Good riddance, Rick Reilly

Don't let the door hit you in the lazy, self-plagiarizing ass on your way out.  May your next job, if there is one, be for a much less prominent company than ESPN.

One last time, Rick's proudest moment at the World Wide Leader.  His shittiness and ESPN's shittiness couldn't possibly be better distilled into a five second moment than they are here.

Fuck Rick Reilly.  That is all.

Rick Reilly tries to whimsically convince us that golf is different and special; plagiarizes self for the umpteenth time; is still an asshole

Apologies for the hiatus.  I decided to do this post mid-last week, but didn't get around to it until now, because who cares I don't have to answer to anyone for my laziness I do this for free and who are you to judge?  Anyways, in the meantime, Deadspin pointed out that not only does this Reilly column suck taint, it's also plagiarized from a column he wrote just five years ago.  Rick does this all the time so it shouldn't be a surprise at this point; I'm mildly annoyed that I did not think to look into this possibility myself.  Anyways, read the Deadspin post as a warmup activity, maybe check out this little reminder of how much of a dickweed Rick is (especially when it comes to golf), then come back here and really get yourself good and worked up at what a shithead this guy is.  I know I'm worked up just getting ready to write this.  Roll the tape.

Two Down 

No clue who this is, no desire to find out; context suggests it's a nickname for one of Rick's golf buddies.  I'd sure pay a few dollars to see them in a cage match fight to the death against Simmons, J-Hench, Cousin Bug, and the rest of the Sports Guy Sycophants.

was watching the Golf Channel on the ancient Magnavox in the clubhouse at Ponky Municipal Golf Links and Deli, known near and far as America's worst golf course.

I feel like I'm there!  Just a quick reminder that not only does Rick suck at thinking, he's a bad writer too.

Kevin Stadler had just won the Waste Management Phoenix Open, thanks to a missed 5-foot putt by Bubba Watson on the 72nd hole. It was the first PGA Tour win of his life -- a 13-year wait -- and it seemed to be annoying the eyebrows off of Two Down.

LOL, eyebrows.  Those usually stay on your head.

"My God, look at this guy!" he was snarling in our bomb-shelter-motif clubhouse, where our homely golf group, The Chops, hangs out.

You can't tell because of the format of this and other article-pick-apart blogs, but he's using the time-tested Bill Plaschke "every sentence is its own paragraph" method here, and it's making the article slightly less bad, only because there's more empty space around the awfulness.

"I mean look how boring and polite he is! Here the guy does something he's been trying to do ONCE his whole life, and all he does is take off his hat and shake Watson's hand!"

"And your point is?" I asked.

Yeah, what WAS Two Down's point?  Let's step back and take a trip back in time to the same year Rick wrote the article he used as a template for this one--check out Rick's thoughts from 2009 as to how winners are supposed to act.  Here are some choice excerpts, before we return to 2014 and listen to all the high-larious antics this set of (likely) fat, emasculated 50-something cumbuckets would engage in if they won a PGA tournament.

There is a hideous new trend in sports that we need to stomp out like milkweed before it spreads. Scientists are calling it the Hey, look what I did, everybody! syndrome. There have been three dreadful examples of it lately, all from people who should know better.

Now before we get too deep, I will briefly help Rick out by making an argument for him that is definitely more substantial than your average straw man.  It's got some validity.  I will then tear down this somewhat valid argument, because Rick is a worthless dillweed.

The argument is that in this 2009 column, he's about to dump on a bunch of guys who are all time legends and have won something significant many many times in their careers, where as Kevin Stadler just won his first ever PGA tournament.  I think that's a somewhat fair distinction to make.  Repeat champions probably should be held to a higher standard of "We/I just won!" sportsmanship than first timers.  However, here are all the problems with that line of thinking, just in case Rick were to decide to show up in the comments and somehow come up with the idea of defending himself on those grounds.

1) Generally speaking, only cuntballs complain about athlete celebrations.
2) Even if you are OK with the general idea that showing up one's opponent is inappropriate, none of the three examples he's about to give are really showings-up of the opponents in question.  They're just apparel-based celebrations of accomplishment, which, who the fuck care.
3) In each of these cases, the losers who were allegedly being shown up are also pro athletes who make plenty of money and in the cases of examples 2 and 3, have multiple titles of their own.  This is not Ohio State hot dogging it after beating Eastern Central Ohio A&M 70-0.  These are stars that beat other stars.
4) Rick Reilly is a fucking moron, you really think he would ever make a point about sportsmanship that was worth a handful of shit?

OK, here we go.

Start with Phil Jackson. When he and his Lakers fricasseed the Magic to win another title, it was Jackson's 10th NBA coaching championship, a new record. Jackson had become the king of coaches. Everyone knew he was going for 10 -- it's not like it was a secret -- and there was the appropriate applause, huzzahs and standing on chairs.

But that wasn't good enough for him. He decided to paint a mustache on his Mona Lisa by quickly grabbing a hat with a big X on it -- for 10 -- and plunking it on his head.

Hey, look what I did, everybody!

MY GOD.  HE WORE A HAT.  THE HUMANITY.  I'M SURPRISED DWIGHT HOWARD DIDN'T BREAK DOWN IN TEARS.  Actually, I generally am surprised anytime that doesn't happen because Dwight Howard has the mental capacity of a 10 year old, but the point remains.  HOLY FUCKING DOGSHIT A HAT.  WHAT'S NEXT, A CRAZY DANCE?  THIS IS ALL VERY UNBECOMING, PHIL.

How were the Magic supposed to react to his new look? 

By not caring?  By going to the locker room and talking about trying to win it all the following year?  (They didn't in 2010, but they did make it to the Eastern Conference Finals where they were bounced by the Celtics.  FACK YOU!)

It was as if Jackson were saying, "Sorry to wear this in front of you so soon, but, c'mon, we knew where this was going, right?"

It was as if Jackson were saying, "Wow, I'm happy that I won ten championships because that's a cool round number!  Here's a really non-aggressive way of celebrating that."

Tacky. Shrill. Brash. 

Remember these words.

For a Zenmaster, it was very un-Zen. Here was the all-time preacher of team hoops, with his team all around him -- still sweaty from all that teamwork -- and Jackson suddenly went 100 percent "me." That hat said, Aren't I amazing! Doesn't this hat prove it? Don't you wish you had one?

That's one of the stupidest things I've ever read.  And I hate Phil Jackson and the Lakers.

I hated that hat for the same reason I hate those hideous championship T-shirts and caps that teams don the instant the final buzzer sounds. Why cover up the glory of the jerseys you bled in together all season -- the ones that have your city or team name emblazoned on the front -- with some ugly shirts nobody can read? 

That also have your city or team name emblazoned on the front.  Also, gee Rick, you think wearing that championship clothing just might be mandated by the leagues, who are in the business of making money by selling clothing to fans that are happy about their teams?

And why top it off with an ugly hat that just dangles a tag in your face?

THE HUMANITY.

Anyway, at least Jackson and his agents decided to donate the proceeds from X hat sales to charity. 

I like the comparative wording here that indicates that if Jackson instead kept the proceeds and burned them, it would only be marginally worse that the horrible, unspeakable act of wearing a hat with an X on it.

Of course, that just makes what Roger Federer did look so much worse.

HOW.  DARE.  HE.

Not two minutes after he had defeated Andy Roddick in a 77-game Wimble-never-done 

DIE

final, he went back to his bench, pulled out a tracksuit top with a 15 plastered on the side, put it on and spun around for the TV cameras. It was his way of congratulating himself on his 15th major, the one that bested Pete Sampras' old mark.

Federer did the same thing Jackson did!  It was so much worse than what Jackson did!

Hey, look what I did, everybody!

And remember this.

Now you tell me: How was poor Roddick supposed to have taken that? 

By shrugging, collecting his runner up check, and going back to fucking Brooklyn Decker (note: I am not sure if they were dating in 2009 and I'm not going to look it up but you get the point)?

It's like Rog was bragging: I knew I was going to roast you, A-Rod. That's why my people have been working on this all week!

Yeah!  The better thing to do would have been to wait until after the 15th title was secured, then have the tracksuit made, then go back to Wimbledon a few days later, and call a press conference!  Better yet, wear the track suit to your next tournament!  Crusty old balltonguers like Rick wouldn't be bothered by that at all!

Talk about cheeky. 

You don't mean cheeky.  It's a dumb point either way, but that's not the right word.

