More Steroids

It’s been a while since we’ve done something terribly irresponsible and potentially libelous here. This strikes me as a good time to change that. Obviously, there have been a lot of people saying dumb things about baseball players and steroids. First, there was that guy talking about Raaauuuuul, and the ridiculousness of people flipping out over that. Then, it was released that Sosa tested positive in ’03. No one was surprised, but some people were laughably indignant. Whatever, it doesn’t bother me.

So anyway, of the 104 players who tested positive in 2003, two names have now been confirmed, Alex Rodriguez and Sammy Sosa. For the mathematically challenged, that leaves 102 players still quaking with fear at the thought of exposure. Well, probably not quaking, but it may be on their mind. Maybe. Anyway, here is the list of 102 players who I think comprise that list. Just a couple notes on how this list was built. First, it’s all pretty much bullshit. I didn’t do anything like look for trends in career statistics. I didn’t look at statistics at all. And I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily accusing any of these players of doing steroids, just that it wouldn’t surprise me if they had. Also, there are a couple names that only made this list because their inclusion will piss off Gerber (be sure to wish him a happy birthday today). Ok, here’s my list:

Players named in the Mitchell Report who also probable tested positive in ’03:

Chad Allen, Larry Bigbie, Barry Bonds, Kevin Brown, Alex Cabrera, Roger Clemens, Bobby Estelella, Ryan Franklin, Eric Gagne, Jason Giambi, Jeremy Giambi, Jay Gibbons, Jason Grimsley, Todd Hundley, Paul Lo Duca, Jason Manzanillo, Denny Neagle, Armando Rios, John Rocker, Benito Santiago, Scott Schoenweiss, Gary Sheffield, Miguel Tejada, Fernando Vina, and Matt Williams.

And now the rest:

Jose Acevedo, Wilson Alvarez, Jeff Bagwell, Rod Beck, Jay Bell, Ronnie Belliard, Adrian Beltre, Joe Borowski, AJ Burnett, Eric Byrnes, Miguel Cairo, Vinny Castilla, Juan Castro, Shawn Chacon, Bruce Chen, Jeff Conine, Jose Cruz Jr., Ray Durham, Juan Encarnacion, Keith Foulke, John Franco, Aaron Fultz, Andres Galarraga, Troy Glaus, Juan Gonzalez, Tom Gordon, Kevin Gregg, Vladimir Guerrero, Travis Hafner, Todd Hollandsworth, Jorge Julio, Jeff Kent, Bobby Kielty, Ryan Klesko, Barry Larkin, Matt Lawton, Ricky Ledee, Travis Lee, Kenny Lofton, Braden Looper, Javy Lopez, Mike Lowell, Orlando Merced, Jose Mercedes, Kevin Millar, Kevin Millwood, Sergio Mitre, Raul Mondesi, Magglio Ordonez, David Ortiz, Lance Painter, Brad Penny, Mike Piazza, AJ Pierzynski, Sidney Ponson, Edgar Renteria, Dennys Reyes, Ivan Rodriguez, Tim Salmon, Jason Schmidt, Richie Sexson, Ben Sheets, Randall Simon, Alfonso Soriano, Mike Sweeney, TJ Tucker, Jose Valverde, Todd Van Poppel, Ugueth Urbina, Jason Varitek, Jose Vidro, Billy Wagner, Vernon Wells, Preston Wilson, Kerry Wood, Dmitri Young, and Victor Zambrano.

Obviously, this list won’t be 100% accurate. First of all, I only picked players I had heard of; when the list eventually comes out, and it will, there will undoubtedly be players on there that I am not familiar with. Second, some of the names on this list are ridiculous. Like, Victor Zambrano is only on there so I can mention him here, and then so I can write Scott Kazmir’s name. Mets fans’ heads are now exploding. Whatever, I don’t expect to get everyone right, I would be happy with a success rate of .367.

Brief Thoughts

I’m done my brief, 4600 words. I’m pretty sure that my guy is gonna win. Whatever. On to more important things.

