The hall of fame voting came out this week and the results turned up empty. In July's hall of fame ceremony (covid pending) no living person will get inducted. The only players inducted from the regular ballot will be Larry Walker and Derek Jeter, who didn't get a ceremony last year due to covid. You need 75% of the vote to be enshrined in Cooperstown and the only player to come close was Curt Schilling, who got about 71%. Curt Schilling who is not a slam dunk hall of famer should be in. There is this "character clause" which has not helped Curt. Curt who has publicly supported Donald Trump and the Capitol Riots as well as making other political and homophobic statements, has this clause to blame. The "Character Clause" might go back as far as the segregationists, and it didn't help in keeping guy's like Ty Cobb who was a miserable human being out of the hall. Hall of fame enshrinement is not based on how you live your post baseball life, it's your baseball career that puts you in, Curt who went to six all-star games and I believe is in the top 50 on the all time strikeout list would be in if it wasn't for this. Curt (bloody sock) and some of the others (Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire) have artifacts in the building but are not in the hall of plaques. The Baseball Hall of Fame should be for those who helped make the game great, not based life afterwards.
Saturday, January 30, 2021
Saturday, January 23, 2021
Conference Championship Games
Can you believe we're here, playing the conference championship games on time. After everyone involved helped us get to this point, we have to crown some conference champions on Sunday. In the first game of the day the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will travel to lambeau field to play the Green Bay Packers. (-3.5) Aaron Rodgers and the Packers finally have one of these games at home at a potentially cold and snowy lambeau. As much as Tom Brady might be on a mission to show the world that he can win without Belichick I believe Rodgers is on a mission to win again in Green Bay before he closes out his Packer career. The fact that this game is in Green Bay helps, I'll go with the Packers -3.5, 30-21 In the late game the Buffalo Bills will travel to Kansas City to play the Chiefs. (-3) I'm really looking forward to this one as the Bills and Josh allen go into arrowhead with some potential weather on the way, to play Patrick Mahomes who just cleared concussion protocol but is dealing with a toe injury and andy reid and company. The Bills are somewhat of an upstart team who may have been aided by the sparse crowd in upstate NY, in beating the Ravens last week. When Mahomes went out for the Chiefs, Chad Henne came in to almost blow the game and then when the game on a gutsy fourth down call. I'm falling for the Bills and their Bills Mafia fan base and I'll lean that way as good as Mahomes is and I like Andy Reid, I'm taking the Bills +3 in this one, 34-31
Picks: Packers, Bills
Rip... baseball hall of famers
In just the last couple of months we have lost a historic number of baseball hall of famers. We have lost Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Whitey Ford, Al Kaline, Joe morgan, Tom Seaver and Hank Aaron as well as manager Tommy Lasorda. The baseball hall of fame now has added to their all-star team in heaven. All of these guys have an argument for being on the mount rushmore of baseball greats.
Tom Seaver was a member of the 1969 Miracle Mets. Whitey Ford "the Chairman of the Board" spent his entire career with the Yankees and won 6 World Series titles along the way. He was the last of the old guard, in terms of the pre 1970 great Yankees. Hank Aaron had the home run record and in my peoples eyes still does, it took a Barry Bonds on performance enhancing drugs to take down his 755. Hank was a consistent player, making the all-star team in all but two years of his career and never hitting more than 50 homers in a season. He was also faced with racism, as a black man who played for the Braves in Atlanta and he took down the record owned by a white man. Tommy Lasorda didn't amount to much as a player but was one of the greatest and fun loving managers of all time.
Saturday, January 16, 2021
MLB free agency
After an different season, it's been a slow offseason. With every team having lost money last season and the Yankees reporting major losses. With teams not knowing how much money they have or will make. Yesterday the market finally started to heat up, with the Yankees finally singing D.J Lamieu and later in the Day going out and getting a Corey Kluber. These were very team friendly contracts with D.J getting 6 years and 90 million, an average annual value of 15 million and Kluber is one a 1 year, 11 million dollar deal. D.J is as close as you get to a five tool player in this day and age when most guys are striking out or swinging for the fences. Now the Yankees can move ahead with building their team and their pitching staff behind Garrett Cole and now Corey Kluber. Will Tanaka come back to the bronx now. Will these signings open up the free agent market enabling guys like George Springer, Didi Gregorius and JT Realmuto amongst other free agents to sign, the market has been slow to develop for everyone. These are moves that had to be made by the Yankees after you let, the crosstown Mets steal the front page with the trade for francisco Lindor and carlos carrasco.
It has been reported that the MLB season will start on time, which is a somewhat interesting turn of events but I guess you don't want to piss your players off with the CBA coming to an end. I also saw that the MLB wants to keep the 7 inning double headers from last season, this kind of changes strategy and reminds you of high school and college baseball. They also want to keep the extra inning rule of starting the inning with a runner on second, this did not have the impact I thought it would with the game all of a sudden ending. If you were going to keep this rule, I would have moved it back to something like the twelfth inning.
NFL Divisional Weekend
After an interesting football season, in which they got through with minimal interruption we now arrive at the divisional playoffs. With the playing of the NFL season we were once again reminded of the virus and its impact on the spots world. The football season was played in mostly empty stadiums across the country, probably about half of the teams had a limited number of fans and I will say that as a baseball fan, fanless was easier to get into than fanless baseball. Records were broken and expanded playoffs made for some excitement. The Jets tried to go 0-16 but its hard and they won a few at the end, No Trevor lawrence for them. The Giants are on the upward swing as they almost won the NFC East.
NFL divisional weekend: The first game of the weekend pits the Green Bay Packers up against the Los Angeles Rams. Aaron Darnold leads a fierce Rams pass rush but the key to this game is how does the Rams defense stack up against Aaron Rodgers and the Packer offense on the frozen tundra in Green Bay. the Packers are favored by about (-6.5) and I think that's about right, maybe a touchdown game. Pack -6.5
Saturday night we have maybe the best game of them all as the upstart Buffalo Bills host the Baltimore Ravens. The Bills will have have to contain Lamar Jackson to win this one. The Bills are favored (-2) and I think they can hold on in this one. Bills -2.5
The early game on Sunday has the Cleveland Browns in Kansas City to face the Chefs. Patrick Mahomes, Andy Reid and company will just be to much in this one, although the Chiefs (-10) are favored this game will be closer than you think. maybe 27-21. Chiefs don't cover, Brown +10
In the Sunday nightcap we have two 40+ year old quarterbacks going at it, as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Brady) visit the New Orleans Saints (Brees). As much as you want to say about the ageless quarterbacks in this one, these teams are also division rivals and one thing I've noticed is that Brady Learns from past games. Bucs +3