Category: Sports

“The ten greatest female athletes of all time” (???)

Scoop, ... 23 comments.

Many of the GOATs are missing from the list:

Marta. THE soccer superstar. “Pele in a skirt”

One or more of these four: FloJo, Jackie-Joyner Kersey, Allyson Felix, Wilma Rudolph. One of them is the greatest female track star. I’m going to say it’s Jackie Joyner-Kersey. Wilma Rudolph certainly gets a special mention for having set world records after overcoming polio and the birth of a baby. She gets the profile in courage award.

One or more of these four: Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Serena Williams, Althea Gibson. One of them is the greatest female tennis player. I’d say that Serena and Althea both belong on the top ten list, with Martina and Steffi coming in at “close but no cigar,” despite Martina having won 59 majors. Althea won 11 majors. She played some pro golf in her spare time. She did all that in an era when black athletes were neither common nor desired in the country clubs that ruled both sports. It’s difficult to evaluate Althea because of the segregation issue, since we have to speculate on what she could have done, making her the Josh Gibson 1 of women’s tennis. While USTA rules officially prohibited racial or ethnic discrimination in her time, players qualified for the U.S. Open by accumulating points at sanctioned tournaments, most of which were held at white-only clubs. I do know that Bob Ryland, who watched Althea and coached the Williams sisters, said that Althea was better than Venus, Serena and Navratilova. That’s just one opinion, but a highly qualified one, and if true, would make her the GOAT in tennis.

Simone Biles. The linked site has two gymnasts and a ballet dancer on the list. You can get rid of all of them and put Biles on the list. She is the GOAT. Pre-Biles, I would have put Nadia Comaneci on the list, but she has clearly dropped to #2.

Heather McKay A dark horse candidate for the overall #1 spot. She was a professional squash player who was undefeated for twenty consecutive years, which must be the longest undefeated streak of any athlete of either gender.

Babe Zaharias You could easily make the case that in her day she would have won every event she entered in any sport she chose. She was a champion in five very different sports: hurdles, javelin, high jump, basketball and golf. She won two golds and a silver in the Olympics, earned all-American status in basketball, then won ten times on the LPGA tour. She is the only track and field athlete, male or female, to win individual Olympic medals in separate running, throwing, and jumping events. In her spare time she played baseball against the men! Of all the athletes named here, her portfolio was the most encompassing.

Annika Sorenstam. She is probably the best female golfer of all time. Won ten majors. Once shot a 59 in a tournament. Mickey Wright won more tournaments and more majors than Annika, but in a less competitive era.

Mikaela Shiffrin and Yuna Kim. The best female athletes on frozen water: Mikaela on snow, Yuna on ice.

Katie Ledecky The best female athlete on non-frozen water.

Near misses: Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Wilma Rudolph, FloJo, Allyson Felix, Nadia Comaneci and Lisa Fernandez. Lisa was the Babe Ruth of softball, both the best hitter and the best pitcher in the world at her peak. She led the NCAA in both ERA and batting average in the same year. (Your move, Ohtani.)

Maybe Caitlin Clark will join the list some day, but it’s too early to say that.

I have no idea in which order they belong, or who should be #1. There are no metrics that help in the decision. How does one compare a golfer to a soccer star to a sprinter to a figure skater to an Alpine skiier? I think it’s obvious that Allyson Felix, who is not on my top ten, was a greater athlete than Annika Sorenstam, who is. Golf doesn’t require superior athleticism. With the possible exception of bowling, it’s the only sport where a champion could look like Craig Stadler. But if we employ that criterion, every track and field star in history would be ahead of Sorenstam, even though Annika was the GOAT in her field. That logic just doesn’t make sense in the proper context.

I think the battle for the best female athlete in history probably boils down to Marta, Simone Biles, Serena Williams, Althea Gibson and Jackie Joyner-Kersey, with Heather McKay as a long shot only because she played in a more obscure sport. I should include Zaharias just because she was great at every sport. There’s just too much subjectivity in the comparison to pick one from the list.

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Footnote follows

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Megan L Williams – rear nudity in episode 4 of Clipped

Scoop, ... 1 comment.

Not to be outdone by the Lakers, the Clippers also have their own drama series, centering on the 2013-2014 season, which was their best regular season (57 wins). As the team rises, the owner falls. Near the end of the season, owner Donald Sterling is banned from the NBA for life and fined $2.5 million by the league after the public revelation of private recordings of his racist comments.

It stars Ed O’Neill as the owner (Donald Sterling) and Lawrence Fishburne as the coach (Doc Rivers). It also features LeVar Burton in the challenging role of LeVar Burton.


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The other woman (showing a little bit of nipple or maybe just areola) is Nikole Howell.

R.I.P. to the Say Hey Kid

Scoop, ... 17 comments.

Disqualifying Barry Bonds for obvious reasons, Willie Mays is the greatest player of the integration era, and probably the second-greatest of all time. Willie and Babe Ruth are about even for WAR among position players, but Ruth gets the overall advantage because he was also once the best left-handed pitcher in the AL. Even though Ruth pulls pretty far ahead of Mays when his pitching records are added in, there is still room for Willie in the GOAT debate because Ruth played in segregated baseball, and thus did not play against all of the best players of his era.

Willie is also the greatest right-handed hitter of all time, the greatest centerfielder …

Oh, why recite his accomplishments? I could be typing all day. Basically, he was the GOAT, or at least on the short list.

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And then there was “the catch” in the 1954 World Series, when Willie turned a sure triple or inside-the-park homer off the bat of Vic Wertz into what may be the longest fly-out of all time. (Debatable. The longest fly-out in the StatCast era is 427 feet. Wertz’s smash was in that same range.)



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This was one of my first baseball cards. At that time, I didn’t appreciate how great Willie was. I wanted a Mantle. (Who was just as good, but for not as long.)


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“I Watched Every Baseball Movie and Ranked Them by How Well the Actors Played Baseball”

Scoop, ... 3 comments.

I agree with him in general.

One place where I disagree strongly is about Field of Dreams, which he rates fairly high, but which made not the slightest effort at realistic period baseball. He is supposed to be rating historical realism as well as the realism of the action, but …

1. The kid playing young Doc Graham looks totally clueless and unathletic. The real Moonlight Graham was an excellent minor league ballplayer for many years, both before and after his brief MLB career, and was considered the fastest man in baseball, according to no less an authority than Christy Mathewson. Equally egregious – forget about historical accuracy – it’s impossible to believe that kid represents a young Burt Lancaster, except maybe at age 12. Lancaster was 6’2″ and a physical Adonis. That kid looks like a paperboy. He’d be more realistic playing Eddie Gaedel. (Nor does he resemble the real Archie Graham, who made his major league appearance in 1905, when he was 27 years old. He got his M.D. that year! He continued to play professional baseball for several years AFTER he became a doctor. Also, he was taller than average for his era at 5’11”, 170. The tall, speedy doctor in his mid-twenties would definitely not be mistaken for a paper boy. In fact, if they had cast an actor who resembled Burt Lancaster at 27, it would have been close to perfect!)

2. The filmmakers didn’t bother to figure out how the old-time ball players pronounced their names. Eddie Cicotte was “SEE-kot.” Not si-KO-tee, who was, I believe, the enemy of the Roadrunner.

3. Most important, showing how little effort went into this: the real Shoeless Joe Jackson was a left-handed batter. Elementary stuff – and they got it wrong.

I can really nerd out on other stuff. For example, the real Jackson is recorded on film, and he had a truly weird, lunging swing which is not replicated in the film. (It looks ridiculous by today’s standards.) Baseball swings in general were different in those days. They did not plant the weight back on their heels and go for a mighty hip turn. But why go into that when the filmmakers couldn’t even bother to get Jackson batting from the correct side of the plate?

That said, I LOVE Field of Dreams and I love the novel upon which it is based (Shoeless Joe). It reminds me of my own dreams, and of some great times playing ball and just having a backyard catch with my own dad, the legendary (in his own mind) Suits Sparrow. Beyond that, it’s a story about redemption and second chances – and who doesn’t relate to that? Let the man without regrets throw the first stone.

R.I.P. Bill Walton

Scoop, ... 6 comments.

He was one of the greatest high school and college basketball players in history. He still holds the high school record for field goal shooting percentage, .783, and had the third-highest number of rebounds of all time in that same senior season, leading his team to a 33-0 record. In his two healthy years (sophomore and junior) of college play, the UCLA Bruins ran the table, 60-0. In the NCAA final game in his junior year, he shot 21 for 22 from the floor. From the middle of his junior year in high school until a loss to Notre Dame in his senior year of college, his teams won 142 consecutive games. That is a record even Kareem never equaled, although he came close. (Kareem won 71 in a row in high school before losing one in his senior year. He won his first 64 in college.)

