Can the Phillies afford Albert Pujols?

Albert Pujols watched “The Decision,” the Lebron James made-for-TV show on ESPN in which the self-proclaimed “King” picked the Miami Heat as his free-agent destination over his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers. More than anything, Pujols took the show as a cautionary tale of what not to do.

“I’m Albert Pujols and he’s LeBron James. He thinks different and I think differently too. I would never do anything like that,” Pujols said referring to the ESPN show.

But then, Pujols said …

“Actually, let’s do a reality show!”

He was joking, of course. But then again, what if Pujols decided to turn the cameras on himself the way Barry Bondsfor ESPN during the 2006 season? Besides being the most boring reality show in history (yes, we appreciate the irony of using the terms, “boring” and “reality show”), there is only one bit of insight we’d like see in a Pujols reality gig.

Just how did Pujols react when he heard the news that his off-season workout partner, Ryan Howard, got a five-year, $125 million contract extension last April. Of course, Pujols’ interactions with Cardinals’ hitting coach Mark McGwireand manager Tony La Russa could be compelling, too, but not as much as when he learned Howard was going to get an average of $25 million per season until 2016.

Look, we don’t believe for a second that Pujols is motivated by the money. Considering he is owed $16 million for the 2011 season and took home $100 million over the last seven seasons, Pujols and his family are not going to be out on the streets anytime soon. Moreover, Pujols grew up Missouri in Independence, he is as local to St. Louis as Akron native Lebron was to Cleveland. More than anything, it should motivate the Cardinals to negotiate with Pujols in good faith.

A greedy athlete is one thing sports fans can’t stand, but a greedy beer corporation that owns the team really gets people angry—at least it should.

Nevertheless, there seemed to be some palpable anger bubbling over the edge when Howard got his megadeal, and it wasn’t so much about whether Howard deserved it. Instead, people thought if Howard is worth $125 million for five years, what will Pujols get?

So when the Phillies locked up Howard, Pujols should have been turning back flips.

If Pujols has just an average season (by his standards) in his walk year, we want to know…

Does the treasury even print that much money? 

So far the reports indicate it will take $30-35 million over 10 years to get Pujols signed to remain in St. Louis. We have to imagine that’s with the hometown discount, too.

Think about that for a second… Pujols, born on Jan. 16, 1980 (two months younger than Howard), already has 10 years of big-league service time under his belt. Let’s say if he doesn’t get bored and wants to play another 10 years to complete a contract extension, we could be looking at numbers never imagined outside of a video game. Considering that Pujols has not yet entered his athletic prime years, it’s reasonable to believe he could hit more than 800 home runs, get close to 4,000 hits with roughly 2,500 RBIs.

Sure, we can expect the inevitable drop in production, but if you haven’t figured it out already, we’re looking at one of the greatest hitters to ever play the game.

Look, it’s one thing to hear how his peers talk about him or how Hall-of-Famers like Mike Schmidt gush like a schoolgirl over his hitting prowess, approach and technique, but what about people who study money and economics for a living? 

Check out what economist J.C. Bradbury told the Chicago Tribune:

“Over the term of a 10-year contract I estimate (Pujols') average annual worth to range from $33 million to $45 million,” said J.C. Bradbury, an economist from Kennesaw State University who wrote Hot Stove Economics.

Bradbury acknowledges how tricky it is to estimate Pujols’ worth in 10 years. But he projects contracts based on a player's historical impact of winning on team revenue, aging patterns of players and league revenue growth. Having studied the effects of aging on production, Bradbury stops at age 36 because the sample size of players good enough to play into their late 30s and early 40s is too small to form conclusions.

“But Pujols is so good that even as his production drops off, he will continue to be one of the best players in the league between 38 and 42,” Bradbury predicted.

In other words, with more than 3 million tickets already sold for the 2011 season and Pujols headed for free agency, maybe Phils’ GM Ruben Amaro Jr. ought to go out on another one of his tire-kicking excursions.

Hey, what’s $400 million when the club is taking every dime out of the ballpark?

The great, underrated Stan The Man

For whatever reason, the elevator specifically earmarked for use for the media took forever to reach our floor. In a rush to get to the clubhouse level at Busch Stadium during the 2009 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, patience was wearing thin.

After all, myself and a bunch of other media types had to get from the press box high above the ballpark to the basement level in order to hear what Roy Halladay had to say. Sure, Halladay had been the starting pitcher for the American League in the 2009 Midsummer Classic, but it was assumed his days of pitching for the Toronto Blue Jays were quickly coming to an end. Philadelphia, Boston or New York seemed like the logical places for him to land, but in order to hear his thoughts on his future we had to get downstairs.

Instead, we waited.

Finally, after the shifting from one foot to the other more than outlived its novelty, the elevator door opened and with it our collective impatience and frustration melted away as if it were a block of ice beneath a blow torch.

There on the elevator was The Man himself, Stan Musial, sitting quietly in a wheelchair in the corner. Guiding the contraption was Musial’s wife of 69 years, Lillian, who was chatting away with her fellow passengers as we boarded for the short trip down. Mrs. Musial was as noisy as her husband was tired and quiet, busily making sure everyone had received the card she was handing out.

“Hi. Hello. Did you get one of these? Make sure everyone gets one.”

It wasn’t until I got off the elevator that I realized that I had been handed a postcard with a color photo of Musial in his Cardinals uniform on the front with a biography and list of career highlights on the back. There was something else on the front, too. With blue marker, the autograph “Stan Musial” was written across the card.

Yeah, that’s right… Stan Musial, via his wife, gave me his autograph. Call it pre-emptive autographing. Climb aboard an elevator and be handed a postcard bearing the signature of not only one of the greatest hitters who ever lived, but also, as of today, a Presidential Medal of Freedom winner.

Musial, the 90-year-old, sweet-swinging lefty and the best player out of Donora, Pa. (Ken Griffey Jr. is second), received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, Tuesday. Also receiving the honor was Bill Russell, the famous Celtics center/humanitarian as well as Maya Angelou, Jasper Johns, congressman John Lewis, Warren Buffett, Yo-Yo Ma and former president George H.W. Bush.

Musial and Russell join Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, Ted Williams, Roberto Clemente, Frank Robinson, Henry Aaron and Buck O'Neil as the only athletes to receive the Medal of Freedom.

Regardless, even though Musial was as well regarded and revered in St. Louis, as a ballplayer he is underrated.

Yep, Stan Musial, the great Stan The Man, was the most underrated player in Major League Baseball history. That’s right.

Sure, it’s tough to slip under the radar with 3,630 hits, 475 homers and a .331 lifetime batting average, but that’s where we’re going with this. Until Pete Rose came along, Musial had the record for most hits in the National League. Better yet, he was deemed worthy of several pages in Roger Kahn’s quintessential baseball masterpiece, The Boys of Summer, as the most perfect hitter to step foot inside of Ebbets Field. To read Kahn’s prose on Musial is to view the ballplayer as an artist.

Still, these days Musial hardly gets the due as his contemporaries Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams. The interesting comparison with Musial, of course, is Williams since both players batted left-handed. In fact, Williams is often regarded as the greatest hitter of all time, but that could have something to do with the literary Boston as opposed to Midwestern St. Louis, where Musial played. Plus, as a player, Williams was not regarded as a nice guy. He yelled and raged, boasted and blathered. He was an enigma and a loner, which was just the type of topic hirsute writers from Boston tried to rhapsodize about.

Williams’ personality was part of his legend and since he was often viewed as a creep, it was more compelling.

Musial was Williams’ opposite. Where Williams used a shot gun to plug pigeons from the light fixtures at Fenway Park, Musial carried around a harmonica and inexplicably broke into song as if he were living in one of those corny baseball news reels. Williams also battled with the press, sometimes spitting toward the press box from the field, and never tipped his cap to his fans in Boston. Meanwhile, Musial still hands out autographs. It means that he was so popular in some circles that it made sense to travel with signed postcards to drop like confetti.

Unsolicited autographing? Really? Cool.

But here’s where Musial really has it over Williams… Unlike Williams, Musial’s teams won championships, and frankly, winning matters. Of course Williams lost years of his prime to military service and there is no telling what could have happened in those seasons — reasonably, Williams could have hit 700 homers and got 4,000 hits.

However, the sense one gets from the scores of books and stories written about Williams indicates he was more concerned with his own stats instead of what was good for the Red Sox. Williams’ notable moments were when he hit a home run to win the All-Star Game and went 6-for-8 on the last day of the 1941 season in Philadelphia to bat .406 for the season. Contrarily, Musial’s best days were all the times he showed up at the ballpark.

To this day Musial is known by everyone in St. Louis and regarded as one of the nicest men ever to grace a uniform. Maybe it has something to do with playing in St. Louis instead of Boston, but the point remains… if I was putting together a team and had to choose between Williams and Musial, give me Stan the Man.

And how is that for a nickname… “The Man.” Succinct, simple. Perfect. Stan The Man.

They called Stan, “The Man,” and for good reason. One look at his career statistics and it’s tough not to wonder why he was given the nickname of a mere mortal. Man? No, that guy could hit like 20 Men, but “Stan The Men,” doesn’t have the same ring.

Three National League MVP awards. Seven batting titles. The owner of 29 NL records and 17 major league records when he retired after the 1963 season. And, of course, the 1,815 hits at home and 1,815 hits on the road.

And he is underrated.

Regardless, Musial didn’t get the Medal of Freedom because he was a good baseball player, just as Russell didn’t get it because he won 11 championships with the Celtics. No, Musial was awarded the honor because he mattered. Sure, they built a statue of him outside of Busch Stadium, but there also is a bust of Musial inside the capitol rotunda in Jefferson City, Mo. Ballplayers typically don’t get statues next to soldiers on horses or politicians pontificating.

“Listen, Stan Musial never had an enemy. I can truthfully say that,” said former Dodgers’ manager Tommy Lasorda. “I don't think there was anybody in this country that didn't like Stan Musial. I know I looked up to him with so much appreciation for what he was to baseball through the years. Worked hard. Never popped off.”

That’s coming from a guy who popped off a lot.

Sports Illustrated’s Joe Posnanski probably wrote it best, using words like “quiet dignity,” “baseball’s perfect knight,” and best, “kindness.”

From Posnanski’s story in SI:

“Stan Musial didn't hit in 56 straight games,” says Musial's friend Bob Costas, who began his broadcasting career with KMOX in St. Louis. “He didn't hit .400 for a season. He didn't get 4,000 hits. He didn't hit 500 home runs. He didn't hit a home run in his last at bat, just a single. He didn't marry Marilyn Monroe; he married his high school sweetheart. His excellence was a quiet excellence.”

Musial was supposed to be celebrated at the 2009 All-Star Game in St. Louis the way Williams was at the All-Star Game in Boston in 1999. The difference was Musial had to share the spotlight with the President of the United States of America, while Williams got the stage to himself. But maybe that tells you all there is to know about Musial… he is happy to share and it takes someone at the level of fame as the President to hog the attention.

Would DiMaggio share? Williams? Any of the modern superstars like Lebron or Kobe Bryant?

Yeah, well Musial did and more than that, he made sure everyone he saw got an autographed picture.

He’s just The Man and that’s for sure.

The Podcast of Awesomeness Vol. 2, No. 6

We all contemplate a career change… a life’s change if you will. For most of us, the path wasn’t really chosen for us as much as there was only one thing we could do. It’s a calling, like being a priest or a prospector.

But our pal Lee Russakoff, the editor and columnist for the good people at Comcast.net, has made the big leap between two divergent occupations. Once a lawyer in a big firm, Lee jumped to writing about sports… on the Internet, no less.

So with a background as varied as his, it stands to reason that Lee would be the wisest (or dumbest) guy in the room for the latest edition of The Podcast of Awesomeness. Of course that’s always a toss up whenever Sarah Baicker and her advanced degree enter the room, so take it for what it’s worth.

