By Jeff Moss
July 20, 2011
DetroitSportsRag@gmail.com
What do the Limited Plus in Southgate, the Iraq War, Celine and Little B’s pops, the author of “The Game”, the brilliant minds behind BASEketball, Timon and Pumbaa have in common?
They are all part of Wednesday Morning Mossisms™.
Hall No
On Tuesday, Chris Osgood showed that he has more brains than a majority of the Detroit media when it comes to hockey.
When it was announced on Monday that the Red Wings and their 38-year old goalie were going to have a conference call to make an announcement about Osgood’s future, many figured that it was a sure sign that Ozzie™ (Downriver Size 18 Girls) was returning for one more year.
The thought process being that if Osgood was to retire the Wings would have planned a full-blown press conference for him.
So the assorted media members rushed to their Twitter account to proclaim the good news in Hockeytown.
Because whenever you can re-sign a guy who will turn 39 in November and who is coming off a groin injury and who has only played in 34 games over the last two years, you’ve gotta do it.
Thankfully Osgood knew he was Matt Dery Dun and called it quits before we had to suffer through another injury plagued season from our backup goaltender.
And before I continue I want to say that I do not hate Chris Osgood. I was never huge fan of the guy, but ANYONE who contributed to three Stanley Cups in this town will forever have my gratitude. You win a championship in Detroit and you will get a lot of leeway with me.
Unlike the ungrateful fuckheads who used to boo Sergei Fedorov every single time he touched the puck at the JLA after leaving Detroit, I actually understand that titles don’t come around every day and that you should appreciate the players who brought you those awesome memories. (And if you don’t believe me, why don’t you ask a resident of Cleveland who isn’t a member of AARP what I mean.)
But what aggravates me is this discussion that Chris Osgood should gain entrance to the Hockey Hall of Fame when he is eligible in three years.
Terry Foster chimed in on this subject in the Detroit News yesterday and from what I can ascertain from this brain-dead article is that Osgood should be inducted into the Hall because he is the kind of guy you’d want to drink a beer with.
Ummm, I think we once elected a President on that basis and how did that work out for the country? Look at the assessed value of your house and get back to me.
Foster actually had the nerve to write, “Osgood is not one of the greatest goalies of all time. But when you add in the Red Wings front and back line that bolstered him and he fans that motivated him, then Osgood turns from ordinary goalie to extraordinary goalie.”
Just retyping that asinine paragraph into Microsoft Word makes me want to punch MYSELF in the face. YOU JUST ADMITTED THE GUY WAS AN AVERAGE GOALIE WHOSE TEAMMATES ELEVATED HIM TO SOMETHING HE WASN’T!!!!!!! By that rational, the fucking Grind Line should have their own wing on Yonge Street.
Look, Osgood was a pretty good goalie, but the Hall of Fame isn’t for guys who were pretty good.
Not only did the guy never win a Vezina Trophy, he only finished in the top three in the voting on one occasion in his 18-year career. The same amount of times that noted Hall of Famers Byron Dafoe, Roman Turek and Roman Cechmanek were finalists.
At no time in his career was Osgood considered one of the top three goalies in the NHL. NEVER.
Not only that, the guy was released by the Red Wings in the supposed PRIME OF HIS FUCKING CAREER. After the 2000-1 season, the guy (Kenny Holland) who refers to Osgood as his “fifth child” decided he wasn’t good enough to play goal in Detroit any longer and the team went and traded for Dominek Hasek.
Seriously, how many guys in ANY Hall of Fame were released by the team they are most associated with at the age of 28???? I am going to go out on a limb and say NONE! I mean, do you remember when the Yankees waived Mickey Mantle in 1959? Hahahahaha.
And Osgood’s surrogate dad wasn’t the only person who thought the guy who used to give up 65-foot goals on a regular basis wasn’t good enough to wear the Winged Wheel.
When Brett Hull signed with the Wings that same offseason he said a major factor in coming to Detroit was that team had solved their goaltending PROBLEM. A lot of Hall of Famers are deemed PROBLEMS by fellow Hall of Famers. You gotta believe me.
Maybe Hull was watching during the 1998 playoffs when the Wings carried Osgood to a Stanley Cup title even though the guy gave up a goal from outside the blue line in each of the first three rounds of the postseason culminating in an OT winner by Jamie Lagenbrunner in Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals.
Osgood was never better in his career than he was during the 2008 playoffs, but even that year he wasn’t the starting goalie going into the postseason.
Not until Hasek shit the bed in a couple games against the Nashville Predators did Osgood get the chance to shine that season.
