Ballers, Gamers and Scoundrels

I should have known about Sherman “Jocko” Maxwell. I should have known about him, but I didn’t. And it saddens me.

You should have known about him, too.

We all should have known about him before he died last week, at the age of 100, in West Chester, Pa. Cause of death was complications from, well, the man was 100 years old.

We should have known about him because Maxwell was America’s first black sportscaster. Actually, back in 1929, when he read scores for five minutes every Saturday on WNJR in Newark, he was was a Negro. At best, as far as much of America was concern.

But like millions of other black men in his age and beyond, he was a man of class and dignity, I learned today as I read through the clips that accompanied his obits. He was a baseball fan who, through the grace of WNJR’s owner, was given an opportunity to read Negro League scores each week for the sation’s audience.

That was the beginning. Maxwell, I also learned today, ultimately did play-by-play for the Newark Eagles over the public address system, and was there when they won the Negro League World Series in 1946.

He was a baseball fan but in his career interviewed the greats of the day, including Sugar Ray Robinson and others.

Maxwell reported games for the Baltimore Afro-American and even chronicled Negro League games for the Newark Star-Ledger at a time when few non-black newspapers were reporting about those wondrous games. In fact, he kept such records at Negro League games that it seems folks believe much of its history would have been lost. “We, the old Afro-American players (the ones whom baseball’s social retardation kept out of their closed, lily white society for so long) owe him one hell of a debt,” Monte Irvin, 87, the former Newark Eagles/New York Giants superstar, said over the telephone yesterday. “So do the fans we had before they broke down racial barriers. So does baseball itself.”

In a sense, he was my Jackie Robinson. He was Bryant and Greg Gumble’s Jackie Robinson. Mike Tirico’s Jackie Robinson. Stephen A. Smith’s Jackie Robinson. James Brown’s Jackie Robinson. He was Jackie Robinson for the myriad black sportswriters who dot the cable and broadcast television and radio airwaves every day now.

And I should have known about him.

But I didn’t.

Oh and I learned that he was on the radio until his retirement in 1967. And that he never was paid a dime for a single moment he was on the air. “No salary ever in any sports, put that down,” he told the Star-Ledger’s Christine V. Baird in a wondrous profile published a decade ago. “Never asked. They never gave me any.

Maxwell earned his living as a postal worker.

Others have championed this, so I am only joining the chorus: Sherman “Jocko” Maxwell should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Star-Ledger’s Jerry Izenberg reported last week that there are 32 baseball broadcasters in Cooperstown, and yet Maxwell isn’t among them.

I didn’t know that, either. And I should have.

Wang

Maybe it’s the Clemens Curse, but something’s happening to the power-pitching ace since the man who’s name was synonymous with the term turned up in the Mitchell report over the winter. Two guys who fit the rocket-arm mold - Barry Zito and C.C. Sabathia - can’t seem to throw strikes, get people out or win.

Just a month into the season, the 2002 and 2007 Cy Young winners, respectively, are a combined 1-10, with Zito at -06 for the first time in his career.

They’ve been replaced at the top of the rotation by the kind of guys who throw pitches that not so much blow by hitters as elude them. Sinkerballs Chien-Ming Wang of the Yankees and Diamondback hurler Branden Webb are 11-0 between them, and they’re doing it by baffling hitters with stuff that dips, slides and moves all over the place.

Note: Any implied correlation between the shocking declines of Zito and Sabathia and Clemens/Mitchell is for entertainment purposes only. Though Zito was also mediocre last season (11-13), they are both outstanding pitchers whose woeful records could very well be turned around by fall.

In the meantime, I’m getting a kick out of Webb and Wang, the law-firm sounding pair who’ve quietly emerged as the standards of the early season.

Webb was 34-18 in ‘06 and ‘07. In 2003, he was baseball’s wildman. He threw 17 wild pitches and walked 199 batters, more than any other player in the majors. He also led the NL with 16 losses that year. The turnaround was attributed to anything magical.”Basically, I just tried to do what I’ve done the last three years, which is throw a lot of sinkers,” Webb said. Just keep throwing them until he got it right.

Wang has pretty much been an “ace” since his second season in the majors. He was 19-6 in ‘06, 19-7 in ‘07 (if he’s 19-8 in ‘08, I’m calling the authorities). In fact, he reached 50 wins faster than any pither over the last 25 years.

