Changeover

Sooo ... just wasted another hour trying to figure out what exactly I did wrong with the coding, with the results getting worse and worse with each attempt.

Before I end up accidentally nuking everything I've ever posted, I'm going to start a new blog, with freshly restored links and everything, and continue from there. Click here and you'll be transported to the new site, as if by magic.

Everything from the old site will remain here.

Checking in

Haven't checked in here for awhile. It's kind of hard to motivate yourself to sit inside and write on your off-day when it is 70 degrees in the middle of winter. Nonetheless ...

*Let me get the self-promotional stuff out of the way first. I had a piece go up on FOXSports.com a couple weeks back looking into the notion of East Coast bias and whether it actually exists. It got posted on Poynter's Romenesko site, and I think one sign I did a competent job is that someone posted it up on Sportsjournalists.com and it didn't get ripped to shreds. Anyway, here's the link. As an aside, it is pretty exciting to work in a newsroom where you can approach people with ideas and not only do they listen, they figure out ways to make them work, then make them even bigger.

Also, I've been posting on the FOX Funhouse blog, as has fellow FOX deskers Andy Nesbitt and Jim Rieneking, who would have fit right in here at Dave's World during the site's heyday.

*So I know I'm a few weeks late to the table on this one, but the more I think about Ben Watson's big play in the playoff loss to Denver -- which belongs on the short list of the greatest plays in the history of the New England Patriots -- the more I realized that in and of itself, it was a micrcocosm of the Patriots' season. The play and the season both started out with everything going wrong. Watson, and the Pats, both had to make ridiculous adjustments on the fly. Watston made an absolutely great hustle play to catch up to the ball at the end, like the Pats down the stretch, then made the big play -- only to not have it matter in the end.

*I've been reading David Halberstam's book on Bill Belichick and give it two thumbs up. The portion of the book I found most intruiging was the one covering Belichick's stint with the Giants. With the benefit of hindsight, BB sure seems to deserve a lot of the credit Bill Parcells gets for the Giants' two Super Bowls. In the first one, Denver led at halftime and they made defensive adjustments that shut down John Elway in the second half. In the second, the Bills came into the Super Bowl as favorites, having scored 95 points in their first two playoff games. Belichick's defense let Thurman Thomas run just enough to shut down Kelly's quick strike capability.
Hmmm ... halftime adjustments and taking a away an opposing offense's strength. Where have we heard that before? And for that matter, the Patriots were 21-27 in Parcells' first three years with the Patriots, then went to the Super Bowl with BB as assistant head coach. I don't want to dismiss Parcells entirely because his skills as a motivator were top notch, but there's a clear delineation between Parcells' record with BB as an underling and without.

*Anyone here who thinks Tim Thomas will still be shutting teams down in April, raise your hand. Actually, let me try that again -- anyone still watching the Bruins, raise your hand.

*Yes, I'm still watching Mexican wrestling on Galavision. Pretty horrible result last Saturday, as Dr. Wagner Jr. lost the NWA light heavyweight title to all-time wuss Atlantis. Dr. Wagner Jr. is the son of an evil doctor who did not follow the Hippocratic oath, and you're telling me he is going to lose to someone who lives under the sea? Gimme a break. On a better note, there's a Lucha VaVoom show in LA next month featuring Blue Demon Jr. and Super Porky vs. Los Villanos III y IV, and you damn bet I'll be there.

*So, 20 years ago, the top seeded team from the NFC with a killer defense played the lowest seed from the AFC, which had gone on an incredible roll and won three consecutive postseason road games to get there. And the NFC team kicked the bejeezus out of the AFC team. Same thing's going to happen here, methinks.

*Hey, did you know that Jerome Bettis is from Detroit? Did you? I bet you didn't hear that, so I'm telling you. Now, if Bettis is from Detroit and plays his final game there, does that mean The Bus has made a round trip? LOLOLOLOL!!!

Sorry.

*In 'n' Out Burger. Reason No. 23424534 or so why I might never leave SoCal.

*Hello Garrett.

January at the beach

*So, how am I liking LA so far, you ask? Let me put it this way. I had Friday off and I spent most of the afternoon at the beach. On January 6. It got up near 85 degrees. That night I had the windows open in my room and it felt like a midsummer night and I had a feeling like I should turn on the Sox game on the radio. Except, I turned on the TV and there were the Clippers.

*Speaking of, the Clippers are a lot of fun to watch, and this is coming from someone who generally does not enjoy the NBA in the slightest. They're a young team that plays energetic ball. Probably not a title contender, but they'll make some noise in the playoffs. Of course, they played just about their worst game of the season against the Celtics a couple weeks ago, so those reading this back home have seen zero evidence of this.

*And speaking of "back home," I couldn't help but read all the teeth-gnashing over Doug Flutie's drop kick and just shake my head in disbelief. Here's a little clue from someone who used to be in the Boston sports media bubble and now watches from afar: Outside of Boston, around the rest of the country, the near-unanimous opinion on the drop kick was "that was just about the coolest thing I have ever seen." Here's an idea: You are not required to manufacture controversy 365 days a year. Sometimes there simply is no controversy. And another idea: If you find yourself working yourself into a froth because Doug Flutie kicked a drop kick, you really should step away from your keyboard, shut off your radio, and take a couple days off.

Hola

So, I was trying to remove the google ads from this thing, and think I did something wrong with the coding, and all of a sudden all the text to the blog was pushed way down underneath all the links. Since I'm heading off to work soon, I'm simply just nuking all the links for now and will try to figure this out when I have more time.

Meanwhile, if you're wondering what's been bouncing around Mr. Scatterbrain's head these days, my take on the Johnny Damon situation just so happened to be my first byline for FOXSports.com

OK

You guys keep coming back, according to my site meter. You want something new? Here's something new: A photo of Mistico getting a beat-down from Averno and Mephisto.



You want news? OK, it is still 70 degrees in SoCal.

Last call

I was going to post a big, weepy goodbye that was going to leave you all in tears and pondering the meaning of your existence. But, it is 85 degrees and sunny in Hermosa Beach, CA, so I think I'm going to go outside instead.

If you've made this warped little blog a part of your daily reading mix, thanks. I had a lot of fun with this. if you took offense at anything I wrote, hey, I wasn't being too serious about much of anything. Except Mexican wrestling. That is serious business with deep sociopolitical implications, and two years from now, when Mistico and Dr. Wagner Jr. are household names, I want you to remember you heard about them here first.

I'm leaving my email address open, so feel free to drop me a line whenever.

Football Thursday

This is it, kids, the final Football Thursday. Steve Sears is back again this week; he's now an official member of the gang in a September-callup sort of way. Thanks to Shawn O'Neal, Dave Scott and Chris Forsberg for playing along every week.

On to the picks:

Game of the week: Indianapolis at Cincinnati

SO'N —- Talk about a strange confluence of events. It wasn't long ago that a Bengals-Colts game would have drawn all the excitement of a bootlegged Dick Cheney-Condoleezza Rice sex tape. Now, tickets are going for more than $700 on eBay and the game sets up as one of the better contests of the regular season. Bengals officials are also warning fans about the possibility of counterfeit tickets. That shouldn't be a problem as Cincinnati fans are used to spotting a fraud. To wit, their so-so team will be exposed this weekend. It's not that Cincinnati is bad. It's that if the Colts are butter, the Bengals that crap my wife makes me eat that comes out of the spray bottle. Trust me, it ain't the same thing.

(Dave's World interjects: Which spray bottle are we talking about, SO'N? When I visited Idaho you were feeding your kid no-stick spray straight out of the can and claiming it counted as a serving of vegetables).

SS -- Two years ago, Kansas City entered Cincy with a 9-0 record and left 9-1. Now, the unstoppable, greatest team of all time, the Indianapolis Colts, are going to northern Kentucky with a similar 9-0 record. Will the same thing happen? I doubt it. Even though the Bengals secondary has made mince meat of the artist formerly known as Brett Favre and other NFC central "quarterbacks" to the tune of 1,000 interceptions, I don't see them doing the same to Peyton. Anyway, the Colts must go undefeated or the terrorists have won.

CF: See, Doyle's the only one who gets to see all the picks before they get posted, so I'm always left to wonder if someone above me already
stole a certain witty angle on the group pick. Like, do I make a Chad
Johnson guarantee joke here, or will Dave Scott have already beaten
that one into the ground? Do I bash Peyton Manning, or will Doyle
have already fun facted that for us. I just don't know. Colts remain undefeated, I guarantee it!

DS: Wow -– what a sad week: Big Papi loses to the A-Fraud, a WWE wrestler we never knew dies and The World Of Doyle shutters its windows.
There truly is no justice.

As one of the original pickers chosen by DD, I feel it's only proper to hearken back to some of the glorious weeks in this feature's long, proud history . . . Hold on – this isn't the Boston Globe, is it?

Truthfully? I never knew how demanding it could be to make a complete boob of myself week-in and week-out. I don't claim to be an NFL-head, but I follow the game. Same with the colleges.

But picking winners (even without a spread) is grueling stuff.
Even so, we're mustering the energy to give you one final hurrah and ask that you remember The Streak (of wins) and not The Rash (of losses) during our time in this Wiseguys' World o' Doyle.

No room for explanations, really, but my gut tells me that Seattle is better equipped to ruin the Perfect Peyton Season than Cincy. Colts win, and the '72 Dolphins guys come out of the woodwork. Again.

And now, for the final time, am unsolicited (yet somehow warranted) cheap shot at Kenny Chesney. I mean Peyton Manning. . . . From our host with the most, Double-D. . .

