Every great hero has been knocked down, beaten, or kicked around at one point or another. Such is what makes the crowning victory that much sweeter.
So it is with the Baltimore Ravens clenching the World Championship, hoisting the Lombardi high for the rough and tumble working city of Baltimore to swoon over. So it is with Ray Lewis, bastard son to a teenage mother, didn't know his father and so was named after a helpful family friend (Lewis wasn't the name of his mother or his biological father), couldn't afford weights so had to settle for doing push-ups and sit-ups with a deck of cards (2-10 is 6 push-ups or sit-ups, face cards are 10 push-ups or sit-ups, aces are 25 and jokers 50), was constantly told he was too small to play football, and emerged as arguably the best middle linebacker of all time and, like a legend of old, finished his career clenching his second Super Bowl for the same city he began his career with 17 years ago.
But all that aside, everybody knows that victory feels good. So instead of a long essay on winning and adversity, on not giving up and such, I'm just gonna point out a series of cool facts, stats, and random esoteria from the Ravens' rollercoaster 2012/2013 Superbowl run. Plus, I think Kyle, the ephemeral winner of the MA staff, will no doubt have much more to say about it.
- The most famous single play of the season has to be the 4th and 29 when Flacco pitched it to Ray Rice at scrimmage for a run that essentially saved what otherwise would've been a loss to San Diego and possibly the season. This play was quickly named "Hey diddle, diddle, Ray Rice up the Middle." The Ravens are of course named after Edgar Allen Poe's eponymous poem THE RAVEN (thus the reason the mascots are named Edgar, Allen and Poe; this also makes the supposedly "thuggish" Baltimore the only NFL team named after a work of literature). So it's quite interesting that Edgar Allen Poe in 1843 wrote an essay about diddling that opened with the quote "Hey diddle diddle, the cat in the fiddle" - From an epic by Flaccus. Flaccus? Really? In it he describes the diddler with the following lines "Your diddler perseveres", "Your diddler is audacious... He would not fear the daggers of the Frey Herren", "Your diddler is nonchalant. He is not all nervous. He never had any nerves".
- For some reason people are still debating whether Flacco is elite and a ton of talking heads still insist he isn't. But let's just look at the facts:
- He's made it to the playoffs every season of his career.
- His 11 post-season TD's tied Joe Montana and Kurt Warner for the post-season record
- His super bowl QB rating, 95.1, was higher that Rodgers, Brees, Brady, or either Manning
I can go on and on but until he starts talking like he has a lipper in his gums and gets a personal stylist - and maybe some trademark touchdown dance or something - people will continue to say he's not elite. But that's fine. Those would be the same people who mid-season said the Ravens would be lucky to make it to the playoffs.
- Ray Rice has a one-year-old daughter named Rayven. If there's anything cuter or any better sign that Baltimore's running sensation's here to stay, I can't think of it.
- Ravens are related to crows and look like crows so a lot of times people mistakenly say a flock of Ravens is a "murder of Ravens". Alas, that denomination is for crows. Though my favorite accepted term for a flock of Ravens is an "unkindness of Ravens". There are already enough racists and ignoramuses who consider the Ravens a team of convicts and murderers. We don't kill mother fuckers; we're just unkind as hell to them.
- People don't know where Baltimore is. Seriously . The city where Edgar Allen Poe, possibly the most famous American author of all time, lived. The city where THE WIRE, the greatest show of all time was set. The city where Francis Scott Key wrote our goddamn NATIONAL ANTHEM! The sad thing is, I bet at least 3 quarters of these idiots know where Forks is.
- Baltimore set down beatings but even more played through unimaginable injury itself. Which makes sense for the city where the Star-Spangled Banner was written not thanks to some awesome defeat but to the fact that Ft. McHenry took a cruel shelling from the entire British fleet and yet in the morning was still standing. Here's just a sampling:
- Ray Lewis tore his tricep and somehow came back to lead his team through a play-offs which included beating the "can't be stopped" offenses of "elite quarterbacks" Tom Brady and Peyton Manning.
- Terrell Suggs came back from a torn achilles in 3 months. Feel the back of your heel, that massive rope that feels like a band of iron. Now imagine tearing that. Then imagine playing NFL football in 3 months. Then imagine tearing your bicep and playing through that too.
- Bernard Pollard played the Super Bowl with 6 broken ribs. Big Ben sat out with 1. Pussy.
- Ed Reed played with a shoulder sprain basically all season. I got a bad shoulder sprain 2 years ago. It still hurts if I spend too much time writing in a day. But to play like he did with it? I would have to get the damn thing amputated.
- Baltimore's lowest power rankings of the season came on week 16 after getting trounced by the Broncos, dropping Baltimore to #11. Nobody took into account the fact that half the team was out with injuries and would be coming back for the playoffs. Or that it was just getting things figured out. Everybody was just shouting, on December 18th, that the Ravens were all but washed up. Here are the teams that were ranked above them:
1. 49ers
2. Falcons
3. Patriots
4. Texans
5. Broncos
6. Packers
7. Seahawks
8. Bengals
9. Redskins
10. Bears
- Oh yeah, and in beating San Francisco, Baltimore is currently the only team in the history of the NFL to have gone undefeated in multiple Super Bowls.
And now a month later, after defeating doubters and haters all season (and, not to seem bitter, but the talking heads seem to love disparaging the Ravens almost as much as they love cupping Peyton's balls and stroking Brady's shaft) the Ravens are the national champions. Even now half the supposed professionals, seemingly having not watched the playoffs, are calling the Ravens mediocre, calling Flacco lucky, all this crap. It's like those crazy conservatives who vehemently chide homosexuality as a work of the devil, then get caught humping some little boy in a truck stop bathroom out by the interstate. And just like when I see such ignorant hypocrisy exposed, there's a warm feeling in my heart when I imagine all those poor suckers who're trying to make careers as professional sports writers and commentators having to admit, if not to the world then at least to themselves, that the team they've been putting down all season, possibly all their career, is currently the unquestioned Super Bowl champions. And even more, that a little blog called Man's Ambition knew better than them with all their magical budgets and metrics and busy CV's.
Now sure, everybody's already talking about how we're losing half our team in the off-season but to that I say we're national champions for the next year at least. And whatever come, until the trophy is in somebody else's hands, nothing else really matters. And I for one won't be surprised to see it sticking around Baltimore a bit.
Oh yeah, and hopefully they'll find and arrest the computer geek who hacked into the Superdome and blew the lights so his home-team would have a chance at not getting completely embarrassed in the largest international single sporting event in the world.
Put that in your flesh pipe and smoke it, pal.
- Ryan
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