I finally got to my first baseball game since Dodgers-Mets 648 days earlier. My dad and I went to see the Mets and Braves last Monday. I hope I never have to wait that long between games again. I’m fully vaccinated, New York’s positivity rate is the lowest it’s been since the pandemic started, the attendance restrictions were limited at Citi Field. It was time to get back. I didn’t realize when I bought the tickets that it was the first game without any limits on attendance at Citi Field. I decided to go last Monday because it was a doubleheader. I got two games (sort of) for the price of one.
It was Jacob deGrom against Kyle Muller in the first game. It was cool to see deGrom, who had come into the game hitting .423 and had driven in more runs than he had given up (the DH is so stupid). It was an easy first inning for deGrom and then he was checked by the umpires for illegal substances after the inning. Since this was the first game of umpires checking pitchers and this game started at 5:10, this was the first game where umpires were checking the pitchers. The Mets scored on a wild pitch in the bottom of the first. I was rooting for the Braves since the Mets had a better record, but with the Mets taking an early lead and deGrom looking great, I was rooting for the deGrom no-hitter that wasn’t a no-hitter since the game was only seven innings. After getting the first eight batters out, deGrom walked the pitcher. I was happy about this because I was fine with the no-hitter that didn’t count, but I didn’t want a perfect game that didn’t count. But the no-hitter wasn’t to be either. With two outs in the fifth, deGrom gave up a long, but very catchable, fly ball to left center that fell in between Dominic Smith and Albert Almora Jr. There was a runner on first who would have scored, but the ball bounced over the wall to save a run. The Braves ended up not scoring and deGrom was done after five innings. Dominic Smith doubled with the bases loaded in the fifth to give the Mets a 4-0 lead. Ozzie Albies homered to cut the lead in half, but that was all the scoring and the Mets won 4-2.
Jacob deGrom throws the first pitch of the first game.
Jacob deGrom gets checked for illegal substances.
Game 2 was Jared Eickhoff against Ian Anderson. Eickhoff got in trouble in the first, but he was able to get out of it without giving up a run. He ended up pitching four scoreless innings. Ian Anderson pitched five and a third scoreless. Ronald Acuna hit a solo home run in the fifth off of Miguel Castro for the only run of the game. The Mets threatened in the bottom of the seventh. Two singles and a hit by pitch loaded the bases for the Mets with one out. Kevin Pillar lined out to the third baseman who stepped on third and the runner was called out for a double play to end the game. But the Mets challenged and won. But with the bases loaded and two outs, Brandon Drury popped out to end the game and the Braves won 1-0.
Jared Eickhoff throws the first pitch of the second game.
According to mlb.com, attendance was 18,698. That’s what was listed for game 2. They didn’t list attendance for game 1, but it was a single admission doubleheader so official attendance should have been the same. The box scores said it was 82 degrees for game 1 and 77 degrees for game 2. They also said that the wind was blowing out to left. We were looking right down the first base line and the wind was right at our backs. And it was strong. Despite the warm temperatures, it was kind of cold. A sweatshirt definitely would have been helpful. I think the wind died down a little bit for the second game. I didn’t know if we would make it to the end of the second game, but we did. I noticed that the flags out in right field were not blowing wildly. So the wind probably depended on where you were in the stadium.
This was the third time I had tickets for a doubleheader (the first time that I bought tickets after it was decided that it would be a doubleheader). The first time was in 2010 for Dodgers-Mets at Citi Field. That turned out to be a forgettable Dodgers team (the only Dodgers team in the last 15 years to finish below .500) and the Mets swept the two games by a combined score of 14-5. Between the poor performance by the Dodgers and the cold weather, I think we made it no more than halfway through the second game (of course, both games were nine innings back then). I also had tickets for a doubleheader in Hartford in 2017. The minor leagues had already started seven inning games for doubleheaders by then. They played the first game, but then it was looking like a thunderstorm was coming and they delayed the start of the second game. Since it was a minor league game that I didn’t particularly care about and I didn’t know how long the delay would last and I didn’t feel like waiting around in a thunderstorm, I just left after the first game. So this was the first time that I got to go to a doubleheader and see both games. But it was really a game and five-ninths since they only played 14 innings. They did a fifth inning stretch in both games. For the Braves, it was two doubleheaders in two days. For the Mets, it was the first of two doubleheaders in one week (Monday and Friday). Unlike most of the rule changes under Manfred, I was okay with seven inning games in doubleheaders because of games getting cancelled with the pandemic (unlike the magical runner that appears at second base in extra innings and the DH in the NL, which are atrocities). And this was a traditional doubleheader so I got 14 innings for the price of nine. But the previous day, the Braves had a split doubleheader so it was two separate admissions. If I had tickets for a game and then it turned out to be seven innings for the price of nine, I’d be pretty upset. With life getting back to normal, I really hope they go back to nine inning games in doubleheaders next year. But if they don’t, they need to stick with single admission doubleheaders so that fans aren’t getting cheated out of two innings.
I had been waiting a long time to get to a game and have a hot dog and a beer. I don’t always have a hot dog at a baseball game. If there are other options that aren’t outrageously priced, I’ll definitely consider getting something else. But for my first game back, I had to have a hot dog. I’m looking forward to more games with better hot dogs and better beers. I’ve had a lot of hot dogs at Citi Field over the years and I know I’ve had better ones than the one I had last week. The beer was a Braven Bushwick Pilsner, which was quite forgettable. I went with that because the craft beer selection was not good. I’ve definitely had better beers at Citi Field in the past. But this time, the craft beer selection was pretty much all IPAs and pilsners and there was one brown ale from some upstate brewery. I probably would have gone with the brown ale, but I wanted to drink a Brooklyn beer at my first game in almost two years. I’m not completely against IPAs, but that’s not what I’m looking for at a baseball game. And although it was the first games where attendance wasn’t limited, the experience was like attendance was still limited. Many concession stands weren’t open. Everything was credit card only. There were no fixings bars open, but at least they did give me enough mustard packets and it was real mustard, not yellow mustard. I’ll be back at Citi Field for at least one more game this year so I hope it’s a more normal experience with better hot dogs and a better beer selection.
I used to not despise Rob Manfred. I miss the days when he was suspending Alex Rodriguez for being a cheater. Baseball is back, but these days Rob Manfred tries to make the sport worse. It’s great watching National League baseball again without the DH, but it seems like it’s coming. Here’s the argument in favor of the DH: most pitchers are bad at hitting. That’s it. Let’s keep going with that logic. Why have bad fielders play in the field? Let’s make baseball like football and have nine designated hitters and eight designated fielders plus the pitcher.
