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Usa today Rockefeller Center tree, green tongue pot myth, deer at sea: News from around our 50 states

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Usa today Alabama

Auburn: Auburn University says its smartly-known golden eagle Nova, additionally called Battle Eagle VII, may per chance likely even be in the early levels of heart failure. The college made the announcement Tuesday in a news open. The 20-year-feeble male eagle for bigger than a decade soared above the gang at college football games. He was sidelined from the pregame tradition after a 2017 prognosis of cardiomyopathy, a chronic disease of the center. Dr. Seth Oster, college avian veterinarian for the college’s Southeastern Raptor Center, talked a pair of most modern exam indicated the eagle may per chance likely even be in the early levels of heart failure. Veterinarians are adjusting remedy dosages to pick out a mediate about at to treat the situation. Aurea, a 5-year-feeble female golden eagle, and Spirit, a 23-year-feeble female bald eagle, have made pregame flights this season.

Usa today Alaska

Ketchikan: Attorneys have filed a category-action lawsuit that seeks to reverse a most modern payment amplify in a neighborhood of verbalize-owned properties providing assisted residing care. Recordsdata organizations list the lawsuit filed in Ketchikan Superior Court docket asks a non-public to effort a preliminary and everlasting injunction in opposition to payment will increase at Pioneer Houses. The lawsuit names the verbalize of Alaska, Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, and Alaska Department of Successfully being and Social Products and companies officers as defendants. The Sept. 1 payment changes elevated the mark of a Pioneer Houses bed by between 40% and 140%. One in every of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit says the verbalize all straight away elevated charges, harming residents. An Alaska Department of Law first payment says the division needs to evaluate the criticism nonetheless normally would now not discuss about ongoing instances.

Usa today Arizona

Flagstaff: A proposal to rep an “ecologically friendly” perpetual resting verbalize on deepest lands in direction of the Coconino Nationwide Forest may per chance likely even now not be so restful for the 13 tribes that take into legend the nearby San Francisco Peaks sacred. Better Issue Forests, a San Francisco, California-essentially essentially based mostly firm, purchased the land from a Phoenix proprietor and announced plans to rep its third “memorial forest,” or cemetery, on the property northwest of Flagstaff. The corporate needs to verbalize cremated remains round a chosen tree on the parcel, which sits at an elevation of 8,400 toes and capabilities ponderosa and southwestern white pine, quaking aspens, and Douglas fir bushes, to boot to a meadow. The project, if it clears verbalize and county regulatory hurdles, may per chance likely likely be preserved as a conservation station. Nonetheless the 160-acre place lies in direction of the boundaries of land deemed eligible to be designated a “old cultural property” surrounding the San Francisco Peaks and the Kachina Peaks Barren predicament and, in the break, to be positioned on the Nationwide Register of Historic Places. An announcement from the Hopi Tribe called the concept a “total violation of our non secular and cultural beliefs.”

Usa today Arkansas

Cramped Rock: The city’s teachers are staging demonstrations over the verbalize’s stripping of their collective bargaining vitality and its ongoing adjust of the district. Nonetheless they’re offering few clues on whether or now not they’ll strike for the first time in decades. Teachers, oldsters and students held “drag-ins” around the 23,000-student district Wednesday, strolling into college constructions together earlier than classes started to picture their beef up for the union. They’re fragment of a chain of actions union leaders have deliberate after the verbalize Board of Education’s resolution to strip its collective bargaining vitality. The union’s contract with the district expired Thursday. The head of the union says it hasn’t dominated out a strike, which may per chance well likely likely be the first in the district since 1987. Arkansas has been as a lot as the ticket of Cramped Rock’s schools for merely about 5 years.

Usa today California

Riverside: Officers have quashed plans to create a modern city called Paradise Valley on the southern fringe of Joshua Tree Nationwide Park in the Southern California desolate tract. The Riverside County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to settle for its Planning Commission’s recommendation and deny the project with out continuance. The resolution is a victory for conservationists and residents who voiced issues about sprawl in the inland predicament east of Los Angeles. It’s a blow to GLC Enterprises, which had been seeking to get approval for Paradise Valley for 15 years. The developer envisioned a community with 8,500 properties and 1.3 million sq. toes of condo for industrial and civic makes enlighten of. Supporters whisper it can likely per chance have created jobs and $5 million in annual tax earnings.

Usa today Colorado

Denver: Proposition DD, which is succesful of legalize sports having a bet in the verbalize, has secured passage. The measure passed by about 1.4%, in step with unofficial results posted by the Secretary of Issue’s Place of work on Wednesday afternoon. That dissimilarity doesn’t descend in direction of the 0.5% margin of victory to feature off an computerized narrate, that technique correct sports having a bet will seemingly be allowed as rapidly as Also can, ought to serene the live result lengthen in the first payment count. Proposition DD would legalize sports having a bet in Colorado via established casinos and online via web sites operated by any of the 38 casinos currently under verbalize oversight. The verbalize would make a selection 10% of salvage proceeds from sports having a bet and exhaust most of its decrease – as a lot as $29 million yearly – on water projects in direction of Colorado.

Usa today Connecticut

Hartford: Slip-hailing company Lyft is offering powerful-needed free transportation in town to faded inmates via a modern partnership with town and a nonprofit criminal justice reform neighborhood. Louis Reed, nationwide organizer for the bipartisan neighborhood #decrease50, announced Wednesday that an initial installment of 60 to 80 codes free of payment Lyft rides is now on hand for distribution at town’s Welcome Center. Mayor Luke Bronin says transit bus routes are tiny, and the modern partnership will relief get folk to job interviews or health care appointments. Hartford is the first city to pick out fragment in this plot, nonetheless diversified cities and organizations around the nation are expected to enlighten, at the side of Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland and Contemporary York City, to boot to a pair of rural areas.

Usa today Delaware

Dover: Officers are making ready to send potable water to properties advance Dover Air Power Defective after deepest wells were stumbled on to have chemical contaminants exceeding federal health advisory levels. The Delaware Issue Recordsdata reports town’s utility committee voted Oct. 29 to waive an annexation requirement so the properties can get city water service. Issue officers announced in July that defense force officers had notified them about wells substandard with per- and polyfluoroalykyl substances. Such chemical compounds are stumbled on in diversified products, at the side of firefighting foam that has been used at defense force bases nationwide. City Manager Donna Mitchell says Dover needs the waiver in preparation of the contaminated coming forward and asking for water service relief, which she says it has yet to fabricate. The contaminated has been providing bottled water to affected properties.

Usa today District of Columbia

Washington: An ex-FBI agent is telling jurors that Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone quoted his hero Richard Nixon as Stone entreated an companion now not to contradict his non-public testimony to lawmakers. The quote was cited in a Stone textual pronounce detailed by faded agent Michelle Taylor at Stone’s trial. A Stone companion, radio host Randy Credico, was requested in 2017 to appear earlier than the House Intelligence Committee. That’s when Stone texted him: “ ‘Stonewall it, plead the fifth, the relaxation to assign the concept …’ Richard Nixon.” Stone is on trial in federal court in Washington on prices of lying to Congress and tampering with a behold. He was charged under particular counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Stone denies wrongdoing. Stone has prolonged admired Nixon and has a tattoo of the late president on his support.

Usa today Florida

Wauchula: A 33-year-feeble orangutan granted correct personhood by a non-public in Argentina is settling into her modern atmosphere at the Center for Massive Apes in central Florida. Patti Ragan, director of the center in Wauchula, says Sandra is “very sweet and inquisitive” and adjusting to her modern residence. She was born in Germany and spent 25 years at the Buenos Aires Zoo earlier than arriving in Florida on Tuesday. In 2015 Attain to a resolution Elena Liberatori dominated that Sandra is legally now not an animal nonetheless a non-human particular person with rights. She remained at the zoo, which closed in 2016, except leaving for the United States. On the center, Sandra joins 21 orangutans and 31 chimpanzees rescued or retired from circuses, stage reveals and the weird and wonderful pet alternate.

Usa today Georgia

Atlanta: For the first time in three decades, town is now not going to host a Peach Drop to ring in the modern year. The Atlanta Journal-Structure reports Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms broke the news Tuesday in direction of an interview with Majic 107.5/97.5’s afternoon host Ryan Cameron. Bottoms says officers are taking a ruin to reevaluate the place and the intention in which the tournament is deliberate. She says town now now not owns Underground Atlanta, which adds issues to hosting the tournament, which has at instances drawn 100,000 folk. The Peach Drop debuted in 1989 – a play off Contemporary York City’s Times Sq. ball descend. After a non-public developer purchased Underground Atlanta, town moved the Peach Drop to Woodruff Park for Contemporary Year’s 2017 nonetheless brought it support to Underground Atlanta last year.

Usa today Hawaii

Honolulu: A settlement has been reached over a deadly excessive-rise fireplace, even supposing the amounts to be paid by insurance protection companies to plaintiffs remains confidential. The Honolulu Basic particular person-Advertiser reports a settlement conference was concluded Tuesday regarding the July 2017 Marco Polo building fireplace that killed four folk. Officers whisper the fireplace at the 568-unit building was one of many worst in stylish Honolulu historic past, requiring the efforts of about 130 firefighters. A non-public has ordered defendants to get monetary disbursements out of an escrow legend by Jan. 15. The settlement looks to unravel loads of court cases filed over the fireplace that caused an estimated $107 million in hurt. Attorneys whisper they’re now not allowed to keep in touch about settlement amounts their customers are expected to receive.

Usa today Idaho

Boise: The verbalize granted a conditional waiver Thursday to the U.S. Department of Energy that may per chance likely even enable analysis quantities of spent nuclear gasoline into the verbalize after years of blocking off such shipments. The settlement announced by Gov. Brad Cramped and Attorney Fashioned Lawrence Wasden, each Republicans, technique the Idaho Nationwide Laboratory may per chance likely even receive about 100 kilos of spent gasoline for experiments as fragment of a U.S. system to develop nuclear vitality and carve support greenhouse gas emissions. The waiver requires the Energy Department to first indicate it will process 900,000 gallons of excessive-level radioactive liquid extinguish that sits above a broad aquifer that gives water to farms and cities. The Energy Department has spent some $600 million seeking to fabricate that, so some distance having failed nonetheless reporting correct progress earlier this year at its Built-in Wreck Medication Unit.

Usa today Illinois

Chicago: Advocacy groups at the side of the ACLU of Illinois have filed court cases in opposition to two county sheriff’s departments for alleged violations of the TRUST Act, which limits cooperation between native police and federal immigration authorities. The groups whisper it’s fragment of an effort announced Thursday to show screen law enforcement agencies for compliance of the 2017 that law prohibits native police from conserving a particular person on an immigration detainer except there’s a warrant signed by a non-public, among diversified things. The court cases narrate sheriff’s departments in Stephenson and Explore counties unlawfully detained loads of immigrants for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after minor traffic offenses. Republican faded Gov. Bruce Rauner signed the TRUST Act in 2017 with backing from law enforcement. Democrats widely supported the premise.

Usa today Indiana

Indianapolis: Regardless of warning indicators flashing this past summer season, Indiana economists whisper they manufacture now not query a recession in 2020, nonetheless the verbalize’s economy will proceed growing at a slower streak. A tight labor market, weakness in manufacturing and the continued alternate war with China are expected to make contributions to a slowdown in the verbalize’s economy. Indiana’s financial output is expected to grow at a streak of about 1.25% next year, in step with the most contemporary financial forecast released by the Kelley College of Industry at Indiana University. Per the forecast, Indiana’s 2020 economy will seemingly be anemic. There are present intellectual spots, such because the 50-year low in unemployment, more folk collaborating in the labor force and elevated wages. Nonetheless economists in the support of the Kelley College forecast talked about political dysfunction and international alternate friction have disrupted provide chains, causing industry and user self belief to erode.

Usa today Iowa

Cedar Falls: The University of Northern Iowa’s president says he’s forming a committee to address minority and diversified students’ allegations of systemic racism on the Cedar Falls campus. President Trace Nook took responsibility in a most modern letter to the college community for the college’s failure to adequately fulfill needs feature by an ad hoc student neighborhood and backed by the student govt. The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reports Nook’s action follows a social media advertising and marketing campaign of criticism by the student neighborhood, Racial and Ethnic Coalition. Among diversified things, the neighborhood posted video testimonials from minority students talking about issues they’ve had on campus, at the side of facing a racist professor and seeking to navigate college fluctuate policies.

Usa today Kansas

Topeka: Time is running out to originate construction on a modern coal-fired vitality plant earlier than its enable lapses. The wrestle over the plant has lasted bigger than a decade. By the time the Kansas Supreme Court docket cleared the technique for construction in 2017, a company eager on it called the potentialities it can likely likely be constructed “some distance-off.” Nonetheless the Kansas City Basic particular person and Wichita Eagle list that paperwork they obtained picture the utility spearheading the project told regulators “foremost pastime” remains in building the plant. Sunflower Electrical Energy Corp. requested for an 18-month extension of a key enable “to finalize preparations” for its construction. Issue regulators renewed the enable except March 2020 and warned they'd now not enable more time. Sunflower didn’t rule the relaxation in or out this week.

Usa today Kentucky

Frankfort: Issue parks are offering a discount on lodging to active-accountability defense force people and to veterans via March 31. An announcement from Kentucky Issue Parks says the USA Militia Good deal is on hand to those currently serving in the navy, retired people of the defense force, veterans, Nationwide Guard people and reservists. With the carve price, hotel rooms originate at $59.95 a evening, and one-bed room cottages originate at $79.95 a evening. The charges are correct at a majority of Kentucky’s 17 resort parks, nonetheless there’s a $5 upcharge at Barren River, Cumberland Falls, Kentucky Dam Village, Lake Barkley, Lake Cumberland and Natural Bridge. The discount is additionally on hand at John James Audubon Issue Park. Extra data is on hand online.

