Archive for Uncategorized
Steinbrenner Removed Owner Anonymity Forever
Posted by: | CommentsThey used to be venerable, largely anonymous men. Baseball teams were the family business. You never saw them, rarely heard from them.
You had an occasional buffoon (Bill Veeck), or a pioneer (Branch Rickey), or a turncoat (Horace Stoneham). Those anomalies aside, the rest of them wore stuffy suits, counted the day’s receipts, and some thought a hit-and-run was a traffic accident.
Their players were indentured. Thanks to the Reserve Clause, a big league ballplayer had the freedom of a goldfish in a plastic bag full of water and the leverage of a six-inch long plank.
Then came George Steinbrenner.
Steinbrenner, the Yankees owner who died early Tuesday morning at age 80, ripped the cloak of anonymity from team sports ownership. He gave it a face.
You may not have liked what you saw, but one thing was certain: You couldn’t look away.
Before Steinbrenner, you had no idea how much a team owner could care about winning or losing.
He was born on July 4, which I always found deliciously ironic, and maybe at times very appropriate, for Steinbrenner hated losing, and so do Americans.
Most of us just didn’t have hundreds of millions of dollars with which to do something about it.
Steinbrenner bought the Yankees from CBS in 1973. He made his money in shipping, and he only bought the Yankees because he couldn’t buy his home state Cleveland Indians.
Can you imagine? All of the bombastic antics, impetuous behavior and soap opera-like drama could have played out on Lake Erie instead of the East River.
Before Steinbrenner, the Yankees were a has-been. Their stadium was run down, their fan base dwindling, and their won-lost record pedestrian. The face of the franchise was Bobby Murcer, a fine ballplayer but with the charisma of a frog.
Steinbrenner bought them and for the first time in Yankees history, the owner was the star, though a polarizing one. The talent on the field lacked fizz, so George provided it. He moved his team into Shea Stadium for two seasons so that Yankee Stadium could be refurbished. At the same time, he set out to dismantle his roster, too.
New Yankee Stadium was unveiled in time for the 1976 season, and it was gorgeous. About the same time, the team itself was getting prettier.
Baseball rules changed regarding free agency, and Steinbrenner was truly unleashed. He went through cash like a teenager does with his allowance.
Never before had baseball owners been able to go to the candy store and buy players. And George, armed with his own cash and money made off TV contracts and the like, blew the doors off free agency.
But no owner, no matter his personality and largesse, is anything without foils, without supporting characters.
Steinbrenner wouldn’t have been half of what he was if he didn’t have Billy Martin or Reggie Jackson or Dave Winfield around him. Without them, he would have been just a loudmouth guy with a lot of money. He would have been Mark Cuban.
Everyone was on edge who worked for the Yankees, from Jackson to the night custodians.
George seemed to like that, because he wanted everyone associated with the Yankees to detest losing.
“When you put on a Yankees uniform, you’re not just putting on pinstripes,” Steinbrenner once said. “You’re putting on tradition. And you’d better treat that accordingly.”
Under Steinbrenner, every Yankees manager was interim. Job security was something to be winked at—like an inside joke.
At times, there was a question as to what Yankees players hated more: losing, or Steinbrenner.
“The more we lose, the more he’s apt to travel to see us play,” one former player said. “And the more he flies, the better the chance is that his plane will crash.”
Graig Nettles went on camera years after retiring.
“He’d light into us when we played bad, and if we started winning, George thought it was because he lit into us,” Nettles said. “That wasn’t the case, but that’s what George thought.”
Steinbrenner had success with the Yankees early on, winning four pennants and two World Series between 1976-81. But from 1982-94, the Yankees failed to make the playoffs. It was during that time, in the early-1990s, when Steinbrenner was suspended by Commissioner Fay Vincent from running the Yankees.
The announcement of Steinbrenner’s banishment incited a 90-second standing ovation at Yankee Stadium. Part of that reaction was because the last straw for Vincent was Steinbrenner paying gambler Howard Spira $40,000 to smear fan favorite Dave Winfield.
But George came back, in 1993. Those close to him say he was a different man after his suspension. Not coincidentally, the Yankees soon started winning World Series again—four in five years from 1996-2000.
Yankees players and managers took turns feuding with Steinbrenner, always publicly. There was Martin and Jackson, of course, and the three of them formed a menage a trois that was dropped on the media as if it came from the Fairy Godmother of Journalism.
The Yankees with George Steibrenner, Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson was like a summer-long episode of “COPS.” The Yankees clubhouse was filled with domestic disturbances in those days.