And we still have the ridiculously stupid magical extra innings runner this season. It’s pretty much baseball’s version of college football overtime. You get something (a runner in scoring position in baseball/good field position in college football) for nothing. Let’s make it more like college football. If it goes to the 12th inning, you start with the bases loaded. After 13 innings, you have three hitters from each team having a home run derby. That would get to be a little like the hockey shootout. I’ll note that there is a reason for the hockey shootout. The alternative is a tie. Of course, they don’t use the shootout or silly overtime rules (3 on 3) in hockey in the playoffs. Baseball didn’t use the stupid extra innings rule in the playoffs last year, but I wouldn’t put it past Manfred. There really is no reason for the rule. In 2019, 8.6% of games went to extra innings. Only 2.3% went past 11 innings. But baseball fans enjoy those games. I remember a Mets-Cardinals game that went 20 innings 11 years ago today and it was awesome.
Game 3 of the 2018 World Series was awesome. The magical runner is designed to prevent games like that from happening. Nobody is going to start watching baseball because of this rule. Some people might actually stop watching because of this and the other stupid things Manfred does (I won’t stop watching, but it legitimately reduces my enjoyment of games, I root against extra innings now). What would help would be finding ways to make sure that nine-inning games don’t last three hours and 45 minutes.
And I’m not unreasonable. I’m fine with seven inning doubleheaders during the pandemic when you get games cancelled for reasons other than just weather. But when the pandemic is over, I want nine inning doubleheaders back. And while this is much less offensive than the DH in the NL or the magical extra innings runner, I would be really mad if I had tickets for one of the games of a split doubleheader and I only got seven innings. If it’s a traditional doubleheader, then whatever, but how can you give seven innings to fans who paid for nine? And even on the DH, I’m not unreasonable. A year ago, we thought one possibility for the baseball season was having the whole season played by teams at their spring training sites (Arizona and Florida bubbles). So instead of the NL and AL, you’d have the Cactus League and the Grapefruit League. If that had happened, I would have been okay with the DH (I wouldn’t have liked it, but I would have been okay with it). You would have had AL teams who of course had planned to have the DH so it wouldn’t have been fair for them to not have it. But when we ended up with the traditional NL and AL (even though the schedules weren’t traditional), there was no reason for the DH in the NL.
I’m not against all rule changes. I just don’t like rules that make the game worse. The Atlantic League is using some experimental rules this season as part of its partnership with Major League Baseball. They’re using the modified DH. You lose the DH when you take out the starting pitcher. That’s much much better than always having the DH because there would be strategy involved and it would encourage teams to leave starting pitchers in longer. But it would still violate the first rule of baseball: “1.01 Baseball is a game between two teams of nine players each, under direction of a manager, played on an enclosed field in accordance with these rules, under jurisdiction of one or more umpires.” The other problems are that it would mean that pitchers never it (relief pitchers would pretty much always get pinch hit for) and that it gives the visiting team an advantage. If both teams have their DH coming up in the seventh inning, the visiting team could have their DH hit and then take out the starting pitcher in the bottom of the seventh, but the home team would have to get through the top of the seventh to have their DH hit.
They’re making the strike zone wider, but not as tall. They don’t call the high strike as it is so I would think this would just mean more strikeouts. I don’t like the idea of making the strike zone greater than the width of home plate. If you want to make home plate wider, then that’s fine, but I don’t like the idea of the strike zone not being clearly above the plate. I guess that’s not really a problem in the Atlantic League because they use an automated strike zone, but I wouldn’t trust different umpires to be consistent if the width isn’t exactly the width of the plate. But apparently the Atlantic League strike zone is also changing from a three-dimensional shape above the plate to a two-dimensional rectangle at the front of the plate. If the ball is the right height and over the plate at any point, it should be a strike (I know it would be a very small percentage of pitches that aren’t strikes at the front of the plate that get to the strike zone at some point past the front of the plate). But if you can show me that changing the strike zone that way makes the game better, I’m fine with it. I just don’t see how that’s going to make the game better.
They’re also moving the mound back by a foot for the second half of the season. That sounds like a big change, but if you did that and didn’t say anything, I doubt most baseball fans would even be able to notice. Maybe that would reduce strikeouts and that would be good, but my suspicion is that it would just lead to even more home runs. If you can show that moving the mound back a foot improves the game, then I’m fine with it.
In the affiliated minor leagues, they’re using some other experimental rules. Triple-A will have slightly bigger bases. If it does anything to improve the game, fine (it does slightly shorten the distance between bases so that could lead to more stolen bases possibly and that would be good). Double-A has a rule that says "the defensive team must have a minimum of four players on the infield, each of whom must have both feet completely in front of the outer boundary of the infield dirt." And they might require teams to have two players in each side of second base in the second half of the season. Sign me up for these changes. They would reward hitters for putting the ball in play more. You could still shift, but those shifts couldn’t be as extreme and third basemen would, you know, have to play third base instead of short right field. In High-A pitchers have to step off the rubber before attempting a pick off throw. Apparently the Atlantic League did this in 2019 and it led to more stolen bases. More stolen bases would be good so I could live with this. In Low-A they’re using the automated strike zone and limiting step offs or pick offs to two attempts per plate appearance. I’m fine either way with the automated strike zone, but I’m a hard pass on limiting step offs and pick offs. I want more stolen bases, but that seems too artificial. It would get to be too easy if you knew the pitcher couldn’t throw over.
Anyway, I thought of the logic of the DH being the same as having different players playing offense and defense in football, I was thinking of how we could make other new rules for baseball to make it more like other sports. I really hope Rob Manfred doesn’t ever come across the rest of this post because these are all terrible ideas, but he might actually like them because he does seem to enjoy making baseball less like the sport that baseball fans love. So if you are Rob Manfred, remember, these ideas are just as stupid as the universal DH and the magical extra innings runner and just like with those rules, they should never be implemented.
Soccer is the silliest sport so if we want to find ways to make baseball worse, that seems like a good place to start. If you hit a foul ball, the other team makes a corner pitch on the next pitch. Instead of pitching from the mound, the pitcher has to pitch from first or third base (depending on which side of the field the foul ball was on.
How about a clock? Nine innings with three outs each inning is so outdated. Let’s have quarters with a clock. Or if we want to be even stupider, let’s go back to soccer. You have two halves that are approximately 45 minutes, but it’s going to be a little longer than that and nobody is going to know when the game is actually going to end because the umpire is going to add a few minutes at the end, but when he says four minutes of extra time, that could three minutes and 52 seconds or it could be four minutes and 14 seconds or whatever.
