LeBron
OK, let’s compare some of the names on the list to be the youngest to get to some of the greatest plateaus in sports.
(For those that do not have ESPN, LeBron James became the youngest to get to 30,000 points last night.)
Baseball: Ty Cobb is still the youngest to get to 3,000 hits, doing it in his 2,135th game at the age of 34 years, 243 days old. Kid Nichols got to 300 career wins at the age of 30. (Which is a) amazing and b) a testament to the old days when you would pitch every other day. In his third season at the age of 22, Nichols appeared in 53 games – 51 starts – and got 51 decisions, going 35-16. He pitched 453 innings that season in 1892, and as amazing as that is, know that number did not lead the league. So yes, he appeared in 53 games and averaged 8.5 innings per appearance. Holy buckets of ice and IcyHot.)
Football: Aaron Rodgers was the quickest to 300 TD passes, doing it in 144 games and just 4,742 attempts.
LeBron got to 30,000 in 33 years and 24 days. Kobe was the previous record holder at 34 and 104 days.
The question now becomes if James, who is the seventh NBA player to top 30,000 points, can catch Kareem’s all-time number of 38,387.
James has averaged 27.1 per game since becoming an NBA player as an 18-year-old back in 2003.
It’s not as big a slam dunk as most would think considering the miles James has on his tires.
James has averaged almost 29 points per game for his career midway through this, his 15th season.
Expecting some slide in the numbers – and his annual decision to miss a few games for rest and what not – LeBron would need to average more than 21 per game and play at least 70 games a season from next year through the 2022-23 season to pass Jabbar. That would be setting the mark at the age of 38.
He could play that long, but will he want to, and will LeBron be willing to be a No. 2 at that point in his career? Discuss.
Hall of Fame today
The next class for the Baseball Hall of Fame will be announced today at 6 p.m.
Here’s what we know form the excellent efforts from Ryan Thibodaux (aka @NotMrTibbs on Twitter) and this amazing spread sheet:
Chipper Jones, Jim Thome and Vlad Guerrero appear to be dunks. Jones and Thome are in their first year on the ballot; Vlad is in year two. Jones is on 232 of the 233 votes that Thibodaux has tracked. That’s 98.3 precent.
For some reason David Ginsburg, a sports writer in Baltimore for the AP, did not vote for Jones. He did vote for Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Guerrero and Thome. So there’s that.
Bonds and Clemens appear likely to increase last year’s totals when they were on 53.8 and 54.1 percent of the ballots respectively. (Side note: Know we have covered this before and however people want to vote, hey, it’s their ballot and their perspective. But for the life of George Herman Ruth, can someone explain how you Bonds and Clemens are not on exactly the same number of ballots every year? If you are not voting for the steroids folks, that’s fine. We get it. But if you are suspending belief on one of those cats, then how in the world could you even consider not voting for the other. Bonds and Clemens were the best players of the last 30 years and their positions and you could make an argument that each dominated the game as much as anyone since Ruth and Walter Johnson at their jobs.)
Anyhoo, as for the others, Trevor Hoffman is currently sitting at 78.4 percent. He likely will fall short when the other 191 votes are counted. Same goes for Edgar Martinez, who is in his ninth and penultimate year on the ballot and has 77.1 percent of the vote.
The other eye-popping thing to us is that Andruw Jones is teetering in the dangerous spot of being on 5.5 percent of the known ballots. If he drops below 5 percent – which seems likely at this point – he will be removed from next year’s ballot, which seems outrageous.
Consider the following stats and which is more valuable in the whole:
A career DH who was useless in the field, meaning he would be a monster liability to half the teams in baseball, with a WAR of 68.3, a .312 career average with two batting titles, 309 homers, 1,261 RBIs and seven all-star game appearances.
A 10-time golf glove center fielder – who played no worse than the third most important defensive position in the game so well in his prime, his team was comfortable awful defensive outfielders who could mash on each side of him to help the lineup – with a WAR of 62.8, a .254 career average, 434 homers, 1,289 RBIs, and five all-star game appearances.
Hey, we have said multiple times that we believe too many very good-to-great players are getting in rather than the truly elite and generational players get into the Halls these days. And that’s OK.
But there’s no way the difference between the two stat lines listed above of Martinez and Andruw Jones is the gap between potentially making the Hall and likely getting the boot from the ballot in the first year.
Someone tell me how that’s right?
Super contest idea
OK, some of the ways we have connected with a slew of you folks is the contests we have offered.
There’s the annual Bowling for Bowls of Bowl Game Success (Bowler Optional), as well as the Masterfully Mastering the Masters Challenge (which has led us to contests for all the majors). We have had some fun with the Mad the Madness First-Out, Last-In Contest and the Feeling the Draft (while drinking a draught) Draft Deal.
For the most part interest has grown in each year and led us to some fun back and froths.
