If there’s one thing that can be said about New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, it is that he will do ANYTHING to save his own ass. Even though he has denied publicly numerous times that he took performance enhancing drugs, the Miami Herald reported this week that Rodriguez admitted to DEA officials in a January meeting that he used performance-enhancing drugs obtained from the Biogenesis clinic.
What brought this on? Rodriguez was doing nothing more than saving his ass again. Prosecutors gave Rodriguez and others immunity in return for testimony against Biogenesis founder Anthony Bosch. Rodriguez’s testimony was key in building the federal case against Bosch, who pleaded guilty last month to providing PEDs to dozens of high school athletes and MLB players, among others. Rodriguez reportedly told DEA agents that he paid Bosch roughly $12,000 per month for PEDs and that Rodriguez’s cousin, Yuri Sucart, served as middleman so that Rodriguez would not be implicated if caught. Sucart was reportedly paid over $1 million to keep silent.
Rodriguez reportedly came clean as a meeting held last January 29, several weeks after an arbitrator reduced Rodriguez’s suspension from baseball from 211 games to 162 games. Rodriguez paid Bosch for supplies of testosterone cream, lozenges laced with testosterone (aka “gummies”) and human growth hormone injections. “Rodriguez injected the HGH into his stomach,” the DEA report stated. “Rodriguez said Bosch told him the HGH would help with sleep, weight, hair growth, eyesight and muscle recovery.” Rodriguez also described how Bosch gave the ballplayer “tips on how to beat MLB’s drug testing.”
Well, if true (and we have no reason to not believe it, here is the smoking gun against A-Rod. Of course, the suspension is over and supposedly Yankee manager Joe Girardi has Rodriguez penciled in at third base for the start of spring training in February. I guess he has to be allowed to earn a living, but to me, this is the proof fans needed to keep him out of the Hall of Fame. Hell, I wouldn’t let him buy a ticket to go in the HOF; it would be throwing mud on the players in the Hall.

While running errands on Saturday, I checked the radio to see how Northwestern was doing at Iowa, and it was ugly – 38-7 Iowa t that point, ending up being 48-7 Iowa as the final score. It sounded like a good old fashioned Hayden Fry ass-whipping, so I turned it off, figuring I would read the Chicago newspapers to see how bad it actually was.
Like Saturday, I was out all day Sunday with the Indignant Family so it was evening before I read the newspapers. I usually start with The Sun-Times, and I did, reading Seth Green’s article on Saturday’s massacre, which he did in a satisfactory manner. But most of the article was the story that NU Athletic Director Jim Phillips was soon to be leaving for the same job at Michigan in no small part due to the “apathetic” fans at Northwestern.
I usually don’t e-mail sportswriters with issues because, in my experience, you either never hear back (which to me says you were ignored and like Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction,” I WILL NOT be INGNORED!); or you will get a snarky reply. (As of this writing, I have not heard from Green.) However, here is my e-mail:

Mr. Green,

Your article on the Northwestern Iowa game today was spot on, but I take umbrage at your use of the word “apathetic” for Northwestern’s fan base. As an alum from “the bad old days” (1977-1981) but a season ticket holder since 1996, I can tell you that I and my fellow season ticket holders in Section 107 (many of whom did not attend NU) are out there in the rain, in the snow. We are FAR from apathetic.
You confuse apathetic with small. With graduating classes of 1,500 – 1,800 each year, we cannot compete with the 16,000 or so churned out by Michigan, Ohio State, or even Illinois. And, of course, Michigan has the long legacy of winning, while we are still trying to exorcize the demons of John Pont.
We are a small school, we don’t have PE majors to hide our athletes, and we graduate 97% of them. Our expectations are simple – field a competitive team every year. Some years, the breaks go against us; other years, the stars are aligned just right and were in the top tier of the league.
Jim Phillips would be a fool not to listen to offers. He turned down Stanford for whatever reason; he turned down Penn State probably in part due to the continuing cloud over that program. Michigan has been a troubled program since Rich Rodriguez came there. His teams lost, he got fired, now it looks like it wasn’t his coaching since he has Arizona in the top 25.
I don’t think that Michigan is the dream job you portray in your article. And neither are Northwestern fans apathetic.

