Blade Trinity Fatal

[Barb Frison]

Inall of football there's no stadium more reviled than Veterans

Stadium, home of the Philadelphia Eagles for the past 32 seasons.

It smells like aging sauerkraut. Acid rain spews from its pipes.

Your sidewalk is softer than the Vet's shiny plastic turf. The

Eagles' faithful will hurl anything at visiting teams: invective,

snowballs, one another.

On Sunday the Eagles played their last regular-season game at the

Vet (page 42). As the team stormed out of its dank tunnel before

the start of the sold-out meeting with the Washington Redskins,

some of the players pointed their taped fingers way up to the

stadium's rafters, to the 700 level, a place where running the

faucet while urinating in the sink is considered common courtesy.

"You wanna get those guys involved early because they set the

tone for the entire stadium," says Eagles linebacker Ike Reese.

"You're ahead before you've played your first down."

In the name of progress the blue-collar joes in the 700 level--15

or so rows that ring the stadium like the third circle of

hell--are being left behind by the team and the city and the NFL.

Never mind that all three will be much poorer without them. At

halftime on Sunday members of the 700 club stood in a puddly

corridor, flicking cigarette stubs in the direction of Lincoln

Financial Field, rising to the south. The Eagles' new home looks

shiny, airy, clean. The field will be grass. But will there be a

single nosebleed season ticket at the Linc for $300? Not even

close.

Neither will there be peepholes from the visitors' locker room

into the Eagles' cheerleaders' changing room, as there were for a

while at the Vet. Never again will an Eagles preseason football

game be canceled because the artificial turf is deemed too uneven

and hazardous. It is unlikely that Eagles fans will ever again

celebrate a career-ending injury, as they did during an October

game three years ago while Michael Irvin of the Cowboys, a

despised player on a despised team, lay still on the concrete

turf. Visiting teams will probably like coming to the Linc.

Everything's going to hell.

"The new place?" Don Wilson, a green-chested, bare-chested

700level denizen said during the Eagles' Sunday win, which earned

Philadelphia the NFC East title and assured the Eagles at least

one home playoff game. "I'm against it. You don't got cheap

seats, you don't got real fans."

We have the same worry as Wilson: the death of passion.

Throughout the 700 level you see overweight white men wearing

Eagles jerseys, the names of exceedingly fit black men stenciled

across their backs: MCNABB, STALEY, VINCENT. Transistor radios

are common; cellphones are not. Who would they call? Everybody's

there.

When a fight breaks out in the 700 level, a dozen security guys

in their yellow windbreakers converge at once. It adds to the

spectacle. You always see a few Eagles craning their necks,

watching the action from the sideline of the real game. "We treat

each other politely," says Bob Costa, a 700 habitue. "It's

opposing fans we treat with contempt." The players operate by the

same principle.

No Eagle, player or coach, is shedding a tear for the final days

of the Vet. The Phillies must play one more season there, but the

football people want out of the dump. Yet for now the dump is the

best thing the Eagles have going for them. They're 11--3 for the

year, 7--1 at home. Late in the game on Sunday, in the highest

row of the 700 level, a fan held up a bedsheet in the weak

December dusk: ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE.

Sure, Eagles fans once booed Santa. This year, all wistful,

they're making nice.

--Michael Bamberger

For future NHL players, eighth-grade shop class is now strictly

an elective. The growing popularity of one-piece composite sticks

has made the time-honored, morning-skate ritual of heating the

wooden blade with a propane torch and shaping it to taste almost

as anachronistic as pregame pepper in baseball. The one-pieces,

the most revolutionary advance in sticks since the Blackhawks'

Stan Mikita began heating and curving his blade in the 1960s, are

made of carbon, graphite and Kevlar. Although there's no evidence

that the new sticks ratchet up the speed of a slap shot (as many

players claim), about half of the league's 640 skaters have

switched from wood in the last two years.

So what's the appeal of the composites, aside from shaving as

much as an hour off an NHL player's workday? Converts point out

that the new sticks are light--Easton Synergies, used by about

270 players, weigh just over a pound, several ounces less than

traditional wood sticks--and easy to flex. Most important,

they're consistent. "Of a dozen wood sticks maybe only seven

would have the feel you want," says Canadiens defenseman Stephane

Quintal, who uses a one-piece made by CCM. "But with the

composite stick each one feels like the last."

