Monday, February 16, 2009

Wish me luck at the “Guy Who Did That Thing” Awards, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

Not familiar
The NBA All Star game was this weekend. Or as the New York Knicks call the All Star Game: Huh?

Yo, check it
Joaquin Phoenix is transitioning from acting to hip hop. Joaquin’s first song is in honor of Christian Bale titled; “Get Out My Light Mother F’er.”

Not good
Indiana lawmakers are going to make chain restaurants, like the Olive Garden, list their meal’s calories on the menu. In addition, the Olive Garden will have to admit that their pasta sauce is really just hot ketchup.

Wrong signal
Muzzummal Hassan, the founder of a Buffalo TV station designed to show Muslims in a positive way, was arrested for beheading his wife, Aasiya. Hint: If you want to portray Muslims in a good light, rule #1, don’t behead your wife. That is what they call in show business a disconnect.

She had filed for divorce, sadly, her head wasn’t into the marriage anymore.

Duuuuheeeee
A woman in Fountain Valley, CA crashed her car while looking for her cell phone, then she walked into freeway traffic, was hit by a car and died. The official cause of death was vehicular trauma, but I think we all know she died of sheer stupidity.

Or as Darwin would call that: culling the herd.

Sad
In Colorado Springs, a man robbed a 7/11 with a Klingon sword. He needed the money to buy a Valentines Day present for his imaginary girlfriend.

Dumb
Did you hear about the #1 Japanese movie? It’s called “He’s Just Not That Shinto You”

Since you asked:

So, Lex, you ask, you’re a writer of some kind, an alleged comedy writer, sort of a sub-species of writer. Like how Paris Hilton is an actress. Put on your sports writer’s hat and tell us if you would vote A-Rod, Sosa, McGwire, Bonds and Clemens into the Baseball Hall of Fame?

Absolutely not.

The most destructive thing anybody can do to a sport is to hurt the sport’s credibility. That is otherwise known as cheating. And juicers are all cheaters.

Everybody knows when they have cheated. In poker, lying is not cheating, it is an art called bluffing. Hiding an ace in your lap? That’s cheating.

In sports you can do whatever you need to do to win. You can whisper something untrue and horrible about a player’s mother to upset them. It’s called gamesmanship. Artificially increasing strength? That is cheating.

There are those who say; “Well what about the players in the Seventies who used amphetamines?” Not the same. To stay with the card analogy, it’s the difference between someone counting the cards at a Blackjack table versus somebody spying on what cards the dealer has.

As embarrassing as it is now to admit, my high school idol was that now incredibly cheesy infomercial huckster and celebrity face-lift joke sweater whore, Bruce Jenner. At the time when he won the gold medal at Montreal, I knew what was happening, he was clearly using steroids. In fact, due to steroid related skin and joint problems, Jenner has had to have so much plastic and cosmetic surgery, he now looks like the world’s scariest feminist.

In 1972 at a bad time for the US Olympic Decathlon - no medals at the Munich Olympics - Jenner barely made the team as the third guy. He was a skinny 175 pound better-than-average Decathlete who couldn’t throw to save his life. He was lucky if the shot put cleared his foot. If you’ve ever known a skinny athlete who tried to get bigger honestly, it is truly pathetic. They can’t do it.

One Decathlete I knew at Santa Barbara broke down in tears of furious frustration because, although he was fast and could jump, he could not gain so much as five pounds of muscle no matter how hard he lifted, no matter how much he ate. His DNA and his nuclear-hot metabolism made him fast but skinny. It was not going to make him strong. Bruce Jenner was like that.

Four years later and Jenner weighs at least 215 pounds? Please. Jenner gained 40 pounds of pure muscle in four years and in Montreal he throws so far he busts the world record. Are you going to tell me that is not cheating? Was Jenner a talented athlete? Of course he was. You can’t pole vault as high as he did, nearly 17 feet, nor run a 4:12 1500 meters without talent.

But Jenner wasn’t a gold medal winner on the “Wheaties” box without steroids and he knows it. The skinny fast, coordinated athletes who take steroids, like Jenner, Sosa, Bonds and McGwire – yes, they used to be skinny – have an advantage with steroids over the naturally stronger athletes.

Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire were always talented. It takes other-worldly talent to hit a 96 MPH fastball that tails. But with steroids they were hitting home runs out of the park when they simply couldn’t before.

“Sports Illustrated” writer Tom Verducci:

“Linked to drugs are two thirds of the MVP winners from 1995 through 2003, five of the top 12 home run hitters of all time and three of the four players ever to smash 50 homers in a season more than twice.”

Steroids are turning home runs into professional wrestling.

Track athletes are in a better position to cheat with steroids than athletes who compete for a long season like baseball, basketball and football players. In track you have to peak at one, two or three big events a year. It makes it perfect to cycle on and off drugs. When you get caught using steroids at the Olympics, like Ben Johnson, it just proves you are too stupid to read a calendar. Bryan Clay apparently isn’t that stupid.

Is there any proof that current Olympic gold medal winner, Bryan Clay, took steroids? Well, besides the unnatural size of his thighs? No. But that is how dark and huge the cloud of suspicion of drug cheating is in track. Instead of innocent until proven guilty it is now guilty until proven innocent and there is no way to prove innocence. A clean urine sample? It just means they quit taking steroids before the test.

Now look at lack of popularity of US Track and Field. It is pathetic. If it wasn’t for the Olympics every four years the U.S. track and field wouldn’t even exist. Track and Field’s credibility was ruined by lying and cheating criminal a-holes like former prisoner Marion Jones and current inmate Tim Montgomery simply to satisfy their own greed. They didn’t care if they ruined the credibility of their sport, they didn’t even take steroids to help the team, it was only their individual gain that mattered to those self-centered steroid egomaniacs.

There is plenty of blame to go around in the steroid era. The same greed is true of all the leeches that supported these cheaters, their sponsors, shoe companies, agents, and meet promoters, they all participated in the collective ruining of track’s respectability for their own gain..

That same lack of credibility could happen to baseball.

If Major League Baseball and that all-time Hall of Fame hypocrite, MLB Commissioner Bud “Sure, use steroids to bring baseball back after the strike with homers, but don’t get caught” Selig want to keep from turning baseball into track and field, they need to act harshly and fast. Ban from baseball for life, ala Pete Rose, anyone caught using performance enhancing drugs.

Period.

No Hall of Fame, no records, no contact with the sport for life and sue for past earnings for getting paid under false pretenses. Anything less than a sports death sentence and a completely immoral sociopath athlete, like Barry Bonds, will still try to roll the dice and cheat with drugs.

Look at it this way: The 1919 Chicago White Sox Black Sox scandal that nearly destroyed baseball lasted seven games. These steroid Neanderthal mouth-breathers cheated in thousands of games.

Which baseball cheating scandal is bigger, steroids or fixing the 1919 World Series? Steroids. Which is worse? Steroids.

But, make no mistake, both scandals were committed for the same reason: greed.