MILWAUKEE, Wis. There have been ups and downs in the career of Guido, an Italian sausage who races during every game at Miller Park, but reporters who cover the Milwaukee Brewers say they've never seen him looking more dejected than he did this morning when team owner Bud Selig announced his suspension.
Guido, in the lead.
"Guys, I'd really rather not talk about it right now," Guido said as he turned towards his locker. "I'm not having a good day, okay?" he snapped at a particularly persistent reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times.
In happier times.
Guido's suspension came after he tested positive for sodium lactate, sodium diacetate and sodium erythorbate, three performance-enhancing substances that produce a traditional "hot dog" color and improved texture in sausages. "It's Guido's own fault," said Guy Randall, a sports reporter for the Milwaukee Sentinel. "He could have stuck to monosodium glutamate like the other sausages, but no--he always wanted that extra little edge."
"Say it ain't so, Guido."
The race, sponsored by Klement's Sausage Company, is held after the bottom of the sixth inning at every home game of the Milwaukee Brewers. Guido has consistently outpaced Bratt Wurst, Stosh, Frankie Further and Cinco over the years, leading some to suspect he was using drugs other than ketchup, mustard, relish and other approved condiments.
Selig: "What kind of trayfe junk is this--it's giving me heartburn!"
Selig has come under criticism for allowing the use of artificial ingredients in ballpark hot dogs to spread during his tenure, a fact that some attribute to the commissioner's dual role as baseball executive and Milwaukee-area auto dealer. "Bud brings a kosher hot dog from home for lunch every day," said Mel Warner, a reporter for Condiments Today, a trade journal that covers Major League Baseball's ketchup, mustard and relish dispensers. "He wouldn't know a nitrate if he fell over it."
WASHINGTON. As she watched her husband's defiant testimony before Congress yesterday, Debbie Clemens could only shake her head in sadness over how far she has fallen. "I stand by Roger 110%," she said with tears forming in her eyes. "I only wish that--like him--I could have just said no."
Debbie Clemens
While her husband continues to deny that he used performance-enhancing drugs during a career in which he won seven Cy Young Awards, more than Cy Young himself, Debbie Clemens has admitted that she used human growth hormone before a Sports Illustrated photo shoot, enabling her to appear more buxom than Yankees' second baseman Chuck Knoblauch. "It was wrong, and I apologize," she said, "especially to all those little girls out there who are just strapping on their first training bras."
In happier times.
In her prime, Debbie Clemens was considered one of the greatest housewives in baseball history, chauffering her four children to school and youth sports events while maintaining a rigorous workout schedule, spending up to 35 minutes on exercise machines unless other people were waiting. She holds the modern-day record for consecutive children named after strikeouts--Koby, Kory, Kacy and Kody. In the pre-modern era, Lucy Yemm, wife of Bill "Five Finger" Yemm of the Cleveland Spiders, gave birth to Kevin, Karen, Kelly, Kyle and Kenneth.
"C'mon--you're hogging the Stairmaster!"
Clemens' confession was met less with surprise than relief by her circle of friends on Boston's North Shore, where the Clemens lived when Roger played for the Red Sox. "We'd go out for Mexican food," said Alice Sheehan, a neighbor. "The next day everybody'd be puffy but Debbie--you don't recover from a pitcher of margaritas like that unless you're on something."
"We lost your kid, so we're going to give you a FREE PIZZA!"
Clemens was sentenced to a year's probation and 200 hours of community service, which she will satisfy by working at the gift counter at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in a Houston suburb.
COLUMBUS, Ohio. Twelve year-old Robbie Bennett has been a star for every baseball team he's ever been on, from T-ball to "Dad Pitch" to Little League. A pitcher, Robbie's walls are plastered with posters of Roger Clemens in the uniforms of the four major league clubs the seven-time Cy Young Award winner has played for. "He was my hero," Robbie sniffles. "Now I think he's a stupid Froot Loop," he says as he throws himself on his bed and sobs into his pillow.
Roger Clemens
The reason for Robbie's tears is the revelation by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell that Clemens received shots of anabolic steroids in the buttocks to maintain his overpowering physique and become perhaps the greatest starting pitcher in baseball history.
