Eddie Murphy On Saturday Night Live Proves He Is A Legend
When you reach a certain age, you see things once great cease to be so. With sports, it happens all of the time.
Tom Seaver, arguably the best right-handed pitcher of all-time, was a back end starting pitcher at the end of his career.
This is what age and time does. You can lose that proverbial fastball, or in Seaver’s case, his actual fastball. Still, the greats are forever the greats, and sometimes in Hollywood fashion, we see a Billy Chapel moment.
That was last night with Eddie Murphy.
To say he is a comedy legend is a complete and utter understatement. This is the man who is probably the greatest SNL cast member of all-time (more on this in a moment).
He’s the genius who made movies like Coming to America and Trading Places all-time great comedies. In some ways, Beverly Hills Cop may not have created a certain genre, but it certainly defines it.
His stand-up special, Raw, could be the greatest stand-up special of all-time. If nothing else, the concert is the best selling.
All told, Eddie Murphy could very well be the funniest person who ever lived. Even though he had become a bit of a punchline when he slogged through movies like Norbit, he’s still hilarious, and we were reminded of that last night.
In his return to Saturday Night Live for the first time in 35 years (with the exception of an awkward appearance at the 40th Anniversary special), Murphy showed himself to be the unparalleled comedy genius he is.
Let's check in on our old friend, Mister Robinson. #SNL pic.twitter.com/UzHoagFGGM
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) December 22, 2019
Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood. Buckwheat. Velvet Jones.
He brought all of the characters back in what is easily the greatest SNL episode this century, perhaps ever.
Eddie Murphy is an absolute legend and seeing him reach back for that fastball to help him once again be the funniest man alive was one of the greatest Christmas gifts we all could have received.
hysterical he still got it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Interesting take. For me, Eddie’s always too self-aware to really lose himself in character the way Richard Pryor disappeared into guys like Mudbone or when he hilariously, brilliantly played various animals. Eddie had a great peak, but that vanished within a few years, and he never learned to act, or simply couldn’t, getting by on preening, mugging, makeup, and yelling. But we’ll always have Trading Places.
I realized tonight i’ve been neglecting that, in comparison with 2019, the 2020 Mets are only improving by 2/3 of a Stroman season. So we can dock a win in comparison if we project Stroman for 3 wins. (You nice anti-WAR folks should look the other way!)
Just off the cuff, if in 2019 Wheeler was worth 4 WAR, Frazier 2, Vargas 1.6 w Mets, Avilan was 0.1, Stroman 1.2 wins… That’s 8.9 wins.
Now projecting 2020 using a basic 321 weighting with no punishment for age except Porcello: Stroman’s at 3.15 wins, Porcello 1.1, Wacha 0.6, Marisnick 1.5 though you might dock him for being a 29 yo reliant on defense for value. Brad Brach is just a repeater. So that’s 6.35 WAR versus the 8.9 WAR they lost. The team is down 3.55 WAR versus 2019, *and* they got lucky last year.
Can we even project them to play more than .500 ball at this point? As for the above method, it’s just ballpark stuff, but it’s a good, working method. A good foundation or skeleton from which to flesh out projections. Marisnick for example is just a part-time player. A good part-timer, as his annual WAR tell us, but his .280 OBP kills his team if he plays a lot, and his weak bat flails even more if he doesn’t have the platoon advantage–yet Beltran’s talking about giving him more playing time. SIGH. So if you’re tempted to dock Marisnick for going into his age 29 season, you might want his manager’s ill-considered statements to tip the balance.
(Also worth noting: the guys the Mets added will be 31, 29, 28, while Stroman will be 29. This is what bad FOs do. They patch and fill. They get older. Their guys get injured a little more often, putting their AAA and waiver wire pickups into action more often. It’s really too bad. Our Mets had the front line talent to contend in 2019, and they had a farm that was just breaking into the top half. They had the front line talent to contend in 2020, but didn’t even get back to where they started from. It’s such a shame.)