When Mariotti attacks Simmons, everybody loses, part 2 of 2

Honestly, for an article written by this blog's third most frequently cited moron (and the inspiration for the blog's name for crisesakes), about this blog's most frequently cited moron, this really isn't much to work with here once you get past Jay's own-shit-smelling hatred of bloggers. Let's see what else we can have some fun with.

The network has only itself to blame, enabling Simmons and turning him loose to the point he was uncontrollable.

Except that the only thing that finally got him shitcanned was his direct and pointed insults towards the NFL, the biggest revenue producer (and probably the most powerful entity) in American sports. It's not like ESPN is looking back at how they enabled and supported Simmons and saying "My God, we should have seen this coming! This was obviously the way this would end!" He picked what is probably the one and only insult target that would get him canned, and even still, it took multiple incidents for ESPN to decide they'd had enough.

There is a difference between covering sports with fierce independence — my philosophy —

Hahahahahahahahahahaha. Go play in traffic, you twatmunch. It's pretty easy to be "independent" when no one will hire you because your own misconduct makes you toxic as fuck.

and being a megalomaniacal jackass like Simmons,

No argument here.

who never took a law class

Jay Mariotti, Esq., here to opine on defamation jurisprudence. Oh wait, never mind, he's just got his head up his own colon as usual.

and, thus, didn’t understand why the company suspended him for referring to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell as “a liar.”

I'm sure he understood. Also, it takes about 90 seconds on Wikipedia to learn that under 1st Amendment caselaw, since Goodell is inarguably a "public figure," Simmons’s remark would only create liability if it 1) was incorrect, which, with a generic insult/accusation like “He’s a liar” is very hard to prove, and 2) was made with "actual knowledge" of the fact that the statement wasn’t true (or "reckless disregard" for the truth, which is inapplicable here since Bill doesn't, like, work in the NFL executive offices and have access to Roger's personal files or whatever). But Simmons (and anyone in America with a brain) legitimately felt that Goodell really WAS a liar. Bill’s mistake wasn’t failing to stay within the boundaries of defamation law. It was publicly insulting a gigantic cash cow that helps make ESPN into a gigantic cash cow.

Goodell may have lied about what he knew in the Ray Rice case, but Simmons did not have incontrovertible proof,

This is not how libel works. At all. ESPECIALLY with public figures. You don’t need “incontrovertible proof” to accuse your fucking neighbor of being a liar. If that were the legal standard (especially for public figures) that would lead to no one ever bringing scandals to light due to fear of owing large sums of money if a court deemed the proof of the scandal to fall short of “incontrovertible.”

which means the league could have sued the network for megamillions —

No. Also, I think you should just say “millions;” Megamillions is the popular multistate biweekly lottery, and really, that’s just good clean fun.

and may have done so if ESPN wasn’t a broadcasting bedfellow.

Yes, they may have sued, but they’d know they didn’t have a case. They’d do it just to rattle ESPN’s cage, because if there’s anything that would make ESPN panic, it would be the possibility of lost profits resulting from a deteriorating relationship with THE SHIELD.

Simmons also was unequipped to be editor-in-chief of Grantland.com — his insensitivity was appalling when he approved a piece that unnecessarily outed a transgender person, who, because of the outing, committed suicide.

Well, I’ll take Jay’s side here. I still can’t believe he can’t find (or perhaps correctly read) a Wikipedia page about libel.

Anyone else would have been fired after the Goodell and transgender mistakes.

Probably not, actually. Definitely not the Dr. V putter story, anyways. And he got suspended for the Goodell remarks. A pretty big deal for a guy with his profile.

Simmons kept his job both times only because ESPN president John Skipper doesn’t acknowledge his own errors until he must.

This is true—Jay knows firsthand. He probably waited about five years too long to ban Jay from appearing on Around the Horn.

Friday was that day, hours after Simmons had appeared on the radio show of another ESPN pariah, Dan Patrick, with another over-the-top rip job of Goodell.

There is no such thing as an over-the-top insulting of Goodell. Goodell and his dumb shiteating fat fucking face are immune to hyperbolic vitriol.

Simmons destroyed the commissioner because he didn’t immediately announce a suspension in the Tom Brady deflated-balls scandal, and while it’s fair to wonder why Goodell is waiting, his weekend pause doesn’t warrant a nuclear explosion.

No, it probably doesn’t, but 90% of everything else he does.

Clearly, Simmons is immature.

Time for one of my favorite old gags—post a hilariously moronic comment multiple times because it’s so enjoyable to read.

Clearly, Simmons is immature.

Clearly, Simmons is immature.

Clearly, Simmons is immature.

Clearly, Simmons is immature.

Clearly, Simmons is immature.
An excellent point from Jay, paragon of maturity.

Once a fanboy, always a fanboy.

Once a man who is convinced that Ozzie Guillen is responsible for all the evils of the world, always a man who... that.

I’ve had my squabbles with corporate management.

OH HAVE YA

But my complaints were legitimate —

/dying

a Chicago radio station demanded I sign a sheet of paper that I wouldn’t criticize the Bulls or White Sox, which would have painted me into an ethical corner had I agreed.

I’m sure that is about 25% of the story, or possibly less, but I do have to agree that working in sports media probably loses a shitload of its appeal once you get muzzled.

When I refused, I was fired the day after Christmas.

If only you could have been fired while eating dinner with your family ON Christmas, via an in-person visit from your boss, like the end of Christmas Vacation except without the boss changing his mind.

My bosses at the Chicago Sun-Times had business ties with certain sports owners in town, and when they asked me to soften my opinions about those owners, I said no.

Partly because of the whole ethics issue, but mostly because Jay is a petulant baby who hates Jerry Reinsdorf like most people hate Hitler.

Had Simmons used another description for Goodell, he’d probably still be working at ESPN.

No, he would not.

By calling him a liar, and then challenging the network to reprimand him after doing so, Simmons no longer was fighting a free-speech war.

Actually, he was, but it was also a war of “which of these relationships is worth more money to ESPN,” and he lost, badly.

He was leaving himself vulnerable to a mountainous lawsuit.

No, you fucking retard. No. And were that the case, the NFL could just sue Bill directly and bleed him dry, but that’s not happening even though the NFL is endlessly insecure and vindictive, because that’s not how libel law works.

Before he works again, the fanboy needs to take a law class or two.

/still dying

The Internet has enabled recklessness by idiot entrepreneurs — such as the assclown at Gawker Media — who think they can publish lies about anyone because it’s difficult for a public figure to win a libel suit against a web publication.

Wait—what??????? I thought Goodell had an AIRTIGHT case against Simmons! How is Gawker publishing (true) things about Mariotti any different than Simmons saying (true) things about Goodell, then?

So the entrepreneurs hire clueless kid losers for $15 a story and order them to drive traffic, resulting in sleazy techniques and wild inaccuracies.

Hey, much better than paying Jay whatever he made at the Chicago Sun-Times while using sleazy techniques to publish wild inaccuracies. Speaking of wild inaccuracies, Jay needs to take a law class or two.

I told a college journalism class 

shortly before being removed by campus security so the professor could continue their lecture

that you’d be better off cleaning sewage plants than working for something called Deadspin.com,

True from an income standpoint, I’m sure, but those sewage-cleaning plant jobs are probably union and difficult to get unless you know someone. You can probably work for Deadspin, at least on a freelance basis, based solely on your own skills and merit.

where you’re being paid less than a janitor to basically pick up garbage and place it on the Internet. Another website, Bleacher Report, has somewhat higher standards yet also pays peanuts to kids who don’t know what they’re doing. Why? Because entrepreneurs think you don’t have to pay for good sportswriting.

And sadly, as Bleacher Report’s content continues to get less shitty (I know, I know) and Deadspin continues to occasionally publish cool shit alongside all its terrible unfunny shit, they’re right! This is a systemic problem in the journalism industry, driven by supply and demand in both the media and journalism labor markets, and has very little to do with DURR HURR BILL SIMMONS WASN’T ONE OF THE COOL KIDS IN THE PRESS BOX.

The Bleacher Report entrepreneurs, too, are sports fans, making them fanboys much like … Bill Simmons.

OH MY GOD! CONSPIRACY! ALL THE PIECES FIT! JET FUEL CAN’T MELT STEEL BUILDING SUPPORT BEAMS!

One of America’s best sportswriters, Bob Kravitz,

Bob Kravitz is a shitty writer with shitty opinions. We should have posted much, much more about him when this blog was still quasi-active.

broke the Deflategate story in his new position at an Indianapolis TV station/website.

Did he? Did he "break" it? Maybe he did (I’m sure he has sources galore in the Colts organization, which, good for him), and guess how many sports fans give a flying cunt about that? This isn’t the 20th century, Jay, when one newspaper might get a scoop and be the place to read about a story while another has no idea about it until the first newspaper publishes. It doesn’t matter how much you hate the internet—it has reduced the value of breaking a story to essentially nothing. Deal with it, or GTFO of the industry and stop bothering people.

