jeff pearlman is a busy guy... SIKE

i mean, how busy could he be if he has time to answer questions for us here at firejay? seriously though, it's very nice of jeff to take some time out of his busy schedule for this. it's even nicer considering we've ripped him a new one on this very blog not once, not twice, not thrice, but a multitude of times. fortunately for us, jeff is a chill guy. the author of "love me, hate me" (which is a very good book, as i've mentioned before, and certainly should be just as well known as "book of shadows" when it comes to journalism that exposes barry bonds for what he is) speaks on blogs, anti-media types, east coast bias, and more in this interview.

LB: thanks for talking with us today, jeff.

JP: Sure. No problem.

LB: let's get the ball rolling with some "tough", so to speak, questions. how do you feel about this blog and others like it? nerdy nerds, sitting in their parents' basements, eating microwaved dinners, and criticizing hardworking professional journalists such as yourself. is this fair? is it right? what is your perspective on the rise of the "blogosphere" in this regard?

JP: I'm actually a fan of the blogosphere, because I like the idea of anyone/everyone having a voice. It doesn't seem fair that the only people allowed to vocally criticize a manager or player are the 500 newspaper columnists across the country. Why, by the basis of studying journalism in college, do we along get that right? Also, I'm a fan of writing. And the fact is, there are many blogs out there with excellent writers who are allowed to be angry, snarky, funny, etc. Unfortunately, your blog stinks. But nobody's perfect.

LB: have you ever had any discussions about anti-media blogs with other professional journalists? how do they feel about it? if not specifically anti-media blogs, what are your thoughts about criticism directed towards the sports media by average run-of-the-mill sports fans in general? surely you can't take people like us seriously.

JP: See, that's where you're wrong. I do take it personally, and so do alot of writers. How can't you? I slave over an article, put my all into something, stay up all night trying to craft it—and you just come along and thrash it. That hurts, and it makes no difference whether the thrasher is my mom, my brother, Dan Pasqua or Larry the blog guy. It always hurts. I suppose that makes me awfully thin-skinned. Such is life. It's who I am. Most writers probably take it better than I do.

LB: how, if at all, do you anticipate the landscape of sports journalism on the whole to change with the rise of the blogosphere? do you notice the line between professionals such as yourself and "amatuers" being blurred in any way? will major sports outlets need to make any major adjustments in the coming years should consumers continue to gravitate towards non-mainstream sources of analysis?

JP: The No. 1 thing is that the line between what's printable and what's not has been completely blurred. If a blog like Deadspin shows, for example, Matt Leinart or Vince Young doing shots with hookers in a seedy motel, mainstream papers have to—absolutely, positively have to—follow up. In the past, you didn't see those stories quite so often. Now it feels like they're everywhere. That's a result of Deadspin, of YouTube, of Facebook, etc. The web has opened everything up wide. I'm not sure how I feel about it, because for so-called celebs there's no longer any time off. You're in public, you're 100% under the radar.

LB: good point. i'm sure leinart could easily become involved with something several times spicier than that. anyways- is there anything you wish people like us knew about your job? this is your free opportunity to gripe about how hard it is and how we don't understand, etc. go ahead and tell it like it is.

JP: My one beef is this: Excellent writing comes with risks. Anyone can write a standard lede, a standard game story, a standard profile and never, ever get ripped. But I've always believed in pushing the envelope. It was something that was stressed to me at Sports Illustrated, and now at ESPN.com, too. The problem is, when you push the envelope it doesn't always work out. You take a lede too far, or your transitions suck, or ... a million different things. Instead of appreciating the fact that a writer tried for excellence, though, bloggers like yourself take great joy in killing us. You never, ever, ever kill Joe Smith of the Patent Trader for his boring take on Mahopac-Carmel. But dare Scoop Jackson or Mike Silver or Mark Kriegel try for the next level, you're always there with the knife. I'm obviously aware that I've written some real crap. We all have. But it comes not from laziness, but effort. I feel like that's lost among bloggers.

LB: ok, those are fair points. but it just so happens joe smith of the patent trader is one of my favorite writers. anyways, i want to ask you about something else. this is going to sound like a loaded question but bear with me. for obvious reasons, major sports outlets tend to focus a disproportionate amount of attention on teams from large media markets (new york, chicago, los angeles) while sometimes ignoring teams in smaller markets (seattle, milwaukee, cleveland, denver, etc.) that are making significant impacts on their leagues. your thoughts- is this just an unfortunate but necessary side effect of the nationalization of the sports media, or something that should be looked upon as a legitimate problem that needs a solution?

JP: I don't have a problem with it. Eight million people live in New York City. That's eight million people (well, not all of them) who live and die with the Mets and Yankees. Milwaukee, on the other hand, is home to approximately 550,000. To suggest fans care about both teams equally is illogical. When I was in college at the University of Delaware, our student newspaper would give the same coverage to swimming and diving as we did men's basketball. Then we realized six people were reading swimming and diving stories. So we stopped writing about it.

LB: clearly not the answer i was hoping for, but thanks for the honesty. shifting gears towards something you're very familiar with: hypothetically, say you're in san francisco on the night of august 7, and somehow end up with a ticket to a giants game, and you feel like, hey, why not go? and somehow, you emerge from the bottom of the pile in right center field with that oh-so-valuable baseball. i could care less about this fashion designer's little internet poll thingy. what would you do with home run #756?

JP: I have two kids, and college is insanely expensive.

LB: fair enough. it's getting worse all the time. let's talk barry bonds books. specifically, i'm curious about the relationship between "love me, hate me" and "game of shadows." how much have you ever talked with mark fainaru and lance williams? any? obviously you guys have a decent amount in common.

JP: I know Mark and Lance pretty well from our mutual Bonds experiences. I interviewed them both for my book; we've talked since and sort of bonded over devoting our lives to such a prick. In a way, I consider them my brothers of hell.

LB: are you mad at them for collaborating on a book? imagine if you had enlisted a co-author- you might have been able to beat them to a release date, and that might make "love me, hate me" the more commonly mentioned of the two books.

JP: How could I be mad at two guys responsible for doing such important work? I truly respect those guys 1,000 times over. They deserve what they've gotten. Do I wish my book came out, oh, a month earlier? Yup. But it is what it is—and they had the Balco goods. Thing is, I'm a fan of reporting. More than I'm a fan of writing. I respect people who dig into a subject like they did. No hard feelings. Also, there was a certain full-circleness (not a word) to it all. My first book, "The Bad Guys Won," was a biography of the '86 New York Mets that spent eight weeks on the NYT best-seller's list. It came out a couple of weeks before Mike Sokolove, an excellent writer, released "The Ticket Out," a killer bio on Darryl Strawberry's youth. So what comes around goes around, I suppose.

