![]() They need to stop looking in the rearview mirror at the Astros, and stop talking about the Astros, and start talking about the season they’re about to play. There’s nobody out there right now better than Joe Ide. You go out on Tuesday and buy “Hi Five” by the great Joe Ide, the latest in his brilliant series about Isaiah Quintabe, a modern Sherlock Holmes from Long Beach, Calif. OK, here’s the only reading tip you need for the week: When he finally does retire, it’s going to feel as if 100 guys have left the room. I said this on Friday and will say it again:įederer is one of those guys in sports, from any era. Only then Federer won the last six points of the match, finishing with a crosscourt forehand winner that must have sounded like a fire alarm as it went past Millman. Millman was playing the match of his life.įinally it was a tiebreaker in the fifth set, and the way they do it at the Australian Open is they play what is called a “super tiebreaker” at 6-all in the final set, which means you have to get to 10 points, and win by two.Īnd you thought that Fed was going to lose another fifth-set tiebreaker at a major the way he’d lost an epic, and far more meaningful, tiebreaker to Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon final. They played five sets, four hours, three minutes. Open – and somehow got to the fourth round. There was Roger Federer on Friday night in Melbourne, 38 going on 39, once again forgetting what year it was as he held off a tough Aussie journeyman named John Millman - who had beaten Fed a couple of years ago at the U.S. THE FIGHT IN FEDERER, TIME FOR YANKS TO MOVE FORWARD & YET ANOTHER MET MANAGER … This week they reminded Giants fans and Yankee fans all over again why they mattered as much as they did, with as much grace as both of them showed. The two of them, at their best, in their biggest moments, made New York feel like the capital of sports again. But when you add it all up - and, man, wasn’t this a week to add it all up with Eli and Jeter? - there are just more boxes to check than individual stats. Was Jeter as good at baseball as Brady and LeBron have been in their sports? Nope. Go find somebody still playing, other than Brady and LeBron, who will last as long and do as much. Jeter played in seven World Series, the Yankees won five of them. Brady played in nine Super Bowls, won six. I am talking about the combination of star power and excellence and longevity and individual accomplishments and winning. And where LeBron James has been in Cleveland and Miami and now Los Angeles. Tom Brady, whom Eli got twice, has been with the Patriots. In all the important ways, we will never again see anyone in team sports be the kind of star Jeter was with the Yankees, and the one Mr. 310 he put up across his 20 seasons in the big leagues. 308, across the equivalent of a full season, which means he had pretty much the same batting average in October and November as the. ![]() He managed to have a lifetime postseason average of. He has the biggest and best postseason resume. Only five guys in the history of baseball had more hits. Jeter? He was an even bigger star than Eli was. But he had his iconic Super Bowl championship, the Jets knocking off the Colts when the Colts were 17-point favorites in one of the most famous upsets in the history of American sports.ĭerek Jeter earns all but one vote to lead the 2020 Hall of Fame class. Joe Namath’s was worse with the Jets and he nearly threw 50 more interceptions than touchdown passes. It isn’t just numbers and can’t ever be numbers with the kind of star Eli was for the Giants and Jeter was for the Yankees. Because if you think it’s merely numbers that measure careers like his - and Derek Jeter’s - then you apparently have decimal points where your sporting soul ought to be. Say it again, or shout it: If you don’t think so, you may have watched some of the movie over the past 16 seasons. Someday Eli will be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton. Jeter was nearly elected unanimously to the Hall of Fame. Both occasions, though, both moments, reminded us not just of who they were - both of them up there on whatever Mount Rushmore we’d have in sports around here in the 21st century - but what they gave us. Eli got out as Jeter was getting into the Hall of Fame. It was a good week to be a New York sports fan, a great one really, because Derek Jeter and Eli Manning were big again this week, for different reasons.
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