Houston Astros Quiz: Name the seven to win 20 games in an Astros uniform. Two did it twice. Answer below.
St. Andrews
What a final round on Monday of The Open Championship. Great leaderboard, great action, and a great champion in Zach Johnson. He has now officially had a terrific career, 12 PGA Tour wins and two majors. Under today’s guidelines, he’s borderline Hall of Fame, and at 39, no reason why he can’t win another five or so tournaments and another major.
With Johnson on No. 10, Monday, and Louie Oosthuizen on No. 5…the leaderboard looked like this.
Z. Johnson -15
Spieth -14
Scott -14
Day -14
Garcia -13
Leishman -13
Oosthuizen -13
But we ended….
Johnson -15
Oosthuizen -15
Leishman -15
Spieth -14
Day -14
Willett -11
Rose -11
Garcia -11
Niebrugge (a) -11
Koepka -10
Scott -10
It was tense to the end, including the four-hole playoff, with Scott and Garcia the only leaders stumbling badly in the clutch.
“The grinder beat the kid. Now, Zach Johnson, by winning the extended British Open on Monday, has as many major trophies as Jordan Spieth.
“As a matter of fact, Johnson has the two most coveted prizes in the sport, achieved at the two most coveted places. He won a Masters green jacket in 2007 at Augusta National and the Claret Jug on Monday at the St. Andrews Old Course.
“He will wake up soon and realize that’s a career, a legendary one. It will come to him slowly because the 39-year-old from Iowa City is the tour’s self-effacement leader.
“When asked afterward about winning even more majors, Johnson smiled and said, ‘I never even thought I’d win one.’
“Right down to the final hole, the final minutes, the final gasps, this was a golf tournament all about Spieth, the 21-year-old Texan who was trying to become the first since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win the first three majors of the year.
“Right to his last putt that drifted inches from the cup and kept him out of the three-man playoff that Johnson won, Spieth was in it, digging, trying, calculating.
“That Spieth was even close at the end, in a sport that tears your heart out with wind, rain, bad bounces, bad swings and little lumps on little hills that change everything, was beyond remarkable. He looked the pressure in the eye and took it on….
“Spieth didn’t do it, but he didn’t flop, either. He succumbed to a field of other great players, playing better….
“When the smoke cleared, one of the first to venture out and congratulate Johnson was Spieth.
“Johnson was emotional when asked about that.
“ ‘He said congrats, that he was proud of me,’ Johnson said. ‘He’s a really good friend of mine. Granted, he’s 18 years younger, which is perspective…A lot of guys know him. He’s a better person than he is a golfer.’….
“(Johnson) was asked what he would have thought 15 years ago if asked about a green jacket and a Claret Jug; ‘I would have said, ‘Whose am I trying on and whose am I touching?’’
“ ‘That’s one phrase I’ve never heard coined with me,’ he said.
“In the end, the game’s current poster boy, Spieth, didn’t win. But he didn’t fail. The ‘champion golfer of the year’ is Zach Johnson. The future of golf is Jordan Spieth.
“The first to tell you that would be the champion golfer of the year.”
For Spieth, it was his ninth top-four finish in his last 13 starts. But as Karen Crouse of the New York Times put it:
“When he returns to Dallas and reflects on the week’s events, Spieth will rue the five three-putts he made during the second round, his double bogey on the short par-eighth on Monday and his cumulative effort on the par-4 17th Road hole, which became his personal Sink Hole, as it has for so many others before him. He played it in three over for the week.
“Spieth’s strength is his putting, so he did not even bother trying to sanitize the mess he made on the 174-yard eighth hole. Playing his tee shot into a stiff wind and stinging rain, Spieth hit it roughly 120 feet right of the pin. His first putt rolled past the cup and off the other side of the green. He putted up to 4 feet, then missed his bogey attempt to drop three shots behind the leaders.
“Of the 80 players who teed it up Monday, 78 walked of the eighth green with no worse than bogey.”
Spieth would say after he doesn’t understand why he didn’t do the smart thing and try to hit the first putt to about 8 feet below the hole.
