Wednesday, December 12, 2012
2013 Results: Bonds, Clemens, Piazza and Biggio are elected to the Hall of Merit!
(bbtf)
Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Piazza and Craig Biggio have been elected to the Hall of Merit!
The timing for our first year electing 4 candidates could not have worked out better, since class of 2013 is the strongest in terms of electees that we’ve ever had. The top of the 1934 ballot included Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Eddie Collins, Pop Lloyd, Smokey Joe Williams and Cristobal Torriente, but only 2 were elected.
Bonds and Clemens were each unanimous at 1 and 2. I believe that’s the first ...
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1 2 >Our chief weapon is surprise. Surprise and fear, fear and surprise, our two weapons are fear and surprise and ruthless efficiency. Our three weapons are fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.
Frankly I find dynasties to be hugely boring. I seem to remember a similar conversation in the early 90s. Bird and Magic were retired, the Lakers and Celtics sucked, the Yankees were awful, the Steelers were mediocre, and the Packers were bad. But you still had mini-dynasties from the A's, Jays, 49ers, Pistons, and of course the Bulls were beginning their run.
Depends on your definition. For me it's an "era". A "dynasty" to me is the Yankees, Canadiens, Celtics, the teams winning multiple championships in bulk over many years with vastly different personnel. Certainly the first dozen years of this century has belonged to the Pats but for my definition that's not a "dynasty." YMMV.
the pro-tsar argument?
for a sportswriter, that's a new one
The Patriots have played in five of the last ten Super Bowls, winning three of them. That's not a dynasty?
Another way to phrase it is that they've been to 2 Super Bowls in the last 5 years, and didn't win either. I think the Pats were clearly a dynasty from 2001-2005 but there just isn't a dynasty in the NFL right now (and that's fine).
In basketball I think we are closer. Over the last 14 years the Lakers (5) and Spurs (4) have won 9 titles. The Lakers stink this year but the Spurs have the best record in the NBA. And we may very well be at the beginning of a Miami Heat dynasty.
The Lakers and Yankees have each only missed one of those years. This statement has nothing to do with the other two teams.
I have some peanut butter in my car, you can use that. Well, on my car.
By this standard the Lakers and Celtics are still going strong (I mean, they can't both win absolutely every year, but they've won three of the last five NBA titles, and been in the thick of it in other recent seasons). The Cowboys, as noted, were perhaps a dynasty from the early 70s through the mid-90s, but are deader right now than Richard III.
The only question you've left unanswered is how big a gap between runs of success you'd allow, and how long a run has to be before you consider it a dynasty.
Seems to me that the Lakers qualify as an almost continuous dynasty that stretches back to the first year they joined the BAA (now NBA) in the late 40's. In the 64 years they've been in existence, they've only missed the playoffs 5 times, and twice in a row only once (1974/75 and 1975/76). By contrast, the Celtics have missed the playoffs 16 times in their 66 year history, including one stretch from 95-96 to 00-01 where they missed it every year.
OTOH for dominant dynasties no team can come close to the Celtics: 11 championships in 13 years, broken only by a loss in the 57-58 finals when Bill Russell got hurt, and a loss in the Eastern finals in 66-67 when the 76ers put up one of the half dozen or so greatest teams in history. That's a record I doubt will ever be broken.
In baseball, the Yankees are the most obvious dynasty, and for short range runnerup I'd have to go with the Braves of the past 22 years. But it's hard to really compare baseball dynasties between the pre-division era, since it's so much easier to qualify for the postseason, and yet so much harder to survive it.
And the NFL is even tougher, due to the draft and the relatively short careers. For dominance, two teams stand out, the 1946-55 Browns of the AAFC/NFL (7 championships and 10 title game appearances) and the Packers from 1960 through 1967 (5 championships in 6 appearances, and an 11-2-1 record in one of the two years they didn't make it). For long term success, it's hard to beat the Cowboys from the mid-60's through the mid-90's, and for continuous dominance / near-dominance in the modern era, I'd go with the last 12 years of the Patriots.
Same. Few things kill my interest in sports more than postseasons that seem like a foregone conclusion, when the same handful of teams win almost every year and no one else seems to have a chance. I find the current break from the dynasties to be refreshing.
Besides, the NBA has never gone more than a few years without a dynasty since the 70's, so this article may be a bit premature. I could easily see the Heat winning the next few titles and rendering this entire conversation moot.
