As a guy who is used to seeing everything he touches turn to gold, or at least to wins and strikeouts, Roger Clemens must be a bit mystified by the prospect of a formerly adoring public looking at him with skepticism and scorn despite his assurances both in public and under oath that he never used performance enhancing drugs.
The latest door to begin swinging shut in Roger's face is Drayton McLane's. The Houston Astros owner, with whom Clemens signed a ten-year personal services contract effective upon his retirement, sounds suddenly like a man wondering what, exactly, he can now expect for his money.
As recently as February 17, in an interview published on the Astros website, McLane was effusive in his praise for the Rocket, stressing that Clemens was still welcome in Houston's spring camp regardless of what else was going on in his world.
Among other things, McLane said "I've given him my encouragement...he knows we care about him. He's done a lot of good things for us. We wouldn't have had some of the successes we've had if Roger Clemens hadn't been an Astro for three years."
Now, however, the Rocket has been in camp with the Astros for just three days, and the team's owner seems to be changing his tune. Acknowledging that Clemens's presence has created a circus atmosphere with all the national media attention following his every move, McLane stated in an interview published February 29 in the Houston Chronicle that he intended to sit down with Astros upper management and determine what, exactly, Clemens's role should be, if any.
McLane says that the personal services contract is not in effect, since Clemens has not officially announced his retirement (again), but didn't sound like a man anxious to explore all the possibilities Clemens could bring to the table. "I'm not aware of what all is in the contract. We'll have to wait and see. He's certainly not getting paid."
McLane did eventually say that he fully intended to honor the contract, calling it the "honorable and correct thing to do," and saying, "There's an agreement we'll pay him for the ten years."
For the record, the agreed-upon amount of the contract is $3 million total for the ten years, or roughly the amount McLane probably spends on jet fuel for the G5, so there's not much doubt that honoring the contract will not break the bank of one of the richest men in America - after all, according to Forbes Magazine, McLane's net worth is well over one billion dollars. That's right, that's billion with a "B."
Heck, McLane could probably pull up his couch cushions and more than $3 million would fall out.
But unless the Rocket's fortunes change drastically, and fast, he very well may find he is earning his money by sitting at home out of sight rather than by being the public face of the Houston Astros. That's assuming, of course, he is not sitting in jail because, as Abraham Lincoln once so astutely observed, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all of the time."
Half-Baked Ravings has uncovered an internal United States Navy memorandum, classified "Top Secret," which lays out in detail the steps the military is planning to take to ensure a crippled satellite which will fall to Earth in late-February or early-March will not land in a populated area.
The object, a spy satellite identified as US193, launched in December, 2006, has been hurtling in an uncontrolled orbit around the earth since shortly after takeoff, when its' computer guidance system failed and its' rocket engine shut down. The 5000 pound satellite, said to be roughly the size of a school bus, is reportedly dropping slowly but steadily toward Earth with a fuel tank filled nearly to the brim with frozen hydrazine, a potentially lethal rocket fuel.
A source familiar with the never-before attempted operation agreed to speak to Half-Baked Ravings under condition of anonymity. Here is a portion of that conversation:
HBR: This satellite represents a health risk to humans if it should crash in a densely populated area?
Source: Absolutely. Anyone within a twenty to thirty yard radius of the fuel tank could be at risk of death if the tank should rupture and the hydrazine fuel leak out.
HBR: What then is the plan to neutralize the risk?
Source: The Navy will fire The Rocket at the satellite shortly before it reenters Earth's atmosphere, that being the time-frame offering the greatest chance of actually hitting and destroying it.
HBR: A rocket will be able to hit an object the size of a school bus outside our atmosphere? Isn't that asking a lot of a rocket?
Source: I didn't say a rocket, I said The Rocket.
HBR: I'm sorry, I'm just a civilian, apparently I don't understand these military terms. What's the difference?
Source (exasperated): What's not to understand? The Navy will shoot an SM-3 Missile at this giant piece of space junk, the lunar equivalent of the Jolly Green Giant's paperweight, and The Rocket will steer it hopefully to a direct hit, thereby destroying the fuel tank of the satellite before it can crash into the earth and kill people. Duh.
HBR: Uh, okay. The Rocket will steer the Missile. Um, you don't mean....
Source: Yes, yes, do I have to spell it out for you? Roger Clemens will steer the Missile on this extremely important mission for us.
HBR: Roger Clemens? Why would he do that?
Source: Why, to get the U.S. Government off his back, of course. He scratches our back, we scratch his.
HBR: That's quite a lot of scratching to ask of someone. He agreed to do it?
Source: Of course he agreed, we knew he would. Why do you think the government goes after people? You think we give a damn what big, fat blowhard athletes put into their bodies? Of course not. Our first choice was to make Barry Bonds do it, but his head wouldn't fit into the capsule, so we had to go to Plan B.
HBR: Plan B being....
Source: Exactly. The Rocket.
HBR: Hmmm. Hey, wait a minute. Is that why Senator Specter is investigating Bill Belichick?
Source (smiling): You catch on quickly, young man. We thought about forcing Belichick to fly this mission, but we decided we would make him film it instead. You know, for posterity.
HBR: That's diabolical.
Source: Exactly. Say, you're pretty quick on the uptake, we could always use a guy like you here in the Secret Operations Department.
HBR: Whoa, no thanks, I'm happy just blogging, thanks anyway.
Source: Is that so? We'll just see about that, my boy.
HBR (nervously): Uh, well then, I guess that wraps things up from here. Thanks for your cooperation, and goodbye.
