Friday, February 13, 2009

Daily Roundup- Friday, February 13th-- muahahhahah

Baseball fans rejoice. Spring training has begun and the majority of the questions outside of Legends Field in Tampa, will be mostly baseball and the upcoming season.

Thus we begin with some previews and we go with Boston Globe comparing the tranquility surrounding the Red Sox as opposed to the storm that is sure to surround the Yankees Spring Training facility.

As if the season hadn’t begun any better for the Red Sox. For all the spending that the Yankees did and took the thunder out of the surge of the Tampa Bay Rays and the constant threat of the Red Sox, the Red Sox and Rays come back to spring training with more momentum and good will than either team. Should be interesting to see how the Yankees respond. Either they fold camp like the Cowboys did with all the B.S. that surrounded them OR, the Yankees rally. I just don’t know if they have the kind of character guys for that sort of thing to happen. The Yankees of today are not built around home grown guys who seem to like each other. They have guys who HAVE to play with each other because the contract stipulates so. Not like the teams that won all those championships. Oh wait, that’s because the majority of that team was juicing.

Pete Rose is back in the news and it has to do with steroids and his disbelief in the whole A-fraud controversy and well, he has some very valid points. Mike “that is my real name and what my porn name would be” Puma reports for the NY Post.

I totally agree with everything Pete Rose is saying. I’m sure that he will be watching the conversation of whether A-Rod deserves to go in the hall of fame very closely considering that if those guys get in, then the push for the all time hits king and the original Charlie Hustle, will be tremendous. Of course getting rid of that lifetime ban will be the first tough task.

Since we are talking steroids already, and I know I don’t bring this subject up enough, the story about Bud Selig talking suspension for A-Rod made me laugh in the hypocrisy of it all. But Ken Rosenthal wrote a pretty good article about moving forward, which is what baseball NEEDS to do desperately.

Its amazing that Bud Selig would even bring up the suspension word for Alex Rodriguez on so many fronts. First of all, the other 103 players have not been revealed so you would have to wait for that. Secondly, you would have to suspend all those players that were found to be steroid users if they are still playing (here’s looking at you Andy Pettite). Thirdly, how can he even talk when he allowed this era to go forward when he himself knew what was going on?

But one interesting point made in the article other than moving forward is to perhaps toughen, already what is American professional sports’ toughest testing program by including blood testing. An interesting point was made on WFAN 660 the other day when the point was made that the reason that players don’t want blood testing is because blood tests are already held to be private by American law and thus making it so public would be against medical ethics. Really its there to protect the weed smokers and other drug abusers that perhaps aren’t caught.

Also what I found out is that they actually watch you pee in a cup which if I’m not mistaken is also unethical but absolutely necessary for a sport that is reeling and needs to be absolutely sure that every player they test is good.

But what’s troubling is the fact that HGH is very hard to be found in the blood stream because some HGH products stay in the blood stream for a mere 20 minutes and then go immediately into whatever body part they are intended for which means they would have to catch the player right after they shot up for HGH. Also, all this tougher testing will mean is that some pharmaceutical company is right now working on even tougher drugs to detect and no matter what, you can’t stop athletes who don’t care about anything other than their own stats to stop using or stop taking things.


Did you know that Bud Selig was the highest paid commish in all major sports? Yes ladies and gentleman, he was paid 18 million. But Roger Gooddell, commissioner of football the highest rated sport, is making 7 million less and during these harsh economic times is going to take a pay cut this year according to a USA Today report.

Just the kind of amazing thing that you can’t believe sometimes. It makes me happy for all the misfortune that Bud Selig suffers through. How about Congress bring him in one more time and publicly humiliate him again? That would be fun.

I can’t just bash Bud and walk away. I got to give him some good P.R. too, here in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the report from Bud that perhaps he would alter the records to show that Henry Aaron is still the home run king won him some fans in the ATL.

I agree that something needs to be done to correct this issue because well we all know that Barry cheated and he didn’t deserve the record. But, how do we judge these players by properly contextualizing the period in baseball? Do we just shut the door on all these players because they played in an era when baseball’s juicing problem was not stopped or controlled at the very least? There has been no suggestion as to how we will look at these players when all is said and done. The fact is, the commissioner can’t do anything until they take a look and figure out one way to judge this era within the context of how many players were using it and if it was a major league problem or it was just a few rotten apples that decided to get an edge. Until we figure that out, there will be no good solution to this.


Yesterday’s reported Elgin Baylor lawsuit has many people wondering if there will be a winner here? Is there a clear good guy or bad guy in this? Bill Plaschke wonders this in his column.

The immediate flaw in Elgin’s argument that he was in a racist organization is that he stayed in that racist environment for 22 years. He was fired, somebody filled his head that it was motivated by racism, not the fact that he had accomplished absolutely nothing as a Clipper GM. But these allegations that have Donald Sterling in specific situations depicted as racist have us headed to court in a its my word or his word kind of deal which will be a tough enough assignment for any judge. I think they will end up settling so that both sides can save face once they both realize that no one is a winner in this.

Also how tacky is it hiring someone from the law team that brought you the original O.J. verdict of not guilty? I mean is there a more overrated law team in America? They managed to make a jury mostly consisting of black people in Los Angeles believe that OJ Simpson former USC icon was not guilty in murdering his wife and a friend. Sure the evidence was overwhelming but you had to believe after the Rodney King officers got away with a slap on the wrist, that somehow karma would come back.


Great article in the San Diego Tribune about disgraced cyclist Floyd Landis detailing his comeback trail to competitive cycling by Mark Ziegler.

The best line of the article was the update all the way at the bottom where it said “Late yesterday afternoon, Landis didn't show up for a pre-race news conference in Sacramento. Earlier in the day he had crashed his bike while training. A tour spokesman said Landis required medical attention and, like his life over the past two years, was “battered and bruised” but expected to race anyway.” Kind of tough for a guy who was run out of his sport as more of a joke than anything else.

Phillip Hersh of the Chicago Tribune details what goes into those mythical bid books that are sent to the IOC by the four finalists selected by the committee to host the Olympics in 2016.

The interesting thing about that book other than the fact that its 600 pages long is that it is detailed with so much inaccuracies. If you are to believe that figures are going to remain the same in 2016 from the time they calculate them in 2009, then you are smoking from something stronger than anyone else is. Chicago in 2016 would be pretty cool, but too bad according to the Mayan Calendar the world ends sometime in December 20, 2012. Oh well Cubs fans.

Interesting court case decision rendered the other day when an Ohio judge ruled it illegal for a ban on representation for high school athletes in baseball who end up playing collegiate-ly. Alan Schwartz for the New York Times reporting.

I first wrote unconstitutional until I realized nothing is unconstitutional until the Supreme Court says so or at least that’s my understanding. But I wonder if this legal proceeding can affect any of the other college sports which would make it incredible for high school football players and basketball players. Basketball especially since they lost a lot of leverage with the mandatory one year waiting period to join the NBA in place.

Finally, a story to warm your cold, hardened hearts thanks to steroids. A tale of the Washington Generals in the New York Times.

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