Good Shape

How does seven playoff victories in a row sound? That's what the Chicago Blackhawks have done since dropping Game 5 to Vancouver in the conference semi-finals, and are now up 2-0 in the Stanley Cup Finals. In The Beard's odd little hockey world, that works just fine. Games 1 and 2, while being polar opposites in many respects, have one (and the most important) thing in common which is they were both won by the Hawks.

The other amazing thing both games have in common, are a lack of production from the Hawks first line of Toews, Kane, and Byfuglien. All three of them have a combined plus/minus of -7 thus far in the series, yet the Hawks still scored 6 goals in game 1. Toews had his consecutive games with at least 1 point streak snapped, Kane has been held in check by an aggressive Flyer defense, and Chris Pronger has simply toyed with Byfuglien the entire time. The Flyers finally got a penalty called on them midway through the first period of game 2, after committing no infractions in the first game.

The real story of the series so far though is the play of Antii Niemi. After throwing up a 5 goal turd in game 1, he did his usual outstanding goal tending skills on display in game 2. One thing most Hawks fans know about Niemi is that he never has back to back horrible games. Game 2 was no exception as he withstood a barrage of shots (33 total), particularly in the third period (15 shots) to preserve the lead.

The Hawks now take their act on the road starting Wednesday. Some numbers the Hawks have in their favor? The team that has won the first two games of the Stanley Cup Finals has won 31 out of 33. Unfortunately, one of those two teams was the 1971 Blackhawks who won the first two games against Montreal, but lost the Cup.

Don't think that will happen with this team though. GO HAWKS!

Go Get Your Shinebox Dwayne!

Speaking of the Bulls, Dwayne Wade decided to open his mouth this week and complain about the Bulls lack of "loyalty" as a reason why he would be wary of signing with them. "I see Michael Jordan is not there, Scottie Pippen is not there. … You know, these guys are not a part..Things like that. So that is probably one of the biggest things for me, because I am a very loyal person." You have got to be friggan KIDDING ME!? That might be the dumbest thing he's ever said in his life right next to "I, do" to that crazy woman he's now divorcing. There's a million things wrong with it, but I'll keep it simple.

First of all, Wade says he's a loyal person, yet he's talking about signing with another team!? How loyal is THAT Dwayne? It seems that Wade has no issue or qualms with the business of professional sports when it allows him to get top dollar from the highest bidder, but he also feels can selectively call somebody else's perceived lack of loyalty into question when it doesn't apply to him? That is inconsistent at best, flat out ignorant at worst. Not to mention, how stupid it is to publicly disparage a potential suitor in negotiation tactics. Even if he really feels that way, his agents and lawyers should have stopped him immediately from sharing that opinion because they know he's sabotaging his own cause with those remarks.

Secondly, and most importantly in my opinion, he is just FLAT OUT WRONG. If anything, the Bulls have been too loyal over the years. Let's start with his feelings about Jordan and Pippen not being "there". Jordan wanted/felt entitled to a piece of ownership with the Bulls. The Bulls (very presciently I might add) said no. He went to Washington D.C., ruined that organization, was seen attending Bulls games in the owners luxury box in 2003-04, became a half-assed GM and now owner/ruiner of the Charlotte Bobcats. Oh and by the way...his silly statue is still outside the north gates at the United Center. Pippen was given a golden parachute of a sign-and-trade contract in 1999, came back in 2003 and retired as a Bull, plus had his number retired. Sounds like they've been treated pretty fairly to The Beard...

Now let's get to the meat and potatoes of how loyal the Bulls have been, particularly to the non-superstar players. Jay Williams certainly feels they were really loyal to him in 2003, especially when they had every right to walk away from him (pun). Bob Love also feels they've not only been loyal to him, but pretty caring and nurturing as well. The Bulls also flew Bill Cartwright around the world looking for the best specialist available when he damaged his larynx in a game years ago(incidentally Cartwright knows who injured him, but he still won't say). Randy Brown was pawning his championship rings because he was flat broke, when the Bulls gave him a job as an assistant - a job which didn't exist until Brown needed one. Pete Myers has been the interim coach twice now, and the Bulls have always taken care of him since he first played for them in 1986. Also, isn't somebody still the Bulls GM even though he's had every reason to be fired? Once again, sounds like the Bulls are pretty loyal to me...

