There's a lot of news, so let's categorize.
PERFORMANCE ENHANCERS
- A new report has come out listing former Giants third baseman Matt Wiliams, among others, as having received steroids and/or other PEDs. Maybe we can finally, finally admit that the good guys used PEDs, too. And instead of throwing a sportswriter hissy-fit and sulking and pouting in public, let's just accept that our melodramatic, overwraught attempts to cast the PED scandal in black and white terms is infinitely inaccurate.
- George Mitchell has set this Saturday (tomorrow) as the deadline for any new evidence or information to include in the Mitchell Report. My guess is that this means we're going to get the report before Christmas. Ho, ho, freakin' ho.
- This brings me to my next point . . .
COLLUSION
This wasn't the first time I've locked horns with Cincinnati's Citybeat sports columnist Bill Peterson. Peterson's take on baseball is both old-fashioned and over-simplified, but I felt that he outdid himself in this week's edition of the Cincinnati alternative newsweekly. Peterson offered a flawed, skewed, and misleading defense of the Reds' hiring of Dusty Baker. Now, I often disagree with Peterson, but as I said, I think he outdid himself with inaccuracies and oversimplifications in the article linked above. So I sat down (somewhat fuming) and typed out a letter to the editor at Citybeat in response. (I should note that I have had one of my letters published in Citybeat back in 2004. That too was a response to a Peterson column. There, he stated that the only difference between the Reds and the Cardinals -- well on their way to 105 wins -- were a few relief pitchers. I blew a gasket.)
