Thursday, November 15, 2012

11/15 (Dickey) Quickie

RA Dickey is my favorite baseball story of the past decade -- and it's very possible that he is my favorite baseball story of all time.

It is hard to find something more compelling: The first knuckleball Cy winner. He's 38. As recently as two seasons ago, he was a cast-off (but was also a former 1st-round pick!) He went through enormous personal travails and came through it with the most thoughtful perspective of any athlete in sports.

You can admire him, sit and watch him in awe, cheer away -- the whole thing. I can't understand anyone who wouldn't root for him.

It is the most remarkable Cy Young victory -- probably MLB Award win, period -- in baseball history. Dickey is probably the most accessible athlete in sports -- the most easily relatable.

The award was a foregone conclusion. His season was not -- and it is one we will remember for a long time.

More:

*MLB MVP Awards: I'm all-in on Team Trout (over Team Cabrera). Cabrera is going to win MVP, and it's not like there haven't been absurd MLB award oversights in the past. It's just that you felt that with the increased influence of helpful "advanced" statistics, we wouldn't have such glaring problems anymore. Not giving Trout the MVP qualifies as glaring.

*Not everyone on the Jets hates Tim Tebow -- Shonn Greene is OK with trying something new at QB. (Ryan and Tanenbaum should be, too.)

*Clippers beat the Heat, decisively: It's a long (long, long) way from the first few weeks of the season until June. But qualify the Clips as a contender in the West with a ceiling of, say, getting to the conference finals.

*Magic isn't a fan of Jim Buss or the D'Antoni hiring: Eh. And?

*College Hoops: Florida clobbers Wisconsin. I'm a huge Florida basketball fan, but I am also very critical (self-critical?) of the team. And I found nothing not to love about what happened last night. All it did was affirm that the ceiling for this team is the Final Four, with the floor as a third straight trip to the Elite Eight. Erik Murphy is a match-up nightmare -- a stretch 4 who has the skills to work inside, too.

*The ACC and Orange Bowl's 12-year deal is only interesting for the reality of Notre Dame becoming a permanent resident in the Orange Bowl every year.

*If I'm Shabazz Muhammad, I'm dropping out of UCLA and working exclusively on getting ready for the NBA. He is a Top 3 lock for next year's draft -- why sweat playing 20 games at UCLA for an NCAA system intent on exploiting him?

*Really enjoying ESPN the Mag's "One Day, One Game" issue, even if Alabama's loss to A&M last week took a bit of the oomph out of it.

-- D.S.

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