Definitely makes me think of Brian Scalabrine (WHITE MAMBA!) telling people he's closer to LeBron than they are to him, and then actually challenging his shit-talkers to play him, which they did, and he absolutely smoked 'em. What a treat, that Brian Scalabrine.
Joe’s tennis story reminds me of the tennis pro in my hometown. Like Joe’s, he was fantastic and played professionally a few years. I asked once why he retired (he was in his early 30’s at the time) and he said, “I entered a tournament and lost to a 13-year-old boy. I knew then it was time to retire.” Then he paused and added, “Of course, if I had realized Andre Agassi would become Andre Agassi, I might have stuck around a little longer.” The legends truly are different and magnitudes better than mortals.
Liked the "Wonder" part of this article. And yes, those who do make it to the pro level ... in any sport tend to be significantly better than the rest of us - at most physical sports. And - Pitching in MLB does illustrate the Wonder to a high degree.
Sometimes, it seems, that pitching coaches (or managers themselves) influences on the pitcher display major consequences on pitching "command" - e.g. pitch selection.
At any rate, from the prior century - David Clyde, Roger Clemens, Pete Broberg and Stunning Steve Dunning come to mind (to name a few) - about Ballyhooed Pitchers coming out of college (in Clyde's case - HS). Excepting Clemens, I've often wondered, if they had the right environments , would those others ... been very good to great pitchers.
Clemens certainly was an excellent college pitcher. He also was the 11th pitcher selected in the 1983 draft. The other 10 collectively finished with almost exactly 100 fewer bWAR. Tim Belcher, picked #1, didn't sign and was re-drafted the next season. He was the only other one with any real career. Of course, Clemens isn't a reasonable upside for anyone. Rather, I wonder if the aforementioned pitchers, plus many others, lost out on a chance to be Ben McDonald or Floyd Bannister or Andy Benes -- highly touted amateur prospects with competent MLB careers well short of stardom.
As to the non-Clemens group? I've long agreed with an off the cuff comment Bill James made in one of his Annuals. A pitcher's career is a race between the time it takes to learn the craft and the pitches he can throw before his arm blows up. Having no support system in place - like the atrociously handled Clyde - makes it less likely that the pitcher can win the race.
While I'd agree that in the past BJ's comment was mostly true, Today, some teams actually enable pitchers (thru software and approaches by coaches) the development and the maintenance of a MLB career. In fact, with the Guardians (they are just but one team to do this) - they're able to find and correct or enhance/develop pitchers from the scrapheap/minors - into an MLB product. That said, a Clemens/Skenes, obviously only comes along once in awhile.
The enabling of pitchers seems more a difference in degree rather than in kind from that done for decades. Roger Craig, Ray Miller, Leo Mazzone ... going all the way back to Charlie Root and Wilbert Robinson, there have been coaches assigned the duty of ensuring proper mechanics, repertoire, and mental mind set. Yes, video and computer analysis has added to it, but not fundamentally changed what teams are doing.
Sorta, kinda, vaguely related: one tinfoil hat belief I hold is that the 'pitch tunnelling' efforts of the last decade-ish is one of the leading causes of increased injuries. By having each pitch thrown from the same slot with the same release point, the stresses are focused on a smaller and smaller part of each arm rather than more spread out as they'd be with variations in delivery.
Agree about 80% on this last comment. The stress by the pitching staff (or mgrs.) to increase velocity on all pitch types thrown - e.g. - have a fast, medium, and slow curve etc. - tends to stress the area of the arm used. The increase in velo by all pitchers, coupled with the increased velo on certain types of pitches - seems to correlate to increased forearm/oblique injuries ... seen since 2016 (roughly). Not to mention in some cases, flatout TJ surgery....
I was at the ASG Fanfest in 2013 waiting to use the batting cage when they held up the line so MLB Network could film a bunch of prospects stepping in. They of course all ripped line drive after line drive. The catch? They were all pitchers, led by Noah Syndergaard, who somehow, inexplicably, has found himself in the news again lately. For all the, "Thank God for the universal DH so we no longer need to see weak hitting pitchers" you have to remember, everyone of those weak hitting pitchers was a two-way player in Little League and HS who mashed baseballs.
