t win.”

Sweden is coached by Pia Sundhage, who formerly coached the United States and won two Olympic gold medals.  Their strategy was to play defensively and the U.S. finished with 27 shots to Sweden’s mere two.  But Sweden scored on one of those and then prevailed in the shootout.

Sundhage said of Solo’s criticism, “It’s OK to be a coward if you win.” While coaching the U.S. team, Sundhage on more than one occasion said dealing with Solo was challenging.

Sally Jenkins / Washington Post

“It’s called composure, and Hope Solo’s never been overburdened with a lot of that, or grace either. The U.S. women’s soccer team had their temperaments tested by a savvy, conservative Sweden in the Olympic quarterfinals and lost. Solo has spent years undermining their collective equilibrium, and this one’s on her.

“She’s a chronically rattled and rattling soul, the American goalkeeper.  Let’s face it: For every shiny marketing moment and big victory she’s been a part of, she’s given the U.S. nasty unwanted drama.  The victories usually smoothed over her behavior.  Not this time.  This time she went pure loser and lout.

“After giving up the winning penalty kick to Sweden, Solo called her opponents ‘a bunch of cowards’ for their conservative game plan.  Now, who is the real coward here? Solo gave up three regulation goals in the past two games, between a draw with Colombia and this loss.  She tried to ice Lisa Dahlkvist on the final kick by changing her gloves, and then couldn’t lay a hand on the ball. And she couldn’t take responsibility for any of it; she could only lash out...

“As social media erupted Friday night over Solo’s postgame insult of Sweden, the goalie seemed to realize she’d done herself additional public damage. But even then, her behavior was hardly courageous.  Instead of apologizing she went on Twitter with what she framed as ‘the full context of my comments today,’ and tweeted to Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl, ‘Losing sucks.  I’m really bad at it.’....

“This may well have been Solo’s final big international result as the U.S. goalkeeper.  That’s probably for the best.”

Solo’s name is in the December file for some serious “Jerk of the Year” hardware.

A-Rod

Alex Rodriguez, the most polarizing New York sports figure in decades, played his last game, at least as a Yankee, Friday night at the Stadium and he had a first-inning RBI double, but finished 1-for-4; 9 HR, 31 RBI, .200 BA for the season.

A-Rod’s final week since last Sunday’s announcement he would be released was to say the least tumultuous.  Manager Joe Girardi made a big mistake last Sunday, saying that if Alex wanted to play the three games in Fenway, Tuesday thru Thursday, Girardi would find a way.

But at the same time Girardi was saying his job was to win ball games, and clearly that didn’t include Rodriguez.

So Girardi didn’t play A-Rod on Tuesday, gave him a pinch-hit appearance on Wednesday, and then started him, batting cleanup and playing DH, on Thursday, only Alex went 0-for-4.

The Yankees, though, over the course of the week, improved to 60-57 (after winning 2 of 3 against Tampa Bay) and are suddenly more than in the race for a wild-card spot.  I admire what the team has done in quickly rebuilding through the trade deadline maneuvering and on Saturday, call-ups Tyler Austin and Aaron Judge both hit home runs in their first at-bats in the big leagues, the first time this ever happened back to back.  Immediately, Austin and Judge were labeled the ‘Baby Bombers,’ which, with Judge’s second homer Sunday in a 12-3 loss clearly helped salve the fans’ wounds.

Anyway, A-Rod’s finale.

Mike Lupica / New York Daily News

“Joe Girardi hasn’t just done a good job managing the Yankees, especially over the past month, really since the Yankees were 8-16.  He has done the best managing job of his career.  If Alex Rodriguez, a beauty to the end, one who even wanted to make out Girardi’s lineup card over the past week, had done his own job even half as well as Girardi has done his, the Yankees might be in first place right now.  The manager kept trying to explain everything to everybody this week, eventually tying himself up in emotional double-knots.  But he honored the uniform this week, by honoring his own code as a baseball man.

“Joe Girardi also wasn’t afraid to be human at the same time, which means flawed, admitting in Boston that he shouldn’t have said a couple of days before that Rodriguez could play as much as he wanted. So he changed his mind.  Guess what?  He was allowed.  More importantly, he was right to do it.  Rodriguez in the end got as much of a send-off as he deserved, considering that his batting average was around .200 for the last 400 at-bats of his big league career.

“And Girardi was right when he said his job was to try to manage his team into the postseason, not some slapped-together farewell tour for a guy who would have sold out Girardi – and Hal Steinbrenner, and Randy Levine, and Brian Cashman – to save himself three years ago during Biogenesis, even with the way some Yankee fans want to carry him around the room on their shoulders now.

“ ‘Some people think that I wanted to make negative decisions, but that’s not the case.  I have a huge heart,’ Girardi said Friday night.  ‘If this is the last time he plays, I wanted it to be something he never forgot.’

“The manager still heard boos at Yankee Stadium on Friday night.  But how can any Yankee fan righteously boo this manager after the job he’s done?  He loses Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller and Carlos Beltran.  Mark Teixeira is a .200 hitter. Rodriguez was.  Somehow here the Yankees are, anyway.  Somehow, though, all the way to Friday night there was this notion that everything should organize around a guy, Alex Rodriguez, who hit the ball about as hard this week as he did all season. And the last two months of last season....

“By the way?  There is no law that required Girardi to treat Rodriguez the way he treated Derek Jeter a couple of years ago.  Or the way he has treated Teixeira this year.  You know who really benched Alex Rodriguez?  Alex Rodriguez did, by being as soft as any DH on the planet.

“He ended up hitting an even .200. In his last week he produced a single hit in nine at-bats. He can blame it all on an early-season injury if he wants to. But what injury is to blame for a .191 batting average the last two months of last season?  When Rodriguez got a big knock in his first time at the plate against the Rays on Friday, an RBI double, it was his 16th extra-base hit of the season.  You know who didn’t have any fun watching a guy like that in the middle of the Yankee batting order?  His manager.  The idea that the manager acted mean or small this week is flapdoodle.

“In a week that was supposed to be all about Alex Rodriguez, the real star of the Yankees was the manager.  As much of a phony as Rodriguez has been across his career, Girardi is the opposite of that.”

Joel Sherman / New York Post

“Alex Rodriguez was horribly great for baseball.

“He loved the game and all its nuances as much as any player I ever have covered. And his actions were as destructive to the sport as just about anyone ever.

“He was often hard to watch and yet you couldn’t take your eyes off of him.

“He so badly wanted to be liked and respected, and the more he strived for both, the more he was disliked and disrespected.

“Greed, insecurity and egomania fueled both his baseball genius and his self-destructive tendencies.  He thought endlessly about what he wanted to say, and then consistently inserted his foot in his mouth.

“Alex Rodriguez was a contradiction ensnared by conflict wrapped in a paradox.  He could ingratiate and infuriate in the same conversation.  He publicly shared his physical marvels and emotional instability. He ricocheted from hero to villain, cheers to boos, fame to infamy like perhaps no other athlete in history.

“If you wrote a column about A-Rod, the reactions, through email and Twitter, almost always were 50 percent you were too soft on him and 50 percent you were too hard on him. There was no gray, all black and white.  But those resolute positions showed why he was horribly great for the game.  You loved him, you hated him, but you thought about him, you watched him, you waited to see what he might do or say next....

“There was no one ever quite like him.  Someone good enough to hit the fourth-most homers ever.  Someone bad enough that the commissioner of baseball would not travel the 7 ½ miles from his midtown office to watch Rodriguez’s final game as a Yankee....

“Before the game Friday, Rodriguez called  his career ‘an incredible journey.’  He mentioned ‘all my screw-ups and how badly I acted’ to say that Hal Steinbrenner’s offer to stay in the Yankee organization as an adviser was ‘hitting 800 homers for me.’

“Remember, not long ago, Rodriguez was Lance Armstrong and Ryan Braun, not only fighting his steroid suspension, but also relentlessly going after reputations and institutions, though he knew the truth that he had been dirty.  It is part of his permanent record – along with the nearly 700 homers; three MVP awards and a year-long suspension; insincerity and indelibility.

“The contradictions. The conflicts.  The paradox.”

Tom Verducci / Sports Illustrated

“Ludwig Tieck, who died in 1853, was a poet and an essayist who became a founder of the Romantic movement.  He captured the high-minded honor of his times when he said, ‘He is not dead who departs from life with a high and noble fame; but he is dead, even while living, whose brow is branded with infamy.’

“Few brows in baseball were ever branded more with infamy than that of Alex Rodriguez.  But far from dead is he.  Rodriguez is a brand, more famous for being infamous than for being a baseball player, and he still has something to offer the sport.

“It was a tribute to these forgiving times that when the Yankees essentially fired him from his job as a DH – they kept him on as a special adviser who will serve as a mentor to their minor leaguers.

