Bill Belichick Makes Dreams Come True

And not just for middle-aged housewives, either. No, Bill also seems to care deeply about forty-something, over-the-hill quarterbacks, because he's making a habit of putting them into season finales and giving them a final shot at gridiron glory.

Last year, with veteran signal caller and veritable Boston legend Doug Flutie having all but guaranteed his decision to retire following the season, Belichick stuck him in the game and allowed him to drop-kick the extra point, a move that hadn't been successfully accomplished in the NFL in more than sixty years.

When the Patriots signed free agent Vinny Testaverde in November, it was noted that the 43-year old was the all-time record holder for most consecutive seasons with a touchdown pass, with nineteen. It was no surprise, then, when he took the field late in today's regular season finale against the Tennessee Titans and led a quick touchdown drive that accounted for the last points in the 40-23 final.

(New England radio broadcasters Gil Santos and Gino Cappelletti made a nice point about the touchdown: the receiver was Troy Brown, who is pretty much the physical embodiment of every "teamwork" philosophy the Patriots have. He was the ONLY player who should have caught that pass.)

The Flutie and Testaverde stories are nice, but leave me at a total loss as to who Belichick will try to help next. Right after the Testaverde signing, I jokingly suggested that Steve Grogan was next; that doesn't seem so funny now. Regardless of who turns out to be the mystery third quarterback of 2007, however, we can be fairly certain of at least three things: he will have a serious task to accomplish (maybe Marino will want to add a few more touchdowns, make Favre work for that record), he will be someone that fans will never (ever) want to see in a game (thankfully, Aaron Brooks doesn't fit point one), and he will be really, really (really) old.

God, I hope Belichick doesn't have George Blanda's phone number.

Happy Birthday, LeBron! (Can You Spot Me A Twenty?)

LeBron James turned 22 years old yesterday.

Don't know why I never realized this before now, but LeBron is exactly five years and two months younger than I am, which means that I've had about five years more experience in the work force than he has, give or take.

Not that it's done a whole lot of good.

The most cash-money I've ever made in one year (I almost just typed season - time to lay off the sports for awhile?) is about $20,000, back when I was a mid-level supervisor for a globally powerful Fortune 500 organization. That's not a lot of money, especially considering it was before I earned my college degree. Since then it's been all downhill (although, just to show that it's not all about money, I have to say that the quality of the jobs has gone up) - people just don't want to pay good money to a book-smart egghead in his mid-20s with no common sense or problem solving skills and a questionable work ethic (not that I've looked or anything. I'm just, you know, assuming. It's a self-esteem thing. Moving on...).

Anyway, I thought it might be interesting (and mildly depressing) to see by just how much LeBron James out-earns me. So, here we go...

LeBron makes...

...$5,828,089 this season, a bargain for the Cavaliers; that number will nearly triple by the 2009-10 season.

...$71,074.26 per game (based on 82 games).

...$2,622.67 per point (based on current average of 27.1 PPG, projected for 82 games).

...$1,759.16 per minute (based on current average of 40.4 MPG, projected for 82 games).

Put it this way - one of LeBron's game checks would not only get me completely out of debt, but there would still be a little left over for the finer things in life, like dinner at Denny's and tickets to local minor league sporting events. We'd be living the good life (subconscious slip: I originally typed, "We'd be LEAVING the good life." Maybe my brain is trying to tell me that money can't buy happiness? Nah). And that's one game check. How crazy is that?

Although...I'm kinda glad I didn't do this with Kevin Garnett's annual salary. Just from eyeballing it, I'm pretty sure one of his game checks could pay off the aforementioned debt AND put a couple kids through college.

I should've worked on my jumpshot more as a kid.

The Best Nicknames In Sports

There has been many an article written about the lost art of the sports nickname, all of which say the same thing: athletes just don’t have nicknames like they used to. To an extent, they have a point: modern nicknames are, for the most part, boring and unimaginative, a sea of T-Macs and A-Rods that seems to differ greatly from a past list that includes such classics as Cy, Schoolboy and Babe.

Still, I’m happy to say that nicknames are not dead. There are many bad ones out there today, of course, but the last twenty years have seen some great ones as well, monikers that truly capture the essence of a particular player’s impact on his chosen sports.

The list below encompasses players from the four major sports in the U.S. (as well as one that falls a little outside the box) and all levels of talent. I tried to limit myself to names that were unique to an individual, which meant classics like Sugar or Babe were out, as well as ones that were more than a set of initials, as tempting as it was to include MJ. These are in no real order, although an attempt was made to provide a general flow from the really good to the great to the all-time best.

20. Hibachi (Gilbert Arenas) – Not so much a nickname as a war cry used by the Wizards guard when he wants to let the world know that he’s on fire, its revelation in early December prompted The Mighty MJD to write on Deadspin, “Gilbert Arenas is a fountain of awesomeness that will never run dry…I could dedicate the next week of my life trying to come up with something to yell when I take a jumpshot, and I couldn’t come up with anything as cool as ‘Hibachi!’”

19. Mr. Hockey (Gordie Howe) – A player that even the most casual sports fan recognizes, Howe earned his nickname with a career that spanned 32 seasons in three different leagues (the USHL, NHL and WHA), including 26 in the NHL. He could do virtually everything on the ice, from putting the puck in the net to playing tough physically, talents that led him to become the greatest points scorer in league history not named Gretzky and earned him a second nickname – “Mr. Elbows”.

18. The Iron Horse (Lou Gehrig) – There are few nicknames that are more apt in their description of a player than “The Iron Horse”, earned by Gehrig during his then-record streak of 2,130 consecutive games played. A constant but quiet superstar in the Yankees lineup for fourteen full seasons, he served as a link between the eras more closely associated with two brighter stars, Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio, while still leaving his own legacy of strength and toughness on the game.

17. Refrigerator (William Perry) – By today’s standards, Perry’s immense size (6’2, as much as 370 pounds) would not be considered exceptional – the standard for linemen on both sides of the ball has risen above 300 pounds, with players such as Cleveland Browns defensive tackle Ted Washington listed at 365 (and probably more). “The Refrigerator”, however, was a phenomenon in his own time, rising to prominence as a member of the great Chicago Bears defenses of the mid-1980s and possibly starting the trend of using defensive players on the offensive side of the ball in goal line situations.

16. Round Mound of Rebound (Charles Barkley) – For all the talk of the unique abilities of players like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, it is very likely that basketball will never again see another player like Barkley, who managed to play (and excel) at the power forward position despite standing somewhere between 6’4” and 6’6”. He followed up his Hall of Fame playing days with a second career as a TV analyst with a reputation for outspokenness.

15. Shoeless Joe (Joe Jackson) – One of the most tragic players in baseball history, Joe Jackson was also the owner of one of the sport’s greatest nicknames, earning the name “Shoeless” when, as a young player, he took off a pair of spikes that hurt his feet and played the outfield wearing only socks. Thanks to his involvement in the Black Sox Scandal of 1919, which led to placement on the ineligible list the following year, Jackson is the only major leaguer since 1900 to hit .400 in a season and not be a member of the Hall of Fame.

14. The Assassin (Jack Tatum) – As a hard-hitting defensive back in the 1970s, Tatum’s reputation was enhanced by his involvement in one of the most famous and one of the most infamous plays in NFL history: he delivered the hit on Frenchy Fuqua that jarred the ball loose and enabled Franco Harris to make the “Immaculate Reception” in a 1972 playoff game, then in a preseason game six years later doled out what is described by virtually every source as a “vicious” shot to the Patriots Darryl Stingley, seriously injuring Stingley’s spinal cord and leaving him paralyzed from the chest down.

13. His Heinous (Bill Laimbeer) – “Bill Laimbeer was one of the most notorious players ever to throw an elbow, thrust a hip, or feign being fouled.” And that’s from the league’s official bio on the former Detroit Pistons center, who helped lead the team to back-to-back championships in the late 1980s. The baddest of the “Bad Boys”, Laimbeer once fought Celtics Hall of Famers Larry Bird and Robert Parish in the same playoff series.

12. The Golden Bear (Jack Nicklaus) – Universally regarded as one of the top two or three players ever to pick up a golf club, Nicklaus was dubbed “The Golden Bear” thanks to a combination of physical (blonde hair and a sturdy build) and mental (fierce competitiveness) attributes. Though his last victory in a major tournament came two decades ago, at the classic 1986 Masters where he came from six shots down on the back nine to earn the win, he is still the all-time career leader in the category with eighteen wins.

11. The Barber (Sal Maglie) – Pitchers were meaner back in the 1950s, willing to fire a warning shot under a batter’s chin for such a subversive act as digging in too firmly at the plate. None was more ornery than Maglie, the Giants pitcher from that era who personified the discord between his team and the inter-city rival Brooklyn Dodgers by refusing to back down from any hitter, often buzzing them so closely that his fastball nearly shaved a few whiskers from their chins.

10. El Guapo (Rich Garces) – The beauty of the “El Guapo” nickname was in its irony; meaning “The Handsome One” in Spanish, it most certainly was not an apt description for the portly Garces, who was listed at 250 but likely tipped the scales at close to 300 pounds during much of his tenure with the Boston Red Sox. Despite the fact that he looked more like me than a professional athlete, Garces spent seven seasons in Beantown, including three as the team’s most reliable bullpen option.

9. Magic (Earvin Johnson) – At 6’9”, Johnson might have been the tallest point guard in NBA history, but he was also an extraordinarily talented athlete who proved capable of playing any position on the floor, as evidenced by his 42 point performance at the center spot in Game Seven of the NBA Finals his rookie season. His nickname was picked up as a young man, but can best be explained through the visual image of him leading the Lakers on the fast break, looking right before flipping a pass back to the left and making it all look easy.

