Amazing excerpt from Michael Ohers book "The Blind Side"...

**Raveninwoodlawn** · 04-26-2009, 12:26 PM

Wow. I have got to pick this book up...forget that he is a member of the Ravens...what a human interest story!

Huge props to Michael and the family that brought him in. Just an amazing story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/ma...ewanted=1&_r=1

**52decleetzu** · 04-26-2009, 12:32 PM

Originally Posted by Raveninwoodlawn

Wow. I have got to pick this book up...forget that he is a member of the Ravens...what a human interest story!

Huge props to Michael and the family that brought him in. Just an amazing story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/ma...ewanted=1&_r=1

Need to register with that link,here is a better one......

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/ma...4football.html

I think that is the article you were referring to..

Simply amazing stuff to say the least.

**RavensInBrazil** · 04-26-2009, 01:59 PM

Wow...what a story. I couldn't stop reading

At first I was a little on the fence about the pick, but now, wow, I'm happy as I could be with it

**52decleetzu** · 04-26-2009, 02:12 PM

I loved this part....

From the first play of the game, the Munford defensive end who lined up directly across from Michael targeted him for special ridicule. The Munford player was about 6-foot-2 and couldn’t have weighed more than 220 pounds, and yet he wouldn’t shut up. Every play, he had something nasty to say.

Hey, fat asz, I’m a kill you!

Hey, fat asz! Fat people can’t play football! I’m a run your fat asz over!

The more he went on, the angrier Michael became, and yet no one noticed. Freeze ordered up plays that called for Michael to block a linebacker or to pull and sweep around the right end and leave the defensive end across from him alone. The first quarter and a half of the scrimmage was uneventful — until Freeze called a different sort of play.

Leigh Anne rose from her seat to beat the crowd to the concession stand and so had her back to the action when the people in the stands around her began to laugh.

“Where’s he taking him?” she heard someone say.

“He’s not letting go of that kid!” shouted someone else.

She turned around in time to see 19 football players running down one side of the field after the Briarcrest running back with the ball. On the other side of the field Briarcrest’s No. 74, Big Mike, was racing at full speed in the opposite direction, with a defensive end in his arms.

From his place on the sideline, Sean watched in amazement. Freeze had called a running play, around the right end, away from Michael’s side. Michael’s job was simply to take the defender who had been jabbering at him and wall him off. Just keep him away from the ball carrier. Instead, he had fired off the line of scrimmage and gotten fit — which is to say, gotten his hands inside the defender’s shoulder pads — and then lifted the Munford player off the ground. It was a perfectly legal block, with unusual consequences. He drove the Munford player straight down the middle of the field for 15 yards, then took a hard left, toward the Munford sidelines. “The Munford kid’s feet were hitting the ground every four steps, like a cartoon character,” Sean says. As the kid strained to get his feet back on the ground, Michael ran him the next 25 or so yards to the Munford bench. When he got there, he didn’t stop but piled right through it, knocking over the bench, several more Munford players and scattering the team. He didn’t skip a beat. Encircling the football field was a cinder track. He blocked the kid across the track and then across the grass on the other side of the cinder track. And kept going — right to the chain link fence on the far side of the grass.

Flags flew, grown men cursed and Sean called Michael over to the sidelines.

“Michael,” said Sean, “where were you taking him anyway?”

“I was gonna put him on the bus,” Michael said.

Parked on the other side of the chain-link fence was, in fact, the Munford team bus.

“The bus?” Sean asked.

“I got tired of him talking,” Michael said. “It was time for him to go home.”

Sean thought he must be joking. He wasn’t. Michael had thought it all through in advance; he had been waiting nearly half a football game to do just exactly what he had very nearly done. To pick up this trash-talking defensive end and take him not to the chain-link fence but through the chain-link fence. To the bus. And then put him on the bus. And Sean began to laugh.

**BlackSunday** · 04-26-2009, 03:20 PM

Great selection, 52decleetzu - I was planning on quoting that as well. I"ll just have to settle for this gem from the last page:

On July 29, Michael took his final B.Y.U. test — another character course. Sean sent the test to Utah by Federal Express, and the B.Y.U. people promised to have the grade ready by 2 o’clock the following afternoon. “The Mormons may be going to hell,” Sean says. “But they really are nice people.”

Where was this BYU course thing when I was in HS? Could've come in handy.

BS

**Paintballguy** · 04-26-2009, 08:29 PM

Oh man the more I hear about Oher, the more I love him. I can't wait to see him drive Harrison 20 yards off the ball.

I love this quote from the Ravens website from Oher:

Oher already knows all about his newest rival, however.

“I’m going to give it my all and just do everything I possibly can to beat Pittsburgh,” he said.

**52decleetzu** · 04-26-2009, 11:01 PM

More here...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/141625/page/1

**Raveninwoodlawn** · 04-27-2009, 09:31 AM

Stories like that just tug at your heart.

Kids in Oher's position as a kid turn to the gangs and thugs in the streets. It's truly amazing that this kid has come this far...homeless, poor, incredibly poor student...if you could call him a student at all.

To turn it all around like that...If I had a son...adotpted or biological, to go through half the stuff Michael has, and to work like he did in high school just to graduate high school in a college prep enviroment...words would not describe the amount of pride I would have as a father. Then to have him just 18 credits from graduation from college and a rich man in the pros...man the Tuohy's must be so proud of him.

Speaking of the Tuohy's...what a family...what incredible people. Who among us, with the resources they have, would have done anything close to what they did for Michael.

**baltimore_hokie** · 04-27-2009, 12:57 PM

i just went out and picked the book up, it's only 14 bucks. i think every ravens fan should read this thing, i can't put it down. i hope that our players from this draft are as good on the field as they are in stories because there are all sorts of stories about these guys.

**bmoreravengirl** · 04-28-2009, 07:58 AM

Originally Posted by Paintballguy

I love this quote from the Ravens website from Oher:

“I’m going to give it my all and just do everything I possibly can to beat Pittsburgh,” he said.

This is what won me over. I like him already.

**ravensmaven** · 04-28-2009, 10:57 AM

I was listening to Bruce Cunningham's show yesterday when he told a little bit of Michael's story and how he was taken in by this remarkable family. He said when he was preparing to interview Michael he told him that he wanted to talk about football and avoid the "negative" stuff of his life. Michael replied,"What negative stuff?"

I love this kid already.