But then it him me. With Woody, just like Watergate, it all comes down to one thing…"Follow the money". And so I decided to Google the salaries for every coach in the NFL in 2014. You can find the results here. It goes without saying that Rex Ryan was going to be towards the bottom and he was…coming in 24th place out of 32 NFL coaches with a salary of $4mm. But if anybody can find a way to pay less its Woody.  So surprise surprise, Doug Marrone was ranked 28th out of 32 in salary…earning $3.5mm in 2014.

Now, look at events of the past couple days.  Marrone, who has not made the playoffs in either of his two seasons in the NFL decides to opt out of his contract with no firm prospects on the horizon. Who does that? Only a coach who knows he has his next job lined up.  Is he a lock for the San Fran-Oakland-Chicago-Atl jobs? I don’t think so.  He’s going to have some stiff competition with names like Todd Bowles (his Cardinals are headed for the playoffs with a 11-5 record), Dan Quinn (his Seahawks won a SB last year and are favorites to win it again), Josh McDaniels (his Patriots are the other favorite to win the SB this year) and our boy Rex Ryan in the mix. So that leaves the Jets. This has Woody’s fingerprints all over it.  A dirt cheap coach with previous Jets experience from NYC.  What about the game plan of hiring a GM first and then letting him pick the groceries? As Mike Tyson once said, "Everyone has a game plan until they get punched in the nose". And Woody’s metaphorical nose punch is always the opportunity to brown bag it. Why blow $20mm in cap space when your lapdog fans will still show up?  And why pay $4mm for a coach when a $3.5mm coach is out there?  I’m actually starting to think that Woody had this cooked up for weeks. The one thing he’s demonstrated over the past few days is that he know a thing or two about tampering…see his childish comments about wanting a still under contact Darrelle Revis on the Jets next year.

Many, many writers have called Woody “clueless” over the last few days.  I disagree.  He knows exactly what he’s doing.  A rich kid acting like he cares about the “dumb” 99 percenters while stuffing his pockets.  Look at the evidence.  The GM then coach strategy lasted about 5 minutes.  Which is the attention span Woody thinks most of us have.  With the economical Marrone in place, you’ll be able to count the the list of good GMs willing to take the Jets job on half of Jerry Garcia’s hand.  Yet another opportunity for Woody to pull an Idzik and “Buy-Low”.  Fire Idzik billboards were cool and generated some great buzz.  But patsy Idzik was the wrong target.  Until Woody either sells or croaks, all hope is lost.

We knew seemingly forever that the show was going to end.  For a long time, it was something that was way off in the distance.  But as we rolled through season 5, the crushing reality of having no more Walter White came closer and closer.  Many wondered how Vince Gilligan would wrap it up.  Would he tie up all the loose ends or would he leave us hanging.  I never spent much time thinking about the ending myself.  I was fine with watching the story unfold, show by show and not considering the end game.

I thought the show easily could have ended at the end of season 4 when Walt killed Gus.  He had beaten a man that was in many ways his equal in terms of cunning and smarts.  After blowing Gus’s face off, the final scene when Walt called Skyler and told her that he had “won” was perfect closure.  He seemed to have achieved everything that he had set out to do from the time of his cancer diagnosis…provide for his family, keep them out of harms way while proving to the world that he was more than a wimpy milquetoast HS Chemistry teacher…that he mattered.  But at some point, Gilligan had decided that there would be one more season…16 more episodes to take Walt to a final destination.  At the end of season 4, I couldn’t see how Gilligan could possibly build on Gus’s death.  The show seemed to have have peaked.

Frankly, I thought season 5 got off to a slow start.  New (and IMHO, lesser) characters were introduced.  Lydia, Todd and Uncle Jack were no match for Gus and Mike.  I started to think that Gilligan was now caught in no-mans land.  He didn’t want to end it at season 4 and by deciding that there would be “just” 16 more shows, he didn’t leave himself enough runway to get to a proper end.  It looked to me like important plot lines were cut out in the race to what seemed to be a self-imposed finish line.  After watching the first 15 episodes of season 5, I would say that there was a fall-off in intensity.

