Written by Jeff Rich

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While Snot-Boogie was robbing every west-side Baltimore dice game that he could snag an invite to, and in the years following his untimely death, Avon Barksdale and his crew ran the drug trade in the fictional world of The Wire.  They were bigger than the game; they didn’t worry about the fiends, their rivals, and most especially the law.  The fiends took an ass-kicking, the rivals were put in body-bags, and the law was nothing short of an inside joke in the Barksdale circles.

They were powerful and rich, and virtually untouchable.  Whatever they wanted, they took, and when they found themselves in a jam, they cheated to get out.  Most of the dirty work was performed by kids, but it took consummate professionals to take care of the most important jobs.  Intimidating and/or killing witnesses took a loyal soldier of the street, a guy like Roland Brice aka Wee-Bey.  The rules don’t apply to people like Wee-Bey, his real-life counterpart would be a dirty football player like Hines Ward, formerly of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

In fact, everything about the Steelers of past and present reminds me of Barksdale’s crew of local terrorists.  The Steelers thrive off of picking on the weak, an act we saw from the low-level dealers in The Wire’s very first episode, when a junkie tried to pass off a photo-copied $10 bill, and ended up in ICU.  Barksdale’s organization had friends in high places, from high price attorney Maurice Levy to the always slick Clay Davis in the State Senate; while the always slick Rooney family gives their Steelers high-powered connections to both the Commissioner’s Office and the Oval Office.

In both cases, there are bumps in the road.  We don’t know much about the early days of Avon Barksdale, but we do know that the Steelers were a dreadful organization in the National Football League for many years before things picked up in the 70s, and then again at the beginning of the 21^st century.  That’s where we can pick things up, with an isolated act of goodwill.

The Steelers, along with the Buffalo Bills, offered a role of solidarity in opposing the Browns move, coincidentally, to Baltimore, and have been very instrumental to their very existence in the present day.  But, even the Barksdales had a peace accord with their East Baltimore kingpin counterpart, Proposition Joe, in the form of an Eastside-Westside basketball game with a catered picnic for the community at stake.  These good deeds are quickly forgotten in the name of rivalry and spite.

It was the acquittal of D’Angelo Barksdale that raised the drunken Irish eyebrow of one Detective James McNulty over the misdeeds of the Barksdale crew, and it was the filthy one-sided officiating in Super Bowl XL that raised my anger-level to DEFCON 1.  For the sake of giving Bill Cowher and Jerome Bettis Super Bowl rings, any Seattle play that threatened their glory was negated by a ticky-tack penalty flag.  The Barksdale crew threw more violent penalty flags in the form intimidation towards a security guard and a handy-man, but the handy-man made a stand by taking the stand against D’Angelo.  A day later, the Barksdale crew didn’t throw any flags, but they did leave the handy-man’s body on display in front of the projects for everyone to see the bullet hole in his head.  In this case, snitches did not end up with stitches.

Attempts were made to take down the Barksdale crew.  The police would step up, and make some arrests from time-to-time, but they were never able to exactly cut the head off of the snake.  Even when Avon got pinched, it wasn’t for as long as you would have hoped, and he had a very capable understudy in Stringer Bell to run the show.  Fans of decency were duped in a similar way when Ben Roethlisberger was accused of sexual assault for a second time, but the law let football fans and a very unfortunate female victim down, so Roethlisberger maintains the title of “alleged rapist” to this day.  He was sentenced by the NFL to a six-game suspension in 2010, but like the slick Barksdale, served significantly less time than prescribed.

The fine (and not so fine) men and women of the Baltimore Police played a role of little significance in taking down the Barksdale operation.  They slowed it down, but celebrated their moments of glory just the same.  Even the Cincinnati Bengals get the best of Pittsburgh from time to time.  Cincinnati actually swept the Steelers in 2009, and have defeated them 5 of the last 20 times they’ve met since 2003, including a playoff game in 2006.

The larger thorn in Avon’s, and eventually Stringer Bell’s, rear end was a modern-day homosexual West Baltimore Robin Hood named Omar Little.  Omar was just Omar, he had allies, but not nearly the army that Barksdale and some other big name organizations had to back him up.  He filled his fair share of body bags, but the same could be said of a certain Baltimore Ravens linebacker…allegedly.  Speaking of the Ravens, it’s the purple clad team that makes their home a little bit south of where the bulk of HBO’s story about Baltimore took place that I’m comparing to The Wire’s consensus favorite character.

Of course, except for a few true traitors, the Ravens are the favorites of no one in Cleveland, but I must admit, there are at least two games a year that I don’t hope they’re the losers.  A year ago, I wasn’t completely and entirely unhappy with the Ravens victories on November 6^th and September 11^th.  In fact, the Ravens have taken four of the last six regular season matchups against the Evil Empire of the Allegheny, but like Mr. Little’s many successful ventures to grab the stash and the cash, the success has often been short-lived.

If you allowed the show to consume you, Omar was a good guy, and a legend to boot.  In reality, he was a sadistic violent criminal, who happily whistled the tune of “The Farmer In The Dell” as he picked off his victims with the sawed-off.  We have to remember, even if a little part of us wants the Ravens to win, they are not the good guys; they’re slightly more acceptable bad guys, but still our enemies.

Speaking of enemies, the Barksdale crew had a new adversary dropped on them when they became a nation with no land in wake of urban revitalization.  Marlo Stansfield basically took over the street corners of West Baltimore without apology, and wanted no part of business savvy Stringer Bell’s drug-dealing co-op.  When Barksdale middle-management was sent to negotiate, he claimed victory without compromise.

He challenged the old guard, and in the end, he was the winner.  He was smart, avoiding assassination attempts and police surveillance efforts.  He was savvy enough to build a crew; Monk Metcalf and Chris Partlow were the right combination of brains and braun to keep Marlo in the throne.  And most importantly, he was ruthless.  No one was above being hit, not even a child; if someone was suspected of snitching, Stansfield’s crew shot first and asked questions later.

That level of ruthlessness is feather in the cap of both the Ravens and Steelers.  Whether it’s James Harrison, Terrell Suggs, Ed Reed, or Troy Polamalu in that head-hunting role, it’s effective.  Josh Cribbs lit up the Steelers in a Browns victory in 2009, but the next time the Browns and Steelers met, Harrison rattled his brain, as well as the brain of Mohamed Massaquoi.  Neither have been a factor in a Browns-Steelers games since, and the Browns have not won a single one of those games.  It’s been almost a full year since Harrison rung Colt McCoy’s bell, and McCoy hasn’t taken an NFL snap since.

It’s not just about the Browns and the Steelers; it’s more about the Browns lacking that player that sends shivers down the spine.  Frankly, they haven’t had that guy since Don Rogers, and he passed away 26 years ago.  Before Rogers, it was Lyle Alzaedo, and I couldn’t even tell you the closest comparison to be made on the current roster. 

Could it be TJ Ward?  He likes to blow things up, but he doesn’t pass they eyeball test, and seems to long for the big hit over the great play.  Maybe I’m nit-picking here, but he seems to have lost a little bit of his edge since being fined for the hit on Jordan Shipley in his rookie year.  Ward hasn’t made a hit, clean or dirty, of any lasting memory since.

So, where is this player?  Who the hell is our Marlo?

I think it’s quite possible that this player isn’t on the 53-man roster at this point, or maybe it’s Phil Dawson, and his three-points-from-55-yards-and-beyond potential doesn’t intimidate the people that need intimidating.  We could get as mad as we want to about the Steelers, the Ravens, and occasionally the Bengals, and all of their dirty tactics, but the bottom line is that you have to fight fire with fire.  The Browns lack that said fire for such a fight, and it's spelled out in their Blutarsky against Pittsburgh since that wonderful December night in 2009.

Until the Browns find that player, until they get their Marlo, the Browns are just fiends in the yard trying to get the best of Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell on fake ten dollar bill at a time, and waiting for the subsequent ass-kicking that comes as consequence for such a scam.

It’s all about the Hamilton’s baby.