The Sour Sixteen are set. Favorites and plucky underdogs. All worthy competitors. Should be fun. Voting will resume Monday, March 27th.
And just a brief flashback as to who were the 16 mediots left at this point in the Tournament in 2022 and 2019:
A lot can happen over a year’s time.
CONSONANTS
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(From The15 Archives, originally published on this date in 2019.)
Not all heroes wear capes.
The Day Drew Almost Died
(Sung to the tune of Don McLean’s “American Pie.”)
A long, long time ago… I can still remember how that QB used to make me smile. And I thought if he had the chance, That he could make Krafty Bob dance, And maybe we’d be happy for a while.
But Parcells leaving made me shiver, And Pete Carroll could not deliver. Good news on the doorsteps; Tom Brady would soon get more reps.
I can’t remember if I cheered, When I read that his artery was sheared, But I sure know that Coach Bill lied, The day Drew almost died.
So bye bye cerebral statue guy. Threw the passes to the D-line, Or hit the corners in stride. And Nick and Ron were drinking whiskey and rye, Singing “Drew is such a nice classy guy”. Drew is such a nice classy guy.
Does Drew even read his Book of Plays? Then why’d he just pass it to the Tampa Bays, If the Coach didn’t tell him so? You don’t believe in gaining yards, You can’t be saved by Parcells and Cafar…do. And can you teach me how to move real slow?
Well, I know the media’s in love with him, ‘cause I saw one slurpin’ on his Jim, He got down on his knees, Man, I dig that dig-nity.
I was a lonely Globie in Foxboro, With a speed-dial line to Tom Donohoe. But I knew I had nowhere left to go, The day Drew almost died.
I started singing, Bye bye cerebral statue guy, Threw the passes to the D-line, Or hit the corners in stride. And Nick and Ron were drinking whiskey and rye, Singing “Drew is such a nice classy guy”. Drew is such a nice classy guy.
Now for five years we been on our own, Zeffross Moss grows fat, and we’ve had Michael Stone, But that’s not how it used to be. When the Statue took a nut crushing sack, With skills he borrowed from Mike Tomczak, And footwork that made him look, like a tree.
Oh, and while the Statue was on the turf, Tommy led the Patriots rebirth. The Drew era was adjourned, No more picks would be returned, And while Borges ripped the coach for Starks, The QB moved to Orchard Park, And we raised banners in the dark, The day Bledsoe almost died…
We were singing, Bye bye cerebral statue guy, Threw the passes to the D-line, Or hit the corners in stride. And Nick and Ron were drinking whiskey and rye, Singing “Drew is such a nice classy guy”. Drew is such a nice classy guy.
Tall, strong slinger with a broken finger, Passes not complete but they sure were zingers. Six and two but falling fast. Drew often ended up on the grass, Whenever he tried for a forward pass. With the jokes in the press box giving Coach such sass.
Now Mo Lewis’ hit was sweet perfume, As the stench of Bledsoe’s failures loomed, We all got up to dance, As the new guy got a chance. Oh, as Brady played with nerves of steel, The Statue’s limits were soon revealed. Six Banners now hang above the field, Where Drew, he nearly died.
We started singing, Bye bye cerebral statue guy, Threw the passes to the D-line, Or hit the corners in stride. And Nick and Ron were drinking whiskey and rye, Singing “Drew is such a nice classy guy”. Drew is such a nice classy guy.
And there we were down in Foxboro, A QB lookin’ oh so slow, With another I-N-Teeeeeee. Drew be nimble, Drew be sacked, Mo nearly broke poor Drew’s back, But he played with dignity-y-y.
Oh, and as I watched him dive off the stage, Tameeka’s disks cost 1.2 mil to assuage. Max Lane could not repel, Made Reggie White fast as a gazelle. And as the blames piled high into the night, Couldn’t be Drew, he was alright, I saw Borges laughing with delight, The day Drew almost died.
He was singing, Bye bye cerebral statue guy, Threw the passes to the D-line, Or hit the corners in stride. And Nick and Ron were drinking whiskey and rye, Singing “Drew is such a nice classy guy”. Drew is such a nice classy guy.
