Mookie Betts is simply never going to be good when it matters, Ohtani overstatement, BC-Notre Dame, the lessening of Derrick White's game

Thursday 10/30/25

Mookie Betts followed up his postgame homophobic comment with his latest postseason choke job. He's never been good when it matters the most. Some guys just don't have the stomach for pressure.

To take two out of three in LA--and it could have been all three--after losing that first game in eighteen innings--is really impressive on the part of Toronto. The Dodgers can still win. But momentum is very much in the Blue Jays' favor. Their place will be ready and rocking.

People would hate someone saying this, but there's a narrative quality that people buy into with Shohei Ohtani that doesn't directly correspond with the actual on the field results. For all of the hype about him pitching and hitting, his value, with those two things added together, still doesn't reach the value of an Aaron Judge. Something is lost in the value translation, obscured by the narrative, the "Whee! Wow!" factor of people who are themselves too simple and too lazy to get into the numbers and to think.

You'd think, given Game 3, that Ohtani's numbers would be overwhelmingly impressive for this series, but they're not. He "flashes." Has these games from time to time that in this age of the social media post, the "short" share, rather than any encompassing understanding, "plays" in the algorithm world of talking out of your ass, echo chamber indoctrination, "hot takes," the absence of nuance, ignorance of history. The guy reached based nine times in that Game 3 (in part because the Jays kept choosing to walk him, which I don't think they had to) in nine plate appearances, and his OPS for the series is still just a tick over 1.000. Look at David Ortiz's OPS in the 2013 World Series.

BC plays Notre Dame at Alumni on Saturday. Chances I'd say are seventy-percent at least that they'll lose by thirty or more. But you don't know. I was saying that to someone yesterday, and they were laughing. I get it. I just said that if I found out the next day that BC won, I wouldn't be shocked. Not much in sports should shock you. There are games each year where someone has the game of their life that they'll never come close to ever again, and the better team puts the ball on the turf four times.

It's surprising that the all-time series between the two schools is 18-9 in favor of Notre Dame, who has won the last nine contests, so obviously at one point they were 9-9. Speaks to how far BC has fallen. Normally, when we use such words, we're talking about a fall from a great height. For instance, Nebraska used to be this annual national title contender, and for a long time, and they've been middling for however long now, which is almost surely going to continue. BC was never all that high, you could argue, to begin with.

But: They were a team that could be in the top twenty-five at the end of the year, and did so with regularity. The polls would close, they'd be sitting at twenty-two. On occasion, they'd pull off a nice upset. They were solid, physical, featured a strong offensive line, put guys in the NFL, and sometimes quarterbacks. They still put a few guys in the league, but you know what I mean.

That was a good spot for BC to be in. The seasons were fun to watch. The product was pretty good. They're dismal now, with their ceiling for a bunch of years being 6-6 and a crummy bowl game, but that feels like the loftiest of heights at the moment in a campaign in which BC is likely to finish 1-11.

The Celtics beat the Cavaliers by twenty at the Garden last night. A nice win, but one despairs for what has become of Derrick White's game. He used to be this excellent all-around player, whose value was that he did so many things well. But now he just stands out their behind the arc, launching threes. He was 3-of-12 from distance last night. Does Derrick White really need to be attempting a dozen three-pointers in a game? And the thing is, I think the Celtics want him to.