Aren't you a Yankee and Celtic fan? Hmmmm.... ;-)
From '70-'82, they won 2 Super Bowls, played in 3 more, and played in 5 more conference championships.
From '92-'95, they won 3 Super Bowls in 4 seasons (just like the Patriots did from '01-'04), and lost the NFC Championship game the other season.
From '48/49 - 53/54 they won 5 titles in 6 years.
From '79/80 - '87/88 they won 5 titles in 9 years, and played for 2 more titles. (From '79/80 - '90/91 they played for 9 of the 12 championships).
Comparing them to the Yankees and Celtics, all time:
NYY: 27 titles in 112 seasons (.241 titles/sesason)
BOS: 17 in 67 (.254)
LAL: 16 in 65 (.246)
(*) Though it's extremely unlikely.
What about 2000-2010? They played in 7 of 11 Finals and won 5 titles.
He's a classic frontrunner.
UNC women's soccer: in the 31 times the NCAA national championship has been played since 1982, they've won 21 times. This includes their repeat wins from 1986-1994 and the stretch from 1982 to 2000 where they only didn't win three times. They've never gone three years without winning a championship (and they're currently defending champions).
Aren't you a Yankee and Celtic fan? Hmmmm.... ;-)
The Yanks forever, since I was born in New York in a largely Italian neighborhood where everyone was a Yankee fan.
But the Celtics only since the Bird era. I hated them prior to that because they always beat the #### out of my favorite teams (the Warriors, the Nats and the Sixers) during the Russell era, when Wilt Chamberlain was my favorite player. (Hey, I was a gunner myself, and Russell's skills were way too subtle.)
I've never rooted for Notre Dame (until I started selling their posters), Dallas, the Lakers, Green Bay, the Unitas era Colts, Southern Cal or Duke, despite the fact that Duke is my alma mater. I've rooted for Carolina since the days of the Underground Railroad, and I rooted for UCLA during the Wooden years because they kicked Duke in the teeth and played a style of ball that I liked. And I've always liked Indiana because I love the campus and the town.
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The most dominant dynasty has been UCLA basketball in the 60s and 70s. I guess I could see someone matching their 88-game win streak (*), but no one's going to touch either their 10 NCs in 12 years between 1964-75, or their seven straight NCs between 1967-73.
UCLA during the Wooden era had several enormous advantages that could never be duplicated today or in the future.
First, they attracted the cream of the California and West Coast high school crop in an era when eastern colleges seldom recruited outside their own geographic area.
Second, UCLA had a great reputation among black players that enabled them also to recruit top prospects outside the West Coast, like Lew Alcindor from New York.
Third, secondary western schools like UNLV hadn't started to compete on a serious level.
Fourth, the southern colleges were either still lily white or had just started limited recruitment of black players. This meant that UCLA had little to worry about from the SEC or the ACC or the then-SWC.
Fifth, the PAC-8 / PAC-10 regular season champ got an automatic bid, and didn't have to go through a conference tournament. This kept UCLA from being downseeded in the regional due to the sort of flukish upsets that are commonplace now.
Sixth, you didn't have players jumping to the pros every year, which meant that the Wooden teams had a continuity to them that's unheard of in the modern era.
And finally, the NCAA tournament brackets were determined by geography rather than by national seeding. This effectively gave UCLA a free pass to the Final Four every year.
So no, I don't think that Wooden's record is ever going to be broken, neither the win streak nor the championship run.
Andy, your exhaustive list left out: "Gilbert, Dr. Sam"
On "Hang Up and Listen", Stefan Fatsis listed the All-Time most NCAA/NAIA Championships by school. They are:
1. UCLA (108) - makes sense.
2. Stanford (99) - of course
3. USC (98) - no doubt
4. Abilene Christian (58) - wait, what?
5. Kenyon (57) - swimming, okay
6. Simon Fraser (55) - aren't they in British Columbia?
7. Adams State (51) - huh
Abilene Christian has won 31 NCAA track and field championships.
24 of the 32 NCAA Rifle championships have been won by either West Virginia or Alaska-Fairbanks. They are the Lakers and Celtics of NCAA Rifle Shooting.
Lindenwood (Mo.) has won the last nine NAIA shooting championships.
