Out of Bounds

Local Boy LaFontaine Missed, but Red Wings Did OK with Yzerman

2009-11-08T11:29:00.001-05:00

He played hockey in Waterford, growing up in the northern Oakland County burg in the 1970s—a decade of horrors when it came to his local team, the Detroit Red Wings.

As he honed his skills as an adolescent and started depositing pucks into opposing goals with eye-popping frequency, the Red Wings were stumbling through the National Hockey League, soiling what had once been a tradition-rich franchise history.

As the 1980s arrived, his name started to become known beyond Waterford. It didn’t hurt that it had a bit of royalty to its sound.

Pat LaFontaine, from Waterford, was off to play junior hockey in Quebec, in a town called Verdun. He was 17 years old.

In his lone season in the Quebec Junior League, LaFontaine made a mockery of it.

In 70 games, LaFontaine, a center, scored 104 goals. He added 130 assists for 234 points—over three points a game.

It was obvious that the QMJHL wasn’t big enough to hold his talent.

Down I-75 from where LaFontaine grew up, the Red Wings were playing to half-empty houses at Joe Louis Arena. The team had a new owner—a pizza pie guy named Mike Ilitch—but the only thing that seemed to change at JLA was that Little Caesars pizza was being served officially at the concession stands. The product on the ice was still miserably bad.

But the Red Wings held the fourth overall choice in the 1983 draft. They’d have a good shot at nabbing LaFontaine off the board.

It was GM Jimmy Devellano’s first draft with the Red Wings. He was Ilitch’s first-ever Wings hire in 1982, but Jimmy D. joined the team too late to participate in the draft that year.

Folks around town salivated at the thought of what local kid Pat LaFontaine could do in a Red Wings sweater.

The Red Wings wanted LaFontaine. The kid, by all accounts, was open to playing NHL hockey back home after his one year hiatus spent in Quebec.

Devellano didn’t make his mark as a hockey rink rat by targeting just one player, though. He knew that things didn’t always work out the way you’d like. He’d have to be ready to select another player, should LaFontaine already be gone.

Red Wings fans didn’t care about anyone else, though. Pat LaFontaine grew up in Waterford, and he should play for the Red Wings, dammit!

The New York Islanders, Devellano’s old team—the one he helped build into a dynasty in the late-1970s—held the third overall pick. It was by sheer luck, through trade, that they had a pick so high, because the Isles were defending Stanley Cup champs.

Sure enough, Jimmy D’s team stuck it to their old employee, nabbing LaFontaine with the pick just prior to Detroit’s.

PUCK!

No matter; with people back in Detroit slugged in the gut, Devellano picked himself up from the mat, deeply disappointed, and went with his Plan B.

No one knew how to pronounce Steve Yzerman’s name when the news came that he was the newest Red Wing.

Some thought it was Eezer-man. Others said no, it’s Why-zerman.

Jimmy D. not only knew how to say it, he knew all about the kid attached to it.

Yzerman’s numbers while playing for Peterborough in the Ontario Junior League weren’t as impressive as LaFontaine’s, but numbers never tell the whole story.

Devellano knew that Yzerman, the son of an Ottawa politician, quiet as a mouse, could be a big-time star in the NHL.

They played a video clip of Devellano, speaking in his squeaky Canadian-laced voice, at his induction into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2006. He was talking about this new kid Yzerman, shortly after drafting him in the summer of ’83.

“We feel he can contribute right away,” Jimmy D. said. “My only concern is that because of his age – he’s only 18 – his strength is a question mark.”

Then, one of the biggest understatements in hockey history, as it turned out.

“But I think he’s gonna make it,” Devellano added.

Drafts in any sport are a crapshoot. All the studying and scouting in the world can’t predict what a kid is going to do once he starts playing the sport for money.

Even Yzerman himself didn’t really know.

I cornered him at Cobo after Jimmy D’s induction that October night in 2006.

Doesn’t it seem silly now, I asked, to see Jimmy speak about you in such uncertain terms?

Yzerman gave that bashful smile.

“Well,” he said, “not many people knew for sure back then, eh?”

I suppose not.

Monday, Yzerman will go into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto on Monday. He’ll be inducted with two former teammates: snipers Brett Hull and Luc Robitaille.

It’ll be 26 years, and some change, since he arrived in Detroit with that funny last name and the baggage of NOT being Pat LaFontaine.

LaFontaine, for his part, had a fine NHL career. He was no draft bust. A quick check on the Internet gives the numbers: 468 goals, 545 assists, 1,013 points. But no Stanley Cups—and a career cut short thanks to concussions. LaFontaine was only 33 when he played his last NHL game.

Yzerman played until he was about a week shy of his 41^st birthday. He scored 692 goals, had 1,755 points, and won three Stanley Cups and the hearts of Red Wings fans forever. His jersey hangs in the rafters of Joe Louis Arena, next to those of Howe and Abel and Lindsay and the rest.

All because the New York Islanders, Jimmy’s old employers, decided that they wanted the kid from Waterford, Pat LaFontaine, for themselves.

We cursed and grumbled in Detroit, then Steve Yzerman suited up and started playing some hockey for the Red Wings.

Jimmy Devellano’s hunch was right.

“I think he’s gonna make it.”

Yeah, just a bit.

Hockey Palaces Like Olympia Sadly Extinct Nowadays

2009-11-04T10:50:00.007-05:00

They don't make arenas like Olympia Stadium anymore. Hell, they don't make buildings like it anymore.

I don't know of any place where an escalator lifts you up at an 80 degree angle, which it did at Olympia---the Old Red Barn where the Red Wings played from the 1920s to December 15, 1979.

If you think I'm exaggerating about the 80 degree angle---you're right; perhaps it was only about 77 degrees.

The Olympia---corner of Grand River and McGraw on Detroit's west side---comes to mind because we're inching closer and closer to the 30th anniversary of the last game played there. Oh, they played a charity alumni game there a couple months later, but 12/15/79 was when the Red Wings recovered from a 4-0 deficit to tie the Quebec Nordiques---Le Nordique---in a final score of 4-4. No overtime back then. Certainly no silly shootouts.

For a few moments that night, I thought they wouldn't need the explosives used to implode buildings that have outlived their use, because when Greg Joly scored on an end-to-end rush with about three minutes to play to tie the game, you'd have thought the place would come down due to the thunder of cheers and foot-stomping.

I ought to know, because I was there.

It's among the list of electrifying moments I've been lucky enough to witness in person in Detroit sports history---right up there with Kirk Gibson's homer off Goose Gossage to seal the 1984 World Series, Isiah Thomas's 16 points in 90 seconds against the Knicks in the 1984 playoffs, and the Lions' 45-3 trouncing of the Pittsburgh Steelers on Thanksgiving Day, 1983.

Yep, my fanny was in the seats---and leaping out of them---for all of the above. Good stuff.

I cornered Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch a couple of years ago at the unveiling of the Gordie Howe sculpture inside Joe Louis Arena, and he confirmed that the organization was looking at parcels of land onto which they'd build a brand new arena for the Red Wings. One of them, I managed to get out of him, isn't too far away from Comerica Park, near the Woodward Avenue corridor.

But despite the success the Red Wings have enjoyed over the past 15 years or so at JLA---four Stanley Cups and some near misses---I don't know that the sentiment will hit me the same when they shutter The Joe for good, as it did when the medicine ball started ramming against Olympia's bricks in the 1980s.

Olympia, with its famous marquee on the lower left; beyond it would be a drugstore where players often stopped for a post-practice milk shake

There was the balcony at Olympia, number one, which thanks to the architects made you feel as if you were looking down at the ice between your legs, if you were sitting in the lower rows.

There was no overhead scoreboard or clock; instead, those were located in the "end zones," along the balcony facade, horizontally stretched from curved corner to curved corner. There were also smaller auxiliary scoreboards on the lower levels of the expensive seats, in the corners.

Olympia seated about 16,000 for hockey and was just about the most intimate indoor arena you'll ever enjoy.

The place shook when the crowd reaction was explosive enough. But when the din was low, you could hear the players shout to one another, even if you sat in the upper rows of the balcony. It was like a theatre that way.

The skates etching the ice, the puck being smacked from tape to tape as it was being passed around, the crunch of the glass during a solid bodycheck---those are hockey sounds to be treasured. And you could hear them at Olympia as if you were wearing personal earphones.

The acoustics were tremendous---which made it a wonderful concert venue, too. All the big name acts played the Olympia: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, you name it.

The Pistons called Olympia home for a few seasons before Cobo Arena opened on the riverfront in 1960.

Olympia's front doors---it literally had a lobby---were just a sidewalk away from Grand River. Kind of like the old Maple Leaf Gardens on Yonge Street. The old-fashioned marquee with the hand-posted red letters would announce that evening's festivities: "HOCKEY TONIGHT RED WINGS VS MONTREAL 8:00."

Then the escalators, which were, frankly, a nightmare for anyone with either claustrophobia or a fear of heights. If you had both, you were in trouble. The steps were barely wide enough for two people. And that steep angle made you feel like you'd tumble backward on the people behind you if you leaned back a bit too much.

I feel sorry for those who never got a chance to take in a Red Wings game at Olympia Stadium.

I feel that way, because they'll never make hockey palaces like that again. No one has it in them, I guess.

Last Night on "The Knee Jerks": Mucking it Up in the Corner with Matt Hutter

2009-11-03T12:12:00.006-05:00

We took to the ice---figuratively, anyway---and talked some serious Red Wings hockey last night on "The Knee Jerks", my weekly sports gabfest with Big Al from The Wayne Fontes Experience.

Our guest was Matt Hutter, who filled in admirably for Jose Canseco, whose schedule forced a re-set till next week (we hope). Matt is one of the featured Red Wings writers for Bleacher Report. Matt provided us with some terrific insight and analysis---not bad for a guy who covers the team from California! Matt gave us some solid minutes, as they say in basketball.

After Matt, Al and I delved into some juicy topics around Detroit sports.

We tipped things off, so to speak, with some concerns about the direction of the Pistons, and we wondered when the mainstream media was going to stop giving team president Joe Dumars free passes.

Next, it was time to, as Al said, talk about something uplifting: U-M football coach Rich Rodriguez's job security!

We ruminated about U-M and MSU football, and openly wondered which coach would be saying goodbye first: Rodriguez, or MSU's Mark Dantonio. Also, you gotta love it when Al used the term "George Perles Mafia" when referring to the dynamic in East Lansing!

Finally, we saved the worst for last: our lovable Detroit Lions. You'll have to listen for yourself.

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, for updates on scheduled guests, time changes, etc.

Upcoming guests:

Nov. 9 Jose Canseco? (stay tuned)
Nov. 16 Ansar Khan, Red Wings beat writer for MLive.com and Booth Newspapers
Nov. 23 TBA
Nov. 30 (or Dec. 7) NHL Central roundtable with hockey writers from Bleacher Report

Some highlights:

Big Al

On the Pistons: "It's only been three games, but John Kuester isn't impressing me at all. And Charlie Villanueva is playing like a soft Rasheed Wallace."

On Rich Rodriguez: "He's more like an SEC coach. A Steve Spurrier type. I don't know that he's a good fit at Michigan."

On the Lions: "Is Stan Kwan the Enemy of the People, or is he the anti-Christ?"

Eno

On the Pistons: "The Pistons have no one who can score in the low post. Joe Dumars is flailing; it's like he's grasping at straws. I don't think he even has a plan."

On Rich Rodriguez: "There's just something about this guy that doesn't fit. I can't put my finger on it, but I think it's going to end badly in Ann Arbor for him."

On the Lions: "It was embarrassing. They lost with no honor, no dignity. And I don't understand that."

You can listen to the episode by clicking below!

Lions Serve Notice to Rams: We're Still No. 32!

2009-11-02T10:46:00.003-05:00

All those Jim Zorn haters out there ought to rev up their engines again. They ought to bang down Redskins owner Dan Snyder's door and demand that Zorn get the ziggy. In fact, the entire Redskins team ought to wear scarlet letters on their uniforms: "L," both for Loser and for Lions.

How any team can lose to the garbage that is the Detroit Lions is beyond me.

Someday, one of the current Redskins will pen an autobiography and he'll let us in on the secret. Surely it must have been an effort, willful and with malice, designed to get the coach fired.

No way could the Redskins have actually given it their all and still come up short against the Lions, as they did back on September 27 at Ford Field.

But they did, and for that the 'Skins ought to change their names to the Washington Red-faces.

How can you even report to work every week, knowing you've lost to the Lions?

Once again, football wasn't played by the Lions yesterday against the St. Louis Rams. It was committed. Poorly. Kind of like those guys they catch on videotape on those "World's Dumbest Criminals" TV shows.

The Rams won it, 17-10, and that score wasn't reached how you would think. It was 3-2, Rams, in the bottom of the seventh before it turned into a slugfest of sorts.