Usa today Louisiana

Contemporary Orleans: Five hundred seventy-one of many verbalize’s public schools, or about 44%, have “many times struggling groups of students” and are actually required to rep improvement plans. Louisiana’s Department of Education released efficiency data Wednesday as fragment of the verbalize’s compliance with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. Among the 571 schools are 271 labeled as wanting “total improvement,” for chronic low overall grades or terrible commencement charges. Three hundred diversified schools – at the side of some with excessive overall grades – must work to toughen efficiency among sub-groups of students, at the side of English language rookies, low-earnings students and those with disabilities. The division pointed to promising findings, at the side of more schools earning A and B grades.

Usa today Maine

Harrington: A lobsterman hauled in an weird and wonderful steal 5 miles off the flit – a stay deer. Ren Dorr says he was setting traps when he saw a young deer Monday morning. He says the deer had given up swimming and was being carried farther offshore. He and his crew hauled the 100-pound buck aboard. Having a wild animal in a confined condo may per chance likely even be anguish. Nonetheless Dorr tells the Bangor Day to day Recordsdata that the deer was so tuckered out that he “laid just correct down savor a dog.” He says it took a half of-hour to plot support to Harrington, where the deer was feature free. Dorr says that he has considered deer swimming earlier than nonetheless that this was diversified. He says that if he and his crew hadn’t intervened, the deer would were “a goner.”

Usa today Maryland

Baltimore: The different of holiday makers who visited the verbalize last year may per chance likely even have dropped relatively of, nonetheless a list says they spent extra cash than in 2017. The Financial Affect of Tourism in Maryland list was announced Wednesday at the annual Maryland Tourism and Shuttle Summit. The list says company spent bigger than $18 billion last year, up about 2.1% from the earlier year. Total visitation decreased from 42.5 million to 41.9 million in 2018, nonetheless the decrease was offset by will increase in visitor per-commute spending. That was driven by longer stays at more in-verbalize locations. The list says most of Maryland’s company got right here by car. Alternatively, the Thurgood Marshall Baltimore-Washington International Airport served a list 27.2 million passengers last year.

Usa today Massachusetts

Boston: The mayor says an effort to rename the sq. in a historically sad neighborhood to Nubian Sq. isn’t slow despite the failure of a citywide referendum. Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh talked about Wednesday that his verbalize of labor will seemingly be meeting with title-switch advocates to keep in touch about next steps. Walsh says that entails formally petitioning town’s Public Improvement Commission for the title switch. He says voters in the Roxbury neighborhood overwhelmingly approved the proposal to rename Dudley Sq.. Walsh’s verbalize of labor says 1,986 Roxbury residents voted in favor to 957 in opposition to. The nonbinding referendum failed citywide, with 46% in favor and 54% in opposition to. Supporters want to rename the industrial center after the usual African empire because Thomas Dudley played a key role in Massachusetts’ slave alternate in colonial instances.

Usa today Michigan

Corwith Township: The verbalize now owns a huge, prolonged-sought allotment of northern property boasting a lake, forests and rare species that’s in the fluctuate of the verbalize’s elk herd. The Michigan Department of Natural Property says it’s performed the $3.8 million defend shut of the Storey Lake property. The deal to have interplay roughly 2,000 acres in the north-central Decrease Peninsula took about two decades to wrangle. The land in Otsego and Cheboygan counties sits between diversified pieces of public acreage: the Pigeon River Country Issue Forest and a tract of verbalize-managed forest land. Officers whisper the property is commence for correct hunting, fishing, tenting, hiking and plant life and fauna viewing. The public will seemingly be invited to pick out part in putting in place an get right of entry to concept. The land once was in the fingers of an proprietor from Switzerland.

Usa today Minnesota

St. Paul: Gov. Tim Walz has requested U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to deny a catastrophe for 12 counties of northwestern Minnesota where farmers are having a elaborate harvest season. In his quiz Thursday, the governor talked about the unrelenting tainted weather this season has plot on high of challenges farmers were already facing from low commodity prices and alternate uncertainties. He says crops have fallen victim to flooding, disease and freezing temperatures. A secretarial catastrophe declaration would get emergency loans on hand to affected producers. The USDA normally requires that a county have a 30% loss in manufacturing of now not decrease than one gash. Walz notes that the soybean and sugarbeet harvests in northwestern Minnesota are running technique in the support of attributable to heavy rains, whereas an early freeze ended many of the potato harvest.

Usa today Mississippi

Taylor: The mayor has all straight away resigned after bigger than four decades relatively than labor. The Oxford Eagle reports James E. Hamilton sent his resignation to the Taylor Board of Aldermen this week. He additionally stepped down because the town’s planning administrator. No critical aspects or reasoning were equipped to the overall public, and the newspaper says its makes an strive to contact Hamilton were unsuccessful. Alderman Ellen Meacham says the aldermen unanimously voted to settle for every of Hamilton’s resignations, though she desires Hamilton may per chance likely even’ve finished the last two years of his present duration of time as mayor. The board on Tuesday discussed a diversified election to be held in early 2020. Crucial aspects aren’t finalized. Hamilton ran unopposed in essentially the most most modern election in 2017.

Usa today Missouri

Kansas City: A frigid weather draw had folk in the metro station attempting bigger than just correct a sweater this week – it additionally had them reaching for nostril plugs. The Nationwide Weather Provider speculated in a tweet that a frigid front that swept into the metro Wednesday evening carried farm odors with it and trapped them in the shallow fragment of the atmosphere. One particular person replied to the clarification announcing, “I believed my dogs tracked in poo from outside! I’m now not crazy.” Meteorologists later tweeted what they described as a excessive-resolution reverse trajectory model to picture the seemingly provide of the “questionable air quality.”

Usa today Montana

Helena: The Massive Divide Ski Put may per chance likely likely be the first ski station in the verbalize to commence for the modern season this Saturday. Aided by the early chilly and snow this descend, the crew has been making snow for a pair of weeks now. Owner Kevin Taylor tells the Self reliant File that the Nov. 9 opening will seemingly be its earliest ever to having a chairlift running. Taylor says the ski station opened Nov. 10 last year and Nov. 11 in 2017. Running on Saturday may per chance likely likely be the Sincere Excellent fortune Chairlift on the decrease mountain to boot to the yard towrope. Snowmaking continues on some additional runs, nonetheless for the reason that most modern chilly snap was so rapid, Taylor is unsure whether or now not diversified runs will commence this weekend or next.

Usa today Nebraska

Lincoln: Officers concept to diminish crew at one verbalize-drag residence for juvenile offenders whereas adding to the team at two diversified companies and products. The Department of Successfully being and Human Products and companies announced the changes Wednesday as fragment of a a lot bigger overhaul of its Formative years Rehabilitation and Medication Center draw. Department officers whisper they concept to carve support the team at the YRTC in Geneva effective Jan. 6, 2020, because that facility won’t be serving as many youths. Nonetheless they concept to hire additional employees at YRTC companies and products in Lincoln and Kearney. Department officers whisper crew individuals who lose their jobs may per chance likely have the different to enlighten for jobs at the diversified YRTC companies and products or in diversified areas in verbalize govt. They whisper they hope to steal employees whenever doable.

Usa today Nevada

Las Vegas: The Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Property’ resolution to pick out some distance flung from its web place a list a pair of sacred American Indian place is drawing criticism. A division first payment talked about the elimination resolution got right here at the quiz of the Issue Historic Preservation Place of work over issues it will also picture the place to vandalism or looting. Nonetheless Rupert Steele, chairman of the Utah-essentially essentially based mostly Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, whose tribe is among folk that take into legend the place sacred, talked about no one consulted the tribe regarding the resolution. The Goshute, Ely and Duckwater Shoshone tribes all take into legend the place, known because the swamp cedars, sacred and non-public the bushes are threatened by a proposal to pipe groundwater from northern and eastern Nevada to Las Vegas. “I may per chance likely per chance like that up there,” Steele talked about of the eradicated list. “That technique the guidelines may per chance likely even be free flowing to the total folk.”

Usa today Contemporary Hampshire

Plymouth: Plymouth Issue University has got a $48,000 grant to put in force a program to educate kids regarding the risks of e-cigarettes. The program known as “CATCH,” an acronym for Coordinated Technique to Child Successfully being. It entails lecture room lessons, come in direction of-led actions, and social and community beef as a lot as educate kids. By January 2020, students in the PSU Successfully being and Physical Education Teacher Certification program who're making ready to remain student educating or college health self-discipline experiences will receive practising. They'll put in force this plot in 35 center and excessive schools in direction of the verbalize in spring 2020. The grant is from the CVS Successfully being Foundation.

Usa today Contemporary Jersey

Atlantic City: The federal govt has dropped its objection to a pair of southern Contemporary Jersey towns the enlighten of sand from a nearby offshore place to replenish their seashores. The most modern action by U.S. Internal Secretary David Bernhardt ought to serene get ongoing beach widening and storm security projects more cost-effective. It additionally removes the necessity for an weird and wonderful proposal floated loads of months ago that would have let some towns shave sand off the end of a pair of of their bigger dunes and enlighten it to widen seashores. On Monday, Bernhardt wrote to Salvage. Jeff Van Drew, a Democrat who represents the affected station of the southern Contemporary Jersey flit, announcing the protection reversal. The prohibition “was growing pointless crimson tape that was having the reverse manufacture of its real intent,” Van Drew talked about in an announcement.

Usa today Contemporary Mexico

Roswell: A lawyer from this town smartly-known because the place of an alleged 1947 UFO smash says he's going to self-discipline President Donald Trump in early-voting Contemporary Hampshire. The Roswell Day to day File reports approved reliable Rick Kraft has filed the categories needed to appear on the ballotas a Republican candidate in the first-in-the-nation presidential predominant. Per the Contemporary Hampshire secretary of verbalize’s web place, Kraft filed his declaration of candidacy Tuesday. The 61-year-feeble Kraft says he made up our minds to drag after he and his foremost other visited the Contemporary Hampshire Issue House in Concord, Contemporary Hampshire, and realized how easy it is to get on the ballot. He called the streak “a bucket list-form ingredient.” Kraft says he would now not concept on coming into any diversified verbalize primaries or caucuses.

Usa today Contemporary York

Florida: A Norway shipshape that years ago was displayed on its proprietor’s espresso table will rapidly rise in a magnificent grander setting: the center of Rockefeller Center. Carol Schultz equipped the sapling for the 1959 Christmas season. After exhibiting it in her residence in the village of Florida, Contemporary York, she planted it in her front yard. In 2010, Schultz and her companion Richard O’Donnell went on Rockefeller Center’s web place and made the 14-ton tree’s narrate for stardom. Earlier this year, they realized it had been chosen. It was decrease Thursday and lifted by crane onto a flatbed truck. This will seemingly likely advance Saturday at Rockefeller Center, where this may per chance possibly likely even be hoisted and surrounded by scaffolding for the decoration process. The lighting fixtures ceremony is slated for Dec. 4.

Usa today North Carolina

Charlotte: Sixteen-year-feeble environmental activist Greta Thunberg says she plans to abet a youth-led climate rally in the Tar Heel Issue this week. Thunberg tweeted Wednesday that she will seemingly be a part of the strike Friday at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Executive Center. Thunberg won international attention for a speech at the United International locations Climate Action Summit in September. Recordsdata retail outlets list the narrate Friday is being organized by the student-led N.C. Climate Strike motion. An total lot of folk attended a rally the neighborhood hosted in September, the identical day hundreds of hundreds of folk around the enviornment skipped college and work to drag govt action on climate switch.

Usa today North Dakota

Bismarck: A descend survey indicates the mule deer population continues to recover in the western North Dakota Badlands thanks to yet one more correct year of fawn manufacturing. Mule deer in the predicament persisted three straight harsh winters ending in 2011 that resulted in list-low fawn manufacturing. The Bismarck Tribune reports biologists counted 2,218 mule deer in direction of the October survey, shut to last year’s 2,446. The ratios of 41 bucks per 100 does and 84 fawns per 100 does additionally held regular. Issue Wildlife Chief Jeb Williams says the real numbers are encouraging even in the occasion that they don’t signify an amplify. Hunting mule deer does was banned for four straight seasons starting in 2012 to help the population recover. North Dakota’s gun season for mule and white-tailed deer opens at noon Friday.

Usa today Ohio

Columbus: Gov. Mike DeWine has signed into law a measure repealing the verbalize’s gross sales tax on tampons and diversified female hygiene products. The Republican governor signed the measure Wednesday. It was integrated in yet one more invoice that gives a tax credit ranking to teachers who engage college gives. Democratic verbalize Salvage. Brigid Kelly, of Cincinnati, and Republican verbalize Salvage. Niraj Antani, of Miamisburg, cosponsored the real legislation repealing the so-called red tax. Most states serene tax tampons and diversified menstrual products, at the side of pads and cups. They’re normally categorized as “luxury objects” in preference to necessities that are now not taxed, equivalent to food or clinical gives. Ohio is among a pair of dozen states that have currently changed such policies.

Usa today Oklahoma

Tulsa: A Republican verbalize lawmaker has abandoned his effort to rename a stretch of Route 66 after President Donald Trump. Issue Sen. Nathan Dahm told the Tulsa World on Wednesday that he’s performed seeking to rename the 4-mile stretch of the iconic motorway in northeastern Oklahoma after Trump. The Oklahoma Route 66 Association and Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell each impulsively rejected naming sections of Route 66 after Trump or any diversified political resolve. Pinnell, who oversees Oklahoma’s advertising and marketing and branding, and others were working to connect the route of the faded U.S. 66 for tourism. Pinnell says a “uniform branding” will rapidly be rolled out. Issue Salvage. Ben Loring, who represents the district where the proposed stretch of motorway is located, says it will even have adversely affected tourism.