Years ago I was at a pro 9-ball tournament in Houston. The best players in the world were there, like Earl Strickland and Buddy Hall.
The winner was this paunchy guy with a weird stroke that nobody knew named Cesar Morales.
Well, it turns out it was Efrain Reyes.
He was already well known in the Philippines, but no one here knew what he looked like, and few people had ever even heard of him.
He was literally the best 9-ball player in the world right in that moment (he’s now considered to be the best ever), and he was unknown to all of the other top players.
It’s a Sidd Finch-level story, except that it actually happened. I always thought it would make a heckuva movie.
To Joe’s point, I played regular pickup basketball with a group of guys. None of them were fantastic … only a couple played at small colleges and all were in their 30’s and 40’s, so past their prime, but it was fun and competitive. One day, we needed one more to even the teams and saw a guy shooting on the opposite court. We asked if he wanted to join and he agreed on the condition he only play from the 3-point line. He was taller than all of us, so we agreed. He dominated like no one’s business. Magnitudes better than the best of us on our best days. Turns out he played professionally in Europe and was home for the offseason. I asked if he had interest in the NBA and he just laughed, “I’m nowhere near good enough for that.” He played 16+ years overseas, making fantastic money, and wasn’t close to sniffing the League. That hammered home to me just how good the truly elite players really are.
Somewhat similar story. I was a freshman in college playing pickup ball at Mizzou's student rec center with no one I knew. Winners stay and my team had won a couple in a row. Next team has a not really tall guy, but taller than most of us who has an out of this world outside shot, but he is obviously playing below his ability level against us. If he had just shot every time down the court, his team would have won in quick fashion. He looks somewhat familiar, but honestly, I am bad with recognizing people. Anyway, I happened to hit 3 or 4 3 pointers in a row and he switches over to guard me. I didn't get another shot off. After the game, which the other team won, guys are gathered around my nemesis and turns out it is John Sunvold.
Our slow pitch softball team's shortstop played AA, he asked our 3rd baseman to move to the OF and our pitchers to not field anything to their right because he had everything covered between 2nd and 3rd. If there as a man on first and the ball was hit to his left, he fielded it, stepped on second, and fired it to first, double play every time, and those are hard to come by in slow pitch because the bases are so close together.
But ever more notable was how honed it he still was on 90+ pitching, he went an entire season and never could slow his swing down enough to rise above below average as a hitter.
The question I'd ask is, what's a AA player doing slumming it in slo-pitch softball? Why wasnt he playing in a baseball league, or a fast-pitch, or modified, softball league?
The way I always refer to it with pro athletes is that the worst player on the worst team in the NBA/NRL/AFL/European Soccer League is 10,000 times better at what he does than you or anyone you know are at anything
I think you are way off on that one. Doing a nice humble brag but I have had the fortune to know quite a few Nobel prize winners. I think they are probably better at what they do than quite a few players.
Depends on how narrow your specialty is, there are only about 20 people worldwide who do what my company does and I know them all, and I'm confident we have the 3 best ones.
Ever gone down the Scallenge rabbit hole? Pretty impressive how he can shut out just about anyone, especially when he goes up against the Messiah and other street ballers, but he does have size on his side.
Almost more impressive is footage of Fred Van Vleet, an undersized nba player, doing the same thing or Div 1 walk on Roy Yuan showing up the best of the streetball influencer crowd.
First of all: "Amadeus" is an extremely underrated movie, and it's still worth a watch every time! I think sometimes biopics don't age well, particularly the older they get. But I think Amadeus is the exception; it's still great every time.
Second of all: my sophomore year of high school, I will never forget the Conference Indoor Championship. We were a pretty good conference in southeastern Wisconsin. An athlete from one of the "lesser" schools in our conference - Milwaukee Lutheran - entered three events. He entered the 55m, the high jump, and the shot put. And he won all three. (He SHOULD'VE lost the shot put, but the best thrower in the conference fouled all his throws.) It was, and remains to this day, one of the greatest athletic achievements I've ever seen. You have to be a great athlete to win a conference title in ANY track and field discipline. To simultaneously win three completely different events? Extraordinary.