Except their 88 game (!!!!!) winning streak was from 1971-74. By then, the powers of the SEC and ACC (primarily Kentucky, North Carolina, NC State, and Maryland) had plenty of black players.
Apropos of whatever (mostly that UCLA played a representative intersectional schedule), here's UCLA's 1973-74 nonconference schedule:
Arkansas
Maryland (powerhouse)
SMU
NC State (powerhouse, eventual NC)
St. Bonnies
Wyoming
Michigan
Iowa
Notre Dame (bye-bye win streak)
Santa Clara
Notre Dame again
That's a helluva tough road.
ACU is Div 2 or NAIA
Adams State is also a great track and cross-country school in Div 2
Ignoring the 1982 strike, the 49ers won 10+ games every year from 1981-1999. They won 5 Super Bowls, played in 10 conference championships (including 6 in 7 years), and led the league in point differential seven times. The Pats have had a great 12 year run, but I don't see how they top the Niners.
Kentucky had 1 black player in 1970-71, Tom Payne, who left after the season for the NBA. They had 3 in 1971-72, two guys who walked on from the football team and Greg Smith who played 4 minutes in 2 games. They had 1 in 1972-73, Reggie Warford, who played in a total of 50 games during his 4 years on the team, In 1973-74 UK had 2 black players, Warford and freshman Merion Haskins. During all four seasons (except 1970-71 when Payne scored 473 points & was all SEC) the vast majority of playing time and points went to white players. I'm not bragging about this, I'm just stating the facts. I can't really speak for the other schools mentioned but Kentucky, at least, did not have many black players during those years.
Point conceded. That's the problem with doing this #### off the top of my head. Ironic since I kind of liked the Montana 49ers (at least in the Super Bowls) but don't care much for Brady's Patriots.
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Fourth, the southern colleges were either still lily white or had just started limited recruitment of black players. This meant that UCLA had little to worry about from the SEC or the ACC or the then-SWC.
Except their 88 game (!!!!!) winning streak was from 1971-74. By then, the powers of the SEC and ACC (primarily Kentucky, North Carolina, NC State, and Maryland) had plenty of black players.
Just Plain Joe's already deconstructed the Kentucky rosters for those years, and clearly I should have said "black star players". I should note a few exceptions....
NC State: David Thompson
Maryland: Len Bias, John Lucas
North Carolina: Charlie Scott, Bob McAdoo
But their tournament run began in 1963-64 and ran through 1972-73, with only one break in 1965-66 when Gail Goodrich and Walt Hazzard had left and Alcindor was on the freshman team. All of those players above, except Scott, didn't come along until the 70's.
And of course their recruiting edge over the SEC/ACC/SWC among blacks was but one of many advantages I listed above. To take the most ridiculous example of them all, since the ACC only sent its tournament winner to the NCAA tournament, that meant that in 1974 Maryland was out, even though it was ranked 4th in the country at that point.
On a similar note, Anson Dorrance coaching the U.S. women's soccer team and funneling basically any top high school women's soccer recruit into the UNC program was, for many years, the prime reason for their dynasty as well.
Bottom line for both UCLA men's basketball and UNC women's soccer: if you can contrive to get essentially all the top talent to come to your school by hook or by crook, you're going to have unparalleled success.
as Tarkanian once said, "the NCAA is so pissed off at Kentucky, they're going to put Cleveland State on probation"
More Sam Gilbert and UCLA
**With athletic scholarships allowed, but with athletes expected to take and pass real courses under the same standards as non-athletes. I'm not even sure that this has been the case at even a single school in a single time frame. It certainly wasn't at Duke at the time I was there.
**With athletic scholarships allowed, but with athletes expected to take and pass real courses under the same standards as non-athletes. I'm not even sure that this has been the case at even a single school in a single time frame. It certainly wasn't at Duke at the time I was there.
Highly unlikely.
College sports as we know them are nearing an end as a revolutionary verdict or settlement in the NCAA/O'Bannon/Oscar/B. Russell case is a near-certainty. So those who enjoy them as they are better get with the enjoying, because it's almost over.
Maryland: Len Bias, John Lucas
North Carolina: Charlie Scott, Bob McAdoo
Len Elmore at Maryland, too, but point taken.
Goose Givens at Kentucky, but that's at the tail end of the Wooden era.
Bias is way later. Carolina had Walter Davis and Phil Ford shortly after Wooden left.
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