After finishing the preseason 4-0, the New England Patriots were looking like the ‘good ship lollipop’ heading into the ’03 season. They were playing well in all phases, they had some promising rookies, and they were integrating the biggest free agent signee in team history, LB Rosevelt Colvin, into the mix. They were healthy. They were deep. Life was good.
Then, it happened.
Tuesday, September 2nd the Pats unexpectedly released Safety Lawyer Milloy. He was a defensive captain. He was a Pro-bowler. A team leader. He was not someone that anyone thought would be released. But, he was. Just like that. Five days before the season opener against a division rival.
Milloy quickly signed with that week’s opponent Buffalo, and the fallout was immediate.
September 7, 2003: Buffalo Bills 31, New England Patriots 0
Yikes. Way to get the season started. Pats fans were a mess. For the first time, Bill Belichick’s decision-making had come into question. The team’s commitment to Belichick was also being put into question. Tom Jackson of ESPN went a step further by stating “Let me be very clear about this: They hate their coach.”
The players denied that sentiment, but it was clear that they were not too happy and were obviously adversely affected by the last minute jettisoning of team leader, Milloy. Predictions of an 11-win season were quickly changed to 6 to 8 wins, tops. The team did get its act together for a win against an equally reeling Eagles team in Philly in week 2. They won again the next week and lost in week 4 to the Redskins (the Redskins!!). They were 2-2 and no one was quite sure what was going on with this team.
They had lost 8 starters (not including Milloy, but including Colvin) to injuries and would start 6 different rookies over the next 5 weeks. Over the course of the season they would use 42 different starters. After the Skins game they beat the Titans, then the Giants and well...
…they haven’t lost since.
Lawyer who?
They have won on the road. They have won at home. They have won in OT. They have beaten teams with winning records (7-0 on the season) and beaten the teams they are supposed to beat. They just find a way to get it done. To the tune of a 14-2 record. Oh, and just for kicks:
December 27, 2003: New England Patriots 31, Buffalo Bills 0
The run that they are on is reminiscent of the run in their improbable world championship season in ’01. Except one thing is missing this time: they have not been lucky. No tuck rules. No miraculous run of good health. No fortunate scheduling. No capitalizing on poor coaching decisions on the opposite sideline (Mike Shannahan’s curious decisions at the end of the Monday night game in Denver notwithstanding). In fact, with the injuries suffered this year, they have been a bit unlucky.
No, this team has not been lucky at all. They’ve just been good. Better than everyone else in the NFL. Vastly better than everyone else in the NFL? No. But they have been stellar in all phases, from the smiling QB with the gaudy winning % to the best defense in franchise history led by San Diego salary-cap victim Rodney Harrison to the play of no less than six ’03 draft picks. It has truly been a surreal season.
Which brings us back to Belichick. Perhaps he is the only one who got lucky. He took a gamble with the release of Milloy, especially the timing of it, and while it cost them one game, he was able to get it back on track and that could only be done with the right kind of people. This Pats team has just that… the right people.
Only two guys were selected to the Pro-Bowl, but this is not a team built around stars. It’s built around people. Players who are hungry, unselfish and most of all… smart. The team concept is real with this group and Belichick and his staff should get as much credit for that as they do for their brilliant gameplans.
This organization too, has come so far. From the laughingstock franchise known as the ‘Patsies’ to an organization that many in the league consider to be a model franchise. Again, surreal.
They are the best team in the NFL, but not by a wide margin. With a #1 seed and the accompanying home field throughout the Pats seemed primed, almost destined, for a trip to the Superbowl. A game they will probably win, but not by a wide margin. Why? The answer is people, people.
What can someone like say, Daniel Snyder, learn from all of this you wonder? Perhaps the sign hanging in Patriots VP of Player Development Scot Pioli’s office tells it all: ‘We are building a team… not collecting talent’.
Amen.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!
My father passed away.
On Christmas Eve.
He died alone in his room in a Mission somewhere in Oregon where he was working and living. While the autopsy results are not yet revealed, he most likely died of natural causes.
I have not spoken to or seen my father for nearly 19yrs. One Friday in May of 1985 after receiving his paycheck, he hopped on a bus, left for the west coast and never looked back. He left my Mom, my sister and I in a two-bedroom apartment. I was 14.
