Baseball Quiz: Name the four to win the triple crown in the 1930s. Answer below.
Week 3 in the NFL
–OK…once again things get jammed up Sunday evening. I watched the Jets-Dolphins today and boy do the Jets and Mark Sanchez suck, despite their win in overtime, 23-20. There is a reason why no one expects greatness out of Sanchez….he’s just not that good; not that it is that easy to find a top ten signal-caller, so we’re stuck with him. He’ll have a few real good games, but far more mediocre ones. And after watching today, I’m more convinced than ever that my Jets, despite being 2-1, will finish 6-10. [If Darrelle Revis is out for an extended period, which we’ll learn Monday, make that 4-12.]
Meanwhile, the Arizona Cardinals are 3-0 after defeating the Eagles (2-1) 27-6 as Larry Fitzgerald had a big game, 9 rec. 114 yards.
The Texans moved to 3-0 in beating the Broncos (1-2) 31-25.
Atlanta is 3-0 after whipping the Chargers (2-1) 27-3.
The Vikings (2-1) upset the 49ers (2-1) 24-13.
Steve G. got his Direct TV money’s worth as his Jaguars (1-2) defeated the Andrew Luckless Colts (1-2) 22-17 with Maurice Jones-Drew rushing for 177 yards.
Jamaal Charles had a monster game…233 yards rushing and 55 receiving as the Chiefs (1-2) beat the 0-3 Saints in New Orleans, 27-24.
Cincinnati (2-1) beat RG3 and Washington (1-2) 38-31.
And the Steelers are 1-2 after losing to the Raiders (1-2) in Oakland on a Janikowski field goal.
Lastly, can you imagine going to the Bears-Rams game, won by Chicago 23-6 as the two teams combined for a measly 434 yards offense? [St. Louis with just 160.] It would have cost you $hundreds for a family of four. Wow, great entertainment. Drive home safely.
–Entering this week’s play, since 2011, Eli Manning had 18 fourth-quarter TD passes. Over that same period, in the first three quarters of games he has just 15. Drew Brees and Matthew Stafford are next on the fourth-quarter list with 13.
–From a piece in ESPN The Magazine, “The 206 drafted rookies who entered the league last season can expect to play an average of 6.86 seasons, according to a 2011 study by the NFL. First-round pick? Another study shows these players last, on average, 9.3 years.
And from Football Outsiders (and ESPN The Magazine), the peak age for various positions is:
QB – 28.4 years
RB – 25.9
WR – 26.5
DE – 26.5
Safety – 26.0
–The current issue of Sports Illustrated features the topic of the importance of “speed” in various sports and there is a blurb by Peter King on former New York Giant receiver Homer Jones, who was the most exciting local player I was aware of as I became a football fan from 1966 on. Jones holds the NFL record for average yards per catch for receivers with at least 200 receptions in their career, 22.3. In 1967, quarterback Fran Tarkenton said to coach Allie Sherman, “We have to get the ball to Homer.”
“In Jones’ first game with Tarkenton, he had five catches, 175 yards and two touchdowns. In his third game, four catches, 196 yards and two TDs.”
You know I forgot that Homer Jones was big…6’2”, 228 (according to King…pro-football-reference.com has him at 6’2”, 215).
Jones had 36 TDs on his 224 career catches, but when you look up lifetime leaders for yards per catch, pro-football-reference has Warren Wells No. 1, except Wells caught 158.
Talk about a blur, Wells had but three full seasons with Oakland, 1968-70, plus 13 catches in 1967 with them, good for six scores!
Overall, he averaged 23.1 yards per catch and had 42 TDs on the 158 receptions. In 1969, with “Mad Bomber” Darryle Lamonica at quarterback, Wells had 14 touchdowns on but 47 catches.
–The October issue of Wired magazine has a bit on the circadian rhythms and how from 3-7 PM, “Body temperature, flexibility, physical strength, and speed all peak. Breathing is easiest, pain tolerance highest.” So compete. This is the theory behind the fact that in Monday Night Football games, “West Coast teams facing East Coast opponents are closer to their late-afternoon physical peak, and they win nearly twice as often.” Huh. So say researchers at Stanford University.
7-9 AM, by the way, is the best time to train. “Lower body temperature makes morning ideal for endurance workouts.”
