Blogrolling is Hooker-Riffic, Explosive and Holy

The Holy Hand Grenade, still causing problems after all these years.

Do you have a weakness for golfer on golfer violence, especially when it involves the cart? I know I do, especially when it involves the use of a cart, dragging a body, and cursing. Ask any of my old golfing buddies, and they'll tell you that's *my* move...

Do you have a weakness for A-Rod's hookers? I know I do. Plus, his madam dated him for free. Aw, that's sweet. True love!

(And in another small moment, consider the name of the skank du jour -- Kristin Davis. Here I was thinking that she played the prude on "Sex and the City", but it turns out that she's 20 years younger and blonde. What an actress!)

Oh, and one last thing... isn't using the services of a prostitute illegal? Someone needs to arrest that troublesome A-Rod. He broke the law.

The NFL considers moving the draft up to late February. The idea is to put the draft in front of free agency, to further kneecap the free agents. Makes sense to me, though not nearly as much sense as, say, providing a freaking spring league so that the most popular sport in the country doesn't have an 8-month off-season.

Oh noes! Shaq is doing online shenanigans during the halftime break, rather than, say, paying attention to what the coach is saying.

In other news, he just became the fifth leading all-time scorer in NBA history, mainly because he's an unstoppable combination of soft hands and utter power. Anything that makes him less focused on playing the game is, in my opinion, something to be applauded, since an angry focused Shaq is a danger to himself and others.

Sports By Brooks does the math to show that the average seat at the new Yankee Stadium is $237. That sound you heard was jaws dropping from coast to coast, but to be honest, I'm just not seeing the Yanks getting it in the long term. Yes, people make serious and ridiculous bank in the City, but at some point (especially when that New Stadium Smell wears off), paying more per hour for baseball than hookers is a losing proposition.

By Blogfrican Law, I Must Inform You...

1) Tiger Woods played golf today.

2) Celtic Fan is officially worried about the start of the Starbury Era, since he would be the first unlikable player to ever wear the laundry

3) Nate Robinson and Will Ferrell are Verry Verry Specail Fwiends!, and

4) A-Rod got booed, hit a home run, drove away with his shady cousin and then *totally* had sex with Madonna.

After Teh Sex was over, I heard they injected a baby seal with HGH until this happened...



Or maybe that was just me...

The Hidden Villain in the Roid Era

Marc Maron is a lefty comedian and political agitator. He's also a fairly perceptive mind, even though I don't agree with him all the time, and has a fairly original take in regards to L'Affaire L'A-Roid.

Maron equates the use of performance enhancing drugs to Viagra -- in that in both uses, you are substituting Extreme Fun for Reality, and it really just comes down to what you want from your experience.

(We're now going to spend the rest of this blog post trying, without success, to avoid the keywords that will fill the post with auto-spam comments.)

In one fell swoop, Maron pulls the shaky morality tentpole out of the three-ring circus of Public Condemnation For Dirty Cheating A-Roid. But let's face it... if there was something that the common person could take that would make them so good at their job that they'd be independently wealthy long before retirement age, you'd be seeing people shooting it into their eyeballs during the morning commute. Especially if that commute was long.

Not to get too far into the puerile, but would the women who are with the guys that can only function with the little blue miracles... be there if they couldn't? Some, sure, especially if the guy has more going for him than a reliable tool; money, looks and kindness can go far in the world. But not all, of course, especially if our theoretical Pharmaceutical Warrior finds himself lacking in the finer graces. For those couples, Extreme Fun compensates, just as it does for people who are paying two to three times for a ticket to a game that they did a generation ago. (Admittedly, not in the same parks. Oh, the siren song that is a new gouge-tastic yard.)

Maron believes (and who am I to question him on such things, having never played the Bob Dole Invitational myself) that what you lose with Extreme Fun is intimacy, honesty and integrity. The first two, sure. The last one, I don't agree, because my definition of integrity might be a little looser than Maron's. Going to our old friend Mr. Dictionary...

(Noun): Adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.

Nothing there about the character being, well, good.

This is getting pretty far from the toy department, but I think pathological people, more often than not, have integrity. I also think that if you're really good at your job, there's a reasonable chance that you are at least a little bit pathological about it. Michael Jordan might have been the most competitive man on the planet. At age 4, Tiger Woods' father threw firecrackers during his backswing to make him focus. Most stars of sports where youth is served hard (tennis, swimming, gymnastics, boxing, ice skating) and individualistic seem, at best, warped to a "normal" outlook. Every pro poker player you've ever seen on television seems like a spooky math and/or gambling freak. And so on, and so on.

