For trying to run over his girlfriend with a car.

The Indians swooped in and grabbed the top remaining free agent on the board, center fielder Michael Bourn. According to multiple reports, the 30-year-old agreed to a four-year, $48 million contract with Cleveland. A fifth-year vesting option worth $12 million is predicated on the former Brave accumulating 550 plate appearances in year four.

Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs is cautiously optimistic about Bourn going forward:

The last four years, Bourn’s posted about the same WAR as Prince Fielder, Ian Kinsler, and Josh Hamilton. He’s done it as an average bat, and there are questions regarding how well he’ll age — Dave Cameron looked at his offense, and Cameron also looked at his defense. What Bourn has done isn’t necessarily what Bourn is going to do, and in December he turned 30 years old. As a guy who relies on his legs, Bourn has a chance of going all Chone Figgins-like. But one can’t deny what Bourn has accomplished, and one can’t ignore Bourn’s performance baseline. He’s been a four-to-six-win player for four years in a row, and that’s the most important information of all.

The offseason additions of Bourn, Nick Swisher, and Drew Stubbs, suggest that Tribe fans will enjoy their new-look outfield, although Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports suspects that Swisher will see considerable time at first base and last season’s center fielder, Michael Brantley, will shift to left field.

Via the New York Post, catching great Mike Piazza’s autobiography, Long Shot, covers an array of topics, from the speculation that he took performance-enhancing drugs and was a closeted homosexual to the on-the-diamond feud with Roger Clemens to Latin ballplayers who don’t make an effort to learn English.

Piazza, who over 16 big-league seasons, principally spent with the Dodgers and Mets, posted a .308/.377/.545 slash line and 66.8 fWAR in 7745 plate appearances, is withering in his criticism of Clemens:

The 44-year-old makes no bones about holding a grudge against Clemens for beaning him during a July 8, 2000, game, and for the infamous bat-throwing incident later that season against the Yankees during the World Series.

The 98-mph fastball to his helmet could have been deadly. 

“I truly believe that if I hadn’t gotten my head down at the last instant, Clemens’ two-seamer would have struck me in the eye and possibly killed me,” he recalls. . . .

“Roger Clemens had near-perfect control. I wouldn’t have batted an eye if he had just brushed me off the plate — of course that’s what he said he was trying to do . . . But to stick it in my forehead, that’s another story altogether.”

Piazza tells how he mapped out a plan for revenge — taking karate lessons and visualizing the next time they would go at it.

“I would approach with my fist pulled back. I figured he’d throw his glove out for protection. I’d parry the glove and then get after it,” Piazza writes.

On the rumors that Big Mike is gay:

Piazza believes the persistent whispers that he was in the closet began after Mets manager Bobby Valentine said in a 2002 interview that Major League Baseball was ready for an openly gay player.

“The whole episode was such a strange, incredible phenomenon . . . I still don’t get it.

“I don’t know where the rumor came from, although I’ve heard many theories, including one that I suppose makes the most sense to me, involving a former teammate and his agent.”

Piazza doesn’t name the instigators, and is vague about how the rumor spread from there. He felt compelled to address the gossip publicly, telling reporters, “I’m not gay. I’m heterosexual. I can’t control what people think. I can say I’m heterosexual. I date women. That’s pretty much it.”

Questions about his sexuality bothered him less than the insinuation that he was somehow phony. “I found it hugely insulting that people believed I’d go so far out of my way — living with Playmates, vacationing with actresses, showing up at nightclubs — to act out a lifestyle that would amount to a charade,” he writes. “If I was gay, I’d be gay all the way.”

Long Shot goes on sale tomorrow.

More here.

From the Associated Press:

At a two-day IOC executive board meeting opening Tuesday, the IOC will also review preparations for the Winter Olympics in Sochi — less than a year away — and the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, as well as select a short list of finalists for the 2018 Youth Olympics.

