MichBoiler

Making it up as I go

[NBS Golf @GolfNBS]

Golf does not care how you get there.

[steelguy @dave_hegan]

I played Purdue Kampen today. I played Crooked Stick about three weeks ago. It’s not even close how much harder Purdue Kampen is then Crooked Stick

I’ve played every tough course in Indiana

Besides Purdue my top 5 are Pfau, Victoria National, French Lick Dye & Sycamore Hills

[PGA Tour @PGATour]

"Why do people play golf?" Sean Connery was once asked, and he gave a brilliant answer.

"If you play golf, you can’t think, honestly, or do anything else while you’re playing.

"I think it’s the most revealing game. I don’t know if it’s a game. It’s something other than a game. I couldn’t define it.

"But it’s obsessive and revealing and a very healthy balancing act, I think. It certainly is for me, and also it’s one of the few games in the world that’s really still got dignity as a game.

"It’s endless, and as Jack Nicklaus says, it’s an unfair game and you have to accept it. It’s like life in that way.

"It’s also a game that you can cheat it. It’s the easiest game in the world to cheat at. The only one that suffers is you, because you know. And you can’t unknow."

[Seeds of the Soul @softhesoul136]

🎼Even though so much time has passed! Despite 37 years having gone by, this song remains just as impressive as it was on day one.

[ADEX🕴️ @ADEXREVIEW]

Lewis Capaldi looked Jamie Dornan dead in the eye on national television and said it’s weird seeing him without a whip in his hand… then immediately followed it with and me without my cock in mine.

The entire couch collapsed. Graham was gone. Jamie just had to sit there and take it.

Only Capaldi could drop that line, still look like someone’s wholesome nephew, and leave the whole room needing a full reset. I’m still not over the delivery.

[drx | #TakeYourWalks @totallydrx]

Mattingly did this twice in one series btw #cantwait

[MichBoiler @fightfoowithfoo]

Oh, it's a word, and they're the definition.

[Tony @yankeekidd5]

@PGATUOR Douchebagish. It may not be a word but should be

[Jeff Passan @JeffPassan]

Since this, Joshua Báez has homered two more times. Three major league plate appearances, three home runs -- the first player in big league history to go deep three times in his first game. One to left, one to center, one to right. Best debut for a hitter in big league history.

[MLB @MLB]

3 home runs in his first 3 Major League at-bats 😤

Did Joshua Báez put on the best MLB debut EVER?!

[Jomboy Media @JomboyMedia]

Joshua Baez’s Triple-A teammates watching him make history in his MLB debut.

Beautiful stuff

[MLB Walk Offs @MLBWalk_Offs]

Cubs broadcast calls Joshua Báez’s monstrous MLB debut where he homered in his first three at bats in his career:

[MichBoiler @fightfoowithfoo]

I'm puzzled by this. Everyone keeps mentioning that Pickett has worn the number since he was four, which clearly isn't true since he wore #3 last year at LSU. If he was promised #5, why didn't he wear it last year?

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

StubHub's social team is dunking on a Heisman winner, and the reason is the wildest legal story in college sports right now. Jayden Daniels just revoked his own alma mater's right to use his name, image, and likeness. Over a jersey number.

Brands only pile on when someone has clearly lost the room. Daniels lost it in about 24 hours.

But the mechanism underneath is worth understanding. His lawyers sent LSU a cease-and-desist using a weapon no college athlete possessed before 2021. Schools used to own everything a player generated. Highlight reels, recruiting graphics, the photo of you kissing the trophy. NIL quietly converted all of that into licensed property, and licenses can be pulled.

Here's what makes it messier.

LSU was running the same playbook from the other side. Lane Kiffin says No. 5 was promised to cornerback DJ Pickett as part of his 2024 commitment. The number was recruiting currency, spent before Daniels ever asked for it back. Pickett has worn 5 since he was four years old, so have his 10 siblings, and the precedent Daniels wanted doesn't even exist. LSU has retired four jersey numbers since 1893. Billy Cannon, Tommy Casanova, Jerry Stovall, Charles Alexander. Joe Burrow's 9 isn't retired, just quietly kept out of circulation.

Which leaves a school that owns the number but not the name, and a player who owns the name but not the number.

LSU spent the number to close one recruit. The bill came due in the name, image, and likeness of the most marketable quarterback the program ever produced.

[Jamison Daniel @AntiquarianMuse]

This is BRILLIANT.

[the Sports ON Tap @thesportsontap]

In 2003, the most hated team in the NBA did the kindest thing anyone has ever done on a basketball court.

April 25, 2003. Rose Garden, Portland. Game 3 of the first round against Dallas. The Blazers are down 2-0 and facing elimination from the moment they wake up.

