Best players of the last 30 years, #19: Kevin Brown

I don't have nearly a large enough readership for anything I write here to generate controversy, but if I did, and if one thing from this countdown were going to cause a stir, I'm certain it would be this entry. Kevin Brown simply doesn't strike most baseball followers as having been excellent, and every one of the pitchers I've already written about in this countdown would beat Brown in a landslide if they were pitted against him in a head-to-head voting amongst baseball fans. If there was some sort of crowdsourced ranking of players from the last thirty years, I don't believe Brown would finish anywhere in the top 50. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I'm going to say the crowd is wrong on this one. Kevin Brown was outstanding.

Best MLB players of the last 30 years, #20: Mariano Rivera

When I first became a baseball fan, it was clear to me that the Mets were the New York team. And yes, the Yankees played there too. By the time I'd been a baseball fan for nine seasons, the Yankees hadn't made the postseason in any of them. I'd learned about their success throughout history, but it felt like just that, history, not something that applied to the here and now (which twenty years later, exists as the there and then of 1995). It didn't seem like there was much reason to care about them one way or another. I was about to learn the error of my ways though, and would soon loathe them in a way previously reserved for the guy my first girlfriend dumped me for. Hating the Yankees quickly became one of my core baseball principles, and the importance of that principle would only grow. Through it all though, there was one Yankee I could never bring myself to hate.

Bartolo Colon breaks record for most PA without a walk

Bartolo Colon is a marvel. He turns 43 later this month, and is MLB's oldest active player. He isn't just hanging on by the skin of his teeth though; through his first five starts of 2016 (plus one relief appearance), Colon has an ERA of 2.56, better than his more celebrated rotation mates Matt Harvey, Noah Syndergaard, and Steven Matz. Colon is in his 20th season, having debuted more than half my lifetime ago, in April of 1997. In 2002 he became the first pitcher to throw a Maddux on Opening Day. In 2005 he won a Cy Young Award. Aside from half a season with the Expos and a handful of Interleague Play games though, until 2014 we were denied arguably the greatest pleasure of the Colon experience: watching Bartolo bat.