But because he doesn’t throw peas, and does get a lot of strikeouts, he was never really perceived in New York as an “ace” in the traditional sense. That iconic tag was reserved for manly-men pitchers, guys like Clemens and his ex-BFF, Andy Pettitte.

Yeah, close your eyes and think ace and images of Bib Gibson, Sandy Koufax and Vida Blue come to mind. So do Steve Carlton, Nolan Ryan and Dwight Good. Or Pedro Martinez in his prime. Guys who throw smoke and turn bats into toothpicks.

Chien-Ming Wang isn’t that guy, and even as he was winning 19 games in successive seasons it was as if Yankee fans still flt he wasn’t the team’s “ace

Maybe it’s his demeanor. Though Wang stands 6-3 and weighs 225, imposing he is not. He nature is calm, typically unruffled. Not “ace-like.” Somehow I can’t see Wang tossing a broken bat at a hitter he’d just thumped, as he glared at the batter as if he wanted to eat his young.

This year, Wang has expanded his repertoire after seeing last season what can happen when the sinker doesn’t sink. (Search: Wang, Cleveland and playoffs). He’s added sliders, splitters and chanegups to the mix, and it’s almost not fair.

Batters aren’t quaking as if they’re facing someone who could throw the ball through them; they’re just confused, baffled, befuddled.

On Sunday, in a battle against Sabathia and the Indians, Wang allowed only two batters beyong first base over his final six innings, after allowing two runners in the first.

All told, he gave up just four hits and struck out nine over seven innings in the Yankee’s 1-0 win. He’s now 5-0.

That same day, Webb outdueled the reigning NL Cy Young winner, Jake Peavy of San Diego. He gave up just one unearned over six innings to improve to 6-0 and lower his ERA to 1.98 - sixth-best in all of baseball.

Webb

The weight of it all finally got to Jose Reyes. The weight of expectations. The weight of scrutiny. The weight of criticism - not so much of his performance, but his behavior.

Sure, the New York Mets’ wondrously gifted shortstop was as culpable as any during the team’s historic collapse last season. But when conversations turned to Reyes, the chatter wasn’t about his lack of production during that fall, but his behavior.

Now we’re not talking Pacman Jones behavior here. We’re talking simply Jose being Jose. Displaying an exuberence beyond measure. A joy that oozed from every pore. And elaborate hand-shaking, arm-slapping, booty-bumping celebrations that punctuated every great play.

Internally, team executives and even some of his teammates looked down on the moves. They whispered that Reyes weren’t being professional, that his hystrionics showed an immaturity. Some local media were even more harsh. Last fall, I shared the set during one local show when one of the other panelists described Reyes as a “punk” for his antics.

The weight of it all finally got to him, and Reyes vowed he would be different. During spring training he promised to show us a new, more reserved Reyes, a more professional Reyes.

Thank goodness that didn’t last very long.

Jose Reyes is back, and I’m glad for it. The Mets are, too. He’s become the spark that lights the fire in New York.

Prior to tonight’s game against arch-rival Philadelphia, Reyes was 10 for his last 23 at bats. That rush included two homers, three RBIs and Reyes himself scored six runs.

Coincidentially (or not), the Mets won all five games, matching their longest win streak of 2007. The last four victories came against the Phillies, who humiliated them last fall by winning the division  - and who’d won nine straight over the Mets before Jose became Jose again.

Prior to that, the pedestraian, professional Jose was playing  pretty pedestraian baseball. So were the Mets. Now they’re 10-6.

The Jose we know would still be on the side of a milk carton had not teammate Carlos Beltran asked/ordered him last Tuesday to cut the crap (not sure how you say that en Espanol) and be himself.

Be himself. Beltran finally figured out that all of that holier-than-thou weight that finally got to his teammate was silly. Why do athletes have to be robots? Why do they have to conform to some old-school edict?

Don’t they just have to play? Play and respect the game? Play and play hard. Play and be a good teammate. Play and, for people like Reyes, be a leader.

Joese Reyes was all that. He was just all that a bit differently that some old-heads thought he should be.

Thank goodness he realized, with some prodding, that he should simply be Jose.

Kosuke Fukudome is a player. He’s a baseball player, quintessential and classic. And that’s good enough for me.

More than good enough, in fact. After only one game, I’ve already anointed the 30-year-old Chicago Cubs right fielder as my player-to-watch this season. Why?

At the plate, he’s smart and efficient. No wasted energy or bravado. And in the field he’s swift and clean, and he possesses the kind of arm that will make the nightly highlights.