Source: Goodbye sounds so permanent. How about "see you later?" Like after we're done examining your tax returns for the last 25 years? Are you quite sure there are no, shall we say, improprieties on them? Heh-heh-heh.
At this point the tape becomes unintelligible, with the sound of running footsteps and what sounds like the Lord's Prayer being mumbled by the correspondent in the background. Fortunately, the substantive part of the tape survived intact, allowing the true story of how the United States government plans to destroy the rogue satellite to be told for the first time.
This is Half-Baked Ravings saying goodnight and see you next time. Unless, of course, those funky deductions I took back in 1997 come back to haunt me, in which case it's been nice knowing you.
Continuing in his well-established pattern of searching out the biggest steaming pile of cow dung in the field and then jumping on it with both feet, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig Tuesday defended baseball's drug testing program and insisted the sport was fully capable of running it rather than turning it over to an independent third party.
Taken on its own, the statement might actually be true, but coming as it did against the backdrop of the showdown between Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee in front of the United States Congress, Selig's words seem hollow and, at best, ill-timed.
While it is true that there was no established testing program in place during the period of time Clemens either did or did not get injected with steroids and HGH (1998-2001), depending upon who you believe in the soap opera-like story, the very fact that baseball's dirtiest laundry is being put on display in front of a disgusted nation; being used by politicians to score public relations points with their constituents, is enough to make one wonder whether Selig has even been paying attention to the scandal as it has unfolded.
According to the Mitchell Report, the document produced after an investigation begun at the behest of Selig himself, baseball's testing program needs to increase its level of "independence and transparency." What better way to accomplish that than to turn the whole thing over to a truly independent testing organization, as was suggested by World Anti-Doping Agency president John Fahey back in January.
Selig's stance is that the testing is accomplished at a WADA-certified lab, so there is already a level of independence. The fact is, though, that the program as currently structured is run by a joint management-player committee, with an administrator running the day-to-day operation who can be removed at any time by either side for any reason.
Maybe Mr. Selig is using a different dictionary than the one I found on line, but according to Dictionary.com, independence is a "freedom from the control, influence, support, aid, or the like, of others." Is a program run by the players and management of MLB, two parties who each have a significant stake in no drug violations being discovered, really free of control or influence?
This isn't a sexy subject, and maybe under normal circumstances it wouldn't matter, but the sport is suffering it's biggest and most embarrassing black eye since the Black Sox scandal nearly one hundred years ago. Selig claims baseball will survive, and undoubtedly it will, but is mere survival enough? The commissioner seems to thumb his nose at the fans, arrogantly stating, "Look, we've broken attendance records for four straight years...with this situation going on, and we'll break one for a fifth year."
Speaking of breaking records, commissioner, the career home run record, one of the most revered of all sports records, was broken last summer by a man under su####ion of illegal abuse of performance enhancing drugs, and a man many believe to be one of the best pitchers of modern times was on Capitol Hill taking his lumps yesterday for the same reason. Those are the records real baseball fans care about, commissioner.
If nothing else, releasing a strongly worded public statement supporting a true independent testing program would assure fans you are serious about cleaning up baseball and ensuring that the competition on the field is fair. It would put the pressure of public opinion on the players union to show they want the same thing. And it would give you someone to point the finger at if there are any future problems.
There isn't a carpet big enough to sweep this issue under anymore, commissioner, in case you hadn't noticed. Grow a spine and do something for the good of the game, Mr. Selig, please.
This Roger Clemens-Brian McNamee saga is not the most uplifting and inspiring story of the year thus far, but it might just be the strangest. It now appears McNamee and his lawyers may have painted Roger Clemens and his Dream Team of legal representation into a corner from which even David Copperfield couldn't escape.
If you've been following the story, you know that McNamee, under threat of prosecution, dropped a dime on Clemens, naming the Rocket as one of the players he injected with steroids and Human Growth Hormone back in the late 1990's and early 2000's.
Clemens's response has been to vigorously deny McNamee's charges, saying the former personal trainer did inject him, but only with lidocaine and vitamin B-12, even going so far as to speak with congressional investigators for over five hours two days ago, after which he praised the team of congressional staffers and lawyers as being "very courteous."
Now, however, McNamee has trumped Clemens again, as the bombshell has surfaced that he has turned over to authorities used syringes and bloody gauze which, he claims, are left over from the actual process of injecting Roger Clemens with, presumably, the substances he has claimed all along he used, namely, steroids and HGH.
Are you like me? Does this story make you want to hold your nose as you're reading it and run for the shower when you're finished? It seems clear that McNamee is telling the truth here, considering he is under threat of immediate and substantial jail time if he lies to investigators, and producing samples which he claims contain Clemens's DNA is a ticket straight to the slammer if the samples are tested and turn out not to match the Rocket's DNA.
But leaving aside, for the moment, the fact that McNamee seems to have employed a brilliant legal strategy, can we focus on the man himself? What kind of person surrounds himself with the detritus of years-old illicit activity, specifically stuff involving what the medical field considers biohazardous material?
Can you picture Brian McNamee in his den, door shut and locked, surrounded by dozens of "samples," each securely bagged and tagged with the name of a professional athlete, complete with the date of the rendezvous from which it was taken? This makes McNamee seem less like the middle man, doing what rich and arrogant professional athletes demand of him, than a scheming secondary character out of a Vincent Price B-movie from the 1950's, chuckling evilly and rubbing his hands in anticipation of the big payday he's going to score from these men who seemingly have it all.