DD -- First off, DS, how can you not include the Revs' loss in Copa MLS on Sunday on your list of this week's bad news? The Revs have now lost the finals twice to the Galaxy. Clearly there is a Curse of Walter Zenga book waiting to be written, then beaten and beaten and beaten long after the horse has not just died, but been turned into glue. Now, as for Our Final Dave's World Peyton Manning Fun Fact, we're going to instead hand off to his fellow ringless MVP, Alex Rodriguez. That would be A-Rod, the man judged to be most valuable to his team in 2005. He left the Mariners; the Mariners won 116 games the following season. He was adjudged most valuable on the last-place Texas Rangers in 2003; when the player judged most valuable to that team left town, their win percentage improved from .438 to .549. Sense a pattern here? A-Rod has been with the Yankees for two years now; that coincided with the first two-year period in which the team didn't win a pennant in a decade. Anyway, here's this week's fun fact: In his past eight playoff games, going back to Game 5 of the 2004 ALCS, two-time AL MVP Alex Rodriguez's postseason batting average is .111. But hey, he plays the field, so the guy whose teams get better when he leaves is clearly more valuable to his team than the guy who was the backbone of the most successful three-year run in his team's century-long history. Oh, and, Bengals win.

Other NFL

SO'N: Arizona at St. Louis -- It's hard to pick what excites Rams fans more -- that Kurt Warner is no longer their quarterback or that his wife will be leaving their fair city shortly after this game? Both are great news for St. Louis residents, whose Rams already trail Seattle by three games in the Feces Fiesta that is the NFC West. Warner's had a hard time throwing the ball to the right guys (five picks, three TDs) and the only games the Cardinals have won have come against teams that are currently applying for admission to the Arena League -- Tennessee and San Francisco. But it's hard to hang it all on Warner. The guy's not what he used to be, but he's been sacked 13 times this year. The guy who took his place when he was injured -- Josh McCown -- has also hit the turf 13 times. To contrast. there are five teams that have allowed fewer than 13 sacks this year. I usually like to be more analytical in my comments, but there's just no need to be eloquent here: Arizona sucks.

Miami at Cleveland -- Silly old me … I didn't even know they still played football in Cleveland. Thought that scoundrel Art Modell had packed them up and headed to Baltimore … named them the Ravens … won a Super Bowl with Trent Dilfer at QB. But, yup, Dave tells me to pick Miami at Cleveland and when I go to the standings, there they are. How about that? Anyway, I supposed the story here is former Bill Belichick guys going at it. Romeo Crenel and Nick Saban have to be applauded for what they've done this year, bringing a little bit of pride back to these once-proud organizations. Good for them. Take the Browns, unless you're worries about taking the word of a guy who thought seriously that football had returned to Baltimore. In that case, take the Dolphins.

DS: Detroit-Dallas -- We told you last week: In Tuna we trust. Monday night's stunner only confirms what we've thought for a long time: Give me Drew Bledsoe, Terry Glenn and The Tuna and I'll give you a playoff team.
Call this the "One You'll Never See on Thanksgiving Day" and call the Cowboys, "Daddy."

And call Quin Snyder, "Coach," or else he'll drip hair gel on you and make you smell his cologne.

Buffalo-San Diego -- I'm trying to remember the last full-time, guaranteed, gonna-be-there–starter that Buffalo has had and, in lieu of Drew, all I can come up with is Jim Kelly. Buffalo has been without a marquee QB since Kelly and that's just unimaginable in these parts of New England.

San Diego, on the other hand, has had Dan Fouts for as long as I can remember. Bolts beat Buff.

SS: Pittsburgh at Baltimore -- Kyle Boller vs. Tommy Maddox. A quarterback match-up that makes guys like Ron Jaworski and Steve Sabol drool. Can your hear the NFL Films tape of this game? "Kyle Boller battled the elements like a true warrior. He haunted the Steelers like the Raven Lenore haunted the poet Poe. He did all he could, but alas, his counterpart stood stronger in this clash of titans. Tommy Maddox directed his men down the field like Eisenhower led his men on the beaches of France. When the dust cleared, Maddox's efficient 7-24 performance was enough to claim a 16-10 victory that would vault the Steelers past the Axis powers --the Baltimore Ravens."

Oakland at Washington -- Back in my younger days, I was a sports free agent. I was not raised to be a Pats fan so my half-brother, who lives
in Northern Virginia, tried to turn me into a Redskins fan. I knew more
about John Riggins than Bill Parcells or Drew Bledsoe at that time. His
efforts, though genuine, were ultimately unsuccessful. The Bledsoe
comeback against the Vikings in 1994 turned me into a Pats fan. I think
I made the right choice. I don't mind seeing the 'Skins win and I
wouldn't mind a win here against a team and a fan base that can't
get over the Snow Bowl. They had their chance to win that and they lost. They had a chance to win the Super Bowl and got massacred. They will lose this one too.

CF: New York Jets-Denver -- We're going out of business folks! Take an additional 20 percent of all green tag items! Everything must go! We're clearing out room for the 2006 Dave Doyles and we're slicing and dicing these prices. Like a slightly used Stephen Sears, regularly $75 per story; new price: free! Come on dooooooooooown!

Philadelphia-New York Giants -- I got nothing to say on this one and my dog is walking dangerously close to my laptop keys, so I'll let him handle this one. His name's Boo in case you wanna say hi.

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(Dave's World interjects: See, one might take a pick like this as a hint that Chris is tanking it this week, but to me, the giveaway is that he has yet to even muster his weekly "Doyle always gives me the lousiest games" gripe).

DD: New Orleans at New England -- If you're driving up or down the great state of Rhode Island on I-95, like, say, if you're going to or from Foxwoods, you'll see a sign that says "International Scholar-Athlete Hall of Fame" at the same exit as the esteemed U of R.I. This always intrigues me, on two fronts -- 1. What in the hell is the IS-AHOF, and 2. Why is it at URI and not, say, Princeton or Stanford? Anyway, on one sleep-deprived road trip, I decided the place should be named after the most famous URI scholar-athlete of recent vintage, so these days I refer to it as "The Lamar Odom International Scholar-Athlete Hall of Fame." Oh yeah, and, Pats win.

Seattle at San Francisco -- So after my tirade about Seattle and the monorail last week, I got a couple "dude, why do you hate Seattle?" emails. Not true. Here is a partial list of things I am going to miss about the Emerald City: Easy Street Records; Alki Beach; Green Lake; the guys and gals at Uptown Espresso on Erskine, who are the best baristas in the whole damn city; "sunbreaks"; Vancouver being a day trip away; Katie Downs pizza in Tacoma; going to Mariners games on a sunny summer afternoon; downtown Olympia; the Seahawks' inevitable late-season collapse during the rare seasons they seem to have any potential; I could go on and on.

Colleges

SO'N: Washington State at Washington -- "Legendary" Washington coach Don James once opined, "Going to Washington State prepares you well for life in that you learn not to expect much." Well, Don James was a dirty cheater and was replaced by a loser (Jim Lambright) who was then replaced by a dirty cheater (Rick Neuheisel) who was then replaced by a loser (Keith Gilbertson) who was then replaced by Tyrone Willingham. The trend would say otherwise, but I am betting Willingham is not a cheater.

(D's W interjects: And let this serve notice to all commies, pinkos, and other undesirables lurking in Northern Idaho: Now that he no longer has a forum for football picks as his hobby, SO'N will no doubt return to his favorite pastime. "Hunting season" is about to begin.)

CF: Boston College-Maryland -- We have a freelancer at work who bought this hideous orange sweatshirt with Maryland written across the front. Now, without fail, people walk up to him when he's wearing it and ask, "When did the Terps change their color to orange?" The freelancer used to chuckle at the joke, now you can tell he's regretting the whole purchase.

What does this have to do with anything? Nothing at all. Did I
mention we're going out of business here at Dave's World?! You want a
real pick, don't come to a lame-duck blog.

DS: Auburn-Alabama -- The luster of this one was taken away by LSU last weekend. But the luster of this one can never be taken away.

I've been doing some research for a book project I'm helping out on and the happy offshoot has been a chance to re-read Warren St. John's, "Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer." It's also given me cause to get a first read of Allen Barra's, "The Last Coach." Both books' authors would be much more qualified to assess this tussle.

Instead, Doyle gives you me.

And I give you, Auburn for the win.

Lastly, let's all wish all-time Good Guy, Dave Doyle, the best of luck in his next endeavor. Put the guy on a bigger stage and the stage will thank you for it –- trust me.

(CUE: Sappy, sentimental, PBS music. BEGIN crying. Fade to Black.)

(D's W: Clearly, DS is referring to a different Dave Doyle here).

DD: Ohio State-Michigan -- Any college football aficionado worth his salt knows Cumberland College's contribution to the sport. That was the team that lost in the most one-sided CFB game ever, a 220-0 decision against Georgia Tech in 1916. Rumor has it that Cumby will be playing the Indianapolis Colts next year. Anyway, I bring this up because the record is going to fall this weekend -- that is, if Ohio State bothers showing up. Because the Buckeyes just have zero chance of winning. They don't belong on the same field as the Wolverines. Block your children's eyes, because this one is going to get ugly in a hurry. (Note: The fact my new boss is a Michigan grad did not in any way influence this pick).

GM

Is it impertinent of me to ask why the Red Sox, who have interviewed and been turned down by roughly 1,432 candidates in their GM search (today they will be interviewing Wally the Green Monster and the guy who sells sausages out on Landsdowne), have yet to have a minority candidate come in for an interview?

Stuff

A few thoughts, here:

*First off, congrats to A-Rod on both his .133 postseason batting average and his A.L. MVP. The award almost erases the final A-Rod image of 2005, that of his ninth-inning double play in Game 5 against the Angels. Almost.

*I have to admit I got a bit of chuckle out of the spate of "hey, the Bruins are a train wreck, who saw that one coming?" articles in the Boston papers over the past couple days. I could re-post the "same old Bruins" item I wrote during the first week of training camp, but lord knows I've gotten my share of things wrong here.

A couple years back, when the Bruins were in the midst of their historic choke against the Habs in the playoffs, Kevin Paul Dupont wrote a tough piece criticizing Joe Thornton for his play and initmated he might not deserve to wear the captain's C. Kevin got absolutely skewered for writing this column. But, here's the thing. Let me make this clear:

DUPIE WAS RIGHT.

Joe Thornton is a very good hockey player. From all accounts, he's one of the best guys you could want to meet. And I definitely wouldn't want to get into a fight with him.

But being a captain in hockey means doing things like Mark Messier did in 1994 when his Rangers trailed the Devils 3-2 in the Eastern Conference finals. He sought out the tabloid reporters, guaranteed victory, and basically went out and delivered it. The Bruins sat around against Montreal with their thumbs up their butts and frittered away a 3-1 series lead for the first time in franchise history.