Better yet, give a listen:

Podcast 2.6

Lots going on around these parts with the surging 76ers and Flyers in action and the Phillies’ training camp just opened in Clearwater, Fla. We talk about all these things and the prospect that Charlie Manuel’s contract issue could be a problem for the Phillies.

Contracts with Charlie

Charlie Manuel has been in this position before. Oh yes, after two straight 90-win seasons and a division crown, Manuel felt as if he had earned a contract extension with the Indians. It made sense considering the Indians were going to rebuild around sluggers Grady Sizemore and Travis Hafner as well as pitchers CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee.

Who better to guide the team than the wildly popular hitting coach and budding manager who returned from cancer treatment to run the team with a colostomy bag tucked under his jacket?

However, Indians general manager Mark Shapiro wasn’t ready to commit to Manuel and when Big Chuck forced the issue, there was only one move the club could make…

Sorry Charlie.

“'I wanted some answers,” Manuel told The Associated Press after his firing in 2002. “I didn't want to be in limbo.”

Shapiro saw it differently. The 90-win seasons and the trip to the playoffs didn’t matter much to the GM when he saw a few years of rebuilding in the post-Jim Thome era. Sure, Shapiro wanted Charlie to stay, but during the off-season he was going to have to campaign for his job.

“I wasn't ready, in that environment, to make that commitment to Charlie,” Shapiro said in 2002. “But I feel very strongly that I wanted him to be our manager for the rest of this year and I wanted to consider him to be our long-term manager in the off-season.”

Charlie, as they say, had hand. A couple of days before he was fired, Manuel hung with then-Yankees manager Joe Torre as a coach on the American League All-Star team and was his usual, fun-loving self. If he knew he was going to push Shapiro into firing him, Manuel sure didn’t act like it.

“For a guy who was going to a meeting and probably knew what the outcome was going to be, I think Charlie felt very secure with himself those three days in Milwaukee,” Torre said in 2002. “You can only do what you do. You're confident in your own ability, and after that, it's out of your hands.”

Flash ahead nearly nine years and check out what is being said in Clearwater, Fla. Once again Manuel is in the final year of his contract, only this time he has guided the Phillies to four straight trips to the playoffs, two World Series appearances and just the franchise’s second World Series victory in 128 years.

Moreover, Manuel has the third-most wins in the modern era of any skipper in Phillies history and should move past Danny Ozark in July. He is only 102 wins behind Gene Mauch for the most in franchise history and could match the club record in two fewer seasons than Mauch.

In fact, in the modern era only two managers who have led the club for at least three seasons have a better winning percentage than Manuel and for those men who stuck around longer than three years, Big Chuck is the best.

So what’s the issue? Based on the bottom line, the Phillies have never had a more successful manager than Charlie Manuel. Add in that he is wildly popular with his players and it seems like an extension for Manuel is the easiest decision general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. will ever make. After all, Manuel only wants a two-year deal.

C’mon, two years? All this quibbling for two years?

Well, kind of…

According to Jim Salisbury, Manuel’s agent Pat Rooney aid his client wants a salary that measures with the top five skippers in the game. He is paid $2.4 million in salary this year and is reportedly looking for $4 million per season. That would put him in line with Terry Francona, Jim Leyland, Mike Scioscia, Dusty Baker and Tony LaRussa as the best-paid managers.

But does Charlie have hand? At age 67, he’s going to play out the string and perhaps find a soft consulting gig like the one Dallas Green has. Maybe the Phillies don’t view managing the Phillies as a difficult gig? After all, the team is loaded with veterans and big contracts all with something to prove after falling short of the World Series in 2010. Maybe The Amaro Gang believes anyone could do what Charlie does?

Take the situation with Davey Lopes, for instance. By all accounts, Lopes was the architect for the Phillies’ success on the base paths where they stole bases at a success rate better than most teams in baseball history. However, when Lopes was looking for a small (relatively speaking) raise for 2011, the Phillies would not budge from the prescribed salary for a first-base coach. Lopes had is offer and he could take it or leave it.

So Lopes walked.

Is that where the team is headed with Manuel? After all, the manager says he wants a contract extension in place by opening day. Past that, the contract talk could become an issue on a team devoid of controversy.

“I’ll let other people worry about whether it’s a distraction,” Amaro told Salisbury.

“It wouldn’t be the first time in the world a manager would go into a season without a contract extension. It wouldn’t trouble me. It wouldn’t trouble the players. They’re pretty focused guys. Clearly none of us want this to be distraction and I don’t think it will be. Like I said, we’d like to be able to put this to bed, so we’ll see.”

Was that in the smug font?

Either way, Manuel says that the bottom line matters the most. Of course he says this knowing he’s been in this position before.

“Once the season starts I don’t want to talk about my contract,” he said. “Hopefully something happens in spring training. I don’t want it to be a distraction for the team. I definitely put my team first. The players and how we play is how I get a contract. This is the only time I want to talk about it. I want to stay focused on the season.”

Yeah, but will he be allowed to?

Meanwhile, one Jerry Sloan = 14 Sixers' coaches

And while the subject is on Jerry Sloan and his time served in Utah, it’s interesting to note all of the men who coached the 76ers.

Check it out: 

Matt Guokas: 119-88 reg. season; 8-9 playoffs
Poor Matty Guokas had the misfortune of taking over the Sixers when former owner, Harold Katz decided to tear the team apart. Stepping up when Billy Cunningham stepped down, Guokas was on the sidelines when he took the Sixers to the Eastern Conference Finals with the last vestiges of the 1983 championship club and a youthful Charles Barkley.

However, during the off-season where the Sixers had the No. 1 overall pick in the draft, Katz dealt the selection, which was Brad Daugherty to Cleveland for Roy Hinson. If that wasn’t bad enough, Katz then sent Moses and Terry Catledge to Washington for Cliff Robinson (the non-headbanded one) and Jeff Ruland.

/shakes head/

Trust me, those deals made even less sense then than they do now.

Could you imagine a frontcourt with Daugherty, Moses, young Sir Chuck with Catledge as the sixth man and Mo Cheeks and Hersey Hawkins in the backcourt?

Sigh!

Poor Matty Guokas never had a chance.

 Jim Lynam: 194-173 reg. season; 8-13 playoffs
Before he was the man on Sixers’ Post-Game Live, Lynam was one of a hanful of men to win an Atlantic Division title for the Sixers. In fact, since Lynam took the 1989-90 club to the Atlantic crown, the team has won the division just one time.

 Doug Moe: 19-37 reg. season
Mulligan!

 Fred Carter: 32-76 reg. season
Not only was Mad Dog a member of the historic 1972 Sixers, he also was on hand to witness the beginning of theShawn Bradley Era.

  John Lucas: 42-122 reg. season
The Sixers, amazingly, took a step backwards during Lucas’ reign. However, thanks to Lucas’ deft touch, the Sixers were in position to draft Jerry Stackhouse and Allen Iverson.

 Johnny Davis: 22-60 reg. season
Davis’ claim to fame in his only season with the club was that he was in the backcourt for Portland when they beat the Sixers in the 1977 NBA Finals. Oh, and he also allowed rookie Iverson to shoot the ball as much as he wanted.

Larry Brown: 255-205 reg. season; 28-30 playoffs
The Hall-of-Famer has coached 13 different teams since 1972, yet managed to stay the longest in Philadelphia. He also figured out how to coax an Eastern Conference title after facing two Game 7s in the playoffs. Fun and crazy times…

 Randy Ayers: 21-31 reg. season
Mulligan! You get two of those, right?

Chris Ford: 12-18 reg. season
Ford was just the interim coach, but he quickly butted heads with Iverson. Apparently Iverson was not impressed that Ford made the very first three-pointer in NBA history.

Jim O’Brien: 43-39 reg. season; 1-4 playoffs
O’Brien has been fired by the Celtics, Sixers and Pacers. He got the axe in Boston because he clashed with GM Danny Ainge and wanted to keep Tony Battie and Eric Williams instead of rebuilding the roster with Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. He got fired in Philly because he wasn’t Mo Cheeks and then he got fired in Indiana because he didn’t win.

 Mo Cheeks: 113-133 reg. season; 2-4 playoffs
Cheeks was around for the rise and fall of the great Sixers’ teams of the 1970s and ‘80s, and was there for the end of the Iverson Era. He’s the greatest point guard in franchise history and maybe even the most well-liked guy, too.

 Tony DiLeo: 32-27 reg. season; 1-4 playoffs
DiLeo came down from the front office when Cheeks was fired, pushed the team back into the playoffs and then went back to his old gig when the season was over. Went out with a winning record…

 Eddie Jordan: 27-55 reg. season
Wait… we’re out of mulligans? OK, fore!

Doug Collins: 24-28 reg. season
Let’s see where this goes…

So that’s 14 coaches and one Finals appearance in the time Sloan spent in Utah. Interestingly, Utah has had just three coaches since moving from New Orleans.

The Podcast of Awesomeness Vol. 2, No. 5

Michael Jordan has been on the cover of Sports Illustrated 56 times. That easily outdistances Muhammad Ali with 38 covers and Tiger Woods with 30. Oh yes, they keep track of those types of things.

They also keep track of the most times people have subbed in for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. According to the stats, Joey Bishop was on 117 times, with Joan Rivers second with 93 appearances.

There's cachet to appearing on that many covers or filling in for Johnny all those times. It means something because things like Sports Illustrated and the old Tonight Show mean something. Maybe not so much any more because everyone has a publication and/or a show these days, but that's fine. After all, you have to be pretty good at what you do to be asked back to some place more than once.

Here at this little media empire, we had our second multiple-appearance guest drop in on the show. Indeed, the great Quizzo emcee, Johnny Goodtimes, made his second appearance on The Podcast of Awesomeness today.

Go ahead and take a listen:

PODCAST 2.5

Johnny's two appearances are second-most behind the three appearances by Chris Wilson, the mellifulous beat keeper for the punk/rock outfit, Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. Sure, that's not a big deal now, but someday, folks... someday.

Regardless, it's a good thing Johnny showed up when he did because Quizzo Bowl 7 is quickly approaching. Oh yes, Quizzo Bowl 7 is slated for Feb. 19 at World Cafe Live so get your smart friends together and see if you can hang with the greats of Quizzo.

Early Call: Doug Collins coach of the year

It’s still relatively early in the NBA season to be discussing the post-season awards with any kind of alacrity. Sure, fans are chanting “M-V-P!” at Amare Stoudemire in Madison Square Garden, but really, what do they know?

Regardless, with the 76ers checking in with a 24-27 record a week before the All-Star break, the trendy pick for coach of the year is Doug Collins. Considering the Sixers are 21-14 since their slow start to the season, Collins and the gang have done something right. Shoot, Collins could be coach of the year just for getting folks to start talking about the 76ers again.

What will it be like if the Sixers really start winning again?

Anyway, Collins as the NBA coach of the year — yes, it’s premature — is an interesting addition to his resume. Though he coached two different 50-win teams in the past and got to the Eastern Conference Finals with the 1988-89 Bulls, Collins’ clubs have always been seen by most as underachievers. But then again that’s kind of the way it is when a team with Michael Jordan doesn’t win it all.

Still, it was interesting reading Collins’ comments on how things have gone in his return to Philadelphia after the Sixers ripped the Hawks on Tuesday night. Noting that a lot of folks cringed or did a silent full-body dry heave when Collins informed them he was taking the Sixers’ gig, the season has been a rousing success…

So far.

From Shaun Powell and NBA.com:

“Well, I've come full circle, back to the place where I began my career as a player, and now I'm at my final stop as a coach,” he said. “And there's no better place to be than Philadelphia, where they appreciate basketball and deserve a winner. And it's my job and my goal to make that happen.”

