Bleacher Report - Articles by Greg Eno

Tiger Not Out of Woods Yet with Lame Website Statement

Greg Eno — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:47:57 -0500

Tiger Woods is finally being brought to his knees.

Augusta couldn't do it. Pebble Beach, neither. Nor could any of the vaunted courses across the pond.

A four-stroke deficit on a Sunday doesn't faze Woods, either. Having to get up and down from 45 yards away, his ball in a pile of thatch? Piece of cake.

But this isn't the golf course, it's the fish bowl of celebrity.

Woods, who was involved in a single-car crash just outside his home over the weekend, is playing this one like Greg Norman trying to hold on to a lead in a major on the final day.

Tiger is shanking them and his approach shots are plopping into water hazards.

Woods is hoping that the statement he released on his website will satiate those among us who are a tad curious—and that number is no doubt in the tens of millions, at least—about what went down, and why at 2:25 a.m. Saturday, when Woods smashed into a fire hydrant and then a tree with his Cadillac.

The statement takes responsibility for the crash—duh, it was a single car mishap right out of the driveway; who ELSE'S fault would it be?—and praises the actions of wife Elin Nordegren, who according to reports used a golf club (I imagine there are a few of those lying around the Woods house, huh?) to smash the windshield so she could help extricate her husband from the vehicle.

The statement also apologized for the embarrassment the incident has caused, and it vowed that it will never happen again.

Bounding out of your driveway, ramming into a fire hydrant and then careening off a tree? I would hope not!

Sorry, Tiger—not enough. Your statement was a 75-yard chip shot when you're 90 yards away from the green.

Tiger left this one short, alright. Now he needs to blast out of some serious rough, just to save bogey.

What was conspicuous by its absence was any REAL explanation of what happened late Friday night/early Saturday morning. Woods chided rumors and the irresponsibility of some of the sensationalistic reporting of the incident, yet did nothing to stop either—unless he fancies himself living in some fantasy land where folks take everything celebrities say at face value.

Was he popping out to the store for a late night Haagen Dazs run for his wife? Did he run out of Doritos?

The number of viable, explicable reasons why one leaves his/her home at 2:30 in the morning doesn't create a very large cache. Unless Tiger took a graveyard shift to earn some extra dough, then we know he wasn't on his way to work, either.

Why not come clean? Woods has, at press time, canceled three separate interview requests made by state troopers who want to ask, basically, "Hey, what happened?"

And the troopers are giving Tiger a wide berth here. Next time you or me or Joe Shmoe try to put off cops trying to investigate an incident at our home, see what happens.

Tiger Woods is the Muhammad Ali of his time, in that he's recognizable worldwide. He's iconic, and his mere being transcends golf, and even the entire world of sport. So when he crashes his car at 2:30 in the morning when no one else is around, it'd be nice to know what the hell went down.

The rumors, meanwhile, continue to swirl like the wind at Candlestick Park.

Tiger and Elin had a fight. Tiger stormed out. If that's true, then good thing she used the golf club to smash the windshield and not his skull.

Tiger's having an affair and was setting out for a late night tryst. If that's true, see above re: Elin and the golf club.

The rumors that Woods derides, however, are like any vegetation: They need fertile ground in which to germinate. And it doesn't get much more fertile than silence and cryptic "statements" that say everything yet answer nothing.

You'd think Tiger would know this. His whole life has been spent in the fish bowl, just about. You'd think he'd know how to handle an incident like this as if it was a par-4 at the Buick Open.

But Tiger is stumbling and bumbling. He's making a mess of this hole.

Meanwhile, the vegetation of rumor and innuendo is climbing, like a vine, around his life. And that stuff grows fast.

He ought to know that.

Hey NFL! Leave Detroit's Thanksgiving Day Game Alone

Greg Eno — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 10:06:32 -0500

I’m going to make a preemptive strike here. An end-around, if you will, to head them off at the pass.

I’m getting my own iron hot. Not enough time to wait for others to reach the proper temp.

This is for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and those who would petition him on their behalf.

Keep your stinking paws off our Thanksgiving Day game in Detroit.

Maybe the rumblings have already started. Maybe I’m not the early bird that I think I am.

The Lions lost, 34-12, on Thursday to the Green Bay Packers. That’s what the Lions do anymore on Thanksgiving—they lose by scores like 34-12. It’s been so bad lately that 34-12 is actually one of the better ones, truth be told.

That’s six straight losses on Turkey Day. And those outside of our fair city are crying fowl.

It began a few years ago, when the Lions were starting a new tradition of getting the stuffing beat out of them on Thanksgiving.

“Take the Thanksgiving Day away from the Lions and give it to a team more deserving—or at least one that’s easier on the stomach.”

One of the biggest instigators was the late Lamar Hunt, the erstwhile owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, who whined yearly about the Lions and their Thanksgiving tradition.

Rotate the game, Lamar said. Let other teams get in on the fun. Other teams like his, for example.

The movement gained momentum. Hunt garnered more and more support, until it was forgotten by many that it was Hunt’s idea in the first place. You could almost see the pitchforks and torches gathering in front of the league office.

Hunt, among other things, thought that the quick turnaround from Sunday to Thursday benefited the Lions, who were used to doing it, so therefore they must have some sort of an advantage.

HA!

The Lions, after their latest Thanksgiving Day turkey, are now 33-35-2 on the holiday. Yeah—that’s some advantage, alright. They really clean up on Thanksgiving, don’t they?

The NFL went out and started scheduling its own Thanksgiving Night game on its own network, but that still hasn’t stopped the moaning about the 12:30 kickoff in Detroit.

At issue is the Lions as a team, not a franchise. It’s nothing personal, the pitchforkers and torchers say. They’d just rather see a better brand of football at 12:30.

Well join the club!

So here’s my scientific, heavily-researched, highly analytical response to that argument.

Tough cookies!

We have precious few football traditions in Detroit. If we didn’t host a couple of Super Bowls, the Vince Lombardi Trophy wouldn’t have even crossed the state line.

Hell, we don’t even have Matt Millen to rip anymore, so there goes one of our pastimes, right there.

Yeah, the Lions are bad—been bad for this entire century, so far. The Lions wear bad like rice wears white. No argument there.

So you don’t like them soiling your television set from 12:30-4:00 p.m. eastern time every Thanksgiving Day? Then turn the channel, or turn the TV off and talk with your family—until the Cowboys come on. Or plan the meal for that time slot. I’m sure you can manage.

There’s this, too: WE have to watch them, so why should YOU be any different? Who died and made you Kings of Football?

You don’t seem to understand. This is all we have here in Detroit when it comes to the Lions. Every year, when the new NFL schedule is released, the first thing we do is ask, “Who’s the Thanksgiving opponent this year?” The second thing we do is get our magnifying glasses out and look for possible wins for the Lions on the team’s agenda—and squint realllllly hard.

That’s pretty much it—for now.

I don’t care that the Lions stink. I don’t care that they’ve been the Washington Generals to the other team’s Harlem Globetrotters for the past six years. I don’t care that the game starts at 12:30 and the outcome is usually decided by 1:00.

The game is ours. Period. The ritual started in 1934, so that means we’re now in our second great economic depression of providing pro football on Thanksgiving Day.

Besides, you have your precious rotating game on the NFL Network during prime time, so shutty.

You think the Green Bay Packers want to take the game away from the Lions? Thursday’s stinker makes two shellackings they’ve laid on the Lions in the past three years. I’m surprised they haven’t called dibs on it by now.

Thanksgiving Day is special in Detroit. It’s enjoying the parade in the morning, then traipsing to Ford Field to watch the Lions get whacked in the afternoon. Then it’s back home to have dinner in the evening and bitch about how the Lions got whacked in the afternoon.

And you’d take that away from us?

Look, all I know is that I don’t recall any blubbering about this game until Millen took over the Lions and turned them into a punch line. Talk about kicking a team’s fan base while it’s down.

Finally, as much as I hate to invoke Bill Ford Sr. as a heroic figure, the truth is that the NFL owes a whole lot to the Ford family. They pumped big time advertising dollars, via Ford Motor Company, into the league in the 1960s and ‘70s, when it was sorely needed.

So quit your moaning and get your grubby hands away from our Thanksgiving Day game.

We wouldn’t even know what to do with ourselves at 12:30. If you met some of our families, you’d see how attractive the Lions look, too.

Matthew Stafford's Legendary Tale Gets Rewritten by Packers

Greg Eno — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:46:16 -0500

Cinderella's coach really did turn back into a pumpkin. Hansel and Gretel got caught after all. None of the pigs got around to building a joint out of brick.

John Elway's legend is safe once again. Whoever sculpts those busts for Canton needn't rush out to procure a head shot of Matthew Stafford at his earliest convenience.

Cloud Nine just touched down. The bandwagon came to a screeching halt—after one game.

If rookie quarterbacks were stock on the New York Stock Exchange, their chart would look like an EKG readout.

On Sunday, Stafford won a game for the Lions—damaged wing and all. Real storybook stuff. Someone dared to disturb Bobby Layne's ghost over it.

Four days later, the reset button got hit, taking his progression back to the hot July days of training camp.

On Sunday, the kid threw five touchdown passes. It usually takes a Lions QB half a season to do that. On Thursday, he had a fetish of throwing to the wrong guys. Four interceptions, and it could have been more. Each one of them was a killer.

The rookie quarterback gives, and he takeths away. Within four days, sometimes.

Stafford tried to pen another chapter in the tiny legend he's trying to author as a first-year signal caller in the NFL.

His tender left shoulder was so bad after Sunday's game that the idea of him playing on Thanksgiving Day seemed folly.

The days of the short week passed, and after each one, the diagnosis was the same: doubtful. Highly.

Backup Daunte Culpepper arrived at Ford Field Thursday morning thinking he was the starter. He had taken all the reps with the first team. Stafford's left wing was still limp.

But a funny thing happened, though the humor was lost on Culpepper.

Stafford threw some footballs Thursday during warmups, and suddenly things weren't so bad. The doctors, abiding by the script, agreed that Stafford playing wouldn't cause any further damage. It was deemed to be a "pain management issue."

So Stafford is announced as the starter not long before game time, and Culpepper was probably the only person in the stadium who was disappointed with that determination.

But someone forgot to send the script over to the Green Bay Packers for their approval.

After an early hiccup—a fumbled opening kickoff that led to a Stafford-to-Calvin Johnson TD toss—the Packers regained control and jammed Stafford's next chapter into the paper shredder.

If you played a drinking game where you had to take a shot of booze whenever Troy Aikman said something like, "That's part of the development of a rookie quarterback," you'd be reading this with a hangover. But Troy's right, and he ought to know. Aikman suffered through a 1-15 season with the 1989 Cowboys, in which he went 0-11 as a starter.

I tried my hand at playing soothsayer on Monday's episode of "The Knee Jerks," the Blog Talk Radio gabfest I co-host with Big Al Beaton .

Stafford could very well, I said, go back to being the goat as soon as on Thanksgiving Day, because that's what happens with these young whippersnappers. They waddle, then they fall down sometimes.

I'm not right all that often, but I picked a helluva time to be spot on.

The loss on Thursday wasn't all on the kid, though.

Once again, the Lions' pass rushers treated the opposing quarterback as if he'd had a garlic sandwich before the game, topped with limburger.

I think I saw Packers QB Aaron Rodgers, prior to rocketing a 68-yard bomb to Donald Driver in the first quarter, have a shave and brush his teeth. Or maybe the rules were that the Lions' pass rushers had to count to 20-Mississippi, and they got stuck on 11 or 12.

Once again, the Lions were the antidote to what ailed the other team. The Packers have had trouble all season protecting Rodgers, who came into the game being sacked once for every 8.9 pass attempts. That rate was one for every 39 passing attempts on Thursday.

It wasn't just that the Lions didn't sack Rodgers; they didn't even get within shouting distance of him. They made him more comfortable in the pocket than a set of car keys.

The Lions' secondary needs all the help it can get, and it's not getting it from the front four. The pass coverage is softer than Charmin, and it's being made to look even worse because of the complete lack of pressure from the pass rushers.

So it's not all on Stafford, but there will still be afternoons where he's no help, as on Thursday, and at Seattle, and against the Rams.

All part of the development of a rookie quarterback, right?

Ha! Now you have to take a shot.

This Is What I'm Thankful For....

Greg Eno — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:16:22 -0500

Time to give thanks. I suppose I can muster up the will to do that. It's only once a year, after all.

So, here goes...

I'm thankful for Army-Navy, even though I never watch it.

I'm thankful for Brandon Inge.

I'm thankful that a football is shaped the way it is, because you never know how it's going to bounce. Other balls are so predictable.

I'm thankful for outdoor stadiums.

I'm thankful for the mute button.

I'm thankful for the Original Six.

I'm thankful for left-handed golfers because they look so cool.

I'm thankful for a well-timed 6-4-3.

I'm thankful for Nick Lidstrom.

I'm thankful for fake kicks, because they're so rare.

I'm thankful for NFL Films.

I'm thankful for tabletop baseball games, so I can play a summer's game on a cold winter's night.

I'm thankful for anyone named Igor, or last names that start with Z.

I'm thankful for players who have the courage to wear number 13.

I'm thankful for Vyacheslav being shortened to Slava.

I'm thankful for the quick slant on a key third down.

I'm thankful for no timeouts remaining for either team in an NBA game.

I'm thankful for sudden death overtime in the Stanley Cup playoffs, even if my heart isn't.

I'm thankful for Tony Dungy.

I'm thankful for having seen every one of Barry Sanders' ten seasons.

I'm thankful for my photo with Ernie Harwell, our arms over each other's shoulder, and showing it to Ernie sometime later and him saying, "Well, who are THOSE two handsome fellas?"

I'm thankful for George Kell and "They're waaaaaaaving him in!!"

I'm thankful for whoever first thought of pulling the goalie.

I'm thankful for kick returners who run it out from five yards deep in the end zone.

I'm thankful for doglegs right because that's how I hit them anyway.

I'm thankful for the flag they run up at Wrigley Field after every Cubs' game: W or L, depending on the result. So quaint, so simple.

I'm thankful for the squeak of sneakers on the basketball floor.

I'm thankful for scoreboard watching in September.

I'm thankful for Canton, Ohio. And Cooperstown, New York.

I'm thankful for Retrosheet.org.

I'm thankful for stand-up triples.

I'm thankful for Dr. J.

I'm thankful for TV showing us the play clock winding down.

I'm thankful for Don Criqui.

I'm thankful for football in the snow and baseball in a light rain.

I'm thankful that the Yankees have the arrogance to omit the names from their jerseys.

I'm thankful that the Red Wings and Tigers have pretty much the same uniforms as they did during the Truman Administration.

I'm thankful for Bruce Martyn and "He shoots, he SCORES!"

I'm thankful for "Hockey Night in Canada," even though I can't get it on my dish.

I'm thankful for the Canadian National Anthem.

I'm thankful for seeing-eye singles.

I'm thankful for a basketball block from behind.

I'm thankful for "the ground can't cause a fumble."

I'm thankful for tape-to-tape passes.

I'm thankful for Bo and Woody.

I'm thankful for knuckleballers.

I'm thankful for Madison Square Garden, because it's still one of our finest sports palaces.

I'm thankful for boxing in Yankee Stadium, the Beatles in Olympia, and hockey at Wrigley Field.