The final episode changed all that.  Going in, based on the flash forwards, I had a pretty good Idea of what would happen.  The artillery in Walt’s trunk, first seen in season 5 episode 1 were no doubt reserved for Uncle Jack and the Arian Race gang.  The ricin (also seen in season 5 episode 1) was going to be used on either the Schwartz’s or maybe Lydia. You knew that there would be a confrontation with Gretchen and Elliott Schwartz after Walt saw them bashing him on the Charlie Rose show.  And you figured Walt would make one last try to reconcile with Skyler and get his millions to his family.  The great unknown was how the story would be told.

I’d say the first 50 minutes played out as predicted.  What was totally unexpected for me was the final scene…2 minutes when Gilligan took the show to its highest point, past Gus’s killing into artistic territory almost never reached.

Breaking Bad has a rabid fan base for one main reason…it appeals to the side in everyone that wants to break way from their boring paint-by-numbers life and do something daring…something they are good at…something that makes them feel alive.  For the first 50 minutes, Gilligan left almost nothing to the imagination.  Walt methodically took care of all unfinished business as if checking things off on a shopping list .  But Gilligan reserved the final 2 minutes for your emotions and your imagination.  Here Gilligan shows a mortally wounded Walt, make that final, inevitable walk to the only place where he could have possibly died, the meth lab.  As Walt enters the lab, he surveys it with a sense of pride, satisfaction and accomplishment  all shown through the expression on his face.  He picks up a gas mask which was to him the equivalent of McCartney’s Hofner Bass, Gretsky’s Titan or Clapton’s Fender Stratocaster.  He strokes the gleaming chemical tanks with a bloody loving hand.  Without a word of dialogue and with only the backing of Baby Blue by Badfinger (“guess I got what I deserved…”), Gilligan crystalizes the essence of the final year of Walt’s life.  Had he gone the conventional way , he could have died of cancer in a hospital with Skyler, Walt Jr., Holly, Hank and Marie by his side and slowly faded into oblivion.  But the path he chose enabled him to finally live and then die on his own terms.  Walt knows that he made the right choice.  Many of us dream that we could do the same.

So even though Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens never failed a drug test, they were denied entry today.  And so was the almost equally deserving Mike Piazza, a baby who got thrown out with the bathwater.  That is utter and complete BS.  Luckily for the cowards of Summer, we are now presented with a 2014 HOF class that contains “supposedly” clean guys like Greg Maddox, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas.  I can understand pronouncing Maddox and Glavine clean.  They certainly didn’t look like juicers, more like guys you would compete against in a Sunday beer league.  They will fly into the Hall as writers will vote with a clear conscience.  Thomas?  He was a condominium at home plate (sorry Balboni).  How can you keep Mike Piazza  who never failed a drug test and was not in the flawed Mitchell Report out of the Hall and then declare Thomas clean and put him in?  Like I said, that problem is never going to go away.  As a wise man once said, never do today what you can put off till tomorrow.  I’m sure that MLB hopes that the induction of boy scouts like Maddux and Glavine will make the world forget about Bonds and Clemens.  That has about as much chance of happening as the Kardashians going away.

Rather than whine, I have a solution…Let em’ all in if they actually deserve it.  That is a tough proposition and requires a healthy dose of common sense, something that today’s process is a few quarts down on.  When I say common sense, I mean very simply…is this player an immortal?  If you have to think about that for more than a second, no sale.  Steroids have blown up forever the current approach to admittance which loves absolutes.  Have 300 wins, 3,000 hits, 500 home runs, 3 MVPs, or 3 Cy Young’s?  Your plaque is waiting.  But look where that has gotten us.  Phil Neikro and Don Sutton?  They let em’ in because they won 300 games.  Does anybody who watched Neikro or Sutton think that either of those two were Hall of Famers during their careers?  Were they must see TV?  Clearly no.  They should never have gotten in.  The same applies to many in our current crop.  Craig Biggio?  He has one credential.  Never won an MVP, never won a World Series.  Never won a batting title.  Never was considered the best at his position.  He can’t get in.  But I can give you 3,000 reasons why he will.  The same goes for a bunch of other compilers like Jim Thome.  And what to do about Slammin’ Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire?  Negative press aside, these guys never failed a drug test.  But Sosa went from 36 hrs in 1997 to 66 hrs the following year.  And while Big Mac was a thumper from his earliest days, he had back to back seasons in 1993-94 where he hit a whopping 9 dingers.  He looked busted and washed up.  Then the career renaissance.  He crept up to 52 and 58 hrs in 96-97 which was just a warm up for his fools gold 70 hr 1998 season.  How are we to take these two seriously? Even criminals have the good sense to launder their money.  Common sense says these guys don’t belong in.

