Cursed to First

2005-03-31T15:26:00.000-05:00

Hello, Goodbye

I'm leaving Blogger for Typepad. Please update your blogrolls accordingly. Thanks.

2005-03-30T10:48:00.000-05:00

Take a Chance, Make It Happen

National sports pundits have asked that nefarious question endlessly since the Red Sox' World Series victory: What will Red Sox fans do without something to complain about? Trick question. We still have something to complain about. A form of suffering particular to Sox fans that didn't end with the championship drought: NESN's lineup of commercials. Scoff all you want, but when you spend as much time as your average Sox fan watching the same cable channel from March through October, with the same wretched commercial spots repeated relentlessly throughout, what begins as "annoying" quickly becomes "cruel and unusual punishment." There are some advertisements that work with the Red Sox experience, familiar jingles or symbols that remind you pleasantly of the ballpark or the game on the radio. "1-800-54-GIANT", for example (and if you can't immediately sing the tune to that jingle, you're not a Sox fan). The Citgo sign. Most advertisements, of course, do not. Witness last year's commercial for Southwest Airlines' new service to Philadelphia. "What's there to do in Philly?" the commercial begins, and then, in the midst of all its other offenses, also utterly and infuriatingly fails to answer that question. "There's a lot, a lotta culture here," rasps what looks to be a bum on a corner. A man with a gigantic beer gut says "Cheese steak", and then a million different people, each one progressively more irritating, say "cheese steak" over a series of jarring camera cuts. This also happens with "The Liberty Bell." I don't need a commercial to tell me that Philly has cheese steak (repeatedly!) and the Liberty Bell. Those are only the most stereotypical things about Philadelphia--the meme of Philadelphia, if you will. Now, if that commercial could have uncovered something truly exciting about Philadelphia, such as that, say, a certain tattoo parlor will inscribe God's true name on your forehead for free, you'd pique my interest. But the Liberty Bell? Sorry, try again. It gets worse, though. Cut to a shot of a guy in a taxi cab. Just your average pasty-faced business traveler. Wait for it...wait for it..."It's like a baby New York". ARGH. Has a single sentence ever contained more stupidity, meaninglessness, and stupid meaninglessness? Truly, the Philadelphia commercial is a flaming pustule on the face of commercial television. It is an infuriating affront to the intelligence of its audience. The first time. Now imagine it's October. The lights have just gone down on the next bloody Homerian epic tragedy at Yankee Stadium and you, the Red Sox fan, with no fingernails left, attempting to get by at work on eye-crust and weak, wan smiles alone, sit before your television screen awaiting your team's fate, and by extension, your own. Between innings during such an experience, the ideal would be transcendental meditation exercises interspersed with subliminal messages of well-being. Instead, you get..."It's like a baby New York." It ain't right. And it ain't over. It would now appear, if my experiences last night are any indication, that the Sox fan's torture at the hands of NESN's advertising department will be renewed for another season. For last night before my horrified eyes appeared the new version of the Foxwood's commercial. Now, the original Foxwood's commercial makes the baby Jesus cry as it is. It involves a jingle obviously conceived by demons in the bowels of hell solely for the psychological destruction of mortals on earth, sung by a person I personally would like to see re-enact the unintentionally hilarious hit-by-car scene in the Brad Pitt bomb Meet Joe Black. Seriously, this jingle. This jingle is...shudder-worthy. It's the kind of jingle that sinks its wretched talons into the soft flesh of your brain stem, and never, ever lets go. Someday, if, God forbid, I ever suffer brain injury, I may wind up somewhere in a vegetative state reflexively, tunelessly croaking, "Take a...chance, make...it happen..." Then there was the Foxwoods commercial version 1.1, which, just to be annoying, printed the words on the screen to the lyrics-less tune of the jingle, but still showed that lounge singer snapping his fingers and smirking through the screen, and with that, even the hearing-impaired were no longer spared the horror of the Foxwoods jingle. But with version 2.0, which has flown like a winged mutant from the depths of the inferno onto my radar screen now that I'm tuning back into NESN for Sox games, SportsDesk, etc., is a St. Patrick's Day version...wait, it gets better...featuring midgets. Midgets dressed up as leprechauns. Midgets--hang on, we're not done yet--dressed up as leprechauns, singing a freshly infuriating version of the hellacious jingle, specially formulated to be the musical equivalent of the flattest, stalest, most watered down green St. Patrick's Day beer. Midgets. With creepy little voices. Playing slot machines, frolicking in piles of poker chips, singing, like the Wizard of Oz remake that time forgot. Oh, and lest you think this is merely seasonally-oriented torture, it is now, by my watch, approximately two and a half weeks since St. Patrick's Day. There are two options from now on, both equally hideous: they continue playing the St. Patrick's Day version for several more months, or they come up with a new seasonal version of the jingle / commercial every month for the rest of the baseball season, and by the end I have to force myself to watch Red Sox games like I'm in A Clockwork Orange, between Foxwoods midgets and whatever fresh hell Southwest Airlines can dream up (Tucson: it's like a baby Toronto!). You want to tell me that's not suffering? But Sox fans will do what Sox fans have always done--band together in times of adversity. Soon drunken renditions of "Piano Man" will surely drown out the horrors visited on us by NESN. Sox fans will find a way to circumvent or subvert their tormentors, perhaps selling knockoff T-shirts that say "FOXWOODS SUCKS" for $5 on sheets of cardboard just over the Mass Pike bridge. And in our darkest moments, we will cling to one single, uplifting fact: NESN may insist on showing us bad commercials, but at least our team owner doesn't let Ronan Tynan waddle out onto the field at every home game to warble "God Bless America" for approximately an hour and a half. And we will count our blessings. Grudgingly.

2005-03-29T09:29:00.000-05:00

Today's Spring Training Pic

(Corcoran Bros. photo) The above is Capt. Shane Corcoran (otherwise known as regular Soxaholix reader da Kine), who was severely injured in an accident while serving in Kuwait:

Shane has a fractured skull, hip or pelvic fracture, a rib punctured his lung, and has a possible hematoma. When brought in, they decided against doing a craniomoty, drilling holes in the skull to relieve pressure...He required more than one blood transfusion. He was conscious (again a good sign) and semi-coherent. He responded to commands to move all four of his extremities, and was able to move them. His lung was re-inflated and a breathing tube put in. They are not really treating his hip/pelvis yet. The major concern is brain damage.

The reason I mention him here is because of a few lines at the end of a post by one of his brothers updating the concerned on his status.

Oh, I asked Shane if he had anything to say to everyone. He thought about it for a good 30 seconds, and came back with: GO SOX!

No words for that. No words. (via Soxaholix)

2005-03-28T16:35:00.000-05:00

This, on the other hand, is cool

Bill Mahoney of Call of the Green Monster got a writeup on Boston.com today. Brian of Tao of Manny made an announcement that he will be moving to the new Most Valuable Network now that Firebrand of the American League has found a new home on all-baseball. And that's the last time you'll get to laugh at my expense as I try to sift through all the blog mergers going on of late.

2005-03-28T13:03:00.000-05:00

Not Welcome to the Neighborhood

I'm sorry, but this kind of thing bugs the crap out of me. Look at the bio on this blog:

John Thorn wrote his first baseball book thirty years ago and since then has produced dozens more, from encyclopedias and coffee-table pictorials to books for children. His titles include Total Baseball, The Armchair Books of Baseball, The Hidden Game of Baseball, and Treasures of the Baseball Hall of Fame. An expert on early (pre-1876) baseball, he co-founded the 19th Century Committee of the Society for American Baseball Research. Thorn is sometimes seen on ESPN, The History Channel, and other television outlets as a sports authority and commentator. He was also a major on-screen presence in and chief consultant to Ken Burns's PBS film, Baseball. He writes two weekly columns for the Woodstock Times: "Play's the Thing" (largely sports) and "Wake the Echoes" (arts and letters). His three sons are Jed (28), Isaac (24), and Mark (18).

With all due respect, sir, what are you doing with a blog? What is the point? This is like a NASCAR driver heading down to an underground drag race. A Vegas high-roller cleaning up at a church-hall Bingo game. A pro baseball player hitting the batting cages. Most of us are bloggers because we are amateurs, and some of us work very hard at our blogs, for free, on our own time, to either improve ourselves or to get our work read enough to achieve the kind of recognition Mr. Thorn already has. Blogging is supposed to be a populist phenomenon--a way for people who don't regularly appear on ESPN or the History Channel to be heard. And even if there's no money involved, we're all competing for a market share of eyeballs and interest. So I really resent it when someone who is already a professional thinks it'll be fun to come play in the blogosphere. Maybe it should be flattering to bloggers that "real" writers are suddenly wanting to get in on the "trend," but to me, it just looks like greed.

2005-03-28T12:21:00.000-05:00

Today's Spring Training Pic(s)

Are courtesy of Barry Zito. This one's my favorite: What a completely bizarre person he is. And yet, he's just adorable enough to pull it off.

2005-03-28T08:36:00.000-05:00

Navel-Gazing and Daydreams

I am officially out of baseball shape. By mid-season last year, I had become attuned to certain dimensions of the game; the most prominent of these was my ability, discovered somewhere around mid-July, to gauge with a decent amount of accuracy what the result would be after any bat-to-ball contact. In other words, I would know most of the time if it was a hit, a fly-out, a ground-out, a foul ball, a pop-up or had the possibility to be a home run literally right off the bat. Yesterday, as I sat down to watch the Red Sox and Pirates play at City of Palms, I discovered I had lost this ability almost completely. I would gasp at what turned out to be a fly-out, moan gullibly, "Oh, no," only to be surprised by an infielder easily gloving a line drive hit right to them. Gradually, though, things began to warm up for me as I watched a profusely sweating Tim Wakefield build a lead of 7-0 in the first seven or so (Why does he wear that long-sleeved Under Armour tunic under his jersey even when it's mercilessly hot and humid outside? And is he allergic to sunscreen? Why does no one ask these important questions?) My eyes began to be able to follow a pitch's route, and I began to make my own judgements as to the home plate umpire's pitch calls (arguing vociferously, of course, whenever I felt he went against the Red Sox). Realizations like this make me sometimes daydream about being a "real" sportswriter, like, say Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated, who spent a few weeks as a Toronto Blue Jay and wrote a lovely piece about it later. Can I tell you? It is not enough for me to simply enjoy such a piece and say, "Good for Tom Verducci." I seethe with jealousy when I see someone being able to have such an experience, and then get paid to write about it. This is my dream. One I often feel frustrated about achieving. I daydream sometimes about having the kind of access "real" sportswriters do; of being able to witness the players and the action of the game up close, at field level, in the clubhouse, at a press conference. When I read things like this:

I immediately realize the utter inadequacy of television to capture the power of a major league pitch. Halladay's fastball is angry, announcing its indignation with an audible hum that grows frighteningly loud as it approaches. His slider is even more evil because it presents itself in the clothing of a fastball but then, like a ball rolling down the street and falling into an open manhole, drops out of sight, down and away. His curveball bends more than an election-year politician.

I feel like I'm missing out on something vital, no matter how intensely I may follow the Sox as a fan. And yet having been inside journalism, at least to some extent, for the past five or so years beginning in college, I know that these plum stories, these treasured experiences, come no more frequently for a sportswriter than they do for an insurance adjuster or a secretary or a freelance correspondent working on local news stories at night (not that I know anyone like that, of course)--that every career is marked with a few high points and otherwise fraught with the mundane. I have also seen the very real way in which familiarity with a writer's beat--be it the East Overshoe Planning Board or a major sports team--breeds contempt. Want a good example of this? Just look at Ron Borges with the Patriots or Dan Shaughnessy with the Sox. A little while ago, someone posted a job listing on the SGMB about a job for the summer doing scores for the PawSox. My first thought was, "that would be so much fun!" and my second thought was, "what would I then do for escape?" It's like my history with music. I entered college as a music major and hightailed it, screaming, over to the English Department after my first semester. I was in love with music and performing in high school--and yet I was the most miserable music major you've ever seen. That semester made me realize the difference between a vocation and an avocation, and that some things you enjoy precisely because you do them as a vacation, an escape, an outlet. When they become your work, everything changes. Sometimes I think sportswriting would be like that. Besides, how close do I really want to get? Do I really want to know that this or that guy slaps his wife around, this or that guy uses women on the road, or just that one of my potential heroes on the field is a useless asshole off of it? Some things are an avocation. Sometimes a little ignorance is nice. At the very end of the game, with a one-run cushion between the Sox and the Pirates, the dreaded Byung-Hyun Kim had the ball. Two men were on base, and there were two outs. He earned two strikes on his hitter (another refreshing aspect of not being a professional is that I have no obligation to tell you who exactly that hitter was) and the crowd grew noisy, attempting to urge Kim not to screw it up, just this once. Kim promptly reared back and drilled said hitter in the back. "CHRIST HE HIT HIM" my dad and I were yelling in that breathless, punctuation-less way we have, not so much hollering, really, as speaking very loudly and urgently about what is happening. "JESUS CHRIST HE HAD HIM AND THEN HE HIT HIM AND NOW THE BASES ARE LOADED AND OH JESUS" It was exhilarating, an orgy of self-righteous contempt aimed toward the hapless figure of defeat Kim made on our screen, as Dave Wallace and Kelly Shoppach corralled him back onto the mound, attempting to salvage what they could of the team's efforts by calming him. "THAT IS THE WORST POSSIBLE THING HE COULD HAVE DONE I DON'T BELIEVE IT GOD EVEN IF HE'D WALKED HIM IT WOULD'VE BEEN MORE DIGNIFIED THAN THAT I CANNOT FRIGGIN BELIEVE HE HIT THE FREAKIN GUY" Calming ourselves was deliciously unnecessary. We were free at this moment to heap all our lives' frustrations onto B.K. Kim and his ineptitude, his inability to come through even in a spring-training game, I MEAN WHAT THE HELL! Not something Tom Verducci gets to do very much anymore, I can promise you that.

2005-03-25T09:37:00.000-05:00

All Your Friends Are Doing It

Today's Spring Training Pic: via Sam, Kristen, and Steve. No further words necessary.

2005-03-24T15:17:00.000-05:00

I Know It's Only Spring Training, But...

For the fourth time in the last week or so, my cell phone has informed me that the Orioles are pounding the shit out of the Sox. I keep trying to remind myself of Keith Foulke's ERA last year in Spring Training, but...damn. Can anyone who is actually getting to watch these games put me at ease? Is there a reason for it, like they're playing their starters and we're playing all AA guys? Or that the Sox are just being lackadaisacal because it's still March? Or Manny and Papi are trying to bat from the opposite sides of the plate just for shits and giggles? Please say yes. Or something like it.

2005-03-24T14:40:00.000-05:00

One More Reason to Love Curt Schilling

This thread began with typical Yanks-fan snarking and aspersion casting about Schilling and whether or not he will start Opening Day. It ends with members of nyyfans.com pledging donations to Curt's Pitch for ALS. That takes some skill. Thanks to Annette for pointing it out.

2005-03-24T11:25:00.000-05:00

in Just-spring when the world is mud-luscious

(Boston.com photo) Still can't beat those damned Orioles.

2005-03-24T09:01:00.000-05:00

Sports Wives

I saw a show last night on A & E called Sports Wives, where they followed Deanna Favre, Debbie Clemens, Charisse Strawberry and Pattie Petty in their daily lives. It was a fascinating show...part Cribs, part True Hollywood Story. I thought Deanna Favre was the most "normal" of the women--a down-to-earth former tomboy from Hattiesburg, MS, who married her childhood sweetheart. Charisse Strawberry was a bit too holy-roller for my taste, and seemed to rationalize about her husband a lot, but she seemed like a good mother. After a while, I got sick of listening to Pattie Petty speak--her speaking voice seems naturally squeaky and raspy--but her story was the most compelling. She and her husband, NASCAR driver Kyle Petty (son of the more famous Richard Petty) lost their son Adam in a racecar crash at the age of 19, and during the taping of the show Pattie gets a call saying that a plane carrying a good friend and his family crashed, killing all on board. Surprisingly, however, the wife I'd probably want to spend any time with would probably be Debbie Clemens. She's charming, vivacious and strong. I liked watching her with her kids--all boys, and the way she handles Roger. The only thing that bothered me was the whole fashion-design end of things; frankly, I thought the stuff she was designing (and selling for upwards of $250 per item) was only getting produced and marketed because of her name rather than on its merit. But, to each his own. Ultimately, though, the only outward differences between their lives and ours are that 1) they have huge houses, and 2) when things happen to them like they do, inevitably, to everyone, they get reported on the evening news. I have actually been interested for a while in the wives of professional athletes, because in a way I think their lives mimic a much older pattern of marriage--that of a medeival lord and lady. If you think about it, medeival ladies of the manor were at the center of a relatively gigantic focus of wealth; they were seen as their husband's partner and equal in the work of running their combined property; and while it was common for the medeival husband to be gone on long crusades and to have a wandering eye, his lady was entitled in the most literal sense of the word--she was the carrier of the name, the bearer of his legitimate children, the key to the continuation of his recognized family line. Marriage wasn't necessarily just about soul mates in those times. While I am making a judgement from afar, I think it's pretty much an open secret that athletes sleep around on the road, and of course it's plain fact that during their sports season, the wives "might as well be single parents," which is how Deanna Favre put it. The proportionate reward for these things, however, is that the wife in this case is entitled, just as the medeival wife was--to the spoils of her husband's wealth and notoriety, to be his partner in official appearances and endeavors, to be, essentially, the Chairman and CEO of the franchise that is his name, property and lineage. I'd love to do more research on this. It would be great to either read more on or hear more from the wives of major figures in general, to find out about the unique and unusual position they fill as women in what are often thoroughly male spheres of existence. My theory is that any of the women who marry a star--be it an athlete, a rock star, or a high-ranking politician--do so with eyes open, aware of the unwritten agreements they are making. Or else they would not survive.

2005-03-23T12:07:00.000-05:00

Today's Spring Training Pic

The Boston.com photo gallery I got this from portrays this as the third time Schilling stopped his car to sign autographs for mobs of fans on his way out of the ballpark where he pitched 3 innings to the PawSox (plus Billy Mueller and Jason Varitek, who skipped a trip with the big club to catch and bat against Schilling during this game). I think my favorite thing about this picture, besides the enigmatic look on the kid's face and the way the surrounding light foregrounds it, is the delicacy of the two hands--the fan's and Schilling's, respectively--around the ball passing between them. The photographs in this gallery are practically a flip book, and it's clear that multiple photographers were on top of Schilling at the same time, as he tried to leave the ballpark with his family. He'll probably get more negative attention about what kind of car he's driving, though, than anything else. I'm really stirring the shit today, aren't I? If only Silva had taken these pictures. Then we could REALLY get something going, here. Oh, wait...HE DID! Fire when ready.

2005-03-23T11:33:00.000-05:00

The Negativity in This Town Stinks

Maybe I'm a little slow, but I don't get all the Schilling bashing of late. I really don't. To me, the bottom line is, if someone had walked up to me a year ago today and said: "You guys just signed a pitcher that will be what the Sox need to finally win it all. He will be a leader immediately, dominate on the field, and finally beat the Yankees in their own house while overcoming significant bodily injury to do so. He will then become the first Red Sox pitcher since Babe Ruth to win a World Series Game 2 at Fenway, with the same injury worsening. He will contribute to a four-game Sox sweep of the World Series..." But then added, "But, you won't like his politics or some of his views on national issues." I wouldn't have been able to forsee myself or anyone else giving a rat's ass. Guess that's just me.

2005-03-22T14:43:00.000-05:00

Just Read It

The more I re-visit it, the more firm I become in my belief that this is the greatest post in the history of ever. I pray--PRAY--for a sequel. In case you've been living up your own ass for the last year or so, you should do yourself a favor and get around to reading it.

2005-03-22T10:49:00.000-05:00

Today's Spring Training Pic

(AP)

Another spring training tradition: familiar faces in new uniforms. Derek, who apparently had a pact with opposing starter Bronson Arroyo to throw one another only fastballs, gave up a base hit to the Cornrowed One. Which, if you think about it, is doubly laughable since the sinking fastball is Lowe's pitch, while Bronson's is that loopy curve. I have to say it's much funnier to see the Derek Lowe Face when it's a meaningless game...and he's on the other team. If you want to follow Derek's progress in L.A., I recommend you do so through the ultra-hilarious Dodger Blues website, which had this to say about Lowe's initial arrival at Dodger camp:

Lowe, who signed a $36 million contract with the Dodgers this offseason, showed up only because he was physcially booted from the Red Sox spring training complex where he had been working out. Lowe had hope to make it through March without being noticed, even conjuring up a plan to steal Trot Nixon's uniform and dump the Boston outfielder in the Atlantic Ocean. Foiled in his attempt, Lowe will now have to settle for being a Dodger. As the old saying goes, you can take a player away from Boston, but you can't take away his Red Sox underpants. (Jim Tracy already tried, and it wasn't pretty--neither the confrontation or the underpants.)

Good times.

2005-03-21T14:20:00.000-05:00

I'll Be Missing You

Got my hands on a copy of the Patriots Super Bowl XXXIX DVD this past weekend and enjoyed it immensely, especially the bonus feature that condensed the interviews down from media day. Can't wait to see Three Games to Glory III. The one cloud in all the silver lining was the dull ache of watching the exuberant Tedy Bruschi, flying around the field, hollering in triumph after a big hit, finally mouthing into the camera in the Super Bowl aftermath, "That's three." According to reports in both the Globe and the Herald, a congenital heart defect may have allowed a blood clot to go to Tedy's brain, which caused the stroke. According to a doctor quoted in the Herald report, it might not necessarily preclude No. 54 from playing again. And so the anxiety level is intense--almost as intense as Bruschi. And according to the Globe, it's verging on hysteria. News crews are sitting outside his home day and night. Those crews, of course, are saying that public interest is pushing them to be aggressive:

"You have to realize that Tedy Bruschi is a public figure and as well-known as a prominent politician. That means he can't have the expectation of complete privacy." "It's been a frustrating story to cover," said Channel 25 assistant news director Paul McGonagle. "People are e-mailing us and stopping our crews out on the street to ask, `What's the real story?'

Then again, while such intense scrutiny is the last thing Tedy needs, it's a measure of how much New England needs Tedy. It makes me think of a recent post on a political / cultural blog I read called Eisengeiste:

Normally, there is a direct relationship between the size of a monkey's brain and the size of their social group - bigger brain, bigger group, a relationship so strong that, as David Attenborough pointed out, you don't even need to know the species to know how big the monkey's social group is. So if baboons hang out with about 25 baboons, it's not too big a stretch to connect this to humans, who social groups seem to be idealized at about 150 individuals. Big brain monkey, big social groups - and most people's meaningful social worlds are roughly that size. Or, more to the point, were. I've thought for some time that the rise of of the turbo-celebrity culture is related to the techonological displacement of human relationships. In other words, the spaces of our minds which would normally be dedicated toward dealing with our fellow 150 primates starts to get taken up by recognizable people we know only from electronic images and sounds.

Case in point: Tedy Bruschi. None of us knows him, and yet we do. He's on prayer lists at churches. He's scrutinized and hounded about his health because, in that strange pseudo-social way, it's as if a member of our family or social group is threatened, and yet we have no access to do the things human beings want to do for loved ones naturally--protect them, comfort them, gauge with our own eyes their level of health. So it's a difficult situation. On the one hand, I'm just as interested as the next person on what will happen to him, whether he will be okay. On the other, I understand, at least intellectually, that he is his own person. And he should be left alone. Meanwhile, I find nearly obscene the idea that people would ask if he'll play again. And frankly, if he does, I'll be a little bit mad at him--he has three little kids at home who need their Dad more than the Patriots need a linebacker. So right now, I'm going on the assumption that he will not be back in uniform. Plus, even if he was, he might lose some of that no-holds-barred, damn-the-torpedoes leaping energy that has endeared him to us so much in the first place on the field. I'd rather he bow out gracefully than fade gradually--or worse. It's hard, though, right now, to see his smiling face on the television, so deceivingly familiar, someone all of us love but none of us know.

2005-03-21T14:15:00.000-05:00

Followup On The Monster

From: "Sully" To: "'insomnomaniac@hotmail.com'" Subject: FYI Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 12:52:22 -0500 I saw the blurb on Radatz - I have a bit up on him as well at Dewey's House. But it has come to my attention via Baseball Think Factory that Mantle only had 19 plate appearances against Radatz. Now, he did strike out 12 times in those 19 PA's, but the number you posted from the ABC news report turns out to be wrong. Given all the misinformation that is currently circulating through the media and the web after the untimely death of Dick Radatz, I think this merits its own thread. There are reports that Mantle struck our 47 times in 63 at bats vs. Radatz; or 44 out of 66; had only one hit; etc. The topic arose about three years ago on SABR-L, and Dave Smith, founder of Retrosheet set the record straight. This is an excerpt from a post by Smith to SABR-L in 2002 after he examined the Retrosheet play-by-play logs--Mantle vs. Radatz, career: The reality is far different: AB H 2B 3B HR BB SO RBI BA OBA SA 16 3 1 0 1 3 12 2 .188 .316 .438 Radatz may have owned Mantle, but the true sample-size was much smaller. Best, Sully

2005-03-18T11:26:00.000-05:00

Today's Spring Training Pic

Boston.com has an interesting photo gallery up of the renovations HWL et al. are making to Fenway in the off-season. I chose this one (over a picture of a construction worker brandishing a shovel as a bat in what will be the new underground batting cage, which was a close second), because I admire the use of light and the fact that the photographer was able to capture the differing textures of the new brick (to the left) on Fenway's facade and the old (to the right). Obviously, if Fenway isn't renovated at all, it'll just collapse into ruins eventually. And the park I know now would be unfamiliar to someone from the 40's or 50's, even though it is essentially the same structure. But I feel a strange tug at my heart when I look at this picture. The bright new brick is visual proof that the 2004 season is over, that a time is coming, someday, when no one at whatever new incarnation of Fenway still stands will remember 2004, or the season, personally; and in a way I want Fenway to keep as many of her scars, her faded brick, her deep green character as possible. There is a whisper of the eternal in that place.

