Lost in Translation - Vol. I

I shouldn't be saying this, but I often feel like sports reporters are obsolete. Not that they don't captivate us with random top ten lists, or intrigue us with up to the minute tweets from the smelly stall in the Cav's locker room, or boggle our minds with statistics that would numb the brain of Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher. What? He's a famous statistician. Ok, so I had to look that one up. So what.

Something I never have to look up to be certain of the utter irrelevance is any quote...by any pro athlete...in any morning sports page. These guys never say a thing, yet today's reporters seem content to mop the mental vomit from these players' lips like creepy mama birds tending nest. Apparently regurgitation trumps follow-up questioning...but I digress.

I'm here to offer the miracle cure. I guess I'll call it Lost in Translation, an exercise many of us perform daily (not that, sicko) that I'll attempt to put in print from time to time. My goal is to cut through the crap for you guys. So, I scoured the sports pages for today's most lackluster quotables and put them through the old translation machine...screw you, Babel Fish.


Mark Sanchez on the looming battle to be the Jets' starting signal caller:  "I'm really having fun." 
Translation: "I'm really looking forward to carrying Geno's jock this season."

Michael Vick on his future in the NFL: 
"I have a couple more years left."
Translation: "I have a couple more years left before I'm flat broke and drunk in Newport News."

Judge Kathleen McHugh after handing down a 30-day sentence to Chad Johnson for violating probation: 
"You should thank your lawyer. He did a great job for you."
Translation: "You're a garden variety douche bag. Ever thought of a name change?"

Wes Welker on being able to speak his mind in Denver: 
"I feel like I can be myself a little more for sure."
Translation: "The Patriot way is for pansies."

Aaron Rogers on his future in the NFL: 
"I played eight (seasons), I think I can play eight more."
Translation: "Must...beat...Brett...at
everything...related...to...football...life...and...texting."

Matt Birk on boycotting the White House visit with the his Baltimore Ravens teammates: 
"I wasn't there. I am active in the Pro-Life movement and I felt I couldn't endorse that in any way."
Translation: "There's a clear connection between football and abortion. My publicist told me so."

The Human Projectile: Michael Zordich

By: C.G. Morelli

 

Before a certain #20 loomed largely in the defensive back field of the Philadelphia Eagles with his tinted, black visor and his magnetism for bone-crushing hits, another human projectile filled those shoes more than adequately. He wore the Kelly green jersey with his #36 proudly stitched on the back. No, I’m not talking about Brian Westbrook. Same number, I know. I’m talking about Michael Zordich. Who, you say? Exactly.

Few remember the hard hitting safety outside of Philly. I’ve yet to determine whether this is because he played for teams throughout his career that weren’t, shall we say, playoff ready, or simply because fans of NFC East rivals have blocked out the images of total carnage that often took place when Zordich was on the field.

Or, maybe it’s just my own maniacal fixation with NFL safeties, particularly those who have donned the green and silver, that allows me to remember quite clearly the bruising, blatant-disregard-for-his-own-body type of style that made this blue collar player so endearing to me.

Zordich made a name for himself as a four year starter and a 1985 All American at Penn State, where he capped off his college career with 201 solo tackles. His nose-to-the-grindstone approach to the game and his gutsy play inside Beaver Stadium caught the attention of scouts in the Chargers organization who thought enough of Zordich to take him with the 235^th overall selection in the 1986 NFL Draft.

However, his stay in San Diego was short lived. He became a camp casualty at the end of the preseason and found himself instead clinging to the final roster spot on a hapless Jets team after being claimed off waivers. But Zordich came to play regardless of what many saw as an inferior status for an undersized football player. He built himself a reputation as being one of the heaviest hitting safeties in the game despite flying well under the radar in stints with the Jets and Cardinals.

It was in 1994 that Zordich made his way back to Pennsylvania to play safety for a struggling Eagles club. That’s where I come in.