There's a big difference between writing columns that are stinging but fair and cheap-shot columns. Everyone knows who the cheap-shot artists are in Boston. Dupie's not one of them. His Thornton column was both on the money and fair. I mean, geez, if the Bruins couldn't handle the heat from one critical column, they didn't deserve to win anyway.

Anyway, the main premise of that column has become apparent yet again this year. The Bruins are the softest team on ice and have zero killer instinct. Changing the captaincy won't turn things around, but I've still yet to see anything out of Thornton that would indicate he deserves the honor.

*I got satellite radio over the weekend. As of right now, I consider it quite possibly the single greatest invention in the history of the human race. I'd say "the greatest thing since sliced bread," but this is way better than sliced bread. 230 channels, no commercials, no DJs, every NHL and MLB game and a ton of college hoops and football. I can't believe I've lived the first 32 years of my life without this.

But this got me thinking ... just how bad is commercial radio? Think about it. They have a product that is free, and that free product has become so lousy that droves of people are willing to pay $12.95 a month for an alternative. I mean, there is still obviously some quality stuff on commercial radio, but if there wasn't so much lowest-common-denomenator garbage I never would have even thought to look into satellite radio.

*So, I'm not sure I'm going to have time to do the Dave's World Awards, after all. I sort of forgot how much time and energy goes into picking up and moving down the coast.

I am, however, going to link up to my friend Matt's Dispatches from Iraq series one more time. I consider this one of the most rewarding endeavors I've undertaken as a journalist. And I'd like to think Matt and I demonstrated something about the potential of blogs -- I gave Matt the medium, he supplied the dispatches, and we were able to give an unfiltered look at what's going on over in the desert without the constraints of traditional media.

Dispatches from Iraq series links

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Eddie Guerrero

If you're not a pro wrestling fan, you might have heard about the death of Eddie Guerrero on Sunday and wondered what all the fuss was about. Wrestler deaths have become sadly routine over the years, but this one gained more traction in the mainstream media than most.

Wrestling has always been a unique blend of reality and illusion that no sport or entertainment vehicle will likely ever be able to match. Of course the results are staged and plots are scripted out months in advance. But the wrestlers who connect best with the audience have always been the ones who come across as real.

In a world of larger-than-life characters, Eddie Guerrero was distinctly a real, down-to-earth human being, with real strengths and real, well-known foibles. He wasn't much bigger than the people in the crowd. The audience knew Eddie wrestled under his real name. They knew he spent his entire life in wrestling. His father, Gori, was a wrestling legend in Mexico, and his older brothers -- Chavo, Mando, and Hector -- have been around the wrestling business so long that everyone knows the Guerrero name. They even knew that the current Chavo Guerrero was Chavo Jr., Eddie's nephew, and not his brother, as he was portrayed on TV.

They also knew of his personal battles with painkiller addiction -- a battle he's said to have kicked four years ago -- and with depression.

Eddie was a real person, like the audience, not a comic-book character.

And he was a person with an absolute unquenchable desire to be one of the greatest performers in the history of the industry. He might have never realized it, but it was a goal he achieved.

I've been watching wrestling just about my whole life, something I freely admit to, and Eddie was involved in what I consider to this day the single greatest wrestling performance I've ever seen. He was in a feature match on a Mexican wrestling pay-per-view event in Los Angeles at a sold-out Sports Arena in 1994. He and his bad-guy tag team partner, Art Barr, had never been given a real chance to get ahead in the American wrestling business, and they were determined to tear down the house for the national TV audience. Guerrero and Barr put on an absolute blowaway performance against opponents El Hijo Del Santo and Octagon that nearly caused a riot and had fans hopping the rails. Security barely kept a lid on things. It was unreal. Or was it all too real? That's the thing with wrestling.

Then there's my favorite memory of Eddie. A couple years back, the WWE sent him out to wrestle a string of small-time shows. This one was at the Quincy, MA National Guard Armory. Couldn't have been more than 400 people there. Eddie wrestled a three-way match with two local stiffs whose names I cannot remember. The crowd was happy to simply have a big name in their little gym and wouldn't have cared if he just showed up and went through the motions. But he put on a 20-minute clinic that had the local guys looking like superstars by the time he was done.

The fans left the building that night buzzing about the show Guerrero put on. With Eddie, it didn't matter if he was the headline act at Madison Square Garden or if he was at Podunk High -- if the people paid their money to see wrestling, he was going to give them their money's worth.

That's the highest real compliment you can pay a professional wrestler. But it also hints at the not-so-secret dark side of the industry, the one with the alarming body count. Remember Barr, Guerrero's partner from that 1994 show? He was dead nine days later at the age of 28 after a bad reaction to painkillers. Way too many wrestlers like Guerrero and Barr have gotten caught in a trap -- they're told they are "too small" to headline, so not only do they feel the pressure to get bigger, but many of them choose to perform a more legitimately physically punishing style in order to stand out, and end up on painkillers, and that doesn't even factor in the grind of being on the road 300 days a year. It is a combination that has caught up to way too many wrestlers over the past two decades.

Which might lead a non-wrestling fan to ask why anyone could support such a business. That's a valid question. It is one I ask myself every time wrestling's horrible side rears its ugly head. Right now, I don't have a good answer.

Best of Dave's World Part I

So, I've decided I'm doing a couple things over the next week or so as Dave's World continues its going out of business sale. For one, we're going to hand out the 2005 Dave's World Awards. We were going to do this at the end of the year anyway, so we'll just push them up a couple months.

These will be modeled after the types of awards you see in various alt-weeklies and monthly magazines in major cities across the country. The difference being, in your average (Insert city here) Weekly or (Insert city here) magazine, they insist on collecting reader ballots, but somehow, without fail, the awards always magically end up in the hands of their advertisers. Here at Dave's World we're going to cut through the pretense, cut out the middlemen, and be upfront about the fact we're flagrantly handing out awards to our friends and colleagues. For example, here's my first award: The 2005 Dave's World Fitchburg Sentinel Sports Staffer of the Year -- Chris Forsberg. Hands down, no contest.

The other thing I'm going to do is re-broadcast some of my favorite things that have appeared on this site over the past six months. If that's self-serving, well, this is my blog. And besides, astute observers have no doubt noted that most of the stuff worth reading here has been contributed by others, while I mainly blab gibberish about things like Mexican wrestling.

One of the first things that found a big audience on the site was this Chile's Corner piece, first published on July 3. Given the way things panned out with the Red Sox over the past couple weeks, in hindsight this looks like it was about three months ahead of the curve:

THE DAVE'S WORLD PRE-GAME REPORT PRESENTS DAVE'S WORLD'S CHILE'S CORNER LOOKING AT WHY NESN RED SOX BROADCASTS ARE UNWATCHABLE SPONSORED BY DAVE'S WORLD AND FOLLOWED BY DAVE'S WORLD EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA INNINGS AND THE DAVE'S WORLD THIRD-RATE KNOCKOFF POKER CHALLENGE AND DID WE MENTION YOU'RE READING DAVE'S WORLD?

By Chile Hidalgo

I haven't been enjoying the Red Sox season as much this year as I have in the past, and I think I've figured out why. At first I attributed it to some sort of World Series malaise -- after all, any number of famous national commentators had speculated that Red Sox fans wouldn't know how to react to winning the World Series.

But the results definitely mattered to me, as friends and family can attest, based on the language I chose to describe any number of Keith Foulke/Alan Embree implosions or Edgar Renteria's 2-for-98 start to the season. It wasn't because the games weren't exciting: three months into the season, the Sox have had more memorable comebacks and running subplots than the 1992, 1993, and 1994 seasons combined (you may recall that Scott Cooper's back-to-back All-Star appearances were probably the most exciting things that happened during those years).

It took me awhile to figure it out, but a couple weeks ago, sometime between an update from Hazel Mae in the NESN SportsDesk Studio and an inside joke between Don Orsillo and some NESN production team member about the size of said team member's biceps, it occurred to me that the reason I haven't been as interested in the Sox has been the quality of the broadcasts. This is the first time that they've consistently bored me. This isn't a knock on Jerry Remy, one of the best color announcers in baseball and a New England institution, or Don Orsillo (well, it's a bit of a knock on Don Orsillo), but has more to do with the disappearance of Sean McDonough and the fact that NESN broadcasts almost every Sox game.

McDonough, the son of legendary Boston Globe columnist Will McDonough, called Red Sox games from 1988-2004, and was pushed out of the Sox broadcast booth after last season. He now occasionally resurfaces on the 3rd or 4th string ESPN team with Tony Gwynn. The best thing I can say about McDonough is that he's the kind of broadcaster who makes you want to keep watching a mid-June 11-0 game after the 7th inning. His combination of dry sarcasm, occasional bouts of homer-ism, and willingness to voice his opinions regardless of the consequences (I'm guessing this had to do with his booth removal) meant that every Sox broadcast he did had something notable about it, whether it was a great one-liner, a new nickname for a marginal player (Hall of Famer Einar Diaz), or increasing concern about whether a specific comment would lead to him losing his job.

One of my favorite Sean McDonough quotes came during one of those late-season games that was roughly 11-0 after the 7th inning. The Phillies were awful that year and had been out of the race (behind the Braves, of course) since May, but on that night they were leading by a couple of runs late in the game. McDonough conveyed this information, then paused for a beat before adding, "if they can hang on and win, the Phillies have a chance to pull within 33 1/2 of idle Atlanta." And then he kept reading the rest of the scores.

Another McDonough highlight: one night while Dan Duquette was the GM, McDonough was laying into him. I forget the exact circumstances, but they probably involved Rudy Pemberton, Dwayne Franchise Hosey, and Robinson Checo. McDonough's tirade had been going on for awhile when McDonough announced -- live -- that he'd just been passed a memo from the Sox that ordered him to stop bashing the GM. And then he proceeded to bash the fact that he received a memo to that effect for about 20 minutes.

