Michael Barry

Don't mistake activity for achievement _John Wooden

[the Sports ON Tap @thesportsontap]

Ichiro Suzuki is 52 years old.

He last played in the Majors in 2019. He's already in the Hall of Fame. He has nothing left to prove to anyone on a baseball field.

On Sunday at the Tokyo Dome, he threw a complete game shutout.

127 pitches. 17 strikeouts. Zero runs.

Here's what the game is. Every year, Ichiro hosts an All-Star game against the best high school girls baseball players in Japan. It was created to grow women's baseball in a country where girls have had almost no path in the sport, and it's become one of the biggest showcases they get. Ichiro doesn't show up for an inning and wave. He pitches the whole thing, at full effort, because he believes treating them like real competition is the entire point.

And he was better this year than last.

In 2024 he threw a 116-pitch shutout with nine strikeouts. This year, two years older, he threw eleven more pitches and struck out eight more batters.

One Japanese fan summed it up perfectly online: what's most monstrous isn't the strikeouts, it's that after 127 pitches his velocity and command never dropped off.

Then he walked off the mound, sweat still on him, and did a 30-minute talk show, cracking jokes the whole time.

This is the same guy who, last month, hit eight home runs in the Mariners Alumni Home Run Derby. At 51.

Afterward, he explained why he keeps doing it.

"I wanted to see what my current limits were, and this gave me confidence in myself."

Ichiro collected 4,367 professional hits between Japan and the Majors. He's one of the greatest hitters who ever lived. And somehow, at 52, the more interesting story is what he can still do with his arm.

The man simply refuses to be done.

For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @thesportsontap

[Michael Barry @hoopfreak52]

Thank you for lunch, President Obama! https://t.co/TKmlUbrosU via @YouTube

[Michael Barry @hoopfreak52]

See this Instagram post by @political__tv https://t.co/YeORuFQmIA

[Cata Paul 🃏‍‍‍ @CataPaul2]

🍿 Pixar movies: from the first to the latest

1. 🤠 Toy Story – November 22, 1995
2. 🐜 A Bug’s Life – November 25, 1998
3. 🤠 Toy Story 2 – November 24, 1999
4. 👾 Monsters, Inc. – November 2, 2001
5. 🐠 Finding Nemo – May 30, 2003
6. 🦸 The Incredibles – November 5, 2004
7. 🏎️ Cars – June 9, 2006
8. 🐀 Ratatouille – June 29, 2007
9. 🤖 WALL-E – June 27, 2008
10. 🎈 Up – May 29, 2009
11. 🤠 Toy Story 3 – June 18, 2010
12. 🚗 Cars 2 – June 24, 2011
13. 🏹 Brave – June 22, 2012
14. 👾 Monsters University – June 21, 2013
15. 😊 Inside Out – June 19, 2015
16. 🦕 The Good Dinosaur – November 25, 2015
17. 🐠 Finding Dory – June 17, 2016
18. 🚗 Cars 3 – June 16, 2017
19. 💀 Coco – November 22, 2017
20. 🦸 Incredibles 2 – June 15, 2018
21. 🤠 Toy Story 4 – June 21, 2019
22. 🧙 Onward – March 6, 2020
23. 🎷 Soul – December 25, 2020
24. 🌊 Luca – June 18, 2021
25. 🐼 Turning Red – March 11, 2022
26. 🚀 Lightyear – June 17, 2022
27. 🔥 Elemental – June 16, 2023
28. 😊 Inside Out 2 – June 14, 2024
29. 👽 Elio – June 20, 2025
30. 🦫 Hoppers – March 6, 2026
31. 🤠 Toy Story 5 – June 19, 2026

🖇️ Source: Pixar

[the Sports ON Tap @thesportsontap]

In 1991, David Robinson walked into a fifth grade classroom at Gates Elementary School in San Antonio.

He was 25 years old, two years into the NBA, already the best center in the league.

He made the kids a deal.

Finish high school, and he'd give every single one of them $2,000 toward college.

Ninety four kids.

Then he left, and those kids went off to do the next seven years of their lives, and most people forgot the whole thing had happened.

He didn't.

In 1998, fifty of those students walked across a stage with a diploma.

Robinson showed up.

And he didn't hand out what he'd promised. He handed each of them $8,000.

Four times the amount. To fifty kids, in cash toward college, seven years after making a promise to a room full of ten year olds who had no way of holding him to it.

He never had to do any of it. He'd made the promise before most of those children were tall enough to reach a rim, and nobody would have said a word if he'd quietly let it go.

Here's the thing about that decision. It didn't stop there.

Robinson and his wife Valerie put $9 million into building a school on the East Side of San Antonio, in a neighborhood that didn't have one like it. Carver Academy opened in 2001, pre-K through eighth grade, mostly low-income families.

Those kids learn Spanish, German and Japanese. They build robots. They run a broadcast studio.

He also went back to school himself, in his forties, and finished a master's degree with a 4.0 while studying 10 to 15 hours a week, specifically so the Carver students would see him do it.

His own explanation for all of it has never gotten more complicated than one sentence.

