Category: Sports

A tale of tweets:

https://twitter.com/ChuxEkere/status/1123698794498015233

I like this sequence of still photos. This one looks like it won’t go in:

https://twitter.com/mattbolistic/status/1123698985288589312

Wait, maybe it will:

https://twitter.com/Promes00/status/1123700011341160449

Oh yeah, it’s in:

https://twitter.com/iBarcelonaBoy/status/1123699076703322112

And this is just funny…

https://twitter.com/FootballFunnnys/status/1123699491209719809

CC Sabathia is a great pitcher and by all accounts a great person. Fun to see a ton of Yankee fans in Arizona for the milestone 3000th strikeout game. And nice to see #LegaCCy trending on twitter:

https://twitter.com/MLB/status/1123445290982363137

If I were a Saints fan I’d probably still be fuming. There’s a local New Orleans Gumbo joint that is advertising Super Bowl catering. I just got an amusing email from them with NFL Commissioner Goodell:

Cajun style wings, yum…

I’m so happy to be proven wrong. Mariano Rivera becomes the first person to be elected to the baseball Hall of Fame unanimously.  From his teammate Bernie Williams:

When it comes to Mariano Rivera, I had the best seat in the house from center field watching him pitch.

It was mind boggling to see him literally just mow down hitters. Mariano would cause more broken bats in one inning than most starters had in an entire game. If we had a lead in the ninth inning – the game was over. He achieved a level of consistency for such a long time, and that is very hard to do. You just don’t really see that in a reliever. That’s what made him so remarkable. Everyone in the stadium knew he was going to throw that cutter – and they still couldn’t hit it.

The broken bats were amazing. I have never seen a pitcher break so many bats…

And from Derek Jeter:

There’s no “persona” with Mariano. He’s never had a character that he portrayed. He’s always just calmly and coolly done his thing. He’s quiet. Thoughtful. Intense. He’s a man of faith.

He has an incredible eye for detail.

Have you ever seen a Mariano Rivera autograph? Google it when you get a chance. With a lot of guys, their signatures are these quick little scribbles. But Mariano, man, if he’s signing something for you, he takes his time. He puts care into it, until he gets it just right — like with everything else he does. To me, right there … that’s Mo.

And like I said: It was always the same thing on the mound. There wasn’t much mystery if you were facing Mariano Rivera. No smoke and mirrors — nothing to hide. The scouting report was the same every time. Mo knew he was going to throw that cutter. The guy at the plate knew he was going to throw that cutter. Fifty thousand plus at Yankee Stadium knew he was going to throw that cutter.

And it wouldn’t matter.

Because Mo wasn’t trying to trick you.

And in the end, like it or not, he was just going to flat-out beat you.

I’m a Yankee fan and Mariano Rivera is my favorite Yankee. He will get voted into the Hall of Fame tonight. He should get 100% of the votes but he probably won’t because baseball is weird. It doesn’t really matter, he was a hall of fame player and a hall of fame person.

https://twitter.com/JimmyTraina/status/1087715706202931200

As a Packer fan, the whole thing was fun to watch, but in Spanish it’s way better…

https://twitter.com/barstooltweetss/status/1082119637221994499

I especially like when he breaks into song towards the end.

FiveThirtyEight.com has a year end post on the 45 best and weirdest charts they made. There are many great examples, including the family tree connecting a single sire to every horse in the Kentucky Derby:

But my favorite is the clear baseball analysis showing that in extra innings umpires, like the rest of us, just want the damn game to end, calling borderline balls and strikes in whatever way will end the game quicker.

On Diekman’s fifth pitch, it appeared that Marisnick had earned a walk. “This is not a strike, this is off the plate,” ESPN broadcaster Jessica Mendoza opined as the networks’ K-Zone showed the pitch a few inches outside.

Home plate umpire Adam Hamari disagreed, however, calling the pitch strike two. Marisnick struck out swinging on the following pitch to end the game, and the outfielder slammed his bat in disgust.

I get it. It’s late, we all want to get to bed…

I’m sure everyone knows about this, it’s been in all the papers. Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana, the world’s #1 and #2 chess players, will be competing for the world championship over the next two weeks. The last time #1 and #2 faced off like this was in 1990.

Fabiano grew up in Brooklyn, and would be the first American chess champion since Bobby Fischer. Five Thirty Eight has a nice feature story on him.

If you ask the people who know Fabiano Caruana what Fabiano Caruana is like, they will tell you that Fabiano Caruana is, you know, just a normal guy.

He likes movies. He likes music. He likes to eat. He works out. He goes on dates.

Just a normal guy.

Just a normal guy who is ranked second in the world in chess. A normal guy who was pulled out of school after seventh grade to do nothing but play the ancient and intricate game. A normal guy who is a hairbreadth away from prying the No. 1 position loose from probably the best player ever to play the game. A normal guy who, beginning Friday, will sit down at a table in London with this probably-the-best-ever player, Magnus Carlsen of Norway, in a grueling, weeks-long battle for the world championship of chess. A normal guy who could be the first American to win the title since Bobby Fischer in 1972. Real 99.99999999th percentile stuff

Just a normal guy.

I’m obviously rooting for the Brooklyn dude. But two ridiculously smart people squaring off? How cool.