I met a man who sang the blues, And I asked him for some happy news, But he just smiled and turned away. I looked up that great box score, Of the Minnesota game some years before, But even then some said that Bledsoe couldn’t play.
And ar the Globe: the writers screamed, Nutscrubbers cried, and Ron Borges schemed. But not a word was spoken; The AP feed was broken. And the three men I admire true; The Tuna, Don King and Cerebral Drew, They caught the last train for Montana, too. The day the Drew almost died.
And they were singing, Bye bye cerebral statue guy, Threw the passes to the D-line, Or hit the corners in stride. And Nick and Ron were drinking whiskey and rye, Singing “Drew is such a nice classy guy”. Drew is such a nice classy guy.
They were singing, Bye bye cerebral statue guy, Threw the passes to the D-line, Or hit the corners in stride. And Nick and Ron were drinking whiskey and rye, Singing “Drew is such a nice classy guy”. Drew is such a nice classy guy.
Copyright 2007 BSMW. Lyrics by Kevin, InThisTown, BOSsportsfan34, Smilin’ Joe Hesketh, Miserable Fellow, Marty Nopointe, Joe Dokes, UncleGizmo, and Ironhead.
Note: Patrick Scartelli and The Sports Junk Drawer will appear Thursday, owing to the Labor Day holiday. In his place is an excerpt from good friend of The15net dot com, sportswriter Mr. Stanislas Tecumseh Darden, Jr., with an excerpt from his forthcoming book, ‘406 Little-Known Beantown (& Foxborough) Sports Facts!’
books.
At one time, Yawkey Way was known as Jersey Street!
First baseman Bill Buckner’s costly error was in Game 6, not Game 7 of the 1986 World Series!
Celtics Hall-of-Famer Bill Russell was, in effect, traded for the Ice Capades!
And speaking of ice, the Bruins for many years played their home games at the Boston Garden, which has a smaller ice surface than the now standard 200′ x 85′!
Red Sox pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee was never an astronaut. The nickname derived from his ‘spacey’ personality!
The New England Patriots actually held a 3-0 in Super Bowl XX!
‘The Splendid Splinter” Ted Williams hit a home run in his final at-bat at Fenway Park!
Despite public perception to the contrary, Atlanta Hawks center Tree Rollins bit Celtics guard Danny Ainge, not the other way around!
The Boston Bruins won a deciding Game 7 versus the Vancouver Canucks in the 2011 Stanley Cup Championship!
Tom Brady was drafted by the Expos in 1995 as a catcher!
The initial of Tom & Jean Yawkey are written in Morse code on the Fenway Park manual scoreboard!
Mr. Robert ‘Bob’ Kraft owned Foxboro Stadium before he bought the New England Patriots!
NBA great Shaquille O’Neal played his final season with the Celtics!
Prior to the 1994 MLB realignment and addition of a so-called ‘wild card’ team, the Yankees and Red Sox were unable to face one another in the playoffs!
Patriots star Troy Brown has received a TD pass and recorded an interception from Drew Bledsoe!
A ‘Bruin’ is an archaic term for a brown bear!
At one time, Jersey Street was known as Yawkey Way!
Celtics GM Arnold ‘Red’ Auerbach drafted Indiana State player Larry Bird an year early!
The Boston Braves baseball team, not the Red Sox, originally helped launch the Jimmy Fund charity!
Gillette Stadium was originally going to be named CMGi Field!
The Boston Garden had no air conditioning!
The left field wall at Fenway Park is know colloquially as “The Green Monster!” It is 37.2 feet high!
The ‘Spoked B’ Boston Bruins logo contains eight spokes!
Boston was the home for one season to a USFL team, called the Boston Breakers!
Former Patriots linebacker Mike Vrabel scored 8 touchdowns with New England, on 8 receptions!
Red Sox great Dennis Eckersley has won a Word Series, a Cy Young Award, and been named the AL Most Valuable Player; as a member of the Oakland Athletics!
In the 1980 NBA Draft, the Celtics traded their #1 overall pick in a swap that netted them center Robert Parrish, and a pick used to select forward Kevin McHale!
Hockey great Robert Gordon ‘Bobby’ Orr signed his first contract with a Bruins farm squad at the age of fourteen!