Modern pentathlon, a tradition-steeped contest invented by the founder of the modern Olympics, is expected to face close scrutiny when the board considers which of the current 26 summer Olympic sports to remove from the program of the 2020 Games. Taking out one sport will make way for a new sport to be added to the program later this year.

The executive board will review a report from the IOC program commission assessing each of the sports contested at last summer’s London Olympics.

The report analyzes more than three dozen criteria, including television ratings, ticket sales, anti-doping policy and global participation and popularity. With no official rankings or recommendations contained in the report, the final decision by the 15-member executive board will likely be influenced by political, emotional and sentimental factors.

I vote that they save modern pentathlon and cut trampoline. Bouncing on a springy platform is not a sport until it’s two people battling in midair with the loser getting knocked off. Whichever sport is eliminated will have the opportunity to campaign to save its spot if it beats out seven other sports (baseball, karate, squash, roller sports, sport climbing, wakeboarding, and wushu) that are trying to feature at the 2020 Olympics. Once again, Jacques Rogge, if you’re reading this, pick squash.

Baseball already has the World Series and doesn’t need the Olympics. Squash is a global sport and would actually be fun to watch. The other sports on that list are either too new (wushu) or would be incredibly boring (sport climbing or wakeboarding). Dislike my picks for the Olympics or want to share your own thoughts? Let me know.

There’s a reason people hate Duke basketball, and it’s not jealousy of their successful squeaky-clean program:

Though Thursday night’s showdown between Duke and NC State should have been defined by the tremendous offensive performances given by both teams (Lord knows college basketball could use the pub), it was a second half cheer from the Cameron Crazies that wound up being all anyone could talk about.

Thanks to the magic of Twitter, word quickly spread after the game (which was not nationally televised) that the Duke student section had chanted “how’s your grandma” at NC State guard Tyler Lewis while he shot free-throws during the second half. Lewis’ grandmother died last week.

On his Facebook page, Justified’s Nick Searcy shares a similar anecdote from his time at UNC :

“When I was at Carolina, one of our players lost his mother and his father in a horrible shotgun murder/suicide. Duke fans, at the next game he played against them, chanted ‘How’s the Family?’”

Stay classy, Crazies.

Good morning.

Here are several links from the past week that will make the second Monday of Febr-r-ruary a bit more bearable:

• Pitchers and catchers are reporting!
• The Mariners were close to giving 2011 Cy Young Award winner Felix Hernandez a new seven-year contract totalling $175 million, but Buster Olney of ESPN subsequently learned that elbow issues put the monster deal on ice, at least temporarily.
• The Indians scooped up two familiar faces: Jason Giambi and Daisuke Matsuzaka.
• According to Nats Insider’s Mark Zuckerman, the Nats clubhouse this season will miss the positive vibes from departed Mark DeRosa. “Serving almost as an extra coach before, during and after games, DeRosa . . . even helped inspire the Nationals to victory in Game 4 of the NLDS after reading a passage from Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘The Man in the Arena’ speech.” Hmmm, I wonder what words he imparted to the team before Game 5?
• John Gibbons is back as skipper of the Jays. He spoke with Richard Griffin of the Toronto Star about an array of topics, including his transition from player to coach:

RG: The experience of not going on to establish the career that people expected obviously doesn’t mean that you weren’t paying attention, because you did manage in the Mets farm system afterwards and you’ve managed twice now for the Jays. Did you realize at the time, that you were in fact paying attention to details, to guys like Davey Johnson, maybe for a future role. You have mentioned Johnson as a major influence as a manager. Did you consciously pay attention to detail or was it just something that you absorbed?

JG: I’m one of those guys. As a catcher you’ve got to pay attention day-to-day. But consciously, I don’t think I was sitting there going, I want to manage in the big leagues, I’ve got to pay attention to what this guy’s doing. No, but you can tell who’s got it, who doesn’t. The thing I got most from Davey is Davey’s a very confident guy, I’m sure you know that. The players picked up on that. That helped those guys getting to the task.

