TERRY MOSHER
TOP OF THE TOWN – Ok, we have had the Curse of the Billy Goat and the Curse of the Bambino and now we might have the Curse of Kendall Graveman on the Seattle Mariners. To refresh, the Curse of the Billy Goat was place on the Chicago Cubs in 1945 when Billy Goat Tavern owner William Sianis was asked to leave Wrigley Field during game 4 of the World Series because his pet goat was bothering fans. Enraged, Sianis said, “Them cubs, they ain’t gonna win no more.” They didn’t during the lifetime of Sianis, who died in 1970. The Cubs Billy Goat Curse actually lasted 71 years until 2016 when the team beat the Dodgers in six games to win the NL pennant. The Curse of the Bambino was placed on Boston after it sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees after the 1919 season. The Curse, often used jokingly, lasted 86 years until 2004 when Boston finally won the World Series. The Graveman Curse may already be in force. Playing a woeful Texas Ranger team after Graveman was dealt to Houston the Mariners fell in dramatic fashion in the second and third games of the 3-game series when rookie Jonah Heim hit two walk-off home runs on back-to-back nights to send the suddenly reeling Mariners down to defeat. Now it’s on to Tampa Bay to play the powerful Rays where new Mariner close Diego Castillo used to reside before being traded for relief pitcher JT Chargois and minor-leaguer Austin Shenton, who has a lot of upside. Castillo is already under the spell of the curse. It was he who gave up one of Heim’s defeat driven home run in his first appearance in a Seattle uniform. … How do you try to compute a yearly-salary of $40,231,758 for working just five months? I got dizzy trying to work out the math, so I just settled for saying it’s just over a half-million per game for a 72-game season. This is Steph Curry’s just-signed five-year contract. I wish I was good enough to sign such a deal for one simple reason: I’d like to demand my salary after each game so I could go to my banks and turn the check in for cash. Don’t you wish, too, that you could walk into your favorite bank and asked for the nearest teller making $10 bucks an hour if they would cash it? Of course they wouldn’t, but it would make my day just to hear the response. By the way, I don’t mind players making as much as they can, but don’t you think these types of salaries are getting out of hand? I can remember when Mickey Mantle was given a $100,000 salary for one year of hitting home runs and people thought it was outrageous. Now you don’t hear a peep when salaries like Curry are signed. The world sure has changed. … I heard that the TV audience for the Tokyo Olympic Games is away down. I’m not surprised. We people have more things to do now than we did even five years ago for the 2016 games. I believe eventually cable networks like ESPN and Fox Sports will eventually reach saturation point in viewers and start backing off on these huge contracts they reach with not just the Games but with college conferences and pro sports. When those contracts start to shrink, and they will, you may start to see some of these pro teams go under. You depend on those huge contracts to feed the sports animal and at some point the viewers quit paying attention. Something has to break when that happens. Ok, enough. Stay safe.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.