Monday, December 30, 2013

6,048,413 Penalty Minutes Is Really a Gross Misconduct

I'm going to the Winter Classic, the NHL's outdoor hockey showcase on New Year's Day, this year featuring the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings at the Big House in Ann Arbor.
Key Wings have spent all season hobbling off the ice to the trainer's room and their record reflects it, but it's not like the league can just plug in another time. It's a regular season game and it counts in the standings.
 When I first found out I was going I was stoked, but I couldn't help but think it was gonna be the Grand Rapids Griffins getting to play for the varsity under the glare of the big network lights.
Amazingly, barring any recurrence of injury during tonight's game in Nashville, Detroit will have the "Kapten", Datsyuk, Helm, and DeKeyser.
To make the event more festive (that's Latin for "create more revenue") the league is staging a pair of "Alumni Showdowns" on New Year's Eve afternoon. Baseball used to call these same contests "old timer's games", but mercifully they amend that in hockey, because tons of these guys are younger than me.
                                                        Leafs legends in their heyday
Interestingly, but not unexpectedly, the Lemmy of Hockey Coaches, Scotty Bowman, will be on hand even though he left the organ-eye-zation to help his son construct a Stanley Cup Champion in some other midwestern town with tall buildings and overrated bands.
But a very visible member of the glory years will not be in attendance: Trainer and puck bunny heartthrob John Wharton did not receive an invitation.
I do not know the reason or reasons John Wharton and the Detroit Red Wings had a disagreement that led to the end of his employment with them. Trust me, I could. At the risk of Jay Pharaoh mocking me on Saturday Night Live, I know John Wharton. And I don't know why he isn't invited.
You couldn't find your ass to shove your head in it if you don't think a trainer is a crucial component of any hockey team, and to nurse and identify and rehab injuries through a 98 plus game Cup winning campaign is like writing a symphony on a xylophone with a pixie stick. Announcers might refer to the work of a trainer as an "intangible", but it's damn well tangible and is not undervalued in an NHL dressing room.
So why isn't he invited? You don't know, do you ? And what, exactly, does that mean ? It means he didn't do anything to embarrass the Wings, the Ilitch family or the City of Detroit. So why isn't he invited ?
I do know it is something he feels bad about, but I still feel bad about tracking dog shit into the house three weeks ago. I'm still welcome here.
Even though I like John Wharton and I think he's a good guy, as a fan I might not want him back if he had gone to the then-division rival Hackhawks or the Nashville Mr. Underwoods or the Columbus G.E.D's…every time the Wings lost to those guys, you might think he coughed up a secret or two. Even were that the case, you'd probably think, "thanks for the hard work so we could get drunk on Woodward and whip Red and White confetti around like schoolchildren, welcome home for an afternoon."
The fact is, John Wharton stayed in town and has done plenty of positive things for this community since the mystery incident.
Read my little missive about Mike Vick from yesterday. That guy not only got a second chance, he got a 7 figure a year paycheck to go with it. I know whatever John Wharton did, drowning dogs was not involved.
John Wharton has written letters to the Wings acknowledging his role in whatever led to he and the team parting ways. According to John, they did not respond to his letters. Someone who has helped the corporation for which they were employed achieve the pinnacle of success in their field deserves better than that, at the very, very least.
We found out who the Watergate Deep Throat was, I'm pretty sure we can find out what John Wharton did to piss off the pizza baron and his underlings.
                                             Ratso and Sundance: The Typewriter Years
And when we do, I think it's going to be so minor in the scheme of things that the organ-eye-zation is gonna be more embarrassed about their treatment of their legendary trainer than anything he did to precipitate his dismissal, and ultimately his exclusion from what is supposed to be a celebration of the championship legacy that he was an integral part of.


Sunday, December 29, 2013

Number 7 In The Program, Seven Digit Inmate Number in My Head

Okay, the Eagles are gonna win…they just took a knee, and they're in the playoffs. I hate the Eagles. I never liked the Eagles, though that Joe Walsh song always made me laugh…no, the Philadelphia Eagles "American Football" Franchise was never even a team I wanted to emulate when I was a kid. And I'm glad.
Because I hate Michael Vick {If you have the slightest inclination at this point to comment with anything similar to "he paid his debt to society" or any of those other useless cliches, you might as well go make a paper airplane out of pudding. I don't want to hear it}.
I completely understand why Philadelphia signed him, and allegedly the Humane Society has benefitted from Philadelphia's decision to give Vick a second chance, but there is no law anywhere that says I personally have to accept their decision. And I don't.  I want them eliminated from the playoffs faster than Charlie Sheen goes through a teener and two strippers.
I happen to have a job in which occasionally I am asked my catering preferences. The only thing that I ever demand is no Subway, because they sponsored an award that was presented to Vick after his dog torture scandal.
                                                             The enemy of my enemy
                                                               is my cheesehead friend.
Subway will never get my money again, and they've gotten a lot of it over the years.
In sports, you often root for a concept like "Your hometown", even though in most cases few of the members of your hometown team have ties to the place in which they play (Cheers to the Lions' Joique Bell and the Wings' Justin Abdelkader for their local roots), or if you're of Swedish descent and live in say, Montana, the Wings might be your favorite team because of their plethora of guys that hail from that place.
So it must be okay to root against somebody for a concept deeper and slightly more important than shit like that, right ?
Like I don't respect Michael Vick, I thought his sentence should have been longer and even as he sits on the sideline and watches Nick Foles turn into the most popular guy in Philly not named Balboa, Vick still makes the sammich I made for myself with meat and bread from the store churn in my stomach like a bottle rocket full of ghost peppers. Fuck him, and fuck the team that welcomed him back because he can heave a football a little farther than the carcass of a dead dog. Let's go Saints.


Friday, December 27, 2013

OH, Astro-Blue Bonnet Bowl, Why Have You Forsaken Me ?

