Earlier this week, after more than a year of  silence, Clemens went on ESPN Radio and again insisted that he has never taken performance enhancing drugs. Interestingly, he said, “Brian McNamee never injected me with steroids or HGH.” The interviewers, Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic of the “Mike & Mike” show completely blew it by not following up that statement with questions like, “Did Brian McNamee ever inject you with any substance?” It’s possible that someone else gave Clemens his steroids, but McNamee gave him the female fertility drug (the one for which Manny Ramirez tested positive) that players use to try to mask the steroids. Another follow-up might have been, “Did anyone ever inject you with steroids or HGH?” But it seems ESPN is sympathetic to Clemens,  getting down on bended knee for his new Public Relations firm. Greenberg later said he thought he did a fair interview, “straight down the middle”, in his words. I agree it was right down the middle, like a softball pitch. Still Clemens whiffed because the entire setup was bogus. He tried to make it sound like the timing of the interview was based on the fact that he was about to go on vacation and not really directly related to the book American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America’s Pastime that was released the same day. Clemens only wanted to chat with his buddies “Greeny” and “Golie” (as he called them during the interview). “Book? What book? Oh yeah, I heard something about it but it’s all garbage.”  I wonder if Greeny and Golie vote for MLB Hall of Fame candidates. I hope not.

The doozy of the interview was Clemens claim that he has a family history of heart disease and it would be “suicidal” for him to take dangerous steroids (as if steroid and other drug users think about long-term consequences when they’re shooting up). Part of his claim to having a family history of heart disease was, he said, “My stepfather had a heart attack.” Now THOSE are some powerful genes.

The family history revelations prompted me to do my own exhaustive investigations into Clemens’ family history of heart disease. Here’s what I found:

• Clemens’ golf caddy’s cousin lives next door to a guy who had a heart attack
• Clemens’ friend Dick Cheney has had 97 heart attacks and has 12 pace makers and 8 diesel-powered backup pacemakers and a Clemens’ autographed defibrilator that he keeps in Rush Limbaugh’s broadcast booth
• When he drives to a local high school to pitch batting practice, Clemens drives by the Baylor Heart Clinic and they have loads of people in there with heart disease
• 28% of Texans who die each year die of heart disease and .0000000001 % of Texans become seven-time Cy Young award winners; do the math
• Clemens’ vacation house, which has no contact whatsoever with the outside world, especially information about new books written by veteran investigative journalists from the New York Daily News, was built by a guy who later had a heart attack; and now the place has plumbing problems–scary stuff, so you know there’s NO WAY Clemens would be taking any dangerous steroids or HGH out there
• Jose Canseco has not had a heart attack, but he got his brains beat in by  5’9″ sportscaster Vai Sikahema in the first round of a celebrity boxing match; When Clemens reaches his desperate years he wants to be able to at least go at least two rounds against Sikahema, so you know there’s NO WAY he would ever touch any dangerous drugs!

Hey Mike,

I was listening to your show today on the way home from work and I was intrigued by your simulated baseball competition that pits an all-white team vs. an all-black team vs. an all-latino team. It’s an interesting exercise to be sure, but I  do have some questions about your methodology.

Why pick teams based on the U. S. Census classification system? And if you’re going to use that system, why is there no all-Asian team? After all, Japan has won two consecutive World Baseball Classics (playing vs. Korea in this year’s final).

I would also like to know if you put Negro League players on your all-black team? It seems unfair to put Walter “Big Train” Johnson on the all-white team since he played in a segregated league. Was “Double Duty” Radcliffe on the all-black team? (I looked on the 950 ESPN web site, but couldn’t find it-why do sports radio stations have such crappy web sites? You guys couldn’t just put your stuff on the excellent ESPN.com site?)

