Murphy's Law

When Reggie Jackson ruled The Big Apple he famously referred to himself as “the straw that stirs the drink.”

Dan Shaughnessy, the controversial columnist for The Boston Globe, has never been loved by many, and he has long been loathed by more than a few (fans and especially players).

Here is a guy who could not complain enough when the team was filled with “characters” like Manny, Damon, Millar and especially Schilling. Now? Arguably they’ve bid adieu to some distractions (Damon, Lugo) and ran out of rope with malcontents (Manny) and did their best to retain delusional free agents (Jason Bay) and picked up gamers who do their talking on the field (Beltre, Lackey) and are now comprised, practically top to bottom, of winners. So who shows up today, whining that the team has become bland? Guess who.

Shaughessy has officially become the anti-Reggie Jackson: he is the stick that stirs the shit.

In recent weeks he has predicted that the upcoming Josh Beckett contract negotiations will end badly. He has giddily wondered if Big Papi is done and how bitter Mike Lowell will be in 2010. He has happily jumped on the naysayer bandwagon about how poor the team’s offensive production is likely to be (as in: they didn’t/couldn’t land a big bomber in the offseason; of course, the song was near the top in runs scored last year so this sudden teeth-gnashing about run production is hysterical at best). He has, in short, been a man in frantic search of a controversy.

I know, you might say. This is what columnists do; it’s their job. Nevermind the fact that this is a poor commentary on what newspaper writers do these days. The point here is that Shaughnessy is slowly but irrevocably being exposed as the most opportunistic of hypocrites. He made a career out of lamenting/celebrating “the Curse of the Bambino”, and then sort of tolerating the good times (for non-fans or people not paying attention, The Red Sox have been to the postseason every season but one since 2003, winning two World Series in the process) but breathlessly pointing out every hiccup and hurt feeling. And, when there was not enough readymade action, he would always foment some. It’s what he lived for. A guy who could not say enough bad things about Manny or Curt, he now invokes both as being the exact type of flavor the team now lacks. The mind boggles. But it really doesn’t. This is Shaughnessy. This is what he does.

Look: if the team is merely a perennial playoff contender who steers clear of me-first prima donnas, I will speak for old school Sox fans everywhere by saying, Great! If there was one thing real fans could have done without the last decade or so, it was the proliferation of pink hat-wearing bandwagon jumpers. It’s safe to assume that so long as the team continues to win, this element will happily attach themselves, but if some of them (per Shaughnessy’s projections) fall by the wayside, all the better. Besides, they’ve really been rooting for the wrong team anyway: if you want bottomless pocketed ownership and me-first mercenaries, there is a team that just opened a very big stadium in the Bronx. In fact, it’s in the shadow of the old stadium Reggie Jackson used to enliven. Maybe that’s the same spot Shaughnessy should have been all these years.

When I was growing up, Larry Bird was by far my favorite athlete. His capacity for heroics, it often seemed, was limitless. I’ve celebrated that love affair here and here.

When I became a man I put away childish things. But as any adult knows, sports are anything but childish.

Over the years, I’ve admired and adored a great many athletes, including Olaf Kolzig, Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez and (semi) hometown hero Cal Ripken Jr. But there has not been a single athlete, since Bird, who has so regularly made me giddy, proud and more than occasionally ecstatic.

Which brings me to Alexander Ovechkin, the man who is quite possibly the best leader on any sports team right now. In fact, he’s quickly making a case for being the best athlete in any sport (and I say that knowing the world is currently graced by geniuses named Kobe, Lebron, Peyton and Pujols). I have never seen a player carry a team so consistently, so willingly, so happily.

Above everything else, I cherish Alexander Ovechkin for the way he is able to make me feel like a little kid almost every time I watch him. And like all the truly elite players of any era, he elevates his game and rises to the occasion when the stakes ae highest and the lights brightest.