We’ll likely never see anything like that again; the combination of drama, intrigue, pettiness, and winning was at the same time intoxicating and repelling.
Steinbrenner relinquished most of the control of the Yankees to his sons in his later years, but he still went out as a winner. He died on top, as owner of the defending champs.
“What do I want it to say on my tombstone?” Steinbrenner said back in 1998. “I just want it to say, ‘He never stopped trying.’”
And we never stopped watching him trying. How could we?
For Once, No QB Controversy in Detroit
Posted by: | CommentsTake a good look at Matthew Stafford. Better yet, take a photo and store it in an airtight frame and lock it up in your safety deposit box.
Take a good look, because not much longer will Stafford have the boyish good looks that he currently possesses.
The young NFL quarterback comes into the league like a newborn—soft and smooth and with chubby cheeks. His legs kick a lot. He leaves with sandpaper for a beard, a limp, and with joints that need to be oiled daily. He has to be shoe horned into his clothes every morning.
Stafford, the Lions’ kid QB, still has his looks. He’s only in his second season, you know. He won’t resemble this 10 years from now. We’re talking about a position that ages you like the presidency.
Brett Favre used to be OK looking, to show you.
What has accelerated the aging of Lions’ quarterbacks over the decades hasn’t just been Deacon Jones, Dick Butkus, Reggie White, or the Minnesota Vikings.
It’s been the enemy within.
Friendly fire has done so many of them in.
Milt Plum spent more time battling Earl Morrall and Karl Sweetan than he did the Lions’ opponents every Sunday. Same with Greg Landry, who was so busy fending off first Bill Munson then Gary Danielson, he hardly had any energy left for the Packers, Bears, et al.
On and on it went.
Danielson and Eric Hipple. Hipple and Chuck Long. Rodney Peete and Erik Kramer.
The Lions liked to think the competition was good. But the battle to be the starter was so intense and so time consuming and distracting, it was like winning a marathon and being told there were 26 more miles just around the bend.
Truth?
The Lions had quarterback tryouts every summer—and into the fall—because they never had a quarterback. It’s similar to the old adage: If you have to ask how much it is, you can’t afford it.
Even Stafford, as last year’s No. 1 overall pick of the NFL Draft, wasn’t immune to the Lions’ inane insistence on annual quarterback tryouts.
Hard to imagine that, a year ago this time, Stafford—the gunslinger from Georgia—was in a life or death struggle with…Daunte Culpepper!
Culpepper’s out of the NFL now. Hardly seems like it should have been a fair fight. But the Lions wanted to make sure, so they ran the two out there during the exhibition season and the clear cut winner was Stafford.
If things go as planned, Matthew Stafford won’t have competition for his job for the next ten years. At least.
Now, finally, the Lions have a quarterback who needs only to worry about preparing to beat his opponents, not another quarterback.
Training camp starts later this month, and for a change, there’s no question who the No. 1 quarterback is in Detroit.
What will we do with ourselves?
Maybe we’ll marvel at Stafford’s arm, which is part God’s creation, part catapult.
Stafford doesn’t throw the football, he propels it. He could stand on Belle Isle and hit a receiver cutting across Windsor.
Maybe we’ll enjoy watching him mature, that ancient sports word.
The quarterback in his second NFL season is like a man who just walked through a car wash. It’s legalized hazing. He comes out battered, disoriented, and unable to see straight. Everyone tells him he’s better for it.
Stafford’s rookie season is under his belt. He made it through with all his faculties. That alone is a reason for a party. Now it’s time to become the young veteran leader.
Maybe we’ll get inspired by his toughness.
Last year, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving Day, Stafford led the Lions back from a huge deficit against the Cleveland Browns. He threw for the winning touchdown after briefly passing out from the pain of a brutal hit the play before. His throwing shoulder was separated and on fire when he jogged back onto the field.
Detroiters eat that stuff up.
I remember Scott Mitchell, softer than Charmin, in a playoff game in Tampa, back in 1997. Mitchell tried a quarterback sneak, and then he died.
Well, that’s what it looked like, anyway.
Mitchell lay on the ground so long, he started to take root.
I believe that moment is what finished Mitchell, for all intents and purposes, in Detroit. Coach Bobby Ross started Mitchell the next season, but pulled him after just a few weeks and that was it for Scott as a Lion.
Stafford has some continuity, too; he has the same head coach and offensive coordinator, two years running. That ought not to be such a big deal, but in Detroit that’s reason to feel flush.
But mostly, he won’t have any competition.
