Sam Malone's Red Sox jacket: A sports history miscellany

Monday 4/13/26

Gordie Howe played in 1947. Ray Bourque played in 2001. Gordie Howe and Ray Bourque played against each other.

Willie Mays won two MVPs, Hank Aaron won one. They are two of the half dozen best baseball players of all-time by any definition. It probably seems like they should have more. At most, Mays could have won three. The season in contention is 1962, when Maury Wills won. I also would have gone with Wills. Aaron ought to have had the one. His best year was arguably 1959, but Ernie Banks was better that season.

Hank Aaron is the greatest at being consistent in the history of sports. Or, if you prefer, the greatest at being consistently great.

Basketball has the easiest Hall of Fame to make. Mark Price should be in it even if that weren't so. Regarding the aforesaid ease: Doc Rivers was recently inducted into the Hall. He was fired yesterday by the Bucs. It was clear he was going to be for the whole year basically. I guess they didn't want to bother with another coach this season.

But as far as terminations go, this felt inevitable. If there was a Hall of Fame for blowing 3-1 series leads I could get on board with Rivers being in it, but he has no business being in a sport-wide Hall of Fame.

This is a history entry but I'll note the Celtics finishing their season yesterday with 56 wins. They reminded me some of the 1993-94 Chicago Bulls, with Jaylen Brown in the Scottie Pippen role. After the Thunder, the Celtics have as good a chance--or better--than anyone to win the championship this year. Should they manage to, that will go down as one of the more impressive team achievements in the history of Boston sports.

I thought they could win about 47 games or so and be the fourth or fifth seed if they went for it hard this year rather than punting on the season, believing they could get Jayson Tatum back and make a run. Admittedly, I didn't think they'd go for it like they did. I was wrong about that.

Even very few people who know hockey history know that Mike Bossy once had 83 assists in a season. Because of the era he played in, Bossy has become perhaps the most underrated great player in NHL history. He's closer to the top ten than people think.

Rarest is the pitcher in baseball who is more valuable than the relief pitcher who throws 130 innings, picks up wins, and registers twenty plus saves. Such relief pitchers no longer exist, of course--a Rich Gossage, a Hoyt Wilhelm, Willie Hernandez in 1984--but they added so much to a team. A singular weapon.

Closers should be judged more by blown saves than converted saves. This explains why I feel as I do about Mariano Rivera. A closer can cost you more than they can do something for you.

Obviously Sandy Koufax had one of the greatest pitching seasons ever for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1966 (and in 1965, which had the storybook ending for him and them). But you know who was nearly as good on that pitching staff? Phil Regan. He threw 116.2 innings out of the bullpen, going 14-1 with a league-leading 21 saves.

If you are one of the greatest defensive shortstops in baseball--which is to say, one of the greatest defenders in the sports history--you should be in the Hall of Fame. This is why I have no problem with Rabbit Maranville's inclusion.

The NBA during the Bulls' second three-peat had a bit of an NHL Dead Puck Era thing going on. Scoring like Michael Jordan scored then wasn't the same as scoring like Michael Jordan did earlier in his career.

Rick Vaive is a more interesting Toronto Maple Leaf than Auston Matthews. Vaive was more than he should have been, Matthews is less than he should be. It's quite possible that Matthews finishes his career with two 50-goal seasons to Vaive's four.

Cal Ripken, Jr. was overrated for much of his career and is underrated now. The streak is the reason for the former, analytics makes the case for the latter. His 1991 season is one of baseball's best.

It's strange that the Red Sox gave Dwight Evans' number twenty-four to Manny Ramirez. Yesterday coming back from the Bunker Hill Monument I was thinking how strange it'd be if Evans had been elected by one of these veteran committees--and maybe he will be down the road--whose ballot he's turned up on in recent years and the Sox retired his number. They'd have to, right? Then there'd be dads having to explain to their kids that it wasn't for Manny Ramirez.

Well, maybe their kids wouldn't know who Manny Ramirez was. Growing up, people--and kids, too, though not to the same extent as adults--would cite the great players of the past. The legends. But also players notable for whatever reason. I had a Little League coach who brought up flamethrower-turned-junkballer Frank Tanana once, though I'm certain none of the other kids know who the hell he was talking about. Of course, I knew Tanana's year-by-year stat lines intimately. As soon as I could read I was studying baseball history.

What's amusing about Dwight Evans which I've never encountered anyone else mentioning is that the famous play he made in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series in which he made a great catch out in right and then doubled the Reds' base runner up at first, featured what may have been the worst throw of his career!

He was trying to get the ball back into the infield as fast as possible, of course, and prioritizing alacrity over accuracy, but the throw was almost comically offline. Outstanding play all the same, though, in what may well be the greatest baseball game ever played.

That shiny satin dark blue warm-up jacket the Red Sox wore in the 1980s and then a bit into the 1990s was really cool looking. Many people had them, too. They were a staple where I grew up, but it wasn't like they were so common that they became less cool. It was like a jacket of belonging. You were so New England, if you will, if you had one.

You couldn't imagine them being worn anywhere else. Existing anywhere else. Like they couldn't be detected with the naked eye by someone from somewhere else. Sam Malone wore one on Cheers. That just screamed out authenticity. Things like that have always made me feel at home when I watch Cheers. I think it's the show that is truest to the city in which it is set and have believed and had that reconfirmed for most of my life.