I mean, it's not as if some little seamstress ran out to iron the patch onto his jacket after the fact. The thing was in his bag the whole time! It's not just the sweater that was manufactured. The gesture was too.

As opposed to gestures involving celebratory clothing that happen spontaneously and without preparation.  HOW DARE USAIN BOLT HAVE A JAMAICAN FLAG PASSED TO HIM TO WEAR AS A CAPE AFTER HE WINS A RACE.  DON'T ACT LIKE THAT FLAG WASN'T WAITING IN THE CROWD FOR YOU THE WHOLE TIME.  WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, USAIN?

I hated that sweater for the same reason I hate when a player preens for the camera in the "I'm going to Disney World" commercials. Here's his pinnacle moment, the one he's worked toward his whole life. He should be going absolutely Lindsay Lohan nuts, but instead he's looking into the sea of people for a director, a cameraman and a boom mike.

Once more, Mr. Montana -- only this time, can you cry?

Yeah, those moments are not at all mandated by NFL contractual obligations with Disney.  Not at all.  Every athlete who does it (do they still do this?) seeks out the camera crew and says "I can't wait to voluntarily endorse you guys.  Let's do more than one take!"

Federer's sweater was a rare show of classlessness from a normally classy guy. One dipped in gold, no less. A gold sweater with a gold 15 pulled out of a gold man-bag. What, they couldn't gold-plate the man himself?

WHAT A PREPOSTEROUS IDEA!

The day before Federer's flub, Serena Williams drubbed sis Venus in a straight-set finale. Then, not 30 minutes later, she showed up at the press conference in a T-shirt that read, "Are you looking at my titles?" Okay, it's funny. And a little dirty. But it's immodest.

Yeah!  Poor Venus!  She only had seven career Grand Slam wins at that point, just five of them at Wimbledon, including a win over Serena in the final the previous year!  Think about her feelings for once, Serena!

And all three -- Jackson, Federer, Williams -- are better than that. They almost always rise above the schlock. When they don't, it's unbecoming.

I like how I used that word earlier in this post to mock Rick, and then he uses it down here.  I promise I didn't realize that was going to happen until just now.

I don't remember seeing pictures of FDR rolling up to his fourth election-night victory speech wearing a "Four-ever!" tuxedo jacket. Neil Armstrong didn't splash down with a "MoonMan" tat on his biceps. 

Absolutely ironclad logic here.  There is no possible counterargument to "Athletes shouldn't celebrate in certain ways, because politicians and astronauts don't celebrate in those same ways."

And I sure as hell don't remember John Wooden slapping on an X hat after his 10th NCAA title.

PHIL JACKSON, SHAME ON YOU.  YOU ARE NO JOHN WOODEN.  AND WHILE I'M AT IT, DON'T YOU JUST HATE THE WAY MIGUEL CABRERA WATCHES HIS HOME RUNS?  WHY CAN'T HE BE MORE LIKE HANK AARON?????

Athletes, coaches ... these are your moments; don't sell their purity. You will get your due, in due time.

Just let it come from us.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.  Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.  You.  Sportswriters are the worst fucking people on the planet.

And now we return to present day.  If you read the Deadspin post you've already seen most of these "jokes," so I won't go too in depth, but Jesus H. Christ on a Rocking Chair, let's keep in mind that this man gets paid seven figures a year for this kind of thing.

"My point is?" Two Down said. "My point is, if I'd just won $1.1 million zops in a PGA Goddang Tour event, forget about my first win in 239 tries, I'd go absolutely electro-shock, three-alarm, bat-guano nuts! I'd pull up my shirt, grab my big ol' stomach and go, 'Manage this waist, chumps!"

"Excuse me?"

"That sounds like something a loser like Roger Federer might do!"

"I'd throw the old lady scorekeeper into the lake and dive in after her! I'd do the Dougie 

Timely!  Even when he plagiarizes himself, Rick struggles to keep up with those dang kids and their music.  "If I won a tournament event, I'd find the prettiest girl in the gallery and ask her to 'Call Me Maybe!'"

with the sign boy! I'd take my 3-iron and knight my caddy like I was the queen!"

He gestured back disgustedly at Stadler, who was now making his trophy speech.

"He's all, 'I certainly want to thank the greens committee. The bunkers were beautifully and thoughtfully raked all week."

I could tell it was upsetting him, so, naturally, I tried to make it worse.

YOU KNOW HOW GUYS ARE!  ALWAYS MESSING WITH THEIR FRIENDS!

"Golf decorum vexes you?"

"Hell, yes!!!" Two Down yelled. "Why can't golfers act like they do in other sports? If this was the NFL, he'd be twerking 

Much more timely than the Dougie.  Well done, Rick.  F-plus.

in front of the other team's bench! You think Richard Sherman acted like this after he won the Super Bowl Sunday night? You think he just took off his helmet and shook the Broncos' hands and said, 'Well played, sir'? No! He probably went up to Peyton Manning and yelled, 'Bro, was that some kinda JOKE?'"

Actually, that was such an ass kicking that he probably did just go up to Manning and say "Good game."  Leave it to Rick to screw up an attempt to paint Richard Sherman as brash.

The other Chops put their gin hands down.

"You're right!" The Human Stain chimed in. "In tennis, Rafa Nadal wins and practically falls dead where he stands, like he just took an arrow in the chest! But golfers act all sheepish, like they just sat in somebody's soup."

Partially because golf is a game for people who like puckering their assholes at all times, and partially because twats like Rick berate golfers the second the golfers show any emotion.

"Totally!" Thud 

Jesus, these nicknames are worse than Simmons's.

announced. "If I'd just won my first ever ticket to the Masters, and it meant I was going to finally play in a Masters with my dad (1982 Masters winner Craig Stadler), I'd pick up the flagstick and fire it like a Tommy gun at the crowd. 

That's actually... that's not really OK.  Please don't do that.

I'd make my caddy give me a piggy back ride and whip him like a jockey on a horse."

Stolen from a movie that was made in 1996.

The subject was taking my mind off the $40 I'd just lost trying to chip into the deep fryer, so I jumped in with both cleats.

Because golf isn't like those OTHER sports, like tennis!  Golf is special!

What's that you say?  I'm putting words in Rick's mouth?  You really think he feels differently?  The guy loves golf more than he loves air.  He talks about it like it's a nonstop thrill ride while also talking about how boring baseball is.  He sucks.

"You're right," I said. "If I just beat 144 guys over four days, and I'd never done it in my whole life? I'd wallow in it. I'd extend my hand to Bubba, yank it back and yell, 'Psyche!' When the guy in the bad plaid jacket came out with the winner's check, I'd snatch his toupee off and fling it like a Frisbee."

BUT I WOULD NEVER WEAR A SHIRT THAT SAID "TOURNAMENT CHAMPION."  THAT'S A BRIDGE TOO FAR.

"I know!" said The Little Ball of Hate. 

Hoooly shit.

"And at my speech, I'd start out with, 'I'd really just like to thank ... my sweet BUTT 

Lol butts!  Butts and poops!

for being so good! Nobody's hittin' these shots but me, you fools!' I can make these Pings play Beethoven, bitches!"

Now everybody was up, outraged at Stadler's fine manners.

[Two paragraphs of terrible jokes, including one with a painfully bad Twitter reference, deleted.  Long story short: these guys, fictional though they may be, are zilcheroos.]

And that's about when we realized Dannie, our curvaceous head pro, 

GOLF PRO-BABE.  THE GOLF GODS REWARD HER FOR WEARING SKIMPY OUTFITS.

had been listening the whole time from behind the dryer.

The dryer?  Or the fryer, which you mentioned a few sentences ago?  Someone please edit this man's work, and if possible, prevent it from being published.

"Right," she said, arms folded. "And then nobody on Tour would ever talk to you again. And you'd lose all your endorsements. And your wife would divorce you. And you'd start dating some sleazy stripper, and you'd end up broke. And you'd end up hanging around this dump with a bunch of no-job-having big-talking deadbeats like you guys."

Oh Dannie, you are just too much!  You pecking hen!  Always trying to ruin the guys' fun!

We all sat there in silent shame until Two Down finally raised half an eyebrow.

"Wait. We could date strippers?"

And that's the end of the article.  You are free to draw your own conclusions, but if they end up anywhere besides "Rick Reilly is an asshole," you may need to revisit them.

