The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

Controversy often plays like a shadow to Hall of Fames everywhere. Nowhere is this more evident than with the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. All-time hits leader Pete Rose remains out of the Hall due to post-playing career gambling, yet the all-time leader in "jackass" references, Ty Cobb, is. In my opinion, whether or not a player gets inducted into the Hall of Fame should be based on what they did on the field. Period. Cooperstown isn't home of the Nobel Prize Hall of Fame; they're home of the MLB Hall of Fame and should determine its inductees on the latter, not the former. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were two of the most dominant players in their respective eras. Before Bonds went to San Francisco, where the rumors about him taking performance-enhancing drugs started, he won two MVP awards in Pittsburgh, and finished runner-up another year. In the final three years of his tenure in the Steel City, Bonds combined to garner: 308 runs, 452 hit...

While I think the NBA Finals will feature the two best teams bar none, in the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers, and I'm hoping the series goes 7 games and is tightly contested throughout, I'm personally getting bored with these two teams' dominance and sincerely hope other teams start competing more in the coming years, because this is just becoming too predictable to my liking.  Sure, the New England Patriots have sat or near the top of the NFL for a number of years, but in that same time-frame, the following other teams have won Super Bowls: Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Denver, NY Giants, Green Bay, New Orleans, Tampa Bay, and Seattle. In baseball, the Kansas City Royals and Chicago Cubs have won the World Series in recent years. The Nashville Predators just made it to their first Stanley Cup Finals. In the NBA, though, we're about to witness the third consecutive finals between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers. While I actually like wat...

When it comes to people crying out that they're having their rights with regard to religion stripped from them in this country, I find they're typically of the Christian faith. This country is predominantly Christian and has been for as long as I can remember (further back than that, as I'm only 30). Without prayer in public schools, The Ten Commandments displayed on government buildings, creationism taught in school, people uttering the words happy holidays in December, the separation of church and state, etc., some like to clamor that their rights are being taken from them - that Christians are the ones being persecuted in this country. I find this almost comical for how ridiculous it is, yet also very common in like scenarios. When a person or group of people possess more rights than others, when said others obtain equal rights, it may feel to the first group of people that their rights have become fewer. That's not the case. It's just the fact that the others ...

As I mentioned previously, I got into a rather heated exchange (well, I was on the receiving end of his "heat". I was rather cool and collected) about Carolina Panthers' quarterback Cam Newton last weekend. The person whom was speaking to me made the claim that Newton is already great and has nothing more to prove to illustrate this, as he saw it, fact. I, on the other hand, said that while Newton has gotten off to a solid start in what will hopefully be a lengthy NFL career, I'm not going to judge the guy based on 5 (4 at the time) games. So, how do we define greatness in terms of athletes? Is there one clear definition? As usual, I think there are a variant of answers to the question of defining athletic greatness. There is such a thing as short-term greatness and while Cam Newton hasn't illustrated even short-term greatness yet, I could understand the other's (the guy at the bar) standpoint a bit better if he had alluded to this as opposed to declaring Ne...