He added: “This has gone better than I ever imagined.”

Collins, too, has been better than some had imagined, too. Again, it’s just 51 games with No. 52 coming tonight at the Center against the Magic, but Collins, at 60, could be more mature than his previous stops in the league with the Bulls, Pistons and Wizards. The difference though could be that those teams were expected to win and challenge for the NBA title while the Sixers were (and are) viewed as a work-in-progress.

Collins told Powell he has a better perspective.

“I'm different now, as a person and a coach,” he said. “When I started in Chicago I'd never been a coach before, on any level. I'm more at ease. Look, I'm as competitive as the next person. I want to win badly every time we step on the floor. But I do like to put the foundation in place, to make the team better than what it was when I got it. And this is one of those situations.”

We’ll see where it goes from here, but so far it’s tough not to be impressed by Collins’ work. Perhaps even he can add coach of the year into an impressive resume that includes Olympian, No. 1 draft pick and four-time NBA All-Star.

Super Bowl 45: Our experts pick the winners

It used to about the game and only the game. Football. Nothing more and nothing less. Oh sure, there was lots of hype, but it was different. It had to do with football as opposed to show.

Now don’t get us wrong. We love a circus as much as the next red-blooded, American football fan. Actually, we prefer the circus to everything else. Who doesn’t love a good party?

Parties are one thing, but the hassle…

It’s enough to stage a revolution or something.

Right?

My favorite thing about the Super Bowl are the folks who are so against the concept of sitting around the TV, planning elaborate menus and calling out of work that they plan alternative events at places like Hallmark stores or the local Borders’. They call it the anti-Super Bowl as if a boycott needs to be staged against commercialization of football and/or pop culture.

Really? Boycott? A football game?

Now I’m for boycotting things as much as the next guy. In fact, there are tons of companies and products I won’t go near for one reason or another, which surely has the execs of those corporations sitting up at night wondering how they failed to connect with me. All I can say to that is, “Sorry guys. It’s not personal, just business.”

If there is a mass boycott or protest going down, I pay attention because doing things like that takes effort and a wise use of time – two things I admire deeply. Hell, anyone can buy ad time and make commercials. And everyone wants to tell you how great they are. Big whoop. As long as there is no marching, chanting or placards, I say, “Let’s boycott!”

Consumers of the world unite!

But boycotting the Super Bowl is kind of like cancelling Christmas because it’s too commercial. Yes, we all know that big-time events like the Super Bowl are far from pure and that the hype supersedes the actual event with a circus filled with commercials, product placement, “celebrities,” and Christina Aguilera, but really, hasn’t that ship already sailed? Should they just play the game and then phone the results into the paper?  With all that TV air time already purchased?

It’s all so very comical. It’s one thing for the tea houses and chain book stores to hold their anti-Super Bowl parties for non-sports fans because generally (and yes, it’s very general) those folks are anti-anti. They believe that if something is created for a mass audience then it stinks, and in most cases they are correct though that theory usually only applies to Michael Bolton.

If they really dislike the Super Bowl so much and want to go to their anti-party, why acknowledge that it even exists? Do they wake up and say, “Oh boy, here we are on Super Bowl Sunday. Time for my protest at the corporately-owned book store that helped put the little shop on the corner downtown out of business. Let’s show those football fans!”

Silliness. Just silly.

Still, I read my favorite Super Bowl story a couple of years ago about musicians Flea and John Frusciante when went to a small venue in Los Angeles to see punk stalwart Ian MacKaye play with his band, The Evens. Now for those unfamiliar with The Evens, it is a band comprised of MacKaye and his wife, Amy Farina. MacKaye plays a baritone guitar and Amy plays the drums all while operating the P.A. right there on the stage. They also play “non-traditional” music venues, which means no bars/clubs or arenas. Because of this Ian and Amy hit the road with very little overhead, no support staff and the result is low ticket prices and unadulterated music. No hype, no fuss, no circus.

Just music.

Of course that’s kind of the opposite of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the band Flea and Frusciante used to play for. That’s not a judgment about that band, it’s just the fact. Regardless, rather than watch the Super Bowl, Flea and Frusciante showed up at the gig to help serve as a roadie crew for The Evens. Inevitably, a reporter asks Flea (a well-known sports fan) if he’s disappointed about missing the big game, and the answer is perfect.

“Who cares about a ball game if Ian’s in town playing his music?” he said.

No frills, no hype, no circus. That’s what it always comes down to…

JOHN FINGER

Writer/storyteller, CSNPhilly.com

And that’s why I’m going with the Steelers in Super Bowl 45. Oh, I won’t be rooting for Pittsburgh (or Green Bay, for that matter). It’s just that the Steelers play an enjoyable style of football because they rush the ball and they convert third-down plays. Not only that, but the Steelers stop the opposition from running the ball effectively. See, the Steelers’ brass understands that in order to win games a team must run it. Therefore, they run it and stop the other team from doing so.

It’s that simple. No frills, no hype, no circus.

In the meantime, I apologize for the dearth of Ben Roethlisberger and Brett Favre wisecracks. I let you down. Sorry.

Steelers 31, Packers 24

***

ROB KUESTNER

Assistant news director, Comcast SportsNet

I like the Eagles. Oh wait. They lost… 

Green Bay wins this game relatively easily. Their passing offense is lethal indoors. We all saw what Mark Sanchez and Santonio Holmes did to the Steelers defense in the AFC title game when they decided to pass. I can only imagine what Aaron Rodgers and Greg Jennings will do. Big Ben is a problem for any defense, but not this Green Bay defense which is fast and powerful. BJ Raji is going to have a field day and be unblockable against the Steelers backup center. Plus, Charles Woodson will reach into his bag of tricks for one last magical effort on football's biggest stage and make something special happen. Green Bay has too many weapons. The Steelers are a little too banged up and Green Bay wins.

Plus, I can't stomach Pittsburgh winning a 7th Super Bowl title when the Eagles are still sitting on 0. Send the Lombardi Trophy back to Titletown. Green Bay wins. 

Packers 31, Steelers 21

***

MIKE WANN

Artist

I developed a system for predicting future happenings based upon current events.  I have used it for lotto and OTB selections, so picking the super bowl winner is a piece of cake.  

Let me walk you through it:

The Steelers are from Pittsburgh.  Pittsburgh is right around the corner from West Virginia.  As any competent linguist or anthropologist will tell you, there really is no difference between West Virginia and Arkansas - they are basically interchangeable.  Therefore the Steelers are represented as 5000 blackbirds falling dead from the sky.

The packers come from Wisconsin, home of cheese and cheeseheads.  This country is in the midst of a lactose-intolerance epidemic.  Lactose-intolerance plus cheese equal gas and lots of it.  Gasoline comes from oil and we get our oil from the middle east.  The packers can be seen as the thousands of Egyptian protesters.  

So now we combine the two:  what would happen if protesters and looters are inundated by thousands of falling birds?  

By now the answer should be obvious:  

Steelers 20, Packers 12

***

JOHN GONZALEZ

Columnist, Philadelphia Inquirer

Forget about football. This game is about Democracy and thwarting Ben Roethlisberger. If Pittsburgh wins, CIA analysts fear The Gray Penis will grow in power and try to have itself installed as a dictator somewhere, possibly in Egypt. No one wants that.

Packers 24, Western PA Creep Show 21

***

BOB FORD

Columnist, Philadelphia Inquirer

I don't see how the Packers have a chance. Their quarterback ain't never raped nobody, ain't never 'lectrocuted no dogs. As we say in the hood, "You can't be defended if you been suspended." Near as I can tell, this Aaron Rodgers fella won't even smack the puppy's behind if he pees on the rug. What kind of leader is that, I ask you?

Rapists 34, Puppykissers 17

***

TODD ZOLECKI

Phillies writer, MLB.com

Considering I spent my life savings to land a couple tickets to Super Bowl XLV, the Packers better win. I’ll seriously cry if they don't.

Packers 31, Steelers 28

***

MATT GELB

Phillies beat writer, Philadelphia Inquirer

We like the Packers, and not just because I inherited a cheesehead someone carelessly discarded into a snow bank on South Street last weekend. One of my earliest Super Bowl memories is XXXI. My parents took my little brother and me to Disney World for a vacation. Desmond Howard's punt return was so captivating to a 9-year old.

Have I made you feel old yet? Good.

Packers 23, Steelers 17

***

LEE RUSSAKOFF

Senior Sports Editor/Columnist, Comcast.net

Break out your hair mousse and rape whistles ... it's Steelers-Packers for all the DTF women in Georgia. I'm going with Pittsburgh and here's why: I took a page from Ray Didinger and broke down the key matchup. After watching hours of videotape with Brian Baldinger, I've come to the only logical conclusion: Peter King (who picked Steelers 33, Packers 27 in September) thought he was pulling a fast one on the Mayan sorcerer by trading his eternal soul for all future Super Bowl results during his lifetime. Little does King know, the world will end sometime next year, making his "eternal soul" trade look Ryne-Sandberg-for-Ivan-DeJesus silly. 

Bad for Peter, great for Pittsburgh.

Steelers 33, Packers 27

 ***

SARAH BAICKER

Reporter/producer, CSNPhilly.com

Aaron Rodgers scares me more than Ben Roethlisberger, which is saying something, considering I'm female...

I even have evidence (no, uh, not the kind that involves collecting DNA). I'm talking about the Packers' six road losses. In the loss to Detroit, Rodgers was hurt in the game's first half. Against New England, he didn't even play. When the Pack fell to Washington, they were heavily injury ridden. And Atlanta and Chicago? Well, they were the NFC's No. 1 and No. 2 seeds, and neither is playing in the Super Bowl.

Yeah, I know, the Steelers have proven they can bring home the prize. But I'm gonna stick with my gut here, and go with the team in green. What can I say, I'm conditioned.

Packers 31, Steelers 27

***

MIKE MEECH

Proprietor, The Fightins

This is a toughy.

It's not often when you get two squads playing in the Super Bowl who are as evenly matched as this year's Packers and Steelers. And if you want me to be completely honest, I have no idea who's gonna win (nor do I particularly care). BUT, I was asked to give a prediction and I plan on wagering on the game anyway, so here goes:

With Maurkice Pouncey (the Steelers rookie Pro Bowl center) still walking around in a boot nursing a high ankle sprain, Pittsburgh will be most likely sending out a right guard named Doug Legursky to start the game as the lucky fella to have Ben Roethlisberger's hands between his legs for four quarters. Now, I'm no football genius, but the center/QB combo is fairly important considering they are the only two guys guaranteed to touch the ball every offensive play. Tossing a new guy into that situation in the biggest game of the season sounds a bit risky. 

Don't believe me? Ask Rich Gannon, who got sacked five times and even fumbled a center/QB exchange after *his* All-Pro center Barret Robbins went AWOL in the days leading up to SBXXXVII and missed the game. That didn't end too well for the Raiders, and I'm expecting a somewhat similar result for the Steelers.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, without his normal bodyguard to stand in front of him to let him do what he pleases, Ben's gonna have to fend for himself this time. KARMIC PAYBACK!

Packers 28, Steelers 23

***

DENNIS DEITCH

Sixers beat writer, Delco Times

Let me preface this by stating that I have the ultimate respect for those who set the odds for sporting events. It is a true science, slathered in mathematics. This writing business was a total accident for me. If I wasn’t such a serial screw-up I’d be flying into hurricanes, recording meteorological information.

Instead I’m writing poop jokes on Twitter. Well, I might be doing that either way.

Where were we? Oh yeah: Oddsmaking. It isn’t often that I see the boys in Vegas burp out a number that makes absolutely no sense to me. But this Super Bowl line, in my opinion, is insane.

