Page 2's "Critical Mass" is a weekly survey of what's happening at the busy intersection of sports and pop culture.

Rest in peace, John Unitas

	No NFL quarterback has been able to match the greatness of No. 19.

My friend Danny, a Baltimore kid born and bred, used to play a game called "Johnny Unitas." It worked like this: You'd be sitting around with Danny doing nothing, maybe watching a game, knocking back some Yoo-Hoos, whatever. Then, apropos of nothing much at all, he would say, "Johnny Unitas or Joe Montana?" You had to choose one of them. Danny gave you no criteria going in -- you were expected to know all the variables and factor in all the counter-arguments, then make a call and stand by it.

After Johnny U and Montana, the game would morph into other comparisons -- Jordan or Magic, Mantle or Mays, Beatles or Stones, "The Godfather" or "Goodfellas" -- but it always began with Unitas. He was the anchor; it all flowed from him.

It was a great game, the kind of thing you could play for hours, hashing and rehashing the choices and claims you'd made, mocking your buddies for their facile, short-sighted reasoning and lording your nuanced, air-tight arguments over them. It was great because it tapped into that hierarchical, list-making, relentless pursuit of perfection thing we all had as sports and pop culture fans.

But I always thought that the real reason it worked was that it was born of Unitas. He wasn't just a football player, he was an idea. To appreciate Unitas, you had to think about numbers, yes, but about style too, and grit and timing. You had to think about the look in his eyes and about the way he'd look in old NFL films footage, flicking that arm out in front of him like a strong-armed conductor. And it wasn't just Unitas, it was what he came to represent to people, how he personified a city and an era. He was a stalwart, a standard-bearer. If you wanted to unseat him in the hall of icons and legends, you'd better have your house in order, you had better bring more than just some gaudy numbers or some fancy trophies. You had better bring the whole kit ... and then some.

When I heard Unitas died of a heart attack at 69 last week, I thought about Danny's game, and it struck me that the main reason I enjoyed it so much over the years was that I knew no one could ever compete with Unitas. I knew that in Danny's heart, and in the hearts of thousands of fans just like him, No. 19 was untouchable. That's the way it ought to be.

And, by the way, I'll take Magic, Mays, the Beatles, "Goodfellas" and Unitas. Every time.

Bad news

	Singer Warren Zevon is celebrating his life, rather than bemoaning the plight of his illness.

Singer-songwriter Warren Zevon, a no-mercy poet of the troubled heart, whose "Werewolves of London" was the heart and soul of Martin Scorcese's "The Color of Money," is very sick. He has inoperable lung cancer.

Zevon's dad was a boxer, and he once wrote a song called "Boom Boom Mancini" about coming home to watch a Ray Mancini-Bobby Chacon fight. It's a straight-ahead, muscular tune with a simple respect for a fighter's heart:

When Alexis Arguello gave Boom Boom a beating,
Seven weeks later he was back in the ring;
Some have the speed and the right combinations;
If you can't take the punches, it don't mean a thing.

Now it's the 55-year-old Zevon who has to fight -- his body, his fears, time. He's actually written a lot of songs about dying over the years -- the Rhino Records two-disc anthology of his career is called "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" -- and his reaction to the recent diagnosis was typically understated and wry. "I'm OK with it,'' he said. "But it'll be a drag if I don't make it until the next James Bond movie comes out.'' And he told the Los Angeles Times, "I feel the opposite of regret. I was the hardest-living rock on my block for a while. I was a malfunctioning rummy for a while and running away for a while. Then, for 18 years, I was a sober dad of some amazing kids. Hey, I feel like I've lived a couple of lives -- and now when people listen to the music they'll say, 'Hey maybe the guy wasn't being so morbid after all.' "

Nothing more to say. Keep a good thought for him, listen to "Boom Boom," hope that some day you find that kind of cool courage kicking around in your own chest.

(Thanks to web logger Brian Linse for the heads-up on the L.A. Times article.)

On the small screen
"The Rookie" on DVD (Walt Disney Pictures, released Aug. 22)

Soundtracks can be painful. Period tunes slapped on to make a story feel authentic; brutal, hackneyed originals that shadow the plot; completely incongruous cuts, the only function of which is to facilitate a sex scene or a car chase -- it's by and large an ugly genre.

Every once in a while, though -- think "Pulp Fiction," think "Goodfellas" (must have "Goodfellas" on the brain today, must be time to watch it again) -- there's a happy kind of marriage between a movie and its music. "The Rookie" is one of those times.

The soundtrack features an alt-country, roots-rock lineup including songs from Guy Clark, Allison Moorer, Steve Earle, Willie Nelson and Ryan Adams. Like all the best of the twang tradition, the songs are bittersweet blends of hurting and hoping. They're the perfect fit for the story of a guy too tired to try and too hungry not to.

The music is one of dozens of things the movie gets right, because it amplifies the homespun details of Jim Morris' story ... but even more impressively, because it suggests something about the way most of us, players and fans alike, put our hearts into sports, but in a guarded, smirk-rather-than-smile, swallow-rather-than-laugh, hang-in-there-more-often-than-you-triumph sort of way.

On the shelf
"Pro Football Prospectus" by Sean Lahman and Todd Greanier (Brassey's, released Aug. 1)

Baseball predictions and analysis -- the stuff of "Baseball Prospectus," which I wrote about earlier this year -- feel more concrete and reliable. After all, guys aren't near as likely to blow a knee or slip a disc on the diamond as they are on the gridiron. Still, this new book does some nice paradigm-shifting work: emphasizing the contributions of defensive players, evaluating drafts three years down the line rather than moments after picks are made, judging players with an eye toward schemes and opportunities, grading skill-position players relative to league average, etc.

Beyond fantasy ratings, the focus is on a more precise measure of all that is happening (even the stuff that doesn't show up in raw performance totals) during a game and from week to week. It's a step in the right direction.

On the newsstand
Billy Beane profile, "Talk of the Town," The New Yorker (Sept. 23)

The A's GM is quickly becoming a rock star, and he deserves it. He and his staff have quietly revolutionized the business of baseball, giving the lie to the theory that only big-city, major-market teams can compete. As the A's roll on toward the playoffs, give Beane's attention to statistical analysis and objective measurement of player value some attention.

Obscure semi-sports-related lines of the week

From Aimee Mann's "Guys Like Me" off the new album "Lost in Space" (SuperEgo Records)

'Cause guys like me,
We look good at the gate;
But you'll agree
With the odds on the slate
And put your money on a bona fide
Heavyweight;
And take it off guys like me;
Take it off guys like me

I dig the play with gender here -- the girl tells her lover she's one of those guys who ain't worth the risk. The crossover between bad bets in love and bad bets in sports is nice, too -- in each world, faith and devotion short-circuit reason, no matter how many warnings you get.

Next week: United Way/NFL PSAs, a Second Look at Peter Gent's "North Dallas Forty" and the Wilco football lyric redux

Eric Neel reviews sports culture in his "Critical Mass" column, which will appear every Wednesday on Page 2. You can e-mail him at eneel@cox.net.