The world of sports keeps getting crazier — and even sadder.
Back in early July, on a telecast of Safeway Goldeyes Baseball on Shaw TV, Ken Wiebe, Jim Toth and I discussed the phenomenon of Stephen Strasburg. He was going to be the next great major league pitcher, save the Washington Nationals and make the collecting of baseball cards popular again.
I said, “Right, he’s 21. He still hasn’t had Tommy John yet. He still hasn’t had a DUI yet. Wait ’till he blows out his arm or has his first brush with the law and then the media ruins his life. At that point, talk to me about Stephen Strasburg the Saviour.”
I felt bad about it, I really did. Trouble was, both Toth and Wiebe — two elite baseball minds — both agreed that it was extremely early to declare Strasburg the next coming of Don Drysdale.
This week, Strasburg blew out an elbow ligament and will require Tommy John. He could come back better than ever or, like Bobby Korecky, he could end up in the Northern League. It’s very sad.
Lets take a good look at the rest of another goofy week in the toy box…
(2) Damien Cox of the Toronto Star, had to do it — speculate about steroids just for the sake of speculating about steroids.
Cox defended his suggestion that home run leader Jose Bautista was juicing by saying, “It’s a question everybody is asking.” Oh, really. I hadn’t heard anyone ask that question. After all, MLB has a testing program now and baseball isn’t half as exciting as it was during the steroid era. Frankly, I just thought Jose Bautista had developed a nice stroke, thanks in no small way to the work of batting coach Dwayne Murphy.
Oh well, as one of the boys at the Big Lead opined, “I wish I could find the clip from In Living Color where Damon Wayans says ‘stupposedly’ and ‘rellegedly.’ It would fit nicely right here.”
Well said.
(3) Columnist and talk show screamer Jay Mariotti has been incredibly successful for reasons I still don’t understand. He not only hates the bad guys, he hates the good guys, too. Never understood how a sports writer could be consistently wrong about pretty much everything and yet get all those great gigs.
This week Mariotti was charged by police for beating up his girlfriend, and folks at ESPN are saying he’s probably lost his most significant national pulpit. After reading most of the Mariotti-related columns from around the United States this past week, it’s apparent he had very few friends, not only among the actual athletes, but among his own media colleagues, as well. (The big bosses seemed to love him, but most sports media bosses are as dumb as posts). Most columnists say they despised him because he was the first to scream (he always screamed) that an athlete or coach should be immediately suspended or banned for even the most insignificant of transgressions.
They say the mainstream media likes nothing better than to eat its own. That was clearly proven this past week by Mariotti and his vast company of haters, er, ahh, colleagues.