TWEETS AND TAKES

Twitter’s got its 140-character limit and that’s just fine. But sometimes a little more elaboration is called for . . .

When 140 characters aren’t enough.

6/14/17 Dale Robertson @sportyWHINEguy Third loss in a row for the Astros? Oh, here we go … No, stop that! Fact: After winning 11 in a row, the Astros went 2-6 through Tuesday night’s loss to the Rangers. But such is the rhythm of baseball. Their 44-22 pace still translated into a 108-win season. We could live with that. Injuries to Dallas Keuchel (neck) and Lance McCullers (lower back) are something to worry about. Keuchel and McCullers are 15-1 combined and those kind of numbers aren’t replaceable. But the following sentence from Jake Kaplan’s story Wednesday is comforting: “The Astros’ lead in the American League West fell (italics mine) to 11 games.” We’ve dealt with worse. 6/14/17 Dale Robertson @sportywineguy Monster Roland Garros for Rafael Nadal. Greatest clay courts player ever by a longshot #rafa And, possibly, the greatest player period, but that’s complicated. Most current fans readily concede GOAT status to Roger Federer, whose record 18 Grand Slam championships are three more than Nadal has accumulated and are more evenly divided among the four tournaments (see the breakdown in “Numbers” on page 19), although he has conquered the French Open only once. Also, Fed has owned Nadal of late, winning five of their matches in a row going back to late 2015. However, Nadal still leads comfortably – 23-14 – in career head-to-head meetings and has himself twice gone on 5-0 runs against his Swiss rival. Further, the Spaniard has won six of the last seven times they have faced off in a Slam and nine of 12 matches total. Those numbers make a pretty strong case for him being proclaimed king of tennis in the 21st century. There’s nothing magical about Fed’s 18 major titles. Rod Laver won 11 despite missing six years worth of Slams in the prime of his career because he’d turned professional after his calendar-year Grand Slam in 1962 and was banned from entering. His first year back in the mix, with the advent of tennis’ Open Era, the Rocket claimed another calendar-year Slam. How many of the 24 he had to sit out might he have won?