Good for the Kitnas!

Now far be it from me to opine, but I truly believe America today would be a much better place if we don't shy from poking honest fun up the chain of hierarchy. So good for the Kitnas, and who knows? Maybe someday we'll turn a page here, and realize it makes us better to be challenged, not standing sitting on our laurels. No p.c. apologies needed.

By LARRY LAGE

ALLEN PARK, Mich. (AP) -- Detroit Lions quarterback Jon Kitna and his wife dressed up as a naked man and a fast-food drive-through attendant at a teammate's Halloween party, depicting an embarrassing moment for one of the team's assistant coaches.

...
Defensive line coach Joe Cullen pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct and guilty to impaired driving after he was arrested twice last year, once in August 2006 after police said he was driving nude through a Wendy's drive-through lane, and a week later when they said he was driving under the influence of alcohol.
...
"All I was trying to do was wear a costume that people would have fun with," Kitna said. "I wasn't trying to demean Joe. If he hadn't come so far, I would not ever have done it. He's very confident of who he is and is very peaceful about what's happened in the past.

"When we talked yesterday, the first question out of his mouth was, `Did you win?' He seemed to not have a problem with it."

Defensive tackle Cory Redding backed that notion."He was still red this morning because Kitna didn't win," Redding said. "It was all fun and games."

Kitna, a born-again Christian who invites teammates to his house to explore their faith, also laughed at the costumes that poked fun at him and his wife.

"Somebody dressed up as me and my wife and came in Bible-thumping," Kitna said with a grin.

Why are you dressed...

like it's Halloween?
You look so absurd,
you look so obscene, well...

A little Ministry music, not the Christianist brand, but the mid 80s industrial house blend from Chicago, to salute the only holiday I can think of where the "Eve" festivities have pretty much overtaken tomorrow's more hallow celebrations... Not that there's anything wrong with that, eh? (Still tomorrow comes.)

Well I've lived with snakes and lizards
and other things that go bump in the night...

Ministry, Twelve Inch Singles (1985)

Morning Poem

by Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

from Dream Work (1986) by Mary Oliver

R.I.P.

... (Freddie) Stebbins Jefferson.

When we've been here 10,000 years
Bright shining as the sun...
We've no less days
to sing God's praise
as when we'd first begun...

The Truth shall set ye free.

The Wise Bard quotes Yosef Kanfesky, rabbi of B'nai David Judea in Los Angeles, in a lengthy piece on bringing about Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Peace will come only when and if everyone at the table has the courage, the strength, and enough fear of God to tell the story as it really is.

For many decades we have sighed and asked, "When will peace come?" The answer is starkly simple. There will be peace the day after there is truth.

Know your target...

and beyond.(before you pull the trigger.)

"Sssssssssmite me! "

Mariam on bike-baiting Minneapolis cops, and the actual impact of community-impact statements:

I work in the system and I've dealt with these "community impact statements". And god help all parties involved if there is one in your case. The City Attorneys office treats them like the gospel, with protocol as to how they are handled and how cases with these statements are to be treated. And yes, they are treated differently than other cases. Now, in theory, this could be a good thing. But let me give you an example I heard about and how it plays out.

The Global Market, located on Lake and Chicago, submitted a community impact statement. They had a guy who was stealing bikes outside of their business and they wanted it stopped. It was effecting their businesses and they wanted to ensure that people who rode their bikes to the Global Market wouldn't be in fear of theft. Anyone familiar with that area knows it's a high crime area and this isn't necessarily suprising. And it is understandable that they would be concerned. What is surprising is how MPD decided to handle it.


Did officers check surveillance video to see if they could identify this culprit? No. Did they conduct surveillance themselves to see if they could observe the described individual stealing bikes? No. Instead, they took a $750 bike and leaned it, without a lock, against a pole on Lake Street. Why $750? Because that amount ensure that the theft of that bike goes from a misdemeanor to a gross misdemeanor - the punishment going from a max of 90 days to a max of 365 days.

One man happened upon this expensive, unlocked bike. As roughly 7 officers watched on, this man hopped on the bike, riding down the street. He rode roughly 1 block where he promptly got off the bike, leaned it against something else, and then waited for the bus. Before he was on the bus, officers quickly nabbed him for gross midemeanor theft.
...
So, instead of investigating an actual crime, Minneapolis police decided to create a crime. And then used several police officers to set up these evil doers. And because there was a "community impact statement" (which did not even relate to this incident) this bullshit case could not be resolved. It was treated as if Moses himself came down from Mount Siani and pointed his finger at this Commandment breaker and asked the City of Minneapolis to smite him.

