Craig Wescoe
6/28/2012 10:40:00 AM
We see comebacks happen in both music and athletics.

Elvis Presley rightly earned the title ‘King of Rock and Roll' based on his enormous and unprecedented music success, helping to spur the Music Revolution of the 1960's. During that time, however, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had overtaken the top spots in that genre. Then in 1968 Elvis made a comeback, returning to his former prominence – and it was great for Rock and Roll!

Similarly, Frank Sinatra was among the most popular singers on the planet in the 1940's, but it was not until he made his comeback in the mid-50's with a more mature voice that he earned the moniker ‘King of Swing.'

There are countless other examples of Musicians making a triumphant comeback and thereby revitalizing their respective genre.

In athletics we see a similar phenomenon occur infrequently, but when it happens, it is always a big story and a major draw for fans and spectators of the sport.

For example, who remembers Michael's Jordan's return to the NBA? He was a step slower than he was in his prime, but still able to compete at age 40 with young men half his age. Even though the game, and age, had caught up to him, it was still a thrilling spectacle for people to see him on the court, evoking memories of the champion in his former days. Everyone wanted to watch and see Jordan play. His comeback caused many people to start following basketball.

I grew up a hockey fan, so my most memorable comeback was when Mario Lemieux took to the ice again in the early 2000's. He was one of the greatest goal scorers ever to play the game, a captain who helped earn the Pittsburgh Penguins multiple championships during his storied career by not only playing at a high level but also making everyone else around him better. His comeback was headline news and many people who wouldn't ordinarily follow hockey tuned in to see what all the fuss was about.

Magic: the Gathering (Magic) has some similarities to music and athletics, especially insofar as the Pro Tour is concerned. Each is a popular form of entertainment and each has its own Hall of Fame based on accomplishments within and contributions to the discipline.

Also not unlike in music and athletics, the Magic Pro Tour has had its own storied comebacks. After establishing himself as the most dominant player to have ever played the game, Jon Finkel's involvement in the Pro Tour began to wane, even to the point that Kai Budde came along and rivaled his success with similar dominance. Then all of a sudden Finkel came back in 2008 to compete in Pro Tour Kuala Lumpur. I remember the hype surrounding his Top 8. Message boards, chat forums, Twitters, and Facebook news threads lit up with chatter over whether Finkel would win another Pro Tour – and he did!

It often only takes one Pro Tour for the fire to reignite and for a former great player to return and to make himself a legend of the game. We saw it recently with Ben Stark and Paul Rietzl, but most notably with Brian Kibler. Brian was always considered to be among the great players, but it wasn't until his comeback to the Pro Tour in Honolulu 2009 that he elevated his game to the next level, stringing together a handful of Pro Tour Top 8's, including two wins! Judging by just about any metric conceivable, the Magic Pro Tour is much more interesting when Brian Kibler is competing.

As we can see with music, with athletics, and also with Magic, when a major figurehead of the past makes a comeback, it generates interest. Many people who never saw Michael Jordan dunk a basketball or heard Frank Sinatra sing Stormy Weather were able to experience it firsthand after hearing countless stories of such greatness.

Similarly, many Magic players in the post-Kai era had only heard of Jon Finkel's greatness, perhaps assuming it was a product of Magic's infancy rather than his natural prowess. But then in the Top 8 of Kuala Lumpur all doubts were allayed as we were able to watch him masterfully read subtle draft signals and boldly move into the open archetype (Kithkin) after many others would have deemed it too late, ending up with the best deck at the table and winning the tournament – demonstrating just how great he not only was but still is!

So if comebacks are so great for music, for athletics, and for Magic, how can we encourage great players of Magic's early days to make a comeback and perhaps do what Brian Kibler did – enshrine themselves as legends of the game?

I've given this question quite a bit of thought, and the most straightforward way is to vote these great players into the Hall of Fame. Not all inductees are inspired to make a comeback, though many at least show up and compete in a Pro Tour every once in a while, and some are inspired by the success of others (i.e. see Kai and Finkel inspired by each other's recent success). For the most part, though, not many Hall of Famers seem to have the fire necessary to make a full-blown comeback. Part of this lack of inspiration, I surmise, is that such players not only have demanding lives outside of Magic but also do not feel the need to prove themselves. Once you're in the Hall of Fame, what is left to accomplish? Other than trying to win a Pro Tour, and maybe some extra cash, where is the incentive?