D.C. is slowly and steadily beginning to realize (the hockey fans –all ten of us– knew right away) that he is a once-in-a-lifetime type franchise player that you can, and should, build a dynasty around. Surpassing Caps fans’ highest expectations, Leonsis, McPhee and Co. have done exactly that. Like Bird, Ovie has taken a joke of a team and turned it around almost single handedly. That, along with the depth of an excellent farm system, has stocked this team with young, hungry and extremely capable players. To this point Ovie has done everything: Rookie of the Year, MVP, scoring leader. Everything except hoisting the Stanley Cup (that may well have happened last year had it not been for eternal Achilles Heel the Pittsburgh Penguins). Is this going to be the year? Maybe. Not for nothing are the Capitals the team with the most points in the NHL, an achievement this organization has never experienced this late in a season. They are, in my estimation, one surly and veteran defenseman away from being the team to beat this spring (trade deadline acquisition?), but whether they do it this year or not, it is all but a certainty that they will be contenders for the forseeable future. Imagine that! Any fan of any team, in almost any city, knows not to take this for granted. After the empty and sobering stretch of futility our teams have suffered since the Redskins last got a ring (January 1992!), many local sports fans know enough to celebrate this good fortune.

All of that would almost be academic if Ovechkin was not so exhilarating to watch. He doesn’t just win (!), he does so in dramatic and often inimitable fashion. Just look at what he did today, against arch-nemesis Pittsburgh, to keep the winning streak alive (!!). This is not a man we are watching anymore; he has become a combination of Santa Claus, Superman and Peter Pan. I’m a grown man and have learned not to hope for the impossible or pray for divine intervention. Fortunately, the player who may end up being the best athlete ever keeps giving us all things we don’t even think to ask for.

I’ve heard of bringing a knife to a gun fight. But bringing a gun to a…locker room fight? Leave it to the clown prince of the NBA’s most dysfunctional franchise, Gilbert Arenas, to make the woeful Wizards even more of a laughingstock than they already are.

Perhaps by now you’ve heard about the latest, most inconceivable (even by this team’s astonishing standards) setback to The Wizard’s image? If not, read it now and believe me later. Stupid story short: Arenas and teammate Javaris Crittenton allegedly brought guns into the locker room, due to a festering dispute over…a bet. This is one of those incidents where even if only 25% of it is true, it’s still beyond the pale, and if Wizards management wants to avoid irreparable damage, Gilbert’s role in this farce must be treated as intolerable.

(Unfortunately, and adding insult to injury, it is impossible to overlook the fact that the only thing consistent about Arenas since he signed his outrageous contract has been his mouth. The oft-injured, mentally fragile superstar is the ultimate conundrum: a true heart and soul type player except when he doesn’t feel like it, or is not taking months at a time off due to injuries. The type of charismatic superstar who can carry a team, except that he is too busy being a clubhouse cancer. The prototypical prima donna whose act, like most athletes invariably realize too late, is no longer quirky or cute when they fail to deliver on the court: when you are making tons of cash on an imploding team and pull a stunt like this, it is –and should be– virtual career suicide. Except that Arenas is likely in little danger of losing his pay-day, and even if The Wizards cut him loose, plenty of other teams would scramble to secure his services. In this regard, pro sports reaps what it sows; but as long as the bottom line is bustling, it’s a win-win for everyone, right?)

Arenas, in the uniform he's worn most often in recent years

A cliche, unfortunately, cannot be overlooked at this moment: thank goodness Abe Pollin did not live to witness this embarrassment. Pollin, of course, was the man who was entirely responsible for building a once-respectable franchise. It didn’t happen quickly or easily, but after some ugly years, the team actually managed to win it all (in ‘78, led by the incomparable Wes Unseld and inspired by coach Dick Motta who famously declared “It ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings”, which became an immediate and ubiquitous rallying cry for underdogs everywhere in the sports world). Keep in mind, this was several years before Joe Gibbs rolled into town and started the Redskins dynasty of the ’80s; in 1978 Washington was a pro sports black hole and the Bullets’ championship was the first crown the city captured in 36 years.

