No shirt no service

The Lieutenant Governor of Texas is a man who calls himself Dan Patrick nowadays. Born Dannie Scott Goeb here in Baltimore, he used to be a DJ on WISZ, the Baltimore Country Music station where I worked for five years after he was gone.  In those days, he called himself Dan Scott, and that's as stereotypically "radio" as a fake name gets. Later on, he started calling himself "Dan Patrick," he ran a chain of sports bars that made him go bankrupt, and he decided to become a conservative.  It happens.

All I know is, the women in the accounting and traffic office at WISZ loved old Dan Whatever. I guess that natural gift of having people like him is what drove him into politics. The ladies talked about what a great guy he was. I never met him, but it's not every DJ who winds up becoming the lieutenant governor of a state that wishes to secede from the union.

Now, instead of the eyes of Texas being upon us, the eyes of the nation are upon Texas, where the Super Bowl was played the other night, as you might have heard. And someone stole Tom Brady's jersey after the game, not figuring on the reality that it might be as hard to sell that holy relic to a memorabilia collector as it would be to unload the original Mona Lisa to an art lover, since it's well known that it was ripped off.

But Dan Patrick, a man who said that God uses that hirsute rural oddity Phil Robertson to bring us important messages, decided to send the Texas Rangers (the state police, not the baseball team) in on the case.

"In Texas we place a very high value on hospitality and football. Tom Brady's jersey has great historical value and is already being called 'the most valuable NFL collectible ever.' It will likely go into the Hall of Fame one day. It is important that history does not record that it was stolen in Texas."

Have you seen this shirt?

In a world where we are being told that our way of life is coming to end in 3-2-1, let's look at that statement. Assuming that Brady didn't mistakenly pack the sweaty garment in his Dopp kit with his unused razor and colognes, the shirt was stolen, and it was stolen in Texas, and even if it turns up underneath Bill Belichick's pile of unwashed hoodies someday, it happened in Texas, and that's the deal.

What ruins everything for the person who currently possesses the #12 jersey is that people all over can run out, buy an official copy of the shirt and get it all sweaty, then claim it as the real deal.

It's tough way to make a living.  These ragpickers who skulk around stealing dirty jerseys remind me of Scrooge's maids, selling his bedclothes.