Adrian Beltre And The Rest

The Class Of 2024

The votes have been tabulated and now there are 3 new members of the Hall Of Fame. Adrian Beltre, Todd Helton, and Joe Mauer will join Jim Leyland as the newest set of inductees. I have to say, I always love when they show the videos of the new honorees receiving their phone calls. It’s so heartwarming to see; I even say this for people who I don’t necessarily think were deserving. You can see how much it means to these men, you would have to have a heart of stone to not feel good for the new inductees.

And I do agree with all 3 choices. It took me until almost the last minute to come around on Mauer, but I finally realized that his peak period was great enough. Similar deal with Helton; I wasn’t in his corner his first couple of years on the ballot, but the arguments I have heard on his behalf were enough to finally persuade me. No such hesitancy on Beltre’s part. Not only was he a great player, but he was one of my absolute favorites from this era. The game is supposed to fun, and he exuded so much joy throughout his career.

You know who else is happy over these results? Buster Posey. His eligibility is still a few years away, but Mauer’s election as a first year candidate is a very good sign for Posey. Posey’s credentials are stronger than Mauer’s are, so it bodes well for Posey to also become a first year inductee when his time comes.

Looking down the ballot, what an agonizing result for Billy Wagner. He only fell 4 votes short. Next year will be his final year on the ballot; it’s likely that he will gain those 4 additional votes he will need to put him over the edge next time, but that has got to be an awful feeling to come oh so close. I’m not sure yet how to feel about Carlos Beltran’s chances. He had the expected jump in votes in his second year, but it’s still uncertain how many voters feel that his involvement in Houston’s sign stealing scandal is an automatic disqualifier. Next year will be telling. If he has another sizable gain, then he is on a clear path to election. If his support stagnates next year, then he’s in big trouble. Joe Posnanski made a keen observation a few years back when discussing Bonds & Clemens. No matter how passionate their supporters were, as long as there were 25.1% of the voters adamantly opposed to their elections, they had no chance. Is there a similar sized bloc that has decided they will never vote for Beltran? We will need to wait a year to find out.

David Wright wound up with 6.2% of the vote, which will barely allow him to survive for at least another year on the ballot. I’m not sure how I feel about that. As you know if you are a regular reader, I am a die hard Mets fan. But I recognize that as good as Wright was, injuries cut him down so that his peak did not last long enough. Nor was that peak high enough that one could make the Sandy Koufax argument for his candidacy. I’m not sure if it really benefits him to place his name on the ballot again when there is little chance that he will make it in.

Returning to Joe Posnanski, he had an interesting idea earlier this week. The gist of it is rather than waste precious ballot space on guys whose support is not growing, use some sort of grading process to guarantee retention.

Here’s my off-the-top-of-my-head idea: The percentage limit for staying on the ballot should go up 5% every year. So, it takes 5% to stay on the ballot your first year, 10% your second year, 15% your third year and so on.

I think this for three reasons. First, it would give us a kind of cool way to separate those excellent players who are not quite Hall of Famers. I think it would be more fun to say, “Hey, Andy Pettitte was a four-time ballot guy” than to say, “Andy Pettitte belongs in the Hall of Very Good.”

He realizes this means that people such as Wagner and Andruw Jones would have fallen off, so his idea is a bit of a work in progress. It’s worth a read.

Anyway, it should be a wonderful induction ceremony this summer. Helton & Mauer were both one-team players, so there will be a multitude of fans from Colorado & Minnesota making the pilgrimage. And everybody loves both Beltre and Leyland. Is it too early to look ahead to next year? 2025 will be Ichiro time in Cooperstown. Wagner figures to have a great shot. Andruw Jones is probably still a little too far away to make the jump to 75% next year, but he is making progress. And CC Sabathia and Felix Hernandez both hit the ballot for the first time.

And The Nominees Are…

One thing to keep in mind when the Oscar nominations come out is that in any year there are dozens of films & performances that merit honor. Narrowing it down to the final shortlists by definition necessitates omissions. Having said that, some of the snubs for Barbie really stand out. It feels oddly symbolic that Greta Gerwig was passed over for a director’s nod, as was Margot Robbie for Best Actress. Many people made the immediate observation that the fact that Ken was nominated and Barbie wasn’t in its own way confirms a lot of the points that were made in the movie. One factor that is often overlooked is the fact that for all of the talk about Liberal Hollywood, the Academy is made up of more than just actors. It stands to reason that there are enough members of the patriarchy who felt threatened by Barbie that they passed over Gerwig and Robbie as a result. Did I ever imagine that I would one day use the phrase “threatened by Barbie” to describe alleged adults?

Barbie disappointment aside, there is a lot to like about many of the nominations. ABC executives have to be happy about the number of nominations that went to the Barbenheimer phenomenon. Ratings for the ceremony are much higher when movies that a lot of people have seen are a major part of the festivities. This year they struck a very strong balance between big mass appeal hits and the kind of smaller movies that benefit well from Oscar love. If nominations encourage more people to see The Holdovers, perfect.