If there is a questionable call, let’s give the manager the opportunity to challenge it like coaches in football. Oh, wait, they already did that. The NFL challenge system is imperfect, but it’s not terrible. Instant replay has been terribly implemented in baseball and basketball. It slows the game down so much. And in baseball, you now have plays like this that are now called the exact opposite way that they were called for the first 168 years of baseball. I would get rid of replay completely except to fix home run calls or plays at the plate. The way it’s mostly being used now in baseball and basketball is just making those sports worse.
In the NFL, you need to get two feet down in bounds and make a football move to establish possession. So you could make two feet and a baseball move to complete a catch on a fly ball or a force play. So Derek Jeter catching the ball and flipping into the stands is not an out if he didn’t have two feet down. Of course, you could extend that idea and say that you need to have two feet down in fair territory to catch a fly ball for an out. And if there’s a force at second, sometimes you’ll see the guy drop the ball, but it’s still an out because the drop happened on the transfer. Under this new rule, you don’t get the out at second base because you didn’t complete a baseball move (transferring the ball from the glove to the bare hand would be the baseball move that you have to complete to establish possession).
Let’s go through some quick football rules. You could have a coin toss before the game where the winner could choose to pitch or hit in the top of the first. If there’s a balk, the umpires don’t immediately stop the game. The pitch or pickoff happens and then the team that’s hitting can decline the balk if they get a good result. If they accept the balk, it’s a five yard penalty and the at bat is finished with the pitcher pitching from five yards farther back. In football, the offense can only have one player in motion at the snap. In baseball, you could make it so that if there’s more than one runner on base, only one is allowed to run before the batter makes contact. Why can’t baseball teams substitute freely like you can in football or basketball? Let’s make it so that players can come back in the game after being taken out (I’ll admit that most of these ideas are probably too ridiculous even for Rob Manfred, but I could totally imagine him going for this one). If a ball carrier is tackled in his own end zone, it’s a safety and the other team gets two points. Let’s make it so that if a team gets a run if they catch a foul ball behind home plate. In football, you get four downs to get a first down. On fourth down, you can risk going for it or you can punt or kick a field goal. In baseball, you get three outs, but there’s no risk involved. So let’s make it so that if you have runners on with two outs, you have to decide if you want to continue hitting. If you do and the third out is made, the other team inherits however many runners you had on base when the third out is made.
How about basketball rules? Of course in basketball, it’s illegal to block a shot that’s on the way down. Let’s bring goaltending to baseball. Rob Manfred has already ruined the most exciting games so why not destroy the most exciting play a fielder could make? He could make it illegal to catch a fly ball that would be going over the fence if the fielder didn’t catch it. We could make a baseball version of traveling. A fielder would only be allowed to take one step with possession of the ball. If they move their pivot foot, the play is dead and all runners get to advance a base. In basketball two technical fouls are an ejection. Instead of having baseball players thrown out right away, give them a technical foul and then they’re ejected on the second technical. The penalty is that the other team gets to choose any player to take one batting practice swing for a chance at a solo home run. And it’s illegal for the offense to touch the ball in the backcourt after they’ve crossed halfcourt. Applying this one to baseball is going to be tricky, but I can come up with something pretty stupid. If the team in the field throws the ball from the second base side of the imaginary line connecting first base with third base to the home plate side of that line, they can’t throw the ball back to the second base side. So like if there’s a runner on third and there’s a ground ball to the shortstop and he goes home, the batter can now advance to second base without the team in the field being able to throw down there. I know, it’s really stupid. So are all of these ideas (including the DH and the magical extra innings runner).
Hockey wasn’t an easy sport to get baseball rules from. You could have an intermission after the third and sixth innings. Also when a team ices the puck, they’re not allowed to substitute before the face off. How about if a team brings in a relief pitcher, they have to leave him in for at least three batters? Oh, wait. They started that last year. I have to say that I didn’t think about it much last year during the regular season. But I absolutely hated it in the playoffs. If there’s two on and one out and a team has a 3-4-5 coming up and 3 is a lefty and 4 and 5 are righties, I absolutely think you should be able to bring in a lefty for the number three hitter. Of course, the exception to this rule is that you don’t have to face three batters if you finish the inning. So if you come in with two outs and you get the first batter out, you can be taken out. If you made one more exception, this rule would be more tolerable for me (I still wouldn’t like it because of the scenario I just described, but it would be better). Let’s say it’s the same 3-4-5 coming up, but now you’re starting the seventh inning instead of being in the middle of an inning. You could leave the starting pitcher in and you could take him out at any point. But if you bring in a reliever, he has to face all three batters. So I would make an exception for starting an inning. If you can have a starter face the number three hitter leading off an inning and then take him out, why shouldn’t you be able to bring in a lefty to face the number three hitter leading off the inning and then take him out after one batter? Both scenarios result in the same number of pitching changes during the inning. Sometimes you can just see right away when a reliever doesn’t have it. When you see that and then he has to face two more hitters, that’s excruciating especially during the playoffs.
And I had to get curling into this blog post. Curling is segmented in a way similar to baseball with ten ends that are kind of like innings. In curling, only one team can score in an end. You could apply that to baseball by just subtracting run totals. So if a team gets one in the top of the first and the other team gets two in the bottom of the first, the score would be 1-0. That would be really silly, but it wouldn’t change anything about the way the game is played (1-0 is essentially the same as 2-1). But we could take the hammer from curling and put it into baseball. In curling (and in baseball), going last gives you an advantage. In baseball, the home team bats last. In curling, you have the hammer until you score. So you could make it so that the home team bats in the bottom of the inning until they outscore the other team in an inning. So if the home team never has the lead, they’re hitting in the bottom of the inning for the whole game. But if they’re ahead 1-0 after one, now they’re batting in the top of the second. And then they would go back to hitting in the bottom of the inning if the visiting team outscored them in the third or something.
If you are Rob Manfred, I cannot emphasize enough how stupid these ideas are. Given your track record of wanting to make baseball less like the sport that baseball fans love, I’m worried that you might not understand that. So many fans despise the DH. It’s just going to mean more home runs and there are too many of those as it is. If Clayton Kershaw hits a home run, it’s an awesome moment.
If a DH hits one of his 25 home runs that season, it’s entirely forgettable. If the Mets and Cardinals go 20 innings in April, it’s a game you remember 11 years later. But with the magical extra innings runner, there’s no way that game goes 20 and everybody forgets it 11 days later.