Rick Reilly gets OHsofuckingclose to writing a good article; ruins it in the last five sentences

Been working on a post about Jonah Keri's MLB trade value rankings, but it's not done, so I thought I'd share this tonight.  Holy ballsack, there is no way Rick Reilly wrote the first 95% of this.  You can bet your bottom dollar he wrote the last 5% though--particularly the last sentence.  You'll see.  Most of this is so inoffensive (and at times, even dryly funny) that I can present it with very minimal comment.  The subject matter: while HOF voters are taking idiotic (and often completely unfounded; Bagwell, Biggio, and more to come) stances regarding players who are allegedly tied to PEDs, the expansion era committee voters happily sent in three managers who managed several of STEROID HISTORY'S GREATEST MONSTERS for extended periods of time.  Although the two voting bodies consist of different people, that's fucking dumb, no?

I'm so pumped up for next July in Cooperstown!

I can't wait to see who's going to be in the crowd at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony for new members Tony La Russa, Bobby Cox and Joe Torre.

Maybe Mark McGwire will show up? It might be as close as he'll ever get. La Russa managed him for 15 seasons in both Oakland and St. Louis and says he never saw McGwire do a single steroid. Imagine that.

Simple unadorned sarcasm that doesn't have a cringe-inducing pun or play on words.  Like I said, if you're like me, you'll have a hard time believing Rick wrote this.

Maybe Alex Rodriguez will attend? He probably won't get in, either. Former New York Yankees skipper Torre says he didn't even notice A-Roid's alleged PED use in the four years he managed him. A-Roid's got plenty of time to go to Cooperstown. He's appealing a 211-game suspension for PEDs. Torre? No ban for him. In fact, he's an executive vice president of Major League Baseball now.

Maybe former Atlanta Braves manager Cox will look out in the crowd to see his old star Gary Sheffield. Probably not. Cox says he never saw all the PEDs Sheffield was taking when he had him right under his nose in the Atlanta clubhouse.

To be fair, Cox was probably legally blind by the mid 90s.

In all, the three managers being inducted oversaw at least 34 players who've been implicated as PED users and never noticed a thing wrong.

Now this isn't entirely fair.  It's not like any of these managers have (to my knowledge) gone on record and swore that they never once ever suspected any of their players ever took any steroids ever ever cross my heart and hope to die on a stack of Bibles.  But the general point here is 100% fair--the national media and a good chunk of baseball's fanbase have spent the last 15 years getting preachy and angry about steroid use.  It's escalated during the course of the last 5 or so years to a fever pitch.  It's probably not going away anytime soon.  So given that the role of a manager is to know his players inside and out so he can put them in the best possible position to succeed on the field, how is there zero outrage directed at these guys?  I'm not saying that steroidmongers should treat managers exactly the same as they treat players.  I'm saying, given that there are dozens of writers and hundreds of thousands of fans bursting with moral indignation at the idea of guys like Clemens and Bonds getting into the HOF, why hasn't there been ANY discussion at all on the national level about the role managers played in enabling steroid use?

Sorry.  Rick, you're doing a good job.  Back to you.

You could build a wing with the admitted and suspected drug cheats they won with: A-Rod, Roger Clemens (Torre), Jason Giambi (Torre and La Russa), McGwire, Jose Canseco (La Russa), Melky Cabrera (Torre and Cox), David Justice (Torre and Cox), Andy Pettite (Torre), Manny Ramirez (Torre with the Dodgers) and Sheffield (Torre and Cox.)

What the fuck is Melky Cabrera doing with the rest of these guys?  Other than that, great point.

If we get really lucky, maybe disgraced HGH pitcher Darren Holmes will show up. He played under all three of them!

I'm sure Rick didn't do that research himself, but the fact that he thought to ask someone else to do it represents a level of effort miles beyond what he usually puts out.

It's just another year in the Hall of Farce, 

Dumb, but not as dumb as his usual "jokes."  I'm just thrilled he DIDN'T go with "Hall of Shame."

where the codes of conduct shift like beach sand; where the rules for one set of men are ignored for another; where PED poppers can never enter, but the men who turned their backs to the cheating get gleaming, bronze plaques.

Hail The Great Enablers!

Holy crap, it's a little melodramatic (it's not like the managers were buying the steroids for the players or anything), but wow, that's borderline good writing.

La Russa's slipping on the Hall of Fame jersey Monday is the sight that really tested my gag reflex. He did more for juicers than Jack LaLanne. 

A dated reference, to be sure, but again not nearly as dumb as his usual fare.  I expected a joke about Orange Julius or something.

He managed McGwire and Canseco -- the Wright Brothers of the Druggie Era -- for 21 combined seasons. He made millions on their pimpled backs, won his first World Series title on their syringes and built his 33-year managing career on their artificially carved biceps.

Under La Russa, the Oakland clubhouse became a kind of leather-upholstered showroom for creams, rubs and injections that allowed players to work out harder, recover quicker and attack the game like a wolf in a hen house. It didn't change much in St. Louis, either, where he says he didn't notice what McGwire, Troy Glaus, Fernando Vina and Ryan Franklin were doing.

Score another victory for Baseball's Best Fans, who trip over their dicks telling you about how their team always Plays The Game The Right Way.  I hope Will Leitch falls out of a hot air balloon.

He spent eight hours a day around these guys, eight months a year, and yet he never saw a thing. Maybe he dressed in a different clubhouse?

Who knows whether and how many of these players were openly using in the clubhouse, but the managers aren't idiots.  You know they knew.  Sorry to acknowledge Canseco, because the last thing he deserves (besides attention) is acknowledgement, but I pretty firmly believe him (and Ken Caminiti, and the rest of the long list of players who have said that everyone in baseball knew everyone was using).

But he goes into the HOF and those players never will. Maybe he can send them some Instagrams.

A pretty bad cultural reference without any meaningful context other than "this is one-uh them apps them kids like to use these days," but still, this is an A+ relative to everything Reilly has done since like 2004.

Hey, you think any of the three skips will mention how PEDS helped them get to that sunny afternoon in Cooperstown?

Oh, and I can't forget to thank Katalina at Tijuana Pharmacy for all her help. Like my players always said, "We can't get cut without Kat!"

You won't even have to be in Cooperstown to smell the hypocrisy. Even the faintest scent of a rumor of PED use is enough to sink a player now.

Managers? Odorless.

Take Houston Astros great Craig Biggio. He had more than enough career to get in, and even though there isn't a stitch of evidence against him, the writers have kept him out because they have a niggling hunch he might've used.

Again, the BBWAA is not responsible for the election of these managers, but the broader point is absolutely worth talking about.  Currently, the discussion about steroid use by subtopic is split up as follows: 90% players, 5% MLB itself, 5% owners.  Managers need a chunk of that pie.  A pretty big one.  (Obviously the owners and league could also stand to gain at least twenty percentage points as well.)

Remember, kids: If you play the game under even a single cloud of suspicion, you're out. Manage it under one? Come on in and pull up a plaque!

Can you imagine this in any other sport? Do you think for a second Johan Bruyneel, the manager of all of Lance Armstrong's cheating, champion Tour de France teams, didn't know what was going on? You figure Bonnie and Clyde's driver just thought they were always running late?

As I think I've made pretty clear around here, I dislike steroid users but do not hate them with the flaming passion of a thousand burning suns.  I especially dislike guys like Bonds and Clemens, who were gigantic assholes in addition to using steroids, but what are you gonna do?  They were great players, as were McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro, etc.  I don't want to be in the business of being the morality police and punishing players for conduct that wasn't against the rules when they were doing it.  I also don't want to be in the business of deciding who would or would not have gotten in anyways absent steroid use.  And I sure as fucking fuck especially don't want to be in the business of deciding whether a guy who's never been formally connected to steroids "looked like a user," or some horrendous garbage like that.  

So you know what?  If I were voting, I'd pretty much just vote without factoring it in.  That might allow for the admission of a guy like McGwire or Sosa who may not have made it in without roids, but that's a far lesser evil in my mind than the exclusion of guys like Bagwell or Biggio.  I don't like steroid use, but Jesus, can we please unbundle the national panties?  It happened.  There are now good measures in place to curb its use.  Anyways, this has been a great and thoughtful article by Rick, and I'm happy to see what he may be in the process of turning over a new leaf, so why don't we---

Next month, the writers are expected to vote down McGwire for the eighth time and Clemens for the second time. 