Because think about it: Brian McNamee saved medical waste for nearly a decade, perhaps even longer if you believe, as I do, that Cemens wasn't the only player he bagged and tagged. Back in the late 1990's and continuing into the new millennium, athletes were happily juicing, nobody the least bit concerned about "getting caught." With that being the case, why would McNamee save this disgusting material?
Could it really be that he was concerned about Roger Clemens lying if the entire sad, pathetic circus were exposed? Or is it at least a little bit possible that these syringes and bloody pieces of gauze were tickets to a pile of cash for McNamee, weapons he could use if and when he decided to blackmail the Rocket and who knows how many other players? "Send me X dollars a year, and you're reputation will be safe. This evidence will stay safely under lock and key."
Unbelievable? Sure. Unlikely? Definitely. But can you say for sure that it's not the case? Is there one single thing about this entire story that smells like anything other than sour milk and rotten eggs?
I don't know about you, but I can't wait for spring training to start so I can start getting the nasty taste of this story out of my mouth.
There's a new movie out, called The Bucket List, and it stars one of my favorite actors, Morgan Freeman. He's been in like a hundred movies and was believable in his role in every one of them as far as I'm concerned, or at least every one that I've seen.
Jack Nicholson is the other star, or maybe I should say the star, since I suppose Nicholson would take top billing over Freeman, but him I'm not so sure about. His trademark smirk got old for me a couple of decades ago, or shortly after Chinatown came out. Whenever I see Jack Nicholson now, all I can think of is Frank Caliendo and how it seems Caliendo does a better Nicholson than Nicholson does.
Anyhow, the premise of The Bucket List, or so I'm told, is that Freeman and Nicholson are two old geezers (Completely believable so far) who find out they only have a year to live, and as a result embark on lots of different adventures in an attempt to do all the things they want to accomplish before kicking the bucket, hence the "Bucket List" of the film's title.
I haven't seen the movie and probably won't, but I thought the premise was interesting. As a guy rapidly approaching geezerhood myself, it made me think about what sort of Bucket List I would want to make. Since I don't have Nicholson's money, or Freeman's for that matter, exotic stuff like climbing Mount Everest or going big-game hunting in Africa would seem to be out of the question. Plus, those things are in direct opposition to my theory of life, which is this: Sitting on the couch isn't so bad.
Ultimately I decided instead of posting a Bucket List that nobody would want to read about, filled with stuff like seeing my kids get married and my granddaughter grow up (You know, the usual old ####-ish stuff people dream about just before they schedule the appointment for their inevitable artificial hip surgery), I would be satisfied if just once I could pick up the newspaper (for all of you under thirty, that's the paper thing trees used to die for to provide us with news in the days before you could sit down in front of a little monitor and type in what you wanted to see on a little keyboard and have it appear like magic in front of you) and not see any of the following terms in the sports section:
"Grand jury testimony," "Possible drug overdose," "Weapons charges," "Strip club melee," "Search and seizure," "Performance enhancing drugs," "Paternity suit," "Temporary injunction," "Illegal drugs," "Illicit telephone recording," "Mitchell Report," "Uncomfirmed reports," "Sources say," "Unfair competitive advantage," "Cheater," "Congressional testimony."
"Improper booster club payments," "Six month prison term," "Lying to investigators," "Federal investigations," "Whoops!" "The cream and the clear," "BALCO," "Bail violations," "Mandatory prison time," "Plea bargain," "Bud Selig," "Drug testing," "Throwing matches," "Suspension without pay," "Suspension with pay," "Illegal suspension," "Misdemeanor assault and battery."
"Jessica Simpson," "BCS," "Improper benefits," "Denied any wrongdoing," "Secretly recorded conversations," "Held without bail," "Breach of contract," "Improper recruiting practices," "Broken promises," "Sexual harassment," "Isiah Thomas," "Felony charges," "Banned stimulants," "Drug suspension," "Bobby Petrino," "Guilty plea," "Not-guilty plea."
"Outstanding warrant," "Su####ion of criminal mischief," "Kelly Tilghman," "Under the table payments," "Denied any wrongdoing," "Misquoted," "Coaching carousel," "Pending investigation," "Swirling rumors," "Unidentified sources," "Gag order," "First degree felony murder," "Under the influence," "Held without bail."
Are you a soap opera fan? There's a new one on the air now, maybe you've caught an episode or two. This one has all the usual plot twists you expect out of your favorite daytime tear-jerker. Love, loss, money, family, betrayal, sick kids, illicitly taped telephone conversations, lawyers, accusations, denials. And that's just the first week's episodes. Can't wait to see what the soap opera writers will think up next!
What a sad, bizarre end to what was up until very recently sure to be a first-ballot Hall of Fame career for Roger Clemens. 24 years in the big leagues, 354 wins, nearly 5000 innings pitched, 4672 strikeouts, career 3.12 ERA, 7 Cy Young Awards, 11 All-Star Game selections, and on and on and on.
Numbers out of some sort of wacked-out video game career. Numbers you may well never see again in an era of 5-man pitching rotations, disabled list stays for minor injuries, the tendency of most managers to yank starters after seven and even six or sometimes five innings based on pitch count rather than results.
Fifteen times in his career Clemens pitched over 200 innings, considered the standard by which "workhorse" pitchers are judged. Nineteen times he reached double-figures in wins, including six seasons of twenty wins or more.
Unbelievable numbers. Incredible numbers. Hall of Fame numbers. Until a guy nobody ever heard of until the Mitchell Report came out, Brian McNamee, dropped a dime on Roger's name and gave federal investigators specifics of how he injected Clemens with steroids and HGH in the late 1990's early 2000's.
