This is how we do it: Boston College Eagles kick off 2013 season with 24-21 win over Villanova

Steve Addazo set 2 goals for his team to start the year. 

One of them was to become Bowl eligible. The other, was to do exactly what they did today...win game 1 of the season. 

Fact is, the football team that lights up the fields of Boston College has been dormant over the past few years as since their last Bowl win, a victory in the 2007 Champs Sports Bowl, their yearly win totals have steadily decreased dropping from 11, to 9, to 8, to 7, down to 4 and finally to an abysmal 2 win. They lost their streak of 12 straight years with a Bowl game at the end with a 4th place finish in 2011 and haven't been to the postseason since.  

Rookie: Chase Rettig is entering his final season with the team and despite throwing for 6,253 yards in his first 3 years with the Eagles he has won just 13 games while losing 23. Those 23 losses are certainly not Rettig's fault but there is blame to go around. Each and every year the Eagles insist that they are getting better but in the end, the result of bad scouting made by men already long ago fired comes back to bit them in the behind. 

Don't get me wrong, the Eagles WILL get better, that is just how college football works but when you look at the team that they have assembled this year, should they get their act together amidst this 10 game NCAA season they really do have the possibility of being better than just better. This 2013 team COULD be great. 

It has been a long time since the Eagles have been up there with Texas A&M or well any of the big time college football power houses but they took the first step towards climbing back up to that lofty perch with a win today. 

Riding the brand new presence of newly instated coach: Steve Addazo, the duo of  Rettig and fellow senior: Alex Amidon combined for 146 yards through the air with a touchdown and an average gain per pass attempt of 11.2 yards. Amidon had a career night hauling his most receptions (13) since joining the team in 2010 and his largest yardage night in almost a full calendar year. As for Rettig, he would toss for an additional 139 yards with 23 completions on just 30 attempts. 

Rettig also spearheaded a second half rally for the Eagles as after heading into the break, they trailed by a touchdown. Rettig would make it work though as he quickly tied the game in the 3rd quarter by hurling a 49 yarder right into the arms of Amidon.  Upon a string of dominant defense the Eagles got it back to Rettig who eventually led the Eagles into a position where once the ball was handed off to running back: Andre Williams BC had a 21-14 lead. (Williams finished the night with 114 yards rushing). 

The Eagles would be faced with a fun final few minutes as they would add an exclamation point to fun afternoon at Alumni Stadium by clobbering Villanova QB: John Robertson and forcing the game sealing fumble. One drive later and with the Wildcats driving, they picked off a bad pass over the middle of the field and soon assembled in the welcome formation that is the QB kneel. 

It really is only a tiny sample but the Eagles won their first opener since 2010 today and that can only mean good things. 

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Aaron Hernandez: Superstar to Inmate - an interpretation of Rolling Stone's recent article: Gangster in the Huddle

"U saw who I’m with... Nfl... just so u know" a 27 year old semi pro football player said late onthe night of June 16th. Just a few hours later, the man who sent that message lay dead, 5 bullets firmly lodged throughout his body and blood pooling outside his 5 foot 11 inch frame. 

Less than a mile away, a football player by the name of Aaron Hernandez strutted into his sleeping home with two men at his side...Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz. They all had guns in their hands. 

Over the next few weeks, the man who had been shot's name was released. He was Odin Lloyd, dating partner of the sister of Aaron Hernandez's fiancé. He had been friends with Hernandez prior to his death but as was revealed in a court reading, their relationship quickly fell apart, culminating in that moment in an industrial park when Lloyd was ordered to get on his knees and put his hands behind his head causing a fight that ended with Hernandez shooting him execution style.  

Over the next few weeks everything about what happened leading up to when Aaron Hernandez changed his legacy from one of luster and glory to one of a murderer was closely speculated and profiled both falsely and correctly. He was reviled to be a marijuana addict, a gangster, a hot head and above all, a gun toting, trigger happy phsycopath. He was speculated to have shot a Miami man in the face but that was not confirmed. 

He was linked to a Boston double murder in 2011 and also charged with the assault of a bartender in 2007. That fight was broken up by guess who, Tim Tebow. 

