A Decade Of Trash
Basketball, whether pro or college, does not really start until the first of the year. College football, sand the Army?Navy game – Go Navy! – is done until bowl season really starts, baseball and F1 are off and, so, we are left with the NFL.
And a retrospective of Trash Talk over the last decade. So, I will, once again, make the ask. There are many modalities, but the overall effort needs you and your support:
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Okay, that being said, let us take a look back at a decade of Trash Talk. May or may not be in any particular order:
ITALIAN GRAND PRIX 1961-2011: MONZA, DEATH OF VON TRIPS & A YANKEE CHAMPION
This one is my favorite in a bittersweet way. Phil Hill was a friend, and frankly, a bit of a mentor in my life. He enjoyed a large life as a world champion in Formula One and at Le Mans, and an even bigger one as a husband, father and restorer of magnificent antique cars.
ZENYATTA! AN LA WOMAN RUNS FOR THE ROSES & HISTORY
I was around, even if young, when Secretariat blowup the Triple Crown. There has never been a horse like that to this date. Never. But there was a filly who was pretty much the equivalent….Zenyatta. There have been great female horses, but none like Zenyatta. Our own Roving Reporter, Rosalind, went to cover Zenyatta’s historic run at the Lady Secret’s Stakes at Hollywood Park. It was magnificent.
WAVELAND AND THE NORTH SIDE, SWEET HOME CHICAGO
The lovable loser Cubbies won the World Series. And Obama joined Mick Jagger, BB King and Buddy Guy for Sweet Home Chicago. It really doesn’t get any better than that.
SUPER BOWL 43 TRASH TALK: THE RED & THE BLACK
Okay, it is likely the only time the Arizona Cardinals will ever sniff the Super Bowl. And even with Kurt Warner and Larry Fitzgerald ripping it up, Pittsburgh won. Barely, but a win is a win, and a loss is a loss. Great BOC music though.
WITH A NECK LIKE A JOCKEY’S BOLLOCKS TRASH TALK
Sorry, I just love the title to this one. And you get to see me wearing a cheesehead!
ESPN IS GUTLESS, CHRIS MORTENSON HAS TINY DEFLATED BALLS AND OTHER DEFLATEGATE TRASH TALK
Like John McCain, I feel bad that Chris Mortenson is now in compromised health. But he has never atoned for the things he has done. In this case, he almost single handedly started “Deflategate” with a completely false report, and has never had the decency to admit his false reportage.
BACON, BOOBS & A BLOWJOB: ALL STAR TRASH TALK
I am sorry. I feel bad. But the title was just too good.
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE BO MERLOT EMPIRE
Charles Woodson is not walking through that door again. My favorite football memory ever is ASU trouncing the Wolverweenies in the Rose Bowl. I was there, and was a glorious day what with the pounding of both Jim Harbaugh and Bo Schemberhler. Also, the great Mose Allison supplies some music.
SUPER BOWL SEX TRAFFICKING TRASH TALK
The hype and bullshit around an actual Super Bowl coming to your town is bonkers. I’ve been through three of them. But there is an underside to it all too.
THE SHAME OF FORMULA ONE IN BAHRAIN
This was a short post. I did not say nearly enough about the state of human rights in the Middle East. But I did try to make a point that F1 should not foster abusive nation states that refuse to respect such rights. One day, I will come back to this.
The things we have done is this weekend’s music. If you ever get a chance to see The Killers, go. Do it. I have seen most of the big bands live at one time or another, and The Killers are very far up on the ladder. There is also a bit of link rot in some of the above posts. I fixed some of it, but not all.
As the Killers intone, you gotta hold on. Irrespective of where you are geographically or mentally in life. Thank you for participation, and thank you for support.
Something for Cub fans and all fans. Sportsball fandom is a particular affliction one might say, especially when you consider all the things we could care about where so many people suffer senselessly and maybe just maybe we could do something about it, instead of watching say the Cubs. Still, the emotions are real when our team wins or loses.
