Lions in winter

 So remember the other day, when the Blob was having great fun at the expense of the Detroit Lions and their goofy new head coach?

Well, they also hired a new GM, Brad Holmes. And it's possible -- just possible -- he might actually know what he's doing.

For instance, didja see what he did yesterday?

He traded Matthew Stafford to the Los Angeles Rams for Jared Goff. Pretty close to an even-steven trade, right?

But there's more.

In addition to Goff, Holmes also slicked the Rams out of not one but two first-round draft picks. And he got a third-round pick besides.

So, to review: The Lions just traded a quality 32-year-old quarterback for a quality 26-year-old quarterback. And they got three draft picks, two of 'em first-rounders, on top of it. 

Not to go all Pollyanna on everyone, but isn't this the kind of deal the Lions used to be on the Rams end of? And doesn't that mean a competent human -- maybe even a more than competent human -- might be in charge of the front office now? I mean, possibly?

"Meh," Lions fan will say. "They're still the Lions."

Can't blame 'em for saying that. Can't blame 'em a bit.

Whine time

And to those of you already asking "Is this going to include more bitching and moaning about your bleeping-bleep Pittsburgh Pirates?" ... 

Well, yes. Yes it is. 

Here's a hall pass. You are excused to the library for the duration of this post.

Which, you bet, is today's edition of  Why Does God Hate My Baseball Team More Than Any Other Baseball Team? Also, What's So Special About The St. Louis Cardinals, God? Is It Because They're Called The Cardinals, Or Because Stan Musial Was One Of The Best Humans Ever To Play The Game?

Opinions vary, but for sure there's something unduly blessed about the stupid Cardinals. Who else gets an All-Star third baseman (Nolan Arenado of the Rockies) for, not even a song, but three bars of a song? The stupid Cardinals get Arenado for some minor-leaguers and one halfway decent pitcher, and -- get this -- they also get $50 million from the Rockies to help with Arenado's buyout.

That's not even three bars of a good song. That's three bars of "Watching Scotty Grow" by Bobby Goldsboro.

Cubs fans, of course, will do their usual sorrowful compare-and-contrast about this, because the Cubs have been the Rockies this offseason. They're practically giving guys away, like Yu Darvish, their best starting pitcher. The Big Reset is on for a team that, um, won a division title without it last year.

So Cubs fans will whine in their best woe-is-us why-does-God-hate-us fashion, and fans of the cruddy Pirates, like me, will LAUGH IN THEIR FACES. This is because, while the Cubs are owned by Joe Ricketts' bratty kids, at least they're not the Pirates owners.

Who have taken their team's nickname entirely too much to heart.

The Pirates owners, see, don't really want a major-league team. Major-league teams cost too much. So they're content merely to serve as a de facto farm system for actual MLB teams that are actually trying to win. They trade for minor-leaguers and develop them and then, when some of them become Gerrit Cole or Josh Bell, they trade them before they have to pay them real money. 

Then they put their latest Dollar General team out there and keep raking in their share of the MLB's TV dough, even though they're not putting an MLB product on the field. It's damn disgusting. 

And this is the part where I always think how awesome it would be not to be a Pirates fan. But no other team had Roberto Clemente, and the Pirates did, so here I am.

Boo-hoo for me.

Narrative-ly speaking

 We're two days away now from seven days until Super Bowl LV (for "Livin' Virtual," presumably), which means it's almost time now to stop talking about Arkansas upsetting UConn in women's buckets and Rutgers beating Michigan State by 30 freaking points in men's buckets.

(About that: Rutgers held the Spartans to 37 points and outscored them 41-17 in the second half. The Spartans shot 28.6 percent, and were 4-of-20 from the 3-point arc. And the most amazing stat of all is not any of that, but the fact the Spartans' leading scorer was Aaron Henry with seven points. It was like a boxscore from the 1930s.)

Now, where were we?

Oh, yeah. That Super thing.

