Why I Hope At Least One of Terrell McClain, Geoff Swaim, or (Unlikely) Rolando McClain, Becomes An Enormous Star for the Cowboys

Time for a spot of fun.  Maybe only for me, but at least I will enjoy it.

This week The Musers took a swing at a motto Dak Prescott.  Junior got it started with "We're going Dak to the future," and George chimed in with "Once you go Dak, you'll never go back."

I've got a couple to suggest myself.  One of which will almost certainly die on this page except as a source of ridicule directed at Your Plainsman, the other of which has some chance of showing up on a poster at a game, if Jerry even allows posters in that dump.

The first one requires a bit of history, children, so sit back  .  .  .  .

There once was a major league baseball team called the Boston Braves.  The team eventually moved to Milwaukee and then to Atlanta, but in the years we care about, the post-war 40's and even into the 50's, it was the National League team in Boston.

During those years, the Braves had two superior pitchers -- Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain.  You can look them up, but for our purposes they provided the Braves with a devastating 1-2 punch at the top of the rotation.

Once, during the pennant drive in 1948, they put together a remarkable run, aided by the weather.  They swept a double header.  After two days off, there was a rainout.  Spahn came back and won, and the next day, Sain won.  Three days later, Spahn won, and then Sain won again.  After an off day, the two pitchers were designated again, and they both won again.  Together, they went 8-0 in 12 days.  We'll come back to that in a moment.

Spahn went on to have the more memorable career, but Sain was a 20-game winner four times.  He threw the last pitch to Babe Ruth in an organized game (in 1943 in an exhibition game between major leaguers managed by Ruth and a team made up of servicemen, including Ted Williams).  Ruth walked.  He also threw the first major league pitch to Jackie Robinson, who grounded out to short.

Sain died in 2006.  Spahn, who died in 2003, won 20 games or more in 13 seasons.  He's the top all-time southpaw winner with 363 wins.  He went 23-7 when he was 42, and pitched 382 complete games.  Times have changed.

But returning to 1948 and that remarkable run.  It inspired Boston Post sports editor Gerald Hern to dash off a catchy little poem:

     First we'll use Spahn
     then we'll use Sain
     Then an off day
     followed by rain
     Back will come Spahn
     followed by Sain
     And followed
     we hope
     by two days of rain.

This got shortened to the phrase (I hope) many of you will recall hearing that became the rallying cry for that 1948 team:  

"Spahn and Sain and pray for rain."

It became very famous -- Spahn later said:  "It's not so much my pitching people know, but that little poem about me and Johnny Sain with the forty-eight Braves."  It even became a commercial slogan:

The Braves won the NL Pennant that year, but fell in six games in the World Series to, of all teams, the Cleveland Indians.

What has all of this to do with The Ticket?  I began this post recalling Craig's and George's efforts to put something together in the way of a catch-slogan for this year's Cowboys.  It got me thinking and I came up with this, referencing Sean Lee, Terrell McClain, and Dak.  It's cute, but really only works if McClain rises to some kind of dominance.  After an interesting pre-season, Geoff Swain seems to have vanished, but I can hope -- his name actually works best, because I can throw an "and" in there, and it's a funnier name so I'll use that, but we may have to go back to "McClain" if Geoff never sees the gridiron, and "McClain" is really a better rhyme.  

Ready?

"Sean and Swaim and pray for Rayne."

ALTERNATIVE:  "Sean, McClain, and pray for Rayne."

OK, it's a stretch.

Here's another one.

Back when the New Orleans Saints were good in the early 80's they had a rallying cry:  "Who dat?  Who dat?  Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?"  The Neville Brothers actually recorded a song with that theme with some Saints players, shortened to "Who Dat Gonna Beat Dem Saints?"  Fans took it up as a cry of solidarity at games.  Despite its minstrel origins, the Saints even adopted it as an official slogan.

You're way ahead of me:

"Who Dak?  Who Dak?  Who Dak Gonna Lead Dem 'Boys?"  

(or "'Pokes," or "Cowboys," if we can't say "Boys" anymore, even if there's no racial implication).

[[CORRECTION:  As the Ticket Drop might say, "WELL F_____ ME!"  I don't subscribe to Sports Illustrated and so didn't know that this particular gag had already been made.  I did a search for the "who dak" phrase before writing this, and nothing popped up, so I thought there was some chance it was original.  Guess not.  Sorry.]]

Enough -- some of you might say more than enough -- of this wordplay.  I hope we have all learned something and perhaps even inspired some of you to top this (not a big challenge, I know).

Didn't like this post?  Oh, all right, here you go:

"Oh, but Plainsman, I like lots of wordplay."

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