“Even Rodriguez had to shake his head on Sunday when asked how a guy who sued Major League Baseball, the Yankees’ team doctor and the MLB Players Association in 2013 and was thrown out of baseball for all of ’14 could be hired less than three years later by New York as a mentor.  So how might he be remembered?  ‘Hopefully as someone who tripped and fell a lot, but someone who kept getting up.’....

“Rodriguez was the perfect player for these times, when baseball moved out of the labor wars and into, and slowly out of, the Steroid Era. The game lost some of its soul and much of its national appeal in those years, but it exploded economically.  Rodriguez moved the needle, figuratively and literally.  He craved, in order, acceptance and fame.  Consumers may not have approved of his behavior, but they loved the spectacle.  Rodriguez made himself matter – and, by extension, baseball.

“Infamy was never a problem for Rodriguez; insecurity was.  He said he needed steroids to be the all-time great that he was expected to be after signing a 10-year, $252 million deal with Texas in December 2000.  We know of eight years in the heart of his career with connections to PEDs: 2001, ’02 and ’03 (admitted steroid use); ’07 (therapeutic use exemption for testosterone); ’08 (therapeutic use exemption for clomiphene citrate); and ’10, ’11 and ’12 (received PEDs from his drug supplier in South Florida, Anthony Bosch).  Rodriguez also confirmed being treated in ’09 by Anthony Galea – a Canadian doctor who pleaded guilty to bringing mislabeled drugs into the U.S. – but not with banned substances.  Is it possible that he never played a day clean in the big leagues?  Even Rodriguez, back in ’09, recognized the opening he gave people to doubt it all.

“ ‘There will be some people that say, you know, ‘Alex is not a great player, going back to high school,’’ he said.  ‘I mean, they’re just going to have this blanket cloud over my career. And for those, they may have their own point.’

“Rodriguez won his only world championship that year. The next season, having just turned 35, unhappy about gaining weight and lacking energy, he turned to Bosch.

“The doping went on for three years, a staggering array of drugs administered morning, noon and night by multiple delivery systems, such as lozenges, creams and injections....

“Centuries ago, infamy derived from Latin to define the opposite of fame, to capture a public dishonor that even leaned toward evil.  Time and culture have softened the edge of the sword. Rodriguez, in his own way, left an indelible mark on baseball. His playing days behind him, now he has a chance to leave a better one.”

MLB

--Since last chat, how lousy have my Mets continued to play? Wednesday, they lost to the lowly Diamondbacks 3-2 in 12.  Thursday, Arizona blitzed the Mets 9-0 in truly embarrassing fashion for a three-game sweep.  The Mets allowed the D’Backs to steal a franchise record 13 bases in the series.

Afterwards, manager Terry Collins told reporters: “There has to be passion to come and play.  There has got to be a sense of: ‘This is what I do for a living.  People who pay to see me play are going to see my best effort.’

“Starting tomorrow, we’re going to get after it here. And those that don’t want to get after it, I’ll find somebody else who does.  Because in Las Vegas there is a whole clubhouse filled with guys that want to sit in this room.  And I’ll find them.”

Then he stormed out.

So Friday, the Mets sent Logan Verrett to the mound and all he did was give up 8 earned, 4 home runs, in 2 2/3 as the Mets lost 8-6 to the Padres.  Verrett is now not just 3-8, 5.36, but in his seven starts replacing Matt Harvey in the rotation, he has an ERA of 7.18.  Exit Verrett.  Mets fell to 57-58.  10-17 since the All-Star break.

But Saturday the Mets finally eked one out, 3-2 in 11, after closer Jeurys Familia blew a save for Jacob deGrom.

And then Sunday, Steven Matz threw 7 1/3 of hitless ball and the Metsies won 5-1...the first time since July 6-7 they won two-in-a-row!  Par-tay!

--Also Sunday...the Nationals beat the Braves 9-1 as Tanner Roark moved to 13-6, 2.83.  Bryce Harper returned after being out five games with a neck injury and went 1-for-3 with an RBI, but he is still batting .234.

The day before, Jonathan Papelbon sought and was given his release by the Nats, the a-hole going 2-4, 4.37 ERA with 19 saves in 22 opportunities.

But in terms of the wild-card race, there was a significant development down in Miami, 5-4 winners today over the White Sox as Chris Sale fell to 14-6, 3.30, having lost four straight.

Giancarlo Stanton is out for the year with a groin injury.  Talk about snake-bit.  It’s the third straight year in which his season has been cut short because of injuries and here he just signed a ginormous, long-term deal.  He finishes this year with 25 homers, 70 RBIs and a .244 batting average.

So...of all the teams A-Rod might entertain keeping his career going on with, No. 1 would be Miami, and tonight there are stories Marlins’ management is thinking about it.  Would A-Rod agree?  And where the heck would he play?

And in Boston’s 16-2 win over Arizona at Fenway, Mookie Betts became just the second Red Sox player, the other being Ted Williams, to hit three home runs in a game twice in one season, Betts driving in 8 in the process.

Arizona’s Zack Greinke yielded 9 earned in just 1 2/3,

--Detroit beat Texas 7-0 as rookie Michael Fulmer improved to 10-3, 2.25, with his first complete game shutout.

--Friday, Colorado’s Charlie Blackmon had three solo home runs in the Rockies’ 10-6 loss at Philadelphia, but then he hit two more on Sunday to give him 20 homers and 59 RBIs to go with a .324 average.

Also Friday, the Braves beat the Nats 8-5 with Stephen Strasburg suffering his second straight rough outing, 5 1/3, 6 earned, as he ‘falls’ to 15-3, 3.07.

But the Cubs’ Jake Arrieta moved to 14-5, 2.55, after throwing 5 2/3 of one-run ball in the Cubbies 13-2 win over the Cardinals.

Thursday, in what has been an awful season for the World Series Champion Royals, at least Danny Duffy threw a complete game, 2-1 over the White Sox, to move to 9-1, 2.82.  As Ronald Reagan would have said, ‘Not bad, not bad at all.’

Wednesday, Toronto’s J.A. Happ continued his spectacular pitching in the Blue Jays’ 7-0 win over the Rays, Happ now 16-3, 2.96.

--The Houston Astros released outfielder Carlos Gomez after he hit .210 in 85 games with five home runs and 29 RBIs.  Gomez was an All-Star with the Brewers in 2013 and 2014; rather remarkably having virtually the exact same stats each season (24 HR 73 RBI, .284 in 2013; 23-73, .284 in 2014).  There are rumors the Mets might pick him up, but I think at this point that would be more about possibly being a piece next year if he had a good spring training, especially if Yoenis Cespedes walks.

--Francisco Mejia extended his minor league hitting streak to 50 on Saturday.

--Shu passed along the latest betting odds to win the World Series from Vegas Insider:

Cubs 14/5
Giants 5/1
Nationals 5/1
Rangers 15/2
Indians 10/1
Mets 40/1
Yankees 100/1...this would be a good bet.

College Football Preview

It’s almost here and I’m fired up.  I have to be all-in on Clemson, as a fellow ACC fan, and, err, my Wake Forest Demon Deacons not receiving a single vote anywhere in any of the preseason polls. [San Diego State is my sleeper to crash the playoff party...yes, you heard that right.]

I’m also undergoing a major reassessment of my allegiance, come football, for the Oregon Ducks, despite all the Duckwear I have in my sports drawer.  I need to take a few long jogs and think about this.  Developing....

Anyway, speaking of polls...first, a reminder of the Final AP Poll for 2015:

1. Alabama
2. Clemson
3. Stanford
4. Ohio State
5. Oklahoma
6. Michigan State
7. TCU
8. Houston...did you forget, like I did, how high they finished?

Now...for 2016

Coaches Poll

1. Alabama
2. Clemson
3. Oklahoma
4. Florida State
5. Ohio State
6. LSU
7. Stanford
8. Michigan
9. Notre Dame
10. Tennessee
20. North Carolina

Sports Illustrated

1. Alabama
2. Clemson
3. Florida State
4. Michigan
5. LSU
6. Oklahoma
7. Washington
8. Houston
9. Ohio State
10. Tennessee
12. Notre Dame
22. North Carolina
24. San Diego State

ESPN Power Rankings

1. Alabama
2. Clemson
3. Oklahoma
4. Florida State
5. LSU
6. Ohio State
7. Stanford
8. Michigan
9. Tennessee
10. Notre Dame
24. North Carolina
25. San Diego State

[Awaiting the AP preseason poll]

Individually, it’s going to be about Clemson’s Deshaun Watson, Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey, LSU’s Leonard Fournette, and Florida State’s Dalvin Cook. 

McCaffrey will win the Heisman as the other three split up the vote in the East and Southeast.  You can book it.