The guy who did it was Nick Roach. Went on to what I think most anyone would consider a well-above-average NFL career... and yet, unless you are a Bears fan, you probably don't remember him. Crazy how good the guys are at the top.
Your comment on Amadeus compelled me to watch again the scene where Mozart, on his deathbed, details his next major work to Salieri, who transcribes it to sheets of music. Taken in individual parts, strings vs reeds vs vocals, it seems almost inane. Nonsensical. Then it is stitched together in a remarkable piece of art, played out on the screen. It never fails to move me and make me wonder .. how can someone envision something so layered, so complex, and so beautiful in their head?
That is my favorite scene in the movie, as he dictates the "Confutatis" to Salieri and Salieri is screaming, "You go too fast!"
I had to do an educational program for choir when I was in college, and my week, I showed that scene back-to-back with the scene from "Hustle & Flow" in which Terence Howard's character composes the song "Whoop That Trick," because the two scenes, in two of my favorite movies, are SUPER similar, in spite of completely different circumstances. I was encouraging people just to go out and write music, whatever and however it came to them.
I went to a small Catholic high school outside of Los Angeles in the mid 1970's. One year our basketball team, which I had zero chance of making, hosted Verbum Dei, a perpetual powerhouse at the time. David Greenwood and Roy Hamilton played for that Verbum Dei team; they went on to be the 2nd and 10th picks in the 1979 NBA draft. They beat us 120 something to 40 something. It was my first up close encounter with freakish athleticism. It was some fifty years ago but I can vividly remember watching Verbum Dei warm up before the game.
It amazes me how many "average" people still don't get how good pro athletes are, let alone how unbelievably great the greats are.
Go read the comments on a professional boxers social media to get an idea.
I used to workout at a proper boxing gym in my mid-size Canadian town. I was there mostly for fitness and sparred, but never competed. The gym used to be run by a national amateur champ who turned pro for about 8 bouts before he realized he'd reached his ceiling. When I sparred with him he knew he was there to help me work on my meager middle-aged game. Sometimes he'd drop his guard and avoid head shots by simply gauging distance and disappearing behind a few slips and rolls.
He doesn't let seasoned boxers beat down the rookies, but occasionally a newbie thinks they're tough and starts trying to take his or someone's less experienced head off, that's when he sends a reminder that there are levels to this game, usually in the form of a body shot that makes you wonder if you'll ever breathe again. Sometimes while in the middle of sparring, he would simply state that he can hit you any time he wants while you won't be able to touch him.
The few young guys and women who compete are far ahead of guys like me who think they can work over a bag well or make contact in some light sparring sessions. Even the kid who has gone 0-3 can out box, and perhaps more impressively, avoid punches better than anyone I know.
Vaguely related: I went to graduate school in the early 90s with someone who bounced around on golf's mini tours for a couple of years before realizing that he was a great player but not REALLY GREAT. He'd occasionally join us classmates on the university course and just goof around, like playing an entire hole with a putter or swing left-handed and often with a beer or six during the round. But every once in a while, he'd briefly show us what he could do. It was ridiculous how good he could be and yet be so far away from Couples / Kite / Faldo / Price, the types who won Majors at the time.
There was a great article in, I think, SI a while back in which a good former college tennis player now journalist plays a pro ranked down near the bottom. The pro smokes him effortlessly and tells him, The way I moved you around the court? That's what the guys at the top of the rankings would do to me. Great illustration of how good these players are.
The pro also had one of my favorite quotes, which is that at the pro level everything is mental so "the guy who wins is the one who doesn't shit the bed."
Definitely makes me think of Brian Scalabrine (WHITE MAMBA!) telling people he's closer to LeBron than they are to him, and then actually challenging his shit-talkers to play him, which they did, and he absolutely smoked 'em. What a treat, that Brian Scalabrine.