“This year, the Old Course produced the second final-round Monday in Open history and gave us one of the most competitive and consequential mad scrambles ever played on the final nine of a major. Still, in the past decade, the skeptical watchdog division of golf has applied extra scrutiny whenever the Open Championship is played at St. Andrews.
“And in the Old Course’s 29th hosting of the oldest championship, protectionists again worried if golf’s original design, which maintains the routing Old Tom Morris established in the late 1800s and which still has seven par 4s shorter than 400 yards – at the U.S. Open, Chambers Bay had six par 4s of 500-plus yards – could hold up sufficiently against a group of players whose fitness, technical proficiency and equipment is ever advancing.
“Actually, the question was put directly to Peter Dawson, the chief executive of the R&A for the past 15 years who was presiding over his last Open, when he was asked after a very long Saturday in which high winds effectively stretched the championship to an extra day: ‘Do you think it’s conceivable that at some point in the future the Old Course could be inadequate to challenge professional golfers?’
“Dawson paused a moment, lifted his formidable chin and said, ‘No.’
“The curtness of the answer did not undermine its honesty. If the inference was that the oldest course had held a modern major for the last time, then Dawson’s dogmatic lack of elaboration was justified.
“For many reasons, the Open will be back to St. Andrews in 2021 to celebrate the 150th championship. As chaotic as last week might have been, the course once again proved it not only remains a relevant test for today’s players, but in so many ways, is still the best site of all.”
As Graeme McDowell pointed out, some of the fairway bunkers are now being flown, so just replicate them further down…which seems like a good idea.
But otherwise, what’s wrong with being able to shoot 65 if the weather lays down? For all the talk of it being easy at times this week, no one shot 63. [The whole tournament there was just one 64…Marc Leishman…and one 65.]
I liked the course more this time than ever. And whatever they do in the way of subtle changes, you obviously don’t touch 17 and 18, which is a superb finish. If the wind is such that you can drive 18 on Sunday, great! How exciting is that?
And as Diaz points out, the huge greens allow for all kinds of pin placements if they want to toughen it up any given day.
“At a time when golf is striving to get younger, hipper and faster, St. Andrews offers a counterintuitive boost. The oldest course – but also the most authentic – is our guide to the future. As Tiger Woods said of his first time in St. Andrews (sentiments essentially echoed last week by 20-somethings like Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth and Jason Day): ‘I thought it was the coolest place on earth.’
“Which ties into the Old Course’s most amazing intangible: its lineup of historically great Open champions, including Jones, Snead, Thomson, Locke, Lema, Nicklaus, Ballesteros, Faldo, Daly and Woods. Spieth’s valiant effort to join them Monday further validated the place. ‘It’s the greatest stage in golf, the major of majors, and we all know that,’ Ian Baker-Finch says. ‘Everyone wants it too much and tries too hard. The great champions find a way to get it done under the great pressure.’
“And the Old Course, seemingly alive, finds a way to get it done no matter what.”
—Zach Johnson joined some incredible company. Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Sam Snead, Seve Ballesteros and Nick Faldo are the only others to win the Masters and a British Open on the Old Course.
–I have read a ton of articles on The Open and the finish and I’ve been surprised no one seems to be mentioning the obvious. What is most crushing for Spieth is he knows this was his year to truly do something special in terms of the Slam because there’s no Rory!
I was also surprised how on No. 14, Monday, when Spieth’s birdie chip attempt hit the pin and spun out and he remarked to caddie Michael Greller, “it’s in if the flag is out,” that the ESPN crew didn’t immediately chime in, that’s why Phil Mickelson always takes it out.
Granted, Mickelson has supreme confidence he can hole every shot around the green, but I virtually guarantee you from here on, Jordan will start doing the same.
–There was Mickelson, cruising along at -10, -6 for Monday’s round, needing to par No. 17 and birdie 18 to post -11 at a time when the final result was very much in doubt.
But Phil had other plans…like the worst drive of the tournament on 17, leading to a triple bogey. He ended up -6.