And how good can Houston be with their star QB Greg Ward Jr. back?  He is one of only two QBs last season to throw for 2,000 and rush for 1,000 yards, the other being Deshaun Watson.

Houston plays Oklahoma Sept. 3.  Huge early contest.  [There are a few others that day that I’ll talk about as we get closer.]

But a lot of us in the East in particular are anxious to see Pitt running back James Conner and how well he can do after missing last season battling Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

--Former North Carolina, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest football coach Bill Dooley died.  He was 82.

Dooley took his teams to 10 bowl games and was the first North Carolina football coach to win 11 games in a season, leading the 1972 Tar Heels to an 11-1 finish.  He is the only coach to have led the university to multiple ACC football championships.

Dooley was the younger brother of former Georgia coach Vince Dooley.  They were to be honorary captains for the season-opening Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game between North Carolina and Georgia on Sept. 3 in Atlanta.

Dooley left North Carolina to become coach and AD at Virginia Tech, where he won 63 games before being replaced by Frank Beamer, who succeeded him in 1987.

Dooley was then hired the same year by Wake Forest and he led the Deacs to three winning seasons in six years, twice being named ACC coach of the year and capping his tenure in 1992 by taking the program to its first bowl game in 14 years, a victory over Oregon in the Independence Bowl.

Overall he finished 161-127-5...simply one of the best coaches in ACC history.

Golf Balls

--So I was skeptical of the format of the Olympic tournament, simply a 72-hole stroke play event, but it turned out to provide great drama as Justin Rose held off Henrik Stenson; Rose hitting a clutch chip on 18 to win it as Stenson, playing with Rose in the final group, three-putted (though for the archives, this was not a ‘choke’ job by Stenson).

The bronze was won by Matt Kuchar in a terrific performance.  And boy, is he psyched, which is what you want to see.

I’ll have far more on Olympic golf and its future next time.  But I’m optimistic and I know Rory, Jordan, Adam et all are pissed they weren’t there.

--Ryan Moore won the John Deere Classic for his fifth PGA Tour title. When you win five, that’s officially a “very solid” career.  At ten it’s a “great” one.

--Boy, all I did was detail Jim Furyk’s spectacular 58 at the Travelers’ tour stop last week and a good friend thought I was calling it the greatest round ever.  No, I said Furyk is the first to shoot 58.  It is the lowest round ever.

Anyway, the friend’s point was that I should have mentioned Al Geiberger’s 59 in 1977 was 13-under, not Furyk’s 12-under par, plus the equipment wasn’t as good, the courses not as in as good a shape as they are today, yada yada yada....

I know!  And I’ve mentioned Al Geiberger many times before.  Heck, I’ve written in the past how amazed I am at the early golfers playing a feathery ball with freakin’ hickory sticks and godawful putting surfaces.

But Jim Furyk is the first to shoot 58.  Period.

And Geiberger’s round was indeed awesome, too.  He’s still “Mr. 59.”

Premier League

Opening weekend and I watched defending champion Leicester City suffer a shocking 2-1 defeat at the hands of newly promoted Hull, who are managerless and relegation favorites.  Hull has just 13 senior players on their roster after an offseason of turmoil.

It is the first time the reigning English champions have started the season with a defeat since 1989.  Understand, Leicester, in its Cinderella 2015-16 season, lost only three out of 38 league games – to Arsenal twice and Liverpool.

My Tottenham Spurs had to struggle at Everton for a 1-1 draw, which I’ll take.  I am not optimistic this year.

Sunday, Liverpool beat Arsenal, 4-3, and Manchester United in its first game with Jose Mourinho as manager defeated Bournemouth 3-1, Zlatan Ibrahomovic scoring in his debut (Wayne Rooney also got one).

Prior to the opening weekend, the BBC’s chief football writer, Phil McNulty, pegged the following order for 2016-17.

1. Manchester City
2. Manchester United
3. Chelsea
4. Arsenal
5. Tottenham
6. Liverpool
7. West Ham
8. Leicester City

Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook had the following odds before the first contests:

Man City 5/2
Man U 3/1
Chelsea 11/2
Arsenal 6/1
Tottenham 8/1
Liverpool 8/1
Leicester 25/1

Watford, Bournemouth, Hull City and West Bromwich all 1000/1.

Stuff

--LeBron James agreed to a three-year, $100 million contract with Cleveland, with the salary in the first year $31 million, making him the highest-paid player in the NBA for the first time in his career.  He has a player option for the third year.

--Not long ago, foxes native to the Catalina Islands off the California coast were on the brink of extinction, but on Thursday, U.S. wildlife officials on Thursday removed three subspecies of island fox from the endangered species list, hailing their comeback as one of the great successes of the Endangered Species Act.

The population of these little foxes was almost wiped out by golden eagles.  Scientists then relocated the predators and bred foxes in captivity so they could be reintroduced to the wild.

By 2000, there were only 15 foxes each on two of the islands and 55 on Santa Cruz Island, and today there are 700 on the others and 2,100 on Santa Cruz.

--We note the passing of longtime ESPN and ABC sportscaster John Saunders, who died suddenly at 61.  A cause of death has not been released.

I really liked this guy as a studio host, especially for ESPN’s “College Football Live” and college basketball. Saunders had been with ESPN since 1986 and was a founding member of the V Foundation for Cancer Research, named for Jim Valvano, who died of cancer in 1993.  He was just a pro and easy to listen to.

John Feinstein / Washington Post

“If I’ve figured one thing out during all the years I’ve worked in journalism, it is that those who are the best at what they do rarely need to be told, or tell others, just how good they are.

“They just know.

“John Saunders, who died suddenly and shockingly Wednesday, was one of those people.

“Saunders...could do anything and everything well, whether it was play-by-play; hosting pre- and postgame shows or hosting ‘The Sports Reporters.’  His range was remarkable.  He was as adept at doing the WNBA and the NHL as he was college football or basketball.....

“Saunders was the guy every analyst wanted to work with for two reasons.  First, his ego was such that he had no problem setting up his analysts to be the stars of the broadcast, lobbing questions that made those he worked with sound smart. Second, he was a joy to be around.

“Saunders was the opposite of someone who thinks being on TV makes you really important. Everyone else was important to him and you felt that the minute you walked into a room with him....

“He was as good as it gets.  And never once did he feel the need to tell anyone.”

RIP.

--Scientists announced this week that Greenland sharks are now the longest-living vertebrates known on Earth, with one female being estimated to be 400 years old.  The team’s research, published in the journal Science, also concluded these sharks reach sexual maturity at about the age of 150.  [That would be frustrating, boys and girls.]

The former vertebrate record-holder was a bowhead whale estimated to be 211 years old.

But if invertebrates are brought into the longevity competition, a 507-year-old clam called Ming holds the title of most aged animal.

Greenland sharks can grow up to 15 feet in length and are found in the deep waters of the North Atlantic.

The researchers used radiocarbon dating to produce their estimates.  Since this procedure doesn’t produce exact dates, one 15-foot female they followed was estimated to be anywhere from 272 to 512 years old, so they settled on 400.  [BBC News]

--Finally, we note the passing of singer Glenn Yarbrough, who died the other day at the age of 86 from complications of dementia.

Yarbrough found fame and fortune as a popular folk singer, including with the trio the Limeliters, who were very popular from 1959 to 1963, after which Yarbrough left to go off on his own.  As in, away from music.  An ardent sailor, he wanted to spend the next decade at sea, but RCA Victor, his record label, persuaded him to record solo albums instead.

So he made a bunch of them and in 1965 had a big hit single with “Baby the Rain Must Fall,” the title song of a film starring Steve McQueen and Lee Remick and a favorite of yours truly.

But in touring, he got upset at how expensive his shows were, with high cover charges in some of the bigger lounges he played in, and he started wondering about his own existence, so in the late 1960s, he started selling all his toys, like his Rolls-Royce, his Porsche, his Bentley, two Ferraris, and a house in New Zealand, and with the proceeds he established a school for disadvantaged children, most of them African-American, outside Los Angeles.

The school lasted a few years into the 1970s when it closed for lack of funds.  Yarbrough then hopped on a 57-foot sailboat he had helped build, and with his second wife and baby they sailed around the world for five years, and on and off after.

Occasionally, through the 1990s, Yarbrough would appear back on land to do some concerts and Limeliters reunion tours. An interesting guy.