The players who have already put up the necessary stats and have been voted into the Hall of Fame are not the only great and storied players in Magic's Pro Tour history. There is yet another group of extremely talented players, any of whose comeback would generate comparably big waves of excitement, and who I believe would have a greater chance of catching the fire that Kibler caught for his comeback.

The players most likely to be inspired to prove themselves and to make a comeback, I believe, are those just outside the Hall of Fame. Players like William Jensen, Mark Herberholz, Justin Gary, Eugene Harvey, and Chris Pikula each have committed lives outside of Magic, and each has borderline credentials to get voted into the Hall of Fame, yet each is (currently) on the outside looking in.

Furthermore, there are currently two major factors working against players in these borderline positions from ever making an inspired comeback to Magic. The first is the time commitment. Players who have moved away from Magic have focused their lives on a career, on raising a family, or on various other pursuits. Taking a week off to attend a Pro Tour is feasible, but trying to grind out PTQs or Grand Prix, for many, is not.

The second factor is that the bar for qualifying for the Pro Tour is higher than it has ever been. Players used to be able to sit on their ratings and earn invitations, or simply attend a couple of 500-person Grand Prix (with 3 ratings byes) and finish in the Top 16 of one of them. Nowadays there are no ratings-based invitations, no Grand Prix byes for players who do not play regularly, and you have to make top 4 of a 1,000+ player Grand Prix (with no byes) to get an invite. Or you have to play in PTQs. Those are all the options for players wanting to make a comeback who aren't already in the Hall of Fame.

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While the current invitation system is great for many purposes, I believe it would be in the game's best interest to modify it slightly in order to encourage some of the great players of the past to make a comeback, to give them the opportunity to put up that one big finish necessary to bolster their case as Hall of Fame hopefuls, and perhaps to reignite that fire that we've seen rekindled in the likes of Jon Finkel and Kai Budde recently.

Wouldn't it be great to see firsthand why many say William Jensen is one of the best the game has ever seen? Or whether Oiso can still outplay Paulo in the faeries mirror? Or whether Justin Gary can reinvigorate former Your Move Games teammates to compete on the level of the super teams today? Or whether Mike Long can make a comeback with clean and high level play in an era where Magic is a much different game than what it was in the beginning, and to prove he is deserving of a spot in the Hall of Fame?

These are all stories I would be very much interested in following, as I'm sure many others would as well. The problem is that in order for any of the above to take place, the players would need to earn an invitation to the Pro Tour. And as I outlined above, many players cannot afford to invest the necessary time into grinding PTQs and GPs, so any kindling of fire within them is quickly quenched by the practical necessities of life.

Furthermore, the game wants to see these players back! Where would the game be today without Team Deadguy, particularly Chris Pikula? What good things could Pikula bring to the game today? He has always been a stalwart of clean play and helping judges to catch cheating. In an era of increased technology and event coverage, coupled with a far more advanced and robust judge program, what new ideas might he add if he were again a mainstay on the Pro Tour? Cheating still exists, and in my opinion competitive Magic would be better off with players like Chris Pikula more involved. Providing him an avenue to bolster his resume and to show voters he belongs among the game's elite is, in my estimation, the best way to make that happen.

So how do we get these great players back into Magic and competing again at the highest level, generating storylines that would make every Pro Tour that much more interesting?

My proposal is that a ‘Comeback Invitation' policy be instituted. The specifics of choosing which credentials to use can vary, but the criteria I see as most fitting are the ones most players and selectors are giving the most weight to in their Hall of Fame voting decisions, namely Pro Tour Top 8's and Lifetime Pro Points. Players who excel in these two areas are the ones most likely to get voted into the Hall of Fame, and as I mentioned before, such players are the ones most likely to accept an invitation to the Pro Tour and to work hard to compete therein. They are the great players of yesterday with the most still left to prove – to show themselves and the Magic world that they belong in the Hall of Fame!