When Alex Rodriguez, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and untold hundreds more were using steroids, they weren't all lacking in integrity. Hell, they probably were able to justify it all in the same sacrifice for the team credo that athletes have used to motivate themselves since sports (and, well, war) began. (And whether or not a nation's soldiers should be given carte blanche to juice up is a whole 'nother kettle of inedible ethics fish. Let's stay on what passes for the target.)

Having integrity doesn't make you moral. Taking steroids when any number of opponents were doing so as well... might not even be unethical, because ethics are dependent on the individual.

But what they are, and this is key, is a perversion -- an unplanned, ad hoc, unfairly administered perversion -- away from intimacy and honesty, and into Extreme Fun.

And here's the nasty truth that no one wants to admit in this whole mess. We, the MLB-watching public, were much more interested in buying the lie. And until we take our share of the blame, and admit it, and refuse to buy the fake crap... well, everyone's just going to figure out a better way to cheat.

After all, no one's gotten poor from selling Viagra, right?

Blogrolling: Now With Extra Knee-Capping, Arson, and Hot Nazi Babe

Tonya Harding, still whining about the world treating her badly. You really don't need to click, but you're going to, aren't you? Yup, me too.

Does it make me a bad person to (a) wish Harding wasn't so regrettable to look at, (b) wonder whatever happened to Celebrity Boxing, and (c) be filled with a nearly equivalent amount of loathing for Bryant Gumbel? No need to answer.

Charles Barkley is back on the TV tomorrow, and will also get his own reality show just for being a terrible, terrible golfer. I think I speak for all of America when I ask this single question: will there be oral sex?

Tom Waits on the old Letterman show, when Letterman still had the fastball; Tom, of course, has never lost his. Never could stand that dog.



Nick Underhill goes hard on the A-Rod, on the off chance that you haven't gotten enough of that story yet. Better than most.

Fundamentally Unsound offers up another big helping of Answery goodness, for all of you that liked the last batch.



And finally, today's inappropriate humor video from blog favorite Sara Benincasa, a NYC talent with dead-on sensibilities who also does a great Sarah Palin. If you like her stuff, by all means, click through: there's plenty.

Blogrolling: Do Not Be Like This

I rarely post video of the first Mrs. Shooter, but when she earns it, she earns it. (I also rarely make this cheap of a joke. OK, the latter is a lie.)



The MoonDog has redesigned his sports blog. Go and tell him how much you hate it, and want the old site back. People who do a huge amount of work on their site always appreciate it when you do that.

Grand National Championships with your college basketball bubble teams. I promise not to care about this unless my alma mater (Syracuse) goes on a big run, at which point I'll become all knowledgeable and stuff. (Go Flynn Go!)

Quick Hit with the top 13 scariest masks in sports. The top spot is an unquestioned winner, and kind of reprehensible.

I'm including this last one more for the technical freakiness of it all, but if you insist on seeing a sports parallel, it's easy: the protagonist is A-Roid, and the dude he meets is Bonds. Also, I am the Walrus.


Hemlock from Tyson Ibele on Vimeo.

Blogrolling on only $500K a year

Oh noes! Trail Blazer and Seahawk owner and my one-time lying sack of guano employer Paul Allen is going to lose control over one of his biggest holdings in a bankruptcy! How will I ever wipe the smile off my face? (Special Note to Seahawk Fan: Your owner is the reason why the refs were in the tank for the Steelers in the Super Bowl. Special note to Blazer Fan: Your owner is the reason why Greg Oden keeps getting hurt. Special note to Paul Allen: Karma's a bitch, isn't it?)

Punch in any Web site, get a cool word picture. It's oddly stimulating.

Simon on Sports gives the time and dates for when Peyton Manning will erase Brett Favre from the record books, thereby provoking an even more pathetic comeback from the Gunslinger. You're never getting away from these people, folks.

Poor banking dears in NYC just can't live on $500K a year. If you can read this without wanting to set some rich prick on fire, you're a better man than me. Or is that worse?

Nick Underhill goes down the A-Rod / Selig path and finds them all reprehensible. I applaud his brave stand.

SSR visits with our old friend Fred Mitchell, the very devoted Fed Ex customer. Yes, I'm still wondering what the Eagles would look like with Reggie Wayne instead of him. And with that, it's off to cry myself to sleep yet again...

Blogrolling: The First Rule Of Poker Pool Fight Club

Chimpanzee Rage from the great Deuce of Davenport with today's priceless moment from the police blotter. Playing special teams for the Colts, surprisingly, will not keep you out of jail...

