The world of sports — as it relates to on-field performance — is a meritocratic system. It’s not a perfect one — there are barriers that deny entry to that system at much earlier stages — but for those who make it into the system, it’s a meritocracy. You show up and show out, you get more playing time, more salary, and so on.
Once an athlete crosses over into the non-sports sphere (and this is true for anybody with a shred of celebrity), their ability to get more “playing time” is, well, less merit-based. A professional athlete gets more time on the platform of the playing field as a result of using trusted methods developed by doctors, sports scientists, and trainers to optimize performance on that platform. They follow this process fastidiously and the results bear out. Off the field, athletes can abandon the practice of relying on experts, instead saying what they think while claiming they did their research, and their misconceptions and bad takes still get lots of “playing time.”
Many people, including Aaron Rodgers, seem to conflate “it works for me” with “it should work for everybody just the same.” As somebody who has worked in IT as a day job, there aren’t many things that piss people off more than telling them “well, it works on my computer.” Except even here, ivermectin didn’t work on his computer.
I’m not holding out hope that Rodgers will learn from this, as that $15K fine for lying about vaccination status isn’t exactly a strong deterrent. The last thing we need is for people with his spotlight — combined with lack of expertise — to be doubling down and putting the public in further jeopardy with his misinformed takes on an ongoing public health crisis, but here we are nonetheless.
— JY
Answers from last week’s issue
Jorge Soler is, we are almost 100% sure, only the third player to win World Series MVP after arriving by way of a midseason trade. Who was the last player to do this?
Steve Pearce, traded from Blue Jays to Red Sox in 2018, had 3 homers and 8 RBI in that year’s World Series, which Boston definitely won without employing electronic sign-stealing techniques that couldn’t possibly have been brought to Boston by former Houston Astros bench coach Alex Cora. Why would you even bring that up?
What two NBA players, both of whom were Western Conference All-Stars last season, changed their jersey numbers in the offseason despite not changing teams?
LeBron James changed his jersey number to #6 from #23. Mike Conley, who made his first All-Star Game last season, changed (back) to #11 from #10. (When Conley was traded to Utah, Dante Exum, now with Cleveland, was wearing #11. Conley decided to wear #10 and said he didn’t try to buy #11 because that was a number he wanted associated with his Memphis time and only his Memphis time. This is now definitely not true. People! Who knows why they do anything!)
Though many NHL players have worn #97, only two donned that particular jersey number before the year 2000. Name them.
Esa Tikkanen (Florida Panthers, 1997-98) and Jeremy Roenick (Phoenix Coyotes, 1996-99) were making fetch happen long before Kirill Kaprizov and Connor McDavid made it cool.
With 110.5 career sacks, brand new Los Angeles Ram Von Miller is the active** NFL leader. What pair of teammates are, as of this writing, tied for second with 102 each?
Arizona Cardinals teammates Chandler Jones and J.J. Watt were tied with 102 sacks apiece when we wrote and sent this question. Since then, Jones has logged one sack, bringing his career total to 103, and Watt has been placed on IR with a shoulder injury that will most likely end his season.
#jonathanwhominga
“For me winning isn’t ‘winning’ — it’s 01110111 01101001 01101110 01101110 01101001 01101110 01100111.” The player who said this in an October, 2013 WIRED Magazine piece was an NBA Champion before he gave the quote but didn’t become a Hall of Famer until after the piece ran. Who is he?
Two players in baseball history won Rookie of the Year, MVP, and at least three World Series titles. One is Pete Rose, who is the other one?
Human Ken Doll and Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady (Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. to his friends) is one of four players to wear #12 for the Bucs and also win a Super Bowl. Name two of the other three.
Five NHL players have had their #12 jersey retired. Two players in this group captained their team and spent their entire career with one team. One of them was with a team that has never won a Stanley Cup, and the other was with a team that has been to the most Stanley Cups. Who are they?
#postscript
In the beginning, Oddball was supposed to be more of a trivia quest than a traditional question-and-answer trivia game. We were writing turducken-type questions that intersected and interrelated and we were having a blast, but when it came to actually making that format work in a way that would please and entertain real human people, we hit some snags. While we eventually found a style and a formula here in the newsletter, the larger idea has persisted. TL;DR want to build out a Zoom-enabled geographically agnostic trivia game, and will want to do some tests to see how people like it.
If you’re interested in helping us out, please let us know by replying to this email. If you are reading this on the web and not in your inbox, let us know in the comments (then subscribe to Oddball).
Many thanks to Jonathan Kuminga for being named his name and to you for being named your name, unless your name is Aaron Rodgers (aka Kaaron Rodgers, Q-Aaron, QB-Anon), who continues to destroy his legacy in real time while also endangering the public by indirectly influencing the millions of people who admire/look up to him to eat fuckin’ horse paste instead of getting vaccinated against COVID-19.
Until next week, be the Ezequiel Carrera you wish to see in the world.
— DJ/JY