LB: gotcha. i didn't mean were you literally angry at them, i just wanted you to admit you wish "love me, hate me" had come out slightly earlier. so thanks for that. anyways, obviously you're still pretty young and want to continue moving on to bigger and better things as your career progresses. but how would you feel if when all was said and done your lasting legacy was "that guy who wrote that one book about barry bonds?"

JP: Ha. I'd be thrilled. Truly thrilled. That book was two years of my life, and it sort of vanished beneath Shadows. I'm proud of it; proud of the reporting and the digging and the effort I put into that thing. Plus, it's a helluva lot better than being the fucking John Rocker guy—which I still seem to be.

LB: let's give you time to plug whatever it is you're working on now. any books? other long term projects? anything you'd like to push, just in case more than ten people end up reading this? i mean, i have to give you some incentive for doing this interview.

JP: No incentive needed, but I'm wrapping up a biography of the 1990s Dallas Cowboys. That, and I'm raising my two kids. My daughter Casey is 4 and my son Emmett is almost a year. Emmett is not named for Emmitt Smith, by the way.

LB: sure he isn't! let's close up with some quick, simple questions. the title of your book comes from the barry bonds quote: "love me, hate me. i don't give a fuck." i think that really sums up barry's attitude very well. so give me a jeff pearlman quote that someone might use for a book title were they to pen one about you.

JP: "I pick my nasal hair in airport bathrooms."

LB: i can't tell if that's dirty or not. bloggers/amatuer writers with big dreams about getting into professional sports journalism should make sure they do what, in order to best increase their chances of one day making their living from writing? please don't say moving out of their parents' basements,

JP: First, start contributing to magazines/newspapers/online publications/etc. And do reporting—real, honest-to-goodness reporting. Interview people. Interview people's mothers and fathers and high school coaches. Pitch pieces to as many places as possible—the local weekly paper, the state's official magazine, Jugs, whatever. Bust yourass. The thing about blogging is that, while it's great, it's also lazy. I know—I write a lame blog, and it's literally me on the couch. It may well show you can write, but it doesn't show you can report.

LB: i'll keep that in mind. most of your recent columns are about baseball- if baseball didn't exist, what sport would you focus on the most?

JP: Running. My passion.

LB: understood. this is cheesy, but our several readers want to know- if you could have lunch with 3 figures from sports history, dead or alive, who would they be?

JP: Red Smith, Jim Murray, Tyler Ugolyn.

LB: i have no idea who those last two are, so i'll have to look them up. who finishes with more career HRs- bonds, arod or pujols?

JP: Bonds.

LB: my god, i hope not. finally, off the record- how the hell did you originally find our blog back in may of this year?

JP: On the record, Jesus led me to you.

LB: alright, that's all i've got. thanks for being here.

JP: Sure. No problem.

Slate finds new ways to suck ass.

Slate is a piece of shit e-mag. Everybody knows it. I don't care that it has a large "liberal" slant; I just care that most of the staff are wannabe hipsters writing sensational crap in order to elicit strong responses. You may be asking why I bring Slate up, since this blog focuses on sports writing and not politics. Well, they have a story linked from their home page titled:

Win One for the Cheater
Why the enraged Patriots will go undefeated.
By Charles P. Pierce

Oh great, here we go. I thought that Slate always tried their hardest to go against the grain, but here we have it: an ESPN segment written in pretencious prose.

Before I even started reading what promises to be a vomit inducing, X-rated, deep-throating of Brady's/Belichick's/Kraft's collective cock, I had to read more about this Charles P. Pierce fellow. From his website:

Charles P. Pierce was born December 28, 1953 in Worcester, MA.

"Aha!" Exclaims our noble blogger eriz. "This is certain to be unbiased"

*throws up all over the floor*

Let's begin, shall we?

Perhaps the oddest thing about a very odd week in the history of the New England Patriots, a franchise that has known its share of very odd weeks, was the identity of the commissioner who finally brought the hammer down on the lawless regime of Bill Belichick (last seen stalking the sidelines dressed like he'd just knocked over a 7-Eleven while his enraged team performed public ritual murder on the San Diego Chargers). Way back in 1970, Sen. Charles Goodell, R-N.Y., lost his political career at least in part because he took legislative action to curb the unilateralist excesses of Richard Nixon. (Sen. Goodell lost to William F. Buckley's less-easily parodied brother James.) So, here's his kid, Roger, conducting himself in such a way that he probably should be standing on a balcony somewhere, his medals gleaming in the tropical sun. No wonder Nixon lusted after the job of the commissioner of the National Football League. Everything about the position would appeal to him.

I guess no Slate sports article would be complete without long winded correlations to American Politics.

Anyway, seeing a Goodell acting as the New Sheriff in Town—to use the John Ford-ism that's become trendy among America's sporty press—has brought out the latent authoritarian in everyone, it seems. He'd already knuckled Pacman Jones for gunplay, Michael Vick for aggravated Rovercide, and Dallas quarterback coach Wade Wilson for practicing pharmacy without either a license or a decent lie. Goodell couldn't very well have taken a pass on laying the wood to Belichick, who went out of his way to steal defensive signals on a sideline only 20 miles or so from Goodell's desk. In truth, he should have suspended Coach Beyond-The-Law for a couple of games, too, but a half-million bucks is a considerable fine, and the loss of a draft pick makes any football executive cry. People who have been waiting six years to see the Patriots get their comeuppance seemed generally quite happy with Goodell. And then the game started.

Quite simply, no NFL team in recent memory has played a game as well from start to finish as New England did Sunday night.

Oh really? You may have your opinion on this matter, but let's be honest here: You're wrong. What about the Tampa Bay's super bowl beatdown of Oakland? What about the Broncos' win over Atlanta in Super Bowl 32, where John Elway repeatedly picked on Eugene Robinson like (insert joke about cocaine and a prostitute here) ? What about JUST LAST YEAR'S Super Bowl when the Colts dominated the Bears in almost every way possible? I named three Super Bowls for a reason. First of all, the consequences of these games are exponentially more important than a week 2 matchup. Secondly, they are examples of two of the very best teams in the NFL (proven over the course of 16 regular season and 2-3 playoff games), where one team beats the crap out of the other team. Sure, we know San Diego is loaded with talent. But they struggled against the Bears a week before and they have an entirely different coaching staff from last year's 14-2 squad.

So before you start with the hyperbole (whoops, too late!) let's put things in perspective.

The 38-14 final is not even remotely a measure of it. Neither is the 407-201 margin in total offense, or the 35:46 to 24:14 gap in the time of possession. This was one football operation beating the other one into the ground.

Which never happens. Ever. Every single game played in the NFL is really even, except one team has to win in the end.

The Patriots built this lead in the offseason. San Diego canned head coach Marty Schottenheimer because he lost a playoff game to the Patriots, replacing him with Norv Turner, who has now coached 325 NFL teams in his life.

Actually, it's like 5 or something; good joke though. The firing of Schottenheimer was a monumentally stupid move, but I'm not sure how this makes the Pats better. Whatever.

For their part, the Patriots picked up receivers Wes Welker, Donte Stallworth, and, most notably, Randy Moss to give Tom Brady some actual weapons to use. They also signed Adalius Thomas, a frighteningly athletic linebacker from the Baltimore Ravens. It was Thomas who broke the game open, stepping in front of a terrible Philip Rivers pass and outracing all of the Chargers more than 65 yards for a touchdown. By the time Thomas made his play, Brady already had used two of the other newcomers, Welker and Moss, to carve up the Charger secondary, the latter on a 23-yard post route that bisected two San Diego defenders and was as perfectly an executed football play as ever has been. Brady looked off the defenders and came back to Moss, who found the ball on his fingertips as he crossed the goal line at full speed.

Oh I didn't know that New England acquired all these players this offseason. Goddamn Sports Illustrated and ESPN, I wish they had filled us in on all of the Patriots' off season moves!

And everybody knows that the Chargers' biggest weak spot is the secondary. Joey Harrington and Rache Cauldwell could rack up yards against them.

On the other side of the ball, Thomas has given Belichick so many options on defense that the coach's creativity is at floodtide, and the team doesn't even feel the absence of all-pro defensive lineman Richard Seymour and explosive safety Rodney Harrison, the latter of whom Goodell earlier busted on a banned-substances rap. The beating was so obvious and thorough that the postgame commentary from the Patriots had more to do with the vicissitudes of the previous five days than it did with the problems inherent in beating a team that went 14-2 last season. There was all manner of chortling and gloating about how the team had managed to overcome the stigma of the media's pointing out that its head coach had gotten caught behaving like an arrogant jackass. A team this good, this dominant, got to cast itself in its own mind as outraged innocents battling to stick it to The Man.

I just wanted to put this paragraph in so I could point out that our dear writer used the word "vicissitudes."

It was like watching conservatives talk about how Michael Moore was picking on them while they were running the entire government.

I don't get it.

So at this halfway point of the article, Pierce has told us about how Goodell is actually his own father, Belichick is Richard Nixon (who wanted to be Goodell all along), the Chargers did some stupid shit in the offseason, the Patriots signed a bunch of good players, and the Patriots beat the Chargers by a lot of touchdowns.

I thought he was gonna tell us why the Patriots are going undefeated.

It's why, absent catastrophic injury, New England can win every football game it plays this season.

Ohhhhhhhh. What was the title of this column again? Let's scroll up... Ah here we go.

Win One for the Cheater
Why the enraged Patriots will go undefeated.

So which is it? They will go undefeated? Or they can? There are lots of teams in the past twenty years you could have said the latter about during the first few weeks. The 2004 Colts. The 1998 Broncos. One of the 49er teams of the 90s. These teams all had the ability to run the table. But there are a bunch of reasons why it hasn't happened, and likely won't, for a long time. The NFL is a super competitive league. The talent separation between the top team and the bottom team is arguably the slimmest of any professional American sport.

The Patriots are quite possibly the best team in the NFL right now. But they will lose at least one game this season. I'd bet my firstborn child on it.

For years, the rest of the NFL has chafed at the ability of the Patriots to play Poor Widdle Us while pushing the envelope of league regulations on everything from the injury list, to media obligations, to what you can and can't do on the sidelines. If, ironically, Goodell is Nixon as "the president," then Belichick is the Nixon who hired the "plumbers," right down to the ludicrous written statement that remains his only public comment on the affair and which lacks only a reference to his mother, the saint, to match old Tricky's farewell speech for unmitigated smarm. When Belichick finally got caught this week, you may have noticed that the rest of the league wasn't exactly rallying to his side. Jerome Bettis grabbed onto a retroactive alibi for having been whipped by New England over the past decade, and Tony Dungy offered a plaintive "what-about-the-children" rumination that was just inches from actual sincerity. This was not an accident. In many ways, everybody in the NFL is against the Patriots, and a lot of them have damned good reason for being so.

I'm glad Pierce hasn't pulled out the old "the patriots are a classy organization" zinger yet. He admits that they are kind of scummy and everybody hates them. But, once again, what does what he has written have anything to do with the Patriots going undefeated?

However, the only thing that New England didn't pick up in the offseason was a cause, and now it has one, especially if the investigation is as thorough and ongoing as Goodell seems to be saying it will be. It is possible that we will have a revelation a week in which, as New England linebacker Tedy Bruschi put it after Sunday night's game, New England's "integrity" comes into question. More ill-feeling. More bad blood. More grist for Belichick's endlessly grinding motivation mill. Moreover, the players seemed all week to resent most that their work in winning three Super Bowls suddenly had been devalued by their coach's misbehavior. That's the obverse of a general feeling that has arisen among Patriots in recent years—that their own talents have been made subordinate to their coach's alleged genius.

So apparently the desire to win championships by itself isn't enough for the Patriots? They needed a cause, i guess. sort of like when Tom Brady pulled out the old "we don't get any respect" card two seasons ago before their divisional playoff game against Denver. I guess Brady's motivational tool didn't work too well for him when he threw a terrible goal line pick to Champ Bailey that was returned 98 yards. On a side note: I was at that game, and man was it fucking awesome.

One of these is inspiration enough. Both of them together is a volatile mix. If more sordid details come out, and Goodell feels obligated to suspend Belichick for a week, the New England players themselves might beat some team 100-0.

No they won't. It's not possible. I can guarantee that they will lose at least one game. I also assure you that they will not win in a shutout all season. Their defense gave up a ton of yards and touchdowns last season. They added Thomas at linebacker, but it's not like a good NBA team signing Michael Jordan at his prime. They have a mediocre linebacking corps after Thomas and an atrocious secondary save for Asante Samuel.

The whole mishegas puts the 1972 Miami Dolphins' distinction as the only team to play an entire NFL season undefeated in serious jeopardy. Roger Goodell did the right thing last week, but he also created a situation in which, come February, when the Patriots win the Super Bowl, and he has to hand the trophy to Bill Belichick, it's perfectly plausible to wonder if it shouldn't be the other way around.

