Recommended reading for next week's seminar

If you haven't already, please read The Debriefing's take on the Kelly Tilghman/Tiger Woods snafu. Click the links -- they suck and are scary, but do it anyway.

I'm immensely grateful to work for an organization that actively fights social injustice in a neighborhood riddled with examples of such injustice, but I know that sometimes I forget how pervasive ignorance about such matters can be. And, as The Debriefing points out, ignorance is no excuse for grossly insensitive comments like Tilghman's. Ignorance fosters cruelty by enabling it to exist unchallenged.

Sports are boring

See, this is why I hate the baseball offseason. Every once in a while, there's just NOTHING going on in sports for me to care about. Seriously, I could have written a sports digest for the day without even turning on the TV. The stories are just so predictable: Roger Clemens is dragging his feet on testifying about his steroid use. Paul Spicer said some boneheaded things and the Patriots are mad. People are mad about the BCS system and demanding that it be changed. T. O. is a huge bitch. Blah blah blah.

You can tell even ESPN is bored:

You know what the numbers mean even without the names attached: 100, .406, 2,003, 1.12.

Now we can add Tom Brady's 50 touchdown passes. Athletes talk about playing in a zone -- Brady was there for an entire season, which is why we add his name to our list of 25 greatest individual seasons in sports history:

Yeah, this is what sportswriters do when there's nothing else going on. They make lists and give them ridiculous titles like "The 25 Greatest Individual Seasons Ever" to lend them a sense of portent when the bottom line is that they're just subjective lists that don't make a hoot of difference to anyone or anything. If I wanted senseless, retroactive list-making, I'd watch me some gat damn VH1 (Top 10 Celebrity Meltdowns! The 50 Hottest Bodies -- Part 2!) Come on, sports. I want drama. I want hockey outside. I want intern scandals. I WANT DONTRELLE WILLIS.

Ok, fine, maybe I'm just ornery because Jason Richardson just freaking TORE UP the Celtics. The officiating sucked, and we didn't have Ray Allen to do this, and it's just not fair, and I don't WANT to have to wait until Saturday to watch the Patriots crush Jacksonville like leetle ants (it's more fun if you say those last 7 words with a thick Russian accent).

K I'm done now.

Also: do NOT Google Image-search "bored" without your SafeSearch on. You've been warned.

Who says true love doesn't exist?

Just look how happy Tigers QB Matt Flynn is with the BCS trophy. The passionate kiss... the confetti raining down on the happy couple... this could be the ending scene from a crappy teen romance.

OSU, of course, played the part of the bitchy girlfriend who the hot-but-secretly-sensitive jock-type dumps when he realizes that he actually loves the quirky-but-beautiful heroine. Honestly, this game felt about as scripted as your typical rom-com anyway.

Hall of Fame voting is in... nope, you didn't make it.

Unless, that is, you happen to be Rich "Goose" Gossage (if you do happen to be him: congrats). The journeyman fastballer finally managed to secure a spot in Cooperstown after 9 years on the ballot -- he'll be the only player inducted into the HOF this year. Good for him.

Predictably, Mark McGwire did NOT make the cut... in the wake of the Mitchell report brouhaha, he should probably be thankful that he actually still managed to weasel his way to 23.6% of the vote. Don Mattingly scored even lower in the voting. It still surprises me that Mattingly never makes the cut, to be honest. Lord knows I hate the Yankees as much as any red-blooded Sox fan should, but he's Donnie Baseball, for Pete's sake. I understand the arguments about how short his career was, but surely the fact that he was one of the most popular pinstripers of all time while racking up incredible numbers for 5 years (along with a batting title and an AL MVP award) should be taken into account, no?

My favorite part of this year's ballot is the handful of kind-of-good Yankees players who really just got lucky by virtue of playing for a dynastic team at the height of its power languishing down at the bottom with 1 or 2 votes. David Justice. Chuck FREAKING Knoblauch. The only thing Knoblauch was ever good at was having a name that conveniently rhymed with Brian Daubach (remember those days?) and looking kind of like a life-sized Rock 'Em-Sock 'Em Robot.

Oh, Rod Beck is still on the ballot too. Haha. I mean... RIP, dude. I hope they have Amber Bock and deep-fried Oreos in Heaven.

Here ya go.

Why on earth should I care about this?

So I don't really have any kind of vested interest in the BCS Championship game tonight. I'm watching, yes, and kind of lukewarmly pulling for Ohio because I have a bunch of friends who are Buckeyes fans and none who are Tigers fans.* Also, it's an understatement to call OSU the underdogs here, and I always like upset victories. It seems to me that the only appropriate finale to this bizarre and unpredictable college football season would be for Ohio to beat an SEC team for the championship. So Go Buckeyes! (I guess.)

I did, however, have my less-than-overwhelming desire to see LSU beaten somewhat whetted by this ridiculous fluff piece (double entendre definitely intended) about how much Tigers running back Jacob Hester apparently loves Elvis in the Globe today.

Hester has been to Graceland eight times and gave serious thought to making it nine over the Christmas break.

His favorite thing?

"I guess I'd have to say the cars," reports the senior fullback. "I love 'em all, from the pink Cadillac to the golf cart."

Hester says his wife has indulged him to the point of allowing an entire Elvis room in his house. Hester has all sorts of memorabilia, his favorite a 2-foot bust of The King.

The movies?

He's seen 'em all, his favorite, "Viva Las Vegas," which co-stars the fetching Ann-Margret, and whose title song is one of Elvis's most underrated efforts. "I agree with you," Hester says. "And there are at least five great songs in that movie."