For the record, the backup QB is a guy named Shaun Hill. The Lions got him from the 49ers and he’s not a tomato can—he can actually play.
Still, I just as soon we not see him—no offense, Shaun.
The quarterback in Detroit is Matthew Stafford, and should be for years to come. Future signal callers will be drafted just so the Lions can be polite.
We haven’t had it this way since Bobby Layne took on the Bears and Cutty Sark back in the day.
This is all so new. We can’t go to bed without having our quarterback controversy.
Please sir, may we have another?
Sorry, folks. He’s fresh out.
The quarterback controversy is dead in Detroit. It’s gone the way of pay phones and Lindsay Lohan.
Nehru jackets will come back before another QB battle breaks out in these parts.
So NOW what do we talk about?
Monday Morning Manager
Posted by: | CommentsThis Week: at NYM (6/22-24); at Atl (6/25-27)
So what happened?
The National League came to town and all was good again.
The Tigers should pull a Milwaukee Brewers and lobby for a move to the NL. The American League can have the Brewers back, as a matter of fact.
The Tigers’ dominance over the Senior Circuit continued last week. A weekend sweep of the Pirates was followed by a weekday sweep of the Nationals, which was followed by a 2-of-3 series win over the Diamondbacks.
The Tigers have won eight of nine, rolling through the National League visitors like a baker’s pin over today’s bread dough.
But now it’s a bunch of games with @ before the opponents’ names.
But here’s to last week, when the Tigers beat up on teams they should have—following underwhelming performances against the weaker sisters in their own AL Central.
Hero of the Week
When a team has a 6-1 week, it’s hard to pick one guy over everyone else, but how about some love for Brandon Inge? Not that he doesn’t get his fair share for a player who takes a .230-ish average home every winter.
But Inge has been on a quiet tear as of late. He’s hitting in the high .300s over his past 20 games or so. He had a big week last week, too: 7-for-20, including a clutch, laser triple Friday night against Arizona. His glove work, as usual, has been outstanding.
The season average is up to .261 now, which is rarified air for Mr. Inge.
Not the strongest of Heroes in a great week, but it’s nice to have the problem of wondering who to choose because the list of candidates is long—right?
Last week on “The Knee Jerks,” the podcast I co-host with Big Al Beaton, we discussed the merits of sending struggling sophomore starter Rick Porcello down to Toledo to work on things.
The consensus was that if the team feels he’d be better off clearing his head in Ohio, then this is actually a good time to do it.
Four of the five starters are pitching OK—and some are pitching better than OK.
The Tigers pulled the trigger Sunday, optioning the 21-year-old to the Mud Hens.
And it’s not certain that he’ll be back up in 10 days, like Max Scherzer was after his demotion.
“He could be but we’re not saying he will, by any means,” GM Dave Dombrowski told the Detroit News. “It’ll be a matter of when we’re told he can be an effective big league pitcher again.”
It’s generally faster for pitchers to figure things out than it is for hitters, when the problems are mechanics. Witness Scott Sizemore, who was jettisoned when the big leagues proved to be too big for him. Sure, Sizemore’s batting average with the Mud Hens looked good after he’d been there for a few weeks (over .300), but that’s against AAA pitching.
No one seems to think that Sizemore’s ready for another appearance in The Show quite yet, despite his relative success in Toledo.
Porcello may or may not be able to correct what’s ailing him in a couple of starts. Now that he’s with the Mud Hens, there should be no hurry to return him to the Tigers. He’s younger than Scherzer and has less big league experience.
Plus, the Tigers are winning without his contribution, and there are still 94 games remaining.
So yes, Porcello is MMM’s Goat this week, but it’s tough love.
Upcoming: Mets, Braves
It’s one thing to kick the Pirates, Nationals, and D-Backs around in your own backyard. It’s quite another to take on the Mets and the Braves at their place.
I’m tickled at the Tigers’ 8-1 homestand, but the next nine games are where you’re going to find out a lot more about them. For after this week’s trips to New York and Atlanta, the Tigers go to Minnesota next Monday thru Wednesday.
If 8-1 is followed by 2-7 or 3-6, then hold off on the “Tigers are a contender” talk.
The Tigers are 13-19 on the road, and the Mets and Braves are outstanding at home.
Two forces are about to collide here, and at first blush it looks like advantage, NL teams—for a change.
The Mets don’t bash their way to victory; their team BA is .257 and only two players are in double digits in home runs. But four of their five starters have ERAs between 2.69 and 3.64, and their overall team ERA is fifth in the NL.