He believed in it and that’s kind of what rubbed off on me. He’s very smart, always on the ball. He let you do your thing. He didn’t talk very often directly to a player. He very often came through a coach, especially for the young guys. But there was something about him, this guy’s on the ball. That was kind of it. But I don’t really remember noticing, saying ‘God, that’s what I want to be.’ I thought I wanted to get into coaching, but it could have been high school, it could have been college, it could have been professional. But, at that time it was sort of open.

RG: But those attributes that Davey has, of never letting your players see you react, never showing your players when you’re behind, staying on an even keel when times are tough in a game…

JG: Yeah, that’s him.

RG: Communicating with players, not necessarily face-to-face. I mean you’re going to have to do a lot of that with the number of Latin players this year to get the proper message across.

That’s something you said Davey already did. Being in charge, letting guys play the game, just get out of the way, you’ve said that’s one of your attributes. Are you just putting guys out there letting them play the game? Is it your goal to just not get in the way?

JG: I think so. The biggest mistake people make in this game is they try to control too many things. As a manager you have your job. You have to run the pitching staff, the bullpen and all that. There’s got to be some structure there. You call the shifts, but, eventually, guys that are control freaks, it catches up with them. The players are the show. When you bring in the type of players we’ve got this year, guys that have been successful, there’s a reason they’re successful. You’ve got to let them do their thing.

• Todd Helton has earned $156,490,000 over 16 big-league seasons but still has a thirst for cheap wine and lottery tickets. The Rockies first baseman was arrested in Thonrton, Colorado and booked for driving under the influence and careless driving.
• Dayn Perry of CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball opines that there was good reason for the Miami New Times to be catious in its reporting of the Biogenesis facility linked to performance-enhancing drugs and current MLB players.
• On a related note, Curt Schilling told ESPN Radio that, during his later years in Boston, “members of the [Red Sox] organization” encouraged him to use PEDs. Jed Hoyer, who was assistant general manager at the time, responded: “I can tell you it would be preposterous that [then–general manager] Theo [Epstein] or I would be involved in that.”

• Andrew McCullough of the Newark Star-Ledger interviewed Hal Steinbrenner in Tampa and discovered that the Yankees’ managing general partner, except for his fear of injuries to the veterans, is bullish on 2013.

That’s it. Have a walk-off week!

Blake Baxter of the College Fix — a student at Eureka College, Ronald Reagan’s alma mater! — reports on a University of Miami corruption scandal.

Alex Collins, one of the top high-school football players in the country, has yet to sign his scholarship letter of intent with his chosen school of Arkansas because his mom ran off with it:

ESPN 150 running back Alex Collins still has not signed his letter of intent with Arkansas. According to two sources familiar with the situation, his mother showed up Wednesday at South Plantation High School, confiscated the documents and left.

Andrea McDonald fled with the paperwork because she doesn’t want Collins to leave home, the sources said. Collins is 18 and does not need a parent or guardian to co-sign his letter of intent.

Per NCAA rules and because he hasn’t received a signed letter of intent, Arkansas coach Bret Bielema, appearing on ESPNU’s broadcast of national signing day, said he could not talk about Collins.

South Plantation athletic director Mike Collins, who is not related to Alex, said later Wednesday that “the family was not on the same page and needed to work things out.”

What makes the story even stranger is that Collins doesn’t live with his mother but with his high-school football coach.

In honor of national signing day, here’s the story of Reuben Foster. Reuben, a highly rated linebacker, was verbally committed to Auburn University only to decommit and verbal to Alabama. The only problem? Reuben has an Auburn tattoo, and he intends to keep it:

The nation’s No. 1 inside linebacker and No. 16 overall recruit in the ESPN 150 announced Monday night that he now plans to attend recently-crowned national champion Alabama. He had previously verbally committed to Alabama two years ago, decommitted last July, gave a verbal to Auburn, and then made a second decommitment in December when former head coach Gene Chizik was fired along with his lead recruiter, Trooper Taylor.

