Jason Giambi is a Cheater

That's no assumption. It's a fact. Some idiots are posting on ESPN.com that he's a man for owning up. He's a man for being able to make millions of dollars via cheating? You HAVE to be kidding me!

Again, this is no assumption: he admitted he cheated in the leaked grand jury testimony and while I think it's vile that the testimony was leaked (hey, at least they're sending the dope who leaked it to jail), he did cheat. Plus, a couple of years later when the world already KNEW he was a cheater, he cheated again with amphetamines, and got caught.

He's no man for agreeing to talk to Senator Mitchell and issuing an apology for using steroids. The only reason he did that is because Bud Selig put a gun to his head.

It accomplishes nothing. By pointing the gun at Mr. Giambi's head, Mr. Selig gets absolutely nothing useful in return. Giambi adamantly agreed to talking only about his own usage (he will NOT talk about anyone else) and issued an apology.

We already KNEW he was a cheater and he's already apologized although before today he was only apologizing for "that stuff". Today's apology specifically used the word steroids.

The only thing this accomplishes is it gives the appearance that Bud Selig tried to do something (even if it accomplishes nothing). I am results and solutions-oriented, however I know we live in a world where appearances matter. But when you look just the littlest bit under the surface, the appearance is, it's worthless in terms of actually accomplishing anything.

Is the American public and Congress stupid enough to buy it? Perhaps not, but perhaps the American public at large and Congress is lazy enough to not look under the surface at all and so sick of the whole business that it is enough.

At least until Barry gets to 750, then ESPN will be all over it 24x7. In the meanwhile, look at Giambi's sh*t eating grin! It's as if to say, "I cheated and laughed all the way to the bank, hahahahahah!"

What do you think about cheating in Baseball? Do you think Barry Bonds is worse than Giambi? Better? The same?

Update 17:40 PDT: The meeting between Giambi and Senator Mitchell is will not happen until July at the the earliest. The reason? They can't get all of the lawyers necessary to be available at the same time until then.

Who is Most Responsible for the Steroids ERA? ESPN, That’s Who!

The thing to remember, and I sort of forget it myself from time to time – it's the E in ESPN. It stands for entertainment. The most important thing is that you be entertained. The sports are…secondary.

ESPN perfected the highlight reel. ESPN indeed provoked Barry Bonds who when Sammy and Mark were dominating SportsCenter EVERY SINGLE NIGHT in the summer of 1998, Barry Bonds had to see that and think, "WOW! I am so much better than those guys, but NO LOVE. If I cheated like they did I would be on ESPN even more than either of them!!"

And folks, this is why the problem probably won't ever get fixed. We value being entertained and controversy is way more entertaining than resolution.

When it comes to stirring controversy, ESPN is a Jedi master. ESPN totally knows how to whip people into a frenzy. I have to confess, I do like the entertainment. But I am a problem solver. ESPN.COM has a piece on whether Sammy Sosa should be in the Hall of Fame now that he's hit 600 homeruns. The commenting on that piece is…frenetic (look it up on dictionary.com, trust me, ESPN knows what it means).

Jerry Crasnick is the only one there who doesn't have small stones and said "No" he wouldn't vote for Sosa.

Check out this dopey comment from pretty boy Steve Phillips (and I think he is smart, and probably just said this crap to be controversial – SP, it worked, thanks man!)

Sosa did get busted for corking a bat during his playing days. Why would a player on steroids cork his bat? He wouldn't.

Haha. That's funny as hell. That's like saying, "Why would a guy who cheats and lies in one way ever cheat and lie in any other way? He wouldn't."

You HAVE to be kidding me!!

I love Jason Stark and he is a solid baseball writer, who is having a hard time trying to rationalizing his ethics:

As I wrote when I voted for McGwire, I don't feel comfortable casting votes based on assumptions. Or popular opinion.

I am OK with this because by this logic Bonds gets in too. I'm ok with allowing all of the cheaters with HOF numbers into the HOF, I'm not OK with picking and choosing which cheaters you pick though. But this points to a big part of the problem. Jason Stark's job is baseball. If he doesn't have access to players, managers, GMs, etc., he simply can't do his job very well. If he tells the truth his access will be limited. It's a part of the way the real world works.

Still, I personally am OK with using my brain and making assumptions with it. I can assume that Barry Bonds was lying his butt off when he said "I didn't know it wasn't flaxseed oil!" I can assume that when Jason Giambi admitted using steroids and then 3 years later got caught using amphetamines that Steve Phillips' logic is flawed.

I can assume that Bud Selig knew about Sosa and McGwire and Bonds and didn't do anything because we loved Sosa and McGwire and at least here in San Francisco, Bonds. And I think if Bonds was only at 600 HR right now there wouldn't be such a fuss over him either.

I can assume controversy around steroids is more lucrative for ESPN than no controversy.

I can assume all these things easily enough…because they are true. That Jack Nicholson quote from the movie holds up. Most of you people can't handle the truth, and ESPN is laughing all the way to the bank.

