COLIN LINNEWEBER

• As always, thanks for taking the time to give me some of your time. I hope I entertain you with my take on the past few days in the world of sports.

• New York Yankees Senior Vice President Hank Steinbrenner said yesterday that baseball is unjustifiably tagged as the only sport with a steroid problem and he alleged the epidemic is far worse in the National Football League than it is on the diamond.

“I don’t like baseball being singled out,” said Steinbrenner. “Everybody that knows sports knows football is tailor-made for performance-enhancing drugs. I don’t know how they managed to skate by. It irritates me. Don’t tell me it’s not more prevalent. The number in football is at least twice as many. Look at the speed and size of those players.”

Surely Steinbrenner chapped a number of asses with his controversial allegations and I imagine that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell would now love to duel with big-Hank in a “Mexican Street Fight.” Nevertheless, it’s usually refreshing when a man of significance speaks his mind instead of being neutral and politically correct. Steinbrenner called the proverbial spade a spade and the NFL knows it.

• Roger Clemens’ Yankee jersey was unceremoniously removed from the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center last week in direct response to the cloud of steroid suspicion surrounding “the Rocket.” The museum’s brass illustrated the art of addition by subtraction here and their entire establishment instantly rocketed-up (pun intended) in class by removing any link to the lying Texan.

• Does anyone else see Clemens’ horrifically abrasive lawyer Rusty Hardin as an unsightly blend between Dallas Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones and Jim Carey’s character in Dumb and Dumber?

• The Reverend Al Sharpton remarked last week that federal investigators had better hold Clemens to the same standards that they have former San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds.

“When I see a contrast between how you treat a Clemens and how you treat a Bonds, that is a civil rights issue,” said the polarizing clergyman.

Although Sharpton generally drives me to whiskey, I couldn’t agree with him more in this case. Pasted below is an excerpt from an entry that I posted on January the 9th of this year.

“If Clemens does eventually get elected into baseball’s Hall of Fame, Barry Lamar Bonds, 43, had better be enshrined as well. If Clemens does ultimately make Cooperstown and Bonds doesn’t, then sadly America as a whole is as racist as many proclaim.”

I am often offended at Sharpton’s penchant for making everything an issue of race. But, in this instance, all I can say is, “Amen, Reverend.”

• Yankees left-hander Andy Pettitte held a press conference in Tampa, Florida Monday to discuss being named in the Mitchell Report and being forced to speak with Congressional investigators earlier in the month. Despite the fact that he looked as nervous as a hooker in a cathedral, the southpaw seemed forthright and genuine and I applaud his moxie for publicly owing up to his sins. Pettite was wrong for what he did and he will face a lifetime of skepticism for the decision he made to utilize human growth hormone. Still, it is a genuine shame that so few ballplayers have had to face the music when so many of them have shot steroids into their cheeks. I suppose that is what happens when the Director of the Boston Red Sox is appointed to conduct the investigation. Conflict of interest, anyone?

• John Rocker, a flash-in-the-pan jackass who has been out of baseball since the ripe old age of 28, again flapped his gums last week and revealed how much of an untalented Neanderthal he actually is.

“Bud Selig is a clown,” said the moronic hick from Georgia. “He should do the entire world a favor and kill himself. He is a certifiable idiot.”

This is simply a vintage case of a midget calling a munchkin short. Rocker is one of the least appealing athletes in the annals of sports and it is pathetic that such a disgrace ever made it to the professional ranks to begin with. In reality, if John Rocker kills himself, he will do “the entire world a favor.”

• Thanks again for reviewing my material. Without your readership, I’d have no reason to write.

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