These are the souls that try men’s days.
Give these PGA Tour renegades credit. They don’t sell their souls on the cheap. If only it were a matter of dignity, self-worth, integrity, honor, or the most basic — the ability to choose right over wrong. But it’s a matter of shovels filled with loot extracted from the Casbah, thus no contest.
The misdirected discussion and debate continue: “Would you, could you, turn down tens of millions of dollars of sign-on dough to play on this new, Saudi government-financed, money-throw circuit?”
Isn’t this just a free-enterprise issue, one as Dustin Johnson claimed, “Something that was best for me and my family”? His reported $125 million sign-on bonus, well, who could say no to that?
Again, it depends on how much your soul is worth — and your regard for recent history, as opposed to free-to-grow-richer free enterprise.
It’s unlikely that any of the Saudi golf money-takers are fully familiarized with Saudi Arabia’s recent history, how it relates to a trifling episode known as the 9/11 terror attacks, orchestrated murders committed by a group of terrorists comprised primarily of Saudi nationals, that slew more than 3,000 Americans.
As emerging declassified U.S. and British investigations continue to claim — why they took so long is another matter — the 9/11 massacres were likely funded, directly or indirectly, by the despotic, money’s-no-object, oil-enabled Saudi monarchy and its servants.
Simply put, that 15 of the 19 one-way trip terrorists were Saudis was no coincidence.
Even if Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia, Bryson DeChambeau and “Captain America” of Ryder Cup recall Patrick Reed, don’t much care, beginning in 2006, U.S. and British government investigations have documented support provided by Saudi government officials to several of the 9/11 hijackers upon their arrival in the U.S.
Yet the media’s focus on Saudi malevolence has been on the usual Islamic oppression of women and the government-ordered 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi — a Saudi dissident journalist, assassinated by Saudi agents in the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul.
No small matters, but not as what has been so widely and egregiously ignored.
That the Saudi money now being thrown to many of the world’s best golfers is from the same overflowing pot from which some likely found its way into the coffers of terrorists who left the United States in despair and disrepair that still afflicts us, has not been at issue. And that’s unfathomable at any price.
This isn’t just Nike made-in-China, slave-wage money or beer and auto sponsorship influence, it’s blood money. And all one has to do, after taking such money to sign on, is show up with a golf bag to stash millions more.
Mickelson, now 51 and likely in financial duress due to insane gambling habits and at least one close association with a convicted and incarcerated inside-trading crook, was 30 and had made $4.3 million in PGA Tour money in 2001 when his new sponsors are alleged to have sponsored the attacks on America.
Greg Norman, 67, already had made many millions in U.S. golf money when the still-unfathomable “Never Forget” attacks occurred.
Norman has excused himself for fronting for this oily Saudi scheme in view of Khashoggi’s murder as, “We all mistakes.”
Thus the 9/11 mass murder of Americans might be just another of those Saudi “mistakes,” like three-putting from 12 feet.
This new circuit will not make money because it can’t make money. Its overhead, just from signings — Mickelson’s for a reported $200 million — can’t come close to breaking even.
But to the 300-year-old Saudi Royal Family, estimated in 2020 to be worth $100 billion, it’s just a drop of oil in the bucket.
Most of us have never had our souls up for auction. We don’t command appearance fees to just show up at work, and we don’t negotiate corporate endorsements to wear on our shirts, thus a deal with such a devil has never been an option.
But given the chance, the cost of telling the Saudis to go to hell, I submit, would be priceless.
Friday is a baseball deny-day
There’s nothing like Friday night baseball!
And nothing is what many Yankees and Mets fans will watch Friday.
The New York Consult Local Listing Yankees return to their exclusive, hidden streaming, Friday night perch on Amazon Prime, where they’ll play another small TV market team, the Chicago Cubs.
The Mets also will play a small-market club, the Angels of Los Angeles, exclusively on Apple+, home of the worst, untreated “telecasts” in the young history of MLB greed-inspired, game-exploiting streaming.
Starting last Friday, the Yanks exclusively appeared on Apple+, then pay-cable YES, then Sunday morning on NBC’s Peacock channel, its pay-wall already established, and now back to Amazon Prime.
Despite MLB’s fall from popular favor due to neglect, avarice and arrogance, how much would Rob Manfred open the bidding for games to be exclusively transmitted in Morse Code?
Meanwhile, there’s hardly enough rain forest left to list those assigned to call these games.
All we know is that Apple+’s lead voice, Melanie Newman, is another graduate from the School of Senses Deprivation, her degree in the ability to apply countless words to what needs none.
Saturday’s YES telecast did not include Carlos Beltran or Cameron Maybin, as if we were granted a mental health day.
Sunday’s pay-the-Peacock included Tigers broadcaster Jack Morris and Yankees voice John Flaherty, thus useful knowledge was both planned and allowed.
Meantime, Manfred’s on-the-extra-quiet offseason plan to make MLB more difficult to watch, let alone endure, seems to be working. He’s conditioning even more fans to live without.
Nothing fine with new ‘fine’
Et, tu, John? Wednesday, with the Twins’ Chris Archer pitching against the Yankees on YES, John Flaherty reminded us that Archer, with the Rays, could be a self-congratulatory showboat.
“He could rub you the wrong way,” he said in the second inning. “He’d let you know what he felt about his stuff on any particular pitch, which is fine. That’s the way the game is, nowadays.”
Sorry, but not for a second did I believe Flaherty believed that. Unless he’s good with unmitigated public immodesty, that was pure, no-upside pandering.
In the bottom of the fourth, as seen live and in replays, ex-Yank Gio Urshela doubled over semi-interested right fielder Giancarlo Stanton. Well, it should’ve been a double, but Urshela, jogging while watching, had to stop at first.
That, too, is “the way the game is, nowadays.” But that, too, is not “fine.” Urshela’s and Stanton’s least-they-could-do’s were ignored. Play-by-play man Ryan Ruocco only said that Urshela “hit a long single.”
Jim Kaat, 83, slipped last week, complimenting Nestor Cortes as “Nestor the Molestor.” But there are no excusable slips these days, thus Kaat’s reference became shame-on-you! news.
Cortes, continues to impress as a good pitcher and good man, and likely accustomed to hearing such a nickname, defused it with a reverential tweet:
“Hey, everybody, Jim Kaat has spent a lifetime in this game we love. He reached out to me and apologized, but he didn’t need to. … I plan on lifting himself up with this tweet and I hope others do, too. No sweat here, Jim!”
Case closed.
During the USFL telecast of Michigan vs. Philadelphia — played in Birmingham, Ala. — Sunday on NBC — the “plausibly live network” — long, loud booing was heard after the ref announced a penalty against Philly. Even for Philly fans, that was a lot of booing emitted by a crowd of roughly 15 people.
0 Commentaires