I don't care how nice of a guy Wade supposedly is. I don't care that he backed off his original statement. I don't care that he's going through a horrible and acrimonious divorce. I don't care that he give 10% of his salary to his church, and his other philanthropic works. I don't care that it's most likely Michael Jordan putting these dumb ideas in his head that the Bulls aren't loyal. None of that matters because it doesn't replace the fact that he's not smart enough to see through MJ's B.S., and that he basically doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut. So to paraphrase Billy Batts in Goodfellas, "Go Get Your F*cking SHINEBOX!" and stay in Miami you dummy.

White Sox Nuggets

• In an somewhat unexpected, yet completely necessary development MLB handed out fines to Ozzie Guillen, Mark Buehrle, AND Joe West. Apparently Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports reads my blog and agrees with The Beard that Joe West has become the exact thing umpires should never be....High Profile. According to Passan, MLB has indeed had enough of  the "Country Joe" act and took him out to the proverbial woodshed with a tongue-lashing phone call in addition to the fine. Score one for MLB for getting this one reasonably right. A suspension would have been more appropriate in my opinion, simply because West is lucky to even have a job considering he was one of those umpires that resigned in 1999 while trying to negotiate a better labor agreement. West was re-hired in 2002, although I'm sure MLB can't remember why now, and for him to still not understand what his role as an umpire is supposed to be, a suspension might have hammered home the point better. Either way though, good for MLB for recognizing a problem and instilling discipline.
• Even with West getting his comeuppance, all is not right in Ozzie Guillen's world apparently, with reports once again surfacing that Guillen and Kenny Williams' relationship has deteriorated even further. To be fair, mlbtraderumors.com is reporting that Ozzie isn't going to be fired anytime soon, but they also echoed the report of the friction two hours later. Whatever...I'm really just tired of this entire story. To see the two guys who are responsible for the greatest White Sox team in history, unable to act like a professional baseball organization because they can't stand each other so much is very disheartening. It reminds me of the Phil Jackson-Jerry Krause fallout 12 years ago. Reinsdorf wasn't able to save that sports marriage, will he be able to save this one? Is it worth saving, let alone even possible to be saved? I don't know...I just hate that it's come to this since I can't think of another baseball team having these types of stories surrounding them.

Balk-Gate

Another series won, and yet I still feel awful about my team. Let's get the obvious preliminaries out of the way. I think ejections are vastly over-hyped. I do not believe they have any sort of intrinsic or quantifiable value on a team, good or bad. What I mean is, they don't automatically help or hurt a team just because they happen. I also believe that the real story of this game is not the ejections, but Bobby Jenks nearly blowing a 4 run lead in the 9th inning by not throwing enough strikes.

Now that we got that out of the way, let's discuss what transpired between Mark Buehrle, Ozzie Guillen and Joe West. If you didn't get a chance to see it on TV today here's a clip of it. It starts off innocently enough but like most things in baseball, it's much more complicated than it appears to be. A big reason why it's complicated is because the main participants have a lot of "history" involved.



Buehrle has had a long history of having a borderline Balk pickoff move to first base his entire career, similar to a lot of left handed pitchers i.e. Andy Pettitte. Ozzie Guillen has had a long history of getting tossed from games. Joe West has a LONG history of not only ejecting Ozzie Guillen out of games (so much so West's Wikipedia page has a pic of him ejecting Ozzie in 2007 for gods sake!), but for also making himself become a focal point/attention grabber of games he umpires. You combine all of this history going into today's game, and it's no wonder things got as heated as they did.



