◼ The arrest of Scottie Scheffler, the No. 1 golfer in the world, was a surprise, to say the least. On the second day of the PGA Championship, held in Louisville, Ky., he was trying to drive around the scene of an accident that turned out to be fatal. He thought he was following the orders of the police. But he was stopped, arrested, and treated roughly. Suddenly, he was facing four charges, including second-degree assault of a police officer. The charges seemed . . . bizarre. The officer, Bryan Gillis, was reprimanded by his department for failing to turn on his body camera during the arrest. Scheffler’s lawyer threatened a civil suit against the department. All charges against Scheffler were soon dropped. The golfer issued a statement of exquisite diplomacy, noting the difficulty of police work. Still, the incident stank, and we are reminded that law and order should apply to the keepers of law and order as well.

◼ A reported settlement agreement between the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the so-called Power Five major collegiate athletic conferences, and hundreds of former athletes headed by former Arizona State swimmer and plaintiff Grant House may change college sports forever. For the first time, as part of a yet-to-be-determined revenue-sharing agreement, the NCAA will allow colleges to pay athletes. House and other former athletes will split $2.75 billion in damages for the lost opportunity to profit from “name, image, and likeness” rights in years past. Will the students be university employees, independent contractors, or some new class of workers? Will they unionize? We are entering a new era of college athletics.

◼ Major League Baseball decided, in 2020, to recognize the Negro Leagues as major leagues on par with the all-white leagues that existed before 1947. Nobody now doubts that the best Negro League ballplayers were the equals of the best white players, that on an invidious basis they were denied opportunities, and that they played an elite brand of baseball. Negro League stars spent the bulk of their time barnstorming, but when they played their peers, the games were as serious and competitive as the Yankees playing the A’s. Now, MLB is integrating Negro League records into the official record book. This is where things get dicey. Record-keeping for black baseball was spotty, its schedules irregular. That becomes an issue in the case of percentage-based records. Catcher Josh Gibson, an undoubted immortal, now outranks Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth for batting and slugging averages—but even after heroic efforts to reconstruct them, we currently have records of only around 2,500 plate appearances for Gibson, compared with over 13,000 for Cobb and over 10,000 for Ruth. Moreover, these statistics are likely to remain a moving target for years, corroding the stability of the game’s hallowed record book. Prudence would suggest some recognition of these inherent obstacles.

◼ Alerted by officials at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain’s culture ministry in 2021 blocked the auction of an oil painting attributed to the 17th-century artist José de Ribera. Some experts suspected that the artist was Caravaggio, the Italian Renaissance master known for his adept use of chiaroscuro. Earlier this month the Prado announced that the painting, Ecce Homo (Behold the Man), depicting Christ crowned with thorns and mocked by a Roman soldier at the trial before Pilate, is “without a doubt” a Caravaggio and a national treasure, “one of the greatest discoveries in the history of art.” Only about 60 of Caravaggio’s paintings are extant. The suggested opening bid for the work was 1,500 euros in 2021. A British national living in Spain is reported to have bought it for 36 million euros and have committed to keeping it in circulation and on public display instead of on a living-room wall. Behold the masterpiece, but also the philanthropy that will enable countless viewers to do so.

◼ Bill Walton, a garrulous mophead free spirit with a stutter and friends among the Grateful Dead, played center for the UCLA Bruins in the 1970s. He helped power them to two NCAA championships under John Wooden, the legendarily buttoned-down, old-school basketball coach. The two had surprising odd-couple chemistry. When Walton was jailed after a protest against the Vietnam War, Wooden came to bail him out. Walton called Wooden often in retirement, just to chat. “I love talking to him,” Wooden told a reporter, although “I don’t do much of the talking.” Sports announcer Marty Glickman had helped Walton overcome his stutter decades earlier. In 14 seasons in the NBA, Walton was named to two All-Star teams, won both the finals (1977) and regular-season (1978) MVP awards, and played for two championship teams, the 1977 Portland Trailblazers and the 1986 Boston Celtics. Longstanding foot and knee injuries impeded but did not stop him. As a basketball color commentator for national TV networks, he often delivered stream-of-consciousness digressions, sometimes controversial, never boring, often stimulating. “English is my fourth language,” he said, “after Stumbling, Stammering, and Bumbling.” Enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993, at age 40; dead at 71. R.I.P.