The passion for one-pieces, which began after Avalanche center

Peter Forsberg used a Synergy in the 2000 playoffs, hasn't

affected the dead-puck era: Scoring has slipped slightly since

1999--2000. Still, the new stick can make players trigger-happy.

"Look at Mats Sundin," Devils goalie Martin Brodeur says of the

Maple Leafs captain who swears by his Louisville composite. "He

used to never take a shot beyond the circles. Ever. With the new

stick he's shooting from everywhere."

Naturally some traditionalists stamp their skates in protest:

Blue Jackets goalie consultant Rick Wamsley, for one, laments

that the game has become a technological arms race. A common

complaint about one-pieces (which retail for about $150, or $120

more than a wood stick): "the puck seems to jump off the blade,

making it harder to control in passing," says Sabres center

Curtis Brown. That's why Brown and several others have begun

using Easton's latest model, the Synergy Si-Core. The graphite

blade of that stick contains silicone, which cushions the puck.

The effect, he says approvingly, is to make the stick feel like

it's made out of ... wood. --Michael Farber

723 Consecutive errorless chances by the Angels' Darin Erstad, an

American League record for an outfielder; the streak ended on

Sept. 22 but went unnoticed until the Elias Sports Bureau found

it last week while updating its record book.

Eight days after Colorado freshman wideout Jeremy Bloom returned

a punt for a score in a 29--7 loss to Oklahoma in the Dec. 7 Big

12 title game, he flew to Ruka, Finland, to ski in his first

World Cup moguls competition of the season. The circuit's

reigning champ took his finals a week early to make the trip.

"I'm so sleep deprived," says Bloom, who found time last week to

read Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to kids at the Denver Rescue

Mission.

Bloom, who missed the first three World Cup events and has had

just three days on the snow this fall, will spend the next three

months skiing competitively, then make up the semester in summer

school. His future at Colorado is uncertain, though, because the

NCAA forbids him to accept endorsement money, meaning Bloom and

his family have to come up with as much as $40,000 to cover his

costs. "If it wasn't for the NCAA, there's no question I'd come

back next season," he says. Regardless, he will come back on

Saturday, then board a plane on Sunday to San Antonio, where

Colorado plays Wisconsin in the Dec. 28 Alamo Bowl. Bloom, who is

fifth in the nation in yards per punt return, will miss a few

days of practice while in Finland, but, says coach Gary Barnett,

"For three days we can make this work. This team loves him."

SCOPED The left knee of Tiger Woods, who had fluid around his

anterior cruciate ligament and benign cysts removed during a

one-hour procedure in Park City, Utah. Woods had been bothered by

inflammation in the knee for most of the year. Still, two weeks

before the operation he won the PGA Grand Slam of Golf in Kauai,

Hawaii, by a tournament-record 14 strokes and shot a

course-record 61 in the final round. Woods, 26, should be back on

his feet this week and is expected to return to competition early

next year.

ALLEGED By Heat coach Pat Riley, that NBA officials "have an

absolute hatred for me" and "are happy as hell" that the Heat

(6-17) is struggling. Riley made the remarks after a 97-92 loss

to the Knicks last Friday in which New York attempted 21 more

foul shots than the Head did and benefited from what appeared to

be an erroneous out-of-bounds call in the waning moments. This

year Miami has shot 418 free throws to 635 by its opponents, the

largest differential in the league. Riley, who spoke with NBA

officials by phone on Saturday, claims that after a Heat loss

last year in Cleveland ref Steve Javie told him that "it's giving

us [refs] absolute delight to watch you and your team die." Riley

intends to present the league with a detailed case demonstrating

referee bias. Says NBA V.P. of operations Stu Jackson, "The

allegations are unfounded and very disturbing."

DIED Of a heart attack, former Saints defensive lineman Frank

Warren, 43, whose 52 1/2 sacks place him fourth on the team's

alltime list. Warren's 13-year stint with New Orleans was

interrupted when he was suspended for the 1990 season for

violating the league's drug policy. After retiring in '94 Warren

joined the staff of then Saints coach Jim Mora as an assistant.

Two years later he tried to play again, but the comeback was cut

short by heart disease. "He's handled adversity on and off the

field better than any player I've ever known," Mora said of

Warren in '94.

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