8. Mr. October (Reggie Jackson) – A controversial player during much of his major league career, Jackson was, indisputably, a money player when it came to the postseason. His greatest achievement was the 1977 World Series, when he did something only the great Babe Ruth had accomplished previously and hit three homeruns in one game (the deciding Game Six – in addition, all three came on three successive swings) and five total in the Series. His crowning as Mr. October has led to similar nicknames for Derek Jeter (Mr. November) and Dave Winfield (Mr. May).

7. The Galloping Ghost (Red Grange) – Before LaDainian Tomlinson, before Walter Payton, before Gayle Sayers, there was Grange, one of the finest backs in the history of organized football. He was given his nickname by Chicago sports writer Warren Brown after a game against Michigan in which Grange scored four touchdowns in twelve minutes, doubling the Wolverines total from the previous two seasons combined.

6. Knuckles (Chris Nilan) – I found this nickname for Nilan with many others on a Wikipedia page for athletic nicknames, and had a good idea which sport he played (hockey) and how he played it (with his fists). Turns out, Nilan is one of the most penalized players in NHL history, with 3,000 career minutes spent in the little glass box, including a record ten penalties and 42 penalty minutes in one game.

5. Manos de Piedra (Roberto Duran) – Duran was one of the greatest lightweights of all-time, winner of 103 fights against only 16 losses. A winner of five title belts in four divisions, he once won thirty fights in a row and 73 of 74, but is best remembered for the infamous “no mas” bout against Sugar Ray Leonard, in which Duran quit near the end of the eighth round.

4. Basketball Jesus (Larry Bird) – There is no better description for the way Boston Celtics fans viewed Bird in the 1980s than the nickname bestowed upon him by ESPN columnist Bill Simmons. The public views most professional athletes as talented physical specimens who possess a certain natural skill; not so with Bird, a player considered by many the hardest working player in league history. That work ethic stemmed from a fierce competitiveness and desire to win – the greatest Bird story ever is the time he walked into the locker room prior to the Three Point Shootout at NBA All-Star Weekend and casually asked, “So, which one of you guys is going to finish second?”

3. The Great One (Wayne Gretzky) – The NHL’s career leader in goals, assists, and points, Gretzky was the single greatest force the league has ever seen. Unlike other sports, where fans of various eras will voice support for their choice of the best ever, that discussion doesn’t seem to exist in hockey; sure, there are those who will argue that Gordie Howe was number one because he played so well for so long or Mario Lemieux should be at the top because he was great even in the face of several potentially debilitating injuries, but those tend to be devil’s advocate arguments. It is still Gretzky against whom all young potential superstars are measured.

2. One Size (Fitz Hall) – My goal in creating this list was to stay away from nicknames that were based on a players initials or shortened name (no MJ, no A-Rod), those that were shared by more than one athlete (no Sugar, no Big Red), and those that were little more than unimaginative puns or plays on words (no Dice-K). Even so, the nickname bestowed on Hall, a 26-year old English soccer player, was too good to pass up – play on words or no, it made me laugh out loud when I saw it on the aforementioned Wikipedia nicknames page.

1. The Splendid Splinter (Ted Williams) – Two images exist of the Ted Williams who played with the Boston Red Sox for two decades in the middle of the twentieth century: the aged star, worn out from years of doing battle with the Knights of the Keyboard and the forces of Germany, Japan and Korea abroad, and the baby-faced rookie, brash and bold and wanting only to hear people proclaim him to be the greatest hitter who ever lived. The latter image was the one who, at a lanky 6’3” 180 pounds, became known as “The Splendid Splinter”, the sweet-swinging outfielder who hit .400 in a season, won two Triple Crowns and two Most Valuable Player awards, and gathered a handful of batting titles.

Hey, Why Can't We Get Guys Like That?

Following the death of Red Auerbach earlier this year, I made a point to head to the store and pick up “Let Me Tell You A Story”, the book he had collaborated on with author John Feinstein. Even growing up in Boston in the 1980s, I didn’t know a lot about Auerbach other than the fact that he was maybe the greatest coach in NBA history and one of the top three legendary figures in a city full of them.

The book was good; there were a lot of interesting stories that I had never heard before, and it proceeded in a more or less chronological order that helped clarify not only Auerbach’s position with the team through the years, but many of the important things that happened during his tenure as coach, general manager and president of the Celtics.

One thing that stood out was Feinstein’s account of the way Auerbach handled the Rick Pitino Era in Boston, which started with much hope in 1997 and ended with the organization on even worse footing four years later. Where Pitino was concerned, Auerbach tended to avoid commenting altogether (which for him was a huge deal – Red had an opinion on everything), even among friends, for fear that something negative might end up in the media and create an issue.

On one occasion mentioned by Feinstein, however, Red pointed out that many former Celtics were playing on other teams, which was his way of saying that Pitino was giving away too many good players for next to nothing.

That quote was startling to me because it was one I had considered many times before – just never in terms of the Celtics. On the contrary, my first thought upon reading that line was of the Boston Bruins, the oft-forgotten player in the city’s sports scene. After a nearly thirty year run of playoff appearances dating back to the days of Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito, the Bruins had fallen on hard times in the 1990s under the ownership of Jeremy Jacobs, who cut the payroll and allowed many of his best players to be dealt or walk away rather than signing them to long-term, big-money deals. It was the hockey version of Moneyball, except without the analysis and success that makes Billy Beane’s idea work.

Just for fun, I decided to look through the NHL team rosters to find as many former Bruins as possible, with the only stipulation that they were either still playing or had only recently retired. The results were even more surprising than I had expected, with about seventeen players who had once played successfully in Boston now elsewhere in the league, in some cases helping teams win Stanley Cups and in one winning the Hart Trophy as the league’s Most Valuable Player. To break it down more clearly and demonstrate just how many of these guys there are, they are separated into individual lines below. (Note: the use of the word lines is about as far as my hockey knowledge goes, so be gentle if I write anything stupid from here on out.)

First Line
Center: Joe Thornton – Drafted first overall in 1997 and viewed locally as the player to replace Ray Bourque as the face of the team for the next two decades, Thornton played seven seasons and 23 games for the Bruins and served three seasons as the team’s captain before being traded to San Jose for three players in November 2005. All he did in the rest of the season was tally 92 points in 58 games for the Sharks to win the Hart Trophy, the first player to ever do so after switching teams in mid-season.

Left Wing: Sergei Samsonov – The only true left wing on this list, Samsonov was drafted in the same first round as Thornton, going eighth overall in 1997, before being traded in the same season. Oft injured during his last three seasons in Boston, Samsonov helped the Edmonton Oilers reach the Stanley Cup finals before signing with Montreal in the off-season.

Right Wing: Mike Knuble – Knuble didn’t start out with the Bruins, playing four seasons for the Red Wings and Rangers before coming to Boston, and didn’t come into his own until 2002-03, when he doubled his previous career-high with thirty goals. He left the team following the lost 2004-05 season to sign with Philadelphia, where he has lit the lamp 48 times in a season and a half.

Defense: Kyle McLaren – My enduring memory of McLaren remains the vicious cheap shot he doled out to Montreal’s Richard Zednik in the 2002 playoffs; if I’m not mistaken, it was the last game he played for the Bruins before being dealt to the Sharks in the off-season.

Defense: Nick Boynton – Boynton played six seasons with Boston, joining the team as a first round draft pick in 1999 and earning regular playing time by his third year. His +/- for his first three seasons as an everyday player were 18, 7, and 17, but he slumped following the lockout and was traded to Phoenix for defenseman Paul Mara in June. He has struggled with the Coyotes, recording only two assists in twenty games before fracturing his foot in November.

Goal: Andrew Raycroft – It took Raycroft three seasons to play for the Bruins on a regular basis, but he finally found success in 2003-04, chalking up 29 wins and allowing just 2.05 goals per game to win the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s best rookie. He struggled in 2005-06, however, and was traded to Toronto during the draft.

Second Line

Center: Bryan Smolinski, Chicago Blackhawks
Left Wing: Brian Rolston, Minnesota Wild
Right Wing: Bill Guerin, St. Louis Blues
Defense: Sean O’Donnell, Anaheim Ducks
Defense: Glen Wesley, Carolina Hurricanes
Goal: John Grahame, Carolina Hurricanes

Yahoo! Sports provided the statistical and position information for this story.

Skip Bayless Had A Chance To Make A Difference; Guess What Happened?

Anyone who seriously follows sports is certain to be familiar with the work of Skip Bayless, the ESPN “personality” who has built a lengthy career out of presenting a contrary viewpoint on even the most mundane topics. His shtick has made him one of the most annoying characters on the World Wide Leader and earned him multiple appearances on The Big Lead, Deadspin, Awful Announcing and a variety of other web sites with writers more talented and less in-your-face controversial than John Edward (that’s Skip’s real name).

I don’t plan to say much in these next few paragraphs that hasn’t been said before; when someone is as disliked as Bayless is and draws as much fierce criticism as he does, it becomes difficult to bring anything original to the table. That’s the thing about Skip, though: even though you know he’s been skewered time and again for his loudly expressed opinions, there’s something about the way he presents himself that just makes you want to pull out the ol’ laptop and start tapping away, if only in the hopes that writing about his latest misguided attempt at playing devil’s advocate will clear it from your brain so you don’t have to think about it anymore.

This afternoon, for instance, I happened to catch Skip and Roy S. Johnson on the “1st and 10” segment of the Cold Pizza morning show. (Quick question on Cold Pizza: is Dana Jacobsen pregnant? Today was the first time I had seen the show in a while and she looked bigger than I remembered. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but when you remember someone as tall, well-built and sort of attractive, then see them a few months later and they’re still tall, still somewhat attractive, but with what could best be described as a general roundness of figure, you tend to wonder what’s going on. Back to Skip.) On one of the early “downs”, there was a topic regarding Barry Bonds and steroids, spurred of course by the recent revelation that the federal government has obtained records of over one hundred players who tested positive for steroids prior to the start of Major League Baseball’s current program, a group that may or may not include Bonds. Bayless, as expected, ranted on and on about the issue, basically rehashing in a thirty second span everything he has written about Bonds in the last few years while also throwing baseball under the bus for having dirty players and cheaters (pretty sure that covers his response – I really should have jotted down some notes). Johnson retorted, they moved on, and eventually that segment ended.