–After shooting 65-69, -10, for the 36-hole lead, Dustin Johnson had a collapse of a different kind in a major. Instead of choking in the final holes, he went out and shot 75-75…stunning. So DJ finished T-49, -4, along with David Duval, who was one of the many great stories in this event. Duval, after his stirring birdie putt on the last hole of the second round got him into the weekend (so to speak given this championship’s weird schedule), he had a stirring 67 in the third and followed that with 73 on Monday. Way to go, David!
–Jim McCabe / Golfweek: “There are a number of ways to measure the shock value of Tiger Woods’ stunning summer of major championships. Try this one on for size: In competition against 310 other golfers (155 in each of the U.S. Open and British Open), he has outscored just 11 names.
“And when you consider the names – Matt Every, Darren Clarke, Alex Kim and Cole Hammer at the U.S. Open; Rod Pampling, Jonathan Moore, Ben Taylor, Gary Boyd, Tom Watson, Mark Calcavecchia and Nick Faldo – it’s even more confounding. Digest that assortment once again, Hammer being 15 years old, Watson being 65; Hammer and Taylor being amateurs; Calcavecchia being a member of the Champions Tour.”
—Tiger’s World Golf Ranking fell to 258. Zach Johnson rose to No. 12 from 25.
The Top Five remains the same…1. Rory 2. Jordan 3. Bubba 4. Dustin 5. Justin Rose.
—Jason Day now has six top 5s in majors since 2011. Adam Scott is the only golfer with more, 7 in that span.
–Scott has the longest streak of cuts made at the majors….17. Day and Henrik Stenson are next at 11.
–So I played the DraftKings.com contest and I won $50! [OK, net $25.] I actually finished 7,145 out of 171,750 with my field of Spieth, Rose, Henley, Owen, Els and Lingmerth. Lingmerth’s 77 on Monday kept me from a much better finish.
Two contestants actually ended in a dead tie, very difficult to do given they had different fields. So they split $1.1 million.
I must say, I only play DraftKings for the golf tournaments, but I was very impressed how the $50 hit my account just two hours after the finish.
Now I expect DraftKings to compensate me for this terrific free publicity I have given them.
–Finally, we bid a fond farewell to Ivor Robson, the first-tee announcer at The Open Championship after 41 years. He has certainly added to the atmosphere of the event. Enjoy retirement, Mr. Robson.
Golf Balls
–The USGA is lining up its U.S. Open venues well in advance. Aside from Oakmont (2016), Erin Hills (2017), Shinnecock Hills (2018), Pebble Beach (2019), Winged Foot (2020) and Torrey Pines (2021), it is getting set to announce The Country Club in Brookline, Mass. for 2022, Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course (2023), and Pinehurst No. 2 (2024).
I love all these west coast venues…great to watch the Open in prime time.
–The other day I was with friends and one of them was telling us about an annual 3-day alumni golf tournament and the player P.M. was matched up with (due to his regular partner having to pull out), turned out to be a big-time cheater.
So I’ve been holding off on this story from the June 2015 Golf Digest by “Undercover Tour Pro” and it’s appropriate to relay it now. I told you of how when I was at the PGA Q-School in Palm Springs back in 2004 how I witnessed cheating, which was easy to do because I was one of just two or three spectators.
So our undercover tour pro says some of the following:
“Each season I’ll witness, at most, two or three arguments over where a ball crossed a hazard. The par-5 11th hole at TPC Sawgrass is one of the trickier spots. Tons of players go for that green in two, and there’s never anyone standing along the hazard line looking up.
“I once watched a guy dunk a big cut into the water there, and he wanted to drop in the bunker by the green. To my eye, he needed to go at least 180 yards back. We called an official over, but in the end the player stood his ground. It was uncomfortable. The rest of the round I kept a sharp eye on him, probably to the detriment of my game. But it’s every player’s duty to protect the field.
“The most repeated story out here came from a tournament in 2012. By now every person on tour has heard some version, even rookies who’ve just come up. It certainly sounds like something happened that shouldn’t have.