Yes, Jacob Hester is a terrific RB, but do we really need to hear about how much he loves Elvis? (And yes, Hester is 22 and married. With an entire room devoted to Elvis memorabilia in his house. Dear lord I'm glad I don't live in the South.) No one in Boston follows college football to begin with (I personally went to the Princeton-Harvard tailgate this year, but didn't even bother getting a ticket to the game), so why on earth would you use up valuable newspaper space that could be much better expended on yet another "Do you think the Pats will win it all?" or "Should the Sox trade Jacoby Ellsbury?" survey?

It's so sad, yet true: during the baseball offseason, sportswriters in Boston legitimately have no idea what to write about. I have visions of them all locked in a room somewhere in Quincy, drawing hatch marks on the wall and tossing baseballs aimlessly back and forth. At some point today, someone will bust in excitedly, yelling, "Guys! Guys! Something's coming in on the baseball wire!" and everyone will bolt up in anticipation only to have their hopes dashed when it turns out to be something about Ben Broussard.

I feel your pain, guys. Really, I do. But please spare me articles like this. At least give me another photo montage making fun of the Lakers' short-shorts from the other night, or perhaps an attempt to explain why anyone would want to hire Cam Cameron after this season.



* Correction for the sake of factual accuracy: I don't really have any friends.

Hideo Nomo still plays baseball

I know, I know, I didn't believe it either, but it's true. The 39-year-old righty and former-Asian-sensation-turned-punchline (kind of like Jackie Chan) has signed a minor league deal with the Kansas City Royals (I'm assuming that the Royals themselves qualify as a minor league team) that includes an option to join spring training.

Back in the day, of course, Nomo was brilliant; besides Ichiro, he is really the player responsible for the currently burgeoning trade in young Japanese stars. He's still the only pitcher ever to have tossed a no-hitter at Coors Field, and I think that was before MLB figured out that they needed to humidify the balls (heh) to make the park less hitter-friendly. I still remember his no-hitter against Baltimore for the Sox in 2001... gather round, children, and I will tell you a tale of the Dark Ages, before the 2004 World Series changed everything, when being a Red Sox fan meant grasping at fleeting moments of glory throughout the season with the knowledge that you would ultimately be doomed to yet another agonizing postseason collapse. It was a different time back then, and that no-hitter was the exhilarating kickoff of one of the more painful baseball seasons I can recall. (Sorry to mix sports metaphors.) In some ways, that 2001 season provides the perfect analogy for Nomo's own career: starting out with such promise, but ending in humiliation and defeat. Nomo currently holds the #1 AND #2 spots for Worst Season ERA among pitchers with more than 80 innings pitched in a season since 2004 (8.25 and 7.24 respectively). Brutal.

So good luck, Hideo!

In other news: The Oakland As' fire sale continues, as Nick Swisher gets shipped to the White Sox for 3 minor leaguers. Billy Beane is a smart man and is clearly laying the foundation for a strong team in the years to come, but he better cross his fingers that his entire pitching staff doesn't get injured again this season. True story: I love the A's because I sat behind their bullpen at the first Fenway game I went to this past season, and after the bullpen catcher (a sexy redhead) finished warming up Chad Gaudin, he walked over and handed me the ball. I was as giddy as a 12-year-old. Here's hoping their trades work out for them.

So do we get Santana, or what?

Jose Canseco is a douchebag

Talk about pleonastic headlines.

This story is about a week old at this point, but I had to say something about it. Apparently, Jose Canseco is planning a sequel to his book "Juiced," in which he revealed the shocking truths that a) sometimes baseball players take steroids, and b) he is a pathetic washed-up ballplayer desperate for one more shot at the limelight. God, there are so many things about this story that piss me off. For one, the idea that Canseco, a man who should have absolutely no credibility in the world of baseball whatsoever, is somehow being led to believe that his word alone is enough to indict other players and call their accomplishments into question. For another thing:

Disappointed by the Mitchell report, Canseco hopes to publish "an unjaundiced view, without the rose-colored glasses" of steroid use in baseball, Saunooke told The Post.

The mangled attempt at figurative language here is slaying me. Are we talking jaundice (condition in which your eyes turn yellow) or rose-colored glasses (presumably pink)? What does this even mean? Moreover:

"The book is basically going to be -- I don't want to say an attack -- but it will be a clarification of why certain names should have been mentioned [in the Mitchell report] that were not mentioned," Saunooke said of the new book. "We had hoped that the Mitchell report would have been more revealing. It basically ended up being nothing more than [Mitchell saying], 'I talked to a lot of people, some people wouldn't talk to me and it's up to the commissioner,'" Saunooke told The Daily News.

So, I'm sorry... Canseco's issue with the Mitchell Report is that it's too honest and doesn't grossly overstep the bounds of its credibility? How dare you create a report in which you merely summarize the facts and cede authority to the acting commissioner of baseball, George Mitchell? Good steroid reports should clearly be a series of exaggerations, accusations, and half-assed attempts to drag others down into the reeking cesspit of failure and self-aggrandizement your own career has become. Conducting objective research is for bitches.

Yep, this story actually has me defending the Mitchell Report. That's how mad it makes me.

It's funny. Ordinarily, I'd feel bad for a guy who went from Rookie of the Year to laughingstock after he blew out his arm PITCHING (of all things) to playing for crappy minor league teams. But seriously, Jose? I hope you die.