Wednesday's List of 13: Mid-week musings…….

Wednesday's List of 13: Mid-week musings…….

13) Big week here in beautiful upstate New York; Tuesday was the first day of legalized sports betting at the Rivers Casino in Schenectady, which is 15.6 miles from Armadillo World HQ, according to MapQuest.

Will report back to you guys when I make my first visit to the new sportsbook, which will be this afternoon for some day baseball.

12) Would major league baseball ever go to a split-season system, where the season reboots at the halfway mark and everyone is 0-0, with first-half and second-half winners meeting in the playoffs?

This is one of those radical change ideas that I’m not necessarily against; it would discourage teams from giving up at this time of year and create renewed hope for teams that had a cruddy first half.

11) Last three weeks, winner on the PGA Tour was a first-time winner, but only two of the three guys got an invite to the British Open- the guy who won the 3M tournament in Minnesota didn’t get an invite and I’m wondering why?

10) Philadelphia 76ers signed Ben Simmons to a 5-year, $170M contract extension; hopefully he’ll take some of that money, buy a basketball, and practice shooting it this summer.

Simmons has a career 58.3% mark on the foul line; he is 0-17 in his career behind the arc. You make $34M a year, would be nice if you could at least make 70% on the foul line.

9) LSU’s new passing game coordinator in 28-year old Joe Brady, who comes to LSU from the Saints. Brady isn’t LSU’s offensive coordinator; Steve Ensminger has that job, but Brady was brought in to make the Tigers’ offense more diverse. We’ll see.

8) ESPN+ is going to have an all-access series featuring Kansas football which means that we’ll have a lot more Les Miles quotes to sift through, never a bad thing.

7) Baseball stuff:
— Cubs put C Willson Contreras (strained arch) on IL
— Cubs acquired C Martin Maldonado from KC for P Mike Montgomery.
— Giants put 3B Evan Longoria (foot) on the IL.
— Mets put P Zack Wheeler (shoulder) on IL, so much for trading him.
— Dodgers put IF/OF Chris Taylor (broken arm) on IL.
— Phillies’ OF Jay Bruce left Tuesday’s game (oblique).

6) The Madden video game has Eli Manning as the worst starting QB in the NFL; Aaron Rodgers is ranked #7, so we’re not 100% sure the Madden people know whats up. Rodgers played LY with a broken bone in his leg and a sprained MCL.

5) New York 8, Tampa Bay 3— Five of CC Sabathia’s 15 starts this year have come against the Rays, which is unusual. Sabathia was jawing with Avasail Garcia at one point and the benches emptied, but like 95% of such events in baseball, nothing happened.

4) Redskins’ QB Alex Smith broke his leg back in November; it is said to be a career-threatening injury. He finally had the brace removed Monday, on July 15, eight months later.

3) College basketball transfer portal:
— Cleveland State G Tyree Appleby bolts to Florida.

2) Angels pitcher Noe Ramirez drilled Houston OF Jake Marisnick in the first game Marisnick played against the Angels since he broke Angels’ C Jonathan Lucroy’s nose in a home plate collision over a week ago. Benches emptied, but nothing happened.

Years ago, the play at the plate wouldn’t even have been mentioned on Sports Center, other than Lucroy getting hurt, but it today’s softer society, it became a thing for a while.

1) In June, 1,899 vehicle break-ins were reported in San Francisco, or roughly 63 per day. Those are the ones that were reported. Just thought you’d like to know.