The Basement View

  Happy Holiday’s and welcome back to the annual tradition of my fake Major League Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot. Hopefully one day this column will be the real deal but for now, we will play pretend, but use the real reasons I would use to select these players as the newest members of the most prestigious group in all of sports. Let’s begin by going back yet again to the dreaded “Steroid Era.”     The Returning Members: 1. Alex Rodriguez Yes, like Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez should be in. You cannot tell the complete history of the game without recognizing A-Rod’s place within it. No matter how dark his place in the game is, we need to acknowledge that it happened instead of continuing to run away from it. Rodriguez might be the most complete player an entire generation of fans has witnessed with their own eyes and perhaps ever will. Getting away from the hate, let me remind you that A-Rod has over 3,000 hits, 690 Home Runs, 2,000 runs scored, 2,000 Runs Batted In, 300 ...

  I want to like the NBA Cup. I really do! In theory it is an incredible idea that not only makes the NBA more like European Soccer, but it also adds a little wrinkle into the season that wasn’t there before, and it just seems like a fun thing to be a part of. But no matter how hard I try, I cannot get there with the way the NBA has set up the tournament. Again, I want to like it, but I have many problems with the format. The first I can’t stand is the group stage aspect of it. I hate the fact there are completely arbitrary groups created before the season just so the league has a moment to get into the news cycle at the end of the summer. The NBA already has divisions—so why not have the group stage games be divisional matchups? The incentive to win the division has gone away completely in the recent years and this would add just a small piece of those divisional matchups back to the game. If you are insisting that the group stage must be the way we go about determining who plays ...

  Woody Johnson gave his fanbase what they needed today. A way out of this nightmare of a season. With the news today that Joe Douglas is out as New York Jets General Manager, there are many critical pressure points hit with this move. The first and most obvious pressure point is that the roaring dumpster fire that is the New York Jets franchise keeps blazing at a record incendiary rate. Only the Jets would have an owner that superseded the General Manager to fire the head coach the GM hired, stepped in on negotiations that were at a stalemate because of the front offices view on the player, and have had a calendar year where he publicly stripped the General Manager of all his power, only to fire the General Manager and blame him for the mess of a season before the season is over. But it’s when you take a half step away from the fire that you see an opportunity to finally correct the incalculable number of wrongs over the past 14 years. Joe Douglas was brought here to end the longe...

  The New York Yankees and their fans will remember the 5 th inning of Game 5 against the Los Angeles Dodgers for a long time. Like they remember Luis Gonzalez’s bloop in 2001. Or Josh Beckett and Miguel Cabrera in 2003. Or 2004. And of course, the cheats down in Houston in 2017 and 2019. That’s what happens when you’re supposed to win and don’t. The Yankees were supposed to win Game 5 of the World Series, get on a plane out west, and continue to try to pull off the unthinkable. It didn’t happen. All because of self-inflicted wounds in the 5 th inning. It started with Aaron Judge’s first error of the season on what seemed to be a harmless fly ball to center. It continued with Anthony Volpe making a poor throw to Jazz Chisholm on a ball hit to his right and the only play that Volpe had to make was the one that he made, it’s just that the Yankee shortstop couldn’t complete the play. And the top was blown off of the inning when Gerrit Cole didn’t cover first base on a weak ground ba...

  The New York Yankees are playing in the World Series for the first time since 2009. One of the major reasons why is trading for Juan Soto in the offseason and installing him in the batting order in front of Aaron Judge. The Yanks in 2023 were coming off their worst season in 30 years at 82-80, missing out on the playoffs, facing the never-ending pressure of the Yankee fan and New York media, and in need of an old-school Yankee power move. They did and it worked out. The three-run home run Juan Soto hit off Hunter Gaddis to win Game 5 of the ALCS is the reason you trade for Juan Soto. That at-bat and that home run is the entire Juan Soto experience in a nutshell. If you don’t match Soto’s neurotic competitive-ism at all times you will lose in a big way. Many “experts” who watch Juan Soto say he “settles” for walks. The Yankee right fielder doesn’t settle for anything. He wears out the pitcher to the point where the hurler would rather move past Soto to face Aaron Judge because the...

  The New York Jets season is over. Thanks to New York’s third consecutive heart-breaking loss, this time to the division rival Buffalo Bills, the once hopeful season has now crumbled into to a million pieces. It’s officially over! Sure, the Jets yesterday morning finalized a trade with the Las Vegas Raiders to land disgruntled wide receiver Davante Adams to team up again with Aaron Rodgers, but this move doesn’t solve the true problems with the Jets. The Jets are the most penalized team in the NFL this year with 462 yards. The second most penalized team is the Houston Texans with 429 yards. Houston has the most penalties in the league with 51 and the Jets are just one penalty behind them with 50. This includes Monday Night’s game which was the most penalized game this season with 22 accepted penalties between the Jets and the Bills and a combined 204 yards worth of laundry. I’ll agree with you that the officiating on Monday Night was perhaps the worst officiated game by NFL offici...

  Aaron Rodgers isn’t Superman anymore. On Sunday in London, it didn’t look like he was even league average anymore. Rogers threw three interceptions to the Minnesota Vikings defense, the first time he’s thrown three INTs since Week 9 of 2022, and the sixth time he’s thrown three picks in a game in his career. That isn’t very Man of Steel-esc. I’m the type of person that usually tries to find some reason why the interception was not the quarterback’s fault, don’t blame me, I’m a Jets fan. I’ve been subjected to poor quarterback play and when I do try to place blame elsewhere—it’s because the ball bounced off the receivers’ hands or shoulder pad. That was not what happened with Aaron Rodgers in London. All three interceptions were the fault of the quarterback. There were at times when Rodgers looked every bit of his age both physically and as he was trying to perform against Minnesota. With that, there are two silver linings for the Jets heading into Week 6. One is that Garrett Wils...