Why do I bet the bowl games ? The NCAA officially sanctions 312 bowl games. Look it up, I'm wrong, but any time I start a sentence "Why do I bet…" you pretty much know I'm frustrated and I'm not concerned with the facts. Just like everyone on ESPN in the morning not named "Mike", which is probably being generous.
Of the 312 bowl games, comprising 624 teams, I know something about approximately 13 of the teams. I can name a coach, player or conference for 73% of the rest. The remainder, I'm lucky if I know a time zone. Beyond that, I'm clueless. I look at their records, glance at a four sentence blurb written by an intern at "Sports and Bikinis.ca"and then start throwing darts at a list of names on a canvas so big it makes Jackson Pollock look like Sergio Aragones.
                                                  Blue Poles lost to the St. John's Red Storm
                                                by a safety.
Then I take a chalk line between two of the darts, hold the string real tight and try to remember if Lee Corso wore one team's mascot's cowboy hat or the other team's mascot's full body ring tailed lemur  costume.
Sometimes I get really primal. Say Northwestern Maine A&M is playing South Padre Island Tech. I take South Padre Island every time, because I want them to score so there are more pans of the cheerleaders doing high kicks. Look, I'm sure there are lovely women in Maine, but I'm not the fucking Beach Boys, I don't have to kiss every region's ass to sell a record.
But I can be scientific. If I have a ton of money, an autographed Ricky Williams vaporizer and Dhani Jones's frequent flyer miles riding on a game, I'll turn on my Pacman Jones signature police scanner and tune in to the frequencies for every coastal town plus Vegas. Because you know at least two dozen guys are getting arrested. Some dumb SOB who was raised on a farm on the Wisconsin/ South Dakota border and is actually gonna get a degree in applied mathematics and is smarter than two of me before I ever took my first of 17, 000 career hits of mescaline--a guy who has been his team's quarterback's center  since they were in Montessori school--is gonna drink a fifth of coconut rum and get caught with a hooker. This is not cynicism, this is fact. I do not have to look this up. The last time a ranked team went to a bowl game without at least one crucial element of their success getting suspended for "violation of team rules" was 1941 when all the players were in the armed services and Lou Holtz and Bobby Bowden played paper football to decide the Rose Bowl.
And let's be clear:Even at Notre Dame,"violation of team rules" does not mean failure to say grace before a meal. You really have to fuck up. It doesn't matter what your legacy is with the school, or your GPA…ok, maybe it matters if your dad is on the board at Exxon and just happened to have an eight figure check laying around with NEW ROBOTICS LAB in the memo line, but it amazes me that guys like Max Bullough at Michigan State can fuck up so bad they cost their team a chance to lose to Stanford by only single digits. Max Bullough's family has been around State's program for so long it was their pig that got used for the inaugural game's football. I can't wait to hear what that jackass did. I hope it's full on amateur Hunter S. Thompson gonzo.
                                                               Can't mention the good Dr. 
                                                               without a little Ralph
Me, I won't be getting any hookers (or coconut rum, for that matter), because every year I lose my ass on all these Funyons Quaker State 10W40 Bowl presented by Red Lobster's Going Out of Business Sale.
I knew when I started this blog, I would be passing out gambling advice. First rule of VictoryCharade: Don't pay attention to VictoryCharade gambling advice.

Rules, Like Facemasks, Were Meant to Be Broken

Everyone knows someone who seems to have rules bent for them, usually by sheer force of personality.
Some friends of mine, legendary members of Detroit's concert production fraternity, don't have very many rules but one abiding one was "You can't give yourself your own nickname."
No matter what milieu I've been in, I've enforced that rule whenever applicable.
"My name is Marvin, but you can call me Madman".
"Why do they call you Madman, Marvin?"
"I call myself Madman because…"
"Sit down, Marvin, we'll let ya know if we give ya a nickname."
I know quite a bit about Deacon Jones, especially for a guy I barely remember watching play.
Until today, I did not know he gave himself his own nickname. According to Sports Illustrated's Mark Bechtel, Jones simply wrote down "Deacon" instead of David on a questionnaire his rookie year with the Los Angeles Rams. It doesn't seem like there was much Deacon Jones wanted to do that he didn't.
If I'm gonna bend the rule for someone, it might as well be Deacon Jones. It's not just because Deacon Jones also put a name to a particular football play that has become the official name in the official record book and you hear it every game. Deacon Jones is the man who first called tackling the quarterback for a loss a "sack". And Deacon Jones sacked quarterbacks on a regular basis. The record book does not reflect this, however, because it was not an official statistical category until 1982 and Deacon Jones's 14 year career ended in 1974. A career that almost never happened because of a sit down "Jim Crow" protest when he was at South Carolina State that led to his scholarship being revoked.
Deacon Jones was a badass whose signature move was headslapping the crap out of an offensive linemen's helmet. The NFL couldn't keep up with the headslapping Jones and eventually outlawed the move, making Deacon one part Daniel Webster, one part John Dillinger
 He actually recorded real songs with a real band and released a single in 1969. Listen to it here. Most of the guys in his band "Nightshift"went on to be in a quaint little band you might have heard of called "War". That's a far cry from the Bears pathetic ass Super Bowl Shuffle.
And here's a clip I dug up from his appearance on The Brady Bunch. Based on the fashions and Peter Brady's age, it sure as shit looks like he beat Joe Namath to that gig.

 Hall of Famer David "Deacon" Jones dies in June of this year. Cheers, Deacon. You deserved to call yourself  whatever you wanted to.                             

