Tag: Mariano Rivera

Tom Brady Announces His Retirement

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Update: Tom Brady has officially announced he is retiring from football.

Tom Brady is officially probably retiring from the NFL after 22 seasons, seven Super Bowl titles, three MVPs, and five Super Bowl MVPs. He is without a shred of doubt the greatest quarterback in NFL history, likely the greatest player in league history, and arguably the greatest athlete in American sports history. As we process the end of an era, only the most somber of songs will suffice. Hit it, acoustic Josie.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=HhwHXYaOJGk

That is if you believe the likes of Adam Schefter and Jeff Darlington, two of the most tied-in guys in all of sports media. What started as rumors of Brady making a decision on his future sooner than later quickly turned into the breaking news alarm being sounded on Saturday afternoon. It was clearly not something ESPN was prepared for at that exact moment because they had wall to wall college basketball games airing and the regional sports networks like NESN and NBC Sports Boston are usually just airing infomercials when there’s not a game on. So kudos to the radio guys for doing the news justice all day while the snow piled up. But then there were conflicting reports that started coming in quoting sources like Brady’s agent Don Yee and even his own father saying he had not made a decision yet on his future. Mike Silver even reported that Tom Brady actually called Tampa Bay GM Jason Licht to tell him he had not made a decision yet. Welp, ESPN, the NFL Network, all of the internet, even TB12’s own Twitter account tweeted out notes of congratulations on a great career. Sports Center seemed to have taken Schefty at his reporting because they ran non-stop coverage and heart wrenching Tom Brady retirement packages. As they should because whether it was Giselle, Alex Guerrero or someone else that leaked the decision; I would bet my car that Brady is retiring. He’s just pissed he got scooped before he could announce it himself in his own way. (i.e. the mysteriously yet to be aired final episode of his ESPN+ show)

With all that being said, I am going to move forward with this blog assuming Brady is in fact retiring. I really hope this isn’t a Brett Favre situation and he hems and haws. Make a decision and stick with it. I personally don’t think he should walk away because he clearly is still one of the best QBs in the league, but hey if he is calling it a career I get it. He’s won seven Super Bowls, he has every significant NFL record for a QB, he’s got multiple budding businesses to tend to now, and most importantly he has his health. If this it for Tom Brady, what an incredible career it has been. Equally as impressive is the fact that he will be retiring at the height of his powers as he finishes his final season as a legit MVP candidate

So he calls it a career, rather than wait to get hurt or face an inevitable possible decline in skills, even as Brady once famously said “I’ll retire when I suck.” Suck, Tom Brady does not. There aren’t many guys that are able to walk away at the top of their game though. The only recent comp I can think of is David Ortiz, who retired after a 2016 All-Star season in which he hit .315 with 38 home runs and 127 RBIs. Absolutely mind boggling. As badly as Tom Brady wants to play until he’s in his fifties, there is something to be said about walking away before the wheels come off. Nobody wants to remember their idols stumbling around the field, clearly diminished and just chasing former greatness.

Speaking of David Ortiz, the fact that he gets elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame the same week that Tom Brady announces his retirement has me feeling straight up geriatric. My childhood idols now have their numbers retired, streets named after them, HOF inductions, and before long will have statues in their honor. We have truly lived through the greatest era in Boston sports history and to quote Henry Hill “and now it’s all over.”

Didn’t matter. It didn’t mean anything. When I was down, I’d go out and win some more. We won everything. We beat other teams, we battled the league, we even came back from 28-3. Everybody had their hands out. Everything was for the taking. And now it’s all over.

Sure Mac Jones looked pretty good, he helped bring the Patriots back to the playoffs as a rookie, and is technically a Pro Bowl level QB now as an alternate replacement. But it’ll never be the same, and I can already feel my future children rolling their eyes as I tell yet another story championing Tom Brady’s greatness.

In his final season, Tom Brady led the NFL in Passing Touchdowns, Yards, Completions, and Pass Attempts, all at the age of 44 and the oldest player in the league. That is otherworldly in a career of god level accomplishments. I’m not sure if this StatMuse graphic is completely up to date, but it paints the picture of just how utterly dominant Brady has been in his 40s compared to every other QB in league history. Sure he has way more games played, but that’s not a knock, in fact that’s a testament to his…pliability (sorry, I couldn’t help myself).

