NFL Quiz: 1) Name the four quarterbacks to throw for 5,000 yards in a season. 2) Name the only two to throw for 4,000 in the 1960s and 70s. Answers below.
Being a Mets and Jets Fan
Just three combined world championships…tons of frustration and sleepless nights, especially when I was younger. This year it’s about the dysfunctional Jets and a coach, Wrecks Ryan, who is devolving into Eric Mangini right before our eyes.
But for the Mets, while they are having another desultory season, some hope was being generated that with arms like Matt Harvey’s and Zack Wheeler’s, with young veterans Dillon Gee and Jon Niese, and a plethora of arms in the minor league system, the future finally looked bright.
Of course I have been extolling Harvey all season, but mentioned in my Sunday night column that he felt exhausted after a rough start against the Tigers on Saturday.
Then Monday afternoon, the Mets dropped a bombshell. Harvey had an MRI that revealed a partial tear of the ulnar collateral ligament. For now, Harvey is going to try to avoid going under the knife, but Tommy John surgery that would keep him out all of 2014 seems to be a virtual certainty.
It just sucks. This is a devastating blow for Harvey, the Mets, and the fan base. A real kick to the gut. Exchanging notes Monday with fellow Mets fans, we are shell-shocked.
It’s also why, as I’ve been writing all this year in particular, you never, ever sign pitchers to long-term deals. Franchises like Tampa Bay and Atlanta have learned and been successful at stockpiling arms in the system, giving them a few years before they are eligible for a big, multi-year payday, and then trading them.
What’s so depressing is that it looked like this coming offseason, the Mets finally had the luxury of coupling one or two of their young guns in a trade for a desperately needed bat. Chances are such plans are now out the window. Harvey was going to be the Tom Seaveresque workhorse for years to come, with Harvey and Wheeler pushing each other to that dream one-two combination that would be the envy of baseball.
But I do have to add that while Harvey and the Mets said there was no specific moment they can point to when he may hurt his arm, I can. July 21, a very warm, humid day at Citi Field. The Mets had given Harvey a rare 5-0 lead. He had gone six dominating innings but he was gassed. Manager Terry Collins left him in for the seventh, this after the club had announced they were monitoring Harvey’s innings carefully to try to get him through September. I e-mailed Johnny Mac at the time. ‘This is incredibly stupid. Take him out!’ It’s impossible to prove, but I will forever now remember that moment as being a key.
On the other hand, as Tyler Kepner of the New York Times reports, a study by Will Carroll, an expert on injuries, found that “one-third of major league pitchers have had Tommy John surgery. Almost all recovered fully after a year or so of rehabilitation. [Ed. Like Stephen Strasburg] Injuries to the shoulder, not the elbow, are the much greater cause for alarm. [Ed. see Johan Santana]
But we’re also learning that the Mets knew of Harvey’s elbow soreness for weeks, so the question becomes, why didn’t he have an MRI earlier?
“When Mariano Rivera crumpled on the warning track in Kansas city last year in early May, his ACL torn, the natural reactions arrived:
“But there is something even more powerful with special players like this – sadness for the game. There are a lot of pitches and swings and innings in a long season, and there are a handful of players who can break the monotony, can evoke passion and energy and a greater interest with their mere presence over the six months, make the endless stream of games seem far less so.
“Just the chords of ‘Enter Sandman’ have done that with Rivera….Brilliance never gets old.
“And here was that sadness cast on the whole darn sport again yesterday with the revelation that Matt Harvey has a torn ulnar collateral ligament….
“Yes, of course, there is pity for a kid being derailed so early. There is despair for Met fans, who just were making out the light at the end of a very long tunnel….
“Yet, selfishly, the strongest reaction is that sadness, the loss of something previous not just from a team and a fan base, but for a whole sport. The exit of a No. 1 – with a bullet.”