The chalk is that Barroid and the B-12 Rocket established Hall of Fame cred prior to shooting up, so we should let them in.  Bonds won 3 MVPs before turning 30 and Clemens won 3 Cy Young Awards and an MVP before leaving Fenway.  Had they stopped there and just tapered off like ordinary guys like Mays and Aaron they were both in.  But that was just not good enough.  As the Boss said, “Poor man wants to be rich, rich man wants to be king and a king ain’t satisfied ‘till he rules everything”.  Why settle for greatness when you can be on baseball’s Mt. Rushmore with Ruth, Cobb, and Koufax?  The Hall doesn’t legislate against stupidity and if I had a vote, I would have cast it for both today.  I’m using my eyes and my common sense.  They belong in.

So even if procrastination won the day today, maybe common sense will win tomorrow.  The biggest challenge of the steroid era is that it will now force sportswriters to heavily weigh other factors beyond raw stats in casting their ballots.  In a world where Phil Neikro is in and Bernie Williams is not, I say that’s a good thing.

One thing I’ve learned while writing this blog is that if you don’t get your post cranked out within minutes of a story breaking, you will be beaten to the punch by, oh about 1,000 articles.  That doesn’t include tweets, blogs and other so-called journalism.  So I’m more than a day late and a dollar short when it comes to offering “insight” on what the Jets did in acquiring Tebow.  OK, by now we all know that a) the deal makes no sense because the Jets just inked Mark Sanchez to a long term deal which supposedly solidified him as the starting QB for the next few years b) that Tebow is not a real QB and doesn’t make the Jets better c) that many players on the team were dead set against the move d) that the NY and National media generally panned the move, e) that the option offense that Tebow will run called the “Wildcat” is a fad that no other team in the NFL runs anymore and finally f) that in landing Tebow, football was a distant second in Jet’s priorities after selling  t-Shirts and PSLs.  To quote the Clash in London Calling…An’ you know what they said? Well, some of it was true!. 

There is no question that the Jet’s brass, lead by their Jim Dolan Doppelganger Woody Johnson did this to generate Twitter buzz, back page juice, Facebook “Likes” and ultimately big bucks as opposed to improving the product on the field.  What’s amazing to me is how long it took the NY press to figure that out.  I’ve been writing that Johnson is not and will never be committed to winning for years.  I go all the way back to Belichick declining the HC of NYJ position for my evidence.  Given a choice between Robert Kraft, a man that has proven that he will move heaven and earth to win and Woody, "the genius"  made the obvious choice.  Being a genius, I know that Belichick figured out that balance sheets and income statements and not the NFL Standings were Woody’s bible. 

So while Kraft and Belichick have been busy making 5 SB appearances and winning 3, Woody has responded the only way he knows how…by trying to make his product “more interesting” to the casual fan.  You know the Pink-Shirted Sanchez crowd.  I’m sure Woody was taking notes when the Knicks went from irrelevance to over-night Global sensations with Linsanity and Celebrity Row in full throttle at the garden.  He had to replicate that across the Hudson, but how?  Then, as if by some miracle, the “original-Lin” falls into the Jet’s lap.  Knowing what I know about Johnson, it was a deal that was so in his wheel house that there was no way he would pass it up.  If you haven’t been paying attention, Woody’s M.O. (like many other failed NY sports czars including Dolan and the pre-suspension Geo Steinbrenner) is to grab thread-bare sports icons (Favre, Tomlinson) and/or cheap talent whose marquee value far exceeds their on-field worth (Exhibit A is matinee idol Sanchez). 

