An appreciation for Bob Baffert

The past four days in the sports world were very busy. Statements were made, narratives were altered and legacies were forever changed. It started on Thursday night with superstar winger Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals finally hoisting the Stanley Cup in his 13^th season. It continued on Friday with the Golden State Warriors winning their third NBA championship in the past four years. Over the weekend in Paris, the top-ranked women’s tennis player, Romania’s Simona Halep won her first grand slam. The top-ranked men’s tennis player, Rafael Nadal, claimed his 11^th French Open and 17^th grand slam title. Lastly, at Belmont Park yesterday, Justify became the second horse in four years to win horse racing’s Triple Crown.

The last five weeks on the calendar are the pinnacle for horse racing. For 37 years, the aura of the Triple Crown loomed over the sport. In 2015, American Pharoah, trained by Hall of Famer Bob Baffert, finally ended the drought. It was going to happen eventually and it was going to happen again. But, the likelihood of the same man being behind both? That’s a whole new level of improbable. Baffert trained Justify to all three victories becoming just the second trainer to boast multiple Triple Crown winners on his resume. The other one? Jim Fitzsimmons who won his second Triple Crown back in 1935.

Saturday marked the 150^th running of the Belmont Stakes. Justify was the 13^th Triple Crown winner. In addition to the 37-year drought that American Pharoah ended, 25 years elapsed in between Citation’s Triple Crown in 1948 and Secretariat winning all three jewels in 1973. Though, when it has happened, it’s usually part of a decade of a golden era in the sport. In the 1930s, three horses won the Triple Crown. In the 1940s, four horses won the Triple Crown. In the 1970s, three more horses won the Triple Crown. And now, two horses have accomplished the sport’s greatest feat in the current decade.

                                                     Garry Jones/Associated Press
Justify became the second undefeated horse
to win the Triple Crown.

Are we in the midst of another golden era in horse racing? If so, it’s all thanks to Baffert. Of the 13 Triple Crown winners, Justify defeated the largest field in the Belmont Stakes. Both American Pharoah and Justify won the final race of the three in wire-to-wire fashion. For what it’s worth, American Pharoah went on to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic in the fall of 2015, doing so by six and a half lengths, the largest winning margin in the event. Most expect Justify to return to Churchill Downs on the first weekend in November for the same race. Rather than arguing that Justify’s victory yesterday diminished the ability for younger fans to understand how difficult it is to win the Triple Crown, maybe just acknowledge how special these two horses were.

Baffert’s list of accomplishments goes well beyond the American classics, as he has several Breeders’ cup wins, International stakes and graded stakes victories under his belt too. It’s not worth analyzing the fields of some of those other races and trying to make sense of how impressive those victories are. It would take a real horse racing expert to do that and it’s really not even necessary. These are the five weeks of the year that horse racing is most visible. Announcers Tom Durkin and Larry Collmus have done a remarkable join accentuating the excitement of this time of year for the sport. For those that weren’t around in 1978 for Affirmed, the Triple Crown and its mystique were an annual draw. There were several horses that got close and made Belmont Park on the second Saturday in June the place to be. Then it happened, and now it’s happened again, all because of one legendary trainer. That should be all we need to know about the legacy of Bob Baffert.

Photo: https://www.newsday.com/sports/horseracing/baffert-likes-justify-for-preakness-while-others-shy-away-1.18424922

Teams from opposite backgrounds collide in Stanley Cup Final

It wasn’t possible to script a Stanley Cup Final with two franchises more dissimilar. The Vegas Golden Knights are four wins away from hoisting the cup in their inaugural season. For many, it’s still impossible to grasp that an expansion team could be this good this quickly. For years, the Washington Capitals have been trying to rid themselves of the reputation that they’re a regular season juggernaut that constantly came up small in the playoffs. One of the teams is going to win its first Stanley Cup. Should Vegas win, it would be a storybook ending to one of the most remarkable seasons in sports. A Capitals victory would finally mark the end of the playoff shortcomings.

Probably the most intriguing storyline about this Stanley Cup Final is that the man in charge of putting together the Vegas Golden Knights used to be employed by the Washington Capitals. Golden Knights’ general manager George McPhee held the same title in the nation’s capital from 1997-2014. After a year off, McPhee spent a year with the New York Islanders working under GM Garth Snow before Vegas owner Bill Foley hired him in July 2016 to call the shots. Washington general manager Brian MacLellan worked under McPhee with the Capitals before McPhee was fired four years ago. TSN’s Frank Seravalli wrote today about the relationship between the two.

Then there’s Vegas coach Gerard Gallant. Less than two months into the 2016-17 season with the Florida Panthers, Gallant was fired by Tom Rowe. Rowe was Florida’s head coach and general manager for the remainder of the season and the Panthers finished sixth in the Atlantic division and Rowe was promptly demoted. I’m sure Florida would like a mulligan on how that played out. Gallant was hired by McPhee and the rest is history. Gallant is a virtual lock for the Jack Adams Award as the league’s coach of the year and McPhee is a finalist for GM of the Year. Throw in the fact that practically the entire roster for the Golden Knights is castoffs who were either left unprotected in the expansion draft or traded by their former teams to ensure someone else would be protected, and it’s easy to see why so many have gravitated towards the Vegas story.