And there is an outstanding group of first-time nominees in the acting categories. Jeffrey Wright! Sterling K. Brown! Danielle Brooks! Emily Blunt! America Ferrera! So many people who have been doing tremendous work for so many years earning some well-deserved recognition. In addition, Lily Gladstone made history with her nomination. Looking through the ballot, unless I missed someone there isn’t anyone on the list who can complete the EGOT. Robbie Robertson did receive a posthumous nomination for Original Score. If he wins he would join the list of Oscar winners who are also in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Because of the sheer number of awards shows this time of year, there is relatively little suspense when it comes to the winners. Several candidates have already begun to run the table, so there are clear cut favorites for the bulk of the Big 6 trophies. Best Actor looks to be a tight battle between Paul Giamatti and Cillian Murphy, but otherwise the leaders in the clubhouse look solid - acting prizes for Emma Stone, Robert Downey Jr. & Da’Vine Joy Randolph, with Oppenheimer the likely Best Picture & Christopher Nolan the likely Best Director. Bottom line, if you want to do well in your Oscar pool it would behoove you to research the nominees for Best Live Action Short. Now, let the campaigning begin!

Coach Tara

The Stanford women’s basketball team defeated Oregon State on Sunday. The game was significant because it was the 1,203rd coaching victory for Tara VanDerveer, moving her past Mike Krzyzewski on the all-time list. VanDerveer now has more W’s than any college basketball coach at any level.

It’s also worth noting that Geno Auriemma is not far behind, with 1,196 wins. This reminds of what happened back in the 1980’s when both Nolan Ryan and Steve Carlton were approaching Walter Johnson’s career strikeout record. You may recall that it was Carlton who first surpassed the record, and there was a brief period in which the two passed it back and forth. Carlton, of course, faded and Ryan went on to run so far ahead of the pack that his record appears to be unbreakable.

We might see some similarities in the way the coaching record plays out. VanDerveer and Auriemma are roughly the same age, so I don’t foresee one sticking around significantly longer than the other. Stanford and UConn are both perennial powers, so both coaches figure to continue racking up wins. The X factor is there’s no way yet of knowing what type of effect the dissolution of the Pac-12 will have on Stanford’s continuing success. Regardless of what happens, it will be fun to see how the 2 will push each other as they are entering the twilight years of their coaching careers.

Stormin’ The Court

Any perusal through old sports clips reveals multiple instances of joyous fans on the playing field following a big win. Sometimes they cross a line that so that it morphs from what looks like a communal sharing of joy into a downright dangerous situation. Just look at Chris Chambliss’ walkoff in the 1976 ALCS. It’s stunning to think that a scene such as this was once considered acceptable.

Or how about this from the end of the 1984 NBA Finals? It’s literally impossible for the players to escape the stampede. This is an extreme example, but I’m shocked that no one that we know of had ever gotten seriously hurt in one of these scenarios. I remember when leagues finally began to take a proactive approach to keeping fans in their seats. I mocked the sight of police horses protecting the perimeter of the field as the 1980 World Series. Why are they being such killjoys? As I grew up I recognized the necessity of doing that.

Crowd rushing continues to be a way of life in college sports. One advantage of my attending a university (Fordham) without a large footprint in big time sports is that this was never part of the culture at my school. But it persists in the major schools, and a potentially scary moment was barely avoided last weekend. The Ohio State women’s team upset Iowa in overtime, and as the crowd rushed the court in celebration a fan ran into Caitlin Clark at full speed. It was unintentional, and luckily she wasn’t hurt in the collision, but it’s well past time for schools to crack down on this. We may not be so lucky next time. It shouldn’t have to come down to a player, student, or coach getting knocked down and seriously hurt followed by officials saying after the fact “this should not have happened.” Is toppling a goalpost really that vital a component of the college experience?

RIP

I mentioned in the above item that I attended Fordham. Charles Osgood was the commencement speaker at my graduation. The former CBS newsman, and longtime host of CBS News Sunday Morning, passed away at the age of 91. He was a truly classy broadcaster, no flash, all substance. The Sunday show was an ideal vehicle for his style. A learned, erudite man, his scripts were almost works of art.

Legendary film director Norman Jewishness passed away at the age of 97. His filmography is noteworthy not just because of the number of classics that he made, but also due to the breadth of his work. In the Heat Of the Night was nothing like Fiddler On the Roof which was nothing like A Soldier’s Story which was nothing like Moonstruck and so on. That is some serious range. It takes a true talent to be able to so adeptly move from genre to genre that frequently.

We also lost Mary Weiss, lead singer of the Shangri-Las. One of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the 1960’s girl groups, they specialized in the sort of dramatic soap operaesque songs so prevalent at the time. The heavy echo in their recordings combined with the tough Queens chicks vibe that they presented created a memorable sound. Leader Of the Pack is the song that will always cement their place in history, but Remember (Walking In the Sand) was just as good. Weiss was 75.

Closing Laughs

You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. That’s all for today. Thanks as always for reading, and be sure to come back on Friday. Bring a friend with you.