Is the voice of the community important? Of course. Should it be considered when combating crime? Absolutely! What I still don't understand is why the response to the community voicing a specific concern resulted in some lip service bike-baiting that created criminals, when officers could have looked for a criminal that already existed.

Say it ain't so, Geo.

George McEvoy on Joe Torre, Babe Ruth:

(A)nother dark cloud that leaves a bad taste in the mouths of decent fans is the lousy way the Yankees' organization - supposedly the class act of baseball - has treated Joe Torre.

All Joe did was manage the team with dignity, win or lose. He knows what it means to be a Yankee. The "suits'' now running things never will understand that feeling.

But this is nothing new for the Yankees.

When Babe Ruth was riding high, hitting more home runs by himself than some entire teams could achieve, they got a lot of great publicity by raising the Bambino's salary to $85,000. That was in the '20s, when the income tax was so low, it was almost invisible.

Several years ago, I sat in a coffee shop in Silver Spring, Md., with Joe Judge, the longtime first baseman for the old Washington Senators, and asked him whether he and Babe's other contemporaries weren't resentful of the huge salary he was getting.

"Not at all,'' Joe replied. "We loved the Babe. Every time he got a raise, we got one, too. He improved things for everybody.''

But then the 1930s came. The Babe got older and slower. What the fans didn't know was that after he reached the $85,000 salary, the suits started cutting his pay. Because he never again reached 60 home runs, the salary was reduced even when he belted 47 out of the park.

He slowed down as he neared 40. He asked to manage the team after Miller Huggins died. They offered to let him manage the Yankee farm team in Newark, N.J. They knew he couldn't take that. Babe Ruth in the minor leagues?

No way.

They offered him a pittance. They might as well have hung a sign on him saying, "Washed Up.'' He was booed in Yankee Stadium. He joined the old Boston Braves, hit three homers in one game, but generally got more laughs than applause. He coached briefly with the Brooklyn Dodgers and then left baseball for good.

freakin Friday.

Five thirty and all's well...

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

"Officers decide not to escalate to hard empty hand strikes, kicks, knees or baton ... (it) would have looked like the officers were beating Meyer into submission," the report said.*

Wow.
Where will this PC movement take us?

Sometimes I wonder ... when exactly did this "victim" mentality pick up steam in America and to what can we trace its origins? Where will it end, or lose most of its faux popularity? Denying the basic facts of life only lasts so long before you find yourself in a hell of a mess. Reread that quotation above, and think about basic enforcement, and the need to "pretty things up."

Amusing in its own way, but really, who is going to make it? We'll find out in the long run... **
----------------------------

*The report, which has Meyer's name and that of other students blacked out, said the officers did what was necessary to control the student.

"The utilization of the Taser in this situation was successful in its use to gain compliance of Meyer," the report states.

Police Chief Linda Stump defended her officers, but said, "Our purpose is, and has always been, to ensure a civil and safe environment where the many types of campus activities and open discourse can occur."

**Farnham's Freehold, behind the cheap sexxy parts of Stranger in a Strange Land, was my favorite Heinlein "book".

Singing in the Scorpio.

U2 Lyrics - Walk On

And love is not an easy thing
The only baggage you can bring...
And love is not an easy thing...
The only baggage you can bring
Is all that you can't leave behind

And if the darkness is to keep us apart
And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off
And if your glass heart should crack
And for a second you turn back
Oh no, be strong

Walk on, walk on
What you got, they can't steal it
No they can't even feel it
Walk on, walk on
Stay safe tonight...

You're packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been
A place that has to be believed to be seen
You could have flown away
A singing bird in an open cage
Who will only fly, only fly for freedom

Walk on, walk on
What you got they can't deny it
Can't sell it or buy it
Walk on, walk on
Stay safe tonight

And I know it aches
And your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on, walk on

Home...hard to know what it is if you never had one
Home...I can't say where it is but I know I'm going home
That's where the heart is

I know it aches
How your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on, walk on

Leave it behind
You've got to leave it behind
All that you fashion
All that you make
All that you build
All that you break
All that you measure
All that you steal
All this you can leave behind
All that you reason
All that you sense
All that you speak
All you dress up
All that you scheme...