So two very long losing streaks have been snapped this year at FF: the Lions' 19-gamer, and the Rams' 17-game version, which had only begun to pick up some national media momentum before it all came crashing down on Sunday.

Now all we're left with is the Tampa Bay Bucs and their measly little 0-7 start. Hmph.

Ah, but fear not, because by the time the curtain closes on this season, the Lions may be doing a revival of their wildly successful 2008 tour and finish 1-15 with a 13-game losing streak in their hip pockets.

It could happen. Don't tell me that it can't.

Don't come at me with the Browns game at Detroit on November 22. And especially don't you dare try to sing me the tired, "The Lions rise to the occasion on Thanksgiving Day" ditty, either.

Look at the schedule and tell me where you see another Lions victory after the ostrich egg they laid on the Ford Field fake grass against the Rams.

When the Rams, no less, talk about you afterward as if they had just taken candy from a baby, it's time for some serious reflection.

The subject was the fake field goal the Rams pulled with about a minute to go in the second quarter, lining up for a 54-yard try.

This is the kicker, Josh Brown, talking:

"When they set up in that certain position with a two-man push (on their right side) they always come hard. Every single time,'' Brown said. "We really knew what they were going to do and we capitalized. We called it on the sideline because we figured what they were going to do. We had watched tape and they came every single time when they were set up that way. It was ours for the taking.''

Wow. It's not bad enough that the haven't-won-for-over-a-year Rams beat the Lions, they have to talk like it was so easy?

The Lions couldn't stop Rams RB Steven Jackson, who ran wild for 149 yards on just 22 carries. That's a Jim Brown/Barry Sanders-like 6.8 yards per carry, if you're scoring at home.

The Lions were without star receiver Calvin Johnson (knee), and so the rest of the receiving corps must have decided to not play, either, in protest.

Poor Matthew Stafford. The rookie QB worked like the dickens to get his sore knee ready after missing two games, and his pass catchers treat him like Isiah Thomas did Michael Jordan in the 1985 All-Star Game?

The Lions receivers spoiled more passes than a pretty girl in a room full of nerds.

Through 45 minutes of play, the Lions had exactly zero catches from their wide receivers. Not that Stafford didn't try; they just kept dropping them.

By the end, Stafford gave up and didn't bother to throw the ball anywhere near them. That'll teach 'em!

It reminds me of an old line by that cut-up coach of the early Bucs, John McKay, who said after another loss, "Well, we didn't block. But we made up for it by not tackling."

The Lions dropped passes, but Stafford made up for it by being inaccurate.

The final "drive" was tragically comical.

The Lions started on their own 20 and ended at their own 10, four incomplete passes later.

The cozy little crowd at FF did their best to rain boos down on Stafford and the Lions, but even that was mostly pathetic.

This was a "message" game and the Lions delivered, big time.

We're STILL the worst, you St. Louis Rams---and don't you forget it!

Lack of “Franchise” Defensive Lineman Detroit Lions' Bane for Decades

2009-11-01T15:10:00.000-05:00

Football has had a fascination with the morose when it comes to handing out monikers to the game’s greatest defensive platoons.

We’ve had Steel Curtains and Doomsday and Purple People Eaters. There were the Killer Bees down in Miami.

Detroit and Los Angeles—when the NFL actually had a franchise there—shared the alliterate name Fearsome Foursome.

Pro football games are won in the trenches, they say. Rare is the championship team that doesn’t possess a solid line, both on offense and defense.

Lions fans will tell you that the team has been looking for its franchise quarterback for some fifty years or so. That’s difficult to refute, but how about a franchise defensive lineman?

The Lions haven’t had one of those around in these parts since the Carter Administration.

His name was Al “Bubba” Baker and he came from Colorado State and at his best, he appeared in the backfield frequently, as well as in quarterbacks’ nightmares.

Bubba Baker (pictured above) was, at times, simply unblockable. He played defensive end but he had the body of an NBA power forward: long and strong. Bubba would line up so far away from his tackle mate that you’d have thought the other guy had a liverwurst and garlic sandwich just before the game.

But all Bubba was doing was getting a running start.

Baker had, in 1978, 23 sacks. As a rookie. And a whole bunch of near misses.

Bubba Baker, with three straight Pro Bowl appearances (1978-80), anchored a defensive line in Detroit that was pretty damn good.

It was the early-1980s when they started to call the Lions’ front four “The Silver Rush.” Not a cataclysmic football nickname, but a nickname nonetheless.

You had Baker and William Gay on the ends, and Dave Pureifory and Doug English inside. Pureifory, from Eastern Michigan University, was so mean and nasty that his sadistic behavior in 1979’s training camp almost caused the Lions’ No. 1 draft pick, offensive tackle Keith Dorney, to quit. Dorney said so in his book.

Gay was a converted tight end who made a Pro Bowl as a D-lineman and who teamed with Baker to form two towering bookends. Pureifory was short, stubby, and ferocious—and English was just plain good, and a consummate professional.

English, a Texan, retired after the 1979 season to go into the oil business, but returned to the NFL in 1981.

The Lions traded Baker to the St. Louis Cardinals after the 1982 season, after Bubba grew tired of the Lions, and they him.

And not since have the Lions truly had a stud on the line of scrimmage, on the defensive side of the ball.

The Lions have been a bad football team for a long time with a lot of warts, but if they could ever plug someone into their defensive line who was top grade, you watch how much better their defense plays.

Sadly, the Lions haven’t even really tried to address this gaping hole, this empty chamber in their popgun.

Only twice since 1992 have the Lions selected a defensive lineman in the first round of the NFL Draft.

I’m sorry, but that’s shocking and perplexing.

Here’s a deficiency the Lions have had for decades, and it routinely gets the short shrift when it comes to the draft.

The Lions’ lack of a playmaker—a bona fide game changer—on their front four has contributed more than anything to the pathetic overall defensive play in this town.

The Lions have no true pass rusher. No run-stopping behemoth. No freak of nature with the strength of Atlas and the speed of a gazelle who can seem to be out of a play, then traverse 15-20 yards in a heartbeat and run a ball carrier down.

And they haven’t, for too long to be respectable.

I’ve said it before—if there’s a team in pro sports today who needs help at any position more than the Lions need help on their defensive line, that team is merely a figment of a vivid imagination.

Oh, how the Lions should be combing the college campuses at this very moment, seeking the biggest, baddest, fastest, meanest, quickest, strongest down lineman college football has to offer. They’re likely to qualify for, once again, a top-five pick in next year’s draft. They should absolutely use it on someone whose uniform number is in the 90s.

There’ve been some impostors passing through Detroit, who we’ve elevated beyond their actual abilities, mainly because we’ve wanted them to be successful so badly.

Shaun Rogers and Jerry Ball leap to mind.

Rogers had potential. He was a man child who could have owned Detroit, if he would have kept himself in shape and his mouth shut—both to keep from talking and eating. His moments of dominance were absolute but terribly fleeting.

Ball, from the early-1990s era, was a solid nose tackle who we thought was an elite lineman as a Lion. But he went to Oakland and from afar we could see what we could not because of the trees in Detroit: that he was good but not great.

But beyond those two players, the Lions haven’t had anyone remotely close to being dominant or a star in the league, playing defensive line, since Bubba Baker’s day.

This has got to kill the old-timers who remember when the Lions routinely fielded tenacious, impenetrable d-lines.

The Fearsome Foursome of Sam Williams, Roger Brown, Alex Karras and Darris McCord—they swallowed up ball carriers and quarterbacks and were often the only thing that could slow down the vaunted Green Bay Packers’ running game.

Hell, that was only almost 50 years ago. What’s the hurry to repeat history?

New-look Pistons Have Lowest Expectations In Nine Years

2009-10-28T11:23:00.004-04:00

When the Pistons open the home portion of their season on Friday against Oklahoma City, the pre-game fanfare won't be all that.

No banners to raise. No pre-game speeches. No glow from any division title or from yet another appearance in the conference final. No pride, really, taken from anything that happened last season.

Check that---maybe they could raise a "2008-09: Glad THAT'S Over!" banner.

It'll be one of those fresh starts with several new faces. So many key players from last season's drama are gone: coach Michael Curry, whose tenure becomes more soiled by the day thanks to player retrospectives; Allen Iverson, the petulant superstar; Rasheed Wallace, the ticking time bomb; even nice guy Antonio McDyess wears another uniform this year.

The proceedings get underway tonight in Memphis---Iverson's new haunts---and only Rip Hamilton remains from the sordid love/hate triangle he formed with Curry and Iverson.

Not since 2000-01 have we gone into a Pistons campaign with so little to expect.

That was the George Irvine year, which was followed by Rick Carlisle and instant success in 2001-02.

Not since 2000 have we looked at the Pistons, shrugged, and said, "The playoffs would be nice---but don't count on it!"

Marty Mornhinweg's bar isn't very high.

Or is it?

MLive.com's A. Sherrod Blakely, guesting on "The Knee Jerks" podcast I have with Big Al, a couple of weeks ago said he sees maybe 50 wins and a sure fire playoff spot for these 2009-10 Pistons.

Blakely likes the Pistons' blend of veterans and young talent, plus the comfort level of new coach John Kuester, who Blakely said has been looking very head coach-like in training camp---in control, confident, relaxed.

The further Curry's stint as coach gets in the rearview mirror, the uglier it looks. Kind of the opposite of when you approach the scene of an accident.

Curry had precious little control or respect last year, and that was highlighted once again when Hamilton, of all people, sided with Iverson in blasting the rookie coach for his lack of honesty with players.

"M.C. lied to us a million times," Hamilton was quoted the other day, talking about discussions Curry had with Iverson and him about playing time and coming off the bench.

Wow---a million times? That's a lot of talking!

Point received, Rip.

So only Hamilton remains, and he's impressed me---so far---with his attitude, willingness to lead, and overall excitement over what he feels will be a high-powered (potentially) Pistons offense---what with the additions of free agents Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, plus the maturation of last year's holdovers and the NBA debuts of rookies like Austin Daye and Jonas Jerebko.

Kuester's team has to defend, though, to have any real chance of attaining Blakely's projection of 50 wins and playoffs. Trouble is, Kuester and his teams have never been attached to the word "defense," at least not with a pin. Maybe with worn out Velcro.

New set of Pistons: Gordon (left) and Villanueva

Yet they talked about it a lot in camp, did Kuester and his players, and now there's even some scuttlebutt that oldtimer Ben Wallace, signed from near-retirement this summer, might be a starter once again. Big Ben's presence in the paint has, once again, been producing rebounds, blocked shots, and batted away passes. In the exhibition season.

Kuester told us several months ago that he believed Wallace to still have something left in the tank. And Ben's play during the pretend games hasn't belied that.

But there are 82 "real" games to play, and Wallace isn't a spring chicken.

As you probably know, I really don't do predictions here. But if you gave me one of those "do it or the girl gets it" threats, I'll tell you that 42-44 wins seems realistic. Whether that's good enough to make the playoffs, I don't know.

"I don't know." That might as well be the Pistons' slogan for this season.

Don't the Phillies Know That Philadelphia Is City of Chumps, Not Champs?

2009-10-25T13:51:00.000-04:00

They don’t win championships in Philadelphia. If they do, it’s a fluke—something that someone pulled over on God.

Every three decades or so, one of the teams will screw up the ecosystem and snatch a title out from under fate’s nose.

What’s happening now is a travesty. The Phillies are in the World Series for the second year in a row. What’s worse, they actually won it last year.

This is all wrong. Philadelphia is a city full of miscreants and crabapples, with a fan base so jaded and tormented that it makes John McEnroe look like Dale Carnegie.

Philadelphia—City of Chumps, not Champs.

The biggest winner in Philly is Rocky, and he’s not even real.

The football Eagles annually tease and flirt with their fans, batting their eyelashes and giving the “come hither” look, only to turn into Margaret Thatcher once in the bedroom.

The Eagles last won the NFL Championship in 1960. Before that, 1940 something. It took them 20 years after the ’60 title to get to the Super Bowl. Then it took over a dozen years to get there again.

The Flyers won their last Stanley Cup in 1975. They’ve made it to the Finals five times since then, but not since 1997.

The last time the 76ers were world champs of the NBA was in 1983.

It took the Phillies about a hundred years to win their first World Series, in 1980. Took them another 28 years before they’d win their second, which is about the schedule they run on in Philadelphia—an accidental title every generation or so.

This is the City of Brotherly Love—as defined by fourth graders.

The late, great sportswriter Jim Murray professed his love for Philly’s acerbic personality this way: “When a plane lands in Philadelphia, everyone gets on; no one gets off.”

They booed Mike Schmidt in Philadelphia, which is only like Detroit booing Al Kaline, for cripe’s sakes.

Philly is also the home of Temple University, which last had a good football team before they came out with electricity, just about.

