An ARod Haiku

I love you ARod
You are truly beautiful
Sincerely, ARod

The All Steroid Team

Now that Miguel Tejada and Alex Rodriguez are admitted steroid users, my all steroid team is finally complete. The pitching staff was a little harder to put together than the everyday lineup, but I'd still take this squad over any team ever assembled. Mike Cameron received some consideration in center field, but Dykstra is a superior leadoff hitter. All of these players were either named in the Mitchell Report and/or have been suspended for using performance enhancing drugs, with the exception of ARod and Bret Boone, whose career stats (and physical appearance) certainly seem to indicate something unnatural in the 2000 offseason.

1. Lenny Dykstra CF
2. Rafael Palmeiro DH
3. Alex Rodriguez 3B
4. Barry Bonds LF
5. Mark McGwire 1B
6. Sammy Sosa RF
7. Miguel Tejada SS
8. Ivan Rodriguez C
9. Bret Boone 2B

Catcher:Ivan Rodriguez
First Baseman: Mark McGwire
Second Baseman: Bret Boone
Shortstop: Miguel Tejada
Third Baseman: Alex Rodriguez
Left Fielder: Barry Bonds
Center Fielder: Lenny Dykstra
Right Fielder: Sammy Sosa
Designated Hitter: Rafael Palmeiro
Utility Infielders: Jason Giambi, Ken Caminiti, Todd Hundley
Bench Outfielders: Jose Canseco, Juan Gonzalez

Right handed pitcher: Roger Clemens
Left handed pitcher: Andy Pettitte
Right handed pitcher: Kevin Brown
Right handed pitcher: Paul Byrd
Right handed pitcher: Denny Neagle
Long reliever: Ismael Valdez
Set up man: Kent Mercker
Set up man: Jason Grimsley
Set up man: Mike Stanton
Set up man: Guillermo Mota
Closer: Eric Gagne

Oh those wacky Philly fans

Maybe it's a good thing Philadelphia has a 25 year championship drought (and Cleveland a 44 year drought). These idiots would burn their city to the ground if they had a dynasty. And some idiot would record it on a camera phone.

Potentially decent sporting event ruined by hokey announcers

Watching Josh Hamilton crank three 500 foot home runs in five minutes would have been a lot more enjoyable if it weren't for ESPN's typically saccharin announcers trying to top each other each dinger.

Karl Ravetch: It's important to know he was addicted to drugs.
Steve Phillips: And he's doing it under the bright lights of Yankees Stadium.
Chris Berman: And so many people are watching him.
Joe Morgan: What impresses me is that he was away from the game for three years.
Rick Reilly: Josh Hamilton is proof of a supreme being.

Seriously? Maybe they were making slightly too big of a deal? If most of us show up to work with alcohol on our breath, we're fired on the spot. This guy goes on a five year bender with hardcore narcotics and happens to be so ridiculously talented that he can dominate after pissing away over 10% of his career that I'm supposed to feel good about it? Hey kids, maybe you can be born a great natural athlete so you can shoot smack in trailer parks for a while, and then come back and make eight figures.

Baseball sucks

Richie Sexson has a lot to be upset about. His average and power numbers have plummeted since 2003 (he suffered a shoulder injury in 2004, and steroid testing in MLB started in 2005). And he's in the last year of a four year, $50 million deal he signed with Seattle prior to 2005, and he figures to take a massive pay cut. But it's just lame to charge the mound when the pitch doesn't come close, especially when your pitcher just hit two guys on the other team.

In relevant sports news, 86 days, 8 hours, 39 minutes until the Hall of Fame game in Canton, OH.

Red Sox, red tires, and a red grill

43 year old Ivonne Hernandez, who looks like Nick Nolte's soulmate in this mugshot, took the Yanks/Sawx rivalry up to a whole new level when she drove her car, adorned with a Yankees bumper sticker and serenaded with "Yankees suck," into a crowd of Red Sox fans without braking. She killed Matthew Beaudoin, 29, which freaks me out a little because he's my age.

Hernandez is being represented by public defender James Quay. She's being charged with second degree murder, aggravated drunk driving, and taking sports way too seriously. I mean, I thought I took sports seriously. I guess being sad for a few days after an overtime game seven loss pales in comparison to accelerating into a crowd of people. And the Yankees and their fans are out of control. Between this and dropping $50,000 to dig up the Ortiz jersey, maybe they need to follow a sport with less then 162 games a season.