As the game itself approaches with its usual glacial stateliness, it's time to put aside everything else and start crafting those all-important narratives the desperate media will use to while away the endless hours until kickoff. This is known as Hyping That Which Is Itself Hype, and it's a Roman numeral tradition.

So of course we'll get the Young vs. Old storyline, Tom Grandpa Walton Brady vs. Patrick Jim Bob Mahomes. Did you know Patrick was only five years old when Tom played in his first NFL game? Did you know Patrick's dad is only seven years older than Tom? Well, you do now.

The Young vs. Old storyline, of course, will naturally segue into the Passing The Torch storyline. Also the Mahomes Says He's Always looked Up To Tom Brady The Way All Young Quarterbacks Do. Also the inevitable Brady Legacy storyline, in which at least one contrarian will point out that Brady has lost almost as many Super Bowls as he's won ... and that he didn't win the five he's won because he always played like a god in them ... and, by the way, didja know he's only completed 55 percent of his passes in the playoffs?

You do now.

Somewhere in all of this there will be the Bruce Arians Appreciation storyline, which will of course segue into the Is Tom Brady Gushing About Bruce Arians A Veiled Shot At Bill Belichick? storyline. 

Which will of course lead to STILL MORE Tom Brady storylines ...

* Is Tom Brady The Greatest Team Athlete In Any Sport In The Entire History Of Team Sports? Discuss.

* Is Tom Brady Still A Fanboy Of That Crazy Guy Who Just Got Evicted From The White House, And If So Does It Tarnish His Legacy? Discuss.

*  What Are Tom Brady's Favorite Foods, And Why Are They All So Damn Weird? Discuss.

* Can We Talk To Gisele, Tom? Just For A Second?

* Tom Brady Says The Media Cannot Talk To Gisele, Proving He's A Giant Tool To Some In The Media.

* Is Tom Brady A Giant Tool, Like Some In The Media And A Lot Of Butt-Hurt New Englanders Now Say? Discuss.

And last but not least ,,,

* Is Tom Brady A Deep State Mole Who Is Not Human At All But A Cyborg Crafted By The Same People Who Built The Secret Jewish Laser From Outer Space? And if so, Will He Set Raymond James Stadium On Fire On Super Sunday The Way The Secret Jewish Laser Set California On Fire?

Discuss.

Memory's walk

 Today is another of Those Days, when detail is so sharp it can draw blood. Memory is a faithless companion sometimes -- what we think we remember is sometimes only a hazy scrap, lacking in context -- but on days like this memory's walk is as true as a razor's edge.

And so to January 28, 35 years ago.

You'll read about it today on the news wires and see it on social media and the teevees, because Jan. 28, 1986 remains a day that sears. It's a billowing white cloud in the blue Florida sky where the contrail of a rocket should have been, trailing party streamers of smoke as if this were some sort of macabre celebration. It's seven lives gone, like that, including a New Hampshire schoolteacher who was along for the ride.

It's the notion of American infallibility gone, too, in that same awful instant.

The moment the space shuttle Challenger blew up is the moment America paid for its assumptions, and the complacency that rides shotgun with assumptions. We assumed our space program was charmed, you see. We assumed it would never again have an Apollo 1 tragedy, that Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee dying in a cabin fire paid the bill in full 19 years less a day before the Challenger went up.

In the years between, we'd put men on the moon and brought back the crew of Apollo 13  and launched piles of shuttle flights, and everything worked out. And so we came to believe everything always would work out, and to think of shuttle launches as just another routine part of another routine day.

They are not, of course. They never are. And so when the Challenger blew up, it became one of Those Days, when memory is a razor and we remember what we were doing, what kind of day it was, Where We Were When We Heard The News.

When Dallas happened, I was on the bus home from school and the sun was shining in that low burnished November way, and two kids sitting behind me were talking about Kennedy getting shot with a rifle.

When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, I was at home watching "Daniel Boone" and my parents were at the grocery and the network cut in with a news flash about a shooting in Memphis.

