Hi everyone — 

For you DC-area folks, I’m going to be in Gaithersburg this weekend at the Gaithersburg Book Festival! Come on out. My pals Linda Holmes and Dave Barry are going to be there too. Heck, Linda and I might just do an impromptu hour-long session on the Philadelphia Phillies with an emphasis on the joys of Jesús Luzardo. Check us out!

A bit of JoeBlogs news: I’ve spent the last few weeks unearthing a whole bunch of old JoeBlogs stories that had been scrubbed from the internet — it’s been painstaking and exhausting and a bit expensive, but I think it’s totally worth it. I’ve been finding so many fun stories I had totally forgotten about. And now I’ve got a plan to unveil them — I’m going to release them in anthologies as collectible little JoeBlogs readers. I’ve got a whole bunch of ideas I think you’ll find really fun.

I started with a single story — a beautiful, Kathleen-designed PDF of Katie the Prefect. Because it’s the first one, I put a suggested price of $5 on it, but it’s set up so you can pay whatever you like.

Many more to come — I’m putting together a collection of Browns Diaries celebrating that magical 0-16 season, and one with all my Bruce Springsteen writing, just as a start. And yes, Season Ticket Holders will automatically get every JoeBlogs Reader free.

Two To Tango: A Weekly Chat with Tom

Welcome to our new weekly feature — a conversation with Tom Tango about, well, whatever’s on his mind. This week, he’s thinking about baseball and sports and time.

Let’s start with an experiment. If you had to think back to the oldest player in every sport who could even plausibly be entered into the “greatest ever” conversation, who would it be?

For example, in basketball, the greatest ever conversation is now basically Jordan and LeBron, with Steph entered as a wildcard, but who is the oldest player you could even throw into the argument? I mean, you could throw in Magic and Bird, but think older. Kareem? Older.

I’d say the oldest plausible choice would be Wilt Chamberlain (born in 1936) or Bill Russell (born in 1934).

OK, let’s say Russell. Remember that year, 1934.

Try hockey. The strong consensus is that Gretzky is the best ever and you can talk about his contemporaries like Mario Lemieux and Mark Messier or current players like Sidney Crosby or Connor McDavid or the goal-scoring machine Alexander Ovechkin. But, again, older, and I’d say that the oldest you can go is Gordie Howe.

Gordie Howe was born in 1928.

Football, we know, is going to skew heavily toward the modern day. I don’t think you could even plausibly argue for someone like Sammy Baugh as the greatest football player ever because nobody thinks the game he played bears any resemblance to today’s game. I think probably after going through Jerry Rice and Tom Brady and Lawrence Taylor and the rest, the oldest plausible argument is probably Jim Brown.

Jim Brown was born in 1936.

I suppose you could really stretch and put down John Unitas.

John Unitas was born in 1933.

I think you know where this is going. Let’s talk baseball, Tom wants you to think about this: Who is the YOUNGEST plausible candidate for greatest ever … and let’s leave out Barry Bonds for now because he’s a whole different conversation. I mean, if you want to jump the gun and put down Shohei or Aaron Judge right now as the greatest ever, that’s cool, have fun, but realistically, who are the top candidates for greatest player ever?

As it turns out, I might have some insight on this:

Top 10 in The Baseball 100 (excluding Bonds):

1. Willie Mays (born 1931)

2. Babe Ruth (born 1895)

3. [Name Deleted]

4. Henry Aaron (born 1934)

5. Oscar Charleston (born 1896)

6. Ted Williams (born 1918)

7. Walter Johnson (born 1887)

8. Ty Cobb (born 1886)

9. Stan Musial (born 1920)

10. Satchel Paige (born ????)

Oh, you can keep going. Mickey was born in 1931, like Willie. Honus Wagner was born in 1874 (!). Lou Gehrig was born in 1903. Josh Gibson was born in 1911. Rogers Hornsby was born in 1896. Tris Speaker was born in 1888.

Looking back, it’s utterly hilarious to me that the only modern players that the consensus will even consider putting on this list of ancient immortals are guys like Bonds and Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez are suspected or known PED users. Apparently, we believe that no baseball player in the last 50 years has figured out how to play baseball as well as guys from 100 years ago without a little pharma help.