Many barren years (and inexplicable, unbelievable draft picks) followed. Then Pollin, in 1995, made the controversial decision to rename the team. It was decried as a cynical marketing ploy, but there were plenty of folks who insisted that Pollin was being completely sincere when he bemoaned the fact that his team’s moniker was unacceptable when so many gun-related deaths were occurring in the city. The dead-on-arrival decision to go with the name Wizards notwithstanding, it was, then –and remains, now– a pretty bold and admirable, if largely symbolic gesture.

So…now we have the team’s most highly paid (but not most important, since we have class acts and ever-reliable anchors named Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison) player makes news for…a gun-related infraction. In the team locker room. With a teammate who has not played a single minute this season. Talk about the gunfight at the They’re-Not-OK Corral.

Hey Gilbert, here’s an idea: if you have a beef, put away the iron phallus and throw down like a man. (And I’m not in any way saying that two grown men fist-fighting is appropriate or mature, but when itchy trigger fingers abetted by gangsta fantasies are the first resort, this is not only childish, but craven. And no soap-box hysteria is necessary to assert that incidents like this one epitomize a backwards and dangerous de-evolution of American culture: everyone can agree on that, right?)

What a punk.

And how sad that his nickname, Agent Zero, would turn out to be so fitting, for all the wrong reasons.

Olaf Kolzig was not merely the goalie and de facto captain of the Washington Capitals from 1996 through 2008. He was the Capitals. His ascendancy not so coincidentally accompanied the team’s first (and only) trip to the Stanley Cup finals. They lost to the Detroit Red Wings, but that was a foregone conclusion: circa 1998, God could have been the opposing goalie and the Wings would have found ways to win. Perhaps more importantly, Olie the Goalie, also known as Godzilla, remained the face of the franchise when they eventually fell on hard times after the 2003 season (a season when they were stacked with talent and laden with the mercurial Jaromir Jagr who mostly underwhelmed and underachieved during his very expensive tenure in D.C.). Olie, at that point could –and perhaps should– have headed for more winning, not to mention lucrative, destinations. But he made it a point that he hoped to play his entire career as a Capital. He was a first rate goalie and a first class guy the entire time. Indeed, it got to the point in the middle of this decade where it was fair to say the franchise didn’t deserve him.

But he never complained and once the team started to assemble some young, precious talent (including the incendiary Alexander Ovechkin, a lottery jackpot the team earned by being so awful in the aftermath of Jagr’s unceremonious departure; a very large blessing in disguise that saved the team money and made them bad enough to land that coveted pick: the rest is history unfolding before our eyes), he was a mentor and a role model.

Kolzig, for all his heroics on the ice, has (and will) arguably make a more significant mark off it. Anyone who has even a passing interest in hockey is well aware that Olie has been a steady and dedicated advocate in the fight to cure autism. In fact, he co-founded Athletes Against Autism to promote awareness and raise funds for research (Kolzig’s son has autism, which initially drew him to the cause). His impact was indelible and he is one of those rare athletes who actually makes a difference. It’s easy to imagine him taking on an even more active role now that he’ll have some well-earned time on his hands. (I could also envision him as a very effective commentator should the networks come calling.)

It was probably inevitable, and definitely unfortunate, but Kolzig did not end his career in D.C. and the end was not pretty (it seldom is). Pushed aside, understandably, because his replacement could not lose during that incredible stretch run leading into the 2008 playoffs, Kolzig bristled. This was a tough one for true fans. Hockey is such a streaky sport, and goaltenders ride streaks like no other position in any sport (baseball pitchers cannot pitch in consecutive games; football games are weeks apart, and basketball players can be on fire one night and ice cold the next and it won’t necessarily derail the team’s chances): in hockey, if you have a hot goalie you can win. If you don’t, you will lose. So nobody could deny that Olaf watching from the bench was unfair, but it was unfair in the way that life is unfair; it was business, not personal. Nevertheless, the proverbial writing was on the wall: the team was getting younger and faster, and Kolzig, after holding down the fort for more than a decade, was not long for this town. He left in a cloud of acrimony, more likely because of his pride and competitive juices. Still, the team could have handled it better, and Caps fanatics held out hope that when the time came they would do the right thing.

