After only four games, every NFL team has at least one defeat except the Cardinals.
Weird fact of the week: the Titans have been the best team in their division despite having lost a game to the Jets! You know you have some offensive line problems when the Jets sack your QB seven times.
There are always what-ifs, but this year had some odder ones than usual.
The LA Dodgers, the best team in baseball based on Pythagorean W-L, need to win a one-game wild card battle against a damned good pitcher (Adam Wainwright) to make the real playoffs. Breaks of the game. They won one less game than the best in baseball, but the only team that won more games happens to be in the same division. To make matters even worse, even if they win that playoff, the Boys in Blue will have to face the top-seeded Giants, and will not have Scherzer available for a while, since he would need to rest after starting the wild-card game.
The Toronto Blue Jays didn’t make the playoffs at all. In fact, they finished fourth in their own division, despite the facts that (1) their record was good enough to win the NL East, and (2) their ratio of runs scored to runs allowed was the fifth best in baseball, better than six of the teams that are still in the hunt.
Some long-ball achievements:
Add an asterisk here: Ruth is no longer in second place because the Negro League records are now officially part of the major league archive. In 1922, Bullet Rogan was 14-8 on the mound and hit 15 homers for the Kansas City Monarchs. Rogan is a Hall of Famer who led the team in home runs, pitching wins and stolen bases that year! According to baseball-reference.com, Rogan finished his career with a .698 winning percentage as a pitcher with a 2.65 ERA. In his spare time, he batted .338 with power.
Sidebar here: the record for a full-time pitcher is 9 homers in a season, held by the great Wes Farrell, in a season in which he pitched 27 complete games! In the years when Babe Ruth was a full-time pitcher, he never hit more than four homers. He maxxed out at 136 at bats in those years, and it was the dead ball era, so four homers was a helluva year! The Bambino was, however, the best left-handed pitcher in the league and won the ERA crown one year, so he kept busy.
It’s a whole different world with Clemson out of top 25 for the first time since the invention of organized sports. They even used to win the Greek Olympics and the Aztec Games. Some developments this week:
#3 Oregon lost a golden opportunity to crowd the SEC teams for the top spot. Earlier in the season they defeated THE Ohio State University, but this week they lost to unranked Stanford. You’d think Stanford would get a little respect for that, but they could climb no higher than #32 in the AP Poll and #46 in the computer rankings.
#8 Arkansas had their dream bubble burst when a powerful #2 Georgia skunked them 37-0.
#9 Notre Dame suffered their first defeat. Cincinnati’s victory gave some luster to the American Conference.
5-0 Kentucky finally got some respect from the poll after defeating #10 Florida. They jumped from unrated status to #16.
It has been a good year so far for the Big 10. They now have five teams among the top eleven in the AP Poll. The computer geeks agree with the high rankings for four of those teams, but are not impressed with Michigan State.
This is a huge deal in historical context:
Britain’s Emma Raducanu breezed through her semi-final match in just 36 minutes. She has not lost a single set in the qualifiers or in the main draw.
Canada’s Leylah Fernandez needed three sets to win all of her matches, but she had to defeat three of the world’s top five players plus a former U.S. Open champion. Weighing in at 105 pounds, she played David today to the Belorusian Goliath, Sabalenka, who at six feet and 176 pounds, has served a ball as fast as 133 mph. Sabalenka’s second serve is faster than Leylah’s first, but that wasn’t enough to win today’s semi-final.
I’m always baffled when they broadcast golf or bowling. Corgi racing seems like a step up. (Cute little fuckers, but obviously not exactly greyhounds in the speed department.)
I can understand their interest. The Aggie is cute – and infectiously enthusiastic.
Note her IG below:
And a helluvan athlete, even though she did not medal in Tokyo.
No only is he just about keeping pace with the sprinters while carrying his equipment, but he’s facing sideways while they all steam straight ahead!
I didn’t know this in a trivia contest. The man was Dan Bankhead, who made four relief appearances for the 1947 Dodgers. (The legendary Satchel Paige was the first black pitcher in the American League.)
Although Bankhead was not especially successful on the mound that year (7.20 ERA), he did manage to homer in his first at bat, and he did get into the World Series that year – as a pinch runner. An interesting question might be: How did a guy with a 7.20 ERA in four meaningless relief appearances get selected for the World Series roster?
Anyway, Bankhead labored in the Mexican leagues in his last 13 summers in pro ball, where he occasionally managed and was fairly successful as a two-way player well into his 40s.
Great Britain, Cross-Country Mountain Biking
I just found out: the team is called “Great Britain” rather than “The United Kingdom” because
(1) The people of Northern Ireland are free to represent either Team GB or Ireland. According to The Belfast Telegraph, 23 of the 31 athletes from Northern Ireland compete for team Ireland. I guess the high sheriffs of British sport thought calling the team The Disunited Kingdom might send the wrong message. Plus DK is already taken (by Denmark).
(2) People from the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man compete for team GB, but those areas are not legally part of the UK.