But guess what readers?  I love the move.  You see I have resigned myself to what Johnson is and I see Tebow as probably the best possible option under center for the Jets until Johnson sells which won’t happen in my lifetime.  First off, Tebow is better than Sanchez right now.  Do they both have crap passer ratings?  Why yes they do.  Sanchez’s 78.2 was 23rd out of 34 in 2011 while Tebow’s 72.9 was 5 clicks lower at 28.  So neither is Steve Young.  But Sanchez is a one dimensional with little mobility, shaky confidence and a slacker mentality while Tebow is a beast of a runner, Michael Jordan brash, a tireless worker and most importantly, a winner.  Yes, Sanchez got his team to the AFC championship in 2 of his first three years.  Given his third year disappearing act and his regression, he may be more Trent Dilfer-Lite then anything else .  In other words, a game manager.  Tebow is no game manager.  He is wired to beat you any way he can.  With the Jets, a few things are etched in stone.  Woody Johnson will never bring in a marquee QB, RB or Coach because that will cut into his profits.  Given that reality, Tebow is the best of a bunch of Plan Bs.  Now I’m not going to go so far as to say that the Jets actually have a plan.  I’d lose whatever credibility I have left as a sports pundit.  But humor me for a second.  They brought in Tony Sparano who by all indications is bringing back 3 yards and as cloud of synthetic turf while every other team in football is airing it out.  As amazing as this seems, the Jets may have concluded that the only way to beat Shady Brady and Bill Belicheat is to channel Parcells/Erhardt circa 1990 and “shorten the game”.  A conservative Tebow led offense fits that approach.  Never mind that you need grade A beef at running back a la OJ Anderson (which the Jets lack with Shonn "Baccarat Crystal" Greene as their main weapon) as well as precision passing to limit turnovers (neither Tebow or Sanchez can find their ass in the dark with both hands).  Those are just details.  I’d love to believe that Tannenbaum/Ryan had visions of a grey, 10 degree day at MetLife Stadium with 40 mph winds whipping in from the swamps of Jersey as Tebow blasts over for the winning TD against the Pats and their pretty-boy air game.  Final score?  7-2.   Don’t you believe for a second that Tebow is resigned to the backup position.  He knows the job is his for the taking.  That’s why he came here.  And it won’t take more than a few Sanchez pick six’s and/or red-zone turnovers for him to win the job by Week 3.  Here’s to Timsanity at MetLife Stadium.  Spike Lee would sure be an upgrade over Fireman Ed.

From the start, I thought that this thing was going to get weird.  As I’ve chronicled over and over in previous posts, baseball never goes after big game like Braun.  So I had this nagging feeling that Braun would never be taken down. Did they take him to the brink?  It depends on what the definition of “they” is.  Upon further review, it wasn’t even MLB that got Braun’s name out there.  If you believe the MLB suits (and I almost never do), Braun was outed against their wishes by a blood thirsty media who pounced on the news of the failed test as part of their oath of journalistic integrity.  According to MLB, if they had it their way, the Braun’s positive test would never have gotten out there until after the appeals process concluded.

So how do I feel?  I now wonder whether we’re headed back to the golden era of McGuire and Sosa or something like it.  What this may prove is that given enough defense funding, no “A” list player will ever be taken down in his prime by MLB.  Will baseball continue to pick off their 99%ers?  With impunity.  But when “chain of custody” starts to creep into the conversation, you know that 1% players and their lawyers can and will dissect every step in the drug testing process.  And they will always find something.  Drug testing isn’t like high tech chip manufacturing or nuclear energy production.  There aren’t any clean rooms and men running around in white jump suits and helmets.  This is pissing into a bottle.  At some point, everyone has to agree that all reasonable precaution will be taken to obtain and process the sample and that both sides will agree on the results.  And the process should be able to be explained in one page, not a 55 page .pdf document.  By definition 55 pages means lawyers and lawyers mean subterfuge.  This may sound out of left field, but there is a rock group out there called “We Were Promised Jetpacks”.  It’s a reference to one of the many things we all thought we would have by now given the pace of technology, invention and our society.  You know, things like affordable electric cars, streamable first run movies and a college football playoff system.  There’s always some half-assed explanation as far as why we cant have these things.  We don’t believe it, but just put our heads down and accept it anyway.  Add drug-testing in MLB to that list.

