The other day, Cleveland.com ran a story — well, it was really more of a podcast recap, which I suppose is one of the things that qualify as a story these days — with the headline: ‘They have to get the coach right’: Why the Browns’ twin mission could finally end their misery.

The quote in the headline sounds like it might have come from an official Browns’ source, but it did not. It came from Orange and Brown talk host Dan Labbe. I guess that’s the name of the podcast. The full quote is as follows.

Well, actually, the full-full quote is this:

Nineteen years? You think the Cleveland Browns are going to hire a coach they’re going to keep for NINETEEN YEARS? I mean, knowing this organization, you’d have to say the odds are against them hiring a coach they’re going to keep for nineteen months.

But, OK, let’s cut Dan a break — he’s only trying to make a point: The Browns need to get this coaching thing right, and then they need to get the quarterback thing right, and that’s the only way they’re going to escape the 25-plus-year malaise that has haunted the team and the city.

That seems to make sense.

That’s the core argument of pretty much every sports talk show on earth. Gotta get the coach right! Gotta get the star right!

Only, in my view, it’s entirely wrong.

I’m going to say something that will sound ridiculous. It probably is ridiculous. But in my view doesn’t matter at all who they hire as coach. I’m serious. It also doesn’t matter at all who they end up betting on as quarterback. Again, I’m serious. I mean, OK, I’m exaggerating a little when I say it doesn’t matter “at all,” — they can’t hire, I don’t know, Natalie Portman as coach and draft me as quarterback and expect that to work (though it would be great fun; I love Natalie Portman).

But assuming they hire a qualified coach, as they surely will, and draft a highly rated quarterback, as they surely will, it doesn’t matter if they “get it right.”

No, what matters — the REAL way for the Browns or any terrible team to escape the malaise — is to build an organization that is geared to winning. An organization set up to make smart decisions, avoid groupthink, challenge conventions, reject panic, stay true to itself, and learn from its many mistakes. That’s not a “right guy” issue.

You think John Harbaugh succeeded in Baltimore for that long because he was the “right guy?” You think Ben Roethlisberger had a 165-81 record in Pittsburgh because he was “the right quarterback?”

I don’t. I think if John Harbaugh had been hired by the Browns in 2008 instead of the Ravens, it’s more likely than not that he would have joined Romeo Crennel, Eric Mangini, Pat Shurmur, Hue Jackson, whatever that guy after Hue Jackson was named, and Kevin Stefanski as a name on the wall of perennial losers.

And if the Browns had drafted Ben Roethlisberger in 2004 — which they absolutely could have done; they took Kellen Winslow Jr. instead — it’s more likely than not that the Browns would still have stunk and Roethlisberger would have followed the same doomed path of Brady Quinn, Brandon Weeden, Colt McCoy, and Johnny Football.

I believe if the Browns had drafted Tom Brady, he would not be broadcasting games (which would be better for all of us).

You might disagree. That’s reasonable. You might think the Browns — and all bad teams — are victims of a few poor choices at critical moments. But after watching this particular team closely for all these years — and plenty of other losing clubs too — I’ve come to feel differently about it. I believe the Browns are a broken franchise driven by fear, greed, and panic. That’s what drives me crazy about them. That’s what can’t be fixed with a coach or quarterback, no matter how right they might be.

Let’s go back just a few years, to 2020.

That year, the Browns hired Kevin Stefanski as coach. They already had their chosen quarterback, former No. 1 pick Baker Mayfield. That year, they went 11-5, made the playoffs for the first time in almost 20 years, blasted through the Steelers in the playoffs, and somehow gave the Kansas City Chiefs a game before losing by just five. Stefanski was named coach of the year. Mayfield had a 96 quarterback rating and was on every other commercial. The Browns were the hottest thing in the NFL.

Didn’t they pick right?

Sure, they did. But it didn’t matter because they’re the Browns and they did what the Browns do. They tried to make a national splash by getting Odell Beckham Jr., and that turned into a disaster. They ran into adversity and handled it poorly. They lost a handful of close games. Mayfield tried to play through an injury and wasn’t effective. They finished 8-9.

A good organization would work through it, shut out the criticism, calmly evaluate the team’s strengths and weaknesses, remember what it stands for, and follow its North Star.

The Browns are not a good organization. So they totally freaked out and traded every draft choice and all the salary cap money they had for a quarterback who had not played in a year and faced 24 credible sexual misconduct lawsuits, along with a certain long suspension from the NFL.

That was … a choice.

And it was inevitable. If it wasn’t that trade, it would have been a series of other spectacularly misguided moves. That’s just what this organization is. The owner has proven repeatedly that he lacks the patience, the vision, the imagination or the moral clarity to build a winner. The general manager is the guy who made that trade. Baker Mayfield went to Pro Bowls with someone else. The two-time coach of the year was fired.

It doesn’t matter who the Browns hire. It really doesn’t. It also doesn’t matter who they draft to play quarterback. Until the Browns make decisions patiently, based on evidence and principle, and not abandon them because of noise, fear, or embarrassment, there’s no chance of things changing.

Right coach? Right quarterback? Doesn’t matter.

All that matters comes down to one question: Can the Browns fix who they are?

You don’t have to answer the question.

The very first big story I ever wrote, way back in 1988 — THIRTY EIGHT YEARS AGO, YIKES! — was about why it’s so hard to win on the road in the NBA. I was 21 years old, still in college, knew nothing about nothing, but I look back at that kid fondly. I was boundlessly curious. I was hungry to make it in this crazy sportswriting business. And, thanks to the encouragement of my first sports editor, Gary Schwab, I learned that if you make the calls, a lot of pretty famous people will call you back.

I talked with Hall of Famers Lenny Wilkens, Pat Riley, Rick Pitino, Jack Ramsay and Rod Thorn, among many others, for that story. It was mind-blowing to me. During the day, I’d be studying computer programming and John Updike*, and in the evening I’d be talking with these sports giants about whether home teams get more favorable calls and how much the home crowd’s energy plays into actual play.

*Alas, I use “studying” loosely here.

I do not tell you this to take a trip down memory lane — though as I get older, those trips become more and more tempting — but to say that the most shocking thing I learned was from Pat Riley. I’d asked him all the same questions I asked everyone else and was about to hang up when HE said: “Wait, aren’t you going to ask me about the Boston Garden floor?”

“The Boston Garden floor?”

And he proceeded to tell me how that parquet floor was an absolute nightmare. “The NBA should outlaw that floor,” he said. “It’s a disgrace to the NBA. There have to be 50 dead spots. There are half-inch cracks where you can get your foot caught.”

Then he laughed and said, “And those %*#(#* know exactly where each and every one of them is.”

This is not the point of this story — we’ll get there, I promise — but let me show you the home and road records for the Celtics in the Larry Bird years:

• 1979-80: 35-6 home; 26-15 road

• 1980-81: 35-6 home, 27-14 road

• 1981-82: 35-6 home; 28-13 road

• 1982-83: 33-8 home; 23-18 road

• 1983-84: 33-8 home; 29-12 road

• 1984-85: 35-6 home; 28-13 road

• 1985-86: 40-1 home; 27-14 road

• 1986-87: 39-2 home; 20-21 road

• 1987-88: 36-5 home; 21-20 road

• 1988-89: 32-9 home; 10-31 road

• 1989-90: 30-11 home, 33-19 road

• 1990-91: 35-6 home, 21-20 road

• 1991-92: 34-7 home, 17-24 road

I mean … that’s utterly incredible. After Bird left, the Celtics’ home advantage dissipated — you just KNOW that Bird studied that crazy floor more than anyone — and when the team moved into the Fleet Center in 1995, the home advantage disappeared entirely.

“You know, an outside contractor offered to duplicate that floor for them exactly,” Riley said back then. “The Celtics wouldn’t let them. They didn’t want to lose that advantage.”

I think about that floor now because the NBA — and the NFL and NHL and Premier League for the most part too — generally works pretty hard to make sure that all their playing dimensions and surfaces are uniform. You know the famous Hoosiers line, where they find that the foul line is 15 feet away from the basket and that the rim is 10 feet high: “I think you'll find these are the exact same measurements as our gym back in Hickory.” The Celtics developed a loophole by playing on the same floor for all those years and learning all of that floor’s rhythms.

But you know what sport DOES let you mess around with dimensions and surfaces?

Right. Baseball.

And now the Kansas City Royals are trying to make their wonderful ballpark a weapon.

Baseball is very particular about its dimensions … in the infield. Sixty feet 6 inches, 90 feet between the bases; these are not only untouchable, they are sacrosanct, the holiest measurements in American sports.

As for the outfield?

Well, for the most part, you can do what you wanna do in the outfield.

Like so many things in baseball, this goes back to the very beginning. Back in the early days, they would play baseball wherever they could find a space. Fairgrounds. Commons. Parks. And when they started building actual baseball ballparks, they would make the park fit the space. In 1887, when the Philadelphia Phillies owner John Rogers decided to build a ballpark for $80,000 — his own money, believe it or not! — he bought a rectangular parcel of land on the corner of 15th and Huntington Streets. Because the land was a rectangle, the builders had no choice but to make the dimensions to the Baker Bowl bananas — 341 feet down the field line expanding to 408 feet in center and decreasing all the way down to 280 feet down the right field line.

This ballpark altered baseball history. The Phillies were rarely good in the 50 or so years they spent at the Baker Bowl — they reached just one World Series — but they often scored a lot of runs and even more often gave up a lot of runs. In 1933, Chuck Klein won the Triple Crown.*

He hit .467 with 20 homers and 81 RBI at home.

He hit .280 with 8 homers and 40 RBI on the road.

*Klein is the second-last National Leaguer to win the Triple Crown. Four years later, St. Louis’ Joe Medwick won it by hitting .374 with 31 homers and 154 RBI. The Baker Bowl played a role in his Triple Crown too — that year, Ducky hit .488 with three homers and 10 RBI at the Baker Bowl. back in Hickory.

Anyway, you know that Fenway Park is shaped the way it is because of the space where it was built. Wrigley Field is Wrigley Field because of where it was built. Yankee Stadium is Yankee Stadium because it was meant to mirror the old Yankee Stadium. Old Yankee Stadium had a short right field line (in large part to play to the pull-hitter power of Babe Ruth himself) and an enormous left field (in part because that’s what the land demanded).

In later years, MLB did put up a few guardrails — you now need the outfield corners to be at least 325 feet away and centerfield be at least 400 feet away — but beyond that, the outfield dimensions are left to the whims of the home team. A team could have a 600-foot fence in center field if it wanted. Nobody would want that because it would make the fan seats pretty brutal, but the point is you COULD.

Kansas City, as a city, has a long history of messing around with ballpark dimensions. This began with Charlie Finley, who at some point became entirely convinced that New York’s incredible success in the 1950s and early 1960s was mostly due to the dimensions of Yankee Stadium.

Don’t believe me? Here’s the quote:

“I am convinced the size and shape of Yankee Stadium is the answer to the great success of the Yankees,” he said.

See? He also said this:

“To me, getting caught playing baseball in Yankee Stadium is like getting caught in a craps game with loaded dice.”

I’ve done a little dive into how this bananas thought ended up in Finley’s head. He always said that he picked it up from former Yankees star Eddie Lopat, who managed the A’s in 1963, but Lopat denied it, and I tend to believe Lopat. My best guess is that Finley misunderstood something Lopat said and, as he often did, just went with his own version of reality.

Anyway, in 1964 — apparently against Eddie Lopat’s specific advice — Finley decided to make Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium into an exact replica of Yankee Stadium.

And boy was Finley excited!

“I feel that in revamping my ballpark to go along with the Yankees,” he said, “I will be, for the first time, able to compete with them on an equal basis.”

As I have written before, there were only three, mostly minor, problems with Finley’s plan to retrofit Memorial Stadium.

1. It was against baseball rules, as mentioned, to build a wall closer than 325 feet from home plate (Yankee Stadium’s dimensions were grandfathered in).

2. It was physically impossible.

3. It was galactically stupid.

With few actual options, Finley decided to build a little fan pavilion in right, close to the field that he called “Pennant Porch.” The idea was that the front of the pavilion would mirror the exact right field distance of Yankee Stadium. When MLB said, um, nah, that still counts as building a wall too close, he threw a fit and changed it so that the wall was exactly 325 feet away. He called it “Half Pennant Porch.”

Finley also brought in the other walls.

He also picked up aging sluggers Rocky Colavito and Jim Gentile.

He also created a standing order for the public address announcer that whenever anyone hit a long fly ball that was not a home run at Memorial Stadium but WOULD have been a home run in New York, he had to announce: “That would have been a home run at Yankee Stadium.”*

*This ended on May 2, 1964, when the Twins’ Tony Oliva, Bob Allison, Jimmie Hall, and Harmon Killebrew hit four home runs in a row. Poor Eddie Lopat was fired a month later.

