They claim that Sir Sidney tested positive for a stimulant: Kansas City Royals pitcher Sidney Ponson tested positive for a stimulant during the World Baseball Classic and has been banned from international competition for two years. Major League Baseball will not suspend Ponson. Under the drug rules, he will be treated as a first-time offender […]

From Heyman: Albert Pujols, for all his heroics this year, has one hit with a RISP and two outs (1 for 14, with 15 BB and 10 IBB), and as Joel Sherman of the New York Post (and SI.com) pointed out, Mets’ youngster Nick Evan passed Pujols with two in two days vs. Pujols’ Cardinals. […]

Slate has a good article up arguing the superiority of the dead-center camera over the traditional, slightly-offset camera. I’m in favor of the dead-center, which ESPN toyed with for a year or two and which the Red Sox, Cardinals and Twins use now. This dissent from the article is understandable, however: There are also television […]

I’m going to spare everyone the big Michael Jackson post I was going to write because (a) it represented mission creep even for me; and (b) it wasn’t coming together all that well. Jonah has a good one up if you’re curious. I’ll just say this: Michael Jackson and his handlers probably spent most of […]

Does this give me license to go off topic and dive into a Posnanskian-length Michael Jackson essay when I get some time later today? The year was 1976. Farrah Fawcett had the poster that was on walls everywhere. Michael Jackson was fronting “The Jacksons” — as the band started off on its own a year […]

In the wake of Michael Jackson’s passing, all of the players in yesterday’s games wore one glove in his memory. . . Yankees 11, Braves 7: Buster Olney went all Jerod Morris on A-Rod yesterday (query: does the fact that Rodriguez tested positive for steroids six years ago, and a year before the institution of […]

Or at least he was during the WBC: Cubs catcher Geovany Soto tested positive for marijuana use while playing for Puerto Rico during the World Baseball Classic last March, the International Baseball Federation announced Thursday. Soto released a statement saying he was “embarrassed by my lapse in judgment.” “While I full acknowledge my inappropriate behavior, […]

T.J. Simers doesn’t get all of the Manny outrage, but he’s not even pretending to be objective about it. In today’s column he fields the emails of those angry at him for being a Manny apologist. He doesn’t duck the charge at all. For him, it’s all about the entertainment factor: “Your idolatry of Manny […]

Via Sons of Steve Garvey, here’s Eric Collins and Steve Lyons during last night’s Dodgers-White Sox game: Lyons: Do you follow some of the other whacked-out statistical categories that are nouveau to the game of baseball? Collins: I do. It’s — Lyons: What are they? Collins: Well, you got defensive — for the first time […]

I don’t read the New York tabloids that often, so until YankeeFanLen sent me this link the other day I had never seen any of Bill Gallo’s sports cartoons, at least not that I know of. Mercy. On one level I appreciate the effort and the artistry involved. And it certainly takes one back to […]