Ryne Sandberg died yesterday at the age of 65; the reported cause of death was metastatic prostate cancer. Sandberg is in the Hall of Fame and was the face of the franchise for the Chicago Cubs from the mid-80s through the mid-90s. In that era of baseball, most second-baseman were of the “slick fielder/light hitter” variety; Sandberg was different.
- He led the league in home runs in 1990.
- His career OPS was .796.
- He scored 100+ runs in 7 different seasons.
- He led the league in runs scored 3 times.
Do not mistake those offensive stats to mean that Sandberg was deficient in the field. He won 9 Gold Gloves in his 15-year stay with the Cubs and was selected for the All-Star team 10 times.
He was not a product of the Cubs’ farm system; the team acquired him in one of the more lopsided trades ever. In 1982, the Phillies wanted a change at the shortstop position and arranged with the Cubs to send SS Larry Bowa to the Cubs for SS Ivan DeJesus. At best for the Phillies, that might have been construed as an “even swap”, but the Cubs cajoled the Phillies’ brass to throw in a 21-year-old second baseman whose major league credentials at the time included all of 6 plate appearances and a batting average of .167. And that is how Ryne Sandberg came to be a Chicago Cub until his retirement after the 1997 season.
Rest in peace, Ryne Sandberg.
Moving on … In case you had not paid attention to NBA business news recently, Amazon Prime Video and the NBA reached an 11-year deal for Prime Video to televise 66 NBA games per season. That deal will include:
- Double headers on Opening Week and on Thursdays/Fridays during the regular season.
- “Select Saturday afternoon games” [Aside: Translation TBD]
- A special “Black Friday Game”. [Meh! I’ll watch the NFL thanks.]
In addition to that commitment, Prime Video will also televise:
- All games in the knockout rounds of the NBA Cup. [Ho-hum!]
- All games in the play-in tournament. [Insignificant – – but potentially interesting]
- Games from the first and second rounds of the playoffs. [I’m listening …]
- Conference Finals games in 6 of the 11 seasons in the contract [I’m there.]
- Some WNBA games too.
With that commitment to telecasting basketball games, Amazon Prime Video needed to go out and hire some announcers for games and for some studio/commentary shows that will complement those games. Obviously, their plan was not to find unknown talent and hand the keys over to them; Prime Video went for lots of experience. I have not seen the announcer pairings yet, but here are some of the hiring decisions by Prive Video:
- Play-by-play: Ian Eagle, Michael Grady, Kevin Harlan.
- Analysts: Brent Barry, Dell Curry, Blake Griffin, Udonis Haslem, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, Candace Parker, Stan Van Gundy and Dwayne Wade.
That is a potent line-up. Ian Eagle and Kevin Harlan have done a ton of basketball telecasts and are at the top tier of their profession. The analysts are far less experienced, but Barry, Nash and Van Gundy bring coaching experience to the microphone and Parker has done excellent work in the studio for March Madness programs for the past several seasons.
Meanwhile, NBC also has part of the NBA TV action and NBC is going to offer a studio show that might be great or it might become known as “The Hiroshima” of sports studio shows. Carmelo Anthony and Vince Carter will be the regular experts in this production, and they will be joined aperiodically by a “Special Contributor” you may have heard of:
- Michael Jeffrey Jordan.
Finally, this from former NBA coach, Phil Jackson:
“Basketball is a simple game. Your goal is penetration, get the ball close to the basket, and there are three ways to do that. Pass, dribble and offensive rebound.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………