The Governor of Texas is in way over his head. Secession? Really? That worked out so well the first time, didn’t it. Honestly, I’m excited about it too, and really hope they go through with it. First of all, I think America would be a better place without the Lone Star State. Too many evangelicals there. Second, and most importantly, if Texas secedes, I’m pretty sure there would be a zombie outbreak. In fact, I’m certain of it. If Texas leaves the Union again, Andrew Jackson will rise from the dead an lead an army of zombies on a rampage all the way to the Rio Grande, not stopping until he hangs or eats the brains of every secessionist down there, starting with Rick Perry.

A couple days ago a statement was made public warning about right wing extremists. This, naturally, made the right wing extremists flip out. But, uh, the more they flip out, the closer they get to doing the things that the government was warning about. Facist-leaning Republicans seem to struggle with irony. And common sense.

Oh, and they don’t really have a sense of humor either. Fox News has a really bitchy article up about how CNN and MSNBC weren’t respectful enough of their contrived tax day protest. Evidently when Sean Hannity and whoever else came up with their idiotic tea party idea, they didn’t consult any high school sophomores, who would have exposed the obvious flaw. So CNN and MSNBC did their duty as proud American institutions and made the obligatory teabagging jokes. I think that some guy named David Shuster wins the prize for most awesome mockery of Fox News and this whole endeavor, saying, "Teabagging day for the right wing and they are going nuts for it, " followed by "They want to give President Obama a strong tongue-lashing and lick government spending." You think that Fox News would catch on to the mockery, and maybe adapt, but they haven’t. In the middle of the article there is an invitation to join the forums and comment about this whole debacle. The link reads, “Click here to join the discussion on teabagging.” I swear I didn’t make any of this up.

Even Ann Coulter weighed in on this teabagging discussion, acting every bit as sanctimonious as Fox News, but with more jokes about Barney Frank. As an aside, can someone explain to me why I read Ann Coulter’s web site? I thought I was better than that. But even though I read her regularly, I can’t remember I got all the way through one of her postings; it seems every week there’s a paragraph that makes my head hurt so much I need to jump over to youtube and watch Bobby Orr highlights until the pain goes away. This week the line was, “Obama's biggest shortcoming is that he believes the things believed by all Democrats, which have had devastating consequences every time they are put into effect.” What the hell? Was Clinton’s Presidency so devastating? Certainly it wasn’t as bad as Bush’s time in office (pick whichever Bush you prefer, neither was any good). Seriously, how does she get away with making such absurd claims.

Getting back to this whole secession thing, just because it baffles me, and it’s still a big deal, people are now polling Texans about a couple of the issues here. I’m like to interpret these numbers for you. 31% of Texas voters say their state has the right to secede. From this, it stands to reason that 31% of Texas voters are mildly retarded. This figure may be low, however, because I sincerely doubt that most Texans know what the word “secede” means. 18% of Texas voters say that they would vote to leave the Union; these are more likely than not the same people that were trumpeting the phrase “’Merica! Love it or leave it!” over the last eight years. Clearly these Texans don’t love America, which must make them terrorists. You’re either with us or against us.

If Dmitry Medvedev were an American, he would vote Republican, live in Texas, watch Fox News, and probably have a lifesize cutout of Bill O’Reilly in his bedroom. But he’s not, he’s a Russian. And he’s warning NATO not to run any war games in Georgia. So, if I follow his logic, it’s ok to invade Georgia and kill a shit ton of people there, but having a military exercise in the country is way out of line. Weird.

One more Republican I don’t like (can you tell that there aren’t any stories about outer space or dinosaurs) is Norm Coleman, the guy who lost the Minnesota Senate race to Al Franken, but won’t go away. Seriously, this guy, when it seemed like he was winning, said that Franken should concede so Minnesota could be properly represented. (He really did say something like this, I just don’t feel like looking up where; if you don’t believe me look it up for yourself.) Naturally, he’s now losing, has been for months, but won’t concede. He’s pretty much burned up all his state court options, and now he’s gonna introduce a suit in federal court. I don’t think he’ll win, because, quite simply, fewer people voted for him than voted for Franken, but if it gets to the Supreme Court all bets are off; Franken could win by thousands of votes in Minnesota, but when he loses by one in Washington (and he will), he’ll be screwed.

