All you true baseball fans out there reading this blog have to give me some credit for tossing these three topics together into a colossal linkbait mash-up of epic proportions and although these three topics I’m about to tie together seem unrelated, read on fearless baseball fans because today’s post is chock full of more sarcastic, cheeky yet clever innuendo and witticisms than you can shake an aluminum baseball bat at.

The Barry Bonds Witch Hunt

By now, everybody’s already heard about the Barry Bonds indictment and it’s being discussed ad nauseum on all the major news sites, forums and message boards. The readers of this blog and our loyal forum members should know by now how I feel about Barry Bonds and the alleged use of performance enhancing substances. I personally don’t care what althletes do to their bodies to boost their effectiveness, mainly because when I was in high school in the late 80’s, many of my teammates on the football and baseball squad were using anabolic steroids along with recreational drugs and consumption of mass quantities of alcohol. 99% of them ended up being washouts and many ended up in rehab, in treatment centers or in jail. In my opinion. the use of steroids or other performance enhancing substances is not a guarantee that a player will rise to the top and be a star like Barry Bonds is. There has to be an element of natural talent to propel an athelete to the level that Barry Bonds has achieved. Witch hunt’s have been out of style since the 1950’s and as the infamous 80’s punk rock band “The Minutemen” sang on their 1980 release Paranoid Time, in the song Joe McCarthy’s Ghost, Joe McCarthy’s DEAD and he should stay that way. The recent fascination with castigation and exploitative journalism is reminiscent of the mass hysteria created in the 50’s by dynamic duo of McCarthy and Roy Cohn, but we live in an ignorant society where most of the population fail to acknowledge the principle “those who fail to study the past are doomed to repeat it”.

The real scandal in the steroids “Witch Hunt” is that two money grubbing journalists, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, the San Francisco Chronicle reporters who authored the book Game of Shadows are sitting back counting the earnings from their book sales while tarnishing the reputation of the game of baseball. A reputation that has been struggling to regain it’s credibility since the infamous strike season when many fans gave up on America’s favorite pastime. When I think of dirt-digging weasels like Fainaru-Wada and Williams and what they’ve done to professional sports, I think of the epic scene at the end of the movie Casino where Joe Pesci’s character, Nicky Santoro, and his brother are graphically beaten with aluminum baseball bats in a corn field. You know the one I’m talking, if you don’t, below is the clip from YouTube (oh, and if you’re a fan of seeing Joe Pesci’s characters get whacked or beat down, you’ll love this article at Cracked.com - The 5 Most Magnificient Cinematic Beatings of Joe Pesci. Anyway, check this clip out. btw, isn’t that Phil Leotardo from The Soprano’s showing Pesci that there’s more uses for an aluminum bat than a little league game

A-Rod is a Brown Nose Bitch

You’ve got to give credit where credit is due. Alex Rodriguez is one of the best sluggers ever to stand in the batter’s box but for all he’s worth on the field of dreams, he’s worth a lot more off the field. A-Rod and his superstar agent-provocateur Scott Boras are reportedly seeking about $350 million over 10 years. The Dodgers had been interested in A-Rod early on, but that love affair seems to have waned in recent days. The California Angels general manager Tony Reagins stated that the Angels were interested in A-Rod, and while it was declined to confirm anything more than the club’s interest, it is questionable that the Angels would have offered Rodriguez more than the $81 million he would have made over the next three seasons had he not opted out of his contract.

If you want a serious laugh, you’ll have to check out the borderline illiterate Larry Dobrow’s article on CBSSports A-Rod’s new deal all about the little things, where this absolutely unprofessional journalist (and I use the term journalist loosely) makes numerous absolutely ignorant comments, followed by several other stupid remarks that paint a dreary portrait of the true Yankee fan as being incapable of writing above a fifth grade level. Here’s the most laughable quote from Mr. Dobrow’s post (hey, I wonder if he’s related to Kevin Dubrow, remember, the spandex clad freak who used to sing for Quiet Riot).

A-Rod is, now and forever, Hank Steinbrenner’s bitch. He might as well tattoo it on his forehead, because this save-face return to the Yankees will define him more than anything else in his undistinguished career — save maybe for the Central-Park-sunbathing incident, which launched many a Latino-cabana-boy fantasy among moneyed Manhattan mommies.

While I do agree that A-Rod is the New York Yankee’s fans and Steinbrenner family’s personal whipping boy, I would question anybody calling an athelete of A-Rod’s caliber a “bitch”. I do believe the amount of money he’s being paid to be the the “Biggest Brown Nose” in professional sports is ridiculous and the fact that the creepy Steinbrenners let Joe Torre walk over a few measley million dollars then come back to court the A-Rod deal. It just doesn’t make much sense, but then again, nothing about the Steinbrenners and the Yankees’ fans makes much sense to me in the first place. Come on feel the noise, girls rock your boys, we’ll get wild, wild, wild…

Joe Nuxhall Rounds Home for the Last Time

Finally, aside from all the grandstanding and sensationalism that’s injecting itself into Major League Baseball’s veins, today marks the passing of a true baseball hero and an overall outstanding gentleman. While most of the MLB community is too busy talking about Bonds and A-Rod, most are unaware of Joe Nuxhall, the youngest major leaguer ever at the tender age of 15 and later a beloved broadcaster, known as “the ol’ left-hander” in Cincinnati, has died. Nuxhall was hospitalized for treatment of pneumonia, awaiting surgery to insert a pacemaker, and had been slowed by a recurrence of cancer since September.