Inevitably, Clemens issued vehement denials, both through his lawyers and personally. McNamee's side reiterated the charges. Clemens called McNamee, purportedly to clear the air, and then recorded the conversation, without telling McNamee, of course; a legal tactic in Texas but morally questionable.
Was this the tactic of a man desperately trying to clear his name? Maybe, but if that was the case, why did Clemens not come out and say something straightforward and direct during the call to McNamee, like, "Brian, you know you never injected steroids into me, why did you say you did?"
Instead, Roger made vanilla statements worth nothing, like "Tell the truth." According to his lawyers, he was concerned about being accused of obstructing an ongoing investigation, but what's the point of recording a telephone conversation if you're not at least going to come away with conclusive proof the other party is lying?
Now, of course, McNamee's side says the gloves are coming off. Attorney Richard Emery said, "...he [Clemens] is going to get buried. I have no compuction about putting him in jail."
Supporters for each side will say there is no proof their man is lying, pointing to ifs, ands, and buts like they were eyewitnesses, facts, and indisputable evidence. Meanwhile, a sparkling diamond of a career lies in shambles, kicked around in the dirt like a third world soccer ball. Clemens will not pitch again, he is finished in baseball, and all those beautiful numbers are tarnished by accusations they were chemically aided.
I'm not a doctor. I've never played one on TV, never studied medicine, don't even watch medical shows. I hate to pay medical bills. My only medical experience is in patching up bumps and bruises my three kids experienced growing up.
I admit all this right up front. I'm no medical professional, and you certainly wouldn't want me diagnosing you. But I'm also not an ####, and if the best Roger Clemens can come up with for a defense against his starring role in the Mitchell Report is his latest public utterances on the subject, I'm thinking he should give some consideration to hiring a new public relations firm.
According to an Associated Press report released on Thursday, man who spent nearly a quarter-century pitching in the big leagues was asked in an interview last Friday if former personal trainer Brian McNamee had ever injected him with any drugs. His answer? "Lidocaine and B-12. It's for my joints, and B-12 I still take today."
Okay, fair enough. Maybe McNamee misremembered what he injected into Clemens's butt if he was really, really busy shooting steroids into everyone else's. Maybe he is wrong. But, honestly, lidocaine and B-12?
Vitamin B-12 has historically been used as a treatment for anemia, and at levels even slightly lower than normal within the human body can cause symptoms such as fatigue, depression, and poor memory. So it is entirely conceivable that a professional athlete, especially an aging one like Clemens, would want to ingest B-12 to combat the effects of fatigue during the season.
But injecting it? Into your buttocks? What's the point of that, when there are much easier ways to take B-12? It is found naturally in foods of animal origin such as liver and eggs, but even if you insist on taking it as a dietary supplement, B-12 can be ingested as an #### pill, a sublingual pill (under the tongue), a liquid, or a nasal spray, each and every one of which would seem to be much less unpleasant than having another man stick a needle of it into your butt.
The lidocaine defense seems even flimsier to me. Lidocaine is used topically to relieve itching, burning, and minor skin inflammations, and injected most often as a dental anesthetic and in minor surgery. Even if Roger was suffering from hemmorhoids, he would use a cream, not an injection.
Why would he require an injection of an anesthetic into his butt? What would the purpose of that be, exactly? Was McNamee performing minor #### surgery on the Rocket that day? If so, it would seem like the kind of thing both men would remember, even years later. I know if it was my butt that's the sort of thing that would recur in nightmares for years, but maybe that's just me.
Perhaps I'm missing something here; I certainly hope that's the case. I would like to think that given the amount of money Clemens must be spending on teams of lawyers and PR firms in this desperate attempt to save his reputation, that he could come up with something a little more believable than "lidocaine and B-12." Alien abduction, maybe, or secret CIA testing on his unwitting self.
The unwitting self part has the ring of believability, don't you think? It certainly does for me, because Clemens must be fairly witless if he expects you and me to #### this whopper without asking any more questions.
The man was a great pitcher; one of the best ever, in my opinion. I'm glad I had the chance to see him pitch when he was starting out. In the early 1980's Roger Clemens was just another big, skinny kid out the University of Texas with a blazing fastball and the guts of a catburglar.
Somewhere down the line came awards and money and personal trainers and injections of disputed substances into his big butt. All the trappings of big-time sports, in other words. But in the beginning, he was just a big kid with miles of talent, not the immortal Rocket who felt the need to do things no one would want for their children to keep it all alive.
If there's a bright side to baseball's Mitchell Report, and I admit it's not easy to find one, it might just be that Hall of Fame candidate Chuck Knoblauch now has a handy scapegoat upon which to blame his failure to come within a stone's throw (hereafter referred to as a Knoblauch toss from second base into the rightfield stands) of receiving enough votes for enshrinement.
The list of names sent annually to the five hundred and some-odd members of the Baseball Writers Association of America, the group of people charged with the heady job of trying to determine who should receive membership in Cooperstown and who will strike out in any particular year, always contains a few head-scratchers. This year's strangest may well be Knoblauch.
Chuck Knoblauch signed with the Minnesota Twins after being drafted in June, 1989, and by 1991 was playing in the big leagues. He won Rookie of the Year honors in the American League that year, playing second base for the Twins and batting .281, with 25 stolen bases and 50 RBI. He played a total of twelve years in the majors, compiling a lifetime average of .289, and batting over .300 three years in a row, from 1994 through '96.