Oh no.  Rick, please don't.  Please stop while you're ahead.  We don't need to delve into this.  You've done a great job here--

They're right to do it. 

Noooooooooooooooo.  Even if you disagree with my steroids stance and agree with his, I hope you can agree that he didn't need to go into this.  The article would have been just fine without it.

Those guys are tainted beyond any reasonable doubt, though Clemens still maintains innocence. But for the expansion error 

Rick, please!  That's the kind of joke we're used to seeing from you!  The wheels are coming off!

committee to let these three managers in -- unanimously, no less -- after winning hundreds of games with better chemistry is the gold standard of double standards.

Jesus.  That's so disappointing.  Just please don't finish with one of your signature horrendous one liners--

If you believe they didn't know, then you'll fit perfectly in Dupers Town.

And the collapse is complete.  Jean van de Velde, Rick.  Rick, Jean van de Velde.

Rick Reilly: is a gargantuan asshole

Which of these lines from his column from last week about how to spend a day at the Masters most loudly and embarrassingly screams "I WANT YOU TO KNOW HOW IMPORTANT I AM!!!"?  Your call.  I want to apologize in advance for alienating any of our seven readers who love the Masters.  I actually enjoy golf quite a bit (despite the shit I give morons like Reilly for loving it) and I'll always watch Sunday at the Masters.  As usual, some of this is just hating for hating's sake.  I'm sure any of you who are huge golf fans would agree that Reilly is out of fucking control here.

Luck just French-kissed you. You've been handed a one-day ticket to Thursday at this year's Masters. But now you're freaking. You'll never get this chance again. What should you do? Where should you go?

Well, this will be my 25th Masters. 

What an asshole.

6:05 a.m. -- Wait! Leave your cell phone! Get caught with one on the course and you're banished for life. I know. I was standing on No. 1 once, watching Tiger Woods putt, when my phone rang in my pocket. Ring tone: "Fly Me to the Moon." Utter horror. Two Pinkerton guards took me roughly by the arms and escorted me toward the front gate. I was staring at a lifetime of standing outside the gate next to Gary McCord when I happened to see Augusta National chairman Billy Payne, whom I knew from his running of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. "Billy! Save me!" And he did. But he's not going to save you.

Do you not know Billy Payne?  Oh, pity.  I certainly do.  Like I was saying, Rick Reilly is a fucking asshole.

6:15 a.m. -- Park for free, like everybody else, in one of the 8,500 no-charge spaces that are really close.

What a breath of fresh air!  Free parking!  In a midsized city on the Georgia-South Carolina border, no less!

Once [your chair] is down, leave. Nobody will take it and nobody will sit in it. The whole deal runs on the honor system, and the Masters is nothing if not honorable.

Totally.  Once you get past the rampant racism and sexism, the place is oozing honor and class.  It was especially honorable when, in 1984, the tournament decided to start letting pros actually bring their own caddies, rather than forcing them to use the club's caddies who were, you guessed it, all black.  And when I said 1984, I mean the 1984 that was 29 years ago.

9 a.m. -- Observe, for a moment, the most well-run sporting event in the world.

Holy hell.  It's a fucking golf tournament.  Let's see the geniuses that manage to somehow coordinate a slow-moving event with like 80 participants and a few thousand fans successfully put on an Olympics.  And geez, much as I despise the NFL, those fuckers have "well-run" down to a science.  Any sold out regular season game is a fuck of a lot harder to coordinate than a golf tournament.

And observe all of the stuff you don't see. No ads. 

The game of golf should be pure!  No ads!  No vaginas!  No people whose skin color would make you lock your car door if you were waiting at a red light and they were standing on the median holding a sign that says "Hungry please help!"

Nobody holding any signs. 

Especially not "Hungry please help!" signs!

No port-a-potties. No cars suspended on lakes. No electronic scoreboards.

Yeah, I agree, sports are just SO much better to watch when you have to wait twenty fucking minutes for the scoreboard to change.

Just golf played on giant fairways and M.C. Escher greens in front of a lot of Southern women in big hats. Fabulous.

This is the guy who thinks baseball is slow and boring.

10:20 a.m. -- Now, as Jim Nantz would say,

Makes sense that one smarmy buttwipe would enjoy referencing another.

over to 16, 

The only golf commentator to ever use that line!  Just like how John Madden was famous for saying "That's a first down."

where you can sit and watch players try to par the Lindsay Lohan of golf holes -- short, gorgeous and shady.

That would have been a non-horrible reference a mere five or six years ago.

For one thing, they're separated from the fans by 150 yards, so they can swear all they want. Certain players (cough, Tiger, cough) really like that.

Golf fans who perceive Tiger to be some kind of "bad boy" are just a bunch of tards.  They really are.

d) the Eisenhower cabin, built in the 1950s to the exact standards of the Secret Service. I slept there once. It's not much.

No big deal.

A sitting room and six bedrooms with twin beds. There was a rather pedestrian painting on the wall above my bed. I had a hunch. I checked the signature in the corner. Yep. Painted by Eisenhower.

NO BIG DEAL.

The room on the corner is where the club's patron saint, Clifford Roberts, always stayed during the "toonamint."

Good ol' Cliff!  What a delightful piece of human garbage he surely was.

I slept there once, too.

NO

BIG 

DEAL

In the desk drawer, there was a little white pamphlet that listed the entire membership. My eyes bulged, but my host asked me not to publish it, so I didn't. The Masters is nothing if not honorable.

Augusta National is nothing if not interested in not pissing off its members, who enable it to do things like offer free parking.

The first time I met Jack Nicklaus was outside this door on Wednesday in 1986 and I had to ask him if he was broke.

Oh, have you not met Jack Nicklaus?  I have.  I even asked him a "hard-hitting" question that was actually quite a softball.  Then I slept in the Eisenhower cabin for.... I believe it was... yes, it was the seventh time I slept there.

12:50 p.m. -- If you're really daring, try to sneak a peek at: a) one of America's finest wine cellars (I've seen it;

NOT THAT I'M BRAGGING

1:05 p.m. -- The waiter writes out the bill on a simple little check pad you could buy at Walgreen's for $1.99.

Isn't that uninteresting factoid proof of the greatness of the Masters?

Leap to get it, but the waiter is going to give you the stink eye if you give him anything but cash. Imagine: Augusta National hosts captains of finance and industry and yet if you're not staying on the property, they're not taking any chances with your Visa card.

Imagine: a place that wants to pretend like it's still 1935!  It'll shock you to find out that it's located in the South.

2:40 p.m. -- See if you can find Bubba Watson on the course. You want to see what his caddie is wearing on the front of his white overalls: The number 1. It goes to the winner's caddie each year. Who says golf doesn't have jersey numbers?

No one?

3:45 p.m. -- Tired yet? Then go sit in your chair on 18. Savor the quaint tradition of a Masters member announcing the names of the players who are about to approach the green, without a microphone. Shake your head at a tournament with no hospitality tents and yet with hospitality coming out of its ears.

What the fuck are you talking about?  Rick Reilly is the worst.

Severely, severely embarrassing

I'm definitely going to finish the Simmons "Let's turn the Hall of Fame into a novelty structure celebrating the careers of Jim Rice and Jack Morris" article later, probably Friday, but this particular dumpster fire could not wait.  Holy fucking cat shit.  Even for Rick Reilly, this is indescribably bad.  I've never seen a journalist lower themselves to shill for a franchise or league like this before.  Not even immediately before and during the NFL lockout, when mouthbreathers like Peter King stepped up to defend the league and (try to) give credence to the claim that its then-current revenue sharing model was unsustainable.  Not even then.  This is worse.

For the 98th straight season, the Chicago Cubs will attempt baseball this season in Wrigley Field. It's historic, magical and covered in vegetation. Then again, so is Machu Picchu and nobody's trying to win baseball games there.

We start off with a dip into the bottomless well of comedy that is Machu Picchu.

I love Wrigley Field. 

I used to live in Chicago and have attended many games at Wrigley.  If you have any experience with that decrepit (but profitable!) place, you'll agree with me that Rick serves as an excellent proxy for every fat, loud 50something business tripper/midlife crisis haver getting drunk in the bars around Wrigley on game day, sloppily hitting on reluctant 20somethings, and boasting about his plans to head down to the Viagra Triangle to crush some steaks at Morton's after the game.

But I'm not a Cubs fan. 

Perhaps your most redeeming quality.

