Sherman Oaks' Albino Rhino is the best defensive outfielder in baseball in 2025 & maybe the 3rd best player overall behind Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani:
A thought I had is that with the proliferation of cable and streaming channels for sports at all levels the pipeline for retired athletes is less into movies and TV now and more into sports broadcasting (kind of the same thing). When you only had three networks there weren't that many slots for telegenic ex-athletes to fill, and at least half of them are usually filled by professional sports broadcasters.
Actors and models usually have fine, gracile bone structure; athletes are robust.
I've met both and the difference is pronounced.
There are exceptions among actors (almost all being men), like Sean Connery and Liam Neeson, but they tend to marry delicate beauties, and since boys tend to take after their mothers that explains it.
Right, athletes and actors/models are on opposite sides of the gracile/robust spectrum.
For example, take a "thin" athlete like a cornerback, point guard or soccer player. 6'1" and 185 is a fairly common size for that kind of athlete give or take a bit. Take an actor or model of the same height and train him to the same task (no roids/bulking program) and same body fat and he'll be around 160 I'd say (that might be generous).
That 25lbs. disparity in bone and muscle makes a big qualitative difference both on the field and in person, and also on camera now that I think of it. It's more than you'd think just from the number.
I'm guessing Tom Cruise, deservedly our greatest movie star, is 5'7" and 150 pounds.
I can recall a friend in 1982 who worked at a Santa Monica hospital remarking how tiny Robert Redford was when he game in to the ER with a cut. The nurses clustering around him towered over him.
I have a sense, not vigorously researched, that the desire for great muscle mass peaked in society in the late 1980s, but for whatever reason continued to grow as a requirement for actors in movies and TV. Obviously some young people these days still want big round body builder muscles but it strikes me as less of a thing in regular person fitness these days. OTOH, for the past decade at least it appears that just about any acting (except fat guy comedy roles) requires the rounded muscle bellies and low body fat of at least an elite gymnast.
On yet another hand, it strikes me that most of these muscly actors are muscly in a different way from the pro athletes. Part of it is that people in movies can be made to look larger on camera than they are in real life. There is something (and it's difficult to say of rsure since I am mostly going off video) but and of like Bill Price is saying- you look at a college wrestler and he doesn't look as good as a Marvel superhero actor, but he does look more formidable if you can imagine a real life encounter.
Anyway, I'm not sure why we should expect a lot of pro athletes to have parents who were actors so I'm happy to learn we don't
You and I live in roughly the same area, which produces a lot of entertainers and athletes, so if we can't think of too many parent-child combos, there probably aren't many.
Without thinking about this carefully, I would have been surprised. I would have expected that jocks and stars would be similar, but that doesn't appear to be true.
For years now I've been saying that MLB is over. Perplexity and Grok don't recognize this Albino Rhino. Perp gave me Karl Mecklenburg of the Broncos, and a baseball player for UConn, then still zeroed when I specified Sherman Oaks. Here's Grok:
"In the last two years, Chicago area media does not appear to have prominently featured an individual or entity explicitly referred to as "the Albino Rhino." My search through available sources, including web results and posts on X, found no direct mentions in Chicago-specific media outlets—such as newspapers, radio, or local blogs—referring to a person, nickname, or figure by this name. The term "Albino Rhino" did surface in other contexts, but none were tied to Chicago media coverage in the specified timeframe."
I didn't invent the term "Albino Rhino" for Pete Crow-Armstrong, who is not an albino, but he is at present, after Sunday May 18, the second best player in major league baseball behind only the great Aaron Judge. He probably won't stay at that level, but still ...
>I’m guessing that Timmy Chalamee didn’t play high school football
He’s an alumnus of LaGuardia, the distinguished NYC public high school for the performing arts. It doesn’t have a football team, so you would be right. .