Granted, McDonough was a tough act to follow, but I've been watching broadcasts with Don Orsillo for what, three seasons now, and can't remember a single notable thing he's said, other than the fact that every time there's a foul ball that hits the stands somewhere between first base and the Pesky Pole he says "down by Canvas Alley." It's not that his presence takes that much away from the game or that he's a lousy announcer, but he adds nothing to the broadcast. Nothing distinguishes each game from the game before or the game after.

Of course, a lot of this has to do with NESN. Watching a game on NESN is kind of like being at K-Mart and hearing the canned announcements encourage you to check out any number of sensational K-Mart product lines such as K-Gro lawn products, K-nol pain reliever, and K-9 dog food (I spent two years in high school working at K-Mart -- trust me, I know). I watch a lot of baseball and a lot of sports on TV, and no other network, not even ESPN, is as relentlessly self-promotional as NESN. I'm tired of having to hear about WB Mason's Extra Innings with TC and Gary DiSarcina every half-inning. I'm not interested in watching "The Fun Before The Game" on the Olympia Sports Boston Red Sox Pre-game Show. I don't want to submit a recording of my friends doing kooky things related to the Red Sox to NESN's Fenway Fan Film Fest. I don't care who's still alive in the Partypoker.net Boston/NY Poker Challenge. I'm interested in Ford's Road Ahead, but would rather read about it in tomorrow's edition of the Boston Globe. (Incidentally, is it just me or is it kind of creepy that NESN, the Globe, and the Sox have overlapping ownerships?). I don't care what's On Tap, even if it's Red Sox Rewind immediately following SportsDesk and Granite City Extra Innings Extra. I don't need a Musical Montage featuring Hot Stuff when Terry Francona gets thrown out of the game. I certainly don't need to see a Very Special Presentation of a replica World Series trophy to the stuffed Wally the Green Monster that hangs out in the booth.

What I want is to be able to watch a baseball game without being reminded every three minutes of what network I'm watching and how else I can help that network rake in revenues. I guess I'm going to have to wait until the next time I get ESPN's 3rd or 4th-string broadcast crew for that.

(Dave's World is going to add a concurring postscript. As I've mentioned on the site several times, I have the DirecTV MLB baseball package. I've been watching a ton of baseball this year. At first, I remember watching a Yankees game on YES and thinking "hmm ... these announcers aren't half-bad." Then I watched a Dodgers game and listened to Vin Scully. An absolute pleasure. Then I watched the entire Sox-Indians series in Cleveland off the Fox Sports Ohio feed, and thought, "hey, these guys are great."

And it finally dawned on me -- they actually talk about baseball during baseball games in other cities; and they actually let baseball unfold at its natural pace, rather than cram every last second of the broadcast with some sort of visual or noise pollution. Even the Yankees have figured this out. They force Steinbrenner propaganda down your throat, but they don't hawk more products than the Home Shopping Network between pitches. Is NESN afraid that baseball games played by the defending world champions in a baseball-mad region that lives and dies with their team isn't interesting enough?

So in case you're wondering if baseball broadcasts around the country have been turned into a cacophony of bad jokes, nonstop carnival barking, and general annoying dreck, the answer is, no, they haven't, its just NESN).

Football Thursday

I commissioned a PR firm to conduct a worldwide poll of Dave's World readers, asking which of the Football Thursday celebrity guest panelists you wanted to have back for a second appearance. And the voting was nearly unanimous -- everybody loves Steve Sears.

Either that, or, Steve was the only person on Instant Messenger when I realized at the last minute I forgot to ask anyone to pitch in this week.

So welcome back, Steve, who joins in along with world-class troublemaker Dave Scott, underground bunker-based Idaho misanthrope Shawn O'Neal, heterosexual male Howie Day fan Chris Forsberg, and your lame-duck blogger for the second-to-last week of Dave's World Football picks.

Game of the Week: Dallas at Philadelphia

SO'N: Millions of Americans surely breathed a sigh of relief when the Eagles made it official and booted TO -- please, do not ever call him Terrell Owens -- for the year and, probably, forever. Finally, ESPN can start focusing on other things. But seriously, this incestuous lust for all things TO by The Mouse takes me back to my high school graduation. It was then that Bryan Adams' emasculation anthem "Everything I Do (I Do It For You)" was omnipresent. It was like if they were to start televising poker from Starbucks. Anyway, I remember thinking to my self, "self, I wish they had a station that played only this song, so people could hear it 24/7 and the rest of us would be spared the pain." So, how 'bout it ESPN? Can we have TO TV so the rest of us can live normal, happy lives? BTW, Drew and the Pokes win, taking another step toward Super Bowl inevitability.

DS: In Tuna we trust, despite the distinct possibility that Donovan F. McNabb winds up throwing for 400 yards and running for another 200. There's still just too much T.O. residual for the Eagles to be fully concentrating on Drew, Terry and Keyshawn.

SS: So I hear T.O. won't be playing in this game. In situations like this, a team such as Philly could implode and tank the rest of the season or they could rally around each other. I'll go with the latter. As for the 'Boys, since Bill Parcells likes to bring back old retreads, like Drew Bledsoe, I've been scouring the transactions to see if he has picked up Kevin Turner, Vincent Brown, Marion Butts or Ray Crittenden. Unfortunately I have yet to see their names. If I had, I would pick Dallas in a route, but I think Philly rallies in this one.

CF: The Burger King Web site doesn't contain a single reference to the King this week, which seems to confirm the rumors that the Dallas
Cowboys signed him during their bye week. It makes sense, too. The
King has shown the ability to thrive around Cowboys' quarterbacks —
stepping in front of a Drew Bledsoe offering in one spot, and
catching that tight spiral from Quincy Carter in another. Distraught
at being shown up by a former fast food mascot, Terrell Owens hires
fellow Philadelphia sports star Ugueth Urbina to light the King on
fire after the Cowboys prevail.

DD: Great, I'm the last one up, and there have already been four T.O. references and a Burger King reference. Ummm … did you see the finish of the Dallas-Seattle game a couple weeks back? Didn't that bring back nightmares? This week Drew is going to trot out another old Bledsoe favorite. This is what I called "The Bledsoe Lean," where, on a quarterback sneak on 4th-and-5 inches, he would grab the ball and just sort of stand there and lean forward instead of actually running forward like Tom Brady, who seems to average about 15 yards on keepers up the middle. Did Drew ever convert a 4th-down sneak in his life?

Other NFL Games

SO'N: Houston at Indianapolis -- You really want me to pick this game? OK, Indy. Now, back to TO. I bash ESPN for their coverage of all things TO, but I gotta admit, I watched the "apology" press conference live. And since I don't even watch the NFL live, I suppose that's why The World Wide Leader gives his every move play usually reserved for presidential assassinations. There. I'm part of the problem. I admit that. I have an insatiable appetite for TO. And nachos. TO AND nachos? Now, that's a party.

(Dave's World interjects: Did you think the Peyton Manning Fun Fact was going to go away just because the Colts finally beat the Pats for the first time since the franchise moved from Baltimore? If you did, you underestimate me. Here is this week's Fun Fact: Peyton wears the number 18 in honor of his 1-8 record in Foxboro).(Yes, I know it is actually 1-7. Send your correction email to norings@peyton.net).

Washington at Tampa Bay -- My favorite part of the TO apology presser was when Drew Rosenhaus addressed reports that he was ready to drop TO as a client. Rosenhaus then referred to TO as "a great person" before bellowing "I love this man!" It was like watching DVD outtakes from "Jerry Maguire." Hell, standing in the background, TO even looked like Rod Tidwell. I kept waiting for Rosenhaus to actually show us all the true meaning of his "personal-services contract." Who's gonna win between the Skins and Bucs? Next question.

DS: Patriots at Miami -- The free pass that this edition of the Patriots is getting -– even from venom-filled WEEI 850 AM in Boston -– is nothing short of incredible. They're hurt; they're adjusting to new coaches; they're coming back to the pack.

Oh yeah? How about this one: They're playing awful football. Poor execution, mental lapses and even all-out exasperation (Brady on the bench, eyes turned skyward) have been evident all season. They are the ultimate WiLo bunch: Win one, lose one, win one, lose one, and so on.

Fortunately, for the suck-ups in Boston, this is a "win-one" week. But it won't be easy, and that's nothing short of comical.

Kansas City at Buffalo -- If Dick Vermeil cries one more time, he's officially eligible for Academy Awards nominations. Onion cutters in a French onion soup factory don't cry as much as this softy.

That said, you had to love the call to go for the win (at home) last week, instead of the OT-inducing tie. Vermeil can cry a river all the way to Detroit for the Super Bowl if he keeps making gutsy calls like that one

SS: Minnesota at New York Giants -- Talk about overrated; this whole sex-cruise business is way overblown. Like the stodgy old reporters who are losing their collective comb-overs would not have done the same thing given the opportunity? It's almost as ridiculous as calling the Stone Temple Pilots, owners of one of the better albums of the 90s (Purple), the most overrated band of all time. The honor most assuredly belongs to KISS. They are terrible. I think the Giants fall back down to earth this week, but there is no way they should lose to the Vikes at home. Take the G-Men.

(Dave's World interjects: Steve, you get a free pass here because you were about 10 years old when the whole Seattle music thing broke and were too young to discern between giants of the industry like Nirvana and their corporately cloned knockoffs. For the rest of you, remember: Worst band ever: STP, Second worst: Creed).

New York Jets at Carolina -- If you watch ESPN on Sunday nights/Monday mornings you can sing along to the tune of the "Here's to football" song. "I love Ty Law getting punked, Brooks Bollinger throwing junk, and the Jets getting dunked ... for just two wins!" I won't torture you any longer. When ESPN started doing this every week during football season a few years ago, I thought it was just a temporary thing. Boy, was I wrong. Does the guy write this stuff during Sundays in Bristol, Conn. trying to find a word that rhymes with Kimo von Oelhoffen as Dan Patrick screams, "We need the song now! Now! We're running out of time!" As far as the game goes, no sane person can take Brooks Bollinger on the road in Carolina. Thanks, Dave. This was an easy one.