Though, by that same token, it’s easy to see why fans of the other 29 teams in the NHL may get behind the Capitals. The success of the Golden Knights has already been an indictment on front offices across the NHL. Expansion teams are never supposed to be this good in the first season. Washington, on the other hand, has never lacked the talent. Superstar winger Alex Ovechkin has won the Rocket Richard trophy as the league’s top goal scorer seven times in his career. Throughout the Ovechkin era, the Capitals have shuffled up their roster, changed coaches several times and of course changed general managers.  On paper, Washington was almost always better than whatever followed in the playoffs. By most statistical measures, the Capitals outplayed the Pittsburgh Penguins in the second round of last year’s playoffs, only to fall to their familiar foe again.

             John E. Sokolowski/USA Today Sports

Finally, after 12 years of failing to make it out of the second round, Ovechkin is playing in his first Stanley Cup Final. He went through Sidney Crosby and Pittsburgh in the second round to get here. An all-time great is getting the shot he’s long deserved on the sport’s biggest stage. Washington head coach Barry Trotz’s coaching career followed a similar path as Ovechkin’s playing career. Trotz had several playoff disappointments of his own as the coach of the Nashville Predators from 1997-2014. Players like Nicklas Backstrom, John Carlson and Braden Holtby have spent their entire careers alongside Ovechkin. The Tampa Bay team that Washington defeated in seven games in the Eastern Conference Final is younger and will likely be at the top of the East longer. There are other young teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs on the upswing in the East. If this ends up being the only Stanley Cup Final the Capitals play in during the Ovechkin era, it wouldn’t be a major surprise.

Who knows where Vegas goes from here? Goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury will almost certainly be the Conn Smythe Trophy winner as the playoff MVP if the Golden Knights win four more games. Though, Fleury turns 34 in November and it remains to be seen if his career has been reborn or if this is a mirage. While that same question could be posed of most of the players for Vegas, it’s unlikely that the Golden Knights have a sudden tailspin next season and become the team everyone thought they’d be this year. The window isn’t going to be open much longer for Washington, but this could be the beginning of a long and fruitful reign for Vegas atop the Western Conference. Whatever happens during the series, one thing’s for sure, the pasts, presents and futures of the Washington Capitals and the Vegas Golden Knights couldn’t be more different.

Photo: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nhl/2017/09/15/ovechkin-nhl-players-grudgingly-accept-olympic-absence/105627678/

Cano and Cooperstown just got complicated

Has there been a better second baseman in Major League Baseball from the time Robinson Cano arrived in 2005? Probably not.  At the end of each calendar year, baseball writers submit their Hall of Fame ballots for the following year and we hear the results in the middle of January. Names that appear on at least 75 percent of ballots earn election to the Hall. On Monday, if those same writers casted ballots of up to ten active players, the current limit on how many players they can vote for, Robinson Cano’s name would almost certainly appear on at least 75 percent of them.

What a difference 24 hours can make. Yesterday, news broke that Cano will be suspended 80 games for violating Major League Baseball’s joint drug agreement. The Seattle second baseman reportedly tested positive for furosemide, which is essentially a water pill that created a diluted sample to remove excess water and salt from the body. Cano’s explanation in a statement he released yesterday was that the substance was given to him by a licensed doctor in the Dominican Republic and he was unaware that it was banned. However, speculation grew instantly that such a diuretic could be used as a means of masking something bigger and that Cano was taking it to avoid testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug, which explains why said diuretic would be banned in the first place.

Immediately, questions arose as to what yesterday’s news does for Cano’s Hall of Fame chances. Should Cano return in August as the same player he’s been his entire career, and continues to be that player in 2019 and beyond, this may be easier to overlook for some voters when Cano is eligible for the Hall. Let’s assume that Cano calls it quits when his massive contract with Seattle expires in 2023 following his age 40 season. That may be on the conservative side too given Cano’s been a durable player in his career having appeared in at least 122 games in each of his previous 13 years and at least 150 games in the last 11 seasons. However, under that assumption, Cano would play the remainder of 2018 after he returns, and then another five full seasons. Sitting at 2,417 hits right now, that would seem to be plenty of time for him to reach 3,000 hits. Since Cano’s rookie season in 2005, only Adrian Beltre and Albert Pujols rank better in Wins Above Replacement than Cano, as Brian Kenny referenced on MLB Now yesterday.

                                                Jeffrey Becker/USA Today Sports

Beltre and Pujols are first ballot locks and there’s no doubt that Cano’s performance credentials are worthy of entry. But, imagine what the discussions will be about the Hall of Fame and drug users if Cano is elected? While it’s possible this is the only black mark for the Dominican second baseman, by the time Cano is or is not elected, the list of potential Hall of Famers with checkered pasts concerning drug tests will only be longer. There are already several that have dropped off the ballot by failing to earn five percent of the vote and there’s another wave that gets just enough to stay on each year but will never get close to the necessary 75 percent. Ivan Rodriguez’s induction last year was the latest in terms of players who entered Cooperstown despite a cloud of doubt surrounding steroid usage.

If we’re continuing to operate under the assumption that 2023 will be Cano’s final season in the big leagues, that means he would not be eligible for the Hall of Fame until 2029. That gives us at least 11 years of waiting before we know how this will impact Cano’s candidacy. I’m of the belief that if he does avoid any further violations and returns at the same level he was performing at before the suspension, he will reach 3,000 hits and earn election. But, that will only further the never-ending debate regarding performance-enhancing drugs and the Hall of Fame. While there’s over a decade until this question is answered, don’t think the discussion is going away.

Photo: https://nesn.com/2018/05/mlb-rumors-robinson-cano-suspended-80-games-for-violating-drug-policy/