You wondering about sex? Glad you asked. 4-6 PM. “Sperm is speedier and more concentrated than in the morning. If pregnancy is your goal, it’s a good excuse.”
–It seems like Patriots star tight end Rob Gronkowski is having quite a time with former porn star Britney Maclin, aka Bibi Jones. After some costly drops in the Pats’ 20-18 loss to the Cardinals the other week, Maclin Tweeted, “Gronk told me he dropped those balls bc he was thinking of me! Gotta get back in his life.”
College Football Review
No. 2 LSU squeaked by Auburn, 12-10.
No. 3 Oregon whipped No. 22 Arizona, 49-0, even with De’Anthony Thomas doing little.
In a game that was pretty much as advertised, No. 4 Florida State racked up 667 yards total offense in defeating No. 10 Clemson, 49-37. Clemson was up 31-21 in the middle of the third before the Seminole juggernaut went into another gear. FSU is definitely for real.
No. 15 Kansas State upset No. 6 Oklahoma in Norman, 24-19, though it was more the Sooners being exposed as frauds.
No. 7 South Carolina manhandled Missouri, 31-10, as Gamecocks quarterback Connor Shaw missed his first pass of the game and then proceeded to complete his final 20, 20-21, 249, two TDs.
No. 11 Notre Dame went to 4-0 with a boring 13-6 win over No. 18 Michigan as the Squirrels had six turnovers, with another Heisman fraud, QB Denard Robinson, getting picked off four times. For the Fighting Irish, it was sweet revenge as Robinson had burned them the previous two seasons in the final 30 seconds. He had thrown and run for 948 yards in those two games but was held to 228 on Saturday.
No. 13 USC beat California, 27-9, as Matt Barkley’s Heisman hopes are officially extinguished, Barkley only going 22-34, 192, with two TDs and two INTs. No word on the Battle of the Cheerleaders as yet.
I hope you were hedging with Beaverwear on Saturday as Oregon State went down to Pasadena and upset No. 19 UCLA at the Rose Bowl, 27-20.
Meanwhile, back to the Little Ten, Central Michigan beat Iowa, 32-31, and Louisiana Tech destroyed Illinois, 52-24.
[From Tim Rohan / New York Times: “Since 2007, the SEC’s vast collection of talent grew with 26 – out of a possible 60 – top-10 recruiting classes, according to Yahoo’s Rivals.com recruiting service. In the same time, the Big Ten has enjoyed six such classes.”]
Nice win for Ball State over South Florida, 31-27. Ditto Western Michigan over UConn, 30-24.
On Friday night, La.-Monroe proved once again they have a real program but lost to undefeated Baylor, 47-42.
Old Dominion quarterback Taylor Heinicke set a NCAA Division I record for passing yards in OD’s 64-61 win over New Hampshire, 730 on 55 of 79 passing. David Klingler had held the record of 716 since December 1990.
Earlier this year, Division III QB Sam Durley of Eureka College set the NCAA single-game mark with 736 yards.
And how about Rutgers going to 4-0 with a 35-26 win over Arkansas! Quarterback Gary Nova threw for 397 yards and five touchdowns, while for the Razorbacks, receiver Cobi Hamilton had an SEC record 303 yards on 10 catches. Arkansas, a pre-season Top 10 in everyone’s poll, is now 1-3.
[The New York Daily News’ Mike Lupica: “Bobby Petrino loses his job at Arkansas because he hires his girlfriend as a ‘secretary’ and now the guy who replaced him, John L. Smith, apparently owes more money than Greece.” Like $25 million, as revealed in bankruptcy proceedings.]
Finally, as I walked into the bank on Saturday morning, I was sporting a spiffy Wake Forest polo shirt (unintentionally) and everyone turned away, or so it seemed…but the Deacs a few hours later moved to 3-1 in defeating Army, 49-37. However, lest us Wake fans get too smug, we gave up 429 yards on the ground. Next up a huge game against Duke…HUGE!
And the new AP Poll
1. Alabama
2. Oregon
3. LSU
4. Florida State
5. Georgia
6. South Carolina
7. Kansas State
8. Stanford
9. West Virginia
10. Notre Dame
18. Oregon State
23. Rutgers!!!
25. Baylor
Ball Bits
–Just like that, Miguel Cabrera is on his way to the Triple Crown. And let’s face it, Cabrera is the league’s MVP when you have this kind of season, not the Angels’ Mike Trout. Meanwhile, Josh Hamilton has a sinus condition that has blurred his vision, which is disconcerting to the team, to say the least, and probably ensures Cabrera’s TC.