Foster Tweeted in December that he is not getting rid of his Auburn tattoo in support of his cousin, former Auburn player Ladarious Phillips, who was killed in a shooting near campus.

 With all this drama over his tattoo, it’s a good thing he isn’t going to Ohio State.

Details here.

Enjoy.

Now that it’s finally lights out for the NFL postseason — get it, Superdome owners? — may we please pay attention to serious business related to the National Pastime?

For example . . .

Via the Washington Post’s Dan Steinberg, insecure Phillies fans are bludgeoning Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports and MLB Network for . . . changing his Twitter avatar.

Behold, the supposed act of treachery:

The Let Teddy Win blog recorded some of the reactions from the Phanatic’s hypersensitive friends and loved ones.

@Eric_Devlin @Ken_Rosenthal go back to the phanatic! Those chumps in Dc aren’t real fans

@Rodeojones000 @Ken_Rosenthal A better avatar would have been you injecting PEDs into their cheating, 21-game-winning pitcher.

@beef5669 @Ken_Rosenthal Wait the #Nationals have fans?????

‏@mager_ryan @Ken_Rosenthal lets make this clear the nats have one great season and think there #1 us phillies fans ran this division for the past 7 year

@phillyaws @Ken_Rosenthal no way they could come up with a photo of a full stadium

‏@BigDaddy_NOLT @Ken_Rosenthal as the phillie phanatic zooms past them all on his quad to steal the victory! #phillies

More here.

Now that Ray Lewis has delivered his final inspirational rant and done his last squirrel dance, it’s time for armchair scribes like me to assess the Ravens legend’s place in history. In doing a quick postmortem on Lewis’s Hall of Fame career, I’m going to set aside the double murder and deer-antler spray and focus on his accomplishments and accolades, which are legion: ten All-Pro selections, two NFL Defensive Player of the Year Awards, 227 starts, sole membership in history’s 40-sack–30-inteception club. I’m one of those people who will actually cop to being a Lewis fan, so don’t take this as garden-variety anti-Ray bias, but I’m not ready to anoint him history’s greatest defender. Lewis is the perfect backer for the soundbite era, but in terms of the linebacking Mt. Olympus, he’s merely one of many immortals.

For all of his 17 seasons, he’s been standing and woofing on the shoulders of giants. In the 1960s, Dick Butkus and Ray Nitschke redefined middle-linebacker play with their relentlessness and unbridled aggression. Nitschke was the heart and soul of five NFL championship defenses for the Packers and, like Lewis, was a two-time Super Bowl winner. Butkus merely set the standard by which all backers are measured, earning All-Pro honors six times.

In 1970, Butkus had possibly the greatest season any linebacker has ever enjoyed: 132 tackles, 84 assists, three interceptions, and two fumble recoveries. Those 216 combined stops are 33 more than Lewis’s career-best 183. The Steelers’ Jack Lambert took up the mantle in the 1970s, averaging 146 tackles per season through his first ten seasons and greeting each ball carrier with the gentle temperament of a rabid honey badger. With his fearsome gap-toothed scowl, Lambert embodied the blue-collar attitude of the Steel Curtain, perhaps history’s greatest defense.

The 1980s brought the heir to Butkus’s throne in fellow Bear Mike Singletary, the man in the middle of the angry, intimidating Chicago defense. Scouring the field with the scariest eyes in football history, Samurai Mike was a ten-time Pro Bowler and, like Lewis, a two-time Defensive Player of the Year. And I haven’t even mentioned the outside backers. Lawrence Taylor single-handedly revolutionized the sport; Jack Ham had 53 career takeaways to Lewis’s 50; and Derrick Thomas was a quarterback-terrorizing machine during his Hall of Fame career.

