The NBA regular season is finally over. The Masters provided an epic ending for the ages.
And the Chicago White Sox are off to another slow start on the field and at the box office.
Here are three takeaways from a wild weekend of watching sports.
1. Big events like the Super Bowl and World Series have the ability to create lasting memories that will be replayed forever.
They remind us how lucky we were to witness athletic greatness as it happened.
But only one big event features the tinkly piano music of the Masters, whose theme song resonates with millions of fans and makes the annual golf tournament in Augusta, Ga., feel like “a tradition unlike any other,” as CBS announcer Jim Nantz has trademarked.
This year’s Masters was a classic — the age-old story of a legendary golfer battling himself and his nerves, with wild pendulum swings over the final nine holes and a sudden-death playoff as the sun went down and the birds chirped madly on the world’s best-known course.
Rory McIlroy’s roller-coaster win to complete the career Grand Slam on Sunday will go down as perhaps the greatest Masters of all time, and it was eerily similar to the Chicago Cubs’ memorable victory in Game 7 of the 2016 World Series.
How so? Let’s count the ways.
McIlroy, like the Cubs franchise, had become synonymous with imploding when the pressure was on. His meltdowns in majors were as much a part of his legend as the ball going through first baseman Leon Durham’s legs in Game 5 of the 1984 National League Championship Series or the foul ball that led to the eighth-inning collapse in Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS were a part of Cubs lore.
Most golf fans with no real allegiance were rooting for McIlroy to complete the Slam after more than a decade of failures at Augusta National, just as most impartial baseball fans rooted for the 2016 Cubs to beat Cleveland and end their 107-year championship drought.
Both McIlroy and the Cubs were well on their way to winning when disaster struck. McIlroy’s wedge shot that rolled into Rae’s Creek on No. 13 — leading to a double bogey that sent him from a clear path to victory into a tie with Justin Rose — was almost as shocking as Rajai Davis’ eighth-inning, game-tying home run off Cubs closer Aroldis Chapman, which sent Cubs Nation into widespread panic mode.
Chapman went off to cry after nearly blowing the World Series, while McIlroy could only churn inside and try to regroup. He rebounded from his self-created fall to beat Rose in a sudden-death playoff, just as the Cubs came back from Davis’ blow off Chapman to beat Cleveland in 10 innings.
Perhaps the biggest difference was that McIlroy had to regain his confidence by himself, while the Cubs had right fielder Jason Heyward on hand to deliver his inspirational rain-delay speech.
As with any great accomplishment, a little luck was necessary for both McIlroy and the Cubs. McIlroy’s second shot on No. 11 looked like it was about to roll into the water before settling on the bank with inches to spare.
“Look, I’ve rode my luck all week,” McIlroy told reporters of the lucky break. “With the things that I’ve had to endure over the last few years, I think I deserved it.”
Ditto the 2016 Cubs.
2. The NBA regular season ended Sunday, but if you totally ignored it, you still can watch the postseason knowing you haven’t missed a thing.
It long has been known that the 82-game NBA season, which began in late October, is too long — especially considering only 10 of the 30 teams are eliminated at the end. Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr recently told The Athletic he believes the season should be shortened to 65 games, citing the difficulty of “playing at a high level night after night after night.”
“We should be playing fewer games,” Kerr said. “Everyone knows that. But it’s a money issue. How many of the constituents are willing to take less money?”
Certainly not the players who are paid the same no matter how many games they miss for load management. And certainly not the owners who would have eight or nine fewer home games to create the revenue they need to pay players and add to their profits.
Maybe a nice compromise would be a 72-game schedule, which the NBA employed in 2020-21 because of the late start to the season after the COVID-interrupted 2019-20 season didn’t end until October. The 2020-21 regular season didn’t start until late December and ended in mid-May, with the NBA Finals not ending until July 20.
For those who don’t really get into basketball until the NFL season ends, the later start was perfect, and having the NBA playoffs run from mid-May to mid-July was a nice change of pace.
But the NBA is risk-averse, and Kerr knows his 65-game schedule idea wouldn’t fly.
“What I don’t have faith in is America’s willingness to cut back on a few profits here and there in the name of quality,” Kerr said. “I don’t think that’s in our nature in America.”
Kerr is definitely a man who understands America.
3. The White Sox might not draw a million fans this year, but they could with one minor change.
Sox Crawl Whiskey-Que on Saturday at Rate Field was sold out, and along with a hoodie jersey giveaway, it helped draw a nice crowd of 30,423 for the game against the Boston Red Sox. Brooks Baldwin even gave a shout-out to the Sox Crawl after delivering a walk-off hit in the ninth inning, saying the fans were energized. (Some would say “buzzed.”)
Fans who took advantage of the Sox’s special offer were treated to a pregame bar crawl that included whiskey tasting and BBQ pork samples along with a lower-level ticket to the game. Two more Sox Crawls are scheduled for June 7 and Sept. 20, but maybe the team should call an audible and just schedule Sox Crawls for the rest of the year while giving away complimentary tickets to anyone signing up for the crawl.
It’s looking like another long year on the South Side.
Might as well make it a little more interesting.
