Ye Shiwen’s ridiculous swimming Gold medal time a little fishy, to say the least

Seriously, does China think we are really that stupid? Do they honestly think we are that completely brain-dead that they can just ram another human steroid down our throats and we won’t notice them smashing World records like they were Tibetan protests? The Olympics are off to a fine start by all accounts however China seem determined to wipe the shine off the five famous rings, and has apparently learnt nothing from being caught doping on several occasions recently.

In 2009 five junior Chinese swimmers were banned after testing positive for the anabolic agent clenbuterol at the 2008 national junior championships. In 1994 China ‘dominated’ the Rome world championships, when its drug-riddled women ‘won’ 13 of the 16 available golds, and were subsequently banned by all World swimming federations.

Basically, China has priors.

Well, apparently they think we aren’t watching or perhaps they think we have the memory retention of your average goldfish, as they are clearly at it again. Chinese ‘swimmer’  Ye Shiwen won the 400m IM gold in a world record time of 4min 28.43sec with a final 50m where she was quicker than none other than Ryan Lochte, who himself won the men's 400m IM in the second-fastest time in history.

Let’s spell that out for all and sundry.

China thinks we are going to believe that a 16 year old called Ye Shiwen won the 400m fair and square in a time that bested Ryan Lochte’s, which in turn was the second fastest time in history.

The Chinese girl clocked 28.93secs for the last 50m compared to the 27 year-olds 29.10secs while she also nearly beat his time for the last 100m at 58.68secs compared to 58.65secs when he raced just minutes earlier. Her ridiculous last two lengths would have also beaten Michael Phelps, before Lochte, the fastest man in that event.

In case you think this is an isolated incident, China won more gold medals in the pool on the first day than it did during the entire Olympics in Beijing four years ago.

Thankfully the worlds various swimming organisations have all expressed serious reservations about this insane ‘achievement’ and will be monitoring the test results of the Chinese teams steroid checks. The swimming bodies can hold on to those results for 8 years, and they believe that any masking agents or other chemicals will eventually be figured out, allowing them to find anything hidden deep in the molecular breakdown of the results.

Then, we will know the truth, and hopefully China will be banned from competing in International swimming until they finally stop cheating.

Then, or when this 16 year old Frankenstein develops an Adams apple and a penis.

That, either.

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Texas Rangers fans who booed Josh Hamilton Friday night should go watch a different sport

Friday night in Texas the Rangers lost a ball game, 9-5 to the White Sox, a team that is ripping it up since its marquee addition of Kevin Youkilis earlier in July. The White Sox are beating all comers since they added the Greek God Of Walks.  That alone should have softened the blow of losing for Rangers fans. The same Rangers who are the highest scoring team in baseball (ahead of the Red Sox in second). The same Rangers who are 58-41 and possess the fourth best record in all of Major League Baseball.

The very same Texas Rangers who have won the last two AL pennants, and have competed in the last two World Series. Some still think they were unlucky to lose last years.

Amazingly, despite all of the above, on Friday night Josh Hamilton was roundly booed by his home fans, Texas Rangers 'fans'. Hamilton struck out in a key moment in the 5th inningand the 'boos' rained down from the Texas stands.

Those Texas fans who chose to 'Boo' their marquee player, a player who some would say is possibly the greatest player in Major League Baseball right now, should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. They are nothing short of ignorant. They are an embarassment to themselves and the state of Texas.

If people want to be negative and 'boo' their own team and players, fine, whatever. However, when you boo such a brilliant player and such a great team, you show only pure stupidity and knuckle-head tendencies.

Baseball is a game of controlled failure.

The very best of players fail 7 times out of 10. Imagine that. They fail to get a hit 7 times out of 10. It is a game of patience, where the best players succeed 30% of the time. It is a game of streaks, peaks and valleys. Hamilton has been peaking all season long, and is currently in an unavoidable valley, something that happens to all players.

The idiotic Rangers fans who booed so heavily that Texas manager Ron Washington chose to sit Hamilton Saturday to give him a mental break, are the worst kind of dim-witted, idiotic fools, who clearly know nothing about the game of baseball, and should go back to watching something easier and more simple like NASCAR.

Baseball doesn't need clowns like them.


