An idiot chimes in.

No, NOT me! (Though I realize that many of you think this should be the permanent headline for my contributions.)

I'm talking about The Bear, CC Sabathia. Who, let me say right now, I will always love for the 2009 season alone.  

But let's remember that this is the same man who decided to finally get into shape...AFTER his playing days were over. Who will ever forget, for instance, those 3 years when he went a combined 23-26, in return for $71 million?

Um, everyone, if CC is lucky.  

But not to be kept out of the spotlight, the pitcher who made Terry Forster, the original Fat Tub of Goo, look like Twiggy, had to weigh in on who the AL MVP should be this year (still 20 games before the end of the season, never mind the playoffs).

CC felt it should be a fellow pitcher, of course: Shohei Ohtani, who he called—with his usual knack for verbiage—"the best player ever to play baseball."

As opposed to the best pumpkin ever to play baseball? But I digress.

Like most people who play the game, CC knows squat about its history. I suspect that his expertise in this case comes mostly from what various MLB suits and sportscasters tell him, and the often misleading stats they flash on the screen.  

In fact, I hereby challenge CC to name five ballplayers who played before 1970. I also challenge him to come within 30 points of Babe Ruth's lifetime batting average, or within 40 wins of the Babe's lifetime victory total. 

He's hardly alone. I remember when Reggie Jackson—an infinitely more knowledgeable individual—decided to embarrass himself by telling everyone that Gary Carter did not belong in the Hall of Fame. Reggie had barely seen The Kid play, in those pre-interleague years. And again, I doubt if he could have come anywhere close to telling you how Carter's numbers stacked up against those of other catchers at the time—or in the Hall.

But that didn't stop him.

Nor did it stop CC, who has, of course, zero idea of what Ruth did, or of how many more ballplayers in the past might well have pitched once a week and DH'ed the rest of the time, had they only been allowed to do so.  

Willie Mays, for one, who was reportedly lights out as a young pitcher, until his father made him stop for fear of hurting his arm. Lou Gehrig, who set strikeout records in college. And of course The Babe, who only stopped pitching because he got bored.  

I'll say it again:  Shohei Ohtani is certainly a superb athlete, doing something truly terrific. He also does it all of once a week, for a team that has not so much as sniffed the postseason for the five seasons he has been with them. 

As a pitcher, he is quite good—in the very limited, coddled capacity in which he is used.

As a batter, he is a .265 hitter with good power, who does not play any other position on the field.

He is, in short, sort of a combination Jose Urquiddy/ Franmil Reyes. Don't take my word for it; these are two of the players baseballreference compares him most closely to. (The batter they compare him MOST closely to is Pete Alonso—but then, Alonso plays the field pretty much everyday.)

If this is the guy who is to be, almost automatically, the MVP every year...well, then, that award has even less credibility than it did already.