​Josef Newgarden did something on Sunday, May 26 in the Indianapolis 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway that had only been accomplished five previous times in the 108 years of the illustrious motorsports event – winning the race in back-to-back years.

When Newgarden made a daring last lap pace of race leader Pato O’Ward on lap 200 of the event on Sunday he managed to do something that only Wilbur Shaw (1939-40), Mauri Rose (1947-48), Bill Vukovich (1953-54), Al Unser (1970-71) and Helio Castroneves (2001-02) had ever done before.

Sunday’s race was arguably the most competitive in the history of the event with a record 16 different drivers in the 33-car field leading a lap with Newgarden leading 26 of the 200 (his Penske Racing teammate Scott McLaughlin who started on the pole led a race-high 66 laps).

The big win for Newgarden comes during what has been a rough first part of the 2024 IndyCar season for the two-time series champion who had initially won the season-opening race at St. Petersburg before having been disqualified more than a month after the fact due to illegalities found within the car (and that of his teammate McLaughlin) in that event.

Newgarden’s Indy 500 victory on Sunday was the 30th win of his career, which ranks him 13th all-time in the sport.

It’s hard to officially pinpoint my sports zero of the week because there are multiple people and entities involved with it – Marcus Smith and Speedway Motorsports, LLC, NASCAR team owner Richard Childress, etc. – but ultimately I’m just going to give the entire zero of the week to NASCAR in general because the sport ultimately oversees everything that happens during one of its events.
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And the thing that earns the sport the dishonor of the week is having former President, current Republican candidate for President and all-around bad dude Donald Trump at the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Sunday, May 26.

Trump used the event, as he’s done before (but at least then had the allure of being the President of the United States), simply as a photo op and the sport was more than happy and willing to kiss his ass as he was chauffeured around pit road during the pre-race ceremonies by Childress.

There are a couple of problems here – but the biggest is NASCAR once again aligning itself with a person who among other things has attempted to overthrow a democratic presidential election, has said and done racist and misogynistic things and has openly lied about and disparaged the sport’s only African-American driver Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr.

There’s also the hypocrisy from some of the fan base who scream “Don’t bring politics into the sport” whenever NASCAR has a driver with Black Lives Matter on their car or celebrates Black History Month or Pride Month, despite none of those things actually being political and then are all “Fuck Yeah, America” when Trump shows up at the track. You can’t have it both ways!

NASCAR seemingly has made efforts to distance itself from politics in the last few years but this does away with all of that. Even more hurtful is seeing social media posts from all of the fans of the sport who may be in the minority in one way or another – people of color, LGTBQ+ fans, etc. who feel like the sport has turned its back on them by inviting the most vitriolic President in the history of this country into its community. 

Xander Schauffele had been one of the best golfers and biggest names on the PGA Tour for quite some time now with 10 wins combined on the PGA Tour and European Tour and having won the Olympic gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics (held in 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic). But despite some big moments in his career – the gold medal and the 2017 Tour Championship win – he hadn’t yet won one of the sport’s four major tournaments (Masters, PGA, U.S. Open or British Open) making him probably the biggest name in the sport without one.
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Schauffele had come close many times in major tournaments. He’s finished runner-up at the Masters in 2019, runner-up at the British Open in 2018 and has three top-5 finishes in the U.S. Open. Schauffele had played in 27 major tournaments before this year’s PGA Championship with 21 of them seeing him finish in the top-25 and 13 times in the top-10. He’s only missed the cut on three occasions. He just hadn’t found his way to the top of the leaderboard at the end of 72 holes.

That was until he went wire-to-wire at the PGA Championship at the Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky. Last weekend and secured his first major title. He started the tourney with a major tournament record-tying round of 62 and by the end had a major tournament record of 21-under par winning the event by one stroke over Bryson DeChambeau.

Now Schauffele can get that “best in the sport without a major” monkey off his back. At 30 years old it likely won’t be his last major tournament win either. 

Unfortunately, for Xander Schauffele, his winning his first career major tournament was only the second biggest story out of the PGA Championship in Louisville last weekend as the world’s No. 1ranked golfer Scottie Scheffler, fresh off winning his second Masters Tournament in three years last month, found himself in handcuffs early on the morning of the second round of the tournament due to some over-zealous and, frankly, bad policing.
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Though it seemed to be a misunderstanding from the beginning, Scheffler was arrested and charged with second-degree assault of a police officer, third-degree criminal mischief, reckless driving and disregarding traffic signals from an officer directing traffic when trying to enter Valhalla Golf Club on Friday, May 17, while emergency vehicles and workers were dealing with an accident involving the death of a pedestrian.