If I were a Cubs fan, I would despise Wrigley. I'd want Wrigley laid flatter than Wrigley gum.

Gum is flat!

There's a reason the Cubs have never won a World Series at Wrigley. There's a reason they're 0-for-the-last-67 pennant races at Wrigley.

Yes.  Really, it's a confluence of factors, but it can be summed up in not too many words.  First, in the very long term, part of it is just bad luck, because fuck, you'd think they would have stumbled ass-backwards into a title at least once in the last century, right?  The Marlins have two in in the last sixteen years for crisesakes.  A few bounces go differently in 2003, and they at least win the pennant that year.  But anyways, that's just part of it.  The rest is that for years, the Cubs have had incompetent management and ownership, and have fielded subpar teams while making money hand over fist.  It's a pretty common story in the wide world of professional sports, although many teams run in a similarly terrible manner break through and manage to secure a title at least once every half century or so.  Anyways, the reason the Cubs haven't won a pennant since 1945 or a World Series since 1908 has barely a fucking thing to do with Wrigley.

The reason IS Wrigley.

No.

Wrigley isn't just the old family dog that needs to be put down. It's an old family dog that probably costs the Cubs about $73 million a year.

I know what you're thinking.  Just wait until he gets there.

That's three Prince Fielders!

The EXACT kind of player teams like the Cubs should avoid signing, because he's not going to get them from where they are to a championship.  See: Soriano, Alfonso, a man currently signed to the worst contract in baseball not involving a Phillies first baseman.

Where do I get $73 million?

My guess: by sitting down to a nice dinner with a member of the Ricketts ownership group, or someone employed by them, and asking "How much do you want me to say you're losing as a result of playing in Wrigley?  You name the dollar amount, pick up the tab for this food, and I'll write the story.  Also: can we talk about how exciting golf is during the meal?"

Start from the outside-in -- with the money-sucking rooftop mini-stadiums that metastasize outside the ballpark.

Ah yes, the mini-stadiums that, per a 2004 agreement with the Cubs (which has a twenty year term, because the Cubs are fucking idiots--more on that later), give the team 17% of their gross revenue in exchange for the team agreeing not to block the rooftop views.  Or in other words, 17% of their gross revenue in exchange for the Cubs doing exactly nothing.

The owners of these annoying watchtowers sell tickets as though they were the Cubs themselves.

The correct way to state that is that they sell tickets as though they are people who own property next to the stadium, which... they are.

They even sell season tickets! 

Even if the presence of the rooftops seats were something outrageous, I'm not sure how this would contribute to the outrageousness.

The city continues to protect these leeches, who pass themselves off as mom and pop entrepreneurs, but actually rake in an estimated $24 million a year, according to the club.

Where to begin: first of all, I hope you believed me when I said the Cubs probably paid Rick to write this column, because by this point in the article, he's practically admitting it.  Second of all, the city is not protecting the rooftop owners.  The deal the rooftop owners struck with the Cubs, which runs through 2023, is protecting the rooftop owners.  Guess who was at the bargaining table for those negotiations, undoubtedly represented by very expensive lawyers and with full knowledge of what they were and were not agreeing to?  THE FUCKING CUBS, WHO HAVE NO ONE TO BLAME BUT THEMSELVES.  Third of all, let's assume the rooftops do make $24 million (combined, not each) every year.  The Cubs have what is considered to be a very bad TV deal in the current climate for sports broadcasting rights.  It expires after 2014, and at that point they will undoubtedly work to get an deal in place that dwarfs it, possibly similar to the gargantuan deal the Dodgers just signed which will pay the team about $250-$300 million a year for the next 25 years.  Do you know what this current bad deal (split between WGN and Comcast) pays the Cubs per year?  $45 million.  So yeah, I think bitching about a dozen or so rooftops making a couple million a year is pretty fucking pathetic.

Of that, the Cubs get a paltry 17 percent, or $4 million a year.

Which they themselves agreed to in an arm's length negotiation, in exchange for doing nothing.  It may well have been a bad deal, and given that the Cubs agreed to it, it probably is.  But they sure as shit can't blame the city and they can't blame the rooftop owners.

Any fair deal would give them at least half.

Perhaps.  Guess Rick should have led those negotiations.  No worries, Rick: in ten years, when the deal is up, you'll get your chance to make sure those poor destitute owners get the deal they deserve!

(There's $8 million they don't get.)

And here begins Rick's political campaign-worth math exercise.  Try to stay with him, now: the Cubs play at Wrigley Field ==> the Cubs agreed to not obstruct the views of the rooftop owners around Wrigley Field in exchange for $4 million a year ==> Wrigley Field is costing the Cubs $8 million per year.

Inside, the Cubs are prohibited from putting up advertising signs that could make them up to $30 million more a year (that would be $38 million) because the signs would block the views of the precious rooftop oglers and the city can't have that.

We have already been over this like four times.  The Cubs are "prohibited" from doing so because in exchange for that $4 million per year they're getting, they agreed not to build any signs.  This is called a legally enforceable contract.  Each side offers consideration to the other.  If they fail to deliver what they have promised, the other side can bring suit against them to remedy the breach.  To complain that the Cubs aren't getting enough from the rooftops and simultaneously lament that the Cubs are "prohibited" from building signs that block the rooftops is the height of disingenuous bullshit.

You talk about a business being in your business. Can you imagine this happening to any other business?

I can!

Hey, H&R Block! We're not going to pay you for your tax advice, but we ARE going to pocket the cash people give us to sit outside your window and listen to it!

Just wait until Rick finds out that people sell beer, hot dogs, and (often) unlicensed Cubs apparel MERE BLOCKS from the stadium!  What a bunch of leeches!

If all this seems insane to you, you should talk to Bruce Springsteen.

Ah yes, Bruce Springsteen, that champion of big business who hates it when the little guy makes a buck here and there.

In the middle of a recent concert at Wrigley, he stopped, turned toward the rooftops and said, with a smirk, "Everybody up on the roof! Who'd you pay?"

Well first of all, they paid the Cubs with 17% of their ticket price.  Second of all, it's sad to hear he said that, and I hope he didn't, but if so it's because the Cubs got to him like they got to Reilly.  Give the Ricketts credit for trying to win the PR war--the Tribune Co. (owners of the team until the Ricketts bought it in 2009) would have been far too stupid to even realize that was something they should attempt.

You say, "Well, the Cubs aren't really a business. They're a city treasure, a kind of living museum."

No one says this.  This is the worst straw man ever.  Everyone knows that pro sports teams are enormous businesses.  It just so happens that to some people, the Cubs are also a charming local institution with a lot of cool history.  Most of those people will die of heart disease before the age of 45, but there are a lot of them in the greater Chicagoland area, and even they know the Cubs are "really a business."

Fine, if they're a city treasure, then the city should help support them, the way it did for this summer's 30th anniversary of the Chicago Blues Festival, which received a $15,000 grant.

I hope you didn't have any liquid in your mouth when you read that, because you probably just ruined your laptop.  WHERE IS THE $15,000 GRANT FOR THE CUBS, MAYOR EMANUEL?  SHAME ON YOU.  THEY'RE STRUGGLING TO MAKE ENDS MEET UP THERE AT CLARK AND ADDISON.

The Cubs pay 12 percent city "amusement" tax on every ticket (about $17 million a year -- we're up to $55 million), and yet the city doesn't give them a dime. Very unamusing.

My angle in this post so far has mostly focused on his gross mischaracterization of the 2004 rooftop deal, but let's not neglect his embarrassingly pathetic overarching message that a team with nine figure annual income, valued by Forbes as the 36th most valuable pro sports franchise in the world in 2012, is in some kind of financial quagmire.  I don't mean to turn this into #OccupyWrigley, but holy fucking shit on a stick, the Cubs shouldn't be paying taxes on their tickets?  What the fuck is wrong with you?  Also, that $17 million, to the extent it's even worth acknowledging the argument, has nothing to do with Wrigley itself.  Obviously any stadium in any part of Chicago, rooftop LEECHES or not, would be paying that tax.

There's more. You can open the doors of your business pretty much whenever you want, but the Cubs can't. They're allowed to play only 30 night games a year. And they can't even pick the nights. When owner Tom Ricketts inquired if they might play a few Saturday night games this season, the local restaurants fumed, "It'll kill our dinner business!"

