Sports Illustrated announced yesterday that San Francisco Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner will be its Sportsman of the Year for 2014. Regular readers know that I stand in awe of the post-season performance, and in particular, the World Series performance of Bumgarner throughout this past season's MLB Playoffs and World Series. I made a case that Bumgarner is the greatest World Series pitcher, over the course of a career, in all World Series history, and I got very few arguments when I did so.
This is one year where Sports Illustrated most definitely got it right.
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The Golden Era Committee of the Baseball Hall of Fame made their long awaited announcement yesterday, and the results were somewhat surprising: Nobody was elected by the Committee to the Hall of Fame. Not Jim Kaat, not Richie Allen, not Minnie Minoso, and not Gil Hodges. Nobody.
Just as I predicted, Facebook erupted with rancorous posts and comments from the legion of Gil Hodges supporters out there. As for me, I am going to try to follow the advice of friend Joe Risacher and stay out of Hall of Fame debates. To those in despair over this, I say, as might Aaron Rodgers, Relax. The sun will come up tomorrow, Obla Di Obla Da Life Goes On, and be very thankful that the biggest problem in your life is whether or not some ball player is or is not in his sports's Hall of Fame.
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Like many of you, I watched NBC's live telecast of "Peter Pan" last Thursday evening.
It was a pleasant enough experience. Allison Williams, with whom I was completely unfamiliar, was charming enough in the title role, Christopher Walken was miscast as Captain Hook and seemed to phone it in, and there was the cachet of seeing a live performance on television that made it intriguing to watch.
All in all, as I said, a pleasant viewing experience. Like so many things on TV these days, NBC promoted different hash tags in the corner of the screen throughout so that viewers could Tweet, Facebook, and use other forms of social media as they watched the show. Out of curiosity, when the show was over, I went to Twitter and entered some of the hash tags to see what people said, and I was shocked, although perhaps I shouldn't have been, over the viciousness and meanness of the comments made. I didn't tote them up, but if I had to guess, I would say that barely one in twenty comments had anything good to say about the show, and no one stopped with a simple "I don't like it". Their comments had to be mean, vicious, and snarky to the nth degree. I mean, if the show is THAT bad in your eyes, why are you even watching it in the first place?
It made me resolve to be a lot more cognizant of some if the things that I put out there on Twitter, Facebook, and, yes, The Grandstander.
Oh, and one last comment on Allison Williams. In addition to being attractive and talented, she has to have the most beautiful set of teeth that I have ever seen. Honest to God, her teeth were absolutely dazzling. Beautiful choppers!
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