Top 3 songs for the week 8/16/69: #1 “In The Year 2525” (Zager & Evans...just shoot me...)  #2 “Honky Tonk Women” (The Rolling Stones)  #3 “Crystal Blue Persuasion” (Tommy James & The Shondells...in my top three all time...)...and...#4 “Sweet Caroline” (Neil Diamond...aargh aargh aargh...)  #5 “A Boy Named Sue” (Johnny Cash...the one and only...)  #6 “Put A Little Love In Your Heart” (Jackie DeShannon....you know, DeShannon is a cool name...just sayin’...)  #7 “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town” (Kenny Rogers and the First Edition)  #8 “My Cherie Amour” (Stevie Wonder...easily in his top three...)  #9 “What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)” (Jr. Walker & the All Stars...another excuse to say this has the greatest beginning to a song, ever... including Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, which if you aren’t tearing up a little near the end, you’re a jerk...though Trump would say Rachmaninoff had no talent and that he had small hands...)  #10 “Baby, I Love You” (Andy Kim)

Baseball Quiz Answer: Most hits after age 27....

Pete Rose 3,357
Ichiro 3,003
Sam Rice 2,925...a Johnny Mac favorite...
Honus Wagner 2,766
Stan Musial 2,635

Obviously, Sam Rice was the tough one.  If you got him, pop open a beer at your office cube.  Those around you will think it’s a Coke.  Really. Especially if it’s 9:30 a.m.

Next Bar Chat, Thursday....far more thoughts on everything that transpired this weekend.



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Bar Chat

08/15/2016

More Rio...and A-Rod

[Posted 11:00 p.m., Sunday]

Baseball Quiz: This is from ESPN The Magazine and a story on Ichiro.  There is a table that I feel compelled to use...So...Ichiro has 3,003 hits thru Friday, No. 2 all time for hits after age 27 (all of his MLB hits are 27 and on).  Who are the others in the top five for hits after 27?  [Hint: Two of them played in the early 1900s.  The other two at least part of their career in the 1960s.]  Answer below.

Rio

--Sunday, Jemima Sumgong of Kenya opened up the action in the morning, taking the women’s marathon.  The U.S. did well, as one of my favorite athletes of all time, Shalane Flanagan, finished sixth, with America’s Des Linden (7) and Amy Cragg (9) earning top 10s.

Another of my girls, Allyson Felix, cruised to a semifinal win to gain a spot in the 400-meter final on Monday.

In the men’s 400 final, South Africa’s Wayde Van Niekerk set a world record, 43.03, breaking the mark of Michael Johnson, 43.18, set in 1999.  Great story there with his 74-year-old female coach in the stands.  I loved the call of analyst Sanya Richards-Ross, who as the runners hit the final 200 said “this will be epic.”

And then we had the men’s 100 meters.  After an easy race in the semis, Jamaica’s Usain Bolt cruised to victory for his third straight gold, besting Justin Gatlin, again.  Bolt is so incredibly amazing.  Next up, the 200 on Thursday as he seeks to make it nine-in-a-row in the 100, 200 and 4X100 relay.

In the pool....

Saturday night, the U.S. women’s 4X100-meter medley relay team won gold – and reached a milestone for the U.S., the nation’s 1,000th gold medal in Summer Olympics history.  So Kathleen Baker, Lilly King, Dana Vollmer and Simone Manuel become part of a trivia question for future generations.  The men’s 4X100, with Michael Phelps, then followed up with No. 1,001.

For Phelps it was his 23rd career Olympic gold in what looks to be his last Games.  I believed him when he announced after the race that this was it.  He is 31, after all, and it’s time to move on, even if none of his teammates believe him.

“Getting off the bus and walking to the pool tonight, I pretty much felt myself starting to crack,” said Phelps.

“Last warm-up, last time putting on a suit, last time walking out in front of people, representing my country...it’s insane.

“This is how I wanted to finish my career.  I’ve lived a dream come true. Being able to cap it off with these Games is just the perfect way to finish.”

So Phelps bows out with 28 medals total; 10 more than the next best, gymnast Larisa Latynina, who competed for the Soviet Union between 1956 and 1964, and won 18, nine of them gold.

Bill Plaschke / Los Angeles Times

“He left it all in the pool, every inch of his lean and bruised body, every dazzling and dark moment of his career, all swirling behind him in the roiling waters of the Olympic Aquatics Center.

“He bent down over the deck in exhaustion.  He stayed down, staring at the blue floor, basking, breathing, until he finally found the strength to straighten, thrust up his arms and wave his hands in a universal gesture of goodbye.

“Thousands of fans wearing a dizzying diversity of colors and flapping many-hued flags stood for the guy wearing the red, white and blue.

“And soon thereafter, in accents and tongues from all over the globe, they chanted his name.

“ ‘Mich-ael Phelps!  Mich-ael Phelps!’

“On a thick-throated Saturday night in Rio, the air was filled with the sort of singular appreciation never heard from an entire Olympics crowd.

“For one moment, it felt as if the entire sporting world was putting aside its differences to say farewell to the greatest.

“Michael Phelps is the greatest Olympian ever, now and forever, and the final race of his five Olympics was filled with the richness of what exactly that means....

“He is Peyton Manning, but only if Manning had been the MVP of that last Super Bowl.

“He is Kobe Bryant, but only if Bryant had scored those final 60 points in an NBA Finals Game 7.

“He is Barry Bonds, but clean.  He is Tiger Woods, with redemption....

“ ‘This is a cherry on top of the cake that I wanted,’ Phelps said afterward, looking drained but happy.”

The New York Times had a bit noting Phelps had 63 races spread over five Olympics and covering 11,800 meters.

In winning the 200 individual medley, he became the third American after track and field athletes Al Oerter and Carl Lewis to win the same event four times.

I do have to add that in his individual race finale, the 100 butterfly, he tied with two others for silver, beaten by Singapore’s Joseph Schooling, who had his photo taken with Phelps in 2008.  Talk about a cool moment, this was Singapore’s first-ever Olympic gold.  Prime Minister Lee was the first to extend his congratulations.  [I like this man, Lee...and his country.]

Also, when Phelps won the 200 IM that gave him 13 individual golds, which bested the mark of 12 held by Leonidas of Rhodes, who back in 152 B.C. took his last three golds in races of about 200 and 400 meters and in a shield-carrying race.  True.

Staying in the pool....

The U.S. swim team won 16 golds, 33 medals, matching their total in Sydney in 2000.

In 2012 in London it was 16 golds, 31 total medals.

Barry Svrluga / Washington Post

“In one way, Katie Ledecky is morphing, right here in front of an international audience, into a everyone-knows-who-she-is star, the premier freestyle swimmer not just of these Olympics, but of all-time.  In another way, she’s just doing her part. She is an American swimmer at the Rio Games. So she must win medals....

“Ledecky is delivering in the way others can only fantasize about, the latest a sizzling leg (anchoring the 4X200 freestyle relay team) that turned what looked like a massive deficit into a walk-in-the-park advantage, taking over for teammate Maya DiRado and simply putting away Australia.”

Then Ledecky won the 800m free by a staggering 11 seconds!  So her haul in Rio amounted to golds in the 200, 400 and 800, plus 4X200 relay, and a silver in the 4X100 relay.

But now it’s off to school at Stanford, where she’ll be a freshman and a member of the swim team.  I can’t imagine what those meets will be like.

--Russian swimmer Yulia Efimova, the villain of the Rio swimming competition, took a parting shot at rival Lilly King on Saturday night, insisting the 19-year-old American was immature and had turned the event into “a cold war.”

Efimova told USA TODAY Sports that the past nine days had been a personal “nightmare” as the bad blood between King and her escalated.

“It was war,” Efimova said.  “It was like a nightmare. This completion (of the program) is a relief because I love racing, but this was more like a war.  It was awful.  She is young, but she should understand more.”

Efimova has been living and training in Southern California the past five years, but she said the reaction she received from the American swimming public has caused her to reconsider.  On several occasion, she was booed as she entered the pool deck.

Efimova continues to claim that singling out Russia for criticism over doping was unfair, despite the extraordinary extent of the Russian doping system that threatened the integrity of the entire Games.

“Why are they discussing only Russians, not another country?” she said.  “I mean, it is not only Russia.”

Sally Jenkins / Washington Post

“King, 19, is a swaggeringly great swimmer, but the rivalry between her and 24-year-old Efimova in the breaststroke is hardly a simple matter of a clean swimmer prevailing over ‘drug cheating,’ as King put it. The facts of Efimova’s case aren’t nearly so clear cut despite the self-righteous Cold War shunning of her.  It’s worth looking a little more closely  at the human face of Efimova and maybe even standing in her place for a minute.  As she suggested tearfully the other night, ‘You can just try and understand me, like if you switch you and I.’

“For starters, Efimova doesn’t live in Russia; she lives in Los Angeles, where she has trained with Southern Cal Coach Dave Salo since she was 19.  He says via email, ‘She is a sweet kid and not the monster she is being branded.’ She was born in the war-torn Chechen capital of Grozny and raised in the Russian swim-club system in Volgodonsk, but in 2011, her coaches feared she was wearied by the grind of the Russian program, so they asked Salo to take her on.