If this is in fact it, I have to give Brady props for not doing the whole gross Mariano Rivera Retirement Tour. Rivera was the greatest closer in baseball history and was a joy/terror to watch for all those years. But announcing you’re going to retire after one more season just opens the gates for distractions and gifts and media fawning every single week and it sounds exhausting if not outright off putting. Assuming the retirement takes, like a successful transplant operation, he will retire after his age-44 season, which is actually one season shy of the 45-years-old end date he had not so subtly hinted at for years. I’ve personally always thought the “45-years-old” timeline was thrown out there by Brady to throw us off the scent so he could play into his 40’s and then retire at some point before the media started asking him every single offseason about his plans. However, as he continued to play I was less sure of that because let’s face it, if he remained healthy Tom Brady could have played until he was registering for his AARP membership. I can even picture the Instagram promo video for TB12 introducing its most famous Medicare client.

Now in the interest of continuing to process my Tom Brady Leaving the Patriots grief, I’m only briefly going to go back to the Bargaining stage here for a second. Simply put, only playing two seasons in Tampa Bay makes his late career departure hurt a little bit less. A lot of Patriots fans will never forgive Brady for leaving, but I think the majority of fans recognized Brady was essentially forced out of town by Belichick and/or after 20 years it may have just been time to move on. So with that being said, I know a lot of Pats fans were rooting for Brady to play well and even win another ring down in Florida if not to stick it to Belichick, at least to incentivize the Patriots to get their shit together, and fast.

However, if Brady had continued to win in Tampa Bay for several years, it suddenly becomes a very real possibility that the lines of allegiance start to blur. Just think about it, do you look back at Peyton Manning as a Colt or a Bronco? It’s not as clear cut as you might think because although Manning had the bulk of his record breaking HOF career in Indy, he had an ugly breakup with the team that drafted him, then went on to set single season TD records in Denver, continued to have legendary battles against Tom Brady and the Pats, went to two Super Bowls, and won another ring with the Broncos. I think that was starting to become an unspoken fear of Patriots fans who don’t even want to entertain the discussion of who claims Tom Brady as their own.

Getting back on track with my stages of processing the post-Brady grief, I think the Week 4 game this season in Foxborough provided a lot of closure for fans who felt blindsided by his departure nearly two years prior. Not to mention an all-time promo from the Sunday Night Football team.

Speaking of closure, goddamnit am I glad I dragged my lazy ass off the couch in Boston and drove the five hours down to the Meadowlands just to see Tom Brady play in person (and witness him rip out the heart of the Jets) one last time. We even joked in the pre-game tailgate that we’d probably be back in the same parking lot four years from now seeing Tom light up another generation of Jets players, but in the back of our minds we knew this could be it. And it was.

We’ll continue to work through this news and process Tom Brady’s retirement when he finally makes it official. Or if he pulls a Wolf of Wall Street and declares he’s not leaving, we’ll cover that too. If this is it though, I can promise you one thing: Five years from now I will without a doubt be in Canton, OH to witness Tom Brady’s Hall of Fame induction speech. And I’m not a meterologist, but I already know it will be incredibly dusty that day.

Some Thoughts on the Baseball Hall Class of 2019

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The National Baseball Hall of Fame election results were announced last night and the Class of 2019 is now set. Here are my thoughts on the players who were elected, the players who weren’t, and the process in general:

    • Mariano Rivera getting elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility was no surprise, but Rivera becoming the first player ever to get elected unanimously to the Hall was a surprise to me. A pleasant surprise. I thought for sure some crusty old baseball writer would step in and stop it from happening. [More on the crusty old  baseball writers later.] Rivera’s Hall of Fame case was an open-and-shut case and it was great to see every voter get it right.
    • Edgar Martinez getting elected in his final appearance on the writers’ ballot was no surprise either. It took ten years on the ballot for him to get voted into the Hall of Fame, but his stock had been steadily rising over the last five years and he had momentum on his side. He wouldn’t have been on my ballot, but I’ve got no beef here. He was the greatest DH of all time when he retired.
    • Seeing Roy Halladay get elected was not a shock, but I didn’t expect to see him get 85.4% of the vote. I think the writers got this one right too, though. He was one of the best pitchers in the game for more than a decade, winning two Cy Young awards seven years apart (and one in each league).
    • Mike Mussina wouldn’t have appeared one my ballot. He was consistently good/very good for two decades, but never one of the handful of best pitchers in the game. It would seem that he got elected on his longevity and durability:

      With that information, I will withhold any further objections to his induction.

    • I was disappointed to see how far short Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds fell when the final voting results were released. For the record, I would vote for Clemens and Bonds. Watching the Baseball Hall of Fame Vote Tracker over the last few weeks, I was hopeful both would see jumps similar to what Edgar Martinez saw over the last few years.

      In the end, Clemens only jumped about 2% from last year, appearing on 59.5% of the ballots this year. Bonds only jumped about 3% this year, to 59.1%. It would appear that the crusty old baseball writers who prefer not to publicly release their ballots are to blame:

      Clemens and Bonds appear to be a package deal for most voters, one way or the other, and it’s getting harder to see them getting elected in the next three years. They don’t seem to have the same “momentum” Martinez had his last few years on the ballot.