2005-03-17T10:56:00.000-05:00

Today's Spring Training Pic

(Boston.com photo) Your knuckleball battery lookin' shahhhp. Because: hee! Meanwhile, the big news today is that former Red Sox relief pitcher Dick Radatz, 67, died after falling down some stairs at his home. Radatz, aka "Monster", was heard frequently on WEEI, but most people don't know that he was one of the most feared relief pitchers of the 1960's. According to abc news:

Radatz regularly pitched multiple innings of relief, long before pitchers evolved into one-inning specialists. "He was a setup man, closer, finisher all in one," said Bill Lee, a former Red Sox pitcher and good friend of Radatz. "He was the best reliever of all time, for a short period of time." Radatz, who was godfather to Lee's daughter, has a picture of himself in his basement signed by Mickey Mantle. The Yankees legend signed it "The greatest I ever faced," said Lee, noting that Radatz struck out Mantle 54 times in 67 attempts.

RIP, big guy.

2005-03-16T13:49:00.000-05:00

Fun Stuff

ESPN's Page 3 has a list up of some baseball players' favorite sports-movie quotes, including a recitation of a line from Bull Durham by Jason Varitek that has members of the SGMB all a-jangle. Since I'm not going to be interviewed by ESPN any time soon, here are some of my personal faves:

From Major League:
"Look at this fucking guy." "FORGET THE CURVEBALL VAUGHN GIVE 'IM THE HEATER!" "God damnit Dorn get in front of the damn ball. Don't give me this 'o-lay' bullshit."
From Bull Durham:
"Well, he really hit the shit outta that one didn't he...guy gets a free steak!"
From Jerry McGuire:
Jerry: "I am out here for you, you dont know what its like for me...out here for you, it is an up at dawn pride-swallowing siege that I can never fully tell you about, ok?! God! Help me...help me Rod, help me help you...help me help you....help me....help you." Rod: (laughs)"Man!...you are hanging on by a very thin thread. And I DIG that about you, Jerry! Help me, Jerry! Help me help you! (walks out laughing)."
From A League of Their Own: (and, yes, I liked that movie, so stuff it.)
"Yeah, I'm just going home, grab a shower and shave, give the wife a little pickle-tickle, and I'm on my way." "Uh, Lord, hallowed be Thy name. May our feet be swift; may our bats be mighty; may our balls... be plentiful. Lord, I'd just like to thank You for that waitress in South Bend. You know who she is - she kept calling Your name. And God, these are good girls, and they work hard. Just help them see it all the way through. Okay, that's it." "Gracefully...and grandly. Gracefully...and grandly. GRACEFULLY! ... and graaand-leee."
From The Replacements:
Shane Falco: I think I'm just going to lie here for a moment and collect my thoughts. Daniel Bateman: Work shit out, right?
From Varsity Blues:
"Boy, you are the damn dumbest smart kid I know." (As he steals a cop car) "I'm goin' to jail." "Wangers on the glass?"
From Ace Ventura, Pet Detective: (I know. Not a sports movie, but it involves Dan Marino)
Dan Marino: Got any more of that gum, Ace? Ace Ventura: That's none of your damn business. And I'll thank you to stay out of my personal affairs.

And that's all I can think of for now. What are YOUR favorite sports movie quotes?

2005-03-16T08:33:00.000-05:00

Wrong Way

WEEI's Gerry Callahan and I grew up in the same hometown. You may notice that at least once a year an old-timer from said town will call him up on the radio to needle him about his football-playing days in high school. When Chelmsford High School was competing in its first state championship against Catholic Memorial High School of West Roxbury in the late 70's or early 80's, John Caito, son of longtime head coach Tom Caito, returned a punt for what would have been the winning touchdown. Were it not for Gerry Callahan, who stood at the 50-yard line with a lone Catholic Memorial player, and proceeded to not only throw an unnecessary block but also clipped the kid for good measure. The ensuing penalty brought the touchdown back, and Chelmsford lost. My dad still calls him "Clip Callahan". Just thought you might like to know that little fun fact. It came to my mind today when my morning show mentioned "big news about Tedy Bruschi", but it was a teaser for the sports minute later in the hour. I, of course, needed to know this news now, so I switched from WAAF to WEEI, figuring that the National Leader in Sports Radio (tm) might have some tidbit about Bruschi. And Callahan? Well, he dropped the ball again. I usually avoid listening to Callahan like the plague. He'd be hard enough to take in the afternoon, but in the early morning? That'd just be masochistic. And yes, I dislike him because of his politics--which I find offensive to begin with, but I find it doubly offensive that he uses his airtime on a sports radio station to discuss them. Today was, of course, no different. Callahan was ranting and raving, nay, foaming at the mouth, about the Sox' upcoming appearance on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I soldiered through a couple of calls, in which his listeners attempted to tell him that he was out of line (he was making the allegation that Tom Werner, for whatever reason, had forced the players to appear on the show, to which the callers responded by asking for evidence or even reasoning that would back up his assumption, to which he responded with a tirade about the professionalism of Jason Varitek), of course, to no avail; finally I gave up and went back to my morning show, content to wait rather than listen to any more of that ridiculousness. I don't see what the big deal is. Really, I don't. The goofy Sox are a perfect match for Queer Eye and I agree with Mer (imagine!) when she says:

This week, five members of the Red Sox are filming an episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy in what is a huge step for professional sports. Perhaps with Kevin Millar, Tim Wakefield, Jason Varitek, Doug Mirabelli, and Johnny Damon showing that they aren't afraid to spend time with 5 very famous homosexuals, the impressionable youth who idolize athletes will learn that there are opinions other than those expressed by John Rocker.

...and Callahan, who proved with his statements about METCO students in 2003 that he has more in common with Rocker than most. Oh, and the news about Tedy? According to USA Today,

New England Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi, who suffered a stroke last month, is reportedly back in the hospital amid various -- and conflicting -- reports about the Super Bowl champion's health. Tucson, Arizona, TV station KOLD said Tuesday night that Bruschi is scheduled to have surgery to repair a hole in his heart by the end of the week. The Boston Globe reported it talked to KOLD sports director Scott Kilbury, who said he received the update on Bruschi from a "friend of the family" who has been close to the situation. Kilbury also told the paper added that the procedure may have been performed already. Meanwhile, a source told the Boston Herald that Bruschi returned to Massachusetts General Hospital for treatment related to his condition but said it had nothing to do with his heart. Another source said Bruschi, 31, was not at Mass. General on Tuesday night, according to the Herald. Patriots spokesman Stacey James told the Boston newspapers information about Bruschi would have to come from his family.

In other words, the news about Tedy is unclear, but alarming. Might be nice if they could have gotten to the bottom of that story today, maybe, on so-called "Sports Radio".

2005-03-15T13:37:00.000-05:00

Inferiority Complex

This post by Sarah, "If I Were a Star Major League Baseball Player..." makes me alternately seethe with jealousy and hang my head in shame, because I will never in my life write something so awesomely humorous. My part was this:

4. I would have a ridiculously gaudy sports utility vehicle filled with strippers, top-shelf vodka and pot smoke with television screens on the back of the headrests, spinner rims and a horn that played "La Cucaracha." I would have a huge mural of the Virgin Mary engulfed in an art-deco sort of wreathe of flames cradling a baby Jesus with my face superimposed on it painted on the roof and a chain-link license plate frame.

Thanks for a much-needed laugh, Sarah.

2005-03-15T11:37:00.000-05:00

Today's Spring Training Pic

I linked this picture once before, but thought I'd feature it today. Please, if you haven't already, look at it again. Click on the above picture to see the full original; it's the perfect size for a desktop. It's so deep, so heavy with texture and sensory details. It's one of the best pictures I've ever seen of Fenway, and even now with snow on the ground it feels like I can just reach in through my computer screen and feel summer, if I want. I'm in a pretty bad place right now for a lot of reasons. My apologies that updates have been sparse--I haven't gotten to see many of the spring training games, although I did watch some of yesterday's contest between Atlanta and St. Louis. What parts of it they showed, anyway, between ESPN's obsessing about Tony LaRussa and his relationship with Mark McGuire. It should be mentioned, though, that a wickedly sharp double play enacted by the Braves' crisp infield yesterday was worth the price of admission. I can't be bothered to find out the names of the players involved, and no game recaps seem to mention the play. But you know what it's like, and in a way, who the players are doesn't matter right now, does it? The ball bounced toward the shortstop, who, with grapevine steps to his right, snapped up the ball, whirling in one smooth motion toward the second baseman, who stood straddling his bag, catching and leaping and throwing all at once as the runner slid toward him, zinging the ball to first where it was caught with a stomp in the heartbeat before the hitter reached the base... Could have been any players. Could have been any team. Could have been any year. So graceful was the play, so meticulously did it hang together, that it seemed as if the opposition between the teams had given way to graceful cooperation, as if the two teams had become one machine, precise, moving in concert. The miracle of a play like this is that it was routine. Commonplace. Garden-variety. A jewel taken completely for granted in the beautiful game. Though I seem to be falling down on the job as a sports fan just now, between here and New Jersey, between home and the office, at night while I sleep, sometimes, messages come in on my cell phone of the latest scores, reminding me that my Sox are playing again, that soon, they'll take the field at Fenway, that soon, summer will be here full of the smells and soft breezes today's picture conjures up, that soon, this too shall pass. And baseball will remain.

2005-03-10T09:34:00.000-05:00

Today's Spring Training Pic

(Dirt Dogs) Steve Silva (hush up and listen!) has an excellent piece up on Boston.com about "Tommy" the Phillies fan heckling his team in Spring Training. A quintissential spring training moment. And, uh...Boston.com? If you ever decide Silva needs a backup, or, maybe you just want to add to your blogging team...heh heh...

2005-03-09T21:11:00.000-05:00

To See or Not to See

There's something about Mer and me. Whether on the SGMB or in any of our Three Chicks Talk Football episodes, she and I seem reactive, somehow. We get each other's attention. We usually find ourselves duking it out on whatever topic is at hand. It's nothing new to me--it's happened to me with other people. And I genuinely like Mer, don't get me wrong. Well, this topic is no different. It began on a comments thread on Surviving Grady, and wound its way to Mer's blog and now finds itself on mine, and as usual, Mer and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum. Mer says:

Legions of Sox fans have not forgiven Fallon and the Farrelly Brothers for thrusting themselves into the middle of such an important and personal moment, insisting that they will not see Fever Pitch. Me? I'll be at the theater on opening night.

Like I said...opposite ends of the spectrum. Personally, I haven't been very impressed with the Farrelly Brothers' movies. I've been amused at some of the New England and Bostonian references in some of their movies, but frankly, I only saw Stuck On You because I heard Tom Brady had a cameo. The only memorable moment from that movie was when a guy at a bar says "Hey Boston boys...say hi to Billy Buckner for me." And Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear give him the conjoined beatdown. Otherwise, the movie was one long string of sight gags punctuated by some pointless, stilted dialogue. Their only remotely enjoyable movie was There's Something About Mary...and that was how many years ago? So if this movie was about, say, the Cubs or Dodgers or even Arsenal, the soccer team the Nicholas Hornby novel was originally written about, the Farrelly Brothers' role in it would still make me wary. Next you have the two co-stars. I don't think you could scrape up two more irritating actors to put together in one movie, at least for my taste. Well, maybe a deadlier combo to me would be Drew Barrymore with Nicolas Cage rather than Jimmy Fallon, but being less hated in my universe than Nicolas Cage is much like being the world's tallest midget. I have shared my hatred of Jimmy Fallon before, but allow me to bestow upon you a bit of the hateration I have for Ms. Barrymore: there are not enough synonyms for "annoying" to describe my reaction when I encounter her. I especially can't stand the slack-jawed way she talks. I have no doubt she's a perfectly respectable woman, but as an actress? Ugh. Get her away from me. She's like fingernails on a chalkboard. And then, finally, we get to the subject. Which is problematic in its own right. Frankly, I have been less than pleased with portrayals of Sox fans in the national media, on television, in books...and I have little faith in either the directors or the actors involved in this project that they will avoid all the tired old stereotypes of Red Sox fandom. Some people on the MB have said seeing the trailers for the movie changed their minds, in part because of a scene in which Barrymore says, "It's only a game" and receives a comical reaction. Honestly? I've been on the giving end of such a reaction...in real life. Why I would feel the need to pay $9.50 to go see two of the most annoying actors of all time enact it on-screen, most likely with the terrible Boston accents that afflict seemingly all non-native actors, is beyond me. There's also apparently a moving shot of David Ortiz crossing the plate that intrigued some of my buddies on the MB. I can see that whenever I want, too--either live or on one of my many DVDs. But in order to get those shots for this movie, the quality of which I remain skeptical about, two of the most annoying actors of all time took up two seats in prime sections at seemingly dozens of games during the season. Every time I saw them sitting there, all I could think of was that two real fans would've refinanced their houses to have those tickets. Think Fever Pitch will address that aspect of being a Sox fan? Not from what I saw. Every time, the terrible twosome were in primo field boxes. Then there are the movie's most egregious offenses, at least outside of whatever it has committed to celluloid. Thing #1: Is twofold. Jimmy Fallon became a bandwagon-jumping pseudo fan after playing a Sox fan apparently made him think he really was one, and as such, used his celebrity, such as it is, to show up on the Green Monster during Game 1 of the World Series. Again, a seat that could have and should have been taken up by a real fan. Thing #2: As part of the shooting of the movie, Fallon and Barrymore (have I mentioned that they're two of the most irritating actors in history?) actually went out onto the field and made out for a while in the midst of the Sox' celebration. In doing this, they finally crossed that line between simply observing the Sox-fan phenomenon and violating it. Here's another thing to consider, if you're going to see this film: its portrayal of the World Series cannot be in any way accurate or realistic, because at that actual moment, were any actual Sox fans out on the field playing tonsil hockey? No. They were weeping, falling to their knees, calling Dad, calling Mom, saying a prayer, perhaps playing tonsil hockey in the stands...but out on the field? They would've been arrested. And yet there were the terrible twosome. Tongues firmly implanted in one another's pharynxes. Assholes. The point has been raised, thought, that since nothing could ruin the World Series win for a Sox fan, any true Sox fan won't let this transgression mar their outlook on the film. Okay, then. I guess that's why I outlined all my other objections to it first. I'm sorry, but I simply do not want to see this film, for many reasons, but above all because I don't want any of my money going to reward the filmmakers and actors who were a thorn in Fenway's side all last summer and a slap in the face in the fall.

2005-03-08T17:17:00.000-05:00

Out of the Closet

My true relationship with Keith Foulke, REVEALED! by Sam, the same lovely goddess who designed...well...everything else visual on this entire freakin' site.

2005-03-08T13:26:00.000-05:00

Happy When Skies Are Grey

(Boston.com) Another Ramirez swings away. I love the motion of this picture, the way the blur on film conveys all of a hitter's power and energy. Slowing time shows the violence of the game. Things have not been going so well lately, but win or lose (even to the MFY), spring training reminds me that another Sox season awaits, to "repair these losses, and be a blessing to us..."

2005-03-06T13:30:00.000-05:00

Today's Spring Training Pic

(Redsox.com: The kid was randomly selected from the crowds at Ft. Myers to play catch with Trot) I am pining for baseball. Not meaningless, lackadaisical spring baseball but real, contentious, competitive Fenway baseball, the kind where every event in the game is greeted with that beautiful "YAAAAAAAAAH!" (Joe Torre apparently shares the opinion that Sox fans won't care about baseball anymore. Shame on him--he of all people should know better). Last night my friends and I went out to a Chinese restaurant in Somerville. That Chinese restaurant was showing the Sox game. I sat and squinted to see it. Michele, next to me, tried to say something to me, and I didn't hear her. "She's, uh...effectively out of the conversation," Steve told her. I ranted about the fact that the Sox and Reds were effectively wearing the same uniforms, making it that much more difficult to understand what was going on from across the room (today, I am closer to the TV and the Sox are wearing their home whites against the Phillies). My cell phone has begun to beep spastically every few minutes with updated Sox scores. Manny was up to bat just now in the game against the Phillies. Steve and I watched attentively, wondering what Manny would do. "He'll probably let the guy walk him," I said, noting a count of 3-1. As Manny took a strike, I said, "eh, or maybe he'll strike out cause he doesn't feel like running the bases." Manny snuck a seeing-eye single through the left side of the infield, moving Papi up to second. "Oh, he wants to keep Papi company," Steve said. Such is our faith in Manny Ramirez--he does what he feels like, not what he can. This essentially stems from an assumption that Manny would hit a grand slam onto the Mass Pike at every at bat...if he felt like it. And look at that picture, today's picture, which I'm getting to belatedly. Look at the expression on the kid's face. That's something I'd insult with words, so just look at it. The World Series? Important. But in some ways, irrelevant.

2005-03-04T16:17:00.000-05:00

Today's Spring Training Pic

(Boston.com) Though there were a number of prettier pictures in Boston.com's photo gallery, I chose this picture of fans watching last night's opening day game for several reasons. First, it's intergenerational, which is important in Red Sox Nation. Second, it shows that though there is baseball being played on a smooth green field, the weather is still far from forgiving. But the real capper for me was that the fans are draped in green--the color of spring, of summer, of new life, even as they bundle up against the cold... It's somewhat similar to the experience Stephen and I had last night watching the game at Chili's. We were in mid-season form already--"Ahhh, come on!! This guy sucks!!"--but unfortunately, the players weren't. Still, we craned our necks at shots of Papi in the dugout and talked about the pitching staff as if it were chattel and at one point, Steve groaned, "I can't believe we had the bases loaded and all we got was one run." Prompting me to groan back, "What else is new." It was jarring to adjust our eyes from the blazing green of the field on TV, spread out for the camera like Elysium, like some unattainable promised land, to the brutal grey truth of a March night in New England as we left sometime around the fourth inning. And yet simply having seen baseball awakened some heretofore hibernating part of us...that imaginative eye opened to a vision of heavenly summer twilight...

2005-03-04T12:30:00.000-05:00

When Worlds Collide

The way Millar sees it, he doesn't have Alex Rodriguez's Inspector Gadget tools, Gabe Kapler's slingshot right arm, or Dave Roberts's pistons. What he has is the ability to help turn a band of cowboys and idiots into a symphony. "I'm not blessed with any ability that is outside of the norm," he said. "All the tools they talk about, like I always say, I don't have a toolbox, but I do love this game more than anybody. "Manny can hit the ball anywhere he wants. My tool? I love my teammates. I love my clubhouse. I love just hanging out, and soaking all of this in, because it's such a short career. "This is a dream. You have to be thankful and appreciate this. And I don't think enough guys do. You're in this little fantasy world. Any chance you get, you've got to have fun, and I think that's what I do. How can you have a bad day in the major leagues? Seriously, how can guys come in miserable and angry?"

From the Globe, via Hoos On First. It also seems that there has beenwidespread remorse over the hounding of Millar that occurred last year after it was discovered that he's having twins after his wife's struggles with infertility, including a miscarriage last year that coincided with Millar's slump. As it so happens, Sheila, or rather, her blogroll, has turned me on to an entire world of blogs by those struggling with infertility. I have actually also wondered why Millar and his wife didn't have kids yet, and if infertility was to blame. And having been following, laughing and crying with infertility bloggers for months now, my heart goes out to Kevin and his wife. Two worlds of my recent interest have collided, and I'm very sorry they have. Meanwhile, I'd like to rather obnoxiously point out that I defended Kevin at the time...okay, well, at least that time.

2005-03-03T10:53:00.000-05:00

Today's Spring Training Pic

(Boston.com) Not chosen necessarily because of its quality as a photograph, but rather because of its newsworthiness. Also because it shows our guys in suits, which is a rare and special sight indeed... They clean up nice, don't they? Well...except Millar. Although it may just be the "Road Warrior" facial expression here...

2005-03-03T09:11:00.000-05:00

Another One of Those Zeitgeist Posts

SABR. Yes, that sound you hear is the opening of a can of worms. YFSF has an excellent post today concerning some revisions and retractions by Bill James about sabermetric theory. Whoa, put the gun down. Let me make what is sure to be the first of several official disclaimers:

Official Disclaimer #1: In no way am I saying that Bill James' statements invalidate SABR as a whole.

But what they do is open up perhaps a tiny space where so-called "traditionalists" and so-called "sabermetricians" can find common ground, or at least establish a demilitarized zone. What I mind most intriguing about James' statements is that where he is questioning or retracting theories, his reasoning is that there is no valid, infallible theory to support them. And so like many points of controversy, the argument to be had here, (or, to call a spade a spade like Sam did, the "Electronic Catfight") is essentially moot.

Official Disclaimer #2: Note: "Moot" does not mean "meaningless." Look it up.

No one can prove that there is no such thing as a clutch hitter. No one has a compelling argument, according to James,

Official Disclaimer #3: Yes, I realize that this is merely James' opinion. And yes, I realize sabermetricians may be prepared to dismiss James at this point, even if he has been a major figure in SABR.

...that players do not get "hot" or "cold". In other words, baseball in the end is just like the rest of the world--people can feel strongly one way or the other about how it works, but there are certain things no one can no for sure. It's like debating whether there's a God or not; it's a chicken and the egg question; it's a matter of opinion. Frankly, I lack the aptitude for or interest in mathematics and statistics to use SABR. I like baseball, and I can write. That is all I can do. Good, bad or indifferent, them's the facts about me, and I don't think I've ever claimed otherwise--or questioned anyone who's not interested in my particular brand of observation. I think that some of us look at baseball as a literary or cultural phenomenon. Some of us look at it as a sociological concept. Some of us just like to have fun with it. What I don't like or understand sometimes is the seeming contention that those of us who follow baseball in different ways are somehow lesser observers of the game because we don't use a particular method of analysis to observe it--or observe it from a particular perspective. To me, and it seems, to James, there are really no right or wrong answers when it comes to the more nebulous aspects of the game. And I admire him for coming out and saying that. I admire him for not being an absolutist. What do you think?

2005-03-02T14:44:00.000-05:00

Today's Spring Training Pic

(Boston.com, Davis) Sox minor league righty Anibel Sanchez strikes a balletic pose during muddy workouts last week. I didn't know much about Sanchez before seeing this picture, so I Googled him, finding this article on Baseball Analysis, which has the following to say about him in August 2004:

Righthander Anibal Sanchez could become this year's version of Hanley Ramirez in 2002: a Latin American prospect playing his way into the dreams of Red Sox Nation for short-season Lowell. Sanchez continued his dominance last night against New Jersey, striking out 10 in 4 2/3 scoreless innings before he was removed because of a pitch count. The strikeouts extended his New York-Penn League-leading total to 94 in 70 innings. Sanchez, signed out of Venezuela, uses a mid- to low-90s fastball and has shown an ability to throw it to both sides of the plate for strikes. He's 3-4, 1.92 and has allowed just 42 hits in 70 innings (.165 opponent average) while walking 28. "He's a quality pitcher with good life through the zone," Tri-City manager Greg Langbehn said. "He's shown a plus changeup at times. His breaking pitch is his biggest drawback now, but he's young and could get that with more experience."

A perfect spring training picture, showing another aspect of the game unique to the early season: the appearance of minor-leaguers and journeymen, those not quite ready for prime-time, to be assessed by coaches and fans. What I find most intriguing about this picture, besides the unfamiliar face I felt compelled to get to know, is Sanchez' pose. It is graceful and delicate, bringing out all the unnatural arcs required of the body in order to execute a pitch, showing just how demanding and difficult it is as a profession. It shows the anaerobic type of tensile strength baseball players must possess, which is of a far different and more nuanced nature than that required by any other sport. Sanchez, with his pointed toe, arched back and perfectly angled arm, shows why baseball is known as "The Beautiful Game"...

2005-03-01T11:15:00.000-05:00

Doppelganger

I can no longer ignore this either-- Via Kristen, these are images of Jason Varitek's brother, Justin Varitek. See if you can tell which is which in this photo (also stolen from Kristen): No, we are not making this up.

2005-03-01T10:51:00.000-05:00

Arena of the Absurd

Okay, and now I find myself writing about something else I'd made a solemn promise to myself never to touch. I'm even losing credibility within my own head. It's awful. So this whole "JeterCenter" idea. My general reaction to it has been "Whatever." And I'm going to leave it at that. "Whatever." The end. But, of course, since it's Boston vs. New York, it can't just be stupid in a fun, if slightly nasty, way. No, it's got to be stupid in an ingrown, cluster-fuck, snowballing-idiocy kind of way. In that Dr. Charles Steinberg's "let's not hand out the rings on Opening Day so no one's feelings will get hurt" kind of way. Honestly, I think the best thing would have been to let the guy have the name. Christ, it's just for a day, and if the guy wants to pay money to salvage what's left of his Yankee pride, I say let's laugh all the way to the bank. I think we can all handle "the JeterCenter" for 24 measly hours. No one's going to call it that anyway; when's the last time you heard any normal person adhering strictly to the name-sponsorship of anything? Does anyone say, "The Taco Bell Ford F150 Shell Gasoline Annual Super Bowl Halftime Show"? Fuck no. They just say "halftime show". But, no. No, there will be none of this "fun" here. Apparently, Fleet Center authorities, saying the name fell under their prohibitions against "vulgar and obscene" names, decided to block the sale.

"We decided that all the names had to be rated G, and this name was determined to be obscene and vulgar," said Richard A. Krezwick, president and chief executive of the FleetCenter, which has auctioned off daily naming rights to about a dozen companies since its contract with the bank was terminated. "We were afraid of the volume of phone calls bogging down our switchboard, the number of e-mails clogging our portal and the potential graffiti on the side of our building."

Oh, my aching ass.

2005-03-01T08:36:00.000-05:00

Today's Spring Training Pic

(Boston.com) Warrants no further description...

2005-02-28T10:40:00.000-05:00

Today's Spring Training Pic

(Boston.com, Jim Davis) Portraits within a portrait. This picture has a very painterly feel to it. I love that the ball Arroyo is tossing up and down is captured in midair. Ortiz fades slightly into the background, but he's still recognizeable; Arroyo's features stand out sharply, and his expression is intriguing and enigmatic. The photographer in the middle is faceless. Arroyo is, once again, the real centerpiece of this photo. It seems some of Jim Davis' best photos this Spring have been those preoccupied by the string-bean pitcher, not sure why. But in this photo in particular, from his crisp, clean uniform to his slender physique to the tufts of unruly curls beneath his baseball cap, Arroyo seems like the embodiment of everything fresh and young about the Sox in a fresh, young season...

2005-02-26T11:04:00.000-05:00

Too Cool for School

Though he appears not to have chosen to share it with us, Surviving Grady's Red appeared in a roundtable chat on Firebrand. My personal highlight?

