Tag Archives: NHL

The “Slate” tool to find out the connections between Athletes is WRONG!

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You’ve probably seen this page pop up on your Twitter feed today. It’s a cool thing from Slate in which you can find how sports players are connected. For example, they use the example that Tom Brady and Kevin Garnett are within six degrees of each other, due to playing with people who had played with multi-sport athletes.

However, it is far from perfect. For example, it treats Jim Thorpe as two people (a baseball player and a football player), a grave error considering that he is one of the greatest athletes of all time. For another, there is an outright false statement that is seemingly also built into the tool. And I quote:

Hockey is the opposite, as there has never been a pro hockey player who also played top-level basketball, football, or baseball. As a result, hockey is a closed system. But once you get off the ice, it’s possible to link every pro baseball, basketball, and football star.

This is, of course, completely wrong, as there has actually been one player who played both baseball and hockey on the highest level. In fact, I wrote about him at one point: his name was Jim Riley.

Sadly, as of this writing, author Ben Blatt and Slate have yet to fix this. But, I can’t blame them, can I? I mean, Jim Riley is very obscure, and if not for the fact that he is the one person to play in both MLB and NHL, he would have been completely forgotten.

Still, I hope that they fix it. After all, I want to see how all of the ProStars connect together.

The Lone Man to play in MLB and the NHL (and other MLB/NHL connections)

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Hockey is back!

(Crickets)

Well, anyway, there have been far fewer two-sport athletes in baseball involving hockey than there are basketball or football. In fact, there has been a grand total of one player who has spent time in the Major Leagues and the NHL. That player is Jim Riley, who spent some brief time with the St. Louis Browns and Washington Senators in the 1920s and spent a brief time with the Chicago Black Hawks (note the space) and Detroit Cougars (not yet the Red Wings) in the 1926-1927 season. Here’s what his top league statistics looked like:

In MLB:

Year Age Tm Lg G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS OPS+ TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB Pos Awards
1921 26 SLB AL 4 12 11 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 .000 .083 .000 .083 -78 0 0 0 /4
1923 28 WSH AL 2 5 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 .000 .400 .000 .400 13 0 0 0 /3
1931 Did not play in major leagues (Did Not Play)
2 Yrs 6 17 14 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 3 .000 .176 .000 .176 -52 0 0 0
162 Game Avg. 162 459 378 27 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 81 81 .000 .176 .000 .176 -52 0 0 0
WSH (1 yr) 2 5 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 .000 .400 .000 .400 13 0 0 0
SLB (1 yr) 4 12 11 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 .000 .083 .000 .083 -78 0 0 0
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 1/14/2013.

In the NHL:

Season Age Tm Lg GP G A PTS GC +/- PIM EV PP SH GW S S% TOI ATOI
1926-27 31 TOT NHL 9 0 2 2 1 14
1926-27 31 CBH NHL 3 0 0 0 0 0
1926-27 31 DTC NHL 6 0 2 2 1 14
Career NHL 9 0 2 2 1 14
Provided by Hockey-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 1/14/2013.

Of course, Riley also played in the minor leagues in both sports. You can find his baseball minor league stats over at Baseball Reference, and you can find his hockey stats over at hockeydb.com.

Now, although Riley is the lone man to have played in both MLB and the NHL, he is not the only player who played both sports. Not even close. Take a look after the jump for other connections between America’s pastime and Canada’s pastime:

Continue reading →

It’s Labor Day, and Baseball remains the most peaceful work environment in sports

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What the heck is going on? No, I’m not talking about how the Orioles continue to defy the laws of the universe (again), I’m talking about how, on this Labor Day, Major League Baseball remains the most stable place in sports when it comes to the relations between players and management. Yes, baseball, the sport that had one strike force the season to become a split-season and the World Series get cancelled, and which at one point in the early 2000s seemed to be headed towards another strike, is the best example of labor harmony.

Meanwhile, the NBA lost a significant portion of it’s season last year, the NFL narrowly avoided a work stoppage with it’s players and now is using scab referees due to a dispute with the usual refs, and the NHL is headed down the road to another work stoppage, which could very well annihilate another whole season.

Remember when the NHL was a major sport on ESPN and everything, and not just something that was only popular in about 6 American markets and could only be found on NBC properties? That little transition from being part of the Big Four to being on the outside looking in on the Big Three happened when they lost an entire season to the 2004-2005 lockout. Who knows what might happen if they again end up with a lost season? The Europeans could just say “Screw this, I’m going home” and depart to teams in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, never to return. What little interest in hockey that there exists in the the United States outside of the Northeast and Upper Midwest will disintegrate even more than before. But, by all accounts, the NHL and the NHLPA seem destined to run straight into the abyss again.

So why is baseball avoiding those problems? Partially it’s because MLB is making so much money that it doesn’t really matter, and the revenue sharing has allowed even the worst teams to spin a hefty profit. The same is not true for the NBA and NHL, and the fact it was more-or-less true in the NFL was one of the main reasons why there was only one preseason game that was lost.

However, the bigger reason is, in my opinion, basically the realization by both the owners and the MLBPA that to have a work stoppage, especially a work stoppage that cancels the playoffs, is a case of mutually assured destruction. Even if one side were to “win”, they’d end up far worse off than they had been before. The 1994 strike was proof of that: fans abandoned baseball until Cal Ripken, the home run chase and the late-90s Yankees dynasty brought it back. However, had the 2002 labor dispute ended in a work stoppage, there was no guarantee that any heroes would come over the hill to save the day. It just wasn’t worth the risk, so they came to terms, and have done so every CBA since.

That lesson, alas, has not yet come to the NHL.