Carlton Fisk hits this one out of the park

In the article Fisk comes off as bitter about the entire steroid era.  And why shouldn’t he be?  Anybody who played the game clean and lost their career to the inevitable accumulation of injuries has a right to be pissed at some pharmaceutical experiment defying nature to hit 73 dongs at the ripe old age of 39.  These monsters on steroids were signing big money contracts for long terms and stealing money out of the pockets of the clean players.  They never had a chance.

One of the silliest excuses spewing from the pock marked face of McGwire is the “I only took them to come back from injury, not to enhance my performance.”  Extending your career IS PERFORMANCE ENHANCING.  You would have lost time to the injuries naturally resulting from your body breaking down over time.  But instead you put that needle into your ass to repair those muscles in record time, getting you back on the field and hitting those tainted home runs at historic rates.  Fisk puts that whole lame excuse into it’s correct light:

“That’s a crock,” Fisk said. “There’s a reason they call it performance-enhancing drugs. That’s what it does — performance enhancement. You can be good, but it’s going to make you better. You can be average, but it is going to make you good. If you are below average, it is going to make you average. Some guys who went that route got their five-year, $35 million contracts and now are off into the sunset somewhere. Because once they can’t use (steroids) anymore, they can’t play anymore.

…

“Try having your knees operated on and catching for 30 years,” Fisk said. “Do you think you feel good when you go out there? (McGwire) had to stand around and play first base. So excuuuuuse me.”

The mouth breathing toothless Cardinals nation also appear to be eating up the old cheater adage that “steroids can’t help you hit a baseball.”  What a load of shit.  There’s a reason we all like playing Wiffle Ball, and it has to do with the fact that you can react really, really late on a pitch with that light of a bat.  Standing at the plate looking like Lou Ferrigno with a tooth pick in your hands gives you that same advantage.

“(McGwire) says, ‘Well, it doesn’t help eye-and-hand coordination.’ Well, of course it does. It allows you more acuity physically and mentally and optically. You are going to be stronger and you are going to be better,” said Fisk, who starred for the Red Sox and White Sox.

Fisk also targets Roger Clemens, who is one of the biggest assholes in the history of sports and doesn’t deserve the pass he’s been giving to sail off into the sunset forgotten in this whole steroids debacle.  Good stuff.

“The reason he got let go from the Red Sox was because he was starting to break down,” Fisk said. “His last couple of years in Boston just weren’t very productive, a la ‘The Rocket.’ Then all of a sudden he goes to Toronto and he wants to show somebody something. Then he gets two consecutive Cy Young Awards (in ‘97 and ‘98). Come on, give me a bucket.

The entire interview is great, and hopefully every baseball fan gets a chance to read this and get to hear somebody actually get pissed at their peers instead of just covering up for them.  It would be a great thing to also have more players sack up and start admitting that they think these cheaters are all raging fucktards who ruined the game they loved.  But I’m not holding my breath.  I’m sure the empty suits at ESPN are already devising a way to ignore this or sweep it under the rug so they can get back to tripping over each other declaring McGwire as a Hall of Famer the next time they vote.

The only topic where I part ways with the Hall of Famer is here where he’s diverting responsibility away from baseball and onto the federal government:

“You don’t blame people for not ratting them out; you blame the people who abused the pharmaceutical world,” Fisk said. “It’s not like you are taking a couple of aspirin and you don’t know what’s going on. (Non-prescription steroid use has been) a federal offense for a long time, regardless of whether baseball was recognizing it and putting rules into place. The people who did it … they were breaking the law to start with. It doesn’t have to be a baseball law. They knew what they were doing and the reason they were doing it. Now they are sorry because they are getting called out.”

It is absolutely the responsibility of Major League Baseball to make rules on what substances can and cannot be taken if you want to play their game.  The reason is that all baseball players don’t spend 100% of their time under the jurisdiction of the US Federal government.  During the offseason these players could train in any number of countries with less or no regulation of these drugs, building up the muscle and showing up at spring training a couple weeks late and 35 pounds heavier.  This was a common observation multiple springs in Mesa where the Cubs and Sammy Sosa spend their springs.  It’s not illegal to be a roided up freak, it’s illegal to use steroids without a prescription within US borders.

Add this statue to the Bad Ass Hall of Fame

You can’t fall back on the US laws because you are then giving baseball and cheating players an out by excusing them if they want to abuse performance enhancing drugs in other countries during the off season.  Baseball is responsible for policing their sport.  Stop giving Major League Baseball excuses for being criminally negligent on this topic for decades after the NFL decided to clean itself up.