Red: I think the surprise "hero" of the 2005 season is gonna be BK Kim.

Red, you do us proud.

2005-02-26T09:29:00.000-05:00

Today's Spring Training Pic

(Red Sox Official Site) I love that they're carrying their shoes. I don't know why, but it's a tiny detail of this picture that just makes it. I also love that there's a photographer flanking them on either side, one a still photographer and the other a motion cameraman. They're surrounded by scrutiny on all sides, at all times--visible, palpable scrutiny. And yet look at them, as the truly extravagant Florida sun gushes over them; the bright smile on Curt Schilling's face, the smirk on Matt Clement in background, the contemplative yet serene cast of Bill Mueller; they are a peaceful and happy procession. Bill carries bats, several of the others carry shoes; they look almost allegorical, representatives of their guild...

2005-02-25T13:32:00.000-05:00

Hilarious

Turns out Yankees fans DO have a sense of humor. This post by YF over at Yanks Fan vs. Sox Fan yesterday completely cracked me up:

Oh, how cute. We hope SF has plenty of tissues on hand for himself and his compatriots. And it's of course nice to see that he's gotten a head start on the season, and is already smearing this year's Yankee squad for...good behavior! Yeah, it'll hurt. For like 9 minutes, or however long the Fenway genies can draw out their little ceremony. We're sure Affleck will be involved. Won't that be nice? Anyhow, while the Sox are out there weeping and calling each other crazy idiots and pretending Stephen King isn't creeping everyone out, the Yanks will be back in their clubhouse, watching video or whatever it is they do before games. A-Rod can hit the stairmaster. Jorge can call his kids. Glanville can negotiate long-term lease options on high value Philadelphia commercial properties. And then, after all of the bullshit, they will walk out onto the field and begin a season long ass-kicking of your Red Sox, who are TOTALLY DOOMED. That's right, DOOMED.

DOOMED. That's right, DOOMED. Feel free to post multiple "LOLs" in response to this. Here or over there is fine by me.

2005-02-25T12:18:00.000-05:00

Today's Spring Training Pic

(Boston.com) The same photographer, Jim Davis (presumably no relation) took this picture, and the one I chose yesterday; I'm rapidly becoming a fan of his. Once again, the picture is exceptionally composed. The eye travels a column of shadows to the sole standout color--the red of Bronson Arroyo's jersey, a color that Davis seems to have been enjoying quite a bit. As with the picture of Manny I selected yesterday, the pose in which Davis has captured the player is invocative, symbolic. Arroyo crouches to autograph something for a fan, presumably only crouching to get a better handle on whatever it is that he's signing, but in that pose he takes on a greater significance--a Red Sox player humbling himself before the Boston fans, as has happened so often on a more figurative scale. But the fans, in turn, are visible only through the photographer's phenomenal use of light--as shadows on the ground. As much as Arroyo strikes a humble pose, the fans are still invisible, immaterial--yet always there, soft ghostly shadows surrounding their beloved...

2005-02-25T10:52:00.000-05:00

Roids, Rants and Rage, Part 2

2. Steroids and the state of baseball A few weeks back, in a comments thread, Tom and I shot off a first volley about steroids, and then I stalled by promising a post on the matter in the future. So here it is. Please refer to yesterday's posting of an important definition before reading this, or at least before dashing to this comments thread to flame me. A further disclaimer: no one in their right mind can say that baseball shouldn't have a tougher steroid-testing policy. No one in their right mind can say that the league shouldn't take steps to prevent unfair advantages between players, especially of a technological nature. Technological advantages (unlike advantages according to race, background, position, etc.--there are any number of advantages and imbalances between players that are far less quantifiable), be they equipment that is not standard (corked bats, doctored balls, etc.), or biochemical training aids such as steroids and human growth hormone should not be permitted. There need to be tougher rules, stricter testing, more oversight by the league. They can look to the NFL's testing system as a model. And I believe this will happen. However. The thing I take issue with is the attitude expressed by Tom specifically and elsewhere in general that:

....with all this steroid crap, I'm not sure how much longer I'll be a baseball fan. In all seriousness, I don't think things can get any better than last year. I'll always be a big Red Sox fan, but if it comes out that all these superstars have been juicing, it's really going to make me think twice about following baseball for 6 months. I don't think any of the current Red Sox do steroids, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if Nomar used them. The thing that will make me stop watching won't be the players, per se, but the league. MLB knows this has been going on, and they let it happen. They let Sosa, McGwire, and Bonds rewrite the record books and piss all over anyone who played the game properly. Hard to support something like that. For me, anyway.

Okay. Tom is purely within his rights as a baseball fan to decide whether or not to purchase a league's product, be it through tickets, television, merchandise or online use. Tom absolutely has a right to his opinion and there are many who agree with him. I am not one of them. Yes, I am disappointed that several of the league's top sluggers are found to have been cheaters. I am disappointed that records have been broken, awards won, by those who have later been found to have used unfair advantages to break them. I believe that the people Tom mentioned who fit that category should be stripped of their awards, records, titles, and banned from the league. However, where Tom and I fundamentally disagree is that he sees baseball as a product: he sees the league as a company and baseball as what they're hawking, and he's not going to buy it anymore if he feels it's been a poor one. Which, again, is completely fine. But from my perspective, baseball is a concept--as I stated yesterday, a fiction. And precisely its appeal, to me, is that it contains a vision of perfection that absolutely no one will ever reach. Look at the early 20th century, and the Black Sox scandal. Can you imagine where we'd be now if everyone had thought like Tom back then? Because the famous "Eight Men Out" were unethical, should fans have renounced the game entirely? Should no one be a fan of the Cincinnati Reds any longer because Pete Rose gambled, and then lied about it? Should no one be a Red Sox fan because of their history of institutionalized racism? Whenever I think about baseball's most recent scandal, I think of my friend Kellie, and how many rude questions she got when the clergy child-molestation scandals roared through the Archdiocese of Boston like a brush fire, all of them along the lines of: How can you be a Catholic anymore? Kellie's essential response was one I admire: Because priests are not Jesus. Like the priests, bishops, and archbishops of the Catholic clergy scandal, baseball players throughout history have been incredibly imperfect beings, as have owners, managers, coaches...and fans. There isn't a single person without sin in the religion that is baseball--but like Christianity, baseball is a process of aspiring toward unattainable perfection. In baseball's case, the perfection aspired to is that of a golden past or a glorious future which do not exist and never have. Along the way, there have been all kinds of things wrong with baseball--steroids are just one of them. What about the number of players who do drugs, who beat and cheat on their wives, who use women on the road, who act like spoiled brats when they don't get their way though they're being paid millions, who assault one another and fans? Are we going to stop following that higher concept because of the many failures to reach it? Or is baseball, as Bryant Gumbel once put it, "a love"? In my life, the answer's an emphatic "yes". Baseball is as close as I get to religion, and its failures are something I'm prepared to accept--in fact, something I accepted long ago as beside the point.

2005-02-24T14:51:00.000-05:00

Today's Spring Training Pic

(Boston.com) Look for this to become a regular feature here... Spring training is a visual experience. Unlike the dog days of August, where the sound of a radio broadcast of a game melts perfectly into a lazy scene of ice cream cones or lounging on a beach or porch, Spring Training carries with it all of our yearnings for warm weather, green grass, bright colors, bright sunlight, the appearance of our players. Spring Training raises a need to see among baseball fans, especially those in the still-wintry North. Hence this new feature of mine. Also, frankly, I love photographs, and there's a visually-oriented part of me that doesn't get a lot of exercise in my life of words, words, words. But when I love a picture, I love a picture. Generally all it takes for me to love a picture is the fact that it compels me to stare at it for grotesquely long periods of time. Often I'll simply jump at a picture, "right-clicking" on the mouse or marking the page of a book or rushing to buy a magazine or poster, without really knowing why it compels me. Then, later, I'm able to piece together why it jumped out at me. This picture fits all that criteria. First, there's the general composition, with Manny framed within the picture by the netting of the batting cage. Endlessly contemplate-able (not a word. I know.). There's also something so vivid about it--you can smell the grass and dirt, you can feel a soft breeze moving past the lens. Manny himself is frozen in a great pose here, with RAMIREZ standing out starkly white against his jersey, his hair squiggling out beneath his cap, posed with his bat at the exact high point of his follow-through. Manny is almost a symbol of himself here. The casual stance of Manny's teammates behind the cages, their red jerseys perfectly accenting his. It's got the feel of a medeival painting--tiny minor figures contemplating the larger main subject in some way. And behind them even further, the small crowd of people gathered to watch the batting practice. It adds depth to the shot in a "zig-zag" line--the eye travels first from Manny to his teammates and then to the crowd and back again. But the ultimate appeal of this photo is the glowering, iron-grey sky behind it all. What a savage color! You can smell that electric tingle from the air before the rains. The grey sky tells you it's spring, not mid-summer; though the midsummer flora (in the form of grass) and fauna (in the form of baseball players and their admirers) have begun to appear, the weather remains volatile and capricious...

2005-02-24T14:33:00.000-05:00

The Spirit of Collaboration...

Appears to be sweeping the sports-blog world. Rich Lederer and Bryan Smith have joined forces to create Baseball Analysts, which looks to be an exciting venture, to say the least. Their first co-written article series, Who Was Your Favorite Player Growing Up? is a great read in its own right, and also introduces an interesting new meme into the blogosphere (my answers are in italics):

1. Who was your favorite player when you were growing up? Wade Boggs. 2. Why? My tastes were (and probably still are) very simple. It seemed like every time I went to the ballpark, Wade Boggs would hit a home run. I also liked the energetic way he played third base. For reasons I can't remember now, at the time I thought third base was the most important position on the field. I was seven. 3. What do you most remember about that player? I remember his face on the screen at Fenway, my parents pointing and saying, 'there's your guy'! I remember, as I posted when Boggs was elected to the HOF:
a ball, rising, arcing, rocketing, shooting out from the tiny faraway dot that was home plate, into a twilight sky, to fall into the net above the Monster, where behind it the moose on the Moose Head Beer sign smirked cartoonishly... I can close my eyes and see it, frozen, mid-trajectory, can see the grey-blue-pink color of the late afternoon sky with the lights just coming on at Fenway behind it, and the Citgo sign ... A ball hit by Wade Boggs.
4. Did you ever come into contact with him? No. 5. Do you have any special memorabilia (baseball card, autograph, etc.)? Several baseball cards of him and the Rocket, and many of the other Sox from the late '80s and early '90s.

I'm looking forward to checking in with this site from now on. And thought it's all still very preliminary, possibly doing some collaboration of my own this baseball season.

2005-02-24T10:08:00.000-05:00

Roids, Rants and Rage (Part 1)

opinion: n 1: a personal belief or judgment that is not founded on proof or certainty; "my opinion differs from yours"; "what are your thoughts on Haiti?" [syn: sentiment, persuasion, view, thought] 2: a belief or sentiment shared by most people; the voice of the people; "he asked for a poll of public opinion" [syn: public opinion, popular opinion, vox populi] 3: a message expressing a belief about something; the expression of a belief that is held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof; "his opinions appeared frequently on the editorial page" [syn: view] 4: the legal document stating the reasons for a judicial decision; "opinions are usually written by a single judge" [syn: legal opinion, judgment, judgement] 5: the reason for a court's judgment (as opposed to the decision itself) [syn: ruling] 6: a vague idea in which some confidence is placed; "his impression of her was favorable"; "what are your feelings about the crisis?"; "it strengthened my belief in his sincerity"; "I had a feeling that she was lying" [syn: impression, feeling, belief, notion] --Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary, © 2002 Merriam-Webster, Inc.

Just so we're all on the same page before I begin the discussion. I swore several weeks ago that I would not give certain subjects attention on this blog. As I sensed would probably happen at the time, I have therefore made myself a liar, since I will of course be giving them attention. They are:

1. The Sox-Yankees rivalry 2. Steroids and the state of baseball

But the least I can do, while opening myself up to the slings and arrows of "If blah blah frickin' blah, then why are you writing about it?" accusations, is gather them all into one (or two, depending on how long I drone on here) zeitgeist-busting post, and from here on simply refer to this post or posts and have done with it. So. 1. The Sox-Yankees Rivalry. Oh, dear God. Almost exactly fifty percent of the time, I feel that the Sox-Yankees rivalry is a large part of what makes being a Sox fan great. I see the sniping beginning between players, management, owners and of course, especially fans before Spring Training is even fully underway, and feel a certain satisfaction, a certain world without end, Amen. The other fifty percent of the time is a mixture of two much more negative feelings: Jesus Christ I hate the Yankees and What a pain in the ass this all is. What prompted me to talk about this, and what actually ends up encapsulating it pretty well, is the comments thread from yesterday on Bronx Banter, in which I was, admittedly, a frequent and obnoxious participant. The real nut of the whole thing, I think, was the exchange between me and Alex M:

Alex M: Thanks for playing Beth, but bo matter how hard you defend your beloved players, they're still a bunch of lowlife punks in my book...and a guarantee it that the rest fo the baseball world is seeing it for themselves too. oh, and one more thing: The piling on on Arod by Boston is only making him more beloved in NYC. I guarantee you that he gets a standing ovation from Yankee fans on Opening Day, if only to prove to the RSN that he is OUR Yankee. I'm not so sure I would have believed that had he not been made the personal whipping boy of the entire Red Sox organization. Me: you say "thanks for playing" as if how you see red sox players is going to affect how i see them. think what you want! i'm just stating things as i see them. in any event, i don't think either of us has any business speaking for "the rest of the baseball world." [re the whole "A-Rod will be beloved" deal] that's pretty sad, then. the perception of a yankee in boston is what makes yankees fans love him? who's preoccupied with who? AlexM: No, Yankee fans will love Arod this year and greet him as a hero because he had arguably the best season of any Yankee in 2004 AND he is being piled on by a bunch of players from an opposing team, whether it is Boston, Detroit or Atlanta makes no difference. What really is sad is that you have to defend an insufferable loudmouth, a mediocre first baseman and corner outfielder that are platoon players at best, and a releif pitcher who's spent most of the last 2 years on the DL and has never even thrown a pitcher in anger for the Sox. None -- Schilling included -- can hold Arod's jock strap in terms of talent, skill, stats, and career. THAT is sad! Last I checked, I'm not disgussing this on a Red Sox blog. You are the one spending your day on a Yankees blog. Talk about pre-occupation... done.

After this exchange, I had two thoughts. One was a pretty much unwriteable amalgam of anger, annoyance and the need to further state my case, and the other was a completely repulsive feeling of satisfaction, a "Got 'im!, because when a Yankees fan drops his holier-than-thou attitude and starts blatantly name-calling, you know you've gotten under his skin. And isn't that what this is all about? Well, okay, probably not. But I personally think we need to embrace these reptilian feelings. Because they're happening anyway, whether we admit it or not. What drives me completely nuts about all the sniping between the Sox and Yankees is precisely that, the posturing attitude sometimes taken that it's the other side's problem, the fault of the other players and fans, the way some people, even as they take potshots, walk around acting like to even acknowledge that you are "preoccupied" by a team you share a century-long rivalry with is wrong. Why is it supposed to make the some people "better" somehow because they don't acknowledge that maybe their team's relationship with the other and vice versa is a little different than with other teams? I don't get it. But that seems to evolve, always, into the content of the argument--You're obsessed with us! No, you're obsessed with us!" Why can't we just drop all the pretense and say, "You suck. No, you suck!" the way God intended? Now, I have deliberately kept the references in the above paragraph neutral since I am aware that this kind of pretense is held on both sides. But I'd be completely lying to you (and, worse, not embracing my reptilian brain as I encouraged earlier) if I didn't say that most of it from my perspective comes from the Yankees' side. In my experience, the main difference between me and Yankees fans seems to be that they a) think they can know a ballplayer's off-field "character" and "class," whatever that means, and b) feel qualified to judge him by it. Thus the kind of quasi-moral scuffle that often takes place, especially in the masturbatory halls of the Internet, between Yankees fans and, well, me, but I would presume at least some other Red Sox fans: not only are our players beneath contempt as moral beings, so are we for even liking / defending their actions. Come off it, guys. First of all, none of us know what either Curt Schilling or A-Rod is really like behind closed doors, so saying whether one is [adjective] and the other is [adjective] on a personal level is pointless. They are characters in a fiction, a fiction that exists only on a surface level, and so applying one's own personal morality to it is pointless. Let's get one thing straight: Yankees fans defend A-Rod because he is a Yankee. Red Sox fans defend Curt Schilling because he is a Red Sox. The end. To say otherwise is to be so disingenuous it gives me fits. A side-note about Schilling, by the way: so often at BB and other places I encounter Yankees fans, there seems to be a fixation on getting me, as a Sox fan, to admit that Curt Schilling, though a [positive adjective] pitcher, is a [pejorative noun.] Maybe he is. I don't know. But in the public fiction we are following, from my perspective, Curt Schilling is a hero. Someone who put his body on the line to give the audience rooting for the Sox a happy ending. And personally, I don't care if he's a Christian conservative, which in another public fiction (that of politics) is my archenemy; I don't care, personally, if the guy goes home and drinks babies' blood at an altar to Ba'al and personally campaigns for Ralph Nader. His life as a political or spiritual entity has nothing to do with him as a baseball character, and therefore, is irrelevant to me. And within the realm of baseball, I enjoy the fact that he is outspoken. I enjoy the fact that he embraces being a public figure with gusto. More than just about anyone else, he seems to understand fully the fact that he is a participant in fiction, and in many aspects of his interaction with fans and media has been exactly the kind of savvy, entertaining character Boston needs and appreciates. And he's done Yankees fans a favor, too--he's given them a nice villain, something would have been sorely lacking once Pedro Martinez left the stage. I fail utterly to understand why, if that is my opinion, my preference, my view on things, anyone feels justified in having a problem with it. But ultimately, though I get pretty pissed off sometimes along the way, this bickering, too, is part of the entertainment, part of the fiction, part of the culture and ethos, and often the more extreme proponents of each opposing vision are those who have bought into it most fully--which is what needs to happen if this lovely snake-eating-itself dance of the Sox and Yankees is to continue. And, I want it to continue. Because really, in the end it's all just so much fun I can hardly stand it. Tomorrow: Steroids and the state of baseball.

2005-02-24T08:41:00.000-05:00

You Can't Tease Us Like This

According to the Globe, Mad Mike shot a home movie of last season that blows all the other films about the World Series out of the water:

Sox manager Terry Francona said, "It was great. Tremendous. It was funny, touching. I remember getting this thing in the mail and wondering what it was. I threw it in [the VCR] and then I realized what it was because he had walked around with that camera for so long. I just thought the whole thing was touching. It was comical at times. And it showed a lot about how the guys felt about each other. I thought he did a really good job. Unlike the NESN one or the one by MLB, this was one guy carrying around his camera, talking to his teammates, and that's what made it so special. I enjoyed it and my kids enjoyed it."

But, of course:

Timlin's film is not for the consumption of nosy reporters. Even Sox chairman Tom Werner was rebuffed by the director/reliever. Werner, a veteran of many successful television programs, said, "I tried to get Mike to let us put it on NESN, but he turned me down." "It's personal," reasoned Timlin.

Great. This is just like elementary school, when people would form some super secret cool kids only club...and then yammer on and on about their cool super secret activities, passwords, code words, etc. in front of non-cool kids, because what is a super secret cool kids only club if the not-cool kids don't want to join? I'd do just about anything to see this film. I'm sure most Sox fans feel the same. If they don't want to let us see it, though, that's their right. But why bring it up, then? Why wave it in front of our faces? Jerks. Thanks a lot, Red Sox. I will now lead a life of torture just knowing this thing exists.

2005-02-23T11:32:00.000-05:00

Just when I thought it was safe...

...to get myself psyched up to post again, Sam goes and pwns us all.

2005-02-22T16:41:00.000-05:00

Ring in the New Season

Ah, the power of the Internet...

2005-02-22T08:37:00.000-05:00

Astute

It's funny man but I've lived in your country for ten years now and I've noticed that your media never plays these kinds of games with its political leaders...you know, manipulative questions, pointed discussions, relentless badgering...only its sports figures. Shows you democracy ain't what it's cracked up to be. --Commenter on Bronx Banter

2005-02-21T19:10:00.000-05:00

Papi Pajama Party

Who else? Annette. Right now, as I post this adorable picture of Big Papi (see also, Curse Of) at spring training, the FOX cameras are zooming in on his hands, and Joe Buck is remarking on how softly the big man cradles the bat. This morning a coworker left a present on my desk, out of nowhere--a huge, fuzzy Red Sox hooded sweatshirt. After a draining weekend, this--adorable pictures, warm fluffy jammies, cuddling with the boyfriend, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, the Sox trashing the Cards on NESN--are exactly what I need. Clever insights into the tough issues are hereby postponed until tomorrow.

2005-02-21T12:20:00.000-05:00

Here's More

I found something else I wrote a little while ago that I can post today. It elaborates on an earlier point I made in this post, where I talk about baseball as having an advantage over football in terms of its language. It also hints toward my feelings on the disillusionment caused by the steroid issue this year and the supposed disillusionment of Red Sox fans now that the Sox have reached the Promised Land. I'll explore both these issues further as Spring Training--the best time to contemplate the game as a whole and your team as a singular entity before getting down to the nitty-gritty of the season--continues. Hope you enjoy it. Promise to be back in form soon... The Poetry of Baseball For me, the fundamental moment came at Fenway Park in Boston, somewhere in the late eighties or early nineties. Though I have never been athletic, watching and occasionally clumsily attempting to play baseball were a large part of my upbringing, and this private study was supplemented with frequent pilgrimages to the storied ground of Fenway, to see the Green Monster, to see Stanley Steamer come out of the dugout with his rake, to see Wade Boggs hit home runs, to see Roger Clemens strike out batters in succession. But of all the mythical men I saw sink cleats into the grass there, by far the most special in my memory was Dwight Evans. Dwight Evans had been playing in Boston since 1973--before my parents had even met. He was a great hitter and an outfielder with, as my dad put it, "an arm like a cannon." By the time I came to Fenway to see him, though, his glory days were over, and he was kept around like a beloved teddy bear, revered like a grizzled veteran of a long-ago war. He was no one to me but a man with a funny black mustache. On the day I am remembering, Dwight Evans came to the plate to bat. "Now batting-atting-atting..." the PA boomed, sounding like the voice of the Wizard of Oz, "Number twenty-four-our-our-our...the right-right fielder-eilder...Dwight-whight-whight-whight-Evans-evans-evans." I was too young to know about Evans' batting average, his fielding statistics, his on-base percentage, his performance against the particular pitcher he was now facing. All that stuff came later. But I knew what a "boo" was. I heard it often at Fenway Park, from the men who slopped beer onto my shoulder from the seats behind us, or the old men scrawling with their tiny pencils in their programs and chewing on cigars. I turned to my father, and in retrospect the question was as filled with a kid's innocence and trust as any I have ever heard or witnessed--"Why are they booing him, Dad?" My dad laughed. He said sidelong out of the right corner of his mouth, not looking away from the matter at hand, of course, "They're not booing. They're saying 'Dew'." I listened again. Gradually I was able to pick out the subtle difference. "Dooooooo..." was what they were saying--the abbreviated version of Evans' nickname, "Dewey." Not "boo." "Dooooo!" I piped, glancing up at my father for his approval. He finally looked down into my face and smiled. Thus rewarded, I attacked cheering for Dewey with my whole heart. "DOOO!!!" I kept yelling, long after Evans had returned to the dugout. "DOO!!" Dewey Evans was no one to me. I didn't know about his heroics in the 1975 World Series. I didn't know about Carlton Fisk's home run. I didn't even know about Bill Buckner's disastrous error. I was actually still kind of working on the difference between a foul ball and a hit. But what I knew was that, for a reason I couldn't articulate, I loved Dwight Evans. And that somewhere in the back of my mind it had something to do with how much I loved my father. That's how it starts. That's how people grow attached to a certain player, a certain team. It's hard to grow up near Boston, hearing your father cheer for Dewey, and not hold a certain fondness in your heart for any guy who wears a "B" on his cap years later. It's not just a game--in fact, it's not even about the game at all, if the game is only the cold and abstract sum of winning and losing, base hits and walks and earned run average. It's about fatherhood, and the way men want to share with their children the things that their fathers shared with them when they were small. It's about childhood, and the heartbreakingly inarticulate way young children idolize their parents. And so generations of Boston children, adoring their fathers, learn to love the Red Sox. And they learn to hate the Yankees the way a child on the playground hates the bully who insults his father. The two become one and the same. Wins and losses, flubbed World Series, and the Curse of the Bambino have nothing to do with it. And gradually those children become the next generation of fans. The species reinvents itself, and evolves. Of course, one cannot live as a child forever. A man with a funny mustache is a perfectly suitable hero when you are seven, but as you mature, you need more. You begin to fall from grace, and you begin to need stories. That's where the language of sports comes into play. Frankly, I'm shocked that someone more learned than I has never investigated the peculiar linguistics of the American sports fan. It speaks so much to our evolution--our story. In high school I was an artsy kid. I hung out with the drama geeks. Playing, liking or in any way having anything to do with sports beyond the marching band was anathema to the artsy kids. Football players in particular--brash, loud, confident, and, to see the way they were coddled by many in town, the future leaders of society--were convenient straw men for our half-baked counter-cultural sentiments. I could not, in good faith, even pretend to be interested in sports in my proscribed high school role, and so I never took overt interest in our high school squads' struggles on the field. I attended football games, but sat among the low-brass section of the Marching Band. The only time I really paid attention to what was happening in front of the crowd was when the band played its halftime show; I had a crush on a boy who played a baritone horn, not one who played linebacker. I'd left behind baseball, too. In the story of the sports-fan kind, such departures are common as well. Every so often something else--a foreign war, Presidential politics, high school, steroid or gambling scandals--breaks in and demands our attention as a Serious Matter. And sports are just games. We look away. But we cannot escape our upbringing. We can learn other tongues, but we stick to our native language in times of need. It still may seem incongruous for me, a bookworm with an English degree, to be caught up in the Sox-Yankees rivalry, and arguing over batting averages and trade rumors. But look deeper, and it's not so strange at all. Both literature and sports fascinate me with their language. Baseball would be nothing without narrative. Take, for example, the Red Sox and the Yankees. It's the story of Cain and Abel all over again, and like any legend of the past, it imbues the present with meaning it would otherwise not enjoy. Every generation has its heroes--Williams, Fisk, Yazstremski, Clemens, Martinez--and its scapegoats--Ruth, Morgan, Buckner, Grady. The names should be engraved somewhere, perhaps on two stone tablets. Baseball is all about words. Each position has a distinctive name—first, second or third basemen, the word "basemen" in and of itself so professional, like "draftsman" or "businessman." And has there ever been a title more crunchy and delicious than "shortstop"? He stops up the gap between second and third, of course, but it's not just a job description the way the name "linebacker" tells you that the man in question "backs" the "line." It contains an adverb--he stops the ball short as it's hit toward left field. It's a comment, an exhortation, as much as a name. But delve further--look at the sounds of the word itself. The whisper of "Shhh" means the crispness of "t" and "p." The name is dynamic. It's alliterative. In the middle is an "awe." Were baseball like football, the pitcher would be simply a "thrower" the way the guy who kicks the ball is, simply, a "kicker". But pitchers don't throw. They pitch. "Pitch" is an entirely different word. In noun form, it's the sticky substance given off by pine trees--perhaps not coincidentally the stuff pitchers themselves put on their hands. In verb form, when you put up a tent, that's pitching, as in, erecting a structure. The pitcher is the centerpiece of the team much the way a pole holds up a tent. If he collapses, so does the rest. You can pitch over, much like pitchers do when they fall forward to deliver the ball to the catcher. But, most importantly, when you huck a ball at 100 miles an hour--one of the more miraculous achievements of the human body, ever--that's not throwing. That's pitching. These subtleties, like the difference between "Boo!" and "Doo!" are of the utmost importance. The word selection is as delicate as poetry. Baseball is never short on poetry. If the stories of teams like the Sox and Yankees are Homeric, the every day language of the game is like the intricate wordplay of e.e. cummings. One of my favorite baseball expressions is "bloop" as in "bloop double." It's more than a description--it's onomatopoeia for you word-geeks keeping score. Or how about what we say when a batter hits a long home run, especially off a dominant pitcher? "He took him deep," or "He took him over the wall." As in, it's not the ball the batter hits and tosses out of the park--it's the pitcher himself. It's such a deeply personal, deeply metaphoric expression--a pitcher's chagrin at giving up a home run is such that he might as well leave with the ball. Of course, the notion of "home" is explicitly present in baseball, but its connotation is entirely different from that of football. The lone base runner crosses the plate--also known, delightfully, as "the dish"--like the adventuring explorer tops Everest: alone and after taking a roundabout route. A journey around the bases is a solitary quest with obstacles along the way, rather than an organized assault by a unified army. As if the game needed more solitude, the batter stands in a "box." The pitcher looks down upon his counterparts from a "mound"--which has grown to a "hill" in the popular vernacular. Baseball players are only loosely affiliated with one another as they take the field. Each has a huge stretch of ground to defend and control. Errors, runs, hits, walks, and any other currency of the game is rewarded to individual players rather than whole lines or "packages". Baseball is a slow, contemplative, lonely game. Pitchers who come in late in the game are otherwise kept in the "bullpen." A pitcher with lots of longevity is known as a "horse." Yep. Lots of time to think up metaphors. Baseball players are christened with new names. The Babe. Teddy Ballgame. The Kid. Joltin' Joe. Shoeless Joe. Big Papi. There are their given names--George Herman Ruth, Theodore Williams, Joseph Dimaggio, Joseph Jackson, David Ortiz--and these new monikers, adopted like the capes and aliases of superheroes. After all, you can't be an epic hero with a name like George Herman. But a name like "Babe", and, even better, with the superlative "The" before it--well, now you're talking. The game is full of paradoxes--though they are known as a team, the players might as well be strangers as they take the field and face the pitch alone. Yet, even as there is an aloof relationship among those on the same team, there is a paradoxically cooperative relationship between those at the center of the action--the pitcher and the batter. Look at it this way: a quarterback throws passes to his own receivers. A basketball player or hockey player, similarly, passes the ball or puck to his teammates. A pitcher, meanwhile, is probably the only athlete in the world who throws a ball directly towards another man, and yet hopes he will not make contact with it. At the same time, they talk constantly from their lonely outposts, "jawing" at each other, from infield chatter--"heybattabattabattabatta"--to arguments over calls, to conversations between runners and basemen as if they were meeting on a street corner. Baseball fans, meanwhile are the only ones that feel the need to log and diagram the game while watching it. Little charts full of little squares can be found in every program, and the cigar-chewers mark them with little symbols, filling in corners with black marks and numbers and letters, documenting the series of complicated equations that formed the spectacle. And baseball fans talk,too. They talk about "taters" and "tosses" and "arms like rockets" and "arms like cannons" and "horses" and "stiffs" and "ham-and-eggers" and "bums" and journeymen "having a cup of coffee". They tell each other the stories of this or that game, this or that World Series. They write books. They write the hieroglyphics of the scorecard. They explain to their children what a curveball is. The talk surrounds us like a bedtime story, read by our fathers, like the Scriptures, read from a pulpit, the sacred litany. Steroid scandals or the collapse of a decades-long tradition of losing pale before this aspect of sacredness about the game itself, the true, fundamental game that is as eternal as language, and our need to communicate. Baseball is forever. Baseball is eternity. Baseball has been played for more than a century in almost exactly the same way. And yet, as any baseball fan knows, the same patterns are rarely seen twice. It's like a perpetually turning kaleidoscope, and baseball fans can’t help themselves-- win or lose, they need to keep a record. They need to make linguistic the infinite and ever-fluctuating patterns before them. They are, in short, poets.

