Oscar Gamble Society

It strikes me as silly that the Baseball Hall of Fame only includes players from American teams, in fact just two leagues, augmented by an effort to retrospectively cull the best of the Negro Leagues. Just as MLB overlooked a great deal of black talent before Jackie Robinson’s debut, so did it overlook most Latin American talent until the 1960s, and Japanese talent until 1995. Yet baseball has been played in Japan since 1872 - nearly as long as in the United States. Obviously, performance in the Japanese or Mexican leagues is more difficult for us to evaluate. But I’d like the Gallery of Greatness to recognize baseball greatness wherever and whenever it flourishes, and to that end I offer a nomination that should be fairly easy to evaluate: Sadaharu Oh.

Playing from 1959 to 1980, he won 9 MVP awards, back-to-back Triple Crowns in 1973 and 1974, and was a 20-time All Star. He set NPB career marks in home runs (868), runs batted in (2,170), runs (1,967), total bases (5,862), slugging percentage (.634) and walks (2,390). His 2,786 hits rank third all-time in NPB, and his career batting average of .301 ranks 14th.

A very good analysis of Oh’s merits appears here.

The NY Times reports that Tom Brady is favoring one leg. Of course, the Times also just reported that Iraq veterans are deranged killers, so we know they aren’t afraid to just make shit up when they’re in the mood. Anyone else hear anything about this? (Brady’s health, not slanders on veterans)

I am going to be on a plane during the undercard game.. so count me in for all San Diego and Green Bay pounders….. Including the usual Pack beats Giants by > Pats beat San Diego for 5….

Just seems like a bad matchup for the Giants.  The strength of the team is the pass rush, but there isn’t an O-Line playing any better than Green Bay right now.  They have allowed a total of 5 sacks in the last 11 games, and have 2 bookend tackles that are as good as any in the league despite what the pro-bowl voteer think.  Take into account that the weather will slow down the pass rush, and I don’t see Favre on his back all to often today.  Without the pass rush, the depleted secondary will be exposed….. Outside of stupid turnovers, I don’t see this as a close game….

The color barrier fell in the NHL, when Willie O’Ree took the ice for the Boston Bruins. Which means the Bruins actually integrated before the Red Sox. I wouldn’t have guessed that.

Popular Mechanics analyzes the relative merits of each series of cyborg in the Terminator movies and new TV series (incidentally, the pilot episode is available as a free download from iTunes). I suspect they’re right about Cameron being a bit more human than your garden-variety cyborg, details of which will likely come to light just before her inevitable canoodling with John Connor. I was especially impressed that the writers were conversant enough in pro wrestling history to draw parallels with the Hulk Hogan/Hollywood Hogan dichotomy. Kudos, Popular Mechanics.

The Fox network has sunk to a new low:

http://boiledsports.blogspot.com/2008/01/breaking-news-green-bay-tv-network-to.html

I’d like to address the following five together - Galvin, Irvin, Keefe, Maranville, Nichols - as Tank requested further evidence based on the understandable lack of familiarity due to the time frames in which each of these guys played:

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