Some time later, they came back for another “down”, with another current topic on the agenda: Jason Taylor’s comments that Shawne Merriman and his sixteen sacks don’t deserve to win the league’s Defensive Player of the Year award because Merriman was suspended for a positive steroid test earlier this season. According to his rant on Bonds, Bayless should have been delighted with Taylor for speaking out on the subject, thankful that a clean NFL player was standing up to a league-mate who is known to have engaged in some wrongdoing. It was the perfect opportunity to acknowledge a professional athlete for standing up for what is right. Right?

Sorry, that’s not how Skip operates. He immediately downplayed Merriman’s positive test and suspension, insisting that the All-Pro linebacker has been tested “almost every day” since his return, so he can’t still be using anything illegal, and he’s still performing at an insanely dominant level, so he must deserve recognition as the best defensive player in football. Never mind the fact that there are known performance enhancing substances that the NFL doesn’t test for; given the rate at which the dark side of chemistry moves, we can only imagine what products are now out there, readily available if you know where to look, that the administrators of professional sports leagues haven’t even heard of yet. Even if Merriman is being tested every single day – even if Roger Goodell is standing there and watching him go in the cup - there is no guarantee that he hasn’t continued to use something illegal.

Barry Bonds is not blameless in the whole steroids mess. He admitted to the BALCO grand jury that he had “unknowingly” used the Cream and the Clear after being misled by his trainer, but insists that he never intentionally used performance-enhancing substances. If Bayless is hard on him, it’s because he is actually doing a decent job of representing the majority of baseball fans, most of whom feel that they “know” Bonds is guilty of wrongdoing in the same way they “know” O.J. killed Ron and Nicole – there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence, nothing hard, but it doesn’t matter. We made up our minds long ago that he must be guilty, so it must be true.

Bayless’s response to the two similar stories – castigation of Bonds, acceptance of Merriman – speaks volumes about the way steroid issues in their respective leagues are handled by the mainstream media. In baseball, a positive drug test is met with anger and the desire to force the action. It is a problem so important, we are told, that the federal government had to become involved, which is somewhat like a disagreement between two children in which a parent must intervene. When the same thing happens in football, however, most of the stories deal with the effect the player’s upcoming suspension will have on his team. There might be talk of government investigations, but nothing too serious, nothing to get excited about, because the media will keep it low-key – no T.O. treatment for NFL steroid cases, whatever you do – and eventually it will go away.

Forget devil’s advocate, forget the role of the fan: on Cold Pizza today, Skip Bayless had a chance to shine a light on this inconsistency, to be one of the few media members willing to step up and say, “Why do we treat these two sports so differently?” Ultimately, though, he did his level best to further the same old line of thought, underplaying the steroid problem in the NFL while blowing Major League Baseball’s issues out of proportion.

William Shakespeare wrote, “Some men are born with greatness, some men achieve greatness, and some men have greatness thrust upon them.” It might be melodramatic to assert that Bayless had greatness thrust upon him this morning and turned it away, but the fact is that he had the chance to make a difference, and he refused.

I’d be lying if I said I was surprised.

Learning To Fit In: Will Matsuzaka And Okajima Become BFF? Does It Matter?

I was stumbling around the Internet last night, searching for news on newly acquired Red Sox pitcher Hideki Okajima, and came upon JapaneseBallPlayers.com, a web site that keeps track of past, present and future major leaguers from the Land of the Rising Sun. They list fourteen active big leaguers, with Tomo Ohka an unsigned free agent, and fourteen who have either retired or returned to Japan, numbers that mesh reasonably well with those available on Baseball Reference.

According to the birthplace data at Baseball Reference, which is the most complete on the Web, eight countries (not including the United States) have supplied more players to the major leagues than Japan’s 34, with Canada (210) and Ireland (40, all of whom played prior to the end of World War I) the only non-Latin American nations in the bunch. Yet no group of foreign players catches our interest quite so much as the one that crosses the Pacific Ocean from Japan.

Why the interest? As I see it, there are two main reasons. First, we recognize that not only are these players arriving in the major leagues from another country, they’re arriving from another culture, one that the majority of people in the United States don’t necessarily know or understand; a Japanese native coming the U.S. to play baseball is completely different from a Canadian doing the same. When it comes to Japanese players (or any foreign player, for that matter), the first cultural barrier to be discussed is often language, usually in the form of a concern: “How will he fit in the clubhouse if he can’t communicate with his teammates?” The answer should be that he will fit in just fine as long as he comes to the ballpark every day ready to work hard and do his job to the best of his ability, but the language barrier means it might take longer for other players to respond to that commitment.

Quick story: when I was in college, I worked as the night manager at a local fast food joint. At one point, we hired a guy named Yu from Indonesia to work the grill, which for the hours he worked meant he had to not only prepare the food but break all the equipment down and get it ready for closing. Yu couldn’t speak a lot of English but I don’t think that restaurant ever had a better worker. The cultural and language barriers were there, and they were evident (it was understood that he had to leave the floor at a certain time to pray, for instance), but the most important thing was that he could be finished with his job and out the door fifteen minutes after we closed. All that mattered at the end of the day was the overall job performance.

The second reason that Japanese players catch our collective eye is that, linguistic and cultural differences aside, the career arcs of players who come from Latin America are surprisingly similar to their North American counterparts: both groups start out at a young age (often during their teenage years), take some time to progress through the various levels of the minor leagues, and eventually either make it to the major leagues or top out somewhere along the way.

Japanese players, on the other hand, usually arrive in the United States as proven veterans, having played in the Central or Pacific Leagues for several seasons and eager for a new challenge and greater financial compensation. Since Hideo Nomo threw open the door to the Far East in the mid-1990s, the youngest player to make the leap was Ohka, who debuted with the 1999 Red Sox at the age of 23. Ohka, however, is an anomaly, as most of the other Japanese imports started their second careers in the United States at the age of 27 or older.

This season, the Boston Red Sox will employ a pair of players, both pitchers, who have enjoyed great success in Japan for a number of years: Okajima, who once had 25 saves for the Yomiuri Giants but will likely be used primarily as a left-handed specialist in Boston, and the much-heralded Daisuke Matsuzaka, a 108-game winner who could wind up anywhere from Hideki Irabu to Ichiro Suzuki on the spectrum of great Japanese players who came to America. It is widely accepted that the Red Sox pursued Matsuzaka (heretofore referred to in this space as Kaibutsu – it means “Monster”, his nickname, in Japanese) for two reasons: one, because he has the potential to emerge as an ace on the mound, and two, because his presence on the team allows the Red Sox to further develop and enhance their already solid business standing in the Far East by signing the most marketable pitcher in the region.

Okajima’s signing was also a multi-faceted transaction, one that speaks in large part to the above point regarding the importance of language and its relationship to overall comfort. Like Kaibutsu, Okaji, as he said he likes to be called, was brought to Boston “on the merits” of his ability; he wouldn’t be pitching for the Red Sox if he wasn’t capable of getting hitters out and filling his required role. At the press conference to announce the signing (which was held before Matsuzaka – don’t want to wear out that nickname before spring training starts – inked his deal), Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein talked about the other reason for the pursuit and addition of Okaji, saying, “…[B]ut, if we do end up with two Japanese pitchers, that certainly would help the assimilation process, not only on the field, but also off the field.” Epstein makes it clear that part of the job description for Okaji is helping Matsuzaka adjust to life in the United States, which is what we as fans expect to hear. If nothing else, it helps put our mind at ease to know that someone from the team – not his wife, not an interpreter, but an actual teammate – will be around to keep the Red Sox big ticket addition company, so if he does fail to perform up to the expected standard in 2007 and beyond he won’t be able to claim loneliness as a factor.

But let’s think about this idea for a minute, that Okaji’s presence on the team is really an important part of Matsuzaka’s assimilation into American culture (or vice versa; the greater pressure is on Kaibutsu, given his large contract and extended courtship, but Okajima will face the same cultural issues as his teammate). Does it make sense to assume that just because two players from the same country are on the same team, they will somehow become good friends?

Probably not, but being great friends is not a prerequisite for being helpful to one another. Regardless of how close they become, the presence of another player translates to an ability to communicate more easily, especially if one picks up the English language faster than the other, and it will likely be good to have another player to compare notes with on everyday matters such as good places to eat and what to do for fun during down times. It’s true that they have never played on the same team together, which means that they’ll be almost as new to each other as they are to their new teammates, but their similar backgrounds and situations should help overcome that relatively issue and unite them with a common purpose.

It will be interesting this season to follow Kaibutsu and Okaji as they learn their way around both Boston and the Red Sox clubhouse; maybe, as Jackie MacMullen wrote in the Boston Globe recently, “…by April Matsuzaka will be eating chowder with Papelbon at Game On. Maybe by May he’ll be listening to loud, lousy music with Beckett before each game. Maybe by June he’ll be playing hide-and-seek with Manny in the wall.” Maybe, in other words, he (and Okajima, although he gets short shrift in MacMullen’s story) will quickly adjust and learn to live within this culture while still playing baseball at the highest possible level.

And, if this makes any sense at all, I kinda hope they find that they hate each other while they do it.

Why Does Merrill Hoge Hate Vince Young?

