Rest In Peace, Luis Tiant

While these rants were on hiatus, Luis Tiant died at the age of 83.  If you never saw him pitch, use Google to find a short video and check it out; he had more unusual pitching motions in his arsenal than a full team of pitchers normally have.  As a kid, trying to imitate Luis Tiant on the mound was a staple of any Wiffle Ball game.  Tiant is not in the Hall of Fame; I wonder if the Veterans Committee – – or whatever they are calling that entity these days – – might consider his candidacy.

Rest in peace, Luis Tiant.

Also, while these rants were on hiatus, the NY Jets fired head coach, Robert Saleh, and promoted defensive coordinator, Jeff Ulbrich, to become the interim head coach.  The Jets are now 2-4 after losing last night to the Bills on MNF. That puts them 2 games behind the Bills in the standings – – actually 2.5 games behind since the Bills won the first of their two meetings this year – – and the level of desperation with the team appears to be building not waning as they just traded for the “injured” Davante Adams per reports this morning.  More on that later …

Robert Saleh was not nearly responsible for the lack of success exhibited by the Jets during the last 3 seasons.  Here is the list of the starting QBs his Jets’ teams trotted out on Sundays in the last 3 years:

• Zach Wilson – – 33 games
• Mike White – – 7 games
• Joe Flacco – – 5 games
• Trevor Siemian – – 3 games
• Tim Boyle – – 2 games
• Aaron Rodgers – – 1 game

Robert Saleh was not the motive force that drafted and signed that assemblage of quarterbacking prowess.  Robert Saleh had no part in Aaron Rodgers’ season-ending injury last year in Game 1.  The Jets are a mess because of their roster-building decisions over the past decade or so and not because of their coaching decisions over the same time span.   Last night on the “Manningcast”, Bill Belichick characterized the Jets’ executive offices and ownership of living by the motto, “Ready … Fire … Aim!”

There is a famous logical fallacy that applies to the Jets’ situation as of now.  That fallacy is known as “Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.”  Translated from Latin, that means “After that, therefore because of that.”  The classic example is a man who goes out into his front yard every day and stomps his feet by the curb at noontime.  A neighbor asks what he is doing and why.  The man replies that it keeps the elephants away.  The neighbor says that there are no elephants in the suburbs.  The man says, “See, it’s working.”

How does that apply to the NY Jets in 2024?  On record now …

• “The AFC East Division is ripe for the taking this year to a greater extent than it has been in a LONG time.”

That Pats are very early in a total restructuring process with a rookie QB who has exactly 1 start to his name as of this morning.  The Dolphins are using their third starting QB this season with 12 games still to play in the season.  The Bills do not look nearly as good as Bills’ teams have looked over the past 3 seasons or so.  The Division is weak, and the winner of the Division will be in the playoffs.

And if the Jets do win the AFC East and go to the playoffs, that will be a glorious time for the team and its fans – – but it will NOT be as a result of the absence of Robert Saleh.  It will happen because the players on the roster find ways to win games instead of losing them as they did last night at home against the Bills.

To that end, reports today say that the Jets have acquired Davante Adams from the Raiders for a conditional third-round pick.  Adams and Rodgers are old buds from Packers’ days and Adams has been wanting out of Las Vegas for months to the point that he has formally asked to be traded and has been out of action since Week 3 with a hamstring injury.  That malady will make a miraculous recovery in the next couple of days even without the Jets sending Adams on a private Jet to Lourdes so he can soak in the sacred healing waters there.

If you are a Jets’ fan, the standard for this year should be a wild-card playoff spot at the very least and the Division title more reasonably.  And when that happens, no aura of “genius” should be assigned to the coaches, GM or ownership.  When I look at the Jets’ remaining schedule, I see 6 games that should be counted as wins.  Combined with the two wins already on the books, that means the team needs only to win 2 or 3 of the other 5 games to get into serious playoff range.  There are no excuses left…

Moving on … The Chargers’ head coach, Jim Harbaugh, had to leave the sidelines right around kickoff time to go to the locker room for medical attention.  Harbaugh said it was a cardiac arrhythmium that needed to addressed.  He returned to the sidelines late in the first quarter and announced that he will be taking blood thinners and wearing a “heart monitor” for the next several weeks to scope out his problem.  He also said that an “ablation process” was also a possibility but that he planned on missing no games.

Jim Harbaugh is a very good football coach and a larger-than-life character to be sure.  I am not a physician, but cardiac “issues” seem to me to be part of a list of conditions that one takes very seriously.  I don’t know what a “cardiac ablation” is, but I know what “ablation” means and that sounds to me like something that just might be serious enough to cause Harbaugh to miss a game here or there.  Moreover, the behavior and demeanor of Jim Harbaugh on the sidelines during a football game should lead anyone to conclude that he is in a “stressful mood” and that he is “intensely interested” in whatever is happening in front of him – – and married with a ”cardiac issue” that seems to be a recipe for a sewage martini.

Bonne chance, Jim Harbaugh …

Finally, since I mentioned the Manningcast above, let me close with this from Peyton Manning:

“You hear about how many fourth quarter comebacks that a guy has, and I think it means a guy screwed up in the first three quarters.”

But don’t bet me wrong, I love sports………