To be fair to Finley, the new ballpark dimensions did mean that the A’s hit with a lot more home run power. They hit just 95 home runs in 1963 and 166 dingers in 1964 (with Colvaito and Gentile contributing 62 homers).

To be fair to, you know, reality and logic, the new dimensions also led the A’s pitching staff to give up a major league record 220 home runs. The 132 home runs they gave up at home was a record for 36 years until the 2001 Rockies gave up 133 home runs at Coors Field.

In 1995, the Kansas City Royals — this was when the team was being run by the estate of the late Ewing Kauffman — decided to make a couple of changes to what was then called Royals Stadium. First, they would take out the artificial turf and put in natural grass. And second, they would move in the fences 10 feet all around.

“We wanted to give the fans more offense,” general manager Herk Robinson said.

Here is an actual sentence that appeared in the actual story announcing the change: “The pulled-in fences should be a boon to the Royals’ Bob Hamelin and Wally Joyner."

I don’t need to tell you that the pulled-in fences were not a boon to either Hamelin (who hit seven home runs in 1995 and was gone shortly after) or Joyner (who hit 12 home runs in 1995 and was gone shortly after). I don’t need to tell you that the pulled-in fences were an absolute disaster for the Royals, who only once finished with a winning record (and barely one at that — 83-70) in the nine years those dimensions lasted. Here are the home run totals at Kauffman Stadium for each of those seasons:

• 1995: Royals 49, Opponents 68

• 1996: Royals 50, Opponents 90

• 1997: Royals 88, Opponents 94

• 1998: Royals 76, Opponents 110

• 1999: Royals 74, Opponents 96

• 2000: Royals 84, Opponents 117

• 2001: Royals 75, Opponents 112

• 2002: Royals 88, Opponents 121

• 2003: Royals 69, Opponents 113

So, um, yeah, that wasn’t the wisest strategic move in the history of baseball.

In 2004, the Royals moved the fences back to their original location. And even though it wouldn’t be until 2017 that the Royals actually outhomered opponents in their home park, at least the home runs they allowed went down somewhat.

Last year, the Royals hit 70 homers at home and allowed 81.

On Tuesday, Royals general manager J.J. Picollo announced that the Royals are once again moving in their fences nine or ten feet (though keeping it at 410 feet in center) and also LOWERING the fences from 10 to 8½ feet in most places.

My man J.J. is convinced that this will help the Royals.

Unlike Kansas City dreamers of the past, though, he says they used data to make this decision.

“During the course of the season,” he told MLB.com, “we just started doing some research, running some numbers and trying to figure out how much this really impacts our offense. Consequently, how would it affect our pitching staff? Ultimately, we concluded that we would be a better team offensively. With our current pitching staff, the changes in the dimensions wouldn’t impact them negatively as much as it impacts our offense positively.”

I’ll be absolutely fascinated by how this plays out for a couple of reasons. One is: I have been a big believer for a long time that teams, especially teams with smaller payrolls, should absolutely try to make their home ballparks as big an advantage as possible. Baseball is a game that lets you do that, so teams should try to do that. If the NFL allowed teams to change the dimensions of the field, you know that a wide-open team like the Rams would make their field wider, and a ferocious defensive team like the Titans would make their field about the width of three Mazda Miatas.

I am convinced that the Pittsburgh Pirates, for example, should make PNC Park fit their style of play … whatever that is.

Two, though, is something that I’ve heard J.J. talk about before: He has believed for a long time that the big outfield at Kauffman Stadium has altered the way young players swing the bat. J.J. was instrumental in bringing in the young brigade of the early 2010s, and while that group certainly lived up to the hype — the team won back-to-back pennants and a World Series — his thought was that many of the young players that had a lot of natural power didn’t develop it, perhaps because they saw one too many long fly ball die at the warning track. Again, I’ll be interested to see if he’s right.

In the meantime … well, I don’t do fantasy sports here. But I’ll give you a freebie: You might want to get Bobby Witt Jr.

We’d see each other a few times every year. At Super Bowls. At World Series. At Masters. At the Olympics. At random games, when our cities happened to cross paths.

We’d greet each other the same way every time.

“When did you get in?”

“Where are you staying?”

“How about dinner on Saturday?”

We’d sit next to each other in press boxes overlooking fields. We’d crowd together on hard metal chairs in stuffy, small rooms where coaches and managers and quarterbacks and golfers stood behind a lectern and spoke into cameras and tape recorders. We’d laugh until we were crying on shuttle buses stuck in traffic. We’d munch snacks and drink warm beer together in hotel hospitality rooms that, paradoxically, closed too early and stayed open way too late.

We’d complain to each other about editors and athletes and public relations people and, mostly, each other.

We’d tell each other horror stories about endless airport delays, and 27 degree hotel rooms, and players who never showed up to answer questions, and that time we got food poisoning at that restaurant in Jacksonville.

We’d laugh together about that time Bob Knight yelled at us, or the time someone in the press box jinxed us all by talking out loud about how fast the game was going, or the time a game ended and we had nothing but a blank computer screen and three minutes to fill it.

We’d ask each other, “What’d you end up writing?”

We’d tell each other our story angles and hope for confirmation that it wasn’t the worst thing ever written.

We’d cancel plans at the last minute because the writing was taking longer than we expected.

We were a club. Sort of. We didn’t all know each other. But we all knew each other. Edwin and Dan in Miami. Bill in Los Angeles. Bernie in St. Louis. Sally and Tony and Michael in Washington. Paul and Tim in Cincinnati. Ann and Scott and Gwen and Bud and Ray in the Bay. Gary in St. Pete. Martin in Tampa. Chuck in Lexington. Pat in Louisville. Dave in Atlanta. Rick in Chicago. Bob and Jackie and Leigh and Dan in Boston. The whole New York contingent, there were a million of ‘em, Vac and Mike and Ian and Dave and George and Adrian and Jerry and all of ‘em. Tom in Omaha. Ken in Charleston. Patrick and Sid in Minneapolis. Woody and Mark and Bob in Denver. Mark in Orange County. Mitch and Joe and Michael in Detroit. Jim from the AP. Christine from USA Today. Randy in Fort Worth. David in Dallas. Bill and Ray in Philadelphia. Bud and Terry and Bill in Cleveland.

Dozens more. Legends like Jim. Characters like Art. Heroes like Dan. Stars like Rick. We’d see each other more than we saw our parents. We’d see each other on weekends and holidays, in Augusta and Beijing, South Bend, Johannesburg and New Orleans, Sydney and Pasadena and St. Andrews, and also Pittsburgh. We’d share quotes with each other and catch each other up on scorecards after bathroom breaks. We’d ask athletes and coaches the same questions. What was the thinking …? Did you expect …? How disappointing is it …?

We were like a traveling band, all of us sports columnists across America, only we weren’t traveling together, and we weren’t a band at all.

We were just living in a time that will never happen again.

We lost Bill Livingston over the weekend. He was 77 years old.

Bill was a sports columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer back when that newspaper — all big city newspapers and quite a few smaller city newspapers too — believed in covering the sports world for their own community. It isn’t an easy thing to explain today. There was just a feeling, no, more than a feeling, a deep-seated belief that the people who lived in Chagrin Falls deserved to read their very own story from the Final Four, told by Bill Livingston, the columnist they read four times a week.

There was a feeling, no, more than a feeling, that a family in Mahwah deserved to wake up in the morning after the Olympics and read their very own figure skating story told by Adrian Wojnarowski, the columnist they read four times a week.

There was a feeling, no, more than a feeling that a baseball fan in Menlo Park deserved to hear about the World Series from Ann Killion, even if the Giants or Athletics didn’t even come close to making it.

Does any of this make sense in today’s homogenized world? Maybe not. Maybe it didn’t make sense then either. But that was our world. We’d see each other a few times every year, and you could always count on Bill Livingston — Livvy, we called him — to make some sort of hard-bitten wisecrack that broke up the room. We’ll miss him a lot. We’ll miss those days.

Cubs sign Bregman

Nobody ever will — nor ever should — view the 2016 Cubs as a disappointment. They broke the longest drought in American sports. They changed the very meaning of Chicago Cubs baseball. They captured America’s heart like no baseball team in decades. All of it was a triumph.

And yet — you know “and yet” was coming — you can’t help but feel the Peggy Lee lyrics coming on: “Is that all there is?” Like the 1986 Mets … the 2009 Yankees … the 1957 Braves … it was tempting to believe that was a dynasty in the making. Those Cubs were loaded down with so many terrific young hitters (with more on the way) and such a smart front office, it seemed like the fun would last for a little while.

A very little while, as it turns out. The 2017 Cubs made it to the NLCS after a crazy playoff series against Washington, but they were not competitive against the Dodgers. The 2018 Cubs won 95 games but got knocked out of the tournament by the Colorado Rockies, of all teams. And after that, the team was a shell and spent the next few years rebuilding and disappointing, much to the dismay of Cubs fans who weren’t ready for the party to end.

This weekend, the Chicago Cubs signed Alex Bregman to a five-year, $175 million contract, and while it isn’t the only big move the Cubs have made in recent years (they traded for Kyle Tucker last year and signed Cody Bellinger and Dansby Swanson before that), it FEELS different. It FEELS like a move you make when you’re trying to win the World Series. The Cubs went all in on this one. They gave Bregman the largest average annual value contract in team history. They deferred a lot of the money, which is not usually the Cubs’ way. And they basically shelved their 24-year-old third baseman Matt Shaw, whose rookie year was marked by good defense, inconsistent hitting and him leaving the Cubs during a pennant race to attend Charlie Kirk’s memorial.

How much of a difference will Bregman make? Well, it’s just an opinion, but if he can stay healthy, I think Bregman will alter the Cubs’ chemistry in the best way. He’s a natural leader who still plays good defense and can still hit with power. I don’t suppose he will ever again be the monster that he was in 2018 or 2019, but he has been a 4-5 win player each of the last four seasons, and Red Sox players couldn’t stop gushing about what a force he is in the clubhouse.

This feels to me like the best move of the offseason.

Slushie Madness!

We went to Costco over the weekend — as part of my birthday weekend, I suppose — and our Costco impulse buy (I know you do have them too) was a slushie machine. Yeah. I know.

Our first attempt at making slushies wasn’t great, but our second shot — our attempt to make Coca-Cola slushies — was an absolute home run.

And I mean that both literally and figuratively.

You know how hearing that perfect summer song can transport you to a long-ago moment. Well, drinking that Coca-Cola slushie took me back more than 40 years to the 7-Eleven in our neighborhood. I’d go there pretty much every day (sometimes twice a day), to order a cherry or Coca-Cola slushie … just so I could get one of these 7-11 baseball coins, the kind that change the photo depending on the angle. I estimate that I spent roughly 86% of my net worth weekly buying 7-11 coins.

But, I mean, look at these bad boys!

Often, going back to eat or drink something you loved as a kid ends up being hugely disappointing — this is what the whole Pixifoods series I wrote 15 years ago was all about.*

*I have found my original Pixifoods series from back in 2010 — I’ll go ahead and reprint that if you like.

But the Coca-Cola slushie we made was delightful. It tasted just as great as I remembered. I didn’t get brain-freeze (though Margo did — amateur). I was reminded that with a good slushie, you have to constantly move the straw around to get more slushie.

And I kept thinking about those coins at the bottom of the 7-Eleven cup. Jim Rice! Andre Dawson! Eddie Murray! One year, I know they had Len Barker. You might remember that those coins were held in place by this little false bottom that you would remove. Pulling the coin was a bit like being a spy.

I guess what I’m saying is this: Slushie Machine = Awesome Purchase.

A few football thoughts from the weekend

Well, that was some kind of football weekend, wasn’t it? Every game (but one — we’ll get to it) was a thriller. You really have to hand it to the NFL: They know how to enthrall America. I scribbled down a few thoughts:

— You might remember a couple of years ago that I tried to drop the Cleveland Browns and went on a little NFL tour in search of a new football team. Alas, I can’t quit my hometown Browns — to the detriment of my health and well-being — but I will tell you that some stuff does linger from my new-team effort.

For one thing, it turns out that I am a pretty big fan of the Chicago Bears.

I didn’t even realize how big a fan of the Chicago Bears I am until this weekend’s game with the Packers, when I found myself living and dying with every play. It felt, honestly, like how I used to feel about the Browns. I was grumbling to myself about officiating. I was grumbling out loud about the meanness of fate. And finally, I was out of my seat when Caleb Williams threw the sweet touchdown pass to D.J. Moore with less than two minutes left, and out of my seat again when the last Packers pass fell incomplete.

It was pretty wonderful.

Obviously, there’s very little shared history yet. My only true Bears experience was going to the game with my pal Jeff and our daughter Katie. You might know that before that game, Jeff bought Katie a hot dog, and Katie asked the vendor for ketchup, which led the entire stadium to boo her, which was so delightful that we talk about it probably once a month.

Still, I have my team for these playoffs. Good, better, best! Go Bears!