Also from the Chimp, do not miss this latest reality television show, also known as the life of 95% of Iggles fans from Kensington. Personally, I'm still more of a chess boxer, but as soon as they mix all three of these into one Overlord Game where your pocket aces get split by a pool cue to the head and a submission hold... well, grease me up, Lunchlady Doris!

Pool Poker and Pain promo


Today's search engine sources of traffic for the site (and these are always absolutely true): Fred Bevill (Hi, Fred!), aka the lispy Heartland Poker Tour color analyst, and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie Penis. I'm proud to be a blogger!

The Gray Lady weighs in with an in-depth piece on American Indian boxers. Keep this in mind when you hear about someone overcoming adversity; adversity is a high school dropout mom, fighting for a better life for her kid at age 18. Someone buy the rights to this for "Million Dollar Baby 2: Electric Boogaloo."

Just to give Steeler Fan an even bigger stiffy for their Super Bowl winning quarterback, there's this: he did the whole thing with broken ribs. I think he just passed Terry Bradshaw for All Time Favorite Steeler QB Ever.

When even the President takes a potshot at you, because your popularity ratings now look a lot like those Wall Street bonus bastards... well, everybody knows, A-Rd. everybody knows. (Me, I know that I like the Sin City Poon. A lot...)

A-Roid

Word on the Internets this weekend, to save Blogfrica from actually dealing with the NBA or Pro Bowl, is that Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003. At this point, the only authority you can trust on roids is, clearly, Jose Canseco.

As a blogger, you get two flavors of post about this.

1) A-Rod's a fraud! Let me spend the next few hundred words saying how I always knew this!

2) Every good player is on roids, so let's just make them legal now, and part of the strategy of the game, kind of like when a NASCAR guy chooses to change tires or fuel up.

Both tactics bore me, so here's a third tactic...

Who, in 2003, are we absolutely certain *wasn't* taking steroids?

Think it over. The best players in the game were clearly using them, without anyone seeming to care. Barry Bonds ruled baseball with an oversized head. The Oakland A's won the AL West with guys like Jason Giambi and Miguel Tejada. Sammy Sosa led the Cubs, Mark McGwire led the Cardinals, and the Marlins beat the Yankees in a relatively blah 4-2 World Series, after the Marlins-Cubs and Sox-Yanks both went to seven games. It was a great year for baseball, thanks to the overly dramatic playoffs. Sure, people were talking about steroids, but no one was really letting it get in the way of the games.

Alex Rodriguez was in Texas, leading the AL in home runs, spending the last of three seasons of futility in the heat.

Assuming that he was, in fact, guilty of going on the juice... I'm not all that sure that I'm going to feel terribly upset about it.

You see, the first person to cheat is kind of a trail blazer. They gain the biggest edge, take the biggest risk, and earn the biggest ire when they are caught. But with each succeeding cheater, especially when they cheating becomes common and/or outdated, the outrage is muted, and so is the urge to prosecute.

This is a tangent, but does anyone remember Douglas Ginsburg? He was the Supreme Court nominee made by Ronald Reagan in 1987 after the Senate bounced Robert "King Tut" Bork, and he got bounced for admitting that he used marijuana. Now, we've elected a President who has admitted to smoking it; admittedly, the President is chosen by the people, rather than the Senate, but one suspects that a Court nominee with a similar problem wouldn't be automatically rejected now. What's changed? Twenty years of people, well, using marijuana.

It's not quite the same thing, of course, since pot doesn't improve your athletic ability (unless Robert Parish owed his longevity to it, or it made Michael Phelps swim faster) in the same way that steroids do. But the principle is the same.

And the guys that weren't using in 2003 probably weren't, well, among the best players in the game. It just seems to be too much of an advantage.

Now, does this mean that we should ignore the possible cheating? Of course not; standards are standards, and the law is the law no matter how valuable the player or the color of his laundry. But if you are using this to feel morally superior to the Yankees, you might want to take a step back... because the simple fact of the matter is that your team probably has cheats on it as well...

And if it doesn't, maybe that's telling, too.

(Also, that we can just about close the Hall of Fame right now.)

D-Rod

That's your oh-so-classy New York Post headline this morning, as the world gets back to the workaday life and ritual humiliation of one Alex Rodriguez, a power-hitting infielder of some note for the New York Yankees. Get ready for $30 million a year in shadenfreude... and maybe this is just me getting soft in my old age, but I'm wondering the following question: why does anyone want to read about this?

