Monday, January 24, 2011

In praise of Ben Roethlisberger



Suddenly all of the media pundits have discovered that Ben Roethlisberger is a great QB. Suddenly, Ben is better than Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. Suddenly, he is most clutch guy in the NFL, and the dude you want in that life & death moment at the end of the game. Suddenly, there is a great out-pouring of praise for Ben Roethlisberger.

Where the fuck were you two years ago when Ben Roethlisberger out-dueled Kurt Warner in the Super Bowl? I though Kurt slew him. Ben popped right back up and led his team on the game winning drive. That hurt me like hell by the way.

This wasn't the first time Ben had done such a thing either. Far from it. He stole a bunch of games en route to the Super Bowl. He's been stealing games right and left in the final moments for quite some time now. They should call them the Stealers.

In case you don't remember, Ben was in deep shit a year ago. The Steelers were trying to trade him to my Rams. I wrote about this subject two or three times on Bleacher Report. You can find these pieces, written more than year ago, where I said that Ben was a clutch guy, and very under-rated. I also said he was greazie-basterd.

I am very ambivalent about Ben Roethlisberger. He embodies the best and the worst of the Pisces guy, which is what he is. I am a Virgo with Virgo rising. Pisces is on my 7th house. I am fundimentally biased to partner-up with a dude like Roethlisberger in just about any enterprise, especially football.

At the same time I say this, Roethlisberger manifests all those negative qualities of Pisces I have written about. He drinks like a champion, and this is why the comish sent him to rehab. He manifests impared jugement in situations away from the field. He's a morally grungy dude, and you know exactly what I am talking about. He does not analyze or assess risk correctly. This is both his strength and his weakness. On the field he is not afraid to gunsling. Off the field he is not afraid to continue gunslinging by other means.

There are two Ben Roethlisbergers: the guy you love and the guy you hate. He is like two fish lashed together at their tails, swimming in opposite directions, against each other. Incidentally, this is symbolic image of Pisces, which is what Ben is.

You might ask the following question: how can a conservative, analytical, hermit, Virgo partner-up with and risk-assessment impaired Pisces gun-slinger? It beats the hell out of me, par, but I've done it more than once in my life. I know it happens. It just happens naturally. We wind up in the same room somehow, and they have a tendency to seek me out. We gravitate together, and we strike up a partnership. We are opposites, but we form a complentary tao.

There is a saying in Spanish that goes "God makes them and they get together on their own." This is said whenever you see any strange partnership that seems to work. Pisces & Virgo are kind of like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

Just to give you one example: My current employers hired me because the most senior programmer in the shop just happened to be a Pisces from New Delhi, India. For some strange reason or another, he had a strong feeling that I was the candidate he wanted for the job. The bosses were not too keen on the idea. He advocated my case, and told the bosses I was the guy they had to hire. I found out a year later he was a 3/6/1970 Pisces dude. It turns out his brother is a Virgo. It turns out my brother is a Pisces. Go figure.

Incidentally, Terry Bradshaw is a Virgo and rolled with a bunch of Pisces partners including Franco Harris, Rockie Blier, Lynn Swann, and Mike Webster. No bullshit. Check it out, prove me wrong, then go figure. For whatever reason, we partner up.