— Of course, I also have a long-standing love and appreciation of the Buffalo Bills (and the city of Buffalo, which is one of my favorites). I so desperately want them to finally win a Super Bowl. So I was rooting hard in that Bills-Jaguars game too.

What happens if the Bears and Bills play each other in the Super Bowl?

I’ll tell you what: If that happens, it will be a very, very happy day.

— Before the wild Rams-Panthers game, Cam Newton came out to bang the drum and lead the crowd … and something occurred to me. It had been YEARS since I’d thought even one time about Cam Newton. And I LIVE IN CHARLOTTE. Newton was one of the most famous athletes in America, one of the most famous people in America. He seemed to be everywhere in my life. And now he’s just invisible. Weird.

— So Mike Schur has a theory, one I’ve come to accept as truth, that the New England Patriots are dementors. We talk about this quite a bit in our upcoming book BIG FAN, coming out May 19 (the New York Times calls it one of the nonfiction books everyone will be talking about this year!).

The theory is that, because Bill Belichick is Scrooge, the Grinch, and Mr. Potter all rolled into one, he specifically built the New England Patriots to not only win championships but also to do so in a way that steals joy from everyone. The perfect Belichick game was an 11-6 mudfight that left everyone, including Patriots fans, feeling just a little bit less happy than they were before the game began.

Belichick is gone, but the Patriots have still got it. On a weekend filled with comebacks, amazing plays, edge-of-seat excitement, the Patriots beat the Chargers in a 16-3 blah-fest that saddened the soul.

By the way, I know that San Diego quarterback Justin Herbert is good. I mean, his numbers are good. His record is good. He’s been to multiple Pro Bowls and received MVP votes. I intellectually know he’s good. But every time I see him, he looks like he did on Sunday — lost and broken. I mean, it wasn’t exactly his fault; the Chargers’ offensive line was a complete mess, and the Patriots’ defense was a runaway train. But I swear, every time I see him play, I think: Why does this guy always look like this when I watch him play?

Password: KUIPER

The Clubhouse is now in session.

The Greatest Ever Survey

I am SO excited about my Greatest Ever Survey, which I posted yesterday. I am excited about it, mostly because it will fuel a JoeBlogs exclusive series coming up later this month that I think (A) you will really like and (B) is probably not exactly what you’re expecting; (C) will revolve around what just might be the best acronym I’ve ever invented.

Also (D), I am commissioning some fun little artwork for it from one of my favorite artists!

The survey simply asks you to name the greatest player in a variety of sports. That’s it. One name. Thousands of you have already filled it out (thank you!), but if you haven’t, well, I’m going to keep it open for another week. It shouldn’t take you more than a couple of minutes.

The Tigers and Skubal are a mid-tier Picasso apart

I guess the question I have is: What are you doing, Tigers?

Thursday was the deadline for avoiding arbitration — and the Tigers and Tarik Skubal could not come to an agreement in time. That meant each side had to file an arbitration number.

Skubal’s representatives are looking for $32 million, which would set the arbitration record — Juan Soto’s $31 million arbitration win a couple of years ago.

And the Tigers countered with $19 million, which is less than they paid David Price in arbitration more than a decade ago.

The $13 million gap between the two is the largest in arbitration history.

And, to my eyes anyway, it’s essentially a public announcement by the Tigers that they have absolutely no intention of even trying to sign Skubal long-term. I mean, it’s never an insult to offer someone $19 million. But when you’re dealing with the best pitcher in baseball, runaway winner of the last two Cy Young Awards, the modern-day Koufax, by far the biggest reason the Tigers went from perpetually lousy to playoff team, well, yeah, $19 million is a statement.

I mean, you have already gotten TWO CY YOUNG SEASONS from the guy for a grand total of $12.8 million. He has been the bargain of the century. Fangraphs has estimated his open-market value over the last two years at a touch over $100 million.

Apparently, an 87% off sale is not enough for these Tigers.

So, yes, lowballing Tarik Skubal because you can is a statement — a statement that you do not particularly value the player, a statement that you do not intend to compete for him when he becomes a free agent at the end of the year, a statement that you do not care if he feels resentful toward the team.

I’ve never seriously thought the Tigers would deal Skubal this year.

Now, I’m thinking it might be inevitable.

Baseball Realignment Ideas

Brilliant Readers have lots (and lots) and lots of thoughts about where baseball should go if, indeed, they add to expansion teams. Here are a few highlights.

Brilliant Reader Ken gives an involved multi-round playoff extravaganza with one division, 14 teams advancing, the top six advance directly to the playoffs, and the other eight play in two double elimination tournaments to give us the final two playoff contenders.

Joe: I love ideas like this, though I don’t know how workable they actually are.

Brilliant Reader Brock wants the NHL format — two leagues and two divisions in each league. The division winners get a playoff bye, and each league has four wildcard teams. One thing that he adds: He wants to go back to the idea of making the AL and NL completely separate — no interleague play. Under this idea, the leagues would never play each other except in the All-Star Game and the World Series.

Joe: In a time when Rob Manfred talks about eliminating the AL and NL — and, I have to admit, a lot of smart people all around the game seem to agree with him — I am much more in tune with Brock. I’d rather double down on the American and National Leagues. I’d be up for them being run independently, with each league potentially having different rules, different strategies, different philosophies. I think that would be MUCH better for the game. And I think it would make the postseason much more interesting.

Again, much smarter people than me (I?) are ready to eliminate the AL and NL and turn baseball into a geographical construct. So take this all with a grain of salt. But I think throwing away 126 years of history would be an absolute disaster.

Brilliant Reader Dave (and his friend Nick) have come up with names for each of the four divisions:

American League

• Gehrig Division: A’s, Guardians, Orioles, Red Sox, Tigers, Twins, White Sox, Yankees.

• Brett Division: Angels, Astros, Jays, Mariners, Rangers, Rays, Royals, Expansion team.

National League

• Clemente Division: Cardinals, Cubs, Dodgers, Giants, Pirates, Phillies, Reds, and the Atlanta Hammers.

• Gwynn Division: Brewers, Diamondbacks, Marlins, Mets, Nationals, Padres, Rockies, Expansion team.

Joe: A lot to unpack here, which I will let you Brilliant Readers do … but I have spent a lot of time thinking about naming divisions after players, and while I love the idea in theory, I don’t love it in practice. This is a great example: All four players the divisions are named after are worthy greats.

But do Red Sox fans really want to play in the Gehrig division? Every team in the Brett division will think, “Wait, we had a player as good as George Brett.” That argument would never end — I mean, the Clemente Division is probably the most inarguable one, but since the Dodgers are in this proposed Clemente Division, they might wonder how it’s not named for Jackie or Campy.

Brilliant Reader Martin wants to go to the NFL setup of two leagues, four divisions in each league, and four teams in each division. He also thinks that if Nashville and Salt Lake City are the two expansion teams added, they should be called the Nashville Chords and the Utah Slopes.

Joe: One of the coolest things about the Nashville expansion effort is that it already has a name — the Nashville Stars, named after the old Nashville Stars Negro Leagues team.

Brilliant Reader Nato focuses his suggestions on creating a meaningful NHL-style Presidents’ Trophy for the team with the best record. Nato’s idea is that the record would come with a large cash prize and other meaningful incentives so that it would actually mean something to teams and players.

Joe: This is also Billy Beane’s idea — he and I have discussed this at some length. The hard part is making the “Best team record” meaningful to everyone. Cash helps, sure, but it has to be something that carries prestige.

One idea someone offered that I kind of love — even if it is entirely unworkable — is that the team with the best record AUTOMATICALLY goes to the World Series. Everybody else would play in a playoff, and then the survivor would play the regular season champion for the World Series crown. Yes, this is unworkable for the three dozen reasons that instantly popped into your head (you don’t have to send that email; I know the reasons), but I appreciate the idea of making the regular season not only matter but matter A LOT.

One other quick thought before we go to the poll: Multiple readers suggested that maybe there’s a way to expand the whole concept of the World Baseball Classic and involve professional teams from other leagues and create some sort of super tourney, not unlike the UEFA Champions League. I haven’t seen an especially compelling way to do this just yet … but I think the idea itself is brilliant.

In this week’s poll, I asked if you would prefer an NFL system (two leagues, eight divisions) or the NHL system (two leagues, four divisions).

The voting was basically split down the middle — 54% of you prefer the NHL, four-division structure.

The Ed Sullivan Show is on television that night, just like it is on every Sunday night in those days. Ethel Merman sings her curtain-dropping song “Some People” from the Broadway show “Gypsy.” She also performs a duet with Broadway legend Gordon MacRae, who played Curly in “Oklahoma.”

The King Toys, a comedy acrobat team, perform too, along with the dancer José Greco, and the folk group “The Serendipity Singers” who sing their hit “Don’t Let the Rain Come Down (Crooked Little Man).”

There was a crooked man, and he had a crooked smile
Had a crooked sixpence and he walked a crooked mile
Had a crooked cat, and he had a crooked mouse
They all lived together in a crooked little house

Two comedians from very different eras tell jokes. Myron Cohen was a salesman in New York’s garment district who always had a joke for his customers. Flip Wilson was an Air Force veteran who got his start in comedy by playing a drunk in the audience who would come out between acts and perform before people even knew he was performing. They are the past and future of American comedy.

This is closer to the end than the beginning of The Ed Sullivan Show. The variety show is still hugely popular as 1967 begins, but it has lost much of the power it had in the late 1950s and early 1960s when it introduced America to Elvis and Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones, Little Stevie Wonder and the Supremes and, most of all, The Beatles.

America’s attention is turning. In the late 1960s, Sullivan will try to keep the audience by turning to rock and roll. Jimi Hendrix will play “Hey Joe” on the show in 1969. Janis Joplin sang “Piece of My Heart” that same year. But the clock is ticking. The show will last only four more years.

On a very special Bonanza, a lovesick youth (played by 16-year-old Beau Bridges) harbors inner tension that leads to tragedy. Lassie protects a mountain lion cub from a wolf. Walt Disney presents the first of a three-part Civil War adventure called “Willie and the Yank,” about a young Confederate officer posing as a Union soldier to get through Northern lines. Johnny Carson, who has only just started hosting The Tonight Show, welcomes a jazz singer and golfer named Don Cherry. Cherry had a big hit in the 1950s called “Band of Gold.” He also was in contention at the famous 1960 U.S. Open, where he finished tied with Ben Hogan for ninth, four shots behind Arnold Palmer.

Later, there will be another Don Cherry, a hockey Don Cherry.

House Minority Leader Gerald Ford appears on “Meet the Press” to demand that the administration be more transparent about what’s really happening in Vietnam.

Walking down the steps this morning, I felt a brief but painful twinge in my right knee.

The number one song in America — the one playing nonstop on all the radios in all the homes and cars across this nation of 198 million people — is “I’m a Believer” by The Monkees.

Neil Diamond wrote the song when he was one of the Brill Building Songwriters of the 1960s. The Brill Building, at 1619 Broadway in New York, had small offices, each with an upright piano, and inside, Carole King wrote “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” Neil Sedaka wrote “Breaking Up is Hard to Do,” Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil wrote “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” and Jeff Barry wrote a whole bunch of silly, happy songs with made up words like “Da Doo Ron Ron,” and “Do Wah Diddy Diddy,” and song about a girl named “Skooby-Doo” — this before the cartoon dog Scooby Doo.

Neil Diamond was younger than most of the other songwriters, and he was hoping to capture some of that happiness and joy that sold in the mid-1960s. He wanted to write a song about someone who had been cynical about love and then, in a flash, love reveals itself. The phrase “Then I saw her face/Now I’m a believer” is what grabbed him.

The Monkees hopped on the song because The Monkees were a television show band that needed to constantly feed the beast with new, happy songs. The Monkees were formed not for the music but for the sitcom; the producers wanted to create a funny show about a Beatles-like band, kind of like a weekly version of the movie “A Hard Day’s Night.”

The casting call was one of the most famous in rock and roll history: Stephen Stills, Danny Hutton (later the lead singer of “Three Dog Night”), Paul Williams, and, yes, you probably knew this, Charles Manson auditioned.*

Anyway, Mickey Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork were cast because they all could act, all had television charisma, and, yes, secondarily, they all had some musical talent. They were supposed to be controlled. They were supposed to be corporate.

The funny thing is that a few months after January 8, 1967, The Monkees — whose popularity in America rivaled the Beatles — go rogue. They fire producer Don Kirshner. They demand to choose their own songs and control their own recording sessions. They record an album with songs mostly written by the band itself, called “Headquarters” — an album without even one poppy single on it — and then they go on tour where they perform the songs live with no backing tracks.

They then play in the movie “Head” — co-written by Jack Nicholson! — which is angry and pointed and meant to prove that they are not some manufactured cotton candy band but real people and real artists with real ambitions.

I drove to work this morning in my little candy-apple red car. I wore my fedora with a feather on the side. I wonder how many people I passed thought, “That guy is a tool,” and how many thought, “That guy is living his best life.”