I'm thankful for the Red Wings' New Year's Eve games. Did you know that Christmas Day at Olympia was a tradition, too, until the players squawked too much?

I'm thankful for a backhand stab at third base and a gun to nip the runner at first.

I'm thankful for good free throw shooters—and bad ones, if they're on the other team.

I'm thankful for Canadian football, because linebackers wear no. 71 and wide receivers wear no. 37 and quarterbacks wear no. 23.

I'm thankful for the two-point conversion.

I'm thankful for medium deep fly balls with a runner on third base, because you know there's going to be a whale of a play at home plate.

I'm thankful for Ann Arbor on a crisp fall Saturday, Joe Louis Arena on a warm June evening, and Comerica Park on a chilly April afternoon.

I'm thankful for Mike Babcock.

I'm thankful for the hip check, because no one throws them anymore.

I'm thankful for a well-executed screen pass.

I'm thankful for the circus catch.

I'm thankful for Mays, Mantle, and Snider all in New York at the same time.

I'm thankful for whoever invented slow motion replays.

I'm thankful for a fastball down the middle on 3-and-0.

I'm thankful for the trap play.

I'm thankful for pinstripes.

I'm thankful for basketball coaches who coach sitting down.

I'm thankful for spaghetti. I know it's not sports but I like it so much.

I'm thankful for a wife who has put up with me, and my games, for 17 years.

I'm thankful that you've read this far.

Happy Turkey Day everyone!

Last Night On "The Knee Jerks": A Football Extravaganza!

Greg Eno — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:38:37 -0500

First, a semi-major announcement—“The Knee Jerks” will be moving up a couple of hours!

Beginning Dec. 14, you’ll be able to get your jerkosity two hours earlier. The show will debut in its new 9:00-11:00 ET time slot, so everyone can get some sleep on Monday nights!

Now moving on...

The Michigan Wolverines and Michigan State Spartans just finished their football seasons, so it was the perfect time to do a post-mortem. Our guests were Andy Reid, sports editor of the Michigan Daily (U of M's student newspaper) and Bleacher Report’s Nick Mordowanec, who writes about MSU frequently .

Andy and Nick provided us with solid analysis of Michigan and MSU, respectively, along with taking a look ahead at both programs’ futures. Big Al almost totally stopped Andy in his tracks when he asked him whether he thought Rich Rodriguez was the right man for Michigan. I guess you’ll just have to listen to find out what Andy said in response!

After talking college football, Al and I turned our attention to the pro game—specifically, the Lions improbable 38-37 win over Cleveland, a.k.a. the Coming Out of Matthew Stafford.

Thirty minutes later, we drifted over to the Red Wings and their latest injury. Defenseman Niklas Kronwall is the latest to go down, thanks to a dirty, knee-on-knee hit by Montreal’s George Laraque.

The Pistons then made a rare appearance on “The Jerks” for about five minutes of garbage time!

But that’s OK—the Pistons will be the focus of our show next week!

As always, we closed with a flurry, in the form of our “Jerks of the Week.”

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for updates on scheduled guests, time changes, etc.

Upcoming guests/topics:

Nov. 30: Guest(s) TBD (Pistons-related)
Dec. 7: NHL Central roundtable with Bleacher Report writers from Columbus, Chicago, Nashville, and St. Louis
Dec. 14: Gregory Shamus , one of the best sports photographers you’ll ever know (Getty Images, Pittsburgh Penguins, Red Wings, Cleveland Cavaliers, and others). Don’t forget—this will be our first 9:00 show!

Some highlights from Monday’s show:

Big Al

On Matthew Stafford: “This was like a Disney film! Like a script! At least it looks like the Lions have found their answer at quarterback and now they can turn their attention to other things.”

On the NHL suspension of Laraque for five games : “You almost want to go to an ‘eye for an eye’ way of punishment. Five games was ridiculous.”

On the Pistons : “(Coach) John Kuester is really hamstrung because he doesn’t have Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince. But there’s no way they’re going to win anywhere close to 50 games.”

Eno

On the Lions : “I don’t think they’ll lay an egg on Thanksgiving. Maybe they can build on Sunday’s win, but they’ve never come off a win like that before.”

On the NHL : “Once again they’ve put themselves in a trick box. The five-game suspension is too low. It should have been 15, 20 games. They’ve set a bad precedent.”

On the Pistons : “I like this rookie Jonas Jerebko. He’s not a true starter, but he’s getting invaluable experience against other teams’ No. 1 units.”

You can listen to the episode by clicking HERE.

Tonight On "The Knee Jerks": Football Frenzy, College and Pro Style!

Greg Eno — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:43:03 -0500

It'll be a cornucopia of football tonight on "The Knee Jerks," the weekly Blog Talk Radio gabfest I co-host with Big Al Beaton of The Wayne Fontes Experience .

Tonight we'll give post-mortems on the recently completed U-M and MSU football regular seasons, with help from Andy Reid, sports editor of the Michigan Daily (U'M's student newspaper) and B/R's own Nick Mordowanec, who writes about MSU frequently.

Al and I will also give our takes on the Lions' thrilling, improbable win yesterday against the Browns.

It all starts at 11 PM ET LIVE. The chat room will be open!

Go to www.blogtalkradio.com/thekneejerks and register. It only takes a minute and then you can join us in the chat room.

Tell Me Another Fable: Detroit Lions Win with 0:00 Left

Greg Eno — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:26:46 -0500

Someday, they’ll have Ford Field’s capacity up to a quarter million, for as many people who will claim to have been there. The Cleveland Browns will be defending league champions. Matthew Stafford will have been carried onto the field on a stretcher. Brandon Pettigrew will have one-handed the football, his body parallel to the turf.

That will pretty much be the gist of the re-telling of what went on Sunday, several years hence.

The Lions beat the Browns, 38-37 in what was deemed to be their last “winnable” game of the season. And we have six weeks to go.

Yes, this was a “winnable” game, alright. Just like how your Lotto ticket is winnable. Or Tom DeLay’s chances on “Dancing with the Stars.”

The Lions had 106 seconds and 88 yards to cover, with no timeouts. Otherwise, they’d have lost to a Browns team that scored, in one game, nearly half of the total points they’d scored for the entire season to this point.

The Lions don’t win games like that. They don’t even get first downs in situations like that. Remember the final “drive” against the Rams a few weeks ago? Someone forgot to take the transmission out of reverse in that one.

The Lions don’t drive down the field and score game-winning touchdowns. They never have. They’ve been the anti-Elway in that regard.

Someone ought to take this kid Stafford and knock some sense into him. How dare he think that he can pull off such miracles while wearing Honolulu Blue and Silver?

Maybe there IS something to this whole went-to-the-same-high-school-as-Bobby-Layne thing, after all.

Ol' Bobby would have been proud. So would Fran Tarkenton.

It wasn’t enough that Stafford zipped and zapped the Lions down the field, gobbling up first downs like Pac-Man. It wasn’t enough that he got the Lions into a manageable situation—the Browns’ 32-yard line—with one shot left in his holster.

It was impossible not to think of Tarkenton when Stafford ran around the Lions’ backfield, faking one throw after the other, as the clock flipped to 0:00. This isn’t the NBA, thank the Lord, where you have to have the sphere in the air before time runs out. The NFL allows play to continue until it’s over with, which in this case took almost as long as Magic Johnson’s talk show run.

Stafford stopped more than once, planted his feet, and made like he was going to throw, but then he would change his mind and dart in the other direction, like the Lions were paying him by the hour.

Then, he could avoid the Browns no longer and heaved the pigskin, just before being firmly planted into the Ford Field turf, his shoulder used as a battering ram against the playing surface.

You know the rest. Hell, the whole state knows it. They know it in Peoria and Butte and Spokane and Amarillo, too. Even the tripe masters in Bristol, CT got the word.

Pass interference. In the end zone. Another lovely NFL thing: the game can’t end on a defensive foul like that.

Here’s where it turns legendary.

Stafford was lying on his back, his left shoulder wrecked, while the Lions celebrated their officiating luck. Center Dom Raiola delivered the news.

“We got PI in the end zone!,” Dom screamed to his prone quarterback.

“He was talking funny,” Raiola said afterward.

Yeah, you tend to do that when you’re lying mortally wounded.

See? There I go, embellishing the legend already.

Somewhere—not sure if up above or down below, knowing Bobby—Layne was smiling as Stafford, aided by a Browns timeout, bolted to his feet, like Cuba Gooding Jr. in “Jerry Maguire,” and ran back onto the field from the sidelines.

Stafford waved backup Daunte Culpepper—who had lined up under center before the Brownies took leave of their senses and called timeout—back to the bench. I can only think of a line uttered by Layne as he huddled the Lions prior to the game-winning drive in the waning minutes of the 1953 NFL Championship Game.

“Alright fellas,” Layne told his players, and it’s been confirmed. “Y’all block and Bobby’ll pass ya raght to the champeenship.”

Which is exactly what Bobby did.

So here’s this kid Stafford, with four TD passes already in his hip pocket—if he throws four of anything it’s usually interceptions, but don’t all rookie QBs?—and his shoulder is on fire and there’s one play to go, from the one-yard line.

It’s 1-8 vs. 1-8, for cripe’s sakes. But it’s a football game in the NFL and those things are lousy to lose when victory is so close.

Stafford throws the TD pass, his fifth, to fellow rook Brandon Pettigrew and the kid QB immediately looks to the bench and motions to his lame left shoulder, the arm hanging limp from it. He’s shaking his head. He wasn’t the only one shaking his noggin.

Lions win, 38-37.

That didn’t happen yesterday. It couldn’t have. Next thing you’ll tell me is that Lucy let Charlie Brown kick the football. Jack and Jill made it down the hill OK after all. Dewey really did defeat Truman.

The Lions won a football game in dramatic, race-against-the-clock fashion. With no timeouts. On a break from the officials. With a rookie quarterback. After falling behind by 21 points in the first quarter.

Oh, stop! Enough telling tall tales!

Rudyard Kipling is dead. Aesop is long gone, too. You take that script to Hollywood and they’ll laugh, telling you that it wouldn’t play.

Rookie QB lies on the ground, uttering his dying words, and the sage veteran has to finish the job? Stafford might as well have been crumpled in a bunker, bombs and gunfire erupting all around him.

Then the kid hears “timeout Browns” on the “loudspeaker”—Stafford’s version in the post-game presser—and scrambles to his feet, puts his helmet on, and returns to battle.

They could make it into a war flick, if you get Hollywood to stop laughing at you long enough.

Lions 38, Browns 37.

Layne’s comeback in ‘53 was against the Browns, too, you know.

Just saying.

Cecil Fielder's Home Run Joyride Nearly 20 Years Ago

Greg Eno — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:07:30 -0500

I’m a little early on this, I admit. I’m jumping the gun, but this time they can’t call me back to the starting blocks.

You heard it here first, then.

When the Tigers gather for spring training in about three months—it can’t get here fast enough, by the way—it will be 2010 and you can say it.

It’ll be 20 years since Cecil Fielder knocked 51 homers out of the confines of American League ballparks on behalf of the Tigers.

Yep—1990. Even the most mathematically challenged can figure out that 2010 minus 20 equals 1990.

Go ahead and use a calculator anyway, if you wish. But you’ll get 20 years since Cecil clubbed his way into the history books.

Fifty dingers might not seem like much nowadays, but no Tiger had hit that many since Hank Greenberg was thrilling the folks at Briggs Stadium in the 1930s and ’40s. Hank, in fact, almost hit 60—he clobbered 58 in '38.

But unlike Greenberg, who was a product of the Tigers’ farm, Cecil was an outsider. Actually, he wasn’t acquired so much as imported.

The Tigers left the continent and traveled to the Far East to wrangle Fielder away from a Japanese team, also called the Tigers (Hanshin). Big Daddy, as he was called, had fled the country either because he was attracted to sushi or because he couldn’t stand playing behind Fred McGriff. Or both.

Fielder was a Toronto Blue Jay but McGriff was dug in deep as the Jays’ first baseman. McGriff was about Cecil’s age but he was Big Daddy’s superior, at least in the Blue Jays’ eyes. McGriff swung lefty and maybe that’s what hurt the right-handed hitting Fielder.

Anyhow, Cecil played for Hanshin in 1989 and the Detroit Tigers, in need of a first sacker, remembered what Fielder could do from his days in the AL East. So they sent a team of envoys to Japan and the result was that Fielder signed with them in January 1990.

The Tigers’ first player from Japan and he was an American. Go figure.

Not much was made of the signing, other than the Tigers had filled a hole at first base. How it would turn out was anyone’s guess.

After 14 games, Fielder had three home runs. Not bad; about a 34-homer pace.

Not bad turned into pretty good, and pretty good turned into “This guy’s hotter than wasabi!”

Fielder slammed 10 home runs in his next 15 games, including three in, you guessed it, Toronto.

But it wasn’t just that Fielder hit home runs. It was how he hit them.

He looked like he was swinging a toothpick, which is what all the big dudes make even 40-ounce bats look like. Fielder was big and muscular and should have been wearing a football helmet, not a batting helmet.

He cocked his bat just before he swung—another staple from the slugger’s repertoire. And while he connected with nothing but air a whole bunch of times, pity the poor baseball that he didn’t miss.

A Cecil Fielder home run came in three varieties—towering, lasered, and crushed. No one had punished baseballs in Detroit before him, or since. He was the strongest man to wear the Old English D not named Willie Horton or Marcus Thames.

One afternoon, Fielder took Oakland A’s pitcher Dave Stewart downtown—downtown Lansing, that is. He drove a baseball over the left field roof at Tiger Stadium, which was by far the harder of the two roofs to clear.

Fielder kept knocking home runs throughout the summer of 1990, and around the All-Star break it was whispered: could Cecil hit 50? He had 28 and there was still about half a season to go.

Damon Runyon must have written the script from the afterlife and sent it down to Detroit, because going into the last game of the season—in New York, no less—Fielder had 49 dingers. If he was going to reach 50, he’d have to do it in Roger Maris-like fashion—in Yankee Stadium on the season’s final day.

Manager Sparky Anderson placed Fielder second in the batting order, to give him an extra at-bat if necessary. He didn’t need it.

In the fourth inning, with Tony Phillips on base, Fielder jacked a baseball off someone named Steve Adkins deep into the upper deck in left field in the Bronx. Number 50. Then, as if to make sure in case they added wrong, Fielder hit another, in the eighth inning. Number 51.

They usually don’t take kindly to Japanese imports in Detroit, but they made an exception in the case of Cecil Fielder.

It’ll be 20 years ago, coming up. No Tiger player—Cecil included—has come close to 50 since then.

Big Daddy, to Detroit from Toronto via Hanshin, Japan. Not the shortest route between two points, unlike his home runs. But it worked out.

Michigan-Ohio State Not All That Anymore

Greg Eno — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:16:14 -0500

They’re putting a Michigan-Ohio State football game on this Saturday, right on schedule. The third Saturday in November, usually. You used to circle the date. Now you happen upon it, by accident.

“Oh, is THAT still playing?”

Michigan-Ohio State creeps up on you now, like your wedding anniversary, or a dentist appointment. It used to be a must-see. Now, it’s a “MUST we see?”

Michigan vs. Ohio State. Time used to stand still for this one. Woody Hayes would bring his brood up from Columbus and he’d start to get a nervous twitch somewhere around Monroe.

