We had a sad house the night of game 7 of this year's World Series.
Having adopted the Toronto Blue Jays because of our son's interest in the team, we were ready to (quietly) cheer as the team was one half inning away from defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers and clinching a World Series victory (our three-year-old was sleeping).
We had let the eight-year-old stay up late to watch. We were already making plans to get him some Blue Jays swag if they won. Sports rarely work out the way we want them to. This wouldn't be quite the same as one of our lifelong teams winning a championship, but it would still be pretty darn fun. And it was so close.
The story of what happened at this point is well known by now. Former Rockies great Jeff Hoffman piped a slider, nine-hole hitter Miguel Rojas tied it with a solo home run, and the Dodgers proceeded to break so many hearts with an extra inning victory.
Now the Dodgers are back-to-back champs. As we all processed the outcome, I presume that the talk went to some of the loftier hobby horses of sports fandom and commentary. Is this team a dynasty? Will they win again next year? Is baseball broken because the Dodgers have a big payroll?
Whatever your appetite for those topics, it's understandable to go down that track when a team repeats as world champions. My mind went a different direction. Beyond the sadness of my kid who sat with a blanket over his head when the Blue Jays lost, I found myself thinking about two individual performances from the world champs.
Today
- Yamamoto and Ohtani and postseasons that will be remembered
- Questions about Daniel Jones as we gear up for the home stretch
- Another fellow old guy holding it down in the NFL
One-name heroics
That's a clunky way to describe my point. But I'm going with it, because it gets to the heart of something I have been thinking about since the earlier rounds of these playoffs. At that time, I was thinking about how Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and his incredible showing in these playoffs.
Vladdy put together the kind of postseason that gets remembered by offering up a one-word version of his name. In some future year, we would refer back to the "Vlad Jr." playoffs. The only hangup, and one that was on my mind well before the World Series, was that individual great performances don't guarantee a championship.
Blue Jays fans will always remember Vlad Jr.'s run, even without the championship banner. Rockies fans still hang on to Matt Holliday's heroics when the Rockies reached their only World Series in 2007, but they also lost.
Beyond their fan bases, the one-name heroics from these players have likely faded and made room for the famous performances from the eventual champions. Actually winning the championship adds the extra significance for the memories of that postseason to stick.
Not every World Series champion offers an all-time great performance. These one-name heroics wouldn't mean the same thing if they happened all the time. Appropriately, this sets the bar pretty high for the players we do list off when thinking of some of the best October and November accomplishments.
To freestyle through some examples that pop into my mind, I can rattle off teams where I do remember their heroes. And I can also list off some champions where I don't remember any individual standing out.
I remember David Ortiz and the Boston Red Sox. Same with Madison Bumgarner and the San Francisco Giants. On the other hand, I can tell you good players for the recent Texas Rangers team that won it all, but no individual player stands out. I remember the Atlanta Braves winning and the Kansas City Royals some years before them. I'll remember some guys, but no one-name heroics pop in my head.
The 2025 world champs added two names to that list of all-time great performances that will be remembered for a long time: Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani.
In Ohtani's case, his performance over the entire run of the 2025 postseason was unsteady. Many people won't remember the body of work, and rightfully so, because his great moments rank among the most incredible things any of us will ever see in any professional sport.
The narrative heft of Ohtani's greatness places him in conversations with Babe Ruth and other mythical figures in baseball history. That's what will stick with many of the people who watched, not that he had some cold streaks at the plate or that he actually pitched pretty poorly in game 7 of the World Series.
It's the kind of thing we will still refer back to in many years, although I suppose that applies to a lot of the once-in-a-lifetime feats of Shohei Ohtani.
As for Yamamoto, he surely finds himself among the greatest postseason pitching performances ever. The past one-name heroics that come to mind for me are Bumgarner along with what Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling did for the early 2000s Diamondbacks.
There are others, and they often gave us a favorite kind of gutsy playoff performance: a pitcher coming back on short rest to clinch the World Series. And the only reason that's even a consideration, of course, is because of that guy's incredible pitching up to that point.
It's especially impressive for Yamamoto to give us an all-time great performance of this nature given the current context in baseball. Famously and to the chagrin of some, starters often don't pitch deep into games. Yamamoto had two complete games and deep outings in every start. He then capped that with a relief appearance on zero days rest, on the road, in game 7, against one of the best lineups in baseball.
He's the World Series MVP, and now his one-name heroics will come up when people remember the best playoff pitching ever. His name might be one of the first that people mention.
Some questions about Daniel Jones
Everything about being an NFL quarterback would overwhelm me. Far be it for me, then, to comment on the facial expressions of actual professionals at the position. Especially when the guy I have in mind is at the helm of arguably the top team in the AFC.
With that qualifier out of the way, let me share what I have noticed. Daniel Jones always looks a little confused, doesn't he?
Maybe he's right there with us, a little baffled at the events of the 2025 season thus far for his first place Indianapolis Colts. Maybe he's asking the same question we are: is it really true that, in the same conference as Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, and Patrick Mahomes, this is the signal caller for the best offense in the conference?
It is true, at least for now. Tip of the cap to Jonathan Taylor.
As for his turnaround this year, it raises another question. Does this mark the beginning of an actual trend, where it actually works for teams to take a floundering former first round pick and revive his career? I certainly think teams will try, but I think the success of Jones this year and Sam Darnold last year in Minnesota will be hard to replicate.
When these two stories are all said and done, I'm inclined to think that their respective early-career struggles were more about the distinctly sad states of the New York franchises that went nowhere with them than about some trend that will happen with other young quarterbacks.
Besides, do you really think Daniel Jones is going to beat any of the Allen/Jackson/Mahomes triumvirate in the playoffs?
Another fellow old guy!
You know the list by now. Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer in MLB, Joe Flacco and Aaron Rodgers in the NFL. Now we have Marcedes Lewis joining them, lining up for the first place Denver Broncos at the spry age of 41.
It's not as if he's just a warm body on a team that was desperate for help. The Broncos are a real team, and Lewis is playing a real role with his run blocking. Am I hoping for a touchdown to cheer for a Broncos score by a player older than me? You bet I am, and if it happens late this season, it might be after I turn 40.
But I'll take him throwing some good blocks, too. Hang in there, Marcedes.
A Jokić video
I like to end these with a fun sports video. Because sports should be fun. Does it turn out that a lot of these are either Ohtani or Nikola Jokić videos? Yes, it does. And given the way he's playing, we might be in for a run of Jokić videos.
Happy Tuesday.
