For those of you who are reading me for the first time, and as a refresher for those who may vaguely recall my previous body of blogging contributions to TSN and to YouGab, here are a few personal notes.  I live in a small cow town, Damascus,  Maryland.  As far as local sporting allegiances, I estimate it at about 50 – 50, Redskins & Ravens, 70 – 30  O’s & Nationals, sadly dominated by woebegone Capitals fans and home to about 10 Wizard fans…in case you did not know this, Washington does have a professional basketball team and that really is their name. I generally go Redskins, Nationals, Capitals, O's, Wiz & Ravens as my rooting hierarchy.  Above all, I am a sports fan.

I have the spent the last two non-blogging years drifting on the sea of sports websites on an almost Jason Bourne – like search seeking to reclaim my sports identity, although I did not have to kill anyone to do that (close call once in a beer line at FedEx field though).    Along the way, I discovered a renewed passion for baseball, an odd affinity to dog sled racing, 83 channels of sports programming on my Comcast box (who is this Jim Rome guy and why does he have his own TV show? and what's the deal with all the Euro-football?) and an old Brooks Robinson autographed baseball.   I lost my big toe in a strange Mayan end-of-the world sports ritual resulting in the Family giving me my coveted Sicilian handle, “Billy Nine Toes.”

Ultimately, I was shocked back to reality when Lance Armstrong appeared on Oprah followed by all-time nice guy Phil Mickelson groused about money like he was Maurice Jones-Drew.  Suddenly, almost magically, the first blog entry in quite some time popped off my keyboard and it all came back to me…yes, I used to post at YouGab…it’s all clear now.    Fortunately, I did keep a sports journal of my virtual & real travels…here are a few notes from the last couple of years…

Feb 2011.  In what could have been the defining moment of my sports amnesia experience, Lance Armstrong retires a hero.  Apparently, after being on the cover of SI in 2002 as Sportsman of the Year, SI developed its own case of amnesia.  In Lance’s case, he just forgot that he used every mode of PED’s under the sun.

Nov 2011. Inasmuchas my office is near State College, this story was too close to home.  The Legend of Joe Pa is no more…the whole Penn State story represented the seedy side of youth sports that nobody likes to think about and even less likes to write about.  A really low moment.  As a parent that devoted years to coaching youth sports,  you know that the kids and the parents trust you.  How could they let that happen?   (Note:  Joe was also a Sportsman of the Year in 1986).

Dec 2011.  In one final hurrah before the Sports Czar lowered the boom on the Crescent City, Drew Brees maxes out the passing yardage record.  The undocumented story was D Coach Gregg Williams tutoring the Saints receivers on how to twist an ankle during a pile-up.  Team generates unusually large (and suspicious) number of late fumbles to create artificial scrums.  Goodell is still looking into the matter.

Feb 2012.  The Giants won the Super Bowl….the Giants won the Super Bowl.  Unbelievable.  I’m remain nonplused.

March 2012.  The 2012 Fantasy Iditarod Season is lost due to a lockout by the owners (would that be...me?!).  The lockout ends the domination of the event by Alaska weathermen.  In related news,  the real race was won by Dallas Seavey  with a time of just over 9 days followed by female musher Aily Zirkle  only 1 hour behind.   If I had only run the contest, I might have finally won my own event.  

April 2012.  A small stroke of poetic justice occurred when some guy named Bubba actually wins the Masters.  22 old guys wearing hideous green sports coats pass out…nobody notices as they assume it is just time for their naps.  On the lighter side, I got to have a beer with a few of my buds on the 16^th green. (I'm on the right).

A small piece of advice if you ever go to a golf tournament – drinking 3 martinis in a hospitality tent after wandering around in the heat all day is not a good idea.  Several koi at the rental property suffered the consequences as a result; details another day.

