Sports Round-Up: Tiger at The Open, Brewers Fans Embarrass Themselves, NFL Controversy That Won't Go Away

by Julian Spivey

Tiger Takes Sunday Lead & Molinari Plays Perfect Golf 
Man was it good to see Tiger Woods soar to the top of the leaderboard during the final round of The British Open at Carnoustie on Sunday morning. It felt like the old days, the glory days. It felt like he was going to come through and win his first major tournament in more than a decade. Then he double bogeyed the 11th hole and it all immediately seemed over with the perfect game Francesco Molinari, playing along with Tiger on Sunday, was playing. You just sensed that Molinari, even after only 11 holes, was going to par his way to victory and he pretty much did – with two birdies thrown in for good measure. Molinari is the hottest golfer on the planet right now winning three of his last six tournaments, with two runner-up positions thrown in the mix. It’s nice to see him at the top of his game as a 35-year old, after he and his brother Edoardo both came upon the scene around 2010 and seemed like they’d be the next big names in European golf without either really entering the upper-echelon. But, now it’s Francesco’s time and he will always have the honor of being Italy’s first major golf champion. 

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NFL Controversy That Won't Die
We are heading into the third NFL season in which it seems the biggest story of the season is yet again going to be the National Anthem and athletes protesting brutality against African-Americans, which has become one of the nation’s biggest debates and a hot topic for President Donald Trump. It’s a topic that the NFL should’ve squashed immediately in backing its player for having opinions and expressing them. But, instead the league cowered down to the President and its right-wing fans and made the whole ordeal a much bigger mess than it ever should’ve been. That mess became a major story again last week when the Miami Dolphins franchise announced plans to suspend any players protesting during the National Anthem for four games (one-fourth of the season). The NFL and the NFL Players Association quickly tabled any punishment when it comes to players protesting on the fields, which is where I hope the story ends. When it comes to an organization threatening to suspend players for one-fourth of the season for having opinions and showing them when the NFL has only suspended players who’ve physically or abused their spouses or girlfriends for lesser time you know the league is officially out of control. 

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Brewers Fans Embarrass Themselves 
During last week’s Major League Baseball All Star game the big story toward the end of the game wasn’t the close competition that saw an extra innings finish or the record-breaking number of home runs hit during the game, but rather some seven year old tweets dug up from the annals of Twitter from Milwaukee Brewers All Star reliever Josh Hader that exposed viewpoints of racism, homophobia and misogyny. They were the disturbing thoughts and bad jokes of a 17-year old high schooler at the time who forgot to scrub his idiocy before becoming a baseball superstar. Baseball didn’t exactly punish Hader in the way that I would’ve liked choosing not to suspend him, but rather make him go to sensitivity training. It was at least an understandable form of punishment with the sport not wanting to suspend an adult for mistakes made as a teen, though I will say that what most believe at 17 they likely still will at 24. The most disturbing part of the Hader story was when he made his second-half debut on Saturday night at his home ballpark in Milwaukee and received a standing ovation from a mostly white Brewers crowd. This is not a good look for Major League Baseball, it’s not a good look for the Brewers fan base and it’s not a good look for the city of Milwaukee. It makes it seem like the fans are condoning racism, homophobia and misogyny and that’s not something we need in baseball. 

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Tim Tebow Injury Keeps Mets From Publicity Stunt
I hate to wish injury on any athlete, but New York Mets Double-A minor league attraction Tim Tebow breaking his hamate bone in his right hand over the weekend and likely being out for the remainder of the season is at least somewhat good news for baseball traditionalists. If you’re a hardcore baseball fan like me, you want to see players make it to the major leagues on merit and not superstardom and celebrity gained somewhere other than on the baseball diamond. You want this because you know just how hard it is to make “The Show” and you’d hate to see someone truly deserving passed over for what amounts to a publicity stunt. That’s exactly what it seemed the Mets, well out of playoff contention, were going to do in September with minor league call-ups. It seemed set that Tebow would make his major league debut for nothing more than to drive late season ticket sales for a struggling baseball team. That would’ve been the Mets prerogative, but as someone who wants to see the game played the right way it just wouldn’t have sat right with me. Tebow’s injury takes away any chance of that happening. 

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NASCAR Has a 'Big 3' and Nobody Else Stands a Chance
It’s been quite the unusual NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Series with three drivers dominating the sport in a manner we haven’t seen in quite some time. Kevin Harvick (6 wins), Kyle Busch (5 wins) and Martin Truex Jr. (4 wins) have combined to win 15 of the series’ 20 races this season leaving many complaining about a lack of parity in the sport. I must admit I’d like to see some of the other superstars within NASCAR win a bit this season, but the longer this dominance by Harvick, Busch and Truex goes on the more impressive and interesting it gets. And, let’s be honest if you’re not a fan of one of these three drivers this season could seem incredibly boring (and unfortunately a good number of the races have been – but not as of late), but regardless it’s going to be a fun final few months of the NASCAR season to see just how many races these guys can win and watch the playoff battle between the three of them go down to the wire. 

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