The Back Nine comes at you before taking a little break for the Fourth of July with the realization that we are inside two weeks until SEC Media Days. What happened?
10. So Tim Tebow can add another notch on his resume belt — Double-A All-Star. He was selected for the game after the month of June where he hit .318. But mainly, he was selected, because he’s Tim Tebow. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If Tebow was hitting .218 it would be difficult to argue with his selection because it is the only way anyone would pay attention to the Double-A All-Star game. It’s in Trenton, N.J., which says it all. But we will pay attention now, because that is the power of Tebow. (In a bit of irony, there was an open spot on the All-Star roster because former Gator star and Rumble Ponies teammate Peter Alonso was elevated to Triple-A recently.) There was some Twitter hate out there as if Tebow was the first player selected to an all-star game with less than stellar numbers (he’s hitting .261, which is 21 points higher than Cal Ripken was hitting before his last MLB All-Star Game.) Jason Varitek once made an All-Star game with a .218 batting average. There is a bigger point here and it is that Tebow is going to play in the Major Leagues. The Mets smell on ice and what better way to sell tickets to a woeful team than to bring one of the most popular athletes in the world to your team? There is also this — after not playing baseball for so long, Tebow just keeps getting better at that sport. (He’s a better Double-A player than Michael Jordan was, but I digress). Something to be said for work ethic there.
11. Meanwhile, there was bigger news over the weekend because of LeBron James and his third decision, this one to join the Los Angeles Lakers. You may say this is the end of the NBA, because once the dust settles there will be two super teams in the West and nothing but tumbleweeds in the East. But this decision makes the regular season more relevant to the casual fan than it has been in a long time. My Lakers’ history is a little bizarre in that I lived and died with Jerry West and Magic and Kareem and Wilt, but when they traded Shaquille O’Neal and kept Kobe I disowned them. So it will be easy for me to root against them, especially because I jumped really hard on the Golden State bandwagon a few years ago.
12. There wasn’t good news for the Gator baseball team over the weekend, as Michael Byrne decided to forego his senior season and join Cincinnati. Byrne had told UF coaches he planned to be back, but sometimes an agent can be persuasive. The truth is Byrne would likely make less if he waited a year because he’ll have no bargaining power and, really, what else could he do at Florida? He’s got a ring, is the all-time saves leader, Stopper of the Year in 2018 and will always be remembered as one of the best to ever come through here. I don’t think he’ll be a great pro just because he doesn’t throw hard enough (I watched a St. Louis reliever throwing 103 mph on Sunday), but all Gator fans should wish him well. Remember, it’s the decision of the student-athlete whether to turn pro or not. We all have nothing to do with it.
13. More evidence I got into the wrong profession — Bobby Bonilla and Jim McElwain were both paid a million bucks Sunday for not doing anything. I’ve tried not doing anything and all I got was a numb backside. Man, there is a lot of money that gets paid every year for people to go away.
14. While on the subject of going away, Blake Toppmeyer of the Knoxville News Sentinel did a piece over the weekend on the 2015 Tennessee recruiting class. It was ranked fourth in the nation and didn’t quite pan out. This isn’t a knock on Butch Jones because that would be too easy. Instead, it’s a lesson that you can’t be too quick to rush to judgment on a recruiting class. For example, I’m getting a lot of feedback from Florida fans because Dan Mullen has yet to wow them in the summer recruiting period. I tell them all to be patient. But even when the class comes in and is ranked, you can hold up on your evaluations. That 2015 Tennessee class only has 11 of the 30 signed players still on the team and only three of them turned pro (two were sixth-round picks this year; the third was Alvin Kamara). It would be even fewer still with the Tennessee team if Darrin Kirkland Jr. didn’t change his mind about leaving and Jauan Jennings wasn’t reinstated. The Vols have lost 11 players to transfers (including Florida punter Tommy Townsend), which brings me back to this ridiculous paranoia among college coaches that the new transfer rules will cause chaos. What do you think we have now? I was curious so I looked up Florida’s 2015 class, which was McElwain’s first. I counted nine starters for this season out of the 20-man class. I’m not sure what that says, but it’s pretty cool.
15. There are two kinds of people in the world — those who live and die by the World Cup results and those who couldn’t care less. It doesn’t mean you fall in the dumb Americans category if you fall in the latter category. I watched more old football games this weekend than I did World Cup. But I do get it. I get the pageantry and the flopping (great tweet from ESPN’s golf writer Jason Sobel Monday — “Ooh, my arm! It’s broken!” — Al Czervik … and every World Cup player) and the incredible interest in the sport and its biggest event. It’s riveting stuff in the last few minutes of a tight game. Kind of like the NBA. So, yes, I have watched some.