Cabrera’s stats [prior to Detroit’s second game of a doubleheader Sunday]
Batting average…first .332 [Joe Mauer .326]
Home runs…tied for first with 42 [Josh Hamilton]
RBI…first with 132 [Hamilton has 123]
–But then there is the issue of San Francisco’s Melky Cabrera, who would win the batting title today even after being suspended 50 games for testing positive for an elevated level of testosterone. As you know he was one plate appearance short, which can be added under Rule 10.22(a).
But Cabrera contacted the Players Union to ask for their help in removing his name from consideration for the batting title and MLB and the Players’ Association agreed to a one-time amendment to the rule.
“I have no wish to win an award that would be tainted,” Melky said in a statement. “I believe it would be far better for someone more deserving to win.”
Commissioner Bud Selig said, “I respect his gesture as a sign of his regret and his desire to move forward, and I believe that, under these circumstances, the outcome is appropriate, particularly for Mr. Cabrera’s peers who are contending for the batting crown.”
As the New York Times’ Tyler Kepner observes, however, “Selig should not have ceded any moral high ground to Cabrera, whose elaborate fraud included an attempt…to deceive an arbitrator by concocting a fake Web site. Cabrera, like Mark McGwire, Alex Rodriguez and so many before him, stained his permanent record, and he should not have anything cleansed….
“(It) smacks of the historical revisionism that baseball had smartly avoided (Ed. referring to the “fantasy whitewashing world of the NCAA, which vacates accomplishments by pretending they never took place”). Most fans will overlook the nuances of the revised rule – which hinges on a single missing plate appearance – and simply see baseball stripping a cheater of an honor. From there, as Selig himself said, more problems are created than solved.
“Now that Cabrera cannot win the batting title, can Jose Canseco no longer be credited as the first man to hit 40 homers and steal 40 bases in the same season? Can Rafael Palmeiro be removed from the 3,000-hit/500-homer club? Should all award winners ever linked to performance-enhancing drugs be retroactively expunged from the honor rolls?….
“Altering a rule to deny a statistical achievement might make Cabrera and baseball feel better. But nothing will ever change the fact that Cabrera hit .346 this season, however he did it. Rewriting history is pointless and impractical. Fans apply their own mental asterisks, anyway.”
*Andrew McCutchen trails Melky by ten points, .346 to .336. C’mon Cutch!
–Incredibly, the Baltimore Orioles have won 16 consecutive extra-inning contests, the most since the 1949 Indians won 17 in a row. When Baltimore makes the playoffs it will be their first appearance in the postseason since 1997.
By the way, as reported by Adi Joseph in USA TODAY, “Bovada.lv gave the Orioles 100-to-1 odds to win the difficult American League East Division entering the season. Enough people took the site up on the offer that a big loss could be coming if the Orioles continue winning, Bovada’s sportsbook manager told The Baltimore Sun.” Like six figures.
–The Mets held on for R.A. Dickey on Saturday, as Dickey picked up his 19th win in his quest for the Cy Young Award. But Washington’s Gio Gonzalez became the major’s first 20-game winner the same day. So a tale of the tape.
Dickey, 19-6, 2.66 ERA (leads league), 209 strikeouts (leads league)
Gonzalez, 20-8, 2.84, 201
The award should go to Dickey (compare his teammates to those of Gonzalez’s), but he has to win at least one of this final two starts.
And the Mets improved their record at home since the All-Star break to 7-24! Plus, on Friday in a 7-3 win over the Marlins, the team snapped a franchise-record streak of 16 games at home in which they scored no more than three runs!
Also on Friday, as part of the ceremonies for the official opening of the Barclays Center, new home for the Brooklyn Nets, Mayor Bloomberg said, “The New Jersey Nets are now the Brooklyn Nets. And the first game is going to be Brooklyn versus Manhattan if you will, or the Nets versus the Knicks. And it will be exciting and a crosstown rivalry is always good.”
Then he said, “And you want both teams to be good. It’s sad that the Mets have sort of fallen apart here.”
–Congratulations to the Washington Nationals for clinching the city’s first baseball postseason in 79 years.