But you know what? It is entertaining as hell. Thanks ESPN!

Bud Selig is a Liar: Why I love Ted Leonsis and Mark Cuban

A little background for those of you who don't know me is in order. I am definitely in the statistically small group of people who knew who Mark Cuban was before he was a billionaire or knew who Ted Leonsis was before he was en route to becoming a billionaire (he's not there yet, but it's on his list of things to do) and owned all or parts of the Washington Capitals (NHL), Washington Wizards (NBA) and Washington Mystics (WNBA). Both Mark and Ted were very good to me going back some 10+ years now. One thing I love in my recent contact with these guys is that fame and success did not seem to change the overall makeup and drive of these two men.

I am grateful to both of them because at a time when I had a little bit of fire in my belly they took the spark and poured some gasoline on it and for me personally that's an extraordinary lovely thing.

Lying goes on all around us. We're lied to constantly. Interestingly as Ted and Mark both own sports franchises… Well think about this, as of a year ago, Mark had been fined $1.6 million dollars (that's probably more money than I have ever had at once)by the NBA. Why? He was fined for what he said, which was, an honest portrayal of how he felt. He was fined $1.6 million dollars for being honest. The league seems to believe that honesty is NOT the best policy for the NBA. I actually don't have strong feelings on David Stern or the NBA, certainly not in the way Cuban or Leonsis probably would.

I don't really know the inner workings of the NBA enough to comment on the inner workings of it or well enough to comment on whether David Stern is a person who acts with both the best interests of the NBA and integrity. It seems to me like he does, but I don't know well enough.

But I know enough about baseball, it's inner workings, psychology, values, etc., to know the following: Bud Selig is a liar. The owners and the management of the San Francisco Giants are…liars. Bud Selig is lying about Steroids. Yes, I said lying about it. And if he wishes to take me to court for slander, fine. All Selig can hope for is that by the time all of the "what did he know and when did he know it" comes out, that he'll be gone. He's playing the game of "musical chairs" and basically what Bud is probably hoping for is that by the time the music stops he's not around even LOOKING for a chair anymore.

This game works this way. The American public is in denial about how much we really like the results of steroids (I am not in denial about this at all, but sometimes I wish I still was!). The truth is, especially given the costs of attending this stuff, we want our professional athletes to be SUPER human. Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa AND Barry Bonds delivered. We the fans like the results, the owners liked the results, and Bud Selig liked the results. You could say that there was so much covering of eyes, ears and mouths by Selig and ownership (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil), BUT there was also so much steroid usage that there's no way they got through this period without seeing or at least hearing about someone getting a needle jabbed in their butt. I'm not talking about last year or the year before either. I'm talking 1998-2002 when it was going on, everyone more or less knew it and then looked the other way.

Human nature is that when the stakes are high, people will cheat. This is why Jason Giambi cheated. And why, not only after he got caught (via leaked testimony – and the guy who leaked it is going to JAIL – I'm thrilled about that, probably the biggest smile of the week for me!!!) for steroids, he got caught for amphetamines (greenies) just last year. But Giambi came out with the truth:

I was wrong for doing that stuff. What we should have done a long time ago was stand up -- players, ownership, everybody -- and said: `We made a mistake.' We should have apologized back then and made sure we had a rule in place and gone forward. ... Steroids and all of that was a part of history. But it was a topic that everybody wanted to avoid. Nobody wanted to talk about it."

Although Giambi is a confirmed cheater, he is, in my opinion, absolutely correct about this. Here's how Selig is handling this: he's pressuring Giambi to cooperate with the steroids investigation: name some names or I will suspend you (more or less).

If Hank Aaron wants to be upset with Barry Bonds, I don't have any issue with that at all. But Bud Selig? Please. You knew Bud, and you looked the other way and did nothing. But then you're the kind of guy who would say, "Yeah, I'm an owner, but just go ahead and make me the commissioner!" We already knew right there this is a man lacking in integrity. But it made a lot of people a lot of money and produced a product people wanted to pay for. Everyone was really happy about this: the owners (they made tons of money on this), the players (they made tons of money – and much more with performance enhancements) and the fans, who couldn't eat it up fast enough.

But Bud is a lying hypocrite, so are the owners, and really so are most of the fans. Giambi did tell the truth in that quote above, that's exactly how it is. But once again, your kids are subtley getting the message: honesty isn't the best policy and cheating works – whether you're a player, the owner or the commissioner. It's a bad message to send. Giambi told the truth and the negative reinforcing feedback is, "Whoever told you honesty was the best policy, was lying!"

I love that there are guys like Cuban and Leonsis out there: again, they aren't perfect, but they aren't motivated to cheat and lie due to the stakes being high. They aren't perfect, but in a world massively lacking it at times, these two gentleman have some integrity, and that's something I value very much.

As for steroids, I think this ultimately will hit the NFL hardest of all. We haven't anywhere near begun to hear the last of it. Sorry Mr. Goodell.