The now-New England Patriots actually debuted as an American Football League team in 1960, called the Boston Patriots!
Danny Ainge is a Mormon!
Red Sox great Ted Williams was the last major leaguer to hit over .400 for the season, when he hit at a .406 average back in 1941!
College and NFL footballs, or ‘pigskins’, are actually made from cowhide!
Drew Bledsoe, the Patriots #1 overall pick in the 1993 Draft, was replaced as starting quarterback due to suffering an injury on September 23, 2001 by Tom Brady!
Baseball great George Herman ‘Babe’ Ruth played for both Boston baseball teams, the Red Sox at the start of his career, and the Braves at the end of it!
Dear BJBSJ Wicked Pissah Beantown Chowderheads Platinum Elite Members; Here is a musical playlist for your Labor Day Weekend enjoyment. Click HERE to download. Songs to enjoy as you stay six feet apart and, because you’ve been so good with following the rules, you can listen in any order. Suggestions for additional tracks are welcomed.
Patriots QB/QT Tom Brady was drafted in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft, with pick number 199!
Raymond Jean Borque originally wore sweater #7 for the Boston Bruins, switching to #77 when the team retired Phil Esposito’s #7!
Stephen Neal was a champion wrestler before he played football!
Red Sox Great Ted Williams was a Marine aviator, missing several MLB seasons due to military service in World War II and Korea!
For many years, women were not permitted to compete in the Boston Marathon!
The Patriots first AFC Championship won against Miami in January 1986, but the rallying cry ‘Squish the Fish’ is zoologically incorrect! Dolphins are not fish; rather, they are aquatic mammals!
The Boston Celtics parquet floor is made out of red oak, whereas the other NBA arenas all use rock maple flooring!
The Boston Bruins are an Original Six member of the National Hockey League!
Well-travelled NFL quarterback Ryan “Fitzmagic” Fitzpatrick attended Harvard University!
The Boston Celtics have won a NBA record 17 Championships!
Don Baylor was hit by 267 pitches during his MLB career!
Sportswriters Bob Ryan and Peter Gammons started working for The Boston Globe newspaper on the same day!
Patriots offensive tackle Sebastian Vollmer was born in Germany and speaks German fluently!
Red Sox third baseman Bill Mueller singled home pinch runner Dave Roberts in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS!
Five Patriots fans were electrocuted after carrying a goal post removed from Sullivan Stadium after a playoff-clinching win versus Cincinnati in 1985!
The Beanpot is a collegiate ice hockey tournament among Northeastern University, Harvard University, Boston College, and Boston University!
Red Sox Great Roger Clemens named all his children with names starting with the letter ‘K’!
Bruins player Glen Wesley overshot an empty net in a 1990 playoff game against the Montreal Canadiens Edmonton Oilers!
Former Boston Herald writer John Tomase has never actually apologized for his untrue assertion that New England filmed the Rams walkthrough practice!
The Boston Red Sox were the last MLB team to integrate, when the late Pumpsie Green was brought in as a pinch runner in July of 1959!
Harvard once beat Yale in football, by a score of 29-29!
Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick’s favorite sport is not football, but lacrosse!
Red Sox Great Carl Yastrzemski played his entire 23 year career in Boston!
Legendary Celtics coach Arnold “Red” Auerbach once punched the owner of the St. Louis Hawks on the face!
The New England Patriots once suffered through a 1-15 season!
The basketball hoop rims at the TD Garden are exactly ten feet off the ground!
Harvard and Northeastern have never met in The Beanpot Final!
Were it not for a rat inside the left field ‘monster’ wall, NBC’s camera might not have captured Carlton Fisk waving his famed home run fair in the 12th inning of Game 6 of the World Series in 1975!
Bruins player Mike Milbury once went into the stands, and beat a fan with his own shoe!
The Boston Marathon was first run in April 1897, and has never had to be cancelled!
Robert Kraft was once a co-owner of the Boston Lobsters franchise in World TeamTennis!
Wade Boggs was an avowed fan of poultry, specifically chicken!
Brockton calls itself ‘The City of Champions!’
Game On! is a little hole in the wall type of pub at Fenway with a speakeasy kind of vibe.