In 1997, Knoblauch won a Gold Glove at second base, the only time he would win the award, and that winter as a free agent, signed with the Yankees to play second. A year later he forgot how to throw to first base, and his error total skyrocketed from 13 in 1998 to 26 in 1999, dropping his fielding percentage to just .963, a hideous number for a second baseman.
A year later, his mysterious throwing woes continued, as Knoblauch committed 15 errors in only 82 games at second base, compiling the unbelievable fielding percentage of .958, before the Yankees threw in the towel, moving him to left field for the 2001 season, where it was hoped he would no longer be in danger of injuring any spectators in the first row of seats behind the dugout. Fortunately for Knoblauch, they didn't ask him to throw in the towel, undoubtedly realizing that if they did, they would likely never see the towel again.
The following year, at the age of 33, Knoblauch was finished, playing less than half a season with Kansas City and batting just .210.
It can be argued Chuck Knoblauch had a solid career as a major league player, especially offensively, I'll give you that. But is Knoblauch really a Hall of Famer? A permanent resident of Cooperstown, New York? Give me a break. If Knoblauch did indeed do steroids, as is claimed in the Mitchell Report, he should be thanking his lucky stars for the instant excuse it gives him for not garnering any votes.
Jim Rice has been on the ballot for years, and despite being the most feared offensive threat in the American League for more than a decade, has yet to receive enough votes for enshrinement. Sorry, Chuck, maybe next year. Then again, maybe not.
In their ongoing and seemingly unstoppable quest to win the title of "Most Embarrassing Professional Sports Entity Ever," the Madison Square Garden Corporation is putting on a determined and impressive two-minute drill as the year 2007 draws to a close.
The latest potential corporate black eye MSG Corp. has thrown a #### of money at to make disappear is the lawsuit by former New York Rangers skating cheerleader Courtney Prince, who alleged in 2004 after being fired that MSG and the Rangers "required them to be glamorous and to wear padded bras, fake eyelashes and hairpieces."
Furthermore, Prince alleged, MSG failed to properly protect the cheerleaders from "inappropriate touching when they went into the crowd at games..."
Hmmm. Let's see. You try out for a job where the point is to objectify yourself as a sex symbol at professional sporting events and then, after being fired, decide you object to being told you must....what? Objectify yourself as a sex symbol at a professional sporting event? Isn't the whole idea of cheerleaders in professional sports to be glamorous and wear all that fake stuff?
As far as Ms Prince's accusation against Madison Square Garden and the Rangers that they didn't take adequate measures to protect the women from inappropriate touching, this is where you have to admire the dedication of MSG and their determination to win that coveted "Most Embarrassing Sports Entity" tag.
Who in the management structure of that company thought it was a good idea to dress beautiful, sexy young women up in skimpy costumes and send them into a crowd of mostly male adults who have been drinking beer all night, without even a single Mitchell Report member or other steroid abuser to protect them? What marketing genius thought that was a good idea?
"I know," some pencil-necked geek pipes up at a meeting. "We'll take the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and send them up into the stands to mingle with the crowd. It'll be great!"
"I second the motion," replies Isiah Thomas, jumping to his feet excitedly. "And after the hockey games are over, maybe they could come work in my office. As you may know, I'm short one administrative assistant."
Doesn't MSG Corp. carry even one lawyer on staff to throw the damper on bright ideas like that? Keeping lawyers on retainer can be an exensive proposition, granted, but is it more expensive than paying $11.5 million to Thomas's victim, Anucha Browne Sanders, and now an undisclosed amount of money to Courtney Prince?
While the corporation made sure to trumpet the notion that there was no admission of wrongdoing on their part in this latest lottery payout, does anyone doubt that had the issue gone to court the result would have been any different than how the Sanders trial ended?
My sympathy goes out to the sports fans of New York (Now there's a sentence I never thought I would say). It's one thing to pay outrageous ticket prices for overpriced and underperforming players. It's another thing entirely to pay those same outrageous ticket prices to subsidize sheer stupidity.
Congratulations, MSG. Does that "Most Embarrassing Sports Entity" title come with a trophy that everyone can hold during the company picnic and get their pictures taken with, or just a plaque to hang on the wall and be admired by the executives planning their next ill-advised move?
Money talks; ethics walk. If there was ever any doubt about the truth of that statement, all you need to do to get your head on straight is to look at the support of Major League Baseball's owners for the man whose everlasting legacy will be that he presided over what is already being referred to as the "Steroids Era" in baseball, Bud Selig.
According to an Associated Press report published on Foxsports.com, Selig, who has yet to even admit to any share of responsibility for the rampant abuse of steroids and Human Growth Hormone, both controlled substances, by MLB players in the late-1990's and early-2000's, enhoys the complete and total support of baseball's owners.
The select group of millionaires and billionaires who should be under the commissioner's control to ensure that the best interests of the game are upheld have revealed their true colors by throwing their support wholeheartedly behind the man who fiddled while baseball burned.
White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf - "He has total support of the owners..."
Yankees owner George Steinbrenner - "He's a terrific commissioner..."
Major League Baseball's owners can decry the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs to the high heavens, but the above statements reveal the truth of the matter - that it's all a smokescreen; all to pacify you, the paying customer, and to make you believe these people have your interests at heart. In reality, though, as long as the money keeps rolling in and profits continue to be made by the majority of the clubs, there will be no change at the top of the command structure in baseball.
It's instructive to look at the result of the last major scandal suffered by Major League Baseball; the Black Sox scandal of 1919. That was the year eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.