Music: U2
Lyrics: Bono
Produced by: Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno
Engineered by: Richard Rainey
Assisted by: Chris Heaney
Additional production by: Steve Lillywhite
Mixed by: Steve Lillywhite
Additional engineering: Stephen Harris
Assisted by: Alvin Sweeney

first time played live: 2000-12-05: Irving Plaza, New York, New York
last time played live: 2006-11-29: Saitama Super Arena, Saitama, Japan

This song has been played at least 134 times live (either as full song or snippet).

Time to make the ice.

Mal's back in town. Driving Zamboni for the winter. I'm in training right now myself, at work. We're both beating colds, and eating pretty good.

I'm glad my buddy's back. He had fun last week, impressing the guys with his painting skills on the ice. Worked 12 hours when I was away one day visiting family; with the OT, that makes 2 days pay. Can't buy the simple life. But lordy do they try...
---------------------

Have a great Tuesday, now that we're out of Libra for the year. And that moon... she matters, you know.

Hitchens on Lessing's prize.

A Formal R.I.P.

"So lay me down
In that open field out on the edge of town
And know my soul
Is where my momma always prayed
That it would go
And if you're reading this
I'm already home."

A beautiful autumn morning breaks, more appreciated here for following two days of almost solid cloud cover. The morning news also illuminates the activity noticed last evening, walking the daily trash bag to the dumpster a block or so down.

There, I noticed the funeral home again was lined with flags, the main one out front at half mast. Plenty of cars in the parking lot, and the flag bearing bikes parked together off to the side in other lots. Another military funeral wake, odd since I had just linked yesterday my reactions to one a few years ago.

The two neighbors from upstairs, sitting out on the front stoop, ventured that it was a bike-riding vet, maybe Vietnam, whose brothers had turned out for a final salute. But no. It was a casualty of the current war -- the most recent Wisconsin fatality.

Madison reservist is Wisconsin's 79th war fatality

Oct 7 - Seeded by RestsoSource: madison.com

Rachel Hugo, of Madison, was killed Friday in Bayji, Iraq, when insurgents attacked her unit using an improvised explosive device and small arms fire, the Department of Defense announced Saturday. She was a member of the 89th Military Police Brigade of the U.S.

The t.v. announcer said her funeral will be held later this morning at the church down the street.

I like that the biker-/vets-- the Patriot Guard-- stand out there at the post of each flag. In wet weather, and on a glorious autumn afternoon, with the mums and pumpkins cleanly positioned aside the meticulous landscaping.

Photo from the files.

Lol ! *

While I'm not really amazed the kid has stuck it out so long (must like that Northern quality of life afterall, eh?), I would bet donuts to dollars that he's learned to start carrying a credit-card for easy hotel check-in.

Lots of these young guys -- they don't like to listen the first time around, thinks it dents the ego to listen to an older, wiser.... woman! Still, funny how opening your mouth and saying, "No, it's not the desk clerk. Standard operating procedure if you want to check into a room, son" can bring about such defiance. Special treatment is such a hard habit to wean yourself from...

Speaking of, congratulations Zach and Amy (Mrs. trj) on the upcoming baby. He's got a stable and secure job with the state in the voting division, and last told she was working for the city. Funny how it all tends to work out like that, relocating and becoming government workers... and even learning to carry a credit card for check-ins! (you can thank me later)

Now who wants to bet when the child gets into high school, Zachary will be even less libertarian due to time, and will better understand the extracurricular no-drinking, no smoking policies for the underage? Funny how time proves out those cranky old ladies who don't have the southern grace to keep their mouths shut and defer to the young menfolk who know it all, eh? Kidding.

Zach on me, awww:

"In her defense, I don't think Mary meant to be condascending. I have spoken to her before and remember her to be a very thoughtful and intellectually challenging conversationalist."

He understands, I'm doing the best that I can! Not tryin' to be condescending, just another way to be. Personally, I liked this brief exhange between us:

Of Tragic Irony on the Teresa Halbach murder, of which Zach became a self-styled expert obsessing about the formerly imprisoned killer.

"But in my defense, I don't think Mary gives me enough credit. I have spent more time pondering Steven Avery than probably anyone not directly affected by the case. It, like so many things I rant about in these pages, has become something of an intellectual obsession."

