Ray Lewis

Ray Lewis’s playing career could end Sunday. Crim Del Harris examines Lewis’s accomplishments, shortcomings and his legacy in Baltimore.

Ray Lewis will likely play his last game in Baltimore Sunday. The locals will rush to claim him as one of their own, a native son of Baltimore. They are wrong. Ray Lewis, the greatest middle linebacker of the 21st century, was never Baltimore. He was a greatness that knows no geographical boundaries. Ravens fans never cheered for Lewis because he represented the spirit of a city. They cheered for him because they never got to cheer for Tom Brady. They cheered for him because it was better than cheering for Corey Dillon.

In truth, many fans had stopped cheering lately. Sunday’s game against the Indianapolis Colts will likely set decibel records in Baltimore that will mask an inglorious end to Lewis’s playing career. Two steps slow and seemingly forever behind in coverage, the linebacker often resembled a rooted oak conspicuously decaying in the modern NFL.

The 2012 A’s: Stop Calling it Moneyball

Despite their first-round loss to the Detroit Tigers, the Oakland Athletics surprised the baseball world with a new take on old-school baseball

Even broken clocks are right twice a day.

The Oakland Athletics, a team many considered broken after the Gio Gonzalez and Trevor Cahill trades, were right exactly 94 times this season, just enough to steal an American League West title from the Texas Rangers.

Unfortunately, it all came to an end last week when Oakland fell victim to a complete game shutout at the hands Justin Verlander and the Detroit Tigers. The team’s many weaknesses finally overtook its contagious enthusiasm. Inexperienced pitchers gave up six runs to one of the American League’s most feared lineups, and their own bats failed against a generous strike zone and Verlander’s own vicious efficiency.

If you watched the A’s at any point this season, you know that Oakland was playing with house money in the playoffs. The 2012 squad was, for lack of a better phrase, really stupid. Their batters set a single-season record for strikeouts. They stole bases constantly. They reinvigorated a gloriously terrible dance song from 2010.

Is This the End of Ryan Vogelsong?

He’s a 35-year-old fan favorite with an inferiority complex and a well-established history of performing in stomach-churning situations. He’s been the most consistent member of the San Francisco Giants’ starting rotation this year. He’s the best value on the team, and he’s saved an injury-plagued bullpen on dozens of occasions.

Don’t forget, though, he’s 35 years old.

Ryan Vogelsong is Jim Morris with an All-Star pedigree. After a lackluster start to his Major League career, he spent years toiling in Nippon Professional League obscurity before being reacquired by San Francisco in 2011. That season earned him a place on the National League All-Star team, and his first half numbers in 2012 placed him squarely among those snubbed from this year’s Midsummer Classic.

But even Cinderella stories come to an end; and Vogelsong’s latest series of outings suggest that his carriage may actually be a pumpkin.

Turn Off the Lights When You’re Finished

A trip to Newark for the Nets anti-climactic farewell to the State of New Jersey.

It was not the most embarrassing thing ever to happen in Newark.

The players did not remain on the court to wish a final good-bye to a half-filled Prudential Center, and, as live footage of Bruce Springsteen performing “Born to Run” flashed across the Jumbotron, what remained of the New Jersey Nets fan base didn’t stick around for them to do so.

Validation of an A**hole: The John Calipari Story

Dear John,

Congratulations, you bastard.

I really want to yell at you, but I can’t, you smug son of a bitch. There’s absolutely no way this will be taken away from you, is there? Unless it comes out that Anthony Davis’s conspicuous 1-for-10 shooting night was the product of some half-brained, pointshaving scheme manipulated by the Miller Lite version of Arnold Rothstein, there is no way the chickenshits at the NCAA will take this away from you.

Baltimore Chopped

The Baltimore Orioles begin their 2012 season tomorrow. The team wrapped up its spring training with a 2-1 loss to the State College of Florida Manatees, No. 5 in the Florida College System Activities Association coaches’s poll. A quick stop in Norfolk Wednesday, an off-day today, and then the Orioles begin what will most likely be an excruciating 162-game schedule. At worst, the 2012 season will be a tragedy. At best, it will be a farce.