The Phillies are messing everything up now.

Needless to say, the Phillies have never won back-to-back World Series—unless you want to strike every Series from 1981 to 2007 from the record books. Then in that case, yeah, they have.

But here they are, two-time National League champions, awaiting either the New York Yankees or the Los Angeles Angels.

This can’t be happening. The Phillies are going against nature, or at the very least, the baseball gods. It’s like that episode of The Brady Bunch in Hawaii when Peter finds the tiki, disturbing something all-powerful.

If the Phillies take leave of their senses and win the World Series again this year, then we’re officially closer to the Apocalypse. One of the Horsemen will have been slain.

Philadelphia can’t possibly handle two championships in a row, anyway. Back-to-back is what they do in New York (Yankees), what they do in Detroit (Pistons, Red Wings), what they do in Chicago (Bulls). Heck, they’ve even done it in San Antonio, which is famous for the Alamo, of all things.

But Philadelphia is as equipped for two straight Phillies World Series titles as a toddler is for his first solid food being a bowl of chili.

They don’t win championships in Philadelphia because the fans there don’t deserve them. It’s further proof that there are deities among us.

Sports fans in Philadelphia are petulant, unreasonable, paranoid, and mean-spirited. Unless you catch them on a good day and they’re just being jealous and unappreciative.

Philadelphia—which gave us the 1964 Phillies, who couldn’t find the handle on a six-game lead with 12 games to play and blew the pennant to St. Louis, which as a baseball city is to Philadelphia what, in fine cuisine, lobster is to beef jerky.

St. Louis wouldn’t dream of booing Stan Musial, either.

Philadelphia is the city that gave us Terrell Owens, and for that alone it deserves locusts descending on it.

The teams in Philadelphia have lost so much, have failed in such grand scale so often, that when their epic, abysmal championship droughts are actually broken with Halley’s Comet-like frequency, as was done by last year’s Phillies, it’s only natural to start looking for pestilence.

But if the Phillies of 2009 are going to put us all in mortal danger by winning their second straight World Series, then it may as well be with the team they have—which is pretty darn exciting, and good.

There’s first baseman Ryan Howard, a slugger of Herculean strength, who doesn’t hit home runs, he makes them with his bare hands. There’s center fielder Shane Victorino, who covers so much real estate in the outfield that you should call him Century 22.

There’s right fielder Jayson Werth, the feast or famine kid who can blow you away with his power or with the wind from his frequent whiffs. But guaranteed that you stick around for his at-bat, regardless.

There’s the pesky double play combo of 2B Chase Utley and SS Jimmy Rollins, two guys who can flash leather and then knock in the game-winning run on any given day.

There’s veteran LF Raul Ibanez, who turned 37 this summer but it’s all in your mind. Ibanez stroked 34 homers.

The top three starting pitchers are Cliff Lee, Pedro Martinez, and Cole Hamels. You can do worse.

The closer is Brad Lidge, who actually “gets” what being an athlete playing in Philadelphia is all about. For Lidge went from being 41-for-41 in save opportunities with a 1.95 ERA in 2008, to being 31-for-42 in 2009, despite an ERA in the thin high air of 7.21 in 2009.

Attaboy, Brad! You knew better than to put together two fabulous seasons in a row. You’re a Phillie, after all.

Batten down the hatches. The Phillies are in the World Series again, and it only took them a year to get back there this time instead of a generation. As Neil Diamond once sang, pack up the babies and grab the old ladies!

Cuz everyone knows it’s the City of Brotherly Love’s Traveling Salvation Show.

Osgood's No. 30 Ought to be in Rafters Post-Retirement

2009-10-21T11:08:00.004-04:00

So this much we know.

One evening, in the not-too-distant future, fans will look to the rafters at Joe Louis Arena---or wherever the Red Wings will be playing by then---and see a large red "jersey" with a white No. 5 and the name "LIDSTROM" adorning it, the years played for the Red Wings listed below it, in red on a white band.

That much we know.

But, and I know my timing isn't great here, I submit that those same fans should also be able to crane their necks and see a big red swatch of fabric with a white No. 30 and the name "OSGOOD" sewn onto it.

You heard me.

It's a few weeks into the NHL regular season, and that may turn some people on, but this is the perfect time to be an argument starter, if you ask me. Let these October games drone on in the background while we muck it up in the corner, figuratively speaking.

Chris Osgood's number retired? You betcha.

By the time he hangs them up for good, Osgood will have likely passed the great Terry Sawchuk for most wins by a Red Wings goaltender. For starters.

He has three Stanley Cups, two earned as the starter throughout the playoffs---and ten years apart, which must be some sort of record, somewhere.

Your honor, the defense rests.

Oh, I know I'll have to do some cross-examining here. I can practically hear the keyboards being pounded on furiously by those opposed to me. That's OK. Nothing is ever a slam dunk when it comes to Chris Osgood's virtues in Detroit.

I don't know why some are so resistant to back off and just accept that Osgood has had a fine career. The arguments against him have turned almost spiteful and personal, and I have no idea why.

The naysayers talk like this: The Red Wings win in spite of him, especially in 1998. He has great teams in front of him, so that's why his numbers look so good. Blah-blah-blah.

As if Sawchuk played with a bunch of chopped liver back in the day.

I promise you, it's OK to give Osgood his due. It really is. I promise the sun will rise tomorrow, and in the east. No children or pets will be harmed. Promise.

And it's also OK to not only give him his due, but to also raise his number among the team's all-time greats because---and here's where it really gets fun---Chris Osgood is, in fact, one of the team's all-time greats.

Let's play a little game.

Name me three goalies in team history better than Osgood. Just three, other than Sawchuck.

I'll even play along with you.

There was the kewpie doll-faced Harry Lumley, who was between the pipes during the Red Wings' successful 1950 Stanley Cup run. Lumley won 163 games for the Red Wings in six seasons (1944-50). I might give you that one out of benevolence.

There was Mike Vernon, with his 1997 Cup. But Mike didn't play in Detroit very long, and I'm not sure he was all that much better, if at all, than Ozzie.

Here's one: Dominik Hasek. It's hard not to give you Dom, although he wasn't a Red Wing all that long. But you almost have to include him because of his overall career.

So you have Lumley, Vernon, and Hasek. I'd scratch Vernon. And Hasek gets the nod mostly for his time in Buffalo.

Any others?

The question begs: Why wouldn't you so honor the second-best goalie in franchise history?

Because that's what Chris Osgood is, like it or not.

I'm putting Ozzie ahead of Lumley because of longevity, and I'm even slotting him in front of Hasek for the same reason, though I wouldn't squawk if you put Dom ahead of Osgood.

But you're not going to raise Hasek's No. 39 to the rafters because he wasn't a Red Wing long enough.

The Osgood haters spew the same tired arguments, already listed above. And it's not a very long list anyhow.

How exactly do the Red Wings win in spite of Chris Osgood?

The team surrendered nearly three goals a game during the regular season last year, an unheard of number in Detroit. Osgood was largely to blame for that, and he wouldn't argue. But the Red Wings came within a whisker of winning another Cup.

Why? Because Osgood raised his game several notches, and was a genuine Conn Smythe candidate until the Penguins captured Game Seven.

This is going to draw more venom, but I'm telling you that Chris Osgood is the greatest money goalie I've ever seen in Detroit. Bar none, even Hasek.

No one bounced back from bad games like Osgood. No one came up bigger in more pressure situations than Osgood. And no one was as unflappable as Osgood is between the pipes, because no one was better between the ears.

Give me Chris Osgood if I need a game to be won, over anyone who's ever worn a Red Wings jersey, save for Sawchuk, who was the best ever, regardless of decade or era or generation.

Retiring his No. 30 and raising it to sway above the ice along with Yzerman and Lindsay and Howe and Abel and Delvecchio and Sawchuk and (eventually) Lidstrom is a no-brainer, as far as I'm concerned.

Go ahead. Make your case.

Last Night on "The Knee Jerks": 50 Minutes of Detroit Sports Pop Culture with Bob Page!

2009-10-20T14:14:00.004-04:00

It was slightly truncated, thanks to that wacky server at Blog Talk Radio, but we managed 50 delightful minutes with colorful broadcaster Bob Page last night on "The Knee Jerks", my weekly sports gabfest with Big Al from The Wayne Fontes Experience.

Bob was in rare form, regaling us with one story after another about old school Detroit sports. For anyone older than 30, especially, this was even better than Bob's appearance in mid-July. And for the youngens? You'll learn a thing or two!

Sadly, BTR's server crashed around 11:51 p.m., and we were forced to halt the proceedings.

But it was a terrific 50 minutes, and I urge you to check it out!

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, for updates on scheduled guests, time changes, etc.

Next week's guest: (tentative) Former Detroit Lions great Alex Karras!

Upcoming guests:

Oct. 26 Former Lions great Alex Karras (tentative, but we're guardedly optimistic!)
Nov. 2 Jose Canseco (yes, THE Jose Canseco!!)
Nov. 9 TBA (but likely a Red Wings beat writer)

You can listen to the shorter-than-usual episode by clicking below!

Schwartz Era Not Immune to Sunday Stinkers

2009-10-19T10:29:00.005-04:00

Things are apparently so bad with the Lions that they don't even show up for their games anymore.

The Lions yesterday set football back in Detroit all the way to...2008.

If this is them turning the corner, then they just ran smack dab into a bus, like that girl in that scene from "Final Destination."

WHAM!!

The Green Bay Packers, if this was dinner time, would have been scolded by their mother for playing with their food, as they skipped out to a 14-0 lead before adding a slew of field goals when touchdowns would have made things butt ugly.

The 26-0 whitewashing was about as much of an indication of how much the Packers dominated the Lions as a scoop of white rice tells you how much of the stuff they have in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant.

The Packers committed penalties by the boatload. Their offense mysteriously stalled in the "red zone" when it was a hot knife to the Lions' butter between the 20s. Yet the Pack was never not in control.

It's amazing the number of transgressions you can commit in a football game and still never be in danger of losing it, when you're playing the Lions.

This wasn't a football game---it was serio-comic performance art, played out in front of 50,000-plus bloodthirsty zealots.

The Lions lost control of this one as soon as Jason Hanson's toe met the football for the opening kickoff, which was taken all the way back for an apparent touchdown. But the Packers were flagged, as usual, and it appeared as if the Lions dodged a bullet.

Yeah, they dodged a bullet alright---just like Bonnie and Clyde did in their car before being eventually aerated by lead.

It was painfully similar to so many of the Lions games last season, when the folks who were late to the game might as well have been ordered back at the gate by the ushers and the police.

"Nothing to see here, folks. Just move back to your cars and exit quietly."

It was 14-0 before all the first beers and hot dogs were in the Packers' fans tummies.

Then the Pack got sloppy and acquired a field goal fetish, making the final score marginally respectable.

Packers QB Aaron Rodgers was the latest passer to need a drool cup for all the salivating he did while looking over the Lions' secondary. The Lions' pass defending corps---which I had foolishly declared on "The Knee Jerks" podcast a few weeks ago was improving steadily---is the "easy" setting in the NFL for opposing QBs, while the rest of the league is categorized as either "moderate," "tough," or "expert."

There weren't seams in the Lions' defensive backfield---there were canyons. Watching the other team pass against the Lions is like watching no-contact drills in practice. The Packers' receivers might as well have been wearing just helmets and shorts.

As bad as it was, you figured that there might be Sundays like this, even in the Jim Schwartz Era. This made the Saints game in Week 1 look good. But what Schwartz and defensive coordinator Gunther Cunningham inherited could not possibly be fixed in one year. So a stinker like Sunday's in Green Bay shouldn't be too terribly shocking.

The idea, of course, is to have far fewer of them in 2009, and even fewer in 2010, and so on.

The Lions were a little banged up---especially on offense with QB Matthew Stafford and WR Calvin Johnson out with injuries, and on the d-line---and that didn't help. At all. But this is the NFL, and others must step up, not step back.

Lions QB Daunte Culpepper was frightfully ineffective, and the game plan is so much more conservative with him in the game than when Stafford plays. It's like o-coordinator Scott Linehan doesn't believe that Culpepper can zing the ball further than 20 yards at a time.

Maybe he can't.

So take this one and pitch it. Burn the tape, as they say. The Lions will now go into their bye week with the after taste of castor oil in their mouths. For almost two weeks.

The Lions didn't play football on Sunday---they committed it.

I wonder if they wrapped Lambeau Field in crime scene tape after the game.

Baseball Needs Yankees Back Under Bright Lights of World Series

2009-10-18T18:34:00.001-04:00

It was the vaudevillian comedian Joe E. Brown who went on the record about it most famously. It was he who put it into words with so much brevity yet pith.

“Rooting for the Yankees,” Brown was jotted down as having said, “is like rooting for U.S. Steel.”