Drummer Alex Van Halen's son was the best player on my son's baseball team and went on to be a top high school long distance runner: a lot of energy like his dad. A couple of times his cousin Wolfgang Van Halen came to see his games, which was nice that the brothers' families were close, which isn't always true among brother acts in rock. Wolfgang was a big, stocky kid, but it was also pretty easy to see his mother was a beautiful actress and his father a musical genius. He didn't seem too interested in sports, but instead listened to music the whole game intensely, like he intended to live up to his name.
There are a few very notable sports/music family threads - Mike/Stan/Kevin Love, Virgil/Butch/Derek Trucks, Tug/Tim McGraw. Of course these involve notably macho musicians, too.
I did a Taki's column once by some marketing professors who correlated what type of movies people liked with their Big 5 personality traits. The interesting discovery was that people who really like sports movies are distinctive from everybody else who really like movies. It's like sports and movies, or the arts in general, are different realms, which can help explain why you don't see that many families crossing over from high achievement in one to the other over the generations.
This also helps explain why my interest in golf course architecture draws attention: it's a sports art, which is a rare thing.
Pete Crow-Armstrong, Max Fried, Jack Flaherty, and Lucas Giolito are all graduates of Harvard-Westlake, the old money super school a couple of miles from me. They figured out about 20 years ago that being rich (e.g., Warren Buffett's pal Charlie Munger was a big donor) and smart (e.g., Charlie Munger) would payoff in baseball.
Granted it was against the White Sox, but Pete Crow-Armstrong went 8 for 14 over the weekend series against the White Sox. He's up to .290/.325/.580 while playing astonishing centerfield.
"Andruw Jones of the Atlanta Braves was fast as a 20 year old centerfield prodigy, he never showed elite speed on offense: he never stole more than 27 bases or hit more than 8 triples in a season. For his career, he’s 136th all time in double plays grounded into. Those are Pretty Good numbers, but nothing amazing."
Jones' career WAR is 62.7 (career HR's are about 8 behind Dave Kingman). And like Dave Kingman, neither are in the HOF. ( Jones won 10 Gold Gloves in his career)
Willie Mays career WAR is 156.2 (fifth all time among the greatest to have ever played the game) (Mays 12 Gold Gloves, tied with HOF Roberto Clemente with most Gold Gloves all time in MLB among OFers. And Clemente is widely considered by expert consensus to have been the greatest RF in MLB)
For the most part, Willie Mays has been widely considered to have been the all time greatest CF of the 20th century in MLB.
The point, is that there is a story about Mays' iconic WS catch off of Vic Wertz. He clearly had the speed to reach the ball and make the over the shoulder catch from nearly 450 ft away. There's not really any similarly iconic play that Jones is directly associated with. Mays, at that point in his career, could very well have had the natural instincts to "know" that the ball was bound to be solidly hit and to start running into deepest part of CF. The great OF's usually have had that kind of instinct, and especially in the early part of their careers, they also would tend to have the speed to go with the instincts. Honestly, that's just a given, that for the most part, the all time greats possess that kind of instinct at a heightened level to "know" that the ball was well hit and to immediately start backing up to attempt to make the catch.
For example: during the 1936 WS game 2 vs NYG, ironically at the Polo Grounds, Joe DiMaggio caught the final out on the run, and his momentum carried him up the clubhouse stairs. Unfortunately for posterity the play wasn't recorded on film.
I'm sorry, but the idea that Jones belongs in the same sentence as Willie Mays as among the all time greatest players of MLB is totally asinine.
A thought I had is that with the proliferation of cable and streaming channels for sports at all levels the pipeline for retired athletes is less into movies and TV now and more into sports broadcasting (kind of the same thing). When you only had three networks there weren't that many slots for telegenic ex-athletes to fill, and at least half of them are usually filled by professional sports broadcasters.
42 degree launch angle pretty close to perfect.
Actors and models usually have fine, gracile bone structure; athletes are robust.
I've met both and the difference is pronounced.