And he’s good. I’m not just going by his exciting 3-for-3 debut earlier this week when Fukudome (his full name is pronounced OH-skay foo-koo-DOUGH-may) hit a game-tying homer in the ninth and came within a triple of the vaunted cycle. He’s true ball: He was a two-time Japanese Central League batting champion with a .305 career average and .397 on-base percentage in 1,074 career games with the Chunichi Dragons. (MLB needs a team called the Dragons!)

He also has four Gold Gloves and he was a key member of the gold-medal 2004 Olympic baseball team.

All of that is why the Cubs signed him, rather quietly, to a four-year, $48 million deal. Yes, quietly.

Quietly because most of us had never heard of Fukudome. Because he is Japanese. That is why folks are mostly buzzing about him in the same sentences with Ichiro Suzuki, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideo Nomo.

They’re Japanese, too, of course. And they’re baseball players, pure and simple.

Who’ll be the best Japanese import ever?

Baseball is evolving to into a global sport, clearly. Probably third among the major sports leagues behind the NHL and NBA, but it’s happening, and that’s a good thing.

Baseball recently revealed that of the 827 players on Opening Day rosters and disabled lists, 230 were born in 17 nations beyond our boundaries. That’s nearly a third. Eighteen of them are of Asian descent.

The evolution is reminiscent, of course, of the years following the breaking of baseball’s color barrier in 1947. Over the next decade, one by one, major-league teams signed black players, most of whom were already stars in the Negro League. Many remained stars, some faltered, a few were signed too late in their careers to match their peak season.

For years those players were a nation within the province of baseball, compared only with one another, included but excluded from the discussion about their greatness relative to baseball, and not merely Negroes in baseball.

It’ll happen again for Japanese players. In fact, it’s already starting to emerge. Ichiro, likely the first Japanese player to reach the Hall of Fame for his MLB career, is solidly recognized as one game’s best hitters ever. And Dice-K has the potential to earn a place among clutch pitchers.

Hitters. Pitchers. Like Kosuke Fukudome, whom a writer at MLB.com recently compared with the great Latin hitter, Tony Oliva, they’re baseball players.

And that should be all right with each of us.

How far have we come - or fallen- in 40 years?

Who says athletes don’t stand for anything any more? Okay, it wasn’t exactly John Carlos and Tommie Smith standing defiantly on the podium in Mexico City 40 years ago to protest racism in America. And so what the Boston Red Sox stood for today was money. Why be critical when at least some athletes stood up for something other than themselves?

In a unique display of cohesiveness and savvy, the Red Sox players delayed the start of their nationally televised exhibition game against the Toronto Blue Jays and threatened not to go to Japan for their season-opener when they heard that their coaches, trainers and staff would not receive the same $40,000 stipend they were getting.

Their timing was smart. “Being on ESPN did not hurt,” said third baseman Mike Powell. More important, their cause was worthy. Let’s not even debate the need for players, whose average salary last seasons was $2,824,751, to receive an additional $40G for their global goodwill journey. That the rest of their traveling party was making the same trip and receiving not an additional cent for their contribution to baseball’s world mission was, at minimum, disrespectful.

It was also stupid.

Last season was baseball’s most bountiful ever. The game generated a record $6.075 billion in gross revenue. Yeah, that’s billion.

Interestingly, manages and coaches were included in the compensation pool for the two prior excursions to Japan. Why get cheap now?

Sanity ultimately prevailed. According to the Associated Press, MLB agreed to pay the managers, coaches and trainers $20,000 each, a source said. AP also reported that the Red Sox players would to make up the difference to make the amount equal to their, and they would also offer funds to other team personnel making the trip.

Kevin Youkilis of the Red Sox called the effort “…an experience of a lifetime, and it ended in a good way.”

Perhaps even more impressive was that the Oakland A’s, who will face the Red Sox in Japan, watched the boycott unfold from their locker-room in Phoenix and decided to delay the start of their own exhibition game until they received word from their Boston brethren that there was a fair deal.

If we’re lucky this effort, as money-centric as it was, would sparked a similar consciousness across all sports.

What if prior to the start of the NCAA tournament tomorrow, young players refused to take the court until the nation’s colleges agreed to really educate student-athletes and ensure that they obtain degrees.

What if NFL players refused to report until former players, who paved the way for their own success, were ensured they’d never have to pay another medical bill for the rest of their lives.