Those Damn Yankees—welcome back to the playoff spotlight.

The Yankees are in a tussle for the right to represent the American League in the World Series, facing off against the very formidable Los Angeles Angels—right coast versus left coast. It’s the Yankees’ first appearance in the ALCS—alphabet soup for American League Championship Series—since way back in 2004.

Remember 2004?

Of course you do—but in baseball years in New York, that may as well be in the days of Alexander Cartwright and the marking off of the very first base path in the 1870s.

Yankees fans aren’t used to there being five years between series of this magnitude—and this isn’t even the big Kahuna.

The one they want, of course, is the World Series, and the Yankees haven’t been in one of those since 2003.

Yikes!

The Yankees, when last seen in an ALCS, were coughing up a three games to none lead to the arch rival Boston Red Sox. Four straight times the Red Sox beat the Yankees to appear in, and eventually win, the ’04 World Series—the Red Sox’ first championship since Babe Ruth pitched for them (1918).

The Yankees are back playing for the figurative pennant, and that’s terrific. If they make it to the World Series, it’d be even better.

Yeah, they may be U.S. Steel—or, to update Brown’s quote, Microsoft. But that’s what makes their presence in baseball’s Final Four even more mandatory.

You don’t have Dudley Do-Right, after all, without there being a Black Bart over whom to conquer.

Professional sports needs its black hats in the spotlight.

The hypocrites in the NBA may have cried foul about the tactics of our very own “Bad Boys”, the Detroit Pistons of the late-1980s, early-1990s, but without the Pistons donning those black hats, Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls couldn’t have existed.

The Bulls would have been champions, but missing a certain je ne sais quoi.

The Bulls, in many people’s eyes, returned championship basketball to its rightful place, where the fouls were soft and the personality was vanilla.

Yet with no Detroit Pistons against whom to root, Jordan’s Bulls would not have been nearly as compelling. They would have been just another superstar-led team who beat back a bunch of faceless inferior opponents—like they were in the middle of the 1990s, when the Pistons were in rebuilding mode.

You remember the Bulls hacking away at the Pistons’ tree trunk until it fell, beating them in the playoffs after three straight years of being schooled—leading to a three-year reign as world champions. But the second three-peat—achieved from 1996-98—wasn’t nearly as juicy, because there was no Black Bart over whom to triumph.

The NFL needs the Dallas Cowboys to be good and of championship caliber. It’s fun to root against an organization ostentatiously dubbed “America’s Team” without the rest of our permission. The Red Wings—sorry to break this to the “Hockeytown” faithful—aren’t the darlings that you think they are, across North America, outside of Detroit.

Far from it, in fact. The Red Wings’ loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 2009 Stanley Cup Finals was triumph over tragedy, as far as the majority of hockey fans were concerned.

The NBA needs the Boston Celtics circling over the rest of the league. Or the Los Angeles Lakers; they’ll do, too.

And baseball needs the Yankees.

Is the ALCS as interesting if the Yankees aren’t in it?

The World Series certainly isn’t, so how can the ALCS even hope to be?

I’m not a Yankees fan. Not even close. I’ve reveled in their recent playoff foibles, and have chuckled derisively at the abject failure of their superstar Alex Rodriguez as he’s struggled mightily in the first round.

But Rodriguez awoke from his post-season slumber this year, almost single-handedly demolishing the poor Minnesota Twins. And the Yankees are back where they belong.

I’m not a Yankees fan but I admit to being glad that they’re back in the ALCS. Because while I had some fun at their first round expense, that kind of fun isn’t as grand as watching them possibly go down against the Angels, or better yet, against the Phillies or the Dodgers in the Fall Classic.

The Yankees are the greatest of all our franchises, in any sport, playing in the greatest of our cities. You’re damn right they were U.S. Steel in Joe E. Brown’s day, and they’re damn well Microsoft—or Comcast—in these modern times.

Pick a decade and the Yankees were likely in a World Series, or several, during it.

It all started with the iconic Ruth in the 1920s, and continued with the Yankees teams of Dickey and Gomez of the 1930s, those of DiMaggio in the 1940s, and with the 1950s squads of Berra and Mantle and Ford. It lapped into the first half of the 1960s as well, with names like Richardson and Maris and Howard joining the fray.

Who can forget what Reggie Jackson did to the Dodgers in 1977, with his three homers on three straight pitches off three different pitchers in the decisive Game 6?

Finally, in the 1980s, the streak of at least one Yankees World Series victory in every decade ended, although they did make it to the 1981 series.

It started back up again in the 1990s with three world titles, and the 2000s were also soiled by a Yankees triumph, over the cross town Mets in 2000.

Now, the Yankees have the chance to bookend the decade of the 2000s with World Series wins, before we get into the 2010s next year.

The Yankees are Notre Dame football, Comcast, the Boston Celtics, the Republicans, and the Detroit Red Wings all wrapped into one.

Welcome back to late-October, old, hateful friend.

Spanking in Buffalo Not All Bad for Red Wings

2009-10-14T10:38:00.003-04:00

The Red Wings got a good, old-fashioned facewash Tuesday night in Buffalo. A regular butt kicking. The Sabres booted the Red Wings halfway back to Detroit, using a second period, four-goal barrage to beat them, 6-2.

It was utter, total annihilation, dropping the team to 2-3 on the season.

And that's a good thing.

Don't look at me that way. Send back the men in the white jackets. Put the thermometer away. I'm fine, I swear.

When a team has had as much success as the Red Wings have had since, oh, 1991, it's not a bad thing to get your nose rubbed into the ice surface on occasion---to remind you that laurels are great for reminiscing about but not something on which you rest.

The Red Wings are going to have to earn it this season. For real this time.

This is still a 100+ point hockey team, and is still a Stanley Cup contender. Legitimately, as they say. Any unit that can trot out the forwards the Red Wings can, not to mention the top four defensemen that they have, is a threat to hoist the chalice in June. Period, no matter what the haters out there might have you believe.

They lost a lot of players to free agency and injury, but the Red Wings also happened to have been the deepest team in the league, so now it's time to prove it. And they will.

But that imaginary gap, the one that has long separated the Red Wings from the rest of the league, is shrinking, and fast. Again, not a bad thing.

The Sabres dominated the Red Wings in just about every area, even faceoffs, and you wonder which is the stronger emotion for the Wings today---anger or surprise.

If it's a mixture of both, then the Sabres' win might just be what the Red Wings needed.

The season opened with a couple of unseemly losses overseas, in Sweden. Then some home cooking corrected things for two games. Now, in the first "real" road game of the season, the Red Wings got spanked.

Hard work is going to have to trump talent this season. A champion's will to show everyone that it's far too early to declare them also-rans is going to have to bob to the surface.

And yes, some anger is fine. Hurt pride can be a springboard to righting the ship.

The Red Wings got waylaid in Buffalo, and they're smart enough to know that it will happen more and more, if they don;t correct their play.

"They were better than us," coach Mike Babcock said of the Sabres. "In all areas. They were just better."

But the Red Wings are still better than the Sabres, and are better than just about all the teams in the league, on most nights.

They're just going to have to work harder to prove it, is all.

And that's not a bad thing.

Last Night on "The Knee Jerks": Hoopin' It Up, with A. Sherrod Blakely

2009-10-13T16:06:00.004-04:00

The Detroit Pistons and the NBA took center court, if you will, last night on "The Knee Jerks", my weekly sports gabfest with Big Al from The Wayne Fontes Experience.

That's because our guest was A. Sherrod Blakely, who is the Pistons beat writer for MLive.com.

Sherrod gave us his insights on the Pistons and the league, from his vantage point as a training camp observer and beat writer. We covered the gamut, from new acquisitions like Ben Gordon, Charlie Villanueva and draft pick Austin Daye, to returning veterans like Rip Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, and oldie but goodie Ben Wallace.

So does Sherrod think this year's Pistons squad is in the midst of rebuilding, or is his beer mug half full? I guess you'll have to listen to the show to find out!

After Sherrod's segment, Al and I dove right into yet another busy slate of talking points.

We started by giving our final thoughts on the Tigers' epic (?) one-game playoff in Minnesota, and what we would have done differently if we were in the dugout pushing the buttons. Hint: we both agree that a certain left-handed swinging rookie should have been called upon to pinch-hit!

From there, I, once again, had to be "The Voice of Reason" and talk Al down a little bit when it came to the Red Wings and the loss of Johan Franzen.

We wrapped things up by dissecting the Lions' 28-20 loss to the Steelers on Sunday, and Al went on a mini-rant, panning Daunte Culpepper's performance.

The piece de resistance, of course, was the show-ending Jerks of the Week!

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, for updates on scheduled guests, time changes, etc.

Next week's guest: the always colorful Bob Page, retired (in theory) broadcaster of Detroit and New York.

Upcoming guests:

Oct. 19 Bob Page
Oct. 26 Former Lions great Alex Karras (tentative, but we're guardedly optimistic!)
Nov. 2 Jose Canseco (yes, THE Jose Canseco!!)

Some highlights from last night:

Big Al

On the Tigers' offense: "Adam Everett is a good player, but he doesn't hit and the Tigers had four batting slots full of Adam Everetts this season. The Tigers need to find a good blend of offense and defense; no more of this one or the other stuff."

On Franzen: "Who knows if he'll be 100 percent when he returns, because this is a torn ACL injury. But I'll take a 75 percent Johan Franzen over a lot of guys in the league."

On Culpepper: "He made some mistakes that Matthew Stafford, as a rookie, wouldn't have made. I think it's time to sit him down and see what you have in Drew Stanton."

Eno

On the one-game playoff: "It was like the whole month of September in a microcosm. The Tigers get off to a lead and the Twins peck away at it. In the end, the Tigers couldn't execute fundamentals and the Twins did, and that was the difference."

On the Red Wings losing Franzen: "They don't ever have the mentality of, 'If one guy goes down, the whole thing collapses,' like some other teams in town. They just kind of hunker down and say, 'We have enough talent to overcome this.' They still have Cleary and Zetterberg and Datsyuk, and others. I'm more concerned about the penalty kill."

On the Lions-Steelers game: "Isn't it funny how the good teams like the Steelers, who are defending champions, can dial up three sacks like that when they need it? The Lions wouldn't have been able to do that against Ben Roethlisberger. But that's why the Steelers are the champs."

You can listen to the episode by clicking below!

Just Like That, Steel Curtain Closes On Lions' Chances

2009-10-12T10:25:00.004-04:00

They say more NFL games than you know come down to a handful of plays. The talent level, supposedly, is so close from team to team that in any given game, wins and losses are often decided by maybe no more than three or four percent of the total number of plays run.

Usually, though, those three or four plays are scattered throughout the game's sixty minutes. They're rarely bunched together, rat-a-tat-tat, at the end of the match.

But that's exactly what happened at Ford Field---a.k.a. Heinz Field North---on Sunday as the Pittsburgh Steelers fended off the Lions, 28-20.

The Steelers sacked Lions QB Daunte Culpepper three straight times within the final 90 seconds of regulation, turning a 1st-and-10 from the Steelers' 21 into 4th-and-34 from their 45, thus sealing the victory.

Only the Lions could turn such a golden opportunity for a tying score into a desperate, Hail Mary situation in a matter of seconds.

Well, the Lions---and the Steelers themselves.

This is no ordinary defense, the one they have in Pittsburgh. Pro Bowler James Harrison spent almost as much time in the Lions backfield as running back Kevin Smith. The Steelers pressured Culpepper more than what the Hoover Dam deals with every day.

And the Lions have no ordinary offensive line. In fact, they'd kill for ordinary, because they're still not quite at mediocre yet.

And you hoped that Matthew Stafford would play on Sunday? Heck, we might be eulogizing him this morning.

Culpepper, though, didn't exactly show much elusiveness in that final drive, which was surprisingly punctuated by a couple of nice catches by rookie Derrick Williams. Daunte may have lost a lot of weight, but he went down sometimes if he was breathed on funny.

Sadly, he picked a couple of those times during that fateful three-play stretch. Steelers DB William Gay blitzed on the third sack, and clipped Culpepper with his arms, and the Lions QB plopped to the turf, his attempt at avoiding Gay about the most pathetic you'll ever see.

Would Stafford had done better? Even if he had---on that play---let's just say that the kid picked a good game to miss.

And the Steelers fans picked a good game not to miss.

They came in droves to Detroit, and if there was a home field advantage for the Lions, it was a trickle---the Steelers fans filtering it capably.

But it was because of those Steelers zealots that the game was sold out in time for the NFL to lift the blackout.

Which meant, of course, that we were lucky enough to see those three rat-a-tat-tat sacks that effectively squashed the Lions' hopes of tying the game.

Steelers defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau, the former Lion, is up for Hall of Fame consideration. It's debatable whether it's more for his exploits on the field or on the sidelines. But in about 30 seconds on Sunday, LeBeau sealed his induction, as far as I'm concerned.