“A veteran player, a guy who has made well over $10 million, was paired with a younger journeyman. Late in the round, the veteran hits a drive into the deep rough on a hillside. The whole group is looking for it. The veteran’s caddie finds a ball, says it isn’t theirs, and throws the ball up the hillside. Couple minutes later, near the spot where the caddie had tossed the ball, the veteran shouts, ‘I got it,’ and chops out to the fairway. Having given up helping to look, the journeyman is already down in the fairway, and passes by the ball. He stops in his tracks. He says, ‘Dude, that’s the ball we found that your caddie said wasn’t yours and threw up the hill.’
“The veteran says it isn’t. The ball is the same make and number as he’d been playing, though the marking is different.
“Obviously, this is where the story sounds like a big he said/he said. But what happens next is fact.
“The veteran wedges it close and sinks the putt for par. He makes the cut. The journeyman, who has also made the cut, refuses to sign the scorecard. The third player in the group is staying out of it. The rules official says he can’t overrule a player who says he changed his mark, and so the official signs the card. Instead of heading to the locker room to change his shoes, the veteran walks directly to his courtesy car and leaves. The story quickly circulates, and there’s a major uproar, loudest from the players who missed the cut by one shot.
“Funny thing is, the veteran in question is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever play with. Always real pleasant and upbeat. But now he has the reputation as somebody you have to watch. It will follow him when he gets on the Champions Tour.
“For how much golf we play, it’s actually really good how few stories there are like this. No one makes it to the PGA Tour by cheating. But maybe every once in a while it’s how someone tries to stay.” [With Max Adler / Golf Digest]
–After taking just one of three in St. Louis, the Mets traveled to Washington for a critical three-game series against the Nationals. Yes, the Mets were tired after their 18-inning contest on Sunday, and then flying to D.C., but they then produced an incredibly pathetic effort on Monday, a 7-2 loss, as Matt Harvey allowed 5 runs (4 earned) early before righting the ship. With this offense, though, it was too late. Harvey ended up driving in the only Mets runs.
I mean you should have seen the lineup manager Terry Collins fielded.
“Let’s be a little blunt: The last time the Mets played a game this meaningful after the Fourth of July was the last game ever played at Shea Stadium on Sept. 28, 2008. Seven years can go by in a blur – or in excruciating slow motion – when you’ve played as much bad baseball as the Mets have played the past seven years.
“The Mets did the kinds of things teams with playoff aspirations are supposed to do for a showdown series. They lined up their three young lions to face the Nats. They spoke, as they often do, of having to find a way to beat the NL East’s standard bearer.
“And then, when the time came to actually play the game – long before Harvey realized ‘I wasn’t throwing the ball where I wanted to’ – this is what Terry Collins had to do for the night ahead: He wrote Wilmer Flores, John Mayberry and Eric Campbell into the 4-5-6 slots. That was the heart of the batting order.
“Mayberry, Campbell and catcher Anthony Recker, hitting eighth, reported for work Monday night hitting .182, .170, and .143, respectively. It is impossible to imagine a worse batting order in what was supposed to be an important game.
“Murmurers’ Row, is what it was. [Ed. Vaccaro also could have noted that regulars Flores and Juan Lagares have on-base percentages of .280 and .282, which is beyond putrid.]….
“It is a tired old refrain from a season spent waiting for the cavalry to come, waiting for the general manager, Sandy Alderson, to help this team that dies on the vine so many nights, even on nights when the pitching is as good as advertised (and when it isn’t, like this time, a thin margin for error becomes an invisible one).”
So we move on to Tuesday night, the Mets now 26-56 against the Nats since 2011, but behind six strong innings from Jacob deGrom and some clutch hitting (out of nowhere), the Mets beat the Nationals 7-2 to square this critical series at 1-1, with a Wednesday afternoon tilt on tap.
After having four hits in their last 72 at bats with runners in scoring position, the Mets were 5-15 Tuesday. They are also now 35-5 in games where they score 4 or more runs.
