Of the 41 trades completed at this year’s deadline, it was one of two that featured a player to be named later (PTBNL).

The inclusion of a PTBNL in a trade is not so much complicated as it is vague. Secretive and oftentimes so customized to the deal at hand, the generic, catch-all term does not do justice to how complex and creative these trades can be.

A team might insist on one to give its evaluators a few extra days, weeks, or months to whittle an agreed upon list of names down to one - although this is becoming less common thanks to copious amounts of player data and 21st-century scouting.

More likely, it could be that one team does not have space on its 40-man roster to acquire a prospect, and pushing an addition down the road gives it time to clear space.

Perhaps a prospect of interest has an injury, and a closer eye on rehab and recovery is required before a team inherits the elbow, back, or knee in question.

Or maybe the injury is linked to a major leaguer - even the centerpiece of the trade. Take the other PTBNL-featured trade from this summer, for example.

When the Red Sox and Orioles matched up for a trade that resulted in Adley Rutschman changing uniforms, Harold Rivas was the eventual player to be named - joining two other highly-touted prospects from Boston’s organization.

We later learned that Rivas’ name was agreed upon by both sides at the time of the initial deal, but his inclusion would be contingent on whether or not Rutschman experienced any setbacks with his wrist injury. If Rutschman didn’t return to Boston’s lineup by a certain time, the Red Sox were set to send the Orioles cash instead.

Mentioning the Rutschman trade is sure to hit a few nerves in Red Sox nation today. The club’s offseason began less than 48 hours ago because, among other things, the bats did not show up in the Bronx.

In the days since, I’ve listened to fans proclaim to Boston sports radio that the team doesn’t have the guys to beat the Yankees, not like they used to. One fan pointed back to Dustin Pedroia. He pointed back to David Ortiz.

I’m sure most everyone’s mind went straight to Ortiz’s playoff performances against New York.

Mine went to the fact that David Ortiz was the greatest PTBNL of all time, when he was acquired in 1996 by the Twins. How they wish they would have held on to that investment.

The Ortiz deal (he actually went by the name David Arias then) was pretty straight forward, like the scenarios listed above. But it also could be that there is a specific-to-season situation that influences the inclusion of a PTBNL.

In 1992, when Ricky Gutierrez was sent from Baltimore to San Diego to complete a trade that occurred about a week earlier, Jim Henneman of The Baltimore Sun reported the move and pointed out that Gutierrez - who had fallen behind Manny Alexander at shortstop - would have been exposed to the upcoming expansion draft when the newly formed Rockies and Marlins stocked their rosters.

When the Diamondbacks and Devil Rays joined the league in similar fashion a few years later, 13 different trades were announced in the hours following that expansion draft.

14 if you count the completion of one: Scott Brosius was sent from Oakland to New York as the player to be named in an earlier Kenny Rogers deal.

The Brosius move went largely unnoticed with the flurry of other activity, headlined by Boston’s acquisition of Pedro Martinez in exchange for Carl Pavano and, you guessed it, a PTBNL.

It took a month for Tony Armas Jr.’s name to emerge as the second piece headed to Montreal.

“For all those teams, like the Indians, Rockies, Yankees, who wondered why Expos general manager Jim Beattie preferred the Boston offer for Martinez to theirs,” Gordon Edes of the Boston Globe wrote, “the picture comes into focus much more sharply. By getting both Carl Pavano and Armas, Beattie comes away with two of Boston’s top pitching prospects and arguably two of the better pitching prospects in the game.”

Armas Jr. ended up being a serviceable starter - Pavano a little bit better than that. Obviously their prospect pedigree did not come close to what the Red Sox acquired in Martinez.

The opposite outcome occurred when Tampa (just the Rays by then) sent their ace, Chris Archer, to Pittsburgh in 2018. Pitcher Tyler Glasnow and outfielder Austin Meadows - the Pirates’ top two prospects in 2017 - were sent south and formed an already strong package. Then, a few weeks later, the PTBNL was revealed.

Tampa Bay Times reporter Mark Topkin wrote, “The deal got better Tuesday, when the player to be named later turned out to be Shane Baz, a touted right-handed pitching prospect who was the No. 12 overall pick in last year’s draft.”

Baz joined a long list of once-upon-a-time first rounders to add PTBNL to his resume.

Gio Gonzalez was that guy in 2005 as part of the deal that sent Jim Thome to Chicago.

Jason Schmidt was that guy in 1996 as the return for Denny Neagle heading to Atlanta.

Coincidentally, using Bill James’ similarity-score concept, the pitcher who most closely resembles Gonzalez’s major league career - we’re talking ever here - is Schmidt, and vice versa.

Equally crazy is this contrast: The White Sox reacquired Gonzalez in a separate deal only one year later. Jesse Orosco, on the other hand, was reacquired by the Twins 24 years after they traded him away as a PTBNL. 24!

Anyway, Trea Turner was also a former first-round guy in 2014 - but there’s a lot to unpack with that one.

In 1985, Pete Incaviglia refused to sign his contract after being drafted by the Expos. The team, logically, traded him to the Rangers and that was that. Except, major league baseball identified this precedent as one that could be used by teams to draft someone they knew they couldn’t sign in order to add a chip to that summer’s trade season.

The league instituted a rule to prevent this (players could not be traded until after a year from being drafted), but a three-team, eleven-player trade in 2014 (and who knows how many trades before this) found a loophole.

While Turner was officially sent from San Diego to Washington in June of 2015 (a year and a week after he was San Diego’s first-round pick), his name was in the December deal, in invisible ink if you will, well within his first year as a professional player.

MLB again stepped in and swiftly shut that down from happening again. Now, players to be named can not be someone who is less than a year removed from being drafted at the time of the initial trade.

While San Diego’s delay in sending Turner was for obvious and nefarious reasons, the time in which these deals are completed varies greatly, oftentimes influenced by other things on the league calendar.

In 2002, infielders Russ Johnson and Josh Pressley were sent from Tampa to New York to complete a trade for Rey Ordonez that happened the day before - initially eyebrow-raising but quickly explained by the fact that the Mets wanted to wait for that year’s Rule-5 draft to conclude - presumably so that they would not take an unprotected player from Devil Rays and then lose him to another team before he got through Laguardia’s baggage claim.

A few Decembers later, the Vincente-Padilla-to-Texas trade occurred days after the Rule-5 draft. And that trade also illustrates an example of the occasional player-named-from-a-known-list trade.

When Ricardo Rodriguez made the trade official, Todd Zolecki of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, “The Phillies had a choice to make, and they decided they wanted an extra arm in spring training. They finalized last week’s trade with the Texas Rangers yesterday when they chose righthander Ricardo Rodriguez over low-level minor-league infielder Julio Gonzalez as the player to be named later in the Vincente Padilla deal.”

Similarly, though maybe with multiple players in the mix, this happened again in 2007 when the Boston Globe reported that, “as expected [the Red Sox] acquired first baseman Chris Carter from the Nationals as the player to be named later in the Willy Mo Pena deal.”

In 2013 the Chicago Tribune reported that, “as expected, the Sox acquired infielder Leury Garcia as the player to be named in Friday’s Alex Rios trade with the Rangers.”

But my favorite as-expected announcement comes from 1995, when Mark Lewis was the final piece to a deal that sent lefty veteran David Wells to the Reds and lefty youngster C.J. Nitkowski to the Tigers.

Chris Haft of the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote, “The Reds made an anticipated but somewhat unpleasant move Thursday by sending infielder Mark Lewis to the Detroit Tigers to complete the trade for pitcher David Wells. Word leaked shortly after the July 31 transaction that the Tigers favored Lewis, who emerged as a productive hitter while platooning at third base with Jeff Branson. That dismayed Lewis, who continued to live in his native Hamilton and enjoyed playing for the Reds. Privately, Lewis’ teammates also expressed hope that the club would keep him. They admired not only Lewis’ production but also his industriousness. The right-handed hitter never missed early batting practice and was usually the first player to arrive at the ballpark.”

Lewis’ clubhouse compliments actually ties in a player who had me thinking about all of this in the first place.

Because the day that Lars Nootbar was traded to Arizona, the Cleveland Guardians acquired Jo Adell from the Angels and had to make a corresponding move to fit him on the active roster.

They opted to send David Fry, a former spring training addition via the player-to-be-named-later route, to Triple-A Columbus.

In 2022, Fry was acquired for J.C. Mejia in a roster-crunch move that Cleveland made to clear 40-man spots (current lineup fixtures Steven Kwan and Brayan Rocchio were added that winter).

When Fry was announced as the player to complete the deal, Paul Hoynes of the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote, “The Guardians went to spring training short on catchers, but they seem determined to correct that problem. The team reached a tentative deal with veteran catcher Luke Maile on a one-year contract.”

He continued, “On Sunday, the Guards also completed the J.C. Mejia trade from November with Milwaukee by acquiring catcher/utility man David Fry as the player to be named. Fry is scheduled to report to minor league camp in a couple of days. The 26-year-old Fry has played three years in Milwaukee’s minor league system after being a seventh-round pick in 2018. He has played all over the diamond with an emphasis on catching where he’s thrown out 40% (49-for-74) of the baserunners he’s faced in 122 games. … Last season he split time between Class AA Biloxi and Class AAA Nashville, hitting a combined .255 (80-for-314) with 12 homers and 46 RBI while playing six different positions.”

Fry rode his positional versatility, ability to hit left-handed pitching, and clubhouse contributions all the way to Cleveland - the old fashioned way - grinding it out.

I remember glancing over at a 2022 Cleveland-Cincinnati game on my phone between euchre deals at a Fourth-of-July gathering, when Fry had one of the better 20 minutes of baseball I’ve ever seen. After starting the game in right field, he was moved to catcher and hung on to a top-of-the-tenth relay throw that gunned down the would-be go-ahead run. Braves’ coach Brian Snitker challenged the call, but it was upheld and the game was sent to the bottom half, still tied.

With Amed Rosario starting the inning on second base, the Reds intentionally walked Jose Ramirez and induced a Gabriel Arias double play (that’s how you beat Cleveland back then). But Fry singled in Rosario to end the game.

While his game-winning home run against the Yankees in a 2024 playoff game might be what is referenced most from his playing career ten years from now, I think that performance against the Reds will stick with me longer. It epitomized the type of player he is.

I said that I began thinking about this the day that Fry was sent down - the day the Nootbar trade was announced. Today, the day after it was completed, the Guardians prepare for tomorrow’s ALDS matchup with the White Sox, and Fry is back on the roster. In the 10 games to end the season after his recall from Columbus, he homered twice and added seven RBI.

You’d be hard pressed to find a team involved in more trades featuring a player to be named than Cleveland - at least during my lifetime. Some I remember (the Ubaldo Jimenez deal had Drew Pomeranz attached), some I’d forgotten (Marco Scutaro was in the Richie Sexson for Bob Wickman trade?), and some I’ve only learned of in recent years.

Like how in 1994, Dave Winfield was sent to the Indians two weeks before the strike prematurely ended the season. Legend has it that a nice steak dinner replaced the player to be named, given the circumstances.

Or going way back to 1962, when Harry Chiti was traded to the Mets for a PTBNL. Three weeks later Harry Chiti was sent back to Cleveland to complete the deal.

But more than those deals, and more than the Fry deal, two Cleveland trades that involved a player to be named later still resonate with me to this day - for the memories that were made later, I suppose.

After the completion of the 2001 season, the Indians let Kenny Lofton and Juan Gonzalez walk via free agency and traded Roberto Alomar to the Mets. In just 36 days, Cleveland lost its leadoff, three-hole, and cleanup hitters.

Then, during the summer of the 2002 campaign, in just 33 days, they traded Bartolo Colon, Chuck Finley, Paul Shuey, and Ricardo Rincon.

Quickly, if Rincon’s name sounds familiar, we watched Brad Pitt make that move in 2010’s Moneyball - though Indians GM Mark Shapiro has more than once alluded that that’s not exactly how it went down.

With the ashes still smoldering from the firesale, and Nelly’s, “Hot in Herre” appropriately dominating the charts, St. Louis sent Coco Crisp to Cleveland on August 7 to complete the Finley deal.

A week later, 16.5 games back of the division-leading Twins, Cleveland promoted Crisp when Milton Bradley landed on the disabled list following an emergency appendectomy.

Interim manager Joel Skinner (players weren’t the only members of the organization cut loose) told reporters that the newcomer - who had never played AAA - would likely bat ninth and have the green light to run. In his 32 at bats in Akron following the trade and prior to his promotion, Crisp flashed speed with a bunt basehit, four steals, and great range in center field.

But that night, Skinner plopped him in the leadoff spot. There, he racked up six hits in his first three games.

First impressions of his cartoonish name and cartoonish batting stance were amazing. He was the exact spark that fading fans needed at the end of that miserable season.

I remember vividly how they started off 11-1, before ending April 13-13. And how at the conclusion of each month thereafter, the amount of games the team fell below .500 grew.

As did the concern that there might not be baseball the next year. In fact, one of Crisp’s early three-hit games was a sidestory to that day’s announcement that an August 30 conference call would determine the game’s future.

Ultimately, as we know, games were not missed in 2003, and Crisp made the jump from 32 games to 99. He tripled his triples. And homers. And RBIs. Like, exactly tripled.

He was part of something new in Cleveland. Not only had he replaced the franchise’s greatest leadoff hitter commendably, but the whole team was different. They were not the station-to-station offense that featured some of the sport’s best power hitters. Crisp’s teams were scrappier, like him - out of necessity.

In 2002, the club only had one guy steal double-digit bases (they only had two guys attempt to steal double-digit bases). In 2003, they ran a little more, and, in 2004, four players recorded more than 10 steals, with two of them tallying more than 20.

Crisp was everything Skinner talked about.

He was an outstanding defender, an outstanding baserunner, and was equally likely to hit a ball hard (with the third baseman in) from either side of the plate. 60% of his home runs between 2002 and 2005 came against right handed pitchers, but the lefties he took deep wore jerseys that read: Zito, Buehrle, Santana, Mulder, and Washburn.

In 2005, he posted his would-be best batting average and on base percentage. He recorded the most hits and most doubles of his career. He had an .810 OPS while also leading the AL in sacrifice bunts.

He was one of the team’s best players during a pretty bad stretch. And by the time the wave that was generated by all of the early 2000’s trades (Grady Sizemore, Travis Hafner, Jake Westbrook, and Cliff Lee) and a renewed commitment in developing from within (C.C. Sabathia, Victor Martinez, Jhonny Peralta), Crisp was gone.

