Yes, I Love the Off-Season, Too

Hello, baseball fans!

The sports pages haven't stopped talking about baseball, but I have. Until now!

At some point in the next month, it appears we're going to get ourselves some official names of Known Banned Substance Users, or KnaBSUs, as I like to call them. Many of these KnaBSUs are current players. So that's always a good time. Which of your favorite mediocre players were/are KnaBSUs?

But once again, I feel the need to point you all in the direction of another fine Nation article, this one by the ever-faithful David Zirin. The Department of Justice has spent a fortune working up to an indictment of Barry Bonds, everyone's favorite ballplayer. And yet, as David so pointedly writes...

In the case of Baseball Fans vs. the Anabolic Era, everyone is guilty: not just players but all who were part of the assembly line that put the drugs in their veins. That means coaches, managers, trainers, the compliant media, and even the owners. It also means that a certain former Texas Rangers baseball executive now in the White House who did nothing while his players like José Canseco passed around the juice would get asked questions under the hot lights.

Oh, David, your voice rings out as beautifully as Naomi Klein's.

I haven't made much noise about my man-crush on Russ "Oh, So" Feingold in the past year or so. The heart is a fickle little muscle, dear B&E readers. (For those of you who'd like to revisit my days of loving sweet Russell, browse the entries in the spring of 2006. There are simply too many potential links.)

But if David Zirin keeps up such fine work (for fun about Imus, read the little ditty that turned up in the LA Times), I might find myself with a man-crush to replace Russell "Thou Art So Mighty" Feingold.

Hey, you non-baseball fans, even though this posting has little to do with baseball, I'm going to throw you two bones. The first of course is Russ "Damn, You" Feingold:


The second, as you may have predicted, is progressive sportswriter, David Zirin, whose name is a lot harder to make nicknames out of. David "Beer 'n" Zirin?


Do these fellas do it for you? If they don't there's something seriously wrong with you.