Oct 2012.  During a visit to the Native American History Museum, I participated in a study that revealed 23% of the visitors werewearing some form of Washington Redskins apparel.  This number spiked when the data from a spy-cam revealed a surprising and rather disturbing trend that showed an alarming affinity for Redskins thong panties worn by women weighing in at over 250 pounds.  The study results prompt D.C. mayor to demand a name change for the team as a requirement to move back to the city.  Owner Dan Snyder responded with a well-known and probably equally native hand gesture.

Dec 2012.  I was nearly snapped back to reality in a surreal sports moment.  The Redskins actually won something other than the offseason – a division title.  In a shocking visual twist, Jerry Jones facelift gave way…unrecognizable as he left FedEx field, he was accosted by stadium security.  In response to his claims to be Jerry Jones, stadium staff told him, “you’re not pretty enough.”

So there it is, 24 months of sports hell, but in the immortal words of George Costanza, “I’m back, baby, I’m back!!”

Now down to business…

Next week I get to post just before the Super Bowl.  In addition to giving you my Fearless Forecast on the Big Game, I will publish the winner of the Chili Cook-Off.  How to accomplish this off of a blog you ask?  Send me your recipe and I will reproduce a couple of them this week and put them up against my own recipe.  The winning recipe as judged by my family (never one to be biased towards me) will be the winner.  I hope I don’t win by default.

I will also take salsa recipes to go along with the mandatory chips. 

Bring it on!

Coming in February...

We are getting very close to the pitchers and catchers reporting – I am definitely looking forward to that and I will be covering that very closely…much closer than, say, hockey season which I am finding hard to watch.  Is that because the Caps stink?, maybe so…nevertheless…give me baseball.

So there we go – thanks to all the YouGab guys for welcoming me back with open arms, Sully, Frag and the rest, thanks a bunch.  Until next week, adios muchachos!

Since Beeze brought us the Tim Joyce investigative report on the Sex Abuse Scandal within the USA Olympic Swim team both of us have spent a good deal of time trying to get this story sent out to the very media Joyce calls out. We were up until nearly 4 am Monday morning; this is the time of day where newsrooms around the country and their producer’s are putting together the morning broadcasts and we got an unusual amount of traffic as we spent a good 90 minutes tweeting the link to both the Gab and WBAL sites for them to see exactly what it was that outraged us. At the end of the day you’ll be really surprised who picked up this story, a little online newspaper in Toronto Canada called “The People at Risk Daily”, and we thank Lisa A. McLeod for doing so, she clearly gets it, but CNN, ESPN, NBC, every news anchor and top gun reporter (and yes B.O.B., even Bill O’Reilly got one from me) could not have been less interested.

In the last 48 hours I’ve been reeling over this, all the while I can scan the channels and see Olympic Coverage, Olympic Coverage, Olympic Coverage, Spoiler Alert, Gabby Douglas etc…USA Swim Scandal? Nada! The cowards Joyce speaks of in the mainstream media, you know the ones who have to answer to a higher authority before ever airing anything without the stamp of approval from the “Politcal Correctness Department” because it’s taboo to step on the toes of the likes of NBC and the billions they doled out for Olympic broadcast rights, or ESPN who can’t offend anything or anyone in sports until it’s obvious the rest of the planet will hang the offender out to dry too, i.e. Jerry Sandusky. Part of what’s wrong here very well could be Joyce’s timing of the story. Joyce’s story hit the web July 31st, the Games were underway and if you’re working on an Olympic story whether it’s a competitor fluff piece or a hard story like this you’d think timing shouldn’t matter, it’s about the USA Olympic Swim team, it talks about the very coaches who are now being investigated for said abuse but that’s not what Bob Costas is going to be allowed to talk about after interviewing Michael Phelps who just broke the Olympic medal record…just can’t have it. When Beeze posted the story at the Gab early Monday morning we weren’t even 24 hours into the shooting of the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, that got top bill and rightfully so, but my problem is why is a news organization like CNN or FOX News not able to cover more than one top story, they do it all the time and on a slow news day they still manage to fill their slots with plenty of crap to keep their anchors talking.