Were the two pickoff attempts today balks? Well technically yes they probably are. Are they any more egregious than other left handed pitchers in baseball? Not really. Did Buehrle do anything in those two moves, that he hasn't done in the (yes I went back and counted them) 70 pickoffs versus 12 Balks he's thrown in his career? It sure didn't look like it, but still it's the umpires job to make those calls if he deems them balks in his judgement.



You can certainly question whether West's motivations were to get the calls right, or inject himself as a focal point of the game but where West doesn't get a pass from The Beard is how he conducted himself afterwards. I have no problem with him ejecting Buehrle for throwing his glove down after the second balk call. It's been long established that throwing equipment as a direct result of an umpire's call will get you thrown out. Buehrle knows not to do that, and he did it on the first balk call but West gave him a pass on that. West did go over the line though when (in my opinion) he baited Ozzie Guillen into getting tossed out. When you look at the footage, West immediately gives Ozzie the back of his hand is a dismissive gesture that seemed to say "Don't try it..." yet he allowed Guillen out of the dugout for what Ozzie described as wanting to know why West was showing Buehrle up.  West then continues his dismissive hand gesture almost knowing that Guillen will lose his temper and therefore will be able to eject Ozzie without any fear of consequence.



As I stated before, the history of the three participants led to this. All three of them acted like children, but of all of them, West should be the one that receives the most vitriol. It's not his job to be the center of attention, yet he clearly has been guilty of relishing any spotlight cast his way over the past several years. You can ask Andre Dawson if you don't believe me. When it comes to Benefit Of The Doubt, West should be familiar with that call:



Strike Three...

NFL Supreme Court Ruling

I'm sure all of you heard that the Supreme Court made a significant ruling that the NFL is not one large business, but rather 32 separate businesses, and therefore ineligible from Anti-Trust Exemption. Of all the breakdowns of this historic 9-0 ruling, Deadspin has the easiest break down of it here. Essentially this means that they cannot be protected as a whole, and are much more vulnerable to lawsuits than they would have been had they received Anti-Trust protection.

This also means a big victory for the players association for the upcoming lockout in my opinion. We shall see what impact it has a year from now...

Quick Hits

• The Chicago Blackhawks took care of business by sweeping the San Jose Sharks with a win today, and all it cost them were 4 of Duncan Keith's Teeth! The 4-0 sweep is a bit misleading as the Sharks played very well for the most part, particularly in Games 3 and 4. They threw everything they had at the Hawks, but the Blackhawks are simply just better at hockey than the Sharks with their right blend of offensive firepower and lethal penalty killing/superb goal tending. The door to the Stanley Cup is now wide open for the Hawks. Just four more wins away...
  
• Only the 2010 White Sox can make winning a series look bad. Throwing up a 13-0 turd at home to the Marlins is one of the easiest ways to feel terrible about taking 2 out of 3 games. Now comes a nice little road trip to Cleveland and Tampa all the while there's this report that the Phillies are looking at Jenks and Putz. In terms of the Phillies best prospect the one name that consistently comes up is Domonic Brown. He's 23 years old, 6'5" 200lb outfielder currently hitting .311, OPS .969 with 7 home runs and 24 RBI's. Might have to pull the trigger on that deal if it comes up between now and July 31...
  
• So when the Milton Bradley trade happened, you might remember that I said it was a great move by the Cubs? Well I never imagined that it would be this good! While the Cubs as a whole might be spinning their wheels , Carlos Silva is now 6-0 after the Cubs took 2 out of 3 from the Texas Rangers. While you're digesting that, here's another thing that might make you raise an eyebrow...he might make the All-Star Team if he keeps this up!Depending on your take, this is either an indicator on how overrated Wins are in pitching statistics, or just how dumb Seattle's GM is.
  