*eriz bazooka barfs all over his keyboard*

WMTMQR: the wednesday morning tuesday morning quarterback review

i think i've made myself clear in the past about my feelings re: gregg easterbrook, aka the tuesday morning quarterback. i definitely look forward to his columns. i appreciate the asides he includes in them, particularly the political ones. his football analysis is sometimes very insightful.

on the other hand... sometimes he writes a column like this week's and includes the kind of bullshit i'm about to bring up. this could easily become a weekly posting for me if he keeps spouting off nonsense. it's too bad. but hey, i have to take a little time off from complaining about simmons, pearlman, and the assorted idiots over at cbs sportsline every once in a while. to begin:


Buck-Buck-Brawckkkkkkk: Jersey/B made a nice comeback against the rugged Baltimore defense, but the comeback was doomed in this wise. Trailing 20-3 with 10:08 remaining, the Jets faced fourth-and-goal on the Ravens' 3. Eric "Double Agent" Mangini took the field goal. Yes, down by 17 you need three scores. But two must be touchdowns, and here you are just 3 yards away! At the endgame, with a minute to play, Jersey/B had first-and-goal on the Baltimore 7, trailing 20-13, and threw desperate passes until the icing interception for the Nevermores. Had the Jets gone for the touchdown earlier and succeeded, at the endgame they could have kicked a field goal and caused overtime.

no. wrong. horrible reasoning. if the jets went for it on 4th and 3 when they were down 17 and failed, the game would effectively be over. they probably wouldn't get the ball back until there were eight or fewer minutes on the clock, and they'd still be down 3 scores. as it was, they got themselves within 2 scores (just as the situation would have been if they scored a touchdown) and... lo and behold... ended up having a fantastic opportunity to tie the game with a minute left. which would you rather have- 1 shot to get in the end zone from the 3, or 4 shots to get in from the 7? hindsight is 20/20, easterbrook, and you sound stupid when you write paragraphs like that.

Head-Scratcher of the Week: "Eli Manning is really showing today that he has become a leader," Howie Long said on Fox, halfway through the Giants' ninth loss in their past 11 games.

yes. the giants are losing for one reason and one reason only- because eli manning isn't being a good enough leader. it has nothing to do with their ATROCIOUS defense (29th in yardage allowed this year, 25th last year) and spotty offensive line.

Rule Change Needed: Oakland appeared to beat Denver in overtime as Sebastian Janikowski kicked a 52-yard field goal, but officials ruled the Broncos' sideline had called timeout an instant before the kick. The Raiders missed the rekick, then Denver scored the other way. Until a few years ago, timeouts had to be called by a player on the field. The rule was changed to allow the sideline to call time. Coaches are misusing the rule by signaling time just as the ball is snapped, and officials are allowing those timeouts: It looked to me as though the Raiders snapped the ball just as Mike Shanahan formed a T signal, and the kick should have counted.

"looked to you"... how? i watched this game live, watched CBS's postgame show, watched the halftime show of sunday night football, watched sportscenter multiple times on sunday night and monday morning, watched around the horn (i know, i know... i'm unemployed right now so i was home, and the remote was really far away so i couldn't change the channel) and pardon the interruption on monday afternoon, and finally watched the halftime show of monday night football. not once, combining the live broadcast and subsequent replays with about ten later rounds of highlights and anaylsis, was a splitscreen view of shanahan and the action on the field shown. there's no way to tell whether or not the timeout was called fairly, other than to take the officiating crew's word for it. when a team is about to kick a game winning field goal, here's a list of things they're looking for:

1. twelve men on the field
2. false starts
3. defensive guys in the neutral zone
4. timeouts

i'm pretty sure they can handle that list, and, you know, comprehend whether the play started legally or not. not once did any of the analysts i saw commenting on the unusual ending during the 30 hours after it happened mention that the timeout might not have been called in time. they all talked about whether or not it was "cheap" or "ungamesmanlike," but this is the first time i've heard/seen someone say "it looked to them" like the officials blew it. could this be because TMQ has access to magical one-of-a-kind tv feed that showed the action in split screen, one camera on the denver sideline and one on the raiders' center? or because he likes to write things that have little or no reasoning behind them?

Best Purist Drive: Score tied at 20-20, the Arizona (Caution: May Contain Football-Like Substance) Cardinals took possession at the Seattle 46 with 1:48 remaining. Did the Cards go pass-wacky? Arizona simply ran the ball up the middle four straight times until it reached the Seahawks' 24, from which the Cards kicked the winning field goal as time expired.

yes, it's fun to wax poetic about the virtues of simply running the ball up the middle. easterbrook does it all the time, in a variety of contexts. in this case i definitely have to call shenanigans. the cards picked up a very decent 5 and a half yards per carry on this game winning mini-drive. that's not "simply running the ball up the middle." that's "possessing a dominating running attack." you might as well run up the middle all four quarters every game if you have that kind of offense. i really don't think "going pass happy" in that situation, despite it not being as gritty and gutty and grindy and old-school and purist as running up the middle, would have been a bad move.

Wide Receiver Runaway Ego No. 3: Chad Johnson's nonstop on-field and sideline shenanigans at Cleveland -- could that just possibly have had something to do with the Bengals' lack of focus and overconfidence? Why do so many NFL wide receivers get away with considering their stats more important than the team's fortunes?

i love this. yes. let's blame cincy's loss on johnson, who had 200+ yards receiving and 2 TDs. johnson has been a ridiculous personality for years, while the bengals have enjoyed mild success and one playoff berth, along with a couple near misses. he's been an integral part of their rise from league laughingstock to semi-respectability. but, yeah. i think it's totally reasonable to say his team's defense allowed 51 points because he likes to do crazy end zone celebrations. get off your soap box, TMQ.

one last complaint before i go- has anyone else noticed how it's becoming more and more common for analysts during highlights or while blabbing away to refer to "football players", "football games", and "football fields" instead of just players, games, and fields? how many times do you hear things like "albert pujols is a just a great baseball player" or "clutch shooting- this is how you win basketball games" or "if you expect to win, you need to put out more effort on the soccer field"? this is really starting to bother me, and it's becoming more and more common. crap, sounds like my angry personality is going to affect my enjoyment of sports yet again.

Can't Believe I've Laid Off This Guy Before

Roman Modrowski is a writer for the Chicago Sun-Times. He writes about boxing a lot. He also has a blog where he talks about Chicago and Notre Dame sports, often very stupidly. I'm a regular poster on the blog, and I finally feel compelled to make him show up here.

I thought our Cubs beat writer Gordon Wittenmyer had a very good lead to his story today. The Cubs didn't look like a good team last night, but they looked like a championship team.

Fantastic sentence there Roman. You just made "good team" and "championship team" mutually exclusive. As far as I can tell, the only way that's possible is if the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series every year.

And yeah, it was a comeback win against the Reds. But anybody who's followed sports for a while knows those are the types of wins championship teams pull out all the time.

The Reds have a terrible pitching staff and a relatively poor closer. A lot of teams pull off these wins. The White Sox, for example, have won a game being down 6 in the bottom of the 9th and being down by 6 in the bottom of the 7th this month. These are the kinds of wins that championship teams pull out, Roman.