Those three sacks should go down in Steelers lore, albeit them coming against the---no pun intended---sad-sack Lions. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a team change a game so definitively and so dramatically, so quickly and so late?

That's a lot of "sos," I know, but goodness gracious---LeBeau dialed up the pressure and his players responded, big time.

Ahh, players. The Steelers, like most NFL teams save a handful, have more good ones than the Lions have. But the Lions showed some moxie, making big plays on both sides of the ball and converting 11-of-18 third downs, which is their new thing this year.

DB William James had a "pick six" for the Lions, and I think the last one of those might be Shaun Rogers' long gallop against the Denver Broncos at Ford Field, two years ago.

But Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger completed 13 passes in a row after James' interception, proving why he's one of the game's greats. The elite guys bounce back like super balls following such duress.

As for the Lions, despite the new cast of characters, you still don't get the feeling that any late-game drives are going to end up positively, such as Sunday's. And you won't, until they actually start to occur. But here's the rub: I think they might, sooner rather than later.

The o-line is bad, but the Lions put a scare into the Steelers without Calvin Johnson, injured earlier. The playcalling is the main reason; o-coordinator Scott Linehan calls a good game, for the most part. Until the Lions get reinforcements on the line, they'll struggle, but the talent level and Linehan's mind will just have to combine for at least one heroic, late-game drive this year.

The Steelers fans who piled into their vehicles and made the trek to Detroit went home happy.

You can only wonder when you can start saying that with any consistency about the hometown folks, whose twenty, thirty minute jaunts have seemed longer than the one from Detroit to Pittsburgh in recent years.

Red Wings Enforcer Polonich Never Same After Brutal Attack

2009-10-11T16:28:00.002-04:00

Red Wings coach Mike Babcock, as he is wont to do, succinctly summarized why his team had signed Brad May to a contract.

“We had him for a few exhibition games and no one bothered our guys,” Babcock said. “Then we didn’t have him and people started taking some liberties.

“I don’t mind it when tough guys are tough guys. But when guys who aren’t tough start playing tough, that drives me crazy. And we’d seen enough of that.”

So the Red Wings found May, a 37-year-old notorious tough guy, on the scrap heap a couple weeks ago, gave him a tryout in the preseason, and signed him to a one-year deal the afternoon of the team’s home opener Thursday.

“May provides something that no one else on the team does,” Babcock continued, ever the pragmatist. “So he’ll always have a role.”

Tough guy. Enforcer. They used to call them policemen, back when I first started following hockey in the late-1960s, early-1970s.

Babcock has often said that players like May “keep the flies off” the more skilled, star guys.

Once upon a time, the skilled, star guys functioned as their own bodyguards.

You think Gordie Howe needed someone to keep the flies off him? Ted Lindsay was another who could score as well as fight.

Bobby Hull could take care of himself. So could Johnny Bucyk and Rocket Richard. And many others.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, we lost that triple threat hockey player—one who could check, score, and fight.

The Red Wings employed one such pugnacious, tenacious little guy in the 1970s named Dennis Polonich.

Polo, they called him. No one said hockey nicknames were overly creative.

Polonich was a homegrown Red Wing, drafted by the team in the eighth round in 1973 and nurtured through the minor league system. He must have had that Napoleonic Complex, because Polo was all of 5′6″ and that measurement was surely taken while he was on skates.

Polonich was a Red Wing in the thick of the worst stretch the franchise ever had, in terms of success on the ice. He played on teams that were cringe-inducing in their ineptitude.

But Dennis Polonich could play hockey a little bit, in addition to being the team’s resident tough guy. He was a triple threat, indeed. No Henrik Zetterberg, but not an unskilled hack, either.

A quick check of hockey-reference.com confirms my suspicions.

In 1976-77, Polonich scored 19 goals. The following season, 16. And that was despite being whistled for 528 minutes in penalties in those two seasons combined.

Then Polonich’s career changed.

It was in October, 1978—the Red Wings entertaining a team called the Colorado Rockies, the hockey version, pre-baseball.

Another triple threat player named Wilf Paiement tangled with Polonich and words were exchanged. Your typical heat-of-the-moment hockey stuff. Shortly thereafter, Paiement and Polonich met again on the ice. Things escalated, as they tend to do.

It all happened so quickly.

Paiement took his stick—by all accounts with two hands near the top, and swung. His aim was for Polonich’s face, and he connected.

Polonich went down in a heap, in a flash, and it was so fast that many at Olympia Stadium didn’t even see what had happened.

The result of Paiement’s stick swinging was not only a league reprimand of 15 games worth of suspension, but also a lawsuit filed by Polonich against his attacker.

The violent thwack of Paiement’s stick against Polonich’s head only caused Polo to miss 18 games in the 1978-79 season, which was amazing considering the magnitude of the attack, which had left him with a concussion, severe facial lacerations, and a broken nose that required reconstructive surgery—resulting in lifelong breathing problems.

He was never the same.

Polonich scored 10 goals that season, played just 109 NHL games after that, and scored a grand total of four more goals in those 109 matches, after scoring 55 goals in his previous 277 contests.

Before Wilf Paiement rearranged his face, Polonich was a tough guy who could score on occasion and who “kept the flies off” the Red Wings’ more skilled players—and they had precious few in those days.

But after, Polonich was a shell of his former self. He still accumulated some penalty minutes, but not as many and his fights were less frequent. He just wasn’t the same, period—physically or mentally. He was out of the NHL by 1982—the same year in which Polonich finally collected some money from Paiement—an $850,000 settlement.

Some who would know say that Paiement’s attack on Polonich was the most violent act ever committed in an NHL game.

But because of Polo’s reputation as an instigator and pest, he wasn’t exactly portrayed as the traditional victim, despite the horrific nature of the attack. There was a lot of “he got what he deserved” from those around the NHL.

In Detroit, the fans loved Dennis Polonich. He was a shrimp but he didn’t hesitate to take on the biggest and baddest that the NHL had to offer. Go to YouTube and type his name in the search box and have some fun.

The Broad Street Bullies themselves, the Philadelphia Flyers, would invade Olympia and those were some fantastic wars—despite the distance between the two teams in the standings. When the Flyers came to Detroit, blood was shed and the Red Wings often won the game.

And Polonich often led the charge, engaging Dave Schultz or Moose Dupont or Bob Kelly in some rock ‘em, sock ‘em fisticuffs.

All that went away after Paiement used his stick as a golf club and Polonich’s head as the teed up ball.

Brad May, today’s Red Wings enforcer, is to make certain that no nonsense goes on involving the Zetterbergs and Datsyuks and Lidstroms. Not on his watch, anyway.

May is still in the NHL at age 37 because his kind is a coveted asset.

Dennis Polonich only played in the NHL until he was 29, but would have played longer, likely, if it wasn’t for Wilf Paiement.

Polo probably would have given the 850 grand back in exchange for remaining an impact player.

Few things are sadder in hockey than an enforcer who doesn’t scare anybody anymore.

Will (gasp!) Backup Goalie Be Red Wings' Bugaboo?

2009-10-08T09:31:00.004-04:00

Can a backup goaltender, of all things, decide whether a hockey team reaches the promised land or not?

We're about to find out.

The Detroit Red Wings pull the curtain back tonight for the first time in front of their home crowd in the 2009-10 campaign. And their fans will see something that they haven't seen in 20 years: an 0-2 Red Wings team.

But the Wings are 0-0 in North America!

The much ballyhooed trip to Sweden proved to be more distraction than it was worth, the Red Wings blowing two-goal leads in both games to the inferior (but improving) St. Louis Blues.

Let's look at that word, inferior.

First there's the inferior backup goaltender, Jimmy Howard---in comparison to last year's No. 2 man, Ty Conklin. But the concern in Detroit is that Howard is not only inferior to Ty Conklin, but also to Ty Cobb, when it comes to being a goalie.

Chris Osgood, the No. 1 netminder, wasn't very good in Sweden. Howard, though, was downright awful.

But it was just one game, right?

Yes and no.

It was one game this season, yes, but for a guy who's been taking his sweet time developing, Howard was expected---check that, required---to play a lot better coming out of the gate.

There's worry in Detroit about the goaltending---surprise, surprise---but for the first time that I can recall (and if you know me, that's a lot of recalling), the worry isn't so much about the starter, but about the guy sitting on the bench most nights.

Jimmy Howard might be the only backup goalie in the NHL who's on the hot seat. And the guy doesn't even have anyone playing behind him!

It's the opposite of the old NFL adage about quarterback controversies: the best quarterback is the one not playing.

In Detroit, not only is the best goalie the one who is playing, the second-best goalie is the one not even on the team right now.

Coach Mike Babcock said in training camp that he expects 25 victories from his backup goalie this season. Good luck with that, Michael.

Do you see 25 wins somewhere in and around Jimmy Howard's body? Heck, do you even see 25 games?

These are the Red Wings. They don't put up with some of the nonsense that teams in other NHL cities are forced to put up with. And one of those things is putting a backup goalie in net and watching the game with one eye open and the other one closed.

If Howard doesn't right himself, and quick, he won't be on the team. It's as simple as that. The Red Wings don't owe him anything. He's not some bonus baby in which the team has a lot of Mike Ilitch's pizza dough invested. They've been patient with Howard. It's all on him now.

Howard has the additional misfortune of following Conklin's act, which was superb last season, pulling the Red Wings through the Chris Osgood Ordeal---during that 82-game thing that we call, in Detroit, "preparing for the playoffs."

I have some good news for the Howard Haters today. Don't worry so much. Babcock, GM Ken Holland et al aren't going to be very patient anymore. Prediction: Howard isn't the backup come Christmas. Just a hunch. Could be time for young Daniel Larsson, or someone from outside the organization.

Now back to that word inferior once more.

I called the Blues inferior, but the other biggie is wondering how many other teams we can say that about, in comparison to the mighty Red Wings.

It's trendy and chic to say that the list of teams you can pencil in beneath the Red Wings in terms of overall strength is dwindling. Perhaps it is. Not so sure, though.

John Buccigross of ESPN.com, in his Western Conference preview, has the Red Wings fourth, behind Calgary, Chicago, and San Jose. He's another who's fallen prey to the trend-setters.

The Blackhawks, of course, are a legitimate threat to the Red Wings' supremacy in the Central (I wish they called it the Norris again) Division. But Buccigross makes a fantastic leap of faith in picking them second in the conference.

Here's Buccigross on the Blackhawks' Achilles heel---starting goalie Cristobal Huet:

"So far, not good. Last season, he was outplayed and lost his starting job. His career had a nice, steady arc before last season's expectations. So it is reasonable to believe he can return to form. But can you picture him as a Stanley Cup-winning goalie? If you can, then this team has as good a chance as any."

Wow. That's a big supposition to make, in calling a team the second best in its conference.

The good news: no backup goalie worries in Chicago. The bad news: that's because they're all focused on the starter.

More about the Blackhawks: Buccigross also likes the Marian Hossa signing---as well he should. But Hossa is out until Lord knows when thanks to off-season surgery. Will it take him time to get revved up? Then again, he might be in peak condition come playoff time. It's not like he couldn't use a (ahem) strong playoff, you know?

About the Flames, supposedly No. 1 in the West in Buccigross's four eyes, the offensive power dazzles him, as does the acquisition of free agent defenseman Jay Bouwmeester from Florida.

Ahh, but there's this about the Flames and their goaltending situation, i.e. Mikka Kiprusoff:

"Kiprusoff's goals-against average has gone up every year he has been in Calgary. The past four seasons, his games played looks like this: 74-74-76-76. That is insane. He turns 33 later this month. He can't sniff that amount of games and expect to finish the season with a kick. Kiprusoff is obviously a grinder. He takes every goal to heart. Having him play that amount of games wears down his brain, and anyone who believes otherwise doesn't understand goalies or people like Kiprusoff. He is not a John Deere tractor on the Sutter farm. He is a man, he's 33 and he needs to be handled better this season or he will have another .884 playoff save percentage like this past spring."

Does that sound like an argument for why the Flames are the best in the West? Sounds more like the opposite, to me.

So Buccigross---and I'm sorry to pick on just him---is making two huge leaps of faith about other teams' goaltending situations in placing them ahead of the Red Wings in the so-called "power rankings."

But that's OK. It'll be refreshing to watch the Red Wings play a regular season in which they're not on the tips of everyone's tongues in the "who's winning the Stanley Cup?" discussions.

By the way, the Red Wings should still be in those discussions, heavily. They're still pretty damn good, despite their losses in free agency. They still have Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg and Johan Franzen and Daniel Cleary and Nick Lidstrom and Brian Rafalski and Brad Stuart and Niklas Kronwall. And more.