Baseball execs are trying to tell you right now that the only way to get through this black eye in baseball is to forgive and forget.  No!  The way baseball gets through this is to get pissed about the cheaters.  Try to prove there were some angry good guys in the sport back then who wanted to speak out but thought they would be shouted down by the heads of the game running away with overflowing sacks with the dollar bill sign printed on the sides.  Let us get our fill of this righteous indignation instead of forcing us to repress it.

Shine the light on all the cockroaches, let baseball actually be sorry for this abuse of the game we all love, then strengthen the testing rules and honestly try to make it better.  There is an entire culture in baseball cultivated by Selig and coaches like LaRussa where steroid users are hidden, protected, and secretly encouraged as long as they don’t get caught.  Pressure to be clean by your bosses and peers is the only way these drugs will be squeezed out of the sport.

When Mark McGwire faked coming “clean” last week Bud Selig was ready with open arms to forgive, forget, and declare that this meaningless gesture somehow “puts an end to the steroid era.”  What Selig doesn’t understand is that the era will not be over until he stops this buddying up to the criminals and instead he starts embracing the true heroes of this dark time in baseball.

Like Carlton Fisk.

It's going to be a long decade.

But then I had to surf over to the boys at baseballprospectus.com and find my buzz kill.  There I found an article called “The Cubs’ Contractual Cul-de-Sac” by Kevin Goldstein breaking down the ball clubs contractual situation which he dubbed “among the worst in history”.  Ugh.  Back down to earth.

Yeah the disaster is obvious but I hadn’t heard it put into historical context that way.  Basically the article breaks down the top eight salaries on the Cubs for 2010 and that paints a very bad picture.  Like modern art bad.

The low side of the scale is Carlos Silva at $11.5 million for the fat and oft-injured “hurler”.  This contract is a pretty fair punishment to the club forced upon us because of asshat Milton Bradley and Jim Hendry’s predilection for bidding against himself for career year Texas Rangers.  If that money makes the team as a number 5 starter it will be a miracle.

The top end of the scale is hoppy outfielder Alfonso Soriano with his $18 million this year and $72 more owed through the end of 2014.  It’s already bad money now and by the last couple years of the contract that will look like Congress level bad spending.  The article points out that Marlin’s Cody Ross has the exact same stats as Alfonso during the same time frame as his Cubs contract.  Ouch.

I’m not going to break down every name on the list, but let’s just say there’s a whole lot of bad contracts on the book for 2010.  And the darkest part of it is that all but two of the names have even bigger money owed for years to come.  These cement shoes are not coming off any time soon.  The only two names that can come off the books this year are Derrick Lee and Ted Lilly.  Laughably these are the most value per dollar contracts in the list and with a good showing this year might be in line for a raise.

That fading light at the end of this tunnel is that the Cubs could still somehow luck their way into a World Series in the next year or two.  With half the teams in your division accurately described as an abortion you are never too far from winning the division.  And we all know that getting to the end of October is all about getting hot at the right time.  Even over priced players can piece that together.

Somebody's about to get fucked up.

If you are anything like me, then you’re preparing for your postseason NFL draft right now. When the NFL is putting out live games then I have a physical need to field a list of players and compare them to the list of players somebody else came up with and hopefully win some scratch. That’s just simple logic.

Defense and special teams are actually a very large part of post season fantasy. That’s because they usually have pretty consistent scoring, so the 4 game run of a #5 seed is immensely helpful. I think last year my best player overall on one of my squads ended up being the Arizona defense. Not only does that factoid illustrate my point, but it also points out how bad the rest of my team probably was.

QB – RB – WR – TE – K – DEF

Eight Five is hobbled but not forgotten.

If you are anything like me, then you’re preparing for your postseason NFL draft right now. When the NFL is putting out live games then I have a physical need to field a list of players and compare them to the list of players somebody else came up with and hopefully win some scratch. That’s just simple logic.

Wide receivers, the original boom or bust proposition. No matter how much running backs angle to take that title away. Every post season you’ll see some of the big names get knocked out early going out with a whimper. There will be one no-name guy who goes all the way and becomes the savior of somebody’s team. And there will be the guy who just goes off even if he only lasts one game.

The key to wide receivers? Not sure. I’d just try to luck into getting one of each.

QB – RB – WR – TE – K – DEF

It's uncomfortable for everyone when you send a team mate into a post game rape shower.

If you are anything like me, then you’re preparing for your postseason NFL draft right now. When the NFL is putting out live games then I have a physical need to field a list of players and compare them to the list of players somebody else came up with and hopefully win some scratch. That’s just simple logic.

Kickers simply don’t matter. Good ones are only marginally better than the bad ones. The best kickers in playoff fantasy will end up being whoever is in the Super Bowl. So if you are really, really, really good at picking who will end up in the Super Bowl, then what are you doing wasting time with this nickel and dime fantasy shit? Start plopping some real dough down on the futures betting market.

*Updated – Matt Stover moved up to Adam Viniateri’s slot.