"I thought I could stay fat like Clemens just by eating Twinkies and French fries," Robbie says when he is asked why he's crying. "Now I find out I have to get shots in the butt."
Eric Gagne
For young Timmy Merlino, the announcement that his idol Eric Gagne had signed with the Milwaukee Brewers was the best news he'd heard in a long time. "He was the first autograph I ever got," Timmy says as he looks down at a plastic-wrapped baseball card of Gagne while with the Dodgers that bears the fireballing right-hander's signature.
But that trophy is tarnished now that it has been revealed Gagne took human growth hormone. "It appears," said Mitchell at yesterday's press conference, "that Eric Gagne's record-breaking string of blown saves in the summer of 2007 was fueled by illegal drugs."
George Mitchell
Young fans are baseball's future, and major league executives expressed fear that yesterday's revelations could depress attendance for years to come. "Once kids hear about the drugs, they'll want to stay home and smoke dope instead of coming out to the games," predicted Bob Hohler, Director of Baseball Operations for the Houston Astros. "Unless they're Cubs fans, in which case they'll come out to the park and get high."
Greater than any economic effect is the loss of innocence, as children begin to see players such as Josias Manzanillo, Kent Mercker and Steve Woodward, all former members of the Boston Red Sox, as something less than the immortals they were considered in their playing days. "You mean to tell me," says Bobby Hammond of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, "that I could take performance-enhancing drugs for years and still suck?"
MILWAUKEE. A crowd of angry male fans descended on Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig's car dealership here yesterday to protest the so-called "Francona Rule", named after Boston Red Sox manager Terry Francona, which will prohibit managers from wearing pullover tops during games beginning with the 2008 season.
"Thanks, my wife likes my pajamas too."
"It's a slippery slope," said Milwaukee Brewers fan Rod Larkin. "Next time they'll come after fans in the park, then guys watching at home. Is this America or Iran?"
It could happen.
The rule was announced by Bob Watson, vice president of rules and on-field operations for Major League Baseball. "You can only wear your uniform top or jacket," Watson explained. "You can’t wear your nightshirt, or whatever it is. If we let guys get away with this, pretty soon Tony LaRussa will start showing up in Cardinal Slip-On Sneaker Slippers."
Selig: "Hey, I get dressed up to come to work every day--why can't Francona?"
A 2004 survey revealed that a majority of American males watch baseball in t-shirts and undershorts until the post-season, at which point they switch to sweatshirts and undershorts. Most major league ball parks do not impose a dress code on male fans unless they enter the playing field, in which case they are required to wear undershorts.
A violation of the small print on the back of your ticket.
Protestors called the new rule a breach of baseball's covenant with American males. "If I wanted to get dressed up when there's a game on," said Lon Turkel, a Chicago White Sox fan, "I'd take my wife out to dinner, and that sure as hell ain't gonna happen."
MUNCIE, Indiana. A debate among Democratic presidential candidates that had become a snoozefest erupted into some of the testiest exchanges of the campaign season when host Chris Matthews asked each of the contenders if they would appoint Supreme Court Justices who recognize a constitutional right to watch the World Series.
Clinton: "There is no constitutional right to watch the World Series--none."
"If I am elected president, I will nominate strict constructionists who will not recognize a right to watch the World Series," said Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), "and I would go further and say there's no right to watch the League Championship Series or the Division Championship Series."
Obama: "So once the Cubs are eliminated, I have to stop watching?"
"That's such a glaring example of the politics of the past," Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.)replied eloquently. "Every man has an inalienable right to watch the World Series, even if he roots for the Chicago Cubs, who never make it."
Jack Nicholson
A constitutional right to watch the World Series was first suggested in the film version of the Ken Kesey novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nurse", in which Jack Nicholson, playing the role of Randle Patrick McMurphy, ignores a prohibition laid down by Nurse Ratched, played by Louise Fletcher, and insists on watching the World Series.
"Counselor, are you saying I would be prohibited from watching a winner-take-all seventh game?
The right has not subsequently been recognized by federal courts, although it has been defended by law school professors with too much time on their hands and cited without authority by husbands across the country once their home team is eliminated. "Our forefathers fought and died for the right to watch baseball," asserted Ray Duncan of Florissant, Missouri. "Yes the Cardinals aren't going to repeat, but does that mean I have to watch a disease-of-the-week movie on Lifetime?"
