SI: Ripper's Dellight (Dr. Z)

[China]

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=rippersdelight&prov=cnnsi&type=lgns

Ripper's delight

Dr. Z, SI.com

Never have I received such a compliment as the one afforded me by Mair Troy from Monsey, N.Y. She is a redhead, so she has tuned in to the little soap opera I've been presenting in the past few issues concerning myself and the Flaming Redhead, who sits at the other end of the dinner table. "To all of you out there who have doubted Dr. Z's ability to land such a hottie," Mair writes, "the question should be, 'Could you have landed her?'"

To which The Redhead replies: "Well, obviously not at the same time he was landing me or there would be some crash landings involved." Mair, thank you for your lavish praise, and since I have already made everyone sick out there with this George Bush-style self glorification, I might as well finish the little narcissistic study by naming you my E-mailer of the Week. And, of course, many thanks.

There's a knock on the door. "Rippers have arrived," announces the butler. Fine, show 'em in.

Guy of Oakville, Conn., has muscled everyone out of the way so he can be the first one through the door. Just like him, I might add. It's the old refrain about my scurrilous bashing of Kurt Warner. If Warner has a good year, "you will probably put your jumping shoes on again like the rest of your kind," he writes. (My kind?). "Petty jealousy" seeps out of my pen. I don't have "the courage to question his courage." Insinuation is safer and "suits your craven nature better."

Guess that covers most of it. You forgot to mention how fat I am. Hey, I'll get back to the Warner stuff, but first I've got to tell you this story. I'm at the doctor's Monday for my semi-annual checkup. There's a new nurse there. Young. Inexperienced. Before the doc sees me I've got to do the old weigh-in, which I dread because it serves as a prelude to the straight talk on how could I ever let myself gain so much weight. So I whip off the shoes and shirt, and empty my pockets, then I notice that the wall is close to the scale on the left side, which means my left hand will be shielded by my body.

Now anybody who's ever had to make weight on an athletic team knows how to work the scale ... play the corners, grab the wall, etc. And by grabbing the wall and thrusting downward you can lighten yourself by 30 pounds, 40 even. Sky's the limit. Which was what I did. Problem was the needle kept jumping, bonk, too high, bonk, too low, the blasted thing wouldn't stay steady. Finally it hit a brief calm, whereupon I hopped off the scale, and she said, "232," which suited me just fine.

So in our little conference, the doc said, "I want you to lose 10 more pounds. You lost 30 from the last time I saw you, and that's excellent, and I think 10 more, only 10, will get you where you should be." Absolutely, doctor. You bet. He was looking at his chart as he said this. Never once did he afford me the careful glance that would have told him I was still the same fathog I was last time, but that's the medical game for you. Everything by the numbers. Which brings us back to Kurt Warner and my own character failings.

You know something? I'm tired of all the Z-bashing for alleged Warner-bashing. I wrote one negative piece, saying it would be a mistake for the Giants to sign him. One, that was all. Then I got off it. We're all entitled to our opinions, even you, Guy of Oakville (sounds like something out of Ivanhoe). Now kindly show in the next group.

My rating Mike McKenzie No. 4 among last year's cornerbacks seems to have fomented a rebellion, even among Packers fans, notably Kevin of Green Bay, who can find a whole mob of better people, (well, six), and besides, isn't it dumb of McKenzie to throw a tantrum about his salary. Who would touch him now?

Jeremy of Madison, Wisc., and another Packers fan, I would presume, feels that I rated McKenzie way too high, and his lack of speed will be exposed this season as the five-yard bump rule is more rigidly enforced.

Frank of Morristown, N.J., which is my neighborhood, thinks my all-pro cornerback selections in general are "horrific," and Pat Surtain could put 'em all away. Incidentally, I liked that "Flaming Gray Head" designation. Could have been much worse, like Flaming Meathead or Flaming Deadhead.

OK boys, gather round. I pick my all-pro cornerbacks by a numbers formula, based on consistency. And I get lots of looks at these people, believe me, lots of them, so the occasional fluke game is absorbed into the average. McKenzie scored fourth highest on my chart. So I had him as the fourth-best CB last year. Sure, he might have trouble with the new application of the rules, but that's this year, not last year. He was a good, tough, physical corner. Surtain, incidentally, was bigger in his big games, especially at the interception level, but he wasn't as consistent. The Colts killed him.

The big problem with grading cornerbacks is that you can't take a really definitive stand because you never know when they're nursing some little injury. Surtain, whom I've picked all-pro in the past, was banged up in a few games. And that's a position where any injury that affects their running and cutting is magnified by the nature of the position. As an example, I thought Ronde Barber of the Bucs was the best corner in football two years ago. Last year he was way off, missing a lot of tackles and so forth. Last week at the Giants camp, I asked his brother, Tiki, what was wrong with him last season.

"Never recovered from the torn PCL (posterior cruciate ligament) he got in December of the Super Bowl year," Tiki said. "He should have gotten it operated on, but he decided to play on it."

