Cry, baby, cry

In the wake of Mark McGwire’s tearful confession to Bob Costas about his steroid use earlier this week, it’s worth mentioning that Big Mac’s effort didn’t quite measure up with some of the all-time tear jerking.

The best?

Easy…

Mike Schmidt announcing his retirement
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOPLJQuVm_I&w=425&h=344]

Schmidty just falls apart here and blubbers to a degree that it's almost decipher what he's trying to say. It was also one of those public cries that makes a guy feel a little funny, but not because it wrestles up some emotions within--it's almost cringe worthy.

But maybe that's relatable to the Flock of Seagulls ‘do than simply the big, juicy tears.

Oh, but we kid because we like to. As such, if a guy is going to cry in public one time Schmidty's is pretty good. Needless to say, it's much better than this one...

Terrell Owens crying about his quarterback
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNO6On7cK1M&w=425&h=344]

As far as put on/phony crying acts go, Terrell Owens' effort wasn't even good enough for the worst soap opera. Funny? Absolutely. But a quality effort... dreadful.

Dick Vermeil crying... well, just because
Strangely, for a guy who cried so much there aren't many videos out there of Vermeil in action. Perhaps we should give him credit for being an old-school crier and getting it done before the proliferation of digital media.

Nevertheless, Vermeil was such an epic crier that people wrote essays about it. The best is from the great Jeff Johnson and his old NFL writing for Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern:

The first time I saw Dick Vermeil cry, I thought: What a jagoff. What is an adult man doing crying about football?

The second time I saw Dick Vermeil cry, I thought: Okay, Vermeil. Calm down. And also, what a jagoff.

The third time I saw Dick Vermeil cry, I thought: The problem is with you, Johnson. You're the one who has to loosen up. Vermeil is in touch with his feelings. Vermeil has a ring, you don't. Let Vermeil cry.

The eighth time I saw Dick Vermeil cry, I thought: Okay, Vermeil. Get on some meds, amigo. Take a deep breath. Let it go.

The fourteenth time I saw Dick Vermeil cry, I thought: This is getting weird.

The thirty-ninth time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: I had just gotten done polishing off a bottle of Drambuie with him. We were at a golf tournament outside Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He told me he wasn't sure if he'd ever eaten a better salad than the one we'd had at dinner. "Those farmers," he wailed, "who are they? The romaine was exquisite. What are you looking at? If you can't—if a grown man can't enjoy a leaf of lettuce—"

The eighty-first time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: It was back on TV. The folks at UW-River Falls, where the Chiefs spend preseason, hadn't followed through on a team-catering request for Rice Krispies. Vermeil was melting down. "Just how tough is it? I'm sorry. I gotta go public with this," the waterworks were on. "My men love their cereal. And now, I don't know what kinda season we're gonna have."

The three hundred and fifteenth time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: It was because of a traffic light that he thought was on the verge of burning itself out. I was on a three-speed in Locust Valley, MO, and I saw him pointing and howling from the driver's seat of his Lincoln. "Some family's gonna get killed!" Several cars honked behind him, but he wasn't budging.

The nine hundred forty-first time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: I was on a cruise ship. Vermeil was at a press conference. One of his kick-returners kept an adult video late and there was a fine. Vermeil, to that day, was unaware of a phenomenon known as porn. It did not make him happy.

The 33,872nd time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: I didn't. It was just an editorial that he wrote for USA Today about the dangers of using magic markers to write kids' names on athletic tape to identify them on football helmets. I assumed he cried the whole time he wrote it. He thought the markers were a bit toxic, that an addiction could develop.

The 198,440th time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: It was an Arby's. A packet of Horsey sauce dared him to open it. He could not.

The 708,814th time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: He said six words and broke down, "Oh, the majesty of a sauna."

The 1,933,336th time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: I only sensed it. God had begun wiping out whole cities with His own vomit. Vermeil's crying caused it. I was in Murfreesboro, TN. We were covered in slime. God had registered his disgust. Vermeil was somewhere, bawling with joy about microwave technology. He stopped abruptly and ate a corn muffin before it cooled.

The 174,999,044th time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: He was dead. Vermeil was a damn ghost and he still would not quit crying. He'd met up with Tony Franklin, the old Eagles place-kicker. "How could you have possibly gone through life so darn short, Tony? It just is not fair."

The 12,000,000,000th time I saw Vermeil cry: I got a lousy T-shirt.

The 38,555,400,093rd time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: It wasn't so much Vermeil as the whole world. A book had been written about Vermeil's penchant for tears. It was called The Vermeil Approach. A religion was involved. Millions of people wept. Of course, looking down and seeing this, Vermeil wept.