One final factoid should take Lewis down a peg: In 14 seasons as a starter, linebacker London Fletcher has averaged more tackles, sacks, and forced fumbles per season than Ray-Ray, but he’s done so quietly and professionally; as a result, nobody’s nominating Fletcher for GOAT. Lewis is a legend, but let’s set aside his peculiar genius for self-promotion and stipulate that he’s got plenty of company in the defensive football pantheon

— Rob Doster is senior editor for Athlon Sports.

Personally I think people spend too much time discussing the importance of the halftime show. 

For example, the New York Times gushed with this headline,

Beyoncé Silences Doubters With Intensity at Halftime

What doubters? Everybody knows she can sing. She’s the one who doubted her ability during the inauguration. I was just making fun of her for faking the national anthem with, you know, the entire world watching. The issue is life’s gotten to the point where even the most important events need to be staged to give an appearance of perfection. What if Beyoncé had sung live and had her voice seize up because of the cold? So what? Life goes on. 

And nothing emphasized that life goes on better last night than when after Beyoncé gave her performance, the Super Dome blew a fuse — or something — and the entire staged production was put on hold. Well, that’s how life works.

The game, which until then had been a rather boring blowout, went on to finish as one of the most exciting Super Bowls in recent memory. You can try to stage things all you want, but in the end it’s the reality that people remember. 

As for Beyoncé, she’s joined a long list of marching bands, singers beyond their prime, and Up With People as headliners of the halftime show. 

But since the halftime show has become a ratings event unto itself, it’s on to New York City for the 2014 Super Bowl where halftime producers not only have to come up with a better show than Beyoncé, but deal with weather related issues as well. Good luck with that. 

Good morning.

Here are several go-to links from the past week to make the first Monday in February a bit more bearable:

• Congratulations to Cal Tech’s baseball squad on its first victory in nearly ten years. On Saturday the Beavers opped Pacifica, 9–7, winning for the first time since February 15, 2003.
• John Sickels rates the minor-league systems of all MLB 30 teams. Here are his top three and bottom three:

1) St. Louis Cardinals (ranked #5 last year): Strengths: Everything. They have pitching, hitting, high upside, and depth. They have a proven track record of player development. Weaknesses: none really. They could use a shortstop with a better bat but so could most teams.

2) Seattle Mariners (#4 last year): Strength: Good balance between hitting and pitching, strength up the middle with Zunino, Miller, Franklin; potential ace arms; good knack for finding underappreciated college hitters. Weaknesses: Persistent problems with Latin American prospects showing poor strike zone judgment and contact issues.

3) Tampa Bay Rays (7): System was already strong and trade with Royals just adds more. Strength: considerable pitching depth; good mix of players who will be ready now/soon (Myers, Archer, Odorizzi) plus guys at lower levels with high upside. Weaknesses: upper level hitting other than Myers.

28) Chicago White Sox (30): White Sox scouts can find players when given the resources to do so, but years of cheapskate draft strategy and poor non-Cuban Latin American focus have crippled system depth. Strengths: toolsy outfielders, with Courtney Hawkins looking excellent from 2012 draft. Weaknesses: overall depth, particularly with potential starting pitching. It will be interesting to see if new GM Rick Hahn can turn this around quickly.

29) Los Angeles Angels (18): Big drop now that Mike Trout has graduated and other players have been traded. Strengths: decent group of position players with Kaleb Cowart the best of the lot. Several potential bullpen arms. Weaknesses: impact pitching, especially potential starting pitchers. Overall depth.

30) Detroit Tigers (23): Very thin in all respects. Strengths: Nick Castellanos and Avisail Garcia could help soon, and there are some potential role players behind them. Bullpen arms. Weaknesses: lack of depth almost everywhere, particularly hitting.