What if college athletes refused to play unless they were allowed to change schools when the coach that recruited them either resigns or is fired?

What if college recruits - particularly young African-American recruits - refused to attend any school that did not have people who looked like them in positions of leadership on the coaching staff and at the university?

What if tennis players refused to hit another serve until the game came up with a system that actually explains the rankings?

What if baseball players refused to play until their union agreed to a drug-testing policy that finally rid the sport of performance enhancing drugs?

What if the Knicks refused to play again until owner Jim Dolan sold the team?

Hey, we can dream can’t we?

During a recent sports-talk show, I was asked my view on whther a certain veteran athlete should retire. The guy was coming off a mediocre season, one that fell far short of the all-World seasons he regularly produced at the peak of his career. The inference was that he should go out with “dignity,” or before he suffered some life-altering injury.

Without much thought I said: “Play on!”

Who are we to tell an athlete when he or she should retire? We do it all the time, typically wanting our icons to retire “on top,” or before we have to watch them perform like pitiable shells of their former selves. (Old guys, please let the Willie Mays thing go!)

We want New York Giants defensive leader Michael Strahan to retire after winning his first Super Bowl. (Please, the man has huge alimony payments.)

We wanted Michael Jordan to retire after nailing the NBA Championship-winning offensive foul/jumper against the Utah Jazz in the 1998 Finals. (The body said yes, but MJ’s mind clearly said no.)

Most athletes retire quietly, disappearing before we know they’re really gone. Some leave in the wake of ignominious remarks that will live in infamy. (See: Latrell Sprewell’s “feed my family” diatribe for turning down $5 million three years ago, an amount his agent called “a slap in the face.” Just recently it was reported that Sprewell’s home was in foreclosure due to more than $200,000 in payments in arrears, and that he’d auctioned off his yacht to pay the $1.32 owed on it.)

Some athletes don’t really retire retire - i.e. the spate of NBA veterans that have been dusted off of late by teams either looking for wizened reinforcements for the playoff stretch (P.J. Brown) or someone to throw into a trade deal to make the numbers work (Keith Van Horn). (The lesson: Never sign those retirement papers!)

Back in the early 90s, I waxed on about how Jimmy Connors should retire. It was 1991 and the aging, injured champion had fallen to No. 936 in the world. Because of his petulant behavior (on and off the tennis court) I had never been a huge fan. I respected his achievements and on some level admired his up-from-nowhere fire. But as he pushed 40 his act had grown weary. I was adamant that tennis (and sports) would be better off if Connors and his tantrums just faded away.

He did nothing of the sort, of course. And that fall Connors put on what may have been the greatest show in tennis histor, reaching the semifinals of the U.S. Open and stirring all of New York in the process. On his 39th birthday, he defeated 24-year-old Aaron Krickstein 3-6, 7-6(8), 1-6, 6-3, 7-6(4), overcoming a 2-5 hole in the final set, in 4 hours and 41 minutes of the most scintillating sports exhibition I may have ever witnessed.

An exhibition we would have missed had Connors retired, as so many were saying he should do.

After that, I’ve been loathe to judge whether any athlete should retire. Play on.

Yesterday, Brett Favre retired “on his terms,” as we like to say. He said simply that, after 17 NFL seasons, he was tired. He had nothing left to prove to anyone, including himself. Some lament that the certain Hall-of-Fame QB’s last pass was an ill-thrown interception in the NFC title game that led to Green Bay being eliminated from the Super Bowl Derby. Hogwash. The all-time everything QB will be remembered for far more than that.

What will we remember about Roger Clemens? I’m not sure whether he’s thrown his last pitch from a major-league mound. but it certainly seems unlikely now that he’ll stare down another batter. He’s too busy staring down the rest of us. He’s too busy telling us what few others believe to be true - that he did not take steroids, was not at Jose Conseco’s party, did not influence a caretaker about her potential testimony and did not tell Andy Pettitte his drug use.

And soon he may have to stare down a federal investigator trying to determine if he lied to Congress.

Right now, all the greatness Clemens displayed on the mound, the greatness that led us to debate whether he was the best pitcher ever, seems pretty insignificant relative to the ugliness that surrounds him now.

Definitely not a way to go out.

Tough times call for tough decisions - even when they’re not popular. But sometimes those unpopular calls turn out to be the right thing to do. Last week, Fisk University, an historically black college in Nashville, announced that it was dropping its participation in NCAA sports as one part of an effort to deal with the school’s dire financial condition. And we mean dire.