I'm not saying the Cubs are going to the World Series, but once in the playoffs, anything is possible.

Yep.

Like I said back on June 25, this looks like a Team of Destiny (but with a bad closer).

By definition, if you say they're a "Team of Destiny", doesn't that necessarily mean that you are saying that the Cubs are going to the World Series? Or does "Team of Destiny" mean nothing even to the people who use the term excessively as well?

Other teams who, therefore, look like a Team of Destiny: everyone going to the playoffs.

Whatever happened to that poor "Team of Destiny" last year from Detroit? Didn't they lose the World Series?

Heyman's Follies

We know Jon Heyman. Mr. VORPsucks. Mr. if-your-team-ain't-in-a-playoff-race-you-ain't-worth-talkin-about-,-son. Mr. Jimmy-Rollins-is-the-best-thing-ever.

Rollins may not be MVP, but he leads NL in fun factor

Of course. Nothing more fun than Jimmy Rollins. I love how he bashes VORP for being a made-up stat, but then he invents awesome ones that are meaningful like Fun Factor (FF).

Your NL leaders, up to the minute in FF.

1) Jimmy Rollins: 76.3
2) Ryan Braun: 74.9 (he's soooo close!)
3) Mike Lamb: 69.1 (I know, I'm shocked too)
.
.
121) Hanley Ramirez: 22.5 (OK at baseball, but his team is bad!)
.
.
400) Barry Bonds: -43.1

So....story checks out.

The National League MVP race is still up for grabs -- I have Prince Fielder, David Wright, Jimmy Rollins and Matt Holliday leading a group of perhaps 10 -- but I will hand out a somewhat less-known honor here now.

Heyman's made his stance before that MVPs must be on contending teams. The Rockies are definitely not a contending team right now (sorry Larry). So why is Matt Holliday here while Miguel Cabrera and Hanley Ramirez are absent? Of course, there's a simple answer to that. I mean, if those two were truly good players, the Marlins would probably be good. Or if the Marlins were good, those two would be worse somehow because of all the pressure. Whatever, we've been over this. Back to the crap.

All I demand to know is exactly which player is "analyst" Jon Heyman's favorite, anyway.

By far my Favorite Player of the Year (FPY) has to be Rollins, the tiny Phillies shortstop who talks big and plays even bigger.

You heard it here first.

Jimmy Rollins: 5'8", 175 lbs
Jimmy Rollins' Talking: 6'3", 230 lbs
Jimmy Rollins' Playing: 7'2", 322 lbs

If this isn't the definition of little man, big attitude, bigger performance, ladies and gentlemen, I don't know what is.

Before we get into this, though, I acknowledge that Rollins was a very good, healthy player on a team full of injuries. Credit is due.

One of the biggest reasons the Phillies are right there is one of the smallest guys in the league. As I interviewed Rollins at Shea Stadium on Sunday, I thought that he could just as easily be working a few miles to the east at Belmont Park. He is that tiny.

Big reasons, small guys, Philadelphia Phillies.

I have to keep reminding myself that Jimmy Rollins is actually pretty good at baseball despite Heyman's constant efforts to tweak my brain into thinking he's the black David Eckstein.

Heyman, the average height for human males is 5'9". Rollins is 5'8". He isn't tiny. Small for a baseball player, yes. Huge for a jockey: also yes.

Yet the last thing he'd want is to be graded on a curve, to say his team is handicapped by its pain, and Rollins by his stature. No one -- no matter how big or small - has come up bigger than him this season.

This is completely and totally false.

He has 27 home runs,

...making him T-26th in MLB and T-19th in the NL

85 RBIs,

...making him T-47th in MLB and 26th in the NL in this stupid, team-dependent stat.

127 runs

Because Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and Pat Burrell hit behind him.

and 36 stolen bases.

Yeah, he's pretty fast, and doing well in this overrated category.

Eventually we get to re: Hanley Ramirez (Miguel Cabrera is never mentioned).

Here's my take: Rollins may be my favorite player at the moment, but as regular readers of this column know, I don't believe a player can truly be "most valuable'' if his great individual numbers don't lead to winning (as is the case with Ramirez), contention and preferably the playoffs.

Yeah, fuck you, Hanley, and your 10.0 WARP3. That doesn't lead to winning. If you're so good, why isn't the goodness of your bat and the energy of your speed psychically or otherwise transferred into the bodies of Scott Olsen, Dontrelle Willis, Sergio Mitre, Rick Vanden Hurk, Wes Obermueller, and Byung-Hyun Kim so that they aren't one of the worst fucking groups of men allowed to throw the first pitch of a baseball game? Huh? Can you answer me that, Hanley? No, of course you aren't good enough to do that. You're just a punk kid playing baseball on easy street at the bottom of the division who isn't valuable at all because none of your at-bats even matter. Loser.

Moving on to a little snippet from later on....

• Derek Jeter really isn't having one of his best years. But he remains one of the most clutch players ever. I know some stat people claim there's no such thing as a clutch hitter, and all I can say is they just haven't been paying enough attention.

Very easy for you to say that the day after that huge home run that eliminated me from the playoffs in my fantasy league on the last at-bat for either team in the week. You know what he was OPSing this month, September, the clutchiest of months, before that game last night? .442* That's clutch, baby. Is there a playoff hunt going on? I think there is....I wouldn't know though...I probably haven't been paying enough attention, as one of those stat people.

A lesson you'd do well to learn, Heyman. People have a tendency to remember a thing when it hits, but not when it misses. It's the root of all superstition, including your stupid theory of "clutch ability".

*Thanks to Fire Joe Morgan for the stat

yes, i'm jealous of this guy. and yes, he is an enormous tool

don't get me wrong, i really wish i were bryan biederman. see, byran's job (as far as i can tell) is to follow fox's mlb broadcast team around to all its saturday broadcast locations and assemble a photo diary based on whatever shots he can get with an all access on field pass. what a fantastic job, no? basically he's getting paid to go to baseball games and take pictures, then write a couple cheesy captions and get the whole package published on foxsports.com.

now here's the problem- when your photo diary contains almost as many shots of you awkwardly posing with/groping/"carrying" women as it does of actual baseball players... you are a officially a huge douchebag.

check out his work from saturday's yankees/red sox tilt and tell me bryan doesn't have a terminal case of "that guy" disease. hey, jackass- you don't need to prove to baseball fans everywhere that you can get girls to pose with you in pictures. we really couldn't care less. take some more pictures on the damn field.

more whining and moaning about bill simmons

loyal reader and simmons lover chris hart (and also at least one "anonymous") won't appreciate this. but hey... whatever. the sports guy's latest mailbag is a predictable cornucopia of mediocre analysis, terrible jokes, and one tragic swing and a miss on a pop culture reference (which is sad because pop culture is pretty much the only thing he consistently does well). let's take a look at all three of those problems, in that order:

I did think The Turncoat (aka Eric Mangini) should have been fined for blowing the whistle on Belichick and then inexplicably shaking his hand afterward. Stick to your guns, Mr. Mangineous. If you're going to sell out your old boss during the game, what better way to show your disgust than eschewing the postgame handshake and just walking off the field? What's the point of shaking hands? Hey, great game, congrats on the win. ... By the way, I ratted you out in the first quarter, sorry about that. My dad was more outraged about that two-faced move than anything since the Doc Rivers extension.