Usa today Oregon

Portland: The verbalize Department of Environmental Quality says smoky skies and stagnant air are expected to hang round in Oregon and southwest Washington for yet one more week. The Oregonian/OregonLive reports the agency in the muse issued an air quality advisory Monday nonetheless on Wednesday prolonged the warning. The agency now expects the air quality advisory to be in manufacture except now not decrease than Nov. 12. Stagnant air cases are trapping smoke and diversified contaminants advance the floor where folk breathe. A total lot of county and native health agencies have issued burning restrictions. DEQ requested folk to enlighten burn restrictions of their areas and defend some distance flung from pointless outside enlighten, critically those with lung or heart issues and young kids.

Usa today Pennsylvania

York: Police officers are alleging in some DUI instances that those that’ve currently smoked marijuana have green tongues. Law enforcement is even told to investigate cross-test a “doable green coating” in one in fact just correct practising program taught all over the enviornment. Police can narrate no scientific analysis to help up the premise. Yet, for decades, they’ve used the observation as one of loads of indicators to interpret doable motive and get arrests in criminal instances. An prognosis of larger than 1,300 DUI instances that reached the York County Court docket of Fashioned Pleas in 2018 stumbled on now not decrease than 28 that talked about phrases equivalent to “green coating,” “green movie” and “green tint.” Scott Harper, a defense approved reliable in West York, list it as “more or much less junk science.” He currently argued in a DUI case in York County that there’s “no evidence that a ‘green tongue’ is indicative of any particular stage of marijuana impairment (assuming it in fact is evidence of the relaxation at all).” The Nationwide Group for the Reform of Marijuana Laws was more blunt. “The science in the support of marijuana consumption turning your tongue green is ready as sound because the science in the support of the earth being flat or that lying makes your nostril grow,” Erik Altieri, govt director of NORML, talked about in an electronic mail.

Usa today Rhode Island

South Kingstown: Researchers whisper the verbalize’s rich, moist soil may per chance likely even get it a pacesetter in the manufacturing of saffron, a luxurious spice. The Windfall Journal reports University of Rhode Island researchers stumbled on a take a look at feature may per chance likely even yield 12 kilos of saffron per acre once a year – bigger than double the harvest in Iran, which produces 90% of the enviornment’s saffron. Researchers whisper the domestic attach apart a matter to for saffron is on the rise, with 35 heaps imported in 2016 and 50 heaps predicted by 2021. Saffron is popular in Center Japanese, Indian and diversified cuisines nonetheless has diversified makes enlighten of. Wholesale prices drag about $5,000 per pound. Buyers can pay $20 for a pair of threads of saffron and $95 for a quarter-ounce. University researchers whisper saffron is costly because it’s delicate to reap.

Usa today South Carolina

Reevesville: The ballotfor the mayoral whisk in this little town was blank Tuesday, leaving voters to jot down in whomever they wished. The Put up and Courier reports Paul Wimberly didn’t know he’d been reelected as Reevesville’s mayor except he spoke with a reporter the next morning. Wimberly has been mayor for 34 years nonetheless missed the election registration decrease-off date this year when Dorchester County was attach apart responsible of the whisk. The hopeful contenders on the City Council additionally missed the decrease-off date, that technique the whisk had no first payment candidates. Wimberly talked about he wasn’t too afraid, because the 1.6-sq.-mile town of about 196 folk is aware of his face and title. So he’s now help in the $300-per-year management role for the town, which depends totally on volunteer positions.

Usa today South Dakota

Pierre: Gov. Kristi Noem says the verbalize is now bigger than 99% compliant with federal Precise ID necessities ahead of next year’s decrease-off date. Noem talked about Thursday that early work by the verbalize’s driver licensing program to meet the decrease-off date technique that every body eligible South Dakotans, with solely a pair of exceptions, have already got been issued a Precise ID-compliant license or card. She says the October 2020 decrease-off date will form now not have any manufacture on those with a Precise ID license or card issued in South Dakota. The federal Precise ID Act sets minimal security standards for licenses. A Precise ID-compliant driver’s license will seemingly be needed to board domestic flights starting Oct. 1, 2020. South Dakota began issuing Precise ID-compliant licenses and identification playing cards Dec. 31, 2009.

Usa today Tennessee

Knoxville: Functions are actually commence for a modern scholarship at the University of Tennessee that guarantees definite students free tuition. A college news open says the UT Promise scholarship is equipped to qualifying verbalize residents attending UT’s campuses in Knoxville, Chattanooga, Martin and Memphis. It requires that students total eight volunteer service hours a semester and make a selection part in a mentoring program. To be eligible, present, fleshy-time UT students will must have a family family earnings under $50,000 yearly and qualify for the Tennessee HOPE Scholarship. Scholarship students will seemingly be paired with a mentor in descend 2020. To enlighten for the scholarship, present students must total the scholarship application and the 2020-21 Free Utility for Federal Student Support by Feb. 1. They additionally must total eight hours of community service by July 1.

Usa today Texas

Huntsville: An inmate who was a member of a white supremacist gang was executed Wednesday evening for strangling a girl merely about 20 years ago over fears she would alert police about his drug operation. Justen Hall, 38, got a lethal injection at the verbalize penitentiary in Huntsville for the October 2002 slaying of Melanie Billhartz. Prosecutors talked about Hall killed Billhartz, 29, with an extension wire from his drug condo in El Paso and then buried her physique in the desolate tract. His attorneys had requested to quit the execution, alleging he was now not competent to be executed and had a historic past of mental illness. Nonetheless a non-public in El Paso last month denied the quiz. Hall was the 19th inmate attach apart to loss of life this year in the U.S. and the eighth in Texas. Three more executions are scheduled in Texas this year.

Usa today Utah

Salt Lake City: A lawmaker who was aiming to be the first Latina mayor of Salt Lake City has conceded the whisk to a city councilwoman who rose to prominence combating air pollution. Democratic Sen. Luz Escamilla talked about in an announcement Wednesday that she conceded in a phone name to fellow Democrat Erin Mendenhall and wished her the “easiest of success.” Mendenhall took a commanding early lead with merely about 59% of the vote Tuesday, nonetheless Escamilla vowed to defend in the whisk except the count was total. Escamilla says that changed after she got modern critical aspects on the different of uncounted mail-in ballots. She says the figures were decrease than expected, making it very now not actually for her to overtake Mendenhall. Mendenhall will change one-duration of time Mayor Jackie Biskupski, who made up our minds now not to drag all over again.

Usa today Vermont

Burlington: Famend Vermont ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s is accused of misleading its customers regarding the create of milk and cream used in its products. Environmental advocate and faded gubernatorial candidate James Ehlers says father or mother company Unilever is making the most of pretend advertising and marketing, in step with a most modern lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court docket in Burlington. The federal criticism filed Oct. 29 alleges that Unilever violated its customers’ belief by announcing Ben & Jerry’s products were made with milk and cream sourced from “satisfied cows” on Vermont dairy farms that make a selection part in its humane “Caring Dairy” program. Handiest a minority of the cream and milk used in the ice cream comes from a pair of of these farms, the criticism alleges. “The last milk and cream originates from factory-fashion, mass-manufacturing dairy operations, precisely what buyers who make a selection Ben & Jerry’s products would savor to defend some distance flung from,” the criticism says.

Usa today Virginia

Abingdon: Voters have defeated a proposal that would have relocated their historic courthouse’s capabilities to a vacant Kmart building in a strip mall. The Bristol Herald Courier reports every precinct in Washington County voted in opposition to the proposal in a referendum this week. The streak was proposed because county officers and judges had expressed effort over security points and a lack of condo and parking. Nonetheless the premise had drawn derision at earlier public hearings. County Administrator Jason Berry says the live result's a “sure message from the oldsters.” He says a committee discovering out the negate will now revisit at 2016 engineering watch and likely take into legend modern alternatives.

Usa today Washington

Olympia: Issue auditors whisper an investigation revealed elevators and escalators are now not yearly inspected as required by verbalize law. KING-TV reports the Department of Labor and Industries failed to stare bigger than half of of the verbalize’s 18,000 conveyances in 2018. Investigators whisper hundreds of conveyances failed to have inspections for 2 or three years, and three were now not inspected in over 10 years. Department officers whisper the backlog was attributable to a building affirm that generated more elevators and escalators wanting inspections. Officers whisper the verbalize additionally struggled to steal inspectors, nonetheless additional funding has allowed the division to pay larger salaries and add additional inspectors. Officers whisper deepest insurance protection policies require conveyance inspections a pair of instances a year. The verbalize division solely serves as a evaluate and steadiness.

Usa today West Virginia

Daniels: An American Heritage Girls troop has helped to lift funds for its mentor’s most cancers remedy. The Register-Herald reports troop people Kate Hontz, Rebekah Stephens and Callie Bethel held a fundraiser last Saturday to help pay for Rachel Quesenberry’s chemotherapy treatments. Callie told the newspaper that the trio “just correct wished to fabricate the relaxation we are succesful of also” to help with Quesenberry’s clinical prices. The 33-year-feeble Quesenberry was recognized with breast most cancers in January and has since passed via chemical and surgical treatments that require her to dash back and forth between Huntington and Daniels. The newspaper says Quesenberry has had IV transfusions that require her to pick out additional chemotherapy remedy for five years. The newspaper says all proceeds from the tournament will dash straight away to Quesenberry, as will any vendor costs.

Usa today Wisconsin

Madison: Contemporary data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison reveals students at the verbalize’s flagship campus are getting out sooner than ever, in mild of mounting nationwide issues and conversations regarding the rising mark of college. College students who graduated from UW-Madison with a bachelor’s stage in the 2018-19 college year did so in a median of fine under four calendar years – 3.96 years, to be loyal – in step with data from the college’s Place of work of Academic Planning and Institutional Study. It’s the first time since the college started monitoring moderate time to stage four decades ago that the amount has been so low. The frequent, calculated in fleshy calendar years (now not academic years), technique students are serene spending a diminutive bigger than the eight-semester now not new to most bachelor’s stage programs.

Usa today Wyoming

Cheyenne: An duration in-between legislative panel has rejected a proposal that would amplify the verbalize tax on alcohol to fund substance abuse remedy programs. The proposed invoice equipped by Republican verbalize Sen. Charlie Scott, of Casper, was voted down 7-6 on Wednesday by the Joint Committee on Labor, Successfully being and Social Products and companies. Proponents of the invoice famed that Wyoming’s excessive suicide payment indicates the persevering with substance issues facing the verbalize and that substance abuse programs in the verbalize had considered sizable funding cuts in most modern years. Alternatively, opponents contended that the tax amplify was unfair and pointless because present revenues were satisfactory to address the substance abuse programs.

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

Read or Piece this myth: https://www.usatoday.com/myth/news/50-states/2019/11/08/rockefeller-center-tree-green-tongue-pot-epic-deer-sea-news-round-states/40568795/

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biofunmy · 5 years ago

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Astros Beat Yankees as Bullpen Battle Ends With One Swing

HOUSTON — Carlos Correa stopped halfway to home plate as his Houston Astros teammates bounced around in delight. As J.A. Happ and the rest of the Yankees trudged off the field after Game 2 of the American League Championship Series, Correa tossed his helmet like a basketball into the circle of his delirious Astros and charged into the celebration.

After 11 innings of taut baseball between the two best teams in the American League, the Astros defeated the Yankees, 3-2, as Sunday night turned to Monday to even their best-of-seven series at a game apiece. Correa’s hit exposed the underbelly of the Yankees’ bullpen.

When James Paxton’s command faltered early in Sunday’s game, Yankees Manager Aaron Boone decided not to play with fire. It didn’t matter that the Yankees trailed by only one run at the time, or that there was one out in the third inning. Boone wanted the strength of his team’s pitching staff, the bullpen, to take control of the game.

After the Astros tied the score against one stout Yankees reliever and outlasted the others, they pounced on Happ, a starter during the regular season. Happ escaped a jam he inherited in the 10th inning, but the first pitch he threw to Correa in the bottom of the 11th inning was blasted over the right-field fence. It was the Astros’ first hit since the fifth inning, but it ended the game.

The series now shifts to Yankee Stadium for Game 3 on Tuesday afternoon. Gerrit Cole, in the midst of a remarkable run of success, will take the mound for the Astros, while Luis Severino, making only his fifth start of the year because of injuries, will counter for the Yankees. The Astros have not lost a game started by Cole since July 12.

Before Sunday’s game even started, the Yankees were dealt an all-too-common blow during this injury-ridden year. Left fielder Giancarlo Stanton, who missed most of the regular season with a litany of injuries but returned a month ago, was dropped from the lineup with a right quadriceps strain. Stanton sustained the injury beating out an infield hit in the second inning of Game 1. He continued to play and later hit a home run, and didn’t report any issues until after the game.

Boone said Stanton had a magnetic resonance imaging examination and was evaluated by the team’s doctors. Whether Stanton would need to be replaced on the A.L.C.S. roster was still an unknown; the Yankees said they hoped Monday’s day off would give Stanton some time to rest and then be re-evaluated. Cameron Maybin, one of the many fill-ins who kept the Yankees afloat this season amid a wave of injuries, started instead in left field on Sunday.