As a young, budding Eagles fan, I could not help but be taken by a player who, on more than one occasion, hit Michael Irvin so hard that he looked more like a crumpled accordion than a Hall of Fame receiver. How could I not like a guy who seemed oblivious on a weekly basis to the trickle of blood that rolled down the bridge of his nose as he lined up and prepared to punish another unsuspecting running back who made the mistake of breaking a run into the second layer of defense? 

And perhaps some of Zordich’s most enduring moments came as an unselfish member of the special teams unit despite holding a spot as a defensive starter. How many guys do you see doing that today? To me, his willingness to throw his body around on punts and kickoffs was a testament to the scrappiness that has come to define Eagles football in the mold of special teams stalwarts like home town boy, Vince Papale.

At any rate, Zordich’s career cannot be measured by stats alone. On paper they’re not all that impressive to be quite honest. In 12 NFL seasons, he picked off 20 passes and scored four defensive touchdowns, one of which was a 58 yard fumble recovery and return against the Giants back in 1995. He recorded 588 solo tackles in his career. Ho Hum, I guess.

But the passion he left on that playing field each week was enough to account for all 11 players on his team, and I’m sure his teammates would testify to that fact.

Dear Eagles Front Office....Remember When?

The inevitable canning of Eagles' defensive coordinator, Sean McDermott, has made me somewhat reflective on the state of my team's defense over the past few seasons post Jim Johnson. With two seasons of McDermott-ball under the belt and a high powered offense to support each time, we still get the same result: a first round playoff stomping.  

Don't get me wrong, the firing needed to happen. My problem is it's just too easy to place all the blame on Mr. McDermott. True, his scheme did not effectively adapt the players he had under contract to the old scheme used by the legendary Jim. True, his youth probably didn't win him too much respect from his equally youthful players. True, the stats usually don't lie (especially the worst red zone defense in football). But if there was one thing this defensive unit truly lacked over the past two seasons it was on-field leadership: the kind us fans in Philly have come to take for granted. Don't forget, we had good old number 20 standing back there for us for more than a decade.

  

And that's when it hit me. This defense truly started to crumble once we saw the official departure of Brian Dawkins. His skills may have been eroding at the time of his release, but as we all know he was much more important to the team than simple physical skills. That brought me back down memory lane to an enraged letter I wrote to the Eagles front office way back when. Enjoy the memories and pray we find ourselves some kind of defensive leader in the off season.

Eagles Front Office: Read This

Dear Philadelphia Eagles Front Office,

I write to you on behalf of native Philadelphians across this great nation who, with one prick of the skin, could produce a few drops of genuine green blood. As you must know by now, the citizens of your fair city have been riding the rollercoaster that is Eagles football since the team’s inception in 1932. They’ve danced in the glory of the triumphs and wallowed in the despair of many punishing defeats. They’ve faced disappointment so many times it’s become somewhat of a profession. They’ve cemented a name in sports history as the city who over-criticizes its heroes. 

But you and I both know they only do this because they care. They care about community pride. They care about toughness and tenacity. They care about rising from the ashes time after time. And, most of all, they care about their football team. They simply want it to be the heartbeat at the very center of it all.

There is no one, in my mind, who has typified this attitude on the playing field more than Pro Bowl free safety Brian Dawkins.

If the city of Philadelphia could somehow sprout legs, strap on a helmet, and run out on the gridiron, it would surely take the form of old, reliable number 20. It would sit back in its safety position and deliver bone-crushing hits on unsuspecting receivers. It would break through the line at blazing speed and punish the quarterback. It would somehow develop an uncanny magnetism for the football and jar loose a fumble at just the right moment. It would appear on your television screen as if out of nowhere to snag an interception. And, each time, it would celebrate with a characteristic flex of the muscles and a flap of the wings.

I make this comparison because I want you to realize how important this guy was to his team and its fans. His track record on the playing field speaks for itself: seven pro bowls, 936 total tackles, 34 interceptions, 32 forced fumbles, and 21 sacks. That’s a lot of numbers to chew on. 

But forget those.

