1) It's SATURDAY, MAY 2. Welcome, May! You can't be any worse than March and April Can you!? Hang in, stay apart and eventually we rise together! 2) Our Greg Cote Show podcast is now separately on Twitter and Instagram! Follow both at TheGregCoteShow. 3) In The Previous Blogpost (ITPB): Hot Button Top 10, your vote on Tua pick, Greg Cote Show podcast & more. 4) Join us on Twitter.com/gregcote and Instagram.
GREG COTE SHOW PODCAST: EPISODE 9 OUT NOW!: Our new(ish) Miami Herald podcast, "The Greg Cote Show With Greg Cote," debuted in early March and Episode 9 is out now! Find a new show every Monday on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, iTunes, Megaphone, Stitcher or wherever you do your podding, and of course at MiamiHerald.com. Find all nine episodes we've done so far right here. Please listen, subscribe, rate and review! Our podcast is a variety show: Sports and non-sports, 3-0-5 and national, fun and (when necessary) serious. In Episode 9 we review the virtual NFL Draft and the Dolphins' Tua-led bounty, welcome guests Tim Kurkjian and sound-alike son Jeff, and talk to former BBWAA president Clark Spencer about his racehorse and about who didn't vote for Derek Jeter.
The new Back In My Day: Face Masks!: This one premiered on Tuesday's Le Batard Show on ESPN Radio. Visit BIMD: Face Masks! to watch.
HALL OF FAMER ANDRE DAWSON ON BASEBALL -- AND OWNING A FUNERAL HOME -- IN THE AGE OF COVID-19: Andre Dawson got his nickname as a young boy growing up in Miami. An uncle would hit him ground balls. Said most kids his age would be afraid of the baseball but that Andre would "attack it like a hawk." And there it is today, in bronze, on his Hall of Fame plaque in Cooperstown, New York.: Andre Nolan Dawson. "The Hawk." Around that same time, as a child, sometimes Andre would be made to dress up and attend the funeral of a relative or family friend. He hated that. "I was frightened by the sight of death," Dawson, now 65, said Thursday, by telephone. "Didn’t like seeing someone laying in a casket. It was like a teenager watching a horror movie. You can’t sleep. As a kid growing up the funeral home was my fear factor." Strange how life sometimes turns out, right? Today Dawson owns and runs the Paradise Memorial Funeral Home in Richmond Heights, a small city in southwest Miami-Dade County. He has been in the business for 12 years, when Dawson and his wife took it over from relatives. Once, Dawson accompanied employees to a home in Liberty City to oversee the removal of a deceased body of an older man. The grieving son kept staring at the tall gentleman in the dark suit. Through tears he finally spoke two words. "The Hawk!?" Yes it was. We haven’t had much occasion to speak with Dawson since he retired from baseball as a Florida Marlin in 1996 and was inducted into Cooperstown in 2010, but the spring of 2020 — a time like no other — seemed the right time to catch up. The coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic is killing people and has shut down sports, and Dawson is a former ballplayer now in the business of death. It has "turned everything upside down" for his work and erased the sport he loves. Pictured: Dawson, in protective mask, at his funeral home. For my full latest column, please visit Hall of Famer Andre Dawson On Baseball and Owning a Funeral Home Amid COVID-19.
WHAT IF: HOW MIAMI SPORTS WOULD LOOK TODAY HAD CORONAVIRUS NEVER HAPPENED AND GAMES NEVER STOPPED: Mickey Muse was born in 1928. Disneyland opened. The Lion King and Frozen set box office records. Now, to any list of notable achievements in the annals of The Walt Disney Company, please add that one very strange time in late April of 2020, when America was bored at home in the throes of a coronavirus pandemic, starving for sports — and there came Disney-owned ESPN to the rescue. "The Last Dance," the 10-part miniseries on Michael Jordan and the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls, has been the most watched documentary in ESPN history. And in the middle of that the virtual NFL Draft set all-time records for most viewers as we all tuned in for Roger Goodell calling players’ names from his basement. It was proof our hunger is for any sports right. Not necessarily live games. Not necessarily anything current. Just sports. If the next chapter is leagues resuming without fans, yes, we’ll be there, too, watching live baseball played in eerily quiet, empty stadiums. The spread of COVID-19 shut down sports in a flurry on March 11-12. I thought it would be fun to imagine what we’d be in the middle of in South Florida team sports right now had the coronavirus never existed, or, put more depressingly, all we’ve missed in the 50 days since sports stopped. If the Miami Heat and Florida Panthers seasons had continued. If the Miami Marlins and Inter Miami’s inaugural soccer season hadn’t halted. If Miami Hurricanes football had gone through spring practice. Join us on the our flight of fancy. No face masks required. For our full recent column, please visit Miami Sports Right Now If Coronavirus Never Happened and Games Never Stopped.