Finally, I’m going to just briefly throw out my two cents on the debate about LeBron James that is raging over at our sister-blog, www.dauerism.wordpress.com. The Yankee hat thing doesn’t bother me, and I don’t care about all this talk about him eventually going to the Knicks. LeBron actually seems like a pretty good guy. But when his career and Dwayne Wade’s career are both over, I really want to be able to look back and say that, yeah, James was a much more talented player, but he’s no Dwayne Wade, and then point to the five NBA championships that Wade has won and the zero that James has. That would just be amusing.

The Biggest Homophobe in the World

We here at SI really, really despise Fred Phelps (I'm going out on a limb here and speaking for everyone involved). But at the same time, I (and assuming again, everyone else here) am painstakingly fascinated by him.

In case you don't know, Fred Phelps is the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, a super fundamental Christian Church founded out of the pure, unadulterated hatred of gays. The church's website is GodHatesFags.com. Straight to the point those fundamentalists.

If the name of the church sounds familiar, you've probably read about them in the news. They're the ones who protest the funerals of American soldiers who died in Iraq. If you're now confused about that jump (from hating fags to protesting fallen soldiers) allow me to connect the dots for you. The WBC is protesting those funerals to make sure all are aware that American soldiers are being slain by God as penance for our fag-loving ways. If that sounds illogical to you, you have a sound understanding of logic. They place a lot of this blame on George W. Bush. George W. "I love homosexuality so much I want to constitutionally ban it" Bush. These people do not praise rationality as much as they praise big ol' JC.

But the WBC doesn't just frequent funerals, they're also lovers of the arts. They love picketing theatrical productions like "The Laramie Project," the play written about the violent murder of Matthew Shepard in an effort to curb homophobia. A few years ago, GodHatesFags.com had a running counter of the number of years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds that Matthew Shepard had been in Hell. Nice.

Well, in an effort to halt the world's slow descent into hell, Fred and his followers are traveling to England to protest a performance of "The Laramie Project" there. The church recently answered some questions about their trip there. I recently tore apart those answers:

1) Is this your first picket in the UK?

1. It is the first actual picket. We have been preaching by so many means to the UK for years. The arm of the Lord our God is not shortened by oceans and things, all of which, he created, and all of which he knew about when he considered these last hours of the very last days of all.

So in response to the question you actually asked, Mr. Interviewer - - yes. This is our first picket in the UK. Period.

But since you've graciously provided us with more than we asked for (like always!) allow me to pay you back with my thoughts. Let's assume God did create "oceans and things." If he created all of these things, he most certainly created the tools necessary to make anal beads. Just a fun thought.

2) Are you flying across to Britain, or is the picket being carried out by members in Britain? If you are flying over, how many protesters are you expecting and when are you arriving?

2. Considering that your nation has tried in many ways, including with draconian laws to shut up the Word of God from OFF your landscape, and to make it a crime to plainly say what the STANDARDS of GOD are, (e.g. THOU SHALT NOT lie with mankind as with womankind, it is abomination or THOU SHALT NOT commit adultery, etc.) that I will not be telling any details of our business to get where we need to be.

First, go ahead and add your own [sic]'s in there. I don't have the energy to type the same thing dozens of times. Second, I think we made her angry. She's writing in the big letters.

But while we're talking about standards from the Bible, how's this from WouldJesusDiscriminate.org concerning Matthew 19:10-12:

Here Jesus refers to "eunuchs who have been so from birth." This terminology ("born eunuchs") was used in the ancient world to refer to homosexual men. Jesus indicates that being a "born eunuch" is a gift from God.

This is in addition to all of that "love one another" and "be good stewards of my creation" nonsense JC was always babbling on about.

3) What is your objection to The Laramie Project?

3. We don't object to it, we see it as a glorious preaching moment. It creates a PERFECT backdrop for us to help YOU connect the dots. From the least to the greatest of the people of the UK, including your lamenting and rebellious and disobedient Gordon Brown. You taught your children FOR GENERATIONS now that God is a big fat liar and that HIS standards are on the table to dispose of. You BROKE their moral compass.

