Monday Morning Mossisms™

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brady_lang.jpg.size.xxlarge.letterbox By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
September 1, 2014

What do Ben Stiller’s wife, Frank DeFord, mullets, the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” theme song, Lorne Malvo, Bill Maher, the Civil War, Steve Lombardozzi, 3000 Miles to Graceland and “cornball bruthas” have in common?

They are all included in Monday Morning Mossisms™ ……

Greg Brady’s An Odd Guy

This July marked the 20th birthday of sports talk radio in Detroit as WDFN-1130 celebrated its platinum anniversary — even though most fans in town have no clue that the original ALL-sports-talk station in Motown still exists.

Twenty years is an awfully long time and there are tons of stories that could be told by WDFN employees — from the moment “The Morning Battery” hosted by Lary Sorensen and Butch Stearns debuted to the station’s current slow death anchored by Matt Shepard.

There is a project in my head that I have always wanted to present on the DSR — the definitive “Oral History” of WDFN, as told to you by the station’s on- and off-air personalities.

I love oral histories — Grantland’s piece on the now-defunct “The National” sports daily; Vanity Fair’s article on the film Pulp Fiction; and the incredible ESPN book by James Andrew Miller, “Those Guys Have All the Fun” are some of my favorites.

The difficulty with an ORAL history, however, is you have to get the participants to actually TALK to you. Most of the WDFN employees — from Rona Danziger to Rob Parker to Eric Pate — would rather listen to Ike “Mega Man” Griffin pontificate on homosexuality than speak to me.

So this pet project of mine is on hold for the time being. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t relay some WDFN anecdotes that have been told to me over the years. Today’s bedtime story involves some extremely bizarre behavior by former ‘DFN staffer, Greg Brady.

You might remember Greg Brady from his days at 1130 where he hosted “That Evening Sports Show”; appeared with Sean Baligian on “Ice Time”; and, most-recently, co-hosted the morning drive program with Jamie Samuelsen.

Brady was one of the first casualties of the Clear Channel cost-cutting purge (HEY, thanks, Elliot Lerner and your failed cooking-the-books scheme!!!!!) and he landed successfully in Toronto — where he now co-hosts an AM Drive show on Sportsbet 590.

Now, before I get into the salacious details of Brady’s psychotic behavior, I should say that I enjoyed his work at WDFN. “That Evening Sports Show” was one of the best programs 1130 ever aired.

And before station management paired with him with his big-headed partner out of “Awakenings,” I was a regular listener of the guy. Anyway, there were two separate incidents involving Brady that boggle the mind.

The first occurred when Brady created a fake Rob Otto email address and started sending co-workers mean messages from it. One nasty missive was sent to Baligian from the “Fake Otto” account while Otto was down in San Antonio covering the 2005 NBA Finals for the station — and not around to defend himself.

Now, that was crazy, but not nearly as mental as what Brady did to another co-worker. This second “victim” confirmed the story but requested that his identity remain anonymous. Keep in mind that this was a lower-level employee of the station who only occasionally appeared on-air. This fellow Clear Channel worker was of no threat to Brady at all, which makes the story even wackier.

On two separate occasions, Brady tried to frame this poor guy. The first instance occurred when Not Barry Williams took one of his co-worker’s business cards, attached a flirtatious note to it and then placed it in the mailbox of a MARRIED Clear Channel saleswoman.

The second Mark Fuhrman attempt was even more nefarious. Brady went and “stole” president of Clear Channel Til Levesque’s executive office chair and placed it at this innocent co-worker’s desk. To make matters worse, Brady KNEW that Levesque was neurotic about her office furniture and that this was sure to piss her off.

Brady denied any culpability in the matter because he didn’t think anyone could prove otherwise. But it turns out Brady’s trespassing and theft was caught on video surveillance.

It was only after Baligian WARNED Brady that the Clear Channel execs had evidence of his malfeasance that he copped to the charges, saving his job for the time being.

So why would the dude create fake email accounts in order to try to get one fellow employee in hot water and lead a to married woman into thinking another co-worker was hitting on her while framing the same guy to a high-ranking executive?

WHO THE FUCK KNOWS? I have tried repeatedly to get Brady to agree to a DSR Podcast in the past, and he even accepted the invitation on one occasion. When it came down to finalizing a date, however, the morning radio version of Martin Freeman’s character on “Fargo” flaked out.

There is still hope for an answer though. While Brady has banished me on Twitter, he obviously still reads everything I write since he keeps accidentally “favoriting” my Tweets and mistakenly hitting the “Follow” button on a guy he has BLOCKED.