There weren’t any namby-pamby Bowl games back then—the 1970s in case you were wondering. It was Rose Bowl or bust. One of those teams would play their hearts out for 11 games and only one of them was going to Pasadena. The other went home—with a 10-1 or 9-2 record.

Now, they hand out Bowl berths like numbers at the deli on a Sunday. Just wait till it’s your turn and find out whether you’re going to Mobile or Tampa or (gulp) Detroit. With a 6-6 record.

Michigan is 5-6, and we should stop right there. They shouldn’t allow them into Michigan Stadium with such a record, to play Ohio State and still pass it off as a “big game.” Unless they make the Buckeyes play with one hand tied behind their backs.

Where has this game gone, anyway?

When Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler were prowling the sidelines—and that’s as good a verb as any—the game was a tug of war. No one went on a basketball-like run of victories.

Michigan and Ohio State. You felt like it was the only game being played that Saturday. At least the only one worth a hill of beans. Like Monday Night Football.

It made the Hatfields and the McCoys look like an episode of “Family Feud.”

Always the Big Ten title was on the line. The season was a 10-game tune up. They used to call it the Big Two and Little Eight in those days. Occasionally, Iowa, Purdue, or Minnesota would give one of the Big Two a scare but sure enough, come the third Saturday in November, there the conference championship belt dangled, waiting to be claimed.

It started in Ann Arbor in 1969, when Bo was a rookie at Michigan and the year before, Woody’s team blew the Wolverines out of Columbus and halfway to Toledo.

1968 was the year Woody had the penultimate U-M/OSU line. The Buckeyes won, 50-14, and late in the game Woody went for a two-point conversion. Afterward, they asked him why.

“Because I couldn’t go for THREE,” Woody snarled.

But the next year Billy Taylor ran wild and Michigan upset Ohio State and it was, as they say nowadays, ON.

This was genuine hatred. Nothing contrived or forced. The schools would rather lose their accreditation than lose to each other. Woody refused to even buy gas in Michigan, or so he said. I believe him.

Kids from Michigan’s campus drove their jalopies around with bumper stickers that read “WOODY IS A PECKER.”

Then Woody got fired and OSU started hiring coaches who, if Michigan was a wet paper bag, couldn’t fight their way out of it.

Someone named Earle Bruce was brought in and it was like going to the theatre expecting to see Olivier and getting his understudy.

Bruce did last nine years, though, then John Cooper came in and even the names of these guys were getting worse. John Cooper? What was this, a Disney movie?

Bo beat Cooper’s brains in until he grew bored and retired. Then Gary Moeller took over and immediately got Cooper into a headlock, too.

Cooper was a good football coach—until the third Saturday in November. Then he turned into someone Matt Millen would have hired for the Lions.

Bruce and Cooper were the ones who threatened to euthanize this rivalry. Now, Jim Tressel looks to be the one to finally pull the plug.

They did it in different ways, of course—Bruce and Cooper by losing all the time, and Tressel by turning the tables.

Tressel stormed into Columbus when he was hired, led a pep rally in the basketball arena, counted the number of days until the Michigan game, and guaranteed victory. Woody and Bo wouldn’t have dreamed of doing such a thing. They had hate but some decorum.

But Tressel’s kids backed up their coach’s words and decided that this beating Michigan thing was pretty cool. So they kept doing it. And doing it, until they’ve damned near killed the game entirely.

There’s no reason to think it’s going to be any different this time around. Michigan has a defense that’s offensive. They jog onto the field and if the wind is blowing wrong you can smell the stench.

The Wolverines don’t have anyone on their roster who knows what it’s like to beat Ohio State. Literally. The last Michigan victory was in 2003. In college football rivalries, that’s a generation.

It also gets coaches fired.

Cooper couldn’t beat Michigan—he went 2-10-1 against them—and that became his legacy at Ohio State. Bruce, before him, did alright (5-4). But that’s a combined 7-14-1 after Woody and before Tressel. And so the rivalry teetered, and now it’s about to fall entirely.

Today, Michigan’s biggest rival seems to be itself. The program is so busy with the in-fighting that you half expect the team to forget to show up to play the Buckeyes. Of course, it wouldn’t be much different than the past five years, so who could tell?

Everything was better back in the day, wasn’t it?

Gas prices. McDonald’s. The “Tonight” show. And Michigan-Ohio State.

It wasn’t a game, it was High Noon. It was the fight with the kid after school. Be there or else. They didn’t finish it, they reconvened. The winner went to the Rose Bowl and the loser’s intestines got gnarled for 364 days.

MichiganOhioState. It was a two school rivalry said in one word. You could empty a crowded theatre in Ann Arbor or Columbus by saying it, more so than if you yelled “Fire!”

Now it’s been reduced, like a sauce that’s been sitting on the stove for too long. Its stock has fallen faster than General Motors. Ohio State so outclasses Michigan anymore that it’s not a rivalry, it’s a chore—something that has to be done before you can close up the cottage for the winter.

This pairing has all the drama and suspense of a “Brady Bunch” episode. They should put it on “Nick at Nite,” not ABC.

Michigan-Ohio State. I have one question for you.

That show’s still on?

Brendan Shanahan: Not Your Typical Hockey Player

Greg Eno — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:13:48 -0500

Brendan Shanahan shouldn’t have been a hockey player. He should have been tasting wine, or taking in the theater. Or maybe he should have been in the aisle behind you at the bookstore, helping some pretty young thing pick out a title for her dad on Father’s Day.

Instead, he elbowed, bulled, and plowed his way into goalies’ nightmares. He put his movie star good looks on the line every night, until slowly his face got that Etch-a-Sketch look that befalls all hockey players, if they play long enough.

Shanahan played long enough. He said so, retiring yesterday at age 40, which in the NHL is the new 30 anymore.

Before Shanahan, power forward was a basketball designation. “Cerebral” and “hockey player” were antonyms. Someone named Brendan was probably a Pistons assistant coach.

Shanahan started and ended a Devil, and it’s only fitting that he bookended his career, because he was a library on skates.

He knew his movies, for one. Shanahan didn’t only play on lines, he could recite them. From many a flick. That’s another thing he could have been: A movie reviewer. He wouldn’t have looked out of place in a camel jacket, a sweater vest, and glasses.

Brendan Shanahan brought the word “refined” to hockey, both in terms of his demeanor off the ice and his goal-scoring skills on it. He was, at his best, perhaps the most complete player in hockey. He might have led the league many a season in the Gordie Howe Hat Trick: A goal, an assist, a fight.

Yeah, he could fight. Can’t all Irish men? In his career, he scored 656 goals, and was whistled for over 40 hours worth of penalties. Often, that was the only way to keep Shanahan off the scoresheet—by hoping he’d end up in the penalty box.

The Red Wings grabbed him in his prime, hoodwinking the Hartford Whalers into coughing him up for an aging Paul Coffey and a "meh" Keith Primeau early in the 1996-97 season. Shanny was 27 at the time and coveted by every team in the league—at least those interested in winning hockey games.

Forget all the Detroit jokes. Shanahan couldn’t wait to get here. He was traded the afternoon of the Red Wings’ home opener, and made like those poor folks on “The Amazing Race” just so he could get to Joe Louis Arena in time for pre-game introductions.

So he makes it and it’s his turn to have his name called, and the roar is deafening. They stood, and cheered, and hollered and the guy hadn’t even taken a shift yet as a Red Wing.

But the people of Detroit, so knowledgeable about their hockey, knew their team had fleeced the Whalers and had brought to town a player the likes of whom hadn’t been spotted wearing the Winged Wheel since Bobby Probert turned people on with his own kind of hat trick: A goal, a fight, and another fight.

Shanahan was more talented than Probert, though. That, too, was no secret.

Shanny looked like a matinee idol and played like an action hero. The ladies who showed up at Joe Louis Arena wearing oversized Red Wings sweaters were smitten. He might have seemed like just another sniper on a team that was full of them, but then you’d look up and some poor sap was in a headlock and Shanahan—Brendan—was using the guy’s noggin as a punching bag.

He scored 309 goals as a Red Wing, nearly half his career total, and his best years were spent in Detroit, both in terms of individual accomplishments and those of the team. Three Stanley Cups he won playing with Yzerman, and Draper, and Lidstrom, and Maltby, and the rest.

Oh, and there was the time when he saved hockey.

Exaggeration? Sure—like calling water that’s at 210 degrees boiling.

It was after the horrific canceled season of 2004-05 that Shanahan went to work, making like Jimmy Carter and bringing the Players Association and ownership together. Others helped him but Shanny took the lead, putting his big brain to use and being instrumental in chiseling out an agreement that took the game out of conference rooms and put it back onto the ice.

Without Shanahan, the NHL might still be in hibernation. Another “exaggeration.”

It ended for him in Detroit shortly after Steve Yzerman retired in July 2006. Shanahan didn’t care to be part of the good old days. He thought his continued presence in the Red Wings locker room would stunt the growth of some of the kids, so he made like Sinatra and wanted to be a part of it—New York, New York.

But Shanny was getting closer to 38 and he could no longer score his age in goals. He popped in 29 pucks his first season as a Ranger, 23 the second. It used to be that he could score that without breaking a sweat. Now it was all he could muster without needing an oxygen mask.

Then a swan song last season with the Devils, the team he broke into the NHL with as an 18-year-old in 1987. In New Jersey he couldn’t play his age—at age 40 he skated in 34 matches. He scored six goals. The action hero was now just an extra.

So now it’s done—21 years in the books as an NHLer, 1,354 points scored, and all those penalty minutes. And three Stanley Cups. And still a face for movies.

He shouldn’t have been a hockey player, much less one helluva one.

Yet he was both. Go figure.

See Shanahan's 400th goal

See Shanahan's 600th goal

Last Night On "The Knee Jerks": Red Wings Good, Lions Not So Much

Greg Eno — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:24:07 -0500

First, a semi-major announcement: “The Knee Jerks” will be moving up a couple of hours!

Beginning Dec. 14, you’ll be able to get your jerkosity two hours earlier. The show will debut its new 9:00-11:00 ET time slot, so everyone can get some sleep on Monday nights!

The first quarter of the Red Wings’ season is almost done with, so on “The Knee Jerks” , my weekly gabfest with Big Al Beaton , we figured it was time to get a perspective on the team from someone who covers it, day in, day out.

Our guest was Ansar Khan , the team’s beat writer for MLive.com. Ansar has been on the Red Wings’ beat for about a dozen years, starting with his days at the Oakland Press.

Ansar gave us some good ice time, going up and down his wing and not committing any costly turnovers, as he gave us an insider’s look at the Red Wings. It was worthy of two points.

After talking Red Wings, including Ansar’s experience of being at Steve Yzerman’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Al and I got down to Detroit sports talk business.

Al wanted to riff on the Tigers’ offseason plans, particularly as they relate to the rumors swirling about the team possibly shopping Curtis Granderson and Edwin Jackson. So we plunged into that, along with chiding some of the so-called “experts” who have been reporting some pretty zany things that GM Dave Dombrowski is supposedly considering. Al’s voice went up a couple of octaves upon the mentioning of pitcher George Sherrill, and I went off on all the people in town who look at Granderson through rose-colored glasses.

After that, it was on to the Lions.

Al likes QB Matthew Stafford’s toughness, and feels that the kid won over some teammates after enduring the brutality that was Sunday’s game in Minnesota. I crabbed about the less-than-accurate throws and the drops of the accurate ones. We both agreed that if the Lions lose to Cleveland this Sunday, they may be looking at having the No. 1 overall pick two years in a row.

We took a few minutes to grind Patriots coach Bill Belichick into the turf for his boneheaded decision to go for it on fourth down late in the game against Indianapolis. I called Belichick unlikable, and Al said the decision smacked of hubris. I know–a $20 word, eh?

Then, as Al said, we had to “hustle” and go to our “Jerks of the Week.”

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter , for updates on scheduled guests, time changes, etc.

Upcoming guests/topics :

Nov. 23 U-M/MSU football post-mortem
Nov. 30 TBD (likely Pistons-related)
Dec. 7: NHL Central roundtable with Bleacher Report writers from Columbus, Chicago, Nashville, and St. Louis
Dec. 14: Gregory Shamus , one of the best sports photographers you’ll ever know (Getty Images, Pittsburgh Penguins, Red Wings, Cleveland Cavaliers, and others); don’t forget—this will be our first 9:00 show!

Some highlights from Monday’s show:

Big Al

On the Tigers : “I can’t believe they’re going to dump payroll now. They could have up to $60 million come off the books before the 2011 season. And some of the rumors coming from out-of-towners are ludicrous!”

On the Lions : “How many different ways can we say that they suck?”

On Matthew Stafford : “He didn’t have happy feet. He showed a lot of toughness against the Vikings. Way more so than Joey Harrington or Scott Mitchell.”

Eno

On talks of trading Granderson : “There are a few bloggers in Detroit who I respect, who went on as if the Tigers had announced they were going to start drowning puppies!”

On the Lions-Browns game : “Maybe the NFL can black it out in Cleveland, too.”

On the No. 1 overall pick in 2010 : “If they lose to the Browns, I think the Lions WILL get the No. 1 overall pick. They’ll have lost to the Browns AND the Rams.”

You can listen to the episode by clicking HERE.

Tonight on "The Knee Jerks": Detroit Red Wings-Heavy Episode

Greg Eno — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:46:21 -0500

It's a hockey-centric episode tonight (Monday) on "The Knee Jerks," my weekly gabfest on Blog Talk Radio with my co-host, Al Beaton , as we talk all things Detroit Red Wings and NHL with Kahn. Ansar Kahn, that is.

Khan has been the Red Wings beat writer for Mlive.com and Booth Newspapers since the 2000-01 season, and for several years prior to that for the Oakland Press. You can get the latest Red Wings insight from Kahn online at Mlive . After getting the scoop on the Wings and NHL, the Knee Jerks will spew all sort of thoughts on the past week of Detroit sports.

Tigers: We'll give our thoughts on all the trade rumors surrounding the supposed availability of Curtis Granderson, Edwin Jackson, Brandon Inge and even Miguel Cabrera.

There's nothing wrong with listening to offers, but what do I think of some of the proposals being thrown around by the MSM? I'll give you a hint. Starts with "ludi", ends in "crous".

Lions: Another Sunday, another loss. Same old, same old, right? Not exactly, as Matthew Stafford showed a toughness in getting beat up by an aggressive Vikings defense we never saw from such luminaries as Joey Harrington and Scott Mitchell.Coming up for the Lions is a huge game with the Browns.

Why "huge" when they are playing the 1-7 Browns? The first overall pick in 2010 may be at stake.

Wolverines: Another Saturday, another loss. Another Monday, another possible NCAA "issue" . But it is tOSU week, so could it be possible the staggering to the end of the season Wolverines can step up their game? Uh...no.

However, John Beilein's basketball team started the season with a bang, as Manny Harris had a triple double in a win over NMU. Funny how the Wolverines' fanbase is now pinning all their winning hopes on the hoopsters, when they were persona non grata a little more than two years ago.

Pistons: Charlie Villanueva and Ben Gordon are showing signs of being a solid one-two scoring punch. Even more unexpected is the offensive firepower backup point guard Will Bynum is bringing off the bench and the surprisingly effective Ben Wallace.