The prophet said - WHAT WILL YE DO IN THE END THEREOF. That is to say for you rebels - WHAT will you do when you get to the end of this road of your filthy disobedient manner of life and find that you have incurred the wrath of God and you find that his promises to make your people to be ALTOGETHER WORTHLESS, GOOD FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! And what will you do when you all land in hell FOR EVER where the worm that eats on you NEVER dies and the fire is NEVER quenched and the smoke of your torment ascends up for ever and ever and ever and ever and ever - never ending...

FOR-EH-VER. Sorry, I just really love "The Sandlot".

...Now suddenly you see that they have NO standards! And then you can add to this pleasant little happy UK family moment that another 13-year-old boy has arisen to dispute paternity! Oh yea baby - you UK rebels truly have it goin on! You are like the Doomed american rebels - just a big shameful MESS!!

You just got served, fag lovers!

I say we are dot connecters! THAT is our job! We use the Laramie Project to tell you unambiguously and unapologetically that your DUTY is to fear God and keep his commandments and that you are required to give the glory of all his judgments that he is executing RIGHT UNDER YOUR NOSE, TO HIM! The God Smacks are HIS WORK!

We are the dot connectors! We slay that shit on the kids menu at Friendly's! Where you saw a smattering of dots we saw the truth! And that truth was a polygon-ized quasi Shrek looking thing that we fleshed out in crayon! Yeah!!!

4) Why have you decided to widen your protests to Britain?

4. Here is the reason - from the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ, to wit: Mt 24:14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come...

Yada yada yada, fire and brimstone, blah blah blah, misappropriated biblical quotes, yap yap yap. Same old, same old there. But notice one important thing there: the legalese of "to wit". That's right, there are tons of lawyers in the Phelps family. Tons! In fact, Freddy himself used to be a very successful and lauded Civil Rights attorney. Until he was disbarred.

Moving on...

The antichrist is sitting now, in the Whitehouse, the time is SO SHORT - the Lord is coming and this generation is DOOMED!

Only Americans would assume the root of all evil would have to be housed on our soil. Typical.

You see the destruction already before your eyes! As filthy america goes down, and The Beast Obama, That Son of Perdition, that Man of Sin gets his power grab on, you will all give over the power of your government to him and when you see that phony façade fall away, and he gets his war on and all your fawning over him turns to great fear, then you can remember these words.

Is it weird that when I hear about Obama "getting his war on" the President takes on a decidedly Leon Phelps-ian look in my mind?

In that hour, if you or any other soul in the UK has a heart to know your God, and you understand that the end is near, you can yet put away your idols, your false gods and your FILTHY manner of life and you can serve the Lord your God in truth! THAT is your only hope.

Right. Serve your God in the truth that you should advocate violence against innocents. Right.

Well, this whole rant must be nearing a close. All of this fag hating is tiring! Time to gear up for the final sermon. Crack your knuckles, sharpen your righteousness, here it comes!

Thanks for asking!

Shirley Phelps-Roper

Oh come on! You can't work me up like that and not finish me off! What was all that hot sodomy talk about if you weren't going to let me finish?! Fuck, now I'm pissed.

And while we're on commercials...

I was not nearly as critical of the commercials as Gimpy is. I genuinely enjoyed the Pepsuber commercial (and the MacGruber skits that mind-birthed it are well worth a half hour on Hulu). The Cash4Gold.com commercial got some play on the DeadSpin live blog. But it deserves so much more than that; there is nothing funnier than people pointing out their failings, and you can't find many people who are swimming in more failings than Ed McMahon and MC Hammer.

You had your nut shots, your animals acting as people, your talking babies, and even a smattering of really awful local advertising out here in St. Louis. All pretty well-worn territory, but still enjoyable if only for one night annually.

But all of this discussion of commercials has inspired me to write a post I've been meaning to tackle for some time: those stupid fucking Burger King retarded whopper family ads.

