Last day @ Latrobe: Ben-watch 2009 begins

Written by Dan Gigler on Thursday, 20 August 2009 5:20 pm.

They were down to the last half-hour.

The only thing remarkable about the last practice of the Latrobe portion of training camp was just that: it was the last practice, and the Steelers had made it through these three weeks relatively unscathed. And then DADADA -- Ben went down. The earth's rotation stopped. Men bit dogs. Twitter broke. Jon & Kate reconciled and had 8 more kids. The Lions won a game. Oh, wait. You mean it's probably not that big of a deal? ... Nevermind ...

So check out the pics of the knicked-up-ankle-heard-'round-Westmoreland County and some other images (with pithy captions!) from the Steelers last day in Latrobe in 2009 ...

Ben drops back to pass ... you'll notice the planet-sized object wearing #78 behind and to the right of Ben, and ...

... oops ... He'll live though. CPR was not needed, nor were the defibrilators. For Ben that is -- the Pittsburgh sports media we aren't so sure about.

That's it right there folks: you can pin your hopes, dreams and aspirations of happiness for the next seven months on that cranky ankle right there.

Sorry dude.

You're giving me some agita, kid.

So is Vick still available? Oh. Right. What about Brett Fav-rah?

Ben Kenobi.

Approach with caution: he can smell fear.

LenDale White has no idea what he started.

Throughout camp, we've seen dozens of folks with Steelers tattoos, and frankly, they've mostly been, as the dear Cope would have said, feh. Usually its just the Steelers logo, or the logo kinda cheesed up with some flames around it or something similarly dumb. Well, if you're gonna do it, do it right. So we bring you Jake Weslager, of Belle Vernon. The Cal. U. student has spent over $1000 and 32 hours under the needle -- starting last August -- at Black Star Tattoo in Belle Vernon to get the Pittsburgh mural you see below. And he still isn't finished. These pics hardly do this Steeler-stine Chapel of body art justice -- we'd need one of those cool Steve Mellon pano pics for that. More below:

This is Jake's most recent addition, done just hours before his trip to Latrobe.

Consider for a moment that head coaches, quarterbacks, offensive coordinators and fans across the nation lay awake at night because of the havoc these man wreak on a football field. Then consider that they're sitting around talking about the annual offense versus defense camp softball game (seriously).