Thursday Night Thumping
Tom Szczerbowski
Sep 27, 2002
As
football fans know, a regulation football game takes 60 minutes to play,
and most contests aren’t settled until the last quarter, however, in yesterday
evening’s BGP-IP Stack tilt, the knockout punch was delivered only 3 minutes
into the game. Indeed, it took Paul McRae
only a New York minute to put this sorry game on ice. He did it by nimbly
moving the ball upfield and anywhere else he pleased against a muddled and
out-of-sync BGP defense.
Kirk Ireland scored his first TD of the 2002 season on a McRae toss
to the rookie in the right corner of the endzone and when the Stack pulled
ahead 2-0 mere minutes into the game on newcomer Paul Gecius’(freshly activated
from the reserve squad) catch and run, things looked completely hopeless
and out of reach for BGP. After the game, McRae was quoted as saying, “Well,
Yogi Berra did say that it ain’t over ‘til it’s over, and we all tried not
to get too complacent out there, but, to be honest with you, we all knew
it was over at that point.” BGP’s Pablo Frank
also invoked Yogi Berra’s famous assertion when his team was trailing 2-0,
except no one knew exactly why. Frank’s resilience was truly noteworthy,
however, when he tried to rally his troops before they could quit on him
and surrender all hope – he was heard yelling at them, “C’mon! Wake up! Don’t
you know that it’s not about where you start, it’s where you finish !!!”,
but in the 2001 season, BGP finished precisely where they started: dead last.
Both men had bravely competed against each other in the past, and after
a lengthy offseason, it took a long climb for each man to ready himself and
make it back to this stage. Both McRae and Frank had to deal with their
own adversities during this trying period: McRae overcame career-threatening
ankle injuries while Frank had to overcome a severe bed-wetting disorder.
Ireland quickly made it 3-0 when he returned a punt for a TD displaying
blazing speed down the right sideline, outrunning virtually the entire BGP
outfit. BGP’s returning veteran Sean Hope and British import Rob Hutchinson
helped salvage at least a modicum of pride for their side scoring a TD apiece,
Hope on a long run after intercepting a pass from a shocked and frustrated
McRae. Tom Szczerbowski
was his usual self, turning a McRae pass over the head of the 6’7” Hope into
a TD on a post-corner route and later doing some fancy dipsy-doodling around
BGP defenders on a punt return and into the end zone on a dizzying array
of moves. He then caught a dart in the left corner of the red zone from
McRae for his third score of the game to predictably wrap matters up 6-2.
If it wasn’t bad enough that Frank’s team was outplayed at every turn,
the tactless BGP, unfamiliar with shame, had to attempt one of football’s
most disgraceful acts before the final whistle mercifully ended the game.
After the snap, Frank called for Hope to fake a broken ankle by dropping
to the ground like he’d been shot, and then rolling around in a heap squirming
in pain to distract the attention of the Stack defenders so they could throw
to an open man for an easy TD. Everything went according to script as the
Stack players slowed down to show concern for Hope, who has a history of
broken ankles, but then BGP, hyper-gleefully anticipating a TD, fouled up
yet another play when they overthrew the totally uncovered receiver. Football
analysts quickly explained the desperation of this play by pointing to the
formidable defense of the Stack, which had completely vexed BGP out of their
senses.
After two games, McRae is leading the league with 7 TD passes and Szczerbowski
is leading the planet in scoring with 6 TDs(5 receptions and a kick return)
and 2 INTs.
| | |
