May 10, 2012

The massacre finally happened. You know, the one everyone, including us, knew was coming.

After a fabulous run of success two weeks ago, when we won money on seemingly everything from baseball to Jai Lai to cockfighting to The Family Feud (true story), The Crew finally received their comeuppance.

We placed three bets Sunday morning. They all sucked. The suckiest of which came on the Red Sox, who lost in 17 innings to the Orioles.

While losing in 17 innings is bad enough, making the opposition's first basemen -- an emergency pitching replacement after Baltimore was dumb enough to run out of available arms -- look like Pedro Martinez in his prime, is even worse.

The Orioles's Chris Davis, who hadn't pitched since playing for something called Navarro College in 2006, shut down Boston over the final two innings, scattering two hits while striking out two. He also hit 92 mph on the radar gun.

That led to a lot of f-bombs, some tears and ultimately a regrettable decision that ended in us placing -- and losing -- our fourth bet of the day.

This time we had the Hawks, down 24 to Boston at the break, giving up three in the second half. It represented a perfect scenario, because as we all know NBA teams rarely give up in the second half of blow-out losses.

Despite that keen, can't-miss approach, Atlanta failed to cover, not even really feigning an effort in the third quarter. By the time the scrubs picked it up in the fourth, it was too late.

More cussing, more tears and we've been trigger shy ever since.

In fact, it has been three days since our last play, an eternity for a low-stakes firm like ours operating in total anonymity. The good news is that we discovered we still like sports, able to watch the games and be entertained even without something riding on them. The bad news is that if we don't get in on the action soon, we may start sniffing glue to satisfy our insatiable need to have some sort of rush course through our addiction-prone veins.

Alas, one thing before we get there...

In the wake of the bounty scandal that has enveloped the New Orleans Saints and cast aspersions on the NFL's ability to protect their players from head injuries, former wide receiver and current ESPN analyst Cris Carter created a bit of firestorm Monday, telling ESPN Radio that he engaged in bounties when he played but only as a way to protect himself

"I mean, first time I've ever admitted it, but I put a bounty on guys before," said Carter, appearing on the "Hill and Schlereth Show" -- perhaps ESPN's most dreadful broadcast across their various platforms. "If a guy tries to take me out, a guy try to cheap shot me, I put a bounty on him right now."

Carter said he placed a bounty on Bill Romanowski. The former linebacker, best known for his days with the San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos, approached Carter during a pre-game warm up and threatened to end his career, Carter said.

Carter did not give any dollar figures nor did name others involved, only that he had to do it protect himself and his family.

A disoriented sounding Romanowski appeared on "The Dan Patrick Show" Wednesday, telling the host that Carter fabricated the story to stay relevant. When Patrick pressed him, asking if his history of concussions and head injuries may have prevented him from recalling a confrontation with Carter, Romanowski said it was impossible.

"If he could read my mind in pre-game, yeah, maybe he had it right. But I didn't talk before games. I was in the zone."

Far be it from us to take the side of Romanowski, who is terrifying and literally bat-shit crazy, but Carter, though he once played for a guy who put a bounty on a kicker, and his story simply don't add up.

For one, we believe Romanowski when he says he never talked to anyone during pre-game warm ups. Judging by the way he played on the field -- with near psychotic abandon -- we're likely to believe his pre-game interactions with teammates and opposition alike were something you might expect from a reclusive, street-bound angel dust addict.

Secondly, during the course of a game Romanowski and Carter were unlikely to meet on the field save for a few times, something Romanowski pointed out to Patrick. If a tight end or an offensive lineman, someone with whom he would go to battle on virtually every play, were saying those things, then we'd be more apt to believe it.

Who knows why Carter said what he did, or perhaps, more importantly, why he said it when he did. Who knows why anyone does anything. Maybe he was, in fact, trying to interject himself into the sports story du jour - bounties in the NFL - like Romanowski said.

Or maybe his employer, bored with the manufactured Kurt Warner-doesn't-want-his-kids-to-play-football-story from the week before, needed something else to talk about and nudged him in this direction (Anything is possible from the network that brings your 'First Take' everyday).

Either way, his claims are, at best, bizarre and, at worst, preposterous.


Super Play of the Day

A's +117