1. no one gives a shit about your family, stop bringing them up. 2. everyone knows that no matter how much you hate your opponent, you have to shake hands with them after a game in some sports. tennis players, hockey teams (after the final game of a playoff series), and football coaches have been exchanging frigid grasps of non-congratulations for years. you just can't not do it. it's the way things work.

now for a gosh-fucking-awful attempt at humor.

Q: I hate Nixon because of Watergate -- not because he did something stupid or illegal, but because every time somebody does something stupid or illegal now, "Gate" gets tacked onto the end of it. The Patriots are the latest example with "CameraGate." Everything bad ends with "Gate." I hate it. What if Nixon's burglars had broken into the Ritz Carlton? Would it have been "CameraCarlton" this week? Or "CameraRitz?" I don't think so. The expiration on tacking Gate onto the end of everything expired 20 years ago. I suggest you start a new naming convention for these kinds of stupidities and illegalities.-- Pat P., Dallas

SG: Not until there's a huge scandal at Colgate University. We need a ColgateGate.

no wonder jimmy kimmel's career has never quite taken off. if you think that's funny, you are either the kind of person that loves the comic strip "marmaduke" or such an enormous simmons fan that you're willing to let him get away with anything at this point. and keep in mind, this is a mailbag. it's not like he absolutely had to print that question. he sat down, read through hundreds of emails, decided this was one of the top fifteen or so, thought about it for some period of time, and finally came up with THAT response.

last but not least, the shocking missed pop culture reference:

Q: Don't feel too comfortable with the Moss Era. Remember, in '05, Moss's first game for the Raiders, he blew past your boys, too. Moss is (a) as brittle as an 80-year-old women with osteoperosis, (2) as moody as a 50-year-old woman in menopause and (d) as devoted as a Christina Ricci's character in "Black Snake Moan." So he encompasses all ages of womanhood. Brady might be a "leader", but so was Cris Carter, Art Shell, Warren Sapp, etc., and they couldn't keep him in check. Prediction: Moss will be on IR by Week 8, and you guys will still compete with Brady throwing to your shady sideline camera men as receivers. And the country will still hate all-things annoying and Boston.-- Nema, San Fran

SG: Believe me, I will never be comfortable with Moss. My guard couldn't be more up. By the way, I loved the fact that Nema used "a," "2" and "d" as the headers for his three reasons. Nobody ever said my readers were brain surgeons.

brain surgeons indeed. even i know that's from a monolouge by buzz in home alone, bill. maybe nema should have worked in something from the karate kid or the godfather instead.

look, simmons isn't that bad of a writer. i definitely admit that you can do a whole lot worse. but given his rampant popularity, sometimes i feel the urge to point out that he's often dumb/unfunny/clueless.

Sensational Stories > Sports

Screenshot of the current front page at the World Wide Leader:



If I were a fan of Florida, Tennessee, Boston College, Georgia Tech, USC or Nebraska I might be a bit annoyed at ESPN's frontpage, where none of those six teams and their important games get a bit of a mention. Three ranked-team showdowns and who's the cover story on one of the biggest websites in sports?

Notre Dame-Michigan. What sells? Not good sports, apparently!

Bill Simmons Writes Article, Admits It's Bad 80% Through, Still Publishes

My only reaction to that: AWESOME.

Blazers don't deserve Bowie 2.0

If he made sense 60% of the time in this article, I would actually admit that this is a pretty good title.

The three-word e-mail came this morning from someone who knows things: "Oden -- microfracture surgery."

It looks like Blazers fans will have to wait until 2009 to see Greg Oden in a Portland uniform.
My three-word response: "Oh. My. God."

It's one of the saddest stories in recent NBA history, regardless of how it turns out down the road: Not just that Portland took the wrong guy last June, but that the same city may have been screwed over twice. There was Bowie-over-MJ, and now, there might be Oden-over-Durant.

I just copied this so you all could see the basic premise, although "saddest stories" implies tragedy, like someone died or something. All that happened is that a dude who is bound to make a lot of money won't play basketball for a year.

Then, we have a few paragraphs of mostly legitimate things about how Oden was supposedly the "safe" pick and how everyone thought that but Simmons, and how everyone is wrong, and Simmons is right, despite Simmons getting very lucky on that. After all that jazz, we get to this.

You could say "Those who ignore the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them," and you might be right. But throwing aside all the videotapes, predraft interviews and workouts and everything else, there's this: At the ESPYS two months ago, I helped write jokes for Jimmy Kimmel, whose dressing room was backstage at the Kodak Theater and right off a hallway where celebrities were ushered in and out before and after the show. So, I watched every single athlete walk by at some point, and I swear, if I hadn't taken this summer off to write a book, I would have written about this story in a blog or something.

Good God, you wrote jokes for Jimmy Kimmel? I didn't watch the ESPYS, but I dearly hope that Kimmel didn't tell any of them.

I will bet every single reader $500 that Simmons does not make a legitimate point out of this story. There's literally no way to do that. My guess: he just wanted to tell the world that he wrote jokes for Kimmel.

Anyway, when you see basketball players dressed in normal clothes, it's mesmerizing to watch them walk for two reasons: They're always much bigger in person, but they move so effortlessly that it's always strangely discombobulating to watch them walk, like they belong to another species or something.

Reason #2 make any sense to anyone? No? Didn't think so.

For instance, we all know one or two exceptionally tall people who don't play sports -- they always move gingerly, and their posture usually isn't that good, and everything about them says, "I wish I wasn't this tall."

I know absolutely zero tall people that feel this way. Tall people like being tall. Being tall is dominant. Or are they saying, "man, I wish I was 5'10'' and average"?

What were we talking about again? Oh yeah, Greg Oden and Kevin Durant.

The best athletes in the NBA don't carry themselves like this. They glide. Everything moves effortlessly as they walk, and it's impossible to fully explain unless you've seen it. Even someone like Shaq glides across the room like he's the size of Steve Nash. They don't move like normal tall people.

