World Beater
Morning Fix: Friday, February 27
☀️ Good Morning:
I’m going to be a a bit efficient this morning.
It was an adventurous night in the Bellone household.
My wife left last night to take my daughter to an event in the DC area. We had planned for her to drive my SUV instead of her tiny car and she had intended on taking the Tappan Zee (or whatever they want to call it now) instead of the GW Bridge.
Naturally, neither of those things happened. She ended up taking her Mini and headed towards the GW, only to have her tire blow out from running over something that fell off a truck in the middle of the road.
That left them stranded in Yonkers, waiting on a tow and needing an alternate plan to get them to DC, which we worked out in the wee hours of the night.
So I leave you with the newsletter I had started before all of that happened.
Growing up near a park with a row of basketball courts was the perfect setup for a teenage kid. You didn’t need much, just sneakers and a ball, and you could head down to “the Oak” to “run full” or shoot around until someone tapped you in.
It was the kind of place where you could play with anyone: your nerdy best friend; a JV kid trying to prove something; or that freak of nature who moved differently, played faster, and made the game look easy.
There weren’t many of them, but you always knew who they were. The kids destined for something beyond the chain-link fence that framed these courts and held our childhood memories together. They didn’t just look better, they felt different. A cut above.
That’s what it felt like watching Nolan McLean on Thursday.
Honestly, it felt like watching peak deGrom. There was no easing into things, or tinkering with his stuff at the cost of results, like we’ve seen from several others this spring. He was just on. And he needs to be on quicker than usual as he heads to the World Baseball Classic.
“He’s built different,” manager Carlos Mendoza said of McLean. “I don’t think any moment is too big for him, or any stage.”
📰 ABOVE THE FOLD
🥊 WORLD BEATER
Nolan McLean exceeded all expectations during his landmark season.
