On the foul line, no less!
An amazing play, not just for the sheer speed and anticipation involved, but also for his field sense in knowing that the right fielder couldn’t quite get to the ball, and then his body control in managing to avoid a collision with him.
And he made it look routine!
The Pac-12 season is in trouble, and the NCAA itself looks to have major issues to contend with.
The season is only three games old, and there are NO undefeated teams, and no 0-3 teams. There are now 30 teams in MLB, and not a single one went 3-0 or 0-3. That has only about a 1.3% chance of happening (once every 75-80 years), and has never happened before in the expansion era (1961-present).
The last year when no team started 3-0 or 0-3 was 1953. (It had about a 10% chance of happening in the 16-team era.)
The last year when no team started 3-0 was actually 1954, but there were two 0-3 teams that year. The Cardinals started 0-3 in especially grand fashion, allowing 43 runs in those three games. They lost game three to the Cubs by the improbable score of 23-13 in one of those crazy classics with the wind blowing out at Wrigley Field. The Cubs had 20 hits and 12 walks in that game, and had scored 22 of their 23 runs in the first five innings! The Cubs starting catcher that day was the legendary Joe Garagiola, who finished the game with a seasonal batting average of 1.000! (To make a long story short, that was the final season of his career and he rarely played. This was his first game of the season and he went 3-for-3.)
Joe was not as bad a ballplayer as he often claimed for story-telling purposes. At one time he was considered such a good prospect that the Cardinals broke all kinds of rules to sign him at age 15. By the time he was 16, he was playing pro ball in the Cardinals farm organization, although just a junior in high school. He did well enough that they promoted him to AA the following year, where he batted a solid .293 for the Columbus Red Birds at age 17.
In the 1946 World Series, although he was a 20-year-old major league rookie, he contributed significantly to the Cardinals’ victory, batting .316 and stroking four hits in game four.
“An outbreak has spread throughout their clubhouse and brought the total cases in recent days to at least 14”
Although life can feel normal some days, this serves as a reminder of just how far we really are from returning to life as usual.
For example, Fauci says he won’t go in a plane or eat in a restaurant. (Nor will I!)
He’s back among the top ten players, as ranked by the highest batting averages in the majors. He’s a solid ninth, with a batting average of ….
ZERO.
I just love early-season stats in general, but this one makes not the slightest bit of sense. Several of Albert’s teammates have as many or more plate appearances and decent batting averages, but they didn’t make the list. There must be some kink in ESPN’s algorithm.
By the way, I may have made this point before, but …
Through the 2012 season, Albert’s lifetime batting numbers were very similar to DiMaggio’s complete career. In fact, Albert’s were a hair better.
| DiMaggio | Pujols through 2012 | |
| AB | 6821 | 6919 |
| HITS | 2214 | 2246 |
| BA | .325 | .325 |
| OBP | .398 | .414 |
| SA | .579 | .608 |
| 2B + 3B | 520 | 520 |
| HR | 361 | 475 |
| R | 1390 | 1376 |
| RBI | 1537 | 1434 |
| OPS+ | 155 | 168 |
| MVP | 3 | 3 |
Of course, their stats are no longer similar. DiMaggio quit after his first off year. Albert has kept playing long past his prime, so all of his percentage stats have declined as his counting stats have increased. If he stays moderately healthy this year, he will finish in the all-time top five in both doubles and homers. (He needs only 7 doubles and 4 homers.) He is already in the top five in RBI and extra base hits.
These Russian soccer players were playing a match on the field when lightning struck one of the players.
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s first pitch was a little outside but we will forgive him because he has been a busy man pic.twitter.com/YiAVAowwiL
— Antwan V. Staley (@antwanstaley) July 23, 2020
Effective immediately, Washington will call itself the “Washington Football Team”, pending adoption of a new name, sources tell ESPN.
This is not a final renaming and rebranding for team; this is the name it wants to use until pending adoption of a new name in the future. pic.twitter.com/sBs0Uo0ICm
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) July 23, 2020
He walks 5’9″, plays 6’9″
According to reports, the new name will not be announced immediately.
Some insiders say Snyder couldn’t decide between “Injuns,” “Hostiles,” “Wagon Burners” and “Savages.” I’m kidding about that, but just barely. Snyder really wanted to keep all the racist iconography and rename the team “Warriors.” As I’ve noted in the past, this is roughly equivalent to Evil Roy Slade’s decision to start his new law-abiding life by changing his name to Evil John Ferguson.
Snyder also hoped to offend a different ethnic group for a while but, as we all know now, it is evil to offend any race or ethnicity except the Irish.
Wait a sec! Why doesn’t Notre Dame’s racist Irish caricature have red hair? Another minor point – I spent quite some time in Ireland working with the Shell people there (great place, by the way), and I never saw anyone wearing yellow shoes.