When the conference championship games came to a close, I was certain that the Steelers would be a favorite – certain. I figured Pittsburgh would be at least a 3-point favorite, and probably a 3.5-point fave so to create some action on the Packers.

Instead, the Packers opened as a 2.5-point favorite, and it has stayed on that number. And I don’t get it.

The Steelers are loaded with Super Bowl experience. They were the No. 2 seed in the AFC – the better conference this season, mind you – despite being without QB Ben Roethisberger (a top-five QB in this league, regardless of where you think he inappropriately placed his junk) for the first four games and sans Troy Polamalu – the NFL’s defensive player of the year – for two games and nicked up pretty badly for a few others. They won 14 of 18 games despite all that. They have had two weeks to heal all the nicks.  

The Steelers run the ball viciously, and the Packers don’t stop the run much at all. The Packers are definitely ball hawks – 24 interceptions – but the Steelers will run, run, run, and when they throw, Big Ben doesn’t give you much to take away (just 5 INTs in 389 passing attempts in the regular season). The Jets had the third-stingiest run defense in the NFL in the regular season, and Rashard Mendenhall tore through them like no one’s business.

I know, this is a game in a dome, on a fast track. It doesn’t matter to the Steelers. There are enough Super Bowl rings on the fingers of their players that they know not to let the conditions dictate what they do.

Seven of the last nine underdogs have covered in the Super Bowl, with five of them winning outright. This is a gift, a layup, a gimme. Unless something truly tragic happens to the Steelers in this game, they are going to win and they will do it without much of an issue.

Call it:

Steelers 34, Packers 17

***

ANDY SCHWARTZ

Managing editor, CSNPhilly.com

Packers president Mark Murphy went to Colgate. So did I.

 Packers 85, Steelers 2

***

RYAN LAWRENCE

Phillies beat writer, Delco Times

So I can count how many NFL games I watched this year on one hand. (Wait, can I count that high? Can NFL players?) So the following pick is for entertainment purposes only; please don't spend all your potential dogfighting moneys on betting on "the big game" based on my pick. Breaking it down: Green Bay. I think they've got Favre. I see him on TV a lot, so he must be good. Pittsburgh. They still have the guy who crashes motorcycles and rapes young coeds, right? That doesn't sound like someone I would count on being sober/healthy/not-in-jail. So here we go:

Fightin' Zoleckis 31, Drunken Randarinos, 20 

***

The Podcast of Awesomeness Vol. 2, No. 4

The term overrated is used a lot in our business. Frankly, it's a little overrated. Actually, the better theory is its misuse. Sometimes things aren't overrated, but are over-exposed, while things that are underrated are just not known as well.

Before you say, "Duh..." try this out:

Things that are overrated had to be rated pretty highly at some point. That means they were probably pretty good, if not excellent. So as Chuck Klosterman wrote:

It's very easy to be underrated, because all you need to do is nothing. Everyone wants to be underrated. It's harder to become overrated, because that means someone has to think you were awesome before they thought you sucked. Nobody wants to be overrated, except for people who like to live in big houses.

 So in the latest edition of the show we welcome on the very underrated Marshall Harris, who will someday be overrated. We also name different provincial things that are over/underrated.

Take a listen:

PODCAST 2.4

Roy Oswalt, Andre Iguodala, sweet tea, cheesesteaks and toasted ravioli get lumped into the proper category, while the upcoming season for Jimmy Rollins, a visitor to the CSN studios on Tuesday, is discussed. 

photo from The Phillies Room

We're still here...

For the more astute of you (or maybe the few that actually pay attention to this sort of thing) this site looks a little different. By that, of course, I mean it isn’t teeming with odd little stories and half-baked theories.

Half-baked being the most fun way to theorize, of course.

Others may have noticed the spate of posts under the banner Word on the Street on the CSNPhilly.com site and probably assumed that this one was on the way out. That only seems logical, right? There are only so many hours in the day.

Here’s the thing… I have an firm affection for this site and have an unnatural affinity for it even though it’s not even a person or a thing. It’s just a bunch of words piled on top of each other in attempt to tell some sort of a story.

In other words, Finger Food isn’t going anywhere. Its focus might shift and the posts might come at a slower rate, but it isn’t going anywhere at all.

That said, let this serve as notice that the posts won’t be published at the same rate as in the past. There is a lot going on with my taking over the Word on the Street jawn and that doesn’t even include a project that is loosely related to this site.

So hang tight, good people. We have some changes forthcoming and hopefully the site remains as fun for you as it is for me.

xoxoxoxo,
jrf

The Podcast of Awesomeness Vol. 2, No. 3

When Joe Frazier knocked down Muhammad Ali for the very first time of his career in the first of their three fights, Ali did not allow it to devastate him. Instead, he popped back up off the canvass before the referee could reach the count of four.

Similarly, whenever Brad Lidge blows a save in the ninth inning of a game he does not hang his head in shame when he leaves the mound. Stoically and purposefully, Lidge heads to the clubhouse with his head up and his eyes straight ahead.

After all, to paraphrase a line from Goodfellas, everyone takes a beating every once in a while.

Look at Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty for hells’ sakes. Two of the most admired actors in the history of the cinema are responsible for one of the greatest flops in Hollywood history.

Oh yes, The Podcast of Awesomeness had its Ishtar moment. The only difference is we did not take a net loss of $76 million.

PODCAST 2.3

It was as if John Gonzalez and Todd Zolecki were being trotted out for a perp walk when they exited the Wells Fargo Center on Tuesday afternoon. The crime, of course, was lending a hand in steering a burning plane of a podcast into the lake.

Nope, not even an appearance by Dan Baker could save this one.

Still, like Ali, Lidge, Hoffman and Beatty, we’ll be back. Maybe we’ll be a little gun shy when we climb back in there, but in the meantime we had two heavyweights in our tiny studio and we scared them away forever.

It was like we had the cast of Ocean’s 11 and delivered Ocean’s 12.

Sigh.

Anyway, if anyone has two Super Bowl tickets they can’t use, contact Mr. Zolecki. He’ll gladly take them off your hands.

Departing Pittsburgh, green grass, the Murray Bros & the NFL winners

Last week: 1-3

2011 NFL Playoffs: 3-5

New York vs. Pittsburgh

We’re all about fairness here at the Food. In fact, we just might even change the name of this site with some type of derivation of the word fair despite all the hard work and research by the good folks in the marketing department. They really like alliteration.

So with that in mind, folks like me have to take their medicine about disparaging the New York Jets and their kinky/loudmouth coach, Rex Ryan. Sure, the manner in which he trash talked about his team beating the Patriots last weekend just might have set back the fine art of attention-whoring back decades. It’s one thing for Ryan to go on cussin’ and fattin’ around on HBO, because that’s cable and a documentary. I think we all know how people feel about subtitles.

But to mouth off in front of the reserved, thoughtful and compassionate press in New York City is taking things too far.

Oh, but that Rex Ryan is crazy like a fox. He knew exactly what he was doing. He thought if he said some crazy crap about Bill Bellichick and the Patriots before the game, it just might get onto the evening news or the newspapers. You know, because the evening news and newspapers are so ubiquitous with the hip and young demographic.

Needless to say, after the upset in New England, Ryan and the Jets have decided to curb the verbosity this week. That makes sense considering the Pittsburgh Steelers do not have any players easily ridiculed for things like deviant, unlawful behavior. Model citizens every last one of them.

Besides, what good would it do to mouth off about the Steelers or Pittsburgh. Sure, Charles Dickens is often credited with describing Pittsburgh as, “hell with the lid off,” but that was in the 19^th century and with the effects of climate change wreaking havoc across the globe, Pittsburghers will have to wear a sweater or a muffler to the ballgame on Sunday afternoon.

Maybe Pittsburgh is what this AFC Championship game between the Jets and Steelers is all about.

We all know that everyone from Pittsburgh loves their teams and their town. Big Love, actually. L-O-V-E type love. They go crazy from the Penguins and tolerate the Pirates simply because the ballpark is fantastic. But the Steelers... man, they go wacky for the Steelers. In fact, they go so coo-coo crazy for the Steelers that even here in the eastern and central parts of the Commonwealth, they often take over the scene. Sometimes the Pittsburgh football fans even petition the league and the local TV stations to show Steelers games on the tee-vee despite the fact that it is an out-of-market game. Worse, the Steelers fans have redrawn the well-planned and tried-and-true border lines so that teams that are closer (geographically speaking) like Baltimore, Washington, New York or New England, are ignored while the Pittsburghers get the hometown advantage.

And that’s just the thing isn’t it? Pittsburghers love Pittsburgh so much that they live somewhere else.

Sure, they redraw the border lines because they don't live in Pittsburgh anymore. Really, think about it—they love their team and their town so much that they moved away. What does that say? How about they like Pittsburgh because they don't live there.

Say what you will about Philadelphia or Philadelphians... at least they don’t leave. Some might venture over to South Jersey or maybe even the western 'burbs, but for the most part Philly folks just move down the block. Loyalties don't change because, really, what else is there? Where are the folks from Philly supposed to go? We already know Philadelphians don’t mix well with others.

So because of the migration habits of folks from certain sections of Pennsylvania, we easily determined the winner of the AFC Championship…

Pick: New York Jets (plus-4)

Green Bay vs. Chicago

The grass hasn’t been green in these parts for a long time. No, it’s not because there is no fulltime (or even a part-time) lawn steward, it’s just because it’s winter. Sub-freezing air and chlorophyll just don’t mix.

However, with the advances in technology and the herbaceous arts, folks do not have to wait until the spring time for the brown lawns to turn green. Just look at the football fields in cold places like Pittsburgh, New England and Philadelphia where the grass looked as if it was ready for a May Day frolic.

But in Chicago at Soldier Field, the Bears and Packers will have to play the NFC Championship on brown grass like a ragtag bunch of kids in a pickup game. For whatever reason, the grass at Soldier Field looks as if it was broiled by an overworked chef at Harry Caray’s than tended to like Chicago’s favorite son, Bill Murray, and his star turn in Caddy Shack.

The thing about Caddy Shack was that Brian-Doyle Murray, Bill’s big brother, wrote the screenplay with scenes from his youth as the inspiration. See, as kids, Brian, Bill and the rest of their six siblings kept jobs at the local Indian Hill golf club in Wilmette, Ill. That means Ty Webb, Judge Smails and Lacey Underall are real people—or at least based on real people… sort of.

Maybe the Chicago Bears could hire the Murray gang to help them keep the grass green? Certainly they’d know the best way to keep the grass green in Chicago in January is to use a cooler seed like rye or fescue mixed with a Bermuda for when the weather changes.

Aerating the grass with some raking or removal of the brown, dead grass also does wonders for the lawn. Of course the dry, winter weather also causes the ground to freeze which means it’s important to keep the grass saturated. However, at Soldier Field they kept the grass hidden beneath a tarp so the snow and frost would be easier to remove. Then again, the warming coils they probably keep below the surface could take care of that, too.

There are three major league ballparks in Chicago and I’m sure if there were to be a big game at Wrigley Field or Comiskey Park, the grass would be green, lush and as inviting in the dead of winter as if it was June.

Better yet, the grass is green in Green Bay, Wisc. They have Aaron Rodgers as the quarterback, too. Therefore…

Pick: Green Bay Packers (minus-3½) 

The Podcast of Awesomeness: Vol. 2, No. 2

So we keep at this podcast thing. We keep at it even when it seems as if we’re screaming WOLF!  in an empty theater. After all, if the wolf can get into a theater in the first place, chances are it did so to be alone. It won’t matter how loud you scream or how many capital letters with exclamation points you use to get through that wolf’s thick head.

In other words, we made a show without Sarah today. Remember her? The quiet and retiring type? Such a dear that Sarah, it’s amazing that a young lady as mousy and shy as her agrees to be on a podcast in the first place.

