FanHouse Mlb

As you can see from the photo above, on May 22nd, the Braves are currently scheduled to play ... Harrison Ford?? As the kids would say, W.T.F. The Braves are actually playing the New York Mets, and as it turns out, there's a pic of Indy on the schedule for every single MLB team right now. On their official MLB produced site anyway.

Of course, that just happens to be the day Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is released. But it's hard to believe that Major League Baseball is simply that enthused about this new Ford-Jones joint in order to let the world know for free. Rather, it would seem that we, the fans, are about to get immersed in another moneymaking scheme by baseball.

Not bad for someone who's "not an athlete," huh?

For the fifth time, Dale Earnhardt Jr., ranks among "America's Favorite Sports Stars" in a national poll. Once again, he is the only race car driver in any series worthy of mainstream recognition, further demonstrating his endless marketability.

Even so, he's still not as popular as the thrice-retired Michael Jordan, who is #3 on the list despite not being active in the NBA for four years.

Popularity aside, perhaps by the time Junior retires he can get his resume up to par with those of his peers in popularity:

1.) Tiger Woods
2.) Derek Jeter
3.) Michael Jordan
4.) Brett Favre
5.) LeBron James
6.) Dale Earnhardt Jr.
7.) Tim Duncan
8.) Peyton Manning
9.) Kobe Bryant
10.) Tom Brady

Which is to say he needs a championship to make it look legit. (Lebron, too.)

Hendrick Motorsports 2008 Starting Lineup
Point Guard: Jeff Gordon
Shooting Guard: Jimmie Johnson
Small Forward: Casey Mears
Power Forward: Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Center: Rick Hendrick

I suppose it might be difficult for the NASCAR-challenged to understand the magnitude of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s announcement that he will sign with Hendrick Motorsports, currently the most dominant team in NASCAR.

In an attempt to help those unfamiliar with the sport, many have attempted to put things in perspective with sports analogies:

Eddie Gossage, Texas Motor Speedway President - "With Dale Earnhardt Jr. joining Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson at Hendrick Motorsports it is like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird playing together in their prime."

Jenna Fryer, AP Auto-Racing Writer - Now they've got Dale Earnhardt Jr., and the four-car stable has turned into NASCAR's version of the New York Yankees.

But would you believe there are still those out in the world who don't understand the value of NASCAR's most popular driver?

John Swansburg, Associate Editor, Slate: "The instant analysis on ESPN2 yesterday was that Junior's move was somehow like Clemens going to the Yankees, the first time around. But such comparisons are by necessity tortured ones, because there is really no analogue for Dale Jr. Has any other professional sport ever been so dependent on an athlete who wasn't close to being the best in the game? ... To offer my own tortured analogy, he's as famous as Tiger Woods and as good as Scott Verplank."

Of course, Swansburg's analogy is flawed. Why? Because I've never even heard of Verplank. Maybe that's supposed to be the point, and to be fair, I don't really follow golf. But I think the writer would be hard pressed to find a single golf fan who has never heard of Earnhardt Jr.

I'll go one further and say that I even resent this analogy, because this fan still believes that Junior is the fifth-most talented driver in the garage. But now that he'll be back on a powerhouse team, even I expect him to prove he has the driving skills, as he has in the past. I have no doubt he is up to the challenge.

I also have no doubt that HMS will be the team to beat in 2008.

Not an NHL fan, thankfully!

This morning, AOL stalwart MJD expressed his desire for the NHL to 'win him back', as if a member of the NHL front office is personally going to show up at his front door with flowers, chocolates, and a song.

Personally, unlike my fellow NHL Fanhouse peers, I don't feel that MJD's post was too vicious, and it's fine that he wants to express his opinion.

What does irk me is that we (hockey fans/bloggers) have seen, FAR TOO OFTEN, non-hockey fans in the media feel the need to tell us hockey fans that ...

1. Hockey doesn't matter
2. Nobody watches hockey
3. They can't see the puck (What are you? Blind? Get some glasses!)
4. Hockey has no personality (I guess you've never heard of Sean Avery)
5. Hockey is goonish (since the only coverage hockey gets is the rare Bertuzzi-like incident)

All of these cheap shots. All of these are the easy way out. All of these are the joke about your fat mother, and it gets tiring after about the billionth time.

A 'fine' example would Jemele Hill (really crappy columnist for ESPN's Page 2), who wrote some flaming pile of excrement about irrelevance in sports and, in her first paragraph, basically compared something as being 'more irrelevant than hockey'. How original.

