TSN, the Canuck edition of ESPN, featured the play of the day, an amazing goal by Dirk Southern of the Victoria Salmon Kings (See it in the video clip). Aired on their AM SportsCentre in the wee hours, hosts Dan O'Toole and Jay Onrai can't help themselves, apparently, putting down the ECHL club and mocking the guys who made the play.

Personally, I think that everyone on the ice playing for the ECHL is a whole lot more memorable than a couple of 2AM talk twits on TSN or any of the self-satisfied ESPN channels.  Suits don't make the man. They just mask the monkeys.

My short, shiny two... Also, RIGHT ON, DIRK.

Brian ROSS
Sr. Editor
SZ

This is America, and I'm all for the American dream. Anyone can go out tomorrow, get the right licenses, the right spot to sell their wares, hire a few people, and start a business. Let the free market decide if it has merit, or need.  Yet in spite of that all, and with more than a decade in minor pro sports under my belt, I have to sincerely ask the businesspeople who fired the "Cotinental Basketball League" press release over my transom last month: "Why? Why? WHY!"

Where is the next Ted Williams, the next guy who can hit a ball at .400 or better for a season? Nowhere in sight.  Professional baseball has swapped intuition for science over the last forty years. It has been an unqualified failure.

Name the .400 hitters:  Cobb. Hornsby. Lajoie. Williams.

We have no .400 hitters in the Free Agency or the Steroids Eras of the game.  A-Rod got close, but more on him, later.

Name the top  pitchers in the history of the game:

With the Larry Johnson kiss-and-tell book about Alcor Life Extension Labs coming out shortly, the pot is being stirred again about Ted Williams frozen head, and its treatment.

Forget that Mr. Johnson ran the lab, and could have cleaned up the very things that he is now lamenting for profit.

Disregard that Tom Verducci, the sports writer who began ringing the fire bell about Williams' handling of his father's estate at SI sourced Bobby Jo Williams, who had a very big axe to grind with her half-brother and sister over the disputed will of Ted Williams.  Williams had cut his oldest daughter, who was reported to have emotional problems severe enough for her institution at one point, out of the estate.  Verducci was a convenient pawn, as a commentator, because he didn't have to do much old-fashioned journalism to give his two cents.

We were the only news agency to which John Henry would grant an interview, after the press hounded him about the head and the other rumors about the labs. 

We found out quickly that the picture that SI was painting of the whole situation was grossly distorted.  In "The Kid's Kid" we gave you the side of John Henry Williams that SI did not want you to see during Verducci's march to turn the younger Williams into a blood-sucking leech, a pariah.  Several weeks after our articles ran, Williams spoke to Mike Fish at SI, and affirmed what he had told us.  Unfortunately, Fish is not Verducci, and the damage was already done.

In this open letter from a couple of weeks before the Fish interview, I called out Verducci, and the SI editors for what I still believe is the shoddy journalism that has allowed this story to have legs for nearly a decade. I hope that Fish's attempt to at least set the record straight was due in some small part to our work.

With the Larry Johnson kiss-and-tell book about Alcor Life Extension Labs about to reignite the controversy over Ted Williams final wishes, we take a look back at how we set the record about John Henry Williams straight.  This Opinion piece "An Elegy for a Lightweight" is from MinorLeagueNews.com's February, 2004, opinion page, shortly after John Henry passed away.

Minor league fans have just affirmed what the owners of baseball know: You run your mouths about steroids, but the minute that a fallen major league superstar shows up in your town, your principles go out the window, the ticket window to be exact, in the form of a loud "Ka-CHING" of the club's cash registers.

The "rebab" tour of steroid cheat Manny Ramirez continued

MAJORBLOGS.net - 05.02.09 -Minor league teams come and go, but for NBA D-League, back-stopped by the full-faith and credibility of the National Basketball Association, the news Thursday from the Bakersfield Jam, affiliate of the Golden State Warriors and the Orlando Magic, that they would cease operations, is a particularly big blow to the D-League program because these owners had something to say on their way out.

The release, carried by MLN - The Raw Feed yesterday, stated: