Follow Up File

Hey, remember Jerome McDougle, the one-time Eagles first round pick who was released before the end of training camp and picked up by the division rival Giants?

Philly Fan was absolutely, positively convinced for a few days there (especially in the netherworld of Grouse Radio) that Ol' Stiffie was going to turn his entire career for our hated rivals. With his impressive 2008 preseason and obvious physical gifts, he was going to be the second coming of Cris Carter, only on defense.

Anyway, you know how this ends, right?

Three active games, with one solo tackle, for the 29-year-old. He's been a healthy scratch for the Giants other games.

Leaving me with the final question... which seems stupider to you: our political discourse, or our sports talk?

Depression

Continuing our swing through the misery that is training camp, the big news out of Lehigh (that's where the Eagles do their business) is that guard Shawn Andrews, one of the best interior linemen in football and a two-time Pro Bowl selection, has been battling depression, which is why he's been out of camp.

Andrews was a first round pick for the Eagles in the 2004 draft as an early entry from Arkansas. As with so many of these guys, he came out early for money for his mom. In his career, he's had two significant injuries, the first being a broken leg that cost him time during the Super Bowl year, and the second being a neck injury that took him out of the Saints playoff game. The latter was a big factor in the loss, in that the only thing keeping the Eagles from scoring at will in that game was the Saints' getting to Jeff Garcia.

In short, he's incredibly valuable to the team, and without him, you don't have Bryan Westbrook doing what he does, or Donovan McNabb remaining upright. He's also never been known to draw stupid penalties, pop off to the media, or pule for more money. None of which, I'm afraid, will spare him from what's to come.

Here's the money quotes from the Philly Daily News and Inquirer, as relayed through the AP (which is enough attribution to get me sued, one suspects).

"I'm willing to admit that I've been going through a very bad time with depression. I've finally decided to get professional help. It's not something that blossomed up overnight. I'm on medication, trying to get better... I really was kind of at my end... In the state that I'm in, I would be at training camp physically, but mentally, I could have gotten myself hurt or gotten one of my teammates hurt."

Andrews is in his fifth year, and he's eating a $15K a day fine to be out, which is enough to make anyone depressed (rim shot), because the absence is not excused.

Now, given his track record, value, and my general disinclination to take much of what happens in training camp as a sign of the coming apocalypse, I'm more or less willing to ignore the whole thing. The world will (probably) little note, nor long remember, the mostly private battles that a big man had with a serious psychological medical condition faced in the off-season.

But what's more interesting is what this will say about the fan base and media.

Some will take the high road (read: softballs to keep player and team access). From these folks, you'll get half-hearted defenses of the seriousness of depression as a medical state, statistics on how many people in the country are under a doctor's care for it, and maybe some numbers on how much we spend on Prozac and the like. These people will be more or less ignored.

Then, you'll get the meathead yammering and cheap frat boy pot shots that make up most sports discourse, especially from fans of rival teams. Hell, if this had been someone from an NFC East rival with a track record of obnoxiousness (read, Plaxico Burress, Terrell Owens, Chris Cooley, etc., etc.), I'd have been right there with them.

But Andrews isn't one of those guys. What he appears to be, instead, is someone who is trying to get through it, who has made the choice to be open about the situation. For that, I'm pretty sure he's going to get slaughtered, but maybe that's actually going to help... because one of the best ways to deal with depression is, frankly, to delude yourself into distraction with an outside source. (Like, oh, say, a sports blog.)

Today's off-kilter tangent is brought to you by the 18th century. Sailors used to be judged for their unclean and awful ways, and when they got scurvy, that was judged to be a character flaw. Scurvy, of course, is caused by a deficiency of Vitamin C in the diet. Whether you're a nice person or not has nothing to do with it. So what does it cost us all, really, to proceed as if depression is similar, and we just haven't found the Vitamin C yet?

So, to Eagles Fan, especially if he's likely to go bust off a call to some braying jackass fest... Andrews is an elite athlete, with obvious physical gifts, and enough competitive fire to have risen to the top levels of his profession. Leave him the hell alone, and find something else to concern yourselves with.

The Sky Is, Um, Not Falling

So I had the dubious pleasure of catching a little WFAN (that's the Mets sports talk radio) while doing errands on Saturday afternoon, and there's really something marvelous about the transparency of the formula.

