Awesome Time

So…they didn’t win.  Pittsburgh teams are now 1-1 in league championships where we’ve written a “Win It For…” post.  That’s no better than chance, so…we’re completely useless.  Also it’s July, and nobody’s posted anything here since May.

We’re working on that.

In the fall of 2004, as the Red Sox stood poised to complete the greatest comeback in MLB history, a message board thread cut to the heart of New England baseball fans. Begun by a teacher in Connecticut, the main post was titled “Win It For…,” and it was simply a list of all the people this fan wanted the Red Sox to win the World Series for. By the time his team completed its first championship run since 1918, the thread had swelled to over 300 pages, a cathartic tome that let go of 86 years of frustration.

On the eve after the 2006 AFC Championship game, after the Steelers had walloped the Broncos to punch their ticket to Super Bowl XL, I cribbed the idea from Red Sox Nation. On our old blog, I posted a “Win It For…” thread for the Steelers asking people to share what the first Steelers title in more than 25 years would mean to them and their friends and loved ones. It didn’t spread to anywhere near 300 pages, but there were still some special responses and a nice reminder of the uniting power of sports.

With the Penguins set to play in their first Stanley Cup Finals since 1992 on Saturday night, I thought it was time for another one of these threads. It hasn’t been 86 years since the Pens last title, or even 26 like the Steelers; but in the 16 seasons since they downed the Blackhawks, there have been enough peaks and valleys, enough twists, turns and heartbreaks that it might has well have been.

Without further ado…

-Win it for Colby Armstrong and Erik Christensen, neither were superstars, but both were key parts of a core group that brought the team out of the mid-decade doldrums. What a better way to remember that than to have their names etched together with their old teammates on the Stanley Cup.

-Win it for my mother and grandmother, who, without hesitation, let me skip dessert on Mother’s Day to watch Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals.

-Win it for my cousin Will. He’s too young to remember the two Stanley Cup teams, but old enough to remember all the playoff frustration that came in the years just after. Just under a decade ago, while he was finishing up middle school, his family moved from Pittsburgh to Pierre, SD. The sports loyalties of youth sometimes fade in those situations, but Will’s passion never faded, even through four last straight seasons, aided by streaming broadcasts, message boards, and the Post-Gazette online sports section. He’s spent the past two semesters, his junior year of college, studying abroad in Hong Kong, no doubt tracking the team as feverishly as if he went to school down the street from Mellon Arena. Will’s plane back from Asia touches down in Pittsburgh on Saturday afternoon, and assuming there’s no traffic, he should be in front of TV by faceoff.

-Win it for the Karasic’s the most generous family on the planet. They’ve given a poor liberal arts grad a chance to hold one of the hottest tickets in town 5-6 times a year for the last three years.

-Win it for Marian Hossa, Sergei Gonchar, and Gary Roberts. The conventional wisdom is that the Penguins core of young talent is still a few years away from peaking. That may be true, but due to salary restrictions and age it’s virtually impossible that these three players will be in Pittsburgh beyond the end of 2009. All have made invaluable contributions to this incredible run, from OT winners, inspired back checking, stout defensive work down to Roberts’s pure passion in Game 1 of the playoffs, the spark that lit the powder keg.

-Win it for Tina, my office manager, who’s rediscovered her passion for hockey over the last two years. Two falls ago, I had to explain to her what offsides was; now she’ll come in to work wondering if the Penguins mistake the night before was going too early to the one-four delay.

-Win it for Shaggy, a true Penguins fan in every sense. Thanks to this team, it’s come to be accepted that we’ll both be late returning to work after our Tuesday hour conversation.

-Win it for Mario Lemieux, the one and only reason there’s still a hockey team in Pittsburgh, let alone one that’s four wins away from a championship. Perhaps I’m biased, but I can’t imagine there’s another team in professional sports that treats its fans as well as the Penguins do, and that’s an attitude that starts at the top. An adopted son in a town that doesn’t always take well to outsiders, Mario decided to hold onto his financial stake in the team after the new arena deal was completed. “It’s time to have some fun with this,” he said at the time. Well, I think it would be pretty fun for him this season and reach perhaps the one goal he never accomplished as a player: the chance to raise the Stanley Cup on home ice. So win it for Mario, in four or six if you can. Although something tells me five or seven would be just fine with him too.