Why is it that I find the crying of sports figures so funny? That’s simple – because it’s easy to laugh at things that don’t matter. No, I don’t doubt the sincerity of the sadness in dealing with a retirement, a victory, or a 2-2 circle change up that lands just so perfectly in the strike zone. It’s just that people without real problems have lousy perspective. At some point we all had to quit playing sports, but did you cry after the last game of the 10th grade JV basketball season? As far as we can tell Mike Schmidt did not cry when announcing his retirement all those years ago because he was sick or injured and forced out of the game. Nor was anyone in his immediate family facing some sort of hardship that required his immediate attention. In fact, there was no real sadness involved at all. All Mike Schmidt cried about was that he was lucky enough to have a great baseball career.

If that’s not funny I don’t know what is.

Oh, and for the record, the medication won't allow me to make tears. Therefore I cannot cry. So there.

The song and the dance

Just like in the movies, sports require the participants to be good actors. We like the drama, thrills and the comedy—both unintentional and intended. Otherwise, what’s the point? We watch and engage it to be entertained.

Brian Dawkins gets that. Why else would he exert so much energy to come up with such an elaborate routine before every game? Sure, it looks like he’s doing it for his teammates to help get them fired up before the game, but really why does a pro athlete need someone else to motivate them? With all the money and competition riding on every play, the last thing a football player (or any other athlete for that matter) needs is some guy dancing the hootchie-coo in order to make other play harder.

I mean really.

Nope, Dawkins does all that stuff for you. He wants you to react and to be entertained. His pro wrestling-like entrance is just his way, not unlike Peyton Manning acting all goofy in a TV commercial, Derek Jeter serial dating, or Tiger Woods doing whatever it is he does.

It’s all part of the show.

But don’t write it off as insignificant. Oh no sir! Ballplayers hate the notion that they might be asked to “dance,” but when the music starts up and the lights start flashing, it takes Barry Sanders-like focus to maintain that austere façade.

Everyone has an act in sports. In fact, even Barry Sanders had an act. As they say, sometimes no style is considered to be a style. Hell, even they digitalized pixels on video games come with personalities programmed into the code. Better yet, the computer geeks set it up so even the folks playing the game at home can design any type of player they wish.

That’s kind of the way it works in pro sports, too. Do you think Terrell Owens was an obnoxious, delusional malcontent from day one? Or was Dennis Rodman such a quirky dude when he joined the Pistons with Isiah Thomas, Bill Laimbeer, and Rick Mahorn in the mid-1980s?

Answer: No. Those guys would have gotten their rears kicked if they tried it.

Just like any of their other skills, the persona is something that needs to be honed. However, it has to come in conjunction with some bona fide playing skills. For instance, no one has a problem when Brian Dawkins does a somersault into a handstand during the pregame introductions in his first game back in Philadelphia as a member of the Denver Broncos. After all, Dawkins didn’t just show up doing that whole X-Men bit. It took a lot of work both on and off the field.

Meanwhile, Freddie Mitchell was a player whose skills skewed the wrong way. The former wide receiver and first-round bust had the song and dance down, but had no idea of which key it was supposed to be sung.

In other words, Mitchell wasn’t good enough to strut the way he did.

Of course there is a slippery slope one treads, too, and Dawkins very well might be in that territory at this point of his career. Before Sunday’s home finale the talk was more about the way Dawkins might enter the ball field as opposed to how well he would perform on it. Sure, everyone wanted to see Dawkins dance, but no one really paid much attention to the way he covered receivers or made tackles.

All anyone wanted to see was the show and to hear about how Dawkins was up in the tunnel in his old ballpark screaming "Hallelujah!" and various other sweet nothings meant to get everyone all ornery and loud.

And you can’t have one without the other.

Halladay the latest to join greatest era in Philly sports history

Sometimes it’s easy to get excited about the littlest things. Maybe it’s a new episode of a TV show, or a favorite meal. Or it could be a small gift or a short trip to a favorite place.

You know what they say—sometimes it’s the small things that matter the most.

So when the team you’ve written about for the past 10 years gets the game’s best pitcher who just so happened to be the most-coveted player on the trade/free-agent market, it should be pretty exciting…

Right?

Yawn.

Sitting there and listening as Roy Halladay was being introduced to us media types during Wednesday’s press conference in Citizens Bank Park, a different feel pervaded. Usually, during such settings it’s not very difficult to get swept up in the emotion. After all, teams usually trot in family members, agents, front-office types and other hangers-on. In rare cases, like Wednesday’s Halladay presser for example, the national cable TV outlets turned out to aim cameras at the proceedings.