He was traded to Boston ahead of the 2006 season in a seven-player deal. And the real downer there is that nothing from that trade impacted the 2007 Cleveland team that was so close to reaching the World Series - or, honestly, any team after that.

With a farm system that boasted names like Jonathan Papelbon, Jon Lester, Hanley Ramirez, the aforementioned Pedroia, and Jacoby Ellsbury, getting Andy Marte and Kelly Shoppach (both considered top-ten guys in Boston’s system, in Cleveland’s defense) looks pretty weak in retrospect.

What’s more is that group of Red Sox minor leaguers kept the ‘07 Indians from the World Series. Hanley Ramirez was the only name missing from that Boston roster and that was because he was the primary piece the team used to acquire Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell.

It stung to watch Boston sweep the Colorado Rockies because Cleveland would have beaten that team as well. Multiplying the misery was the soon-realized reality that Sabathia, set to enter his contract year in 2008, was probably not going to be around to help end the Indians’ World Series drought.

Which brings me to the second trade.

On the day that President Bush signed a bill to rescue America’s banking system, Brantley was brought to Cleveland to help rescue our spirits.

A month earlier, Sabathia was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers.

Unlike Crisp, who was St. Louis’s minor league player of the year in 2001 and the headliner of his two-person package, Brantley was the clear-cut second piece in Sabathia’s four-person return, but a good one. Most publications viewed Matt LaPorta as Milwaukee’s best or second best prospect, while Brantley occupied a spot a tier or two lower, somewhere just inside the top ten.

The Akron Beacon Journal’s Sheldon Ocker reported that because Milwaukee made the playoffs, Mark Shapiro was able to pick which of the two players he wanted from a list Cleveland made at the time of the original deal. How about that for being customized?

Give Shapiro credit for getting two future major leaguers on the list in the first place, and even more credit for picking the right guy. Taylor Green eventually logged 29 career hits over two seasons for the Brewers. Brantley had 35 in his first month.

It doesn’t seem like much time separated Crisp and Brantley in Cleveland, but consider this: On the day Crisp made his major-league debut, the iPhone hadn’t been invented. On the day Brantley made his major league debut, the NFL announced that players and coaches wouldn’t be allowed to use social media on the sidelines during games.

A September call-up in 2009, Brantley racked up four hits in his first three games - perhaps as impressive as Crisp’s start considering that Brantley was hitting 8th and 9th in the batting order, only getting 11 plate appearances to Crisp’s 15.

In his fourth game, Brantley was inserted into the leadoff spot. He never gave it up, hitting there the rest of the season, and posting a .313 batting average in his first 28 games as a pro.

Brantley played multiple spots in the outfield (centerfield opened up when the club shut down Grady Sizemore in early September) and, despite some early struggles at the plate, he became a key part of the team, and quite clearly the key part from that trade.

He was one of the team’s best players during a pretty good stretch. But by the time a wave of homegrown talent turned into all-stars (Francisco Lindor, Jose Ramirez, Jason Kipnis) and the team had replaced Sabathia, Lee, and Westbrook (Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, Trevor Bauer), he was hurt when the team reached the World Series in 2016 - and so was Carrasco, Bauer, and Danny Salazar, to be fair.

Even though the team fell short both times, the runs in 2007 and 2016 will always be remembered in Cleveland. Had Crisp and Brantley been a part of those postseasons, who knows if the outcomes would have been different?

Maybe this year, David Fry will be the PTBNL that helps Cleveland end its World Series drought, the longest in baseball.

Maybe he will get an opportunity to hit another late-game home run against the Yankees in the ALCS. Maybe he will play six positions against the team that traded him away.

Or maybe the Guardians will remain waiting for later - for when the sport has a salary cap, teams in Salt Lake City and Raleigh, and stars named Harold Rivas and Brian Curley.

It was a pair of recently dug up concrete blocks.

On their sides (or upside down) they very much looked like something he should have been hauling the opposite direction, but face-up, the way they were originally buried, they were beautiful. On top of each was a slab of white rubber - one was a rectangle, the other a pentagon.

I’m guessing that I was 12, because when we sank them 60 feet, 6 inches away from each other, I remember the most correct too-far-away feeling.

Not like when we put up a 10-foot basketball hoop when I was 8. That was just too far away.

The early 2000s featured a wave of new ballparks across Major League Baseball, and my two favorites - not located in Boston or Chicago - were built: PNC Park in Pittsburgh and Pac Bell (now Oracle) Park in San Francisco.

On a slightly smaller and slightly more local scale, ballpark construction found its way to my town too, yielding new bullpens at my school district’s varsity field.

The story is a little fuzzy for everyone involved, but what I think happened was that my dad caught wind of the project and drove by during an end-of-season field cleanup sort of thing - the sort of thing that years later I partook in.

And I think my dad went to those too, probably to help take down batting cage nets and windscreens. Perhaps he even touched up the paint job on the outfield fence.

But on this day, he was not there to give his time. He was there to take what was probably headed for a dumpster.

Up until that point, my brother and I had been using bases made from extra black rubber mats we had in our barn. Hard to see and extremely vulnerable to both Mother Nature and John Deere, they were passable for a while, but we were getting pretty serious about baseball.

Our enthusiasm gave the new mound and plate second lives - especially in the summers, when we’d head down in the late morning or early afternoon with a few unopened Mountain Dews, a handful of baseballs, and the day’s starting lineups on a scrap sheet of paper.

Typically, my brother would represent both teams’ starting pitchers, dictating the game’s tempo and providing play-by-play commentary from the mound. I would crouch behind home plate and either frame strikes or sling singles over the heads of invisible infielders.

For extra-base hits, I’d grab a bat, imitate batting stances, and chase the balls I hit while my brother described what was happening behind me.

I’m left-handed, but I loved flipping around to the other side to be Einar Diaz and others. I loved the differences between Omar Vizquel’s two stances, and the similarities that Coco Crisp displayed from each side of the plate.

I loved hitting solo shots (Cleveland still had to win) with Gary Sheffield, Tony Batista, and Julio Franco.

Of course, lefties Jim Thome, Russell Branyan, and David Justice hit the farthest home runs - all with exaggerated uppercut swings to make sure I didn’t accidentally send a screaming liner back up the middle.

In foul territory between home and first, we would twist our soda cans into the grass so that they wouldn’t blow over, and every few innings we would sit there for a few minutes, peering out past left field, beyond the farm across the street, and into the horizon.

Occasionally, that horizon alerted our umpires - which my brother picked for each game - when we only had an inning or two left before rain.

There was a treeline behind where we sat, running the length of the foul line from home plate to the right-field corner. We stashed a pitchback there - near blackberries and away from poison ivy if possible - and like stagehands rushing something in and out of a scene, we would set it up behind the plate when the person catching needed to be freed up to do something else.

For example, I would flip my hat around if the next pitch was going to result in a double play ball. My brother - as Dave Burba, or Jason Schmidt, or David Cone - would aim high so that the ball would make its way somewhere near second base on two or three bounces.

The 6-3 and 4-3 varieties were the easiest twin killings for us to achieve, and my part was easy: battle the ruts, tap the second-base bag, which might have been missing a corner, make the unconventional left-handed throw from second to first, and avoid the ghost runner who was barreling down on me.

My brother had the hard part: transforming to another person while running to cover first. He was usually Thome by the time he got there - but he also had Paul Konerko and Mike Sweeney at the ready.

Late in games, I’d be summoned to come in and face a middle-of-the-order bat - this was long before the three-batter minimum for relievers, so I really let it fly.

The pitchback would once again enter the game, and I’d throw the ball as hard as I could against the net, trying to get a routine flyball to my brother in shallow center. I can still hear the clank of the ball hitting the metal frame and bouncing sideways into one of our horse pastures.

Another Mountain Dew break for the rock-paper-scissors winner.

After the final out, we’d climb the hill back to the house, and give the game summary. We’d act out postgame pressers with Charlie Manuel or Eric Wedge.

Wedge would say things like, “Yeah, I mean, just really impressive that we were able to throw two no-hitters on the homestand.”

The storylines we could generate in an hour made for some of the day’s best entertainment. Thome had the sport’s first ever five-home-run game. Almost every Cleveland pitcher set career highs for single-game strikeouts, almost every time out.

We loosely followed the Indians’ real schedule, and loosely kept track of our win-loss records, stats, and imaginary injuries. And because our games featured plenty of manager ejections (and the occasional player brawl), we had suspensions to keep track of.

Eventually, our annual end-of-summer vacation would cause a break in the action, and between going back to school and everyone’s mind moving on to football, the games failed to pick back up with any real regularity.

When we found time on the weekends, our challenges transformed from having to avoid the head groundskeeper (who had a reputation for mowing in the middle of the game), to having to delay start times because the grass didn’t dry until the afternoons.

As the leaves began to turn, our baseball field became a football field. Home plate became an endzone pylon - the mound marked the last first down you could get in two-hand touch games. Friends would walk, bike, or drive over to run out routes in the outfield.

As the leaves began to fall, the records my brother and I set with Bartolo Colon and Kenny Lofton were officially safe until the next summer. The plays that Vizquel and Roberto Alomar made up the middle would not be topped for several months - if ever at all.

But for as closely as we inserted some of the happenings of Major League Baseball into our games, for as diligent as we were in having the correct lineups, for as serious as I took learning batting stances, our divergence with MLB in September, in retrospect, was extreme.

While the cooler weather ended our games, the real baseball pennant races were heating up. And the real single-season record-breaking performances were just coming into focus.

28 years ago today, Mark McGwire hit his record-breaking 62nd home run.

On September 18 the next year, Sammy Sosa became the first player to hit 60 twice.

September is when Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez became the second and third players ever (and first two in my lifetime) to post 40 home runs and 40 steals in a season, in ‘96 and ‘98, respectively.

I don’t remember realizing or recognizing those accomplishments at the time, and I’m not sure how much I even watched them play in the twentieth century, but I had their baseball cards and saw their highlights on SportsCenter.

Alfonso Soriano became the fourth 40-40 man on September 16, 2006, and I do remember that. You want to talk about an interesting five-year stretch - from 2001-2005, Soriano averaged 32 homers and 33 steals. He led the American League in hits and runs in 2002.

The problem was he also led all American League second basemen in errors in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005. When he was traded to the Washington Nationals for the 2006 campaign, he was more open to a position change than he had been in the past, and the club moved him to the outfield.

His homers went up. His steals went up. His errors went down. His first and only six-WAR season of his career was thanks to a combination of his best offensive season and a defensive season that didn’t sabotage the statistic.

It would take 17 years before Ronald Acuna Jr. increased the 40-40 club’s membership to five players, when he hit his 40th home run on September 22, 2023. Five days later, he stole his 70th base. This while also leading the National League in hits and on-base percentage. It was probably the greatest offensive season I had ever seen.

Until the next year.

Shohei Ohtani didn’t even need September to reach the 40-40 club - he got there in August. But on September 19, 2024, Ohtani went 6-for-6, with three home runs and two stolen bases. With that, he became the first player to go 50-50. Greatest game ever. Greatest season ever. Greatest player ever? That’s for another time - but probably.

And let’s not forget Cleveland’s Jose Ramirez from that same year. He finished the season with 39 homers, 41 steals, and 39 doubles. With two more at bats, he potentially could have not only become the seventh member of the 40-40 club, he could have become the second ever - joining Soriano - to add 40 doubles.

That was the conversation people were having the morning of September 29, the last day of the season. And then, a three-hour rain delay resulted in the game (which had no impact on the playoffs) being canceled. Jose didn’t get the chance.

Entering play today, Chicago’s Pete Crow-Armstrong sits at 41 home runs and 35 steals. Perhaps he will become the seventh player.

September was when, in consecutive seasons, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander landed on exactly 300 strikeouts during their final starts - joining a very short list of other players in the past 30 years to get to that number: Clayton Kershaw, Chris Sale, Gerrit Cole, Pedro Martinez (twice), Curt Schilling (three times), and Randy Johnson (five times). The years were 2018 and 2019, four and five years removed from when they were teammates in Detroit.

And on September 26, 1999, Manny Ramirez - in his penultimate season as an Indian - reached the 160 RBI mark - the first player to do that since 1938.

My brother and I may not have received that mound and plate until after Manny left for Boston, but many a time did one of us jog around the bases as him.

He was my brother’s favorite player, and we definitely inflated numbers, but we never got Manny to 160 RBI. 160?

I could keep going with individual numbers (Ichiro became the game’s all-time single-season hits leader, Francisco Rodriguez became the all-time single-season saves leader, etc., etc.) but there are plenty of memorable team accomplishments to mention as well.

16 of the league’s 30 franchises have turned in their best regular seasons since 1997. And of those, 13 of them broke their club’s existing record in September.

That list includes the 2001 Mariners and the 2008 Angels - the years that Ichiro became the game’s all-time single-season hits leader, and Francisco Rodriguez became the all-time single-season saves leader. I had to.

It includes the 1998 Braves, who had Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz. The 2011 Phillies, who had Cole Hamels, Cliff Lee, and Roy Halladay.

It includes the 1998 Yankees, who won 114 games on the way to their first of three straight World Series titles.

And it also includes former teams from Milwaukee and Tampa, though the Brewers and Rays of this year are the two teams in baseball that can set new franchise marks with hot Septembers. Actually, the Brewers just have to be okay.

Two of the longest winning streaks in the sport started in August and ran into September: Oakland’s 20 in-a-row in 2002 (you know this one from Moneyball), and Cleveland’s 22 in-a-row in 2017.

On September 1, after giving up three solo home runs in the top of the ninth (to blow a two-run lead and potentially snap its 17 game winning streak), Oakland kept its unbeaten stretch intact when Miguel Tejada hit a three run shot of his own in the bottom half. They walked it off to start the month.

The next night, Tejada walked it off again, this time with an RBI single. 19 straight.

And then, after an off day, Scott Hatteberg hit a pinch-hit homer in the ninth to win 12-11. Three straight walk-off wins and the at-the-time third longest winning streak in baseball history.

Even more exciting for me, for a number of reasons, was the streak that came 15 years later. I sat in my car in front of my apartment, afraid to miss the final out of the win that surpassed Oakland’s run. I pulled my phone out to record Tom Hamilton’s call seconds before Lonnie Chisenhall ended the game with a sliding catch.

The next night, Jay Bruce drove in Jose Ramirez in the bottom of the ninth to win again.

Last year, Cleveland’s 15-of-16 stretch that started on September 5, helped erase what was a 15.5-game deficit in July to win the AL central - the largest comeback to win a division in MLB history.

And to pinball back to the A’s, they overcame a 13-game deficit to win the AL West in 2012 - good for the second-best division comeback in the past 30 years, and tied for fourth best ever.