After the Ted Wells report was issued, Kravitz wrote of unprofessionalism he encountered in the New England media the last few months:

Well, come on, what do you expect? It’s the Boston media.

“The people who disappointed me most were the folks at The [Boston] Globe’s website, Boston.com. They are renowned pom-pom wearers, so it wasn’t a surrpise.

Typo is [sic], left in because Jay is such a big fan of professionalism.

But I was struck at the enthusiasm they displayed while carrying the Patriots’ water. It shocked me that a great newspaper like the Boston Globe would employ such rank amateurs and cheerleaders. Sad.”

Because it’s not the 20th century, Bob and Jay, and pretty much all newspapers are shit and are desperate for access. They’ll cut their own dicks off to curry favor with popular local teams. I know it’s hard for you fucking dinosaurs to understand that times have changed, but maybe if everyone else seems out of touch, you’re the out of touch ones.

Where did Simmons grow up? Boston.

HOLY SHIT ANOTHER LEVEL TO THIS WHOLE THING! NO ONE IS SAFE! THE CLOCK STRIKES AT MIDNIGHT!  THE ILLUMINATI ARE ABOUT TO TAKE OVER!

From who did younger Boston.com sportswriters learn? Simmons.

And I’m sure it was only the young Boston.com writers carrying water for the Pats. I’m sure that Dan Shaugnessy, Jackie MacMullan, etc. were NOWHERE near that practice.

Shame on ESPN for empowering Simmons for so many years.

Oh wow, that’s got to sting. “Shame on you.” Go easy, Jay!

ESPN also killed sportswriting when it gave a major platform to a statistics geek, Nate Silver, failing to realize that sport is best covered via the exploration of human emotion, not the joyless crunching of numbers.

BWAHHHHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

SHUT IT DOWN

I DON’T THINK WE NEED TO GO ANY FURTHER

Oh wait, yes we do:

In the process, the network chased off Rick Reilly, only the greatest sportswriter of his generation

Rick Reilly couldn’t sportswrite his way through a wet piece of toilet paper. Fuck him and fuck Jay for cheerleading for him. Die, both of you.

and someone who broke news responsibly,

HEY YOU’RE GONNA SAY I HAD THIS ON TWITTER FIRST, RIGHT???????

covered games and press conferences on site, interviewed subjects, understood libel law and carried the profession with savvy.

/dead

Next, ESPN is trying an African-American site with an editor, Jason Whitlock, who isn’t liked by many African-American writers and is more comfortable in a strip joint than in any mentoring position. The site’s marquee hire so far was a white journalist, Mike Wise.

Come on Jay, don’t half-ass it. Tell us how you really feel. Heat up that taek, it’s a little lukewarm for you.

I appreciated my eight years at ESPN; the TV show was fun,

I’ll bet he signed a settlement agreement with ESPN that prevents him from saying the show's name.

and when I was on, the ratings were much higher and the banter much livelier.

Kill yourself.

But the culture is not conducive to doing one’s best work. It’s a political loony bin where Skipper, like Goodell, can’t maintain consistency in issuing disciplinary punishments. Seems he finally got one right Friday.

Again, as in the case with Jay, it was a mere five-to-ten years late.

And, no, I would not hire Bill Simmons at this news organization if he applied. Our standards are too high.

Aw, you mean the San Francisco Examiner, the country’s 58th most important newspaper, wouldn’t hire Bill? Pity. My guess is he lands at Bleacher Report and continues to grab a whole fucking shitload of eyeballs and pageviews.

Jay Mariotti is sports director and lead sports columnist at the San Francisco Examiner. He can be reached at jmariotti@sfexaminer.com. Read his website at jaymariotti.com.

Never. Never ever ever.

When Mariotti attacks Simmons, everybody loses, part 1

I mean, not us, the sports-following public.  We all win in the sense that we get to laugh and one stupid asshole with "credentials" picking on another, more popular, stupid asshole without credentials.  But Bill and Jay most definitely both lose.

The Internet has perpetrated too much disarray in the world, 

Could have ended the article right here and actually made a decent point.  Also, get off his lawn and pull your pants up.

giving semi-lives to people with no lives 

Hopefully this is (besides being an obvious critique of YouTube celebrities, etc.) a veiled shot at the people who have exposed Jay as a violent, woman-hitting asshole.

and adding too many reckless, unqualified voices to the daily churn. 

First use of "qualified" or a synonym or related term: 23 words in.  Pay out the winner of your office pool accordingly.

The sports media business is no different. 

Different from what?  The internet?  The sports media business takes place almost entirely on the internet.  Jay of all people should know this, given that his own personal website was the only "outlet" that would hire him for about a six year period there.

A new century gave rise to sports websites that had to compete against legitimate journalists 

Buckle up!  Here we go!  This sentence is like getting pummeled in the face by a boxer whose gloves say OLD and MEDIA on them.

who actually broke news responsibly, 

I'm so tired of these unprofessional bloggers always breaking news irresponsibly!  Why, established media members like Chris Mortensen and Chad Ford and Ken Rosenthal and on and on and on never participate in the race to the bottom that is the effort to get a scoop.  Just because the "instant update" nature of the internet has dragged established media like those guys into its game doesn't mean you can go blaming blogs for it.  And better yet, this whole article is actually a complaint about Simmons, who hasn't broken a fart's worth of news in his whole career.

covered games and press conferences on site, 

Hahahahahahahahahhahaahahaaahhahahaha

interviewed subjects, 

Nothing like a HARD-HITTING Mike Wilbon interview/ball washing session to really get yourself inside the mind of a professional athlete.

understood libel/slander law

Subtext: Jay feels as though he has been the victim of libel and slander.  Reality: Jay has deserved each and every bad thing anyone has ever written or said about him, even the ones that weren't true.

and carried the profession with savvy.

Yes.  Savvy.  So much savvy.

So, to have any chance, many of these new sites went low-brow and hired fans with no training in anything but how to wear a personally customized jersey to an arena, drink three beers and cheer maniacally for one’s team.

Well now you sound like you're just complaining about Simmons and Bleacher Report (They were made for each other, weren't they?), when I really feel like we were building some momentum towards an anti-blogger rant.  Disappointing.

Bill Simmons, for instance.

At least Bill has never (to our knowledge) stalked or assaulted a woman.  Good for him.  Wait, is that libel?  Probably not, since Jay pleaded no contest to charges of both of those in 2011.

ESPN.com, then a digital embryo in a growing corporate empire, lured the eyeballs of sports fans by hiring one. Simmons had some talent, 

Mariotti admitting that Simmons has talent is kind of like a 6 year old admitting that his 8 year old brother is smarter than him.

spoke the fan language and understood the fan perspective, so the hire was a good one … as a blogging niche. But then ESPN did the inconceivable, unleashing him as a sportswriting monster who decided 6,000-word pieces without a quote — 6,000 words of literary masturbation — were good reads. 

Whoa, I have to admit it--all of a sudden Jay is bringing some FIRE.  GO JAY GO.

They were not good reads, 

HOW WILL WE LOOK BACK ON THE MOMENT WHERE WE REALIZED THEY WERE NOT GOOD READS 15 YEARS FROM NOW?  Also, Jay, you're a horrific writer yourself.  Your masturbatory articles just happen to be shorter than Bill's.

but at that point, anything with the ESPN stamp of approval seemed to succeed as the network claimed domination of the industry, 

I will mock Simmons for a lot of things, but one claim I will never make is that he "only obtained his success because he was piggybacking on ESPN's success" or something like that.  He earned all those fans on his own.  Most of them are dipshit morons who know nothing about sports and should never be conversed with, but still: he earned them.

whether it was a revolving all-night cycle of SportsCenter or the quieting of four sportswriters with a mute button on a debate show (I was on that show).

WERE YOU?  REMIND US.  What a monument to the professionalism and savviness of REAL SPORTSWRITERS that show is.

Sports fanboys began to read the fanboy sportswriter. Traffic grew. Advertisers bought in. Simmons wrote two masturbatory books, both best-sellers. Suddenly, it didn’t matter if he never broke news and never quoted anyone but himself and his cousin. 

All true.  Maybe your ire should be directed towards the people who made Bill popular, then, no?  The idiocracy of sports fans creates phenomena like Bill.  Additionally, it's more than worth pointing out that the only person to blame for Jay's lack of success is Jay.

ESPN created the original fanboy sportswriter, spawning a generation of fanboy sportswriters who also don’t know how to break news responsibly, interview subjects and cover sports properly.

I know I've used "hahahahahahaha" already a couple of times in this post, but seriously, how else do you respond to this?  Jay Mariotti just wrote that sentence.  THE Jay Mariotti.  July 2, 2006 Jay Mariotti.  He thinks today's new media sportswriters are irresponsible, shouldn't matter because they don't have ACCESS, and cover sports improperly.  What else do you say to that?

Friday, ESPN uncreated Simmons, choosing not to renew his contract.

VINDICATION!  Maybe they'll hire Jay to fill his shoes!