There are things that could change to make baseball better, but these are not the changes to make. The game has way too many home runs and strikeouts these days. I was looking at the all time leaders in strikeouts per nine innings pitched. Of the top 20, only eight of them are retired players. Here are some of the top 50 who are currently active: Oliver Perez, Patrick Corbin, Scott Kazmir, Sonny Gray, and Ian Kennedy (I don’t know if they’re all currently on active rosters, but I guess they were at least in spring training this year). They’re nice pitchers, but if they’re in the top 50 all time in strikeouts per nine, it’s way too easy to strike batters out. And strikeouts are so high not because of the size of the strike zone or something like that, it’s because batters go all out for home runs (because the balls are juiced, which was supposed to be address this year, we'll see how that turns out) and because pitchers go all out because they’re not expected to stay in the game very long. Average pitchers striking out a batter (or more) per inning and average hitters hitting 20 home runs in a season don’t make the game better. The game would be better with more players like Rickey Henderson, Tony Gwynn, Ozzie Smith, and Greg Maddux (308th all time in strikeouts per nine). Yes, those are some all time greats, but there’s nobody like those guys anymore. The closest thing we might have to one of those players these days might be Mookie Betts being like Rickey Henderson. Now their numbers are very different (because of the way the game is played), but I think their skill sets are similar. Henderson was probably faster, but there’s no way that he would steal anywhere close to the number of bases he stole if he was playing today (he had 14 seasons with at least 50 stolen bases and three with at least 100). Mookie Betts probably has more power, but he wouldn’t have hit as many home runs if he was playing when Rickey Henderson played and he would be stealing more bases. Not surprisingly, Mookie Betts is one of the most fun players to watch in baseball today. And it’s not because of the home runs he hits. I love watching Mookie Betts run the bases and play the field.
Baseball is such a wonderful sport and Rob Manfred is making it less wonderful. I don’t have all the answers, but find ways to have starting pitchers stay in the game longer, fewer home runs, fewer strikeouts, more balls in play, and more base stealing . That would be a more fun game to watch.
My last post was for Festivus in the year 2020 so it was pretty negative. I’ll end the year with something positive. Today I listened to Dave Dameshek’s annual Sheky Awards. So I’m stealing the idea and giving out the First Annual Jimmy Awards. Most of his awards fall under the umbrellas of sports, food, and entertainment so that’s pretty much what I’ll be doing, but I’m not using the same categories that he used for the most part. Before I get to the awards, I have a couple of notes. We’ll see if this actually becomes an annual thing. There’s a decent chance that I’ll completely forget about this by next year or I just won’t be motivated to write the post again. And I definitely don’t like being called Jimmy (my old friend Bill was the only person who I didn’t mind calling me Jimmy and I haven’t seen him in at least 10 years), but my awards can be the Jimmy’s. Let’s get started.
Best Game Jim Attended This Year- Long Island Nets 111, Maine Red Claws 102 on January 17. This one wins by default as it’s the only professional or college game I attended in 2020. I don’t really remember much about it. Tacko Fall played for the Red Claws. I thought the Red Claws won, but apparently they didn’t.
Best Trip Jim Went on This Year- March for Life on January 24. It was definitely a good trip, but it had no competition. This is the only time I left the state of New York in 2020. Hopefully these two categories will have more nominees next year.
Candy of the Year- Reese’s Peanut Butter Christmas Trees. This one is an upset as the Reese’s Easter Eggs are the favorite to win every year. I didn’t have many of the Christmas Trees, but the ones I had were really good this year.
Vegetable of the Year- The biggest of all the Sheky Awards is Fruit of the Year. Pretty much the only fruits I eat are bananas, pineapples, mangoes, strawberries, and blueberries so I’m doing Vegetable of the Year. I’ve probably eaten more vegetables this year than ever before. The winner is Green Giant’s frozen Tuscan Seasoned Broccoli. That gets included every time I get groceries delivered from Target. It’s good stuff.
Snack of the Year- The three big ones for me this year were peanuts, Boar’s Head Everything Bagel Hummus (with carrots, crackers, or pretzels), and Sun Dried Tomato & Basil Wheat Thins. And the winner is Sun Dried Tomato & Basil Wheat Thins. They came on really strong at the end of the year.
Ice Cream of the Year- Vanilla came back strong this year. I have never been a huge fan, but I developed more of an appreciation for it this year. Of course, vanilla is the ice cream used in cookie dough ice cream, which is a strong contender for Ice Cream of the Year, but it’s not the winner. The winner is the classic ice cream sandwich, but from Stop and Shop. I got them one time from Target and they weren’t as good as the ones from Stop and Shop. And it has to be the classic kind. Stop and Shop did peppermint ice cream sandwiches for Christmas and they weren’t as good as the classic.
Fast Food of the Year- My fast food consumption was definitely down this year. I gave it up for Lent and then with the pandemic I didn’t have any fast food until I got Chick-Fil-A delivered on June 23 (delivery apps are helping me with the food categories). I think Chick-Fil-A might have been the winner from 2017-2019, but that was the only time I’ve had it in the last nine and a half months of the year (I don’t remember if I had it at all before that, but I probably did). Other places that would have been in the mix for the last few years would have been Shake Shack and Five Guys. I haven’t had Shake Shack since the pandemic started and I’ve only had Five Guys once. So the Jimmy goes to Chipotle, which would have won many times before they started having issues in 2015. I’ve always liked Chipotle, but it’s just the easiest for me to get delivered with their app (I always use their app any time I get Chipotle and apparently I had it six times this year) and they occasionally offer free guacamole so it’s a runaway winner for Fast Food of the Year.
Pizza of the Year- Little Vincent’s cold cheese slice would have won this award in many previous years, but I don’t know if I had it at all this year. If I didn’t have it between January 1-March 10, I didn’t have it (I might have had it in that time frame, but I don’t remember). Jimmy’s of Greenlawn’s buffalo chicken slice definitely could have won this in the past and Johnny D’s of Greenlawn’s barbecue chicken slice had a good run for a little while before the quality declined (there’s now a third pizza place in the location that both of those places once occupied). And Chef’s broccoli cheddar slice is always in the running and it probably had the early lead. But the Jimmy for Pizza of the Year goes to the buffalo chicken slice from Jimmy’s of Centerport (I miss Jimmy’s of Greenlawn, but Jimmy’s of Centerport is alive and well). It was one of the things that I had given up for Lent and then by the time Lent was over, the pandemic had hit and Jimmy’s wasn’t on Door Dash or Uber Eats. But then they added online ordering and delivery to their website (which is better than Door Dash or Uber Eats because they don’t charge any fees) and the buffalo chicken slice from Jimmy’s finished the year very strong to narrowly edge out the broccoli cheddar from Chef’s. I hope the cold cheese slice from Little Vincent’s gets back into the running in 2021.
