Labels: hockey

Further more, the full-of-himself, oaf of a ref, empirical umpire DARED to bark back at Pedroia something like "that's enough, or you're out of the game" when the Red Sox infielder asked him to get some help in getting that call right from the other umpires. He even stubbornly belched out that it was "his call to make" when Red Sox manager Terry Francona also pleaded with him to get the assistance from his peers on the field.

THIS IS WHY baseball sucks as much as LIFE can suck too, at times - because not only do both drag on and on, potentially for indefinite amounts of time, but both can be the stage of so many annoying ABUSES OF POWER.

They did say that baseball was an allegory of life, right?

That the nine innings it takes for completion of a game are allegorically referring to the different stages of life itself... Let's see now if there are nine of them indeed: for there are nine months of gestation, that is for sure, but nine stages after that...? Not so sure! Let's see now: early infancy, first steps, pre-school/kindergarten, first grade, the rest of the little school jungle and associated growing pains, high school and more growing pains, the ol' college try, first few jobs and a taste of the real world out there, weariness and retirement... OKAY, I AM CONVINCED!

Death would be the tenth stage - the final stage? Not quite the final, if you know better - as I do! But that is another story... (Death being number 10 is a story in itself indeed; but a "perfect ten" -the kind that Bo Derek purportedly was- it definitely is NOT. That debate is for another blog though...)

Baseball games being allegories for our LIVES, thus, umpires represent the flawed authority figures that we have floating all around us, oppressing us and pressing us to do MORE, whatever "more" is... Telling us to shut our mouths when injustice is flagrant. ORDERING US to accept their decisions, when their decisions are totally, entirely, completely OFF THE MARK!!!

Such debilitating incompetence shall not be suffered with impunity ANYMORE.

MARTY FOSTER - you're a marked man!

Just like Tim Tschida (uh - SIDA??! Stay away from me, plague!) is one...

Who's Tim Tschida, you ask?
Another inept umpire made famous through infamy when he blew a call (purposefully?) in one of those epic Red Sox-Yankess series of significance - an ALCS, no less! American League Championship Series, for those who might not know... The year was 1999 and Tschida was the second base umpire for that pivotal game 4, see? He totally blew the call when he effectively did the opposite of his cronie Marty today. It was in the eighth inning, and then Red Sox star Jose Offerman beat the defensive throw and was clearly NOT tagged by Yankees second-baseman Chuck Knoblauch (Knowyucch as he is known in these parts). Yet, Tschida saw a tag where there wasn't one and called Offerman out, which also occasionated an inning-ending double play that preserved the slim Yankee 3-2 lead in that game. "Knoblauch clearly whiffed on the tag" everyone concurs nowadays, even Tschida - but back then, the call was not reviewed, not even questioned, and it stood. And the Yankees stole that series, too.

The significance of that game, and the fact that the opponent was the hated New York bunch of scoundrels, angered the Fenway faithful much more then this latest injustice with Marty versus Dustin. Tschida's call against Offerman enraged the fans and within seconds they pelted the filed with all sorts of debris. Then Yankees manager Joe Torre was forced to pull his team into the dugout - for he knew how right the crowd was... More than anyone else, more than Tschida certainly, Torre knew that his team was stealing victory right there and then. But what else to do when you are offered such an opportunity? You take it, that's all. Hence the greater allegorical value of baseball in regards to everyday life - but let's not get too much into that here and now!

NESN's Tony Lee recapped that, for this latest series of injustices (the Boston Red Sox-Chicago White Sox series, in other words) and for the final game of that three-game set, the repeat offenders would be reunited: "Bill Welke (was) calling balls and strikes at Fenway Park, where the Red Sox and Chicago White Sox (met) in the second of three straight games.
Crew chief Tim Tschida (was) at first base, Mike Estabrook at second and Marty Foster at third."

Wow - Tschida AND Foster - one wondered immediately what insanely off-call Estabrook might make, one day, in order to complete this Three Stooges picture...? But, in all fairness, he didn't do it right there and then...