But we sent her out to see a dentist today and so Dan Roche, DJ B-Seid and me stripped it down a touch. Y’know, we went acoustic or “unplugged” as the rock-n-roll types say.

Remember that whole unplugged thing? Back when the M in MTV used to stand for Music, the popular cable channel used to do this thing where well-known pop stars showed up and instead of playing songs with electric guitars and wired microphones, they did it “unplugged.” That meant they subbed in wooden guitars, emptied moonshine jugs and megaphones. 

Needless to say it was a giant hit.

PODCAST 2.2

And like any landmark event in television history, MTV took the unplugged phenomenon and beat it like a bad habit. In fact, it got to the point where those acoustic guitars sounded just like fingernails on a chalkboard—and not one of those new-fangled dry erase boards, either. This is an old-timey chalkboard with chalk and the fingernails. They have them in museums… go check it out.

Anyway, our little group remains undaunted. Even when interlopers burst into our little room to change clothes or use the complimentary hair spray, we forge on… and so should you.

Could Floyd Landis be the modern day Joe Jackson?

Apparently, if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around, it does make a sound. It’s the same thing as in a bike race when a guy rides faster than everyone else only when he passes the finish line he gets a different type of award.

The difference is that it costs… everything.

So with that, Floyd Landis, one of the sports world’s greatest pariahs, ended his career as a professional bicycling racer. A native of the backwoods hinterlands of Lancaster County, approximately a hilly, 60 miles bike ride west of Philadelphia, Landis won the 2006 Tour de France only to be stripped of his title two days afterwards. Nearly five years after his greatest race, Landis was stripped of his title, his life savings, got a divorce, mourned the suicide of his father-in-law, lost teams, teammates and friends, and, on top of it all, had his career destroyed.

Landis’ victory lap turned into a book tour and benefit to raise cash for his legal defense of a failed doping test taken shortly after a seemingly heroic ride in Stage 17 of the Tour de France.

Yet after two years of racing sporadically for a handful of middling racing teams, Landis told ESPN’s Bonnie D. Ford that he had filed his papers with his former adversaries, the United States Anti-Doping Agency, and no longer has to submit to further drug testing. In other words, Landis will be treated like a U.S. citizen for a change.

According to Ford, Landis grew increasingly frustrated with re-carving a niche in the sport in which he devoted his life. He spent 2009 riding for the U.S.-based United Healthcare team before he was released from his contract, stating that he wished to race in the longer, European stage races which suit his strengths. Landis latched on with Rock Racing only to see the team fail to gain a pro racing license, before finding a spot with the Bahati Foundation Cycling Team with the hope of racing the Tour of California.

However, when Landis decided to reveal his sordid history with doping, and revealed the alleged dopers in his sport—including Lance Armstrong—he was without a team again.

“I’ve spent five years trying to get back to a place that I can never really go back to, and it’s causing more stress than is worth it," Landis told Ford. “There must be more to life than this.”

But does that eliminate Landis from more witch hunts where he is both the hunted and the hunter? Far from it. Landis’ allegations against Armstrong, his inner circle, cycling officials and race directors of the alleged systematic, drug-aided run of Tour de France victories, were toxic enough to draw an investigation from federal prosecutors. A U.S. Justice Department-backed grand jury in Los Angeles has subpoenaed several of Landis’ and Armstrong’s teammates and fellow riders.

Just to prove he wasn’t kidding around, Landis filed a “whistle-blower” lawsuit last September and has met with federal investigators and doping officials.

In other words, Landis may not be riding his bike in races any more, but he won’t be far from the spotlight. Since the investigation into the doping allegations comes from Landis’ and Armstrong’s days of riding with the U.S. Postal Service team, a government agency whose funds are considered public, could be deemed as fraud or conspiracy against the United States. Undoubtedly, there are many folks—especially Armstrong—who are anxiously awaiting the results of the grand jury.

About the suit, a spokesman for Armstrong told The Wall Street Journal:

“By his own admission, he is a serial liar, an epic cheater, and a swindler who raised and took almost a million dollars from his loyal fans based on his lies. What remains a complete mystery is why the government would devote a penny of the taxpayer’s money to help Floyd Landis further his vile, cheating ambitions. And all aimed directly at Lance Armstrong, a man who earned every victory and passed every test while working for cancer survivors all over the world.”

No, Landis did not respond with, “Takes one to know one.”

The Armstrong camp has been quick to point out that the most-decorated racer in the history of the sport has never tested positive or been penalized for doping. They do not point out that positive tests never have been documented against baseball stars Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire or Jose Canseco. Landis says he was caught in a positive test because of an error by the lab, so take it all for what it’s worth.

“I’m relatively sure this sport cannot be fixed, but that’s not my job, that's not my fight,” Landis told Ford of the impetus behind his retirement, one he mulled for months before finally filing the paperwork.

“I don't want it to come across that I'm quitting because I'm bitter,” Landis added.

Nevertheless, the Landis saga is just about over. Sure, he’ll definitely return to the spotlight if the grand jury returns with an indictment against Armstrong or other cyclists, but otherwise, a story that began in glory and perseverance has ended amidst sadness and anger.

In a way, the end of Landis’ career could turn out to be like the end of disgraced baseball star Joe Jackson. Though Landis was never officially banned from his sport, his tiff with Armstrong and the cyclist union have effectively blacklisted him from employment on a team that could race in the European circuit. Still, Landis rode in the U.S. and every once in a while turned up for a mountain bike race, including the Leadville 100 in Colorado.

Legend has it that Joe Jackson used to turn up in small little towns far from the glory of the major leagues with a pseudonym just because he loved to play so much. Of course there was no television in those days so even the most ardent baseball fan could have been unaware what Jackson looked like. In our oversaturated media age, though, Landis doesn’t have that sort of luxury… but that doesn’t mean he can’t show up unannounced to a weekend race in any town in the country just to go for a ride.

Guys at the highest level of the sport have trouble giving it up so easily and at age 35, with a surgically repaired hip and a passion for the sport, Landis could be the ultimate vagabond racer. He’s been riding a lot, Landis told Ford.

“I've been riding my bike a lot, trying to figure out life, which is the same reason I did it to start with, so I've come full circle. I'll always ride my bike. But I'll never start on a line on a road and try to get to another line on a road faster than another guy. That's over.”

Over for now as he  just rides in peace in the mountains that ring his home in Southern California…

That is until the posse from France captures and extradites him.

photos from ROAD Magazine and Recovox News.

Jimmy McNulty, Connie Hawkins, blowhards and picking NFL winners

So the wild-card round of the NFL Playoffs came off without a hitch with no real surprises or upsets. Of course that could be open to interpretation considering, the Seattle Seahawks beat the defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints and the New York Jets beat the AFC champion Indianapolis Mannings.

Notably, the only home team to win of the four games played last weekend was the Seahawks and they faced the fattest odds.

Maybe the Saints, oddsmakers and pundits were giving the Seahawks too much of a hard time? After all, the Seahawks hosted a playoff game after they won the NFC West. Certainly that’s nothing to sneeze at. Besides, with one more victory the Seahawks will be .500 this season. The worst-case scenario is that Seattle could finish the playoffs .500, too. Either way, that’s best than the 0-2 the Eagles have posted in the past two years.

Anyway, last week our picks checked in with a sister-kissing 2-2. We covered on the Packers and Ravens, but missed on the Saints and Mannings. The goal now is to beat the 7-3 record posted last season.

So let’s get into it.

Saturday games

Baltimore vs. Pittsburgh

Pick: Baltimore (plus-3)

To be perfectly honest, I have no idea which team will win this game. My gut tells me Pittsburgh is probably a bit overrated and Baltimore could be a smidge underrated. Of course sometimes my gut has bleep for brains, but, y’know…

Nevertheless, the point spread indicates that if this were a game played at a neutral site it would be a pick ‘em. That means in order to choose a winner in this one we have to go with unconventional analysis.

So what do we have? Not much. It’s unfair to look at a pop culture angle because The Wire is the greatest television program ever produced. Of course The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh is solid work featuring Doctor J, Meadowlark Lemon, Jonathan Winters and was Flip Wilson’s last film appearance. A bunch of NBA stars of the day joined Doc in the movie, including my favorites, “Super” John Williamson, Cedric “Cornbread” Maxwell, Kareem and, of course, Connie Hawkins.

Speaking of underrated, Connie Hawkins could be the most underrated player in the history of basketball. Straight out of Brooklyn and the early street ball culture, Hawkins was blacklisted by Iowa and the NBA in a New York City point-shaving scandal even though he had nothing to do with it. As a result, Hawkins spent most of the 1960s messing around with the Globetrotters and in the ABA before his lawsuit against the NBA was settled.

Though he was named to the all-time ABA first team and finished fourth in the voting for the all-time ABA MVP (Doc was first), most basketball fans never got to see Hawkins in his prime. That’s a shame because by all accounts, Hawkins’ style was the precursor to Doctor J, who, of course, gave way to Michael Jordan.

Connie Hawkins aside, we’re going to give Baltimore this one because of Jimmy McNulty and Lester Freamon.

Green Bay vs. Atlanta

Pick: Green Bay (plus-2)

What did we learn about the Packers after last Sunday’s victory over the Eagles at the Linc? Well, for one we learned that teams are so afraid of quarterback Aaron Rodgers and the Packers’ passing attack that some are willing to allow them to run at will.

We also learned that if the Packers are allowed to run at will, they, ahem, will. To beat the Eagles the Packers got 123 rushing yards from rookie James Starks on 23 carries. The interesting part about that is Starks rushed for 101 yards on 29 carries during the regular season. Mix that with Rodgers’ three TD passes in the red zone and defenses get confused quickly.

So chalk this one up as a game where the home team doesn’t match up all that well against the Packers. Could it be that the Packers were playing possum this season?

Sunday games

Seattle vs. Chicago

Pick: Seattle (plus-10)

Did you see that run by Marshawn Lynch last weekend? You know, the one where he broke approximately 37 tackles, disappeared from view, tossed aside a defender as if he were the biggest kid on the Pop Warner team and was just taught the stiff arm before zig-zagging 67 yards for the game-clinching TD.

It was insane…

And to think, Lynch started the season for Buffalo, a team that finished the season three-wins behind Seattle at 4-12.

However, the Bears allow just 90 yards a game on the ground while Seattle was next-to-last in the NFC with 89 yards per game rushing. In other words, don’t expect much scoring in this one. In fact, the team that scores a touchdown just might be the winner…

Because there won’t be two of them.

New York vs. New England

Pick: New England (minus-9)

Remember when the Eagles were getting ready to play the Patriots in the Super Bowl six years ago? Remember how Freddie Mitchell started mouthing off about the Patriots?

Remember how the Patriots reacted? Yeah, it didn’t end well for the biggest first-round draft pick in Philadelphia sports history.

Watching the Jets yap away about Tom Brady and the Patriots this week, led by coach Rex Ryan and cornerback Antonio Cromartie, it was easy to think about Mitchell. Moreover, just as it was back then, Patriots’ coach Bill Belichick just yawned and said, “Who?”

Now I like trash talk as much as the next guy and wouldn’t have a problem if football players gave pre- and post-game interviews as if they were Randy “Macho Man” Savage talking it over with “Mean” Gene Okerlund. Actually, it’s good for business when players and coaches tall some smack.

However, there is a proper way to do it and clearly Mitchell, Ryan and Cromartie don’t understand it.

Reggie Jackson knew how to do it and if I were to rank the all-time trash talkers, Reggie, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan would be the holy triumvirate. Interestingly, Reggie went on ESPN radio in New York City this week and offered some bleep-talking etiquette lessons to the Jets.