DOLPHINS WINNING REBUILD WITH 3-YEAR PLAN THAT INCLUDES PATIENCE WITH TUA: The NFL Draft and free agency are past, and now the Miami Dolphins and other teams await what the coronavirus threat will allow. When will teams be able to go from virtual meetings to hands-on with their newest players? When will football fields go from empty acres to crawling with activity again? Will the season start on time? Will it start with no fans allowed? None of those answers are yet known. But this is: The Dolphins keep reminding us that things are different now. For everybody, yes, on account of the deadly COVID-19 virus. But I mean for one long-forlorn franchise in particular. For one team picking itself up and –- in the midst of a pandemic -– spreading nothing but hope to its hungry fans. The feeling is palpable. The once-proud, long-off radar Dolphins are building something here. There is a plan. There is a clue. General manager Chris Grier and coach Brian Flores are fronting an organization that, for the first time in some 20 years, seems to finally know what it is doing again. For our full recent column, please visit Dolphins Winning Rebuild, Won't Rush Tua.
Our column on Miami's top draft pick: DOLPHINS AIM HIGH, WIN BIG WITH TUA TAGOVAILOA PICK
FEATURED MOST RECENT OTHER COLUMNS:
Greg Cote's 2020 NFL Mock Draft
Hackers, Barking Dogs, Crazy Pressure: Why Virtual NFL Draft Is Biggest Ever For Dolphins
Dolphins' Grier Says He Has An Idea On Top Pick. He'd Better Be Right.
Coronavirus, Tua Make This Dolphins' Weirdest, Most Interesting Draft Ever.
Amid a Pandemic, to Florida, Pro Wrestling is 'Essential'.
A Pie Chart of QB Possibilities For Dolphins.
Baseball's Bizarre Restart Plan Would Be Unfair to Players.
NFL Draft Will Offer Blunt Verdict on Canes' Talent.
Other featured recent columns: NFL Draft, Tiger 'n Phil Not A Good Look Right Now / Ultimate All-Time South Florida Major Sports Trivia Challenge / Sports Should Stop Pretending It Will Resume Anytime Soon As Coronovirus Rages / How a Longtime Herald Sport Writer Came to Own a Top Contender in Saturday's No-Fans Florida Derby / In Midst Of Pandemic, A Horse Race / Time for NBA, NHL to Shut it Down, End Seasons / Backlash Over NBA Coronavirus Testing Mirrors Growing Anxiety, the New National Mood / Le Batard Show Deals with Coronavirus-Related Upheaval / Brady Leaving Patriots for Tampa. Will Belichick Be Proved Right In Letting Him Go? / Desperate Fans Turn to NFL After Reality Of First Weekend With No Games / Miami Sports Now Utterly Engulfed By Coronavirus Threat -- But Precaution Is Justified / It's Dominate Or Bust For Dolphins GM Grier Over Next 6 Weeks.
Select additional recent columns: Inter Miami Is Market's Sleeping Giant As Home Opener Nears / Beckham, Inter Miami Survive To Finally Reach Opening Week / Jeter Arrives At Camp, Calls Marlins 'Layered With Talent' / Dwyane Wade, His Transgender Daughter And A Lesson In Love / Pressure On Marlins for Big Improvement Now -- and It's About Time / It's Time For Anonymous Lone Voter Who Denied Jeter To Step Forward / Heat And Gloriously Impatient Riley Win In Trade For Iguodala / Return Of Ed Reed, Even If Mostly Symbolic, Leads Surge By Canes Football / Our two-part series: How One Man Long Forgotten Changed Everything For the Miami Dolphins and How Shula Made Dolphins Perfect and Made Miami Matter, And the Coach Today at 90 / Kobe's Death Sends Sports World Reeling, But Immortality Is His / Jimmy Johnson's Biggest Triumph? Knowing When To Quit -- And Why / and Announcing Miami Dolphins' 2010-19 All-Decade Team
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Revisit this blog often because it updates regularly. The Associated Press Sports Editors 2018 writing awards ranked the blog's author a Top 10 national sports columnist in the major-outlet category. Greg is also a regular co-host on the Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz on ESPN Radio. Finding Greg Cote: Twitter. Instagram. Facebook. Columns. Podcast. Podcast on Twitter. Podcast on Instagram. LeBatard Show. Fins At 50. Songs: Letting Go and The Ballad Of 1440.
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