Unfortunately, she isn't the only mediot (media idiot) to insert this generic line in one of their overrated columns. Any time a mediot ever talks about hockey, it's usually in a disparaging way.

I honestly don't have the strength or desire to publicly respond to every single stupid comment made by NFL/NASCAR/NBA/POKER fans, so I'll do it just this once.

Question: Who is 6 feet tall, weighs 210 pounds, is getting paid $15.6 million this season, and is hitting a woeful .239/.317/.307 (AVG/OBP/SLG)?

Answer: Rob Kelly Abreu.

One of the biggest disappointments of a disappointing Yankees season has been the play of Bobby Abreu, who is suffering through the worst season of his career. The normally patient Abreu went a career-record 61 straight plate appearances without a walk, and has been the target of fans, media, and even scouts.

"He looks old. He's playing old. He's overweight," a scout says of Abreu. "He's back to being the passive Bobby Abreu. And he's not throwing very well, either."

Old and overweight? Ouch!! Even though the guy went .333/.412/.400 in the playoff series loss to the Detroit Tigers just a few months ago, and is only 31 years of age, he's suddenly an over-the-hill fatty?

"Wow. Overweight. Wow," he said softly, as if to himself.

And with that, he pulled up his navy blue T-shirt and exposed his stomach.

He doesn't have a six pack, but the guy is no jelly belly, either.

He slapped his stomach twice, and then pinched a piece of it between thumb and forefinger.

He smiled, giggled. "Hey, listen, I don't know who said that," he said. "But, look at me, I'm fine. I'm 209. It sounds like someone is looking too hard for reasons why I didn't get off to a good start."

Being a bit overweight has not stopped many players from being effective major league players (see Fielder, Cecil), nor has it stopped Abreu from stealing bases this season (he's got six). Hasn't Abreu had a fine career despite not being chiseled from stone?

What really ought to concern Yankees fans is the dwindling patience Abreu has shown this season and his sudden Ozzie Guillen-like penchant to swing at pitches that are outside the strike zone.

With Abreu's power dwindling slowly season-by-season, his true value comes from his patience and excellent ability to get on base. At this rate, it'll be an easy decision for the Yanks not to exercise Abreu's $16mil option for next season, even if they can easily afford the contract.

Chris Minaker is a minor leaguer within the Seattle Mariners organization. He played baseball at Stanford and graduated from the university with a Masters in Sociology last June. As anybody who's ever gotten a Masters Degree knows, you have to write a thesis paper to get your degree.

Well, Minaker's thesis isn't bound to help him make any friends within the offices of Major League Baseball. It was a study on steroids, and how their use in professional sports is affecting athletes in college sports. While baseball would want you to believe that other sports such as football have a bigger problem with illegal substances, Minaker's study showed otherwise.

His paper was strictly about college athletes at Stanford, but some of its conclusions about steroids won't have baseball executives or union officials grinning with glee.

"If the need for steroids is broken down by sport, it becomes clear that baseball has the biggest problem with steroids," Minaker writes, citing results of a confidential, written survey he took of 91 male varsity athletes at Stanford. "It is also baseball that has had the most well-publicized steroid problem of all of the professional team sports. It seems that the problem of the professional ranks has trickled down into the collegiate ranks."

Minaker found that baseball was the sport at his school where supplements - everything from steroids to caffeine - were most used. He didn't set out to point a finger at his chosen profession. In many ways, he still hasn't.

Minaker admits that 89 students at Stanford is a rather small sample size, but the numbers within them don't lie. Nine of the athletes he surveyed admitted to using steroids, and five of them were baseball players. It should also be noted that the Stanford football team wasn't very cooperative and remains "shrouded in secrecy."

The alarming thing about Minaker's survey is that it's proven that steroids and other supplements have broken through into the college ranks, and that ultimately they will make their way to high schools too.

It's a very interesting article written by Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times, and I recommend you take the time to read it.

Previously at the Fanhouse:

Barry Bonds Owes Greg Anderson Big Time

Steroid and HGH Investigators Debate Naming Customers

Gary Matthews: 'I Have Never Taken HGH'

HGH Investigator To Let MLB In On Player's Identities

ESPN announced yesterday that Barry Bonds shirt size ballooned from 42" to 52", his shoe size grew from 10 1/2 to 13, and his hat size went from a 7 1/4 to 7 1/2. These "stats" were allegedly taken from Mark Fainaru-Wada's and Lance Williams' book, Game of Shadows. What else does the worldwide leader, or Fainaru-Wada and Williams have up their sleeves? So human growth hormones (HGH) makes the bones in a man's body, in Bonds' case the bones of the skull and feet, grow???

