Password: KUIPER
The Clubhouse is now in session.
I know it’s pedantic, sure, but please remember it’s a new year, and that means if you are writing a check, be sure to put 1994 on there … because that’s the last time you wrote a check.
Pulled from the comments — Brilliant Reader Tom:
Fun story about (New York Post columnist) Mike Vaccaro. We went to the same high school, Chaminade HS, an all-boys Catholic prep school on Long Island. I did not know Mike as he's three years older than me. In 1984, or 85, Mike had a letter to the editor published in Sports Illustrated. It was about how all the guys on the basketball team had the swimsuit issue picture of Kathy Ireland (if you are of a certain age, you know the one it was, her arms across her chest, bikini top in hand, looking alluring into the camera) hanging up in their locker. Well...Chaminade was pretty strict (jacket and tie, no long hair, they'd send you down to the locker room to shave if you came to school with facial hair) and one of the prohibitions was nothing hanging in our lockers. It's been 40 years so I don't remember if Mike, or the team, got in any trouble. I wonder if Mike has ever met Kathy and told her that story.
Well, I’ve got two wonderful little follow-ups on this.
First, as I’ve known for many years — it’s one of my favorite Vac stories — Mike was thrown off the basketball team for that letter to Sports Illustrated. He was allowed to return to the team the next year, but, yeah, Chaminade was strict, and he got tossed.
But the second follow-up is a story, I did not know. There’s another pretty famous guy who went to Chaminade — well, actually, there are a whole bunch of famous people who went to Chaminade, and it’s a wide range of fame, from Brian Dennehy to Bill O’Reilly to Ultimate Fighter Luke Cummo. Well, one of those famous people who went to Chaminade and became friends with Mike was actor and filmmaker Ed Burns.
Years later, Mike and Eddie reconnected, and they’re good friends again. At one point, Burns hit speed dial on his phone, handed it to Mike, and said, “Somebody wants to speak to you.”
That somebody was Kathy Ireland.
Why was Kathy Ireland on Ed Burns’ speed dial? Well, maybe because he’s married to supermodel Christy Turlington.
I assume you know that I loathe pickleball with every fiber of my being.
In that spirit, I wish I could express the glee my family felt when they sent me this screenshot along with the message, “Finally, a romance for Dad!”
I have so many questions. Well, two questions, I guess:
Is that guy supposed to be Novak Djokovic?
How is this not against the law? I mean, it’s definitely against the laws of nature, but I’m talking about international law.
For our upcoming book BIG FAN, Mike challenged me to go to watch (and play) in a pickleball tournament to find the humanity in the sport. It was a cruel thing that he very much enjoyed doing, and I can’t wait for you all to read that chapter.
Let’s catch you up on a little bit of the Hall of Fame buzz, thanks for BR Ryan Thibodeaux’s essential Baseball Hall of Fame Tracker (with 113 public ballots, six of which are unverifiable):
— Carlos Beltran’s bid looks very promising. He’s at 87.6% of the votes cast so far, which you would THINK makes him a lock to get 75%. But it’s not so simple; Beltran tends to do much worse on private ballots. Last year, among people who revealed their ballots before the announcement, he got 80.5%. And among those who either revealed their vote after the announcement or never revealed at all, he got closer to 50%.
I think he’s probably going to get elected because all 19 of the public voters casting their first ballot voted for Beltran.
I hope he gets elected for many reasons. One, I covered Carlos’ career from the very beginning. I wrote about him a lot when he was a rookie in Kansas City. I went to Puerto Rico to hang out with him. I wrote about him at every stage of his career — from scared kid who played with a remote control car in the clubhouse, to blossoming star, to postseason phenomenon, to New York superstar (and all that comes with it), to clubhouse leader, to center of a firestorm. I’d say I’ve watched him grow up more than any other player in my career.
Second, I wish we could break free from the Hall of Fame as a purity test. Yes, I know many feel differently. But I’m so tired of it, so exhausted by it, so sick of Hall of Fame voters needing to use virtue ethics, Deontology, and Utilitarianism to decide if a baseball player was good enough to go into the Baseball Hall of Fame. We’ve now voted in a player who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, and several players who very well might have used PEDs, and a central figure in the 1980s drug scandal, and a player who spat at an umpire, and kooks who have said and done some pretty hateful things ….
… you know: Human beings.