This is the only part of the article that is not buttfuckery of the highest order.  In short: until 1988, the Cubs did not play any night games.  That year they finally began doing so after installing lights, but they had to make a deal with the city restricting the number of night games they could play per season to get the lights approved in the first place.  Part of the city's justification was the high degree to which Wrigley is integrated with its surrounding neighborhood, making night games a pain in the ass for local resident.  These regulations remain in place today, and really, I think the Cubs probably have a legitimate gripe in wanting them relaxed.  The area directly bordering Wrigley is all businesses at this point anyways.  And anyone who moves to the neighborhood certainly knows what they're getting themselves into (unless they do so during winter and have the least informative real estate agent ever): Cubs fans are going to piss on your house.  They're going to.  They might be slightly less inclined to do so after a day game than after a night game, but it's going to happen.  If the Cubs want to play a normal "every game is a night game except for getaway day" schedule, fuck it, I say let them.

Now back to the buttfuckery.

Got it. Everybody gets to compete for customers except the Cubs.

The degree to which he's shilling for the team is exactly as embarrassing as I promised it would be, right?

Any idea how much more the Cubs could get for a TV package with 55 night games, which is what many teams play and when most fans watch? Me neither, but let's guess $5 million. (We're up to $60 million.)

Regardless of their day/night game balance, starting in 2015 they're going to have a deal that's worth a fuck of a lot more than $45 million per year.  Let's try not to weep too hard for them.

God forbid they'd want to put up a decent video replay board, which is ad gold for most teams and, by the way, a place where Cubs fans could actually tell the score of the game without having to do the inning-by-inning math themselves, as they do now on the old hand-lettered relic in center. ($7 million? Total so far: $67 million.)

They can do this anytime they want.  This is one of the few complaints raised that actually directly relates to Wrigley (as opposed to if they played in a different, modernized stadium in a different location) but unfortunately for Rick it's still fucking idiotic.

Plus, can you imagine the frogs that would rain down if they tried to sell the name of the stadium? They could never do what the White Sox did, which is to sell Comiskey to U.S. Cellular for $68 million over 20 years. The Cubs could probably get $100 million. There's another $5 million a year. (That's $72 million.)

Again, they are welcome to do this anytime they want.  Not even those nefarious robber baron rooftop owners would be able to stop them.

And forget about how long it takes you to get up and get a hot dog at Wrigley (two innings sometimes), or get to the restroom and back (often three). Hell, by the third inning, the Cubs are on their third reliever. No wonder so many people sneak food in. What's that total in lost concessions? A million? (We're at $73 million.)

Who cares, but yeah, Wrigley is a fucking trashhole for a lot of reasons and this is one of them.  They can't really remedy this until they move to a new stadium.  Too bad for them.

And that's just the money they don't get.

You say this as if you have made arguments so far in this article that would be convincing to anyone other than the Ricketts family.

Imagine the players they don't get -- because of their weird start times, their rotting training facilities, their wimpy weight room, their nonexistent in-game batting cage, their backachingly small clubhouse and their 104-year ringless streak.

To the extent this is even an issue, which, who the fuck knows if it is unless you hook a bunch of MLB players up to lie detectors and then ask them if these things actually make the Cubs an unattractive destination, it can and has been remedied by money many times in the past.  See: Soriano, Alfonso, and many many others.

Can you imagine what a genius like Cubs GM Theo Epstein could do with another $73 million a year? He'd be Theo, Unchained. He'd have the fourth-highest payroll in MLB instead of the 15th (2012). One of the biggest draws in sports shouldn't be 15th in anything.

Prior to 2012, they had not been outside of the top 10 in payroll since 2003.  They were 3rd as recently as 2010.

The Red Sox finally stopped treating their little neighborhood park like it was a Faberge egg. They started putting up signs everywhere at Fenway, maxed out revenue anywhere they could, and won two of the past 9 World Series. You hear Boston fans complaining?

Again, with the fucking signs.  Good thing the Red Sox were able to put up those signs after reneging on their deal to not do so with the rooftop owners around Fenway!

And yet Ricketts doesn't want to raze Wrigley.

THEN ALL OF THIS, EXCEPT THE ROOFTOP DEAL WHICH HE HAD NO PART IN BUT RUNS FOR TEN MORE YEARS ANYWAYS BECAUSE THE TRIBUNE COMPANY IS RUN BY ASSHOLES, IS HIS FUCKING PROBLEM.  HE CAN DEAL WITH IT AND CONTINUE TO MAKE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS EVERY YEAR.  I THINK HE'LL BE OK.  Jesus Christ, what's Rick's next article?  A spirited defense of Jeffrey Loria?

He was practically raised on Wrigley. He lives close enough that he takes the "L" to most games.

MLB owners: they're just like us!

And because he loves it, he has offered to pour $500 million of the family's money into renovating Wrigley -- $300 million for fixing the joint and the rest into a proposed hotel/fitness club across the street.

And what does Ricketts want for plowing no government cheese into the Wrigley rat trap? Not a dime. 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA nice try.  There is a sizable difference between "not wanting any city funding" and "being told to fuck off after asking for city funding."

He just wants the city to relax some of the restrictions that make the Cubs a kind of crippled Carnival cruise ship with foul poles.

There's your trademark Rick Reilly Topical Joke.  I think I liked the Machu Picchu one better.

And STILL aldermen such as Thomas Tunney are gumming it all up. Tunney wants more parking, more cops 

What business is it of the city that the city not be turned into a fucking mess after a business does a huge construction project to expand their operation?  The nerve!

and to extend the sleazy rooftops deal, 

DIE.

all of which he doesn't want to pay for.

Why the fuck should he, or more accurately, should the city?  Make a good argument, Rick.

"You're talking about one of the richest families in America," Tunney told reporters the other day.

Correct.

Not at this rate.

Do you have douchechills yet?

Epstein really didn't want any part of this column, but he did email to say, "We're focused on doing everything we can with what we have available to us now to make the baseball operation as healthy and successful as possible."

Too bad there's so little available.

Oh my God.  Oh my God oh my God oh my God oh my God

It's simple, Chicago. You can either have your creaky, quaint, vine-covered crypt, or you can win. But you can't have both.

Let's recap: first of all, the Cubs, like every single other MLB team, are not hurting for money and will not be anytime soon.  Second of all, the team is about to get a gigantic TV contract that will gives it more revenue than it'll know what to do with.  Third of all, Wrigley has one unfixable revenue problem (concessions line lengths), several revenue problems that are difficult but not overly burdensome and could be fixed with some clever negotiating (number of night games, amount of advertising in the stadium, rooftop deal), and several revenue problems that the team simply has chosen not to fix because they like the history of the stadium (no fancy scoreboard, no naming rights).  Together, those problems are probably 1% of the reason the Cubs suck and have sucked for some time.  The other 99% is attributable to incompetence, something that Epstein might be able to do something about, but that Ricketts seems to be contributing to.  Fourth of all, anytime the Cubs want to build a new stadium, they'd have financiers lined up around the block, and said new stadium would undoubtedly be one of the best revenue generators in sports, but it won't happen because Ricketts himself doesn't want to do it.

For those reasons, dear reader, you should feel sorry for the Cubs.

Do the math. You're used to it.

Is that supposed to be a taunt?  Is there a reference to Chicagoans being good at math that I'm not getting, other than the fact that everyone knows it's been 100+ years since the Cubs won a World Series, which, let's face it, doesn't really involve much math?

Rick Reilly is the worst sportswriter on the planet.

Brief follow up re: the man some people (unfortunately) refer to as "Riles"

Two weeks ago I wrote a post describing how incredibly self-centered Rick Reilly is.  Today he has a new column, inspired by the fact that Colin Kaepernick is adopted.  Notice I used "inspired," not "about."  Know who the column is actually about?  You guessed it--Frank Stallone.  Nah, just kidding.  Of course it's about Rick Reilly.

Rae, my 23-year-old daughter, is adopted from Korea. Sometimes I look at her and feel for the woman who gave her up, who never got the joy of knowing her, raising her, watching her.

First two sentences. I don't need to read any further to know how the rest of the column will go.  Neither should you.

P.S.--remember the time Shea Hillenbrand cost himself a job because he was furious at the Blue Jays for not congratulating him on adopting a child?  That was great.

According to Rick Reilly, the person most hurt by Lance Armstrong's lies was Rick Reilly

I don't think Rick has a baseball HOF vote, but he should.  He gives any of those assholes a run for their money in terms of ability to make everything revolve around himself.