Almost a month ago, a post on Deadspin.com referenced a You Tube video from the preseason in which ESPN analyst Merrill Hoge tore apart the performance of Tennessee Titans rookie quarterback Vince Young (sadly, the video is no longer available, but there are plenty of others), going so far as to say, “The Titans are stuck with Vince Young for the next three years, and they can’t get rid of him, no matter how much they obviously might want to.” I repeat: this video clip was initially recorded during the preseason, before Vince Young had ever played a meaningful game as an NFL quarterback.

Since then, Young has shown himself to be, in many ways, a solid performer at the position; he’s still just a rookie, so we shouldn’t rush to pass final judgment, but he has definitely demonstrated a knack for making exciting plays and leading the team to victory. After twelve starts, Young has entered into the conversation for Rookie of the Year, joining an outstanding first-year player class that includes New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush and wide receiver Marques Colston, and Chicago Bears kick returner Devin Hester. Young probably won’t win – that’s some pretty tough competition he has to deal with – but the fact that he has, as a rookie quarterback, put himself in a position to be considered is impressive.

Since then, Hoge has continued to make it his life’s work to tear down Young, with matters coming to a head following Monday Night Football on ESPN on Christmas Night. Hoge once again jumped into the discussion with both feet, responding to a suggestion that Young might be the Rookie of the Year by asserting that he didn’t deserve the award because he has only played twelve games (which is incorrect, since Young has played fourteen, but we’ll give Merrill a pass and assume he meant Young has started twelve games), and it should really go to a player who has played in fifteen games. Conveniently, only one serious candidate, Bush, meets that qualification, so we should probably just go ahead and put his name on the trophy right now. (Hester has also played all fifteen games, but he’s in the running solely for the fact that he has had a great year returning kicks, which for me is the equivalent of a closer winning a major award – in order to do so, he has to seriously outdistance all other contenders. As good as Hester has been, he hasn’t done that.)

This isn’t really about whether or not Merrill Hoge is right or wrong about Young’s legitimacy as a Rookie of the Year candidate – I happen to think that Bush would not be a bad choice, one of the top two players on my ballot – but about the fact that in order to get his point across, he resorted to an absolutely terrible argument – not even Cal Ripken would agree with Hoge’s implicit assertion that games played is the most important statistic in football – that actually takes attention away from the fact that, in choosing Bush, he was making a completely acceptable decision.

If Hoge wanted to make a case against Young, he could have chosen any number of inadequacies in the young quarterback’s game: his low rating (69.7, third worst among qualifiers), his unimpressive touchdown-to-interception ratio (12 TDs, 11 INTs), or his completion percentage (52.6, last in the league). The fact is, Young has a Rookie of the Year candidacy because of his leadership and his ability, first showcased nationally in the BCS championship game last year, to make the big play when needed, usually with his legs. He is also developing a reputation as a winner; the Titans started out 0-5, with Young sitting on the bench for most or all of the first three. Since he assumed the starting role, they are 8-4, including six wins in a row (that’s the third best streak for a rookie quarterback all-time, although it must be noted that Chicago’s Kyle Orton is second with eight straight last season).

Bush, on the other hand, has struggled in the Saints running game for much of the season, but has emerged as a multi-level threat, spelling primary back Deuce McCallister for 5-15 carries a game and hauling in 86 passes from Drew Brees (good for seventh in the league). He has more receptions and total yards than Colston, though the receiver has more receiving yards and more touchdowns. It’s a tight race, one that will probably come down to the voters’ perceptions of the three front-runners: how Young’s leadership compares to his statistics, how much Bush is punished for not living up to the (impossible) hype that surrounded his entry into the league and how much extra credit Colston deserves for rising from a seventh round pick to a primary option in the Saints offensive system.

Whoever ultimately wins, one thing should certainly happen at ESPN: someone should take Merrill Hoge aside, tell him to stop letting whatever personal issues he has with Vince Young cloud his judgment, then teach him how to construct a reasonable argument.

Greg Oden Is The Next Patrick Ewing? I'll Buy That

As I headed out to grab some dinner earlier this evening, Fox College GameTime hosts Lincoln Kennedy and Dan Moriarty were conducting an interview with CBS Sports writer Seth Davis. When the discussion turned to Ohio State’s Greg Oden (who Florida had just limited to seven points, six rebounds and four blocks in an 86-60 blowout), Moriarty asked Davis to talk about the comparisons that the freshman center has drawn to NBA big men such as Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, David Robinson and Shaquille O’Neal.

Something about a comparison between a player such as Oden, who has all the potential in the world, and a player such as Russell, who is consistently identified as one of the top five centers in professional basketball history, doesn’t sit well with me. On the one hand, it’s what we do – how better to accurately describe the impact we think a player will have than to pair him with someone whose game we already know? On the other hand, however, this is an odd exercise that places unrealistic expectations on the younger man by forcing him to live up to the unlivable legends of his predecessors.

Davis, to his credit, immediately brushed aside the validity of the Russell comparison, choosing instead to align Oden with former New York Knicks great Patrick Ewing, a fellow center who dominated at the collegiate level before heading to the NBA and becoming arguably one of the top ten centers in history. Though this might still strike some as a bad choice, given the outstanding success enjoyed by Ewing throughout his career, my personal opinion is that it was the best possible comparison (with Robinson a close second).

How, you might ask, can I make such a claim? It’s simple: Greg Oden can be comfortably compared to Patrick Ewing because as great as Ewing was, we can be reasonably certain that another player will one day come along who possesses similar athletic ability and reaches similar heights. The same is true of Robinson and possibly Hakeem Olajuwon; they were great, but not necessarily transcendent.

But there will never be another Russell, as much for the era in which he played as for the talent he possessed (Russell is similar to Babe Ruth in that respect: a great player whose reputation was made even greater by the timing of his career), just as there may never be another Abdul-Jabbar (who dominated college basketball for three seasons before becoming one of the five best centers in NBA history) or another Shaquille O’Neal (challenged by only Olajuwon for the title of best center of the last two decades).

This isn’t limited only to centers, of course: the most common NBA comparison is that of up-and-coming guards to Michael Jordan, who most consider the best player in league history. The analysis remains the same, however, in that it makes just as little sense to talk about Dwyane Wade or Kobe Bryant as The Next Jordan as it does to speak of Oden as The Next Russell.

Rather than weighing young players down with impossible comparisons to these players, we could do everyone a favor by making more realistic assumptions.

Real People, Real Quotes, Real Funny

“I’ve always loved the psychology of sport. Football is the ultimate team sport. If one out of eleven is off…you know where the leak in the bucket is.” – Matthew McConaughey discussing some philosophical ideas on the December 18th Monday Night Football broadcast (Awful Announcing)

“Stay out of the paint.” – Knicks head coach Isiah Thomas delivering what was later described as “a lecture on sportsmanship” to Nuggets guard Carmelo Anthony; seconds later, J.R. Smith was the victim of a hard foul in the lane, starting a melee that cleared both benches and spilled into the first few rows of seats (New York Post and CBS Sportsline)

“He’s full of shit, he’s a total asshole.” – Nuggets coach George Karl expressing his displeasure with Thomas; Thomas had said that Karl was running up the score by leaving his starters on the floor late in the game (With Leather)

“A place where I’m going to be rewarded emotionally and spiritually to have an extreme impact on somebody’s life can be much more powerful than hitting a homerun in a clutch situation…it feels right inside of my body.” – Former Red Sox outfielder Gabe Kapler, announcing his retirement on December 12th; Kapler left his playing days behind to accept a job with Boston’s Class A affiliate in South Carolina (Yahoo! Sports)

“I can’t explain it. Why do people write forever? Why do people do whatever they like to do and not want to back away from it? I don’t play golf, I don’t fish and I am not a guy for hobbies.” – Penn State coach Joe Paterno, explaining in no uncertain terms that he will retire when he is damn good and ready; I would suggest that if he is ever interested in pursuing a hobby, he talk to Bobby Bowden about this eBay thing (Fox Sports)

“J.D. is healthy…we’ve had noted experts that have demonstrated that he’s without any condition that would effect him over the five years of the contract.” – Player agent and noted psychic Scott Boras, commenting on reported medical issues involving J.D. Drew’s right shoulder; the free agent outfielder has a five year, $70 million contract hanging in the balance while the Red Sox seek further opinions (Yahoo! Sports)

“One play at a time, right, that’s how you eat an elephant, one bite at a time.” – ESPN broadcaster Craig James, responding to a question about how Oregon should go about overcoming a 17-0 halftime deficit in the Las Vegas Bowl (ESPN)

“When will he get here? We’ve got to ask the weatherman.” – Denver vice-president of basketball operations Mark Warkentien on the impending arrival of newly acquired guard Allen Iverson; Denver’s airport is currently closed due to a blizzard (Yahoo! Sports)

“I didn’t actually go ahead and ask for a trade…I went in and expressed my displeasure with the style of basketball that we were playing. We weren’t playing winning basketball. I said that if we are going to continue to play this style, and we were going to continue to lose, then I didn’t want to be a part of it.” – Iverson, explaining to the Associated Press that he did not in any way ask to leave Philadelphia (Yahoo! Sports)

“If that job’s open, you’ll find me at the friggin’ head of the line, with my resume in hand, ready to take that job…I don’t care if we’re in the middle of a playoff run, I’m packing my stuff and coming to Seattle.” – Atlanta Falcons head coach Jim Mora, who expressed his desire to pursue the job at the University of Washington (his alma mater) if the position ever became available; Mora apologized the next day and insisted that the words were a joke that was blown out of proportion (ESPN.com)

“They screamed, I screamed, we were reading the letter out loud, and everyone gave us these weird looks.” – Michelle Wie on her reaction upon finding out that she had been admitted to Stanford; the weird looks could possibly be attributed to the fact that she had been excused from class following an exam and was in a computer lab, where it is possible that other students were still taking exams, and therefore bothered by someone yelling, shrieking, and carrying on in general. Just a thought (Yahoo! Sports)

“We’re screwed.” – Celtics coach Doc Rivers on the loss of team leader Paul Pierce for up to three weeks with a foot injury. Okay, I made it up…but you know that’s what he’s thinking.

