Great moments in radio: Drew Brees on ESPN

What a kick it was this morning to drive to work and hear Drew Brees on the ESPN Radio show The Herd with Colin Cowherd. This was not your ordinary morning-after interview with the winning Super Bowl quarterback.

A few minutes into the  interview, Cowherd asks Brees when he learned the Saints were going to open the second half with an onside kick. The only response is some dead air and shuffling sounds. Then a different voice comes on and says Brees is taking a call from the president and will have to call back.

That was pretty cool — almost as unexpected as the Saints’ kickoff.

But even cooler was that a few minutes later, Cowherd is informed that Brees had called back. And indeed he had, giving Cowherd a few more minutes.

“He’s the nicest guy in the world,” Cowherd said of Brees, and he was right on.

The incomparable Jerry Rice nominated to the football Hall of Fame

Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith head the class of seven NFL players who will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame at Canton, and I write today to lavish praise on Rice.

He was incomparable, the dominant receiver of his era. He played superbly in the biggest games, and he played superbly in games that had little effect on the standings.

The San Francisco 49ers had a wonderful run of great seasons, and Rice was surrounded by a stellar cast. But his star shone brightest of all, whether he was catching touchdown passes from Joe Montana or Steve Young.

He rewrote the NFL record book for receivers. Even on his last legs with the Oakland Raiders and Seattle Seahawks, Rice still managed to be productive well past his prime years at Candlestick Park.  Not a bad career for a guy who played his college ball at Mississippi Valley State University.

Don’t look back

It’s the middle of the winter, roughly midway from the World Series to the opening of spring training, and I need some baseball inspiration.

I found it in this photo of Bob Feller and Satchel Paige, from Oct. 15, 1946.

Feller led an All-Star team of American and National league players in a pair of exhibition games against Negro Leagues All-Stars in Kansas City, Mo. Paige, who soon would pitch with Feller on the Cleveland Indians, was with the Kansas City Monarchs then.

All of which reminds me: I need to post about the one cap I got as a Christmas gift, a Monarchs beauty. I’m saving that post for another day.

Mark McGwire comes clean

Mark McGwire finally admitted publicly today that he used steroids and human growth hormone during his brilliant yet tarnished Major League Baseball career. He’s a pitiable figure.

I vividly recall the night he overtook Roger Maris for the single-season home run record, how he circled the bases and exuberantly hoisted his son in his arms, how the network announcers fawned poetically over his one-for-the-ages achievement.

What a crock.

With all those homers flying out of the ballparks, the ball had to be juiced, right? No, it was the players themselves. Corporate Baseball ignored that while counting gate receipts and broadcast revenue.

I wish I could say I was wise to what was happening. Like millions of other fans, I got caught up in the wonder of the players battling to hit 60, 61, 62 and then, almost inconceivable it was, 70 home runs in a season.

The first inkling I had that something wasn’t kosher probably came around the end of the 1996 season, when Baltimore’s Brady Anderson hit 50 home runs. In the four previous seasons in which he played full-time or nearly so, his totals were 21, 13, 12 and 16. But 50?

I don’t know if Anderson has ever been linked to steroids, but his prodigious output came about the time that others started their ramp-ups to power levels at previously unseen levels. As the players bulked up, their numbers got fatter and fatter.

It’s been so long it’s difficult to recall that Barry Bonds was listed on his 1987 Topps baseball card at 6′1″, 185 pounds, skinny as the proverbial rail. At the tail end of his career, his weight was listed at 236 pounds. Yes, we men all put on a few pounds as time and gravity take their toll. But most of us don’t transform from stick men into Popeye in such a short span.

I find it a bit curious that McGwire, who developed those “I eats me spinach” forearms at mid-career, unburdened himself only a few days after the latest round of Hall of Fame balloting. The numbers McGwire posted are real and are already recorded in the logs of the game. But at this point, I believe there’s little chance McGwire himself will make it to Cooperstown except, perhaps, as a visitor.