Ruth Bader Ginsburg: "I was hoping we could watch some ice skating for a change."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only female justice since the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor, has spoken critically of a right to watch the World Series in speeches to professional groups. "Republican appointees on the Court who claim to be strict constructionists suddenly get all loosey-goosey when it's about baseball," she said in a commencement address at the Judge Wapner School of Law in Burbank, California, last spring. "Whenever I want to watch ice skating they take the remote away from me."
MILWAUKEE. Major league baseball commissioner Bud Selig today announced a bold plan to revitalize ailing teams by converting them into "fantasy" franchises, thereby avoiding big payroll costs for weaker clubs.
Selig Pontiac-GMC
"We looked at the numbers and the fastest growing segment of our business is the fantasy leagues," Selig said from behind a metal desk at his car dealership. "Frankly, virtual baseball is a helluva lot more exciting than a September game between the Marlins and the Astros."
Bud Selig: "You know, Kansas City is no Milwaukee."
Under the plan, the Kansas City Royals and Tampa Bay Devil Rays would be the first underperforming franchises targeted for fantasy status. Each team's players would be released, and the league would track their stats at the Japanese, semipro, and company softball teams that picked them up. Fans would vote "American Idol"-style to select the teams' lineups going forward.
Milwaukee, the Venice of Wisconsin
"I don't see the Royals surviving in the real world," Selig said, his gaze wandering to a Pizza Hut on the horizon as he contemplated the future of the national pastime. "Kansas City isn't a world-class destination like Milwaukee."
"Mighty fine lookin' heifer."
"People think the Royals are named after kings or something, " he continued, "but it's actually just a livestock show--the American Royal. Last year they had 2,167 head of cattle, 583 hogs, 636 lambs and 156 goats at the damn thing," Selig said, a contemptuous smile forming across his lips. "Try to get the networks to cover a game in a city where Joe Buck has to breathe the smell of three thousand barnyard animals across town. It ain't gonna happen."
Prize-winning goat.
Evan Milken, a Tampa resident who admitted that he had once attended a Devil Rays' game, expressed surprise at the announcement. "That was major league baseball I was watching?" he asked. "Coulda fooled me."
CARACAS, Venezuela. President Hugo Chavez today threatened the United States with an embargo on the export of shortstops until Venezuelan native David Concepcion, a five-time Gold Glove winner for the Cincinnati Reds' "Big Red Machine" teams of the 1970's, is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
"The big medal is for Most Improved Right Fielder."
"Venezuela produces the world's most beautiful women and the best shortstops," Chavez said to a cheering crowd at the presidential palace in Caracas. "Let the Yanqui oppressors try to get by with their little David Ecksteins and Freddie Pateks."
Freddie Patek, world's shortest shortstop
On Monday Chavez took out a full-page ad in USA Today touting Concepcion's Hall of Fame candidacy and praising other Venezuelan shortstops such as Luis Aparicio and Miquel Cabrera. The socialist dictator has become increasingly eccentric over the past few years, calling for an end to presidential term limits and ordering the nation's clocks to be moved forward by a half hour. "He kept missing the Web Gems segment on SportsCenter," said Marvin Schaeffer, who covers Latin America for The New York Post.
Dave Concepcion
In addition to shortstops, Venezuela is a major exporter of petroleum, which is marketed in the United States under the "Citgo" brand. The company is perhaps best known in America for the sign in Boston's Kenmore Square that is visible to spectators in Fenway Park.
The Citgo Sign
Conspiracy theorists have speculated that Chavez uses the sign to disrupt the play of non-Venezuelan infielders such as former Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra and current Boston second baseman Dustin Pedroia, who has developed "Garciaparra Syndrome", a disorder characterized by obsessive fiddling with batting gloves. Chavez has issued perfunctory denials of that charge, citing the writings of left-wing linguist Noam Chomsky as evidence that America is to blame for world poverty, teenage acne and Johnny Pesky's failure to throw out Enos Slaughter in the 1946 World Series.
"You think I'm wacked--read some Noam Chomsky."
