Will Mookie Betts, following his M.V.P. season for the World Series champion Boston Red Sox last year, have a career similar to the one Tom Brady has had since his performance for the 2002 Super Bowl champion New England Patriots?

Betts and Brady come into some confluence because of the coincidental developments in Major League Baseball and the National Football League in the last four months. In October the Red Sox played and beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. On Sunday the Patriots will play the Los Angeles Rams in the Super Bowl.

Betts played his part for the Red Sox by sparking them to their fourth World Series title in a 15-year span after they had failed to finish on top of M.L.B. for 86 years. Betts led the American League with a .346 batting average and a .640 slugging percentage and had a second-best .438 on-base percentage and 1.048 slugging-plus-on-base.

Post-season, he received …

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As I contemplated my voting for the Hall of Fame this year, several thoughts occupied my thinking other than for whom I would vote.

Mariano Rivera was obviously going to be elected and the only question was …

would he be the first player to receive 100 percent of the votes. In a way, I was hoping he wouldn’t because I felt there was something screwy about a three-out closer attaining that honor.

With all of the great players who have played this game, Rivera was likely to achieve a status never attained by Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig, Honus Wagner, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Walter Johnson, Warren Spahn, Sandy Koufax and others.

But Rivera had something going for him that had not been available to previous candidates …

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Manny Machado hasn’t had a hit or driven in a run all winter, but he has attracted the most attention and the most comment of any free agent or any other player. By comparison, Bryce Harper has been invisible.

Early this month Machado was the central figure in the wildest rumor of the off-season. In widespread reports, he was said to be at Soldier Field in Chicago watching the N.F.L. playoff game between the Bears and the Eagles.

If that had been true, it might have been vaguely interesting. But there was more. Machado, the reports proclaimed, wasn’t simply watching the game. He was watching it with Jerry Reinsdorf, the White Sox chairman.

None of it, of course, was true, but it stirred the kind of talk that warms the Hot Stove League to a fever pitch.

On the heels of that rumor came another Machado matter, this one more rooted in reality but just as bizarre in its own right.

In what I believe was an unprecedented action, Machado’s agent, Dan Lozano, issued a statement harshly criticizing two well respected veteran baseball writers for their reporting of a White Sox offer to the All-Star shortstop.

Citing no sources, Buster Olney of ESPN and Bob Nightengale of USA Today both reported the White Sox offered Machado $175 million for seven years.

Olney tweeted:

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