BASEBALL: Hall of Fame induction ceremony
Noon, ESPN
Nolan Ryan, George Brett, Robin Yount, Orlando Cepeda. A class for the ages, each member truly worthy of the elite club he’s joining.
But where’s Pudge Fisk?
STAT MAN
Pedro Martinez, David Cone, Mike Mussina, David Wells … raise your hand if you knew Baltimore’s Sydney Ponson was the American League leader in complete games.
With five.
IT’S NOT OVER
The numbers that really count are these: more than 120,000 for three Cubs-Sox games at Comiskey Park, the Sox’s first sellouts since 1997, which also involved the Cubs. … A record three-game-series crowd at Shea Stadium for Yankees-Mets. … A 50,000 house at the desolate Oakland Coliseum for a Giants-A’s game, and the largest single-game crowd in Camden Yards history for the Orioles and Phillies.
Orioles-Phillies?
Interleague play was adopted as a three-year experiment when baseball was still desperate and reeling after the 1994 strike. Nobody likes the scheduling headaches it causes, and nobody broke down the doors to see the Pirates play the Twins, but the crowd response to genuine rivalries suggests some form of interleague play will continue.
LOY OH LOY
Don’t grimace, but as Bulls No. 1 draft pick Elton Brand learns the ropes with the NBA-dominated U.S. national team in Puerto Rico, the NBA vet with whom he has been compared is Clipper-turned-Piston forward Loy Vaught.
You were expecting Karl Malone?
When Brand was drafted, Bulls coach Tim Floyd projected him as a “double-double guy”–a dependable hand good for double figures in points and rebounds every night. That’s pretty much what Vaught was–he had three straight double-double seasons for the Clippers before a back injury cost him most of the last two seasons.
Yes, you’d like more from the No. 1 pick in the draft, but legitimate double-double guys don’t show up, say, under the Christmas tree.
And what if they had said Stacey King?