“Efimova has two offenses for performance-enhancing on her record, and let’s take a closer look at them.  One day in 2013 she went to a local GNC in L.A. and bought a nutritional supplement. Her English was poor, and she didn’t check the contents, which included the banned hormone DHEA. Efimova’s offense was deemed unintentional, and the normal two-year suspension was reduced to 16 months.

“No American would do such a thing, right?  Actually, as NBC correspondent Alan Abrahamson has pointed out, Efimova’s case was very similar to that of Jessica Hardy, banned for ingesting a tainted supplement in 2008 only to win two medals at London 2012.  No one splashed water in Hardy’s face or refused to shake her hand....

“Efimova is deemed a chronic cheat here mainly because of her second offense: testing positive for the heart medication meldonium in the midst of the crisis over the exposure of state-sponsored doping in Russia.  Meldonium was in broad use by Eastern European athletes legally until WADA prohibited it in January 2016.  This spring, WADA declined to ban more than 200 athletes who tested positive for meldonium after January, including Efimova, because it’s unclear how long it takes to clear the system.  It’s quite possible that she obeyed the WADA ban but the medication remained in her system anyhow.

“Efimova tried to explain these circumstances in her Olympic post-race news conference as King refused to look at her. Here was Efimova’s account of herself, and you can accept it or not.

“ ‘I have once when I made mistakes, and I have been banned for 16 months,’ she said.  ‘For second time, it’s not my mistakes.  Like, I don’t know why actually I need to explain everybody or not....Like if WADA say, like, tomorrow, stop like yogurt or nicotine or, I don’t know, protein, that every athlete use, and they say tomorrow now it’s on banned list. And you stop. But this is stay [in] your body like six months, and doping control is coming, like, after two months, tested you, and you’re positive.  This is your fault?’”

--China plunged into the doping crisis at Rio as the Chinese Swimming Association confirmed 18-year-old Chen Xinyi tested positive on August 7, the day she finished fourth in the 100m butterfly final.

This comes as China has vigorously defended its athletes, particularly superstar Sun Yang, who was labeled a “drug cheat” by Australia’s Mack Horton after he defeated Sun in the 400m men’s freestyle.

The big duel, however, Horton and Sun in Saturday’s 1500m freestyle failed to materialize, as Sun came down ill after winning the 200m and finished last in his 1500m heat.  But then Horton only finished fifth in the final, which was won by Italy’s Gregorio Paltrinieri, American Connor Jaeger taking the silver.

--After winning the 100-meter freestyle on Thursday night to become the first African-American female swimmer to take gold in an individual event, tying 16-year-old Canadian Penny Oleksiak for the top spot, Simone Manuel talked of dealing with being a rare black swimmer representing the U.S.:

“It is something I’ve definitely struggled with a lot,” Manuel said.  “Coming into the race I tried to take weight of the black community off my shoulders.  It’s something I carry with me. I want to be an inspiration, but I would like there to be a day when it is not ‘Simone the black swimmer.’

“The title of black swimmer suggests that I am not supposed to win golds or break records, but that’s not true because I train hard and want to win just like everyone else.”

--American Anthony Ervin wrote quite a story.  In winning the 50-meter freestyle, the 35-year-old became the oldest American swimmer to win an individual gold medal.  More stunning was that he last won the event in 2000 as a 19-year-old, before his life fell apart.  But he clawed back.

--Finally, I comment in that other column I do that you can have Rio.  I will never go there.  I wrote that 24 hours before Ryan Lochte and three members of the U.S. swim team were robbed at gunpoint late Saturday night/Sunday morning.  They were stopped by people posing as armed police, the USOC said in a statement.

The robbers demanded money and their personal belongings.

Initially, the USOC denied reports the robbery had taken place, then they said, “All four athletes are safe and cooperating with authorities.”  What assholes...the USOC,  that is.

Lochte and his buddies were leaving a party at the French Olympic team’s hospitality house when their taxi was stopped on the way back to the athletes’ village.

Incredibly, earlier IOC spokesman Mark “Dick” Adams said reports of the robbery were “absolutely not true.”

Freakin’ Lochte’s mother was the first to tell the truth!

I’ll have more on this, far more, in the next column I do...the one I post Friday nights.

Back to the track....

--Anyone who saw Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson in her 100-meter semifinal heat early Saturday night had to be going, “Wow.”  It was like she was shot out of a cannon.  No way she would lose the finals, I thought.  And Thompson prevailed in it, taking gold over American Tori Bowie and two-time gold medalist, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, thus gaining the title world’s fastest woman (“Queen of the Track”), winning in 10.71 seconds.

Thompson grew up in Banana Ground, Manchester Paris, a remote Jamaican community, raised by her grandmother.

[My girl, English Gardner, finished seventh in her first international final, a big step, and she will only get better.  She will medal in Tokyo!]

--I was watching the men’s 10,000 meters, Saturday, and after about ten minutes I couldn’t have been the only viewer thinking, ‘Galen Rupp is going to trip Mo Farah...he’s too close,’ and sure enough, seconds later, Rupp tripped Farah, sending Farah tumbling, but the defending Olympic gold medalist in both the 5,000 and 10,000 bounced right back up, got back into it, and then did what he does best, close it out in the final lap, this time sprinting by runner-up Paul Tanui of Kenya in the final 100 meters, winning his second consecutive gold in the event in 27:05.17.  Rupp, Farah’s training partner and silver medalist in London, finished fifth.

“When I fell down, I was like, ah.  One moment, my race is over, my dream is over,” said Farah afterwards.  “But then I managed to dig deep.  I promised my daughter Rhianna, my oldest daughter, I was gonna get her a medal.  And in my mind I was like, ‘nah, I can’t let her down.’

“As soon as I got up, I was hoping that the guys didn’t see me fall down in the front.  I didn’t know if they saw it, but they did make a little bit of a surge.  I was just thinking, ‘It’s OK, I still got quite a long way.’”

Farah does race under a shadow, though, as a 2015 report published by the BBC and ProPublica contained allegations from former athletes and coaches that Alberto Salazar, who has trained Farah, approved usage of banned drugs.  And recently a photo has emerged of Farah with a Somali coach who was arrested by Spanish police on doping charges.

But Farah has been tested like everyone else at his level, more so as a champion, and still nothing.

Separately, Friday, Michelle Carter won gold in the shot put, becoming the first American woman to do so.

Also Friday, Ethiopia’s Almaz Ayana set a world record in the women’s 10,000...29:17.45, 14 seconds better than the 1993 mark of China’s Want Junxia.  I did not see this one, but Dr. W., a terrific runner himself in high school and at Wake Forest, said it was awesome to watch Ayana’s performance. 

--Simone Biles joined Mary Lou Retton, Carly Patterson, Nastia Liukin and Gabby Douglas as American all-around winners in gymnastics, leaving no doubt who the best in the world is these days.

American Aly Raisman won silver, sweet revenge for her disappointment four years earlier.

Then, in London, it was teammate Gabby Douglas who was the show-stopper, Biles not on the team, but then Simone exploded on the scene and everyone knows her name now.  [She won her third gold, Sunday, on the vault, last I saw...a lot to cover these days, kids.]

--The U.S. women’s soccer team was sent packing.  After a 1-1 tie in regulation, Sweden edged the U.S. in a shootout 4-3.  U.S. goalie Hope Solo, one of the true jerks on the planet, then let loose.

“I thought we played a courageous game.  I thought that we had many opportunities on goal.  I think we showed a lot of heart.  We came back from a goal down; I’m very proud of this team.

“I also think we played a bunch of cowards.  But, you know, the best team did not win today; I strongly, firmly believe that.  I think you saw America’s heart.  You saw us give everything that we had today.  Unfortunately the better team didn’t win.”

Sweden is coached by Pia Sundhage, who formerly coached the United States and won two Olympic gold medals.  Their strategy was to play defensively and the U.S. finished with 27 shots to Sweden’s mere two.  But Sweden scored on one of those and then prevailed in the shootout.

Sundhage said of Solo’s criticism, “It’s OK to be a coward if you win.” While coaching the U.S. team, Sundhage on more than one occasion said dealing with Solo was challenging.

Sally Jenkins / Washington Post

“It’s called composure, and Hope Solo’s never been overburdened with a lot of that, or grace either. The U.S. women’s soccer team had their temperaments tested by a savvy, conservative Sweden in the Olympic quarterfinals and lost. Solo has spent years undermining their collective equilibrium, and this one’s on her.

“She’s a chronically rattled and rattling soul, the American goalkeeper.  Let’s face it: For every shiny marketing moment and big victory she’s been a part of, she’s given the U.S. nasty unwanted drama.  The victories usually smoothed over her behavior.  Not this time.  This time she went pure loser and lout.