Joe’s tennis story reminds me of the tennis pro in my hometown. Like Joe’s, he was fantastic and played professionally a few years. I asked once why he retired (he was in his early 30’s at the time) and he said, “I entered a tournament and lost to a 13-year-old boy. I knew then it was time to retire.” Then he paused and added, “Of course, if I had realized Andre Agassi would become Andre Agassi, I might have stuck around a little longer.” The legends truly are different and magnitudes better than mortals.
The Wonder of Paul Skenes...and Joe Posnanski. Just your regular everyday baseball essay, and it's wonderful. Don't go changin', Joe.
Liked the "Wonder" part of this article. And yes, those who do make it to the pro level ... in any sport tend to be significantly better than the rest of us - at most physical sports. And - Pitching in MLB does illustrate the Wonder to a high degree.
Sometimes, it seems, that pitching coaches (or managers themselves) influences on the pitcher display major consequences on pitching "command" - e.g. pitch selection.
At any rate, from the prior century - David Clyde, Roger Clemens, Pete Broberg and Stunning Steve Dunning come to mind (to name a few) - about Ballyhooed Pitchers coming out of college (in Clyde's case - HS). Excepting Clemens, I've often wondered, if they had the right environments , would those others ... been very good to great pitchers.
Clemens certainly was an excellent college pitcher. He also was the 11th pitcher selected in the 1983 draft. The other 10 collectively finished with almost exactly 100 fewer bWAR. Tim Belcher, picked #1, didn't sign and was re-drafted the next season. He was the only other one with any real career. Of course, Clemens isn't a reasonable upside for anyone. Rather, I wonder if the aforementioned pitchers, plus many others, lost out on a chance to be Ben McDonald or Floyd Bannister or Andy Benes -- highly touted amateur prospects with competent MLB careers well short of stardom.
As to the non-Clemens group? I've long agreed with an off the cuff comment Bill James made in one of his Annuals. A pitcher's career is a race between the time it takes to learn the craft and the pitches he can throw before his arm blows up. Having no support system in place - like the atrociously handled Clyde - makes it less likely that the pitcher can win the race.
While I'd agree that in the past BJ's comment was mostly true, Today, some teams actually enable pitchers (thru software and approaches by coaches) the development and the maintenance of a MLB career. In fact, with the Guardians (they are just but one team to do this) - they're able to find and correct or enhance/develop pitchers from the scrapheap/minors - into an MLB product. That said, a Clemens/Skenes, obviously only comes along once in awhile.
The enabling of pitchers seems more a difference in degree rather than in kind from that done for decades. Roger Craig, Ray Miller, Leo Mazzone ... going all the way back to Charlie Root and Wilbert Robinson, there have been coaches assigned the duty of ensuring proper mechanics, repertoire, and mental mind set. Yes, video and computer analysis has added to it, but not fundamentally changed what teams are doing.
Sorta, kinda, vaguely related: one tinfoil hat belief I hold is that the 'pitch tunnelling' efforts of the last decade-ish is one of the leading causes of increased injuries. By having each pitch thrown from the same slot with the same release point, the stresses are focused on a smaller and smaller part of each arm rather than more spread out as they'd be with variations in delivery.
Agree about 80% on this last comment. The stress by the pitching staff (or mgrs.) to increase velocity on all pitch types thrown - e.g. - have a fast, medium, and slow curve etc. - tends to stress the area of the arm used. The increase in velo by all pitchers, coupled with the increased velo on certain types of pitches - seems to correlate to increased forearm/oblique injuries ... seen since 2016 (roughly). Not to mention in some cases, flatout TJ surgery....
I was at the ASG Fanfest in 2013 waiting to use the batting cage when they held up the line so MLB Network could film a bunch of prospects stepping in. They of course all ripped line drive after line drive. The catch? They were all pitchers, led by Noah Syndergaard, who somehow, inexplicably, has found himself in the news again lately. For all the, "Thank God for the universal DH so we no longer need to see weak hitting pitchers" you have to remember, everyone of those weak hitting pitchers was a two-way player in Little League and HS who mashed baseballs.