One to watch for is lefty Hisanori Takahashi, the 35-year-old rookie from Japan who moved from the bullpen into the starting rotation on May 21 and has an ERA of just over 3.00 in six starts. He’s due to face the Tigers this week, having last started on Friday—when he threw six shutout innings at the Yankees.
As for the Braves, the news last week was that 38-year-old Chipper Jones will NOT retire forthwith, as had been reported. Jones says he’ll put off such talk until after the season.
Manager Bobby Cox, however, IS retiring—after the season. So this will be the Tigers’ last chance to see Mr. Ejection, barring a matchup in some sort of series that’s played in October…what do they call it again?
Player to watch for the Braves: the rejuvenated Troy Glaus, who had all of 29 at-bats last year with the Cardinals.
First baseman Glaus, 33, has 14 HR and 55 RBI and is hitting .280.
The Tigers know all about Glaus, having seen him for all those years with the Blue Jays and Angels.
That’s all for this week’s MMM. See you next week!
Izzo Again Holding MSU Hostage
Posted by: | CommentsThe legendary college basketball coach John Wooden, who we just lost, was never connected to any NBA rumors. Not once. He was the Wizard of Westwood and no NBA owner seemed to want to make him the Ace of Atlanta or the King of New York or the Prince of Portland.
NBA teams left Bobby Knight alone, too. Same with Hank Iba and Denny Crum and Digger Phelps.
All great college coaches, and not one of them a serious NBA candidate.
In college football, the pros never went after Bear Bryant or Ara Parseghian or Bo Schembechler. Or Woody Hayes or Bob Devaney or Amos Alonzo Stagg.
Texas A&M came after Bo in the late-1970s, and that was bad enough. Old Bo considered jumping ship at Michigan briefly, and later said such a dalliance would never happen again. And that was from another college.
The professional teams never dared to even place a phone call to these coaching giants because of a wonderfully simple reason.
The aforementioned coaches made it quite clear that their aspirations would always be about what they could do on Saturdays, not Sundays.
End of discussion. Bud, nipped in.
Tom Izzo would be a fool to leave Michigan State for the Cleveland Cavaliers, as has been reported that he might do. If he did, it’d be because he’d be blinded by the allure of that tiny question that can be mighty powerful.
“What if?”
“What if I left the college scene and tried my hand at the pro game? Could I do what so few have done before me—leave campus and be a success on the NBA circuit?”
I’ve written this column before. I’ve scolded Izzo, the great Michigan State basketball coach, and warned him not to look longingly at the NBA. That time, it was because the Chicago Bulls were rumored to want his services. This was a few years ago.
I’m writing this column again because Izzo makes people like me write it.
He won’t do what the Woodens and the Knights and the Ibas and the Crums have done before him. Izzo won’t keep himself joined at the hip with the college game. He’ll never say never.
Because of that, here’s what you’re going to get every few years: a campus in East Lansing held hostage to its basketball coach’s sadistic shell game.
Izzo won’t slam the door shut on all this pro nonsense for good, because he lacks the humility that engulfed the truly great coaches before him.
Wooden would have turned beet red if this much of a fuss was made over him. And he’s only the greatest college coach. Ever.
Izzo, I believe, has no serious interest in leaving his God-like status at MSU for the 82-game rigors of the NBA, with its three-games-in-five nights in snowy January in places like Minneapolis, Toronto, and Milwaukee.
He has no desire to leave his Izzone for a game where he can shout himself blue in the face and it simply won’t mean a damn thing to some of these prima donnas being paid millions.
They talk about how he might like to do no more recruiting. I’ll tell you this: Izzo would be BEGGING to go back to recruiting once he finds out how little influence he truly has in the pros.
Izzo was at his sadistic best during the Big Ten Tournament last March, when he all but rubbed his hands together and did a diabolical laugh as he described to reporters what he had in store for certain of his players, for poor play in the tourney.
You think that’s going to hold any water in the NBA?
At MSU, it’s about Izzo. His players come and go. He stays. And gets all the glory.
In the NBA, if LeBron James ever wins a championship, he’ll do so with what’s-his-name as the coach, tucked under LeBron’s arm the whole way.
In the NBA, Izzo will be another cautionary tale—as if we need another of those.
Tim Floyd, Jerry Tarkanian, Lon Krueger, John Calipari—move over one seat. Here comes Tom Izzo.
But that won’t happen.
Izzo is no more serious about taking this job in Cleveland than he is driving his car into a brick wall tonight.