Even though all eight of the accused players were acquitted at trial, the damage to baseball's reputation was so great that the office of Commissioner of Baseball was established as a direct result of the scandal to reassure the fans that the game's integrity would be upheld. Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was appointed baseball's first commissioner and immediately banned all eight players from the game for life.
The judge's comment? "Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player who throws a ball game, no player who undertakes or promises to throw a ball game, no player who sits in confidence with a bunch of crooked ballplayers and gamblers, where the ways and means of throwing a game are discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball."
Contrast that no-nonsense statement with the public utterances of Bud Selig regarding the performance-enhancing drugs scandal and you can immediately see the difference between a commissioner concerned with protecting the good of the game, and a commissioner whose sole concern is to protect the interests of the game's owners. "For the time being...I'm studying things and analyzing things."
1919 was a long time ago and perhaps it's unfair to compare two different situations from two different eras. There was no player's union in 1919, the men who played on the field were completely and totally under the thumb of the owners.
But those owners, even almost a century ago, were bright enough to see that a scandal of the magnitude of the Black Sox debacle could potentially run the entire moneymaking operation into the ground if the fans, the people who ultimately pay for everything, felt the game was rigged.
How is that so different from today? Well, baseball is enjoying a run of unprecedented popularity, meaning unprecedented income, and the owners don't feel this scandal is of a magnitude to upset the apple cart. If that's the case, why make waves? Keep Selig in the office and continue allowing the clowns to run the circus!
But if profits start falling, suddenly the man who is so popular with all the owners right now will find himself the odd man out and will immediately be held accountable for allowing this issue to take down a great game. Maybe it's not fair; maybe there really was nothing Bud Selig could do for ten years as he watched chemically-enhanced giants tear down records that had stood for decades.
The fact of the matter is, though, the man at the top must be held responsible. He is the one who should pay for allowing the scandal to develop and become full-blown - that's the nature of his job. If and when the money-train starts slowing down, Bud Selig will discover more and more owners feel exactly that way. They will start to wonder what I already wonder: Why in the world are they paying that guy $14.5 million dollars a year to sit around and look befuddled?
In what should come as a surprise to absolutely no one who has paid attention to Bud Selig's tenure as Major League Baseball Commissioner, the man who has presided over the biggest scandal to rock baseball in eighty years has thrust his head back into the sand, or somewhere the sun doesn't shine, and wants you to believe all is well with the world.
I'm not sure I can do justice to the laughability of Selig's recent comments or to the gullibility he seems to believe you possess, so here are a few direct quotes from baseball's fearless leader on the subject of performance-enhancing drugs and the devastating Mitchell Report.
These nuggets of wisdom were tossed out to reporters on Tuesday during a four-minute briefing to reporters. It's hard to believe anyone could cram so much self-serving #### into four minutes unless they were running for president, but here you go:
"We have the toughest testing program in American sports." Really? I wonder if Ricky Williams would agree with that assessment. In fact, I wonder if anyone in America would agree with that assessment.
"I'm proud of where we are." Hopefully "The Commissioner" was talking about the actual geographical location of where he was when he made that absurd comment, although considering he was in Cleveland, I have to believe he didn't. How he could be proud of anything related to the black eye baseball suffered in the last several days stretches the limits of credulity beyond anything a fan should have to endure.
"I do hear people from time to time say we were slow to react..." If by "people" and "from time to time" he means "everyone" and "constantly," then "The Commissioner" is right on the money here. I only read his comments and didn't see the actual briefing to reporters, so I can't say for sure that Selig was able to maintain a straight face when he said this, but I'm going to go out on a limb and assume he wasn't trying to make a joke.
"...From the late '90s on we have been monitoring this thing." Monitoring? What does that mean, exactly? By saying that, isn't "The Commissioner" admitting that he was at least somewhat complicit in this entire mess? You can't monitor a situation you are unaware of, so for Bud Selig to say, in the same interview, that he's proud of the gutter MLB finds itself in and that he was monitoring the situation as it developed over the last ten years is evidence enough right there that he should lose his job.
"For the time being while I'm studying things and analyzing things I just don't have any further comment." Translation: "I think I've pretty much reached the bottom of even my previously unplumbed well of stupidity. I'm going to wait and see if any of you fools buy even a little bit of what I've told you and maybe I will get really lucky and not have to do anything more. That's been my strategy for the last decade and I think it's worked pretty well, if I do say so myself. After all, I'm proud of where we are."
Good grief. Maybe "The Commissioner" ought to consider taking some performance-enhancing drugs, because that was one performance that could sure use some serious enhancing.
Remember when you were trying to get your driver's license for the first time and you had to take a Driver's Ed course? In Massachusetts when I was growing up you could get your license at age 16 if you had completed a certified Driver's Education course and if you hadn't, you couldn't get your license until age 16 and-a-half.
So naturally, everyone took the course so they could start driving six months earlier. Maybe it's still like that in Massachusetts, I don't know. In any event, part of this Driver's Ed course, usually the very last part, included the infamous film they showed the class of all the horrible things that could happen to those drivers stupid enough to ignore all the wisdom that they learned while attending Driver's Ed.
The film, if I remember correctly, lasted at least ninety minutes and was filled with the sort of blood and gore you normally had to be at least eighteen to see at the movies. Nowadays, of course, you can see worse every day and twice on Sundays just by going to Youtube, but you get the point. Severed limbs, bodies lying in the road, pools of blood, you name it, all were shown in graphic living color with the intention of getting kids to drive carefully. Kind of a "Scared Straight" program for regular kids.
