Written by Brian McPeek

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Another week come and gone on the North Coast. And if I have it straight, this one included the Cavs losing three games by what seemed like a total of about a thousand points, the Indians losing 28-year old Fausto Carmona but signing 31-year old  Roberto Hernandez Heredia to fill Fausto's roster spot, the Ravens getting whacked in the AFC Championship game when their Pro Bowl kicker completely shanked a short field goal that would have meant overtime and Joe Paterno dying twice.

Okay then. Let's get to it:

A Rose by Any Other Name...

No wonder Fausto Carmona, or whatever the hell his name actually is, is a basket case. The poor bastard has been keeping a huge secret while also trying to get through major league lineups.

That explains his unearthly perspiration as well as his ungodly numbers the past couple years. And right when I was ready to give up on him and leave him for dead on the slag heap of former Indians pitchers, he goes and provides me with high comedy.

Oh, I still don’t care what happens in terms of him pitching for the Tribe this season. Aside from seeing what name he wears on the back of his jersey I’m done with Fausto’s big tease and have no interest in his 50 good innings of the 200 he throws. And I say that fully understanding that being able to get and count on 200 innings from a pitcher is a value in and of itself. But when Fausto woke up Thursday with a different name and three years older than he was Tuesday that made the $7million he earns this season just a bit too much for my taste.

At some point you need those 200 innings to have some quality element to them. You can pay anyone a lot less than league minimum to throw 200 shitty innings if you don’t care what those innings look like. With Fausto you were still clinging to the hope that a 28 year old might have the lamp go on and stay on. But with the nearly 32 year old Roberto Hernandez Heredia that ship has sailed.

I’d had it up to here with Fausto already. I have no appetite whatsoever for Roberto Hernandez Heredia.

Curb Your Enthusiasm

I hate being the voice of reason because reason has never been my strength, but it’s almost a relief to me to see what the Cavs have managed to do over the last week in losing three games by about a combined thousand points.

Like I said a couple weeks back, I can’t root for any of these teams to lose. It’s not in my DNA. But it drives me crazy when the needy fan base creates quality and stardom where it doesn’t yet exist. Desperation is unbecoming. And it’s been desperation talking when it comes to telling us if the season ended yesterday that the Cavs would be the 7^th seed just as it’s a geo-centric driven theme that Tristan Thompson is the second coming of Shawn Kemp (the good, young, athletic Kemp as opposed to the fat, coke-addled (allegedly) Kemp that played here for a few seasons).

You know who Tristan Thompson is? He’s Andy Varejao.

Yes, he’s far more athletic. In fact, his athleticism is at times spectacular to watch. So let’s call him a ridiculously athletic version of Varejao. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But expecting a great deal more or, worse, seeing more than that right now is misguided.

Thompson is going to ultimately be a 10-point, 10-rebound and 2 blocks per game kind of guy. He’s going to run the floor hard, get after loose balls and get most of his points on slop around the rim and by making himself an option off of guard penetration. Every now and again he’ll score 20 points on a night when he does all of the above and also knocks down more shots from 10-15 feet than he misses. But those nights will be rare.

Thompson has no shot. He has no ‘go to’ move down low and he’s not taking guys off the dribble and slash. Not right now and I’d highly doubt he’s going to develop into Larry Nance offensively regardless of how hard he works. Shit, he’s worse than a coin flip from the free throw line which is 15-feet and straight away with not a hand in his face.

He is what he is and that’s nothing to be disappointed about. Even though he cost you the 4^th pick in last June’s draft you walk away happy with 10 and 10 and a defensive helper in a draft as weak as the 2011 draft will turn out to be.

With Deepest Sympathy

Dear Ravens Fans:

I truly hope your football team losing the AFC Championship game in a most gut-wrenching manner is not the worst thing that happens to any of you or the players on the roster this week. May it only get worse.

