Cheerleaders demonstrate core strength and pulse-racing athleticism.

PHOENIX (Sportsman’s Daily Wire Service) As reported by the Associated Press, competitive cheerleading is not an official sport that colleges can use to meet gender-equity requirements, a federal judge ruled Wednesday in ordering Quinnipiac University to keep its women’s volleyball team. Nationally renowned cheerleader coach Sparkles Botwinick begs to differ.

“Not a sport my ass,” snorted Botwinick, still a petite dynamo at 47 years old. “Cheerleading at the highest levels requires athleticism, conditioning, and the ability to execute under pressure.  You try doing a  2½ high pyramid into a twisting basket toss with 25,000 frothing at the mouth maniacs trying to get a peek under your skirt, then tell me it’s not a sport.” (more…)

If you thought his team mates steered clear of Kobe on the floor, they were no where to be seen as he stormed into the locker room looking to pin blame for their Game 2 loss.

LOS ANGELES (Sportsman’s Daily Wire Service) – When it was over, there wasn’t a Laker to be found…anywhere. Only fifteen seconds after the Lakers lost Game 2 to the Boston Celtics, the home team’s locker room was mysteriously empty and if not for the solitary figure of Kobe Bryant calling out his “punkass” team mates and heaving every object not nailed down (including a Japanese reporter), eerily quiet.

“I hate you! I hate you!” fumed Bryant. “I hate you, hate you, hate you!”

Onlookers unfamiliar with Kobe’s juvenile tantrums were as stunned as Staples Center fans who had just witnessed the Lakers lose the second game in the Finals against the (marginally) underdog Celtics.   Kobe was uncharacteristically ineffectual, his frustration mounting as the game progressed. (more…)

Allen Iverson completely outsources his signing decision -- a process he's also applied to his last eight tatoos.

DETROIT, MI (Sportsman’s Daily Wire Service) The unsigned Allen Iverson prefers to keep his day-to-day decision making to a bare minimum. Beyond when to wake up, when to eat breakfast, what to wear, which of the six bathrooms in his home to relieve himself in, Iverson leaves “the big decisions” to his team of advisors – from where to hide the shoe box that contains most of his disposable income to which team he signs with. (more…)

Postgame wrap of TSD’s  first week out in Hollywood…Rogue CIA Op force-fed hours of bad sitcom as punishment…and a compilation record so awful you’ll be longing for some vintage K-tel vinyl.  Check us out After Dark…

I’m sometimes nostalgic for the days of literary feuds. Back when novelists were important public figures and you had TV hosts like Dick Cavett and Jack Parr and David Susskind who gave feuding writers like Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer a platform to have at it.

So imagine my excitment upon reading venerable baseball scribe Murray Chass go off on his one-time NYT colleague Selena Roberts for her thinly sourced A-Rod book.  Granted it’s not Vidal-Buckley, but  it’ll do.  The title of his column (found at www.murraychass.com) pretty much sums up the mood:  ROBERTS WHIFFS ON A-ROD AND ‘ROIDS.  Here’s an excerpt:

Roberts and I were once colleagues at The New York Times, and I can’t say she established that credibility. She also didn’t strike me as being a top-flight reporter. As a result, I don’t feel I can trust her book full of anonymous sources. Even if every single A-Rod transgression she reports is accurate, it’s too easy for her to write one former teammate said this and another player said that.

Also, check out his bio – he’s one old school cat.  Split an infinitive and it’s pistols at dawn.

Before you jump to any conclusions — well, he is a fool with a self-image problem that  no one playing baseball for a living should ever have –  but as to whether A-Rod is a cheater…well, here’s a take that might give you some pause:

The athlete’s reliance on steroids is no different in principle from a reliance on training techniques, newly designed footwear, sunglasses, mitts, nutrition or the computer-graphic analysis of plays. We are what we do and are never entirely self-sufficient in determining the scope of what we can do.

The fact that Rodriguez might not have achieved what he has without steroids no more undercuts his ownership of his achievements than the fact that he wouldn’t have achieved what he did without loving parents. Likewise, Bonds hit all his home runs, regardless of what Selig feels called upon to pronounce. The fact that drugs might have enabled him to do this no more undermines the authenticity of this achievement than the fact that Tour de France cyclist can do what he does thanks only to the latest in bicycle engineering, well-organized team strategy and, yes, steroids. The achievements are his, even if he managed them thanks to his reliance on the latest tools.  (From A-Rod Isn’t a Cheater)

The problem with steroids isn’t that it’s simply a new technology, it’s that it’s a technology that produces cartoonishly improved results.  A tweak to a bicycle frame may net you a fractional advantage, but won’t lead to times that make last year’s seem prehistoric.

