Making the Rounds With People On Drugs

This week, my place of residence is the 7th floor, the pediatric ward, of the hospital while Tyler gets some treatments. We've got our own 7th floor crew rollin' up in this joint:

(What's your name?)
T-money, yo
(What you do?)
Rock the chemo
(How you do it?)
Straight to the vein, then chill with Finding Nemo
...
Sorry about that. I'm even more sleep deprived than usual. Anyway, I've got a brief break, so I thought I'd catch up on what I've missed in the wide, wide world of sports:

Sammy Sosa hit HR #600 in Texas last night, and the organization had the audacity to play "The Natural" as he rounded the bases. To be fair, I'm not aware of a song called "Ballad of the man from the land of needles and cork who forgot how to speak English and fled the country to escape persecution." But then again, I don't really follow country music much.
...

Meanwhile, in an interview with local radio, Rangers owner Tom Hicks was asked about any decisions he regretted since becoming owner of the team. He responded with, "Juan Gonzalez for $24 million after he came off steroids, probably, we just gave that money away." Since we're talking about drugs, I have to wonder: is Mr. Hicks on crack? That's not even close to most regrettable decision Tom Hicks has made in his tenure as owner. To recap:

Signed ARod to 10 year, $250 million deal.
Traded ARod and $67 million to Yankees for Alfonso Soriano and player to be named.
Traded Alfonso Soriano to Nationals for Brad Wilkerson, Termel Sledge, and Armando Galarraga.
Traded Termel Sledge, Chris Young, and Adrian Gonzalez to Padres for Adam Eaton, Akinori Otsuka, and Bill Killian.

Compared to that debacle, failing to hook Gonzalez up with the right steroids manufacturers was a rather minor oversight.
...

The NFL has said that it is serious about dealing with concussion injuries amongst its players. Because of the sports' physical nature, it's impossible to completely prevent concussions from occurring. However, the league can be more responsible in the way players are treated after incurring a concussion, both while active players and just as importantly, after retirement. Concussions may increase the likelihood of a person suffering serious brain disorders in later life, such as depression, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

While the Federal government has shown an interest in baseball's steroid involvement, the NFL won't be helping with the treatment of retired football players. Many researchers believe that people who suffer from Parkinson's disease will be among the first to benefit from advances being made in stem cell research. Yesterday, the President vetoed a stem cell research bill saying,
"Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical."

I'd have a little easier time digesting that statement if it wasn't made from the same person who entered a nation into war. Oh well, at least he made Kurt Warner happy.
...

Joe Girardi has turned down an offer to manage the Baltimore Orioles. While Girardi has probably accepted that he won't be the next Joe Torre (that position is being kept warm for Don Mattingly), he's realized that he doesn't want to end up being the next Lee Mazzilli either.
...

Finally- Tim Floyd signs an 8th grader to a verbal commitment to USC, and it's seen as aggressive recrutiing, and yet if I tell the girl at Jamba Juice to call me when she turns 18, I'm a creep? That just ain't right.

The Nightcap - Allison's Family Continues to Stokke Internet Fire

Tonight's Nightcap is sponsored by Allison Stokke's drink of choice, Belvedere Vodka. Because when not trying to maintain those last few moments of innocence, it's always fun for an 18 year-old to party with her boyfriend, throw back a few shots, and chase it with some Coors Light. (Note: I'm just guessing on the can in her hand. It could very well be Diet Coke. Also the bottle doesn't appear to have been opened...yet.)

So let me get this straight- high school pole vaulter Allison Stokke is upset about all the attention she's receiving, so this Orange County girl's solution is to go to the Washington Post and Fox News with her story? If she really wanted anonymity, she should have granted Insomniac's Lounge an interview. I can promise her that my parents wouldn't have been adding her to their MySpace page immediately afterwards. Perhaps her feelings in the Post article are sincere, but if so, she's been badly misguided by her media savvy father. (He is an attorney who regularly defends people accused of rape and child molestation, so he's very familiar with using the media). The timing is odd too. It's the end of the school year. There won't be many meets between now and her college track season next spring, so this story would have dried up quickly as websites moved on to June's flavor of the month. She's in a peripheral (i.e., non-televised), seasonal sport, so unlike athletes like Michelle Wie and Maria Sharapova, her exposure is limited by the short duration of her sport. Even the peripheral athletes that overtly seek extra attention have a very short life span. When is the last time you saw Jennie Finch anywhere? Anyone remember high jumper Amy Acuff? If the Stokke family had just left the story alone, it would have run its course, and no one would have ever mentioned her again until perhaps the 2008 Summer Olympics. As it is, she's added an extra week or two to her lifespan.