That Blazers team had a nickname. The Jail Blazers.

They were, at the time, maybe the least likable team in professional sports. Arrests. Suspensions. A roster full of guys the national media treated as villains. Portland fans were exhausted by them.

Before the game, a 13 year old girl named Natalie Gilbert walks to center court to sing the national anthem in front of 19,980 people.

What nobody in the building knew is that she was sick. She had the flu. She later said she just didn't feel like herself at all that day.

She gets a few lines in.

And then her brain goes blank.

She sings "star's last gleaming" instead of "twilight's last gleaming," realizes it instantly, and stops. She looks around. She puts her hand to her face.

Thirteen years old. Twenty thousand people. National television. Frozen.

There is no worse feeling available to a human being.

And then a man walks out of the Portland huddle.

Maurice Cheeks, the head coach, minutes away from a playoff elimination game, leaves his team, walks across the floor, puts his arm around her shoulder and says, "C'mon."

Then he starts singing with her.

Now understand something. Maurice Cheeks cannot sing. At all. He is not remotely trying to rescue the performance.

He's just refusing to let a kid stand there alone.

He keeps his arm around her the whole way. He feeds her the next words. And within a few seconds, all 19,980 people in that building stand up and sing it with them.

A moment that was going to define a little girl's life in the worst possible way became the exact opposite.

Dan Patrick wrote at the time that Cheeks' simple actions had become the defining moment of the entire playoffs.

They went on Jay Leno together. CNN. Good Morning America. It became one of the first truly viral NBA moments, years before that word meant anything.

Portland lost the game. They lost the series. Cheeks finished his Blazers tenure with a fairly ordinary record and was eventually let go.

Now here's the ending.

In March 2025, almost 22 years later, Maurice Cheeks came back to Portland as an assistant coach with the New York Knicks.

The Blazers found Natalie Gilbert.

She's 35 now. Married. Goes by Natalie Zito. She's also, as it turns out, a Blazers season ticket holder.

They brought her back to sing the anthem again.

She nailed it. The whole building erupted. And the camera cut to Cheeks on the sideline, beaming like a proud father.

The two of them met before the game and hugged.

What she said afterward is why this story matters. She explained that she'd been made fun of a lot as a kid, and that in the moment she felt most helpless and hopeless, a stranger walked right over with no hesitation.

"This moment changed my life."

And then she said something even better. That she wouldn't go back and change any of it. That seeing him again and finding out he's still the same standup guy proved it was all real.

Twenty two years. One arm around a shoulder.

Follow @thesportsontap, we post a story like this every day.

[Joe G @EastEndJoe]

This happened on live TV.

[Todd Spence @Todd_Spence]

While filming SEINFELD's "The Marine Biologist" episode, the writers felt the ending didn't work, and last minute realized they could connect Kramer's storyline of hitting golf balls into the ocean and George's storyline of attempting to save a beached whale. At 2AM, they wrote Jason Alexander's speech that would close out the episode, and handed it to him the following morning, thirty minutes before the scene would have to be taped. Alexander said "No problem", quickly memorized the dialogue, and nailed the scene in one take 🔥 it's still absolutely insane he never won an Emmy for playing George Costanza

[David Daoud @DavidADaoud]

My last bit of hating on Argentina (maybe) before I go back to my usual programming -- but only because this shows Lionel Messi is such a con artist.

This is the foul that got Fernandez sent off.
-Notice, at 0: 04 , in the bottom left, Tagliafico theatrically dives dives. Out of nowhere. There isn't a Spanish player nearby.
-Fernandez just body slammed Cubarsi, but Messi shows up at 0: 17 and points the referee to Tagliafico, apparently trying to manufacture an earlier incident or derail the dismissal.
-If I'm not mistaken, this is right before Messi tried to get the referee to book or send off Cucurella for covering his mouth.

Nasty little sneak.

[MichBoiler @fightfoowithfoo]

@SladeThorsson @RT_on_X She was married to the 51 year old man IN THAT SKETCH! HE'S SITTING ON THE COUCH!

[fan @NoodleHairCR7]

The most shameless video of the World Cup Final

Enzo Fernandes kicks Cubarsi, an Argentina player fakes an injury and falls down, Enzo gets a red, Messi goes upto the ref pointing to Arg player down saying he’s injured review the foul 😭

[Zack Thomas @TFel922]

Ryan Fox holed the winning putt at The Open just 22 seconds after Sam Burns picked his ball out of the cup… 22 seconds.

In the biggest pressure moment in golf possible, to win The Open, he didn’t even need 30 seconds to step up and sink it. I never want to hear another excuse for players taking exorbitant amounts of time to hit a putt.