But when a team introduces its third former Cy Young Award winner since July after trading one away, there’s a tendency to become a little used to big events like introductory press conferences. Think about it—this year the Phillies have added Pedro Martinez, Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay. That’s five Cy Young Awards right there.

At the same time, Ryan Howard, Cole Hamels, Charlie Manuel, Jayson Werth and Ruben Amaro Jr. all got new contracts since the Phillies won the World Series. Not to mention, the team signed Placido Polanco, Brad Lidge, Raul Ibanez and, of course, had that little parade down Broad Street.

In other words, you can see why it was easy not to get too worked up over Halladay’s arrival. That’s doubly the case considering the Flyers fired a coach and the Sixers welcomed back Allen Iverson within the past two weeks. Add in the facts that the deal for Halladay took three days to come together after Amaro spent the week in Indianapolis denying involvement of anything and it’s easy to get a little jaded.

Wait… is Ruben denying he was even in Indianapolis now?

Of course with success comes boredom. In fact, a wise man once told me that championships were boring and bad for business. Perhaps he is correct, because while people are excited about the recent developments with the Phillies, they also are expected now. It’s not quite complacency, but during the past decade every Philadelphia team has been in the mix to acquire the top players on the market. Sure, we’re still getting used to all of this largesse and therefore go a little wild for guys like Halladay, but really…

Been there, done that.

That brings us to the grand point—this is the greatest time ever to be a Philadelphia sports fan. Ever. Since 2001, every team but the Flyers have been to the championship round of the playoffs and every team has made gigantic, stop-the-sports-world acquisitions.

Just look at the list of names:

Roy Halladay
Pedro
Cliff Lee
Jim Thome
Larry Bowa
Jeremy Roenick
Chris Pronger
Peter Forsberg
Chris Webber
Elton Brand
Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo
Terrell Owens
Asante Samuel
Jevon Kearse
Michael Vick

If the team wants them, they are pretty darned good at getting them.

Certainly that wasn’t always the case. A friend’s dad often tells the story about how he and his friends were amazed that a Philadelphia team could get a player like Julius Erving, and I remember watching on TV when Pete Rose signed his four-year, $3.2 million deal with the Phillies. The fact that the Pete Rose signing was on live TV proves how big it was because, a.) there weren’t a whole lot of channels on the dial back then. Just 12 and none of them offered all sports programming. Cable? What?

And, b.) I didn’t even live in the Philadelphia region when Rose signed. Hell, I didn’t even live in Pennsylvania.

Oh, there were other big deals, too. Like when the Sixers traded Caldwell Jones to get Moses Malone, for instance. But they were few and far between. For every Moses, there was always a Lance Parrish lurking at the podium ready to take questions about how he will deliver the championship.

As far as those big moves go, the mid-season trade for Dikembe Mutombo was the first major move for us at the CSNPhilly.com site. We had three people on the staff back then and the trade came down on a snowy February afternoon that kept us cooped up in our little corner of the second floor in the Wachovia Center. Better yet for the Sixers, the deal for Mutombo was one of the few that worked out as designed. Mutombo gave the team the defense and presence in the middle it lacked and made it to the NBA Finals.

With Shaq and Kobe in mid dynasty, a trip to the finals for a team like the Sixers was as good as winning it all.

Jim Thome’s arrival was bigger yet. Not only was Thome the biggest name on the free-agent market, but also he was a symbol that there were big changes coming. Of course the unforgettable moment of Thome’s first visit to Philly was when he popped out of his limo to sign autographs and pose for pictures with the union guys from I.B.E.W. who held an impromptu rally outside the ballpark to try and sway the slugger to sign with the Phillies.

Moreover, Thome’s introductory press conference was memorable because the big fella was reduced to tears when talking about the switch from the Indians. It was a scene that hadn’t been repeated in these parts until Allen Iverson got a bit weepy when talking about his return to Philadelphia.

Oh yes, Philadelphia will make a guy cry.

Or maybe even do a bunch of sit-ups in the front yard.

Maybe in a different era, the acquisition of Roy Halladay would be a bigger deal. Maybe when the contract plays itself out—potentially five years and $100 million—we’ll view it differently. Until then he’s just another big name in a veritable cavalcade of superstars that seem to wind up in our town.

And the Oscar goes to...

