Happy Valley Doesn't Need the Death Penalty

Never in the NCAA's wildest dreams could they have imagined a scenario as horrifying the one that unfolded at Penn State. 

It's for precisely that reason that, despite Jerry Sandusky's 45 counts of child sex abuse convictions and a preponderance of evidence that Joe Paterno and high-ranking university officials withheld information on his crimes, the NCAA cannot and should not punish the Nittany Lions football program -- much less hand down the death penalty for which many are calling.

Bud Selig Wants to Do WHAT to the Home Run Derby?

The answer, if you've been paying attention the past few days to the furor sparked by Robbie Cano's being booed viciously by the Kansas City partisans during the Derby on Monday, is possibly institute a mandate that says the host team must have a representative in the event.

Okay, okay, so Selig isn't all of a sudden off on a wild crusade to change the rules of the Derby yet again - he merely said that Major League Baseball would "talk about this [potential rule change]."

The mere fact that there would be any kind of discussion on this, however, is simply ludicrous.

Roger and Me

I was at a Sox game two weeks ago or so with a buddy of mine when the subject of Roger Clemens' recent return to Fenway came up. For those of you who missed his appearance in the Monster Seats mere days after his acquittal on charges of perjury, check it out here. I'll wait until you get back.

...

Okay, so his reappearance at Fenway was the subject of a brief discussion, and we were talking about the reception the Rocket got - a mixture of cheers and boos, with the boos seemingly a little louder. I was about declare that I too would have booed Roger...but a funny thing happened on the way to my statement. I thought honestly about how I would react to seeing the guy in the same ballpark, displayed on the videoboard. And I realized something that I had never really given much thought to before.