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Another day down, and another sad day for Major League Baseball.
Sports, at their best, are a brilliant, moving and inspiring distraction from the everyday troubles that permeate and cloud the world.
Lately, discussion regarding baseball has been filled with nothing but trouble.
Steroids, drugs, accusations, lies, double-handed dealings, denials and threats.
When will it stop? When will baseball go back to being baseball?
Maybe it is.
Maybe this is what baseball has really looked like all along.
Maybe this is just what happens when you turn over enough rocks and dig beneath the surface.
And it’s not just baseball. Modern sports in general have in many ways devolved into something that looks nice, bright and shiny on the outside, but the inside has rotted out and has been filled in with parasitic greed and nothingness.
Opening Day feels like a long, long time away right now.
The game will survive. The players will stay play. Fields will still look like heaven and the ball will still crack every time it perfectly smacks a glove or bat.
But baseball will never be the same.

Posted by Brian T. Smith

There are a great many things about sporting journalism that annoy me.

That might sound funny coming from a sports journalist; then again, it might not. Some of the most irritating things to the average sports fan reside within the sports world. We all have our biases and dislikes, whether they be teams, players or entire sports.
Many of mine reside within the same medium in which I work. I have no more time to write about all the ways in which I disagree with the national media’s coverage of athletics than you have to read about it, but one topic at a time doesn’t hurt.
Specifically, today’s rant is against those things that are reported that have basically nothing to do with sports but are treated as actual news. What I’m thinking of in particular is the love lives of our favorite competitors being given print or broadcast time as though it’s really the public’s business.
To wit: I realize she hasn’t had a hit movie in years, but why is it necessary for Ashley Judd to pop up in broadcasts for two different sports? It’s nice that she went to Kentucky, it’s nice she’s true to her school and supports the Wildcats’ basketball team, but who cares if she’s in the stands at Rupp arena?
Furthermore, I hope her marriage to Indy 500 champ Dario Franchitti is a happy one and brings their family a lifetime of joy. However, putting a picture of Franchitti in the newspaper using one that also had little misses in it was harder than drawing a watercolor of the guy with the Borg-Warner trophy myeself. It was almost as bad as reading about what Sheryl Crow was doing every day during the Tour de France while she was dating Lance Armstrong.
Maybe Tom Brady really is a nice guy, maybe he is as humble as all the NFL Kool-Aid sippers at ESPN, Fox and the Associated Press believe him to be. But why should we care which model he’s dating this week and which one is having his child? At least Cardinals quarterback Matt Leinart’s baby making involved another athlete, but it’s still not public business.
Which brings me to the dumbest story of the NFL postseason: The impact of Jessica Simpson on the Dallas Cowboys’ failure, more directly the way she supposedly caused QB Tony Romo implosion.
Since we journalists love this sort of thing, the blond bombshell already has a sporting nickname.
Yoko Romo.
First off, I’m not sure I’d compare this year’s edition of the Cowboys to the Beatles, nor would I compare Romo to Troy Aikman, let alone John Lennon. But, since they’re the Cowboys and everything that exists in the NFL world is a big deal in our business, somebody needed to put the blame on the team’s most famous girlfriend.
I guess it could be worse. At least Simpson is taking some of the attention away from Terrell Owens, which is good for all of us.
The question is, do these people really think the Cowboys lost to the Giants because their QB has a famous main squeeze?
The Cowboys had the advantage in almost every statistical category, yet still managed to lose. They were penalized 11 times for 83 yards in the game, so maybe Jessica caused everyone else’s attention to wander, not just Romo.
Since the team frowned on their star QB having a public fling with a famous girl, perhaps Jerry Jones should put a “no pop singers” clause in Romo contract.
Should the A-list affair end during the offseason, what will the headlines be the first time Romo stinks up the joint?
Whatever they are, there will be headlines.

Posted by From the Archives

The Super Bowl is always the biggest sporting event in the world. For the third straight year, the big event might have a local participant.
Former Graham High School star Ahmad Bradshaw is within a game of that goal after playing well for the New York Giants in their 21-17 victory over the Dallas Cowboys in the NFC playoffs.
A rookie running back, Bradshaw finished with 40 yards of total offense and had some tough runs for the Giants in Sunday’s win.
All that stands between Bradshaw and a trip to the Super Bowl is the Green Bay Packers, who the Giants will play in the NFC title game.
The Super Bowl has been kind to local players. Wise’s Carroll Dale played in three Super Bowls, including the first two with the Green Bay Packers.
Mike Compton (Richlands) won two Super Bowl rings with the New England Patriots, while Heath Miller (Honaker) was on the winning side in Super Bowl XL with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Last season, Thomas Jones (Powell Valley) had a good game for the Chicago Bears, but it wasn’t enough as the team lost the big game to the Indianapolis Colts.
Could this be the year for Bradshaw?

