Wrigley Field.  The power alleys are a joke and always have been.  Think of Ernie Banks in the late 1950's forever circling the bases after wind blown fly balls found the first few rows of the bleachers.  And for some time now, it has become even easier with that netting angled out toward the field enabling baseballs hit to the top of the ivy to have officially gone "yard."  The fact is they needed another yard to have truly been hit out.  Only the deepest foul lines in either league prevent The Friendly Confines' distances from being a total joke.  But unlike our feelings for Sammy Sosa, we love Wrigley Field for all the baseball purist reasons. 

Sam the Sham Sosa, what a shame.  Sam the Scam Sosa, might be the better name.  Cork in the bat, juice in the muscles, nothing in the brain.  Those inviting power alleys evidently were not enough of an advantage for the bulky bilingual blaster who pathetically claimed he did not speak English at the first Senate hearing charade.  Like McGwire, Bonds, Palmiero, A-Rod, and Clemens too, someday he will find himself inducted into the Hall of Fame. 

But not Pete Rose who amassed more safe hits than anyone in The Game's Major League history...without 'roids and without HGH.  The Hall of Fame - what a sham, what a scam, what a shame.    

So it looks as if Big Papi's big pop might have been enhanced, you say?  Perhaps his former clutch power came from the same place as his former slugging partner's, one Manny Ramirez.  Now, how can such an accusation be levied against another icon of the Red Sox Nation?  Just look to the baggy uniforms.

What?  The baggy uniforms?  Yeah, that's right.  What better way to downplay chemically engorged muscles.  What better way to hide a synthetically enhanced framework that supplies pharmaceutical power.  But now the cat is out of the baggy pants, thanks to Manny being Manny.  And Big Papi is taking no big chances but rather tried to go the 'au naturale' route which has landed him in a traffic jam on the Interstate.  And while David Ortiz rides the pine, his former fellow spends his 50 game suspension fine tuning his swing and keeping in shape syringe-free in the Dodger farm system.  Some suspension.

Last night on the ESPN broadcast, Steve Phillips pathetically defended the Dodger's 'Manny not being Manny' suspension-rehab plan.  It was formulated under the dual premises of injury prevention and team competitiveness for the day when Ramirez resurfaces in LA.  

Hogwash, Phillips.

Joe Morgan got it right...when he questioned the 'message' the Dodger plan did not  send to all the current performance enhancing dopes still trying to perfect the timing of their designer 'roids and HGH injections between Bud Selig's fake random testing protocol.  If you get caught, we'll take some money from your multi-millions and then send you to the MLB Detox Training Program.  But no 12 Steps there. 

According to Joe (we agree), a zero tolerance policy is the only policy that will eventually clean up the game.  Oh, there will still be users and abusers but when caught, simply, they will be eternally gone.

Never say never but this will never happen.  Too much money and too few fans who still appreciate the beauty of what used to be referred to as inside baseball.  Hitting it out of the park is all the masses want to see.  The Commissioner knows it, his fellow owners know it, and so do the players.  Even the architects.  At the New Fake Yankee Stadium, the replication of the short porch in right field wasn't enough to guarantee "going yard."  The new stadium design includes open areas behind the grandstand (unlike the original) that produces a wind tunnell out toward right rivaling a nor'easter coming up the coast.  As if shorter fences, a juiced ball, and some players still juiced is not enough to guarantee those home runs that  capacity crowds love so much.

Why not just eliminate the pitcher and shoot the damn ball out of a Howitzer?  People love the circus.....  

Any Yankee fan who attends a game at the "New" Yankee Stadium, pays the exhorbitant prices of parking, ticket, souvenir program, yearbook, franks-soda-beer-peanuts and crackerjacks, and a $25.00 five dollar Yankees cap, then pays for the gas and toll home, should just cut to the chase and admit themselves to their nearest mental institution.  I might suggest a less intense first step for getting one's behavioral priorities in order such as an outpatient visit to the local shrink, but by depositing close to a week's salary into the pinstriped vault at the Steinbrenner Bank of the Bronx, you ain't gonna have much of nuthin' left baby!  

But take solace and remember that your hard earned fleeting dollars have gone to a worthy cause:  to the poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks, to that unfortuante Miami "bi-racial" youth that was prevented from going to college to learn the difference between cheating and honestly competing, to the overly pressured mega-millionaire Texas Ranger shortstop 'waif' who felt that he had no other recourse to his increased stress level than to fly his cousin to the Dominican Republic in order to purchase "over the counter"-U.S.A banned -strength building supplements 'cuz at 25 going on 15 (there might be some truth in that) he and his Cuz were just a couple of dopey kids fooling around with stuff better left to dopey 'adults' like Hustler magazine, cherry bombs, a few too many Budweisers, and oh...uh...ah.... injections of illegal substances with a syringe. 

O' well, boys will be boys.    