Of course you don’t need an historic winning streak or unprecedented climb in the standings to make it a memorable September.

We’ve seen some incredible pennant chases as of late, especially since the league expanded from a 10-team to 12-team playoff format.

And what makes all of this so captivating to me, so impressive and sometimes unthinkable, is the fact that 150 games, give or take, are in the rearview during these September moments.

The baseball season is kind of like a triathlon, if you will.

All 30 teams jump in the water right out of spring training.

By Memorial Day, you have a decent idea of what you are looking at, and on comes the second stage of the season - the long, rhythmic, summer - full of grinding climbs and free falls. This goes on until, in my opinion, Labor Day.

The trade deadline acquisitions have settled in and carved out roles on their new teams by then. Prospects who opened the season in the minors because they couldn’t swim yet start arriving as late-season reinforcements - some via September call-ups, when an additional hitter and additional pitcher can be added to every major league roster for the final month.

Some teams arrive at this stage well out of contention. Some are barely hanging on, held together with grip tape and bubble gum themselves. And some are poised to play their best baseball down the stretch.

In September, teams can’t sneak up on each other in the water anymore. Teams can’t fly around a corner and pass another in the blink of an eye.

The race, which in this case has 20 days remaining, is in the wide-open.

Everyone is scoreboard watching, and soon we will start adding magic numbers to this magical month.

In 2006, I went to the Indians’ last game of the season. It was fan appreciation day and giveaways filled the breaks between innings. Cliff Lee threw a complete game, and the team won 6-3.

But they finished 78-84 that year, 18 games back of the division-winning Twins.

It was actually a pretty good September for them, but they dug themselves in such a hole early in the year that it didn’t matter. There was no scoreboard watching that day, and the only magic number that I was concerned with was printed on a raffle ticket in my pocket.

After the game, manager Eric Wedge told reporters, “Obviously we are in the best division in baseball. Sitting here on Opening Day, who would have bet this division would send two teams to the playoffs and we wouldn’t be one of them? But next year, we’re coming back.”

He was right. They did.

But he also said, “Except for the first month, the starting pitching has been about as good as it can be.”

How soon he forgot about his summertime staffs from years earlier. How soon he forgot about the two no hitters that one homestand.

In his defense, that game, and that press conference, was on October 1.

His mind must have been on to football.

It was a mess that came from a place of good intentions, and the chore of cleaning it up created a time machine.

A random Mark Grace card brought back memories of watching the Cubs after school. From far outside Chicago’s local market, count me as part of a group of millions who had access to Harry Caray’s calls on WGN (just barely in my case - I caught the tail end of his career before his grandson, Chip, took over the mic). As an Indians’ fan, the Cubs were nonthreatening - both because they played in the National League and because their start times rarely overlapped with Cleveland’s. That would, of course, change one day, but that’s a story for another time.

A random Ronnie Belliard card brought back memories of taking I-77 north to the East 9th St exit. I once watched him hit a ball into what appeared to be Jacobs Field’s entire cotton candy stock pile, just next to the left field bleachers. Fans went over, under, and through the stanchions to get the ball, and, when the dust settled, the place had been picked clean.

A random Jose Vidro card brought back memories of playing video games back when home runs disappeared into a sea of screaming pixels. For whatever reason, I always seemed to end up with Vidro at second base after High Heat, Triple Play, or 2k fantasy drafts.

I came across the same pile of cards that I spread out during the summer of 1998, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa took aim at Roger Maris’ single-season home run record. I vividly remember tuning in to watch McGwire break the record the day after my ninth birthday. It was a time when you had to turn on the game and keep it in the background if you wanted to witness history. There were no cell phone notifications to tell you when Big Mac was on deck.

Fast forward all the way to my 2006 Topps Cleveland Indians set that I bought when I worked for one of the club’s team shops - my first job. That year, CC Sabathia, Victor Martinez, Travis Hafner, Grady Sizemore, and others formed one of my favorite Cleveland rosters. Surrounding myself with genuine fans a few days a week was amazing.

About two-thirds of the way through my card-sorting mission, I reunited twenty Upper Deck Collectors Choice Stick Ums cards. I’m not sure I ever had the full set, but I can, with confidence, confirm the demise of a few that I did have once upon a time. Especially one card in particular.

My mom didn’t throw it out. It wasn’t left in a damp basement. I didn’t sell it.

No, I peeled Andruw Jones - in his road grays, lace-cover flaps suspended mid-bounce - right out an unidentifiable big league outfield and stuck him on the headboard of my bed.

The year was 1999 and Jones was one of the best players in all of baseball despite being just 22 years old. That season, he played all 162 games and secured his second of what would be 10 straight gold gloves. He was the sport’s best defender. He hit 26 homers and 35 doubles. He stole 24 bases.

Like the aforementioned Cubs’ teams, I never felt conflicted while rooting for the same-era Braves. Maybe it was because the pre internet world - and lack of more regular interleague play - made the leagues feel peacefully separated until October. Or maybe the Caray men were just that convincing. Chip (Harry’s son, Skip’s dad) called the games on TBS - the other superstation that broadcast baseball superstars.

Atlanta featured a trio of Cy Young starting pitchers: Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz. Chipper Jones played third, hit third, and actually went on to win the NL MVP that season. But my favorite Braves player was Andruw Jones. In fact, he was my favorite player in all of baseball.

In third grade, I was the only person on my baseball team that could catch a fly ball hit right at him. In fourth grade, I was the only one who could catch one that wasn’t. The 10-year-old me wanted to be Andruw Jones.

Ultimately, I only hit my weight a handful of times over the next 15 years, whereas Jones blossomed into a legitimate power hitter. Legitimate as in the first Brave to hit 50 homers in a season. Hank Aaron was a Brave. Eddie Matthews was a Brave.

But the sticker on my bed did not have a bat, and I looked at it every night, hoping to dream about playing centerfield in the major leagues. During the school day, I drew pictures of me robbing homers - something I of course had never done since most of the fields I played on at that age didn’t have fences.

Actually, now that I think about it, all of those five hoppers that I picked up and lobbed into second base were robberies, since the only home runs back then came on balls that missed an infielder and rolled forever.

Anyway, I was reminded of that feeling when 10-year-olds approached the register at The Cleveland Indians’ Teamshop in 2006, wanting to be Sizemore. The highlight of my day was stuffing one of his jerseys in a bag for someone. Or, better yet, printing out tickets and handing them to someone already wearing one - two hours before that night’s first pitch.

Sizemore debuted in 2004, and while I have fond memories of his rookie campaign, my favorite part of that season was when my family used my school’s spring break to go to a game in Atlanta. We spent Easter Sunday at Turner Field. Chip and Skip were both there, and I sported a Cubs hat with an Andruw Jones teeshirt jersey.

Jones had a rough day, but he was still one of the best players in the league.

From 97-06 (his twenties), he averaged 34 home runs, 101 RBIs, and led all of baseball in defensive WAR.

From 98-07 (his peak offensive years … in which he won a gold glove every season) only Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez produced more total WAR.

Of course, one of Jones’ biggest moments came before I saw him, before his peak offensive years, and before his twenties!

In Game 1 of the ’96 World Series, Jones homered off of Andy Pettitte, becoming the youngest player to go yard in the fall classic. Two innings later, he homered again.

I do not remember that happening in real time, but that was the same season that I attended my first major league game. 30 years ago this past Monday - three months before Jones’ historic night - I watched the Indians host the Twins with my parents and brother. I do not remember anything from the game, but I remember leaving before it was over.

Trailing 5-4 in the bottom of the ninth, we were in a parking garage when Kenny Lofton scored on a bases-loaded walk. The structure shook from the stadium’s eruption. Fortunately, we had safely evacuated before Alvaro Espinoza hit a walk-off homer in the 11th.

A little over a week later (30 years ago this upcoming Wednesday), Espinoza and Carlos Baerga were sent to the Mets in exchange for infielders Jose Vizcaino and Jeff Kent. And what I remember from that was Cleveland fans were not happy. Baerga was an All-Star and one of the faces of the team.

At the end of the season, Cleveland sent the Baerga return plus Julian Tavarez (who started the game that Espinoza walked off) to San Francisco for Matt Williams.

It was San Francisco general manager, Brian Sabean’s, turn to take some heat for a trade, and, out of all of that, Cleveland actually did quite well. They got one year of Williams (who went on to win a gold glove and silver slugger at third base), Jim Thome bumped over to the other corner of the infield (where he entrenched himself as one of the franchises all-time best sluggers), and the team got back to the World Series. All it cost was a depth arm/swingman, utility infielder at the end of his career, and another infielder who - little did we know - was pretty much at the end of his career too.

But looking back, the real story to all of this is the ancillary, conduit-like piece that went along with the ride of it all: Jeff Kent. In San Francisco, he would finish top-ten in NL MVP votes four times over the next six seasons. He won it in 2000. Sabean, it ended up, did better than quite well.

Tomorrow, I will be making the drive to Cooperstown for this year’s Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, where Kent will take his place alongside the game’s greatest to ever play. Part of this year’s three-person class, he will be joined by Carlos Beltran. And he will be joined by Andruw Jones.

Last summer, I attended to watch the enshrinements of Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki, and the Ford Frick Award winner, Tom Hamilton. Each of them played a huge role in me falling in love with baseball, and each of them are tangled in the web of a book I am writing.

But I only had one sticker on my bed. And I only had one teeshirt jersey.

Moreover, as someone who still dreams about standing in centerfield, watching the game from the best seat in the house and chasing down balls in the gaps, it will be a great weekend for the position. Jones and Beltran become just the second and third centerfielders to be inducted in the last 20 years. It’s been a decade since Ken Griffey Jr. went in.

Griffey and 57 other past inductees are set to attend this weekend’s festivities - making the 61 total Hall of Famers a record for the event. Jones’ former teammates Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, and Chipper Jones will be a part of that group, meaning it could be (and should be) an Atlanta-heavy crowd, though Beltran and Kent will certainly bring out semi-local Mets fans.

And here is something else I will predict: like last year when plenty of Cal Raleigh jerseys swam through the streets surrounding Ichiro’s induction, I’m expecting to see a fair share of Ronald Acuna and Matt Olson jerseys over the four-day celebration.

That’s one of the best parts of Cooperstown. Baseball’s past meets baseball’s present. Personified, Ronald Acuna was born the same year that Jones homered in the World Series as a teenager. Olson, the only other Brave to homer 50 times in a season, did it in 2023 - a year after Jones’ son, Druw, was drafted second overall by the Arizona Diamondbacks.

It might not be long before a Druw Jones jersey is spotted during induction weekend - one for, say, Paul Goldschmidt?

All of this highlights more than cool coincidences. The truth is that Alvaro Espinoza’s home run, the Indians-Marlins World Series, the McGwire-Sosa home run race, the 1999 Home Run Derby, the Subway Series - they were all a long time ago. My first strong baseball memories are from another generation.

Jim Thome’s son was drafted by the White Sox last week. Andy Pettitte’s son was selected by the Yankees. It doesn’t seem possible.

But, between the sadness and scariness of it, something recently occurred to me - specifically as it relates to this weekend. Players that I remember as rookies are entering the Hall of Fame.

So, 90 years after Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson were elected as Cooperstown’s first class, allow me to set aside a handful of others as part of my inaugural class within the classes - a group that I can claim I watched in its entirety:

Andruw Jones (1996-2012; Inducted in 2026)

CC Sabathia (2001-2019; Inducted in 2025)

Ichiro Suzuki (2001-2019; Inducted in 2025)

Joe Mauer (2004-2018; Inducted in 2024)

Carlos Beltran (1998-2017; Inducted in 2026)

We will not see the plaques for Jones and Beltran until Sunday, but here is how the other three read:

CC Sabathia:

UNRELENTING ACE WAS THE ROCK OF THREE FRANCHISES’ STAFFS, DELIVERING EACH TO THE POSTSEASON. SELECTED AS 2007 A.L. CY YOUNG AWARD WINNER IN CLEVELAND BEFORE CARRYING 2008 BREWERS TO OCTOBER WITH N.L. HIGH SEVEN COMPLETE GAMES IN A HALF-SEASON. LED YANKEES TO 2009 WORLD SERIES TITLE WITH LEAGUE-LEADING 19 WINS, STARTING GAME 1 OF ALL THREE POSTSEASON SERIES AND EARNING A.L.C.S. MOST VALUABLE PLAYER HONORS. SIX-TIME ALL-STAR WON 251 GAMES, REACHED THE 200-INNINGS MARK IN EIGHT SEASONS AND FINISHED IN THE TOP FIVE OF CY YOUNG AWARD VOTING FIVE TIMES BECAME THIRD LEFT-HANDED MEMBER OF 3,000-STRIKEOUT CLUB.

Ichiro Suzuki:

WITH EXTRAORDINARY WORK ETHIC AND UNPARALLELED BAT CONTROL BROUGHT RECORD-SETTING HIT TOTALS TO MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL AS ITS FIRST JAPANESE-BORN POSITION PLAYER. ELECTRIFIED 2001 MARINERS TO RECORD 116-WIN CAMPAIGN, EARNING AL. ROOKIE OF THE YEAR AND MOST VALUABLE PLAYER HONORS. THE ONLY PLAYER WITH 10 STRAIGHT 200-HIT CAMPAIGNS, 2001-2010, SET ALL-TIME SINGLE-SEASON HITS RECORD WITH 262 IN 2004. AN ALL-STAR AND GOLD GLOVE OUTFIELDER THROUGHOUT HIS FIRST DECADE IN THE MAJOTS, LED A.L. IN HITS SEVEN TIMES, WON TWO A.L. BATTING TITLES AFTER CAPTURING SEVEN CONSECUTIVE IN JAPAN. TOTALED 3,089 MLB HITS AND 509 STOLEN BASES.

Joe Mauer:

LIFELONG TWIN WAS ONE OF THE MOST COMPLETE CATCHERS IN THE GAME’S HISTORY, PRODUCING AT THE PLATE AND BEHIND THE MASK LIKE FEW OTHERS. DEPLOYED PRECISE LEFT-HANDED SWING TO BECOME FIRST A.L. CATCHER TO WIN A BATTING TITLE, SECURING THREE TOTAL - 2006, 2008, 2009 - MOST EVER AMONG BACKSTOPS IN A.L./N.L. HISTORY. EARNED A.L. MVP HONORS IN 2009 WHEN HE HIT .365, SETTING ALL-TIME RECORD AMONG THOSE WITH 100 GAMES CAUGHT IN A SEASON, AND HOMERED 28 TIMES. FIRST OVERALL SELECTION OF 2001 MLB DRAFT WAS A SIX-TIME ALL-STAR. WON FIVE SILVER SLUGGERS AND DISPLAYED ATHLETICISM BEHIND THE PLATE, EARNING THREE GOLD GLOVE AWARDS.

