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SIRK'S NOTEBOOK:
04/28/07 VS. DC UNITED
Steve Sirk
May 2, 2007
The Crew have spent the month of April more tied up than the boot-licking bondage boys at Whipcrack Wendy's Dungeon of Lust. (To use a common figure of speech.)
After three straight draws in league play, the team had not wavered from its "glass half full" outlook. However, the final Saturday of the month provided a big test. D.C. United, the Washington area's unanimous pre-season pick to be "Once Again The Greatest Team In The History of MLS Ever", came limping into town with an 0-2 record. It has been eleven years-- think all the way back to the hiccup/heyday of the Thor Lee Era-- since United had started a season with three straight losses. Plus their roster is littered with names that send a shiver down one's spine....Jaime Moreno...Christian Gomez...Fred.
Alas, the Crew proved their mettle. They bottled up the United offense, got a follow-up goal from an unlikely St.-Vincent-&-the-Grenadines-ian (or whatever you should call Ezra Hendrickson), withstood a brief mindf*** from Mother Nature, and then held on for a 1-0 victory.
At 1-0-3, the Crew are marching along the unbeaten path to the tune of 2004's drummer. Oh, except this actually feels like fun.
No, it IS fun, dammit. With each passing week, I am more convinced that this is a Crew team that the fans and city can and will embrace. They're fun to watch, they work hard, they have character, and they have characters.
First we'll look at some game stuff, then get to a whole lot of ultra-ridiculous nonsense from the victorious locker room.
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EZ duz it
In the 28th minute, the Crew's loping center back, Ezra Hendrickson, found himself a long way from home. Nevertheless, he was determined to finish what he started. After stealing the ball at midfield, he dished the ball to the more capable feet of Ned Grabavoy. Then, like a newborn giraffe out of hell, Ezra sprinted straight toward the DC goal. After Grabavoy played a typically fine through ball to Joseph Ngwenya on the left side, EZ's run was reward when Ngwenya played to his feet in the box. Hendrickson's left footed shot was popped into the air by a defender's foot, and then shockingly headed directly back to Hendrickson's right foot by another defender. He blasted his second chance low into the left half of the net for the eventual game-winner.
In the locker room, Dispatch reporter Shawn Mitchell told Hendrickson to get ready for the bum rush as the herd of reporters trampled to his locker.
"Man, I have to score more often!" he joked.
Ever modest, he didn't have much to say about his goal. "I as lucky it came back to me. I knew I needed to put it away the second time."
Okay, let's see if someone has something more interesting to say. How about coach Sigi Schmid? "Ezra is just a competitive player. A lot of times, players from the Caribbean get hit with the rap that they're not competitive, but nobody is more intense than Ezra; nobody wants to win a game more than he does. When you see a guy like him score the goal that gets us our first win, it just makes you happy because nobody gives more to the team than he does."
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Quotable
"That was, what, a 90-yard run from our box to their six-yard box? I don't know how many of those he'll be making in the summertime." -- Ned Grabavoy, on Hendrickson's goal.
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Mother Nature hates the Crew
Despite early afternoon weather reports claiming that there was a "0%" chance of precipitation, the game was delayed for 24 minutes at the 84th minute due to a torrential rain and lightning storm that was apparently conjured up out of nowhere by a dastardly wizard, or something else undetectable by Quintuple Doppler radar.
If you look at Mark Montri's match photos here on HPI, you will see another of his trademark precipitation shots. I swear, when Crew Stadium eventually gets hit with a plague of toads falling from the sky, Mark will be in position to shoot a photo of the earthbound toads set against one of the massive light towers.
Anyway, with the Crew just six minutes from their first victory, both teams had to seek cover.
"I thought the lightning hit the transformer and knocked out the power and then we had an official game," said Schmid. "I guess that didn't happen. Next time, we need to flip that switch." (Consider that a memo to Operations man Scott DeBolt.)
With no light switch shenanigans at their disposal, the Crew had to suck it up and wait.
"Aargh! That's always a nightmare!" said defender Frankie Hejduk. "You're warm and your adrenaline is going, and then you have to come in and sit around. Full credit to the guys, because we came in here, kept moving, stayed focused, and walked out there believing that we were going to win. The mind is a powerful thing."
"I think they were building up a little momentum, so honestly, I think it was an all right break for us," said midfielder Danny O'Rourke. "We knew when we went back out that we had to pressure them right off the bat, so I think the break maybe favored us a little bit. I don't doubt that we would have been successful without it, but I don't think it was bad for us either."
