The other day, I ranked the Star Trek TV series. Now, I'm going to rank the movies. All 10 of them.

No. Not 13. The J.J. Abrams movies don't count. They may carry the name, but they are not Star Trek. There are four lights, and there are ten films.

10. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, 1989. Okay, we got it: In Star Trek, the even-numbered movies are good; the odd-numbered movies are not. This one wasn't helped by the fact that, after Leonard Nimoy directed the 2 previous films, William Shatner wanted to direct one.

He never directed in Trek again. As time, as the various Trek TV series, went on, we saw episodes directed by Jonathan Frakes, and also by Nimoy, his son Adam, Patrick Stewart, Gates McFadden, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Avery Brooks, Alexander Siddig, René Auberjonois, Andrew Robinson, Tim Russ, Robert Duncan McNeill, Roxann Dawson and Robert Picardo. Between them, they directed 105 episodes, topped by Burton with 28. Frakes directed 21, and also directed the 8th and 9th movies. But Shatner? Never again.

Was this movie that bad? It didn't have to be. The idea of the Enterprise crew meeting God -- or someone, or something, claiming to be the God of the Bible -- had been kicked around since Trek creator Gene Roddenberry considered the 1st movie in the mid-1970s. But, when finally tried here, it was not well-executed, and, in the end, it was unsatisfying.

Seeing Spock forced to choose between his blood brother (well, half-brother), Sybok (Laurence Luckibill), and his brother-in-arms, Kirk, was a great idea. But the campfire scene near the beginning was stupid, and so was the idea of pilot Sulu and navigator Chekov getting lost. And did we really have to turn the Enterprise-A into a joke that had yet to "earn her name"? (Of course, she would.)

The supporting characters? Their situations were mixed. Chekov got to sit in the Captain's chair for the 1st time. Sulu's piloting skills were on display. But Scotty was alternately terrific and silly: That bump on the head should have been beneath him, or so to speak. And Uhura, well, maybe it was exploitative for her to do a nude scene, and at age 56, Nichelle Nichols had to be in shadow. But she made it work, and it was clear she was in control of the situation.

On a scale of 0 to 10, this film had the potential to be a 9. With a bit less silliness, it could have been a 7. Instead, it was a 4. Still, it was better than any of the J.J. Abrams films. With that in mind, let's move on.

9. Star Trek: The Motion Picture, 1979. Once people saw the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, with all its flaws, people saw Star Trek: The Original Series' red skies, papier-mâché boulders and rubber-masked aliens, and realized, "Hey, they could have done a lot better."

So when Paramount Pictures gave Gene Roddenberry the big budget to make a movie around Star Trek, he... copied 2001. The bad parts. The weird parts. The long, wordless, classical-music-backed montages that made the film at least 15 minutes longer than it needed to be. The hard-to-define enemy. The weird new lifeform at the end. And, of course, one thing 2001 didn't have: The new uniforms, described as "space pajamas."

The length, 2 hours and 12 minutes, led to this film being nicknamed Star Trek: The Motionless Picture. The trip into a "heart of darkness," and Francis Ford Coppola's also-long film earlier in the year, led to this film being nicknamed A Spockalypse Now. And V'Ger's similarity to the robotic opponent in the 1967 episode "The Changeling" led to this film being nicknamed Where Nomad Has Gone Before.

If you didn't like this movie, here's a suggestion: Just fast-forward through the montages. You'll save about 20 minutes, and the movie will be a lot better.

8. Star Trek: Insurrection, a.k.a. Star Trek IX, 1998. Yes, it's an odd-numbered movie. But the biggest problem is that it was a movie. When you wait 2 years to see the next movie, you want it to be terrific. Insurrection wasn't. Had it been a 2-part episode of ST:TNG, it would have felt a lot better.

The good parts include continuing the process, begun on Deep Space Nine (the film takes place right after the end of the Dominion War) and "completed" in Star Trek: Picard, of Starfleet drifting away from its ideals. The good parts also include some humor, Riker showing his space combat chops, the restoration of the Riker-Troi romance, a rare but good love story for Picard, and the fight for an ideal that Picard thinks Starfleet has chosen to abandon.

The bad parts include a genuine threat from an enemy we had never seen before. Had we already known the Son'a, and how dangerous they could be, it would have been different. Instead, this was their introduction, so it was like, "Who the hell are these guys?" And since DS9 was coming to an end, Voyager was still in the Delta Quadrant, and Picard hasn't yet mentioned them, we've never seen them again. So it's like, "How big of a threat can they be?" So this was a very unsatisfying film.

7. Star Trek: Nemesis, a.k.a. Star Trek X, 2002. The last of the TNG crew films (so far) seemed to break the pattern: It was an even-numbered film, and it was horrible. That's the conventional wisdom.

Well, the conventional wisdom is wrong. Just as The Search for Spock, Generations and Insurrection are better than they get credit for, so is Nemesis. The big argument against this film is Data's "death" (a word that, after Picard, we can now put in quotation marks). People hated it. They tend to overlook that it is a sacrifice every bit as comparable as Spock's in The Wrath of Khan, completing the arc of the character being TNG's analogue to Spock, even if Spock had spent much of his life rejecting Data's quest to be more human.

The crew of the Enterprise-E is facing a threat that is even worse than that of Khan, the TOS-era Klingons, or the Borg, and more intentional and insidious than the comparable one posed by V'Ger: Total annihilation at the hands of renegade Romulans. And, with a great deal of thought and ingenuity -- including Picard mirroring Riker in "The Best of Both Worlds" by out-thinking a "Picard" who claims to know his every move -- they beat it. I liked this movie, even with its downbeat ending.

6. Star Trek: Generations, 1994. As the baton was handed off to the Next Generation crew, the Roman numerals were dropped, so this would not be known as Star Trek VII.

Seeing that the new Enterprise-B was commanded by Captain John Harriman, and that he was played by Alan Ruck, only 8 years removed from playing Cameron Frye, the neurosis-saddled best friend in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, one could be forgiven for thinking of a catchphrase from Star Wars: "I've got a bad feeling about this!" And we never did see Harriman redeem himself. (I'm choosing to not accept the 2006 fanmade miniseries Star Trek: Of Gods and Men as canon.)

Of the original crew, only Shatner (Kirk), James Doohan (Scotty) and Walter Koenig (Chekov) agreed to return, although Jacqueline Kim played Ensign Demora Sulu, taking her father's place as Helm Officer of the Enterprise. The story leading to what appeared to be Kirk's death was a good one, even if it made Harriman and his crew look weak by comparison.

We jumped 78 years to see... a "tall ship" named Enterprise, sailing on the ocean, manned by Picard and his senior officers, dressed as Napoleonic Era sailors? Holy Holodeck, Batman! Okay, it was cute, now get on with the story.

The movie tries to be TWOK, by making both Picard and Kirk alternately cheat and face death. And this ends up not working. It makes Malcolm McDowell's villain, Dr. Tolian Soran, somewhat sympathetic, while reminding us that he is still incredibly evil and must be stopped. But the fact that it takes Kirk and Picard, Starfleet's 2 greatest Captains ever -- we didn't yet know about Jonathan Archer -- to do it is wrecked by how clumsily it was carried out.

And Kirk's death scene was really unworthy of the character, right down to the dumb joke it inspired: "After all the times there was the Captain on the Bridge, we had the bridge on the Captain."

There was a warning in this film, though, even if it took 26 years for us to realize it. Kirk tells Picard never to give up the Captain's chair on the Enterprise: "While you're there, you can make a difference!" As we have now seen in Star Trek: Picard, 14 years after that sequence (from his perspective), he gave up that chair, in order to make a new difference, and it didn't work, and he fell into a depression that lasted another 14 years, before the events of the new show.

Does that retroactive warning carry resonance now? Absolutely. Does it make this film better? Slightly. Enough to make it a good film? Well, it's not a bad film. But it could have been considerably better.

5. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, 1984. After the box-office and emotional success of TWOK, this was going to be a letdown, no matter what, even if we all knew that Spock was going to be restored to life by the end. Although we didn't expect the destruction of the Constitution-class USS Enterprise, which, if you think about it, was the greatest character in Star Trek, over even Kirk and Spock.

(Unlike the death of Spock, a twist every bit as big as finding out the Darth Vader was actually Luke Skywalker's father 2 years earlier, that gut-punch had not been leaked before the release. Promos said, "Join us, for the final voyage of the Enterprise." But we didn't expect to see the old girl blown up.)

And there were some ridiculous things. The "katra" concept, the deus ex machina idea that went on to restore Spock's life. The alien with whom McCoy tries to negotiate a ride to the Genesis Planet. Killing off Dr. David Marcus (Merritt Buttrick), the brilliant young scientist that Kirk found out in the previous film was his son. Kirk's reaction, "You Klingon bastard, you killed my son!" The fight between Kirk and Klingon Commander Kruge. And the Vulcan priestesses wearing what appear to be negligees. Given the usual modest dress of Vulcans, this was highly illogical.

And Christopher Lloyd, as Kruge, trying to out-ham Shatner, which even Ricardo Montalban hadn't been able to do, though God knows he tried. Although I have to admit, it produced a great exchange: Kirk: "Look around you! This planet is destroying itself!" Kruge: "Yes! Exhilarating, isn't it?" Surely, that role, rather than that of Jim Ignatowski on Taxi, was what got Lloyd cast as Dr. Emmett Brown in Back to the Future.

But this movie gets a bit of a bad rap. While Chekov got to scream in each of the 1st 2 movies, and he had a big role in TWOK, most of the supporting cast had pretty much been little more than that: Supporting. This time, Scotty, Sulu, and even Uhura got to be a part of the heroic process. As Spock's father, Ambassador Sarek, Mark Lenard had great interactions with Kirk and the Vulcan elder T'Lar, played by the legendary Judith Anderson.

And, of course, continuing the theme of TWOK, Kirk is still facing the consequences of his various actions over the years, and facing death as never before. "At what cost?" Sarek asks. "Your ship. Your son." But Kirk understands, illogical though it may be: "If I hadn't, the cost would have been my soul."

TSFS was a letdown, but it is not a bad movie.

4. Star Trek: First Contact, a.k.a. Star Trek VIII, 1996. Not only is this easily the best of the films with the Next Generation crew, it is their Wrath of Khan, because it forces Picard to deal with his experiences with the Borg. They hurt him more deeply than Kirk had by anything, even his previous experiences with personal defeat and personal loss.

And watching Dr. Lily Sloane (Alfre Woodard) show him that he's turning into Moby-Dick's Captain Ahab, followed by him showing her that Ahab was fighting for personal vengeance and that he's fighting for that and more, showed Patrick Stewart at his finest.

Showing the aftermath of the Star Trek Chronology's World War III -- a nuclear exchange in 2053 resulting in 600 million dead, as opposed to Spock's earlier claim that the war killed 37 million, or roughly half as many as actually died in the real-life World War II -- leading to the 1st Warp 1 flight finally gave Star Trek an "origin story." That was nice, but at a horrible cost. Would Gene Roddenberry, who had died 5 years before the film's release, have accepted that needing such a cataclysm was needed to bring humanity together to achieve such a utopia? Only he knew for sure.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the film centered around the Borg Queen's attempt at the psychological seduction of Data. She was willing to give him what he said he always wanted, the chance to be fully human. He saw through that, knowing that anyone who served the Borg could not be fully human. But, more than that, he showed that, because he wasn't fully human, he was incorruptible. Maybe he was better off, no matter what he wanted. Certainly, the people of the Federation were better off for him not being fully human.

3. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, 1982. What? Not Number 1? No. I will explain.

The stakes for this film were huge, after the failure of ST:TMP. Director Nicholas Meyer liked the idea of revisiting "Space Seed," an episode of the original series, in which Ricardo Montalban played Khan Noonien Singh, a threat from the 20th Century. (A long story, in more ways than one.) Kirk thought he had ended Khan's threat.

He was wrong, and he has to confront that threat aboard the Enterprise, with mixed results. Part of the dynamic of this film is that, unlike in the 1967 episode, where Kirk and Khan physically fought, Shatner and Montalban were never together, only communicating across reaches of space, including Shatner's iconic "Khaaaan!" yell -- which, as we would soon learn, was a ruse.

Even more iconic is Spock's sacrifice, which becomes one of the greatest death scenes ever filmed, in any genre: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." And one of the greatest funeral scenes ever filmed, with Kirk's eulogy for his First Officer and best friend followed by Scotty playing "Amazing Grace" on the bagpipes as a prelude to Spock's body, with a photon torpedo tube serving as his coffin, being fired onto the Genesis Planet.

The theme of the movie is the changing of Kirk's character. All through the 3 seasons of the original series, and the 1st movie, he's a bold, sometimes even reckless, commander, a man who once proudly (in "By Any Other Name") proclaimed, "Risk is our business." And, because Hollywood, especially 1960s TV, trucked in happy endings, he always got away with it.

In this film, it's even mentioned that the Kobayashi Maru scenario, a test of character given to Cadets at Starfleet Academy, an example of which begins the film, had only been beaten once, about 30 years earlier, by Kirk himself. He reveals that he cheated.

He had always cheated death. He had never truly faced death, until losing Spock -- "No, not like this," he admits. Clearly, if it had been himself making the sacrifice, whatever physical pain he felt, the sense of loss would have been less than it was with Spock. Finally, after 30 or so years in Starfleet, the bill for Kirk's successful gambling with life and death had come due.

That is what makes TWOK, for so many Trekkies, the greatest film of all: Not just the great story, and the great adventure, against the man Spock, in STID, would describe as "the most dangerous enemy the Enterprise ever faced"; but the development of Kirk's character, and Spock's, too. It was a recognition that Spock was truly the more popular character, and also a recognition that Kirk had done so much, and had faced so little hardship, and now had to face it.

Of course, this isn't true. Anyone who saw the 2nd pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before," knows that not only did his original First Officer, Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell (Gary Lockwood), die, but that Kirk had to kill Mitchell himself. Anyone who saw the episode "Obsession" knows that Kirk bore some guilt over an incident on the USS Farragut 11 years earlier. Anyone who saw the episode "Operation: Annihilate!" saw Kirk find the dead bodies of his brother Sam and his sister-in-law Aurelan, and almost also lose his nephew Peter.

And he lost a lot of crewmen: The fanmade series Star Trek Continues, which pretended to finish the five-year mission, had Kirk, played by series creator and main writer Vic Mignogna, admit that he'd lost 73 people under his command in those 5 years, a number that was about to rise to 75.

So it's not really fair to say that Kirk "never had to face death." In fact, when he had to sacrifice the Enterprise late in TSFS, he asks, "My God, Bones, what have I done?" McCoy tells him, "What you had to do, what you've always done: You've turned death into a fighting chance to live."

Which is what Spock did near the end of TWOK. Half-human and half-Vulcan, he was able to reconcile his human need to save his crewmates with his Vulcan way of figuring out the most logical way to do it. Kirk understood: "Of my friend, I can only say this: Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most... human." That line, and the sacrifice that inspired it, were both so great, the guy who runs the YouTube page CinemaSins took "sin points" off for both.

So, yes, TWOK is a great movie, not just a great Star Trek movie or a great science fiction movie. But, I submit to you, that it is not the best Star Trek movie.

2. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, 1986. Concluding the trilogy that began with TWOK, Star Trek has an adventure where they travel back in time, to what was then our present. The producers always liked that, because it allowed them to use already-present studio sets and location shots, and save money on set building and special effects.

It was fun watching the Enterprise's "Magnificent Seven" struggle with our era: The need for money, the struggle with public transportation, the need to solve their 23rd Century problem with 20th Century materials and methods, and Kirk eating pizza (crust-first) and drinking beer, as if those things aren't still around in the late 23rd Century. (Surely, they were.)

The environmental message was a bit preachy, especially in the Reagan Eighties. But, you know what, we needed to be preached to. We'd spent 2 movies watching Kirk deal with the consequences of his actions over 30 years. And even if we hadn't, we deserved to have Kirk, Spock, and marine biologist Dr. Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks) lecture us on how to deal with the consequences of our actions over 300 years.

Finally, we got something we didn't get in any of the 1st 3 Trek films: A very satisfying ending. TMP's ending was weird, TWOK's was depressing (if fitting), and TSFS's was half-uplifting and half-depressing. It had been 27 years since Star Trek gave us a definitive, no "Yeah, but... " win for the good guys. And we got it.

How good was this movie? My grandmother, who was already 42 years old when Star Trek debuted in 1966, was not a fan of it. But even she liked this movie. It may not have been better-made than TWOK in terms of writing, drama or special effects, but it didn't have to be better-made. It was better.

It also established the pattern, which held until 2002: In Star Trek, the even-numbered movies are good; the odd-numbered movies, not so much.

1. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, 1991. Designed to be the valedictory for the original crew, this is the best Trek film of them all. It was a story worthy of the man quoted throughout its script, William Shakespeare.

Like TWOK, Kirk has to face the consequences of his actions. And, by now, we were into the 5th season of The Next Generation, so we knew that we had to reconcile some things, including the fact that, by the time that show began -- 71 years after the events of this movie -- the Klingon Empire had ceased to be the Federation's marquee enemy. And, being the original series' analogue for the Soviet Union, we had an allegory for that country's collapse and reform into the Russian Federation, and the end of the Cold War.

But, just as some people didn't want the Cold War to end, so, too, were there people -- on at least 3 sides, as it turned out, counting the Romulan Empire, the original series' analogue for Red China -- who had an interest in the Federation-Klingon conflict continuing.

That could have been done in a very hackneyed way. But, with Nicholas Meyer, director of TWOK, returning to direct, and also writing the screenplay with Denny Martin Flinn (and contributions by Nimoy), they avoided the pitfalls and forged a great story.

This movie had, if not "it all," then, a lot. A detective story. A prison break. Redemption for TSFS's maligned USS Excelsior, now commanded by Captain Hikaru Sulu (finally getting a command and a first name). DeForest Kelley as McCoy and George Takei as Sulu each giving the best performance of his career. Great performances as Klingons by David Warner and Shatner's old friend from Shakespeare productions in their shared hometown of Montreal, Christopher Plummer. A thrilling space battle. A good resolution of the film's underlying conflict. And a fine "commencement address" by Shatner at the end.

The Undiscovered County, not The Wrath of Khan, is the best Star Trek film.

Occasionally -- as with this past Friday, the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, or with Congressman John Lewis invoking his experience as the youngest major figure in the Movement when he argues with Donald Trump -- we get a reminder that the Civil Rights Movement was not that long ago.

So it is with the death of Bobby Mitchell, an important figure in the history of American sport.

Robert Cornelius Mitchell was born on June 6, 1935 in Hot Springs, Arkansas. During his youth, Arkansas was racially segregated, and he attended the all-black Langston High School. Not named for Langston Hughes. Given his poetry, I'm thinking the white men who led Arkansas at that time didn't even want the black kids to know of his existence.

But times were changing. Bobby was about to turn 12 when Jackie Robinson reintegrated what would come to be called Major League Baseball. By the time he graduated from Langston in 1953, more than half of the teams in MLB were integrated. The St. Louis Cardinals would bring up their 1st black player the next year, Tom Alston, and were signing others. They offered Bobby Mitchell a contract. He had also played basketball and run track at Langston.

He decided to stick with football, accepting a scholarship from the University of Illinois, inspired by one of their black players who had starred in the NFL, Buddy Young of the Baltimore Colts. In 1955, his sophomore year, he led Illinois to an upset of Michigan, then ranked Number 3 in the country.

He was injured for much of his junior year, but his senior year was good enough to get him into the College All-Star Game, a preseason contest held every year from 1935 to 1976, in which college all-stars would play the defending NFL Champions (and usually lose) at Soldier Field in Chicago. He scored 2 touchdowns, and the All-Stars beat the Detroit Lions.

But he also decided to stick with track. He helped Illinois win the 1958 Big Ten Championship, and was considering attending the U.S. trials for the 1960 Olympics in Rome. But the Cleveland Browns chose him in the 7th round of the NFL Draft, and head coach and general manager Paul Brown (the team was not named for him, or for Jim Brown) offered him a $7,000 salary. This was enough to make Mitchell forget about his dream of a Gold Medal.

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Playing for Paul Brown wasn't easy. He was a great coach, but also a tyrant. The one man he seemed unable to tyrannize was running back Jim Brown, often called the greatest football player ever. As Mitchell later explained, if the white Paul Brown was angry at the black Jim Brown, he would direct his anger at another player, usually another black player, such as Mitchell: He would say, "Bobby Mitchell! Who do you think you are? We are getting ready to play a football game, and your head is not in the game!" Jim and Bobby both knew that this meant that Paul was actually angry with Jim.

Paul Brown was not inherently racist. Indeed, he had been pro football's "Branch Rickey," bringing running back Marion Motley and guard Bill Willis into the All-American Football Conference when it, and the Browns, were founded in 1946. At the same time, the NFL's Los Angeles Rams brought in a pair of black players who had played at the Los Angeles Coliseum for UCLA, running back Kenny Washington and lineman Woody Strode. So pro football had "four Jackie Robinsons."

In a 1959 game against the Washington Redskins, Mitchell ran for 232 yards, including a 90-yard touchdown. Whenever a black player scored against the Redskins, Shirley Povich, the great sports columnist for The Washington Post, would write that the player "integrated the Redskin end zone."

You see, the Redskins were the last NFL team that had not yet integrated. Their owner, George Preston Marshall, had been asked many times when they would sign a black player. His answer was the same every time: "We will sign black players when the Harlem Globetrotters sign white players."

Marshall was one of the most important NFL executives. Not only did he move the Redskins from Boston, where they couldn't seem to draw fans, to Washington, where they were instantly popular upon their 1937 arrival and remained so even when they lost most of their games in the 1950s, but he helped to reform the League. It was his ideas that established the NFL Championship Game, the forerunner of the Super Bowl, set the NFL's revised rules of the 1930s that made the modern passing game possible, and helped negotiate the NFL's early TV contracts.

But he was a jerk, and the reasons why were not limited to prejudice. He was every bit the football tyrant that Paul Brown was. His personal life was also stormy. And broadcasting may have been the reason behind what was seen as his racism. In the 1950s, the Redskins were losing because teams that were willing to bring in the best available talent, regardless of race, had passed them by.

The teams that won titles in the 1950s had great black players: The 1950, '54 and '55 Browns (the aforementioned Motley and Willis); the 1951 Rams (Washington and Strode were gone, but they had running back Paul "Tank" Younger); the 1952, '53 and '57 Lions (Dick "Night Train" Lane); the 1956 New York Giants (Mel Triplett, Roosevelt Brown and Emlen Tunnell); and the 1958 and '59 Colts (Young was gone, but they had Lenny Moore and Jim Parker, among others). The San Francisco 49ers, the one team in the '50s to reach the Championship Game without winning any, also had a solid black presence (reaching the '57 title game with John Henry Johnson and Joe Perry, but losing it to the Lions).

So why didn't Marshall integrate? Even if he wasn't personally hateful toward black people, he let a business decision decide it for him. The Redskins were then the Southernmost team in the NFL. Much like the baseball Cardinals, who did so before Washington's baseball team, the Senators, could, he built up a vast network of radio stations to broadcast his team's games throughout the South.

He had a stranglehold on Southern audiences: They would listen to their favorite college team -- be it 'Bama, Tennessee, Ole Miss, LSU or anyone else -- on Saturday, and the Redskins on Sunday. And he figured that if he signed any black players, white Southerners would abandon his team, and he would lose money.

That "Southern" status also inspired Marshall to refuse to let a Dallas team into the NFL. Lamar Hunt, son of oil baron H.L. Hunt, wanted to put an expansion team in the NFL, but Marshall said no. This was incredibly short-sighted, as it led Hunt to found the American Football League in 1959, to begin play in 1960.

To counter this, the NFL wanted to put their own team in Dallas for that season, considering granting a franchise to another oil baron, Clint Murchison. Marshall decided to try to block this move, and he had allies who could have made the block happen.

But Murchison was smarter than Marshall. He bought the rights to "Hail to the Redskins," the team's fight song. He said he would sell the rights back to Marshall for one dollar if he'd let his team into the League. Otherwise, every time the song was played by the Washington Redskins Marching Band, he would owe Murchison royalties. Marshall agreed to drop his objection, and the Dallas Cowboys were born. (Gee, maybe Marshall should have said, "To Hell with it, I'll write a new fight song.")

The Redskins' biggest problem may have been that they had the NFL's smallest stadium. Griffith Stadium, which they shared with the baseball Senators, topped out at 35,000 seats when temporary bleachers were brought in for football. A new stadium was being built, to be called District of Columbia Stadium (or "D.C. Stadium" for short -- it would be renamed Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in 1969). Marshall wanted it.

But it was being built by, and built on land owned by, the federal government. And Stewart Udall, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, who had oversight, told Marshall that he couldn't use it unless his team were integrated. Realizing that, especially with an improved TV contract, he would lose less money by pissing off Southern bigots than he would by staying in a 35,000-seat stadium, Marshall relented.

In the 1961 NFL Draft (in those days, the Draft was held in December, so the players selected were rookies for the next calendar year's season), the Redskins selected Syracuse running back Ernie Davis, who had become the 1st black man to win the Heisman Trophy. But Davis refused to play for Marshall, believing him to be racist. So Marshall arranged a trade, sending the rights to Davis to the Browns, in exchange for Mitchell, a similar player, who had already been named to the 1960 Pro Bowl.

(Davis was found to have leukemia, and never played a down of pro football, making it a bad trade for the Browns, who won the NFL Championship Game in 1964, but also lost it in 1965, 1968 and 1969. Davis died in 1963.)

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Mitchell was willing to report to the Redskins for the 1962 season. He ended up being the 1st black man to sign for them, and 1 of 3 to play for them that season, along with guard John Nisby and running back Ron Hatcher.

(Nisby, from the University of Oregon, had previously played for the Pittsburgh Steelers, made 3 Pro Bowls, served on the City Council in his hometown of Stockton, California, and died in 2011. Hatcher, from Pittsburgh and Michigan State, only played in the NFL in that 1 season. He is the last survivor of these men, now 80 years old.)

The Nation's Capital had become a city with a majority of its residents being black. The Homestead Grays of baseball's Negro Leagues had alternated their home games between Washington and Pittsburgh (Homestead is a city outside Pittsburgh), and had included all-time greats Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard.

But the Redskins had never had a black player, the Senators had only recently integrated (and had more white Cubans than black Americans), and by the time the NBA had integrated in 1951, the city's franchise in it, the Capitols, had gone bust. Mitchell was being asked to be not just the Redskins' 1st black player, but the city's 1st black star. He lived up to the expectation, paving the way for such men as Doug Williams, Elvin Hayes and Anthony Rendon.

The rivalry between the Redskins and the Cowboys may have begun with Murchison buying the rights to a song, but it didn't really rev up until George Allen became Redskins head coach in 1971. Nevertheless, Redskin fans can take some happiness in the fact that, in his very 1st game with their team, Bobby Mitchell returned a kickoff for a 92-yard touchdown against the Cowboys.

Moved from halfback to flanker by head coach Bill McPeak, he led the NFL with 72 catches and 1,384 yards, huge totals by the standards of the NFL, although some AFL receivers had already topped them. The Redskins went 5-7-2, their best record in 5 years. In 1963, he caught 69 passes for 1,436 yards, including a record-tying 99-yard touchdown pass, from George Izo.

For the 1964 season, the Redskins acquired quarterback Sonny Jurgensen from the Philadelphia Eagles, and the Jurgensen-to-Mitchell combination became the deadliest in the NFL, along with the Colts having Johnny Unitas to Raymond Berry.

In 1966, Otto Graham, who had preceded Mitchell on the Browns and become one of the all-time great quarterbacks, was named head coach of the Redskins. With the rise of Charley Taylor, who would go on to become the NFL's all-time leader in receptions, Graham moved Mitchell back to halfback for 1967. At that point, Frank Gifford of the Giants and the aforementioned Lenny Moore of the Colts had been the only running backs to also be significant pass-catchers, but Mitchell remained a good option for Jurgensen.

In 1969, a year after retiring as head coach of the Green Bay Packers, whom he'd led to 5 NFL Championships, Vince Lombardi was named head coach and general manager of the Redskins. He told Mitchell he was willing to move him back to flanker. But Mitchell was now 34 years old, and realized he'd lost a step. Lombardi offered to make Mitchell a scout, and so Mitchell retired.

He did so with 14,078 all-purpose yards: Rushing, receiving and returning. At the time, that was 2nd all-time to his former teammate Jim Brown. He had scored 91 touchdowns: 65 on receptions, 18 on runs from scrimmage, 5 on kickoff returns, and 3 on punt returns. Those 91 touchdowns were then 2nd all-time to early Packer legend Don Hutson. He had made 4 Pro Bowls.

Mitchell was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1983. As a result, when the Browns introduced their Ring of Honor, and the Redskins their Ring of Fame, they each elected him.

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Marshall had suffered a stroke in 1963, and the team's caretakers slowly improved the team. He died in 1969, the year Lombardi arrived. He got them to a record of 7-5-2, their 1st plus-.500 season in 14 years. But he developed cancer, and died in 1970.

After a season with Bill Austin as interim head coach, Edward Bennett Williams, who had bought the team from the Marshall estate, hired Rams coach George Allen, who revamped the team. In 1971, with Allen coaching, and Mitchell and others having scouted key players, they made the NFC Playoffs, their 1st postseason appearance since the 1945 NFL Championship Game. In 1972, they beat the Cowboys for the NFC title, before losing Super Bowl VII to the Miami Dolphins. They remained a strong team throughout the decade, reaching 5 Playoff berths and just missing 3 others.

By 1978, Mitchell was the assistant general manager, and fully expected to be named the 1st black GM in the NFL. But when the position opened, Williams passed Mitchell over in favor of Bobby Beathard. In a business sense, Beathard was certainly qualified: He had helped build World Championship teams as a scout for the Kansas City Chiefs and as director of player personnel for the Miami Dolphins. And the results bore this out, as the Redskins reached 4 Super Bowls in 10 years, winning 3 of them.

Beathard left the post in 1988, after the Redskins won Super Bowl XXII. Again, Mitchell expected to be named the new GM. By this point, Jack Kent Cooke had bought Williams out, and he named Charley Casserly the GM. Again, there was some justification, as Casserly had also been part of the front office that had built the D.C. ballclub's title teams, and a win in Super Bowl XXVI did follow, based on the moves made by Casserly, and also in part by Beathard -- and also in part by Mitchell.

Mitchell remained in the Redskins' front office, and remained a beloved figure in the D.C. area and among the nationwide fan base that the Redskins, like many other teams, had built due to constantly being shown on TV as one of the more successful teams.

The last straw came in 2002. Steve Spurrier, the "Ol' Ball Coach" who had starred as both player (1966 Heisman Trophy winner) and coach (1996 National Champion) at the University of Florida, did something no Redskin coach had dared to do since Mitchell's retirement.

The Redskins don't retire numbers (Sammy Baugh's 33 is the lone exception), but some numbers are withheld from circulation, considered "unofficialy retired." Mitchell's 49 had been one. But Spurrier gave it to Leonard Stephens, a tight end who hadn't yet played a regular-season professional down. It wasn't just that the number was given out, but to the quality of player.

Spurrier, himself a former quarterback, enraged Redskin fans by giving out 3 such numbers. In addition to Mitchell's 49, he gave out 2 numbers last worn by team quarterbacking legends: Joe Theismann's 7 to Danny Wuerffel, who had worn it under Spurrier on Florida's 1st National Championship team, and had himself won the Heisman (which Theismann, who changed the pronunciation of his name to rhyme with the Trophy's, infamously finished 2nd for at Notre Dame in 1970); and Jurgensen's 9 to Shane Matthews, another of his Florida Gator quarterbacks.

The backlash was nasty, and both men volunteered to end it by switching numbers. Spurrier relented, giving Wuerffel 17 (previously worn by Billy Kilmer, the 1st quarterback to take the Redskins to a Super Bowl, and Doug Williams, the 1st black quarterback to win a Super Bowl, but not withheld from circulation) and Matthews 6.

By the next season, both were gone from the Redskins; by the season after that, so were Spurrier and Stephens. Stephens did not ask to switch from 49 to another number, and Spurrier didn't switch him.

And so, after the 2002 season, after 41 seasons with the Redskin organization, Mitchell left. he continued to live in Washington, with his wife Gwen, a lawyer. They had 2 children, Robert Jr. and Terri.