Earl of Memphis wants to know where I have the late ex-Giants OT Roosevelt Brown ranked. First of the great finesse tackles. Faster and more athletic than anyone who ever had played the position before him. He and Ron Mix half a decade later were the only tackles I ever saw who consistently pulled on sweeps. Your favorite, Jim Parker, is a guard on my all-time team, since I believe he was slightly more effective inside. John Hannah is the other guard. My all-time tackles would be Art Shell on the power side and a tie between Mix and Forrest Gregg as the finesse tackle. Right behind them, along with Anthony Munoz and Rayfield Wright, would be Rosey, as a finesser. Bob Brown would be my No. 2 power tackle, behind Shell. Mike McCormack would have to be in there somewhere, too. So your call of Rosey as top 10 is pretty close to my own ranking. Incidentally, I did an obit on him in the Scorecard section of this week's issue of Sports Illustrated.

A tough one from Ben of Baltimore, who is tired of all the shtick that so many columnists and radio wannabes try. Wants to know who are the young sportswriters I enjoy reading. (And thanks, incidentally, for the nice things you said). Let me step back into the past. Jimmy Cannon was my favorite columnist. I used to tape his columns to my bathroom mirror. He could make you laugh, make you cry. How many of these guys can do it now? Red Smith had a great following, but I always found him a bit too leisurely paced. Dick Young of the New York Daily News was a demon for breaking stories and getting scoops. That's the way beat writers were then. They tried to scoop you every day. It wasn't the group-journalism approach you see now (although the much more restricted access is partly responsible for that).

Frank Graham was the greatest for one-liners:

"They learn to say hello just when they should say goodbye."

And this one ... his lead on the Max Baer-Tony Galento fight:

"They rolled the clock back last night and two cuckoos jumped out."

I'm still not answering your question, am I? Who are the good young guys? Gosh, I'm trying, Ben. There are pretty writers around, but one element I find lacking in most of them is The Truth. That, to me, still should be the No. 1 attribute in journalism. If I had my like savings invested in a newspaper, I'd probably hire the Daily News' Mike Lupica to be my columnist. He fits the definition. Always tackles the biggest story head on, and you always know where he stands. A lot of columnists are just writing feature stories. I don't get to read everyone throughout the country on a regular basis. There are some good writers out on the coast. The San Francisco Chronicle's Ira Miller is a good, solid, meat-and-potatoes guy, and the Los Angeles Times' Sam Farmer is a lot of fun to read. None of these guys are especially young. Sorry. Us oldies tend to stick together.

Dan of Arlington, Va., is agonizing a bit over the Clinton Portis-Champ Bailey trade. He wants to know whom I would have kept between Bailey and LaVar Arrington. Probably Bailey because of the unique nature of the position, but they couldn't have gotten Portis for Arrington. Part two: Were the Skins feeling the pinch because of so much unwise spending in the past? Absolutely. And part three: Could they have gotten Portis without throwing in a No. 2 draft? I don't think so. But cheer up, Dan. It's a great trade for the Skins, and it'll be interesting to see how Joe Gibbs uses his new star.

Ray of Raleigh (thanks for the nice words) is bugged by the prolific use of the pronoun "you," such as in my closing line in last week's Coughlin piece: "... you get the feeling that he's going to make it work." Ray, the "you" he feels I'm speaking to, doesn't get that feeling at all. Well, it's like this, you see (even if you don't really see it personally), you know how it works (do you really know?), as W.C. Fields said, "You can't cheat an honest man" (would you try to cheat someone?) and so on. My big Webster's sums it up in definition No. 4 under You: "Indefinitely, not specifying any person as addressed, as, 'so sudden as to make you jump, you have to register before voting.' Chiefly colloquial."

This Webster's is the second edition of the New International Dictionary, 1943. It comprises 3,210 pages and I think they're going to use it at the clean-and-jerk weightlifting competition at the Olympics. It's been in my life ever since I was a tiny tot ... OK, not so tiny ... and if you're really a wordsmith I'd suggest you find one of these monsters in a second-hand bookstore and snap it up. Never mind those flimsy little desktop dictionaries.

Drew of LaCrosse, Wisc., is upset because ESPN left Walter Payton off its list of the top 25 athletes over the last 25 years. Would I have included him? Off the top of my head, I'd say yes, but we're dealing with a lot of sports and if I sat down and worked it all out, I don't know. Oh what the hell, I'd have had Walter in there. Sure I would have. Who's my No. 1? I have to go back more than 25 years, and it would be top competitor, not top athlete. A tie. Rocky Marciano and Al Oerter, the discus thrower.

Mark of Chicago and a recent San Diego transplant starts off the kind of letter that gets me madder than anything I receive, this way (what a clumsy sentence ... his letter got me mad ... he starts it off this way): "This my second attempt in persuading you to give props to the best running back in football, LaDainian Tomlinson ... " And so on. Hey Mark! How about someone giving you some props? I picked Tomlinson as my all-pro running back last year. No. 1, you dig? Go pester those other guys out there.