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The LA Dodgers land prize fish Hanley Ramirez as Miami continues to unravel

You have to wonder, what on earth are the Miami Marlins doing? Stunning MLB news today as it is starting to break that the LA Dodgers have landed Hanley Ramirez and his very, very big bat in a several-player-deal that is heavily weighted in the Dodgers favour. At first glance it would appear Miami might be in the middle of a big salary (and talent) dump, the deal is that lopsided.

If you recall, the Marlins dumped every decent part of its roster after World Series wins in '97 and '03, this time round they would appear to have forgotten to win the series before dumping its roster.

The ugliest part of this is the Marlins front office is now going to attempt to sneakily assasinate Ramirez around baseball by releasing thinly veiled hints in regards club house chemistry and so on. I am not buying it, what about all those goofy pro-Marlins promos we were force fed where Ramirez horsed around with Reyes and other Marlins, apparently one big happy family? Now it suits the front office to hide behind these 'character' stories we are already starting to see on Hanley. I call bullshit. They are trying to distract us from the stink of their latest fire sale by distributing misinformation.

The big winners? Obviously the Dodgers. Get the nicknames ready, their nasty murderers row of Kemp, Ethier and Ramirez has the potential to pplay wrecking ball on opposition pitching staffs for a very long, productive and successful time. Who the hell do you pitch to amongst that trio? You could legitimately say the Dodgers are suddenly serious World Series contenders, and that's exciting for Dodger fans all over the world.

Not so much a good time to be a Marlins fan. They couldn't have timed this obvious fire sale any worse. Their gaudy new ballpark is now shorn of several key parts, not just Ramirez but also Omar Infante and Anibal Sanchez. The word on the street is they are going to dump Josh Johnson too, which leaves us all to just scratch our heads and wonder, who on earth is planning things down in Miami?

The Marlins are an absolute train wreck.

Let's finish on a positive note. The Dodgers are 10/1 to win the National League and 18/1 to win the World Series. If Ramirez slots right in and starts bashing away, those are both very good value prices, so grab 'em while you can!

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A tribute to Jessica Ghawi

The terrible shooting in Denver in the very early hours of this Friday morning still seems somewhat unreal. It is both shocking and tragic, and there are obviously and understandably going to be billions of words written about this terrible, pointless injustice.  From a news point of view, the story is going to be covered into the most minute details. On a more personal level, we are all going to have our opinions, and many of them are going to be very strong. I for one am barely able to conceal my anger at those who would even now protect this insane ‘right to bear arms’, a ‘right’ protected by a constitution written when bears and angry indigenous peoples were a real issue.

This article isn’t about any of that.

Far more experienced and superior writers are going to tackle the news and political elements of this tragedy. This is just about a girl, Jessica, who died this morning, for absolutely no reason at all, way too soon.

I was saddened to see that Jessica Ghawi, one of the confirmed twelve victims, (who writes under the name Jessica Redfield ) was an aspiring sports writer, and from what is available to read about her, a bright, shining, creative person who just loved sports and writing, and was making an innocent attempt to launch a life for herself in that realm. Somewhat prophetically Jessica had actually written about a shooting in the same mall she would eventually die in, on her blog, which you can read here.

I don’t know Jessica, but her story struck a chord in me, perhaps in the fellowship of those of us trying to gain a foothold in the world of sports writing. The people who didn’t come home alive from the movies last night all deserve their own respectful eulogies, Jessica’s story just grabbed me as particularly sad and lonely.

Perhaps it was the last few ‘Tweets’ she sent. There is something gut wrenching in the pure excitement and playfulness of her final comments, as she waited to see a movie she was looking forward to.



Perhaps it is her charming, innocent smile in her pictures available online.  Or perhaps what has me thinking about this poor girl I have never met, is the playful, creative and very funny article she wrote on her beloved hockey. In it she linked the type of guys she had been dating to NHL hockey teams.

This Denver\Colorado Avalanche analogy below, as it turns out, is particularly poignant

The Boy Next Door: Plain and simple, that is your next door neighbor. Whether you love them or hate them, you live next to them and they’re always around. That is your home team, the one that’s closest to you. That is now the Colorado Avalanche for me since I just moved to Denver and he’s my new neighbor. I haven’t quite decided what to think about him yet. He seems harmless in a cute and endearing way. I definitely see a friendship sparking between us. It may even turn into a full-blown love affair. We’ll see, I’m definitely keeping my eye on him though.

