What to do about the Astros

Rob Manfred, baseball Commissioner who referred to the Commissioner’s Trophy as a “piece of metal,” has an escalating problem on his hands.  The longer he refrains from punishing the Astros, the more heat is generated from players and fans over the lack of justice.  He has to do something quickly to dissipate the ill will, or the result will be hit batters, melees, and possibly injuries.

The most logical thing to do would be to punish the players involved, either by fines or suspension but that’s not an option.  Why?  Because Manfred offered everyone blanket immunity for talking.  Can you imagine a DA whose strategy is to offer every suspect immunity, because that way you are sure to find out who is guilty?  Someone on ESPN said they didn’t want Manfred, an attorney, making any more decisions about the Astros because baseball doesn’t need another attorney; on the contrary, I think they just need a better one.

So, why not just take the trophy away from them?  This has a lot of appeal, but there are problems.  One, the fans and players can still bask in their memories, unless MLB has access to those amnesia flashers used in the Men In Black movies.  Second, Astros owner Jim Crane is rich, and he’s a jerk; he could just hire someone to make a duplicate, then keep it in his office until Manfred says he is stopping by for a visit.

A third option was posited by ESPN’ Buster Olney: CENSURE! The Commissioner’s office would draft something, probably on a parchment rolled up onto a scroll, that would formally say something like, “Thou beist cheaters, verily!”  Yeah, that’ll teach them not to cheat.

I have come to the conclusion there is only one answer: suspend the Astros from the post season for two, maybe three years.

First off, how could the union complain about this?  Yes, some of their members would be denied an earned trip to the post-season, but an equal number of members would be getting in in their stead.  Maybe there is something in the CBA about not altering who gets into the playoffs, but a clear majority of the union’s members would support this.

Two, this would impose exquisite torture on the Astros by the death of a thousand cuts.  Every time they would win a game, they would feel good for a second but then realize it doesn’t mean anything because no matter how many games they win, they can’t get to the playoffs.  In fact the more they win, the more they feel lousy.  Given that Astro Josh Reddick has said that they are "going to win and shut everybody up," this would be an apt come-uppance, because winning would only encourage more taunting.

Third, this would damage the franchise (not the players) for years. The closest parallel I can see is that of the sanctions handed down on the New Orleans Saints after “Bountygate," when the Saints were found to have financially encouraged players to injure opposing quarterbacks.  The team was fined $500,000, forfeited draft picks, their coach was suspended for a year and other key personnel were suspended.  The Saints finished 7-9 the next season, managed to win a wild card slot the next year, but then finished with 7-9 records for the next three seasons.  The Saints are now again one of the premiere teams in the NFL, but it has been a long road back to respectability.  If the Astros can’t make the playoffs for two years, that would make it difficult to attract quality players who only want to play for a chance to play in the World Series.

Lastly, I think this would stain their legacy more than nullifying the 2017 championship.  In the future, people could choose not to put an asterisk next to the 2017 World Series outcome and pretend they still won the trophy; but if they are suspended for two season yet win enough games to make the playoffs, there would have to be an asterisk explaining, “Yeah, the Astros won the division but didn’t go to the playoffs because they cheated in 2017.”  Nobody could ignore the fact that they won 100 games but had to sit at home in October.

Maybe the right time to announce this would be when MLB comes out with the report n the allegations of cheating by the Boston Red Sox.  Rob Manfred could take the opportunity to announce a new policy, that teams that have been found to have cheated will be suspended for the post season, and then declare the Astros and the Red Sox ineligible for the playoffs.

Manfred has to either do something to stem the anti-Astros hatred, or be prepared to hand down numerous suspensions to pitchers on other teams for throwing at the Astros or suspend Astro pitchers for retaliating.  Suspending the Astros for the post season would mete out some justice, mollify the angry mob, and avoid re-writing history.

It would also shut some of those mouthy cheaters up.

The Rise of Skywalker--Spoilers!!!

The Rise of Skywalker—Spoilers!

In order to prepare for seeing the final film in the Star Wars non-ology (yeah, right, no more Star Wars films after this) I re-watched The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi on Netflix.  I then read a few spoiler-free reviews that commented that The Rise of Skywalker more or less chucked all the good decisions made in The Last Jedi and virtually remade The Force Awakens.  Since I decided that I liked Last Jedi more than Force Awakens, this did not motivate me to see Rise of Skywalker.  But, in its tenth week of release, the crowds had finally died down and I made my way to the very same theater I had seen the original Star Wars (none of this “A New Hope” garbage) at 43 years earlier.