Here, let me demonstrate. The first Shooter Wife was an undiagnosed depressive who didn't finish college. She was miles out of my league, looks-wise, whip-smart, funny, an outstanding cook, and more than fun in the sack. It didn't work out for a million reasons. Here are the ones that come to mind right away: I couldn't make her happy, she changed her mind about wanting kids after we got married, we fought over money, being with someone who is depressed is utterly maddening, I hated my jobs and she hated hers, and loads more that I'm not going to talk about here. We didn't really treat each other very well, and after what seemed like an unending spiral of life getting worse, I asked her to leave. She did.

Now, does that make you feel better about reading this, or are you mentally tapping your foot as you wait for me to get back to sports? Better yet, does it make you seem a little sordid?

My divorce was, by most independent measures, relatively painless. We called 1-800-DIVORCE and paid $149. There were no kids, no real property to divide, no reason to ever see or talk to each other ever again. I ate the debts we racked up, and on some level, I'm still paying for that, but in the long run, my rock band was a heck of a lot more expensive. The whole marriage was done in just a couple of years. I don't often think about her, and I imagine she doesn't think about me. By the scale of such things, I imagine what we went through was about 1% of what the Rodriguez Experience will be.

And yet, this. For months afterward, I walked around in an unshakable dark cloud of unhappiness, without the ability to even taste food or care about anything. In short order, I got fired from a job I hated and replaced it with another, and had to move to a crappy part of town and take on an odorous roommate. It took me years and a life-changing class to lose the depression and the certainty that every relationship I was ever going to have was going to end just like my marriage, and that I deserved what I was getting.

Even to this day, it burns that there is someone in this world who I once loved to the best of my ability, who I stood in front of hundreds of people and declared my love for, who I really did think I was going to grow old with. It's a scar that only heals to a point, and remember... this is a "clean" divorce.

Now, I don't presume to know what Mr. Rodriguez is going through today. Presumably, money makes everything easier, and it's not like he'll be unable to find someone to distract himself with.

But I do know this; he now gets to be a more or less absent father (even more than the usual transient baseball player existence) for the rest of his life, with any number of people getting to read (at length) the sordid details of his life with his ex as they fight over money.

I'm not sure there's a person on this earth that I'd wish that on.

I also know that, as a father, I'd sooner take a bullet than lose access to my kids.

So if you're chortling with amusement over this, do me a favor. Take a look at the mirror, and ask yourself if you really feel good about this aspect of yourself.

And if you do, get help, a life, and a heart. The order isn't important.

Epic Drop: Top 16 Players for your MLB Dead Pool

The list tonight is a bad piece of business, which makes me think it's going to get a lot of traffic, comments, links and the like. Just so long as it makes some raging Red Sox Fan convinced that they need to go nuts over any hint of dark humor about Jon Lester, I'll be happy. (If I can enrage a Red Sox fan with the Celtics up 3-1 in the NBA Finals, that's a real accomplishment.)

Whorifying

The streets of New York are awash in people clutching newspapers with the latest Jose Canseco allegations towards Alex Rodriguez... and I'm not going to get into the substance of those now, because there's actual journalists out there who get paid their weight in bottom ramen for that sort of thing. Besides, the last time that people said Canseco was a liar, he, um, wasn't, and nearly all of the people he fingered (as opposed to injected) turned out to be Roid Achievers.

No, what I'd rather talk about here is the transparent motives of all involved. Canseco needs to pimp his book (personally, I'd like to see the man branch out into poetry, or perhaps The Theater). A-Rod needs to shrug off any allegation. The Yankees need to pretend this stuff doesn't bother them, and that paying a guy more than the gross national product of many sub-Saharan nations doesn't mean he has to keep his name out of the NY Post. The Lemur needs to get the cheap ratings high from a train wreck story, all while pretending to hold their nose over the awful awfulness of covering train wreck stories. And all of us in the sports blogosphere feel like we've got to comment on it, because it's damn near impossible not to.

So, there you have it.

Canseco's a media whore.

A-Rod's a media whore.

The media are whores.

And me, for pointing all of that out, and you, for caring (and admit it, you do care)...

We're beyond sin, really.

Now, does this mean that A-Rod will be undervalued in my roto auction?

A-Rod Can't Carry Michelle Wie's Jock

MSNBC
Baseball is excelling, generating $6 billion in revenue last year. But its players are far from a hit off the field. When one looks at the top 10 endorsers in U.S. sports today, none play "America's pastime."

Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter would seem to be a marketer's dream team, but Michelle Wie, a teenage female golfer, hauls in about $6 million more in endorsements each year than the New York Yankee stars combined. And when one thinks of the great commercials of all-time involving athletes--such as Mean Joe Greene and Coca-Cola, or Michael Jordan and Larry Bird hoping to hit "nothing but net"--none star baseball players.

An influx of players from Japan, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere has caused the numbers of U.S.-born players to shrink. Many players from foreign lands grab marketing opportunities in their home countries, while their appeal to U.S. firms is not as strong. And the steroid scandal has also frightened companies away.

Here's the real reason why, folks... MLB no longer attracts enough people in the target 18-to-34 demographic. It doesn't because the games are too expensive, too many markets are non-competitive due to salary inequities, and hyper-organization, scholarship competitions and parental over-involvement have drained the lifeblood out of youth sports. That, and video games are a lot more fun.

Plus, um, Wie's a freak. A-Rod's just a good baseball player. And more than a bit of a tool...

Disrespecting the Game

In the 8th inning of last night's World Series game (I feel compelled to tell you this since, by the numbers, you probably were not watching, and who could really blame you?), Fox reported on what Sports Illustrated reported on what most everyone already knew, or would have probably guessed... that Alex Rodrigruez had opted out of his deal with the Yankees, and was going to hit the free agent market.

This seemed to perturb the sports media both in the booth (Buck and McCarver, the syphilis and gonorrhea of post-season baseball) as well as the post-game post-coital Bristol Brigade, and if my in box and sports blog headlines have anything to say about it, many of my brethren in Blogfrica. The gist of it is that A-Rod disrespected the World Series by announcing this during Game Four, that he demonstrated a lack of class by attempting to distract attention from the championship. Also, that Scott Boras is the Antichrist.

At which point the following two things came to mind:

1) Um, he's Alex Rodriguez. What else were you expecting? I don't look to Manny Ramirez for outfield defense, I don't look to Curt Schilling for modesty and tact, and I don't look to Alex Rodriguez for anything but what's right for Alex Rodriguez. This is a guy for whom the old SNL Al Franken routine would seem like, well, the simple and unadorned truth. Not only does the sun rise and set on his ass, it asks permission first. (And if you think that your favorite baseball star would behave any differently following a year in which he was the best player in his league, you're smoking something, and really should share.)

2) Why is Disrespecting the Game OK for our sports media 99.9% of the time -- witness the entire existence of Tony Kornheiser, not to mention the routine, um, "work" of Mssrs. Michaels, Madden, Stills, Nash and Young in the NBC Cavalcade of NFL Sunday Night Has Something Tangentially To Do With Football Night -- but wrong for A-Rod?

To wit, the Yankees have not named their new manager for over 300 hours now, with media hostage negotations threatening to continue until well after the free agent signing period, for A-Rod's presumed old team. I'm sure that Mike Lupica hasn't seen his family for weeks now, which is the bright side of the story for them, but still. Yet, no one (well, outside of l'il ol' me) has felt compelled to call the Yankees out for this, let alone the sports media.

Here's a wild thought for the people with the microphones: if A-Rod's Disrespect of the World Series bothers them so much, don't cover it. Focus instead on Game Four of a series that will be almost as magical and memorable as the 2004 one (quick, non Red Sox or Cardinals Fan -- name anything about it other than Mientkiewicz keeping the ball).

But no, wait, that's unpossible! It's censorship and discretionary reporting and A-Rod not signing with the Yankees is, after all, A Big Story because (and here's the dirty little secret here) the game isn't all that interesting to you most of the time anymore now, is it? (Or, given the utter inevitability of it all after about three innings of Game One, the rest of us.)

Save for someone slapping someone (ah, there's A-Rod Disrespecting the Game again), we all don't *really* care, unless you've got money or fantasy players (i.e., money) or your local rooting interest going on. That's because baseball is a predominantly local operation that's trying to pretend to be a national one. Tommy Lasorda in the MLB commercials admits it freely; if your team doesn't win (and, let's face it, unless you like a large market team and/or get very, very lucky, they won't), you are going to turn the page to football... where, ahem, the New York Jets don't get to fix their quarterback situation by just going out and buying one on the open market in Japan or elsewhere, because there really isn't an open market that has the best quarterbacks. Unlike, say, starting pitcher or third base. But no, we can't imagine why people would rather talk about What's Next in MLB, rather than how wonderful everything we just saw was.