At long last, an embarrassing business might have a chance again.

Oh my God.  I can't keep going on this tonight.  Someone who simultaneously thinks that Bill only got popular because ESPN got popular first, yet is also to blame for all the shittiness that makes ESPN what it is today, should be placed in a spaceship and immediately shot into the sun.  Seriously, fuck both of these people.

Periodically I have to link to Deadspin for doing something awesome. This is one of those times

The World Wide Leader in sports, everyone.

Edit made ten minutes after the original post: just to be clear about something that shouldn't need clarification, this isn't just a story about ESPN being shitty.  It's also a story about Salisbury and Mariotti being total fuckfaces.  My original comment above was not intended to make it sound like I was sparing them from criticism.  But you probably knew that.

Mariotti vs. Simmons in an ethics-off. WHO YA GOT? (Part 1)

So I did not post about Simmons's conference championship game picks, but needless to say, he took both underdogs to win outright, and instead both favorites covered.  To be fair to him, had I posted my picks, I would have only gone 1-1, as I liked the Broncos and Niners to cover, and the Niners to possibly win outright.  To be unnecessarily generous to both him and me, the Niners were about a foot away from winning outright.  Anyways, much as we all wanted to enjoy some tasty Simmons schadenfreude after the GREATRIOTS laid a huge egg in Denver, his Twitter feed was silent between Friday evening and Monday morning, and when he did get around to tweeting on Monday, he had bigger concerns to address.

I assume you know what I'm referring to, but if you don't, Google "Grantland Dr. V article."  You'll find plenty of thoughtful (and some not very thoughtful) responses to what went down.  It's a tragic story that reflects very poorly on Grantland and Simmons, but I'm not here to pile on them.  I'm here to bring you the response the incident prompted from sports journalism's foremost expert on ethics: Jay Mariotti!

Like you, I had no idea he had a job again.  Somehow, he convinced some outlet called Sports Talk Florida to pay him for his labor.  As far as I can tell, Sports Talk Florida is an internet radio station that also publishes STRONG TAKES from its personnel on its website.  Jay apparently hosts a show from noon to three every afternoon, and also gets to write.  And when he writes, you know he's not going to shy away from the hot topics of the day.  Bill Simmons: prepare to be TAKEN TO TASK.  As Chris W said when sending this link to Jack M and I, let's root for the meteor.  (Late breaking edit: I didn't realize commenter tony harding also placed this link in the comments to my last post until just now.  Thanks dude.  I assume SportsTalkFlorida is in your blogroll.)

A fanboy should not be a sports columnist, a TV analyst and a website editor. 

Can we just end the article here?  Actually, even that's taking things too far and giving Jay's thoughts too much credit.  I think it's fine for fanboys to be columnists.  I'm a nerdy blogger who lives in his parents' basement, etc., so I have to support the idea of fans having a voice in the sports world.  I don't hate Simmons because he became a popular writer on a huge platform without any journalism credentials.  I hate Simmons because he's a fucking idiot.  However, I will agree with Jay that just because you have the magic formula that causes dipshit sports fans everywhere to gobble up anything you write doesn't mean you should be given a role on TV or creative and editorial control over a (corporate-funded) website.  Jay and I are definitely on the same page there.

A fanboy should remain a fanboy, 

Oh no.  You know where this is headed.

root vacuously for his teams 

If you use your imagination, you can hear Mariotti's voice morphing into Wilbon's as this sentence goes along.

and leave the serious work to the trained journalists. 

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

Only SERIOUS JOURNALISTS like Bill Plaschke and Jay should be able to offer up HOT TAKES on matters related to sport.  If you don't own a journalism degree, you shouldn't be allowed to offer your opinion as to whether or not Ozzie "the Blizzard of Oz" Guillen is utilizing his bullpen properly.  

What a fucking cunt.

Several years ago, ESPN turned a fanboy named Bill Simmons into a blogging cartoon character 

It is true that they literally turned Simmons into a cartoon character at one point (2005?  2006?) for a very short-lived online series that was as poorly executed as it was conceived.  I think Jay is referring to the fact that ESPN employed him at all here, but I just wanted to remind you that "Sports Guy's World," or whatever the fuck that web cartoon was called, was a thing that ESPN spent money on.

— the Sports Guy, he was called — who was cast as a role model for legions of other fanboys unqualified for professional sports media and used by the network to generate traffic for then-fledgling ESPN.com.

I know you feel threatened by the fact that just about anyone can start a blog and develop a reader base these days, Jay, but let's not take it too far.  At the time ESPN hired Simmons (1999?  2000?) blogs were still several years away from being a thing (I hate using that terminology, but it's the weekend and I'm feeling lazy) and your cozy little job at the Chicago Sun-Times was still perfectly intact.  Simmons was only hired as a role model in the sense that his appeal was based on being an everyday fan.  Jay seems to think that ESPN hired him in order to inspire other knuckle-dragging non-accredited journalists to become successful BLOGGERS (term used pejoratively in this case) and RUIN SPORTS MEDIA FOREVER.  Kind of sounds like sour grapes from a hard-partying no-contest-pleading-to-charges-of-woman-punching fuckass who has no one to blame for his own downfall from major newspaper columnist to internet radio station guy.

This was when the Internet was swallowing the world and newspapers were starting to die, a perfect segue to a sportswriting fad. 

Yes, a "fad," which played a huge role in the death of many gigantic newspaper institutions, as you just acknowledged, and which will be the main way people get sports content for a long time to come.

Problem was, Simmons spawned a lot of other fanboys who could become sportswriters simply by signing onto Word Press and launching blogs. 

Although there are relatively inconsequential differences between a Blogger-hosted blog and the site Jay is using now, for all intents and purposes, one of these so-called "weblogs" is the only reason he has a voice right now.

Around this time, web entrepreneurs with no conscience about accountability and ethics 

Yeah, I hate those unethical bloggers!

launched their own grubby sites, 

I'm not going to link to it, but if you're feeling generous, go to Sports Talk Florida's site, and soak up the non-grubbiness.

then hired fanboys for pennies while ordering them to accrue as many clicks as possible by whatever means possible, 

LEAVE BLEACHER REPORT OUT OF THIS.  THEIR MOBILE APP IS ACTUALLY KIND OF GOOD.  (No really, it is.  ESPN Scorecenter has become progressively shittier with every upgrade, and Bleacher Report TeamStream is non-horrible.)  I also love the insinuation that it's only bloggers who ever stoop to ethical lows to generate buzz.  No mainstream old media print journalist would ever consider such a thing!

even if it meant stalking famous athletes and media people and publishing blatant lies, blind items, dick and vagina photos, whatever attracted the eyeballs of various stoners and losers.

Deadspin's commenters are the worst people on the internet, but I'm pretty sure there are at least some non-commenting readers who are neither stoners nor losers.

All of which brings us to Simmons today. Having ruined the sports media industry in too many ways to count, 

This is attributing too much power to Bill.  He's an obnoxious, talentless pile of dinosaur shit--but his overall impact on the sports media industry is probably no worse than "kind of bad."  It might even be neutral.  Sure, he's spawned a massive crowd of mouth breathers who think that liking sports means comparing athletes to characters from TV shows, and that the Ewing Theory is demonstrably provable via the scientific method.  But he's also probably inspired a lot of smart and entertaining people to start writing about sports.  Lord knows I'm not one of them (I'm not inspired by Simmons, nor am I smart or God knows entertaining).  But many of your favorite bloggers, and maybe even some of your favorite mainstream writers, probably owe a little bit of their success to him.  Plus, Grantland as a whole is a steaming sauna of shit fumes, but it employs some great writers like Bill Barnwell and Zach Lowe.  If I had magical past changing powers, I'd cut off Simmons's career around 2003 (and even that might be too late), but I certainly wouldn't stop him from ever having begun writing.

he now finds himself in an unforgivable legal predicament that could end his hollow reign atop a media empire that should know better. 

If the fallout from this Dr. V situation is the end of Grantland, I'll grow a mullet.  Wishful thinking on Jay's part.

It was Simmons, as editor-in-chief of ESPN’s Grantland spinoff site, who approved the publication of a piece last week called “Dr. V’s Magical Putter.” The story was intended to determine the legitimacy of a unique piece of golf equipment. It ended with the transgender community crying foul over the insensitive work of the story’s author, Caleb Hannan, who discovered in the course of his reporting that the putter’s inventor, Essay Anne Vanderbilt, was a transgender person.

When Vanderbilt learned that Hannan was aware of the information and that he had told Phil Kinney, one of the putter’s investors, she e-mailed Hannan and accused him of a “hate crime.” Then she committed suicide. The date was Oct. 18, 2013.

Last week, Hannan’s story ran on Simmons’ site, outing Vanderbilt as transgender and not treating the suicide with the proper tact and care. After reading it, and then absorbing the firestorm of criticism accompanying it, all I could ask myself was: 

How can I make this about me somehow?