Democratic Senator John Kerry issued a statement deploring the Bush administration's failure to maintain sufficient reserves to see America through a shortstop shortage, saying "When I was a boy growing up watching Eddie Yost play shortstop for the Red Sox, whom among us would have thought that America would ever lose its position as the birthplace of the world's greatest 'hot corner' men?"
Eddie Yost
In the 2004 presidential race Kerry identified Yost, who played for the Washington Senators, the Detroit Tigers and the Los Angeles Angels, as his favorite Red Sox player.
NEEDHAM, Mass. In this quiet suburban town west of Boston, fathers bring their kids to Great Plain Avenue on Saturday mornings to buy, sell and trade baseball cards at two competing dealers situated across the street from each other. "It's great fun for my boys, and it brings back memories for me," says Jim Wolfson, a mutual fund accountant.
Needham Town Hall
Beneath the surface of those innocent transactions federal regulators see a serious threat to the American economy, however, one that could cause the bull market of the past few years to come to a crashing halt if the prices of basic commodities such as sports memorabilia were to fall. "You have small, loosely-regulated card shops piling on debt in complex derivative transactions," says Timothy Schwermer, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Baltimore. "It wouldn't take much--a career-ending injury to Ken Griffey, Jr. or Barry Bonds going to jail--for the whole market to collapse."
The use of leverage enables small, suburban card dealers to dramatically increase their gains from seemingly mundane transactions. "I had a kid come in here last weekend who wanted to dump all his Nomar Garciaparra stuff," says Paul ####, owner of Needham Sports Cards, "everything from a rookie card to footie pajamas." With the help of a Boston investment bank, #### was able to borrow $125 on just $10 worth of collateral--a Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd bobble-head doll--to complete the purchase.
"Oil Can" Boyd: "Why'd he call me a bobble-head?"
Omaha billionaire Warren Buffett explains that, if the value of either Garciaparra or Boyd as a long-term play drops, #### will face a "margin call" in which he will be required either to sell the Garciaparra holdings, causing the value of his purchase to drop further as supply increases, or post additional collateral. "I'm tempted to explain the concept by making a joke using Mr. Boyd's nickname," Buffett warned, "but this is a serious topic and I'm essentially a humorless man."
"Bud Selig gave this to me."
Mr. Wolfson, the accountant, says he is protecting his boys' investment through a complex series of hedging transactions that will offset any decrease in the value of their holdings by a forward purchase of Eurodollars, Texas light crude oil and Star Wars-themed Colgate toothpaste tubes.
"In any period when you have deflation of asset values," he notes, "there's always a flight to quality."
With the news that Santhi Soudarajan will be stripped of the silver medal he or she won in the women's 800 meter race in this month's Asian games, other sports are taking a closer look at the alleged gender of competitors.
Santhi Soudarajan: A real tomboy.
"It is our policy to separate the boys from the girls, but I have never liked the whole 'drop-your-pants-and-show-me-what-you-got' system," said NCAA president Myles Brand. "It's disgusting."
So the International Olympic Committee has developed a helpful questionnaire to assist coaches in separating the bulls from the heifers on the first day of practice. Sample questions from the North American version of the test include the following:
1. You are forced to miss your child's hockey game because of a business meeting. Your cell phone goes off in the meeting and you see that it is your spouse calling. Your first question when you answer is:
(a) Is everything all right?
(b) What's the score?
"Drop the puck!"
2. The slipcover on your den couch is starting to fray. Your reaction is:
(a) Chintz!
(b) It looks okay to me.
"I wouldn't feel comfortable farting on something like that."
3. For a Super Bowl party, your menu includes:
Artichoke dip: Bleeh.
(a) Artichoke dip and brie melted over Granny Smith green apples.
(b) Beer, Doritos, honey-roasted peanuts, beer and taco chips.
4. Your fondest memory of your sister/sister-in-law's wedding day in 1993 is:
(a) The fun you had with the other bridesmaids!
Bridesmaids.
(b) BC beats Notre Dame, 41-39!
No longer bridesmaids.
5. The date is October 27, 2004. Your two sons have important exams in school the next day. The Boston Red Sox are on the brink of winning their first World Series in 86 years. You tell the kids:
(a) Go to bed--you need a good night's rest.
