Remember Vin Scully? He’s the long-time voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers who retired in 2016 after a 66-year career broadcasting the team. He was also the final link to the former Brooklyn Dodgers upon his leaving the broadcast booth.
If you’re making a movie about his life, you would need someone who looks like him to play the part and look no further than The Great One. Yes, Wayne Gretzky could play Scully. I’m not kidding — go look at a photo of Gretzky and then take a look at Scully. Tell me I’m lying. It’s uncanny, isn’t it? Just throwing it out there.
Anyway:
There will be more
So Jon Gruden is out as head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders because of some really crappy stuff he said in e-mails sent around between 2011 and 2018. Should he have said it? Of course not. The Internet is forever and things will catch up with you. I’m sure people will be able to dig up some crap on me if they looked hard enough and use it against me. Only a matter of time, really.
Did Gruden need to go? I don’t know — I’m not in the locker room and I wasn’t part of the discussion. If he lost the locker room, that’s a sign that you need to leave. You can’t coach players who won’t play for you, simple as that. But this is the National Football League, a league which has been rife with hypocrisy from time immemorial. Gruden isn’t the first person employed by either the league or one of its teams to say or do something stupid and he sure as hell won’t be the last. He paid for it with his job.
And don’t worry — there will be more of these sorts of instances and you can bet that everyone employed in gridiron football who’s ever sent an e-mail is frantically trying to delete anything ever said that could be construed as offensive. Meanwhile, Eminem, who’s made a career out of using homophobic language — similar to what Gruden wrote in some of his e-mails — will be performing at the Super Bowl halftime show. Good work, gang. Isn’t whataboutism fun?
A great way to end it
There are very few boxing matches which live up to the hype. Ones I remember include Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Mike Tyson-Evander Holyfield I (not the one where Tyson tried to rip Holyfield’s ear off) and anything ever served up by Micky Ward and the late Arturo Gatti. The latter was literally two guys beating the formaldehyde out of each other for nearly three dozen rounds over three fights in one of the greatest trilogies not just in boxing but in professional sport. Period.
You can now throw the third bout between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder in there. The two met for the third time for Fury’s World Boxing Council (WBC) heavyweight championship and it was a very entertaining bout with Fury knocking Wilder out in the 11th round. This after Wilder knocked Fury down twice in the fight. You only get a trilogy if you need to finish something and this needed to be finished in the ring. The first bout in 2018 ended in a draw while Fury won the second bout by knockout.
There’s been talk that Fury went over to pay tribute to Wilder but Wilder wanted nothing to do with it, reportedly saying he wouldn’t show any respect. Fury responded to that by calling Wilder a sore loser and an idiot. I did see some video showing Fury going over to talk and Wilder almost waving him away so maybe there’s truth to it? In any event, it paves the way for Fury to go after Oleksandr Usyk of Ukraine, who holds the other major versions of the world heavyweight championship (International Boxing Federation, World Boxing Organization and World Boxing Association).
And finally …
Good Idea: Luka Doncic being called a superstar.
Bad Idea: Tyler Herro thinking he’s a superstar just like Luka Doncic.
Whatever Tyler Herro of the Miami Heat is smoking/drinking/huffing, I’d like to have a bit of it because there is no way you he could say something like this sober and straight-faced.
For some reason, Herro thinks he’s in the same category as Doncic when it comes to talk about the NBA’s young stars. During a taping of the Bally Sports Miami Mic’d Up podcast earlier this month, Herro said he felt he deserved to be in the conversation with players like Doncic. Right. There’s confidence and then there’s stupidity. Maybe if Herro was dropping 26 points per game, eight assists per game and grabbing eight boards per game, like Doncic did last season, he would be in that conversation.
Let’s all pat Herro on the head and wish him the best for this season because he’s just rammed his shin bone in his mouth.
Until niext time, folks …