2005-02-21T11:34:00.000-05:00

Keep the Same Approach

I'm not feeling up to posting my own piece today, but I want to point out that Tao of Manny, perhaps the most underrated blog in the Sox world, has an excellent post up that pretty much sums up my feelings on Spring Training following the World Series win:

Winning is no longer an unexperienced possibility; we Sox fans all know what it feels like. The past is now mere prologue to the beginning. The Yankees are suddenly unhinged, nearly obsessed with the Red Sox. Every NY paper now has three beat reporters: Yanks, Mets, and Sox. Any mention of "1918" from a Yankees fan is just an excuse to say something like, "yeah, and in all those years, the Sox never choked like the Yanks last year." But, even more, the Yankees just don't matter. The whale was killed; its blubber is now melted down in casks as the Pequod sails merrily back to Nantucket. In the end, though, things are wonderfully the same. Because, here's what the rest of the country never understood: all that was beside the point, really. Oh, I wanted them to win; I rooted for them to win. And I did root against the Yankees. But the "curse" talk, the mythology and legend around the Sox just made good copy. It was background noise to what's great about the game and what's great about rooting for the Sox. I've grown up rooting for the Red Sox. Generations have grown up rooting for the Red Sox. People on the outside thought it was an obsession with winning The First World Series Since Babe Ruth Was Sold To The Yankees. But, it's just rooting for our team, going into a General Store (or a Cumby's) and hearing the game on the radio, watching balls go off and over The Wall, getting asked "what happened in the game?" and knowing there's only one game they could be talking about, smelling the sausages on the way into the game, and a thousand other associations redolent of home. The Red Sox are home, they are The Olde Towne Team. "They carry the hopes of a region" was the common sports-writer cliche, but it was more than that, and less. The Sox carried the experiences of a region, a long history of a million small moments in all of our lives. The big memories of Bucky Dent and World Series lost (and now won), but even more the innumerable half-forgotten memories of growing up in the shadow of the Red Sox. They are the seasons passing; they are summer and fall. And they are most assuredly spring.

This is another of the miracles of Sox fandom: when one of us is down, another one steps in to bear them up, always. Thanks, Brian.

2005-02-20T10:55:00.000-05:00

Guns N Corn

Once again, Annette is the master of the adorable pic

2005-02-18T07:52:00.000-05:00

Tawk Amongst YaSelves

I've had a death in my family and I'm not sure when I'll be posting again after this. So in the meantime I leave you with this excerpt from a post I wrote back in July: Top 10 Reasons why Baseball is Better than Football

10. Media. Many orders of magnitude more books, movies, websites, chat rooms, message boards, magazines and television shows are available with which to feed your obsession during baseball season. Football has a few pulpy magazines and a forgettable catalog of horribly written souvenir books. 9. Schedule. 162 games; compared to just 16, it's an all-you-can-eat buffet. Football games are special weekend events. Baseball games sink and blend into the routines of daily life in intriguing ways. By the end of the season, several rounds of five- and seven-game playoff series to decide the championship really separates the men from the boys. 8. Commentary. Baseball has whole legions of geeks hunched over computer keyboards year-round, coming up with truly astonishing mathematical formulas to both document and predict the probabilities, idiosyncrasies and mysteries of baseball. Football has John Madden with his light pen. 7. Language. Bloop double. Can of corn. Tater. Dinger. Grand slam. Switch-hit. Batsman. Hurler. Crossed him up. Took him deep. A little bleeder of a single down the left field line. K, BB, SB, OBS, OBP, RISP. Flashed some leather. Basket catch. Backstop. Baseman. Double steal. Hit and run. Pick-off throw. Deep drive to left, way back, way. back. Football's still stuck with John Madden and his inane ramblings. 6. History. Baseball as we know it goes back to the post-Civil War period. Football just barely squeaked into the national consciousness before the British Invasion...of the 1960's. Maybe it's just where I happen to live, but I've rarely met anyone whose childhood was irrevocably altered by a football game. Ask anyone who was at a verbal stage of life in October 1986 in Boston, though, and you'll hear something different when it comes to baseball. 5. Dignity. Baseball doesn't lend itself nearly so well to beer commercials featuring busty blond twins and inane, terrible rock tunes. 4. Philosophy. Baseball requires patience, control, grace and complex thought at every position, with every play series. With the exception of offensive linemen and the quarterback, football is not exactly on a par in this regard with the players in the trenches. 3. Pace. Baseball has no time clock, in many ways. Where UnderArmour, Gatorade, Nike, Reebok, and so on ad nauseam have turned football players from leather-capped doughboys to android-looking biomechanical mutants, most of the great players of baseball's past would have little trouble joining a game today. 2. Heart. No one's going to make a movie about the Cincinatti Bengals called Still, We Believe. 1. Rivalries. This is where every factor named above comes into play at once. I'll never forget when Kevin Millar related during an interview early this season that the ground at Yankee stadium literally shook during Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. Sorry, but the Pats-Panthers Super Bowl didn't quite get me to the same place, you know?

Top 10 Reasons why Football is Better than Baseball

10. Commentary. While I lament the rise of John Madden as the public face of football, there is nothing--absolutely nothing in the world--like hearing Gil Santos call a Patriots game. Nothing. I personally think Gil Santos should read, announce, and report everything, from the nightly news to Presidential addresses. Who do the Sox have? The Rem-Dawg? Sorry. Not in the same ballpark. 9. Win or go home. 8. Virility. Football is about conquering territory. Football is about enormous male ideals in tight uniforms flexing their buns on screen. Football is about bone-crunchin', hit-takin', back-breakin' testosterone-drenched violence that strikes our deepest reptilian nerves. Baseball, by comparison, seems to be about baggy-assed uniforms and futility. 7. Efficiency--not simplicity. Those SABR geeks may make your head spin, but listen to Bill Belichik or John Gruden talk football for fifteen minutes and they look like a bunch of navel-gazing, necromancing morons. 6. Consistency. The Patriots play every Sunday, maybe once or twice on Monday night. It's easy to clear your schedule for that. With baseball, though, you just know you're going to tune in the day your team takes a waste-of-time thrashing from a shitty team, but you'll be stuck, you know, having a life when they win that epic in extra innings on a walk-off home run. Also, every time you go to see the Patriots, barring catastrophic injury, Tom Brady will line up under center and take a snap on every down. When you buy Red Sox tickets, you might be treated to a performance by Pedro Martinez or Curt Schilling--or you might get stuck with, say, John Burkett or Derek Lowe on the mound. Not good. 5. Humility. Football is unassuming: End zone dances. Sacking the quarterback. Blitz! Hundred-yard touchdown runs. Goofy mascots. Throwing snow at Gillette Stadium. Drenching the head coach with Gatorade. And while less articulate than baseball, football has its share of breathtaking sights: including and especially a wide receiver in full flight. And yet football, for all its macho posturing, takes itself much, MUCH less seriously than baseball. Football lineups function as a cohesive, machine-like unit, where all parts must cooperate and compromise to move the team as a whole down the field. Baseball players have lots of time out in the middle of an expanse of manicured grass to count their money--alone. And so, where football has a Super Bowl Champion team being introduced as such and even the ingenious, self-parodying "Leon" commercials, baseball has reports that Alex Rodriguez, the highest-paid athlete on the planet, refused to sign over the rights to the film of himself being "Punk'd" by Ashton Kutcher. And he threw a public hissy for good measure. God. Get over yourself already. 4. Equality. Football may have a difficult track record when it comes to race relations, but they never created an entirely separate, segregated league in which to house black players. Nowadays, most racial conflicts in football have been or are being addressed positively. The advents of Michael Vick and Donovan McNabb have put racial quarterback controversies mostly to rest (unless you're Rush Limbaugh). While racial problems remain in football--the demographic profiles of coaching staffs, in particular, have yet to catch up with modern social mores--blacks have continued to shun baseball in general as both fans and players more consistently than any other pastime, and that really says something. Oh, and while baseball continues to fuck around with a five-strikes steroid policy, football players are routinely yet fairly scrutinized for substance abuse. Even as football players get more outsized every year, they shame baseball just by example with their drug policies. This means that no one in fifty years will be speculating about whether Ray Lewis should be in the Hall of Fame on suspicion of cheating--but some will still have lingering doubts about Barry Bonds. 3. Intensity. Football players go through roughly a car accident's worth of impact and / or injuries every game. If you don't play hurt in the NFL, you don't play at all. Tom Brady won a Super Bowl last year with a second-degree separation of the shoulder. Players have played and won Super Bowls with broken bones, including Rodney Harrison in this past year's contest--he used his compound-fractured right arm to shove an opposing player out of bounds on a crucial down, causing an injury so complex and horrifying that he needed surgery to repair the mangled limb and couldn't attend the victory parade in Boston. Drew Bledsoe suffered a sheared aorta on a crippling hit from Mo Lewis of the Jets back in 2001. Football is also played in wind, snow, rain, sleet, hail, plagues of frogs, you name it, anything besides lightning, a volcanic eruption or an earthquake. No rain delays for a sprinkle, no grounds crews mincing about with rakes. These men are absolute fucking warriors. Meanwhile, baseball games are routinely called off due to impending, possible rain, and baseball players are routinely sidelined due to the development of blisters. Blisters. You have got to be kidding. 2. Popularity. Baseball may have history, but most of MLB has been forced to realize that they may be going the way of the Brontasaurus in many places. Boston and New York may still pack in to see baseball games, but there's nothing sadder than watching athletes with a combined income more than many small countries going through the motions in a mostly-empty stadium built back in their Dynasty Era (e.g. the Toronto Blue Jays). Meanwhile, the NFL is also one of the only cultural activities mutually shared and enjoyed by both whites and blacks in this country. 1. Parity. Truly the greatest blessing ever visited on any sport. On any given Sunday, as they say, any team can win, whether it's a Sunday in September or Super Bowl Sunday. Most importantly, this means there will never be a George Steinbrenner in the NFL. There will also never be a team that goes without a championship for a hundred years. And that's the way it should be, by God.

Discuss.

2005-02-17T11:58:00.000-05:00

Welcome Back

"Love is what makes you smile when you're tired." --Terri, age 4

2005-02-17T10:02:00.000-05:00

So What's the Good News?

Via Hoos on First: Curt Schilling Interview with FoxSportsNet:

Part I Choice Quote: I had an idea of the interest level [in Boston], I had no idea of the energy level. Taking the ball and walking to the mound at Fenway is just a real different thing. Fenway Park is, you know, a century old. It feels like everybody in the park has been around for a century. Their agony and the misery comes out. Their waiting to be upset, their waiting to get mad at you because that's been happening forever, but at the same time they love you like you're their own kid. They want you so badly to do well, but they're expecting you to screw it up. There is a dynamic there between the players and the fans that doesn't exist, I don't believe, in any other city with any other team and it fans. Part 2 Choice Quote: ROSENTHAL: How weird is it for you now that [Randy Johnson]'s a Yankee? SCHILLING: It's not weird. Um...what a rush? I mean, first of all, it's great for baseball. Unfortunately, the Yankees got another huge contract and can afford it. But I don't begrudge Mr. Steinbrenner one bit. He spends his money on his team. It's going to be weird, seeing Randy in pinstripes. I would much rather face somebody else than Randy Johnson. But it's...my god, I mean, I think about April 3, Opening Day, Yankee Stadium, Red Sox-Yankees. Randy freaking Johnson on the mound. Being able to oppose him. I mean, I don't know that it gets much better than that.

Jose Melendez is getting back into blogging shape for the new season with two incredible posts:

KEYS TO SPRING TRAINING: Choice Quote: Well, those sorts of KEYS are all well and good, but they do not exactly get Jose in the shape required for the rigors of the season. Think about it this way. Manny Ramirez may go to the batting cages at Good Times Emporium in Somerville three times a week for 15 minutes, but it's not exactly the same as taking live batting practice. Since November, Jose's basically shown up three or four times a week, done some cursory work and then gone home. That needs to change now. For instance, in preparation for the season, Jose is going to need to build up his endurance. Not only will he need better endurance to write every game day, he'll need better endurance just to be able to get through the Boston Herald sports section. Do you think Jose reads that sort of thing in the off season? Absolutely not. Jose read the Herald today for the first time in months and it left him winded, depressed and discouraged. After all, who needs news on the assassination in Lebanon, when a hero saved a dog from icy waters? If Jose is going to have success this season, he needs to be able to plow through the Herald, the Metro and maybe even the Phoenix without breaking a sweat. KEYS TO THE COMMENTS: Choice Quote: Jose’s third objection [to Pride and Prejudice] is [Jane] Austen's ridiculous use of alliteration in the title of what is ostensibly a piece of high literature. Alliteration is fine for blogs, newspapers and Harlequin Romances, but for serious literature? Did Dostoyevsky call Crime and Punishment "Perpetrators and Punishment?" Did Melvillie call Moby Dick "Of Water and Whales?" Did God call the Bible "Sinners and Saviors?" Nope. Because they know alliteration is just a little trashy. Yo, Austen, you want to use a literary device in your title? Why not sack up and lay down some enjambent.

The only bad news with this particular piece of good news is that Jose Melendez makes me want to just shut down this blog and quit, because I will never, ever be that good. Or that funny. Or have such a simple yet effective blogging theme. And finally, via Tatiana: I heart you, Curt. P.S. There's also this... Thanks to Annette for completely making my day Mmmmm hmm.

2005-02-17T07:50:00.000-05:00

Raining and Pouring

I don't know about you, but at least for me, these past few days have been just relentlessly bad. I suppose this is par for the course:

Charismatic New England Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi was hospitalized yesterday after complaining of headaches just days after capping a Super Bowl-winning road trip with his first appearance at the Pro Bowl in Hawaii. One source told the Herald Bruschi lost some vision in one eye, but the sight was returning. A team official said he was up "walking and talking." The 31-year-old inside linebacker is being evaluated in the exclusive Phillips House at Massachusetts General Hospital where he was admitted after arriving at the hospital by ambulance. "After complaining of headaches earlier today, Tedy Bruschi was admitted (to MGH)," Patriots spokesman Stacey James said in a statement last night. `"He is in good condition and will be held for further evaluations. "The Bruschi family appreciates everyone's concern, but requests that you respect their privacy at this time." Several sources said the player had been rushed to the Boston hospital by ambulance from his home in North Attleboro and may have suffered a stroke. (Herald)

Update: File this under "things which make me want to bash my head against a brick wall and yell, 'NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!'"

2005-02-16T14:14:00.000-05:00

Uplift and Separate

It's that fallow period again, and before I start writing about baseball, I want to take a moment to reflect a little bit on the passage of football season. This past Sunday marked the official closing ceremonies of the 2005 edition of the NFL with the Pro Bowl in Hawaii. It makes little sense to even have a Pro Bowl, anyway, since if players take the game seriously, they might get hurt for nothing, but if they don't, it'll be a pretty stupid game. That's pretty much what happened. Brady threw a pick and McNabb seemed more concerned with socializing on the sideline--not that I blame either of the Super Bowl quarterbacks for making light of the Pro Bowl after the championship journey both just went through. Meanwhile, one game too late, Peyton Manning and Michael Vick dominated. Manning threw something like thirty touchdown passes in the first half alone. I don't know...I wasn't really paying attention. Kellie and I watched the game at my apartment, demolishing a bag of mini Reese's Peanut Butter cups together, while also watching the videotape of Tommy's various post-Super Bowl TV appearances that she had so thoughfully compiled for me. (By the way, I would kill--kill!--for a screen-cap of the scene from the Simpsons where Brady rides out on a Segway towing a banner that says "EVERYONE ELSE SUCKS BUT ME." And then I want that screen-cap put on t-shirts, mugs, keychains, and all over this website. Maybe I'll even do a dumb, amateurish tiled background of it. That's how far I'd go for that screen-cap). We acted the same way we always do while watching football--Kellie was heard to holler, "OH, FUCK PEYTON MANNING!" at the screen on more than one occasion. But already there was a distance, a nostalgia altering the picture in front of us. This game was as much about the future as it was about the past. It was nice to see Vick succeed. For some reason, I root for him when I can tear my attention away from the Patriots. It seems he is probably the quarterback--if not all-around player--with the most raw athletic ability in the league; I want to see him harness it, and become the Michael Jordan of the NFL. Unless, of course, he's facing Tom Brady. But Vick's continued lack of...what? Discipline? Patience? Experience? showed even in his stellar Pro Bowl appearance; he ran in at least one of his touchdowns rather than standing back in the pocket and hitting a wide-open receiver right in front of him. Vick's ability to improvise is such that he may rely on it too much, instead of approaching the game methodically. He said in a sideline interview that working on being a pocket passer was his priority for the off-season, although if the Pro-Bowl was any indication, he has his work cut out for him. Ultimately, the Pro Bowl and the ending of football season marked the end of a whirlwind six months in my own little world of sports--an ending that left me with no distraction from the stark thought that we will never see another year like this in Boston--a "championship sandwich" of a World Series trophy between two from the Super Bowl, and three parades through Boston in eighteen months. Once again I have fallen so utterly in love with my Patriots that the Red Sox were all but forgotten; the Sox are beginning to creep back in again, everything's the same, yet different, and though I will welcome them, as every year, right now I just want to take a deep breath.

2005-02-15T08:55:00.000-05:00

Test for Echo

I am not a hockey fan. I'm not sure why, since I'm descended directly from residents of Minnesota and North Dakota, which are among the most hockey-obsessed regions* of the United States. One cousin of mine was so devoted to hockey that from the age of five through college, he could be found tending goal year-round, including summer--yes, summer--hockey camps. So despite the fact that being a hockey fan is probably my birthright, it has never taken with me. There's no real explanation for it--the sharp schussing of skates on ice, the slamming checks into the glass and overtime dramas all make for a perfectly nice sport. Meanwhile, I am not a fan of college sports. Especially in football. My own university was not the type to inspire "spirit" and our teams were mostly Division IAA or below, and I've always been more captivated by the creme de la creme playing professionally. So the Beanpot hockey tournament? Doubly uninteresting. That is, until this morning, when my morning radio show rebroadcast a clip of Tom Caron's call of the game last night between Boston University and Northeastern University for the title. The Beanpot, normally the province of the respective schools involved and little else, is the only hockey fix one of the original six cities has been getting this year, and so has drawn much more attention this year than in the past. Into that spotlight last night a young man stepped, playing for Boston University, scoring a goal after fourteen grueling minutes of overtime to win it, prompting a hollering call from Tom Caron of "SCOOOOOOOORRRE!" so rife with excitement it gave me goose bumps up and down my entire body. The young man who scored the winning goal is eighteen years old, a freshman at BU. He was born in Topsfield, MA. "To tell you the truth," he told New England Hockey Journal (a periodical I have never before heard of and will probably never come across again), "I was scared out there in overtime, but who isn't? You just fight through that." His name is Christopher Bourque. Yeah. That Bourque. From NEHJ:

The name evokes images of one of hockey's all-time greats, a grizzled leader, the consummate professional...it seems the bottom line is, put a Bourque in the FleetCenter--no matter how old--and you can't help but end up with a memorable moment.

This is one non-hockey fan who's impressed. ____________________________________________ *Originally said "are the hockey capital of the United States" but then according to Sam, Detroit burst a blood vessel, so geez. This is why I don't write about hockey, ever.

2005-02-14T11:26:00.000-05:00

Hat and the Catfight

The pink-hat debate is featured on Boston Common today. Congrats, girls. P.S. Boston Common also linked to my post about Truck Day, but I think they're making fun of us. Whatever. No such thing as bad publicity.

2005-02-13T13:05:00.000-05:00

Quote O' the Pro Bowl

Akers: "Could I have one of your rings?" Vinatieri: "No."

(via Samcat, who has up a lovely summation of yesterday's Pro Bowl Skills Contests) Also see this beautiful article by Gordon Edes about Jason Varitek. Thanks, Kristen, for passing it along (email).

2005-02-11T15:48:00.000-05:00

Truck Day

Thanks to Stevebee, who sprinted over after class to stalk the truck:

2005-02-11T15:45:00.000-05:00

Genius, Part II

Oh, my God, Kristen. Oh. My. God.

2005-02-11T11:41:00.000-05:00

Gasp!

Need this. Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed it. NEED. IT. Have added it to my Amazon Wish List. Ahem.

