The Steel Signal

Last night, I was awakened at Stately Batista Manor as a hypocycloid lit up the sky.

It can only mean one thing: The Steelers report to training camp today.

To the keyboard!

I know I've been very quiet this offseason here in the hills of Yonkers, a few Hail Marys from the town that's nicknamed Gotham City.

You're probably all wondering what I've been doing.

One thing I haven't been doing is working on a book on the 2009 Steelers season. If I were, I'd have called it "We've Had Our Hands on Balls," an actual Mike Tomlin quote that typified how just a few dropped passes meant the difference between playoffs and mediocrity.

Here's what I have been doing: Making money in my underwear.

No, it's not the kind of work where the money is stuffed into my underwear. Get your mind out of the gutter. The money is going to my PayPal account after I edit, and then approve or reject, articles of various subjects for the Internet.

This is a side job for me. My real job is at a newspaper (but not as a writer). Somehow I have avoided being thrown from the Titanic that is the newspaper business, but I need outside employment because A) The ship will sink eventually, and I need to know how to do something else, and B) The extra money doesn't hurt.

So I basically have two jobs, or at least a job and a half. This is why I haven't had the time to post an update on every blip of the Steelers' offseason.

However, one recent event I will say something about involves the untimely passing of Kaye Cowher, wife of former Steeler coach Bill Cowher. She died last week of skin cancer at age 54.

My take on this is that in retrospect Cowher made the right move stepping down as coach in 2007. At least it gave him a chance to spend more time with his wife while he could.

The lesson here is don't put work ahead of family.

Going forward, I am hoping against all hope that I can carve out the time to at least check in a few times during training camp and do a column on every regular-season (and hopefully) playoff game. No more power rankings. No more mid-week columns, unless Ben Roethlisberger rapes a motorcycle and doesn't wear a helmet.

This could change, of course, if someone sees fit to pay me as a Steelers blogger. That hasn't happened -- yet. I did apply for such a position this summer, but did not get it.

I actually have made a little bit of scratch here and there selling links on my old Steelers website, Steelahs.com. Generally, however, starting your own blog and trying to make money on it is like looking for change under the couch cushions.

This is one of the reasons I moved to the Blogger platform. It's free. The money I did make on Steelahs.com wasn't enough to cover the annual fee for the server and for the domain name. I'm still going to keep Steelahs.com up for at least a few more months. After all, those who bought links on my site paid $35 for an entire year. I can't just give them nine months of exposure if they paid for 12. I'm an honest businessman.

Even if I don't always wear pants.

Speaking of people who have a hard time keeping their pants on, the way I see it, the Steelers have two seasons coming up, one without Ben Roethlisberger and one with Ben Roethlisberger. Through the first four to six games, when Roethlisberger serves his suspension (I doubt it will be eight games), I'm going to be rooting my heart out for Byron Leftwich or Dennis Dixon to lead the Steelers to a 4-0 or 6-0 record so Roethlisberger loses his job and never takes another snap for the Steelers.

Of course, that probably won't happen. Even if Roethlisberger sits out just four games, those four games will be home to Atlanta, at Tennessee, at Tampa Bay and then home to Baltimore. Without Roethlisberger, the Steelers start the season 2-2 at best.

But hey, it's a new season. The infamous five-game losing streak has been wiped clean. And unlike my old Steelers site I'm not going whore this site out to lame links from halfway around the world. So without a profit motive, I can post this inspirational YouTube link from "scifiradioguy" without reproach.

Toe hits pigskin in 44 days.

Mike Batista

Big game in the Big Apple

Steelers coach Mike Tomlin calls it "January Football."

OK, so technically the Super Bowl has become a February event (and one of these years will probably drive a flying wedge through some relationships on Valentine's Day). But by "January Football," our favorite Omar Epps lookalike means "playoff football."

When I think of January, I think of cold. I think of breath coming out of people's mouths like steam. And, yes, I think of snow. Sometimes lots of it.

This has been the backdrop for many NFL playoff games.

Why should the Super Bowl be any different?

That's why I'm in favor of having Super Bowl XLVIII in New York.