But he won’t say that, because he gets off on this stuff. It’s enough for him to remind the people in East Lansing that he can crush them into a fine powder.
NBA teams keep Izzo’s phone number on speed dial because they haven’t been instructed not to—by Tom Izzo himself.
Izzo can end all this nonsense. He can come out and say, “Look, NBA, save your breath. I ain’t never turning pro! And you can’t make me.”
The bona fide great coaches in the college game never had to deal with this hysteria. They made it quite clear: We’re college coaches, son. Thanks, but no thanks.
Till death do us part.
John Wooden didn’t have the insatiable need to be loved by his fans at UCLA. Thus, he never teased the NBA, never held his school hostage.
You want a difference between a legend like Wooden and a pretender like Izzo?
There it is.
Sometimes it Helps to Be a Little Crazy if You’re a Closer
Posted by: | CommentsMaybe someone with Ph.D. after their name can shed some light, but it sure seems like the pro sports specialist has an affinity for—and pardon my laymen’s term here—playing his game of life with something less than a full deck.
There’s the hockey goalie, whose career at said position surely must have started as either the loser of a bet or because all the regular sticks were taken.
For no one with all 52 cards would volunteer to be pelted with discs of vulcanized rubber being fired upon them at speeds that would make a Lamborghini blush.
Glenn Hall, the Hall of Fame netminder who broke into the NHL with the Red Wings in the early-1950s, holds the league record for consecutive games played, with 502.
Which makes it easy to calculate the number of consecutive upchucks from Hall’s tummy.
Hall famously—or infamously—included as part of his pre-game routine, a trip to the loo to empty the contents of his stomach. Through his esophagus.
Another Red Wings goalie, Roger Crozier, had to be hospitalized several times during his career because his job proved too much for his queasy tum-tum.
Bet losers, those goalies are. Or something.
The hockey goalie is looked at cross-eyed by his teammates, and by those covering the game. Crazy people might snap at any moment, you know.
Football kickers—that’s another group of folks that marches to the beat of a different drummer.
Think about it: these are dudes who spend several hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, on a life that revolves around thumping a football with the side of their foot.
The football kicker is harmless, pretty much, but he’s not all there, either.
Which brings us to the closer in baseball.
They’ve gone by different names throughout the years.
In the 1960s and ‘70s, they were “firemen,” so named for their charge to put out fires in late innings.
By the 1980s, they had developed into “stoppers.”
Now they’re called “closers.”
Call them whatever you like, they have one common denominator.
They’re all a little nuts.
The baseball closer—that late-inning relief specialist who either saves the game or blows it, with no in-between—has to possess the fearlessness of a man guessing his wife’s weight and the eccentricity of Howard Hughes. Or so it seems.
The Red Sox had a guy named Dick Radatz back in the 1960s. They called him “The Monster,” which wasn’t a nickname; it was a fact. Radatz was born in Detroit and he was 6’6” and 230 pounds and as bad as Leroy Brown.
There was Al Hrabosky, the Mad Hungarian. Hrabosky wore a Fu Manchu and had eyes that bore through hitters like lasers. His ritual included standing behind the mound, his back to the hitter, as he psyched himself with silent mantras.
Then Hrabosky would slam the ball into his mitt and spin toward the mound. You could almost see the smoke pouring from his nostrils.
There was Roger McDowell, who pitched for the Phillies and the Mets, and who would have made a great thesis subject for someone studying human psychosis.
The roster of off-kilter closers through the years would dwarf any grocery list.
The Tigers have had some decent closers in their glorious history, but they’ve been weird in that they’ve been relatively sane individuals.
John Hiller was probably normal because he wasn’t just a closer. Hiller could start, middle relieve, and close—all in the same week.
Aurelio Lopez was Senor Smoke, but he wasn’t particularly strange. Just fat.
The most eccentric thing about Willie Hernandez was that he changed his name to Guillermo.
Mike Henneman resembled a California surfer with his ruggedly handsome, blond looks and was a pretty normal guy in his own right.
Todd Jones looked nervous but never really was. Jonesy paced around and on the mound like an expectant father in the maternity ward.
He chewed his gum at a rate of 600 per minute. He looked as comfortable out there as a man whose shorts were two sizes too small. Jones was the Don Knotts of closers.
But the Tigers have employed a couple of doozies, one of whom is working for them presently.
In 1981, a one-hit wonder named Kevin Saucier dazzled us in Detroit.
Saucier was called “Hot Sauce.” The moniker was a play on his last name, but it could also have been because Saucier bounced around the mound like someone who’d just consumed a gallon of the stuff. He was a cat on a hot tin roof out there.