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Dramatic weather photos
Since Montri was caught without his bad weather gear, I tried to convince him to shoot photos from the press box once the game resumed. "Just fake it," I said. "Shoot out the windows, then use the TV for close-ups."
Despite knowing better, Mark decided to humor me, so let's see how my back-up plan captured the tense action of the game's waning minutes...
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Crew adds prefix "im" to United's potent attack
Not only did the Crew pick up their third shutout in four games, they did it by stifling the vaunted DC offense.
"The guys in front of me were great again," said goalkeeper Andy Gruenebaum, who gets official credit for his third shutout. "Three out of four games have been shutouts, and those guys have made it really easy for me. I wanted us to get back on the shutout streak again, and to do it against DC United is icing on the cake."
"Our defense has been great all year, and I don't just mean Andy and the back four," said Hejduk. "I mean our entire team defense, from the top on back. The key with DC is to plug up the middle on Moreno and Gomez, and I think Danny, Ned, and Eddie Gaven did a great job of keeping them contained."
"We wanted to clog up the middle tonight," said Grabavoy. "Everybody knows DC is a good technical team with many great players. They have Jaime and Emilio up top, but those guys also like to drop deep to get the ball, and then they rotate, which makes things difficult. Those kinds of team are hard to play against, because you can't say 'I got this guy', because if you have Jaime Moreno, suddenly Jaime's playing deep and Ben Olsen is up top. It's true for all their guys. Our goal was to get in behind the ball and make it difficult to play that game. I think we did a good job of it."
"We made some good decisions in the back," concluded Schmid. "Ezra and Marcos Gonzalez did an excellent job. We knew they were going to attack centrally, so one of the things we wanted to do was bottle up the middle. Ned Grabavoy did a very good job in the midfield. At halftime, we talked about pinching our wingers in more because they never really go to the wing. I thought we did a really good job, and then Andy came up with a few big saves for us and made some good decisions coming out of the box....although that one got my heart racing a bit. I don't think I've seen that knee slide in a while."
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Oh, yeah, the knee slide....
Before we get to Andy's knee slide, one of the most enjoyable parts about being around a team that is truly a TEAM, is that everybody is loose enough to let the smack talk flow. There is nothing more brutal than guys talking to their close friends. Although it may seem like a paradox to some, the more you see guys cutting on each other and laughing at one another in the locker room, the better it bodes for team chemistry. Nobody teases as effectively and hilariously as family.
I am quickly learning that the left side of the locker room is where the new generation of jokers are: Andy Gruenebaum, Rusty Pierce, Danny O'Rourke.
Back to the knee slide that Sigi referenced. Late in the first half, Gruenebaum made another adventurous foray from his goal to the sideline. This time he went down on one knee to make an awkward thigh tackle. After winning the ball he played it up the field.
After the first game, Gruenebaum mentioned that Rusty Pierce told him that was his "one" for the year. So did Rusty have anything to say about this latest foray?
Gruenebaum shrugged it off as if he were not concerned. "Rusty knows this, and we all know this," he explained. "I have 4.6 speed."
Pierce was apopleptic. "Yeah, and we all know that I'm a #10 but Sigi won't play me there in games. I'm a playmaker!"
Gruenebaum ignored Pierce. "I just needed to show off my speed. If I didn't get there, then you could say whatever you want, but I showed my speed."
Pierce was beside himself. "He is SO terrible! This is on the record! You can print this! If I were coach, he would not be starting! He's awful!"
Unfazed, Gruenebaum continued. "Have you guys ever heard of little man's syndrome? Rusty has it, standing at all of five foot five. The truth is that in preseason, I ran a 4.6 forty-yard dash. I was faster than Rusty and all the other guys. It was just lightning quickness. What can I say? I'm the Hebrew Hammer."
O'Rourke wandered by and was dismayed to see that anyone was bothering to interview the Hammer. "He better be thanking people for the shutout," said O'Rourke with a shake of his head.
Never one to pass up a chance to instigate, I informed O'Rourke that his name or the midfield hadn't come up once. However, the Hammer decided to matters into his own hands. "I don't comment on Indiana players because they're crap."
"Can you name ONE TIME that Kentucky beat us?" asked an astonished O'Rourke. "One time EVER?"
