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Paul Shirley of the Phoenix Suns has his very own blog, called "Road Ramblings." Very interesting insight into what it's like to be a professional athlete. Particularly an intelligent, funny professional athlete.

He seems to see most of the crap surrounding the sport for what it is: crap. If he wrote 'crap' though, it would probably be replaced by [something], as his blog is censored by the league with the use of brackets. It adds to the humor as he tried to describe things without G-rated language.

From his March 23 entry..

Good stuff.

Congress began holding hearings on steroid use in baseball today, demonstrating that they really, really have nothing to do.

So, if you have any ideas for some stuff they could look into, if you have a problem with potholes on your street or ornery garbage men, say, maybe now would be a good time to give your representatives in Washington a jingle. They're bored as hell.

Okay, a few things here...

One, who cares.

Two, why the hell does baseball have an antitrust exemption? That should be revoked whether they clean up the 'roids or not. Ridiculous.

More seriously, though, this issue is silly. Major league athletes use performance enhancing drugs because the game is filled with obscene amounts of money. End of story. With the kind of money they make, it's ridiculous to expect them not to do everything humanly possible to gain a tiny advantage. Nearly anyone would do it.

Further, using drugs is not the only way they enhance performance. Will the Congress hold hearings on laser eye surgery? Is it really fair if some players (who have no vision problems) have the shape of their corneas altered so that they have the vision of a hawk? How about Tommy John surgery, where the ligaments in the forearm are rearranged to produce a more powerful pitcher? Is that fair? (Currently this surgery is only being done on pitchers who have had arm injuries, but it surely won't be long before someone finds a doctor to do it electively.)

Congress justifies its attention to this issue by claiming they're doing it for "the children." If pro ballplayers use drugs to get ahead, kids will see that it's the only way to make it in the big leagues and will follow suit. Well, if they're not naturally one of the top 50 or 100 athletes on the planet, then they're probably right.

But if it's all about the children, then why no hearings on alcohol advertising associated with pro sports? What about basketball players jumping into the stands and kicking the shit out of the fans, where are the hearings on that?

Of course I'm being a bit facetious. The point here is dual: 1 - Congress has much more important things to deal with. The committee that's holding these hearings is called the House Government Reform Committee. Maybe they should focus on that. 2 - They can't win on this issue. The way to get drugs out of the game is with economic pressure from the fans in the form of not buying tickets, not through legislation.

Republicans are supposed to be all about making the government smaller, getting the government out of the regulating business and letting businesses regulate themselves. They're big believers in The Market. The Market will take care of itself. If companies are doing bad things, The People will find out about it and the companies will be punished by losing market share. Government shouldn't mess with The Market.

So why the hell are Senators, Republican Senators no less, getting all tough on Major League Baseball?

Shouldn't we just let The Market decide? If the fans are really pissed off about steroids, they'll stop going to the games and the leagues will go out of business. Or they'll write thousands of angry letters and the leagues will clamp down on the steroid use. But do really need The Congress to get involved? Don't they have better things to do?

I suspect, though, that it won't happen. The fans want to see the superhuman mega-men do superhuman mega-things. Does anyone really think that baseball would be more popular if the players were weaker, but clean? As for the "integrity of the game," who are they kidding? All these kinds of revelations do is expose they way these sports have been run for many, many years. As the money involved skyrockets, the pressure to break records and be the very best does as well and desperate measures will always follow. We romanticize sports, baseball particularly, way out of proportion. It's never been a pure game at the professional level. If you want to see baseball with integrity, go watch 8 year olds play. But don't watch their parents.

Interesting article on this at Salon (subscription or hoop jumping required).

It's over. Lance Armstrong has won his sixth Tour de France in a row and now I can get back to some more regular blogging.

If you hadn't noticed, I've fallen a bit behind in the past couple of weeks. This has something to do with general fatigue of reporting the depressing state of affairs these days, but has probably more to do with my getting up at 6 every morning and watching the Tour for an hour or two before work, time I used to spend catching up on blogging.

As for the race, it's truly incredible, like watching hundreds of guys run a marathon every day for 3 weeks. Lance authoritatively kicked all of their asses to become the first person to ever win the race six times. He not only won it six times; he won it six times consecutively. Impressive, to say the least.

People like to accuse Lance of using performance enhancing drugs, but I say this to those people, "Shut up already." He's never failed a drug test, just let it go. Also, while he did have over six minutes on the second place finisher this year, that's six minutes over 83 and a half hours. If we assume he uses drugs just because he wins, we'd have to assume that most of the other top ten or so riders are using drugs, too. If he was winning by an hour or two, I could see the argument, but he's well within the range of many other riders. They just can't catch him. Call me romantic, but I think the little extra he has may have to do with being very nearly killed by cancer and then coming back to be the top athlete in probably the most insane endurance event in the world.

Beyond that, I don't really care if all of them are using drugs. They should just let athletes do whatever they want. They can have a "clean" version of each sport if there's a market for it, but I suspect there wouldn't be. These guys do everything under the sun to enhance their performance: they have millions of dollars worth of research and custom equipment, strictly regulated and calculated diets, special supplements, etc. It's all "performance enhancing." It seems arbitrary to draw the line at certain chemicals but not others. Some of the newest banned substances are chemicals found in our bodies naturally, just like vitamins. So screw it -- let them take whatever they want. They're already superhuman as far as I'm concerned.

So, what's new in politics?

How sad is it that our reputation around the world is so bad that our athletes are being told not to wave flags at the Olympics in Athens, for fear of angering the crowd?

It's damn sad.

The simple act of holding up our flag is now considered by many to be an act of aggression to the point where we're warning our citizens to display restraint. Personally, I'm all for restraining dumb-ass patriotism anyway, but when's the last time a nation's flag inspired such feelings all around the world? Swastika, anyone?

P.S. -- and no, I'm not comparing the U.S. to Nazi Germany in policy or action, I'm comparing the feelings of the world public toward the two.

Oh, and here's a favorite quote about patriotism:
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- George Bernard Shaw