Even without Stanton, the Yankees had plenty of firepower for their battle against the Astros’ Justin Verlander, one of the best pitchers in baseball. The Yankees countered with Paxton, whose second-half turnaround was sparked by increasing the usage of his curveball. That pitch would be essential against an Astros offense that was the best in the major leagues at making contact during the regular season, one known for its ability to clobber fastballs.

Pitch selection mattered less when Paxton’s command faltered. The Astros took a 1-0 lead in the second inning when Alex Bregman smacked a leadoff single and he scored on a double to left by Correa.

In the third inning, Paxton again fell behind in counts and needed his fastball more. With one out, he coughed up singles to Michael Brantley and Jose Altuve on fastballs. Trailing by 1-0 and wary of falling farther behind against Verlander, who had started strong, Boone pulled him.

With no game on Monday and 10 relievers at his disposal, Boone was asking his bullpen to get 20 outs. They got even more.

It helped that Judge soon gave the Yankees a 2-1 lead. D.J. LeMahieu had drawn a leadoff walk in the fourth inning before Judge, the next batter, took advantage of a momentary lapse in Verlander’s command. Judge fouled back a 95-mile-per-hour fastball over the plate. He then hammered the next pitch, a slider to the same spot, over the center-field fence for a go-ahead two-run homer.

As the game progressed, Boone’s strategy of leaning on his bullpen appeared to be working until Adam Ottavino entered the game. Despite pitching well this season, Ottavino has been shaky lately. Five of the 10 batters he had faced this postseason entering Sunday had reached base. That continued in Game 2.

After Chad Green delivered two scoreless innings on 26 pitches, Ottavino entered in the fifth inning to face the top of the Astros’ lineup, the type of assignment he has drawn all year. But the first pitch he threw was a poor slider over the heart of the plate that George Springer blasted to left field for a homer that tied the score at 2-2.

The rest of the game was a tense affair between the two best teams in the A.L. Players hit balls hard into the air that died at the warning track. A potentially fruitful scoring chance for the Yankees in the sixth inning fizzled when Altuve, Houston’s second baseman, booted a ground ball but Correa, the shortstop, smartly raced over to recover it. The Yankees third-base coach, Phil Nevin, waved LeMahieu home from second base but Correa’s throw beat him by 20 feet.

Verlander survived his fading command long enough to get two outs in the seventh inning and departed after 109 pitches. Like Boone, Astros Manager A.J. Hinch then deployed his bullpens to neutralize the Yankees’ lineup. For about two hours, neither team mustered anything: Brett Gardner’s sixth-inning single, in fact, stood as the only hit by either team

But the Yankees couldn’t push a run across, and Correa won the game in the bottom of the inning.

Benjamin Hoffman tracked the game for The Times. Read on to follow it as it happened.

11th Inning: The Astros End It

After two quick outs, Edwin Encarnacion walked for the Yankees, leading Astros Manager A.J. Hinch to pull Joe Smith for Ryan Pressly. Brett Gardner, who had the game’s previous hit (in the top of the sixth) got another one, singling to right, and Hinch proceeded to replace Pressly with Josh James. That brought up Gary Sanchez with two on and two out, and the slugging catcher struck out looking in a fairly epic 10-pitch at-bat. Sanchez argued loudly with the call on a ball that appeared to be low and outside.

Carlos Correa then won the game on the first pitch of the 11th inning with a home run.

David Waldstein: Updating the situation earlier, with an injured person in Houston’s dugout, the Astros released a statement saying that it was a paramedic supervisor who was hit by a foul ball off the bat of Michael Brantley in the fifth inning. He was taken to a hospital and is in stable condition, the team said.

10th Inning: Lots of Pitchers, No Runs

Aaron Hicks made his postseason debut by pinch-hitting for Cameron Maybin. He proceeded to ground out to first against the reliever Joe Smith. Didi Gregorius popped out in foul territory, with Alex Bregman making the catch after a bit of a run, and D.J. LeMahieu hit a chopper back to Smith to end the half-inning.

With Aroldis Chapman having thrown 25 pitches in the ninth, Aaron Boone replaced him with C.C. Sabathia to start the 10th. The veteran starter is helping serve as a left-handed specialist in this series after having been left off the division series roster. He retired Michael Brantley on a grounder to second.

Sabathia was then replaced by Jonathan Loaisiga who walked Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman.

With the left-handed Yordan Alvarez due up, Aaron Boone replaced Loaisiga with J.A. Happ, and the starting pitcher struck out the rookie. Happ then fell behind, 3-0, to Yuli Gurriel, but retired him on a fly ball to left to end the threat.

There has not been a hit in this game since Brett Gardner’s infield single in the top of the sixth, which resulted in a runner being thrown out at home.

David Waldstein: Sabathia pitched in relief in Game 5 of the 2011 American League division series against the Detroit Tigers. He went one and one-third innings and gave up a run on two hits in the middle of that game, which the Tigers won, 3-2, at Yankee Stadium. Max Scherzer also pitched in relief in that game for Detroit.

9th Inning: We’re Headed to Extra Innings

Roberto Osuna did his part in the top half of the inning. He got Brett Gardner to ground out to first, struck out Gary Sanchez and then got Gio Urshela to fly out to shallow center.

Aroldis Chapman was then summoned for the Yankees for the bottom half of the inning. He struck out Carlos Correa and Robinson Chirinos, but walked Aledmys Diaz, who had come in to pinch-hit for Kyle Tucker. That brought up George Springer, who struck out on a 100-mile-an-hour fastball to end the inning.

David Waldstein: In 32 regular season games against the Yankees, most of them while he pitched for the Toronto Blue Jays, Roberto Osuna has only allowed 3 earned runs in 34 innings, for a 0.79 E.R.A.

8th Inning: Bullpens Thriving

There was not a lot to show for the eighth inning.

Will Harris struck out D.J. LeMahieu to start the inning but after he walked Aaron Judge, A.J. Hinch came out to the mound to make a change. He delighted stat-heads everywhere by going straight to his best reliever, Roberto Osuna, in a high-leverage situation. And Osuna delivered, retiring Gleyber Torres on a fly ball to right and striking out Edwin Encarnacion with a 97-mile-an-hour fastball.

Yankees reliever Zack Britton came out for the bottom half of the inning and immediately got Jose Altuve to ground out to second. He walked Alex Bregman but recovered to strike out Yordan Alvarez, who showed some impressive strength by reducing his bat to splinters as he slammed it to the ground after the at-bat. Yuli Gurriel then lined out to center to end the inning.

David Waldstein: Alvarez’s frustration is starting to bubble over. Alvarez hit 27 home runs during the regular season, and his longest stretch without a home run was eight games. But including the postseason, the rookie has not homered in 12 games. When he struck out flailing at a Zack Britton breaking ball that was way out of the strike zone in the eighth, he slammed down his bat, which broke, and Alvarez snapped it in two as he walked back to the dugout.

7th Inning: Verlander’s Day Is Done

The Yankees finally got rid of Justin Verlander, but the game remains knotted, 2-2.

Verlander started the inning by striking out Gary Sanchez. He needed only one pitch to dispatch Gio Urshela, who flied out to center, but then he walked Cameron Maybin, pushing his pitch count for the night to 109. He did not get to 110, as A.J. Hinch replaced him with Will Harris, who is tough on lefties, to face Didi Gregorius. The move worked, as Harris struck out Gregorius to end the inning.

Tommy Kahnle, who had already recorded four outs, was back out to start the seventh inning. He struck out Kyle Tucker, with the rookie flailing fairly haplessly at a changeup. George Springer hit a towering pop-up that D.J. LeMahieu handled easily at first, and Kahnle got out of the inning when Michael Brantley grounded out to second.

Springer limped into the clubhouse after his at-bat. The extent to which the center fielder was injured was not immediately clear. He took his position in center to start the eighth inning.

6th Inning: Carlos Correa Saves a Run

There wasn’t any scoring in the sixth, but that doesn’t mean the inning wasn’t interesting.

The Yankees made Justin Verlander throw a lot of pitches through five innings, and in the sixth it briefly felt as if that might bear fruit. D.J. LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres singled on either side of an Aaron Judge flyout to right, putting runners on first and second for Edwin Encarnacion with one out. The big right-handed batter, who typically thrives with runners on base, flied out to center.

From there things got a little weird. Brett Gardner hit the ball sharply to Jose Altuve at second, who was unable to field the ball cleanly, and as it shot out of his glove to his right, LeMahieu rounded third and tried to score. Carlos Correa crossed over the field from shortstop, picked the loose ball up and threw home, easily nailing LeMahieu at the plate for the third out.

In the bottom half of the inning, Tommy Kahnle got some serious defensive help as well, with Gio Urshela climbing the ladder at third base to make a leaping grab of a hard liner by Yuli Gurriel that seemed destined for extra bases. Correa then hit a 400-foot out to center, possibly robbed by the dimensions of Minute Maid Park. Kahnle then ended the inning by getting Robinson Chirinos to fly out to right.

5th Inning: George Springer Ties Game

A questionable pitching change by Aaron Boone has this game tied after five innings.

After Justin Verlander pitched a quiet top half of the inning, Chad Green started the bottom half by striking out the rookie Kyle Tucker, who had come in as a pinch-hitter for Jake Marisnick. That made Green perfect through six batters, but with George Springer coming up, Boone brought in Adam Ottavino in hopes that the veteran’s wicked slider could neutralize Houston’s slugger.

It did not work. Springer homered to left-center field on the first pitch Ottavino threw — a slider.

After Springer’s homer, there was a brief delay in the game when a foul ball off the bat of Michael Brantley struck a member of the security staff in Houston’s dugout. Brantley, who looked stricken after the incident, proceeded to strike out but reached first when Gary Sanchez could not corral the wild pitch in the dirt.

With Brantley running on the pitch on the first pitch of the next at-bat, Jose Altuve hit a sharp grounder to Didi Gregorius’s right that the shortstop was able to knock down but was unable to make any sort of play on, putting runners at first and second for Alex Bregman, with the crowd exploding with “M.V.P.!” chants. Ottavino struck out Bregman, but then was pulled in favor of Tommy Kahnle, who struck out Yordan Alvarez to end the inning.

David Waldstein: Michael Brantley hit a hard foul ball into the Astros dugout and it hit someone, apparently a security guard. Several of the Astros players, including Brantley, were visibly shaken by it and A.J. Hinch had to come out and reassure Brantley as the guard was attended to by the Astros’ medical staff. Eventually, the guard was able to walk out of the dugout, escorted by one of the trainers.

Brantley still appeared to be shaken while he was on second base and during a pitching change he was called over to the Astros dugout, where Gerrit Cole came out and chatted to him briefly. Whatever Cole told Brantley — hopefully it was that the guard will be fine — it seemed to cheer Brantley up a bit because he patted Cole on the back and jogged back to second base.

4th Inning: Judge’s Homer Gives Yankees the Lead

Things had looked dire for the Yankees through three innings, but they are now leading, 2-1, after four.

They finally got their first base runner off Justin Verlander when D.J. LeMahieu walked to start the top half of the fourth and Aaron Judge made Verlander pay for that mistake by blasting a slider over the center-field fence for a 423-foot home run. It was Judge’s first home run of the postseason.

Verlander settled down after the homer. He got Gleyber Torres to fly out to right and then struck out both Edwin Encarnacion and Brett Gardner to end the half-inning.

Staked to a lead, Chad Green was back for more work in the fourth and got through things quickly, retiring Yuli Gurriel on a liner to center, striking out Carlos Correa and getting Robinson Chirinos to line out to left.

David Waldstein: So much for Verlander’s slider being good. He left one up and over the plate for the Judge homer. Verlander has given up 70 earned runs this season, including the postseason, and 39 have come on home runs (36 in the regular season).

The Astros have had seven base runners and scored only one run through three innings. The Yankees have had two and both scored. They will need to do more damage when they have the chances.

3rd Inning: Yankees Go to the Bullpen Early

With Justin Verlander dealing and the Yankees already in a hole, Manager Aaron Boone went to a reliever with just one out in the third inning, meaning this will be a long night for the Yankees’ bullpen.

It’s hard to blame Boone for feeling desperate, as Verlander has yet to allow a base runner. In the top half of the inning, he retired Gio Urshela on a fly ball to right, struck out Cameron Maybin on three pitches, and got Didi Gregorius to fly out to right. He’s up to four strikeouts and has seemed even more dominant than that.

James Paxton, on the other hand, was good, but not quite good enough. He started the bottom of the third by striking out George Springer but then allowed a bloop single to right-center by Michael Brantley. With relievers already warming up in the bullpen, Paxton allowed a sharp liner to right from Jose Altuve and with that his day was done.

Chad Green came on in relief and while Alex Bregman smoked another ball to the outfield, this one ended up in the glove of Cameron Maybin, who appeared to be struggling with the glare of the lights at Minute Maid Park. He then ended the inning by getting Yordan Alvarez to pop out to short.

David Waldstein: Justin Verlander looks completely different than the pitcher who was rocked in Game 4 of the division series. Verlander was pitching on short rest in that game and said he did not have command of his slider. But he looks locked in and effective tonight, and the slider is sharp.

2nd Inning: Astros Take the Lead

The Astros got on the scoreboard first when Carlos Correa doubled on a grounder that shot through the infield, making it 1-0 Houston. But James Paxton stranded a pair of runners who had been threatening to make things worse.

Justin Verlander had made things look exceedingly easy in the top-half of the inning; he has needed only 28 pitches to erase all six batters he’s faced. Edwin Edwin Encarnacion appeared to pop out before it was determined that the ball ricocheted off a girder and then came back into play, making it a dead ball. Given a second life, he struck out instead. Brett Gardner was frozen for strike three on a vicious slider and Gary Sanchez flied out to shallow center.