(And I am not trying to take away anything from Osgood’s stellar play in 2008. But wouldn’t you think a guy who had a HALL OF FAME career would have been the starter going into the playoffs as opposed to an injury prone, over-the-hill Hasek?)
And then in the last few years of his career the dude barely took his job seriously during the regular season. In February of 2009, Osgood had to be given a 10-day break because of his lousy regular season play.
Because the members of the media loved the guy (and enjoyed a beer with him on occasion) they never mentioned the rumors that the goalie’s play was being impacted by an increased amount of extra-curricular activities off the ice.
I appreciate everything that Osgood accomplished in his career as part of an ensemble, but to place him among the GREATEST EVER would be an absolute insult to guys like Patrick Roy and Terry Sawchuck.
There is no question in my mind that if this awful precedent is set and Osgood is inducted into the Hall that he will be the first athlete in any sport to have THIS type of career and yet gain enshrinement.
I don’t want to live in a world where Jack Morris and Alan Trammell can’t even get a sniff of Cooperstown even though they thoroughly deserve to be there and a guy like Osgood is mentioned in the same breath as Ken Dryden, Bernie Parent and Martin Brodeur.
Can you imagine what I would have written if I actually disliked the guy?
The Book of Iorg
On Tuesday night I was tuned into the Tigers game with the sound off as I normally do to avoid a seizure from the sound of Rod Allen’s voice™ (Cosmo Kramer/Mary Hart.)
While watching Brandon Inge make an error in the process of going 0-for-4 at the plate to lower his anemic batting average to .177 and his OBP to .484 I decided to listen to the soundtrack of “The Book of Mormon” on my iPad.
Not that it should come as a shock to anyone that I would be listening to the Tony Award winning musical considering it pretty much is a combination of all the things I love in this world:
Critically Acclaimed Broadway Musical? Check.
Sacrilegious? Check.
From the people behind “South Park” and “Team America”? Check.
Chock full of Star Wars resets? Check.
Mocking of Mormonism and Christianity in General? Check.
And I actually figured out a way to correlate Inge’s latest horrendous performance and the music of Trey Parker and Matt Stone in this column.
Because if it wasn’t for a stupid Mormon mission, the Tigers might not have re-signed Inge last year to a moronic two-year deal worth $11.5 million.
Back in June of 2007, the Tigers took a leap of faith and selected Cale Iorg in the sixth round and gave him a whopping $1.5 million to sign with the team.
The humungous contract that most assuredly aggravated Bud Selig had his “guidelines” was offered even though the son of former Blue Jays infielder Garth Iorg hadn’t picked up a baseball bat for two years!!!!
You see, Iorg is a Mormon who traveled to Portugal for a two-year Mission in an effort to spread the word to a bunch of heathens that certain types of underwear are magical and that Jesus once traveled to the Americas.
After harassing the Portuguese for 24 months, Elder Iorg returned to the States and resumed his baseball career in the Tigers minor league system.
But surprisingly enough, not playing baseball had an adverse effect on the kid.
It would seem that shaming poor inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula doesn’t happen to part of the formula that calculates Win Above Replacement™ (Tim Diemer.)
If everything would have gone to Dave Dombrowski and David Chadd’s plan, the 25-year old Iorg would have progressed enough that he could have replaced Jhonny Peralta at shortstop this season and allowed Peralta to take his limited range over to third base.
Instead, Iorg has never recovered from his two-year sabbatical. Unfortunately, telling a bunch of non-believers that they will go to Hell if they don’t convert to Christianity doesn’t assist you in hitting a curve ball.
Cale has never batted above .251 at any stop in his minor league mission and he is looking more and more like a bust every day.
He is currently batting .213 with an OBP of .258 and an OPS of .586 in Toledo. I would say those numbers are Inge-esque, but Brandon would probably sell his soul to a dude that Iorg despises for those type of splits.
Which brings us back to “The Book of Mormon.” Most of the musical takes place in Africa where the mission of the main character takes place.
In the highlight of the play, the natives who are the target of the Mormon’s conversion techniques explain to the Utah natives how AWFUL it is to live on the African continent.
In a total send-up of the Lion King’s “Hakuna Matata” the Ugandans sign a song entitled “Hasa Diga Eebowai.”
I am not shitting you when I say that it is the FUNNIEST song in the history of mankind. If you have not heard it, I am not about to ruin it for you.
But I will provide a link to the tune below and just remember, every time Brandon Inge makes an error, or strikes out on a pitch in the dirt or asks us fans to leave him alone, just say “Hasa Diga Eebowai.”
It is kind of like no worries for the rest of your life. Kind of.
Another check-swing strike out… Hasa Diga Eebowai.