The “controversy” over Brett Myers and not Cole Hamels starting opening day for the Phillies is a good example of why spring training is too long. People have to reach hard for things to write and talk about. No, it doesn’t matter who starts opening day. What’s the over/under on how many regular season days will it take for this to be completely forgotten? Three? Four? Take the under.
This story falls under the “player numbering,” umbrella of nonsense, most common, for some reason, when talking about pitching rotations and wide-receiver corps.
Surely you’ve heard: “They’re good, sure, but who’s their number one?…. “He’s a number four or five guy at best.”… ”You can’t give a guy like that, who’s s number two or three, number one money.”… ”He’s talented, sure, but does he have a number one mentality?”…
This just in: The guy on a team who pitches (or receives) the best is that team’s number one. He may be the same guy the team considered number one at the beginning of the year, but he may not, and very often isn’t. It has probably never happened, in the 120-plus-year history of major league baseball, that a team started the year with a rotation with a clear No. 1-2-3-4-5 and those five guys actually pitched that way. If it has happened, it was just dumb luck.
If you pooled all the pitchers in the big leagues and then randomly distributed them among 30 teams, obviously some teams would get two pitchers (or more) better than any one on other teams. And even that would be based on past performance and reputation, even though pitching is the least reliable and predictable basic element in any team sport. But every team would, obviously, have a “number one”, or at least a guy they ran out there opening day. So what?
That’s the point, really- what does this have to do with anything? It’s just people trying to sound sports-savvy without saying anything at all. It’s just noise.
The wonderful-but-sometimes-silly John Marzano said the other day that pitchers have to learn to be number ones, have to mature and grow into the role. He used Tom Glavine as an example.
I’m guessing a key moment in Glavine’s “growth,” into a number one was when he got separated from Greg Maddux. If Glavine had stayed with the Mets, all that growth would have regressed real fast the instant they signed Johan Santana.
IN OTHER NEWS: When the PIAA added the School District if Philadelphia four years ago, it had to redo the basketball tournament to accomodate District 12, aka the Philly Public League. They’ll have to redo it again next year, when the Philly Catholic League joins.
The hope is that experience teaches the honchos to do a better job this time. Some of the breaks with tradition in the current format were necessary, such as moving some District Three teams to the western half of the brackert even though geographically, they’re in the eastern half of the state. Even D12 teams have been moved out west, which really means there’s no such thing as “out west,” i.e., the bracket is no longer geographic, which was probably necessary.
But the current setup doesn’t begin to adequately allow for traditional regions of power around the state, and thus creates some extreme inequities. In Boys’ AAA, Lancaster Catholic entered states as the No. 5 seed from District Three. It beat Hershey in the district fifth-place game. That meant Hershey drew the District 4 champion, Selinsgrove, which it blew out and held to 28 points. Catholic, meanwhile, drew Communications Tech, which is only the Philly Public League champion. Should Lancaster Catholic have tanked the fifth-place game?
Pre-District 12, the best big-school boys’ teams in the eastern half almost always came from District 1 (southeastern Pa. other than Philadelphia) and District Three (Harrisburg, Lancaster, York, Reading etc.). The PIAA acknowledged that truth, to the extent it could, by keeping D1 and 3 apart in the early rounds of states. Since there are no longer geographic considerations, it should have been easier to keep them apart under the new setup. But the new setup seems to go out of its way to put them together. Example: In AAAA, fourth-place finishers from 1 and 3 (Penn Wood and Elizabethtown) played each other in the first round. District Three sixth-place (Mechanicsburg, which E-town beat in districts) was sent out west. Mechanicsburg is still playing as this is written, and E-town isn’t.
Yes, I sound like a homer because I’m talking about Lancaster County teams getting tough draws. That’s just because those are the situations I’m familiar with. Similar stuff goes on throughout all eight brackets. Much of it is unavoidable. Not all of it.
The Philly Catholic League, especially in girls’ hoops, includes some very high-powered teams. If the PIAA doesn’t reaslistically factor that in to the next bracket, we could see the best two teams in a given bracket in the entire state playing in, say, the second round.
AND FINALLY: If Brett Favre is actually retiring, the thing I’ll remember most about him is incredible physical toughness. You could see it, especially in his prime, in his ability - his willingness, really - to stand in the pocket for the extra second a given play required, knowing it meant he’d be getting his head taken off. More tangibly, it’s what made him the most durable and winningest (in the simple terms of career regular-season wins) QB ever.
As for where he ranks in the pantheon, I probably don’t have him as high as many. Montana, Unitas, Elway, Marino and the very underrated (it says here) Steve Young have to be ahead of him. Tom Brady and Peyton Manning will eventually be, if they aren’t already. Favre just played too many bad games, probably as many as those other guys did combined. Not that he wasn’t great, a hall of famer, and a guy who’ll leave a void if he’s really gone.
