The ridiculous headline in the Indy Star regarding Shawne Williams on 9/14 read:  "Pacers Lay Down the Law."  Really?   A 3 game suspension for a player flagrantly disrespecting several laws and having no indication of accepting responsibility for himself or his behavior is laying down the law?

   The hippie logic of the 60's made it clear that the chances of being busted carrying illegal drugs were the same as the chance that a canary could pick up the  Soldier & Sailor's Monument and carry it to the moon.  Of course there was one provision:  You can't commit two crimes at once.

  Let's see now, Williams made an improper lane change: crime 1.  He had no driver's license: crime 2.  He had not registered his vehicle (expired plate):  crime 3.  He had a "cigar sized marijuana cigarette" burning in the ashtray: crime 4.  He had a friend in the car with a stolen gun with no license to carry it: crimes 5 & 6.

   Bird claims that Williams "is a good kid who made a bad decision."  Which decision was the bad one:  to never get a driver's license?  I am a business owner and I wouldn't think of having an employee driving without a license.  There are thousands of young Americans who earn the minimum wage or slightly better, scraping by to save up the money to get their licenses.  Why doesn't a young millionaire have a driver's license and why was no one on the Pacers aware of this? Doesn't the Pacer's insurance company require the presentation of driver's licenses?  Wouldn't you think the player's agent, Happy Walters, would provide a modicum of responsible advice to his young charge about how to conduct his business?  Or is he just "Happy" to walk off with his 15% for negotiating his client's ridiculously excessive contract?

  Or maybe the decision to fire up a fattie the size of a ball park hotdog while illegally driving was the bad decision?  How do the police and prosecutor justify NOT charging Williams with possession?  Even Lindsay Lohan didn't get away with the "it wasn't mine" alibi.  Is there any other reader out there who buys this BS excuse?  If your son or daughter were similarly apprehended, do you think the prosecutor would wink and look the other way for YOUR family? What the police and prosecutor are doing here is enabling in the worse possible sense and they are derelict in their duty in this case. 

  Or maybe it was a bad decision to hang with his thug friend who just happened to be carrying a stolen gun used in a crime in Tennessee, without a license to carry.  Sounds like a good way to end up shot.

  This is not a "good kid who made a bad decision."  This is a reckless and irresponsible, coddled young man given a free pass due to his freaky genetic ability to grow 7 feet tall.  He hasn't earned the right to disregard our laws, nor does he deserve to represent our team.

  Bird claims he is "laying down the law" and "setting an example" for the team.  Unfortunately, the example is, that if you want to use pot or act like a thug, you can get away with a slap on the wrist and come back to earning your millions.  This tiny suspension is self-serving to the Pacers and a horrible precedent for a team looking to re-build its image.  I know the Pacers desperately need players, but they are going to need fans too, and the last couple of crops of thugs has run off their fan base.

    How about a 30 game suspension with some serious requirements attached: 

1.)         Attend drug counseling for a year and complete classes about drug abuse.

2.)         Provide proof of driver's license and insurance and auto registration for any car(s) owned by Williams.

3.)         Attend gun safety classes and provide proof of passing the exams.

4.)         Be placed on team probation for 12 months minimum with any further brushes with the law being grounds for removal from the team.

  While Mr. Bird is a folk-hero here in Indiana, he has presided over a sorry decline in the quality of the team as a direct result of the lack of discipline enforced upon it.  How about sending a real message:  Breaking the law, using drugs and hanging with criminals is 100% not acceptable and will be dealt with in draconian fashion.  Maybe we can get our team back.

   Not since Gulliver has a giant been so beset by the outrageous slings and miniature arrows of a pack of little people~!   Have all of the world's finest golfers been smitten by Beckham's Syndrome and given up golf  in favor of soccer?  Why can't the PGA Tour seem to field a reasonably qualified field of players?  The tour should offer Tiger Woods at least the illusion of a challenge on his march to overtake the Golden Bear's hallowed record of 18 major tour victories.

    Tiger got whipped by 3 no-name first timers this year in the Masters, the Open and the British Open and almost got caught by Woody Austin in the PGA.  Woody Austin?  The guy is a pure ball-striker but he's got more tics than a Lyme disease convention!   His post-PGA interview was absolutely surreal:  how does this guy find his way out of the house in the morning?   They must smear peanut butter on the doorknob or something.