Instead, let’s go back to a game in 2002 against the Texans when Dawk did it all. On defense he threw David Carr around like a rag doll, recording a sack, an interception, and a fumble recovery. Then he caught a pass from Brian Mitchell on offense and scampered 54 yards for a touchdown.

Or we can think back to a certain 4^th down connection from Donovan McNabb to Freddie Mitchell against the Packers in the 2003 Divisional Playoffs. No, Dawkins wasn’t playing offense this time around, but he did set up an Eagles win by picking off Brett Favre in overtime.

There was the unlikely run we saw two seasons ago. Dawk basically sealed a division title by ending games in Weeks 15 and 16 with interceptions in the end zone, first off of Eli Manning and then Tony Romo.

And this past season…is there anyone who could possibly downplay Dawk’s vital role in leading his team to a fifth NFC Championship game in the past eight years?

These are reasons enough for me to believe Weapon X still has a few more years left in the tank, both as a heavy-hitting playmaker at safety and as an emotional locker room presence

So how can you just chew him up and spit him out? How can you treat him like some ordinary player? Some chump free agent off the street?

The man gave his heart and soul to this team, to this city, to every fan who’s ever donned that midnight green number 20 replica on Sunday afternoons. The very least he deserved was to finish his career with the team who drafted him 13 years ago.

I’ve been a fan of this team for 30 years, and in that time I’ve endured repeated heartbreak. I’ve seen the team through stretches of perennial futility. I lived through the Kotite years. And each time I came back a stronger fan than ever.

But this time, I just don’t know.

Signed,

C.G. Morelli

The Sporting Scribe

A Playoff Toast to Fans of Philadelphia Sports

By: C.G. Morelli

Hello, my name is C.G., and I’m a Philadelphia sports addict.  I don’t know when this obsession began because I can’t remember life without it.  Maybe it was something I learned at an early age.  Maybe I have some kind of rare genetic defect.  It’s hard to say, really.  Heck, there could have been something strange in the water I drank as a kid.  Come to think of it, though, I didn’t actually drink much water when I was a kid because I was too busy gulping down a different kind of liquid.  We called it wooder.

I know, I know…you might say wooder is just another pronunciation of the word “water,” some kind of regional dialect or something.  But I know better.  There’s much more to it than that.  All you have to do is pour yourself a glass and you’ll see the difference.  There’s something a little upsetting about a hearty gulp of luke-warm tap wooder.  At first taste, it may seem similar to the garden variety water people drink all across this great nation, and probably even around the world; but I’ve been exposed to the Schuykill River’s bounty my whole life.  And let me tell you, if you’ve had the same experiences as me then you know that wooder is by no means water.  It’s not even close. 

I dare you to sip its sweet nectar at some point in your life so you can taste the acrid heaviness of rusty pipe mingling with the stale tang of supplemental fluoride.  I’ve borne witness to many an outsider who, after taking a manly swig of wooder, could do nothing but spit it up like a baby who’d just been force-fed a jar of strained peas.  But, for those of us who have been gulping it down by the glassful since we were babies, the taste cannot be matched anywhere on Earth.

You really can’t underestimate the importance of wooder.  It’s what we all have in common, isn’t it?  It’s the source; the thing that makes us the anomaly that we are to those poor souls who have only had the chance to drink plain water.  Take me, for example. I’ve been an imbiber of wooder for more than thirty years, and I’ve swallowed enough of that slimy substance to experience its effects first hand.  If you were to follow me around for a while, I’m sure you’d pick up at least a few of my…uhhh…quirks.  After being in my presence for any prolonged period of time, you may notice an unusual amount of pride welling up inside me for a broken-down city.  Or, you may witness a hard-nosed (some would say unhealthy) exuberance for all sporting events that involve Philly or its people in any way.  You may even see, in me and in those of my kind, a lack of what people who drink ordinary water would call a “positive outlook.” 