Why is a career fanboy 

To be fair to Bill, he's been a professional writer in some capacity or another (term "writer" used loosely for the past seven or eight years, as he's averaged about three columns per year, but still) for pretty much his whole adult life.  He's an insufferable fanboy, and a real piece of shit to work with, but he knows the sportswriting industry.  I'll give him that much.  He still shouldn't be Grantland's editor, but acting like he's nothing but a guy who likes sports is disingenuous.  He's shitty sportswriter, but he's still a sportswriter.

making critical decisions about a difficult story involving suicide and a transgender person? Why was Bill Simmons in this position to begin with? Shouldn’t he have been back in Boston, wearing a Celtics throwback jersey and screaming from the cheap seats that Doc Rivers quit on the team?

While that is some top-notch mockery, let's face it: if Jay were editing a site as big as Grantland, he'd make horrendous ethical gaffes like this fucking constantly.

Part 2 later this week.

Back to the salt mines

Wow, I took some time off there.  That's what happens when you're a burnt out sports media blogger--sometimes you just have to disappear for a couple weeks and realize that no one really gives a shit whether you post anything or not.  That's just the impetus you need to get back in the game.  Lots of ground to cover here.

First of all, thanks to dan-bob for posting a couple things while I sat on my couch and watched TV rather my usual practice of sitting on my couch and watching TV while blogging.  That was the first time since November of 2010 that dan-bob posted twice in the same week.  Just goes to show you that he's still got excellent writing, analysis and joke-writing skills, but unlike me, actually has other things going on in his life that usually prevent him from exercising those skills here on a regular basis.  I know nobody cares, but since I'm on the topic of real lives of FireJay bloggers, not all that much has changed for any of us since 2007.  Back then we were recent college grads (except for PNoles, who was still in college) living all over the country who didn't have a whole lot of ideas as to what we really wanted to do with our lives.  Now, we are late 20somethings living all over the country in different places than we were back in 2007, still without a whole lot of ideas as to what we really want to do with our lives (except for PNoles, who is the only one among us who has a job that I'm pretty sure he likes and intends to keep for a long time).  Life is good!

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Second of all, Jay Mariotti has launched a new website, or is about to launch it, or something.  Fuck if I care to bother knowing the details.  All you need to know about it can be read here, and also, just know that we won't be expending any effort around here towards getting him "fired."  Such effort would be unnecessary, because that new website of his does not constitute a "hiring" of any kind.  He was fired by all of his employers several years ago, remains fired, and may he fuck off and disappear from the public consciousness as soon as possible.

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Third of all, I wanted to clarify some comments I made about the Biogenesis mess and its fallout.  The last thing I can afford to do is alienate any of our seven readers, so let me be very clear.  When I said this in the comments section to one of my short posts a few weeks ago:

But it's also kind of too late to undo A-Rod's career, and the mouth-breathing retards clamoring for JUSTICE AGAINST CHEATERZZZ could probably use a reminder that the guy who's pulling out all the stops to nail Rodriguez, including by jumping right over the top of the JDA and going to the CBA to find the sword he wants to use for a JDA-contemplated problem, is the same guy who has himself done tons of harm to the game in years past.

I did not mean to imply that everyone who wants to see users get in trouble is a mouth-breathing retard.  Not at all.  There is plenty of room for disagreement as to what level of outrage towards steroid users is warranted.  I do not harbor much of it (certainly way way less than the average baseball fan), but I do harbor a little of it, and I do want to see the players who get caught under the program agreed to by the league and the MLBPA get the punishments they have coming to them as laid out in the Joint Drug Agreement.  I just happen to think that many baseball fans (or perhaps I should say, many baseball fans who are vocal on the internet--if you've read anything online about the Biogenesis fallout in the last six months you've heard from them, I'm sure) and most baseball writers have a depressingly shortsighted perspective on the whole issue.  They can't seem to think any deeper than GRRRRR CHEATERZZ IS BAD and they think the solution is Draconian punishments like TAKE AWAY THEY'RE CONTRAX AND GIVE DEM LIFETIME BANZZZ, when even those steps will never come close to eradicating usage.  They also are offended at the fact that Braun escaped punishment in 2011/2012 by using the appeals process granted to him in the JDA, and offended at the fact that Rodriguez is using the appeals process granted to him in the JDA to play right now.  The idea of due process and collectively negotiated rights don't mean anything to these people--they just want heads to roll, and they want those heads to roll now.  That is why they are mouth-breathing retards.

I also happen to think that the 200+ game punishment Selig wants to give A-Rod when the JDA lays out very specific rules as to how steroid-using players should be punished, as well as his reported consideration of punishing A-Rod under the CBA instead of the JDA (to prevent A-Rod from playing while the appeal process happens), are both fucking laughable.  What a piece of shit Selig is.  Where does this guy get off?  Steroid use is a practice that the league not only didn't punish, but condoned and indirectly endorsed when big home run totals and the big revenue they led to were a financial life preserver for the league.  Now that Selig is coming to the end of his time as commish, he's going to get TOUGH ON CRIME because he wants to preserve his legacy.  Where was this response in 1998 and 2001, Bud?  What a fucking piece of shit.  I could riff for paragraphs on this complicated subject, but I'll wrap it up by saying that it's not that people who want to see users get punished are idiots for having that desire--it's that many of them (both professional writers and commenters) seem to 1) not be aware of Selig's full legacy as commish, with regard both to steroid use and other problems, and 2) think that the harshest possible response to a infraction is the right one (always beware of people like this, because they are usually fucking idiots).  So go ahead, be glad that the Biogenesis users got caught.  Just don't be the kind of person who lets the fact that Braun and Rodriguez are unlikeable people color your judgment as to whether those players deserve to use the appeals rights given to them in the JDA, and don't be the kind of person who thinks a lifetime ban is a sensible punishment for something that, well, let's just say A LOT of MLB players engage in, and have engaged in for years, often to the benefit of MLB.  The league should take steps to curb steroid usage but LOCK 'EM UP AND THROW AWAY DA KEYS is not one of them.

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Fourth of all, before disappearing into Sitonmyassville a couple weeks ago I promised I would take on Simmons's abominable NBA offseason HEY IT'S JUST LIKE AN 80s MOVIE MOST PEOPLE HAVE SEEN ONE OR ZERO TIMES column.  Good news!  I'm still going to do that, since it's not like he's going to write another article anytime soon.  Bad news!  I'm not really starting tonight.  I mean, I'll give you a quick taste.  But I don't have much time to spare right now after slogging through those incoherent ramblings about steroids.

When Alan Sepinwall tweeted about Midnight Run's 25th anniversary two weekends ago, I did a quadruple take. Twenty-five years? How could that be? Top Gun seems like it came out a million years ago. So does The Breakfast Club, so does Wall Street, Fatal Attraction, The Killing Fields, Coming to America, and every other memorable mainstream '80s movie. 

All of those movies seem like they came out during the 80s, which when Midnight Run came out.  Bill is the guy at the party trying to make his inability to perceive something that pretty much everyone can perceive into an interesting conversation.  "Man, can you BELIEVE that gas is like $4 a gallon now?  I just can't even fathom it!"  Bill Simmons is a fucking moron.

Midnight Run? It's an outlier, a timeless classic, our least-dated '80s movie.

Oh my God.

Watching it all these years later, only a couple things feel rusty: The cars, the lack of cell phones, Robert De Niro's cheesy leather jacket, the relentless cigarette smoking and, most strikingly, the fact that anyone could bring guns on airplanes like they were Altoids. Everything else feels fresh. 

So, excepting all of the styles, trends, societal cultural norms, technology and laws that are different, IT HASN'T AGED A DAY.  Basically, it's 100% fresh in the sense that it's a movie about criminals and cops, some of whom are good guys and some of whom are bad guys, and those kinds of movies still get made in 2013.

It's just as funny as it was 25 years ago, the action moves briskly, and the chemistry between De Niro (as bounty hunter Jack Walsh) and Charles Grodin (as the Duke, an on-the-lam accountant who stole $15 million from a mob boss) remains ridiculously good.

Charlees Grodin!  There's an actor who makes you think "This movie definitely isn't from the 80s--gotta be more recent than that, right?"

When I retweeted Sepinwall and added "Is this Moron Number One? Put Moron Number Two on the phone" (one of Dennis Farina's many classic moments), 

"Classic move by me to pick that quote, don't you think?"

my Twitter replies quickly filled with other Farina one-liners. That made me wonder if I'd found the right medium for my annual "Movie Quotes As Awards" breakdown of the NBA's busiest offseason month. Two days later, Farina passed away at 69. Now it had to happen.

Without that inspiration, who knows what flick Bill might have chosen to fill out his unimaginative and pointless "[sports event] is just like [movie]!" template this time around.