    Ernie Els made a short run at the lead and then realized that he might be in contention and quickly rejected that idea.   It has been 5 years since Els backed into a playoff and hung on to win the British Open.  He has the killer instinct of a bed of kelp.  No one, especially Tiger, expected Ernie to sustain a challenge.

   Since Sergio (The Great Brown Hope) Garcia was forced to reduce his 15 waggle pre-shot routine, he has been a non-entity in major tournament play.   He finally got in position at the British this year but  his game looked like a pre-fab cardboard house on day 4 at the British Open :  "Please Fold Here."  Sergio has become the male equivalent of  Michelle Wie-his mis-signed card at the PGA seemed more like a plea to just  get off the course.  Probably more effective to fake an injury like Ms. Wie  to save your dignity-better to be thought of as a malingerer than a moron.

    Of course, John Daly had a run at the early lead.   While Daly remains an intriguing spectacle,  his whole saga is akin to a train-wreck:  you just can't avoid watching but that doesn't make it very pleasant.   Years of over-drinking, over-eating, over-smoking, over-gambling and trying to overdose on trailer park women has taken its toll on Johnnie Boy.   When he was young and relatively fresh at 25 he was able to keep his game together for 4 days to steal a victory at the 1991 PGA at Crooked Stick.  He has trouble making the cut nowadays.   If he doesn't get back to rehab, he will have a whole lot more trouble coming his way.

    The old saying in golf is "Its not how, its how many."  Well this latest Tiger win makes it 13 and it doesn't really matter who  the other contenders for this PGA crown were.   But just to refresh your memory, in order  following Woods, Austin and Els  were:  John Senden, Aaron Oberholser, Geoff Ogilvy, Simon Dyson,  Boo Weekly,  and Kevin Sutherland.   Can anyone outside of their immediate families recognize these guys?

     With Phil Michelson nurturing his injured crap-shooting wrist,  there really wasn't a serious contender for this title.  If the tour players can't mount a more serious challenge than this latest, pitiful effort , Tiger should just be allowed to phone in his next Major victory.  For Nicklaus's 13th victory at the 1975 Masters, he had to hold off Johnnie Miller and Tom Weiskopf and his last round mate, the young Tom Watson.    Is Tiger's march to surpass Nicklaus inevitable?  Not quite, but the munchkins posing as PGA tour players are certainly making it easier for him!

Hard-liners in 1961 insisted that Roger Maris`s assault on the Bambino`s single season home run record was a sham.  Even though Maris had to contend with night games and air travel and the relentless Big Apple media,  many old-timers felt that hitting 61 home runs in 162 games didn`t really compare with hitting 60 home runs in 154 games.  Conceding the point, Maris`s record got stigmatized with the dreaded asterisk.

  What is the league to do with the  passel of tainted records set with the aid of performance enhancing drugs?  If Bud Selig was alive today he would have set these records straight! Can you imagine Kennesaw Mountain Landis standing by and letting these bulked up androids reduce the hallowed marks of the game to dust?

  The games earliest cheats gained infamy and are well remembered as the Black Sox.  Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire and Rafael Palmero certainly deserve a similar fate.  No one is going to forget the way they played the game.  Most serious baseball fans remember Denny McLain, whose 31 victory season for the Detroit Tigers in 1968 remains one of the most incredible pitching accomplishments of the second half of the 20th century.   He is remembered more today for being a con-man and a miscreant who gambled on the game and frittered his chance at baseball immortality away.

  Pete Rose earned the nickname "Charlie Hustle" by busting his ass for 24 years of non-stop drive and determination on the playing field.  In retirement, he has earned the sobriquet, "Charlie Cementhead" for his stop-and-start admissions of gambling.  If old Pete would have just apologized and taken his medicine years ago, he would be in the Hall of Fame today.  Americans will forgive you for just about anything if you will just make a sincere apology.  Too late for Pete, though. He has jumped back and forth on both sides of the fence so much that he would make John Edwards dizzy!

  But what do we do about the records?  Were Rose`s records hard-earned, or will he become further smeared by the growing amphetamine or "greenie" stories circulating about players of his era?   Time will tell, but there is a simple solution.  In track and field, the wind is measured at the site of important events to make certain that any times or distances recorded are not significantly "wind-assisted."  If the wind is too much of an aid, the times or distances are disregarded and the existing records stand.   Future generations are welcome to talk about Bonds' "Human Growth Hormone Assisted" numbers or perhaps Mark McGuire`s "Anabolically assisted ones.   Soon  the advent of the metal bat and eventually the laser-bat will certainly signal the eclipse of the games earliest records.  But as Richard Pryor said on the Star Wars Bar set of his short-lived television show:  "Yeah, I know your boy hit 2600 home runs with a laser bat.  But Hank Aaron hit all of his with a piece of wood!"  You would think that would count for something!