One can still wonder though how many more missed calls and victories it will cost the Red Sox before Tschida and Foster are permanently OUT. But then home plate umpire Welke could retire every big bat on the Sox line-up on a flurry of called third strikes and outdo the "unperformances" of the other two just like that.

And, again, we haven't seen what blown calls Estabrook is capable of, yet - him and the hundreds of other umpires waiting in the wings...!

In other words, the problem is not one or a bunch of inept individuals such as referees who refuse to use all that is at their disposal in order to circumvent their flawed perception of things and get things RIGHT.

The problem is THE SYSTEM.

And nobody wants to change the system - it works fine, up to a certain very defined and limited degree, but it works up until that point, so the attitude is LET IT FLY...

The allegorical reach of this, now, is tremendous: for it is applicable to virtually every strata of society: be it the financial structures, scientific contingent or the overall governing systems (usually so-called democratic capitalism) that are preferred in the world.

ALL are flawed - ALL prove to be inadequate, ultimately.

Yet all will remain in place as long as a certain elite profits from it, as it convinces the rest of us that it is all for our greater collective good, also, to stick with it...


Speaking of sticking to systems - baseball is not the only allegory to life there is, you know that... Any other sport could be seen as such - most notably HOCKEY. It is called 'ice hockey', yes, for those of you in fairer climates, true...

Believing in a system is great as long as it keeps producing the desired results for all parties involved - an example of that is the Boston Bruins' employ of defensive-minded coach Claude Julien's game plan. It was executed to perfection for two consecutive games (the decisive game seven against the Tampa Bay Lightning, which crowned the Boston Bruins as the Eastern Conference Champions, and the first game of the Stanley Cup Finals against the Western champs, the Vancouver Canucks.) And yet, it yielded two different results, yet eeriely similar: both times, it was a 1-0 final score. The Bruins won the first game, of course, but lost the second - DOING THE EXACT SAME THING, TO PERFECTION (it must be emphasized, again...)

Even the (so-called) experts admit it, and can hardly explain it:




One word here about those so-called experts now - Barry Melrose, I hate you, too! Here is the expert who picked the Boston Bruins to LOSE in every single round (except, perhaps, the first round against the Canadiens - but that's not for sure) and NOW, he's "Captain Positive" for the Boston cause...

Can we be any more two-faced, any more of a turncoat than this?
Not to mention any more of a bandwagon jumper...!

Melrose didn't see how the Boston Bruins could even HOPE to defeat the Philadelphia Flyers in the second round - the Bruins swept them in four straight.

Melrose saw no chance in hell for the Bruins to get past the speedier, "more talented roster" of the Tampa Bay crew. Boston prevailed in that one too, shutting out their allegedly "more talented" offense NOT ONCE BUT TWICE in order to win the series and advance to the Finals.

I forget what he said about the first round, really - I wasn't even listening! But, knowing Melrose, he looked at the regular season statistics and decided that the Montreal Canadiens, being ever the pests in the Boston Bruins' sides, were too quick and too confident (not to mention that they harbored too much hatred for the B's) NOT TO be able to steal yet another series they didn't deserve to even be in for starters...

And now it is this same Melrose who predicted that the Boston Bruins would win the Stanley Cup in FOUR STRAIGHT...?

Immediately, we see how his turnaround jinxed things, hopefully only temporarily for the Bruins - the B's do everything right (as he describes himself, and so he should, in the above video) except scoring the game's lone goal as they had done versus Tampa in their previous game - and so they drop that one.

SO NOW, Melrose adjusts and predicts the Bruins win will be in FIVE games. Yeah, give me FIVE, Barry...!

That was *my* prediction all along - but I wanted to see the Bruins take a game right away. And see the Bruins take the wind out of the bandwagon-hopping tools that are the Vancouver Green Men - and you! I wanted to see the delusions of grandeur of Vancouver totally demolished from the get-go. I wanted to see the Boston Bruins take game ONE.

As it is, the uncertainty remains overall.
I'll blame Barry Melrose for THAT!

However, the Boston Bruins can and must fulfill their destiny, which has been apparent ever since Peter Chiarelli, Cam Neely, Claude Julien, Zdeno Chara and Tim Thomas have become the pillars of the team.

