Tag: MLB

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From My Seat Sports

Live Sports: Pandemic Therapy

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

I went to bed angry Sunday night for the first time in months. Truly pissed off. Having waited more than four months to see my hockey team of choice — the Stanley Cup-champion St. Louis Blues — play a meaningful game, I watched them lose their opening playoff tilt by the narrowest margin possible in a timed contest. The Colorado Avalanche scored the game winner with a tenth of a second on the clock, and it took almost 10 minutes of video review to confirm that tenth of a second existed. Infuriating, that ice hockey game played in August.

And damn, did the anger feel good.
Larry Kuzniewski

Ja Morant

For the first time since the novel coronavirus changed our planet — at least that part occupied by the United States — in mid-March, we have a packed sports calendar. The NBA has resumed its season with 22 teams each playing eight “seeding games” in Orlando, a one-city “bubble” designed and operated to contain that insidious virus and still provide televised basketball at its highest level.

Likewise, the NHL has opened its postseason with two bubble cities, both north of our border: Edmonton and Toronto. If you like sticks and pucks, you can turn on the NBC Sports network today — a Monday in August – and watch live playoff hockey for more than 12 hours, a total of six games to be played (starting with the New York Rangers and Carolina Hurricanes at 11 a.m. central). This is a new, if disorienting, form of bliss.

Major League Baseball is trying, too. Instead of localized, condensed play within one or two bubbles, MLB is trying to coordinate 30 mobile bubbles — one for each team — and present a 60-game regular season followed by an expanded postseason. And it’s not working entirely, not if you ask the Miami Marlins or St. Louis Cardinals. The two National League franchises have each been locked down after virus outbreaks, quarantined in hotels while rapid testing measures just how many players or staff in traveling parties of more than 50 carry the contagion. And let me tell you, the only thing worse than no pandemic baseball is pandemic baseball with your favorite team not allowed to play. It’s waking up on Christmas morning with gifts under the tree . . . for everyone but you.

It still feels good. For more than 100 days, sports fans have pined for the “welcome distraction” of games and scores to track. Well, guess what? Some of that distraction isn’t welcome in normal circumstances: a blown lead, a narrow loss, a game-changing call that goes against your team. It purely stinks. And it lingers. In all the right ways.

The Memphis Grizzlies lost their first two of eight seeding games as they cling to the final (eighth) playoff spot in the Western Conference. They lost to a pair of teams — Portland and San Antonio — below them in the standings, teams unlikely to catch Memphis for a postseason berth . . . unless the Griz allow them. Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr. are as electric as any young tandem in the league, and they both had moments over the weekend, Jackson burying a late-game three-pointer against the Spurs that forced overtime . . . until it didn’t (thanks to a buzzer-beating foul that led to game-winning free throws for the bad guys). What if we’ve waited all this time to see our Grizzlies, and the “show” becomes a bubbled-season collapse into the draft lottery? (Memphis plays New Orleans Monday, then will face five playoff teams. Should the Grizzlies make the postseason, they will have earned it.)

More than 1,000 Americans are dying each day from COVID-19. The U.S. president, here in August, is calling into question the very lifeblood of democracy: our voting system. Children and teachers from coast to coast are wondering if they’ll become the lab rats for a “return to normal” no one feels comfortable defining. Times are still really, really tough. But we have sports again, at least a version. Justin Thomas is now a Memphian for life, his win in the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational highlighting the beautiful TPC Southwind — and countless tributes to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital — for a national TV audience, including the thousands of Memphis fans forced to watch from their living rooms. It felt good, and it felt right, watching Thomas barely hold off defending champ Brooks Koepka.


And even when sports don’t feel right — when the game-winning goal is scored by a villain — it still feels good. Let’s stay healthy, and let’s play on.
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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Irony Week

Every so often, like a recurring skit on Saturday Night Live, there is talk from this administration about an “Infrastructure Week” — several days (one presumes) where the focus would be on improving the nation’s bridges and power grid and highways and such. It never works out, mainly because nothing survives in the news cycle longer than 24 hours these days, least of all “news” about fixing bridges. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

On the few occasions the administration has trotted out this gambit, events have always intervened — a fresh scandal, an errant tweet, some children getting put in cages, the president insulting a foreign leader, a new mass shooting, a “riot,” an invading “caravan,” golf, you name it. The truth is, you can’t really name a week after anything any more, but I’m going to try anyway. Even if it’s just in hindsight. I’m declaring the past seven days as “Irony Week.”

Let’s begin with Major League Baseball, which, after much wrangling with players, management, and owners, finally came up with a plan for a much-shortened, 60-game season. All the players would be regularly tested. Games would be played in empty stadiums. Sure, teams would be flying all over the country and maybe walking through airports and staying in hotels, but hey, it’s going to be great. Baseball is back, baby! (Except Canada won’t let teams play in Toronto’s stadium, because Americans are kinda, well, not welcome to fly into anywhere these days.)

That plan lasted five days before a dozen members of the Florida (duh) Marlins came down with the virus. Several games were canceled, but MLB officials said the season would go on. Because, surely, this won’t happen again. Play ball!

Things were a little better over in the NBA, where teams deemed worthy of playoff contention were put into a “bubble” at Walt Disney World in Orlando to finish the season that was aborted in March. Players and officials are not allowed into the outside world: no travel, no airports, no chance of the disease wrecking the season. Except for when, oops, the league let L.A. Clippers guard Lou Williams leave the bubble to attend a funeral in Atlanta and Lou decided he needed some wings from the Magic City strip club before returning. Which is pretty much peak-NBA.