2005-02-11T06:45:00.000-05:00

Stir of Echoes

Not that I could ever compare to this, but here are a few notes from watching Game 7 again, written Surviving Grady style in a numbered list (because hell, I'm out of my own ideas this week, I guess). 1. The more I watch of these games again, the happier I am that Pedro has left us. I know, I know. You in back, put the gun away. But, really, with Pedro gone, Yankees fans don't have even the slightest foothold with us. No more "Who's Your Daddy?" chants in Yankee Stadium. Their pure, righteous hatred for Pedro was the last leg Yankees fans had to stand on in having scorn for the Red Sox. Now he's moved in across town. Another reason I'm glad Pedro is gone is that, watching his still-inexplicable appearance in this game, I was reminded of the utter torture that was watching him get through that interminable inning, in which he gave up more runs and hits in three outs than Derek Lowe on two days rest had given up in six innings. My breakdown at this point began with babbling that wasn't quite words, degenerated to shrieking as he began giving up doubles, accompanied by wild gesticulation at the screen, bottomed out with a period spent lying on the floor in my own drool, and then hit a strange sort of Zen state in which I repeated, again and again, in a zombified monotone, "I can't believe I'm sitting here screaming to take Pedro out again. I can't believe I'm sitting here screaming to take Pedro out again. I can't believe I'm sitting here..." Well, never again. 2. Line of the game? Joe Buck after Johnny Damon's second home run: "Johnny Damon is just going off." 3. Hee, Vasquez was really shitting his pants, wasn't he? 4. Derek. Ah, good ol' Derek. My father has a theory about why Derek turns into Megatron (courtesy Jose Melendez) in the postseason after being Gidget in the regular; it has to do with the words "laying off" and "the Sauce" and that's all I'll say about that. Okay, I'll also say this about good ol' Derek. Did you see this shit? The boys at Dodger Blues are going to have a blast and a half with him. 5. The other Derek. Still can't stand the fucker. He has to be the most annoying hitter, ever. How many times can one guy repeat the same facial twitches? And he dives across the plate so much that I'm ready to run out there and bean that asshole. 6. Every time I see Jason Giambi on these broadcasts, I would not be surprised if he simply leaned forward and let out a jet-stream of barf, right in front of God and everybody. In a way, I think the stage directions Giambi pukes were appropriate for just about every situation in which he was shown on camera last season. 7. Tim McCarver is the biggest idiot. Ever. Oh my God. Ever. 8. As much as I hate Tim McCarver? That's how much I love my Red Sox. Seriously. I've been having my usual September-February romance with the Patriots, but I am irrational about the Red Sox. Truly. I fucking love them and don't you ever say anything bad about them EVER. Really, I'm not much of an absolutist about anything else in my life. Politics and religion, especially. Morally, I'm fairly tepid. Even with the Patriots, I have room for twinges of guilt or doubt. But I fucking love the Red Sox, and if you don't, fuck you. You know what I mean? 9. My favorite moment from this game is the shot of Terry Francona from the dugout, standing up, eyes flashing, face tense, holding out his hands as if cradling something precious, yet dangerous, quite clearly saying, "Come on! COME ON!!!" And then...all hell, busting loose. 10. Those men, sprinting across that green-gold field, at night. Does life get any better? I ask you.

2005-02-10T16:49:00.000-05:00

I'm Not Worthy

I'm not posting any more links like this, because I'd probably do it every day. Just put that blog on your blogroll, kinja, XML, favorites list, whatever, and if you're a Red Sox fan, your assignment is: read it. Unless you want to be the one Red Sox fan who, when all the other Red Sox fans on teh IntraWeb are all, "OMG DID U SEE TEH POST ON COTG!!!211!!@@!!!1", will have to be like, "I AM TEH LOSR!!!!!@!!!!11!@"

2005-02-10T06:59:00.000-05:00

Winter of Our Content

Revisiting Game 6 was refreshing. Due to insane work demands of late I haven't been able to watch most of the rest of "World Series Winter" on NESN. But last night, with a rare chunk of free time, I decided that if I was going to watch any game over again, it would have to be Game 6, since it's the one in which the player every one of my friends refers to only as "your man" around me makes his red-socked march into history. But rather than being necessarily stirred by his performance--not that I am not still moved whenever I think of it--or gleeful at the world-famous Slap--not that I am not still gleeful about it at least, oh, once a day or so--the moment that really struck me while rewatching the game was the very, very end. I'd forgotten completely about it, how Keith Foulke--worn thin by the ordeals of Games 4 and 5--put Hideki Matsui and Ruben Sierra on base with walks (prompting quite possibly the stupidest comment ever made, by Tim McCarver, which somehow found a way of equating a walk to a home run) and ran up a full count on Tony Clark while all of Yankee Stadium, Red Sox and Yankees fans alike, leaned forward... "With one swing of the bat, Tony Clark could send the Yankees to the World Series," Joe Buck pointed out, and due to the fact that I knew what would happen and therefore was not having apoplexy like the first time around, I could actually cock my head and say calmly, "Good point, Joe." Because it's true. Hey, if Bucky F. Dent and Aaron Boone could send the Yanks to the Series, then why not Tony Clark? The moment from the third ball delivered by Foulke and the next pitch stretched on seemingly forever, and even though I knew what would happen, my heart beat faster. The moment was filled with tension that absolutely leapt from the screen as the camera panned over tense faces in both dugouts. During this drawn-out moment, then, I had time to reflect even further on the way the ALCS had come together for the Red Sox--as precisely and perfectly as a piece by Mozart, not a note or a blink of the eye out of place. Tony Clark could have sent the Yankees to the World Series, right then and there, on the last pitch. There they were, aligned in a constellation of two men on, two out, pitcher, catcher, hitter with one pitch left to decide his fate. One swing of the bat was all it would have taken. A single pitch, winking into Varitek's glove, was all it took to alter the game's trajectory to an equal and opposite result. The differences and twists of fate hang on moments just that minute in baseball. Wow.

2005-02-09T11:08:00.000-05:00

Ladies and Gentlemen

Please welcome the first and hopefully last ITNARWEB QWEZ!!!@@!!11!!! to appear on this blog.

You scored as Curt Schilling. You are Curt Schilling! You are a trooper. You push yourself to the limit, regardless of any setbacks. You are also not afraid to express your opinions on a variety of topics. Very family-oriented. You're the man!!

Curt Schilling

67%

Jason Varitek

57%

Theo Epstein

50%

Mark Bellhorn

40%

Johnny Damon

40%

David Ortiz

37%

Kevin Millar

27%

Manny Ramirez

20%

Which Red Sox Player Are You?
created with QuizFarm.com

Got it from SamCat. Maybe I should've just posted this picture today instead.

2005-02-09T08:24:00.000-05:00

Genius

There are quite a few bloggers in the world of Red Sox fandom that put me to shame. Today, I'd like to call attention to one of them.

2005-02-08T13:51:00.000-05:00

Mardi Gras, Boston Style

Kristen has a sweet post up about her experience at the parade today. I couldn't make it because I am a desk slave, so I'll just radiate lightning bolts of jealousy from my cubicle and let her tell the story.

2005-02-08T06:05:00.000-05:00

History Repeating? I Think Not.

I'm not sure when, exactly, I knew the Patriots would lose the Super Bowl. But from some time in the first quarter through...well, let's be honest here, Rodney Harrison's interception, I was certain they were going to lose. I had forgotten, until the moths began gnawing away at my stomach lining sometime during the dismal pregame entertainments (the stellar National Anthem by the combined military choirs the single exception), how much I have hated watching the Super Bowl when the Patriots are playing. It's simply too much for me, sometimes, when my hometown team's season is at stake, simply to enjoy the game and the spectacle. In each previous Super Bowl victory, the final two minutes have found me huddled in the bathroom at my parents' house (the first time mostly by accident; the next two on superstitious and probably cowardly purpose), plugging my ears with my fingers so as not to allow myself to strain to hear the TV broadcast from the next room, but straining just the same to hear my family and friends' cheers erupt when victory was assured. This Super Bowl was the absolute worst. Much of the first half found me retired to the kitchen, rather than the bathroom, at first on some pretense of poking at the various hors d'oeuvres simmering in the oven or on the stove, finally simply sitting at the table painstakingly re-reading, without comprehension, the same frame of Dilbert from the ruins of the Sunday Globe I found lying on the table. It made no difference. On one series, my exile to the kitchen seemed to prompt an interception by Tedy Bruschi with Philadelphia knocking at the door of our end zone; but during another I overheard the first Philly touchdown, my heart in my throat as my mental Rolodex whirred through football facts to remind me, cruelly, about the strong correlation between this Patriots team scoring first and achieving victory. For much of the middle quarters I plopped sullenly on the couch, grim and silent much of the time, watching a miraculously healed T.O. grab catch after catch after catch, watching Brady, as unflappable in demeanor as always, nevertheless drop the ball in the Red Zone on a handoff to Kevin Faulk, and fling himself desperately after it, only to be overturned like a helpless child and relieved rather unceremoniously of the ball soon after by some hulking brute with a number in the 90's. Halftime was some safe drivel by an aging Paul McCartney, a man whose work I generally respect but whose appearance this time was so heavily laced with all the residual PC uproar from last year's "wardrobe malfunction" (among my most loathed cultural memes in recent memory) and its puritanical backlash that I found it impossible to enjoy. The frail and sagging McCartney even wore long sleeves at the piano, as if to reassure viewers that they would be spared a glimpse of his flesh, and in the equal and opposite direction from Janet Jackson's faux pas a year ago, it went so far beyond reason as to be distasteful. And then, plunged back in to the desperate struggle of this interminable, endless game. Following an abortive Patriots drive toward a put-away touchdown that instead degenerated into a field goal, Philadelphia got the ball back with a whopping five minutes left on the clock. My mind raced. Philadelphia clearly had the crowd in its pocket; Philadelphia's players mugged and gyrated for their video roster cards on-screen; Philadelphia's defensive backs hounded the staid Brady as he walked toward the huddle or sideline; Philadelphia clearly had all the charisma. And while the Patriots had begun to play like themselves again in the second half, with the ball in Donovan McNabb's hands with only a touchdown and a field goal between them and another trophy for Boston, and with a seeming eon left on the clock, I was anything but confident. But Philadelphia suddenly flared out, somehow, mentally as seconds clicked by seemingly unheeded by their entire sideline, physically as writhing players in green jerseys had an epidemic of cramps massaged away on the field. I was reminded, then, of my main complaint against the Yankees; that they didn't so much win as watch other teams collapse, and then collect the trophies afterwards from the ashes. Then, of course, came the laser beam touchdown pass from McNabb, and there we were, 24-21, and the bathroom was calling seductively. The next thing I heard, around the fingers jammed firmly into my ear-sockets, was "Beth! BALL GAME!" from my dad. I still haven't seen Rodney Harrison's interception. But no matter. My immediate feeling was one of immense relief, followed by a brief inward howl of animal vindication. Beating the Eagles had not been the ho-hum blowout so many cocky fans and sportscasters eager to atone for earlier playoff predictions against New England had foreseen. This didn't surprise me much, but the tightness of the game had pent up stress in me that is the perfect fuel for a good post-victory trash-talking. And yet. So much of the stadium filed out in seeming regret. Patriots fans remained, but it had been undeniable for most of the game that those in attendance were cheering for the underdog. Those analogies to the Yankees were once again rearing their ugly head. And did throughout yesterday. Until, that is, I heard Ted Serandis broadcasting on WEEI tonight while I travelled from work to story and from story to newsroom. Serandis was remeniscing with old-timers on the airwaves about the not-so-illustrious team history of the Patriots. He, and they, came forth with some facts that shocked me: the Patriots were the dead last team incorporated in the AFL, and remained dead last in most other ways for decade upon decade. With no stadium of their own, the Patriots practiced on a high school field, played wherever they were allowed, and even resorted to using a Ramada Inn as a locker room on game days. They were an afterthought, if a thought at all, in Boston, a wandering bunch of no-name nomads. Eventually they were built a stadium in Foxboro, which, but for a mile-long strip of auto dealerships on the highway, Route 1, that traverses its heart, and of course for the gleaming Taj Majal that is Gillette Stadium, remains something of a backwater in the metro-Boston area. This first stadium, first called Sullivan, then Schaefer, then, for much of its later life, Foxboro Stadium, was an eyesore at best, a hellhole at worst. Slabs of ugly concrete furnished inside with the cruelest of flat metal bleachers, populated with die-hard drunkards of the sort that made taking in a ballgame anything but a family event. The kind of brawlers and degenerates that make, say...The Vet? Look like Disneyworld. While improvements to the franchise were immediate when longtime season ticket holder Robert Kraft, a paper packaging magnate, purchased his hometown team in 1994, it was still close to eight years before the laughinstock would hoist a trophy, and precisely ten before a non-vulgar "d" word--dynasty--would be applied to them without irony. Before just three years ago, the Patriots were more than mediocre. They were a true laughinstock. A punchline. Rocked by coke scandals, riddled by free-agent melodrama, steered toward the rocks by one megalomaniacal coaching staff after another, in their only Super Bowl appearances prior to 2001's upset victory the Patriots had been a backdrop to other, more glorious teams such as Brett Favre's Packers in 1996. I'm too young, or was too disinterested at the time, to remember most of that. But the one vivid memory I have of the Patriots before 2001 is of a mocking newscast on one of the local stations showing season ticket holders at the old Foxboro taking in the game--via the eyeholes they'd cut in paper bags over their heads. Today, we hear snide comparisons to Yankees fans--my own mind even brings them up for consideration, as mentioned. But truly, the comparison is a weak one. The question of salary equity in the two sports aside, while the Yankees passed through a purgatory of their own in the '70's and '80's, they are still the winningest franchise in all of sports throughout their century-plus history. Before their "dynasty years" of the nineties they boasted almost two dozen World Series flags. A shrine of their past greats--in turn the greats of the game itself--occupies one conspicuous corner of center field at the monolith that is their Stadium; the first and for many years the only Stadium in the traditionally more provincial and homey game of baseball. And in attitude? I can only speak for myself. In past years I have experienced many Yankees fans' attitude as one of presumption--the simple assumption that the Yankees would prevail, and who can blame them? Since before there were telephones or automobiles, they have most often been correct. Not so, the Patriots. If there has ever been an historical underdog, looked at over the course of their history as a franchise, it is New England. And three years against the 42 it took for them to bring home their first Lombardi Trophy does not a perennial frontrunner make. At no time throughout the past three seasons--and especially the Super Bowl--have I felt myself sitting back and saying, "Piece of cake." Maybe it's just me, but I suspect there is still a little worm that gnaws at a New England consciousness. The ghosts are far from gone. And yet we have incredibly short memories in this country, in this culture, don't we? Often this season I've heard the line, "Give someone else a chance." To win a game. To win the Super Bowl. And in many ways it's understandable. Right now, here in front of us, the Patriots are a juggernaut, and it seems a natural instinct for those not enjoying similar success to align against it. Part of the sting of losing to a dismal Miami team this year was seeing the unabashed, screaming joy on the part of their players and die-hard fans; as if beating the Patriots in a late-season game were a moral, and not just physical, victory. I guess even with a woeful franchise history behind us, it's the way things are. But we gave someone else--everyone else, actually--a chance for much of my lifetime, and who knows how many will overtake us when the curtain comes down on the Belichik era. So in the end, though I sympathize in many ways with the Eagles fans I know, I refuse to make apologies. Now is our time.

2005-02-06T23:47:00.000-05:00

One More Time

(Photo from Boston.com)

2005-02-06T13:27:00.000-05:00

Go Pats

(Pictures from Boston.com)

2005-02-06T06:10:00.000-05:00

One Last One Final...

Pregame Jitters and Final Thoughts before the Big Game Mer: Ok, so I'll admit...I'm feeling a bit leftout reading the most recent versions of TCTF. Sure, Brady's hot and all that...but the green and silver have some hotness working as well. I mean, sweet creamy Jesus, look at this man. Kristen: You guys? The fuck is wrong with Tom Brady? What is this "personal pain" of which Channel 7 is speaking? This is a crackhead news story, isn't it? One of his sisters totally got in a fender bender or something, right? Everything is okay? Stupid news. WHAT IS WRONG? They're going to make me wait an entire hour to find out, aren't they? This is why I don't watch the news... Stay tuned for me to either flip the fuck out or feel very, very stupid. ... Okay, his grandmother is very sick and his parents might not make it to the SB. Now I am all sad for him. *sniffles for Tommy* Carry on. Sam: Mer? The TO photos? Not fair. NOT. FAIR. You can't do that to me before the Superbowl, you just can't. Although the shower one worries me in some undefineable way. The last one, with the car, and with, with the DKNY underwear, and, and, and. Oh man. Seriously. Not fair. Kristen I HAD NOT HEARD THAT ABOUT BRADY HE HAD BETTER FRELLING BE ABLE TO KEEP HIS HEAD IN THE GAME COME SUNDAY. Beth: Let's inject a little sanity here. Tommy keeping his head in the game...hmm. Didn't I hear some story about a certain quarterback playing with a 103 degree fever after being hooked up to an IV the night before? Sam: Oh, I know, I know. But he seems like the sort who would be more thrown off by issues with someone he loves than issues with himself. Mentally speakin'. I dunno, I think I just have all this free-floating anxiety about this game, and I'm looking for places to direct it so I don't seem completely and utterly off my rocker. Kristen: Right. And apologies to you all for my freak out last night. Driving around Brockton for three hours, finding that the neighborhood racoon has apparently adopted me and taken to sleeping behind my car, falling head over heels in love with my new computer and hearing that Tommy may be sad made me all batshit crazy. You are all good people. Um, so, I know this is sort of tangentially off-topic but I read this on Mer's blog, thanks to a link from Beth in her archives and, um, will you marry ME? For real, sister. I had to write an article for a friend's magazine and this is what I ended up writing about. Although somewhat less eloquently, I fear. My favorite quote ever regarding the subject: "The boys mouths gaped open and they stared at me, as if they were thinking, 'I cannot reconcile your breasts with your knowledge of the infield fly rule.'" It's like the man-candy discussion. We will get to the point, eventually. Allow us our fun. And any males reading? Suck it up and get over yourselves, we'll start talking about Jevon Kearse soon enough. We've listened to you discuss the aesthetic merits of cheerleaders often enough. I just, yeah, I know it's a tangent but thanks for writing it. Mer: Well, thank you. I've actually rewritten that article in hopes of doing something bigger with it. The rewrite is MUCH better, and honestly, reading that original version makes me cringe. Hopefully you'll be able to read the newer version soon enough. Fingers crossed. And yeah, I'll talk about Jevon Kearse. He's got a hot smile. Sam: Eh, sorry Mer, I'm more inclined to agree with you on TO than on Kearse. But! Who has the cute kicker? Who has the cute kicker? Mer: Here's a question for everyone: Where will you be watching the Super Bowl and who will you be watching with? I'm flying to Philly on Friday morning. My parents and I are going to my favorite bar/restaurant where, for a moderate fee, we'll get a reserved table, open bar (all you can drink!), open menu (all you can eat!), and an Eagles Super Bowl t-shirt. I will take my camera so I can share some of the looniness of Philadelphia with you, as I expect lots of face-painted green-wig wearing fools to be in attendance. What about the rest of you? Kristen: Oh, I be at my parents' house in NH where I have watched the past two Pats Super Bowl victories. The first, in the comfy chair in the living room I hijacked from my brother's girlfriend, the second while I was kicking water bottles and shit around my kitchen and cursing the name of Adam Vinatieri, and then, you know, offering to bear his children. 60 inch bigscreen TV. 30+ people including my friend's Dominican boyfriend who knows nothing about this "American football" business. Lots of Sam Adams, even more food. Good natured ribbing from my Dad about giving myself a heart attack. My parents' friends alternately watching the TV and slinking away from me in fear. Giant spiral ham. Gallons of chili. Pounds of shrimp. I heart the Super Bowl. Good natured comments about Tom Brady's ass. Watching my mom blush when I reveal far too much about my crush on Richard Seymour. Oh my god, I can't wait! Sam: Not sure where I'm Superbowling yet. One of my friends is having a party, and he's a fellow Bostonian so it should be interesting, but I wouldn't know too many other people there and, judging from what he's said, there's at least a 65% chance that the cops will bust it up by halftime, so I dunno. My dorm is doing some kind of Superbowl party, so maybe I'll just limpet onto some of my hallmates and drag them down for that. We shall see. Beth: I will be SuperBowling (Sam, is that a word?) at my parents' house, where I have watched the Super Bowl every year since I had to be in bed by halftime. Good food and watching the game with my Dad, which is always my favorite. Also, I watch the SB there especially when the Pats are in it, because...well... Story Time. Two years ago, when the Rams tied the game at 17, I was feeling hints of the Red Sox, and a blown lead, and an inevitable loss. When a recovered fumble that would have been a touchdown for the Patriots was called back on a penalty, I was also fed up. Plus, after hours of snacking and drinking, I really had to pee. I figured, since most people assumed the game would go to overtime, the end of the fourth quarter would be the best opportunity to use the facilities. And so it was that I was sitting on the can, of all places, when I heard my father's recliner slam shut in the living room as he leaped to his feet, and heard his hollering about how "that was the greatest, most exciting, incredible Super Bowl I've ever seen!" Yep. In the bathroom. That's me. So, two years later, I found myself in a similar position: and I figured, not seeing the field goal live was a small price to pay for the title. After all, I rationalized, I could see it on film, and probably would, over and over again, and I'd rather see the field goal go through later on than sit and watch them lose in living color. So into the bathroom I went, even though this time, I didn't actually have to go. And it was deja vu all over again. So I watch at my parents' house, because that's where the Lucky Bathroom is. Seriously.

Final Thoughts

Kristen: I have no fingernails left and have started obsessing over which member of the Patriots looks like a Fraggle so that should give you a sense of how I feel about this game. I am nervous. Very, very nervous. I envision myself turning into Rainman on my parents' couch, rocking back and forth and saying, "Open the lanes for Corey, just open the lanes" while my friends back away slowly. I do not understand how everyone and their brother can be so flippin' confident about the whole thing and seem not to even consider the Eagles a challenge. Because they are. I suppose I shall take solace in the fact that while some fans and most of the media are evidently overlooking the Eagles, I'm sure the Pats and their coaches are not. Which is good. Also? Big Sey playing? Woo hoo! Were I at all religious I would probably be saying some sort of prayer right now. But evidently God is busy healing T.O. anyway so that won't do much good. All my faith and trust in Belichick, Brady, Bruschi and Big Willie and the Teds. And Adam's foot. So help me if it comes to that again... GO PATS! Sam: I don't know how Bill Simmons et. al. are so confident about this game, I am making myself sick with worry over it. I know, I know, Belichick and Brady and Dillon and Angry Harrison and Bruschi and Branch and I'm stopping now. But. McNabb. Westbrook. Kearse. Trotter. A team with the kind of momentum that, worryingly, reminds me of the Red Sox. Well, sort of. Sorry, NFL, you ain't got nuthin' on the '04 ALCS. But you see what I mean. I just can't get comfortable about it. I guess we'll have to wait and see, but in the meantime I plan to orally remove all my fingernails and perhaps give myself an ulcer at the same time. Maybe I'm too used to being a Sox fan and a Lions fan to ever adopt anything approaching Yankee-fan confidence. I wish I could, because it sounds nice and serene, but ever since that Dolphins game I've been nervous about every game these guys play, because no matter what the media says, no matter what the coaches say, no matter what the players say... Any given Sunday. *bites nails* Mer: (from her blog) It's clear that both of these cities have a huge place in my heart, but when it comes to sports, I can't give either city the edge. Born and raised in Philly, I am a diehard supporter of the Sixers, Flyers, and Eagles, and I always will be. But a combination of the Phillies' organization's lack of desire to win, their failure to connect with the fans, and an apartment within earshot of Fenway Park led to my passion for the Boston Red Sox. I never imagined I'd be able to cheer for a team outside of Philly's city walls, but it's impossible to spend four years in Boston without falling in love with the city and their baseball team. And so, it is a weird position to be in, with the Eagles and the Patriots meeting up in this year's Super Bowl. I am forced to cheer against the same fans with whom I, just a few months ago, stood shoulder to shoulder with on Boylston Street as the World Series parade rolled by. When all is said and done, we are all very similar, the citizens of these two cities. We are passionate about our teams, loyal (sometimes, to a fault), and no heartbreak is great enough to send us away forever. We love winning, but we know our history of losing has only made us stronger. We are knowledgeable and cynical at times, if only to protect ourselves. I call both of these cities home, but when it comes to football, there is no doubt where my heart lies. Beth: No matter what the outcome today, think...just THINK...of this past year in the life of the Boston sports fan. We have been so fortunate and so blessed. Think of the sheer number of times we've had cause to stand and holler for joy this year. Think of the number of times victory has been ours. Win or lose, we will never see a year like this again. Savor it. Win or lose.

2005-02-04T06:45:00.000-05:00

Fight Songs, trash talk, and testicle squeezing Last time, on 3 Chicks Talk Football: Beth: You do realize how much NE fans are going to make fun of the E-A-G-L-E-S chant, don't you? Mer: Do the Pats have a fight song? Beth: No. The Pats have no chants, cheers or fight songs. The beginning of "Welcome to the Jungle" played over the stereo system usually gets the crowd going, though. If you think about it, though, the word "Patriots" is pretty awkward in any sort of rhythm. Mer: True. As for Pats funs making fun of our song, that sort of stuff doesn't bother me. It's straight out of junior high... I don't really understand the fan's need to shittalk before this game. I mean, these two teams don't hate each other, the cities don't hate each other, and there's no reason to get so angry. It's not like we're the Yankees...we're the Eagles, and we haven't won anything. I assume the three of you know what I mean...can you imagine screaming at an Eagles fan at a bar this weekend? I can't imagine getting into a fight with a Pats fan or taunting him. I guess to me, these cities are far too similar to hate each other. Kristen: It does make it difficult when you can't work up an appropriate lather about how much you hate the other team. No one around here hates the Eagles. Why should we? We don't have any particularly demoralizing history with them and they've not done us wrong in the past. It's downright amusing to watch people be all, "Yeah, well, uh, your song sucks!" 'Cause that's about all we've got. I mean, we can't even make fun of your uniforms like we could with Carolina. Beth: Come on. The song IS pretty dumb. :-) No dumber, though, than "Sweet Caroline". Kristen: Dare you speak ill of Neil Diamond??? BA BA BA! Mer: I've never really thought any team or school fight song had the potential to be intelligent. They're just fun... (Answering Beth's question about the matchup between the Eagles and the Pats) I don't know nearly enough about the Pats to talk about a matchup. Living in Dallas, it's hard enough to see Eagles games, much less Pats games. This is where you come in...help me out. The Eagles are now forced to be a different team without TO and Chad Lewis. This is why I am so nervous...I really have no idea what to expect. During the season, they were most definitely an offensive minded team. If their opponent scored 28, the Eagles scored 35. They won a majority of their games by double digits. But obviously, that changes. Here's my hope for the offense. Let's assume TO will play only to be used as a decoy. The WRs move out and up the field, drawing the defenders out (Westbrook in double coverage) and opening up the middle of the field. If Donovan will seize the opportunity and run with the ball, I think he could make signigicant gains. I don't know if it's common knowledge, but McNabb doesn't particularly like running with the ball. He's great at it, no doubt, but he hates the stigma of being known as a "running QB," so he only does it when it's completely necessary. Most Eagles fans are praying he'll be open to running - often - next Sunday. As for their defense, that completely changed after the Steelers game. Trotter became a starter at middle linebacker and Mark Simoneau moved to the weak side, which was a huge improvement. They love the blitz, and I'm sure you know that Jim Johnson is known for his wild blitz packages. The place that the D really shines is in the red zone. If teams have first and goal, and the try to rush the ball into the endzone, more times than not they end up getting stuffed. Throwing it in is really the best option. Usually it is the only option. (Responding to Kristen's question about the TO circus) To be honest, I think most of us would rather hear about whether or not TO will play than how the Eagles are going to get crushed. So no, I don't mind.But yes - the only reason people are talking about it is because there are two weeks to fill. I think most people are just plain heartbroken that he's not healthy. Obviously, we'd love him to come back and be effective, but most of us doubt that is possible. I think we're all secretly hoping he surprises us. If he comes back and is invisible, well...that will be a shame, and I'll feel really bad for him. It has got to suck to wait your entire career to get to one game only to be hurt when you get there. Ahem. From today's paper:

In the new SI, Eagles linebacker Ike Reese was one of several NFL players surveyed about what goes on at the bottom of a pile when players are fighting for a fumble. His answer: "When we played the Patriots last year, Brian Westbrook fumbled a punt and we were all down there scrambling for it. Mike Vrabel had my testicles in his hand, and he was squeezing them. Where the football ends up depends on who has the strongest will or strongest hands. Guys reach inside the face mask to gouge your eyes. But the biggest thing is the grabbing of the testicles. It is crazy."

