Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Joe Thornton Traded
It just goes to show you how stupid the Boston Bruins are and what a laughing stock their franchise is. They got three scrubs for Thornton, who in my opinion is one of the top 5 players in the league. I hope they don't win a game the rest of the year. Hell move the Franchise to Quebec. Joey T Gone
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Bucky Dent's Home Run
Let's re-live the moment. I'm already pissed off at the Pats, Celts and Bruins, so let's bring back the moment we like to refer as Bucky "fuc....." Dent!!!
Great Story
ESPN NHL Power Rankings
New England Patriots
Most New England Fans are starting to piss me off, as if the Patriots were suppose to win the damned SuperBowl every year. Most of the forums that I've gone to, about five in the area, are flooded with unknowledgeable fans. But I have to give credit to my guys and gals over at the boston.com forums for knowing what the hell they are talking about. They seem to be true fans and realize the year we are going through. Before 1993, this year would be considered great thus far. New England is in a different world due to their 3 title is 4 years. We'll probably never see it again by any team, but it's been one hell of a ride. I'm not throwing in the towel yet as other great teams could get hit by some key injuries going into the playoffs but I'm here today to say thank you to the Patriots for four great years and hopefully more to come.
Monday, November 28, 2005
Free Sports Picks
Guys, make sure you visit Wolfman Sports for live up to date odds every day and you best not forget about the free sports picks we offer on Sports Underground
StoneCold has been doing this for years, so make sure you catch his free sport picks that he dishes out every day. They won't be free for long. Make sure you join the Forums at Wolfman Sports and talk smack about your favorite teams.
Friday, November 25, 2005
What's Next for the Red Sox
I really like the fact that they got Mota for much needed bullpen help so what's next? Damon's asking price is way to high so adios. Go after Tori Hunter, he's a much better fielder than Damon anyway and has way more upside with the Bat. I would like to see them grab another starter and one more bullpen guy. I would shit if they signed Konerko, go get em!!
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Boston Celtic Pride
Where the hell has it gone? How can a franchise with so much history suck as much as they have the past 15 years? No title in 19 years and clearly no title in sight. I do how ever like the young guys they have established. I'm not about to rank on the NBA because everytime I do I get burnt for it but the NBA has a lot of growing up to do. I understand that the game changes but the game is clearly turned into a thug marketing league. Deal with it and I'll remeber the good old days when winning was a priority, not a 2nd thought.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Yes Boss.....
Well, how the mighty have fallen. What's the Yankees next move? Bring Oil Can Boyd out of retirement? Maybe David Cone? How in the hell did they not get involved in this, I'm shocked. Can you imagine what Steinbrenner is saying to Cashman right about now. "Brian if you don't deliver me a quality starting pitcher that will increase my pitching payroll to over 150 million you're fired". Well by the looks of the picture to my right, Torre may want to re-think his managerial status for next year. Until then, it's going to be a fun winter in Boston.
Monday, November 21, 2005
To my Fellow Yankee Fans....Whatever!!!!
How do you like them apples??? To bad you have Pavano because the Red Sox are about to get the prize stud pitcher of the year when they acquire Josh Beckett from the Marlins. Hey Cashman, how are the shit stains in your tighty whities treating you right about now? After the Boss hears about this you'll be down on all fours in no time. OUT!!!
Beckett Deal almost done!!!!
With this, the Sox will have Schilling, Beckett, Papelbon, Arrojo, Wakefield etc....If Schilling returns to form this is a steal for the Sox. I've been hearing about Hanley Ramirez for about, well it seems like ten years. This is starting to excite me again. I want a youth Movement in Fenway. Lowell's bat is perfect for the monster, he'll hit 50 double and 30+ HR's. If they keep Manny, their line-up is even better. Go Sox!!
Like Coach Dungy said.....
All we are is 10-0. Geek boy led his team to another impressive win on Sunday over the Bengals. Can anybody blitz this guy?? When the Bengals did they rattled Manning. Keep on doing it so he doesn't keep on hitting Dallas Clarke who seemed to be wide open every single passing play. Please put a stop to this but as I said, the Colts will not win it all this year.
Friday, November 18, 2005
Scott Borasshole
When it comes to sports agents I tend to get a little pissed off. These mutants are the sole reason why sports is so screwed up today on so many levels. Scott Borasshole has Johnny Damon convinced that he can get a 7 year deal for 80+ mill. This for a guy with a rag arm and above average bat. I really don't think that Boras is thinking about Damon's future but more is thinking about the percentage he gets per contract. Now is Damon worth 5-6 mill per year for the next 5 years, yes. But realistically Baseball has calmed down on it's bidding wars(excluding the Yanks) and realize that they can follow teams like the A's and build a good farm system and win. But as soon as these young kids have a few years of service in them the Borasshole's of the world take over and screw things up. I guess the days of players staying put with one team is gone. That's sad. Thanks for letting me rant.
Johnny Damon to the Yanks?
If it happens, he'll become the worst hated figure in Boston Sports. I know Steinmart enjoys making the lives of Boston fans feel like crap, but why don't they go after something they actually need like pitching. This is what happens when he runs a ball club and they haven't won a World Series since this happened. I hate the Yankees with a passion and I thoroughly enjoy watching them spend more $$$ every year only to watch them lose in the end. Johnny, if you hear me, you best stay in Boston. It's where you belong.
Three in a row?
Well, what do you think? I've seen the Patriots through the first nine games and I obviously have a lot of questions. Their secondary is horrible and injuries continue to mount. But, they are usually at their best when experts claim they can't do something. Can they do it again? That remains to be seen but I am one person who will NOT bet against them.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Oh Yes!!!!
Tom, please concentrate on the New Orleans/San Antonio/Oklahoma City Saints instead of Bridgette. What were the two of you doing in the Limo anyway? Well here's a little side note for ya, Pats 31 Saints 14. You can bank on that one!!
Gigantic Head Signs Contract
Another over paying Yankee signing. Matsui is good, but not worth 52 mill over 4 years. He's got two good years left in his tank. Hey George, how's Kevin Brown doing? Hideki Matsui
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Alex Rodriguez Esqueer
I caught the pretty boy coming out of the Salon the other day in which he paid $450 for a light frost on the top of his head. Alex, please go to another shrink, your killing me! Not to mention the award you stole from Big Papi.
Nice Look Peyton
Hey Peyton, is this where you went last year after the Patriots knocked your team out of the playoffs.....you may want to look for another destination for this year because your team will not be playing in Detroit.
Is Tom Brady having fun?
Three super bowls, two super bowl MVP's, 9-0 playoff record and oh ya, a hot hollywood girlfriend, freaking priceless!!
Monday, November 14, 2005
Drama Queen
The Theo Epstein saga continues. Can this guy be gone already. I mean for someone who didn't enjoy the glamour of being a rock star figure in Boston, he sure as hell can't keep his ass out of the headlines. Memo to Theo: get the hell out, we don't want you here anymore.
A-Rod wins MVP
Cry Rod beat out David Ortiz in the MVP race today. What the hell were the writers thinking? Alex Rodriguez personifies everything that's wrong with baseball today. It makes me puke that he won. The Red Sox would have suffered greatly without Ortiz. A-Rod pads his stats when they don't count. He's a punk and will never earn respect from anyone but the writers. Hell, New Yorkers don't even respect him. The MLB SUCKS as do you pretty boy. Get another freaking shrink to go along with your other 11. You make me sick and the fact that you won this award makes me never want to watch baseball again!!! Well, at least for a while. Maybe with the bonus that he'll receive from winning the award he can go to a salon and put more frost in his hair, how about that "fag rod"?
Thursday, November 10, 2005
1975 World Series Game Six
Here's a great article written by Peter Gammons about game six back in 1975.
And all of a sudden the ball was there, like the Mystic River Bridge, suspended out in the black of the morning.
When it finally crashed off the mesh attached to the left-field foul pole, one step after another the reaction unfurled: from Carlton Fisk's convulsive leap to John Kiley's booming of the "Hallelujah Chorus'' to the wearing off of numbness to the outcry that echoed across the cold New England morning.
Carlton Fisk motions for the ball he hit in the 12th to stay fair -- and it did.
At 12:34 a.m., in the 12th inning, Fisk's histrionic home run brought a 7-6 end to a game that will be the pride of historians in the year 2525, a game won and lost what seemed like a dozen times, and a game that brings back summertime one more day. For the seventh game of the World Series.
For this game to end so swiftly, so definitely, was the way it had to end. An inning before, a Dwight Evans catch that Sparky Anderson claimed was as great as he's ever seen had been one turn, but in the ninth a George Foster throw ruined a bases-loaded, none-out certain victory for the Red Sox. Which followed a dramatic three-run homer in the eighth by Bernie Carbo as the obituaries had been prepared, which followed the downfall of Luis Tiant after El Tiante had begun, with the help of Fred Lynn's three-run, first-inning homer, as a hero of unmatched majesty.
So Fisk had put the exclamation mark at the end of what he called "the most emotional game I've ever played in.'' The home run came off Pat Darcy and made a winner of Rick Wise, who had become the record 12th pitcher in this 241-minute war that seemed like four score and seven years.
But the place one must begin is the bottom of the eighth, Cincinnati leading, 6-3, and the end so clear. El Tiante had left in the top of the inning to what apparently was to be the last of his 1975 ovations; he who had become the conquering king had been found to be just a man, and it seemed so certain. Autumn had been postponed for the last time.
Only out came an Implausible Hero, to a two-out, two-on situation against Rawlins J. Eastwick III, and Carbo did what he had done in Cincinnati. Pinch hitting, he sent a line drive into the center-field bleachers, and the chill of lachrymose had become mad, sensuous Fenway again. Followed by the point and counterpoint.
In the ninth, a Denny Doyle walk and Carl Yastrzemski single had put runners at first and third, which sent Eastwick away and brought in lefthander Will McEnaney, who walked Fisk to load the bases and pitch to Lynn.
Lynn got the ball to the outfield, but only a high, twisting fly ball down the left-field line that George Foster grabbed at the line and maybe 80 feet in back of third base. Third-base coach Don Zimmer said he told Doyle not to go, but he went anyway, and Foster's throw got to Johnny Bench in time for the double play. As the Red Sox shook their heads, mumbling "bases loaded, nobody out in the ninth,'' the Reds had their hero in Foster, who had put them ahead in the seventh with a two-run double.
Then in the 11th, the Reds had it taken away from them by Dwight Evans. With Ken Griffey at first, one out, Joe Morgan crashed a line drive toward the seats in right. Evans made his racing, web-of-the-glove, staggering catch as he crossed the warning track ("It would have been two rows in'' -- Reds bullpen catcher Bill Plummer), then as Griffey in disbelief stopped halfway between second and third, Evans spun and fired in. Yastrzemski, who had moved to first for Carbo's entrance to left, retrieved it if to the right of the coach's box, looked up, and guess who was standing on first base, waiting for the ball? Rick Burleson, who had raced over from shortstop. So Dick Drago, who worked three scoreless innings, the Red Sox, and a seventh game all had been saved.
When it was over, it was almost incomprehensible that it had begun with Tiant trying to crank out one more miracle. But it had, and for four innings, the evening was all his. They had merchandized "El Tiante'' tee shirts on the streets, they hung a banner that read "Loo-Eee For President'' and everything the man did, from taking batting practice to walking to the bullpen to warm up to the rhumbas and tangos that screwed the Reds into the ground for four innings brought standing ovations and the carol, "Loo-Eee, Loo-Eee ...''
