Yes, we’ve missed a lot of stuff over the past eight years, and we’ll miss a lot of stuff in the future. That’s a large part of what makes the game so addictive and entertaining. You can make well-educated and reasoned assessments of a circumstance, and things can still end up completely surprising. It’s more fun to be wrong about forecasting a player’s collapse than it is to be right about it. Doesn’t change the fact that we may have missed that one, but it is more fun.
Minding my own business while doing research the other day, I came upon one of the weirdest, coolest pitchers ever. Looking into Tom Glavine and his 242 career wins–which puts him at No. 50 all-time–I found a guy named Jack Quinn, at No. 44 with 247. I love these kinds of random findings; you could be talking to someone you know about Gaylord Perry, and he might in passing mention the last legal spitballers, Quinn being among the best of ’em. I had no idea Quinn was so interesting. He wasn’t a star, and he pitched from 1909-1933, pre-dating my baseball consciousness by about five decades.
Team Health Report: Atlanta Braves February 2003