Beantown Sports Guys

Goodbye, Red

Today, a great man has passed away.

Celtic legend Red Auerbach, age 89, passed away in his home in Washington from a heart attack.

Red wasn't just the best coach ever to grace the game, but he was an amazing man. He was one of the first coaches to embrace black players, and was 100% color blind. One of his closest friends, Bill Russell, is easily in the top 5 of the best NBA players of all time with Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson. Russell thrived in the NBA all because of Red. Russell had amazing talent and skill, but Red turned all that raw athleticism into a machine. Together they won 10 championships, and Russell was taught enough by Red to win his 11th as a player/coach.

Red was the King of Gamesmanship, lighting up his trademark cigar when he realized the game was in hand. He used to crank the heat in the Visitor's Locker Room, draining the energy out of the players before tipoff. He would coach the Celtics to learn where all the dead spots on the parquet and trap the opposition into those areas so when they dribbled the ball would just drop and barely come back waist high, easy pickings for a steal. Red truly was an ambassador of the game.

Every time I go to a Celtics game I seek out Red. He's always about 10 or 12 rows a bit off dead center court, edge of the aisle, with his cane propped in front of him. He's usually wearing a blue blazer, with a red sweater vest underneath. The Celtic faithful don't bother him, they merely respect him and allow him to enjoy the game that he helped create.

It will be a very weird feeling going back to the Garden for the first time and instinctively looking for Red and not finding him.

But he'll be there alright, I'll just have to look more carefully...

Rest in peace, Red.

Bad draft decisions to haunt your team

I never wrote this after the NFL Draft, as I was spending more time focusing on the Sox and the overall draft rather than one team or one school. It’s 5 weeks into the NFL season and I will say it now:

Mario Williams will be average at best, more specifically, if he stays in Houston.

He just got his 1^st NFL sack last week, and Houston would have been a lot better off grabbing Reggie Bush. Granted, Bush hasn’t even scored his 1^st TD, but coming into this weekend, he had 23 catches for almost 200 yards and is helping out Deuce McAlister regain his form. Deuce is 10^th in rushing in the NFC, and is scoring the TDs that could be Reggie’s.

Williams is a good player. He’s not fantastic, and this is what initially shocked me to see him going there. He is a product of the system at North Carolina State. He is a product of having a great defensive line. He would thrive in a system that has a nasty DE and a fantastic DT, and Houston has neither of those.

Need proof?

Fellow college teammates, Manny Lawson and John McCargo, were drafted 22^nd and 26^th respectively. If you looked at the tape they had on Williams during the draft, you would have seen that he wasn’t even above average on most of his plays, and those that he was, you would see the double team away from him, usually two guys on Lawson, sometimes two guys on McCargo. He missed tons of tackles, and many of his sacks were coverage sacks.

North Carolina State his Senior year had a great secondary, and he benefited from the overall system they had in place. We likely won’t see the best of Mario Williams, unless he eventually leaves Houston, much like Gerrard Warren and Courtney Brown when they played for the Browns and now both play for Denver. Amazing athletes and players, just bad schemes and systems for them. Mario would be great in Miami right now, and even better in New England. But Houston made the biggest mistake of their franchise in passing on Bush, and the proof will be in the pudding as we watch the two of them develop over the years.

Oh, Georgie Porgie...

The Sox are already hitting the links and back at home with their families, and the Yankees are on their way as well. Losing to the Detroit Tigers in a 5 game series, all the talk right now is how badly Alex Rodriguez has played, going 1-14 and zero RBIs. That is where the focus should be, on the players that didn’t step up, like A-Rod, and no where near Joe Torre.

But that isn’t where it has shifted to.

There is a lot of talk out of New York that Joe Torre could be looking for a job soon, as Steinsbaby wouldn’t mind bringing in Lou Pinella. I think that is a horribly huge mistake.

It hurts me to do this, but I’ll go out on a limb and give the Yankees some props here for am minute:

The Yankees were hit extremely hard by injuries early on. Losing Hideki Matusi to a broken wrist that many thought would sideline him for the entire season, and Gary Sheffield to a rock solid She a Hillenbrand collision, it appeared that they wouldn’t be able to replace that production.

But they did. They kept close, and then the Sox got hurt, at the wrong time. The Yankees were hurt early enough to make a move for Bobby Abreu, easily the best trade deadline move in the entire league.

Chemistry isn’t want kept this team together, they had no identity at that time.

Torre kept them together.

While the Sox fell apart and all of Beantown wondered what would have happened if Theo made a move earlier, the Yankees appeared to be the favorite to win their first World Series this millennium.

That didn’t happen though. They ran into a team that some might say are destined to win it all. A team that hasn’t been to the playoffs in forever, a team that Pudge Rodriguez joined a few years ago and everyone said he was crazy. But in an ESPN the Magazine article, he cited that they could do some special things and come together and win one.

It’s looking like he was a bit of a prophet, but they’ll still have to get past the A’s who also advanced to the ALCS, and then whoever they play in the Series.

All in all, Steinsbaby would be a fool to get rid of Torre. Joe made the tough move to put A-Rod to 8^th in the batting order (something never done to anyone that has had over 121 RBIs in the regular season), he stacked his pitching rotation for success, and molded his lineup to the best of his ability. How can anyone fault him for that? Most people wouldn’t, but Steinsbaby isn’t most people.