Have you ever wondered what gets people to visit YouGabSports.com?

Sure, we’d like to pride ourselves and say that it is our impeccable writing skills and attention-grabbing layout. Heck, we’d even go as far as to say our sharp wits and veiled sarcasm would be a constant draw as well. And while its safe to say that those qualities have certainly done their parts in bringing readers and members to the Gab on a daily basis, there is a whole other contributing factor that we weren’t really prepared for when we launched YouGabSports as your new voice in sport. And after scouring through our referrals and other traffic meters, I’ve come to one likely conclusion:

This site is home to a whole new breed of perverts.

Outside of Beeze’s weekly posts, my next clue came in the form of perhaps the strangest search referral we’ve ever received, which of course, picked up on some, umm…terminology, in one of Beeze’s eloquent diatribes. You see, we signed up for a blog referral site called BLOGGED, which puts links to all of our posts, as well as rates our designs, content, etc. Well, a few months back, and only God knows why, but some reader chose to search Blogged for the term “Hairy Ball”. And being that Hairy Balls are a huge draw, we were lucky enough that that user found their way over to YouGabSports thanks to the aforementioned Beeze. Well, I’m not sure they truly found what they were looking for, but it provided at least some of the motivation for this post.

And no, that is not me.

Our next piece of evidence lies in the hands of the very popular Ms. Erin Andrews. Yours truly saw the Andrews story break and knew that the horny little geek boys that populate the internet would all over it. Well, we ran with the story just minutes after it broke, and thanks to BallHype, another referral site which is specific to sports blogs in particular, we received a YouGab record for referrals in a week, seeing over 500 independent users come over from Ballhype hoping that we had linked the video somewhere. Unfortunately for them, we couldn’t put ourselves into that kind of legal position, but we appreciate their patronage nonetheless. Even so, we’re not afraid to look a gift horse in the mouth and we’re trying to exploit Ms. Andrews once again.

Not to be outdone by a television analyst, we have a new hot item drawing customers in. Now granted, we knew when we launched Eye Candy section, we weren’t hiding behind a moral veil of any kind. We opened it up immediately to all users to add their favorite lady friends to the section, within the limits that they couldn’t display nudity. Still, that hasn’t stopped the plethora of Karen McDougal fans from pouring into the Gab over the last several days, just trying to get a look at her umm…assets. Again, we can thank the Beeze for his contributions here. Needless to say, we will shamelessly promote any of our fellow Gabites to add some more of their favorite ladies to the section.

With all that being said, we still get our fair share of sports readers looking at our topics on a daily basis. We’ve had hot button issues like the Ricky Rubio conundrum, the Brett Favre shenanigan, and other great pieces of writing by our staff and readers that have grabbed the eyes of our readers.

The point in all of this is simple. Ever thing you contribute, from the vaguest reference, to the images and videos you attach to your posts, and most importantly, your insight and style, helps YouGabSports continue to grow. Thank you for all of your hard work and commitment in helping YouGabSports become The New Voice in Sports!

With the induction of Jim Rice and Rickey Henderson into the Baseball Hall of Fame this past Saturday, a couple of Hall of Fame related topics have been bantered about in the last few days. In particular, they once again revolve around the induction of suspected steroid users and of course, Pete Rose.

Let’s start with Rose, who according to the New York Daily News, is once again having his Hall Of Fame eligibility reviewed by Commissioner Bud Selig. Of course, we’ve been down this road before, most recently in 2002 when Rose finally came clean and admitted to betting on baseball, but only did so because it was in conjunction with the release of a book. He had been supposedly close to getting his eligibility restored, only to have Selig see through the shenanigan and put it off again. Well, now Rose no longer qualifies to be on the writer’s ballot, having missed his 15 year window after retirement and if reinstated, would be at the mercy of his contemporaries, those who make up the Veteran’s Committee.

Now, Rose is never going to fall into good graces with the moral majority, having sold himself and his soul for just about any coin he could get from it. He disgraced himself, his team, and the game when he chose to bet on the game when he was in a position to actively affect the outcome. However, his playing career merits entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame, having garnered 17 All-Star appearances, 2 Gold Gloves, an MVP award in both the regular season and the World Series, 3 batting titles, 3 World Series Titles, and of course, the career hits record. In the end, it’ll be in the hands of the people that have the most to gain or the most to lose by his presence there, his contemporaries.

Aaron Wants Asterisk for Steroid Users

Hank Aaron seems to be fairly outspoken this week. After having voiced his opinion on Pete Rose, both to the media and also to Bud Selig, Aaron turned his attention to steroid users and their place in the Hall of Fame, in particular Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds.

When asked about if they should be allowed in, he didn’t answer definitively, but did say that if they were allowed in, then they should have an asterisk put next to their names in order to separate them from those that played the game cleanly. Aaron’s quote was as follows:

"You put these guys in, put an asterisk beside their names," Aaron told the San Francisco Chronicle. "To be safe, that's the only way I see you can do it. I played the game long enough to know it is impossible for players, I don't care who it is, to hit 70-plus home runs. It just does not happen."