He continued to work with civil rights organizations, including the National Urban League and the United Negro College Fund, and the Howard University Cancer Research Advisory Committee. Howard, the D.C.-based school known as "the black Harvard," built its hospital on the site of Griffith Stadium.

He also raised money for the University of Illinois, and from 1980 onward hosted the Bobby Mitchell Hall of Fame Classic, a golf tournament that raises money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society -- perhaps as a tribute to the man for whom he was traded, Ernie Davis.

Bobby Mitchell died yesterday, April 5, 2020. He was 84 years old. No cause has yet been announced. I suspect that if the cause were the coronavirus, someone would have said so. But, to my knowledge, he was not already sick.

Bobby Mitchell was a legend on multiple levels. It's a shame that he wasn't fully appreciated by the team he did so much to uplift.

I hate this. Nothing is happening in sports, except death. Just in the last few days, we lost field-goal-kicking legend Tom Dempsey, football civil rights pioneer Bobby Mitchell, and now, baseball legend Al Kaline.

Albert William Kaline was born on December 19, 1934 in Baltimore. At the age of 8, he developed osteomyelitis, an infection which would later almost kill Mickey Mantle before he could become a baseball legend. In Al's case, a piece of bone had to be removed from his left foot. Nevertheless, he played baseball, football and basketball at Southern High School in Baltimore (now Digital Harbor High School).

He started out as a pitcher, but on Southern's team, there was no room for another pitcher, so he was moved to the outfield. He was signed right out of high school at age 18, for $35,000. Under the rules for "bonus babies," he had to stay on the Tigers' major league roster for the rest of the 1953 season, and all of 1954. As a result, he never played in the minor leagues.

He made his major league debut on June 25, 1953, at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. Wearing Number 25, he replaced Jim Delsing in center field in the 6th inning, and came to bat once, in the 9th inning, flying to center field off Harry Byrd. The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Tigers 5-2.

He only played in 30 games that season, but, as I said, the rule said he had to remain on the big-league roster. With no major league team in Baltimore while he was growing up, he had to look elsewhere for heroes, in the pages of the newspapers, magazines, and The Sporting News. His heroes in baseball were Ted Williams, who wore Number 9, and Stan Musial, who wore Number 6. When Pat Mullin was traded after the 1953 season, he told the Tigers to give Al the Number 6, and he wore it for the rest of his career.

He became the Tigers' starting right fielder in 1954, and finished 3rd in the American League's Rookie of the Year balloting. In 1955, thanks to 200 hits and 321 total bases, he batted .340, leading the League in each category. At age 20, he became the youngest player ever to win the AL's batting title.

He also made the 1st of 18 All-Star Games, and finished 2nd to the Yankees' Yogi Berra for the AL's Most Valuable Player award. He finished 3rd in 1956, 2nd in 1963 (again to a Yankee catcher, Elston Howard), and 5th in 1967, but never won the MVP.

In 1957, the Gold Glove Award was established, and Kaline won it for AL right fielders 10 times. He might have won it had it been there in 1956, and he led the AL in outfield assists, doing that again in 1958. But he missed significant playing time in both 1958 and '59 due to injuries. In spite of his '59 injury, he had enough plate appearances to lead the AL in slugging percentage.

That got him an appearance on the early 1960 game show Home Run Derby, alongside players like Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. He didn't do well, though, hitting just 1 home run, losing to Aaron.

But he didn't get into a Pennant race until 1961. That year, the Tigers and the Yankees were close most of the way, until the Yankees swept them 3 straight in The Bronx in early September, and then split a 4-game series in Detroit in mid-September.

In spite of a .324 batting average and a League-leading 41 doubles from Kaline, a batting title by Norm Cash, 45 home runs by Rocky Colavito, and a 23-9 record by Frank Lary, a pitcher whose success against the Bronx Bombers got him nicknamed "The Yankee Killer," the Tigers won 101 games, but finished 8 games behind the Yankees, paced by the record-chasing home runs of Mantle and Roger Maris.

Legend has it that, during that early September series at Yankee Stadium, Kaline went out to right field, where Maris was playing and Babe Ruth once did, a fan yelled out, "Hey, Kaline! You're not half as good as Mickey Mantle!" and he yelled back, "Nobody is half as good as Mickey Mantle!" He was being modest: Al Kaline was at least 90 percent as good as Mickey Mantle.

He got hurt again in 1962 and 1964, before an orthopedic surgeon prescribed a corrective shoe for his left foot, the one that had to be operated on when he was a boy. He got hurt again in 1967, as Detroit was struck by the worst race riot of the 20th Century, and the Tigers just missed winning a 4-way Pennant race with the Boston Red Sox, the Minnesota Twins and the Chicago White Sox: The Red Sox won 92 games, the Tigers and Twins 91 each, and the White Sox 89. The Tigers were not eliminated until losing the 2nd game of a doubleheader on the final day.

*

Kaline was 33, and had gotten close to a Pennant twice, but still hadn't won one. The Tigers soared to the AL lead early in 1968, and never looked back, but Kaline wasn't a part of it much of the way, missing 2 months with a broken arm. Finally, manager Mayo Smith woke up to the reality that shortstop Ray Oyler was a wonderful fielder, but maybe the worst hitter in the major leagues. Smith took Mickey Stanley, who had been subbing for Kaline in right field, moved him to short, and returned Kaline to the lineup.

Kaline's hitting took off the rest of the way, joining fellow '61 holdover Cash, Willie Horton, Bill Freehan and Jim Northrup as hitting stars, the 31 wins of Denny McLain and the 17 of Mickey Lolich, on a team that won 103 games, good enough to take the Pennant by 12 games over the Baltimore Orioles, Kaline's hometown team, which would win the Pennant the next 3 years.

Finally getting the chance to play in the World Series, Kaline made the most of it. With the Tigers trailing the St. Louis Cardinals 3 games to 1, he hit a bases-loaded single in Game 5. He finished with a .379 average, 2 home runs and 8 RBIs. The Tigers took the last 3 games, including the last 2 in St. Louis, and won the Series.

Kaline helped get the Tigers back into the postseason in 1972, getting key hits in a last-week series with the Red Sox, and earning the Tigers the AL Eastern Division title. However, they lost the AL Championship Series to the Oakland Athletics.

The '72 Tigers were managed by Billy Martin. He said, "I have always referred to Al Kaline as 'Mr. Perfection." He does it all: Hitting, fielding, running, throwing. And he does it with that extra touch of brilliancy that marks him as a super ballplayer."

Baltimore Orioles 3rd base legend Brooks Robinson agreed: "There have been a lot of great defensive players. The fella who could do everything is Al Kaline. He was just the epitome of what a great outfielder is all about: Great speed, catches the ball, and throws the ball well."

In 1973, he was given the 1st Robert Clemente Award for community involvement, but his career was winding down. Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee remarked, "He had pigeon shit on him, because he was already a statue." He batted .300 or better 9 times, including .313 in 1972. But he batted just .255 in 1973 and .262 in 1974, dropping his lifetime batting average below .300 to .297. He also fell just short of hitting 500 doubles, with 498; and 400 home runs, with 399.

However, he did join the 3,000 Hit Club, and did it in style: On September 24, 1974, against the Orioles, in his hometown of Baltimore, he sliced a double to the opposite field, down the right field line at Memorial Stadium. He closed his career on October 2, going 0-for-2, to finish with 3,007 hits, as the Tigers lost 5-4 to the Orioles at Tiger Stadium. Not that anybody knew about OPS+ in 1974, but, for his career, his was 134, making him 34 percent better at producing runs than the average player in his time.

In a pregame ceremony, the Tigers made his 6 the 1st number they ever retired, and the City of Detroit renamed Cherry Street, which ran behind the left-field stands at Tiger Stadium, "Kaline Drive," a play on "line drive." And there was an entire generation of kids in Michigan who thought that "alkaline batteries" were named after Al Kaline.

He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1980, appearing on 88 percent of the ballots in his 1st year of eligibility. For comparison's sake, the only other player elected by the Baseball Writers' Association of America that year was Duke Snider, and it was his 11th year on the ballot. Also on the ballot for the 1st time were Orlando Cepeda and Ron Santo, both of whom had to wait for the Veterans Committee to vote them on, and Santo wasn't elected until after he died.

Indeed, there were 4 right fielders in his generation who got elected: Kaline, Aaron, Clemente and Frank Robinson. Kaline had easily the fewest home runs of them, but he had more hits than Robinson, and, of the other 3, only Clemente had more Gold Gloves. Clemente had 12, Kaline 10, Aaron 3, Robinson only 1.

In addition, Maris and Colavito, who moved to left field when he reached the Tigers, were both considered power hitters and great defensive right fielders, despite not making the Hall of Fame. But Maris only won 1 Gold Glove, Colavito (said to have the best outfield arm of that era, other than Clemente) never won any, and both had fewer hits and fewer home runs than Kaline.

Career OPS+? Aaron 155, Robinson 154, Kaline 134, Colavito 132, Clemente 130, Maris 127. So you can see what it took to be a better player playing primarily right field in that generation than Al Kaline.

Kaline, Brooks Robinson and Carl Yastrzemski are the only men to have played at least 22 seasons for just 1 team and no other. Kaline, Yaz, Musial and George Brett are the only players to have 3,000 hits, with 300 of them home runs, for just 1 team. Kaline, Clemente, Willie Mays and Ichiro Suzuki are the only players to have 3,000 hits and 10 Gold Gloves.

In 1999, The Sporting News named its 100 Greatest Baseball Players. Kaline was ranked 76th. Later that year, he was named as a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team, and he was among the finalists who were introduced at a pregame ceremony before the All-Star Game at Fenway Park. He was also among the living Hall-of-Famers who were introduced at a pregame ceremony before the 2008 All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium.

Although Ty Cobb, who played for the Tigers from 1905 to 1926, and set several major league records (some since broken), including career records for batting average, hits, runs scored and stolen bases, and had a memorial plaque on the outside wall of Tiger Stadium that called him "a genius in spikes," Kaline is the man known as "Mr. Tiger."

He remains the all-time most popular athlete in Detroit history. He ranks ahead of Cobb, or any other Tiger. He ranks ahead of any Lion, including Barry Sanders. He ranks ahead of any Piston, including Isiah Thomas. He ranks ahead of any Red Wing, including Gordie Howe and Steve Yzerman.

*

Immediately after retiring as a player, Kaline became a color commentator on the Tigers' TV broadcasts, serving in this role from 1975 to 2002. On September 27, 1999, the last game was played at Tiger Stadium, against the Kansas City Royals. Each team's greatest living player appeared in uniform, to present the lineup cards to the umpires as honorary captains: Kaline for the Tigers, and newly-elected Hall-of-Famer Brett for the Royals.

The players in the Tiger lineup that day wore the numbers of the greatest player ever to play their respective positions for the Tigers. For this reason, Karim Garcia, later to help the Yankees win the 2003 Pennant, is the last Detroit Tiger to wear Number 6. Appropriately, he hit a home run... in the 6th inning.

The next season, the Tigers opened Comerica Park, and dedicated statues of their retired number honorees, including Kaline. After the 2002 season, he left the broadcast booth, and became a "special assistant" to general manager Dave Dombrowski. Like other such figures in baseball, including the Yankees' Reggie Jackson and the late Yogi Berra, this essentially made him both an honorary coach at Spring Training and a "club ambassador."

He was invited to throw out ceremonial first balls at the 1984, 2006 and 2012 World Series. He married Madge Hamilton, his high school girlfriend, in 1954, and they had sons Mark and Michael. Michael played baseball at Miami University of Ohio, and his son Colin played in the Tigers' minor-league system for 2 years, and is now coaching in the college ranks.

After 67 seasons of involvement in the Tiger organization -- a 68th had sort-of begun -- Al Kaline died today, April 6, 2020, at his home in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He was 85 years old. No cause of death has been reported, but he was not known to be long-term ill, or to have tested positive for the coronavirus.

Tributes have come pouring in:

* Justin Verlander, who pitched for the Tigers before being traded to the Houston Astros: "Such a kind and generous man who meant so much to so many. I hope you knew how much I enjoyed our conversations about baseball, life, or just giving each other a hard time. I am honored to have been able to call you my friend for all these years. R.I.P. Mr Tiger, Al Kaline."

* Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench: "It was a privilege to have known and shared time with Al Kaline, one of the finest men to play the game and walk among us. I talked to him March 27 and got to tell him I loved him. Rest in Peace Mr. Tiger."

* Baltimore Orioles Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer: "One of my favorite people, Al Kaline passes away. Such a graceful, elegant player. Always put the Tigers on my away schedule, just to see, talk with Al. My condolences to Louise , family and friends."

* Detroit Lions Hall-of-Fame running back Barry Sanders: "I am sorry to hear of the passing of Detroit sports legend, Al Kaline. It is always devastating to lose someone who means so much to the city. Rest easy, Mr. Tiger."

* Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan: "So sad to hear about the passing of Al Kaline. He was a legend on and off the field. Through his 22 seasons with the team, he brought joy to generations of Tigers fans across our state as he worked his way into the 3,000 club. Farewell, Mr. Tiger."

* Actor Jeff Daniels, who grew up in the Detroit suburb of Chelsea, Michigan: "He was the only fielder who could make the ball come to him. Goodbye, #6. #AlKaline"

* Rock and Roll Hall-of-Famer Bob Seger, born in Detroit and grew up in nearby Ann Arbor: "Devastated to hear Al Kaline has passed away. I was lucky enough to meet Al a few times. He was a genuine hero of mine. I told him he & Willie Mays were my 2 favorite players of all time & he sent me a photo of him & Willie which I treasure! He was a great man & he wore it well!"

With his death, there are now 14 surviving players from the Tigers' 1968 World Championship team: Willie Horton, Denny McLain, Mickey Lolich, Bill Freehan, Dick Tracewski, Mickey Stanley, Don Wert, Jim Price, John Hiller, Tom Matchick, Fred Lasher, Wayne Comer, Jon Warden and Daryl Patterson. Freehan has been afflicted with Alzheimer's disease for years, and has been reported to be in hospice care.

And there are 3 surviving players who were contestants on Home Run Derby: Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Rocky Colavito.

No Time to Die, the 25th film in the James Bond franchise, was supposed to premiere today, April 8, 2020. (Notice the time that I posted this: 12:07 AM, or, in military time, 0007.) But, due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the desire to have a big splashy premiere in London without killing people, it's been pushed back: It will premiere in London on November 12, and in America on November 25.

There is some irony in this: The fiendish plots of the villains in On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Moonraker both involved unleashing infectious diseases on the world.

This will be unlike any other ranking of the Bond films, because it admits the truth: Goldfinger is not Number 1. It's not even close.

Here is my ranking, after having seen them all again through adult eyes. And, of course, there will be spoilers.

24. Quantum of Solace, 2008. After the high of the Casino Royale reboot, we got the bottom of the (gun)barrel. At the end of the previous film, we're led to believe that Bond has had his origin story, and that he's ready to be the 007 that we know and love (even when we shouldn't love him). Instead, he spends much of this movie making rookie mistakes.

What's more, it drags more than any other Bond film. It's 1 hour and 46 minutes long, but feels twice that. Quantum feels like a pale imitation of SPECTRE (and, as we find out 2 films later, is merely a subsidiary of it).

Furthermore, this is the only film in which Bond doesn't have sex, despite coming into contact with women played by Gemma Arterton, Olga Kurylenko and Stana Katic. I know, he's still in mourning over Vesper Lynd, but being in mourning over Tracy Draco didn't stop him from getting it on with Tiffany Case in DAF. I know this is a new Bond, but, seriously.

This film is dirty, draggy, and presents Bond as un-Bond-like as we've ever seen him. It was bad enough to make 007 fans nostalgic for...

23. Die Another Day, 2002. You've got Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry, scenes in Hong Kong and Cuba, and North Korea serves as a compelling enemy for the post-Soviet world. How can you go wrong? Here's how:

* You've got Bond captured by the North Koreans at the start of the film. They torture him for over a year. And we're expected to believe that a 48-year-old Brosnan -- never mind a 71-year-old man, as Sean Connery's Bond would have been -- survives this in reasonably good shape.

* You've got a theme song sung by Madonna. She can't sing. This also proves that Madonna does not have to act in a film to unduly affect its quality.

* The identity-switching plot stretches the imagination, even by Bond film standards.

* M has to explain to Bond how much he has missed. Not only have the 9/11 attacks happened in his unavailability, but Q has died, with John Cleese, introduced as his assistant in TWINE, promoted into his post.

* The invisible Mercedes. As Charlie Brown would say, "Auugh!"

* The villain's father betrays him a little too easily, like General Korrd turning on his fellow Klingon Captain Klaa in Star Trek V -- not one of that series' better films.

* And, let's be honest: Brosnan pretty much phoned it in. We know he's a better actor than this, but it's like he knew this was it.

Regardless of whether James Bond was 48 years old or 71, it was time for this version of him to hang up his holster. It was time to reboot. That worked -- at first.

22. The World Is Not Enough, 1999. The title for TWINE comes from the Bond family motto, as seen in OHMSS: In Latin, "Orbis non sufficit." Allegedly, it was the epitaph on the tomb of Alexander the Great.

This was also the last film with Desmond Llewelyn as Q. Llewelyn died the month after its release -- not of anything connected to old age (he was 85), but in a car crash. His 17 appearances are still the most of any actor in Bond films.

The twist is that Elektra King, played by the fabulous Sophie Marceau, isn't the damsel in distress, she's the big bad. She remains, to this day, the only female leading Bond villain. That, alone, should have led to a great Bond film -- or, at least, a great Bond story.

This was not it. It was terrible. Having a corrupt businessperson, rather than a mad scientist or a dictator the main villain worked in TND, but not in AVTAK, and not here. And, seriously, Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist? Susan Sarandon may have won an Oscar for playing a nun, but some suspension of disbelief is just too far. The band performing the theme song was named Garbage, and this film was garbage as well, the 1st to be worse than...

21. The Man With the Golden Gun, 1974. Christopher Lee was an intelligence agent in the Royal Air Force during World War II, at the same time Ian Fleming was a British intelligence agent. And they were related by marriage. It has been argued that Lee was one of the men on whom Fleming based the character of Bond.

In addition, Lee had already played such villains as Count Dracula, the Frankenstein monster, The Mummy, Dr. Fu Manchu, Grigori Rasputin, and the Devil himself; but also heroes like Sherlock Holmes and his brother Mycroft. All this, before playing Count Dooku and Saruman.

Who better to play the titular character from Fleming's last full-length novel? Francisco Scaramanga was an anti-Bond, a man supremely talented everything he did, but who did it for money rather than for Queen and Country, as did 007. In spite of, like Goldfinger, being titled after, and being about, the villain instead of the hero, this should have been one of the best Bond films.

But, dear God, it was, to that point, the worst! Maud Adams (in her 1st of 2 such films) played a half-decent Bond Girl as Scaramanga's girlfriend, Andrea Anders. But Britt Ekland was utterly hopeless as Bond's unwanted MI6 assistant, Mary Goodnight.

Again, there was a plot element borrowed for a current film fad, in this case kung fu movies, and it was ridiculous. And did they really have to add Sheriff J.W. Pepper again, this time running into Bond on vacation in Thailand? And Lee laid it on a bit too thick: Even as Dracula, he didn't chew this much scenery.

Roger Moore was in danger of becoming as big of a joke in the role as George Lazenby was. He and producer Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli (who soon bought out the half-share of his financially-troubled partner Harry Saltzman) were in danger of the franchise ending entirely -- and I'm not the only one who thinks so. They needed for the next Bond film to really be a good one. Fortunately, it was: The Spy Who Loved Me.

20. Diamonds Are Forever, 1971. A side note. A few years back, ABC showed all the old Bond films in sequence, on Sunday nights, from Dr. No through License to Kill. But, for a reason I've never learned, they skipped over On Her Majesty's Secret Service. They went from You Only Live Twice straight to Diamonds Are Forever.

This rendered DAF's opening sequence ridiculous. Bond is crazed over finding Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Okay, I get that Bond usually gets his man, and didn't get him at the end of YOLT. And I get that MI6 would probably make getting Blofeld a priority. But Bond is taking it way too personally for someone for whom OHMSS hasn't occurred. And, if this had been your introduction to Bond, you could be forgiven for thinking that OHMSS hadn't occurred, since Sean Connery is playing the role one more time, after George Lazenby was dumped.

But it did occur, so you can understand that he's avenging his wife. And, at DAF's start, it looks like he's gotten his revenge. Which makes no sense: Why would you put that at the start? (Never mind that For Your Eyes Only would reprise this.)

The Las Vegas-based adventure that follows, which Bond finds out that a Blofeld (now played by Charles Gray) is behind about halfway through (plastic surgery strikes again, as the guy Bond killed at the beginning was a double), becomes ridiculous. Especially when you find out that the enigmatic Willard Whyte, the obvious Howard Hughes analogue that Blofeld is impersonating, is actually a fairly young man, played by country singer and sausage magnate Jimmy Dean (42 years old at the time, as opposed to Hughes then being 65).

The movie closes with Blofeld appearing to have been killed, but we didn't see a dead body; and then with yet another "one last henchman to kill before Bond can screw the Bond Girl." In this case, two: The team of Mr. Wint (Bruce Glover) and Mr. Kidd (Putter Smith), The Hays Code had fallen in 1968, so the inferences that they were not only gay, but a couple, could now be more overt.

Still, it was a bad stereotype, in a bad story, in a bad film. Connery should not have come back, and, this time, he left for good -- except for Never Say Never Again, which was not official. Goodbye, Mister Bond.

19. Thunderball, 1965. Sean Connery called this his favorite Bond film, but I can't see why. The long, wordless underwater sequences really make it drag, making me think that Lloyd Bridges could have made it an episode of Sea Hunt, and it would have been over in half an hour. Or an hour, if it had been an episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

Adolfo Celi made a credible villain as Emilio Largo, and Claudine Auger was lovely as Domino Derval. But this was not a good movie. Worse yet, because someone else got the rights to this film, it was remade in 1983, with a 52-year-old Connery giving it one more shot (and he'd had his six), in the horrendous Never Say Never Again.

18. A View to a Kill, 1985. Yes, Moore was 57 years old when it was filmed. Yes, Tanya Roberts' Stacey Sutton was not a compelling Bond Girl. Yes, Grace Jones' May Day was an attempt at an over-the-top henchman, a female equivalent of Richard Kiel's Jaws. Yes, merely trying to corner a market (in this case, computer technology) is a plot whose foiling is beneath Bond. (Heck, it's basically the Duke brothers of Trading Places, with more computers and less bigotry.)

And, no, the one thing that some people think saves this movie, having a villain played by Christopher Walken, does not help. The role of Max Zorin had initially been offered to David Bowie, who turned it down, saying, "I didn't want to spend five months watching my stunt double fall off cliffs." Another blond British rocker, Sting, was offered it next, but he also turned it down.

But it's not that bad. It doesn't drag like Thunderball. It's never as silly as DAF. It doesn't copy a current movie fad like TMWTGG. And the shots of San Francisco, including of the Golden Gate Bridge, are pretty good, if not as "exotic" as a Caribbean or Asian island, or an Amazon jungle, or a Winter resort.

Still, it was time for Moore to hang up the Walther PPK, and he did. This was also Lois Maxwell's final film as Miss Moneypenny.

17. On Her Majesty's Secret Service, 1969. Connery left, and Australian model George Lazenby was hired. He was 9 years younger, but that was his only advantage. He totally lacked much of what made Connery so effective in the role, including confidence and ruthlessness.

Would Connery's Bond have so easily fallen for Teresa Draco, a.k.a. Countess Tracy di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg)? No, not so easily, anyway. Then again, Lazenby's Bond appreciated her as a near-equal -- both in talent and in neuroses -- and Connery never would have have, even if Roger Moore occasionally did (as with Anya Amasova in TSWLM and Octopussy in the film named for her).

Director Peter Hunt was clearly influenced by a film released earlier that year, Midnight Cowboy, as his editing was dizzying, and might have induced seizures in some. Had he simply made OHMSS like previous Bond films, it would have been among the most visually arresting of them.

The Piz Gloria location, in the Bernese Alps of Switzerland in real life, did make for some spectacular shots. Telly Savalas did a good job taking over the role of Blofeld. And the ending is a gut-punch, especially for people who remembered Rigg as the heroic Emma Peel on The Avengers (the 1960s British spy TV series, not connected to the Marvel Comics stories). In other words, this could have been one of the best Bond movies. But it remains in the bottom half.

16. The Living Daylights, 1987. Timothy Dalton's introduction to the series is standard spy stuff, the West vs. the Soviet Union, except, this time, a Soviet spy is messing with his own country instead of the West, and MI6 and the KGB have to once again, reluctantly, work together.

In real life, the Soviets were still occupying Afghanistan, and this film puts the Mujahideen on the side of the good guys, which won't make sense to anyone watching this film after 2001. By Bond standards, this film is about average: Dalton helps himself a little, but he wasn't about to replace either Connery or Moore in anyone's eyes. Robert Brown remained as M, but Caroline Bliss took over as Miss Moneypenny for both of the Dalton films.

15. Goldfinger, 1964. Ian Fleming died on August 12, 1964, 4 months after visiting the set, so he didn't live to see its release on September 17. According to many Bondophiles, this is the one that, A, really set the tone for the series, especially with Q presenting 007 with the tricked-out Aston Martin DB5, and the love interest with the censor-testing name Pussy Galore; B, is the best Bond film of them all; and, C, proves that Sean Connery is the best Bond of them all.

A is wrong, because From Russia With Love did that. B is wrong, and so is C, and they're linked, as I'll explain:

* Bond's luck in this film is insane. It defies logic so much, it would give Mr. Spock a Vulcan headache. Seriously:

** Who sees an enemy coming, reflected in the eye of the woman he's kissing? Even Batman never pulled that off, with Catwoman or anyone else.

** Eponymous (and redundantly-named) villain Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) staying at the same hotel that Bond is? What a coinky-dink!

** And how did Bond get up to the top of that Kentucky cell that he was put in, and stay there, long enough for the henchman to be taken by surprise?

** And Bond escaped from it juuuust in time to hear Goldfinger explain Operation Grand Slam. Not one minute before, requiring him to wait around for some dumb henchman to not quite find him; and not one minute too late to have heard any of it.

** Pussy tells Bond, "You can save your charms. I'm immune." This was as close as the Hays Code would allow a film released in America in 1964 to have a character flat-out say, "I'm gay." Which Pussy explicitly was in the novel. Yet one literal romp in the hay with Bond, and she not only turns straight, but turns coat. Instead of wanting to kill him for it, because it was rape. (Which I'll get back to.)

** Bond gets captured, and stays captured, for more than half of the film. For all the tut-tutting about Raoul Silva's plan depending on getting captured in Skyfall, as was the Joker's in The Dark Knight and Loki's in The Avengers, at least those villains knew what they were doing. Bond is just lucking out the whole freakin' time.

** At the end, Goldfinger, who we're supposed to accept is an evil genius, doesn't know that you're not supposed to fire a gun on board a goddamned plane!

** Worst of all: How many chances did Goldfinger and his henchmen have to kill Bond, and fail to do so? These henchmen were so bad at shooting (How bad were they?), I'm convinced that at least one of these actors was hired to play a Stormtrooper in Star Wars.

** And how many times did they outright refuse to kill him when they had the chance?

*** The henchmen had Bond right where they wanted him in the Swiss forest, and took him alive.

*** Goldfinger tranquilized him, instead of using an actual bullet or, you know, the gold laser that was already inches away from him.

*** At Fort Knox, Oddjob (Harold Sakata) could have killed Bond by throwing his hat, but runs down to fight him instead, only throwing the hat afterward.

*** The cheesiest example: Bond's bluff to get out of the "gold-laser bris" works, and it shouldn't have: Even if Goldfinger thinks Bond knows what Operation Grand Slam is, he hasn't had a chance to tell anyone, and won't, if Goldfinger simply lets the laser take its course. Just finish him off, Auric!

Does it sound like I'm rooting for the bad guys here? Do I expect them to win? No, Mister Reader, I expect the film to make some damn sense! But I gotta admit: "Do you expect me to talk?" followed by "No, Mister Bond, I expect you to die!" is a great exchange, and Bond villains had so few of them. Pretty much the only other good one was Drax's "See that some harm comes to him" in Moonraker.

* Bond isn't even the hero of the movie. He's almost incidental to it. At the end of the Fort Knox sequence, it's not Bond, but his CIA friend Felix Leiter (played here by Cec Linder), who stops the dirty bomb -- with 7 seconds to go, so that it reads "007."

* The editing is bad, from Bond's grappling hook at the beginning to the mountain-driving sequence, to the henchmen's car exploding as it starts to go over a cliff, to the Fort Knox soldiers being knocked out by the Goldfinger plane fleet's gas before the fleet is even overhead.

* I realize that Frobe's English was so heavily accented that it needed dubbing. But they couldn't make a character who is specifically said to be British sound a bit less like a German war criminal who somehow got acquitted at Nuremberg? (Remember: The Nazis, too, hoarded gold.)

It makes Goldfinger the most cartoonish villain in the entire 24-film series, and that's saying something, since it also includes a Caribbean dictator obviously based on "Baby Doc" Duvalier (Dr. Kananga, played by Yaphet Kotto in Live and Let Die), a character played by Christopher Walken (Max Zorin in A View to a Kill), and a giant with steel teeth whose only name is "Jaws" (Richard Kiel in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker).

* Finally, this film wants us to root for James Bond. As the scene with Bond and Pussy in the hay suggests, they go on to have sex. And she is objecting the whole way. James Bond is a rapist. And this film is asking you to root for him. And the Hays Code didn't have a problem with it, so long as the editing cut directly from him kissing her, without any clothes having yet been taken off, to a scene of a propeller starting, which the Code keepers were too dumb to know was a metaphor for Bond's "engine starting."

So if you think Goldfinger is the best James Bond film, you're basing this on your feelings, not on the available facts. You can make it your favorite, but it is far from the best.

On the plus side, Shirley Bassey gives the most iconic performance of a Bond film theme song. And the Aston Martin is pretty cool. And Goldfinger does utter the 1st "Goodbye, Mr. Bond." And Eon showed a lot of guts in not only naming the film after the villain, but, really, making the film the villain's story more than the hero's. Unfortunately, that works both ways: Once the opening sequence is played, we never hear Bond's theme again: Only Goldfinger's theme is played throughout the film.

14. Octopussy, 1983. This? This movie? Ahead of Goldfinger? Blasphemy! No, it is not. It's my list. You don't like it, make your own damn list.

In 1983, Kevin McClory, who produced Thunderball and still had the rights to that story, and to the concepts of SPECTRE and Blofeld, wanted to remake the film, and did so as Never Say Never Again (which I'm not even going to count here, since it's unofficial), with a 52-year-old Connery. It was released on October 7, 4 months after Octopussy on June 6, and... made less money.

I remember watching Siskel & Ebert At the Movies, and both Gene Siskel and Robert Ebert said that Connery was the better Bond. Ebert said, "Moore's too prissy. He's too afraid to get his white suit dirty." This was stupid: Moore wasn't afraid of anything, and coming away looking cleaner was part of his charm.

Yes, this is the movie where Moore hides in a fake alligator. Connery had a fake bird on his head at the start of Goldfinger. Yes, this is the movie where Moore dresses as a clown, complete with makeup. He was trying to infiltrate a circus, so it was a good disguise.

Robert Brown had played Admiral Hargreaves in TSWLM, and was cast as M for this film, replacing the late Bernard Lee. Although it's possible he was taking over in the character as well as in the office, it is more likely, given Lee's death, that Lee's M had died, and Hargreaves was promoted into the office.

Maud Adams returns, as the titular smuggling tycooness. Her real name is not mentioned in the film, but, in the book, it was Octavia Smythe -- "Octavia" to fit with the "octopus" theme, just as Spider-Man villain Doctor Octopus was named "Otto Octavius." It's a Batman-Catwoman relationship: They shouldn't be on the same side, but, eventually, they have to be.

Louis Jourdan, for once, is not the most suave man in the room. Octopussy has the best all-female private army seen onscreen until the Amazons of Wonder Woman in 2017. Q's Union Jack balloon is a hoot. And it is a good Cold War story.

But the best scene is Bond sliding down the banister with a machine gun, shooting the Newell post so it doesn't, as Steve Martin might say, grab him like a slab of meat with mittens.

13. You Only Live Twice, 1967. This is a decent adventure story, and it shows us "Tiger" Tanaka (Tetsurō Tamba), a Japanese man who is not a stereotype, but rather a very modern man, as a major official in every modern nation. And we finally get to see Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Played here by Donald Pleasence), after two films (or, considering this film, two and a half) where all we saw where his hands, torso and cat.