As Barry "The Clear" Bonds and his giant head close in on Hank Aaron`s hallowed career home run record,  the thought arises:  Are there any unbreakable records in Major League Baseball?  Until late in Cal Ripken`s career, Lou Gehrig`s Iron Man streak was thought to be pretty much untouchable.

 Pete Rose, bless his little gamblin' heart, finally tallied more hits than the immortal (and insufferable) Ty Cobb.  And of course, Mark McGuire, and a veritible pod of chemically enhanced mutants capped by Bonds, toyed with  the single season home run record owned by Babe Ruth, Roger Maris and an asterisk.

 In this day of greatly superior diet and training methods, superior medical care and a greater understanding of kinesiology and athletic mechanics, not to mention illegal supplementation: Is there any record in baseball that remains unbreakable?

  I believe there are a few.  Perhaps the most sacro-sanct record is Joe DiMaggio`s streak of hitting in 56 consectutive games.  Nothing can help (or hurt) your career more than playing in the media hub of New York City.  I think Mr. Coffee is worshipped a bit more than his statistics warrant.  Baseball is a game of streaks and guys do get hot, and although there have been very few players capable of putting together a streak of more than 35 games in a row of late, I believe this one relies a little too much on luck to stand unbroken.  A broken bat single here, a blooper there, combined with some solid hitting and the string stretches out.

  Unless the game changes its current direction, Ricky Henderson`s base-stealing records look pretty safe.  But the only record that seems impossible to beat is Cy Young`s incredible tally of 511 career victories.  Of course in Cy`s day, pitchers would pitch every other day or come in late and close the game for another injured pitcher.  A pitcher breaking in at the tender age of 20 would need to win 20 games a year until he turned 46 to top this record!  An incredible physical specimen like Nolan Ryan or Roger Clemens comes along once a generation.  The Rocket is now poised for a Yankee comeback, but even with his incredible skills, Clemens stands at 348 victories and would need another 8.5 20 victory seasons to catch old Cy.   He keeps coming back, but I can`t see him pitching into his 50`s!  Frankly,  the chances of even one more 20 victory season for the Rocket are remote.

 Any takers?  Is this the sole unbreakable baseball record?

"There is nothing at all that could have been done for him" said medical examiner  Michael Graham.

Hancock" was very fortunate" said Police Chief Patrick Delaney.

   These disparate quotes, separated by 3 days and the tragic resolution of Josh Hamilton`s involvement with alcohol and drugs, clearly indicate that Hamilton was NOT fortunate in walking away from his earlier accident.  Both incidents occurred within a few miles of each other and in close proximity to a liquor store and the Oz strip club on what is locally called the Yellow Brick Road.

  The investigation into Hamilton`s death found his blood alcohol level to be extra-ordinarily high, nearly twice the legal limit.  In addition,  8.55 grams of marijuana and a glass pipe were found.  Fox Sports reported that the glass pipe was used for smoking marijuana, but it sounds more like a crack pipe-more information is needed.

 In the earlier accident, Hancock reportedly inched out from a stop sign at 5:30 a.m. and had a passing tractor trailer sheer off his front bumper.  It was determined that the truck driver was driving legally.  Amazingly, "No sobriety or breath tests were given to Hancock, and no tickets were issued, Delaney said. The SUV was too damaged to drive home."    How does a young man clearly exercising horrendously bad judgement at 5:30 in the morning, and involved in a very dangerous accident, escape police scutiny?  The investigating officers claimed to be unaware that Hamilton was a ballplayer and claimed that he did not appear to be impaired.   He failed to show up on time for the Cardinal`s game that day, however, claiming to have "overslept on a new bed."  At least his ability to get up on time for work was impaired.

  Josh Hamilton didn`t have to die.  The wake-up call he got 3 days before his death went unanswered by the police at the scene of his earlier accident.   Do you think he bought the "glass pipe" and the marijuana the night he died or might it have been in the vehicle, or at least in use  3 days earlier?   If Josh Hamilton was sitting in jail for investigation of driving under the influence he would still be alive today.  Poor Josh Hamilton`s death is the logical conclusion of enabling