STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND POSADA VOTE, TITLE DROUGHT FOR THE LIONS & DO YOU STILL THINK DANIEL’S A GIANT? …
Ivoted for Joe Mauer to make it to Cooperstown this time, and am glad he made it. But if Mauer is there as a catcher, than so, too, should Jorge Posada. I didn’t understand the voting from my fellow members of the BBWAA when Posada was there and gone from the ballot, and don’t understand it now.
Posada played 17 years and finished with a lifetime batting average of .273, and hit 20 or more home runs in his career seven times.
And, oh by the way, he played for the last great Yankee dynasty, including the best Yankee team of them all, in 1998.
He belongs in the Hall of Fame the way Donald Arthur Mattingly does, one hundred percent.
And I sure do hope Billy Wagner, someone else for whom I voted, finds five more votes the next time the ballots go out, at the end of 2024.
● If the Lions can win two more games and win their first Super Bowl, it will be the pro football equivalent of the Red Sox finally winning a World Series in 2004, their first since 1918, and the Cubs winning it all in 2016, 108 years after 1908.
That’s what 1957 feels like in Detroit.
● We know how well the Knicks have played over the past month or so.
Now, over the next few months, we’re going to find out just how good they really are.
And if this Knicks team ever does make a deep run in the playoffs, the signing of Jalen Brunson will officially go down as one of the great free agent signings in the history of sports in the city.
● By the time the Yankees get to Tampa, Yankee fans are going to start to get the idea, just from the coverage, that Marcus Stroman is the pint-sized version of Gerrit Cole.
● We’ve seen Josh Allen in this NFL postseason, and not just this postseason.
We’ve seen the work of Mr. Mahomes and Mr. Jackson.
Now tell me you’re still convinced — or were ever convinced — that the Giants’ guy, Daniel Jones, can be one of those guys.
● The Yankees clearly think they can bullpen their way back to the end of October, and stop me if you’ve heard that one before.
● Gee, lucky thing they broke up Breen and Van Gundy and Jackson, right?
● If you love college basketball, and that means men’s or women’s college hoops, how could you not love that women’s game between South Carolina and LSU the other night?
● The much younger player, Carlos Alcaraz, beat Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon final, and that’s exactly what happened in the semis of the Australian when Jannik Sinner got the GOAT.
● Finally today:
We celebrated the first birthday of our first grandchild on Jan. 21.
My Pops, Bene Lupica, who passed away last spring, would have turned 99 on Jan. 27.
You know all that stuff about the circle of life?
It was as real over the past week in our family as it’s ever been.