A Last Minute Entry For Ironic Headline Of The Year

Louisville C Caracter suspended for violation of team rules

The brief AP article mentions that not only has the freshman (who is clearly not living up to his name) been suspended indefinitely, but he was also forced to sit out the first three games of the season after being suspended by the NCAA.

Best line of the article? "Pitino had no immediate comment on how long Caracter would be suspended."

I hear Marvin Lewis has the same problem.

I Once Agreed With Scoop Jackson; Today, I Defend Him

When Allen Iverson was essentially suspended with pay by the Philadelphia 76ers earlier this month while the team tried to trade him, at least one commentator made the point that it appeared Philly was considering “tanking” the season in order to win the right to draft Ohio State’s Greg Oden, who has already been elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame after four games at the collegiate level. (Sorry, I made that up.)

Maybe it was because the commentator was ESPN’s Scoop Jackson, who AwfulAnnouncing has trained me to question at every opportunity, but the statement triggered alarm bells in the portion of my brain that handles common sense. For starters, it didn’t make any sense – the NBA isn’t like Major League Baseball or the NFL, where the team with the worst overall record gets the number one pick. We might not like to think of it in these terms, but an organization in either of those sports can play to lose in order to obtain a strongly desired player (as the Houston Texans were accused of doing in order to draft Reggie Bush in 2006, before they felt guilty and chose Mario Williams instead).

The NBA is different, however, because of the lottery – the team with the worst record has the best chance of winning the top choice in the draft, at about 25%, but is in no way guaranteed that selection. From the looks of it, Scoop was just tossing something up against the wall in an attempt to be original; I was pretty certain it wouldn’t stick because he didn’t appear to have done his homework on the situation.

So I decided to do it for him, tracking down a list of the twenty-two lottery selections since 1985, the teams that made them, and the overall ranking of those teams. The first finding did not bode well for Scoop: only four teams that finished the season with the league’s worst record had later won the right to draft first, indicating that the Sixers have little to gain by winning the fight to finish last.

Further digging, however, indicates that Scoop might actually have been onto something, as there were eight other occasions in which a team finished with a record in the bottom three, including four in a row from 1996 to 1999 (a stretch that began when Philadelphia selected Iverson first overall after finishing next-to-last in the league during the 1995-96 season), for a total of twelve instances where a team drafted first after compiling no better than the third worst record in the league. I feel fairly comfortable stating, then, that Scoop Jackson actually made a good point regarding this situation.

It should also be noted that Jackson’s comments regarding the Sixers’ commitment to winning, particularly his use of the word “tank”, were not off base; the team was bad even before Iverson sat down for good on December 6, but they haven’t done any better since, losing seven games in a row without The Answer. They are currently in position of the league’s worst record at 5-19, half a game ahead of Memphis and 1.5 up on Charlotte.

They might not want to fit Greg Oden for a uniform just yet, but it might not be a bad idea to find out how he feels about cheese steak.

All They Want For Christmas...

With only five shopping days left until Christmas, it’s time to consider what some of the top names in the world of sports will be hoping for on the morning of December 25th:

Tom Brady – A wide receiver with Terrell Owens’ ability and Troy Brown’s attitude.

Carmelo Anthony – One of those remote controls that Adam Sandler had in the movie Click so he can just hit the rewind button and do things a bit differently.

Daisuke Matzusaka – A more fashionable winter coat and a more fashionable nickname.

Bill Belichick – Coordinators who are good enough at their jobs to make everyone stop talking about Charlie Weis and Romeo Crennel.

David Stern – For NBA observers to forget the “new” ball ever existed.

Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce – A proven veteran teammate who can stay healthy and give them a fighting chance at a title before time runs out.

Urban Meyer – A wheel of cheese to go with his w(h)ine.

Ryan Farnsworth – A little brother for Farney.

Gary Bettman – To reestablish the NHL as a member of the Big Four sports in the United States.

Carl Monday – A new microphone to replace the ones that were destroyed by Mike Cooper’s father.

Mike Cooper – A computer that he can use in the privacy of his own (parents’) home.

Peyton Manning – A shiny Super Bowl ring.

Tony Kornheiser – To be joined in the Monday Night Football booth by Pardon The Interruption co-host Michael Wilbon.

Bud Selig – For this whole steroid thing to go away once and for all.

Greg Oden – A healthy right wrist, so he can finally showcase the skills that should earn him the right to be the number one pick in 2007.

Michael Vick – A mentor that will help him finally become a consistently successful NFL quarterback.

Chris Berman – For fans to forget the one tolerable catchphrase he has created in career.

Matthew McConaughey – To keep on livin’, L-I-V-I-N.

Troy Smith – A national championship to complement his Heisman Trophy.

Allen Iverson – The chance to play for a competitive basketball team.

Boston Bruins Defensemen – Lifts in their skates so they can finally see eye to eye with 6’9” teammate Zdeno Chara.

Roger Goodell – News that a member of the Cincinnati Bengals has been caught reading to children or painting church pews.

ESPN – For an NFL player to finally go completely over the edge and reenact the opening scene from The Last Boy Scout.

Barbaro – Hay, oats, and the love of a thousand good mares.

The (Almost) Forgotten College Football Champions

Lost in the hype surrounding the upcoming college football bowl season, and in particular the BCS games in early January, is the fact that there are four other divisions aside from 1A (which apparently doesn’t exist anymore – the 1AA playoffs were renamed the Division 1 Championship), all of which recently completed playoffs to determine a national champion. So without further ado, congratulations to…

Division I: Appalachian State University defeats the University of Massachusetts-Amherst – at one point while during the game, my wife caught a glimpse of the Mountaineers end zone, but only saw the first “mo” and the final “ers”. Until I stepped in, she was a little concerned that Appalachian State’s nickname was not family friendly. In related news, the students at UMass deemed the loss a catastrophe worthy of a riot.

Division II: Grand Valley State defeats Northwest Missouri State – The win gave Grand Valley State its second consecutive title, its fourth in five years, an undefeated season, and an NCAA-long 28 straight wins. Last year’s championship game victory also came against Northwest Missouri State.

Division III: Mount Union defeats Wisconsin-Whitewater – Much like Division II, the 2006 Division III championship game featured a rematch of undefeated teams that had previously met in the 2005 title game, with the same result in both cases. Wisconsin-Whitewater wanted a win for its coach, Bob Berezowitz, who is retiring after 22 years with the school, but was unable to overcome Division III football’s greatest dynasty; Mount Union has now won two consecutive championships and nine in the last fourteen seasons. Coach Larry Kehres has a staggering 246-20-3 career record.

NAIA: Sioux Falls defeats St. Francis (Ind.) – This was the third lower division championship match-up of previously undefeated teams. St. Francis was making its third straight appearance in the title game but remains winless, having lost to Montana’s Carroll College each of the last two seasons. Sioux Falls won its first title since taking the 1996 NAIA 2 championship.

Something I Feel You Should Know Before Reading This Blog

While visiting my parents last weekend, I stumbled upon something I hadn’t seen in quite some time: my first baseball glove, which my father had bought for me when I started playing baseball in second grade and I continued using until my freshman year of high school, when the coach decided it was too small and made me buy a new one. It was just sitting there on the floor in one of my parent’s spare rooms (we call this particular room the “new kitchen” because, in a perfect world, it will one day replace their current, old kitchen. Because the world is imperfect, however, it has been referred to as the “new kitchen” for as long as I can remember), gathering dust, so I picked it up and gave it a look for old-times sake.

I was surprised by something I had forgotten: this glove, my first, was a Don Mattingly autographed model, which is a little bizarre considering I was born and raised in southern New Hampshire and my entire family consists of Red Sox fans.

It was unclear at first how this could have been allowed to happen, but the answer soon became painfully obvious: I’m left-handed. Not sure how many of you out there share this fate, but it is not an easy road, especially when it came to buying baseball gloves in the late 1980s. There’s nothing quite so depressing as seeing all those cool gloves laid out on the racks (especially the solid black ones, which always looked exceptionally bad ass), then looking closer and realizing that there is only one left-handed model in the bunch, it’s at the bottom of the bin, and it’s got Don Mattingly’s name across the palm.

Say what you will about my Don Mattingly glove, however: it served me better than the Pedro Guerrero model I got for Christmas a couple of years later. I found that one this weekend as well, and it still looks brand new. If I’m lucky, at least one of my kids will turn out to be left-handed; all I have to do then is make up a couple of exciting Pedro Guerrero stories (to make the glove more appealing, of course) and I’ll save $40.

The Ten Best Running Backs Of All-Time

When Marty Schottenheimer recently expressed his opinion that LaDainian Tomlinson “is the finest running back to ever wear an NFL uniform”, he started a discussion that snowballs each time Tomlinson rushes for more than one hundred yards in a game (eight straight and counting) or scores two or more touchdowns in a game (ten times so far this season).

The pronouncement, which Schottenheimer said in the heat of the moment following the game and would probably identify as the hyperbole that it was if pressed on the issue today, made me consider my own top ten running backs. It probably bears more than a passing resemblance to most other lists of this types – there are at least five or six no-doubters that should be on every individual’s all-time top ten – and is fairly heavily based on career yardage, but this is (in no firm order) my list of the top ten running backs in NFL history:

Jim Brown: You know those highlights you always see of high school games where running backs get hit and a pile forms, but the defense never wrapped up and the back somehow pops out and goes for a touchdown? Jim Brown did stuff like that, only he did it against the best defensive players in the world. No back ever exhibited more raw power than Brown. Most fans would pay good money to see him practice, let alone play a game (especially if that practice included board drills against Dick Butkus or Jack Lambert – the impact of those collisions might have caused earthquakes).

