Grey Beard

Dad Gamer. Dwarven soul. Azeroth’s Okayest Tank. Knight of Good OG. Bloodbowl Coach. Come for the mediocre game play, stay for the hangout.

[Keagan Stiefel @KeaganStiefel]

Drake Maye and Ann Michael Maye star in a new social media video for LL Bean.

Funniest commercial involving a #Patriots player since Tom Brady screamed at that guy inside a Dick’s Sporting Goods.

[the Sports ON Tap @thesportsontap]

On the last day of the 1941 season, Ted Williams was hitting .39955.

Officially, that rounds up to .400.

His manager offered to sit him. He could have walked away as a .400 hitter without lifting a bat.

He played both games of a doubleheader instead.

Understand what was at stake. Hitting .400 is the most romantic number in baseball. It had been done a handful of times and it was already becoming rare.

Williams was 23 years old. If he sat, the record book would say .400 forever.

He refused.

His reasoning, as he told it for the rest of his life, was that he didn't want to be a .400 hitter with a technicality. He wanted to earn it standing in the box.

So on September 28, 1941, in Philadelphia, Ted Williams played a doubleheader against the Athletics with the single most famous batting average in American sports hanging on it.

He went 6 for 8.

He finished the season at .406.

Nobody has hit .400 in a Major League season since. Eighty five years and counting. It has become one of those records people quietly assume will never be broken again.

And here's the part that makes the whole thing even more absurd.

Ted Williams lost nearly five full seasons of his prime to military service in two different wars. He was a Marine fighter pilot in World War II and flew combat missions in Korea, where he crash landed a burning jet.

He still finished with 521 home runs and a career .344 average.

His final at bat, in his last game in 1960 at Fenway Park, he hit a home run. Then he ran the bases, went into the dugout, and never came out to tip his cap.

And when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1966, he used his speech to argue that Negro Leagues greats like Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson belonged in Cooperstown too. That was 1966. He didn't have to say that. He said it anyway, and it's cited as one of the reasons the doors eventually opened.

Two games he could have skipped.

Eight at bats he didn't have to take.

Six hits, and the last .400 season anyone has ever had.

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

[the Sports ON Tap @thesportsontap]

Logan Ryan says he made close to $80 million in the NFL and never spent a dollar of his salary.

Not a car. Not a house. Not one paycheck.

He retired at 33 and lives entirely off what his investments pay him.

He posted the whole thing himself this week, and it's the best financial advice any athlete has given in years.

First, who he is.

Logan Ryan was not a superstar. He grew up in Berlin, New Jersey, played at Rutgers, and went in the THIRD round to New England in 2013. Eighty third overall.

He never made a Pro Bowl in eleven seasons.

What he did do was last. Patriots, Titans, Giants, Buccaneers, 49ers. 755 tackles, 19 interceptions, 15 forced fumbles, 13 sacks.

And two Super Bowl rings.

Here's the mindset, in his own words.

He points out that he was the 14th cornerback taken in his draft class, and says that chip never left him.

"It made me suspicious of any dollar that felt too easy to spend. So I never touched the paychecks."

So how does a man live for eleven years without spending his salary?

He built a portfolio and lived off what it produced. Commercial real estate. Private credit. And notably, he got into OpenAI early, while he was still lining up at corner on Sundays.

He also lives beneath his means on purpose. His words: he doesn't fly private, and he still doesn't wear the heavy jewelry.

And he says he asks his financial advisor more questions than any other client on the man's books.

Now the part that matters most, and it's the reason he wrote any of this.

"Most guys who hit that number are broke a few years after their last check. I've watched it happen up close."

That's not a hypothetical for him. He spent eleven years in locker rooms watching teammates get life changing money and lose all of it within a few years of their last game.

His actual thesis is one sentence, and it flips how most people think about a big contract.

"Chasing a big number was never the point. What actually bought my freedom was saving relentlessly, year after year, while everyone around me spent."

The number was never the win. The saving was.

And here's what freedom actually meant to him: "I retired at 33 and answered to no schedule but my kids'."

One more thing worth knowing, because this isn't a story about hoarding money.

In 2017, right after signing a three year, $30 million deal with Tennessee, Logan Ryan surprised his older brother.

His brother had gotten into Drexel, graduated with honors, and was working as an engineer, and was still buried in student loan debt.

Logan handed him a check for $82,000 and wiped it out.

His comment at the time was that the system is broken and makes no sense, and that he was fortunate enough to be able to take care of it.

He didn't spend his money on himself.

He spent it on being done working at 33 with his kids and his brother taken care of.

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

[Lord of the Rings Memes @TheLOTRMemes]

Peak male

[Grey Beard @iamgreybeard]

BOHICA AC seems to be rounding into form heading into @ChaosCup season. Hoping to make it to Orlando in November.

[Grey Beard @iamgreybeard]

@threedieblock when’s the next episode drop?

