Greatest Ben Gordon Call Ever

Last week I was going through my email archives from when Hotmail and Yahoo were fighting for supremacy to try and find some stuff about a unique March Madness pool I’m part of. Then I came across this gem which was very indicative of my life as a 26 year old at the time. I got a good chuckle out of it plus had the greatest call about Ben Gordon‘s career ever so I decided that I’d give it a breakdown. I’ll start at the beginning.

Subject line: it’s friday

At 8:26 am I already knew that I was gonna mail it in for the day. I’m just throwing out feelers to see who’s with me.

“I could sure go for a good day of talking sports.”

No joke, my friends and I would email back and forth all day about sports. Whatever crazy/logical/irrational/can you imagine if… sports takes were on our minds or that we wanted to make fun of. That was much more enjoyable than working and looking back on it this was a foundation for what later became Bacon Sports.

Goose, what’s up with your boys?

My friend Karl is a Detroit Tigers fan and this was during one of those dark days years in the 20 year losing period of the Pirates where I had to vicariously live through other peoples teams. Since Jim Leyland was the former Manager of the Pirates it made complete sense for me to start following the Tigers.

As for Jim Leyland, he’s the best. I loved him on the Buccos, I loved him with the Tigers, and I loved him even more after watching this video of him cursing out Barry Bonds.

“I had my fantasy hoops draft last night and was happy that I got Ben Gordon on my team”

It’s not often that you have documentation of your early support for Ben Gordon but that’s exactly what this is and amazingly it a good thing (unlike late in his career – bad contract Ben Gordon). Ben Gordon was entering his third season in the NBA with the Chicago Bulls (my favorite team) and he was coming off averaging 16.9 ppg. The Bulls went 41-41 under Scott Skiles and I must have loved the chemistry I saw between Gordon, Kirk Hinrich, Loul Deng, and Andres Nocioni.

That 2006 season Ben Gordon put up a career high 21.4 ppg and the Bulls went 49-33, making it to the second round of the NBA playoffs. “I think he’ll do well” will probably go down as one of my best calls ever. On my tombstone it’s gonna say, “Here lies Rob Cressy. He was on board with Ben Gordon during the best season of his career.”

Email signature: RateMyGamblingStory.com

I’ve started tons of sports websites and this was the one at the time. RateMyGamblingStory.com (which doesn’t still exist) was a site where people submit their best or worst gambling stories. Anyone who has ever gambled has a story of an insane backdoor cover (both good and bad) or a Vegas trip where the table was straight fire and the night ended at 7 am at Spearmint Rhino. There was a rating system similar to what Hot or Not was doing so you could vote on how good the gambling story was.

I want to hear from you. Do you have any old emails that give a prediction that went awesomely right or horribly wrong, are funny or speak of a time in your life that’s memorable for some reason? Shoot me an email to boom@baconsports.com or on Twitter @BaconSports.

Now excuse me while I try and dig up emails on how I thought Mike Dunleavy Jr was gonna be the next Larry Bird.