El Tiante had a 3-0 lead from the first inning, when Lynn had followed Yastrzemski and Fisk singles by driving a Gary Nolan kumquat into the bleachers over the pitching mound of the Boston bullpen. Nolan did not last long, followed by a succession of seven, but the Billinghams, Carrolls, and Borbons had apparently done what they had to do.
And the abracadabra that had blinded the Reds before began to smudge. In the fifth, after Boston had lost two scoring opportunites, Luis walked Designated Bunter Ed Armbrister, and before he could hear his father incant Grande Olde Game No. 56 ("Walks ...''), Pete Rose singled and Griffey became the first player in three games here to hit The Wall. Not only was it the first time anyone had scored off Tiant in Fenway in 40 innings, but as the ball caromed away to be retrieved by Evans, the park went silent. In his running, leaping try for the ball at the 379-foot mark, Lynn had crashed into the wall and slid down to the ground, his back hurt.
Lynn eventually was able to stay in the game, but by the time the inning was over Bench had become the second to tickle The Wall, with a single, and it was 3-3. Then when Foster sent his drive off the center-field fence in the seventh, it was 5-3, and when Tiant was left to start the eighth, Cesar Geronimo angled a leadoff home inside the right-field pole, El Tiante left to his chant and his ovations. And in the press box, Sport Magazine editor Dick Schaap began collecting the ballots that determined which Red got the World Series hero's automobile.
So, if the honey and lemon works on the throat and the Alka-Seltzer does the same for the heads, Fenway will not be alone tonight. She has one drama, and it is perhaps sport's classic drama.
Bill Lee and Don Gullett, the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Red Sox, and a long night's journey into morning, a game suspended in time as Fisk's home run was suspended beyond the skyline, a game that perhaps required the four-day buildup it got.
Summertime has been called back for just one more day -- for the seventh game of the World Series.
And all of a sudden the ball was there, like the Mystic River Bridge, suspended out in the black of the morning.
When it finally crashed off the mesh attached to the left-field foul pole, one step after another the reaction unfurled: from Carlton Fisk's convulsive leap to John Kiley's booming of the "Hallelujah Chorus'' to the wearing off of numbness to the outcry that echoed across the cold New England morning.
Carlton Fisk motions for the ball he hit in the 12th to stay fair -- and it did.
At 12:34 a.m., in the 12th inning, Fisk's histrionic home run brought a 7-6 end to a game that will be the pride of historians in the year 2525, a game won and lost what seemed like a dozen times, and a game that brings back summertime one more day. For the seventh game of the World Series.
For this game to end so swiftly, so definitely, was the way it had to end. An inning before, a Dwight Evans catch that Sparky Anderson claimed was as great as he's ever seen had been one turn, but in the ninth a George Foster throw ruined a bases-loaded, none-out certain victory for the Red Sox. Which followed a dramatic three-run homer in the eighth by Bernie Carbo as the obituaries had been prepared, which followed the downfall of Luis Tiant after El Tiante had begun, with the help of Fred Lynn's three-run, first-inning homer, as a hero of unmatched majesty.
So Fisk had put the exclamation mark at the end of what he called "the most emotional game I've ever played in.'' The home run came off Pat Darcy and made a winner of Rick Wise, who had become the record 12th pitcher in this 241-minute war that seemed like four score and seven years.
But the place one must begin is the bottom of the eighth, Cincinnati leading, 6-3, and the end so clear. El Tiante had left in the top of the inning to what apparently was to be the last of his 1975 ovations; he who had become the conquering king had been found to be just a man, and it seemed so certain. Autumn had been postponed for the last time.
Only out came an Implausible Hero, to a two-out, two-on situation against Rawlins J. Eastwick III, and Carbo did what he had done in Cincinnati. Pinch hitting, he sent a line drive into the center-field bleachers, and the chill of lachrymose had become mad, sensuous Fenway again. Followed by the point and counterpoint.
In the ninth, a Denny Doyle walk and Carl Yastrzemski single had put runners at first and third, which sent Eastwick away and brought in lefthander Will McEnaney, who walked Fisk to load the bases and pitch to Lynn.
Lynn got the ball to the outfield, but only a high, twisting fly ball down the left-field line that George Foster grabbed at the line and maybe 80 feet in back of third base. Third-base coach Don Zimmer said he told Doyle not to go, but he went anyway, and Foster's throw got to Johnny Bench in time for the double play. As the Red Sox shook their heads, mumbling "bases loaded, nobody out in the ninth,'' the Reds had their hero in Foster, who had put them ahead in the seventh with a two-run double.
Then in the 11th, the Reds had it taken away from them by Dwight Evans. With Ken Griffey at first, one out, Joe Morgan crashed a line drive toward the seats in right. Evans made his racing, web-of-the-glove, staggering catch as he crossed the warning track ("It would have been two rows in'' -- Reds bullpen catcher Bill Plummer), then as Griffey in disbelief stopped halfway between second and third, Evans spun and fired in. Yastrzemski, who had moved to first for Carbo's entrance to left, retrieved it if to the right of the coach's box, looked up, and guess who was standing on first base, waiting for the ball? Rick Burleson, who had raced over from shortstop. So Dick Drago, who worked three scoreless innings, the Red Sox, and a seventh game all had been saved.
When it was over, it was almost incomprehensible that it had begun with Tiant trying to crank out one more miracle. But it had, and for four innings, the evening was all his. They had merchandized "El Tiante'' tee shirts on the streets, they hung a banner that read "Loo-Eee For President'' and everything the man did, from taking batting practice to walking to the bullpen to warm up to the rhumbas and tangos that screwed the Reds into the ground for four innings brought standing ovations and the carol, "Loo-Eee, Loo-Eee ...''
El Tiante had a 3-0 lead from the first inning, when Lynn had followed Yastrzemski and Fisk singles by driving a Gary Nolan kumquat into the bleachers over the pitching mound of the Boston bullpen. Nolan did not last long, followed by a succession of seven, but the Billinghams, Carrolls, and Borbons had apparently done what they had to do.
And the abracadabra that had blinded the Reds before began to smudge. In the fifth, after Boston had lost two scoring opportunites, Luis walked Designated Bunter Ed Armbrister, and before he could hear his father incant Grande Olde Game No. 56 ("Walks ...''), Pete Rose singled and Griffey became the first player in three games here to hit The Wall. Not only was it the first time anyone had scored off Tiant in Fenway in 40 innings, but as the ball caromed away to be retrieved by Evans, the park went silent. In his running, leaping try for the ball at the 379-foot mark, Lynn had crashed into the wall and slid down to the ground, his back hurt.
Lynn eventually was able to stay in the game, but by the time the inning was over Bench had become the second to tickle The Wall, with a single, and it was 3-3. Then when Foster sent his drive off the center-field fence in the seventh, it was 5-3, and when Tiant was left to start the eighth, Cesar Geronimo angled a leadoff home inside the right-field pole, El Tiante left to his chant and his ovations. And in the press box, Sport Magazine editor Dick Schaap began collecting the ballots that determined which Red got the World Series hero's automobile.
So, if the honey and lemon works on the throat and the Alka-Seltzer does the same for the heads, Fenway will not be alone tonight. She has one drama, and it is perhaps sport's classic drama.
Bill Lee and Don Gullett, the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Red Sox, and a long night's journey into morning, a game suspended in time as Fisk's home run was suspended beyond the skyline, a game that perhaps required the four-day buildup it got.
Summertime has been called back for just one more day -- for the seventh game of the World Series.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Smack Talk
Ok guys, Smack Talk is back. I want to see who is the ultimate trash talker when it comes to sports. I've visited a few Boston forums and have seen the talent. Post your comment in the comments section and the winner will be crowned the Smack Talker of the Week award. The Topic this week is "Peyton Manning", drop me a paragraph on why he won't lead his team to the superbowl this year, and yes, Colt fan is welcome to enter. That means you Toggahh. Out!!
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Colt Fan
Colt Fan is creeping up close on the "Hate Meter" to Yankee Fan. Colt Fan is use to losing big game after big game. Colt Fan has a nerd quarterback, a gold toothed idiot for a running back and a head coach that weighs in at 105 lbs. Colt fan needs to come down to reality because reality is about to bite them all in the arse. Colt Fan was a happy camper last night as the Colts beat my beloved Pats. What did Colt Fan do after the game, I've come up with a few scenarios.
1. Colt Fan went to nerd party to watch Manning Family Direct TV Commercials
2. Colt Fan went to bed, come on, there's no Bars in Indiana, atleast not good ones.
3. Colt Fan gathered together to watch Revenge of the nerds which was based in Indiana and half the movie was filmed in the RCA Dome.
Let's face it, Colt Fan is a wannabe NFL fan. Colt fan doesn't have the knowledge or the players to win it all. The Colts lack heart as do their fans.
Colt Fan, I salute you on your victory last night but you're not even going to the Super Bowl this year, why? Peyton Manning is your QB.
1. Colt Fan went to nerd party to watch Manning Family Direct TV Commercials
2. Colt Fan went to bed, come on, there's no Bars in Indiana, atleast not good ones.
3. Colt Fan gathered together to watch Revenge of the nerds which was based in Indiana and half the movie was filmed in the RCA Dome.
Let's face it, Colt Fan is a wannabe NFL fan. Colt fan doesn't have the knowledge or the players to win it all. The Colts lack heart as do their fans.
Colt Fan, I salute you on your victory last night but you're not even going to the Super Bowl this year, why? Peyton Manning is your QB.
Monday, November 07, 2005
The Pats Defense Sucks
Can this secondary actually stop anyone, can we get a pass rush on Manning? These are the keys to the game. I'm sitting here as it's 34-21 and Corey Dillion's fumble hurt us bigtime. But, our defense can't stop the Colts. The Colt's will have the number 1 seed in the playoffs and the road to the Super Bowl will go through the RCA Dome. There we go again, "the edge" with another first down. We had better learn how to stop an offense or we are toast. A little message to Peyton: Yes you won tonight but you are a Manning and that means that you will NEVER win a Championship. Also, they have Dungee as a coach, talk about a guy who can't win a Championship. He's a good regular season coach until he gets in the playoffs. All promise but no Championship. But I congratulate the Colts, they beat our ass tonight and deserved to win. But a Super Bowl victory, ahhhhhhhhhh, no.
Patriots/Colts Pregame
Get the beers ready and your game face on because we're about an hour away from a Boston Massacre. I can't tell you how much I hate Peyton Manning and I really shouldn't because he never beats us. So to the "two" idiots on the Boston Message Boards, you know who you are, I want to hear from you two morons after the game!!!
Joey Cappelletti
Great Story. I hope you all know about it.
To see his big brother win on Saturdays, Joey Cappelletti had to win on Fridays.
Monday through Thursday, Joey stoically endured spinal taps and chemotherapy, headaches and nausea, doctors and medications. He could barely leave bed. But he brightened and bounced around like any other kid when Friday came. He knew that if he let the leukemia beat him that day, his parents would think he was too sick for a football weekend in State College, Pa. And for Joey, there was nothing like a football weekend in State College, where his brother, John, was Penn State's star tailback and Joey was one of the guys. "Going up there was like we were going to heaven," says the boys' father, John Cappelletti Sr.