• While embracing the wins-above-replacement metric as a useful tool, ESPN columnist Jim Caple cautions against relying solely on WAR when evaluating talent.
• Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports wonders if harsher penalties for the use of performanc-enhancing drugs in baseball will be much of a deterrent.
• What goes into the process of teams’ insuring against player injuries? The Economist offers some insights:

As salaries in professional sports have soared over the past few decades, so has the price tag associated with the risks inherent in such strenuous physical activity. Athletes in sports like golf and tennis often buy their own insurance, though those with recurring conditions have trouble getting coverage. But sports teams that offer guaranteed contracts face huge losses if stars are injured, even only temporarily. As a result, the economics of the business are now shaped by insurance markets just as they are by TV contracts or ticket sales. . . .

One big risk for insurers is moral hazard. Players insured against a career-ending injury may have little incentive to make a comeback if they have already received a payout; clubs with temporary disability policies have an incentive to keep a player sidelined until he is fully healthy. Jeff Moorad, a former boss of baseball’s San Diego Padres, recalls a debate over Chris Young, a pitcher recovering from a shoulder injury in 2010. “As a matter of principle, we didn’t stand in his way, and he came back and contributed,” he says. “But the accounting department much preferred that he stay on the disabled list.”

• Sports economist and MLB consultant Andrew Zimbalist talks with the Tampa Bay Times’ Steven Nohlgren on the Rays’ ongoing attempt to get a new ballpark built in Tampa.
• Bruce Markusen of the Hardball Times pens another must-read, this one devoted to the baseball history of the Alou family. 
• Geoff Young of Baseball Prospectus lets us know everything we wanted to know about Barry Bonds and his intenational walks. Among his items of information:

80 This is the number of times Sid Fernandez and Bonds faced each other. Fernandez never intentionally walked Bonds. No one else has done so with more plate appearances. Dwight Gooden, a former teammate of Fernandez, is second with 75.

Paul Assenmacher and Chuck McElroy show up farther down the list. If you needed someone to retire Bonds, you could do worse than those two. He hit a combined .114/.171/.300 against them, with 18 strikeouts in 76 plate appearances. Even then, seven of his eight hits went for extra bases.

86 This is how many intentional walks Liván Hernández, the active leader, has issued in his career. Hernández faced Bonds 30 times and issued just one free pass. Bonds went 10-for-21 with four homers, so maybe that wasn’t the optimal strategy.

110 This is how many unintentional walks Shawon Dunston drew from 1989 to 2002. That covered a span of 1,340 games and 4,435 plate appearances.

Dunston and Bonds played together for the Giants in 1996, 1998, and 2001-2002. Dunston drew five walks over those final two seasons. Bonds drew the same number on September 12, 2002.

• For those living in or near Houston, BPro and the Astros are teaming up to offer baseball fans field-box seats to a game on Saturday, May 11, and an opportunity to meet online-magazine and front-office personalities. Details here.

• NBC Hardball Talk’s Craig Calcaterra provides details on how those interested may help County Meath in Ireland get a field of their own.

That’s it. Have a walk-off week!

New York Post:

Dan Marino is famous for his touchdowns — but the Hall of Famer’s scoring off the field is downright shocking.

The married gridiron great — a pregame analyst for CBS since 2003 who will be doing this Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast — sired a love child with a network underling and then paid her millions to keep quiet, sources have exclusively told The Post. . . .

She gave birth to their daughter, Chloe, in June 2005.

“They had an affair, and she had a baby,” said a source. “Everything was on the down-low and secretive.”

News of the affair and child comes as Marino is set to work Sunday’s big “Super Bowl Today” telecast. . . .

Marino yesterday admitted to his dalliance.

The rest here.

Forgive me for not launching into hysterics yesterday or earlier today over the revelation that the currently injured Alex Rodriguez, who admitted to taking performance enhancing drugs from 2001 to 2003, may have lied and continued to use PEDs. Other big-league players, including the Nationals’ Gio Gonzalez, were also implicated in the Miami New Times article. (In today’s Washington Post, Jack Wagner writes that the report links Gonzalez to three substances: zinc, MIC, and Aminorip, noting that it was not “immediately clear what MIC and Aminorip are, or if they appear on MLB’s list of banned substances.”)

