Turning back the clock on Big Ben

As Cleveland Browns fans mourned another lost week end to the Steelers, Bill Hershey, a former Beacon Journal colleågue, recalled an earlier piece in Sports Illustrated  that told of Ben Rothlisberger's youthful rise to super-stardom while  playing  at Findlay High School his senior year.  I offer it to Browns fans not as a gloating Steelers fan (that would be a cheap gloat  these days!)  but rather as a vignette from an earlier day when Big Ben didn't get to start as a quarterback until his senior year. Notice how he took advantage of that opportunity to throw for a record 4041 yards and 54 touchdowns. (Cliff Hite, his high school coach at the time, is today a Republican state senator from Findlay.)

Here's the word from Hershey:

At Findlay High School, Rothlisberger was  captain of the football, basketball and baseball teams.  He did not play quarterback until his senior year, giving way to the coach's son, Ryan Hite.  Instead, Roethlisberger played wide receiver because as Coach Cliff Hite  explained to the Toledo Blade, "My son  throwing to Ben was a better combination" He said the reason for passing over Ben as the QB could be simply explained:  "I'm a nationally known knucklehead."

At the same time, Ryan Hite was a talented athlete, too. As far as knuckleheads go, it's a serviceable word for the Browns front office,  which didn't see the point of drafting Big Ben.

Super Bowl: I have a Terrible Towel. GO STEELERS!

ONE THE EVE of the tectonic eruption popularly called the Super Bowl, I must tell you something: I am a frantic Pittsburgh Steelers fan. Your response to this mini-WikiLeak will be expressed in three ways: Hooray for our side, How could you?, and Who cares?

Well, I care. You couldn't have lived in the apron of small towns around Pittsburgh for 20 years without intense loyalty to a team that everybody beyond the steel and coal country borders either loves today - or hates. But the haters are a small price for us loyalists to pay for Eight Super Bowls and all that goes with them.

Still, the two-week layoff between the last playoff game and the big night in Dallas left the sports analysts little to add to their commentary after a few days - which is when I dozed off.

Even before the experts started to repeat themselves to fill up the next 12 days, we were less than spellbound by those who told us that the outcome could be decided by blunders, penalties and injuries. Or they might not. Would Big Ben's Roethlisberger's pre-season romps, for which he was suspended four games,weigh heavily on the mule of a quarterback who is known to lumber and barrel his way through a half-dozen gruesome attackers? Then there is James Harrison, the all-pro linebacker from Kent State who somehow escaped the Browns' payroll. Is he so mean and brutal that the NFL had every right to fine him $100,000? His disposition to sometimes maul quarterbacks, his critics insist, is something only the Steeler fans could love.

Will the Steelers succumb to the Packers' West Coast offense? Will NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's ghost bewitch the team? And having lost four of their five starters on the offensive line to injuries, could the backups keep Big Ben from getting flattened a dozen times? Will the Rooney family's winning tradition through the years be enough save these guys? Is hating the Steelers enough to cause them to lose?

You know something? I don't think any these will really matter after the opening kickoff.

Linus has his blanket to serve his pleasure. And near by desk is the magical Terrible Towel. You may not think so, but it can empower the Steelers to make us diehards happy one more time. If we sulk in defeat, it simply means that we are a spoiled bunch who must give the towel a temporary rest. At least, until next season.

No, it won't be the end of he world if the Steelers lose. But for me, it will be hellishly close.

Pro Football: Out of "luck" only in closing moments

ALLOW ME to change the subject to professional football, of which I am a nutty fan. With sports, one can be nutty without endangering fragile world peace, encouraging the wrath of Rush Limbaugh or forcing John Boehner to choke up. Still, in the wake of Sunday's games it was possible to hear some things that were nuttier than others. Not that they changed anything, which is a good reason why sports is so important in our workaday cares.

For example, you could not pick up a paper or listen to a sportscast that didn't accuse the Pittsburgh Steelers or Cleveland Browns of being lucky to have won because of their opponents' blunders.

The Steelers won in overtime against the Buffalo Bills because, as "luck" would have it, a Buffalo receiver dropped a pass in the end zone that would have changed the outcome. (Actually, the crestfallen receiver openly blamed his misfortune on God's last-minute intervention instead. Honest.)

And the Browns won, as luck would have it, because Carolina's field goal kicker missed the payoff zone with seconds remaining.

Being inexpert on the fortunes of winning and losing, I still must wonder why the witnesses to these terrible moments (for the losers, at least) don't make a big deal out of a mishandled end zone pass in the first quarter of the game, or a stray field goal attempt in the second quarter or any other game-changing episode that unluckily (?) doesn't happen in the closing seconds.