- Win it for Sid, Gino, Gronk and Flower; all under 25 and living the dream.

-Win it for Matt, Zavo and Phil, my best buddies from high school, and with whom Penguins hockey has been one of the constant threads running through our friendship. The first time we went to a hockey game together was winter break during our freshman year’s of college. It was December 2001, Jaromir Jagr had been traded, Ivan Hlinka and the Penguins were already beginning to free-fall towards the bottom of the standings. The seats were partially obstructed, we couldn’t see the far end of the ice, and the Senators thrashed the Penguins 5-2. It was a trend that would continue for the next four seasons; we didn’t see a winning game in person until the 2006 home opener. That shouldn’t really be surprising though, as the Penguins during that period lingered near the bottom of the NHL standings, never a playoff contender let a lone a championship caliber team. In spite of that, there’s probably nothing during the course the last eight years we’ve shared more laughs, joys and frustrations over. It’s what sports are all about really. Win it so that we can share a championship together.

Add your own in the comments…

The trick to figuring out if an artist is going to be a one-hit wonder? Just ask yourself, was he or she ever parodied by Myron Cope.

And people used to wonder why Myron wasn’t remember as being one of the most talented football scribes of all time.

Although the subject faded as the series progressed (getting pummeled into a three games to none hole, and vanquished in five will do that to you), the Rangers accusations that Sidney Crosby is a “diver” were a major story line early on in the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals. New York’s choice to employ such verbal sparring seemed questionable at best.  Crosby had been on the receiving end of such accusations throughout much of his rookie year, and rather than weigh him down, they stirred his motivation to one of the finest freshmen campaigns in NHL history. Calling out The Kid didn’t do much to influence calls on the ice either, as Martin Straka was whistled for interfering with Crosby in the waning moments of a tied Game 1. The Penguins netted the winning goal on the ensuing power play.

What’s interesting, is that, apparently, there’s even some historical precedence to suggest accusing a Penguins superstar of on ice theatrics is a bad idea. The feature archived issue in SI.com’s Vault this week is from June 1992, featuring Mario Lemieux on the cover following the Pens Stanley Cup sweep over Chicago. In the story that wraps up the finals, Sports Illustrated author Jon Scher is drawn to comments made by Blackhawks coach Mike Keenan earlier in the series regarding the Penguins captain.

But the sound Lemieux heard in the background throughout the playoffs was not the roar of appreciation. Instead it was the rattle of ancient skeletons behind doors he thought had been sealed in the spring of 1991, after he had led the Penguins to their first Stanley Cup. The head rattler was Chicago coach Mike Keenan, who tried desperately to get the attention of league officials with a withering attack on Lemieux during a press conference in Pittsburgh before Game 2.

Keenan accused Lemieux of repeatedly taking pratfalls after incidental contact with opposing players. “I can’t respect Mario for diving,” Keenan said. “The best player in the game is embarrassing himself and embarrassing the game.” The aroma of sour grapes was unmistakable: Chicago defenseman Steve Smith had been called for hooking Lemieux with 18 seconds left in Game 1, and five seconds into the subsequent power play Super Mario flicked a rebound past Blackhawk goaltender Ed Belfour to win the game 5-4. It was a crushing defeat for Chicago, which had led 4-1 in the second period.

“I actually didn’t dive that time,” Lemieux said. Other times, many other times, he has tumbled to the ice hoping to attract a sympathetic whistle. Early in his career Lemieux was excoriated behind his back by opposing players, coaches and front-office types who saw his flopping as unseemly behavior for a would-be superstar in a sport that likes its rough edges razor sharp. After Lemieux led the Penguins to a Cup, the criticism faded, only to be revived by Keenan in a pointed attempt to influence the referees in a series that, from Keenan’s perspective, had already gone awry.

As usual, Lemieux played it close to the sweater. “No comment,” he said after scoring the winning goal in Game 2. a 3-1 Pittsburgh victory. Then he smiled and added, “For now.”