Over time, I have become convinced that MLB commish Bud Selig et al at best ignored and at worst encouraged the use of steroids post strike (‘94) to reboot interest in baseball and crank revenues like never before. They saw something they liked in 1987 when offense spiked (remember when 1987 was called the live ball year? how funny is that?) Right after that, owners set about overhauling baseball’s ancient set of ballparks. From 1987 on, out of 31 ballparks, MLB replaced 24 of them.  Many of them were home-run hitter friendly or outright “smallpark-launching pads” (Camden Yards, Coors Field, Cincinnati, Houston, Philly, Pittsburgh). Not coincidently, these parks also had dramatically reduced seating capacities to drive ticket prices even higher.

Obviously, Selig and his crew got together over some beers and figured out that Koufax-Marichal 2-1 sleepers put fans in a coma and that chicks dig the long ball.  They devised a dead-simple scheme.  If people came to the park to see Mickey Mantle, how many more would come to see a whole team of Mantles?  You know what happened next.  2-1 nail biters gave way to 15-11 barn-burners, the Bash Brothers, McGuire and Sosa and Barry Bonds.  Ballpark attendance skyrocketed, prices soared and cash registers exploded.  The plan worked.

I’m pretty certain that the total cost of attending a game from 1994 on has quadrupled or more.  And as you know, the genie ain’t going back in the bottle. Once you have proven that you can get people to pay $500 for a regular season field level seat, you aren’t going back. What Selig/MLB Owners did was pure marketing genius. They didn’t have to improve their product or market it any better. They just had to enhance it through chemistry. Then they got new stadiums and exponential price hikes.

But that was only half the battle. The bashing came at a huge cost. Salaries skyrocketed across the board as rank-and-file players like Steve Finley and Jim Edmunds starting hitting dingers like Aaron and Mays. For example, Edmunds was making $625k in 1996. He jumped from 25 to 42 HRs between 1998 and 2000.  By 2006, Edmunds was making $12mm. So to achieve total financial victory, Selig and the owners had to reach the Bettmanesque holy grail of “cost certainty”. Max profits would then follow. The easiest way to do that? Return statistics to pre-steroid era. 42 Hrs might support $12mm, but 15 sure as heck won’t.  And the fastest way to return stats to the pre-steroid era is to scare the living bejesus out of the league by taking down one of its biggest stars.  Can you imagine all the pills, creams, powders and syringes that got flushed down toilets or tossed in dumpsters that day?  Now, does that mean salaries will return to 1986 levels?  Of course not.  But MLB wanted to do something to bring down costs and this was the fastest and most direct way possible.  Can you think of another product that has gone up in price 25x in a generation for what is essentially a lesser product? I know I can’t.

(1) Lowest on the food chain are retired journeymen who somehow got caught.  The player list in the Mitchell Report is mostly made of of this flotsam.  Way too many players to list here.  One example in the report is Nook Logan.  Remember him?  Me neither.  I always thought that these players were “outed” to satisfy the public’s lust for blood for some public hangings just like in the wild wild west.  Well these players define expendable.  In all honesty, they probably did ‘roids mostly to hang on to MLB positions as opposed to breaking all-time home run records. In that regard, they are maybe the most forgivable of the group.

(2) Next are active “Rank-and-File” players.  J.C. Romero is a perfect example of this type of player.  Prior to the 2009 season, Romero was suspended 50 games for testing positive for androstenedione, a performance-enhancing drug banned by MLB.  “Rank-and-File” players will never compete for awards, have no endorsements at stake and of course will only get to Cooperstown by buying an all day pass.  These players take a seat for 50 games, then continue living the dream.  Who wouldn’t take that trade-off?

(3) Next are retired “Name Brand” players.  Chuck Knoblauch and Eric Gagne are great examples of this type of player.  Both players had significant achievements and MLB careers.  They also faded into total obscurity upon leaving the game.  MLB felt totally comfortable naming these names because (A) they’re retired, (B) they aren’t going to sniff Cooperstown and (C) they have no following whatsoever.  In other words, the sound of one hand clapping from a revenue and PR standpoint.  Again, these players were offered up on the Mitchell Report to lend “legitimacy” to the report with no real consequence to MLB nor the ex-player.