After watching his brother run through opponents, Joey would slip into the locker room to see him, say hello to Penn State coach Joe Paterno and go from locker to locker, ribbing his buddies on the team.
The weekends so exhausted Joey that he sometimes needed hospital visits to recover. His dedication wasn't lost on John, though. "He would always rally himself," he says. "No matter how sick he was, he'd have to get ready for the game. That started to be my mentality. He was doing it, so I was doing it the same way."
Joey's motivation would carry John a long way-to the 1973 Heisman Trophy, and what may be the most emotional moment in the history of football's most storied award.
Cappelletti's Heisman hopes got a big lift the last weekend in October when the Nittany Lions faced West Virginia a few days before Joey's 11th birthday. In the pregame locker room, John asked what his brother wanted as a present. "Three touchdowns," Joey replied. "No, four."
John reluctantly agreed, stomping the Mountaineers for three first-half scores before Paterno decided to give his powerful workhorse the rest of the day off. But when a Lions player told the coach about Joey's birthday wish, Paterno ordered number 22 back in. Cappelletti rushed onto the field, scored that fourth touchdown and smiled as he trotted to the bench. "Thanks for my present!" Joey yelled from the stands.
That was nothing compared to John's next gift. After finishing the season with 1,522 yards and 17 touchdowns for the undefeated Lions, Cappelletti became Penn State's only Heisman winner, beating Ohio State offensive tackle John Hicks.
Toward the end of his acceptance speech at the black-tie Heisman dinner, Cappelletti spoke from the heart, not from the script he had written with brother Martin earlier that day. "My brother Joseph is ill. He has leukemia," John said, tears streaking his face. "They say I've shown courage on the football field, but for me it's only on the field, and only in the fall. Joey lives with pain all the time. His courage is round the clock. I want him to have this trophy. It's more his than mine, because he's been such an inspiration to me."
Amidst sobs from a crowd including Vice President Gerald Ford, Joey turned to his mom, Anne, and said, "Did he really just give me the Heisman Trophy?" Joey put the trophy on the mantel at home, next to one he earned in Little League baseball.
After Cappelletti helped Penn State complete a 12-0 season with an Orange Bowl win over LSU, he moved on to the Los Angeles Rams. A little more than two years later, at the age of 13 and eight years after he was diagnosed with leukemia, Joey died with John at his bedside.
The brothers' close bond was recounted in a 1977 TV movie and young-adult book titled Something for Joey. John still answers letters from students touched by the story. "People write, 'I never appreciated my family as much as I do now,'" John says. "Having some small contribution to someone's life is a lot more meaningful than scoring some touchdowns."
Cappelletti, 48, now a businessman and father of four in Southern California, has worked with Ronald McDonald House and other leukemia-related organizations. He believes Joey has inspired others to do the same. John and his parents are grateful that Joey's death, and the poignancy of John's speech, have influenced so many people.
"Joey was an extra-special person," says Anne, who still visits schools with her husband to discuss the book. "He had a lot of love for everybody. When I think back, it seems like it all had to be. Somehow Joey had to leave his mark."
Maybe the family's story should have been called Something from Joey.
To see his big brother win on Saturdays, Joey Cappelletti had to win on Fridays.
Monday through Thursday, Joey stoically endured spinal taps and chemotherapy, headaches and nausea, doctors and medications. He could barely leave bed. But he brightened and bounced around like any other kid when Friday came. He knew that if he let the leukemia beat him that day, his parents would think he was too sick for a football weekend in State College, Pa. And for Joey, there was nothing like a football weekend in State College, where his brother, John, was Penn State's star tailback and Joey was one of the guys. "Going up there was like we were going to heaven," says the boys' father, John Cappelletti Sr.
After watching his brother run through opponents, Joey would slip into the locker room to see him, say hello to Penn State coach Joe Paterno and go from locker to locker, ribbing his buddies on the team.
The weekends so exhausted Joey that he sometimes needed hospital visits to recover. His dedication wasn't lost on John, though. "He would always rally himself," he says. "No matter how sick he was, he'd have to get ready for the game. That started to be my mentality. He was doing it, so I was doing it the same way."
Joey's motivation would carry John a long way-to the 1973 Heisman Trophy, and what may be the most emotional moment in the history of football's most storied award.
Cappelletti's Heisman hopes got a big lift the last weekend in October when the Nittany Lions faced West Virginia a few days before Joey's 11th birthday. In the pregame locker room, John asked what his brother wanted as a present. "Three touchdowns," Joey replied. "No, four."
John reluctantly agreed, stomping the Mountaineers for three first-half scores before Paterno decided to give his powerful workhorse the rest of the day off. But when a Lions player told the coach about Joey's birthday wish, Paterno ordered number 22 back in. Cappelletti rushed onto the field, scored that fourth touchdown and smiled as he trotted to the bench. "Thanks for my present!" Joey yelled from the stands.
That was nothing compared to John's next gift. After finishing the season with 1,522 yards and 17 touchdowns for the undefeated Lions, Cappelletti became Penn State's only Heisman winner, beating Ohio State offensive tackle John Hicks.
Toward the end of his acceptance speech at the black-tie Heisman dinner, Cappelletti spoke from the heart, not from the script he had written with brother Martin earlier that day. "My brother Joseph is ill. He has leukemia," John said, tears streaking his face. "They say I've shown courage on the football field, but for me it's only on the field, and only in the fall. Joey lives with pain all the time. His courage is round the clock. I want him to have this trophy. It's more his than mine, because he's been such an inspiration to me."
Amidst sobs from a crowd including Vice President Gerald Ford, Joey turned to his mom, Anne, and said, "Did he really just give me the Heisman Trophy?" Joey put the trophy on the mantel at home, next to one he earned in Little League baseball.
After Cappelletti helped Penn State complete a 12-0 season with an Orange Bowl win over LSU, he moved on to the Los Angeles Rams. A little more than two years later, at the age of 13 and eight years after he was diagnosed with leukemia, Joey died with John at his bedside.
The brothers' close bond was recounted in a 1977 TV movie and young-adult book titled Something for Joey. John still answers letters from students touched by the story. "People write, 'I never appreciated my family as much as I do now,'" John says. "Having some small contribution to someone's life is a lot more meaningful than scoring some touchdowns."
Cappelletti, 48, now a businessman and father of four in Southern California, has worked with Ronald McDonald House and other leukemia-related organizations. He believes Joey has inspired others to do the same. John and his parents are grateful that Joey's death, and the poignancy of John's speech, have influenced so many people.
"Joey was an extra-special person," says Anne, who still visits schools with her husband to discuss the book. "He had a lot of love for everybody. When I think back, it seems like it all had to be. Somehow Joey had to leave his mark."
Maybe the family's story should have been called Something from Joey.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Pats vs. Rams
Here's an interesting little article from the week leading up to the Pats vs. Rams that many of you may find interesting. It shows you that "nobody" should underestimate determination!!!
The New England Patriots are the only ones who seem to believe their Super Bowl invite carries even a portion of an ounce of validity. The Oakland Raiders think they have a beef. The Steelers would like to play a best-of-three. And the rest of the NFL isn’t really sure how Bill Belichick got his no-names to the big game — except Rams coach Mike Martz.
"We knew about this team far before we played them," Martz said following the Rams' 29-24 win over Philadelphia in the NFC title game.
And there is documented proof that Martz spread his thoughts to the rest of the Rams.
"Coach Martz told us they could be here after we played," ORT Ryan Tucker said of Martz’s postgame comments in Foxboro following a 24-17 win in Week 10. "He said, ‘I didn’t want to tell you guys, but this is a Super Bowl-caliber team.’ I don’t know, man. That guy can look at a team for a short time and tell you how good (it) is, and why. He’s a great football mind."
The meeting of the minds between Martz and Belichick hasn’t dominated headlines like Brady vs. Bledsoe, but the strategic warfare between the coaches will be explosive. Belichick is known for "shutting down your top option" as Martz put it, but against the Rams, it isn’t clear where to start. QB Kurt Warner threw for 401 of his 4,830 yards in Week 10 vs. the Patriots in a game played at night, in the cold, with a breeze, in November. In the comfort of the Superdome in New Orleans Sunday — Warner played indoors in college, later played Arena football and currently plays his home games in St. Louis under a dome — Warner will be downright unstoppable.
Rams WR Torry Holt, who led the St. Louis receiving corps with 81 receptions, expects a lot of physical play from the Patriots. If that is the game plan Belichick boasts, what will change? In their prior meeting, Isaac Bruce caught seven passes for 130 yards, while Holt had seven grabs for 89 yards and a score. So that leaves LBs Mike Vrabel, Tedy Bruschi and Bryan Cox to stop RB Marshall Faulk. Good luck. Faulk caught seven passes for 70 yards and had 153 total yards in the last meeting — on grass, in the cold, in November.
But if the Patriots have a trick up their sleeve, it is the element of surprise. They won’t sneak up on the Rams; Martz will have them well-prepared. But like the rest of the football world, St. Louis believes it is a 14-plus-point favorite. Nobody saw the Patriots coming, and everybody expects last week’s halting of the Steelers express to be Belichick’s last playoff ride.
"It didn’t cross my mind that we would see New England again," Rams SS Kim Herring said. "Honestly it didn’t. Luckily there is nothing new. We’ve seen each other."
That might not be a lack of respect, but it certainly sounds like it. CB Dexter McCleon did his best to bail out Herring, who said he feared media day more than the Patriots.
"You just never worry about the other side," McCleon said. "You better not. You have to worry about getting yourself there and taking care of your own business. New England is on a roll. They can beat anyone."
But the Rams don’t believe that. They are simply saying the "right thing" in order to avoid making noise, or provide added motivation, as if there is such a concept in the Super Bowl, for the Patriots. DE Grant Wistrom said the Rams are confident — very confident — that if they play their game, their best game, they should not lose. While Wistrom is probably right on several counts, Belichick won’t let that one slide.
Just two weeks ago in the NFC divisional playoff against Green Bay, Martz used the media to light a fire under his defense. He scribbled the advertised score from one NFL analyst, "45-40," on a locker-room chalkboard. Three days and eight forced turnovers later, the Rams were suddenly considered a defensive force.
While Belichick is using a match from that same book to spark the Pats, the media continue to wonder whether New England can get enough breaks on special teams and defense to stay with the Rams. I know the Patriots have scored just two offensive touchdowns in the postseason. I know the speed of the defense is minimal, at best. I know the Rams are to the Patriots what the Globetrotters are to the Generals. But let’s be frank: "Any given Sunday" includes Super Bowl Sunday.
The Rams are not bulletproof. Remember, the 1-15 Carolina Panthers came within a touchdown of rocking the Rams’ boat. A team for which turnovers are kryptonite, St. Louis is facing a New England team that survives with takeaways, forcing 34 during the regular season.
Holt told the media Tuesday that he picked New England to bounce the Steelers. Then he went so far as to say that New England could "slow us down." Don’t be surprised if the gritty Patriots are able to dictate the pace of this game. If that happens, a Rams victory, on New England’s terms, will be that much more impressive.
