“BEREA, Ohio – The Cleveland Browns on Tuesday signed 9-year old Dylan Sutcliffe to a one-day contract as the team celebrates the one-year anniversary of its First and Ten volunteering initiative this week. Sutcliffe, who was diagnosed with ataxia telangiectasia (A-T), joins the Browns for OTAs today after he told Make-A-Wish Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana that his dream was to play football with the Browns. General Manager Ray Farmer made the announcement.
“We’re excited to add another quality player to our roster as we prepare for the 2015 season,” said Farmer. “When we first connected with Dylan, it was clear he was a competitor who had all of the right attributes to be a contributor to our team.” “Dylan is definitely a young man who has all of the ‘Play Like a Brown’ traits, particularly through his passion, toughness and relentlessness.” said Head Coach Mike Pettine. “We look forward to seeing him bring that energy to practice this afternoon.”
Ataxia telangiectasia (A-T) is a primary immunodeficiency disease that affects a number of different organs in the body. A rare, recessive genetic disorder that affects between one out of every 40,000-100,000 children worldwide, A-T is a progressive ailment that is characterized by neurological problems, particularly abnormalities of balance, recurrent sinus and respiratory infections and dilated blood vessels in the eyes and on the surface of the skin. Patients also typically have immune system abnormalities and are very sensitive to the effects of radiation.”
A day late but an awesome, awesome story. Our buddy over at @SC_Cleveland and his fiance initially met Dylan at the Browns jersey reveal back in April, when his Make-A-Wish was apparently stuck in the mud:
Thanks to their (and many others) efforts, his wish eventually made it to the front office and finally became a reality yesterday. They held a presser, Dylan got to break it down at practice, the whole nine yards. For a franchise that has been scrutinized so much over the past few years/forever, this was a really cool move. Impossible not to smile when you see a kid who’s had as tough a draw as Dylan’s dream come true.
So while you were sleeping last night, Miami Marlins cyborg Giancarlo Stanton did this:
114 MPH off the bat, landed on the roof of the seats in left, 475 feet away. Fourth player ever to leave Dodger Stadium entirely. Adios, senor pelota.
That got me thinking. Since I’m completely out of positive thoughts to blogthere’s no Cavs game to distract us tonight we could all use some good vibes heading into Game 2 against the Cardinals tonight, why don’t we take a look at some of the longest moonshots in Prog history? Spoiler alert – there’s a lot of this:
5. 478 ft – Jim Thome, 7/27/99 vs. Detroit Off of: Dave Borkowski
I may or may not but most certainly did not check to see if I could find videos of all these before I started writing this. 0-1 so far. So here’s a video of Thome’s first walk-off homer of his career, from 1994:
Thereeeee we go. It’s almost like we didn’t even lose 8-3 last night.
4. 479 ft – Jim Thome, 7/17/00 vs. Houston Off of: Wade Miller
…..yeah I’m 0-2 but I’ve had a couple good at-bats and have made a couple nice plays defensively. Thome went yard twice this game, both off this jabroni. On that note, here’s his bomb and FIRE bat flip from Game 5 of the 95 ALCS:
Tell it goodbye! Man that place was rockin’.
3. 481 ft – Manny Ramirez, for Boston, 7/26/07 Off of: Cliff Lee
I swear the top 2 have videos for them. But this one took some research so lay off me, I’m starving. First of all Manny hit two tank-pieces this game, one off Clifford and the other off our dear friend Jensen Lewis. I initially thought it was the one off Lewis, but it wasn’t, which is unfortunate because I had a hilarious picture to use for him, which I’ll share now:
Go Commodores. Secondly there’s some dinger debate on this one. The PDF I found from Wikipedia, so you know, gospel, listed the bomb as 481 feet. But ESPN’s Home Run Tracker (which is actually pretty cool but only goes back to 2006) had it pegged at 447. It doesn’t really matter since there’s no video and thus we’ll never know for sure so here’s Manny hitting a 3 run yackjob and setting a franchise record for RBI in a season (164) (!)
2. 485 ft – Mark McGwire, for Oakland, 4/30/97 Off of: Orel Hershiser
Check it out, a video!
That ball…might not come back. This one’s a perfect snapshot of the steroid era: long, high and goddamn entertaining. And also long. Sweet Jesus.
1. 511 ft – Jim Thome, vs. Kansas City, 7/3/99 Off of: Don Wengert
I mean we all knew that was coming. If you’ve been through the new entrance in center field you’ve definitely seen the bat-pointing statue, and probably walked right over the plaque marking where this puppy landed. Here it is, with bonus Hammy call:
“Jim Thome has just left Jacobs Field, on to Eagle Avenue.”
Something tells me that one might not be matched for a while.
But AI, what’s the longest home run hit at The Prog THIS season, you ask?
442 ft – Alex Gordon, for Kansas City, 4/28/15
God. Damnit.
That yellow circle is the ball, Red? My brother-in-law. The blue circle is not me because I had to take a piss. Overall, not a great couple minutes of my life.