Let’s go back further. My father, by all accounts, had a terrible childhood. His father bolted when he was an infant and his mother died when he was 13. He was an orphan, moving in and out of foster homes where it is suspected that he was abused emotionally, if not in some other ways. He finally moved in with a childhood friend and his family. He married my mom when he was 17, had my sister at 18 and then me when he was nearly 21.
He had a good job working for the local decorators union and moved us to the suburbs when my sister was ready to start school. He was an intelligent guy. An affable man whom everyone liked. Yet, his past would just not go away.
He had big dreams, but wallowed in disappointment. He had trouble with responsibility. He did not deal well with pressure. He started walking out on us in the late 70’s. First, to the Catskills and then down to New York City. I seem to recall him being in Milwaukee at one point. He attempted suicide. I vividly remember telling friends at school that my father was a truck driver and that’s why he was never around. I remember finding it impossible to admit to others and to myself that it was really happening. I remember lying about him. A lot.
He came back to us. My mother, desperate for some normalcy in her kid’s lives, took him back while my sister and I tried to pretend it didn’t happen. He then left for 2 1/2yrs in the early 80’s ending up in Oakland, California. I would like to provide more details of this time in my life, but my memory has been self-quashed when it comes to his transgressions.
He returned the last time and told of us of how great California was and we all moved to San Diego. Well, there was no cheap living there and we moved on to New Mexico, where there were no jobs. Having been unsuccessful in an attempt to start a new life out west, it was back to Boston amid an air of failure. It was now a matter of time, even in my 13yr old mind, that he would be leaving us soon. And so it was.
This one really hurt. I was a teenager, old enough and mature enough to understand what had happened this time and after some painful days and the surreal trip to the police station with my mom to fill out the missing persons report, I made the decision to not allow him back into my life. Not even into my mind.
I went about my life as normal as possible and thought about him a lot less than you would think. On occasion my friends would ask why I never talked about my dad. The answer for me was simple: ‘There’s nothing to say.’
Thank God for my friends.
The next 15 years, he never wrote. Never called. Never knew what was happening with my sister and I. He missed the purchase of my first car, the proms, the graduations, weddings, the birth of his two grandchildren from my sister… he missed a lot.
In January of 2001 on a lark, I decided to pay $32 online to find out where he was. I got the answer: Duluth, Minnesota. I paid another $1.50 for the local Duluth newspaper to provide any mention of him in their paper. There he was, marrying a woman named Norma a few years earlier. After 15yrs. of not knowing where my father was, I now had the information. And I did nothing with it.
I waited some 8 months before deciding that my sister had a right to know. I was concerned for her. I felt that she might use the information only to have her heart broken again. My sister and I are very different in a lot of ways, but none more than our view our father. I gave her the information and told her to be careful.
She wrote to him and he wrote back. They spoke on the phone. She went and visited him that fall. She told him about me and that I wished to have no contact with him. She says he asked about me, though I sometimes wonder how sincere he was. He was working as a bartender. He was married to Norma, but had no kids. She said he seemed pretty happy.
Then, while driving to my in-laws on Christmas Eve last year, I got a call from my sister saying that Norma called and told her he had left, again. He took off and the police found her car that he had taken, somewhere in Portland, Oregon. No surprise.
Over the years, my stance has been pretty hard line towards him, I’ll admit. But I can never wipe away the feeling I have towards a man that walked out on his family and never once tried to contact them.
My father had a tough childhood. There is no denying that. I will not pretend to know what his childhood was like. I will not pretend to think that I would have handled the same situations well either. But when I think of the childhood he provided for my sister and I… I find myself feeling much less empathy for him than I do apathy. I have not spent the last 18yrs in a state of anger towards my father. It’s worse than that. I have spent that last 18yrs in a state of indifference towards him.
If I had not found my father online 3yrs ago, he would have died not knowing anything about how his children were. How they were doing. Whether they were dead or alive. It makes me wonder how much he cared, if he did at all. And if he didn’t care, why should I have cared?
Norma called me on Saturday to tell me the news. How did she get my number, you ask? He didn’t have it and he had left her a year earlier anyway. I had never spoken to her. I had never met her. I will never meet her. She had lost my sister’s number and plus, my sister had moved to Texas over the last year. So how did she find me? You know how? She called information and found my listed phone number. An effort, that in the last 18yrs of his life, my own father never made.