The 142-year-old institution is in debt and operating at a deficit. It spends more on its students than it brings in, and is in real danger of shutting down.

School officials cutting NCAA-sanctioned sports could save $500,000 annually. Currently, according to reports, the school spends $263.075 annually to support its Division III programs, including basketball. (There are no athletic scholarships in DIII.) Revenue? The school says it generated about $10,000 last year, and that was from an NCAA grant awarded for participating in some sports.

Talk about March Madness.

School officials said they’ll replace the intercollegiate sports with a more extensive intramural program. Predictably, some students, faculty, university employees (particularly those in the athletic department) are against the move. “Usually everyone has a homecoming football game,” university senior David Hill recently told Black College Wire. “We just have a basketball game, and now we’re not even going to have that.”

Hill, a physics major, added: “It decreases the camaraderie between students now that you don’t have a function or an event where students get together. It decreases school pride. What are you rooting for, other than your academics?”

Seems plenty to me.

Like other HBCUs, Fisk was founded with a clear mandate: to provide freed slaves and their descendants with an incomparable education and prepare them for leadership in society. The school’s mission talks about its “rich academic experience,” says its faculty and students have a “passion for learning and personal growth.”

I’m all for sports and the experiences they provide for young people. I lament the loss of organized sports in our public schools and have fed my family on the industries of professional and collegiate sports. But like many others I also recognize that our passion for sports often exceeds our reason, a notion that is supported on our sports pages nearly every day.

The lives of the Fisk students who will no longer be able to play D-III sports will not be inexorably diminished. Nor will the lives of those students, like the quotable Mr. Hill, who no longer have D-III games to attend (free, if I may add).

Schools throughout the nation - from Miami to Stanford, my alma mater - are arguing over the relative importance of sports on their campuses. As un-winnable as the sports v. education discussion may be, it isn’t likely to subside anytime soon. It just may be eternal.

Leave that argument to them. Let other schools try to wrestle profits out of their athletic programs. HBCUs, frankly, have bigger mandates than simply providing sports teams for a few athletically gifted students. Fisk is right to drop D-III sports in an effort to save its ability to educate students.

Oh, I can see the hair on the backs on some black-college graduates rising now. Sports has played a huge role in the history and growth of many HBCUs. They provided the athletes who broke color barriers in some pro sports and, in recent years, HBCU teams have often proven capable of competing with and beating teams from larger institutions. Just this weekend, baseball teams from Bethune-Cookman and Southern more than held their own against UCLA and USC, two venerable programs that should compete for the national title this season, in MLB’s first Urban Invitational in Los Angeles.

Some HBCUs should play on. Play for the pride. Play for the money. Play for the same reason every other school plays. But with many HBCUs - Fisk isn’t the only one at Defcom 5 when it comes to finances - the priority for those institutions should be fulfilling the school’s founding mandate rather than filling arena or stadium seats, especially when so many larger schools are falling short in educating student athletes.

Fisk is making the right call here, and one can only hope it helps the institution regain its financial footing.

As of its last report, the school had raised $1,032,00 toward a matching grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which pledged up to $2 million dollars if the school can raise $4 million by June 30. You may contribute by clicking here.

As major-leaguers gather in Florida and Arizona to stretch their hammies and revive their pitching arms, the game cannot ignore its continuing dilemma regarding American youth. Specifically black inner-city youths, who’ve dropped the game so far down its list of “games we play” there seem to be more African-American kids swinging golf clubs than baseball bats - which once seemed about as far fetched as America electing a black president.

No use rehashing the numbers. Everyone knows the numbers of black players in the majors is dwindling. The likes of NL MVP Jimmy Rollins and AL Cy Young winner C.C. Sabathia are a anomalies today, a fact that isn’t likely to change soon.

Yet that has not dissuaded baseball from embarking on a wave of initiatives aimed at what we now call “urban” youth, with an emphasis on simply replanting the seed that once flourished among young blacks. The latest effort is called the Urban Invitational Baseball Tournament, a unique four-team event that will be held this weekend at baseball’s Urban Youth Academy in Compton, CA.