I hated it.

I want to say it is the worst of the nine movies in the Star Wars canon (ten, if you add Rogue One), but frankly I have no recollection of Attack of the Clones and only fleeting memories of Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith.  I do remember walking out of the theaters and not being as disappointed as I was after seeing Rise of Skywalker.  Isn’t worse when you mother says she isn’t mad, just disappointed?

One of the criticisms of Force Awakens was that co-writer/director J.J. Abrams had constructed a movie that appeared to replicate the beats of the original Star Wars (aka “A New Hope”).  I felt that, similarly, Rise of Skywalker attempted to follow the beats of the less successful sequel, Return of the Jedi.  There was the emergence of a new threat by the bad guys that needed thwarting, there was the need for a full scale assault at the end, and there was the need for a small band to take out an object for the invasion to succeed (force field projector/nav tower).  It wasn’t bad, just very, very familiar.

One reason for that familiarity was that the bad guy was the same as in Return of the Jedi, Emperor Palpatine. After killing off the new evil overlord Snoke in Last Jedi, they had to come up with a new new bad guy and so they resurrected the bad guy from the first trilogy.  First of all, really creative move there.  Secondly, Palpatine had been vaporized in the Death Star’s nuclear core, but now he’s alive again; so, he got better?  It’s not like he was wounded and crawled away, like the killer in a horror movie, he was VAPORIZED.  No one comes back from that.  Third, him still being alive makes all the joy the characters felt at the end of Return of the Jedi to be false—they really hadn’t killed Palpatine, so there was no reason to have a party and hand out medals to everybody except Chewbaca.

Also, I swear Palpatine’s taunts to Rey saying, “Go on, strike me down, save your friends . . .” were pretty much identical to the taunts he threw at Luke in return of the Jedi.  I have trouble remembering them because I have seen the Family Guy parody of the original trilogy too many times, and their portrayal of Palpatine being a total jerk was the best thing in the series.

One of the reasons I preferred Last Jedi was that I felt writer/director Rian Johnson did a better job bringing out the personalities of the characters and not making them chess pieces being moved around a board.  One thing the sequel trilogy completely missed was the emotional story at the center of the original trilogy, the love story of Han and Leia.  The original movies somehow overcame George Lucas’ inability to write good dialog (it is part of Star Wars folklore that Han Solo’s response of “I know,” to Leia’s profession of love was ad libbed by Harrison Ford) and created a love story around all the techno babble. 

In Rise of Skywalker, everyone is too busy running around to fall in love.  It is established early in Force Awakens that Finn finds Rey attractive, enough to lie about being in the resistance, and she seems to feel similarly about him.  But at the end of Rise of Skywalker she is back on Tattooine, moving into Luke’s old farmhouse (I hope she was able to get the Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru stains off the porch), apparently alone.  Does she end up with Finn?  With Poe?  There characters are so busy moving around the chessboard there is no room for emotional attachments to form. 

The biggest flaw in Rise of Skywalker is that it ends exactly where Return of the Jedi ends, with the bad guys beaten and everyone celebrating (it is supposed to be a big deal that two women are shown kissing during the celebration, but humans are also kissing giant slug-like creatures, so it is hardly a banner day for the LGBTQ).  At least Chewy gets a medal this time.  The ending of the nine-episode series needed bigger stakes, it needed to build to something that felt inevitable since the original movie.  The original trilogy felt all of one piece, while the sequel trilogy movies all felt like they were cobbled together independently, which they were.

I recall being disappointed when I saw Force Awakens and found out that after the events of Return of the Jedi the bad guys were STILL in control and the good guys were scattered do-gooders.  Why was the Dark Side so resilient?  The Rise of Skywalker should have ended with the Dark Side permanently defeated, no more talk about “balance” in The Force, just a perpetual happy ever after.  That would have felt like a bigger win than the victory at the end of Return of the Jedi (which wasn’t a victory at all as Palpatine survived to threaten the galaxy again).