The New England Patriots are the only ones who seem to believe their Super Bowl invite carries even a portion of an ounce of validity. The Oakland Raiders think they have a beef. The Steelers would like to play a best-of-three. And the rest of the NFL isn’t really sure how Bill Belichick got his no-names to the big game — except Rams coach Mike Martz.
"We knew about this team far before we played them," Martz said following the Rams' 29-24 win over Philadelphia in the NFC title game.
And there is documented proof that Martz spread his thoughts to the rest of the Rams.
"Coach Martz told us they could be here after we played," ORT Ryan Tucker said of Martz’s postgame comments in Foxboro following a 24-17 win in Week 10. "He said, ‘I didn’t want to tell you guys, but this is a Super Bowl-caliber team.’ I don’t know, man. That guy can look at a team for a short time and tell you how good (it) is, and why. He’s a great football mind."
The meeting of the minds between Martz and Belichick hasn’t dominated headlines like Brady vs. Bledsoe, but the strategic warfare between the coaches will be explosive. Belichick is known for "shutting down your top option" as Martz put it, but against the Rams, it isn’t clear where to start. QB Kurt Warner threw for 401 of his 4,830 yards in Week 10 vs. the Patriots in a game played at night, in the cold, with a breeze, in November. In the comfort of the Superdome in New Orleans Sunday — Warner played indoors in college, later played Arena football and currently plays his home games in St. Louis under a dome — Warner will be downright unstoppable.
Rams WR Torry Holt, who led the St. Louis receiving corps with 81 receptions, expects a lot of physical play from the Patriots. If that is the game plan Belichick boasts, what will change? In their prior meeting, Isaac Bruce caught seven passes for 130 yards, while Holt had seven grabs for 89 yards and a score. So that leaves LBs Mike Vrabel, Tedy Bruschi and Bryan Cox to stop RB Marshall Faulk. Good luck. Faulk caught seven passes for 70 yards and had 153 total yards in the last meeting — on grass, in the cold, in November.
But if the Patriots have a trick up their sleeve, it is the element of surprise. They won’t sneak up on the Rams; Martz will have them well-prepared. But like the rest of the football world, St. Louis believes it is a 14-plus-point favorite. Nobody saw the Patriots coming, and everybody expects last week’s halting of the Steelers express to be Belichick’s last playoff ride.
"It didn’t cross my mind that we would see New England again," Rams SS Kim Herring said. "Honestly it didn’t. Luckily there is nothing new. We’ve seen each other."
That might not be a lack of respect, but it certainly sounds like it. CB Dexter McCleon did his best to bail out Herring, who said he feared media day more than the Patriots.
"You just never worry about the other side," McCleon said. "You better not. You have to worry about getting yourself there and taking care of your own business. New England is on a roll. They can beat anyone."
But the Rams don’t believe that. They are simply saying the "right thing" in order to avoid making noise, or provide added motivation, as if there is such a concept in the Super Bowl, for the Patriots. DE Grant Wistrom said the Rams are confident — very confident — that if they play their game, their best game, they should not lose. While Wistrom is probably right on several counts, Belichick won’t let that one slide.
Just two weeks ago in the NFC divisional playoff against Green Bay, Martz used the media to light a fire under his defense. He scribbled the advertised score from one NFL analyst, "45-40," on a locker-room chalkboard. Three days and eight forced turnovers later, the Rams were suddenly considered a defensive force.
While Belichick is using a match from that same book to spark the Pats, the media continue to wonder whether New England can get enough breaks on special teams and defense to stay with the Rams. I know the Patriots have scored just two offensive touchdowns in the postseason. I know the speed of the defense is minimal, at best. I know the Rams are to the Patriots what the Globetrotters are to the Generals. But let’s be frank: "Any given Sunday" includes Super Bowl Sunday.
The Rams are not bulletproof. Remember, the 1-15 Carolina Panthers came within a touchdown of rocking the Rams’ boat. A team for which turnovers are kryptonite, St. Louis is facing a New England team that survives with takeaways, forcing 34 during the regular season.
Holt told the media Tuesday that he picked New England to bounce the Steelers. Then he went so far as to say that New England could "slow us down." Don’t be surprised if the gritty Patriots are able to dictate the pace of this game. If that happens, a Rams victory, on New England’s terms, will be that much more impressive.
Impossible Dream Season of 1967
I wasn't born yet but I can remember my parents telling me how special this season was and how baseball at this time era was the best there ever was. I found a great article on the season and thought I'd share it with you.
In every life there is one immortal summer. For me, and for countless other Red Sox fans, it is the Impossible Dream summer of 1967 that still burns in the memory, still lives as a wellspring of surprisingly deep feeling.
I was 11 years old then, and crazy for baseball in the way only an 11-year-old can be. Walking my paper route up and down Ashland's hills, I buried my nose in the sports section of my customers' Globes and Record-Americans and Herald-Travelers, heedless of the traffic.
During pickup games, I was sometimes Rico Petrocelli, the Sox's eager young shortstop, but more often I was Tony Conigliaro. (Tony C. dated starlets, and I hoped one day to do the same.)
Never did I imagine myself as Carl Yastrzemski. In 1967, that would have been like pretending to be God.
As the Sox headed north from spring training that year, Vegas was laying 100-1 odds against them winning the pennant. But my friends and I were expecting big things. We were always expecting big things from the Sox: We were kids. What did we know, or care, that it had been almost 50 years since they had won a World Series?
Now Time, that wily thief, has stolen another 30 years from us all. Now we know what our parents and grandparents knew, that to be a Red Sox fan is to envy Marley's Ghost, who only has to wear the chain he forged in life, and doesn't have to lug around a chain forged by Bill Buckner and Harry Frazee and Bucky Bleeping Dent.
Today, I look back with a bit of disbelief at that turbo-charged summer of 1967.
In particular, I think of Yaz -- mighty, mythic Yaz. It is next to impossible to describe the sensation of watching him stride majestically through that season. He hit one homer after another, made one astounding play after another, always at the moment of highest drama -- and you knew he would come through every time. You just knew it.
In 1990, in the first May Day march in Prague after the fall of communism, two jubilant men carried a sign that read: "Don't believe in miracles. Rely on them." That was how every kid in New England felt about Carl Yastrzemski in 1967.
I think also of my father. When the pennant chase came down to two final, apocalyptic games with the Twins, Dad and I ensconced ourselves in adjoining easy chairs in our family den. We drew the shades to keep sunshine off the TV set, turned up the volume so it would feel as if we were at the ballpark, and settled in for the final chapter of a saga that had transfixed New England all summer long.
My father was born in 1927, a year when the New York Yankees dynasty was at its zenith, led by Babe Ruth, who should have been winning pennants for the Red Sox but had been sold by the accursed Harry Frazee. My father had lived through the disappointment of 1946, when Johnny Pesky held the ball and Enos Slaughter scored and the Sox lost the World Series.
But he didn't mention to me that my Sox had last won a World Series in 1918. Why burden the kid with the past? However, when Yaz assumed his familiar corkscrew stance at the plate, my father told me about the time he'd taken me as a preschooler to see Yaz's legendary predecessor in left field: Ted Williams.
It is startling to realize now that in 1967, my father was younger than I am today. The unfiltered Lucky Strikes Dad smoked back then glowed red in the darkened den. The whole weekend seemed frozen in time, as if all other activities in the universe were on hold. We watched the ballgames in an unspoken communion of father and son, one of the best gifts baseball gives us.
Remembrance is the other great gift. I can still name the 1967 Red Sox lineup without consulting a scorecard, and Yastrzemski's stats -- .326 batting average, 44 homers, 121 RBI -- are etched in my cortex. My friend Brian, who is similarly afflicted, joined me in conjuring up memories of 1967 at Fenway the other night while we were watching the 1997 Red Sox.
Jim Lonborg, who would win 22 games and the Cy Young Award, presiding with paladin cool over the mound at Fenway. George Scott swatting 450-foot homers and scooping up everything hit his way at first. Right fielder Jose Tartabull, an unknown, exceeding the limits of his weak arm and throwing out a runner at the plate in a big game. Rico roosting under that final pop fly, then squeezing it into his glove to win the pennant while Boston went delirious with joy. Reggie Smith. Dalton Jones. Mike Andrews. Joe Foy. Jerry Adair, steadiness incarnate. Hawk Harrelson, our own flamboyant version of Joe Namath. Elston Howard, who had broken up rookie left-hander Billy Rohr's no-hitter while with the Yankees but helped the Sox in the stretch. Jovial third-base coach Eddie Popowski. Sparky Lyle. Manager Dick Williams, the crew-cut disciplinarian in the dugout, whom I didn't like because he reminded me of my shop teacher.
And Tony C., young, powerful, charismatic, surely on his way to a 600-homer career. Tony C., struck down by a fastball in August of 1967 with the sudden, jolting horror of a death in the family. To an 11-year-old, the sight of Tony C. unconscious in the dirt was the first hint that none of us lives forever.
Thirty years later, I can still recite from memory, and it still chokes me up to do so, Ken Coleman's rendition of that awful moment from the record, "The Impossible Dream," released after the season. "And then one August night, the kid in right, lies sprawling in the dirt. The fastball struck him square; he's down. Is Tony badly hurt?"
Years later, I would learn that Yaz and Tony C. didn't like each other. Years later, I would notice the strange lack of joy Yaz sometimes took in the game he played so well, that it seemed to be a job to him.
But in 1967, I didn't know any of that. I only knew that my friends and I spoke of Yaz in the same awed tones our parents used when discussing FDR and Churchill. He made 1967 a Camelot for those of us too young to really remember JFK.
Was White Sox manager Eddie Stanky rash enough to disparage Yaz as "an All-Star from the neck down"? Then Yaz would get four hits against the White Sox, homer in his final at-bat, and tip his cap to Stanky as he rounded the bases.
Did Rohr need an impossible catch to preserve his no-hit bid in his major league debut against the Yankees? Then Yaz would make an impossible, somersaulting catch in the ninth inning, while Coleman frenziedly shrieked "Yastrzemski is going hard, way back, way back. And he dives -- and makes a tremendous catch!" (Rohr would lose the no-hitter two batters later, but Yaz had done his part.)
Did the Sox, down 8-0 to the Angels, need a 3-run homer to ignite an amazing come-from-behind rally that would propel them to a 9-8 victory? Then Yaz would hit one. Did Yaz need to field a line drive with his bare hand on the first bounce to nail the runner at the plate? Then Yaz would do just that.
But it was in the final month of the season that Yaz soared into the realm of myth. The pennant race was intense, with the Red Sox, White Sox, Tigers, and Twins all bunched together, straining like racehorses toward the finish line. With two weeks to go, exactly one-half game separated the four teams. So what did Yaz do? He merely went 40 for 96 (.417) in the last 27 games of the season, driving in 26 runs. In his final 13 plate appearances, with everything on the line, Yaz got 10 hits. He ended up winning the Triple Crown.
Any player posing a threat to the Sox inhabited my personal demonology that year. I hated Jack Hamilton, who threw the pitch (a spitball, it was rumored) that shattered Tony C.'s cheek, and eventually his career. I hated the Twins' Harmon Killebrew, who had the effrontery to battle Yaz for the home-run crown. I hated Dean Chance, his name full of smoky menace somehow, who pitched the final regular-season game against Lonborg.