(4) Active “Name Brand” players come next.  This group includes Jason Giambi (The Sultan of Shot) and Miguel Tejada.  These players were former MVPs who were on the back 9 of their careers and without their syringes, were 5 putting on 17.   Their performance declines were so steep that they were embarrassing MLB and making a mockery of their awards.  Begging to be exposed, baseball obliged.  It wasn’t such a bad deal because it gave the player a chance to hug the public’s leg for forgiveness (which Giambi did).  America loves a great confession, so being outed was actually a great career move for Giambi who somehow emerged as a sympathetic figure.

(5) Finally we have the highest in this rogues gallery, the Scapegoats.  This group, not dissimilar to Lex Luthor, the Riddler or the Joker of DC Comics fame, all had “anti-hero” status while playing.  Roger Clemens (The B-12 Rocket) and Barry Bonds (Barroid) are charter members of this un-esteemed group.  In MLB’s calculus, these players had done more damage to their reps through their own antics than PED allegations, lawsuits and maybe even a little time inside could ever do.  Worst of all, they defied the baseball gods (Selig?) and were un-repentant.  They needed to be taught a lesson.  Baseball offered these names up with surgical precision…evaluating the cost to the game in revenue and publicity vs. gains in street cred.

Notice anyone missing from the above?  How about “Name Brand Superstars” like Pujols, Jeter, and Verlander.  And “Young Guns” like Kershaw, Longoria, and Ellsbury.   These players are inside the velvet rope and off-limits. Or so I thought.

From 2007 when the Mitchell Report came out until 2009, you could take my theory to the bank.  But maybe that wasn’t enough to satisfy the politicians.  Because in 2009, we had the first player to blow a hole in my well-thought out PED conspiracy theory…my old friend Mr. Aroid.  Aroid was the very definition of the Name Brand Superstar…And he was arguably the lead revenue generator for the highest grossing team in Baseball.  In other words, the kind of player that MLB and the Mitchell report had previously avoided with extreme prejudice.  His career trajectory had him right up there with Ruth, Aaron and Mays…but also Bonds and McGuire. And maybe because MLB had already dealt with the devil when they allowed Barroid to eclipse Ruth, they decided to not repeat history with Aroid.  So they hung him at high noon.  Problem was, given my antipathy for Aroid, I didn’t see that as a trend breaker.  But now with Ryan Braun, we have a situation that obliterates my theory.  We now have clearly moved on to a new era in PED testing…zero tolerance.

Ryan Braun is the essence of the Name Brand Superstar and his outing has me believing that baseball will expose anyone at this point.  I have to believe they’d even go for Mt. Rushmore players like Jeter if it came down to it.  What I can’t figure out is why the about face?  Seems to me that in the 5 years since the Mitchell report was released, baseball has somehow determined that no player is off limits, revenue be damned.  Why?  the public doesn’t seem to give a damn, paying staggering ticket prices and flooding ballparks like never before.  The only plausible explanation is this…that MLB flying high from one of the best season’s in memory, felt that now was the time to strike fear in every would-be cheater by taking down the biggest pelt of the Post-Mitchell era.  So given this new reality, lets move on to the suspect himself, Mr. Braun.

One thing that struck me in the past few days is the staggering amount of revenue at stake in Braun’s career. The Brewers believed so much in Braun last April that they extended his contract through 2020, even though he was already signed through 2015. The new deal – five years, $105-million (U.S.) – effectively made Braun a partner with the Brewers’ owner, Mark Attanasio.  One thing I have not been able to track down is whether Braun has a “morals clause” in his contract voiding it for conduct detrimental to the team.  If so, then a positive test puts it at risk.  If not, then the $105 million is not really in jeopardy for Braun.  But a boatload of money is at risk for Braun’s business partner, Mr. Attanasio if millions of disillusioned Brewers fans start showing up at Miller Park disguised as empty seats.  And that brings us to the end game…

With so much at stake, why would Braun and his business partner Attanasio risk a positive test?  There are only a few possible scenarios:

(1) Braun Took PEDs thinking he had “immunity”: Despite all the public noise about Braun being “clean”, this one is not that hard to for me to swallow.  Braun had a downturn in 2010 with his lowest HR (25) total and RBI (103) total of any full season in his career.  For a guy shooting to be recognized as the best player in baseball, those numbers don’t cut it.  Braun wouldn’t be the first player to feel that he was competing with juicers so why not level the playing field.  He also had to believe that as a “white hat” star, he was inside the velvet rope.