DD: St. Louis at Seattle -- We're taking a break here to discuss Tuesday's Seattle municipal elections. Now, Seattle's streets and highways are congested as bad as any city in the country. The roads themselves are outdated. The cost of gas is such that we're supposed to be happy we're "only" paying $2.55. There's a transportation crunch and things are only getting worse. So what did Seattlites do Tuesday? They voted down a monorail plan that would have connected the north and southwest of the city through the ridiculously congested downtown. Not to mention, would have stopped at the stadia for which they were OK with spending a billion dollars (which sit on the spot of the former Kingdome, which was imploded five years ago, a building for which they are also still paying). Meanwhile, the cityfolk won't get back a dime of the $200 million they've already sunk into the project; and will continue to be taxed on the rail line that won't be built for another two years. If you've ever seriously considered Northwest living, relocate to Portland or Vancouver instead, where they actually get public works projects finished (hell, Vancouver even got the Olympics). Oh, and the Seahawks will fall apart like they always do, starting Sunday.

Cleveland at Pittsburgh -- So I was having an instant message conversation with a friend of mine recently in which we were discussing odd names for arenas. (If you wonder if I might have something better to do with my life, scroll down and see my 2,000-word post on Mexican wrestling and you'll have your answer). Without a doubt, my favorite offbeat-sounding name for a facility is Diddle Arena, which, seemingly appropriately, is in Western Kentucky, and hosts WKU hoops. Then I googled Diddle Arena and found out that it was named after WKU legend Edgar Allen Diddle. Edgar Allen Diddle! Sounds like the lead character in an adult movie with a Poe theme. Oh yeah, anyway, Cleveland wins.

CF: Denver at Oakland -- Oakland fans think opposing teams hate them because of how unstoppable they used to be. No, we just hate the Raiders because of their fans. (D's W: Chris linked a series of photos to his picks this week that I'm not linking. The one I was supposed to put here was of a goofy looking dressed up Raiders fan). Listen, I give the guy an 'A' for effort. I'm sure he spent a good 8 to 10 hours concocting that ripped-off head in a Saints helmet. But chances are he skipped his kid's school play to do it. And when Little Billy wanted to play catch in the backyard on Sunday, Daddy was too busy painting his face to look like a zebra with vertigo.

Jacksonville at Baltimore -- Am I the only who thinks Jacksonville quarterback Bryan Leftwich looks exactly like Saturday Night Live's Kenan Thompson? (D's W: Here, Chris linked to a photo of Urkel for some reason). I mean, every time I see him on the sideline with his helmet off I keep waiting for that Kel guy to run over and start screaming something about Good Burger. And while we're totally ignoring the pick -- and why not since Jamal Lewis couldn't rush for 100 yards against the cast of All That, let alone the Jacksonville D -- it's simply impossible to flip past Dance 360 on UPN (which is co-hosted by Kel Mitchell and former Onyx frontman Fredro Starr). Tag ya man! Tag ya man!

Colleges

SO'N: Alabama at LSU --If an Alabama team finishes undefeated and out of the national-title game for a second straight year, get ready for the Apocalypse. The good folks at Auburn got screwed last year, and if Texas, Southern Cal and Alabama win out, the Tide will get the shaft this year. If it happens, Paul "Bear" Bryant will rise from his grave and a lead a coalition of living and dead Auburn and Alabama football fans on a rampage to make the Crusades look like the lunch rush at Subway. The good news is this — Alabama's offense is so bad even Bear's ghost knows this team is a fraud. The Tide are plenty good, and the defense is perhaps the nation's best, but this is no title contender and LSU will put things in perspective.

DS: UMass at Army -- The last time UMass and Army met was, well, whenever the last riot in Southwest was started over a sporting event or a racial insult. Likely, last weekend or perhaps, last night, knowing my Amherst disciples.

On the football field, the two teams have met just once before (a Minuteman loss in 1977) and in its I-AA history (dating back to the division's formation in 1978), UMass is, according to the Minuteman game notes, "8-16 against I-A foes, with the last victory being a 26-10 triumph over Ball State on Sept. 1, 1984, at home at McGuirk Alumni Stadium."

Would it be too bold to predict the 7-2 Minutemen beat the host, 2-6 Black Knights?

We think not. And with the Minuteman win, all the ROTC kids hanging out at Boyden are torn between their two allegiances, but decide they might as well join the riots instead of stopping them.

SS: Navy at Notre Dame -- The Fighting Irish (this nickname offends me) have obviously dominated the Midshipmen, beating them 41 straight times. That will be 42 by late Saturday afternoon. We all know about Notre Dame, the success of Brady Quinn, the 300-year contract Charlie Weis just signed, but what about Navy? Well, Lamar Owens is the quarterback. They like to run. They ... uh.... like boats. That's all I've got. I just have to say "Thanks, Dave" once again. I get the easy games, though I wish he had given me another chance to pick against Northeastern. Maybe next time.

CF: USC at Cal -- Southern Cal seems like the place to be. Heck, my friends are hightailing it to Los Angeles quicker than foxes lately. The only things that interests me about USC are the rumors about Matt Leinart dating that Kristin girl from Laguna Beach. Nice pull there, Matty. And since I'm on the picture kick, that shameless lead-in gives me an opportunity to present this, which I know Dave's World will have no problem posting on his site.... (D's W: Why Chris sent a shot of a shirtless Leinart, I'm not sure).

DD: Boise State at Fresno State -- How do you know it is November? When the Top 25 college basketball polls come out and Gonzaga is in the Top 10. This eventually leads to its corollary question -- how do you know it is March? When Gonzaga gets bounced in the first weekend of the NCAA tourney. (This will lead to the corollary email, where Shawn explains to me why it is different with the Zags this time, they're loaded).

Gonzaga, of course, routinely gets ranked higher than it deserves because writers back East feel they are obligated to rank the Zags high in order to avoid being accused of dreaded East Coast Bias -- you know, the same East Coast Bias that voted for Bartolo Colon over Mo Rivera as AL Cy Young; has USC atop the football polls for three years running; has 10 straight AL MVPs coming out of the West Division; etc.

Anyway, the football equivalent is the WAC, where Boise or Fresno and sometimes both end up in the Top 25 en route to the Humanitarian Bowl or the galleryfurniture.com bowl or some other such holiday classic. And it will probably be Boise, which has been putting up absurd numbers of points recently.

Last week's Football Thursday

Duel to the death

I just witnessed the craziest Wild Kingdom-esque death battle right outside my window as I edited Football Thursday.

So there is this massive spider with a web on a tree right outside my office window. I myself would not mess with this thing. It is roughly the size of Ted Washington.

I also suddenly have a hornets nest somewhere near the house. Why the hornets arrived in November in Seattle, don't ask me.

Either way, you can see the invetable showdown looming.

Occasionally, hornets would come close to the web, but the spider would shake violently and scare them off.

Finally, one came too close and got caught in the web. The spider tried to pounce, but the hornet kept flashing its stinger. The spider would manuever around the stinger and try to bite; the hornet would thrash around and try to sting.

This went on longer than you might think. Eventually the hornet got a little too tangled in the web and it was lights out soon thereafter.

The spider just got done wrapping him up in webbing and then did a little touchdown dance and I think he just pulled out a Sharpie.

No, I'm not making any of that up, except the Sharpie part.

Hit the road, jack

Yes kids, those rumors you heard were true -- I have accepted a job at FOXSports.com in Los Angeles and will be starting in a couple weeks. It is quite an exciting opportunity and I can't wait to get started.

I'd like to thank The Sports Xchange, for whom I've been working the past seven months. TSX is a great little company that is carving out a solid niche for itself at a time much of the sports journalism business is contracting and their future is bright.

Alas, this means Dave's World will be closing its doors soon. No one has told me I have to shut things down, but I'm starting a new job and want to give it my full attention. In the interim I'll check in when I can over the next week and we'll have our regular Football Thursday roundtable tomorrow and next week.

Now, I have a question or two for the peanut gallery: I'm going to be driving down I-5 from Seattle to LA soon. I'll be taking a few days to do so and stopping to visit a couple friends along the way. Has anyone out there ever done all or part of this drive? If I was going to stop somewhere along the way and spend an afternoon seeing some sort of place that I should see at least once in my lifetime, what would you recommend? Crater Lake? Redwoods National Park? Mt. Shasta? Tacoma? Drop me a line and tell me what you think.

Monday musings

Pretty big development out here -- I am looking out my front window here at Dave's World HQ in West Seattle and see a big patch of blue in the sky. This is the first piece of non-grey sky I have seen in the week since I've come back from Boston.

I moved out here right around the time rainy season ended, so I forgot how dreary it can get here, especially right after you turn the clocks back and it is dark at 4 p.m.

So right now I'm going to head off and do what I call The Seattle Stare, where you stop what you're doing and look up at that rare patch of blue sky and ponder the fact you haven't seen the sun for weeks and probably won't see it again for another several weeks unless you jump into your car and drive to California or something.

*OK, I'm back. What an awesome finish to Kansas City-Oakland yesterday. When the second-to-last play got stopped at the one-yard line, I was all but screaming at my television for the Chiefs to go for the touchdown instead of a game-tying field goal, and I could care less either way about the Kansas City Chiefs. The best part of this is that it took about four seconds after the final play for Dick Vermeil to start crying. I know Dick Vermeil cries about everything, but it has been awhile since he's done so in the national spotlight. God bless Dick Vermeil.

*T.O. is back in the news, and … zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz … *yawn* … what was I talking about?

*The New England Revolution are playing in Copa MLS? Am I reading this right? When did this happen? Here's my take on soccer: I love World Cup soccer. I love following the U.S. men's national team. Some of my fondest sports-viewing memories involve the men's national team, including the time my friend Chile (of Dave's World Chile's Corner fame) accidentally got us tickets in the Jamaican rooting section for the US-Jamaica qualifying match at Foxboro Stadium. Or the time Chile and I went to a Gold Cup doubleheader in Foxboro, and the El Salvadoran fans claimed the section we were sitting in as their rooting section for their match with Costa Rica, and I was unwittingly wearing Costa Rican red.

