So, here we are, last day of the year — Happy New Year, everyone, and all the best to you and your family this year — and it seems like everybody’s recapping. On the radio, they’re doing a countdown of the best songs of 2013. On various blogs, I’m seeing the best movies, the best…
Month: December 2013
Hall of Fame Ballot: The Minor Characters
So, you probably know that today is the deadline for our Hall of Fame votes. And that means I’m putting together my massive Hall of Fame post. I believe that will be up at NBC tomorrow and then, on Thursday at noon, I’m planning a Hall of Fame chat here on the blog. Come one….
The New Hall
Dave Cameron over at Fangraphs wrote a terrific piece a couple of weeks ago where he tries to determine what exactly is the Hall of Fame’s historical standard. Where is that line drawn? He finds that the traditional standard is somewhere between 1% and 2% of all players. It varies by era, of course. More…
The Browns: A Coaching History
It began with Chris Palmer. He was the first coach hired for the new Cleveland Browns. It’s hard now to remember just how much hope there was for the new Browns. For three years, Cleveland had been without football, and it was miserable. Now, there was a beautiful new stadium — which the city had…
The Game’s Greatest Honor
There is a small and perhaps odd point I’ve been meaning to make in one of these Hall of Fame posts but it has never quite fit. The point has something to do with how much easier this whole Hall of Fame thing would be if we didn’t spend so much time thinking of it…
Paul Blair
What I remember most is a sound. It’s a familiar sound now, but I was probably 7 or 8 then. The batter hit the ball deep into the outfield and my eyes followed the ball. That’s the natural move, to follow the ball, and when you do even the most routine outfield fly ball looks…
Time For a Hall of Fame Stand
In June 1966, Ted Williams did something amazing. Nobody saw it coming, perhaps not even Williams himself. He was in Cooperstown, giving his Hall of Fame speech, and he was visibly moved by the day. Williams had never been able to let go of the anger he felt toward sportswriters — even before his last…
Movie Titles
So, I’ve been thinking a lot about movie names. Woody Allen has said one of the hardest things he does is come up with a name for his movies. Apparently he had the hardest time coming up with the name “Annie Hall,” even though that was the name of the lead woman character. I thought…
The Poscast Ep. 3 – The Ultimate Sports Draft
[iframe style=”border:none” src=”http://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/2600896/height/50/width/480/thumbnail/no/theme/standard” height=”50″ width=”480″ scrolling=”no” allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen] Joe and Michael talk about how many knives it takes to make a great peanut butter and jelly sandwich, faux argue about offense and defense in football and then have what is unquestionably the ultimate sports draft. Check out this episode
Sabermetrics vs. (Uh) Sabermetrics?
This Pat Caputo column about the Hall of Fame has, well, a lot of problems. A lot. For one thing, he left off a bunch of players (28 to be exact) and then wrote, “You can speculate all you want about those I left off my ballot and performance enhancing drugs.” That seems, I don’t…