Let's get full disclosure out of the way now. Yes, I live in Yonkers (a Yonkers Yinzer!), which shares a border with the Bronx. So I'm a few Hail Marys away from New York City. But I grew up as a New Englander hating New York. And I'm obviously not a fan of the Giants or Jets. So when it comes to football, I have no emotional ties to the city.

I won't rule out my stance being influenced by the fact that I'm a fan of the Steelers, a "cold-weather" team (tell that to the 1994 Chargers). But regardless of the Steelers' fortunes, I think there should be a weather asterisk next to the names of any warm-weather or indoor Super Bowl champion that did not win at least one playoff game, or even a crucial late-season game, in cold weather.

The Saints barely make the grade. All their playoff wins came in the comfort of the Superdome. However, in Week 13, they did win 33-30 in overtime at Washington to improve to 12-0. Gametime temperature was 36 degrees. That's borderline. Maybe I'm just giving them a pass because they whipped the shit out of the Patriots.

The 2006 Colts get immunity because as an indoor team they had to play Super Bowl XLI in the rain at Miami. Come to think of it, they beat the Patriots in the AFC championship game. OK, so maybe I'm playing favorites.

Anyway, that leaves the 1999 Rams as the most recent Super Bowl champion to bear my weather asterisk. Not only did they have both of their playoff games at home, they didn't even have to go outside for Super Bowl XXXIV, which was played at the Georgia Dome.

The Steelers kept another asterisk out of the books by beating the Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII. The indoor Cardinals, labeled by Charles P. Pierce of Slate.com as "glorified Arena Football League team," defeated the Panthers on the road in the playoffs that year. But the temperature was in the upper 40s. Not cold enough.

Warm-weather or indoor teams who gripe about possibly playing a Super Bowl in the cold should take a lesson from the 2002 Buccaneers.

I think I might have mentioned this once or twice, but the Steelers were the last team to beat the Bucs that year, 17-7 in Week 16 on a Monday night in Tampa. With a first-round bye still up for grabs, the Bucs had to play at Chicago on the final weekend of the regular season. The franchise carried a heavy albatross, never having won with the temperature below 40 degrees. Temperature in Chicago at kickoff? 38 degrees.

Not only did the Bucs brave the elements and win 15-0 to lock up the No. 2 seed, they went to Philadelphia for the NFC championship game (game-time temperature: 26 degrees) and socked the Eagles 27-10 to punch their ticket to the Super Bowl. They beat the Raiders 48-21 in the Super Bowl. Yeah, that Super Bowl was in San Diego. But had the Super Bowl been outdoors in a cold-weather city, the Buccaneers would have been prepared.

OK, so cold is one thing, but snow is quite another. Let's imagine snow falling on the new Meadowlands during Super Bowl XLVIII.

Who doesn't love to watch a football game in the snow, with players slipping and sliding all over the place? If that, with a bitter cold and howling wind thrown in, is the setting for Super Bowl XLVIII, you and I will be enjoying it from the comfort of home while those who can afford $1,000 tickets freeze their asses off. It would be a victory for the common man.

A snowy Super Bowl won't be the disaster that opponents of a New York Super Bowl say it will be. The Super Bowl can get away with a 6-3 game in a blizzard because, well, it's the Super Bowl. The NFL is taking a big risk here because it can.

The Super Bowl is already sawed off from the flow of "January Football" because of the two-week break after the conference championship games. The contrast is even more stark with the utopian atmosphere of Chamber of Commerce weather, or worse, room temperature.

Super Bowls in San Diego, Miami, New Orleans and even Jacksonville (they can have a Super Bowl in Jacksonville but not in New York? C'mon) are surrounded by an atmosphere of parties, MTV reporters and hookers. Football is almost an afterthought.

A foot of snow would change all that.

Mom of Steel

It takes a special woman to be the mother of a Steelers fan.

My mother was just that for half of the 60 years that she lived.

This is my first Mother's Day without her.

My mother was no ordinary Mom of a Steelers Fan. Only she could make a fond memory out of the infamous Phil Luckett game.

In 1979, my mother's life was at halftime. Little did she know how different her second half would be. Her firstborn was becoming a Steelers fan.