Maybe they can bring in Bob Costas to pitch

Billy Crystal is going to sign a one day contract to play for the New York Yankees in an exhibition game on Thursday against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Crystal has been in three great movies (When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, Monsters, Inc.) and a bunch or drek will turn 60 on Friday. He will be the latest in a line of celebrities to play with professional teams, including Garth Brooks (who played at Oklahoma State and went to spring training with the Padres, Mets, and Royals), Master P (the Hornets and Raptors in 1999), and Tom Selleck (the Tigers in 1992).

This would never happen in the NFL. Can you imagine if an NFL team signed, say, Bon Jovi to play a preseason game? He would be in traction within an hour. Stuart Scott went to Jets training camp in 2002 and suffered a detached cornea after being hit in the eye from a football shot out of a JUGS machine. He was 37 and presumably in decent shape, and he suffered a serious injury in a drill. Even an action star would get pummeled in an NFL preseason game.

My one liner of the day

A friend of mine called me this weekend, eager to talk about his fantasy baseball team.

"There's nothing better than Opening Day," he said.

"Sure there is," I answered. "The first Sunday of the football season, the draft, Wild Card weekend, March Madness-"

"The start of March Madness I'll give you, but the draft?" he responded.

"I will take week 11 of the NFL season over Opening Day for baseball easily," I answered.

The Cardinals are the Bengals of MLB

I almost didn't notice the Scott Spiezio situation in St. Louis. With all the steroids headlines, it's easy to miss when someone does something truly despicable. The Cardinals released Spiezio yesterday, after a variety of charges against him became public. From an O.C. D.A. press release:

Spiezio is accused of speeding, cutting across several lanes, crossing through the oncoming traffic lanes, driving over a curb, and crashing into a fence. The crash knocked down a fence pole and blew out the front two tires of the car. Spiezio is accused of getting out of the car and fleeing the scene on foot.

The defendant is accused of running to his Irvine condominium complex and going to a friend's condo, who lived in the same complex. While his friend attempted to clean up the defendant, Spiezio is accused of vomiting in his friend's room. When the friend made a comment about the vomit, Spiezio is accused of becoming angry and attacking his friend, punching him repeatedly and throwing him against a wall.

Now, out of all these offenses, I do confess to throwing up in a friend's room. More than one, in fact. But I didn't kick any of their asses for commenting on it. At least, I don't think I did, and if I tried I guarantee I was unsuccessful.

This is the third major alcohol related problem with the Cardinals in the last 12 months, starting with manager Tony La Russa's DUI arrest last March. Reliever Josh Hancock died in a car crash in April, somehow managing not to take anyone with him. There is talk that Spiezio had trouble coping with the loss of Hancock, but that is pretty much the opposite of an excuse. Regarding Spiezio's release, La Russa said "I think it's a consistent message about what the team represents." How about some penalty to the manager?

Andy The Truth Pettitte

Many media outlets were questioning Andy Pettitte's absence from the Congressional Hearings Wednesday, and I've heard different reasons he didn't attend. The most solid one is that he didn't want to incriminate his father, or discuss his problems. Apparently, the second time he used steroids in 2004, he got them from his dad and not McNamee. His dad had shoulder surgery and bought the drugs from a shady character at a gym. And Pettitte had no desire to go into his father's problems in front of a national audience.

From page 101: Mr. Farrell. There was one thing Andy omitted about his dad besides all his physical problems or -- as you can expect, these physical problems caused him to be unable, to work to support his family, really pitched him into a deep depression; and he was suicidal for a while. And that was part of the reason he turned to using HGH. So it's on both the physical, emotional, psychological level a very sensitive subject for the family.

So again Pettitte really comes out of this thing as the cleanest steroid user in the history of professional sports. The moral to this story: truth will set you free!

Follow the money

Inspired by The Big Lead, I tried to track down campaign contributions from Roger Clemens, thinking perhaps that influenced the partisan line of questioning by Congress yesterday. I found none, but did notice that Clemens' attorney Rusty Hardin twice contributed the maximum to John McCain. It's worth noting, especially considering how influential Hardin was in setting up these hearings.

