It's The Testicles, Stupid!

Scott Schoeneweis is absolutely right.

Schoeneweis had met with people from the Commissioner's Office in December to discuss an ESPN report alleging he had violated the collective bargaining agreement by using steroids. The office determined it had insufficient evidence of a violation to warrant discipline.

Schoeneweis said the Mets and other clubs he had played for were aware of his use, which was tied to his treatment of testicular cancer.

"I was just trying to get to normal, not above normal. It's all well-documented," Schoeneweis said.

But he lamented: "The retraction [explanation from the league] wasn't as glorified [as the original report] ... It's the era we live in."

It's true. For all the media coverage of steroids, cheating, and the like, where's the equal coverage when one of the damned is either exonerated, or presents a note from his doctor? And since I mentioned the report, the least I can do is mention the retraction. Now go strike out some lefties.


***

It recently came to my attention that the Seattle Mariners' new slogan which appears on their website header is "Mojo Risin'", which if you remember was the Mets rallying cry back in 1999 when Robin Ventura would play the Doors song after victories that season.

If you remember back in '06 (I think), the Blue Jays used "You Gotta Believe" as their rallying cry, which was Tug McGraw's 1973 cry that grew to legendary proportions. That was out and out robbery, and the Mariners' marketing scheme seems to be the same thing.

But not really. Here's my question: You Gotta Believe aside (because that's not really an example of over the top marketing), who would want to steal a marketing idea from the Mets? Remember Our Team Our Time? Or even better, does anyone remember "Who Let The Dogs Out" during the 2000 playoffs? Do you remember that the Mets stole that gem from the Giants after the Giants used that song all season, and then the Mets beat them in the playoffs and then stole the marketing theme to the point that they actually had the Baha Men play the song at Shea Stadium before a game?

Even Mojo Risin', if you think about it, and as cool as the song is and how it didn't come so much from a boardroom as it did from a lockerroom, came from a song called "L.A. Woman"? New York Mets theme song: Los Angeles Woman. There was always something a tad incongruous about that.

So if Seattle is robbing from an old dusty Mets slogan, they probably could find a better shack to steal from.

***

And a quick word on the dog and pony show that was the Roger Clemens vs. Brian McNamee hearings:

Can't we just put the two on some remote island so that Johnny Fairplay, Rupert, and Bobby Jon can judge the two of them in Tribal Council? I mean, wouldn't it have been great if instead of Henry Waxman, the proceedings were moderated by Jeff Probst? And after the questioning was over, all the politicians write "Roger" or "Brian" on a sheet of parchment and then faced the camera to explain their decision, and then Probst tallies the votes? At least this way, we can find a sure fire winner and loser in this, because we may never find out who's lying and who's lying less. My way, we have a winner, and the loser goes to jail for perjury!

And for the winner, well we can just leave him on the island too.

Stranger Than Fiction?

Forgive me, for it's so infrequent that I step out of character and break through the "fourth wall" as it were. But I might be in need of a serious mental evaluation.

It started when I went to sleep last night and all of a sudden I'm in a park. It was a park in the mold of say, Flushing Meadow Park, but it was just your basic non-descript park with lots of grass. Who's the first person I see walking in front of me?

Why it's Roger Clemens! He's wearing a Craig Sager-like purple suit, and an Arizona Diamondbacks cap. If you're looking for some hidden meaning in that, don't even bother. It gets worse from here anyway.

After walking past Clemens uncomfortably and trying to open up a safe distance from him, I see my wife ... at which point we sit down in front of a big movie screen as if it was Bryant Park. There's now a crowd that's starting to form, and Clemens is now behind us talking to his lawyer about something. So now I'm thinking that my cell phone is going to ring, and Clemens will be on the other end setting up his tape recorder. Instead he starts walking towards everyone shaking everybody's hand as if he's trying to win votes in New Hampshire.

Oh, and did I mention that Clemens was on a pair of stilts while doing this?

That's right. Roger Clemens is wearing a Diamondbacks hat and walking on stilts ... with a big smile on his face. Maybe the stilts signified his "rising above" all of his anger. Or maybe it signified the circus that the whole Roger Clemens fiasco has become. Or hell, maybe it signifies that I'm just a bizarre human being that shouldn't eat so close to bedtime, or read funny stuff like this before going to bed ... yeah, that's it. And Clemens is trying to shake my hand. I'm trying to ignore him like I ignore those guys on the subway who play Christmas songs on their guitar and then ask for money. But Clemens keeps his hand out practically begging for a handshake. So for the greater good, I give Roger one of those dead-fish handshakes to get him to move on ... which in retrospect might have been a bad idea considering how "strong" he is.

But then, here come his kids. And I don't know what his kids look like so these might have been some random kids with him, and they were wearing Texas Longhorn paraphernalia giving me the "hook 'em horns" sign. So I smiled and gave his kids (or the actors playing his kids) the sign right back (at which point I had an actual Texas Longhorn student teach/correct me in the art of the sign. I had a finger signal for him in return but I'm not going to get into that.) I must have made a good impression on the kids because someone told me what a good role model I was to them right before I woke up.

So that's it. This is my life without baseball to watch. I wish I had a punch line to the dream like "and then Mike Piazza showed up with a broken bat foaming at the mouth and knocked Clemens off of his stilts beat him with them and chased Clemens away from the park and we all ate ice cream and lived happily ever after", or "and then came Brian McNamee with a large syringe that he injected Clemens with except that he injected the stilts instead, and then Shawn Estes threw a beach ball at him and missed." But I don't. I have nothing. Nothing except the fact that it's January, and I'm a special brand of disturbed. If anyone can interpret this and give me back my normal dreams which involve the open seas, a warm sun, and an all-you-can-eat buffet, please don't hold back. I need help.