Saucier was a lefty, which only added to his weirdness factor. When he closed a game, Hot Sauce leaped off the mound and looked like a Mexican jumping bean, slamming his hand into his glove and shaking hands with anyone he could get his mitts on.
I once even saw him exchange handshakes with one of the grounds crew. No joke.
Hot Sauce was diluted the next year, however. He lost his control—literally and figuratively. He began to walk people, then hit them. The more it happened, the more it played with his head.
Saucier quit the Tigers, and baseball, in the middle of the 1982 season.
“I’m afraid I’m going to hurt somebody,” Hot Sauce said of his sudden control woes.
A closer afraid of hurting someone? Now that’s different.
The other strange cat who has closed games for the Tigers is the free spirit who’s doing it for them currently.
Jose Valverde, “Papa Grande,” is a man overloaded with ritual and superstition. It’s in the way he drinks water in the bullpen, the manner in which he puts on his glasses, and that’s just the tip of his iceberg.
Valverde was signed by the Tigers in the off-season as a free agent, essentially replacing Fernando Rodney. It’s been like swapping out Tony Bennett for Lady Gaga.
Valverde is 6’4”, 220 pounds and with his glasses he looks like a nerd on steroids.
Some closers give you a real show after every closed game. Valverde entertains after everystrike .
He fist pumps. He looks skyward. He shakes. He points. Then he asks for the ball and gets his next sign.
Valverde cast his lot as a Tigers closer last week when he struck out, in order, the Yankees’ Nick Swisher, Mark Teixeira, and Alex Rodriguez to preserve the Tigers’ 5-4 win on Monday night. It was sort of impressive.
Afterward, Valverde’s antics were served up to the Yankees by the New York media trying to get them to bite. Was it showing them up?
Not one of the guys Valverde struck out took the bait.
Maybe they just resigned themselves to the fact that Valverde is a closer, and closers are a little nuts anyway.
Whatever gets them through the night.
Sayonara
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s been a great run.
I’ve been blogging since 2004 and it’s amazing what I’ve had to say all these years.
But more and more often, the blank white composing box has been taunting me. It’s becoming more and more difficult to have a voice on matters.
I’ve come to the simple conclusion: I’ve dried up.
So effective immediately, I will no longer be maintaining or adding content to GregEno.com.
Maybe I’ll re-visit this decision later, but for now, I’m saying so long.
Thanks so much for reading, you April Fool!
Osgood Suckering Red Wings Fans (Again)
Posted by: | CommentsIf I saw Chris Osgood at a billiard hall, I’d high-tail it out of there. If I met him on the golf course, I’d head in the other direction. I wouldn’t even trust him at the local bowling alley.
It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s banned from the casinos in town, plus the one in Windsor.
Osgood, if he chose to, would take you for everything you have at the above establishments. The only better sandbagging is done on the Atlantic Coast just prior to a hurricane.
Once again, Osgood has us all suckered. He’s about to fleece us once more. This is hardly the first time.
Remember the beaten down and sheepish look he wore when he returned from exile in 2005? The Red Wings had gotten rid of Ozzie back in the summer of 2001, having traded for Hall of Famer Dominik Hasek so that he may tend goal for them.
Osgood trudged off to the New York Islanders—the Islanders!!— and then ended up with the St. Louis Blues. In neither locale did he thrill the masses. They all but ran him out of St. Looey.
The Red Wings brought him back to Detroit as a soon-to-be 33-year-old backup in 2005. More like they rescued him. He was the prodigal son, only in this instance, the son got kicked out—he didn’t leave of his own volition. But he was back, in the warm and cozy confines of the Red Wings organization, which he’d known since before he was old enough to legally consume alcohol.
The Red Wings had Manny Legace—Manny Legace!—as their No. 1 goaltender, so Osgood was brought on board as a nod to his loyalty to the organization and to function as the veteran mentor.
Oh, what Ozzie must have been thinking when, on the eve of the 2006 playoffs, Legace popped off to the papers and openly wondered about his own qualifications as being the No. 1 goalie for a long playoff run. It was like being led into battle by General Patton—if ole George would have stopped just before they fired the first shot, turned to his troops, and said, “I wonder if I can do this, after all?”
If there’s anything Osgood is short on, confidence is not one of them. He may be short in other things, like feet and inches—and hair—but he’s got them all beat in the confidence department.
So to have been relegated to backup goalie, then to watch the supposed No. 1 guy wring his hands and turn into Don Knotts just before the playoffs must have killed Osgood.