By now most folks have seen Terrell Owens’ post-game “act” in which he cried as if he were running for President of the United States of America following the Cowboys big choke job in their first playoff game. For those that haven’t seen Terrell Owens’ post-game drama, here it is:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMue5XOGX94&rel=1]

For the most part the T.O. video has been posted, talked about and then shrugged off as if it were a another bad episode in the most banal sitcom. Most folks don’t even really think it was funny or even surprising that a professional football player with diva-like tendencies would cry during a post-game press conference following a loss in the playoffs when asked about the poor play of his quarterback, Tony Romo. The reason why it wasn’t a big deal compared to when Hillary Clinton supposedly cried in New Hampshire is because there doesn’t seem to be anything remotely authentic about Owens. Owens is a drama queen so when he pretends to emote, it’s a yawn fest. Conversely, Ms. Clinton has been accused of not having a soul, so when she allegedly cried during the last days of the campaign in New Hampshire it was monumental.

But as far as Owens goes his ex-teammate Jon Runyan said it best during his appearance on Daily News Live: “That wasn’t about Tony [Romo] it was about T.O. It’s always about T.O. …”

After another choke, watching T.O. was more like that crying Britney fan video that made its way through the Internets. It wasn’t funny, sad or interesting – it was just bizarre.

Really, really bizarre.

When Mike Schmidt retired and broke down blubbering and crying midway through his announcement – now that was funny. There he was with his Flock of Seagulls ‘do and up-to-the-second ‘80s style and the most composed player ever to wear the Phillies’ uniform couldn’t get through a sentence without the water works.

Bret Boone bawling after his ouster from Seattle was a good one, too, and Fred Couples falling apart following a tournament victory is spit-take worthy. Likewise, anything with the emoting Jim Mora is hilarious simply because he always tries so hard to remain as sullen and composed as if he were General Douglas MacArthur delivering his farewell address to Congress on April 19, 1951.

But instead of getting, “I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that "old soldiers never die; they just fade away…” as with General MacArthur, we get “Playoffs!”

As for Dick Vermeil – that’s not even a contest. In fact, let’s just turn it over to the great Jeff Johnson and his old NFL writing for Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern:

The first time I saw Dick Vermeil cry, I thought: What a jagoff. What is an adult man doing crying about football?

The second time I saw Dick Vermeil cry, I thought: Okay, Vermeil. Calm down. And also, what a jagoff.

The third time I saw Dick Vermeil cry, I thought: The problem is with you, Johnson. You're the one who has to loosen up. Vermeil is in touch with his feelings. Vermeil has a ring, you don't. Let Vermeil cry.

The eighth time I saw Dick Vermeil cry, I thought: Okay, Vermeil. Get on some meds, amigo. Take a deep breath. Let it go.

The fourteenth time I saw Dick Vermeil cry, I thought: This is getting weird.

The thirty-ninth time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: I had just gotten done polishing off a bottle of Drambuie with him. We were at a golf tournament outside Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He told me he wasn't sure if he'd ever eaten a better salad than the one we'd had at dinner. "Those farmers," he wailed, "who are they? The romaine was exquisite. What are you looking at? If you can't—if a grown man can't enjoy a leaf of lettuce—"

The eighty-first time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: It was back on TV. The folks at UW-River Falls, where the Chiefs spend preseason, hadn't followed through on a team-catering request for Rice Krispies. Vermeil was melting down. "Just how tough is it? I'm sorry. I gotta go public with this," the waterworks were on. "My men love their cereal. And now, I don't know what kinda season we're gonna have."

The three hundred and fifteenth time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: It was because of a traffic light that he thought was on the verge of burning itself out. I was on a three-speed in Locust Valley, MO, and I saw him pointing and howling from the driver's seat of his Lincoln. "Some family's gonna get killed!" Several cars honked behind him, but he wasn't budging.

The nine hundred forty-first time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: I was on a cruise ship. Vermeil was at a press conference. One of his kick-returners kept an adult video late and there was a fine. Vermeil, to that day, was unaware of a phenomenon known as porn. It did not make him happy.

The 33,872nd time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: I didn't. It was just an editorial that he wrote for USA Today about the dangers of using magic markers to write kids' names on athletic tape to identify them on football helmets. I assumed he cried the whole time he wrote it. He thought the markers were a bit toxic, that an addiction could develop.

The 198,440th time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: It was an Arby's. A packet of Horsey sauce dared him to open it. He could not.

The 708,814th time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: He said six words and broke down, "Oh, the majesty of a sauna."

The 1,933,336th time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: I only sensed it. God had begun wiping out whole cities with His own vomit. Vermeil's crying caused it. I was in Murfreesboro, TN. We were covered in slime. God had registered his disgust. Vermeil was somewhere, bawling with joy about microwave technology. He stopped abruptly and ate a corn muffin before it cooled.