Also, Mark Simoneau is healthy and will play next weekend, which is good for the Birds. However Jon Runyan's sprained knee isn't doing well and he did not practice yesterday. This is not good. Sam: MIKE VRABEL TESTICLE SQUEEZING WHAT A THING TO COME HOME TO AFTER NIGHT LECTURE *brain explodes* And, as a side note on the subject of fight songs... ahem. Hail to the Victors? How is that not intelligent and awesome? Mer: I'm just SO amused at the amount of testicle squeezing that goes on in a sport in which so many players are afraid of having a gay player in the locker room. Kristen: Oh! And also, there was an article on ESPN.com a while back about how there are virtually no pro football players who wear cups and the ones that do get ragged on by their teammates for not being real men. Is this something I don't understand because I have estrogen? Because, wha? Mer: It's true, but I heard it was because it affected their ability to run and move quickly...like, wearing the cup made sudden movements uncomfortable. Same with a great deal of baseball players, actually. Kristen: Sam, how do you feel about (Patriots Offensive Coordinator Charlie ) Weiss going to [Notre Dame]? Considering your feelings for the school and all. I guess I'm just curious never having gone to a college that had anything even remotely related to an athletic program. And also, what's the buzz on Tommy at U Michigan? Sam: About Weis going to Notre Dame... well, I'm less worried about it on the college level and more worried on the pro level (i.e. how the Pats are going to do without him). I don't know how much of a difference he can make as a coach unless ND seriously revamps their academic standards and recruiting practices-- they're just not going to attract the same players that, say, Michigan will. I guess I'll wish him luck grudgingly. It's not Michigan State or Ohio State (sorry Beth, but the place is like a hotbed of horribleness), and it's not like they'll be competing with us for a Big 10 title (they're independent of any conferences, because they're too good for such mundanities), but when they play Michigan I'm going to hope that their fucking Touchdown Jesus falls over and pins Weis beneath it the night before the game. Just, you know, in case. From what I've heard, Tommy was pretty much what you expect from a star quarterback at Michigan... he partied it up, didn't take the hardest classes (a major in organizational studies? I don't even know what that is), but didn't do anything too irresponsible either. He was, obviously, quite good (won the Citrus Bowl for us in his time, I believe). I did hear some stories about how he would stay after the games in the parking lot outside the stadium signing autographs for little kids until the very last one had left, which often meant he was standing out there forever. And yeah, it's normal for people here to want a college football player's signature. Wolverine football is pretty much on a level with Detroit (pro) football here. Maybe even more fans. Awwww he was so wittle! And, oh man, you have not lived until you've been to a Michigan football game at home. Seriously. I thought I had lived before, but no. There is literally nothing like it. Bigger than any football stadium anywhere, college or pro... hugely dedicated and insane fan base... immense student section... oy. When you get 110,000 people packed in there and the stadium starts doing the chant where the east half screams 'Go!' and the west half screams 'Blue!'... again, nothing like it in the world. It *reverberates*. Kristen: Mer, I am glad that I have gotten to know you because were you not a dissenting voice of reason, I would have declared war on your entire region for this kind of garbage. Because they have to haul out the fact that someone was killed during the ALCS celebration as reason why we don't deserve to win. Which? Yeah, not really appropriate but thanks. But you are a lovely person and I shall keep that in mind as I continue to fester. Mer: Look at it this way. There are two entire weeks leading up to a game that NO ONE has given the Eagles a chance in hell to win. These guys have to write something.... It's just like the Boston paper pointing out that human mascots are 18-7 in Super Bowl matchups with animal mascots. And the Philly paper pointing out that a recent national survey found that people in Philadelphia keep neater households than people in Boston. It's all horseshit, and really, these guys are just desperate for stuff to write about. You can only write so many articles on each team's offense, defense, and potential matchup. I could be biased because I love both cities equally, but I read articles and just laugh my ass off. This 2 weeks worth of buildup is completely ridiculous. Now, go read my blog for a really good story...

2005-02-03T13:34:00.000-05:00

Win it for Grandma

Tommy's granny died yesterday:

[...]Meanwhile, Brady has kept a low profile, spending most of his time outside of practices, meetings and interviews either in his hotel room or watching film on the Eagles. "Maybe a lot of that has to do with his family," said teammate and good friend Lonie Paxton. "And maybe he just wants to win. If, knock on wood, something bad happens in this game, he doesn't want anyone to think he was distracted or that his family situation took anything away from his preparation...He understands that our success depends so much on him. And he takes that responsibility very seriously."

And Simeon Rice apparently went to the Warren Sapp school of ill-advised public statements:

While his grandmother's death has no doubt tempered Brady's demeanor, the fact is he's not a very flashy interview subject to begin with. That reality seemed to frustrate some of the national media on hand this week. On Tuesday, for example, NFL Network correspondent, and Tampa Bay defensive end, Simeon Rice positioned himself next to Brady's podium and offered his commentary on the QB's quotes. "No personality," said Rice into the camera. "My god, no wonder the (Pats) win. God, so boring. As boring as that cat is, I couldn't `kick it' with him." Brady apparently saw that report while watching television in his hotel room, because at the end of his press conference yesterday he offered a quick smirk and said, "Thanks for coming, I know I can be kinda boring."

Translation? To use a phrase my dad has often hurled at a football player jawing with a ref or fellow player on television, "Keep chirpin', asshole."

2005-02-03T06:29:00.000-05:00

As the token Philly chick, Mer continues to put up with ign'ant questions and even endures the mention of the "Baby New York" commercial Kristen: Thanks for setting the record straight, Mer. I shall inform mi padre of this the next time he speaks badly of your city which, the few times I have visitied it, I have greatly enjoyed. Especially this past summer when I drove down with, at the time, my boyfriend, his parents, his brother and his brother's girlfriend. It was the first stop on what would become a 3200 mile, three city (Philly, Tampa Bay, Atlanta) ballpark tour and Philly was easily the best part. Easily. I dug Citizen's Bank Park. Reminded me of Pac Bell or whatever the hell they're calling it these days. Except with a parking lot behind center field and not the bay. But I dug it. I especially dug the fact that it was $1 hot dog night. And I saw David Bell hit for the cycle. And everyone in the park knew it. It was awesome. Also, I hope that I will not get beaten up for saying this, but the Philly Phanatic rocks the socks off Wally. Beth: You know, I think that "Baby New York" commercial diid Philly a great disservice in Boston. I think NE fans want to kick Philly's ass purely as revenge for NESN's incessant airing of that awful, awful spot. Kristen: That and the fact that they WILL NOT STOP TALKING ABOUT IT on WEEI. Perhaps the problem is my need to listen to EEI despite the fact that it oftentimes makes me want to reach through the radio and strangle someone. "Pretzels." Besides, I like pretzels. Mer: This morning I bought a plane ticket so that I could spend Super Bowl weekend in my hometown. Recently I blogged that there is nothing like being in Philly during a playoff run. I can not wait ti experience Philly during a Super Bowl run. And yes, while I am there, I will ingest as many Philly soft pretzels as humanly possible. They are the greatest creation ever. Beth: I've done a little reading, checked on PhiladelphiaEagles.com into a few player bios, etc. Checked Trotter, Kearse and McNabb. I like Trotter the best, I think. Probably because of his intensity (which was evident in the game vs. the Falcons), probably because it seems I have a weakness in general for guys who wear No. 54. Interesting also that Trotter was the "prodigal Eagle"--in Washington for 2002 and 2003 after being drafted by the Eagles in 1998. That said, I know how much I yell back at the screen when national commentators try to talk about MY teams, so I don't want to take any media word for what the Eagles are like. Of course, I ALSO don't want to reveal my own utter ignorance about the Eagles and the NFC in general--this year I was too worried about the Steelers and Colts to pay much attention to any team in the other conference until we were playing one. Now we are. So, swallowing my pride, I want to ask you some questions, Mer, that have come to my mind thinking about the Eagles. I hope you don't take it personally that I don't know much about your team. 1. What is a multimillionaire football player doing owning a carwash and a hair salon? (Trotter.) 2. What is Andy Reid's general personality like? I noticed on the website he said something cheesy about Kearse being a "fastball to throw at the offense". Is he cheesy in general? 3. Would you say the Eagles are an offensive-minded team, a defensive-minded team or a multidimensional team? How well do you think they match up with the Patriots? 4. What is up with McNabb and his mom? Mer: 1. Yes, a carwash and hair salon are odd choices. All I know is that Trotter graduated with a business degree and has plans to actual make a living when his playing days are over, which I find to be comendable. I read an article a long time ago that mentioned something about Trotter wanting to get into the construction and/or real estate business when he's finished playing. 2. Andy Reid. He's a lovable guy that the players all respect and have publicly said there's no one else they'd rather play for. But, at the same time, he's tough. If you're out there giving 95% and he knows you can do better, he's going to be hard as hell on you. This is why he is so well liked in Philly. Outsiders questioned what the fans would do to Reid had the team lost another NFC Championship. I have to believe they would have stood by him. I'm not sure there's anyone in Philly who doesn't love Andy Reid. He loves coaching with a passion, and that shows in his attention to detail with the gameplan. It also shows in the way he treats his players. He's a funny guy with a sense of humor. Sometimes the jokes are cheesy, but the bet he made with TO regarding the tights - that's typical Andy Reid. He frequents restaurants by the neighborhood I grew up in, and I've had friends serve him on several occasions. I've never heard anything other than he's a fantastic guy. (I've got to dry my hair. More answers coming. Sorry for the choppiness. My free time is so limited right now...) Beth: Another Eagles question: What's with the song? Kristen: I have another question. The T.O. "Will he or won't he?" thing is all over the Globe and the Herald and they won't stop talking about it on WEEI so I guess I'm wondering if, from a Philly fan's perspective, you're already tired of hearing about it. And, is this a function of there being two weeks between the championship games and the Super Bowl so people are digging for stories? Also, are people hoping he comes back or worried that if he does, he'll be ineffective? I'm really curious. I just figure that everyone else is talking about it, I might as well ask. Enlighten me, Mer. Mer: What's wrong with the song? Let me tell you - right now, the one thing I am looking forward to is being in a packed bar in downtown Philly with a cold beer in my hand (yuengling, obviously) singing along to the eagles fight song with a bar of crazy drunk people. I can't wait. fly eagles fly on the road to victory Beth: I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, Mer. I'm just wondering where it came from. how it got started, etc. Mer: ooh, the history? No one knows for sure. It's been around for ages (since the 40s, most think), but strangely, there was a long time where no one sang it. It resurfaced when Andy Reid/Donovan McNabb came to town. Now it's probably as popular as ever. The E-A-G-L-E-S - EAGLES part at the very end was added onto the song semi-recently. In the old days, they were two separate entities. I remember being on a plane to Miami when I was super young. The Birds were playing in Miami that Sunday, so loads of Eagles fans were on our plane. They were all drinking, and were repeatedly screaming E-A-G-L-E-S - EAGLES!!! AT one point, the pilot had to come on and ask them to settle down. Lately, I've found myself singing the fight song when I'm alone in my car on the way home from wrok. It's quite sad, really. Beth: You do realize how much NE fans are going to make fun of the E-A-G-L-E-S chant, don't you?

2005-02-02T09:30:00.000-05:00

Veering back on topic, we begin discussing the Eagles, and Mer gives us some insight into the sports cities that will be meeting in the Big Game Kristen: The Pats are familiar with Jevon Kearse from last year's Divisional Playoff game against the Titans. How will that help/hinder them now that he's with a new team and running a different defensive scheme. Discuss. Eh, I tried. Also, let me see if I've got this right. The Dolphins have quarterbacks named A.J. Feeley and Jay Fiedler. The Falcons have a kicker named Jay Feely. So somewhere, there must be an A.J. Fiedler, right? That's how this works? Sam:Jevon Kearse and Jeremiah Trotter scare the pants off of me. I'm afraid that we're gonna try to tackle McNabb and he's just going to do that thing where he steps up with a defender hanging onto his ankles and makes a 60-yard completion. The Flash movie you get when you visit the Eagles' homepage made me wriggle in dorky, art student glee. I almost don't want to root against Freddie Mitchell. Almost. Mer: I'm not kidding when I say it had me crying like a baby at work yesterday. I'm saying fuck Jacksonville...I'm buying a ticket to Philly for next weekend. I need to be home when this game is played. Kristen: McNabb has that crazy little hitch run thing that he does which always seems to lead to a huge gain, as you mentioned. He's a master at turning nothing into something. And am I the only one that worries about giant defenders and Tom's little chicken legs? I just keep replaying that Lawyer Milloy hit (mmm, Lawyer Milloy) over and over in my mind and it just makes me cringe. Honestly, it's not that I don't have confidence in the Pats offensive line, I just, I don't know, get all squicked out when Tom gets sacked. Repeated screams of "Get OFF my quarterback!" are testament to that fact. And big scary defenders are, well, big and scary. And McNabb can move. Tom? Not so much. I love him but you can time his runs with a sundial. But then, we have Rodney Harrison which, yeah, trained killer, that guy. Sam: Oh man, ladies. I'm sitting here in class, surfin' the internet because people are still trickling in and the professor hasn't started yet, and I read this (spoof)article. I had to hold in laughter so hard that my eyes started watering.

"I can blow up the fucking sun if you want."

*snort* Beth: I've never seen that site before! Thanks for cluing me in to the Onion sports page. Anyway...Trotter scares me too. But Tommy is tough. Tougher than he looks, definitely. You'd think he'd cry if he broke a nail to look at him, but I've seen him take a punishing, whalloping, gigantic hit and come up laughing. As for hitting him in the legs, he's a bit too elusive in the pocket for that to be a likely possibility. He usually gets hit when he's blindsided, and it's generally from behind or to the side. Kristen: And to prove his toughness, evidently he played with a 103 degree fever on Sunday and was receiving and IV in his left arm until game time. Squee! Yeah, he's tough. No doubt. Separated shoulder last year and everything, no disrespect to Steve McNair. I just, you know, sort of want to block for him myself or something. Mer: I can't believe none of you have mentioned the fact that the Eagles have signed Jeff Thomason, a contruction project manager who has been retired for two years, to replace Chad Lewis, the guy who scored 2 TDs in the NFC Championship Game. Don't worry about my feelings...go ahead and laugh. It's ok. Also, TO's doctor said yesterday that he would not clear him to play. Though, knowing TO, he'll find a way to get onto the field. His effectiveness will be at a minimum though....and my money says he reinjures his ankle and spends his offseason rehabing. You guys are right to fear Jeremiah Trotter and Jevon Kearse. They are bad muthafuckers. And Trotter is on a mission, which I'll be blogging about soon enough. But, ya know, they are only two guys. I fear that it won't be enough. Yes, I'm excited for the Bowl. But I am even more excited to see what hairdo FredEx shows up with. Beth, this should wipe away all your worries about the outcome of the game. And I'd like to end with something that made me warm and fuzzy inside. The Phillies' Jim Thome was at the Eagles game last weekend, and had this to say: "It was awesome. You cannot believe the way these people are. This is another level," Thome said. "This is a totally different level. The intensity of these people. Everything stops. Everything revolves around the sports teams." Kristen: Hey now, Mer, chin up about Jeff Thomason. We've got a college wrestler who never so much as played a snap of pro ball before this year protecting our QB's ass and that's worked out pretty well so far. I am not taking the Eagles for granted. No way, no how. And the fact that everyone else seems to be is worrying me immensely. Remember 2001? The Greatest Show on Turf? Remember how that turned out? Right, I'm just sayin'. Mer: Ah yes, and in 2001, the Pats were 14 point underdogs. I would kill for an upset like that. Literally, I would kill. There are a handful of rednecks around here that no one would miss. Beth: Hey, which reminds me...we need to talk about the CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS represented by this SB. Two tough-assed, hypercritical, bloodthirsty blue-collar towns...two intense and passionate old-school East Coast cities with something to prove. Jacksonville isn't going to know what hit it. Mer: My two favorite sports towns, no doubt about it. And as my friend pointed out, the header of my blog has really become somewhat of a SuperBowl advertisement. Beth: Mer, give us some insight into Philly and how it differs from Boston. Kristen: Gregg Easterbrook from NFL.com has taken to calling it the "Democracy Bowl." Liberty Bell vs. the U.S.S. Constitution. Cheesteaks vs. Chowder. Ben Franklin vs. Sam Adams. Can you all tell I'm a history dork? The thing is that I think Boston and Philly are way more alike than residents of either city would like to admit, at least for the next two weeks. "Two tough-assed, hypercritical, bloodthirsty blue-collar towns." Exactly. Or, per Manny "essacly." There's a mismatch with St. Louis or New Orleans or Carolina or Atlanta or somewhere more, um, genteel, I guess is the right word. Or maybe southern. Those people don't get into fistfights over the superiority of their teams without the influence of a lot of alcohol. It don't take us that much. And, you know, we've both got that suffering thing down pat, no pun intended. Because, god, that would be a HORRIBLE pun. My Dad has long said, "In Philly, they'll boo Santa Claus." Which, okay, but we evidently treated Roger Clemens "worse than Hitler" so I'm not really sure we have a leg to stand on in that debate. We don't exactly welcome opponents or defectors with open arms. This is part of the reason the World Series was somewhat anti-climactic. We couldn't really HATE the Cardinals. It's much more satisfying to beat up on someone you loathe. But right, this is not about baseball. Forgive me, I'm on hold with the Sox again and they've started playing classic game highlights which is much better than endless repetitions of "Mr. Blue Sky" but it's also making me really want to watch my World Series DVD again. So my point, I guess is that Philly and Boston? Not so different after all. Mer: As someone who has lived in both of these cities, I feel I have a pretty good grip on each town's sports fans. There is no doubt that Philly and Boston are nearly identical sports cities. First of all, sports are the center of the universe to people living in Boston and Philly. In both cases, the mood of most city dwellers depends on what the local team did the night before. In other cities, you'll find people who aren't sports fans that have no idea if the local basketball team won the pervious night. In Boston and Philly, everyone knows, sports fan or not. As mentioned, both are blue-collar towns that apprecioate winning, but even more, they appreciate hardwork. In Boston, they call them "dirtdogs." In Philly, they refer to them as "Philly guys." You can be a flashy player born with immense talent, but if you don't show up everyday willing to give 110%, there's a great chance that the fans and local media will not accept you. Selfishness, greed, laziness...those things don't fly in either city. (well, maybe unless your name is Pedro Martinez.) Both cities are also full of knowledgeable fans. These fans don't just understand the concept and rules of the game...they live, breathe, and sleep the history and future of their teams. Sure, they have their share of moronic idiots that make everyone else look bad, but who doesn't? Both cities also have the reputation as being very negative about their sports teams, but living in Dallas has helped me to understand why this is. In Dallas, when the Rangers were under .500, no one talked about them. In Philly, when the Phillies underachieve, people got mad. They called the local sports radio station bitching and moaning about Larry Bowa. In Boston, when the Red Sox miss the playoffs...well, we know how people react. Fans in Boston and Philly are just much more passionate about their teams. With this passion comes an anger if the teams aren't doing so well. I'm of the opinion that anger over a disappointing team is better than apathy. I also think both cities suffer from a case of Ugly Stepchilditis. Both cities are always compared to NY...neither is as big, as exciting, or as newsworthy. Both cities have a chip on their shoulder from such comparisons, and always seem to be fighting to prove their worth. Add in both cities' sports failures in the past (the Sox for Boston and every team for Philly) and you've got a huge reason why fans in both cities behave why they do. I also just need to say that we didn't boo Santa Claus. Well, we did, but that is just another in a series of misunderstood events in Philly sports history. The guys dressed as Santa that day was drunk, stumbling all over himself, and half falling out of his costume. That's why he got booed. But no one ever mentions that, because Philly is the city people love to hate. Sports are the best story of all, and every story needs a villain. (I posted about this once.)

2005-02-01T13:54:00.000-05:00

More Hot Air

Dear God. I forgot how miserable the two-week gap between the Conference Championship Games and the Super Bowl is. Almost as miserable as the wasteland of despair between the Super Bowl and Spring Training, but of course nothing but the fiery depths of actual hell itself can really come close to that interminable February-March gulf. But, fuck this week is at least running a strong third place. For example, with the dearth of grist for the media mill, media types are left scrambling for content. With which I can sympathize...a few tumbleweeds have, after all, appeared on this blog of late. The difference is, I'm not still expected to churn out copy on a daily basis. So, mostly, I keep my mouth shut. I wait for the game. I tend to the flu I've been afflicted with since late Sunday (a football-less weekend and my current ill health. Coincidence?). Then I make the mistake of reading some of the absolute rot being spewed out by media types in order to fulfill their deadlines, and judging by the results, they are obeying the letter, if not the spirit of the law. Because while I'm not normally a blame-the-media tinfoil hat-wearer, the dreck sprung from the sickening loins of the dreaded Two-Week Super Bowl Bye has left me unable to contain my commentary any longer. And out of the dreck, an old and oft-rehashed theme begins to rear its Swamp-Thing like head. We Boston fans? Yeah, we were better when we were losers. Turns out winning championships has made us "a little blase"; Being a Patriots fan is apparently being lumped in with Yankees fandom, though a league-wide salary cap, revenue sharing, and an owner who is not legally insane make it really not the same thing at fucking all; In other news, Tom Brady and Derek Jeter were separated at birth, a comparison I can't think about for too long or blood will shoot out of my nose; But it's okay, because Boston fans don't even really like football. Which is also okay, because somehow, our football team, which could attain the ranks of the winningest football teams of all time this week, whose coach has tied Vince Lombardi's postseason record, apparently sucks anyway. Then there's...there's this. Which pretty much nails the trifecta: Boston teams suck; Boston fans love them because they love losing; and now that they're winning, Boston fans suck. All of this is summed up by a quote from an extremely impartial source:

"It's thrown me off my game," Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy said in a perfectly pitched deadpan voice from his Massachusetts home. "It's a whole new bag of tricks."

Really...I can't even be verbal about this. If I were attempt to explain exactly how this article made me feel, it would create a mutated mega-post so astronomical in scale that it would immediately crash every computer connected to the World Wide Web. Suffice to say: screeeeeeeeeeeeam. This is what two weeks' wait before a Super Bowl to put all these matters to rest does to the American population: it gives us (or our sportswriters) enough free time to convince themselves that the Super Bowl favorite and its fans are frauds. It's not healthy. I move that the two-week waiting period be abolished hereafter, and as for this year, I'll be spending the rest of Super Bowl Week alternately chugging Mylanta and NyQuil, and utterly ignoring ESPN.

