TERRY MOSHER
TOP OF THE TOWN – There ought to be a law that the Seattle Mariners never have to play the Houston Astros. The Mariners are 2-23 against the Astros in the last two seasons, including 1-5 this year. In the last 19 games, the Mariners are 1-18. Their only win came July 26, a 7-6 victory. The Astros have outscored them 133-50 in those 19 games. That’s a lot of banging on the garbage can. The Mariners and Astros could save a lot of travel expense by just mailing in the result. … Athletes are striking back against Trump’s dismantling of the Post Office to suppress the vote, especially of browns and blacks. Led by LeBron James and Patrick Mahomes a large group of athletes have signed on to a letter urging “fans of every age, race and gender” to vote and said they will help them do so. Part of the letter says, “Join us and take your protest to the election and fight to keep our community from being silence.” The Los Angeles Dodgers are making Dodger Stadium a polling place for the November election and the group, which is titled “More than a Vote” is working to get many more arenas and sports facilities as voting places. … Daniel Cormier, one of the greatest UFC fighters, apparently has retired. Cormier lost the third fight to Stipe Miocic by decision Saturday and afterward said, “That will be it for me.” Miocic retained his heavyweight belt with the decision win…. Bremerton born Alex Smith returned to the football practice field for Washington for the first time since suffering a horrific right leg injury in November of 2018 that almost took his life. He developed a bacterial infection that doctors and family believed had to be stopped by amputation. Smith, though, would not give up. He refused to have his leg amputated and after numerous surgeries to clean out the spreading infection and 638 days of harrowing decisions and painful recovery, Smith is back on the field and likely will be the starter for Washington, which is as improbable as it seems. Talk about guts. Smith has all of that and plenty more. A lesser man would not have endured what he did. You got to applaud Smith for what he did and now we’ll see if he is all the way back. ,,, You know MLB is celebrating the 100th year of the Negro Leagues, but if you give it much thought you have to think why did we have the Negro Leagues? Why were they excluded from MLB? Whites built a caste system in America that didn’t allow for colored people to have a place at the regular table, and that forced black athletes to form their own league to play a game that is as American as bread and butter. The Negro Leagues should never have had to exist. But it took until 1947 when Jackie Robinson broke into MLB with the Dodgers that the color barrier was finally breached. Even then Jackie took a lot of bleep from players, including on his own team, and from fans all across America. But he kept his mouth shut and showed America that a black person could play the game pretty well too. It’s terrible what we did as a country to block blacks from many of the things whites took for granted. There is still a strong vein of racism that flows through America. A recent poll confirmed that, for me, when 65 percent of white men said they would vote for Trump, a racist and white supremist, among many other things. Ok, enough of this.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.