The Traveling A-Roid Tragic Magic Show just gets better and better.  Now we learn that poor little persecuted Alex has hired a legal team/PR firm that we will now refer to as "Damage Control, Inc."  DCI will now use every puff of smoke ("I did not inhale!")  and every mirror they can get their hands on in an attempt to pull off the greatest reversal of public opinion since Wild Bill Clinton looked America in the eye and said incredulously, "I did not have sex with that woman." 

"No Katie, I never used steroids."   

The DCI playbook may not be too original but they are smart enough to learn from the sleight of hand skills of the former President of public deceipt by lining up Yankee corporate-cloned ballplayers to stand in support of Rodriquez during Wednesday's scheduled press conference a la the Clinton Impeachment press conference when Big Bill was flanked by his party's Congessiona power brokers.  Was that really over a decade ago?  My, how time flies when you're having fun.  Just ask Jim Leyritz laughing it up in his present abode.  

Supporting public figures on TV so the entire world can see (if they have the stomach too) Emmy Award winning acts of contrition and amateurish attempts at portraying public humility has become a cottage industry.  DCI will be paid handsomely.  We wonder who is footing the bill - poor little Alex or Baby George aka Stupid Hank?  Well that's not totally true of the junior Steinbrenner...at least he was smart enough to be born wealthy.

Obviously the "New" York Yankees, including their newly acquired first baseman-group therapist Mark Teixeira ("I'll probably give Alex a big hug!"), have received their marching orders from Stupid Hank who is not even smart enough to already be regretting the grotesque sum of moolah he has legally guaranteed A-Fraud over the next decade - 300 million in round figures, give or take a few mil here or there.  Or is he?

Not to worry Hank.  Group therapist Teixeira has predicted that the 'show' of support for The Material Guy "...will probably bring the team together."  The MLB is not called 'The Show' for nuthin'.  And if it doesn't...well then, expect a big juicy bear hug of sympathy from your new mega million dollar first baseman.   

Only three questions need to be asked:

(1) Why does a man who has already publically admitted to using illegal (illegal as in U.S. Federal Law!) performance enhancing substances from 2000 thru 2003 require a team of damage control spin doctors to "help" him through a press conference, one, by the way, rumor indicates that said spin doctors were instrumental in orchestrating?  Or simply put - what's A-Rod trying to hide?  Maybe some info that would give the Yanks a way out of his contract?  Hmmmm....

(2) Is there any other reason that his teammates will be flanking him in support, i.e. perhaps, maybe, could it be... that some of them might be included in the 103 unnamed?

(3) Who spilled the beans on A-Wrong?  How did it happen that only his name was leaked from the report?  Now, that appears to be a juicy one with a story all it's own.

There are many who would love to see A-Rod be exiled to the Isle of Elba, or at least Kansas City.  But then the Traveling A-Roid Tragic Magic Show would be no more and we'd have to settle for some real baseball.        

Oh, the latest PR move out of Big Hank Steinbrenner's mouth is just a little too juicy to pass up.  He/The Yankees state that they take A-Fraud at his word.  That is like saying you believe Sammy Sosa's instantaneous inability to speak even broken English at those first Senate hearings way back when the Steroid Scandal actually had America's interest.  Or Raphael Palmeiro's original authoritatively firm denial.  Or, Mark McGwire's declaration that he never shared a steroid shooting gallery (clubhouse toilet stall) with the sore loser-whistleblower-book profiteer Jose' Canseco.  Or Roger Clemens who was lying through his teeth so badly at Senate Hearing #2 he couldn't find a squirt of spit to wet his mouth but, nevertheless, continued to search for it.  Or, the Grand Poop-ah of them all, Barry L. Bonds.  Or, or, or...A-Roid looking straight into Katie Couric's eyes and saying after a brief hesitation, "No, I never used steroids."  What was A-utomaton Robo-rod really thinking?

C'mon Hank!  He's already a proven liar but now because he coughed up a partial truth, the Material Guy has become Saint-worthy?! How about a little intellectual honesty here?  Or, in your case, a little honesty.  Admit it: you're 300 mil long with this creep and you're so distraught over the now failed "Great All-Time Clean Pee Home Run Record" promotion, that your damage control strategy is right out of the Bill Clinton playbook - it all just depends on what the definiton of the word 'liar' is. 

Oh Hankster...you are going to look pretty foolish attempting to rationalize the fall out over the greater New York City Metroploitan Area when the rest of A-Bum's A-Bombs explode all together forming a giant mushroom cloud over your new Billion Dollar Big Ballpark in the Bronx facsimile.  Because, just like hungry, desperate Mexicans pouring over our borders, the next wave of A-Bombs is definitely coming, undoubtedly...just give it some time.  When the mushroom cloud clears and we learn of his Yankee years' periodic performance enhancement (how's that for P.C.?), you will eat crow, and at 300 million over a decade, that's alot of bird baby-George.   

All the King's spin doctors and all the King's PR men, couldn't put A-Bum together again. 

Tsk, tsk.