He led a lonely, lonely life. But it was a choice. That is what's most sad of all... it didn't have to be that way.
May he rest in peace.
Emptying out the desk drawer of the mind…
If you haven’t noticed…. on television these days, rich is the new gay.
The news of a proposed ‘Goonies’ sequel has me in a lather. The Corey Feldman comeback is right around the corner. I can feel it.
Actual conversation with a friend back home in Boston on Sunday the 14th at 11:00am:
Me: We got him!
Him: A-Rod??!!
Me: No, Sadaam Hussein, you dumbass!
Him: Oh, cool. I really want the Sox to get A-Rod…
I am jonesing for TiVo. Seriously, I NEED to get this.
My New England Patriots are like a machine right now. I am simply stunned by their performance this season. A probable 14-2 season after that horrific start to the season in Buffalo (31-0 loss). Just incredible. More on them in a few days.
Do we really need ‘The Nanny’ speaking like Snoop Dogg on those Old Navy commercials? The end of the world is near…. Fisschnizzle.
Ok, Joe Namath’s interview on ESPN during the Pats/Jets game last weekend was one of those moments when you turn to the person next to you and say: “Did that just happen?” If you missed it, while being interviewed by sideline reporter Suzy Kolber, ‘Broadway Joe’ twice says, “I want to kiss you.” Yes, he was shitfaced. And yes, I laughed my ass off.
Speaking of sideline reports… during a Laker telecast last Friday evening, some sideline dope approached ‘Simple Life’ “star” Nicole Richie (daughter of a proud Lionel) and asked her about the Lakers and she responded by saying she wants ‘to have sex with Kobe Bryant’. Ree-diculous.
‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ starts its new season on Sunday January 4th. God, I wish I could TiVo that.
Mad Cow Disease comes to America!! We got it now!! Sweet. This is the worst thing to come to America from Europe, since the Osbourne family.
Be on the lookout for ‘C.S.I.: New York City’ (New Orleans is also possible) next season. And you thought ‘Law & Order’ had cornered the market on multiple spin-offs.
The Red Sox/Rangers A-Rod trade charade was, in the end, very reminiscent of ‘Seinfeld’… a show about nothing. Sigh. I still think this gets done.
Congratulations to my sister and her husband on the news that they are expecting. Great. Just one more nephew or niece for me barely see and thus, alienate. Kidding. God bless them all.
I am hating that ‘human domino’ commercial from Miller Lite. Can’t they just go back to the two hot chicks wrestling in the fountain? Please?
Brett Favre’s performance on Monday Night Football 24hrs after learning of his father’s death was truly awe-inspiring. Never been a huge Favre fan… until now.
Finally, both of my fantasy football teams (The Boston Chowdah & Plymouth Pilgrims) are playing this weekend in their respective championship games. If they both win, I will be a Fantasy Football God… and as insufferable as ever.
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!!!!!!
Joke of the Week:
Tommy Shaughnessy enters the confessional and says, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I have been with a loose woman.”
The priest asks, “Is that you, little Tommy Shaughnessy?”
“Yes, Father, it is.”
“And who was the woman you were with?”
“Sure and I can’t be tellin’ ya, Father. I don’t want to ruin her reputation.”
“Well, Tommy,” says the priest, “I’m sure to find out sooner or later, so you may as well tell me now. Was it Brenda O’Malley?”
“I cannot say,” says Tommy.
“Was it Patricia Kelly?”
“I’ll never tell.”
“Was it Liz Shannon?”
“I’m sorry, but I’ll not name her.”
“Was it Cathy Morgan?”
“My lips are sealed.”
“Was it Fiona McDonald, then?”
“Please, Father, I cannot tell you.”
The priest sighs in frustration. “You’re a steadfast lad, Tommy Shaughnessy, and I admire that. But you’ve sinned, and you must atone. Be off with you now.”
Tommy walks back to his pew. His friend Sean slides over and whispers, “What’d you get?”
“Five good leads!” says Tommy
Curt Flood didn’t have this in mind, did he?
Before Curt Flood took Major League Baseball to court in an effort to rid baseball of the reserve clause, baseball’s labor pool was among the most mistreated in the country. From a strictly vocational perspective, Flood, along with Players Association founder Marvin Miller, rid baseball of it’s own form of slavery. Before the dissolution of the reserve clause players had no leverage whatsoever, had to stay with the same team no matter the pay or conditions and reaped only a tiny portion of the financial rewards that the owners received.