Baltimoreans view the Orioles the way a parent might view a young child who is struggling in school. We may occasionally snicker along with the other parents, and we may often compare them to their better-looking, more successful older sibling (the Ravens). And God knows we don’t attend parent-teacher conferences anymore. But we still love them, and when they demonstrate a flicker of aptitude, like a low B on a pop quiz, we still take them out for ice cream.

Faulkner profiles Deron Williams

A few months ago, our writer in Baltimore wrote an excellent piece based on an Oscar Wilde-style imagining of Denver’s quarterback situation. I’m one-upping him.

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There was a time and a place for that, and he knew it was neither here nor now. The cobalt skies over Utah ripped open and bled as they had in The Colony, and after that, Champaign — places where clearly defined horizons rested along deserts or prairies or meandering rivers. Places that mattered only to those who occupied them, to those cradled by their avenues and withered by their gazes, ashing and fading with time as their streets emptied into the cool matrices of Dallas and Chicago. And he was here again, steps away from the train that could take him. The island, where the inextinguishable lights would shine upon grainy vistas of dockyards and steeples, condominiums and tenements filled with those who wanted him to stay.

Billy being Billy

Manny Ramirez is coming to Oakland.

Great.

It is absolutely fitting that Manny Ramirez will likely conclude his career in a city that is culturally defined as a non-destination, a bastion of underachievement.

As Oakland struggles to hold onto its three major sports franchises, Billy Beane has placed his chips on a player believed and proven to be a repeat offender of Major League Baseball’s banned substance policy, a clubhouse cancer, the antithesis of a workhorse and one of the greatest hitters of the last 20 years.

As a city and as a fan base, Oakland deserves nothing more or less.

Who the #%@! is Lavoy Allen

Morrisville, Pennsylvania’s Lavoy Allen is one of the best basketball players in Temple’s history and, apparently, the worst of the NBA.

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They say you can nail a job in the first 90 seconds of an interview. Eye contact, a strong handshake, a relaxed smile and a subtle compliment can do wonders. Balancing deference with measured confidence, carefully telegraphing that this is their house, but you belong here.

Some players fall in the draft out of concerns that they’re closet headcases, arrogant jackasses who make great AND1 tapes but terrible teammates. Others have the opposite problem.

Make no mistake, Lavoy Allen is the latter, and he is the worst player in the NBA.

He is 22 years old, 6’9”, 228 lbs. He grew up outside Trenton in Morrisville, Pennsylvania and is coming off four years of Division I basketball at Temple University. He holds the Owls’ record for career rebounds.

During that time, he averaged 11.6 points per game, 2.3 assists, 8.6 boards and 1.8 blocks, anchoring a team that made the NCAA Tournament in each of his four years. His junior year, the year he really should have gone out for the draft, he posted a double-double on points and rebounds for the season.

The Philadelphia 76’ers, his hometown team, selected him in the second round with the 50th overall pick of this year’s NBA draft.

9/11/11

New York City on the tenth anniversary of 9/11

Really, it was just another day.

I woke up around noon hungover. Too lazy to cook but too antsy to wait for takeout, I showered, put on sweats and went for a walk, planning to hit the Shake Shack on 86th Street. I didn’t have anywhere I needed to be until late that afternoon, to catch a softball game in Hell’s Kitchen.

There was a street fair on 3rd Avenue, with stands offering barbecued corn on the cob and fried calamari, which, given the state of my stomach, didn’t sit right. The clouds overhead promised rain, but failed to deliver, and the wind whipped down the avenues in bold gusts, scattering tossed wrappers and enveloping the neighborhood with a distinctly Upper East Side aroma of fresh air and dog shit.

The bars were flooded with people wearing NFL jerseys, though it wasn’t all Jets and Giants fans. The 9/11-sports angle is so played out I don’t even want to try to chase it down, though I suppose it is interesting that the first Sunday of the 2011 NFL season coincided with the tenth anniversary of the attacks.

It was slow going to the restaurant. My legs were stiff from softball practice and dancing. I had slipped and fallen in front of the bar the night before, and everything I wore reeked of stale liquor and cheap beer. When I woke up, my pockets were stuffed with crumpled dollar bills and leaflets from the concert hall. I was also a little deaf; I’d been too close to the speakers.