Rick Reilly wants credit for being first to Tweet

Please tell me he was a coach when this was taken.

 

Maybe nothing in sports history was more painful than watching Willie Mays totter around in the Mets outfield in 1973.

 

The previous year, he hit .250/.400/.402/.802. The year before that, he led the National League in on-base percentage. Willie Mays is not an example of a player who hung around too long. He had one bad year and retired after it.

Furthermore, shouldn't players be allowed to play for as long as they are good enough and still want to? Wouldn't you? These guys are in their late 30s and early 40s. Given the track record of athletes after retirement, I have nothing but praise for those who stick with it for as long as they can contribute.

Those players are not analogous at all to Rick Reilly. Reilly is 56 and has been terrible for a decade. Most sports writers have careers into their 60s and 70s. Age is not to blame for Reilly's downfall.

Reilly is more like these guys:



He's a prostitute. And a lazy one at that. He's traded on the loyalty of his fans to the point where he has none.

 

Tartabull had 31 HRs and 102 RBIs in his first year with the Yankees, and 19 HRs and 67 RBIs in the strike-shortened year. He wasn't terrible.

Bonilla also had a couple of good years after his shitty start in his first stint with the Mets.

 

Aren't you fellas forgetting someone?

 

Verse stated it earlier... Reilly hasn't lost his stuff. He sold it.
He's more Iced Tea than Ice T.

 

2010, maybe. But if Reilly was 2009 Favre he'd have written his Gumbel story this past year.