NBA tall people glide, non-NBA tall people are klutzes and trip on their shoelaces and slip on bananas with accompanying cartoon noises constantly playing in the background. We get it. Great point. Please tie this in soon somehow, I'm getting very bored.

So, before and after the show, I was vigilantly watching everyone stroll by for one reason: I wanted to see Oden and Durant walking in normal clothes. It was like the final piece of the "Durant vs. Oden" puzzle for me.

You know what convinced me that Alex Rodriguez is better than Albert Pujols? Alex Rodriguez is way better at riding a bicycle.

As it turned out, I got to see Durant first -- he shuffled down the hallway, all 81 inches of him, looking like he was put on Earth to play sports for a living. No big surprise there. Even the biggest nonsports fan on the planet could watch Durant walk for 35 feet and think, "That guy was born to play basketball." Now, I needed Oden. We didn't see him before the show, and I didn't see him right afterward. Just when I was about to give up, a friend of mine said, "Yo, Oden just walked by."

I scurried down the hallway to see him. Lo and behold, Oden was walking by himself down the last stretch of the hallway, about 50 feet in all, right before the exit to head outside.

Blazers fans don't need any more reminders of the 1984 draft.
And you know what? He walked like a 50-year-old man. His posture was screwed up. He had the Fred Sanford walk going. If you saw him from behind and just studied his walk, you would have thought it was a retired player, someone like Patrick Ewing or Robert Parish.

You all owe me $500.

Wow. There you go everyone. THAT was the point. Kevin Durant: walks like a superstar. Greg Oden: walks like a crotchety 50-year-old man that watches Matlock and M.A.S.H. too much. Awesome. I totally believe that Kevin Durant is better at basketball than Oden now that I know that Greg-O walks funny. You needed to write 5 fucking long paragraphs to express that.

I feel like Peter Griffin at the end of this clip.

I couldn't believe it. I didn't stop talking about it the rest of the night.

I can't even imagine how many famous people you bothered with this irrelevance.

Greg Oden walked like a guy who had bad knees. If I were Portland's GM and watched Oden walk across the room, that would have been it for me. The next day, I even called my buddy Sully (who works for the Celtics) just to have the obligatory, "Yo, we might have dodged a bullet May 22; Greg Oden walks like a 50-year-old man" conversation.

Bill Simmons: Yo, Sully! We might have dodged a bullet May 22; Greg Oden walks like a 50-year-old man!

Sully: Shut the fuck up.

Obligatory indeed.

Now, you could argue this is the single dumbest thing I've ever written, and you might even be right. Just know I have spent the past two months telling that Oden/ESPYS story to everyone who brought up the Oden-Durant thing to me.

Two months well-spent, my friend. Glad to hear that you focus on what's really important. This is totally the reason that everyone respects you.

Sometimes in life, you just know with these things.

There you have it, Simmons is now pretending he PREDICTED that Oden would miss this year.

I hope I'm wrong.

I sincerely doubt that.

here we go again...

Ugh, I guess it's time to make fun of Page 2's Jemele Hill again. Sure, criticizing Hill is like playing 1-on-1 hoops against a quadriplegic, but someone has to put those cocky cripples in their place. When Hill isn't writing pop culture laden puff pieces supported by no statistics or facts, she's writing about how black athletes get no respect. In Jemele's world, everyone is racist: the media, fans, sportswriters, owners, the IRS, and corporations. Now Jemele wants to know why everybody doesn't want to crucify Rick Ankiel after how Barry Bonds has been treated.

Race should be injected into a conversation judiciously and sometimes, slowly. So before I explain how the coverage and reaction to Rick Ankiel's alleged misdeeds represent racial bias at its worst, I need to first disclose a few things.

I don't support Barry Bonds. I believe he took steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. Nevertheless, he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame and any talk of placing asterisks next to his accomplishments is just flat-out silly.

Although Bonds never tested positive for steroids, I don't just think he took steroids. I know he did, and so does Jemele. Or she should, at least. A grown man in his 30s does not rapidly grow several shoe and hat sizes unelss he

1.) Has acromegaly, a rare genetic condition that made Andre the Giant, well, a giant. It also prohibits atheletic conditioning, makes you taller, and takes your life at a very young age.

2.) Takes a shitload of steroids.

I'm gonna go with option #2 here. Call me crazy, but before you imply that Bonds has been treated differently despite the fact that we "only think" he took steroids, we need to realize that both men took growth supplements commonly used in sports doping.

But if there was any question about whether Bonds was treated differently because he is African-American, it was answered last week with Ankiel, a feel-good story that looks to be a tall tale.

Actually, nothing about race was answered here. At all. Ankiel's story is a week old. We have no idea how he will be treated down the road by fans or the media. Accusations about Bonds have been around for years.

A double standard the size of Bonds' head is being exercised with Ankiel, whose involvement with a human growth hormone scandal is being rationalized by some fans and members of the media.

And some fans and members of the media have rationalized Bonds' steroid use. What's your point?

I get that Bonds is far more talented and accomplished than Ankiel, and therefore creates far more media coverage. I also get that, to some degree, this is a popularity contest, since public perception is that Ankiel is considered more likable than Bonds. But what I don't get is the spin being put on Ankiel's alleged HGH use.

So Jemele understands the reasons that Bonds has been accused and slandered so harshly? She's right: he's unlikable, hated even. He also holds one of the most revered records in American sports, and is a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame. What about Ankiel? The only record he owns is highest OPS by a former pitcher who got injured and wandered around the Minors only to come back and be a productive member of a big league team. Not quite as historic as most Home Runs ever. Plus Ankiel seems like a pretty cool guy. So when Jemele said that any questions about race involving Bonds were answered, she was lying.

I don't get how people, with a straight face, can make Ankiel's use of HGH seem heroic, but treat Bonds like a war criminal. I've been as tough on Bonds as anyone, but at least I'm consistent. I don't support Bonds and certainly not what seems to me to be a fraudulent comeback by Ankiel.

Who said that Ankiel was being heroic? I'm not denying her claim, I'm just genuinely curious where she is getting this from. According to Jemele, "some people" think Ankiel is "justified" in "heroically taking HGH." How about a quote? Or an article? Or anything at all besided hearsay? Is that too much to ask for?*

But if you are one of those people who swears that race has nothing to do with the Bonds backlash, the treatment of Ankiel is an enormous setback to your argument.

Hmmmmmm. But I though Ankiel was a likeable guy who isn't one of the greatest baseball players of all time? Surely that has to come into play here.

let's look at this like it's a scientific study. We have three variables: Likeability, Historical Importance, and Race. The results of said study are how the player is treated by fans and the media.