Sincerely,

Tony Fernandez

In less time than it takes for a Ferguson, MO policeman to hassle a black man, the Chicago Cubs moved quickly when two-time Manager of the Year Joe Madden resigned from the Tampa Bay Rays to begin negotiating with him to helm the ballclub in 2015. Of course, the Cubs already had a manager in Rick Renteria, who Theo Epstein said was the man to nurture the young Latin players the Cubs have signed.
Renteria did as well as he could with the team he had, going 73-89, an improvement of seven games from the year before. In all of his bluster about being different from previous Cub front offices, Epstein is doing what previous regimes have done – bring in a big time “name” manager to turn the club around. Don Zimmer, Dusty Baker and Lou Pinella were brought in with World Series credentials, and all left without a World Series appearance.
The biggest difference between Madden and the other mentioned above, I think the Cubs will regret replacing Renteria. He brought a calm steady presence to the dugout, and the young players responded. Given more time, I think we would have continued to build on the improvement in 2014.
Madden, however, kept the small market Rays competitive in the ultra-competitive American League East with the huge money Yankees and Red Sox, and the Rays won as many pennants as the others did on half the payroll. Playoff success was harder to come by, with only the Red Sox consistently winning championships during this period. Madden does bring one trait to the table (same as currently unemployed former Twins manager Ron Gardenhire did), being able to win on a shoestring. Despite being a “big market team,” the Cubs have to be run on the cheap because on the huge amount of debt (and the resultant interest payments) the Ricketts family used to buy the team. And, the old axiom is: it is cheaper to fire the manager than to fire the team.
On Facebook, I said that the Cubs couldn’t win if they hired John Madden, Joe Torre, Shoeless Joe Jackson from the grave, or Joe Pesci, the Cubs won’t win until they get cured of the Ricketts.

Unlike the rest of the world it seems, I did watch some of the World Series and it was fun to watch, although several games weren’t. The Giants jumped out in Game 1, winning 7-1 and the dumb pundits on ESPN and elsewhere said that the underdog Royals were toast.
That is, until Game 2, when the Royals returned the favor, beating San Francisco 7-2, then won the first close game of the series, 3-2 in Game 3. Then the beat downs continued: SF 11-4 in Game 4; then future World Series MVP Madison Bumgarner shut out the Royals 5-0. With a chance to end it all, the Royals bombed former White Sox started Jake Peavy 10-0, setting up Game 7.
As I’ve written many times before, Game 7s are like life – sometimes you get a clunker, sometimes you get something sublime. Step in Bumgarner. On two days rest after winning games 1 and 5, Bumgarner came on in relief of Tim Hudson, giving up a leadoff single, then retiring 15 of the next 16 batters he faced, leading the Giants to their third World Series Championship in five years.
The Royals were the feel good story of the Fall, reaching the postseason for the first time in 29 years, then winning eight straight playoff games to storm to the Fall classic. But they faced a red hot Bumgarner.
The ratings were reportedly down again and the naysayers saying that the World Series needs something to get people to watch. (Personally, I blame ESPN, the MLB Network and other media outlets for focusing WAY too much on the Red Sox and Yankees, both of whom were non factors this season with the only interesting thing in Gotham this year was watching retiring Derek Jeter get presents from the teams during his farewell tour.)
Anyway, attendance seems solid for the league in general (there are always teams who are having problems, usually winning which seems to attract fans like bees to honey), and I’m sure some analysts will say that having two wild card teams and one truly small market team in the World Series hurt ratings. What do they know?” It was a compelling Series.

We knew that former baseball slugger Jose Canseco isn’t exactly “the sharpest knife in the drawer.” Using performance enhancing drugs to amass 462 home runs and 1,407 RBIs in a 17 year career, he is considered by many players, especially his former “Bash Brother” Oakland A’s teammate Mark McGwire, a “rat” for telling the world about the drugs the two took while anchoring the A’s lineup in the late 1980s.
Attempts at self advertising including a short-lived boxing career, numerous incidents of domestic abuse that could be linked to ‘roid rage, the irrational anger that comes along with steroid use; he “wrote” a couple of books, the first of which sold alright, but the follow up calling himself “Vindicated” on the steroid issue had very little to add.
With all of his history, it probably doesn’t stretch credibility that this week Canseco accidentally shot himself in his left hand with a semi-automatic pistol while cleaning it. Canseco had surgery to try and save one of his fingers.
Long time readers know that while not for guns at all, I say that only mentally capable people should be able to get their hands on guns. Or at least only mentally capable people with one hand-and-a-half hands.