Three people are rescued from a mine on Whiskey Island in Cleveland. Five hundred thousand anti-Red Guard protesters march on Peking. You can buy a mink jacket for $789. Lyndon Johnson gives his State of the Union address.

“I have to come here tonight,” he begins, “to report to you that this is a time of testing for our nation.”

A Sears Kenmore Wringer Washer will cost you $98 unless you want the aromatic, suds-saving feature, which adds $100.

Twenty percent of college students admit in a poll that they cheated at least once on a test in their freshman year.

Teenagers — mostly girls — rush the stage of the Loews State Theater in New York to get to the psychedelic rock band “Blues Magoos.” “It wasn’t bad,” the stage manager says. “They’re good kids. Just enthusiastic.”

Sugar reaches a 35-year low price. Japan worries that American automakers will soon invade and dominate its car market. You can get a pool table for less than $400 if you shop well, and Florsheim shoes for less than $20.

Kids play outside, almost always unsupervised. Most families have one income and one television — mostly black-and-white televisions. Gas is 32 cents a gallon. Many homes have a telephone party line, meaning they share the telephone with other families.

The top movie in America is “Follow Me Boys,” starring Fred MacMurray as a one-time saxophone player who settles down in a small town and becomes a Scoutmaster to help the boys stay off the street. It is the last Disney movie released in Walt Disney’s lifetime. Another big hit is “The Professionals,” a Western starring Burt Lancaster and Lee Marvin as mercenaries hired to rescue a rancher’s wife from a Mexican bandit.

I purposely set up everything to sleep in this morning. I set no alarm. Margo was careful not to wake me up when she left this morning to tutor kids. Westley, our dog, was instructed to leave me be, and he followed through — probably because he’s also old and tired and uninterested in getting up early himself.

I set everything up so I could sleep in all day if I wanted.

I woke up at 6:22 a.m. anyway.

John Unitas and the Baltimore Colts take on the Philadelphia Eagles in something called “The Playoff Bowl.” This is a consolation game for the two NFL teams that missed the championship. It is, purportedly, for second place. Vince Lombardi calls it a “Loser’s Bowl for Losers.” The Colts win 20-14.

Jackie Gleason flips the opening coin in the game.

Dick Young writes, “Next time Jackie Gleason tosses kickoff for the Second Place Bowl, they should give him an assistant to bend over and read it.”

The first NFL-AFL Championship game is a week away between the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs. Nobody seems to have any doubt that the Packers will win and win handily. There are some calling it “The Super Bowl.”

“We peasants have been bombarded with the Super Bowl propaganda for some time,” Cleveland’s E.M. Gingerich writes in a letter to the editor. “It never sounded too good to me. It reminded me too much of Super Suds and stuff like that. I wonder why nobody suggested stuff like the Lettuce Bowl or the Greenback Bowl or the Gold Bowl.”

South Carolina is put on probation for violations involving financial aid to athletes — apparently, their head football coach, Marvin Bass, provided three players with cash, meal tickets, and books for their classes. The school also created a secret fund used to entertain high school coaches.

Oscar Robertson scores 21 points and adds 17 assists as the Cincinnati Royals beat the Baltimore Bullets in an NBA game.

The headline in multiple papers: “Royals Riddle Bullets.”

The Harlem Globetrotters try to sign Gale Sayers. The Cincinnati Reds talk about moving Pete Rose from second base to the outfield. Joe Pepitone, in an effort to get in the best possible shape for the 1967 Yankees season, works out with the football Giants. A San Francisco newspaper columnist calls Vince Lombardi, “The Benito Mussolini of fun.”

In College Park, Maryland — with 1:15 left and Maryland leading N.C. State 60-55 in a college basketball game — N.C. State coach Norm Sloan says something so upsetting to referee George Conley that Conley just takes the ball, walks off the court, and declares the game over. Neither Sloan nor Conley reveals what is said, but it must be bad. Conley was a Kentucky State Senator for a decade. He’s probably heard some pretty ugly insults.

“Integration is no problem in sports,” David Condon writes in the Chicago Tribune. “More than 25 percent of the players in the National Football League are Negroes.”

Most newspapers still insist on calling Muhammad Ali “Cassius Clay.”

On my kitchen table this morning was an advanced reader of BIG FAN, the book I wrote with Mike Schur that will come out on May 19. Next to it were notes for the Why We Love Baseball young reader edition that will come out in 2027, along with notes for the still-secret baseball book that will also come out in 2027.

When the dust clears, that will make an even dozen books.

On my phone were texts from our two daughters, Elizabeth and Katie. Elizabeth is teaching theater to preschool and elementary children and is about to sign for her first apartment. Katie just got back from studying abroad in London and is back at Wake Forest for her spring junior semester.

Margo kissed me on the forehead on her way out the door, the way 19th-century characters do in the movies. This year, we will have been married for 28 years.

Westley, our old dog, finally came into the room to greet the day. He just stared at me for a long time as if to say, “We’ve a lot of stuff, haven’t we, buddy?”

I think all the time these days about the poem from Saigyö that Roger Kahn quotes in “The Boys of Summer.”

  Did I ever dream
I should pass this way again
As an old man?
I have lived such a long time—
Nakayama of the Night

*Apparently, this Charles Manson bit is an urban legend. Even when you search for things like “urban legends,” they sometimes still pop up wrong. It’s harder every day to get at what’s real.

This will sound like it’s about football, but I don’t think it is. I think it’s about something more. Sunday night, with two seconds left in the game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens, rookie kicker Tyler Loop lined up to boot a 44-yard field goal.

If he made it, the Ravens would win the game by a point and go to the playoffs.

If he missed it, the Steelers would win the game by two points and go to the playoffs.

Loop had not missed a 40-something field goal all season. He’d attempted eight of them, including one earlier in the game. He made eight of them. The Ravens were so confident that he’d make the field goal that they didn’t even try to get closer. In fact, to set up the field goal, quarterback Lamar Jackson actually lost two yards but placed the ball in the middle of the field.

If you follow the NFL at all, you surely know that Loop badly missed the field goal.

The Steelers will play a home playoff game against Houston on Monday night.

And, on Tuesday, the Ravens fired their longtime head coach, John Harbaugh.

One play. One moment. If he’d made the kick, the Steelers probably would have fired their longtime head coach, Mike Tomlin. If he’d made the kick, Harbaugh would be watching film right now, and Ravens fans would be dreaming Super Bowl dreams.

One play. One moment.

Of course, it isn’t about one play and one moment. There are countless moments in each team’s season that could have changed the story. But this is the moment that endures because it came at the end, and it was so decisive, and you don’t have to use much imagination to envision the alternate universe.

What is sports but a series of such story-bending moments? Every pitch, every pass, every shot, every putt, every decision sets a course. Think about a seemingly meaningless 0-1 pitch in an early inning of a June game between, I don’t know, the Blue Jays and Yankees. New York leads 3-1. Carlos Rodon throws a curveball just off the outside corner to Davis Schneider. Yankees rookie catcher J.C. Escarra tries to frame it so that home plate umpire Dan Merzel will call it a strike.

Merzel is in his first year as a full-time umpire. This is not important, but he has a degree in applied mathematics from Johns Hopkins. Well, I mean, I’m sure it IS important to Dan, but it’s not important for our example.

Anyway, Merzel called it a ball.

Had he called it a strike, the count would have been 0-2.

Davis Schneider, I kid you not, hit .025 after falling behind 0-2 in 2025.

But instead the count was 1-1, and Schneider eventually doubled, and this sparked a four-run rally, and the Blue Jays won the game 5-4, and the Blue Jays went on to sweep the Yankees four straight, and this gave the Blue Jays the tiebreaker over the Yankees when they each finished the season with the same 94-68 record, and this gave the Blue Jays homefield advantage in the division series, and the Blue Jays won their two home games against the Yankees 10-1 and 13-7, and the Blue Jays went on to the World Series.

One play. One moment.

Every game — every day — is filled with a countless number of these. We’d drive ourselves crazy if we spent too much time thinking about how taking a different route home or calling a friend or holding up the runner at third or buying this book instead of that one or missing a 44-yard field goal might change not only our lives but the entire world around us. But it’s true.

Thirty-three days until pitchers and catchers report, and here’s your daily splash of joy — Why You Love Baseball:

Brilliant Reader Jacob: “Probably the thing I love most about seeing big league games in person: seeing Major Leaguers playing catch; it’s the first thing kids learn to do and do it before every game at every level, and to see it perfected as these masters of the game effortlessly toss the ball hundreds of feet on a line is mesmerizing.”

Brilliant Reader Waldo: El Duque Hernández high-leg kick, beautiful ❤️!!

Brilliant Reader Mark: “Players not stepping on the line when coming on and off the field.”

Brilliant Reader Arnie: “While I have had the thrill of being at Game 7 with my son in 2016 when the Cubs won the World Series, nothing beats the regular season games that I took in at Wrigley this past year again with my son and now also my grandson!

If you want to email why you love baseball — photos, drawings, poems, and all else welcome — here’s the address.

Woke up this fine morning thinking about league size.

Yeah, sometimes I just wake up thinking about league size. It’s a problem.

At some point in the next few years — assuming that MLB doesn’t just blow itself up, which is not necessarily a safe assumption, but let’s go with it — there will be 32 teams in baseball. I don’t know when, but at some point (I’d guess before Rob Manfred retires in January 2029), they will add two teams. Nashville and Salt Lake City seem like pretty heavy favorites at the moment among the folks I’m talking with. But, there are other cities in the mix — Montreal, Portland, Raleigh, San Antonio, maybe Charlotte.

Anyway, when the smoke finally clears, baseball will have 32 teams just like the NFL and NHL.

That’s a good number, 32. Sandy Koufax’s number. Jim Brown’s number. Magic Johnson’s number.

There’s a whole lot you can do with a 32-team league.

The question today is: What’s the best way for BASEBALL to structure a 32-team league?

Before we get there, though, let’s talk a little bit about baseball’s numerical history because it’s pretty odd.

What we’re talking about here is the numerical history of the American and National Leagues. When you start including other major leagues like the Negro Leagues and Frontier League — bring back the Brooklyn Tip Tops and Kansas City Packers and Pittsburgh Rebels! — the number of major league teams has fluctuated from 16 to 33.

But from the founding of the American League in 1901 until 1960, there were always 16 teams in MLB. That number stayed consistent. And that number was absolutely ideal for the long and winding baseball season. You had two eight-team leagues, those eight teams fought it out for 154 games over six months, and then the champion of each league played in the World Series. It was elegant, romantic, and wonderful.

But MLB couldn’t stay at 16 teams forever. For one thing, the country was growing rapidly. For another, the nation's appetites were changing.

In 1961, the American League added two teams. The next year, the National League did the same. MLB also added eight regular-season games to the schedule. So now MLB had a total of 20 teams — two 10-team leagues.

This was … not quite as elegant.

Meanwhile, in the world of football, things were changing drastically. A whole American Football League was founded (something almost impossible to happen in baseball because of MLB’s antitrust exemption), and that meant there were a bunch of playoff games and a big ol’ Championship Game people immediately started calling “The Super Bowl.” People loved it! Turns out Americans couldn’t get enough of these dopamine-rush winner-take-all events.

So in 1969, MLB entirely changed course. They added four teams — moving the number up to 24 teams — and divided each league into two six-team divisions. The champions of each division would play in a championship series.

Now, four teams would make the playoffs instead of two! Double the fun!

But MLB was still way behind the other sports in playoff buzz. By the mid-1970s, the NFL had 10 teams making the playoffs. The NHL had, I don’t know, 400? I’m pretty sure my father’s bowling team made the NHL playoffs at some point.

In 1977, the American League added two more expansion teams. Yeah, it was weird. For 17 years, there were 14 teams in the American League and only 12 in the National League, making it meaningfully more difficult to make the playoffs in the AL. That wasn’t ideal.

In 1993, the National League added two teams, bringing the total to 28.

In 1994, MLB divided each league into three (uneven) divisions and added a wildcard — now eight teams made the playoffs instead of four.

Double the fun again!

In 1998, MLB added two more expansion teams, bringing the league total to the 30 we still have today. Each league was divided into three divisions with five teams each. And for the last 25 years or so, MLB has been adding wildcard teams to the playoffs (these days, 12 teams make the playoffs), and constantly changing the number of games in each playoff series (we now have three-game series, five-game series, and seven-game series). The whole thing has turned into a mathematical calamity.

When baseball expands to 32 teams, there will be an opportunity to bring back some sanity and reason to the baseball season.

But here’s the question for you: How would you do it?

Would you follow the NHL’s formula — two leagues, two divisions of eight teams in each league, and build out the playoffs from there?

Or would you follow the NFL’s formula — four leagues, four divisions of four teams in each league, and build out the playoffs from there?

Let me tell you what my ideal would be … and why it will never happen.

What I’d like to see is eight divisions, four teams each — but ONLY if the playoffs involve JUST THE EIGHT DIVISION WINNERS.

