<By the way, in looking up Bradshaw's record I noticed that, before Joe Montana in 1989, only one quarterback in history had a passer rating over 110 for an entire season. Care to guess? Your clue: he was once nearly decapitated by Alex Karras.>

The real contrast I wanted to make was between him and the possibly technically inferior Bradshaw was that Plum seemed to lack whatever special leadership quality Bradshaw had. I imagine there were days that Mean Joe Greene was not happy with Bradshaw, but I don't recall him bouncing a Coke bottle off Terry's head.

Game Collection: All Russian Masters Tournament 1914

Why would the date change instantly in the database listing, but not change when uploaded to my games collection? Will it change to the correct date in my games collection after some time, or is this a bug?

Following up on your last, I looked at Plum's annus mirabilis (1960) a little more closely at pro football reference.

http://www.pro-football-reference.c...

Cleveland had some talent! Jim Brown led the league in rushing, of course, and they also had Hall of Famer Billy Mitchell. Plum's backup was Len Dawson, who also became a pretty good quarterback in the minors. :-) The Browns easily led the league in scoring. So I thought the defense must be bad, but in fact they were fourth in the league in points allowed, just 12 points behind the leaders (San Fran). Nevertheless, the Browns finished 8-3-1, a game and a half behind Norm Van Brocklin's Eagles in the East.

They scored more points and allowed fewer than the Eagles, so if you do a projected record based purely on point differential, you project 9.2 wins for the Browns and 7.8 for the Eagles. But that's not how they pick the winner...The Browns' losses were 31-29 to the Eagles, 17-13 to the Giants and 14-10 to the Steelers. They tied the Cardinals 17-17 in what must have been a bizarre game -- the Cardinals had five INTs against 9 pass completions. Plum had no picks and 2 TDs, overall turnovers were 6:2, but the Browns couldn't hold a 17-7 lead. After that game the Eagles were 8-1-0 and the Browns were 5-3-1, so the Eastern Conference was pretty much decided. Against Pittsburgh Plum threw for 327 yards but the Browns scored just 10 points. So maybe something was lacking there...anyway, the next year, Plum had a 90+ rating as you note, Jim Brown ran for 1400 yards and the Browns finished third. The next year Plum was gone to be Alex Karras' bane. The Browns won the title in 1964 with Dr. Frank Ryan.

Billy Mitchell was a military expert who said shortly after WWI that air power was going to become more important than naval power. Then, I'm not sure, he arranged for fighter planes to attack mothballed ships to demonstrate his thesis, and was court-martialed. Gary Cooper played him in the movie.

"Paper Lion" really is an excellent book, but you have to remember it was written in a time when little negative was written about athletes, and little about the inner workings of teams. So it may seem pretty naive today.

Yes, when he went to the 'Skins somebody wrote that Mitchell faced the blackest future and the whitest huddle in the NFL. George Preston Marshall was a showman and an innovator, but also a racist.

I would put Marvin Miller in the Hall of Fame. Bill James too. Henry Chadwick, the inventor of the box score, is in, rightly I think.

Concerning Bonds, SI writer Tom Verducci had some suggestions for rules changes, and one I found really interesting. He wrote that it was fine if players like Bonds want to wear all that body armor, such as those huge elbow shields. No problem. (Obviously this doesn't include helmets.)

But if the batter is hit on that protective equipment, it's just a ball. No hit batsman. No first base. Sounds good to me.

Thanks, Shams. I haven't followed the story closely at all, so I learned a lot. Now I don't have to read about it any more!

Thanks, JFQ