Football Caligula, hockey player conditioning, Trevor Story outperforming Roman Anthony

Friday 9/18/26

A nice come-from-behind victory for the Red Sox last night after trailing 3-0 to stave off the sweep by the Texas Rangers and deal a blow to their playoff chances. Obviously I want the Red Sox to win, but I think many would like to see the Rangers knock the Astros out of the playoffs by taking that weak Central division. The Sox have been playing listless ball. These games haven't meant much in the standings for them--they're essentially locked in place--but you don't want to go into October needing to flip a switch and start playing like someone else.

Sonny Gray gave up three runs early, but he settled down and gave you 6.1 innings. It was Trevor Story with the big hit--a three-run blast in the eighth inning. How many Red Sox fans would have thought Trevor Story would be outperforming Roman Anthony, who at least didn't strike out yesterday, which I count as progress. That player is a strikeout machine. A powerless strikeout machine, which all other Sox fans overlook or aren't aware of. Anthony has played just about a third of a season this year. You know how many homers he has? 4. Which you know is a 12 homer pace if you can do multiplication. He's up around an average of 200 strikeouts per 162 games.

A pattern with this player: he starts out hot. Things are going great. In the sense that he reaches base. He still has no pop. Then, it all goes in the opposite direction. Happened to start this year, and then happened again when he returned to the line-up.

It's amazing to me that the Yankees have gone thirty-four years without a losing season. And that the Dodgers have made the playoffs fourteen years in a row. The latter weakens the legacy of those Braves teams, with their lone World Series title to show for their streak of fourteen.

Another big scoring NFL game last night, with the Bills beating the Lions 41-31. What was I saying about the offense this year already?

The Bill Belichick disaster at UNC rolls on. Belichick has started to look like a drug and sex kingpin at this point. Mike Lombardi "resigned"--sure--as Belichick's hand-picked UNC football GM following an investigation into UNC's drug culture and football players having sex with staff, and now Belichick's son Steve has resigned as defensive coordinator because of drugs, which he was doing with players. Can you imagine how bad it really is? Whatever leaks out/is reported is 1/1000th as bad as what's actually going on. Bill Belichick is like football Caligula it would appear.

Jayson Tatum has too much of a corporate mentality to ever be a truly great basketball player. Doesn't have the "it" gene. Not that kind of competitor. He's a brand first guy. Brand Tatum. Middle of the road. Innocuous. Unruffled and bloodless.

Men's Hockey East preseason poll came out. Boston College was fourth. Seems maybe a little high. If you were fourth in Hockey East this year, you're probably not going far anyway, by which I mean, you wouldn't make the national tournament. I think BC's talent level is down and have doubts Greg Brown is the right coach/fit. I'm also worried that BC's time has passed as a hockey power in this new age of college sports. Maybe unduly worried, I grant, but it's in my mind.

People almost never have any understanding of the difference between professional athletes and everyone else. I saw someone remark today that NHL players are in better shape than ninety-five percent of the population. They're in better shape than all of the population.

Rick Bowness--crusty old school coach of the of the Blue Jackets--mentioned being pissed off about two players showing up for training camp out of shape. The comments I saw from people about this spoke to just how clueless nearly everyone is even with this. We're not talking Joe American deciding to go for a jog one morning for the first time since he can't remember when and feeling some ankle pain and breathing hard after two blocks.