Gruenebaum mentioned something about a pre-season scrimmage. And he thought that might have been a tie. O'Rourke dismissed Gruenebaum's comeback and then stalked off to the shower.
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The Hammer on the weather delay
So did the Hammer spend the weather delay?
"When we came in, my first thought was to get some tunes going to stay loose. I think Guns 'N Roses came on, and that's always quality. I personally would have gone with some Metallica, but I don't want to seem too crazy around the guys."
So Metallica doesn't, say, have enough Caribbean flavor for Ezra Hendrickson?
"Yeah, Ezra all day long with that Caribbean music, and he's the only one that likes it. But you know what? He scores g-dubs, and as long as he scores g-dubs, he can listen to whatever."
(For those who don't speak Hammerese: g-dubs = GWs = Game-Winners.)
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Danny O on the Hammer
With the Hammer gone, and O'Rourke finally out of the shower, I tried to get O'Rourke to explain in great detail how the defensive midfielder is responsible for the goalie's success.
"Soccer is a team game," he said, seemingly dodging my instigating question, although it was just a set-up. "The truth is that it takes all ten guys on the field to make Andy look good. He's shocking back there! He makes all these kick saves like he's a hockey goalie and then expects all kinds of praise, but I am not giving it to him."
But at least he has 4.6 speed.
"Please. I could beat him running backwards. It doesn't take much to beat the Hebrew Hammer at anything."
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Ned's outlook on the 2007 Crew
"I definitely think we're better, but it's a long season," said Grabavoy. "Guys are going to pick up injuries, so other guys are going to need to step up and make a difference. We're not going to have the same starting eleven for an entire season, so all of the guys are going to have to make a contribution.
"Now we have to start going on the road, so now we'll have to see how we deal with that. I think we did well in Salt Lake, but we'll see. We've improved, but I don't think anyone in this room thinks that we're a really really really really really good team. We need to stay level-minded about where we are, and then put that effort into our play and into training every day."
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Cue up Sister Sledge
Sigi: "Before the game, Frankie gathered everyone and was saying 'We're a family! We're a family! Let's go out there and fight for each other like a family!' It's that sort of mentality that is getting ingrained with our team. As long as these guys maintain that fighting spirit, we will be in every game."
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Fan support
The players were grateful for the support they received against DC.
"It was awesome," said Hejduk. "The fans that supported us, wow, we need them to help us. Every home team needs fan support, and tonight they came out to see a good game. I hope they come out in hordes for the next game, because we feed off of their support."
After the game, the players joined hands and gave some sort of chorus line bow to those fans who rode out the storm.
"Yeah, that was one of Frankie's German things," said O'Rourke. "I liked it, although I was holding the Hammer's hand, which made me a little uncomfortable. He took his goalie gloves off, so his hands...I mean...uh, no comment. I don't know who's gonna read this."
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Attn: 103 & 137 types
I first cracked this joke to make Flick laugh, but there may be some merit to it. Whenever Gruenebaum would make a stop, I'd say, "Stop! Hammer Time!"
But the more I think about it, the more my little joke may something legit for y'all to shout. I don't know if it's 2 Legit 2 Quit, but I figured I'd at least throw it out here in case "Stop! Hammer Time!" actually has some redeeming value.
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Quotable (pt 2)
"It's nothing that a lot of ice bags and massages won't fix." -- O'Rourke, when asked to specify the unspecified "knock" he took that nearly prevented him from resuming play after the delay.
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Sight of the night
After the game, we stumbled upon a few members of DCU's front office and traveling staff, pacing back and forth under the stands at the north end while impatiently sucking on lit cigarettes. They were like high school kids trying to quickly sneak a smoke at the varsity football game, except they were middle aged and wearing comical team blazers.
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Even MORE on the Hebrew Hammer
As was mentioned during last week's espn2 broadcast, Gruenebaum has been living with Crew midfielder Duncan Oughton and his wife Carly. While this speaks volumes of Oughton's desire to be a good teammate and to help a young player on a meager developmental contract, Oughton has found that having Gruenebaum as a housemate has its advantages. Namely, Gruenebaum's massive DVD collection.
"I do get one benefit," said Oughton. "At any given time, I'm maybe 35 feet from the door to Rabbi Rentals, so Carly and I are never wanting for movies to watch. He keeps his store well-stocked, and in the event that he doesn't have a particular title, he's recently entered into some sort of loan agreement with Blockbuster, where they will mail their DVDs directly to our local Rabbi Rentals location."