QB – RB – WR – TE – K – DEF

Even just one game with Gates is probably better than 3 with the guys at the bottom of this list.

If you are anything like me, then you’re preparing for your postseason NFL draft right now. When the NFL is putting out live games then I have a physical need to field a list of players and compare them to the list of players somebody else came up with and hopefully win some scratch. That’s just simple logic.

A lot of postseason fantasy drafts will forgo the TE position and just throw it in with a WR/TE flex. In those leagues the tight end position is obviously minimized to the point of only 6 maybe 7 of these guys being draft worthy. Clark and Gates are a definite cut above the rest, with the second tier ending with Celek. After that it’s even more of a crap shoot than what you normally expect.

QB – RB – WR – TE – K – DEF

I'm diving head first into this Packer. That may have came out wrong.

If you are anything like me, then you’re preparing for your postseason NFL draft right now. When the NFL is putting out live games then I have a physical need to field a list of players and compare them to the list of players somebody else came up with and hopefully win some scratch. That’s just simple logic.

One common rookie mistake in a postseason draft is to overrate the top seeds. NFL parity has created a playoff system where somebody who plays on Wild Card weekend always seems to find their way into the Super Bowl. If you have players from that lucky team then you have a chance at 4 games with your stud, while the ceiling on Peyton Manning is 3 games. Don’t be afraid to take a flyer on a stud from a 6 seed.

It was a really weird year for running backs in the fantasy season. The NFL is now a passing heavy league where the dreaded running back by committee is becoming the rule instead of the exception. While a RB is still important, I still think that drafting 1-2 stud quarterbacks are more important to winning. In whatever order, I’m still looking at targetting a RB and QB in the first two rounds in which ever order.

QB – RB – WR – TE – K – DEF

If only Flacco could light up the Bears every week.

I never understood why fantasy football has to end with the regular season. If the NFL is putting out live games then I have a physical need to field a list of players and compare them to the list of players somebody else came up with and hopefully win some scratch. That’s just simple logic.

In some ways playoff drafts can be more interesting than the regular season since the number of games a team plays becomes a huge factor in who to draft. Huge. Take it from somebody who got dominated last year by a team including Kurt Warner, Larry Fitzgerald, and Santonio Holmes.

What does every playoff team except two have in common? Good to great quarterback play. The Jets and Ravens are the lone exceptions with rookie Sanchez and sophomore Flacco just playing the role of game managers. Every other team has a real man behind center that can take the entire team on his shoulders and carry them to victory. We’re seeing a golden age of good QBs in the NFL right now and there are a lot of future hall of famers in this playoff group.

So don’t miss out at QB in your draft. If you have a flex where you can start 2 of them, then do it. That gives you license to take a flyer early on a McNabb and hope the Eagles get hot at the right time to the tune of 4 games. If the parity era of the NFL has taught us anything it’s that there’s a very good chance a 5 or 6 seed will make it to the conference championship and into the Super Bowl.

QB – RB – WR – TE – K – DEF

Alex Smith at halftime getting into the San Francisco city theme song Y-M-C-A

NFL picks went 4-0 for +8.12 units yesterday bringing NFL picks on the season up to 14-20 for +1.62 units.  Winner, winner, chicken dinner.  We’re heating up as the record for the last 14 days in NFL is up to 7-5 for +9.92 units.  All lines and odds published are from matchbook.com and current as of the time of writing.  Home teams are capitalized.

The Cardinals have been monsters on the road this year posting a record of 5-1 and are 4-1 against the spread in their last 5 games overall.  The 49ers are getting better on offense under Smith, but that’s not saying a lot since before they probably couldn’t have won the Motor City Bowl.  I wish I could have gotten this number at -1, but I still see value at just over a FG favorites.

Arizona -3.5 over SAN FRANCISCO +104  (2 units)

Thank f'ing god the o-line is getting healthy.

NFL picks have been 6-7 for +3.3 units in the last 14 days pending tonight’s Vikings/Cardinals game.  Record could be better but at least we’re positive during this late season stretch of sharpened bookmakers.  All lines and odds published are from matchbook and current as of the time of writing.

Monday night football for week 13 finds Green Bay playing Baltimore at home.  This has already given Berman way too many opportunities to recycle the annoying “frozen tundra of Lambeau Field” line in his mock Facenda baritone.  At least Favre isn’t involved in this game, so the count of how many mentions he gets during the broadcast should be kept in the lower double digits.

Ah, but to the game.  The Packers offense line has been banged up all year but this week finally gets healthy.  Their defense stops the run and pass as good or better than Baltimore but doesn’t get the credit for it.  The Packer offense is much, much better than their peers on the Ravens sideline.  Packers roll at home with a short number.

GREEN BAY -3.5 over Baltimore +100  (3 units)