“Go look at the hardware, dude. Walk through the lobby up there and look at the stuff that's there,” Jackson said. "You don't have that, you don't have anything close to that. You might want to shut up, you might learn something. Read, you might figure something out. Watch film, you might get educated. If not, you have a chance to get embarrassed on Sunday. I hope you don't, because I like the Jets.”

Reggie knows that the best banter is the truth. He won the World Series five times with two teams and was called Mr. October for a reason. Cromartie dropping expletives on Brady because he celebrates after touchdowns and wins is kind of dumb.

“Don't [be] mad because I get excited because I did well. Or try to pretend like I'm acting some way because I dropped 40 on you in the first three quarters,” Jackson said on the Michael Kay radio show. “This guy threw 50 touchdown passes in one year. He won three Super Bowls. Was he embarrassing to people when he was excited because he won? You don't know what he's talking about because you've never won. So don't tell me how he thinks. You don't know. Acknowledge that. That's not my opinion, that's fact.”

Zing.

“This guy is an automatic Hall of Famer, making fun of him is like making fun of Mariano Rivera,” Jackson said. “What are you doing? What are you doing?”

The Patriots are beatable. Even when they went 16-0 in the regular season they showed they could be beaten. But there is an old saying I heard from Sparky Anderson a long time ago about, “letting sleeping dogs lie.” No sense waking them up just to get bit.

That’s just dumb.

The best part about Mitchell thing was when the Super Bowl media day arrived and the mouthy receiver was disappointed to learn the NFL didn’t set up a dais for him amongst the team’s stars. Apparently that was the day Mitchell was supposed to learn that action speaks louder than words.

Trevor Hoffman finally closes it out

Nearly four hours before a late September 2009 game at Miller Park, a guy in cargo shorts with his flipped around backwards was barreling over the banks of the parking lot adjacent to the TV trucks on a skateboard. No, it’s not unusual to see a kid out on a skateboard catching air over the contours of a veritable sea of macadam, but this wasn’t just some kid.

This was Trevor Hoffman riding his skateboard outside of the ballpark in Milwaukee.

Certainly it was no surprise seeing Hoffman, the all-time major league saves leader and certain Hall of Famer, in such an informal setting. After all, I recall bumping into him one morning at a Starbucks in St. Louis, and while out for a run around the Sports Complex before a game at The Vet. Still, a 41-year old tooling around on a skateboard is a rarity even before one considers that he has saved more ballgames in baseball history.

If there was ever a more grounded and regular dude than Hoffman who will one day go to the Hall of Fame, few people have seen him shredding on his skateboard outside of Miller Park hours before pitching a perfect ninth inning for his 590^th save of his career.  

Hoffman was as real as they came, his former manager Bud Black told The New York Times.

“He can carry on a conversation with the owner of the club, and he can also talk with the clubhouse attendants and the ushers. He has such an ability to go across so many layers of people. In the simplest terms, he’s just an outstanding person.”

Ultimately, a person is measured not by numbers and records or silly awards, but by the way they treat others.

As Hoffman’s successor with the Padres Heath Bell told The New York Times:

“Usually with such great competitors, some guys are really cocky, some guys are all about the money or the fame, some guys don’t want any part of it, some guys are very shy. He wasn’t any of those things.” 

Nevertheless, after 18 seasons and a record 601 saves, Trevor Hoffman called it a career during a press conference in San Diego on Wednesday afternoon. Though he wasn’t as durable as his multi-inning closer predecessors, Goose Gossage or Bruce Sutter, it’s tough to argue against Hoffman standing at a podium (with Ken Griffey Jr.) in Cooperstown five years from now.

No, Hoffman wasn’t the first of the one-inning closers and he certainly didn’t reinvent it. Hell, he might not even be the best of the new-breed of closers considering Mariano Rivera has a remarkable success in the regular season and unparalleled greatness in the postseason. But for 18 seasons, save one for injury, Hoffman was uncannily consistent in a position where consistency is rare.

Consider this:

Hoffman got 552 of his saves with the Padres, which when put into perspective is impressive because the Phillies, as a team, had 587 saves during the same period. For perspective, Hoffman got nearly as many saves as 11 regular closers for the Phillies. During this span, Jose Mesa set the Phillies’ record for saves with 112, though that mark likely will be broken by Brad Lidge in 2011.

And in that case Lidge is the rarity for the Phillies in that he will be the team’s main closer for a fourth season. That has never happened.

Think of Hoffman’s save record this way… he had as many saves against the Los Angeles Dodgers (68) during his career as Rawley Eastwick saved in eight big league seasons. What’s the big deal about Rawley Eastwick, you ask? Well, the lefty who pitched for the Reds, Cardinals, Yankees and Phillies during his career, led the majors in saves in 1975 and 1976 for The Big Red Machine, often regarded as the best team in National League history. Certainly there were plenty of chances for Eastwick to close out games since those Reds clubs rate amongst the greatest of all time, just as Rivera has had a ton of chances saving games for the Yankees. But the 1976 Rolaids Relief Fireman of the Year just didn’t pile ‘em up the way Hoffman has.

Sure, Hoffman and Eastwick worked in different eras of baseball. Particularly now when roles are so ironclad in definition and save chances are much more prevalent, Hoffman has an advantage over pitchers that came before. Still, only Hoffman and Rivera have saved more than 500 games and no Hall of Famer (Dennis Eckersley) has saved more than 390 games.

Shoot, Hoffman has more than twice as many saves as Hall-of-Fame closer, Sutter.

So the question is, how did he do it? How did Hoffman put together epic saves seasons every year no matter what? How did he do it with just a changeup and a four-seamer that rarely (if ever) topped 90 mph? Hoffman wasn’t a soft thrower like Jamie Moyer but his pitch was a changeup that he turned to after he lost his fastball when he “jacked up my shoulder screwing around on the beach, throwing a Nerf football and playing volleyball.”

Hoffman was drafted by the Reds and spent his first two years of pro ball playing shortstop and committing 50 errors. However, when he was converted to pitcher, the Marlins saw enough of his arm to select him in the expansion draft. Just two months into his major league career he was sent to San Diego for Gary Sheffield in a deal where the Padres were looking to shed salary.

Error-prone shortstop to all-time saves leader, just like that.

Still, the opposition always knew what to expect. Yet somehow that high leg kick and loose motion from the stretch just got outs…

For 18 years.

So how has Hoffman lasted when others, often with more talent, do not?

“When you’re out there as a closer you want to get strikes and you want to get them quick," Hoffman said during his press conference. “Sometimes you don't want to waste your whole repertoire to get into an out situation or a count. If you have pretty good conviction on two pitches, I think that's enough you want to deal with.”

Ultimately, Hoffman refused to waste his talent.

“Don't leave yourself questioning ‘what if I tried harder.’ I think it is being disciplined, having a plan,” he said during his farewell in San Diego.

Hoffman never recorded more than seven blown saves in any of his 18 seasons, and true to his consistency, he reached that high-water mark five times. But add it all up and Hoffman has 76 blown saves in 677 chances. In not nearly half as many seasons, Lidge has more than half the total of blown saves (43) as the all-time save king and Hoffman’s 29 saves against the Phillies in 54 appearances is more than Tug McGraw ever compiled in a single season.

More notably, the 40-save plateau has been reached just five times in 127 years of Phillies’ baseball. From 1996 to 2007, Hoffman saved at least 40 games nine times.

No, the closer position isn’t as hard-nosed as it once was. After all, Hoffman pitched 602 innings to get 601 saves. But if it’s easier to be a closer than it was, how come very few pitchers last long at it?

In the end, of course, Hoffman sounded like the unassuming guy hanging out at Starbucks or riding a skateboard in the parking lot before a game.

“The retirement word can be a bit scary,” he told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “It kind of snuck up on me. I thought the announcement would be a little blurb at the bottom of the TV.

“How thankful I was to be able to put the uniform on and be a kid until I was 43. The most coveted title I carried was teammate.”

Of course how can a recap of Hoffman's career be complete without a look at the greatest entrance in baseball history...

Eagles playoff football: Worst losses ever

Once again the Eagles ended a season filled with promise and expectation with a frustrating defeat in the playoffs. Under head coach Andy Reid, it’s an annual rite of January that his team will frustrate and underwhelm when the playoffs begin. That’s just what the Eagles do when the playoffs start.

This time it was the Green Bay Packers who perplexed Reid with a rarely seen running attack that just made the Eagles’ inability to cash in on opportunities all the more maddening.

You know… different year, same crash-landing result.

So as the Eagles push into their second half-century without a championship (the third-longest drought amongst NFL teams and 15 years longer than the Flyers’ epic run without a title amongst Philly teams) it’s only fair to size up the latest failure with the other mind-numbing defeats.

Here are the Eagles’ worst non-Super Bowl losses in the playoffs in no particular order of disappointment:

2003 NFC Championship at Lincoln Financial Field (Jan. 18, 2004)

Panthers 14, Eagles 3

You know the phrase, “It was like watching paint dry…” In the case of this game such a statement would be unfair to paint, the color spectrum and the periodic chart of elements. Truth is, it would have been preferable to watch paint dry than this football game.

Usually the numbers don’t tell the entire story of a game, but this one sure did. Donovan McNabb, playing with torn cartilage in his ribs, went 10-for-22 with 100 yards passing and three interceptions by 5-foot-9 cornerback, Ricky Manning Jr. Eventually, Koy Detmer came on to relieve McNabb, but it wasn’t enough to boost the Eagles.

Of course what would a playoff loss in the playoffs be without complaints of Reid’s coaching moves? What would we talk about if we weren’t befuddled about the coach’s decade-long aversion to a running game… even when it’s working? The word after this game was that lineman Jon Runyan pleaded with the coaches to keep running the ball, especially since Correll Buckhalter and Duce Staley combined for 137 rushing yards.

No, this one might not have been the most disappointing loss in team history, but it was easily the ugliest.

2002 NFC Championship at Veterans Stadium (Jan. 19, 2003)

Buccaneers 27, Eagles 10

This one began with Brian Mitchell’s 70-yard kickoff return to set up a touchdown run by Duce Staley that had the old stadium shaking behind the raucousness of the fans in its final football game. It ended with Ronde Barber returning an interception 92 yards with a crowd so quiet that Barber could be heard celebrating his run in the upper reaches of the stadium.

From here the Buccaneers went on to trounce the Raiders in a Super Bowl most thought was destined to be the Eagles’ to lose… only if they got there, of course. In fact, the scene in the parking lot before the game was as celebratory as it could get without the brush fires or flipped over cars. There was even one enthusiastic gentleman in moll of the parking-lot scene urging the Eagles to “Beat the Bucs” while parading around with a deer head trophy.

Wrong type of Bucs, dude.

Maybe we should have seen how it was going to turn out based off the overconfidence beforehand?

1988 NFC Divisional Game at Soldier Field (Dec. 31, 1988)

Bears 20, Eagles 12

The Fog Bowl

Unbelievably, Randall Cunningham threw for 407 yards on 27-for-54 passing with 254 of those yards spread amongst Keith Byers and Keith Jackson. However, Cunningham also threw three interceptions and by the time the thick fog rolled in off Lake Michigan and visibility was reduced to nothing, the Eagles’ chances of finding the end zone also disappeared.

Unbelievably, The Fog Bowl seems like something perfectly suited to happen to the post-1960 Eagles. That’s especially the case for the late-80s to mid-90s versions of the team where it could be argued that those Eagles’ teams were amongst the most talented in NFL history to never win a Super Bowl. It was almost as if the Eagles of this era had a starting pitching rotation with four aces but couldn’t quite get to where they were supposed to be.

The Fog Bowl personified this era. The Eagles, specifically Cunningham, did everything but score a touchdown and win the game. And for once, it seemed as if the folks watching at home and the players on the field saw the same exact things. The same goes for Verne Lundquist and Terry Bradshaw calling the action in the broadcast booth:

Lundquist: "Cunningham will throw … or run. Sacked for the fourth time. Wait a minute …"

Bradshaw: "He got rid of the ball, Verne."