“Cleveland Indians announce franchise’s new name: the Guardians”
Together, we are all… pic.twitter.com/R5FnT4kv1I
— Cleveland Indians (@Indians) July 23, 2021
There will be beer.
FIRST NBA CHAMPIONSHIP IN 50 YEARS!! pic.twitter.com/U1nYNYMrbv
— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) July 21, 2021
The big fella also had 14 rebounds and five blocked shots. Man, that guy has game!
The Bucks won it on their home turf, spurring a joyous celebration for a franchise that last won a title when the point guard was ol’ number one, Oscar Robertson, and the big scorer was a certain Mr. Abdul-Jabbar.
“Norway women’s beach handball team fined for wearing shorts instead of bikini bottoms”
That’s how you maintain a brand. The high sheriffs of that sport know how to assure the quality spectator experience in anything called “women’s beach ____.”
I’m not totally resistant to change. After all, I’ve accepted the designated hitter, so I’d go along if the women decided to play naked. Then they could wear skimpy bikinis on nostalgia days, like when baseball players wear those old-timey loose flannels.
The Pitchers Whose Spin Rates Fell Most After a Crackdown on Sticky Substances
If you have used up your NY Times articles for the month, there is a stripped-down free version here.
Once ranked #3 in the world, she fell on hard times in the past two years, but seems to be back on her game. She entered Wimbledon unseeded, but has already turned back two rivals in straight sets. She won three rounds in the French Open, two of them against seeded opponents, but then got slaughtered by Krejcikova, 6-2, 6-0, in the fourth round. Krejcikova went on to win the tournament, so Sloane’s loss to her doesn’t seem so bad in retrospect.
He achieved that by winning the French Open Sunday after losing the first two sets. He’s still one major shy of the record co-held by his rivals Federer and Nadal, but he has accumulated his titles in fewer years, and is the youngest of the Big Three.
Key facts:
1. Before the semi-finals on Friday, Nadal’s lifetime record at Roland Garros had been an unbelievable 105-2. Djokovic handed him loss #3 Friday, and was also responsible for one of the previous two. (The only other man to defeat Nadal at Roland Garros was Robin Soderling, an excellent clay court player who made the French Open finals two consecutive years in his brief, illness-shortened career.)
2. Djokovic has a lifetime winning record against both Nadal (30-28) and Federer (27-23). He has won his last ten non-clay matches against Nadal.
For the record, Nadal has dominated Federer 24-16, so their combined record in matches involving only those three players is:
Nadal 52-46
Djokovic 57-51
Federer 39-51
Nadal’s record is divided sharply by surface. Nadal is 14-2 against Federer on clay, compared to 10-14 on other surfaces. He is 19-8 against Djokovic on clay, 9-22 on other surfaces. There is no question that Nadal is the greatest clay court player in history, with an amazing record of 33-10 against the two greatest rivals of his era. That makes Djokovic’s win against him in Friday’s semi-finals seem to smell all the sweeter.
Nobody. Not Nicklaus or Snead or Watson or Boros. Not Harry Vardon or Old Tom Morris.
All close. None with cigars.
But Phil Mickelson did pull it off. He won the White Owl. The El Producto. The Dutch Masters. The Phillies Cheroot.
This past weekend he was Older Tom Morris.
Quite a game. Not many pitchers get to hit in the #2 slot, but he’s not your average pitcher. He is leading the AL in homers!
(And as a pitcher, he has allowed only 11 hits in 26 innings. while striking out 40.)
He’s the most interesting player to come around in decades. One year in Japan (2016) he had an earned run average below 2.00 and an OPS above 1.000! The only pitcher I can remember who clearly could have been a star as an every day player was Don Newcombe, who led the NL in winning percentage one year with a 20-5 record while batting .359 with an OPS over 1.000.
Newcombe was never an every day outfielder in MLB because he was just too good on the mound. One year he won 27 games. Newk did, however, have one season with the Reds late in his career when he appeared in more games pinch-hitting than pitching, and batted over .300 for the season. Newcombe did end his professional career as an every day outfielder, but not in the USA. He did that by pulling a reverse Ohtani and migrating to Japan where he posted a very respectable .473 slugging average in his final pro season. To put that in perspective, Ernie Banks posted a .464 slugging average over his final 12 seasons, encompassing the 60s and 70s.
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A statistical oddity: with the season almost a quarter over, middle reliever Heath Hembree of the Reds, who has never been an especially good pitcher, has not allowed a single hit. (OK, he’s only been in six games – but still!)
The Tebow wager: Which sport will he try after he fails at this?
He’s now the oldest living player in the Hall of Fame, and many say he’s the greatest player ever to take the field. I don’t know about “ever,” but I think he’s the right choice among those who have played since WW2, and I can’t name a position player from any era who could do as many things as well.
You may not know: Willie’s home and road stats look like carbon copies.
| Per 162 games | 2b | 3b | HR | R | RBI | Avg |
| Home | 28 | 6 | 36 | 110 | 100 | .302 |
| Road | 28 | 8 | 35 | 112 | 105 | .301 |