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The Black Hand is set to defend title in 2009

The Plain Bull

An inside look at the BDFL's Benton Bullets

by Bullet Hand

Ready, Aim, Fire!
MEDIA VOID - Bullets Reloadin’ for ’09.
The Benton Bullets have relished their Championship probably more than any team in the history of the BDFL. They are the 1st franchise to don The Grand Daddy trophy, and continue a “victory tour” of the Southeast that will almost be impossible to be equaled. In fact, if the Bullets have their way, they will continue the tour another year with another BDFL Title.
The Bullets are by no means resting on their laurels – although they continue to celebrate practically every day. Bullet has spent the off-season, when not celebrating, scouring the country for just the right players to RELOAD in 2009. So, look out for more lead-to-fly this season as the Bullets (the BDFL’s All-Time winningest franchise – you can look it up) gets in position to “ready, aim, and fire!” again.
 

2009 Roster transactions:

Benton Bullets

Established 1995

Benton Bullets

CITY: Benton, AL
NICKNAME: Bullets
OWNER/GM: Jerome "Bullet" Hand
HEAD COACH: Preston Gothard
TEAM COLORS: Black and Blue, Silver and Gold
HOME STADIUM: Rebel Stadium at Lowndes Academy in Hayneville
MASCOT: Coors Light Silver Bullet Beer Man (looks a lot like the old G'dale Rocket with Greg Desmond (GHS '81) inside. Greg Blackman (GHS '81) the former UAB Beauregard T. Rooster," also fills in on occasions.
TEAM THEME SONG: "Gimme Back My Bullets" and "Saturday Night Special" by Lynyrd Skynyrd
TEAM MOTTOS: "Ready, Aim, Fire!", "Shoot to Thrill" and "Throw Some Lead"
WORK PHONE: 334.260-4500
HOME PHONE: 334.872-3938

CELL PHONE: 334.730-5277
EMAIL: handhand@

juno.com

Team Colors

Benton Bullets - Colors black and blue comes from the old NFL's Black & Blue Division of the 70s. The silver comes from Coor's Silver Bullets and the gold is a play on Skynyrd's Mr.Saturday Night Special "Got a barrel that's blue and cold (gold)". The big "B" logo also shows two gold bullets flying.

The Black Hand

From the Black Belt comes the new Black Hand

by Iron Hand

BENTON - Black Hand, or 'A Manu Neura in Sicilian, was also a type of extortion racket. It was a method of extortion, not a criminal organization as such, though gangsters of Camorra and the Mafia practiced it.

The roots of the Black Hand can be traced to Sicily and throughout the rest of Kingdom of Naples as early as the 1750s. However, the term as normally used in English specifically refers to the organization established by Italian immigrants in the United States during the 1880s who though fluent in their Southern Italian regional languages, had no access to Standard Italian or even a grammar school education. A minority of the immigrants formed criminal syndicates, living alongside each other. By 1900, Black Hand operations were firmly established in the Italian-American communities of major cities including New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Chicago, and San Francisco and small rural cities such as Benton, AL. Although more successful immigrants were usually targeted, possibly as many as 90% of Italian immigrants in New York were threatened.

Typical BlackHand tactics involved sending a letter to a victim threatening bodily harm, kidnapping, arson, or murder. The letter demanded a specified amount of money to be delivered to a specific place. It was decorated with threatening symbols like a smoking gun or hangman's noose and signed with a hand imprinted in black ink; hence the Sicilian name 'A Manu Neura (The Black Hand) which was readily adopted by the American press as "The Black Hand Society".

Gangsters would carry out the threat if the victim did not pay. Ignazio Saietta, a Sicilian gangster in New York's Little Italy, strangled his victims and burned the bodies in East Harlem near the "murder stable". One of the threatened victims was the tenor Enrico Caruso who received a Black Hand letter, on which a black hand and dagger were drawn, demanding $2,000. Although Caruso decided to pay, he again received a demand for $15,000. Realizing the extortionists would continue to demand money, he reported the incident to the police who, arranging for Caruso to drop off the money at a prearranged spot, arrested two Italian-American businessmen who retrieved the money. On occasion, Black Handers threatened other gangsters and usually faced retaliation. In Chicago, the notorious Shotgun Man murdered dozens of people in broad daylight on the same street corner during a decade-long reign of terror.

If law enforcement closed in, gangsters answered with their usual style: assassination. Victims include New Orleans police chief David Hennessy and NYPD lieutenant Joseph Petrosino. They intimidated potential witnesses even in the courtroom.

The Black Hand practice in the United States disappeared in the mid 1920s after a wave of negative public opinion led organized crime figures to seek more subtle methods of extortion, however it is still alive and well Benton located in Lowndes County, Alabama.

Another Black Hand, officially Unification or Death, has it's roots in the secret society founded in the Kingdom of Serbia on June 10, 1910. It was a part of the Pan-Slavist movement, with the intention of uniting all of the territories containing South Slav populations annexed by Austria-Hungary. This society's possible connections to the June 28, 1914, assassination in Sarajevo of Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, is considered to have been the main catalyst to the start of World War I.

The original Black Hand oranization was founded by former members of a semi-secret society named Narodna Odbrana (Defense of the People) dedicated to achieving Pan-Slavism and nationalism by means of assassination. The purpose of the group was to recruit and train partisans for a possible war between Serbia and Austria and eventually free Serbia from Austria. Under their anti-Austrian propaganda, they organized spies and saboteurs to operate within the empire's provinces. Satellite groups were formed in Slovenia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Austria. In 1909, after the Bosnian Annexation Crisis, Austria pressured the Serbian government to put a stop to their anti-Austrian insurrection.

In 1912, differences between the two main groups of the Narodna Odbrana—political leaders of the Radical Party and military officers—arose. The political leaders preferred a more passive approach for the time being, including more peaceful relations with Austria and concentrating on strengthening Serbia for future struggle, but some of the military officers grew impatient with the more moderate radical policies. Consequently, the more zealous members of the Narodna Odbrana started a new secret society, and the Black Hand was founded.

The group encompassed a range of ideological outlooks, from conspiratorially-minded army officers to idealistic youths, sometimes tending towards republicanism, despite the acquisition of nationalistic royal circles in its activities.

Both Black Hand activities (extortion and assissination) are alive and well, practiced on the football fields throughout the BDFL where the Benton Bullets captured the 2008 BDFL Championship and the coveted Grand Daddy trophy as the league's best.

AFL Throwback Week Team:

1960 Oakland Raiders

Benton Bullets to represent the 1960 Oakland Raiders - Since Bullet is the Al Davis of the BDFL and he's been a life-long charter member of the RAY-DAR nation, this was a very logical choice for the Bullets to play as the original Oakland Raiders in Week 7. Pro Football Hall of Fame great and an original Oakland Raider in 1960 Jim Otto will serve as the team's honorary captain.

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