Good Sports

I know you all hate my rambling about baseball, if only because YOUR team didn't make the World Series like mine did. HAHA, ya losers!

However, I DO want to touch on the subject of sportsmanship. I must say that this baseball postseason has been littered with poor sportsmanlike conduct on all sides.

First batter up: Albert Pujols. In game 1 of the National League Championship Series, Tom Glavine of the New York Mets threw a brilliant shutout against the St. Louis Cardinals. When asked about Glavine's performance, Pujols (who went 0-3 with a strikeout and a costly baserunning blunder) said this:

"He wasn’t good. He wasn’t good at all,” Pujols said of Glavine, who threw seven innings of four-hit ball for the victory. “I think we hit the ball hard, we didn’t get some breaks. “I say he wasn’t good at all. We just didn’t get some opportunities and that’s it. . . (Glavine did the) same thing that he always does. Throw a changeup, fastball and that was it. I just think we should’ve done a better job than we did."

Lovely. You get your ass handed to you by Glavine, a man in his forties with nearly 300 wins, and all you can do is mock his performance? Since when is that sportsmanlike conduct? Since Roid Rage?

Second batter up: Scott Rolen. Scott Rolen, the St. Louis third baseman, had a batting average since June that nearly slipped into imaginary numbers. Every flailing swing at a high fastball with runners in scoring position sent Cardinal fans everywhere screaming for their shrinks.

So Tony LaRussa, the manager, did what you or I would do without thinking: he benched Rolen during one of the playoff games. I mean, Rolen's excrement that day had a better shot at driving in a run than he did.

Of course, this didn't sit too well with Mr. EgoTrip (that's Rolen, if you're unsure). Rolen whined to the media about being benched. He sulked in the dugout, forlornly gazing onto the field like Bambi looking for his mother's blown-out face. He avoided TALKING to LaRussa FOR OVER A WEEK. Which is, if you're keeping score, what a BITCH does when she doesn't get an engagement ring the first time she cried for one.

Note to Rolen: You're a big, muscular ox with a (presumably) large cock and millions of dollars in the bank. Act like a fucking MAN.

Third batter up: Kenny Rogers. In the second game of the World Series, pitcher Kenny Rogers of the Detroit Tigers begins twirling a masterpiece against the St. Louis Cardinals in sub-Antarctic conditions. Suddenly, during the first inning, the cameras zoom in on this:

Obviously, Rogers smeared pine tar on his pitching hand. While pine tar helps a pitcher keep a grip on the ball, it also helps to deaden the spin of the ball in flight, causing it to flutter like a knuckleball. Such an effect would be highly desirable for a pitcher. Unfortunately, it's ILLEGAL.

Rogers managed to wriggle out of the situation by claiming it was simply dirt, and he promptly marched into the dugout and washed off the offending material. Which then not only makes him a CHEAT. It makes him a LYING CHEAT.

My point in all of this isn't to talk baseball AGAIN. It's to point out the continued failure of millionaire sports figures to play by the simple rules of their childish sports, and act like men while doing it.

Boys, grow the fuck up. PLAY BALL!!!