"We do the right things because that's what God told us to do."

The NBA gives out an award every year for community service. In 2003 they renamed it the David Robinson Plaque.

Two rings. An MVP. Ten All-Star teams. Three Olympic teams. Hall of Fame.

And fifty adults in San Antonio who got a check from a man who made them a promise when they were ten.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🚨🇯🇵 HOLY SH*T: Nagoya, Japan right now...

104.5 mm of rain was unleashed in ONE HOUR, the highest total since records began being kept in 1890.

Subways have been shut down, commuters have been stranded, and streets are absolutely flooded.

Nagoya authorities have issued the highest Level 5 emergency safety warnings and Level 4 evacuation orders for parts of the city...

Writer: Michael

[Michael Barry @hoopfreak52]

https://t.co/ob2IZnkilj

[Michael Barry @hoopfreak52]

https://t.co/TP1FHvXWlr

[FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup @FIBAWWC]

Dorka Juhasz, the woman that you are ✨ #FIBAWWC

[Michael Barry @hoopfreak52]

https://t.co/Y9mkJlkRHX

[Michael Barry @hoopfreak52]

https://t.co/HOnoGsnBVe

[Carolyn Rockey @CarolynWRockey]

In early 1986, Bo Jackson was the best athlete in America, and everyone knew it.
He'd just won the Heisman Trophy. He was hitting over .400 for Auburn's baseball team. NFL scouts were already calling him a generational talent. So when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, holding the No. 1 pick in that year's draft, wanted to bring him in for a visit, owner Hugh Culverhouse sent his private jet and promised Jackson the trip wouldn't cost him anything.
It cost him everything.
The NCAA ruled the flight an improper benefit. Jackson's college baseball career was over before he ever agreed to play a single down for Tampa Bay. He believed it wasn't a mistake he believed it was a setup, a way to force him onto the football field by taking baseball away from him.
So when the Buccaneers drafted him first overall anyway, he told them plainly: don't bother. They offered him $7.6 million over five years the richest rookie contract in NFL history at the time. He turned it down and signed a minor league baseball contract worth a fraction of that, choosing bus rides and small crowds over a team that had lied to him.
People called it irrational. Jackson didn't see it that way. Some things, he believed, mattered more than money.
A year and a half later, on his 25th birthday, he stepped onto the field for the Los Angeles Raiders a team that let him play both sports against a Seattle linebacker who'd publicly promised to shut him down. Jackson took a handoff, stiff-armed a defender to the turf, and outran the entire Seattle defense for a 91-yard touchdown that carried him straight into the stadium tunnel. He finished the night with 221 rushing yards, a record that still stands today.
Then baseball season came, and he did it all over again playing outfield and hitting a 448-foot home run in the same All-Star Game, on his way to being named MVP.
To this day, Bo Jackson remains the only athlete in American professional sports history named an All-Star in two major leagues.
His career ended earlier than anyone wanted, cut short by injury in 1991. But the story people still tell isn't really about the speed or the records. It's about the year he refused to let anyone buy back his integrity and turned out to be right.

-Fabulous Lovers Of Weird Everything

[FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup @FIBAWWC]

Need proof of USA’s #FIBAWWC dominance? Say no more 🇺🇸

Now, who’s coming for the champs this year?

📺 WATCH FULL https://t.co/kiGS6n6qeL

[Boardwalk Times @BoardwalkTimes]

Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro rules out spinning off ESPN.

"Well, I have been clear that I’m not interested in spinning off ESPN. I think that anybody in the industry would look at our sports rights and the fandom associated with sports right now, and you can’t help but be jealous of what we have here. I mean, ratings are through the roof. The NBA Finals, the NHL Finals, like, we have never seen ratings like this before. And I have been clear that I think it should be part of the ecosystem."

(Source: CNBC)

[Michael Barry @hoopfreak52]

https://t.co/UVxTJiIodp

[On3 @On3]

BREAKING: Former Utah Jazz forward Jaxon Kohler has committed to BYU, @JoeTipton reports😼

Kohler played college ball at Michigan State.

https://t.co/zzKWbzb0JF

[John Basham @JohnBasham]

Even Left-Wing Propaganda Network @CNN's Data Guru Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten) Is Forced To Admit DEMOCRATS ARE FAR LESS POPULAR THIS MID-TERM THAN THEY WERE IN TRUMP'S FIRST MID-TERM ELECTION.

[Brian Krassenstein @krassenstein]

Democratic Socialist Angie Nixon, who astonished pollsters to win the Democratic nomination for US Senate, just gave an incredible interview:

"I've unseated incumbents before.I've been outspent 5 to 1 and I did that while I was nine months pregnant with COVID.

Y'all, I'm not nine months pregnant anymore and I definitely don't have COVID. So y'all know I'm going to work hard as I can and that is how I'm going to win. And that is how I know that Ashley Moody will be calling me Senator in November."

[Michael Barry @hoopfreak52]

Bob Myers on Andre Iguodala’s Importance to the Warriors’ Success https://t.co/YTvwvYWRon via @YouTube