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

It's Fourth And Goal, Let's Look at Slides From My Vacation

I watched just about zero sports today, unless you count the "surfing" in Fantastic Four: Rise of The Silver Surfer, which I watch muted because I know what happens and I have new CD's to listen to.
I watch sports telecasts with the sound off sometimes, almost always because of something going on inside the house and not inside the broadcast booth.
But I hear tons of complaints about sportscasters these days. Most sportscasters are like offensive lineman, state legislators and Amanda Bynes: You only hear their name when they do something wrong. Or, more appropriately: when it's someone's opinion that they've done something wrong, or are just wrong in general, like fucking your brother's girlfriend when he's having hernia surgery. {For the record, my brother has never had a hernia or a girlfriend}.
                                                    Has not dated my hernia-free brother
Obviously, a select few broadcasters are regarded as community treasures and their names are easily as famous as the best players whose on the field exploits they describe. Those names are rare, and I promise I'll talk about some of my favorite current ones at a later date. I wanna talk about the reasons that sportscasters draw the ire of the sports viewing populace and why the ranks of the detested seem to be increasing by at least two names every season.
To be honest, I don't get it. I have a few that I can do without-most notably the constant conjecture and hypothesis oozing from the mouth of Tim McCarver, whose baseball broadcast partner, Joe Buck, also calls football, so like a naked Artie Lange wall calendar, people can hate him year round.
One thing I'm pretty certain of is that no one gets mad when someone in the booth doesn't speak enough. Is that person out there ? Let me know. (I don't have the comments section on this page so my mom can tell me to come in because the streetlights are on).
So what are the broadcasting traits that make you want to swap out the cashews for a dish full of Xanax?
It drives me away from the nuts and to the pharmaceuticals when McCarver turns the fielding of a routine ground ball into a writing sample he's sending to Stan Lee: "If that slow roller doesn't go into that huge leather thing that's been attached to his appendage since he was still occasionally wetting his pants, the concession stand in Section 423 could have had a propane tank explode and the shrapnel could have killed the last lefty Oakland has in the bullpen." But he did field it Tim, so STFU.
I don't care who it is, I despise it when a color commentator takes a crossing route we see 20 times a game and extrapolates it into an anecdote about a teammate he had on the Roughriders in '78. I was just learning how to feather my hair in '78, that doesn't mean I talk about it at parties. Tell me what's going on on the field, not in your scrapbook. I'm a sucker for an anecdote or possible trivia answer when it's taking a 350lb. guard a week to hobble off the gridiron, but I don't need the History Channel when the the Right The Hell Now Channel that's handing you your paycheck is showing me a live feed of Brandon Pettigrew handing a safety the football like he's returning his bowling shoes and wants his license back.
A guy who I'm starting to hear grumbles about is Gruden. When discussing the hopefully imminent dismissal of Jim Schwartz, I heard someone say that he hoped "Chucky" gets the job just to get him out of the booth.
I actually liked Gruden a lot when they first clipped a mic on him, and I still like much about him now. Yeah, he's been passing out a lot of audible fellatio to some just above average football players (though it's nice that he's branching out from the early days when he was QB-centric) and sometimes he describes a zone blitz like he's Stephen Hawking arguing about space with L.Ron Hubbard

                    The real L. Ron Hubbard never played Lester Bangs in a movie
but at least Gruden has a Super Bowl ring. Joe Buck just had a famous, well connected daddy.
Are all these guys really that bad ? I read that the players hate Chris Collinsworth, who's another guy I like.
I haven't muted a game since the bad old days of Fox hockey telecasts, but judging by Facebook (JoeBucksucks has a page) and Twitter, a lot of people seem like they're tempted to every time they watch anything.
And somewhere Howard Cosell (Google that guy, youngsters) is laughing.


Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Victory Charade: The Moral of the Story is Keep Your Hands to Your ...

Victory Charade: The Moral of the Story is Keep Your Hands to Your ...: In the 90's I was bartending in The Shelter "back bar". Not that fictionalized Shelter in the Eminem stroke flick "8 Mile...

The Moral of the Story is Keep Your Hands to Your Own Stick

In the 90's I was bartending in The Shelter "back bar". Not that fictionalized Shelter in the Eminem stroke flick "8 Mile", but the real alt rock dance and live music dungeon buried under St. Andrew's Hall. Most of the people who drank at my bar had no interest in the music, they just came for the cheap drinks and to meet someone. I had to entertain them, and since I don't know how to make balloon animals, I showed hockey fights.
There are better videos of more "traditional" melees, but this is one of the craziest spectacles in American sports, and it happened December 23rd,1979-thirty four years ago yesterday.
Peace on Earth and Goodwill towards men unless they're wearing penny loafers
Enjoy. Merry Christmas, everybody. Thanks for reading Victory Charade.

Monday, December 23, 2013

Fantasy Football: Nothing Like D&D, and If You Say It Is, I'll Beat You With This Pewter Andy Dalton

When I was a kid, my mom loved to say "Don't knock it until you've tried it." She was referring to strange sounding, strange looking foods that had a reputation for being nutritious, not cocaine and sex on carnival rides, but the point is I did heed the spirit of her advice.
I do not know anyone who has actually played fantasy football and hated it. I know lots of people who say they hate it or it's stupid or lame or the same things they said in 8th grade about the story of the furry footed creature on an adventure with dwarves that is crushing box offices right now. Somewhere along the line, people gave up on their uninformed opinion and gave it a try.
I really don't understand what the turn off to fantasy football is in the first place.
It involves getting together with friends and acquaintances, in most cases consuming a few beverages and trying to prove that you are smarter than everyone else. That's been happening at cocktail parties since before Marvin Harrison's great great great grandfather William Henry was president. Except with fantasy football, you get to wager on it.
It's not like I'm banging on your door on a Saturday morning and trying to get you to fire up on Awake and The Watchtower just so next Saturday you gotta bang on somebody's door and try to get them to fire up on Awake and The Watchtower. Everyone I know who has played fantasy football keeps playing it, and you don't go to hell if you quit, even though you won't.
No more bitching about Millen. You are "Millen". You draft the players. Much like leaving the house of the young lady who was the Girl with Your Tanqueray Eyes the night before and wakes up looking like the guy who fixed your brakes, you get to hate yourself.
No more bitching about Schwartz or Harbaugh or Andy Reid. You are those guys. If Matt Forte isn't playing up to the lofty standards you set for yourself back when you played half a season of Pop Warner until your aunt got the night shift at the strip club and all of a sudden you had Madden and quit, then you don't have to start Matt Forte. Cool thing about fantasy football, is you don't have to listen to Matt Forte bitch about it.
One of the big excuses I hear is "I just like real football." Except you're lying. I see you at the bar during the Sunday night game and you're playing the jukebox, or you're on Facebook freaking out because two zombies from the Walking Dead just stumbled into Homeland while Dexter was taking care of his kid until another moonshine deal turned into a gunfight on Boardwalk Empire. You like one team, maybe two.  Or you spend half your paycheck wagering on one game

that your college roommate knows all about because he banged the cheerleading coach's sister after the St. Patrick's Day parade. Now you're an all your eggs in one basket case. Fantasy football: Every single game on the schedule can mean something to the outcome of your league for one low price.
After I factor in what I've won, my fantasy leagues this year have cost me a grand total of $45 and I'm publishing this blog right now, because somebody somewhere just came in their pants because they drafted the San Francisco 49ers defense...