Piled under the tree that Christmas were a Steelers coat, a Steelers winter hat, a Steelers sweatshirt, Steelers gloves, a Steelers mini-locker, an aluminum Steelers wastebasket, Steelers pencils, Steelers notepads and these Steelers action figures with flexible arms and legs, removable helmets and a full set of uniform-number decals.

Of course I was still young enough to think that Santa Claus brought all those black and gold trinkets. But it was mom and dad.

Growing up

Not long after the Steelers defeated the Rams in Super Bowl XIV, I read a newspaper article about some Steelers players (can't remember who) considering retirement. It made me sad. I went to my mother and told her that I might not like the Steelers anymore.

I think she pretended to take me seriously in that lovingly patronizing manner that parents employ when children think they're talking about something important.

I'm glad she didn't take me seriously.

Eventually I overcame the shock of that article, accepted the reality that athletes don't play forever and remained a Steelers fan, even though it would be another 16 years before they returned to the Super Bowl.

In those intervening years, the Steelers' mediocrity allowed me to keep my interest within reason and get started on a somewhat normal life that included Little League, high school, college, my first job and my first apartment. That was followed, unfortunately, by my first (and hopefully last) layoff, and a move back in with mom.

The Steelers rescued me from total despair while I was out of work by recovering from a 3-4 start and reaching Super Bowl XXX against the Cowboys.

My sister's boyfriend at the time was a Cowboys fan, which at least gave me someone to watch the game with.

I taped the game, left the TV on and went to my sister's.

My mother, who was a nurse, was about to leave for work that night when she noticed that the TV was on. She wondered why it was on (even though I told her I'd be taping the game) and shut it off.

I forgave her.

After all, would I really have wanted to watch Neil O'Donnell throwing the ball into the waiting arms of Larry Brown over and over again?

The Steelers almost got back to the Super Bowl two years later. I assure you my mother had no inkling that the Steelers were a win away from the Super Bowl, much less who they had to beat to get there. That's why it's purely coincidence that she was blasting and dancing to a John Denver cassette when I went to visit her the night before the Steelers played Denver in the AFC championship game.

I forgave her for that, too.

Not long after the Steelers lost that game to the Broncos, certain non-Steelers events conspired to make me very unhappy with my life. By the fall of 1998, I was in a dark place.

Thanksgiving was coming up and the plan was for me to have dinner with my mother, who by now was divorced and living alone.

I told her the Steelers would be on TV, so I could watch them after having dinner.

Knowing the doldrums I was going through, my mother knitted me a black and gold scarf to cheer me up I while watched the Steelers.

We all know what happened. The Steelers lost in overtime to the Lions in a game marked by a controversial coin flip. It was the start of a season-ending, five-game losing streak.

Who knows the depths I would have sunk to without that scarf.

Scarves aren't needed in Orlando, which is where I took my mother in 2002 to see her beloved big brother, Joseph, who we affectionately called, "Uncle Junk."

The Steelers had a Monday night game at home against the Colts while we were in Florida. I watched the game in my uncle's living room. The Steelers comfortably won the game 28-10.

Nonetheless, being the Steelers fan that I am, I felt the urge to curse at certain points during the game. Out of respect to my aunt and uncle, I tried to keep those expletives under my breath. I guess I didn't do a very good job, because mom was cracking up.

Glory days

While my mother was supportive of my Steelers fanaticism, she said it would be a "cold day in hell" if she ever went to a football game. So I can't complete this tribute without talking about her appreciation for baseball ... and Neil Diamond.

In 2004, when the Red Sox ended their 86-year drought and won the World Series, I worked at a newspaper in Rhode Island and covered the first two games in Boston. It's a tradition at Fenway Park to play "Sweet Caroline" in the middle of the eighth inning.

During Game 2, when it was playing, I called my mother on my cell phone so she could hear it.

The following year, my mother said she wanted to see the Red Sox while they were champions. It was apparent at that point she didn't have many years left, and who knew when the Red Sox would ever win the World Series again?