On the other hand, the two Japanese women aiding in his task, Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi) and the unfortunately named Kissy Suzuki (Mir Hama), in spite of how capable they turn out to be, are caricatures. And the idea of making Bond become Japanese, or, to use a later metaphor, "Turning Japanese," is incredibly insensitive, even by 1960s standards.

At least they used actual Japanese actors, instead of Americans or Britons in "yellowface," a la Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's (and, to a lesser extent, Joseph Wiseman as the half-Chinese Dr. No). Still, this film could have been a lot better.

One of the main differences between the books and the movies is that, in the movies, this was the first time Bond and Blofeld came face-to-face, and Blofeld, while defeated, gets away; while, in the books, YOLT concludes a trilogy of books where Blofeld is the villain, and Bond kills him, avenging Tracy.

One more interesting note: Charles Gray, who went on to play Blofeld in DAF, here plays Bond's initial contact in Japan, Dick Henderson, who gets the martini order wrong: "Stirred, not shaken."

12. Tomorrow Never Dies, 1997. This was the 1st Bond film after the death of original producer Cubby Broccoli, and his daughter Barbara and stepson Michael G. Wilson, having been associate producers to that point, took over in full.

This film gets a bum rap: It did not begin the decline of the Brosnan Era. I have never liked Jonathan Pryce, going back to his awful commercials for Infiniti cars in the late 1980s; and, as a more interesting version of Rupert Murdoch, using a media empire to influence world events in his favor, he makes a great opponent for Bond..

This was also the 1st time that Bond, having previously teamed up with Russians, had to do so with a Chinese agent, Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh, a Malaysian actress of Chinese -- Cantonese -- ancestry). Like Anya Amasova in TSWLM, she was a good match for him. And, like many other movies with a scene in Vietnam, that sequence was actually filmed in Thailand. Oh yes, this film also had Teri Hatcher playing an ex-girlfriend of Bond's. She was still real, and still spectacular.

11. Licence to Kill, 1989. Note the British spelling of the word Americans would spell "license." Bond and old friend Felix Leiter start by foiling a drug lord, then parachuting into Leiter's wedding. Leiter hadn't been seen since Live and Let Die, where he was played by David Hedison, who becomes the 1st actor to play the role twice.

But the drug lord gets his revenge, maiming Leiter and killing his bride, leaving him alive to know he's won. Bond, remembering how his own wife Tracy was killed on their wedding day (thus officially making Dalton's Bond the same man as Connery's, Lazenby's and Moore's), seeks his own revenge. M warns him against it, and revokes his license to kill, meaning he's on his own and subject to any country's laws.

Q defies M, and helps Bond. This movie was not based on any of Fleming's novels, yet Dalton's performance in it has been called the closest to the book version of Bond that had yet been seen. Due to production problems, it would be the last Bond film for 6 years, and Dalton's contract ran out, so, as Bond, he, pardon the choice of words, only lived twice.

10. Moonraker, 1979. This movie gets a bum rap, due to 2 things: Moore being 52 years old, and thus considered too old for the part; and the laser-gun battle in space. For the 4th time in 12 years -- YOLT with the space program, LLD with blaxploitation, TMWTGG with kung fu, and now this with science fiction, 2 years after Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and with Star Trek: The Motion Picture soon to follow -- the Bond films decided to tie in with a current pop-culture phenomenon.

As for the age factor: These days, plenty of action-adventure films feature stars around that age, and even older. Antonio Banderas is 59. Tom Cruise is 57. Robert Downey Jr. is 55. Current Bond Daniel Craig, Jason Statham and Vin Diesel are all 52, the same age Moore was in Moonraker. Will Smith turns 52 in September. Ben Affleck and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson aren't far behind them at 47. And let's not forget: Cary Grant, one of the original candidates to play Bond, was 56 when he starred in North By Northwest.

As for the laser battle: Yes, it's so cheesy, mice get excited. But that's just 2 minutes. The rest of the film holds up very well. It's worth remembering that Moonraker was the highest-grossing Bond film ever, and remained so until GoldenEye, 16 years later. Maybe pandering to the Star Trek and Star Wars fans wasn't such a bad idea.

Venice (previously seen in FRWL, and seen again in Casino Royale) and Rio de Janeiro hit the "exotic location" buttons. The disease designed to wipe out all of humanity harkens back to OHMSS, and Michael Lonsdale is a credible villain as Sir Hugo Drax.

Jaws (Richard Kiel) becomes the 1st henchman to appear in a 2nd film, and also the 1st to turn coat and work with Bond and his Girl. Speaking of whom, Lois Chiles is good as the astronaut with the censor-shaking name, Dr. Holly Goodhead. (A much more believable scientist than Christmas Jones.)

You'll notice that I have the film in which Moore goes into space ranking higher than the film in which Connery almost goes into space. I stand by that ranking. Moonraker is a good film.

9. Spectre, 2015. After finally obtaining the rights to the character of Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his organization SPECTRE from the estate of Kevin McClory in 2013 (McClory had died in 2006), Eon was ready to reboot Bond's classic nemesis as well.

Christoph Waltz, already the villain in Inglorious Basterds and Seth Rogen's horrible reboot of The Green Hornet, was a good choice to play him. And the idea of Bond causing the massive facial scar we saw on Donald Pleasence in YOLT (and going a step beyond that and costing Blofeld the use of that eye) was a good touch. So was having Blofeld be responsible for the villains of CR, QOS and Skyfall.

Monica Bellucci, at 50, became the oldest Bond "Girl" ever (breaking the record of Honor Blackman, 38 when she filmed Goldfinger), but you'd never know it: She was as fine as ever. And having Mr. White (Jesper Christiansen) turn coat and help Bond at the end of his life was fitting in a way.

But having Blofeld's father adopt Bond after he was orphaned as a boy, and thus making them step-brothers, and having Blofeld make his grievances against Bond personal for so long, was insane. There was no reason to have the 2 men be on a 30-year collision course. On the other hand, having Bond leave Blofeld captured, to face British justice, rather than killing him, showed growth in the character, even compared to previous Bonds' relationship to the villain.

And so, in a repaired Aston Martin, Bond and Mr. White's daughter, Dr. Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), ride off into the sunset, with Craig as yet unaware if there would be another Bond film with him. Of course, there is one more, No Time to Die, and Madeleine will be in it with him. But so will Blofeld, who is not advertised as the main villain. Time will tell about that film.

8. Live and Let Die, 1973. Bond is dead, long live Bond. Roger Moore, despite being 3 years older than Connery, takes over, and the stakes are less than stopping Blofeld or somebody else from destroying and/or taking over the world. It's just taking down a drug lord, played by Yaphet Kotto in the dual role of Dr. Kananga, dictator of a Caribbean island nation, and Mr. Big, the drug kingpin of Harlem.

This makes him the 1st black Bond villain, although Dr. No was the 1st nonwhite one. And Gloria Hendry, who had co-starred in Black Caesar earlier in the year, plays CIA Agent Rosie Carver, the 1st black woman to sleep with Bond (at least, onscreen).

This was a sendup of "blaxploitation" films, including Black Caesar, and there are some seriously cringeworthy moments. One that's not related to race was brought up by Moore years later: "Why would have have a man run across crocodiles while wearing crocodile shoes?" And Louisiana Sheriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton James, actually from Oregon) was pretty cringey, too.

But it's a good story, and Jane Seymour as Solitaire makes a good romantic lead, And Moore proves every bit Connery's equal. He's more stylish, every bit as good with the quips, and proved he was just as ruthless: When Rosie says they'll kill her if she tells who's compromised her, he says he'll kill her if she doesn't. She says, "But you wouldn't -- not after what we just did!" He says, "Well, I certainly wouldn't have killed you before."

7. Skyfall, 2012. The worst thing I can say about this one is that, at 2 hours and 23 minutes, it was too long. Having M die in spite of everything that Bond had tried to do made very little sense, but it showed that the spy game is always troublesome. Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) needing to get captured to make his plan work was a bit dippy. And suggesting that Bond was now possibly too old for this shit, when the previous movie was an extension of his origin story, was wrong. There should have been at least 2 movies in between, showing us Bond in his agent prime.

But Silva was still a chilling villain. Introducing Naomie Harris as (the finally first-named) Eve Moneypenny, making her a real field agent instead of just M's secretary, introducing Ben Whishaw as a surprisingly young Q, and introducing Ralph Fiennes as the new M all worked very well.

6. For Your Eyes Only, 1981. After the "Bond vs. Anti-Bond" confrontation of TMWTGG, the Cold War love story of TSWLM, and the Bond-in-space story of Moonraker, a Bond film that was, literally, down to Earth was not so much a letdown as a reprieve, especially for Connery fans who didn't like the sillier aspects of the films (ignoring just how silly those films could be, including Connery's own space-themed adventure, YOLT).

This one opens with Moore's Bond laying flowers at Tracy's grave, marked with the dates 1943-1969, thus proving that his character is the same one played by Connery and Lazenby. And then he's attacked by someone who, due to legal reasons, they couldn't say was Blofeld, but it was Blofeld, back after 10 years (and, apparently, paralyzed due to what Bond did to him at the end of DAF). After 2 films with Connery fighting him, and 1 with Lazenby, it is Roger Moore's version of James Bond who finally gives Ernst Stavro Blofeld the shaft. (Don't worry, the cat got away and lived.)

Ironically, given the opening scene, Bond has to return to the Alps, albeit to the Italian side rather than the Swiss side. Julian Glover plays Aris Kristatos, the 1st Bond villain to first appear to have been an ally, which turns out to be a very effective twist -- repeated with similar effectiveness in TLD, and with considerably less in TWINE. All in all, a very good spy film, and another nail in the coffin of the prevailing opinion that Moore and his body of work weren't as good as Connery and his.

Bernard Lee was dying of cancer, and so this was the 1st Bond film not to feature the character of M.

5. GoldenEye, 1995. Perhaps the 1st reboot of the Bond series: It was pushing it to say that Timothy Dalton, 43 at the time of LTK, was playing the same man as Sean Connery, then 59, did from 1962 to 1971, but, canonically, he was.

For GE, Pierce Brosnan debuted as Bond, after initially being considered as Moore's replacement for TLD. It made sense: Moore had been considered due to being the suave international hero in a TV series, The Saint; while Brosnan had been a suave TV star on Remington Steele. But he couldn't get out of his contract, so they turned to Dalton instead. Now, Brosnan was available.

With an opening sequence set in 1986, before Dalton took over, it's easier to say that Brosnan, 42 in 1995, was not the same man that was played by a then-65-year-old Connery. Twice, in GE and in TWINE, there oblique references to Tracy, but if you didn't know Bond's personal history, you wouldn't presume that this confirms he was ever married.

But is he the same man? The new M, Judi Dench, suggests that he is, by calling him "a relic of the Cold War." There's also a new actress playing Miss Moneypenny. Her name is Bond. Samantha Bond. She remains in the role through all the Brosnan films.

The Bond franchise needed a good one after the 6-year gap, and they got it. The transition of some Soviets (Famke Janssen's Xenia Onatopp was said to be Georgian, not Russian) to traditional capitalist gangsters was played up, so it was both a Cold War spy movie and a Mob movie, and Brosnan handled it as if he had been playing Bond in the 2 previous films. Eon Productions got it right. Unfortunately for Eon and Brosnan, it would never be so good again -- at least, not together.

4. Dr. No, 1962. This film started it all, for a very good reason: The original heads of Eon Productions, Harry Saltzman and Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli didn't know if turning Ian Fleming's novels into films would work, especially in America. If successful, they would make more money there than in the rest of the world. If unsuccessful in the U.S., it wouldn't matter how successful it was in the U.K. and elsewhere: They would be doomed. So they chose the Bond novel that they thought would be the cheapest to produce. It worked, and subsequent Bond films had bigger budgets.

Most of the familiar Bond tropes started here (with the analogues for this film in parentheses):

* The opening "gunbarrel sequence" and opening titles, both designed by Maurice Binder, who would continue to design opening titles until his death in 1991.

* The iconic theme song, composed by Monty Norman and performed by an orchestra conducted by John Barry.

* James Bond, Agent 007 of MI6, Britain's international security agency (played by Sean Connery), looking cool as hell, getting the girls, killing the bad guys, and dropping mad quips.

* Bond's boss, known only as M (Bernard Lee), approving of his results but not always his methods.

* Bond's playful banter with M's secretary, Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell, and the character doesn't get a first name, Eve, until Skyfall).

* Exotic locations (Jamaica, which had been granted independence by Britain after filming was completed, hence it was still a colony in the film).

* A spectacular lead "Bond Girl" (Ursula Andress as the revenge-minded Honey Rider).

* And an insidious villain (Joseph Wiseman as Dr. Julius No) with a nefarious plot (sabotaging an American space launch, so that the Soviet Union would get blamed, starting World War III, and allowing No's superiors in SPECTRE to take over what was left of the world).

Not yet in place: Q and his gadgets (the only new equipment Bond gets is a new sidearm, a .32-caliber Walther PPK), a tricked-out car, and a plot tying in with a current cultural phenomenon (which has been done a few times, and usually hasn't aged well).

If you can get past Bond's hyper-macho attitude, and the fact that the film views the world through a lens that is still tinted by the British Empire (which had, in real life, already given way to the British Commonwealth), the film is a good adventure with a satisfying conclusion.

3. Casino Royale, 2006. The reboot. A James Bond who is, for the 1st time, definitively not the man first seen in Dr. No. This is Bond Begins. The 1st onscreen origin story for Agent 007, although it's been suggested that he never needed one. The debut of Daniel Craig as Bond. It is also, aside from an American reworking on the CBS anthology series Climax! in 1954, and the unofficial spoof in 1967, the 1st depiction of the 1st of Ian Fleming's Bond novels, published in 1953.

To borrow an analogy from this film's Texas hold 'em poker theme (as opposed to the original's baccarat), Eon Productions went all in. For everyone involved, this had to be a good one.

It was. They totally nailed it. Although Craig was already 38 years old, he was a believable agent new to this level, making rookie mistakes, but figuring things out as he went along. The inclusion of a 1964 Aston Martin to become this Bond's car was a nice touch.

Judi Dench remained as M, even though she may not have been the same character as in the Brosnan films -- "God, I miss the bloody Cold War" was not a line the M she had been playing would have said. Eva Green was just right as the compromised Vesper Lynd. And Mads Mikkelsen was devilishly appropriate as Le Chiffre.

Everything was in place for the Craig Era to be a great one. And then they followed this triumph with Quantum of Solace.

2. From Russia With Love, 1963. For all the flak the Bond movies get for their sexism, this one had a plot that was ahead of its time: It recognized that, due to his promiscuity, Bond could be snared in a "honey trap," thus damaging the security of the NATO alliance and of Britain in particular.

But, much more than its only predecessor, Dr. No, FRWL established the sense of both intrigue and romance that the Bond films became known for. And, despite being only 19, still the youngest Bond Girl, Daniela Bianchi made for a good foil as Tatiana Romanova.

This film also introduced Desmond Llewelyn as Q the quartermaster.

1. The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977. This is it: The best and defining James Bond film, and it stars Roger Moore, not Sean Connery.

Karl Stromberg (Curd Jürgens) is a pretty standard Bond villain, but his plot is pretty good, and requires an ingenious solution. Having Jaws (Richard Kiel) helps: He makes all previous large Bond-opposing hitmen (including Robert Shaw as Red Grant in FRWL and Harold Sakata as Oddjob in Goldfinger) look as small as Herve Villachaize as Nick Nack in TMWTGG.

Barbara Bach as Major Anya Amasova, Agent XXX (Triple-X), is the best Bond Girl. You can argue that another is more beautiful, or has a better body, although it would be a tough argument. But, more than any other, her character is a match for Bond, in intelligence (in both senses of the word), talent, determination and even wordplay -- the latter, no mean feat because she's playing a Russian speaking English.

Egypt makes a fantastic "exotic location." A villain's base in the middle of the ocean makes a stiff challenge. (How does Jaws swim all the way back to land?) And the submersible Lotus Esprit is the best Bond car ever, ahead of the Aston Martin.

Sorry, Connery fans, you might find this positively shocking, but this is the best Bond film. Don't blow a fuse.

April 8, 1974: Hank Aaron hits his 715th career home run, breaking Babe Ruth's career record.

Not having anything new to talk about, except the deaths of sports legends, means Africa we have to make stuff up. Exercise, baseball's calendar. Today is the anniversary of Hank Aaron hitting his record-breaking/record-setting home run. So, Happy Hank Aaron Day.

Baseball season usually being from April to October, not every day of the year can be assigned to a player. Sometimes, it's fairly easy, like when a famous game is played, and a player's name gets attached to it, But sometimes, that gets problematic, especially in October, where we may have more than one great anniversary in one day.

Keeping in mind that this is my list, and I decide whether a baseball figure is worthy of "his own day"; and that not every day will be assigned to someone, and that new suggestions are welcome (I will credit anyone whose suggestion is approved), here is my list:

January 1: Hank Greenberg Day. He was born on that day in 1911.

January 16: Dizzy Dean Day. He was born on that day in 1910. Also the birthday of another St. Louis Cardinals legend, Albert Pujols, in 1980.

January 18: Curt Flood Day. He was born on that day in 1938.

January 24: Jack Brickhouse Day. He was born on that day in 1916.

January 25: Ernie Harwell Day. He was born on that day in 1918.

January 26: Bob Uekcer Day. He was born on that day in 1934.

January 31: Ernie Banks Day. He was born on that day in 1931.

February 6: Babe Ruth Day. He was born on that day in 1895. Commissioner Happy Chandler declared April 27, 1947 "Babe Ruth Day" throughout baseball, but that day isn't as well remembered as the days the Yankees gave for Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle.

February 9: Bill Veeck Day. He was born on that day in 1914.

February 14: Mel Allen Day. He was born on that day in 1913.

February 17: Red Barber Day. He was born on that day in 1908.

February 24: Honus Wagner Day. He was born on that day in 1874.

February 25: Monte Irvin Day. He was born on that day in 1919.

March 1: Harry Caray Day. He was born on that day in 1914.

March 2: Mel Ott Day. He was born on that day in 1909.

March 3: John Montgomery Ward Day. He was born on that day in 1860.

March 6: Lefty Grove Day. He was born on that day in 1900.

March 8: Jim Bouton Day. He was born on that day in 1939. One of the things that, prior to 2019, made a fellow proud to be an Astro.

March 19: Richie Ashburn Day. He was born on that day in 1927.

March 22: Bob Costas Day. He was born on that day in 1952.

March 24: George Sisler Day. He was born on that day in 1893.

March 26: Harry Kalas Day. He was born on that day in 1936.

March 27: Miller Huggins Day. He was born on that day in 1879. Ahead of Buster Posey (1987), and way ahead of Matt Harvey (1989).

March 29: Cy Young Day. He was born on that day in 1867.

April 1: Phil Niekro Day. He was born on that day in 1939.

April 2: Luke Appling Day. He was born on that day in 1907.

April 4: Tris Speaker Day. He was born on that day in 1888.

April 6: Ron Blomberg Day. He became the 1st MLB player to be used as a designated hitter on that day in 1973. Instead of his birthday, August 23, 1948.

April 7: John McGraw Day. He was born on that day in 1873.

April 8: Hank Aaron Day. Instead of his birthdate, February 5, 1934.

April 12: Addie Joss Day. He was born on that day in 1880.

April 14: Marvin Miller Day. The 1st Director of the Players' Association was born on that day in 1917. Ahead of Pete Rose (1941), Greg Maddux and David Justice (both 1966).

April 15: Jackie Robinson Day. He debuted in Major League Baseball on that day in 1947, making April 15 perhaps the holiest day on the Baseball Calendar. Instead of his birthdate, January 31, 1919. Interestingly, 3 of the 1st black players on teams had January 31 as a birthday. The others are Ernie Banks of the Cubs and Tom Alston of the Cardinals.

April 16: Bob Feller Day. He pitched his 1st of 3 career no-hitters on this day in 1940. It remains the only no-hitter ever pitched on a season's Opening Day, although it is no longer the earliest on the calendar that a no-hitter has been pitched. Instead of his birthday, November 3, 1918.

April 17: Alexander Cartwright Day. The man most often credited as the inventor of baseball (it's not completely fair, but it is partially fair) was born on that day in 1820.

April 21: Joe McCarthy Day. The Yankee manager who won 8 Pennants and 7 World Series was born on that day in 1887. He should not be confused with the infamous Senator of the same name.

April 22: Tom Seaver Day. On that day in 1970, he tied a major league record with 19 strikeouts in a 9-inning game, and set one that still stands by striking out 10 straight, the last 10 he faced. Instead of his birthday, November 17, 1944.

April 23: Warren Spahn Day. He was born on that day in 1921.

April 27: Rogers Hornsby Day. He was born on that day in 1896. I had considered giving this day to Nolan Ryan, as it was the day in 1983 that he became the all-time strikeout leader.

April 29: Luis Aparicio Day. He was born on that day in 1934.

May 1: Oeschger-Cadore Day. On that day in 1920, the Boston Braves and the Brooklyn Dodgers played the longest game in MLB history, 26 innings, and both starting pitchers went the distance. Joe Oeschger of the Braves was born on May 24, 1892. Leon Cadore of the Dodgers was born on November 20, 1891. I could have chosen this day as Nolan Ryan Day, as it was the anniversary of his 7th career no-hitter in 1991.

May 2: Toney-Vaughn Day. On that day in 1917, for the only time in baseball history, both starting pitchers in a game threw no-hit ball for 9 innings. Fred Toney of the Cincinnati Reds kept his no-hitter for 10 innings, while Jim "Hippo" Vaughn lost his, and the game, in the 10th. Both were born in 1888: Vaughn on April 9, Toney on December 11.

May 5: Chief Bender Day. Baseball's most prominent Native American was born on that day in 1884.

May 9: Tony Gwynn Day. He was born on that day in 1960.

May 11: Charlie Gehringer. He was born on that day in 1903.

May 12: Yogi Berra Day. He was born on that day in 1925.

May 14: Dwight Gooden Day. He pitched his no-hitter on that day in 1996. Instead of his birthday, November 16, 1964.

May 15: George Brett Day. He was born on that day in 1953.

May 17: David Wells Day. He pitched his perfect game on that day in 1998. Instead of his birthday, May 20, 1963.

May 18: Brooks Robinson Day. He was born on that day in 1937. I am well aware that this is also the birthday of my favorite athlete of all time. He will get a day.

May 23: Zack Wheat Day. Arguably still the best hitter the Dodger franchise has ever had, in either Brooklyn or Los Angeles, he was born on that day in 1888.

May 26: Harvey Haddix Day. On that day in 1959, he pitched 12 perfect innings, but lost the game in the 13th inning. Instead of his birthday, September 18, 1925.

May 27: Bagwell-Thomas Day. Two future Hall-of-Famers were born on this day in 1968, Jeff "Bags" Bagwell and Frank "Big Hurt" Thomas. Their teams even faced each other in the 2005 World Series: Thomas was injured and unable to play for the Chicago White Sox, but they beat Bagwell's Houston Astros anyway.

May 28: Kirk Gibson Day. He was born on that day in 1957. His famous walkoff home run happened on October 15, 1988, so giving him his birthday as "his day" makes it easier to decide among the many big events that happened in baseball on that day.

May 30: This date available. I could have made it Manny Ramirez Day, but he was a 2004 Red Sock, and one of them proven to have personally cheated, so screw him.

June 6: Bill Dickey Day. He was born on that day in 1907.

June 8: Mickey Mantle Day. It's the day the Yankees gave for him in 1969. Instead of his birthdate, October 20, 1931.

June 12: Dock Ellis Day. On that day in 1970, he pitched a no-hitter, and claimed to have done so under the influence of LSD.

June 15: Johnny Vander Meer Day. On that the day in 1938, he pitched his 2nd straight no-hitter. Instead of his birthday, November 2, 1914.

June 17: Ron Guidry Day. On that day in 1978, he struck out 18 batters, setting a Yankee team record, and began the tradition of Yankee Fans standing with a 2-strike count. Instead of his birthday, August 28, 1950.

June 18: Lou Brock Day. He was born on that day in 1939.

June 29: Harmon Killebrew Day. He was born on that day in 1936.

July 1: Bobby Bonilla Day. The day every year, until 2035, that the Mets have to pay Bobby Bo over $1 million, because of the dumbest contract in baseball history.

July 2: Joe DiMaggio Day. He hit in his 45th straight game on this day in 1941, setting a new record, one which still stands. Instead of his birthday, November 25, 1941.

July 4: Lou Gehrig Day. It's the day the Yankees gave for him in 1939. Instead of his birthday, June 19, 1903.

July 5: Goose Gossage Day. He was born on that day in 1951.

July 7: Satchel Paige Day. He was born on that day in 1906. It's been checked. A lot.

July 10: Carl Hubbell Day. He struck out 5 straight American League Hall-of-Famers in the All-Star Game on this day in 1934, but his National League team lost anyway. Instead of his birthday, June 22, 1903.

July 11: Bo Jackson Day. He hit a memorable All-Star Game home run on this day in 1989. Instead of his birthday, November 30, 1962.

July 16: Shoeless Joe Jackson Day. He was born on that day in 1887.

July 17: Lou Boudreau Day. He was born on that day in 1917. The temptation was to give him October 4, the day of the 1948 Playoff between the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Red Sox, but that's Johnny Podres/Brooklyn Dodger Day.

July 18: David Cone Day. He pitched his perfect game on that day in 1999. On what had originally been celebrated as Yogi Berra Day. Cone was born on January 2, 1963.

July 19: Lon Simmons Day. He was born on that day in 1923.

July 21: CC Sabathia Day. He was born on that day in 1980.

July 23: Pee Wee Reese Day. He was born on that day in 1918.

July 26: Hoyt Wilhelm Day. He was born on that day in 1923.

July 30: Casey Stengel Day. He was born on that day in 1890.

July 31: Curt Gowdy Day. He was born on that day in 1919.

August 12: Christy Mathewson Day. He was born on that day in 1880.

August 14: Earl Weaver Day. He was born on that day in 1930.

August 16: Ray Chapman Day. He was hit with a pitch on this day in 1920, and died the next day. He remains the only player to die as the result of an on-field injury. (Officially. See Doc Powers.) He was born on January 15, 1891.

August 20: Al Lopez Day. He was born on that day in 1908.

August 21: Jack Buck Day. He was born on that day in 1924. His son Joe Buck does not get a day.

August 22: Carl Yastrzemski Day. He was born on that day in 1939.

August 25: Rollie Fingers Day. He was born on that day in 1946.

August 27: Jim Thome Day. He was born on that day in 1970.

August 30: Tug McGraw Day. He was born on that day in 1944.

August 31: Frank Robinson Day. He was born on that day in 1935.

September 2: Al Spalding Day. He was born on that day in 1850.

September 4: Jim Abbott Day. On that day in 1993, the one-handed Abbott pitched a no-hitter. Instead of his birthday, September 19, 1967.

September 5: Nap Lajoie Day. He was born on that day in 1874.

September 6: Cal Ripken Day. On that day in 1995, he played in his 2,131st consecutive game, breaking Lou Gehrig's record. Instead of his birthday, August 24, 1960.

September 9: Frank Chance Day. "The Peerless Leader" was born on that day in 1876.

September 10: Randy Johnson Day. He was born on that day in 1963.

September 11: It was known as Pete Rose Day, because on that day in 1985, he collected his 4,192 hit, officially becoming MLB's all-time leader. This is complicated by, A, the fact that we now know that Ty Cobb had 4,189, meaning that Rose broke the record 3 days earlier; B, Rose's banishment from baseball, meaning we shouldn't celebrated the day; and C, the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Rose was born on April 14, 1941, but I'm not going to award him April 14 as Pete Rose Day.

September 16: Robin Yount Day. He was born on that day in 1955.

September 17: Rube Foster Day. The great pitcher, and the founder of the Negro National League, was born on that day in 1879.

September 19: Duke Snider Day. He was born on that day in 1926. A tough call over Bob Murphy (1924), Joe Morgan (1943) and Jim Abbott (1967).

September 25: Phil Rizzuto Day. He was born on that day in 1917.

September 26: Nolan Ryan Day. On that day in 1981, he set a record with his 5th of what would turn out to be 7 career no-hitters. It was tough picking a day for him. He was born on January 31, 1947, so he shares his birthday with Jackie Robinson and Ernie Banks.

September 27: Mike Schmidt Day. He was born on that day in 1949.

September 28: Ted Williams Day. On that day in 1941, he went 6-for-8 in a doubleheader, to close the season batting .406, making him baseball's last .400 hitter to this day. In addition, on that day in 1960, he hit his 521st career home run in his last major-league at-bat. He seems to be the only player with 2 events that significant on the same calendar day. Instead of his birthday, August 30, 1918.

September 29: Willie Mays Day. On that day in 1954, he made the most famous defensive play in the history of sports, known to baseball fans as "The Catch," to help the New York Giants win Game 1 of the World Series, sparking a 4-game sweep of the Cleveland Indians. Instead of his birthday, May 6, 1931.

October 1: Roger Maris Day. On that day in 1961, he hit his record-breaking/record-setting 61st home run of the season. Instead of his birthday, September 10, 1934.

October 2: Bucky Dent Day. On that day in 1978, you either know what he did, or you're reading the wrong blog. Instead of his birthday, November 25, 1951. Speaking of 1951...

October 3: Bobby Thomson Day. On that day in 1951, he hit what we would now call a walkoff home run to give the New York Giants the National League Pennant over the Brooklyn Dodgers. Instead of his birthday, October 25, 1923.

October 4: Johnny Podres Day. On that day in 1955, he pitched a shutout over the Yankees in Game 7 of the World Series, to give the Brooklyn Dodgers their only Series win. Also known as Brooklyn Dodger Day. Instead of his birthday, September 30, 1932.

October 5: Tommy Henrich Day. On that day in 1941, he took advantage of a dropped 3rd strike to keep the Yankees from losing, and spark a rally that won Game 4 of the World Series. On that day in 1949, he hit the 1st walkoff homer in postseason history, winning Game 1 of the World Series. Both times, it was against the Brooklyn Dodgers. Instead of his birthday, February 20, 1913.

October 6: Roy Halladay Day. On that day in 2010, he pitched the 2nd no-hitter in postseason history. Instead of his birthday, May 14, 1977.

October 7: This date available, despite it being a postseason day.

October 8: Don Larsen Day. On that day in 1956, he pitched the 1st no-hitter in postseason history, a perfect game in Game 5 of the World Series. Instead of his birthday, August 7, 1929.

October 9: Jeffrey Maier Day. It's a bit odd to name a day after a fan, especially when you consider that he didn't even come up with the ball. I could name it Derek Jeter Day, but I had a better date in mind. And I could name it Bernie Williams Day, in honor of the man who hit the homer that won the game. But everyone knows it as The Jeffrey Maier Game. I could have messed with Met fans by naming this Mike Scioscia Day, in honor of Game 4 of the 1988 NLCS, but decided to stick with my own team.

October 10: Grover Cleveland Alexander Day. On that day in 1926, he struck Tony Lazzeri out to end a Yankee rally, and then closed out Game 7 of the World Series for the St. Louis Cardinals. Instead of his birthday, February 26, 1887.

October 11: Jon Miller Day. The great broadcaster was born on that day in 1951.

October 12: Joe Cronin Day. He was born on that day in 1906.

October 13: Bill Mazeroski Day. He hit the only home run to win Game 7 of a World Series on that day in 1960. Instead of his birthday, September 5, 1936.

October 14: Chris Chambliss Day. He hit a Pennant-winning home run for the Yankees on that day in 1976. Instead of his birthday, December 26, 1948. Met fans might want to call it Tommie Agee Day, for his catches in Game 3 of the 1969 World Series.

October 15: Enos Slaughter Day. His "Mad Dash" won Game 7 of the World Series for the St. Louis Cardinals. This was a tough call, overlooking the aforementioned 1988 World Series walkoff by Kirk Gibson, the birth of Jim Palmer in 1945, the catch by Ron Swoboda in the 1969 World Series, and a Pennant-winning home run by Tony Fernandez in 1997.

October 16: Aaron Boone Day. On that day in 2003 -- okay, it was after midnight, but MLB considers anything done in a game starting on a calendar day to have happened on that day -- you either know what he did, or you're reading the wrong blog. Instead of his birthday, March 9, 1973.