Quickly on Farina: I first remember him during Season 1 of Miami Vice, 

DOESN'T IT SEEM LIKE THAT SHOW JUST ENDED????

when he played a wisecracking mob boss named Albert Lombard. By the end of his last episode, you liked him, you feared him, you laughed with him and, strangely, you wanted him to stay alive. (Retroactive spoiler alert: He didn't.) NBC jumped on the momentum by giving him the leading role in Crime Story, an innovative cop drama that never made it. Two years later, he stole every one of his scenes in Midnight Run and could have been nominated for an Oscar, but since Academy Awards voters don't respect or appreciate comedies, astonishingly, nobody from Run got nominated for anything.

I have never seen Midnight Run all the way through, but have seen the whole thing in pieces, and I can promise you that while it's an above average movie its lack of Oscar recognition is about as tragic as Zoolander's lack of Oscar recognition.

At that point, you would have bet anything that Farina was going to become a star 

And he did.

— a funnier James Gandolfini, basically — only it never happened. 

If you think Farina's resume is not that of a star, at least on some level (WHAT LEVEL OF STAR WAS FARINA?  IS JOE FLACCO ELITE?????), you know even less about pop culture than I already thought you didn't.  

That's Hollywood for you. Some people never find the right part, and there's more luck involved than you'd think. 

ONLY I AM ENOUGH OF A HOLLYWOOD INSIDER TO KNOW HOW THESE THINGS WORK!  YOU HAVE NO IDEA!

Once upon a time, David Chase agonized about casting Gandolfini or Michael Rispoli as Tony Soprano. Had Rispoli ended up with that role, there's a good chance we're remembering Gandolfini as the unforgettable bad guy in True Romance and that's it. Farina never landed his Sopranos-like break, but Midnight Run's Jimmy Serrano lives on and on. He's one of the best things in one of the most rewatchable, funny movies ever made. This column is dedicated to him.

Please, no one tell Farina's family about this.

Last note: No movie used more F-bombs more effectively than Midnight Run. As much as it kills me, I'm dashing out all those F-bombs for this column, just because of their sheer volume. 

And because I would never directly admit it, but I'm letting ESPN's desire to make Grantland as mainstream as possible subjugate my editorial authority.

And if you don't like it, I have two words for you.

I HAVE TWO IMPLIED WORDS FOR YOU THAT I WILL NOT BE SAYING DIRECTLY!

Let's check in on this blog's namesake

----Update, written five minutes after I published this- I'm not 100% sure the Mariotti Facebook account is real. There isn't another one out there that suggests otherwise... but some of the stuff on this one is almost too good to be true. Hmmmmmm. Meh, fuck it, does it really matter either way?----

----Double update: dammit, Deadspin is saying it's fake. Well there goes that. I knew it was too good to be true. Even Mariotti isn't stupid enough to suggest that the MLB ASG be played after the whole season is over. Still, I'm shocked that he doesn't appear to have a (public) Facebook profile of his own. Come on Jay, what are you waiting for! You can be a celebrity in your own little world! It's everything you've always wanted!----

When we last left multiple Pulitzer Prize winner Jay Mariotti, he was being fired from everywhere and allegedly hitting his girlfriend in public (and pleading no contest to reduced charges... you know how it goes). On more than one occasion. Fortunately, thanks to Facebook he still has an outlet for the well-crafted pieces of brain poop that occasionally spill out of his head. (Full disclosure, I saw this on Deadspin. But rest assured that I'll be checking his news feed without being tipped off by anyone from now on.)

He always did have a way with clever nicknames. But he dropped the ball a bit here- that's the Blizzard of Stink Face to you, Jay.

Only Jay could be so intentionally contrarian and desperate for attention that he would take a shot at the USWNT when they're at their absolute apex of popularity. Big ups to Russell Paperz for burning Mariotti with the burniest of burnsauce.

Let's do one more. Why not.

1. No.

2. Hey, everyone loves the Pro Bowl, amirite?????!!?!?!?!

The Mariotti Fallout

In the last few days I've read a few of the pieces about the JayBird's fall from grace. If you've been asleep at your keyboard, the sportsblogosphere has been awash with joy at Mariotti's tumble. Here are a few of the sites weighing in:

Sports By Brooks has chronicled an exhaustive list of all the times Jay's castigated a professional athlete for domestic violence issues over the last twenty years or so. It's a pretty extensive list, and the SBB post excerpts all the relevant pieces which do a clear job of exposing Jay's willingness to criticize.

Deadspin has gotten ahold of an alleged eyewitness and even a photo of both the woman and the apartment lobby in question.

Richard Deitsch at SI.com has collected a few interesting viewpoints from around the media, though he mostly discusses the vitriolic response of FJayM whipping boy Gregg Doyel. Apparently Doyel had a Mariotti-related rant on his Twitter account (quick recap of the tweets here) a few nights ago. After reading Doyel's Twitter account it is clear to me that these sportswriters have an enormous amount of time on their hands to tweet about bullshit. After reading a few of Gregg's thoughts, it's clear that in spending a great amount of his energy castigating someone before knowing the facts, he seems to lack a sense of self-awareness.

Doyel had this to say:

"My initial thought was of the irony," Doyel said. "Here's a guy who writes without pause or nuance about athlete misbehavior. There is no gray with him, only black and white. In his columns he's fired more people than Donald Trump -- and for doing the exact thing Mariotti was accused of doing the other night. I was shocked by the news, and I was disgusted."

Gregg's timing reveals that he's preposterously eager to see his own version of Jay confirmed in public. It's evident in the way he says it - carefully including the "accused of" phrase to technically cover his ass when he obviously has convicted Jay in his mind. Convicted him not because he has any factual knowledge of the events but because it's a perfect opportunity to kick an enemy when he's down.

[Aside: one of my favorite Onion sidebars ever, moderately relevant at this point: "Bully Not So Tough After Being Molested". Cringe humor. Awesome.]

Even Ochocinco seems to have grasped the fundamentals of the situation. Lord knows he's not one to withhold his thoughts.

In my opinion, the Miami Herald's Dan le Batard offers the most dispassionate and long-distance view of the situation. He points out that Mariotti is a symbol of a greater malaise within the sports world, and the overwhelming vitriol spewing out of the mainstream media and the blogosphere is disconcerting. He correctly recognizes Mariotti as a caricature who's unrepresentative of the sports media as a whole, but also suggests that the sheer glee with which his colleagues have reacted to Jay's situation is a symptom of a culture too obsessed with grabbing attention - even at the expense of core values like "fairness and fair play and compassion". It sounds a little hokey when put that way, but it rings true.

I fall in with Le Batard's take. Domestic violence isn't joyful, and an overhwelming reaction against Mariotti misses the point: he's a symbol of what people want. In a way, Jay isn't really Jay - he's just a stand-in for our own appreciation of an entertainer who stirs the pot on television and in print with a skill that infuriates but grabs attention. He's the face of our desire for entertainment. We hate that, and we hate that Jay has made a ton of money off that... but Jay wouldn't have made that dough and gotten his name in the bylines and his mug on the screen if there weren't enough of us clamoring for it. The sports media is big business, and these companies wouldn't have hired Jay if people didn't want Jay.

Don't confuse your hatred of Jay the personality's existence with a hatred of Jay as a person. I make no attempt to defend Jay's actions or personality: a quick glance at our posts reveals that we think he's an asshole, at least in print. The facts may bear out in any number of directions, and Jay has surely earned little sympathy or forgiveness. But public humiliation went out of style a few hundred years ago.

I suppose we've carved out our own little niche of the blogosphere tearing Jay up, and it's paying off enough that our traffic on the 21st went up more than twelvefold compared to the previous two Saturdays. It pains me to think that we might be making our last few posts labeled "Jay Mariotti" and may even have a moderate identity crisis soon, but at this point there's not much left to say. Let the court case come out where it will; let the eventual firing happen in its course (doubt any media employer would take him now even if the accusation proved false); let Jay go back to being whoever he was before the media conglomerates gave him the pulpit to fulminate from.

To the rest of the sports media: if we really want to attack the problem here, we should take our last opportunity to keep Jay off the air and tone down our attacks on him. Why not just let Jay slink away into whatever career might be left for him? Is that such a bad solution?

Huh. Interesting

Not that we here at FireJay condone domestic violence or anything... but it seems somewhat likely that this will lead to a firing of some kind. So in that sense, and that sense only- hooray!

TMQR post coming up later this weekend.

Nothing Needs to be Said About This:

Jay won Around the Horn on Friday (which of course does not involve "winning" in the traditional sense, but work with me here; I guess you could say Tony Reali thought he was the least stupid member of the panel that day). Here's how he led off his subsequent "face time:"

A few months ago it would have been unthinkable to say that Alex Rodriguez would one day make the Hall of Fame.

So, like the title says, nothing needs to be said about that. But I think I'll post a funny picture of Jay anyways.

If Anyone Else Was Wondering If Jay Mariotti Was Still the Most Clever Writer on the Internet.....

He is.

If Milton Bradley, the old board game company, had a game for Milton Bradley, the baseball malcontent, it surely would be Trouble.

Back to the Salt Mines, People

Effective September 1, Jay Mariotti will begin working for the Chicago Tribune.

Wait a minute, what?