Walton’s NBA career was hampered by injuries. In his first eight NBA seasons, he played only 223 games, missing three seasons altogether. Despite his lack of playing time, he won two championships, a league MVP and a finals MVP.

His playing career, as good as it was, seems like just a prelude to his career as a broadcaster and overall ambassador for basketball. On the air, he was always upbeat and positive, if sometimes incomprehensible. As his CBS obit said, “He was known for his entertaining, and at times incoherent, style.” Most important of all, everyone who knew him regarded him as a good person, and considered him a charming broadcaster.

At least when they could figure out what he was talking about.

The worst baseball name of all time

Scoop, ... 4 comments.

There have been many embarrassing and unfortunate baseball monikers over the years. Wagon Tongue Keister, Half Pint Rye, Goober Zuber, Creepy Crespi, Putsy Caballero and Cuckoo Christensen1 come to mind. The championship, however, is uncontested, because those other guys had silly names given to them, while Ugly Dickshot would have had a hilarious name even without a sobriquet. The fact that he also had a great nickname was just icing on the cake. The only way he could have lost is if Russell Kuntz had been nicknamed “Slippery” instead of “Rusty.”

Ugly wasn’t really all that ugly, but he owned that nickname (“I’m the ugliest man in baseball”), and was a pretty fair ballplayer. A star in the high minors, he had seasons like .359 with 117 RBI one year in Buffalo, .356 for Jersey City, and .352 with 200+ hits and 99 RBI for Hollywood. In each of those three seasons, he finished in the top three in his league in batting average, winning outright in his year with Jersey City. Unfortunately for Ugly, Buffalo ain’t the Big Apple. He kicked around the bigs for four years as a spare outfielder and pinch hitter in the 1930s, headed back to the minors, then re-emerged in the big show many years later, when baseball was desperate for warm bodies in the late war years. To his credit, he batted .303 and stole 18 bases during the one year when he got to play full-time. Because of the depleted wartime rosters, he finished third in the league in batting average (missing the title by only seven points), fifth in stolen bases, and fourth in triples. Unfortunately for him, that year was 1945 and he was 35 years old, so it was back to the minors for ol’ Ug when the younger, better players returned from the war in 1946.

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Footnote #1: I love to write about Cuckoo Christensen. Maybe Ugly Dickshot wasn’t that ugly, and Creepy Crespi wasn’t that creepy, but Cuckoo Christensen was plenty cuckoo.

Walter Christensen was a Cincinnati outfielder who was essentially a one-year wonder. He never hit a major league homer, but even without any power, his having batted .350 in that one year, while leading the league in on-base percentage, still represented an impressive level of achievement for a rookie. He is the only rookie in baseball history to lead either league in OBP (unless you count the very first year of MLB, when everyone was a rookie, and somebody had to win). Because Cuckoo batted so well that season and so infrequently after it, his lifetime major league batting average never dropped below an impressive .315, with a lifetime .392 OBP! That wasn’t as much of a fluke as you might think. His lifetime average was .310 in the minors over the course of 15 years.

He got his nickname … well, to be blunt, because he deserved it. The history of the minor league St Paul Saints recounts:

“One of the Saints’ impressive youngsters was 22-year-old, 5’6 ½” center fielder and leadoff batter Walter Christensen. Christensen also was known as ‘Cuckoo Christy,’ an extrovert whose antics pleased the fans, but sometimes drove managers up the wall. He enjoyed doing somersaults in the outfield, usually when the ball was not in play. Sometimes, however, he would somersault while waiting for a lazy fly ball to come down.”

Cuckoo also tried that stunt in the majors, and lost at least one game in the process, which may go a long way toward explaining the brevity of his MLB career. In “Nuggets on the Diamond”, Dick Dobbins wrote:

“With the Reds leading by one run in the bottom of the ninth and runners on base, Christensen went after a fly ball, did a somersault, then dropped the ball. The Reds lost the game, and an angry (manager Red) Killefer chased Christensen all the way into the centerfield clubhouse.”

Nutty or not, the man led his league in on-base percentage when he was a rookie, something nobody else has ever done! How many of us would-be jocks would give up a limb to have that record?

There is a caveat to be stated. Cuckoo was basically a half-time player. He met the minimum playing-time requirements of that day for leading in percentage stats, but would not meet the modern requirements. Imposing the modern eligibility requirement for percentage-based categories to all seasons across-the-board would depose Cuckoo Christensen as the 1926 OBP leader, replaced by Hall of Famer Paul Waner, so the recalculated championship would make much more sense to modern eyes.