When Robert Kennedy was assassinated, it was a June morning and my friend and I had just awakened after camping out in his treehouse, and he turned on the radio and we both yelped "What?!" at exactly the same time.

I heard about John Lennon on the car radio as I drove to work in the predawn December darkness. And I heard about the Challenger in a bookstore in Anderson, In., on my day off.

It was two days after the Bears won the Super Bowl, the woman at the cash register had a radio on, and gradually the hushed tone of the commentators penetrated my usual bookstore fog. 

"What's going on?" I asked.

The woman at the register looked up. To this day -- razor memory again -- I can vividly recall the blank incomprehension on her face.

"I think the space shuttle just blew up," she said, softly.

Thirty-five years later I still hear her.

Hall of nothing

Serial jackass Curt Schilling almost got into the Hall of Fame yesterday. But it's not the Hall of Almost, so he didn't.

He came up 16 votes shy of entry, and no one else got any closer, which means there will be no inductees this year for the first time since Ike was in the White House. That's 61 years to you and me, kids.

This happened not because there was no one on the ballot worthy of induction. It happened because baseball writers are a persnickety bunch, and frequently fuss over irrelevancies the way biddies fuss over hands of canasta.

Example: The biddies fussing over Curt Schilling's politics.

To be sure, the guy IS a serial jackass, a lunatic fringe Trumpazoid who thought it was cool to cheer lynching journalists and storming the Capitol in the name of William Wallace or Paul Revere and the Raiders or whoever. But he could also  throw the hell out of a baseball -- which, unless he's doing a life stretch for first-degree murder, frankly is what matters most when you're considering whether a guy should be in the Hall of Fame.

Look. I get it. Schilling's a disgusting human being. And Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds -- who, don't look now, crept ever closer to induction yesterday -- are un-indicted alleged  juicers.

The Blob doesn't care. The Blob, if it had a vote, would have put a check mark beside all three of them.

Schilling?

Personally I couldn't care less if Schilling voted for Our Former Only Available President And Inciter Of Insurrection eleventy-hundred times, or if he thinks Democrats are emissaries from Hell who bake children into their pizzas. I care about what kind of pitcher he was, which in my estimation was good enough to get him into the HOF.

And Clemens and Bonds?

Whether they juiced or not, the documentation is pretty solid they both allegedly began doing so after they'd already put up Hall of Fame credentials. Also, amphetamines in the '60s, '70s and '80s -- which also enhanced performance, and which many an HOFer gobbled like M&Ms in those days.

And, yes, I know, the Hall has a morals clause. But no one's ever taken it seriously. There are drunks and racists and crooks and utter psychopaths in the Hall. Kenesaw Mountain Landis is in the Hall, and he kept black players out of Major League Baseball for decades. 

Call me crazy, but this seems a bit more relevant to Hall of Fame qualifications than whether or not someone is a right-wing asshat. Yet there the Judge is.

And there Schilling and Bonds and Clemens should be. Enhanced nutjobbery or performance aside. 

Virtual-ity

Well, if this doesn't beat all. They're gonna let a NASCAR guy play in the Pro Bowl!

Also, Snoop Dogg!

And, look, I get it, the Pro Bowl is the Mr. Irrelevant of professional sports, so why not Bubba Wallace Jr. and Snoop? No one watches the Pro Bowl anyway besides sad cases in faded Tommy Kramer jerseys. Heck, let Drew Brees's kids play in it.

Oh, wait. They kinda did last year, tackling one another on the sidelines and occasionally running onto the field. 

No one cared, of course, 'cause it's the Pro Bowl. 

So, yeah, this Bastard Plague-inspired idea to play a virtual Pro Bowl this weekend is just the ticket. Instead of actually putting real players on a real field for the annual Greatest Spectacle In Injury Avoidance, they're going to have Bubba, Snoop, and a handful of actual NFL players play it out on Madden instead.