As always, At the end of the show, we'll also name our respective Jerk of the Week!

Tune in at 11PM every Monday night for the latest and greatest in sports talk...sports talk with a Detroit attitude! Of course, if you can't tune in live, the podcast will be available for download and streaming at our show page Tuesday morning!

Detroit Lions Pour More Losing Concrete in Minneapolis Stinker

Greg Eno — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:12:06 -0500

The Lions proved once again that they have a losing foundation.

The mix that was poured to create it includes an impressive blend of poor blocking, miserable tackling, and an obscene pass rush and coverage.

It's rock solid, this foundation, and the trouble is, their coach has been thwacking away at it with a hammer, when he really needs a medicine ball swinging from a chain.

On top of this foundation, the Lions play football and show us various ways every Sunday to come out on the losing side of things. It's really quite an art, like David Copperfield showing us how he can make different things disappear.

But below that surface is the foundation—the common denominator, if you will.

The Minnesota Vikings were the latest team to make mincemeat of the Lions—27-10 in the Metrodome on Sunday.

The foundation was rock solid as usual.

Impenetrable poor tackling of running back Adrian Peterson. Concrete-like strength of a non-existent pass rush. Waterproof, non-porous protection of an accordion-like offensive line.

The Lions could give the Mafia a run for their money with the concrete they pour every Sunday.

The Vikings padded their stats but not the scoreboard in the first half. It was 10-3, Minny, and the Lions were still hanging around, like the kid brother who won't let you spend time alone with your girlfriend.

The Vikings only scored 10 points in the first 30 minutes despite raining long passes to Sidney Rice, who was as open as a 24-hour diner all afternoon, and despite Peterson running around, past, and through the Lions, who again showed why they're the football version of the Washington Generals.

Mack Sennett, God rest his soul, would love these Lions. So would have Groucho, Chico, and Harpo Marx. The Lions could have been perpetual co-stars. Margaret Dumont would have been out of work.

But the Vikings didn't do themselves any favors, either. They started shooting themselves in the cleats, with fumbles and penalties. So off they trudged at halftime, with a 10-3 lead and video game-like stats.

Peterson had rushed for 100 yards before the first beers were down, I think. Brett Favre would give him the ball and you could almost hear the Keystone Kops music and see everything turn to sepia and in fast motion.

But it was still just 10-3. Sennett would have put up a caption card in his silent short that said, "WTF?"

Ahh, but then Kevin Smith fumbled to open the second half, the Vikes pounced on it, and a couple of Peterson saunters later, the score was 17-3 Vikings and all was right in the world again.

Lions QB Matthew Stafford was harassed by the Vikings' front four more than Sean Penn by photographers on a Hollywood sidewalk.

Stafford was denied one of the creature comforts of playing quarterback: time enough to look for a receiver. The result was a flurry of hurried throws, many of which came nowhere near their intended targets. It's hard to have accuracy when you can tell every defensive lineman what he had for breakfast.

But a word about Kid Matthew.

On the occasions when he does have time to throw, why does he insist on forcing his receivers to make circus catches? The football is never delivered between the numbers; sometimes it's rarely delivered between the shoulder blades. It's like Stafford has sunk some dough into a highlight reel montage of diving, sprawling, mind-boggling catches.

Sometimes the Lions receivers oblige. Then again, sometimes Matthew gets the ball in the general area of the receivers' chest or hands and it doesn't matter, anyway. If the Lions don't lead the league in dropped passes, then I want a recount.

Favre beat the Lions again. He's spent about 13 percent of his career playing them—two out of 16 games every year—so I say we dock him and make only 87 percent of his numbers worthy.

The drumbeat of losing goes on for the Lions. They are 1-25 in their past 26 games. Jason Hanson is even missing field goals. Who do they think they are? The Italian Army? Wile E. Coyote? The Pittsburgh Pirates?

This isn't a football season anymore, it's a disaster management drill. Pretty soon they're gonna call in FEMA and give Martin Mayhew pointers.

The Lions play the Cleveland Browns next week. Frick and Frack, at Ford Field. Football theater of the absurd. If there's going to be any action on that one in Vegas, it'll be done by members of Gamblers Anonymous.

The game is likely to be blacked out in Detroit, which is a version of the mercy rule.

Vikings 27, Lions 10.

The End.

Curtis Granderson is No "Untouchable" as Trade Talks Swirl

Greg Eno — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:01:13 -0500

Curtis Granderson is a nice guy. He’s the kind of man any father would be thrilled to have his daughter marry. He is one of the true ambassadors of baseball, and I don’t throw those kinds of words around willy-nilly.

But I’d trade him in a heartbeat.

This is one of those columns that will get me, figuratively, run up the flagpole at Comerica Park, hung in real-life effigy. You’ll have thought that I started a Kill All Puppies campaign by the time the vitriol is done with.

That’s OK. Nowhere does it say, “Thou must always write what people WANT to read, not what they SHOULD read.”

It’s the job, or rather the duty, of the columnist to present opinions and viewpoints that are genuine, not populist. Even if those opinions are as popular as ants at a picnic.

The hot stove has been fired up. It’s the time of year—the World Series done, the general managers convening—when logic gives way to jingoism. When the bubble gum cards get broken out.

Give me your Joe Shmoe and I’ll give you my John Doe.

The GMs are meeting, and they don’t do it to say hi and catch up with the wife and kids.

All 30 of them are charged with trudging to the meetings, some better equipped than others, and sniffing around to see how they could improve their ballclubs via trade.

Some have better, more attractive bubble gum cards than their colleagues. And more money.

It’s a time for the Internet to teem with rumors, suggestions, and demands from its paying customers.

Break out the bubble gum cards!

The media people, who should know better, don’t, apparently. They’re the ones who usually cast the first stone.

There’s this mythical thing—a place, really—that conjures up, to me, an image of a baseball player posing in front of a throng of potential suitors. He’s standing, by his lonesome, as if on display, on this mythical spot.

It’s something called the “trading block.”

The media people, supposedly so well connected, hear things. Perhaps sometimes they imagine that they hear things. Maybe voices come to them in the middle of the night.

Then these things get splattered onto the Internet, and don’t worry, the fans will take it from there.

One of these things went splat! onto the Internet this week.

“Report: Tigers’ Granderson, Jackson on trading block.”

Not sure where it started, nor by who. Someone heard something, I suppose. Payroll money might be an issue.

The players are center fielder Curtis Granderson and pitcher Edwin Jackson—two supposed key playing cards in the house of them that collapsed with historic ignominy down the stretch.

Not so much Jackson, who has only been a Tiger for one season, but Granderson’s possible cashiering has the fan base in Detroit beside itself.

In a way, it’s charming that the mere thought of dealing Granderson away is met with such resistance. This is because it shows that being a good guy and being active in the community still means something to some towns. And Detroit has been very good that way; they’ve always appreciated the hard-working guy, the genuine dude.

But I’m getting rather tired of being satisfied with just having a bunch of nice guys on the Tigers. The Tigers have had nice guys for years. Maybe not as high profile as what Granderson does, but nice guys nonetheless.

When Miguel Cabrera’s drinking binge made headlines in the final weekend of the season, what sprung to my mind almost immediately was, “This kind of stuff just doesn’t happen with the Tigers.”

The Tigers have been, for the most part, a button-downed organization with precious few rabble rousers on their roster over the decades. That’s why the Cabrera thing resonated so much; it was so out of character for anyone wearing the Old English D over his heart.

Nice guys are great. But winning is even better.

It may sound cold and callous, but give me players with whom I can win baseball games, not popularity contests.

Granderson is coming off an All-Star year, but in title only. He should have been an All-Star in 2006, or 2007, or 2008. Any year than 2009, when he made the squad almost out of default because of the dearth of center field talent in the American League.

He hit .249, was dreadfully and shockingly ineffective against left-handed pitchers, had an obscenely low on-base percentage—that gauge of a player’s ability to not make outs—of .324, dipped dramatically in doubles and triples, and struck out 141 times. All as a supposed leadoff hitter.

It was Granderson, by the way, who made a baserunning blunder befitting a Little League player in the ninth inning of the one-game playoff in Minnesota, getting doubled off first base on a line drive. A blunder that tore the heart out of the Tigers.

Yet he is considered an “untouchable,” another terrific sports word.

You don’t dare trade Curtis Granderson, his adoring public says, because, well, he’s CURTIS GRANDERSON!

He’s a nice guy. Is active in the community. Someone on the Internet wrote that Granderson was the “face of the franchise.”

He does have an electric smile, I’ll give you that.

I’ve talked to Granderson on a number of occasions. A couple years ago we shared a few minutes of quiet time after a game—a loss—as he told me about his experience in Great Britain, bringing baseball to kids across the pond.

The guy’s terrific, no doubt. Always has time for the ink-stained wretches and shameless hangers-on. And he is, frankly, a wonderful center fielder, glove-wise.

But to say that he’s untouchable, beyond consideration for trade, might be community wise but is baseball foolish.

In fact, there may be no better time to trade Granderson than now, with the Tigers in need of a shakeup after the most embarrassing season in their history. You heard me.

This was worse than the 43-119 debacle of 2003. Worse than 53-109 in 1996 or 57-102 in 1975, when the Tigers lost, at one point, 19 straight games. Worse than those dreadful teams of the early-1950s.

You can have all of them and they can’t beat the 2009 Tigers in terms of flat out embarrassment and shame. They became the only team to be in first place starting as early as May 10 yet fail to win its division. They became the first one to cough up a three-game lead with four games to play.

And you’d have a .249 leadoff hitter considered untouchable from such a disgraceful outfit?

If you want to use that word, untouchable, then take pitchers Justin Verlander and Rick Porcello and call me in the morning.

I’m not saying give Curtis Granderson away for a box of baseballs and a batting doughnut. All I’m saying is, take a look at it, if you can get something decent in return.

Someone has to say it in this town, for cripe’s sake. No one else seems to have the temerity to do so.

Ben Wallace Giving Detroit Pistons Great Minutes, but Too Many

Greg Eno — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:52:15 -0500

Ben Wallace is a 35-year-old NBA big man who is playing like he’s 25. For now.

There’s been a lot of ballyhoo over Wallace, who the Pistons snatched from the jaws of retirement last summer and signed for a league pittance.

The signing was decried, but not by me. But that’s because I figured Wallace could come off the bench when some energy was needed, maybe block a couple of shots, grab a few rebounds, and then sit back down, his night done after 10, 15 minutes.

I had no delusions of grandeur about him. No idea that he’d even be considered for a starting position, let alone be granted one.

But my blessing of the signing came with a caveat.

When a guy is publicly talking about retirement, when he’s already in that “mode,” be careful, because you have no idea when those feelings might suddenly reappear.

Wallace spoke openly after last season, which ended with him as a non-factor with the Cleveland Cavaliers, about hanging up the sneakers. Injuries had frustrated him, as did his time in Chicago, which never met anyone’s expectations—Wallace’s or the Bulls’—after he signed his big free agent contract in July 2006.

But he wanted to give it one more shot, and the idea of doing that in Detroit intrigued him, as it did the Pistons. So I figured, why not?

Now, after seven games, Wallace is being heralded as “the old” Ben Wallace. Not “an old” Ben Wallace. There’s a difference.

I think it’s terrific that Wallace is giving the team far more than it had ever dreamed when training camp began. He’s back to being Windex personified. He’s disrupting shots and blocking some of them. He’s providing sage defensive advice to the team’s kids. He’s almost, dare I say, a coach on the floor that way.

But he’s playing way too many minutes for my comfort. Not that anyone bothered to ask me.

The NBA season is an 82-game marathon. And Wallace has sprinted from the start, racing out to a big lead.

But refer back to the opening paragraph, please. Ben Wallace is 35-years-old.

Pistons president Joe Dumars subscribes to a theory which has merit, but still makes me shudder at the number of minutes Wallace is logging so far—well over 30 per night, and sometimes close to 40.

The theory says that big men can last longer in the NBA, can play well into their 30s, because they don’t run up and down the court, as a rule, at the same speed as the smaller guys, i.e. the guards. OK.

But 35 is 35. And Wallace is more active than most big men.

Not to be Chicken Little, but let’s see where Wallace’s production is at come February, if he’s still playing 30+ minutes per game. Then, let’s see if he has anything left for a playoff run a couple months after that.

The Pistons’ frontcourt rotation, however, is probably not the same now as it will be down the line. New coach John Kuester still has to see what he truly has. And, in his defense, it’s hard to yank Wallace off the floor when he’s playing the way he is.

“Ben sets the tone for us defensively,” Kuester told reporters recently.

Yes, he does. For now.

And about that retirement thing. Wallace says basketball is fun again, because he’s healthy. Point taken. But what if something becomes the matter with him again this winter? He’s already been in retirement mode once this year.

Food for thought, but it’s unseemly to chew on it now, isn’t it?

Last Night on “The Knee Jerks”: The Lions' Report Cards are in...

Greg Eno — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:36:02 -0500

Believe it or not, half of the Lions’ 16-game NFL schedule has been played, so after a suggestion from Big Al Beaton, my co-host on the weekly gabfest “The Knee Jerks” , we gathered around the campfire, and had ourselves a mid-season review.

Our guests were Michael Schottey and Dean Holden , two of the premier Lions writers for Bleacher Report . Those two guys chimed in with analysis, mid-season letter grades, and a look ahead at the season’s second half. It’s not “feel good” radio, but these are the Lions, after all!

After burying the Lions for about an hour, Al and I delved into some juicy topics around Detroit sports.

We segued into the mess in Ann Arbor as it relates to the football program. Once again, we openly wondered how much time U-M officials will give coach Rich Rodriguez after yet another second half collapse, this time to Purdue at home. I went off a little bit (understatement) on the type of football being played at Michigan, and it was Al, believe it or not, who was the voice of reason!!

Next, it was time to, as Al put it, talk about something more uplifting: the Tigers’ hiring of former third baseman Tom Brookens as the team’s new first base coach. Al wondered if this was a set up to replace Jim Leyland down the line. Interesting thought. So we talked about Brookens, and whether he’d make a good big league manager.

Then, more happy stuff: The induction of Steve Yzerman into the Hockey Hall of Fame on Monday. Yzerman went in with 2002 teammates Brett Hull and Luc Robitaille , which caused Al to ask where that ‘02 Red Wings Stanley Cup-winning squad ranks among the all-time best NHL teams. Then I rained on the parade, and lamented the hiring of Dave Lewis as coach of that team after Scotty Bowman retired.

By that time, we were running out of clock, and with no timeouts remaining, we had to go to our “Jerks of the Week.”

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for updates on scheduled guests, time changes, etc.

Upcoming guests/topics :

Nov. 16 Ansar Khan , Red Wings beat writer for MLive.com, and Booth Newspapers
Nov. 23 U-M/MSU football post-mortem
Nov. 30 TBD (likely Pistons-related)
Dec. 7 : NHL Central roundtable with Bleacher Report writers from Columbus, Chicago, Nashville, and St. Louis

Some highlights from Monday’s show:

Big Al

On Michigan football : “If anything is going to happen with Rodriguez, it probably won’t happen until after NEXT season. I wonder if AD Bill Martin timed his September retirement so that they can’t shove Rodriguez, and him out the door at the same time.”

