BIG BREAKING NEWS NYC SPORTSWRITER GIVES JOHN CREDIT FOR SOME BRAINS

I couldn't believe it either. But Village Voice sportswriter Allen Barra, in his excellent Subway Series postmortem, actually wrote these sentences:

The problem seems to be not Santana's fabled change-up but his velocity: his fastest pitch yesterday was only 92 mph, and four-fifths of his throws clocked in under 90 mph. As John Sterling noted on the Yankees broadcast, "The change-up may be Johan's best pitch, but it only works if it's thrown after a live fastball."

It was not a set-up to a punchline. Barra did not take it back in the next paragraph. He treated a specific thing John said on the radio as a credible thing to say. This feels so weird. Until you look higher up the page and notice this gem:

Tack up a little sign and put it in Joba's locker: "Suzyn Waldman is full of crap. Great pitchers are strikeout pitchers."

Still. A New York sportswriter treated a specific thing John said on the radio as a credible thing to say. As I seem to remember John observing one time -- I think it was John -- anyway, whoever said it, it was something to the effect of: nobody, but nobody, can predict what's going to happen in the game of baseball. Nobody.

Amazing.