–From the above-referenced ESPN The Magazine article on peak age for various positions in football, for baseball, the peak age for all position players is 28. For a pitcher it is 29; important to take into consideration when you are signing older free agents in particular.
–ESPN.com’s Rick Reilly had a pretty vicious story on Derek Jeter the other day regarding the fact that “You couldn’t fill a shot glass with the good quotes Derek Jeter has given in 18 seasons.” The two had a tension packed interview session. But this week Jeter collected his 200th hit for an eighth season, tying Lou Gehrig for the Yankee lead in this category.
–It’s not looking good in Pittsburgh as the Pirates end the week at 75-77. Next up, four games at Citi Field against the Mets.
—Ichiro has 15 hits in his last six games with the Yanks.
Worst Decisions in Sports History
“The cruelty of sports is that a single brain fart can define an entire career. But feel no pity for the idiots on this list: They deserve that permanent dunce cap welded to their pin heads.”
XVIII. The Knicks let Jeremy Lin walk.
XVII. The Miracle at the Meadowlands. Think 31 seconds left and QB Joe Pisarcik’s botched handoff that Eagles D-back Herman Edwards scooped up for the winning touchdown.
XVI. Tony Romo and Jessica Simpson head off to Mexico.
XV. Al Davis drafts JaMarchus Russell number one.
XIV. Brett Favre sends photos of his [blank] to Jenn Sterger.
XIII. Ron Artest goes after a Detroit fan in the stands.
XII. Baseball commissioner Bud Selig decides to let the 2002 All-Star Game end in a tie.
XI. Ten-cent beer night. Cleveland Indians hosting Texas in June 1974. It turned into a riot. “The late journalist Tim Russert just so happened to be at this game. Looking back on the events of that night, he told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, ‘I went with $2 in my pocket. You do the math.’”
X. Olympic judges award Park Si-hun the 1988 gold medal over Roy Jones Jr. Drew Magary says you can still watch the footage of this bout online, which I’ll do sometime. Jones outpunched Park, 86-32, with Marv Albert crying out “Park Si-Hun has stolen the bout!”
IX. Barry Switzer goes for it on fourth down – twice. Think Super Bowl XXX when in a tie game with the Eagles, Switzer has his Cowboys go for it on fourth-and-one from his own 29-yard line late. Even John Madden screamed, “THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE!”
VIII. ESPN hires Rush Limbaugh to join its NFL pregame show.
VII. Michael Jordan retires to give baseball a try.
VI. The Vikings trade five players and eight draft picks for Herschel Walker.
V. Grady Little lets Pedro stay in the game. Drew Magary: “The amazing thing is that – even after winning two World Series over the next four seasons – Sox fans still bitch about that call. Why can’t you assholes just be happy for once?”
IV. Marty Mornhinweg opts to kick. “After winning the sudden-death-overtime coin toss during a 2002 game, the former Detroit Lions coach allowed Chicago to have the ball first, despite knowing that ‘sudden death’ means ‘you score first, you win.’ Which is precisely what the Bears did, kicking a field goal on their first possession.
III. The Decision. Think LeBron James.
II. The Knicks hire Isiah Thomas.
I. The Sox sell Babe Ruth to the Yankees.
—Brandt Snedeker won both the TOUR Championship and FedEx Cup in undramatic fashion at East Lake in Atlanta. For winning the event, his fourth win on the PGA Tour, Snedeker took home $1.4 million, but in winning the FedEx Cup, tack on another $10 million.
–The World Golf Hall of Fame is a joke, made more so by the election of Fred Couples. I mean c’mon. Freddie Couples had a very good PGA Tour career with 15 wins, including the 1992 Masters, but he is not a Hall of Famer, a title presumably reserved for the “greats.”
I’m not alone, it seems, in having this opinion. Couples was elected with a record-low 51%. The minimum is 65, but there is a clause that when no one gets the minimum, the leading vote-getter is elected provided he has at least 50%. Vijay Singh got in in 2005 with 56%. The whole thing is stupid.
–Some animal stories aren’t worth a lot of ink, even as they get national press, and such is the case of the man who jumped into the tiger exhibit at the Bronx Zoo from the monorail train. The 25-year-old, who claimed after he wanted to be one with the animal, was alone with the Siberian tiger named Bashuta for about 10 minutes before being rescue by zoo officials. He suffered bites and punctures on his arms, legs, shoulders and back and broke an arm and a leg, but officials said “The tiger did nothing wrong” and is not being punished. And that’s all that matters. Tiger remains a perennial Top 10 on the All-Species List.