—Albert Pujols hit three home runs on Monday in the Angels’ doubleheader sweep of the Red Sox, passing Mike Schmidt for No. 15 on the all-time list at 549.
Pujols has 24 home runs in his last 58 games (thru Tues.). Mike Trout hit his 28th Monday. Not a bad combo, with both on track for 50-ish.
–The Mets are scheduled to face Zack Greinke on Friday night in New York. So Greinke will be extending his scoreless inning streak of 43 2/3 to 50 2/3 or 51 2/3.
The 43 2/3 is the fourth-longest in the majors in the post-1960 expansion era. Orel Hershiser has the record at 59 (1988), followed by Don Drysdale, 58 2/3 (1968), and Bob Gibson, 47 (1968).
Clayton Kershaw had a 41-inning scoreless streak last season.
The other day when Greinke squared off against the Nationals’ Max Scherzer, it was the first major league game in 26 years featuring two pitchers with more than 100 innings and ERAs of 2.11 or less. [Greinke’s was 1.39…now 1.30…Scherzer was 2.11.]
“The number of shifts has nearly doubled every year since 2011, from 2,357 to 13,298 last year, according to Baseball Info Solutions. And there has been another spike this season, to 10,262 by the All-Star break.”
–Pitcher Nathan Karns of Tampa Bay became the first A.L. hurler to homer since 2011 as the Rays beat the Phillies 1-0 on Tuesday. But this also marked the first time since 1962 that an A.L. pitcher homered for the only run of the game. Back then it was Baltimore’s Milt Pappas performing the feat in a game against the Yankees.
–So let’s look back to April 1 and the odds set by Nevada’s largest sportsbook. The MGM (race and sports) had the Nationals at 5/1 to win the World Series, with the Cubs and Red Sox at 6/1 and the Dodgers and Mariners at 8/1. The Cardinals were 12/1.
Competitive Eating
“About a week after eating 62 hot dogs in 10 minutes to win the Nathan’s Famous hot-dog-eating contest, Matt Stonie drove to a Hooters and bought some chicken wings – 200 of them. By dinnertime, he’d polished them off as part of this training regimen for the Hooters Worldwide Wing Eating Championship to be held Saturday in Clearwater, Fla.
“These so-called training sessions can include drinking more than a gallon of water* and are used by competitors to stretch their stomachs so they can hold more food for contests. But they can lead to serious injuries and are part of what competitive eater Patrick Bertoletti calls the dark side of the sport.
*I had to remind myself this is eight pints…128 oz.
“Starting about a month and a half before he beat eight-time defending champion Joey Chestnut at the Nathan’s Famous contest on the Fourth of July, Stonie said, he ate as many as 60 hot dogs three times a week and followed some of those practice sessions by drinking almost a gallon of water.”
Stonie said he planned to eat 200 wings four to five times before Saturday’s contest, which Chestnut won by eating 182 wings in 10 minutes.
Bertoletti said he was one of the competitors who suffered an injury while training, but he declined to say what it was.
“I don’t want to hurt the sport, I don’t want to hurt my marketability and I’m embarrassed,” he said.
Any doctors out there who want to offer a guess as to what kind of injury Bertoletti suffered, feel free to write in.
Despite the risk, Bertoletti says he continues to use his dangerous training methods.
George Shea, who along with his brother runs the Nathan’s contest and started Major League Eating, discourages competitors from training.
“It’s ridiculous,” he told USA TODAY. “You don’t need to do it… There’s no arms race to 100 (hot dogs).”
But Stonie said he made about $100,000 competing in 17 events in 2014. This year he plans to make considerably more after his Nathan’s victory. Chestnut, according to George Shea, made $230,000 last year.
Meanwhile, no one benefits more from competitive eating than Nathan’s Famous. Between 2003, the year before ESPN first broadcast the contest, and 2014, the company’s hot dog sales grew from fewer than 250 million to 1 billion!
The company’s stock, at the same time, grew from $6 to $53 last year. Including the impact of a $25 dividend, the adjusted share price today is about $56.