"It's been a tremendous experience, but I'm going to be honest with you, the profession is dying,'' Mariotti said, "I don't think either paper [Sun-Times or Chicago Tribune] is going to survive.

Hold on, play it again.

"It's been a tremendous experience, but I'm going to be honest with you, the profession is dying,'' Mariotti said, "I don't think either paper [Sun-Times or Chicago Tribune] is going to survive.

Once more.

"It's been a tremendous experience, but I'm going to be honest with you, the profession is dying,'' Mariotti said, "I don't think either paper [Sun-Times or Chicago Tribune] is going to survive.

Fascinating. So why is he doing this? You don't suppose.... NO. NO WAY. No way is he doing this just to get back at his former employer, the Chicago Sun-Times! That would be silly. After all, we know that Jay is not in favor of holding grudges.

A special fuck you to Sports by Brooks, linked above as the source for this story, for this:

If you live outside of Chicago, there’s a good chance you only know Mariotti from his surprisingly well-reasoned work on ESPN’s Around The Horn.

Well-reasoned? Either the powerful Jay Mariotti lobby has gained control of SBB and is now using it as a mouthpiece for his self-promotion efforts, or no one at SBB actually watches ATH. Those are the only possible explanations for that comment.

The Jay-Bird Hypocritically Deals With Erin Andrews & Celeb Culture

As you might remember,the JayBird writes for AOL Fanhouse now. Basically, he's a professional blogger. Here's his take on the Erin Andrews blowup. Basically, he excoriates the blogosphere for feeding the Andrews frenzy. While he has some points, he kind of misses the point. There's a lot of shit in this article, but I don't feel like Tolstoying it for this post. Here's the best selection:

A second-guess, this is not. I've been saying it for years. And sadly enough, I've feared it would involve Andrews, whose only sin is being good-looking and blond on a powerful television network watched predominantly by sports-and-female-loving males.

Well, shit. She's managed to get to the top of the pile in the sportscasting world almost surely because of her incredibly high rating on the conventional attractiveness scale. Though Erin herself didn't commit this sin, isn't it partially ESPN's fault for parading this sex object on the sidelines of famous football games? It's like Jay wants to excuse ESPN for marketing and profiting off Erin-Andrews-as-sex-symbol but then complains when someone actually treats Erin like a sex symbol.

Am I blaming sports bloggers and their commenters that a very disturbed person secretly videotaped Andrews as she was standing nude in her hotel room, then posted the five-minute video on the Internet?

It's not my fault.

No, I am not, even though the video was posted under the title "Hot naked blonde who looks a lot like a sports blogger favorite in her hotel room.'' But am I blaming bloggers for helping create the daily sex-and-objectification culture that turned Andrews into an ongoing peep show on their Web sites?

Look, Jay. Why don't you just blame masculine culture as a whole - the culture that can't look at a good-looking woman on television without objectifying her? That's not something exclusive to the sports-blogging world, that's something shared in any public sphere.

Occasionally glancing at such junk through the years, I was whisked into a cross between a frat boy's porn fantasies and a sports remake of Revenge of the Nerds. Who were these geeks? Why was the Internet, once again, giving semi-lives to people with no lives?

Hey Jay, didn't you recently and publicly abandon your print-media old-school ethics-bound news organization for an internet-only basically-a-blog gig?

Ironically, the internet (and the ESPNiverse) has given a semi-life to people like Mariotti - who should have no life.

My punishment for writing this, naturally, will be a full-scale assault on my character by these very sites,

A deserved assault, considering all the stupid things you've said and done in your entire career.

none of which are worthy of being mentioned on a respectable, globally regarded site such as this.

You're such a fucking big deal, Jay, that you have to remind us about how big a deal you are on AOL fucking Fanhouse.

See, these dweebs can dish out the criticism but can't take it.

Name-calling: way to go, Jay.

Rather than take on an almighty sports executive -- the real test of a sportswriter in an age when leagues and media are frequent bedfellows -- they go after media people.

What? Bloggers are afraid to take on sports execs? I don't even understand this point - in the whole article he complains about amoral bloggers who take advantage of people like Erin Andrews, but now he seems to complain about the media members who are cozied up to the leagues. That's NOT bloggers, who have very little connection to the inside sports world.

When a blog gets something right about me, for instance, I'll be the first to say so.

Jesus H. Christ, Jay. Save yourself a few bucks and mail the fifty-pound package of letters you owe us third-class. We've waited two years; we can wait a few more days.

To date, they're batting way under the Mendoza line, about .150.

He must not have read us.

A blog said I was with a "semi-hot blonde'' at an NBA party; she was a public-relations person for a player marketing a charity game.

So was the blog wrong?

A blog was woefully wrong about my salary, just guessing and never bothering to look into it.

How would they look into it? Is your salary public knowledge? Shit, Jay, there's a lot of things you rarely bother to look into.

A blog recklessly ran items that weren't remotely true when I left the Chicago Sun-Times.

I hope he's referring to this epic post of ours. I think we can admit to being reckless, though.

A blog said I brag endlessly about our TV show in bars; when people ask about Around The Horn, I'm friendly and answer all questions or else I'm called a jerk.

We've looked at a lot of your articles and you actually are kind of a jerk. You've made a career off being a jerk, at least in print. Who knows, Jay, maybe you are a nice guy in person.

A blog said I don't like to have pictures taken in bars; that's true, because I don't want some blogger running a picture and calling me drunk when I've had one beer.

That's your prerogative. That's pretty sensible actually - and it doesn't have a lot to do with blogs. Lots of people in this country don't want to be photographed drinking, only because there's a bit of a social stigma about being publicly drunk that extends to more people than you, Jay.

If this is the American Way, what happened to the truth and justice part?

The sort of truth created when you sign a three-year contract extension with your employer in mid-June, only to quit in early August?

A few years ago, after the blogs had their way with me during another Ozzie Guillen meltdown,

You mean last year? Or maybe the summer of 2007? Or all those other times you said stupid shit?

I had death threats in Chicago.

For the official record, that wasn't us. We just wanted to see him fired.

The newspaper ordered me to have a driver take me to U.S. Cellular Field so I would avoid possible violence in the stadium parking lots.

I'm sure you protested all night about being given such special treatment.

So, sure, the Erin Andrews case gives me the shivers, too. While I'm more Jim Belushi than George Clooney, I think I'll take a good, long look at the peephole the next time I'm in a hotel room.

Jay, you're not that important. Or even vaguely attractive. Notice that no male sportscasters ever get this shit happening to them.

And wonder what the hell happened to my profession.

Hey, that's why we're here, Jay. We wonder why people like you have important roles in it.

I Don't Particularly Like Manny But......

As it is written, he whom Jay Mariotti attacketh like a man who hath no intelligence, pnoles defendeth.

Fans Glorifying Manny Need to Get a Life

Hear that all you baseball fans who like baseball? Get a new hobby, losers!

Here comes the standard Jay Mariotti "shit-for-brains-audience" recap....the one that he gives in every article to take up space that consists of news everyone already knows. It really is a lack of respect for the readers to do this every time.

Just to refresh your memory, Manny Ramirez is a shamed steroid cheat. He used a female fertility drug that produced artificial testosterone, making him the latest in a pathetic line of high-profile players who have done performance-enhancers and contaminated an entire baseball era. He also is a petty quitter, having stopped running out groundballs in a hissy-fit ploy that forced the Red Sox to trade him to the Dodgers.

How's everyone doing so far. Still with us? Or are we moving too fast?

So why were people cheering him when he returned last weekend after a 50-game suspension?

Because Manny Ramirez arrived last year, swung the Dodgers over his shoulder, and carried them 21341923423.23 miles to the postseason. A role-model? No. A great baseball player? Absolutely.

And giving him long, robust standing ovations?

Good players that cause you to get to the playoffs when you otherwise wouldn't tend to get those.

And proudly wearing $22 concession-stand dreadlocks and No. 99 jerseys?

Because baseball fans do these kinds of things.

And waving signs that said "We Still Love You, Manny" and "It's all about the dreads, not the Meds" -- stadium greeting cards that made him feel good when he should be feeling like, well, a convicted scumbag?

I'm sure he felt like a convicted scumbag over the last two months. He got caught, admitted it, and served his penalty. What the hell are the fans supposed to do? If I'm a Dodgers fan, I cheer Manny. If I'm a Yankees fan, I cheer A-Rod. If I'm a Giants fan a couple of years ago, I probably don't boo Bonds (after much deliberation). It's that simple.

Why oh why would anyone with a soul, a conscience and working brain cells glorify a cheater?

Yeah, especially after he murdered all those puppies and killed people while driving drunk.

Manny Ramirez does not equal Hitler.

Because most of these goofs were Dodgers fans who made the short drive from Los Angeles to San Diego, where they bought up 60 percent of the seats and turned Petco Park into Mannywood South. As we saw in San Francisco with the local fawning over Barry Bonds, some cities simply lack the sophistication to hold an appropriate grudge against a cheater.