[Grey Beard @iamgreybeard]

Preordered my copy of Spike! Magazine 22 for all of the new @GW_officialuk Blood Bowl Se7ens rules and fluff. Looking forward to putting on a tournament at @go4gamesnola #bloodbowl

[LOTR Universe @Lordoftheringsu]

One fan to rule them all! 🔥

[dank @cptdankkk]

Charlie Sheen reveals the time he spent $7,000 on 2,200 seats to catch a Cecil Fielder home run

“That was April 1996. I did it for Cecil Fielder. In Anaheim at the Big A”

“I called because I wanted to sit in that section. They said, ‘Well, that section’s closed. It’s an underattended game.’ I said, ‘Okay, what about this? How many seats are in that section?’”

“They were like, ‘Uh, 2,200.’ And I said, ‘What if I wanted to buy all of them? What kind of break could you cut me? What kind of deal could you swing?’ I think it came out to something like $7,000”

“It was left field. I wanted to force the hand of the baseball gods and not just catch a foul ball, but catch a home run ball. I figured if I’ve got the entire left-field stands with a couple buddies of mine, I’ve stacked the deck”

“We were hammered. We barely made it to the game. There’s also a great shot in Sports Illustrated of me standing like this with a glove and the empty stands behind me”

“We didn’t catch anything that night. And the next night, not just in that section, but in our seats, four home runs were hit. You can’t force the hand of the baseball gods”

[Dexerto @Dexerto]

The original "Leeroy Jenkins" video was first uploaded to the WoW fansite Warcraft Movies on this day 21 years ago

[Grey Beard @iamgreybeard]

@mvpletea Extended version or no deal.

[Dudes Posting Their W’s @DudespostingWs]

Japanese engineers developed a “Sword Tip Visualization System” for the Fencing World Championships, and it makes fencing look absolutely incredible to watch.

[Grey Beard @iamgreybeard]

@halenhargreevs Gloria by Laura Brannigan

[Wowhead💙 @Wowhead]

Blizzard has officially confirmed what unlocks during Midnight Early Access and on the March 3rd weekly reset!

#Midnight #Warcraft

https://t.co/syiQ4l51bz

[Grey Beard @iamgreybeard]

@realimjustkey Not my bag, but this absolutely rules. Keep going.

[Grey Beard @iamgreybeard]

Sriracha.

[Chef 👩🏻‍🍳 @chefsevenn]

Ketchup is not an option, what else are you adding here?

[Grey Beard @iamgreybeard]

@VinnysCorner1 True. Fan since 1986 btw.

[Grey Beard @iamgreybeard]

@BowlNe1 Purchased my next team, found GW dice online, and made arrangements for them to be professionally painted in the coming weeks. Cannot wait for them to be in house and our next season to kick off at the local store. I’ll be bringing BOHICA AC on the road to some tournaments too!

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a senior vice president at a $68.7 billion gaming company.

Activision-Blizzard.

We have a 30-year-old franchise.

Warcraft.

Millions of players. A subscription model that prints $15 a month per user. A cash shop on top of the subscription. Paid expansions on top of the cash shop.

Our former creative director just told the press he wishes we hadn't called it "Warcraft."

He said the name sounds intimidating.

He helped create the name.

We ran focus groups. The focus groups said the brand needed to be "more approachable." We asked the focus groups if they played the game. They did not. We took their advice anyway.

Our VP told an interviewer we want players to experience "weddings, raids, and new adventures." She listed weddings first. Before raids. In a game called Warcraft. Nobody in the room flinched.

She also said "No one thinks the same about Warhammer."

She compared our franchise unfavorably to a competitor. On the record. As a defense of the franchise.

The forums are on fire. Twenty-year veterans are writing goodbye posts. One thread is titled "Think I'm done with WoW." Another calls our pre-patch a "player purge."

We called our GDKP raiders "delusional."

We timed a cash shop bundle to launch during the Trading Post anniversary -- the one event where players earn free cosmetics. We offered 200 discounted items but kept the monthly currency cap at 1,000. The math doesn't work unless you open your wallet.

The community noticed. We described their concerns as "feedback we're monitoring."

We are always monitoring. We have never once changed course because of monitoring.

The players say we're "Disneyfying" the game. Turning gritty into cute. War into weddings. Orcs into mascots.

They're not wrong.

The data says approachable properties have wider TAM. Total addressable market. That's the metric now. Not "subscribers who love the game." Not "community that built this franchise." TAM.

TAM doesn't post on forums. TAM doesn't write goodbye letters. TAM doesn't have 20 years of muscle memory and lore knowledge and raid nights that turned into real friendships.

TAM is a number in a slide deck that makes a board feel comfortable.

We added player housing. Players have asked for it since 2004. We launched it in 2026. Twenty-two years. We described this as "listening to our community."

We are very good at listening. Eventually. When the feature aligns with a monetization roadmap.

Here is what I know and cannot say in a meeting:

The name was never the problem. The name built this. The name survived server crashes and subscription drops and an activision merger and a harassment scandal and a $68.7 billion acquisition.

The name is "Warcraft" and for 30 years nobody was confused about what it meant.

The problem is not that new players find the name intimidating.

The problem is that old players are starting to find us unrecognizable.

And we don't have a focus group for that.