And I hated, with a deep thrill of fear, the forbidding Bob Gibson, star pitcher of the St. Louis Cardinals. He would crush the Sox -- and the hopes of all of us -- by winning three games in the World Series. A year or so ago, I heard Gibson interviewed on a Boston radio station, and was startled at what a nice guy he appeared to be. In 1967, he seemed as menacing as Moloch. When he took the mound, I trembled for my Sox.
I even came to hate my best friend, Paul, over the Red Sox. We'd rooted for the Sox together all summer, but when the Sox fell behind in the seventh game of the World Series, Paul began teasing me, predicting they would blow it. Then, in what I viewed as an unspeakable act of treason, he even offered to bet $1 on the Cardinals. When the game ended with the Sox losing, 7-2, I stormed out of Paul's house and walked home, tears scalding my face. I felt very old all of a sudden. I didn't talk to Paul for almost a year after that.
Extreme? You bet. But I was 11, and the lesson of the Impossible Dream year of 1967 was that life would always be lived at a fever pitch, that one heart-stopping drama would always follow another, that Good would always triumph over Evil.
In that sense, I guess 1967 was make-believe after all. But what a wonderfully sustaining fiction it was.
In every life there is one immortal summer. For me, and for countless other Red Sox fans, it is the Impossible Dream summer of 1967 that still burns in the memory, still lives as a wellspring of surprisingly deep feeling.
I was 11 years old then, and crazy for baseball in the way only an 11-year-old can be. Walking my paper route up and down Ashland's hills, I buried my nose in the sports section of my customers' Globes and Record-Americans and Herald-Travelers, heedless of the traffic.
During pickup games, I was sometimes Rico Petrocelli, the Sox's eager young shortstop, but more often I was Tony Conigliaro. (Tony C. dated starlets, and I hoped one day to do the same.)
Never did I imagine myself as Carl Yastrzemski. In 1967, that would have been like pretending to be God.
As the Sox headed north from spring training that year, Vegas was laying 100-1 odds against them winning the pennant. But my friends and I were expecting big things. We were always expecting big things from the Sox: We were kids. What did we know, or care, that it had been almost 50 years since they had won a World Series?
Now Time, that wily thief, has stolen another 30 years from us all. Now we know what our parents and grandparents knew, that to be a Red Sox fan is to envy Marley's Ghost, who only has to wear the chain he forged in life, and doesn't have to lug around a chain forged by Bill Buckner and Harry Frazee and Bucky Bleeping Dent.
Today, I look back with a bit of disbelief at that turbo-charged summer of 1967.
In particular, I think of Yaz -- mighty, mythic Yaz. It is next to impossible to describe the sensation of watching him stride majestically through that season. He hit one homer after another, made one astounding play after another, always at the moment of highest drama -- and you knew he would come through every time. You just knew it.
In 1990, in the first May Day march in Prague after the fall of communism, two jubilant men carried a sign that read: "Don't believe in miracles. Rely on them." That was how every kid in New England felt about Carl Yastrzemski in 1967.
I think also of my father. When the pennant chase came down to two final, apocalyptic games with the Twins, Dad and I ensconced ourselves in adjoining easy chairs in our family den. We drew the shades to keep sunshine off the TV set, turned up the volume so it would feel as if we were at the ballpark, and settled in for the final chapter of a saga that had transfixed New England all summer long.
My father was born in 1927, a year when the New York Yankees dynasty was at its zenith, led by Babe Ruth, who should have been winning pennants for the Red Sox but had been sold by the accursed Harry Frazee. My father had lived through the disappointment of 1946, when Johnny Pesky held the ball and Enos Slaughter scored and the Sox lost the World Series.
But he didn't mention to me that my Sox had last won a World Series in 1918. Why burden the kid with the past? However, when Yaz assumed his familiar corkscrew stance at the plate, my father told me about the time he'd taken me as a preschooler to see Yaz's legendary predecessor in left field: Ted Williams.
It is startling to realize now that in 1967, my father was younger than I am today. The unfiltered Lucky Strikes Dad smoked back then glowed red in the darkened den. The whole weekend seemed frozen in time, as if all other activities in the universe were on hold. We watched the ballgames in an unspoken communion of father and son, one of the best gifts baseball gives us.
Remembrance is the other great gift. I can still name the 1967 Red Sox lineup without consulting a scorecard, and Yastrzemski's stats -- .326 batting average, 44 homers, 121 RBI -- are etched in my cortex. My friend Brian, who is similarly afflicted, joined me in conjuring up memories of 1967 at Fenway the other night while we were watching the 1997 Red Sox.
Jim Lonborg, who would win 22 games and the Cy Young Award, presiding with paladin cool over the mound at Fenway. George Scott swatting 450-foot homers and scooping up everything hit his way at first. Right fielder Jose Tartabull, an unknown, exceeding the limits of his weak arm and throwing out a runner at the plate in a big game. Rico roosting under that final pop fly, then squeezing it into his glove to win the pennant while Boston went delirious with joy. Reggie Smith. Dalton Jones. Mike Andrews. Joe Foy. Jerry Adair, steadiness incarnate. Hawk Harrelson, our own flamboyant version of Joe Namath. Elston Howard, who had broken up rookie left-hander Billy Rohr's no-hitter while with the Yankees but helped the Sox in the stretch. Jovial third-base coach Eddie Popowski. Sparky Lyle. Manager Dick Williams, the crew-cut disciplinarian in the dugout, whom I didn't like because he reminded me of my shop teacher.
And Tony C., young, powerful, charismatic, surely on his way to a 600-homer career. Tony C., struck down by a fastball in August of 1967 with the sudden, jolting horror of a death in the family. To an 11-year-old, the sight of Tony C. unconscious in the dirt was the first hint that none of us lives forever.
Thirty years later, I can still recite from memory, and it still chokes me up to do so, Ken Coleman's rendition of that awful moment from the record, "The Impossible Dream," released after the season. "And then one August night, the kid in right, lies sprawling in the dirt. The fastball struck him square; he's down. Is Tony badly hurt?"
Years later, I would learn that Yaz and Tony C. didn't like each other. Years later, I would notice the strange lack of joy Yaz sometimes took in the game he played so well, that it seemed to be a job to him.
But in 1967, I didn't know any of that. I only knew that my friends and I spoke of Yaz in the same awed tones our parents used when discussing FDR and Churchill. He made 1967 a Camelot for those of us too young to really remember JFK.
Was White Sox manager Eddie Stanky rash enough to disparage Yaz as "an All-Star from the neck down"? Then Yaz would get four hits against the White Sox, homer in his final at-bat, and tip his cap to Stanky as he rounded the bases.
Did Rohr need an impossible catch to preserve his no-hit bid in his major league debut against the Yankees? Then Yaz would make an impossible, somersaulting catch in the ninth inning, while Coleman frenziedly shrieked "Yastrzemski is going hard, way back, way back. And he dives -- and makes a tremendous catch!" (Rohr would lose the no-hitter two batters later, but Yaz had done his part.)
Did the Sox, down 8-0 to the Angels, need a 3-run homer to ignite an amazing come-from-behind rally that would propel them to a 9-8 victory? Then Yaz would hit one. Did Yaz need to field a line drive with his bare hand on the first bounce to nail the runner at the plate? Then Yaz would do just that.
But it was in the final month of the season that Yaz soared into the realm of myth. The pennant race was intense, with the Red Sox, White Sox, Tigers, and Twins all bunched together, straining like racehorses toward the finish line. With two weeks to go, exactly one-half game separated the four teams. So what did Yaz do? He merely went 40 for 96 (.417) in the last 27 games of the season, driving in 26 runs. In his final 13 plate appearances, with everything on the line, Yaz got 10 hits. He ended up winning the Triple Crown.
Any player posing a threat to the Sox inhabited my personal demonology that year. I hated Jack Hamilton, who threw the pitch (a spitball, it was rumored) that shattered Tony C.'s cheek, and eventually his career. I hated the Twins' Harmon Killebrew, who had the effrontery to battle Yaz for the home-run crown. I hated Dean Chance, his name full of smoky menace somehow, who pitched the final regular-season game against Lonborg.
And I hated, with a deep thrill of fear, the forbidding Bob Gibson, star pitcher of the St. Louis Cardinals. He would crush the Sox -- and the hopes of all of us -- by winning three games in the World Series. A year or so ago, I heard Gibson interviewed on a Boston radio station, and was startled at what a nice guy he appeared to be. In 1967, he seemed as menacing as Moloch. When he took the mound, I trembled for my Sox.
I even came to hate my best friend, Paul, over the Red Sox. We'd rooted for the Sox together all summer, but when the Sox fell behind in the seventh game of the World Series, Paul began teasing me, predicting they would blow it. Then, in what I viewed as an unspeakable act of treason, he even offered to bet $1 on the Cardinals. When the game ended with the Sox losing, 7-2, I stormed out of Paul's house and walked home, tears scalding my face. I felt very old all of a sudden. I didn't talk to Paul for almost a year after that.
Extreme? You bet. But I was 11, and the lesson of the Impossible Dream year of 1967 was that life would always be lived at a fever pitch, that one heart-stopping drama would always follow another, that Good would always triumph over Evil.
In that sense, I guess 1967 was make-believe after all. But what a wonderfully sustaining fiction it was.
Friday, November 04, 2005
Bird vs. Nique
The Celtics lost to the Pistons tonight on a bonehead call by Rivers at the end. The Celtics will have an up and down year as I reported earlier but there is clearly a bright future ahead. Doc Rivers is a good coach but every coach makes a bonehead move now and then. Tomorrow will be a test to see how they rebound after a loss against the Charlotte Bobcats
Let me take you back to 1988. Larry Bird vs. Dominique Wilkins in an epic Playoff battle....
LARRY BIRD AND I HAD completely different styles on and off the court, but when it came to competing, we were almost exactly alike. We both were great competitors. And when the Celtics came to Atlanta to play us or if the Hawks went up to Boston, I knew it was going to be a special night.
Over the years, Bird and I went head to head many times, but the best showdown was in the 1988 Eastern Conference semifinals. The Celtics looked like they were going to prove all those "experts" who picked them to coast through us right. They won the first two games.
You always focused on Bird, but they had a lot of good players, including Kevin McHale and Robert Parish on the front line and Dennis Johnson and Danny Ainge in the backcourt, and they always seemed to have a real deep bench.
But we came back and won the next three games, and that underdog label got thrown out the window. We really had a lot of confidence going into Game 6 and we should have put the series away there. We had a late lead and just let the Celtics back in. We gave them the game.
So that sent the series to a Game 7--the game I'll never forget Our team was loose going into the game at Boston Garden. We had a very hard-working team. Guys like Antoine Carr, Kevin Willis, Cliff Levingston, and Tree Rollins were real big, physical guys who loved to bang under the boards. They were real blue-collar guys. Then you had guys like Doc Rivers, John Battle, Randy Wittman, and Spud Webb, guys with a lot of talent.
Mike Fratello was a great coach and he brought everyone together and working on the same page. He knew that everyone brought a piece of the puzzle to the table and everyone laid it on the line every night for him.
About the only thing we didn't have was a lot of great individual athletes. We didn't have many great scorers. That's one of the reasons I had to try to score so much, because we didn't have a lot of scorers. That's one of the reasons I took so many shots.