To be serious for a sec, the new name seems to be contingent on registering the trademarks, sealing all the licensing deals, and other legal folderol. Nobody seems to be spilling the beans about which name the team is attempting to lock down, but the coach said “he wanted the new name to honor both Native Americans and the military, saying that many native people join the military.” Personally, I would have suggested that the team stay away from ethnic identification altogether, but I’ll hold off until I see what he has in mind.
The 2020 season is looking less likely. The Ivy League has cancelled all sports for the fall and the Big Ten has determined, for now, that it will play conference games only, while also preparing not to play at all if the data point to that.
Lifetime .300 hitter and former MVP Buster Posey is the biggest name to drop out so far, but baseball’s #1 superstar, Mike Trout, is still undecided.
The full list of opt-outs includes some big names, but not guys currently at their peak. Nick Markakis is willingly losing the year in his pursuit of 3000 hits, and former Cy Young winners David Price and Felix Hernandez, with 319 wins between them, will not play. (Hernandez may not have made a team in any case.)
Chicago wins big in 1984, loses big in 2017.
Mahomes signs the biggest sports contract ever
It’s nice to talk sports again, if only for a minute. If you’re American and a big sports fan, you already understand my headline. If not, here’s what it means:
Maybe it didn’t matter. Given that they are the Bears, maybe they could have found a way to screw up Mahomes.
Well, given her dad, she ought to be quick, so I guess Lightning Bolt will work
One of the choices is “Warriors,” which would allow the team to retain its offensive iconography and 90% of the racism.
Talk about tone deaf.
This reminds me of one of my fav movies, Evil Roy Slade. When a psychologist was trying to persuade Evil Roy to begin a new non-outlaw life with a new name, Evil Roy said something like, “A new name … I like that. Evil John Ferguson? Evil Fred Noland? Evil Lee Rich?”
Dan Snyder: “A new name? I like that. The Potomac Redskins? The DC Redskins? The District Redskins? The Capital Redskins?”
Y’know, Dan, a lot of black people live in DC. The National N…..s might be right for you!
I think the best way to handle this would be turn turn the racism backward and create an offensive white stereotype. Luckily, the “Brockmire” show has already done all the work:
That episode of Brockmire was filmed about a year ago, but life now mirrors it as the Cleveland Indians consider a name change.
All kidding aside, I’m not convinced that Snyder will really give in, but you can actually bet on what the new team name might be. “Presidents” is the current favorite. As a commenter noted, “People have been advocating for ‘Redtails’ after the airplanes the Tuskegee Airman flew. They’ve mocked up artwork and everything.”
Here are some possibilities from the fierce animal kingdom:
Oh, let’s not leave that kidding aside. How about some silly suggestions:
From the comment section:
The Capital Punishment. They can have a mascot race in the sixth inning with different instruments of death… “And the guillotine wins by a head!”
This happened “days after his tennis tournament was abandoned due to a mini outbreak. Djokovic hosted the Adria Tour in Croatia over last weekend, where players weren’t obliged to observe social-distancing rules and were even seen giving sweaty hugs at the net after their matches.”
“Ewing, the men’s basketball coach at Georgetown University, who was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2008, revealed Friday that he had tested positive for the coronavirus and was being treated at a local hospital.”
He scored more than 24,000 points in his career, 28th highest in NBA history. He scored more than 23,000 of those points for the Knicks, making him their all-time career leader in points. He also holds the team records for career rebounds and blocked shots. His single season high of 13.5 win shares has been topped only by Clyde Frazier in Knicks history.
With no baseball to watch, I re-watched a lengthy film strip about the 1957 World Series, which was basically the event that got me interested in baseball in the first place.
Am I really talkin’ baseball? Now it seems like it all never really happened.
How fickle is the fate of ball players. About a year after being the World Series MVP, Steve Pearce was an unwanted free agent.
You may not even remember Steve Pearce, not even after I just reminded you that he was the MVP of the 2018 World Series. He could do no wrong then, delivering homers and timely hits whenever they were needed. He hit three homers and knocked in eight runs in only 12 at bats. The World Series does occasionally provide some surprise MVPs, but few were more surprising than Pearce, who wandered through seven major league teams in a career in which he averaged only about 170 at bats per season.
So how did he follow up his unexpected moment of glory? Last year he batted .180 with one homer while earning more than six million dollars. His OPS+ was 32, which means he was approximately one-third as productive as an average player, whereupon the Sox made no effort to re-sign him and let him become a free agent. He “unofficially” retired. The Orioles invited him to spring training, presumably because .180 with 1 homer put him at immediate parity with the rest of their line-up. (You may laugh, but five of the Orioles’ regulars had a negative WAR last year, including their starting first baseman, who batted .179 while earning $23 million – and that was an improvement over his previous year! Pearce could have given them similar production at a quarter the cost.) Alas, it did not work out. Even the lowly Orioles could not open a spot for him, and his unofficial retirement became official.