From the very beginning the whole ordeal seemed fishy and like the Louisville Metro P.D. and its Det. Bryan Gillis had overreacted and overstepped, especially because one of the nearest eyewitnesses to the event was ESPN reporter Jeff Darlington, who gave his first-hand reporting from the scene.

It was shocking that the charges weren’t dropped early this week but after footage of the traffic stop caught from a nearby traffic camera was released by the LMPD on Thursday, May 23, the whole incident looks even dumber on the part of the P.D. and basically makes Gillis’s initial statement seem like a fabrication – for instance nowhere in the video is he “dragged by Scheffler’s vehicle” as was in the initial report. The officer, who has been punished by his department on 11 previous occasions (including 13 days suspension combined for five of those offenses), has once again been disciplined by his department for failure to turn his bodycam on during the arrest of Scheffler.

Amazingly, even after all of this has come to light the charges against Scheffler still have not been dropped as of Thursday, May 23.

It seems evident based on the many disciplinary actions against Det. Gillis that he should no longer have a job at the LMPD, but then again that is policing in 2024.  

We’re about 50 games into the Major League Baseball season, meaning it’s almost time for the league to unveil its All Star Game ballot.

Every year I like to pick the players I think should get the starting nod for the midsummer classic. I like to make my first selections in May and my final batch in June.

Here are the 10 players I think are currently the most deserving of the All-Star starting spots in the National League…

*All stats are as of May 18

Pitcher: Shōta Imanaga (Chicago Cubs)
During the MLB offseason, the biggest pitching acquisition out of the Japanese professional league was Yoshinobu Yamamoto going to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Shōta Imanaga was almost an afterthought when he signed with the Chicago Cubs. Imanaga is certainly an afterthought no more – he’s been the best pitcher in baseball nearly 50 games into the season. Imanaga leads baseball with a 0.84 ERA while having a 5-0 record with 58 strikeouts and a 0.91 WHIP.

Catcher: William Contreras (Milwaukee Brewers)
Milwaukee Brewers catcher William Contreras is currently tied with Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani for the National League batting title with a .350 average. He’s tied with Dodgers outfielder Teoscar Hernadez for second in the league with 37 RBI. The 26-year-old backstop, who was an All-Star with the Atlanta Braves in his first full-time season in the league in 2022, is well on his way to career-highs all around.

First Base: Bryce Harper (Philadelphia Phillies)
The Philadelphia Phillies are the hottest team in baseball right now and a lot of that has to do with their veteran superstar Bryce Harper, who has taken very well to first base after spending the majority of his career as an outfielder. Harper is fourth in the N.L. with 10 home runs and fifth in the league with 33 RBI. The two-time MVP is looking to make his eighth career All-Star team.

Second Base: Ketel Marte (Arizona Diamondbacks)
Arizona Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte was one of the biggest stories of the 2023 MLB Postseason with his lengthy hit streak. Marte has picked off in 2024 right where he left off in 2023 on a hot streak. Marte is hitting .287 with nine home runs, 25 RBI and a .333 OBP. Marte is hoping to make his first All-Star appearance since 2019.

Third Base: Alec Bohm (Philadelphia Phillies)
Philadelphia Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm is another one of the big reasons the Phillies are currently the best team in baseball. Bohm is fifth in the N.L. with a .329 average. He’s second in the league with 37 RBI and he’s fourth in the league with 57 hits. The 27-year-old is looking to make his first All-Star appearance this season.

Shortstop: Mookie Betts (Los Angeles Dodgers)
It’s wild how Mookie Betts could go from one of the best outfielders in baseball to the best shortstop in the National League, but here we are. Betts is fourth in the league with a .341 average and second in the league with 63 hits. He leads the league with 40 runs scored. He’s also added eight home runs and 29 RBI to go along with all those numbers. The 31-year-old is looking to make his eighth career All Star Game.

Outfield: Jurickson Profar (San Diego Padres), Teoscar Hernandez (Los Angeles Dodgers), Cody Bellinger (Chicago Cubs)
As amazing as my American League outfield selections were, the National League is kind of lackluster thus far this season when it comes to the outfield – you can blame some of it on reigning MVP Ronald Acuna Jr. having a bit of a slow start and the aforementioned Mookie Betts move to shortstop. San Diego Padres outfielder Jurickson Profar is hitting .325 with seven home runs and 30 RBI. The 31-year-old veteran is hoping to make the first All-Star Game of his 11-year career. Teoscar Hernandez’s .245 average is lower than I’d like to see from one of my All-Star selections but I can’t deny his power numbers with 11 home runs being third in the league and his 37 RBI are second. My final outfield selection goes to Chicago Cubs veteran Cody Bellinger, who is hitting .264 with seven home runs and 22 RBI.