So, Greg, you are still welcome to answer these charges on DSR Radio while discussing our common frustration with the Red Wings and Tigers organizations.  Just don’t ask your mother (Jamie McDonald-Samuelsen) for permission this time.

Lynn Henning is a Crazy Person — Part 43,320

This websight™ (Terry Foster) has long since established the FACT that Detroit News baseball scribe Lynn Henning is always wrong about everything Tigers related — his prediction in 2005 that the Tigers were 5-to-10 years away from competing in the AL CENTRAL (we’d still be a year away from contention if the back-end of his prediction had been correct); his proclamation that “the Tigers will rue the day they let Joel Zumaya sign with the Twins”; his fluffing of every Tigers prospect since 2000 (none of whom have panned out); his opinion that Dave Dombrowski would replace Bud Selig; his take that Doug Fister to the Nationals was a great deal for the TiGERS…

Wait, I forget ….. what I was talking about again??

Oh yeah, Lynn Henning is a moron.

A few weeks ago I decided to take it easy on Lynn because I was worried the old man might be suffering from early-onset dementia or some shit. Seriously, the guy was confusing Max Scherzer and Rick Porcello in Tweets for Christ’s sake.

But then the nut job started accusing EVERY person on Twitter who is critical of his asinine Tweets of being me. Like Poor Ol’ Jiff Must has nothing better to do than create 50 bogus accounts in order to bomb Henning. I mean, that’s what I have my minions for.

Here is just a small sampling of Henning’s paranoia:

 

If you want to Tweetdive Lynn’s account, you can find about 20 other instances in the last couple of months where he thinks I am some sort of bogeyman behind all of the dissent coming his way.

If Lynn Henning wants the answer to the question of why he constantly gets bombed on social media by Detroit sports fans, he needs to look in the mirror. I am not the problem. It’s Tweets like this that emanate from HIS account:

When you say BATSHIT CRAZY things, people are going to treat you like you are BATSHIT CRAZY! OVER $10 million a year for Joba Chamberlain? This guy actually gets paid for his BASEBALL OPINIONS.

Ya gotta believe me.

While we are talking about DetroitSportsRag ideas that will probably never come to fruition, try this one on for size:

There is ANOTHER Lynn Henning from MICHIGAN who also grew up on a FARM that also has some notoriety. This is THAT Lynn Henning:

lynnhenning_hbo

Yep, that’s a picture of environmentalist Lynn Henning on Bill Maher’s “Real Time” program.

Here is her Wikipedia page:

Screen Shot 2014-08-31 at 11.32.00 PM

How great would it be to have THIS Lynn Henning on as a guest of the DSR Podcast and quiz her about Tigers-related issues?

I mean, her takes couldn’t be any worse than loving the Fister/Ray trade and hating the David Price deal.

We’ve gotta make this happen soon.

And Finally …….

Here is a quick DSR movie review for you of the film “Draft Day” starring Kevin Costner and Jennifer Garner. If you aren’t familiar with this travesty of celluloid, it’s a picture about the travails of the Cleveland Browns on the day of the first round of the NFL Draft.

Forget for a moment that this movie includes three of the most implausible trades in NFL history. I am talking about shit that would make Matt Millen shake his head and laugh.

Also, forget for a second that this film makes “Moneyball” look like a Ken Burns documentary, not a movie that focused on the early-century Oakland A’s while spending approximately 30 seconds discussing Mark Mulder, Barry Zito and Tim Hudson.

Finally, totally ignore that the director and writer thought it was believable that:

1) The GM of an NFL team ON DRAFT DAY who is considering taking a Buckeyes player wouldn’t know said player got ejected from the Ohio State/Wisconsin game.

2) That the same GM would mortgage his future by trading away THREE first-round draft picks and THEN decide to perform his due diligence on the guy he traded up to get!!!!

[Insert your own Robbie Ray/Ian Krol joke here.]

Instead, just read the following grades my wife and I gave “Draft Day” and I am pretty sure you will get the gist:

Melissa Moss, who has never watched one second of the REAL NFL Draft, has no clue how many points you are awarded for a touchdown and had to keep pausing the film to ask me what a second-round pick meant, gives it an …….. A.

Jeff Moss, who is old enough to remember when the NFL Draft’s first round occurred during the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, and who had to call the Free Press sports desk from a payphone at Orchard Lake Middle School to find out that the Lions drafted Chuck Long gives the film an …… F.

Yep, “Draft Day” is actually a chick flick wrapped up in 100 minutes of Shield propaganda. The only thing this piece of crap left out was Dermot Mulroney getting married to Roger Goodell’s daughter.

You’ve been warned.