Years ago I was at a pro 9-ball tournament in Houston. The best players in the world were there, like Earl Strickland and Buddy Hall.
The winner was this paunchy guy with a weird stroke that nobody knew named Cesar Morales.
Well, it turns out it was Efrain Reyes.
He was already well known in the Philippines, but no one here knew what he looked like, and few people had ever even heard of him.
He was literally the best 9-ball player in the world right in that moment (he’s now considered to be the best ever), and he was unknown to all of the other top players.
It’s a Sidd Finch-level story, except that it actually happened. I always thought it would make a heckuva movie.
To Joe’s point, I played regular pickup basketball with a group of guys. None of them were fantastic … only a couple played at small colleges and all were in their 30’s and 40’s, so past their prime, but it was fun and competitive. One day, we needed one more to even the teams and saw a guy shooting on the opposite court. We asked if he wanted to join and he agreed on the condition he only play from the 3-point line. He was taller than all of us, so we agreed. He dominated like no one’s business. Magnitudes better than the best of us on our best days. Turns out he played professionally in Europe and was home for the offseason. I asked if he had interest in the NBA and he just laughed, “I’m nowhere near good enough for that.” He played 16+ years overseas, making fantastic money, and wasn’t close to sniffing the League. That hammered home to me just how good the truly elite players really are.
Somewhat similar story. I was a freshman in college playing pickup ball at Mizzou's student rec center with no one I knew. Winners stay and my team had won a couple in a row. Next team has a not really tall guy, but taller than most of us who has an out of this world outside shot, but he is obviously playing below his ability level against us. If he had just shot every time down the court, his team would have won in quick fashion. He looks somewhat familiar, but honestly, I am bad with recognizing people. Anyway, I happened to hit 3 or 4 3 pointers in a row and he switches over to guard me. I didn't get another shot off. After the game, which the other team won, guys are gathered around my nemesis and turns out it is John Sunvold.
Our slow pitch softball team's shortstop played AA, he asked our 3rd baseman to move to the OF and our pitchers to not field anything to their right because he had everything covered between 2nd and 3rd. If there as a man on first and the ball was hit to his left, he fielded it, stepped on second, and fired it to first, double play every time, and those are hard to come by in slow pitch because the bases are so close together.
But ever more notable was how honed it he still was on 90+ pitching, he went an entire season and never could slow his swing down enough to rise above below average as a hitter.
The question I'd ask is, what's a AA player doing slumming it in slo-pitch softball? Why wasnt he playing in a baseball league, or a fast-pitch, or modified, softball league?
Good question, I was too intimidated by him to ask, but probably because our town was too small to have those options
The way I always refer to it with pro athletes is that the worst player on the worst team in the NBA/NRL/AFL/European Soccer League is 10,000 times better at what he does than you or anyone you know are at anything
I think you are way off on that one. Doing a nice humble brag but I have had the fortune to know quite a few Nobel prize winners. I think they are probably better at what they do than quite a few players.
Depends on how narrow your specialty is, there are only about 20 people worldwide who do what my company does and I know them all, and I'm confident we have the 3 best ones.
Your opening paragraphs remind me of Brian Scalabrine's epic (and 100% accurate) line: "I'm closer to LeBron than you are to me."
Ever gone down the Scallenge rabbit hole? Pretty impressive how he can shut out just about anyone, especially when he goes up against the Messiah and other street ballers, but he does have size on his side.
Almost more impressive is footage of Fred Van Vleet, an undersized nba player, doing the same thing or Div 1 walk on Roy Yuan showing up the best of the streetball influencer crowd.
Sinner’s ped thing seems to be forgotten.
First of all: "Amadeus" is an extremely underrated movie, and it's still worth a watch every time! I think sometimes biopics don't age well, particularly the older they get. But I think Amadeus is the exception; it's still great every time.
Second of all: my sophomore year of high school, I will never forget the Conference Indoor Championship. We were a pretty good conference in southeastern Wisconsin. An athlete from one of the "lesser" schools in our conference - Milwaukee Lutheran - entered three events. He entered the 55m, the high jump, and the shot put. And he won all three. (He SHOULD'VE lost the shot put, but the best thrower in the conference fouled all his throws.) It was, and remains to this day, one of the greatest athletic achievements I've ever seen. You have to be a great athlete to win a conference title in ANY track and field discipline. To simultaneously win three completely different events? Extraordinary.