(b) Professional educators believe that a child's academic progress should be supplemented whenever possible by family discussions of current events and their historical significance.
If you answered (b) to four or more questions, you are ineligible to participate in the women's 800 meter event.
ST. LOUIS, Missouri. Detroit pitcher Kenny Rogers, the oldest starting pitcher to win his first career postseason game but also the most immature, agreed with MLB commissioner Bud Selig to undergo a full body cavity search before taking the mound in game five of the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals.
"C'mon--I double-dog-dare you!"
"Fine," said Rogers, "but I'm not cleaning up my locker."
Rogers was accused of using a foreign substance to "doctor" a baseball in the Tigers' win over the Cardinals in game two, but Selig said results of tests were inconclusive. "It may have been foreign to you, but it was native to Kenny."
Selig: "It was gross."
Rogers has had discipline problems in the past, attacking two photographers before a 2005 game against the Los Angeles Angels. Criminal assault charges against him were reduced when he agreed to complete an anger management course and had one of the photographers' heads mounted for display in his den.
"I did not pick my nose, you doofus!"
"I admit I had something on my hand," said Rogers as he pushed a reporter and an elderly woman seeking an autograph for her terminally-ill grandson to the ground. "I'm not going to tell you where it came from."
Bill Gluck, current president of the Society for American Baseball Research or "SABRE", said that the application of slippery or sticky substances to baseballs by pitchers is a common occurrence, and was in fact legal during the 19th century. "Guys like Joe 'Milk Train' Evans of the Cleveland Blue Sox would apply earwax, snot, or even toe jam to make a pitch dip precipitously as it approached the plate."
"Milk Train" Evans: Pioneer in use of goopy crud.
Rogers' battery mate Ivan Rodriguez, the first Hispanic-Russian-American catcher to play in the World Series, denied that Rogers used #### or gradu. "It was a form of phlegm, but it wasn't a booger," he said. "I don't want to get into specifics, but when Kenny pitches I don't need to use pine tar."
Rodriguez: "With Kenny pitching, I don't need pine tar!"
Rogers' history of aggressive behavior towards the media was cited by Baseball Tonight writer Mike Olson as the reason reporters were reluctant to press him on the issue of the mysterious brown spot on his hand in game two. "One time I asked him how he was feeling, and he said my wife wears her underwear for two days in a row, which is not true," said Olson. "Another time I asked him what time it was, and he threatened to come to my house and kill my gecko."
"He's like foaming at the mouth, yelling 'You want a piece of me?'"
Whatever Rogers used, it worked, as he extended his post-season scoreless pitching string to twenty-four and a third innings, and increased his league-leading Reporter Punch-Out Average to 2.41 per game.
There is, in this great land of ours, a cadre of fanatical extremists who move among us undetected, like a virus poised to attack when our resistance is low.
They survive on dried fruit and energy bars, like yuppie Bedouins. They move like gypsies from one location to the next, working in different locales in the morning, at noontime and at night, to avoid retribution. Like nomadic rug weavers, they carry the tools of their trade—water bottles and CD's with uptempo music—on their backs.
They are sadists, meting out punishment to the weak as if it were the divine command of a vengeful God.
As Bullwinkle the Moose once said, they are a cordon of nefarious henchmen—and women.
I am, of course, speaking (actually, writing) about America's spinning instructors.
For those unfamiliar with this form of exercise, "spinning" involves cycling on a stationary bike with adjustable tension, usually in a studio equipped with loudspeakers and fans. Groups of paunchy men and women who seek to lose a few pounds pump their legs in time to music as they obey commands barked at them by lithe, unforgiving and generally younger instructors--"out of the saddle!"—"ten-minute climb!"—"faster!"
Columnist George Will, a Chicago Cubs fan, once wrote that if America were ever taken over by a foreign power, its leaders would do well to recruit prison guards from the fan base of the St. Louis Cardinals, who stand in relation to the Cubbies as the former Soviet Union did to Estonia; an overwhelming adversary that keeps its lesser opponent crushed beneath the heels of a pair of sharpened baseball cleats.