And that system they have?
Well, since everyone else is sticking to theirs, for good or bad, certainly so will the Boston Bruins...! For every trend there is an exception - if most systems are viscerally flawed, this one has got to be the exception (hey - it got the job done versus three extremely execrable enemies: Montreal, Philadelphia and Tampa! One more, Boston - one more!)

BRUINS IN 5 it is! (Well, 5 or 7 - only the ultimate result counts, eh?)

And may no referee interfere with that lest he wants to MORRER...!

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Labels: baseball, hockey, LIFE, sports

Anyone remember that time when some half-crazed, half-baked (half-intoxicated most probably too) sportscaster on the lame-o HNIC CBC Saturday night broadcast called Mario Lemieux as such, because he thought that was the most appropriate image to conjure up the alleged *magnificence on ice* of the guy? Well, yeah - it sounded very ridiculously strange back then and it still does now - with the difference that, NOW, it helps to describe just how much of a donkey the dude can be indeed!

I mean, HERE ARE THE DAMNABLE FACTS:

Mario, when he was a player, did not mind AT ALL having a dirty player or twelve on his team, players that would insidiously ensnare and attack other good players - good players that were AS GOOD AS IF NOT BETTER THAN MARIO - in order to allow Mario to look so *magnificent* on the ice - when, in reality, truth and fact, he was nothing but a sissy on skates. One who could handle a puck, surely - but never to be thought of as a *COMPLETE PLAYER* - NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS... He was only good at making plays and, to do so, he needed space on the ice; the same lively space that his very own coach denied other elite players from the competition. If Mario was so good, his own coach would have given him a great testimonial of faith in him by allowing the competition to compete with him - and let the ones who score the greatest number of goals win. THAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE GAME, IS IT NOT? For his coach, his Cup-winning old goat of a coach, to use cheap and dirtier-than-dirty tactics in order to ensure victory PROVES that he knew something about Mario. Mario, for all of his magnificence, never made an impact on his ridiculous team by himself. He had to have a considerable amount of players in the supporting cast before he could amount to ANYTHING. Other great players, TRULY GREAT PLAYERS, carry their entire team on their shoulders. Mario never did that - he was too selfish a bastard and too gutless to be able to. Thus, he was a far cry from being the *magnificent* one!

In 1991, Mario's slimebucket of a teammate, Ulf Samuelsson, purposefully injured the great, truly complete player, awesome Boston Bruins forward, Cam Neely. Why? After all, if Mario was so *magnificent* he would have been able to compete fairly against the Great Cam *The Man* Neely - RIGHT? Wrong! Cam Neely was beating the Pittsburgh Penguins all by himself - and Mario was powerless to undo it, let alone match it. And the Pens' coach, the loathsome Badger Bob, KNEW THAT - so he ordered his man Ulf to take out Neely, in the most insidious way there is too: with a knee-on-knee check that barely looked illegal. So much so that, when it happened, it even went unpunished by the referees! No one seem to have even seen what happened nor understood it, even though it had all transpired in broad view, on open ice, before a huge crowd and before the cameras that had been capturing a pretty good series up until then, one that the Boston Bruins were winning up until that moment of infamy. The Bruins' coach, Mike Milbury, had no doubts about what had happened there: he was livid and wanted to get to Badger Bob's throat for being such a dirty tactician ready to do almost anything to win. And Badger Bob was right, in a way: it was going to be his only chance to win, ever - he would die of cancer soon enough. Still - it did not excuse nor legitimize his most despicable decision there - effectively denying a great player, a truly complete player, his true destiny.

Mario got the nod and the laurels, instead. The bastard.

But the fact was that HE WAS NOT EVEN A FACTOR IN THE BRUINS-PENGUINS SERIES THAT YEAR!
You would listen to the battle accounts and ZERO MENTION was made of him! How funny was that, eh - omitting the magnificent one... Funny but true. And totally legitimate! For he was effectively neutralized by the Bruins' Dave Poulin; while no one could stop Cam Neely without stepping lower than a barnyard mule, evidently...
And here is the evidence:



Listen to the main party in the entire case now:



Flash-forward a decade:

Cam Neely is a respected team president of his beloved Boston Bruins. He attempted a comeback, circa 1999, but it was not possible. He retired as a player but remains part of the game while retaining all of his integrity as well as passion for it. His team is one built around HIS IMAGE: tough, talented, playing with determination and ready to battle hard for the victory.