I think you're sniffing the goalpost paint if you pick the Red Wings anything less than best in the Central and second in the conference, but what do I know? I picked the Red Wings to win the Stanley Cup in 2008, and I picked them again in 2009. Boy, did I miss that one by a mile, eh?

Last Night on "The Knee Jerks": We Put the Gloves On, Then Took 'Em Off!

2009-10-06T10:36:00.002-04:00

We turned extra combative last night on "The Knee Jerks", my weekly sports gabfest with Big Al from The Wayne Fontes Experience.

That's because our guest was none other than Marvin Hagler, Jr., son of the multiple world champion boxer.

Junior was on to discuss his upcoming professional boxing debut, set to take place on Saturday near Philadelphia. It's the headliner of a Celebrity Boxing card, but Marvin is no typical celebrity boxer. He's got that famous pedigree, and, at age 33, he's considering making this more than just a passing fling.

One bombshell was laid on us. It involves Marvin and his dad, and I guess you'll have to listen to the show to find out what it is!

Oh, and BTW, Big Al asked Marvin which of his father's fights was his favorite, and he selected the "Eight Minutes of Fury" bout against Thomas Hearns in 1985, which Hagler Sr. won by TKO in the third round.

"Sorry, Detroit," Junior said.

After Marvin, there was, as usual, a boatload of things to rant about.

We started with the ever-developing Miguel Cabrera saga. Al and I spent about 30 minutes dissecting it, along with offering our opinions on how the Tigers as an organization handled things. (Hint: not very well).

Then it was on to today's one-game playoff in Minnesota.

We offered up who we thought needed to have a big game (care to take a guess), and why the Tigers got to this point to begin with.

There was some time left for the Lions and their 30-minute performance in Chicago on Sunday. This gave Al another glorious opportunity to utter his two favorite words, "FIRE KWAN!!," as in special teams coach Stan Kwan, whose unit was torched for one big kick return after the other, surrendering field position all afternoon.

By the time we got through all that, Michigan-Michigan State got left out in the cold! They were the guest on "The Tonight Show" that Johnny didn't have time for.

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, for updates on scheduled guests, time changes, etc.

Next week's guest: A. Sherrod Blakely, Pistons' beat writer for MLive.com.

Upcoming guests:

Oct. 12 A. Sherrod Blakely
Oct. 19 Bob Page
Oct. 26 TBA
Nov. 2 Jose Canseco (yes, THE Jose Canseco!!)

Some highlights from last night:

Big Al

On Cabrera: "The Tigers were put in a tough situation but they exacerbated it. They were foolish to think they could keep something like this quiet."

On Cabrera II: "I was 26 years old once, and I did my share of drinking. But I wasn't being paid $120 million and asked to carry a team to the playoffs. The only good thing was that he wasn't driving. But if that's the only good thing you can say..."

On the Lions: "I've been calling for them to fire Kwan, but in all fairness he's coaching with one hand tied behind his back. He just doesn't have the talent."

On Matthew Stafford: "He missed some plays, but in a couple years he's not going to miss them and this offense is going to start to hum."

Eno

On Cabrera: "I hope the Tigers get him some help. This wasn't a case of a guy going out once, getting drunk once, and getting belligerent, once. These were the actions of someone with a problem. He needs to go into rehab between now and spring training and get cleaned up."

On Cabrera II: "His numbers were good but not great. He had 33 HR and 101 RBI, but he's capable of 40 and 120, easily. I don't care that he doesn't have much support in the lineup. Tough. That's what he's getting paid to do."

On the Lions: "They need to address the defensive line in next year's draft, big time. That's the crux of their problems on defense. No contain, no pressure on the quarterback, no plays for negative yardage."

On Matthew Stafford: "Yes, he missed some open receivers, but at least they were open. I like that the tight ends got involved, too. Stafford's mistakes are coachable, so that's a good thing."

You can listen to the episode by clicking below!

Lions Once Again Kings of 30-Minute Football

2009-10-05T11:24:00.003-04:00

The Lions turned in another of those 30-minute jobs yesterday in Chicago, and it cost them, big time.

A 21-21 halftime tie turned into a 48-24 laugher for the Bears, but here's what's NOT funny.

Matthew Stafford dislocated his knee cap, according to ESPN.

The thing popped back into place on the sidelines, following a sack in the fourth quarter, when Stafford was clearly seen grimacing in pain and grabbing his right leg.

No, no laughing about that.

Early reports say QB Stafford could miss a game, maybe two.

But today there will be those dreaded tests, and how many Black Mondays have their been in the NFL for teams over the years?

What is sometimes considered a minor injury has too often turned into something more, and of the season-ending variety, to boot.

Sorry to be Chicken Little here, but you never know what an MRI might reveal when it comes to a football player's knee.

Stafford took some more baby steps Sunday, in his quest to be a bona fide NFL signal caller.

He threw for nearly 300 yards, plus a touchdown. He again exhibited his arm strength. There were some missed receivers, but that now seems to be part of his M.O. At least the receivers are getting open.

See? No Chicken Little talk there.

Fox analyst Brian Billick, himself once considered one of those NFL offensive "geniuses," correctly pointed out that Stafford needs to get a little more air under some of his passes. Stafford did so on the game's first play, a 50+ yarder to Calvin Johnson, but then went back into laser mode on other throws when he should have lofted.

But like offensive coordinator Scott Linehan said last week, "We can pull back on that (overthrowing). I'd be more concerned if he couldn't get it there."

Amen, because we sure have seen enough of the latter in Detroit.

So it wasn't Stafford who cost the Lions on Sunday---not even his injury, which came when the game was pretty much decided.

The two culprits were the (sadly) usual suspects: the overall defense and the special teams' kick coverage.

The Lions covered kicks yesterday as if the return man was carrying around Swine Flu all over his jersey. It was an abysmal display, and constantly gave the Bears field position at or around midfield.

The defense was sieve-like, once again, and it's truly a wonder that the Washington Redskins could manage but 14 points against the Lions last week.

Tackling was poor. Little to no pressure on the QB---again.

Bears RB Matt Forte came into the game with a yards-per-carry average of 2.5, yet traversed the entire length of the field, almost, in just two carries, on his way to 121 yards on 11 tries.

But that's nothing new; the Lions make pedestrian runners look like Jim Brown all the time. They're like the Tigers that way, who turn nondescript pitchers into Cy Young on a regular basis.

Some positives, though, were gleaned from Soldier Field.

Don't look now, but the offense is piling up long touchdown drives with some consistency.

They did it against the Redskins and did it some more against the Bears. They're converting third downs a lot better than any Lions team in recent memory. And they did it yesterday without any real contribution from the running game, which had been productive in Weeks Two and Three.

But it's hard to win when the defense doesn't pick up the offense one iota.

The tone was set in the second half when rookie Johnny Knox---it's tempting to keep going with his name, thanks to the star of the "Jackass" franchise---took the half-opening kickoff 102 yards to paydirt. Maybe someday we'll find out why they call it "paydirt," by the way.

Anyhow, that was the harbinger of bad things to come for the Lions, which often does following intermission.

A quick word or two about the Lions' running game.

Kevin Smith is a real nice guy and means well. He's a competitor and all that.

He's just not very good.

A runner of greater ability, awareness, and vision than Smith would have turned some of the negative and short yardage plays Sunday into something positive.

Yeah, I know---I'm still blinded by what Barry Sanders did routinely for ten years.

But a runner doesn't have to be Barry to have made something of what Smith was given by his offensive line on Sunday in Chicago.

I know Smith wasn't 100%. I get that.

But he just doesn't seem to have that intangible---the ability to turn something from nothing, even just a little bit. Perhaps he'll get better in that area, but I kind of think that you either have that or you don't. It seems innate to me.

We'll see.

So it was another half of a performance from the Lions. Another reminder that the NFL means being competitive for 60 minutes, and the Lions simply don't have the horses to hang with most teams for that long.

That's not an indictment of coach Jim Schwartz. He just needs more talent, is all.

Oh, and it would be nice to hear OLB Julian Peterson's name called every now and again. That would be splendid.

Meanwhile, we await news on what is now suddenly the most famous knee in Michigan.

Stafford Has QB Presence Like No Other Lion in Years

2009-10-04T10:17:00.000-04:00

It was Super Bowl week, and Thomas Henderson wanted to try out some new material.

What better opportunity than Media Day—held on Tuesday before The Big Game—to show how brilliant you are, and how much the other guy isn’t?

Henderson, the bombastic Dallas Cowboys’ linebacker who encouraged the use of the nickname “Hollywood” for himself, wanted to tell reporters just what he thought of the opposing quarterback, Terry Bradshaw of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

This was before Super Bowl XIII in January 1979, with Bradshaw’s Steelers already having won two championships, after the 1974 and ’75 seasons.

Henderson made sure the eyes were on him and the pens were put to notepads and the tape recorders were whirring.

“Terry Bradshaw,” Henderson said, “couldn’t spell ‘cat’ if you spotted him the ‘c’ and the ‘a’.”

Laugh, chortle, guffaw!

In a game whose strategic tactics are often compared to that of chess and military theaters, Bradshaw, playing what should then be the most cerebral of all of football’s positions—quarterback, for goodness sakes—somehow garnered a reputation of being a little shy in the smarts department.

It’s a reputation that still follows him, to this day.

The country bumpkin from Louisiana proceeded to go out, in the wake of Hollywood Henderson’s biting comedy, and victimize the Cowboys with one big play after the other.

Bradshaw carved up Hollywood and his Cowboys for his third Super Bowl victory. He’d win another, the following season.

Country bumpkin Terry retired undefeated in The Big Game, 4-0.

Not bad for someone who was allegedly absent the day they handed out brains.

Bradshaw, today pulling down way more dough as a Fox Sports studio analyst than he ever did being a Hall of Fame quarterback, last week harkened back to his then-fledgling football-playing career.

The subject was our own Matthew Stafford, the Lions’ rookie quarterback, who had just earned his first NFL victory.

Jimmy Johnson, a Super Bowl-winning coach before being lured into the bosom of TV, reminded everyone that he had Troy Aikman as a rookie in 1989, and Troy went 1-15 in his debut season.

“Sometimes you gotta throw these kids to the wolves!,” Jimmy said with emphasis.

Then Bradshaw offered a truism.

“That’s what happened to me; I got thrown to the wolves,” Terry said.

Did he ever.

Bradshaw joined the Steelers in 1970 from Louisiana Tech as the NFL’s first overall pick, when the Steelers were coming off a 1-13 season.

It didn’t start off smoothly for him.

What else do you call it, when they hang the quarterback in effigy at his home stadium?

They did with Terry in Pittsburgh—his “likeness” purposely portrayed with a goofy, idiotic, cross-eyed look on his face.

The more Bradshaw struggled in his rookie season, the louder the whispers became.

Terry Bradshaw, those so wise in such things said, is too dumb to be a pro quarterback.

So they said—in so many words.

Sometimes in those exact words, actually.

Hollywood Henderson, before that XIIIth Super Bowl, tried to revive the “Bradshaw is dumb” thing, despite Terry being twice a champion at the time.

He can’t spell “cat” even if you spot him the “c” and the “a.”

But Bradshaw could spell “win” very nicely, thank you.

Stafford is, indeed, being thrown to the wolves in Detroit. When your new team went 0-16 the year before your arrival, you’re also being smeared with raw meat before being chucked.

It’s a monumental task, to lead the Lions from historic depths to the look and feel of a winning unit.

But the kid is going to be OK.

It’s hard to make my case, I understand that, because it’s rooted in gut feel and held together with intangibles, but I’m telling you that Stafford has “it.”

Matthew Stafford carries himself more like a pro quarterback, after just three regular season games, better than so many of the other bozos the Lions have thrust under center.

He also fits this town very well, despite coming from the University of Georgia.

Ty Cobb was a Georgia Peach, too, and look how he fit in, in Detroit. So it has been done before.

Stafford has embraced Detroit—its people, its financial hardships and its grit. He did so almost immediately after being drafted No. 1 overall by the Lions in April. He’s a good-looking kid but there’s no “pretty boy” about him. He has already spoken of getting involved with the community, helping in any way that he can.

So many things went wrong with the last highly-drafted quarterback the Lions had, but if Joey Harrington had one flaw that stood out above the rest, it was this.

Joey wasn’t a Detroiter. He was wine and cheese, being drafted into a shot-and-beer town. He was an “aw, shucks” guy coming into a “you got a problem with that?” city.

Joey was “pretty boy,” absolutely.

He arrived in town playing the piano—literally—and no one in Detroit even owns a piano, much less plays one.

We play electric guitar here; this is Detroit Rock City, after all!

But we were willing to overlook Joey and from where he came, because he was new and exciting and maybe he could play quarterback a little bit—and in that case, who cares what his pedigree is?

Big oaf Tony Siragusa, several years back, made some snide remarks about Harrington, in Tony’s role as another of those Fox Sports blabbermouths.