The time has come. Without hesitation, ask Kolzig to retire as a Capital and raise that jersey to the rafters. Kolzig is not only unquestionably worthy of this honor, it’s literally the least this franchise (and city) can do for him. He is, without any possible exception –including the beloved Rod Langway– the most important player in Capitals history. Period, end of discussion. He was a local treasure for years and for the majority of those games near the end he was the only reason to watch the team. In some regards, his stewardship and integrity helped pave the path for success the team seems set to skate on for quite some time. Bring him into the fold, welcome him home, and give him the public honor he so richly deserves.

It’s about time. Congrats, Jim.

The man once broke a bat on a check swing: that alone should have ensured him enshrinement in the hall. He was a very bad man and two things, above all, need to be said: if he doesn’t get hurt late in the season in ‘75, the Red Sox absolutely beat the Reds in the World Series. 100% And, all of his accomplishments are untainted by performance enhancing drugs. He did it right and he did it clean: he defines old school.
On a personal note, the first home run I ever saw live was at Fenway Park in 1977, against the Seattle Mariners. The man who hit it was at the time the most feared slugger in professional baseball: Jim Rice.

It’s a great day for Rice, and a great day for Red Sox fans.

The clothesline heard ’round the world 

Twenty-five years ago. Long enough to officially make it a classic. But, of course, it was a classic even as it was being played. Sports writers and fans can be forgiven, in this one instance, to invoke words like “war” to describe the NBA finals that year, a seven game masterpiece ultimately won by the Celtics, in the old Boston Garden.

Bob Ryan,the estimable dean of Beantown sports scribes, deserves kudos for his invocation of the series in today’s Boston Globe. He focuses on the (truly) pivotal Game 5, played in the infamously un-air conditioned Garden in the midst of an unseasonably scorching East coast heat wave. To a fourteen year old Irish Catholic altar boy (who worshipped at the altar of Larry Bird), it was as though God was proving that He was a Celtics fan and was providing some Old Testament fire and brimstone to test the mettle of the two teams; epitomized by Larry Bird’s blue collar grit and Magic Johnson’s L.A. cool: forget about facile Hollywood facsimiles of ancient Gladiator combat; this is as close as we could legally get to emulating that barbaric crucible of competition. (Did I mention that I was fourteen?)

Each team had already made statements; the momentum had swung at least three times. It was now a best of three, and as is invariably the case in a series like this, the outcome would likely be swung to the favor of whoever could secure a game five victory. Who was going to step up? Keep in mind, in the ’80s you were either a Lakers fan or you were a Celtics fan. There were other teams in the NBA, obviously, but for a long stretch of that great decade, it seemed like each season was an extended formality: we collectively bided our time until everyone else got out of the way and let the two teams go hammer and tong for the title. A couple of months ago, I recounted what this rivalry was like for a fan in the prime of his formative sports-loving life here.

I’ll happily step out of the way and let Ryan remember it best; he was there, after all:

Referee Hugh Evans had to leave at halftime, a victim of dehydration. Robert Parish sat out a stretch of the second half with leg cramps. But there was one player who applied mind over matter better than everyone else, one player who not only overcame the circumstances to play a good game of basketball, but who so took to the conditions that he played one of the great games of his life.

Give up it up for the Garden, and old school:

Best series ever.

“Those summer days…”

Not much to add to that photo. Especially if you are a Red Sox (or, HA!, a Yankees) fan.

Curt is finally calling it quits.

In his own time, on his own terms, Curt rides off into that sunset. Here’s to hoping he does work in the broadcast booth and avoids making a high-profile buffoon of himself via his prehistoric political views. Even if he never surfaces in the public eye (or ear) again, admittedly a most unlikely proposition, he will endure long in the hearts and minds of anyone who cheered for the teams he helped win. Especially the team he ended his career with.

