The 2011 Hockey Hall of Fame class featured four highly-decorated NHL players: goalie Ed Belfour, defenseman Mark Howe, and centers Doug Gilmour and Joe Nieuwendyk. Among the illustrious foursome, perhaps it is only fitting that Gilmour and Nieuwendyk were inducted together – each was an elite center in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, scored over 1,000 career points, served as a team captain, and the duo even played on the same team and won a Stanley Cup together. Given the similarities, let us look at these parallel Hall of Fame careers and examine the question:
Swingmen/wings (i.e. basketball players that can play either shooting guard or small forward) are typically among the most versatile basketball players on the court; moreover, one of the best abilities is availability, so add in durability to a diverse skill set and you have a very valuable player. Two NBA stars who fit this description nearly to a “T” were Michael Finley and Joe Johnson – at their respective peaks, both were iron men on the court who played roughly 40 minutes a night and scored 20+ points per game with solid rebounding and assists totals as well. Given their similar abilities and career trajectories, it is only natural to compare the pair and ask:
The modern-day closer is a highly-specialized role, with most top-tier closers rarely pitching more than one inning at a time to lock down the victory. However, if you go back half a century or so to the nascent days of the closer (or firemen, as they were known back then) circa the 1970s, end-of-game relief pitchers at that time would commonly pitch one, two, or even three innings at a time to nail down the victory. In those early “Wild West” days of relief pitching, two pioneering pitchers who would pave the way for today’s closers were Rollie Fingers and Rich “Goose” Gossage – as the first two players in MLB history to reach 300 career saves (while saving winning and losing 100+ games apiece), they were at the vanguard of baseball’s evolution; thus, between these two contemporaries, it is only natural to ask the question:
Perhaps no position in professional sports is as heavily scrutinized as the quarterback in football – win and you get all the glory, but lose and the burden of blame falls squarely on your shoulders. During the 21st century, perhaps no two quarterbacks have been as heavily criticized during their playing days as Jay Cutler and Tony Romo – though each put up prolific passing numbers in his prime, neither could guide their teams to much postseason success and thus were constantly under the microscope for perceived shortcomings. With both quarterbacks having retired from the NFL as players and made their way into the broadcasting booth, let us look back on the parallel careers of these much-maligned signal-callers and consider:
