AUG 4: BOS (ERod) @ DET (Mize)

[Bellhorn04]

Schwarber has been running the bases, that hammy is starting to look pretty good.

 

I don't think Chaim would have made the trade if Schwarber wasn't close.

[Hugh2]

I don't think Chaim would have made the trade if Schwarber wasn't close.

 

I think he knew he couldn't go after the other guys either because ownership told him to stay under the luxury tax, so he got creative with Schwarber thinking outside the box. Here's a guy who might have a similar upside to Rizzo/Cruz, will cost a fraction of the prospects because he's on the D.L. and management will approve of the trade because he stays under the tax limit.

 

Sometimes, you do the best you can, with what you have. DD might have made the trade for Rizzo, and if the FO told him he had to stay under he'd be giving up Casas/Yorke + to not eat the money.

[Maxbialystock]

"Gibson doesn't come close." Besides having an exceptional career in baseball, including his winning the NL MVP in 1988, Mr Gibson was inducted into the college football hall of fame in 2017. He still holds pass receiving records at his alma mater Michigan State. So, I'd say he comes pretty close.

 

And almost forgot; before Gibby had his serious leg injury, he was one of the fastest runners in baseball, who could also hit for power.

 

Jim Brown was the best running back in NFL history and a college lacrosse legend.

[Maxbialystock]

Ted Williams was the greatest hitter of all time and at one time he was the world's best fly fisherman while also being one of the world's best fighter pilots. That is impressive. He was the man.

 

Agree on the hitting and fishing. He had great eyesight and reflexes, ideal for a fighter pilot, but he never really delivered on the fighter part of it. He was shot down--but was still able to "limp" back to his base--by antiaircraft fire while on a bombing/strafing raid in Feb 1953, near the end of the Korean War. He never flew in combat in WW II, which was undoubtedly one of the reasons he was called up for the Korean War, which he bitterly resented because he was an inactive reservist and felt active reservists should have been called before him. He also tried to avoid service in WW II by saying he was the sole support for his mother.

 

Nevertheless, Ted Williams was a rarity in that he served in two different wars while also being one of the very best hitters in MLB. In both wars he was in fact a trained fighter pilot--an instructor in WW II and John Glenn's wingman in the Korean War. Yes, he griped some, but he was unquestionably a patriot.

[Tedballgame]

Agree on the hitting and fishing. He had great eyesight and reflexes, ideal for a fighter pilot, but he never really delivered on the fighter part of it. He was shot down--but was still able to "limp" back to his base--by antiaircraft fire while on a bombing/strafing raid in Feb 1953, near the end of the Korean War. He never flew in combat in WW II, which was undoubtedly one of the reasons he was called up for the Korean War, which he bitterly resented because he was an inactive reservist and felt active reservists should have been called before him. He also tried to avoid service in WW II by saying he was the sole support for his mother.

 

Nevertheless, Ted Williams was a rarity in that he served in two different wars while also being one of the very best hitters in MLB. In both wars he was in fact a trained fighter pilot--an instructor in WW II and John Glenn's wingman in the Korean War. Yes, he griped some, but he was unquestionably a patriot.

 

Per Wikipedia:

 

Williams was talented as a pilot, and so enjoyed it that he had to be ordered by the Navy to leave training to personally accept his American League 1942 Major League Baseball Triple Crown.[144] Williams's Red Sox teammate, Johnny Pesky, who went into the same aviation training program, said this about Williams: "He mastered intricate problems in fifteen minutes which took the average cadet an hour, and half of the other cadets there were college grads." Pesky again described Williams's acumen in the advance training, for which Pesky personally did not qualify: "I heard Ted literally tore the sleeve target to shreds with his angle dives. He'd shoot from wingovers, zooms, and barrel rolls, and after a few passes the sleeve was ribbons. At any rate, I know he broke the all-time record for hits." Ted went to Jacksonville for a course in aerial gunnery, the combat pilot's payoff test, and broke all the records in reflexes, coordination, and visual-reaction time. "From what I heard. Ted could make a plane and its six 'pianos' (machine guns) play like a symphony orchestra", Pesky says. "From what they said, his reflexes, coordination, and visual reaction made him a built-in part of the machine."[145]

 

Williams completed pre-flight training in Athens, Georgia, his primary training at NAS Bunker Hill, Indiana, and his advanced flight training at NAS Pensacola. He received his gold Naval Aviator wings and his commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps on May 2, 1944.

 

Williams served as a flight instructor at NAS Pensacola teaching young pilots to fly the complicated F4U Corsair fighter plane. Williams was in Pearl Harbor awaiting orders to join the Fleet in the Western Pacific when the War in the Pacific ended. He finished the war in Hawaii, and then he was released from active duty on January 12, 1946, but he did remain in the Marine Corps Reserve.[78]

 

He flew 39 combat missions in the Korean War. He later became an instructor. He survived a crash landing after his plane was shot up.

 

Don't tell me that Ted was not one of the greatest fighter pilots.

[Tedballgame]

Jim Brown was the best running back in NFL history and a college lacrosse legend.

 

Barry Sanders would disagree with the first part.

[moonslav59]

Jesse Owens