At the end of the day, as always, this is a little kids’ game and it’s ludicrous that grown-ups with serious responsibilities and worries take it so seriously. But we do take it seriously. And, arguably, no group of fans took it more seriously, and suffered more for their devotion, than the Red Sox fans circa 1918 to 2004. I can only claim being a fan for part of that time, but it was a sizeable enough chunk to cover the “unholy trinity”; the tri-fecta that includes the Bucky Bleepin’ Dent game (‘78), the Bill Buckner Game 6 Debacle (‘86) and the Aaron Bleepin’ Boone HR (‘03). It was, of course, scarcely a month after that irredeemable evening in the Bronx (that infernal house of horrors that is thankfully gone for good), that the boy wonder, Theo Epstein, intruded upon Schilling’s Thanksgiving in Arizona and made his pitch to the pitcher he (we) coveted. It worked, and Schill, in his brazen fashion, quickly drew a line in the sand regarding the “Evil Empire”: I’m not sure I can think of any scenario more enjoyable than making 55,000 people from New York shut up, he said, transforming himself into a hero in Boston (and public enemy Number One in New York). Of course, talking the talk is what anyone with a mouth can do; walking the walk…well, let’s just say bloody sock and leave it at that.

2004 (and 2007 for that matter) would not have been possible without Curt Schilling. Period. For that, anyone who ever has or ever will call themselves Red Sox fans owe the Great 38 their eternal gratitude.

mwine122: What do you make of this:

mwine122: (from Chris Kraus’ introductory essay from Pornocracy, the novel that is a companion piece to Catherine Breillat’s film, Anatomy of Hell)

mwine122: ” If a wedding is ‘the most important day of a woman’s life’ (Bride Magazine) it is because it serves as an affirmation of her as a woman [ital.].

mwine122: Perhaps accurately, now that the culture has only inertia to offer, this generation perceives marriage and its ensuing spawn of the nuclear family as the only acheivable utopia.”

mwine122: This fascinates me because there is the parallel chant, from the Oprah crowd and the therapy crowd that “marriage takes WORK!”

bullmurph: i’d say that’s a bit over the top and pointy headed

bullmurph: but there are major elements of truth

mwine122: So, I find it an interesting project to try to reconcile this workaday attitude toward marriage that I hear a lot more of… and the idea that it’s the only thing a modern woman can “make perfect” in her own life…

mwine122: eeek.

mwine122: I’m gonna run back into my molehole now.

bullmurph: ha! moleholes are safe, huh?

mwine122: safer than marriage beds/

bullmurph: i’d be curious to read about weddings in other countries; i wonder if the utter obsession with the wedding day is a distinctly american phenomenon

bullmurph: i.e. i’ve seen VERY rational, even “frugal” women get totally wrapped up and whacked out over it

bullmurph: like “this is MY day”

mwine122: well, it’s interesting because Breillat is VERY French

bullmurph: but i wonder if it says more about americans than “women”

bullmurph: (i’m saying this to try to cut women as a group some slack)

mwine122: and both the movie and the book are Fuh-RENCH!

mwine122: the essayist, however, is painfully American…

bullmurph: i still think i’m on to something here…

mwine122: and personally, I think he gives Breillat too much congratulation. I was kind of annoyed by the film. Fascinated, obviously, but interested in why it annoyed me… hence I’m prompted to read the book.

mwine122: I do think you’re onto something– personally, I think the sort of whackiness about weddings has a LOT to do with showing off and class… much more than it does with womanhood– or even, showing off one’s womanhood (i.e., femininity)

bullmurph: agreed

mwine122: it’s more than an affirmation of one’s heterosexual position in the culture– more than about asking for all of one’s family and peers to grant your relationship authenticity, even.

mwine122: The American wedding is all about saying, look what my family can afford.

bullmurph: eh….i think that is too academic a reading

bullmurph: i think you can put it more on the solipsistic nature of americans in general

bullmurph: of course the parents want to show they can afford a nice spread

bullmurph: and the bride wants the whole world there

bullmurph: but it ultimately amounts to SHOW and style over substance

bullmurph: (or else everyone would elope)

mwine122: and a pretty dress.

mwine122: I DO get the pretty dress part.