Spelling Bee Highlights

Occasionally, I watch the National Spelling Bee. Some of the kids' reactions are priceless. These are some highlights, courtesy ESPN:

Roethlisberger Returns

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger returned to practice on Tuesday for the first time since the NFL handed him a six-game suspension in April for violating the league's "personal conduct policy". While Big Ben's relationship with the city of Pittsburgh has soured, his teammates are giving him plenty of public support. Receiver Mike Wallace was quoted as saying, "He's a man and everybody makes mistakes. I just feel like he's the leader of our team. Anytime he comes back we accept him for who he is." Video of his teammates below, courtesy ESPN:



And for further analysis, here's ESPN's Trey Wingo, Cris Carter, and Marcus Allen discussing what Ben has to do to regain the team's confidence:



Personally, I'm with the Steelers fanbase on this one, since this isn't the first time Roethlisberger has had questionable decisions. For further reading, here's the original FTRS post stemming from Ben's Georgia incident here.

SportsNation - Sports TV at its Funniest

Photo courtesy the NY Daily News.

Due to some unexpected things I needed to attend to today, I'm going to delay the NBA East post to tomorrow. In the meantime, here's the post I intended for Friday...

SportsNation on ESPN is one of my favorite sports shows and websites. It tracks the mood of the dedicated sports fans (especially in regards to the Favre debacle) and shows clips of the funnier side of sports. Here's one of my favorite SportsNation moments:



And the infamous Gunslingers mock ad, ripping the Brett Favre Wranglers jeans ads...

Woods Talks to Rinaldi

Photo courtesy of BusinessPundit.com.

In the midst of March Madness, there's other news that surfaced over the weekend. Golfer Tiger Woods was interviewed by ESPN's Tom Rinaldi Sunday night in a tightly controlled, 5-minute interview available here, with post-interview commentary by Rinaldi here and ESPN Golf's Bob Harig's take here.

I don't doubt Tiger's remorse and I respect that there are matters he wants to remain private, however this interview did not cast any further positive light on his situation. The interview's controls were evident, and as a result, there is a sense of distrust, especially when a man who had previously lied to millions by portraying someone he wasn't use phrases like, "to tell you the truth" and "honestly,..." Tiger, those phrases are unnecessary and only reassert the notion that you lied previously. The second key flaw with the interview was that he kept using repeater phrases over and over again, making it feel more like a press conference than an interview. We saw the press conference at PGA Tour headquarters, and this interview felt similar. Perhaps he should have waited longer to be able to give a more candid interview than the guarded one he gave to Rinaldi Sunday night.

Big Papi Fallout

Photo courtesy of ESPN.

On Thursday, the New York Times reported that both Manny Ramirez, currently with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and David Ortiz, currently with the Boston Red Sox, tested positive for steroids in a 2003 test, when both players were members of the Red Sox. To put it mildly, the news has caused shockwaves throughout New England and the baseball world at large.

This story has so many angles. First, it's not a surprise that Manny Ramirez's name showed up on the list. He served a 50-game suspension earlier this season for failing a steroid test. His name was already tarnished in the eyes of many baseball fans. His Hall of Fame career will have the taint of steroid use that may have lasted his whole career from his start in Cleveland in the 1990's to Boston to LA.

The main angle, and the one that's the shocker, is David Ortiz. Ortiz is one of the most outspoken players in regards to banning steroid use in baseball. Prior to spring training this year, Ortiz said:


"You test positive, you gonna be out. Serious and period. I would suggest that everybody get tests, not random, everybody. You go team-by-team, you test everybody 3-4 times a year, and that's about it...bang 'em for a whole year. I know that if I test positive by using any kind of, um, substance, I know that I'm going to disrespect my family, the game, the fans, and everybody. And I don't want to be facing that situation."

To see the video of these comments, click here.


Photo courtesy of Soxblog.mlblogs.com.

For someone to be so outspoken on steroids, then to be on a list of players that tested positive, something doesn't seem right. David Ortiz, known to Red Sox fans as "Big Papi", is known to be a fun, outgoing member of the Sox clubhouse and a standout member of the community. The two things that don't fit are the steroid use and his stat line from 2000-2009. If he were to be subject to his own recommendation for steroid users, he'd be banned from the game for a year.

There's other conflicting information floating around. Nomar Garciaparra, a former Red Sox player currently playing with the Oakland Athletics, said Thursday that players that wanted testing would ask that they be counted as "positive" in order that a drug testing program would be put in place. Shortly after these comments, many baseball sources denied this. Another thing that hasn't been sorted out is that if players were on the list, the player's association was to contact the player and give them the bad news. Ortiz claims he found out through the NY Times article released today.

The third angle, and perhaps the most mysterious, is how the information came out. The initial news story, broken by the NY Times' Michael Schmidt and David Waldstein, has the headline, "Ortiz and Ramirez Are Said to Be on 2003 Doping List". The main sources for the report are lawyers involved with litigation regarding the list. The lawyers spoke anonymously because the actual list of players is under a court seal. Problem is, divulging information that is under federal court seal is a crime.

There's a host of journalism questions here. First, why did the lawyers willingly break the law by leaking names to the Times? Surely, they would have known the ramifications beforehand. Second, should the Times have taken the sources' information, knowing the law would be broken? Third, will the Times be facing legal issues for publishing the details? On a related note, I find it interesting that the NY Times, through its ownership of the Boston Globe newspaper, has a minorty ownership stake in the Red Sox.

For more on this story, you can read the NY Times article here. For ESPN's take on the story, including a great video with investigative reporter T.J. Quinn, go here. For Curt Schilling's opinion, click here.

I'll be adding my own personal thoughts as a Red Sox fan in the coming days. There's lots of debate going on and it'll require a second post to gather my thoughts together and write them up. It's been a sad day to be a resident of Red Sox Nation.