Today, the tables have not just turned, they have been obliterated, set on fire and stuck firmly beneath the asses of the owners in baseball. The two highest paid players in the game make over $20mil each, while 90% of the teams make less than that in profit each year, if they make a profit at all. These are the facts. They should not garner much sympathy mind you, but they are the facts nonetheless.
Now along comes the highest paid player in baseball, Alex Rodriguez, looking for an opportunity to get out of baseball hell in Arlington, Tx. by restructuring his contract in order to fit the payroll budget of the Boston Red Sox. He wants to be free to go to a team that wants him, with the permission (if not encouragement) of his old team. He wants to reduce his salary in exchange for an opportunity to be a free agent a year earlier than already stipulated in his original deal.
You see, A-Rod signed a deal with the Texas Rangers 3yrs ago, spurred on by his agent and the Players Association for $252mil over 10yrs. It was unprecedented in professional sports. To this day, it has not been eclipsed. A-Rod said he wanted to win, but he knew this deal was a loser from the beginning. In the eyes of the Players Association, the most powerful union in all of organized labor, $25mil per year IS winning.
A-Rod requested that he restructure his deal in order to move to a place where he would be happy, sacrificing a few million that he would never spend anyway. But to the Players Association, happiness is not an important goal. Why? Because it cannot be assigned a dollar value, therefore it is of no interest to them. They have no interest in the fact that this deal is great for baseball. It is great for A-Rod. Everyone involved… except them, wants it.
There is a stipulation in the collective bargaining agreement that says a player cannot restructure his deal, lowering the dollar value, without there being ‘added benefit to the player’. Who determines what constitutes ‘added benefit’? Guess who. The Players Association, naturally.
In this instance, the Red Sox offered to reduce the contract by several million in exchange for a chance to play on the big stage of the east coast, play for a winning team… oh, and to be able to opt out of the deal in 3yrs, one year earlier than his current deal stipulates. So, if A-Rod were unhappy in Boston after the ’06 season, he could declare himself a free agent and negotiate a better deal (hello, Yankees) or a stay a Red Sox for a still-ridiculous salary. Yeah, I see no ‘added benefit’ there.
This stance by the Players Association is insane. They say that such a deal would set a terrible precedent for A-Rod’s fellow players. Hmmm. I will leave the response to that logic to one of A-Rod’s fellow players (and future teammate?) and union member, Curt Schilling: "At the end of the day I hope it's not greed that kept this deal from getting done. I would think if Alex Rodriguez wants to come to the Boston Red Sox, he'd sit down and find a way to get it done. God forbid if he did that and the players' union said, 'No, you can't.' The last time I checked, I pay money to pay the salary of Don Fehr and Gene Orza. I understand they say there would be a ripple-down effect if Alex wants to change his contract, but what other player would be affected by the restructuring of Alex Rodriguez's contract? None that I know of."
Curt Flood and Marvin Miller fought hard to change the baseball labor system in order for players to be free and happy (as well as wealthy). The current situation with this $25mil/yr player is a demonstration of perverse irony.
Emptying out the desk drawer of the mind…
Saw ‘Love Actually’. Yes, it’s a chick-flick, but since I was with a chick, it’s ok. A feel-good holiday movie. Hugh Grant plays the same character as usual, but he is only one of several stories in the film. Overall I liked it, though I found it more funny than poignant… which I don’t think was it’s intent.
While I won’t equate GWB’s trip to Iraq on Thanksgiving to his landing on the aircraft carrier stunt last spring, I do have some doubt about its sincerity. I would have felt better had there been no handpicked press on board the plane.
I have not seen the Paris Hilton tape, but have heard it is disappointing… from a porn perspective. I too, do not understand her fame and think this will only increase it. Sadly.
The good karma surrounding my New England Patriots right now is downright eerie. This team has it going right now and QB Tom Brady has a Ringo Star-like lucky streak going at the moment. If he wins another Superbowl this year, he will not be lucky anymore... it may be time to declare him great.
Cell phone commercials are just insufferable. There are no exceptions to this.