Barry Sanders: If Brown was the best ever at simply running people over, Sanders was the best at making them miss (and look foolish doing so). He was the type of player who, at times, seemed to be playing an entirely different game. This was especially the case in 1997, when he carried the ball 25 times for only 53 yards in the first two games of the season, then put up 100+ yards in the last fourteen games (including two with over 200 yards) to finish with 2,053 for the year.

Eric Dickerson: Before he became a mediocre sideline reporter, Dickerson debuted with one of the greatest two-year stretches of any player in any sport, rumbling for 1,808 yards as a rookie in 1983 and a league-record 2,105 the following year. He only had 1,234 yards in 1985, but added 248 in the Los Angeles Rams playoff win over the Dallas Cowboys.

Walter Payton: “Sweetness” was the league’s all-time career leader in rushing yards for over a decade, until Emmitt Smith broke his record in 2002. He received the ultimate honor in 1987 when the Walter Payton Award was introduced; the award is given annually to the best offensive player in Division 1AA football.

Emmitt Smith: Smith had the benefit of running behind one of the best offensive lines in football for several seasons in the 1990s, but deserves his fair share of the credit for each of his eleven consecutive 1,000-yard seasons. A three-time Super Bowl winner with the Cowboys (he ran for over 100 yards in two of the games), I still have the Sports Illustrated in which he appeared on the cover with the headline “Superman”.

O.J. Simpson: Did you know that before O.J. starred in the Naked Gun movie series, started his search for “the real killers” and wrote a best-selling (for awhile) book, he played a little football? His 1973 season, when he ran for 2,003 yards in fourteen games, could be considered the best by a running back in history (even if two of his best games came against the hapless New England Patriots). Two seasons later, however, he might have been even better, totaling over 1,800 yards on the ground and adding 426 receiving (he had only 70 receiving yards in 1973, largely because his quarterback was terrible). He was also a great college football player, winning the Heisman Trophy in 1968 with nearly three times the vote total of the second place finisher.

Marshall Faulk: As silly as it sounds, I wasn’t sure at first that Faulk deserved a spot on my list, doubts which were not assuaged by looking at his career stats; sure, he had seven 1,000 yard seasons in eight years and was regarded as one of the best backs of the late 1990s-early 2000s, but that wasn’t enough to put him over the top. Then I slid my eyes over to the right, to his receiving numbers. Now, take this with a grain of salt – the Rams weren’t known as the “Greatest Show On Turf” for nothing – but from 1998 to 2002, a run of five straight seasons, Faulk caught eighty or more passes each year. Four of those seasons, he had more than 2,000 combined yards. Those numbers constitute an all-time great.

Curtis Martin: Martin doesn’t immediately jump out as an all-time great, but ten – count ‘em, ten – consecutive seasons with 1,000 yards to start his career and over 14,000 yards in eleven years make a pretty good case. Besides, he’s one of those guys who kind of quietly goes about his business, and we don’t usually do enough to honor those guys. It’s hard to believe that only the first three years of his career were spent with the Patriots – it seemed like he was in New England for much longer.

Earl Campbell: Campbell was a Heisman Trophy winner who ran for over 1,900 yards in his third NFL season, but he had pretty much run out of steam by his sixth season and didn’t even pass 10,000 yards by the time his career had ended. Still, he makes this list for one reason and one reason only: his jerseys. The most enduring image of professional football in the late 1970s is of Campbell breaking through the defense, somebody getting a good grip on his jersey and the damn thing just tearing off of his back like a pair of NBA warm-ups. (Thank God he didn’t utilize the tear away pants as well). That visual alone earns him a spot in my top ten, even if he wore down and didn’t play in an NFL game after his thirtieth birthday.

Gale Sayers: You can’t judge Gale Sayers on numbers alone – you have to read some stories and watch him run in order to realize that he’s an all-time great. Two things about his career stand out in particular: one, he had a six touchdown game as a rookie in 1965, and two, he was averaging over six yards per carry through nine games when he suffered a devastating knee injury in 1968. It’s been said that the closest thing to a modern-day Sayers is Saints back Reggie Bush, which is of course a great compliment to Bush.

So after careful thought…no Tomlinson. Not yet, but it’s mainly because he’s so young. If he continues to dominate the game for the next several years – and that is pretty likely, considering he’ll be taking handoffs from a young quarterback who should provide balance to the offense (not to be confused with a young Jedi who will bring balance to the force, although Tomlinson would still probably rush for 1,500 yards a season with Darth Vader as his quarterback) – he will not only enter this discussion, but begin a rapid approach to the top of the list.

Maybe if it comes down to Smith and LaDainian for number one, they can settle things with a dance contest.

(Note: This must be mentioned – Sean Salisbury just described Tomlinson by saying, “God dresses up as Number 21.” Then he repeated it. Look, I understand that LaDainian Tomlinson is special. I understand that he one day soon he will likely be one of the greatest football players ever. But “God dresses up as Number 21”? That’s one of those sound bites that sounds like Salisbury thought it up earlier this afternoon, spent the day repeating it to everyone around the office who would listen, then was so excited that Tomlinson backed it up with a great game that he busted it out on the air twice in about three minutes. It’s just a little too cute. In other words, it sounds like something I would write and I’m upset that I didn’t think of it first.)

Statistical information courtesy of:

Pro-Football-Reference.com
Yahoo! Sports
Wikipedia

I Was Thinking...

…helpful hint of the week: never question Mr. Nibbles.

…congratulations to University of New Hampshire junior quarterback Ricky Santos, who walked away with the Walter Payton Award, the Division 1AA rough equivalent of the Heisman, on Thursday. Santos has been a phenomenal field general for the Wildcats to this point in his career, with more than 10,000 passing yards and 120 total touchdowns in three years as a starter, including 3,100 and 41 this season alone. His teammate, senior wide receiver David Ball, who broke Jerry Rice’s Division 1 record for touchdown receptions earlier this season, finished fifth in the voting.

…Houston Astros first baseman Jeff Bagwell retired this week, ending a fifteen-year career that might one day land him in the Hall of Fame. The numbers and accolades he accumulated in that time were excellent – 449 homeruns, more than 1,500 runs batted in, a Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player award – but the Bagwell story I’ll share with my kids one day is his part in one of the biggest “what ifs” in baseball history: what if the Boston Red Sox had refused to deal him for bullpen help in 1990, when he was a Double A third baseman stuck behind Hall of Famer Wade Boggs and future two-time All-Star Scott Cooper? Bagwell ended up playing half of his career in the pitcher’s paradise that was the Astrodome…what if he had played all fifteen years in the hitter friendly confines of Fenway Park? That’s a question we can never answer, but we do know that he likely would have been just as respected as a person in Boston as he was in Houston.

…when bad guys in the movies are pulling off a heist, why do they always have everything planned down to the specific minute? First door, thirty seconds…south corridor, ninety seconds…having never performed such an intricate operation myself, I just had to wonder if this is the actual manner in which they are carried out. Any professional thieves out there who can help?

…for that matter, why do they always make a big deal out of owning 51% of a company? I realize it constitutes a simple majority and sounds dramatic, but isn’t it overused as a plot device by this point?

…AwfulAnnouncing was the first site I saw that pointed this out, but ESPN’s Scoop Jackson apparently has a problem with the fact that nine days after deciding his playing days in Philadelphia were finished, Sixers guard Allen Iverson has still not been traded. Jackson cites a number of reasons why this might be, many of which make sense, but tries to turn the situation into a large-scale sociological issue. As AA points out, however, the fact is that Iverson is still a 76er because the team is trying to get a reasonably good deal for him while negotiating with teams from a weakened position. It’s the same reason the Pacers had a heck of a time trying to deal troubled forward Ron Artest last season: sure, he was emerging as a game-changing beast of a player, especially on the defensive end of the floor, but he was also a volatile and emotional player who could explode at any time. That’s why it took seven weeks for Indiana to get rid of him, and even then it wasn’t the best deal, with Peja Stojakovic coming in return. If the Iverson saga drags out for that long, then we have a legitimate complaint – he’s a more valuable player than Artest – but until then, let’s just give Billy King the benefit of the doubt and see what he can come up with, shall we?

…Atlanta Falcons coach Jim Mora Jr. made a minor lapse in judgment this week, jokingly telling an interviewer that he would absolutely accept the job as head coach at Washington if it was ever offered to him. Since the words left his mouth, the story has become overblown beyond all belief, to the point that some talking heads on Friday suggested that team owner Arthur Blank should fire Mora for the remarks. While Blank has a right to be at least mildly annoyed, especially if he and Mora have not discussed the coach’s future at length, this doesn’t appear to be a fireable offense. Could Mora have handled the situation better, perhaps made it more clear that he was having a bit of fun with the interviewer, an old college friend? Of course. Does he have every right to pursue other opportunities should they arise? He does (although I’m of the opinion that he should wait until his current contract expires to do so). Hopefully, Blank recognizes that Mora should not be kicked to the curb over these comments and takes advantage of the opportunity to sit down with the coach and further discuss his long-term association with the team.

…it’s been a while since the last time I highly anticipated the theatrical release of a movie, but there are two films due out this month that have me very excited: We Are Marshall and Rocky Balboa. Marshall strikes me as a movie in the vein of Remember The Titans – based on a true story, but with quite a bit of embellishment mixed in for story telling purposes. Still, I enjoyed Titans, and I enjoy Matthew McConaughey – how can one not like the man who brought us David Wooderson? – so this has a real chance to be good. As for Balboa – after the frighteningly bad Rocky V, every fan of the series is rooting for this one to succeed. The indication from the previews I’ve seen is that it is every bit as formulaic as the first four – Rocky is the underdog, Rocky is a fighter, Rocky needs to fight because it’s who he is – but that was part of what made those movies great in the first place (that and some kick-ass training montages). Of the two, this is the one that has me most interested.