When we played the Celtics, Larry and I were often trying to stop each other. Larry was known to talk a little trash, but we never said anything to each other during the game. We had the kind of respect for each other that when we played, we would just go out there and play hard and let our games do all the talking.
I used to love playing against Bird. We loved to go against each other. It was a great experience to have that competition level. We made each other play that much better, that much harder. We'd just push each other and bring out the best in each other. I never wanted to be second best and I'm sure he didn't, either.
Stopping him was hard because he was a smart player. If you thought you had stopped him, he had a way of finding the open man, but you never knew when the pass was coming. And he was dangerous from long range, so you couldn't sit back and play off him. He was a deadly shooter from out there.
In Game 7, we were both in the zone. I don't remember much about the early part of the game, but as the game wore on, it was like two gunslingers going at it. It was like a war. I'd come down on one end of the court and make a shot Bird would come down to the other end of the court and make a basket. It was back and forth, back and forth all night.
I was making all kinds of baskets that night. I pulled out everything I had in that game. I was making slam dunks, short-range jumpers, transition baskets, baskets off offensive rebounds, tip-ins, everything. It was just one of those games where I was able to take everything to a higher level.
Unfortunately, so did Bird. The game really reached a fever pitch in the fourth quarter. He ended up scoring 20 in the fourth and I had just about that many. This was the biggest game I had ever played in. Neither one of us wanted to lose.
Near the end, they had pulled in Front. They had a two-point lead, but we had the ball. I got the ball with time running out and Ainge fouled me before I had a chance to put up a three-pointer. He fouled me even before I had a chance to put my arms up.
I went to the line and made my first shot. But we still had a problem. If I made the second, we would have been down one with just a second or so to play. So I had to intentionally miss the shot and just pray that one of our guys could get a hold of the rebound with enough time left to put up a shot. It was a long shot, but it was the only one we had.
The shot hit off the rim as I had hoped. We were all going for it, there were hands reaching everywhere, but Boston grabbed the rebound and time ran out. The Celtics had won the game and we were pretty heartbroken.
I finished with 47 points. Most people would be overjoyed with that, but I was pretty down about the game afterward. But in retrospect, we laid it all on the line and played as hard as we possibly could. Anyone who saw that game and that duel Bird and I had that night will tell you it was one of the greatest games they had ever seen.
Link
Let me take you back to 1988. Larry Bird vs. Dominique Wilkins in an epic Playoff battle....
LARRY BIRD AND I HAD completely different styles on and off the court, but when it came to competing, we were almost exactly alike. We both were great competitors. And when the Celtics came to Atlanta to play us or if the Hawks went up to Boston, I knew it was going to be a special night.
Over the years, Bird and I went head to head many times, but the best showdown was in the 1988 Eastern Conference semifinals. The Celtics looked like they were going to prove all those "experts" who picked them to coast through us right. They won the first two games.
You always focused on Bird, but they had a lot of good players, including Kevin McHale and Robert Parish on the front line and Dennis Johnson and Danny Ainge in the backcourt, and they always seemed to have a real deep bench.
But we came back and won the next three games, and that underdog label got thrown out the window. We really had a lot of confidence going into Game 6 and we should have put the series away there. We had a late lead and just let the Celtics back in. We gave them the game.
So that sent the series to a Game 7--the game I'll never forget Our team was loose going into the game at Boston Garden. We had a very hard-working team. Guys like Antoine Carr, Kevin Willis, Cliff Levingston, and Tree Rollins were real big, physical guys who loved to bang under the boards. They were real blue-collar guys. Then you had guys like Doc Rivers, John Battle, Randy Wittman, and Spud Webb, guys with a lot of talent.
Mike Fratello was a great coach and he brought everyone together and working on the same page. He knew that everyone brought a piece of the puzzle to the table and everyone laid it on the line every night for him.
About the only thing we didn't have was a lot of great individual athletes. We didn't have many great scorers. That's one of the reasons I had to try to score so much, because we didn't have a lot of scorers. That's one of the reasons I took so many shots.
When we played the Celtics, Larry and I were often trying to stop each other. Larry was known to talk a little trash, but we never said anything to each other during the game. We had the kind of respect for each other that when we played, we would just go out there and play hard and let our games do all the talking.
I used to love playing against Bird. We loved to go against each other. It was a great experience to have that competition level. We made each other play that much better, that much harder. We'd just push each other and bring out the best in each other. I never wanted to be second best and I'm sure he didn't, either.
Stopping him was hard because he was a smart player. If you thought you had stopped him, he had a way of finding the open man, but you never knew when the pass was coming. And he was dangerous from long range, so you couldn't sit back and play off him. He was a deadly shooter from out there.
In Game 7, we were both in the zone. I don't remember much about the early part of the game, but as the game wore on, it was like two gunslingers going at it. It was like a war. I'd come down on one end of the court and make a shot Bird would come down to the other end of the court and make a basket. It was back and forth, back and forth all night.
I was making all kinds of baskets that night. I pulled out everything I had in that game. I was making slam dunks, short-range jumpers, transition baskets, baskets off offensive rebounds, tip-ins, everything. It was just one of those games where I was able to take everything to a higher level.
Unfortunately, so did Bird. The game really reached a fever pitch in the fourth quarter. He ended up scoring 20 in the fourth and I had just about that many. This was the biggest game I had ever played in. Neither one of us wanted to lose.
Near the end, they had pulled in Front. They had a two-point lead, but we had the ball. I got the ball with time running out and Ainge fouled me before I had a chance to put up a three-pointer. He fouled me even before I had a chance to put my arms up.
I went to the line and made my first shot. But we still had a problem. If I made the second, we would have been down one with just a second or so to play. So I had to intentionally miss the shot and just pray that one of our guys could get a hold of the rebound with enough time left to put up a shot. It was a long shot, but it was the only one we had.
The shot hit off the rim as I had hoped. We were all going for it, there were hands reaching everywhere, but Boston grabbed the rebound and time ran out. The Celtics had won the game and we were pretty heartbroken.
I finished with 47 points. Most people would be overjoyed with that, but I was pretty down about the game afterward. But in retrospect, we laid it all on the line and played as hard as we possibly could. Anyone who saw that game and that duel Bird and I had that night will tell you it was one of the greatest games they had ever seen.
Link
The Splendid Splinter
Ted Williams wanted to be known as the greatest hitter who ever lived. When he failed to meet those expectations, pity anything that got in his way.
Like a water cooler. After popping up in a minor-league game, he was so angry that he came back to the dugout and put his fist through a glass cooler. "It just exploded," Williams said. "Blood's flying, glass, everything. I was lucky I didn't cut my hand off. If he had, there would have been no Teddy Ballgame. No .406 average. No Terrible Ted.
Williams had a lifetime batting average of .344.
Who is baseball's greatest hitter? That debate will never have a clear winner. But Williams probably produced more hits, more admiration and more mixed feelings from his own hometown fans than anyone who ever played.
The Boston Red Sox leftfielder belted 521 homers, batted .344 and had 1,839 RBI. He won two Triple Crowns. His .483 on-base percentage is baseball's best, with Babe Ruth second at .474. In slugging percentage, Williams' .634 trails only Ruth's .690. Williams' .406 average in 1941 is one of sport's magic numbers. No player has topped .400 since.
The Splendid Splinter dominated the 1940s. In his seven seasons that decade, he led the league in runs batted in three times, batting and home runs four times each and runs six times.
Williams flew combat missions for the Marines in the Korean War.
As good as Williams was, people will always wonder what might have been. What if injuries had not cost him almost two full seasons? What if five of his prime years had not been spent in the Navy in World War II (1943-45) and flying combat missions for the Marines in the Korean War (most of the 1952 and 1953 seasons)?
And what if he had been as determined to be liked as he was determined to be a great hitter? Williams flew a career-long combat mission with fans and the press. "I'm the guy they love to hate," he said.
His charitable work for children made him an institution in New England. He might not have cared about being loved, but Williams definitely didn't like being hated.
"When somebody says nice things about me, it goes in one ear and out the other,"' he said. "But I remember the criticism the longest. I hate criticism.'"
He won two MVPs, but might have won twice that many if he hadn't alienated the writers who voted for the award. For all the things he did, many remember Williams for what he refused to do - tip his hat to the fans at Fenway Park.
They booed him early in his career, and Williams never forgave them. The criticism may have bothered him, but it also may have fueled the fire that made Williams such a respected batter.
He was born on Aug. 30, 1918, in San Diego. Growing up, he was shy and sensitive. "I was awfully self-conscious as a kid - about everything,"' he said. "The way I looked and things I didn't have that some of the other kids did."
His mother worked long hours as a Salvation Army worker, so Williams spent much of his time on playgrounds, developing a skill that few have ever been able to match. "I used to hit tennis balls, old baseballs, balls made of rags - anything," he said. "I didn't think I'd be a particularly good hitter. I just liked to do it."
He was wrong. All that left-handed hitting got him noticed by a scout. After graduating high school, Williams signed with the San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League. Two seasons later, the Red Sox bought his contract for $25,000 and four players.
He spent one season with Triple-A Minneapolis before breaking in as Boston's 20-year-old rightfielder in 1939, hitting .327 with 31 homers.
Williams tipped his hat for every home run that season. He was embraced as "The Kid," and Boston had visions of a man who one day might break Babe Ruth's home-run record.
The Red Sox moved the rightfield fence in following Williams' rookie season. Wanting to protect his keen batting eye, he moved to leftfield so he wouldn't have stare into the sun. Williams slumped to 23 homer in 1940.
He still batted .344, but that wasn't enough to erase the frustration. Part of it was Williams' look. He was a gangly 6-foot-3 and 205 pounds, and his long legs made it appear he was loping and never running as hard as he really was.
One game he struck out, then made an error. He heard the boos, and he couldn't get the echo out of his head. "In the dugout between innings, I swore never again to tip my hat in Fenway Park,"' he said.
It was the start of a not-so-beautiful relationship between Williams and "those wolves in the leftfield stands."' His dealings with the press weren't any better.
Williams spits into the air as he crosses the plate after hitting his 400th homer.
"If his noodle swells another inch, Master Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox won't be able to get his hat on with a shoehorn," wrote Jack Miley in the New York Post. "For when it comes to arrogant, ungrateful athletes, this one leads the league."
Williams routinely led the league in critics and hitting. On the final day of the 1941 season, he had a .39955 batting average. It would have been rounded up to an even .400 if he'd chosen not to take another at-bat. But Williams was never one to back down from any challenge, and played in both games of the doubleheader.
He went 6-for-8. It was the finishing touch on an astounding accomplishment, yet Williams lost the MVP award to Joe DiMaggio, who had his 56-game hitting streak that season.
There is no telling what kind of damage Williams might have done to pitchers if he hadn't been serving in the military in two wars? It's not unreasonable to think he could have passed Ruth's 714 homers.
Was he the greatest hitter ever? Others have hit for higher averages, had more home runs, more RBI. Williams would have been near the top of every career category if military service hadn't intervened. And a more confident man never entered the batter's box.
"Some call it courage," he said. "I call it confidence in yourself. Knowing you can hit any pitcher alive."
Few ever played so well for so long. He batted .388 in 1957, and won the A.L. batting title again at .328 the following season at age 40. His eyesight and discipline at the plate were legendary. In 7,706 at-bats, Williams struck out only 709 times.