12yrs ago, a boy and his family took Michael Jackson’s money in a trade for their silence. Now, I don’t know the pressures that the family was under at that time, nor can I say with conviction that I would not have done the same thing. However, if the latest Jacko allegations are true, you have to wonder that if they had decided to press charges, perhaps some other boy(s) could have been spared similar pain.
While watching Jennifer Garner on the ‘Tonight Show’ a couple of weeks back, I came thisclose to making out with my television. Yes, I am in love with her.
Tiger Woods has hit a hole-in-one with his Swedish nanny. God bless him. She is hotter than Georgia asphalt. Men around the country are surely giving up a few strokes to her. Ok, that was bad.
I forgot to pack pants for my trip to Boston over Thanksgiving, so I was forced to buy some up there. I was in Abercrombie & Fitch, but left to avoid the embarrassment of having them pull down pants from the fat-guy section. You see, if you have a waistline north of 34, they put the pants 14ft in the air and you are forced to ask for help getting your giant pants. I headed next door to the Gap instead.
Gatorade’s Propel Fitness Water is the greatest drink invention since God himself created water. No lie.
Favorite moment of my Thanksgiving weekend: Listening to my friend’s 96yr old grandmother tell us about watching the Hindenburg fly overhead in New York City, minutes before it disintegrated while attempting to land in Lakewood, NJ.
The college football BCS system is such a joke, it’s hard to believe that it actually exists. It goes against the principles of competition and veers so far outside the scope of commonsense, you have to wonder if it’s worth the attention paid to it.
Pick-up ‘Room on Fire’, the new album from ‘The Strokes’. You will not be disappointed.
‘The O.C.’ is resting nicely in the imprint left by AtomicTom fave ‘Beverly Hills 90210’. The soap opera-like story lines, actors playing roles much younger than they really are and of course, hot-looking girl/dude after hot-looking girl/dude. Just like 90201, you need to suspend all disbelief to watch this show, but it can be an entertaining little yarn.
Sports Illustrated is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. They are selling prints of many of their most famous covers. I highly recommend for the sports fan in your life. www.sicovers.com
Joke of the Week:
A man is driving up a steep, narrow mountain road. A woman is driving down the same road at the same time.
As they pass each other the woman leans out the window and yells, “PIG! ”
The man immediately leans out his window and shouts back, “BITCH!”
They each continue on their way, and as the man rounds the next corner, he crashes into a pig in the middle of the road.
If only men would listen.
Peter Gammons got it right: it’s a modern-day Cold War. It’s the Red Sox and the Yankees. Sox young GM Theo Epstein is JFK. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner is Kruschev. Last year’s dogged and downright nasty pursuit of Cuban pitcher Jose Contreras was this rivalry’s very own Cuban Missile Crisis.
Of course, none of the Yankees/ Red Sox battle is as important as the real Cold War was, but make no mistake, these two are serious about winning it. On the field and off. Last October’s epic American League Championship Series, appears to have been just prologue.
So, it goes with these two age-old rivals. And for those of you who think because the Yankees win all the time that this is not a rivalry, you are using the incorrect definition of the word rivalry. It’s about the competition, not just the results. This off-season has just begun and the shots are already being fired. The Sox got off the blocks first with a weeklong pursuit of pitcher Curt Schilling. They got him while giving up much less than the Yankees would have given and signed him to a relatively cheap contract extension. The sales pitch included this: “Go to the Red Sox and be a God… or go to New York and be just another Yankee” Schilling chose the former.
The Yankees naturally responded by signing outfielder Gary Sheffield. Sheffield had a MVP caliber season last year and has been throwing himself at the Yankees since season’s end. There are more battles on the horizon. The Sox are likely to sign closer Keith Foulke. The battle over relievers Tom Gordon and LaTroy Hawkins may loom. The Sox may still make a play for the Yankees Andy Pettite.
Also, keep in mind that Alex Rodriguez, the games best player, has made it known that he will approve a trade to only two teams in all of baseball. Take a guess which ones.
A friend of mine who is a fan of another team in baseball (I forget sometimes that there are other teams), said to me while the Schilling deal was going down, that it must be fun to be a Red Sox fan. I said that other than when they take out your heart and stomp on it, yeah, it is a lot of fun. The same is true for Yankee fans (except the part about the stomping of the heart).
The Yankees and Red Sox don’t stop playing just because the World Series has ended. The game just moves off the field and onto cell phones, airplanes, laptops, front offices and of course, checkbooks.