—NFL team revenue hit $7.3 billion in 2014, up $1.3 billion, or 21 percent over the prior year, according to a Bloomberg report on new financial records released by the publicly held Green Bay Packers on Monday. Commissioner Roger Goodell has said he intends to hit $25 billion by 2027.
The 32 teams share equally in the league revenue, with each team receiving $226.4 million.
Meanwhile, remember when Goodell told CNBC a decision on Tom Brady’s Deflategate appeal was “coming soon”? Tuesday, Goodell said there is no timeline for a ruling.
–The field is beginning to take shape for the Aug. 2 running of The Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park. War Story and Competitive Edge have committed to take on American Pharoah, while Mr. Jordan and Tekton are listed as probable, with Belmont Stakes third-place finisher Keen Ice remaining a possibility.
I’m already getting nervous about watching this race in person. Triple Crown winners don’t always keep winning, as I’ll get into in detail next week.
–The Washington Post’s Couch Slouch (aka Norman Chad) of the Washington Post on new sports stadiums and tax subsidies.
“Here’s the latest stadium update on America:
“Indeed, we should be thankful that our expansionist forefathers and foremothers – via Manifest Destiny, the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican-American War – had the foresight to acquire enough land to allow future generations the almost constitutional right to erect countless sports palaces with ample parking in which we can exercise our freedoms and liberties to their fullest extent, particularly on autumn Sunday afternoons.
“Speaking of Sunday afternoons, the NFL – in the midst of a half-century boom period not seen since Louis XIV ruled France in the 1600s – always is seeking new horizons for new facilities. There have been 10 new NFL stadiums completed in the last 12 years and, God and taxpayer subservience willing, there are more on the way.
“In Atlanta, the Georgia Dome, all of 22 years old, has been declared out-of-date. In Washington, FedEx Field is still a teenager, but Redskins owner and native-American benefactor Daniel Snyder is looking for non-reservation public land in which to relocate his singularly offensive franchise.
“(Don’t get me started on California, which soon might have more stadiums than Starbucks.)
“Recently, as the Florida state legislature considered a bill to approve $255 million in taxpayer money for upgrades to the Jaguars’ NFL stadium, the Dolphins’ NFL stadium and Daytona International Speedway, House budget chief Richard Corcoran remarked, ‘I don’t understand how you can claim to have a fiscal crisis on health care but can find millions of dollars in subsidies for billionaire sports owners.’
“It’s easy – you simply claim to have a fiscal crisis on health care and still find millions of dollars in subsidies for billionaire sports owners.”
–We note the passing of Alex Rocco, the veteran character actor who will forever be known for playing mobster Moe Greene in “The Godfather.” Rocco was 79.
“Based on infamous mobster Bugsy Siegel, Greene is the Las Vegas casino owner whose partnership with the Corleones ends badly: He is murdered with a shot through the eye during a stomach-churning slew of revenge killings at the end of the film.
“In a memorable scene before Greene’s violent death, Michael Corleone, the heir to his family’s crime syndicate played by Al Pacino, tells the gaming kingpin that his family wants to buy him out.
“Michael: I leave for New York tomorrow, think about a price.
“Moe Greene: Do you know who I am? I’m Moe Greene! I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders!
“Playing Greene was ‘my biggest ticket anywhere,’ Rocco said in a recent interview on the entertainment website avclub.com.
“ ‘I had no idea what Moe Greene was gonna do for me,’ Rocco said in the interview. ‘There was an off-Broadway play, ‘Who Shot Moe Greene?’ There was a Moe Greene’s Bakery. Alec Baldwin did Moe Greene on ‘Saturday Night Live.’ Billy Crystal opened up the Academy Awards once, saying, ‘I just ran into Moe Greene outside.’ It just doesn’t die down.’”
Rocco was a self-described “degenerate” gambler in Boston when he decided to attend an acting class. He got the bug and after moving to Hollywood, took a class taught by Leonard Nimoy “who kicked Rocco out because no one could understand his thick Boston accent.” [Elaine Woo]
So Rocco enrolled in a speech class, Nimoy took him back, and over the next decades, Rocco appeared in more than 130 films and TV episodes.