The guy who did it was Nick Roach. Went on to what I think most anyone would consider a well-above-average NFL career... and yet, unless you are a Bears fan, you probably don't remember him. Crazy how good the guys are at the top.
Your comment on Amadeus compelled me to watch again the scene where Mozart, on his deathbed, details his next major work to Salieri, who transcribes it to sheets of music. Taken in individual parts, strings vs reeds vs vocals, it seems almost inane. Nonsensical. Then it is stitched together in a remarkable piece of art, played out on the screen. It never fails to move me and make me wonder .. how can someone envision something so layered, so complex, and so beautiful in their head?
That's how I feel when I look at tapestries in museums.
It’s not easy, Bill…
That is my favorite scene in the movie, as he dictates the "Confutatis" to Salieri and Salieri is screaming, "You go too fast!"
I had to do an educational program for choir when I was in college, and my week, I showed that scene back-to-back with the scene from "Hustle & Flow" in which Terence Howard's character composes the song "Whoop That Trick," because the two scenes, in two of my favorite movies, are SUPER similar, in spite of completely different circumstances. I was encouraging people just to go out and write music, whatever and however it came to them.
Ahh, what an article: it talks both a University of Illinois great (Kosta) and "Amadeus"!
I went to a small Catholic high school outside of Los Angeles in the mid 1970's. One year our basketball team, which I had zero chance of making, hosted Verbum Dei, a perpetual powerhouse at the time. David Greenwood and Roy Hamilton played for that Verbum Dei team; they went on to be the 2nd and 10th picks in the 1979 NBA draft. They beat us 120 something to 40 something. It was my first up close encounter with freakish athleticism. It was some fifty years ago but I can vividly remember watching Verbum Dei warm up before the game.
Didn't you go to Brush High School, home of Cy Young award winner Steve Stone?
It amazes me how many "average" people still don't get how good pro athletes are, let alone how unbelievably great the greats are.
Go read the comments on a professional boxers social media to get an idea.
I used to workout at a proper boxing gym in my mid-size Canadian town. I was there mostly for fitness and sparred, but never competed. The gym used to be run by a national amateur champ who turned pro for about 8 bouts before he realized he'd reached his ceiling. When I sparred with him he knew he was there to help me work on my meager middle-aged game. Sometimes he'd drop his guard and avoid head shots by simply gauging distance and disappearing behind a few slips and rolls.
He doesn't let seasoned boxers beat down the rookies, but occasionally a newbie thinks they're tough and starts trying to take his or someone's less experienced head off, that's when he sends a reminder that there are levels to this game, usually in the form of a body shot that makes you wonder if you'll ever breathe again. Sometimes while in the middle of sparring, he would simply state that he can hit you any time he wants while you won't be able to touch him.
The few young guys and women who compete are far ahead of guys like me who think they can work over a bag well or make contact in some light sparring sessions. Even the kid who has gone 0-3 can out box, and perhaps more impressively, avoid punches better than anyone I know.
Vaguely related: I went to graduate school in the early 90s with someone who bounced around on golf's mini tours for a couple of years before realizing that he was a great player but not REALLY GREAT. He'd occasionally join us classmates on the university course and just goof around, like playing an entire hole with a putter or swing left-handed and often with a beer or six during the round. But every once in a while, he'd briefly show us what he could do. It was ridiculous how good he could be and yet be so far away from Couples / Kite / Faldo / Price, the types who won Majors at the time.
There was a great article in, I think, SI a while back in which a good former college tennis player now journalist plays a pro ranked down near the bottom. The pro smokes him effortlessly and tells him, The way I moved you around the court? That's what the guys at the top of the rankings would do to me. Great illustration of how good these players are.
The pro also had one of my favorite quotes, which is that at the pro level everything is mental so "the guy who wins is the one who doesn't shit the bed."