October 17: Willie Stargell Day. The Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series on this day in 1971 and again in 1979. Each time, they came from a 3 games to 1 deficit to beat the Baltimore Orioles, and clinched in Baltimore. "Pops" had a difficult Series in 1971, but in 1979, he led "The Family" to victory, and completed what remains a unique sweep: Winning the Most Valuable Player award for his League in the regular season, his League Championship Series, and the World Series. Instead of his birthday, March 6, 1940. I could have made this Dave Roberts Day, in honor of the most famous stolen base in baseball history, but he was a 2004 Red Sock, so screw him.

October 18: Reggie Jackson Day. On that day in 1977, he hit 3 home runs to win Game 6 and the World Series for the Yankees. Instead of his birthday, May 18, 1946.

October 19: Yadier Molina Day. On that day in 2006, he hit a Pennant-winning home run for the St. Louis Cardinals against the Mets. Instead of his birthday, July 13, 1982. I could have chosen Rick Monday, who did the same for the Los Angeles Dodgers against the Montreal Expos in 1981, but "Rick Monday Day" would have sounded awkward. I could have made this Dave Roberts Day, in honor of The Bloody Sock Game, but he was a 2004 Red Sock, so screw him.

October 20: Scott Brosius Day. On that day in 1998, he hit 2 home runs, including the game-winner off the supposedly unbeatable Trevor Hoffman of the San Diego Padres, to give the Yankees a win in Game 3 of the World Series. A tough call over Juan Marichal, born on that day in 1937. And, of course, I have already accounted for Mickey Mantle, born on that day in 1931.

October 21: Carlton Fisk Day. Again, the date on which the game began matters, not on which the game ended. It was 12:34 AM on October 22, 1975, when Fisk hit a walkoff home run in the 12th inning to give the Boston Red Sox the win over the Cincinnati Reds in Game 6 of the World Series. A tough call over Whitey Ford, born on that day in 1928; and Steve Carlton, winning pitcher in Game 6 to give the Philadelphia Phillies their 1st World Series win, in 1980.

October 22: Jimmie Foxx Day. He was born on that day in 1907. Ichiro Suzuki, born on that day in 1973, now makes it a close call.

October 23: Joe Carter Day. On that day in 1993, he hit a walkoff home run in Game 6 to give the Toronto Blue Jays the World Series over the Philadelphia Phillies. Instead of his birthday, March 7, 1960.

October 24: Dave Winfield Day. On that day in 1992, his 10th inning double gave the Toronto Blue Jays a Game 6 win over the Atlanta Braves, the 1st and only World Series win for himself, and the 1st for the team.

October 25: Mookie Wilson Day. On that day in 1986, his 10th inning single gave the Mets a Game 6 win over the Boston Red Sox, and set them up to win the World Series the next day. I could have called it Bill Buckner Day, but that would be wrong.

October 26: Kirby Puckett Day. A great catch and a walkoff extra-inning home run to send a World Series to a Game 7 puts him ahead of Don Denkinger's goof in 1985, Joe Girardi's triple in 1996, Luis Sojo's single in 2000, and Max Muncy's 18th inning walkoff (the only game his team won in that World Series) in 2018. Instead of his birthday, March 14, 1960.

October 27: Ralph Kiner Day. He was born on that day in 1922.

October 28: David Justice Day. On that day in 1995, he hit a home run for the only run of Game 6, allowing the Braves to clinch their 1st World Series win since moving to Atlanta. Instead of his birthday, April 14, 1966.

October 29: Madison Bumgarner Day. On that day in 2014, he pitched 5 innings on 2 days rest to help the San Francisco Giants win Game 7 over the Kansas City Royals, and win the World Series. Instead of his birthday, August 1, 1989.

October 30: Ed Delahanty Day. He was born on that day in 1867.

October 31: Derek Jeter Day. On that day in 2001, he hit a walkoff home run in Game 4 of the World Series. MLB's rule is that the game started on October 31, so it doesn't matter that he hit that homer at 12:03 AM on November 1. But then, "Mr. November" stuck, didn't it? Instead of his birthday, June 26, 1974.

November 1: Johnny Damon Day. On that day in 2009, his double steal foiled the Philadelphia Phillies' shift, and led the Yankees to win Game 4 of the World Series. Instead of his birthday, November 5, 1973.

November 2: Ben Zobrist Day. On that day in 2016, he drove in the runs that won the Chicago Cubs their 1st World Series in 108 years. Instead of his birthday, May 26, 1981.

November 4: Hideki Matsui Day. On that day in 2009, he almost single-handedly won Game 6, and thus the World Series, for the Yankees. Instead of his birthday, October 24, 1974.

November 6: Walter Johnson Day. He was born on that day in 1887.

November 9: Bob Gibson Day. He was born on that day in 1935.

November 13: Buck O'Neil Day. He was born on that day in 1911. Also, among fans of classic TV, this is Felix Unger Day.

November 19: Roy Campanella Day. He was born on that day in 1921.

November 21: Stan Musial Day. He was born on that day in 1920.

November 29: Mariano Rivera Day. He was born on that day in 1969. Ahead of Vin Scully, who was born on that day in 1927. Sorry/Not Sorry, Dodger fans, but even if Scully was the greatest broadcaster ever, which he most certainly was not, even for the Dodgers (Red Barber), it doesn't put him ahead of Mariano.

December 7: Johnny Bench Day. He was born on that day in 1947. No, you can't put Tino Martinez (1967) ahead of him, and certainly not Yasiel Puig (1990).

December 13: Larry Doby Day. He was born on that day in 1923.

December 17: Chase Utley Day. He was born on that day in 1978. I list this one less to please Phillies fans, and more to smack Met fans.

December 18: Ty Cobb Day. He was born on that day in 1886. And I was born on that day in 1969.

December 19: Al Kaline Day. He was born on that day in 1934.

December 20: Branch Rickey Day. He was born on that day in 1881.

December 21: Josh Gibson Day. He was born on that day in 1911.

December 22: Connie Mack Day. He was born on that day in 1862. A tough call over another Philadelphia baseball legend, Steve Carlton, born on that day in 1944.

December 23: Liberation Day. This was the day in 1975 that arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled that the reserve clause was invalid.

December 30: Sandy Koufax Day. He was born on that day in 1935.

December 31: Roberto Clemente Day. The day of his plane crash in 1972. He may be the closest thing that baseball has to a saint, and the "feast days" of a saint is usually the anniversary of the day he died, since so many of them were in the early days of the Christian church, at a time when birth records were so haphazardly kept that their birthdays were often unknown.

No sports results to think of, so my mind is going to other places. These theories are all my own, but that doesn't necessarily mean the thoughts therein hadn't previously occurred to others.

These songs are listed in chronological order, by their order of release, not necessarily in the order of the time period in which they take place.

1. 1961 and 1964: Marie's the name... of Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman"
In 1961, Elvis Presley had a Top 5 hit with "(Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame," in which he laments that a friend's new girlfriend had been his own girlfriend just yesterday. In 1964, Roy Orbison had a Number 1 hit with "Oh, Pretty Woman." It was about his wife, Claudette, as was "Claudette," a song that became a hit for The Everly Brothers in 1958.

Roy and Elvis were friends, from their days recording together in Memphis. As far as I know, neither ever made a move on the other's woman. But what if the guys in the songs in question were friends?

Elvis' character begins by calling the other guy "a very old friend." Said friend doesn't call Marie a "pretty woman," but "I heard him say that she had the longest, blackest hair, the prettiest green eyes anywhere." (Claudette Orbison didn't have green eyes, but she did have black hair.)

So what about the pretty woman in Roy's song? Is it Marie, the "flame"? The later song says nothing that could be construed as a reference to the earlier one. But the pretty woman first listens to Roy's character, then walks on by (possibly a reference to "Walk On By," a hit for Dionne Warwick earlier in the year), then walks back to him. It's as if she had to think about it. Why? Maybe she already had a boyfriend, the Elvis character from the earlier song.

It would be out of character for a guy like Roy Orbison to steal a friend's girlfriend. But "His Latest Flame" doesn't say that Marie's new boyfriend had any idea that she was the other guy's old (or current) girlfriend. Maybe he just didn't know.

Then again, the other side of the single that had "His Latest Flame" was "Little Sister." Maybe that's a sequel, showing that the older sister had a habit of cheating, and the hope that the younger one wouldn't.

2. 1963-67: All of Lesley Gore's hits are linked
"Answer songs" have been used in music pretty much since the beginning of the recording industry. And it's obvious that "Judy's Turn to Cry" was an immediate sequel to "It's My Party," the song that hit Number 1 and launched Tenafly, New Jersey native Lesley Gore to stardom at age 16 in 1963.

But there is an established theory that she plays the same girl in all her hits, or at least her early ones. "You Don't Own Me," from early 1964, has been considered one of rock and roll's earliest feminist anthems, and turns the old double standard on its head: She doesn't want him to cheat on her, as he did with Judy, but she says, "Don't say I can't go with other boys."

But between "Judy's Turn to Cry" and "You Don't Own Me," there was "She's a Fool," in which she sees the boy she loves with his new girlfriend, and, "She has his love but treats him cruel.""She" could be Judy, and this could have inspired her move to take Johnny back at the party mentioned in "Judy's Turn to Cry." Maybe "Judy's smile was so mean," not just because she had stolen Johnny from Lesley, but also because she knew she had stolen somebody else's boyfriend as well, before Lesley struck back.

Some of Lesley's other hits could be part of the story, but out of sequence. In "Maybe I Know," she considers the possibility that "he's been cheatin'." And she admits "I Don't Wanna Be a Loser." A later hit is "We Know We're In Love," but a still later hit, from 1967, is "Brink of Disaster." In an earlier hit, "That's the Way Boys Are," in which she comes to terms with it, and she later sings "I Won't Love You Anymore (Sorry)."

One of her minor hits, in late 1964, was "Sometimes I Wish I Were a Boy." Not only does this predate Beyoncé's "If I Were a Boy" by 44 years, but presaged her coming out. In a 2005 interview, she said she'd known she was gay since she was 20, in 1966: "I just kind of lived my life naturally, and did what I wanted to do. I didn't avoid anything. I didn't put it in anybody's face."

3. 1967: The man sittin' on the dock of the bay is gay

On December 10, a plane crash in Madison, Wisconsin killed Otis and 4 of the 5 members of his touring band, The Bar-Kays. Trumpeter Ben Cauley, the only survivor, lived until 2015. None of them were hurt: They died because they crashed into Lake Monona, and drowned. Cauley couldn't swim, and survived by hanging onto his seat cushion before he was rescued. He was the only one who was able to get out of his seat belt.

Otis had wanted to add sound effects of waves and seagulls to the song. M.G.'s guitarist Steve Cropper added them, and the song was released. It became the 1st rock and roll song to become a posthumous Number 1 hit.

San Francisco has long been a haven for gay men. One reason is America's drive west. San Francisco is the end of the line, a place where people can reinvent themselves, and turn their back on everything before them. It's the opposite of New York: If you can't make it there, you probably can't make it anywhere. Hence, the Golden Gate Bridge became the bridge most known for suicide jumps.

Another reason it became a gay haven is its status as a port city. Soldiers and sailors returning from the Pacific Theater of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War had to stop in San Francisco before being sent back home. Those who had been gay, and had to hide it, and were tired of hiding it back home, stayed.

In the 2nd verse of the song, the narrator says, "I left my home in Georgia, headed for the Frisco Bay, 'cause I've had nothing to live for, and looks like nothin's gonna come my way." In the bridge (not to be confused with the Golden Gate), he says, "I can't do what ten people tell me to do, so I guess I'll remain the same." And in the 3rd verse, he admits that it hasn't worked: "This loneliness won't leave me alone." Whether "it" involved finding true love, we can only guess. And we can only guess whether he's straight or gay.

Otis was very straight, having 4 children with his wife, Zelma Atwood, including singer Otis Redding III. He adopted a very macho stage persona. On "Tramp," one of his duets with Carla Thomas, he blurted out, "Ooh, I'm a lov-er!" And he almost certainly didn't meant to suggest, a year and a half before the Stonewall Uprising, that he was playing a gay man in this song.

But the idea fits. And black men have an even harder time surviving in their own community, living gay among straights, than white men do. (Same for Hispanics.) While it's hardly the only possible explanation for why the man in the song feels so lonely and helpless, it's plausible.

4. 1968: Delilah is still alive at the end of the song
In 1968, Tom Jones sang "Delilah," which is considered one of the great "murder ballads" of all time. The narrator catches "my woman" (he never says "wife" or "girlfriend") cheating on him. The next morning, he shows up at her door: "She stood there laughing. I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more." He closes by saying, "So, before they come to break down the door, forgive me, Delilah, I just couldn't take anymore."

Sounds cut and dried, doesn't it? Not so fast. He never says she's dead. He never even says that he used the knife, only that he felt it in his hand, and she stopped laughing.

Why would "they" (presumably, the police) have to break down the door? If he's killed her, he should be on the run, get as far from the scene of the crime as possible, unless he believes he deserves to go away for it. If the door needs to be broken down, maybe Delilah is still alive, being held as his hostage.

5. 1969: The "Silver Hammer" murders are all in Maxwell's head
There had to be at least one Beatles song on this list. And, like "Delilah," it involves an apparent murderer. Oddly, no one seems to have connected this one to the "Paul is dead" rumor that seeped into public consciousness shortly thereafter.

In the 1st verse of "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," we learn that Maxwell Hedison is a university student, and that he murders a fellow student, named Joan. In the 2nd verse, apparently taking place sometime later, he gets revenge on a teacher who's punished him by killing her. In the 3rd verse, he's been arrested, and he's put on trial. He testifies in his own defense, but the judge isn't buying it. So Maxwell kills him, too, and there, the song ends.

There have been plenty of Beatle songs that don't seem to make much sense, but most of these are the result of John Lennon's drug use. This is a light, bouncy Paul McCartney song. Sir Cute One probably never intended for people to analyze the hell out of it. And yet, what the flying...

In the 1st verse, Maxwell is "majoring in medicine." So, he's in what we in the U.S. would call college. But the instructor in the 2nd verse is called the "teacher," not the "professor." This makes it sound like she's teaching at a level below college. So at what level is Maxwell here?

That brings us to the court case. It certainly appears that he is being tried as an adult. And there's 2 girls in the gallery, named Rose and Valerie, shouting that he must go free. This would seem to be quite a validation for Maxwell, especially as it's coming during his testimony.

Any defense attorney worth his salt would tell you that the best way to gain an acquittal in a murder trial is to keep his client from testifying. So why is Maxwell on the stand? Is his lawyer an idiot? Did he overrule his lawyer's recommendation that he not testify?

And since he's already murdered 2 people (that we know of, there could be more), and both of them were female, why would the people championing his release also be female? And why would he take the chance of murdering the judge? In front of witnesses? Including law-enforcement officers? And how did he get his hands on the murder weapon, his silver hammer, when it should have been entered into evidence, away from him?

None of this makes any damn sense, unless you consider that it's a fantasy. It's all in Maxwell's head. Nice girls like Joan, Rose and Valerie would never take his side in anything, much less go out with him. And maybe he is still in high school, and the teacher punishing him is the only real part of the story.

So he gets his revenge, but only in his mind. And he imagines a trial, at which he "wins." But, in reality, he doesn't have the guts to carry any of it out. As The Temptations would sing of a far more benign situation, a year and a half later, "It was just my imagination, once again, running away with me."

Is this what McCartney intended? Almost certainly not. But a similar idea was used by Bret Easton Ellis in his 1990 novel American Psycho and its 2000 film adaptation. It's also been suggested for the 2019 film Joker, an alternate take on the classic Batman villain: The main character is an unreliable narrator, and so the murders we see him commit may not have actually happened. Or maybe they did, but he isn't the perpetrator.

If we were to ask Paul, he'd probably say we're thinking about it too much. But if John had written it, and were still alive to ask about it, he might match Joaquin Phoenix's last line from Joker: "You wouldn't get it."

6. 1970: "Kentucky Rain" is a sequel to "Suspicious Minds" -- or maybe it's even darker than that
Eddie Rabbitt, later to be known for writing and singing country hits like "I Love a Rainy Night," wrote "Kentucky Rain," and it was recorded by Elvis Presley. It was a moderate hit for him in 1970.

In the 1st verse, he says he's looking for his wife, who's left him, and he has no idea why. He has to know. In the 2nd verse, he talks about his search. And in the 3rd verse...

There is no 3rd verse: The song is left open-ended. He doesn't find her and get an explanation. He doesn't give up, go home,  and then find a letter from her, saying that people have been telling her that he's looking for her, and she feels she has to finally give him an explanation.  We never find out, and neither does he. This is a stroke of genius, but it's frustrating.

A few months earlier, Elvis had his last Number 1 on the pop charts, "Suspicious Minds," written by Mark James. The narrator desperately wants to keep the woman he loves, but she doesn't believe him when he says he hasn't cheated on her. As much as her accusation hurts, he says he can't leave her. But she doesn't leave him, either. It's a codependent relationship.

Maybe "Kentucky Rain" is this song's sequel. Maybe she left him because she was sick of thinking that he had cheated, and sick of his protests. This would make her the villain of the story.

But maybe she's not. Maybe he's the villain. Maybe she's a victim of domestic abuse, and leaving without leaving a note behind was the only way she could get out.

And maybe he's just too dumb to know that's the reason why. Maybe he's so he so deluded that he thinks everybody else is trying to help him, including the old men outside the general store and the preacherman who offers him a ride.

In this case, the song to which "Kentucky Rain" would be a sequel would be "Baby, Let's Play House," one of Elvis's earliest songs, which he closes by saying, "I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man."

And that became the first line of one of John Lennon's Beatles songs, "Run For Your Life." When discussing the music of Elvis and John, we tend to not want to talk about those songs.

7. 1973: Leroy Brown won the fight
Jim Croce had 2 very different-sounding songs with similar themes. The result of the 1st was very definitive, and it throws the result of the 2nd into doubt.

In 1972, he sang "You Don't Mess Around With Jim." Big Jim Walker is the king of pool hustlers in New York, but he makes the mistake of hustling a "country boy" named Willie McCoy, a.k.a. Slim. Slim wants a rematch.

Actually, he wants revenge. They fight with knives, and "Big Jim hit the floor." Next, instead of the song's title, everyone sings, "You don't mess around with Slim." Jim may not be dead, but it doesn't look good for him: "He was cut in 'bout a hundred places. He was shot in a couple more." Unquestionably, Slim won the fight.

A year later, shortly before his own death in a plane crash, Croce released "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown." Leroy Brown is a gambler on the South Side of Chicago, and is every bit as tough as Big Jim Walker, and the song makes it clear that he's smarter, better-dressed, and more successful with women.

It's implied that Leroy is also more successful at gambling: While both men drive Cadillacs -- Jim's is a convertible, a "drop-top," Leroy's is an Eldorado, and being the same model is possible -- Leroy also has a custom Lincoln Continental, which, along with a Caddy, had long been the standard for a rich American's car.

Anyway, in the 3rd verse, "at the edge of the bar sat a girl named Doris, and, oh, that girl looked nice." It turns out, she's married, and her husband is there. The 4th verse, in its entirety: "Well, the two men took to fightin', and when they pulled them from the floor, Leroy looked like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone." Sounds like Leroy lost the fight, and his life is in danger.

But then, unlike when he changed the lyric for Jim Walker, Jim Croce goes right back to the chorus, still singing that Leroy is "the baddest man in the whole damn town." How can that be, if he lost the fight?

Maybe he didn't lose. Croce never said what the other guy looked like, only that both men were pulled from the floor. Maybe the other guy looked worse. Maybe Leroy is still the baddest because he took the worst beating of his life, and still won.

8. 1975: The woman in "Lyin' Eyes" is a Red Sox fan
I first thought of this theory before the Boston Red Sox started winning the World Series again in 2004, and first wrote about it on this blog in 2011.

In October 1975, "Lyin' Eyes" by The Eagles hit Number 2. This was a month when the Red Sox were in the World Series, complete with the legendary Game Six when Carlton Fisk did the Fenway Twist.

Lead singer Glenn Frey was from Detroit and a Tigers fan. Don Henley, who contributed some of the writing, is from Texas, but I've never heard him talk about baseball. Yes, he later had a solo hit titled "The Boys of Summer," but it doesn't mention baseball. Like the Roger Kahn book about the Brooklyn Dodgers, its title seems to have taken its from a Dylan Thomas poem. Certainly, neither Frey nor Henley was a Red Sox fan.

But I was able to match every line of the song with something connected to the Red Sox. Here's the short version: There are plenty of "big old houses" owned by "rich old men" in Boston and environs. Kenmore Square, long before the steroids, could have been called "the cheating side of town." Being 1975, the boy "with fiery eyes and dreams no one could steal" would be Fred Lynn. "She drives on through the night, anticipating," because Boston traffic is horrible.

"She whispers that it's only for a while," because she knows the Sox will blow it in the end. The only times when they don't blow it is when they don't get close enough to blow it. "She swears that soon she'll be comin' back forever." Someday, they will win the World Series. She’s sure of it. If she only knew...

"She wonders how it ever got this crazy. She thinks about a boy she knew in school." This boy could be Tony Conigliaro, Carl Yastrzemski, or Harry Agganis. "Ain't it funny how your new life didn't change things." Foreshadowing of finding out that what happened from 2004 to 2018 was fake?

The theory that The Eagles' song "Hotel California" is about winding up in Hell has been debunked. The entire album of the same name is about how the American Dream coming true, particularly the Western, and especially the California, part of it, was a disaster.

9. 1982: "Billie Jean" was a "beard"

A "beard" is a term for a woman who serves as a man's date to ward off a rumor that he is gay. Michael Jackson faced accusations that he was gay, and, worse, had molested boys. He was tried on such charges once, and was acquitted, but some people still think he was guilty.

If such actions did happen, when did they start? Had there already been such a rumor in 1982, when he recorded "Billie Jean"? Maybe a song where he played a character who was going out of his way to say he was not, as the woman in the song claimed, the father of her child was a defense against the darker rumors.

Like an inoculation: The defense against the disease might backfire and make you feel lousy for a little while, but you'd still be better off than if you got the disease. If that was the idea, it worked no better than did his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis' daughter.

10. 1983: The "Her" in "Tell Her About It" is Brenda, and the narrator is Eddie
In 1977, Billy Joel released his album The Stranger. It includes "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant," and lots of people think it's his best song, and he agrees. It seems to be 3 songs in 1, with the bulk of the song being "The Ballad of Brenda and Eddie" -- or "Brender an' Eddie," if you want to use the N'Yawk accent.

Brenda and Eddie seemed like a great couple in high school, but they "had had it already by the Summer of '75." And yet, after the divorce, "they parted the closest of friends." So, before the marriage, great; after it, okay; during, not so much.

Fast-forward to 1983. BJ has released An Innocent Man. This is my favorite album of his, because he's copying acts from his youth, especially the early 1960s. The title track has been compared to a Drifters song. "Uptown Girl" makes no pretense of hiding that it's a tribute to Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons. "The Longest Time" isn't just doo-wop, it's a cappella. And "Tell Her About It," a Number 1 hit, sure sounds like it could have been sung by Dion DiMucci during the John F. Kennedy Administration.

The narrator of "Tell Her About It" is telling a guy that he used to date the woman he wants to get with, and that if he doesn't "tell her everything you feel," he'll blow his chance with her. The narrator has already had a relationship with her and blown it, because he wasn't honest with his feelings, but also suggests that she may not have been fully open with hers: "She's a trusting soul, she's put her trust in you, but a girl like that won't tell you what you should do."

So the narrator has no problem setting his ex up with another guy. He's actively encouraging it. Could he be Eddie, trying to set this new guy up with Brenda? It would make for a decent sequel. Certainly, some of Joel's songs could use a good sequel.

*

Let me give you one more theory that sounded great when I thought of it, but it doesn't pan out: President Harry Chapin. In his 1974 Number 1 hit "Cat's in the Cradle," he says he missed a lot of the important moments in his son's childhood, because "there were planes to catch and bills to pay."

Presidents fly off considerably more often than most people who have regular jobs. While they don't pay their own bills, they do have to submit budgets. In the 2nd verse, the father blows the son off, but the son's smile never dims, and he still says "I'm going to be like him." Sounds like the sort of thing a son says to a powerful, charismatic father -- for example, if the father is the President of the United States.
But this theory falls apart in the 3rd verse, when the son ask the father for the car keys. If this was really the President and his son, the Secret Service would have been doing the driving.

Also, Harry's character in "Taxi" is driving his cab in San Francisco, not New York. So he doesn't become either Travis Bickle int he film Taxi Driver or any of the characters on the sitcom Taxi.

In this time of nothing happening -- except going to the store, dealing with whatever shortages they may have, hearing of famous people dying (from the coronavirus or otherwise), and watching Donald Trump handle it all badly -- many people are taking the drastic action of... reading.

Of course, much of that is on our computers: Desktop, tablet, smartphone. Luckily for me.

Lately, Google has been giving me story suggestions, including various pop culture lists of "the top 5 reasons why (such and such) is the best (of something) -- and 5 why it's (the other one)." Example: Batman: Five reasons why Dick Grayson is the best Robin (and five why it's Tim Drake). Or, name a superhero from either DC or Marvel, and five heroes from the other comic universe he could defeat (and five he couldn't). Sometimes, the reasons make sense; sometimes, they don't.

So, I decided to do that for New York baseball. I am alternating reasons why the Yankees, and the Mets, can each claim to be New York's true baseball team.

There will be some humor, and some snark. What there will not be is the DH question: Met fans still hate the DH, and Yankee Fans still wonder what the hell is wrong with them.

So, here goes:

Top 5 Reasons Why the Yankees Are New York's True Baseball Team (And 5 Why It's the Mets)

10. Mets: The Human Scale

Roger Angell is one of the greatest writers the subject of baseball has ever known. God willing, he will still be alive on September 19 of this year, which would be his 100th birthday. He has written for The New Yorker magazine since 1944. He has written 11 books, and 7 of them have been about baseball, including The Summer Game (1972), Five Seasons (1977), and A Pitcher's Story: Innings with David Cone (2002, describing how Coney dealt with the decline of his fine career).

Angell grew up as a fan of the New York Giants, and is one of the few people alive and old enough to remember, and root for, a team managed by John McGraw. He saw, in the 1930s, the Giants win 3 Pennants, but also lose back-to-back World Series to the Yankees (1936 and '37), making the Yankees, for the first time definitively, New York's team.

More than that, he saw the Brooklyn Dodgers win the 1941 Pennant, and, with the brief exceptions of the Giants' 1951 and '54 Pennants, be not only the more successful, but the more popular National League team in New York. In a span of just a few years, he saw the Giants go from Number 1 to Number 3 in town.

Interviewed for Ken Burns' miniseries Baseball in 1990, he said, "The move of the Giants was absolutely heartbreaking. Absolutely heartbreaking." We hear such sentimental stuff about the move of the Dodgers, also to California after the 1957 season, all the time. We rarely hear it about the Giants. But Giant fans and Dodger fans came together to root for the newly-established Mets in 1962.

The Mets were terrible. In their 1st 4 seasons, they lost 120, 111, 109 and 112 games. Contrast that with the Yankees, who won 5 straight Pennants from 1960 to 1964 -- and had won 29 out of 44 from 1921 to 1964. When the Mets went 66-95 in 1966, Year 5, it was considered a huge step up. (Then came Year 8, 1969. I will discuss that in Reason Number 2.)

Despite this, in 1964, the last year of the Yankee Dynasty, but also the year that Shea Stadium opened, the Mets overtook the Yankees in attendance, and by plenty: The Mets averaged 21,390 fans per home game, the Yankees 15,922. It would be the "Miracle" year of 1969, also the Yankees' 1st year without a major star (since Mickey Mantle had retired), before the Mets' attendance was more than double that of the Yankees, since they were essentially taking the fans of 2 different teams. But in terms of straight numbers, they had surpassed the Yankees in just 3 years.

And even in the 1st 2 years, at the Polo Grounds, while the Mets weren't yet surpassing the Yankees in attendance, they had a more engaged crowd. Angell noticed this, saying in his inerview with Burns:

An amazing thing happened, which was that New York took this losing team to its bosom. Everybody thinks New York only cares about champions, but we cared about the Mets.

I remember going to some games in June that year (1962). They were getting walloped. They were getting horribly beaten. But the crowds came out to the Polo Grounds in great numbers.

People brought horns, and blew these horns. And after a while, I realized this was probably anti-matter to the Yankees, who were across the river, and had won so long. Winning isn't a whole lot of fun if it goes on.

But the Mets were human. And that horn, I began to realize, was blowing for me. Because there's more Met than Yankee in all of us. What we experience day to day in our lives is much more losing than winning. Which is why we love the Mets.

The Yankees had been described with words like "dynasty,""baseball royalty,""lordly,""godly,""godlike,""officious,""haughty,""imperial,""imperious." (No one yet thought to call them "the evil empire," but "imperial" and "imperious" had been used.) Words used to describe the early Mets included "hopeless,""hapless,""inept,""clownish,""oafish,""pathetic." What's easier to aspire to: Being better than the 1962 Mets, or being anywhere near as good as the 1962 Yankees?

The Mets were a team you could get in on the ground floor of, as were the Jets, as would later be the Nets, the Islanders and the Devils. The Yankees? If you were in school in 1962, they had been winning Pennants for your entire lifetime, and probably for your father's entire lifetime as well.

As later Oakland A's batboy Stanley Burrell, later to become the rapper MC Hammer, would have put it, the Yankees were a team that told you, "You can't touch this." But as the theme song said:

Meet the Mets!
Meet the Mets!
Step right up and greet the Mets!
Bring your kiddies
and bring your wife!
Guaranteed to have
the time of your life!

Or, to borrow the words of a later jingle, for AT&T, the Mets invited you, more or less, to "Reach out, reach out and touch someone."

The Yankees were a team for gods, or for people who thought of themselves as such. The people in skyscraper offices, not the people who cleaned them. The people in limousines, not on buses. Your boss, not you. The Mets were a team for human beings, for regular people. People who needed that next paycheck.

9. Yankees: The Grand Scale

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" So said Robert Browning in 1855. In other words, what's wrong with aspiring to be the best? Let's quote another song: "I'll make a brand-new start of it, in old New York! If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere!"

Why not aspire to play in Yankee Stadium? Why not aspire to what the Pinstripes represent? Why not give yourself the goal of winning the World Series? Why not decide that you want to be pulling ticker-tape out of your hair as 4 million people cheer you on, 'round about Halloween?

Met fans like to use words like "magic" and "miracle." Yankee Fans think that this is small-time thinking. Sure, they use words like "mystique" and "aura," but they also know that, when Yankee management is truly determined to win, they get the players who are willing to wake up from the dream, and do what it takes to make the dream come true. To get things done on a grand scale.

8. Mets: Pitching

Over 100 years ago, the great Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack supposedly said, "Pitching is 75 percent of baseball." If you believe that, then the Mets are much closer to being a team for you than the Yankees are.

Sure, the Yankees have had great pitchers. Hall-of-Famers, including Whitey Ford and Mariano Rivera. But when you think of the truly great Yankees, even those guys aren't among the first few names that come to mind. You think of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson and Derek Jeter. Even Jeter, who wasn't a slugger on the scale of the others, had his share of big home runs. He hit a home run for his 3,000th hit.

The Yankees have had great pitchers, but you don't think of great pitching when you think of the Yankees. You think of the Sultan of Swat before you think of the Chairman of the Board.

In contrast, the Mets are all about pitching. When you think about their history, the first name that comes up is Tom Seaver. The second? Probably Dwight Gooden, ahead of any of the hitters on the 1986 Mets, even the Hall-of-Famer Gary Carter, the should-be Hall-of-Famer (or so they say) Keith Hernandez, or the would've-been Hall-of-Famer Darryl Strawberry. You think of Tom Terrific and Doctor K before you think of Mike Piazza and David Wright.

7. Yankees: Hitting

But "Chicks dig the long ball." And not just women: The home run is what everybody wants to see. And the Yankees have done it better than anyone. Ruth redefining the sport with the most and longest drives anyone had ever seen. Mantle's "tape measure" blasts. Roger Maris hitting 61 in '61. Reggie, Reggie, Reggie. Bucky Fucking Dent and Aaron Fucking Boone. Alex Rodriguez's 2009 redemption, and Hideki Matsui's clincher in that year's World Series. Postseason walkoff home runs by Jeter, Boone, Chris Chambliss, Jim Leyritz, Bernie Williams, Chad Curtis (okay, we'd like to forget that one, because of what he did later) and Mark Teixeira.