…caught a bit of the Division 1AA football championship game tonight and noticed one thing about the announcers: they weren’t bad overall, but the play-by-play guy was in love with the idea of running backs breaking tackles. Listening to him call the game, it sounded as if every decent run was the result of the back getting hit, bouncing off, and fighting for every extra yard. Funny thing was, the two times in one quarter that I heard him say a player was “breaking tackles”, that player was proceeding virtually unimpeded right up until the actual tackle took place. I realize HD makes for a better viewing experience, but unless he was sitting behind a post, he should have been able to call the plays correctly.

…finally, I would be remiss to write anything today and not mention the birthdays of two very important people in my life: my mother-in-law, who turned 29 on Friday, and my older brother, who celebrates the big 3-5 on Saturday. I wish them both nothing but the best.

Daisuke Matsuzaka: "The Oxygen Destroyer" Arrives

It’s (almost) official: Daisuke Matsuzaka is (almost) a Boston Red Sox. He arrived at Hanscom Field earlier tonight and “moments ago” (according to NESN – it was actually a couple of hours ago at this point, so he’s probably already turned his head and coughed) arrived at Mass General Hospital for the required physical.

Now that the eagle has landed, it’s time to get down to business and give the guy a nickname. As a Red Sox fan, it is very likely that I will be writing about Matsuzaka quite a bit in the coming months, and let’s face it: Daisuke Matsuzaka does not roll off the tongue when spoken or the fingers when written. It does not possess the quick, one-two punch of Pedro Martinez, or the strangely lyrical quality of Nomar Garciaparra (although my wife insists that “Matsuzaka” will prove to be a great chant, with 30,000 people and the correct cadence). For all his greatness on the mound, Matsuzaka’s name is a stumbler – one of those that can get caught in your mouth and tumble around a bit before finally escaping.

The Matsuzaka nickname has been up for debate around the internet at least since the Red Sox posted the record $51.1 million for the rights to call him up and discuss fair compensation for his services. Lewis Forman of Webster Street Minutes gave it a go in mid-November, coming up with a list that included D-Mat, the media’s early favorite, Suzaka, which sounds oddly monster-like, and Suki, which is the name of a woman I work with (she’s a very nice lady, but I can’t imagine calling Matsuzaka, a pitcher Red Sox fans are pinning their hopes and dreams on for the next six seasons, by the same name). Boston.com got into the act around the same time, asking for and receiving a number of possible nicknames, the most popular being D-Mat, Dice-K (a play on the pronunciation of his first name that is also becoming very popular in the local media) and none of the above.

While it is likely that the top two Boston.com entries will be the ones that eventually catch on, especially given the reach and influence of NESN and other local media, I am of the opinion that Matsuzaka deserves more than the routine, bland, “A-Rod” style nickname. As the player who will either lead the Red Sox back to the Promised Land or crash-and-burn in spectacular fashion (really, there is no in-between there), he deserves an all-time great name, something on the level of “The Splendid Splinter” or “The Sultan of Swat.”

Below, let’s take a look at a few of the best possible nicknames for Daisuke Matsuzaka:

Andrew: Say “Daisuke” five times in a row, really fast. If you pronounced it correctly, you ended up saying something like “Dice K”, which is what many fans and media personalities are already beginning to use, but that kind of sucks. The first time I heard his first name spoken quickly, it sounded like “Dice Clay”, as in Andrew Dice Clay, who was a fairly successful comedian/actor in the early 1990s. So “Dice K” sucks, “Dice Clay” isn’t much better – how about “Andrew”? It’s an easy name to say, much like Pedro or Nomar, and can be shortened to “Andy” when he’s pitching well and the fans like him. The only down side I can see? There’s something not quite right about a foreign player coming to play in the United States and immediately being given an Americanized name. It wasn’t necessarily the right way to go with Pedro “Petey” Martinez and it probably isn’t the right way to go now.

The Oxygen Destroyer: It’s amazing what one can learn from a simple visit to Wikipedia. Apparently, the name of the scientist who “destroyed” Godzilla in the 1954 original movie was Dr. Daisuke Serizawa, which means that using “Godzilla” as a nickname for Matsuzaka would be oddly fitting. Unfortunately, Japanese baseball already has its “Godzilla”: Hideki Matsui, who enjoyed much success with the Yomiuri Giants before joining the New York Yankees in 2003. One of the point of nicknames is originality, so “Godzilla” is out. Another intriguing aspect of the story, however, was the name of the machine invented by Dr. Serizawa and eventually used to destroy Godzilla: The Oxygen Destroyer. If Matsuzaka turns out to be as unhittable as advertised, this might prove to be an apt name for the type of pitcher who literally takes a hitter’s breath away. This one might be my personal favorite, but is a little bulky for day-to-day use.

Esu: Quite simply, the Japanese word for “ace” (I think – those online translators can be tricky). It puts a little pressure on him to succeed early, but that demand doesn’t seem reasonable considering the total cost of the investment thus far. He cost the Red Sox ace money; why not call him an ace?

Daisy: Just kidding. Unless he turns into the second coming of Hideki Irabu, in which case I’m not.

Kaibutsu: This was Matsuzaka’s nickname in Japan before the soulless marketing machine that is Scott Boras assumed control of his affairs. Appropriately enough, it means “Monster”, which any Boston fan can tell you was the nickname of Dick Radatz, a dominating relief pitcher who pitched for some truly awful Red Sox teams in the early 1960s. Radatz, who stood 6’5” and weighed nearly 250 pounds, was one of those players who truly owned a nickname – all one had to do was take a look at this hulking behemoth walking off the mound and “Monster” was invariably the first word that came to mind. For that reason, it might be tough for Matsuzaka to step in and start using it right away, particularly with only two years gone by since Radatz’s death from a fall at his Massachusetts home. The saving grace, however, is the language barrier: when you get right down to it, only “Monster” belongs to Radatz; “Kaibutsu” is, to American baseball fans, an entirely different word and nickname, but one that still sounds, well, cool. And it makes for an even better chant than Matsuzaka. (Seriously – close your eyes and imagine Fenway Park literally shaking from the noise of 35,000 fans screaming, “Kaibutsu! Kaibutsu!” It gives ME goose bumps, anyway.)

It’s a tough decision, and it’s still early, but I’m pretty sure that when writing about Daisuke Matsuzaka this season, “The Oxygen Destroyer” and “Kaibutsu” will see a lot of use (even if the latter is almost as tough to type as Matsuzaka – I still like it). Unless he pisses me off, that is – in that case, get ready to read about the struggles of “Daisy”.

The Quarterback Question: Should Rookie QBs Sit Or Play Right Away?

Since Carson Palmer rode the pine for the Bengals for his entire rookie season, I’ve found myself wondering if it is truly beneficial to a quarterback to spend much of that first year on the bench. Many experts will tell you that this is absolutely the case, that being able to stand on the sidelines and carry a clipboard allows the quarterback valuable time to learn the offense and get a feel for the flow of the game. Others, however, live by the theory that the best way to learn is to do; therefore, every play a quarterback runs in an actual game is beneficial to his development.

The following method is fairly unscientific, but hopefully it helps draw a conclusion or two. To begin, I took every current starting quarterback in the NFL (in a perfect world, I would have gone back and looked at every quarterback drafted in the last ten or so years, especially the first rounders, but I’m not getting THAT into this right now), then used Yahoo! to find out how many games each played in his rookie season. The quarterbacks were then grouped into three lists: those who played eight or more games as a rookie, those who played one to seven games, and those who did not play at all. Those lists are as follows:

Note: italics denote the player is a 2006 rookie.

Eight Or More (12): Matt Leinart (Arizona), Michael Vick (Atlanta), David Carr (Houston), Peyton Manning (Indianapolis), Byron Leftwich (Jacksonville), Joey Harrington (originally with Detroit), Eli Manning (New York Giants), Donovan McNabb (Philadelphia), Ben Roethlisberger (Pittsburgh), Alex Smith (San Francisco), Bruce Gradkowski (Tampa Bay), Vince Young (Tennessee)

One To Seven (12): Steve McNair (originally with Tennessee), J.P. Losman (Buffalo), Jake Delhomme (Carolina), Rex Grossman (Chicago), Charlie Frye (Cleveland), Jake Cutler (Denver), Jon Kitna (Detroit, then with Seattle), Brett Favre (Green Bay, then with Atlanta), Tom Brady (New England), Drew Brees (originally with San Diego), Chad Pennington (New York Jets), Philip Rivers (San Diego)

Did Not Play (8): Carson Palmer (Cincinnati), Tony Romo (Dallas), Trent Green (drafted by San Diego and debuted with Washington), Brad Johnson (Minnesota), Aaron Brooks (Oakland, then with New Orleans), Matt Hasselbeck (originally with Green Bay), Jason Campbell (Washington), Marc Bulger (St. Louis)

Three rookies have played eight or more games already this season, with first round picks Matt Leinart and Vince Young taking the reins in Arizona and Tennessee, respectively, and sixth rounder Bruce Gradkowski being pressed into service following Chris Simms’ injury early in the season. The remaining nine quarterbacks on that list present a mixed bag, with one surefire Hall of Famer (Peyton Manning), one guy who will stir some debate when his career is over (McNabb), six who might turn out to be journeymen or all-time greats (Vick, Carr, Leftwich, Roethlisberger, Smith and Eli Manning), and one who is hoping a change of scenery will jumpstart an otherwise mediocre career (Harrington). Given this, it appears that teams should be more careful about allowing quarterbacks to accumulate significant playing time early in their careers – in most cases, it does not reap positive results.