Oh, and there's also this... that irritation that Peter Gammons and others expressed last night when the A-Hype crapped all over their Sawx game? It's what the rest of us feel, um, the rest of the freaking year, when you take your eyes off the game and go into Pontification Land. (So there are these apples, and they are not likable.)

So please, spare us the obvious and tired point of how A-Rod has Disrespected the Game. He's just the latest in a long line to not leave too much on the nightstand, or to make change from what was left before. (You know, by the people who are in bed with MLB on a habitual basis.)

A-Rod Is Worth More Than This

You are looking at the world's largest seizure of drug money -- $207 million in cash, in the form of dollars, pesos, and yen. More here.

I have no real point to this, but hey -- look it all that money. Woo.

We're Only In It For The Children

Mommy and Daddy are fighting again!

Yes, if it's Saturday, it must be another chapter in the book that only New York wants to read, Alex Rodriguez's Life In Newspapers.

The latest is that the third baseman and preseason FTT MVP candidate (you can, as they say, look it up -- though we'd like it if you ignore all of the other predictions) says he's going to opt out of his contract at the end of the year, and that he's going to Vegas for a weekend with his friends.

The Yanks said fine, that's great -- we'd like to extend you now. And also, my mother wants to visit. For a month.

A-Rod replied that he won't negotiate during the season, and that he wants to buy a motorcycle.

The Yankees countered with saying that if he's going to be that way, they won't negotiate with him in the off-season. And that if he doesn't start picking up his underwear, they're just going to throw it out.

Dishes, presumably, will be thrown next, after an exchange of idle threats.

Meanwhile, the Yankee fans are watching from this whole thing from upstairs. Should they be happy that the mean man who doesn't make Mommy happy will leave?

But if that happens, Mommy won't be able to stay in this house in the first division. And Daddy might go live with that tramp with the Boston accent right down the street. Mommy would never get over that.

Kids, FTT is here to tell you -- don't worry.

Mommy and Daddy are going to stay together.

That's because no one else can stand them.

Or you, really.

Now, stop crying and go to bed!

MLB Potpourri: I Still Hate Griff And Bonds

> Roger Clemens held the Twins to a double and a single in a 5-1 Yankee win, but what's telling here is *how* he did it -- just 4 strikeouts, with 100 pitches in 8 innings, retiring his last 15 faced.

It's Win #350 for the Rocket, and note also that the Yankees felt compelled to use Rivera in a non-save situation, rather than Flaming Proctor. (Of course, after watching the A's handle the Yankees on Saturday and Sunday, Mariano was well rested.)

Meanwhile, Alex Rodriguez left the game after a collision at first, from a sprained right hamstring. Even when the Yankees win this year, they lose. With the Red Sox beating the Rangers, the lead remains 10.5, and the wild card is 8.5.

For the Twins, they've scored just 1 run in their last 18 innings, having been shut out last night by Jeremy Bonderman and Doug Jones in Detroit. Justin Morneau just doesn't look right following his injury.

> The Cubs win again, jumping early and often on the Nats. The Brewers kept pace by pounding those always comical Pirates, but the terrific June continues for Chicago, bringing them above .500, and 6.5 games out of the division, 5 games out of the wild card.

It was the 7th win of the year for Ted Lilly, who, along with Jason Marquis, has managed to make the Cubs off-season drunken sailor spending spree not look quite so, well, drunken.

> The Indians continued to roll, with a 10-2 crushing of the Devil Rays. Fausto Carmona's 9th win came after his worst outing of the year, and keeps the Tribe 2 games up in the Central.

> The Mets became the latest team to go to Colorado and get their noses bloodied, the victims of an 6-2 beatdown. Tom Glavine didn't like the altitude in a 6-run third inning, and is now just 7-6 with a 4.39 ERA is his Death March Year to 300 Wins. Jason Hirsh shrugged off an 5+ ERA and 8 home runs in his last three starts to get the win, and also had 2 RBIs.

> My pick to win the AL Central... is now just a few games out of, gulp, last. The White Sox scored 6, but Bobby Jenks blew the save, and the Orioles took the win.

And in other news... I'm just about ready to begin projectile vomiting over the idea that we should all be putting our brains in a box and celebrating Griffey and Bonds in the All-Star Game.

I don't care that both are hitting again this year. I don't care that they're got monstrous home run numbers. I don't care that we're supposed to be telling our kids about them.

One is a regrettable human being, a terrible team mate, and a likely perjurer, independent of the obvious roid/HGH/blood of young boys cheating.

The other is a guy who threw a perfect career away to chase money, and got his karmic comeuppance with a string of injuries and a franchise that hasn't been relevant for the entire time he's been there.