This is a quote from the wife of the great Chicago columnist Mike Royko. He was a Cub fan, to say the least. He died in 1997. This describes the night the Cubs won the division title in 1984. The most ecstatic year for Cub fans between 1969 and 2016. Of course that year ended in tragedy too, losing to the Padres in the NLCS.
This little story may be the best story ever, for Cub fans. Period, To tell you the honest truth this story made me cry and I don’t cry.
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“The Cubs winning the World Series? There really are no words to describe what Mike would have thought, would have felt,” says Judy. “He would have … I don’t have the words.”
She can remember vividly the night when the Cubs clinched the 1984 division title. She and Mike watched the game at the Billy Goat Tavern. It was jammed, and after the victory, people, strangers mostly, approached Mike to exchange high-fives. Quietly, gently, he grabbed Judy by the hand and led her from the bar, up the stairs and out onto Hubbard Street. She thought they were headed home. Instead he took her in his arms and they started to dance.
“We were there, alone in the middle of the street, just twirling in that strange, otherworldly light,” she says. “We were so happy.”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-mike-royko-20-years-death-perspec-0416-20170414-story.html
Rereading that Cubs post brought tears to my eyes.
Again.
Me too. It was a hell of a morning putting this together. Waveland came close to being at the top of the queue. The personal bit with the first one, and the rarely granted rights to the Cahier archive by the Cahiers kind of militated in favor of the Italian Grand Prix post. But the Cubs and Waveland were close. Zenyatta was up there because of Rosalind. And Zenyatta was a hell of a story, but she got in between Phil and the Cubbies by a slight accident. Bad editing. The editor of this post has been sacked. And that guy has also been sacked.
Ten years from now, I can’t wait to review the Trash Talk featuring Iceland’s 2018 World Cup championship soccer team. John Rogers of the Reykavik Grapevine’s Twitter feed (in English) has taken trash talk to a whole new level. For instance, after the 2018 draw of teams, placing them in groups for a round robin to eliminate lesser teams, Iceland found itself in the same group with perennial power of Argentina, led by superstar Lionel Messi. In response, the Grapevine tweeted this:
See also this running commentary from Iceland v Portugal in last summer’s European championships, which spawned the “Ronaldo Tears” theme. Rogers knows Trash Talk.
Iceland Smites. Mark it down now.
Yeah, that Cubs post is awesome. As a newcomer to this site, I’m just now going through the highlights. That is definitely one of them.
What on this list could possibly equal the Cubs? As a 4th generation Cubs fan who grew up FAR from Chicago, the waxing and ultimate waning of the team over any given season was just part of the background of life. I build houses with my dad under high desert sun listening to the Cubs Radio Network on the AM, driving nails as the innings slid by. Some kind of perfect zen, I guess. Oddly, I ended up back in the old grid my parents fled, where summer gives you 10 and winter grinds you down 11. And then: pow! It could not have been better. The series, an object lesson in perfect drama. That last game – well, even the grounds crew needed to be part of history, right?
Nothing, but nothing could have been better than all that. Generations of “next year”, crashing into actually doing it. Waking up on Nov. 3, all was right with the world. A bright bubble of joy, equilibrium, and relief. Who knew it was only gonna last another 4 days?
Yes; karmic whiplash. It could only happen to the Cubs: pulling back from the edge to deliver sheer joy for 4 generations of fans, only to be swamped a few day later by a slimy political clusterfuck of epochal proportions. Not a few of us wondered if our curse, cast from our backs, simply latched onto the nation as a whole.
But game 7, holy smokes, that was crazy beautiful.
Sigh. Too brief, the moment of respite and joy. It was pretty damned great, though!
Went back and read the thread from the Stillers-Cards Super Bowl. I came to two conclusions, one old and one new. The old: Stillers ruled, and rule. Silverback Harrison and Big Ben have a good shot to lead this team to another Lombardi.