Even so, there are so many rich possibilities for this kind of fantasy baseball system. Here are a few:

• All guys named Joe (I’m off to a good start here with DiMaggio and Morgan) vs. All guys named Bob (this team could claim variations, such as Roberto Clemente). There are a few other names you could probably build good teams around, such as Mike, Steve, John, George (Babe Ruth and George Brett is a good start) and Bill/Willie; these would, of course accept players with these same names in other languages.

• An all-Domincan team (All-Puerto Rican? All-Cuban? The all Japanese team has already won it twice in real life so no need to simulate with them)
• An all MLB brothers team (Molina, Cruz, Niekro, Giambi, Forsch, Drew, etc.) vs. all others
• An intra-USA competition based on the state in which the player was born
• Chewing Tobacco vs. Sunflower Seeds
• Time-based (e.g. All pre-1950 vs. all post-1950)
• Yankees vs. the best of the non-Yankees
• Best players who have won a World Series vs. Best Players who have never won a World Series (e.g. Alex Rodriguez)
• Clean-shaven vs. Facial Hair
• Best players of one year vs. another (e.g 1927 vs. 1975)

I’m sure the Elias Sports Bureau could supply you with about 8000 other matchups.  Now you have some good time-fillers for a couple of years of dog days.

Sincerely,

–Chris Hiester

P. S. Check out my article on “Chooch” vs. “Chucha”

]]> http://hiester.com/wp/my-letter-to-mike-missanelli/feed/ 0 http://hiester.com/wp/alycia-if-youre-reading-this/ http://hiester.com/wp/alycia-if-youre-reading-this/#comments Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:51:15 +0000 Chris http://hiester.com/wp/alycia-if-youre-reading-this/ Dear Alycia Lane,

Although some people think you are overpaid, I disagree. I would like to apply for the position of your Personal Email Security Expert. We could negotiate a salary. I’ll show you how to change your Yahoo! Mail password. It’s a little tricky, but I’m an expert. I have a Yahoo! Mail account and I’ve changed my own password hundreds of times. Sometimes I change it up to 15 times a day. Once in a while during a little break during work, I’ll do a quick password change. Maybe I’m obsessed with changing my password. I often send notes to colleagues letting them know that I just changed my password, so they don’t even think of snooping on my email. My behavior might seem a little strange, but I assure you that nobody is sending any photos of me in my Speedo to Linda Cohn.

Have your people call me.

Chris “Celebrity Password Protector” Hiester

Uh…hold on a second. The American President is a movie, right? It’s fiction. Michael Douglas is an actor and I bet not one frame of that film was shot in the White House. So, Michael Douglas was not a bachelor President. He was playing a bachelor President in a fictional movie. When I was watching I was sure she was going to say James Buchanan, who was the last (and only) bachelor to be President of the United States. I can’t believe there is an editor, even an editor of the “humorous” and “offbeat” pieces that would let that quote pass. Oh, but the distributor of The American President is Castle Rock Entertainment, a company that is owned by Time Warner, the same company that owns CNN. Now I see. It’s not only bogus reporting, it’s Time Warner’s version of cross-selling. Excuse me while I drape the black cloth over my picture of Edward R. Murrow and go puke.

Ah, now that feels better. I shouldn’t be surprised, really. These are the same fools who believed and reiterated all the lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (and how about those great ratings they got in the early days of the war).

KYW “News” Radio 1060 AM is the #1 rated radio station in the Philadelphia market. Every day, they run “business reports” by the very people whom their journalists are supposed to be covering. Fred Sherman of Royal Bank and Susan Springsteen of Morgan Stanley, people who have a vested interest in the state of the financial markets, report to us about the state of the financial markets. They even have web pages on KYW’s web site. It’s like they’re bragging that they have no journalistic standards. They need to take the word “News” out of “KYW News Radio”. How can that be considered journalism? Would it have been OK if Jeffrey Skilling was given space on the front page of the New York Times to report about how Enron was doing? KYW also has the news anchor people reading ads during their own shows. I’m sure some people are confused about what is editorial content and what is advertising. So much for the Chinese wall.