Sincerely,

Everyone

PS- An elite QB beats the Patriots Sunday in what may have been Tom Brady’s worst game in years. Your QB is mediocre and needs psychotherapy. I hope he gets it assuming your aging safety and murderous, geriatric, increasingly mediocre middle linebacker don’t kill him first.

Failing the Final

In poker terms Joe Paterno really ‘ran cold’ over the past 3 months. That’s what they call it when a player has accumulated a nice pile of chips based on solid play and making the proper decisions only to see those chips vanish when the cards, the luck and the good reads go cold. Paterno had 45 years of wins and good will accumulated at Penn State when he got cold-decked. That’s about all you can call it when you watch your career, reputation and legacy go down the drain because of a sex scandal on your watch, you’re unceremoniously fired as a result and then you die twice in 15 hours (once on Twitter at 9pm Saturday night and then for real Sunday at ~10am).

I guess you could technically say now that he’s never run colder.

Leave now if you’re looking for me to be respectful in terms of JoePa’s legacy and death. I’m not here for that today. Maybe time will give me some perspective I don’t currently possess but I know that even after they bury Paterno in the next week or so, there are literally hundreds and hundreds of victims of the Penn State sex scandal who will carry their grief and difficulties around like boulders for generations to come. It’s not just the kids who were physically and sexually abused who will continue to suffer but so will their parents and so will the children of the actual victims be affected by what went on in those showers and in Sandusky’s basement, car and hotel rooms.

And while Paterno wasn’t guilty in terms of the commission of those crimes against kids he was guilty by omission. He carried the knowledge of what Jerry Sandusky likely was for upward of 25 years without addressing the matter specifically or strongly enough to prevent further victims from being victimized. That’s not forgivable in my opinion. Not when you’ve lived the life of a king based on the reputation of Penn State as a model program and a bastion of integrity.

Not ever, actually.

If integrity and character were placed above everything else at Penn State and Paterno was lauded for his role in creating that image, then what does he really have left when he looked the other way while a man he knew for 40 years allegedly sexually assaulted young boys?

Mine is clearly an unpopular position for many who reside in Pennsylvania and/or who still hold Paterno in just slightly lower regard than God. But I’m tired of the hypocrisy. I turned on the radio Sunday morning in time to hear some ESPN asshole (largely redundant, I understand) named John Kincade tell me that he could never allow someone so morally ambiguous as Jim Tressel to run his football program. But Kincade was adamant that the last three months shouldn’t color people’s opinion of Paterno. He actually had a bigger issue with Tressel’s attempt to protect his players (and himself, no doubt) than he had with Paterno letting fate and Jerry Sandusky have their way with kids.

That’s asinine whether you substitute Bobby Petrino or Philip Fulmer or anyone else for Tressel in that equation.

Maybe Paterno, being a religious man, would understand the following passage from the Bible:

“Bad Company Corrupts Good Character” -1 Corinthians 15:33

That about sums it up for me. Paterno can be responsible for all the endowments and new buildings on campus and have had a hand in developing some quality football players and quality men, but the bad company he chose over the right thing to do corrupts all of it. Plenty of evil men have built roads and bridges.

I’m not saying Joe Paterno was evil. But he could have kicked evil right in the ass, cast it away from State College and locked it up forever with one phone call or one quiet visit with the police chief. The fact he didn’t, and that future victims were subjected to Jerry Sandusky, is as much, if not more, the legitimate and lasting legacy of Paterno as anything else he did at Penn State.

Let the revisionist history begin. Now that Paterno has assumed room temperature his family can go about making sure he (and they) are distanced enough from the Sandusky situation that the same stench that plagues Sandusky won’t foul their air forever.

As for me, I won’t forget that JoePa was nothing better than a coward who could have spared countless kids and families the pain that his good friend allegedly inflicted upon them. I do agree that the ‘Joe Paterno Cowardly Aider & Abettor of a Child Molesting Friend for Two Decades Library’ probably is a bit wordy and would be a bitch to engrave on the facade.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t fit.

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