So I figured what better day to take her than Mother's Day. The Red Sox lost on a chilly, drizzly afternoon. But after the game, all mothers were invited onto the field to walk the perimeter of the hallowed Fenway Park turf.

Two Mother's Days later, in 2007, I was driving from New York to Rhode Island to visit my mother, and listened to the Red Sox on the radio. As I crossed the border from Connecticut to Rhode Island, the game seemed rather uneventful. The Orioles led 5-0 heading into the bottom of the ninth inning. But as I got closer to my mother's, the Red Sox started rallying.

As I exited I-95 (which is called Route 95 in Rhode Island) onto the streets of Pawtucket, just minutes from my mother's, I wondered if I would have to A) Sit in the parking lot and wait until the end of the game, or extra innings, before going into my mother's building or B) Make a beeline for the TV upon entering my mother's apartment, which, believe me when I tell you, she wouldn't have minded at all.

It turns out the Red Sox, like the true champions they proved to be that year, completed their six-run rally when I was about a block from my mother's. On one hand, that comeback would have been a nice moment to share with my mother. On the other hand, I'm amazed at how perfect the timing was.

Like the Red Sox, the Steelers accompanied their "long-awaited" championship with another one three years after it. I know my mother watched at least some of Super Bowl XLIII, because when I called her during the marathon pre-game show, she asked me why the Steelers stayed at an undisclosed hotel the night before the game. She wondered if there was some kind of a terrorism threat.

I explained to her that Super Bowl teams customarily change to secret hotels the night before the game to avoid getting into trouble. We now know that was especially necessary for the Steelers with guys like Ben Roethlisberger and Santonio Holmes on the team. Hell, Eugene Robinson looks pretty good now compared to Roethlisberger.

Mom passed away on Jan. 28, just as the Steelers' reign as Super Bowl champions was down to a precious few grains in the hourglass.

The Steelers were succeeded as champions by the Saints. Mom's probably met a lot of those where she is now. And I'll bet they let her play John Denver as loud as she wants.

Mike Batista

My new digs

Greetings, yinzers and non-yinzers alike!

Welcome to Respect the Towel, the site that used to be Steelahs.com.

So why did I change the name of my site? Well, to be honest, I never liked the name "Steelahs.com." Whenever I told people the name of my site, I always had to say the name then immediately spell it so they wouldn't think it was just "Steelers.com." It was very cumbersome in terms of name recognition.

When I launched Steelahs.com three years ago today, the name was an acknowledgement of my Rhode Island roots, and the Boston accent that came with it. Even though I had learned to pronounce my "r"s by the time I moved to New York, my girlfriend at the time seemed to think I still had the accent. And I wanted a name that conveyed that fact that I was a Steelers fan from New England, so the name Steelahs.com seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, live and learn.

So why Respect the Towel?

For starters, I am the proud owner of a Terrible Towel, which is the official flag of Steelers Nation. I bought mine the day after the Steelers won the 1995 AFC championship game. The Internet was still kind of a new-fangled thing back then. So I called 1-800-TEAMTUF on my touch-tone phone, and waited on hold for at least an hour. It made me appreciate having a Terrible Towel that much more.

Of course, "Respect the Towel" is a little bit of a nod to "The Sopranos," which I still watch on DVD when I'm not watching the first quarter and a half of the Steelers' 2009 season opener (before Troy Polamalu got hurt) on NFL Game Rewind.

We all know what happened to Ralph Cifaretto when he didn't respect the Bing. And we all know what happened when the Tennessee Titans didn't Respect the Towel when they beat the Steelers late in the 2008 season. The Steelers never lost again, and went on to win Super Bowl XLIII.

It's too bad the inventor of the Terrible Towel, Myron Cope, didn't get to see the Steelers' sixth championship. He died on Feb. 27, 2008. Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers, like me a Steelers fan from New England, honored Cope after his death by waving the Terrible Towel after Weekend Update.

I don't quite have the same following as a Steelers blogger that Meyers does as a comedian. Not yet, anyway.

With the transition from Steelahs to Respect the Towel, I'm joining many of my fellow Steelers bloggers on the Blogger platform. And before you ask, the answer is yes, if all my fellow Steelers bloggers were going to jump off the Fort Pitt Bridge, I probably would, too.