They started out ok. "I wish I'd never been broiled" made me chuckle. The spare napkin/condom spot was done well enough to make me uncomfortable about similar past conversations. I think there were one or two more that were good enough not to draw my ire and mediocre enough to be largely ignored.

But then they got terrible in one fell swoop. With the house party. And Spicy Chicken.

Knowing that any of you who might be unfortunate enough to stumble upon this blog probably haven't been consumed by this commercial as much as I have, I'll bullet all of the brain-racking fallacies located therein below:

-We learn that Whopper Jr and Spicy have friends. Human friends. This just feels weird to me.

-We also learn that Whopper has a daughter. She's a human girl. This opens up a wealth of dilemmas. Is burger-dome the recessive gene? Is it sex-linked? Is the daughter adopted or is Whopper's wife a human burger-lover? If she's a burger, what adoption agency would allow two sandwiches to adopt a white girl? If she is a woman, how exactly does a Whopper impregnate a woman? You know what, I don't actually want to know the answer to that question. I just know that my girlfriend isn't allowed to eat Whoppers anymore.

-In perhaps the most infuriating move, Whopper discovers that little bastard Spicy putting the moves on his daughter. I would eat him if I were Whopper. Commensurate with that sentiment, Whopper charges at Spicy - - but he can't get through the fuckin door! What humor! A giant sandwich struggling to get through a door! But, wait a minute. This is his fucking house. That's his fucking door. He is the burger lord of his burger domain and he can't build a door that a burger can fit through? What the fuck?

-But then there's something even more wrong with that scene - - Spicy is already in the fucking room! What sort of black magic does a chicken sandwich possess that allows him to move through walls like Nightcrawler that a burger can't summon from the depths of the Underworld?

I don't know the answer to any of these challenges. I just know that I hate that I care so much.

Rebuttal

In response to your latest ALOTO post (that's A League of Their Own for those of you who don't habla acronyms), I could say a number of things.

I could say that you're a no talent hack who is merely causing trouble. But I won't say that.

I could say it was obvious from your ramblings that you haven't seen the movie, and all of your references could easily be found on Wikipedia or IMDB. But I won't say that.

I could say that you clearly don't understand the filial bonds between teammates and the competitive nature between siblings which belies your claim that your family exists or loves you. But I won't say that either.

Instead, I'm going to ignore your ALOTO comments altogether and simply say this:

Charlie Conway was the most important player on the Ducks.

Jay Paris Strikes Again

I’ll acknowledge that there really isn’t any good way to vote on post season honors in sports; everyone screws it up. When control rests in the hands on the fans, people like Alexei Kovalev are picked to start the NHL All-Star Game over superstars like Alexander Ovechkin. When players and managers vote, mistakes like Rafael Palmeiro’s 1999 Gold Glove Award happen (he only played 28 games at first base, and well over 100 as DH). And when the media votes, people like Jay Paris screw it up, badly.

Paris, who writes for the North County Times, first came to national prominence when he was one of three writers to vote for Edinson Volquez for NL Rookie of the Year. This would be a perfectly defensible vote, if only Volquez hadn’t made his major league debut in 2005. Not only did he debut that year, but he also pitched in the majors in 06 and 07. He was well beyond the inning threshold for rookie status, and had easily blown past the limit of days on the active roster. If he hadn’t spent his first three years in the American League he probably would have accrued the minimum number of at bats too. So, naturally, Paris voted for him.

So when Paris got to vote for NFL Defensive Rookie of the year, he had the opportunity to partially redeem himself. The clear choice here was Jerod Mayo, of the New England Patriots. Mayo received 49 out of the 50 votes, blowing away the competition. The only voter who didn’t vote for him was, of course, Jay Paris. But it’s not who Paris didn’t vote for that’s perplexing (well, it is that too), it’s more puzzling who he did vote for: Keith Rivers, of the Cincinnati Bengals.

Rivers, who at least was a rookie, only made one notable play all season: getting absolutely obliterated by Hines Ward in week 7. Rivers was placed on IR with a broken jaw, ending his season after six games and four plays. Somehow Paris though that this merited a Rookie of the Year vote.