We don't have to forget about all of that because they're having good years. In fact, it's kind of more important to remember now.

That doesn't make us cynical mean blogger people. That makes us people who decide the worth of athletes beyond last week's box scores. (Which is, of course, more than we can say for the World Wide Lemur.)

$200 Million Doesn't Buy You A Spare Tire

Watching the Yanks lose their 5th game in a 6-game road trip so far, one had to be struck by the sight of a 44-year-old starter (Clemens, of course) coming into a game to pitch relief. It was the first time for the Rocket out of the pen in a regular season game since his rookie year in 1984, and it didn't quite work out, and he gave up a hit and a run in what turned out to be a 7-2 loss and a series loss to the previously moribund Giants. The team is now 36-37.

Yes, it's extremely defensible strategy to bring in Clemens on his off-day to pitch an inning. It nearly worked, they didn't have him out there for long enough to risk anything, and it's not like they care too much about his future after this year. They've done the same thing with Pettite on several occasions, and the day after a 13-inning marathon, you needed every possible arm. Just a relief the dear boy was around, really -- and you wonder, on some level, whether this was exactly why he negotiated being away from the team on off days in the first place.

But as the team falls back to 11.5 games out of first and 6.5 games out of the wild-card... it just has the feel, if not the reality, of desperation.

Older teams are prone to big streaks in either direction. When they're right and rolling, everyone is playing to career norms, and veteran players are veterans for a reason -- they are above average. Anyone in the majors who has managed to get 1000 innings or 5000 at bats is, by definition, a good player -- there are too many other guys around to take the job if you aren't, and independent of a big contract, patience is limited.

But when they're hurt or failing, the same math goes the other way... because the team is less likely to have a good back-up position. And that, truly, is the main failing of the Yankees in the latter days of the Torre era (and I call this the Torre era more than the Cashman era, because it's frankly hard to tell how much of this team is Cashman, as opposed to Big Stein's lackeys, as opposed to the farm system that started the run in the first place).

It's truly amazing that a team with a $200 million payroll had no better option at first base than Doug Mientkiewicz. When that career .760 OPS hitter and 11-year veteran was felled by injury (in what should be a relief, in that his .671 20007 OPS is matched by many middle infielders)... and his vaunted fielding prowess at the diamond's least important defensive position isn't all that important, unless you think that Jeter and A-Rod are the worst throwers at their position in MLB, which your eyes tell you isn't the case...

Well, it's even more amazing that the team's best fallback option is the 33-year-old Miguel Cairo. Perhaps the most amazing part of this whole series of moves is listening to YES broadcasters talk about what a surprise Cairo's defense has been. As if a team with a $200mm payroll should be content with a .595 OPS at first base just to get a glove in the lineup. A small note to the Yankee faithful -- the .320 OPS difference between the Boston first baseman (mostly Youkilis) and yours has to taste good, especially because you're paying a lot more for your numbers.

The troubles at first base even have the team rolling the dice with playing Jorge Posada there, despite the fact that he's an injury risk waiting to happen... and that when Jorge is there, the team has to play his back-up, the breathtakingly inept 29-year-old Wil Nieves (OPS of .260 this year, and .361 for his career, which is to say, less than several National League *pitchers*). Nieves, however, brings a lot of defense to the table -- the Giants only stole five bases off him and Mike Mussina yesterday. They had 32 in their first 73 games, and weren't starting Dave Roberts, so five in a game was just bound to happen.

Here's who the Yankees *should* have waiting in the minors to play first in the event of an injury: Jack Cust. The Oakland lefty and career minor-leaguer always could hit; he just can't field. Or Scott Hatteberg, who was available for a song two years ago (the song in question was "On A Horse With No Name"), and probably still available from the Reds for the price of a minor pitching prospect.

At this point, you'd be happy with a Travis-ty Lee or a JT "12 Inches Of" Snow. Does anyone have Tino Martinez's cell phone number -- landline service to the senior center is spotty. Maybe Paulie O'Neill can gripe his way through a few nostalgia at-bats, just so the Yankee faithful can cream themselves over his intangibles?

The Yankee farm system is very good for developing high ceiling prospects that allow them to go after big contract veterans. It is much, much less good at finding the kind of true AAA player that an older team with injury risks needs. That can only be attributed to a lack of discipline or effort, or a need to show some cost savings somewhere after filling the garage with toys.

Because when you look at a Roger Clemens or an Andy Pettite pitching out of the bullpen on their off day, you are not seeing a veteran giving his team some crucial outs in the middle of a long run up Red Sox Mountain.

