ball, Delle Donne will try anything
once. She’s unusually open-mind-
ed for an established superstar,
her teammates say, so she gave
regular meditation an earnest
shot starting in the middle of the
2018 season, and eventually she
felt calmer. Then she started feel-
ing more in control on the basket-
ball court. Then she became a
devotee, meditating 10 minutes a
day, as if she were staying after
SEE MYSTICS ON D3by yourself and ruminate when
there are analytics available, prov-
en drills to solve whatever ails you
on the basketball court? Why
empty your mind when there’s
always another opponent to
scout?
“ ‘Eh, that’s weird,’ ” Delle
Donne said, flip as could be, de-
scribing her attitude toward the
mental exercises the Mystics’
sports psychologist introduced
when she first got to Washington.
“ ‘That doesn’t sound like me. I
don’t do yoga. I don’t think I’d be
into i t.’ ”
Still, if it could help her basket-BY AVA WALLACEElena Delle Donne does not like
yoga.
Up until about 18 months ago,
she didn’t much care for medita-
tion, either. Not Delle Donne, the
Washington Mystics star who
Thursday morning was named
the WNBA MVP for the second
time in her career, becoming the
first player in league history to
win the honor with two teams.
Delle Donne’s first coach, her
father, approached basketball
with a healthy understanding of
biochemistry and physics. Why sitScherzer finished with 11 strikeouts
and a shaking head. He hadn’t gone this
deep in an outing since July 6. But none of
the details were sharp. The offense
couldn’t t urn base r unners into rallies, the
Cardinals’ bullpen shut it down in the late
innings, and Dexter Fowler robbed As-
drúbal Cabrera of a three-run homer in
the eighth. The Nationals stranded nine
runners and managed just an unearned
run. They soon left St. Louis with a series
defeat and the pressure building.
Despite the loss, the Nationals main-
tained a 1^1 /2-game lead over the Chicago
Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers in the
National League wild-card standings af-
ter both teams lost Wednesday night.
“Frustrating,” Chip Hale, again filling i n
for Manager Dave Martinez, said of losing
when Scherzer pitches well. “We know
where we are. We know we’re in the fight.”
Baseball teams spend months stressing
over even the smallest decisions. T here’s a
SEE NATIONALS ON D5BY JESSE DOUGHERTYst. louis — It will show up in the box
score as a double, but if there were room
for comment, just a short editorial note,
what happened with two outs in the
seventh inning would be better classified
as a tough break for the Washington
Nationals.
The Cardinals’ Paul DeJong hit a flyball
that Juan Soto lost in the sun above Busch
Stadium. A catch gets Max Scherzer out of
the inning. Instead, Soto crouched, his
knees quivering a bit, and the hit bounced
on the warning track for a double. To mmy
Edman followed with an RBI single. Matt
Wieters followed that with a two-run
homer to right. That ended Scherzer’s
outing, at five runs allowed in 6^2 / 3 innings,
and buried the Nationals in a 5-1 loss to
the first-place Cardinals.
“I saw it all the way,” Soto said. “A nd
right after it was coming down, that’s
when I lost it.”KLMNO
SPORTS
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 , 2019. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/SPORTS M2 D
BY MICHAEL BRICE-SADDLERThe crudely drawn sign was
supposed to be a joke.
Carson King took Sharpie to
poster board Friday night and
sketched o ut a simple p lea: “Busch
Light Supply Needs Replenished.”
The 24-year-old added his Venmo
handle and crossed his fingers
that someone watching ESPN’s
“College GameDay” the next
morning would see the sign and
send him a “couple dollars” f or his
favorite b eer.
His wish was g ranted. And then
some. King said he had been sent
about $35,000 by Wednesday
morning — a number that contin-
ues to grow — and his once-hu-
morous endeavor has trans-
formed i nto a fundraiser for a l ocal
children’s hospital, backed by ma-
jor brands, including Busch.
“I was completely over-
whelmed. I didn’t think anything
like this would have a chance to
happen,” King said Tuesday in a
phone interview. “Especially
when Busch commented. I was at
a loss for words.”
“College GameDay” was broad-
casting from Ames, Iowa, on Sat-
urday as No. 18 Iowa faced un-
ranked Iowa State. The game had
personal significance for King,
who attended Iowa State but is
taking time off from school to
work. The school, he noted, has “a
notoriously not good football pro-
gram.” Even though he now lives
about 45 minutes a way in Altoona,
King and his friends drove up for
“College GameDay” t o “show how
great the fans were and show the
SEE GAMEDAY ON D6
‘College
GameDay’
joke takes
altruistic turn
Les Miles found
plenty to do in his
26 months away
from coaching.
