Joe Burrow knows

We're only as good as the way we treat each other

(Local12.org)

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Joe Burrow hosted a charity golf outing Monday at Coldstream Country Club, probably one of 100 such events held around the country yesterday by athletes and other celebs seeking to raise money for pet projects. Bob Huggins always held his at Kenwood CC, usually while sitting in a Barcalounger behind the 1st tee. I recall one year way back in the day, Boomer Esiason power-hooked a tee shot into the windshield of a passing car.

Number 7 paid for the windshield and signed a football for the driver.

Saint Joe’s foundation raises money for hungry families in Louisiana and rural Ohio.

(Excuse me if I don’t call it “food insecurity’’, K? It’s about people struggling to pay their grocery bills. They’re. . . hungry. Let’s not complicate this.)

There is nothing and everything special about a famous person using his fame for the betterment of others. What separates Burrow, I think, is the understated way he goes about his worthy deeds and the earnest-y he applies to the task. Recall him using his speech at the Heisman presentation as a plea for help for the hungry in southeast Ohio.

It’s a big deal. He doesn’t make it one.

But it’s more than that. It’s the T-shirt.

I love the T-shirt.

Do Good, it says.

No pithy saying, no Hallmark card sentiment. No pop-psychology for the currently hip.

Do good.

My favorite line from one of my favorite books comes from the author and retired NY Times columnist, Anna Quindlen:

• “All of us want to do well, but if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough.”

Yes.

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A Short Guide to a Happy Life originated as a commencement address Quindlen made to graduating high school students. Life’s not about achieving greatness or having a widespread impact on the world or any of the other grandiose notions that are staples of graduation speeches.

It’s about being full in the moment. I used to tell my teenaged son, “Happen to life. Don’t let life happen to you.’’ It’s about that.

The difference between existing and living is the amount of energy and grace we choose to offer the world. It’s the moment spent appreciating our time here, how fragile it is, how swift, how so in need of our considered investment.

• “Think of life as a terminal illness,’’ Quindlen wrote. That sounds maudlin. It’s anything but. It’s a siren blast to make the best of our time. Jackson Browne sang, “Nothing survives but the way we live our lives.’’

Live with open eyes. Try to say “no’’ a little less. Do good.

Joe Burrow, I think, understands this. It’s easy to trust his sincerity. Giving back seems ingrained in him, maybe by how he was raised or by where he grew up. Both, probably. For Burrow, Giving Back seems natural.

Hunger should not happen in this country. Freedom from essential want should be a right. When it’s not, we have to depend on those more fortunate to help straighten the imbalance. We’re only as good as the way we treat each other.

Now, then. . .

The REDS TRIPLE A EXPRESS is running so hot, I spend half my retired working life Google-ing the names of the most recent arrivals. I feel like a clerk on Ellis Island at the turn of the 20th century. Fabulous prizes to veteran Mobsters who heard the name T.J. Hopkins and said, “Oh, yeah, I know that guy.’’

Will Andrew Abbott be special in a week or a month? For a decade? Beats me. He was special last night, though. In and out, up and down, knee-bending breaking stuff. The Brewers aren’t exactly the Mash Brothers — 26th in runs, 27th in OPS — but they’re major-league hitters. They never caught on to what Abbott was doing to them.

With each succeeding McLain and Abbott and De La Cruz and Encarnacion-Strand comes hope, and hope is the lifeblood of little-market teams. Hope can also be a con, if it never blooms. The fascination is in seeing which will come true.

I’M STARTING TO BELIEVE BIG FASTBALLS are a curse. I’m starting to think that if I’m running a Baseball organization, I ask my talent finders to seek out pitchers who throw strikes, change speeds and have extraordinary command.

Hunter Greene?

No. Greg Maddux. Wade Miley. Bronson Arroyo. Guys who are not taught from the time they’re 10 that throwing the ball as hard as they’re able is the best way to reach the majors.

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USA Today:

Baseball continues to be stricken with their nightmare epidemic: Elbow injuries. 

Day after day, team after team, someone is undergoing Tommy John surgery. 

There have been 30 pitchers who have undergone Tommy John surgery this year, 12 in May alone, involving everyone from Cy Young winner Robbie Ray to first-round prized prospect Kumar Rocker to young star Luis Garcia to Colorado Rockies veteran German Marquez. 

Maybe it’s time for baseball to reduce the 162-game schedule simply to protect the health of pitchers, Dodgers pitching great Orel Hershiser says. 

“This is the best the baseball has ever been thrown,’’ Hershiser says, “but you can’t strengthen connective tissue. I think every pitch today is more stressful than it’s ever been thrown. When you make your body perform at its highest level every pitch, I don’t think that wear and tear is possible to maintain.

No, it’s not. I don’t wonder if Hunter Greene is going to lead the league in strikeouts. I wonder if he’ll lead it in arm surgeries.

THIS JUST IN. It really is. Yahoo!:

In a stunning twist to the saga that has consumed golf for the last year, the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and LIV Golf, the upstart breakaway tour funded by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, have agreed to merge.

“After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” said PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan in a statement. “This transformational partnership recognizes the immeasurable strength of the PGA Tour history, legacy and pro-competitive model and combines with it the DP World Tour and LIV – including the team golf concept – to create an organization that will benefit golf’s players, commercial and charitable partners and fans. Going forward, fans can be confident that we will, collectively, deliver on the promise we’ve always made – to promote competition of the best in professional golf and that we are committed to securing and driving the game’s future."

First take: LIV won. The outlaw tour is today’s American Football League. That bothers me. But not much. When I watch golf, I wanna see the best golfers. I don’t care how. I might think that American players shouldn’t be associated with the Saudis, I might wish that guys like Dustin Johnson were more than mercenaries and that Phil Mickelson would stop trying to frame his defection as a freedom-fighting decision.

But in the middle of a summer Sunday afternoon, I want to see Johnson and Mickelson and Koepka and DeChambeau (remember him?) on the leaderboard.

You?

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . Few have written better lyrics than Jackson Browne. Do yourself a favor. Read these words from what I believe is Browne’s best tune, which covers four decades of songwriting ground. Spectacular.

Meantime, here’s the tune from which I lifted the above quote.