Designated Hitter: Shohei Ohtani (Los Angeles Dodgers)
With apologies to Marcell Ozuna of the Atlanta Braves who is having a terrific season thus far, but this is a no-brainer to go with Shohei Ohtani in his first season with the Los Angeles Dodgers (hell, he’s going to win the fan vote anyway when it happens). Ohtani leads the N.L. with a .350 average (tied with William Contreras), he’s first in the league with 13 home runs, and he’s first in the league with 64 hits.

​We’re about 50 games into the Major League Baseball season, meaning it’s almost time for the league to unveil its All Star Game ballot.

Every year I like to pick the players I think should get the starting nod for the midsummer classic. I like to make my first selections in May and my final batch in June.

Here are the 10 players I think are currently the most deserving of the All Star starting spots in the American League… 

*Stats in this article are as of May 18.

Pitcher: Tarik Skubal (Detroit Tigers)
When the 2024 season began you probably wouldn’t have expected the midsummer classic front-runner on the bump to be a Detroit Tigers pitcher. What if I told you it was actually a coin flip between a Tigers pitcher and a Kansas City Royals pitcher (Seth Lugo)? Before the season some folks had Tigers ace Tarik Skubal as a dark horse Cy Young candidate and I just didn’t believe it. But here we are nearly 50 games into the season and Skubal is 6-0 (second in the league) with a 1.80 ERA, 66 strikeouts and a 0.78 WHIP. The 27-year-old southpaw is looking to become Detroit’s first All Star Game starting pitcher since Max Scherzer in 2013.

Catcher: Salvador Perez (Kansas City Royals)
Kansas City Royals veteran backstop Salvador Perez is pretty used to not being able to make other vacation plans during the middle of July being a perennial All-Star, either as the starter or reserve for the A.L. at catcher. Perez, now 34, is having another stellar season for K.C., hitting .333 (on pace to have a career-high and currently second in the league) with eight home runs and 36 RBI (third in the league). If he makes the A.L. roster it would be his ninth All-Star team, only five catchers in MLB history have appeared in more.

First Base: Josh Naylor (Cleveland Guardians)
Can you tell players are really showing out thus far in the American League Central Division? Cleveland Guardians first baseman Josh Naylor is currently on pace for career-highs in home runs and RBI with 12 (third in the league) and 34 (fifth in the league) already respectively. He’s hitting .256 with a .344 On-Base Percentage. The 26-year-old is looking to make his first All-Star team this summer.

Second Base: Marcus Semien (Texas Rangers)
There’s simply not a better second baseman in baseball right now that Marcus Semien of the Texas Rangers and it’s been that way for probably more than half a decade now. Semien, who shockingly has only made two previous All Star appearances, currently has nine home runs with 33 RBI, a .270 average and .319 OBP.

Third Baseman: Isaac Paredes (Tampa Bay Rays)
Isaac Paredes can play anywhere on the infield but has taken up home as the Tampa Bay Rays primary third baseman this season. He’s hitting .308 so far this season with eight home runs and 24 RBI. The 25-year-old broke out big time in 2023 with 31 homers and 98 RBI and is looking to make his first midsummer classic this season.

Shortstop: Gunnar Henderson (Baltimore Orioles)
Baltimore Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson is currently leading the major leagues with 14 home runs. He’s hitting .265 with a .345 OBP and 30 RBI for the O’s. The 23-year-old phenom is looking to make his first All Star game in his second full-time season in the bigs and is well on his way.

Outfield: Kyle Tucker (Houston Astros), Aaron Judge (New York Yankees), Juan Soto (New York Yankees)
The American League All Star outfield right now would surely put fear into the eyes of National League pitchers if it ends up looking like this in July. Houston Astros outfielder Kyle Tucker is currently second in the A.L. with 13 home runs, while New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge is third in the league with 12 and is currently on quite a burner. Meanwhile, Judge’s outfield partner in the Bronx, Juan Soto, is second in the A.L. with 37 RBI. Soto also leads the league with 57 hits and is top-five in hitting with a .317 average.

Designated Hitter: Giancarlo Stanton (New York Yankees)
So, there are currently only two hitters in the A.L. qualifying as full-time designated hitters and Giancarlo Stanton of the New York Yankees is the best. Stanton is fifth in the A.L. with 11 home runs. He’s hitting .258 (around his career average) with a .309 OBP and 26 RBI. Stanton is trying to make just his second All-Star appearance since joining the Yankees in 2018.

​NASCAR driver and 2012 champion Brad Keselowski won a thrilling race at Darlington Raceway in Darlington, S.C. on Sunday, May 12 to snap what was the second-longest winless streak in the sport among active drivers at 110 races.
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Keselowski was running in third place late in the race about a second behind his Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing teammate Chris Buescher and 23XL driver Tyler Reddick battling for the lead. When Reddick made an ill-fated dive bomb on Buescher to take the lead and the two made contact both drivers found themselves with cut tires and out of contention. Keselowski assumed the lead and never looked back. It was his first win with the team he now co-owns since taking over before the 2022 season.

