No Sauce on Mr. Ketchup
Written by Jason Keidel, Tuesday September 15 2009
A round face and free smile under a black helmet belie the quiet force with which a humble star plays the quintessential team game.
Born in Seoul, Hines Ward is the soul of the Pittsburgh Steelers, defending Super Bowl champions. Hines in Heinz – pick your handle – has kept the football end of the sporting bargain to a town that needs it while they lament the rubble of a once-proud baseball power in the Pirates, a club rotting in the ignominy of 17 straight losing seasons.
A third-round pick as a wide receiver out of Georgia in 1998, Ward stunned no scout with his speed or size. But he fit the blue-collar grit espoused by Pittsburgh’s square-jawed, spitting coach, Bill Cowher. While teams stuffed the box to stifle Jerome Bettis, Ward became increasingly important, squatting in the soft pockets of zone defenses for the sorry cadre of Steelers quarterbacks (from Mike Tomczak to Kordell Stewart to Tommy Maddox) to find in duress. Once the team found its Terry in Ben Roethlisberger, Ward built his Pro-Bowl platform.
He hurls his 200lbs. into linebackers, cracking bones with clean blows, wandering into the trench of enemy secondaries, crashing around and snagging balls, sans alligator arms. He gives and takes his shots with equal glee, springing up from the grass after being decked and hopping back to the huddle. Football is a dangerous drama of human wreckage. He understands.
I bounced on my dad’s knee when the Steelers first gained football glory in 1974. I’m not silly enough to say Ward is better than Lynn Swann or John Stallworth – the two immortal prongs of a lethal trident who snared Bradshaw’s bombs en route to four Super Bowl titles – but he’s the best since them. Ward could play on those teams, your teams, any teams.
So this pseudo-dynasty has cracked open the door for us to arrange some context. Harkening the formula of 1970s, the current iteration relies on a savage defense and a quarterback who can make big plays after boneheaded picks; and the staggering anomaly or needing just three coaches in 40 years – all of whom preach the pigskin gospel of legal violence. The only chasm in this Curtain is the absence of Franco Harris. The current squad has Willie Parker, who fashions his speed after Peter Parker, but is really a scatback who dances too much in the backfield before darting to a hole in the line. No matter the running game, however, we need another title to take the argument seriously.
The only hurdles in the march back to February are complacency and the sanity of the quarterback, who stumbled horribly the year after the 2005 championship and a concussed preseason of crashing his motorcycle without wearing a helmet.
A woman in Nevada remembered a year late that Big Ben raped her. We can file that case in the folder of frivolity that besieges big athletes with bigger wallets. Remember Duke Lacrosse? MTV icon (is that an oxymoron?) Tila Tequila loaded up on tequila and charged Shawne Merriman with phantom abuse. These are the inevitable landmines of large-scale success. How will No. 7 respond?
For his part, Ward stays fit and avoids the sheriff and Page Six the way he dodges a charging safety. He is charitable, owns a tavern in Pittsburgh’s South Side, and leaves the bulletin board quips to Joey Porter, who was the only visibly verbose Steeler of memory before his departure for the Miami Dolphins.
Wide receivers are not usually the most important component to a franchise, but are generally the loudest. Let’s look at the mouthy wideouts who attract the most media sunlight:
Terrell Owens – 0 rings
Randy Moss – 0 rings
Chad Ocho – cero anillos
If he stays healthy, Ward will finish his career with over 900 catches (and his next grab should put him over 10,000 yards), more than enough to satisfy the statistical vanity of the Hall of Fame. But he is not defined by data. He’s more the football rendition of a shortstop in the Bronx who just claimed a sexy record formerly held by an Iron Horse. Bling is the thing – Ward has two Super Bowl wins over four years, with a blue-sky schedule in 2009 and the same, hungry guts ready to defend the title.
Ward talks on the chalk. No one on Heinz Field felt worse than Hines did last week when he coughed-up the ball on the Titans’ 5-yard line with a minute left in a tie game. Sullen on the sideline, kneeling by his helmet, Ward’s teammates slapped his shoulder pads, vowing to pick him up. It was, for the record, his first lost fumble in three years. Like the Mickey Mouse tattoo carved into his right arm, he smiled, and they won in overtime.
Canton is calling, Mr. Ward. Keep your summer schedule free in about seven years.
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