Who cares?

I couldn't help but get caught up in the congressional hearings yesterday. It was the sports equivalent of seeing Lindsey Lohan throwing up on herself, watching Congressmen take Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee apart. Riveting television. With the ratings for these hearings off the charts, you'd think if their was an Under Armour logo between the drug dealer and the steroid user maybe people would stop complaining about the waste of taxpayers dollars, but I digress.

But I really don't care who can prove what or whether the feds are going after Clemens for perjury, although if they don't you can't help but question the motivation for going after Bonds and not Clemens. But I do care that Clemens thinks that anyone believes that his wife is a raging steroid user, that Andy Pettite apparently contracted Alzheimer's in the offseason, and that whether or not Congresspeople believe Clemens follows completely along party lines, with Republicans siding with Clemens and Democrats siding with McNamee.

The highlights yesterday were every time testimony from a new witness was introduced, such as Petitte's wife and Clemens' nanny. Representative Burton also provided some entertainment with his grandstanding "lie after lie after lie" speech, but the fact that he kept having to stop to talk to a page took away from its impact. In the same speech he questioned "Why in the world would you work for someone who was unethical?" which drew a chuckle from me coming from a politician.

Why won't you just die?

In 1996 Orioles owner Peter Angelos quashed deadline trades involving Bobby Bonilla and David Wells, the Orioles rallied to make the playoffs, and Angelos was emboldened to interfere with the operations of the club for the next twelve years. Since 1996, how many good personnel moves have the Orioles made? Three, (signing Tejada, drafting Roberts and Bedard) maybe four? Although the Tejada trade looks good now, it would have looked far better a year and a half ago had they gotten Roy Oswalt in return.

That trade, culminated a few days before the Mitchell Report was released, did seem to indicate that president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail was calling the shots. But the dragging out of the potential Eric Bedard trade reveals Angelos still needs to mull over any moves the Orioles make, handcuffing MacPhail, since Baltimore can only move at a glacial pace even by MLB standards. Why would any other team want to trade with Baltimore when they are so prone to backing out of trades, and are so hesitant to consummate a deal?

Rocket fesses up

After all the denials and the qualified admissions it's great to see Roger Clemens finally admit to a massive amount of steroid and HGH use. Now, maybe we can move forward from this pointless 60 Minutes interview and start talking about a fantastic slate of playoff games this weekend, or even the NFL Draft. Or whatever new rules there will be next year for the kickers' balls, or pretty much anything NFL, or the writers' strike, or pretty much any topic besides this analysis of Clemens naive interviews and press conferences.

The list is life

It's been flying around the internet today, here it is, the infamous list of performance enhancement users from the Mitchell Report. Props to Deadspin.

Lenny Dykstra
David Segui
Larry Bigbie
Brian Roberts
Jack Cust
Tim Laker
Josias Manzanillo
Todd Hundley
Mark Carreon
Hal Morris
Matt Franco
Rondell White
Roger Clemens
Andy Pettitte
Chuck Knoblauch
Jason Grimsley
Gregg Zaun
David Justice
F.P. Santangelo
Glenallen Hill
Mo Vaughn
Denny Neagle
Ron Villone
Ryan Franklin
Chris Donnels
Todd Williams
Phil Hiatt
Todd Pratt
Kevin Young
Mike Lansing
Cody McKay
Kent Mercker
Adam Piatt
Miguel Tejada
Jason Christiansen
Mike Stanton
Stephen Randolph
Jerry Hairston
Paul Lo Duca
Adam Riggs
Bart Miadich
Fernando Vina
Kevin Brown
Eric Gagne
Mike Bell
Matt Herges
Gary Bennett, Jr.
Jim Parque
Brendan Donnelly
Chad Allen
Jeff Williams
Howie Clark
Nook Logan

And here are the performance enhancement buyers
Rick Ankiel
Paul Byrd
Jay Gibbons
Troy Glaus
Jose Guillen
Jerry Hairston, Jr.
Gary Matthews, Jr.
Scott Schoeneweis
David Bell
Jose Canseco
Jason Grimsley
Darren Holmes
John Rocker
Ismael Valdez
Matt Williams
Steve Woodard

I had planned on bolding the names that surprised me, but there aren't any. Editions of the list that was floating around earlier in the day had some names that surprised me: Wally Joyner, Kerry Wood, and Mike Cameron.

