A significant retirement has taken place in the world of baseball as Ryan Braun announced his retirement.

Braun has not played this season after being unable to find a new home when the Brewers declined to exercise the option on his contract.

Debuting in 2007 for Milwaukee, the only team he ever played for, Braun was an instant star, winning the American League Rookie of the Year and subsequently the Slugging Title.  Over the next five years, Braun was one of the top sluggers in the National League, going to the All-Star Game in all of those campaigns, all of which seeing him collect at least 100 RBIs.  Braun led the NL in Hits in 2009 (203), batted over .300 five times, and was a five-time Silver Slugger.  He also won the Home Run Title in 2012 (41), won the MVP in 2011, and led the NL in OPS twice.

Braun infamously failed a PED test in 2011, though successfully won the appeal, though would be suspended two years later through the Biogenesis scandal.

He retires with 1,863 Hits, 352 Home Runs, 1,154 RBIs, a Slash Line of .296/.358/.532, and a bWAR of 47.1.  Braun is 25^th in JAWS among Leftfielders with 42.9, a good number but well below the average Hall of Fame Leftfielder number of 53.7.  

Braun is Hall of Fame eligible in 2026, but his PED issues hurt what would be a borderline candidate.

We wish Braun the best in his post-playing career.

 Starting his radio career in the mid-1980’s, Dwight was a superstar with audiences for most of his career but he didn’t start out that way. . Trying to get a recording contract in Nashville didn’t seem to be working for him, as he was playing traditional honky-tonk music instead of the pop-country that was all the rage at that point in time. So, he headed off to Los Angeles, performing at rock and punk shows. This not only allowed him to diversify his audience, but he added slight rock styles into his own music. With those more electric sounds in his songs, he ended up carrying on the tradition of the ‘Bakersfield sound’ in country music. This sound and new audience finally allowed him to get a record contract, and from there he had success. He was never one who wanted to play by Nashville’s rules and always desired to experiment with the sounds and styles he was recording, while still sounding country. This mostly honky-tonk music gained him an audience with the country radio listeners and he was able to keep his rock crowd happy with his rebellious attitude. Thus, while never one to burn up the charts, Dwight carved a place for himself in country music history.

On the eve of the first Sunday of the 2021 NFL Season, the sport lost one of its great as former Minnesota Viking, Mick Tingelhoff, passed away at the age of 81.

Undrafted in 1962 from Nebraska, Tingelhoff took over as the starting Center for the Vikings, and he never missed a game in 240 contests, starting every one of them.  The former Cornhusker began a six-year streak of Pro Bowls in 1964, with five of them earning him a First Team All-Pro Selection.  

Minnesota retired his number 53, and named him to their Ring of Honor.  In our most recent list of the Top 50 Vikings of all-time, he was ranked at #5.

In 2015, Tingelhoff was finally inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to extend our condolences to the fans, friends and family of Mick Tingelhoff.

Yes, we know that this is taking a while!

As many of you know, we here at Notinhalloffame.com are slowly generating the 50 of each major North American sports team.  That being said, we have existing Top 50 lists out and we always consistently look to update them when we can and based on necessity.  As such, we are very happy to present our pre-2021-22 revision of our top 50 Chicago Blackhawks.

As for all of our top 50 players in hockey we look at the following: 

1.  Advanced Statistics.

2.  Traditional statistics and how they finished in the NHL. 

3.  Playoff accomplishments.

4.  Their overall impact on the team and other intangibles not reflected in a stat sheet.

Please note, that this is our first revision in in the last three years, and it has generated two new entries.  

As always, we present our top five immediately:

1. Stan Mikita

2. Bobby Hull

3. Patrick Kane

4. Glenn Hall

5. Duncan Keith

You can find the entire list here.

There are no changes in the top five, despite Kane being at #3.  This was the same spot he was at three years ago, and while he is closing on Hull, he is not quite there yet.  Keith, who is now with Edmonton, was #5 last time, but was unable to supplant Hall for #4.

Recently retired Goalie, Corey Crawford,  enters the list at #26.  We erroneously left Crawford off our inaugural top 50.  

Left Wing, Brandon Saad, comes in at #50.

We welcome your input and comments and as always, we thank you for your support.