Think of a Met fan whose memory goes back as far as 1999, but not to 1986, and ask him to name the 5 biggest home runs he's ever seen from his team. He'll name Todd Pratt and Robin Ventura's walkoffs in the 1999 Playoffs. He'll name Piazza in the 1st game back after the 9/11 attacks. And then... He might mention Wright, or Daniel Murphy, or Yoenis Cespedes, but he'd really have to think hard for a specific moment.

A fan going back as far as the mid-'80s revival will remember Carter's homer in the 1985 opener, and the 1986 postseason heroics of Strawberry, Lenny Dykstra and... I'll admit, I had to think for a moment to remember this name: Ray Knight. Hernandez? They might remember singles or doubles that he hit, but they'll think of his defense before they think of any of his hits. I'm not saying that's a bad thing (like Don Mattingly, he was a great defensive 1st baseman), but it is telling.

Ask a Yankee Fan not old enough to remember the old Dynasty, and they'll remember the big names, because they've seen those names in Monument Park. Ask a Met fan not old enough to remember the Pennants of 1969 and 1973 who hit the big home runs on those occasions. Maybe they'll name Cleon Jones, but will they name Donn Clendenon? Al Weis? From '73, they might think of Rusty Staub, but would they think of Wayne Garrett?

Let's put it another way: Ruth, Gehrig, the 1961 Mantle-Maris record chase, and Reggie in '77 have all had movies made about them. Nobody's yet made a movie about Seaver.

6. Mets: You and Me Against the World

The Mets' fandom is the product of a "shotgun marriage" between the fandoms of the Giants and the Dodgers. But by the time they made their 1969 run for the postseason, they had a new generation of fans that wasn't old enough to remember the old teams. A kid who was, say, 7 at the time of the move wasn't really invested in either the Polo Grounds club or the Ebbets Field outfit, and would have been 11 on Opening Day 1962, and have graduated high school in '69.

So these fans didn't need to care who their parents rooted for. They could be united in their love of baseball, the Mets, and New York. And since "Everybody who ain't us, hates us," their bond created a "You and me against the world" mentality. That was the title of a 1974 hit song by Helen Reddy, written by Kenny Ascher and Paul Williams. (Yes, the little blond singer with the glasses.)

Chicago, Atlanta and Baltimore in '69? Baltimore in '69? Pittsburgh and Cincinnati in '73? Chicago again in '84? St. Louis in '85 and '87? Houston and Boston in '86? Los Angeles in '88? Atlanta again at the turn of the 21st Century? San Francisco in 2000? Philadelphia from 2007 to '11? Los Angeles again, Chicago again, and Kansas City in '15? Bring 'em on! We're New York, we can handle anybody!

After all, as we have seen, there's only one team that can really beat the Mets. It's themselves.

5. Yankees: No One Likes Us, We Don't Care

This concept comes from one of the nastiest sports teams in the world, South London soccer team Millwall FC. They chant it to the tune of "Sailing" by Rod Stewart. (Not the Christopher Cross song.) It's kind of the inverse of the "You and me against the world" idea that Met fans seem to embrace.

It reminds me of a scene in a 1975 episode of M*A*S*H. Head nurse Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan (played by Loretta Swit) is changing a wounded soldier's bandage. He's had it with the Army, and he says, right to her face, "I hate your guts!" She considers this for a moment, and says, "My guts are not here for you to love."

And that is how Yankee Fans react. We know New England hates us. We know Cleveland and Detroit and Kansas City hate us. We know both sides of Texas, Dallas and Houston, hate us. Thanks to multiple Playoff series against both Oakland and Los Angeles/Anaheim, we know California hates us. Thanks to 3 Playoff series with the Seattle Mariners from 1995 to 2001, we know the Pacific Northwest hates us. Thanks to our minor rivalry with the Toronto Blue Jays, we know all of Canada hates us. Hell, even other New Yorkers and New Jerseyans, the ones who root for the Mets, hate us.

And you know what? We love it. As our own Reggie Jackson once said, "Fans don't boo nobodies."

4. Mets: Better Broadcasters

From the dawn in 1962 until 1979, the Mets had the same 3 announcers: Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy and Ralph Kiner. Nelson was steady -- except for his sportsjackets: Once Met fans got color TVs, they saw that his jackets were loud. (Similarly in those days: Heywood Hale Broun.) Murphy was the golden voice that led the way both before and after Nelson's retirement in 1979, until his own in 2003, sadly forced because he was dying of cancer.

And Kiner, a Hall of Fame slugger for the Pittsburgh Pirates, had the malaprops, but he also got serious with his postgame (or, if a doubleheader, between games) show Kiner's Korner. He was the best interviewer New York baseball ever had. (Maybe Marty Glickman was better overall, but for baseball, it was Ralph.)

In the '80s, Murph and Kiner would be joined by Tim McCarver, Gary Thorne and Steve Zabriskie. In the '90s, as Murph and Kiner aged and cut back, on came Gary Cohen and Ed Coleman. In the 2000s, legendary hockey announcer Howie Rose joined. And ex-Met players like Staub, Hernandez and Ron Darling joined in.

And while you knew they always wanted the Mets to win, they all understood that the game mattered more than their own wishes. They were professionals. Not like those "homers" who made fools of themselves over the Yankees.

3. Yankees: More Fun Broadcasters

As Phil Rizzuto would say, "You huckleberry!" The Yankees' announcers -- especially Mel Allen from 1939 to 1964, Rizzuto from 1957 to 1996, Jerry Coleman from 1963 to 1969, Bobby Murcer from 1983 to his death in 2008. John Sterling since 1989, Michael Kay since 1992, and Suzyn Waldman since 1995 -- show you that their hearts are on their sleeves, even if you can't see them because they're on radio.

And it's stupid to say that the Yankees haven't had broadcasters who handled the job with the utmost professionalism. There was former Brooklyn Dodger announcer Red Barber from 1954 to 1966. Frank Messer from 1968 to 1984. Bill White from 1971 to 1988: The Yankees were behind the times racially in many ways, but they were the 1st team to have a black regular broadcaster. Jim Kaat from 1995 to 2006. Ken Singleton since 1997. Paul O'Neill since 2002. David Cone since 2008.

And you know what? They're still more fun that the Mets' broadcasters. For all the intelligence that Hernandez and Darling (Yale) bring to broadcasts, and for all their playing experience, they're really kind of boring. Say what you want about any Yankee broadcaster, but none of them is boring.

2. Mets: New York as Underdogs' City

Everybody who's not from the New York Tri-State Area seems to hate New York. That's about 300 million people trying to gang up on 20 million. Despite New York's size, there is an underdog mentality.

It's not the Donald Trumps and the Michael Bloombergs who make New York go. It's the taxi drivers, the bus drivers, the Subway motormen, the tollbooth workers, the pushcart vendors, the waitstaff, the shopkeepers, the repairmen (including auto mechanics), the garbagemen, the cops, the firefighters, the Con Edison workers.

The blue collar guys and gals. The people who work. The underdogs. The people who deal with crap similar to the crap you deal with. These are the people who identify with the Mets, the blue-collar team. (Okay, baseball jerseys usually don't have collars, but the Mets do sometimes wear blue jerseys.) For these people, the Mets are their team. "Dese are my guys, and doncha evah fugeddabouddit."

1. Yankees: New York as Winners' City

"No, those are not my guys, pal!" others say. God forbid we should root for a team that's as bedraggled as we are. We get enough of that with the Jets, the Knicks and the Rangers. We want someone who's gonna lift us up, and let us win along with them, and make us feel like New York really is "the greatest city in the world." The Yankees do that.

Roger Angell was right: There is more losing than winning in life. So why not go with a team that gives you a better chance to end your rotten day with a good result?

To paraphrase Nick Hornby, from his screenplay for the original, British soccer, version of Fever Pitch, You don't get many Aaron Boone moments in real life; and you don't get very many of them in baseball, either. So when they do come, you cherish them. And what team, in any sport, has offered you more to cherish than the New York Yankees?

A member of perhaps the most famous sports team the world has ever known has died, and most Americans have never heard of him. Which should not be, since he did play in America, however briefly.

Peter Phillip Bonetti was born on September 27, 1941 in Putney, South-West London. His parents, immigrants from the southern, Italian side of Switzerland, moved him in 1948, to Worthing, on the Sussex coast, where they ran a cafe.

He signed as a goalkeeper with local team Worthing F.C., a team currently in the 7th division of English "football." He was signed by Reading F.C. of Berkshire, and eventually his mother wrote to Ted Drake, the legendary former Arsenal striker who had managed West London side Chelsea to the 1955 Football League title (the 1st man to win the League as both a player and a manager), to give him a trial. Drake gave it, and Peter passed it.

In 1960, Bonetti led Chelsea's reserves to win the FA Youth Cup, and made his first team debut. He began the 1960-61 season as their 1st choice goalkeeper. The "Blues" (also called the "Pensioners") were relegated to the Football League's Division Two in 1962, but bounced right back up the next year under manager Tommy Docherty,

Docherty, a Scottish halfback who had starred for Preston North End of Lancashire and Arsenal of North London, rebuilt the team. With Bonetti, midfielders Terry Venables and John Hollins, and forwards Peter Osgood, Bobby Tambling, Barry Bridges and George Graham, Chelsea became a fashionable team for the first time.

(Venables and Graham would become best friends, even after Graham was sold to Arsenal. Eventually, they would maintain their friendship despite becoming rival managers in North London, "Gorgeous George" at Arsenal and "El Tel" at Tottenham Hotspur.)

It helped that Chelsea were the team closest to the West End, London's version of Broadway and the surrounding Theater District of New York. Greg Tesser, a former rock music promoter who recently died, published Chelsea FC in the Swinging 60s: Football's First Rock 'n' Roll Club in 2013. He included stories of how any American stars who were filming in Britain would head to the West End, and might attend Chelsea matches at Stamford Bridge.

But sizzle isn't enough, you have to provide steak. During the 1964-65 season, it became increasingly possible that Chelsea might win all 3 of England's major domestic trophies: The Football League Division One, the FA (Football Association) Cup, and the Football League Cup. They did win the League Cup, defeating Leicester City in a 2-legged Final. But they fell short of the other 2, bowing out of the FA Cup to Liverpool, and finished 3rd in the League, 5 points behind winners Manchester United.

(The "Domestic Treble" proved very elusive in England. It took until 2019 to be won, by Manchester City.)

In 1965-66, Docherty got Chelsea, nicknamed "Docherty's Diamonds," to the Semifinals of both the FA Cup and the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (the tournament now known as the UEFA Europa League), with Bonetti receiving raves for his performances in goal against teams like AC Roma, AC Milan and FC Barcelona, who eliminated Chelsea, and went on to beat fellow Spanish club Real Zaragoza in the Final. "Doc" also got them to the 1967 FA Cup Final, losing it to Tottenham. But he couldn't get them any closer, and resigned early in the 1967-68 season.

Dave Sexton, who had helped bring Arsenal out of the doldrums as an assistant to Bertie Mee, was brought in. In 1970, Chelsea got into the FA Cup Final, playing Leeds United. Neither had ever won it. Leeds had won the League the year before, and had lost the Cup Final in 1965. They were favored in this game, and did seem to have the stronger team.

It wasn't just that. Chelsea had never won the Cup, only making 2 Finals, losing to Sheffield United in 1915 and, as I said, to "Spurs" in 1967. It had actually become a joke. Even before Hollywood "came to Chelsea," the team had been associated with stars of London's music halls, one of which was Norman Long. In 1933, he recorded a song titled "On the Day That Chelsea Went and Won the Cup."

The song told of a dream, since "an astounding thing like this" could not have happened in real life. Most of the occurrences he mentioned were time-specific, and wouldn't be considered funny by current British audiences, much less American ones, but he did mention the Sun coming out in Manchester, and "Taxi-men had change for half a quid" (half a pound, or 50 pence), "lawyers told the truth and then refused to take their fees," and "doctors wrote prescriptions that we all could understand."

But on April 11, 1970, at the original Wembley Stadium in West London -- though 8 miles from Chelsea's Stamford Bridge -- Chelsea came from behind twice. They trailed 1-0 before equalizing, and when Mick Jones scored for Leeds in the 84th minute, it looked like they'd won it. But just 2 minutes later, Ian Hutchinson headed the ball in. Extra time was needed, and there was no further scoring, largely due to Bonetti's fine goalkeeping. Under the rules then in place, a replay was required, and, in the interest of sportsmanship, the teams took a joint "lap of honour" around the pitch.

The replay was set for April 29, a Wednesday, at Old Trafford, home of Manchester United, and it was a very rough match, with manager Don Revie's Yorkshire-based side living up to their image as "Dirty Leeds," and Sexton's Chelsea responding in kind.

Early on, Jones crashed into Bonetti, who needed treatment, and he effectively played on one leg the rest of the way. Not to be outdone, Chelsea's Ron Harris lived up to his nickname of "Chopper" by injuring the knee of Leeds winger Eddie Gray. There were dirty lunges and head-butts. David Elleray, who refereed in England's top flight from 1986 to 2003, reviewed the match for the BBC in 1997, and decided that each team should have been down to 8 men by the end.

Jones scored in the 35th, and Leeds again led late. But Chelsea refused to give up, with Peter Osgood heading the ball past Gary Sprake to tie it up in the 78th. The game went to extra time -- meaning these teams played 240 minutes, plus stoppage time, before a winner could be declared -- and, in the 104th minute, it was a centreback, David Webb, who scored the winning goal. Chelsea were winners, 2-1. (The photo at the top shows Bonetti posing with the Cup.)

*

But it is in "international football" that Bonetti will be most remembered. Like every other English goalkeeper of the 1960s, he was stuck behind Gordon Banks, who starred first for Leicester City, then for Stoke City. Bonetti was named to the England squad for the 1966 World Cup on home soil, but Banks played every minute of every game, including the Final that went to extra-time at Wembley, as England beat West Germany 4-2.

Only the 11 players who appeared in the game -- no substitutions permitted under the rules of the time -- were given winner's medals at the time. After decades of objections, in 2009, FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, ordered that medals be struck for the reserves, and Bonetti and the other reserves were handed their medals by Prime Minister Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the Prime Minister.

He was not named to the England squad for Euro 68, but he was for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. Again, he was stuck behind Banks. But between the Group Stage and the knockout stage, Banks came down with food poisoning. Manager Alf Ramsey named Bonetti the starter for the Quarterfinal -- against West Germany.

Alan Mullery and Martin Peters gave England a 2-0 lead. Bonetti had had his "finest hour." But soccer matches are an hour and a half. In the 68th minute, he allowed a goal by Franz Beckenbauer. In the 82nd, he allowed an equalizer by Uwe Seeler. The game went to extra time. Gerd Müller
scored in the 108th. The Germans had won, 3-2, and Bonetti was blamed for the defeat.
Never mind that Beckenbauer, Seeler and Müller were 3 of the finest players of their generation, regardless of position or country. On top of that, Pelé, the greatest player who ever lived, who went on to win that World Cup, his 3rd with Brazil, said, "The three greatest goalkeepers I have ever seen are Gordon Banks, Lev Yashin and Peter Bonetti."

(Yashin starred for Dynamo Moscow, and for the Soviet Union team that won Euro 60, reached the Final of Euro 64, and reached the Semifinal of the 1966 World Cup. In 1963, he became the 1st, and remains the only, goalkeeper to win the Ballon d'Or as World Player of the Year.)

Nevertheless, that Quarterfinal was the 7th and last time that Bonetti would ever play for England. He could have been selected for Euro 72, but wasn't. And England did not qualify for the World Cup in 1974 or 1978, or for Euro 76.

*

Bonetti continued to excel at the club level. Chelsea followed their 1970 FA Cup win with the 1971 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, again needing a replay in the Final, this time over Real Madrid in Athens, Greece. In 1972, Chelsea reached the League Cup Final, losing to Stoke City, backstopped by Banks. That remains the only major trophy that Stoke have ever won.

Bonetti remained with Chelsea through the end of the 1974-75 season. He was then signed by the St. Louis Stars of the North American Soccer League. They played some games at the 6,000-seat Francis Field at Washington University, a leftover from the 1904 Olympics, but some games sold enough tickets to be moved to Busch Memorial Stadium downtown.

He played 21 games for them, as named the League's First Team All-Star goalie, and helped them win the Central Division. In the Playoffs, they eliminated the defending Champions, the Los Angeles Aztecs, before losing to the original version of the Portland Timbers in the Semifinal. (Portland then lost the Final to the Tampa Bay Rowdies.)

Bonetti returned to Chelsea, which had been relegated, but he helped them gain promotion in 1976. He closed his playing career in 1979, with 5 games for Scottish team Dundee United.

He retired to the Isle of Mull, in Scotland's Inner Hebrides, where he became a mailman and ran a guesthouse. He lived there with his wife, Kay McDowell, and their 4 children: Daughters Kim, Suzanne and Lisa, and son Nicholas.

He went into coaching, and while he was never a full manager, both Chelsea and the England team brought him back. While coaching with Chelsea in 1986, he was talked into briefly coming out of retirement to play 2 games for lower-league Surrey team Woking F.C., 1 match each in league and FA Cup play.

Most of his coaching career was spent working for former Liverpool and Newcastle United star Kevin Keegan, as his assistant with Newcastle (1992-97), West London team Fulham (1998-99), England (1999-2000) and Manchester City (2001-05). From 2005 onward, he would occasionally play what we in America would call old-timers' games, usually coming on for the last 10 minutes of games played by a charity team called Old England XI.

Peter Bonetti died yesterday, April 12, 2020, at the age of 78. No details were given, other than that it was "a long illness." So it probably was not the coronavirus, or a complication thereof.

As far as is known, he was not diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, or another form of dementia. But, so far, 5 members of the 1966 England team have been diagnosed with something like that: Martin Peters, Ray Wilson, Nobby Stiles, Jack Charlton, Gerry Byrne.

Their numbers do not include Jeff Astle, perhaps the best-known English footballer to have died from football-related dementia. He starred as a forward for West Midlands club West Bromwich Albion, and played for England in the 1970 World Cup. Nor do they include Gerd Müller, the German star who helped eliminate Bonetti and England from the 1970 World Cup, and won it in 1974, and was diagnosed in 2015, though is still alive.

With Bonetti's death, there are 12 members of the England team that won the 1966 World Cup Final who are still alive. Bobby and Jack Charlton, George Cohen, Nobby Stiles, Geoff Hurst and Roger Hunt played in the Final. Jimmy Greaves, Peter Bonetti, Ron Flowers, Norman Hunter, Terry Paine, Ian Callaghan and George Eastham did not.

Greaves, famously a recovering alcoholic, has been battling cancer, and was recently admitted to a hospital, where he tested positive for the coronavirus. I was sure he would be the next to go. Instead, it was Bonetti.

April 14, 1920, 100 years ago today: Babe Ruth makes his debut for the New York Yankees. It doesn't go so well for them: They lose 3-1 to the Philadelphia Athletics, at Shibe Park in Philadelphia.

In the 1st inning, Wally Pipp hit a home run, followed immediately by Ruth's 1st Yankee at-bat, a single to right field. He then struck out in the 4th, beat out a grounder to 2nd base in the 6th, and popped up to 3rd base in the 8th. So he went 2-for-4.

But, for the A's, Cy Perkins hit a game-tying home run in the 5th, and the Yankees' center fielder misplayed a fly ball in the 8th, leading to the winning runs, as Philadelphia's Scott Perry outpitched Yankee ace Bob Shawkey. The Yankees' center fielder that day? Babe Ruth. Yes, "the GOAT" (Greatest Of All Time) was "the goat" (scapegoat).

The 1920 season was a watershed for baseball. It wasn't just that Ruth hit home runs farther and more frequently than anyone had before. Pitching changed as well. Doctoring the baseball -- scuffing it, and putting various substances on it, including human saliva, all of which got put under the category of "spitball" -- was banned. Also, new balls were put into play as soon as possible, to keep them whiter and easier to see, thus less dangerous.

As a result, a new era of big hitting began, the Lively Ball Era. And pitching feats like winning 30 games in a season fell by the wayside.

Some pitchers who were great before 1920 managed to adjust. Some didn't. Some didn't get that far, having already retired.

There have been other major changes since. After "The Year of the Pitcher" in 1968, the pitcher's mound was lowered from 15 inches high at its crest to 10 inches. The strike zone, allegedly, has also been changed. We still saw lots of "high strikes" in the 1970s, but in the 1980s, they became fewer and farther between.

I wonder: Which pitchers from the Dead Ball Era (1900 to 1919) -- or even the pre-Divisional Play Era (up until 1968) would have excelled in today's game? And which would have had trouble?

10. Would Be Great: Cy Young

Denton True Young (pictured above) originally had the nickname "Cyclone," because an early minor-league manager said the fence he was throwing his fastball against looked like a cyclone, or a tornado, had hit it. It was shortened to "Cy." Good thing he wasn't called "Tornado": You think MLB would have established a "Tor Young Award"

He pitched in the majors from 1890 to 1911, and he successfully adjusted to the 1901-03 changes. Given that he began to rely more on his curveball as he got older, I have no doubt that he could have handled big sluggers -- be they Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson or Aaron Judge -- with finesse.

The trick would have been to see how he would have adjusted to pitch or innings limits. Cy didn't just win an all-time far-and-away record 511 games: He pitched 7,356 innings, including 749 complete games. Don't show those stats to Brian Cashman, or he might have a stroke.

9. Would Have Had Trouble: Jack Chesbro (And Any Other Spitballer)
"Happy Jack" pitched in the majors from 1899 to 1909, winning Pennants with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1901 and 1902, and almost doing so with the Yankees (then known as the New York Highlanders) in 1904, winning 41 games. However, his spitball got away from him in his last start, resulting in a wild pitch that let in the winning run, costing the proto-Yankees the game against the Boston Red Sox (then known as the Boston Americans) and giving them the Pennant.

These days, finding a catcher who can catch a decent knuckleball is hard. Can you imagine finding one willing to catch regularly doctored balls? From guys like Chesbro? Ed Walsh? Stan Coveleski? Red Faber? Burleigh Grimes? All 5 of those guys made the Hall of Fame. They would have to have adjusted to not having their "money pitch" today, as well as to today's boom-boom-boom game.

8. Would Be Great: Christy Mathewson
Pitching for the New York Giants from 1900 to 1916, "Big Six" won 373 games. He had the greatest array of pitches the game had yet seen. A good fastball, a good curveball, and he was the 1st major league pitcher to master the screwball, which he called the "fadeaway." There aren't too many guys today who can hit it.

Most of all, Matty had exceptional control. And he was hailed as the smartest pitcher of his era. It's not hard to imagine him "pitching with his head," like Catfish Hunter or David Cone.

7. Would Have Had Trouble: Walter Johnson
In their 1981 book The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time, Lawrence S. Ritter and Donald Honig wrote, "He had just one pitch, a fastball -- but what a fastball!" The fastest pitcher of his era? It helped "The Big Train" win 417 games from 1907 to 1927, 1st all-time in American League play, including a record 113 shutouts, and his record of 3,508 strikeouts stood until 1983.

But without a 2nd pitch, managers would be skeptical. He might be converted into a reliever. A closer with just a fastball? How well does that work for today's fastest pitcher, Aroldis Chapman? Usually, very well. Sometimes, however... Let's face it: Jose Altuve didn't need anyone to cheat, he knew a fastball was coming.

6. Would Be Great: Grover Cleveland Alexander
"Old Pete" pitched for 1911 to 1930, and won 373 games (tied with Mathewson for 3rd all-time and 1st among National Leaguers -- Cy Young spread his 511 over both Leagues) against just 208 losses. From 1911 to 1920, he had 6 seasons of at least 27 wins, 3 of at least 3. But from 1921 to 1930, he still managed seasons of 22-12 (at age 36), 12-5, 21-10 and 16-9.

In 1923, 1926 and 1927, he led the NL in WHIP (not that anyone knew about that stat at the time). From 1921 onward, he had 7 seasons with an ERA+ of at least 120 (making him 20 percent better, or more, at preventing runs than the average pitcher of the time), and peaked at 160 in 1927 -- at age 40, his 21-10 season.

The image of Alexander now is of the old drunk coming in because he was needed to save the day for the St. Louis Cardinals against the Yankees in Game 7 of the 1926 World Series, and working through both the hangover and the Bronx Bombers to do it. By his own account, he wasn't hungover at the time, but he did mix his pitches up to strike Tony Lazzeri out. That shows quick thinking.

Also, today, both his alcoholism (already present before he served in World War I, but what he dealt with made it worse) and his epilepsy (which began in the war) would be properly treated today. There was no Betty Ford (or, given his era and the epilepsy, Ida McKinley) Center back then. There is now. And medication would have helped. "Alexander the Great" could absolutely have been a good pitcher had he come along 100 years later, especially since he wouldn't have had to go off to war.

5. Would Have Had Trouble: Dizzy Dean
But another Cardinal great wouldn't be. Jay Hanna Dean might have had the talent to pitch today, but nobody would put up with his antics. His braggadocio would have ticked his teammates off, never mind the opposition. On September 21, 1934, he and his brother Paul, a.k.a. Daffy Dean, both pitched shutouts in a doubleheader. Except Paul's was also a no-hitter, something Diz would never do. And Diz said, "Gee, Paul, if I'd a-known you was gonna throw a no-hitter, I'd a-thrown one, too."

It's easy to imagine "Ol' Diz" getting into a feud with an opposing hitter with a big mouth. It's easy to imagine him getting into a Twitter war, something not possible in the 1930s.

If you're familiar with his career, you know that a good but not great Cardinal team won the 1934 World Series mainly on the right arms of Diz (30-7, the last 30-win season in the NL, plus 2-1 in the Series) and Daff (19-11, plus 2-0 in the Series).

You may also know that, in the 1937 All-Star Game, Diz took a line drive off the bat of Earl Averill off his foot. Looking at an X-ray, the doctor told him that the big toe was fractured. Diz said, "Fractured, hell, the damn thing's broken!" And in order to favor the toe, he changed his pitching motion, and that hurt his arm. Goodbye, fastball: He was done in 1941, age 31.

You might think that better medical techniques would have saved his arm, and allowed him to pitch until he was 40 or so. Probably not: That requires the patient listening to the doctor, and Diz didn't listen to anybody.

Furthermore, without his fastball, he was finished. After the Cardinals traded him to the Chicago Cubs in 1938, he had a memorable "last stand," helping them win the Pennant and holding the Yankees off for 8 innings in Game 2 of the World Series, but they ultimately got to him. He would have needed another pitch to make it today, and he really didn't have one.

4. Would Be Great: Bob Feller
Like Walter Johnson, "Rapid Robert" was believed to be the fastest pitcher of his era. Unlike the Big Train, he also had a very good curveball. He won 266 games, despite losing most of 4 seasons in his prime to serving in World War II. He won 93 in his last 4 seasons before The War, and 65 in his 1st 3 full seasons after it.

Given that he started in 1936, when he was still just 17 and in high school, it's not surprising that he threw his last professional pitch in 1956, at 37. But as late as the Cleveland Indians' 1954 Pennant season, at 35, he was still 13-3, with an ERA+ of 120 and a WHIP of 1.186.

3. Would Have Had Trouble: Satchel Paige
"Ol' Satch" is more myth than man. He pitched in the Negro Leagues from 1926 to 1947, before finally getting called up to the major leagues at age 42 in 1948, helping the Indians win the World Series. He lasted in the majors until 1953, plus a 3-inning one-shot deal in 1965, making him, at 59, the oldest player in MLB history.

And what an array of pitches he allegedly had, and what great control he had. He claimed he could throw a pitch over the top of a soda bottle, and, "I ain't never thrown an illegal pitch. But, sometimes, I throw a pitch that ain't been seen before -- by this generation."

Now, imagine Leroy Robert Paige coming along 50 years later. Integration would have been a fact of life. Had he reached the majors in 1976, the mystery would have been gone pretty quickly. He might have had a career like that of Fernando Valenzuela: Sensational at first, but soon, hitters like Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn would have used videotape to break his mechanics down, and rendered him a good, but not great, pitcher.

2. Would Be Great: Sandy Koufax
Break the Koufax career into thirds. From 1955 to 1960, he was talented, but erratic. Then, Los Angeles Dodger scout Kenny Myers showed him how to correct a hitch in his windup, and catcher Norm Sherry told him to ease up on his fastball a little, and work on his curve. He had been trying too hard to strike everybody out.

By not trying to do that, he ended up striking out more batters than anybody had ever seen, and, from 1961 to 1966, he was maybe the best pitcher the Lively Ball Era had ever seen. Then, with his arm wracked with arthritis, he retired just before turning 31, so we never got to see the final third of his career.

If Koufax had come along 50 years later, in 2005, his problems would have been addressed at age 19, not 25. The arthritis issue could have been dealt with, given modern technology. Given a great fastball and an equally unhittable curveball, a Koufax who reached the majors in 2005 could still have been excelling in 2019, at 33.

1. Would Have Had Trouble: Nolan Ryan
But "The Ryan Express" had just the fastball. He didn't get it really controlled until he went to the team then known as the California Angels in 1972, at 25. Now, imagine he came along 40 years later. A 2006 debut, with hitters studying his fastball, might have meant he got clobbered.

Speaking of clobbering, lots of fans not old enough to remember the "unhittable" Ryan of the mid-1970s know him from his elderly no-hitters of 1990 and 1991, and his "noogie" of Robin Ventura in his last season, 1993. Now, imagine old Nolan Ryan facing the insane, steroid-boosted Manny Ramirez of 2003. It would have been Tyson vs. Spinks, and Ryan would not have been Tyson.

April 14, 1920, 100 years ago today: Babe Ruth makes his debut for the New York Yankees. It doesn't go so well for them: They lose 3-1 to the Philadelphia Athletics, at Shibe Park in Philadelphia.

In the 1st inning, Wally Pipp hit a home run, followed immediately by Ruth's 1st Yankee at-bat, a single to right field. He then struck out in the 4th, beat out a grounder to 2nd base in the 6th, and popped up to 3rd base in the 8th. So he went 2-for-4.

But, for the A's, Cy Perkins hit a game-tying home run in the 5th, and the Yankees' center fielder misplayed a fly ball in the 8th, leading to the winning runs, as Philadelphia's Scott Perry outpitched Yankee ace Bob Shawkey. The Yankees' center fielder that day? Babe Ruth. Yes, "the GOAT" (Greatest Of All Time) was "the goat" (scapegoat).

The 1920 season was a watershed for baseball. It wasn't just that Ruth hit home runs farther and more frequently than anyone had before. Pitching changed as well. Doctoring the baseball -- scuffing it, and putting various substances on it, including human saliva, all of which got put under the category of "spitball" -- was banned. Also, new balls were put into play as soon as possible, to keep them whiter and easier to see, thus less dangerous.

As a result, a new era of big hitting began, the Lively Ball Era. And pitching feats like winning 30 games in a season fell by the wayside.

There have been other major changes since. After "The Year of the Pitcher" in 1968, the pitcher's mound was lowered from 15 inches high at its crest to 10 inches. The strike zone, allegedly, has also been changed. We still saw lots of "high strikes" in the 1970s, but in the 1980s, they became fewer and farther between.

I wonder: Which old-time players would have excelled in today's game? And which would have had trouble? These men are listed in chronological order.

10. Would Be Great: Ty Cobb
I can tell what you're thinking: With his prejudices, his braggodcio, and the media coverage of today, "the Georgia Peach" would never be permitted to last. His big mouth would constantly get him into trouble. Well, you never know. He was pretty savvy by the standards of his time. He might have adjusted to the social media era.

But as for playing: He would have understood that the faraway fences of 1905 to 1928 would be a lot closer. He would have been smart enough to use the ballparks he was in. Oddly, the new home of the Detroit Tigers, Comerica Park, would have been far better suited to his contact-hitting, double-and-triple-seeking ways than was the 1938 to 1999 version of Tiger Stadium, with its overhanging upper deck in right field. He would have liked Comerica.

In the Divisional Play Era, 1969 to the present, Cobb might have been a player like George Brett. Brett's 3,154 hits included 665 doubles, 137 triples and 317 home runs. Granted, those 3,154 hits were over 1,000 fewer than Cobb had, so he might have had more. He wouldn't have batted .366, but he would have batted higher than Brett's .305, and stolen more bases than 201, if not quite as many as his own 892.