After what happened late last night in Denver, out there in the cyberspace realm of this lonely, fucked up world is a now unattended Facebook page. There are most likely a few text messages sitting in her mobile phone innocently asking how the movie was. There are probably a couple of emails from friends in her Gmail or Hotmail or whatever inbox, correspondence she meant to get to work on, and just hadn’t as yet found the time. It would appear Jessica was a pretty voracious writer in terms of volume, so no doubt there are still articles she has half-finished sitting in the ‘draft’ status, as they will do so now for eternity. Half-finished pieces of creativity from a life snuffed out before its time.

My heart goes out to all of Jessica’s family and close friends. She seems like a really terrific young lady, and amongst everything else, it is heart-breakingly tragic that none of us are ever going to know how good a sports writer she may have become.  Those ‘draft’ articles, those ideas and creative thoughts she had, will never come to fruition, and that’s horribly sad.

Hopefully some shred of her being will live on through a patchwork collection of her creative output, and hopefully that brings some small comfort to her family and loved ones.

President Obama put it better and more succinctly than most will today, "our time here is limited, and it is precious".

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Please! Enough already with the Jeremy Lin: 25 games started = $25 million contract

Good lord! Jeremy Lin this, Jeremy Lin that. The Knicks will keep him, the Knicks won’t keep him. Whatever. Houston have him now so maybe, maybe there is some end in sight to this torrential downpour of repetitive, inane Jeremy Lin media coverage. What on earth has been going on? ESPN is practically ESPN\JeremyLin.com at this stage, their poster boy LeBron James has even taken a backstage to Linsanity.

Imagine you were a pretty big sports fan who, the night before Lin injured himself this NBA season past, was hit in the head by a blunt object and slipped into a coma. Imagine you woke up today and your loved ones had a laptop ready for you with all the big sporting websites open so you could catch up on your beloved sports news straight off the bat.

From the sheer stupid, heavy weight of Lin related coverage, you would have to assume that Lin had, while you lay in a coma, single handed led the Knicks to the NBA title, averaging 34 points a game in the playoffs, had talked Michael Bay out of ever making another Transformer movie, had opened sixteen orphanages, slapped the silly out of Tom Cruise, and donated 50 % of his salary to New York’s homeless.  The next day after all that, he had cured World hunger.

How stunned would you be if you were to find that Lin had actually ceased playing the night you had got knocked out cold? He didn’t score one point from that point on in the NBA and evidence suggests he had not slapped the crazy out of Tom Cruise. You would basically slip right back into a coma, right?

Whatever about the (L)insanity of all this endless media coverage, what on earth are Houston doing offering Lin a 3 year $25 million dollar contract on the basis of one half of a decent NBA season? Is there really such a dearth of talent around at the point guard position that people are willing to dole out such huge figures on the basis of a completely inconsequential sample period?!

Taking a quick step back, let’s review the ‘career’ of Jeremy Lin thus far.

Lin has played in 64 NBA games. Total. Ever. Of those, he has started a pathetic 25. 25 games started in the NBA. In the history of time. Lin has attempted 80 three point shots in his career, and has hit on a very pedestrian 25 of those. Think about that for a second. He has hit 25 3 point shots. Ever. Ray Allen hit about that many in the time it took to write this article. Lin has scored 588 points in his long, storied NBA career. Total. LeBron James scored 588 points falling out of bed this morning.


Jeremy Lin is about to get a contract that rewards him with a million dollars for every start in his career thus far.

This bloated Lin coverage is absolutely ridiculous.

What is it going to finally take to get him off of the front pages? Bearing in mind, Lin has basically done nothing of consequence in terms of NBA history, and yet still he is demanding more column inches and breathless side-line reporter segments than real, actual, productive and successful athletes. What is it going to take? LeBron caught in a limousine with a transvestite ‘lady’ of the night? Josh Hamilton taking a tour of the Duff Brewery? Bryce Harper renouncing Mormonism and switching to Scientology?

It would be one thing if Lin was interesting. Sadly he would appear to have the charisma of your average log and the dramatic possibilities of the colour grey. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer my wildly over rated athletes to have, you know, lived a little.

Bring back Tim Tebow, all is forgiven!