Cause admit it, you can’t get enough. Here’s a choice nugget from a (yet another) feature/takedown of one Lenny Dykstra,  this one written by a NY Post photo editor who went to work overseeing production of the fraudster’s ill-fated mag:

The strangest part of working at The Players Club, though, is Lenny’s adolescent antics. Editorial “brainstorming sessions,” fueled by Coca-Cola and ice cream sundaes, typically last until dawn. But this does not mean things are getting done. Most meetings are simply extended hang-out sessions, with Lenny cracking up at his own jokes or asking us to watch the Real Sports segment over and over, especially the moment where Lenny points to his seat on his private plane and says, “This is where the Big Man sits.” He also seems to relish letting go a long, leisurely fart for the amusement of his employees or showing off his silk tie and saying, “You see this tie? I paid $500 for it” as he rubs it on his crotch and laughs at our embarrassed expressions.

The article is titled “You Think Your Job Sucks? Try Working for Lenny Dykstra.” http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_8558. The energy Dykstra expends on leading a lifestyle that’s way beyond his means is almost exhausting just to read.  I always thought the main benefit of money — real money — is the accessibility. To things,  people and places.  The idea is that life has suddenly become vastly easier…and the distance between what you want or maybe need has become no further than your thumb and middle finger (snap).  Lenny tries so damn hard just to keep up appearances…it’s like his life is about  trying to stretch a double into an inside-the-park home run.  His head’s down as he’s furiously churning around the bases, oblivious to the fact that the catcher is holding the ball, patiently waiting for Lenny to slide into his tag.

Just as parents use beads or to pennies to teach their children difficult  concepts, we here at TSD use sports to help us make sense of a complex world. So it should come as no surprise that we’d resort to a sports trade to accurately gauge the implications of  Arlen Spector’s decision to become a Democrat.  The GOP loses a respected veteran right-hander, a third or fourth starter who can give you 10-12 wins…highly valuable for a contending team, but a lot less valuable if your club’s most realistic goal is to avoid losing more than 100 games.   The Democrats deepen their bench and add a somewhat known quantity to the mix, though there are lingering doubts as to whether he can be trusted in the clutch.

The best the TSD editorial staff came up with was the Reds getting Milt Pappas from the Orioles in 1965.  (more…)

The Jets are scheduled to play their home owner on Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish New Year.  And the next Sunday they’re to play at home on Yom Kippur, the holiest of  Jewish holidays.  Apparently the Jets roster consists of an unusually high number of Jews who are outraged by the League’s insensitivity.  Take it away Jimmy Kimmel:

It’s Huffingtonpost.com’s version of wikipedia, if wikipedia limited its coverage to “dicks. ”  While they do not define what exactly warrants a dickopedia entry, the first sentence in Mel Kiper’s entry pretty much gets the message across:  Mel Kiper, Jr. (born July 25, 1960) is an ESPN analyst for the NFL draft, huge football nerd, and a dick.

This is what they have under “Education”:  While attending Essex Community College in Baltimore, Kiper decided to become the kind of dick that runs an obnoxious business while they are in school. Thus, he founded Kiper Enterprises, a modestly named draft information company. While this business was less dickish than, say, stealing an idea for a future million dollar corporation and claiming the idea was your own, it is still more obnoxious than selling “Major League Beer Pong” T-shirts to freshmen.  http://www.dickipedia.org/dick.php?title=Mel_Kiper,_Jr.

It’s gonna be a long weekend.

Clued into the ESPN Dykstra story by my estimable colleague Mr. Alexander, I read it as a sequel to a piece that appeared in, of all places, the New Yorker, in March of ’08. Before the bailout. Before Madoff.  Before AIG. Before all the schemes and frauds and esoteric finance .  The story, titled Nails Never Fails,  doesn’t try overly hard to make Dykstra look like a fool. Or a dick.  Lenny more than obliges by handling that part all by himself.  

For many ballplayers, the growing-up point does not arrive until after retirement, when all the freebies vanish and equipment managers and hotel maids can no longer be relied upon for regular laundry service. Dykstra last played in the majors in 1996, at age thirty-three. Improbably, he has since become a successful day trader, and he let me know that he owns both a Maybach (“the best car”) and a Gulfstream (“the best jet”) (more…)