Sunday, December 22, 2013

If Gruden Won't Do It, See What Daphne Zuniga is Up To.

Like the violin player on the Titanic or the PA at Vivid video responsible for packing up the jizz stained sheets, I stayed til the bitter end. I watched the pigskin fly through the uprights at Ford Field and waited to make sure there were no flags, and then flipped over to NBC, even though I knew I would be subjected to Carrie Underwood's inexplicable soft pop anthem of bad market research. After a whole Lions season, what's two and a half more minutes of torture?
I really believed the Lions would make the playoffs. In Detroit that's akin to Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin or your friend who buys ten dollar blow jobs in Highland Park and tries to convince you the fellatrix didn't have a dick. Plenty of football fans in Detroit want the Lions to make the playoffs. Very few of them, even the ones at Ford Field, face painted to look like Violet Beauregarde at Movement truly believed they would do it.

And they didn't. Their season is over, other than taking a look at guys who might be treading that fine line between getting offered a new contract or being on the Buccaneers practice squad next year, and deciding what to do with the guys on the sideline in the headsets.
I know I'm not the Sir Edmund Hillary of sports commentary when I say this, but with the exception of Gunther Cunningham, the Lions coaching staff has gotta go. The Ford family should be handing out more pink slips than were available at Anna Nicole Smith's estate sale.
Losing five out of six games in their situation is inexcusable. I'll spot them the Baltimore loss because they were robbed of 6 points and the Ravens were handed another 3 like it was an exhibition game at a Poe festival, but losing to the Giants is worse than getting stoned during a strike at the Pringles plant.
I felt this way before I saw footage of Schwartz calling out Lions fans for booing, when he was rarely willing to work the officiating crew. (Think that doesn't have an effect ? See HOF coaches like Stram, Hank or Bowman, William Scott).
The Schwartz had his head in his ass on numerous occasions this season, and on most of those occasions popular opinion couldn't pry me and my blanket from the pumpkin patch. But no more. The Schwartz should be in the trash compactor when the final whistle blows in Minnesota.


                                                 Yeah, I know his name is Dark Helmet,
                                                 but you get the idea.
This is not me trying to extricate myself from Slappyland or me sleeping with the WDFNemy. I simply waited until it was officially over to state my feelings.
Matt Stafford is 25 years old. He and Calvin Johnson under the right tutelage can be a legendary touchdown combination. Someone is out there that can teach Stafford that he can't be some Brett Favre sidearm gunslinger on every fucking offensive possession, because it ain't working. In fact, there are plenty of coaches out there that might make that their first order of business. I like synchronized swimming for the crotch shots, but I do appreciate the discipline, and if people can coach a dozen young women to perform the same exact movements while they are upside down underwater, I'm pretty sure someone can convince Matty to throw the ball overhand from something resembling a pocket, even a collapsing pocket, 9 out of 10 times. That's just one example of one of the changes I hope to get from the new guy, and the new guy's agent's phone should be ringing a week from tonight, if it isn't ringing right now.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

No One Got Slapped With a Shoe. That's Men's Hockey.

 Two border country hockey teams got in a brief melee the other day. Not exactly newsworthy, though hockey fights, like oral sex and inopportune flatulence, are almost invariably entertaining.
This one has the added bonus that it's the US vs Canadian women's teams. Obviously, you're not likely to catch the prurient thrill of the cat fight clothes rip during a hockey fight (if that's your thing), but from a sports and nationalistic perspective, it was pretty damn impressive. You go girls. To the penalty box.


Friday, December 20, 2013

Much Like Little League, I Just Couldn't See The Pitch

Call me naive


…but I thought Detroit would have an MLS team by now. Like a decade ago "by now". And I had no idea I was such a geocentric bastard when it comes to American sports. I have a favorite Premier League team-Tottenham Hotspur ( COYS!), a favorite La Liga team kinda-I prefer Barcelona, which is kinda easy, because they have the best player on the planet and their arch rivals, Real Madrid have the whiniest player on the planet (see my inaugural blog if you don't know who that is), but every other team I like is within a don't-have-to-stop-to-piss drive from my house.
And I've tried to "pick" a team in MLS to support, but I just can't seem to do it. I appreciate certain players and certain team's styles of play, and I love the rabid fan bases in the Pacific Northwest-Seattle and Portland-and I'd love top go to a game there, but it's obvious I won't have a team, my team,until they grant a franchise to Detroit. Everyone in Detroit knows that the world flocks here to try to get rich off of pictures of a boarded up Wendy's on 7 Mile, and this is where the trust fund handlebar mustaches  gravitate because they can get a 7000 square foot loft on Grand River for less than the price of the racing bicycle they traded in for the vintage lime green Schwinn, but somehow MLS has managed to avoid us. And no, before someone starts howling, I don't expect a soccer stadium to be tax payer funded, nor do I expect a parade down Woodward if we get one (unless of course they win an MLS Cup, because Detroit does love winners and parades for winners and an excuse to drink openly on the streets like some kind of frostbite Mardi Gras). I just want a team I can get behind. I dig the shit out of DCFC, but due to circumstances only semi in my control, I was temporarily living in NOLA when they started and I kinda feel like a bandwagon hopper. And honestly, I thought if MLS didn't want us, that no way in hell a smaller league would. Maybe we don't need MLS. Maybe I just answered my own question. I guess I do have a hometown club to root for. I just gotta remember not to fuck up and wear my blue and white Spurs scarf to the matches.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

It's Just a Flesh Wound!!!!

