Red Right 88

Cleveland sports fan and sports writer

Name:
Location: Cleveland, Ohio, United States

quit my job decided to drive west

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

The column you were going to read in the West Life

This is the missing column that was supposed to appear in the Jan. 25 West Life, but got bumped by last minute inspiration. It is here so that anyone who types Zachary Dzurick Lofa Tatupu Joe Carter in the right search engine will find it. But I think you will agree it was ditched for a reason.

Cleveland sports fans never overreact, do they?

I guess everyone is allowed to have an opinion. And it seems silly to get worked up when someone else’s opinion is light years away from yours.
But here are some words uttered in my direction over the last 24 hours.
“If LeBron doesn’t want the ball for the last shot, then I don’t want him on my team.”
“Larry Dolan is a cheap (edited by management) and by trading Coco Crisp, the Indians are giving up on the 2006 season.”
Let’s start with the second one first. All Sunday as the rumors that the deal was done with Boston, I tried to find some news. Since that was scarce, for the first time, I ventured to the Indians forum on a local website.
Let me start by saying, I love Coco Crisp. While the Indians bats were silent early in the season, Crisp was the one clutch player you could count on. Over the last few years, the Indians tried in vain to make Crisp a fourth outfielder. But whoever they put in his way (Alex “Five tools” Escobar, Jody Gerut, Ryan Ludwick, Matt Lawton, Milton Bradley, Brady Anderson, Russell Branyan, Wil Cordero), Crisp kept plugging away and won an every day job. I have also interviewed Coco and he is just a great guy. There is no way that I wanted him to be traded.
That said. Apparently Coco Crisp is the second coming of Joe Carter. I love the guy, but the venom spread on this website about how trading Coco Crisp was unreal. It seems this is akin to parting with Rocky Colovito. (My dad is still a little steamed about that one.)
I know nothing about the guys involved in the main deal or the supposed secondary deal. I will won’t even pretend to interpret their stats or what so called experts believe.
I will say this instead, Mark Shapiro has given me no reason to doubt him. Phil Savage and Danny Ferry’s first moves can easily be questioned. (drafting Brodney Poole instead of Lofa Tatupa and signing career journey man Damon Jones for four years and $16.1 million years) But Shapiro, I think he has earned the right to be trusted. He has built this team the right way at the right price.
To just suggest Crisp is being traded for money reasons is silly. The Marte kid must be worth the risk. I know everyone who calls into radio shows and has a blog is qualified to be a MLB general manager, but seriously I am positive these are the same people who didn’t show up for the games until late in September.
The White Sox GM isn’t resting on his laurels and every other team in the division spent money this off season. The Damon Jones signing proves it doesn’t make sense to throw money around on free agent just because the media and the “fans” tell you need something.
I love Coco but in Shapiro I trust.
As for the rapidly falling career of the Chosen One. Again are you kidding me? For the sake of the argument, I will accept the ridiculous notion that James doesn’t want to take the last shot. So because of that you want to get rid of someone who has an opportunity to put up a triple-double every single night. As Bill Cosby used to say, “Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.”
James is 21 years old. He may not admit it, but he has to be a little tired both physically and mentally. There is a lot of internal and external pressure on being the Chosen One. His recent misses and passes at the end of these road trip games are really the first time he has ever failed in his life. This is the first time he is getting questioned and nailed by critics. You know certain elements have been waiting for a reason to pile on.
How about we give the kid a little grace period before jumping off the bandwagon? I don’t know why he passed to Sasha, but in my book if you really believe that Sasha had no business getting the ball then that is on the head coach. Because anyone on the floor at the end of game should be ready to take a game winning shot. But if you insist that James has to be the one to take it just because he is the Superstar then tell me why Jordan passed the ball to Steve Kerr to win that one championship. And was it Kobe and Shaq that took those big game winning shots during their championship run or was it Robert Horry?
What matters is that with the flu and a bad knee, he made sure against Utah that no last shot would be needed. That is more important than a few missed shots.
The point is big shots are taken in the playoffs and not in the regular season. And LeBron can’t be the man until his team gets that far. He may be the best all around player in the league, but lets not forget he is still growing up on the court and his team is still trying to find the pieces parts, he needs to fulfill his destiny.
In other words, relax.