• I can't stand Bears Mini-Camp coverage. Every team that has mini-camps, the reports are nothing but warm and fuzzy fluff pieces like this. All of a sudden the Bears are going to be a playoff team now because they had mini-camp. All the questions surrounding this team on both offense and defense are now answered. There's no doubt about it, the Bears are in the drivers seat in the NFC North. It's enough to make your head explode because anybody who's watched the NFL for over a month knows that you don't learn anything about your team after Mini-Camp that you didn't already know before. The questions you have about your team aren't answered now, or during OTA's, or during the REAL Training Camp, or during the Preseason. The answers come during the season. If the Bears end up being good (And obviously I hope they do) then that's great. If not, oh well. All I know is when the season starts, I won't be remembering what they did in mini-camp, and neither will anyone else.

Well, Well Well...Better Late Than Never

Please click on the picture above to see a clip from the documentary Bigger, Stronger, Faster* in which Floyd Landis issues one of several denials regarding his stripped 2006 Tour De France win over his use of performance enhancing drugs.

Apparently someone does have a conscience after all, and that someone in Floyd Landis. Here we are now, after years of his supposed righteous indignation denials, cockamamie excuses (i.e. "whisky defense"), filing countless court appeals, writing a book called "Positively False : The Real Story Of How I Won The Tour de France", and the ultimate douchebag move of Landis raising money for the "Floyd Fairness Fund" which people donated (approximately $1 million) to help him pay his outstanding legal bills. After all of this garbage he has spewed...now he wants go all Jose Canseco on us, and tell the truth.

And what a truth he has to tell too! Landis sent repeated emails to senior cycling officials confessing not only his own EPO and blood transfusions, but those of his former teammates Lance Armstrong, George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer, and David Zabriske. He didn't stop there. He also claims that Lance Armstrong told Landis that U.S. Postal Service Pro Cycling Team director Johan Bruyneel had a financial arrangement with ICU to make sure that any positive tests were covered up. Landis went on to further say that Lance Armstrong's personal trainer Dr. Michele Ferrari of Italy to assist him with the extraction and re-transfusion of the blood transfusions, and that he only accepted cash for these transactions. Landis also give many other sordid details that upon reading them seem like they are pretty straightforward. WADA, USADA, and more importantly Jeff "Eat His Lunch" Nowitzky think so too.

The reaction from Lance? He's going the "credibility" route. Apparently Armstrong is not only 100% arrogant, but completely stupid too. All he needed to do was remember how many people in 2005 said Jose Canseco wasn't credible either, to know that issuing that charge is pretty much guaranteed to blow back in your face! Also following Lance's play is UCI President Pat McQuaid by saying "These guys coming out now with things like this from the past is only damaging the sport. If they've any love for the sport, they wouldn't do it." Oh...My...God....

There's several things at play here that The Beard is having a field day with. First of all, Landis is really just a complete moron! Straight up, indefensible, how does he put his shoes on in the morning type of moron! He's a moron not for telling the truth, but for telling the truth after YEARS of trying to B.S. his way around his own cheating. What's important to remember however, is that just because Landis is a moron, doesn't mean he has bad eyesight.

I do believe that like Canseco, Landis finally realizes that the truth shall set him free. I also believe that like Canseco, Floyd realized that by telling the truth and naming names, he can finally stop being the one that's been fairly or unfairly singled out as the doper in cycling. WADA has maintained for years that Cycling is the #1 sport in the world for drug cheating and dopers. Think about that for a second...that's more than football, track and field, baseball, hockey, golf, and bodybuilding/weight lifting. Floyd knows this too, and now because he's willing to sing, he is offering us a glimpse at just how far the Cycling Blood Doping and Performance Enhancing Rabbit Hole goes.

I also believe that we are now closer to finally taking down the false god that Lance Armstrong is. Yes he's been knocked down several pegs already, but nothing has ever been proven with him in terms of his cheating. There hasn't been a smoking gun so far, and to be fair even with his confession Floyd isn't really providing one either. Still Landis has filled in a lot of blanks today and Lance is certainly acting itchy about these new charges. That's probably because investigations are now actually going to transpire, and we now might have real proof that the guy who tells people dying of cancer "If you want it bad enough, you can beat cancer like I did", is nothing but a blood doping, steroid ingesting, lying dirtball.

But don't take my word for it, just ask the late George Carlin...