Holding grudges: A trait commonly found in sophisticated people

All they seem to care about is whether the player produces and the ballclub wins.

What terrible Dodger fans.

And right now, with the Dodgers holding the best record in the major leagues and surviving just fine in their time without Ramirez, fans are checking their morals at the turnstiles and dreaming about a dreadlocked World Series in Chavez Ravine.

Checking their morals at the turnstiles. Wow. Everyone who cheers for Manny is going to hell.

In New York, Ramirez will be peppered with questions about why he used steroids. His reluctance to address the issue so far has been as big a disgrace as the drug bust itself. With stunning arrogance, his defining quote to date on the topic was this June 9 gem: "I didn't kill nobody, I didn't rape nobody, so that's it, I'm just going to come and play the game." Actually, I might argue that he and the other superstar cheats have raped the game.

Baseball, coincidentally, is not a person.

Until he specifically answers the steroids questions, which Dodgers owner Frank McCourt says won't happen, Ramirez will face media heat nationally. This could lead to a breakdown in performance and attitude, if his meltdown in Boston last July is any indication.

Once Manny left for L.A., however, the media heat just disappeared completely, right? How'd he play there?

Also, 2008 Boston Manny: .299/.398/.529. Fuck you, Jay.

But when he was away, the likes of Andre Ethier and Juan Pierre excelled. A brooding Manny is a Manny who can distract the finest of clubs, as the Red Sox can attest.

OK, don't play Manny. Play Juan Pierre, and see how that works out. I hear he's close to his career norms this year!

And might I remind you, Ethier's breakout in the first place occurred last year, and coincided with Manny's arrival. I'm not saying one caused the other, but you can't say that Ethier has just magically started to be a good player without Manny around.

So when Mannywood officially reopens next week, fans can spend $99 for two seats in left field and two blue "Mannywood" t-shirts. My guess is, the place will be packed for the rest of the season.

Know what else the Dodgers should include in the package?

A vomit bag.

Hilarious.

Detective Jay Knew the Whole Time

You'll just have to take my word for it that Jay wrote this. It's a well-known FireJay policy that we don't link his articles.

At least three times, maybe more, I've asked Sammy Sosa if he ever has used steroids. Each time, he testily answered no, once stating that the only performance-enhancing substance he took was a "Flintstone vitamin." He had this goofy, cartoonish way about him that made you want to believe him, even though deep down, as someone who noticed that his head and upper body were swelled disproportionately to human reality, I knew he was as stone-cold guilty as any of them.

You. Fucking. Genius.

That's what I said, the biggest scandal in sports history. Think about it. Nearly every baseball superstar we've tried to embrace the last dozen years because of his magnitude and numbers -- Sosa, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez being the foremost -- has come up dirty.

Frank Thomas, Albert Pujols, Ken Griffey Jr, David Eckstein. Your move, Jay.

And all it does is make me ill for gushing over each of them at one time or another, starting with the Summer of Love in 1998, when Sosa and McGwire waged a muscle duel and blew past the single-season home run numbers of Roger Maris and Babe Ruth.

Gushing over them...but earlier you said.....knew entire time? pnoles confoozled.

The surge rejuvenated a game that lost some measure of popularity earlier that decade, when a labor impasse led to the cancellation of a World Series and widespread fan apathy. Alas, it turned out to be nothing but a hoax, just like almost everything else we've applauded in the Steroid Era.

Anyone else need this history lesson as badly as I did? Whew, thanks Jay. I'm up to speed now.

I'm ashamed to have admired their accomplishments, even while I was openly suspicious in some of my columns back then.

I'm ashamed, because I'm just like all of you, but suspicious, because I'm way smarter and better than you. I knew the entire time, cheered anyway, but documentation exists, Jay smart. I cheered, but I knew, I ashamed. Jay Good. All Else Bad.

Nah. It just was a matter of time and circumstance before the heat finally caught up to Sosa and he officially joined the Liar's Club. That's what angers me most about these villains, the deceit and the lies,

It hasn't even been a month since you wrote that it was impossible for the Chicago Cubs to win a World Series. Ever.

Like the Rocket and the Home Run King*, Slammin' Sammy conceivably could be headed to jail after standing before Congress under oath and testifying that "everything" he knew "about steroids and human growth hormones is that they are bad for you, even lethal" and that he "would never put anything dangerous like that" in his body. "To be clear," he said that day, "I have never taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs. I have never injected myself or had anyone inject me with anything." He was accompanied by a lawyer who said Sosa had difficulty speaking English, which struck me as odd considering Sosa knows English very well, including every choice curse word he has used when scolding media people.

Hmmmm....so Sosa actually does speak English very well, even though a lawyer said he did not? Detective Jay is on the case! I bet no one else ever noticed this!

Problem was, his testimony came in 2005, two years after the alleged positive test was included among the Dirty 104.

Which means Sosa may have been lying under oath. Perhaps we'll be calling him Slammer Sammy.

Throw the book at him boys! Another case cracked by Mariotti! His pure intellect is perhaps only surpassed by his one-liners!

So, no, he doesn't belong in the Hall any more than McGwire, who has been rejected overwhelmingly in his first three years of eligibility by the voting baseball writers -- myself included.

Did anyone know that Jay has a Hall of Fame vote (seriously)?

Well I don't have much to say about that, so enjoy this Chone Figgins quote that Jay plugged into this article.

"It's just like gambling on baseball. If you're not supposed to do it, you shouldn't be able to get in," Los Angeles Angels infielder Chone Figgins said. "It's the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Cheatin'. It's like not paying your taxes. They eventually catch up to you."

I hope Chone Figgins makes the Hall of Fame in 2020 or whatever just on the basis of this quote. Taking steroids is like not paying your taxes. Love it.

But wait, we haven't heard an Ozzie Guillen reference yet! Enjoy this quick, easy, and seamless transition that gives Jay an excuse to talk about Ozzie.

The infamous 2003 list was supposed to remain anonymous under terms established between Major League Baseball and the Players Association. For some reason, either the union didn't destroy the test results or someone in management is involved in hanky-panky. How interesting that Sosa's name was leaked in a Times story published on the day the Cubs were scheduled to play the crosstown White Sox -- owned by Jerry Reinsdorf, Selig's right-hand man forever -- in the opener of their interleague series. Ozzie Guillen, manager of the Sox, said before the game was rained out that all the names of the Dirty 104 should be released publicly.

Whew. See? Ozzie's relevant to this article too!

The Blizzard of Oz is a flaming hypocrite, of course, having said three years ago that former major-league pitcher Jason Grimsley was a snitch for serving as a steroids informant in a federal investigation. "Shoot the [bleep]," Guillen said then. "The only thing I can say is that a former player should shut up and go. Shut up and move on. We don't need these guys. Baseball is better without him." Now, Ozzie thinks all names should be revealed.

Now that he ::sniff:: doesn't write for the Sun-Times anymore, look how hard it is to squeeze in these Guillen insults! You can tell, this is absolutely killing him. Also, I love when Jay calls other people hypocrites. It gives me just the world's biggest joygasm.

I sensed Sosa was up to no good several years ago, when he claimed to have been "robbed" of $20,000 in the lobby of the Caracas Hilton. He had placed the money in a plastic bag, wrapped it inside a towel and supposedly left it in the lobby while he and his brother ate in a hotel restaurant.\

There's Jay's sharp eye for suspicious activity! Gee, I bet you could read that story to 25,000 of us normies and not a single person would have caught onto a whiff of shadiness.

Uh, what was Sosa doing in Venezuela with $20,000 in cash stuffed in a bag?

This logic is superhuman!

I was able to ask my questions to Sosa. Each time, he denied ever using steroids. I wanted to call him a liar but couldn't.

Today, I can.

...said Jay Mariotti, triumphantly, out of breath, planting a flag atop the highest mountain in Iowa, as onlookers in the distance gasp in awe upon seeing his rotund silhouette standing bravely in the orange, setting sun.

That shit's POETRY.

Saying Hello to an Old Friend

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time we revisit a story that was told billions of times already, but hasn't been told in almost a year. A story told by a man who once showed up here quite frequently, and is still allegedly our flagship target. Ladies and gentlemen, please wwwwwwwwwwelcome back.....Jay Mariotti.

Bad Vibes Abound in Friendly Confines

For those of you who don't believe me......

Let's

check

the

FireJay

archives

again

shall

we?

::sniff:: Those were happy times. I sort of miss you, Jay.

CHICAGO -- I'm actually a hopeful guy at heart, confident we'll one day have an economic recovery,

Likely very soon!

peace on earth

Likely not happening!

and better late-night TV from Jimmy Fallon.

The least likely of all!

But my faith in humankind never has extended to the Cubs. Let me lay this out right here: They won't win another World Series in our lifetime or anyone's else,

Interesting. Jay should bet his life savings against the Cubs winning every year and live like a king. But I don't quite understand that sentence. Can you please give me three very random and completely unrelated references to clarify this?

doomed like pork rinds, Vanilla Ice and the last U.S. president as irreversible national debacles.