And here is how mine would read:

CC Sabathia:

ONE OF THE LAST PITCHERS FROM AN ERA WHEN THE STARTING-PITCHING MATCHUP MATTERED - WHEN IT MAY AS WELL HAVE BEEN ON A MARQUEE SIGN ABOVE THE TURNSTILES. WAS ON THE FRONTLINES OF CLEVELAND’S TRANSITION FROM MASHING ITS WAY TO THE PLAYOFFS TO RUNNING THE TOP PITCHING FACTORY IN THE LEAGUE. WON 100 GAMES FOR TWO FRANCHISES AND IT SURE FELT LIKE HE WON 100 FOR MILWAUKEE IN 2008. ENORMOUS SIZE AND LEADERSHIP, WITH A SIGNATURE HAT AND ARM ANGLE. COULD BE ONE OF THE LAST PITCHERS TO RECORD 3,000 CAREER STRIKEOUTS.

Ichiro Suzuki:

RESCUED THE SPIRIT OF SEATTLE’S FRANCHISE FROM THE DEPARTURES OF KEN GRIFFEY JR. AND ALEX RODRIGUEZ AND INSTANTLY IMPACTED THE SPORT. 2001’S ROOKIE OF THE YEAR AND MOST VALUABLE PLAYER, HE RECEIVED MORE TV TIME BETWEEN PITCHES THAT SEASON THAN ANY OTHER PLAYER I CAN REMEMBER. YEARS BEFORE STATCAST BUSIED BASEBALL BROADCASTS, EVERYTHING ICHIRO DID WAS MEASURED: HOW FAST HE RAN DOWN THE LINE, HOW FAR HE THREW THE BALL, HOW COOL HIS SUNGLASSES WERE. HE BROUGHT THE SINGLE BACK INTO STYLE AT THE EXACT TIME THE GAME NEEDED SOMETHING PURE.

Joe Mauer:

LIFELONG PAIN IN THE ASS FOR OPPOSING FANBASES. NEVER FELT AS SCARY AS AROD OR VLAD OR BIG PAPI, YET HE SIMILARLY MADE TEAMS PAY IF THEY DIDN’T WORK AROUND HIM. HIT ABOUT 300 POINTS HIGHER THAN THE BEST CATCHER IN WHATEVER YEAR IT IS THAT YOU ARE READING THIS. WAS NAMED U.S.A. TODAY’S 2000 HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL PLAYER OF THE YEAR AND HE GAVE OFF QUARTERBACK LEADERSHIP VIBES DURING HIS BASEBALL CAREER, EVEN WEARING A FACE MASK FIFTY PERCENT OF THE TIME. WALKED AGAINST CC SABATHIA IN HIS FIRST CAREER AT BAT CONTRIBUTING TO HIS LIFETIME .388 ON-BASE PERCENTAGE.

As for the two newest inductees:

Carlos Beltran:

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR IN 1999 WHEN HE HELPED FORM ONE OF THE BEST OUTFIELD TRIOS THAT NO ONE OUTSIDE OF THE AMERICAN LEAGUE CENTRAL REMEMBERS. FRINGE FIRST ROUNDER IN A DECADE’S WORTH OF FANTASY DRAFTS, A TRUE FIVE-TOOL PLAYER WHO BROKE INTO THE MAJORS WHEN GRIFFEY, BONDS, AND RODRIGUEZ WERE AT THE TOP OF THEIR GAMES. A COVETED BAT DURING THREE SEPARATE TRADE DEADLINES INCLUDING THE 2004 SEASON IN WHICH HIS MVP-LEVEL SEASON FADED INTO THE BACKGROUND BECAUSE OF HIS LEAGUE CHANGE. FOR AS GOOD AS WE REMEMBER BELTRAN BEING, HE WAS EVEN BETTER.

Andruw Jones:

TWO-TIME MINOR LEAGUE PLAYER OF THE YEAR, JONES CAUGHT ROUTINE FLY BALLS AND SLICING LINERS WITH EXCITING EFFORTLESSNESS. PART OF FOUR STRAIGHT NLCS BERTHS AND TWO WORLD SERIES TO START HIS CAREER, THE NATIONAL LEAGUE TOOK NOTICE OF JONES THE WAY THE AMERICAN LEAGUE TOOK NOTICE OF KEN GRIFFEY JR. LESS THAN A DECADE EARLIER. LIKE GRIFFEY JR., JONES DID ENOUGH BEFORE HIS THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY TO WARRANT CONSIDERATION FOR A SPOT IN THIS BUILDING. AND LIKE GRIFFEY JR. HE WOULD GO ON TO FINISH WITH 400 HOME RUNS AND 10 GOLD GLOVES, SOMETHING ONLY WILLIE MAYS AND MIKE SCHMIDT WERE ABLE TO DO.

Being my first favorite player, you might think that I’d put Jones’ plaque in the middle of whatever wall these would be going on. But that sticker was on the far right of my headboard, so I would have his plaque hang there as well. Plus, Sabathia deserves to go in the center. Think about this:

Against the four other players head-to-head, CC’s team went 36-16, with the would-be Hall of Famers combining to go .272/.328/.426 with only 4 home runs and 13 RBI in 177 plate appearances. It’s not the largest sample size, but both the number of games (52) and total at bats (162) would exhaust this creation’s rookie eligibility. Suzuki, Mauer, Beltran, and Jones combined to post career strike out and walk rates of 14 and 10 percent, respectively. Against Sabathia, those rates look a lot more pedestrian: 22% K; 8% BB.

Ichiro’s plaque would be placed all the way to the left, slightly falling even more to the left, emulating his swing.

As for Mauer, Beltran, and positions two and four on the wall, it really doesn’t matter. Both players find themselves in the middle of several baseball memories of mine - mostly because they played so many games against Cleveland.

Or maybe, no matter how fun it is to imagine a perfectly-arranged room in Cooperstown, one that could be sorted and maintained based on aesthetics and accolades - maybe there’s fun in randomness. Maybe each person to walk into the room could move them wherever he or she pleases - to represent something or nothing. Maybe that would keep the memories generated unpredictable.

Like what happens when you sift through a giant collection of baseball cards.

Eisen left ESPN a few years before SportsCenter turned 25, but the show was still in its prime when the network began referencing its soon-to-be silver-anniversary episode. That was the summer the Pistons won the NBA finals, Cal State Fullerton won the College World Series, and Roger Federer and Smarty Jones each flirted with perfection.

Between highlights, ESPN began a countdown to my birthday - unbeknownst to me until a few weeks before September, if I’m remembering correctly.

No, Eisen’s ESPN employment was before that - lasting from 1996-2003. As my episodic and semantic memory began to develop during that time, I stuffed it with episodes about statistics, birthday-bias free.

SportsCenter was there to follow full slates of weeknight NBA and MLB games. It kick-started weekend mornings. It was on permanent standby to give my video game consoles (and my brother’s play-by-play commentary) much needed breaks from Madden.

The show is how I learned what Lance Armstrong and Serena Williams did on the other side of the world. It’s how I learned that Greg Maddux threw another sub-100-pitch complete game. When I missed Tiger in his Sunday red because of a summer-baseball tournament, it’s how I learned that he chased someone down on the back nine.

It’s how I learned that Vladimir Guerrero and Raul Mondesi had cannons. That Raymond James Stadium had cannons. That Bill Romanowski, Milton Bradley, and Ron Artest were loose cannons.

In 2000, a local radio station was giving away Indians tickets at a nearby grocery store. In exchange for a correct answer to their team-themed question, one could walk away with four bleacher seats to that night’s game. I approached the table with my mom and was asked to name Cleveland’s starting lineup, around-the-horn style. I got a, “good try, kid,” response.

But I watched SportsCenter that morning and knew the club traded for outfielder Ricky Ledee.

Long story short, we drove home with the tickets in hand, and, fittingly, took in the game with the back of Ledee’s jersey in our sightline for much of the evening.

My stories from this time period are not unique, made clear by anecdotes that Chris Berman, Mike Greenberg, and others shared with Eisen over the past several weeks.

And because of the series, this actually marks the second consecutive summer that I’ve paired old SportsCenter highlights with my morning coffee - as last year I watched a season’s worth of MLB highlights for a book I am writing.

Given the nostalgia, our nation’s birthday, and the upcoming All-Star Game, I couldn’t help but thinking about the golden age of sports television, America’s Pastime, and its midsummer classic.

To put it another way, I couldn’t help thinking about the 1999 Home Run Derby and All-Star Game at Fenway Park.

That particular derby belongs with the most vivid baseball memories I have - even though I was nine years old and don’t recall much else from that season. I watched it again before writing this, and, without having seen any footage in almost 30 years, I remembered all of it. Kind of a remarkable thing for an extended round of batting practice. But here’s why:

Smash Mouth kicked off the broadcast with their aptly named smash hit, “All Star.” Nearly two years before Shrek popularized the song on a wider scale, the band’s new single would go on to score that night (62 times, if you will), and peaked at No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot 100 the next month.

And speaking of 100, part of the magic from that year’s festivities was that a panel of media members, baseball executives, and baseball historians put together a 100-player ballot for fans to select the Mastercard All-Century Team. Voting opened the next day, but a handful of legends could be seen during the derby - including two that would ultimately make the final team, finishing fourth and fifth in fan votes: Hank Aaron and Ted Williams.

The two were among seven players to receive over 1,000,000 votes, trailing only Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. And while an additional panel had to be created last-minute to add five players who the fans left off (Stan Musial being the biggest miss), it’s hard to look back and argue with the fans’ top-four.

Of all players to appear in 1,000 games between 1871 and 1999, Ruth, Williams, and Gehrig hold the top three spots for highest all-time OPS+ - a widely-used statistic created decades after they had all been retired.

Consider this:

If Mike Trout took the rest of the year off in order to rest up, return next season, and carbon copy his three MVP seasons before retiring:

Mike Trout: 2299 hits, 1598 runs, 435 doubles, 531 homers, 1369 RBI. Good for 116.4 WAR.

Ted Williams: 2654 hits, 1798 runs, 525 doubles, 521 homers, 1839 RBI. Good for 121.7 WAR.

If you take the last 16 American League MVPs - skipping over Justin Verlander in 2011 - and put their award-winning seasons up against Babe Ruth’s career (we’re looking at roughly the same number of plate appearances here):

MVPs: 2727 hits, 1752, runs, 522 doubles, 637 homers, 1715 RBI. Good for 128.4 WAR.

Babe Ruth: 2873 hits, 2174 runs, 506 doubles, 714 homers, 2214 RBI. Good for 162.3 WAR.

And if Juan Soto used the next eight and a half seasons (earning more than $440 million along the way) to repeat his career to date:

Juan Soto: 2332 hits, 1638 runs, 414 doubles, 530 homers, 1496 RBI. Good for 90.8 WAR.

Lou Gehrig: 2721 hits, 1888 runs, 534 doubles, 493 homers, 1995 RBI. Good for 113.5 WAR.

Aaron, who by the way bests all six of those stat lines, was the all-time home run leader as the century came to a close - belonging to a group of just 15 players to hit 500 in a career. That number that has swelled to 28 today.

His career accomplishments, specifically in the power department, made him an excellent and exciting choice to throw out the ceremonial first pitch for the home run contest.

As for Williams, who would throw out the All-Star Game’s first pitch the next night, he was in the stands for the derby. ESPN cut to him for a quick interview midway through the first round. The questions were asked by, you guessed it, Rich Eisen.

With some of the game’s greats in attendance, part of the reason I remember that derby so well was that the field was stacked with current stars. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa (coming off their historic 1998 home run race) were there. Ken Griffey Jr - one of four then-active players who would later be named to the All-Century Team (McGwire, Cal Ripken Jr., Roger Clemens), was not only the derby’s reigning champion, but the only two-time winner since the event’s inception in 1985. Future Hall of Famers Larry Walker and - one-time Red Sox prospect - Jeff Bagwell participated while in the prime of their careers.

The other half of the entry list featured captivating stories too.

Jeromy Burnitz entered the competition as the NL’s hottest hitter in June. Snubbed from the initial ballot, he made the trip to Boston as Tony Gwynn’s injury replacement.

Shawn Green was evolving into a legitimate superstar, going 35-35 in ’98. He was quietly on his way to a Sliver Slugger and Gold Glove in ’99.

Veterans B.J. Surhoff and John Jaha weren’t necessarily names people expected to see, but Surhoff had tallied 20 homers at the halfway point - two short of his career best for a season. Meanwhile, Jaha was enjoying a one-last-hoorah type of season, after his contract year in ’98 was plagued by injuries.

And then there was Nomar Garciaparra. Even though he had only hit 14 homers at the break, he belted 35 the year before and brought undeniable star power wherever he went. If you’re my age, and grew up with Sports Illustrated for Kids and This Week in Baseball, you remember just how awesome Nomar was. His pre-pitch routine was mimicked in backyard whiffle ball games across the country, and I always associated the popularity of my teammates’ TPX batting gloves with all of the TV time that Garciaparra’s wrists received - though I’m not sure if that was the reason.

Nomar’s applause before his hometown crowd was incredible, but the fans packed the stadium, and adjacent streets, to see McGwire. And boy did he deliver.

In round one, his 13 homers set a derby record. Folks on Lansdowne Street eagerly awaited balls to fall from nowhere. Berman, Joe Morgan, and Mike Piazza turned from broadcasters to fans, letting out shouts of disbelief.

For comparison, Walker, Garciaparra, Jaha, Surhoff, Green, and Sosa combined to hit 10 home runs in the first round. The three players who advanced with McGwire (Burnitz, Bagwell, Griffey Jr.) combined to hit 14.

The problem for McGwire was that after mashing his way to the semis, he had to sit and wait before he took another swing. Griffey Jr. - who clinched a semifinal berth after only 13 swings in round one - seized his opportunity and took complete control of the competition. With the energy of McGwire’s first round still buzzing around the park, Junior went on the beat Burnitz head-to-head on a night that was supposed to favor right-handed hitters.

The next night, as I’ve already alluded to, provided one of the most moving moments in baseball history. After a Field-of-Dreams-esque promotion for the All-Century Team nominees, Williams made his way to the mound to throw out the game’s first pitch. And by made his way, I mean he was driven in that general direction, but neither he nor anyone else seemed all that interested in keeping the game’s start time on track. As producers and other TV people pivoted in real time - in what must have felt like an attempt to land a space shuttle - field microphones picked up spontaneous conversations that Williams had with Ripken, McGwire, and the like.