Leading off the bottom half of the inning, Alex Bregman hit an absolute rocket that came off his bat at 107 miles per hour on its way to the wall — so fast that the Houston third baseman managed only a single. Paxton walked Houston’s power-hitting phenom, Yordan Alvarez, putting runners on first and second, which turned to first and third when Yuli Gurriel lined out to right.

That brought up Correa, who smoked a grounder past Gio Urshela at third that rolled all the way to the wall for a double, scoring Bregman for the 26th postseason R.B.I. of the shortstop’s career (a club record). Paxton struck out Robinson Chirinos and got out of the inning when he struck out Jake Marisnick.

David Waldstein: Some interesting numbers on the history of Game 2: Since the league championship series went to the best-of-seven format in 1985, only 3 of 30 teams have come back from 0-2 deficits in games to win the series: The last was the Boston Red Sox, who erased a 0-3 deficit against the Yankees in 2004. In1985 the Kansas City Royals did it against the Toronto Blue Jays and the same year the St. Louis Cardinals did it against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

But according to Major League Baseball, teams that have won Game 2, regardless of the outcome in Game 1, have gone on to advance to the World Series 19 of the last 21 times, and 28 out of 34 times over all, or 82 percent.

1st Inning: No Action as of Yet

It was an exceptionally quiet first inning.

Justin Verlander made quick work of the Yankees in the top half of the inning. The first batter he faced, D.J. LeMahieu, lined the second pitch of the game right into the glove of Carlos Correa, and his next three pitches all found their way past Aaron Judge for a strikeout. By comparison he labored in a four-pitch at-bat to Gleyber Torres in which he fell behind, 2-0, but recovered to get the red-hot Torres to fly out to center.

James Paxton responded by opening the bottom half of the inning by walking the ice-cold George Springer. He made up for his mistake by inducing a 4-6-3 double-play from Michael Brantley. Paxton then ran the count full against Jose Altuve but got out of the inning when the former M.V.P. lined out to short.

Maybin Replaces Stanton in Yankees’ Lineup

Cameron Maybin will start in left in place of Giancarlo Stanton in Game 2.

According to James Wagner of The Times: “Giancarlo Stanton injured his quad running down the line on his infield hit but was O.K. enough to play further into the game, per Aaron Boone. He received an MRI and a strain was revealed. Boone hopes Stanton will return this series.”

James said Boone told reporters that Stanton was available off the bench or in emergency situations, but given Stanton’s injury it is more likely the Yankees will not use him.

Keys to the Game

Justin Verlander is an intimidating presence on the mound and is easily on the short list for the best pitcher in the majors over the last four seasons alongside Max Scherzer, Jacob deGrom and Chris Sale. His lone weakness is the long ball; Verlander has allowed 121 home runs over those four years, compared with 94 for Scherzer, 86 for Sale and 72 for deGrom. That weakness could seem glaring against a Yankees lineup that hit 306 home runs this season — just one fewer than the Twins, who set a major league record — and added three more in Game 1.

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frowncod73-blog · 6 years ago

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Eagles locker room clean-out day: Updates on Carson Wentz, Nick Foles, Brandon Brooks, and more

With the Philadelphia Eagles being eliminated from the 2019 NFL playoffs on Sunday evening, today was locker room clean-out day at the NovaCare Complex. It was a somber day as some players leave the Eagles’ locker room for the last time. There were a number of newsworthy tidbits from a number of players speaking on Monday, so here’s a roundup.

CARSON WENTZ

No. 11 spoke for the first time since news of his back fracture injury emerged after the Eagles’ Week 14 game.

It was encouraging to hear that the injury isn’t expected to be a long-term issue.

Former NFL team doctor David Chao weighed in on this:

Getting Wentz healthy (and keeping him that way) is obviously critical to the future of this team’s success. It sounds like he knows he has some doubters to prove wrong.

Q: With the level of success that Nick had, does it put more pressure on you?

WENTZ: It could, without a doubt. You look at that and you say it could put more pressure. You could say coming into the season there was more pressure. But I do everything I can to block that stuff out. I think right now, going forward, my focus is on getting my body right and to play this game freely the way I did back last year before the injury. Cut it loose and get rid of all that pressure and anxiety, and whatever it may be. Just play the game freely and that’s where I’m going to get to.

The feeling here is that some have gotten way too down on Wentz. I think people easily forget just how good he was in 2017. Let’s see Wentz have a full offseason to get healthy and work on his game. There’s reason for optimism when it comes to his 2019 outlook.

Nick Foles got better over time. Why can’t Carson?

Speaking of the Super Bowl MVP ...

NICK FOLES

Based on everything he’s said following the Eagles’ loss, it sure doesn’t sound like Foles will be back in Philly next season.

Nick Foles said he’ll always love Philly. Well, Nick, Philly will always love you, too.

BRANDON BROOKS

It really sucks that Brooks suffered an injury so late in the 2018 season that it could impact his 2019 outlook. Hopefully Brooks’ recovery timeline will allow him to be ready for the start of next season. The Eagles need their Pro Bowl right guard in the lineup.

BRANDON GRAHAM

I’m going to be so sad if the Eagles don’t find a way to keep my fellow BLG. He’s always such a happy guy who brings so much fun and positivity to the locker room. Not to mention he’s hell of a player who made the biggest play in Eagles history by strip-sacking Tom Brady in last year’s Super Bowl.

The good news is that it sounds like Graham, who is going to be a free agent, has a lot of interest in coming back to Philly. We’ll see if the feeling is mutual.

JASON KELCE

Over the weekend, conflicting reports emerged regarding Kelce potentially retiring before the 2019 season. Speaking after Sunday’s game, Kelce said he hasn’t made a decision quite yet. He sure didn’t slam the door shut on the possibility of calling it a career.

For the Eagles’ sake, hopefully Kelce isn’t leaving the game.

FLETCHER COX

Cox got banged up in the Eagles’ loss but he gutted it out as best as he could.

CHRIS LONG

Long, who turns 34 years old in March, is still under contract for the 2019 season. The veteran pass rusher gave some weight to retiring last year, however, so it possible he calls it a career. If that’s the case, the Eagles would save $5.3 million in cap space with only $300,000 in dead money. For what it’s worth, Long seems undecided about his future.

DARREN SPROLES

Earlier this month, ESPN reported Sproles told the Eagles he wants to play another season. Sproles turns 36 in June but he showed he still has some gas left in the tank. Sproles is set to be a free agent so the Eagles will have to sign him to a new contract. I’d guess we’ll see him back.

ZACH ERTZ

Ertz, Brooks, and Cox are the Eagles’ three 2019 Pro Bowl selections. Brooks definitely isn’t playing in the game and I’m guessing Cox isn’t either given that he’s in a walking boot right now. Ertz is the only player who might play.

MALCOLM JENKINS

As previously noted, made it through the entire regular season and playoffs without missing a single defensive snap. He also played 157 special teams snaps. Warrior.

NIGEL BRADHAM

Add Bradham to the long list of players who got hurt in New Orleans.

SIDNEY JONES

The 2019 offseason is a big one for Jones. After only playing in 10 out of 37 possible games over two years, he needs to prove he can get healthy. Jones is only 22 years old so it’s way too early to give upon him. But it’s time for him to step up.

It’ll be interesting to see how Jones fits into next year’s secondary with Rasul Douglas, Avonte Maddox, and Cre’Von LeBlanc all playing well down the stretch. Jim Schwartz favorite Jalen Mills will still be around and it’s not impossible free agent Ronald Darby could be retained.

GOLDEN TATE

I don’t think we’ll be seeing Tate return to the Eagles in 2019. It feels like he’ll get more money on the market than what the Eagles will offer.

DOUG PEDERSON

One of my favorite takeaways from Monday’s media session:

The Eagles don’t have the cap space to be super active in free agency but the allure of Pederson could potentially give the Eagles an edge when it comes to shopping for bargain bin guys.

Emotional intelligence!

THANKING THE FANS

The Eagles put out this video of players sending a message to the fans.

Source: https://www.bleedinggreennation.com/2019/1/14/18182899/eagles-locker-room-clean-out-day-updates-carson-wentz-nick-foles-brandon-brooks-darren-sproles-long

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jessicakehoe · 6 years ago

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From the FASHION Archives: The Uncanny Prescience of Yves Saint Laurent From the Winter 1982 Issue

Since its launch in 1977, FASHION magazine has been giving Canadian readers in-depth reports on the industry’s most influential figures and expert takes on the worlds of fashion, beauty and style. In this series, we explore the depths of our archive to bring you some of the best fashion features we’ve ever published. This story, originally titled “The World of YSL” by David Livingstone, was originally published in FASHION’s Winter 1982 issue.

Yves Saint Laurent hates fashion and loves Proust. He has said so more than once and is in this way special and fresh. He is also serious, awfully so. He dresses bodies, but what he counts as important is the mind, and he himself has one that is delicate, a blessing and a bother. He is strong too, however, or else would not be so successful. His annual income is estimated to be in the neighbourhood of $4 million. He does not, he says, work to make money. Many others are depending on him. He’s got an apartment in Paris, another in New York, a castle in Normandy and a villa in Marrakesh. He can afford expensive habits – his furniture, they say, could go into a museum – but he struggles for more profound satisfaction and quiet. He only wants to make good clothes and endures celebrity as if he were sentenced to it. But like a sentence from his adored Proust, his career goes on and on.

All the records agree that his beginning was one for the books. Christian Dior died in October 1957. In November, Yves Saint Laurent, an assistant designer, was named the chief. On Thursday. January 30, 1958, he presented his first collection. The main silhouette was flared from narrow shoulders to a wide hem and was called the Trapeze. The press and buyers, types that are distinguished by hard eyes and mouths and that don’t go for the display of unrehearsed emotion, could not contain themselves. They cheered. They shed tears! On Friday, you could read all about it in The New York Times. The front page.

Just 21 years old, Saint Laurent fell into fame everlasting. Fuss still attends his every move. In Paris last January he revived shantung. Fabric salesmen in Toronto started pushing shantung. A bellwether for the fashion industry. Saint Laurent is also a subject of general interest. He throws a party and it’s news. Last January, he celebrated the twentieth anniversary of his own couture house with a do at the Lido. The lavish affair, featuring trained animal acts, Paloma Picasso, Ukrainian dancers and Diana Vreeland became a “people” item in Newsweek. In April, his fall collection of ready-to-wear was hailed by Women’s Wear Daily as “Timeless and masterful.” Earlier this year, Joan Rivers joked to a Tonight Show audience, “If Yves Saint Laurent says it’s boobs in the back, it’s boobs in the back.” And what she said was funny because it was coarse, but not because it was entirely inconceivable.

Recurrently one of the primary influences on what earthlings will be wearing next season, Saint Laurent has been responsible for so many trends that Women’s Wear once dubbed him “Monsieur First.” He has popularized pea jackets, safari jackets, smoking jackets, blazers, pant suits, boots and see-through blouses. He didn’t necessarily invent these things – Vogue in 1943 tried to talk its readers into pea jackets and André Courrèges is credited with the first pant suit – but in fashion, to quote from popular song, “It ain’t what you do, it’s the time you do it,” and Saint Laurent always seemed to know when. If he is not with the times, he is ahead of the times, and the times catch up. In the late ‘60s, he persisted with pants to the point where restaurants had to let them in. In 1971, he based a collection on the ‘40s. A few years later the word all over Paris was “retro.”

More recently, Saint Laurent has come to stand for the two operative principles of current high fashion: good sense by day and wonderland by night. In 1974, he told 7, “What will be more and more important is to be able to create, through a style, clothing that won’t go out of style…” thus articulating a concept generally known as investment dressing and expressed to perfection in his classically tailored glen plaid suit that costs a strictly contemporary $1,300. In 1976, triggering an outbreak of after-dark fantaisie, he presented a fall couture collection that was unabashedly unrealistic, a money-to-burn extravaganza of voluminous brocade blouses and taffeta skirts described by a sociologist in New York magazine as “an advertisement that you don’t have to get in a taxi or on the subway.”

In fact, the street has played an important part in shaping Saint Laurent’s approach to fashion. While these “rich peasant” costumes may have seemed to uphold the aristocratic authority of couture, they were called by some, “rich hippie,” and were regarded to be but a borrowing from the layered ethnic look favored by the spaced-out young women that one used to see selling candles on the boulevard. From the days of Rose Bertin, “minister of fashion” to Marie Antoinette, the function of couture had been to provide affluent and mature women of the world with the pleasure of painstakingly crafted luxury to be worn as a sign, not of being with-it, but above it. But in the ‘60s, fashion went all democratic. Youth and the street became important, and Saint Laurent championed ready-to-wear as more relevant than snootily out-of-it haute couture. Having established himself as a couturier judged to be one of the greats, right up there with Balenciaga and Chanel, he opened a ready-to-wear outlet in 1966, the first Rive Gauche boutique of which there are now more than 120 dotting the globe. He did not do the first ready-to-wear collection (Pierre Cardin did that in 1959) but he altered the course of fashion history by making ready-to-wear the main depository of his creative ideas. He broke with the tradition of using couture collections as a laboratory for experiment and introduced his innovations in his off-the-rack lines. In 1971, he told WWD: “I prefer my look to be in my Rive Gauche collections rather than in the couture four months later….La mode … [is] what you see in the street, what women buy and wear, what is copied. It’s ready-to-wear.”