“A decade ago, before pitch and innings limits became standard operating procedure, the best young pitcher in the game had nine starts of more than 121 pitches; in six starts in September that year, Mark Prior had pitch counts of 131, 129, 109, 124, 131 and 133. He is now, seemingly, a cautionary tale.
“The kind the Mets can point to as they have done everything right in their handling of Matt Harvey, according to current conventional wisdom in baseball, just as the Nationals did with Stephen Strasburg. But Harvey apparently blew out his elbow, just as Strasburg did. And as the search for the perfect formula for handling young pitchers continues without uniform success, some officials are beginning to believe that with all of the uncertainty about physiology and pitch history and mechanics that there is really only one hard truth about young pitchers: You control them for six years in their major league careers.
“So you might as well pitch them, because you just never know.”
Look at Tim Lincecum. When he was drafted by San Francisco and first came up, everyone thought his unusual mechanics and small frame would lead to arm issues. But he threw 180 innings his first year in professional ball, and in 2008 tossed 227. While he doesn’t have the stuff he used to, at 29, Lincecum hasn’t had the arm issues long predicted.
“The Giants’ control of Lincecum ends this fall, when he goes into free agency, and nobody can argue that San Francisco hasn’t gotten excellent return on his time with the team: about 1,400 innings, two Cy Young Awards, two championships, massive crowds. The success of Lincecum and the team has meant tens of millions of dollars to the organization, and given the rise in popularity of the franchise in recent seasons, the handling of the right-hander will continue to pay off.
“The Giants’ focus was not on keeping Lincecum healthy long-term; their priority has been getting production from him in the years for which they have controlled him and paid him. When he was ready to pitch in the big leagues, they pitched him.”
So, as Olney concludes, “(As) carefully handled pitchers like Strasburg and Harvey break down, more officials could reach the conclusion that there is so much they don’t know, so much they can’t control, and there is still only one hard truth: A team controls a pitcher for six years in his major league career.
Meanwhile, as for the Jets, I watched Rex Ryan’s pathetic press conference on Monday, with all of us hoping he’d add more color to his decision to play Mark Sanchez in the fourth quarter of a meaningless exhibition game, behind an offensive line comprised of second- and third-teamers, when he knows after watching Geno Smith for three quarters that Sanchez was back to being his best option for opening day Sept. 8. We also wanted Rex to comment on the extent of Sanchez’ injury.
Wrecks offered up nothing, except to say Sanchez wouldn’t play in Thursday’s exhibition finale.
“Ryan, inherited and mummified by rookie general manager John Idzik, has likely sealed his fate as Dead Coach Walking.
“The Fall of Rex Ryan has been a swift and stunning one.
“Remember when he was the talk of the town and the toast of Jets Town when he took Gang Green to back-to-back AFC Championship games his first two seasons?
“Remember when most every Jets fan wanted to belly up to the bar with him for a beer or two?
“Remember when his bluster and braggadocio was a howling breath of fresh air that blew away the paranoia of the Eric Mangini Era?
“Remember when he told us he didn’t come here to kiss Bill Belichick’s rings? Remember when he called out Tom Brady?….
“When you get your owner the back page of the tabloids and as much space on the web as the Kardashians, and you become the franchise’s most compelling figure since Broadway Joe Namath, you build up enough equity to survive flipping the bird to a taunting Dolphins fan and cursing out another fan who volunteered that Belichick that Belichick is a better coach, and only a minority chide you as a buffoon.
“But when you lose 13 of your last 19 games, when you admit that you didn’t have your finger on the pulse of the locker room, when you have three offensive coordinators in three years, when your trusted defensive coordinator abandons your sinking ship for Buffalo, when there are no more scapegoats left and you avoid the guillotine that lopped off the head of the former GM because the owner has great affection for you, when you lose your cool at a bizarre postgame press conference, gone are the days when you are viewed as a lovable character….
“No quarterback – be it Brady or Sanchez – deserves the kind of shabby treatment that Sanchez received Saturday night against the Giants….
