Whether you’re at the end of your coffee, your day, your week or even your rope, welcome to Whitt’s End …
• Hate, HAte, HATE me some referees. Look forward to the day when every call in every sport is made correctly by robots. Until then, we’re left with Amari Cooper being twice called for offensive pass interference on nothing more than incidental hand fighting last Sunday night in New Orleans. In his first 64 NFL games, he was flagged for OPI five times. Then twice, in one game? Riiiiight. Cooper was blanketed by single coverage and Zeke couldn’t run and the Cowboys got beat. But those calls were bogus. And don’t get me started on the archaic method of spotting the ball. In a league where millions of dollars are spent analyzing players’ metrics down to the centimeter, the NFL routinely marks the position of the football on the field – a repeated act of relatively vital import – via an old dude with a bad hip sorta meandering his way in a semi-straight line and then randomly plopping it down, depending on which foot and hand feel comfortable to him at the time. It’s about as accurate as using the Farmer’s Almanac to plant your soybeans. Dangit, you got me started.
• Kudos to the Rangers for a fitting farewell to Globe Life Park. In a forgettable season, it was a memorable funeral with a sterling cast of pallbearers including Nolan Ryan. That said, it was cheap what they did on the field in the final week. As in, purposefully dropping a foul pop-up so pitcher Mike Minor could instead have a chance for a strikeout and reach 200 for the season. Just kinda cheap, in my book. All so reporters could type this sentence: Minor and Lance Lynn are the first Rangers pitching duo to reach *200 strikeouts in a season since Bobby Witt/Nolan Ryan in 1990. So there. I wrote it.
• Mavs have commenced training camp, which annually features one of the dumbest rituals in sports: Measuring the height of players … in socks. Luka Doncic, for example is 6-foot-6 and ¾ inches. Which means absolutely nothing. Because he doesn’t play basketball – nor, dare I guess, much else in his life – while wearing only socks. Doncic is 6-7 in sneakers, which matters. It’s the same illogic that spurns NFL scouts to time prospects running the 40-yard dash not in pads but in their underwear. Sports are just plain weird.
• I am surprisingly pleased that former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger was convicted of murder in her 2018 shooting of Botham Jean. My theory: Guyger, who was having an affair with her married patrol partner – she sent him an explicit photo with the message “Wanna touch?” just 30 minutes before the shooting – recklessly entered the wrong apartment, thinking it was hers. When she saw an “intruder” – a black man, at that – she panicked, thinking her affair had been uncovered and it was someone sent by her lover’s wife for some amount of revenge. In that circumstance, Guyger may have actually feared for her life, prompting the shooting. Whatever the reason, it’s justice that even police officers are held accountable for their actions. It’s the second DFW cop convicted of murder in the last year (Balch Springs officer Roy Oliver is serving 15 years in prison for shooting 15-year-old Jordan Edwards in the back). The guilty verdict effectively pauses the “oops” defense, and reiterates that you shouldn’t blindly “Back the Blue” any more than you should paint all military personnel as heroes or put athletes on a pedestal. Life isn’t black and white, but rather a kaleidoscopic spectrum of gray hues, shades and tints. I have police friends I’ve heard say, “I’d rather face 12 jurors than six pallbearers.” Today, hopefully they’re rethinking that strategy.
• Think DFW is crazy about its Cowboys? Check out the TV ratings from Sunday night’s game. In DFW, Saints-Cowboys drew an impressive 38.2. But in New Orleans? An almost unfathomable 57.0. Who dat, indeed.
• Last month was both the hottest and driest September in DFW history. As in ever. The average temp was 95.4 (which would’ve been above normal for July), with zero measurable rain. Good news: October is the only month when we can simultaneously enjoy all four major sports: NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA.
• Hot.
• Not.
• Excited about Luka and the debut of Kristaps Porzingis, but, sorry Mavs, I’m already tired of the Boban buffoonery. I get it, Boban Marjanovic is kinda goofy. And really tall. Like 7-3. But, um, some of us covered Shawn Bradley and all 7-6 of his unintended comedy. Deja boo. Boban at the State Fair. Boban at the Lil Nas concert. Boban standing next to the diminutive J.J. Barea. Ugh. Truth is, Boban is a mediocre backup center that will play about 10 minutes per game. Feels like he’s the Mavs’ equivalent of the Rangers’ Bartolo Colon from 2018: a physically, um, unique sideshow attraction to distract us from noticing all the losing.
• It was two years ago already that deranged gunman Stephen Paddock took up a perch on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas on the strip and fired 1,057 bullets into a country music concert crowd. In the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, he wound up killing 58 and wounding 500 more. There is no happy ending, because we’ll never know why. The FBI in January ended its investigation, concluding that the attack was “neither directed, inspired or enabled by ideologically motivated persons or groups.” Paddock acted alone. He wanted infamy. He welcomed suicide. Impossible to combat – much less prevent – what you can’t comprehend.
• Even in a year that had no chance to succeed, the Rangers drew 2.1 million fans. Tell me again about the heat?! Sunday’s finale sellout of 44,144 pushed attendance up 27,000 from 2018. Next year’s draw will likely be more than 3 million, because DFW loves nothing more than the latest and greatest shiny object.
• From the Dept. of Nobody Cares About Your Dreams Except You: Everybody recognized me, treated me normal. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw and likewise recognized everyone. But when I focused on them straight on, or in the face, they turned into … me. Everyone I talked to looked just like me. Everyone. I knowwwwww, right? Straight outta the Twilight Zone. No thanks.
• Biggest concern out of New Orleans is future Cowboys opponents being handed a defensive blueprint. Against Cover 2 (which seemingly would give Dallas a numbers advantage and an invitation to run), Zeke was repeatedly stuffed. If the Cowboys can’t run enough to force teams to send another defender from the secondary and into the box, they’re in trouble.
• Again, take away the politics and just realize that we have a sitting President who types the word “Liddle’,” thinks it’s correct, and then bashes those attempting to tweak his misplaced apostrophe for not knowing how to use a “hyphen.” No doubt No. 45 would finish 45th among U.S. Presidents in English 101.
• Am I the only one who can’t understand 3D printers? I mean, how does a printer turn ink into … guns? Not pictures of guns, real guns?!
• Don’t look now, but Big Tex’s face is at the State Fair is hideous. Scary. Like a guy who has a knife in the back or a man about to be charged with a #MeToo moment. My solution: Replace Big Tex’s “face” each season. First choice: Willie Nelson. Second: Nolan.
• I get that we’re freaked out that there are 16 known deaths attributed to vaping, because … Wait, no I don’t. Sixteen? I mean, yeah, there are signs that vaping isn’t an entirely safe alternative to traditional tobacco. But smoking cigarettes is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., killing 480,000 people per year. Can we shut down smoking before we expend energy fretting over vaping?
• DFW needs a “Mattress Mack.” Houston furniture store owner Jim McIngvale helps flood victims, sponsors tennis tournaments and puts his money where his mouth is when it comes to supporting his town’s teams. Mack this week placed a $3.5 million bet on the Astros to win the World Series. The Astros, of course, are the favorites and a win would net him $7.7 million. But still, $3.5 million is legit. Last confidence of that “amount” around here came from Jimmy Johnson, who guaranteed a Cowboys win over the 49ers in the 1993 NFC Championship Game.
• Told a woman last weekend that I’ve been writing professionally for 33 years. Her: “My God, how many stories have you written?” Me: “Too many to count. Too few to retire.”
• This weekend? Saturday-Sunday tennis tournament in Frisco before we put up our feet and cross our fingers for Cowboys-Packers Sunday afternoon. As always, don’t be a stranger.
