Another tough week for Patriot's fans. Time to start fantasizing about who your ideal replacement quarterback might be. But, given the season that's in it this week's musings stray into the area of horror - "what players would you least like to see in a Boston team uniform". Read on if you dare...
OK – this is no longer funny. The continuing inability of Cam Newton to throw a pass the required distance is starting to be more than the sort of thing that you figure he’ll get over. Ten yard outs are nine-yard shoe-toppers. Anything over twenty yards down field has the receivers stopping in their tracks and reacting more like defensive backs than the actual DB’s covering the routes. Worst of all – the throws are making the receivers vulnerable to injury. N’Keal Harry, who was actually rounding into a threat earlier in the season, was hammered a couple of times because he had to reach back for or wait on balls that should have been delivered much more crisply.
So, what’s the answer? Typically this would be when you start to have a quarterback controversy – except on the Patriots roster there really is nobody good enough to give rise to that type outcry. Even assuming there was someone in the stands to start booing and raising the alarm - I still don’t see much chance of there ever being a huge “We want Stidham” or “Where the hell’s our Hoyer” chant washing over Gillette Stadium.
So, are there any other QB’s around who have some credentials? Anyone who has led a team to the Super Bowl, has some mobility, arm strength, can learn a new system? Anybody available to be signed who has that resumè?
Anyone?
Oh – don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. Like that Friends episode where Ross hits on his cousin – you’ll say that could never happen – but, c’mon – if your cousin was Denise Richards you would at least think about it.
OK – we’re all aware of the fact that currently the Vegas odds on anyone with the initials “C.K.” making a professional comeback are slightly favoring Louis (yeah, at about 1000-1, but still…), and having already tried to capture the Camback Player of the Year award the Patriots are never going to go that route again – but, still, you have to have at least thought about the possibility.
Don’t. That way lies madness. But this sort of speculation is exactly what this space is all about so, just for the fun of it, let’s pick other “least likely candidates to ever join a Boston sports team”.
Remember – none of these ever happened – and there is good reason why not.
The Celtics – There are lots of players who are so associated with other teams that having them on the Celtics would be unthinkable, starting with Wilt Chamberlain, who was the flip side of the Wilt v. Bill debate for over a decade. That would be the winner except that Wilt, while on the short end of most every tussle with Russell was almost a sympathetic figure. “Imagine what Auerbach would have done with Wilt” is something all Celtics fans contemplated and did not automatically dismiss. As to the other franchise players like Kareem, Magic, Hakeem, and, of course MJ – they just appeared to belong somewhere else – certainly more than the idea that they didn’t belong on the Celtics.
No – there is only one guy whose presence in a Celtic uniform would require an entire change of mind set to contemplate. That person is Bill Laimbeer. Yes, I know he played to win, was a fierce competitor, had a decent outside shot – blah, blah, blah. But he also suffered from the unavoidable fact that he was, at the end of the day, Bill Laimbeer.
And Bill Laimbeer was an asshole.
The Bruins – Of all the teams to be considered the Bruins come closest to having actually signed player(s) who would have received strong consideration for making the list. The first instance of that arose in 1975 when not one, but two players who had long been considered “Anti-Bruins” were added to the roster. It has receded somewhat in people’s memories but the trade that sent Phil Esposito (and defenseman Carol Vadnais) to the New York Rangers for Jean Ratelle and Brad Park was probably one of the seminal events for an entire generation of young Bruins fans. Ratelle was a member of the hated Rangers, one of their captains for crying out loud. That was bad enough. But Brad Park was someone who had the temerity to be spoken of in the same breath as Bobby Orr. That had been, up until the moment of the trade, grounds for considering Park to be like the Joker to Bobby’s Batman, the Lex Luther to his Superman, the Frank Burns to Bobby’s Hawkeye Pierce.
But the trade had greater implications - if the Bruins could trade away PHIL ESPOSITO the world of the 1970’s was suddenly very unsafe - anything could happen. Mars could attack. Bigfoot could show up in your back yard. A great white shark could devour you during your summer vacation at the beach. Bobby Orr could leave the Bruins.
Well, maybe not that last one.
Eventually, everyone got to like Brad Park and Jean Ratelle. Some of the same things came in to play when the Bruins signed Ken “The Rat” Linseman some years later. You’d be surprised what you could live with. However, the one guy that could never have been a Bruin follows much the same career path as Bill Laimbeer. “Ulfy” is and will remain a four-letter word in all Bruins fans’ vocabularies. Park and Ratelle – OK. The Rat – yeah, sure. But if you tried to put that Swedish POS into a Bruins uniform, even today in an old-timers game – Bruins fans would tear the building down and burn any sweater that had ever touched the flesh of that demon in human form. Don’t believe me? Here is one of the opening paragraphs of Samuelsson’s Wikipedia page:
“During his playing career, Samuelsson was viewed by NHL stars as "the most hated man in hockey"; he was described to the New York Times as "the lowest form of human being" and someone whose play is all about "trying to hurt you and knock you out of the game".[1] He is also infamous for his knee-to-knee hit on Boston Bruins Cam Neely during the 1991 playoffs that completely ended Neely's career five years later.”
The only thing I question in that description is the use of the term “human being”.
The Red Sox – This turned out to be tougher than I thought. While my mind turned immediately to the Yankees (where else?) there were a number of countervailing considerations that were brought to bear. Reggie Jackson? Reggie could be charming, in a Reggie sort of way. Billy Martin? In the end Billy was just pathetic. Thurman Munson? Tragic. Graig Nettles? He was a dick, but really not of much consequence. Derek Jeter – overrated, perhaps, but not a villain. Aaron Boone – nope, it turns out he was just the prelude to the glorious chapter to come.
I kind of resisted making my final choice, mainly because I hate even acknowledging the protagonist’s place in history. Here’s a little story to back that up.
Back in 2019, while we were all living in a parallel universe, the Sox and Yankees met in London to play a couple of regular season games. Yes, they travelled overseas. I had tickets, and so did I. What a concept! As is detailed in one of the chapters of my book “Hello Out There” (available at Amazon on-line) I managed to finagle my way in to the VIP section, where a number of former players for both teams were circulating, taking pictures and signing autographs. I had found a fellow Red Sox fan who was about my age and so knew just how good Reggie Smith was and why it was a thrill to get his picture and signature. Then one of the ex-Yankees walked by.
“You gonna ask for his autograph”? I asked the guy I had just met.
“Not even if he signed it with his middle name” was the quick response.
If you haven’t sussed it already that reply is a dead giveaway for most Red Sox fans as to who was being referred to. Russell Earl Dent is never called by his given name. In and around New England he is, and always will be, Bucky Bleeping Dent, or Bucky F. Dent for those who need a further clue as to the bleep. There is, I believe, a deeper reason than mere frustration behind Dent’s three name moniker. After hitting the single most painful, excuse me, wind blown home run in baseball history Dent earned the extra name in order to join the ranks of other assassins. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Mark David Chapman – they are all referred to in this way because, in the end, it seems impossible that such puny, inconsequential, weak, dull people could have had such a dramatic effect on history. So, we have to add a name to their everyday designation. How can someone who is the equivalent of Daniel Baldwin eliminate the greatest President ever? How can some guy who couldn’t hold a job as a packing clerk kill JFK? How could a failed camp counsellor erase John Lennon? How could a career .247 hitter, who never hit more than 8 home runs in an entire season, bring down the team with Rice, Fisk, Lynn, Evans, Tiant and Yaz?
Bucky Fucking Dent could never be a Red Sox.
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