But after almost a month of turmoil all the chaos seemed to die down. Hernandez was in jail, he sent a letter out but that was nothing new. "I'm innocent," he said, no one agreed with him. The illegal gun possession was confirmed time and time again but by the time we reached this month of August the 2013 preseason was upon us and with Hernandez behind bars, his name was all but forgotten…until now. 

Early this morning, PAUL SOLOTAROFF AND RON BORGES released a mega 7,000 word, 15 page article revealing in depth details that chilled you to the bone and succeeded at making our jaws drop at information we already had been informed of. 

It began with one of the strongest accounts of the moment that sparked the murder of a man who had previously given a glowing review of Hernandez to his sister. 

“S**t was crazy,” Lloyd had said also eluding to him and Hernandez' "Smoking that super-duper". 

Long story short Hernandez and Lloyd were clubbing partners riding into Boston every night for one sleepless weekend. But on Sunday night/Monday morning, their interactions would transform from ones of camaraderie and minor substance abuse to ones of anger and violence. According to one of Lloyd's associates, he and Hernandez had been in the top floor of a top Boston club. Lloyd had seen a pair of family members from his perch on a balcony and gone downstairs to see them. Somehow, Hernandez overheard the conversation below. 

After hugging and trading pleasantries, one of the men, a tall man with dreadlocks began to point at Hernandez. 

“I don’t like that n*****, he’s one of them funny people,” The man said. Lloyd tried to defend Hernandez. “You’re gonna start some s**t ’tween me and him.” He said. 

Lloyd treasured his relationship with the celebrity that now watched him from above but like he eluded to when worrying about his cousins comments directed at Hernandez, the very second he returned to his table with Hernandez, an altercation began. Hernandez shoved Lloyd to the ground swearing at him with insane rage.

The entire situation was caught by security cameras. 

They soon left the club and Hernandez texted 2 Connecticut associates who were later revealed to be men named George Wallace and Carlos Ortiz. “You can’t trust anyone anymore!” he said commanding that they drive to Boston. Once they arrived, he rented a Nissan Altima, handgun in hand and thugs by his side. They drove to Lloyd's house which was located in a gang torn section of Dorchester that Hernandez was not new to. 

They picked Lloyd up but he soon recognized that Hernandez was not ready to party, no, he was ready to kill him. He fought back as Hernandez and Wallace attempted to force him to the ground. He ripped a mirror off the Altima and raised his arms as the first shots rained down on him. But nevertheless, his life would not progress past 3:30 AM that Monday morning as police found his riddled body several hours later. 

But there is more to the world of crime and abuse that will likely go down as the few years of mistakes that ended Hernandez' life as a free man. 

We all know he grew up in a broken home. Hernandez's father was violent and raised Hernandez to follow in his footsteps. They all played football and it is highly speculated that drugs were constantly prevalent in their Bristol home. He had no friends, no he had victims of his bullying, people feared him, they did not like him. But still, Aaron's father: Dennis Hernandez was his role model...for better or worse. 

“He was the perfect dad: He went to every scrimmage, and got ’em up at dawn to work out," one of Hernandez' high-school opponents: Brandon Beam said. 

He raised his kids to build muscle. They had a bench press in his basement and Hernandez was pretty much a body builder by age 12. He played running back but did not preform ankle breaking jukes like most pro rushers. "He preferred to run through people rather than go around then," the Rolling Stone article read. 

“They were the roughest kids by far in Guinea Alley,” says Eddy Fortier, who went to Bristol Central with them in the Seventies and is a former youth counselor. “They had to be tough – they were about the only Puerto Ricans in an Irish-Italian town,” says Fortier’s brother, Gary.  

They had to be tough...tough. That was all that Hernandez had, his strength and his father. But even that was eventually stolen from him as before Hernandez was even out of high-school, his father died of a lethal infection sustained at a hospital. 

The future NFL'er was in trouble. He quickly became associated with high school gangs but according to Beam, had the maturity of a middle school-er. “The guy would do anything to crack us up,” he said. 

But like was said before, when Dennis Hernandez died, everything changed. His humor vanished, his innocence was lost and he turned to the dark side if you will. “He’d open up the tiniest bit, then say nothing for weeks, like it was a sign of weakness to be sad,” says Beam. “His brother was at college, and the only other person he would really talk to was the one who was taken away.” 

