Potpurri for Five

Yes, it's the return of the quick hitting thoughts based on nothing more than what's been floating around my head while I'm not really doing The Job, since I'm traveling. But here goes anyway.

1) Coach Has To Go: When you actively consider the bright side of any team's loss being that Coach might get canned from the loss.

So any Eagles Fan who is keeping Andy's Done in the back of their mind in the lead-up to tomorrow's Eagles-Cowboys game... yes, this is for you. Lions Fan who want to be sure that Coach Rod is on his face for failing to avoid Immortality, here it is. Cowboys Fan who dreams of Coach Wade taking the Switzer Bullet (um, it'd help if they had someone with a pulse, but really, your problem is your owner), same story.

And if you're really rooting for the loss, without any kind of fantasy football payoff or against the spread bet coinciding... well, let's just say that you're beyond the pale with Old Coach. You might start hoping he never existed, or something.

2) If you root for the team with the best record in the league and pule about the officiating in any game that isn't an elimination playoff experience, you are officially a Douchebag For Now And Ever, World Without End, Amen. (And yes, I'm talking about the Bad Tooth again, who couldn't take the Christmas present to a struggling nation that is his team losing. Though to be fair, I liked the follow-up loss to the Warriors -- the Warriors! -- more, just because the Lake Show's fans are also not far from Eternal Bag Status.)

3) With Randy Johnson's one-year deal to get his 300th win and then go away in San Francisco, can we officially designate the Giants as the Vienna of MLB? In that it's a pretty place to visit, history happened here, but it's otherwise irrelevant to, you know, actually important things happening?

Realistically, there are two uniform possibilities for The Unit to make his 300th look like anything but a stagger over the finish line: Seattle and Arizona. Given that he went 11-10 with a tolerable 3.91 ERA last year in the desert, and needs just five more wins to get the green jacket... seriously, Arizona, why couldn't you be the one to get this done? He's going to look silly doing this in SF. Well, OK, not as silly as Barry Zito continuing to work for the worst contract in MLB history, but close.

Oh, and SF? One year for $8 million here is a lot of cheddar in a bad economy for a guy who wont' really sell a lot of seats for you in his chase for the record. Why not, you know, buy a farm system that actually produces a tolerable position player instead?

4) Sammy Sosa says he's not ready to retire from MLB. Um, can someone tell these roid rock heads that if no one is giving you a job, your reluctance to retire doesn't much matter? I really don't want to have to write the same jokes again, and you don't want to read them...

5) A Houston hospital is changing its name from the Roger Clemens Institute for Sports Medicine to the Memorial Hermann Sports Medicine Institute.

In its statement, the hospital said the decision to take off Clemens' name was made "to better reflect its commitment to all sports and athletes" and that "the move reflects the desire to promote the broad range of sports medicine services and programs offered by Memorial Hermann."

In that shooting a cheating sack of crap who is well on his way to becoming the pitching equivalent of Pete Rose in terms of Hall of Fame estrangement in the ass with roids is, admittedly, a *very* narrow service...

Rocket Glare

Hey, who would have thunk that a hideously long and large personal services contract to a guy who had spent his entire career chasing dollars like a Thai prostitute might have been a bad idea?

You've got to hand it the Astros and Drayton McLane, who said on Friday that he will honor the 10-year (ten? good grief) personal services contract despite, you know, having his spring training camp tured into a media sideshow by the presence of an (ALLEGED) federal perjurer and substance abuser.

Somewhere, Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell are wondering what they needed to do to get this kind of sweetheart deal. Maybe slug a cop, or run a sweatshop?

There is also, um, this... what exactly qualifies the Rocket as a good influence for your young players? What can he teach them, other than that chemicals are a fine thing for preserving your career so long as you don't get caught, and that throwing your teammates under a bus for more money is a big win, and that Mike Piazza is just the kind of guy that you can throw bat shards at if he's taking you deep?

Pencil me in as something of a skeptic for the 'Stros doing much, so long as the owner thinks that sniffing Rocket jock is how he wants to spend spring training. Even in a division where the competition is the always doomed Cubs, the genuinely mediocre Brewers, and the chewing gum and tin foil Cardinals.

But it's all ok, you see, because McLane knows that "Roger is a good person." Sure he is, chief. And not a perjurer and a cheat, or a ridiculously unnecessary distraction. And in other news, Drayton McLane is not getting taken to the cleaners, and Astros Fan is not getting hosed.

The Angriest Place On Earth

Even as the controversy surrounding Roger Clemens intensifies, the pitcher plans to attend an ESPN sponsored event at Disney World later this month. Representatives for Clemens late last week informed ESPN that he will stick to his scheduled promotional appearance over the weekend of Feb. 29-March 2.