There are exceptions among actors (almost all being men), like Sean Connery and Liam Neeson, but they tend to marry delicate beauties, and since boys tend to take after their mothers that explains it.
Right, athletes and actors/models are on opposite sides of the gracile/robust spectrum.
For example, take a "thin" athlete like a cornerback, point guard or soccer player. 6'1" and 185 is a fairly common size for that kind of athlete give or take a bit. Take an actor or model of the same height and train him to the same task (no roids/bulking program) and same body fat and he'll be around 160 I'd say (that might be generous).
That 25lbs. disparity in bone and muscle makes a big qualitative difference both on the field and in person, and also on camera now that I think of it. It's more than you'd think just from the number.
I'm guessing Tom Cruise, deservedly our greatest movie star, is 5'7" and 150 pounds.
I can recall a friend in 1982 who worked at a Santa Monica hospital remarking how tiny Robert Redford was when he game in to the ER with a cut. The nurses clustering around him towered over him.
De Niro was photographed walking around in 3+" platform shoes for an outdoor scene so he'd be taller than another actor.
Indeed. Timothy Chalamet's sons probably won't be NFL tight ends.
Thought Sheryl Crow and Lance Armstrong had a baby for a minute, then realized they're not actors.
Has a pro athlete's child made it big as an actor, singer, or artist?
I can't think of one off the top of my head.
It really seems like there are two types of Americans: jocks/businessmen and artists/entertainers.
I have a sense, not vigorously researched, that the desire for great muscle mass peaked in society in the late 1980s, but for whatever reason continued to grow as a requirement for actors in movies and TV. Obviously some young people these days still want big round body builder muscles but it strikes me as less of a thing in regular person fitness these days. OTOH, for the past decade at least it appears that just about any acting (except fat guy comedy roles) requires the rounded muscle bellies and low body fat of at least an elite gymnast.
On yet another hand, it strikes me that most of these muscly actors are muscly in a different way from the pro athletes. Part of it is that people in movies can be made to look larger on camera than they are in real life. There is something (and it's difficult to say of rsure since I am mostly going off video) but and of like Bill Price is saying- you look at a college wrestler and he doesn't look as good as a Marvel superhero actor, but he does look more formidable if you can imagine a real life encounter.
Anyway, I'm not sure why we should expect a lot of pro athletes to have parents who were actors so I'm happy to learn we don't
You and I live in roughly the same area, which produces a lot of entertainers and athletes, so if we can't think of too many parent-child combos, there probably aren't many.
Without thinking about this carefully, I would have been surprised. I would have expected that jocks and stars would be similar, but that doesn't appear to be true.
Didn't actor Jack Haley(Tin Man) have a grandson who was a rebounding forward for UCLA who lasted a few years in the NBA?
Sounds awfully plausible that the two Jack Haleys were related, but I don't see it confirmed.
LOL I ASSumed he was the son of Sheryl Crow and Lance Armstrong!!
For years now I've been saying that MLB is over. Perplexity and Grok don't recognize this Albino Rhino. Perp gave me Karl Mecklenburg of the Broncos, and a baseball player for UConn, then still zeroed when I specified Sherman Oaks. Here's Grok:
"In the last two years, Chicago area media does not appear to have prominently featured an individual or entity explicitly referred to as "the Albino Rhino." My search through available sources, including web results and posts on X, found no direct mentions in Chicago-specific media outlets—such as newspapers, radio, or local blogs—referring to a person, nickname, or figure by this name. The term "Albino Rhino" did surface in other contexts, but none were tied to Chicago media coverage in the specified timeframe."
I didn't invent the term "Albino Rhino" for Pete Crow-Armstrong, who is not an albino, but he is at present, after Sunday May 18, the second best player in major league baseball behind only the great Aaron Judge. He probably won't stay at that level, but still ...
"They installed Garvey at first and traded Buckner. It worked out well for the Dodgers."
Not so much for the Red Sox, though.
