While We’re Waiting serves as the early morning gathering of WFNY-esque information for your viewing pleasure. Have something you think we should see? Send it to our tips email at tips@waitingfornextyear.com
The piece on on Ali, but this was a great take on Jim Brown- “Jim Brown, I think, was like that for the late 1950s and early ’60s. Old football films of Jim Brown running do not jump off the screen the way they do for, say, Gale Sayers. You watch Gale Sayers highlights in 2012, and he feels just as amazing and surprising and alive as he did in 1966. He’s timeless that way. Not Jim Brown. I always thought on film he looks dated somehow, yellowed, like beauties from the Silent Film Era. It’s hard for film to capture Brown as he was in, say, 1958 or 1963 — the most astonishing football player ever. He was relentless, overpowering, overwhelming — he was bigger, faster, stronger and more determined than anyone else on the field. They knew he was going to get the ball. They always knew. And they could not stop him — 5.2 yards per carry for an entire career (nobody with 2,000 carries has averaged more than 5), 104.3 yards per game for an entire career (nobody else has averaged 100), led the league in rushing every year but one. But even these numbers, even the highlights that survive, none of them can explain Jim Brown. I grew up idolizing JIm Brown based only on the stories my father and his friends told me growing up in Cleveland, but in the end (they would tell me) I couldn’t really KNOW what he was really like.” [Posnanski/Joe Blogs]
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Too high a grade? “No matter how you try to spin it, this was one of the worst offensive seasons for the Cleveland Browns since their return in 1999. Part of it stems from the front office’s conscious effort to make almost no offseason moves in an effort to truly gauge where the team was at talent-wise. Part of it also stems from the fact that the team is still trying to recover from some tremendously disappointing drafts before Tom Heckert and Mike Holmgren arrived.
Whatever the case may be, the point is that the Browns now know what they have, and it isn’t much. It is imperative that changes are made to the offense this offseason; otherwise, “blowing it up” and starting over once again will be a much more viable option. Overall grade: D-” [DiMatteo/Dawg Pound Daily]
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“Wow, the early returns from this season of Cavaliers basketball have been above and beyond expectations through 12 games. While it seemed the team was going to have another poor year (most pundits predicted about 13-18 wins) the team has been flying high of late and surprised us all quite a bit. It’s truly a credit to Byron Scott for urging these guys on to get some tough road victories that in a 26 game losing streak type of season they weren’t going to come close to getting.
Contrary to what everyone thinks, the team hasn’t really played some atrocious schedule to boost their 6-6 record. With the 19th ranked schedule right now that suggests the team is pretty close to the middle of the pack in terms of schedule strength.” [John/Fear the Sword]
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A primer on basic stats, this time slugging percentage- “I know some dislike the new stats, but they are now a part of baseball and are not going away. If anything they are getting even more complex. So what is slugging percentage? There is a basic and easy way to understand the formula for it. Slugging percentage is singles + (doubles x 2) + (triples x 3) + (home runs x 4) all divided by the players’ total number of at bats. The easier way is to say it is the total bases a player accumulates divided by the players’ at bats.
The league average for slugging percentage is often considered to be .400 to .415. For a player to have been exceptional last season and make the top 30 in both leagues he would have had to post a .495 SLG. As a comparion, last year the highest slugging percentage for the Indians was Asdrubal Cabrera’s .460 SLG, though Carlos Santana was close with a .457 SLG. They were 62nd and 66th in the league respectively, which shows how the Indians really did lack a credible consistent power threat.” [Ellis/Indians Prospect Insider]
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Finally, pictures from the event I wish I could have made it to. The Uni-Watch Cleveland get together. [Uni-Watch]