The Old Boston Garden had numerous ‘obstructed view’ seats, from which seeing the entire playing area was quite difficult!
NFL veteran head coach Duane Charles “Bill” Parcells did not provide respectability for the New England Patriots franchise upon his hiring!
Bruins standout Cam Neely once got a bunch of goals in a certain number of games on a bum leg, caller!
Red Sox Captain Jason Varitek caught four no-hitters!
Hundreds of college hockey fans were stranded at the Old Boston Garden during the 1978 Beanpot tourney because of a blizzard!
Celtics player Cedric Maxwell actually was rarely called Cedric. Most people called him “Corn”!
Ted Williams was not voted the American League Most Valuable player in 1941, despite hitting .406!
PV = nRT!
Boston Beer Company honcho Jim Koch stated in a radio interview that he thought Tom Brady should just accept his four game suspension from “Deflategate!” What an asshole!
In 1972, daredevil Evel Knievel jumped his motorcycle over the big bridge connecting New Hampshire & Maine!
When with the Red Sox, pitcher Roger ‘Rocket’ Clemens twice struck out a record twenty batters in a nine-inning game!
Jesus Saves, but Esposito scores on the rebound!
The Ted Williams Tunnel is in fact named after the Splendid Splinter!
The Boston Patriots played their home games one season at Harvard Stadium!
Cambridge Rindge and Latin basketball phenom Patrick Ewing was never going to play for Boston College, stupid!
The Head of the Charles Regatta started all the way back in 1965!
In 1986 Wade Boggs once injured himself trying to remove his cowboy boots!
During WWII, future President John Fitzgerald Kennedy proved himself an accomplished swimmer! His younger brother Edward in 1969; not so much!
Prior to the 21st century, Beantown was so victory-starved, they held a parade for former Bruin Ray Bourque, who won a Stanley Cup as a member of the Colorado Avalanche! Sad!
In 1982, prizefighting middleweight Marvin Nathaniel Hagler legally changed his name to Marvelous Marvin Hagler!
A power failure occurred at the Old Boston Garden during the 1988 Stanley Cup Final between the Bruins and the eventual champion Edmonton Oilers!
Natick excels at being unsporting – just ask Framingham!
Patriots head coach Bill Belichick owns a boat which he renamed VIIIRings after winning Super Bowl LIII!
Chuck Connors, TV’s “The Rifleman” played 53 games for the Boston Celtics!
You can trace a direct line in left field at Fenway from Ted to Yaz to Rice to Greeny, then a JAG or two to Manny, to a whole bunch of other JAG’s to Benny!
(Dear BJBSJ Wicked Pissah Beantown Chowderheads Platinum Elite Members; Here is a musical playlist for your Memorial Day enjoyment. Click HERE to download. Songs to enjoy as you stay six feet apart and not on the dunes. Suggestions for a third disk are welcomed.)
Disk One:
1.Lucille/The Girl Can’t Help It – Little Richard (Live in Boston 1970)
2. Use Me – Bill Withers
3. Chinese Duplicity – Dry Coughing
4. You Are What Your Record Says You Are – The Silverized Tracksuits
5. A Wee Dram of Vacation – The Irish Rovers
6. Cowboy From New Canaan – Kelbo Thompkins and the 200 Line
7. Ghost/Tosser – The Erhardt/Perkins Progression
8.Leaving Las Vegas – The Dearly Bedarded
9. Social Distance Dance – Men Without Masks
10. Kites To Kevin – MCLC
11. Grandma Got Run Over By a Jeeple – JimBot01960
12. Can’t Exceed the CBT Blues – The Baseball Paperists
13. The Belichick, The – Sideshow Ben
14. For Carl It’s Worth It – Buffalo2Springfield
15. When I’m Small – Phantogram
16. For Your Muff – The Yardale Birds
17. The Ballad of Tom And Yoko – The Tompa Baytles
18. Brianna’s Mom – Fountains of Dave
19. You’re Here To See Me – Joe West Coast
20. [S]he got game – Ty Tell9ine with W.A. Brown
21. Sunshine (Is the Best Disinfectant) – The Goodman Orange Project
The 15 