Who you have been wrong about?

I was about to be wrong about him, and then I watched him try to keep up at the 1984 Olympic trials, when an unknown John Stockton undressed him in a scrimmage. Pearl lasted three days.
For me, it will always and forever be the 1980 presidential election. I was doing politics as a baby reporter and I went through the Rust belt and everything I saw made it obvious that, if the old D coalition wasn't dead, it wasn't at all well. So wrote the first draft of a story in which I said, "President Jimmy Carter will be lucky to get 100 electoral votes, and the outcome is in doubt only in Walter Mondale's Minnesota." I turned in the draft, and then I watched the Sunday shows, and I softened the piece to an "Undecided nation" story. Taught me a valuable lesson about trusting your own reporting. I coulda been a pundit!

 

Thought Michael Bishop would have done better coming out of K-State, but he ended up being the No. 3 QB in New England for a while and never emerged.

 

I never thought Tayshaun Prince would be worth a shit in the NBA.

 

That makes two of us.

 

I think every Pirates fan assumed mediocrity at best for Bay. We've been trained to expect the worst from the Pirates and that deal is still one brief moment of brilliance surrounded by years of stupidity.

If only they hadn't given up way too early on Oliver Perez. I just get the feeling that he'll be joining Chris Young as guys who should have been anchoring Pittsburgh's rotation rather than putting it together elsewhere.

I was wrong on Benson, too, but part of that was the injuries. He seemed to be putting it together when he got hurt, then never got it back.

I NEVER liked Slash. Never liked him as a quarterback and all the talk that he would have been a great receiver was ridiculous. You know why he was open all the time in 1995? Because the team had four other receivers who were better than him and a line good enough to let them get away with playing five wides a big chunk of the time.

I still think Vick could have been a hell of a running back. Stewart was never going to be anything but what he eventually became -- a mediocre quarterback.

 

Derrick Coleman didn't fail. He was great, but he was ... Derrick Coleman. Look up his 1993 season with the NJ Nets. Off the hook.

Me: Charlie Ward (thought he'd never make it).
Dennis Hopson (thought he was a stud).

 

Kevin Maas hit 20 homers in a little more than half a season for the Yankees in the early 90s. Great, I thought, a capable left-handed power hitter with the short right-field porch in Yankee Stadium... three years later, he was out of baseball.

 

Rick Mirer (I spent some time as a Irish fangirl).

Scott Chapman -- kid I went to HS with, drafted by the Astros as a catcher, won rookie of hte year in the New York league (I think), never did much after that.

 

You need to explain this "time as an Irish fangirl." Is that like the semester some girls spend wondering if they are lesbians and experimenting with cleaning carpets?

 

Make it three.
And isn't anyone going to 'fess up to Ryan Leaf?
Your Holiness is dead to someone now, I'm thinking.

 

Pretty much. I decided I hated both Michigan and Ohio State and decided to try out a different team. Notre Dame was on TV all the time. I regret the error.

 

Come child and let me absolve you of your grevious sin.