Eventually, Williams threw out the first pitch to Carlton Fisk, and Fox got its commercial break.

Then, as Barry Larkin told The Athletic in a 2024 story, “It was time to wake up and face Pedro.”

Wake up they did not. Or maybe Pedro was just that good.

He carved the National League’s lineup, striking out Larkin, Walker, Sosa, McGwire, and Bagwell in his two innings of work. Between Williams and Martinez, the night could not have been any more Boston. It could not have been any more Fenway Park. Not that it mattered, but the American League also went on to win the game, 4-1.

In my oldest book of baseball memories - right with McGwire and Sosa’s 1998 home run race, right with 2000’s Subway Series, and right with dozens of random barehanded plays by Omar Vizquel - lives those two nights.

And that is without factoring in something that I didn’t even know (or don’t remembering knowing): Fenway was getting a grand farewell. Two months before hosting, the Red Sox unveiled plans to build a new ballpark. In fact, during the event’s FanFest, held the day before the derby at Hynes Convention Center, a model of the new park was on display. A new stadium, of course, did not happen. Plenty of people point to the three-day celebration as what saved Fenway.

It’s also without factoring in things that no one knew. We did not know that Ken Griffey Jr.’s thirties would not be like his twenties, and that he would only participate in one more derby. We didn’t know the extent that steroids were inflating home run numbers. We did not know that Pedro’s best days in Boston were still, somehow, ahead of him. That Boston’s best days were ahead of them. We did not know that first-time all-stars Billy Wagner, Jeff Kent, and Vladimir Guerrero would one day reside in Cooperstown.

Tomorrow, 25 players will suit up for their first All-Star Game when they take the field at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. Perhaps the first of many for some.

Christopher Sanchez - appearing in his second All-Star Game - will get the ball for the NL and look to channel his best Pedro in front of his home crowd. Fan favorite Kyle Schwarber will hit for him, and their teammate, Brandon Marsh, will patrol an outfield spot.

But first, Schwarber and Bryce Harper will, with presumably better luck than Nomar, take aim at familiar peanut vendors during tonight’s Home Run Derby.

Given Philadelphia’s place in our country’s history - the Phillies literally have the Liberty Bell in their logo - this year’s events have all the makings for one of the more memorable All-Star breaks, not so different from when the All-Century Team voting added an extra element in 1999.

Like then, somewhere a nine-year-old will be watching on TV his phone, primed to remember this 30 years from now. Even if the festivities are missing ESPN … and the greatest number nine who ever lived.

I know this because our hometowns fall under even the smallest green blob on Doppler radars.

Despite summer vacation being a few weeks away, I wore a Cleveland Indians’ winter coat that night while I listened to WKNR’s radio coverage. My dad and I were parked outside of a restaurant that I have no memory of entering.

I’m sure we spent the evening talking about LeBron and the Cavs with my soon-to-be travel baseball teammates. And we probably talked about the Indians - who played that night and were likely on a TV in the corner somewhere.

We did not know it at the time, but the Matt Lawton, Milton Bradley, and Brandon Phillips experiments were full speed ahead to nowhere. Phillips in particular was especially promising. He debuted the previous season, but entered 2003 with his rookie eligibility intact.

The primary return piece in one of the best trades in franchise history, Phillips carved out a role in Cleveland slightly ahead of the other two prospects the Expos exchanged for Bartolo Colon. Of course, it was Cliff Lee and Grady Sizemore who would go on to become two of the best players in the American League.

But on that cold Thursday evening, a night that a less-than-half-full crowd watched the Indians drop a game to the Tigers, Phillips occupied the ninth spot in the batting order. He was the future, but he was going to take time. The entirety of the Colon trade was going to take time. Baseball takes time.

LeBron, however, was basically the best player in Cavs’ history come Friday morning - and he wasn’t even on the team yet. And it only took that long because Cleveland fans needed all of Thursday night to convince themselves that this wasn’t a dream. A year after the state of Ohio joined the consortium to partake in the Mega Millions jackpot game, it won LeBron.

The Akron Beacon Journal printed Tom Reed’s, “Lottery Keeps Star Near Home.” Brian Windhorst (yes, that Brian Windhorst) wrote a story titled, “Finally a Little Luck.”

In The Plain Dealer, Susan Vinella - referencing LeBron’s day-before $90 million endorsement deal with Nike - used the clever line, “A Cav in One Fell Swoosh.”

Meanwhile, Mitch Albom’s piece in the Detroit Free Press was titled, “Win Some Lose Some.” The Pistons turned a pick that they had acquired in a trade into the number-two selection - something that only had a seven percent chance of happening.

While that was cause for celebration, the story would have ended a lot better for Detroit had they gone on to draft Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, or Dwayne Wade (the third, fourth, and fifth players selected in what is universally recognized as one of the best five draft classes of all time). Instead, they whiffed on European star prospect, Darko Milicic.

If Detroit was overly optimistic, the Denver Nuggets were on the other end of the spectrum. They entered the lottery with the same chance as Cleveland (22.5%) to win the LeBron sweepstakes.

“Basketball? The Denver Nuggets Can’t Even Play Pingpong,” read The Denver Post after the team was awarded the third overall selection.

Columns across the country captured similar reactions, but no article from that night, nor since, comes to mind more quickly when thinking about LeBron than his introduction to the world via Sports Illustrated in February of the previous year. Grant Wahl’s, “The Chosen One” cover story pulled back the curtain on LeBron’s talents, upbringing, and potential to star in the NBA.

And if that wasn’t enough to put the world on notice, SI doubled down and put LeBron on its cover for a second time before he graduated high school. Just a few weeks before the draft lottery, he appeared with 27 others on the front of a May issue, promoting the publication’s “101 Most Influential Minorities in Sports” story. He was 18 years old.

On June 26, the night of the NBA draft, the basketball prodigy officially became the face of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Did they tank for a shot at LeBron? Almost certainly. But given the team’s recent performance, they didn’t have to try very hard.

The Cavs had watched their win totals drop from 30 in 2000 to 29 in 2001 to 17 in 2002 - good for three straight last-place finishes in the division. Owner Gordon Gund nearly timed the team’s back-to-the-future uniform rebrand perfectly with LeBron’s arrival and subsequent franchise-altering trajectory. But first, the new/old wine-and-gold (while aesthetically pleasing) hit rock bottom.

I attended at least a dozen games from that three-year stretch, each time taking my place in a crowd that rarely envisioned the Cavs having a chance to pull off the night’s matchup. Instead, we filed into Gund’s namesake arena to watch Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady, Allen Iverson and other visiting players put on dazzling displays. That, and the potential bonus that if the Cavs hit the 100-point mark, we could replay Carter’s windmill dunks in our heads the next day while enjoying a free taco.

I kid you not, before LeBron, the loudest roars I ever heard at a basketball game, maybe any sporting event, were the few magical moments when my ticket stub turned into a chalupa.

My brother and I also looked forward to watching some of the TV’s pregame show from FSN Ohio’s set located on the main concourse. Once, we even got to say hello and shake hands with Austin Carr. When I told him that I was named after him, the only person more surprised was my mom.

It was those kinds of moments that made making the trip up I-77 to catch a Cavs game fun - not the team’s competitiveness.

The atrocious brand of basketball was made possible by a cast of characters that included first-round flops Trajan Langdon, DeSagana Diop, and Dajuan Wagner. Likable players such as Lamond Murray, Wes Person, and Jumaine Jones played too many minutes. Shawn Kemp, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, and Tyrone Hill made too many millions (although Z would later redeem the injury-plagued start to his career).

There were also a couple of guard/forward slasher types that set expectations for the position so low that when LeBron arrived, his skillset, basketball IQ, and trustworthiness nearly overwhelmed the organization.

Ricky Davis was acquired by Cleveland four days before the 2001 season. He served as a decent scorer of the bench, and - starting with that season - would receive sixth-man-of-the-year votes three times in the next four years. However, the Cavs could only stomach him for two and a half of those before shipping him up to Boston.

I will never forget watching a game against Utah in March of ’03. Late in the fourth quarter, Davis grabbed a rebound and promptly sent the ball back to the Jazz’s backboard. Needing two rebounds to record a triple-double, he tried to get two for the price of one. It was an embarrassing end to a game that accounted for six percent of the season’s wins. I’m not sure if anyone outside of Cleveland paid any attention to it, but it sure felt like the beginning of the end for him as a Cavalier.

Overlapping with Davis for that season was Darius Miles, a former number-three-overall pick. Miles only lasted a year and a half in Cleveland, although a life-sized cardboard cutout that my dad snagged from McDonald’s resided in my house for at least two more. Its silhouette would scare me in the middle of the night, but on the court he didn’t scare anyone. The centerpiece from the trade that sent Andre Miller (quite literally the only good Cavalier from my childhood) to the Clippers, Miles never built off of his promising 2001 rookie season.

Aside from his signature celebration (remember that bizarre knuckleheads gesture he made after he scored? If you don’t, it’s probably because he didn’t score very often), he came and went without leaving any lasting memories. And just like that, Andre Miller turned into Jeff McGinnis, with Miles acting as the catalyst that downgraded Cleveland’s backcourt.

Remember that bizarre thing McGinnis did with his non-dribbling arm when he brought the ball across half court? If you don’t, it’s probably because you stopped watching the Cavs. He did it every time.

On October 29, 2003, LeBron made his debut in Sacramento, taking the court with Ilgauskas Davis, Miles, and second-year stud Carlos Boozer. He scored the quietest game-high 25 points you will ever see - mostly because the buildup surrounding his first game was unprecedented.

The city of Cleveland had to wait a week before they could see LeBron in person, but legendary radio play-by-play man Joe Tait, as well as the team’s TV tandem of Michael Reghi and Carr, transmitted excitement back to Northeast Ohio. There was something extra behind Tait’s trademark, “Wham with the right hand.” Reghi’s, “Fight Number 23” became a household catchphrase.

I made it to a few games during LeBron’s rookie campaign, and - unlike before - fans did not rush to their seats to watch Kobe during pregame warmups. Fans did not hold their breath when Jason Richardson ran a post route on a fast break. Fans did not smile while looking up at the Jumbotron to watch the replay of Tim Duncan sending a shot attempt five rows into the crowd. It was LeBron who caused people to hold their breath, hold their liquids (if you know what I mean), and hold onto hope that we’d score more points than the other team - Garnett or Nowitzki be damned.

It took just three seasons to improve from a 17-win team to a 50-win team. James logged a five-year stretch in which he went MVP-2, MVP-5, MVP-4, MVP, MVP. The five straight playoff berths, while heartbreaking, were healing for the city dubbed The Mistake by the Lake.

Nike’s 10-story “We Are All Witnesses” banner became as iconic of a landmark in Cleveland as the Terminal Tower and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. And to give tangible credibility to the brilliant messaging, LeBron provided countless moments that will forever live in Cleveland sports’ lore.

Like when he turned in maybe the best individual performance I have ever seen in the ’07 conference finals against Detroit. He scored the team’s last 25 points (and 29 of their last 30). His game-winner with two seconds left in the second overtime gave the team a 3-2 series lead. He played 50 of the game’s 58 minutes that night.

Or like when he drilled a catch-and-shoot three as time expired in the ’09 conference finals against Orlando. I’ve always been a romantic for the calls that accompany great sports moments, but in my Rolodex of favorite game-winning, walk-off, and buzzer-beating plays, there is no sound clip that comes to mind when I think back to this shot. My dad, brother, and I each jolted from our respective positions on the couch and took off running in three different directions. Had the officials deemed his foot was on the line, we would have missed the entire overtime circling the house.

Ultimately, the records he set and the wins he willed never translated into a title. And, perhaps the only smudge on his otherwise spotless reputation - on and off the court - came when he decided to inform Cleveland that he was leaving in what, not just Cleveland, but the basketball world remembers as being an insincere, disrespectful money grab that ESPN aired, calling the event, “The Decision.”

Look, fans can say they remember it differently, but we knew he was leaving. No diehard Cleveland fan sat down expecting him to tell Jim Gray that he was returning. I actually thought he was going to Chicago, not Miami.

Here’s how I looked at it - and still look at it to this day: This was not Art Modell moving the Browns to Baltimore. This was not Manny Ramirez or Jim Thome leaving a championship-caliber team for the money in Boston and Philadelphia.

This was a guy who had given his entire life to Cleveland and the surrounding area. A door opened up for him to pursue a championship with a better team (with some of his closest friends). LeBron did not owe Cleveland anything else. In fact, the Cavs’ front office failed to give him more.

I’m proud of my twenty-year-old self for not joining team management in bashing LeBron and calling him a traitor. I did not burn my LeBron jersey like so many others did.

I watched the Cavs plummet back to the bottom of the league without aiming resentment toward him.

I mean, seriously:

1998 - 22 wins

1999 - 32 wins

2000 - 30 wins

2001 - 29 wins

2002 - 17 wins

2003 - 35 wins

2004 - 42 wins

2005 - 50 wins

2006 - 50 wins

2007 - 45 wins

2008 - 66 wins

2009 - 61 wins

2010 - 19 wins

2011 - 21 wins

2012 - 24 wins

2013 - 33 wins

We won the lottery. People lost sight of that.

Without LeBron, the games turned back into fun nights where the score didn’t matter. I have great memories of going to games with friends during college. Kyrie Irving (the Cavs’ first draft pick post LeBron - and a fellow number-one overall pick thanks to Cleveland winning the draft lottery again) was really good, but he couldn’t do it all.

Then, on July 11, 2014 Sports Illustrated reentered the story when Lee Jenkins published an essay that was crafted by LeBron. He was coming home. After opting out of his contract with Miami, the chosen one chose Cleveland. And this time he had the pieces (namely Irving) to transform the team in weeks not years.

Just like that it was four straight NBA finals appearances for the Cavs. And during the 2015-16 season, he delivered on his promise to bring a championship to the city.

I will never forget going to a midweek Indians-Mariners game during the Cavs-Warriors series. After the final out, my brother and I walked out of Progressive Field and into a Cavs’ watch party that must’ve been five square miles. It was almost 10 pm and the night was just getting started, which is noteworthy considering we were joined by our parents.

The four of us bounced between a few places, making sure that we were somewhere we could hear the broadcast at the end. I distinctly remember walking down the sidewalk, soaking in the excitement and energy. The Nike banner may have been gone, but LeBron’s presence in downtown Cleveland was never stronger.