MLS? Not so much. The last MLS match I was at was a Revs-Burn game I covered for the Ft. Worth newspaper last fall. The last MLS game I attended as a spectator was a D.C. United-Revs game in April or May of 2004. There was a crowd of about 25,000 there to see Freddy Adu. DC scored on a Revs own goal about five minutes in and then spent the next 85 minutes clogging the midfield. It was as if they were making a deliberate attempt to turn off a huge crowd to the MLS product so that they never came back.

But, who knows? Maybe it has gotten better. I'll flagrantly jump on the bandwagon and check out the title game.

*Spike TV is replaying their Ultimate Fighting Championship special from Saturday night tonight. I missed it the first time out, but the buzz on the 'net is that this was one of the most exciting fight cards in mixed martial arts history. I'll be checking that out at least during the commercials of Pats-Colts. They are also re-airing the two-hour Total Nonstop Action wrestling two-hour special from last Thursday afterwards. I've been meaning to write about this for awhile now, but, in short, TNA wrestling on Spike gets two big thumbs up from Dave's World. True, the group has a fraction of the WWE's budget, but the product is infinitely better and they're starting to get a buzz as the in-thing in wrestling, with the WWE going the way of the hula hoop.

*Check this out.

CMLL live! (sorta)

Alrighty, then. Since I have both no life and a nagging cold that is apparently never going away, I've decided it is time to do a live CMLL wrestling blog. By "live," I mean "show that I Tivo'd two weeks ago that I'm finally getting around to watching," and the shows being aired on Galavsion are five months old, but it is live to me. Here goes:

The show begins with a bang. Dr. X is putting his Mexican national welterweight title on the line against La Mascara.

I've done some research, here. The Mexican national weight class championships are actually controlled by the athletic commissions and not the wrestling promoters. They treat them like real sports titles, and only wrestlers actually from Mexico can hold or challenge for the belts. I kid you not. That's got to make for some interesting behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing.

Anyway, keen followers of Dave's World's Mexican wrestling coverage (all three of you) may have noticed that never once have I bothered to mention the name of La Mascara, not even in passing. Why La Mascara is being given this golden opportunity to show he is the best welterweight in Mexico is beyond me.

In the time it took me to write that last paragraph, Doctor Equis has already claimed victory in the first fall. His submission move looked like a soccer team trainer stretching out a player's hamstring and appeared roughly as devastating, but, you know, I've never set foot in the ring at Arena Mexico, so I'm not going to question these gladiators.

So, Dr. X, who usually wears a menacing looking costume but tonight is dressed head to toe in white for some reason, recklessly careens into the turnbuckles to start the second fall, as LaM gets out of the way. I mean, I know Dr. X has a 1-0 lead and you want to put your opponent away when you can, but that was just a needless gamble. Within moments, LaM evens the score with a bizarre looking submission hold. Basically, La Mascara stands over Dr. X, hooks the Doctor's feet up to his hips, grabs his arms, and swings him back and forth between his legs.

One might logically ask, "Why doesn't Dr. X just drop his feet off La Mascara's hips and break the hold?" One can only assume Dr. X was in such blinding pain that he could not think straight.

Alright, time for the third and deciding fall. Back and forth action, but La Mascara gets the upper hand with a pretty cool headfirst dive through the ropes that has the announcer screaming "suicida!!!" over and over. LaMa applies the same move he used for the second-fall submission -- you'd think Dr. X would have looked to avoid this the second time around -- and within seconds, we have a winner. La Mascara is now the No. 1 welterweight in all of Mexico (so long as you ignore CMLL welterweight champ Mephisto and WWA welter champ El Hijo Del Santo) and has a snazzy new belt for his wardrobe.

*****

Next match, six-man tag. They didn't tell us who beforehand, so we'll just watch the entrances for now.

Oh lord. Here comes Heavy Metal. Heavy Metal comes out to the ring to Rainbow in the Dark by Dio. I'd quip "Heavy Metal is so old he's been using this song since Dio was popular," but Dio was never popular.

From bad to worse … next up is Mascara Magica. "Magic Mask" does not wear a mask. Perhaps the mask is invisible, and that's why it is magical.

And the final partner is Negro Casas, one of the all-time greats. This team is sort of like having David Ortiz surrounded in the lineup by Craig Grebeck and Ed Sprague. Which is probably Larry Lucchino's plan for next year, but that's for another day.

OK, the opposition … Hector Garza comes out first. Hector Garza is phenomenal. He's with the team of Halloween and Damian 666. Ehh. Halloween and Damian are decent performers, but they have a low-budget look and a 1997 NWO-type routine. If I wanted to bore myself with yesterday's news, I'd turn on Monday Night Raw.

So it is basically Casas vs. Garza and a bunch of extras. We're just going to fast forward to the end, here -- and a spectacular finish it is. Casas is laid out about two-thirds of the way across the ring, and Garza hits a moonsault, getting about as high in the air as I've ever seen anyone hit it. Metal and Magica are of course no help and Garza scores the pin.

*****

Now it is time for Momentos Estelares, which is sort of like SportsCenter's Top Plays. In order: Ricky Marvin, who looks like one of the British Bulldogs, uses a flying head scissors to knock Hooligan from the ring apron to the floor. That had to hurt. Incidentally, it just dawned on me that Hooligan has a union jack on his mask, so I think he is supposed to be a soccer thug. . . . La Mascara scored a submission over Dr. X in a tag team match. Man, there's a Patriots/Peyton Manning dynamic going on between these two. . . . Marvin lays out Virus with a dive through the ropes . . . Dos Caras Jr. whips Universo 2000 into the buckles, comes after him, jumps, and kicks U2K in the chin with one foot, then nails in him the back of the head with his other foot, all in one motion. Both kicks look like they landed way too hard.

*****

Wow … they are teasing a mano-a-mano matchup between Mistico and El Hijo Del Perro Aguayo later in the show. That is HUGE. That's like just suddenly mentioning "oh, by the way, in about a half-hour we'll have Ali fight Frazier" out of the blue.

The best tag team in the world, Ultimo Guerrero and Rey Bucanero, are talking to each other backstage. I don't speak Spanish, so I am going to assume they are talking about how their careers in the States will take off if Dave's World keeps writing about them.

*****

Match No. 3: Tiger Mask, Ultimo Dragon, and Dos Caras Jr. against Guerrero, Bucanero, and Tarzan Boy. Let's just take a look at the subplots here instead of the match itself:

*Tiger Mask is a sad sight. Real old-school wrestling fans might remember him as a huge star from Japan in the early 1980s, an innovative high flyer who made a splash in America. He was about 5-7 and 140 pounds at the time. Now, he basically looks like Mike Scioscia dressed up in a tiger costume. The 2005 version of Mike Scioscia. In his prime, TM used to spin kick his opponent out of the ring and then follow up with a lightning-quick dive. He tried it here, but it was sort of watching Paul Coffey play for the Bruins.

*Ultimo Dragon is a Hall of Famer. He's a Japanese guy who made his name in Mexico and has wrestled all over the world. He's Guerrero's original trainer, so there is a teacher-student undercurrent here.

*Dos Caras Jr., nephew of Lucha legend Mil Mascaras, is a legit mixed martial arts fighter. Unclear on whether he fights MMA with his mask on.

*Tarzan Boy's presence as Bucanero and Guerrero's partner usually gives away who is going to get pinned to end the third fall.

*And most importantly, the tecnicos are accompanied by Que Monito, the midget gorilla formerly affiliated with Shocker. Shocker, you may recall, took the coward's way out and jumped to the AAA promotion, where the competition is nice and soft for little babies who can't handle the rough-and-tumble world of CMLL. Que Monito, however, is a primate with an innate sense of integrity and loyalty who understands that jumping from company to company to company kills your reputation dead.

Surprise finish to this one … Dos Caras ripped apart Guerrero's mask, then dumped him backwards for a nasty German suplex and got the pin.

*****

Main event time. Mistico against H. del Perro. How do I explain the sheer huge-ocity of this match? Imagine going to the ballpark and getting a pitching matchup of Dontrelle Willis and Johan Santana; or Peyton vs. Brady in football; or better yet, Brady Q. vs. Matt Leinart. Here you have the two hottest rising stars in the biz, one on one, no six-man tag with partners to hide behind. The crowd at Arena Mexico --they just panned the building, attendance looks to be roughly eight billion -- is going absolutely nuts in anticipation.

First fall -- The highlight was Mistico doing this insane running dive out of the ring in which he grabbed the ropes, went head over heels, did a 720 degree twist in midair, and nailed Perro. Now, if there are still any wrestling nonbelievers out there, they're snickering and calling that an unrealistic fighting move, but I'll have them know I was once in a bar brawl and performed the same maneuver, doing the same twist as I dove over a table and hit my target. The guy never messed with me again; in fact, he ran home crying to his mama.

Either way, Perro rebounded to score the pin after his signature running double foot stomp to the chest. The slo-mo replay might make it appear to the untrained eye that Perro doesn't put much force into his stomp, but let's please be realistic here and not get carried away -- Perro just wants to do enough damage to win, not get charged with murder.

Second fall -- Perro kicks the bejeezus out of Mistico for about 10 minutes and rips his mask. But Mistico catches him napping and hits his finishing move -- a wristlock, an ironic touch considering the spectacularity of the rest of his offensive arsenal.

Third fall -- Too much action for ten reporters to cover, much less one humble scribe. The match, in total, goes well over a half hour and the crowd works to a fever pitch (not a Fever Pitch. That would imply the crowd is trite and overexposed). Time for the big finish -- Perro accidentally knocks veteran ref Bebe Richards out of the ring. Perro rips Mistico's mask off (revealing that Mistico has bleached his hair blond: why someone who wears a mask would need to bleach his hair is beyond me) and goes to pin Mistico. Local newspaper El Globo runs a "Perro defeats Mistico" headline. By the time Bebe gets back in position, Mistico, with his mask back on, kicks out at two and three-quarters. Perro goes to argue with the ref, and Mistico gets up and applies the wristlock for the win.

This very well might be the Dave's World Mexican Wresling Match of the Year . . . but we're not done yet. Mistico is angry. He grabs the mic, jibber jabbers about something, and yells "mascara contra cabello!" Even I know that means he just challenged Perro to a mask vs. hair match. Matches in which the loser has to either permanently remove his mask, or get his head shaved if he has no mask, are the ultimate in dispute resolution in Mexican wrestling, the Supreme Court of the ring.