2005-01-31T09:53:00.000-05:00

2005-01-31T06:37:00.000-05:00

Sam tries to catch up; we then fly off on an unbelievable tangent about man-candy. Sam: There's no way I can catch up now, is there? I swear, I need the internet implanted in my brain, with a little heads-up view in front of my eyeball, so I can just be online all the damn time. But let's try anyways, shall we? 1. I'm very much a diehard Pats fan-- I've got the jersies, I've got the pictures up on my wall (I've been making my mother mail me the photo inserts from the Globe), I've got the calendar, I've got the swanky computer wallpaper. But if the Lions were in the postseason, they would be whom I rooted for, because they're my number one team, and I've also got the jersies, photos, etc. for them, plus the added fact that I've been to numerous Lions games and not one single home Pats game (I've been to a couple where they played the Lions). What does this make me? 2. Do people really not know who Tedy Bruschi is? Good lord. I'm at the point where I can't imagine a life without Tedy Bruschi in it. It's hard for me to picture a football fan who doesn't know of his glorious ways. I guess this is what they call a nonsubjective point of view, huh? 3. Tom Brady + full beard = uncomfortable lovin'. I mean, yes, I will enjoy him no matter how he turns himself out in the mornings, but still. Some people are not meant to wear that kind of facial hair. Now, see, McNabb can wear the beard, he looks good with that beard. Brady, not so much. 4. "We have a very "Hail the conquering hero" attitude about it" OK, so was I the only one who thought of the Michigan fight song here? Hail! to the victors valiant! Hail! to the conqu'ring heroes! Hail! Hail! To Michigan, the leaders and best, etc. Yes? Yes? Work with me here, people. 5. "I'm just going to keep trying to be one of the greats, but three or four balls just doesn't suit me very well." Um, Plexiglass? Knock it off. In non-spoiled- overpaid-brat-speak we call this 'whining'. Then he goes on to say, "Everybody keeps telling me how important a person I am on this football team, but you can't justify that for me right now. Just look at the whole season -- it speaks for itself." What? You guys had a fucking amazing season, in case you had your head in the turf for most of it. I wouldn't be totally disappointed if you made it to the AFC Championship with a rookie quarterback. Do I even have to say how ecstatic I would be if the Lions made it to the NFC Championship? 6. Speaking of which, talk about disrespect: yes, there is debate about Brady. The lack of shiny numbers does make him a nice target for the naysayers, even if he does have all the big wins. But there's been plenty of debate about McNabb too-- he had the numbers, but not the big wins. Now he's got one, and I suppose we'll see what we will see. But neither one gets the flak that poor Joey Harrington gets. The guy's got all the stuff to be a good quarterback, but had everything aligned against him: he was forced to play right out of college without any learning time behind a seasoned veteran, he has had approximately zero receivers and zero running game before this past season (and this past season it was all young, and the receivers had tons of dropped ball), his offensive line is weaker than Jorge Posada's chin, and EVERYONE HERE BLAMES THE STATE OF THE TEAM ON HIM. They get on him for being too nice to his teammates, they get on him for poor execution in the red zone, every damn thing. Sometimes I just want to give him a great big hug and let him know that not everyone in the entire state of Michigan thinks it's all his fault. 'Cause it's not. Excuse my Lions ranting, ladies, I know this is the playoffs, and they may be out but they're not forgotten. Yeah, if I missed anything it's because you people are too damn talkative when I'm in studios. Blast and tarnation be upon you. Beth: So getting back to scruffiness and trucker caps...is this more your style, Kristen? Kristen: Did anyone else read the article in today's New York Times comparing Brady to Jeter? My knee-jerk Sox fan reaction is to be horribly offended but, dare I say it, Araton makes some interesting points. And Sam, we don't likes a little scruff? Not even a little bit? A highly scientific and well-researched poll of three female co-workers and, um, my mom shows the count 4-2 in favor of the scruffy, frat boy Tommy over the metrosexual Queer Eye incarnation. Hey, I just report the facts. Beth Allow me to make a case for the metro look. Kristen, he looks FAR more gay in that pic than in the pic I linked. FAR. Mer: Nice beard. Maybe when he's done with the press conference he can come cut down the tree in my backyard. Beth: As long as he worked up a nice sweat, I wouldn't mind. Kristen:I see your point. But I was referencing the scruff. However, this one gives me pause. Oh God, I've totally devolved into one of those times when I stare at absolutebrady.com for hours on end and lose use of all my functional brain cells. Please forgive. Sam: Omigawd. I think my heart just stopped. Seriously. *right click* *download image* Scruff, yes. All about the scruff. Full-on beard, not so much. There's a fine line there that some guys can walk, but when they tip over to the mountain-man beard, I just have to shake my head sadly. Seriously, though. We need some sort of Absolute Brady site for Bill Mueller. Um. Yeah. *slinks away* Mer: Any guy that nay have been reading this thread has definitely abandoned it by now. Kristen: But, I mean, who would want to spend all their time scouring the internet for pictures of hottie Sox players? I mean, really. *raises hand* Okay then. I cannot function. Seriously, my kitchen is a complete fucking disaster because of a burst water pipe owing to the Blizzard of Aught Five, my bedroom is a disaster area, I have no clean laundry and I desperately need to vaccuum. And all I can think about is how I seriously need to invest in a color printer and some double-sided tape. This is what three straight days of cabin fever yields. Fucking football players and their hotness. And just think, two weeks of this... Am I the last person on the planet to notice how fine David Givens is? Yes? Okay then, I'm on the slow bus. Sam: David Givens has long been a favorite of mine. Not only is he luuuurvley, not only is he good with his hands *cough cough*, he MAJORED IN DESIGN in college. As one half an art student, this makes me inexpressibly happy. I tried thinking of a way to get this thing back on track, but really, I've got nothin'. Sorry, gals. Beth: Um...we could talk about the Eagles?

2005-01-28T11:37:00.000-05:00

Link

Fairly self-explanatory. Via Boston Common.

2005-01-28T06:12:00.000-05:00

Pats / Eagles mud-wrestling continues. Sam returns from class to find her inbox violated. Beth: Oh. OH! And ANOTHER thing. The whining in Pittsburgh? Want. To smack. Every. ONE. Of them. I HATE it when people who have failed because of their own performance(s) act as though they've been victimized. Hines Ward? "It just really...it just really hurts, you know?" Sob, sob, blubber, blubber...Hey, pal, put on your big boy pants. You want to whine about not winning?How bout you try not losing next time? Jesus Christ, it's one thing for fans who weren't on the field, they have no control over what happens. But wtf! One of the members of the TEAM boo hooing over the fact that they didn't win? whining about how another guy's retiring? and acting like somehow he's been "victimized" by the fact that he and the rest of his team SUCKED TOO BAD TO WIN, but because the Bus is retiring, somehow this makes it tragic and unjust? I mean...???? Kristen: And yet, the Pats weeping openly at their ring ceremony last year made me all schmoopy. When Rodney Harrison hugs Belichick and says, "Thank you for believing in me when no one else did." and Belichick says, "Man, am I glad we got you." Eep. Likewise, D-Nabb hosting the trophy with tears in his eyes. Something about victory reducing large men to tears makes me all blubbery. Pretty sad when the biggest man on the field after the game was the rookie. Mer: Ok, well first of all, I guess it's just different in New England. Here, everyone picked the Pats to win both playoff games, the D word is being tossed around daily, and they are 7 point favorites in the Bowl. If that is disrespect, I want some. Secondly, I'm sure we're all tired of hearing about Peyton Manning, but come on - the guy set a record. How can you expect the media to not have prattled on and on about it? It was a big deal, and the casual football fan is interested in records and numbers. Most football fans need something tangible like numbers. Tom Brady doesn't have the hot numbers to attract the attention of the casual football fan - only the people who watch him each week realize what he brings to the table. As I mentioned before, the reason he is so good is because he doesn't make mistakes - EVER. He's not the best running QB, he's not the best passing QB. He's just flat out solid in every single aspect of the game. Sometimes it seems like Pats fans don't want to admit that there ARE some categories that Tom Brady isn't at the top of. So yes, casual football fans need records or stats or touchdowns to get excited. Who cares if they don't realize how great Tom Brady is? You have two, maybe 3, Super Bowl championships. Isn't that enough? Another reason I think the Pats aren't the media darling that the Cowboys of the early 90s were is because of the lack of household names on their team. Michael Irvin, Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith...those are names people know and want to talk about. Tedy Bruschi? Outside of NE, nobody cares about that guy. They know he's good, but he doesn't interest them. With the exception of Tom Brady and Corey Dillon, the same goes for most of the team. That may bother some Pats fans, but personally, I think it's indicative of how good of a TEAM the Pats are. They aren't just one or two star players carrying the team....they are all equally as important. I wish Pats fans could be happy about that instead of complaining about how they aren't given enough attention or respect. Beth: Okay...so does NE get credit or not? First you're denying they don't, then you're giving a justification for why Brady doesn't get as much credit as Manning does.

"Sometimes it seems like Pats fans don't want to admit that there ARE some categories that Tom Brady isn't at the top of.

Geez, Mer, got any more generalizations to make about Pats fans? Is this based on SoSH again, or...? We KNOW Brady's not at the top of EVERY category. But we do happen to think he's at the top of quarterbacks, period. What's wrong with that?

"Who cares if they don't realize how great Tom Brady is? You have two, maybe 3, Super Bowl championships. Isn't that enough?

Right. Which is why I said:

However, where you have a good point is that there's no good reason for Pats fans to let it really get to them. I try not to, try to just enjoy it for myself and know what I know and let it go and not write too many run on sentences that inadvertently rhyme and make me look like a jackass.

Mer: Here's what I've heard recently. "Peyton Manning is a fantastic record-setting QB who will probably win a SuperBowl one day. The NE Patriots are the best team in the NFL, and have been for a couple of years. If I was going to start a team from scratch, I'd take Brady. You can't argue with his success." Sure, I'm making generalizations. I base my opinions on Pats fans on all of the Pats fans I know, since most of my friends are Bostonians. Of course I realize that I'm generalizing, but so are you when you say that people don't respect Brady enough or give Belichek enough credit. With all that damn coding on that last email, I didn't even see that last paragraph. Kristen: I think it's your ultimate Catch-22. We want people to realize how good the Pats are and how great Brady is because we are so fiercely proud of them and him. We have a very "Hail the conquering hero" attitude about it in that we look at the records and Brady's numbers when it counts and we think, "How could you not get this?" We want to look at the rest of the league and say "You take your first round picks. We're happy with #199." But on the other hand, we respect the fact that, as you said, no one outside of NE knows who Tedy Bruschi is and they sure as hell haven't heard of Asante Samuel but we don't have to like it. The thing about the Pats is that they are such a TEAM that no one person is above it. As Beth said, I would argue that the most recognizable person on that team is the guy on the sidelines in the gray hoodie. Which is all well and good but sometimes you just want to reach through the TV screen and throttle Michael Irvin (I mean, I want to do that anyway, most times), for saying something about how they're not that great. The Patriots aren't as sexy as the Cowboys were. And by "sexy" I mean newsworthy for their colorful personalities or flamboyance or what have you because I think we can all agree that the Pats are a damn fine team. But if no one is getting arrested for spousal abuse, no one is being indicted on cocaine possession and no one has been charged with concealing a weapon, then there's no news. The public likes the headlines and after a while "Pats win again" gets boring. I can understand that. But I think that speaks to the cynicism of the national sports consciousness and not to the lack of talent or dominance on the part of the Patriots. Mer: Absolutely. I tried to put myself in the place of most (most, not all, ok?) Pats fans. If, after the Sox won the Series, people started talking about how they got lucky and weren't really the best team, would I have been pissed? Sure, I would have. I would have argued it till I was blue in the face and it would have driven me crazy. Because diehard fans love their team like family, and they don't want anyone criticizing them. I get that. But I also hope that most Pats fans can put themselves in my place. We see fans celebrating 2 Super Bowl wins, possibly 3, and they are complaining about respect. And hell...we'd just all kill for one Bowl win and zero respect. Ya know? Kristen: Oh yes, girl, I understand. Ask me what I would have given up for Boone's home run to have landed in Johnny Damon's glove. I understand. Beth: Well said, Mer. I think I understand where you're coming from now. Group hug would probably go here... Sam: HOLY FUCKING FUCK MY INBOX. I assume you guys were at work or something and therefore had computer access but I was in the middle of a 3 hour painting studio, so, uh, no computer. And then I come home, and HOLY CRAP MUCH READING.

2005-01-27T09:18:00.000-05:00

A New Big Dog on the Block?

And here I thought Daily Kos really loved me. In a post linked by Soxaholix, Big Kos (I'll call him that from now on, I think, in indirect homage to Silva) says he thinks sports blogging is the "next big thing." Which is all well and good. Until he says,"...which is why I've bought a company in that realm." Um? Some of us have been slaving away at this for free already, there, pally. Some of us would be quite satisfied with easily the biggest leftist political blog on the planet (and some of us, we will now admit, thought that blog was the result of sincere political opinion rather than capitalizing on a "market", but will now snap a rubber band around their wrists whenever they mistakenly use the words "sincere" and "political" in the same sentence again). And though we appreciate the kind words, we will not be accepting them after all if they're meant as a, "I will now squash them all, and take over their market." If that's what you meant, go ahead and bite us, Big Kos. Meanwhile...saying Billy Beane is baseball's "top GM"? Um, you got some "investigation" of your own to do before starting that fabulous company of yours.

2005-01-27T06:47:00.000-05:00

As promised, Beth and Mer mud wrestle. Kristen also leaps into the fray. Sam is busy in class for this segment. So now it's back to TCTF? Beth: Mer and I have actually been having part of this discussion over on the SG msg board. Kristen: Yes, I have been reading your posts and lurking in the shadows with an occasional "I heart David Givens" thrown in for good measure. Anyway, here's what I think. I'm skeptical about T.O.'s ability to heal miraculously and come back to tear it up. And, though it remains to be seen if he will run his legs, he will most certainly run his mouth. Ask Vanderjagt about giving the Pats extra motivation. Here's the thing: I really like Donovan McNabb. I really, really do. If Tom Brady weren't my QB, I'd want D-Nabb hands down. No Manning, no Vick, no Roethlisberger, none of that. He deserves to be in this game. And he deserved to win on Sunday. Without Chad Lews, and most likely without T.O. - at least at full speed - I would be concerned about the Eagles recieving game. I guess that puts more pressure on Westbrook and Mitchell and the capable shoulders of McNabb. I'll bet they can handle it. Or, I would bet they could handle it if they were playing anyone else. That's not overconfidence because the combination of McNabb and Andy Reid surely gives me pause. But I think maybe it's a bad year to be an NFC champ. Part of me wants this to be a really close game and part of me wants it to be a huge blowout. Not because I don't like the Eagles because, aside from T.O., I have much love for the Eagles and can certainly identify with their fan base, and I do take some sort of twisted pride in the fact that they've apparently adopted the Red Sox as their motivation. It's just that I agree with Beth, people still don't get it. They still think Tom Brady is "pretty good" and Belichick is "pretty smart." It's time to solidy those "best ever" arguments. Also, we're losing both our offensive and defensive coordinators after the SB and I can't say that doesn't worry me. Who knows when and if we'll ever be here again? But I shall refrain from trash-talking the Eagles because they are a damn good team and truth be told, I'm terrified. I always am. I think most honest fans are. Ignore the loud-mouthed jackasses. Something tells me they're new to this bandwagon. Converts are always the worst. Oh, and Mer, I agree with you re: Tommy's hair. It's called Supercuts, Tom. Look into it. But not until after the Super Bowl. Whatever you do, do not ask Freddie Mitchell for the number of his stylist. By the way, Sam, this is genius: "Hell may have no fury like a woman scorned, but heaven hath no sweetness like a sports fan vindicated." I dropped that one on my resident office Steelers fan after she attempted to make me feel bad by telling me about her boyfriend rocking back and forth in the corner and hanging his Joey Porter jersey in his closet while saying, "Bye. See you next year." She was trying to take advantage of my good sportsmanship. Eh, I'm over it. Beth: I like the hair. What can I say. I don't think Tommy has ever shown up in any kind of haircut, clothing style, etc. where it hasn't made me happy to see him. Mer: Lots of things to get to here. TO has an injury that takes 12 weeks to heal, at the least. It's been 7 weeks so far. He will not play. If he somehow convinces Andy Reid to let him suit up, he'll be as effective as Randy Moss was against the Eagles. "Without Chad Lews, and most likely without T.O. - at least at full speed - I would be concerned about the Eagles recieving game. I guess that puts more pressure on Westbrook and Mitchell and the capable shoulders of McNabb." Yes, losing TO and Chad Lewis is very concerning, and to be honest, I think it might be too much for them to overcome. A good team should be able to overcome injury, but losing the guy around whom you built your offense, and then one of his best replacements, may just be too much. Westbrook can only do so much when he's in double coverage. I'm letting the TO comments slide. I don't have the energy for that debate again. Who is it that talks about Tom Brady as only being "good" and Belichek as only being "pretty smart?" Where are you all hearing this? For the few weeks, I've heard nothng but Patriots asskissing. Everyone talks about how they are a dynasty and how you can't pick against them until they lose and how Belichek is one of the greatest coaches in the history of the NFL. I don't know if Pats fans are inventing this "we aren't respected" attitude as a source of motivation, but it's insane. I've heard nothing of the sort and in fact, I've heard exactly the opposite. I loved Freddie Mitchell's hair. I love that dude's attitude. Some in the media have been criticizing him for always seeking attention. I guess some people always need something to complain about. I found an interesting stat today. Check it: Since the start of the 2001 season, including the playoffs, the Patriots' record is 56-16. The Eagles' record is 54-19. That's two more wins for the Patriots: Super Bowls. That's three more losses for the Eagles: NFC championship games. Pretty interesting, I'd say. And just to prove that not everyone is disrespecting the Pats, here's this:

"I think Brady is as good as there is in the NFL," Jim Johnson said. "This guy is so accurate. I've already been studying film on him, and I can't believe some of the throws this guy is making. Montana was so darn cool, and Brady is just like that. I haven't seen anything that bothers him." "You can see why he was the MVP of two Super Bowls. He's got a feel for the game right now, and you can see the confidence he has in making all the big throws. He doesn't make many mistakes, and they've got good receivers."

Kristen: Maybe I am searching for the negatives. I mean, you do have to look pretty hard. Perhaps it's a product of listening to Rodney Harrison week in and week out preaching about getting no respect. Maybe I just watch too much SportsCenter. I know that people respect the Pats and give them credit. I think part of it is the obsession that people have with numbers and records and stats. Brady will never be Manning. Never. And I wouldn't want him to be. I suspect he wouldn't want to be either. There just seems to be some sort of mental stumbling block that people can't get over in terms of defining things. They always say, "Is Tom Brady one of the best ever?" Why can't they just say, "Here's why Tom Brady is one of the best ever." Maybe it's semantics. Perhaps I should not get so caught up in it. I think Freddie Mitchell would have fit in well with the Red Sox. I do sort of like him. He reminds me a little bit of Pedro Martinez in that he's not afraid of self- promotion but it's a bit tongue in cheek. But at the end of the day, you're glad he's on your team. Jeremiah Trotter scares me. I'll admit it. I am terrified that he'll come into some rough contact with Tommy's chicken legs. Switching tracks for just a second, does anyone else think that Plaxico Burress' hissy fit over not getting more balls thrown his way was perhaps indicative as to why the Steelers couldn't get it together on Sunday? Especially since he was being covered by a dude who was just signed two weeks ago. It's not like Ty Law was running rampant back there. Methinks you should stop whining, Plexiglass and step it up. What do we think of Hines Ward's hanky fest? Also, Ty Law and his little scooter made me all warm and fuzzy inside. Beth: Yes, Mer, you've been hearing that stuff, but as Kristen pointed out, they've been putting it in v. hypothetical terms, like, "IS this true?" instead of "wow, hey, this is true." And the guys saying you can't pick against the Pats are saying it in the context of kicking themselves for picking against the Pats in BOTH playoff games, and only now they're jumping on the bandwagon. That's why it irks Pats fans. And seriously...Tommy does not get his due. Usually Belichik gets all the credit, Tommy's just another pretty face in the system. This pisses us off as well. And really, if you compare it to the on-air fellatio of Peyton Manning this year, he gets nothing. I'm not saying NO ONE gets it. I'm saying SOME people REFUSE to get it. Like the idiot who asked Tommy, "Why do you think you play better in the postseason than in the regular season?" Hello??!?!? Could just be me (and Tommy) but I (we) happen to think that a 28-4 record over the past two regular seasons leaves little room for improvement. Why is someone even asking that question? Is it just that they've only been paying attention to the pats in the postseason and suddenly realizing they're a good team? Hey, whaddya know, I think that's it. In terms of their numbers and their consistency, they are NOT getting the respect they deserve. They aren't getting the kind of press even the Colts get in the regular season, and though the numbers make it undeniable, they're not getting the kind of coverage previous "dynasty teams" like the cowboys got. They're still being called lucky in some circles. I can't STAND that shit. However, where you have a good point is that there's no good reason for Pats fans to let it really get to them. I try not to, try to just enjoy it for myself and know what i know and let it go and not write too many run on sentences that inadvertently rhyme and make me look like a jackass. (To Be Continued...)

2005-01-26T14:45:00.000-05:00

Don't Hate the Playa, Baby, Just Hate the Game

(I'm aware that this is cutting and pasting my comments from the other site. What can I say. Sometimes I'm unforgivably lazy. But I wanted to draw attention to this post). I'd like to know one good reason why people wouldn't like this team. Just one. Like he said, no coke scandals, no sex scandals, no holdouts, no loudmouths, no trash talk, no nothing. There's also a salary cap, so no one can whine about payroll or talent; we quite simply have a great organization and a great head coach / GM. In my mind, the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the only reason left can be jealousy. Although I suppose I could be persuaded otherwise. That's what the comments are for, if you'd care to enlighten me.

2005-01-26T11:47:00.000-05:00

TCTF Marathon

Us Chicks what Talk Football are talkin' up a storm this week, being that both Super Bowl teams are represented in our little group. We've also been joined by Kristen as a special guest. We're breaking up our extremely long conversation into several parts, because we have received feedback that the length of TCTF football posts had been cumbersome. My apologies, and we hope you enjoy this TCTF--or FCTF?--marathon week. Four? Chicks Talk Football? Edition Beth Kristen, this is Mer and Sam. Sam and Mer, this is Kristen. You can check out her blog. Kristen: Hola chicas, Nice to meet you all, however that works, email-wise. Finally, some smart-talkin' fellow football lovin' females. I mostly started my blog so that I could stop driving people around here batshit crazy with my never-ending sports commentary. I never dreamed that cool like-minded people would read it. Anyway, I gradated from Emerson in 2002 but started in 1999 which is some bizarre math worthy of someone much more numbers savvy than an Emerson grad. I'm pretty sure I graduated in 3 years with a dual major in Film and WLP but for a communications school, they're not so much with the communicating so who really knows? I lived at 132 Beacon for two years and then moved off campus to an apartment approximately 300 yards from Fenway Park in Kenmore Square. Best little crack den imaginable. I work for a textbook publisher now on Arlington Street - Bedford/St. Martin's. We do English and History college texts. Which, woo hoo, but it's better than it sounds. I've done some freelance writing as well. I did movie reviews for a NH newspaper for four years so I've seen more bad movies than I care to remember. I spend way too much time at work on ESPN.com, Dirt Dogs, Page 2, survivinggrady and now, Cursed to First. Why do I feel like I'm writing an online dating profile? :-) So the blog pretty much sums it up so far as my sports sensibilities and fanaticism lie. You get the idea. I must now go convince my father that Darryl Strawberry most likely does not read my blog and if he does, he will not be able to hunt down my dad and beat him senseless with a fungo bat because of his less than charitable comments about the Big Straw. Eagles/Pats SB, I'm crossing my fingers. Or praying. Or lighting incense at the altar of the Tom Brady bobblehead. I look forward to talking with all of you soon. Sam: Pulling sneaky decisions while I'm exiled on a family event, eh?Fortunately, I have discovered the hotel ethernet port, and thusly am able to get online and foil your nefarious plots. Seriously, though (or as serious as I get, in any event), welcome to the monkey house, Kristen. You graduated with a dual-degree in 3 years? Good lord girl, I'm doing a dual-degree and firmly expect to be here at least 5 years, possibly longer. My life is woe. In a way it's good that I'm here with this part of my family, because a lot of them are as into sports as we are (or more so, terrifying as that thought may be), so I've been able to discuss football and baseball to a glorious degree. We're concerned about Hines Ward on Sunday, we don't think the Pats have anyone who can cover him if he gets a good break and ends up deep in the secondary. And the Busboy makes my hands shake like a caffeine addict going into withdrawal (ha ha, so close to real life it almost isn't funny). And Kearse... OK, stopping now, I'm making myself ill. Mer, I think the Aigles' performance will be largely dependent on how effectively they hold Michael Vick. He can be shut down, we've seen that during the regular season, but when he isn't effectively contained all hell breaks loose. Obviously there's more to that team than just him, but it does rather seem like you can tell how Atlanta's gonna do by looking at how Vick is doing in that particular game. Anyhow, I should go sleep, because we have to get up at some obscenely early hour to get to the temple on time for the bar mitzvah, but I'd just like to add that today we went to the Detroit Auto Show, and it was UTTER AWESOMEITY. You know you're jealous. Mer: And so it is: Eagles/Pats in the Super Bowl. The next two weeks look to be very interesting here in TCTF Land. Sam: So I'm pretty happy right now. I've got tons of homework that needs to be done for tomorrow morning, but hey, I already found a photo of Tedy Bruschi hefting the Lamar Hunt trophy, so I'm glowing so much it's nearly drowning out the horrible flourescent dorm lights. Also, Rodney Harrison is officially in the 'I would totally have his babies' club. Was it me, or did Bill Cowher's chin look *bigger* in the postgame interview? Maybe he was jutting it out funny? It was actually kind of terrifying. And Mer, looks like we'll be seeing you in Jacksonville :) Poor Cardiac Jags. They were a good team with a huge-hearted quarterback and a lot of luck. In another universe (i.e. one in which they were in the NFC), they might be in this Superbowl. Instead, we're all converging on their turf in a couple of weeks :) I'm awfully happy about the Pats going, and I can't even begin to count how many people have come up to talk to me about it. Haven't seen the Steeler fan who works in the cafeteria yet-- hopefully he'll be working dinner tomorrow. I look forward to taunting him over the 'catch of the day' (mysteriously unidentified, and caught from where? we're not on a lake or anything), 'beef lasagna', and 'kyoto blend' (no, I don't know what it is either, but this is what the online menu is telling me). Hell may have no fury like a woman scorned, but heaven hath no sweetness like a sports fan vindicated. But GODDAMN do I wish the Lions had found a way. Kristen: Only Rodney Harrison? I would have the babies of everyone on that team. Except for Belichick. He gets to be my angry uncle whom I am scared of and who gives me lectures and I feel very bad for disappointing him. Bob Kraft is like a happy little gnome of a man. So Belichick now has the same playoff record as the man the trophy is NAMED AFTER. Can there be any doubt how great he is? Cowher's chin is threatening to eclipse all three rivers. It must now go back to its offseason job of impersonating Jay Leno's chin. This is what everyone was predicting before the season started and this is what it's come down to. Imagine that. As it should be. May the best team win. Beth: Right now, all I can really think of to say is, "wheeeeeeeee!" Be sure to tune in tomorrow, when Beth and Mer start off the Pats / Eagles mud-wrestling...

