Baseball finally has its karmic payback for the years of ignoring/cashing in for the 40 years of the PED era – yeah, 40. People now hate talking about the Hall of Fame.
Oh, they still do it, and they will do it every time the topic comes up. But topic fatigue has set in, and it’s not going away. The problem is that the same names are going to come up every year (Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz and Randy Johnson will be the newbies who cut the front of the line next year), leaving us to re-chew the Four Horsemen of the Steroid Apocalypse, plus Tim Raines, plus Larry Walker, plus blah-blah-blah-de-blah-SHUT UP!
[HALL OF FAME BALLOTS: Ratto | Baggarly | Poole]
There is no fun in rehashing old leftovers. There is no restaurant known for its 12-time baked potato. We have hit the wall on the entire PED topic, and while we will reinflate it, we will do it with diminishing relish each year.
In fact, it would be of no surprise if Bob Costas was on a Hall of Fame panel at some prestigious university some time soon and just walked off in mid-sentence muttering that he’d rather watch one of those “Jackass” sports.
And when you’ve lost Bob Costas, you’ve lost America.
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Lost in all this is logo news that under normal circumstances would make people salivate like junkies who just had their gums done. First, the Cleveland Indians have replaced Chief Wahoo, the grinning Indian with James Caan’s jaw, with a block-C as their prime logo. Wahoo will still be on the home hats and sleeves, but the team is clearly backing away from the cartooniest aspects of its branding mechanism.
And in Pittsburgh, the Jolly Roger has been canned after 78 years of largely uninterrupted service with the Pirates. Not sure what pressure group had the influence there, but most pirates no longer wear do-rags, so maybe the impetus came from the Bravo Channel.
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Compare, contrast and throw up: Andrew Bynum’s career manipulations, and J.R. Smith’s career manipulations.
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The WWE has its own network, or will by February 24, just in time for Wrestlemania. But it will fail, and miserably, if its late night talk show isn’t Piper And The Sheik. If you have to ask who, you’re not cool enough to have the $10 a month it will take to buy the package.
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The hot college football rumor: Lane Kiffin as the new offensive coordinator at Saban A&I, replacing Doug Nussmeier, who went to Michigan to be the offensive coordinator under Brady Hoke. Gee, I wonder what A.J. McCarron’s mom is going to tweet about that.
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And finally, Dan LeBatard’s Hall of Fame ballot, which he turned over to Deadspin, turned out to be not that much different than the one from the actual voters, which tells you that this is the future of the Hall of Fame no matter in whose hands it is placed. If I were you, and for purposes of this next sentence I will be, I would surrender my car keys to the closest responsible adult (or dog) and drink to the comprehensive trivialization of Baseball Immortality. Victory through defeat is finally ours.
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