It's quite nutty to raise these questions, I know. There is doubtless a perfectly rational explanation by the deeper thinkers, but I don't know what it is.

As Chuck Noll, the former Steelers coach, once explained to a reporter who asked whether the Steelers would have won if, by chance, an onside kick had worked by traveling the necessary 10 yards. "Winning," said Noll, "has nothing to do with geography."

Mangini's Browns: Fourth down and Forty

WHAT CAN THIS diehard Steelers fan from Western Pennsylvania say about the Cleveland Browns that won't be irresponsibly offensive to their fans who have already decided that the team is offensive? I've been thinking about it for some time, but have always retreated from the role of an interloper in what is, after all, the worst stink on the lake since some overly sincere, if misguided, folks failed to recall Dennis Kucinich from his huge desk in City Hall. Fortunately for him, the enmity wasn't unanimous and he seems to be living reasonably well as a congressman and quadrennial presidential candidate. The same fate doesn't appear to be imminent for the Browns.

It's been tough on me, too, as friends from around the country assume that anyone living this close to Cleveland owes it to the city to root for the Browns. I've tried to point out their error but they simply conclude that I am in denial. It was that way, too, when we lived in Columbus and the neighbors reacted in shock when I told them I was planning to mow the lawn on the afternoons when the Buckeyes were pummeling their opponents. It wasn't enough to explain that I happened to be an alum of another Big 10 school, the University of Illinois, whose football team is rarely anything to brag about even though the school does have a very nice campus.

But I was emboldened to speak out about the Browns after hearing their soon- to- retire running back , Jamal Lewis, complain that Coach Mangini was driving the players "too hard". That may be, although it's not NFL friendly to criticize a coach in public. I think it would be more deferential to the boss to observe that receivers are paid to catch passes on those occasions when the quarterback succeeds in throwing the ball in their general direction. But being a good sport myself, unlike Mark Antony, I'm not here to bury Mangini nor praise him.

But I do want to give some moral support to the overwrought Browns fans who hate the Steelers for winning so much. What they don't know is that Steeler fans such as yours truly suffer desperately through an entire winning season, game by game, with the playoffs and Super Bowl at stake. It can be most unpleasant to see a single fumble or interception that could be an immediate signal that this one will be a defeat that you will long mourn. On game day when the team isn't on network TV, we watch the clock, trash the NY Times crossword, absently nibble lunch without having a clue to what's on the plate and head for a sports bar to watch our team for a couple of hours of sweaty palms.

To Browns fans I say: when you are pulling for a loser it isn't nearly as agonizing as it is when your team is a winner. Trust me. I speak from experience. I'm also a Pirates fan, if you know what I mean.

Another season, another woe...

 IT WOULD BE unlike me not to take note of the opening of a new Major League Baseball season today.  In this troubled world, it should be a national holiday to hail the unequaled  equality of the moment.  As minor philosophers have often observed, all of the teams have the same record before the first increasingly expensive pitch is thrown.  Such equilibrium is not lost on such Pittsburgh fans as I, whose Pirates modestly aspire not to pennants but to a .500 season, a plateau that the team has not accomplished since James Buchanan. Or was it Grover Cleveland?  No matter.  We savor our moment, as brief as a flash of lightning, before the first nine innings have expired.  After that, we start assessing the rookies at Altoona for a glimpse of next year's possibilities. It is precisely at this moment that we feel the pain of the Cleveland Browns fans, but not for long.  

For Pittsburghers, it is the best of times and the worst of times.  The Steelers' uncommon successes should more than make up for the Pirates' uncommon (horrific ?) failures.  Maybe that contradiction in outcomes could sustain us until  ...oh, the middle of June, when speculation begins in earnest on another Steelers winning season to offset the Pirates' firm hold on last place.  To those who tell me that the truth always lies at the midpoint between the two extremes, I say, "The hell it does.!"   The Steelers played 19 games last season to claim the Super Bowl;  the Pirates, 162 to claim the cellar.   Where is the emotional equity in those numbers?

But to give baseball its due, it should be recalled that the game was once known as "Our National Pastime"  before it  was replaced with Twittering.  I know nothing  about Twittering - until yesterday I didn't even know how to use it in a simple declarative  sentence - but I do know that a runner cannot go from first base to third without touching second and that the infield fly rule has nothing to do with insects.  For those insights, and the little figurine of Roberto Clemente that stands on the shelf above my desk, I will honor the opening of a new season with the not quite exhausted patience of Job while forlornly conceding once again,  "No, we can't!".