Ponder This...

I can’t say I’m all that surprised that Floyd Landis was caught cheating. And I hate to paint an entire religious denomination with a broad brush, but name one Mennonite athlete who hasn’t been exposed as a cheater. Exactly. You can’t. As far as I know, all Mennonite athletes are cheaters. Of course, I could be wrong. And I’ll be happy to admit as much if any Mennonite readers care to jump on their laptops or Blackberrys and e-mail me with some examples of honest Mennonite athletes. I’ll be waiting, Mennonites.

It must be interesting for Carson Palmer to look into his mirror every morning. Back in May, in a douche-tastic article in Sports Illustrated, Palmer said he uses those who doubt he can return from his knee injury in time to start the Bengals’ season opener as “fuel.” And that he “keep[s] thinking of all the naysayers who don’t believe I’ll make it back. I’m going to prove them wrong.” But then last week Palmer said: “It’s unrealistic to say that I’m going to start against the Chiefs.” Ohhhh ... SNAP! No you didn’t just disrespect Carson Palmer like that, Carson Palmer! Man ... that was cold. How dare you doubt he can recover completely from a devastating knee injury in less than eight months? Just be aware, Carson Palmer, that Carson Palmer uses your naysaying as fuel. And when he faces you on the field, Carson Palmer, Carson Palmer will have no mercy.

Major League Baseball named 12 finalists for Comeback Player of the Year on Monday – six in the NL and six in the AL. A few of the names are obvious because they came back strong this season from an injury-plagued 2005. But then there are others – Corey Patterson, Carlos Beltran and Curt Schilling among them – who came back from absolutely nothing but their own suckiness. To me, a Comeback Player of the Year winner should be coming off a gruesome injury or a disease, not stinking. What is Corey Patterson supposed to say if he wins? “I’ll always remember that day in early April of 2005. My fears were realized. The tests came back and I had been diagnosed with Suck. An acute case, too. Very aggressive. I was sent to Iowa for treatment. Most of my teammates thought they’d never see me again. I was worried they were right. But then things slowly started turning around. Some days I’d go 0-for-4 with four strikeouts, but others I’d get a hit. Maybe even two. I saw some light at the end of the tunnel. I did have to be a victim to Suck. Then I was sent to Baltimore. The doctors there had a treatment they thought could help me beat Suck. And then slowly but surely I came out of it. Sure, you never totally defeat Suck. Once you’ve had it there’s always a chance it could come back without notice, and some days I still look like I have it. Plus, there are those who will never make a long-term commitment to me because of my history with Suck. But I am recovering. And that’s why this Comeback Player of the Year Award means so much to me. It gives hope to other players afflicted with Suck that they, too, can one day come out of it.”

So I’m thinking of doing a semi-regular item on the site in which I put a caption to a widely-seen sports photo. (I know, it’s a wildly original idea.) Here’s my first attempt: “It was only when he pressed his lips to them that he realized the bricks were made partly of feces:” http://espn-att.starwave.com/photo/2006/0806/rpm_jjohnson_412.jpg. So maybe I’ll try another. “His eyes bulged and his lips pursed. He was making a testosterone deposit in his pants:” http://i.a.cnn.net/si/2006/more/08/07/landis.agenda.ap/t1_landis2.jpg. And one more: “After eating a record 58 bratwursts, the little man uncorked a fart his competitors would not soon forget:” http://msn.foxsports.com/id/5850642_4_1.jpg. Okay, okay. Perhaps it won’t be a regular item on the site.

Woo-hoo! Yippee, everyone! The NBA’s 2006-2007 schedule is out and ... drumroll, please ... the marquee Christmas Day game is ... Kobe vs. Shaq, Shaq vs. Kobe! Yesssssssss! You know, if this was two years ago. (Maybe.) So the NBA is coming off perhaps its best season in a decade, with plenty of new stars and legitimate story lines to mine and David Stern – who I am convinced is the most overrated sports executive ever – decides to go with Shaq and Kobe on Christmas. Ridiculous. Does anyone really care anymore and the Shaq and Kobe “fued”? Did anyone ever care? Not that I know of. Yet Stern is still trying to get mileage out of it. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Stern called a press conference to announce: “I just wanted to let everyone know that I just heard Kobe call Shaq’s mom a whore. That is all. Thank you for coming.”

Congratulations to Jared Jeffries on getting a nice big-money deal with the Knicks, but I’m wondering how soon it will set in for him that he was courted heavily by Isiah Thomas. He’ll probably just be sitting on his couch one afternoon in a week or two, watching a movie and he’ll suddenly realize: “Oh ... my ... God. My career is ruined. Isiah Thomas wants me.” (Oh, and I mean “Isiah Thomas wants me” in the sense that he wants Jeffries on his team, meaning Jeffries must be a lousy player; not in the “Isiah Thomas wants me” in the sense that he wants Jeffries sexually and will rub his erect penis on his back light Thomas might do to a Knicks office employee. Just wanted to clarify.)

Here is my Page 2 article from Monday: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=gallo/060807. I kind of intended this one to be more snarky and sarcastic than funny. Seriously. And, uh ... all those other columns I’ve written that you didn’t think were funny? Snarky and sarcastic, too. Yep. Snarky and sarcastic. No intent to elicit any laughter at all.

Sometimes I forget how much I hate Brian Billick. It’s in part due to the fact that his team has slipped farther and farther out of the NFL spotlight in recent years thanks, in part, to Billick being an awful head coach, so we’re not subjected to as much of him by the national media as we were in the early part of the decade. But then I happened to stumble upon an article this week – http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=jc-ravens080406&prov=yhoo&type=lgns – in which Billick says that sometimes distractions are positive for a team, like when Ray Lewis was involved in a murder before the 2001 season. Says Billick: “I want to be careful to not sound mercenary about the tragedy that Ray dealt with [in 2000]. But, clearly that event and what was surrounding Ray created a very narrow focus.” Wow. Just ... wow. Forget the fact that Billick is saying the death of two people was great because it helped his football team. What really amazes me – or doesn’t amaze, sadly enough – is that Billick calls the double murder Lewis covered up as “the tragedy that Ray dealt with.” How media people can listen to someone say something like that and not respond with: “Excuse me, Mr. Billick. Apologies for interrupting. But you are an incredible a--hole. And I hope you burn in hell. Now you were saying ...”