The new: Twitter killed Trash Talk. And most other thought requiring more than 140 characters. Compare for yourself, any of those old threads vs. any of the threads from this year.
Regardless, my Stillers have a critical game this evening against another of their rivals, the Ravens. While there has been a lot of talk and calendar-circling about next week’s game vs. Cheatin’ Bill and His Cheating Cheaters of Cheatertown, the fact of the matter is that the Stillers cannot afford to lose today. They lose today and win next week, and they still trail NE.
At least the Ravens rivalry is one based in respect. The hatred of the Bungles is based in the unrelenting criminality which defines the Cincy team’s play. Burfict, PacMan, and Mixon, criminals all. I’ll doubtless rant more on the sewer that is the Bungles, but I don’t want to get diverted from today’s game.
And today’s game against Baltimore is a real test of the Pittsburgh character. The unspoken fact, the elephant in the room, is that Ryan Shazier won’t be back this year, probably won’t ever play football again, and might never walk again. I don’t have any personal insight into the exact specifics of his medical condition, but the silence emanating from UPMC and HQ Steelers tells me it’s a bad, bad injury and that my preceding sentence is probably accurate. I remember watching the live broadcast of Dennis Byrd’s horrific broken neck injury in a Jets game about 25 years ago and nearly weeping. While things have progressed greatly since then, spinal injuries are still delicate and unpredictable things.
In this situation, the Stillers have to pull themselves up out of the despondency that losing a respected defensive captain – their defense’s “quarterback” – to a hideous injury from what was, in the greater scheme of things, a nothing hit. Or they can do like the old joke about the Red Sawx being like lawn furniture, that come Labor Day they both fold up and get put away. I look back to one of the great Steelers teams of the 70s, the 1976 team. That year, they lost Bradshaw to a bad injury in week 5, going 1-4 to that point. Their defense collected and decided that, if they were to have any chance of getting to the playoffs it would fall on the shoulders of the defense. They made a commitment to do everything in their power to win. In the 9 remaining games of the 76 season, Pittsburgh allowed a total of 28 points. And they won every game of that 14-game season. While Oakland beat them in the AFC Championship game, it needs be remembered both Franco Harris and Rocky Bleier were injured and unable to play in that game.
Just as the 76 team’s D made history by taking control of the rest of that season, today’s Pittsburgh O needs to step up and outscore everyone in sight. Look to the leadership of Big Ben and Al Villanueva, the latter knowing a bit about battle, taking casualties, sucking it up and moving on.
We’ll see how this plays out.
More later. I gotta do the wash and get some breakfast.
hey, i made it into the 10 year posts! w00t! thank you kindly, bmaz. seeing Zenyatta in person, and seeing her last win, is one of my treasured memories. I fell in love with a horse, but not horse racing, and I mourn the many horses that have died in the SoCal fires.
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And yes, Twitter has taken away the wonderful conversations and debates on these pages, which is an ongoing sorrow, but it has given Marcy and Bmaz and Jim et al the ability to engage in real time with – for lack of a better term – media and political elites, and been rewarded with raised profiles and real-time results in moving the conversational bars. 10 years ago Marcy was a dirty fuckin’ hippie. Today her computer brain is sought out by those that once mocked.
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Just wish they’d fuckin’ pay for the privilege. Hit the “donate” button you deep-pocketed lurkers!! (and yes, MY (next) check will be in the mail shortly).
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rosalind, not believing she has found herself watching and enjoying Laker basketball
Holy fucking shit, they Bills and Colts game in Buffalo is totally insane! There is SOOO much snow, can’t see anything…..And it is glorious!
Football, the way it was meant to be.
One doesn’t know how badly the Giants suck until one is forced to watch them. I think half the reason the League’s ratings are down traces directly to the home team blackout/must show rule, as applied in the NY media market. The TV stations HAVE TO show the Giants and the J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS. both teams sucking, and only get to show one game during one of the afternoon slots. Regardless of whether there are other, more interesting or entertaining games out there. Thank you, King Roger.