Salem witch trial judge Bergen Record columnist Bob Klapisch minces no words in his lede:

Say goodbye to Alex Rodriguez and whatever good memories you have of this disgraced slugger, assuming there are any left to conjure. A-Rod has been linked (again) to performance-enhancing drugs, as recently as last season, putting the finishing touches on his now-utterly trashed legacy — baseball’s all-time fraud.

Writing in Sports Illustrated, Tom Verducci seems to think that this report will taint the Yankees’ most recent World Series triumph:

In any case, the news is worse for Rodriguez than it is for anybody else in the report, if only because of his stature and that 2009 confessional production under the tent in the Yankees’ spring training complex. Until now, Rodriguez was careful to shield the Yankees from his taint, telling the story about how he stopped using PEDs before he became a Yankee — as if it made perfect sense that he used for a last-place Texas team but suddenly would have no more use for performance enhancers upon being put on the New York stage. The story seemed to fly for many people. But now, with this story, the franchise and its 2009 championship are smeared by Rodriguez’s connection to PEDs. 

UPDATE: Does anyone, including Verducci, really believe that the eight players on the 2000 Yankees whose names appeared in the Mitchell Report have smeared that world title as well?

In response, Ken Davidoff of the New York Post reminds us that the article in the Miami New Times contains mere accusations, not proof:

First, what do we actually have here? As of now, we have a terrific newspaper story that isn’t much of a prosecutorial case. We have a notebook with someone writing, “I sold drugs to A-Rod and a bunch of other guys.”

It’s going to take considerably more than that to bring down A-Rod and his pals. For starters, Anthony Bosch would have to confirm that yes, he did write that and yes, he did sell those drugs to those people. Then he’d have to provide additional evidence that these actions occurred. Canceled checks? Prescription slips? Photos of A-Rod? It’s got to be something good.

Maybe Bosch can pull that off, and maybe A-Rod actually would be suspended due to a non-analytic positive. It isn’t impossible. It’s a long way away, though, and A-Rod’s hiring of Roy Black and strong denial yesterday indicate that he’s going to fight this passionately. Which means that this is going to be a very fun story.

Still, is “a very fun story” the best way to describe what’s in store for baseball’s fans, most of whom appear enervated, not juiced, by the barrage of PED stories?

Frequent Baseball Think Factory commenter Ray DiPerna went so far as to opine to me yesterday:

I don’t understand why anyone still cares about this, on any level. The sport will never be rid of PEDs — indeed, in time there is a great chance that PEDs will be legal again and accepted; see the change in the laws against same-sex marriage or interracial marriage — and nobody has any clue which players who have been anointed ‘clean’ are actually clean.

I am not sure what to make of people whose thought process is so confused that they would still think negatively of a player for using PEDs when usage is so common, or, even worse, would think that they have the faintest notion which players presumed clean are actually clean.

While I am unwilling to go along with the notion that PEDs will be deemed kosher in my lifetime, DiPerna’s larger point stands. Why is little attention paid to players arrested for driving while intoxicated or under the influence, criminal activity that jeopardizes the lives of others? Why isn’t the fleecing of taxpayers in order to build gaudy ballparks a bigger deal?

And while we’re at it, when might we find a gaggle of sportswriters demanding that the NFL get rid of its lethal-weapon helmets once and for all?

For those Yankee fans hoping (praying?) that somehow the club will be able to part ways with the hobbled slugger via the insurance policy, thereby wiping away the rest of the $114 million remaining on his contract, Craig Calcaterra of NBC Sports’ Hardball Talk has some breaking news:

As Calcaterra notes elsewhere, for-profit insurance companies don’t exist to pay off specious claims, let alone fraudulent ones.

And wait, there’s still more:

Know what happens if MLB finds cause to discipline A-Rod? He gets disciplined. Know what sets forth the discipline for a PED violation? The Joint Drug Agreement. Know what does not allow for voiding a contract for PED discipline? The Joint Drug Agreement.

