The Weekly Dis
Fear and loathing in Fort Wayne. Caffeine and patience don't mix. The new refrigerator magnets are (almost) here! A wonderful Week in Discasting.
A couple of weeks ago, the Reign of Terror was in a foul mood – and rightly so, as Rimer used to say – when they sat down to record an episode of the Cannon Fodder podcast. The Jackets were in last place in the East, or thereabouts, at the time. There was a Torquemada tone to the Reign that night.
It led to the following text exchange between me and one of my favorite Jackets fans, who is also a longtime season-ticket holder. And I mean LONG time.
Since, the Jackets have won four of six and played many periods of solid to pretty good hockey, including in two road losses at two tough NHL outposts (Carolina and Dallas).
At this moment, as I type, I am at a coffee bar in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I am in Fort Wayne because it is an underrated food city, it is cheap, and it's about halfway to Bridgeview, Illinois – where I'll be when the Crew play their Decision Day game against the Chicago Fire. Kickoff Saturday is just after 4 p.m. EST.
This is the third time I've been to Ft. Wayne. The abandoned factory (bottom left) is not representative; I just thought it made for an interesting photo, like you see in those galleries of abandoned shopping malls. The Happy Taco is right around the corner from the AirBnB where I'm based this weekend. Not the greatest neighborhood, but, holy shit, what tacos! The Happy Taco itself is nothing but a small foyer surrounded by a walled kitchen that pumps out amazing deliciousness at reasonable prices. You order through bullet-proof glass. The deliciousness is passed through something akin to a bank-vault drawer (top right), which you can see over my shoulder. The Penny Drip coffee bar (top left) is on a busy stretch where I got to see a car accident at rush hour on Friday evening. I've had two Cafe Americanos, one hot, one iced, and I'm so jacked up on caffeine that I probably could've pushed that Ford C-Max Hybrid onto the tow truck all by myself.
(This little trip was made possible by generous readers who donated to help pay for it. Thanks. My costs are just about covered, which warms Mrs. Arace's heart. On Monday, she will be presented with a list of donors and she will select three to recieve Disrespected Media T-Shirts. I'll be reaching out to the winners via email.)
The Crew had six victories and were in last place on Sept. 1. Their fans, a spoiled lot, were stirring; from among them came calls to fire GM Issa Tall.
Professional sports might be the most ruthless of results-based businesses. There has been at least one GM I've covered who, when he wasn't happy with my coverage – and this was in the early years, when the GM was usually unhappy with the coverage – I had a pat response: "Doug, I write the scoreboard and the standings."
Yet, there's so much more to the scoreboard and the standings. There's analytics! Just kidding. Sometimes, you've got to step back, take a breath and try to see the bigger picture. Give it a minute. Don't jump onto social media at Olde Towne Tavern at 2:30 a.m., and so forth.
Tall overhauled the roster – 10 players in, nearly as many out – during the summer transfer window. There is some real quality that has been imported, beginning with two new Designated players, attackers Santi Rodriguez and Brais Mendez. What is more, this group was universally wired to mesh with the core group that was already here – Sean Zawadzki, Taha Habroune, Steven Moreira, et all – which is to say they're not dicks, and they want to win the Crew Way.
This week, I had a one-on-one with Tall and Tim Bezbatchenko. I'll be using that material as a base for a long-form piece on the resurrection of the 2026 Crew, a team nobody wants to meet in the playoffs. The Bez interview was recorded as an episode of The Crewcible; just scroll down here to watch and/or listen.
Heading into Decision Day, the Crew have won seven of eight league games – one of the four best eight-game stretches in the 31-season history of the franchise – and clinched a postseason berth. Saturday, we will learn whether they can climb out of the No. 8-vs.-No. 9 play-in game and scale up to No. 7 – or even No. 6.
What was it that Wilfried Nancy once said, the thing about impossible being an opinion?
As it turns out, this Crew team has balls as big as the building, as John Tortorella once said of Zach Werenski.
Give it a minute
This is not to say that the Blue Jackets, who were 7-7-0 heading into Buffalo last night, are of the same stuff as the 2026 Black & Gold. But they were a decent team on paper when they sucked, and they're better now with defensemen Ivan Provorov (did you see him fall down three times Thursday night?) and Dante Fabbro back in the lineup.
The Jackets are playing better and, they insist, they can play better yet. I'll give him a minute. Apparently, so will my friend who was ready to slit his wrists with his season-ticket card two weeks ago.
Our most recent exchange, beginning with Hockey Fights Cancer night on Thursday night and continuing Friday morning, as I was on SR-30, headed for the Indiana border:
It's never too late for schedule magnets
This week in Discasting
Tim Bezbatchenko, once known as the Boy Wonder of Major League Soccer, turned 45 last month. Still a Boy? Still a Wonder?
Bezbatchenko went from Columbus DeSales High to the University of Richmond (where he was recently inducted into its athletic Hall of Fame), to the Pittsburgh Riverhounds, to the University of Cincinnati Law School, to a white-shoe firm in New York City, to MLS headquarters, to general manager of Toronto FC, to president/GM of the Columbus Crew, to director of soccer operations for Black Knight Football. All before he turned 43.
His Torontos won an MLS Cup and three Canadian Championships.
His parents, from Westerville, have had Crew season tickets since the beginning in 1996. Bezbatchenko came home after Save the Crew #SavedTheCrew – and his Crew teams won MLS Cups in 2020 and 2023, won a Campeones Cup in 2021 and made it to the CONCACAF Champions League final in 2024. Just prior to the Crew's Leagues Cup victory in '24, Bezbatchenko left for Black Knight and Bournemouth.
This past summer, he was lured back home to be Haslam Sports Group's President of Global Soccer. While he oversees Crew soccer operations, his real work right now has to do with getting the Columbus NWSL expansion team up in running in time for its launch in 2028; he is also involved exploring international opportunities, such as investments in overseas academies/clubs.
We sat down Thursday in the conference room at the Crew's training facility:
Aaron Portzline and I go back to 1999, when I arrived in Columbus to be the first Blue Jackets beat writer for the Dispatch and he was my backup. He took over the beat in the early aughts, when I became a full-time columnist. For nearly a decade, he has covered the CBJ for The Athletic. I don't know why I'm introducing him, because he needs no introduction. He is the mayor of Jacketville.
He and I have been podcasting about the Jackets, on and off, for nearly 30 years. He was my first guest when I lauched Cannon Fodder last year, and since, he has been my most frequent guest. There's nobody better.
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Michael Arace
