Picked-up pieces while picking up a Super Bowl sheet cake at Star Market …
▪ Super Bowl LV is easily framed as Tom Brady vs. Patrick Mahomes, quite possibly the top pairing of quarterbacks in the 55-year history of this event. Those of us lucky enough to be at Arrowhead Stadium on Jan. 20, 2019, will never forget the first championship matchup of the GOAT vs. NFL Future.
It was the biggest game in the 47-year history of Arrowhead at that time, and the Patriots cut the hearts out of the frozen local fans by keeping a lid on Mahomes and bolting to a 14-0 halftime lead. New England led, 17-7, at the end of three quarters before a flurry of scoring filled the fourth. Both teams scored twice in the final 3:32 of regulation and it went to overtime tied, 31-31.
Brady finished 30 of 46 for 348 yards, with one touchdown pass and two picks. He converted three third-and-10s on the winning drive in overtime. Mahomes finished with 295 yards passing, completing 16 of 31 attempts, with three touchdowns and zero interceptions.
Just like Rich Gannon in 2002 and Matt Ryan in 2017, Mahomes never got the ball in overtime. The Patriots won, 37-31, on Rex Burkhead’s 2-yard TD run less than five minutes into OT.
My favorite memory of that weekend was running into Pat Mahomes Sr. at the Marriott bar the night before the game and swapping stories of his two-year stint pitching out of the Red Sox bullpen. He went 3-0 in 21 games for Kevin Kennedy and Jimy Williams in 1996 and 1997.
Incredibly, my expense account for AFC Championship weekend, which included a hefty tab for “beers with Patrick Mahomes,” did not bounce back from Globe accounting.
▪ Mahomes and Brady were both 24 when they won their first Super Bowl. Ben Roethlisberger did it at 23.
Brady’s first seven Super Bowls were decided by 6 points or fewer. The only “blowouts” were the 41-33 loss to the Eagles in 2018 and the 13-3 snore-fest over the Rams two years ago.
▪ Remember when Truck Day was a big deal because the Red Sox were a big deal? Back in the days when the Sox went pedal to the metal to bring you a championship every year? Well, Truck Day is Monday at Fenway.
The Sox are lucky they still have fans who forgive them for not being “all in.” These are the agreeable patrons who say, “They’ve won four championships in this century. Leave them alone.”
Sorry. No can do.
In my view, the local baseball team is a public trust, and fans who pay Fenway/NESN prices deserve a team that is the top priority of its ownership group, one trying to win a championship every season.
Sox bosses have been kings of overreaction for the last decade, changing course almost annually. Why can’t they be appropriately aggressive, recognizing that fans are paying ridiculous prices, and try to win this year with a long-term plan in mind? That worked from 2003-11.
▪ Quiz: Name four players who hit a big league home run before turning 20 and also after turning 40 (answer below).
▪ It’s going to be fun debating Dustin Pedroia’s Hall of Fame candidacy over the next five years. He was neither Joe Morgan nor Roberto Alomar, but he was better than Bill Mazeroski and Nellie Fox and probably better than Bobby Doerr.
Pedroia was an MVP, a career .299 hitter, won four Gold Gloves, was part of three World Series winners, and was an All-Star four times. Pretty sure he was not on PEDs.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t as good as Lou Whitaker or Jeff Kent, and neither is in the Hall yet.
▪ You can’t love Brady and hate LeBron James at the same time. You can’t say Tom’s the GOAT but LeBron is not yet Michael Jordan. Sorry. LeBron is better than Jordan. He’s 36, the Lakers are better than they were last year, and he’s making more than 40 percent of his threes.
Oh, and in an era of “load management,” James plays every game. And that’s after only a 72-day offseason.
▪ After dismissing baseball writers as liars and cowards, Curt Schilling said he wanted to turn his Cooperstown candidacy over to Hall of Famers. Swell.
Wonder how Curt feels in the wake of Reggie Jackson’s comments to NJ.com: “Look at what you did. You took yourself out of the Hall of Fame because of what you say and how to express yourself and how you think.
“Freedom of speech is great, but we can’t have a country with white supremacy, Nazis, Black Panthers, racist stuff, and anti-Semitics.
“I don’t care if Schilling is conservative or not conservative. That doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that he’s stepping out on the balcony and yelling out something to defame Jews or Muslims or any other ethnicity or gender. Curt, get away from here with that.”
▪ Did you know that the late Bud Collins, vault of all tennis information for decades, was Abbie Hoffman’s tennis coach when Hoffman played at Brandeis? According to Bud, Hoffman played a conservative game, never charging the net.
▪ Jim Weatherly, who wrote “Midnight Train to Georgia,” died in Tennessee this past week. Weatherly played college football at the University of Mississippi on teams that won two Southeastern Conference titles and a national championship.
▪ The Devils, Sabres, Wild, Golden Knights, and Avalanche have all had to postpone games thus far in the NHL season. Twenty-six postponements have affected 16 of the league’s 24 US-based teams.
▪ Seventy-two-year-old Gregg Popovich is going to wind up with more regular-season coaching wins than anyone in NBA history. In his 25th season with the Spurs, Popovich trails only Don Nelson and Lenny Wilkens and went into the weekend 46 wins behind Nelson for the top spot.
▪ Baseball hiring Theo Epstein and Ken Griffey Jr. is a good indication that commissioner Rob Manfred has new self-awareness and will not come at every problem in the same manner.
▪ Dee Brown and Antoine Walker were Celtics teammates for two seasons, Brown wearing No. 7 and Walker wearing No. 8. The Celtics today have Jaylen Brown and Kemba Walker, Nos. 7 and 8 in your program, respectively.
▪ I stop reading baseball articles after I come across “spin rate.”
▪ This summer marks the 50th anniversary of perhaps the most entertaining baseball All-Star Game ever played. In a game that featured 21 Hall of Famers, the AL beat the NL, 6-4.
Six Hall of Famers homered: Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Johnny Bench, Harmon Killebrew, Roberto Clemente, and Reggie — who hit a blast that might have traveled 500 feet if it hadn’t been stopped by a transformer atop the uppermost deck of Tiger Stadium. Vida Blue got the win for the AL.
Jim Palmer, who pitched two innings, remembered, “Frank Umont, AL ump, was behind the plate. The umps had to walk through our dugout after the game and Umont said, ‘[expletive] the National League!’ My kind of ump.”
▪ Good luck to Rob Gronkowski in everything he does, but I was over the goofy-Gronk stuff about 10 years ago.
▪ Bill Pepitone, former New York City police officer and nephew of former Yankees first baseman Joe Pepitone, is running for mayor of New York City.
▪ One of my readers suggests that Danny Ainge allow Bruce Cassidy to coach the fourth quarter of Celtics games.
▪ Quiz answer: Ty Cobb, Rusty Staub, Gary Sheffield, and Alex Rodriguez.
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at daniel.shaughnessy@globe.com. Follow him @dan_shaughnessy.