The win, which clinches a spot in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs for Keselowski, was the 36th Cup Series win of his career placing him 24th all-time in NASCAR history.

Keselowski’s winless streak-snapping win and first as a co-owner of his team wasn’t just one of his career highlights for the 40-year-old driver but also his family. Keselowski has made a tradition of riding with an American flag in his car during his victory celebrations and on Monday of this week his oldest daughter Scarlett, 8, took the flag to her school so her classmates could say the daily Pledge of Allegiance facing it. 

Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker makes a career off of his foot. Well, last weekend while serving as a commencement speaker to the graduates of Benedictine College, a Catholic school in Atchison, Kan. the three-time Super Bowl champion firmly put that foot in his mouth with a series of truly dumbass comments on a myriad of topics including politics, religion, gay pride and women in the workforce. Among the comments drawing the most outrage was Butker urging women to forgo careers so that they could support their husbands in the household. It should be noted that Butker’s mother, Elizabeth Keller Butker, has worked in Emory University’s Department of Radiation Oncology in Atlanta, Ga. since 1988. She specializes in brachytherapy and Gamma Knife medical physics care. All of that means she’s probably too smart to have raised a dumbass kid who’s publicly calling out women in the workforce but alas here we are anyway.
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Butker and his wife, Isabelle, whom he praised for being a homemaker (calling it one of the most important titles of all while his mother is out there trying to cure cancer patients) are free to live any life they choose, as are we all. But telling a group of graduates that they should forget about whatever they just studied essentially to do a woman’s duty is the exact opposite of what you want to hear from a commencement speaker.

Why are so many schools, both big and small, so concerned with celebrity commencement speakers anyway? For the most part, if a celebrity didn’t graduate from the school they’re giving the speech at (Butker went to Georgia Tech) they shouldn’t be doing it.

As of Thursday, neither Benedictine College nor Kansas City Chiefs had given statements on Butker’s comments. His speech is still on the college’s YouTube page so it seems they condone it.

​New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson is on a burner right now. He’s having one of the hottest streaks we’ve ever seen in NBA Playoff history with four consecutive games of 40 or more points. That’s something only three other players in NBA history have accomplished: Jerry West (who holds the record with six straight), Michael Jordan (four) and Bernard King (four).

Brunson is amidst a streak of playoff scoring more dominant than anything we’ve ever seen from LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kobe Bryant, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, etc.
Oh, and by the way, the game preceding Brunson’s four-game 40-plus point-scoring streak was a 39-point performance against the Philadelphia 76ers on April 25. What a slacker he was that night!

The 76ers certainly didn’t have anything for Brunson in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs and the Indiana Pacers struggled against him in game one of the round two series that began on Monday (May 6).  

We’ll find out tonight in game two of the series if Brunson can take one step closer to West’s NBA record of six straight 40-plus point playoff games. He’s the hottest player in the NBA at the moment. 

We’ve seen some wild displays of poor sportsmanship and overall disrespectful behavior from NBA players before but the one-two combination of sheer stupidity that came from Milwaukee Bucks guard Patrick Beverley on Thursday, May 2 when his team was eliminated from the playoffs by the Indiana Pacers is one of the worst examples of such we’ve seen in a while.

​Late in the final game of the series, Beverley threw a basketball into the stands at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis not once but twice. The first toss into the crowd hit a female fan rather hard in the face with a ball that had some serious zip on it. The second malicious intent behind it.

The fans had been taunting Beverley, which is something I’ve never liked from sports fans, and we don’t know what was being said but athletes must know that the only reasonable action they can do in such situations is to have security at the arena eject the fans (which Beverley admitted was something asked to him before the incident he now calls “inexcusable.”

The NBA has seen some truly despicable interactions between players and fans before – almost always instigated by the fans – but it’s never a great look for the league when its athletes are doing things that could harm spectators.

The second thing Beverley did on Thursday that was idiotic and the one that I took more offense to was his refusal to answer the question of an ESPN reporter because she wasn’t subscribed to his podcast (does every NBA player have a podcast these days?). Not only did he refuse to answer the question but he physically moved away her tape recorder and wouldn’t let her in the media scrum.

Being an asshole to the press is never going to sit well with me but doing it because they don’t subscribe to your podcast is a particularly pissant reason for doing so.

Beverley showed himself to be a tool on Thursday night and it’s something the league should consider this offseason. No punishment has been announced for Beverley as yet but if he’s not suspended multiple games at the beginning of next season for these actions it will be too lax of a response from the league.