My how you've grown!

This was brought to my attention by Washington Post Live, a pretty decent sports show I might have to start watching. Hardly looks like the same guy.

The Bonds conspiracy theory

Greg Anderson was released from prison yesterday, where he's spent the majority of the last 2 years. He was first sent to prison for refusing to testify against Barry Bonds way back on July 5, 2006. The only plausible explanation for Anderson staying in jail when all he had to do was say what everyone knew - that Bonds willingly and knowingly took performance enhancing drugs - is that Bonds was paying him a good deal of money.

The only alternatives is that he did it out the kindness of his heart or that Bonds was threatening to do something he found more repugnant than jail. Now I've got some good friends, but I don't know if I would spend more than an hour in jail for any of them. And Bonds is a bad guy, but I doubt he was going to kill Anderson's mother is he ratted him out. It's pretty safe to assume that he was paid off, especially in light of the fact that Bonds was indicted on obstruction charges. If you connect the dots it's pretty clear he got to Anderson.

Now Bonds signed a one year, $15.8 million deal in February, which there's no way he could have gotten after being indicted, so it would worth giving Anderson as much as low eight figures for his silence. To say nothing of the fact that Bonds broke the career home run record, maybe the most hallowed record in sports, in the time that Anderson was in jail. Which begs the question - did Bonds pay off Anderson specifically to put off the indictment until after he broke the career home run record?

Is this really so far fetched? You'd have to figure if the grand jury could have indicted before he broke the record, they would have. So it's likely some new piece of evidence became available, and it's likely that evidence is the testimony of Anderson. So what recent event could have set off this change of heart by Anderson? How about the completion of the 2007 Major League Baseball season two weeks ago? We'll see how this plays out, but don't be surprised if this further devalues the already cheapened mark of 762 home runs.

Maybe this offseason they can pick up Bonds

Aubrey Huff gave the Orioles' PR staff heart attack while on Bubba the Love Sponge on Sirius Radio. He waxed poetic on his conquests ("I'd say between 2 and 300"), the lack of nightlife in Baltimore ("horsesh*t town"), how he spends mornings ("you wake up from a hangover about 1 o'clock"), and preparing for games ("All this studying? Honestly, you're gonna look at a piece of, a TV? And say this guy, this guy is going to throw me this way? No, he might throw you a different way! Who cares?").

Prior to the 2004 season the Orioles big signing was Rafael Palmeiro, who had his worst two seasons as a regular before wrecking the team by accusing Miguel Tejada of giving him steroids. In the 2004 offseason the Orioles traded for a washed up Sammy Sosa in an effort to add some buzz. Sosa had by far his worst season. Two years ago the Orioles big acquisition was Kris Benson. He had career lows or close to it in every category and had Tommy John surgery in the offseason. In that same offseason the Orioles big pickup was Huff, who set career lows in every category. Their other big signing was Denys Baez, who had career worst numbers and is already out for 2008. So the good news is the Orioles' streak of horrible personnel moves in intact.

Why are you still following baseball?

One common theme in my blog is the evilness of Major League Baseball and the MLBPA. So when I saw this story on Deadspin, I couldn't wait to blog about it. Apparently, MLB.com used to sell downloads of classic games for $3.95. You burned the games onto CDs, and then could watch them on your computer. But before they'd play, they would check for your license on MLB.com. So MLB.com changed their servers, and now if you try to play a game that you purchased the it can't find the license. You can buy the games again for $1.99, but if you do so you're a complete moron because they can change servers whenever they can find a cheaper supplier. Honestly, at no point in the last 15 years have I seen one piece of evidence that Major League Baseball cares one iota about their fans.

Now it's only Prince

Sportswrap pointed out this weekend that Boston owes Minnesota big time for giving up on David Ortiz and Randy Moss (although he went to Oakland first), and trading them K.G. for half their roster. I couldn't find any connection between Matt Ryan and the Golden Gophers, although their colors are similar to those of B.C.

The title of this post is of course a reference to Chris Rock famously saying "the only black people in Minnesota are Prince and Kirby Puckett." With Torii Hunter a free agent, it's really going to be down to Prince and Adrian Peterson.