It’s ironic that contact with the outside world should have figured so prominently in the imagination of one whose growing up was marked by isolation. Yves Saint Laurent was born on August 1, 1936, in Algeria, into a French civilization. His mother, a snappy dresser, actively inspired his early interest in clothes. His father, an insurance agent, passively did not discourage it. He had two sisters whom he would amuse by making costumes for their dolls and staging theatrical entertainments complete with a stage, props and sets that he designed himself. As a teenager, seeking advice from Michel de Brunhoff, director of French Vogue, Saint Laurent still considered a career in theatre as a distinct possibility. De Brunhoff encouraged him to attend fashion school in Paris. He also passed some of Saint Laurent’s sketches on to Christian Dior. In 1953, Dior hired Saint Laurent as an assistant.

Yves Saint Laurent was a bony, bespectacled bundle of nerves who left the impression that he never laughed. However, Dior, struck by the young man’s talent more than his timidity, saw in him a natural successor and once confided to his right-hand person, “…[W]hatever happens to me I want Yves to take over.” At the time of Dior’s death in 1957, the House of Dior was the largest dressmaking operation in Paris and his heir was naturally bound to win a lot of attention. Beyond that, Saint Laurent’s first collection was a sensation. One of the Trapeze dresses was sold a record-breaking 147 times. Ingenuously full like a little girl’s smock, the Trapeze signalled the arrival of youth. In 1960, in his fourth collection for the dead giant’s establishment, Saint Laurent shortened skirts to the knee and introduced “beat” themes such as turtlenecks and motorcycle jackets. But for the sedate clientele, this was altogether too freaky. The collection bombed. Suddenly, Saint Laurent, who up until then had been kept from obligatory military service thanks to his powerful employers’ interventions with the French government, was drafted.

September 14, 1960: “St. Laurent of Dior is in the Army Now.” September 19: “Saint-Laurent in Hospital.” November 11: “Dior Designer Out of Army.” The headlines in The New York Times unfolded with a speed that would have been comical had they not represented a sorry episode about which Saint Laurent was still having nightmares more than 15 years later. While his military career was brief, there had been sufficient time for Marc Bohan to have been named chief designer at the House of Dior. Having recuperated from his nervous breakdown, Saint Laurent returned to Paris in 1961 and sued Dior for $120,000. He eventually settled for less, and in the meantime announced the opening of his own couture house. Supported by a business partner, Pierre Bergé, and backed by an American investor, he showed the first collection in January 1962, and there have been bravos ever since.

Today Yves Saint Laurent is a complicated empire. In addition to the couture and ready-to-wear divisions, there are more than 200 licensing arrangements by which his name is attached to a variety of merchandise including jeans, children’s wear, swimwear and so on. It’s a multi-tentacled business, a reminder that if the French make beautiful clothes, they also make beautiful office supplies and have a talent for refined bureaucracy. In North America, a key figure in the Yves Saint Laurent empire is Didier Grumbach, who occupies the position of president of Saint Laurent Rive Gauche-U.S. Related to the Mendès family, famous French manufacturers, who have made Saint Laurent��s ready-to-wear since its inception, he is also president of Paris Collections, the marketing and distribution arm of Rive Gauche. Seated in his New York office, decorated to the nines by the celebrated Andrée Putman, he displays the single-mindedness of an organization man. His sense of pertinent is well-defined, logical and precise. His conversation is full of “That’s another story,” “That’s an old story,” and “I don’t think that is important to your story.” He boasts effusively that Saint Laurent Rive Gauche is “an international confederation of retailers” and speaks of the importance of exclusivity and prestige. “In most of the cases when a name is strongly licensed, the desire of the woman to wear the clothes fades. You don’t hear of any woman dressed by Pierre Cardin.” A close-mouthed guardian of the Yves Saint Laurent legend, he seems determined not to be revealing. He has practically no dealings with Saint Laurent himself, about whom his remarks are confined to little more than “Any creative person is inquiet.” As for Bergé, with whom he works closely and who is often in New York, he says, “Well, Pierre Bergé is a Scorpio.”

Following this arcane clue, I ask someone who knows about such things to describe a Scorpio. The immediate response is “Powerful. They go after what they want.” The description seems a perfect match for Bergé, president of Yves Saint Laurent, and as People magazine put it, Saint Laurent’s “main man.” While Saint Laurent has a reputation for being shy and withdrawn, Bergé has a reputation for being mouthy and fierce. A staunch defender of the designer’s genius, he once told WWD, “What I do is sell enthusiasm, about something I believe in and admire.”

Saint Laurent has a knack for inspiring loyalty. “I devote my life and body to Yves Saint Laurent,” says Krystyne Griffin, president of retail at Hazelton Lanes and president of Saint Laurent Rive Gauche Canada. Tall and formidable, she is a multilinguist who gives instructions to her secretary in French and is apt to make the press feel they are working for her. She is leggy and quick on her feet. In 1980, she hopped on a plane to Paris when she heard that Creeds would no longer be carrying Saint Laurent and came back with the Canadian franchise. Although she oversees operation of the Rive Gauche boutique at the Lanes and another in Montréal, her most public incarnation is as a publicist. When it comes to promotion, she has a touch that is more like a talent. If an invitation arrives bearing lovely calligraphy, chances are that Griffin has been at work organizing an event such as the launch of Kouros, Yves Saint Laurent’s fragrance for men, or the introduction of his cosmetic line, which is available in North America only at Little Lanes or Hazelton Lanes.

Although he posed naked as a jaybird for advertisements of his first men’s fragrance, Saint Laurent himself has increasingly refrained from personally promoting. And more generally his photographs show him to be one of serious mien. Most that have been published would go nicely on a dust jacket. So far he has turned to literature once. In 1967, La Vilaine Lulu was published. A storybook that also included his drawings, it described the adventures of a pyromaniacal, sadistic little girl. At the launch party, held at New Jimmy’s, a hot Paris nightclub of the day, Saint Laurent warned that Lulu should not be analyzed for psychological meaning, although it seems safe to take her as a sign of what he considers droll. He does however have plans to publish a book that is autobiographical. In 1973, in Interview, he told Bianca Jagger, “I would very much like to write a book…. A very, very beautiful book that would be a summation of everything I love… . “And in 1977 when novelist Anthony Burgess profiled him for The New York Times Magazine he reported having stolen a glance at Saint Laurent’s manuscript. Said Burgess: “I was pleased with the intricacy of sentence construction, the love of rare words, the hints of a mental complexity not usually associated with the dress designer.”

Unlike Charles Frederick Worth, father of haute couture, who affected a velvet beret and the floppy neck scarf that were the sartorial trappings of late nineteenth-century artists, Saint Laurent has not made a habit of playing the artiste manqué. Rather, in 1970 when Helen Lawrenson interviewed him for Esquire, he told her: “I detest courtiers who confuse their work with art. Courtier, haute couture, mode – all these terms are passé. La mode est démodée.”

Such outspokenness seemed to brand Saint Laurent as a ‘60s radical. And, again in 1970, he told WWD: “Hippie is more than a way of dressing, it’s a spirit which fills young people. I don’t know any young people who are not hippies in their spirit. This is what it is all about. When the revolution comes, it will come from the young people.” Throughout the ‘70s, by contrast, Saint Laurent came more and more to stand for the established order. Although The New York Times proclaimed his 1976 collection as “revolutionary” (on the front page, even), The National Village Voice’s headline was less than enthusiastic: “The Yves St. Laurent Bombshell is a Dud.” Following the $250,000 New York party to launch Opium, Saint Laurent’s most recent scent for women, New Times, another countercultural journal, ran a story that mocked the extravagance as decadent.

Over the years, Saint Laurent has dissociated himself from the present and more and more has sought his inspiration from days gone by. In 1974, he told WWD, “I’d rather look to the beauty of the past than the uncertainty of the future.” As designers such as Issey Miyake, Gianfranco Ferre and Ronaldus Shamask have been exploring progressive architectural forms, Saint Laurent has done hommages to Picasso, Proust, the Ballet Russe, Charles Stuart and Shakespeare. For his more practical day wear, he has adapted looks from his own past. The long lean collarless tunics he did for last spring, for example, were an update of the rajah line he showed in 1962.

Most designers, of course, do not last long enough to make this kind of self-reference possible. And while bombs and cancers every day make it more difficult and less desirable to contemplate tomorrow, how lucky is Saint Laurent to have memories rich enough to be nourishing, strong enough to suffice.

The post From the FASHION Archives: The Uncanny Prescience of Yves Saint Laurent From the Winter 1982 Issue appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

From the FASHION Archives: The Uncanny Prescience of Yves Saint Laurent From the Winter 1982 Issue published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/

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365footballorg-blog · 7 years ago

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Position-by-position breakdown: New York City FC vs. Atlanta United

USA Today Sports Images

June 6, 201811:24AM EDT

Ahead of Saturday’s clash between Atlanta United and New York City FC, MLSsoccer.com breaks down the matchup between the top two teams in the East position-by-position. (12:30 pm ET; TV & streaming info).

GOALKEEPERS:

New York City FC

This is a tough choice and it might come as a shock to pick Sean Johnson over the internationally-experienced Brad Guzan but the NYCFC ‘keeper has come into his own since joining the Cityzens. Johnson’s two big flaws have always been his propensity to make the big mistake and his inconsistency with the ball at his feet. While those issues still flare up from time to time, overall he’s improved in those two areas over the last 18 months.

Guzan has been steady since joining the Five Stripes, but he rarely comes up with the spectacular save and doesn’t possess the athleticism Johnson displays regularly.

DEFENDERS:

Atlanta United

NYCFC have been fluid formationally in recent weeks, but for this exercise we are going to place Alex Ring in the midfield instead of defense. Sebastien Ibeagha has claimed the starting role in front of Maxime Chanot for now and Ronald Matarrita is preparing for the World Cup, as Patrick Vieira turned to Ben Sweat in the second half against Orlando City on Saturday.

For Atlanta, Michael Parkhurst has been a rock in Tata Martino’s back three while Leandro Gonzalez Pirez has rebounded from a horrific start to the season. The jury is still out on Franco Escobar, who has recently claimed the starting role next to them, but the team’s 1.22 expected goals against per game is good for the second-lowest rate in the league.

Given the changes NYCFC have made in recent weeks and the important absence of Matarrita, the Five Stripes get the nod.

MIDFIELDERS:

Atlanta United

Yangel Herrera’s absence is a big one, despite the young Venezuelan’s subpar form to start the season. Ebenezer Ofori has been serviceable taking his spot, but doesn’t provide the gamebreaking ability that Herrera showed at times in 2017. Maxi Moralez has been one of the best players at his position this season. Ring hasn’t been at his 2017 level, but the Finnish international has adapted to Patrick Vieira’s tactical changes smoothly.

We’re counting Julian Gressel and Mikey Ambrose (or Chris McCann) as midfielders for this exercise, and mostly in practice. The 2017 Rookie of the Year has been special at his new right wingback position, tallying four assists and contributing countless times on the attacking half of the field. Jeff Larentowicz has been his usual steady self and Darlington Nagbe’s ability to connect the team from back to front has been essential.

What gives Atlanta the edge is Miguel Almiron. The Paraguayan international has controlled almost every match he has played in 2018 and is one of the frontrunners for MVP.

New York City FC

Assuming Patrick Vieira decides to start Jesus Medina and Ismael Tajouri-Shradi alongside David Villa, NYCFC have one of the most productive forward trios in the league. Nothing more needs to be said about the Spanish legend, who has eight more goals this season, and Tajouri-Shradi has been the most efficient finisher in the league this season. Medina has struggled a bit, having just one goal and no assists in his last eight games, after a hot start.

Josef Martinez took a three-goal lead in the Golden Boot race after his hat trick against the Union, but he has actually been inefficient with his finishing this season. His 12 goals are 2.22 less than he would be expected to score on average based on the quality of his chances (.79 of the 2.22 comes from a PK miss). Four of his 12 goals come via the penalty spot. Having said all that, his movement, speed and power possibly make him the most difficult matchup in the league.

Next to him Ezequiel Barco has flashed in moments and is a creative hub for an extremely dangerous attack. But he hasn’t put up much in the way of box score stats (3g, 0a) and is still adjusting to the league.

I might raise a few eyebrows picking the NYCFC trio, but until Tajouri-Shradi’s form drops off, that’s who I’m going with.

New York City FC

Atlanta United

Hoo boy.

One coached one of the top 2-3 clubs in the world, Argentina, and won multiple titles in South American leagues. The other is one of the all-time great players at his position and has helped turn a club into one of the best teams in MLS after a disastrous expansion season.

Tata Martino needs to be given credit for realizing the 4-2-3-1 tactical setup he used in 2017 wasn’t going to work with this group. His switch to a 3-man backline has spurred Atlanta to the top of the table.

Patrick Vieira built a team that values possession, but they have also been naive in some of the most crucial moments of his tenure. They have changed up their pressing schemes a bit this year, and Vieira has been more willing to change his formation, but their 4-0 loss at the hands of the Red Bulls earlier this season still sticks in the back of my mind.

Series:

Topics:

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investmart007 · 7 years ago

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WASHINGTON | Talk about political football: No Eagles at the White House

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/M8N4iz

WASHINGTON | Talk about political football: No Eagles at the White House

WASHINGTON (AP) — Taking on the NFL and football’s Super Bowl champs, President Donald Trump gave the boot to a White House ceremony for the Philadelphia Eagles on Tuesday and instead threw his own brief “Celebration of America” after it became clear most players weren’t going to show up.

Both sides traded hot accusations about who was to blame.

Trump tried to turn the fracas into a referendum on patriotism and tie it to the dispute over players who have taken a knee during the national anthem to protest racism and police brutality. However, Eagles players never knelt during the “Star-Spangled Banner,” throughout the 2017 season and their march to the Super Bowl.

The White House accused Eagles team members of pulling a “political stunt” and abandoning their fans by backing out at the last minute. Indeed, few apparently were going to come, though some expressed disappointment that they’d been disinvited and complained Trump was unfairly painting them as anti-American.