“After giving up the winning penalty kick to Sweden, Solo called her opponents ‘a bunch of cowards’ for their conservative game plan.  Now, who is the real coward here? Solo gave up three regulation goals in the past two games, between a draw with Colombia and this loss.  She tried to ice Lisa Dahlkvist on the final kick by changing her gloves, and then couldn’t lay a hand on the ball. And she couldn’t take responsibility for any of it; she could only lash out...

“As social media erupted Friday night over Solo’s postgame insult of Sweden, the goalie seemed to realize she’d done herself additional public damage. But even then, her behavior was hardly courageous.  Instead of apologizing she went on Twitter with what she framed as ‘the full context of my comments today,’ and tweeted to Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl, ‘Losing sucks.  I’m really bad at it.’....

“This may well have been Solo’s final big international result as the U.S. goalkeeper.  That’s probably for the best.”

Solo’s name is in the December file for some serious “Jerk of the Year” hardware.

A-Rod

Alex Rodriguez, the most polarizing New York sports figure in decades, played his last game, at least as a Yankee, Friday night at the Stadium and he had a first-inning RBI double, but finished 1-for-4; 9 HR, 31 RBI, .200 BA for the season.

A-Rod’s final week since last Sunday’s announcement he would be released was to say the least tumultuous.  Manager Joe Girardi made a big mistake last Sunday, saying that if Alex wanted to play the three games in Fenway, Tuesday thru Thursday, Girardi would find a way.

But at the same time Girardi was saying his job was to win ball games, and clearly that didn’t include Rodriguez.

So Girardi didn’t play A-Rod on Tuesday, gave him a pinch-hit appearance on Wednesday, and then started him, batting cleanup and playing DH, on Thursday, only Alex went 0-for-4.

The Yankees, though, over the course of the week, improved to 60-57 (after winning 2 of 3 against Tampa Bay) and are suddenly more than in the race for a wild-card spot.  I admire what the team has done in quickly rebuilding through the trade deadline maneuvering and on Saturday, call-ups Tyler Austin and Aaron Judge both hit home runs in their first at-bats in the big leagues, the first time this ever happened back to back.  Immediately, Austin and Judge were labeled the ‘Baby Bombers,’ which, with Judge’s second homer Sunday in a 12-3 loss clearly helped salve the fans’ wounds.

Anyway, A-Rod’s finale.

Mike Lupica / New York Daily News

“Joe Girardi hasn’t just done a good job managing the Yankees, especially over the past month, really since the Yankees were 8-16.  He has done the best managing job of his career.  If Alex Rodriguez, a beauty to the end, one who even wanted to make out Girardi’s lineup card over the past week, had done his own job even half as well as Girardi has done his, the Yankees might be in first place right now.  The manager kept trying to explain everything to everybody this week, eventually tying himself up in emotional double-knots.  But he honored the uniform this week, by honoring his own code as a baseball man.

“Joe Girardi also wasn’t afraid to be human at the same time, which means flawed, admitting in Boston that he shouldn’t have said a couple of days before that Rodriguez could play as much as he wanted. So he changed his mind.  Guess what?  He was allowed.  More importantly, he was right to do it.  Rodriguez in the end got as much of a send-off as he deserved, considering that his batting average was around .200 for the last 400 at-bats of his big league career.

“And Girardi was right when he said his job was to try to manage his team into the postseason, not some slapped-together farewell tour for a guy who would have sold out Girardi – and Hal Steinbrenner, and Randy Levine, and Brian Cashman – to save himself three years ago during Biogenesis, even with the way some Yankee fans want to carry him around the room on their shoulders now.

“ ‘Some people think that I wanted to make negative decisions, but that’s not the case.  I have a huge heart,’ Girardi said Friday night.  ‘If this is the last time he plays, I wanted it to be something he never forgot.’

“The manager still heard boos at Yankee Stadium on Friday night.  But how can any Yankee fan righteously boo this manager after the job he’s done?  He loses Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller and Carlos Beltran.  Mark Teixeira is a .200 hitter. Rodriguez was.  Somehow here the Yankees are, anyway.  Somehow, though, all the way to Friday night there was this notion that everything should organize around a guy, Alex Rodriguez, who hit the ball about as hard this week as he did all season. And the last two months of last season....

“By the way?  There is no law that required Girardi to treat Rodriguez the way he treated Derek Jeter a couple of years ago.  Or the way he has treated Teixeira this year.  You know who really benched Alex Rodriguez?  Alex Rodriguez did, by being as soft as any DH on the planet.

“He ended up hitting an even .200. In his last week he produced a single hit in nine at-bats. He can blame it all on an early-season injury if he wants to. But what injury is to blame for a .191 batting average the last two months of last season?  When Rodriguez got a big knock in his first time at the plate against the Rays on Friday, an RBI double, it was his 16th extra-base hit of the season.  You know who didn’t have any fun watching a guy like that in the middle of the Yankee batting order?  His manager.  The idea that the manager acted mean or small this week is flapdoodle.

“In a week that was supposed to be all about Alex Rodriguez, the real star of the Yankees was the manager.  As much of a phony as Rodriguez has been across his career, Girardi is the opposite of that.”

Joel Sherman / New York Post

“Alex Rodriguez was horribly great for baseball.

“He loved the game and all its nuances as much as any player I ever have covered. And his actions were as destructive to the sport as just about anyone ever.

“He was often hard to watch and yet you couldn’t take your eyes off of him.

“He so badly wanted to be liked and respected, and the more he strived for both, the more he was disliked and disrespected.

“Greed, insecurity and egomania fueled both his baseball genius and his self-destructive tendencies.  He thought endlessly about what he wanted to say, and then consistently inserted his foot in his mouth.

“Alex Rodriguez was a contradiction ensnared by conflict wrapped in a paradox.  He could ingratiate and infuriate in the same conversation.  He publicly shared his physical marvels and emotional instability. He ricocheted from hero to villain, cheers to boos, fame to infamy like perhaps no other athlete in history.

“If you wrote a column about A-Rod, the reactions, through email and Twitter, almost always were 50 percent you were too soft on him and 50 percent you were too hard on him. There was no gray, all black and white.  But those resolute positions showed why he was horribly great for the game.  You loved him, you hated him, but you thought about him, you watched him, you waited to see what he might do or say next....

“There was no one ever quite like him.  Someone good enough to hit the fourth-most homers ever.  Someone bad enough that the commissioner of baseball would not travel the 7 ½ miles from his midtown office to watch Rodriguez’s final game as a Yankee....

“Before the game Friday, Rodriguez called  his career ‘an incredible journey.’  He mentioned ‘all my screw-ups and how badly I acted’ to say that Hal Steinbrenner’s offer to stay in the Yankee organization as an adviser was ‘hitting 800 homers for me.’

“Remember, not long ago, Rodriguez was Lance Armstrong and Ryan Braun, not only fighting his steroid suspension, but also relentlessly going after reputations and institutions, though he knew the truth that he had been dirty.  It is part of his permanent record – along with the nearly 700 homers; three MVP awards and a year-long suspension; insincerity and indelibility.

“The contradictions. The conflicts.  The paradox.”

Tom Verducci / Sports Illustrated

“Ludwig Tieck, who died in 1853, was a poet and an essayist who became a founder of the Romantic movement.  He captured the high-minded honor of his times when he said, ‘He is not dead who departs from life with a high and noble fame; but he is dead, even while living, whose brow is branded with infamy.’

“Few brows in baseball were ever branded more with infamy than that of Alex Rodriguez.  But far from dead is he.  Rodriguez is a brand, more famous for being infamous than for being a baseball player, and he still has something to offer the sport.

“It was a tribute to these forgiving times that when the Yankees essentially fired him from his job as a DH – they kept him on as a special adviser who will serve as a mentor to their minor leaguers.

“Even Rodriguez had to shake his head on Sunday when asked how a guy who sued Major League Baseball, the Yankees’ team doctor and the MLB Players Association in 2013 and was thrown out of baseball for all of ’14 could be hired less than three years later by New York as a mentor.  So how might he be remembered?  ‘Hopefully as someone who tripped and fell a lot, but someone who kept getting up.’....

“Rodriguez was the perfect player for these times, when baseball moved out of the labor wars and into, and slowly out of, the Steroid Era. The game lost some of its soul and much of its national appeal in those years, but it exploded economically.  Rodriguez moved the needle, figuratively and literally.  He craved, in order, acceptance and fame.  Consumers may not have approved of his behavior, but they loved the spectacle.  Rodriguez made himself matter – and, by extension, baseball.