Clemens was scheduled to serve as a top draw at "ESPN The Weekend" before the Mitchell Report was released in December that alleged he had used steroids multiple times--and the network began running an on-air spot promoting it. But the day the report came out, ESPN pulled the humorous ad, citing Clemens' role in a controversial news story. -- Media Post

I have this image in my head of the Rocket going from ride to ride as people clear out of lines, rather than meet His Terrible Gaze. Finally, he goes to the carnival prize games and forlornly pumps fastball after fastball into the milk jug game, but his command is off, so he "pulls a hamstring" and limps off as that ominous music from "There Will Be Blood" plays in the background. The carnie apologizes frantically, sobbing, trying to give the Rocket the biggest prize, but he refuses to take it. A week later, four bodies are found.

Epic Drop: Top 11 Future Excuses For Roger Clemens

Your list is here, and you know what the best part of this is? The fact that since he won't be back with the Yankees next year, and their fans feel screwed by his very convenient hamstring pull in the playoffs, there's really no one left out there who really wants to defend him. Roger's united everyone, Red Sox Fan, Yankee Fan, Dave Stewart, and the rest of the AL fan bases that might even still exist, so far as the media knows. Roger, you've saved baseball after all!

The Return Of My Cranky Pants

(H/t for Cranky Pants as a concept to the SFGate's Tim Goodman.)

1) Clemens retirement speculation. Did you know that Roger's not sure whether or not he's going to come back next year, and his wife thinks he shouldn't because he's been such a baseball workaholic but he thinks he might and that he thinks that the Yankees should keep Joe Torre and that reading the last sentence just caused your functional IQ to drop by 20 points? (Don't worry, it's temporary. Like pot.)

There is nothing...

> not the tendency of announcers to stop reporting the game they are covering

> not the production of rumors as fact

> not the cheerleading for athletes who are good interviews

> not even the cross-pollination of sports with entertainment or politics (hey, you got your chocolate in my axle grease! you got your rancid cotton candy in my chocolate! wait... they taste like crap together!)

No, not all of these things put together that sticks in the craw like the Retirement Speculation Story. It is the living embodiment of a media-athlete circle jerk, and that it's even the subject of freaking cell phone commercials right now is a sign that Something Is Very Wrong With Our World.

If I were the vengeful all-powerful deity to whom all human events were a puppet show that required simple, swift and wildly escalating justice... any athlete that engaged in such foolishness would have their tendons snap like kindling. Writers, something else.

GO DO YOUR JOB. OR NOT. IF YOU DECIDE NOT TO DO YOUR JOB ANY MORE, I DO NOT CARE. SOMEONE ELSE, HONEST, WILL DO IT.

2) Congressional resolutions about sports. I am not, for the record, anti-political; I do not spend my days fuming about what Those Bastards are doing with My Tax Dollars. I assume that, just like in the private sector with its CEO scandals and Enron-esque shenanigans, there will be some good, some bad, and a cottage industry made from pointing out the latter. (Though it is kind of remarkable how quickly complaints about corporations go away, really. Find me a radio station windbag who goes on about the S&L bailout, or the Iraq contractor thefts, the same way they go on about government waste. Perhaps there is a reason for this that involves six media conglomerates controlling over 95% of everything we read, see, and hear. Anyway, moving on.)

And then there's this:

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1) commends Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre for establishing a National Football League record for most career touchdown passes;

(2) recognizes Brett Favre for his outstanding community service in Wisconsin and Mississippi and his 16 consecutive years of dedicated service with the Green Bay Packers, a community-owned organization; and

(3) directs the Clerk of the House of Representatives to transmit a copy of this resolution to Brett Favre, to the Green Bay Packers organization, and to the Commissioner of the National Football League.

Is it a small thing, really, in the course of the Republic? Yes. It probably took a junior staffer an hour to write, it got the Rep who read it (D-Steve Kagen, Appleton, WI) a little time on C-Span, and it made the reps from Wisconsin and Mississippi happy. It even made Republicans and Democrats agree on something, and after all Favre's done charitable things and hasn't gotten doped up on pain meds, as far as we know, in months.

But does it continue to cheapen the political discourse to resolve the equivalent of Puppies Are Fuzzy, Puppies Don't Hate, Puppies Are Cute, Puppies Are Great! into the public record?

Believe it or not, we actually pay these people to do things for us. Things that are more important than the all-important Favre Resolution or the all important Puppy Addendum. (For the record, FTT Just Says No To Puppy Burning, but we are soft on Gay Puppy Marriage.)

3) Jerry Buss says that, contrary to popular belief, Kobe Bryant plays for the Lakers and as such, is subject to the same realities (i.e., He Might Be Traded) as lesser mortals.

Really, what is stupider here -- the reporting of a bland pronouncement of How Sports Works as News, or the idea that it might actually *be* news? Trade speculation is a close second to Athlete

Retiring on the Insufferable Meter. Deal the loon or not. Otherwise, these cranky pants are getting matching shoes and jacket.

Epic Drop: Top 10 Signs Clemens Won't Be Around...

for the Yankees' stretch run. The image, I have to confess, gave me serious pause, and won't be shown here, for the sake of our tender advertisers. Besides, it could put one off prepackaged food for a while, really.