… but would be so much more boring than letting Cuckoo Christensen keep his crown.

Tom Brady roast: Top highlights from the raunchy Netflix special

Scoop, ... 1 comment.

Two of my favorite lines:

Nikki Glaser: “Tom lost $30 million in crypto. Tom, how did you fall for that? Even Gronk was like, ‘Me know that not real money.'”

Tom Brady: “The NFL spent $20 million and found that it was more ‘probable’ than not, that I was ‘generally’ aware that someone may have deflated my footballs. You could’ve just given me the 20 million and I would’ve just told you I fuckin’ did it.”

Full article

Variety picks the 27 best jokes

Also, Kim Kardashian had a few good lines.

Some baseball trivia about futility

Scoop, ... no comments.

Here’s a record that is increasing rapidly.

As of 1967, the single-season record for the most home runs by a batter hitting below .200 (and qualifying for the batting title at the modern pitching distance) was 4, set by Frankie Crosetti in 1940, when he batted .194.

Tom Tresh nearly tripled the record to 11 in 1968 when he batted .195.

Rob Deer shattered that record in 1991, when he swatted 25 homers while batting a puny .179. Deer’s record held nearly 20 years until Mark Reynolds smashed 32 homers in 2010 with a .198 batting average.

Joey Gallo pushed the mark up to 38 in 2021, when he batted .199.

And Kyle Schwarber raised the record again this year (2023), when he hit 47 home runs while batting .197

So the record lasted 28 years, then 23, then 19, then 11, then 2. In the process, it grew from 4 to 47.
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Some other similar records:

The lowest batting average for a 60+ homer season is Roger Maris’s .269 in 1961.

The lowest batting average for a 50+ homer season is Pete Alonso’s .260 in 2019. Schwarber should destroy this record if he can reach 50 dingers some year.

Rob Deer holds the record for the most homers for a player below .180. (25, while batting .179 in 1991).

Chris Davis holds the record for the most homers by a batter hitting below .170. (16, while batting .168 in 2018)

Bill Bergen holds the record for the most homers by a batter hitting below .160 (0, while batting .159 in 1906). He also holds the record for a batter hitting below .150, and .140. (1, while batting .139 in 1909) There is not much competition for these records, since it is unlikely that a player hitting below .160 could get enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title. No player but Bergen ever met the criterion at the modern pitching distance. Among players with long careers (3000 or more plate appearances), Bergen was easily the worst hitter in history. In 11 major league seasons, his lifetime average was .170 with two home runs and an OPS+ of 21. His season high in extra base hits was 11. The guy must have been a helluva catcher to last that long in the bigs with no stick.

If we drop the minimum number of plate appearances to 900 and exclude pitchers, Ray Oyler gives Bill Bergen a little competition. His lifetime batting average was .175 with an OPS+ of 48. Oyler is not from the distant past. He was a shortstop in the 1960s, mostly with the Tigers, and I can remember watching him play for the Syracuse Chiefs against my home town team, the Rochester Red Wings. I wish I had some colorful anecdotes about his ineptitude, but he actually seemed to know what he was doing at the plate in the AAA International League. In 1964 he batted a respectable .251 with a more-than-respectable 19 homers, which added up to a very solid year for a shortstop in that era, solid enough to get him promoted to the majors. Unfortunately for Ray, he reached his level of incompetence when he had to hit against major league pitchers.

If we include pitchers, then the worst hitter ever to get 900 plate appearances was Bob Buhl, who was a good pitcher for the Milwaukee Braves in their glory years. He was a solid third starter behind Spahn and Burdette, and led the entire National League in W-L percentage in the Braves’ championship season of 1957. Buhl’s athletic prowess did not extend to his stick work. The man simply could not hit. In 1962, as a regular starter with 216 innings pitched, Buhl’s hit total was a cool zero. He went 0-for-70 that season, part of his all-time record of 87 consecutive at-bats without a hit. In 15 years in the majors, he amassed two doubles, no triples, no homers, and batted .089 with a slugging average of .091. In 242 career road games, he never got a single extra base hit. Buhl discussed the game when he finally broke his 0-for-87 streak: “I didn’t feel any pressure. Everybody knew I couldn’t hit. The infielder was backing up (for a weak pop-up), caught his spikes and fell down. The ball fell. They called time to give me the damn ball. I was embarrassed.”