Of course, this is just the story we tell ourselves. There’s no actual way that the best baseball players were all born before the invention of television.

That sounds right. We often cite the amazing statistic that Babe Ruth hit more home runs than every other team in the American League in 1921, and it is amazing, but it also might tell you that the quality of play around the league was pretty terrible. These were farmers and factory workers and fishermen and clergymen. We choose to believe that Ruth’s home run achievements of 1920 are unmatchable by today’s players because it’s pretty to think so … and maybe we all just know in our hearts that we are suspending our disbelief.

Tom thinks that what we should do is have two lists in baseball — greatest players born before 1935 and greatest players born after 1935.

On a logical level, I agree with Tom wholeheartedly. It’s absolutely silly to compare Albert Pujols and Jimmie Foxx, Mookie Betts and Mel Ott, Pedro Martinez and Grover Cleveland Alexander, Tarik Skubal and Lefty Grove.

And yet, isn’t it part of the wonder of baseball to suspend our disbelief and presume that there’s a direct tie between Lefty Grove and Tarik Skubal, that they played fundamentally the same game, and that if we stretch our imaginations just far enough, we can think of them matching up for a big game, Tigers vs. Red Sox, Fenway Park, Grove has to solve Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene and the rejuvenated Javy Báez and Skubal has to find a way to get Jimmie Foxx, I mean, this is part of why baseball is magical, right?

It Takes Two To Rob Homers

I tried to share this so the video goes to the exact moment, but it doesn’t seem to be working… so just click at 7:34 and enjoy the splendor. Kerry Carpenter hits the long fly ball off Liam Hendriks. Wilyer Abreau drifts back, back, reaches the wall, leaps throw his glove high — and somehow deflects the ball back into the field of play, where Ceddanne Rafaela is Johnny on the spot and catches it!

Mark it down as a Flyball 9-8 in your scorebook!

I love the expression Johnny on the spot. For one thing, I’m pretty sure that way back in the 1970s, NFL Films used it every week in their highlights. When I hear “Johnny on the Spot,” I hear the wonderful Harry Kalas saying it, usually paired with some glorious football name from the past as in,

Tracing the heart of wonderful old-timey expressions like this can be tricky, but in the case of Johnny on the spot, it’s super easy, barely an inconvenience.

In the spring of 1896, the New York Sun published a story titled “Johnny On the Spot: A New Phrase Which Has Become Popular in Town Nowadays.” It was reprinted in more than 100 newspapers across the country.

“A ‘Johnny on the spot,’” the Sun explained, “is a man or youth who may be relied upon to be at a certain stated place when wanted and on whose assured appearance confident expectation may be based.”

So when talking about Cedanne… I used it correctly!

The Sun did warn readers that the phrase would “probably go out of popularity after some very hard usage in paragraphers’ columns, variety theaters, campaign speeches and cheap plays… but until a successful is found, it is likely to be in pretty general use hereabouts.”

I don’t think a worthy successor to “Johnny on the spot” has ever been found.

Let’s bring it back! Harry Kalas would have wanted it that way.

Kathleen’s Corner

A curated guide of social media silliness and highlights from your favorite chronically online editor:

• Speaking of incredible catches, Julio Rodriguez made this diving catch for the Mariners last night.

• A ninth-inning go-ahead grand slam? That’s a hitter’s dream, and Junior Caminero made it happen for the Tampa Bay Rays.

• The Hartford Yard Goats pulled out these fun Harry Potter-inspired alternate uniforms. It’s almost as if they knew Katie the Prefect was getting re-published!

• It was a rough night for this Orioles ball boy, but he played it off well. Shoutout to those unsung heroes.

The Rockies … and money

Brilliant reader Jon sends in this note: If you take the four worst records in baseball …

… you come up with a super-terrible 51-120 baseball team.

Then you can throw in the Marlins (16-26), Nationals (18-26). and Angels (17-25).

There is A LOT of terrible baseball happening out there.

It’s tempting to chalk it all up to tanking or small-market blues or something like that, but the simpler truth seems to be that these are all teams that continually drop bowling balls on their own toes.