Years ago in a Playboy interview, Bob Costas was asked what he hated to hear when he was watching a sports broadcast. I'll paraphrase his answer, because I don't feel like going into the basement, digging through boxes to find the issue and then using nail polish remover to unstick the pages. C'mon, lots of straight guys paint their nails while they masturbate. But I digress.
Costas's answer was that he hated hearing,-after an obviously serious on-field injury or off-field death of a player "This really puts it all in perspective."
He explained that the reason it bothered him was "what happened to the perspective we were supposed to have gained last time something like this occurred ?"
I've been bemoaning the Red Wings injury woes this season. A team that was already full of new faces skating on the top lines or defensive pairings and they haven't had a chance to jell, because someone is always in street clothes. Here's a partial list:
-Helm, shoulder
-Abdelkader, head
-Nyquist, groin
-Franzen, concussion
-Zetterberg, back,
-Dekeyser, shoulder
-Weiss, groin
-Howard, knee
-Datsyuk, concussion (though he was back to his old Bolshoi Ballet meets Skate Du Soleil self tonight).
Yes, injuries are part of the game, but the Wings have been hit hard this season in a year of personnel and geographic transition. And I might have bitched about it, though my friends find it hard to picture me as anything less than the epitome of emotional stability.
Anyway, I'm whining like David Lee Roth after he found a brown M&M stuck to the ass of his hooker when I catch this little tidbit off the NHL injury wire:
MINNESOTA WILD:
Josh HardingIRDec 18
Comment: Harding was placed on injured reserve Wednesday due to a new change in the treatment protocol for his multiple sclerosis.
Josh Harding is the starting goaltender for the Minnesota Wild. He's 18-5-3, with a 1.51 goals against average. If you're not a hockey fan, first of all, unless you're from Turks and Caicos you're not forgiven, and second of all, that means he's having a season that is on par with some of the finest in history. That's far less than two goals a game on a team with one marquee defenseman, Ryan Suter and he's not even a classic stay-at-home guy.
And speaking of "stay at home", Harding is doing this in a league that is making him travel all over the continent, which while not being the cross country train rides full of influenza  they once were, still takes a physical toll on even the most finely conditioned athletes.
Harding already won the Masterton Trophy for perseverance and dedication to the game of hockey.
This year I hope he fucking wins the Vezina.



Wednesday, December 18, 2013

C'mon David Stern. Paper Train It Before You Take It For a Walk in the Meadowlark

The NBA has it made. They have the smallest rosters, the easiest to maintain playing surface, the cheapest uniforms and equipment. And, most importantly, Chinese people love the game and according to Forbes magazine, watch it by the millions on mobile devices, which may one day translate into a Baztrillion dollar TV deal. Ok, I made up "baztrillion", but an American guy made up Almond Chicken, so we're even. I think.
But I loathe the NBA's version of basketball, culture and pecking order. This hasn't always been the case. Like many rowdy Detroit kids, I identified with the Bad Boys and followed Dennis Rodman's career even when he was playing for the despised Chicago Bulls. Rodman was like Clyde Drexler and Darby Crash had a kid with Evel Knievel and PT Barnum.
Now you couldn't get me to sit down and watch an NBA contest unless Julie Benz was a Laker Girl and was sending me jello shots in the second row with the T-shirt gun.
I don't have any idea why the average dunk makes the Top Ten on Sportscenter anymore. They happen 30 times a game and they count for the same amount of points as an uncontested layup when the defender is too winded from shooting his Mega-Ade commercial the night before and a regular season post-game press conference is more like a runway show for Italian haberdashers.
The aforementioned Dennis Rodman drew attention to himself to be sure, but it was not an act. I saw Dennis out at clubs with no entourage, no cameras (I realize that's impossible now), no fanfare (especially the ones that were of questionable standing with the Michigan Liquor Control Commission). And he was the NBA Defensive Player of the Year. The hard working "Selke" guy, not the glamor guy launching threes from everywhere in the arena.
Now the people who play the game are bigger than their team, bigger than the game, in some cases even bigger the the entire city and state that launched their career. Yes, I'm talking to you, Simon LeBron.
They aren't athletes, per se, anymore. They're brands. And while that can be said of a handful of athletes in all the other sports combined, it's what fuels the NBA. And the NBA is looking to wring even more money out of these bipedal billboards. The latest ? Creating jerseys with player nicknames on the back.You can read more about that if you care to here.
I happen to think if you're one of the tens of millions of kids around the world who play organized basketball who actually make it to the biggest, most lucrative stage, you'd like to honor the name of your mother or father or grandparents that helped you make it to being one of the approximately 370 guys to achieve that plateau. Not some name bestowed upon you in a movie by Spike Lee (Ray Allen is gonna wear J. Shuttleworth after the character he played in He Got Game). That's what imdb is for, Ray. The league is already plenty playground enough, except in the last five minutes when there are more timeouts than a month at the Duggar's house.
                                                            They'd have a couple NBA teams 
                                                            if these kids were European.
 Does the NBA really need to go there? Maybe if they fixed the game first, and actually figured out a way to make more than four teams competitive every year. It's like a fistful of Globetrotters and a map full of Washington Generals right now.
And I can dig the Globetrotters having nicknames on their jerseys, because they are entertaining to begin with. Remember what it looked like the last time a competitive league tried the nickname gimmick? I do.