“You do hope Ryan isn’t cracking under the strain of Big Brother watching his every move.”
Yes, it’s just a real barrel of monkeys being a Jets and Mets fan these days.
Ball Bits
–After homering twice in a 7-1 win over Toronto on Tuesday, the Yankees’ Alfonso Soriano now has 11 home runs and 33 RBI in just 30 games since being acquired from the Cubs. Soriano also hit career No. 400. Alex Rodriguez hit No. 651 in the same game. He receives a $6 million bonus for tying Willie Mays at 660. That will suck.
–The Pirates made a great move for the stretch run, acquiring right-fielder Marlon Byrd (21 HR 71 RBI, .285) and catcher John Buck (15-60) from the Mets for a minor league infielder and a player to be named later. After the Harvey injury, the Mets felt it was time to unload some pieces that aren’t part of the future.
–Among active pitchers with at least 200 career starts, Mark Buehrle of Toronto has the most without a stint on the disable list, 423. Josh Beckett, now of the Dodgers, has 312 career starts but a whopping 15 stints on the DL. [Wall Street Journal]
College Football
Yes! The season starts Thursday, with North Carolina at South Carolina worth a look-in. [Rutgers at Fresno State is kind of interesting for us locals.] Wake Forest hosts mighty Presbyterian, the school, not the official church team quarterbacked by the ageless John Calvin. I must say I have no clue as to Wake’s team this year. My in-house expert, Chris K., is going with 7-5, though this is dependent on a 4-0 start, which means a win in Week 2 at Boston College, so that’s the key early contest. [The Steve D vs. Editor Italian Lunch Bowl.]
Meanwhile, while I have Oregon defeating Louisville in the BCS title game, which requires Alabama getting upset along the way, for starters, Ben Cohen of the Wall Street Journal had the following on the Tuscaloosa campus.
“Alabama, the closest thing to a dynasty in modern college football, has managed to turn this sport into an autumnal snooze. The prohibitive favorite to win the national championship yet again, the No. 1-ranked Tide owns three of the last four titles, has been favored by Las Vegas oddsmakers for 43 straight games and is now targeting the sport’s first three-peat since the 1940s.
“As Alabama prepares to open its season Saturday against Virginia Tech, the 124 other teams theoretically playing the same game are once again united in a single purpose: to dethrone the Tide. But hardly anyone appears up to it. Archrival Auburn is rebuilding. And by a stroke of scheduling luck, Alabama gets to skip Southeastern Conference powers Georgia, Florida and South Carolina. Basically, there are two games between the Tide and the SEC championship: a Sept. 14 trip to No. 7 Texas A&M and a Nov. 9 home game against 12th-ranked LSU.
“Meanwhile, running back T.J. Yeldon is a Heisman Trophy candidate and quarterback A.J. McCarron is returning for his third season as the starter, having already collected a pair of crystal footballs in that role.
“As other schools like Texas A&M, Oregon, Florida State and Southern California attract headlines about everything from lavish facilities and possible NCAA violations to uncertainty about who will be the starting quarterback, the only thing that approached controversial proportions during Alabama’s preseason is who might take on the role of McCarron’s backup.
“Amid all of this prolonged dominance, there are signs that boredom, if not downright apathy, has started to creep in. The first offenders: Alabama students. The Crimson White, Alabama’s school newspaper, reported in November that 30% of student tickets went unused by students last season.
“ ‘You get to the point where there’s a game against Western Carolina at 11 in the morning that’s not really worth waking up for,’ said Marc Torrence, the newspaper’s sports editor, referring to a 49-0 rout last season. ‘You can do a whole lot of other things on a Saturday, like get a head start on your drinking or sleep in, that are a lot more interesting.’”
‘Bama’s schedule is indeed unfortunate. As opposed to #5 Georgia, which opens with #8 Clemson (the big one Saturday night!…8:00 PM ET, on ABC, don’t bother me…), #6 South Carolina the following week, and also has Florida and LSU later on.