I was working as an attorney for the Wisconsin police union at the time. Zach worked for a few years as a former prison guard in Tennessee, between undergrad and law school.

My initial thoughts upon hearing of the young photographer's disappearance, were a bit ... "softer", and hopes for the Calumet County Sheriff's department to complete a responsible investigation were well satisfied. Two reactions, both devastated no doubt at such a senseless death, but different ways of channeling anger and finding some root cause to blame...


Still, Amy and Zach, all the best! Good luck with the delivery!

I'm sure you'll make excellent parents ... if you listen to Amy once in awhile, the first time around that is, without letting your ego get in the way of common sense. Yes you can! Though you're not exactly a leading thinker, despite the hype led by the gay little brother fan club, there's no shame in being the type of man who always walks in paths blazed by others. None at all. It might make you passive, and bound up inside, but then we can't all practice independence when there are bills to pay. :-)

Make the best of your lot, keep those minds open, and remember: It's not where you come from, it's where you're going that matters most! All the best to my old former Jurisprudence classmate and his growing family.
--------------------

* Since it's a special occasion, we've got to choose some appropriate pop lyrics. So in the spirit of all-inclusive insurance plans (don't be looking at me :-), I offer up this old gem from Billy Joel, temporarily re-titled: Anthony's Zachary's Song:

You should never argue
with a crazy my- my- my- my- my- mind...
You oughta know by now.
You can pay Uncle Sam with the overtime...
Is that all you get for your money?

Well if that's what you have in mind
If that's what you're all about...
Good luck moving up
Cuz I'm moving out.

Day is Done.

Day is done,
gone the sun,
from the lakes
from the hills
from the sky.
All is well,
safely, rest,
God is near.

Fading light,
Dims the sight,
And a star gems the sky
Gleaming bright,
From afar,
Drawing, near,
Falls the night.

Thanks and praise,
For our days,
Neath the sun
Neath the stars
Neath the sky,
As we go,
This, we, know,
God is near.

Got Honeycrisp?

Four test trees at the University of Minnesota suffered damage during a harsh winter and had been marked to discard when apple breeder David Bedford began work there nearly three decades ago.

"A little bit on a lark, I decided to undiscard it," Bedford said. "A couple years later, they started bearing fruit, and I was pleasantly pleased with the quality of it. I guess it's just one of those little nuances of fate."

Apples' flavor comes from slight variations in their sugar and acid levels. Honeycrisp is considered a "balanced" apple, something between a tart, acidic Granny Smith and the sugary, but sometimes bland Red Delicious.

But more important than its flavor, growers say, is Honeycrisp's texture. Many liken it to watermelon in the way the fruit breaks when bitten, releasing a spurt of juice. Bedford calls it "explosively crisp."

The cells in a Honeycrisp apple are unusually large, twice as big as in some other varieties, Bedford said. That allows each cell to hold more water, which it releases in a burst when cracked.

The University of Minnesota's apple breeding program released Honeycrisp in 1991. Early interest was mostly in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, partly because of the university's location and partly because the tree does best in areas that have a cool early autumn with a significant drop in temperature at night.

Leave the inmates; free the guards.

Still if we can make the effort
If we take the time
Maybe we can leave this much behind
Til it shines, ooh til it shines...

~Bob Seger

Who's afraid of Charles Lindbergh?

I suspect many thought the Nobel Prize for Literature that Doris Lessing won yesterday belonged to Philip Roth. Many have crowned him the great American novelist. Eh...

I liked Goodbye, Columbus and some of his early stories. When She was Good is another winner. But as a non-Jew, I really don't think I'm in his demographic audience for the later works.

We get it, Phil. You're a Jew, and that has affected your entire life in America -- your assimilation, your fears and concerns. Your protagonists are often middle-aged or later Jewish men, usually academics or others involved in productions derived in the life of the mind.

How many Americans do you suppose relate to that type of writing? International readers? Sure, he sells. Sure, the critics lap that mental conflict up. But I've always thought the man is a tad overrated outside his target audience -- those who really aren't afraid of Charles Lindbergh and think that the younger Jews in America have done well in assimilating themselves in what was WASPy cultures.

Lessing's earlier works -- and remember, this is a body of work prize -- dealt with concerns of women, and they responded. Maybe the Roth-loving critics can't relate, but I think Lessing is more appealing overall than Roth's concerns, which are limited.