Tuesday, December 17, 2013

61 Yards and A Cloud of Rust

I wanted to avoid this. I wanted to avoid discussing it like someone would avoid getting a prostate exam from Andre the Giant.
It's been about 24 hours since one of the low points in Lions history. Or was it ? Can we agree that 0-16 was the absolute nadir. It sure doesn't feel like it, because the klieg lights were not on that Sunday.
Before I say anything further, I have to say this: I know Matt Stafford for the most part played quarterback like Adam Sandler-not like Paul Crewe in the The Longest Yard, but like John Clasky in Spanglish. Ok, I never saw that movie, but in the trailer, Adam Sandler didn't look like he could throw a football.
I know Calvin Johnson couldn't catch a nip shot at Joe Francis's bachelor party.
I know with Bell and Bush in the backfield one of those 3rd and 1's could have stayed on the ground.
But I also know this
 has been a motherfucking penalty since Pete Rozelle's mom was sleeping in the wet spot. It cost the Lions 6 points, and they lost by 2.
Officials aren't paid to worry about what a franchise's history is--at least we assume they aren't, because it sure seems like Tom Brady and Bill Belichick get more gifts than the Sultan of Brunei's 16 year old daughter. But ostensibly, they are paid to call penalties no matter what color the offender's jersey is.
And someone's gonna wanna knock me down and tattoo "Slappy" across my forehead in Honolulu Blue, but I think the Lions got robbed.
If they score that touchdown, Justin Tucker could still walk through the streets of Baltimore and people would think they knew him because he played a cop on The Wire.
Jon Gruden, who has a goddamn Super Bowl ring and is paid extremely well to be an unbiased observer said it last night: "That call may have cost the Lions the division title."
If they're in the lead,Stafford never throws that pick in the last minute, because he never would have been in that position.
Let me put it another way: If someone starts a grease fire in your house, and you panic and throw water on it, whose fault is it that the house burned down ?
I know I just made myself a William Clay pigeon, and put myself in a trap. There ya go all you "long suffering Lions fans"; altogether now, everyone say "pull".


Monday, December 16, 2013

...And This Paddle Game, and a Date With Alex Morgan and...

I never understood the song "The 12 Days of Christmas". I was raised Catholic, so I always thought there were only three days of Christmas: Christmas Eve, when you get drunk and go to Midnight Mass, Christmas, when you open presents and eat turkey and ham and a bunch of cookies with little silver balls on them that apparently aren't edible any other time of the year, and the 26th, when the consumerists in your family go bargain hunting while you watch some third tier bowl game featuring two 6-5 teams from the Plains states and drink the wine that people quietly refused to drink the night before.
Besides, pear trees probably don't thrive in Michigan (this isn't a botany blog, I could be wrong) and the only Partridge I want is a 19 year old Susan Dey.
But the following is what I would like for Christmas. I don't expect you to sing it.
-The Detroit Red Wings to make it through the season without having to sign Ned Braden and Doug Dorsey

 and to keep the playoff streak alive. Not only is it a great streak, it means a shitload of actual real cash to the people who bartend Downtown.
-The Detroit area to get a regular, annual stop on the PGA Tour. If you know me, I might not strike you as the type of guy who likes golf. I do. I also like capybaras, and most people don't even know what those are, so blow me.
-The Pistons to buy the Packard Plant and build an arena there. It would be like a modern day Wrigley Field (I swear there are some nice, well kept neighborhoods right near that megatagged monstrosity).
-Jim Leyland to enjoy his retirement and be proud of all the stuff he accomplished in baseball. I want this gift wrapped in Mike Mouyianis Not Kicking My Ass brand wrapping paper.
-The NFL to quit playing regular season games in England until the Premier League schedules a few Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal matches in the U.S. Preferably at Wayne State.
-And I never, ever, ever want anyone to remake Bull Durham or Slapshot.
There's the list. Aren't ya glad you don't have to go to the mall to ignore it ? Yeah, It's not 12. I'm not a greedy dick, and if it was a song, I wouldn't want it to be longer than 2 1/2 minutes.

-

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Everyone On the Thanksgiving Bandwagon Hopped Off When They Got Asked for Gas Money

That Lions loss to Baltimore is the toughest one I can remember. And you just knew, because Jim Schwartz is the worst coach in the history of the NFL, that once they lost to Baltimore they'd fall apart and the Giants, led by that Genius in Depends Tom Coughlin would steamroll them right out of Ford Field. And really, who cares about the loss to the Vikings because they were out of playoff contention by that game anyway.
Wait ? They didn't play the game yet ? They did on Facebook, and talk radio and chat rooms and barstools and ALL the experts
agree that ESPN would be way better off airing a Battle of The Network Stars featuring the cast of Airwolf vs the cast of The Middle, because Baltimore is gonna come into Detroit and leave with the Lions' dignity, the deed to the Packard Plant, and hereafter the quant little white-tiled hot dog emporiums on Lafayette will forgo the chili fries in favor of Ray Rice pilaf.
All the experts except Vegas.
Listen up, all you Schleprocks who revel in how badly the Lions have hurt your tender little feelings over the years: The Lions are favored by a touchdown over the Baltimore Ravens. They had zero-zero! control over what transpired today in the Chicago and Green Bay games. But that's when all the yapping started "It's gonna be the same old Lions, etc, vomit, etc, dry heave, etc."
But ya wanna hear something ?
The Lions were only 6.5 point favorites until the Cleveland and Dallas losses. {If you are a gambler, yes, I'm only looking at the line I plan on using and the lines will vary by sportsbook , internet service and Marv, the guy with the cigar nursing the Johnnie Walker next to the service bar. If you are not a gambler, just trust me on this one or go get a scratch off ticket}.
What this means is that enough money was bet on the Lions to win by more than 6.5 after people knew what exactly was at stake that it moved the point spread to entice more people to bet on the Ravens and create a more equitable outcome for the book.
So there are people out there who believe the Lions can win. Lots of them. I have not yet decided whether or not I believe the Lions will. But I refuse to join the chorus of foul weather "fans" predicting that their arm will have to be amputated because the Bears and the Packers gave them a hangnail today.
Call me a "slappy" all you fucking want, but I can read the statistics and watch the games and that tells me that Stafford is having a better year than Flacco, the Lions defense only gives up about 3 more points per game than the Ravens, and that when John Harbaugh's team has to take a plane to a game they play like they were hanging out with Denzel Washington and John Goodman in "Flight" ( one road win so far this season).
I'm not gonna go to bed tonight thinking that I'm gonna wake up on Tuesday with the Lions on top of their division. But I'm not gonna go to bed tonight thinking that just because this franchise has notoriously been more frustrating than getting Kirstie Alley as a three legged race partner that tomorrow night is gonna be one big prehistoric nightmare.