Spinning instructors form an even richer selection pool; they're youthful, ready to roll at a moment's notice and, unlike Cardinals fans, favor bottled water over from malt beverages
Like those agents of cruel dictatorships who glad-hand their way to their seats at the United Nations, spinning instructors claim to have only our best interests at heart. Better cardio-vascular condition, improved muscle tone, the healthy glow and positive attitude that strenuous activity produces—these, they say, are our only goals.
To which I say—bull.
My rogue's gallery of spinning sadists includes the following Axels of Evil:
The Talker: You've pedaled through 25 minutes of a half-hour session, waiting for him to play music that falls upon your ears less heavily than a hammer. A song you actually like issues from the speakers—say Van Morrison's "Moondance". "You should be at about 75% tension, seated climb," he says, then continues. "So anyway, last night my roommate called me at like midnight and says 'Dude—I'm down here at the Laundromat and I'm out of quarters." The shaggy-dog story unfolds over Morrison's poetry—"You know the night's magic—seems to whisper and hush." Which would you rather hear?
The Tastemaker: She knows what kind of music she likes, and thinks you should too! "Here's something for the guys—Twisted Sister!" I alphabetized my jazz collection last night, from Adderley, Cannonball to Zawinul, Joe—no Twisted Sister that I can recall.
The Sing-Along Guy: If he were really Rod Stewart, he wouldn't be a spinning instructor, now would he?
The Show-Off: It's not about you--it's about her! She can pedal faster! She can climb longer! She's out of her seat, back in the saddle, up again, down again, et cetera! You get the sense that she was homecomingqueenheadcheerleaderclasspresiden####a>mp;batontwirler in high school.
The Twister: He comes by your bike, checks your stroke, puts his hands on your tension knob and cranks it one, two, three times to the right. Where before you were gliding across Indiana on a smooth, flat highway, you are now straining like a turtle in a warehouse club-sized tub of peanut butter.
Don't get me wrong—spinning is great exercise, and unlike real-world cycling, you are unlikely to get hit by a beer truck as long as you can't pedal your stationary bike outside the studio.
GREEN RIDGE, Mo. Eunice Holcomb has long been a valued employee at the Swift Poultry Processing plant in this idyllic town in central Missouri that features a horseshoe pit on the town square and not one, but two full-time village idiots. "I have been employee of the month at least twice and sometimes three times every year going back to 1989," she says proudly.
Come August of 2008 she hopes to be something else—an Olympic Gold Medal winner—as chicken sexing was today approved by the International Olympic Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing, China.
"That is something I've always dreamed of," she says as she swings back and forth in the glider on her front porch and looks out on dusty State Road HH that runs alongside her family's sorghum fields. "Other little girls wanted to be princesses or baton twirlers, but not me."
Eunice is a "chicken sexer" and is trained to distinguish between male and female chicken hatchlings when they are young so that her employer can place them on the correct feeding program; males (roosters) are fattened for sale as meat while females (hens) are fed a diet that maximizes their egg-laying capacity.
The People's Republic of China has produced some of the world's greatest chicken sexers including Meng Xuenong, Ye Jianying, and Wu De, often referred to as the "Ed Ott of Chinese Chicken Sexing" because his name has one fewer letter than that of the catcher for the 1979 "We-Are-Fam-i-ly!" World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates. "When I saw Ott score on Manny Sanguillen's pinch-hit in the Game 2 win over the Baltimore Orioles, it inspired me to greatness, even though my family had only four letters to give me after my older brothers and sisters had been provided for," Wu said.
There are two types of chicken sexing; "feather" sexing of chicks whose sexual characteristics are manifested by differences in their feathers, and the more difficult "vent" sexing in which competitors must identify chicks' sexual organs from one of fifteen basic external physiological patterns.
"People who say chicken sexing isn't a sport—I tell them to go figure skating, or maybe curling," said Lamar Gene Holcomb, Eunice's husband, who is hoping for a six-figure endorsement deal if his wife receives a medal in Beijing. "She'd look good on a Wheaties box," he says with pride, "if they make one big enough."
Eunice has two years of training ahead of her, including a Spartan regimen under which she will abstain from sex for the last six months leading up to the games. Will that be difficult, a reporter asks her. "I don't think so," she says with a straight face. "I look at genitals eight hours every day and that's the last thing on my mind when I get home."