Whatever he did, there was the love-hate relationship with Boston fans. "Williams is a peculiar case, so tangled in his inner man that even a psychologist or psychiatrist would have trouble unraveling him," wrote Arthur Daley in The New York Times. "He is more hated than liked by those who know him best."
But on the final day of the final homestand of the 1960 season, 10,454 fans showed up at Fenway to give a loving goodbye to the 42-year-old Williams.
Boston's mayor presented a $1,000 check to the Jimmy Fund, the children's charity Williams championed. The local sports committee presented a plaque. The inscription wasn't read in its entirety, since Williams hated to be fussed over. He then took the microphone.
"I want to say that my years in Boston have been the greatest of my life," Williams said.
When he came to bat in the eighth inning, Fenway erupted. Everybody wanted a dream ending, and Williams provided it. He hit a home run, and ran the bases like he'd done 520 times before - head down and fast. After touching home plate, he went straight to the dugout.
"We want Ted!" the crowd yelled.
He never came back out. As author John Updike wrote, "Gods don't answer letters."
Williams managed the Washington Senators and Texas Rangers from 1969-72, compiling a 273-364 record. After his retirement, Williams spent much of time fishing, and was as proficient with a rod and reel as he was with a bat.
Like a water cooler. After popping up in a minor-league game, he was so angry that he came back to the dugout and put his fist through a glass cooler. "It just exploded," Williams said. "Blood's flying, glass, everything. I was lucky I didn't cut my hand off. If he had, there would have been no Teddy Ballgame. No .406 average. No Terrible Ted.
Williams had a lifetime batting average of .344.
Who is baseball's greatest hitter? That debate will never have a clear winner. But Williams probably produced more hits, more admiration and more mixed feelings from his own hometown fans than anyone who ever played.
The Boston Red Sox leftfielder belted 521 homers, batted .344 and had 1,839 RBI. He won two Triple Crowns. His .483 on-base percentage is baseball's best, with Babe Ruth second at .474. In slugging percentage, Williams' .634 trails only Ruth's .690. Williams' .406 average in 1941 is one of sport's magic numbers. No player has topped .400 since.
The Splendid Splinter dominated the 1940s. In his seven seasons that decade, he led the league in runs batted in three times, batting and home runs four times each and runs six times.
Williams flew combat missions for the Marines in the Korean War.
As good as Williams was, people will always wonder what might have been. What if injuries had not cost him almost two full seasons? What if five of his prime years had not been spent in the Navy in World War II (1943-45) and flying combat missions for the Marines in the Korean War (most of the 1952 and 1953 seasons)?
And what if he had been as determined to be liked as he was determined to be a great hitter? Williams flew a career-long combat mission with fans and the press. "I'm the guy they love to hate," he said.
His charitable work for children made him an institution in New England. He might not have cared about being loved, but Williams definitely didn't like being hated.
"When somebody says nice things about me, it goes in one ear and out the other,"' he said. "But I remember the criticism the longest. I hate criticism.'"
He won two MVPs, but might have won twice that many if he hadn't alienated the writers who voted for the award. For all the things he did, many remember Williams for what he refused to do - tip his hat to the fans at Fenway Park.
They booed him early in his career, and Williams never forgave them. The criticism may have bothered him, but it also may have fueled the fire that made Williams such a respected batter.
He was born on Aug. 30, 1918, in San Diego. Growing up, he was shy and sensitive. "I was awfully self-conscious as a kid - about everything,"' he said. "The way I looked and things I didn't have that some of the other kids did."
His mother worked long hours as a Salvation Army worker, so Williams spent much of his time on playgrounds, developing a skill that few have ever been able to match. "I used to hit tennis balls, old baseballs, balls made of rags - anything," he said. "I didn't think I'd be a particularly good hitter. I just liked to do it."
He was wrong. All that left-handed hitting got him noticed by a scout. After graduating high school, Williams signed with the San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League. Two seasons later, the Red Sox bought his contract for $25,000 and four players.
He spent one season with Triple-A Minneapolis before breaking in as Boston's 20-year-old rightfielder in 1939, hitting .327 with 31 homers.
Williams tipped his hat for every home run that season. He was embraced as "The Kid," and Boston had visions of a man who one day might break Babe Ruth's home-run record.
The Red Sox moved the rightfield fence in following Williams' rookie season. Wanting to protect his keen batting eye, he moved to leftfield so he wouldn't have stare into the sun. Williams slumped to 23 homer in 1940.
He still batted .344, but that wasn't enough to erase the frustration. Part of it was Williams' look. He was a gangly 6-foot-3 and 205 pounds, and his long legs made it appear he was loping and never running as hard as he really was.
One game he struck out, then made an error. He heard the boos, and he couldn't get the echo out of his head. "In the dugout between innings, I swore never again to tip my hat in Fenway Park,"' he said.
It was the start of a not-so-beautiful relationship between Williams and "those wolves in the leftfield stands."' His dealings with the press weren't any better.
Williams spits into the air as he crosses the plate after hitting his 400th homer.
"If his noodle swells another inch, Master Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox won't be able to get his hat on with a shoehorn," wrote Jack Miley in the New York Post. "For when it comes to arrogant, ungrateful athletes, this one leads the league."
Williams routinely led the league in critics and hitting. On the final day of the 1941 season, he had a .39955 batting average. It would have been rounded up to an even .400 if he'd chosen not to take another at-bat. But Williams was never one to back down from any challenge, and played in both games of the doubleheader.
He went 6-for-8. It was the finishing touch on an astounding accomplishment, yet Williams lost the MVP award to Joe DiMaggio, who had his 56-game hitting streak that season.
There is no telling what kind of damage Williams might have done to pitchers if he hadn't been serving in the military in two wars? It's not unreasonable to think he could have passed Ruth's 714 homers.
Was he the greatest hitter ever? Others have hit for higher averages, had more home runs, more RBI. Williams would have been near the top of every career category if military service hadn't intervened. And a more confident man never entered the batter's box.
"Some call it courage," he said. "I call it confidence in yourself. Knowing you can hit any pitcher alive."
Few ever played so well for so long. He batted .388 in 1957, and won the A.L. batting title again at .328 the following season at age 40. His eyesight and discipline at the plate were legendary. In 7,706 at-bats, Williams struck out only 709 times.
Whatever he did, there was the love-hate relationship with Boston fans. "Williams is a peculiar case, so tangled in his inner man that even a psychologist or psychiatrist would have trouble unraveling him," wrote Arthur Daley in The New York Times. "He is more hated than liked by those who know him best."
But on the final day of the final homestand of the 1960 season, 10,454 fans showed up at Fenway to give a loving goodbye to the 42-year-old Williams.
Boston's mayor presented a $1,000 check to the Jimmy Fund, the children's charity Williams championed. The local sports committee presented a plaque. The inscription wasn't read in its entirety, since Williams hated to be fussed over. He then took the microphone.
"I want to say that my years in Boston have been the greatest of my life," Williams said.
When he came to bat in the eighth inning, Fenway erupted. Everybody wanted a dream ending, and Williams provided it. He hit a home run, and ran the bases like he'd done 520 times before - head down and fast. After touching home plate, he went straight to the dugout.
"We want Ted!" the crowd yelled.
He never came back out. As author John Updike wrote, "Gods don't answer letters."
Williams managed the Washington Senators and Texas Rangers from 1969-72, compiling a 273-364 record. After his retirement, Williams spent much of time fishing, and was as proficient with a rod and reel as he was with a bat.
1986 World Series
Come on guys, can we give Billy Buck a break?
1986 World Series
The 1986 World Series, the 83rd playing of the modern championship series in Major League Baseball, was a memorable battle between the New York Mets and the Boston Red Sox which helped to spread the legend of "The Curse of the Bambino" to mass public awareness.
Umpires: John Kibler (NL), Jim Evans (AL), Harry Wendelstedt (NL), Joe Brinkman (AL), Ed Montague (NL), Dale Ford (AL)
Series MVP: Ray Knight
Getting there
The Mets had been in a swirl of controversy during the entire season thanks in part to their edgy and rowdy players, but the team went 108-54 during the regular season, easily the best record in baseball, finished the season 20 games ahead of the next National League East division contender, and won the 1986 National League Championship Series, 4 games to 2, over the Houston Astros.
The Red Sox, on the other hand, went 95-66 during the season, and played a back-and-forth series against the California Angels in the 1986 American League Championship Series. All but eliminated, the Red Sox stormed back to win the pennant (breaking the hearts of Angels fans as a result) and advance to the World Series.
The Red Sox won the first two games of the Series in New York, but the Mets won the next two in Boston. Game 5 went to the Red Sox, leaving them just one game away from their first title since 1918.
Game 6, October 25
In Game 6 at Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadows, Boston took a quick 2-0 lead on RBI base hits from Dwight Evans and Marty Barrett. The Mets tied the score in the fifth inning on a single from Ray Knight and a run-scoring double play by Danny Heep. An error by Knight led to Barrett scoring in the 7th to give Boston a 3-2 lead, but again the Mets rallied, tying the game on a Gary Carter sacrifice fly. The 3-3 tie forced extra innings.
In the top of the 10th inning, Dave Henderson homered to pull the Sox within 3 outs of a world championship, and Barrett singled in Wade Boggs to make it a 5-3 lead. When Wally Backman and Keith Hernandez were retired in the bottom of the 10th, the championship seemed at hand.
Then, Carter singled to left. Pinch hitter Kevin Mitchell singled to center. Knight hit a single that scored Carter and advanced Mitchell to third base, making the score 5-4. The Red Sox replaced pitcher Calvin Schiraldi with Bob Stanley to face left fielder Mookie Wilson. Stanley quickly got two strikes on Wilson. Then, with Boston one strike away from a championship, Stanley threw a wild pitch, and Mitchell scored to tie the game, while Knight advanced to second base. The Red Sox were shocked to have blown the lead with the game all but over, much as they had done to the Angels in the ALCS almost two weeks prior. Wilson fouled off a few pitches, then he hit a roller up the first base line and through the legs of first baseman Bill Buckner. Knight scored the winning run from second, and the Mets stormed the field, as a dejected Buckner walked off.
Aftermath
Game 7 was delayed a day due to rain, but on Monday, October 27, the Mets came from behind again to win the game 8-5, and claim their second World Series title.
Due to the destruction wreaked by Met fans storming the field when the team clinched the division championship at home, security was tight at Shea Stadium for Game 7 and the crowd was well-behaved (by New York standards) in their celebration of the city's first baseball world championship in eight years. It would take a decade for a New York team to bring the winner's trophy back.
Trivia
Bruce Hurst would've been named the World Series Most Valuable Player if the Red Sox had held on. Hurst was the Red Sox's starting pitcher in Game 7 (which was pushed back a day due to a rain-out) even though Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd was originally supposed to start.
Roger Clemens shaved soon after being removed from Game 6. The newly clean-shaven Clemens had hoped that he would look good for the ultimately aborted Red Sox post game championship celebration. In addition, NBC's Bob Costas was already in the Red Sox's clubhouse in preparation for what was preceived to be the Red Sox's championship celebration.
Just prior to Jesse Orosco striking out Marty Barrett to clinch the World Championship for the Mets, a pink smoke bomb was released in centerfield.