People who've watched Patrick Mahomes play already say the NFL looks like a video game. So why not make the Pro Bowl an actual video game?

In fact ... 

Well, here's the Blob's idea: Go completely vintage and play it on Tudor Electric Football. 

None of us who owned one of those things will ever forget the thrill of our running backs endlessly turning in circles 10 yards behind the line of scrimmage. Or how horrendously inaccurate the  passer guy was with that little piece of foam that was supposed to be the football. Plus, Passer Guy was like ten times bigger than the actual players.

It was like suiting up King Kong and putting him out there. And he threw about as well, too.

Yes, sir. Love to see Deshaun Watson (one of the Pro Bowl "players") complete a pass with that dude. Or Marshawn Lynch go into a foaming rage as he watches his running back turn in circles while his linemen perversely MAKE A FREAKING BEELINE FOR THE ENDZONE. 

"Dammit!" he'd say, because we all did.

Then he'd switch out the base of one of the said linemen for that of his running back. And watch again while his back still ran in circles and his lineman took off on a plumb bob-straight line again.

"What the HELL?!" he'd say.

Because we all did.

 

Yes, sir, by golly. Forget Madden and all those splendid graphics.

Give us this instead.

That guy again

 Look, I get it. You hate Tom Brady. There's a support group and a secret handshake and everything for it now.

If you live in New England, you hate Tom Brady because he acted with exactly the cold-blooded pragmatism you celebrate as the Patriot Way when Belichick ruthlessly cuts loose a loyal soldier once the returns diminish. And now he's in Tampa and it's all warm and WHAT THE HELL HE'S GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL WITHOUT US.

And if you live everywhere else?

You hate Tom Brady because he's smug and he's married to a supermodel and he lives in a freaking castle, and he looks better at 43 than you did at 23. And he still plays football better than 99 percent of the quarterbacks in the NFL.

Also, Deflategate. Also, now you've gotta watch him in the Super Bowl again, for the 10TH FREAKING TIME.

If that doesn't spoil the clam dip and loaded nachos, nothing will. You might as well drink your beer as warm as they do in weirdo England.

Still, attention must be paid this morning. It surely must.

It must be paid because 50 years ago a man named George Blanda had to fill in at quarterback for the Oakland Raiders, and he did all sorts of wondrous things. Threw touchdown passes and kicked field goals and led the Raiders to come-from-behind wins, and even played in the AFC title game -- where the Raiders lost to the Colts, but Blanda completed 17-of-32 passes for 217 yards and two touchdowns, and also kicked a 48-yard field goal.

Like Tom Brady, he was 43 at the time.

Unlike Tom Brady, he looked 43, or maybe even 53. Which prompted a lot of walker jokes and rocking chair jokes and retirement home jokes.

Brady, on the other hand, doesn't look like he's aged a day in the last 10 years. And he still plays like he did 10 years ago. It's as if he made a pact with the Devil in the womb, and now will play on and on, never visibly aging or slowing down.

Everyone who hates Tom Brady would find the latter easy to believe.

The rest of us ... well, come on. We know it's not the Devil that keeps him so eerily ageless, but all those kale/avocado shakes and energy bars made from the essence of a Brazilian rainforest or whatever.

In any case, it's time to appreciate him. He's the undisputed GOAT, and what he's managed to do this year at 43 cements it for good.

First, he didn't get the Bastard Plague. Second, he took a team that hadn't won more than nine games in a season for a decade and got them to the Super Bowl by being Tom Brady, and also by inducing Gronk and Antonio Brown and Leonard Fournette to join the party.

In Green Bay yesterday, he threw for 280 yards and three scores to give the Buccaneers the cushion they needed to hold off Aaron Rodgers and the Packers. He also threw three picks, which will happen when you're 43 years old and presumably human. 

But the main thing is, he won. Again. 

And is going to the Super Bowl. Again.

Hate that with every fiber of your being if you must. But marvel at it, too.