Joey was soft; he was all about champagne and strawberries, or something like that, Siragusa said, when you need your QB to be piss and vinegar. Tony then questioned Harrington’s manhood, in an indirect way, not too subtly.

We were aghast in Detroit. Or, at least we pretended to be.

I bet you that a lot of the people who purported to be offended, on Joey Harrington’s behalf, by Siragusa’s comments, secretly made an admission at the same time.

Tony Siragusa, in our heart of hearts, was right. Only, we didn’t want to believe it.

In retrospect, Siragusa was spot on about Joey.

Stafford shows fearlessness on the football field. There’s some mad bomber in him. He’s always eager to show off his rocket arm. He’s not afraid to fail.

There’s no panic. No happy feet in the pocket; Harrington danced the cha-cha back there as a Lion.

Stafford always believed, from Day One, that he was going to start for the Lions—and right now. Not next year; not in Week Six. Now.

He carries himself like a pro quarterback. He has a good head on his shoulders. He’s already ingratiating himself with his teammates—offense and defense included—fabulously. They believe in him, to a man.

I’ll even go out on a limb and say that Stafford can spell “win”, without being spotted the “w” and the “i.”

Just a hunch.

Time For Hamilton To Lead, Like It Or Not

2009-09-30T10:46:00.004-04:00

Rip Hamilton appears to be done grieving, and that's a step in the right direction, anyway.

Hamilton chatted up the team during Media Day on Monday, and he spoke with a twinkle in his eyes and often times barely able to suppress a grin.

"We have to teach the newer guys, the younger guys, how to win," Hamilton said as the press people cornered him in his creamy white Pistons home uniform.

I know who "we" is, in Rip's mind, but he'd be best off placing himself at the top of the list of "we."

The Pistons are Hamilton's team, for better or for worse. And he'd better start acting like it.

Monday was a good start, albeit in a venue and situation where everyone tends to say all the right things.

But it's still progress for Rip, because last season he didn't come close to saying any of the right things. At all.

Hamilton went into mourning and soaked himself in grief after the Pistons traded longtime teammate and friend Chauncey Billups to Denver for one Allen Iverson. Then Rip got hurt. Then he didn't want to be the sixth man. Then he openly and brazenly challenged rookie head coach Mike Curry.

Rip Hamilton fussed and kicked and screamed and it was hardly what a new coach like Curry needed---heaped on top of the Iverson debacle and the degradation in skills and attitude of Rasheed Wallace.

But Hamilton didn't care, clearly. It was all about him and how things affected...him.

I'm willing to give Rip a pass and call last season a fluke---something we'd all like to forget in Pistons Land---if he's willing to step up and be a leader.

The Pistons could use one, you know.

In the Billups days, the Pistons liked to portray themselves as a team bereft of superstars but who get the job done because of their work ethic and commitment to team. The sum was always greater than their parts.

They won a championship doing that, and came close to another one.

Not having a superstar was fine, because Billups was more of a leader than we knew, until it was too late.

The Pistons still don't have a megastar, but now they don't even have anyone in the captain's chair.

Hamilton better get used to that seat and the controls before him in the cockpit.

This is Rip's team, make no mistake. Whether he chooses to act like it, we'll see.

I don't want to hear this talk about "we're all in this together" and "we don't need a leader because we can all lead." And I especially don't want to hear it from Hamilton, who should know better. That's a bunch of doo-doo.

So newcomer Ben Gordon plays the same position? Tough. Deal with it.

The Pistons need a solitary leader, and there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that.

Who better than Hamilton, despite his gagging on the opportunity last season?

Hamilton (left) and newcomer Ben Gordon pose at Media Day

You're not going to get it from Tayshaun Prince, the Marcel Marceau of the Pistons. Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, the new free agents, are, well, new. Rodney Stuckey is still too wet behind the ears. Ben Wallace, back from sabbatical, has never wanted any part of leadership.

Who else?

Kwame Brown? Chris Wilcox?

It's Rip, by default.

But on Monday, at least, Hamilton seemed ready to take a step toward becoming the captain.

"Offensively, we can hold our own with anybody," Hamilton said, again trying to suppress the grin of a cat about to swallow a canary. "But we have to make a statement on defense, by stopping people. We have to get back to that."

So true, so obvious.

It's a start---because Hamilton didn't do or say the obvious things last year.

Maybe Rip finally has the Billups trade out of his system. For him, it's the "Billups trade." For the rest of us, it will be known as the "Iverson trade," because AI's last name is now synonymous in this town with "debacle."

Rip seems to be done pouting and grieving.

"I was told by one of my first coaches in the league that the more positions you know how to play, the better chance you have of staying on the floor," Hamilton said on Monday, smiling. "I look at it as a challenge, if I have to play the (small forward) position," he added, referring to the logjam at shooting guard, thanks to the addition of the flash scoring Gordon.

Those are some nice words, almost cleansing, after last season.

It's a start.

Last Night on "The Knee Jerks": Pistons Talk Put On Hold, But Some Good Rants

2009-09-29T10:56:00.003-04:00

Our NBA talk got put on hold for a couple weeks last night on "The Knee Jerks", my weekly sports gabfest with Big Al from The Wayne Fontes Experience.

Our guest, A. Sherrod Blakely---Pistons beat writer for MLive.com---got caught up in some work-related stuff and couldn't be with us, after all. But he WILL be joining us on October 12, so we're pleased about that!

So given all that extra time to kill, Al and I started flapping our gums, as is our wont! And, as usual, a couple of good rants resulted.

We kicked things off by talking Tigers and their chances to wrap this division up (finally) this week.

Al, as usual, is a Nervous Nellie and I had to "talk him down," as he put it. Because, after all, I AMJ the "Voice of Reason"!!

I reminded Al that the Tigers just need to win two of four against the Twins and that they certainly can do that.

Next, we moved on to U-M and their win over Indiana. The health of QB Tate Forcier is an issue, and again I "reasoned" Al down from the ledge, assuring him that the Wolverines CAN win without Forcier.

A good rant developed in this segment as we veered off into the college basketball programs in this area, especially the sad state of affairs at University of Detroit-Mercy.

We wrapped things up with the Lions and their historic win on Sunday over Washington. Another good rant formed here when the subject turned to Joey Harrington and how he never really fit in with this town's fans.

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, for updates on scheduled guests, time changes, etc.

Next week's guest: Marvin Hagler, Jr., who is launching a boxing career on October 10. Marvin will then fight Sugar Ray Leonard Jr. (I'm not making this up) in February.

Upcoming guests:

Oct. 5 Marvin Hagler Jr.
Oct. 12 A. Sherrod Blakely
Oct. 19 Bob Page
Oct. 26 TBA
Nov. 2 Jose Canseco (yes, THE Jose Canseco!!)

Some highlights from last night:

Big Al

On U-M football: "(QB) Denard Robinson...if he's in there, the other team knows it's going to be a running play. But the defense can't stop a high school team right now."

On the Tigers: "I'm concerned about the Twins! Are they in the Tigers' heads? Carl Pavano's been unhittable against the Tigers this year."

On the UDM basketball program: "Perry Watson was a good coach and had a lot of ties to the PSL, but as far as selling the program and getting people excited about it, there wasn't much there."

On the Lions: "You have to say the 2009 draft was a home run. Look at all the guys who are starting. And they're getting some contributions from the players in the lower rounds, too. But they're still not a very good team yet."

Eno

On the Tigers: "I think they can get the two wins they need against the Twins. As far as Pavano, no one can explain it. Pavano probably couldn't, and the Tigers probably couldn't. It's just one of those things. That's why baseball is such a great game."

On U-M football: "If Michigan can't win without Tate Forcier, then they have issues. The kid's been good, but let's not get carried away. I'm more concerned about their defense than the QB situation. Michigan is supposed to be deep at QB. So let's see it."

On UDM basketball: "One of the biggest recruiting obstacles is Calihan Hall. It's old, decrepit, and is just a glorified high school gym. Plus the campus is old and not very attractive. And it's in a bad part of town. You don't even want to park your car there. They won't even play Oakland University, because OU's program is way better."

On Matthew Stafford: "There's something about this kid that tells me that everything's going to be OK. He has that presence about him. We wanted to believe that about Joey Harrington, but he was from Oregon and he was a pretty boy who played the piano. It wasn't a good fit."

You can listen to the episode by clicking below!

Streaking Lions Win First Straight Game

2009-09-28T10:38:00.003-04:00

Every dog really does have his day.

Every blind squirrel really does find a nut.

The longshot came in. The House lost.

It was "any given Sunday," finally. The dice came up snake eyes.

Someone had to be the victims of the Lions' losing streak ending, and it happened to be the team with some of the most ravenous, venomous fans in the NFL.

The Washington Redskins are today's NFL patsies. They will now officially spend the longest week of their football lives.

The Redskins have lost to the Detroit Lions. No team in the league has been able to lay claim to such a distinction since December 23, 2007.

Oh, what a week they'll have in Washington, with all their radio shows and TV shows and chat rooms.

These aren't the Houston Texans the Lions beat. Not the Jacksonville Jaguars. Not some team that plays in a city where you can hear a pin drop.

These are the Redskins, and their followers were scared to death of this matchup with the Lions.

Worst fears, realized.

Like my friend Big Al wrote over at The Wayne Fontes Experience, let another team's fan base pull its hair out this week. Let another city's radio airwaves be filled with hate and frustration.

The Lions walked off the field winners Sunday, a homely 19-14 win over Washington, but it was the Lions' homely win and they'll take it.

Linebacker Larry Foote, the Detroit native and U-M grad, was caught by the candid cameras in the locker room after the game, pouring champagne over head coach Jim Schwartz's head. Not sure where Larry got the bubbly from, but someone obviously was holding it for just such an occasion.

The Lions won a football game. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers will have to hold their 26-game losing streak longer in purgatory. But here come the St. Louis Rams, who are halfway there with 13 straight losses.

Let the Rams' fans wring their hands now.

It's off now, that King Kong the Lions were lugging on their backs for 19 games. But ole King wasn't easy to pry off.

You just knew it couldn't end with QB Matthew Stafford taking a knee as the time ticked away. You knew the Lions wouldn't be able to be streak busters that easily.

No, it had to come down to a heart-stopping final drive by the Redskins, who managed to get to the Lions' 35 in the waning seconds.

But this wasn't Brett Favre, it was Jason Campbell. And this wasn't 31 of the 32 coaches in the NFL, it was Jim Zorn.

Zorn ought to know better. He was a gunslinging QB when he played for the Seattle Seahawks, bombing away to Steve Largent et al.

But he stared down the barrel of a franchise-shaking loss and shook like a leaf.

Instead of chucking the ball into the end zone---for who knows what can happen when you do that, especially when the other team wears Honolulu Blue and Silver---Zorn had Campbell try one of those goofy hook-and-lateral plays after a measly 12-yard toss. The 'Skins didn't even sniff the 20 yard line, much less the end zone.

Ever since Cal beat Stanford in 1982, football teams have been trying to recapture that miracle. Hardly any have been successful.

Zorn would have been better off with a Hail Mary, but that's the other guys' deal to worry about today.

Zorn also made a questionable move to accept a penalty against the Lions, turning a 4th-and-four and a long FGA into a 3rd-and-14, which the Lions converted, enabling them to score a TD later in the drive.

They say you should never take points off the scoreboard, if you're on offense. And you should probably not take fourth downs off the board, either, if you're on defense. But Zorn did---more fuel for the fire that will engulf Washington and Redskin Nation this week.

They'll be talking about this one for years in D.C. The Lions---a team the Redskins have dominated (never having lost to them at home in over 75 years)---mustered their first win in 20 games against Dan Snyder's bunch.

The fun thing is, you don't have to be relegated to wishing you were the proverbial fly on the wall in order to see what they're saying in Washington. Thanks to Internet chat rooms, you can get a very nice picture indeed.

The Redskins fans want Zorn fired. Immediately. Some wanted him canned somewhere between Ford Field and Metro Airport. No joke.

The Lions are on the outside looking in again, but this time the view is just fine. This time the Lions can peer through the glass and watch debauchery and barroom brawls take place. The subject is still them, but in an entirely different way.

The Lions can watch as Redskins fans hurl empty beer mugs at Snyder and Zorn and Campbell and the like. They can press their noses against the glass and see a football team's entire fan base bust up the joint, beside themselves.

All over the little Lions.

The 1-2 Lions---same record as the Redskins.

Stafford was pretty good---21-for-36, 241 yards, a TD and NO interceptions. He played smart. He "left some plays on the field"---his words---but he made a veteran move by slinging the ball downfield when he saw Bryant Johnson in single coverage at the goal line in the fourth quarter, drawing a pass interference penalty.