A week and a half later, he turned in a 27-11-11 triple-double in game seven to bring the city its first professional sports title in over 50 years. After the game he let out an emotional, “Cleveland, this is for you.”

There isn’t anything I can write about LeBron’s career that hasn’t already been written. And there isn’t anything I can write that will change someone’s stance on his basketball legacy. Camps were formed and fortified decades ago when the first person mumbled, “Is LeBron better than Michael?”

I’m just happy that when he signed with the Lakers in 2018, Cleveland’s fanbase responded with a genuine thank you, and not the same F-you that many reacted with in 2010.

If last week’s playoff exit against the Thunder ends up being the last time we see him on the court, I hope that even the biggest LeBron haters tip their caps in similar fashion. His dominance spanned generations (made clear by the fact that his own son also plays for the Lakers!). If people got bored with LeBron because he hung around for an NBA-record 23 seasons, that’s on them.

One last LeBron-related memory:

When I was a senior in high school, and LeBron James was the NBA’s top scorer, I remember having a substitute teacher on a Friday during my last-period class. After taking attendance, she read us our teacher’s instructions for the afternoon: classic end-of-chapter questions that had a fifty percent chance of making it into the grade book. I don’t know what I did for the next 40 minutes, but it was not that.

Then she pulled the, “I’ll be collecting your packets before the bell,” move. Mine was essentially blank. However, the packet on the desk in front of me was complete - filled out by a good friend of mine who had just hobbled to bathroom on crutches. I, not subtly at all, grabbed his while he was out of the room, erased his name, replaced it with mine, and turned in both packets, face down on the table at the front of the room. When my friend returned, he saw the stack, put two and two together, and thanked me for saving him the trip down the narrow aisle. Those sitting around me found it amusing, but I knew the best part would come after the weekend.

On Monday, our teacher returned and ended class by handing back our assignments. One by one, my peers walked up to grab their work when their names were called. It didn’t take long for a handful of classmates to make eye contact with me, holding back laughter. My name came somewhere in the middle, while my friend sat waiting. When my teacher reached the final packet (which he definitely saved until the end) he half smirked, looked up and said, “LeBron James. Whereya at?”

The class erupted. My friend’s face went red.

If LeBron doesn’t suit up in 2026, that will be the same question we ask ourselves when we scan an evening-slate of games in the fall.

The Cavs lost to the Knicks last night, falling behind 2-0 in the franchise’s first LeBronless conference finals series since 1992. One of the sport’s oldest players, James Harden finished the game with 18 points. He debuted in 2009, after LeBron had already won a league MVP.

Cleveland’s uniforms have again been changed since then. The announcers are not the same. And the team’s youngest player was born a year after the 2003 draft lottery. The night the ping pong balls displayed the numbers 6-2-3-12. The night it was 20 degrees below normal in Cleveland. The night that there was nowhere to go but up. And then, from the rafters, LeBron reigned down.

We were all witnesses.

I had a hunch that Aaron Rodgers being left in the green room was going to be the production’s top pick, so I began storyboarding my own episode to pass the time - one that would look at the draft pick-by-pick.

So, without further ado, here are my most memorable selections for each pick in the first round, spanning the 27 NFL drafts that I have watched.

1. 49ers: Alex Smith QB Utah (2005)

I can’t remember if my NCAA football dynasty with Utah on Xbox started before or after I actually watched the real Alex Smith, but I do recall mentioning Smith and head coach Urban Meyer to friends before either of them were on their radars. That year, the Utes cracked the top-ten by late October. Three months later they stomped Pittsburgh in the Fiesta Bowl, Meyer had accepted the gig at Florida, and Smith was the potential first overall pick. This was also the year that I used study halls to fill out my first mock draft. I predicted Smith to the 49ers, Cedric Benson to the Dolphins, Derrick Johnson to the Browns, and Braylon Edwards to the Bears. Hey, at least I had those guys in the right neighborhood.

2. Panthers: Julius Peppers DE North Carolina (2002)

In the early 2000s, I did not realize how rare Julius Peppers was. He wasn’t Shohei rare, but he was pretty close. Serving as both an edge-setting star that my brother and I would imitate playing football in the backyard, and also a rebounding machine that we would imitate in the foyer of our house (with one of those hoops you hang on a door), Peppers also starred in his own narrative. And while he may have had more TV exposure with some really good Carolina basketball teams, the dude looked the part of a future Hall of Famer on the football field. Which is exactly what he became.

3. Lions: Joey Harrington QB Oregon (2002)

Joey Harrington blossomed into a Heisman favorite at the same time that I began receiving Sports Illustrated, Sports Illustrated for Kids, and ESPN the Magazine in the mail. I remember the quack-attack movement and Oregon’s New-Year’s-Day rout of Colorado. So when another west-coast quarterback, David Carr, began being linked to the Texans and their first pick in their franchise’s history, I thought a giant mistake was about to be made. I won’t pretend to remember what worked for Harrington in college and what didn’t work for him in the pros; I just remember the hype. The top-five vote getters for the 2001 Heisman were: Eric Crouch, Rex Grossman, Ken Dorsey, Harrington, and Carr. And Along with Carr and Harrington, Patrick Ramsey was the only other quarterback to go in the first round of the 2002 draft. Crouch went in the third round (as a wide receiver). The hype was not real for any of those college stars.

4. Giants: Philip Rivers QB North Carolina State (2004)

The best quarterback draft in 20 years - certainly the best that I had ever seen - featured three guys that each have an argument to make the Hall of Fame. There’s a lot to unpack with this one for those that don’t know. The short version is that Eli Manning (and his dad) made it clear that he did not want to play for the Chargers. But the Chargers took him first overall anyway, a move that was quickly followed by a trade to the Giants who had just selected Rivers at pick four. I remember watching Rivers help hang 38 points against Ohio State in September of the 2003 season. He was fiery and reminded me of Brett Favre. Of course, once the trade was made, it was unclear how or when he was going to get a chance to play in San Diego, with a scuffling yet promising Drew Brees at the helm.

5. Saints: Ricky Williams RB Texas (1999)

With the fourth pick of the 1999 draft, the Indianapolis Colts selected Edgerrin James, a running back out of Miami, and someone who I had never heard of. Of course, in his defense, I only knew a handful of college football players, and most of them either played for Ohio State or Notre Dame. However, everyone knew Ricky Williams, and everyone knew Ricky Wiliams was going to be the fourth pick. He was the first Heisman winner that I can remember, and he dominated SportsCenter highlights - projecting to be his generation’s Earl Campbell. When Williams did not go to the Colts, Saints’ head coach, Mike Ditka, traded ALL OF THE SAINTS’ PICKS to move up and get him. Was the bigger shock that the Colts passed on him or that Saints moved up to get him? I can’t remember, but it was all anyone was talking about, and it was probably the moment I fell in love with the draft.

6. Browns: Kellen Winslow Jr. TE Miami (FL) (2004)

Kellen Winslow epitomized the guy you hated when he was on the other team but loved when he was on your own. Until he overstayed his welcome on your team, that is. Browns fans who may have condemned his warrior rant a few years earlier, suddenly embraced his passion, only to reverse course again when he wrecked his motorcycle in a parking lot.

I remember writing an excited and hopeful three-page poem the day after the Browns took him sixth overall. I also remember an unexpected sidenote from my 9th grade math teacher following Winslow’s rookie season. He was working through a practice algebra problem on the board with another student when he overheard me and a friend mention something about K2. He, probably to the confusion of the other student, took a big step to his left and wrote Winslow. Without turning around, he drew a vertical line between n and s, so that it read Win slow. He then erased the line and drew another between the s and l. It now read Wins low. He then stepped back to the right to continue combining like terms or whatever he was doing. So many times I tried to replicate that when I became a teacher myself, and I don’t think I ever pulled it off.

7. Vikings: Adrian Peterson RB Oklahoma (2007)

A lot of coaches, media members, and fans alike subscribe to the mindset of, “you shouldn’t take a running back top-ten unless you are running back away from winning a Super Bowl.” But even those people would probably agree that Peterson was too good to fall to seven. A man amongst boys in college, Peterson didn’t elicit, “what a great fit,” reactions after the Vikings took him, but it was clear that the team was going to build around him. They had a good defense in place and looked to solve most, if not all, of their offensive problems in one fell swoop. I was reminded of the Peterson pick when the Giants received criticism for taking Saquon Barkley second overall in 2018.

8. Panthers: Christian McCaffrey RB Stanford (2017)

The McCaffery pick holds extra significance for me because of the added fantasy-football relevance. Months before NFL landing spots were determined, I had a strong inkling that I might be taking a rookie ballcarrier with my keeper league’s first-round pick. YouTube highlights of CMC and Leonard Fournette, albeit very different, were unlike any I had ever seen. And while Fourentte was drafted ahead of McCaffery, both in the NFL draft and my fantasy draft, the latter met, and exceeded, expectations for both the Carolina Panthers and my 1st-and-5 squad.

9. Bengals: John Ross WR Washington (2017)

When John Ross broke Chris Johnson’s 40-time record, a lot of people forgot that he played a position in which he was not simply handed the football. In retrospect, everyone overvalued all of the first and second-round receivers that year. Cooper Kupp and Chris Godwin (both selected in the third round) ended up being the best from that class, while Ross and a handful of others were not as impactful as their new teams had hoped. Ross only caught 51 balls for the Bengals … in four seasons. It seemed like a bad pick at the time, and who could forget the Bengals following that up with red-flag running back Joe Mixon in round two?

10. Chiefs: Patrick Mahomes QB Texas Tech (2017)

People could not believe that the Chiefs traded away their 2018 first rounder to move up and take Deshaun Watson on draft night. Alex Smith was only 32 and just turned in a Pro-Bowl season. They needed a cornerback, not a quarterback. Then, Watson wasn’t the pick. It was Mahomes, who was considered to be reckless and to have poor mechanics. Kansas City, according to press conferences and post-draft articles, saw a franchise-changing player who would push the ball downfield more than Smith, even it wasn’t going to happen right away. It seemed a like a costly reach, but Andy Reid’s track record smoothed over some of the initial doubt. And let me tell you, that John Ross pick was forgotten by all.

11. Steelers: Ben Roethlisberger QB Miami (OH) (2004)

It’s hard for me to remember if living in Ohio (and having cousins who went to Miami) inflated what I perceived Roethlisberger’s national buzz to be, but he looked like a future NFL star every time he played on national television. He was my favorite of the three good quarterbacks from that draft, just like Josh Allen was my favorite quarterback from strong 2018 class. Size and strength doesn’t always translate (see Josh Freeman) but whenever other quarterbacks possess these traits, I will always use Big Ben’s highlights at Miami to serve as a litmus test.

12. Cowboys: Micah Parsons LB Penn State (2021)

Leading up to the last two drafts, Abdul Carter and Arvell Reese earned comparisons to Micah Parsons, as will the next twitchy front-seven player who is too good to be labeled a tweener.

But who was Parson’s compared to? The answer is a bunch of guys most do not remember. Some experts thought he was a middle linebacker. Some thought he’d be better as a 4-3 WILL. Only a few mentioned that he could be used as a hand-in-the-dirt edge rusher in passing situations. To be fair, Parsons opted out of the COVID 2020 season, so when the Cowboys took him, he had not played in over a year. He was all projection, and the fact that the Dallas took such a risk was both fitting and intriguing.

13. Bills: Lee Evans WR Wisconsin (2004)

On a cold Saturday night in the fall of 2003, a friend spent the night at my house to watch No. 3 Ohio State engage in what became a classic low-scoring Big-Ten game against No. 23 Wisconsin at Camp Randall Stadium. This was long before the college football playoffs, and seven years before the Big Ten title game - meaning it was the days where a midseason loss ended dreams of a national championship. I vividly remember Wisconsin’s fourth-quarter drive that crushed those dreams for Buckeye fans. It wasn’t even the whole drive; it was one play. A 79-yard touchdown pass with five minutes left to give Wisconsin a 17-10 lead.

The play call went after one of my all-time favorite Buckeyes, not to mention a guy that ended up going 15 picks later in this same draft, Chris Gamble. Evans executed a double move that could only be compared to an Allen Iverson crossover. Gamble bit so hard on Evans’ out route, that when Evans turned upfield, Gamble found himself a mile behind him with no safety over the top.

It was a solid pick for Buffalo who needed a receiver to pair with Willis McGahee (basically a rookie himself - more on him later ). But more than anything, when he was selected I remember that I had to turn away when ESPN played his highlight reel.

14. Colts: Tyler Warren TE Penn State (2025)

Tyler Warren’s postseason and pre-draft testing belongs in category by itself. In 2024, he went over 100 catches and was, every now and then, utilized as a Wildcat quarterback. He even got a Heisman vote, finishing seventh overall - the highest for a tight end since 1977. And it wasn’t like this was just a chain-moving weapon. He could actually block. Line him up anywhere and ask him to do anything was the general consensus heading into the draft. So when he wasn’t the first tight end taken, it was surprising.

15. Chiefs: Derrick Johnson LB Texas (2005)

I mocked Johnson third overall, which may have been a bit bullish, and would have guaranteed that he was going to be taken in the top-ten. One of the most dominant college linebackers I’ve ever watched - right with AJ Hawk, Patrick Willis, and Luke Kuechly - I tuned into Texas games to watch Johnson when everyone else was there for Vince Young and Cedric Benson. To this point in my NFL Draft watching career, I remember thinking that this pick was the biggest round-one steal I had ever seen. And while he was not the same type of linebacker as Derrick Thomas, one of my dad’s favorite football players, there was something cool about the Chiefs ending up with him.

16. Steelers: Troy Polamalu S Southern California (2003)

Polamalu was an All-American do-it-all safety opposite Heisman-Trophy-winning quarterback Carson Palmer for the 2002 USC Trojans. When Palmer went first overall, the question became, how high would Polamalu go? Sixteen to Pittsburgh was the perfect fit, and for the next decade, he and Baltimore’s 2002 first-round safety, Ed Reed, made life very difficult for Palmer and the other AFC North quarterbacks. That USC team also occupies a place in my memory because it was the first team that I manually entered names for on a PlayStation NCAA football game. The next year, Polamalu took his hair and number 43 jersey to Madden, where he was rated a 78 as a rookie. By the time he entered his third season with the Steelers, Madden had bumped him up to a 91.