It was truly awesome. From start to finish.
And, yeah, the idiocy of the “what can local markets show” rule is seriously detrimental.
So, earlier this morning, I wrote a very long comment that the internet somehow ate just as I realized the time and had to scramble out of the house.
The gist is partly as scribe, and now also rosalind, point out, Twitter has indeed cut down on the conversations here. I am as guilty as the rest of us in moving my real-time comments on whatever contest I’m watching onto Twitter instead of the Trash thread.
I lament the loss of some of our commenters past. Today, I especially miss freepatriot, as he would be dancing around to celebrate Baker Mayfield’s Heisman win. I’d be trying to bring him back down by reminding him how Mayfield grabbed himself by the pussy while his team played my beloved Jayhawks.
Last night saw a glorious comeback by Gator volleyball. Mary Wise has been the coach since 1991 (predating our arrival here in 1993) and has won SEC championships in almost every year. Somehow, she’s never won a national championship. This season was shaping up to look as though it could be the one, as the team has been ranked in the top 5 all season. They got the number 2 seed for the tournament. Last night, they were playing for a slot in the final four. They won a close first set, but then lost both sets 2 and 3 by pretty wide margins. In the fourth set, they fell behind early by quite a bit and it seemed the season was over. They stayed close in this set though, and then when they were only down 21-18, their star player Carli Snyder, who had been throttled all evening, took over and willed the team to a win. But then in the fifth set they fell behind again in the early phases. But once again Snyder decided her career could not end in this way, and they pulled out a tenacious 15-12 win.
Now they are off to Kansas City to try to win Wise’s first natty. To do so, they will have to add the championship of the PacHowevermany to their SEC championship. In this weekend’s regional action, their two wins were over UCLA and then USC. In the semifinals, they will face Stanford. Then if they win, they face either number one seed Penn State or the number five seed Nebraska, who would be playing with a virtual home court advantage. The road won’t be easy, but this team seems determined.
The Gator basketball team also finally showed some tenacity last night. Somehow, it seems that getting that 17 point lead over Duke and almost holding out for the win took out everything they had. They followed that with a blowout loss at home to FSU and then an even more bewildering home loss to Loyola Chicago. Last night’s win was on a neutral court in the wilds of New Jersey against a ranked Cincinnati team, so maybe they are back on the right track. They should have center John Egbunu back in a couple of weeks and if he returns to last year’s form, they will be a formidable team.
Thanks to bmaz for persevering over the years and getting all these trash talk threads up, mostly without Marcy having to put up Brady pron posts to spur him into action.
“Mostly”.
Say, whatever happened to the Wheel woman, who used to like sports?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnVXIUyshng&list=RDbnVXIUyshng&t=8
Puttin’ in my vote for the Packers-Browns game making a top ten list for embarrassing – for the Pack.
Glad it isn’t on TV down here.
Still embarrassing…or devious reverse psych on my part.
I withdraw my top ten vote, but reserve the right…
Mr. Discount DoubleCheck?!
Fly, Eagles, Fly.
Travel well, too.
Again.
Agian.
I’ve been a Cubs fan since forever, I saw Ernie Banks several times. Now I live in Chicago, not far from Wrigley, and when the Cubs won, I went to the stadium and signed the Wall. A lifetime is a long time to wait for a win, but it was worth it just to stand in the throng and shout for the old players who never won anything besides a place in my memory.
Sorry to hear that Wentz may likely have a partial tear – or maybe a bad sprain – to an ACL.
Dolphin QB Tannehill had a Grade 2 ACL sprain and opted for rehab and we know how that didn’t work out so well.
I saw the hit and it looked clean. Partially obscured but it could be cleats grabbed turf and leg flexed sideways at the knee.
Foles did look sharp and he drove them to the winning FGs.
I like the Iggles a lot and wouldn’t mind seeing them kick the Pats in the SB.
Pete