9. Would Have Had Trouble: Honus Wagner
"The Flying Dutchman" was considered the game's greatest player, possibly its greatest ever, until Cobb took that crown while Wagner was still playing. His lifetime batting average was .329, his OPS+ 151, his career RBIs 1,732 (a record at the time), and he collected 3,430 hits. It's now been over 100 years after his last game, and he is still regarded as the greatest shortstop who ever lived.

He was a great defensive player, too, appearing in 1,887 games at shortstop, 374 in the outfield, 248 at 1st base, 210 at 3rd base, 57 at 2nd base, and even twice on the mound, pitching 8 1/3rd innings, all scoreless.

But would any scout even look at him today? With that nose, those ears, that physique, and those bowed legs, he probably looked less like a great athlete than any MLB player in recent times, even Yogi Berra.

I can't imagine any team today putting him at shortstop. And on the properly manicured fields of today, instead of the pebble-strewn dirt patches of the early 20th Century, he would have really had to adjust. And can you imagine Honus adjusting to things like the split-fingered fastball and cut fastballs? Cobb, maybe; Wagner, I doubt it.

8. Would Have Been Great; Babe Ruth

As I alluded to in the entry about Cobb, most of today's ballparks don't have 450-foot expanses in center field and the power alleys. Today, the longest distances in any big-league park are Fenway Park in Boston, the only surviving AL park from that era, and Comerica Park in Detroit, which both have a 420-foot marker.

In the Great Bambino's day, while there were several parks with very short right-field fences, including the then-new original Yankee Stadium, there were also a lot whose fences went way out, including said Yankee Stadium, whose center field was 490 feet when the Babe arrived and 461 feet when he retired. "The House That Ruth Built" wasn't entirely built for Ruth.

This is why baseball historian Bill Jenkinson titled his 2007 book The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs: He took the 8 ballparks the American League teams played in during the Babe's seasons, and compared their dimensions with the parks those same franchises play in today, found records of the Babe's homers (which direction, at what point they seemed to have landed), and decided that the Babe's 59 home runs in 1921 would have, in those same 8 teams' parks of today, including the surviving but much-shortened Fenway, would have been 104 home runs.

If you don't believe me, or Jenkinson, think of the current Yankee Stadium, Comerica Park, Cleveland's Jacobs Field, Chicago's U.S. Cellular Field, Baltimore's Camden Yards, the Oakland Coliseum, and Minnesota's Target Field; and compare those to the old Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds where the Yanks played until The Stadium opened in 1923 (short poles but faraway alleys and center), Tiger Stadium (then known as Navin Field), Cleveland Municipal Stadium (the fence would later be brought in from 470 to center to 410), Chicago's Comiskey Park, the Orioles then playing as the St. Louis Browns in Sportsman's Park (a short right field but 426 to center), the A's then playing in Philadelphia's Shibe Park which was 447 to center, and the Twins, then the Washington Senators, playing at Griffith Stadium were every fence except the right-field corner was ridiculously far away. Even Fenway brought center field in quite a bit, 505 to 420.

Those are the parks in which the Sultan of Swat hit 708 home runs (with the last 6 coming in the NL in '35). How many would he have hit in today's parks? If we use the same ratio, 104/59 = 1.763, we're talking about 1,253 home runs. Ain't no way Bryce Harper and Mike Trout gonna match that. They're not even going to approach 714, to say nothing of Hank Aaron's 755 and Barry Bonds' 762.

7. Would Have Had Trouble: Hack Wilson
Lewis Robert Wilson certainly took some "hacks": He was one of the scariest hitters of the early Lively Ball Era. In 1929, he helped the Chicago Cubs win the National League Pennant with 39 home runs and a whopping 159 RBIs. He was just getting warmed up: In 1930, he hit 56 homers, an NL record that stood until 1998; and had 191 RBIs, a major league record that still stands.

But he played his last major league game just 4 years later, at age 34. Why? Two reasons. His heavy drinking affected his health, and not just by jacking his weight up. At 5-foot-6 and 190 pounds, someone said, "He was shaped like a beer barrel, and not unfamiliar with its contents."

Maybe his drinking could have been properly treated today. And maybe he would have been a designated hitter, instead of being perhaps the most ill-suited center fielder ever. And maybe he would have been put in the gym, to get himself into shape.

But maybe that wouldn't have worked. Because the other reason he was out of MLB just 4 years after his amazing season was that he couldn't get along with his managers. That's plural: It wasn't just a personality conflict with one guy. Managers, and their superiors in the front office, wouldn't have put up with a Hack Wilson. A Ruth, or a Cobb, because they produced and didn't embarrass the ballclub; sure; a Wilson, no.

6. Would Have Been Great: Josh Gibson
Gibson, perhaps more than any other player in baseball history, is a figure of legend. The fact that he was called "the Black Babe Ruth," when Ruth is such a figure of legend, shows that. So does the fact that Negro League fans preferred to call Ruth "the White Josh Gibson."

A brain tumor killed Gibson at age 35, just 3 months before Jackie Robinson reintegrated the major leagues. He never got to play at the highest level. Negro League record-keeping was woefully inadequate, so stories of him hitting over 800 career home runs, including an alleged 84 of them in a season, are mere speculation, and have to take the quality of the pitchers he faced into account. We don't even have film of him, so we can't look at his swing and "break down his mechanics," to see what kind of hitter he really was.

At his peak, he was 6-foot-1 and 210 pounds. He never fell out of shape until his fatal illness overtook him. He could hit the ball anywhere. Well, almost anywhere: Someone looked in the black newspapers of the 1930s and '40s, and found accounts of every game he ever played at Yankee Stadium. While it was recorded that he hit some long home runs there, the papers didn't say that he hit a fair ball all the way out, something no player did in a major league game. If he had done it, those papers would have been the likeliest to say so at the time.

But Gibson would have feasted on the ballparks built in the 1990s and 2000s. Most likely, about midway through his career, he would have been moved from catcher to another position, like Johnny Bench was, and that probably would have extended his career. With the major leagues open to him, and racial prejudice severely reduced (if not entirely eliminated), he could have concentrated on baseball, and that would have been bad news for pitchers in my lifetime.

It's worth asking: What kind of player would Jackie Robinson have been today? I think he would have been one of the top running backs. You see, baseball was not his best sport. He was all-conference at UCLA in 1939 and '40. If baseball had already been integrated -- if it didn't need a "Jackie Robinson" -- he might not have been interested.

Likewise, Willie Mays has said that he was a great high school quarterback. Roger Maris also excelled at football. And Bob Gibson's best sport was basketball. Sandy Koufax has said that basketball was his best sport as well. It's possible that neither Jackie, nor Willie, nor Roger, nor Gibby nor Sandy would even have played professional baseball, given today's choices.

5. Would Have Had Trouble: Mel Ott
From 1926 to 1947, this guy hit 511 home runs, the 1st National League player to break the 500 barrier. But he hit 323 of them at home. That's 63 percent. It was mostly because he was a lefthanded hitter pulling the ball down the right field line at the Polo Grounds, where the foul pole was just 257 feet from home plate.

Who's kidding who? He would have hit 300 home runs in the modern era, maybe 400. But 500? Not a chance. He would have been less a Jim Thome, more an Adam Dunn.

Chuck Klein, who benefited from the short right field fence at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia, falls into the same category.

4. Would Have Been Great: Joe DiMaggio
When people asked "the Yankee Clipper" what the highlight of his career was, he usually said, "Just putting on the Yankee uniform." When they asked him if there was anything he didn't like about playing for the Yankees, he cited being a righthanded hitter having to hit into the "Death Valley" of left and center field of the pre-renovation original Yankee Stadium.

Instead of center field being 461 feet away, as it was until 1973, it became 417 in 1976, and 410 in 1988, and it remains that with the opening of the current Stadium in 2009. Left-center was 457 until 1973, became 430 in 1976, and has been 399 since 1988. Straightaway left went from 402 to 387 to 379.

And that's not the only change. Pretty much every American League team that was in existence from 1936 to 1951, except for Detroit, now has a ballpark that is easier to hit in. And he wouldn't have had to serve in World War II. And his heel injury would have been better-treated as well, so he wouldn't have had to retire at age 37.

With the closer fences, and having maybe 6 more years to play, Joltin' Joe's 351 career home runs would probably have had at least 100 more had he played the bulk of his career in the 2010s instead of the 1940s. It's not hard to imagine him reaching the 500 Home Run Club.

3. Would Have Had Trouble: Ted Williams
So, if Joe D would have had shorter fences, no war to fight in, better attention to his injury, and 6 more years to play in, surely, all that would also have benefited "the Splendid Splinter" as well, right?

He played until he was 42, so he wasn't shortchanged by injuries. Certainly, he wouldn't have missed 3 years due to World War II, and, for all intents and purposes, 2 years due to the Korean War. Having 5 more years, and the shorter fences, would have turned his 521 home runs into, if not quite a threat to have more home runs than Ruth's 714, Aaron's 755 or even Bonds' 762, then maybe around Willie Mays' 660.

But there's something else to consider. Nobody knew more about hitting than Ted Williams. But he didn't know about pitching. His stint as manager of the Washington Senators/Texas Rangers franchise from 1969 to 1972 showed that he didn't help the pitchers under his employ nearly as much as the hitters.

In addition, he would have faced pitches he never saw before, and also specialized relief pitching. Granted, that would have hurt most of these guys, possibly taking the shorter-fence advantage away. But the very scientific approach he had to hitting, and his oft-stated (publicly, mind you) hatred of pitchers would have made them more motivated.

Think about this: Suppose Ted Williams had played in the 1990s and 2000s, but not on the same team as Pedro Martinez. Ted is not known to have been targeted by a headhunting pitcher, ever. Nor is Ted known to have ever threatened a pitcher who brushed him back. But the dueling egos of Ted and Pedro the Punk could have produced a confrontation. Given Ted's size, he could easily have kicked Pedro's scrawny ass.

But Ted's temper might have gotten the better of him, perhaps more than any of these guys except maybe for Cobb. Can you imagine Ted on social media? No, he's one great player who was far better off in his own era than in ours. Maybe he could have adjusted, and still won batting titles. But .406? No.

2. Would Have Been Great: Mickey Mantle
If any 1950s and/or '60s player would have benefited from being out of that era of toxic masculinity, and into the era of the Betty Ford Center and modern sports medicine, it's "the Mick." Most likely, his father and the other men in his family wouldn't have been working in the mines until all that ore dust wrecked their lungs and killed them early, so he wouldn't have had that fear of early death hanging over his head.

So he could have just let 'er rip on the field. And, with the doctors being able to take better care of his legs, and the modern mindset of baserunning, Mickey would have been a more dynamic player, and that's before you consider the shorter fences.

Sure, Willie Mays might still have been better. The thought of "the Say Hey Kid" on the artificial basepaths of the 1970s and '80s NL is scary. But Mickey, in the modern game? Actually, he might have been even better in the run-happy 1980s than in the homer-happy 2010s: He still would have hit a lot of home runs, but he would have stolen more bases, too, and thus helped his team (whether it was the Yankees or someone else) win more games.

And what about Hank Aaron? He might have had even more than 755 home runs in modern ballparks. Dick Allen, with racial tensions reduced, ballparks more suited to him, and greater sensitivity among fans, might have cracked the 500-homer barrier, instead of finishing with 351.

1. Would Have Had Trouble: Tony Conigliaro
I'm going to catch hell if this post reaches the eyes of New Englanders, probably more for this entry than the one I did on Ted Williams. Really, it doesn't make sense that Tony C would have been a lesser player in the modern game. Had he been wearing a modern batting helmet in 1967, the pitch that nearly destroyed his eye would have hit an earflap instead. He would still have been hurt, but he would have come back sooner, with, perhaps, no permanent damage.

But there were things the public didn't know about about Tony in 1967, when he became a martyr to the Red Sox cause. He was more of a carouser than was known, and seemed to care about being a star as much as he did about being a ballplayer. He had a daughter that no one knew about until after his death. Indeed, he was closer to being Boston's Joe Pepitone than its Mantle.

In her book Confessions of a She-Fan, Yankee Fan Jane Heller told of she and a friend of hers meeting Conigliaro after hours, and said friend suggested that she was the only fan who ever dated both Conigliaro and Jack Hamilton, the pitcher who beaned him.

In his book Tales from the Impossible Dream Red Sox, shortstop Rico Petrocelli, said, "While he dated actresses and Playboy bunnies, he wasn't a playboy like Bo Belinsky" (a Los Angeles Angels pitcher of the early 1960s who was wild in more ways than one). But Petro also cites the recording contract Tony had, which could have become a distraction as much as it was for his contemporary, Tiger pitcher and Las Vegas lounge organist Denny McLain.

Tony C would have been irresistible to baseball's marketing boys. Had he come along 30 years later, in 1994, he, rather than Nomar Garciaparra, would have been the Red Sox public-eye counterweight to the Yankees' Derek Jeter. The distractions might have been too much, and reduced his effectiveness, the way it sometimes did for Alex Rodriguez.

In addition, he had already had the 1964 season cut short by injury. Maybe he would have remained injury-free after 1967, but maybe not. As Petrocelli said in his book, "Tony was not only a chick magnet, he was a magnet for stray pitches. Five times he had bones broken by pitches, including the one that broke his shoulder blade five months earlier in spring training." That does not bode well for a long, stat-heavy career.

Sports is supposed to be one of our potential escapes from the bad things that happen in real life. But what happens when real life intrudes on sports?

Tomorrow is April 15, the anniversary of Jackie Robinson's major league debut, and Major League Baseball announced it's going to have a "virtual" celebration, in lieu of being able to do so in regularly-scheduled games, postponed indefinitely by the coronavirus pandemic.

The NFL is still planning on holding its Draft next week, in a "virtual" was from Las Vegas, and ESPN has been trying to focus on it. The fact that Tom Brady left the New England Patriots for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Philip Rivers left the Los Angeles Chargers for the Indianapolis Colts, who have now signed him as a short-term replacement for the recently retired Andrew Luck, has made the Draft a little more interesting -- for people who found it interesting in the first place.

With the pandemic finally beginning to recede in Europe, professional soccer leagues there have discussed restarting their games on June 1, although it will likely be in empty stadiums, to reduce the risk to fans. The hope is that the 10 or so remaining games can be completed by July 1, with the 2020-21 season starting in September instead of the usual August.

MLB is also considering a June 1 start, with a condensed season, but the plan to condense it geographically -- keep every team in their Spring Training complexes, thus having a Grapefruit League (Florida) and a Cactus League (Arizona), instead of an American League and a National League -- doesn't make much sense. Either let every team play their home games at home, or don't. And by that, I mean, let every team play at home.

The NBA, the NHL and MLS are still keeping their options open.

*

But we can't really escape. Not even through our traditional escapes. Death, whether from the coronavirus or otherwise, has intersected, intervened, and interfered.

Just in the 1st half of this month, we've lost:

As I said yesterday, in a post mentioning some sports legends we've recently lost, we can hide ourselves away to avoid the coronavirus, but there is no escape from the progress of life, which always, for each of us, though we may not know when, where, or how, ends in death.

So it is for another of the stars of the team that dominated the NFL in the 1960s. Many of them lived to see the 50th Anniversary of their wins in Super Bowl I and the Ice Bowl, but in the 3 and 2 years, respectively, since, have passed away.

William Delford Davis was born on July 24, 1934 in Lisbon, Louisiana, in the northern part of the State, near the Arkansas line. He grew up in nearby Texarkana, Arkansas (there is an adjoining city of the same name across the State Line in Texas), and became a 2-way lineman at nearby Grambling State University.

In many places in the South, there were colleges and universities set up to be black people's equivalent to nearby white ones. Florida A&M was established in Tallahassee, near Florida State; Tennessee State in Nashville, near Vanderbilt; and, in Louisiana, Southern University in Baton Rouge near LSU, and Grambling State in Grambling, near Louisiana Tech in Ruston.

Along with running back Paul "Tank" Younger and lineman Buck Buchanan, Davis was among the early stars produced by Grambling head coach Eddie Robinson, who went on to win more games than any college football coach, regardless of race or level, before him, and raised the profile of black colleges' football programs in general.

Cleveland Browns head coach and general manager Paul Brown had been a pioneer in re-integrating pro football, so he knew what the top black-college football players were capable of. He selected Davis in the 1956 NFL Draft. But another draft claimed Davis, that of the U.S. Army, and he missed the 1956 and 1957 seasons. In 1958 and 1959, Brown played Davis all over the offensive and defensive lines, to see where he would most help the team.

Davis may not have convinced Brown that he was particularly well-suited for any position. Or, he may have done a better job of convincing Vince Lombardi, head coach and GM of the Green Bay Packers. He traded for Davis, and put him at defensive end, and he became one of the greatest players that position has ever known.

The Packers won the NFL Western Division in 1960, their 1st such title in 16 years. They lost the NFL Championship Game to the Philadelphia Eagles. With a little more tinkering, Lombardi got them to the 1961 Championship Game, and a defense led by Davis and linebacker Ray Nitschke wrecked the high-powered offense of the New York Giants. The offense, quarterbacked by Bart Starr, protected by an offensive line with Jerry Kramer and Forrest Gregg, and with star runners Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor, ran riot through the snow of what would become Lambeau Field on New Year's Eve, and the Packers won 37-0.

The sack was not an official NFL statistic during Davis' time. David "Deacon" Jones of the Los Angeles Rams, Davis' chief competitor for the title of the NFL's best defensive end, created the term for tackling the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage. Football historian John Turney determined that Davis had "possibly more than 120." Davis believed he was the franchise's all-time leader, and when you consider that he was a teammate of Nitschke, and that they later had Reggie White at defensive end (albeit having spent the 1st half of his career with the Eagles), that says something.

Definitely still a team career record is the 21 fumbles that Davis recovered. He would make 5 Pro Bowls, all in a row from 1963 to 1967. He would help the Packers make it back-to-back NFL Championships in 1962, with a 13-1 record, their only loss a nationally-televised Thanksgiving Day shocker to the Detroit Lions.

And he helped them win 3 straight NFL Championships from 1965 to 1967, the last 2 setting up wins in Super Bowl I and Super Bowl II. The last of these NFL Championship Games was the game known as the Ice Bowl. On another New Year's Eve, the game-time temperature was 13 degrees... below zero. That's without the wind-chill factor.

NFL Films footage of the day shows Davis walking into Lambeau Field, in a heavy coat and a fur-lined hat, with a big smile on his face, as if he's sure that his team, used to cold Wisconsin weather (if not quite this cold), would be far more ready to play than their opponents, the Dallas Cowboys, used to the warm South. The Cowboys put up one hell of a fight, but the Packers won, 21-17.

Earlier in the year, on June 4, 1967, what was then called the Cleveland Summit was called by Davis' former Browns teammate Jim Brown, to bring prominent black athletes together in support of Muhammad Ali, who had been stripped of the Heavyweight Championship of the World by the governing bodies for boxing, following his April 28 refusal to be drafted into the Army, and his subsequent indictment for draft evasion.

Davis attended what's now usually called "The Ali Summit," and supported Ali, even though he himself had been drafted and served his 2-year hitch. Also attending was Washington Redskins flanker Bobby Mitchell, who died earlier this month.

He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1981, and later to the NFL's 1960s All-Decade Team, the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame, the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, and the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame. In 1999, The Sporting News listed its 100 Greatest Football Players, and he was ranked 69th. In 2010, the NFL Network ranked its 100 Greatest Players, and he came in 86th.

According to Pro-Football-Reference.com, Willie Davis had the 4th-highest "Approximate Value" of any NFL player in the 1960s. The 3 ahead of him? Johnny Unitas, Jim Brown and Fran Tarkenton.
He and his wife Ann had a son, Duane, and a daughter, Lori. Duane Davis played football at the University of Missouri, but hurt his knee, and turned to acting. He played college football players in the films Necessary Roughness (in which his character "catches" a ball with his face mask) and The Program, but was injured filming both.
He played basketball player Bo Kimble in Final Shot: The Hank Gathers Story, Joe Louis in the TV-movie Rocky Marciano, James "Buster" Douglas in the HBO film Tyson, a fictional right fielder in Little Big League, and a fictional boxer in Diggstown.

His own son, Wyatt Davis, is finishing up his sophomore year at Ohio State, and was named an All-American and All-Conference guard last season.

Willie Davis lived out his life in the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica, California, and died there today, April 15, 2020, after being hospitalized with kidney failure about a month ago. He was 85.

In a weird coincidence, he died on what would have been the 80th birthday of another Willie Davis, the Gold Glove center fielder who helped the Los Angeles Dodgers win the 1963 and 1965 World Series.

Jerry Kramer, Hall of Fame guard on the 1960s Packers: “A principled human being. A beautiful guy. A consistent guy, the same guy at 70 that he was at 42, 35 or whatever. A very special human being.”

Dave Robinson, who was the other defensive end on the 1st 2 Super Bowl winners, and also in the Hall of Fame: "There's only one Willie Davis. I just feel sorry for the people who never got a chance to really meet, sit down & talk to the man... he would've changed your life."

David Maraniss, who interviewed Davis for his biography When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi: We've lost another legend. Willie Davis, great player out of Eddie Robinson's Grambling, defensive captain, better person, Hall of Fame in every respect, one of many Lombardi era Packers as successful off the field as on it, Dr. Feelgood could light up the field, & any room.

Donald Driver, receiver on the Packers' Super Bowl XXXI winners: ’ve had the pleasure of spending time over my 20yrs with some phenomenal icon and legends. Today, we loss one of them. My friend Willie Davis. Our prayers go out to Willie family and friends. #RIPWillieDavis#REST87

Just since October 13, 2018, of last year, the Packers have lost 5 Hall-of-Famers: Bart Starr, Jim Taylor, Forrest Gregg, Willie Wood and Willie Davis. With Davis' death:

* There are 10 surviving players from the 1961 NFL Champion Green Bay Packers: Paul Hornung, Herb Adderley, Jerry Kramer, John Roach, Tom Moore, Dale Hackbart, Nelson Toburen, Lee Folkins, Gary Knafelc and Boyd Dowler.

* There are 12 surviving players from the 1962 NFL Champion Packers: Hornung, Adderley, Kramer, Roach, Moore, Toburen, Knafelc, Dowler, Howie Williams, Ed Blaine, Ron Gassert and Gary Barnes.

* There are 14 surviving players from the 1965 NFL Champion Packers: Hornung, Adderley, Kramer, Moore, Dowler, Tom Brown, Junior Coffey, Bill Curry, Ken Bowman, Steve Wright, Bob Long, Marv Fleming, Carroll Dale and Dave Robinson.

* There 18 surviving players from the Packer team that won Super Bowl I: Hornung, Adderley, Kramer, Dowler, Tom Brown, Curry, Bowman, Wright, Long, Fleming, Dale, Robinson, Red Mack, Jim Grabowski, Phil Vandersea, Donny Anderson, Dave Hathcock and Jim Weatherwax.

* There are 20 surviving players from the Packer team that won Super Bowl II: Adderley, Kramer, Dowler, Tom Brown, Bowman, Wright, Long, Fleming, Dale, Robinson, Grabowski, Anderson, Weatherwax, Don Horn, Chuck Mercein, Ben Wilson, John Rowser, Bob Hyland, Jim Flanigan and Dick Capp.

* And there are 7 living participants in the 1967 Cleveland (Ali) Summit: Jim Brown, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Curtis McClinton, Jim Shorter, John Wooten and Walter Beach.

Note: You might be wondering why I didn't do this last year, on the 20th Anniversary of the event. The answer is, I just didn't think of it then.

In spite of the coronavirus, the NFL is still going to hold its annual Draft as scheduled, starting today and running for 3 days, at Caesars Palace outside Las Vegas in Paradise, Nevada. There will be no public events, and all team selections will be done virtually, via phone and the Internet.

The NFL Draft is frequently held in New York. In the last few years, Radio City Music Hall has often been the venue. A few times before that, it was at Madison Square Garden, in the room formerly known as the Felt Forum (1968-91), the Paramount Theater (1991-97), The Theater at Madison Square Garden (1997-2007 and again 2009-18), the WaMu Theater (2007-09), and now the Hulu Theater.

The Draft has had some sour moments. Jet fans, especially when it's in New York, tend to go, and their reactions to their team's 1st round pick is usually vociferous. Like the nursery rhyme about the girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead, when it's good, it's very, very good; but when it's bad, it's horrid.

But Jet fans have nothing on fans of the Philadelphia Eagles. As NFL Films co-founder, producer and writer Steve Sabol (a Philadelphia area native) put it, to be read by John Facenda, the local news anchor who was the voice of NFL Films from 1967 until his death in 1984, put it, "In Philadelphia, a fan learns to boo before he can walk."

In 1998, the Heisman Trophy was won by Ricky Williams of the University of Texas, who had broken the NCAA's career record for rushing yardage. That record lasted for just 1 year, broken by Ron Dayne of Wisconsin, who would play for the Giants.

Williams seemed to push all the right buttons. He was big. He was strong. He was very fast. He was from one of college football's marquee schools. He had excelled in one of college football's toughest leagues, the Big 12 Conference. He had come through in high-profile games. He seemed nice. He seemed smart. He was respectful of the game's history: When Doak Walker, often regarded as the greatest Texas-born player, was dying, Ricky visited him in the hospital, and, for one game, switched from his usual Number 34 to Walker's legendary 37. And, at the time, there were no red flags.
He should have been the top pick in the NFL Draft. Except that 1999 was the year the restored Cleveland Browns were beginning play, and they had the top pick. They made it known that they would be picking a quarterback. That turned out to be Tim Couch of the University of Kentucky. He turned out to be a bust, partly because he wasn't that good, partly because the Browns handled him badly. But that's a story for another time.
The 2nd pick belonged to the Philadelphia Eagles, 3-13 the season before. Their quarterbacks were Rodney Peete (decent but injury-prone), Bobby Hoying (a reasonable backup, but shouldn't have been a starter) and Koy Detmer (not even the best quarterback in his own family, and his brother Ty wasn't so hot as a pro, either).

Drafting a seemingly good quarterback is not a cure-all, especially for his rookie year. In the previous year's Draft, the Indianapolis Colts had the 1st pick, the San Diego Chargers the 2nd. The top 2 picks were going to be Peyton Manning of Tennessee and Ryan Leaf of Washington State, and pretty much everybody was thinking that you couldn't go wrong with either one. The Colts picked Manning, and he had a rough rookie year, but became a Hall-of-Famer. The Chargers picked Leaf, and it was a disaster even beyond his rookie year.

But the Eagles also needed to boost their running game. Their 2 best running backs were Duce Staley (good, but not great) and Charlie Garner (occasionally good, at best). Furthermore, given that they were 3-13, the Eagles could have gone with the cliche of drafting "the best available athlete." At the time, it wasn't hard to believe that this was Ricky Williams.

Angelo Cataldi, then as now the morning show host for all-sports radio station WIP (then 610 AM, now 94.1 FM), knowing that the Browns were likely drafting Couch, promoted the idea of the Eagles drafting Williams. He arranged for a group of Eagles fans to attend the Draft at The Garden. Some of them even wore Eagle jerseys with Williams' name and Number 34 on them, presumably paid for out of their own pockets, not out of WIP's bank account.

At the Draft, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced, "With the 2nd pick, the Philadelphia Eagles select... Donovan McNabb... " The rest of his words could not be heard, as the Eagle fans in attendance overwhelmed it with boos.

They had been betrayed by team management, and not for the 1st time. Or so they believed. And they booed their lungs out.

Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Philadelphia Eagles Fans for Booing the Drafting of Donovan McNabb

5. Eagles Management. From previous bad drafts and bad free agent signings to the financial difficulties of former owner Leonard Tose and the cheapness of former owner Norman Braman, Eagle fans were used to the organization not doing right by them.

New owner Jeffrey Lurie had promised better. So far, he hadn't delivered. Drafting McNabb instead of Williams seemed like another crack in the promise.

4. The Running Game. The team that can run the ball the best controls the clock. The team that controls the clock usually wins the game. And, as former Eagle cornerback Herman Edwards, then an assistant coach with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, would later say as head coach of the New York Jets, "You play to win the game!"

And, as I said, the Eagles needed to boost their running game, possibly more than they needed a good quarterback. This was largely due to the fact that, from 1995 to 1997, they had put their faith in a different Ricky W: Ricky Watters had helped the San Francisco 49ers win a Super Bowl, and the Eagles signed him as a free agent, but he didn't work out for them, appearing to take a nonchalant attitude, which is anathema to Philadelphia fans.

And, as I also said, Williams seemed like "the best available athlete."

3. Donovan McNabb -- as he was at the time. He came out of Syracuse University. In 1997, he got them to 9-4. Their wins included these over opponents that were then nationally ranked in the Top 25: The Kickoff Classic at the Meadowlands against Number 24 Wisconsin, and home to Number 17 West Virginia. But he also lost at home to North Carolina State, and away to Oklahoma and Number 22 Virginia Tech.

In 1998, he got them to 8-4. They won away to Number 13 Michigan, and home to Number 16 Virginia Tech (with Michael Vick as a senior). However, they again lost to North Carolina State and West Virginia, this time away in both cases; and lost at home to Number 10 Tennessee.

In both seasons, he led the Orangemen to the Championship of the Big East Conference. But the Big East was never seen as an elite football league. In basketball, yes; in football, no. In both seasons, he got them to a major bowl game: The 1997 Fiesta Bowl against Number 10 Kansas State (actually played on New Year's Eve that season) and the 1999 Orange Bowl against Number 7 Florida (played on New Year's Day). However, they lost both games. In both seasons, he got them to a Top 25 ranking: 20th in 1997 and 24th in 1998.
In other words, he looked like a good college quarterback. But was he the best college quarterback? These results suggest that he wasn't.

And, let's face it: His pro career could have been better. He was 10-8 in Playoff games, 1-4 in NFC Championship Games including 2 losses at home, and 0-1 in Super Bowls. And, so far, voters for the Pro Football Hall of Fame have not seen fit to elect him.

And there were other choices:

2. Other Quarterbacks. Couch, who had led Kentucky to a 7-5 season, including a bid to the Outback Bowl (which they lost), had already been drafted by the Browns. But McNabb wasn't the only other good college quarterback remaining.

With the 3rd pick, the Cincinnati Bengals drafted Akili Smith, who had led Oregon to an 8-4 season. With the 11th pick, the Minnesota Vikings drafted Dante Culpeper, who had led Central Florida to 9-2. With the 12th pick, the Chicago Bears drafted Cade McNown, who had led UCLA to 10-2, the Pac-10 title, and victory in the Rose Bowl.

In the 2nd round, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers drafted Shaun King, who had led Tulane to an undefeated 12-0 season and the Number 7 ranking in the country (albeit against, at best, what college basketball fans would call a mid-major schedule).

In other words, McNabb had a good college football career, but was he clearly the best quarterback in that Draft? The best, maybe. Clearly the best, no.

1. Ricky Williams -- as he was at the time. As I said, he seemed to have all the prerequisites: Good guy, great player, filled a need for the Eagles. And he was available. But they didn't take him. And their fans booed.

*

Eagle fans hated the selection of McNabb. They shouldn't have:

Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame the Philadelphia Eagles for Drafting Donovan McNabb Instead of Ricky Williams

5. They Needed a Quarterback. When the Detroit Lions chose him in the 6th round out of USC in 1989, there was nothing wrong with wanting a healthy Rodney Peete on your team. But he got hurt in his 1st preseason, and this began a string of injuries. By the time the Eagles got him in 1995, having a healthy Rodney Peete was pretty much a lost cause. And, as I said, neither Bobby Hoying nor Koy Detmer was going to be the answer.

4. Running Backs. The best college running backs often turn out to be pro busts -- figuratively or, through injury, literally. Eagles fans found that out when they won 2 games late in the 1968 season, costing them the chance to draft the eventually felonious O.J. Simpson, and instead got Leroy Keyes, who fell well short of expectations.

The Eagles had won their last NFL Championship in 1960. Just between then and 1998, and just among Heisman Trophy winners: Ernie Davis never played a pro down due to a fatal illness, Steve Owens lasted just 5 seasons and rushed for less than 2,500 yards, John Cappelletti lasted 10 years and rushed for less than 3,000, Archie Griffin lasted 7 years and rushed for less than 3,000, Charles White lasted 9 years and rushed for just over 3,000, and Rashaan Salaam lasted 4 years and rushed for less than 1,800. Since then, the aforementioned Ron Dayne lasted for 8 years and rushed for less than 4,000,

In addition to those, Billy Sims and Bo Jackson, both Heisman winners, looked like they were headed for the Hall of Fame. But Sims wrecked his knee in his 5th season, and Jackson hurt his hip in his 4th, and neither ever played again. Ki-Jana Carter was the 1st pick in the 1995 NFL Draft, but wrecked his knee in a preseason game in his rookie year. played in just 59 games over a span of 10 seasons, and rushed for just 1,144 yards.