17. Buccaneers: Josh Freeman QB Kansas State (2009)

When the Bucs selected Freeman, I was holding a radar gun with numb hands, hoping the game would stay close so that I wouldn’t be called upon to pitch an inning of relief. It was the spring of my freshman year of college and I had decided, after a long process of eliminating everyone else, that I was going to embrace the Buccaneers as my favorite football team. They were a mediocre team with a new coach, looking to draft a new quarterback. So between innings, I would check in with a group of dads for an update. The big-bodied, strong-armed Freeman shot up draft boards leading up to it, and, I thought, like I had so many times before with the Browns, that we had gotten our guy. The next year the draft moved to primetime, and, fortunately, a baseball game did not interfere with me being able to see the team select Gerald McCoy, one of the franchises all-time best players. Freeman, on the other hand, lost his starting job during his fifth pro season.

18. Ravens: Joe Flacco QB Delaware (2008)

Today, small-school QBs get plenty of spotlight, but I remember Flacco fitting right between two eras - the Who-is-this-Guy era where unfamiliar names dazzle during the combine, and the There-are-no-more-Who-is-this-Guy-Guys era, made possible thanks to expansive steaming/cable packages, as well as social media. Because of this, reactions were split on Flacco.

The Ravens recently missed badly on Kyle Boller, which helped fuel the negative half of the reaction, but give the team credit for not wasting any time before going back to the well. With so many stars on defense, it was a worth-the-risk pick for the Ravens, and it proved to be a good one. He won a Super Bowl, and today Flacco is one of only three players still active from that 2008 crop.

19. Seahawks: Shaun Alexander RB Alabama (2000)

LaDanian Tomlinson was my first favorite college football player, but Shaun Alexander ran a close race. We’re talking my earliest football memories here, so there’s some extra stuff with Alexander and Alabama that needs to be accounted for - like the numbers on the helmets, and the elephant mascot. And does anyone else remember that the back of his jersey read: Su. Alexander. As a 10 year old, that took a minute to figure out. All of it was entertaining to me, and the fact that there are no other recognizable names from the ’99 Crimson Tide team hits the nail on the head. Their offense’s scheme was: hand the ball to Alexander, and don’t get called for a holding penalty. He doesn’t need you to block for him.

20. Steelers: Kenny Pickett QB Pittsburgh (2022)

Ignoring the 2001 draft - in which Michael Vick went first overall - I have seen three drafts feature only one first-round quarterback. The Jets took Chad Pennington 18th overall in 2000, the Bills took E.J. Manuel 16th overall in 2013, and the Steelers took Kenny Pickett 20th overall in 2022. Those, my friends, are three drafts that a quarterback should not have been taken in the first round - at least not those three (I can hear the Brady comments as I write this). That said, even with all of the head shaking that took place when Pickett’s name was called, there was some genuine intrigue. Imagine if the kid who played college ball twenty minutes away could step in and take over for Roethlisberger without the team missing a beat. That, of course, did not happen, but for all the bad picks on this list, you could squint and see this one maybe working out.

21. Jaguars: Matt Jones WR Arkansas (2005)

According to Mel Kiper Jr., some felt that Matt Jones was the best athlete at the 2005 combine. Quickly, the way he threw the football became the least important thing in the eyes of those who were imagining moving him off of quarterback to play tight end or receiver. Remember, Eric Crouch was taken in the third round. Terrelle Pryor was taken in the third round … of the supplemental draft! Antwaan Randle El? Second round. Julian Edelman? Seventh round. With Roddy White, Mark Clayton, Vincent Jackson, and Reggie Brown on the board (not to mention Heath Miller), Jacksonville overthought this one. Aaron Rodgers sitting in the green room took attention away from this pick, and the Jaguars’ success in 2005 further delayed the mass criticism that ultimately followed.

22. Browns: Brady Quinn QB Notre Dame (2007); Johnny Manziel QB Texas A&M (2014)

Pick 22 was the only tie that I couldn’t break. And so that this entry is not twice as long as the rest, I’m going to assume the vast majority of people reading this do not need any context on the Browns’ QB situation over the past 25 years.

When Brady Quinn was selected, Cleveland ended his draft-day freefall and tasked him with being average - like they had with several quarterbacks before him. And, compared to Tim Couch, Charlie Fry, and others, I actually thought Quinn was a future All Pro. Shortly after watching his first start at Notre Dame - he set the school’s pass-attempts record, I believe - he became my favorite college quarterback. Sadly his success at Notre Dame never translated to the NFL.

Conversely, I remember watching Johnny Manziel’s bowl game against Duke on New Year’s Eve, 2013. It was one of the most insane performances I’ve ever seen. My dad and I just looked at each other between plays in total silence. But for as impressive as it was, I remember determining without a doubt that Manziel was not going to make it as a pro. His playground style was unsustainable, and Mike Evans bailed him out countless times - and that is to say nothing of his size and off-the-field concerns.

Too many hang cleans for Quinn. Too many hangovers for Manziel. Cleveland is going on 30 years without a franchise quarterback.

23. Bills: Willis McGahee RB Miami (FL) (2003)

There are a lot of risky picks on this list, but this had to have been be the biggest of them all. Players who tear their knees in bowl games or during the pre-draft process are lucky to maintain day-two value. I don’t know where McGahee was slated to land before his injury against Ohio State, but I will say this: he did not tear his knee. It exploded. And this made it really hard to imagine he’d come back from that, especially in frigid Buffalo. I mentioned McGahee in Evans’ blurb, so let me do the opposite. Evans missed the entire 2002 campaign after an ACL tear during Wisconsin’s spring game, and he became the teams 2004 first-round selection. Maybe the Bills were simply hunting value by picking ugly MRIs.

24. Cowboys: Dez Bryant WR Oklahoma State (2010)

This was predictably crazy. Leave it to the Cowboys to draft someone who missed most of the previous football season. Bryant was not injured, nor did he opt out of the 2009 season - though Dallas has taken players who belong to those groups. No, Bryant was suspended for lying to investigators about interactions that he had with, of all people, Deion Sanders. What’s more is that the Cowboys were not even a year removed from Terrell Owens before they selected a receiver that they had to surround with an entourage so that he would not make poor decisions. Listen, Dez was good. And the Cowboys would probably draft him again if they had a chance to do it over. But on draft day, it had all the makings of a disastrous pick.

25. Giants: Jaxson Dart QB Ole Miss (2025)

Last year, Dart became the latest quarterback to be picked by a team who moved back into the first round. Those selections always make sense, even if the name chosen appears on the second page of the best-player-available list. Teams get the fifth-year option, and they also avoid giving every other team the evening and next morning to revaluate and recalibrate draft boards/potential trades atop the second round. But the Dart pick was memorable, and curious, because the Giants signed not one but two free agent QBs beforehand. Good for them for assessing each opportunity independently, but it was strange. And none of that speaks to the split opinions about Dart being able to play in the NFL. One year later, it looks like he can stick, so long as he protects himself a little better.

26. Packers: Clay Matthews LB Southern California (2009)

When the Packers paired Matthews with their 2006 first rounder, AJ Hawk, their linebacker room featured two of college football’s former best second-level defenders - and one from each of college football’s two best linebacker-producing factories. It also gave them two guys with flowing locks, perhaps in an effort to disguise their alignments from opposing offensive lines. The pieces were in place for Aaron Rodgers, so this pick looked to be one that could result in helping to send Green Bay back to the playoffs - which is what happened for the next eight seasons. Nothing surprising here, just a really good, fairly memorable pick by the cheeseheads.

27. Seahawks: Rashaad Penny RB San Diego State (2018)

You can’t dispute that Penny was a talented college running back. But the wear on his tires and limited track record against quality competition made the Seahawks’ decision to draft him in first round a head-scratcher. Other running backs with better pedigree, from better conferences, who were not coming off of a 300-touch season, were taken in the first two rounds of that draft. This wasn’t Matt-Jones bad, but imagine the career that Nick Chubb could have had in Seattle. With a whiff on Eddie Lacy in between, Chubb could have reignited the torch that went out when Marshawn Lynch retired.

28. Panthers: Chris Gamble CB Ohio State (2004)

Aside from the play where Lee Evans torched him, Gamble was one of the most appreciated and impressive Buckeyes during the early Jim Tressel days. A converted WR (he actually played both ways and returned kicks), Gamble settled into a playmaking corner who more often than not guessed right. That said, I do remember feeling like taking him in the first round was bit of a reach. And I had the same feeling minutes later when the Falcons took WR Michael Jenkins. It was awesome to see those Buckeye heroes go back-to-back, but with Karlos Dansby, Teddy Lehman, and Bob Sanders all on the board, I thought the Panthers would go elsewhere.

29. Cardinals: Robert Nkemdiche DT Ole Miss (2016)

If you are only a casual football fan, you have no idea who this guy is. But multiple outlets had him top-five - even first overall - in way-too-early versions of mock drafts. A generational talent in high school, Nkemdiche looked like a bigger version of Jadeveon Clowney. I recall Ed Oliver having similar year-before buzz, and Peter Woods finds himself in a similar situation this year. While Oliver’s mini skid was based on measurables, and Woods’ potential slide will be due to a bad 2025 season, Nkemdiche brought character concerns with him to the 2016 draft. Still, I thought the Cardinals stole him at 29 and that he would pair with Calais Campbell on Arizona’s defensive line for years to come.

30: Colts: Reggie Wayne WR Miami (FL) (2001)

The Reggie Wayne selection was my introduction to a luxury pick. In 2000, Peyton Manning led the AFC in passing yards, Edgerrin James led the AFC in rushing yards, and Marvin Harrison led the AFC in receptions. Most who followed the sport knew Reggie Wayne’s name, since he played for the nation’s best team. And most also knew that Peyton Manning didn’t need another weapon.Three weeks before the draft, Mel Kiper Jr. labeled him as being the best route runner in the class. It seemed unfair that the Colts could nab him at pick 30. And, as it played out, it was.

31: Cardinals: Beanie Wells RB Ohio State (2009)

While I was surprised that Chris Gamble and Michael Jenkins snuck into the first round in 2004, I sat in bewilderment as the 2009 first round neared its completion. Chris “Beanie” Wells and James Laurinaitis had yet to be taken, and with LeSean McCoy and Rey Maualuga still on the board, it seemed possible that they wouldn’t even be the next players at their positions to be drafted. But the NFC-champion Cardinals pounced on Wells as they looked to both replace and upgrade the aging Edgerrin James. I saw Wells play twice in person, and while he has been bumped off since, he entered the NFL as a member of my Mount Rushmore for Ohio State running backs.

32: Ravens: Lamar Jackson QB Louisville (2018)

I did not have a strong lean one way or the other on Lamar Jackson as a prospect. I think it is because I thought that (in order) Josh Allen, Sam Darnold, Josh Rosen, and Baker Mayfield were all going to be good. How many good quarterbacks could one draft produce? And why are some teams talking about Lamar playing wide receiver? When the Ravens traded back into the first round, it was definitely a signal that Baltimore believed that he could be a franchise quarterback, and that’s why I remember it. The Ravens long-standing ability to draft well, combined with Jackson’s play-making ability, led most to believe there was something there. It was an exciting way to end the night.

The good news, it turned out, was that huge just meant she was from Pennsylvania - I’m not sure she even watched football. But I got the impression that she cared, so I cared.

Each subsequent Super Bowl yields more when I search for it, and starting with the Falcons-Broncos game in ’99, I can recall the players, the plays, and the trophy presentations.

It was between those two matchups that the New England Patriots made its second of what is now 12 Super Bowl appearances. That is more than the Bears, Chargers, Jets, Raiders, and Ravens have combined. You could actually stretch that to 11 teams if you start from the bottom of the all-time-trips list.

Excluding its Super Bowl berth in 1985, New England’s next 10 AFC Championships will forever mark sustained success in a relatively short period of time. But most observe and acknowledge two distinct dynasties within that run. This, despite (after further excluding the 1997 game - which is not considered to be a part of either) nine Super Bowl appearances that featured the same coach and quarterback. Surely the two dynasties will be overwhelmingly remembered as one, thirty years from now.

I, however, will always divide their dominance into two halves: The When-I-Lived-Fifteen-Minutes-From-The-Pro-Football-Hall-Of-Fame (HOF) Era, and The When-I-Did-Not (IDN) Era.

Super Bowl Sundays in Canton started with a quick trip to the Hall of Fame’s gift shop. My dad would buy a hat for himself - to commemorate the occasion and add to his collection - and championship-themed t-shirts to raffle off during the game. Patriots, Ravens, and Steelers shirts were usually the consolation prizes for the second card picked, while some (like, randomly, the Titans’ shirt in 2000) made for sought-after souvenirs. For my brother and I, these oversized nightshirts were coveted. A few times we won one. A few other times we were gifted one from the original recipient.

By midday, the kitchen assumed its annual it’s-going-to-get-worse-before-it-gets-better state, and my brother and I had already watched the same pregame segment five times.

As daylight faded, early birds claimed the best seats around the TV. And when more people arrived, both the appetizer table and Super Bowl squares filled. Guests who had done something other than think about the game all day searched the house for me or my brother for a quick analysis.

Before long, the volume was turned up for the national anthem, and I found myself surrounded by twenty to thirty others, wishing the day and all of its magic would last forever.

The Patriots made it to the Super Bowl five times during The HOF Era, including a stretch in which they won three championships in four years. Admittedly, I rooted against them every time.

A young-and-impressionable fan, I was pulled toward the greatest show on turf in 2002, and away from a Michigan man and his ex-Brown head coach.

In 2004, with a little more self-efficacy, I confidently rooted for the Panthers and Steve Smith - the guy I modeled my backyard-football career after. In what I remember as being the greatest Super Bowl I had ever seen, the Panthers tied the game with a minute left, only to give Adam Vinatieri the stage to drill his second Super-Bowl-winning field goal.

And then, the following year, Donovan McNabb finally got his chance to win a ring after three consecutive NFC title-game losses. In that game, both McNabb and Brady took backseats to their respective team newcomers, Terrell Owens and Corey Dillon. Owens, unbelievably, suited up for the Eagles after breaking his leg two months prior. What’s more, he hauled in 9 passes for 122 yards. Dillon, meanwhile, continued his turn-back-the-clock season, leading all ballcarriers that night with 75 yards and the go-ahead touchdown. He was a league winner in fantasy football that season, and the real season ended with him hoisting the Lombardi Trophy.

On the brink of the sport’s greatest run, if not already there, New England graciously let a few other AFC teams compete for a chance to win the Super Bowl before returning at the conclusion of the 2007 season.

And this was the best Patriots team yet. They ran the table during the regular season thanks to its record-setting offense that outscored its opponents by 315 points. Wes Welker tied the league lead in receptions, while Brady and Randy Moss connected for as many touchdowns as NFC-champion Eli Manning had thrown to his whole team.

The Pats entered the game favored by nearly two touchdowns, but both defenses were ready. At the end of the third quarter, only ten combined points had been scored.