Legace blew up, as expected, and the Red Wings lost in the first round to an inferior Edmonton Oilers team. In Steve Yzerman’s final season. What a way to send The Captain off, eh?
Again the Red Wings turned to Hasek, instead of Osgood, in the offseason. They signed Hasek as a free agent. Osgood would be No. 2 again.
Hasek played OK, but the Red Wings lost in the conference championship to the Anaheim Ducks, who would win the Stanley Cup.
Fast forward one more year, to the 2008 playoffs. Osgood was doing more sandbagging; he conned us into thinking he would be no more than a backup once again, could be no more than a backup to the great Hasek.
Coach Mike Babcock, after four games of the first round series against Nashville, the proceedings tied at two wins apiece, took his chips off of Hasek, who had been shaky in Games Three and Four, and placed them on Osgood. It was one of the gutsiest decisions I’ve ever seen a coach make in Detroit.
Osgood, poker-faced, shrugged and said sure, I’ll go in.
He allowed one measly goal in a game that was tighter than size 38 pants on a 40 waist. The Red Wings won, in overtime. Osgood was named one of the three stars, and he skated onto the ice at Joe Louis Arena to a thunderous ovation after the game when it was announced.
The Red Wings took off from there. Chris Osgood, the sandbagging goalie, led them to their fourth Stanley Cup—and his third—in 11 years. The fact that they won all the marbles was largely due to Osgood’s play between the pipes.
Then, last season and more sandbagging. Osgood suckered us again.
The apple of everyone’s eye was the backup, Ty Conklin. Osgood played miserably coming out of the gate and Conklin…didn’t. So while Ozzie sat on the bench, Conklin played and played very well. It was around this time last year, in fact, when the hockey denizens around town dared to crow that Ty Conklin, not Chris Osgood, should be the Red Wings’ starting netminder when the playoffs roll around.
It’s easy to sucker the thick-headed. And Osgood, who must never have met a blackjack table he didn’t like, was doing it.
Osgood really poured it on, though. This was going to be a hustle of great proportions. Ozzie was going to be Minnesota Fats, the Cincinnati Kid, and Paul Newman, all rolled into one. He played extra awful in goal. He was so bad, in February his coach sent him away, to “get his head together.”
HA!
It was like taking candy from a baby; the fans took the bait, hook, line, and sinker.
“Ty Conklin should be the starting goalie in the playoffs!”
“Chris Osgood is finished!”
Oh yeah? Place your bets, gentlemen!
Osgood “recovered” and Babcock, who was on to Ozzie’s con, named him the starter for the playoffs, after all.
Osgood almost ran the table. The Red Wings lost Game Seven of the Stanley Cup Finals, by one goal. You can’t get much closer than that. But they lost the Cup not because of anything bad Osgood did. Yet had they won it, it would largely have been because of all the good Osgood did.
So here we are, January 2010. And Osgood is suckering us again, or trying to. This year it’s Jimmy Howard, a rookie , who has some people thinking the Red Wings ought to leave Ozzie on the bench come playoff time—should the Wings qualify.
Why? Because Osgood is sandbagging it again in the regular season, while the kid Howard is doing things like stopping 51 of 52 shots, as he did in L.A. the other night.
I’m not much of a gambler. I can barely figure out how to work a slot machine. But if I saw Chris Osgood at a table, I’d beat it.
You want the rookie Howard in goal, instead of the proven Osgood, when the playoffs arrive—again, should the Red Wings qualify?
P.T. Barnum was right, and this is your minute.
Brendan Shanahan: The Atypical Hockey Player
Posted by: | CommentsBrendan Shanahan shouldn’t have been a hockey player. He should have been tasting wine, or taking in the theater. Or maybe he should have been in the aisle behind you at the bookstore, helping some pretty young thing pick out a title for her dad on Father’s Day.
Instead, he elbowed, bulled, and plowed his way into goalies’ nightmares. He put his movie star good looks on the line every night, until slowly his face got that Etch-a-Sketch look that befalls all hockey players, if they play long enough.
Shanahan played long enough. He said so, retiring yesterday at age 40, which in the NHL is the new 30 anymore.
Before Shanahan, power forward was a basketball designation. “Cerebral” and “hockey player” were antonyms. Someone named Brendan was probably a Pistons assistant coach.
Shanahan started and ended a Devil, and it’s only fitting that he bookended his career, because he was a library on skates.