Someone needs to take the ballot out of Paris’ hands before he ruins a vote that I actually care about.

No loyalty in baseball? I'm not so sure.

Mr. Gerber has made a compelling argument that Dottie did not purposely drop the ball in the last inning of the AAGPBL World Series, but I remain unconvinced. I’m not going to fight him about this, though, because truthfully I can’t make up my mind about it. However, I am going to take issue with his last statement, the underlying theme of his argument, that Dottie loved the game more than she loved Kit.

When taking the whole movie into account, the answer to this question is painfully obvious: Kit meant immeasurably more to Dottie than baseball did. Dottie did not want to play professional ball at all, she was only persuaded to sign up so that Kit could make the team as well. That is not how someone who was driven by a passion for baseball would act, not even a little. Her husband was over seas, she had nothing really tying her to her home preventing her from playing, and she still would only join up at her sister’s urging.

We again see Dottie’s lack of commitment to baseball when her husband returns from the war in the middle of the playoffs. Not only does she entertain the notion of ditching her team to go back to Oregon, she actually does it! It is only miles down the road that force of her commitment to the Peaches pulls her back to the team. If she truly had the passion for baseball that Dick claims she had, she would have gotten her husband tickets to the remaining games and would have tried to go home with him after game seven, as a champion, without any hesitation. But she wavered. Chase Utley never would have wavered.

Gerber says that Kit wanted it more than Dottie, and that enabled her to jar the ball loose. He’s half right: Kit did want to win the Series more than Dottie did. But this was because Dottie was never really all that interested in winning it at all. If Dottie had really wanted to win she would have had the ball in her glove, not her bare hand, and would have put the tag right in Kit’s face.

Time and again we see Dottie putting others ahead of herself: she joins the league for Kit, she puts her dream life on hold for her teammates, and, finally, she drops the ball for her sister. And yes, I’ve convinced myself of this in the last five paragraphs.

But anyway, there’s one more pressing concern that I have here: why on earth were the Peaches not playing a no-doubles defense? The outfielder never should have let Kit’s liner go over her head, it’s inexcusable.

(Sticking with a theme) There's no loyalty in baseball!

My magnificent insights have been recently absent from this blog. My apologies, but I was busy drowning in yuletide and adopted Pagan rituals for the better part of the past two weeks.

Since I got a chance to catch up on Gimp's prolific posting, I was inspired to try and resolve a near-two-decade-old debate.

I'll go ahead and blow my argumentative load up front and then defend myself, because based on some in-person discussions about this topic, what I have to say is going to shock and upset many of you.

Here we go: Dottie Henson didn't drop the ball on purpose at the end of A League of Their Own and you should be happier about this than the alternative.

There is basically one two-pronged counter-argument to this irrefutable statement: that Dottie didn't care about winning and that she loved her younger sister Kit too much to see her devastated.

Bullshit.

First, to the point that she didn't care about winning. This is absolute, unadulterated crap. We're talking about Dottie Henson here! Dottie who loved the game so much she was player-manager during Jimmy Dugan's season-starting bender. Dottie who left a comfortable life on a farm in Oregon to try and play professionally (with Kit at her side, admittedly). Dottie who played even while she was worried about her husband fighting overseas, and the same Dottie who then put her dream life with her husband on hold to come back to play in Game 7! She got her husband back from war, starting driving home, and then made him turn the friggin car around so she could go play the game. And now you're gonna try and tell me she didn't want to win? Again - - bullshit.

And you really think Dottie threw the game because she felt bad for Kit? Did Dottie feel bad for Kit when she rifled that line drive right over Kit's head in the top of the 9th. Fuck no she did not! Couldn't she have much more easily thrown the game while she was at the plate rather than wait for the off-chance that her sister would run through the stop sign in the bottom half of the inning? And she definitely didn't feel bad when she told Ellen Sue the best way to strike out her beloved sister in the bottom of that inning.