With Bonds, we have:

Likeability: Essentially None.
Historical Importance: One of the Greatest Players of All Time
Race: Black (although he listens to Celine Deion, so who knows really?)
Result of study: Almost universally loathed as an athlete due to steroids

Now Ankiel:

Likeability: Most people seem to think he's a pretty cool dude.
Historical Importance: Pretty darn good in 150 ABs this season. A failure as a pitcher
Race: White (although he hits the ball pretty darn hard, so who knows really?)
Result of study: People are sucking him off left and right even though he took HGH (let's give Jemele the benefit of the doubt here)

You can't change all three variables and then be like "AHA, IT'S BECAUSE BONDS IS BLACK. DAMN WHITEY ALWAYS TRYING TO BRING THE BROTHAS DOWN WHILE LETTING THE CRACKAS GET AWAY WITH MURDER."

That would be just be bad Journalism.

Consider the evidence: Bonds was connected to BALCO. Ankiel is connected to Signature, a disreputable pharmacy under investigation for illegally distributing performance-enhancing drugs to a bevy of professional athletes.

We get it. They both took unnatural substances.

The New York Daily News reported Ankiel received eight shipments of HGH in 2004 -- a year before Major League Baseball put it on its banned substances list. This supposedly exonerates Ankiel from any wrongdoing. Bonds also took HGH and steroids before they were banned by MLB, but you can bet Ankiel won't be booed at ballparks or have syringes thrown at him.

ANKIEL. ISN'T. NEARING. THE. MOST. REVERED. SPORTS. RECORD. IN. AMERICA.

If you can't believe Bonds didn't "knowingly" take performance-enhancing drugs, why would you ever believe Ankiel stopped taking a banned substance that MLB can't test for or that taking HGH had nothing to do with his miraculous major league comeback?

This sentence is terrible. Seriously, read it again. ---- Can't --- didn't ---- knowingly --- can't --- nothing -- miraculous comeback? That's like a septuple negative. I think that she's really asking "if you can't believe that Bonds didn't not take drugs on purpose, only to not not have broken the home run record, can't you not believe that Ankiel isn't amazing for not retreating back from late retirement thanks to HGH, only to have not become a not-that-great homerun hitter?" The answer is of course yes. Duh Jemele, you stupid bint.

Ankiel's explanation is as shaky as Idaho Senator Larry Craig's, and certainly no better than what Bonds offered.

Wow, Jemele, I'm proud of you. You didn't make an awkward, unfunny pop culture reference until almost halfway through your column. Baby steps, sure, but we're getting there.

Ankiel claimed he was prescribed HGH to recover faster from his reconstructive elbow surgery. Shockingly, I've heard sports talk radio hosts and others in the media sanction this excuse and they've even gone so far as to say Ankiel's use of HGH was necessary to maintain his health. Tell me we're not naive enough to believe athletes are taking HGH just for the health benefits. They're not going to risk their reputation, careers and freedom for a beefed-up version of Neosporin.

Neosporin heals infections. HGH promotes muscle and ligament growth. Get your medical references right.

They take HGH because while it assists with injuries, it also makes them stronger and more potent, and therefore better at their sport.

There is no proof that HGH, or even steroids, makes hitters better. Stronger, sure. Faster, maybe. But there is so much that goes into hitting. Making a logical jump like that is nothing short of foolish.

If Ankiel's possession of HGH was above board, why did he have it shipped to him at a separate facility, which coincidentally also is under investigation for illegally
supplying HGH and steroids?

Probably because he knew he would get in trouble for using HGH here. I'm not making excuses for Ankiel. But the whole point of your column was to show how Americans are racist, not if Ankiel was being honest here.

Commissioner Bud Selig had no problem insinuating Bonds' guilt through passive-aggressive behavior during the home run chase, but he hasn't said a word about Ankiel, Troy Glaus or Jay Gibbons -- the other players who have been implicated in this HGH scandal. The commissioner just wants to "talk" to Ankiel, Glaus and Gibbons at some point about HGH. I'm sure Jason Giambi will serve the coffee.

Ho ho ho ho. Good one. When did Selig say anything about Bonds' steroid use in connection with the home run record? Here's a clue: he didn't.

If you struggle to understand why busloads of black people show up outside a courthouse with "Free Vick" signs and T-shirts, the free pass Ankiel has received should explain it.

I personally think Vick may have been punished more than he should have been, but let's be honest here. Vick killed dogs, Ankiel took HGH.

It's not that African-Americans fail to recognize when someone black has done something wrong. It's that white athletes are usually given the benefit of the doubt when they're associated with trouble -- even when common sense and evidence dictate otherwise -- and African-Americans feel if they don't provide some semblance of fairness with their athletes, no one else will.

We get it Jemele. You're black. You're a woman. And you write for ESPN. And now all the sudden you speak for the entire black population of the united states, because you know that all black people everywhere live their lives wondering if they can get fair treatment in life, when one black athlete isn't treated exactly the same as a white athlete. Jemele is so out of touch that she still uses "african american," even though that terminology has been passe for years.

Yet many of them can't do the same when it comes to white athletes who look just as guilty as Bonds and Vick.

Roger Clemens' late-career spike and body changes are just as suspicious as Bonds, and Clemens' name surfaced in Jose Canseco's book. But any mention of that is considered sacrilege.

Says who?

Pete Rose committed the worst sin a professional athlete can and some fans still want him back in baseball, and the Hall of Fame. But Bonds' records should be wiped clean?

Some fans. Some fans. Some fans. Some sports fans also think the Patriots are Classy, Barry Bonds should be universally adored, and that the Red Sox are nothing like the Yankees in their free agent acquisitions.

Not a soul has called for Glaus, who the Daily News said received several shipments of testosterone and nandrolone, to return his World Series MVP. No one is saying the nine home runs and 29 RBIs Ankiel has hit since being called up from the minors last month shouldn't count. Some fans already have decided that deception and dishonesty shouldn't get in the way of their heart-warming story.

There you go. No racism in your point. It's a heartwarming story. Bonds' story is not heart warming.

But now that golden boy Ankiel has been caught, something tells me people will be much more eager to talk sensibly about performance-enhancing drugs. They certainly weren't willing to talk about it when Bonds' king-sized head was on the chopping block.

I have two words for Jemele Hill: Shawn Merriman. Her whole point is essentially disproved by looking at Merriman. He's more hated than Ankiel, thanks to that retarded "lights out" shit. He's a more prominent name than Ankiel. He's also a 2 time probowler who may be headed for the NFL Hall Of Fame. Oh, and he's a little blacker than Ankiel. And the media and most fans don't give a shit that he used steroids.

Go back to writing "Oh no, you didn't, GIRLFRIEND" columns to Danica Patrick and interviewing the Men's Curling team in the back of a '77 pinto. There's plenty of racism in American sports, but you couldn't make a decent, relevant point about it if your life depended on it.

*yes, yes it is too much to ask for.