Originally brought up by Cincinnati to pitch during World War II while just out of junior high classes, Nuxhall worked more than six decades for the Reds. He continued to pitch batting practice into the 1980s and was a member of the team’s Hall of Fame. He was famous for his closing remarks to every broadcast “This is the old left hander rounding third and heading for home”.

Joe Nuxhall was 79 years old.

Fashion Designer Marc Ecko who shelled out $750K for the Barry Bonds baseball that broke Hank Aaron’s home run record has decided to let the public decide on the fate of this piece of baseball memorabilia. Marc has put up a website and is allowing visitors to vote on the fate of the baseball. The choices are :

A) Bestow It - Give it to the Cooperstown Hall of Fame with the full rights to the ball belonging to the Hall of Fame.

B) Brand It - Burn an asterisk onto the ball with a branding iron, adding a permanent footnote to the record and then send it to Cooperstown.

C) Banish It - Put the ball on a rocket ship and launch it into orbit, a moon shot for the ages, Out of sight, outof mind.

As of my vote today, there were 3,521,020 votes on the website. You have to submit and email address to get the results of the poll. All in all, for over 3 million visitors and all the publicity Marc Ecko has has on national television, I’d say the $750K price tag was on helluva a great viral marketing concept on hispart.

If you want to vote, visit http://www.vote756.com

or click on the banner below

Even more interesting is this piece of Bonds memorabilia for sale at MLB.com. Seems they need to update their sales pitch because it’s been a while since Barry was #2 on the list.

San Francisco Giants Barry Bonds Autographed Grey Jersey Barry Bonds, who is #2 on the career home runs lists, has autographed this grey jersey. Each jersey is certified by Bonds.

Barry Bonds didn’t waste any time adding to his home run record set yesterday. In fact, I didn’t even have a chance to blog about the record setting home run before Bonds has went and hit another one. This time it was a two-run shot into the water outside of AT&T Park for home run numer 757 of his career. The San Francisco fans were delighted as the Giants cruised to a 5-0 win over the Washington Nationals which assisted Giants’ skipper Bruce Bochy to his 1,000th managerial victory.

Barry Bonds was quoted as saying “I’m pretty locked in right now and the atmosphere is a lot easier today”. It must be a great relief to the powerhitting Giant having finally surpassed the milestone that was so controversial due to the issues of steroid abuse surrounding Bonds. As many former MLB players turned commentators have openly stated, regardless of the steroid issues, nobody has brought up the fact that possibly many of the pitchers Bonds has faced throughout his extraordinary carreer may have also been on “the juice”.

Barry Bonds drew praise from President Bush who once was a partial owner of the struggling Texas Rangers. Bush phoned the Giants star Wednesday, a day after Bonds hit his 756th home run to break Hank Aaron’s record. The president Bonds “you’ve always been a great hitter and you broke a great record,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.

The tabloids and newspapers papers were less kind.

The front page of the New York Post had a banner headline of “756″ that was formed out of syringes, which was an obviousa reference to allegations that Bonds used steroids. The front page of The Daily News page read: “King of Shame.” The Boston Herald’s back page headline was: “King Con”. Oh well, it’s not like petty jealousy and negative reactions are going to further the sport of Baseball which has had a decline in the sports market ever since the cancellation of the 1994 World Series due to ridiculous salary negotiations. Major League Baseball became the first professional sport ever to lose its entire postseason due to a league players labor dispute.

In other news, the AP wire reported Hank Aaron is still the home-run king when it comes to television ratings due to the fact that ESPN2’s broadcast of Barry Bonds’ record 756th homer received a 1.1 cable rating on ESPN2 Tuesday night, which translates to 995,000 households while Hank Aaron’s 715th home run on April 8, 1974, which broke Babe Ruth’s record received a 22.3 rating on NBC, the equivalent of 14.9 million homes. Times have changed a lot since 1974 due to cable programming. I personally have the MLB package on my cable system and I was upset the last two Giants games were blacked out on my provider due to them being televised on ESPN2. Instead I watched some reruns of Futurama and Family Guy while Bonds was setting his record. I’m certain that sort of confusion led to many households tuning out of that market broadcast due to believing that it wasn’t televised.

For any of you Bonds fans out there who want to relive the moment, here’s a great offering from MLB.com that shows how fast the big guns come out to start marketing

San Francisco Giants Barry Bonds 756 DVD 756. The most sacred record in all of sports. So big that HR or Home Run isn’t even needed as a qualifier. And now it has a new owner, Giants slugger Barry Bonds. With this Collector’s Replay Edition presentation of this momentous game, savor a spectacular moment in history as Barry Bonds - the one-time 5-tool rookie with loads of promise - fulfills all expectations and becomes number one on the greatest sports list ever.