Besides, she's going to Cal-Berkeley. By this time next year, she'll have stopped wearing makeup or shaving her armpits. I doubt many people will be fleecing her Facebook page for pics then.

....

A few other thoughts from the day in sports that really should be in their own posts, but that would mean coming up with some new headlines; and it's already almost 4 am, so screw it...

It's been about six hours since I've last checked the story, so I'm not sure where Kobe Bryant currently stands on his trade demands with the Lakers. Either way, it doesn't really matter. Kobe has no leverage on the issue, and Jerry Buss will stop drinking with hot 23 year-olds before he trades Kobe Bryant. At least that's the case this offseason. There is however one scenario in which I could forsee Bryant possibly leaving LA. If OJ Mayo totally blows up during his one season at USC, then I could see Buss trading Kobe to move up in the 2008 draft for the rights to the fellow Trojan (Buss received his PhD from and taught at USC). While he won't have the same cache as Kobe Bryant, "Juice Deuce" should still be a pretty good draw in Los Angeles. Combine him with whomever the Lakers draft from this deep 2007 class and you've suddenly built a decent nucleus to compete in the next generation's (Portland, Seattle) Western Conference...

Personally, I was much more offended by ARod's latest bush league move on the field in Toronto than I was by reports of him heading up to his Four Seasons hotel room with a stripper. I don't know what that says about me, and I probably don't want to know...

So for three weeks, I've been waiting for Tom Glavine to get closer to 300 wins, so I could post my well-researched (by my standards, at least) article about how he could very likely be the last pitcher to reach that magic number for the next 10 years, along with speculation of who that next 300 game winner might be. Then Wednesday afternoon, I walked past a newsstand and saw that very topic is the cover story for this week's Sporting News. Sonofab*tch! To all you bloggers out there, the lesson to take from this is to always post whatever is on your mind, no matter how hasty or pointless it might seem...

I've got another contest to share that I should probably be keeping for myself. Between now and June 3, you can enter on DenverBroncos.com for the chance to win an all expense FunJet Vacation to Cozumel during the week of June 24-July 1. Putting the "fun" in FunJet is that those dates coincide with the Denver Broncos Cheerleaders calendar photoshoot, and the winner will be given the opportunity to attend one session of the shoot. While it's not explicitly stated in the rules, I assume the winner will also have to pass a lie detector test, as Mike Shanahan needs to know your true intentions before letting you go.

Oh, and if you happen to win but can't find anyone to gawk at Broncos Cheerleaders with ya....Lemme know.

All Animals Are Equal, But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others

This weekend at Pimlico, horse racing enthusiasts and mentally imbalanced people across America all honored the memory and legacy of Barbaro, the horse that inspired a nation by living for eight months in pain after breaking down at The Preakness. The passion displayed for the fallen champion was both disturbing and bewildering, and perhaps even a bit endearing. No actually, I'm sticking with just disturbing and bewildering.

While Barbaro's fight for survival eventually came to an end, the compassion demonstrated by his followers certainly must have endured. So when just minutes after Barbaro's name was ceremonially honored at Pimlico, a five year-old stallion named Mending Fences broke down on the very same track, you would expect enthusiasts to embrace this fallen horse as a new life to fight for. A second chance to win the battle. There would be cards and letter sent to Mending Fences' hospital. Poems and dances would be composed in his name. His struggle would be our struggle, and together we would transcend any of the other petty differences that clutter our day - like actual human suffering.

Or maybe not.

"The horse was put down," Pimlico vice president Mike Gathagan said. A green screen was put up in front of the stallion to shield the procedure from a stunned crowd of more than 100,000.

I guess if you're a horse lover, survival is only worth the fight if you've got extremely valuable jizz.