So drafting a running back in the 1st round, even a great college running back like Ricky Williams, wasn't necessarily a great idea.

3. Other Teams. The Browns didn't draft Williams, either. Once they drafted Couch, and the Eagles drafted McNabb, the Bengals could have drafted Williams. The New Orleans Saints offered the Bengals 9 draft picks for their pick, so they could draft Williams. The Bengals turned them down, and drafted Akili Smith.

The 4th pick belonged to the Indianapolis Colts. The Saints tried to make a deal with them, too, but they wouldn't budge. But they also didn't pick Williams. They drafted a different running back, Edgerrin James of the University of Miami. And while Couch and Smith were both busts, James was not: He went to the Hall of Fame.

Finally, the Saints got the Washington Redskins to agree to a deal: The 5th pick in that Draft, in exchange for the Saints' entire 1999 Draft except for the 2nd round, and their 1st and 3rd round picks for 2000. The Saints drafted Williams. The Redskins did some more maneuvering, and packaged 3 of the picks they got from the Saints to send to the Bears for a pick they ended up using on University of Georgia cornerback Champ Bailey, who made the Hall of Fame.

Incidentally, the Saints' general manager at the time was Bill Kuharich, son of Joe Kuharich, who, as Eagles head coach and general manager in 1964, made what is generally regarded as the worst trade in Eagles history: Sending Sonny Jurgensen to the Washington Redskins for Norm Snead.

Jurgensen was a carouser, and the moralistic Joe Kuharich hated that. Snead was a straight arrow. With the Redskins, Jurgensen continued his Hall of Fame career, throwing the most touchdown passes of any quarterback in the 1960s. The quarterback with the most interceptions in that decade? You may have guessed: Snead.

Anyway, what all this means is that 5 teams passed on drafting Ricky Williams: First the Browns, then the Eagles, then the Bengals, then the Colts, and lastly the Redskins. As we will soon see, the Browns and Bengals might have been better off if they'd taken him. Between what we will soon see, and what we have already seen, the Eagles and Colts might not have been.

2. Ricky Williams: A Bad Fit for Philly. His pro career turned out to be mixed. Bears legend Mike Ditka was the Saints' general manager at the time, and they went just 3-13 in 1999. Williams rushed fir 884 yards. Ditka was fired, and replaced with Jim Haslett. It was a huge improvement, as they went 10-6, and, each for the 1st time in franchise history, won their Division (the NFC West) and won a Playoff game. Williams rushed for 1,000 yards even, despite missing half the season due to injury. And then they slid back down to 7-9 in 2001, despite Williams rushing for 1,245 yards. He was getting personal success, but not much team success.

He didn't fit in. His Saints teammate Joe Horn said, "Ricky's just a different guy. People he wanted to deal with, he did. And people he wanted to have nothing to do with, he didn't. No one could understand that. I don't think guys in the locker room could grasp that he wanted to be himself. You know, quiet."

He was traded to the Miami Dolphins for 4 draft picks, and 2002 turned out to be his best NFL season. He rushed for a League-leading 1,853 yards. He rushed for another 1,372 yards in 2003. In those seasons, they went 9-7 and 10-6, but didn't make the Playoffs either time. And in the run-up to the 2004 season, he was suspended for testing positive for marijuana. And then, on August 2, he announced his retirement.

It's become a meme in the years since: ESPN's Stephen A. Smith telling NFL players to "Stay off the weed!" Or, as he pronounces it, "the weeeeeeee-duh!" Physically speaking, Ricky Williams was as gifted as any running back in NFL history. Emotionally speaking, he was at the other extreme, being diagnosed with clinical depression and social anxiety disorder. He chose smoking pot over playing football.

The Dolphins seemed to prove his point, that they needed him more than he needed them, going 4-12 in 2004. Williams patched things up with them, served his mandatory 4-game drug-test suspension, and rushed for 743 yards in 12 games. The Dolphins went 9-7, and just missed the Playoffs again. And then, in early 2006, he was suspended for the entire upcoming season, for violating the NFL's drug policy again.

The Canadian Football League had a less stringent drug policy, and Williams signed with the Toronto Argonauts. But his season with the Argos was stricken with injuries: A broken bone in his arm and a damaged Achilles tendon limited him to 11 games and 526 yards. The CFL instituted what's become known as "The Ricky Williams Rule": No longer would a player under suspension by the NFL be eligible to be signed by a CFL team, although a "grandfather clause" meant that Williams himself could stay.

He didn't: After claiming that yoga had helped him to stop using marijuana, he entered into negotiations with Commissioner Tagliabue, and was granted reinstatement. He returned on November 26, 2007, playing for the Dolphins against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday Night Football. But it would be the only game he played that season, as he suffered a shoulder injury.

He played all 16 games of the 2008 season, rushing for 659 yards, and helping the Dolphins win the AFC East. He played all 16 games of the 2009 season, rushing for 1,121 yards, making him only the 7th player in NFL history to rush for at least 1,000 at age 32 or later, but the Dolphins only went 7-9. In 2010, he rushed for 673 yards, and the Dolphins went 10-6, but missed the Playoffs.

His contract with the Dolphins had run out, and he signed with the Baltimore Ravens for 2011. He played in every game, rushed for 444 yards, and on January 1, 2012, he joined the 10,000 Yards Club. The Ravens went 12-4, won the AFC North, and advanced to the AFC Championship Game. But, a month later, Williams announced his retirement, not quite 35, with 10,009 rushing yards, 342 receptions for 2,606 yards, and 74 touchdowns.

He has since become a certified yoga instructor, and an advocate for medical marijuana. Apparently, the former hasn't actually turned him off from the latter; but, together, they have helped him deal with his mental health difficulties.

He is in the College Football Hall of Fame, but not the Pro Football Hall of Fame, for which he has been eligible since 2017. There are 31 players with at least 10,000 rushing yards. Adrian Peterson, Frank Gore, LeShawn McCoy and Marshawn Lynch are still active. Steven Jackson becomes eligible next year. The only ones eligible but not yet in are Fred Taylor, Corey Dillon, Warrick Dunn, Ricky Watters, Jamal Lewis, Thomas Jones, Tiki Barber, Eddie George, Ottis Anderson... and Ricky Williams.

Two of those players, Williams and Lewis, have had drug issues. The rest haven't. Based on statistics, it appears that 12,000 yards -- or, actually, 12,074 -- is the actual threshold: Every player with at least that many is in, except for the still-active Peterson (14,216) and Gore (15,347, 3rd all-time behind Emmitt Smith and Walter Payton). So maybe it's not the drug issue that's holding Williams back, since never-suspended players with more rushing yards aren't in Canton.

Nevertheless, Williams was a headache for 2 different NFL franchises, New Orleans and Miami. Neither team has elected him to their team hall of fame. If you ask the average Dolphin fan to name his all-time team, his running backs are going to be those on the 1972-73 Super Bowl teams, Larry Csonka and either Jim Kiick or Mercury Morris. (A little ironic, since Morris had to overcome a more severe drug problem than Williams, and did.)

Even in the 21 years since Williams arrived in the NFL, or in the 16 years since he was first suspended, America's understanding of mental health issues has improved. It is entirely possible that the same issues would have reared their heads had he been drafted by the Eagles instead of the Saints.

And that would have been very bad for his mental health. Can you imagine Eagle fans reacting to Ricky Williams' drug and psych issues? They would have tried to destroy him. And, away from the more laid-back atmospheres in Louisiana and South Florida, it would have been much worse for him. Instead of accepting him, Eagle fans would have compounded the problem.

Now, imagine that the Eagles drafted the top quarterback available the next year. Because they still would have needed one. Who would that have been? There were 12 quarterbacks drafted. The 1st was Chad Pennington, who had a decent career with Miami and the New York Jets. Of the 11 after him, the best was... Tom Brady, taken in the 6th round by the New England Patriots. And we'll never know for sure if he would have won even one single solitary NFL game without being the perpetrator, or at least the beneficiary, of cheating.

And, given how close the Eagles were to winning the Super Bowl with McNabb but without Williams, would they have been any better the other way around? With Pennington as quarterback and Williams in the backfield? It's unlikely.

Because the quarterback they did draft turned out to be pretty good:

1. Donovan McNabb. Suppose you rooted for a struggling NFL team. And suppose I told you that they were going to draft a quarterback who gave his college back-to-back seasons of a Conference Championship and a bid to a New Year's Day bowl game. And that he would lead your team to the Playoffs in only his 2nd season, and that this would be the 1st of 8 trips to the Playoffs -- without any guarantee as to how any of those berths would turn out.

Would you like your chances? Would you take this? I think most fans would.

Donovan McNabb turned out to be, if not the greatest, then the most statistically successful quarterback in Eagles history. He joined Fran Tarkenton, John Elway and Steve Young as only the 4th quarterback in NFL history to have 30,000 passing yards, 200 touchdown passes, 3,000 rushing yards and 20 touchdown runs. He made 6 Pro Bowls. He won 5 NFC East titles.
In 2004, he set a record (since broken) with 24 consecutive pass attempts completed. That same year, he became the 1st quarterback ever to finish a season with at least 30 touchdown passes and fewer than 10 interceptions.

As I said, he went 10-8 in Playoff games with the Eagles. But look at it another way: In 11 seasons with Donovan McNabb as their starting quarterback, the Eagles won 10 postseason games; in 76 seasons with all other starting quarterbacks, they have won just 13. In fact, until Nick Foles came along, it was 9 postseason wins in 73 years without McNabb.

The Eagles reached 5 NFC Championship Games with him. They only reached 1 Super Bowl, and lost it -- but that was to the Patriots, so how do we know it was on the up-and-up? We don't. With the Pats, we presume they're guilty until they're proven innocent.

You can say that other Eagles quarterbacks -- Norm Van Brocklin, Sonny Jurgensen, Ron Jaworski, Randall Cunningham, Nick Foles and Carson Wentz -- were better than Donovan McNabb. Certainly, some of those were more talented. But results matter. Van Brocklin was only in Philadelphia for 3 seasons; Foles, 2. Long-term, McNabb is the Eagles' best quarterback ever.

So the people booing his selection at the 1999 NFL Draft owe him an apology. Yes, Ricky Williams looked like the better pick at the time. But he wasn't. McNabb was.

VERDICT: Not Guilty.

The Coronavirus pandemic has forced people to stay home, and even read! People are even reading books, not just their computers, tablets and smartphones.

Since the possibility of us not having a 2020 baseball season at all is starting to loom large, here are some books about previous baseball seasons that you may find interesting -- or may already have.

The Red Stockings of Cincinnati: Base Ball's First All-Professional Team and Its Historic 1869 and 1870 Seasons, by Stephen D Guschov.

The Summer of Beer and Whiskey: How Brewers, Barkeeps, Rowdies, Immigrants, and a Wild Pennant Fight Made Baseball America's Game (1882), by Edward Achorn.

Fifty-Nine in '84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had, by Edward Achorn.

Turbulent Seasons: Baseball in 1890-1891, by Charles C. Alexander.

A Game of Brawl: The Orioles, the Beaneaters, and the Battle for the 1897 Pennant, by Bill Felber.

MISFITS! Baseball's Worst Ever Team: 1899 Cleveland Spiders, by J. Thomas Hetrick and Michael D. Arnold.

The Days of Wee Willie, Old Cy and Baseball War: Scenes from the Dawn of the Deadball Era, 1900-1903, by Chuck Kimberly.

The First World Series and the Baseball Fanatics of 1903, by Roger I. Abrams.

The Year They Called Off the World Series: A True Story, by Benton Stark. Published in 1991, before the 1994 season.

The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball (1905), by Frank Deford.

When Chicago Ruled Baseball: The Cubs-White Sox World Series of 1906, by Bernard A. Weisberger.

Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History, by Cait N. Murphy.

When Cobb Met Wagner: The Seven-Game World Series of 1909, by David Finoli.

The Chalmers Race: Ty Cobb, Napoleon Lajoie, and the Controversial 1910 Batting Title That Became a National Obsession, by Rick Huhn and Charles C. Alexander.

Stealing Games: How John McGraw Transformed Baseball with the 1911 New York Giants, by Maury Klein.

The First Fall Classic: The Red Sox, the Giants and the Cast of Players, Pugs and Politicos Who Re-Invented the World Series in 1912, by Mike Vaccaro.

Mack, McGraw And The 1913 Baseball Season, by Richard Adler.

Baseball's Biggest Miracle: The 1914 Boston Braves, by Frank Ceresi and John B. Holway.

The Major League Pennant Races of 1916: "The Most Maddening Baseball Melee in History," by Paul G. Zinn and John G. Zinn.

The 1917 White Sox: Their World Championship Season, by Warren N Wilbert and William C Hageman. Published in 2003, before the White Sox' 2005 World Series win.

War Fever: Boston, Baseball, and America in the Shadow of the Great War, by Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith.

Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series, by Eliot Asinof.

The Pitch That Killed: Carl Mays, Ray Chapman and the Pennant Race of 1920, by Mike Sowell.

1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York, by Lyle Spatz and Steve Steinberg.

The 1922 St. Louis Browns: Best of the American League's Worst, by Roger A. Godin.

The House That Ruth Built: A New Stadium, the First Yankees Championship, and the Redemption of 1923, by Robert Weintraub.

Baseball's Greatest Season, 1924, by Reed Browning.

The Battling Bucs of 1925: How the Pittsburgh Pirates Pulled Off the Greatest Comeback in World Series History, by Ronald T. Waldo.

The Cardinals and the Yankees, 1926: A Classic Season and St. Louis in Seven, by Paul E. Doutrich.

Five O'Clock Lightning: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and the Greatest Baseball Team in History, the 1927 New York Yankees, by Harvey Frommer.

The 1928 New York Yankees: The Return of Murderers' Row, by Charlie Gentile.

Simply the Best: The Story of the 1929-31 Philadelphia Athletics, by Brett Topel.

Lefty Grove and the 1931 Philadelphia Athletics, by Robert P. Broadwater.

The 1932 New York Yankees: The Story of a Legendary Team, a Remarkable Season, and a Wild World Series, by Ronald A. Mayer.

The 1933 New York Giants: Bill Terry's Unexpected World Champions, by Lou Hernandez.

The Gashouse Gang: How Dizzy Dean, Leo Durocher, Branch Rickey, Pepper Martin, and Their Colorful, Come-from-Behind Ball Club Won the World Series-and America’s Heart-During the Great Depression, by John Heidenry.

April 25, 1980, 40 years ago: Operation Eagle Claw is launched. It becomes known by its staging area, codenamed Desert One. It was an attempt to rescue the Americans being held hostage by the Iranian government. It was one of the earliest operations of the U.S. Army's Delta Force special-operations group.

Nobody's perfect. We've all heard that. Even a "perfect season" isn't perfect. But one man built a perfect season in the National Football League.

Donald Francis Shula was born on January 4, 1930 in Grand River, Ohio, outside Cleveland. A son of Hungarian immigrants, he grew up in nearby Painesville. When he was 11, his mother noticed that he'd cut his face from playing tackle football, and forbade him to play it, ever again.

In 1945, at Harvey High School in Painesville, a gym teacher noticed that he looked strong enough to play football, and suggested he go out for the football team. But his mother had forbidden it. No one had any idea at the time, but the very history of the sport hung in the balance. On the signup sheet, he forged his parents' signatures. In his senior year, 1947, he led Harvey to a 7-3 record, its best in 18 years.

But college football scholarships were hard to come by, since the boys who had gone off to World War II were now grown men, and older than college football players would normally be. A former Harvey coach recommended John Carroll University, a private Catholic school in the Cleveland suburbs, coached by Herb Eisele.

While there, Shula considered training for the priesthood. Again, the history of football hung in the balance. But big wins over Youngstown State and Syracuse convinced him to stick with football. Today, the football facility at Carroll is named Don Shula Stadium. That would not have been the case had he become Father, Monsignor, Bishop, or even Cardinal Shula. (Maybe the school would have been renamed for him, or a school somewhere, but not a stadium.)

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He graduated in 1951, with a sociology degree. Again, the history of football was up for grabs, because he was offered a teaching and coaching job at Lincoln High School in nearby Canton -- the city where the National Football League was founded in 1920, but not yet home to the as-yet-nonexistent Pro Football Hall of Fame.

But Paul Brown, head coach and general manager of his hometown team, the Cleveland Browns, defending NFL Champions, had selected him in the 9th round of the NFL Draft. In the 22nd round -- today, the Draft has only 7 rounds -- Brown had selected Shula's roommate at Carroll, Carl Taseff. Brown liked looking at Carroll players because Eisele had attended Brown's clinics and used similar tactics, thus making Eisele's players adaptable to Brown's system. The teaching job offered him $3,750 a year. Brown offered him $5,000. Shula signed with the Browns.

This was the time when single-platoon football, where players played on both offense and defense, was giving way to two-platoon football, where they went only one way and not the other. Two of the defining coaches of my youth were among the first players to be only defensive backs and really good at it: Tom Landry of the New York Giants, and Don Shula.

Shula played in all 12 Browns games in 1951, becoming a starter midway through the season, and intercepted 4 passes. The Browns had beaten the Los Angeles Rams in an epic NFL Championship Game the season before, but, in 1951, the Rams won a rematch. This began an unfortunate trend for him: So often close to glory, but not quite getting it.

He had enlisted in the Ohio National Guard, and, with the Korean War on, was soon called up to serve. He remained stationed Stateside, and was deactivated in time to play half of the 1952 season. Again, the Browns reached the NFL Championship Game, but lost again, this time to the Detroit Lions.

Before the 1953 season, Shula and Taseff -- apparently, Brown had become less enamored with them, or maybe he got a trade deal he decided he couldn't pass up -- were traded to the Baltimore Colts. They went 3-9 despite leading the NFL in defensive takeaways, including 3 interceptions by Shula. Wilbur "Weeb" Ewbank, a former Brown assistant, became their head coach in 1954, and the team got better. In spite of a broken jaw, Shula finished the 1955 season with 5 interceptions.

Ewbank waived Shula at the end of training camp in 1957, and so he missed their 1958 and 1959 NFL Championships. He played a season with the Washington Redskins, and retired as a player, with 21 career interceptions and 4 fumble recoveries.

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In 2012, I did a sport-by-sport series on whether "mediocre players" make the best coaches. It would be unfair to say that Don Shula was a "mediocre player," but he wasn't an especially successful one. But, like a lot of athletes who weren't great players, he took his love for, and knowledge of, his sport, and made himself a good coach.

Shula went right into coaching after retiring, first as an assistant at the University of Virginia under head coach Blanton Collier, then at Iowa State, then the University of Kentucky. While at Virginia, he married Dorothy Bartish. They had 5 children: Sons Dave and Mike, both of whom also became NFL players and coaches; and daughters Donna, Sharon and Anne.

In 1960, he got his 1st NFL job, coaching the defensive backfield for the Detroit Lions. He convinced head coach George Wilson to take Taseff with him. By 1962, he was the defensive coordinator, and 5 members of his defense have made the Hall of Fame: Joe Schmidt, Alex Karras, Yale Lary, Dick LeBeau and Dick "Night Train" Lane. It also featured such luminaries as Roger Brown, Darris McCord, Sam Williams, Carl Brettschneider and Wayne Walker. The front four of Karras, Brown, McCord and Williams was one of several pro football defensive lines to be known as "The Fearsome Foursome."

In a game known as the Thanksgiving Day Massacre, they handed the Green Bay Packers what turned out to be their only defeat of the season, sacking Hall of Fame quarterback Bart Starr 11 times. But with only the 1st place team in each Division making the Playoffs at the time, the Lions' 11-3 record was still behind the Packers' 13-1, and so they didn't make the NFL Championship Game.

Still, it got Shula noticed, and in 1963, with Ewbank having left for the AFL's New York Jets, the Colts welcomed him back, as head coach. His 1st game was a 37-28 loss to the Giants at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, but he got them to rebound to finish 8-6.

He got them to the 1964 NFL Championship Game, and lost to the Browns. Paul Brown had been fired by new owner Art Modell, and their new head coach was Collier. Collier remains the last head coach to lead the Browns to an NFL Championship, and, until the 2016 Cavaliers, the last man to lead a Cleveland team to a World Championship in any sport.

In 1965, Shula led the Colts to a tie with the Packers for the Western Division title. (What Baltimore, a Northeastern city, was doing in the Western Division, I don't know.) But they lost a Playoff to the Packers in controversial fashion.

In 1967, they were undefeated going into the last game of the season, their only blemishes being ties against the Los Angeles Rams and the Minnesota Vikings. But they went out to L.A., and the Rams clobbered them, 34-10. Thus, the Colts and Rams both finished 11-1-2, and since head-to-head play was then the tiebreaker, the Rams made the Playoffs, while the Colts didn't.

In 1968, Johnny Unitas, perhaps the greatest quarterback football had yet seen, was injured during the preseason. Earl Morrall stepped in as quarterback, and the Colts went 13-1, and avenged their only regular-season loss by going to Cleveland and beating the Browns in the NFL Championship Game. (Under the rules of the time, hosting the title game was rotated, not decided by record. This also explains why the Dolphins played the 1972 AFC Championship Game on the road.)

But this NFL Championship did not make the Colts "World Champions." They had to play the AFL Champions in Super Bowl III, and it was Ewbank's Jets. The Colts were favored by 18 points, but Jet quarterback Joe Namath said, "We're gonna win, I guarantee it."

The Colts played as poorly as any team has ever played in a major league sports final, blowing several chances. It was only 7-0 Jets at the half. Unitas had missed the whole season, but he said he was ready to go back in. Shula later said if he'd put Unitas in to start the 2nd half, the Colts would have won. Instead, he waited until the Colts were 16-0 down, and the Jets won 16-7.

Super Bowl III was played on neutral ground, at the Orange Bowl in Miami. If Shula only knew how much he would come to "own" that stadium, and that city and its metropolitan area...

Shula was on the wrong side of the biggest upset in pro football history. In 2 years, he had guided his team to a regular-season record of 24-2-2, but did not have a World Championship to show for it. He was fired after the 1969 season, and his record as Colts coach was 71-23-4, including 3 Playoff berths in 7 seasons, and an NFL Championship -- but not a World Championship. To make matters worse, just 2 years later, his successor, Don McCafferty, led the Colts to win Super Bowl V -- with Unitas getting hurt in midgame, and Morrall stepping in and leading them to victory.

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The Miami Dolphins had entered the AFL in 1966, and, like most expansion teams, had struggled. Original coach George Wilson, who had coached the Lions to the 1957 NFL Championship and had hired Wilson for his staff in 1960, was fired, and Shula was named to replace him in 1970. He hired Taseff as an assistant, and they would remain together through the 1993 season.

Over the next 6 seasons, he would take the Dolphins to a 67-16-1 regular-season record. In a 16-season stretch from 1970 to 1985, the Dolphins would utterly dominate the newly-created American Football Conference Eastern Division, going 168-63-2, winning the Division 10 times.

In 1970, he got the Dolphins to the AFC Wild Card (only 1 Wild Card per Conference at the time), and lost a Divisional Playoff to the Oakland Raiders. In 1971, he won the AFC East, and on Christmas Day, beat the Kansas City Chiefs in what remains the longest game in NFL history, a double-overtime 24-21 away win.

Shula got some measure of revenge by beating the Colts, who had won the AFC East the year before, in the AFC Championship Game. But they lost Super Bowl VI to the Dallas Cowboys, 24-3. Until 2019, they were the only team ever to play in a Super Bowl and fail to score a touchdown.

In 1920, the 1st NFL season, the Akron Pros won the title, going 8-0-3. In 1922, the Canton Bulldogs went 10-0-2. In 1923, the Bulldogs went 11-0-1. In 1948, the Browns went 14-0 and won the league title, but that league was the All-America Football Conference, not the NFL. None of those teams, from Shula's native Northern Ohio, had to play an NFL Championship Game.

In 1934, and again in 1942, under head coach and NFL founder George Halas, the Chicago Bears went through the regular season undefeated, but lost the NFL Championship Game. Going into the 1972 season, no NFL team had gone undefeated and untied and then won the NFL Championship Game, under that name or under that of the Super Bowl.

The Dolphins began the season by beating the Chiefs. (Just as their Playoff game the preceding season was the last football game at Kansas City Municipal Stadium, this was the 1st regular-season game at Arrowhead Stadium.) They won at home to the Houston Oilers, away to the Minnesota Vikings, away to the Jets, home to the San Diego Chargers, home to the Buffalo Bills, away to the Colts, away to the Bills, home to the Patriots, home to the Jets, home to the St. Louis Cardinals, away to the Patriots, home to the Giants, and home to the Colts.

How close were these games? Their win home to the Bills was 24-23. Their win away to the Vikings was 16-14. Their win home to the Jets was 28-24. Every other win was by at least 10 points, including home to the Patriots, 52-0.

Like the '68 Colts, Shula had to do without his starting quarterback for a while, although for not nearly as long. He had been satisfied with Morrall as a substitute for Unitas, and had acquired him as a backup for Bob Griese, and he played from the 5th game onward, until Griese returned for the AFC Championship Game.

In addition to Shula himself, 6 members of the '72 Dolphins are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame: Griese, running back Larry Csonka, receiver Paul Warfield, center Jim Langer, guard Larry Little, and linebacker Nick Buoniconti. Good cases can also be made for tight end Jim Mandich, guard Bob Kuechenberg, defensive tackle Manny Fernandez, defensive end Bill Stanfill, and safety Jake Scott.

Between Buoniconti, Fernandez, Stanfill, Scott, and All-Pros defensive end Vern Den Herder, cornerback Tim Foley and safety Dick Anderson (not to be confused with the later Rutgers head coach of the same name), it was hardly what the media called it, a "No-Name Defense.")

Running backs Jim Kiick and Csonka (in that order) were nicknamed "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," after the 1969 Western movie starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. The backfield also featured Eugene "Mercury" Morris, who, as his nickname (for the Roman messenger of the gods, known as Hermes in ancient Greece), was pretty fast.

Also noteworthy is Marlin Briscoe: In 1968, with the Denver Broncos, he had become the 1st black man to start at quarterback under the NFL banner. (It was still the AFL, but the merger process was already underway.) But, like so many black quarterbacks at that time, he was moved to receiver, and it was at that position that he had his greatest success on a team level.

On Christmas Eve, they hosted the Wild Card winners, the Browns, at the Orange Bowl, and won 20-14. On New Year's Eve, they went to Three Rivers Stadium. Just 8 days earlier, the Pittsburgh Steelers had played their 1st official Playoff game (their 1947 Eastern Division Playoff is usually not counted), and won on the Terry Bradshaw to Franco Harris "Immaculate Reception." But the "Steel Curtain" was not quite ready, and the Dolphins won 21-17.

So the Dolphins qualified for Super Bowl VII, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the stadium where Shula's hopes for the 1967 Colts died. They would be playing the Washington Redskins, whose coach, George Allen, had also been a great defensive coordinator -- and had coached that Rams team that knocked Shula's '67 Colts out. His veteran squad, nicknamed "The Over-the-Hill Gang," was 11-3, 13-3 counting the Playoffs. These 'Skins were good, mean, and ready for battle. And the oddsmakers actually made the undefeated Dolphins 3-point underdogs. And Namath thought his Jets were being shown disrespect?

It was January 14, 1973. Richard Nixon was 6 days away from being sworn in for a 2nd term as President. The Vietnam War was coming to an end. The Cold War had thawed a little. Hardly anybody was talking about Watergate just yet. Music was dominated by hard rock and soul. "Muscle cars" were the popular automobiles. Arcades were still full of pinball machines and games of chance, with video games on the horizon.

It was 84 degrees at kickoff, and that remains the warmest temperature in Super Bowl history. That would seem to have favored a team from Miami a lot more than a team from Washington, although the Redskins had plenty of Southerners on their roster.

The Dolphins broke an early deadlock by scoring a touchdown late in the 1st quarter. They scored another touchdown in the 2nd quarter, and were up 14-0 at the half, having limited to the Redskins to 4 1st downs and just 72 yards from scrimmage. But there was a warning sign, noticeable mostly in retrospect: Both times, when Garo Yepremian, the Dolphins' Cyprus-born left-footed placekicker, attempted the extra point, it was good, but a low kick.

In the 3rd quarter, the Redskins nearly scored a touchdown, but Charley Taylor, eventually to become the NFL's all-time leader in receptions, just missed catching a Billy Kilmer pass and taking it in for a touchdown. Curtis Knight ended that drive with a 32-yard field goal attempt that went wide right, and it looked like Washington's best chance was gone.

They got close again early in the 4th quarter, when Kilmer threw to Jerry Smith, wide open in the end zone. But the pass hit the crossbar of the goalpost, and Scott intercepted a Kilmer pass on the next play. (Before the 1974 season, the NFL changed the rule, and goalposts were moved from the goal line to the end line.)

With a little over 2 minutes left, it was still 14-0 Miami, and the Dolphins had 4th and 4 on the Redskin 34. Shula ordered a field goal, which would have made it 17-0, forging a 17-0 record. He would later say he thought, "What a hell of a way to remember this game."

As I said, the goalposts were on the goal line, so, with the 7-yard backup, this was a 41-yard attempt. It was on natural grass, but there was no wind. A good kicker like Yepremian should have been able to make it. But, again, he kicked it low, and it was blocked by the Redskins' Bill Brundige.

That was bad enough. But the ball was still live, and it rebounded, and Yepremian, rather than kick-holder Morrall, got to it. Yepremian should have just fallen on it: It would have kept the gap at 2 scores, and the Redskins wouldn't have had time.

Instead, he saw Brundige coming to tackle him, and he decided to get rid of it. For whatever reason, this left-footed kicker threw it with his right hand, and it went almost straight up. He reached for it again, and it glanced off his fingers and into the hands of Mike Bass, who took it 49 yards for a touchdown -- the 1st fumble recovery touchdown in Super Bowl history.

With 2:07 to go, it was Miami 14, Washington 7. The Redskins had life: If they could hold the Dolphins on the next possession, they could tie the game and send it to overtime. (The NFL did not yet have the 2-point conversion.)

The Redskins held the Dolphins to a 3-and-out, and almost blocked Larry Seiple's punt. They had 1:14, although they'd used up all their timeouts. The "No-Name Defense" held, with Den Herder sacking Kilmer on 4th down to end the game.

The Dolphins had their undefeated season. Miami had its 1st World Championship in any sport. Scott was named the game's Most Valuable Player, the 1st defensive back, and only the 2nd defensive player, so honored. Shula had his redemption.
The Dolphins did, indeed, go 17-0. The NFL expanded to a 16-game regular-season schedule in 1978. In the 1984 season, the San Francisco 49ers went 18-1, losing only at home to Pittsburgh. In 1985, the Bears went 18-1, losing only, with great pride for Dolphin fans, away to Miami. In 2007, the Patriots went 18-0 before losing the Super Bowl to the Giants.

The 1972-73 Miami Dolphins remain the only undefeated and untied NFL Champions. For that season, as he had previously been in 1964, 1967 and 1968, the Associated Press named Shula their NFL Coach of the Year.

Is there a reason the '72 Dolphins can't be called the greatest single-season team in NFL history? Their regular-season opponents had an aggregate winning percentage of .397. The Giants and Chiefs both went 8-6, and that was the best of their opponents.

However, due to the aforementioned scheduling rotation, they did have to go on the road to face the rising Steelers for the AFC title, and they won; and, of course, the Super Bowl was at a neutral site. (Miami has hosted 11 Super Bowls, a record that New Orleans is set to tie in 2024, but the Dolphins haven't played in any of those.)

Legend has it that, in every NFL season, when the last undefeated team loses for the 1st time, the surviving members of the '72 Dolphins get together for a champagne toast. In reality, this is an exaggeration, as only a few of them do it. Shula himself has never participated in it.

The Dolphins would win their opener in 1973, before losing their 2nd game, away to Oakland, ending a 16-game regular-season winning streak. They went 12-2, their only other loss coming away to Baltimore. They hosted the Cincinnati Bengals, coached by Shula's old mentor Paul Brown, in the Playoffs, and beat them. Then they avenged their defeat to the Raiders, beating them for the AFC title. And they won Super Bowl VIII, beating the Minnesota Vikings 24-7 at Rice Stadium in Houston.