Beer of the Year- This is a strange year for Beer of the Year. Sam Adams Summer Ale would have been a dynasty if I had been doing this for the last decade and a half. Sam Adams Chocolate Bock might have snuck in to win a couple of times. But this year, I wouldn’t have had any Summer Ale if not for my friend John. Last year was a down year for Summer Ale, but I think it was better this year. Sam Adams Octoberfest has had some really good years recently, but I did not have any Sam Adams Octoberfest this fall (I probably had at least one back in January on my birthday, but that’s not enough for it to be considered) or any other varieties of Oktoberfest either. The pandemic has affected how much beer I drink (definitely less this year than in the past) and how I obtain beer. I definitely haven’t gone out to buy beer since the pandemic started so that meant I relied on delivery. There were a couple of websites that I used for delivery where I was able to get an interesting variety of beer, but they won’t do contactless delivery anymore so I’m better off just getting my deliveries through Drizly even if the selection isn’t the greatest because I have much more control over when it will arrive than the other websites I had used earlier in the year. It’s too bad because I was never able to try the Yuengling Hershey’s Chocolate Porter. It might not have been good, but there was the potential for greatness. Anyway, I have two very specific beers that tie for Beer of the Year. The Jimmy for Beer of the Year goes to the Brooklyn Lager and the Boston Lager I drank after the Dodgers won Game 6 of the World Series.
Restaurant of the Year- I’m not considering fast food here (but no fast food restaurant would have won anyway). Restaurants that would have been contenders over the last couple of decades would have included Torcellos, Nicky’s, Campania, Dave’s Goldmine Mexican Grill, European Republic, and Canterbury Ales. Torellos and Canterbury Ales don’t exist anymore and Nicky’s doesn’t do delivery. So the other three are all contenders, but the winner is a restaurant that I think I only had twice before this year. And actually, I only ordered from it twice this year, but it’s great for ordering lots of food and saving some for leftovers (one of the orders was right at the beginning of the pandemic when I could only get groceries delivered like every two weeks). The Jimmy goes to Old Fields Barbecue. My next order will probably be on my birthday. It’s really good.
Best TV Show Jim Watched This Year- There are some interesting choices here. I watched Parks and Recreation and Community for the first time this year. Seinfeld is always in the running. The Simpsons and South Park are annual contenders, but I didn’t watch them as much as in the past. South Park has been hurt in recent years because I watched the new episodes. This year I only watched the first episode and that definitely didn’t help it. If I limited South Park to season 4 through the Black Friday Trilogy, it might win. I think I watched X-Files this year. I watched at some point recently on Amazon Prime, I think that at least spilled into 2020. But the winner is The Office. If I watched as much Seinfeld or Simpsons (seasons 2-8) as I watched the Office, it would be a much tougher decision, but I watched a lot of the Office so it gets the award (it was even able to overcome the fact that I watched seasons 8 and 9, which are terrible and bad until the last few episodes respectively).
Best Movie Jim Watched This Year- I didn’t watch a lot of movies this year, but even if I did, there’s a good chance the winner would still be the same: The Naked Gun. It inspired an early pandemic blog post.
Best Player on a Team Jim Likes- We have a newcomer for this one. It has to be Mookie Betts. And it was a loaded field. He beats out Clayton Kershaw (who would have won this award several times), Walker Buehler, Corey Seager (who won the NLCS and World Series MVP Awards), Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Ian Book (the best Notre Dame quarterback since Tony Rice), and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah.
Jim’s Favorite Athlete of the Year- He might not be the best player on a team that I like anymore, but Clayton Kershaw is still my favorite. If I did this every year, the last decade would have looked like this:
2010- Paul Pierce (who also would have won in 2008 and 2009)
2011- Clayton Kershaw
2012- Manti Te’o
2013- Clayton Kershaw
2014- Clayton Kershaw
2015- Clayton Kershaw
2016- Clayton Kershaw
2017- Clayton Kershaw
2018- Clayton Kershaw
2019- Clayton Kershaw
If there were any close calls in the last decade, it might have been Justin Tuck in 2011, but his second Super Bowl victory came in February 2012. Ian Book would have won in 2018 if we had won our playoff game. John Shuster deserves an honorable mention for 2018. If it had been a bad year for the Dodgers and Kemba Walker stayed healthy and the Celtics made it to the Finals and won, Kemba Walker probably would have won.
Best Game Jim Watched on YouTube- Starting in April, I pretty much watched an old game on YouTube every day until baseball started in late July. Many were games that I had never seen before. There were a lot of classics in there that don’t win the award: Game 7 of the 1965 World Series, Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, Clayton Kershaw’s Opening Day home run and shutout in 2013, Clayton Kershaw’s no-hitter in 2014, Game 3 of the 2018 World Series, the Miracle on Ice in 1980, the Curling Miracle on Ice in 2018, Isner-Mahut’s 11-hour match from Wimbledon in 2010, Game 5 of the 1976 NBA Finals, Michael Jordan’s 63-point game against the Celtics in the 1986 playoffs (a game that the Celtics won), Game 4 of the 2008 NBA Finals, Game 7 of the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals, the Ice Bowl, the 1981 NFC Championship Game, Super Bowl XXIII, Super Bowl XXV, Super Bowl XXXIV, the Monday Night Miracle, Notre Dame-Miami in 1988, Notre Dame-Penn State in 1992, Notre Dame-Florida State in 1993. But the Jimmy for Best Game Jim Watched on YouTube is the Sugar Bowl from New Year’s Eve in 1973. Notre Dame and Alabama were both undefeated and Alabama was ranked number 1. We beat them 24-23 to win the National Championship (yet Alabama still claims that year as one of their National Championship years). We dominated the first quarter, but we only led 6-0 after one. There were six lead changes in the rest of the game (and like I said, it was 24-23, not like 42-38 or something). And the style of football was so much more interesting. The different formations and the creativity in the running game really stood out. Hopefully we’ll beat number 1 ranked Alabama again tomorrow.
“I got a lot of problems with you people and now you’re gonna hear about it!” It’s Festivus and there are so many grievances to air. Let’s get right to it.