That makes sense to me. I think if the playoffs in each league (assuming we still have the American and National League) featured just the four division winners, that would make a lot of sense. It would give us real pennant races. It would make the long season feel somewhat worthwhile. It would add up.

Here’s the problem: There’s no way that MLB will go back to just eight playoff teams. This is a league that grabs for every dollar it can, no matter the long-term implications. MLB really isn’t making that much money on the wildcard round. It’s not like the NFL, where every extra playoff game is tens of millions of dollars. I mean, most of this year’s wildcard round will be shown on Peacock and NBC Sports Network — you think MLB is getting a lot of money for that?

They’re not. But they’re getting SOME money for that, and like I say, MLB is all about getting every dime it can RIGHT NOW. That’s why the word “Strauss” — a German workwear company — is plastered on every batting helmet. Next year, MLB might have a “PUT YOUR LOGO HERE” circle on every uniform with a QR code for you to scan.

So they’re not going back to only eight playoff teams.

Assuming they stay with 12 playoff teams — or, more likely, go up to 16 because, again, money — then I see no value in eight divisions at all. At that point, they should just go back to two divisions (to determine the two first-round byes), or even one, and just pick the teams with the best records. Yes, for me it’s ugly and antithetical to baseball’s history, but this seems to be the direction that MLB is going, and I think a lot of people would prefer the simplicity of it.

Anyway, I’m very curious to hear your perspective. This isn’t really about math or symmetry; it’s about what a baseball season should feel like. I’m very much on the record as someone who wants fewer playoff teams and more meaning in the regular season. Many others would like more chaos and a bigger October.

So let’s see what you think: I’ll write about the poll results in The Clubhouse later this week, and if you have some stuff you’d like to say, send it along here.

Browns 20, Bengals 18

The final record: 5-12

The big takeaway: Myles gets the sack record, KevStef gets a parting gift.

Well, as expected, the Browns fired Kevin Stefanski this morning. We’ll talk about our guy Stefanski in a minute. First, though, I should say as a fan — since putting voice to what it means to be a fan is the whole point of this ridiculous Browns Diary — that Myles Garrett getting his 23rd sack of the season, breaking the sack record, was the happiest Browns moment I’ve had in years. I actually yelled out, “Yes!” when it happened.

“That’s the first time I can remember you yelling out something during a Browns game,” my wife Margo said.

Yeah. It’s been a long time.

Myles Garrett is amazing. It is my nature — and the nature of lots of sports fans* — to paint in broad strokes and refer to this player or that as the greatest at something or other. Steph Curry is the greatest shooter ever. Novak Djokovic is the greatest tennis player ever. Bill Glass, who plays Dr. Rick in those “turning into your parents” ads, is the greatest commercial actor ever. Simone Biles is the greatest gymnast ever. Myles Garrett is the greatest pass rusher ever. And so on.

*Thankfully! How else would I make a living?

And if you are this type of fan, right now your “greatest ever” synapses are buzzing and you are looking for that comment button so you can scream “ABSOLUTELY NOT, LARRY BIRD IS STILL THE GREATEST SHOOTER EVER, AND ROGER FEDERER IS THE GREATEST TENNIS PLAYER EVER, AND DEAN WINTERS (OR MAYBE STEPHANIE COURTNEY) IS THE GREATEST COMMERCIAL ACTOR EVER, AND NOBODY WILL EVER TOP NADIA COMANECI AS A GYMNAST, AND MAYBE YOU HAVE HEARD OF A GUY NAMED LAWRENCE TAYLOR, AND ARE YOU AN INSANE PERSON?”

So here’s what I want to say about Garrett instead: The last two weeks, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cincinnati Bengals decided, consciously and subconsiously, that they would rather LOSE THE GAME than allow Garrett to get the record-breaking sack. It was an astonishing thing to see. They each basically eliminated dropback passes from their offensive game plan; they ran the ball and punted rather than risking sacks; they dumped off short passes hoped that they might win even if they didn’t score much.

It was a shocking strategy for both teams for different reasons. For the Steelers, it was shocking because they needed to win the game. Losing put them in the position of needing to beat Baltimore Sunday night just to make the playoffs, which they did only when a rookie kicker missed a 44-yard field goal at the end.

As for the Bengals, I mean, they have probably the best receiving tandem in the NFL in Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, and they have one of the most accurate downfield passers we’ve ever seen in Joe Burrow, so watching them dump the ball off most of the game and run the ball a bunch didn’t seem an especially effective plan.

But it did have the intended effect: It seemed like they would prevent Garrett from getting the big sack. It was quite the shift from Michael Strahan’s record-breaking sack, which, you might remember, was Brett Favre simply giving himself up.

Then, with just 5:19 left in the game — and the Browns leading — the Bengals basically had no choice. Burrow dropped back and Garrett did his magical thing. He perfectly anticipated the snap — no defensive lineman in the NFL gets called for more offsides penalties than Garrett because he’s always playing right on that edge — and was around the Bengals’ left tackle, Orlando Brown Jr., instantly. It was, as Mina Kimes wrote, like he was on “fast forward.”

This is the magic trick we have been fortunate to watch for the last few years as Browns fans. We haven’t had much joy, but seeing Garrett just disappear at the line and reappear at the quarterback time and time again has been truly wonderful. The thing about being a fan, especially of a spectacularly bad team like the Browns, is that you must find your happiness wherever you can. For years, I would get it by watching Joe Thomas playing brilliantly at left tackle, even as the team changed quarterbacks and coordinators daily and lost in the most spectacularly grotesque ways.

Now, it’s about watching Myles Garrett perform weekly miracles.

I’m so glad he got the record. It made the season for me.

My (new) favorite NFL television quirk

Every year, I pick out a little NFL television quirk that brings me an uncomfortable amount of joy. For a while, it was the fact that whenever a quarterback stepped to the line, looked around, and called a timeout, the announcer was (legally?) obligated to say: “He didn’t like what he saw.”

I used to like how cameras — they don’t do this anymore, alas — would focus on the 2:00 on the clock when the two-minute warning happened.

I like how the camera guys always find the two people in the crowd with that combined “D-Fence” sign — one holding a giant “D” and the other holding a little fence.*

*This is not something I “like” or “dislike,” but I am convinced, absolutely convinced, that field goal kickers miss more often when the camera angle is from behind them than when the camera angle is from behind the goalpost. Is this something I believe alone?

Here’s my new favorite quirk — though I should say it’s not exactly new, I think television producers have been doing it for years, but I’ve really noticed it lately: I love when someone commits a turnover and then, if the other team scores, the cameras find and focus on the guy who committed the turnover. It seems so unnecessarily cruel, as if to say: “Hey, in case you forgot, THIS IS THE GUY who turned the ball over to lead to this score.”

The Last Kevin Stefanski Press Conference

I’ve noticed a new looseness with Kevin Stefanski over the last few weeks. I mean, no, he still isn’t saying anything of note, he’s still the master of meaningless cliches, but he’s been saying them with a little bit more gusto as of late.

I’m convinced that this is because he has known for some time that he would get fired.

Monday morning, he did get fired. Interestingly, the Browns did not fire general manager Andrew Berry, probably because the Browns had what has become a celebrated 2025 draft class, featuring likely defensive rookie of the year Carson Schwesinger, the Browns’ leading rusher Quinson Judkins, the Browns’ leading pass-catcher Harold Fannin, and the Browns’ top two passers, Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel.

I do not want to downplay this rookie class because I’m hopeful about it … but I’m also skeptical. The Browns were so shorthanded in 2025 that they had no choice but to play rookies everywhere. When you play a bunch of rookies, then the rookies put up numbers. Judkins averaged just 3.6 yards per carry. Fannin looked promising, but hey, SOMEBODY had to lead this team in receptions. I don’t think either of the rookie quarterbacks is a viable NFL starter. We’ll see how many of these rookies actually become impact players as the years go on.

But what makes me more skeptical about Berry is that the REASON the Browns were so shorthanded in 2025 is that they made the worst trade in NFL history, giving up everything, including their souls, to get He Who Shall Not Be Named to play quarterback. Last I checked, it was Berry who made that trade. Giving Berry too much credit for what might be a good rookie class in 2025 is like giving a medal to someone who puts out part of the fire that he set in the first place.

“Oh, I see,” Rip Torn says in Defending Your Life. “You’re not a hero if you save your own life.”

“A hero?” Lee Grant replies. “No. You’re not. No.”

But the Browns want to treat Berry as a hero, so he stays.

Stefanski does not, and I think in the end it probably comes as a relief. Being the coach of the Cleveland Browns — particularly under this mess of an ownership group — must be so frustrating, exhausting, and soul-sucking. On the bright side, if you can ever take this team to the playoffs, they’ll definitely give you NFL Coach of the Year — Stefanski won the award both times he took the team to the playoffs.

On the dark side of being a Browns coach is, yeah, everything else.

Stefanski tried to meet the Browns’ dysfunction with bland professionalism, and being boring and colorless took him pretty far. He avoided saying or doing anything controversial. He never passed any blame — he must have told us 500 times that he needed to coach better. He called reporters by their first names to the very end.

“You can’t write a better script,” he said on Sunday after the Browns beat the Bengals 20-18 on a last-second field goal. Then he looked over at longtime Browns reporter Tony Grossi and said, “Not even you, Tony.”

And he lasted six years, something the previous 13 Browns coaches could not achieve.

What did those six years take out of him? We’ll probably never know because Stefanski’s greatest strength is keeping his feelings buried. I know it will never happen, but I’d love to have an off-the-record beer with the guy someday.

I imagine someone will hire Stefanski pretty quickly — I just heard from a Giants fan and Brilliant Reader who asks, “What do you think of Stefanski in a (slightly) less dysfunctional organization with a promising young quarterback?” And the answer is, I think he’d have a real chance of success. I don’t think it’s guaranteed, obviously. He’d have to make some adjustments. I think he’d probably have to rethink how he deals with the public-facing part of the job (especially in New York) and loosen up just a little on the cliches. I think he’d probably want to hire an offensive coordinator he’s sympatico with and let them call the plays. But the instincts are there, I believe, and the football savvy is there. I think he’d be a really good hire for the Giants.

As for the Browns, I guess the most obvious thing for them to do is make defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz the head coach. I’m not a huge fan of that idea; Schwartz turns 60 this year, he wasn’t all that great when he was the Lions’ head coach more than a decade ago, etc.

I’d love to see them keep Schwartz as defensive coordinator and hire an interesting offensive-minded guy like Seattle’s Klint Kubiak. But I don’t know if that would work. I don’t know if a head coach would want to come into a situation where the defensive coordinator was part of the deal.

The truth is that this move could really backfire; Stefanski might go on to success elsewhere, and the Browns might hire another Hue Jackson or Mike Pettine. That doesn’t mean that the Browns made the wrong move letting Stefanski go; I think time just ran out on that marriage. It’s more that I don’t trust the Browns to do the winning thing.

Thirty-five days until pitchers and catchers report, and here’s your daily splash of joy — Why You Love Baseball:

Brilliant Reader Cody: “I stumbled across a box of old memorabilia my dad held onto. Check out the pennant he picked up from the 1966 All-Star Game at Busch II. How many Hall of Famers can you count?

Joe: Let’s see — from left to right, I count Clemente, Mays, Torre, Aparicio, Cepeda, Aaron, Mantle, Killebrew, Santo, Brooksie, Oliva, Yaz, Perry, Gibson, Marichal, Koufax, Bunning, Morgan, Kaat, McCovey, Stargell, Robbie, Kaline, Dick Allen and Walter Alston as manager. So … that’s 25? Not bad. Not bad at all.

If you want to email why you love baseball — photos, drawings, poems, and all else welcome — here’s the address.

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:

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:

1. Is that guy supposed to be Novak Djokovic?

2. 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)
5:26 AM • Jan 2, 2026

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 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.

Let me be the first — after Vineyard Vines, STK Steakhouse, RetailMeNot, MacCase, IDAGIO, CSMG, Bon Vie Café & Bistro, The Ick, Hilsinger-Mendelson, VitalSleep, Team IRC, Adobe, and 436 other companies that somehow got my email — to wish you a Happy New Year!

Today is the 59th birthday of the great Mike Vaccaro, New York Post columnist deluxe. Mike was born one week before me. This is the week I get to call him an old man.

So, 2026, eh?

No baseball player has exactly 2026 hits — the closest are the Phillips Guys, Tony and Brandon, with Tony Phillips at 2,023 and Brandon Phillips at 2,029. Tony did walk more than three times as often, though, 1,319 walks to only 420.

Nobody scored exactly 2026 runs — A-Rod gets closest to the pin with 2021.

Nobody drove in exactly 2026 RBI — Barry Bonds wins the Price is Right this time with 1,996 RBI. That’s one more, by the way, than Lou Gehrig for sixth place overall.

No pitcher has struck out exactly 2026 batters — the closest is a tie between Lance Lynn and Rick Reuschel, who each had 2,015. This is why I love doing silly statistical things like this. The numbers bring together Lance Lynn and Rick Reuschel.

