Clayton Kershaw made his season debut today and it was awesome. It was a weekday afternoon game in Minnesota, but it worked out really well because it was my last day of school before Easter vacation and it was a half day. I was at home watching the game by the end of the top of the first inning. Clayton Kershaw was outstanding. The Twins were swinging and missing all game and when they did hit the ball, it wasn’t hard. He should have had a perfect game eight years ago, but Hanley Ramirez and Don Mattingly messed that up. Today it was Rob Manfred that was to blame. Kershaw came out after seven innings with a perfect game intact.
Besides not being able to finish the game, the only other bad part was that Carlos Correa wasn’t in the lineup to strikeout a couple of times.
Alex Vesia gave up a hit to the second batter in the bottom of the eighth and that was that. I was hoping for the first combined perfect game ever. But check out this story about when Babe Ruth was involved in a combined almost perfect game. It stunk that Kershaw had to come out of a perfect game, but if there was ever a time to take a pitcher out of a perfect game, it was this game. It was Kershaw’s first start, the weather was cold, and he had pitched less than 17 innings (between spring training starts and a simulated game last week) since he got hurt on October 1. So I’m blaming Rob Manfred for Kershaw not being able to finish the game with the shortened spring training. And having another reason to be upset with Manfred gave me the idea this blog post. Years ago I did my Sports Hate Power Rankings with my least favorite teams. Now we’re doing the Sports Villain Power Rankings for my least favorite people in sports. I’m limiting this to people who are currently active so we won’t have Barroid, A-Roid, or Mike Krzyzewski on this list. It’s highly likely that I’m going to realize that I forgot people right after I publish this, but here we go:
26. David Shaw- He would rank higher if Stanford was still good in football. He’s just on this list as long as he’s coaching Stanford.
25. James Harden- He would rank higher if he was still on the Nets. I don’t like the 76ers at all, but I would root for them over the Nets without hesitation.
24. Sidney Crosby- I haven’t watched a lot of hockey this year. Hopefully I’ll be able to pay more attention in the playoffs. The Rangers have a pretty good chance of playing the Penguins in the playoffs and my dislike for Sydney Crosby goes back to the 2010 Winter Olympics.
22. (Tie) Brandon Crawford and Logan Webb- I’m going to have one player currently under contract with the Dodgers on this list, so I needed to put somebody from the Giants on the list.
21. Lincoln Riley- He has the potential to skyrocket up the rankings in the years to come.
20. Lane Kiffin- I hate how people have decided that they like Lane Kiffin now. Why? He’ll always be on this list.
19. John Calipari- Maybe Kentucky will reclaim their spot as the best team full of mercenaries pretending to be college students from Duke now.
18. Geno Auriema- The only reason he’s not higher is because I don’t care more about women’s basketball.
17. Dabo Swinney- I used to have a fairly positive view of him, but he earned his spot on this list back in 2020 when he was telling the ACC officials which penalties to call or not call in the Notre Dame game.
16. Jim Boeheim- There are a lot of unlikeable coaches in college basketball, and Jim Boeheim is the most unlikeable of them all.
15. Jim Harbaugh- He would rank higher if he was a better coach. He’s one of two exceptionally weird college football coaches on this list.
14. Bill Belichick- I almost forgot about him because the Patriots haven’t been as good lately.
13. LeBron James- I did not almost forget about LeBron James. Anthony Davis would have made this list if the Lakers weren’t terrible, but LeBron James still makes the list and ranks pretty highly. I did really enjoy how bad the Lakers were this season.
12. Trevor Bauer- He’s my least favorite Dodger ever. I hope he gets suspended for all of this season and then the Dodgers just cut him after that.
11. Kevin Durant- The only reason he doesn’t rank higher is because of his teammate.
5 . (Tie) Yuli Gurriel, Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman, George Springer, Marwin Gonzalez- These are the 2017 Astros who got a lot of at bats that are still in the Majors.
4. Brian Kelly- And here’s our other really weird college football coach. I’m going to have more about him in an upcoming post. If he doesn’t win a National Championship at LSU, he won’t be able to do something that Ed Orgeron did and that would be embarrassing. Speaking of Orgeron, he was just at a Notre Dame practice. Any time I hear his accent or Brian Kelly’s fake accent, I think of Maine Justice.
3. Tom Brady- It’s safe to assume that he’s won one Super Bowl without cheating and he just did his whole fake retirement thing. And he went to Michigan.
2. Rob Manfred- What is Rob Manfred’s next bad idea? You know it’s coming.
1. Kyrie Irving- He was a horrible teammate who completely ruined the Celtics’ season three years ago. It would be so wonderful if the Celtics ended his season. He’s my least favorite Celtic guy who played for the Celtics ever (he doesn’t deserve to be called a Celtic).
After all of that, I’ll end on a positive note. In my last post, I left out the change in baseball that I’m most excited about. Joe Davis is replacing Joe Buck as the voice of Major League Baseball on Fox. I said years ago that he would be the next person to call the World Series on TV, but I didn’t expect it to come so soon. He had the impossible job of replacing the greatest broadcaster in the history of sports (it would be one thing if he was like Gary Cohen or somebody who had an established career, but Joe Davis took over when he was 29) and he’s been really really good. I posted my email exchange with Rob Manfred. Here’s my Instagram direct message exchange with Joe Davis:
Sadly, the podcast did not continue after 2020. I listen to way too many podcasts and that was one of my favorites.
So now Joe Davis will be the first World Series TV broadcaster who wasn’t Joe Buck since Bob Costas in 1999. If Fox would replace John Smoltz with Ron Darling or somebody, that would be awesome. And it will be the first World Series called by the voice of the Dodgers since 1988. It would be awesome if we could get the same World Series Champion as that World Series.
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