    • While steroid accusations will probably keep Clemens and Bonds out of the Hall for good, politics and personality may just postpone Curt Schilling’s induction. I say that because his polling jumped about 10% this year to 60.9%. A force in October for 15 years, Schilling deserves a spot in Cooperstown. With comparable contemporary Mussina getting in this year, I think Schilling will eventually get in.
    • I don’t think Juan Pierre is a Hall of Famer, but I thought he deserved at least a few votes. He was one of 11 players on the ballot not to receive a single vote, and one of 16 players to receive less than 5% of the vote and fall off next year’s ballot. Pierre played in 162 games for five straight years in the mid-2000s and led his league in stolen bases three times (and caught stealing seven times).

Craig Kimbrel’s Agent Made an OUTRAGEOUS Claim Yesterday

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This is hyperbole that would make Scott Boras blush and that’s a guy who just said JD Martinez was so good (the best free agent ever in fact) that teams should apologize for underpaying him!

But for Craig Kimbrel’s agent to say he is the *best* closer of ALL-TIME?

Only 319 more saves to go to tie Mariano Rivera, Craig.

Lets take a look at this outrageous statement. Yes, Kimbrel is 14th all-time in MLB history with 333 saves. In fact he and Fernando Rodney, who is 11 years older than Kimbrel, are the only active players in the Top 20 in career saves. But that 333 BARELY puts him halfway to the 652 saves that Rivera racked up in 19 seasons. So if Mo Rivera pitched until his age 43 season and Kimbrel just finished his 9th season at age 30, that means he’d have to average 25 saves a season for the next 13 seasons. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but what position is more fickle and fades faster than hard throwing relievers?

Hell, Jonathan Papelbon is the best closer in Red Sox history, one of the most dominant relievers I’ve ever seen, and he only lasted 12 seasons (7 with Boston). Papelbon is 9th on the all-time list with 368 career saves, but he fell off the map and was done at 35.

So yes, statistically Kimbrel is definitely up there with the best closers of all-time, but have you ever really felt secure when he comes into a game? Yankees fans went two goddamn decades of playing 8 inning games because when Mo Rivera came into the game in the 9th it was over. Meanwhile every single Craig Kimbrel save is a high wire act and god forbid someone is on base or it requires more than 3 outs.

Love ya, Craig. Mean it, wish ya the best. But you are not the greatest closer of all time and the Boston Red Sox will not be paying you anywhere near what you are looking for.

Once Dominant Red Sox Reliever Daniel Bard is On the Comeback Tour

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danielbard

Yahoo! Sports – For a time, Daniel Bard was one of baseball’s most effective and feared relievers. Now the 31-year-old right-hander is scratching and clawing for one more opportunity in the big leagues, which he hopes will come this season with the St. Louis Cardinals.

I admit I had completely forgotten about Daniel Bard. The once heir apparent to the best closer in Red Sox history, Jonathan Papelbon. Guy was absolutely lights out as a setup man and then the Red Sox fucked everything up. Seriously, don’t mess with success.

Remember when the Yankees had the same EXACT situation on their hands with Joba Chamberlain? Guy was an absolutely dominant reliever who was in line to take over as closer for Mariano Rivera. Nope, Yankees tried to move him into the starting rotation and the guy folded. Admittedly he had some sparks of dominance as a starter. I was at a game at Fenway he started and the guy went 7-8 innings and struck out 10. But for whatever reason, his build, his control, his endurance the guy unraveled and was ruined as a pitcher. They had a specific set of rules called the Joba Rules to keep this guy in tact for christ’s sake. Probably not the ideal guy to be messing with his whole workload and mindset. But I digress…

This is the latest team in a long list of teams kicking the tires on Bard. Theo was the first to try and resurrect Bard’s career unsurprisingly, picking him off the scrap heap in 2013 after the Sox placed him on waivers. He signed with the Rangers next season before actually re-signing with the Cubs organization in 2015, signed with the Pirates organization in January 2016 and didn’t even make it to April before getting released. Bard ultimately signed with the Cardinals last year and that’s where the comeback tour rolls on.

Reports say Bard seems to have his control back and is still throwing 96 mph. And this isn’t from some scrub St. Louis reporter, by “reports” I mean that this is coming from Peter Gammons, the human Britannica of baseball himself. So that’s gotta count for something.

With guys like Bard who were absolutely filthy for a short stint and then flamed out just as fast, it always reminds me of the Stellan Skarsgard quote from Good Will Hunting.

goodwillhunting_wishinevermetyou

Best of luck, Dan.