Mario is, now, retired too. AT LAST. And he is now the OWNER of the lousy Pens franchise that should have never won anything at all - EVER. Unlike Neely, Mario is widely regarded as a hypocrite, a liar and a two-faced son-of-a-bitch.

He claims to love hockey, CLEAN hockey - and yet, his team is, once again, chock-full of dirty players and goons of all ilks - one of them, Matt Cooke, is the renowned bonafide master of dirty hits all across the league. Yet, Mario complains about violence perpetrated by other teams and other players - but never his goon Cooke who purposefully tries to injure other players, star players at that. Mario should have met somebody like that when he was playing!

When Cooke blindsided Boston Bruins superstar Marc Savard, even Sidney Crosby was appalled by the actions of his teammate. But not Mario - no, he didn't flinch. And neither did the damn league: there was no suspension for that heinous act.



Poor Sidney Crosby and poor Eugeny Malkin - with a hypocrite like Mario as their boss, they can indeed expect no protection at all. And it was exactly as Don predicted too: the following year, it was Crosby's turn to get injured. And then it was Malkin's.

Mario, instead of crusading for the protection of good players, carried on blasting the league every six months, like clockwork, biting the hand that fed him and made him a millionnaire, as Don Cherry reminds us: but Mario focuses on brawls on ice, not any other follies. Perhaps his reluctance to have an official stance on the dangers to good players comes from the fact that he would rather see them all knocked out of the game; so that all of his precious records stay safely his? It's a theory... As an owner, it cannot be missed that he has failed in using his higher-than-the-average-team-owner profile to force the league to act against players like his very own Cooke there.

Conclusion: Mario is indeed a creepy hypocrite. Watch the following video starting at 4:30 for more insight into that, from Don:



That makes TWO star players from the Boston Bruins organization that the trashy Penguins have compromised the careers of.

There will NOT be a third.

Mario Lemieux - you are a bastard and a two-faced moron. You never deserved any of the success that you have had. What is that talent to handle pucks that you had when it does not come with integrity, with the mInd and heart of a man who knows what is right from is wrong? You were a coward on the ice and your man, Matt, is another coward too. A malicious one - that needs to be eliminated. And your declarations about not wanting to be part of a league that has so much violence in it...? It is the league that fed you all those millions that should kick you out, ask for the money back and move that damn team out of the Pitt and into oblivion, for all I care...!

UPDATE:
After roughly a dozen dirty hits, the NHL's sorry excuse for a commissioner finally suspended Matt Cooke for perpetrating, for the umpteenth time, more of the same... Mario offered no comments, at that time. The Boston Bruins voiced their opinion that Cooke was unwilling to learn and amend himself and that he showed no respect whatsoever for his opponents. Matt Cooke came back - and did it again. He got suspended, again. By that time, Don Cherry's prediction of an "open season" on good players had already come true, with Sid The Kid Crosby being out with a concussion of his own. And HIS career seems compromised as well. Mario, again, had nothing to say...

In late April 2011, as the Boston Bruins came back from an 0-2 series deficit to finally win their first round playoffs series (in seven games) against arch-rival Montreal, accomplishing that for the first time in team history - the Pittsburgh Penguins blew a 3-1 series lead over the Tampa Bay Lightning, finally losing game seven by the score of 1-0. It was the first time in their team's history they had ever lost a series in which they had gained a 3-1 edge. They sure were lacking scoring punch there - what, Mario, somebody takes out your best players and, suddenly, you cannot score anymore? Aww...

He who kills by the sword dies by the sword.

May Matt Cooke burn in hell with Badger Bob who is waiting for him there.

And may Sid The Kid, from this point on, be like Cam The Man - no more, no less.

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Labels: hockey