With innings pitched, we get OH SO CLOSE. Vern Kennedy (who, in different seasons, led the league in losses, earned runs, and walks) and Johan Santana (who should be put back on the Hall of Fame ballot) each threw 2,025⅔ innings in their very different careers. I mean, I say we round up and count it, though, realistically, they hit their mark on October 1 at exactly 6 p.m.

Nobody has finished within 300 walks of 2026, but this is a good time to remind you that the career list for walks looks like so:

1. Nolan Ryan, 2,795

2. Steve Carlton, 1,833

There has never been anyone in sports like Nolan Ryan.

No manager has won exactly 2026 games, but Terry Francona did win the 2,026th game of his illustrious career on September 17 in St. Louis. Spencer Steer’s three-run homer was the big blow. Francona now has 2,033 career regular-season victories. But you probably want to add in his 44 postseason wins.

In the 2010-11 NBA season, Derrick Rose scored exactly 2,026 points. So that’s fun. That was the year that Rose won the MVP over LeBron James because everybody was kind of mad at LeBron for “The Decision” to go to Miami. I know I was. In the five seasons between 2008 and 2013, LeBron won four MVPs. This was the one year he didn’t.

Eric Dickerson had 2,026 yards from scrimmage in his superb 1986 season. He carried the football 404 times that year — an utterly absurd number. Even though the season has expanded to 17 games, nobody has carried the football 400 times since 2006, when Kansas City Chiefs coach Herm Edwards kept giving the ball to Larry Johnson. I was there for all that — Larry Johnson was a true force of nature. The Chiefs had a legendary offensive line — maybe the best ever offensive line with Will Shields and Willie Roaf (just before he retired) and Brian Waters — and for two seasons, Johnson plowed over defenders like a modern-day Jim Brown.

But Jim Brown was plowing over defenders 50-to-75 pounds lighter, and it is unconscionable in today’s NFL to give a running back the ball 400 times. Johnson was never the same after his 416-carry season. And how could he be?

No NHL player has 2,026 points — Jaromir Jagr is the closest with 2,122 points, counting his playoff totals. We watched the full season of “Pluribus” — it was spectacular — and have found ourselves wondering what the world will be like in 2122. My guess is Justin Verlander will win his 843rd game that year.*

Nobody has completed 2,026 passes in the NFL, but Terry Bradshaw did complete 2,025. So his year has come and gone. I’m sure Franco or Swann or somebody dropped at least one pass, though — every year seems to come up Terry Bradshaw, right?

I often think there are so many things in our society that would be impossible to explain to an alien from an advanced planet, but I’m not sure that anything is less explainable than NFL pregame shows.

I think I spent maybe 2,026 seconds (33 minutes, 46 seconds) watching college football in 2025. I really checked out. It wasn’t a purposeful thing — I didn’t just stomp my foot one day and say, “THAT’S IT, I WILL NOT WATCH STAND FOR EVEN ONE MORE NOTRE DAME GAME!” — I just, you know, there were other things to do, and I got out of the habit, and it never even occurred to me to turn on the television on Saturdays.

I used to love college football. Love it. I’ve probably been to 50 bowl games in my life, no joke, and I enjoyed writing them all, even the Poulan/Weedeater Bowl (ESPECIALLY the Poulan/Weedeater Bowl, which I covered TWICE).

I used to love it.

Now, I don’t care at all. I just lost it. I can’t even say why.

I thought about this on New Year’s Eve — I know I said that I would go to bed at 10 p.m., but there was work to do — I’m writing a new book, for crying out loud — and a little after 11, I stopped working and went to watch TV with my family. They were watching some sort of show reviewing the trends of 2025 (Six-Seven!), and I asked to change the channel and saw that the Miami-Ohio State game was on. I grew up an Ohio State fan. So I turned it on, and there were 55 seconds left in the game, and Miami had just scored a touchdown to pretty much put it away for the massive upset.

And I turned it off without any feeling whatsoever.

It’s weird how that intense college football passion could just fade away, entirely unmourned. But it might be a lesson for MLB going into 2026. They seem very serious about shutting the game down in search of more money for billionaires. The danger, it seems to me, is not the anger that will surface. Yes, that anger will be the most obvious consequence, but the owners know they can outlast anger because that’s still an emotion, and it still shows that people care.

No, the danger is all of the people who, like me with college football, will just stop caring. They won’t rage-quit the game. They will age-quit the game because the older you get, the more you realize that there are other things to do, other places to get your joy, other ways to spend your time and money, other paths to occupy your mind. Maybe I’ll come back to college football. Maybe I won’t. I have no idea. But my best guess is that, no, I’ll never be a college football fan again because I already don’t have enough time for all the things in my life. I suspect that once they lose you, they probably never get you back.

Finally, two Davids of the infield — former Dodger Dave Anderson and former Angel David Fletcher — finished their careers with 2,026 at-bats. I love how quirky at-bats are; it’s so baseball that at-bats don’t include times you walk, times you get hit by a pitch, times you bunt a runner over a base, or times you hit a fly ball deep enough to score a runner from third. Those are not “at bats” even though you were at bat to accomplish them. Baseball!

David Fletcher, for unclear reasons, received an MVP vote after the COVID season when he hit .319 in 49 games. He has been an outstanding defensive player who can play pretty much anywhere.

Dave Anderson was a big guy — 6-foot-2 or so — who also could play pretty much everywhere. He didn’t hit with power, and he wasn’t particularly fast, but he was useful enough to get 10 years in the big leagues and a World Series ring.

He got one plate appearance in that 1988 World Series, by the way: In the eighth inning of Game 3, the score was tied 1-1 and Dodgers DH Mike Davis was scheduled to come to the plate. The Athletics put in lefty reliever Rick Honeycutt, and Lasorda, doing the manager thing, pulled Davis for Anderson to get the split advantage.

Anderson finished his career with a .646 OPS against lefties.

Mike Davis finished his career with a .727 OPS against lefties.

But Anderson hit slightly better against lefties than righties, and Davis hit slightly worse against lefties than righties, and managers have always loved pulling levers. Anderson struck out on four pitches. But the Dodgers won the World Series anyway.

Thirty-nine days until pitchers and catchers report, and here’s your daily splash of joy — Why You Love Baseball:

Brilliant Reader Andrew: “I love the stories from a long history of colorful characters — from Rube Waddell chasing a fire engine to Sandy Koufax sitting out for Yom Kippur to Dock Ellis, Mark Fidrych, and Manny being Manny.”

If you want to email why you love baseball — photos, drawings, poems, and all else welcome — here’s the address.

OK, I guess it’s a federal law that all newsletters, reviewers, music services, television shows, Facebook pages, and businesses of every kind have to do a recap of 2025. I’d prefer not to. I’m looking forward to 2026 and some new ideas.

But laws are laws. Here are five 2025 posts you liked:

1. My Baseball Masterpiece (Really!)

It took me way, way, way too long … but this piece, where I count down my 100 greatest baseball players of 2025 and put a dumb but wonderful baseball card fact next to each player — No. 84: Dylan Cease wears No. 84 because of the 84 asanas in yoga (fact placed next to cartoon of ballplayer in full uniform performing Tadasana, the Mountain Pose) — was probably my favorite in 2025. I just love dumb baseball card facts. Love them. I can spend hours looking through the backs of old baseball cards and just reading the absurd facts they found for each player.

By the way, there’s a whole baseball card chapter in BIG FAN, the book Mike Schur and I wrote about what it means to be a fan of stuff. It comes out May 19. You can preorder now, and you can get a special signed copy in various places, particularly our good friend Joseph-Beth Booksellers. I believe I’ve already signed 5,000-plus books. And miles to go before I sleep.

2. The Greatest Game I’ve Ever Seen?

I was in Cooperstown watching that incredible Game 7 of the World Series. It felt like the perfect place to be.

3. The Wildest NBA Trade Ever 🏀

I’m hoping to write some more NBA this year … maybe a little hockey too. We’ll see how it goes.

4. The End of Baseball on ESPN

In the end, ESPN and MLB came to some sort of new arrangement, with ESPN losing Sunday Night Baseball and the Home Run Derby and whatnot, but now they’re running the MLB package? Or something? Fans didn’t win, that’s for sure. No matter the deal going forward, MLB’s decision to give ESPN an opt-out clause was a spectacular own goal and proof that while people may view Rob Manfred as an unsentimental and hard-edged businessman who doesn’t love baseball, well, he’s not that good at business either.

5. The Business Card

I tried a lot of stuff to make JoeBlogs better in 2025. Some of it worked, I think. And much of it, bluntly, did not. One of the things I tried was “The Batting Order,” where every week I would do a series of nine stories, and I would lead off the whole thing with a Batting Card that looked like so:

The idea seemed sound when I came up with it, and Kathleen and I put a lot of effort into it. But you know, Bruce Springsteen put a lot of effort into “Outlaw Pete” too — sometimes stuff just doesn’t turn out the way you hoped.

This particular Batting Order had what was probably my favorite rabbit hole of the year — I tried to chase down the origin story of a Willie Mays signed business card that a friend gave me. Whenever you find a story that has a Century One agent, a professional bowler, and Willie Mays, I mean, you follow that story all the way to the end!

And with that … a year ends, and a new one begins. Thank you for being a JoeBlogs reader. I’ve got some plans already in the works for 2026, and I’m sure you do too, and in the meantime, I wish for all of your favorite teams to win, for all of your most hated teams to lose and for all of your favorite players to go 5-for-5, throw five touchdown passes, score five goals, and put up a quintuple double.

Forty days until pitchers and catchers report, and here’s your daily splash of joy — Why You Love Baseball:

Brilliant Reader Dan: “The reaction of a kid when they pass through the concourse, come out of that concrete tunnel, and see a field for the first time.”

If you want to email why you love baseball — photos, drawings, poems, and all else welcome — here’s the address.

The world needs another Billie Jean King.

On Sunday, in Dubai, something absurd happened. Maybe you heard about it. Maybe you didn’t. On Sunday, in Dubai, the No. 1 women’s tennis player on earth decided to make her own sport a farce.

On Sunday, in Dubai, Aryna Sabalenka, a four-time Grand Slam winner and the defending U.S. Open champion, was beaten by washed-up men’s tennis underachiever Nick Kyrgios in an exhibition match that was explicitly designed, as if in a laboratory, to give every misogynist on earth live ammunition to bash the sport that she rules.

It’s hard to pick a single “worst part.”

But for me, the worst part is that the farce was cynically and bleakly dubbed “Battle of the Sexes II” by its creators.

In September 1973, in the Houston Astrodome, Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in the famous “Battle of the Sexes.” Books have been written about that match, movies made, and yet it might be hard for people more than 50 years later to fully appreciate and understand the moment.

Billie Jean King was in the process of inventing women’s professional sports in America. She, more than anyone, convinced Virginia Slims — a cigarette brand marketed for women — to sponsor a women’s tennis tour. She led a campaign that forced the U.S. Open to pay men and women equally.

She wasn’t fighting to prove that women were superior or even equal to men on the playing fields.

She was fighting to prove that women belonged in sports.

She had no interest in playing tennis against Riggs, a 55-year-old tennis hustler. But, when Riggs mentally, physically, and emotionally dismantled No. 1 player Margaret Court in an exhibition match, King believed that she had to play the match; she had to prove that women’s tennis was vivid and of high quality and worth watching.

She understood the stakes perfectly.

“I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn't win that match,” she said. “It would ruin the women's tour and affect all women's self-esteem."

That match was a circus, exactly what Riggs craved. The hype was overwhelming. Riggs got to be the center of the nation’s attention. But on the court, he never stood a chance. Billie Jean King played steady, sturdy, suffocating tennis, and she wore Riggs down in three straight dominating sets.

Did it prove anything to have a top women’s player beat a tired old man?

Yes!

“Beating a 55-year-old guy was no thrill for me,” Billie Jean King said. “The thrill was exposing a lot of new people to tennis.”

Yes!

The thrill was exposing a lot of new people to tennis … to women’s tennis … to women’s sports … to the joy of it all.

Sunday, the world’s No. 1 player, Aryna Sabalenka, chose to play a match that could only have the opposite effect of the true Battle of the Sexes. The only outcome was that it would expose a lot of new people to bastardized tennis that highlights the utterly irrelevant fact that at the top end of the sport, there’s a gap between women and men.

There was no way for Sabalenka to win the match.

There was no way for Sabalenka to highlight the wonders of women’s tennis.

There was no way for Sabalenka to escape this sham with her dignity and place in the sports world intact.

But she probably got a lot of money for it.

You would hope she got a lot of money for it.

You could spend thousands of hours trying to think up a match that would make Sabalenka and women’s tennis look worse … and never come up with one.

Think about this scenario:

— You set up the No. 1 women’s player in the world against the 671st -ranked man who has barely played in a year, who most people thought was retired, and who has spent time on podcasts recently bragging about how much time he spends drinking.