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Duncs vs Dante (Round 2375508)
You know how they say people have been married so long that they can finish each other's sentences? Well, Duncan and former teammate Dante Washington have been verbal sparring partners for so long that they can finish each other's jokes. In this exchange, watch how the New Zealander, rather than answer the question, deftly intercepts Dante's follow-up joke and claims it as his own, thus thwarting Dante's attack.
DW: "Hey, Australian....if I put on a crocodile suit, would you wrestle me?"
DO: "No, but if you wore a sheepskin rug, I'd f*** you."
(Everyone laughs.)
DW: "You probably would." (<--- Meager follow-up by someone who has had his thunder stolen by his adversary.)
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Historic moment in Notebook history
Despite filling more space in the Notebook than anyone besides perhaps Dante, I have never had the pleasure of seeing Duncan score a goal. His first career goal came against DC United when I was in Milwaukee on a baseball trip. His second career goal came at Colorado in a game I was not watching on TV because I was at a hockey game in Cleveland. There has been a long-standing joke that I curse Duncan, and at one point, Duncan was lobbying to have Mark McCullers ban me from the stadium, unless I was willing to work as a restroom attendant in the men's room, nowhere near the field of play.
Well, in Sunday's reserve game, I saw Notebook Hall of Famer Duncan Oughton crack the crap out of a ball that managed to hit the back of the DC net. The jinx is over!
Er, not so fast.
"You weren't here at the start of the game, were you?" asked Dante. "We didn't see you because you were late, so Duncan didn't think you were here. That's how the muppet was able to score."
Later on, Duncan disavowed the jinx. "I will not pin the curse of my scoring record on you, although it would be nice to have someone to pin my small tally of goals on."
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Dante's almost-equalizer
In the final minutes of the reserve game, all-star-turned-broadcaster-turned-reserve-game-backup Dante Washington scored the apparent equalizer. A ball was lofted into the box, fumbled by the DC goalkeeper, and then Dante cleaned it up from six yards out.
However, the referee called a mind-boggling foul on Brad Evans. "I asked the ref what the foul was," said Washington, "and he gave me like five different rules, hoping I'd accept one of them. 'The keeper had possession', 'he ever had a chance to catch the ball because he was fouled', and stuff like that. In my book, that goal counts. I don't care what the ref says. It was a legit goal."
So if he's counting the goal, Dante doesn't need to be embarrassed that he was officially outscored by Duncan?
"No, my goal counted to everyone but one person, so it still counts. And unlike Beaker's goal, mine was left-footed."
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Duncs vs The Screaming Eagles
During a stoppage in play in the reserve game, Oughton was in a rather heated discussion with the referee, which eventually turned into some good-natured banter with the Screaming Eagles. I was at the other end of the field, so I couldn't quite hear what was happening. All I knew is that it ended with a spontaneous burst of laughter from the DC supporters, while Duncan gave a quick smile and round of applause before putting his game face back on.
So what the heck happened there?
"The DC fans were making lots of 'baaaaaaa' sheep noises at me," said Oughton. "I just made them feel like it was the first time I had heard it, and I pretended to be a little excited, which could possibly be a touch embarrassing in soccer shorts."
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Tucker and Danny O
Team Manager Tucker Walther is the glue that holds the team together. In many ways, he is like Alice from the Brady Bunch, doing whatever needs to be done, personally of professionally, to keep this adopted family running smoothly.
As Danny O'Rourke was prepared to leave the locker room, Tucker had a few words.
"Will you look at yourself?" asked Tucker. "Your tie's crooked and it's not even tied right, I think the buttons are mis-matched on your shirt, and your shirt isn't even tucked in straight. That's it-- give me your mom's phone number so I can call her and ask her to teach you how to dress."
This is almost where I made the "Come on, Tucker, don't pretend that you don't already have Mrs. O'Rourke's phone number" joke, but then the following thoughts crossed my mind:
1. I don't yet know Danny well enough to make yo momma jokes.
2. Danny is a professional athlete, and is therefore in much better shape than I am.
3. Danny gets paid to kick the crap out of people for a living.
4. Danny has tattoos.
5. Danny is crazy, as evidenced by the fact that he once let Vanity Fair dress and pose him for this ridiculous Terminator-without-the-shades picture.
So, yeah. Probably best I keep my yo momma jokes to myself.
Questions? Comments? Wondering how you can get a Rabbi Rentals card? Feel free to write at sirk65@yahoo.com
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