One of the things that old time players (and spectators like me) hate about today’s game of football are all of the play celebrations. A guy makes a great tackle, or a sack and they dance and prance around the field like they just won the Super Bowl. I do make a slight exception for touchdown celebrations since the guy that scored just hit “paydirt.” While I hardly ever agree with the No Fun League on celebrations, when the league started penalizing excessive celebrations, especially the multi-player, non-spontaneous, 10 minute episodes of Soul Train that used to happen in end zones all over the league, I was happy.
The play-to-play celebrations do still occur, but for the second time this season, a defensive player has hurt himself celebrating and the most recent one was even more embarrassing since his team was getting routed at the time by 25 points. While one should never celebrate someone getting injured, these incidents do have a certain karmic appropriateness to them.
Earlier in the season Detroit Lion linebacker Stephen Tulloch injured himself doing a “discount double-check” move after sacking Green Bay QB (and State Farm Insurance pitch man) Aaron Rodgers. After sacking Rodgers, he made his move and ended up tweaking his knee and crumpling to the turf. Tulloch tore his ACL and is out for the season.
While stupid, at least the game was close at the time, and the Packers and Lions are division rivals and have been for decades. Yesterday, the Chicago Bears got trounced 51-23 by the New England Patriots, but it was the end of the season for defensive tackle Lamarr Houston. Houston tackled Patriots’ backup QB Jimmy Garoppolo with three minutes 21 seconds left in the game (future Hall of Famer Tom Brady had already lit the Bears up, going 30-35 for 354 yards, five touchdowns and no interceptions). It was Houston’s first sack of the season (after signing a five year, $35 million contract with the team with $14.9 million guaranteed), and despite being down 48-23, Houston celebrated, hurting his knee, and today it was announced that he will miss the rest of the season.
When Walter Payton or Barry Sanders scored touchdowns, they would flip the ball to the referee and go to the sidelines, abiding by the old football adage, act like you’ve been there before and will be there again. But with ESPN Sports Center and every big play available on nearly every media outlet, it isn’t enough to play a good game, you have to get a highlight on television.
Like I’ve said before, generally, I feel for athletes – they work very hard in high school and college, make no money in either place, and if they make the big time, permanent injury and more than likely bankruptcy await them. However, the build-up that coaches and media and even family pump into these young men is preposterous. It creates monster egos.
Stephen Tullock and Lamarr Houston are the current poster boys for getting what you deserve.

The rest of the headline would be “is doomed to repeat it,” and that is the first thing I thought of this morning when I read a piece on SI.com that was originally reported in the New York Daily News. According to the paper, Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg has had discussions about moving the franchise to Montreal. Sternberg has reportedly spoken about the possibility with “wealthy Wall Street associates.” Sternberg resides in Rye, New York, and worked in finance in New York City before buying into the Rays in 2004.
Now, it is well known that the Rays have a lot of trouble getting fans home games at 24-year old Tropicana Field, which resembles a warehouse with a baseball field inside. (I wish that I could personally remind White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf of the fact tat the Rays can’t draw there since he played civic extortion from Chicago in threatening to move to team to Tampa. Finally, it was the state and city ponying up funds for U.S. Cellular Field, and the success of Michael Jordan for Reinsdorf’s other major sports asset, the Bulls, that kept the team in Chicago.)
Anyway, the Rays have finished last in attendance in baseball each of the last three years, which has caused the team to operate with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball most years. The team has been able to compete regardless, but with GM leavign for the Dodgers and two time Manager of the Year Joe Madden quitting last week, the breaking point may be here for Sternberg and the team. They have been unable to secure funding or have plans approved for a new stadium.
Okay, that’s fine – if the fans don’t come out despite winning teams, then the owner has every right to leave. But Montreal? The Expos played there from 1969 to 2004, with some playoff success and some Hall of Fame players like Andre Dawson, Gary Carter and Tim Raines. But they never drew. They played in Olympic Stadium, a mostly indoor stadium that was as sterile as Tropicana Field, and like Tampa, they former Expos couldn’t get the city, province, or national government to commit to a new stadium. So, they moved to Washington D.C., where the Nationals have been successful on and off the field.
It is time to face it – Canada is not interested in baseball. Honestly, the Blue Jays have trouble getting fans to SkyDome. When the Jays were winning championships in the early 1990s, they drew well, but not consistently. Only when they were championship teams did the Jays fill the mammoth arena. However, despite 47 years and counting since the Maple Leafs last won the Stanley Cup, the Air Canada Centre is full for every game. It’s been 21 years since the Montreal Canadiens last hoisted Lord Stanley, but the Bell Centre is full for every game.
Hockey is Canada’s game. They may like an occasional NFL game north of the border, but baseball has never taken hold there, which was proven by the Expos. One would think that someone who thinks they are a smart business man may study and learn from the history of the Expos and think long and hard about a move there.