It looked like the dynasty would continue in 1974, as they went 11-3. They went to Oakland for the Divisional Playoff, and it looked like they had the game wrapped up on a late touchdown, Griese passing to Benny Malone. But Ken Stabler threw to a well-covered Clarence Davis for the winning touchdown, in what became known as the "Sea of Hands" play and game.

*

The Dolphins missed the Playoffs the next 3 seasons, despite going 10-4 in 2 of them. Shula rebuilt, but these Dolphin teams wouldn't quite be good enough. They lost to the Houston Oilers in the 1978 AFC Wild Card Game, lost to the Steelers in a 1979 Divisional Playoff, missed the Playoffs in 1980, and lost to the San Diego Chargers in a 1981 Divisional Playoff that became known as "The Epic in Miami" and "The Kellen Winslow Game."

The 1982 would be shortened to 9 games by a players' strike, but the Dolphins won the AFC Championship again. The Redskins got some revenge, beating them in Super Bowl XVII at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, 27-17.

The Dolphins drafted quarterback Dan Marino, and lost to the Seattle Seahawks in a 1983 Divisional Playoff. But Marino put together perhaps the best passing season anybody had yet seen in 1984, and the Dolphins cruised to another AFC Championship, their 5th, and Shula was in his 8th NFL championship game. But Joe Montana showed Marino, Shula, and everyone else the difference between a passer and a quarterback, and the 49ers beat the Dolphins, 38-16.

To the surprise of most football fans, neither Shula nor Marino never got into another Super Bowl. The Dolphins lost the 1985 AFC Championship Game, at home, to the Patriots. They missed the Playoffs the next 4 seasons, and it began to look like Shula, now 60 years old, should retire. They then got stuck behind the Buffalo Bills in the AFC East, losing to the Bills in the 1990 Divisional round and the 1992 AFC Championship Game, at the Dolphins' new home of Joe Robbie Stadium in the Miami suburbs.

In 1991, after 32 years of marriage, Dorothy Shula died. Don soon founded the Don Shula Foundation for Breast Cancer Research. In 1993, he married Mary Anne Stephens, and he lived the rest of his life at her home in the Miami suburb of Indian Creek, Florida. In 2007, they joined his former quarterback, Dan Marino, in doing TV commercials for NutriSystem weight loss products.

In spite of his struggles, on the field and off, Shula wasn't done as a coach. He got off to a 9-2 start in 1993, in spite of Marino suffering a season-ending injury, and Scott Mitchell having to play quarterback. But Mitchell got hurt, too, and he was down to a 3rd-string quarterback.

On November 14, the Dolphins beat the Philadelphia Eagles 19-14 at Veterans Stadium. This was the 325th win of Shula's head coaching career, surpassing Halas as the NFL's all-time leader. To this day, Shula and Halas have been joined only by Bill Belichick * as head coaches who are winners of 300 or more NFL games.

That 3rd string quarterback who beat the Eagles that day? It was Doug Pederson, who would coach the Eagles to win Super Bowl LII, over Belichick's Patriots.

At the end of the year, Sports Illustrated named him their Sportsman of the Year, although that was pretty much a lifetime achievement award, rather than a reflection of his doing anything particularly noteworthy that year. (In 1972, they split the award between UCLA basketball coach John Wooden and tennis star Billie Jean King. In 1973, they gave it to Jackie Stewart. Stewart had a great year, but auto racing is not a sport.)
But a true "last stand" wouldn't come that year. Under Pederson and veteran Steve DeBerg, the Dolphins collapsed, losing their last 5 games. They remain the only NFL team to start a season 9-2 or better and miss the Playoffs. They won the AFC East in 1994, Shula's 15th 1st place finish as an NFL head coach, but lost a Divisional Playoff to the Chargers. They made the Playoffs in 1995, but lost a Wild Card Game to the Bills, 37-22. Shula then retired.

He coached his 1st NFL game on September 15, 1963. He coached his last on December 30, 1995. In between, he coached a record 526 games, went 328-156-6 in regular-season play, and 19-17 in the Playoffs, for a total of 347-173-6, for an overall winning percentage of .665.

In 33 seasons, he reached the Playoffs 19 times, won 15 Division titles, on 10 occasions reached the AFC Championship Game or its previous equivalent, won 6 of those, won 3 NFL Championships, and won 2 Super Bowls. It's also worth pointing out that Shula's teams were consistently among the least penalized teams in the NFL: They were not only efficient, but played cleanly.

*

Don Shula was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1997, in his 1st year of eligibility. (Coaches need to sit out only 1 season before they're eligible. They can then coach again without losing their Hall-of-Famer status.) He was named the head coach on the NFL's 1970s All-Decade Team, and to the staff of the NFL's 100th Anniversary All-Time Team.

He was the 1st inductee to the Miami Dolphins Honor Roll, and the address of Hard Rock Stadium (formerly Joe Robbie Stadium, among other names) is 347 Don Shula Drive, in honor of the man and the number of games he won as a head coach. In 2010, a statue of him was unveiled outside that stadium. In 1983, while he was still coaching, the Florida legislature renamed the South Dade Expressway, near which the stadium was built, the Don Shula Expressway.
John Carroll University named its new football ground Don Shula Stadium. The annual game between Florida International University in Miami and Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton is named the Shula Bowl, and the winner receives a trophy named the Don Shula Award.

In 1999, the Vince Lombardi Cancer Foundation gave him the Lombardi Award of Excellence, which they define as going to "an individual who exemplifies the spirit of the coach" (Lombardi). In 2003, 30 years after completing his perfect season, Shula was invited to toss the coin before Super Bowl XXXVII at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. (The Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Raiders.)

Shula co-wrote 3 books: The Winning Edge in 1973, with Lou Sahadi; Everyone's a Coach in 1995, with Ken Blanchard; and The Little Black Book of Coaching: Motivating People to Be Winners in 2001, also with Blanchard.

He also lent his name to Don Shula's Steakhouse. The original opened in Miami Lakes, at a hotel that he also owned. One was in New York, near Port Authority Bus Terminal. I considered going there once, but the menu was posted in the front window, and the prices were ridiculously high, so I didn't go in. That one is now closed, but they are still open in Florida in Miami Lakes, Tampa, Gainesville and Walt Disney World; and in Chicago, Houston, and the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, Arizona.

In 2013, noting that they'd never been invited to the White House for a ceremony honoring them, President Barack Obama invited the '72 Dolphins to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of their win in Super Bowl VII. Shula gave him a period-specific Dolphins jersey, with the Number 72 on it, and "UNDEFEATED" as the "name," signed by all the surviving players.

Langer, Kuechenberg and Fernandez were still alive, but refused to attend, because of their opposition to Obama. Yepremian, however, was a Republican, and known to be a friend of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who lives near Miami on the very exclusive Fisher Island, but attended anyway.

Dave Shula became a lefthanded quarterback. played at Ivy League school Dartmouth, and, like his father, played for the Baltimore Colts, in 1981. He coached under Don with the Dolphins from 1982 to 1988, then under Jimmy Johnson with the Cowboys until 1990.

In 1991, in one of his last hires before he died, Paul Brown hired Dave as the receivers coach for the Bengals. Paul's son and successor as Bengals owner, Mike Brown, hired Dave as head coach in 1992, but his 5 seasons at the helm were unsuccessful. Dave left coaching to run the steakhouse franchise, and in 2018 went back at Dartmouth, where he remains receivers coach. He is married with 3 sons.

Mike Shula was a better player and a better coach than his older brother Dave. He quarterbacked the University of Alabama to 9-2-1 and a win in the Aloha Bowl in the 1985 season, and 10-3 and a win in the Sun Bowl in the 1986 season. He was drafted by the Buccaneers, but only played the 1987 season. He remained with them as an assistant coach for the next 3 years.

In 1991, he joined his father's Dolphins staff. In 1993, he was lured away by the Chicago Bears, became the Bucs' offensive coordinator in 1996, and the Dolphins' quarterbacks coach in 2000. In 2003, he was named head coach at Alabama. He got them to the 2004 Music City Bowl (but lost), and a 10-2 record and a win in the Cotton Bowl in the 2005 season, before a scandal forced his firing in midseason in 2006. What responsibility Mike bore for the scandal is debatable.

He has never been a head coach again, but he was immediately hired as the quarterbacks coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars, and has since served on the staffs of the Carolina Panthers, the Giants, and now the Denver Broncos. He is married with 4 daughters.

Bill Belichick, Patriots head coach, who has actually admitted to going beyond the rules to win: "Don Shula is one of the all-time great coaching figures and the standard for consistency and leadership in the NFL, I was fortunate to grow up in Maryland as a fan of the Baltimore Colts who, under Coach Shula, were one of the outstanding teams of that era. My first connection to Coach Shula was through my father, whose friendship with Coach Shula went back to their days in northeast Ohio. I extend my deepest condolences to the Shula family and the Dolphins organization."

Jimmy Johnson of Fox, who coached the Cowboys to win Super Bowls XXVII and XXVIII, and succeeded Shula as head coach of the Dolphins: "He set the standard."

Bill Cowher of CBS, who coached the Steelers to win Super Bowl XL: "His leadership and wisdom helped to guide me and many others who have made a life in coaching football. Thank you Coach Shula. May your spirit and legacy live on forever."

Phil Simms of CBS, who quarterbacked the Giants to win Super Bowl XXI: "He was gracious, humorous & gave real game insight. Office was impressive as he was; museum to football, a sport which is forever grateful to him."

Bruce Arians, head coach of the Buccaneers: "We lost the greatest coach of all time."

Frank Martin, Miami native, now head men's basketball coach at the University of South Carolina: "Thank u for showing us Miamians how 2 b fans & 4 the class u always showed. Your leadership made us all young bucks from the Orange Bowl Neighborhood want 2 b educators." (The head women's basketball coach at South Carolina is Dawn Staley, legendary player from Philadelphia, who turns 50 today, born the day of the Kent State shooting.)

Jim Palmer, Baseball Hall-of-Famer: "First met Don in the 60’s in Baltimore , then the O’s minor leagues shared St Thomas U with the Dolphins. Always cordial but had an aura that demanded respect. What a man, what a coach!"

Chris Mortensen of ESPN: "DonShula was as fierce a competitor as I have met and covered in the

He did. A lot. He not only won, but he set an example in so doing. He didn't win as much as he could have, but he won more than most, and in the right way.

May 8, 1970, 50 years ago: The moment that New York Knickerbockers fans had been waiting for finally arrived. Although, given what was seen the year before, with the New York Jets winning Super Bowl III and the New York Mets winning the World Series, it was far closer to a "miracle" than "guaranteed."

The Knicks (almost nobody calls them by their full name) were founded in 1946, as a charter franchise in the Basketball Association of America, which became the National Basketball Association in 1949. They and the Boston Celtics are the only 2 charter franchises still playing in their original cities. The only other charter franchise still playing is the Philadelphia Warriors, who moved to San Francisco in 1962, and have been known as the Golden State Warriors since 1971.

The Knicks reached the NBA Finals in 1951, but lost in 7 games to the Rochester Royals, who are now the Sacramento Kings. They reached the Finals again in 1952, losing to the Minneapolis Lakers in 7. They reached the Finals again in 1953, losing to the Lakers in 5. They had not reached the Finals since.

The Lakers, on the other hand, won the 1948 National Basketball League title, and were admitted into the NBA, where they then won 5 of the next 6 titles. In 1959, they lost the Finals to the Celtics. After the 1960 season, they were moved to Los Angeles, where they won the Western Division title in 1962, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1968 and 1969 -- and lost to the Celtics every single time, including in 7 games in '62, '66 and '69.

By this point, the Knicks had been rebuilt under head coach William "Red" Holzman (who had played for the '51 Royals), chief scout Dick McGuire (who had been a star on those early 1950s teams), and general manager Eddie Donovan. Playing at the new Madison Square Garden that had opened in 1968 were future Hall-of-Famers Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Dave DeBusschere and Bill Bradley.

In 1969, the Knicks got to the Eastern Division Finals, losing to the Celtics. The 1969-70 season was when it all seemed to be coming together. They had an 18-game winning streak, an NBA record (but for only 2 more years).

In the Playoffs, despite the presence of Earl "the Pearl" Monroe, one of the few players who could match "Clyde" Frazier for flashiness, the Knicks beat the Baltimore Bullets in 7 games. Then, despite the presence of Alcindor and already-all-time great Oscar Robertson, the Knicks beat the Milwaukee Bucks, to reach their 1st NBA Finals in 17 years.
Paul: "Okay, ask me that same question again." (Too late, fool.)

May 10, 1970, 50 years ago: The Boston Garden experiences what eventually becomes known as "The Miracle of the Fours." It is Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Boston Bruins, who have not won the Cup in 29 years, and the St. Louis Blues, who have only been playing since 1967. The game went to overtime, thus to the 4th period. The game was tied 3-3, so whoever could score a 4th goal would win it.

Star Trek debuted in 1966. My father was an original Trekkie. I wasn't born until 1969, a few months after "The Original Series" was canceled, but he taught me well, showing me the reruns on New York's WPIX-Channel 11, and taking me to the 1st 7 movies.

Star Wars debuted in 1977. I was an original fan. My father took me to the Original Trilogy.

I was a 2nd-generation Roddenberrian, and an original Lucasian. So you might think that I prefer Star Wars. In fact, I prefer Star Trek. Is that because I was exposed to it first? Maybe.

Here's 5 reasons why Star Trek is better, and 5 why Star Wars is:

10. Star Wars: Better Movies
Star Trek fell victim to a curse: While its even-numbered movies were all good (yes, even the 10th one, Nemesis, if you think it's bad, you're wrong), it's odd-numbered movies weren't (although The Search for Spock and Insurrection kind of have bum raps).

Whereas even the bad Star Wars movies have their moments, and it wouldn't have taken much to fix them -- even The Phantom Menace.

9. Star Trek: Better TV Shows
Younger fans will tell me that The Clone Wars and Rebels are awesome. Even if you agree, there have now been 7 Star Trek TV shows, and even Discovery has found its footing. Yes, there's been some garbage on each of them, but so much more has been good.

8. Star Wars: Better Toys
Star Wars seemed to be invented to provide little boys with toys, and, in the late 1970s, I was their target audience. Even though the action figures, made by Hasbro, were small, they were the right size for a child's hands.

Mattel made Star Trek action figures, much bigger, but they left a lot to be desired. The likenesses were good, but the phasers and tricorders were light blue, a color not seen on either. Also, they were easily losable, and the tricorder snaps easily broke. And, for some reason, they got Uhura's hair very wrong: It was a puffy, outward, 1950s style, instead of the 1960s beehive she usually had, at least in her official capacity on the Bridge.

7. Star Trek: Better Catchphrases
Okay, nobody ever actually said, "Beam me up, Scotty." But the Star Trek catchphrases are many. Warp factor one. Highly illogical. I'm a doctor, not a (fill in the blank). He's dead, Jim. I can't change the laws of physics. Hailing frequencies open. It was inwented in Russia. Engage. Make it so. They are without honor. I can live with it!

In this regard, Star Wars just doesn't measure up. I find your lack of faith disturbing. These aren't the droids you're looking for. Your powers are weak, old man. Laugh it up, fuzzball! I... am your father. Good, let the hate flow through you. This is podracing! I hate sand! And, of course, I've got a bad feeling about this!

6. Star Wars: J.J. Abrams Couldn't Screw It Up
When J.J. Abrams was assigned the 2009 Star Trek reboot movie, he made a Star Trek movie for people who loved Star Wars but hated Star Trek. And yet, it had all the things people hated about Star Trek: Overacting, Jim Kirk being a horndog, dopey special effects, impossible technology, technobabble. It was horrible. Abrams' production company is called Bad Robot, but old-school Trekkies called his Trek movies "Bad Reboot."

You could tell that he didn't respect Star Trek, but that he both loved and respected Star Wars -- so much so that the Sequel Trilogy is essentially a remake of the Original Trilogy.

5. Star Trek: It Survived J.J. Abrams
Since Abrams thankfully moved on, we have gotten the 1st season of Star Trek: Discovery, and that dug the hole even deeper. But the 2nd season brought the Enterprise, complete with Captain Pike, Mr. Spock, and Pike's First Officer previously known only as Number One into it, and that saved it.

We have also now had Season 1 of Star Trek: Picard, bringing back much of what we loved about the Next Generation period (2364 to 2379 for them, 1987 to 2001 for us). Yes, it had problems, but, like the Synthetics, it was more than saved at the end, and restored to the Gene Roddenberry vision of "seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before."

And also the David Gerrold vision: "The final frontier is not space. The final frontier is the human soul. Space is merely the place where we are most likely to meet the challenge."

In 2009, and even more so, in 2012, after Star Trek II II: The Re-Wrath Of Khan -- excuse me, Star Trek Into Darkness -- it looked like Abrams had managed to do what NBC, Stanley Kubrick, Fred Freiberger, William Shatner's directing, and, yes, Star Wars couldn't do: Kill Star Trek. In 2020, Star Trek is back, and with at least as much hope for the future as Star Wars. And it's that what Star Trek is all about, hope for the future?

4. Star Wars: Better Music
Alexander Courage composed the music for Star Trek: The Original Series, including the iconic opening theme, and the "Captain Kirk Fight Music." Jerry Goldsmith composed the music for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and its theme became the opening theme of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

But the opening themes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager were not particularly memorable. And "Faith of the Heart," the theme song for Star Trek: Enterprise, written by Diane Warren and sung by Russell Watson... I liked it, but a lot of Trekkies still despise it.

John Williams composed the music for Star Wars. We remember the opening theme, the Imperial March, and the Cantina Band's number, and we remember them all fondly. And has there ever been a better use of music in a movie, ever, than the muted Imperial March played when Darth Vader told Luke Skywalker the big secret?

3. Star Trek: Better Prequels
Go ahead, make your jokes about Star Trek: Enterprise. But it not only cleared up some mysteries we'd had for decades, but delivered few retroactive plot holes. Discovery, at least in Season 2, has also done a good job. The Star Wars Prequel Trilogy? Holy bantha.

We didn't need to know who built C-3PO. (After all, we still don't know who built R2-D2.) We didn't need to see young Jabba the Hutt or kid Greedo. We didn't need to know that Jango Fett was as overrated a character as his "son" Boba.

Yoda was a big plot hole. Learned a whole lot more in the 20 or so years between Episodes III and IV than he did in the 1st 900 years of his life, he seems to have, hm? The Jedi as a whole seem to be far less worthy of Luke than they were of him. It almost got to the point where the people who think Darth Vader is the coolest character ever had a point, as he betrayed the Jedi.

And yet, Anakin Skywalker still seems more like a petulant kid in over his head than the great warrior old Obi-Wan suggested he was. Darth Vader, the most iconic thing about the Original Trilogy, becomes the biggest letdown of the Prequel Trilogy.

2. Star Wars: The Villains Are More Fun
And yet, there is an appeal to Darth Vader. Even to Emperor Palpatine. People who like gangster movies can appreciate Jabba the Hutt. Kylo Ren was a compelling figure, even if he was every bit as petulant as Grandpa Anakin. Peter Cushing as Governor Tarkin in the Original Trilogy, and Domhnall Gleeson as General Hux in the Sequel Trilogy, outvillained the intended villains. And, while even he couldn't save the Prequel Trilogy, Christopher Lee is one of the alpha human beings of all time.

Star Trek? There was Khan Noonien Singh, and later Lore. But the original Klingons and Romulans weren't that interesting, and needed the sequel series to flesh them out. The Borg were hopelessly two-dimensional. V'Ger didn't even think of itself as a villain. Tolian Soran? The Son'a? There were James Bond villains with more depth.

1. Star Trek: Brains
No, this is not a reference to how "Spock's Brain" is better than The Phantom Menace. Besides, "Spock's Brain" isn't even the worst Original Series episode. "The Lights of Zetar" was considerably worse. (Sorry, Shari Lewis.) So was "And the Children Shall Lead." So was "The Way to Eden," Herbert.

Admit it: The Galactic Empire is the dumbest set of villains in movie history. I'm not just talking about how Emperor Palpatine's "foreseeing" never foresees that he's going to lose. Or about how the Stormtroopers do a lot of shooting and missing.

Han Solo practically spells it out in The Force Awakens, during the meeting about how to handle Starkiller Base: "So, it's big... Okay, how do we blow it up? There's always a way to do that." And while they've had shields since at least Return of the Jedi, they're still too easily disable-able, and still nothing like the shields of a starship in Star Trek. As Riker would say, "One photon torpedo ought to do it."

They learned nothing in the 30 or so years from the time a single damaged Rebel ship crashed into the Bridge of a Star Destroyer, sending it tumbling into the surface of Death Star II, to the construction of Starkiller Base.

All those Star Wars fans who say a Star Destroyer would wipe Picard's Enterprise out with one shot? They've got it totally backwards: Kirk's Enterprise would destroy the Death Star. Fast-forward 100 years, and Picard's Enterprise would end the Empire in 5 minutes.

Whereas, in Star Trek, you need brains. You have to be able to out-think your opponent. Hell, in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II," Riker had to out-think a Borg-assimilated Picard, who thought he knew every move Riker could make. And in Star Trek: Nemesis, Picard had to out-think Praetor Shinzon, a clone of himself, who thought he knew every move Picard could make. Think about that: Picard's a smart guy, and both Picard himself and Riker had to out-think a Picard... and both did, and both won.

How many times did Kirk out-think a computer? Several. All that logic from Spock. All those diseases cured by Dr. McCoy. All those "miracles" worked by Scotty. And that's just on The Original Series. Throw in the moves made by Picard, Riker, Data, Sisko and his crew, Janeway and her crew, Archer and his crew...

Sure, some scripts were dumb. But name me another TV franchise, in any genre, that celebrated brainpower more than Star Trek. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Hell, I could wait for as long as it takes to watch Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Or The Last Jedi.

True, the Rebels in Star Wars often required great skill. But rarely was that skill analytical. The smartest people in the Rebellion would have been considered average in Starfleet.

On March 10, 1876, in Boston, Alexander Graham Bell -- inadvertently, because he had accidentally spilled acid on himself -- became the 1st man to make a telephone call. Thinking he had to yell upstairs to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, he yelled, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you!" Hearing it through his end of the 1st telephone system, Watson came to tell him that the device worked.

On October 23, 1995, 119 years later, and most definitely not in Boston, George Steinbrenner asked a Mr. Watson to come and see him. And a dynasty was born.

Robert José Watson was born on June 10, 1946 in Los Angeles, and grew up in the city's South Central ghetto. He attended John C. Fremont High School, helping them win the City Championship in 1963, with future major league stars Willie Crawford and Bobby Tolan as teammates.

Named for one of the founding fathers of the State of California, Fremont High also produced baseball players Bobby Doerr, George "Catfish" Metkovich, Clint Conatser, Gene Mauch, Nippy Jones, George Hendrick, Dan Ford, Chet Lemon and Eric Davis; football players Ricky Bell, James Lofton and David Fulcher; basketball players Joe Caldwell and David Fizdale; Olympic track Gold Medalist Richard Stebbins; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Leonard Pitts, Congressman Henry Waxman, and music figures Don Cherry and Dr. Dre.

Bob was signed as a free agent by the Houston Astros in 1965, and remained with that organization for 14 years. He made his major league debut on September 9, 1966, and it was in his hometown, at Dodger Stadium. It didn't go so well for the Astros: They lost 7-0 to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Claude Osteen pitched a 3-hit, no-walk shutout. Wearing Number 38, Bob pinch-hit for pitcher Carroll Sembera in the bottom of the 8th inning, grounded to 3rd baseman John Kennedy, and was not put in the field for the 9th.

That would be Bob's only major league appearance of the season, and he struggled between the majors and the minors until becoming a full-time major leaguer in 1970. This included a couple of mentions in Ball Four, pitcher Jim Bouton's diary of the 1969 season, with his having spent the last month and change of the season with the Astros.

While making the occasional appearance behind the plate, Bob would be mostly a left fielder, also playing some 1st base, through 1974, and wearing Number 27 from 1968 onward. From 1975 onward, he was mostly a 1st baseman. In 1972, he batted .312. He achieved that average again in 1973, and made his 1st All-Star Game. He made another All-Star Game in 1975, and finished the season with a career high in batting average, .324.

That season, with the knowledge that the 1 millionth run in MLB history was about to be scored -- counting only the National and American Leagues -- Tootsie Roll sponsored a prize of $10,000 and 1 million Tootsie Rolls to the player who scored said millionth run. A running tally was kept on the scoreboards of all 24 ballparks then in use.

On May 4, 1975, at 12:32 PM, Watson was on 2nd base at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, when he saw that the counter was at 999,999. Milt May hit a home run. At a time when $10,000 was still big money for a ballplayer, Watson sprinted to 3rd base and then home plate. Dave Concepcion of the Cincinnati Reds had just hit a home run, and had also seen a counter, and also ran. But Watson beat him by 4 seconds, and won the prize.

(Later on, some spoilsport determined that neither one of them actually scored the millionth run, and wouldn't say who did.)

In 1976, 2 movies were filmed at the Astrodome. Murder at the World Series was a TV-movie that premiered on ABC on March 20, 1977. It starred Lynda Day George, Murray Hamilton, Karen Valentine, Janet Leigh, Hugh O'Brian, Tamara Dobson, Joseph Wiseman, Bruce Boxleitner and Lisa Hartman, as a series of kidnapping by a rejected Astros prospect threatens a World Series between the Astros and the Oakland Athletics. No real Astro players were in it, although sportscaster Dick Enberg played himself.

The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training featured the titular misfit ballplaying kids, like Bob Watson did, traveling from Los Angeles to Houston to play at the Astrodome, in their case against a local team, between games of an Astro doubleheader.

Their game runs long, and the NL umpires say that the 2nd game of the doubleheader has to start on time, so the Little League game ends, with the Bears losing. The real Astros were in the dugout, and Bob Watson tells the umps, "Hey, come on, let the kids play!" The fans hear this, and a "Let them play!" chant rings out. The NL umps let the Little League game continue, and the Bears come from behind to win.

Bob topped 100 RBIs for the 1st time in 1976, and in 1977 reached career highs with 22 home runs and 110 RBIs. But while he remained a good player, the Astros got nowhere while he was there. On June 13, 1979, knowing that he would be a free agent at the end of the season, they traded him to the Boston Red Sox, for Pete Ladd, Bobby Sprowl and cash. Neither team got much out of the trade, and the Red Sox did not try to re-sign him after the season. He did, however, become the 1st player ever to hit for the cycle in both leagues.

The Yankees needed a ctacher to replace Thurman Munson, who had been killed in a plane crash. So they traded 1st baseman Chris Chambliss to the Toronto Blue Jays (who subsequently sent him to the Atlanta Braves in a dumb trade), for Rick Cerone.

Now, the Yankees needed a 1st baseman. Although a righthanded hitter, and thus at a disadvantage playing in Yankee Stadium, Watson was similar to the lefthanded Chambliss: A good hitter for average, with some power, and a good glove at 1st base. Wearing Number 28, he batted .307 in 1980, with 13 homers and 68 RBIs, helping the Yankees win the AL Eastern Division.

Bob turned 35 in 1981, and his hitting dropped off precipitously, batting just .212, losing his job as the starting 1st baseman to Dave Revering, and coming up with just 6 homers and 12 RBIs in the strike-shortened regular season. But he did have a good postseason, helping the Yankees win the Pennant. He hit 2 home runs and had 7 RBIs in the Yankees' World Series defeat to his hometown Dodgers, but he also made the last out, a fly out to Ken Landreaux in center field.

Early in the 1982 season, the Yankees traded Bob to the Atlanta Braves for Scott Patterson, a pitcher who never reached the major leagues, and has since become well-known as an actor. Playing in Fulton County Stadium, "the Launching Pad," gave him a brief renaissance, as he -- and Chambliss, and manager Joe Torre -- helped the Braves win the NL Western Division title. He batted .309 as a pinch-hitting specialist in 1983, and retired after the 1984 season, with a .295 lifetime batting average and 1,826 hits, including 184 home runs.

*

Bob remained in Houston after retiring, with his wife Carol, their daughter Kelley, and their son Keith. He went into coaching, and was named the A's hitting coach. In 1993, the Astros named him their general manager. Officially, he was the 1st black general manager in the major leagues. Unofficially, Bill Lucas had the job but not the title, with the Atlanta Braves from 1976 until 1979.

When the Strike of '94 hit, the Astros were within striking distance of the NL Central Division title. Had the season played out, and the standings at the time held to the end, the Astros would have won the NL Wild Card berth.

That got George Steinbrenner's attention. On October 23, 1995, restructuring the team, the Yankee owner moved Gene Michael into an unspecified front office role as "super scout," and made Watson the Yankee GM. Oddly, while the Yankees were only the 3rd MLB team to have a black general manager, in the quarter-century since, they have still never had a black (or Hispanic) field manager.

It was the end of the gloryless Don Mattingly era, and Bob was not afraid to shake things up. On November 2, at Steinbrenner's request, he hired his former Atlanta manager Joe Torre as the team's manager. The New York media, knowing his record as a major league manager wasn't good, mocked this decision. The New York Daily News printed a headline calling him "CLUELESS JOE."

Yankee Fans, remembering Joe's failed tenure as Mets manager, also reacted badly. Full disclosure: I was one of them. We were wrong: Joe turned out to be the right choice. Good call, George. Good call, Bob.

Bob was just getting warmed up. On December 7, he traded Sterling Hitchcock and Russ Davis to the Seattle Mariners for Tino Martinez, Jeff Nelson and Jim Mecir. On December 11, he signed Mariano Duncan as a free agent. On December 21, he signed David Cone, who had played out his contract as a Yankee, to a new contract. On February 6, 1996, he traded Blaise Kozeniewski to the Chicago White Sox for Tim Raines. On February 20, he signed Dwight Gooden as a free agent.

During the season, on July 4, he brought Darryl Strawberry, who had finished the 1995 season with the Yankees, back from an "independent" minor league. On July 31, he traded Ruben Sierra and minor-league Matt Drews to the Detroit Tigers for Cecil Fielder. On August 22, he claimed Luis Sojo off waivers from the Mariners. The next day, he traded Bob Wickman and Gerald Williams for Graeme Lloyd, Ricky Bones and Pat Listach. On August 31, he traded Chris Corn to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Charlie Hayes.

Each of these deals ended up being key in a run into, and through, the postseason. The Yankees won the AL East, beating out the Baltimore Orioles. They beat the Texas Rangers in the AL Division Series, then the Orioles for the Pennant, and, finally, the Braves in 6 games to take their 23rd World Championship. It had been 18 years since the 22nd.

He remained the Yankee GM through the 1997 season, but had laid the groundwork for a team that, over a span of 8 years, won 6 American League Pennants and 4 World Series.

On February 2, 1998, he was hired as Major League Baseball's vice president in charge of discipline, rules and on-field operations. In 2000, while keeping the preceding job, he worked with USA Baseball to select the roster for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. The U.S. team won the Gold Medal. Bob held his MLB discipline job through 2010, and was succeeded by... Joe Torre, who had managed the Yankees until 2007, and the Dodgers in the interim.
Bob had survived prostate cancer in 1994, but was stricken with kidney disease in 2016. He died from it yesterday, May 14, 2020, in Houston, at age 74.

In an official statement, the Astro organization said, "He was an All-Star on the field and a true pioneer off it, admired and respected by everyone he played with or worked alongside. Bob will be missed, but not forgotten."

It is rare, especially since the Astro cheating scandal came to light last year, for the Yankees and the Astros to agree on something. It's also rare when I agree with Bob's successor as Yankee general manager, Brian Cashman. But, for the Yankees' official statement, Cashman, said:

Bob was a gentle giant. He was an incredibly kind person, and a mentor whom I looked up to and admired. He shared his wealth of experiences and deep knowledge of the game freely and with everyone he came in contact with, and I was one of those beneficiaries.

Bob is the reason Joe Torre became manager of the New York Yankees, and the two of them were instrumental in creating a winning culture that led to remarkable achievement. I'm so proud that i had the opportunity to work for someone like Bob Watson. All of his life's successes are richly deserved.

My deepest sympathies go out to his wife, Carol, their two children, and all of his extended family and friends. Bob was a tremendous man, and he will be missed.

Bob Watson made me, Brian Cashman, and the Houston Astros agree on something. That isn't his greatest accomplishment. But it is astounding, and says a lot about the character of the man.