That's the sort of reaction it seems the Mitchell Report has prompted in the baseball community. A trickle of players have seen the light at the end of the tunnel and recognized it as the express train of public judgment speeding down the track at them. Those few individuals are jumping ahead of the curve and staking out either:
A) The best excuses for why they were caught red-handed juicing like Anita Bryant in the 1970's, or
B) The best and most emphatic denials of ever having ingested anything stronger than aspirin or perhaps the occasional Tylenol tablet into the temples that are their god-like bodies.
Just today we've seen one player take up residence in each camp. The Baltimore Orioles' Brian Roberts fessed up to one isolated instance of bad judgment in 2003, when he experimented with a single shot of steroids and for which he issued the obligatory mea culpa and assured us that "performance-enhancing drugs have never had any effect on what I have worked so hard to accomplish in the game of baseball."
On the other side of the fence stands Roger Clemens. After issuing a vigorous denial through his attorney three hours after the issuance of the Mitchell Report, the Rocket today said, "I did not take steroids, human growth hormone or any other banned substances at any time in my baseball career or, in fact, my entire life."
Pretty hard to misinterpret that strong statement, but on the other hand, it's pretty hard to misinterpret the statement of Clemens' former trainer Brian McNamee that he personally injected Clemens with steroids in 1998 and HGH in 2000 and 2001.
If Clemens is telling the truth, there are only two possibilities - either McNamee is mistaken or he is lying. It's hard to imagine that he could be mistaken about who's butt he was sticking a syringe into, especially since reports are that he and Clemens at one time were close. Likewise, if he had any motivation for lying to the Mitchell investigators, no one has come up with any credible explanation of what that motivation may have been.
The only other explanation would be that the Rocket is lying; desperately trying to salvage his reputation in what is truly the twilight of his career. Players like Brian Roberts have time to at least partially erase the sting of being outed in the Mitchell Report as they continue their careers, but for someone like Roger Clemens, whose best days as a player, probably even all his days as a player, are now behind him, the final image people will have of him is that of a cheater.
In any event, players had better hurry up and get their statements prepared before all the good excuses are gone. Roberts now has ownership of the "terrible mistake" excuse, while Andy Pettite staked his claim on the ever-popular "injury rehab."
Guys who want to get in on the public breast-beating had better hurry up before it all gets old and tiresome and the American peoples' amazing capacity for forgiveness and understanding has evaporated. There is an old saying, "He who laughs last didn't get the joke." In this case, he who apologizes last might be left holding a big, steaming bag of recrimination.
A few observations off the top of my bald, freezing-cold head after snow-blowing my way out of the driveway only to discover my street hadn't been plowed yet. Maybe it's just me, but this giant of a pre-winter storm seemed an awful lot like the Mitchell report: Even though I knew it was coming, it turned out worse than I expected.
- It looked like old-time football Sunday on the shores of Lake Erie.
In a game both teams wanted very badly in order to keep pace in the playoff race as the sand continues to slip through the hourglass of the 2007 season, The Cleveland Browns shut out the Buffalo Bills by the un-football-like score of 8-0, on two field goals and a safety they got credit for when punter Brian Moorman kicked the ball through the end zone after missing a snap deep in his own territory.
I don't know about you, but I love watching football in snowy conditions. The players' jerseys are muddy and dirty, the yard lines are obscured by snow, and you almost expect to see #### Butkus looming out of the snow to throw down any running back crazy enough to try to run through him.
Maybe it's just me. In any event, the Browns improve to 9-5 and could lock up a playoff spot next week.
- In what I felt would be a statement game for someone, Jacksonville made it loud and clear, beating Pittsburgh on the road to move to 10-4.
It turns out both teams made a statement of sorts - Jacksonville announced their intentions of making some noise in the playoffs, and the Steelers, who have now lost two in a row, are admitting they may not be as good as a lot of us thought.
Losing a December game at home in bad weather when you're a team that prides itself on defense and the ability to run the ball is not the way to give your fans a lot of optimism going into the playoffs. The Steelers have now given up 63 points in losses to two AFC playoff teams the past two weeks and find themselves tied with Cleveland for the lead in the AFC North.
Pittsburgh finishes the season with two consecutive road games, at St. Louis and at Baltimore while the Browns travel to Cincinnati next week and finish up at home against the 49'ers. While the Steelers do own the tiebreaker with the Browns by virtue of them winning both head-to-head matchups this season, would it surprise anyone to see Cleveland win their last two and Pittsburgh lose the season-finale to the Ravens?
- The NFL-record 72 point spread is safe, at least for another week.
For everyone expecting the Patriots to come out and light up the scoreboard, throwing the ball sixty times and putting up 78 points on the Jets, New England once again confounded people by doing what was least expected. Granted the conditions were bad, especially the wind, but in a game that featured two blocked punts, as well as four fumbles and two interceptions, the Pats were content to keep the ball on the ground and answer their critics who say they can't run the ball.
The New England ground game chewed up 131 yards on 35 attempts, with Laurence Maroney getting the bulk of the work - 26 carries for 104 yards, exactly 4 yards per carry.
On the defensive side, from a Pats perspective, the worst thing that could have happened was the rib injury to Kellen Clemens on the second play of the game. That injury forced Chad Pennington to take the majority of the snaps and he finished a pretty impressive 25 of 38 for 186 yards. Not bad, considering the lousy conditions.
- The Miami Dolphins sucked some, but not all, of the drama out of next week's game against New England by beating the Ravens in OT, 22-16.