From facts I have gathered about steroids, my feelings about Fainaru-Wada and Williams, Congress' dog-and-pony steroid show, and the ability of the sports media to lie about this topic without fear of recrimination, are known. Yet this "bone growth thing" takes the friggin' cake. As I did yesterday with ferreting out whether or not physicians with their own practices use their personal credit cards to make purchases from pharmaceutical companies, I turn again to the experts - physicians and sports medicine doctors from a local university - for the real dope on doping in sports. The question I put to these men of near-alchemical knowledge of medicines was simply this: Can HGH make a fully-grown adult male's bones grow and if so, how much HGH would it take, and what are the side effects?

Their answers were interesting - after they laughed at me (damn, that makes twice in consecutive days that respected persons from the medical profession have laughed at my questions!):

Doc A: No (chortle), no way HGH makes bones grow. Bones may thicken, but not grow.

Doc B: The Barry Bonds stuff, huh? ESPN sure does a good job of - let's just say they've twisted the facts of human growth hormone's effects on the adult male body.

Doc A: Edema can be mistaken for growth, but no (chortle). And I mean can be by someone with no expertise with growth hormone side effects. Look, I'm sorry to laugh, but where people get this information, I don't know. I can't imagine any responsible person in the medical profession saying something like this. We're all professors as well and we know this misrepresentation of facts is dangerous.

Of course there are dangers associated with human growth hormone as there are with any drug, prescription or non-prescription. With growth hormone the primary adverse and potentially dangerous side effect concerns enlarged internal organs. But how that pertains to Bonds' feet and hat size, I don't know - well, I do. It doesn't.

Once again, another Fainaru-Wada, Williams, ESPN/Buster Olney-generated myth gets busted. When will other journalists begin to ask questions instead of playing the role of follow the lead sports media sheeple?

It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma!

A curious name popped up in a bust related to the one that took place yesterday at Signature Pharmacies of Orlando, Florida. Here's the breathless report from Brendan J. Lyons senior writer from the Albany Times-Union:

In a related case in Mobile, Ala., two owners of Applied Pharmacy Services have been indicted by an Albany County grand jury. Their customer list allegedly includes former professional boxer and heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield, Los Angeles Angels center fielder Gary Matthews Jr., and retired baseball star Jose Canseco, an admitted steroid user.

A law enforcement source involved in that investigation said authorities have not identified what types of products allegedly were ordered by Matthews or Holyfield, whom they said used the name "Evan Fields" when placing orders.

Matthews was told before his spring training game on Tuesday that his name appeared in a Times Union news report. "There's nothing much to say. A name is mentioned. It's sketchy at best," said Los Angeles Angels Vice President of Communications Tim Mead.

How the federal investigators were able to, in one day, tie together the name Evan Fields to Holyfield is unknown. Unless the name is listed with Holyfield's address, it appears that the feds might be setting the public up for future tying of names - aliases? - to famous people.

Though Holyfield himself did not comment, Donald Tremblay, a PR director from Main Event, the company promoting Evander's upcoming fight said the ex-champ he's never heard of Applied Pharmacy Services. In a later statement, Holyfield said:

"I do not use steroids. I have never used steroids," the four-time champ said in the release. "I resent that my name has been linked to known steroid users by sources who refuse to be identified in order to generate publicity for their investigation. I'm disappointed that certain members of the media ... chose to use my name in headlines and publish my photo alongside stories ... about an investigation into a practice that has nothing to do with me or what I stand for."

Evan Fields, eh? It is said that entertainers are also involved with Signature and Allied. Perhaps the investigators need to check the names beginning with "S." There they may find the name "Strawberry Fields," a sure link to a famous entertainer living in - Paul McCartney.

Note to investigators: This should not be a, "let's cause a big ruckus" event to further tell the world of the horrors of steroid use. We already got that dog-and-pony show from Congress. Further, it's not an X-File where every name can potentially lead to the knowledge of alien intervention in creating a hybrid human-alien through the use of - steroids. Take your time, put in the work, come up with some facts, then hold a press conference and tell us all who did what. Don't say diddly-pooh beforehand.