Wednesday 2/26/25
The BC men's hockey team is back atop the national rankings again. Last year's squad had more depth and high-end talent, but they are one of a number of teams that have enough to win it all. I keep a close eye on Maine, too, as a friend of mine who knows his hockey teaches there.
Heard that Rob Gronkowski might be coming back. I feel like that's not a great sign as to how your life is going or how you feel about your life if you're returning to play your sport again after retiring unless there are extenuating circumstances, as with Ryne Sandberg, for example.
Saw an interview with Mike Vrabel yesterday. He sounds like a coach, at least. A grown-up. Jerod Mayo never did, with the likes of his "burn some cash" comments.
Bruins dropped another game in OT last night. Dreadful save percentage from Jeremy Swayman once again. I have a feeling the Bruins won't trade Brad Marchand which will be a mistake. I also think he doesn't want to leave, which isn't what's best for what remains of his career either. Hell, they're more apt to give him a three-year deal than they are to deal him. You aren't going anywhere in 2025 if Brad Marchand is your second best player. But if you are a contender, Brad Marchand can be a very useful second line player and penalty killer.
Celtics are playing well. Perhaps they're putting it together at the right time. I've liked what I'm seeing from this team. This is a revealing week. They beat the Knicks (who always seem to lose to good teams) at MSG Sunday, the Raptors last night, they have the second of their back-to-back against the Pistons tonight, then the Cavs Friday, and the Nuggets Sunday.
Lot of games in not many days, two championship contender opponents, with the back-to-back in the middle. Any second game of a back-to-back is a tough game; the bad opponent all of a sudden becomes tantamount to a good team.
Three sports-related pet peeves:
Ripping on so-called compilers. The term is used as a pejorative. If you are good enough to stick around in your sport for twenty years--and productive enough--then that's awesome. Those are your numbers. They're no less your numbers because you were there all of that time. Your numbers are your numbers. If you lasted long enough in baseball to drive in 1700 runs, that shouldn't be diminished by anyone.
It's people interested in sports history who do this the most, but it's lame faulting a player for playing longer than you might have liked them to for their reputation and their rate stats. If you know as much about the game as you think you do, you should be able to understand who they were at their best and who they were when they weren't their best. You should be able to look at those rate stats and know what's what and how they ended up as they were. A player isn't supposed to manufacture this story book scenario of going out at or near their best. If you want to play, and you can play well enough to get a job, you should play as long as those things remain true. No player should have it held against them for playing as long as they could. You see this with talk of Willie Mays' career a lot, and it has always bothered me.
I'm also irked whenever I see people--it will almost be baseball historian type--putting down a player's career or making light of his accomplishments because of the home park he played in. Unless it was Coors Field, you can't be doing this. The implication is that anyone would have had at least some degree of that player's success because of the ballpark, like they had nothing to do with it or didn't use their skills to make the most of that park, which is a huge skill itself. A good example is Wade Boggs at Fenway. Boggs hit everywhere, but he hit more at Fenway, and you'll see that brought up against him. I look at it the opposite way. He was on this team, playing his home games at Fenway, and he smacked line drive after line drive off of that wall. If that's just so doable, why wasn't everyone else doing it like Wade Boggs did it? He should be lifted up for this, not have it used as some demerit.
During the 1980s, Gary Carter was never really talked about as a future Hall of Famer, which is ironic now, because there are those who argue he's the best catcher ever. You will see someone making that claim occasionally. I paid a lot of attention to this kind of thing at the time, especially collecting baseball cards. Baseball card collectors were always handicapping someone's Hall of Fame chances.
I've been going through some lists on a baseball history site that people made of their top 100 players (no pitchers included), and Carter has shown up as high as the thirties. Usually he's in the fifties, I'd say. Thirties is too high. Fifties might be too high. But he's solidly in the top 100. You have to leave out many outstanding ball players to get down to 100.
So: A guy who wasn't really discussed as a Hall of Famer while he was playing--or at least it wasn't seen as a given--who is one of the all-time bests at his position. Make of that what you will.
Comments