BRETT FAVRE HUMOR

From The Onion, no less.

HATTIESBURG, MS—Retired quarterback Brett Favre mailed his throwing arm to the Vikings Tuesday, sending the record-setting limb to the team's headquarters for evaluation in hopes of signing with Minnesota. "I made sure to bubble-wrap it, and I stuck a couple big chunks of dry ice in the envelope, so it should be fine," said Favre, who sent the appendage after the Vikings expressed health concerns with the potential signing of the 39-year-old quarterback. "Once the Vikings examine it, I'm sure they'll find that my throwing arm has no structural damage. The doctors who cut it off said it looked great." According to James "Bus" Cook, Favre's agent, the three-time MVP is unlikely to come out of retirement if the Vikings believe that his amputated throwing arm will require major surgery.

Awesome.

FAVRE HASN'T PUT KNIFE AWAY YET

Normally, I am glad to read the reports of hard-working, respectable people in the media.

When it comes to Brett Favre, I'm no longer so glad.

With word leaking last week that Favre was going to talk to the Vikings about joining the team, I made my feelings clear.

Despite trying ever since to avoid Favre news, it's practically unavoidable. He's all over the place. Luckily, he doesn't play hockey, so there is still refuge.

The latest interesting nugget comes from Greg Bedard of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He blogged about Favre early Wednesday, and he sounds as jaded as I am about the whole thing.

This is what I'm reasonably sure is going on:

BLF tested his arm early last week. It did not go well. He called the Vikings to say he was done, that his arm is killing him. The Vikings, who really want him, said, 'Not so fast. Let us take a look to see how bad it is.' BLF can't play without arthroscopic surgery. And it will involve more than just clipping the biceps tendon. The shoulder needs to be cleaned out. That tends to happen with 39-year-old shoulders. (This is why both the Yahoo! and ESPN reports were correct last week)

Again, like I've reported from the beginning, this all depends on BLF's shoulder and whether he is willing to get the surgery. If he doesn't get it, he's done. If he does, he's still in play.

The Vikings think eventually BLF will come around and want to play again sometime later this month or in June. They're just waiting him out and keeping him on the line until then. This is not ending anytime soon.

First off, it's positively genius to refer to Favre as "BLF". I love it.

(Brett's middle name is Lorenzo.)

I can only echo the Packers' take on the deal. If he wants to play football, he should go ahead and play.

Of course, when the Packers say it, the meaning isn't exactly what it sounds like. It's their cute little way of saying "Bring it on, sir". I'm thinking the Packers don't believe Favre's arm can either 1) withstand a 16-game season, or 2) beat the Packers twice.

I'm thinking they're probably right on both counts.

SAINTS QUALIFY FOR NCAAs

Just as their season started in February, St. Scholastica baseball lost its patriarch when good friend John Baggs died of cancer.

On the field, the Saints have clearly learned much of what their old coach tried to teach them.

St. Scholastica (35-5) has qualified for the NCAA Division III regionals once again this year. They'll be heading to Oshkosh, Wis., this week to play in a regional hosted by UW-Oshkosh. The Saints are the third seed in a six-team grouping, and will play fourth-seeded St. Norbert in the opening round. The top seed is St. Olaf, followed by St. Thomas. Wisconsin-Stevens Point and Beloit are the other two teams in the regional.

The Saints got to regional play after a busy second day at the UMAC Tournament Friday in Duluth. St. Scholastica scored 56 runs in three straight wins -- two of them over Bethany Lutheran, who had upset the Saints Thursday night -- to clinch their 13th straight UMAC baseball crown.

The regional tournament begins Wednesday. The winner advances to the Division III World Series in Appleton, Wis., beginning May 22.

KEN MACHA RIGHT ABOUT BRAUN, DEMPSTER; WRONG ABOUT PUCKETT

Friday night, Brewers left fielder Ryan Braun hit a game-winning two-run home run in the eighth inning against the Cubs. When bat met ball, Braun went into a bit of a walk, instead of running toward first base. He also stuck his tongue out (right). Video can be seen here.

