Sports Then and Now

At 80-years-old, Jack McKeon is back as manager of the Florida Marlins.

I’m not exactly sure what it means for baseball that 68-year-old Davey Johnson is back in the dugout as a major league manager and of the two managers hired in the last week he is the youngest by a whopping 12 years.

The hiring of 80-year-old Jack McKeon as manager of the Florida Marlins and Johnson as skipper for the Washington Nationals is an interesting twist for a game that in recent years had been trending toward giving young coaches a chance to manage in the majors.

Both Johnson and McKeon have enjoyed long and successful careers in baseball, but neither is the answer for the long haul. Johnson has reportedly agreed to manage the Nationals the remainder of this season and through the 2012 campaign, but if the team doesn’t continue to make strides, you know that certainly could change at any time.

McKeon will likely simply finish out the season for the Marlins, who have had nine managers (including McKeon now twice) in the last 11 years.

Some have compared the return of McKeon to what happened in 2003 when he replaced Jeff Torborg after a 16-22 start and went on to lead Florida to a 75-49 record and the World Series championship. Read the rest of this entry →

MLB Commissioner Bud Selig is considering a proposal that have two 15-team leagues and add two teams to the postseason.

Major League Baseball is reportedly discussing a plan to realign the American and National League, by sending a team from the 16-team National League to the 14-team American League, to even up the two leagues at 15 teams each.

The plan also calls for abolishing all divisions and adding a 5th team to the playoffs in both leagues.

To quote Jeff Goldblum in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, this realignment plan is the worst idea in the long, sad history of bad ideas.

The first issue is how to schedule the regular season. With 15 teams in each league, there would have to be one team that takes a few days off while the other 14 teams in each league play each other in a three-or-four game series.

Yes, the baseball season is a grind, but fans are used to watching their teams playing every day of the week and could easily forgot that their team is on the field playing a game if they had more than one day off. Read the rest of this entry →

Lee May

The June Sports Then and Now Vintage Athlete of the Month is one of the forgotten sluggers of baseball history.

For more than a decade, Lee May was one of the most feared sluggers in baseball.  He blasted 20 or more home runs and drove in 80 or more runs for 11 straight seasons while playing for the Cincinnati Reds, Houston Astros and Baltimore Orioles. Read the rest of this entry →

The Steve Bartman foul ball is just one of many unlucky moments for the Chicago Cubs and their fans.

Today is Friday, the 13th, a date that superstitious people believe is unlucky.

With that in mind, here is a list of the 13 most unlucky teams in professional sports.

These are teams that have not won championships in the past few decades, have suffered numerous devastating losses, and fan bases that believe that their team is cursed.

13. Phoenix Suns (NBA)
The Suns have more regular season wins than any other NBA franchise without an NBA championship, as there have 19 seasons where the team won at least 50 games, three of those of at least 60 wins, and been to the NBA Finals twice, only to lose both times.

Suns fans believe the reason for their bad luck stems for the 1969 NBA Draft where the Suns and Milwaukee Bucks were up for the number one pick, which would be decided by a coin flip.

The winner of the coin toss would get the #1 pick and would select Lew Alcindor, now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Suns executive Jerry Colangelo called “heads”, but the coin landed “tails” and the Bucks won the rights for the #1 pick and of course picked Alcindor, who led Milwaukee to a NBA title just two years later.

12. Philadelphia Eagles (NFL)
The Eagles have gone over a half a century without a NFL title, their last championship coming in 1960.

Most of the Eagles’ heartbreak has come in the 21st century as the team has made five appearances in the NFC Championship Game, only winning once in 2004, where they advance to Super Bowl XXXIX and lost to the New England Patriots 24-21.

Philadelphia also appeared in Super Bowl XV but lost to the Oakland Raiders and lost the famous “Fog Bowl” to the Chicago Bears in a loss that many Eagle fans feel cost them another appearance in the Super Bowl. Read the rest of this entry →

Happy 86th Birthday to Yogi Berra.

Today marks the 86th birthday for one of the true iconic sports figures of the 20th Century. While Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra was a Hall of Fame player, what has made him part of the American lexicon is the array of statements, some of which he really said and others that just sound like he probably said them, that are quoted by people and attributed to Berra all the time.

Here are just a few of the “best of the best” Yogi-isms.

“I want to thank you for making this day necessary”

“It’s like déjà vu all over again.”

“When you get to a fork in the road, take it”

“Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded.”

“We have a good time together, even when we’re not together”

“Our similarities are different”

“We make too many wrong mistakes”

“Slump? I ain’t in no slump… I just ain’t hitting”

“You can observe a lot by watching”

“It gets late early around here…”

“A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore”

“If I didn’t wake up I’d still be sleeping”

“Always go to other people’s funerals otherwise they won’t go to yours”

“You have to give 100 percent in the first half of the game. If that isn’t enough, in the second half, you have to give what is left.”

“Never answer an anonymous letter”

And perhaps his most famous saying:

“It ain’t over ’til it’s over”

Here’s hoping that it won’t be over for Yogi Berra for many years to come. Happy 86th Birthday Yogi!

Justin Verlander tossed the second no-hitter of the season last Saturday.

The Major League Baseball season is barely a month old and it is already clear that the pitching dominance that was evident a year ago is going to stick around for a while. In fact, if 2010 was known as the “Year of the Pitcher”, 2011 looks to be “Year of the Pitcher – Part 2” and unlike most movie sequels where the second attempt usually falls short of the original, this sequel might be even greater than the first one.

The no-hitters thrown during the last week by Francisco Liriano and Justin Verlander offer just a taste of what could be an unlimited amount of pitching excellence.

When analyzing the numbers, it really is amazing how drastic offensive performance has declined across major league baseball over the last five years and is now more in line with what was seen 20 years ago and in some cases as far back as the pre-designated hitter era.

That leads to the question of whether what is being experienced is really a case of the quality of pitching rising to greater heights or merely a re-balancing of the game to where it would have always been had it not been for the performance enhancing drug era.

But whatever the reason, there is no denying that the statistics for pitchers are improving and those for hitters are declining.

Consider that so far in 2011 the average number of runs scored per team per game is 4.19 and the league-wide batting average is .249. The last time the league-wide average for runs per game was comparable was in 1992 when the average was 4.12 and the league-wide batting average was .256. The league-wide Earned Run Average (ERA) was 3.75.

Just two years later, in what is considered to be the start of the steroid era in 1994, the league-wide average jumped to 4.92 runs per team per game and the league-wide batting average was .270. The ERA for the league also jumped to 4.51.

Just as recently as 2006, teams were averaging 4.86 runs per game with a .269 average while the league-wide ERA was 4.53.

After a league-wide ERA of 4.08 a year ago, the best in the league for a season since 1992, hurlers across baseball are on pace this season for an ERA of 3.82.

If the current league-wide batting average of .249 continues for the entire season, it will be the first time since 1972 when the league had an average below .250. During that season, the league hit .244 while teams averaged 3.69 runs per game and .65 home runs per game. Read the rest of this entry →