Sports opinions that don't stop
Every once in a while, you've just got to set everything straight
In a touch more than two weeks, I’ll quit being 55 years old and begin being 56.
Yet, as I’ve long said, I see the world through 19-year-old eyes.
I can still see it, and sports, with wonder. Still be moved by both. Simultaneously, I always feel like I'm catching up, trying to figure it out, find the key, graduate.
Perhaps there’s no graduating.
My first sports memory is the ’75 World Series, Cincinnati and Boston, and my second the Jan. 1, 1976, Orange Bowl, Oklahoma stopping freshman quarterback Rick Leach, who went on to enjoy a decade long MLB career, mostly in Detroit and Toronto, and Michigan to claim the ’75 national championship … unless a magazine counts, Sports Illustrated’s college football preview that preseason, the Sept. 8, 1975 issue, OU on the cover, that arrived at our house a month and change before the Reds took down the Red Sox in seven.
That’s me, my frame of reference and the backstory to all the opinions I’m about to spout. Should you need one, it’s yours.
• The Associated Press media poll, in which the Sooners begin the college football season 16th, remains the most credible of all the polls.
• Pete Rose should be in Cooperstown as a player despite gambling on the game at the end.
• Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa should remain out of the Hall because they cheated the game every single day for seasons.
• Nobody’s ever slid into third base like Rose and sliding into first base is dumb in all cases but to avoid tags.
• If you’re going to feign injury and stop a soccer game for even 15 seconds you should leave the pitch for two minutes without replacement unless you’re coming out for good because if you’re really hurt, you’re really hurt.
• Track and field is the greatest Olympic sport and ought to have an American audience more than every four years, so here’s hoping a major network picks up the Diamond League on television just as the PGA Tour is on television.
• The most important American sport is baseball, nothing else is close, the best sport for viewing is hockey and, still, it should surprise nobody the sport you have a whole week to digest and look forward to, in which the action stops over and over and over again, just long enough to offer replays of every single play, reigns in this country.
• Nobody has ever played better golf than Tiger Woods, more dominantly than Tiger Woods, for as long as Tiger Woods, yet “best ever” is still about about the majors and that’s still Jack Nicklaus.
• Joe DiMaggio was never the “greatest living ballplayer,” nor the second, nor the third because Ted Williams, Henry Aaron and Willie Mays all outlived him.
• Top five Sooner quarterbacks: Baker Mayfield, Jason White, Sam Bradford, Kyler Murray, Steve Davis … Admittedly, I never saw Jack Mildren play. Murray gets docked for being a one-year guy. Josh Heupel does not belong in the conversation.
Professional careers and draft positions are meaningless in all lists rating collegians.
• The last baseball players to be more famous than every single football player? Maybe Nolan Ryan or Dave Winfield, the diamond’s first two million dollar players, definitely Reggie Jackson and Rose, whose careers overlapped for 20 seasons.
• Top-five Sooner men’s basketball players: Wayman Tisdale, Buddy Hield, Alvan Adams, Hollis Price, Blake Griffin, the metric being, as it should be, making their team better, which is why Trae Young should never appear on this list.
• Top-five Sooner women’s basketball players: Courtney Paris, Phylesha Whaley, Stacey Dales, Danielle Robinson, LaNeishea Caufield.
It pains me not to name Dionnah Jackson, who, if you can believe it, is now the third-year head coach at Missouri-Kansas City. Madi Williams, all things considered at a later date, may take the fifth spot.
• Nothing holds back collegiate wrestling like collegiate wrestling. For starters, a dual tournament should determine the national champion. Do that and, all of a sudden, the regular season matters and quits being a series of exhibitions.
• The widest space between the best to ever play their position and the second best to ever play their position is the space between Jerry Rice and whoever the next best receiver happens to be.
• If we’re ranking the best to ever play their sport, not limited to a single sport, I’ve got Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan, Mario Lemieux, Willie Mays, LeBron James, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Jerry Rice (and then, maybe, Gordie Howe).
I’m sure I’m leaving out a soccer player or two, so Lionel Messi after Ruth?
• Among the quarterbacks, I’ll take John Elway and Warren Moon is criminally underrated.
• The best sports that once mattered to the masses but now don’t are horse racing and boxing, which, for the most part, are only covered by their own singular media. Auto racing, Indy Car in particular, is heading that direction.
• Nobody ever called the games as well as Vin Scully.
• If you’ve got a man, or woman, on second base and nobody out, you must get them home every single time.There are no excuses. Ever.
Glad we straightened all that out.
Excellent. I would add to the soccer flop comment that they should stop the clock instead of having extra time be a great mystery at the end of each game. What I liked best about this, though, is that it reminded me of how I felt when we spent a month in Ireland last year. I could not get enough of the local sports, hurling and Gaelic football and such. I, too, saw it all with the eyes of a teenager and was amazed. And I am older than you! Thanks, good piece.
First read it in the Transcript. Liked both what you said and how you said it.