>I’m guessing that Timmy Chalamee didn’t play high school football
He’s an alumnus of LaGuardia, the distinguished NYC public high school for the performing arts. It doesn’t have a football team, so you would be right. .
Drummer Alex Van Halen's son was the best player on my son's baseball team and went on to be a top high school long distance runner: a lot of energy like his dad. A couple of times his cousin Wolfgang Van Halen came to see his games, which was nice that the brothers' families were close, which isn't always true among brother acts in rock. Wolfgang was a big, stocky kid, but it was also pretty easy to see his mother was a beautiful actress and his father a musical genius. He didn't seem too interested in sports, but instead listened to music the whole game intensely, like he intended to live up to his name.
There are a few very notable sports/music family threads - Mike/Stan/Kevin Love, Virgil/Butch/Derek Trucks, Tug/Tim McGraw. Of course these involve notably macho musicians, too.
Thanks.
Wolfgang Van Halen is a confident name.
I did a Taki's column once by some marketing professors who correlated what type of movies people liked with their Big 5 personality traits. The interesting discovery was that people who really like sports movies are distinctive from everybody else who really like movies. It's like sports and movies, or the arts in general, are different realms, which can help explain why you don't see that many families crossing over from high achievement in one to the other over the generations.
This also helps explain why my interest in golf course architecture draws attention: it's a sports art, which is a rare thing.
Pete Crow-Armstrong, Max Fried, Jack Flaherty, and Lucas Giolito are all graduates of Harvard-Westlake, the old money super school a couple of miles from me. They figured out about 20 years ago that being rich (e.g., Warren Buffett's pal Charlie Munger was a big donor) and smart (e.g., Charlie Munger) would payoff in baseball.
So far, they've been right.
Granted it was against the White Sox, but Pete Crow-Armstrong went 8 for 14 over the weekend series against the White Sox. He's up to .290/.325/.580 while playing astonishing centerfield.
"Andruw Jones of the Atlanta Braves was fast as a 20 year old centerfield prodigy, he never showed elite speed on offense: he never stole more than 27 bases or hit more than 8 triples in a season. For his career, he’s 136th all time in double plays grounded into. Those are Pretty Good numbers, but nothing amazing."
Jones' career WAR is 62.7 (career HR's are about 8 behind Dave Kingman). And like Dave Kingman, neither are in the HOF. ( Jones won 10 Gold Gloves in his career)
Willie Mays career WAR is 156.2 (fifth all time among the greatest to have ever played the game) (Mays 12 Gold Gloves, tied with HOF Roberto Clemente with most Gold Gloves all time in MLB among OFers. And Clemente is widely considered by expert consensus to have been the greatest RF in MLB)
For the most part, Willie Mays has been widely considered to have been the all time greatest CF of the 20th century in MLB.
The point, is that there is a story about Mays' iconic WS catch off of Vic Wertz. He clearly had the speed to reach the ball and make the over the shoulder catch from nearly 450 ft away. There's not really any similarly iconic play that Jones is directly associated with. Mays, at that point in his career, could very well have had the natural instincts to "know" that the ball was bound to be solidly hit and to start running into deepest part of CF. The great OF's usually have had that kind of instinct, and especially in the early part of their careers, they also would tend to have the speed to go with the instincts. Honestly, that's just a given, that for the most part, the all time greats possess that kind of instinct at a heightened level to "know" that the ball was well hit and to immediately start backing up to attempt to make the catch.
For example: during the 1936 WS game 2 vs NYG, ironically at the Polo Grounds, Joe DiMaggio caught the final out on the run, and his momentum carried him up the clubhouse stairs. Unfortunately for posterity the play wasn't recorded on film.
I'm sorry, but the idea that Jones belongs in the same sentence as Willie Mays as among the all time greatest players of MLB is totally asinine.
Albino Rhino? I bet he doesn’t like that nickname. How about White Lightning?