–As for the Johnny Manziel situation, evidently he met with NCAA investigators for six hours on Sunday. It’s unclear whether the NCAA was satisfied or further meetings will be required. Texas A&M opens at home against Rice on Saturday.
A&M Chancellor John Sharp is now defending Manziel, so it doesn’t appear that the school is going to suspend him independently of what the NCAA eventually rules.
This is one instance where I don’t blame the NCAA for taking a while to get it right. It’s not as if the allegations Manziel took cash for signing autographs came out last spring. This is all pretty recent.
But in playing Johnny Football, A&M could really get screwed should the NCAA eventually rule against him.
–An upcoming story in Rolling Stone magazine alleges that when Aaron Hernandez was at Florida, then coach Urban Meyer, now at Ohio State, “may have covered up failed drug tests along with two violent incidents,” one of which was a drive-by shooting outside a bar.
Super Bowl 2014
Bar Chat 5/27/2010…after we learned that the Meadowlands had been selected to host the coming Super Bowl.
“And now the EXCLUSIVE Bar Chat weather forecast for Super Sunday, 2014…Increasing clouds in the morning with snow developing around mid-day and picking up in intensity by game time, 6:30 p.m. Accumulations of 4-6 inches by halftime, with an additional 3-5 inches in the second half. As warmer air filters in, however, the snow will mix with sleet around 11:00 p.m., leaving the roads impassable following the game…that is if you can shovel your car out of the lot to begin with.
“As the storm then moves up the coast late Sunday night, colder air will wrap back around the system and by Monday morning we could see a further 6-10 inches. The airports will be closed, and for the 35,000 who never made it out of the Meadowlands parking lot, the National Guard will be called in to evacuate the casualties. An estimated 546 will freeze to death.”
Well, I have since been refining the forecast and I will give my final one around Thanksgiving, but you have now seen The Farmer’s Almanac’s forecast for this coming February and it predicts a winter storm will hit the Northeast around the time of Super Sunday.
As reported in the New York Post, the good folks at the 197-year-old publication base their forecasts on “planetary positions, sunspots and lunar cycles,” an unchanged secret formula since David Young published the first one in 1818.
–I failed to mention a great sporting event that occurred Sunday before I went to post.
Cardiff City 3 Manchester City 2
And what was the significance of this Game 2 Premier League match-up?
It was Cardiff’s return to top-flight football after being in the wilderness since 1962! After 51 years, Cardiff had just been promoted to the Premier League and then they do this. And by all accounts it was no fluke. The Malaysian owner has spent a ton of money on upgrading the club. So this could be a very interesting story going forward this season. [I just love the whole relegation/promotion concept in European football.]
Liverpool 1, Blackpool 2
Blackpool had just returned to the Premier League for the first time since 1971.
Burnley’s was in its first top-flight home game in 33 years and Man U had won the league the prior three seasons.
–Well, I’m the 24 hours guy and I should have waited another 24 in discussing the Rory McIlroy-Carolina Wozniacki relationship. I relied on the normally reliable (non-tabloid) Irish Independent the other day, which reported the two had split up at Rory’s request, but now we learn Rory and Caroline went out to dinner in New York over the weekend and he attended her first round match at the U.S. Open.
“Fans of the biggest celebrity couple in sport clearly can dab their eyes and put away the tissues. As Mark Twain might have said, reports of the demise of their relationship clearly were greatly exaggerated…or so we’re told.”
But the paper says Rory continues to inflict off-course wounds on himself because he doesn’t have any professional PR help, which, for example, he needed when back in March at the Honda Classic, he walked off the course after completing just eight holes in the second round.
The paper blames Rory and the time difference between New York and Ireland for the confusion on his relationship with Caroline as he didn’t, appropriately, address it before his second round, Friday, and so ‘insiders’ filled in as to why the two had dropped their cozy Twitter photos.
