Old baseball observation that never gets old:It can be the hardest game to discuss with any certainty. The media loves its absolutes. Skip Bayless isn’t rich because he hedges his words.Problem is, the world is never black and white. It’s always gray, but gray is boring. So we go thumbs up or down after every Reds game, which of course isn’t very smart.This morning, the Reds are great, or at least aren’t as absolutely terrible as they were Friday morning. A lot went right after the top of the 1st Thursday afternoon. To me, the best development during the weekend that was, was Jeff Hoffman. Guy threw five one-run innings Sunday, very much looked like he belonged. You figure Castellanos is going to hit and Castillo’s Thursday was an aberration. But if The Club can get credible starts from Hoffman – and, possibly, DeLeon Monday night – well, the (NL) Central equation shifts a little, doesn’t it?What we liked after three whole games in a six-month season:Castellanos. He hit a couple homers, crushed a triple to dead center, lingered over a prone Cards pitcher after scoring a run, then John Wayne-d his way through a press conference.“Look, I ain’t out here to talk about me. I don’t know if I’m a leader. I damn sure ain’t a follower. But that’s not for me to say, you know? It’s for those guys to say what I am. I’m not here to disrespect nobody or whatever, but I want to win. I’ve lost my whole career and I ain’t trying to start the season 0-2.”What does it mean? In the grand scheme, maybe little. In the immediate, a lot. This April for the Reds is about assuring themselves that all the stuff they said in March was indeed true. Namely, that last year was a fluke and will not be repeated. The fact they crushed Cardinals pitching and stared down the division bully was huge. How huge? Ask me in a few months.All we know is, Castellanos was in the middle of all of it. We like the bat-itude, bro.Joey Votto “barreled’’ the ball, as they like to say. Sure, he popped up twice in the opener. Used to be, a Votto pop-up was a once-a-season phenomenon. But he also plated Castellanos with a wicked liner on Sunday. DBell paid Votto a veteran’s respect by batting him third. If Votto can live up to it, the lineup is suddenly very potent.India looked established, didn’t he?What wasn’t so great:The Club is going to lack defensively until proven otherwise. That’s a problem and an unspoken reason pitching coach Derek (King Midas) Johnson is so excited about strikeouts.It was disconcerting to see Castillo knocked around like that. It’s never happened to that extent. With Sonny Gray out, the Reds can’t afford a slow start by Castillo. As good as Hoffman was, they’re not winning anything without Castillo or Gray pitching like all-stars.Now, then. . .AND STILL NO SMOKE FROM THE VATICAN IN CLIFTON. . . What’s the next level up from embarrassing? I was critical of Silent John Cunningham last week. One, one-paragraph statement in three weeks re John Brannen’s future does not for good leadership make.It’s possible this has gone above Silent John’s pay grade. When a $5 million buyout is involved, the president’s office is likely very interested, too.Nobody knows anything, quite possibly even the folks at the center of the mess. Here’s what I think: The longer this goes, the more obvious it becomes that the university is looking for a way to fire Brannen without paying him. The coach has lawyer-ed up and just might have something to say in the coming days.Again: Cunningham said the school had enlisted an “independent’’ investigator to look into the “allegations’’ against the coach. What allegations? Maybe I missed the part where named players made serious charges against Brannen that were supported by a big majority of their teammates.What we’ve seen so far is a couple unnamed guys who apparently believed their coach didn’t care about them enough. Somewhere, Bob Knight is stifling a laugh.Look, maybe there will be fire to accompany the current smoke. But until further notice, I don’t see grounds for dismissal. I see more than 1,000 players in the transfer portal, all over the country. It’s not hard to see Me-Firsters, bolstered by family, friends, hangers-on, etc., being told how great (and unappreciated) they are and being advised that greener grass lies elsewhere. Instead of sticking it out and making it work at the place to which they committed, they’re moving on.Not all of them, sure. But enough to be significant.Meantime UC’s offseason, already torpedoed, is edging toward disaster. And if it ever becomes clear that Brannen did nothing unquestionably fire-able, good luck ever getting a hot young coach to sign on in Clifton.BEST FINAL 4 GAME EVER? I’m not good at recalling specific games, in any sport. Maybe you are. But Game 2 Saturday night was way up there.Mick can’t coach?It’s not accurate to say, as many have, that UCLA slowed things down. You don’t score 90, even in an OT game, by playing the way Mick’s old Big East teams played. What his team did was control the tempo, start to finish. The Bruins played the game at their pace. Mick had arguably the two best players on the floor – Juzang and Jaquez Jr. – and they were brilliant at doing what he wanted them to do. They damned near stole a game in which they were given almost no chance.I think that was the requisite scare any team on the road to a championship needs. Gonzaga fulfills its destiny tonight.AND THIS. . . Mark Few helped win the game, by doing nothing. I’ve always loved college coaches who let their players play at winnin’ time. Nobody does that better than the Zags coach. Instead of calling a timeout after Juzang put back his own miss to tie the game with 3-some seconds left, Few trusted his players to win it.Soooo many times coaches strangle the game late, control-freaking things. What most often results is a point guard, dribbling the ball 10 feet above the circle until 7-8 seconds remain on the shot/game clock, then tossing up a bad shot his teammates have no chance to rebound.Few lets ‘em play. Here’s Jim Nantz, describing the last shot to the LA Times:"It's one thing Mark Few said to us leading up to the game on a Zoom call. He said: 'We're always ready to go. We're going to inbound and we're going. And that ball got inbounded so quickly that, if I'm right in my analysis, UCLA was just caught in that flicker of euphoria. Just being on its heels. Advancing in their mind the game going to double-overtime. That's all it took for Jalen Suggs to go unimpeded, uninterrupted to midcourt in a flash, to then put up the shot.''' MR. STICK TO SPORTS READS BOOKS, TOO! A few very good ones lately.This Is Happiness I mentioned a few weeks ago. A simple Irish tale, told with humor and melancholy. Almost as good as drinking a Guinness. Sent me running back to the public lending library for another Niall Williams novel, History of the Rain.I didn’t finish Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson, because someone else had requested it and I’m a slow reader. I had to return it. But I got the idea, and it was jaw-dropping. Did you know that in the early 1930s, when the Third Reich was seeking ways to marginalize its Jewish citizens, its leaders studied how America treated its Black citizens? Me, neither. True. And shocking.Just started Pappyland, the story of the Van Winkle family of Kentucky, makers of famously great bourbon. Wright Thompson, the author, is a very good sports writer. Also, Southern. The combination makes for some lively, authentic words from a man who knows his subject.BECAUSE TV IS MY LIFE. . . A bunch of good stuff this month, a lot of it on PBS. Ken Burns on Hemingway. . . a Doc Severinsen retrospective. . . a Masterpiece 50 8-parter on FDR. Plus, Sasquatch on Hulu.Last night I watched an hour about the Army Rangers D-Day assault of Pointe du Hoc, a critical German gun battery 100 feet above the beach in Normandy. More than half the 2,000-plus Rangers died in climbing the vertical cliff.I love this stuff. I wish this sort of documentary were shown to school kids in every city and town in America. These guys, doing these things, are the reason you kids enjoy the lives you have today.As the Tom Hanks character in Saving Private Ryan said to Ryan at the end of the movie:“Earn this.’’TUNE O' THE DAY. . . Disliked this tune when I first heard it. Thought the Stones had sold out. Disco? Really? It gets better with every listen. This is the extended, disco version. Source link
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