Then, half-expecting New England to wake up and win by 20, I watched one of the more memorable fourth quarters in Super Bowl history, highlighted by David Tyree’s helmet catch during the Giants’ game-winning two-minute drill.

That is when some retroactively closed the door on the first Patriots dynasty.

Three years after that bid for a perfect season fell short, I recall driving home from college to watch Aaron Rodgers and the Packers win the franchise’s fourth Super Bowl - moving the team one ahead of a handful of others that included the Patriots and Giants.

Two of the game’s great fanbases contributed to record-setting TV and stadium attendances, as Rodgers and Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger represented their teams well. The 16th and final Super Bowl of The HOF Era was the eighth to be decided by one score. As if the time with family, friends, and food wasn’t enough, those parties provided really good games.

Favre, Elway, Manning, and Warner all won Super Bowls during that stretch. Each of them will forever reside down the road from the house I watched from. Brady, Rodgers, Brees, and the other Manning will all join them at some point.

The IDN Era, fittingly, started with the Patriots back on the field, as they found themselves in a rematch with the Giants. I crammed into a colder-than-comfortable room with some of my closest college friends, at the house that had become my favorite hangout/free-parking spot on campus.

There were no Super Bowl squares or pineapple cookies. Missing was the t-shirt raffle and chocolate eclair cake. But, by God, Brady and Belichick found the place.

Like the teams’ matchup a few years beforehand, it was fairly uneventful until late. But, again, recent history suggested we’d be in for an entertaining finish, and that proved true. Flipping the script, it was Brady who had the ball in his hands with a chance to win it at the end. However, the Giants and their all-world pass rush held off his usual heroics and escaped with a 21-17 victory.

A few months later, most from that room graduated and scattered across the country. For the ones I stayed in touch with, Super Bowls provided an annual reason to gather - oftentimes one of the only opportunities in a given year that worked with everyone’s new and complicated schedules.

It was apartment life for us all. I watched the next seven Super Bowls in six different places.

Pairing the game with where I watched from has not only proven to be helpful during trivia nights, but those moments continue to serve as reference points for frequent memory sorting.

And that’s to say nothing of what happened on the field. There was a power outage and a highly-questionable play call. There was an all-time blowout and an all-time comeback. There was Nick Foles!

Somewhere along the way, the countdown to kickoff lost some of its luster for me. I became preoccupied with other things, mostly. But the games themselves remained as compelling as ever.

After their loss to the Giants, the Patriots made it back four more times. They won three of them.

Throughout the 15 years of The IDN Era, other stories rivaled the Patriots’ success. Taylor Swift became a football fan, for starters. And then of course there is the fact that Peyton won a Super Bowl with the Broncos and Brady won a Super Bowl with the Bucs. The latter officially nailed the Patriots’ coffin closed, as the Belichick-led but Bradyless Pats stumbled into mediocrity on the field - and, more recently, far worse off of it.

Not to get off track, but this year’s turnaround season for the Patriots coincides with the continued smoldering of two decades’ worth of franchise artifacts. And, for a while now, it’s been hard to tell if there’s more smoke coming from inside or outside the building.

The bottom line is that the Patriots went to 10 Super Bowls in 24 years. Since North America’s professional sports leagues filled out/implemented playoffs, only the 80s-90s-early 2000s Los Angeles Lakers can claim a stretch of equal dominance.

While they remained a constant, the league has changed. Teams have moved, divisions have realigned, and the Browns returned to the league just in time to pass on McNabb in the draft (as they did with Brady, Brees, Roethlisberger, and Rodgers later on).

New rules installed to protect its players, especially the quarterbacks, have influenced how the game is played. Instant replay and challenge flags have altered its flow. And if you haven’t watched a game in a few years, it might take you the entire first quarter to process Sunday’s opening kickoff.

Despite all of this - which, to be clear, has been mostly if not entirely for the best - the Super Bowl itself has remained relatively unchanged. Thirty-second commercial spots continue to cost more than most will need in retirement. And, partially because of this, the game remains the most watched television broadcast every year.

Aside from six times (in my opinion), the product on the field has lived up to or surpassed the hype. We’ve only seen five routs, and the 13-3 final that wrapped up the 2018 season stands as the lone snoozer. Unless you’re part of Patriots’ nation, of course. For you, the team’s sixth, and most recent, Super Bowl victory simply featured a different, low-scoring way to get to the same outcome.

Whether the Patriots win or lose on Sunday, this game will mark the start of something new. This will be the first Super Bowl belonging to The My-Son-Wears-A-Hand-Me-Down-Tom-Brady-Jersey-On-Sundays Era (DAD). If New England decides to simultaneously start a dynasty, it wouldn’t be the first time.

Despite living in neighboring New Hampshire, I don’t envision myself hopping on the Patriots’ bandwagon duck boat any time soon. But if my son embraces a perennial winner, I certainly won’t fault him.

Maybe in a few years, when he is old enough to not only stay up for the whole game, but remember it thirty years later, the Patriots will be making the franchise’s 13th, 14th, or even 15th Super Bowl. And maybe Mike Vrabel and Drake Maye will win their fourth title in three years - just like Vrabel did as a player for New England during The HOF Era.

Or maybe the stars won’t align for them that night. Maybe an NFC foe led by, say, Arch Manning will win the game in the closing minutes.

If that happens, I will sit next to him as the wrong-colored confetti falls. With him down on his luck. And us at the top of the stairs.

To this point in my life, the Scarlet and Gray were little more than a frequent background act at family gatherings. But in January 2001, a year and a half before the Buckeyes hosted the Red Raiders on that humid August afternoon, my dad came home from work and rushed to his stereo, picking up the coverage he was listening to in the car. Seldom used, but fresh off of playing Christmas CDs for the previous month, the speakers pumped equal parts relief and optimism, by way of sports talk radio.

Ohio State had hired Jim Tressel to be its next head coach.

The university’s announcement capped off a two-week fan frenzy that started with John Cooper’s firing. My dad even called into a local show to celebrate - something completely out of character for him, and something I had completely forgotten about until sitting down to write this.

That month reset the program and its fan base. And while I didn’t have the context from previous seasons to feel the entirety of this transition, it very much felt like a train had pulled into the station, with room for anyone who wanted to board.

More than anything, Tressel’s arrival brought hope that the Buckeyes could restore balance in the war with Michigan, America’s biggest sports rivalry. And, sure enough, in year one, Tressel’s group beat the team up north on its own turf. Forget the 7-5 record. Forget the bowl-game loss to South Carolina. Ohio State beat Michigan, fulfilling Tressel’s promise that he made during his first day on the job. Stepping on the court during halftime of an Ohio State basketball game, Tressel looked at the crowd and said, “I can assure you that you will be proud of our young people, in the classroom, in the community, and most especially in 310 days in Ann Arbor Michigan, on the football field.”

By year two, my brother and I were ticket-holding passengers on the train that was halfway to history. First stop: a Tractor Supply parking lot. With his microphone picking up bleed from the marching band, Paul Keels introduced us to what would become the greatest sports season I had, and have, ever followed.

He also introduced us, and the world, to Maurice Clarett. The 6-foot 230-pound true freshman from Warren Harding High School - he informed us - ran wild that afternoon amassing 175 yards to go along with three touchdowns.

Clarett’s performance became the first of many to recap and relive during homeroom on Monday mornings. No sooner did I have my middle school class schedule down, did I have Ohio State’s new lineups committed to memory - sub packages and all.

The 2002 team featured a top-ranked defense led by a handful of players from my neck of the woods: Mike Doss, Dustin Fox, and Kenny Peterson to name a few. On offense, Clarett quickly became the focal point for a unit that was so unapologetically conservative that our sophomore kicker, Mike Nugent, was one of, if not the, most beloved and impactful players on the team.

By the middle of October, the eight-win Buckeyes had climbed to No. 4 in the rankings. After a six-point win over Penn State to close out the month and bring the team to 9-0, I recall the term Luckeyes circulating in anti-Ohio-State conversations. It was the third win decided by one score and the label gained further traction after the team barely survived a low-scoring road matchup against unranked Purdue. And also, at the same time, the divide in public opinion was widened because the game was won by the play of the season - an instant highlight that legitimized Ohio State’s hopes of winning a national championship.

With less than two minutes remaining, faced with fourth-and-one from the 38 yard line, the most risk-adverse coach in the nation called a passing play. And what ensued was not a quick slant or screen. With one of Purdue’s safeties dropping down into the box to stop the run, Craig Krenzel uncorked an off-balance throw TO THE ENDZONE. The ball hung up in the air so long that Buckeye fans had ample time to process that the miracle season was now over.

Then Michael Jenkins hauled it in, causing Brent Mussberger to immortalize the play, game, and season, with his, “Holy-Buckeye!” call.

On the sidelines, Tressel looked as collected as ever. On couches and at bars across Ohio, fans did not. And when we did not think we could take anymore, our devotion was rewarded with two more heart-attack games to close the season: an overtime victory against lowly Illinois, and a 14-9 win over Michigan - a game in which the Wolverines outeverythinged the Buckeyes, except in two areas. The Buckeyes won the turnover margin, and for the 11th time in 13 tries, they ended the game with more rushing yards than the opposing team. To the dismay and disbelief of Michigan fans, Ohio State imposed its will and luck on a team that was confident it would overcome both.

Since there was no Big Ten Championship game at the time, the regular season finale earned the Buckeyes a date in the desert with the Miami Hurricanes - with a national title on the line. The entire sports world expected a rout. Ohio State’s top-ranked defense was a nice story, but this was Miami. Many from that Hurricanes team went on to play in the NFL - several earning eventual All Pro honors. Of the players on the sideline for the Hurricanes that night, four were selected in the opening round of the 2003 NFL draft. Six more followed suit in 2004. After another was chosen in 2005, the last of that night’s would-be first rounders went in 2006. They were the defending champions. They averaged 42 points per game. Their opponents averaged 18.

I remember watching the game at my uncle’s house - a different uncle before you ask. Two different generations of Ohio State fans settled in around the tv: one that appreciated watching Jim Tressel wear a sweater vest like Woody Hays, and one that, in addition to, appreciated watching Woody Hays wear one himself. ABC didn’t have to do much to convey just how intimidating Miami was, but we had been down this road. Ohio State’s six single-possession victories from that season primed the team, and us, for the battle that unfolded throughout the night.

Led by its defense, which forced five Miami turnovers, the Buckeyes did just enough to win the game, cementing its place in college-football lore. In fact, technically it was four turnovers since one of them was Clarett ripping the ball back from Sean Taylor’s hands after his third-quarter interception.

When Saturday’s Miami Herald hit newsstands, sportswriter (and a former Hurricane himself) Dan Le Batard wrote, “Miami’s amazing run atop the sport is over today - as is one of the most amazing runs ever in any sport, any time, any place - because Ohio State was a bounce better, an inch better, a breath better in a 31-24 victory that took two overtimes to complete.”

Yes there was a game-changing injury to Miami running back Willis McGahee. And yes there was a controversial, game-extending penalty call that gave Ohio State an additional chance to force a second overtime. Those footnotes fit perfectly with the nationwide skepticism of Ohio State’s dominance that year. But, in retrospect, if there was any doubt that game wasn’t a fluke - if there was any doubt that season wasn’t a fluke, consider this: In the 23 seasons since that matchup, Ohio State is 240-34. And that doesn’t include bowl season, where the Buckeyes have won 16 more - two of them for national championships.

The Hurricanes, on the other hand, have only finished the year in the top-25 eight (soon-to-be nine) times. More alarming is that they have only won seven bowl games, and three of them are from this year. Miami’s wins slowed, the pipeline to the NFL dried up, and memories of The U became second-hand for anyone younger than the PlayStation.

Fast forward to 11 days ago. Miami was back in the Fiesta Bowl - the very game it’s streak of 34 straight wins was snapped. This time the game was not for the national championship, but, under the new postseason format, a chance to get there. And this time Tostitos was not the sponsor. Instead, PlayStation.

Several factors make comparing this team’s run and Ohio State’s 2002 run oranges to apples: the transfer portal, NIL, a playoff field of 12 teams, etc., etc. But the similarities are there - even beyond the goal-line contact and hold-your-breath moment that followed Ole Miss’s final pass attempt into the end zone last Friday.

Miami boasts multiple playmakers on defense, is committed to the run game, and trots out battle-tested leader at quarterback. The fanbase adores its head coach, and his mission to make the program relevant again is well underway and full steam ahead.

Moreover, in the minutes leading up to the playoff committee’s announcement of this year’s qualifiers, many predicted Miami would be left out entirely. And now the 10-seed Hurricanes are one win away from the biggest title upset since, well, by now you don’t need me to finish that sentence. Vegas spotted the Buckeyes 11.5 points in 2002. Tonight’s Miami team is getting 8.5.

When we left my uncle’s house on January 3, 2003, I was right back where that season had started. The characters were all the same: My family, our car, Paul Keels on the radio, and a distant “Hang on Sloopy” sitting perfectly around his voice in the stereo mix. When the postgame coverage cut to the podium, Tressel addressed his team as well as the live, tv, and radio audiences. “We’ve always had the best damn band in the land,” he said. “Now we’ve got the best damn team in the land.”

Regardless of tonight’s outcome between the two teams that handed Ohio State its lone losses in 2025, there is a group of Miami fans that are four years into a trip that does not have a defined final destination. A championship would be the ultimate stop, but a loss will not derail their train. Some aboard can recall the championships under Howard Schnellenberger, Jimmy Johnson, Dennis Erickson, and Larry Coker. They still talk about plays made by Michael Irvin, Warren Sapp, Ed Reed, and Santana Moss.

Others, however, hopped on in a post-pandemic world, pretty sure that there was also a Jimmy Johnson race car driver and not totally sure if they are/were the same person.

If this narrative completes its full-circle trajectory tonight, perhaps we’ve spent the past two decades in the eye of Miami’s storm - much like Ohio State’s 13-year stretch where they were only able to muster two wins against Michigan and two meaningful bowl game victories against Arizona State and Texas A&M, respectively.

I wonder - on December 6, 2021, how many longtime-listeners became first-time-callers on Miami radio stations? And how many middle school students recounted Miami’s season-opening win against Notre Dame with friends this past September? They won the turnover margin, had more rushing yards, and my goodness - who is this Malachi Toney guy?

Answer: A 5-foot-11 188-pound true freshman from American Heritage High School.

Finishing top-two in the ACC in receptions, receiving yards, and receiving touchdowns, he was routinely Miami’s man of the hour in 2025.

With the Band of the Hour playing in the background.