Our overlapping sports seasons
Our overlapping sports seasons
Classy gesture by Boone
Good morning, all. I hope your week is off to a terrific start.
I am old enough to remember, when the MLB season opened on the day the NCAA D1 men’s championship basketball game was played. Those days are long gone. With money, all-sports radio and television channels and the cry for programming content, our seasons overlap more than ever.
Spring will arrive tonight at 11:06 EDT. The NCAA D1 men’s basketball tournament begins tonight with a play-in game and the MLB season begins at 6:05 AM on Wednesday, when the San Diego Padres play the Los Angeles Dodgers in Seoul, Korea. By the time the NCAA holds its men’s championship game on April 8 in Glendale, Az., the MLB regular season will be well underway.
Baseball season starts earlier - on average two to three weeks earlier than 60 years ago - and the NCAA basketball season ends more than one week into April. It used to be our sports seasons and our seasonal calendars used to coincide. Not anymore. Baseball’s spring training is really winter training. College basketball spills well into spring, the NBA ends in the summer, just in time for the start of the NBA Summer League and football goes year round.
Don’t take this muse as a criticism of what our sports calendar has become. It is just an observation and a reminder that if you plan your sports viewing around the Gregorian calendar, you are liable to miss the first pitch.
Classy move by Aaron Boone
New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone made a classy move last week, when he invited former Yankees manager Joe Torre to Yankees spring training camp. Torre, of course, is in the books as one of the Yankees greatest managers, and was at the helm of the Bombers, when Boone hit the home run against the Red Sox in the 2003 ALCS to win the pennant.
It is no secret, that despite Torre’s success as Yankees manager, he did not depart the organization on the greatest of terms, following the 2007 season. His relationship with GM Brian Cashman was especially strained. After the death of owner George Steinbrenner in 2010, however, Torre was invited to Yankee Stadium to participate in a ceremony that honored Steinbrenner, and has returned on numerous occasions since to be part of special events.
Torre, however, told the YES Network’s Meredith Marakovits in an interview last week, that he was caught off guard, when Boone called him a couple of weeks ago and invited him to be part of spring training. Now 83, Torre accepted the invitation and the next thing you know, he was roaming the Yankees complex wearing a Yankees uniform. The story reached its climax on Monday, when Torre, sitting on the bench in uniform, was permitted to remove Yankees pitcher Carlos Rodon from the game, after he hurled five no-hit innings. The picture of Torre, walking to the mound to make the pitching change, set the social media world ablaze.
I don’t know how well the Yankees will do this season, despite the addition of Juan Soto. Already the injuries are mounting in camp and Boone needs to produce this year, the final season of his contract. But the Yankees, who have been known to make some public relations blunders, hit a grand slam by inviting back the popular Torre.
That is it for this week’s newsletter. As always, thank you for your support and have a terrific week.
DAN LOVALLO