Among my emails Wednesday morning, 

The first time I clicked into this article, I clicked out after reading this far.  I begrudgingly went back when I realized I was overdue for writing a post.

out of the blue, was one from Lance Armstrong.

Riles, 

What do you think Reilly called Armstrong?  Hopefully something as cringe-worthy as "Riles."

I'm sorry.

All I can say for now but also the most heartfelt thing too. Two very important words.

L

And my first thought was ... "Two words? That's it?"

Armstrong, as has been documented in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of places, is a legendary assfuck.  I'm so sorry that the personal apology he emailed you wasn't contrite enough for your tastes, but you should be thrilled you got one at all.  

Two words? For 14 years of defending a man? And in the end, being made to look like a chump?

/smallest violin

Wrote it, said it, tweeted it: "He's clean." Put it in columns, said it on radio, said it on TV. Staked my reputation on it.

Staked your what on it?  Oh, that?  Good news, no one noticed.

But here's the thing. When he says he's sorry now, how do we know he's not still lying? 

Oh my God, who cares?  He's another dirty competitor in the dirtiest sport on Earth.  Like 90% of all pro cyclists are on something.  You're a complete and total hack, a complete and total tool for athletes to use to push their agendas (as you're about to admit in this very column), and that's not their problem.  They might be terrible people but they don't owe you an apology.  They're not your friends.  They didn't steal anything from you.  Get the fuck over yourself and stick to writing stories about disabled children who get to play sports just like everyone else because gawrsh sports are just beautiful aren't they?

And I guess I should let it go, but I keep thinking how hard he used me. 

You're a 15 year old girl realizing the guy isn't going to call.  You're a fucking child.

Made me look like a sap. Made me carry his dirty water and I didn't even know it.

Because you're a bozo.

Look, I've been fooled before. I believed Mark McGwire was hitting those home runs all on his own natural gifts.  I believed Joe Paterno couldn't possibly cover up something so grisly as child molestation. 

Holy God, you are dumb as fucking rocks.

I bought Manti Te'o's girlfriend story. 

OK, that one, woosh, I'm not touching that one.

But those people never looked me square in the pupils and spit.

Pathetic.

It's partially my fault. I let myself admire him. Let myself admire what he'd done with his life, admire the way he'd not only beaten his own cancer but was trying to help others beat it.

YOU ARE ATROCIOUS AT YOUR JOB.

I didn't realize that behind those blues was a bully, 

Everyone realized that!  It's, like, the #1 most well known thing about his personality.

a coercer, a man who threatened people who once worked for and with him. The Andreus. Emma O'Reilly. Tyler Hamilton. Armstrong was strong-arming people in the morning, and filing lawsuits and op-ed pieces in the afternoon. We'd talk and his voice would get furious. And I'd believe him.

How do you have any money?  How have you not been scammed out of every single penny you own by deposed princes of Nigeria who ask for help getting millions into American banks? God you're gullible.  

I guess I should forgive him.

Fuck that.  What you should do first is 1) get off your fucking cross, 2) try to develop a perspective that doesn't place you at the center of the goddamn universe, and 3) stop being bad at your job.  Worry about forgiving Lance later.

He orates about as well as he writes

Rick Reilly, on the MNF set, talking about the crazy final play of the game:

B.J. Raji told me he was shocked to look up and see one ref signaling touchdown, and another signaling touchback!  To me, this is... the whole... era of replacement refs... one touchdown, one says touchback... (trails off) So fellas, is this the straw that broke Goodell's back?

/death stare from Steve Young

Throw in a few terrible puns and something about how great golf is and you've got yourself an article.

You can't take a $1,000 pair of Italian loafers and step in poop, over and over again!

You certainly can't!  Fucking idiot.

As always, Rick Reilly shows us the funny

In a column that no doubt consists mostly of jokes he has already used in other columns throughout the years, Rick brings up a topic about as ripe for hilarious non-analysis as airplane food and boner pills: BASEBALLERZ R SLOW WHEN THEY DO THINGZ, TEH GAME IS BORINGS TO ME.

Things that nobody reads in America today:
The online legal mumbo jumbo before you check the little "I Agree" box.

Kate Upton's resume.

Actually, I would like to read that.  I want to know whether or not she graduated from high school (is that a thing models do?) and where she got her first big break.  EAT IT RICK, I'M ALREADY MESSING WITH YOUR WORLD.

Major League Baseball's "Pace of Play Procedures."

Premise of the article: baseball games are too slow.  Rick's chosen method of drawing in the audience: making a list of things that people apparently don't read and putting MLB's pace guidelines on it.  Since whether or not people read those guidelines is a very relatable, illustrative idea.  Get the engraving machine ready--I smell another sportswriter of the year award.


Not that baseball games don't have a pace. 


Where's he going with this...


They do: snails escaping a freezer.


SNAP!


Cincinnati at San Francisco was a 3-hour, 14-minute can-somebody-please-stick-two-forks-in-my-eyes snore-a-palooza. 


Remember that 3.25 hours number.


Like a Swedish movie, it might have been decent if somebody had cut 90 minutes out of it. 


Don't drag the fact that you didn't enjoy The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo into this.


I'd rather have watched eyebrows grow.  And I should have known better.


That last sentence was a link to a piece he wrote in 2000 about this very subject.  I hate linking to the shitpile that is Deadspin, but they have done a good job documenting Rick's self-plagiarism in the past. Not to say he's plagiarizing here, but come the fuck on, man.  There are like thousands and thousands of things happening in sports that you can write about.  Maybe try not to keep writing about the same shit over and over? 


Buster Posey of the Giants, The Man Who Wrecked Your Dinner Reservations, has this habit of coming to the box, stopping outside it and unfastening and refastening his gloves before his FIRST SWING! What exactly was he doing in the on-deck circle? His cuticles?

I'm not going to say I've never ever been annoyed at the pace of a baseball game, but holy fucking shit Rick, your favorite sport is golf.  Golf is the undisputed heavyweight champion of sports that involve people taking for-fucking-EVER to get ready to swing a thing another thing.  Jesus.  It's agonizing.  But hey, at least when golfers aren't taking four minutes to throw blades of grass in the air and otherwise do the super important things you do when you're getting ready to swing a club at a ball, they're walking places.  Now that's action.

New rule: Umpires who don't order batters back into the box within 12 seconds -- because the rules state that a pitcher must throw the ball within 12 seconds of receiving it -- will get the room at the hotel next to the newlyweds.

NEW RULE: IF YOU TAKE MORE THAN FIVE SECONDS TO LINE UP YOUR PUTT, YOU GET PUNCHED IN THE FACE LOL

There's also this amusing passage in the "Pace of Play Procedures" (hah!): 

What is that "hah" doing there?  Is he laughing at the existence of the Procedures?  Is it a pre-emptive laugh at what we are being led to believe will be a RIOTOUS rule within said procedures?  Is he still thinking about how funny it is to watch snails try to escape a freezer?

"When given permission to leave the batter's box under Rule 6.02, batters may not step more than 3 feet from the batter's box."
Whoo-eee! That's rich. These guys wandered away from the box like 2-year-olds at a petting zoo. Six times they left the dirt circle around the plate altogether. Left the entire circle!

THE HUMANITY!  Look, complain about the number of seconds it takes a pitcher/hitter to do X all you want.  I'm down with that.  At some point, guys are taking too long.  But who gives a flying rat's ass about this?

And by the way, this nonsense about there's only a 2-minute, 10-second TV break between half innings? Bullfeathers. Only once did the break between half innings take 2:10 or less. The rest of the time, it was miles over. The break before the top of the fifth was 4 minutes, 12 seconds! 

It should go without saying that this has not a fucking thing to do with the Pace of Play Procedures or how many inches from the plate batters are wandering these days.  This is about teams making money.  Durrr.

Where did everybody go? 

They were in the stadium the whole time, it's just that the TV feed cut away so sponsors who paid money can get messages about their products out to the viewers?

Out to feed their meters?

No?

There were 14 attempts by pitchers to pick off runners, not one of them even coming close. 

Actually, 14 pickoff attempts in a game that was close throughout sounds relatively low.  I guess it was a game involving the Giants at AT&T Park, so there were probably like six total baserunners during the nine innings.

Most of them resembled somebody tossing a turkey to a co-worker.

Tossing a what to a who?