Of course the Yankees want A-Rod’s contract voided. It’s a crappy contract. They wanted Jason Giambi‘s voided too and didn’t try to do it after exhausting their options. Or at least appearing to exhaust them. Which is what I think this really is: red meat for the angry fans. The Yankees way of showing them and the talk radio hosts that they’re upset too and, man, how bad that A-Rod guy is.

On the bright side, only 11 days remain until pitchers and catchers report.

Ray Lewis denies using this traditional Chinese medicine to heal from his torn triceps:

Ray Lewis returned to Super Bowl media day with another controversy: allegations of cheating.

According to Sports Illustrated, the iconic Baltimore Ravens linebacker tried to obtain deer-antler velvet extract in an attempt to speed the healing for a torn triceps that sidelined him for more than half the season.

Lewis approached the makers of the deer-antler velvet extract — Sports with Alternative to Steroids — the company’s owner Mitch Ross told SI. Deer-antler spray contains IGF-1, which is on the NFL’s list of banned substances. Using the spray would be a violation of the NFL’s steroids policy.

During a podium session packed with news media, Lewis dismissed the story.

“Two years ago, that was the same report,” he said. “It’s not worthy of the press.”

When asked directly whether he had used the spray during his recovery this season, Lewis said, “Nah, never.”

Whatever happened to normal, plain-old steroids?

The Miami New Times released this shocking report based on the files of a clinic in South Florida today:

An all-star roster of professional athletes with Miami ties: San Francisco Giants outfielder Melky Cabrera, Oakland A’s hurler Bartolo Colón, pro tennis player Wayne Odesnik, budding Cuban superstar boxer Yuriorkis Gamboa, and Texas Rangers slugger Nelson Cruz. There’s even the New York Yankees’ $275 million man himself, Alex Rodriguez, who has sworn he stopped juicing a decade ago. . . .

Born and raised in Miami and starring on the diamond since he was 18 years old, A-Rod admitted in 2009 that he had used steroids, claiming in an ESPN interview that his doping was limited to a three-year window — 2001 through 2003 — while he played under a record contract for the Texas Rangers. Ever since then, A-Rod claimed, he’d been playing clean. He’d never failed an MLB drug test since penalties were put into place.

Yet there was his name, over and over again, logged as either “Alex Rodriguez,” “Alex Rod,” or his nickname at the clinic, “Cacique,” a pre-Columbian Caribbean chief. Rodriguez’s name appears 16 times throughout the records New Times reviewed.

Take, for instance, one patient list from Bosch’s 2009 personal notebook. It charts more than 50 clients and notes whether they received their drugs by delivery or in the office, how much they paid, and what they were taking.

There, at number seven on the list, is Alex Rodriguez. He paid $3,500, Bosch notes. Below that, he writes, “1.5/1.5 HGH (sports perf.) creams test., glut., MIC, supplement, sports perf. Diet.” HGH, of course, is banned in baseball, as are testosterone creams.

Alex Rodriguez and several of the other athletes named in the report have denied any connection to the clinic, but it looks like baseball’s doping scandal is still ongoing.

UT’s situation is not unique. It’s just worse than most:

From the window in Dave Hart’s corner office, the University of Tennessee athletic director can see Neyland Stadium above all else, a fortress along the Tennessee River that instantly identifies the Volunteers as a member of college football’s elite.

Its enormity is a testament to the sport’s incredible growth during the past two decades and the power of the Tennessee brand. It also effectively conceals an athletic department that built enormous debt while trying to maintain its place among the richest and most powerful football programs in the Southeastern Conference.

Now, after staggering to losing football seasons in four of the last five years and seeing attendance drop to levels last seen in the 1970s, the Vols find themselves mired in more than $200 million of debt, the most in the SEC, with reserves of just $1.95 million, the least in the conference.