My brother, after the BoSox manager left Pedro in through that painful 8th inning, stated:
“They are not cursed- they are stupid.”
*** Update ***
Yankees won. Grady Little should be jobless before his plane lands in Beantown.
by John Cole| 5 Comments
This post is in: Sports
My brother, after the BoSox manager left Pedro in through that painful 8th inning, stated:
“They are not cursed- they are stupid.”
*** Update ***
Yankees won. Grady Little should be jobless before his plane lands in Beantown.
This post is in: Sports
This is sad news:
Joe Santoni, who named the Pittsburgh Steelers in a contest in 1940, died at 82.
Santoni died Friday of complications from heart surgery.
Santoni was an avid sports fan and in the 1930s followed an NFL team then known as the Pittsburgh Pirates. But the team wanted a new identity to differentiate it from the city’s baseball team.
Santoni, who worked in the mills for Pittsburgh Steel, submitted the name “Steelers” through a joint contest held by the team and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and founder/owner Art Rooney Sr. liked it.
It is a shame this was his last season.
by John Cole| 7 Comments
This post is in: Sports
The Steelers opponent, the Broncos, start Pope John Paul Steve Beuerlein, age 97, and the Steelers still manage to lose, with judicious help from the officials in the last minute of the game. Regardless, you can not pin this on the Zebras, despite the bullshit calls, because Alexander should have intercepted that pass to end the Broncos drive. And let’s not even talk about the offensive line for the Black-n-Gold, which is just plain offensive.
I am beginning to understand where the terrible comes from in the “Terrible Towel.” The Steelers are 2-4. Blech.
by John Cole| 14 Comments
This post is in: Sports
Apparently, in Planet Yankee, if you charge the field and then are not daintily sidestepped or placed gently on the ground, despite the fact that you were running, swinging at someone like an out of control madman, you are a victim.
Pedro was behaving like a child, but Zimmer is to blame, and his being pushed to the ground in self-defense is his own stupid fault. I don;t give a shit if someone has bad knees and is 72 years old, if they come at me, I am defending myself. Yankee fans kill me- maybe if Pedro had just thrown a broken bat at Zimmer the Yankee fans would defend him.
*** Update ***
Ny Mayor and Yankee fan shows he is a moron:
Boston Red Sox ace Pedro Martinez should have been arrested for throwing 72-year-old Yankees coach Don Zimmer to the ground during Game 3 of the American League Championship Series, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Sunday.
“If that happened in New York we would have arrested the perpetrator,” Bloomberg said. “Nobody should throw a 70-year-old man to the ground, period. You start doing that pretty soon you’re going to throw a 61-year-old man to the ground, and I have a big vested interest in that.”
“You just cannot assault people, even if it’s on a baseball field,” added Bloomberg, who was asked about Saturday’s bench-clearing matchup before marching in the Bronx Columbus Day Parade.
Which is great, EXCEPT THAT ZIMMER WAS ASSAULTING PEDRO. What Bloomber reall said was:
“Attention 70 year old men- you are free to assault anyone you want in any of the five burroughs, and should something nasty happen to you in the middle of your crime, we will arrest and charge your victim.”
Idiots.
by John Cole| 9 Comments
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Calpundit links to an article about Walter O’Malley, the man who moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn to LA, as well as helping to break the color barrier and a number of other important things to help usher in the modern era of baseball. Kevin is shocked that some people might block O’Malley from the Hall of Fame because of a grudge they still hold about him moving the team:
“Walter did a lot of great things for baseball,” said Hal Lebovitz, Hall of Fame writer from Ohio. “But I can’t vote for him the way I could never vote for Art Modell for the football Hall of Fame. In a way, they were traitors to their cities.”
My mother’s side of the family grew up in Baltimore, and I can tell you first-hand that Hal Lebovit’s sentiments are tame stuff compared to the hatred most people from Baltimore have for former Indiannapolis Colts owner Robert Irsay, who stole the Colts from Baltimore. Here is some background on the move:
The Colts received the first selection in the April 26, 1983 NFL draft and selected Stanford quarterback John Elway. Six days later Irsay pulled the rug under from his own front office and quickly traded Elway to Denver for the Broncos’ 1983 first round choice, offensive tackle Chris Hinton, and quarterback Mark Herrmann. Leaving the question as to what might have been in store for Baltimore had they kept Elway under the Horshoe rather than in Denver under the Bronco. Instead, another blunder move by Irsay while Denver acquires a franchise quarterback for the next two decades.