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Olympics: LeBron, The President and respect

We're not going to pull the wool over your eyes here in this column. We have had our well documented ‘disagreements’ with ‘The King’, LeBron James, largely based around ESPNs sycophantic infatuation with the lad. You could argue it is not all his fault. Nevertheless, ‘From the bleachers’ has unashamedly driven the nail in as often as possible.

Last night we were given pause for thought.

The USA played Brazil in an Olympics warm up in Washington, and President Obama, a big basketball fan, was in attendance. LeBron, who dominated on the night in the USAs 80-69 win, had this to say about his President;

"You have dreams about being in the NBA. You have dreams about making the game-winning shot at the buzzer. You never have dreams about having the president actually watching you play, because you don't think it's possible. It's definitely humbling, to see him here, the first lady and their kids here to watch us play. Really, it's amazing."

Why is this newsworthy?

The office of the President of the United States is supposed to come with a level of respect. All too often idiots like Luke Scott make basically treasonable comments about the current office, and they get away with this because the President is African American (How else do you explain it?). The President is supposed to be referred to reverentially as Mr President. A legally, fairly elected President (this one didn’t have to stuff any ballot boxes in Florida to gain office) demands your respect.

Disagree with him if you want, but respect him or you are in direct contradiction with the constitutional ethos of the United States of America, a document that is all too often forgotten unless it is being used to maintain arguments for the fanatic right.

Just to note also, for those of you who do disrespect the Presidential seal, President Obama received a rousing, noisy and notably universal ovation as he arrived at the game last night.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Last night, LeBron got it all right, on and off the court. More like this from the kid, and we may even end up liking him.






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MLB: Emotional night on tap tonight at Fenway Park as Red Sox host White Sox

When the Boston Red Sox host the Chicago White Sox tonight at Fenway Park, there will be more sub plots attached to the occasion than to your average day time Mexican soap opera. A fully charged night of emotion is almost guaranteed as a number of potentially dramatic talking points play themselves out across the diamond.

First to the most glaringly obvious. ‘Youk’ is back. The bearded one is almost guaranteed a terrific response from the Fenway crowd thanks in large part to his classy exit from The Fens, almost as much as the years of graft and World Series wins behind him. Kevin Youkilis was always a fan favourite in Boston, and most likely always will be. He probably didn’t need to take out a full page advertisement on ESPN thanking the Fenway faithful, however the fact he did, shows he does care about his relationship with his former fans. Just remember, that loud droning noise you will likely hear as he takes his first at bat is not booing, it's Yooooooouk-ing.

Interesting quick side note on that page, notice Youkilis went out of his way to thank Tito?

‘’To Terry Francona, who led us to 2 World Series championships in 2004 and 2007, I thank you for your support and personal guidance through my career with the Red Sox.’’

Read into that what you will.

Second, to the return of one Jacoby Ellsbury. The dashing young outfielder looks like he has hit the ground running and he had three ringing hits in last night’s big win against Tampa. A healthy Ellsbury, playing at even a fraction of the incredibly high level he played last season, would mean an awful lot to the Red Sox attempts to dig into the Yankees AL East lead. A healthy Ellsbury brings average, speed, superior defence and also a little power\pop in his bat. He also bring s a healthy slice of ‘clutch’ to the occasion, and finally he brings a serious ‘presence’ to the spear tip of the Red Sox lineup, on a nightly basis.

Ellsbury should get a healthy ovation tonight in his first at bat.

Finally, Carl Crawford, barring a last minute setback, should take the field for Boston for the first time in 2012. The Red Sox outfield will suddenly have much more star power to it, and the lineup gets that little bit ‘longer’ with the inclusion of Crawford, who did not suddenly turn into a bad baseball player overnight. If he is healthy, he should contribute. Hopefully the Fenway fans recognise that Crawford has worked hard to recover from injury and he should be given a clean slate to work off of.

The possibilities that a truly healthy Crawford bring to the Red Sox are limitless, a return to even a percentage of the amazing talent that was Carl Crawford in Tampa would be a giant boost to the Red Sox.

So there it is. Plenty of storylines, against the back drop of Boston trying to struggle back into the AL East race. Chances are tonight they should see a boost in the win column, as the White Sox started, Axelrod, has gone 0-2 with an ugly 7.11 ERA in his last five starts.

Then again, this is baseball, and as the Red Sox have shown us the last 18 months, anything is possible!



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