I just can’t help myself. Like most sports fans, little things bug me and I can’t them out of my cranium.
For instance…
1) I love NASCAR, but this year, things have been crazy — and often dull. The races are too long, there are too many cautions, the cars all look the same and there are so many dead spots in the TV telecasts, that it’s almost as snoozy as golf tournaments without Tiger.
Lately, however, things have become very troubling and now NASCAR has a real mess on its hands.
And they can blame it all on drug testing.
NASCAR now wants a federal judge to reverse his own ruling that lifted the ban on driver Jeremy Mayfield and will now allow Mayfield to compete. NASCAR wants the judge to reinstate the ban and keep Mayfield off the track in order to protect its questionable drug-testing policy.
After weeks of speculation, NASCAR finally claimed that Mayfield had tested positive for methamphetamines, but during Mayfield’s appeal, the judge said the chance of a false positive was, “quite substantial.”
Quite substantial?
OK, so it’s partly Mayfield’s fault. Anyone who would turn over their fluids to these phony drug testing labs, is taking a gigantic chance. Still, when a judge calls the chance of a false positive, “quite substantial,” then somebody should start looking into these labs.
Nowhere else on earth does anyone claim to be without error. Yet these “flawless” labs take an athlete’s fluids and then come back and return verdicts of guilty (or not guilty) even though the fluid bottles are opened by humans and tested by humans. The chance for contamination is overwhelming, but sports associations believe every word these labs tell them. And yet there is no proof that the tests were even done on the subject’s fluid. They could have been done on a dog’s pee for all anyone knows.
Drug testing is done randomly, arbitrarily and without scrutiny, for huge costs to the sport associations. We’d all be better off if sports were all like the CFL. Don’t test, don’t care.
And the popularity of the CFL has proven that the fans DO NOT CARE.
2) Poor Mike Kelly The media in Winnipeg already hates him and he’s only lost one game (19-17 In a rain storm IN Edmonton).
Now that the Bombers will be without 1,000-yard wide-receiver Derick Armstrong, some of the Winnipeg pundits (none of whom have ever played a sport or coached one) are blasting Kelly for everything except the African AIDS epidemic.
Armstrong, a very good receiver, has had his locker cleaned out and is being shopped around the CFL because he refused to play in a football game.
It was a stupid decision and one figures if Armstrong had apologized for an error in judgment (a big error in judgement), Kelly would have let the thing go. But Armstrong didn’t apologize and only made things worse by using some crazy excuse that he wasn’t “respected” enough.
Oh, bite me. Nobody in the CFL is respected. The contracts aren’t guaranteed. It’s minor-league football. If you refuse to play, you should be cut. Kelly cut Armstrong. there is no controversy, other than the one the local newspapers want to create.
3) After spending a weekend in Minneapolis watching the Twins and Tigers, I’ve come to the following conclusion: If you simply walk Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau every time they come to the plate, you will beat the Minnesota Twins every single time you play them.
Sure, it will look chicken-shit but you’ll win.
Michael Cuddyer just doesn’t provide enough protection in the lineup for two of the best hitters in the game. Frankly, I’d never throw a strike to either one of them.