“Eventually, on Sunday, McIlroy put the issue to bed when he tweeted: ‘I’d love to know who this guy’s source is. Seems to pop up in the papers all the time and is wrong 99.9% of the time.”
So, yes, you’ve got the money, Rory. Hire a PR guy to avoid all this extra stuff that clutters the brain for a sport where you are already generating enough gremlins as it is.
–The body of the Australian man killed by a crocodile in the Northern Territory’s Mary River was found. The 26-year-old “and the dead crocodile floated to the surface early today (Monday). The crocodile had been shot by rangers within hours of the attack on Saturday night, but had sunk before it could be retrieved.” [Aussie Press Association]
–So my brother went ‘home’ to western Pennsylvania last weekend in taking my nephew back to Pitt for the new school year, stopping in to see Cousin Frank and Pam in Latrobe, where he learned how no one in town there drinks Rolling Rock (long brewed there) anymore since it was sold in 2006 to Anheuser-Busch, which now brews the beer elsewhere. Instead they all drink Yuengling, America’s Oldest Brewery.
One reason why I look forward to my brother’s trips to PA is his stop in Shartlesville on the way home for Shoo-fly pie, the molasses goodie from Pennsylvania Dutch country.
–Here’s something else that will make one drool…from USA TODAY Sports Weekly’s look at the ballparks, I learned of the food favorite at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.
Bacon-wrapped hot dog…$9.25
“Legend has it the first hot dog sold at a ballpark happened in St. Louis in 1893. It’s only fitting that the Cardinals serve this hot dog wrapped in two slices of hickory-smoked bacon, topped with baked beans, pico de gallo, barbecue sauce, mustard aioli, fried onions and two pickle slices. It’s on a bun from Fazio’s Bakery in St. Louis’ famous Hill neighborhood.”
–After posting the last column Sunday, I settled in for the MTV VMA awards in one of my few annual attempts at keeping up on today’s music scene.
And there was Miley Cyrus…good lord! What the [heck] was that?! She looked awful, she wasn’t the least bit sexy, she was gross, and if she showed up at my door I’d call the police. [If Selena Gomez showed up at my door, on the other hand, I’d invite her in for tea and crumpets. It would simply be the right thing to do.]
Anyway, LT was giving me guidance on who I was to root for, she called Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, and the only thing I mildly liked was Justin Timberlake.
Top 3 songs for the week 8/31/74: #1 “(You’re) Having My Baby” (Paul Anka with Odia Coates…never did learn if Odia really was the mother…) #2 “I Shot The Sheriff” (Eric Clapton) #3 “Tell Me Something Good” (Rufus…cool sound for that era…)…and…#4 “The Night Chicago Died” (Paper Lace…was #1 two week earlier…) #5 “Feel Like Makin’ Love” (Roberta Flack…on top of her game…#1 three weeks prior…) #6 “I’m Leaving It (All) Up To You” (Donny & Marie Osmond) #7 “Wildwood Weed” (Jim Stafford…terrific entertainer…in the purest sense of the word…) #8 “Rock Me Gentle” (Andy Kim…eh…) #9 “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe” (Barry White…we still miss you, Barry…) #10 “You And Me Against The World” (Helen Reddy…talk about a beautiful, sad, depressing tune…then again, this was an incredibly depressing time in our country…Nixon having resigned Aug. 9…but Gerald Ford proved to be the perfect replacement…and now I’m rambling…)
NFL Quiz Answers: 1) 5,000 yards in a season: Drew Brees, 5476 (2011); Tom Brady, 5235 (2011); Brees, 5177 (2012); Dan Marino, 5084 (1984); Brees, 5069 (2008); Matthew Stafford, 5038 (2011). 2) The only two to throw for 4,000 in the 60s/70s were Joe Namath, 4007 (1967) and Dan Fouts, 4082 (1979). [Fouts then extended his record to 4715 in 1980 and 4802 in ’81.]
