By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
April 18, 2014
Back in February of this year, the DSR ran a tournament to crown the Worst Detroit Sports Media Personality. It was the second time we put together a bracket like this — Michael Rosenberg took the crown in 2012.
And in 1990 UNLV and 2009 North Carolina fashion, Terry Foster made a mockery of the tourney. The 97.1 host, Detroit News writer and failed restauranteur crushed the competition throughout his bracket and then annihilated his News co-worker, Vincent GoodSHILL, in the Final.
We at the DetroitSportsRag felt we had to honor Foster in a proper fashion as we fully appreciated his authoritative victory as the worst member of the Detroit Sports Media. Which is the equivalent of being the biggest douche bag in a fraternity.
So, the DSR Elite decided to present Foster with a trophy when he made one of his 97.1 public appearances. Here is a photograph of the trophy that was hand-delivered to “The Truth” last night.
(The trophy at the top of this article is the one that stays at the DSR Headquarters. We will engrave the name of the winner of this tournament every time we run it from now on. Or until I have a massive heart attack or someone assassinates me.)
Anyway, here was the plan. Foster was hosting a viewing party at Buffalo Wild Wings in Detroit last night, where the ESPN 30-for-30 Bad Boys documentary was being shown.
So we figured that out of respect for Isiah Thomas, Bill Laimbeer and Joe Dumars, we would wait until after the viewing to show up at the chicken wing joint to present T-Fos with his award.
But we figured we had to make more of a spectacle of this occasion than just simply walking up to Foster and handing him a trophy with a horse’s ass sitting on top of it.
For whatever reason, I thought it would be humorous to have a mariachi performer sing “One Shining Moment” in Spanish while we presented Foster with the goods.
Well, you try explaining to a mariachi performer that you want him to show up at 10:30 on a Thursday night to play “One Shining Moment” in an effort to publicly humiliate a dude on a night when he was supposedly celebrating being included in the Pistons documentary. Especially when he speaks no English.
You might be asking how much that would cost. The answer would be $200 plus $6 for parking. And luckily, I never really had to explain to the mariachi musician (or his VERY pregnant wife who spoke very good English) why the fuck we were doing this.
So we got to the B-Dubs around 10:00pm and I had my legal team of Ben Shipper and George Contis scope out the upstairs bar where Foster was taking a victory lap for his participation in the ESPN project.
They reported back to me that Foster was just mingling with the crowd and this would be a very easy presentation. The 350-pound bouncer at the door didn’t really seem to care about what we were doing (I mean, a mariachi performer in full regalia with his instrument was walking over nervously and the guy never wondered what was up) and it appeared that there would be no repeat of the 97.1 goons roughing me up on Opening Day a few years back.
Here are three videos of the trophy handoff. Yes, three videos. We wanted to save this for posterity, and with the expense involved, we weren’t taking any chances.
There you have it. Foster handled it pretty well, although a blonde chick hanging out with him looked fairly pissed. Foster even shook my hand and said he didn’t hate me, which is weird since I hate myself and in the past he has called me a racist to his Twitter followers and told DSR Prankster Matt Pierson that I was like Hitler.
Hell, he even TOOK the trophy and didn’t even try to return it.
Part of the plan was to present Foster with a $100 donation to his charity of choice for the evening (something about blankets for the homeless, I believe), but we totally forgot to do that in the excitement of the mariachi music.
(And speaking of the mariachi performer, he kept following Foster around the bar and serenading the guy. The dude had no clue this was a prank and why would he? WHO DOES SHIT LIKE THIS?!??!)
Anyway, we had left BW3’s and had to return with the donation, which was kind of awkward. But Foster graciously took the $100 bill and hopefully that will purchase some blankets for those in need. Like the hostess at Foster’s Smokehouse. RIP.
The one thing that did piss me off was that we made participatory ribbons for the other members of the Fucked-Up Four (Mitch Albom, Pat Caputo and GoodSHILL).
I was pretty sure Albom would be off in Haiti and Caputo would be crunching numbers somewhere proving sabermetrics don’t account for eras, but I thought there was a decent shot that the anorexic midget would be in attendance.
But when we made the presentation, nobody saw Goodwill. When returning to give Foster the donation, I left the ribbons with the others and that is when GoodSHILL appeared at the bar. Maybe he was in the restroom with his nose shoved up Dumars’ rectum during our first trip.
I guess we will just have to get Vince his ribbon some other time. And by the way, the lady at the engraving place told me this was the first time they ever made a ribbon with a curse word on it.
All in all, it was a fun evening. The DSR’s second-in-command (Justin Spiro) and I even got to take a great thumbs up picture together …….