(Dear MLB, please enable embedding of videos. This isn't 2007.)

Saturday night, Braun hit another long bomb, this one to give the Brewers a 5-2 lead on their way to a 12-6 win. The at-bat before his long home run, Cubs starter Ryan Dumpster had a message he wanted to send the slugger's way.

(Let's see how long this video is available for.)



Set aside for a moment the argument about whether the pitch actually grazed Braun's helmet, because it's irrelevant. The umpire ruled that it did, Braun was awarded first base, and it didn't matter because the Brewers won by six runs and absolutely destroyed the Cubs pitching on this night.

Focus instead on the location of Dumpster's pitch.

Yeah. There.

"I think the league frowns upon people throwing at people's heads," (Brewers manager Ken) Macha said. "I don't know if (MLB vice president) Bob Watson will look at that or not.

"I don't think that's a good idea to throw at people's heads. I don't know if (Dempster) was or he wasn't. I can't answer that. It's hard for me to tell anybody what somebody else's intentions are."

I wouldn't be happy, either.

After all, it has to be kind of scary watching people throw at your best player's head.

I am all for the policing that we see in baseball. To me, there are no issues with a pitcher sending one between a guy's numbers when they feel it's necessary.

But it has to be between the numbers, not into someone's earhole. You just don't go after a hitter's head, no matter how much of a jerk they may act like.

Macha's right about this, and Dumpster would probably face a fine or a possible suspension if he didn't play for the Cubs.

Where Macha goes wrong is in trying to tie in a larger point about the dangers of headshots. This comes from the same Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article.

"The implications of hitting somebody and the effect that can have on somebody's career, look at Kirby Puckett. He was one of the stars of our game, enjoyed the game. He got hit in the face by Dennis Martinez and that was pretty much the end of it. There are consequences of what you do out there."

I have great respect for Tom Haudricourt, but it would have been nice if he had found a way to correct Macha. After all, it only took me one Google search.

To this day, Puckett searches for the logic behind his illness. "Nothing popped. There's nothing detached. Doc says it was just the pressure building up behind the eye for 35 years. And finally it just got to the breaking point on March 28."

(Dr. Bert) Glaser has ruled out as a cause any residual trauma from the beaning Puckett suffered Sept. 28 when his left sinus was shattered by a Dennis Martinez pitch.

(NOTE: The Times article cited Glaser, who was with the Retina Eye Institute in 1996, as "one of the foremost eye specialists in the country", so there's a good chance he knew what he was talking about.)

Ken Macha is far from the first person to blame Puckett's blindness on Martinez, either directly or indirectly. Sadly, many people continue to make this mistake even now, over 12 years later.

It would have been nice for Haudricourt to reach into the vast amount of information available on the internet before he allowed Macha to become the latest.

SICK AND TIRED OF STEROIDS

He's left Deadspin, but Will Leitch still surfaces on occasion.

The latest sighting of the "former blogger" and one-time target for Buzz Bissinger came Friday morning, when he penned a piece for Sporting News Today.

(By the way, if you don't get Sporting News Today sent to your mailbox every morning, you're missing out. At least 30 pages of comprehensive sports coverage, including all the late-night scores you missed because your alarm goes off at 3am or 4am every morning. Wait, that's just me.)

Leitch absolutely nailed the Ramirez story. It's on page five of the 40-page Friday issue.

Seriously, it’s time to let it go. I’m tired of it, we’re all tired of it. We’ll never really know what happened during the “Steroid Era,” who was using, who wasn’t. Some of you—most of you will be media members—will be driven mad by this fact. Most of you will not. Most of you will recognize that baseball is a sport. It’s entertainment. It’s something that can move us, touch our hearts, inspire us, connect generations. But it’s still just a bunch of guys wearing funny outfits swinging a stick and running around a square.

One of the fun things about a story like Manny Ramirez is that people who don't like sports are talking about it. Of course, they end up asking questions like "Who else in baseball is using?" and "Are you surprised?".