“Infamy was never a problem for Rodriguez; insecurity was.  He said he needed steroids to be the all-time great that he was expected to be after signing a 10-year, $252 million deal with Texas in December 2000.  We know of eight years in the heart of his career with connections to PEDs: 2001, ’02 and ’03 (admitted steroid use); ’07 (therapeutic use exemption for testosterone); ’08 (therapeutic use exemption for clomiphene citrate); and ’10, ’11 and ’12 (received PEDs from his drug supplier in South Florida, Anthony Bosch).  Rodriguez also confirmed being treated in ’09 by Anthony Galea – a Canadian doctor who pleaded guilty to bringing mislabeled drugs into the U.S. – but not with banned substances.  Is it possible that he never played a day clean in the big leagues?  Even Rodriguez, back in ’09, recognized the opening he gave people to doubt it all.

“ ‘There will be some people that say, you know, ‘Alex is not a great player, going back to high school,’’ he said.  ‘I mean, they’re just going to have this blanket cloud over my career. And for those, they may have their own point.’

“Rodriguez won his only world championship that year. The next season, having just turned 35, unhappy about gaining weight and lacking energy, he turned to Bosch.

“The doping went on for three years, a staggering array of drugs administered morning, noon and night by multiple delivery systems, such as lozenges, creams and injections....

“Centuries ago, infamy derived from Latin to define the opposite of fame, to capture a public dishonor that even leaned toward evil.  Time and culture have softened the edge of the sword. Rodriguez, in his own way, left an indelible mark on baseball. His playing days behind him, now he has a chance to leave a better one.”

MLB

--Since last chat, how lousy have my Mets continued to play? Wednesday, they lost to the lowly Diamondbacks 3-2 in 12.  Thursday, Arizona blitzed the Mets 9-0 in truly embarrassing fashion for a three-game sweep.  The Mets allowed the D’Backs to steal a franchise record 13 bases in the series.

Afterwards, manager Terry Collins told reporters: “There has to be passion to come and play.  There has got to be a sense of: ‘This is what I do for a living.  People who pay to see me play are going to see my best effort.’

“Starting tomorrow, we’re going to get after it here. And those that don’t want to get after it, I’ll find somebody else who does.  Because in Las Vegas there is a whole clubhouse filled with guys that want to sit in this room.  And I’ll find them.”

Then he stormed out.

So Friday, the Mets sent Logan Verrett to the mound and all he did was give up 8 earned, 4 home runs, in 2 2/3 as the Mets lost 8-6 to the Padres.  Verrett is now not just 3-8, 5.36, but in his seven starts replacing Matt Harvey in the rotation, he has an ERA of 7.18.  Exit Verrett.  Mets fell to 57-58.  10-17 since the All-Star break.

But Saturday the Mets finally eked one out, 3-2 in 11, after closer Jeurys Familia blew a save for Jacob deGrom.

And then Sunday, Steven Matz threw 7 1/3 of hitless ball and the Metsies won 5-1...the first time since July 6-7 they won two-in-a-row!  Par-tay!

--Also Sunday...the Nationals beat the Braves 9-1 as Tanner Roark moved to 13-6, 2.83.  Bryce Harper returned after being out five games with a neck injury and went 1-for-3 with an RBI, but he is still batting .234.

The day before, Jonathan Papelbon sought and was given his release by the Nats, the a-hole going 2-4, 4.37 ERA with 19 saves in 22 opportunities.

But in terms of the wild-card race, there was a significant development down in Miami, 5-4 winners today over the White Sox as Chris Sale fell to 14-6, 3.30, having lost four straight.

Giancarlo Stanton is out for the year with a groin injury.  Talk about snake-bit.  It’s the third straight year in which his season has been cut short because of injuries and here he just signed a ginormous, long-term deal.  He finishes this year with 25 homers, 70 RBIs and a .244 batting average.

So...of all the teams A-Rod might entertain keeping his career going on with, No. 1 would be Miami, and tonight there are stories Marlins’ management is thinking about it.  Would A-Rod agree?  And where the heck would he play?

And in Boston’s 16-2 win over Arizona at Fenway, Mookie Betts became just the second Red Sox player, the other being Ted Williams, to hit three home runs in a game twice in one season, Betts driving in 8 in the process.

Arizona’s Zack Greinke yielded 9 earned in just 1 2/3,

--Detroit beat Texas 7-0 as rookie Michael Fulmer improved to 10-3, 2.25, with his first complete game shutout.

--Friday, Colorado’s Charlie Blackmon had three solo home runs in the Rockies’ 10-6 loss at Philadelphia, but then he hit two more on Sunday to give him 20 homers and 59 RBIs to go with a .324 average.

Also Friday, the Braves beat the Nats 8-5 with Stephen Strasburg suffering his second straight rough outing, 5 1/3, 6 earned, as he ‘falls’ to 15-3, 3.07.

But the Cubs’ Jake Arrieta moved to 14-5, 2.55, after throwing 5 2/3 of one-run ball in the Cubbies 13-2 win over the Cardinals.

Thursday, in what has been an awful season for the World Series Champion Royals, at least Danny Duffy threw a complete game, 2-1 over the White Sox, to move to 9-1, 2.82.  As Ronald Reagan would have said, ‘Not bad, not bad at all.’

Wednesday, Toronto’s J.A. Happ continued his spectacular pitching in the Blue Jays’ 7-0 win over the Rays, Happ now 16-3, 2.96.

--The Houston Astros released outfielder Carlos Gomez after he hit .210 in 85 games with five home runs and 29 RBIs.  Gomez was an All-Star with the Brewers in 2013 and 2014; rather remarkably having virtually the exact same stats each season (24 HR 73 RBI, .284 in 2013; 23-73, .284 in 2014).  There are rumors the Mets might pick him up, but I think at this point that would be more about possibly being a piece next year if he had a good spring training, especially if Yoenis Cespedes walks.

--Francisco Mejia extended his minor league hitting streak to 50 on Saturday.

--Shu passed along the latest betting odds to win the World Series from Vegas Insider:

Cubs 14/5
Giants 5/1
Nationals 5/1
Rangers 15/2
Indians 10/1
Mets 40/1
Yankees 100/1...this would be a good bet.

College Football Preview

It’s almost here and I’m fired up.  I have to be all-in on Clemson, as a fellow ACC fan, and, err, my Wake Forest Demon Deacons not receiving a single vote anywhere in any of the preseason polls. [San Diego State is my sleeper to crash the playoff party...yes, you heard that right.]

I’m also undergoing a major reassessment of my allegiance, come football, for the Oregon Ducks, despite all the Duckwear I have in my sports drawer.  I need to take a few long jogs and think about this.  Developing....

Anyway, speaking of polls...first, a reminder of the Final AP Poll for 2015:

1. Alabama
2. Clemson
3. Stanford
4. Ohio State
5. Oklahoma
6. Michigan State
7. TCU
8. Houston...did you forget, like I did, how high they finished?

Now...for 2016

Coaches Poll

1. Alabama
2. Clemson
3. Oklahoma
4. Florida State
5. Ohio State
6. LSU
7. Stanford
8. Michigan
9. Notre Dame
10. Tennessee
20. North Carolina

Sports Illustrated

1. Alabama
2. Clemson
3. Florida State
4. Michigan
5. LSU
6. Oklahoma
7. Washington
8. Houston
9. Ohio State
10. Tennessee
12. Notre Dame
22. North Carolina
24. San Diego State

ESPN Power Rankings

1. Alabama
2. Clemson
3. Oklahoma
4. Florida State
5. LSU
6. Ohio State
7. Stanford
8. Michigan
9. Tennessee
10. Notre Dame
24. North Carolina
25. San Diego State

[Awaiting the AP preseason poll]

Individually, it’s going to be about Clemson’s Deshaun Watson, Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey, LSU’s Leonard Fournette, and Florida State’s Dalvin Cook. 

McCaffrey will win the Heisman as the other three split up the vote in the East and Southeast.  You can book it.

And how good can Houston be with their star QB Greg Ward Jr. back?  He is one of only two QBs last season to throw for 2,000 and rush for 1,000 yards, the other being Deshaun Watson.

Houston plays Oklahoma Sept. 3.  Huge early contest.  [There are a few others that day that I’ll talk about as we get closer.]

But a lot of us in the East in particular are anxious to see Pitt running back James Conner and how well he can do after missing last season battling Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

--Former North Carolina, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest football coach Bill Dooley died.  He was 82.

Dooley took his teams to 10 bowl games and was the first North Carolina football coach to win 11 games in a season, leading the 1972 Tar Heels to an 11-1 finish.  He is the only coach to have led the university to multiple ACC football championships.

Dooley was the younger brother of former Georgia coach Vince Dooley.  They were to be honorary captains for the season-opening Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game between North Carolina and Georgia on Sept. 3 in Atlanta.

Dooley left North Carolina to become coach and AD at Virginia Tech, where he won 63 games before being replaced by Frank Beamer, who succeeded him in 1987.