New rule: Pitchers get two pickoff attempts per runner. For every one after that, the umpire adds a ball to the hitter's count.

Ah, and here we have the exact moment when he went from being a guy who might know something about sports and is complaining about some shit that's sort of OK to complain about, to being a guy who obviously has his head firmly entrenched in his ass when it comes to knowing anything about sports.

Four times the hitter, after going through his Art Carney routine, got into the box, decided the pitcher was messing with him, and called time out.
Twice the pitcher wanted a timeout.
Five times the catcher called time out to go out to the mound to discuss, what? ObamaCare?

That's a thing that was in the news recently!  Other options: the TomKat divorce, how darn hot it is outside, and something about that Justin Bieber fella.

And explain to me why a reliever who's been warming up in the bullpen for five minutes still needs eight pitches to warm up on the mound. 

Because he hasn't been warming up with that catcher, or from that mound.

Do field goal kickers get eight practice kicks? Dumb.

Lulz at the idea of analogizing field goals and pitches.  DO BASKETBALL PLAYERS GET TO PRACTICE THEIR ALLEY OOPS DURING TV TIMEOUTS?  DIDN'T THINK SO.

Three hours and 14 minutes, 170 step-outs, and three double-shot macchiatos for that?

Please, I beg of you, bring on the NFL.

Yeah!  Can't wait for NFL games to start!  If you're annoyed by 3 hour and 14 minute games that mostly consist of players standing around and waiting or adjusting their equipment for twenty seconds before the next three second flurry of action, the NFL is the league for you!  It's wall to wall adrenaline with no breaks or interruptions, and you know what the best part is?  Sometimes you get to take a three or four minute breather while one of the officials ducks into a little booth and rewatches the play that just happened twenty times before deciding that it pretty much happened the way he originally saw it happen.  God it's thrilling.  My heart is racing just thinking about all the action!  

People who think baseball is boring because there's too much standing around but that football is BALLS TO THE WALL AWESOME ALL THE TIME should be sterilized and/or beaten to death in public.

Grab bag post featuring an idiot, a complete dipshit, and a guy who won't stick to his guns

None deserve their own post. All deserve some ridicule.

First, you may not have heard, but Penn State had a pederast in their midst. Fortunately they dealt with the terrible situation swiftly and properly by contacting law enforcement. I think that's what happened anyways. Proving that he has his finger squarely on the throbbing pulse of America, Rick Reilly chimes in with an important message:

This is not about Joe Paterno.

No fucking motherfucking shit.

If these boys really were molested, groped and raped by a middle-aged ex-Penn State football coach, then whatever misjudgment Paterno made will be a single lit match compared to the bonfire these boys will walk in for years to come.

Many of them won't be able to trust. Won't be able to love. Won't be able to feel -- nor trust or love themselves.

Yes, everyone think of the children. And they already are. We don't need to be reminded of that in this situation; even the most callous or clueless person understands that the kids are the victims here. Paterno may be in the spotlight but it's for sensible reasons. He's the most powerful and visible person involved and the only one besides Sandusky who's nationally known. The fact that it's about the kids and not about Paterno doesn't mean the media is obligated to focus their attention on the kids or the crimes. That's an angle that's just too grisly and sad for a lot of people. The Paterno angle carries with it the possibility of some kind of justice, or at least so a lot of people will think. In short, it makes sense that a lot of the water cooler talk about this mess focuses on Paterno rather than the crimes/victims.

But of course that doesn't mean it's "about" him. The people who really do think this is about Paterno are mouth-breathing PSU alums or students who live for nothing but college football and could give a damn about anything else, including prevention of child rape. They probably (hopefully) make up less than one percent of the population.

Don't feel sorry for Paterno. He's had his life. Feel sorry for these boys, because they may never get one.

The people who feel sorry for Paterno are an even tinier subset of the tiny set of people who think this is about him. Those in that tiny subset are not worth addressing. They should be herded into a mine and sealed inside with concrete. I believe we have a label for articles like the one Rick wrote here. It should appear first in the list at the bottom of the post. He also threw this in, seemingly in an attempt to confuse me:

No, this isn't about 84-year-old Joe Paterno not taking more steps that might have stopped it. It's about everybody not taking more steps that might have stopped it. Not parents, not teachers, not uncles,

Uncles?

Enough of that uplifting story. Let's talk about Big League Stew. Yahoo's MLB blog is written by a mongoloid who goes by 'Duk and thinks that this is clever, useful analysis.

For the purposes of this post, let's say that I have just traded the ten-dollar bill that I just found on the ground for a fast-food meal at a chain burger joint.

It's nothing fancy, but it will get the job done. I hadn't eaten in days.

Furthermore, let's also suppose that I decide to walk home from the restaurant in an attempt to work off the caloric impact I have just foisted upon my system.

[two paragraphs spent extending this painful and worthless analogy snipped; don't worry, you don't need the full bit to appreciate how mind-numbingly stupid this is]

So I tell you that I'm perfectly willing to take your doggy bag if you don't want it. I might take it all the way home, but I might also throw it away. It doesn't matter, though, because you've already paid the bill. I'm on the hook for nothing.

I've also just perfectly described the strategy that Dayton Moore and the Kansas City Royals are taking in their attempts to resurrect a winner.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Finally, an article that's not truly abhorrent but just kind of bothered me as I read it because of Mark Schlabach's unwillingness to commit to his initial stance. It's a stance that I think is stupid and wrong but certainly defensible, and I'd like to see a capable writer like Schlabach fully support. Unfortunately he backpedals. Backpedals like a bitch.

LSU and Alabama are clearly the best two teams in the country and are head and shoulders above the rest. It's a shame they can't play each other again in the SEC championship game.

You want a plus-one playoff? Let the Tigers and Crimson Tide play three times this season, with the best-of-three winner claiming a national championship.

That's not how a plus one would work. Just nitpickin'.

LSU and Alabama are that much better than everyone else this season.

And we know that for sure, without any doubt; just ask an SEC fan.

If LSU wins out and wins the SEC West, critics will suggest Alabama shouldn't play for a national championship because it didn't win its conference. But when the dust settles on the college football season, the two best teams should play for a national championship, no matter the circumstances.

Strong stance. One that I think is dumb. Even if we could be sure that Alabama is better than Okie State or Stanford, Bama had its chance and blew it. If they were to rematch with LSU in the title game and win, it's kind of like... well, OK, we know both those teams are awesome and we know which was playing better in January. Can we say for sure that Bama was the best? I understand that you can never really say who the best of the best is unless they've all played each other, and a win by (not THE) OSU or Stanford over LSU doesn't forever end the debate. But to me, a rematch with a different outcome than the regular season matchup is wholly unsatisfying. And a rematch with the same result if/when OSU or Stanford was undefeated but got shut out of the title game feels even worse. I dunno, I just really don't want to see Bama play LSU again unless there are no other big conference undefeateds left.

History suggests that the odds of an LSU-Alabama rematch in the BCS title game are slim. After No. 1 Ohio State defeated No. 2 Michigan 42-39 in their 2006 regular-season finale, the Wolverines argued they deserved another chance at facing the Buckeyes in the BCS title game. But No. 3 Florida jumped the Wolverines in the final BCS standings, and the Gators routed Ohio State 41-14 in the BCS Championship Game.

Here's the difference, though: At the end of the 2006 regular season, you could argue that Florida was better than Michigan. But if Alabama wins out this season, you couldn't argue that another one-loss team -- or even undefeated Boise State -- is better than the Crimson Tide.

Sure you could. What if Stanford's only loss is by a field goal to Oregon in overtime? What if OSU's only loss is by a field goal to Oklahoma in overtime? There's definitely a debate to be had there.

Especially not after SEC teams won the past five BCS national championships.

Fucking SEC people. You cockswabbers, chanting your conference's name. GMAFB.

If Oklahoma State wins out, it will deserve a chance to play LSU for a national championship.

Wait, what?

The same goes for Stanford, if the Pokes slip up along the way.

OK. So that whole thing about Alabama clearly being the second best team out there, and them definitely deserving a rematch... tempered. Significantly tempered.

But if those two teams lose somewhere down the line, Alabama would be the most deserving team to play LSU for a national title.

And you just sucked all the controversy out of your article. That makes me angry because the ESPNiverse has trained me to zone out if a journalist isn't being intentionally contrarian or simply a straight-up asshole. Although you've let me down, Schlabach, you're still OK in my book. Just don't get my hopes up like that again.