–Reader Shu, who has recovered from his scorpion bite, passed along a piece from The Arizona Republic that notes the cost of the scorpion anti-venom, Anascorp, manufactured in Mexico, was recently billed out at $83,000 for two doses. But the article by Ken Alltucker says the Chandler Regional Medical Center’s charge was $39,652 per dose. Since The Arizona Republic reported the charges, the hospital lowered its price to $8,000 per dose. Other hospitals in the region charge $7,950 to $21,875.
But as Ken Alltucker reports, “Mexico-based Instituto Bioclon produces more than 250,000 vials of the scorpion anti-venom each year for Mexican residents. The Mexican version of the drug is sold for about $100 per vial at pharmacies or for less at government-funded clinics and hospitals in Mexico.”
Or as Shu observes, our health-care system is really [messed up.]
–Shu passed along a piece from the Daily Mail’s Paul Bentley.
“When grandmother Kath Forster spotted a snake curled beneath Indian garden slates on her driveway, she calmly picked it up with ice cube tongs and trapped it in a box of Celebrations.
“She might not have acted so decisively had she known exactly what she was tackling – for the 57-year-old had in fact just encountered one of the deadliest snakes in the world.
“Mrs. Forster’s experience at home in Dronfield, Derbyshire, is the second time in a week that a saw-scaled viper has been seen in England.
“Experts are now warning that it is only a matter of time before someone is seriously injured or killed by one of the snakes, because the authorities in India are not checking their shipments carefully.”
It seems she was having work done at home when her gardener unpacked a crate of patio slates from India and spotted the 20-inch snake curled up inside upon removing the last slab.
Mrs. Forster called a vet who sent snake experts to collect it and they then identified it.
Yikes, did you know the saw-scaled viper can survive for up to six months without food in shipment crates?! No more frozen Indian meals for me. I’d be afraid to open up a package, know what I’m sayin’?
And The Mail reports: “In June 2009, there were mass attacks by the vipers in southern Iraq after rivers dried up, exposing swarms which usually live in reeds.”
Previously last week, a saw-scaled viper was seen in Tilbury Docks, in Essex, arriving in a giant shipping container from India.
–It seems the Good Vibrations are over. Beach Boy Mike Love announced he will go back to touring with Bruce Johnston and their old incarnation of the Beach Boys, leaving out Brian, Al Jardine and David Marks. Brian Wilson’s manager said, “Brian is very bummed” in reacting to Love’s statement that he was being protective of the band’s legacy.
“You’ve got to be careful not to get overexposed. There are promoters who are interested [in more shows by the reunited lineup], but they’ve said, ‘Give it a rest for a year.’”
Wilson said the tour was “very tiring,” but added, “I’m really looking forward to doing another album.”
Top 3 songs for the week 9/25/82: #1 “Abracadabra” (The Steve Miller Band…they did some great stuff….this isn’t one of ‘em…) #2 “Jack & Diane” (John Cougar) #3 “Hard To Say I’m Sorry” (Chicago…talk about mailing it in…)…and…#4 “Eye Of The Tiger” (Survivor…just shoot me…) #5 “You Should Hear How She Talks About You” (Melissa Manchester… whatever, I’m busy…) #6 “Eye In The Sky” (The Alan Parson Project) #7 “Who Can It Be Now?” (Men at Work…these guys were awful…but the era sucked so they made some coin…) #8 “Somebody’s Baby” (Jackson Browne…ah yes, one of the two or three best flicks of all time…Fast Times at Ridgemont High…) #9 “Hurts So Good” (John Cougar…my brother likes him…I’m not a fan…) #10 “Love Is In Control (Finger On The Trigger)” (Donna Summer…had to look this one up…don’t bother yourself…)
Baseball Quiz Answer: Four to win the triple crown in the 1930s.
1937 – Joe Medwick, STL, .374, 31-154
1934 – Lou Gehrig, NYY, .363, 49-165
1933 – Jimmie Foxx, PHA, .356, 48-163
1933 – Chuck Klein, PHI, .368, 28-120