So with no friends, no people that could save him, his 360 degree turn to evil was rapidly coming to a climax. Hernandez enrolled in the University of Florida, continued his gang associations, and developed a barrage of anger issues.  He smoked pot, fought bartenders, and was benched in game one of the 2007 NCAA season. But mighty Urban Myer came in and saved his tight end the embarrassment that would accompany his labeling of the benching a suspension. 

"He's just not ready to play." Myer said

But that was obviously not the case. He failed countless additional drug tests and according to Rolling Stone should have faced suspensions as massive as season long bans but as it stood, "he did not miss a single snap." 

He would hang out with Ernest Wallace and supposedly Wallace was the Senator Palpatine that assisted in finally pulling Hernandez over the line.

“I never saw him with them, but misery attracts misery: There’s vultures waiting to swoop,” says Coach Hevesy, who attempted to act as a father to Hernandez “He played video games with my son, and my daughter wore his jersey to sleep. But whenever he left campus, he’d come back different. That’s when the problems happened.”

Midway through his joiner year in Florida, Hernandez and two fellow footballers known to the world as "The Poncey Twins" were linked to a drive by murder outside a Miami bar. 

“He was out with the Pounceys and [ex-Gator safety] Reggie Nelson, and some guys tried to snatch a chain off one of the Pounceys,” says a local Gators reporter. “The guys drive off, then stop at a light, and someone gets out of a car and shoots into their car through the passenger window. One victim described the shooter as possibly Hispanic or Hawaiian, with lots of tattoos on his arms.”

Hernandez' fits the description. His arms are almost completely covered in tattoos as several signs possibly labeled as gang depictions  are largely concealed on his knuckles and forearms. He fits the description but after that specific incident he was not even questioned by police...so the problems continued. 

But nevertheless, all problems aside, Hernandez was a very good college player. In 2009, he led the team in catches with 68 and eventually complied 12 touchdown receptions in his 3 years of NCAA action. It was because of this that Hernandez felt pressured to help his image and attempted to earn himself a higher position on teams draft boards. 

He sent a letter to every NFL team. 

“My coaches have told you that nobody worked harder than me,” he wrote. “The only X-factor is concerns about my use of recreational drugs. To address that, I am putting my money where my mouth is [if you sign me I will accept a contract that would allow you to drop me without pay if I ever used]”

Well that never happened.

For a long time, it seemed that Hernandez' pleas would be for not as after the first 3 rounds had been completed he was still left underrated. But Bill Belicheck would finally fulfill Aaron's dreams.

The Patriots needed a top receiver. They had recently added Wes Welker but had long ago lost Troy Brown and Randy Moss. Hernandez seemed to be the best guy to fill the job and almost immediately he proved just that. He caught 6 touchdowns in his first year but  soon tag teamed with fellow tight end Rob Gronkowski in 2011 to blow away any and all marks for tight end play. This was all en-route to earning himself a 40 million dollar contract long before his rookie deal expired. 

At that time, Hernandez insisted that the “Patriot way” had changed him and he was “a new man.” He knew how to push the buttons of owner Bob Kraft.

But nevertheless, with so much big money now credited to his name Hernandez seemed to lose the will to be a good little boy and soon returned to his gang associated ways. He began to miss practices, and forgo rehab assignments angering his coach Bill Belichick and in Bill's words coming "one misstep away from being dropped."  

He would conceal his drug use, alienating himself from his teammates and making them feel as if they did not know who he was. He began to take a highly addictive and body wrecking drug named PCP or more informally referred to as simply Angel Dust. He would get high after games smoking constantly on his car rides home from games. But nobody knew about any of it. Well that is, nobody that could either punish him, help him or at least get him to focus not on football but on his problems. 

About 1 year before the murder of Lloyd, Hernandez and a "cohort of thugs" as they were labeled by Rolling Stone became engaged in a bar fight with members of a group that Hernandez did not harbor fond feelings for. It is suspected that two murders were committed by someone involved in the fight although it is suspected that Hernandez was not the trigger man in these crimes. 

But nevertheless, an old Toyota 4Runner was seen speeding off away from the club following the murders. The driver was not identified as the car soon vanished only to be found, caked in dust in a garage owned by Hernandez' uncle. 