Blame it on the wooder, I say, because it runs through your veins, burrowing deeply within, infecting the blood and marking you an imbiber for life. If you don’t believe me, a simple pin can prove my theory.  Go ahead and give yourself the slightest prick of the skin so that a few drops of blood trickle onto the tip of the pin.  If you drink ordinary, run-of-the-mill water, then you can expect to see a couple of boring, deep red blobs, none different than the ones you’ve seen throughout your life.  But, if you’ve been drinking wooder all along, you’ll notice something quite different, something that corresponds with the four seasons.  The four seasons in Philly, that is: Baseball, Basketball, Hockey, and Football. 

In the musty, humid months of Philadelphian summer, I can prick my skin to produce a few drops of bright red blood.  In the damp months of late spring, as large clusters of burgundy buds begin to form on the graying branches of the deciduous trees, the blood squeezed from my veins oozes a distinct orange; sometimes I can get a few red, white, and blue drops in a very lucky year. 

Of course, when the summer winds down and the final weekends along the Jersey Shore have been spent, the blood that runs through my veins is a deep, midnight green.  And there is no blood more hungry, more envious of the champion than that which spills the color of the turf at the Linc. Sadly, sheer desire has not translated into ultimate victory.

Our flagship franchise has remained unfulfilled; disillusioned and annoyed by years of empty hoping and stale wait-till-next-year promises.  Outsiders often stare in our direction and wonder, “Hey, buddy, why the brash attitude?” or “Where’d ya get the chip, pal?”  I just return their glare each time with a look that says, “It’s the wooder, kid.  There’s somethin’ in the wooder.”  It’s just who we are and what we know.  It’s what makes the football culture in this great city something special.  Championships or not, ten losses or 10,000 losses, it simply doesn’t matter.

So, if you want to brand me as some kind of addict, then go right ahead.  I’ll keep standing up here with my glass of wooder, admitting to all of you that I can’t possibly do without my teams or my fair city.  Call me a chump, call me weak...whatever.  Because even though I stand up here by myself, I know I’m by no means alone.  Here’s to you Philly, old pal.  I toast to you in advance…with a great big glass of wooder.

Go Birds. This year will be different.

It's a Wing Bowl, Folks

By: C.G. Morelli

The Philadelphia Eagles have come a long way in the past decade. Over these last ten years, the Birds have made seven playoff appearances including four NFC Championship berths, four division titles, and a Super Bowl. They’ve finished under .500 only two times in that span.

But that hasn’t always been the case. In fact, before the Andy Reid era the Eagles were perennial doormats in the NFC East and any shot at the Super Bowl seemed nothing more than a pipe dream to Philadelphia fans. I must say that growing up in the City of Brotherly Love was more than a bit depressing on Super Bowl weekend because there was never anything to play for.

That is until 1993, when a few enterprising individuals gave birth to their brainchild. The idea: Wing Bowl, a buffalo wing eating competition pitting the city’s flabbiest, yet most talented, eaters against each other. The Bowl, which started as a simple promotional event for a local radio station, has gradually become a national draw over the years.

Taking place the Friday before the Super Bowl, grown men with freshly hatched pseudonyms like Bill “El Wingador” Simmons, Kevin “Heavy Kevvy” O’Donell, Carmen “The Beast from the East” Cordero, and Glen “Fluffmaster” Garrison climb into outrageous outfits oftentimes consisting of tights and a cape, and proceed to gorge themselves with more wings than you and I could eat in the course of an entire year.

It has become a bit of a tradition for each contestant to come fully loaded with their own posse of outcasts to spur on their feeding frenzies. The motley groups at times consist of bikini clad cheerleaders affectionately dubbed “Wingettes,” or other oddball, comic book-like characters created in the warped, but entertaining, minds of the contestants.

For much of the life of the contest, Wing Bowl has been dominated by one man, the illustrious soul known to all Philadelphians as El Wingador. Mr. Wingador has won the event five times and recorded a personal best by eating 205 wings. He actually used to train for the event by chewing frozen tootsie rolls in the “offseason” to strengthen his jaw muscles. That’s dedication, folks. It’s exactly what got him inducted into the Wing Bowl Hall of Fame in 2006. Really, I’m not kidding about this.