Ravens peck the Patriots in the NFL playoffs

The Baltimore Ravens thrashed the New England Patriots today in the NFL playoffs 33-14 in a lopsided game in frigid Foxboro, Mass. I’m having a hard time getting interested in the playoffs, and runaway games don’t do much to lure me in.

It’s obvious that the Patriots’ dominating run is over as they’ve succumbed to age, injuries and bad breaks. Not that I care. Years have passed and I’m still ticked off about the blown call that helped the Pats defeat the Raiders one snowy night in 2002.

As for the Ravens, it’s nice to see one of the non-elite franchises advance. I have mixed feelings about this one, however.

The Ravens were wrestled away from Cleveland by the petulant Art Modell. Although he no longer owns the team and the last ex-Browns player on the roster is long gone, I have not been able to get behind the Ravens.

Counterbalancing that franchise move is the travesty of how the Colts were ripped from Baltimore in the middle of the night for a move to Indianapolis.

Wrong is wrong is wrong.

So I hereby bury the hatchet with the Ravens and wish them and Coach John Harbaugh (above) well next week. May they kick the Colts in the keister.

Alabama defeats Texas to win the national championship

The final: ‘Bama 37, Texas 21.

Did I watch? Not a play. But I listened to the last several minutes via ESPN’s streaming radio feed.

Tres bien: Andre Dawson elected to the Hall of Fame

Andre Dawson was elected to the Hall of Fame today, a rich reward for the speedy outfielder. He’s pictured above with Expos teammate Vance Law.

Dawson only experienced the playoffs in two of his 21 years in the big leagues, so he didn’t get as much network exposure as did many of his contemporaries, greater and lesser.

I know Dawson had many successful years with the Chicago Cubs, but I keep a more romanticized memory of him playing with the Expos at Stade Olympique. His election today likely has a bittersweet tinge for the Quebecois, who lost Dawson to Chicago in 1987 and the Expos themselves after the 2004 season.

An unapologetic Canadian sympathizer, I’m hoping Dawson’s plaque is engraved with his face beneath that iconic red, white and blue “meb” cap when he’s enshrined next summer.

A tip of the cap to the Big Unit, Randy Johnson

This is how I’ll remember Randy Johnson – snarling, defiant, dominant. His long hair a tangle, his facial hair prickly, his fastball hurtling menacingly toward the plate from that lanky 6′ 11″ frame.

I’ll remember him most in a Mariners’ cap as above, for it was in Seattle that I first got to follow him closely. In fact, RJ and I each came over to Seattle at mid-season in 1989, a fact that no one but myself has ever noted heretofore. (He left the Montreal Expos for the Ms, and The Associated Press transferred me to Seattle from Omaha.)

When Johnson arrived in Seattle, he was not quite the Hall of Fame pitcher he would become. But without question he had the stuff to make it big in a career of 22 seasons in the big leagues. He announced his retirement today in a conference call with reporters, and a formal announcement is scheduled tomorrow.

Besides our coincidental moves to Seattle in ‘89, I have another trivial connection to The Big Unit. One of his nieces played on the same Little League team as my son in the mid-90s. For mere mortals such as I, even such a tenuous connection to a baseball immortal is still a thrill.

No, thanks. I’ll pass on the chips (Fiesta Bowl 2010)

On my television screen, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl tonight looked more like the Ugly Uniforms Bowl.

As one of my Twitter buddies pointed out, TCU players looked like walking eggplants. And although the pants in this photo appear orange, on my screen the Boise State players looked as if they were slathered in salmon mousse.

The only thing that would have made it worse was if the game had been played on Boise State’s hideous blue turf.

Farewell to Isaac Bruce, one of the great ones

Isaac Bruce bid farewell to his outstanding NFL career today. He was on the field for one play for the 49ers, who went on to defeat the hapless St. Louis Rams. Bruce spent all but the last two years of his career with the Rams, dating back to their last year in Los Angeles, 1994. He was an integral part of the “Greatest Show on Turf.”

It’s pretty cool that he got to log his last play before the Rams fans, even as few as there were.