Now, I’ve written fairly extensively in the past about the use of the asterisk and the power of speculation. I’ve called into the question who gets given the responsibility of determining the assignment of the asterisk and what qualifications a player has to meet in order to garner such a prestigious achievement. The short answer is the simplest, no one has the knowledge or the right to pass judgment on another party based on speculation or stereotyping. Not you Mr. Aaron, not the Baseball Writers of America, and certainly not the Commissioner himself. If you think steroids has damaged the game, you have no idea the amount of trouble that rampant speculation can cause, and if you don’t believe me, just ask a bunch of suspected witches from Salem in the late 1600’s or suspected Russian conspirators during the McCarthy Era. Its not a good enough reason to exclude any parties and it certainly isn’t a good enough reason to segregate them either.

You want the real answer to the steroid problem, use separate wings, not for the purpose of cordoning off steroid users, but separate them by generation. If you can’t pinpoint who cheated, then everyone who can and should make it in from their generation should be kept together, to be compared against their peers, as they should be anyway. Stop concentrating on the record books, because there is no changing what has been wrought. Instead, change the perception of a players spot in history. Mark McGwire didn’t play with Hank Aaron, and shouldn’t be enshrined as such.

Unkept Thoughts

-         Sox fans are panicked over their recent slide out of first place and their current position two games behind the Yankees. Look at it from both the optimist’s and the pessimist’s side. As an optimist, you can be happy knowing that they still lead the Wild Card by 2.5 games over Texas. As a pessimist, you can think just how worse things would be if Boston HADN’T won all eight games against New York thus far.

-         Toronto is continuing to try and move Roy Halladay, but their demands of Philadelphia, their closest match, are outrageous. Yes, they should get 3 solid prospects at the very least, but to expect the team to trade their top two, major league ready, pitching prospects, as well as their top hitting prospect is asking just a bit much. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Halladay stay put this season.

-         Cleveland is looking at trading both Cliff Lee and Victor Martinez, in either a package to one team or separately to multiple teams. While the package deal may be appealing, they are unlikely to match-up enough with another team that has the needs for both and the prospects that are necessary to get the deal done. The Dodgers have been rumored to be looking at both, with Tampa Bay, Boston, New York, and other clubs looking at acquiring one of the pair.

-         Mark Buerhle’s perfect game last week was a great pick-up for MLB for what has seemed like kind of a mediocre year for the sport. The perfect game was Buerhle’s second no-hitter for his career, which is saying a lot for a guy that isn’t a hard-thrower, nor is he regarded as a strike-out pitcher. So much for the thought that in order to succeed in the majors, you need to be equipped with a cannon.

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

- Albert Einstein

Truth be told, I never thought I'd have anything more to say about an "athlete" stupidly flaunting him or herself in the face of the governing drug policies. Well, one should never say never I guess because I found a new low.

In the midst of his battle with NASCAR over a failed drug test that Mayfield contends was a false negative, caused by his usage of the prescription medication Adderall and the over-the-counter allergy medication Claritin-D, NASCAR has asked a federal judge to reinstate the suspension after Mayfield AGAIN tested positive for methamphetamines. Yes kids, you read that right, while awaiting ruling on his appeal, Mayfield failed another random drug test on July 6th at his home.

Someone hand Mr. Mayfield his prize for being the biggest boner on the planet!

And that's just the straw that broke the camels back. Mayfield's step-mother has also testified to NASCAR that she has personally seen him taking the drug, known of his usage of Methamphetamines dating back to 1998, and knows that he personally used to cook it himself. Sounds like a fairly open and shut case here, and it will likely mean two strikes against Mayfield, meaning that a third positive would result in a lifetime suspension from the sport.

Now, I can sit here and discuss how moronic it is to get busted doing the same drugs you were suspended for while your appeal is soon to be heard by a federal judge, but that's not where I'm going to go here. No, I can fully understand why Mr. Mayfield get out from under the grip of the Methamphetamines that he is apparently addicted to. Methamphetamines are one of the most addictive illegal drugs on the planet, and their users face an incredible journey to recover from that addiction.

Rather Mayfield's stupidity is two-fold. His first, and most obvious mistake is having gotten involved with the drug in the first place. If you're going to pursue a career as an athlete, and many folks will argue that these drivers are athletes, than don't you owe it to yourself to take care of your health and you mind?! And don't get me wrong, the family deserves to bear just as much of that burden for having witnessed the usage and apparently allowed it to continue unabated for years, enabling the problem to fester and grow to the point where the consequences of his action just didn't matter any more.

His second mistake is appealing the initial suspension. Failing a drug test in any league enables the user to enter into a treatment program, giving him the help he would need to pull himself away from these demons. Instead, he's put himself another foot deeper into the NASCAR grave, not to mention the consequences he may face for filing a false affidavit to a federal court. Rather than put himself on the road to recovery, Mayfield has put himself in a position to where his career and his character will be forever in question, if they aren't finished already. 

No good can ever come out of drug usage, especially in the face of tougher testing and consequences across the world of sports, and Jeremy Mayfield is just another example of how the good guys are catching up to the bad guys. It's just too bad that when the line was drawn in the sand, he chose to be on the wrong side of it.

Welcome one and all back to Saturday Morning Cartoons. After a week off for the holiday, we're back in full force with a new topic, something a little fun hopefully. This week, we're looking at a couple of shows that have tried to bring the facets of sports out of the stadiums and into your film studios. Not many have been able to make it work, as shows like Pros V/S Joes have flopped in the past. Still, there are some that are fun to watch and have a somewhat decent following.

Here are this week's selections...

And with that, we wrap this week's edition..thank you for watching...and big balls.