Meanwhile, the Patriots had just lost the AFC championship game and he was right in the time of this life when he allegedly shot a man named Avery Bradly in the face before dumping him in an abandoned ally-way. As all this happened, Hernandez suddenly began to fear for his life as he suspected that the very gangsters he had assembled around him "were trying to kill him". For this reason he illegally carried a gun where ever he went. 

He added 12 security cameras in his home and stashed an assault rifle in his gym bag as he feared retribution for leaving his gang behind. 

But the guns were not where the panic ended. According to Carlos Ortiz, Hernandez rented an undisclosed condo 12 miles away from his multi-million dollar mansion. Ortiz refereed to the condo as a "flop house." 

Much like he did before the draft, Hernandez may have been TRYING to clean himself up, but with his name so deeply wound into the gang world that was no simple task meaning that when Lloyd's cousins began racially insulting Hernandez, he quickly reverted to his old ways.

He has wormed his way out of so much, but after what has come out through the court investigations, the various reports and most recently this mega description by Rolling Stone, the hole he has now dug himself might now seem just a little too deep for this master of deception to climb out of. 

For all his life, Aaron Hernandez was the star, the big buff unstoppable football player who broke records and broke bones. But with 5 brutal gunshots he revealed to the world that those days of success were all a lie. With 5 brutal gunshots, Aaron Hernandez' luck ran out and as police officers came to his doorstep, the Patriot tight end quickly went from superstar to inmate. 

To read the Rolling Stone article click here

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I went to a Baseball Game: The story behind the NCAA's summer leauges

On July 3rd 2012, I went to a baseball game.It was no MLB game of super stardom and frankly it wasn't even a minor league game. This game that I saw live from a tiny western Massachusetts town of just under 40,000 people was not one with a World Series on the line.

This was a summer league game whose players weren't even directly playing to maintain a scholarship. These were collage kids, playing for the Holyoke Blue Sox of the New England Baseball League. These were collage kids barely playing under the towering illuminating stadium lights of a 3,000 person grandstand high school field. Yet through all that, I walked away that night in awe, shocked at the difference in experience between seeing a game like this and watching a Red Sox game 2 hundred rows away from action.

I went to another such game on July 9^th 2013 and while the team I was rooting for ended the night on the wrong side of a 5-4 13 inning final: I walked away with that same feeling of awe.

But nevertheless, there was something else that that screamed for attention amidst my based awe  something else. 

As of this 2013 season, there are 298 division 1 baseball teams in the NCAA amounting to almost 7,000 varsity players across the nation. Each February, those 298 teams flock to the fields in a 13 week season of nearly 30 games a team.

When those 13 weeks are up, the 64 highest ranked teams in the nation then frantically go at each-other in a 26 day playoff season which culminates in the annual competition that is the College World Series. Nevertheless, once a champion is crowned a whole new set of NCAA rules and regulations kick in.

You see, NCAA baseball is unique in the way that its players are the only players in the world who really do not have an off-season. Once the season ends each of the primer athletes from the NCAA's D-1 schools are divided up across the nation to join upwards of 100 different major summer baseball leagues where those players play anywhere between 10 and 60 games with their assigned teams.

But there is one major road block for deciding where players go. According to NCAA baseball rule 30.5.2 “no more than 3 players from the same institution may play on the same summer team. In addition to that no coach of an institution may be the coach of a summer team with one of his or her players on it.”

Regardless of that, like is prevalent is pro sports there is a certain hierarchy to these leagues.

The smaller, poorly attended leagues are normally destinations for a team’s lesser role players while the more prestigious groups of teams almost always are used as a reward for the more All Star like college athletes.

But nevertheless, one league reigns supreme and that league the one housed in the windy, cool, crisp air and land of Cape Cod.

The Cape League: originally founded in the summer of 1885, the Cape Cod Baseball League as it is officially called was one of the first reliably running summer leagues in the nation.

Nevertheless, as the decades piled up, and the calendar ticked towards the halfway point of the 20th century, this now esteemed club of ball players quickly grew into something far greater than a mere summer league. Following World War Two, the 20 year old military GIs left the Cape and were quickly replaced by a new wave of a skilled genre of young ball players.

