Today is the day when we find out who’ll be the next legendary superstar elected into Baseball’s Hall Of Fame!
This year features an especially deep class of eligible players, from home run king Barry Bonds to 7-time Cy Young award winner Roger Clemens to HBP icon Craig Biggio. We’ve been arguing back and forth about this for months, and the time is up … let’s see who the sports writers of America voted into the Hall!
Grant Brisbee over at Baseball Nation shared Bill Murray’s speech from his induction into the South Atlantic League Hall of Fame, and I want to share it here for two reasons:
1. Bill Murray is the coolest guy in the entire world and should be inducted into everybody’s Hall Of Fame, if only for the speeches.
2. It needs to get remixed with clips of Max Fischer sitting in the crowd, taking notes.
The secret, apparently, is to find something you love to do and then do it for the rest of your life. For me, that’s listening to my favorite actor talk about baseball. Bill Murray Hall Of Fame speeches are my Rushmore.
Full video is below (thanks again, SBN Studios).
WWE’s Brock Lesnar lost his first UFC fight, amassed a 5-3 record, got a terrible case of diverticulitis and was retired back into pro wrestling via TKO helplessness by Cain Velasquez and Alistair Overeem. Because of this, 5-time champion Randy Couture believes Lesnar deserves a spot alongside him in the UFC Hall of Fame. Wait, sorry, I think I copy-pasted that in wrong.
Hold on, let me check the video:
Donovan McNabb is probably never going to play in the NFL again, unless he’s willing to take a job as a backup. Even then, he’ll probably still complain about being a backup and demand that he be allowed to compete for the starting job. At least that’s what I assume is the thought process of any GM looking for a competent veteran, because otherwise he’d be a Miami Dolphin.
It seems that McNabb may have accepted this idea now as well, because he’s already taking the next step in his career – promoting himself for the NFL Hall of Fame. According to McNabb, he’s as good as in.
“What happens a lot of times is we look at what the list says, so we talk about the five NFC Championship Games, the six Pro Bowls and then we come to the end, ‘Well, he never won the big game,’ ” McNabb told Mark Kriegel of FoxSports.com, via the Philadelphia Daily News. “Well, Peyton never won the big game until he won the Super Bowl. Dan Marino never won the big game. Does that mean his career is a failure? No, not at all.” (Via NFL.com)
That’s right, the big game is the Super Bowl, and Peyton Manning never won the big game until he won the big game. Aside from the fact that Manning and Marino are two of the most proficient passers in NFL history, that’s incredible logic right there. But let’s go ahead and destroy that logic for the sake of building a self-beneficial argument.
“First of all is his numbers. How many times has he led his team to the big game?” McNabb said. “The big game still is the NFC Championship Game, the game to lead you there, and most importantly of all, did he make the players around him better? In his time, in his era, was he a top-five, top-10 quarterback in the league?”
Okay, that’s more convenient, making the NFC Championship Game the “big game”. The Super Bowl is just the Pro Bowl play-in game at this point, so what matters is the conference championship. That must be why Jim Kelly is in the Hall of Fame. He sucked at winning Super Bowls, but they don’t matter. He was, however, awesome at winning the AFC Championship, and that’s the “big game”. But if that is the argument, it’s pretty weak, because McNabb was 1-4 in his big games.
I want to be fair, though. First, since McNabb invoked Manning and Marino as examples, let’s compare this trio.
The people entering the NFL Hall of Fame this year were announced, and it’s not like there were any big surprises or controversies. Curtis Martin and Willie Roaf, along with a couple others, were expected to also make it this season but didn’t. Either way, no one will make a gigantic deal out of this like every single baseball writer ever.
Sanders and Marshall Faulk led a class of seven voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday. Joining them were Shannon Sharpe, Richard Dent, Ed Sabol, Les Richter and Chris Hanburger. -FOX Sports.
Does anyone appreciate the little conflict that arises when NFL players are chosen for the Hall of Fame? It seems to go by pretty easily with no people writing ranting columns on “character” and such, or maybe I’m just being selective. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, as I’m not some supercomputer football machine thing. Although, that would be pretty cool.
I’ll admit, I’m a little young to recognize the names of Dent, Richter, or Hanburger (who is a letter away from being a very delicious food), but I’ve definitely heard of the others, as they’ve made a much bigger dent in the minds of the average fan. Their contributions (especially Sabol’s with NFL Films and how it’s given football fans much more than they could have expected out of the game) will certainly be recognized with their additions to the Hall of Fame.
Also, like everyone else, I have to see Sharpe’s equine mug all over pre- and postgame shows on NFL Sundays. He makes Sarah Jessica Parker look mildly attractive, and that’s saying a lot.
I feel bad that we started the day off with domestic violence and love gone wrong, so I thought maybe now was the time to share a story that tugs on the heart strings a little. The constricted, clogged strings of an enlarged heart. Dale Bemis was one of 13 super lucky people recently inducted into the White Castle Cravers Hall of Fame, leading the world to collectively wonder – “Why the eff does White Castle have a Hall of Fame?” Nevertheless, there is one and Pete Rose again has hope.
Dale earned the honor after he submitted an essay about the final moments he shared with his dying father, as they ate White Castle burgers with extra pickles, and how his wife once randomly ordered burgers with extra pickles while they were dating, telling Dale that it was a sign from his dad to marry her. Or she’s actually his estranged sister. For the sake of romance, let’s hope not.
I’ll take a Crave Case, hold the shortened life expectancy, Chicago Sun-Times:
