Delmas Could Be Big Hitter Lions Have Lacked

Chris Spielman looked around at what was going on around him and he could scarcely believe it.

It was the summer of 1988. The Lions had just made Spielman their second round pick, a wrecking ball of a linebacker from THE Ohio State University. Spielman was a throwback, a guy who could have played with a leather helmet and been nice and comfy.

And he was a winner. He won as a prep student, growing up near Canton, Ohio, where the Pro Football Hall of Fame is located, and playing for Washington High School in football tradition-rich Massillon. The winning continued in Columbus, with OSU.

The winning wouldn't come so easily in the NFL for Spielman, because he had the misfortune of being drafted by the Lions, who were a little better in 1988 than they are now, but only by a smidgen.

So Spielman launches into his off-season workout regimen and is aghast that precious few of his new Lions teammates want to join in.

The ones that bother to hit the weight room with Spielman are both amazed and bemused by his intense routine. They'd never seen anything quite like it.

Another Lions rookie that summer was safety Bennie Blades, an assassin from Miami of Florida.

Together, the intense and zealous Spielman and the natural-born hitter Blades helped inject the Lions defense with energy and physicality that had been woefully missing.

After his second season in the NFL, I ran into Blades at Fishbone's in downtown Detroit. I was working for a local cable TV station at the time and co-producing a sports talk show. I gave Bennie my card and asked him to be on the show sometime. He agreed.

A few months later, in the spring of 1990, Blades indeed appeared on our TV show. And, noting that the Lions had a Monday Night Football date that year with the L.A. Raiders, he had a message for the fans.

"Get your tickets early," Bennie said, looking into the camera, "and watch me hit Bo Jackson in the mouth!"

The Lions haven't had much of that bravado since, at least not on the defensive side of the ball. Certainly not in the secondary, where good teams separate receivers from footballs routinely.

Blades teamed with another OSU guy, William White, to form a very respectable and physical safety duo in the early-1990s. Blades and White laid some hats on you, while cornerbacks Melvin Jenkins and Ray Crockett disrupted pass patterns. That quartet was a big reason why the Lions finished 12-4 and went to the 1991 NFC Championship game.

The Lions, today, have another Bennie Blades-type in the making.

I love Louis Delmas. Already, and he hasn't so much as had one training camp practice.



Delmas, the Lions' second-round pick out of Western Michigan, has the right attitude befitting a feared safety: the bravado and mentality that says, "Warning to all who dare wander in my neighborhood."

He just might hit you in the mouth, indeed.

Delmas didn't take long to start talking some trash. Just a couple days after the Lions drafted him, to be exact. Then he kept telling fellow rookie Matthew Stafford, the team's bonus baby QB, how Delmas was going to intercept him in drills. Which he did, eventually.

But it's not just the trash talk. Delmas joined a WMU program that was among the dregs of the MAC, and helped lead it back to the top. And he's supremely confident that he can contribute to a similar resurgence with the Lions.

The Lions haven't had a true enforcer at the safety position in quite some time. Ronnie Rice, from my alma mater at EMU, was a decent player but didn't command the same respect as the top hitters in the NFL do.

Delmas, it says here, can be that kind of a difference maker.

The coaches love him, too. Their only concern, now, is how to harness some of his energy and tone him down a bit.

As if THAT'S been a problem around here very much.

Spielman, by the way, was once asked, during one of those NFL Films 1-on-1 interviews, if he had any game day routines or rituals that he'd like to share.

"If I told you, then I'd have to kill you," Spielman said.

I'm still not sure if he was joking.

Still A Flicker Left In “Big Red’s” Flame

Baseball is magic.

Check that—baseball is a magic act. It likes to pluck unsuspecting people out of the crowd and shine the spotlight on them, to entertain the rest of us. Then, in a flash, the poor sap is back into the crowd, often never to be heard from again.

It’s one of the beauties of the sport, to me, that the Joe Blow player—sometimes the 25th man of a 25-man roster, can take his place on stage, performing feats that belie his abilities, and thus take a place in baseball history. Forever.

The list of pitchers who’ve thrown no-hitters or even perfect games, for example, doesn’t read like a Who’s Who of hurlers. It’s dotted with Hall of Famers, but also liberally sprinkled with guys whose ERAs look like the price of a Big Mac meal.

Don Larsen was not a great pitcher. If we’re going to talk among friends here, he wasn’t even very good. He was serviceable. Another noodle in a plate full of spaghetti.

So how to explain Larsen throwing the only perfect game in World Series history, for the Yankees in 1956? Especially since, three days earlier, Larsen pitched one-and-two-thirds innings and walked four batters.

Larsen even tempted fate, daring to spit into the face of baseball superstition.

Sometime along the sixth or seventh inning, despite his teammates doing the usual ritual of not so much as even looking at him, much less discussing his ongoing perfect game, Larsen, nonetheless, found Mickey Mantle in the dugout.

“Hey Mick,” Larsen recounted years later, “wouldn’t it be something if I threw a no-hitter?”

Larsen said that Mantle looked at him as if the pitcher was possessed, and quickly moved away.

A trip to the ballpark can, three hours later, be unforgettable. Could be a no-hitter. Could be someone hitting for the cycle. Maybe a spectacular catch in the outfield that lifts you out of your seat. Perhaps that 25th man knocks a couple balls out of the park, including a game-winner in the bottom of the ninth.

Stuff that keeps you talking to captive audiences for years.

Chris Shelton is back in the big leagues. Could be a sip of coffee, but he’s back. He’s with the Seattle Mariners now. They say he’s going back down when the M’s need a fifth starter again, but it’s only been a few days and Big Red has already driven in a game-winning run. So who knows?

Shelton owned Detroit for a few weeks. It was in 2006, and Shelton, a red-headed first baseman who looked like Raggedy Andy all grown up, came out of the gate in April like he was being chased by a pack of wolves.

Big Red, they called him. Some took to calling him Red Pop, in honor of Detroit’s Faygo soda company.

The dark skies descended upon Shelton in a hurry in '06

Nine home runs in the Tigers’ first 13 games, Chris Shelton hit in April 2006. That power display made him just the fourth player in MLB history—and the first ever in the American League—to hit at least that many homers in his team’s first 13 games, joining Mike Schmidt, Larry Walker, and Luis Gonzalez before him.

If there had been one of those special mayoral elections in Detroit back then, the kind the city has fallen in love with lately, Shelton would have won in a landslide.

He was another of baseball’s faces in the crowd pulled on stage by the fickle magician.

Shelton was a nobody, and I don’t mean that derisively. It’s fact. He was a 26-year-old who’d kicked around in the minor leagues for a few years, unable to even make the 40-man roster of the woeful Pittsburgh Pirates, who left him exposed in baseball’s Rule V Draft in December 2003.

The Tigers snatched him up, and the only reason he stayed with them is because, according to Rule V, a selected player has to stay with the selecting team the entire season, or else he goes back to his previous team. No being sent to the minor leagues, in other words.

Shelton had a grand total of 46 at-bats in 2004, tethered to the Tigers.

The next season was a lot more active, and productive, for Big Red: 388 AB, 18 HR, a .299 BA.

Still, no one could have foreseen Shelton’s jackrabbit and history-making start in 2006. After 41 AB, Shelton was hitting a softball-like .512.

But the magician was eventually done with him, and Shelton got dumped back into the crowd, his participation in the act over.

By mid-June, people no longer stopped what they were doing to watch a Chris Shelton at-bat, as they had done back in April. The Tigers as a team thrived, but Shelton individually was in the 14th minute of his 15 minutes of fame.

He was no longer a .500 hitter, or a .400 hitter, or even a .300 hitter. As July began to wane, Shelton was at a very ho-hum .278, and sinking fast.

That’s when I found him in the Tigers clubhouse, in a sour mood.

I was making the usual rounds before game time, the first-place Tigers trying to fend off the visiting Chicago White Sox, who were just three-and-one-half games behind them in the Central Division race.

I saw Shelton, at his locker, head down, twirling a bat slowly. Perhaps he was silently asking the piece of lumber why it had forsaken him so quickly.

“Got a few minutes?”

Shelton looked up and slowly nodded. He wasn’t the jovial, smiling kid from a couple months ago.

I dared to ask him about his swing, wondering where it had gone.

My question shouldn’t have blindsided him, for everyone was beginning to wonder about Chris Shelton. Yet Shelton snorted and sneered, telling me that he had no intention of answering such a query, incredulous that I had the temerity to pose it.

About a week later, Shelton still slumping, the Tigers shipped him back to Toledo. To work on his swing.

Shelton didn’t make the Tigers in 2007, and was traded in December of that year to Texas. He batted .216 for the Rangers in 97 at-bats last season.

The Mariners signed him as a free agent over the winter. They called him up from the minors last week, and he delivered a game-winning single last Sunday. He’s still only 29 years old.

The 15 minutes are up, and Shelton is just another face in the crowd. But at least he’s in the crowd. For now. But better to be in the crowd in the big leagues, than on stage in the minors.

Hamilton The Roadblock To Pistons' Three-Guard Fantasy Coming True

Jack McCloskey loved tall guys.

Made sense, since Trader Jack was a basketball guy, through and through, and basketball does tend to be played by dudes who have to duck through doorways.

There aren't too many shrimps in the Hall of Fame.

Ralph Sampson was one of those big men who had McCloskey, the Pistons' GM, drooling.

Sampson, dominating the college game down at Virginia, was, for a time, undecided about whether he'd turn pro in time for the 1981-82 NBA season. If he'd eschew college for the pros, then McCloskey would have been beside himself.

The Pistons won 21 games in 1980-81. But the expansion Dallas Mavericks won but 15, so they'd have the No. 1 overall pick in the '81 draft. This was when the worst team got the first pick, no strings attached---before envelopes tumbling around in a bingo cage or ping pong balls being sucked through a tube decided the fate of NBA franchises.

McCloskey wanted Sampson. Wanted him badly. If Ralph had come out of college, Trader Jack would have done all he could to either trade with the Mavs for the No. 1 pick, or dissuade them from drafting Sampson.

But the Mavericks had their eyes on Mark Aguirre, anyway---a talented forward of ill repute, who was driving his coach Ray Meyer crazy at DePaul.

Sampson stayed put, and McCloskey went with Plan B.

"We need creativity really bad, and that's what Isiah Thomas provides," I recall Jack telling the media folks in the weeks leading up to the draft.

Isiah wasn't the big man that McCloskey coveted for his sad sack team, but he was the best little man available. By far.

Isiah was just two years out of high school when he made himself NBA-ready. After two seasons and an NCAA championship with Bobby Knight at Indiana, Isiah had had enough---of Knight and the college game. But especially Knight.

They said you can't build an NBA championship team from scratch---and that's what McCloskey had in Detroit, scratch---around a little guy. Isiah was 6'1" and so he wasn't even very tall by everyday life standards, much less the beanpole world of the NBA.

It was a big man's game, and Jack McCloskey knew it. But Isiah Thomas was supremely gifted---a dazzling passer and tough-as-nails attacker of the key. Today they call it "the paint."

So Jack took Isiah, right after the Mavs took Aguirre, Thomas' boyhood buddy from Chicago.

Isiah became The Franchise in Detroit, while Aguirre so irritated his NBA coach, Dick Motta, that Motta would eventually call Aguirre a "coward" and a "jackass" over the years.

Isiah would, in time, combine with Vinnie Johnson and Joe Dumars to form perhaps the greatest guard trio to ever play for the same NBA team at the same time.

There's a fantasy being lived out in Pistons Land nowadays.

That fantasy says that today's Pistons can recreate that guard trio magic through the talents of Rodney Stuckey, Richard "Rip" Hamilton, and newly-signed Ben Gordon.

Ha!

Where do I begin?

I could start with the obvious---that Stuckey is no Isiah Thomas. But that's too easy, and maybe a bit unfair, for Stuckey is still only about to embark on his third NBA season, and he hasn't yet gone into training camp as a starter.

Last season, Hamilton was blinded with grief.

They traded his pal Chauncey Billups, and Rip was too busy pouting and mourning that he didn't see the opportunity before him.

Even with Allen Iverson in tow, the Pistons could have been Hamilton's team. Rip was the most consistent scorer, the hardest worker, and he had himself a nice little love affair with the fans.

In Detroit, the sports fans appreciate the hard workers, the blue collar guys. Players who approach their game the way the fans approach their lives.

Hamilton, even though he lost his starting role briefly to Iverson due to the emergence of Stuckey at point guard, nonetheless could have been Mr. Piston with Mr. Big Shot traded away to Denver.

It wouldn't have mattered if Rip was a bench player. If he had the right attitude, he could have been team captain material and the fans would have continued to embrace him---maybe even more so with the popular Billups gone.

Who else would have been the leader?

Tayshaun Prince? Too quiet.

Rasheed Wallace? Too noisy.

Antonio McDyess? Too nice.

Hamilton wanted no part of providing leadership. He was too busy bitching.

So to think that Hamilton is going to play nice in a three-guard setup with Stuckey and Gordon, who plays the same role as Rip, that of scoring machine shooting guard---is fantasy of the highest order.

Unless Hamilton has an epiphany with new coach John Kuester, after fighting rookie coach Michael Curry tooth and nail last season, you can forget about the Pistons reigning terror on the NBA with another three guard dealio.

Oh, it could work---if Rip gets his 35 minutes a night. But where does that leave Gordon, who the Pistons are paying $11 million a year?

It could be that Rip gets traded; that's been the scuttlebutt, too. The Gordon signing would make even more sense if Hamilton is shipped away.

Rip Hamilton could have made the Pistons his team. But he wanted no part of it. He showed me a part of him that I didn't know existed. I didn't think Rip had the petulant gene in him.

But he did, and I think it's folly to believe that he'll embrace a three guard rotation.

Where's Mr. Rourke when you need him?

"What is your FAHN-tasy??"

The Latest Episode of "The Knee Jerks" With Special Guest Bob Page!!

It was a no-holds barred episode of "The Knee Jerks" last night on Blog Talk Radio, as Big Al and I welcomed former Detroit and New York broadcasting legend Bob Page to the program.

As expected (and hoped), Bob told it like it was. It was a wonderful first hour of a special, expanded, two-hour edition of TKJ.

Here are some highlights:

On being down on major league baseball: "After the 1994 strike, when they canceled the World Series, I was essentially done. You think I'm going to pay to see that nonsense?"

On his time in Detroit: "It's my hometown, and always will be. I would have liked to have come back and done something in Detroit, but it's a soft market and everyone is afraid of their own shadow."

On working in New York: "They brought me in the back door, on a little-known network and a little-known show. Other guys, like Eli Zaret and Bernie Smilovitz, were brought in as these big stars. Maybe that's why I lasted so long and they didn't."

On New York as a sports town: "I will tell you that New York is, by far, the most overrated sports town. By far."

On the U-M football program: "Les Miles should be the coach at Michigan. All (AD) Bill Martin had to do was call Les, say, 'It's time to come home. We don't care what you're making at LSU.' And Les would have been on the next plane. Bill Martin screwed that up terribly!"

And that's just scratching the surface.

Tune in, and after Bob, Al and I talked Tigers, Pistons, and Red Wings, plus named our respective Jerks of the Week (mine wasn't even about sports!).

You can listen to the show here:

20 Years Ago, Russ Thomas Had One Last Contract Squabble

Russ Thomas was a curmudgeonly soul, a sort of modern day Charles Dickens-type character.

He walked with a limp and had an old, craggy face and seemed to live in a time about two generations before the rest of us.

And he was tight-fisted with the cash that his boss charged him with overseeing.

Thomas was the Lions' GM, way before Matt Millen soiled himself in that role.

Thomas had played for the Lions in the early-1950s, was a radio broadcaster for the team, and ended up in the good stead of Bill Ford when Ford bought out the syndicate owning the Lions in 1964.

Ford made Russ Thomas his general manager, and it was as if the Lions were under the thumb of Ebeneezer Scrooge reincarnated.

Thomas had yearly go-rounds with players and coaches, almost always about money. Ole Russ had this funny thought: why pay them fair market value before putting them through the wringer first?

And even then, Russ might not loosen his grip on the wad.

The Lions, maybe out of blind luck than anything else, had drafted some Hall of Fame players in the middle of the 1960s. Legendary names, truth be told.

Receiver Fred Biletnikoff. Safety Johnny Robinson. Quarterback John Hadl.

Trouble was, each and every one of them were legends for teams in the American Football League---Biletnikoff with the Oakland Raiders; Robinson with the Kansas City Chiefs; Hadl with the San Diego Chargers.

This is because the tightwad Russ Thomas wasn't willing to meet the contract demands of these priceless players, so they jumped to the rival AFL.

Who knows how successful the Lions might have been with players like that toiling for them in the 1960s and part of the '70s.

It was stuff like that, and more, that made Russ Thomas Matt Millen in Detroit before Millen even graduated from high school.

Thomas was vilified in Detroit; the most-hated executive this town has ever seen. And we're talking about a city that has seen the likes of Ned Harkness with the Red Wings and the lightning rod Millen with the Lions.

It's the view of this grizzled rabble-rouser that the hatred for Thomas ran deeper than that for Millen, because Thomas' own players despised him.

Twenty years ago, Thomas had announced that 1989 would be his last season. But he had time for one last go-round with a superstar player.

The Lions, those blind squirrels, had lucked upon a nut in the '89 draft. The Green Bay Packers gift-wrapped running back Barry Sanders for them after passing on Barry to take mammoth tackle Tony Mandarich.

Yeah, I know.

So here comes Barry, the most electrifying player the Lions had on their hands since the days of Billy Sims and, before Billy, Lem Barney.

But Russ Thomas was being miserly again.

Barry and his dual agents wanted a certain dollar figure to sign with the Lions. Russ balked. Lions fans rolled their eyes, but with a twist.

If Russ Thomas blows this for us, they said, then there's no telling what we're capable of doing---to the Lions financially, and to Russ physically.

There was no AFL, of course, for Barry to use as leverage, but there was the Canadian league. Rumors started that Barry Sanders might take his jitterbug running style north of the border.

Training camp came and went. The stand-off between Thomas and Sanders' people dragged on throughout the summer.

The exhibition season came and went. Still, Sanders remained unsigned.

Then, just days before the Lions' season opener against the Cardinals at home, the word came: Barry Sanders had, finally, come to agreement on a contract.

But it was only about 72 hours before game time. And Sanders hadn't so much as attended one practice session.

The Lions hosted the Cardinals, and Barry was in uniform, though he didn't start. Information leaked that Sanders would certainly play, at least a little---though it was unknown when in the game he'd get the chance.

In the second quarter, Sanders jogged onto the field with the rest of the Lions' offense, and the Silverdome crowd went mad. He was wearing no. 20, the number worn so well by Sims and Barney.

He took a handoff, and, without the benefit of training camp, practice, or anything football-related, Sanders slithered through the Cardinals' defense to the tune of 17 yards.

He earned his first contract on that initial carry alone.

Sanders' contract squabble was Thomas' going away present. He retired, as promised, at the end of the 1989 season.

Russ is gone now, but he's not forgotten, at least not by fellow curmudgeons who've been following the team for almost 40 years, like the one banging on his keyboard right now.

Twenty years later, the Lions got their prized rookie, Matthew Stafford, signed in a heartbeat.

No CFL for him, I guess.

I wonder what Russ Thomas would think of Matthew's contract terms? If he wasn't already dead, it would no doubt kill him.