It would have been a dream come true for everyone outside of the New England area to root for the 0-14 Dolphins to beat the 14-0 Patriots, but Miami went and spoiled that storyline by finally winning a game, in just their 14th try.
However, it will still undoubtedly be the most-hyped matchup ever between two teams going in opposite directions, as the Dolphins will feel the pressure from all the old guys who played on the '72 'Fins. All the hopes and dreams of all the aging Dolphins will fall on the shoulders of the 1-13 bunch as they attempt to protect the "Glory Days" memories of a bunch of players most of them had probably never heard of before this year.
- Wouldn't it be fun to be a fly on the wall the first time Arkansas faces a halftime deficit next year?
What can Bobby Petrino possibly say to his team that will elicit anything other than sidelong glances and snorts of cynical laughter between the players when he talks about standing and fighting, about overcoming the odds, about anything?
The man who probably has a picture of Benedict Arnold on his desk next to the obligatory one of his family, the man who quit on his players in Atlanta and let them know he was abandoning them in the most cowardly way possible, by leaving a half-page "Dear John" letter to the team, can never again get in a player's face with any credibility and talk about commitment and sacrifice.
- Congratulations to Brett Favre for setting another NFL record.
This time the old geezer passed Dan Marino for most passing yardage in a career; quite an accomplishment, but the stat which I consider to be the most impressive is this: Favre has now started 251 consecutive regular season games, 271 if you include playoffs. Only Minnesota's Jim Marshall played in more consecutive regular-season games, with 270.
That's an unbleievable feat. He has played through injuries and addictions, with great teams and horrible ones, he has been an MVP and a guy people in Green Bay couldn't wait to see retire. He has done it all and still keeps going and going, like the Energizer Bunny of the frozen tundra.
Woody Allen once said that ninety percent of success is just showing up. If there's any truth at all to that, Brett Favre has been about as successful as they come.
Hello, and welcome to The Inside Scoop!, where we bring you the real story on those alledged misdeeds, high crimes and misdemeanors committed by your favorite athletes and sports personalities. I'm your host, Marv Albert, and today's report has some real bite in the backside, so pull on your foul weather gear and lets jump right into the muck, shall we?
Scoop #1 - Bud Selig. The Commissioner of Major League Baseball wasted no time jumping on the Mitchell Report bandwagon. He licked his finger, stuck it in the air, and determined the winds of change were blowing briskly. "There is nothing in his [Mitchell's] recommendations that I can begin to disagree with."
When asked why, as commissioner, he did nothing about the rampant problem of performance enhancing drugs for ten years until being forced to, the former car salesman replied, "It was all just a misunderstanding, really. You see, I kept getting reports of players sticking each other in the butt, and I didn't realize it was with needles. I thought it was just some sort of team bonding ritual or something. I figured, don't ask, don't tell, you know? It was an honest mistake, anyone could have made it."
Scoop #2 - Jason Kidd. The New Jersey Nets All-Star guard is accused of groping a 23-year old model at a New York City nightclub in October. According to a lawsuit filed by the unnamed woman, Kidd "grabbed her buttocks and #### on multiple occasions," and also slapped a cell phone out of her hand, before being pulled away by bouncers.
"It was all just a misunderstanding, really," Kidd said when asked about the situation. "You see, she told me I was a great baller, and I didn't realize she was talking about basketball. I just naturally assumed my reputation preceded me, you know? So I made my move, being a smooth ladies man and all, but she wasn't up for it! Really, she was just leading me on. I should know, it happens to me all the time."
Scoop #3 - Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan. The silver-haired coach dropped an F-bomb while being taped during an address to his team at halftime of Wednesday night's game against the Phoenix Suns. ESPN, which was televising the game, apologized for allowing the curse to air on its' broadcast.
ESPN spokesman Mark Mandel said, "It [the offending word] was said quietly, and we missed it. It was all just a misunderstanding, really. Who knew anyone actually watches those things? We figured, it was halftime, everyone would be getting more nachos and beer. Now that we know people are watching, we're going to start airing more 'This Is SportsCenter' commercials in that time slot."
Scoop #4 - Arkansas Razorbacks Head Football Coach Bobby Petrino. The former Atlanta Falcons head coach quit following the Falcons Monday night loss to New Orleans, heading immediately to Arkansas where he was introduced as the new coach.
When asked how he could leave a team during the season, despite having a contract, Petrino replied, "That contract thing, it was all just a misunderstanding, really. I signed it, but that doesn't mean I ever intended to honor it. Hell, I signed a ten year contract at Louisville, and left six months later. At least I made it eleven months in Atlanta. The way I figure it, they got more out of me than they had any right to expect.
"But I love it here in....where am I again....Arkansas? Yeah, that's it, Arkansas. Sooey! This is it for me, I'm where I want to be now. Unless, of course, something better comes up. You know how it is. Nobody's into dogfighting here, are they?"
Well folks, I'm afraid we're all out of time on tonight's edition of The Inside Scoop! Be sure to tune in next time, when we shine the investigative spotlight on the high-stakes world of competitive curling. Thanks for watching, and remember to hold out for The Inside Scoop!
Hey everyone, I know it must seem like I've dropped off the face of the earth, but it's nothing like that.
I've been busy writing - two full-length novels so far, plus over a dozen short stories - and working hard to try to get an agent. If you are curious and have a few minutes, check out my website, www.allanleve rone.com.
If you're a literary agent or if you know one, by all means contact me! In the meantime, I'll be here when I can - love this forum - and as always, thank you for checking out my blog, especially considering how many great ones you could be reading instead....