You see, on Friday night, the Mets lost with Johan Santana on the mound against Phillies farmhand J.A. Happ in a tight game... and in the overreaction world that is sports talk radio, it's not one of 162 games, or even a rivalry game in mid-season... it's a breathtaking opportunity lost, a rebirth of Phillies confidence, a clear indictment of the in-game skills of Jerry Manuel (who pulled Santana after a low pitch count for Duaner Sanchez, who lost it on a couple of two-out hits).

Now, was the decision to pull Santana, who hadn't given up an extra-base hit and was cruising for almost the entire game, correct? Pretty damned doubtful, but defensible if Santana had told him he was done, or if he's concerned about burning out his ace before the stretch drive, since he's somehow not getting just how unspeakably important last night's game was. That was the kind of win that could just cause a big streak...

Or, at least, might have, had the Mets not then turned around and won the last two games of the series (9-4 on Saturday, and 4-2 in 12 innings with a rain delay today).

So, what's more likely here... that the NL East is just a collection of 85 to 90 win caliber teams, and as long as the teams stay within hailing distance of each other (the Phils now lead the Marlins by 2.5, and the Mets by 3.5), you can more or less safely ignore most of what happens in this pennant race for the next month or two... and given that none of those teams really sets up to have a post-season rotation that can match up to what Chicago (or the presumably stumbling Diamondbacks) can throw out there, maybe not even then.

Meanwhile in the other end of MLB+, the Yankees scraped back to a split in their 4-game series with the Red Sox... while the Rays swept the Royals for their seventh straight win in a row, meaning that they've gained two games on both teams during the showdown. So the Rays now have a 5 and 9 game lead over Coke and Pepsi, and if they can put together a quick 2-gam series win (Kazmir vs. Pettite, Jackson vs. Ponson), maybe they can put the Yankees in a double-figure hole in the East. The Sawx get a surprisingly competent Twins team that's even played near .500 on the road, and when you've got a team that's counting on big hits from JD Drew, you've got a team that's capable of blowing a series at home... especially when you weren't able to put the stake in the heart of your rival after taking the first two games in a four game set.

What you can, of course, rely on is that... no matter what the teams do on the field, any movement in the A-Rod Divorce will overwhelm anything else you hear about this, at least until Hank Steinbrenner bursts a blood vessel. Which is, well, increasingly more likely as the Rays just continue to put distance between them and the rest of the division...

Epic Drop: Top 11 Plans For When I Win The Mike And Mike Auction

Your link is here, and the astute reader will notice that there is no actual content here that betrays any specific knowledge of either Mike.

That's for one simple reason: I don't listen to their show. And normally, I'd feel bad about not doing the research, but let's face it... the blogging doesn't pay enough for that kind of ritualistic self-abuse. WNBA research is pleasant by comparison...

Epic Drop: Second Verse, Not The Same As The First

The thrilling conclusion is here. The scary part for me with this post is that over half of the roles were submitted by the Shooter Friends, who clearly have even less of a life than I do. My sports talk radio was limited to Jim Rome on the West Coast for his opening hour as part of my commute, and while he's painful on television, he's not that bad on the radio. (Though the Clones really do wear on you after a while.)

Epic Drop: Top 20 Sports Talk Radio Callers

Your list is here, and it's the first of a two-part series, because the hate, she just grew and grew and grew. Blame Kyle Orton and the Bears for not being able to give me one more week of relevant Eagles football, but I'm still kind of confused how the Vikings eliminate the Eagles tonight, when they could both still finish 8-8 and the Eagles beat them in the head to head match up... and no, that it not a request for someone to tell me why it is that way. I've already moved on to my post-season bitterness.

Top 5 Slow Day Sports Radio Conversation Starters

1. Pete Rose. It's been at least three months since anyone has really talked about him.

Is that too long?

2. An athlete is making a political stand against/for the Iraq War.

Don't these people know that only the media gets to have opinions in public?

3. I don't care if I get heat for this. I'm going to say it anyway. My producer is trying to talk me out of this, but I think you people deserve to hear my real opinion.

I think that Barry Bonds is an asshole.

And that he's black.

I think Barry Bonds is a black asshole!

Your increasingly tense phone calls are next!

4. There's a pay-per-view fight coming up. My interview with one of the fighters will finally answer the question, once and for all -- do they hate each other, really hate each other, really really hate each other, or -- and you almost never see this -- really, really, really hate each other?

The answer may surprise you.

5. I watched a movie, drama, or reality show last night.

Let's talk about it like it were sports!