I would recommend offering one invitation per year to a Pro Tour of the player's choice, without any travel accommodations or appearance fees, for each player who has either accumulated 200 lifetime pro points or has finished in the top 8 of at least 3 Pro Tours lifetime. Such players have demonstrated commitment to and excellence in the game throughout a prolonged period of time, and many of which would make for a great comeback story if they seize the opportunity and put up the necessary finishes to get back onto the train (and into the Hall of Fame).

If we had adopted these two criteria (200 pro points or 3 PT Top 8's) and had instituted the comeback invitation policy for Pro Tour Avacyn Restored in Barcelona, exactly 40 otherwise unqualified players would have had the option to book their own travel accommodations to compete in the event. Everyone else with either 200 lifetime Pro Points or 3 PT Top 8's was already qualified, either through Hall of Fame status or through the Pro Player's Club, with the exception of three players who qualified via Grand Prix or PTQ (DeRosa, Fabiano, and Osyp). The list of 40 previously uninvited players (according to my research, excluding players currently holding a suspension) would have been:

Masashi Oiso
Kenji Tsumura
Scott Johns
Ryuichi Arita
Svend Geertsen
Eugene Harvey
Mark Herberholz
Tsuyoshi Ikeda
William Jensen
Mark Justice
Benedikt Klauser
Nicolas Labarre
Mike Long
Kyle Rose
Guillaume Wafo-Tapa
Marco Blume
Kurt Burgner
John Chinnock
Justin Gary
Terry Soh
Mattias Jorstedh
Tomohiro Kaji
Peer Kroger
John Larkin
Mark LePine
Christian Luhrs
Chris Pikula
Michael Pustilnik
Jeroen Remie
Brian Selden
Jakub Slemr
Gadiel Szleifer
Gabriel Tsang
Tomi Walamies
Katsuhiro Mori
Carlos Romao
Alex Shvartsman
Masahiko Morita
John Sonne
Richard Hoaen

There are three Pro Tours per year and the players on this list span the entire globe. Moreover many of these players have not been involved in competitive Magic for years, and so even if travel expenses were paid for, they likely wouldn't attend. This means realistically probably only fifteen or so people from this list would even accept an invitation and attend a Pro Tour, most likely the one geographically closest to where they live. So if there is a Japanese PT, a European PT, and an American PT, we could expect on average maybe five players from this list to attend a given Pro Tour.

Even as Magic continues to grow and players' stats continue to build, the comeback invitation will likely not increase the size of any given Pro Tour by more than about ten players. While these five to ten extra players may not add much to the quantity of players in the room, it would certainly add to the appeal of the event if one of them were to make a deep run, or perhaps even top 8 or win it, thus successfully making a case that they belong in the Hall of Fame!

As a spectator and fan of the Pro Tour, I would be very much interested in watching comeback stories unfold. And as a player, I would be further incentivized to continue putting time and effort into competitive Magic if I knew that there was a Comeback Threshold I could reach that would ensure my lifelong ability to make a comeback on the Magic Pro Tour if I ever were to fall off short of the Hall of Fame, or have to take time away from the game to pursue other things, whether foreseen or unforeseen, without having to do so through the PTQ circuit.

Just as Elvis Presley did for Rock and Roll and Frank Sinatra for Swing, Michael Jordan did for basketball and Mario Lemieux for hockey. Each filled seats and generated interest in their respective art through their comeback. Jon Finkel and Brian Kibler have likewise brought a level of interest and attention to the Magic Pro Tour through the respective comeback of each.

As I've been researching my first ever Selection Committee Hall of Fame ballot these past few weeks, I've gained a renewed appreciation for the storied history of the game and of its top players. I can't help but wonder what would happen if one of these inactive yet borderline Hall of Fame players were to make a comeback and prove to the world they belong among the best of the best. Who would it be? Whose fire would get ignited? And perhaps more importantly, if a comeback invitation policy were to be implemented, what would be left to hold such a player back from making that final push for the prize?

Craig Wescoe
@Nacatls4Life on twitter