There's the smattering of a connection developing now between the kid QB and the star receiver, Calvin Johnson. Stafford was also allowed to pass the ball on first down, when offensive coordinator Scott Linehan sensed a momentum shift.

The Lions will still likely only win two or three games this season. The Redskins are hardly a barometer against which to judge your team's development. But a win is a win as they say, and though it was no Mona Lisa, it's the Lions' and they'll take it.

The million-to-one shot came in. The tortoise won a race. William Hung came away with "Best Singer." The Italian Army won a war.

The Lions are 1-0 in their last one game.

But keep the champagne chilled. No more bubbly in September. Never again, right?

Red Wings' Run of Excellence Taken for Granted in Detroit

2009-09-27T10:04:00.000-04:00

I was in New York, one of my favorite towns, and I started walking. It was a June day, some 18 years ago, and if you haven’t been to New York in June, then your life officially has a missing ingredient.

I set out around Times Square and headed north, up Sixth Avenue, from around 42nd Street. Maybe a half hour or so had passed when I decided to stop and look behind me, to see how much concrete I had covered.

The blocks and blocks of midtown Manhattan that I had engulfed boggled my mind.

Wow, I thought—did I really do all that?

It’s time now that certain people stop in their tracks and take a look back—at the Detroit Red Wings and what they’ve accomplished since 1991.

There are still old-timers among us—I’m not quite in that fraternity—who remember the 1950s, and how the Red Wings, along with the hated Montreal Canadiens, dominated the six-team NHL.

Back and forth the Red Wings and Canadiens went, seemingly handing the Stanley Cup off to each other every spring. It was like the Lions and Cleveland Browns in the same decade, only more so.

The Red Wings—they of Howe and Lindsay and Wilson and Kelly and Sawchuk, meeting the Canadiens of Richard and Moore and Geoffrion and Beliveau and Worsley—every late April for a showdown for the Cup.

The old-timers will tell you that this was the heyday of Detroit hockey. The Red Wings did win four Stanley Cups in six seasons, from 1949-50 thru 1954-55. And when they weren’t winning them, they were coming damn close.

But those Red Wings teams, as mighty as they were, filled with as many legends of the game as they were, did not do what today’s late-20th, early-21st century Red Wings are doing—with no signs of letting up.

In a town besmirched by its football team, abandoned for 13 seasons by its baseball team until 2006, and teased relentlessly by its NBA entry almost yearly, the Red Wings’ annual contention for hockey’s Holy Grail is accepted almost casually, with a feeling of entitlement oozing from its faithful.

I have never been a fan of the designation of “Hockeytown,” which the team encouraged its fans to use in describing Detroit, sometime around the mid-1990s. Those of you unfortunate enough to consider yourselves regular readers will attest that I’ve derided that self-aggrandizing moniker with stubborn consistency.

“Hockeytown.” HA!

The Canadiens have won over twice as many Stanley Cups as the Red Wings have managed—with both franchises’ timelines running almost concurrently.

So what does that make Montreal? “Chopped Livertown”?

The Red Wings play in Detroit, er, Hockeytown, and it’s a yearly ritual to set out in June and take in a hockey game at Joe Louis Arena. A game with Stanley Cup implications, of course.

The hockey denizens in town are aghast when their team doesn’t win the chalice.

I was on the ice at JLA, in the aftermath of last June’s Game 7 triumph by the Pittsburgh Penguins, and Hockeytown was being vandalized by a group of happy Penguins and their families and staff.

Champagne was being sprayed into the expensive seats by Penguins players—who were soaking their own fans who made the trek from Pittsburgh, and who were hanging over the glass, trying to get blasted.

Player wives and children hugged husbands and daddies. Business-suited men and professionally-dressed women—presumably part of the behind-the-scenes functionaries—gleefully meandered on the same ice surface that, less than an hour prior, was being urgently skated on by dead tired Red Wings players trying to muster one more goal.

There were tears. There were hugs. There was hooting and hollering.

By the Pittsburgh Penguins!!

They had the temerity to win the Stanley Cup in Hockeytown. The horror!

The Red Wings of today have won four Cups in the past 11 seasons. In these modern days, that would qualify as a dynasty of sorts.

But there’s this.

Since the 1991-92 campaign—that’s 17 seasons in a row—the Red Wings have begun the post-season as legitimate Cup contenders. Not maybe contenders. Not “if everything goes perfectly” contenders.

Real, honest-to-goodness, they’re-likely-to-win-the-whole-darn-thing contenders.

For 17 straight springs.

The old-timers can’t boast of that kind of run from their 1950s Red Wings.

Nor can any team, in any sport.

Has there been the same legitimate World Series contender since 1991?

Not even the vaunted New York Yankees can say they were World Series ready in the early-1990s. And certainly no other team can lay claim to constant championship contention for 17 straight years.

The NBA has had its flavor-of-the-day dynasties—the Bulls of the 1990s, the Lakers of the early 2000s. And blips on the screen in between. But no NBA club has been consistently in the hunt since 1991-92.

The NFL, the League of Parity, purposely has constructed itself to prevent dynasties. And none of its teams can come close to describing itself as a Super Bowl contender—legitimately—on an annual basis since 1991.

But the Detroit Red Wings have gone into the playoffs every April, starting in 1992, with genuine hopes of raising the Stanley Cup two months later.

Every single year since 1992.

There have been first round knockouts, for sure. Conference finals meltdowns, yeah. Bizarre second round losses, absolutely.

And a couple of disappointments in the Cup Finals themselves.

But there have been those four Cups and deep playoff runs in most years.

Yet you won’t hear or read much about that in Detroit.

Instead, it’s always about why the Red Wings can’t, or won’t contend. Why the goal-tending will surely fail. Or some such worry.

A few years back, after the lockout, the league operating under a genuine salary cap for the first time, the haters were out in full force.

Let’s see how fast the Red Wings fall when their bottomless money pit is no longer to their avail, the haters said—many hailing from Hockeytown, USA.

This fall, the trendy thing to do is to pick the young, hungry Chicago Blackhawks to become the new rulers of the West. The worry du jour is all the free agents the Red Wings lost this summer.

It says here that the hockey fans in Detroit don’t know how good they’ve had it, in the time it takes a child to be born, grow up, and graduate high school.

They’ve been walking with the Red Wings for 17 blocks now, and it never occurs to them to stop and look back at all that’s been accomplished.

It’s a fan base that’s been spoiled rotten, and I wonder anymore how many of them know that we had another name for the NHL franchise in Detroit long before Hockeytown became all the rage.

The Dead Things.

Folks around here ought to remember from where their team came, and immerse themselves in the historical significance of what the Red Wings are doing at this very moment.

Because it ain’t been done, anywhere, since the great Yankees teams of the 1940s, ‘50s, and early-‘60s.

Yet they never called New York, the greatest of all our cities, “Baseballtown.”

They didn’t have to.

Whether Forced Or Not, Jimmy D Got Rooked In Federko Trade

2009-09-23T09:52:00.005-04:00

Jimmy Devellano, recently announced as a winner of the Lester Patrick Trophy for dedication toward hockey, was the first man hired by Mike Ilitch when the latter purchased the sad sack Detroit Red Wings in 1982. One of the reasons was Jimmy D's uncanny ability to sniff out NHL talent from the woodwork of small North American towns, and from other NHL teams.

It wasn't a smooth ride at the beginning. Three years after his hire, Devellano presided over a brutal 17-57-6 season, his attempts at a quick fix via free agency---college and pro---having failed miserably.

But three years after that, the Red Wings were on the right path, seemingly.

Two consecutive visits to the Conference Finals, plus another Norris Division title in 1988-89, gave cause to believe that Devellano was finally the genius executive the Red Wings had been looking for, for decades.

Until he made The Trade.

There are urban legends---whispered myths---that Devellano engineered one of the most lopsided trades in team history because of something not hockey related, spurious in nature. I can neither confirm nor deny that.

But what can be confirmed is that, 20 years ago this summer, Devellano got absolutely fleeced by the intra-division St. Louis Blues.

A reminder of Jimmy D's temporary loss of sanity and genius stands behind the Red Wings bench today, and has for four seasons now.

Current assistant coach Paul MacLean, one of Mike Babcock's lieutenants, was shipped away in 1989 to St. Louis, along with burgeoning center Adam Oates, for aging center Bernie Federko and plugging forward Tony McKegney.

Ugh.

Coach Jacques Demers had Federko in St. Louis while Jacques coached the Blues and he loved him. Loved him so much, apparently, that he was able to convince Devellano to do whatever it took to bring him to Detroit to provide more veteran leadership.

The Blues said, "OK, you want Federko that bad? Then we want MacLean---and Oates."

And Jimmy Devellano, usually so wise when it comes to personnel, agreed to such a travesty of a trade.

Federko (left) and Oates, who would eventually be traded for each other

MacLean, acquired from Winnipeg just one year prior, did what he was supposed to do, scoring 36 goals for the Red Wings in '88-'89. And Oates was on the verge of greatness. He was 27 and had just recorded a whopping 62 assists.

But off they both went, to St. Louis, for 33-year-old Federko and McKegney, who was 31. McKegney scored 40 goals in 1987-88, but slipped to 25 one year later.

At the time, the trade was looked at with suspicion, but Jimmy D was on a mini-run and everyone liked Demers, so maybe he could work more magic with Federko and the question mark McKegney.

Not even close.

Federko played one clumsy season in Detroit before retiring, scoring 17 goals, and McKegney was gone after just 14 games as a Red Wing, shipped to Quebec for defenseman Robert Picard.

MacLean and Oates did wonders for the divisional rival Blues---MacLean scoring 33 goals, and Oates registering 79 assists as he combined with Brett Hull lethally.

The Red Wings failed to make the playoffs in 1989-90, the last year they did so.

OK, about the urban legend regarding this trade.

The young bachelor Oates was rumored to have done something untoward that didn't please Mike Ilitch in the least. Ilitch, the legend goes, demanded that Devellano trade Oates. So Jimmy D was acting with a distinct lack of leverage, and it showed---if this is true.

Don't know for sure, but that's your urban legend.

Regardless, let it be known that 20 summers ago, the Red Wings made maybe their worst trade under the Ilitch ownership, long before the folks around town took to calling their city "Hockeytown, USA."

Adam Oates and Paul MacLean for Bernie Federko and Tony McKegney, straight up.

Not too many have rooked the Red Wings since that travesty.

Last Night on "The Knee Jerks": Can the Shaky Tigers Hold On?

2009-09-22T12:37:00.005-04:00

The Tigers' wobbly state as a first place team took center stage last night on "The Knee Jerks", my weekly sports gabfest with Big Al from The Wayne Fontes Experience.

Our guest was Johnny Lawrence, one of the featured Detroit Tigers columnists for The Bleacher Report.

Johnny gave us his take on the Tigers' chances to finally put the division to bed, and their outlook for the playoffs. While Johnny doesn't see the Tigers advancing past ALDS, we all acknowledged that "anything can happen."

The chat room was chock full of folks, which we appreciate. Of course, many were fans of Johnny's, so we'll see what happens next week!

After Johnny's segment, Al and I got busy in a football kind of way.

We started by eulogizing ex-Lions coach Monte Clark, who passed away last week. It was mutually agreed that Monte got shafted by the Lions, being fired just one season removed from a divisional title.

Then we lamented the deaths of so many in the Lions family, past and present, in 2009. I called it "weird and sad."

Speaking of weird and sad, Al said, let's talk about the Lions on Sunday against the Vikings!

So we did.

To top things off, Al ranted about NFL officiating, particularly the mysterious chop block call on Gosder Cherilus.

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, for updates on scheduled guests, time changes, etc.

Some highlights from last night:

Big Al

On the second half meltdown: "It's talent. The Lions just don't have enough of it. You can talk schemes and strategy all you want, but it boils down to talent."

On Jeff Backus: "His 'miscommunication' damn near got Matthew Stafford killed!"

On Brett Favre: "He's nothing more than a 'game manager' now. And isn't that another way of saying that you can't win games anymore? Brett Favre didn't beat the Lions on Sunday."

On NFL officiating: "Make these guys full time, number one. All the other leagues do it. And you should be able to challenge more calls than you can now. As a fan it's incredibly frustrating."

Eno

On the second half meltdown: "I'm concerned that this new staff is being schooled by the other team's coaches at halftime. The Lions played reasonably well for 30 minutes then just fell apart."

On Calvin Johnson: "I love it when the Lions run Johnson on a reverse. No one can tackle him; he's going up against these little DBs with a head of steam. I wish they ran that play more."

On Brett Favre: "He may be a 'game manager,' but he's still an upgrade from what they had, and that's the bottom line."

On NFL officiating: "I'm not sure making the officials full-time is the answer. They're still going to make bad calls. But maybe they should broaden the scope of plays that you can challenge. Video replay showed that the Gosder play was no chop block."

You can listen to the episode by clicking below!