I almost think people are put off when I tell them that I'm not surprised.

But I'm not.

I'd like to fake some outrage at a guy like Manny. He's got all the talent in the world, a God-given ability to smack a baseball that most of us can only marvel at. He needs to take steroids/PEDs like I need to eat a half-pound burger. Same goes for most major-league players. On the list of stuff they should be consuming to keep their bodies in optimum condition, "steroids" should rest at the bottom, right behind Ho-Hos, Big Texas Cinnamon Rolls, and fried lard.

Instead, I'm just inclined to stick him in the long line of cheaters and move on with my life. Frankly, I'm more concerned about a hockey player sneaking brass knuckles into a fight against a bigger guy. That's the kind of cheating that actually affects my ability to enjoy a competition.

I'm beyond the point of watching sporting events and wondering if the athletes are juicing.

It's not that it shouldn't matter. I don't want my son choosing to play a sport and then finding out that he has to stick a needle in his ass to keep up with everyone else who is. It absolutely matters that we stop it.

But I can't do anything about it. As Leitch says at the end of his column, the only thing that can stop us from enjoying baseball is us. Same is true of any other sport. It might not be for everyone, but I just don't care about this anymore.

We all had a hand in turning our awesome sports into big businesses. We can't turn away when the participants act accordingly.

THE CREDIBILITY OF CANSECO

It seems like a blasphemous idea.

A known criminal and a known liar actually has credibility.

But it's true.

Jose Canseco, who has only decided to speak out of a personal vendetta against baseball for not employing his overrated, no-longer-viable hide, continues to find baseball's cheaters long before baseball does. How does he do it?

Well, it no longer appears that the old theory -- that Canseco was simply throwing names at the wall until they started to stick -- applies. The guy knows what he's doing.

Obviously, he knows people who deal in this crap. He's been in locker rooms with some of them. He's aware of how athletes think.

Now that he no longer cares who he offends, he can let loose.

FanHouse colleague Matt Snyder has more.

We heard tales about Roger Clemens and shrugged them off. 'This idiot doesn't know how to quit when he's ahead,' we'd say.

Enter the Mitchell Report, and Rocket personally burying himself in a clinic on how to not clear your own name.

Next up? Canseco claimed he had some "stuff" on Alex Rodriguez and that he was 90 percent sure Manny Ramirez was a user.

I'd love to nail Canseco to a wall. The problem is that he's clearly not lying. He's not "throwing names at the wall". He is naming names that he knows.

All along, we should have taken Canseco seriously. It's not our fault that we in the media didn't, but the fact of the matter is that we all dropped the ball on that.

MANNY TO STOP BEING MANNY

Huge news out of baseball, as we have our first big-time casualty of the "new" drug policy.

Sure, Rafael Palmeiro got busted a few years back, but Manny Ramirez takes this thing to a whole new level.

It will be announced later Thursday that Ramirez will be suspended 50 games for a violation of baseball's drug policy. There will be no appeal of the suspension.

Obviously, Ramirez (or "Manny", as everyone calls him) has an excuse, since everyone seems to have an excuse.

"Recently I saw a physician for a personal health issue. He gave me a medication, not a steroid, which he thought was okay to give me. Unfortunately, the medication was banned under our drug policy. Under the policy that mistake is now my responsibility. I have been advised not to say anything more for now. I do want to say one other thing; I've taken and passed about 15 drug tests over the past five seasons. "I want to apologize to Mr. McCourt, Mrs. McCourt, Mr. Torre, my teammates, the Dodger organization, and to the Dodger fans. LA is a special place to me and I know everybody is disappointed. So am I. I'm sorry about this whole situation." – Manny Ramirez

Why is it that no one seems to ever actually be taking PEDs to cheat? It's always a mistake, an oversight, or some malicious act that leads to a positive test.

I said once on the radio that the first athlete to come out and say they knowingly and willingly took a performance-enhancing drug, and did it to gain an advantage on fellow competitors (not to recover from an injury or prevent a future injury) should be automatically inducted into that sport's Hall of Fame.

