TAMPA, Fla. — There is fertilizer, there is horse manure, and then there is the game the Lions played Sunday. Did I say played? I meant dis-played. They dis-played punts, they dis- played returns, they dis-played snap counts. They even sent 12 men on the field and couldn’t do anything. This was after Tampa Bay sent 10 men on the field and couldn’t do anything.
Why not send the Little Rascals out there? Then we’d have a fair fight.
All they want is an office, or even a few desks in someone else’s office. A telephone. A chair. A place to conduct business. It isn’t much.
But you never know when you ask for help.
Take Saturday morning. It was raining in Detroit, cloudy, depressing. A perfect day to sleep in. Baseball players were sleeping in, because, despite an average salary of over $1 million a year, things are just so lousy, they had to go on strike.
He never mentioned money. He never gushed about some new car he was going to buy, or some new mansion with a hundred rooms. He made no joke about how
“the ladies in Detroit better watch out,” as one top draft choice had done years before him. He didn’t preen or mug. He wore no earring. He didn’t boast,
“There’s a new sheriff in town!”
You want to know the first thing Grant Hill did as a Piston? He listened to a question. And before he answered, he noticed the crowd in the back, and asked, politely, “Could you all hear that?”
This is why people don’t go ape over the Lions. Right here. This lousy Sunday afternoon, this flat, average, too-little- too-late performance that left the Silverdome full of scowling faces and left the Lions with a .500 record.
This is why fans around here watch football with fingers crossed and are cautious after wins, even after a great performance like Monday night against Dallas. While the rest of the country is tossing hosannas, around here they say, “Well, sure, if we can keep this up . . .” This is the reason. Sunday at the Silverdome.
He was such a quiet man, everyone said, but don’t they always say that? A quiet man, older fellow, kept to himself. And then one day, the Justice Department is banging on his door, and protesters are screaming on his lawn, waving photos of death, dismemberment, the most horrible evil a man can do. They are saying, years ago, the quiet man was a part of this. And he’s gotten away with it all this time. This is a pattern in the hunt for Nazi war criminals. It repeated itself last week, in the Boston suburb of Norwood, Mass. An 87-year- old Lithuanian immigrant. A quiet man.
Somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere fans say “Yay!” but there is no joy in Detroit — when the Lions play Green Bay.
Hey. Whatdya want for nothin’?
Hut one, hut two . . . HUDDLE UP!
WHO’S IN THIS WEEK: Scott Greene, Marc Renaud, Barry Sanders (lifetime membership), Henry Thomas, Jim (Har-de-har) Harbaugh, Carolina and Dom Capers
(doesn’t Dom Capers sound like a champagne?), Eddie George, Steve Bono, Orel Hershiser, the fans at Joe Louis, the BIG SCREEN at Spectadium in Troy, and Davey Johnson, who keeps winning, and keeps getting fired.
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