I want Carlos Beltran to get elected because, true, maybe he was a key figure in the Astros sign-stealing thing — maybe he was even THE key figure, much like Hall of Famer Leo Durocher was THE key figure in the 1954 Giants sign-stealing thing — but he was also a great player, a legendary player, and maybe voting him in will help break us out of this annual morality play. The Hall of Fame veterans committees, it seems, will never break this cycle. They will keep voting for borderline players who were never good enough to get 75% of the writers’ vote. They are happy to banish Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, Mark McGwire, and the rest to Hall of Fame purgatory because it is good to feel morally superior, even if plenty of players in the Hall of Fame were nowhere near their class, and wouldn’t have been if they had taken a million drugs.
— Andruw Jones is at 83% of the vote and is also doing very well with first-time voters; I think there’s a very good chance he is elected. It will likely be VERY close. He has one more year if he falls a handful of votes short this time.
— I’m thrilled to see a meaningful jump for King Félix Hernández — he’s receiving 58% of the early vote and has appeared on 17 of the 19 first-time voter ballots. I’m rooting hard for Félix, too, because I think it’s past time for us to reconsider how we judge the greatness of pitchers (i.e., remove pitcher wins from the equation). Time is limited because soon the big four — Greinke, Kershaw, Scherzer, and Verlander — will be on the Hall ballot and once they get on there (if history is a judge), I suspect that voters will stop considering interesting alternative cases like King Félix and Cole Hamels and Jon Lester.
— Bobby Abreu is making a little bit of a push, which led Ryan Thibodaux to compare his rise to that of Larry Walker a few years ago:
Inspired by @dr-tracy.bsky.social and with a major h/t to @tonycal.bsky.social, here a chart showing Bobby Abreu's 6th and 7th (current) year on the ballot versus Larry Walker's 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th. Last year and this, Abreu is mirroring Walker's results, but he's a year ahead of Walker's pace. 👀
— Ryan Thibodaux (@notmrtibbs.com) 2026-01-02T05:26:05.777Z
That’s interesting, but I suspect that Walker’s gigantic jump — from 55% to 75% in his final year — is pretty close to unrepeatable.
— Chase Utley is climbing thanks to a great showing on first-time ballots (17 of 19), and I feel pretty sure that his journey will end in Cooperstown.
Here, via Wikipedia, might be the most jaw-dropping thing in all of sports:
Yep, you already know it … but the Pittsburgh Steelers have had three coaches since 1969. How mind-boggling is that? I mean, hasn’t LSU had three coaches this year?*
*I actually have only the vaguest idea what’s going on at LSU — as I wrote the other day, I’ve just lost all touch with college football. I did not watch a single minute of college football on New Year’s Day. I will admit there were a couple of brief moments when I thought, “Oh, I should watch one of the college football games.” I wasn’t OPPOSED to watching. But we watched Wicked: For Good instead. It was fine; nearly as good as the first one or the Broadway show (which I’ve seen three times). But Ariana and Cynthia (I write their first names as as if they are friends with my daughters) are just stunningly wonderful in every way.
I bring this up because on Sunday, the Steelers play the Ravens for the division title and a place in the playoffs, and I can’t help but think that if the Ravens win, this will mark the end for Mike Tomlin. I could be wrong about that — Mike Schur thinks I’m wrong, thinks that they will stick with Tomlin out of “we don’t fire our coaches here in Pittsburgh” snobbery — but it just feels like time is running out on Tomlin’s incredible run of winning records and no playoff payoffs.
Of course, firing Tomlin — if that’s how it ends up — could also backfire spectacularly. It’s not like anybody looks at the Steelers drafts and acquisitions in recent years and thinks, “Oh, that team is definitely underachieving with all the talent they have.” They’ve drafted two Pro Bowlers this decade, and one of them — George Pickens — didn’t get to the Pro Bowl until after the Steelers traded him.
So while, yes, it’s possible — as many Steelers fans believe — that there’s a ceiling with Tomlin as coach and that the Steelers will never take the big step forward unless they move on, it’s also possible that Tomlin’s will is all that’s keeping Pittsburgh from collapsing for a while. Maybe collapsing is what the Steelers need to reset, but it’s a pretty big risk. The Browns reset has been going on for more than 25 years.
Thirty-eight days until pitchers and catchers report, and here’s your daily splash of joy — Why You Love Baseball:
Brilliant Reader Adam: There’s a Yu Darvish Museum in Kobe.
If you want to email why you love baseball — photos, drawings, poems, and all else welcome — here’s the address.