You could call me a lemming for moving over to Blogger, but the fact is it's free. It would have costed me the price of a Steelers ticket to renew my site design apparatus for another year over at Register.com, and that doesn't even count the $25 a month I was paying for the traffic analyzer. I studied that traffic analyzer like a crazy old geezer panning for gold. More than 30 unique visitors was a good day for me, so the traffic analyzer didn't make a lot of sense.

The disadvantage is that Respect the Towel is a subdomain. That means that if you just type www.respectthetowel.com, it won't come up. You have to type respectthetowel.blogspot.com. That might make the site harder to find on search engines. But I know that won't be a problem because I have dozens of loyal readers who will spread the word about my new site (pretty please?).

Hopefully the new site name will be more recognizable and therefore increase traffic. A lot of thought went into the new name. Here are some of the other site names I considered:

Steelers State of Mind: I was going to go with this name. It was certainly fitting considering how I eat, drink, sleep and breathe Steelers. It also would have been a subtle reference to the fact that I live in New York, and a timely one considering Jay-Z's song "Empire State of Mind." But I did a Google search for "Steelers State of Mind," and got "Steel City State of Mind," a Pittsburgh version of Jay-Z's song. That kind of took away from the originality of the site name, and I also didn't want people searching the Internet looking for the song, and being disappointed to find my little old site. But I did come very close to choosing this name. As a matter of fact, I did claim the URL and put Steelers State of Mind up on the Internet. But I took it down after a few days. Sort of like Joey Galloway in a Steelers uniform, if you blinked, you missed it.

At the Confluence: It sends chills down my spine to hear a golden-throated announcer say the words "at the confluence," because it means the Steelers are on TV. I saw, however, that there's an established Penguins blog that uses the word "confluence." So I didn't want to step on any toes.

The Black and Gold Pages: While this would have been a witty play on words (you know, The Yellow Pages), there would have been two problems with this one. First, I would have had to decide whether to use the word "and," " 'n'," or just an ampersand, and no matter which one I used, some people would have typed it in wrong. Also, black and gold can include the Pirates and Penguins, too. While I will make references on occasion to the Pirates and Penguins, this is just a Steelers blog.

'Burger Joint: This was the headline in The Boston Globe when the Steelers beat the Patriots 33-10 at Gillette Stadium in 2008, the year they won their sixth Super Bowl. Thanks to my father, I was able to attend that game with him and witness in person the Steelers' transformation from a good team to a championship-caliber team. The name " 'Burgher Joint," however, would have implied an all-encompassing Pittsburgh blog, and maybe even a foodie blog. So it was a no-go.

The Whole Bottle of Ketchup: This would have been in deference to the shrine that is Heinz Field, and it would have highlighted my effort to bring you the most thorough Steelers blog possible. But to be quite honest, the older I get, the less my stomach can handle ketchup. So this one was out.

The Hypocycloid: Hypocycloid is that shape that appears three times in the Steelers' logo, one red, one yellow and one blue. But if I thought spelling "Steelahs" was a pain in the ass ...

Bapty's Steelers Blog: A lot of my friends call me "Bapty." My last name, Batista, is frequently bastardized into Baptista. The guy who coined the "Bapty" moniker, if I ever get married, will be the best man at my wedding. He just doesn't know it yet. And he won't find out here because if he reads this, the devil might need to wear a jacket. I didn't choose this name because it just sounds a little too homespun, like it's put together by some bachelor slob in his late 30s living in a basement apartment. Uh, wait a minute ...

The Yellow Seats (or The Gold Seats or The Golden Seats): I think the yellow seats at Heinz Field are so cool, but while I think this would have been a good use of synecdoche (sorry), it sort of implied that I actually go to Heinz Field. I've only gone once. Maybe I'll go this season. It was a 10-hour drive from Rhode Island, but only a seven-hour drive from New York. We'll see.

So what do you think? Did I choose the right name? It's OK to post comments, you know.

That's it for now. I'm looking forward to my fourth year as a Steelers blogger. Just 131 days until kickoff.