Thanks.

On a cold, rainy Tuesday, it was Country Music Night at Wrigley Field, the perfect promotion for the saddest ongoing song in sports. Living here, I am sensing more than a smidgen of burnout in Cubdom, a world-weariness that suggests even the most loyal masochists in sports are sick of pledging their entire beings to a cursed cause -- only to be inevitably bludgeoned every autumn.

I stopped reading the second you used the word "cursed". Unfortunately, it seems I already read roughly 89% of those words.

Wasn't there some sort of "curse" on that there Boston baseball team?

Naw, couldn't be. They won the World Series twice recently.

Now, there's a queasy feeling that the Cubs are regressing and might not even make the playoffs this season. They've lost eight of their last nine games, with a rain-shortened 6-1 win over the Pirates finally breaking the streak, and they too often strike the appearance of a sluggish, broken-down, overpriced blob that has overstayed its welcome as a National League contender.

They're four games out of first place on May 31. And they're behind teams that aren't even good.

This begs for a snarling, spitting, belly-bumping tantrum by manager Lou Piniella, who went bonkers in June 2007 and saw the Cubs use it as an emotional turning point in a division-title season.

Jay seems to be of the opinion that the Chicago Cubs won the division in 2007 because Lou Piniella kicked dirt on an umpire. Good for you, Jay.

But here's the rub: His wife, Anita, won't let her hubbie throw bases or fits anymore at 65, which not only is the clubhouse's loss but SportsCenter's, too.

Translation: The Cubs are fux0red.

At 22-22, the Cubs are only four games behind Milwaukee and St. Louis, locked in a first-place tie in the NL Central.

Dan-bob, please explain to the audience what is wrong with this sentence.

But the Cardinals, with Albert Pujols as the resident machine and pitching coach Dave Duncan working more miracles with mediocre arms, are poised for a division-title run.

I'm glad you think that Joel Piniero and Kyle Lohse aren't in for some sort of rude awakening.

The Brewers aren't bad, either, even without C.C. Sabathia.

Actually, they are kind of bad, especially when you consider Rickie Weeks isn't playing anymore. They have four guys hitting the ball acceptably well, and one of them is Craig Counsell, who is totally going to hit .327 all year. Trevor Hoffman will never give up a run, and the team will definitely stay in first place with Manny Parra and Jeff Suppan pitching this awful.

Let me read that sentence again.

The Brewers aren't bad, either, even without C.C. Sabathia.

Wow Jay, you've totally convinced me that you know one thing about the Brewers.

The Cubs are one of baseball's worst offensive teams,

WRONG!

ranking 11th in the league in runs and 14th in batting average and total bases, a far cry from the mashers who powered their way to glory.

Geovany Soto is going to hit .210 all year, and Aramis Ramirez will never come off the disabled list.

One issue is the deterioration of Derrek Lee, who hit 46 home runs four years ago, into a glorified singles hitter. Another issue is Aramis Ramirez, a dangerous hitter who can't stay healthy. Then there's the maddeningly streaky Alfonso Soriano, who is striking out like a fiend and remains misplaced as a leadoff man. The reigning NL Rookie of the Year, catcher Geovany Soto, is hitting .214 with one homer.

There is absolutely no reason to think that any of these players will produce at such a sluggish/disabled rate over an entire season.

Then there's Milton Bradley, who has brought nothing but poison to the Friendly Confines and threatens to spoil the good vibes that have pervaded Wrigley the last two seasons. Only Bradley, who should be accompanied by a shrink 24/7, still can carry a grudge in late May about an umpiring spat that happened on April 16.

Bradley is hitting home runs at a higher rate per plate appearance than he ever has in his career. His OBP is 119 points higher than his batting average. If you think that Milton Bradley is a .224 hitter, then please, by all means, panic.

But, hey, at least Mr. T was there on Monday night, in his red, white and blue get-up and bandana, mucking up the seventh-inning song with the worst of them. You thought Denise Richards was bad? Jeff Gordon, Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Romo, Mike Ditka, Dick Vitale? Mr. T brought "PAIN!!!" in the worst way.

See? It isn't all bad!

Hiatus Over

I was reading a "newspaper" this morning on a train (apparently those things were huge back in the 1960s or something), and I stumbled across a thing written by Rick Telander of the Chicago Sun-Times that made me miss my long months away from all you fine fellows here at FireJay.

To say it was a bad day for Sox is an understatement

I'd say it's a pretty decent description. They lost a baseball game, and a decent-ish trade idea fell through. But pray tell, Ricky, why is this the apocalypse?

And how was your day? I guarantee you it wasn't White Sox bad.

The Whipped Sox, my friends, should have slept through Thursday.

You know those White Sox....always running ridiculous errands for their girlfriends and never spending time with anyone else.

They should have found a time warp past Thursday and exited somewhere far, far down the continuum, in a place where the team, the attitude and the future all have possibilities.

I'm right on page with this. There are no possibilities for the White Sox right now. Not even losing. Just nothingness. And let's not forget that attitude! So possibilityless! No doubt that's behind that oh-so-glamorous 17-23 record!

(Psssssssst. Rick. You used the wrong word, dude! And you totally suck at writing! Teehee!)

The Sox lost by three touchdowns to the Minnesota Twins at U.S. Cellular Field

They lost by 19 runs. You are trying way too hard to work in football analogies, bro. You're allowed to say that when a team loses by either 18 or 21.

in a game so colossally bad that if there are such things as game tapes that must be burned, this was them.

We are sorry to report that the English Language was found dead in an empty apartment today at the age of 1571.

Bad pitching, bad fielding, bad hitting, bad baserunning, bad managing. That's how you get shellacked 20-1.

Did I miss anything else?

No, that's really it.

I did.

No, you didn't.

There was the humiliation of having a ballpark about as full as a field of carrots -- before the carrots have sprouted.

Dude. This was a fucking DAY GAME on a THURSDAY. Were you expecting a goddamn sellout?

The Cubs were out of town

Irrelevant. Very, very irrelevant.

the temperature was in the 80s

People were at work.

the clouds had vanished,

It was May 21st.

a light breeze blew from the south,

The team is 6 games below .500

the Sox were playing the Twins -- the hated ''piranhas'' of Ozzie Guillen's verbal creativity

About the only legitimate point you made.

and the clean, well-appointed park was about half-empty.

I'd call it half-full, or well over half, as you are about to state.

There were 23,048 attendees (56.7 percent full) at The Cell, to be precise.

This is very, very good for a day game on a Thursday for a team 6 games below .500 in a crappy division. I can probably find you 20 teams that would never have managed that attendance mark. You sir, are a pooheaded fuckshit.

More?

Yep.

Jake Peavy.

The San Diego Padres' 2007 Cy Young Award winner basically told the Sox they stink.

So he elected to stay with the San Diego Padres. Huh. Good logic there.

Did they need that?

About as much as Rosie O'Donnell needs to be told she's not runway material.

Just an awesome joke.

Hey, a big backslap to K-Will for even getting this potential trade on the table and fiddling around with it! Know what I'm saying?

Kenny Williams has made more trades than any MLB manager in the past 7 years. You're making it sound like he's terrified of doing this sort of thing.

You do remember the Cubs were the team that really wanted Peavy during the offseason -- and he really wanted them -- but the Padres and Cubs couldn't work out the compensation, so the thing fell through.

So this would have been a nice middle finger to the crosstown National League team that always hogs the Chicago headlines and attendance figures.

I'm sure that was the first thing on Kenny Williams's mind. I don't know how many times it has to be explained to writers. The Chicago White Sox do not give a shit about the Chicago Cubs. They play 6 games a year, and then that's it.

When the Sox came from nowhere to try to get Peavy, it shocked everybody in these parts.

But, uh, maybe general manager Ken Williams should have gotten word from the pitcher himself that he would come to the American League team -- Peavy has veto power over his trade rights -- before figuring out the rest of the equation.

Reliable sources have suggested that Williams knew Peavy would never come, and that this whole thing was a sham to pump up Peavy's trade value. Just a thought.

Williams and Padres GM Kevin Towers had come to an agreement, but what the hell did that mean? It was like changing Paris Hilton's lip-gloss color without getting her consent first.

I like this guy! He's got fresh one-liners!

The embarrassment of Peavy's renunciation of the Sox was so profound that it will linger for months, if not years, tarnishing the franchise that just can't seem to get over the hump of second-class status.

"Rick Telander" is clearly a pseudonym for "Jay Mariotti". You think you're exaggerating a bit there, Jay?

The guy didn't even use first-person English. (emphasis his)

''As of right now, this is the best place for us to be,'' Peavy said late Thursday, ''this'' being wretched San Diego. ''We made that decision for the time being.''

Wow. He used "we", and "us" (referring to his family and possibly agent) instead of "I" and "me". Take that, White Sox.

Is Peavy, like, a platoon?

He was talking about his family, you fuckhat.

Oh, this was sad, sad. Dumb, dumb.

Not as sad and dumb as your writing! Heyooooooooooo!