2005-01-26T08:57:00.000-05:00

Now I've Got Chills

(01-25) 16:44 PST FOXBORO, Mass. (AP) -- New England quarterback Tom Brady had a 103 degree fever the night before the Patriots beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC championship game, Sports Illustrated reported. The magazine said in this week's issue that Brady had an intravenous line in his left -- non-throwing -- arm on Saturday night while fighting off chills in his Pittsburgh hotel room. In outdoor temperatures of 11 degrees, Brady threw for two touchdowns with no interceptions to lead the Patriots to a 41-27 victory and their third Super Bowl appearance in four years. (AP story, printed in San Francisco Chronicle)

2005-01-25T21:08:00.000-05:00

High Roller

As we speak, Curt Schilling is throwing the Red-Sox-starved a bone by playing in the Bravo's "Celebrity Poker Showdown". It seems like all he's been doing lately is glancing at his cards, looking frustrated, rubbing his face so that his World Series ring gleams in the light, flinging the hand down and folding. The rubbing the face thing. That's his tell. Especially if he pushes his hat up and swipes at his forehead. I watched him do that night after night on the mound. Wiping one hand across his mouth and then scratching at his nose with his thumb, that's a sign he has a good hand. It's so obvious. Because the forehead thing, that's what happened in Game 1 of the ALCS, and Game 6, and Game 2 of the World Series, when he was hurting and struggling. The hand across the mouth and the thumb to the nose, that was common with a full count and a batter that looked about to wet his pants, as Curt turned to come set and finish him off. Probably it's a good thing his opponents aren't ~~stalkers~~ Red Sox fans. Kellie called a few minutes ago to make sure I was watching. "Your man's winning!" she said excitedly. "What, no he's not!?" I looked back at the TV. I know nothing about poker whatsoever, so I could have been wrong. "But he's the chips leader!" Kellie cried. "Right, but they just said that everyone at the table had been the chips leader so far, at one time or another," I replied. "You know, Beth..." Kellie said, after a pause. "We need to work on your 'happy skills'." Meanwhile, Curt just folded. Again. I'd much rather watch him pitch. This poker thing is just a tease. P.S. Brad Garrett just put on a Yankees cap. Curt just sort of smiled at him. This could get much more interesting. P.P.S. Curt lost. He hobbled on his crutches into the Loser's Lounge. He raised $5000 for the S.H.A.D.E. Foundation, but he is PISSED. Which is, of course, why I love him. "Whelp." One of the commentators said, as he hobbled along. "Looks like this just isn't your year." Squee.

2005-01-25T21:05:00.000-05:00

I Needed to Share

Click

2005-01-25T13:54:00.000-05:00

Untitled

...because I harbored even for a second the stupid thought of titling this post something like, "Love thy Enemy" or "Wouldn't Wish it on my Worst Enemy" or something that would make light of what is not a funny or remotely baseball-related situation. Fuck Boston vs. New York. Larry Mahnken is a good guy, and doesn't deserve what happened to him. No one does. According to Alex Belth, Larry has a Paypal account on his site where people can make donations to help him during this difficult time. Give it a thought.

2005-01-24T22:04:00.000-05:00

Nothing But Greenery

Approximately four seconds. Give or take a few fractions of a moment. That's how long it took Tom Brady, protected by the fortress of his offensive line, to scan the field, cock his arm, and unleash the bomb that would devastate Pittsburgh. David Givens, Brady's first read, was running an inside route about ten yards away, in the thick of the swarming Steeler linebacker corps. His second was shadowing Givens another ten yards away, and was similarly pursued by the Steelers' secondary. Sixty yards downfield, Deion Branch was motoring toward the end zone. Brady patted the ball. He looked left. He looked right. He caught the attention of the Steelers linebackers balanced on tiptoe, pausing to follow his eyes over the chaos in the trenches at the line of scrimmage. And then he looked right again, toward Givens, who was struggling to get open. The linebackers bit. Before he even looked back, Brady's arm was in motion, releasing a towering Hail Mary pass downfield. Without even looking back to check on Branch, he delivered a pass priority air-mail, hitting No. 83 in stride for the touchdown that drove the first stake through the heart of the Steel City. This single play was the portent that told Patriots fans who might have bought into the hype about the Steelers' defensive strengths, their rookie phenom quarterback, their ravenous fans, to sit back and relax. This was the turning point, the subtle moment where Tom Brady once again rose above his counterparts on the field and delivered when it mattered. It wasn't even so much the fact that the pass was such a Kodak moment--spinning out of the sky as if dropped from the clouds, whistling into Branch's outstretched hands as he pulled just a step away from his defender--it was the finesse, the sheer, raw ability involved that is so often overlooked in Tom Brady. Because Bill Belichik and Charlie Weiss can draft the scheme. Givens and Branch can run the routes. The offensive line can block. But when it comes down to that four seconds, and the choices there are to make--Givens or Branch? Ten yards and a first down, or 60 and a touchdown? Average or brilliant? Enough or above and beyond? There is no one in the spotlight but Tom Brady, alone in the pocket, reading the field. There is an element there that can't be coached, or taught, or manufactured. There is an almost diabolical cleverness to the way Brady deliberately looked the linebacker toward Givens, baited him, faked him with nothing but his face. And then launched that pass without hesitation--knowing he had his man, knowing his own ability, having absolute confidence in his knowledge of what was unfolding. For a quarterback, the game is little more than situational ethics. Everything is relative. Peyton Manning, after all, is sitting at home after breaking the record for touchdown passes in a single regular season. Tom Brady has thrown a fraction of Manning's number of downfield bombs, but it is their context, not their volume, that makes them great. And making those split-second moves in context is what Tom Brady is, what he means to the franchise and the fans of New England, and the game itself. Still, if the post-game press conferences are any indication, it's not catching on. And as reporters tossed out careless questions toward the pinstripe-suited Brady, he seemed more perturbed behind the microphone than he ever had behind his tackles. One question in particular seemed to offend him--something along the lines of "how is it that you can function under the pressure of the playoffs?" Brady stopped. He lowered his eyes. His congenial smile faded. "How is it...that I can function." He repeated quietly. Some people still don't get it. I, on the other hand, will never doubt him again. Of course, as those in the Patriots organization will tell you endlessly, it's a team sport, a team effort, and no one player can carry the day. And this is true. Because while Brady's contributions were phenomenal, they were complemented by the performance of Corey Dillon and the defense, which proved good for four turnovers. Including an 87-yard interception return for a touchdown by Rodney Harrison. And so in the midst of it, though it was clumsily phrased, the question had a measure of validity. What is it?, the reporter was trying to say. What is the one factor, the one nugget of truth, to be gleaned from all this, from your performance, from your existence? The answer remains slippery and elusive, and may only become clear once No. 12 and a soft-spoken head coach have long since hung it up. In the end, there are probably many answers. But the question, at the moment, is what it's all about. Until it's understood why the Patriots do what they do--without the customary explanations for football dominance, mainly revolving around the presence of multiple indespensible marquis players--it may go unacknowledged that they do it. For fans and gamblers, some of whom, but not all, are the same people, part of enjoying football is the art and science of prediction. Point spreads, picks every week, who's favored, the over-under, whether to take the points...the Patriots defy all that. They are a reliable winning machine, but how they tick remains unclear. Statheads are loath to trust that which they cannot quantify. But for a fan such as myself, it's something I'm coming to terms with quite nicely, thank you. Of course, I have my own theory, which is plainly that Bill Belichik and Tom Brady are the best coach-quarterback pair ever to suit up for an NFL franchise, and that they will soon be recognized as such. They are a twin miracle, and for now, before they get their due, I have only to be grateful that they have manifested themselves in my hometown's colors. And to live in the now, in the immediate, the way Belichik does. One spectacular game at a time. To take a small lesson from Rodney Harrison, in his press conference, where he answered the question, "Did it surprise you that there were no Steelers around you when you walked into the end zone?" "It was just smooth sailing," Harrison said. "It felt good for once to see nothing but greenery." That's where the Patriots are right now. Smooth sailing--no one around. Passing them all into nothing but greenery.

2005-01-23T21:55:00.000-05:00

School's In

This is Peyton. This is Peyton after the Patriots. This is Ben. This is Ben after the Patriots.

ANY QUESTIONS??

More later when I've recovered.

2005-01-22T20:59:00.000-05:00

Things About Which I Will Not Write

There have been several stores in the news recently or that have been covered here already before that I have made up my mind not to write about under any circustmances at all, or again. They are:

Ballgate.

Whether or not Curt Schilling pitches "commando".

ANYTHING involving the word "commando".

A-Rod bitching about Curt.

For that matter, Curt flapping his gums about A-Rod, Republicanism, or Jesus.

This.

However, there are some things I have been remiss in not commenting about in the last week or so, and they are:

Bronson and Bellhorn being signed.

Minky vs. Millar

New Sox acquisitions

How hot Tom Brady is, with delicious visual aids

The conversation I had with a random stranger before the glowing altar of a TV playing 3 Games to Glory II for promotional purposes inside CVS.

Any and all recurrences, relapses, revisitations and repeats of the Randy Johnson tantrum.

So that's what I'm not writing about. In the meantime, I have slaved--SLAVED!--to bring you the following pictures from the Patriots' final regular season game at Gillette Stadium. So, in celebration of their hopeful trouncing of the Steelers tomorrow, here is the nonverbal portion of my post for today. You can be assured there will be more after the AFC Championship game tomorrow, provided the Blizzard of Aught Five doesn't knock out my power.

2005-01-20T10:42:00.000-05:00

The Playoffs, Round One Beth: Was that Jets game a disgrace or what? Sam: No kidding. I only got my hopes up, oh, about 500 times in the course of that one. Thank you, New York. I should know by now to never trust teams coming out of there... Oh, and the first Eagles TD of the game? Where Freddie Mitchell caught the ball, got back up, and PRETENDED TO PULL HIS PANTS BACK UP, COMPLETE WITH SECURING THE BELT? I nearly fell off the bed, I was laughing so hard. Then I had to explain to the kid I was watching it with why it was so funny, but damn. Delight. Mer:I would just like it to be on the record that, no matter what happens in today's game from this point on, I am enjoying this more than I have ever enjoyed a football game. Freddie Mitchell with the pants (and buckling the belt), JR Reed with the 48 yard punt return, McNabb's orgasmic confidence in the pocket, and Mitchell's miracle TD catch after LJ Smith coughed up the ball - this is what I've been waiting all year for. Beth: You know, I felt the same way watching the Pats. I so hope we have a Pats-Eagles Super Bowl. Sam:

"I'm trying to think of what excuses they're saying in their locker room right now," Tedy Bruschi said afterward. "What rules do they want to change now? Maybe it'll be, 'We can't play a game if it snows.' I don't know. I was just tired of it. I was tired of hearing this and that, talking about the last game and how we didn't win the game, they lost the game by giving the ball away. Last time I checked, turnovers are when defenses take it away. And we just took it away again today. To hold that offense to three points, I mean, their players are great. I respect what Peyton Manning did this year. I respect those players. Sometimes you've just got to be quiet and play football." ... "I'm a special player," he [Freddie Mitchell] said, wearing an Indiana Jones hat and bow tie. "I've just got to thank my hands for being so great. I've just been chillin' being patient, being humble. I knew my time was going to come. I want to say `Hi' to all my new friends out there, those people who doubted me and the receivers."

So I'll just be over there in the corner, giggling happily and saying, "FootballFootballFootball!" over and over again. Goodbye, Viqueens! Goodbye, Horseshoes! Goodbye, Randy Moss! Goodbye, Peyton Manning! Hee hee. Beth: They're saying, "He's a freakin' liar and an egomaniac. He just made it up to cover his big butt. No Yankee would ever do that." Sorry. Still can't get over that one from SoSH v. NYYFans. The thing that rings in my head (well, among others) about all the hype leading into the Pats / Colts game was when someone (I of course can't remember who) said, "The Colts HAVE to win. If they don't, what are they going to say? They have the five-yard rule. The Patriots' secondary is depleted, and there's no Ty Law..." Seriously. What is going through their heads? OK, taking a break from searching for Colts quotes to post the following link: OMG OMG OMG OMG. Okay. Under control. From the Indianapolis Star:

"They played ball," said Colts running back Edgerrin James, shrugging. "Bottom line. No tricks. They just played ball." "(Cory Dillon) made some good runs and was bouncing off people and slashing," Colts coach Tony Dungy said. "That's where they hurt us; they didn't hurt us so much in the passing game, other than a couple of third-down throws."

Oh yeah, Tony, our passing game SUCKED. Sigh!

"They made plays off our mistakes," Colts defensive lineman Raheem Brock said. "We couldn't get off the field. We couldn't get the ball back for our offense." ... "We never gave ourselves a chance," Colts center Jeff Saturday said.

Okay. Give me just one teeny goddamned break here. Just one, that's all, I promise, kay? So it's not the fact that the Patriots KICKED YOUR ASS, it's that YOU made "mistakes." Fuck YOU. Where's that patented "tip my cap" response? Where's the CREDIT, now, FINALLY, after the Patriots KILLED you AGAIN?!?! Except for Edgerrin James up above, quotes from the Colts about how well the PATRIOTS played, and maybe, that they were....underestimated? By your team? Just possibly? Are few and far between. And where's Vanderjerk when you need him, huh? He ran his mouth before the game, he should have to be called to answer afterwards. And who's better qualified to talk on the subject? After all, he's the one who scored the only points for the Colts. I'm sorry, but there is no football team I have ever hated more than Peyton Manning's Colts. Bunch of fucking MARTYRS. Sigh. OK. Calm down Beth. PM & Co. are water under the bridge. If we're ripping anyone a new one, it should be the Steelers. But that's another email. Although I really do sense a rivalry brewing here at least approaching, if not ever possibly matching, Sox / Yankees. These teams seem to be on a collision course every year, even though they're not in the same division. But the way I see it, PM is this generation's Dan Marino, and Tommy is this generation's Joe Montana. It's kind of a no-brainer who's going to win most of the time, even if the other does put up the gaudy numbers during the regular season. BTW, on ESPN.com, they TOTALLY stole our idea with "Snap Judgement." But, Skip Bayless makes the following very interesting points:

Best Throw of The Week: Third-and-goal, Patriots, from the Indy five, about a minute and a half left in the third quarter. Patriots leading only 6-3. Brady fades and looks to his first option. Covered. Then his second. Covered. Then he breaks left and escapes the rush. By then, David Givens finally has lost his man. Throwing against his body, the right-handed Brady whips a pass so hard that he fears Givens won't be able to snag it. Givens does. Patriots, 13-3. Colts' resolve, effectively shattered. ... Worst Throw of The Week: Here was the flip side of the weekend's best pass. Here was Peyton Manning facing second-and-goal from the five with one more shot before having to settle for a half-ending field goal. Convert, and the Colts would have a 7-6 halftime lead and the momentum after getting outplayed for the first two quarters. Manning faked to Marvin Harrison in the corner of the end zone and tried to come back to the middle to tight end Dallas Clark -- who had been legally leveled at the goal line. Now what? Manning began to scramble forward, but unlike Brady, Manning isn't poised enough on the move to find an uncovered receiver. He forced a throw to Reggie Wayne that was nearly intercepted by Eugene Wilson. That was the turning point.

Mer: That's not as good as ours...anyone can get guys to talk football. But I like the thing they do with the chart that has each of them answering a handful of questions with three words. We should try that sometime... I despise Skip Bayless. So for all the hype, there really wasn't alot of great football this weekend. The Jets/Steelers game was really the most exciting. I was cheering for the Steelers for a handful of reasons. I love Duce Staley, I was watching with a friend who is a Steelers fan, and most of all, we were watching at a bar, and sitting a few seats away was a Jets fan in a Yankee jacket. I did NOT want to see him celebrate. So despite the fact that there were loads of mistakes and it was sloppy at times, it was a great game. And watching the Yankee fan slink out of the bar as yet another of his teams choked in the postseason was highly entertaining. We watched the Atlanta/St Louis game at a restaurant during dinner, but the game was already over by the time we got our table. Did anyone doubt this would be a blowout? There was a reason STL was a .500 team. The Pats/Colts game was a disappointment, because I had high hopes for a high scoring game in which momentum would switch back and forth until someone finally came out on top. Instead, the Pats controlled the entire game, the Colts' receivers couldn't get their hands on the ball, and Peyton Manning pulled a Yankees yet again. As for the Eagles game, I wasn't lying when I said yesterday that I enjoyed it more than any other football game I can remember watching. The media had been going on and on for weeks about how the Birds would be rusty, their offense would be anemic without TO, and Randy Moss would quiet the Philly crowd. Instead, the Eagles dominated the Vikings from the start, giving Eagles fans the kind of game we've been waiting all season for. I can see why this game would have been boring for non-Eagles fans, but I was as giddy as a schoolgirl all afternoon. There were so many highlights that I can't even remember them all. McNabb's pass to Freddie Mitchell for their first TD and Mitchell's subsequent celebration which included mock-pulling his pants up and buckling his belt, Freddie Mitchell recovering LJ Smith's fumble for a TD, a healthy Brian Westbrook tearing it up in his first playoff game, Jevon Kearse and Jeremiah Trotter destroying everything in their path, and McNabb...I will never get tired of watching McNabb in the pocket. Relaxed, patient, cool, calm...the guy is confident and having a blast. You can't ask for much more than that. Sam: OK, yes, feel a little dirty agreeing with something Skip Bayless wrote, becauseI usually read his articles and end up saying, "Wow, he knows about as much about sports as I do (which ain't much) and writes worse than most blogs I read," at the end of them. But hey, points for New England kowtowing. I can't remember if he picked them to win or not before the game, feel like I saw it on Cold Pizza and promptly forgot. Beth, the photo of ol' Infinite Audibles? I pretty much sprayed water all over my computer. Thanks. Please tell me you went back and checked out the rest of, ahem, PeytonManning.com. Please tell me you read his 'diaries'. I would like to read you an excerpt from the one he posted up just before last year's AFC Championship game. Ahem.

"Hello everyone! I know it's been a while since I last checked in, but things have been pretty busy here in Indianapolis. We have been fortunate enough to advance to the AFC Championship Game in New England this weekend. We weren't satisfied with just winning one playoff game [ha ha ha oh God the irony].... Teddy [Two Ds? Since when, Peyton?] Bruschi is sometimes overlooked and underrated, but he's an excellent player. Willlie McGinest has always been awesome [Awesome? What are we, 5?]. Mike Vrabel's a really good player and everyone knows about Ty Law. He is one of the premier players in the league [The prophesy! Of! Dooooom!]."

Hee hee. Well, we know how that one worked out, eh? I do *so* hope that he writes an entry again sometime soon, just to see what sort of mild platitudes he can drudge up to explain away this one. And hey kids! You too can send your bestest buddies an e-postcard featuring a guy with too many stats and not enough rings! What rollicking good times! Pretty much the only good thing I can say about it is that the web design is, at least, palatable. As opposed to, say, mannyramirez.com, which mostly makes me want to start sobbing uncontrollably and hang up my mouse for ever and ever. I love the guy, but someone please get him a goddamn webdesigner who is over the age of 13 and not blind in one eye. Beth: I'm not even familiar with Skip Bayless. I just liked what he said in that instance. Peytonmanning.com continually cracks me up. I have seen most of the pics on there, Sam...have you seen the one where he's sitting on Santa's lap? Freddie Mitchell's celebration and pimped-out post-game press conference were wonderful. And I was rooting for the Eagles, Mer, even if you ARE rooting for the Steelers. Although I can understand wanting to hand New York more misery. It's got to be a little unnerving for Steelers fans, though, the way they squeaked by; I never expected the Jets to give the Steelers as much of a run for their money as they did. Maybe it was just the matchup. As for Roethlisberger being at a disadvantage because he's a rookie, I don't buy it. I remember a certain other second year quarterback that became the Super Bowl MVP four years ago... Mer: Skip Bayless is cocky. He gets off on criticizing athletes and seemingly always has something negative to say. I can't watch him on ESPN for more than a minute before I want to reach through my TV and throttle him. Also, he used to work at my station. I'll see if I can go back and find some of the stuff that Freddie Mitchell has said in the past. His interviews are always the best. I fell in love with him the first time I saw an interview with him in which he referred to himself as "The People's Champ." And the only reason I'm cheering for the Steelers (and believe me, it's hard to root for the Burger) is because I always cheer against the favorite when my team isn't involved. The Pats are favored and have won 2 SuperBowls already. I love me some Tom Brady, but I'd like to see someone else get a ring. Plus, that will leave Brady more time for modeling in his underwear and stuff. Beth: The Burger! Sam: The Burger is pretty much all I refer to him as. That, or Roethlisbergeregerererererer. But whatever you call him, I'm much less afraid of him in this upcoming game than I am of the Busboy and Dunce Staley. The thought of them running over our guys gives me THE FEAR. I feel like we have a better chance of stopping The Burger than we do them...although, again, I feel like the Colts didn't take full advantage of our weak secondary. Can't for the life of me figure out why, but if the Steelers do we may be in trouble. In any event, one of the fibers coordinators today asked me how the football game went, because I had been freaking out so often and so vocally before it that even the people who care more about getting enough soda ash into the dye than getting footballs into the endzone knew there had been a big game. I consider it my sacred duty, bringin' sports into the clannish art school. Like Curt Schilling and his Jesus-lovin', only hopefully less creepy. Beth: Winning Souls for Tommy, that's how I put it. And I am also like that, esp. at my workplace. Except in my workplace we have a Steelers fan. And this Steelers fan--who went to Pitt, whose father was an original investor and season ticket holder in the franchise, so he has a decent excuse--has talked so much smack, that I finally said to him, "You know, if the Steelers lose, it's going to be very difficult for me to have much sympathy for you at all." Of course, being a Steelers fan, he didn't care. Being the superstitious sort, I don't like the Patriots being favored. That bodes ill to me. I was actually rubbing my hands together saying, "Yeess...Yesss....GOOOOD..." when all the talking heads were all PM this and PM that, because the more they hyped Indy, the more sure I was that the Patriots were going to be able to fly under the radar, and when the time was right, come out of nowhere to kick righteous ass. Sometimes I truly don't know how the national talking heads arrive at their picks. Because back at the end of the regular season, people were reasonable about it, half picking Indy, half picking NE, if they even played each other, etc. Then PM goes and has a 450,000-point game against a fraudulent Denver team and all of a sudden everyone's running to the betting booths like their assholes are on fire to put money on the Colts. Then the broadcasters, I think some at first wanting to be "innovative", wanting to be the guy who was right about something, started picking Indy. Then the rest followed, because it was the trendy pick. Pretty soon people were rationalizing away the Patriots' strengths, hyping up the absence of Ty Law and Richard Seymour, and not taking note of PM's record in Foxboro, esp. in the playoffs. True, PM had an historic year, but I think what it might come down to is that a lot of ppl on the National scene were rooting for Indy, because it would make a great story. Peyton's revenge. Like the Red Sox finally overcoming the Yankees, only football style, where the national pundits have been STARVING for an icon. For whatever reason, all the excellent quarterbacks fail to cut it as the Golden Boy, and PM seems to be the one they'd like to anoint. But he keeps falling short. So in a way, this becomes his mystique--when is Peyton going to do it? IS Peyton going to do it? They get focused on the story line. Because at the end of the day, they're storytellers. Not really football experts. You'll notice that Dan Marino, Mike Ditka and Boomer Esiason--all of whom have been IN the game--refused to pick against the Patriots. It was Greg Gumbel types who started picking the Colts. Also because Dan Marino sees Peyton, and knows all too well what will unfold for him, because Dan Marino sees Peyton, and sees himself. But meanwhile, now that the pundits look like buffoons, they start kicking themselves for the previous pick and start favoring NE, esp. since the Steelers looked shakier than predicted against the Jets. And I start to get nervous. However. This is not to say I'm starting to doubt the Patriots. Because what has panned out at least over the last few years more often than not is that the Pats under Belichik don't believe the hype--either for themselves or any of their opponents. That's one of the many reasons why I LOVE THEM.

2005-01-19T15:47:00.000-05:00

eep

Me: Um...I'm going to need more time on this project, I'm afraid. My Boss: Hmm...ok. That's fine. How about you come in and do it Sunday? Me: [Has stroke, heart attack, aneurysm and grand mal seizure all at once] My Boss: Whoa, Beth, I'm joking.

2005-01-19T13:35:00.000-05:00

Playing Grab-Ass on the Field

"That's what really convinced me he was ready," said (Phil) Simms. "He jogged the length of the field as usual. Mr. Cool. then, in the far end zone, he stopped and went wild interacting with the fans, jumping, gyrating, and gesturing. We went, 'Wow.' It was a pretty neat moment. Then he jogged back up the field, Mr. Cool Again." --Phil Simms on Tom Brady before last Sunday's game

Love. Lovelovelovelovelove. Love. Love.

2005-01-19T09:06:00.000-05:00

Little Light Today

So let's go to the Land of Make-Believe, shall we? And imagine what it would be like...if Beth met Tom Brady... (Wayne's World Style dream-sequence action:) Doodlee-doo, Doodlee-doo, Doodlee-doo...

Beth: Um, hi. Welcome to Cursed and...First. I'm.. Beth.. and, my guest tonight is... one of the... greatest sex--uh, football. I guess, quarterback, ever. [ Smacks herself] GOD! That sounds stupid! God, I'm an idiot! I never know how to start these things! Tom Brady: You're doing great, Beth. Beth: [ hopeful ] Really? No, I'm not. [ hyperventilating ] Anyway... I guess... I didn't have, have to say, who you were, because... man, I mean... everyone knows who you are. Mmm... you're Tom Brady. Tom Brady: Well, it's great to be here. Beth: [ uncomfortable ] You... you... you remember when you like, won two Super Bowls? Tom Brady: Yeah, sure. Beth: That was awesome! Tom Brady: Yeah, it was. Beth: O-kay... Oh! You... you remember when you were down by one point... and, uh, and Adam missed the field goal, and... and everything..? Tom Brady: Well, to be honest, Beth, I'd kind of like to forget all of that. Beth: [ smacks herself harder ] IDIOT!! That's so stupid! What a dumb question!! Tom Brady: No, no, no, Beth. I get asked that all the time in interviews. Bob Lobel asked the same question last week. Beth: Really? [ pause ] [long pause] [Tom Brady starts to get uncomfortable] Beth: That's pretty awesome. [ pause ] Tom Brady: O-kay... Beth: Remember... you remember when you were in the Super Bowl, and you were down a point, and, uh, Carolina scored a touchdown, and, like, uh, went for two points, and they, like, didn't make it, and, then you came back out on the field, and uh, everyone knew you were going to win anyway? Tom Brady: Yeah... Beth: That was awesome. Tom Brady: Um...

("Raw Material" for this ~~ripoff~~ brilliant piece ~~stolen~~ found here)

2005-01-18T08:27:00.000-05:00

Of the Scarlet and Grey

Sorry if this isn't your cup of tea, but my sister finally posted these pictures, and I just HAD to post some myself. They are photos of my father and sister at the Ohio State / Michigan Game this past year. You will note how COMPLETELY GEEKED OUT my father is to be there. The last picture, of my dad getting to sit on the Ohio State team bench, is one of my favorite pictures of all time.