Welcome to the Postseason

Welcome to the post season, football fans. All the prognostication is over and the swollen-headed experts can pretend the fantasy scenarios of how the season would play out they so proudly proclaimed back before week one actually played out. Most fans of the home team can begin their off-season commiseration and start looking forward to the eternal promise of next year while sixteen teams fight it out in the Thunderdome that is the NFL playoffs.

The photo is of Cal Hubbard of the New York Giants and was taken in November of 1936. Hubbard started playing pro ball in 1927 playing both defense and offense. In 1929 Hubbard moved to the Green Bay Packers where he played for the legendary Lambeau and won an NFL championship.

Hubbard took to the small town atmosphere in Green Bay and began umpiring baseball games during his summers there. In 1936, he took on a new career as an American League umpire and eventually became well known for his work on the diamond. In 1958 he was appointed umpire-in-chief of the AL and to date Hubbard is the only person to be enshrined in both the Baseball and Pro Football Halls of Fame.

100 Years Ago - Christy Matheson's Advice

The Major League Baseball playoffs have arrived and in the wake of doping, BALCO, and ignominious testimony before congress by some of the more...colorful...characters in the game I thought it might be nice to look back 100 years to the advice given by one of baseball's greats.

Matheson began his professional career with Norfolk, a minor league team in the Virginia-North Carolina League, and in the 1900 season he got the call up to the majors to pitch for the New York Giants. Between July and September he played in six games, starting one, and by the end of the season he hadn't won a single game. The Giants, angered with what they perceived as Matheson's lack of talent, not only sent him back to Norfolk, they demanded a refund. The same month the Cincinnati Reds acquired Matheson, but quickly traded him back to the Giants where he stayed.

Matheson dabbled with professional,  playing fullback for the Pittsburgh Stars in the first NFL's 1902 season, but he disappeared from the roster in mid-season. The reasons for his ending this dalliance with full-contact sports is a bit of a mystery, but Matheson spent the remainder of his MLB career with the Giants and still holds the National League record for career wins (373).

Matheson's sage words about sports come from the October 1913 issue of  Boy's Life Magazine.