Posted by Tim Hayes

This weekend is as good as it gets if you’re an NFL nerd.
Four NFL divisional playoff games. Each one tough to pick.
Thick storylines.
Old rivalries (Giants-Cowboys).
New heavyweights (Jacksonville).
And one brilliant old man who just won’t go away (Mr. Cheesehead himself, Brett “Don’t call me old” Favre).
The sports media has done its best to turn this season into a 24/7 essay on the wonders of the Patriots. And, perhaps, rightfully so. Pulling off a 16-0 regular season record is nothing to ignore, and definitely something to celebrate (no matter how sad the Pats’ divisional opponents may have been).
But this weekend, the Pats are 0-0.
Peyton Manning and the steady-is-as-steady-does Colts deserve as much attention, analysis and appreciation as Brady, Moss, Belichick and the Patriots.
Will Romo wilt?
Will the Chargers remember that it’s the playoffs and fall asleep?
Is Jacksonville really for real or just for real?
How did Seattle make it to the Divisional Playoffs again?
And just how much NFL can one person watch in two days and still call themselves a functioning human being?
Game on!
The Super Bowl is overdone.
The Conference Championships are usually remarkable or instantly forgettable.
This weekend is where it’s at.

Posted by Brian T. Smith

From the “better late than never” category, Major League Baseball has set up an investigations branch, intended to monitor drug use in the sport.

The unit, which was announced Friday, will report directly to the commissioner’s office and “will have broad authority to conduct investigations,” commish Bud Selig mumbled in a prepared statement.
The formation of the investigations outfit was the suggestion of George Mitchell in his highly controversial report, which identified 88 major league players with possible connections to performance-enhancing drugs. Mitchell also suggested the leagues adopt a “tip line” system through which players or clubhouse workers can rat out those who violate league rules. Why no MLB employees were previously aware they could report those who violated the rules is beyond me, but maybe Mitchell knows something about establishing ultra-secure phone lines in MLB clubhouses we don’t.
Nothing else about the new investigations wing was specified, but it basically sounds kind of like what the Jedi Knights did for the senate in the Star Wars movies, Episodes I through III, just no lightsabers. And no Yoda.
Impressed by the new development, this writer is not.
For one thing, Selig’s statement offered one line that was almost comedic by its timing: “The department of investigations will have critically important responsibilities in protecting the integrity of our sport,” Bud said.
Protecting the game’s integrity? How about saving it? How about reclaiming it?
Baseball has always had tragically poor timing , but this move looks like a particularly poor grasp at straws, especially when it almost literally took an act of congress for MLB to do anything about the drug problem.
Steroids have been banned in baseball for more than a decade, although both the testing methods and punitive measures were so laughable it didn’t matter, at least not until the damage had been done and anyone with the right connections could get pumped up enough to dent baseballs and records which had stood for decades. Now, the top five of the home run list considered almost sacred (Aaron, Ruth, Mays, Frank Robinson, Killebrew, Reggie Jackson) has been infiltrated by the likes of Bonds, Sosa, Palmeiro and McGwire, all of whom have dirt on them as a result of the Mitchell Report or a previous positive test or allegation. By that reckoning, almost any power statistic - and in turn the only hall of fame that matters - will be soiled, hence the need for MLB’s own cops wing.
The trouble is, it’s hard to get into the spirit of the thing knowing how poor the timing is. It’s kind of like George A. Custer setting up a task force on the morning of Little Bighorn to determine wether the Sioux were really a threat.
Selig’s already tapped former New York cop Dan Mullin as the unit’s head and ex-FBI man George Hanna as the director of investigations, but for something like this a sort of “drug czar” is needed, sort of like President Bush’s idea of an intelligence kingpin (for whatever that’s worth). And there’s really only one man for the job.
Frederick Stanley McGriff.
Besides the obvious connection to law enforcement by his nickname, the Crime Dog is a perfect fit. Having retired in 2004, McGriff got to see the steroid era at what was probably its zenith. He played in some big parks, like SkyDome, Jack Murphy and Fulton County Stadium, so he must have been subject to the temptation to dope up, especially toward the end of his career as he approached 500 career homers (he finished with 493.)
Plus, as the man who endorsed Tom Emanski’s fielding instructional videos, McGriff knows all about defending things, so baseball’s honor should be no problem.
At a time of crisis, you go with your big guns, and Fred McGriff is the man for Selig’s new enforcement agency. If Selig really wants to clean up the game, he needs to bring in a cleanup hitter.

Posted by From the Archives