The group of QBs who played one to seven games in their rookie seasons only includes one rookie, Jay Cutler of Denver, who missed inclusion in the first category because Mike Shanahan stuck with Jake Plummer for about three weeks too long. Another player, Philip Rivers, is the type of guy for whom this type of debate was created: he sat behind Drew Brees for nearly two full seasons, appearing in just four games total before getting a chance to start this season and flourishing with a 96.3 passer rating through thirteen games. In that respect he is not that different from his Brees, who played one game as a rookie before earning the starting role in 2002, and McNair, who was a top five pick in 1995 and played just thirteen games over his first two seasons in the league.

The most celebrated late round pick in recent history is Tom Brady, who went late in the sixth round in 2000 and sat for almost his entire rookie season before stepping in for the injured Drew Bledsoe in 2001 and establishing himself as the leader of one of the NFL’s great dynasties. He will be joined in the Hall of Fame one day by Favre, the Packers legend who was originally drafted by Atlanta before being traded to Green Bay after attempting just five passes for the Falcons in 1991. On the other end of the spectrum are a handful of guys who show some brilliance at times – Delhomme has a Super Bowl appearance on his resume, Grossman was the MVP of the NFL through four games this season, Kitna was a dependable starter before losing the Cincinnati job to Carson Palmer – but have never proven that they can perform consistently as NFL quarterbacks.

Of the final group, the only player who was drafted into a starting position and held out to learn the position was Palmer, who sat behind Kitna for a full season before being handed the job by coach Marvin Lewis in 2004. Only four of the remaining seven are still with their original teams (although Johnson left Minnesota, played for a few other teams, then returned for this tour of duty). Hasselbeck and Green are the proven stars of the group – each has played six seasons with his current team, with Hasselbeck leading the Seahawks to a Super Bowl appearance last season and Green putting up outstanding passing numbers for the Chiefs – and Romo has emerged as a quality player in Dallas.

After looking over the above lists, it seems evident that the middle group, in which guys played a handful of games as rookies before taking over a starting job, was the one in which the most successful of the current starting quarterbacks resided. With the possible exception of J.P. Losman and Charlie Frye, both of whom are still young, there are no real duds to be found.

Just remember: if an NFL team ever hires me to coach or run their football operations, and I insert a rookie quarterback into a starting role, forget you ever read this.

All career information courtesy of Yahoo!

Wake Me Up When The Suns Miss A Shot

Caught the last eight minutes or so of the replay of the Celtics-Suns game tonight after I finished watching Gladiator ("Are you not entertained?! ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!?"), and a few things stood out:

The Suns are an amazingly good shooting team. I don't think they've missed more than 2 or 3 shots since I've been watching. Okay, they just said they're shooting 70+% in the fourth quarter.

Steve Nash is a really, really good basketball player.

This Celtics team seems really close to "making the leap", as Bill Simmons would say - they need to maintain intensity for longer stretches and learn to close out close games, but the talent appears to be there.

I typed that last point without laughing, despite the fact that the Celtics have now lost five in a row and seven of eight.

Shawn Marion has the ugliest shot I've ever seen, but the man can shoot the lights out.

Brian Scalabrine was in the game when I turned it on - I thought it was written in his contract that he wasn't allowed to play if the Celtics were within ten points of the opposition? Hurry back, Kendrick.

Unfortunately, they aren't showing the post-game show on the replay, so I don't get to see if Doc Rivers throws anyone under the bus tonight. "The Sports List" with Summer Sanders is on, though; I'll take Summer over Doc.

I'm curious what the Celtics will have to give up to get Allen Iverson from the 76ers. He could potentially give the team a couple good seasons and possibly provide Paul Pierce the offensive partner he has lacked since Antoine Walker's original tour through Boston, but what will be the cost? I hear Michael Olowokandi, Scalabrine and Theo Ratliff are all available - they're valuable commodities, right?

Very subdued Tommy Heinsohn tonight. He actually gave Phoenix credit for outplaying the Celtics down the stretch. I'm not gonna lie - I'm a little worried about him now. Pray for him to go on a fifteen minute rant on blocking fouls during tomorrow night's game.

Finally, I can't write something like this without mentioning the Daisuke Matsuzaka negotiations. Do we really need constant updates on this whole ordeal? A couple of weeks ago they made a point to announce that he wanted to wear number 18, which is only a big deal because the last good player to wear 18 was Johnny Damon - it's not like he was asking Manny or Papi to change their number. Anyhow, look at it this way - the chances are 80-20 that the Red Sox and Scott Boras manage to hammer out an agreement before next week's deadline. Let's just leave it alone for awhile, then come back to it as things start to go down to the wire. Keep it fresh - why should we be sick of Matsuzaka (I'm gonna come up with a great nickname for him, by the way - it is my new purpose in life) before he's thrown a major league pitch?

True story totally unrelated to sports: I went to Best Buy tonight with my wife and my friend Sarah. We were walking around, looking at movies, when I heard someone ask an employee if he could help them find the movie "Grease". "Sure," he said. "That'll be in the international section."

I don't think he was kidding.

Wow...

When I turned the Celtics game on about ten minutes ago, they were getting smoked by the Grizzlies, down 89-73 with about six minutes to play. Now, they've just finished off a 14-0 run that momentarily tied the score.

Rajon Rondo in particular has been huge - he must've pulled in three or four rebounds in that time and avoided a turnover with a huge hustle play, laying out for a ball that had bounced off his hands. They also just flashed up a graphic on Gerald Green - 16 points in the fourth quarter, including a couple of big shots to trim the lead.

If this team can play this way all (or even most) of the time, they will be tough to beat. For whatever reason, however - be it youth or lack of talent - they don't seem able to maintain that level of intensity for a full 48 minutes.

My favorite thing about this game? Rudy Gay just hit a fifteen-footer to give the Grizzlies the lead with 2.6 seconds left, and Tommy Heinsohn spent the next thirty seconds blaming it on the new ball.

Then Sebastian Telfair drew some contact, but no foul, on the final shot, which Tommy also mentioned.

According to Tommy Heinsohn, the main factors in this loss are, in order: the ball, the officials, and the Celtics.

I love Tommy Heinsohn.

The Second Saturday In September

For three years in the early 2000s, my brother Tim and I traveled to Dracut, Massachusetts on the second Saturday in September to play in the KPM Charity Softball Tournament, an event organized by the family of one of my brother’s co-workers, a heckuva nice guy named Marty Wilkins. It was held on behalf of Marty’s three nephews, Kyle, Patrick, and Matthew, a set of triplets who were all afflicted with the same debilitating form of Muscular Dystrophy. The tournaments were never, to my knowledge, huge money-makers, but it was always a day where “The Boys”, as they were commonly called (until this weekend, I don’t think I ever knew their names, and had to ask my mother to help me out) ruled the roost, holding thirty or more adults in the palms of their hands for the duration of the afternoon. It was a day that was all about them, and there was never anything wrong with that.

My lasting memory of the tournament came from the first or second year I played. Every year, sometime in the middle of the afternoon before the later rounds, there was a homerun derby. (The fences at the field we played on weren’t more than about 250 feet away, and some of these guys could mash the ball; it wasn’t uncommon for one player to reach double digits.) There was a little prize money on the line – each of the ten or so participants paid about ten bucks to enter the competition, with half of that money going to the winner and half to The Boys – but it was usually more about having a good time and putting on a show for the friends and family who had come to watch.

Anyway, the first or second year I played (the year before Tim convinced me to enter, then watched me embarrass the family name by going homerless), the derby proceeded as usual, with a few dropping out quickly and a few others hitting some absolute bombs. The original ten entrants were quickly cut down, eventually leaving just the last couple of guys. One of them outlasted the other and was presented with his share of the money – about fifty dollars. He took it, thought it over for about two seconds, then yelled, “It’s ALL going to the kids!” The place went nuts – he got what might have been the loudest cheer of the day. The thing was, he was just reminding us why we went there every year – it wasn’t about hitting more homeruns than another guy or winning a silly tournament (although those things were certainly nice – take it from someone who comes from a competitive family), but about The Boys, three brothers who had been handed a tough lot in life and were doing everything they could to make the best of it.

My last KPM tournament came in 2003 – life got in the way in 2004 and 2005 and they didn’t hold the event this year. Still, the Wilkins family crossed my mind from time to time; I wondered how they were doing, if the kids were staying healthy, if the parents were managing to make ends meet in the face of what must have been huge medical expenses. It was hard, almost unimaginable, to believe that they were fifteen years old now – in my mind’s eye, they will forever be ten, eleven, twelve, a trio of young pups who had not yet matured into high-school age kids.

Last week, Tim forwarded me an email that he had received from Marty with the subject, “Sad News”. As soon as I saw the title and where it had come from, I knew. Turns out that Matthew had lost his lengthy fight with the illness, passing away on Monday. There was a picture attached to the email, a group shot from the 2002 tournament, and it helped me remember which of The Boys Matthew had been – a friendly and outgoing talker, he always struck me as the voice of their tight-knit little group.

My first thought upon receiving the message was to email Marty with my condolences, but that didn’t really work – I had the window open, even a couple of sentences typed out, but they didn’t feel right. I asked Tim what I should write, and he told me to “say what you want”, but I couldn’t figure out what that was. Finally, the answer became clear: I have a blog. I have a reader or two (on a good day). Maybe the best thing I could do for the Wilkins family and its three courageous sons was to write about them, to explain how they fought this illness as hard as they could for as long as they could and never gave up, to tell as many people as possible that those days helped show me the lengths people will go to in order to help family members in need.

Maybe nobody will read this, and that’s okay, because part of it is for me too, a chance to look back and think about the big smile that took up permanent residence on Kyle, Patrick, and Matthew’s faces the second Saturday every September. But maybe some people will give this a read, and that will be even better, because even though The Boys are still young and have been separated for the time being, we can all learn a lesson not only from them, but from the love with which they were treated by everyone who entered their lives, and find solace in the hope that one day they will be together once again.