Left Field

Am I on Steroids?
Guess what? You might be on steroids. Last week, it became known that David Ortiz tested positive for one (or more than one) of those pesky performance-enhancing drugs back in 2003. But Ortiz says that he has no clue how he could have possibly ingested or been injected with steroids and they must have somehow been in some supplement he was taking.
That's right, this man unknowingly took steroids, just like Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez and several other ball players who've used the “I don't know how that got in my system” defense after testing positive. This gave me pause, thinking: Could I, too, be unknowingly juicing?

We almost didn't tune into the Home Run Derby on Monday night because, well, ever since those stupid Congressmen almost made Mark McGwire cry on national TV, thus convincing everyone that steroids were somehow bad for baseball, what's the point?
But we did, however, watch the Derby - mainly because we wanted background for our pursuance of the argument that Ichiro would have beaten all of these jokers had he accepted the novelty-based invitation to compete. This was clearly a post-steroid Derby, as evidenced by the fact that Detroit's Brandon Inge didn't hit a single dinger and hometown favorite Albert Pujols (who looks pretty 'roidy, if you ask us) barely made it into the second round. The power outage was so blatantly boring at times that ESPN producers opted to show Prince Fielder's first-round, 11-homer performance on split screen while Chris Berman fumblruskied his way through a rambling interview with Pujols.

While you were out mowing your lawn last weekend or watching with interest what moves your hometown NFL team was making in the offseason (Where is Favre's shoulder these days?), the United States men's soccer team was playing in and, as it turns out, blowing its biggest game in history - an improbable gold medal match in a World Cup tune-up in South Africa.

The men's team defeated reigning World Cup champion Spain in what may have been the biggest upset in national sports history since Herb Brooks led a bunch of rag-tag college hockey players to victory over the Soviet Union's previously untouchable national team at Lake Placid during the height of the Cold War.

How do you celebrate when your city wins a major professional title? By destroying a small part of it, of course!
And that's exactly what Lakers fans did in downtown Los Angeles Sunday night after Kobe and company dismissed the Magic in the fifth game of the NBA Finals. Store fronts were smashed, leading to some looting - what says "Congratulations Lakers" more than an armful of stolen Nikes? There was also, of course, the obligatory middle-of-the-street bonfire. Come on now, an impromptu bonfire? That's so '94 Vancouver Canucks. You'd think Laker fans could at least employ some originality in their destructive assholery.
Also, for a franchise with 15 NBA titles under its belt, you'd think these fans would be accustomed to winning and wouldn't be so surprised by Sunday's championship that they'd suddenly find it necessary to toss a garbage can through a cop's windshield. But then again, these are Lakers fans, the majority of which don't even watch a game until the playoffs, at which point they dig out that Derek Fisher jersey, flip on TNT and notice that at some point during the season that they ignored in favor of standing in line at nightclubs that the team acquired Adam Morrison. If you don't know how to be a fan, chances are you won't know how to react should the bandwagon you've boarded roll all the way to a championship.

As stated in the last self-admittedly awesome installment of this
slender and irregular column, the Left Field department (or at least
half of it) actually watches the Seattle Mariners. Slight correction
here…we aren't necessarily watching the Mariners, exactly, but waiting
for those other eight guys to get off the plate so we can watch Ken
Griffey, Jr. unleash that silky swing that brings us and all the other
kids who grew up in Seattle back to the days of spending warm summer
afternoons protected from the sun by a multi-million-ton concrete
Kingdome ceiling as spilled Rainier beer trickled past our sneakers.

Now
back in Seattle, Griffey is still the bubbly (although more
bubble-butted) guy we once knew, but as of late, he hasn't been too
hot. In fact, he hasn't even been lukewarm. He's been plain shitty at
the plate - at one point last week he'd gone 0 for his last 22. Yikes.
And as of this printing, he was hitting a cool .208, thus dancing a few
strikeouts away from the Mendoza line. He’s hit five dingers thus far,
which isn’t totally bad, but hardly on par with the numbers we
Griffey-ites remember from the glory days.

You have the hat, and the t-shirt and the fake New England accent.
Congratulations. You're a phony baloney Boston Red Sox fan and Left
Field probably scowled at you last weekend up in Seattle where we set
up camp for the weekend series against the Mariners.

Now, let's
get one thing straight: Red Sox fans are endlessly better than Yankees
fans. And, Red Sox fans have a sort of blue-collar, beer-drinking
folksiness about them that's easy to like. But it's the bandwagon Red
Sox fans that bought a cap when Johnny Damon and Manny Ramirez (now a
Yankee and a drug user, respectively) led the magical team of 2004 to
victory and now deem it necessary to root against their home team every
time the Red Sox come to town.
By Left Field's estimate, about
one in four Safeco Field seats were occupied by Red Sox fans - who
gladly chanted "Let's go Red Sox" ad nausea, which in a visiting
ballpark is the equivalent to walking over to your neighbor's home for
the express purpose of taking a paint-peeling dump. There are some
things you just don't do away from home.

Oh come on, relax. We're not being unpatriotic, but
are rather talking about the NFL draft, which although not until next
weekend has already overtaken the sports websites and taken up entire
hour-long segments of valuable ESPN2 time which could easily be used to
air "Sports Century: Charles Barkley" in its entirety.

We here at
the Left Field desk do indeed care about the results of the NFL draft,
it's the draft itself that we just simply can't invest our valuable
sports-watching hours in. Sure, we might watch to see who the Lions
take as the overall number one pick and what unheard of offensive
lineman the Seahawks squander their first-round pick on, but we just
can't justify watching the whole damn thing. But as for the rest, we'll
just pick up a newspaper and see who went where and call it good until
training camp starts up.

Controversies in bowling usually range from what light beer should
be consumed to the preferred width of the diamonds on the classic King
Louie retro shirt.

Well, two weeks ago, the Professional Bowlers
Association ignited a much-needed publicity brouhaha when the tour held
its first limited equipment tournament, the GEICO Plastic Ball
Championship at Wheat Ridge, Colorado.  Unlike regular PBA events, in
which players usually cart a baker's dozen or more bowling balls, the
rules of this event required all players to use the same old school
purple (yes, purple!) plastic ball.
How outdated is the plastic
ball?  All-time tour wins leader Walter Ray Williams Jr. was the last
bowler to win with a plastic ball, capturing the 1993 Homestead
Classic. The two top players on the tour this season, Wes Malott and
Norm Duke, skipped the event with Malott registering his disdain for
the concept saying, "Nobody's asking Tiger Woods to use a wood driver
or Roger Federer to use a wood racket." 

It takes a special kind of temperament to coach competitive sports at any level. In the amateur world it's usually a parent or some dedicated volunteer who is willing to put in long hours for little or no pay to give young athletes the kind of chance that they themselves had as kids.

Left Field doesn't really give a damn about Michael Phelps taking a
bong hit. And we're pleased that so many others don't care either.
After Kellogg's (the cereal and snack company that also employs other
cereal peddlers like Tony the Tiger, as well as Snap, Crackle and Pop)
decided not to renew Phelps' sponsorship contract, the blogs have lit
up with voices decrying Kellogg's seemingly silly actions.

There
are even online petitions that have gathered a few thousand signatures
from individuals pledging to boycott Kellogg's products. Here's an
excerpt from one particularly hilarious petition: "The Kellogg's has
profited for decades on the food tastes of marijuana using Americans
with the munchies. In fact, we believe that most people over the age of
twelve would not eat Kellogg's products were they not wicked high."