On Tom Brookens : “He was a blue collar player. That’s why the fans in Detroit liked him so much. Maybe he was born to be a big league manager.”

On Yzerman : “Words fail me as to how classy this guy was. The ovation they gave him in Toronto was deafening.”

Eno

On Rich Rodriguez : “Something about this guy isn’t right. It never felt right to me, from the moment of his first press conference when he admitted that he never had set foot in the state before.”

On Tom Brookens : “Tommy’s a smart guy. And he’s a Tiger. I think he would make a terrific big league manager.”

On the 2002 Red Wings : “If you were to corner GM Kenny Holland over a couple of beers, I bet he’d tell you that he should never have hired Dave Lewis to coach after Scotty Bowman retired. They could have won two more Stanley Cups with a more experienced coach.”

You can listen to the episode by clicking HERE .

Losing-Cultured Lions Have No Idea How to Handle Lead, Wither Against Seahawks

Greg Eno — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:45:12 -0500

The Lions blew a game on Sunday, but you can hardly blame them. It wasn’t exactly a familiar situation for them.

The Lions lost, and those betting that the Seahawks would cover their 10-point donation won, as Seattle beat Detroit 32-20—the last seven points coming with less than 30 seconds to play on a “pick six” interception.

Until then, the Lions had covered the spread—and the Lions don’t cover things so well, normally.

Certainly not receivers. But that’s another story.

The Lions found themselves with a cool 17-0 lead before the first quarter was finished. The 2-5 Seahawks came out like a 2-5 team—or the Lions—and coughed up the football on their first two plays from scrimmage. And the Lions made them pay with 14 points.

But one of the by-products of losing so many football games in such a short period of time—the run is now 24 of the last 25 in the loss column—is not knowing what the hell to do with early success.

So when the Lions zoomed out to that 17-0 lead, it had the feel of finding a lost dog that you knew, deep down, would be claimed by its rightful owner just when you start to get attached to it.

Sure enough, the Lions began coming from ahead, and worse, they did it in drip-drip fashion. And everyone knows that you need to just yank a Band-Aid off—you don’t slowly peel it away.

A Seahawks touchdown made it 17-7. Then they started tacking on field goals, drawing nearer and nearer, when you knew that the Lions were powerless and would eventually surrender the lead.

17-10. 17-13. 17-16.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Peel. Peel. Peel.

The Lions don’t jump out to early leads. It’s not their style. They don’t jump out to relatively early leads, relatively late leads, or any lead of any sort, truth be told.

So you’ll excuse them for not having the slightest idea of how to handle what happened in Seattle on Sunday.

They looked down, saw the Seahawks in a grave, stood above them with shovel in hand, and then lost the handle on the burial utensil. And while they scrambled to find it, the Seahawks were able to climb out of the hole.

Yes, funereal metaphors are appropriate this morning, because the season is dead. Has been, probably, since the lie-down last week against the wretched Rams in Detroit.

The Seahawks went on a 32-3 run after the first quarter, which meant that the final 45 minutes were a far better indicator of what the Lions are than the first 15 were.

It’s not that the Lions went into a shell, like a hockey team would with a lead. It’s just that rookie QB Matthew Stafford got all Ty Detmer-ish and started chucking interceptions all over the field—usually on balls that were badly underthrown.

The Lions would move the ball a little bit—I love this Aaron Brown kid, by the way, who’s the quickest little running back the Lions have had in quite some time—then Stafford would torpedo them with a completion to the Seahawks.

Yes, rookie quarterbacks will do that to you. They’ll look wonderfully mature and together, as Stafford did in the first quarter, then they’ll look like a clueless 21-year-old kid, as Stafford pretty much looked the rest of the game.

Hey—here’s a suggestion that might help the kid out, and you can take it with a grain of salt if you’d like, as it’s coming from someone who never played or coached the game.

THROW THE BALL TO CALVIN JOHNSON!!

I don’t know, just a thought. But what the hell do I know?

Actually, what I know is that team’s best players touch the ball as much as possible. In the case of wide receivers, that means damning the double teams and the game planning done by the opposition and somehow, some way, getting the ball into that star player’s hands.

After three quarters, Johnson had one catch. And only a handful of footballs thrown in his direction.

It was wonderful that rookie tight end Brandon Pettigrew again showed why he’s the real deal, but no offense—CJ is the “go to” guy.

He was the “go to” guy alright—the Lions told him to “go to” a spot and wait. Patiently.

I don’t care how much attention Johnson is paid every Sunday by opposing secondaries. Stafford should be zinging the ball in his vicinity 12, 15 times a game. At least. You think Jerry Rice, Michael Irvin, et al played their entire careers facing single coverage?

A couple of the interceptions were the result of throwing to Johnson, but the ball never got to him. For a kid with a rocket, Stafford short-armed quite a few balls Sunday. Floated them, really.

But seriously—throw the ball to Johnson. A lot. If the Lions had a premier running back, you’d expect them to spoon-feed him the ball to the tune of 20, 25 carries a game, wouldn’t you? Then why not do whatever you can to let CJ do his thing?

Speaking of Johnson, there were those looks on the bench—the kind the TV cameras catch—that showed frustration and disgust with the situation. He even gave the kid QB a cold shoulder at one point, looking away from him in a blatant act of disregard.

But that stuff happens every week in the NFL. No cause for concern.

Yet it doesn’t mean that the Lions shouldn’t do something about it. I’ve been a supporter of offensive coordinator Scott Linehan all season, but he’s irking me with this reluctance to throw to Johnson.

It wasn’t just the one catch Johnson had after three quarters; it was the long gaps between throws to him that mesmerized me.

Would the Lions have won yesterday’s game had they gotten their best offensive weapon more involved?

Gosh, wouldn’t it be great if that question wasn’t rhetorical?

Pat LaFontaine was Missed, but Detroit Red Wings Did OK with Steve Yzerman

Greg Eno — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:23:43 -0500

He played hockey in Waterford, growing up in the northern Oakland County burg in the 1970s—a decade of horrors when it came to his local team, the Detroit Red Wings.

As he honed his skills as an adolescent and started depositing pucks into opposing goals with eye-popping frequency, the Red Wings were stumbling through the National Hockey League, soiling what had once been a tradition-rich franchise history.

As the 1980s arrived, his name started to become known beyond Waterford. It didn’t hurt that it had a bit of royalty to its sound.

Pat LaFontaine, from Waterford, was off to play junior hockey in Quebec, in a town called Verdun. He was 17 years old.

In his lone season in the Quebec Junior League, LaFontaine made a mockery of it.

In 70 games, LaFontaine, a center, scored 104 goals. He added 130 assists for 234 points—over three points a game.

It was obvious that the QMJHL wasn’t big enough to hold his talent.

Down I-75 from where LaFontaine grew up, the Red Wings were playing to half-empty houses at Joe Louis Arena. The team had a new owner—a pizza pie guy named Mike Ilitch—but the only thing that seemed to change at JLA was that Little Caesars pizza was being served officially at the concession stands. The product on the ice was still miserably bad.

But the Red Wings held the fourth overall choice in the 1983 draft. They’d have a good shot at nabbing LaFontaine off the board.

It was GM Jimmy Devellano’s first draft with the Red Wings. He was Ilitch’s first-ever Wings hire in 1982, but Jimmy D. joined the team too late to participate in the draft that year.

Folks around town salivated at the thought of what local kid Pat LaFontaine could do in a Red Wings sweater.

The Red Wings wanted LaFontaine. The kid, by all accounts, was open to playing NHL hockey back home after his one year hiatus spent in Quebec.

Devellano didn’t make his mark as a hockey rink rat by targeting just one player, though. He knew that things didn’t always work out the way you’d like. He’d have to be ready to select another player, should LaFontaine already be gone.

Red Wings fans didn’t care about anyone else, though. Pat LaFontaine grew up in Waterford, and he should play for the Red Wings, dammit!

The New York Islanders, Devellano’s old team—the one he helped build into a dynasty in the late-1970s—held the third overall pick. It was by sheer luck, through trade, that they had a pick so high, because the Isles were defending Stanley Cup champs.

Sure enough, Jimmy D’s team stuck it to their old employee, nabbing LaFontaine with the pick just prior to Detroit’s.

PUCK!

No matter; with people back in Detroit slugged in the gut, Devellano picked himself up from the mat, deeply disappointed, and went with his Plan B.

No one knew how to pronounce Steve Yzerman’s name when the news came that he was the newest Red Wing.

Some thought it was Eezer-man. Others said no, it’s Why-zerman.

Jimmy D. not only knew how to say it, he knew all about the kid attached to it.

Yzerman’s numbers while playing for Peterborough in the Ontario Junior League weren’t as impressive as LaFontaine’s, but numbers never tell the whole story.

Devellano knew that Yzerman, the son of an Ottawa politician, quiet as a mouse, could be a big-time star in the NHL.

They played a video clip of Devellano, speaking in his squeaky Canadian-laced voice, at his induction into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2006. He was talking about this new kid Yzerman, shortly after drafting him in the summer of ’83.

“We feel he can contribute right away,” Jimmy D. said. “My only concern is that because of his age – he’s only 18 – his strength is a question mark.”

Then, one of the biggest understatements in hockey history, as it turned out.

“But I think he’s gonna make it,” Devellano added.

Drafts in any sport are a crapshoot. All the studying and scouting in the world can’t predict what a kid is going to do once he starts playing the sport for money.

Even Yzerman himself didn’t really know.

I cornered him at Cobo after Jimmy D’s induction that October night in 2006.

Doesn’t it seem silly now, I asked, to see Jimmy speak about you in such uncertain terms?

Yzerman gave that bashful smile.

“Well,” he said, “not many people knew for sure back then, eh?”

I suppose not.

Monday, Yzerman will go into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto on Monday. He’ll be inducted with two former teammates: snipers Brett Hull and Luc Robitaille.

It’ll be 26 years, and some change, since he arrived in Detroit with that funny last name and the baggage of NOT being Pat LaFontaine.

LaFontaine, for his part, had a fine NHL career. He was no draft bust. A quick check on the Internet gives the numbers: 468 goals, 545 assists, 1,013 points. But no Stanley Cups—and a career cut short thanks to concussions. LaFontaine was only 33 when he played his last NHL game.

Yzerman played until he was about a week shy of his 41^st birthday. He scored 692 goals, had 1,755 points, and won three Stanley Cups and the hearts of Red Wings fans forever. His jersey hangs in the rafters of Joe Louis Arena, next to those of Howe and Abel and Lindsay and the rest.

All because the New York Islanders, Jimmy’s old employers, decided that they wanted the kid from Waterford, Pat LaFontaine, for themselves.

We cursed and grumbled in Detroit, then Steve Yzerman suited up and started playing some hockey for the Red Wings.

Jimmy Devellano’s hunch was right.

“I think he’s gonna make it.”

Yeah, just a bit.

Hockey Palaces Like Detroit's Olympia Stadium Sadly Extinct Nowadays

Greg Eno — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:49:29 -0500

They don't make arenas like Olympia Stadium anymore. Hell, they don't make buildings like it anymore.

I don't know of any place where an escalator lifts you up at an 80 degree angle, which it did at Olympia—the Old Red Barn where the Red Wings played from the 1920s to December 15, 1979.

If you think I'm exaggerating about the 80 degree angle—you're right; perhaps it was only about 77 degrees.

The Olympia—corner of Grand River and McGraw on Detroit's west side—comes to mind because we're inching closer and closer to the 30th anniversary of the last game played there. Oh, they played a charity alumni game there a couple months later, but 12/15/79 was when the Red Wings recovered from a 4-0 deficit to tie the Quebec Nordiques—Le Nordique—in a final score of 4-4. No overtime back then. Certainly no silly shootouts.

For a few moments that night, I thought they wouldn't need the explosives used to implode buildings that have outlived their use, because when Greg Joly scored on an end-to-end rush with about three minutes to play to tie the game, you'd have thought the place would come down due to the thunder of cheers and foot-stomping.

I ought to know, because I was there.

It's among the list of electrifying moments I've been lucky enough to witness in person in Detroit sports history—right up there with Kirk Gibson's homer off Goose Gossage to seal the 1984 World Series, Isiah Thomas's 16 points in 90 seconds against the Knicks in the 1984 playoffs, and the Lions' 45-3 trouncing of the Pittsburgh Steelers on Thanksgiving Day, 1983.

Yep, my fanny was in the seats—and leaping out of them—for all of the above. Good stuff.

I cornered Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch a couple of years ago at the unveiling of the Gordie Howe sculpture inside Joe Louis Arena, and he confirmed that the organization was looking at parcels of land onto which they'd build a brand new arena for the Red Wings. One of them, I managed to get out of him, isn't too far away from Comerica Park, near the Woodward Avenue corridor.

But despite the success the Red Wings have enjoyed over the past 15 years or so at JLA—four Stanley Cups and some near misses—I don't know that the sentiment will hit me the same when they shutter The Joe for good, as it did when the medicine ball started ramming against Olympia's bricks in the 1980s.

There was the balcony at Olympia, number one, which thanks to the architects made you feel as if you were looking down at the ice between your legs, if you were sitting in the lower rows.

There was no overhead scoreboard or clock; instead, those were located in the "end zones," along the balcony facade, horizontally stretched from curved corner to curved corner. There were also smaller auxiliary scoreboards on the lower levels of the expensive seats, in the corners.

Olympia seated about 16,000 for hockey and was just about the most intimate indoor arena you'll ever enjoy.

The place shook when the crowd reaction was explosive enough. But when the din was low, you could hear the players shout to one another, even if you sat in the upper rows of the balcony. It was like a theatre that way.

The skates etching the ice, the puck being smacked from tape to tape as it was being passed around, the crunch of the glass during a solid bodycheck—those are hockey sounds to be treasured. And you could hear them at Olympia as if you were wearing personal earphones.

The acoustics were tremendous—which made it a wonderful concert venue, too. All the big name acts played the Olympia: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, you name it.

The Pistons called Olympia home for a few seasons before Cobo Arena opened on the riverfront in 1960.

Olympia's front doors—it literally had a lobby—were just a sidewalk away from Grand River. kind of like the old Maple Leaf Gardens on Yonge Street. The old-fashioned marquee with the hand-posted red letters would announce that evening's festivities: "HOCKEY TONIGHT RED WINGS VS MONTREAL 8:00."

At the corner, there used to be a drugstore attached, where players from the 1960s used to occasionally stop for a post-practice milk shake and sign autographs. Imagine such a thing nowadays?

Then the escalators, which were, frankly, a nightmare for anyone with either claustrophobia or a fear of heights. If you had both, you were in trouble. The steps were barely wide enough for two people. And that steep angle made you feel like you'd tumble backward on the people behind you if you leaned back a bit too much.

I feel sorry for those who never got a chance to take in a Red Wings game at Olympia Stadium.

I feel that way, because they'll never make hockey palaces like that again. No one has it in them, I guess.

Detroit Lions Serve Notice to St. Louis Rams, NFL: We're STILL No. 32!

Greg Eno — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:27:26 -0500

All those Jim Zorn haters out there ought to rev up their engines again. They ought to bang down Redskins owner Dan Snyder's door, and demand that Zorn get the ziggy. In fact, the entire Redskins team ought to wear scarlet letters on their uniforms: "L," both for Loser, and for Lions.

How any team can lose to the garbage that is the Detroit Lions is beyond me.