As for the Dodgers, you have to feel for them. They spent all winter laboring over bringing Manny back, and this is what they get for it. Yeah, they're 13-0 at home, and they're still a really good team. But this puts a damper on what they've accomplished so far, and with Manny out until July 3, it will be very hard for Los Angeles to keep playing at their current pace.

Luckily for them, they already lead their pathetic division by six-and-a-half games, so their magic number is down to like 42. Shouldn't be a problem for them to hold on. Not only that, but they'll have a fresh and motivated Manny for the rest of the season.

It's not all bad.

UPDATE: TWINS DEMOTE CASILLA

You may have read my baseball post on Monday. If not, you should.

In it, I mentioned that the Twins couldn't afford to wait all spring for struggling infielder Alexi Casilla to start hitting.

They're done waiting.

The Twins today sent struggling second baseman Alexi Casilla to AAA Rochester and brought up infielder Matt Tolbert.

Casilla was batting .167 (14-for-84) with one double, one triple and four RBI in 24 games for the Twins this season. He emerged with the Twins last season, batting .281 in 98 games.

In 23 games with the Red Wings, Tolbert was hitting .260 (25-for-96) with four doubles, two triples, nine RBI and one home run. He was 7-for-12 in his previous two games.

It's a good move. Casilla tends to labor mentally when he strings together poor at-bats, and he's had a lot of them lately. It's only going to kill his confidence if he goes to the bench or continues starting virtually every day when he isn't hitting.

He showed last year he can swing it. We'll see if a trip to Rochester is going to cure what ails him.

A STUNNING DISPLAY OF INCOMPETENCE

Actually, since this is the NHL we're talking about, it's not all that stunning.



The league should be ashamed of itself after this. Instead, they'll make excuses about how the Ducks wear black breezers and the puck is black.

Oh, wait. You mean they already did that?

FAVRE GETS OUT THE KNIFE

And here we go again.

Minnesota Vikings head coach Brad Childress and quarterback Brett Favre plan to meet at an undisclosed location later this week to discuss the possibility of the former Packers and Jets quarterback renouncing his retirement from the NFL to play the 2009 season with the Vikings, according to a source with direct knowledge of discussions between the two parties.

There is a mutual understanding that sometime soon thereafter Favre will decide whether to sign with the Vikings. The team would expect him to participate fully in offseason minicamps and training camps, which he missed last year with the Jets.

Favre has not been working out and declined to have surgery to repair the torn biceps tendon that plagued him the final month of last season.

The never-ending saga will probably never end. Hence calling it "never-ending", I guess.

It's as if this is all been orchestrated from Day One. The Vikings get a quarterback who might be a passable starter, but not anyone capable of exciting more than immediate family or friends. All other free agents are set aside for the sake of keeping enough salary cap room to bring in Judas.

Sadly, the only people this helps are the Packers, Bears, and Lions, all of whom have to be salivating at the prospect of baiting the old man into countless bad interceptions. Could it help the Vikings? Sure, but only if Favre is great again. After the way he closed out 2008, it's doubtful anyone would bet real money on this happening.

(Especially when the above report mentions him declining the surgery. He'd better hope Adrian Peterson carries the ball 40 times a game.)

The only person potentially hurt by this is Favre. If he comes back and it doesn't work out, he's the one who looks like an idiot. Childress simply looks like a guy who did what he could to put together a championship team, while also trying to save his own hide. While making moves with the sole motivation of saving your job is hardly noble, you have to give the guy credit for making an effort.

Meanwhile, Favre looks like a complete jackass. Nothing beats a 40-year-old man holding a grudge like a 14-year-old girl. It's not exactly behavior to be proud of, no matter the end result.

I feel real sorry for Viking fans. They spent 16 years cursing the guy and finding his flaws so they wouldn't have to appreciate him from afar. Now that everyone on the planet can see his flaws, they're going to be stuck with him for a season.