I started thinking; just maybe the reason isn’t the timing of the games as much as it is the story has “USA Swimming” in the title and not Penn State. It sure seemed pretty easy to point the finger at a school in a college town, say the administration and coaches covered it up, district attorney’s and police departments knew but basically looked the other way while Sandusky molested boys in the Nittany Lion locker room shower stalls, as I recall no one died, but Sandusky went to trial, was publicly humiliated, Paterno was forced out as head coach and into the grave. I’m not minimizing the abuse of Sandusky, personally I look forward to the day there’s breaking news he was found swinging in his cell, I’ll be more than okay with that sound bite. But when we’ve got numerous coaches, suicide, sexual abuse, cover-ups, a girl who got pregnant from a coach, there’s something seriously wrong when no one wants to ask the question - What the hell is going on with the USA Olympic Swim team and why hasn’t anyone appointed a special prosecutor from the US Attorney’s office? Why hasn’t a congressman asked why is this being swept under the rug? Oh yeah, it’s an election year, they have bigger fish to fry, their careers.  Barry Bonds and Roger Clemons got more attention than this and that was for perjury about steroid abuse…(is this making sense to any of you yet)? Why, because they were multi-million dollar, high profile athletes that makes it okay? Where are our priorities? I’m sorry, when the safety of young girls (and most of you know I have a daughter so you know where my anger is coming from) are being compromised by the very coaches entrusted by parents to train them to represent our country and it’s covered up for the sake of the reputation of an organized sport and the ole boy network that oversees it I can’t fathom why this isn’t front and center and I’m not seeing headlines with coaches being escorted into police stations cuffed and jackets hiding their faces, just like Jerry Sandusky...this story mirrors Penn State in so many ways. The differences, it's on a much larger scale, over a longer period of time, involves not one but many coaches and children and 16 year Sarah Burt walked herself in front of a tractor trailer and committed suicide. Yeah, it makes you just scratch your head doesn't it?...or want to go out and hurt someone.

B.O.B I believe was who made the comment that when the games were over, the closing ceremonies have concluded and athletes, networks and reporter’s come home this might just rear its ugly head. I thought the same thing too. If that’s the case, I won’t be surprised, but I’ll have a lot of mixed emotions if I do see it. First, I’ll be extremely pissed off if I hear Erin Burnett, Kyra Phillips or Soledad O’Brien talking about this like they just found out about it, that I can assure you isn’t the case, they all got it the morning Beeze and I tweeted “talking heads” from here to the moon and back. If Bill O’Reilly talks about it I’ll be glad FOX covered it instead of pumping sunshine up Mitt Romney’s ass while we still listen to him and Harry Reid trade barbs over Mitt’s tax records, because in the grand scheme of things, this is what I really want to know about. Wrong! Sure, I’ll be glad to see this get the attention it deserves, but God help whoever it is that does so if they got this story originally from us, I’ll be calling them out for doing exactly what it is I believe they’re doing, lying in wait to pounce when the timing is just right  - after the games. Which we all know is the wrong reason, it’s just the politically correct reason, and that’s horse shit.

Sarah Burt deserves better, her family deserves better. Tim Joyce deserves the same recognition for having the guts to break this story as Sarah Ganim got when breaking the Sandusky story, and we all know that story wasn’t really “breaking news” either, it was a story that resurfaced on the heels of one reporter who was just not going to take NO for an answer. I’m here to say, I’m not taking NO for an answer either.

Got to go now, I need to tweet the hell out of this to the same mainstream media that ignored the last story and I suggest you all do the same…don’t you take NO for an answer either.

Could it really be true? Could the prince of Hell, once he’s inherited the keys to the castle, be looking to sell?

If some fast swirling rumors are to believed, that could indeed be the case, as the New York Daily News is reporting that multiple “insiders” are saying that the Steinbrenner boys are shopping the Yankees.

Yeah, those New York Yankees.