To everyone freaking out about the greatest athlete on the planet overriding a play call from a first-year NBA head coach, aka all of national media and seemingly 90% of the city of Cleveland:
I’m absolutely flabbergasted by what I’ve been reading and hearing on the radio in the aftermath of a Cleveland sports team winning Game 4 of a best-of-7 playoff series yesterday. I get that over-analyzing is a thing we do around here. Look at the game tape, talk about things that didn’t necessarily go our way and contemplate strategies going forward. That’s all well and good. But there seems to be an alarming number of people out there that have gotten a running start, taken a jump off the pessimist high dive and ripped off a wicked can-opener into the deep end of negativity. And most of these people are aiming their splashes at Coach Blatt.
Before I go any further, let me say this: I completely understand the Blatt criticism…to an extent. He had an abomination of a game yesterday. No doubt about it. His Chris Webber impression very well could have lost the game for us, possibly even the series, if the refs would have caught it. The handful of inbound “plays” that led to the ceremonial burning of our timeouts and ultimately ended with LeBron surrounded by the sideline, halfcourt line, Mike Dunleavy (RIP) and Derrick Rose were questionable at best. Did an injured Kyrie hurt us more than he helped? Hard to say.
So question those decisions. Question the timeout mistake. That’s fair. Even when it comes to the title of this blog, go right ahead and criticize him for drawing up a play in the first place that had the best player in the world inbounding the ball. Like I said, coach had a rough game. But believe it or not, a player changing a play a coach had called or just challenging his tactics period HAS happened before in the history of the world. Probably more often than you’d think. I’d be willing to bet this wasn’t even the first time in the past month LeBron changed a Blatt play call. This shouldn’t be NEARLY the story that it is, but it’s Cleveland, so mentally prep yourself to hear about it until the day you die probably.
To prove I’m not lying, here’s a few other examples of egregious insubordination by athletes toward coaches:
Michael Jordan, 1989, Chicago Bulls vs. Cleveland Cavaliers
So this little diddy…
…never happens if the greatest basketball player of all time doesn’t step WAY out of line and politely suggest that coach Doug Collins give him the ball during the previous timeout. From Sam Smith’s 1992 book The Jordan Rules:
“Collins called time-out, gathered everyone in a tight circle, and began to draw a play for Dave Corzine. “Everyone started to look around,” recalled back-up forward Jack Haley, who would call the moment the most thrilling of his life. “Doug could see everyone sort of frowning, and he started to explain that they wouldn’t be expecting Corzine to get the ball. Michael just slammed his fist down on the clipboard and said, ‘Give me the fuckin’ ball.’ Doug looked at him, drew up the play Jordan wanted…””
Yeah ok Doug Collins may or may not have been fired like a month later but they were completely different circumstances than Blatt is in this year. It was Collins’ third year as a coach and like 6th playoff series. He also went on to have a pretty successful career, making the playoffs in seven of the eleven seasons he coached.
Juan Marichal, 1963, San Francisco Giants vs. Milwaukee Braves
Fun story for baseball fans who grew up in the age of pitch counts and, well, general regard for the human body. On July 2nd, 1963, the Giants and Braves played a 16-inning ballgame. A total of two pitchers were used. Juan Marichal threw 16 innings, allowing 8 hits, 0 runs, 4 walks and recording ten strikeouts. The Braves’ Warren Spahn went 15 and a third, giving up 9 hits, 1 run, 1 walk and two strikeouts. Spahn was 42 years old at the time. They’re both in the Hall of Fame now. Some guy named Willie Mays hit the homer that won it. I think he’s in there, too.
Giants manager Alvin Dark allegedly tried to take Marichal out after the 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th innings. Then after the 14th he flat-out told him, “You’re done.” Marichal pointed to Spahn on the mound and said, “Do you see that man on the mound? That man is 42 and I’m 25. I’m not ready for you to take me out.” He stayed in the game and got the win two innings later.
Dark would go on and win nearly 1,000 games as a big league manager, and is one of three managers in Major League history to win both an American League and National League pennant. David Blatt’s career NBA record is 53-29.
Luke Cafferty and Vince Howard, Friday Night Lights season 4 episode 5, East Dillion Lions vs. South Pines Tigers
If there’s one thing all sports fans can agree on, it’s that Coach Eric Taylor is the greatest football coach in the history of planet Earth. That’s just a fact. And even the greatest coach his sport has ever seen has been second-guessed by his players before. In their third game of Season 4, the Lions are struggling to get anything going on offense, particularly due to the fact that Taylor refuses to call anything but inside runs. Eventually, Luke and Vince get fed up and change the play call in the huddle to an option out of the Wildcat formation.
They run the play, Luke pitches the ball to Vince and boom touchdown. Weird.
Long story short, let’s not make a bigger deal out of this Blatt-LeBron thing than it should be. Criticism is warranted, certainly. But not because of what happened in that last huddle. We WON, guys. Can’t we just enjoy it like Austin and Fred?
Bottlegate 