Thursday 11/17/22
* Dante Scarneccchia is the best coach Bill Belichick has ever had on staff and should be in the Hall of Fame. Belichick's teams founder without him.
* Pete Peeters is closer to belonging in the Hockey Hall of Fame than most people think.
* Mike Liut should be in the Hall of Fame.
* Vladimir Krutov really should be in.
* Dale Murphy, who people push hard for for the baseball Hall of Fame, is not close. He had six good seasons. That's it. Murphy didn't have a better career--or not a much better career--than Darryl Strawberry. People like Murphy, though, and narrative--squandered talent, etc.--works against Strawberry.
* The 1983 Yankees--who finished third in the AL East--featured a starting nine in which each player had an OPS+ of at least 100. This is rare.
* 172 players in baseball history have a career ERA of less than 3.00. Two of the four best pitchers in baseball history--Roger Clemens and Lefty Grove--do not.
* Phil Niekro has thrown more innings than anyone in the past 100 years. Cy Young threw almost 2000 more innings than Niekro. That's more than 200 complete games' worth of innings.
* Cy Young only won two ERA titles, which is why I would not have him in that group of the four best pitchers of all-time. Said list would be: Walter Johnson, Roger Clemens, Christy Mathewson, and Lefty Grove.
* It's strange--or it feels strange--to say that Chris Chelios is the best hockey player the United States has ever produced. Fantastic player, but it feels strange, right? But he is, and by a decent sized gap.
* I've never looked at the logos of the New York Islanders and the Atlanta Hawks and seen them as they were intended to be seen. The former has always locked like an M holding a hockey stick to me, whereas the latter looks like a backwards C with a dot hanging in the air.