The Daily News piece is saying that the Steinbrenner boys do not share the same interest in the game as their father George, who bought the team in 1973 for $8.8 million. They cite the infamous “inside sources” as saying the boys are viewing the sale of the Los Angeles Dodgers, for upwards of $2 billion, as a sign that now is the time to move the team, and early estimate are that they could fetch a cool $3 billion or more in a deal.

The Steinbrenners were quite to issue a rebuttal to the story, with Hal Steinbrenner taking to Twitter to issue his statement, saying “I just read the daily news story. It is complete fiction. Me and my family have no intention of selling the Yankees and expect it to be in the family for years to come.”

Unfortunately, the media has already run with it, and I myself couldn’t pass up the opportunity to discuss it. Just think about it for a moment; this could be a landscape changer for Major League Baseball as a whole.

For as a big of an iconic franchise as the Dodgers were, they don’t even hold a candle to the Yankees. Selling the Yankees is akin to the United States selling a stake in the government. The sale of the Yankees, if it comes to pass, would take years to complete. Bud Selig and his cronies would have to make sure they take every step imaginable to make sure that the bidders are thoroughly investigated and there are assurances that the team can stay afloat. The Yankees are a money making machine, but they do so under the “you have to spend money to make money” mantra. Any new ownership group would have to be able to do so.

What kind of bidding frenzy would this create? And I’m not just talking about new owners looking to get into the game and do so with the most iconic franchise in all of sports. I’m talking about current ownership groups looking to upgrade to a bigger piece of the puzzle. Look at the Red Sox sale for instance. It involved John Henry selling his stake in the Marlins to Jeffrey Loria, who in turn sold his team to Major League Baseball. Baseball ownership is an insider organization, and you have to bet your bottom dollar that the good old boys will want to keep the Yankees under the umbrella.

Then there is the economic landscape to consider. The Yankees have contributed $206.27 million in luxury tax payments since 2003, or 95% of total luxury tax funds. You can bet your bottom dollar that Major League Baseball, who splits the money between players’ benefits, development of the game in underdeveloped countries, and an Industry Growth Fund, counts on the Yankees going over that cap. I can almost guarantee that a new ownership group would do everything in there power to get the Yankees under that cap. Hell, the Steinbrenner regime is doing what it can do get under the cap by next season.

In the end, it comes down to passion. If the Yankees do sell, could they find an owner that was as passionate and no-holds-barred as George Steinbrenner was? Say what you want about George, and I have, but he was as much a part of the Yankee show as the team on the field was and without him, you can see that in the product the Yankees currently have on the field and in the seats. This is a team that needs a passionate owner willing to take risks and spend money.

So we get to sit back and play the waiting game, reading the speculation and denials as they come and go. But I guarantee you that once this comes to pass, and it inevitably will, the circus will come to town.

George would be proud of that.

LET ME PREFACE THIS RANT BY SAYING IT’S GOING TO BE LACED WITH PROFANITY, IF THAT OFFENDS YOU I DON’T GIVE A SHIT, GO FUCK YOURSELF!!!

As some of you have seen we had a little visitor while trying to celebrate the life of our friend 3^rd stone, most of you probably missed it though because just like at TSN he waited a few days for the blog to get stale and then came in and put in his two cents that way only the publisher, in this case Beeze, and those who commented would see it, and that’s only if you had checked the alert box. I’ve seen this punk mother fucker do it before, many times. Busch league crap like this has been a trademark of his for a long time. HE HAS NO BALLS!!! Who is it I'm talking about? BACKELL, or BACKASS as I like to call him, who else?