The Colts rebounded in 1983 to go 7-9, the best turnaround ever in the NFL for a winless team. The Colts were 6-4 after week 10 and then went 7-9 on the season. The Chris Hinton acquisition proved temporarily successful as the rookie earned a starting berth at offensive guard for the AFC in the Pro Bowl. The Colts’ running game came together as Curtis Dickey and Randy McMillan combined for just shy of 2,000 yards rushing to rank first in the AFC and second in the NFL. They capped their season with a 20-10 victory at home over Houston on December 18 in the season finale.
Few realized it at the time, but that game marked the final time the Colts would play as the home team in Baltimore. In 1984, in the middle of the night, the owner, Robert Irsay, ‘snucked’ the team out of Baltimore to Indianapolis. (See image, right – one of the last vans to pull out) This was the famous Mayflower incident that left Baltimore without a team, and much controversy and debate that still rages today. Their surroundings changed, the club owned by the Irsays still to this day continues its losing ways.
An entire city was devestated. No team, except for perhaps my Steelers and their rival the Browns (who also endured a similar unpleasantness), identified with their city more than the Colts. Sure, there were still the Orioles, but this was the Colts. My mother was with her brother and my grandmother and grandfather to greet the Colts and and Johnny Unitas when they returned from NY after the ‘Greatest Game,’ and my mother’s family ties to the Colts were typical of those who lived in Baltimore. It was a blue collar town with a deep love for their Colts, and Irsay shattered that.
“Unitas We Stand” was not just some sort of pithy slogan to root for the team, it was part of the core moral and ethical values of the city. Teammate John Mackey referred to playing with Unitas as ‘being in the huddle with God.’ If Johnny Unitas was God, certainly heaven was Colts football in Baltimore. For those of you who are unaware, during the Greatest Game ever played, the television brodcast briefly went out. For the next 25 years until he died, my grandfather had both a radio and a television tuned to the game in case the television broadcast went out again. It never did, but he would never miss another down of Colts football.
To get an idea how deep the grudges still are about Irsay stealing the Colts:
– It took my mother until Peyton Manning to call the Indiannapolis Colts the ‘Colts.’ For the previous fifteen years she had referred to them as ‘that damned team from Indiannapolis.’
– Along with important family birthdays, deaths, the date the Colts were stolen is still marked on calendars in our household.
– For years my mother woke up in the middle of the night crying because the Colts were no longer in Baltimore.
– The night the Colts were stolen, my mother called my grandmother and said “Thank God daddy is dead and didn’t have to live to see this.”
– Mayflower moving vans, the moving line used to sneak the Colts out of the city, almost went under in the region. To this day my mother and her friends refuse to even cosider using the corporation.
– When the Colts were moved, the Baltimore Colts marching band rushed off and incorporated. They continued to organize, practice, and play from 1984-1998:
The Baltimore Colts’ Band, Inc. continues to operate without a football team. The band performs at 30 NFL football games, 23 CFL (Canadian Football League) games and had the honor of performing at the 1991 Pro-Football Hall of fame enshrinement, parade, pre-game and halftime and receives the first standing ovation for a halftime band in Pro-Football Hall of Fame history.
Fifteen years after the move, they performed for the last time and Became the Baltimore Marching Ravens.
– Baltimore magazine continues to reference Rob Irsay, barely containing their disgust.
– In a poll in Baltimore magazine (which my mom still gets) last year, the following question was asked:
“Who is your favorite Baltimorean, living or dead?”
The #1 response- “Bob Irsay, because he is dead.”
So no, Kevin, I don’t Lebovitz’s statement is crazy at all. In fact, for my mother, I will leave you with a song:
Let’s go you Baltimore Colts
And put that ball across the line,
So, drive on you Baltimore Colts –
Go in and strike like lightning bolts,
Fight, fight, fight,
Rear up you Colts and let’s fight –
Crash through and show them your might –
For Baltimore and Maryland –
You will march on to victory.
– – – by Jo Lombardi & Benjamin Klasmer
by John Cole| 4 Comments
This post is in: Sports
I was pretty damned depressed by the disgusting showing from the Steelers vs. the Browns on Sunday night, but if I were a Bucs fan I would be suicidal after that Colts comeback. They seem to be handling it well, though.
Just to clear something up- I hear a lot of people grousing about the Simeon Rice call at the end of the game that gave the Colts a second shot. First, the Bucs did not deserve to lose the game after that hideous letdown (21 pts in five minutes- c’mon). Second, by rule, the call on the field was correct:
16. A defender who takes a running start from beyond the line of scrimmage in an attempt to block a field goal or point after touchdown and lands on players at the line of scrimmage.
As my brother stated, you can argue that the rule is stupid (ala the ‘no-fumble’ rule that cost the Raiders vs. the Patriots two years ago), but the call on the field was correct. He ran several yards, jumped, and landed on people- precisely the definition of leaping.
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I love the NFL because you get the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat– every weekend.