My first grievance is with society. This pandemic has been handled so poorly by so many different levels of government and by individuals. I don’t know if there was a way to keep the virus from getting out of China (maybe there was, there have been other diseases that started in Asia or Africa in the last couple of decades that didn’t become pandemics like this, but I don’t know enough to say if this could have been contained), but once it got out of China, it was going to be bad. It didn’t have to be this bad though. So this was a very general grievance, but I should point out that I have no grievance with doctors, nurses, and scientists who are dealing with this virus. They’ve been doing heroic work over the last year and the vaccines that have been developed will bring this to an end. I also have no grievance with delivery drivers and people who work in grocery stores or pharmacies. They’re all awesome. What I don’t get is why we aren’t trying to limit the damage now. It’s not like it’s April and we have no idea how long this is going to last. There’s light at the end of the tunnel with the vaccines. We have Dr. Fauci saying that everybody who wants to get vaccinated should be able to by the spring. We’ve been dealing with this for over nine months now and we have just a few more months to go. The summer and early fall were not too bad in New York, but now things are getting really bad again (we just set a new record for most new cases in a single day and hospitals are filling up, but at least the death rate is much lower than the spring). In the spring, we did stuff to try to stop the spread. Now it’s like nobody cares anymore. I don’t get it. Several of my other grievances will be connected to the coronavirus.
Let’s start with Notre Dame. I have a grievance with the university for not accepting one of my former students. I taught him for three years and I’ve kept in touch with him since then. I was a really good student in high school, but he was a better student and much better person than I was. I was trying to think of how many students I’ve taught in my 13 years of teaching. My rough estimate was 400 (that’s probably a bit of an underestimate). Of the approximately 400 students, I have four that clearly stand out as the best students I’ve ever taught and he’s one of them. So yeah, he’s in the top 1% of students that I’ve taught. Notre Dame messed that up. But I was actually happy that he wasn’t there this semester because life must have been miserable for the students there.
Now let’s get into sports. The pandemic kept me from going to the Big East Tournament. It’s one of my favorite events of the year. I think I went every year last decade except for 2017 when I went to a couple of nights of the ACC Tournament in the Barclays Center instead of the Big East Tournament. And then, the NCAA Tournament was canceled. That first weekend of the tournament is probably my favorite weekend of the whole year. You get 48 meaningful college basketball games in four days. I always take that Friday off from work. It’s the best. I hope we get it back in 2021.
Speaking of Notre Dame and college basketball, I hate to do this, but I have to air a grievance with Mike Brey. I love Mike Brey (I know, this isn’t how you typically start a grievance). He’s had a great run at Notre Dame, but it’s fair to wonder if it’s coming to an end. The 2014-2015 team was the best Notre Dame basketball team of my lifetime and it’s a shame that we just ran out of gas at the end of the Kentucky game. If we had won that game, we had a real chance to win the National Championship (we were 3-1 that season against the other Final Four teams). We had another Elite Eight run in 2016 and we were back in the tournament in 2017. We haven’t been back since. We would have made it in 2018 if not for injuries. But the last two years haven’t been good and this year’s team isn’t going anywhere. I really hope Mike Brey can get the program moving in the right direction again because I do love him for everything he’s done over the course of two decades at Notre Dame, but I’m worried. The other thing that I’m worried about is that it could be much worse if we don’t make a good choice to replace him whenever that time comes.
I have some football grievances. I’ll start with the College Football Playoff committee. Ohio State should have been left out. They played six games. They beat two good teams (Indiana and Northwestern), but they weren’t overly impressive in either of those games. The Dodgers won the World Series after playing 60 games, but it’s not like they played 60 when all the other good teams played 100. Obviously Alabama and Clemson were making the playoff. The last two spots should have been two of Notre Dame, Texas A&M, and Cincinnati. I have a grievance with the coronavirus because it moved the Rose Bowl from the gorgeous setting of the Rose Bowl in Pasadena to Jerry World. Notre Dame is playing in just its second Rose Bowl ever and we have to play it in Jerry World. Lame. Of course, the only reason that we’re playing in the Rose Bowl is that it’s going to have more fans than the Sugar Bowl and that’s what Alabama wanted. If life was normal, Alabama would have preferred the Sugar Bowl over going to California, but whatever. This will be the second Rose Bowl played somewhere other than Pasadena (the other one was at Duke in 1942 after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor). Coincidentally, I’ve seen Notre Dame play at the other two locations.
Dabo Swinney has become a villain this year. I never really had strong feelings about him (if anything, I liked him for the times he beat Alabama and Ohio State in the playoff). But it’s clear the ACC is letting him give orders now. He decided that pass interference on Clemson wasn’t pass interference when we played them in November. That call forced us to punt and gave Clemson a chance to run out the clock. Fortunately, they didn’t get the job done. He also decided that Clemson wasn’t playing Florida State and that meant that Notre Dame wasn’t going to play Wake Forest. So he cost me a fun Saturday of watching Notre Dame beating up on a mediocre ACC team.
I thought I was going to have a grievance with the Big 10 because I was totally cool with their season being canceled. I’m not happy about Ohio State making the playoff, but it was worth it to see Michigan and Penn State have terrible seasons. Notre Dame ever joining the Big 10 would be my worst college football nightmare, but being in any conference is just terrible for Notre Dame. We were in the ACC for this season and it was so stupid. Everybody wanted Notre Dame to join a conference because our schedule wasn’t hard enough. Now that wasn’t true to begin with, but it was proven demonstrably false by this year’s schedule. We replaced our games against USC, Wisconsin (which was supposed to be at Lambeau Field, I had a hotel room booked), Stanford, Arkansas, Navy, and Western Michigan with games against North Carolina, Boston College, Florida State, Syracuse, and South Florida as our one non-conference game. North Carolina turned out to be pretty good, but our schedule was clearly not as hard and clearly not as interesting as it was supposed to be as an independent. In hindsight, we should have stayed independent. We had no control over losing the games against USC, Wisconsin, and Stanford, but we could have kept the six ACC opponents we already had (which already included Clemson), kept Navy, and then added BYU and added a couple other teams like Army, Cincinnati or a Big 12 team (if we wanted a good opponent), or South Florida or whoever (if we wanted a cupcake). Playing in a conference is just stupid. Every game in college football is supposed to be meaningful, but even before playing Clemson in the regular season, we knew we’d just end up playing them again in the ACC Championship Game. Beating them in the regular season was great, but it was kind of undone by our terrible performance in the rematch. I was hoping that we’d win the game, spike the ACC Championship trophy, and then just have it melted to be made into something useful. But I have to admit, it would be pretty awesome if we had Game 3 because that would mean we beat Alabama.