Quite a show this week. I need a cigarette. And I've never smoked in my life.

Football Thursday

OK, we're trying something new this week. Anyone who has tuned into this warped little site for the past six months knows that I love tweaking Peyton Manning, or, more specifically, the fact that the same voices in the national media build him up over and over and over again in an unprecedented manner for a football player who has constantly spit the bit when it matters most.

So needless to say, Monday night's Colts-Patriots game is about as big as regular-season games get in Dave's World. So we are going to have the entire gang pick a winner in the Colts-Pats game, which means a few games are going to get left off the board this week.

Also, joining the roundtable regulars this week -- Chris Forsberg, Dave Scott, and Shawn O'Neal -- is Boston freelancer writer extraordinaire Matt Kalman, who is a pretty good guy for a New Yorker.


Indianapolis at New England

SO'N: I don't watch the NFL. I know that this will shock those of you who trek to Dave's World weekly for the pittance of NFL knowledge I drop into your trembling, grateful hands. As a college football addict, I have an agreement with my wife -- I get to sit around and watch TV on Saturday in exchange for "honey-dos" on Sunday. My total NFL viewing this year was the final five minutes of Seattle's win over Dallas a couple weeks back, which commenced right after I finished pulling 16 bags of leaves off my yard. But even I'm going to watch this game. I mean, it's Peyton vs. The Pats -- the NFL's version of a train wreck in a tunnel. New England has no business winning this game, which is why the postgame presser will be all the more entertaining when it happens.

(Dave's World interjects: By "honey-dos," I think he means donuts).

DS: In case you hadn't heard the news -- and I know how the Theo Epstein stuff tended to drown out a bunch of worthy items -- we're currently riding a two-week undefeated streak. That's right, friends. Eight and oh over the past two weeks of this glorious football season.

It's getting so scary, that I'm picking aggregate goal finals from MLS and nailing them. Go Revs!

Oh, and as for the other football team that uses the pitch at Gillette? They'll be fortunate to keep it within 30. You think you've seen long plays from Denver and Buffalo? It's not unthinkable for the Colts to have scoring plays of 120 or 150 yards when you count add in the celebration yardage that Marvin and The Edge will be experiencing.

MK: I can guarantee at least one thing about this game (and this isn't one of those Patrick Ewing "I'm going to make guarantees until one comes true" guarantees). In Tuesday's Boston Herald, you'll find at least one or two well written, articulate, descriptive, informative, insightful and enjoyable sidebars about this contest, written by a Semitic ex-New Yorker with a broad intellect and a gift for making Lewis Black seem like he doesn't complain enough. That is, unless I get re-assigned to covering some Boston Lobsters off-season GM meeting or something.

Oh, and this just in! A Red Sox source says, "Theo Epstein was a pedophile priest in a former life." Remember, the source is unnamed and isn't a scummy lawyer who always wanted to run the kid out of town and take all the credit for the best three seasons of baseball you Chowdaheads who fill that rickety, warn out, smelly dump of a ballpark have ever witnessed.

Shoot, I'm supposed to pick a football game or something, right? Well every time some schmuck on TV or radio in print picks against the Pats, I turn to whomever's next to me (or just say to myself), "How the hell do you ever pick against the Pats?" 'Nuff said.

DD: I've spent many an afternoon or evening at Gillette working alongside Matt, usually with both of us doing sidebar duty for competing papers. Ah yes, sidebars. Easiest gig in the journalism business. Get there hours early, watch as columnists who used to rip apart Bob Kraft saw no problem with stuffing their faces with piles of Kraft's free buffet spread (and go back for second and thirds and fourths), then sit back and watch the game and take notes.

Then, file the following Pulitzer-worthy gem: "Deion Branch's catch was huge tonight. How huge? 'My catch was huge,' said Branch. Tom Brady agreed. 'Boy, what a big catch Branch had,' the quarterback said." And so on.

Anyway, common sense would seem to indicate the Colts should march all over the field on Monday night. But then, common sense never accounted for Grady Little leaving Pedro in the game or Florida State missing all those gimmee kicks against Miami every year. Indy will find a way to screw this up.

CF: As much as I dread hearing the Peyton Manning hype after the game, I want the Colts to win. "Blasphemy," you say? No, just keeping with
history. Look at the Pats' three Super Bowl runs. There's one
consistent theme: Late-season inspiration from a regular-season defeat.

In 2001 it was a Sunday-night loss to the Rams in Foxboro, a game the
Pats probably would have won if Antowain Smith didn't fumble at the
goal line. Fast forward to the Super Bowl where the Pats are
inexplicably massive underdogs and simply outhit the Rams for title
No. 1.

In 2003, it was the opening-day loss to the Bills and Lawyer Milloy.
Fast forward to Dec. 27 where the Pats reverse the favor with a 31-0
drubbing at the Razor that carries them through the playoffs and to
title No. 2.

And last year it was Pittsburgh, where the Pats lost on Halloween,
then atoned in January. That shoe should fit Peyton and Co. just
fine. Bonus points if the Colts have any sort of ridiculous
celebration after the win. I fully expect them to sip champagne in
the locker room.

Other NFL games

SO'N: Seattle at Arizona -- OK, maybe it's time to start taking Seattle seriously, at least as it pertains to the regular season. It sure looks like this team is going to run through the NFC West like any team of reasonable quality should. The Hawks are 5-2 (should be 6-1) and still have four games remaining with teams within their own, crappy division. That's why this game is among the most dangerous the Seahawks will play this year. Seattle just isn't good enough to roll past anyone and the Cardinals are exactly the kind of team that usually puts the Seahawks in proper perspective. Add in the fact that Seattle has next to nothing in the way of pass catchers and I'm taking the Cardinals.

Oakland at Kansas City -- He's got banged-up ribs and a pulled groin, but Randy Moss has to be loving life. For all those years in Minnesota, he was the bad egg. He was a guy with problems. He was a guy who smoked way too much bud. Think Minnesota would love to have Randy and his weed affinity back, now? Maybe not. The Vikings are sinking, but the Raiders are going nowhere in a hurry. and Kansas City is going there just a wee bit slower. About midway through the NFL season you start to see games that you simply know are going to mean nothing. KC won't catch Denver, but if the Chiefs are going to have any shot at the wild card, they must win this one … and they will.

MK: Giants at 49ers -- I want to thank Dave for the opportunity of a lifetime and also let him know that I had to turn down Letterman, Howard Stern and covering the Silver Lake-Cohasset field hockey game to sit down and write these picks. Now it's on to selecting a victor in the Jim Burt Bowl. You remember Jim Burt of course? The defensive lineman who played for both these clubs in a jersey five sizes too small so that the number looked like a bar code. His eyes were the size of saucers and he was famous for carrying his baby around on the sidelines after big wins –- no better place for a tike than an NFL sideline. BREAKING NEWS -– A Red Sox source tells me that Theo Epstein was seen on his way to this game, when he stopped and clubbed some seals at Fisherman's Wharf!!! I assure you the source does not have a law degree and isn't Italian and doesn't think he's better than everyone else.

In tribute to those poor seals, go with the Niners.

Detroit at Minnesota -- What better game for me to pick than one involving the best partying team in all of sports (including those South American soccer teams that sniff lines when they're not between them). I've read all the reports and still no sign of any midgets on that Vikings Love Boat. Sounds like I should give up this freelance writer gig and become a cruise director in the NFL. In all seriousness, I feel bad for these guys –- they've been persecuted for doing what every other team probably does in its own locker room and they were dumb enough to get caught. Damn, who hasn't drunkenly propositioned a waitress or two or three . . . well you know where I'm coming from. That's why the Vikings will win. And you know you want them to go all the way (pun intended) so Tagliabue can hand Tice the trophy and Tice get some Norwegian-looking honey to lapdance with it.

DS: San Diego at New York Jets -- This is a trick right? Doyle's given me the three easiest NFL games on the board and he expects me to fall flat on my face and ruin, what I affectionately am calling THE Streak.

Well it's not going to work: The Jets are awful, the Chargers are above average and there's no changing my mind on this one.

Chargers, big.

Pittsburgh at Green Bay -- Again, come on Doyle? You trying to mess with my psychological state? You must respect THE Streak just as Team UnderArmour must protect their house.

Brett Favre threw five damn INTs last week. Said Favre after the game, or so we'd like to think, "I just needed to get in the hands of some guys who could actually catch."

And let's give it up, while we're here, for Pittsburgh's QB coach, Mark Whipple and his Whiplash Offense principles that have helped Big Ben become who he is. Further, it gives us reason to mention that Whip brought home the Div. I-AA title for UMass. In the process he proved that Bob Marcum knows football coaching talent when he sees it.

It should be noted that Marcum also knew SID talent when he saw it, and often rewarded Shots with complimentary Rafters food because of it. What I wouldn't give for a dozen or so more free meals from Coach Marcum!
Steelers win.

CF: Atlanta at Miami -- The Miami Dolphins have a fight song. Yes, an NFL team with a fight song. So I couldn't pass up the opportunity to listen and neither should you. Go here.

Download and listen to a song that sounds like it might have been
concocted during the ho-down segment of Whose Line Is It Anyway? I
would give my right leg to see Ricky Williams score a touchdown then
have the Dolphins cue this track for celebration music.

Carolina at Tampa Bay -- Welcome to Tampa Bay, where the Buccaneers are going out of their way to prove that defense doesn't necessarily win championships. The Bucs are first in the league in total defense -- allowing 229.7 yards per game, nearly 24 yards less than second-place Baltimore -- while compiling a 5-2 record. But last week Tampa Bay allowed just 50 yards passing against San Francisco and still found a way to lose to one of the worst teams in football. Now that's impressive. But not as impressive as the Panthers' defense will look in flustering Chris Simms this week. Someone get Luke McCown ready.