Saturday, December 14, 2013

If I Had An Invisible Rope, I'd Be A Way Better Mime Than That Guy

It's true confessions time: I'm a huge, flatulent, screaming, hypocritical idiot.
I've done a ton of shit in my life, and I took pride in just about half of most of it.
When I was a waiter and some podiatrist's kid who got a Rolex for passing driver's ed would complain about the service, I'd think "You wouldn't last one day in a slow Big Boy with a section next to the salad bar you little prick, you have no right to judge."
When I worked in the auto industry and some dickknob engineer who thought his reversible Mickey Mouse tie really made him Merlin the Magician would tell me how to maximize my spline roller output, I'd say "Pull on some gloves and put that little theory into practice, Pythagoras."
.As far as I'm concerned, Teddy Roosevelt nailed it.
So why the hell do I think it's okay to break major blood vessels in my cranium when an NHL referee hacks a call on a play that happened at 72 miles an hour that I'm watching in Matrixlike slo-mo on an ultra high def screen the size of a fucking bread truck ?
I mean I will re-watch a hooking call like I'm on the Warren Commission, begging for every member of the official's family to contract dysentery on a cruise ship that's sinking while the band is playing Seger covers, and I've never officiated a hockey game in my life. I umped about 3 little league baseball games and worked the lines on a few youth soccer matches and I sucked at that. In shoes.
These guys are skating backwards, dodging Latvian behemoths in Iron Man suits, I'm critiquing them at 140 decibels while making piles of belly button lint on the card table that's holding the Chunky Soup I just burned and I can't skate backwards. You know why ? Because I can't skate forward either.
If Lily Aldridge ...
                                    No, Jim doesn't really care that I'm married to a King of Leon

...asked me to fetch a ballgag and some Astroglide for us from a top shelf and I had to don a pair of Pavel Datsyuk signature Reebok skates to do so, I'd botch that fifty percent of the time.
I will bellow and admonish and get indignant at these once or twice a game transgressions and I'm not sure I can even blow a whistle 45 times in 60 minutes without supplemental oxygen.
I know it's dumb, but I can't stop. I've been doing it so long I'm like the guy smoking a camel no filter through his trach opening next to the oxygen canister.
I'm watching the Bruins vs. the Canucks right now, ( after the Wings skated like they were charting migratory patterns of Aleutian song birds) and there's a good chance that while I'm typing this I'll scream at an official who can't hear me because he's in British Columbia and he doesn't give a fuck what I think even if he could hear me.
                                             

It's a horrible habit. It's idiotic But it least it doesn't cost 7 bucks a pack, and whether anyone will admit it with me or not, I know I'm not alone.


Friday, December 13, 2013

Screw It, Let's Just Race Zambonis

I don't like the shootout. Yeah, you're gonna say "Of course he doesn't like the shootout, the Wings just lost two in a row."
This is not a case of "I really love my little brother, he's just been going through a bratty phase from the age of eight to the age of forty." I've never liked the shootout.
It's like beets. If you don't like the taste of them, you're not gonna bring it up during a meal that they're not being served at. But if your significant other, your personal chef or you during a personality disorder crisis start serving them as a component of every meal, you're gonna be prompted to discuss it.
So I don't like the shootout, the Wings haven't won one yet this season, and now I'm discussing it.
The shootout is a shitty way to decide a hockey game for a number of reasons:
If It's a zero-zero or 1-1 deadlock after 60 minutes of regulation and 5 minutes of 4 on 4 hockey, then the goalies have acquitted themselves pretty well and should be allowed to skate off into the sunset after  making the little glory loop for being one of the game's three stars.
                                                     Only 3 Stars??? That's a bit weak, innit?
If the game ends tied at 4-4, even the casual fan has gotten his money's worth and the offensive stars have had a chance to show what they're capable of in real hockey situations. As it is, both teams would get a point. The extra point for the shootout basically represents the fact that the shootout is worth equally as much as the entire 65 minutes of hockey that has just transpired, except this time that point is potentially decided by three skaters from each team.
You don't decide a football game with a punt, pass and kick. You don't decide a baseball game with a home run derby. And you shouldn't decide a hockey game by having Todd Bertuzzi let the puck slide harmlessly off his stick.
Now look, I know we're stuck with the shootout just like the American network television viewer is stuck with those Lemmyforsaken "music" competition shows like "The Voice", "The Sing-Off", and "Let's See If This Chick Can Yodel While I'm Going Down On Her" (Ok, that hasn't been broadcast yet, but I'm pitching it).
And I realize the shootout does provide some fleeting moments of excitement, like a straddled balance beam dismount in college gymnastics, but you don't want to decide the outcome of hockey games with that, do ya ?

Laugh now ( I kinda am), but come April or May, the 6 points the Wings have neglected to pick up could be the difference between making the playoffs or not, and almost assuredly will decide our playoff seeding and it's only December.
What's quaint "skills competition" (as Ken Daniels sardonically refers to it every broadcast) ineptitude today could be the difference between a trip to Montreal in the first round, or a trip to South Florida. And as bizarre as it sounds, trust me, the Wings would much rather play hockey down south in the spring-- because they would get to perform for their ex-pat winged wheel-clad fans in round one -- than deal with a bunch of Quebecois angry because pasta has been illegal in their province for a year.
The shootout may have snared some casual fans when hockey was really hurting, but they just got a glorious new TV deal in Canada. Too bad they couldn't have made phasing out the shootout part of the package.