Someday, one of the current Redskins will pen an autobiography, and he'll let us in on the secret. Surely it must have been an effort, willful and with malice, designed to get the coach fired.

No way could the Redskins have actually given it their all and still come up short against the Lions, as they did back on Sept. 27 at Ford Field.

But they did, and for that the 'Skins ought to change their names to the Washington Red-faces.

How can you even report to work every week, knowing you've lost to the Lions?

Once again, football wasn't played by the Lions yesterday against the St. Louis Rams. It was committed. Poorly. Kind of like those guys they catch on videotape on those "World's Dumbest Criminals" TV shows.

The Rams won it, 17-10, and that score wasn't reached how you would think. It was 3-2, Rams, in the bottom of the seventh before it turned into a slugfest of sorts.

So two very long losing streaks have been snapped this year at FF: The Lions' 19-gamer, and the Rams' 17-game version, which had only begun to pick up some national media momentum before it all came crashing down on Sunday.

Now all we're left with is the Tampa Bay Bucs and their measly little 0-7 start. Hmph.

Ah, but fear not, because by the time the curtain closes on this season, the Lions may be doing a revival of their wildly successful 2008 tour and finish 1-15 with a 13-game losing streak in their hip pockets.

It could happen. Don't tell me that it can't.

Don't come at me with the Browns game at Detroit on Nov. 22. And especially don't you dare try to sing me the tired, "The Lions rise to the occasion on Thanksgiving Day" ditty, either.

Look at the schedule and tell me where you see another Lions victory after the ostrich egg they laid on the Ford Field fake grass against the Rams.

When the Rams, no less, talk about you afterward as if they had just taken candy from a baby, it's time for some serious reflection.

The subject was the fake field goal the Rams pulled with about a minute to go in the second quarter, lining up for a 54-yard try.

This is the kicker, Josh Brown, talking:

"When they set up in that certain position with a two-man push (on their right side) they always come hard. Every single time,'' Brown said. "We really knew what they were going to do and we capitalized. We called it on the sideline because we figured what they were going to do. We had watched tape and they came every single time when they were set up that way. It was ours for the taking.''

Wow. It's not bad enough that the haven't-won-for-over-a-year Rams beat the Lions, they have to talk like it was so easy?

The Lions couldn't stop Rams RB Steven Jackson, who ran wild for 149 yards on just 22 carries. That's a Jim Brown/Barry Sanders-like 6.8 yards per carry, if you're scoring at home.

The Lions were without star receiver Calvin Johnson (knee), and so the rest of the receiving corps must have decided to not play, either, in protest.

Poor Matthew Stafford. The rookie QB worked like the dickens to get his sore knee ready after missing two games, and his pass catchers treat him like Isiah Thomas did Michael Jordan in the 1985 All-Star Game?

The Lions receivers spoiled more passes than a pretty girl in a room full of nerds.

Through 45 minutes of play, the Lions had exactly zero catches from their wide receivers. Not that Stafford didn't try; they just kept dropping them.

By the end, Stafford gave up and didn't bother to throw the ball anywhere near them. That'll teach 'em!

It reminds me of an old line by that cut-up coach of the early Bucs, John McKay, who said after another loss, "Well, we didn't block. But we made up for it by not tackling."

The Lions dropped passes, but Stafford made up for it by being inaccurate.

The final "drive" was tragically comical.

The Lions started on their own 20 and ended at their own 10, four incomplete passes later.

The cozy little crowd at FF did their best to rain boos down on Stafford and the Lions, but even that was mostly pathetic.

This was a "message" game and the Lions delivered, big time.

We're STILL the worst, you St. Louis Rams—and don't you forget it!

Lack of “Franchise” Defensive Lineman Detroit Lions' Bane for Decades

Greg Eno — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 11:55:45 -0400

Football has had a fascination with the morose when it comes to handing out monikers to the game’s greatest defensive platoons.

We’ve had Steel Curtains and Doomsday and Purple People Eaters. There were the Killer Bees down in Miami.

Detroit and Los Angeles—when the NFL actually had a franchise there—shared the alliterate name Fearsome Foursome.

Pro football games are won in the trenches, they say. Rare is the championship team that doesn’t possess a solid line, both on offense and defense.

Lions fans will tell you that the team has been looking for its franchise quarterback for some fifty years or so. That’s difficult to refute, but how about a franchise defensive lineman?

The Lions haven’t had one of those around in these parts since the Carter Administration.

His name was Al “Bubba” Baker and he came from Colorado State and at his best, he appeared in the backfield frequently, as well as in quarterbacks’ nightmares.

Bubba Baker (pictured above) was, at times, simply unblockable. He played defensive end but he had the body of an NBA power forward: long and strong. Bubba would line up so far away from his tackle mate that you’d have thought the other guy had a liverwurst and garlic sandwich just before the game.

But all Bubba was doing was getting a running start.

Baker had, in 1978, 23 sacks. As a rookie. And a whole bunch of near misses.

Bubba Baker, with three straight Pro Bowl appearances (1978-80), anchored a defensive line in Detroit that was pretty damn good.

It was the early-1980s when they started to call the Lions’ front four “The Silver Rush.” Not a cataclysmic football nickname, but a nickname nonetheless.

You had Baker and William Gay on the ends, and Dave Pureifory and Doug English inside. Pureifory, from Eastern Michigan University, was so mean and nasty that his sadistic behavior in 1979’s training camp almost caused the Lions’ No. 1 draft pick, offensive tackle Keith Dorney, to quit. Dorney said so in his book.

Gay was a converted tight end who made a Pro Bowl as a D-lineman and who teamed with Baker to form two towering bookends. Pureifory was short, stubby, and ferocious—and English was just plain good, and a consummate professional.

English, a Texan, retired after the 1979 season to go into the oil business, but returned to the NFL in 1981.

The Lions traded Baker to the St. Louis Cardinals after the 1982 season, after Bubba grew tired of the Lions, and they him.

And not since have the Lions truly had a stud on the line of scrimmage, on the defensive side of the ball.

The Lions have been a bad football team for a long time with a lot of warts, but if they could ever plug someone into their defensive line who was top grade, you watch how much better their defense plays.

Sadly, the Lions haven’t even really tried to address this gaping hole, this empty chamber in their popgun.

Only twice since 1992 have the Lions selected a defensive lineman in the first round of the NFL Draft.

I’m sorry, but that’s shocking and perplexing.

Here’s a deficiency the Lions have had for decades, and it routinely gets the short shrift when it comes to the draft.

The Lions’ lack of a playmaker—a bona fide game changer—on their front four has contributed more than anything to the pathetic overall defensive play in this town.

The Lions have no true pass rusher. No run-stopping behemoth. No freak of nature with the strength of Atlas and the speed of a gazelle who can seem to be out of a play, then traverse 15-20 yards in a heartbeat and run a ball carrier down.

And they haven’t, for too long to be respectable.

I’ve said it before—if there’s a team in pro sports today who needs help at any position more than the Lions need help on their defensive line, that team is merely a figment of a vivid imagination.

Oh, how the Lions should be combing the college campuses at this very moment, seeking the biggest, baddest, fastest, meanest, quickest, strongest down lineman college football has to offer. They’re likely to qualify for, once again, a top-five pick in next year’s draft. They should absolutely use it on someone whose uniform number is in the 90s.

There’ve been some impostors passing through Detroit, who we’ve elevated beyond their actual abilities, mainly because we’ve wanted them to be successful so badly.

Shaun Rogers and Jerry Ball leap to mind.

Rogers had potential. He was a man child who could have owned Detroit, if he would have kept himself in shape and his mouth shut—both to keep from talking and eating. His moments of dominance were absolute but terribly fleeting.

Ball, from the early-1990s era, was a solid nose tackle who we thought was an elite lineman as a Lion. But he went to Oakland and from afar we could see what we could not because of the trees in Detroit: that he was good but not great.

But beyond those two players, the Lions haven’t had anyone remotely close to being dominant or a star in the league, playing defensive line, since Bubba Baker’s day.

This has got to kill the old-timers who remember when the Lions routinely fielded tenacious, impenetrable d-lines.

The Fearsome Foursome of Sam Williams, Roger Brown, Alex Karras and Darris McCord—they swallowed up ball carriers and quarterbacks and were often the only thing that could slow down the vaunted Green Bay Packers’ running game.

Hell, that was only almost 50 years ago. What’s the hurry to repeat history?

Don't the Phillies Know That Philadelphia Is City of Chumps, Not Champs?

Greg Eno — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:50:20 -0400

They don’t win championships in Philadelphia. If they do, it’s a fluke—something that someone pulled over on God.

Every three decades or so, one of the teams will screw up the ecosystem and snatch a title out from under fate’s nose.

What’s happening now is a travesty. The Phillies are in the World Series for the second year in a row. What’s worse, they actually won it last year.

This is all wrong. Philadelphia is a city full of miscreants and crabapples, with a fan base so jaded and tormented that it makes John McEnroe look like Dale Carnegie.

Philadelphia—City of Chumps, not Champs.

The biggest winner in Philly is Rocky, and he’s not even real.

The football Eagles annually tease and flirt with their fans, batting their eyelashes and giving the “come hither” look, only to turn into Margaret Thatcher once in the bedroom.

The Eagles last won the NFL Championship in 1960. Before that, 1940 something. It took them 20 years after the ’60 title to get to the Super Bowl. Then it took over a dozen years to get there again.

The Flyers won their last Stanley Cup in 1975. They’ve made it to the Finals five times since then, but not since 1997.

The last time the 76ers were world champs of the NBA was in 1983.

It took the Phillies about a hundred years to win their first World Series, in 1980. Took them another 28 years before they’d win their second, which is about the schedule they run on in Philadelphia—an accidental title every generation or so.

This is the City of Brotherly Love—as defined by fourth graders.

The late, great sportswriter Jim Murray professed his love for Philly’s acerbic personality this way: “When a plane lands in Philadelphia, everyone gets on; no one gets off.”

They booed Mike Schmidt in Philadelphia, which is only like Detroit booing Al Kaline, for cripe’s sakes.

Philly is also the home of Temple University, which last had a good football team before they came out with electricity, just about.

The Phillies are messing everything up now.

Needless to say, the Phillies have never won back-to-back World Series—unless you want to strike every Series from 1981 to 2007 from the record books. Then in that case, yeah, they have.

But here they are, two-time National League champions, awaiting either the New York Yankees or the Los Angeles Angels.

This can’t be happening. The Phillies are going against nature, or at the very least, the baseball gods. It’s like that episode of The Brady Bunch in Hawaii when Peter finds the tiki, disturbing something all-powerful.

If the Phillies take leave of their senses and win the World Series again this year, then we’re officially closer to the Apocalypse. One of the Horsemen will have been slain.

Philadelphia can’t possibly handle two championships in a row, anyway. Back-to-back is what they do in New York (Yankees), what they do in Detroit (Pistons, Red Wings), what they do in Chicago (Bulls). Heck, they’ve even done it in San Antonio, which is famous for the Alamo, of all things.

But Philadelphia is as equipped for two straight Phillies World Series titles as a toddler is for his first solid food being a bowl of chili.

They don’t win championships in Philadelphia because the fans there don’t deserve them. It’s further proof that there are deities among us.

Sports fans in Philadelphia are petulant, unreasonable, paranoid, and mean-spirited. Unless you catch them on a good day and they’re just being jealous and unappreciative.

Philadelphia—which gave us the 1964 Phillies, who couldn’t find the handle on a six-game lead with 12 games to play and blew the pennant to St. Louis, which as a baseball city is to Philadelphia what, in fine cuisine, lobster is to beef jerky.

St. Louis wouldn’t dream of booing Stan Musial, either.

Philadelphia is the city that gave us Terrell Owens, and for that alone it deserves locusts descending on it.

The teams in Philadelphia have lost so much, have failed in such grand scale so often, that when their epic, abysmal championship droughts are actually broken with Halley’s Comet-like frequency, as was done by last year’s Phillies, it’s only natural to start looking for pestilence.

But if the Phillies of 2009 are going to put us all in mortal danger by winning their second straight World Series, then it may as well be with the team they have—which is pretty darn exciting, and good.

There’s first baseman Ryan Howard, a slugger of Herculean strength, who doesn’t hit home runs, he makes them with his bare hands. There’s center fielder Shane Victorino, who covers so much real estate in the outfield that you should call him Century 22.

There’s right fielder Jayson Werth, the feast or famine kid who can blow you away with his power or with the wind from his frequent whiffs. But guaranteed that you stick around for his at-bat, regardless.

There’s the pesky double play combo of 2B Chase Utley and SS Jimmy Rollins, two guys who can flash leather and then knock in the game-winning run on any given day.

There’s veteran LF Raul Ibanez, who turned 37 this summer but it’s all in your mind. Ibanez stroked 34 homers.

The top three starting pitchers are Cliff Lee, Pedro Martinez, and Cole Hamels. You can do worse.

The closer is Brad Lidge, who actually “gets” what being an athlete playing in Philadelphia is all about. For Lidge went from being 41-for-41 in save opportunities with a 1.95 ERA in 2008, to being 31-for-42 in 2009, despite an ERA in the thin high air of 7.21 in 2009.

Attaboy, Brad! You knew better than to put together two fabulous seasons in a row. You’re a Phillie, after all.

Batten down the hatches. The Phillies are in the World Series again, and it only took them a year to get back there this time instead of a generation. As Neil Diamond once sang, pack up the babies and grab the old ladies!

Cuz everyone knows it’s the City of Brotherly Love’s Traveling Salvation Show.

Are the Detroit Tigers Caught in the Middle for 2010?

Greg Eno — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:27:57 -0400

Strength in the middle.

It’s been bantered about in all the major team sports.

NBA championships, folks used to say by rote, can’t be won without a dominant big man clogging up the middle. It’s not required nowadays, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.

Strong interior blocking, in the middle of the offensive line, is indispensable when it comes to establishing a ground game in the NFL. Conversely, superior middle linebackers have been the hallmark of countless championship platoons, too.

Hockey’s glamour guys are the flashy centers—the fancy playmakers who can also score.

And in baseball?

You’ve heard it countless times: “One of the reasons why (insert team) are so successful is because they’re strong up the middle!”

The middle being, of course, catcher/shortstop/second base/center field.

The 1968 Tigers were three-fourths strong up the middle, with Bill Freehan behind the plate, Dick McAuliffe at second base, and Mickey Stanley in center field. It was only light-hitting shortstop Ray Oyler who was the exception.

The ‘84 Tigers were exemplary up the middle: Lance Parrish/Lou Whitaker/Alan Trammell/Chet Lemon.

The 2010 Tigers might look like this in those four positions: Gerald Laird/Scott Sizemore/Adam Everett/Curtis Granderson.

Doesn’t exactly send chills down the spines of opponents.

There’s Laird with his gifted cannon for an arm, and that’s nice. But there’s nothing in his bat other than rally-killing outs.

Everett and fellow shortstop Ramon Santiago, together, make up an average player at best.

Sizemore, if he replaces free agent Placido Polanco, has never played an inning in the big leagues.

Granderson is coming off an awful 2009 campaign.

If the 2010 Tigers are going to remain in the mix in the Central Division—forget anything beyond that for now—they’ll have to be better in these key “up the middle” positions.

Getting more production out of left field, right field, and designated hitter won’t hurt, either.