Take the Rockies. As a couple of Rockies fans have pointed out to me in the last few days — and Rockies fans deserve to be heard with all they’re going through — the Rockies HAVE spent money over the last decade. I mean, they gave Nolan Arenado a $260-million extension! Sure, they traded him two years later — and paid $50 million of the salary for the privilege — but, still: They gave him the original deal.

They also gave Kris Bryant $182 million! Sure, that was — even in the very moment that it happened — titanically misguided, but the point is that the Rockies will spend money. This is actually the first year in more than a decade that the Rockies dropped out of the top 20 in payroll … and even now they’re 21st, well ahead of teams like the White Sox, Marlins, Rays, Pirates, Guardians, and so on.

They’ll spend. They’re just very, very bad at it.

Money sounds more and more like an obsession of Rockies’ owner Dick Monfort, who was one of the loudest critics of the Dodgers’ spending spree this offseason. He looks to be leading the owner’s light brigade toward a salary cap.

“The only way to fix baseball is to do a salary cap and a floor,” he told the Denver Gazette. 

Monfort’s mantra has definitely caught on in owners’ boxes across baseball, and more and more people I talk to in the game believe that the owners will be willing to go as far as necessary, including canceling a season, in order to get their salary cap. I sure hope that’s wrong for a billion different reasons. And I hope that one of these yeehas will someday explain to us exactly HOW a salary cap will fix baseball. How will a salary cap make baseball any more fun for fans? How will a salary cap give us a better brand of the sport? How will a salary cap put more balls in play, raise batting averages, give us more triples, push starting pitchers to go deeper into games, make the regular season matter more, give us better competition? I want specifics.

I want to know how a salary cap will make the Colorado Rockies better.

Becuse a salary cap will not make Dick Monfort and his team any smarter.

A Complete Unknown (Still)

We finally watched “A Complete Unknown” — the sort of fictional, sort of non-fictional, sort of true, sort of made-up movie about the young Bob Dylan going electric, and I have to say: I just didn’t get it at all. Maybe that was the point. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to get it. Maybe it was supposed to be as inscrutable as Bob Dylan himself. Maybe the fact that after every scene I turned to Margo and said, “What was the point of that?” is a failing on my part. I might just be too left-brained. I totally accept that. I’ve always thought Dylan was going over my head anyway.

What really struck me, though, was how unimpressed I was with Timothée Chalamet’s performance as Dylan. I like Timothée Chalamet as an actor. I really do. I think he’s been great on SNL. But I just didn’t see him as Dylan even a little bit. I’d heard from a friend I trust that the movie was kind of a meandering mess, but that Chalamet was great. I assumed that to be true based on the 500 awards he was nominated for or won.

Man, I just didn’t see it at all.

But this gets to one of my pet peeves about Hollywood: Any time there’s some biopic about a musician, the critics just lose their minds. I mean, Jamie Foxx won the Oscar for playing Ray Charles, and Sissy Spacek won the Oscar for playing Loretta Lynn, and Reese Witherspoon won the Oscar for playing June Carter, and Rami Malek won the Oscar for playing Freddie Mercury (ugh), and the praise thrown at Joaquin Phoenix (Johnny Cash), Taron Edgerton (Elton John), Austin Butler (Elvis), Jennifer Lopez (Selena), Val Kilmer (Jim Morrison), Chadwick Boseman (James Brown), Lou Diamond Phillips (Richie Valens), Angela Bassett (Tina Turner), Gary Busey (Buddy Holly), Gary Oldman (Sid Vicious) and Forest Whitaker (Charlie Parker) would fill most public libraries.

And look, some of them were great. But they were not all great. They can’t ALL be great. You can’t just give a guitar, a piano, and a microphone to an actor and expect us all to fall to our knees in awe. I have nothing against Rami Malek, but did the Oscar voters actually WATCH “Bohemian Rhapsody?” It does answer the much-asked question: What if Freddie Mercury had absolutely no charisma whatsoever? But I don’t think that merits an Academy Award. That pick was worse than ANY baseball writer’s MVP choice, even Andre Dawson in 1987.

Chalamet played Dylan enigmatically, which I suppose was the point, but it did absolutely nothing for me. At least he actually sang. Rami Malek didn’t even do that.