Junior

It’s an appropriate name for today’s list of links since they all involve him.

CBSsportsline profiles the chase for 600

And the attention Young Master Bruce (eh…I’m just trying it out) is getting. The fans in Cincinnati are having a hard time getting behind Jr this season because they know as soon as he hits 600, the club will deal him. There is a club option on Jr. for next year, but the Reds aren’t likely to exercise it. I think he’d stay, but it’s not up to him. It’s probably better for the club long term if he moves on…but it still saddens me.

There was a time I would have committed murder to get my hands on one of these. It was a bygone day called…last week. Some people in Reds country have never been happy with Jr. because he wasn’t what they wanted. Me? I’m just happy that in a day where it seems like every guy I drove hours to watch play has let me down, that Jr is still out there trying. He’s not the demi-god he was at 25, but I don’t care. Every time I watch him play, it’s like I’m 16 again and wishing to God in heaven that I could do what he could.

Barry Larkin and Reggie Miller were the first athletes to retire that I watched their whole careers. Ken Griffey Jr is the first one to really make me feel old.

Sal Paolantonio isn’t real popular with me these days due to his hackery over the Harrison incident (He shouldn’t even live in a neighborhood like that!). Today he picks under and overrated coaches. He’s dead on about Tom Moore of course, but his attacks on Jeff Fischer are ridiculous. Want to know why Fischer fails in the playoffs? His teams have been lead by Steve McNair and Vince Young…and they weren’t that good. Playoff record alone is a really poor standard of judgment of a coach. The best way to judge a coach is over the course of several seasons. Do his teams under or overperform their talent? Does the coach consistently put his team in a position to win? The playoffs are a crapshoot. Jeff Fischer is one of the best around, and Salpal can’t convince me otherwise just by listing a couple of individual games where his team was clearly not as talented as the opponent. He kills Fischer for losing on the road at New England by a field goal? Seriously? He kills Fischer for losing the Super Bowl by a yard to one of the greatest offenses of all time? Really?

I’d like to do my own overrated column about writers. Salpal would be on top of the list today.