Catching up

I’ve been writing a lot of single-topic Slayed lately, and it’s been a while since I posted story links. Let’s catch up a bit.

• The trailer for the documentary Still: A Michael J. Fox movie is out, and as you can imagine, I can’t wait to see it.

• Ted Lasso dedicated this week’s episode to Grant Wahl, whose death I wrote about in December. Steve Greene’s story in Indiewire explains Wahl’s deep influence on Trent Crimm’s storyline this season.

• As you can imagine, sports teams like to keep their internal strife internal. But that’s not the story this week in St. Louis, where Cardinals manager Oli Marmol and outfielder Tyler O’Neill are openly scrapping about O’Neill’s questionable baserunning efforts Tuesday. Not only has Marmol benched O’Neill, he has been openly calling O’Neill out in the press, and O’Neill has felt no recourse but to defend himself. None of this is pretty, but this much I’ll say — it did look like O’Neill was practically jogging home on a critical play in Tuesday’s game.

• My Stanford men’s basketball cohort and I are still going nuts over the school not firing failed coach Jerod Haase — and making it a thousand times worse, letting former star and Western Athletic Conference Coach of the Year Mark Madsen take the job at Cal. Madsen held his opening press conference this week, and I couldn’t be happier for him or sadder for the Cardinal.

• By the way, bigtime move for the Madsen family in naming their newborn daughter Anastasia.

• The Pacific 12 Conference is still looking at ways to replace UCLA and USC, who have abandoned their home for Big Ten riches. As Jon Wilner writes, NCAA men’s hoops finalist San Diego State is a must-add.

• “A 9-year-old girl didn’t want her goat slaughtered. California fair officials sent deputies after it.” Society will never run out of stupid.

• I put this last because no bullet point could follow it. The headline reads “Horrifying stories of women chased down by the LAPD abortion squad before Roe vs. Wade,” and a chilling, exhaustively researched story by Brittny Mejia in the Los Angeles Times gets at the heart of that matter — and the questions it raises for today.