Bloom called the Swedish Academy's decision "pure political correctness." He told The Associated Press: "Although Ms. Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable ... fourth-rate science fiction."

If you saw this prize as a vote against Roth winning this year, then Bloom's PC charges make sense. My counsel? Don't take it so personally, Phil and fans; there's always next year, although the shelf life of his lifelong themes may be limited. But it's good not to always play the outsider, ok that we've assimilated away those concerns of his, and the younger Jewish generations quite thankfully move on, not wallowing in fears of the past and better embracing the overall "American" label. Right?

The problem with the Nobel Prize for literature is contained in its mission statement. It is awarded annually to a person of any nationality "who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction."

Note those three deadly words: "an ideal direction." Nobel built an aspirational element into the award that has been ignored only occasionally. Majestic doom and gloom have sometimes been recognized with honorees of the caliber of Andre Gide, Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot and Harold Pinter - good is good - but people of at least equivalent accomplishment have been consistently overlooked - Graham Greene, for instance.

Because from tiny acorns...
grow mighty oaks.

Happy Birthday...

Leonard Pitts Jr.

On Thursday, it will be 50 years since I fooled around and got myself born. It's a personal milestone that raises a critical question I've been grappling with for weeks:

Can I get a column out of this?
...
Your humble correspondent has survived no death camp. To the contrary, I've seen Niagara Falls and Hawaiian sunsets. I've been in African shanties and French restaurants. I've seen Stevie Wonder dance on a piano, heard Aaron Neville sing Amazing Grace. I've suffered loss, yes, but I've also seen birth.

It's been -- so help me, Jimmy Stewart -- a wonderful life. But there have been those hard days when faith was shaken, and I moped in the self-pitying conviction that life was a conspiracy against me. When I was a kid -- and I suppose this is true of all kids -- I always figured that one day I would Understand It All. At the end of five decades, I'm still waiting for that day.

Congratulations...

Doris Lessing.

A fine choice.

Lessing is the second British writer to win the prize in three years. In 2005, Harold Pinter received the award. Last year, the academy gave the prize to Turkey's Orhan Pamuk.


A seasoned traveler of the world, Lessing has known many homes from Persia to Zimbabwe to South Africa and London.

"When you look at my life, you can go back to the late 1930s," she told The Associated Press in an interview last year ago.

"What I saw was, first of all, Hitler, he was going to live forever. Mussolini was in for 10,000 years. You had the Soviet Union, which was, by definition, going to last forever.

"There was the British empire - nobody imagined it could come to an end. So why should one believe in any kind of permanence?"

Alive, and doing fine.

Susan Lenfestey lives in Minneapolis and writes at the clotheslineblog.com.

In Ken Burns' recent series, "The War," a veteran says the military knew that the longest a person could endure combat before going totally nuts was 240 days. We've been in Iraq roughly 1,650 days now, and though God knows most of us haven't been asked to do much more than sell off our children's future, I think we're all going a little nuts.

We sit glassy-eyed through committee hearings on such fantastical characters as Blackwater USA's Erik Prince -- a secretive megabuck donor to President Bush whose "troops," paid to escort diplomats, will now have members of the State Department paid to escort them.

We watch slack-jawed as Republicans vie for the affections of their crumbling evangelical base by proclaiming love for their (third) wife or the unborn -- unless the unborn becomes born and requires health care and education.

We nod out as Hillary's machine rolls on toward the inevitable, fed by media reports of -- the inevitable. And as 2008 approaches, those of the liberal persuasion are filled with a familiar dread.

We agonize as Congress squabbles over who is more unpatriotic for calling which members of the military more unpatriotic -- and our president assures us that the American government does not torture people.

Iraq is a never-ending nightmare, and the Decider's mind seems decided on something catastrophic for Iran. We're drowning in debt. Our health-care system is great -- for those who can afford it. It's October and 80 degrees outside. Creepy.

On the way home from the State Capitol I got lost trying to find the pedestrian bridge over Interstate 94. I pedaled through a backwater of apartments and townhouses along the freeway. A group of African-American guys were shooting hoops, women and kids laughing and playing along the side. A group of Mexican guys were working on a car, two wheels pulled up on the curb so one could crab his way underneath. And a group of Hmong guys were re-siding a 1960s-era flat-roof church, a temporary sign hanging over the old one, "Hmong Evangelical Lutheran Church."

Stereotype alley, I know, but also reality. And a comforting bit of normalcy in a world gone nuts.

