Witch Hunt 101

Instructors for Witch Hunters:

1. You must find someone to truly dislike, or you must truly like yourself so much that you don't care what you say about others.
2. You must find something that everyone else hates about that person (or people), or hates about what that person could be doing.
3. You must be able to validate, through any means, that whatever you are accusing the 'witch' of doing.

This is not the dictionary definition, but often people are accused and tried in the court of public opinion. Even if they are not guilty, or they are guilty of a lesser offense, the public has a tendency to kick, maim and mutilate whoever they can. I look around the blog posts and the message boards and I see a witch hunt in Major League Baseball.

In 2003, a test for PEDs occured. Beyond that, most of us, most of you, have NO idea what happened. Even the Players Union and MLB came out today and basically said that this was not what we thought it was. I'm willing to bet that some of you see the MLB and the MLBPA playing mind tricks on you, but the bigger picture is this:

Laws are being broken. Did you remember that there is a tacit right to privacy in the US? The First, Third and Fourth Amendments to the constitution, as well as several court cases have told us that. I could go on, but the simple fact is this: I am sick and tired of seeing our constitution trampled due to irresponsible lawyers.

People are, simply, finding the 'witches' that they want to find and accusing them of consuming PEDs, when the bigger story isn't really there. Stop the damned witch hunt and just fix the sport!

Plaxico - The Next Part

Plaxico Burress... again the outside and negative part of sport. Plaxico is being railroaded and that's what I believe. I think his treatment by the New York Justice System is not justified.

He did break the law in New York, so I understand why he needs to 'be punished', and as we know from various places, ignorance of the law is no excuse.

I think that people forget that he shot himself in the leg the day after Sean Taylor was killed, in his home, while sleeping. There is no sense of 'a reason' for the law to be broken. Sometimes, laws are ridiculous. This is one of them.

Father's Day...

It's been a long weekend watching the US Open. My poor husband, and his only love: golf. He's been trying to watch as much as he can and just as soon as it seems to get interesting, the rain starts falling too hard or the lightening starts.

I tried, just the other day, to tell a friend that golfers weren't whimps. The only other sport that plays in the rain is football. And even football games can get called for lightening. Golfers play until the golf course gets unplayable, and it's not them that makes the decision. My hubby is a father. He wants to start playing golf with his kids. I wish that they would. That drama is for another story in another place.

---

My Dad is a man who loves his baseball. In particular, he loves the history of the sport and loves the history of his favorite team: the St. Louis Cardinals. He's now rooting for the local, Evansville Otters. They're not having the best of years, but that's okay, he's still rooting for the team.

Next week, not for Father's Day but for his birthday, we're heading to St. Louis, for a Friday and Sunday watching the Cardinals. Saturday is reserved for the Hill, the Zoo and hopefully the Botanical Garden. It'll be a lot of walking for my parents, so I doubt we'll make it to see everything. It'll be a Saturday, which means that the travel around will be a little more 'stilted'.

But we're going to be spending quality time in some of the most expensive seats watching Albert and company hopefully beat an American league team. The Cardinals have had decent luck and decent playing against the AL Central (7-4 this year, thus far) and playing against Minnesota next week. Happy Early Birthday to my Dad. And Happy Father's Day to my Husband and my Dad. And last, but definitely not least, Happy Father's Day to all the Dads out there.

Plaxico - PreTried

I will be the first to say I don't like the Plaxico Burress of the media. I just don't like the over-active arrogance that I see, and I don't like what he seems to stand for: athletes who are so 'good' that they are better than the rest of us.

They aren't. But that's another story for another day.

But Plaxico Burress is a man who has been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion before we really know the whole truth. We know he had a gunshot wound to the leg. We know that there was a gun involved. Everything beyond that is basically conjecture.

We apparently know that he had a permit to carry a gun in Florida that expired. In some places that I have read, apparently gun laws in New York are so strict that they don't recognize other states' laws (what, no multi-state compact?). So, we can probably say that this is ignorance of the law (if we are pre-trying and pre-convicting) is probably Mr. Burress' worst offense (outside of the discharge of the weapon).

What really gets me about all this is that Plaxico Burress shot himself in the leg the same week ESPN the Magazine comes out with the story of the NFL after the home invasion killing of Sean Taylor. These guys are walking contradictions: they are the biggest, baddest athletes we have in this country and they're scared beyond belief. Many NFL athletes of the 'good old days' were playboys and I'm sure that there are some today.

They have the money to do anything but be anonymous. Any other young man would be expected to go out on a Friday or Saturday night. These guys, they have a job that makes them play on Sunday, so Friday should be their night. So, are they not supposed to be social? Are they not supposed to be 'out there' to meet people?

That's my question for the people ready to castigate Burress and his teammates for being out and about. The only thing is the ridiculous law that they are hammering him for, even if he was the only one who got hurt. I was listening to Mike and Mike the other morning and Jack Ford said something that was interesting, that Plaxico Burress is being, essentially punished for his fame.

And I have issue with that.

My Thoughts on Barack Obama's Thoughts on the Playoff

(or the lack of a playoff, as it were).

As it turns out, even though I have friends and family who did not vote for Barack Obama, they heartily agree with what he said on "Mike and Mike in the Morning" a few weeks ago. "I would have my attorney general investigate possibly a college football playoff system via executive order". That's what he said.

It's a shame, an absolute shame, that the college football post season cannot get anything better than a bunch of computers and a few humans (who didn't play or coach any of the games) decide who the national champion should be.

It's broken. It needs to be fixed.

Since the bowls can't go back to the way they were (and fix the national championship problem) then there should be another option. The sweet sixteen plays the first week of January. This is the top 16 teams in the country playing in eight games, weighted so that the better team plays at home. Then, the following week, the 'elite eight' plays in the bowl games, with the final four playing (and rotating) through the four bowl sites and the national championship being played the third week in January.

I think this would make it much better and not depreciate the value of the bowls.

Of course, in an effort to fix it, it got broken in the first place. Who knows what's actually right?