–“Game of Thrones” fans…Emilia Clarke, Daenerys Targaryen, told the L.A. Times after the series received a whopping 24 Emmy nominations, “(Next season…season six) it’s just go, go, go. Shocking moment to shocking moment. Epic moment to epic moment. It’s mental; it’s epic. And definitely Dany’s a part of it.”
Oh baby…Dany and the Dragons…I see a 7-night run at The Garden! Or maybe not…that’s probably a major fire hazard.
–From USA TODAY: “Florida health and wildlife experts are warning residents to steer clear of armadillos in light of a reported spike in cases of leprosy.
“So far this year, nine cases have been reported in Florida, according to the state Department of Health. Between two and 12 cases are reported each year, an agency spokesman told WTLV (Jacksonville) on Tuesday.”
Leprosy is also called Hansen’s disease and is caused by a certain bacteria. Each case reported this year has involved people who had direct contact with armadillos, though Hansen’s disease is usually spread person-to-person.
–It wasn’t to be. Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert are divorcing after four years. It was a rocky relationship, but I missed (because I wasn’t watching) that at the CMA show in April, Miranda won a slew of trophies but didn’t thank Blake once during several acceptance speeches. I’m biting my tongue. A story in the Washington Post said, “She later blamed being nervous on stage.”
As the Post’s Emily Yahr correctly observes, “this is the kind of showbiz split that could have an impact on their careers. While Shelton and Lambert are both extremely successful solo singers…there’s no doubt that they got a boost and many headlines from being Nashville’s golden couple.”
Plus they have co-written a lot of each other’s music.
–Jim Farber of the New York Daily News says he has been to a show on every U2 tour since they first played in 1980, and he’s ranking their current “Innocence + Experience” tour just below “their storied performances of the ‘Joshua Tree’ era.” Pretty high praise. The band has been doing a string of shows at The Garden.
“By making old and new songs bond on themes of time and perspective, this aging, embattled band found a new way to make themselves relevant, yet again.”
–And Bruuuuce fans…Springsteen rocked Asbury Park on Saturday night…the Wonder Bar on Ocean Avenue, Springsteen in one of his classic “surprise sets” joining Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers for close to two hours.
As reported by Stan Goldstein for NJ.com: “Saturday was one of those special, magical Asbury Park nights that many wondered if we would ever see this again. Luckily, there’s still magic in the night.
“Bruce was in a great mood and loose. It was as good a bar performance as I’ve seen from him in years, and I go back to seeing him play in bars since 1979.
“Springsteen joined Grushecky onstage at 10:35 p.m. and played 15 songs in a show that ended at 12:23 a.m. before a packed house. There was also a huge crowd watching from the sidewalk outside the Wonder Bar. Bruce dedicated the final song of the night, ‘Light of Day,’ to them.
“ ‘People out on the street, this is for you!’ Bruce shouted and pointed to them as he could see them through the side windows.”
His last performance at the Wonder Bar had been in 2011.
Top 3 songs for the week 7/23/66: #1 “Hanky Panky” (Tommy James and the Shondells) #2 “Wild Thing” (The Troggs) #3 “Lil’ Red Riding Hood” (Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs)…and…#4 “The Pied Piper” (Crispian St. Peters) #5 “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me” (Dusty Springfield) #6 “Paperback Writer” (The Beatles) #7 “Hungry” (Paul Revere & The Raiders) #8 “Red Rubber Ball” (The Cyrkle…I swear, this one has aged pretty well…) #9 “I Saw Her Again” (The Mamas & The Papas… one of their better ones…) #10 “Sweet Pea” (Tommy Roe…this one hasn’t aged well…)
Houston Astros Quiz Answer: Seven 20-game winners: Mike Hampton, 22 (1999); Jose Lima, 21 (1999); Joe Niekro, 21 (1979) and 20 (1980); Larry Dierker, 20 (1969); Roy Oswalt, 20 (2004-05); J.R. Richard, 20 (1976); Mike Scott, 20 (1989).