For those of you wondering what the title means, it’s referring to an incident when the preacher had crashed the server at Sporting News. On that night, I was doing a mock draft with NWolf and we were talking on the phone and he asked me if I lost the connection to TSN and I had, the whole site was down and stayed that way for a long while because it was well after midnight on the east coast, I want to say it was early in the a.m. on a Monday and more than likely only a skeleton staff was behind the scenes. The next afternoon when I went to see if things where back up and running I started catching wind of what happened and who was to blame, then I saw this TOOL (backell) wrote a blog explaining he did it and it was a ruse. First off it wasn’t a ruse as he’d claim, we knew he was inflating his page views for months by sitting there hitting F-5. He said, and this is my favorite part, it shows what kind of fucking liar he is, “that he taped down the Control and F buttons on his keyboard to keep refreshing”. Now when I read that, being a handy type guy I looked at my keyboard which was for a desktop computer and thought,  that isn’t happening, and it sure as fuck isn’t happening on a laptop either. Try it and get back to me, it won’t work. So it’s pretty obvious our TOTW was sitting there late at night, as usual, adding to his page view count when he must have gotten just a little carried away seeing how he had just added about 5,000 hits to his daily tally…shocking for a preacher to be padding his numbers and trying make himself something he’s not, don’t you think?

I’ve had more than a few run-ins with this piece of shit. This honorable preacher ran blog contests, collected the votes and always won for best blogger that came with a huge trophy he’d paste on his profile and also on the header to his blog. He did this so those who might have come across his post for the first time would think they stumbled across some award winning journalist…that’s a frickin hoot. A legend in his own mind is what he is.

Making an example of this fucking piece of shit isn’t hard, not when you come into our house and shit on our rug, especially when we’re mourning the loss of a friend, the same friend he claimed he respected after being sure he told us all that’s the only reason he signed up. He’s not the only one that did this either, the other guy did it twice in the same day. Yeah, lets’ roll out the red carpet for these guys, pat them on the back and make them welcome shall we? That’s not going to happen.  If folks want to continue to act like douche bags that’s fine, in fact there are those out there that I never expect to change and we’ve managed to go about our day’s just fine without them. We don’t give a fuck about what’s “politically correct” (and if I find out who it is that coined that pussy phrase they’ll be made an example of too), that’s just an easy way of saying I’m afraid to say how I really feel, well if that’s how you are we really don’t want you here, there’s plenty of places on the net you can go where they’ll open their doors give you a big hug, tell you everything you say is right and follow that with a pat on your back after they give you an internet hug and kiss. You can fucking have it. If shallow approval is what you need to get through the day you’ve got more problems that you can ever imagine.

What really has been bugging me about this, and it runs deeper than just a couple of comments on our tribute to 3^rd stone, it’s that it was probably more directed at me specifically than anyone else, and I’m a big boy I can handle myself just fine, what pisses me off is I haven’t joined any of these other places, I don’t go there and comment, I don’t have them bookmarked, I don’t care what they do. They don’t seem to want to offer any olive branches, and quite frankly I don’t feel like I would need to apologize to any one of them, and here’s the reason, most of these people I haven’t had a run-in with, they don’t like me for some reason and that’s fine, as I said, I’ve been going about my business without one thought either way about any of them, it seems they’re the ones who felt a reminder was in order. If that’s what was intended then be a fucking man about it, don’t post it on a blog 4-5 days after it was up so no one will see it, if you’ve got something to say come to me and say it and by all means don’t take it out on a whole group, message me directly, we’ll go from there. And  if you’ve got something you’d like to say to me in person, say where and when, I’ll be there, but don’t pull this chicken shit, back door pussy crap, because that’s what it is, and in the end all you will have gotten for your trouble is a “Tool of the Week” nod! Come again when you can’t stay so long asshole!

Strat-O-Matic.com to be taking over SOM Online 
Big news! This spring, Strat-O-Matic Baseball Online will be moving from SportingNews.com to Strat-O-Matic.com, and Strat-O-Matic Media will officially own and operate all aspects of the game going forward. 
Full announcement here on the forums!"

Yet another service at sportingnews.com...

Bites the Dust...

What a shock!!!

What a surprise!!!

What incredible management!!!

If ya wanna do something right...

Ask the SportingNews management...

Then do the opposite...

dvt

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