Lundquist: "Must have. He completed it to somebody. And we're not trying to make light of this, but it is actually impossible for us to see the field."

Cunningham says the Eagles could have played with more than 11 players and no one would have been the wiser.

“When that fog rolled in, you might as well close your eyes and close up the shop,” Cunningham told ESPN.com. “That was it.”

The fog rolled in late in the second quarter with the Bears leading 17-6. From that point all the Bears had to do was go into a stall… for 30 minutes. Nevertheless, Bears quarterback Mike Tomczak insists the game was won because the Bears were better.

No so, defensive stalwart Seth Joyner told ESPN.com.

“Some wins you win by domination, and some wins you win by default,” Joyner said. “He needs to go back and look at the film.”

Needless to say, there are a lot of Eagles’ playoff games that could be said about.

1978 NFC Wild-Card Game at Fulton County Stadium (Dec. 24, 1978)

Falcons 14, Eagles 13

When punter Mike Michel was forced into kicking duties and missed an extra-point in the first quarter, it hardly seemed like a big deal. After all, with five minutes to go in the game the Eagles led 13-0 and were poised to win their first postseason game since the 1960 NFL Championship.

But Falcons’ QB Steve Bartkowski threw two touchdown passes to take the lead, with the game-winner coming on a 37-yard pass to Wallace Francis with 1:39 to go in the game. Actually, it was the ensuing extra point that proved to be the winning score in the first-ever wild-card playoff game (video).

Still, the Eagles had a chance to win the game. Ron Jaworski appeared to have hit rookie Oren Middlebrook at the goal line with 45 seconds left, but the ball fell out of the receiver’s hands. Jaworski overthrew Harold Carmichael with 17 seconds left, to set up a 34-yard field goal attempt, but of course, Michel shanked it.

Needless to say, that spring coach Dick Vermeil drafted barefoot kicker Tony Franklin in the third round of the and Michel, just 24, never appeared in another NFL game.

So why was Michel kicking at all and why didn’t Vermeil go out and get a real kicker when starter (and Temple alum) Nick Mike-Meyer went down with a rib injury? Better yet, why didn’t Vermeil get a real kicker before the Eagles’ first playoff game in 18 seasons especially since Michel missed three of the 12 extra points he attempted? Good questions, huh…

Actually, reports from 1978 say Vermeil did try out a bunch of kickers only Michel was the best of the bunch in practice. Though the missed kick was Michel’s last play in an NFL game (his 35.8 yards per punt average not good enough to get him a job punting), reports were that Michel rarely missed in practice. Nevertheless, kicking in practice against some guys off the street and in the playoffs is a little different.

Daily News beat writer Gary Smith, now with Sports Illustrated, wrote:

This was like taking a driver’s ed class at the Indy 500.

Sunday’s defeat was nowhere as bad as losing because of a missed extra point or because the fog was too thick to run the offense. But then again, when it comes to losses in the playoffs Andy Reid deals in quantity, not quality.

Ted Dean: The Eagles' forgotten hero

Considering that the Eagles and Green Bay Packers are two of the oldest continuous franchises in NFL history, it would seem that the teams would have a long and intense playoff history against each other. Yet despite a combined 168 seasons in the NFL, the Packers and Eagles have squared off in the postseason just twice.

Of course both of those games rate amongst the greatest games in Eagles’ history and were the site of some of the most iconic plays.

No one will ever forget the 4^th-and-26 pass from Donovan McNabb to wide receiver Freddie Mitchell with 72 seconds remaining in regulation to set up the game-tying field goal from David Akers and the eventual game-winner in overtime. Ask anyone who was around for the 1960 championship game, played on a Boxing Day, Monday afternoon and they will tell you that the most memorable play was the very last one of the game. That’s where the legendary two-way player, Chuck Bednarik, sat on fullback Jim Taylor until the clock expired at the Eagles’ 8-yard line.

As we’re often reminded, the 17-13 victory was the last time the Eagles were champions of the NFL. Only two other NFL teams (Lions, Cardinals) have suffered through a longer championship drought.

So if 50 years of history coupled with just a pair of playoff games is any indication, Sunday’s NFC Wild-Card showdown at The Linc could be another classic. Of course none of that matters now, but it sure is fun to measure how the past links with the present. There’s a line between Bart Starr, Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers. There also is one with Norm Van Brocklin, McNabb and Michael Vick and the two-game winning streak on the line.

Still, the thing about classic games like the 1960 NFL Championship and the 2003 NFC Division playoff is that people rarely remember the details of the game leading up to the final plays. They remember the broad strokes, like the ’60 title game was Vince Lombardi’s only loss in the playoffs or that the Packers have gone 1-5 in the playoffs since the ’03 loss.

But often the game’s most notable hero is the one least expected. Did anyone think McNabb would look for Mitchell on 4^th-and-26 on the do-or-die play? Sure, the immodest Mitchell, in his bizarro reality, probably talked himself into thinking that only he could have delivered on that game-turning play. The reality is Mitchell will go down as one of the biggest first-round busts ever.

But Ted Dean was a victim of bad luck and was the proverbial meteor shooting through the sky.

Certainly every Eagles fan knows all about Ted Dean, right? Just a 22-year-old rookie out of Radnor High and Wichita State during the 1960 title game, Dean scored the championship-winning touchdown on a 5-yeard run with 5:21 remaining in the game. Dean’s TD run was a run set up by his own 58-yard kickoff return to the Packers’ 40-yard line at snowy Franklin Field.

So, obviously those two plays turned Dean into an instant legend in Philadelphia… right?

Guess again.

Though he led the NFL in kickoff return yardage during his rookie year, injuries and a motorcycle accident limited Dean’s career to just 44 games over parts of four seasons. Interestingly, Dean’s TD run in the championship game was one of three he had in his career, while the 13 carries and 54 yards on the ground were the third-best outputs in the NFL.

Even more interestingly, the winning touchdown play wasn't called for Dean by Van Brocklin in the huddle, but for running back Billy Barnes instead. However, according to Reuben Frank in, Game Changers: The Greatest Plays in Philadelphia Eagles Football History, Van Brocklin changed the play while walking to the line, choosing to give the ball to the rookie.

Here's how Dean described the play to Frank in 2008:

“We were walking up to the line and he yelled out, ‘Switch,’ and changed the play,’” Dean said. “I can’t speculate why he did it, and I never had the opportunity to ask him. He had faith in me. He knew my potential and put his trust in me. I was elated, of course. I wanted to be the one running over the goal line.

“I had fumbled earlier in the game, and I rarely ever fumbled. Van Brocklin knew I was still hot from fumbling, so maybe that’s why he gave me the ball.”

By the age of 26, Dean was out of football and teaching at Gladwyne Elementary School. That wasn't uncommon, though, noting that the NFL (or even Major League Baseball) hardly paid enough in those days to be a full-time job. Interviews of Dean are tough to find and he chose not to attend the 50-year reunion of the 1960 team last September before the season opener between the Eagles and Packers. Instead, the hero of the Eagles’ last championship chose to stay at his home in Arizona, far from the limelight.

Nevertheless, Frank says he had a nice chat with Dean while working on his book and he remembered the winning play well:

“I put my head down like a battering ram, ran behind a block behind Gerry Huth, and I was in,” Dean said. “I wasn’t touched until just before I got into the end zone.”

It might have been the motorcycle accident and the resulting hip injury in 1965 that soured Dean’s interest for football. Though he attempted to make a comeback as a kicker in 1967 with the Steelers, Dean put the game behind him and never looked back.

Dean preferred to talk about piano playing, not football as he told writer J.F. Pirro.

“I got anxious with football,” he said in that old interview. “I don’t want to get serious with any other sports—but maybe some hobbies.”

No, Dean would not become a folk hero in Philadelphia like so many under-the-radar ballplayers dream about. He was the shooting star, here for a glorious moment and then choosing to make his mark in another walk of life.

Regardless, Dean’s touchdown run was not only one of the most significant plays in franchise history, but also one of the rarest. Take away Dean’s run and the Eagles have had just six, fourth-quarter rushing touchdowns to win or tie a game in the 28 years that followed.

Coincidentally, Dean and Mitchell were both out of the NFL by age 26. Counting the playoffs, Dean and Mitchell also scored six touchdowns in their career.

Makes one wonder what will happen to this Sunday’s hero.

Breaking the law, lake trout, wintertime and picking the NFL winners

Generally, breaking the law is a bad idea and it’s something the folks behind this little site do not endorse. Still, we understand that sometimes circumstances tilt toward a little bending and flexing of certain statutes. For instance, we think it’s OK to steal bread in order to feed a starving family. That’s basic because if a criminal is allowed to have a lawyer for free, then we ought to look out for each other.

Or something.

You may be asking about the slippery slope this theory creates, and yes, I understand the moral dilemma. Sociologists haven’t weighed in, but I’m sure they look at bread stealing as a gateway to bigger things. Like, as soon as a person gets enough to eat to shake off the hunger pangs, it’s only a matter of time before the upstairs doors are closed and he is making bathtub moonshine.

Yes, it’s an all-too familiar tale. Of course some may see it as one of those “victimless crimes,” which sounds like an oxymoron, like “jumbo shrimp.” But if that’s the case, didn’t you feel safer walking the streets at night knowing Martha Stewart was locked up behind bars for insider trading? Hey, Martha is no Bernie Madoff, Goldman & Sachs, or some other immoral Wall St. knob, but you know how we voiceless middle Americans feel about comeuppance… we love it!

Anyway, people love betting on football games a lot. They even make up variations of normal gambling like that whole fantasy football bit. Ever play that? Man, people get nuts over it. Sometimes they even act like they really are a football coach and/or general manager when they talk about their fantasy football team(s). Hell, they even utilize lean muscle mass and brain power and express their feelings into words on web sites and books about how to be a really good fantasy football guy.

Yeah, it sounds crazy doesn’t it?

However, unless you are playing for jelly beans or pink slips, gambling is illegal in most municipalities in the United States, sir. In other places in our country it’s frowned upon or tolerated only in plush, environmentally-controlled palaces with mismatched wall-to-wall carpet and medieval and/or nautical themes.  

Still, like a hungry person swiping a loaf of bread, it’s probably a crime not to wager a little something on the playoff football games that are slated for this weekend. Look, I’m not telling you to do it because of how they view those sorts of things in society, but if I had a little extra money/gold/pelts/heirlooms just burning a hole in my pocket, I would wager it thusly on this weekend’s slate of NFL Playoffs games:

Saturday games

Saints at Seahawks

Pick: Saints (minus-10)

Gotta give Seahawks’ coach Pete Carroll some credit… not only did he figure out a way to get a team with a losing record a home game in the NFL playoffs, but also he’s done it with players getting paid far less than the guys he had at USC. Nevertheless, unless Carroll figures out a way to get hometown hero Tim Lincecum into the game instead of having him serve as the cheerleader/12^th man, this one could be a blood bath.

Jets at Colts

Pick: Colts (minus-2½ )

The line in this one indicates that the Jets are a little better than the Colts. However, the Colts have won four games in a row, beat the Jets in the AFC Championship last year, and ever since they snuck out of Baltimore in the middle of the night like some gypsy thieves, the Colts have dominated the Jets. As the Indianapolis Colts, they are 27-14 against the Jets and going back to Super Bowl III, the Colts are 42-26 against the Jets.

The craziest one? In 1991 when the Colts went 1-15 their lone win came against the Jets.

