Newz Forum: OTHER: Sidney Ponson, Eric DuBose, MLB, Maurice Clarett, the Cubs plus more..., page 1

You may recall that Sidney Ponson spent some time in the slammer in Aruba this winter because he assaulted someone on a beach there following an altercation. Sadly for him, it turned out to be a judge that he assaulted.

Well, he's through all of that and reported to Spring Training and vowed to "get in shape" which would mean losing weight equivalent to a typical fifth-grader. Now he is involved in an altercation with a bar patron in Florida which caused him to suffer a minor hand injury. Of course, his agent says that it was all self-defense on Ponson's part and no arrests were made.

The Orioles recently had pitcher Eric DuBose arrested for DWI. When questioned by the officer, DuBose said he could not recite the alphabet for the policeman because he's from Alabama and they have a different alphabet there. If he were dead sober, that could be a good opening line for short riff on "Alabama" and "educational achievement" and stuff like that. As an excuse for having difficulty with a roadside sobriety test, that is pretty lame.

The O's would seem to have pitching problems that involve the mental acuity of some of their pitchers; the Cubbies have pitching problems that involve physical injuries. Mark Prior and Kerry Wood are less than 100% at the moment and both could miss some time early in the season. Closer, Joe Borowski, broke a bone in his hand trying to catch a ball in a spring training game. That leaves the Cubs with Carlos Zambrano at the top of the rotation and LaTroy Hawkins as the closer. That is not a pitching staff that can survive for an entire season; the Cubs need to get those three injured pitchers back tout de suite or they won't win 75 games this season. I don't think the 1927 Yankees would have had enough offense to break even with that pitching staff.

The betting public seems to expect a significant decrease in home run production this year. When the oddsmakers in Las Vegas offered a proposition bet on how many home runs the MLB leader would have this year, they set the line at 46.5. Only a couple of years ago, the line started at 60 and was raised to 63 because everyone was taking the "over" proposition. This year, the line started at 46.5 and has stayed right there meaning that about as much money is going to the "over" side as is going to the "under" side. If you think that the MLB honchos will juice the baseball this year to compensate for the lack of juice in the players, then get to Vegas and play the "over" here...

Would you be surprised to read in the papers that Maurice Clarett's mother did not invite the entire Ohio State coaching staff over to their house for a festive Easter Dinner this weekend? I wouldn't be. So, you should not be surprised to know that Ohio State did not allow Maurice Clarett to use the Ohio State facilities to work out for NFL scouts after he bombed the combine workouts in Indianapolis. Now it seems that Clarett's high school will let him use their facilities for a workout next week. Clarett's agent said that this workout has to be an eye-popper because of how bad the last one went and here's the interesting thing. Clarett has changed fitness coaches since the combine seeking to re-direct his training more toward cardio-vascular workouts instead of weight training. He's has two years off to get himself ready to showcase his skills for scouts and only figures out now that he was on the wrong fitness regimen?

The Denver Nuggets have come alive in the last month or so - coinciding very nicely with the arrival of George Karl to the bench and his bringing Doug Moe down there to join him. Before Karl arrived, the Nuggets were on a pathetic 4-16 run in their previous 20 games; since Karl has been there, the team is 18-5. It appears as if Karl and Moe are complimenting each other. Moe loves to have his teams run and run and run some more; the Nuggets are doing that and getting lots of easy baskets; that has driven their shooting percentage way up. Moe's teams never played defense very much but Karl seems to have infused the team with some desire to do that. The Nuggets went 10 consecutive games holding opponents under 100 points while still running and gunning. That may not sound like much but here is yardstick for you. Doug Moe once coached an entire season [81/82] with the Nuggets where they did not hold the opponent under 100 points even once. The Nuggets hold down the #8 position in the playoff race at the moment.

Greg Wyshynski is the Features Editor for Sports Fan Magazine and he writes a weekly column for the on-line publication every Friday called The Jester's Quart. Today, he takes a critical look at the way the media has portrayed the steroid problem in baseball recently and compared it to the way the same people spoke about baseball back in the 1990s. It is a very interesting perspective from someone who was not around for the Roger Maris assault on Babe Ruth's record; I commend it to your reading.

I don't know if you've seen Deion Sanders as the pitchman for a hot-dog cooker that sells for $50. If you run across this promotion, take a moment and look at it briefly. Then ask yourself why anyone needs to pay $50 to cook hot dogs. Is there some magical taste that the cooking method at your local 7-11 imparts to that fetid meat mixture that would compel you to pay money for such a device? What's wrong with a grill or a grill pan or even a pot of boiling water? Listen to this promo and try to figure out how long the people had to stay awake to come up with the arguments that this was a device you actually might need to have in your life.

Finally, here's an observation from Jerry Greene in the Orlando Sentinel:

"Did you read about the obesity report that says more than half of the NFL is fat? Put that together with more than 300 players going onto the free-agent market, and you know what Wall Street would call it? Pork bellies."

But don't get me wrong, I love sports...

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