The Marvel Cinematic Universe wrapped up its 22-movie series with the cataclysmic Avengers: Endgame, which threw the kitchen sink and a few other household appliances into its resolution.  The Star Wars Saga should have ended its nine-film run with something . . . well not quite as big, but perhaps relatively proportional.  The stakes at the end of The Rise of Skywalker are exactly as big as the stakes at the end of Return of the Jedi.  Jedi was the end of the first trilogy; the ending of the 10-film series should have been much bigger.

Of course, such an ending would have made creating additional Star Wars movies difficult.  Technically, the sequel trilogy films are well-made, the acting is great (actors Daisy Ridley and John Boyega should have more successful careers than Mark Hamill and Carrie Fischer; Adam Driver already has more Oscar nominations than Harrison Ford), and they are quite entertaining.  But as a resolution to the greatest trilogy of movie trilogies ever made, they are uninteresting and flat.  It is disappointing that with all of the resources at his command, J.J. Abrams decided to set his sights so low and be content to essentially remake the earlier films.

But then this is the guy who turned the second of his Star Trek movies into a remake of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  So, there was a precedent.

Trash cans are the new steroids

Trash cans are the new steroids

The Astros held their long-awaited press conference last week, and if anyone was paying attention (and they were) the fact is that the Astros didn’t actually apologize for anything.

What are the hallmarks of a proper apology?  It must be unconditional; no fair saying you’re sorry “if you were offended.”  You have to describe what you are apologizing for accurately and in detail.  You have to acknowledge the fairness of people being upset over what you did.  And you have to allow the injured party to decide how to proceed on their terms.

The Astros, for the most part, did none of these.  Some of the “apologies” I heard came close, but none were truly unconditional.  They limited the apology to “their fans,” and did not apologize to the LA Dodgers, the NY Yankees, or any of the players they victimized by their sign stealing.  They did not apologize to baseball fans in general.  They did not apologize to the Commissioner, or the ghosts of Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle. 

None went into any detail about what they did.  What I mostly heard were players apologizing not for cheating, but for “the choices I made.”  It wasn’t wrong for you to make a choice; it was wrong that you choose to cheat.  I didn’t hear anyone say what they did was “cheating.”  The closest was possibly owner Jim Crane who said they apologized because they “broke the rules.”  Of course, this immediately followed his assertion that what they did in no way impacted the games that were played, causing someone to ask, “then why are you apologizing?” eliciting Crane’s answer.  He seemed to be saying what they did wasn’t wrong, it was just against some silly rule.  He might as well have said, “We’re apologizing because the Commissioner told us to.”

His assertion that the game wasn’t impacted by their cheating (excuse me, “rule breaking”) is in line with Mark McGuire’s long-time stance that he didn’t gain any advantage by taking steroids. The only time he ever conceded that steroids helped him hit home runs was when Bob Costas pointed out that if steroids helped him heal from injury, then that means he played in games he wouldn’t have been able to but for steroids.  But McGuire always maintained he didn’t hit home run because of steroids, he hit home runs because he worked out like crazy (what he overlooks is that he was bale to work out like crazy because steroids allowed him to recover faster). 

Crane was obviously trying to staunch the cries (mostly from Dodger and Yankee fans) that the Astros should forfeit their 2017 World Series title and 2019 American League pennant.  I’m against revisionist history; everyone will associate the 2017 Astros with cheating and adjust their opinions accordingly but taking away titles doesn’t erase the memories of fans.  Now if the Commissioner were to take away their rings and bonuses, that might be something.  Frankly, after hearing the arrogance of Crane saying the game wasn’t impacted (and then one minute later asserting he had never said that) makes me rethink my position; maybe the only way to get through to people like this is to strip away what they worked (and cheated) for so hard to get.

If the sign stealing didn’t give them a competitive edge, then why did they do it?  Practice?

What struck me listening to various players was that they were clearly all coached by the same PR person, because they all said they “wanted to move forward.”  This reminded me of Mark McGuire testifying at a Congressional hearing on steroids and saying he “wasn’t there to talk about the past.”  Yes, that was why you were there.  Naturally the Astros want to “move forward,” but as someone at ESPN said, that’s not their decision.  The people that you cheated will let you know when it is time to move on.  I’m guessing that will only be after many, many high and tight pitches under your chins and in your ribs.

This is all keeping in the public persona of the Astros since they stopped tanking and started winning.  There have been other rumors about cheating, like Gerrit Cole’s spin rate on his pitches going up significantly, possibly due to a sticky substance.  There was the ugly incident when an assistant GM berated a female reporter about a reliever who had been suspended for domestic abuse, and then the Astros attacked the reporter and denied hat it happened (they eventually fired the assistant GM but not the people who denied her allegations). 

The Astros have not apologized to many of those injured by their cheating.  They have not described how the plan came about and how it was implemented; many still haven’t said, “I’m a cheater.”  They have not acknowledged that the result of their sign stealing was their players had better stats and other teams lost games, maybe in the playoffs.  They have not offered to do any penance at all, which is important given that the Commissioner decided to give blanket immunity to all of those who cheated (seriously, how stupid was that?).  All they want to do is move forward past this, because of course they do.

Given how poorly baseball has handled the worst (non-steroid) cheating scandal since the 1919 Black Sox, and how poorly the NFL handled scandals like the Ray Rice incident (first he is not punished, then was suspended two games, then he is banned for life) and Deflategate (Brady says he is completely innocent after destroying his cell phone, but still gets a 6 game suspension), clearly sports leagues need to hire some criminal prosecutors and defenders to contrive better processes BEFORE they happen.

Baseball's proposed post-season format makes zero sense

News flash—baseball is different than football.

That may not come as a shock to you, but apparently the Lords of the Realm (the major league baseball owners) are unclear on the concept.  They look at the success of the current NFL post-season process and they think it sounds like a good template for baseball.

The New York Post is reporting that baseball is considering expanding its playoff roster to 14 teams, up from the current 10.  This would qualify 46.7% (14 of 30) of the major league teams for the postseason (that’s nearly half for those of you who are numerically deficient).  The division winner with the best record would advance to the second round, while the other two division winners and four wild card teams would play in a best-of-three series.  The division winner with the second-best record could select their opponent from the four wild card teams, and then the third division winner would choose who they faced among the remaining three wild card teams.  The two unselected wild card teams would face each other, with the winner facing the division winner with the best record in the second round.

This is nuts.

The reason why it makes sense to have so many wild card teams in the playoffs for football is that football is a much more chaotic, random sport than baseball.  In football the teams play only 16 games per year (although the owners want more), which is a small sample size.  Additionally, games can turn on a random event, such as a bad ball bounce or a gust of wind nudging a field goal attempt.  The odds that a 10-6 team really is better than a 9-7 teams is probably, maybe 30-40%.  Typically, a single win or loss is all that separates a division winner from a team staying home.

Teams play teams in their division twice and opponents from a designated division once, meaning that teams face a different quality of opponent.  In 2015, the Carolina Panthers faced one of the easiest schedules of all time, facing only one team with a winning record during the regular season, and finished 15-1.  Maybe if they had faced the teams from a better division, they wouldn’t have finished with quite so good a record.

Injuries can influence a team’s record as well.  If a key player goes down with an injury just when the team is playing an easy opponent, the impact may be irrelevant; but if injury strikes a key player when a team faces a strong opponent, a team might lose a game they might otherwise have won.

Baseball is different.  Baseball teams play 162 games, which is quite a large sample size.  In 2019 the number four wild card under this proposal would have been the 84-78 Boston Red Sox, who finished 12 games behind the wild card Tampa Bay Rays, who finished 96-66.  After a 162-game season we can definitively say that the Rays deserved to be in the post-season and the Red Sox did not.

Let’s talk about how much time this new format would take up.  The World Series already extends into November (well, October 30 last year).  But now there will be a three-game series before the divisional series, pushing the post-season back even further.  Another difference between baseball and football is that in football, the championship game is on a neutral field in a domed stadium or warm weather venue; they play the World Series where the teams are from.  What if Minnesota, which plays in an open-air stadium, were to host a World Series game in November (playoff games in October are nearly as problematic)?  Games called on account of blizzard are not only possible, but probable, and postponing the game for a day or two would not be an option; you’d have to wait for the spring thaw.

You could start the baseball season earlier, but that would pretty much mean starting in March.  In most of the country, inclement weather would be a factor and cause a lot of games to be rained out and made up later.

Plus, this three-game series would be almost random, as a three-game sample size is very small.  The number four wild card team could easily get lucky and knock out the second-best divisional winner.  Last year in the American League (assuming the #2 division winner picked the lowest seed possible) the 103-win Yankees would have played the 84-win Boston Red Sox.  Yes, the Yankees won 19 more games, but tell me the Bosox couldn’t possibly have won a best of three series against their most hatred rivals. 

Of course, the solution to the timing problem would be to shorten the regular season back to the old number, 154 games.  This would also address the problem of baseball playing far fewer double headers than before and forcing too many day-games-after-night games or having to play a day game on a “get away” day.  But the owners wouldn’t like losing the paying customers at 8 games, and the players wouldn’t like getting paid for 8 fewer games.  Also, even though 154 is the number of games they used to play, traditionalists would complain that after so many years of 162 games how would it affect record books.  In fewer games, could anyone challenge Roger Maris’ (non-steroid) record of 61 home runs in a season? 

Expanding the post-season in baseball is solving a problem that doesn’t exist by creating a host of other problems.  Major League Baseball shouldn’t reward teams just because they finish in the upper 50% of all the teams in the league.  This isn’t youth soccer, where every kid gets a participation trophy.   As for the argument that more teams will strive to make the playoffs if mediocre teams are allowed into the post-season, well, has anyone eve made an effort to get a participation trophy?

RIP Orson Bean and Robert Conrad

RIP Orson Bean and Robert Conrad

Two actors best known for their work in the 1960’s passed away last week; neither was a major award-winning actor, but both were outstanding in their particular niche (whatever that might be).

Orson Bean is the kind of actor I have trouble describing to a millennial, someone who was ubiquitous on television in the 60’s and 70’s but not associated with any particular project.  He voiced Bilbo Baggins in the Rankin-Bass 1977 animated version of The Hobbit, then later voiced both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins in  the 1980 sequel Return of the King (apparently taking on the entire trilogy was beyond Rankin-Bass’ resources).  I am not familiar with the latter, but I own The Hobbit even though the transfer to VHS (this was before DVDs) is dim and the sound is sometimes hard to make out.  The Rankin-Bass productions were never masterpieces of the animator’s art, so they relied heavily on the vocal talents of the actors.  Bean’s soft cadence and folksy, light New England accent were a perfect match for Bilbo Baggins, the small Hobbit who played such a large role in the Tolkein fantasy series.

Bean’s other memorable role was as the nutty business owner Dr. Lester in Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze’s paean to utter insanity, Being John Malkovich.  One of the keys to the success of the film was grounding its completely insane plot in the seeming realities of the real world.  Orson Bean always had a slightly off-kilter demeanor, and Jonze used it perfectly.

I read one obit that said Bean was struck by a car after “darting” into traffic.  When I am 91 years old I hope I am still able to “dart.”

Robert Conrad also had his own distinctive on-screen demeanor, one quite different from Orson Bean’s.  One of Conrad’s best known bits was appearing in a commercial where he dared people to knock a battery off of his shoulder.  He always came across as combative, physical, and intense.

Conrad was, of course, best known in the role of Jim West in the original series The Wild Wild West.  The TV series has spawned two TV movie sequels and a big budget film version starring Will Smith, but for some reason all of these efforts treated the source material as a comedy.  The movie, which is one of the biggest screen fiascoes of all time, probably ended any hope for a follow up basic accurately on the source material.

I read an obit for Conrad that said that Wild Wild West was Steampunk before Steampunk had been invented, which is a nice description.  The series fused the remaining fondness for westerns left over from the 1950’s with the James Bond mania that swept the world in the 1960s.  The series followed the adventures of two Secret Service agents named Jim West and Artemis Gordon as they foiled plots to take over the western US, or take over the entire US, or even take over the world.  Gordon was an actor, a master of disguise, and a scientific genius; West was an ex-Civil War officer who could beat up as many as five men at a time and seduce any woman with a wink and a grin.  The show was usually science fiction, but some episodes were straight westerns (Night f the Jack of Diamonds), some were fantasy (Night of the Lord of Limbo),  and a couple were Gothic horror (Night of the Maneating House).

The show was known for its use of scientific gadget that were improbable in the 1870’s setting (it always amused me when a machine had blinking lights as this was well before Edison invented the light bulb).  Conrad was vocal about doing his own stunts; he once went to swing from a chandelier, missed, and struck his head on the concrete floor nearly killing himself.  Ross Martin, who played Gordon, said on a talk show, “He does all his own stunts, and I do all my own acting.” 

For an actor with, shall we say, a somewhat limited range, Conrad had a long career.  He later starred in the series Black Sheep Squadron (also known as Baa Baa Black Sheep) about pilots in the Pacific during World War II, for which he garnered a Golden Globes nomination for Best Actor in a Drama.  He also starred in a number of other series all of which lasted no more than one season.

I think one of his most notable acting performance was as the guest murderer on the Columbo episode, An Exercise in Fatality.  He played a character based on Jack LaLanne, a fitness guru named Milo Janus who owned a series of gyms from which he had been embezzling.  Janus was unlike the typical Columbo murderer, who were usually urbane, intellectual jerks; Janus was physical and unpretentious.  Conrad was 39 at the time but the character of Janus was 52, which upset Conrad at the time but was supposed to emphasize that Janus was in incredible shape.  The script made good use of Conrad’s image as a physically fit tough guy, yet Conrad made the character smart enough to challenge Lt. Columbo.

RIP, Orson Bean and Robert Conrad.  It’s hard to imagine two such different actors passing away on the same day.

Djokovic--what's his ceiling?

Novak Djokovic won the Aussie Open.  This should not come as a surprise as he has won eight of them and is undefeated in Aussie Open finals.  But the important question now is how many more majors will he win?

The two biggest impediments to Joker winning majors are named Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, but who knows how much longer Federer can keep playing.  He is 7 years older than Djokovic, 38 vs. 31, and while he got to the semis at the Aussie Open he had to fend off two unprepossessing challengers (one with the improbable first name of “Tennys”) who had match points against him but failed to convert.  An injury contributed to his losing to Joker in the semi-final, and the older you are the harder it is to bounce back.  People have been writing him off prematurely for some time but, at some point soon, he’s going to stop making it to the second round of majors.

Nadal is only one year older than Djokovic but plays a grinding style of tennis that has already sidelined him for months at a time.  Nadal’s early exit from the Aussie semi-final thanks to Dominic Thiem could be a harbinger (I would also note that while Nadal did defeat Nick Kyrios, he lost a set and won two tiebreakers, meaning Kyrios was four points from winning the match). Nadal could frankly win the next five French Opens, but his success on other surfaces going forward might be limited.

There aren’t a lot of other challengers to Joker.  Thiem pushed him in the AO final but still lost.  Murray retired after to hip surgery, and a comeback would be implausible.  Stan Warwinka is still dangerous, but also getting up in age.  None of the other young guns (Medvedev, Kyrios, Ronic) have shown much capacity to beat any of the Big Three.

So, will Joker get to 20 Majors and catch Roger Federer?  I think, barring a catastrophic injury, that is small potatoes.  Nadal is currently at 19 majors and should tie Roger if he wins the next French Open (if there is anything in the world I would bet on, it would be Nadal winning at the French Open).  He is likely to nose ahead of Federer; Djokovic should blow by him by a mile.

Djokovic won 2 major titles in 2018, 2 in 2017, zero in 2016 (but missed the US Open), and 3 in 2015.  He also won three majors in 2011.  I think, barring injury, that Joker could win 2-3 more majors per year for 3-4 years.  The upper bound of that is 12 additional majors, which would give him 29.  30 majors could not be described as preposterous. 

I think Roger Federer is the Greatest Of All Time, but can I make that argument once Djokovic is at 22?  25?  30?  It would be difficult.  Djokovic had the good fortune of being born 7 years after Roger Federer, so Roger was probably on the decline during the prime of Novak’s career.  I believe peak Roger would beat peak Novak but, unlike with baseball teams, I am not aware of any computer simulation software that could do a mockup of such a hypothetical meeting. 

When Pete Sampras retired in 2003 with 14 major titles, then a record for the Open Era, people thought it would last for a while.  It took less than 20 years (16, to be exact) for not one, not two, but three players to blow by him, and two of them are still likely to add more majors to their totals.

Maybe that’s how Federer feels now, with Nadal one major away from tying him and Djokovic three away.  In 2004-2007 he won 11 of the 16 majors, a pace that would get him to 30 quickly had it not been for the emergence of Nadal and the Joker.  A lot of things could happen that keeps Nadal or Djokovic from passing Federer; injuries often happen to older players, especially when they go late into tournaments and play younger, fitter players. 

But I’d bet that Nadal gets to 21 and Djokovic to . . . let’s say 25, just to be conservative.  And I would still say Roger Federer is the GOAT, unless you want to make an argument for Rod Laver.