He knew his movies, for one. Shanahan didn’t only play on lines, he could recite them. From many a flick. That’s another thing he could have been: a movie reviewer. He wouldn’t have looked out of place in a camel jacket, a sweater vest, and glasses.
Brendan Shanahan brought the word “refined” to hockey, both in terms of his demeanor off the ice and his goal-scoring skills on it. He was, at his best, perhaps the most complete player in hockey. He might have led the league many a season in the Gordie Howe Hat Trick: a goal, an assist, a fight.
Yeah, he could fight. Can’t all Irish men? In his career, he scored 656 goals and was whistled for over 40 hours worth of penalties. Often, that was the only way to keep Shanahan off the scoresheet—by hoping he’d end up in the penalty box.
The Red Wings grabbed him in his prime, hoodwinking the Hartford Whalers into coughing him up for an aging Paul Coffey and a “meh” Keith Primeau early in the 1996-97 season. Shanny was 27 at the time and coveted by every team in the league—at least those interested in winning hockey games.
Forget all the Detroit jokes. Shanahan couldn’t wait to get here. He was traded the afternoon of the Red Wings’ home opener, and made like those poor folks on “The Amazing Race” just so he could get to Joe Louis Arena in time for pre-game introductions.
So he makes it and it’s his turn to have his name called, and the roar is deafening. They stood and cheered and hollered and the guy hadn’t even taken a shift yet as a Red Wing.
But the people of Detroit, so knowledgeable about their hockey, knew their team had fleeced the Whalers and had brought to town a player the likes of whom hadn’t been spotted wearing the Winged Wheel since Bobby Probert turned people on with his own kind of hat trick: a goal, a fight, and another fight.
Shanahan was more talented than Probert, though. That, too, was no secret.
Shanny looked like a matinee idol and played like an action hero. The ladies who showed up at Joe Louis Arena wearing oversized Red Wings sweaters were smitten. He might have seemed like just another sniper on a team that was full of them, but then you’d look up and some poor sap was in a headlock and Shanahan—Brendan—was using the guy’s noggin as a punching bag.
He scored 309 goals as a Red Wing, nearly half his career total, and his best years were spent in Detroit, both in terms of individual accomplishments and those of the team. Three Stanley Cups he won playing with Yzerman and Draper and Lidstrom and Maltby and the rest.
Oh, and there was the time when he saved hockey.
Exaggeration? Sure—like calling water that’s at 210 degrees boiling.
It was after the horrific canceled season of 2004-05 that Shanahan went to work, making like Jimmy Carter and bringing the Players Association and ownership together. Others helped him but Shanny took the lead, putting his big brain to use and being instrumental in chiseling out an agreement that took the game out of conference rooms and put it back onto the ice.
Without Shanahan, the NHL might still be in hibernation. Another “exaggeration.”
It ended for him in Detroit shortly after Steve Yzerman retired in July 2006. Shanahan didn’t care to be part of the good old days. He thought his continued presence in the Red Wings locker room would stunt the growth of some of the kids, so he made like Sinatra and wanted to be a part of it—New York, New York.
But Shanny was getting closer to 38 and he could no longer score his age in goals. He popped in 29 pucks his first season as a Ranger, 23 the second. It used to be that he could score that without breaking a sweat. Now it was all he could muster without needing an oxygen mask.
Then a swan song last season with the Devils, the team he broke into the NHL with as an 18-year-old in 1987. In New Jersey he couldn’t play his age—at age 40 he skated in 34 matches. He scored six goals. The action hero was now just an extra.
So now it’s done—21 years in the books as an NHLer, 1,354 points scored, and all those penalty minutes. And three Stanley Cups. And still a face for movies.
He shouldn’t have been a hockey player, much less one helluva one.
Yet he was both. Go figure.
Have Me in Your “IN” Box Daily!
Posted by: | CommentsI finally got around to fixing the subscription feature, so if you’d like to receive updates daily from all the blathering I do on this website, simply look to your left and notice the “GregEno.com On Demand!” blue button. You can enter your e-mail address and anytime I rant, you’ll know about it!
My Appearance On “This Week In Detroit Tigers Baseball”
Posted by: | CommentsOn Tuesday night I had the pleasure of being a guest panelist on Motor City Bengals’ ‘This Week in Detroit Tigers Baseball.’You can listen to the finished product HERE.
I had a blast discussing the Tigers’ first half with J. Ellet Lambie , Ian Casselberry, and John from Tigergeist.com, who are some of the best Tigers bloggers in town.
Special thanks to host Joe Dexter, who pulled it all together, including editing the podcast for your consumption.