Think of it as the World Baseball Classic in the ‘Hood. Participants comprise two traditional college baseball powers, UCLA (Jackie Robinson’s alma mater, which is ranked No. 1 in the Baseball America poll) and USC (winners of 12 national titles) and two teams representing historically black colleges, Bethune-Cookman and Southern. BC graduated its top three batters from last season, who hit 27 of the team’s 40 HRs. Nonetheless, the ‘Cats and Southern are ranked Nos. 2 and 3 respectively in Black College Baseball’s preseason poll, so if you’re thinking rollover, well, you’re not thinking. BC has reached the NCAAs seven of the last eight years.

The Urban Invite is part of multi-pronged approach to exposing more African-American youth to the game and ensuring that if they want to play, they’re be able to find and field or a team or a coach - something or someone that will allow them to do so. Combined with the ongoing RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) program, the Urban Academy itself and, to a lesser degree, the annual Civil Right Game that takes place in Memphis on March 29, the events are to be commended for, if not results, their breadth and tenacity.

Jimmie Lee Solomon, the Executive Vice President or Baseball Ops (and game’s patron saint of its diversity efforts) says the goal of the Urban Invitation is to give “exposure to the HBCU baseball programs and an awareness of opportunities that exist there, and the high caliber of play they provide.” Another hope is that event creates “buzz” akin to college football’s Bayou Classic, an annual event featuring black-college football rivals Grambling State and Southern at the Superdome in New Orleans that sells out and has essentially become the black college football Super Bowl. While that may be a bit much to hope for the Urban Invite (at least for now), the event will be highlighted by a first-time ever “battle” between Southern’s famous marching band, “Human Jukebox,” and the marching USC Trojans.

Check out the JukeBox video: Click HERE.

More importantly, check out the Southern Dancing Dolls:

(Heck, Sunday’s “battle” between the dancing Dolls and the USC Song Girls is no doubt worth the five-buck ticket price by itself.)

Oh yeah, this is about baseball. My bad. Anyway, all of these initiatives combined may not alter the trend that is changing the face of baseball’s major leagues - at least not in our lifetime. But perhaps that should not be the goal.

Baseball is planning on expanding its urban academy concept to cities such as Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Miami and Atlanta. If through all these efforts, the game became another positive option for the myriad young men today who have too few then it would have accomplished something more critical than if just a handful of brothers reached the majors. If a dozen more black kids earned baseball scholarships to Bethune Cookman, Southern, UCLA or USC then the game would have truly honored the legacy of the man who changed it more than any other.

Dear voters of North Carolina’s Fifth Congressional District: What the hell were you thinking?

This is your national representative? This is in whom you’ve entrusted the care of your neighborhoods and well-being?

Virginia (no kin to Red) Foxx is your choice?

God help you.

We all know by now that this week’s show in Washington was an absolute waste. Even the congressmen know it. We learned nothing by watching Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee “yes, sir” and “no, sir” us to boredom. Not a thing.

Or maybe that at one of them may be the absolute best liar on the planet. My vote’s on the big guy.

We also learned that some of the people who represent us are worthless. Okay, I had never heard of Re. Virginia Foxx before this week. Didn’t know she was even on the committee. She may bring more pork to her district than Jimmy Dean, for all I know. But when she spoke up at the hearing, it jolted me from my stupor:

“Mr. Clemens, you know,” he began. “I am not an expert in any of these issues.” As I turned to look I saw she was sitting in front of some blown-up images of Clemens pitching, blowups that look like they were done at the do-it-yourself section at Staples. “but you appear to me to be about the same size in all of those photos. Maybe you’d like to say something about how hard you work at keeping yourself in shape and how that would result in the stamina and body build that you have.”

I almost gagged in my office. Did I hear the congresswoman correctly? This was beyond a softball. It was a beachball lobbed from 12 feet. It was so silly even Clemens didn’t quite know how to react.

Truthfully, the pictures she showed, which the congresswoman said were taken before and after Clemens allegedly used steroids, didn’t look that much different. But, geez, those wouldn’t have even passed for show-and-tell in my daughter’s fifth-grade class. If I’d know the lady wanted picks I would have given her the ones I found (above), which show two very different Rogers.

Hey, we all know pics mean nothing. I laughed at all the bobble-head pics people found of Barry Bonds and tried to use as “evidence” that he used steroids. So this is offered tongue firmly planted in cheek, as well.

These pics mean nothing. The Bonds pics mean nothing. The hearings meant nothing.

And Rep. Virginia Foxx is nothing but an embarrassment to our nation.

North Carolina’s Tax Dollars Burned and Shredded