We have not had a Super Bowl contest. Why? Because, well, it’s the Super Bowl for one.
And two, if we asked New England minus-5.5, who you got, well, we’d need a slew of tie-breakers, right? Right.
Also of note is that we are going to spend a big chunk of next week, breaking this game down from a slew of angles. But if we started doing that today, how often can we tell you that Tom Brady has thrown 209 passes in the Super Bowl.
Nick Foles has thrown as many Super Bowl passes as you, Stewwie and Spy combined. (That is unless part-time Chattanooga resident Peyton Manning or The Honors regular Matt Ryan has stopped by.)
Anyhoo, who’s up for a Super Bowl contest with, say, 10 prop bets that could range from the coin toss to the length of the anthem to guessing the passing yards of Brady to predicting the number of NFL-related Trump Tweets during the game to Justin Timberlake’s first song during the halftime show to number of commercials featuring Peyton (and believe it or not Eli).
Vegas has props on all of those, so as John Belushi – who was born on this day – said when he was trying to lead the good dudes from Delta House into the mix, “Who’s with me?”
(Bluto: Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no. And it ain’t over now Otter: Germans? Boone: Forget it. He’s rolling.)
This and that
– Speaking of baseball, it’s now official that A-Rod is joining ESPN to be the analyst on the Sunday Night Baseball game on that network. He will still work with Fox as well. And man, all the hand-wringing about Bonds and Clemens and the Hall, and somewhere along the way, A-Rod – who unlike the other two actually admitted to using steroids – has become the face of those covering the sport less than a decade than almost being chased out of the sport. Crazy.
– Trae Young of Oklahoma is a joy to watch play. He dropped 26 on No. 5 Kansas on just nine shots. Yes, nine. This was the next game after shooting it 30-plus times Saturday when he matched the Big 12 scoring record with 48. Wowser.
– Here’s an interesting look at seven college football teams that could close quickly in recruiting. Among them is Tennessee, which makes sense. Also of note, the picture with the story was a photo of Jeremy Pruitt and Phillip Fulmer. In this short time, has Phillip Fulmer become the most well-known AD in the country?
– Toys R Us announced the closing of 175 stores nationwide. The list can be found here. That number represents almost 20 percent of the entire chain. None of the stores listed were local, but the Toys R Us stores in the hometowns of the 5-at-10 (Smyrna, Ga.) and the Mrs. 5-at-10 (Fayetteville, Ga.) are being closed. (Side question: Did you know the plural of Toys R Us to be Toys R Us’s, according to The Chicago Manual of Style and New Fowler’s Modern English Usage? Makes sense because the tradition ‘es’ after an ‘s’ would be Toys R Uses and if you followed the pattern of other words that end in ‘us’ like octopus or alumnus, that would be Toys R Usi and even Toys R I. Man English is a strange language.)
– You know the drill, when TFP ace sports columnist and college hoops guru Mark Wiedmer writes on college basketball, we are in. Here’s his thorough and well done look at the Vols drumming Vandy in the first half and surviving a second-half storm. UT is a tournament team and Rick Barnes likely deserves national coach of the year consideration after the Vols were picked No. 13 in the 14-team SEC before the season and are not 14-5 and No. 22 in the country.
– The NCAA has announced it will investigate Michigan State and its involvement in all the allegations and sexual misdeeds committed by Dr. Larry Nassar. Here’s more.
– On Golic and Wingo, future Hall of Famer Joe Thomas gave his Cleveland Browns a sound tip. The Browns have nine figures in cap space. Thomas suggested signing free agent QB Kirk Cousins and spending picks 1 and 4 on the best players on the board. A Browns offseason with Cousins, Minkah Fitzpatrick and either Saquon Barkley or Bradley Chubb would be pretty stout. Heck, even Kevin Costner would approve. (We love the draft. You know this.)
Today’s questions
Super Bowl viewing: At a gathering or at home so you can pay better attention to the game? Discuss.
Speaking of baseball, the hall, PEDs and A-Rod, do you think Bonds and Clemens would have a better chance to get into Cooperstown or redirect their narrative if they admitted to using PEDs at this point? Discuss.
As for today, the Apple Computer Inc. unveils the Macintosh on this day in 1984.
The first canned beer – Krueger’s Cream Ale – is sold by the Krueger Brewing Co.
Neil Diamond is 77 today. Ernest Borgnine would have been 101. Frederick the Great, a former king of Prussia, was born on this day in 1712. (If Frederick the Great had siblings, man, it would stink to be Terry the Mediocre or Lawrence the Pretty Good, right?) Ray Stevens is 79 today. John Belushi would have been 69 today.
Winston Churchill died on this day in 1965. Larry Fine, the middle one of the Three Stooges died on this day in 1975. Ted Bundy died on this day in 1989.
As for the Rushmore, and since Mary Lou Retton is 50 today, Rushmore of U.S. gymnasts.
Go and do not forget the mailbag.