Dooley was then hired the same year by Wake Forest and he led the Deacs to three winning seasons in six years, twice being named ACC coach of the year and capping his tenure in 1992 by taking the program to its first bowl game in 14 years, a victory over Oregon in the Independence Bowl.

Overall he finished 161-127-5...simply one of the best coaches in ACC history.

Golf Balls

--So I was skeptical of the format of the Olympic tournament, simply a 72-hole stroke play event, but it turned out to provide great drama as Justin Rose held off Henrik Stenson; Rose hitting a clutch chip on 18 to win it as Stenson, playing with Rose in the final group, three-putted (though for the archives, this was not a ‘choke’ job by Stenson).

The bronze was won by Matt Kuchar in a terrific performance.  And boy, is he psyched, which is what you want to see.

I’ll have far more on Olympic golf and its future next time.  But I’m optimistic and I know Rory, Jordan, Adam et all are pissed they weren’t there.

--Ryan Moore won the John Deere Classic for his fifth PGA Tour title. When you win five, that’s officially a “very solid” career.  At ten it’s a “great” one.

--Boy, all I did was detail Jim Furyk’s spectacular 58 at the Travelers’ tour stop last week and a good friend thought I was calling it the greatest round ever.  No, I said Furyk is the first to shoot 58.  It is the lowest round ever.

Anyway, the friend’s point was that I should have mentioned Al Geiberger’s 59 in 1977 was 13-under, not Furyk’s 12-under par, plus the equipment wasn’t as good, the courses not as in as good a shape as they are today, yada yada yada....

I know!  And I’ve mentioned Al Geiberger many times before.  Heck, I’ve written in the past how amazed I am at the early golfers playing a feathery ball with freakin’ hickory sticks and godawful putting surfaces.

But Jim Furyk is the first to shoot 58.  Period.

And Geiberger’s round was indeed awesome, too.  He’s still “Mr. 59.”

Premier League

Opening weekend and I watched defending champion Leicester City suffer a shocking 2-1 defeat at the hands of newly promoted Hull, who are managerless and relegation favorites.  Hull has just 13 senior players on their roster after an offseason of turmoil.

It is the first time the reigning English champions have started the season with a defeat since 1989.  Understand, Leicester, in its Cinderella 2015-16 season, lost only three out of 38 league games – to Arsenal twice and Liverpool.

My Tottenham Spurs had to struggle at Everton for a 1-1 draw, which I’ll take.  I am not optimistic this year.

Sunday, Liverpool beat Arsenal, 4-3, and Manchester United in its first game with Jose Mourinho as manager defeated Bournemouth 3-1, Zlatan Ibrahomovic scoring in his debut (Wayne Rooney also got one).

Prior to the opening weekend, the BBC’s chief football writer, Phil McNulty, pegged the following order for 2016-17.

1. Manchester City
2. Manchester United
3. Chelsea
4. Arsenal
5. Tottenham
6. Liverpool
7. West Ham
8. Leicester City

Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook had the following odds before the first contests:

Man City 5/2
Man U 3/1
Chelsea 11/2
Arsenal 6/1
Tottenham 8/1
Liverpool 8/1
Leicester 25/1

Watford, Bournemouth, Hull City and West Bromwich all 1000/1.

Stuff

--LeBron James agreed to a three-year, $100 million contract with Cleveland, with the salary in the first year $31 million, making him the highest-paid player in the NBA for the first time in his career.  He has a player option for the third year.

--Not long ago, foxes native to the Catalina Islands off the California coast were on the brink of extinction, but on Thursday, U.S. wildlife officials on Thursday removed three subspecies of island fox from the endangered species list, hailing their comeback as one of the great successes of the Endangered Species Act.

The population of these little foxes was almost wiped out by golden eagles.  Scientists then relocated the predators and bred foxes in captivity so they could be reintroduced to the wild.

By 2000, there were only 15 foxes each on two of the islands and 55 on Santa Cruz Island, and today there are 700 on the others and 2,100 on Santa Cruz.

--We note the passing of longtime ESPN and ABC sportscaster John Saunders, who died suddenly at 61.  A cause of death has not been released.

I really liked this guy as a studio host, especially for ESPN’s “College Football Live” and college basketball. Saunders had been with ESPN since 1986 and was a founding member of the V Foundation for Cancer Research, named for Jim Valvano, who died of cancer in 1993.  He was just a pro and easy to listen to.

John Feinstein / Washington Post

“If I’ve figured one thing out during all the years I’ve worked in journalism, it is that those who are the best at what they do rarely need to be told, or tell others, just how good they are.

“They just know.

“John Saunders, who died suddenly and shockingly Wednesday, was one of those people.

“Saunders...could do anything and everything well, whether it was play-by-play; hosting pre- and postgame shows or hosting ‘The Sports Reporters.’  His range was remarkable.  He was as adept at doing the WNBA and the NHL as he was college football or basketball.....

“Saunders was the guy every analyst wanted to work with for two reasons.  First, his ego was such that he had no problem setting up his analysts to be the stars of the broadcast, lobbing questions that made those he worked with sound smart. Second, he was a joy to be around.

“Saunders was the opposite of someone who thinks being on TV makes you really important. Everyone else was important to him and you felt that the minute you walked into a room with him....

“He was as good as it gets.  And never once did he feel the need to tell anyone.”

RIP.

--Scientists announced this week that Greenland sharks are now the longest-living vertebrates known on Earth, with one female being estimated to be 400 years old.  The team’s research, published in the journal Science, also concluded these sharks reach sexual maturity at about the age of 150.  [That would be frustrating, boys and girls.]

The former vertebrate record-holder was a bowhead whale estimated to be 211 years old.

But if invertebrates are brought into the longevity competition, a 507-year-old clam called Ming holds the title of most aged animal.

Greenland sharks can grow up to 15 feet in length and are found in the deep waters of the North Atlantic.

The researchers used radiocarbon dating to produce their estimates.  Since this procedure doesn’t produce exact dates, one 15-foot female they followed was estimated to be anywhere from 272 to 512 years old, so they settled on 400.  [BBC News]

--Finally, we note the passing of singer Glenn Yarbrough, who died the other day at the age of 86 from complications of dementia.

Yarbrough found fame and fortune as a popular folk singer, including with the trio the Limeliters, who were very popular from 1959 to 1963, after which Yarbrough left to go off on his own.  As in, away from music.  An ardent sailor, he wanted to spend the next decade at sea, but RCA Victor, his record label, persuaded him to record solo albums instead.

So he made a bunch of them and in 1965 had a big hit single with “Baby the Rain Must Fall,” the title song of a film starring Steve McQueen and Lee Remick and a favorite of yours truly.

But in touring, he got upset at how expensive his shows were, with high cover charges in some of the bigger lounges he played in, and he started wondering about his own existence, so in the late 1960s, he started selling all his toys, like his Rolls-Royce, his Porsche, his Bentley, two Ferraris, and a house in New Zealand, and with the proceeds he established a school for disadvantaged children, most of them African-American, outside Los Angeles.

The school lasted a few years into the 1970s when it closed for lack of funds.  Yarbrough then hopped on a 57-foot sailboat he had helped build, and with his second wife and baby they sailed around the world for five years, and on and off after.

Occasionally, through the 1990s, Yarbrough would appear back on land to do some concerts and Limeliters reunion tours. An interesting guy.

Top 3 songs for the week 8/16/69: #1 “In The Year 2525” (Zager & Evans...just shoot me...)  #2 “Honky Tonk Women” (The Rolling Stones)  #3 “Crystal Blue Persuasion” (Tommy James & The Shondells...in my top three all time...)...and...#4 “Sweet Caroline” (Neil Diamond...aargh aargh aargh...)  #5 “A Boy Named Sue” (Johnny Cash...the one and only...)  #6 “Put A Little Love In Your Heart” (Jackie DeShannon....you know, DeShannon is a cool name...just sayin’...)  #7 “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town” (Kenny Rogers and the First Edition)  #8 “My Cherie Amour” (Stevie Wonder...easily in his top three...)  #9 “What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)” (Jr. Walker & the All Stars...another excuse to say this has the greatest beginning to a song, ever... including Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, which if you aren’t tearing up a little near the end, you’re a jerk...though Trump would say Rachmaninoff had no talent and that he had small hands...)  #10 “Baby, I Love You” (Andy Kim)

Baseball Quiz Answer: Most hits after age 27....

Pete Rose 3,357
Ichiro 3,003
Sam Rice 2,925...a Johnny Mac favorite...
Honus Wagner 2,766
Stan Musial 2,635

Obviously, Sam Rice was the tough one.  If you got him, pop open a beer at your office cube.  Those around you will think it’s a Coke.  Really. Especially if it’s 9:30 a.m.

Next Bar Chat, Thursday....far more thoughts on everything that transpired this weekend.