If you type it they will come

I was up writing until nearly two a.m. on Sunday night. When I stopped, I was too wound up to go to sleep. I have set up my television to automatically turn off every night at 3:07 a.m., it doesn’t mean I will fall asleep, but at least there is one less distraction. I might have even slept a little before shuffling off to work bright and early.

Monday is the workhorse day at the paper while Tuesday morning is proof day with the goal of sending the paper to the plant to be printed by noon or so. So those are the days when I should at least pretend to rest.

So I told myself I would watch Mystery, Alaska then start lying in bed by midnight with the TV off already because I knew I was tired. But the movie left me curious since the best player for Mystery was Conner Banks. I couldn’t remember the first name of the Mighty Ducks’ best player whose last name was also Banks. The Internet is a good friend to the Insomniac with a bed memory thanks to seven concussions (yes I realized in the proof that I wrote bed instead of bad, I think that is just my inner child whining)thanks Turns out it the kid was called Adam (and in my opinion the true hero of all three movies) I also learned that Goldberg’s first name was Greg. Go figure.

Not sure why, but rather than lying down so as least to say I tried, I yahoo’d myself. I remember a few years doing that and coming up with a big fat zero. Now I am all over the place thanks to the paper’s website and the blog that serves as a column archive.

But imagine my surprise when I found stories of mine in places I never put them. I found links to articles at www.nearwesttheatre.org, www.clevelandbrowns.com and www.rockyriverchamber.com. No surprise there really I suppose. You write something nice about a local group and then they put it on their site. But how about finding links to my articles at these sites: www.wrestling pod.com (the article about the new real pro wrestling), www.cerebropalsy.com (my feature on Jennifer Sherman), www.best-newspaper.info/the-sport-newspaper.html (Rocky River Recreation‘s Lacrosse program. which you can‘t even find at the Rec‘s website, sure the Sports Illustrated article is there, but who loved ya first), www.1airlineflightscheduleparis21.info/northbridge-ma-public-school-bus-schedule/midview-schools-bus-schedule.html (my article about the SWC split, which mentioned how Midview has more kids than Olmsted Falls), sharp.search-now858.com/scott_sharp.html (my personal favorite as it apparently it links to all things Scott Sharp.) There was even a link to www.insidehighered.com/news where I was quoted by a writer who did a story on teen gambling. That same story was found on a college in Kentucky’s website as well.

Now I was wide awake so then I decided to google myself. There I found a few more hits including another Scott Sharp site www.newszoom.com/search/latest/scott-sharp/news (I think Coach Sharp is a great guy but who knew he was so popular) However be careful on that last link, I think my pop blocker saved me a virus there. There were also broken links on google that included www.golf-in-1.com (Except it said it was about Kelley Moore) , www.find-sports.org/Hockey (a Tim and TJ Murphy profile) and there was even www.miame.com/women-men/astrology/west-life.html which claimed to have my story on the best of 2004. I swear no occult magic or tarot cards were used in the making of that article.

At MSN, www.creative-interior-design.info/interior-designer-west-burke.html had a link to my profile of Ashley Rucker. All because she mentioned she might one day want to be an interior designer. I also learned my name appears in the Baldwin-Wallace football media guide. It also asked me if I was looking for Zachary Dezurick or Zachary Dezurik. Not sure I could handle knowing anything about those guys so I declined.

Funny thing is even though they all exist in cyberspace, outside of my column blog, you can’t find any of my articles (outside of this week’s) by logging directly to www.westlifenews.com. Although our webmaster is working to change that.

So finally I asked Jeeves, the real question, “Who is Zachary Dzurick?” But he didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already learned. I did get a little nervous when Dogpile’s search engine led me to the Houston Herald Obituaries, but thankfully the reports of my demise were greatly exaggerated.

So what did we learn today boys and girls, that maybe when you have already written a perfectly acceptable column that name dropped Rocky Colovito, Coco Crisp, Joe Carter, Lofa Tatupu and LeBron James, you should just stick with it. Now that column will be lost forever, for something that really had nothing to do with sports and has now kept me awake well past closing time.

Of course, I bet in a few days if you type Zachary Dzurick Lofa Tatupu Joe Carter in a search engine, that column might magically surface somewhere from deep in cyberspace. Also, you have to be careful what you write these days because as I have learned. if you have the right search engine, Pittspuke and West Life are now forever linked. Amen to that.