16. If you saw the galleries following Tiger Woods at the golf tournament this weekend, you received another reminder that he is still the lightning rod for the sport. Every time he got it going, you wondered if this was the time he was going to break through. But he did not. All I know is it ramps up interest in the last two majors and that golf, like all sports, isn’t scripted. If it was, Tiger would have been there right until the end. So would former Florida stars Brian Gay and Billy Horschel, who were right there until they faded Saturday. But that’s just my script.
17. The Tweet of the Week comes from Mike Mills, former member of one of my top three bands of all time (R.E.M.) and an avid Braves fan — “They do, however, need to upgrade the bullpen. This team could go far in the playoffs, but not with this bullpen. As far as next year, remember the Nationals shutting Strasburg down to save him; haven’t passed the 1st round since. Play for this year!” I’m with you, brother. Just having the Braves in first place at this point in the season has been great. And their game was actually on MLB Network on Sunday. I forgot what they looked like.
18. Woke up like a kid on Christmas on Sunday morning because the steam room was set to open at the gym. Alas, it turns out there’s another week of fine-tuning. So I jumped on the elliptical and listened to this playlist:
• “There I Find You” by Middle of Nowhere.
• “I Think I’m Paranoid” by Garbage.
• “Younger Years” by The Milk Carton Kids.
• “She’s Kerosene” by The Interrupters.
• And for an oldie, “”Message of Love” by The Pretenders.
Contact Pat Dooley at 352-374-5053 or at pat.dooley@gvillesun.com. And follow at Twitter.com/Pat_Dooley.
Why didn’t you put “Light My Fire” on your playlist, huh? Why didn’t you put “Light My Fire” on there?
So it is just an assumption that Tim will be called up? No inside information.
Pat. I am with you about the Braves. I go way, way back with them. Back in fact to when they were in Milwaukee and it was Spahn, Sain, and pray for rain. And it is strange that the Yankees or Red Sox are on ESPN almost every night. Mostly the Yankees. And now the Braves are playing the Yankees in New York in a three-game series in New York and ESPN is not carrying a single game of the series. But they are carrying the Red Sox vs. the third place Nationals.
tampagator……I think the actual quote was “Spahn and Sain and two days of rain”
Why didn’t a Mike mills song make the playlist? I wonder if ole Dooley is getting the disease Mac had called acedia. It’s a sort of flatness or indifference. I promise Tebow doesn’t have it. My guess is that’s why Tennessee’s 2015 class didn’t work out…and why Tebow oily s going to the majors. The mental side Is huge in sports…not everything but but it’s huge.
I think Byrne will be a good pro because he has the mental makeup. I know they throw hard but the only number that matters is not giving up runs. I love the kid but staying would have been more downside than anything else.
I’m afraid Byrne will only be batting practice for MLB. Gator baseball coaches need to work on the guys NOT swinging at bad pitches. In the CWS, we were obviously swinging at bad first pitches and then letting low down the middle fast ball pass by. CWS umps sure like to call low strikes!
There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who use the phrase, “I get it,” every third sentence and those who actually…… get it.
Since I was a kid (mid 70s), I’ve been told the 2 things that are “the coming thing” are – soccer and the metric system (get used to it!). So I’ll start caring about kickball about the same time I care about how many kilometers/liter my truck gets.
I’m with you on that one, Mark. I used to wonder why in the Army we registered virtually all our weapons and systems in meters while the Navy used yards. Then I finally realized that virtually all our effect zones were on foreign soil that used the metric system, while the Navy has nearly about the biggest kill zone known to man and therefore can get away with using simplicity in everything they do. I’m not sure how that applies to soccer, which I may or may not understand in the next life, but what the hell.
Gator-6, My personal favorite was when the Florida Dept. of Transportation came out with an entire design/spec system based in metric units. ‘Cause, you never know when you’re going to have to export a road or a bridge or a sidewalk. How very Government of them.
Mark, remember when the state roads had speed limit signs in MPH and KPH? Only lasted a short time. In my Army time metric. 6 has the right idea here as our targets are not here. Common ground with allies. Engineering mostly metric. Thank god they didn’t decide to go to metric on the football field.
I actually live in Atlanta, and while the Braves are doing well, an inordinate amount of time on sports talk up here is centered on the Atlanta United soccer team. DEAR GOD PLEASE LET COLLEGE FOOTBALL SEASON START SOON!!!!
I’ll second that emotion.
Boy Howdy!
With the World Cup, it’s the biggest sport on the biggest stage in the world. And with changing demographics in the U.S., it will be the biggest sport in this country in a generation.
Probably too late to turn the country around (the metastasis is too great) but Trump’s trying. When a hideous, boring sport like soccer becomes as popular as basketball, baseball and football, one can officially kiss America’s ass goodbye, forever — irreparably broken.