Through it all, Trump appeared to revel in fanning the flames of a culture war that he believes revs up his political base.

Trump had long been leery of the Eagles’ planned visit to the White House, in part because the team’s owner, Jeffrey Lurie, has been a Trump critic, and because several players have been vocal critics of the league’s new policy that requires players to stand if they’re on the field during the national anthem or else stay in the locker room.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the team notified the White House last Thursday that 81 people, including players, coaches, managers and others would be attending the Super Bowl celebration. But she said the team got back in touch late Friday and tried to reschedule, “citing the fact that many players would not be in attendance.” The Eagles proposed a time when Trump would be overseas.

Eagles officials declined comment on the White House version of events, sticking with a simple earlier statement: “We are truly grateful for all of the support we have received and we are looking forward to continuing our preparations for the 2018 season.”

No one connected with the team said the players’ reluctance to attend had anything to do with the national anthem, as Trump tried to portray the situation. And comments by star players in the current pro basketball finals indicated it’s not about football.

“I know no matter who wins this series, no one wants the invite anyway. So it won’t be Golden State or Cleveland going,” said LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers. There was no disagreement from Stephen Curry, who angered Trump last year when he said he wouldn’t go to the White House after the Warriors’ NBA triumph, leading the president to disinvite him and his team.

Trump, furious about the small number of Eagles who were coming, scrapped Tuesday’s visit, believing a low turnout would reflect poorly upon him. He had told aides last year he was embarrassed when Tom Brady, star quarterback of that season’s champion New England Patriots, opted to skip a White House visit.

Instead, the president held what he dubbed a “patriotic celebration” that was short and spare. A military band and chorus delivered the Star-Spangled Banner and God Bless America, with brief Trump remarks sandwiched in between.

“We love our country, we respect our flag and we always proudly stand for the national anthem,” Trump said.

The White House crowd of roughly 1,000, mostly dressed in business suits, was light on Pennsylvanians and heavy on administration and GOP Party officials. Several in attendance blamed the players, not the president, for torpedoing the Eagles

event. John Killion, a lifelong Eagles fan who now lives in Florida and traveled to Washington to see his team, said he was “devastated and infuriated” by a breakdown he blamed on the Eagles owners.

“I waited my whole life for the Eagles to win the Super Bowl and they were going to be congratulated at the White House. And I don’t really care who you like or dislike, it shouldn’t be about that,” he said.

Bill Fey, a Republican state committeeman from southern New Jersey and an Eagles fan, called the decision “a black eye as far as I’m concerned with the NFL. I think that everyone should come to the White House. This is the peoples’ house.” Still, he said, “I think the Eagles did what they thought was necessary. I don’t blame anyone.”

Trump’s own patriotic event was not without its controversy.

Following the playing of the anthem, a heckler shouted from the audience: “Stop hiding behind the armed services and the national anthem!” prompting boos. A Swedish reporter posted video of a man kneeling as the anthem was played.

In a statement Monday, Trump placed the blame on Eagles players he said “disagree with their President because he insists that they proudly stand for the National Anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country.”

Besides the fact that none of the Eagles had taken a knee during the anthem in 2017, defensive end Chris Long said the NFL anthem policy change and Trump’s reaction to it were not even discussed by the players in meetings about making the visit.

Those deciding to stay away had various reasons beyond Trump’s opposition to the protests, including more general feelings of hostility toward the president, one official said.

Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins, who had planned to skip the ceremony “to avoid being used as any kind of pawn,” said in a statement that at the White House a “decision was made to lie, and paint the picture that these players are anti-America, anti-flag and anti-military.”

Trump has long railed against the protests that began in 2016 when San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began silently kneeling on the sidelines during the anthem to raise awareness around racism and, specifically, the killing of black men by police.

At a rally last September, Trump suggested NFL owners fire “son of a bitch” players who “disrespect” the flag by kneeling.

As for politics, Trump believes the anthem controversy is a winning issue for him and was pleased that last month’s announcement of the league’s new policy returned it to the news, according to people familiar with the president’s thinking but not authorized to discuss private conversations.

Even so, Trump made clear Tuesday he doesn’t believe the policy goes far enough, tweeting: “Staying in the Locker Room for the playing of our National Anthem is as disrespectful to our country as kneeling. Sorry!”

The president told one confidant Monday that he aims to revive the issue in the months leading up to the midterm elections, believing its return to the headlines will help Republicans win votes.

Trump’s attempt to drive a wedge between the team and its fervent fan base could have political consequences in Pennsylvania, which Trump won by just 44,000 votes in 2016.

The politics are already playing out in the state’s Senate race, where Republican Rep. Lou Barletta is challenging Democratic incumbent Bob Casey.

Barletta attended the White House ceremony sans Eagles, “representing the proud Pennsylvanians who stand for our flag.”

Casey tweeted he would be “skipping this political stunt at the White House” and invited the Eagles on a tour of the Capitol instead.

By JILL COLVIN and JONATHAN LEMIRE by Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC(U.S)

#Celebration of America #Donald Trump #NFL #Philadelphia Eagles #TodayNews #Washington #white house

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flauntpage · 7 years ago

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Sixers Notes: She Blinded Me With Sports Science

Joel Embiid’s “minutes plan” is not your mom’s low carb diet. You don’t count points and then stop when you hit a certain number. You don’t get prepackaged granola bars in the mail.

Maybe that was the case last season, when the plan was a restriction that included hard numbers and zero wiggle room. This year there’s flexibility and fluidity, which you saw on Wednesday night when Embiid played 27 minutes in the 120-115 loss in Washington.

It was the main topic once again at Thursday’s practice session, where Brett Brown reflected on the usage of his 148 million dollar center.

“I think it’s a good example, last night, for all of us to understand why there could be a tremendous variance in minutes,” the head coach told reporters. “We all come back and look at a box score that says he played ‘X.’ I sat down with the sports science people this morning and they’re very thoughtful in how they come up with this decision, in relation to the loading. And you can judge the loading scientifically in blocks. There was only one section in his loading, his chunk of minutes, that they viewed to be higher – it was a torrid pace up and down. The other times he came in, it was played at a reasonable pace.”

That’s especially important considering the fact that Embiid has little game fitness. His overall health is something different entirely.

“Therefore,” Brown continued, “when you study his body of work, and especially the 24 minutes of real-time rest that he had at the end of the third, and when I put him back in in the fourth, in their judgment that warranted that he could play the last four or five minutes of the game. It all equaled a number that kind of surprised all of us, none more so than Jo. But the collaboration and communication I had with our doctors and sports science people behind the bench, it was a good routine and good rhythm. I get excited to think about two things, that we still have his health at the forefront, and then, selfishly, for me and the team and Jo, you’re able to get maybe 8 more minutes than you thought you were gonna get.”

I love a good sports science discussion.

Seriously though, this thing is playing out better than most people expected and I think we’re getting some clarity to boot.

During last night’s game, Brown said he was keeping an eye out for visuals that might indicate that Embiid was running out of steam.

“There’s a gut feel that I don’t need any piece of paper to tell me,” Brown said. “I get it. It happened in the third period last night; there was something that went on that made him gravitate to the perimeter more. I think that’s one of the things I noticed, when it’s sort of a three-point line to three-point line world, instead of rim to rim, and him getting deep catches and really wanting the ball in the block. It’s hard. For an NBA big, you start going rim to rim, versus a perimeter guy, it’s a difference of several feet. You accumulate that over the course of the game and that’s a hard life. I think that’s one of the signs I see in my judgment that fatigue might be creeping in.”

Embiid said Thursday that he felt great following the season opener. He didn’t expect to play that many minutes, but admitted that his game isn’t quite there just yet.

“There was a couple of stretches where I was a little bit tired, Embiid said. “But it’s all about pacing myself, which can be bad because I didn’t think I was as active as I usually am, especially defensively. It was kind of frustrating a little bit.”

The 7’2″ center says things will “come together” when he gets in shape.

He isn’t sure right now whether he’ll play in back-to-backs to begin the season. The Sixers play in Toronto 24 hours after the home opener.

“I have no idea,” Embiid said of his availability. “I’m actually going to ask them that question, but hopefully I get to play back-to-backs. Yesterday I played and my body feels good today. My knee feels amazing. If I had to play today, I feel like I would play depending on how I feel. I feel like I’m ready.”

Embiid knocking down some triples after practice: http://pic.twitter.com/nKABMtJmKp

— Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) October 19, 2017

Holding on to the ball

The Sixers committed 17 turnovers in the loss while Washington gave the ball away nine times.

Ben Simmons and Markelle Fultz only threw it away once, but Robert Covington and Jerryd Bayless had a pair passes deflected and stolen in game’s final minute.

That was the first topic Brown addressed with the team on Thursday morning.

“You go to the problem areas initially, which really was a turnover discussion and the ability to really lock down and guard your man, as simplistic as that sounds,” Brown said. “From day one we’ve talked about turnovers, offensively, and blow-bys, defensively. It was an appropriate time this morning to hit those two areas. When I first sat with the team on opening day, it would have been the second sentence out of my mouth, these two areas that we’re going to focus on. It was appropriate today. Both of those areas hurt us. And then we talked about the good things. This was the most encouraging opening day that we have had, that I have had since I’ve been here. I think the base is in place and we will grow from that.”

Jon has it right:

Having a down night

One guy who looked “off” on Wednesday night was 6th man Dario Saric, who finished with 3 points on 1-5 shooting in 23 minutes. He added 3 rebounds, 2 assists, and a block.

He was asked to do a variety of things, first playing alongside Amir Johnson with the second team, then getting usage as a stretch five when the Sixers went to a fourth-quarter small ball lineup.

“He had a down night,” Brown said of Saric. “It’s gonna happen. I think hes done well coming off the bench. The last few preseason games he had some of his best games I’ve coached coming off the bench, recently. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it. I don’t personally think it does. But I think he understands his role, maybe throwing him a curveball in putting him at the five from time to time may have put him off guard positionally, although I think he’s versatile enough to change a game at that five spot. I think he’s sort of something we have in our back pocket we can use. Maybe some of those things factored into it but I dust it off as just one of those things that happens over 82 games.”

Richaun Holmes is still out with a fractured wrist and was the only player on Thursday’s injury report. Jahlil Okafor, who dealt with a gastrointestinal issue earlier in the week and did not play last night, was not listed.

Sixers Notes: She Blinded Me With Sports Science published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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jessicakehoe · 6 years ago

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From the FASHION Archives: The Uncanny Prescience of Yves Saint Laurent From the Winter 1982 Issue

Today Yves Saint Laurent is a complicated empire. In addition to the couture and ready-to-wear divisions, there are more than 200 licensing arrangements by which his name is attached to a variety of merchandise including jeans, children’s wear, swimwear and so on. It’s a multi-tentacled business, a reminder that if the French make beautiful clothes, they also make beautiful office supplies and have a talent for refined bureaucracy. In North America, a key figure in the Yves Saint Laurent empire is Didier Grumbach, who occupies the position of president of Saint Laurent Rive Gauche-U.S. Related to the Mendès family, famous French manufacturers, who have made Saint Laurent’s ready-to-wear since its inception, he is also president of Paris Collections, the marketing and distribution arm of Rive Gauche. Seated in his New York office, decorated to the nines by the celebrated Andrée Putman, he displays the single-mindedness of an organization man. His sense of pertinent is well-defined, logical and precise. His conversation is full of “That’s another story,” “That’s an old story,” and “I don’t think that is important to your story.” He boasts effusively that Saint Laurent Rive Gauche is “an international confederation of retailers” and speaks of the importance of exclusivity and prestige. “In most of the cases when a name is strongly licensed, the desire of the woman to wear the clothes fades. You don’t hear of any woman dressed by Pierre Cardin.” A close-mouthed guardian of the Yves Saint Laurent legend, he seems determined not to be revealing. He has practically no dealings with Saint Laurent himself, about whom his remarks are confined to little more than “Any creative person is inquiet.” As for Bergé, with whom he works closely and who is often in New York, he says, “Well, Pierre Bergé is a Scorpio.”

The post From the FASHION Archives: The Uncanny Prescience of Yves Saint Laurent From the Winter 1982 Issue appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

From the FASHION Archives: The Uncanny Prescience of Yves Saint Laurent From the Winter 1982 Issue published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/

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jessicakehoe · 6 years ago

Text

From the FASHION Archives: The Uncanny Prescience of Yves Saint Laurent From the Winter 1982 Issue

Today Yves Saint Laurent is a complicated empire. In addition to the couture and ready-to-wear divisions, there are more than 200 licensing arrangements by which his name is attached to a variety of merchandise including jeans, children’s wear, swimwear and so on. It’s a multi-tentacled business, a reminder that if the French make beautiful clothes, they also make beautiful office supplies and have a talent for refined bureaucracy. In North America, a key figure in the Yves Saint Laurent empire is Didier Grumbach, who occupies the position of president of Saint Laurent Rive Gauche-U.S. Related to the Mendès family, famous French manufacturers, who have made Saint Laurent’s ready-to-wear since its inception, he is also president of Paris Collections, the marketing and distribution arm of Rive Gauche. Seated in his New York office, decorated to the nines by the celebrated Andrée Putman, he displays the single-mindedness of an organization man. His sense of pertinent is well-defined, logical and precise. His conversation is full of “That’s another story,” “That’s an old story,” and “I don’t think that is important to your story.” He boasts effusively that Saint Laurent Rive Gauche is “an international confederation of retailers” and speaks of the importance of exclusivity and prestige. “In most of the cases when a name is strongly licensed, the desire of the woman to wear the clothes fades. You don’t hear of any woman dressed by Pierre Cardin.” A close-mouthed guardian of the Yves Saint Laurent legend, he seems determined not to be revealing. He has practically no dealings with Saint Laurent himself, about whom his remarks are confined to little more than “Any creative person is inquiet.” As for Bergé, with whom he works closely and who is often in New York, he says, “Well, Pierre Bergé is a Scorpio.”