— You tilt the match so that each player only gets one serve. This is purportedly to give Sabalenka a fighting chance; Kyrios is, indeed, one of the greatest servers in the long history of tennis. But what it actually does is take away one of Sabalanka’s greatest strengths — her mighty first serve — AND exposes her to one of her greatest weaknesses, her penchant for double-faulting.

— You corrupt the actual shape of the tennis court because you want to make Sabalenka’s side of the court nine percent smaller. Again, this is meant to be a constant visual reminder that Sabalenka would not have any shot at all against an out-of-shape Kyrgios unless you pervert the very geometry of tennis.

It looks absolutely horrible.

She couldn’t possibly win. There were a million outs if she had — Kyrgios is finished, out of shape, he didn’t get a first serve, he hit into a smaller court, etc.

But it didn’t matter because she didn’t come close to winning. Kyrgios took the boring match in straight sets.

“I feel like we brought more attention to our sport, and I don’t see how it can be bad,” Sabalenka said when the thing mercifully ended. At that exact same time, social media overflowed with countless jibes mocking women’s tennis and reminding everyone that men reign supreme.

How can it be bad, indeed?

What does it mean to be the No. 1 women’s tennis player in the world, anyway?

Here’s the thing: Nobody in women’s tennis thinks they can compete on the men’s tour. Nobody. As Ben Rothenberg writes in his excellent Bounces newsletter, Sabalenka’s hitting partner is a 34-year-old former ATP player named Andrei Vasilevski, who topped out at 569 in the world.

So what? Women’s tennis isn’t meant to compete with men’s tennis any more than college football competes with pro, MLS competes with the Premier League, senior golf competes with the PGA Tour, the College World Series competes with the regular World Series or women’s track and field competes with men’s track and field.

This was a sad money-grab guaranteed to make women’s tennis look inferior rather than distinct. What a shame. The Battle of the Sexes lifted sports. This thing brought sports down.

I’ve made a decision — and I readily admit it’s an old-person decision. But here it is: I’m not staying up for New Year’s this year. Every year, I stay up … and I spend the last 87 or so minutes of the year watching terrible television as semi-celebrities lip-sync in frigid weather at Times Square or on the Grand Ole Opry Stage in Nashville. Forget it. I’m going to bed at like 10 this year, I’ll fall asleep with a book on my chest, and I’ll wake up in 2026 and watch That Thing You Do with the family like we do every year.

That’s a tradition worth keeping.

OK, here’s the last Monday Rewind of 2025!

Browns Diary: Browns 13, Steelers 6

• Record: 4-12

• Big takeaway: It’s nice to see Kevin Stefanski get a good win before the end.

• Chances Our Guy Stefanski will be fired at end of season: I think it will happen. It seems certain it will happen. But who knows with this team?

All game long — and I mean right up to the final few seconds — the same thought kept playing in my mind: How will the Browns blow this game? Blowing games like this is the Browns’ business, and there’s nobody in football better.

I don’t think this just happens, by the way. I’m convinced the Browns spend more time practicing blowing games than any other team. You can’t be this good at something without practice.

I think starting on the first day of OTAs, coaches emphasize again and again:

• When you're about to force a punt, that’s the best time for a dumb taunting penalty.

• The best moment to try and force a pass into triple coverage is when you’re ahead and should be burning clock.

• Hitting the quarterback late is most effective on third-and-long.

• An illegal motion penalty is the most efficient way to turn a 1st and 10 into a 1st and 15.

• Commit obvious holding penalties on running plays only when it’s clear that it will nullify a big run.

• Allowing a big punt return is a nice way to change momentum if things are going too well.

The Browns tried a few of these old standards Sunday against the Steelers, but Pittsburgh stubbornly kept trying to lose the game anyway, even though a victory would have sealed them the division title. They dropped a pick-six. They went for it on fourth and one in field goal range, and instead of running the ball, they tried some dumb over-the-top bomb play that had exactly a 0.0% chance of working. Aaron Rodgers looked like a quarterback who should have retired three years ago.

But I know these Browns, and they don’t give up losses easily.

And they did try to lose this game … I mean, they gave Rodgers and the Steelers about 500 chances to win. But here’s the thing about the 2025 Cleveland Browns: That defense is no joke. I don’t know if this is the greatest defense ever for a four-win team, but it’s gotta be in the photograph. The Browns have the No. 1 pass defense in the NFL. You throw against them at your own risk.

The defense is, of course, led by Myles Garrett — he did not get his record-breaking sack on Sunday, but he still dominated the game because the Steelers were SO UTTERLY DETERMINED not to let him get the record-breaking sack. They ran the ball when they would normally pass. Rodgers got rid of the ball too quickly to avoid becoming a part of history. I have watched Myles Garrett religiously for nine years now, so this is coming from a pretty biased source: I think he’s the most dominating defensive player in NFL history.

And the Browns are 53-79-1 in games that he’s played.

It takes a special kind of incompetence to be that bad with a player that good.

But the point of the diary, more than anything, is to talk about what being a fan of a terrible team feels like, and Sunday’s game felt pretty great. Beating the Steelers always feels good; potentially knocking them out of the playoffs feels even better (Pittsburgh will now have to beat Baltimore on Sunday night to make the playoffs).

Honestly, this could have been a franchise-defining game for the Steelers. I could imagine:

1. Them losing to the Ravens on Sunday, dropping out of the playoffs.

2. This leading to them firing Mike Tomlin as head coach after 19 years.

3. This leading to the Browns hiring Mike Tomlin as their head coach.

4. This leading to a Freaky Friday sort of soul exchange where the Steelers become terrible, and the Browns become great, and we all get the flying cars and push-button food machines that we were implicitly promised.

Well, a fella can dream.

Here I am filling out my Hall of Fame ballot … in a fedora!

I don’t actually announce who I voted for — we always save that for announcement day — but I do talk a bit about the Hall of Fame. And I get fountain pen ink all over my hands! And I am wearing my new fedora! So, basically, it’s a must-watch video.

Joe Burrow gives his offensive linemen … FOSSILS!

I cannot get enough of Joe Burrow. I just think he’s the coolest … and have ever since he was in high school in Athens, Ohio.

So you might know that Burrow comes up with cool gifts to get for his offensive linemen every year. Last year, he got them samurai swords.

This year, he bought them fossils. Actual, prehistoric, dinosaur, bear and woolly mammoth fossils. This apparently was inspired by the team’s visit to the Field Museum in Chicago last year, when he got to see various fossils and memorably said:

“When aren’t fossils on your mind? They go back millions of years. That’s sick.”

I can’t become a Bengals fan because I’m from Cleveland, and that just wouldn’t feel right. But I absolutely can and should get a Joe Burrow jersey. I love that guy.

If you can’t afford FOSSILS, how about a gift of memory?

Hat tip to Brilliant Reader Michael for passing this along.

The most passionate Steelers and NFL fans among you might remember Cornell Gowdy. He was an undrafted free agent with the Steelers for a little while, got cut, got cut again, and then was brought back during the strike in 1987 when the league decided to go with replacement players. He impressed Steelers coach Chuck Noll with his toughness, and Noll kept him on the team. In 1988, he made him a starter at safety, replacing legendary Donnie Shell.

Gowdy didn’t last long — he was cut early the next year — but, I mean, how many football players start in the NFL? It’s quite an incredible thing. And then Gowdy continued in football. He was a scout in Kansas City for a while in the early 2000s.

Anyway, his daughter Courtney Monet never got to see him play. But she’d heard all the stories and this year decided to go online and watch some of the film. She was so taken by it that, as a gift, she put together a video highlight reel of her father playing.

I don’t know how long this will be up on YouTube, you know — copyright and all that jazz. But Courtney says that she gave her father the video for Christmas and, she says, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile so much.”

The commercial that’s driving me crazy right now

I’m normally pretty tolerant of those Allstate “Mayhem Like Me” commercials because the actor who plays Mayhem — Dean Winters — is pretty much the greatest in everything he does. Greatest on 30 Rock. Greatest on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. And he’s the greatest as Mayhem.

But …

The Kiss Cam Mayhem commercials is killing me. Absolutely killing me.

The commercial itself is whatever. I guess the idea is the husband/son of this woman are watching TV, and they see their wife/mother kissing someone on the kiss cam, and this leads to them tipping over the grill, which causes a fire, you know, the usual mayhem.

But, and I hope at least a few of you are as bothered as I am by this …

They don’t show the kiss cam on television.

Ever.

What is supposed to be happening here? Are they getting the in-stadium feed at their house? Yes, I know, it’s stupid to look at a commercial where a person represents mayhem and fact check it … but I’m sorry, the Kiss Cam thing is just a bridge too far.

Why You Love Baseball

Brilliant Reader Erik: Me and Tony Oliva. Camera Day 1970, Met Stadium, Bloomington, Minn.  Don’t know if I’ve ever been happier.  Joe: I’ve written about my father’s favorite players before — I would probably reduce the list to three: Frank Howard Tony Oliva Brooks Robinson That’s a pretty good three, if you ask me.

Merry Christmas. Forty-six days until pitchers and catchers … and here’s your daily splash of joy.

Why do you love baseball?

Brilliant Reader Glenn Williams: “I have been carrying around a little black and white photo in my wallet of Ted Williams standing in the Fenway outfield that my late father took in the fifties. When I fell in love with baseball as a little kid, I asked my father who the best hitter ever was. He said that many think Ted Williams is. Wow, the same last name as us, I think. Who did he play for? The Red Sox. Our team!”

Brilliant Reader Michael: Because Lou Gehrig was played by Gary Cooper in Pride of the Yankees.  What perfect casting, an honor to them both.

Brilliant Reader Zach: “No matter how down you are, you still have a chance to come back and win and truly do something extraordinary.”

Brilliant Reader Ruth: “This is my son and me at the 2015 World Series.  We were in the upper deck for every playoff game, and until we lost that last game, we were the happiest two people In Citifield! Noah Syndergaard was pitching that day. We were photobombed by a Thor!”

If you would like to send in the reason why you love baseball, we’d love to hear it. And in that spirit, we’re also now collecting photos and artwork too — old snapshots, ballpark scenes, favorite scorecards, kids’ drawings, ticket stubs, whatever captures the joy of the game for you. Some people are sending song lyrics. Some are sending poems. It’s utterly wonderful. Just send along your baseball joy to askjoe@joeposnanski.com.

On Christmas Day, 1958, an Oldsmobile sped as fast as possible to a hospital in Chicago. The mother, writhing uncomfortably in the back seat, was — in the words of a nurse we once met — “very pregnant.” That nurse explained to us the first time we went to the hospital that yes, while Margo was quite pregnant, she was not yet “very pregnant.”

“Come back when you’re more pregnant,” she advised.

The woman on the way to the hospital that day in 1958, Bobbi Earl, was very pregnant. She knew the feeling well, even though she was only 19 — this was to be her fourth child. At some point, she understood that the car wasn’t going to make it in time, and she gave birth to a son in the Oldsmobile. After she reached the hospital, baby in hand, she named him after teen idol Ricky Nelson. Only she spelled Ricky with an extra E.

That was Rickey Henderson.

“Rickey was born on Christmas Day,” Rickey used to announce sometimes, and he was indeed a Christmas miracle all his life. How much happiness did Rickey bring into the world with his speed, his showmanship, his brilliance, his unyielding love of the game, and the countless hilarious stories he inspired? If heaven has a joy meter, Rickey melted it exactly the way that thermometers melt on hot days in the cartoons.

Many, many Rickey stories make me laugh, but my favorite does something else: It makes me feel. It involves Rickey’s high school guidance counselor Tommie Wilkerson, who tried — as so many high school counselors do all over this vast country — to inspire him to be the best version of himself.

Rickey said he didn’t want to play baseball.

Tommie said she would give him a quarter for every good thing he did on a baseball diamond. Well, Rickey needed the money.

Two things qualified as “good” in her book.

• A run scored.

• A stolen base

Rickey Henderson went on to become the greatest base stealer and run scorer in the long history of baseball.

Forty-seven days until pitchers and catchers … and here’s your daily splash of joy.

Why do you love baseball?

Brilliant Reader Adam: “The joy (and surprise) on your kid’s face the first time they catch a fly ball in Little League.”

Brilliant Reader Adam: “Too many reasons to write down — the shortstop casually making throws from short left that the first baseman never has to move for, the catcher throwing a seed after warmups, the way the dugout celebrates a productive out, the primal yell when you know a ball is gone, and how I can remember dates because of games — like putting on the TV after my wedding to see Darryl Strawberry walk off the Royals in 1996, or having my first date with the woman I’d marry be the Dykstra game.”

Brilliant Reader Mark: “Adrián Beltré moving the on-deck circle behind home plate to get a better view of the pitches.”

