637AM, welcome to Tuesday
Al,
Yawn.
Man, I'm tired this morning. I get up too goddamn early nowadays. Somewhere in the 5AM hour on the daily (yes, including weekends), my eyes pop open and I have to figure out if the struggle to try to fall back asleep until 6AM (no, not including weekends) is worth it.
Usually, it's not. And I get up, and have the first sixteen of my thirty two ounces of my coffee and read the web.
No, not the
whole web. But I did see that a
another blogger has referred to you as “America's Wingman.” I really do think that this is the first time I've bestowed a nickname on someone else, so it's a proud moment every time another blogger jumps on the bandwagon.
So you caught too? I was all glove, no stick (and the ladies loved it...) coming up in rec league baseball, and volunteered to go behind the plate for my last three years I played. I caught for a tall lefty whose release happened to be right in the lights, and dude made me look regularly inept back there. Pissed me off. Actually, worst thing that ever happened to me back there was a game where we were pitching our star pitcher, the other team couldn't hit, and so the coach told them to
swing into my catcher's mitt to get their free base. Fucking dick. I took punishment on my wrist from about four swinging bats before I got mad. Then my dad got mad and went over, grabbed their coach, and helped him see the light.
Gotta love that Italian anger.
So anyway, you're asking me another of those questions that I could go any number of ways on. If Barry Sanders had shown heart, fire, and leadership for the Lions, he'd be an easy pick. He was far and away the most talented guy ever to wear a Detroit uniform. I have a lot of love for some of those mid 1980s Detroit Tigers too. Kirk Gibson, in particular, was a Michigan State Spartan, and there has
never been a guy in a Detroit uniform whose competitive fires burned more vividly.
But I'm going with Zeke. Isiah Thomas, the little general, was my absolute favorite. He was a leader, a scorer, a passer, whatever the team needed him to be at the time. I think one of the greatest individual performances of all time was Isiah scoring 20 some-odd points against the Lakers in one quarter on a badly sprained ankle. This guy was amazing.
I loved Laimbeer, Dumars, Mahorn, pre-nutjob Rodman. I loved Whitaker, Trammell, Chet Lemon, Enos Cabell (for the name
and the afro), and Jack Morris. I loved Herman Moore, Chris Spielman, Bennie Blades, Ray Crockett, and even get a little misty thinking about Erik Kramer.
Speaking of Kramer, let me ask you... What one game stands out for you as your favorite Philly victory in any sport?
1991 playoffs (1/5/92, to be exact), my Lions hosted the Dallas Cowboys in a playoff matchup on their trek to the NFC Championship (where they got spanked by the Redskins). 38-6 was the score, and Kramer went 29-38 for 341 and three Tds, and Barry had an awesome 47 yard TD run.
And we
killed the Cowboys. I hate the goddamn Cowboys.
Am I going to get any work done at all today? Wait, I think that's a
rhetorical question...