Coat of Sports

Eagles Can Finally Disappoint

My earliest sports memory is of my family taking me to a Philadelphia Phillies game at Veterans Stadium in 1983. Our seats were somewhere along the third baseline. Pete Rose came to bat. He grounded out to first. My father called him a "lousy bum." End of memory.

Later that year, the Phillies lost to the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series. I didn't really mind then. My older brother seemed to be quite upset by it. So much so that he ripped down his Mike Schmidt-Steve Carlton/MVP-Cy Young Poster. Little did I know this was just the first in a long line of serious disappointments.

As a lifelong Philadelphia sports fan (too young to remember the 1980 Phillies championship, or even the 76ers Broad Street parade) I’ve come to not only expect disappointment, but to relish it.

In that time, I’ve gotten to see the Phillies falter in the 1993 World Series -- a series they were four outs away from winning. Too bad those four outs were in two different games. I saw the Flyers falter in the 1996 Stanley Cup Finals. And I cringed as the Sixers got swept away in the NBA Finals in 2001. Each of these teams stepped up and lost the big game. They lost when it counted. They had reached the highest echelons of disappointment.

In that time, the Eagles have been a failure, but only in a bush-league sort of way. They’ve lost a lot of games since I first became a conscious sports fan (sometime during that 1983 Phillies season). But they’ve lost mostly meaningless games. They never lost the big one. Dare I say, they've been bad at losing.

Next Sunday, in Super Bowl XXIX, I can only hope that the Eagles will lose the big game, and disappoint me in a way they’ve never been able to before.


Maybe Next Year

Has anyone noticed yet that next year will be Super Bowl XL? Can’t you just imagine all the catchy slogans and t-shirt graphics? I’m so over Roman numerals…


Doug Mientkiewicz and Raider of the Last Ball

If you haven’t read this story yet, let me summarize:

Doug Mientkiewicz is a piece of human garbage.

When Cardinals shortstop Edgar Renteria hit a weak grounder back to Red Sox pitcher Keith Foulke in Game Four of the 2004 World Series, the Red Sox first championship in 88 years was clinched – almost. The out still had to be recorded.

Foulke turned toward first base and softly lobbed the ball to late-inning replacement Doug Mientkiewicz. Mientkiewicz, with his nimble hands and acute reflexes, grabbed the toss out of the air and squeezed the ball into his mitt. The out was made. The Red Sox were victorious. And Mientkiewicz continued to squeeze the ball in his mitt. He squeezed it all the way into the locker room. Then all the way out to his car. Then all the way to his safety deposit box in Florida.

Now, Mientkiewicz is keeping the ball and joking about his newly-found retirement plan.

As if professional athletes weren’t greedy enough, this mouth-breathing dip-shit (who only came to the Red Sox for the last two months of the season) stole a baseball. And not just any ball. A ball that represents generations of frustration, anguish and despair. He has no business keeping that ball. That ball, in the words of Indiana Jones, “belongs in a museum.”

Perhaps there are more important things for me to get upset about. It is only a ball.

Yet when you visit the Baseball Hall of Fame Museum, there is case after case, filled with anonymous looking baseballs. Each one looks pretty much the same. A white cover. Red stitches. Maybe a few scuffs. They’re almost all interchangeable. But they’re not.

Each ball holds its unique place in history. There it is -- inches from your nose -- the ball that scraped the outfield wall for a momentous homerun. Or the ball that popped into a catcher’s mitt for the final out of a perfect game. It’s a ball that made a dream come true. And it's there for everyone to enjoy. Fathers can point to it and tell their sons, "I remember that day."

Few objects represent history the way that ball locked away in Florida does. Like a holy relic, it has an energy. It vibrates at a frequency all it’s own.

Perhaps Mientkiewicz felt his .238 batting average more than made up for his $2.8 million salary this year. And the World Series bonus wasn’t enough either. No, he felt he needed more and decided to claim something he has no rightful ownership of. Given his actual level of performance, I think he should just be grateful the Red Sox haven’t charged him for all the extra letters on the back of his uniform.

I can only hope that this sort of greed is recognized and punished by a higher power. Again, as in Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark, I want to believe that right now the ball is burning a hole in the side of that safety deposit box. Better yet, maybe the next time Doug opens the box, lighting will shoot out of it and melt his face.