Brilliant Reader Cliff: “On Wednesday, August 15th, 2012, I landed in Seattle at 10 am and dropped my bags at the hotel just in time to walk to a 12:40 pm game at Safeco Field.  Mariners vs the Tampa Bay Rays. I had no tickets, but I was able to buy Centerfield Bleacher Seats for $13. … Felix Hernandez threw a Perfect Game.”

Joe: I can’t believe it has come to this … but if I were commissioner, I would make it illegal (barring injury) to pull a pitcher who has gone at least five innings and is throwing a perfect game. I would make it illegal to pull a batter who has three home runs or is one hit away from the cycle. I would make it illegal to pull a pitcher in the middle of a no-hitter before he’s thrown, say, 120 pitches.

This is all part of my “baseball is about so much more than winning and losing” philosophy. It is also about fans building memories, lifelong memories. When you buy a ticket to a ballgame, you deserve the possibility that something unforgettable will happen, a recollection that you will cherish forever. I’ve been to thousands of regular-season baseball games over the years, and they mostly blend together, but being in Fenway Park on May 19, 2008, — the day Jon Lester threw a no-hitter a short time after going through chemotherapy for lymphoma — will stay with me always.

Teams can’t guarantee moments like that, obviously.

But they owe us the effort to try.

If you would like to send in the reason why you love baseball, we’d love to hear it. And in that spirit, we’re also collecting photos and artwork too — old snapshots, ballpark scenes, favorite scorecards, kids’ drawings, ticket stubs, whatever captures the joy of the game for you. Some people are sending song lyrics. Some are sending poems. It’s utterly wonderful. Just send along your baseball joy to askjoe@joeposnanski.com.

Happy Holidays from New York

On the car ride in from LaGuardia, our driver almost hit a baby stroller. He was trying to make a tight turn because of the heavy traffic. A grandfather was standing on the corner with a baby stroller. The car came within inches of sideswiping.

The grandfather banged his fist on the car multiple times to express his displeasure.

Our driver reminded us to give him five stars when we ranked the ride.

We saw The Great Gatsby on Broadway, and it was entertaining enough — seeing Jeremy Jordan live made everyone in the family happy — but there is one astonishing thing I have to share:

The show ends, as you might expect, with Nick reciting/singing the final section of the book, perhaps the greatest close in American literature:

Only, it doesn’t end there … on the word “past,” a bunch of flappers rush the stage, and the orchestra plays loudly, and they perform a reprise of the song “Roaring On.”

It was jolting … and the thing I couldn’t get over is that the creator of the show thought — honestly thought — “Yeah, that book ending is fine, but I can do better.”

I have not yet gotten my fedora/old-fashioned hat. It is proving to be harder than expected. I figured New York would be bursting with fedoras. But we went to J.J.’s hats — which proudly advertises at New York’s oldest hat store — only to find that it’s “temporarily closed.” I guess this is a real opportunity for New York’s second-oldest hat store. We went into a couple of big department stores only to find they don’t sell hats.

Today’s another day. We beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Hung out on Tuesday with pal Gary Gulman, one of the funniest people on earth, and it was as delightful as you would expect. My favorite part was talking about the ubiquity of the old Sears department store. You people old enough will remember well. And those of you who are young, well, this whole concept blew the mind of my daughter Liz — she couldn’t wrap her head around the idea that not so long ago, you could be like:

“OK, today, I have to get my car tuned up, I need to buy a new washer and dryer, back-to-school clothes for the kids, and a ratchet set with a lifetime warranty. I also need to get my annual eye exam and new car insurance. We should probably have a family holiday portrait done. I also want to get new plates, some jewelry, a snowblower, a hula hoop, some yellow paint, and new bath towels.

“Great. Let’s go to Sears.”

Happy Christmas to all. And to all a good night.

Forty-nine days until pitchers and catchers … and here’s your daily splash of joy.

Why do you love baseball?

Brilliant Reader Michael: While technically a girls SOFTBALL post, it translates. I am the head coach in high school girls softball. Less than two outs, bases loaded, game tied bottom of the last inning. A senior, best hitter on the team, is at bat. A freshman at 3rd. I call for a squeeze bunt, my freshman takes off with the pitch, the bunt goes down and … it works. We win. My dad, who was at the game, ran up and hugged me with tears in in eyes speechless.

Brilliant Reader Judith: “Entering the stadium searching for my seat, that first view looking out over the field. Every time, it catches my breath with such utter joy.”

Brilliant Reader Terry: “As a kid in the late 1950s, I loved getting the weekly Sporting News. I could follow the Red Sox and Dodgers … plus all their minor league teams from AAA down to Class D.”

Brilliant Reader Pat: “When your beautiful significant other sits down at her first visit to Wrigley Field and immediately begins filling out her scorecard.  Something about a gorgeous woman scoring a baseball game gives me goose bumps.”

Joe: Margo loves keeping score. The only thing I ever write here that makes her angry is when I make it sound — even unintentionally — like she doesn’t know how to keep score. So, just to be clear: She’s an excellent scorekeeper.

If you would like to send in the reason why you love baseball, we’d love to hear it. And in that spirit, we’re also now collecting photos and artwork too — old snapshots, ballpark scenes, favorite scorecards, kids’ drawings, ticket stubs, whatever captures the joy of the game for you. Some people are sending song lyrics. Some are sending poems. It’s utterly wonderful. Just send along your baseball joy to askjoe@joeposnanski.com.

BIG FAN Galleys are here!

Here’s the thing about BIG FAN, the book Mike Schur and I wrote about what it means to be a fan: We finished it too soon. It is absolutely killing us to have a nine-month gap between delivering the book and it finally coming out on May 19. We are SO excited for you to see it.

But we’re getting here! Over the weekend, we got to that huge first step — the advance reader galleys arrived! I did a little unboxing video.

Instagram post

I’m so psyched for you to get to read this book. We’re going to give away some galleys here in the new year. And we’re putting together the book tour. And we’re signing thousands and thousands of books for preorders (available here and here and here for you Canadians). And we’re creating signed limited editions that you might get if you preorder from our friends at Joseph-Beth Booksellers. I just created a 10-of-10 set where I sign the book with a fountain pen (a Sailor Pro Gear, thank you for asking). Mike is getting a few pretty famous people to sign limited editions, too.

Anyway, we’re getting closer.

Bills 23, Browns 20

• The Record: 3-12

• The Big Takeaway: Myles Garrett is one sack away from breaking the NFL record.

• Chances Our Guy Kevin Stefanski gets fired at end of season: 99%

I don’t actually know if the Browns were close to winning this game. The Browns might have been — the Bills seemed pretty uninterested. The Browns also might not have been; if the game had ever REALLY been in jeopardy, the Bills probably would have turned this up. I have been watching the Cleveland Browns collect moral victories for more than 50 years. I’d probably rank this moral victory as a 6 out of 10.

Myles Garrett was credited with a half-sack on a weird play in which Bills quarterback Josh Allen fell down, and he now has 22 sacks for the season. The record is 22.5. I’m trying to think of the greatest seasons in sports history for terrible teams. There’s obviously Steve Carlton’s 27-win season for the 1972 Phillies. There’s Cal Ripken’s 11.5 WAR season for the 1991 Orioles. There’s Shohei for the Angels, multiple seasons, and there’s George Gervin, averaging 33 points a game for the meh Spurs*, and Oscar Robertson averaging (essentially) a triple-double for the lousy 1960-61 Cincinnati Royals, and Chris Johnson running for 2,000 yards for an 8-8 Titans team.

I’m sure you can come up with a lot more.

*One thing George Gervin could do was finger roll!

But this one feels particularly dispiriting. I don’t think there has ever been a more unblockable force in football history than Myles Garrett. The Browns have wasted him. As for how Myles himself feels about the situation, I present to you this question and answer:

Reporter: “Hey Myles, you know, when you went through that trade request, you said you didn’t care about records, all that Hall of Fame stuff, you just wanted to win. So with two games to go and you guys are 3-12, what’s that been like for you?”

Garrett: “Next question.”

Yeah, can’t blame him for that. There is no good answer for that. He demanded a trade because he was frustrated. He changed his mind and decided to trust the Browns to put a team around him. Sometimes there is no right answer.

Shame on the Angels

I don’t want to go too deep into this Tyler Skaggs saga because it’s oppressively sad, and I’m not sure there’s much I can add to it. But I do want to say two things:

1. The Angels couldn’t have handled it worse. It’s … simply … not … possible.

2. Next time you hear any team call itself a “family”… remember what happened here.

Just to recap the terrible story: Tyler Skaggs, an Angels pitcher, was found dead in his hotel room in 2019 when the team was in Texas to play the Rangers. Investigators found fentanyl, alcohol, and oxycodone in his system. It was ruled an accidental overdose.

Not long after that, Eric Kay — a longtime communications executive for the team — was arrested and later sentenced to 22 years for selling the drug that led to his overdose. Kay has denied the specific charge — he doesn’t believe it was definitively his pill that killed Skaggs. Jurors disagreed. Either way, he admits to selling drugs to Skaggs and other Angels.

It’s all awful, and the Skaggs family filed a wrongful death lawsuit seeking $118 million in potential lost income plus punitive damages.

And the Angels, incredibly, unthinkably, incompetently, decided to take it to court.

There’s an old saying — one that has been attributed to everyone from Mark Twain to Nelson Mandela to Nicholas Sparks — that it’s never too late to do the right thing. I have mixed feelings about the quote, but I generally believe there’s a powerful truth to it: If you just keep on doing the wrong things, the consequences multiply. The Angels could have paid the family. Yes, it would have cost them money. But they knew how troubled Skaggs was and how little they had done to help him. They knew that Kay and teammate Matt Harvey admitted to providing Skaggs with drugs.

They decided instead of taking some responsibility for this tragedy, they would go to court, provide stone-hearted witnesses to testify that Skaggs was on the decline as a pitcher, put their biggest stars like Mike Trout on the stand to answer unanswerable questions, reveal all sorts of team dysfunction, and just generally make themselves look heartless and cold-blooded.

And when the jury asked the judge where to mark down the punitive damages — signaling that they were going to award the family a lot of money — the Angels raced in to settle so that they didn’t get hit with the full weight of judgment.

I’m not saying that the Angels are unique — they’re certainly not. This is how callous companies act. But that’s the thing about doing right: The Angels didn’t have to act like a callous company. They could have acted like a team.

White Sox sign Murakami

From a pure scouting perspective, there are a few hard questions about Japanese third baseman Munetaka Murakami.

• Will he make enough contact? He strikes out a lot, especially in a nation where not striking out is considered a virtue.

• Can he play third base in MLB? Apparently not — his third-base defense was shaky enough that scouts really have only looked at him at first base.

• Can he get healthy? He battled an oblique injury last year.

BUT … the White Sox brought in some fun when they signed Murakami over the weekend … and this is an organization in desperate need of fun. Murakami is an old-fashioned masher. He blasted 56 home runs for the Yakult Swallows in 2022. Last season, after coming back from that oblique injury, he smashed 22 home runs in 56 games. In Japan, the man hit bombs and walked a lot, and while the overall package didn’t seem to excite the normal Japanese suitors — no Yankees, no Dodgers, no Mariners, etc. — you’ve got to give it up to the White Sox for bringing him in. It might not work. But the sole advantage of being as adrift as the White Sox have been over the last few years is that you really don’t have anything to lose. Murakami could be a lot of fun!

Red Sox buy — er, trade for — Willson Contreras

The Willson Contreras experiment is over in St. Louis. All in all, it didn’t go especially well. The Cardinals were coming off a 93-win season in 2022, and they signed Contreras away from the rival Cubs for $87.5 million. The thinking was that he was a finishing piece, an All-Star catcher who would give the Cardinals their best chance for taking the next step.

Roughly 12 minutes into the deal, the Cardinals determined that Contreras couldn’t catch. They made him a designated hitter, which created a big stink, and then they moved him back to catcher, which created a big stink, and then they lost 90 games for the first time in a quarter century, which created the biggest stink of all. The next year, his arm was fractured when J.D. Martinez hit him with a swing. This past year, Contreras was moved to first base full-time.

All the while, the Cardinals descended into boring mediocrity.

So the Cardinals bailed out of the deal over the weekend, sending Contreras to the Red Sox for some meh-prospects and real cash. But here’s the thing: Willson Contreras is still a good hitter. He posted a 127 OPS+ over his three years with the Cardinals, and he generates as much bat speed as just about anyone. I really like what the Red Sox have been doing this offseason; I’m not normally a fan of bringing in aging veterans, but with Sonny Gray and Willson Contreras to go with their young core, I think the Red Sox are putting themselves in a fun position to step it up in 2025.

I’m getting a fedora

That’s it. I’ve made up my mind. We’re going to New York this week for the holidays, and I’ve decided that I’m buying a fedora. It’s time, as I approach my 59th birthday, for me to become a fedora guy.

If any of you have any advice about buying a fedora … or you want to make a case for another kind of hat (I know you bowler people are out there) … or you know a good fedora dealer in New York (yes, I’m calling them fedora dealers) … you know where to reach me.