DD: Philadelphia at Washington -- Had a pretty spirited discussion with my friend Chile (of Dave's World Chile's Corner fame) over several pitchers of beer at the Sunset Grill last week about the most overrated band of all-time. He argued in favor of Creed. A worthy choice. I, however, voted for the Stone Temple Pilots. I maintain that STP was created out of thin air on a drawing board somewhere on Madison Avenue when Nirvana and Soundgarden and Pearl Jam all got huge, and the suits decided they needed a new grunge act. Basically, the Eagles are the football equivalent of Stone Temple Pilots. They may have had a hit or two and they were the beneficiaries of huge hype, but when push came to shove they were just posers. Redskins win.

Houston at Jacksonville -- Is it just me, or does it seem like the Jaguars have been on the verge of becoming a serious contender for about four years now? And, is it just me, or is Byron Leftwich constantly playing hurt? Either that, or he is attempting to master the Steve McNair trick of waiting until the camera is on you after the play in a key juncture before you suddenly start limping and clutching your ribs. Easiest way to a co-MVP, right there. Tom Brady should take notes. Anyway, the Texans won last week, and clearly are on to the start of something big.

COLLEGES

SO'N California at Oregon -- It's been a tough couple weeks for Oregon. First, the Ducks lost three-year starting QB Kellen Clemens for the season to a broken leg. Then, Nike unveiled the new uniforms they plan to soon unleash on an unsuspecting world. See, that's the downside to being Phil Knight's personal crew of cabana boys. Yeah, everything's bought and paid for -- you included -- but you gotta wear stuff like this Cal, meanwhile, has some of the sharpest unis in the nation. It won't matter. Oregon's Dennis Dixon finally gets his shot to QB and Oregon doesn't lose again this year.

(Dave's World interjects: Great. Like it doesn't take long enough to edit, format, and post this piece. Not content to simply turn every pick into War and Peace, the guys are now adding links. Next week they'll be sending me polls and charts.)

DS: Miami at Virginia Tech -- This Baby Vick has me on the cusp of believing in him. But it's gonna take more than beating BC's brains in. He needs to come up big in this one and all indications are he will.

Tech is on a mission to royally screw up the BCS and we're joining that quest in earnest this week.

We all do the Hokie-Pokie to celebrate.

MK: Notre Dame at Tennessee -- Other than Charlie Weis coaching the Irish and the fact that everyone in Boston hates the Golden Domers, I know nothing about this game. So let me use this space to say something very important:

Need a sportswriter? Well, here I am. I work hard. I produce tight, clean copy on deadline and I'm versatile. I've worked for more than 75 papers across the country, covered the Boston Bruins beat for a month and been the editor of New England Hockey Journal (shameless plug for hockeyjournal.com). If you read this site and think you have a job for me, contact me at mkalman@aol.com.

(Dave's World interjects: I recommend contacting Matt via IM while he's on deadline).

And pick the Volunteers in tribute to Allan Houston, an underachiever in many ways, but the sweetest jump shooter in Knicks history.

CF: Wisconsin over Penn State -- Dave's World hasn't seem to catch on to the fact that I, the typical New Englander, know and care very little about major conference college football. So while we're waiting for Holy Cross to snap its recent skein, I'll hand off to my good buddy Eric Avidon -- a former colleague at the Sentinel & Enterprise and now one of the brightest young stars at the MetroWest Daily News -- with the breakdown on this game (keep in mind he's a Wisconsin alum).

OK, off the record, Penn State wins.

Whoops. Meant to post his 146 on-the-record words hyping Heisman
Trophy candidate Brian Calhoun. But I'd feel a lot better about
picking Penn State if their coach wasn't 146 years old.

DD: USC-Stanford -- Funny thing happened back in September: Stanford lost at home to Division 1-AA Cal-Davis. Mind you, Stanford won on the road at Navy, no small feat. But they were still "the team that lost to Cal-Davis." Then they went on the road and beat Washington State. I was there with Shawn. Shawn reacted to his Cougs' loss as if he was told he can't feed his infant son chew and Schiltz anymore. Then the Cardinal beat Arizona. Three straight road wins, and the Card was still "that lousy team that lost to Cal-Davis." Then Stanford outgunned Arizona State, a team ranked in the top 10 at one point this season. Still, "they lost to Cal-Davis." Then the Cardinal almost knocked off undefeated UCLA. You guessed it, "lost to Cal-Davis."

Even if Stanford knocks off USC this week -- which isn't going to happen -- it will still be "the team that lost at home to Cal-Davis."


Assorted football links

• Andy Nesbitt's Foxsports.com picks from last week (updated on Fridays).
Complete with his high-school yearbook photo.


• Dave's World Football Thursday 10/13



• Randolph's Random Picks,
going strong for over a decade.


• Eric Mirlis's The Writers' Weekly Picks,



• Email

Mayhem

In case you haven't heard, Theo Epstein is no longer with the Boston Red Sox. That is a Dave's World exclusive, right there. I think.

Looks on this end like the Red Sox' Camelot period is over. The era that Sox fans spent their entire lives dreaming about -- where they win the World Series and surpass the Yankees in the process -- has come and gone.

And I'm not sure it is coming back anytime soon. The guy who plucked David Ortiz and Bill Mueller and Kevin Millar off the scrap heap; the guy who convinced Curt Schilling to pick the Red Sox over the Yankees; the guy who had the cojones to trade Nomar Garciaparra in a deal that addressed all the team's weaknesses; the guy who went out and signed a closer who got the job done after the lack of one led to their downfall in 2003; the guy who on paper should have been here for the next 20-30 years; he's the one who got shoved out the door.

The guy who is sticking around is the one who force feeds us Very Special Presentations For Wally The Green Monster and Red Sox nation membership cards and tries to sell us grass from the Fenway field.

Oh, and the guy who is sticking around is also the one that constantly pipes up and flings mud at everyone who leaves town -- from Pedro to Nomar and now Theo.

Can you imagine the Patriots acting that way? Can you imagine Jonathan Kraft running to a columnist last year and publicly dumping all over Scott Pioli right at the time they were about to announce a new deal? Of course not. Did people in the organization go out of their way to badmouth Ty Law when Law was running his mouth and calling his coach a liar? No. They would never consider behaving in that manner, and that is why they are constantly praised for being one of the classiest franchises in all of professional sports.

The Sox, on the other hand, now have no GM, assistant GM, have to either re-sign Johnny Damon or find another center fielder; likely need new first, second and third basemen; need to revamp the entire bullpen; and will likely need at least a couple new starting pitchers. And that doesn't even count the annual attempt to run Manny Ramirez out of town (I'll believe he actually requested a trade when I see either him or his agent confirm it).

What top-flight free agent or general manager prospect would want to hook on with the Red Sox after everything that just transpired? Especially if you know that someone looking over your shoulder in the office is going to eventually publicly trash you?

Anyway, Epstein can pretty much punch his own ticket from here. He did what no Red Sox general manager had done for 86 years. He has, by far, the strongest general managerial resume in the history of the Boston Red Sox. The 2003 team would have gone to the World Series if Grady Little hadn't made a catastrophic error; the 2004 team won it all; the 2005 team won 95 games and were eliminated by a World Series-winning team that went 11-1 in the postseason. The only more successful run in franchise history was when the team won it all in 1915, 1916, and 1918. Somewhere Theo will get both the money and the power he's looking for, no doubt.

As for the whole media three-ring circus, which every Boston sports related subject inevitably devolves into in a way that doesn't happen in most other cities, all that needs to be said is that the struggling Boston Herald won this battle in Super Bowl XX-type fashion. That about sums it up.

*Just a little private message for those of you who email or IM me to tell me that you don't like either the Sheriff Sully or Scott's Shots sites: Here are a couple ideas -- 1. Email them directly if you feel so strongly, or 2. If you dislike them that much, stop going on their site every day. Seems a reasonable solution.

*Alright, enough of that. Football Thursday is back on tap tomorrow. Time to look forward to Peyton getting his comeuppance yet again.

Hello

Went home to Boston for a few days and caught a nasty cold. Compound that with taking the red-eye across the country and back, and I can barely see straight. Your body just can't do at 32 what it could at 20.

Anyway, once I come down off my NyQuil-induced semi-coma, there's certainly a lot to talk about.

Back from Iraq

By Matt

I was walking through my local supermarket parking lot on my way to pick up some Pepsi the other day when I stopped mid-step.

Something felt odd.

The obvious answer might have been that I was in a parking lot a few blocks away from my apartment rather than a desert thousands of miles away. Another apparent answer would be that I wasn't wearing body armor, carrying an assault rifle, or getting shot at. But that couldn't explain what I was feeling.

Then, it hit me: The smell was missing.

As I walked through the wet parking lot on a crisp Northwest morning, all I could smell was the clean smell of autumn. There was no hint of burning garbage, or creeks made of decomposing trash heaps. I smiled, took a deep breath, and continued my mission.

I've had quite a few moments like this since my return late last month. Everything seems so different. I've felt like I've been living somebody else's life since I came home, like I'm living in somebody else's skin.

Take your life right now: Where you are, who you spend your time with, what you are doing. Imagine trying to revert to this life after a year of spending time with other people, thousands of miles away, often in the presence of danger.

It has been incredibly difficult trying to fall back into some of my old routines. Certain situations seem to bring these feelings out more than others. Whenever I've been in a large group setting like walking through the mall, or in a crowded bar, I've found myself being overwhelmed by the intensity of the sights and sounds.

Lately, however, it seems that I've found my groove. I've had quite a few experiences like my parking-lot epiphany since my return stateside, but even though it feels unnatural to be without the smell of burning trash and sewage water, I don't miss it at all. I'll take my Pepsi and my crisp autumn morning. It's good to be home.

Matt is a sergeant in the Stryker Brigade based out of Ft. Lewis, WA. He recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. During his tour, he wrote a series of dispatches for the site, linked below.

Dispatches from Iraq series links

• Dispatches from Iraq 8
  
  
• Dispatches from Iraq 7



• Dispatches from Iraq 6



• Dispatches from Iraq 5



• Dispatches from Iraq 4



• Dispatches from Iraq 3



• Dispatches from Iraq 2



• Dispatches from Iraq 1



• Dispatches from Iraq 5 feedback



• Reader feedback to Dispatches from Iraq 4



• Message from the mother-in-law of a fallen soldier



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