I have more grievances with the College Football Playoff system. When it started, they had the New Year’s Six and that name made sense because they’d have three games on New Year’s Eve and three on New Year’s Day. As somebody who has always thought that New Year’s Eve is the stupidest celebration of the year (we’re celebrating the arbitrary start of the year and the last time we did that, we got 2020), I loved the idea. You had the six best bowls spread out over two days. But because people do care about New Year’s Eve for some reason and ratings weren’t good, they changed how the New Year’s Six games were scheduled. This year, we gave one on December 30, three on January 1, and two on January 2. Even under the original scheduling, it was silly when the Rose Bowl wasn’t a playoff game because you’d have the two playoff games on New Year’s Eve and then three other games the next day. But because the Rose Bowl needed to be played at 5:00 on New Year’s Day, they didn’t put the playoff games on New Year’s Day if it wasn’t a Rose Bowl playoff year. Here’s what I would do about that. The two playoff games are always on January 1. If the Rose Bowl isn’t a playoff game, then have the Rose Bowl in between the two playoff games. That would be a little weird, but it’s less weird than having the playoff games on December 29 (like they were when Notre Dame made it two years ago) and then several more bowl games after the playoff games.
But really, they messed up the bowls when they went to the BCS. The problem is that you had one bowl that really mattered and the rest didn’t (now with the playoff, you have two bowls that really matter and the rest don’t). In the 1977 season, you had four major bowl games all on the same day (January 2 because January 1 was a Sunday) and three of them had a hand in deciding the National Championship. And going into the day, you didn’t know which bowls would have had a hand in deciding the National Championship. If number 1 Texas had beaten number 5 Notre Dame, then the Orange Bowl wouldn’t have mattered. But since Notre Dame won, it mattered that number 2 Oklahoma lost in the Orange Bowl. So my answer is to start over. This is one of my favorite ideas that’s never going to happen. Here’s what I would do (I’ve written about this before, but I’ve been refining the idea). You play the bowl games and then pick the top two teams from the winners of the major bowls to play for the championship. You take the five Power 5 conference champions. The Rose Bowl is the traditional Big 10 vs. Pac 12 matchup. The SEC champion goes to the Sugar Bowl. The ACC champion goes to the Orange Bowl. The Big 12 champion goes to the Cotton Bowl. The highest ranked Group of 5 Champion goes to either the Peach or Fiesta Bowl. The rest of the spots are filled by the highest ranked at large teams. Of the at large teams and the Group of 5 team, the two lowest ranked of those teams play in either the Peach or the Fiesta Bowl. That eliminates one of those games as possibly having an impact on the National Championship, but those two have less history than the other games so they can deal with that. So here are the matchups we could have this year under my system:
Rose Bowl- Ohio State vs. Oregon
Sugar Bowl- Alabama vs. Notre Dame
Orange Bowl- Clemson vs. Florida
Cotton Bowl- Oklahoma vs. Texas A&M
Peach Bowl- Cincinnati vs. Georgia
Fiesta Bowl- Iowa State vs. Indiana
So we’d have teams 1-11 and 25 in the rankings (usually number 25 is not going to sneak in, but that’s the way it is this year). Iowa State and Indiana were the lowest ranked at large teams so they play each other. As for the other at large teams, I put Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl because the rest of the at large teams were from the SEC and I didn’t want Alabama playing an SEC team. I used a random number generator to assign the three SEC at large teams and coincidentally it worked out nicely geographically. The way it would work out in my system for this year, the winner of the Sugar Bowl is getting to the National Championship Game. Clemson would be in with a win. But if Florida won, that would probably open the door for Texas A&M or maybe Cincinnati or Ohio State to get into the championship game. As for scheduling, I think I’d put the Peach Bowl and Fiesta Bowl in the afternoon/early evening on New Year’s Eve and the other four on New Year’s Day. New Year’s Day used to mean something in college football. Then it didn’t. The College Football Playoff was supposed to fix that and it did when the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl are playoff games, but not so much when the playoff games are on December 28 or whatever. One objection to my idea might be that you could have three undefeated teams playing in three different games. Like let’s say Alabama, Clemson, and Ohio State were all undefeated and they all won their bowl games. Somebody is getting left out of the championship game. I think that would be good because it would encourage good non-conference scheduling. If Ohio State gets left out because their schedule wasn’t good enough, too bad. I really hope that they don’t go to an eight-team playoff even though it would make it easier for Notre Dame to get in because it would discourage good non-conference games. If all the Power 5 conference champions would get in automatically, it wouldn’t matter what you did in your non-conference games. And if there were three spots left for other teams, you wouldn’t want to risk playing a good team out of your conference and losing.
Let’s move on to professional sports. My first grievance there is with the Jets for being the Jets. I think that’s all I need to say about them.
In the NBA, my first grievance is with the Clippers. Yes, the Celtics had a disappointing defeat against the Heat in the playoffs and the Heat lost to the Lakers, but neither of those teams were going to beat the Lakers. The Clippers were the team that should have beaten the Lakers, but they didn’t get past the Nuggets. I watched pretty much none of the NBA Finals this year (if I watched any, it was because the TV happened to be on ABC when the games were going on, not because I decided to put on ABC) and that’s the first time I can remember not watching any. Also, I’m mad at the coronavirus from taking away the opportunity to have Kyrie Irving play in Boston with fans there. I have a very clear order of my least favorite players right now:
In baseball, I have absolutely no grievances with the Dodgers. Their season was awesome and Clayton Kershaw finally got the championship that he deserved (and he was excellent in the playoffs). I have many grievances with Rob Manfred (not doing more about the Astros, the DH in the NL, the magical runner that appears at second base in extra innings, 16 teams in the playoffs). And of course, I’m also mad at the coronavirus for taking away 100 Dodger games this season. I would have seen the Dodgers in person at least three times (the only sporting event I went to for the whole year was a Long Island Nets game in January) and I would have watched at least 75 more games on TV if it had been a normal season. I’m also mad at the coronavirus for Altuve, Springer, Bregman, Correa, Gurriel, and Reddick not having to face fans on the road. It would have been like Kyrie Irving facing fans in Boston, only it would have happened in every stadium.
I’ll finish with a baseball movie grievance since I just watched A League of Their Own with my eighth graders. We just finished the Great Depression and I wasn’t starting World War II the week before Christmas. So I showed them the movie and it’s an excellent movie, but there’s a plot hole. Dottie drives in the tying and go ahead runs in the top of the ninth in Game 7. There were two outs with runners on second and third when she came up. There’s no way they would pitch to Dottie in that situation. You definitely put her on with first base open.
