6:35 listen. Two hosts, three stories, one running scoreboard.
The Ledger: RY 26-13 | Rylie 25-14
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RY: Aaron Judge missed eighty-four games, the Yankees still own a wild-card lead, and tonight they drop him straight on Colorado with zero rehab starts.
RYLIE: Wait, what?
RY: One live BP session. Done.
RYLIE: Judge back cold, SMU beating Florida State after nearly two hours of dead lights, and Kawhi walking out of the Clippers mess holding the bag — that is the rundown.
RY: I am telling you the American League just changed temperature.
RYLIE: Temperature.
RY: Yes. Ninety-nine days without the best player on earth and every front office treated New York like a pitching-first wild-card club. That math is dead tonight.
RYLIE: They went forty-five and thirty-nine without him.
RY: Respectable.
RYLIE: It is.
RY: With him they were thirty-six and twenty-three. Offense at five-point-two runs and a seven-seventy OPS. Without him it sank to four-point-one and six-eighty-one. That is not coincidence, that is a six-foot-seven wrecking–
RYLIE: Gravity. I hear you.
RY: Seventeen homers and a nine-oh-seven OPS before the rib fracture on May thirty-first. Then nothing.
RYLIE: And still.
RY: Still what?
RYLIE: Still four back in the East with nineteen games left and a starved lineup that survived on fumes. Ben Rice broke out. Spencer Jones looked real. None of it filled that hole.
RY: Exactly.
RYLIE: So why skip the rehab?
RY: Because he is Aaron Judge.
RYLIE: [scoffs] That is not a medical plan.
RY: One BP at the Stadium. They activated him off the sixty-day. Tuesday night he is in there against Gabriel Hughes and the Rockies. My gut says he torches this.
RYLIE: Your gut.
RY: My eyes too. I watched that offense go thin. I watched them scrap. Tonight the captain walks back in and the room changes.
RYLIE: I hear the myth-making, but skipping minor-league at-bats after eighty-four missed games is a real swing. Timing has to be perfect or September gets louder the wrong way.
RY: Or it declares war.
RYLIE: Or it pulls a rib again.
RY: Nope.
RYLIE: You cannot just say nope at a rib.
RY: Watch me. He is back. Lineup looks mean again. Colorado is walking into the wrong building.
RYLIE: Fine. I will give you the gravitational pull. I will not give you zero-risk.
RY: I will take the pull.
RYLIE: Of course you will.
RY: Can they even do that — just skip Scranton entirely after nearly three months?
RYLIE: Yes. Club decision. They did it. One live session was enough for them.
RY: Love it.
RYLIE: [exhales] Reckless love.
RY: Speaking of games that refused to behave — SMU in Tallahassee.
RYLIE: The blackout.
RY: Lights die at Doak with four-forty left on the pregame clock. Transformer short. Helmets dead. iPads dead. Scoreboard dead. And the Mustangs still drop five hundred eighty-five yards and escape twenty-seven twenty-four.
RYLIE: Nearly two hours.
RY: Old-school was not a slogan. It was the rulebook.
RYLIE: Hold on.
RY: What.
RYLIE: You are romanticizing a safety meeting. Roughly thirty people in a room — Phillips, both presidents, ADs, coaches — while electricians chased a short. Four generators. Safety was the only veto.
RY: And they played.
RYLIE: At nine-fifteen under partial power. Official clock on the field. No coach-to-player talk. No PA.
RY: And SMU still won it on Nick Reed’s twenty-yarder with twenty-one seconds left. That is gut. That is–
RYLIE: That is also Kevin Jennings throwing for four hundred thirty yards while Florida State went two-of-fifteen on third down.
RY: Ha!
RYLIE: Ashton Daniels twelve-of-twenty-three for one hundred twenty-five. The gadgets did not lose that game. The offense did.
RY: I hear you, but strip the tech and one team still outgained the other five hundred eighty-five to three-thirty. My eyes say SMU was simply tougher in the dark.
RYLIE: Or better prepared for chaos. Super Bowl blackout in thirteen ran thirty-four minutes. This ran nearly two hours and still produced a real ACC result.
RY: Exactly. Stress test passed.
RYLIE: Barely.
RY: Reed drills it. Mustangs leave town. I love that mess.
RYLIE: [laughs] You love any mess that ends in a bold road win.
RY: Guilty.
RYLIE: Norvell’s group never converted. Ousmane Kromah ran for one-twenty and they still could not finish drives. That is the actual story under the outage theater.
RY: Theater that revealed who needs the toys.
RYLIE: Fair. Phillips set the standard clean — safe enough, full support, play. I just will not pretend a blackout made SMU cover.
RY: They covered because they were better.
RYLIE: There it is.
RY: Curveball time. Kawhi.
RYLIE: Oh no.
RY: Cleanest heist in modern NBA history. Light fine. Passport stamped. Clippers left in purgatory.
RYLIE: Says who?
RY: The hammer. Five first-round picks gone from twenty twenty-nine through twenty thirty-three. Thirty million dollar fine. Ballmer banned a full year. Kawhi pays seven hundred thousand and keeps flying.
RYLIE: He broke the rules.
RY: And walked. Windhorst called him an unmitigated winner. Tens of millions in deals that were not permitted, restitution at seven hundred grand. Greatest investment ever.
RYLIE: [scoffs] That framing is gross.
RY: It is accurate.
RYLIE: I hear the receipt stack, but the league found the Clippers initiated and facilitated those endorsement deals, failed to report them, and ate every L while Leonard kept the bag and the reunion path.
RY: Raptors get the Finals MVP vibe back. LA gets monitoring for five years. He escapes the probe shape of this thing.
RYLIE: Escape is doing a lot of work.
RY: Seven. Hundred. Thousand.
RYLIE: Against tens of millions. I get the outrage math. I still hate crowning a heist.
RY: I am crowning the outcome. My gut does not care about the press release.
RYLIE: Of course it does not.
RY: Ledger.
RYLIE: Both cashed.
RY: I took Philly over Atlanta and they punched a one-nothing win. Beautiful. Ugly. Mine.
RYLIE: [laughs] I took Dodgers over Cincinnati and they won six to three. No drama.
RY: So I move to twenty-seven and thirteen.
RYLIE: I am twenty-six and fourteen. You gloat one night, I stay loud.
RY: My only excuse is I do not need one.
RYLIE: Please.
RY: Fresh pick — give me NYY over COL. Judge night. I am not fading that.
RYLIE: Give me PHI over HOU. Quiet lineup discipline, home bed, I will take the skeptical grind.
RYLIE: Tomorrow we dig into whether Detroit really lets Larkin sit on that short list, plus the Gonzalez money hangover in New England.
RY: That’s the Rundown. Same time tomorrow — bring your takes.