Williams got a 10-day quarantine, and surely nothing like that will ever happen again. Ever. But just to be safe, the NBA should go ahead and construct a strip club at Walt Disney World. Call it the Magic Kinkdom. Or is that taken?

National COVID expert Deborah Birx was in Nashville this week. You may know Dr. Birx as the “scarf lady” because of her seemingly boundless stash of neck-wraps, which she uses to cover her face when the president says something stupid about COVID. I kid. Anyway, the good doctor was in Tennessee to urge mayors to mandate the wearing of masks in their cities because (after weeks of push-back) the Trump administration has finally recognized what their own Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has been saying for weeks: Masks help flatten the curve and control the spread of COVID.

Standing next to her on the podium was our own Governor Bill Lee, who at that very moment could have backed up Birx’ suggestion to the mayors of his state. But he didn’t because he’s a right-wing ideologue who thinks people should be able to decide for themselves whether or not to wear masks in public. You might say he’s pro-choice when it comes to masks. And you might say he’s an idiot.

Speaking of … You may have missed Tennessee state Senator Frank Nicely’s attempt at Twitter humor this week. He went after the Lincoln Project, a group of Republicans opposed to Trump’s re-election. “The only thing you have in common with Lincoln,” Nicely wrote, “is the make of the car in the parking lot …” Semi-solid dad-joke burn. 

I wondered if Nicely had a history with the Lincoln Project, so I googled “Nicely, Lincoln” and the first articles to come up were about Nicely claiming that Abraham Lincoln liked cock-fighting. Turns out that Nicely is a big fan of forcing roosters to claw each other to death with razor-like spurs and cited Lincoln as a co-cock-fighting cognoscenti. All I can say is that if you google yourself and the first reference is to “cock-fighting,” you’ve got problems. Also, for the record, Nicely lied. Lincoln wasn’t into cock-fighting.

Other short takes from Irony Week: Arkansas state senator, homophobe, and COVID hoaxer Jason Rapert came down with a serious case of the virus this week. Hopefully, he’ll have some nice LGBTQ nurses and doctors in the hospital with him to help him recover from the hoax.

Billionaire creep Elon Musk, whose wealth has gone up $46 billion in the past four months, often with help from state and federal incentives, tweeted that “another government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the American people.”

And the CDC, which had sensible guidelines in place for when schools should reopen, was forced by the administration to issue a boilerplate statement urging the nation’s schools to reopen, no matter what. Another once-respected federal agency gutted and turned into a political tool. Remember that National Weather Service map with Trump’s sharpie-drawn hurricane path? Yeah, like that.

Finally, Irony Week would not be complete without pointing out the strange phenomenon of a president who felt it necessary to spend time in three television interviews bragging about how he “aced” a dementia test.

Man. Woman. Person. Camera. TV. Irony.

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News News Feature

CannaBeat: Play Ball!

CREDIT: Body and Mind

Here we go!

The General Assembly cranked back up last week, and while it seems some new leaders may have dampened efforts toward medical cannabis, some other cannabis bills have already been filed.

New House Speaker Cameron Sexton said of cannabis legislation, “It’s against federal law. And so, until that changes, it’s hard to have a discussion.” However, other states have passed medical cannabis despite speakers’ reluctance, according to the Marijuana Policy Project. Gov. Bill Lee said he wants to “explore alternatives before we go there.”

However, Rep. Rick Staples (D-Knoxville) filed a bill last week that would allow referenda in Tennessee counties that would “authorize the growing, processing, manufacture, delivery, and retail sale of marijuana within jurisdictional boundaries.” The bill also “decriminalizes the possession of small amounts of marijuana statewide.”

The Memphis City Council tried to lower punishments set here for the possession of small amounts of cannabis back in October 2016. The move would have allowed Memphis Police Department officers to charge anyone in possession of less than a half-ounce of marijuana with a $50 fine or community service. However, state lawmakers voided the rule.

Sen. Sara Kyle (D-Memphis), who sponsored a raft of pro-cannabis legislation last year, is back this year with a new bill. Kyle wants to allow medical cannabis patients from other states immunity from Tennessee laws. If a person carries a medical marijuana patient identification card from another state and has less than a half-ounce on them, they “do not commit an offense in this state.”

So, say you’re a patient from West Memphis and you carry your legally prescribed cannabis with you across the bridge. If Kyle’s bill were law, police here could not arrest nor charge you for carrying your medicine.

A number of other cannabis-related bills remain from the first part of the 111th legislative session. However, no major bill has yet been filed that would organize a medical marijuana system in Tennessee.

Buds of Summer

ICYMI: Major League Baseball (MLB) players won’t face drug penalties from the league if they use cannabis.

MLB and the MLB Players Association announced last month that marijuana had been removed from the league’s list of banned substances, and its consumption among players will now be treated the same as alcohol. Up to now, players were fined $35,000 if they tested positive for cannabis.

The new policy begins with spring training 2020, which starts on February 21st when the Rangers meet the Royals in Arizona.

Body and Mind

Coming soon to West Memphis

West Memphis

Work is underway for three dispensaries to be open soon in West Memphis, according to WMCTV.

The dispensary sites were approved by the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission in 2018. At the time, no work had begun on any of the West Memphis sites. Plans were filed for the shop on OK Street in October. That one is from Body and Mind, a Vancouver-based, publicly traded company that offers dried flower, edibles, topicals, extracts, and vape pen cartridges.

West Memphis Mayor Marco McClendon told WMC that the lure of medical marijuana could help people from Memphis to move to his side of the Hernando DeSoto bridge.