Day: June 20, 2024

Time to knock out some sports notes while I avoid going outside and facing Heat Dome ’24.

Say Hey

The incomparable Willie Mays died Tuesday night. I never saw him play live as the tail end of his career just barely overlapped with my life. I did hear the stories and saw the grainy highlight reels. And I remember how those fat, softcover, sports trivia books popular in the late Seventies and early Eighties were always filled with amazing facts about his career. Willie, at worst, was on of the four best players ever. At worst.[1]

I sent a few of you this statement after the news of his death broke. I’m pretty proud of it so will repeat it for my blog readers:

Willie should have kicked Joe DiMaggio’s ass when the Yankee Clipper insisted on being introduced as “The Greatest Living Baseball Player” late in his life. It was asinine, dishonest, and offensive to suggest Joe D was better than the Say Hey Kid.

Rany Jazayerli has a great piece on The Ringer breaking down how Mays was even better than the raw numbers suggest. I know all about the time Ted Williams missed because of his military service in World War II and the Korean War. I did not know, or did not recall, Mays missed nearly two years when he served in Korea. Even for a player as accomplished as he was, those two years made a massive difference in his career production.

Willie Mays Was the Greatest Baseball Player Who Ever Lived

Royals

I’ve been paying more attention to the Royals over the past month or so. Figures that whatever fueled their hot start over the first two months of the season seems to have fizzled over that stretch. It is nice that they aren’t terrible, though. I’ve been on the verge of resubscribing to either MLB.TV to watch or At Bat to listen several times, but then they lose a couple games and I figure I watch/listen to other stuff at night so why upset my routine. Then again, At Bat is only $30…

Pacers

It won’t be official for a couple more weeks when the NBA calendar turns over, but word has it that the Pacers and Pascal Siakam have agreed on a big contract extension. There wasn’t much doubt; word around the NBA was that Siakam would not agree to be traded to a team he was not interested in re-signing with. There were some rough patches early, but eventually he fit in well with his new teammates. Add a summer of working out together plus a 100% healthy Tyrese Haliburton next season and the Pacers should be firmly in the second tier of the Eastern Conference behind Boston.

NBA Finals

What a boring series. Boston is the least impressive great team I can recall. That isn’t really fair. Almost every game, though, they have one terrible quarter which keeps you from thinking, “Wow, this team is incredible!” They have two legit stars in Jaylen Brown and Jason Tatum, a perfect compliment (when healthy) in Kristaps Porzingis, and remarkable role players in Jrue Holiday and Derrick White. White, especially, floors me every game when he makes multiple “HOLY SHIT!!!” defensive plays.

The Celtics definitely got a great draw, with Jimmy Butler, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, and the entire Knicks roster injured and then Haliburton getting hurt during the Eastern Conference Finals and the Denver Nuggets getting knocked out of the Western Conference semis by Minnesota. That shouldn’t distract from a magnificent season and a team that is poised to be, perhaps, the next NBA dynasty getting the Finals monkey off their backs.

Olympic Swimming Trials

Big week here in Indy with the Olympic swimming trials at Lucas Oil Stadium, which is obviously a little weird. The closest we came to attending was having dinner with some friends who were in town to attend and dropping them off at the gates before we headed home.

I highly suggest finding one of the videos showing how they built the pools inside a football stadium. Wild stuff, and roughly 20,000 people a night are coming in to watch.

It’s been a good week for the local swimmers, with several athletes who either went/go to high school in the Indy suburbs, or attend(ed) IU or Notre Dame making the Olympic roster so far. I guess swimmers can come from anywhere, and the high school/club swim programs in Carmel are some of the absolute best in the world, but it is always weird to me that landlocked Indiana can crank out such high level swimmers.

The schedule for the week seems weird to me. Or at least the TV schedule. Some nights NBC showed swimming for an hour. Some nights two hours. I get that they have airtime to fill, and buzz to create for the Paris games. But seems like the trial meet used to be over a long weekend instead of stretched across a week.

Also I’m preemptively complaining about local NBC stations sending reporters to the Olympics. Absolutely zero need for it and their little puff pieces they file for the local news are terrible 99% of the time.