Of course none of that matters now. I just felt like counting up all the times the Jets and Colts played. I also wanted to figure out a way to mention Johnny Unitas, but that’s not really going to work. Besides, the Jets won’t have Joe Namath on Saturday. They’ll just have Rex Ryan who as the coach of the Jets, already has two more victories in the playoffs than his dad, Buddy.

Nope, I didn’t understand any of this either.

Sunday games

Ravens at Chiefs

Pick: Ravens (minus-3)

Ah Baltimore, the city that should have a bigger inferiority complex than Philadelphia. Stuck so close to Washington (yet so far away), Baltimore often serves as a slight vista up I-95 to New York or Boston or wherever folks from D.C. like to go.

But Baltimoreans feel pretty good about their spot in American culture. The football team is pretty good, the waterfront still draws tourists like flies, John Waters is around, and the greatest TV show ever produced, The Wire, was shot and set in town.

The people of Baltimore also appear to have gotten past the idea that the football team wears purple and is called the Ravens instead of blue and white and the Colts.

For the old-timers, the football team in Baltimore is called the Colts. You know, Johnny Unitas, Art Donovan, Don Shula, Lenny Moore, Bert Jones, Gino Marchetti, Earl Morrall and Raymond Berry. The name and colors should have remained locked up in Memorial Stadium when that gypsy Bob Irsay packed up that Mayflower truck and snuck out of town in the middle of the night. That’s what should have happened.

Instead, Johnny Unitas’ flat-top grew out, his black high-tops were retired and Baltimore had to wait for Art Modell to sneak the Browns out of Cleveland before they got another team.

Baltimoreans, of course, are a hearty lot. They know all about being past by on the interstate as thrill seekers go off looking for someplace a little less hardcore. Sure, they do crabs and beer as well in Baltimore as any place on the planet, but they also eat something called lake trout, which doesn’t come from a lake and sure as hell ain’t trout. In fact, lake trout, which is served breaded and deep fried, is a fish that a person doesn’t even have to go fishing for. Know the phrase “shooting fish in a barrel?” Well, with lake trout you don’t have to pull the trigger. Just bend down and yank them out of the gravelly sand in the shallow water. Don’t worry, they’ll be there waiting.

Kind of like the cows that produce all the steaks they like to eat in Kansas City. For the Chiefs players, they better not fill up so close to game time. They are going to need to be light on their feet with the Ravens’ fleet defenders bearing down on them for 60 minutes. Stick with rice or pasta.

Packers at Eagles

Pick: Packers (plus-2½)

They get after it in Wisconsin. Really, they get after it. According to some silly poll taken by some magazine that probably won’t exist in a year or two, Milwaukee, the closest “big” city near Green Bay, is the drunkest town in the U.S. Meanwhile, Philadelphia checked in at No. 20.

What does this mean? Well, for one thing there probably isn’t a lot to do during the winter time in Wisconsin because it’s so damn cold. It’s so cold, in fact, that people rarely go outside after the first week of October and there are indoor walkways that connect all of the buildings so folks won’t have to go outdoors and get frost bite. They also build shacks on top of the frozen lakes and go fishing.

Fishing and drinking, apparently.

Nevertheless, since the towns look like habitatrails and the people have decided to stay inside, there better be something to watch on TV and it better be good. Imagine how much drinking would go on in Wisconsin if the Packers were bad. In fact, if the Packers lose this weekend and the football season were to end more than two months before the first day of spring, martial law is declared in Green Bay, Milwaukee and Kenosha. Keep people out of the snow drifts.

Although the Eagles should have a plan for second-year linebacker extraordinaire Clay Matthews, it’s unknown whether the defense can contain quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Plus, with the temperature expected to be a balmy 32 degrees on Sunday, the Packers might play in shorts.

Hey, it doesn’t hit the 30s until May in Wisconsin. The warm weather is sure to have the Packers feeling loose and ready to move.

Last year’s playoff picks record: 7-3

Born at the wrong time

Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contribution to the team(s) on which the player played.

There is something quaint about the annual Baseball Hall of Fame announcement. It’s almost like a pureness or something basic about it that all fans (and media types) should love, and that’s the fact that at some point it comes back to the game.

As Harry Kalas once told me, “It’s such a beautiful game,” and he was never more correct about anything in his life. Not to get all NPR-ish/baseball-as-a-metaphor-for-the-intrinsic-universe on you, but the beauty of it is what keep us rapt for 12 months of the year, year after year. Of course part of that is the simple joy of talking about the game and that’s what happened when the Baseball Writers Association of America announced that it had elected Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar to the Hall of Fame.

For the briefest of moments it was all about baseball again. Blyleven, the long-suffering righty with an otherworldly curveball and World Series rings from the Pirates and Twins, finally got the votes needed after falling five short in 2010. It was the 14^th year Blyleven had been on the ballot with just one more chance remaining. Strangely enough, Blyleven got more than the mandatory 75 percent of the votes even though he got no better than 29 percent in his first six years on the ballot.

Just how does a guy go from drawing 17 percent of the vote in his first year of eligibility where he finished one spot behind Dave Parker (eliminated from the ballot after 15 years), to election to the Hall of Fame? Perhaps Blyleven is the perfect example of a player whose abilities got better and better the further he got from his playing days.

“I thank the [BBWAA] for, I’m going to say, finally getting it right,” Blyleven quipped during a conference call on Wednesday afternoon.

Alomar, meanwhile, was the best second baseman of his generation. He could hit for power, average and was the Gold Glove winner every year from 1991 to 2001 save for 1997. He went to 12 All-Star Games where he started in nine of them and, most importantly, his teams won. Alomar’s teams went to the layoffs seven times and with the Blue Jays in 1992 and 1993 he won the World Series.

Phillies fans will remember Alomar getting 12 hits in the ’93 series with a .480 batting average and six RBIs. He also is linked to the Phillies through newly elected Hall of Famer Pat Gillick, whose shrewdest move might have been the trade with the Padres before the 1991 season in which the Blue Jays got Alomar and Joe Carter for Tony Fernandez and Fred McGriff. Better yet, that trade might be the last true blockbuster considering the four players combined for 25 All-Star Game selections, eight World Series appearances and six rings.

Somehow, Gillick’s maneuver resulted in back-to-back World Series titles for Toronto and induction into the Hall of Fame in 2011.

But just as it is in every year after the votes are counted, the BBWAA vote always proves to be the catalyst to some sort of controversy. Often the voting gives more questions than answers as well as the most perplexing question in finding a logical reason why the trustees of the museum in Cooperstown only allow certain folks to vote at all.[1]

Beyond the voting bloc, which is a facet of this that no bit of outrage or reason will ever sway, it’s the results that resonates the most. And as that pertains to the 2011 Hall of Fame class, the story wasn’t about Blyleven or Alomar and how they rate against the all-time greats. Far from it. Instead, Wednesday’s announcement was about Jeff Bagwell, Rafael Palmeiro and every single person that played Major League Baseball from the mid-1980s until the end of the past decade.

Based on the voting the message was, “We don’t believe you.”

Sure, it’s easy to understand why so many voters failed to vote for Palmeiro even though he is one of four players in history to get 3,000 hits and 500 homers, just as it’s easy to get why Kevin Brown will no longer be on the ballot despite seasons of dominant pitching. Palmeiro tested positive in 2006 and served a suspension for supposed performance-enhancing drug use and Brown was named in the Mitchell Report.

For the taint to be removed from their careers, nothing short of an all-out campaign will save Palmeiro and Brown as well as guys like Mark McGwire.

“Guys cheated. They cheated themselves and their teammates. The game of baseball is to be played clean,” the newly elected Blyleven said during the conference call.

The tough part to reconcile is guilt by association and how Jeff Bagwell (41 percent of the vote) and Larry Walker (20 percent) could rate so poorly amongst the voters despite careers that (statistically speaking) are more than worthy. Neither player was ever linked to illicit drug use, they never tested positive nor did their names appear in the Mitchell Report. Of course most drug users don’t test positive so that proves nothing, but it seems like the crime here is the players’ date of birth.

Obviously both players produced some incredible statistics, especially Bagwell. He is the only first baseman in history to hit 30 homers and steal 30 bases in a season (he did it twice) and he hit 39 or more homers in six straight seasons, which is more than Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle and is more than Mike Schmidt and Reggie Jackson, combined. Clearly the game is different in the modern day than it was when Mays, Mantle, Schmidt and Jackson played (smaller ballparks, watered down competition, etc.), but that’s not Bagwell’s fault and it’s not Walker’s fault, either.

Still, to me, the stats are only the extra sweetness to a delicious career. The biggest factor for me isn’t so much the stardom Bagwell and Walker had with baseball fans as it is the cachet they carried amongst their peers. Billy Wagner told me about Bagwell carries incredible sway in the clubhouse and his praises or chides with his teammates was substantial. According to Wagner, Bagwell was the best teammate he ever had. Moreover if respect from his peers counted for votes, then Bagwell and Walker would join Blyleven and Alomar as the newly elected Hall of Famers.

But we just don’t know about those guys, do we? Bagwell is left doing silly interviews where he has to justify his career… his life…  because he was once teammates with admitted steroid users Ken Caminiti and Jason Grimsley during the era where dabbling in such things was seemingly the norm.

Look, I talked to several folks who did not vote for Bagwell or Walker and they had solid, well-thought out and objective reasons for filling out their ballots a certain way. If someone believes Bagwell (or anyone else) is not a Hall of Famer and can back it up with solid analysis, it’s difficult to see an error in a personal opinion. The thing is I don’t think most folks looked at that way. My read is that Bagwell is guilty because everyone else is guilty.

In a story he did for ESPN with the great Jerry Crasnick, Bagwell laid it all out there with this winning, money quote:

“Here's my whole thing when people ask me about the Hall of Fame: Would I be honored to death to be in the Hall of Fame? Of course I would. But it doesn't consume me at all. I loved every single part of what I did as a baseball player. But I've got my kids, I've got my family, and getting in the Hall of Fame isn't going to affect my life one way or the other. And it won't make me feel any better about my career.

“I'm so sick and tired of all the steroids crap, it's messed up my whole thinking on the subject. I hate to even use this word, but it's become almost like a 'buzz kill' for me.

“So much has gone on in the last eight or nine years, it's kind of taken some of the valor off it for me. If I ever do get to the Hall of Fame and there are 40 guys sitting behind me thinking, ‘He took steroids,’ then it's not even worth it to me. I don't know if that sounds stupid. But it's how I feel in a nutshell.'”

Regardless, I’m past the black-and-white view of baseball history. There is no sugar-coating things from Hall of Famers like Cap Anson and Ty Cobb, which were far worse crimes than those who used performance-enhancing drugs or wagered on games. Just because something is the norm doesn’t mean it is correct and in the case of Anson and Cobb, institutional racism and violence is a blight from which baseball will never recover.

But if we’re just arguing about statistics then that’s just dumb. After all, who really knows what they mean any more and anyone who says they have a firm grasp of what the so-called steroid era means and its implications of it is way smarter than me. It could be that the era of baseball we witnessed for the past decade or two is something that needs to be set aside and labeled the way record keepers did with the numbers produced before the year 1900 and then the “modern era” from 1900 to approximately 1990.

Perhaps we just watched the “post-modern era” come to a close.

How do we measure the players from the souped-up/watered-down era? That’s a tough one. If you have an answer there are some folks in Cooperstown, N.Y. who would like a word.  

---

[1] The thought here is that baseball should copy the model of football and create voting committees from all sorts of fields. Currently, the BBWAA vote is given to members with 10 consecutive years of service. Once a member has his 10 years, he has a vote forever. It doesn’t matter whether he works in the media or even bothers to watch baseball—10 years with a card is all it takes. Obviously this is a silly criteria and it would probably serve the folks in Cooperstown to devise a voting committee with much more diversity. At least that way agendas and out-of-the-loop retirees won’t have an impact on the voting.