Jon of Atlanta wonders how the lefty-righty QB thing in Washington -- between Mark Brunell (lefty) and Patrick Ramsey (righty) -- will affect the offensive tackles, since the right-side guy becomes the blind-side protector for a southpaw QB. It'll work out the same way it did in Jacksonville, where the key pass blocker was Tony Boselli, the LT, even though Brunell was a lefty.

Shawn of Boston wants to know when I'll discuss "the very real possibility of the Patriots going 19-0 this season and supplanting those annoying '72 Dolphins as the best team ever?" The answer is now. I'll discuss it now. Right here at home. Linda, will the Patriots go 19-0? No, she says. Why not? Because they only play 16 games, she says. OK, I'm wasting valuable time here. This is serious. The Patriots will not go 19-0 or even 16-0 on the regular season. Too many games. Teams too close now. The annoying '72 Dolphins will continue to annoy you.

Mark of Shreveport, La., asks why a team doesn't sue a player for breach of contract if he's signed up and holds out. The contract says you can't play for anybody else. It doesn't say you have to play. But you do if you want to get paid. One of the traditional weapons the working man has, in fact just about the only one, is the withholding of his services. In other arenas it's called a strike. Holding a player to a long-term contract that pays him less than he's worth isn't a good policy. Smart teams re-do them. "If a player has out-performed his contract, all you're doing by holding him to it," Bobby Beathard once said, "is creating an unhappy ballplayer."

Updated on Friday, Jun 18, 2004 1:02 pm EDT

[ntotoro]

The comment about the line makes me feel a little better about them having to switch at possibly one time or another during the season. What shocks me even more is he actually gave the 'Skins somewhat of a complement, regardless how backhanded it appeared at first... :laugh:

Nick

[Chachie]

What he said about the Portis/Bailey trade was true. I'm sure there will be times when people cry out "Why did we trade Champ?!?!"

But then the next time Portis gets the ball......

[jenmdixon]

A tough one from Ben of Baltimore, who is tired of all the shtick that so many columnists and radio wannabes try. Wants to know who are the young sportswriters I enjoy reading. (And thanks, incidentally, for the nice things you said). Let me step back into the past. Jimmy Cannon was my favorite columnist. I used to tape his columns to my bathroom mirror. He could make you laugh, make you cry. How many of these guys can do it now? Red Smith had a great following, but I always found him a bit too leisurely paced. Dick Young of the New York Daily News was a demon for breaking stories and getting scoops. That's the way beat writers were then. They tried to scoop you every day. It wasn't the group-journalism approach you see now (although the much more restricted access is partly responsible for that).

Frank Graham was the greatest for one-liners:

"They learn to say hello just when they should say goodbye."

And this one ... his lead on the Max Baer-Tony Galento fight:

"They rolled the clock back last night and two cuckoos jumped out."

I'm still not answering your question, am I? Who are the good young guys? Gosh, I'm trying, Ben. There are pretty writers around, but one element I find lacking in most of them is The Truth. That, to me, still should be the No. 1 attribute in journalism. If I had my like savings invested in a newspaper, I'd probably hire the Daily News' Mike Lupica to be my columnist. He fits the definition. Always tackles the biggest story head on, and you always know where he stands. A lot of columnists are just writing feature stories. I don't get to read everyone throughout the country on a regular basis. There are some good writers out on the coast. The San Francisco Chronicle's Ira Miller is a good, solid, meat-and-potatoes guy, and the Los Angeles Times' Sam Farmer is a lot of fun to read. None of these guys are especially young. Sorry. Us oldies tend to stick together.

I can't say I disagree with him re: sports journalists, unfortunately. Although some of the 'feature story writers' are quite enjoyable, like Thomas Boswell from the Washington Post...or the late, great Shirley Povich. Thoughts, anyone?

edited to fix my spelinh errs

[Octane67]

Champ didnt want to be a Redskin no more..... some fail to see that point of view.... He wanted to test free agency to see how much he was actually worth (the trade was a good move to get something for him) + how other teams operate + he was sick of how the the skins kept changing defensive coordinators.

I think this writer did a good job w/ the questions.... instead of what we usually see on the national scene (danny and skin bashing)

[akrpsu]

Originally posted by jenmdixon

I can't say I disagree with him re: sports journalists, unfortunately. Although some of the 'feature story writers' are quite enjoyable, like Thomas Boswell from the Washington Post...or the late, great Shirley Povich. Thoughts, anyone?

edited to fix my spelinh errs

If your a golf fan, check out Boswell's articles on the US Open this weekend. I just read his article on Phil Mickelson and it was very good. In general I really like his work.

[redman]

Dr. Z's arrogance is such a turn-off. He's a snob disguised as an ordinary sports-writing joe. Every time someone asks him his opinion on something he has to start out by giving his own dissertation on the way it was 40-50 years ago. I truly get nothing from reading him.