He did some
acting, appearing
in three movies,
including one in
which he plays a
character who bullies a football
coach. He appeared in
commercials for Dos Equis and
Dr Pepper. He even gave some
thought to running for political
office.
The man known as “The Hat”
and “The Mad Hatter” during
his rollicking and hugely
successful run at LSU because of
distinctive white cap, his
penchant for offbeat strategic
moves and his just-as-offbeat
comments on those moves
wouldn’t specify what office he
might have run for.
He did say: “Everybody wants
to be president, right?”
President Hat. It’s a dizzying
thought.
When his wife, Kathy, was
asked about her husband’s
possible career in politics, she
said, “I think Les and I decided
that if we were going to spend
time getting dressed up like that,
doing it to impress recruits’
mothers would be the best way
to spend the time and make that
effort.”
So Miles is more than happy
to be back on the sideline at
Kansas, back at practice, even
back on the recruiting trail.
“I thought if I could convince
people to support the idea of
putting together a bill and then
being willing to compromise to
get something good
accomplished, I could make
some kind of a positive impact,”
he said. “But in the end, I
decided I’d have more impact on
people’s lives ultimately as a
coach. Politics has some real
positives and some real
negatives. For me, football is all
positives and had more potential
that way than politics.”
The positives already include
a surprising victory. On Friday,
the Jayhawks traveled to Boston
SEE FEINSTEIN ON D6
Miles’s slogan
for campaign:
Make Kansas
great (finally)
John
Feinstein
BY LES CARPENTEROne day this past spring, still
early in free a gency, E reck Flowers
found himself in a meeting room
at t he Washington Redskins’ team
headquarters. In front of him was
a video screen. Around him were
Bill Callahan, the team’s offensive
line and a ssistant head coach, and
other coaches and front-office
members.
They were showing him videofrom the first four y ears of his NFL
career. This was not a happy
event; Flowers’s time as a tackle
for t he New York Giants a nd brief-
ly the Jacksonville Jaguars had
been a major struggle.
But as the Redskins’ people
showed Flowers the video, they
had a n interesting p roposition for
him.
We want you to be a guard.
Flowers was surprised. He had
been a tackle his whole career,from high school in Miami, where
he was a four-star recruit, to the
University of Miami, where he
started for three seasons before
becoming a f irst-round pick, to the
Giants a nd Jaguars. But his career
had stalled. “Bust” was a word
often used about him in New York.
Play guard? W hat did he h ave to
lose?
It is far too soon to declare the
move a success, by Flowers’s own
admission. But of all the thingsthat haven’t g one w ell for t he Red-
skins through the season’s first
two weeks, the seemingly most
far-fetched experiment isn’t one
of them.
Placed on a thrown-together
left side of the line with Donald
Penn — signed in training camp
because of Trent Williams’s hold-
out — Flowers has been solid. The
analytics website Pro Football Fo-
cus gives him a grade of 61 on its
0 to 100 scale, which ranks38th out of 70 players at the posi-
tion. He has allowed quarterback
Case Keenum to be pressured four
times and has been penalized
twice.
While that might not be a fan-
tastic set of numbers for an offen-
sive lineman, he has survived — a n
impressive feat at a position he
SEE REDSKINS ON D7For Redskins’ Flowers, position switch has led to rosier outlook
Meditations on an MVP season
Focus on mental side of game helps Mystics’ Delle Donne win award again
TONI L. SANDYS/THE WASHINGTON POST
Elena Delle Donne wanted the Mystics to help her get better. Now
she is the first player to win the WNBA MVP award with two teams.WNBA semifinals: Game 2
Aces at Mystics
Today, 8:30 p.m., ESPN2Bears at Redskins
Monday, 8:15 p.m., ESPN, WJLA-7Lost in the glare
CARDINALS 5,
NATIONALS 1Soto’s misplay helps
doom Scherzer, NatsJEFF ROBERSON/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Max Scherzer struck out 11 in 62 / 3 innings Wednesday but also yielded five runs, including a two-run homer in the seventh by former teammate Matt Wieters.‘Always doing something’
Interim manager Chip Hale does
not lack for energy. D3
Nationals at Marlins
Tomorrow, 7 p.m., MASN2NL WILD CARD
WLGB- Nationals 83 68
- Cubs 82 70 1 1 / 2
- Brewers8 2701 1 / 2
PRO BASKETBALL
New Wizards point guard Isaiah Thomas has surgery
on his left thumb and is expected to miss 6-8 weeks. D2
HIGH SCHOOLS
A New Jersey wrestling referee who forced a competitor
to cut his dreadlocks is handed a two-year ban. D6HOCKEY
Third-line forward Richard Panik is hoping for plenty of
scoring chances in his first season with the Capitals. D8UPLOADED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws