Murphy a well deserved All Star

Tonight is the MLB All-Star Game, and the only Met participating is Daniel Murphy, and there is no player that deserves to be there more. Murphy is one of the hardest working baseball players out there. He plays the game the way that it should be played. He always hustles, plays hard, and does anything he can to help the team. He is currently 2nd in the NL in hits with 113, trailing Andrew McCutchen and Casey McGehee who have 115 each. Murph has a .294 average this season to go with 7 homers and 37 RBI.

Murphy came up to the MLB in late 2008. His primary position was 3rd base... However, the Mets had their 3rd baseman of the future in David Wright. He had 131 at-bats that year and hit .313. He played left field for the most part because he was too good of a hitter to keep out of the lineup. He started 2009 as the everyday left fielder. The Murph in left experiment turned into a disaster. He struggled mightily in left, and when Carlos Delgado got injured, they moved Murphy over to 1st.

The Mets went into the 2010 with Murphy as the starting 1st baseman. This was the plan until Murphy hurt himself running the bases in spring training. This injury opened the door for Ike Davis, who quickly became the starting 1st baseman and Murph was no longer looked at as an option at 1st. So he tried to learn how to play 2nd. He worked so hard to learn the position, which is so different from 3rd base, where Murphy has always been the most comfortable. While learning to play the position, he tore his MCL trying to turn a double play and never played game for the Mets in 2010.

In 2011 the Mets didn't really consider him an option to be the starting 2nd baseman. Brad Emaus won the job out of spring training, but he never got anything going and was sent back to the Blue Jays because the Mets got him in the Rule 5 Draft that year. They called up Justin Turner and Turner became the starting 2nd baseman, but Murphy, whenever given the chance, did nothing but hit. If there's one thing that can be said about Murphy, he can absolutely rake. He eventually won the starting job at 2nd and got himself into a race for the batting title that year. Then in August, Murphy tore his other MCL turning a double play and would miss the rest of the season. He was batting .320.

Murph played in 156 games in 2012 and 161 in 2013. He has become one of the better 2nd basemen in the league and has come a long way defensively. He has worked so hard to learn how to play the position, which is one of the reasons why I am so happy that he finally made an All Star Team.

Murphy is 29 now and he has seemingly always been surrounded in trade talks. But Murph deserves a contract extension. He loves being a Met and wants to stay in New York. He is a fan favorite and consistently hits in the .290s. He is one of the most underrated players in all of baseball and I really hope that the Mets don't trade him and that they give him an extension. Murph deserves it. He has worked so hard and done so much for the New York Mets organization and they should reward him for everything he has done.

LeBron is going home, for now

The excitement of LeBron James returning to Cleveland made my day on July 11th. I was pumped to finally see the King return to where he began his "illustrious" career. But I lost all my hype the next day, when he signed a 2 year, $42.2 million dollar contract, with an opt-out after one year. This shows me that LeBron wants to test the waters with the Cavaliers, before deciding what he wants to do for the rest of his career. From a logistical standpoint, it's a smart deal. LeBron wants to make sure he is where he wants to be, before signing that long term deal. Truly, money and logistics wise, he made the right choice. He didn't want to be bound by a 5-7 year deal if things don't end up working out, and Cleveland doesn't come out as the right choice for the #Descision2.

But, his contract contradict his words. LeBron said he wanted to finish his career in Cleveland. This contract obviously doesn't support that statement, unless LeBron wants out of the NBA in the next two years. He claimed that Cleveland has always been his home. Well, if it always has been your home, your contract shows that you don't exactly want to be there.

All I'm saying is that in my mind, LeBron destroyed his decision by signing just a 2 year deal, with the 1 year opt-out. If LeBron truly believes that Cleveland is the right place for him to be, and wants to spend the rest of his career with a young lineup surrounding him that can contend for the NBA Championship for years to come, he should have taken a 5-6 year deal, to prove to all of us fans that he truly wants out of Miami, and is all in with Cleveland.

Lou Gehrig and His Legacy

In honor of the 75th anniversary of Lou Gehrig's "Luckiest Man Alive" speech, USA Today Sports wrote an amazing article on the importance of baseball to Lou and how he impacted the game.

Murray Becker AP

As Cal Ripken Jr. circled the field at Camden Yards to accept congratulations for topping Lou Gehrig's consecutive games streak in 1995, he couldn't help thinking about the ill-fated star.

"His record was thought to be unbreakable," says Ripken, whose streak eventually reached 2,632 games. "Lou was in my thoughts, my speech and my talk with the media afterwards."

Gehrig played 2,130 games in a row until he was physically unable to play anymore. A dying man at age 36, Gehrig stepped to a Yankee Stadium microphone July 4, 1939, and told fans he was "the luckiest man on the face of the earth."

Seventy five years later, he is not only a Hall of Famer and New York Yankees legend, but his image and reputation also have grown almost larger than life.

"He was a player for the ages," says former Yankees publicist Marty Appel, author of Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees from Before the Babe to After the Boss. "He didn't need the support of Babe Ruth to be a great player. His performance on the field spoke for itself. His speech was a baseball moment that had nothing to do with playing. It was baseball's Gettysburg Address."

It can be argued, though, that Gehrig's legendary status began with his famous words.

"When Gehrig gave his speech, it was the first time many of the people in the ballpark heard him speak," Appel says. "Radio interviews were not that frequent, so people in the ballpark did not realize he had such a strong New York accent."

Gehrig, the son of poor German immigrants, had many qualities that belie his now-worldwide celebrity. He was quiet, dignified, soft-spoken and modest to a fault. He compiled gargantuan statistics without a gargantuan personality.

Ruth cast a giant shadow on and off the field. Other than both men batting left-handed and wearing Yankees pinstripes, Ruth and Gehrig were polar opposites, with Ruth craving the spotlight and Gehrig preferring privacy. Overshadowed by bombastic Ruth early in his career and polished Joe DiMaggio at the end, Gehrig was always the tortoise against somebody else's hare.

"If I stood on my head at the plate, nobody would pay any attention," Gehrig once said. "I'm just the guy who's in there every day, the fellow who follows Babe in the batting order.

"Whether he strikes out or hits a home run, the fans are still talking about him when I come up."

Even when he hit a home run, Gehrig was almost methodical in his gait, keeping his head down as he ran the bases. Doing this cost him a home run crown in 1931, when he passed Lyn Lary on the bases after hitting an apparent game-winning homer. Lary, seeing the ball clear the fence, went from third base to the Yankees dugout but Gehrig, deep into his trot, was ruled out when he passed the spot Lary left. Given a triple instead of a home run, Gehrig finished the year with 46, sharing league leadership with Ruth.

A year later on June 3, when he became the first American League player to hit four home runs in a game, the news was overshadowed by the sudden retirement of longtime New York Giants manager John McGraw.

That fall, Gehrig hit .529 with three home runs and eight RBI in a four-game World Series sweep of the Chicago Cubs. But fans and writers seemed obsessed with Ruth's "called shot" in Game3. Never mind that Gehrig followed it with a home run that provided what proved to be the game-winning run.

"If Gehrig had stayed healthy, we'd be debating whether he or Ted Williams was the greatest hitter of all time," says Jonathan Eig, author of Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig. "I think Gehrig is underrated. If he had played another four or five years — which was entirely possible considering the shape he kept himself in — he would have finished with the best numbers of anyone in the game."

Gehrig, a first baseman, did some things Ruth couldn't match: a four-homer game, a Triple Crown and stand-alone records of 500 RBI over a three-year span and 23 career grand slams.

An RBI machine, Gehrig knocked in 185 runs, an AL record, in 1931 and topped 150 in six other seasons.

"He was so proud of that," Eig says. "He always said he didn't care about home runs but that RBI were his baby."

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Gehrig always maintained he wasn't a headline guy. His feats suggested otherwise. The New York native was handsome and muscular. He hit a ball out of Wrigley Field as a visiting high school All-Star, struck out 17 hitters as a pitcher at Columbia University and was 20 when he joined the Yankees in 1923, the same year old Yankee Stadium opened.

Yet he used his $1,500 bonus money to move his parents from the city to the suburbs and never earned more than $39,000 in a season even at the height of his career.

Today, he might own the team. He not only played every day but produced, hitting .340 during the regular season and .361 in seven World Series. A model of consistency, he had five 40-homer seasons without ever topping 49 and collected at least 109 RBI in every year from 1926 through 1938.

"I much preferred Gehrig to Babe Ruth," says Ray Robinson, author of Iron Horse: Lou Gehrig in His Time. "I liked my heroes shy and not full of themselves. I liked Lou's courteous, dignified and soft-spoken manner. So when they had Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day, I decided to go."