Just prior to the start of the World Series, Bill Buckner during an interview for Boston television, jokingly brought up the fear of allowing the other team to score the winning run after letting the ball go through his legs. This now unintentionally ominious interview resurfaced during an episode of ESPN Classic's Battlelines.
Before being called to pinch-hit in Game 6, Kevin Mitchell was busy making flight arrangements in order to go home to San Diego. According to Mitchell, just prior to Bob Stanley's wild pitch, Mets third base coach Bud Harrelson had informed Mitchell to be prepared for a ball in the dirt.
Keith Hernandez claimed to Bob Costas during the clubhouse celebration that he walked into manager Davey Johnson's office to drink a Budweiser during the 9th inning of Game 6. Hernandez, who originally accepted defeat, eventually came to the conclusion that Johnson's chair that Hernandez was sitting in was a good luck charm.
According to sports journalist Dick Schaap, while approaching an elevator sometime after Game 6, he caught newly elected National League president Bart Giamatti, who was a major Red Sox fan, mutter profanities out of frustration for Red Sox manager John McNamara's decision to keep a battered Bill Buckner in the late innings rather than put in Dave Stapleton for defensive purposes as he had done many times that season.
When it seemed like the Red Sox winning Game 6 would be a foregone conclusion, third base umpire Harry Wendelstedt told Wade Boggs to give him his cap as soon as the game was over. Wendelstedt's reasoning according to Boggs was that he always collected caps from teams that had just won a ball game.
A Monday Night Football game between the Washington Redskins and the New York Giants directly opposed Game 7 of the World Series. This was not done intentionally: Game 7 was originally scheduled for Sunday night but was postponed due to rain.
This was the first World Series in which the designated hitter rule was used when the game was played in the American League team's home stadium, with pitchers batting in games played at the National League venue. From 1976-1985 the DH rule had been used in even-numbered years.
1986 World Series
The 1986 World Series, the 83rd playing of the modern championship series in Major League Baseball, was a memorable battle between the New York Mets and the Boston Red Sox which helped to spread the legend of "The Curse of the Bambino" to mass public awareness.
Umpires: John Kibler (NL), Jim Evans (AL), Harry Wendelstedt (NL), Joe Brinkman (AL), Ed Montague (NL), Dale Ford (AL)
Series MVP: Ray Knight
Getting there
The Mets had been in a swirl of controversy during the entire season thanks in part to their edgy and rowdy players, but the team went 108-54 during the regular season, easily the best record in baseball, finished the season 20 games ahead of the next National League East division contender, and won the 1986 National League Championship Series, 4 games to 2, over the Houston Astros.
The Red Sox, on the other hand, went 95-66 during the season, and played a back-and-forth series against the California Angels in the 1986 American League Championship Series. All but eliminated, the Red Sox stormed back to win the pennant (breaking the hearts of Angels fans as a result) and advance to the World Series.
The Red Sox won the first two games of the Series in New York, but the Mets won the next two in Boston. Game 5 went to the Red Sox, leaving them just one game away from their first title since 1918.
Game 6, October 25
In Game 6 at Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadows, Boston took a quick 2-0 lead on RBI base hits from Dwight Evans and Marty Barrett. The Mets tied the score in the fifth inning on a single from Ray Knight and a run-scoring double play by Danny Heep. An error by Knight led to Barrett scoring in the 7th to give Boston a 3-2 lead, but again the Mets rallied, tying the game on a Gary Carter sacrifice fly. The 3-3 tie forced extra innings.
In the top of the 10th inning, Dave Henderson homered to pull the Sox within 3 outs of a world championship, and Barrett singled in Wade Boggs to make it a 5-3 lead. When Wally Backman and Keith Hernandez were retired in the bottom of the 10th, the championship seemed at hand.
Then, Carter singled to left. Pinch hitter Kevin Mitchell singled to center. Knight hit a single that scored Carter and advanced Mitchell to third base, making the score 5-4. The Red Sox replaced pitcher Calvin Schiraldi with Bob Stanley to face left fielder Mookie Wilson. Stanley quickly got two strikes on Wilson. Then, with Boston one strike away from a championship, Stanley threw a wild pitch, and Mitchell scored to tie the game, while Knight advanced to second base. The Red Sox were shocked to have blown the lead with the game all but over, much as they had done to the Angels in the ALCS almost two weeks prior. Wilson fouled off a few pitches, then he hit a roller up the first base line and through the legs of first baseman Bill Buckner. Knight scored the winning run from second, and the Mets stormed the field, as a dejected Buckner walked off.
Aftermath
Game 7 was delayed a day due to rain, but on Monday, October 27, the Mets came from behind again to win the game 8-5, and claim their second World Series title.
Due to the destruction wreaked by Met fans storming the field when the team clinched the division championship at home, security was tight at Shea Stadium for Game 7 and the crowd was well-behaved (by New York standards) in their celebration of the city's first baseball world championship in eight years. It would take a decade for a New York team to bring the winner's trophy back.
Trivia
Bruce Hurst would've been named the World Series Most Valuable Player if the Red Sox had held on. Hurst was the Red Sox's starting pitcher in Game 7 (which was pushed back a day due to a rain-out) even though Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd was originally supposed to start.
Roger Clemens shaved soon after being removed from Game 6. The newly clean-shaven Clemens had hoped that he would look good for the ultimately aborted Red Sox post game championship celebration. In addition, NBC's Bob Costas was already in the Red Sox's clubhouse in preparation for what was preceived to be the Red Sox's championship celebration.
Just prior to Jesse Orosco striking out Marty Barrett to clinch the World Championship for the Mets, a pink smoke bomb was released in centerfield.
Just prior to the start of the World Series, Bill Buckner during an interview for Boston television, jokingly brought up the fear of allowing the other team to score the winning run after letting the ball go through his legs. This now unintentionally ominious interview resurfaced during an episode of ESPN Classic's Battlelines.
Before being called to pinch-hit in Game 6, Kevin Mitchell was busy making flight arrangements in order to go home to San Diego. According to Mitchell, just prior to Bob Stanley's wild pitch, Mets third base coach Bud Harrelson had informed Mitchell to be prepared for a ball in the dirt.
Keith Hernandez claimed to Bob Costas during the clubhouse celebration that he walked into manager Davey Johnson's office to drink a Budweiser during the 9th inning of Game 6. Hernandez, who originally accepted defeat, eventually came to the conclusion that Johnson's chair that Hernandez was sitting in was a good luck charm.
According to sports journalist Dick Schaap, while approaching an elevator sometime after Game 6, he caught newly elected National League president Bart Giamatti, who was a major Red Sox fan, mutter profanities out of frustration for Red Sox manager John McNamara's decision to keep a battered Bill Buckner in the late innings rather than put in Dave Stapleton for defensive purposes as he had done many times that season.
When it seemed like the Red Sox winning Game 6 would be a foregone conclusion, third base umpire Harry Wendelstedt told Wade Boggs to give him his cap as soon as the game was over. Wendelstedt's reasoning according to Boggs was that he always collected caps from teams that had just won a ball game.
A Monday Night Football game between the Washington Redskins and the New York Giants directly opposed Game 7 of the World Series. This was not done intentionally: Game 7 was originally scheduled for Sunday night but was postponed due to rain.
This was the first World Series in which the designated hitter rule was used when the game was played in the American League team's home stadium, with pitchers batting in games played at the National League venue. From 1976-1985 the DH rule had been used in even-numbered years.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
New England Patriots = No Respect
It doesn't matter what they do or how hard they try. We as Boston fans will always find the nay sayers about our teams. This article is a perfect reference in how stupid sports writers can be. You never bet against the Pats, especially when their backs are against the wall. But then again, we're accustomed to feeling this way.
Boston Celtics off to a good start
It took overtime on opening night to get past the Knicks but I'll take a "W" at anytime. Pierce and Davis played great games but I feel that Delonte West is truly a star in the making. He had full command of the floor and chipped in with 14pts, 9 rebounds and 9 assists, almost a triple double on opening night. The Celtics are young and will have their ups and downs this season but they have a lot of promise. Tonight was a step in the right direction.
Red Sox "Needs"
Does anyone out there believe that the Red Sox will finish above .500 next year? It doesn't look good for the home town team as if I were to predict where they may finish next year I'm looking at a third place finish in the AL East.
Needs: 1 Front Line Starting Pitcher
Closer/Bullpen help
1st Baseman
Center Field
This team is old and must become young fast. Trade Schilling and Manny for prospects. The rumor I heard of Trading Manny for Glaus and Erstad is absurd. Whoever comes in as GM must retool that roster and think about two years from now and start allowing our prospects to develop. Hanley Ramirez, it seems we've heard about him for 10 years. Get him in there and see what he can do as well as the other farm hands. The future can wait a few years. We have our title and I'd rather build around Papelbon, Ortiz and co.
Needs: 1 Front Line Starting Pitcher
Closer/Bullpen help
1st Baseman
Center Field
This team is old and must become young fast. Trade Schilling and Manny for prospects. The rumor I heard of Trading Manny for Glaus and Erstad is absurd. Whoever comes in as GM must retool that roster and think about two years from now and start allowing our prospects to develop. Hanley Ramirez, it seems we've heard about him for 10 years. Get him in there and see what he can do as well as the other farm hands. The future can wait a few years. We have our title and I'd rather build around Papelbon, Ortiz and co.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Mrs. Manning is coming to town
Yes we'll be greeted Monday night by the biggest whiner in the NFL. The man who the five yard shove rule has been named after. Mrs. Peyton Manning and his group of cry babies roll into town to face the mighty Patriots. Now lets give the Colts some credit, they've played a brutal schedule thus far, sarcasm. I would actually like to line up in Seymour’s spot on Monday. The Patriots need a strong safety, can I please plow through the C-gap on a safety blitz and knock him into the middle of next week. Uhm, it may be tough with my slender frame but adrenaline alone would get me there. Can I possibly see another Direc TV commercial with the Manning's??? It drives me up a wall. Why does the NFL cater to all of the Manning's needs? They haven't won a damned thing and hopefully that will continue. Brady and Co will face a tough task and we need to get a few players back. Our secondary scares the hell out of me. Any predictions on the score? Let me know.
Can the Boston Bruins win an OT Game?
Can they win? Is it chemistry? or a lack of competitiveness? Maybe it's just the way the new "NHL" is played this year. Players hang out at the blue line and they know they can't be touched. It doesn't bold well for our hometown hockey club as they lose another one to the Islanders. Bruins Lose and to make matters worse Brian Leetch is injured, Leetch Injured If they continue their goaltending this way, the playoffs will be a stretch.
Theo Epstein....What the hell?
Theo Epstein screwed us!! Theo Resigns So what's next? Will the Red Sox hire Towers, Gillick or will they promote from within? Theo couldn't handle the "rock star" status he had in Boston, what in the world did he expect? We hadn't won a World Series title in a million years and he expected everybody to remain normal. As a life long Sox fan I feel cheated and betrayed by young Theo and want a real explanation. Is Luscious Larry to blame? It can't be John Henry because the man seems afraid to say anything but if I was given the opportunity to make 4.5 million over the next three years, I wouldn't give a sh*% if people were banging on my doorstep every night, heck, you have enough money, hire a bodyguard. There is something else to this story and I fully expect to get to the bottom of this. Now the Red Sox are in disarray and next season is NOT looking good. Any thoughts?
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