Update: Ryan Dempster Was Wrong

I had almost forgotten about this:

Dempster LOL

Oh man. The playoffs-less offseason is a long and tiring thing, but at least I have lots of Cubs fans to hang out with lately!

One Bad Thing Happens to the Yankees, Therefore Baseball Needs to Change The Rules

So the Yankees' best pitcher was injured while running the bases. Unfortunately, a lot of mean-spirited assholes out there want to crucify someone for dooming the Yankees' chances and deliberately hurting the Yankees' pennant run. Popular scapegoats:

1. The National League (for making pitchers run the bases)
2. Bud Selig (for interleague play) I would vivisect this awful, awful article, but attacking open-source journalism sites seems like picking on someone smaller than me.
3. Chien-Ming Wang (for not being able to run around the bases without hurting himself, which any eight-year old can do)
4. Space Aliens (for invading Hank Steinbrenner's brain)

When asked for his opinion, Hank Steinbrenner gave it:

I just think it's time the NL joined the 21st century," Steinbrenner said in a telephone interview. "The AL, the minors, colleges, high schools, they all have DHs.

All those leagues have had the DH for like 30 years, even way back in the 20th century. I like this logic: even high schools have DHs, so the NL should too, even though the DH is used in a vastly different manner in high school.

"Truthfully, the NL owners should be concerned with it

Truthfully, you're only concerned with it because one freak accident happened to you. Kind of like how baseball is considering instant replay just because two freak accidents happened to New York teams. Shut up already.

, even with the practice their pitchers get doing it.

My guess is that NL pitchers don't practice baserunning much. Of all the injuries this year, about .0000023 of them will come from an AL pitcher running the bases. Surely the rules need to be amended to adjust for this institutional unfairness toward the yankees.

You don't need to lose your best pitcher.

It's not the NL's fault Chien-Ming Wang can't round a base.

The pitcher has enough work to do.

Running around the bases is not much work.

It's something Bud (Selig) needs to address and he needs to address it soon. Don't give me that traditionalist crap.

No, he doesn't need to address it just beacuse your pitcher got hurt. Interleague play has been going on for eleven years now, and there's no reason to change things just because the almighty Yankees caught a shitty break. Just beacuse one bad thing happened to the Yankees doesn't mean baseball needs to change its rules.

Another Steinbrenner, another fat loudmouth. Also, I hate the DH.

Scoop and America's Most Racist University

ESPN's big-name black writer takes on big-name black issue: Notre Dame

Considering the failures that Notre Dame and Washington endured this year, I don't know where to start. But I thought this article was worth a link. I am a little bit annoyed by one of Scoop's admissions:

I will admit I have waited three years to write this column.

I am trying to think of the sensible approach to rationalizing this comment - there must be a large segment of the sportswriting world that is waiting for Weis to fail in the same way they accuse others of waiting for Willingham to fail.

Obviously the situation at ND is pitiful at this point - but can you start a column where you purport to go to Notre Dame to find out "the real story" and then admit you've harbored this sentiment for three years?