Drawn to the state by the introduction of a promise for the presence of MLB scouts, the Cape League was officially sponsored by the NCAA in 1963 and picked up by the MLB a few years later, all before in 1985, a switch was made in the bat category as it was officially sanctioned that all games would be played with wooden bats thus enforcing the major league feel. 

Regardless, as the league continued to develop, the presence of pro scouts finally began to pay dividends as in the late 1960’s a large surge of Cape League alums stormed into the MLB and never slowed down as at this point in time there have been 1004 Cape League Alumni to see MLB play, 214 of which are currently active in one of the major league’s 30 teams.

For the longest time, the world of NCAA semi pro baseball was one of mockery and laughter. Yet in the blink of an eye, the little things like the introduction of wooden bats, MLB scouts and offseason summer leagues has done what the big things like the college World Series never could.

In a way, it was little leagues like this that saved the one the ruled them all. In a way, it was leagues like the Cape League and the NECBL (the league that the Blue Sox are a part of) that transformed collage baseball into a year round sport.

And in more than just one way it was small summer leagues like this that brought a since of intimacy back to the game of baseball.

This is the way the game is meant to be played and no matter how long the MLB continues to travel farther away from its roots, one facet of America’s oldest game will remain unchanged.

And after seeing this summer league game amidst the buzzing of the ageing stadium lights and punctuated by the steady crack of each and every pitch striking the leather of the catcher’s mitt I have learned that the awe induced by the driving will of these athletes to reach the ultimate goal of a spot on an MLB roster is that unchanged facet of the great game of baseball.  

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NECBL, the Holyoke Blue Sox, and yet another overlooked elite ball club: Originally published on July 4th 2012

Alright hears a stretch. They may not be in Boston, but, every year hundreds of NCAA baseball stars flock to the ten team summer league known officially as the  NECBL (New England Collegiate Baseball League).

As I said before, the NECBL has a unique feel to it. Playing out of high school fields, before the merest of crowds, this 10 team origination provides a unheard of atmosphere for  its 270 annual athletes.

Okay, time to cut to the chase.  By the numbers, 3 of these 10 teams call Massachusetts home, the North Adams SteepleCats, the New Bedford Bay Sox, and, here's one, the Holyoke Blue Sox. 

So, with that in mind, I was at game number 29 of this years Blue Sox season, and, was immediately, confronted by a wave of disappointment and confusion. Looking at the double sided game notes in my lap, I frowned at the fact that, with only 3 members of last years league leading Holyoke club moving on to bigger leagues, my team I know, I'm allowed to be biased :)  had fallen to last place in their Western Division.

Anyway, in the wake of a 6-5 Holyoke loss, I was immediately skeptical, and soon came across the fact that the idea of an extra year contract is absolutely foreign, a frame of mind, much in part due to the strict rules regarding summer leagues set fourth by the NCAA. Team by team, a given school can not have any more than three roster members, (starter or non starter) on any given off season team, meaning, that with new players incoming every year, a returning NECBL player will simply sign a contract with the league promising them at least a spot on the bench of a participating team.

Yet as my knowledge of this intriguing league expended, it was soon found, that, seeing as the NECBL draws players and fans from around the country, (and in some cases the world), a participating player would almost always be assigned a "host family" to shelter, and assist the player through the laid back 42 game, June to July schedule.

Alright looking back at this local league's slightly ironic history, a few outstanding facts well outstand.

Founded back in 1993, the league quickly blossomed bringing in, future MLB stars including the likes of ,Stephen Strasburg , Andrew Bailey and Matt Joyce.  

 The years progressed, and as the leauge flipped and floped through team by team changes, it finally reached it's current unchanged state with the relocation and renaming of the Holyoke Giants to MacKenzie Stadium and to the Holyoke Blue Sox.

Yet as i waddled through the overgrown fencing (not Wrigley field) surrounding the well maintained diamond in downtown Holyoke, it became instantly evident, that, leagues like this, stadiums like this, teams like this, and the sandlot style attitude this wonderful little league employs is the part of baseball lost in the bright lights, million dollar contracts, and game by game TV deals of the MLB and other pro leagues.

 

It's a perfect atmosphere, and it's the game the way it is meant to be played.

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