(2) Braun Innocently took an OTC product that triggered the high testosterone levels:  According to numerous reports, Braun’s testosterone levels were the highest on record.  Somehow that doesn’t seem to track with accidently taking an OTC supplement.  Let’s say for a second that its true.  That makes Braun and Attanasio MORONs.  If you had upwards of $200 million at stake, would you risk it all for some powder that you got at the local GNC?  No you wouldn’t.  Because you couldn’t have possibly read this far without Mensa level intellect.

(3) The Test was a False Positive:  This is a complete non-starter.  The testing process used by MLB has better technology than NASA.

Out of the three, I’m going with number 1.  Just like our prisons are filled with innocent men and women, I’ve yet to hear a player admit that they were juicing upon capture.  I think Braun was taking something to improve his performance and given his status as a Top-5 Stud, never dreamt that he’d get exposed.  He was living a Mitchell era fantasy.  Braun and everyone else will now have to adjust their clocks to 1 A.B. (After Braun).  It’s a whole new era and no cheater is safe.

Well lets now get to the baseball impact.  Pujols joins an Angels team that defined mediocrity on offense.  They finished 17th overall in runs scored in 2011.  As good as Pujols is, and in my opinion, he along with Manny Ramirez are the two best right hand hitters in MLB since Mays and Aaron, he’s not going to have much protection around him.  Peter Bourjos, Torri Hunter and Vernon Wells are not exactly Murderer’s row.  Ironically, the one player who could protect Pujols is surprising rookie Mark Trumbo, who despite leading the team with 29 homers in 2011, now finds himself in search of a position with Pujols cemented at 1B.  The change in venues won’t help either as from what I’ve read, the Angels ballpark is roughly equivalent to St. Louis for hitters.  Add to that the fact that Albert leaves a division that includes Cincinnati’s Great American Smallpark, the Cubs “Friendly Confines” and Pittsburgh to compete against Texas, Oakland and Seattle which aren’t exactly “hitter friendly” and you have a recipe for a step backwards.  Oh, did I mention that at 31, Pujols had the worst offensive season of his career. His career BA / OBP / SLG is .328 / .420 / .617. Last year it was .299 / .366 / .541.   He played in 147 games and had 579 AB.  Does that mean he can’t crank it back up?  No it doesn’t but with PEDS a thing of the past and HGH testing on the horizon, my money would be on him regressing, not improving.

Look, I have the utmost respect for Pujols and I would never bet against him.  His at bat with one down in the 9th trailing 7-5 in game six against Texas this year tells you everything you need to know about Albert.  Knowing full well that the season and most likely his St. Louis career hung in the balance, he pulled a Teddy Ballgame and crushed a double in the gap to ignite St. Louis’s comeback and eventual win in one of the greatest and most tension filled WS games in history.  He is…the anti-ARod, the anti LeBron.  If anybody can put a team on his back, its Pujols.  That said, he has huge challenges living up to that contract and very little upside.  I don’t get it and I’d like to think I would have stayed in St. Louis.  I wish him well.