"No matter how bad my life gets...

at least I'm not a Packer fan."

~Yellow lettering on the purple t-shirt Norm got Sunday afternoon from his daughters for his 92nd birthday. The guys at coffee the next morning especially appreciated it (it's a mixed crowd), given the final GB-Chicago score. Plus, his Vikes had the weekend off.

Road trip? 10-4.

And how about that Brett Favre?

I don't really understand why (holding the record for) touchdowns tosses in football doesn't equal home run totals in baseball. I know Green Bay was disappointed in the "I might retire, I might not" drama of off-seasons past, and then there was talk -- if I recall correctly -- that he said he'd consider playing for another team (?) Or maybe it was the losing, but I do know Brett Favre isn't as loved as he once was. Still, the coverage seemed sparse. Now he did Vicodin's, was it?, and talked all about it in his "book". So take that for what it's worth too.

Should it all linger on the definition of "performance enhancing" and is it the syntheticism we should be focusing on? Sociology of sport -- there you go now.

What?

You thought you were rid of me so easily?
Heh. EWOTTBE, remember? (eyes wide open til the bitter end)

Nope, just out of town, visiting the family, enjoying these beautiful days out of doors. Forgot the camera though. It's nice to come back here and be aware of the changes just this little bit north, though. America's amazing in her variety, that's one of our strongest points, I think.

Anyway, speaking of being rid of...
Let's pretend I took the time here to set up a poll, and just never revealed the result. How do you vote? The Dolphins should or should not welcome back Ricky Williams. Now please don't vote if you don't know of Ricky Wm's, and remember to consider all factors. Vote now please, and show your work:








































Me? I say you have to go for it, at this point. What do you have to lose? Ricky plays with heart, and I can't believe he's unlikeable. No, his faults and failures honestly added up still don't equal so big a risk that you don't take him back.

Norm always told me that Daunte Culpepper made up for his slow ability to pick up the defenses by his scrambling ability. But he wasn't sorry to see him leave Minnesota for that basic fault. Still, how they ushered him out in Miami was not handled with class, and class counts. When you saw D.C. was picked up by Oakland, and took a look at the schedule, well who didn't see yesterday's fire game coming? He's a man afterall, and men have pride. Most men -- that type of game-player, I mean. Even if he's a scrub the rest of the year, he's fired up for that game, naturally.

Same with the knock on Randy -- the misinterpretation, in my opinion -- that Randy ever said "I play when I want to play." No, I always took that as "I can't give 110% all the time; I have to be efficient if I want to play at this "beauty" level." (My words, of course.) You just can't turn it on on every play, was how I read that one, and physically, it makes sense.

So Ricky Williams? Please I hope when I'm reading your work you didn't mention the "role model" angle. Points off for that. Whoever added that to the skill set of pro athletes was probably a parent not willing to do the heavy lifting of their job themselves.

So yeah. Holla back if Ricky comes knocking. I told you I remember the years in Chicago of "Payton right" ... "Payton left" ... "Payton up the middle" ... , didn't I? That man was efficient. Ronnie Brown can't do the same; nobody can nowadays, not like that. Talk about stretching and earning every yard, and maybe even getting a few extras on the field on acting ability alone.... Sure, physically it killed him, but what we know now that we didn't know then... And likeable? Yes, everyone loved him, but you tell me how funny some of those "practical jokes" he pulled seemed at the time, and how many were remembered in a better light after he left us. I'm sure for a man like that, efficient and beautiful but a workhorse who couldn't give less than 110% couldn't simply put, that losing -- all those losing years -- was felt extra-sensitive. Meaning it hurt him more than most -- some people can shrug off losses, but I think it added up on him even though he never let it slow his play. Damn shame they never bought him any backup, somebody who also cared to play at that level year in year out. I think they never really tried to understand what they were asking him to do, alone and how he carried a franchise. Sometimes you just see things in retrospect, which is fine, but how much better and rarer those that play in the moment and shine?

This Ricky -- I don't really follow it closely enough to know if he should even share the same paragraph as Sweetness. But there you go -- that's who I'm giving the top grade to, based on the work submitted. The work that best answers this question -- a variation on a theme I've been playing with lately, but Boom!I think I hit the hole and hereby retire it here: WWWD?
=
What Would Walter Do ?

I gotta think he'd understand Ricky Williams too.