But they say you have to be good down the pike, so let’s put our focus there.

Laird is likely to remain the starting catcher, because even though rookie Alex Avila seems to have the bigger stick, the Tigers are enamored with Laird’s gunning down of opposing base runners. I think they’re scared to death to NOT have Laird in there, for fear that they’ll lose a ton of games due to base thefts.

I'm not sold on that premise, but I do realize how good Laird is at what he does when it comes to throwing a baseball.

Sizemore seems set to take Polanco’s place. It’s unlikely that Jarhead will return in 2010, because the Tigers don’t want to tie up any more dough than they have to in players. Sizemore comes a whole lot cheaper, mainly because he’s a green horn. But you never know how it’s going to go with rookies as starters.

Everett is a free agent as well. His glove is good, but he’s another who gives you virtually nothing offensively. Santiago brings more to the table with the bat, and holds his own defensively. But he’s never really been a full-time player in the big leagues.

The Tigers need to address shortstop, for sure.

We can only hope that Granderson’s 2009 season was an anomaly. If so, then center field shouldn’t be an issue.

So, to review: a good field, no hit catcher; a good field, no hit shortstop; a rookie second baseman; a (we hope) rebounding center fielder.

The Tigers, at least, have what they feel is a capable replacement at second base in Sizemore, already in the organization.

If I had my druthers, I’d like to see Avila get more playing time, with Laird brought in for defensive purposes late in tight games. I’m fine with Sizemore, because you have to see what you got with him. I want a different shortstop. And I want Granderson to work hard at his game, which I’m sure he will.

The Tigers, right now, are less-than-average “up the middle.” I have a sneaking suspicion that such a deficiency contributed greatly to their house of cards collapsing in September.

Red Wing Chris Osgood's No. 30 Ought to Hang from Rafters Post-Retirement

Greg Eno — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:18:24 -0400

So this much we know.

One evening, in the not-too-distant future, fans will look to the rafters at Joe Louis Arena—or wherever the Red Wings will be playing by then—and see a large red "jersey" with a white No. 5 and the name "LIDSTROM" adorning it, the years played for the Red Wings listed below it, in red on a white band.

That much we know.

But, and I know my timing isn't great here, I submit that those same fans should also be able to crane their necks and see a big red swatch of fabric with a white No. 30 and the name "OSGOOD" sewn onto it.

You heard me.

It's a few weeks into the NHL regular season, and that may turn some people on, but this is the perfect time to be an argument starter, if you ask me. Let these October games drone on in the background while we muck it up in the corner, figuratively speaking.

Chris Osgood's number retired? You betcha.

By the time he hangs them up for good, Osgood will have likely passed the great Terry Sawchuk for most wins by a Red Wings goaltender for starters.

He has three Stanley Cups, two earned as the starter throughout the playoffs—and 10 years apart, which must be some sort of record, somewhere.

Your honor, the defense rests.

Oh, I know I'll have to do some cross-examining here. I can practically hear the keyboards being pounded on furiously by those opposed to me. That's OK. Nothing is ever a slam dunk when it comes to Chris Osgood's virtues in Detroit.

I don't know why some are so resistant to back off and just accept that Osgood has had a fine career. The arguments against him have turned almost spiteful and personal, and I have no idea why.

The naysayers talk like this: The Red Wings win in spite of him, especially in 1998. He has great teams in front of him, so that's why his numbers look so good. Blah-blah-blah.

As if Sawchuk played with a bunch of chopped liver back in the day.

I promise you, it's OK to give Osgood his due. It really is. I promise the sun will rise tomorrow, and in the East. No children or pets will be harmed. Promise.

And it's also OK to not only give him his due, but to also raise his number among the team's all-time greats because—and here's where it really gets fun—Chris Osgood is, in fact, one of the team's all-time greats.

Let's play a little game.

Name me three goalies in team history better than Osgood. Just three, other than Sawchuck.

I'll even play along with you.

There was the Kewpie doll-faced Harry Lumley, who was between the pipes during the Red Wings' successful 1950 Stanley Cup run. Lumley won 163 games for the Red Wings in six seasons (1944-50). I might give you that one out of benevolence.

There was Mike Vernon, with his 1997 Cup. But Mike didn't play in Detroit very long, and I'm not sure he was all that much better, if at all, than Ozzie.

Here's one: Dominik Hasek. It's hard not to give you Dom, although he wasn't a Red Wing all that long. But you almost have to include him because of his overall career.

So you have Lumley, Vernon, and Hasek. I'd scratch Vernon. And Hasek gets the nod mostly for his time in Buffalo.

Any others?

The question begs: Why wouldn't you so honor the second-best goalie in franchise history?

Because that's what Chris Osgood is, like it or not.

I'm putting Ozzie ahead of Lumley because of longevity, and I'm even slotting him in front of Hasek for the same reason, though I wouldn't squawk if you put Dom ahead of Osgood.

But you're not going to raise Hasek's No. 39 to the rafters because he wasn't a Red Wing long enough.

The Osgood haters spew the same tired arguments, already listed above. And it's not a very long list anyhow.

How exactly do the Red Wings win in spite of Chris Osgood?

The team surrendered nearly three goals a game during the regular season last year, an unheard of number in Detroit. Osgood was largely to blame for that, and he wouldn't argue. But the Red Wings came within a whisker of winning another Cup.

Why? Because Osgood raised his game several notches, and was a genuine Conn Smythe candidate until the Penguins captured Game Seven.

This is going to draw more venom, but I'm telling you that Chris Osgood is the greatest money goalie I've ever seen in Detroit. Bar none, even Hasek.

No one bounced back from bad games like Osgood. No one came up bigger in more pressure situations than Osgood. And no one was as unflappable as Osgood is between the pipes, because no one was better between the ears.

Give me Chris Osgood if I need a game to be won, over anyone who's ever worn a Red Wings jersey, save for Sawchuk, who was the best ever, regardless of decade or era or generation.

Retiring his No. 30 and raising it to sway above the ice along with Yzerman and Lindsay and Howe and Abel and Delvecchio and Sawchuk and (eventually) Lidstrom is a no-brainer, as far as I'm concerned.

Go ahead. Make your case.

Detroit Lions: Momma Said There'd Still Be More Days Like This

Greg Eno — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:50:14 -0400

Things are apparently so bad with the Lions that they don’t even show up for their games anymore.

The Lions yesterday set football back in Detroit all the way to…2008.

If this is them turning the corner, then they just ran smack dab into a bus, like that girl in that scene from “Final Destination.”

WHAM!!

The Green Bay Packers, if this was dinner time, would have been scolded by their mother for playing with their food, as they skipped out to a 14-0 lead before adding a slew of field goals when touchdowns would have made things butt ugly.

The 26-0 whitewashing was about as much of an indication of how much the Packers dominated the Lions as a scoop of white rice tells you how much of the stuff they have in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant.

The Packers committed penalties by the boatload. Their offense mysteriously stalled in the “red zone” when it was a hot knife to the Lions’ butter between the 20s. Yet the Pack was never not in control.

It’s amazing the number of transgressions you can commit in a football game and still never be in danger of losing it, when you’re playing the Lions.

This wasn’t a football game—it was serio-comic performance art, played out in front of 50,000-plus bloodthirsty zealots.

The Lions lost control of this one as soon as Jason Hanson’s toe met the football for the opening kickoff, which was taken all the way back for an apparent touchdown. But the Packers were flagged, as usual, and it appeared as if the Lions dodged a bullet.

Yeah, they dodged a bullet alright—just like Bonnie and Clyde did in their car before being eventually aerated by lead.

It was painfully similar to so many of the Lions games last season, when the folks who were late to the game might as well have been ordered back at the gate by the ushers and the police.

“Nothing to see here, folks. Just move back to your cars and exit quietly.”

It was 14-0 before all the first beers and hot dogs were in the Packers’ fans tummies.

Then the Pack got sloppy and acquired a field goal fetish, making the final score marginally respectable.

Packers QB Aaron Rodgers was the latest passer to need a drool cup for all the salivating he did while looking over the Lions’ secondary. The Lions’ pass defending corps—which I had foolishly declared on “The Knee Jerks” podcast a few weeks ago was improving steadily—is the “easy” setting in the NFL for opposing QBs, while the rest of the league is categorized as either “moderate,” “tough,” or “expert.”

There weren’t seams in the Lions’ defensive backfield—there were canyons. Watching the other team pass against the Lions is like watching no-contact drills in practice. The Packers’ receivers might as well have been wearing just helmets and shorts.

As bad as it was, you figured that there might be Sundays like this, even in the Jim Schwartz Era. This made the Saints game in Week One look good. But what Schwartz and defensive coordinator Gunther Cunningham inherited could not possibly be fixed in one year. So a stinker like Sunday’s in Green Bay shouldn’t be too terribly shocking.

The idea, of course, is to have far fewer of them in 2009, and even fewer in 2010, and so on.

The Lions were a little banged up—especially on offense with QB Matthew Stafford and WR Calvin Johnson out with injuries, and on the d-line—and that didn’t help. At all. But this is the NFL, and others must step up, not step back.

Lions QB Daunte Culpepper was frightfully ineffective, and the game plan is so much more conservative with him in the game than when Stafford plays. It’s like o-coordinator Scott Linehan doesn’t believe that Culpepper can zing the ball further than 20 yards at a time.

Maybe he can’t.

So take this one and pitch it. Burn the tape, as they say. The Lions will now go into their bye week with the aftertaste of castor oil in their mouths. For almost two weeks.

The Lions didn’t play football on Sunday—they committed it.

I wonder if they wrapped Lambeau Field in crime scene tape after the game.

MLB Is Better Off with New York Yankees in the Playoffs

Greg Eno — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:50:22 -0400

It was the vaudevillian comedian Joe E. Brown who went on the record about it most famously. It was he who put it into words with so much brevity yet pith.

“Rooting for the Yankees,” Brown was jotted down as having said, “is like rooting for U.S. Steel.”

Those Damn Yankees—welcome back to the playoff spotlight.

The Yankees are in a tussle for the right to represent the American League in the World Series, facing off against the very formidable Los Angeles Angels—right coast versus left coast. It’s the Yankees’ first appearance in the ALCS—alphabet soup for American League Championship Series—since way back in 2004.

Remember 2004?

Of course you do—but in baseball years in New York, that may as well be in the days of Alexander Cartwright and the marking off of the very first base path in the 1870s.

Yankees fans aren’t used to there being five years between series of this magnitude—and this isn’t even the big Kahuna.

The one they want, of course, is the World Series, and the Yankees haven’t been in one of those since 2003.

Yikes!

The Yankees, when last seen in an ALCS, were coughing up a three games to none lead to their arch rival the Boston Red Sox. Four straight times the Red Sox beat the Yankees to appear in, and eventually win, the ’04 World Series—the Red Sox’ first championship since Babe Ruth pitched for them (1918).

The Yankees are back playing for the figurative pennant, and that’s terrific. If they make it to the World Series, it would be even better.

Yeah, they may be U.S. Steel—or, to update Brown’s quote, Microsoft, but that’s what makes their presence in baseball’s Final Four even more mandatory.

You don’t have Dudley Do-Right, after all, without there being a Black Bart over whom to conquer.

Professional sports needs its black hats in the spotlight.

The hypocrites in the NBA may have cried foul about the tactics of our very own “Bad Boys”, the Detroit Pistons of the late-1980s, early-1990s, but without the Pistons donning those black hats, Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls couldn’t have existed.

The Bulls would have been champions but without a certain je ne sais quoi.

The Bulls, in many people’s eyes, returned championship basketball to its rightful place, where the fouls were soft and the personality was vanilla.

Yet, with no Detroit Pistons against whom to root, Jordan’s Bulls would not have been nearly as compelling. They would have been just another superstar-led team who beat back a bunch of faceless inferior opponents—like they were in the middle of the 1990s, when the Pistons were in rebuilding mode.

You remember the Bulls hacking away at the Pistons’ tree trunk until it fell, beating them in the playoffs after three straight years of being schooled—leading to a three-year reign as world champions. But the second three-peat—achieved from 1996-98—wasn’t nearly as juicy, because there was no Black Bart over whom to triumph.

The NFL needs the Dallas Cowboys to be good and of championship caliber. It’s fun to root against an organization ostentatiously dubbed “America’s Team” without the rest of our permission. The Red Wings—sorry to break this to the “Hockeytown” faithful—aren’t the darlings that you think they are, across North America, outside of Detroit.

Far from it, in fact. The Red Wings’ loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 2009 Stanley Cup Finals was triumph over tragedy, as far as the majority of hockey fans were concerned.

The NBA needs the Boston Celtics circling over the rest of the league. Or the Los Angeles Lakers; they’ll do, too.

And baseball needs the Yankees.

Is the ALCS as interesting if the Yankees aren’t in it?

The World Series certainly isn’t, so how can the ALCS even hope to be?

I’m not a Yankees fan. Not even close. I’ve reveled in their recent playoff foibles, and have chuckled derisively at the abject failure of their superstar Alex Rodriguez as he’s struggled mightily in the first round.

But Rodriguez awoke from his postseason slumber this year, almost single-handedly demolishing the poor Minnesota Twins. And the Yankees are back where they belong.

I’m not a Yankees fan, but I admit to being glad that they’re back in the ALCS. Because while I had some fun at their first round expense, that kind of fun isn’t as grand as watching them possibly go down against the Angels, or better yet, against the Phillies or the Dodgers in the Fall Classic.

The Yankees are the greatest of all our franchises, in any sport, playing in the greatest of our cities. You’re damn right they were U.S. Steel in Joe E. Brown’s day, and they’re damn well Microsoft—or Comcast—in these modern times.

Pick a decade and the Yankees were likely in a World Series, or several, during it.

It all started with the iconic Ruth in the 1920s, and continued with the Yankees teams of Dickey and Gomez of the 1930s, those of DiMaggio in the 1940s, and with the 1950s squads of Berra and Mantle and Ford. It lapped into the first half of the 1960s as well, with names like Richardson and Maris and Howard joining the fray.

Who can forget what Reggie Jackson did to the Dodgers in 1977, with his three homers on three straight pitches off three different pitchers in the decisive game six?

Finally, in the 1980s, the streak of at least one Yankees World Series victory in every decade ended, although they did make it to the 1981 Series.

It started back up again in the 1990s with three world titles, and the 2000s were also soiled by a Yankees triumph, over the cross town Mets in 2000.

Now, the Yankees have the chance to bookend the decade of the 2000s with World Series wins, before we get into the 2010s next year.

The Yankees are Notre Dame football, Comcast, the Boston Celtics, the Republicans, and the Detroit Red Wings all wrapped into one.

Welcome back to late-October, old, hateful friend.

GM Dave Dombrowski Culpable for Tigers' Sticky Wicket

Greg Eno — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:32:47 -0400

David Dombrowski has been President/GM of the Tigers for eight baseball seasons, and just what has the team accomplished?

One playoff appearance.

DD is 1-for-8, and that’s a .125 BA—something that even Gerald Laird would scoff at.

It’s time to take a serious look at how Dombrowski has been minding the store.

It’s one thing to miss the playoffs; it’s quite another to do so consistently in a notoriously weak division. It’s yet another to do it whilst frittering away the owner’s money like it grows on trees.