The Chicago camp insisted later in the week that no disrespect to Lemieux had been intended. “We don’t mean to cast anything negative toward Mario,” said Darryl Sutter, the Blackhawks’ associate coach. “We’re just asking the question, Is there another set of rules, unwritten rules, that are there for Mario and Mario alone? Based on what we’ve seen in this series, the answer is yes.”

So what does that tell us? Well for starters, Mike Keenan was a dick even back then. Also, it’s probably not a good idea to give the superstar captain of the Penguins extra motivation. But, most importantly I think,  is that it’s good perspective on the accusations surrouding Sid. Thankfully, the diving accusations aren’t even a footnote to Lemieux’s career and it’s doubtful they will be for Crosby either. I guess it’s just hard sometimes for others to accept by beaten so thoroughly by natural talent.

I found this video yesterday as I was surfing.  Definitely food for thought…let me know what you think in the comments.

Those of you who know me know my stance in the creationism “debate” - I’m sure at some point I’ll write a big ranting piece on it here if some super-Jesus-y school board decides they want to be the next ones to mess with high school science classes in the name of “balance.”

For now, though, I point you to PZ Myers at TalkReason, who, laughing almost to the point of tears, relays this story of what happened to him last Friday…

Enjoy.

I can’t believe I live in a world where someone very much responsible for “The Hulk” gets to make out multiple times in the span of 90 minutes with both Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson. What kind of moral example is that setting?

My vote for male lead in this movie? Me. My improvisational skills would be stellar.

“Natalie! Scarlett! Don’t fight. You can both have me. TOGETHER!”

Picking the right college stressed me out. I had no idea how I was supposed to decide where to spend the next four years of my life based on course catalog’s, and 45 minute campus tour. By February of my senior year I was lucky if I got three hours of sleep a night, and couldn’t stomach much beyond saltines. And I wasn’t even a high school athlete, let alone the most sought after one in the country.

It should come as no surprise then that Terrelle Pryor, considered by many services to be the best high school quarterback in America has a few short nerve endings these days. Still, according to this story in the Washington Observer Reporter, he has to be a little more careful with how he handles the pressure.

At a basketball game Friday Saturday night, the two-sport star Pryor was taunted mercilessly by the South Fayette student section. “One student dressed in a red sweater vest - think Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel. Each time Pryor took his position for free throws, he heard it, [as in] ‘here’s your daddy for the next four years!’”

Despite scoring 24 points, along with 21 rebounds, seven blocks and six assists to lead Jeanette to a tense overtime victory, Pryor became rattled as the game progressed. He began jawing at the opposing crowd, only inciting them further and leading to the ejection of two South Fayette students. However, it wasn’t until the game concluded that things got really interesting.

“As dumb as [the ejected South Fayette students] were, Pryor topped them after Jeannette pulled away in the overtime.He continued his dialogue with fans. Then, after postgame handshakes, Pryor immediately went toward the student section. Following a ridiculous, prolonged exchange, Pryor’s teammates intervened. Why they didn’t stop him before is unknown. Why his coaches allowed it to happen is an even greater injustice.

Officials escorted Pryor and Jeannette toward the locker room, where the two teams were side by side. That’s when a Jeannette assistant exited the Jayhawks’ locker and complained about the conduct of the South Fayette students. That’s something he had a right to do.One officer, however, did not appreciate the direction of the conversation. He was present when Pryor accosted the South Fayette fans.’You’re lucky we didn’t take your kid (Pryor) in,’ the officer said. ‘He threatened to go into the crowd.”‘

Thank god Stephen Jackson wasn’t in the house, or else things might have gotten really ugly.

Keith Olbermann had another of his magnificent Special Comments last night, this one on the current battle between Congress and the President over the renewal of FISA legislation.  I was going to write a post about this, but as is so often the case, Keith says it better than I ever could.

I hope these words haven’t fallen on deaf ears.  Chris Dodd successfully filibustered an earlier FISA bill containing immunity for telecoms, and has vowed to do so again.  Here’s hoping the Democratic leadership in the Senate backs him up, for once.  I realize it’s hard when the majority isn’t really a majority (we’ve got 51 seats, but you need 60 to get anything done), but even then, Harry Reid needs to stand up and explain why things don’t get done, rather than appearing to capitulate and then letting the Republicans control the storyline of it somehow being the Democrats’ fault for not getting anything passed.