But the tides have changed in recent years and a new wing-eating legend has emerged. He is known simply as Joey Chestnut, and he’s hoisted the championship trophy at the last three competitions. Last year, Chestnut devoured a Wing Bowl record 241 wings, besting his next closest competition by 14 wings.

Sounds slightly insane, doesn’t it? But don’t be so quick to judge. The obvious damage inflicted on Chestnut’s insides actually brought him some pretty sweet prizes. In the last competition, he tallied up nearly $40,000 in booty, including a brand new Harley Davidson, a new Toyota Tundra, and a diamond-encrusted gold ring. Not bad for a guy who’s claim to fame is 90 minutes worth of speed-chewing followed by two hours of agony in the john.

At any rate, Philadelphia’s Wing Bowl has become a perfect backdrop against the media hoopla of Super Bowl weekend, and it has given Birds fans something to cheer about even in those years when our team has been nothing more than an afterthought.

The Human Projectile: Michael Zordich

By C.G. Morelli

Before a certain #20 loomed largely in the defensive back field of the Philadelphia Eagles with his tinted, black visor and his magnetism for bone-crushing hits, another human projectile filled those shoes more than adequately. He wore the Kelly green jersey with his #36 proudly stitched on the back. No, I’m not talking about Brian Westbrook. Same number, I know. I’m talking about Michael Zordich. Who, you say? Exactly.

Few remember the hard hitting safety outside of Philly. I’ve yet to determine whether this is because he played for teams throughout his career that weren’t, shall we say, playoff ready, or simply because fans of NFC East rivals have blocked out the images of total carnage that often took place when Zordich was on the field.

Or, maybe it’s just my own maniacal fixation with NFL safeties, particularly those who have donned the green and silver, that allows me to remember quite clearly the bruising, blatant-disregard-for-his-own-body type of style that made this blue collar player so endearing to me.

Zordich made a name for himself as a four year starter and a 1985 All American at Penn State, where he capped off his college career with 201 solo tackles. His nose-to-the-grindstone approach to the game and his gutsy play inside Beaver Stadium caught the attention of scouts in the Chargers organization who thought enough of Zordich to take him with the 235^th overall selection in the 1986 NFL Draft.

However, his stay in San Diego was short lived. He became a camp casualty at the end of the preseason and found himself instead clinging to the final roster spot on a hapless Jets team after being claimed off waivers. But Zordich came to play regardless of what many saw as an inferior status for an undersized football player. He built himself a reputation as being one of the heaviest hitting safeties in the game despite flying well under the radar in stints with the Jets and Cardinals.

It was in 1994 that Zordich made his way back to Pennsylvania to play safety for a struggling Eagles club. That’s where I come in.

As a young, budding Eagles fan, I could not help but be taken by a player who, on more than one occasion, hit Michael Irvin so hard that he looked more like a crumpled accordion than a Hall of Fame receiver. How could I not like a guy who seemed oblivious on a weekly basis to the trickle of blood that rolled down the bridge of his nose as he lined up and prepared to punish another unsuspecting running back who made the mistake of breaking a run into the second layer of defense? 

And perhaps some of Zordich’s most enduring moments came as an unselfish member of the special teams unit despite holding a spot as a defensive starter. How many guys do you see doing that today? To me, his willingness to throw his body around on punts and kickoffs was a testament to the scrappiness that has come to define Eagles football in the mold of special teams stalwarts like home town boy, Vince Papale.

At any rate, Zordich’s career cannot be measured by stats alone. On paper they’re not all that impressive to be quite honest. In 12 NFL seasons, he picked off 20 passes and scored four defensive touchdowns, one of which was a 58 yard fumble recovery and return against the Giants back in 1995. He recorded 588 solo tackles in his career. Ho Hum, I guess.

But the passion he left on that playing field each week was enough to account for all 11 players on his team, and I’m sure his teammates would testify to that fact.