Thursday, December 12, 2013

And Managers Can No Longer Hand in Lineup Cards Because the Ump Might Get a Papercut

On January 16th, Major League Baseball is expected to announce a rule outlawing running into the catcher. It's pretty much a done deal and according to most reports they will have the blessing of the player's association. Even if the player's association tells them to shove this horrendous decision in their obviously puckered little asses, MLB can unilaterally impose the rule starting in 2015.So that should give them plenty of time to find the appropriate spokesperson. Let me suggest Dennis Haysbert. He's articulate, likable, and he's already a mouthpiece for an insurance company, and insurance companies are the only possible explanation as to why MLB is making this move.
We may allegedly be in good hands with Haysbert's bosses, but baseball fans are in lousy hands with Selig and the aging bobbleheads running MLB.
In a sport that has lost market share to MMA's brutal violence and NASCAR's potential for fiery disaster, they are altering the ability of a player to attempt to score because of the slight possibility someone might get injured. 
"This is, I think, in response to a few issues that have arisen," MLB Exec. VP of baseball operations Sandy Alderson said in a press conference. "One is just the general occurrence of injuries from these incidents at home plate that affects players, both runners and catchers -- and also the general concern about concussions that exists not only in baseball but throughout professional sports and amateur sports today."
They sure aren't doing it because the fans want it removed-check any online poll and the fans pretty solidly want runner/catcher contact kept in the game. 
This is a sport that has pandered to fans incessantly and ad nauseum since the work stoppages. I don't want another sausage race, Bud Selig, I want the guy racing around home to score any way possible this side of being nudged by the giant doughnut that races on the Jumbotron so my section can win a coupon I'll never use. We don't come to the ballpark for a dollar off a cruller, you crusty old nightmare, we come to see exciting baseball. And a guy barreling around third with the winning run on his cleats is  the definition of it.
Now MLB is pandering to the companies that insure the eight figure a year contracts of the players and who obviously want to take a risk away. Bud Selig and his cohorts won't admit it, but it's absolutely true. You could see the writing on the radiology room wall when San Francisco's wonder boy backstop and queen heartthrob Buster Posey got his leg busted when he got clobbered by the Florida Marlins' Scott Cousins on a play at the plate. The play, it should be noted, happened in extra innings. That's right, the game was on the line.

So what happens next year, as you sit in your $125 seat drinking your $9 beer? That remains to be seen, but under the proposed new rule the runner cannot collide with the catcher; he must slide. The catcher will no longer be allowed to block the plate-that's right, for all intents and purposes, he'll be asked to step to the side of the plate to attempt to tag the runner out.
It's like the classic cartoon with the two annoyingly polite chipmunks. "After you". "No, I insist, after you".
This is not like the argument against fighting in hockey, where it's a traditional part of the game, affects the ability of the stars to skate freely, but almost never directly involves scoring. MLB is changing a fundamental way a run is scored. 
And I've heard claims that those who are in favor of keeping the play in the game are motivated by some sense of machismo. No, sorry, Dr. Phil, that's not the case. Sports fans who live for contact have moved on to the other sports I've already mentioned or never strayed from hockey in the first place, no matter how hard Gary Bettman has tried to chase them out of the village with a flaming puck. This issue has to do with attempting to win a baseball game, and due to a few high profile incidents, both the offensive and defensive player are being robbed of one of the most effective and (yes, exciting) ways of scoring or preventing a run. There are supposed to be risks involved, otherwise chess would be a popular spectator sport. Jeezus, little girls are paralyzed every year cheerleading. Buster Posey's gruesome, horrible, catastrophic injury ? He recovered to be MVP the very next year. 
I don't care where Allstate stands. I care that someone who makes ten million a year to stand in an outfield and adjust his crotch is occasionally given the opportunity to round the base at third, put it into high gear and attempt to make the guy in the body armor drop the baseball so the team I root for (or bet on) can win. That's where I stand.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Everything But The "Suck"

For a guy who gambles on sports as much as I do, it amazes me that I've held off as long as I have to gamble that someone would read my blathering about the contests I watch so frequently that I'm burning out my retinas.
I guess I figured that everyone who follows sports had an opinion about them. But then I read about three dozen of those opinions, scattered between pictures of buxom cheerleaders and pro tennis panty shots and thought "Shit, my opinion is more valid than those guys."
That was about two decades ago. Then Facebook burst on to the scene thanks to the hard work and computer brilliance of a pop star and that guy who looks like the horny dork from Juno. And I started letting my warm, moist feelings be known about everything from soccer not being some lame, useless sport...
…in most cases, to the NBA being a steaming pile of feces. (The above image was the most readily available image I had of a steaming pile of feces).
Having interrupted enough crucial Farmville League Championship matches with my inane spewings about meaningless, non-revenue producing shit like the NFL, NHL, MLB and major college athletics on Facebook, I have now taken refuge here where presumably the hate mail I get won't make my mom cry. (Who am I kidding, most of my Facebook hate mail was from my mom).
If you happen to read this and don't know me personally, here's a bit of a biographical heads up: I'm a Detroiter, which means a number of things in regard to sports. Three of our four major franchises have won championships in my lifetime. So if you're from Boise and want to write to me about the ineptitude of the Lions, I'm probably going to laugh, because A: The Lions get paid, and B: At least the field they play on is relatively the color of grass, and not sixteen acres of boysenberry Skittles.
Which brings me to another point: If you write to me and rip on the team/coach/player/manager/ballgirl I'm defending, you have to do better than the term "suck". I didn't almost fail out of a prestigious Jesuit high school to distract my glamorous day watching Craftsman Truck Series Qualifying trying to explain why someone doesn't "suck". Most people actually do suck something, but in most cases, that doesn't affect their job performance (unless it's nitrous oxide, and I don't think they can find that in someone's urine). So if you feel that someone on the field or on the bench or in the press box is subpar, be creative as well as vitriolic, got me ?
In some rare cases, you might even agree with me, and I'd like to hear that too.
And because I refuse to have the only photo on my inaugural blog be a shot of the Portugese Man-of-Wahhhh, here's a picture of the greatest NHL defenseman who ever lived:
And even though that's like saying water is wet, someone will probably try to dispute me on it. But tough shit. Jimmy Doom has a blog now. And he's gonna use it.