The Tigers, thanks to Dombrowski’s questionable generosity of the past, are on the hook for a whole lot of Mike Ilitch’s pizza dough spent on just a handful of players.

Nate Robertson. Jeremy Bonderman. Dontrelle Willis. On just those three mostly ineffective pitchers alone, the Tigers must cough up millions of bucks annually.

We laughed at DD’s predecessor, Randy Smith, for ham-handed contract negotiations with the likes of Bobby Higginson, who was over-rewarded after his 2000 season, and for the pathetic courting of Juan Gonzalez—a contract that Ilitch ought to drop to his knees every night to thank God that it never materialized.

But Smith, in retrospect, just appears to be Dave Dombrowski Lite.

That’s not a compliment to either man, by the way.

The Tigers are in a trick box this offseason, and for as much as you’d like to blame the field manager, Jim Leyland—and he’s very culpable, too—the core of their troubles can be traced to Dombrowski.

In fairness, you can pretty much wipe away the first two of his seasons in Detroit, coming off Smith’s disastrous run, which culminated in the horrific 43-119 season of 2003.

You can also give Dombrowski props for luring Pudge Rodriguez to the Tigers, even though Pudge wasn’t exactly being flooded with offers at the time.

There was the Ugueth Urbina-for-Placido Polanco trade of 2005, which was among the very best and most lopsided in franchise history.

Beyond that?

This is a “what have you done for me lately?” business, and lately hasn’t been filled with Dombrowski’s finest hours.

The trades have been spotty in their success. The free agent signings have been similarly pocked. Contract extensions have been doled out with frightening recklessness.

The Central Division has never been a powerhouse grouping. Any division with the Kansas City Royals served up 18 times for consumption to each of the other teams can’t be taken too seriously. Not to mention the Tigers.

If you’re the White Sox or the Twins or the (until this season) Indians, and you got to play the Tigers and the Royals 36 times every season, that meant a guaranteed 20-25 wins (at least) per season until 2006, when the Tigers finally woke up.

The Tigers had no semblance of an offense in 2009, albeit partly due to some players underachieving (yes, I’m looking at you, Curtis Granderson). Yet Dombrowski’s efforts to bring bats in from outside the organization were laughable.

Aubrey Huff will go down as a poster child for Dombrowski’s bungling.

When it was clear that Huff was gagging under the sheer force of pennant race pressure, being swallowed whole by it, DD still had time to pick someone off the scrap heap. That player wouldn’t have been playoff eligible—he would have joined the team after Sept. 1—but so what?

The Tigers added Matt Stairs in mid-September in 2006, and Matt hit a key home run in the final weekend series against the Royals to send a game into extra innings.

The Baltimore Orioles, in 1974, added ex-Tiger Jim Northrup in the final two weeks, and Fox went 4-for-7, helping the O’s cross the finish line ahead of the Yankees.

So it can be done.

But Dombrowski treated the Sept. 1 date as if it was some sort of force field beyond which he couldn’t make any more moves.

Dombrowski ought to thank his lucky stars that he works for a generous owner who is loathe to fire anyone. In lots of other towns, DD would have been long gone.

Dombrowski, in eight years, has fired a GM (Smith) and two managers (Luis Pujols and Alan Trammell), and all the franchise has to show for that and all the personnel moves is one postseason appearance—and the 2006 Tigers tried mightily to cough that one up, too.

Now the Tigers may not be able to add to their burgeoning payroll thanks to Dombrowski’s painting them into a corner financially.

This is, like all the other ones, a crucial offseason. The 2010 Tigers are likely not going to look all that much like the 2009 version. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing will pretty much be up to what Dave Dombrowski does from between now and February.

How confident are YOU?

Detroit's Spanking from Buffalo Could Leave Positive Mark on Red Wings

Greg Eno — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:02:24 -0400

The Red Wings got a good, old-fashioned facewash Tuesday night in Buffalo. A regular butt kicking. The Sabres booted the Red Wings halfway back to Detroit, using a second period, four-goal barrage to beat them, 6-2.

It was utter, total annihilation, dropping the team to 2-3 on the season.

And that’s a good thing.

Don’t look at me that way. Send back the men in the white jackets. Put the thermometer away. I’m fine, I swear.

When a team has had as much success as the Red Wings have had since, oh, 1991, it’s not a bad thing to get your nose rubbed into the ice surface on occasion—to remind you that laurels are great for reminiscing about but not something on which you rest.

The Red Wings are going to have to earn it this season. For real this time.

This is still a 100+ point hockey team, and is still a Stanley Cup contender. Legitimately, as they say. Any unit that can trot out the forwards the Red Wings can, not to mention the top four defensemen that they have, is a threat to hoist the chalice in June. Period, no matter what the haters out there might have you believe.

They lost a lot of players to free agency and injury, but the Red Wings also happened to have been the deepest team in the league, so now it’s time to prove it. And they will.

But that imaginary gap, the one that has long separated the Red Wings from the rest of the league, is shrinking, and fast. Again, not a bad thing.

The Sabres dominated the Red Wings in just about every area, even faceoffs, and you wonder which is the stronger emotion for the Wings today—anger or surprise.

If it’s a mixture of both, then the Sabres’ win might just be what the Red Wings needed.

The season opened with a couple of unseemly losses overseas, in Sweden. Then some home cooking corrected things for two games. Now, in the first “real” road game of the season, the Red Wings got spanked.

Hard work is going to have to trump talent this season. A champion’s will to show everyone that it’s far too early to declare them also-rans is going to have to bob to the surface.

And yes, some anger is fine. Hurt pride can be a springboard to righting the ship.

The Red Wings got waylaid in Buffalo, and they’re smart enough to know that it will happen more and more, if they don;t correct their play.

“They were better than us,” coach Mike Babcock said of the Sabres. “In all areas. They were just better.”

But the Red Wings are still better than the Sabres, and are better than just about all the teams in the league, on most nights.

They’re just going to have to work harder to prove it, is all.

And that’s not a bad thing.

Just Like That, Steel Curtain Closes On Lions' Chances

Greg Eno — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:50:25 -0400

They say more NFL games than you know come down to a handful of plays. The talent level, supposedly, is so close from team to team that in any given game, wins and losses are often decided by maybe no more than three or four percent of the total number of plays run.

Usually, though, those three or four plays are scattered throughout the game’s sixty minutes. They’re rarely bunched together, rat-a-tat-tat, at the end of the match.

But that’s exactly what happened at Ford Field—a.k.a. Heinz Field North—on Sunday as the Pittsburgh Steelers fended off the Lions, 28-20.

The Steelers sacked Lions QB Daunte Culpepper three straight times within the final 90 seconds of regulation, turning a 1st-and-10 from the Steelers’ 21 into 4th-and-34 from their 45, thus sealing the victory.

Only the Lions could turn such a golden opportunity for a tying score into a desperate, Hail Mary situation in a matter of seconds.

Well, the Lions—and the Steelers themselves.

This is no ordinary defense, the one they have in Pittsburgh. Pro Bowler James Harrison spent almost as much time in the Lions backfield as running back Kevin Smith. The Steelers pressured Culpepper more than what the Hoover Dam deals with every day.

And the Lions have no ordinary offensive line. In fact, they’d kill for ordinary, because they’re still not quite at mediocre yet.

And you hoped that Matthew Stafford would play on Sunday? Heck, we might be eulogizing him this morning.

Culpepper, though, didn’t exactly show much elusiveness in that final drive, which was surprisingly punctuated by a couple of nice catches by rookie Derrick Williams. Daunte may have lost a lot of weight, but he went down sometimes if he was breathed on funny.

Sadly, he picked a couple of those times during that fateful three-play stretch. Steelers DB William Gay blitzed on the third sack, and clipped Culpepper with his arms, and the Lions QB plopped to the turf, his attempt at avoiding Gay about the most pathetic you’ll ever see.

Would Stafford have done better? Even if he had—on that play—let’s just say that the kid picked a good game to miss.

And the Steelers fans picked a good game not to miss.

They came in droves to Detroit, and if there was a home field advantage for the Lions, it was a trickle—the Steelers fans filtering it capably.

But it was because of those Steelers zealots that the game was sold out in time for the NFL to lift the blackout.

Which meant, of course, that we were lucky enough to see those three rat-a-tat-tat sacks that effectively squashed the Lions’ hopes of tying the game.

Steelers defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau, the former Lion, is up for Hall of Fame consideration. It’s debatable whether it’s more for his exploits on the field or on the sidelines. But in about 30 seconds on Sunday, LeBeau sealed his induction, as far as I’m concerned.

Those three sacks should go down in Steelers lore, albeit them coming against the—no pun intended—sad-sack Lions. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a team change a game so definitively and so dramatically, so quickly and so late?

That’s a lot of “sos,” I know, but goodness gracious—LeBeau dialed up the pressure and his players responded, big time.

Ahh, players. The Steelers, like most NFL teams save a handful, have more good ones than the Lions have. But the Lions showed some moxie, making big plays on both sides of the ball and converting 11-of-18 third downs, which is their new thing this year.

DB William James had a “pick six” for the Lions, and I think the last one of those might be Shaun Rogers’ long gallop against the Denver Broncos at Ford Field, two years ago.

But Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger completed 13 passes in a row after James’ interception, proving why he’s one of the game’s greats. The elite guys bounce back like super balls following such duress.

As for the Lions, despite the new cast of characters, you still don’t get the feeling that any late-game drives are going to end up positively, such as Sunday’s. And you won’t, until they actually start to occur. But here’s the rub: I think they might, sooner rather than later.

The o-line is bad, but the Lions put a scare into the Steelers without Calvin Johnson, injured earlier. The playcalling is the main reason; o-coordinator Scott Linehan calls a good game, for the most part. Until the Lions get reinforcements on the line, they’ll struggle, but the talent level and Linehan’s mind will just have to combine for at least one heroic, late-game drive this year.

The Steelers fans who piled into their vehicles and made the trek to Detroit went home happy.

You can only wonder when you can start saying that with any consistency about the hometown folks, whose twenty, thirty minute jaunts have seemed longer than the one from Detroit to Pittsburgh in recent years.

Red Wings' Enforcer Dennis Polonich Never Same After Brutal Attack

Greg Eno — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:49:58 -0400

Red Wings coach Mike Babcock, as he is wont to do, succinctly summarized why his team had signed Brad May to a contract.

“We had him for a few exhibition games and no one bothered our guys,” Babcock said. “Then we didn’t have him and people started taking some liberties.

“I don’t mind it when tough guys are tough guys. But when guys who aren’t tough start playing tough, that drives me crazy. And we’d seen enough of that.”

So the Red Wings found May, a 37-year-old notorious tough guy, on the scrap heap a couple weeks ago, gave him a tryout in the preseason, and signed him to a one-year deal the afternoon of the team’s home opener Thursday.

“May provides something that no one else on the team does,” Babcock continued, ever the pragmatist. “So he’ll always have a role.”

Tough guy. Enforcer. They used to call them policemen, back when I first started following hockey in the late-1960s, early-1970s.

Babcock has often said that players like May “keep the flies off” the more skilled, star guys.

Once upon a time, the skilled, star guys functioned as their own bodyguards.

You think Gordie Howe needed someone to keep the flies off him? Ted Lindsay was another who could score as well as fight.

Bobby Hull could take care of himself. So could Johnny Bucyk and Rocket Richard. And many others.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, we lost that triple threat hockey player—one who could check, score, and fight.

The Red Wings employed one such pugnacious, tenacious little guy in the 1970s named Dennis Polonich.

Polo, they called him. No one said hockey nicknames were overly creative.

Polonich was a homegrown Red Wing, drafted by the team in the eighth round in 1973 and nurtured through the minor league system. He must have had that Napoleonic Complex, because Polo was all of 5'6" and that measurement was surely taken while he was on skates.

Polonich was a Red Wing in the thick of the worst stretch the franchise ever had, in terms of success on the ice. He played on teams that were cringe-inducing in their ineptitude.

But Dennis Polonich could play hockey a little bit, in addition to being the team’s resident tough guy. He was a triple threat, indeed. No Henrik Zetterberg, but not an unskilled hack, either.

A quick check of hockey-reference.com confirms my suspicions.

In 1976-77, Polonich scored 19 goals. The following season, 16. And that was despite being whistled for 528 minutes in penalties in those two seasons combined.

Then Polonich’s career changed.

It was in October, 1978—the Red Wings entertaining a team called the Colorado Rockies, the hockey version, pre-baseball.

Another triple threat player named Wilf Paiement tangled with Polonich and words were exchanged. Your typical heat-of-the-moment hockey stuff. Shortly thereafter, Paiement and Polonich met again on the ice. Things escalated, as they tend to do.

It all happened so quickly.

Paiement took his stick—by all accounts with two hands near the top, and swung. His aim was for Polonich’s face, and he connected.

Polonich went down in a heap, in a flash, and it was so fast that many at Olympia Stadium didn’t even see what had happened.

The result of Paiement’s stick swinging was not only a league reprimand of 15 games worth of suspension, but also a lawsuit filed by Polonich against his attacker.

The violent thwack of Paiement’s stick against Polonich’s head only caused Polo to miss 18 games in the 1978-79 season, which was amazing considering the magnitude of the attack, which had left him with a concussion, severe facial lacerations, and a broken nose that required reconstructive surgery—resulting in lifelong breathing problems.

He was never the same.

Polonich scored 10 goals that season, played just 109 NHL games after that, and scored a grand total of four more goals in those 109 matches, after scoring 55 goals in his previous 277 contests.

Before Wilf Paiement rearranged his face, Polonich was a tough guy who could score on occasion and who “kept the flies off” the Red Wings’ more skilled players—and they had precious few in those days.

But after, Polonich was a shell of his former self. He still accumulated some penalty minutes, but not as many and his fights were less frequent. He just wasn’t the same, period—physically or mentally. He was out of the NHL by 1982—the same year in which Polonich finally collected some money from Paiement—an $850,000 settlement.

Some who would know say that Paiement’s attack on Polonich was the most violent act ever committed in an NHL game.

But because of Polo’s reputation as an instigator and pest, he wasn’t exactly portrayed as the traditional victim, despite the horrific nature of the attack. There was a lot of “he got what he deserved” from those around the NHL.

In Detroit, the fans loved Dennis Polonich. He was a shrimp but he didn’t hesitate to take on the biggest and baddest that the NHL had to offer. Go to YouTube and type his name in the search box and have some fun.

The Broad Street Bullies themselves, the Philadelphia Flyers, would invade Olympia and those were some fantastic wars—despite the distance between the two teams in the standings. When the Flyers came to Detroit, blood was shed and the Red Wings often won the game.

And Polonich often led the charge, engaging Dave Schultz or Moose Dupont or Bob Kelly in some rock ‘em, sock ‘em fisticuffs.

All that went away after Paiement used his stick as a golf club and Polonich’s head as the teed up ball.

Brad May, today’s Red Wings enforcer, is to make certain that no nonsense goes on involving the Zetterbergs and Datsyuks and Lidstroms. Not on his watch, anyway.

May is still in the NHL at age 37 because his kind is a coveted asset.

Dennis Polonich only played in the NHL until he was 29, but would have played longer, likely, if it wasn’t for Wilf Paiement.

Polo probably would have given the 850 grand back in exchange for remaining an impact player.

Few things are sadder in hockey than an enforcer who doesn’t scare anybody anymore.