What you are seeing, instead, is the baseball equivalent of a late-model performance sports car, with serious reliability issues and a dodgy, at best, insurance policy, hauling rocks to a job site. At some point, it's going to break down, and your utter lack of a contingency plan is going to get you stuck in the middle of nowhere -- or, 11.5 games out of first, 6.5 games out of the wildcard, and a pulled A-Rod groin away from utter irrelevancy.

Now that I've buried them, they will run off six in a run and make Red Sox Nation hide in the bathroom for a weekend. But any team where the bench is so bad that .600 OPS is common... or the bullpen is getting supplemental innings from top-line starters... is no threat. Even if they do have the MVP and a half-dozen Hall of Famers. It's a long season, and teams have 25 players for a reason.

Bringing the Wood

To all the A Rod haters out there, this just isn’t your year. Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not a fan of A Rod or the Yankees, but I recently found myself picking A Rod in my Baseball Fantasy League. It’s a 5-5 format with 12 teams and the draft order is determined “randomly” a couple of weeks before we draft. I say “randomly” because in all the years I’ve been playing in these leagues (Football, Basketball and Baseball) run by the same guys, I’ve yet to come within sniffing distance of the top of the order. I find bitterness to be a virtue, don’t you?

Anyway, I landed in the 8th spot this year. I’m pretty familiar with being stuck in the middle of the drafting order so I usually find myself being able to scoop up 2 solid offense players with my first two picks. I hate pitching and refuse to even think about picking up one before round 3. And then it’s most likely a stud closer.

As I do every year I wait to do my research until the last minute. This year – I did none at all. I had a Fantasy Baseball magazine (sucker purchase by the way) and looked up how others had drafted on ESPN.com. In a nutshell, I wasn’t prepared. What I really wasn’t prepared for was that my league was going to hand me the future 2007 AL MVP at slot 8. Alex Rodriguez.

What I can’t understand is how does A Rod fall to me at 8? And before you all start emailing me about how to get into this league let me run down the first 7 picks for you.

1. Albert Pujols. Can’t disagree with that pick. This guy has been a stud since breaking into the bigs. By the way, he was robbed of the MVP last year. He had more runs, more extra base hits, a higher average, higher OBP, higher slugging and higher OPS than Ryan Howard. He also struck out almost 4 times less than Howard (50 to 181). Oh, and I think his team one the World Series. He’ll get on track, so this was the pick at #1.

2. Johan Santana. Too high a slot for Johan. He’s a first round pick, but not at number 2. At this spot you need to find an offense player who is going to produce for you in at least 4 categories. An SP only helps you once a week, sometimes twice if the schedule lines up right. And taking him here, you’re waiting 20 more picks before you get a shot at your first offense producer. Minor bone.

3. Ryan Howard. Must be a pick by a Philly Homer. We have a lot of Philly guys in the league so I see where this could happen. However, he struggled through the spring and even commented that he had a lot to do with his swing, that it didn’t feel right. This was a guy I was thinking about at 8. Glad to see him go early so I didn’t have to roll the dice. Hap tip for saving me from myself.

4. Jose Reyes. Every year there is a trendy pick. And this was this year’s trend setter. I like his game, but with ARod and Ortiz out there, I’d have gone with one of them.

5. Alfonso Soriano. In a few words, he’s a Cub. Nothing good can come from that. And he’s already hurt. But hamstring injuries are rarely nagging.

Ok, at this point I’m thinking that these guys think this is a NL only league. Except for the guy who drafted Santana. But I’m worried. Two picks to go to me and I want A Rod or Ortiz and I’m thinking no way I get either. Do I start thinking Beltran or Cabrera? We’ll see.

6. David Ortiz. Crap. There goes one of my guys. Love this pick at 6. In other drafts I hadn’t seen him go this high and was hoping he was coming my way.

7. David Wright. WHAT? Is something wrong with my computer? Is something wrong with the computer of the owner who picked Wright? How many beers have I had? How does that happen? Are you telling me that David Wright is more valuable, at the same position, as A Rod? I’m ecstatic by this move. I think this owner thought it was a NL East only league. Major Bone.

Too many people have been lamenting about the “down” year A Rod had last year: 113 runs, 35 HR, 121 RBI, 15 SB and a .392 OBP. If that is a down year, I can’t wait to see what he does this year when he wins the AL MVP. So the lesson here is don’t do any draft prep. Just join a league where the other owners flub it up so you get A Rod with the 8th pick.