The post From the FASHION Archives: The Uncanny Prescience of Yves Saint Laurent From the Winter 1982 Issue appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

From the FASHION Archives: The Uncanny Prescience of Yves Saint Laurent From the Winter 1982 Issue published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/

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flauntpage · 8 years ago

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Down Goes Brown Grab Bag: Crosby's Injury, Playoff Outrage, And The Draft Lottery

(Editor's note: Welcome to Sean McIndoe's weekly grab bag, where he writes on a variety of NHL topics. You can follow him on Twitter. Check out the Biscuits podcast with Sean and Dave Lozo as they discuss the events of the week.)

Three stars of comedy

The third star: This Predators fan—We'll get to the whole P.K. Subban dancing controversy in a bit, but let's just say that Nashville fans get it.

— Preds Warmup Signs (@PredsSigns) April 30, 2017

In related news, the Rangers can do stuff like this in the warmup and apparently nobody cares.

The second star: Chris Pratt—OK, technically, this is from three years ago. But Pratt just reposted it on Twitter recently, and it was the first time I'd ever seen it, so we're grandfathering it in.

Sudden Death really is just about the greatest movie ever made. We broke down the mascot fight in the YouTube section four years back, but that's not really enough. We should probably do another scene from that movie some time soon. Hmmm...

The first star: Taylor Hall—Apparently he listens to the podcast.

Officially adding

— Taylor Hall (@hallsy09) April 30, 2017

My favorite part of that joke is that it's still only the second funniest lottery-related tweet of Hall's career, trailing this one from two years ago.

Outrage of the week

We're three weeks into the playoffs, and you know what that means. We've reached outrage overflow mode, that inevitable point in the postseason where everyone is on edge and there's so much happening that our capacity to rationally discuss anything just disappears completely. We're going to have to break out the lightning round this week.

The issue: Sidney Crosby has another concussion after an ugly collision with Matt Niskanen, one that was helped along by a nasty Alexander Ovechkin slash.

The outrage: The play was dirty!

Is it justified: Seeing Crosby down and out like that was awful, just about the worst-case scenario for any hockey fan. It doesn't matter who you cheer for—hell, even if you're a Capitals fan—you don't want to see the league's most important player out with another head injury.

That said, the play itself was anything but black-and-white. I'm pretty sure I've watched it hundreds of times so far, and I'm still not sure if it was dirty. I didn't like the Ovechkin slash, which should have been at least two minutes. But Penguins fans just finished spending the last few weeks telling us that a hard slash on a puck-carrier is a hockey play, so that outrage only goes so far. The Niskanen half was the tough one, and I still see a player realizing that a falling opponent is about to crash into him and putting his hands up to protect himself.

Not everyone agrees. Maybe Niskanen really did sense an opportunity to target Crosby's head. But I'm still not sure, and I lean towards it ultimately being careless and maybe even reckless, but not dirty.

The issue: The Department of Player Safety didn't suspend Niskanen, or even hold a hearing.

The outrage: The DoPS never suspends anyone during the playoffs!

Is it justified: We've been over this before. If you want tougher sentences during the playoffs, have the GMs and owner instruct the DoPS to call it that way. But based on the standards that have been established over the years, it's no surprise that Niskanen didn't get anything beyond the game he'd already missed as a result of being ejected. It would have been unusual if he had.

The issue: Pittsburgh reporter Rob Rossi challenged Washington coach Barry Trotz about the play, wrote a column accusing the Capitals of intentionally targeting Crosby, and then made the media rounds to push the theory.

The outrage: That take is nuts. Let's spend the next two days talking about it!

Is it justified: The accusation about Capitals players planning Crosby's demise was out of bounds, especially in a post-Todd Bertuzzi league. He was widely criticized and mocked, and rightly so. Rossi's done some good work over the years, but there's no defending that take.

That said, as Elliotte Friedman pointed out this week, this seems to be the direction that a lot of sports journalism is headed. Lots of people wrote measured, thoughtful takes on the Crosby injury. If you ended up talking about Rossi instead, well, that tells you all you need to know. Attention is the currency of today's media, and now more than ever, you get what you pay for.

The issue: Nick Bonino drew a crucial penalty on Wednesday by embellishing a high-stick from T.J. Oshie.

The outrage: Hockey fans hate this stuff.

Is it justified: Sure, but the problem is that this is how the game works now, diving and embellishment works. There's a good chance you get the call. Every now and then, you'll get called for faking, but most of the time the ref will still take the other guy too. Unless you're completely obvious, they'll almost never take just the diver. Lots of players do this stuff, Oshie included.

Could the league fix it? Not totally, although encouraging refs to just take one guy more often would help. So suggest cranking up the post-game fines—drop five figures on someone who pulls a Bonino and at least a few guys might think twice. But you can never get rid of this stuff entirely, short of making everything open to review. And it's hard to think anyone wants even more reviews.

The issue: There aren't enough bathrooms in the new Edmonton arena and now their media want everyone to start peeing in the sinks.

The outrage: That's... wait, what?

Is it justified: Yeah, I don't get this one either. Let's just keep moving.

The issue: Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs says he doesn't think the NHL will go to the Olympics because it's not worth the effort for "the four people that watch it".

The outrage: The NHL really does hate its fans.

Is it justified: I'm sure the league's key television partner was thrilled to hear Jacobs trash-talking the viewership potential of an event it pays billions to broadcast. Just a thought, but the NHL might want to ease up on side-eying anyone else's ratings. But it was certainly interesting to see an owner as influential as Jacobs say "I don't think it's going to happen" about something we've already been told definitely won't happen. Gosh, it's almost as if the league is still posturing here.

The issue: P.K. Subban danced during a warmup and Mike Milbury called him a clown.

The outrage: Nobody likes Mike Milbury.

Is it justified: The clown take was terrible and pretty much everyone knows it, including Milbury, who backed off the comments fairly quickly. The NHL needs a lot of things, but more lectures from the fun police isn't on the list. Here's hoping Subban dances all the way to the Stanley Cup final.

The issue: This is too much outrage.

The outrage: Seriously, we're all exhausted.

Is it justified: Pace yourself, we still have five weeks of this stuff to go.

Obscure former player of the week

Earlier this week, Ottawa's Jean-Gabriel Pageau scored four goals in a game, becoming only the 12th player to do so in the last 30 years. So who's the most obscure player in that group? Well... it's probably Pageau, to be honest. But it seems a little early to hand him those honors, so let's go with Tony Hrkac.

Hrkac was taken in the second round of the 1984 entry draft when the Blues decided to show up for a change. He made his NHL debut in 1987, and played part of three seasons with St. Louis before being traded to the Nordiques. That would be the first of many moves over the course of his career; he'd go on to be traded six times, sign five free agent deals, get claimed on waivers once and be picked in the 1998 expansion draft.

All in all, he played for nine NHL teams over his career, despite spending several years in the IHL in the mid-90s. He appeared in his last NHL game for the Thrashers in 2003, although he continued playing off and on in the minors until 2010.

There are two things most fans of the era remember about Tony Hrkac. First, his last name was pronounced "hur-kuss", so everyone called him "the Hrkac Circus". And more importantly, he had one of the best playoff games ever as a rookie in 1988. That night, in game five of their first-round series, Hrkac lit up Chicago's Darren Pang for four goals including a short-handed winner in a 6-5 Blues win.

Hrkac's four-goal playoff game was the first that the NHL had seen in almost 24... hours. Buffalo's John Tucker had done it the night before against Boston. But the feat wouldn't be matched again for 12 whole days, when Mark Johnson pulled it off against the Capitals. What can I tell you, the late-80s were fun.

Be It Resolved

Saturday's draft lottery resulted in three longshots moving into the top three picks, including the Flyers, who had the 13th worst record but will pick second. Meanwhile, terrible teams like the Avalanche and Canucks and the expansion Golden Knights all dropped way down.

Is that fair? Not really. The lottery is kind of a mess. But if that's news to you, then you haven't been paying attention over the years. And you can't start complaining now just because your team was the one that got screwed.

First things first: We shouldn't even have a lottery. There's a far better system for determining draft order while still weighting everything in favor of the worst teams. It's called the Gold Plan, I've written about it a ton, and you're probably sick of me mentioning it. But it's roughly a million times fairer than random ping pong ball drawings, and a lot more exciting to boot. If you're not already on board, now's a good time to join us.

But let's assume that the league wants to keep a lottery system. After all, this is the NHL, the league where everything is fine and nothing should ever change. If you want to keep the ping pong balls and the weighted odds, then sometimes, the longshots will win. That's a feature, not a bug.

This whole thing is classic NHL. Design a system that we all know could result in a specific scenario; appear to be totally fine with that possibility; wait until that scenario inevitably plays out; then demand the system be changed because the thing you always knew might happen finally did.

We already did it with the Connor McDavid lottery a few years ago, when the Oilers won for a third time and everyone complained even though we knew Edmonton had decent odds going in. We did it with the skate-in-the-crease rule that everyone insisted was just fine right up until it showed up on a Cup-winning goal, at which point it was immediately scrapped. We're doing it right now with the offside review and puck-over-glass, badly implemented rules that won't be changed until they cost some team a playoff series. Which they absolutely will. We just need to wait long enough.

Should teams like the Avalanche have better odds? Maybe. Should teams like the Flyers have any odds at all? Maybe not. But these were all questions to be asking before Saturday's drawing. If you didn't have a problem with the system then but do now, you're either being disingenuous or you don't understand how probabilities work.

Either way, it would be nice for this league and its fans to want to solve a problem in advance for once, instead of slipping into knee-jerk reaction mode whenever the inevitable happens.

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

So the Washington Capitals are peppering the Penguins with shots, but can't score because Marc-Andre Fleury is playing like some sort of mid-90s action hero. You know what other Penguins' goalie played like a mid-90s action hero?

Oh hell yeah.

If you're not familiar with Sudden Death, you should a.) acknowledge that you have fundamentally failed as a person somewhere along the line and b.) head over to this excellent SB Nation tribute. But if you need the short version: The Blackhawks and Penguins are facing each other in game seven of the Stanley Cup final, terrorists are trying to blow up the arena, and Jean Claude Van Damme is here to karate fight everyone in the building.

At this point, we're well into the move. We've already seen Luc Robitaille swear and Van Damme use a supersoaker full of lighter fluid to end a dude, but have not yet seen a helicopter crash at center ice.

Also, Van Damme has already killed the Penguins' mascot with a dishwasher. Have I mentioned this is the greatest movie ever made? It totally is.

So at this point, we're late in the game and the Blackhawks are leading. Even worse, Penguins' starting goalie Brad Tolliver has left the game with the flu. Fun fact: Tolliver was played by former Penguin Jay Caufield, even though Caufield wasn't a goalie. I'm starting to think this movie might not be very realistic, you guys.

Van Damme has stolen Tolliver's uniform because of reasons, and he returns to the game. Well, he returns to the bench, where he sits in the middle of all the players, the way goalies do. His coach comes over and orders his unhealthy player back onto the ice, because this was 1995.

By the way, the two announcers are the Penguins' real life duo of Mike Lange and Paul Steigerwald. I love that Mike "Scratch My Back With a Hacksaw" Lange has his own IMDB page.

Brad Tolliver wasn't a real player. But as we hear from the arena announcer, the guy he's replacing is: It's Ken Wregget, playing himself. This game is going to end with the arena getting blown up by a helicopter, making it the second biggest hockey-related disaster Wregget has ever been a part of, behind the 1984-85 Maple Leafs.

"I don't know what he did back in the locker room." Uh, he has the flu, guys. I'm pretty sure we can narrow it down to a couple of options.

We get an extended sequence of Van Damme trying to figure out where to look and how to stand while praying the puck won't come near him, aka "the Brian Elliott". He eventually responds to a breakaway by charging out and flipping his opponent into the air, which is completely ridiculous because only a psychopath would ever do that.

"He hit his head on the ice... he hit it so hard his kids will be born dizzy." In the modern remake, this is the point where the concussion spotters will call down and the movie will end.

Tony Amonte gets his second breakaway of the shift because apparently the Penguins are being coached by Jared Bednar. Still woozy from his brain injury, Van Damme drops down and makes a highlight reel glove save. In what stands as easily the worst part of the movie, his Penguins teammates celebrate by raising their sticks in the air like they just scored. This is so stupid that I'm amazed The Love Guru didn't think of it.

This is the point where our clip ends, but it's not the end of Van Damme's goaltending adventures. He realizes that he can't save the world if he's stuck on the ice, so he does the only reasonable thing: Grabs a random Blackhawks player and sucker punches him to start a line brawl. Because the script writers have never actually seen playoff hockey, this results in the referees actually giving him a penalty, getting him out of the game and back into the terrorist-murdering business.

Sudden Death came out in December 1995, because the world had been good and deserved a Christmas present. It made several billion of dollars and won every Academy Award, but ushered in the Dead Puck Era of the NHL because the league's goalies now had access to Jean Claude Van Damme game film while coaches started focusing on defending the neutral zone in case a helicopter crashed there.

There have been 20 Stanley Cup finals since this movie came out, and the Blackhawks and Penguins have combined to win 25% of them. You do the math.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at [email protected].

Down Goes Brown Grab Bag: Crosby's Injury, Playoff Outrage, And The Draft Lottery published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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