And Dottie is a professional baseball player, but I guess since she's a woman it's heartwarming that she might throw the game for her sister's sake. If you were an Indians fan in, say, 1995, would you be OK if Sandy Alomar dropped the ball at home so Robbie Alomar could win one for the Blue Jays? I think everyone in Cleveland would be rightly calling for Sandy Alomar's head! You can't pull that shit! You know how much Harvey Bar revenue she would have blown if she tanked that game? She would've sent Mr. Harvey into another Diabetic shock after he comforted his blubbery ass with another case of Nutty Harvey Bars.

And for those of you that are comfortable with this sister love scenario, let me leave you with this lingering question. If Dottie loved her sister so much that she needed to violate the trust of her teammates, fans, and the baseball gods so that bratty fuckin Kit could win, then why were they incommunicado for the next 4 decades?! If Dottie loved Kit so much you'd think she'd pick up the phone and ask how being a World Champion is (and I only use that phrase to try and steal the meaning back from the Phillies. Fuckin Phillies.).

The truth of the matter is that Kit wanted it more, Dottie got surprised by a sudden play at the plate, made a ballsy play on it, and got beat. The end. In fact maybe she was so shocked that her younger sibling bested her that that's why they didn't talk for damn near half a century.

And why did they finally get back together? Because Dottie loved the game so goddamn much she went to Cooperstown to relive the memories. She loved the game way more than her sister. Fact.

World #&*(^$@ Champions

In the wake of the Phillies’ World Series victory, Chase Utley took the stage at a post-parade rally to deliver a few remarks. He started, “World champions… world fucking champions!” The stadium erupted, his teammates loved it, and I still watch it on Youtube about once a day. Well, it was broadcast live, on pretty much every station in Philadelphia, without a delay. And some people decided to complain to the FCC. The Inquirer obtained copies of the twenty six complaints, and published excerpts of some of them. You can muddle through all that self-righteous bullshit at Philly.com, or just keep reading, and I’ll tell you what they’re really saying.

"If they didn't want such words to be broadcast, they should have aired [it] on a delay to catch any obscene language. Pull their license to broadcast."

Because about half a second of profanity was aired in the middle of the afternoon, NBC, CBS, FOX, and ABC should be razed, and their fields strewn with salt. Not only were they ok with Utley saying “fucking,” they probably told him to, and should never be heard from again.

"He should be disciplined for his lack of respect towards his fans and in particular the children exposed to such vulgarity. . . . The broadcasters are not at fault. Chase Utley is."

Chase Utley played through an agonizing hip injury for months to bring a World Series to Philadelphia. Although he’s only played for a couple years, he has Hall of Fame potential. That’s not enough for me though. Despite years of being a consummate professional, almost to the point of being boring, and working tirelessly to save abandoned animals, he is a disrespectful, vulgar bastard. The responsibility for raising my children is clearly on his shoulders, and he isn’t doing a good job.

"This was not a casual slip. This was an intentional misuse and abuse of the public airwaves. . . . How am I to explain such profanity to my child?"

(This one is my favorite.) I am a terrible parent. I am completely incapable of communicating with my children. Instead of using this as an opportunity to show them how you can be successful through hard work, like this team was, I’m going to harp on Chase Utley dropping an F bomb, for the second time this season, no less, and blame him when my daughter runs away to be a stripper and my thirty year old son is selling weed out of my basement. Damn you, Chase Utley.

"It was embarrassing that he was allowed to do that and if there are no ramifications I will be furious. Is there no platform that is sacred anymore?"

How dare they sully the good name of broadcast television, which has given us such cultural staples as Temptation Island, two wife-swapping shows, people eating horse testicles, Desperate Housewives, every soap opera ever, and pretty much all reality television? I expect nothing but excellence from network TV, and anything less should be punished.

Earlier this week Chase Utley tried to put this nonsense to rest, saying, “I tell all kids not to use that word. If they're 29 and they win the World Series, I think they can say that. But I definitely would say to all the kids out there, 'Kids, it's a bad word. Don't say it. And I'm dead serious.'’” I don’t understand why not everyone could have this approach. I wish I could say the the people complaining were Mets fans, but they probably weren't. I guess I wish people were smarter.