The 174,999,044th time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: He was dead. Vermeil was a damn ghost and he still would not quit crying. He'd met up with Tony Franklin, the old Eagles place-kicker. "How could you have possibly gone through life so darn short, Tony? It just is not fair."

The 12,000,000,000th time I saw Vermeil cry: I got a lousy T-shirt.

The 38,555,400,093rd time I saw Dick Vermeil cry: It wasn't so much Vermeil as the whole world. A book had been written about Vermeil's penchant for tears. It was called The Vermeil Approach. A religion was involved. Millions of people wept. Of course, looking down and seeing this, Vermeil wept.

Why is it that I find the crying of sports figures so funny? That’s simple – because it’s easy to laugh at things that don’t matter. No, I don’t doubt the sincerity of the sadness in dealing with a retirement, a victory or a 2-2 circle change up, it’s just that people without real problems have lousy perspective. At some point we all had to quit playing sports, but did you cry after the last game of the 10th grade JV basketball season? As far as we can tell Mike Schmidt did not cry when announcing his retirement all those years ago because he was sick or injured and forced out of the game. Nor was anyone in his immediate family facing some sort of hardship that required his immediate attention. In fact, there was no real sadness involved at all. All Mike Schmidt cried about was that he was lucky enough to have a great baseball career.

If that’s not funny I don’t know what is.

Wait until Sunday...

Meanwhile, some segments of the national media believe that Philadelphia fans are about to spontaneously combust this Sunday. Here's a pretty apt piece of literature from the folks at Deadspin regarding this idea.

For the record, I'm weary of all the people described in the story, especially the Zordich-i.

Seriously, do people still really care that much about Terrell Owens? Based on the emails I get, people chastise me (us) for not ignoring Owens. He's gone, they write. He's in Dallas. Stop writing about him. It's not news.

Yes, people write in to say don't write about Terrell Owens, and no, they don't see the irony in that.

I do, and I think I can get at least 800 words out of it. Stay tuned early next week.

The T.O. Circus takes its act to Dallas

The news came fast and furious on Saturday morning, and with it the not-so shocking reports that Terrell Owens had signed a three-year deal with the Cowboys. Seriously, how apt is that? Sometimes sports really do mirror a bad soap opera, and as we all have learned here in Philadelphia, the circus that is T.O. travels with its own big top and ringmaster.

Surely, the fans in Dallas must be pretty excited to get one of the game’s top receivers, but as the folks around here now know, the honeymoon will be short. In fact, people in San Francisco went out of their way to warn us about what was going to happen.

“Sure,” they said. “Things are going really well now. But just wait. Something will happen.”

Who would have known how right they were.

So as a public service to the football fans in Dallas, we’re going to offer the same warning the San Franciscans gave to us.

Just wait. Yes, at first T.O. will look good. He’ll say all the right things and dance appropriately atop the star in the middle of the field. He’ll entertain and charm everyone right up until that moment when someone else gets an accolade or attention that shines the spotlight away from him. Really, it’s only a matter of time before the big top is blown over and all good will blows up in everyone’s face like one of those phony cigars in the cartoons.

So enjoy it while it lasts. Who knows, T.O. may even take the Cowboys to the Super Bowl and he could even last a few years down there before anything really bad occurs. But if history is any indicator of the future, it will end badly with Terrell Owens. It’s just that inevitable.

Alive (barely) and kicking The great part about the NCAA Tournament is the notion that teams like Wichita State and George Mason can dream about going to the Final Four. Of course we all know that Villanova in 1985 is the only team seeded as high as eighth to win it all, but hey, what does it hurt to dream a little. Right?

But in the opening rounds of this year’s tournament, George Mason, Wichita State and Bradley have kept dancing long enough to at least get fitted for the glass slipper. Better yet – discounting reality and Las Vegas-type odds – there is a 50 percent chance that either Wichita State or George Mason could make it to the Final Four, and that’s really cool.

Luckily for the rest of us, the fact that the trio of Cinderellas have emerged from the opening weekend shouldn’t have much of an effect on the all-important office pool. Oh sure, there are a lot of wounds and a few, “what was I thinking” sentiments, but with 15 total games remaining in the 2006 NCAA Tournament, everyone should still have a chance.

Some more than others, of course. In that regard, we need everything to go perfectly in order to win it. In fact, if either Gonzaga, Boston College, Duke or UConn slip up, we’re done. And surely there are a more than a few Villanova fans out there that want to see that happen.