I can’t think of a year where grievances needed to be aired more than this one. There are so many things I didn’t get to do this year and so many people that I didn’t get to see at all this year. If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably one of the people that I wish I had been able to see. As I’ve said, the start of the year is completely arbitrary. And the beginning of 2021 is going to be just as bad as this year has been. But at some point in 2021, things will be getting better. I hope to have nowhere near as many grievances to air a year from now.
4th ranked Notre Dame beat the number 1 ranked team at home
All of those things have happened in 2020. Unfortunately, the Lakers winning the championship is way too common. But the Dodgers won a World Series and a vice president won a presidential election for the first time since 1988. Notre Dame has won two other games against the number one ranked team since then. We beat Colorado in the 1990 Orange Bowl and we beat Florida State in 1993. The 1988 college football season ended with Notre Dame winning the National Championship. Hopefully this season will end that way too.
This was our first game against the number one ranked team since I was a student. And much like that game, this one lived up to the hype. Ian Book played the best game of his life (so far). He threw a couple of deep balls, he ran the ball well, he threw the ball away when he was under pressure (this is something he has not done often), and he led a 91 yard drive with less than two minutes left to tie the game. Kyren Williams has been amazing. I wasn’t expecting much out of him this year, but he’s been great. Even when we’ve been able to run the ball well in the past, we couldn’t do it against the elite teams. We did it yesterday. Williams had the long run on the second play of the game to give us the lead. His average for the rest of the game wasn’t great, but it seemed like he made plays whenever we needed one. And he had the best game I’ve ever seen from a Notre Dame running back picking up the blitz. That was fun to watch (it was like watching Mookie Betts running the bases). Our wide receivers were a pleasant surprise. Avery Davis made the biggest play of the game and Javon McKinley made some good plays. They’ve both been better than I expected. Ben Skowronek has probably been about what I expected. The offensive line did a pretty good job. We’ve had great offensive linemen under Kelly, but it always seemed like the offensive line didn’t perform in our biggest games. We were able to out-physical Clemson last night.
Our defense gave up 40 points, but I thought they were pretty good. Travis Etienne was shut down. D.J. Uiagalelei set a record for passing yards against Notre Dame, but we made Clemson one dimensional. They didn’t have Trevor Lawrence and I did think Uiagalelei missed a couple of throws that he could have made, but they definitely didn’t lose the game because of poor quarterback play). Jeremiah Owusu-Koromoah’s fumble return was kind of like something I did once or twice in the old NCAA Football video games where you intercept a pitch and return it for a touchdown.
Special teams was mostly good. Jonathan Doerer made four field goals and only missed a really long one (and Jay Bramblett made a great tackle on that play to save a potential disaster going into halftime). I was thinking missing an extra point at the end of regulation or at the end of the first overtime would be the worst possible way to lose, but there was no reason for concern. Kickoff coverage was very good. Matt Salerno has been sure-handed on punt returns, but I’d like to see somebody who is a threat to do something returning punts. But if they do everything else well, I’ll live with not having a threat on punt returns.
When we fell behind by seven, I was thinking we should go for two if we scored a touchdown, but then when we scored, I didn’t want to. Kelly was asked about it after the game and his reason for not doing it was pretty much the same reason I changed my mind: we worked too hard to score that touchdown and have the opportunity to get to overtime. But then in overtime, I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to stop Clemson. (Speaking of overtime, I’m morally obligated to talk about how stupid college football overtime is. It’s slightly less stupid than Notre Dame playing in a conference because the idea of overtime is not stupid, but the rules that they came up with are just so dumb.). We get back to back sacks to put Clemson behind the chains. I had flashbacks of when we were one play away from beating USC in 2005. We had 3rd and 20 after a Trevor Laws sack and then 4th and 9 and then it was the Dwayne Jarrett catch for 61 yards that led to the Leinart fumble and then the Bush Push (by the way, I looked up how long the Jarrett catch was just to make sure, but I definitely didn’t have to look up how many yards USC needed on third and fourth down, I remembered). But this time we finished it off.
I almost got to see an all time classic win in person against USC in 2005. After the game I had the thought that if not for the pandemic, I could have been there last night (this game was on our original schedule). But really, I probably wouldn’t have gone. I haven’t been to a night game since Jon was in law school. It would not be fun to have to drive back to a hotel after a night game. And ticket prices would have been ridiculous. The other reason I wouldn’t have gone was that it’s November. I haven’t been to a November home game since Navy in 2013. After the Stanford game in 2014 (which was early October, also check out that post for my favorite games, the list needs to be updated because this one is definitely at the top of the list of games that I didn’t go to), I pretty much decided that I didn’t want to go to any cold weather games at Notre Dame anymore (this isn’t a hard and fast rule, but September games are definitely my preference). Of course, it turned out to be much warmer than the last football game I went to, which was at Duke 52 weeks ago. So it would have been cool to be there in person for a game like that, but I probably wouldn’t have been there even if I could have gone.
I have this ranked as our best win since 1988. You could obviously make the case for the Florida State game in 1993. But I think this one was bigger than that. In 1993, Lou Holtz was in the sixth year of the best extended stretch of Notre Dame football since Ara Parseghian was the coach and Florida State hadn’t won a National Championship yet. This win was more like beating Miami in 1988. Clemson has been one of the top two programs in college football for half a decade and Notre Dame has not been on their level during that time. And also in 1988, our last two wins came against undefeated teams that were two wins and one win away from a National Championship when we played them (USC and West Virginia).
I hope this year’s team can finish like the 1988 team. It’s going to be tough. We should win our next four games before a rematch with Clemson, but we play three teams that are better than anybody we’ve played so far other than Clemson (plus Syracuse, who is terrible). We do have some wiggle room now that we’ve beaten Clemson. If we did lose a game and then beat Clemson again, that should be good enough to get to the playoff. But being undefeated in the regular season would give us a chance to make it to the playoff even if we lost the rematch with Clemson. It would be so nice to play in this stupid conference for a year, win it, and then be independent again. Really our worst case scenario should be getting the ACC spot in the Orange Bowl. But I hope this team isn’t satisfied. This was a great win for Brian Kelly (we can move this game ahead of the Oklahoma game in 2012 as his best win) and the team, but there’s so much more that they have a chance to accomplish. If we get to the playoff, we’re looking at the possibility of Round 3 with Clemson and teams like Ohio State and Alabama. If you want to do something great, it’s not going to be easy. The 1988 team beat teams that were ranked 9, 1, 2, and 3 when we played them (those teams were 4, 2, 7, and 5 in the final poll). Let’s finish this season the way the 1988 team finished the season and not the way the 1993 team finished the season. Go Irish!