* my son

Lets quickly replay the facts unsealed in the Grand Jury Report.  We start way back in 1998 with an investigation into improper contact between Jerry Sandusky, the accused rapist and and an underage boy that somehow results in a finding that no harm was done.  We then move to 2000 when a Janitor eye witnesses Sandusky performing oral sex on a ten year old boy in a shower.  Does the Janitor report it?  No, because he’s afraid of losing his job.  Then in 2002, we have an unpaid grad-school coaching assistant named Mike McQuery, bucking to get a paying gig who witnesses Sandusky raping a ten year old boy on a Friday night.  Does the 28 year old ex-Penn State starting QB, who was undoubtedly able to subdue the 58 year old Sandusky step in to break it up?  No.  Does McQuery report Sandusky, who was in the process of committing a felony to the Police?  No, he does not.  As a matter of fact, McQuery effectively sits on what he has just witnessed for a full day before allegedly reporting the incident to Coach Joe Paterno.  And when he does report it to Paterno on a Saturday, what does Paterno do next?  Remember, a young boy’s life may be in danger here.  Paterno also waits an entire day before allegedly reporting it to his superiors,  Athletic Director, Tim Curley, and Vice President, Glenn Schultz, who in turn notified the 600k man, Penn State President Graham Spanier.   What happens after that? Effectively nothing.  Sandusky has his rights to bring young boys to Penn State facilities revoked.  It was a toothless edict as Sandusky continued bringing young boys to Penn State as late as 2007.

If you’ve read this far, you are probably looking for the punch line and here it is.   I’ve read reams of reports on this situation over the last few days and one thing that is universally lacking in all accounts is motivation.  The pundits have all offered up opinions as to what must be be done from here.  None have speculated as to the “Why”.  No one dares say what must be said.  Well, if you’ve been reading my blog at all over these past few years, you know that motivation is the what I seek at all times. I’m not nearly as fascinated with outcomes as I am with what causes people to do what they do. We know that Paterno et al failed to do what most rationale people would do under similar circumstances. I say most because there certainly are a few out there that would have done EXACTLY as Paterno and gang did which was nothing.  The linking thread?  Money and an empire to protect.  You see, from the Janitor, to McQuery to Paterno, to the Administrators, the stakes got higher and higher.  But to each, what they were protecting was far more valuable than the lives of a few expendable boys from the wrong side of the tracks.  For the Janitor and McQuery, its relative pocket-change.  But when we get to Paterno, Curley, Schultz and Spanier, we are now talking about tens and probably hundreds of millions.  So they had a choice.  Report specifics to the Police or Shit-Can it.  Even though they had nothing to do with Sandusky, and nothing to hide, you can see their thought pattern.  Police reports lead to reporters.  And reporters lead to scandals.  Scandals lead to lost recruits and big-time donors.  Then god-forbid, the team starts to lose.  And when losses mount, well you know that heads are gonna roll.  Penn State stunk in the early 2000s around the time of Sandusky’s reign of terror and the last thing Paterno needed at that point was s scandal.  Hell, he was 74 years old and had been coaching there for 50 years plus.  He was just getting started.  So he and the rest of these criminals did what they had to to bury it and keep the cash registers humming.

I still hear way to much lawyer-speak and wishy-washy BS surrounding this case.  You have two eye witness accounts of Sandusky committing sex crimes against young boys.  You have coaches and administrators who had everything to lose and nothing to gain in reporting the incident burying the case.  And you had dozens of the most vulnerable children who had their lives stolen from them by a man in Sandusky who basically created a boy-farm for one purpose…to serve his carnal needs.  There cannot be any grey area here.  Sandusky is a given.  He goes away for life.  Paterno, McQuery, Curley, Schultz and Spanier must not only lose their jobs but must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  I keep praying that once the world sees a few of these guys do the perp walk and hard time, it just might make the next time different.  Maybe a McQuery steps in and rescues the young boy.  Maybe the janitor drops a dime.  And maybe a Paterno get summarily fired.  He knew about Sandusky as far back as 1998, “retired” him in 1999, but let him have the run of the place after that with young boys.  I keep praying for a world where people do the right thing.  But when mega-bucks and empires are involved, prayers go unanswered.

I was 14 years old at the time and had a paper-route.  I remember waking up early the next morning at about 5:00am or so to find out who won.  I was nervous as I unbundled the morning stack of papers.  When I cracked the paper open, I froze in disbelief.  Frazier had won.  I read about the fight, but it just didn’t register that anybody could actually beat the great Ali.  I have always been in awe about what Frazier accomplished that night.  Nobody, not Namath, not Koufax, not Mantle, Unitas, Montana, Russell, Jordan, Orr, Gretsky etc. etc. etc. ever won a bigger “match”.  I can think of no greater tribute to an athlete than to acknowledge that.  RIP Smokin’ Joe.